This paper proposes that managers add an attention to virtues and vices of human character as a full complement to moral reasoning according to a deontological focus on obligations to act and a teleological focus on consequences (a balanced tripartite approach). Even if the criticisms of virtue ethics cloud its use as a mononomic normative theory of justification, they do not refute the substantial benefits of applying a human character perspective – when done so in conjunction with also-imperfect act-oriented perspectives. (...) An interactive tripartite approach is superior for meeting the complex requirements of an applied ethic. To illustrate how deficiencies of a "strong" virtue ethics formulation can be overcome by a balanced tripartite approach, this paper compares normative leadership paradigms (each based on a combination of virtue, deontology, or consequentialist perspectives) and the dangers inherent in each. The preferred paradigm is servant leadership, grounded in a tripartite ethic. Effective application of such an ethics approach in contemporary organizations requires further empirical research to develop a greater understanding of the moral language actually used. Meeting this challenge will allow academics better to assist practicing managers lead moral development and moral reasoning efforts. (shrink)

Who a manager is, as a person of moral character, has been only of tangential interest in social science definitions of management, which have focused on functions, roles, behaviors, and environmental influences. But how do managers themselves speak of managerial excellence? This paper answers this for a particular corporation, based on a three-phased research process that deliberately imposes no descriptive or normative categories, but allows the answer to emerge, listening to what managers themselves say when discussing excellent managers and their (...) behaviors. This approach finds that: (1) virtue ethics and virtue language is fluently used by practicing managers, (2) virtue language is important to understanding managerial excellence, and (3) whereas the set of virtues defining the excellent manager can be expected to be dependent on the societal, industry, and organizational context, such a set of manager virtues can be identified and prioritized within a particular organizational milieu. The implication is that, once an organization's management better understands the meaning of the excellent manager in terms of the virtue language already used by its own employees, it is better equipped to implement a practical ethic of virtues, one helpful toward recognizing and developing excellent managers. Ethics researchers are challenged to increase their understanding of extant virtue language as the basis for a renewed development of virtue ethics theory and applications. (shrink)

After briefly describing the philosophy of personalism this article assesses each of three normative leadership paradigms (transformational leadership, postmodern or postindustrial leadership, and servant leadership) in terms of five major themes of this phenomenological philosophy. Servant leadership appears to be closest to personalism. The critical ingredient for servant leadership is also personalism’s starting point, i.e. the dignity of each human person. A genuine servant leader works with his followers in building a community of participation and solidarity. However, some claim that (...) servant leaders are subject to manipulation by their followers. If so, and if transformational leaders, when too successful, gain too much power or manipulate using bogus empowerment, a superior approach might be provided by a combination in which a morally tough servant leader adopts certain transforming behaviors of Bass’s altruistic transformational leader. The leader and the followers would focus on a jointly formulated and refined vision, avoiding manipulation by any party through a mutual commitment to participation, solidarity of community, and respect for each person. (shrink)

After briefly describing the philosophy of personalism this article assesses each of three normative leadership paradigms in terms of five major themes of this phenomenological philosophy. Servant leadership appears to be closest to personalism. The critical ingredient for servant leadership is also personalism’s starting point, i.e. the dignity of each human person. A genuine servant leader works with his followers in building a community of participation and solidarity. However, some claim that servant leaders are subject to manipulation by their followers. (...) If so, and if transformational leaders, when too successful, gain too much power or manipulate using bogus empowerment, a superior approach might be provided by a combination in which a morally tough servant leader adopts certain transforming behaviors of Bass’s altruistic transformational leader. The leader and the followers would focus on a jointly formulated and refined vision, avoiding manipulation by any party through a mutual commitment to participation, solidarity of community, and respect for each person. (shrink)

Williams, Elster and Pears hold that an effort to induce in oneself a belief in the truth of some proposition that one believes to be false can succeed only if one manages, somewhere along the way, to forget that one is engaged in such an effort. Although this view has strong intuitive appeal, it is false, and in this paper it is shown to be false by example.

