To make a business case for corporate sustainability, firms must be able to sell their sustainable products. The influence that firm engagement with non-governmental organizations may have on consumer adoption of sustainable products has been neglected in previous research. We address this by embedding corporate sustainability in a cosmopolitan framework that connects firms, consumers, and civil society organizations based on the understanding of responsibility for global humanity that underlies both the sustainability and cosmopolitanism concepts. We hypothesize that firms’ sustainability engagement (...) and their NGO engagement influence consumer adoption of sustainable products. Empirically, we investigate the adoption of sustainable Eco-circle products made from recycled fibers marketed by Li Ning, a China-based global sportswear brand. We apply a stepwise regression approach to test our hypotheses with paper-and-pencil survey data from 217 Chinese consumers. We find adoption to be positively associated with consumers’ sustainability attitude but not with firms’ sustainability engagement. For firm–NGO engagement, these relationships are reversed: Adoption is positively associated with firm–NGO engagement, but not with consumers’ related attitude. Our results present a picture of the Chinese context in which there is a business case for corporate sustainability if firms’ words about sustainable product strategies are supported by signals from civil society about firm deeds. The results imply that in a Chinese context, firms need to be particularly aware of the role of NGOs when hoping to be rewarded for sustainability. (shrink)

Now that the Washington Football Team, formerly known as the Redskins, has succumbed to recent political pressure and changed its name, some may think that the fight over pseudo-Native-American representations (PNAR) in sports is over and won in favor of the activists. I will argue, using Beauvoir’s existential ethics, that PNAR in general is immoral and that several other teams should also change their branding.

To make a business case for corporate sustainability, firms must be able to sell their sustainable products. The influence that firm engagement with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may have on consumer adoption of sustainable products has been neglected in previous research. We address this by embedding corporate sustainability in a cosmopolitan framework that connects firms, consumers, and civil society organizations based on the understanding of responsibility for global humanity that underlies both the sustainability and cosmopolitanism concepts. We hypothesize that firms’ sustainability (...) engagement and their NGO engagement influence consumer adoption of sustainable products. Empirically, we investigate the adoption of sustainable Eco-circle products made from recycled fibers marketed by Li Ning, a China-based global sportswear brand. We apply a stepwise regression approach to test our hypotheses with paper-and-pencil survey data from 217 Chinese consumers. We find adoption to be positively associated with consumers’ sustainability attitude but not with firms’ sustainability engagement. For firm–NGO engagement, these relationships are reversed: Adoption is positively associated with firm–NGO engagement, but not with consumers’ related attitude. Our results present a picture of the Chinese context in which there is a business case for corporate sustainability if firms’ words about sustainable product strategies are supported by signals from civil society about firm deeds. The results imply that in a Chinese context, firms need to be particularly aware of the role of NGOs when hoping to be rewarded for sustainability. (shrink)

Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

Was Natur für uns ist und welche Bereiche unserer Umwelt als natürlich erfahren werden, scheint sich einer prinzipiellen Bestimmung zu entziehen. Auch ist weitgehend unklar, worauf sich der verantwortliche Umgang "des" Menschen mit "der" Natur beziehen soll? Etwa auf die Erhaltung des Status quo der Natur oder auf die maßvolle Steuerung des Wandels der Natur? Ist in den gegenwärtigen umweltpolitischen und den Naturschutz betreffenden Überlegungen tatsächlich "die" Natur der Referenzrahmen verantwortlichen Handelns oder geht es uns vor allem um die Erhaltung (...) eines nützlichen Zustands für uns und nachfolgende Generationen? Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes ziehen die Gewissheiten unseres theoretischen und praktischen Umgangs mit der Natur in Frage und suchen nach neuen Perspektiven. -/- Unter den Stichworten Objektive Natur (I.), Natur als Resonanzraum (II.), Natur als Ressource und Wert (III.), Natur als natürliche Umwelt (IV.), Künstliche Natur (V.), Vergesellschaftete Natur (VI.) und Verantwortete Natur (VII.) sind Beiträge der Philosophinnen Heike Baranzke und Christine Zunke sowie der Philosophen Michael Großheim, Michael Hauskeller, Kristian Köchy, Ulrich Krohs und Gregor Schiemann versammelt. Interdisziplinäre Herausforderungen zur Thematik werden in den Studien von Jörn Ahrens (Kultursoziologie), Karl-Werner Brand (Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung), Hans Diefenbacher (Wirtschaftswissenschaften), Thomas Fuchs (Psychiatrie), Ulrich Gebhard (Erziehungswissenschaften), Thomas Kirchhoff (Ökologie), Dörte Martens/ Nicole Bauer (Umweltpsychologie), Hartmut Rosa (Soziologie), Heinrich Spanier (Umweltschutz), Vera Tekken/ Josef Settele (Umweltforschung), Frank Uekötter (Umweltgeschichte) und Michael Wink (Biologie) deutlich herausgearbeitet. Die Beiträge der Theologen Dirk Evers und Thorsten Moos runden den Band ab. (shrink)

“Pure white light!” exclaimed a British philosopher in my hearing some fifty years ago when the conversation turned to Henry Sidgwick. That sums up pretty well what his contemporaries thought of him. He stood in their view as the exemplar of objectivity in thought, of clear and passionless understanding. The light he threw on his subject was uniquely uncolored by feeling, prejudice, or desire.

