The relationship between power, law and consent is a key feature of the Western debate on criminal law. On the one side, defining the legitimate ways of exercising the punitive power has been a critical question since the Enlightenment thought onwards and especially as to the rule of law doctrine. On the other side, the role played by public punishment in shaping consent and its communicative potential have been crucial questions for critical, as well as non-critical approaches to criminal law (...) in contemporary thought. These questions gain in strength and radicalism when it comes to international criminal law (ICL). In this case the filter of the state is not present anymore to mediate between power, law and consent, and the power to punish individuals is directly exercised by international institutions. This means, on the one hand, that traditional justifications of the power to punish and which are elaborated on in the domestic sphere are not useful anymore in legitimating international punishment. International criminal norms are not framed by an international democratically elected parliament, and their exercise is not controlled by the complex system of checks and balances typical of the rule of law. On the other hand, having not being created by a sovereign, international criminal law cannot be conceived as an instrument to build or consolidate consent around the sovereign. A double-sided dilemma therefore arises: traditional explanations are no longer apt to answer the question whether ICL is legitimate, while ICL itself can no longer be considered an instrument to build consent around the traditional power exercising it, namely the state. Although I consider both sides of the dilemma equally interesting and stimulating, I will focus here only on one side of the coin: the ability to build consent of the ICL institutions, and in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC). In other words, instead of asking whether the consent around the ICC is broad enough for the Court to be considered legitimate, I shall ask whether the ICC is able to build consent around the world order it embodies. (shrink)
The increased scrutiny of investors regarding the non-financial aspects of corporate performance has placed portfolio managers in the position of having to weigh the benefits of ' holding the market' against the cost of having positions in companies that are subsequently found to have questionable business practices. The availability of stock indexes based on sustainability screening makes increasingly viable for institutional investors the transition to a portfolio based on a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) benchmark at relatively low cost. The increasing (...) share of socially responsible investments may play a role in providing incentives towards a continuous upgrading of sustainability standards to the extent that their performance is not systematically inferior to that of the other funds. This article examines whether these incentives have been so far detectable with particular reference to the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index (DJSSI) that focuses on the European corporations with the highest CSR scores among those included in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index. The aim of the article is twofold. First, we analyse the performance of the DJSSI over the period 2001-2006 compared to that of the Surrogate Complementary Index (SCI), a new benchmark that includes only the components of the DJ Stoxx 600 that do not belong to the ethical index to evaluate more correctly the size of possible divergent performances. Second, we perform an event study on the same data set to analyse whether the stock market evaluation reacts to the inclusion (deletion) in the DJSSI. In both cases, the results suggest that the evaluation of the CSR performance of a firm is a significant criterion for asset allocation activities. (shrink)
The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses (...) for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain’s so-called voluntary motor areas. (shrink)
Drawing on the natural-resource-based view, we propose that employee stakeholder integration is linked to environmental performance through firms’ proactive environmental strategies, and that this link is contingent on shared vision. We tested our model with a cross-country and multi-industry sample. In support of our theory, results revealed that firms’ proactive environmental strategies translated employee stakeholder integration into environmental performance. This relationship was pronounced for high levels of shared vision. Our findings demonstrate that shared vision represents a key condition for advancing (...) the corporate greening agenda through proactive environmental strategies. We discuss implications for the CSR and the environmental management literatures, with a particular focus on the NRBV and stakeholder integration debates. (shrink)
This article explores the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate reputation using qualitative research approach. Specifically, the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation is examined from the viewpoint of value theory. This paper brings up for discussion the various value priorities lying in the background of CSR actions. The aim is to form categories of value priorities around CSR and reputation, based on qualitative research approach. The main concepts in this paper – CSR, reputation and value – are (...) also defined. This paper further discusses the theory of value structure and content, which identifies certain principal values among different cultures. The data consist of eight interviews with employees of a newspaper company. The results suggest that value priorities play an influential role in CSR actions, influencing to the essence of certain reputation stories in the corporate context. (shrink)
Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)
In this paper, I wish to explore the contribution of the phenomenological reduction to a distinct form of empathy, which has been identified and called by Ratcliffe :473–495, 2012) radical empathy. This form of empathy brings to light the sense of reality experienced by the subject rather than a mere mental state. However, I shall consider whether and how the phenomenological reduction allows different interpretations of the same experience, thereby impacting on our understanding of another’s sense of reality. Far from (...) dismissing the role of the reduction, I propose a reconsideration of its relevance for radical empathy. In order to spell out my argument, I propose a case ex negativo that looks at Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s different analyses of the sense of reality experienced by obsessive patients. I argue that this interpretative difference ultimately depends on two opposite uses of the reduction itself, and that Merleau-Ponty’s account offers a promising perspective to reintegrate and contextualize the phenomenological reduction into radical empathy. (shrink)
The present issue of Journal of World Philosophies will host a series of papers discussing the phenomenon of linguistic communication2 from a philosophical point of view and from a cross-cultural perspective. The papers’ authors discussed the topic together with some other scholars in a workshop in Athens, 2015. The contributions are organized around the following four issues: 1. What do we know? 2. How (through which instrument of knowledge) do we know it? 3. What is the role of language as (...) a medium? 4. What is the role of the social context? (shrink)
The suffering of nonhuman animals has become a noted factor in deciding public policy and legislative change. Yet, despite this growing concern, skepticism toward such suffering is still surprisingly common. This paper analyzes the merits of the skeptical approach, both in its moderate and extreme forms. In the first part it is claimed that the type of criterion for verification concerning the mental states of other animals posed by skepticism is overly (and, in the case of extreme skepticism, illogically) demanding. (...) Resting on Wittgenstein and Husserl, it is argued that skepticism relies on a misguided epistemology and, thus, that key questions posed by it face the risk of absurdity. In the second part of the paper it is suggested that, instead of skepticism, empathy together with intersubjectivity be adopted. Edith Stein’s take on empathy, along with contemporary findings, are explored, and the claim is made that it is only via these two methods of understanding that the suffering of nonhuman animals can be perceived. (shrink)
Animal ethics has presented various 'pro-animal arguments' according to which non-human animals have a more significant moral status than traditionally assumed. Although these arguments (brought forward, for instance, by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Midgley, Stephen Clark, and Mark Rowlands) have been met with various forms of criticism, a quick overview of animal ethics literature suggests that they are difficult to overcome. Pro-animal arguments seem to have consistency and argumentative support on their side. However, recently a new type of criticism (...) has become more prominent. The claim is that the pro-animal arguments ignore the relevance of established paradigms and meanings. The moral status of animals is .. (shrink)
Contemporary literature includes a wide variety of definitions of empathy. At the same time, the revival of sentimentalism has proposed that empathy serves as a necessary criterion of moral agency. The paper explores four common definitions in order to map out which of them best serves such agency. Historical figures are used as the backdrop against which contemporary literature is analysed. David Hume’s philosophy is linked to contemporary notions of affective and cognitive empathy, Adam Smith’s philosophy to projective empathy, and (...) Max Scheler’s account to embodied empathy. Whereas cognitive and projective empathy suffer from detachment and atomism, thereby providing poor support for the type of other-directedness and openness entailed by moral agency, embodied and affective empathy intrinsically facilitate these factors, and hence are viewed as fruitful candidates. However, the theory of affective empathy struggles to explain why the experience of empathy includes more than pure affective mimicry, whilst embodied empathy fails to take into account forms of empathy that do not include contextual, narrative information. In order to navigate through these difficulties, Edith Stein’s take on non-primordial experience is used as a base upon which a definition of affective empathy, inclusive of an embodied dimension, and founded on a movement between resonation and response, is sketched. It is argued that, of the four candidates, this new definition best facilitates moral agency. (shrink)