Since the 19th century, innocence has been a hallmark of childhood. The innocence of children is seen as both a sanctity worth defending and a feature that excuses the unavoidable mistakes of adolescence. While beneficial in many settings, notions of childhood innocence are often entangled with values judgements. Inherent in innocence is the notion that that which we are innocent of is undesirable. Further, attributing innocence to some implies the tolerability of blame for others. This has unique implications in a (...) medical setting. This essay explores the implications of espousing the innocence of paediatric patients. Ultimately, because attribution of innocence is both prone to bias and rooted in the same framework as blame, it degrades patient-centred care and compromises the patient–provider relationship. I argue that avoiding such characterisations may allow providers to more effectively promote paediatric health. (shrink)

In the introductory chapter to this collection, the editors point out that, until recently, most Anglophone Spinoza scholarship has been focused on the metaphysics and epistemology of the Ethics. But according to Kisner and Youpa, Spinoza thought that metaphysics and epistemology were significant chiefly because they are required for understanding the more important part of his project—the ethical doctrine developed in the last three parts of the work. Ethica was so-titled because it is a book about ethics.In recent years, the (...) scholarly community has begun to shift its attention to bring itself more in line with Spinoza's intentions—to focus more directly on his ethical views. The volume under review presents... (shrink)

Rapid advances in the domain of science and technology are having an unprecedented effect upon the provision of higher education in universities throughout the world, the pace of change often being so fast as to make planning for the development of the “classroom of the future” an extremely difficult task. The Mobile Multimedia University (MMU) project, a collaborative action between four leading UK based research facilities, has been established to investigate these issues. Included amongst its aims is the use of (...) novel research methodologies to determine the factors which will influence the shape and form of future education provision, and thus the distribution of knowledge to society, such as mobility, telecommunications and multimedia services. This paper describes the use of a Delphi survey in predicting the technological trends and innovations which will affect university education in the near future. It describes the theory underpinning the Delphi method, illustrating this with examples of how such a technique has been successfully used in the past. It then details the specific application of the Delphi approach within the current MMU research project, detailing the preliminary results and discussing the implications of these findings for the future of universities and other institutes of higher education. (shrink)

According to Colerus, Spinoza replied affirmatively when his landlady asked if she "...could be saved in her faith." This paper asks what Spinoza could have meant -- and what his landlady would have thought he meant. She was asking about salvation of a certain kind -- a kind that Spinoza did not in fact believe to be possible. When he talks about salvation in his writings, he has in mind a different kind of salvation -- one that his landlady will (...) certainly not achieve "in her faith." So, when he assured her that she could be saved in her faith was he simply lying to her? This question is explored against the background of the controversies regarding Spinoza's sincerity in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus. (shrink)

"No, your honor. I didn't know who or what he was when I first came across the book -- they don't exactly love him in the synagogue, if you've read the story of his life. I found it in a junkyard in a nearby town, paid a kopek, and left cursing myself for wasting money hard to come by. Later I read through a few pages and kept on going as though there were a whirlwind at my back. As I (...) say, I didn't understand every word but when you're dealing with such ideas you feel as though you were taking a witch's ride. After that I wasn't the same man. That's in a manner of speaking, of course, because I've changed little since my youth.". The speaker is Yakov Bok, the unlikely hero of Bernard Malamud's The Fixer. At this point, early in the novel, Yakov speaks truthfully when he says that he has changed little since his youth. But over the next two and a half years (the time-period covered in the novel), he will undergo profound change and impressive moral growth. He suffers; he learns; he grows. Spinoza's name and ideas appear again and again at crucial moments in the course of the hero's moral development. Yakov Bok's verbal account of Spinoza's ideas is often comically primitive, but his understanding far outstrips his ability to articulate. By the end of the novel, his sufferings have led him to a deep grasp of certain of Spinoza's ethical and political doctrines. (shrink)