Owing to an absence from home, I did not see Professor Errol Harris’s critique of my Gifford Lectures, Reason and Belief, till long past its appearance. But the criticism clearly demands an answer. Mr. Harris argues his case with acuteness and urbanity, and with a command of science that I can only envy.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Dirk van Dalen’s biography studies the fascinating life of the famous Dutch mathematician and philosopher Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. Brouwer belonged to a special class of genius; complex and often controversial and gifted with a deep intuition, he had an unparalleled access to the secrets and intricacies of mathematics. Most mathematicians remember L.E.J. Brouwer from his scientific breakthroughs in the young subject of topology and for the famous Brouwer fixed point theorem. Brouwer’s main interest, however, was in the foundation (...) of mathematics which led him to introduce, and then consolidate, constructive methods under the name ‘intuitionism’. This made him one of the main protagonists in the ‘foundation crisis’ of mathematics. As a confirmed internationalist, he also got entangled in the interbellum struggle for the ending of the boycott of German and Austrian scientists. This time during the twentieth century was turbulent; nationalist resentment and friction between formalism and intuitionism led to the Mathematische Annalen conflict. It was here that Brouwer played a pivotal role. The present biography is an updated revision of the earlier two volume biography in one single book. It appeals to mathematicians and anybody interested in the history of mathematics in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Like others who work in philosophy, I asked myself from time to time what I was trying to do in my philosophizing. The natural answer seemed to be that I was trying to understand the world, and to do so by taking any thing or event that puzzled me and pressing the question Why? till I arrived at the understanding I sought. And what does understanding anything mean? It means to explain it or to render it intelligible. And when does (...) it become intelligible? Only when it is seen in context, and seen as required by that context. This requirement is of various kinds. Sometimes it is causal, as when an attack of malaria is explained by the bite of the anopheles mosquito. Sometimes it is a means-end relation, as when the presence of a rudder is explained as a means of guiding a ship. Sometimes it is logical, as when the Pythagorean theorem is explained by showing that it follows necessarily from other accepted propositions of geometry. (shrink)

To some students this method was too uncompromising for human frailty. To others, while chastening almost to despair, it was immensely stimulating; and the writer of this notice, who had the privilege of working with him for three years, falls emphatically in the latter group. Joachim was a remark able teacher who had no use for the arts and devices of the teacher. He gained his effect through the purgative influence on his pupils of his rare singleness of mind. Frail (...) of body, shy, deficient in animal spirits, he was still so obviously and wholly interested in the truth of the matter, so scrupulous in scholarship, and so just in statement, so incapable of glossing over difficulties with rhetoric, so reverent of the great philosophers and so modest about himself, that one's hours with him were memorable lessons in the patience and the discipline of good work. Though the discipline was rigorous, one was given to feel that something of great price lay at the end, nothing less indeed than a vision of reality. Logic in his hands was no mere razor-honing, nor was it a manipulation of symbols according to rules, nor yet a rattling of semantical dry bones; it was a study of the nature and conditions of intelligibility. And since intelligibility reached its high point in philosophy, he chose to study logic by studying the ideals of understanding implicit in the great philosophers. For his own part, the test of any theory was its power to maintain itself in the light of reflectively ordered experience as a whole, and hence he would not have regarded his classical learning, his studies in German literature, or even his virtuosity on the violin as wholly alien to his thought. He belonged to the tradition in which philosophy, if not identical with wisdom, at least carried it as a corollary. (shrink)

I am grateful to the group of philosophers who gave so liberally of their time and talent to the January issue of Idealistic Studies, which was devoted to my work. My thanks go particularly to Richard De George and Charles Landesman, who conceived the idea of such a collection, and to Robert Beck who, as editor, cooperated with them warmly. I treasure the collection the more because all the writers have been in one way or another students of mine. Judging (...) by their admirable essays, I was more successful in persuading them that rival positions were wrong than that my own were right. About that I cannot complain. The business of a philosophy teacher is not to produce disciples but to offer a discipline in thinking; and if the discipline is effective enough to expose cracks in his own system, that is at least some evidence that he has done his job. (shrink)

Owing to an absence from home, I did not see Professor Errol Harris’s critique of my Gifford Lectures, Reason and Belief, till long past its appearance. But the criticism clearly demands an answer. Mr. Harris argues his case with acuteness and urbanity, and with a command of science that I can only envy.