The reputation of Hugo Preuss has been tainted by the failure of the Weimar Republic, whose constitution he drafted. Preuss has consequently been comparatively neglected in the history of German political thought and some have seen him as trapped in the conceptual world of the German monarchical state. This article argues against that view of Preuss, and against the same view of Robert Redslob who influenced him at a crucial stage. It also argues that Preuss (...) had good democratic reasons for advocating a directly elected president and that the later problems with the German presidency were a product of subsequent reinterpretation of the role of the president, which was contrary to Preuss's intentions. (shrink)

Hugo Preuß war nicht nur einer der wichtigsten theoretischen Vordenker der modernen Demokratie in Deutschland, sondern war als Politiker auch wesentlich an der Verfassunggebung der Weimarer Republik beteiligt. Als Staatsrechtler entwickelte Preuß die demokratische Genossenschaftstheorie und zählt damit zu den Begründern des Pluralismus in Deutschland. Zudem war Preuß als politischer Publizist aktiv im Kampf für die Demokratisierung des Kaiserreiches und ergriff nach 1919 zur Verteidigung der Republik und zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus die Feder. Preuß war (...) damit ein früher Verfechter des Konzepts der wehrhaften Demokratie gegen die vor allem rechten Feinde der Weimarer Republik. Als liberaler Politiker wurde Preuß in der Berliner Kommunalpolitik ein Exponent sozialliberaler Ideen. 1918 war er Mitbegründer der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei und zeichnete als erster Reichsinnenminister der Weimarer Republik für die Wahlen zur Nationalversammlung und für den Prozeß der Verfassunggebung verantwortlich, den er vom ersten Entwurf der Verfassung bis zur Verabschiedung begleitete. Bis zu seinem Tod gehörte er dem Landtag Preußens an, wo er in der DDP für die Weimarer Koalition eintrat. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly significant managerial concept, yet the manager as an agent of corporate bureaucracy has been substantially missing from both the analytical and conceptual literature dealing with CSR. This article, which is both interpretative in nature and specific in reference to the U.K. cultural context, represents an attempt at addressing this lacuna by utilising qualitative data to explore the perceptions of managers working in corporations with developed CSR programmes. Exploring managerial perceptions of motives for (...) CSR initiatives, methods of stakeholder engagement, organisational integration of CSR and its impact on managerial work, this study concludes that an instrumental approach dominates, which indicates an external-internal organisational paradox in the design and execution of CSR initiatives. (shrink)

An English eccentric and an agitated dean -- Mr. McGregor's garden -- I banish you -- Vultures and ostriches -- Post mortem.

I want in what follows to suggest – it would take a great deal of space to argue the matter in detail – that each of the prevailing schools of philosophy, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and the ‘Continental’, has its characteristic strengths and weaknesses; and that to make effective progress in the philosophy of religion, one needs the virtues of both.

How can Socrates maintain, as he appears to do, that both pleasure and virtue are the chief good? In the Gorgias, he declares that pleasure is not the good for human beings. Consistently with this, he argues in the Apology and Crito that this good is virtue. Yet in the Protagoras, he can claim after all that it is pleasure. How can these positions be other than mutually contradictory? A common strategy among interpreters is to take the Protagoras as making (...) concessions for the sake of argument, or merely experimenting with ideas. This cutting of the Gordian knot is repudiated by Professor Rudebusch. The answer he gives is that there are two possible accounts of pleasure; and the fact that Socrates argues against pleasure as conceived in one way, in the Gorgias, is perfectly compatible with his acceptance of it as envisaged in another, as illustrated by the Protagoras. If Socrates is commending the life of virtue as itself the most pleasurable, all inconsistency disappears. As Rudebusch says, this is not a matter of concern merely to scholars; if anyone were convinced by Socrates on the point, he or she might well be induced to make fundamental changes in his or her way of living. (shrink)

El presente libro se inicia con una breve reflexión sobre la actitud de los intelectuales en América Latina ante la coyuntura actual, señalando las aportaciones y confusiones de su dicurso teórico y tratando de rescatar las formas de expresión del pensamiento crítico; psra esto se considera la vigencia de la dialéctica como lenguaje. Además, se pretende incursionar sobre las relaciones entre individuos y colectivo, y sobre cuestiones metodológicas para el estudio de sujetos sociales; se incorporan el problema de análisis de (...) variables desde la perspectiva de las mediaciones, y una reflexión sobre la lógica del discurso económico para mostrar cómo implica el olvido del sujeto. Constituyen estos trabajos un esfuerzo de aplicación de la postura racional de nuevas posibilidades de reflexión teórica que contribuyan a enriquecer el discurso, aunque conscientes de su carácter todavía exploratorio. (shrink)

Seen from a national business system perspective, the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerges as a specifically US‐American response to challenges regarding the corporate place in society. With the spread of American capitalism, however, CSR is bound to come into contact – and conflict – with other approaches to the role of business in society that have been shaped by different national cultures. Within Europe, one such area of potential conflict concerns the role of organised labour in representing employee (...) interests. Studying the perceptions held by European trade unions on stakeholding, as one of the important concepts in the CSR discourse, does indeed reveal a considerable degree of union scepticism of CSR and its terminology. There is, however, also embryonic evidence of at least some unions attempting to link the CSR discourse to traditional union goals. Furthermore, national differences in union responses to CSR are beginning to emerge, which may, in turn, further shape the evolution of national business systems in Europe. (shrink)