In Göttliche Gedanken (Godly Thoughts), Andreas Schmidt provides an in-depth discussion of the metaphysics of knowledge and of mind in four early-modern rationalists: Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. His topic overlaps with what is called “philosophy of mind” in contemporary Anglo-American circles, for he is quite interested in the relation between mind and body in these four historical thinkers. But as Schmidt effectively reminds us, the “mind-body problem” looks entirely different when embedded in the conceptual setting of the seventeenth century. (...) In Schmidt’s reading, reflection on mind at that time begins with reflection on knowledge and our capacity to know. What must the mind be in order for us .. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Plato's efforts at metaphysical explanation not only fail, they are nonsensical. In particular, Plato's appeals to Forms as metaphysically explanatory of the sensibles that participate in them is "empty talk" since "'participating' means nothing". I defend Plato against Aristotle's charge by identifying a particular, substantive model of metaphysical predication as the favored model of Plato's late ontology. The model posits two basic metaphysical predication relations: self-predication and participation. In order to understand the participation relation, it is important (...) first to understand how Plato's Forms are self-predicative paradigms. According to the favored model, Forms are self-predicative paradigms insofar as they are ideal, abstract encoders of structural essences. Sensibles participate in Forms by exemplifying the structures encoded in the Forms. Given plausible conditions on metaphysical explanation, Plato's appeals to abstract Forms as metaphysically explanatory of sensibles is a reasonable competitor for Aristotle's appeals to natural, substantial forms. At the very least, Plato's appeals to a participation relation are not empty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologiae”: A Guide and Commentary by Brian DaviesBrian J. Shanley, O.P.Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologiae”: A Guide and Commentary. By Brian Davies, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 454. $105.00 (cloth), $31.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-19-938062-6 (cloth), 978-0-19-938063-3 (paper).The purpose of this book is to provide guidance to a nonspecialist reader of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. It is not meant as a substitute (...) for the text itself, but rather as a companion for a reader in order to offer explication for the most important arguments, a sense of the context of the whole, a quick survey of the terrain of a treatise, some historical context when necessary, and a prod to critical thinking. Davies’s ambition is daunting. As the subtitle indicates, he intends the book to be both a guide and a commentary. If it were only a guide, it would focus on the truly critical themes in some depth in order to aid the reader through the various parts without commenting on everything. If it were only a commentary, its purpose would be largely expository and exegetical. It is hard to do both functions well on a work as large and complex as the Summa theologiae.After a brief overview of Aquinas’s life and a short commentary on the meaning of sacra doctrina, Davies turns to the topic of God. Given his previous work on Aquinas, it is not surprising that the strongest and longest section of his book concerns the Prima pars. Davies does a nice job of parsing the existence of God and mapping out the Five Ways in a manner suitable to his audience. He then turns to the question of how God does not exist, and makes it plain that the main thrust of Aquinas’s treatment is apophatic, or negative. It is surprising that Davies never mentions the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Aquinas and generally downplays the Neoplatonic strains in Aquinas’s theology. I would have thought that divine simplicity and goodness deserve more consideration, and I would have liked to see Davies give more insight for the reader on how to parse some of Aquinas’s metaphysical terms (especially the real distinction in created beings and how this is the main marker of the ontological gap between God and creation). When Davies turns to how we name or use language about God, he signals to his readers that he is entering into an area that has been much debated. Not surprisingly, while he does a reasonable job of trying to explain how analogical predication works to a nonspecialist reader, specialists will have much to quibble about. At the heart of his explanation of analogy is the claim that analogy is primarily “a linguistic phenomenon in which one and the same word is used to speak of different things with connections of meaning that can be traced in each use of the word” (69). Analogy in Aquinas is more than a theory about language; it is embedded in a metaphysics of participation and creation that needs to be adumbrated to understand how analogy works. The subsequent treatment of God’s knowing and willing is reliable, though more attention might have been paid to the practical model of divine knowing. When it comes to the Trinity, [End Page 306] Davies does a solid job of trying to explain that most complicated doctrine of Aquinas to a nonspecialist.Davies misses the opportunity to explore the fundamental contrast that Aquinas draws between God’s causal immanence in all things as Creator and his special, interpersonal, Trinitarian indwelling through grace, as the treatise on the Trinity segues into the treatise on creation. When turning to creation, Davies notes that the fundamental metaphysical principle behind Aquinas’s account is that “the existence of something that does not exist by nature has to be caused” (110), although he seems diffident about its validity (“like it or not”) and never mentions participation. Sometimes he speaks about God’s causality in creation as “causally accounting for their esse” (ibid.) even as he notes that God... (shrink)

Review of Daniel Cook, Hartmut Rudolph, and Christoph Schulte, editors. _Leibniz und das Judentum_. Studia Leibnitiana Sonderhefte, 34. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008. Pp. 283.

The recently published Cambridge Companion to Spinoza contains a fine essay by Pierre- Francois Moreau on Spinoza’s reception and on his influence during the more than three hundred years that have passed since his death. In Moreau’s twenty-five page article we find a brief paragraph on the novelist George Eliot and half a sentence on Ed Curley. There is not another mention, at all, of any other philosopher from an English-speaking land since the seventeenth century – nothing on how Spinoza’s (...) ideas were received in England, North America or Australia. Not a word on any influence that Spinoza might have had on later thinkers in those countries. (shrink)

Traditionally ‘imagination’ primarily denotes the faculty of mental imagery, other usages being derivative. However, contemporary philosophers commonly hold it to be a polysemous term, with several unrelated senses. This effectively eliminates this culturally important concept as an appropriate explanandum for science, and paves the way for a thoroughgoing eliminative materialism. White challenges both these views of imagination, arguing that ‘imagine’ never means ‘suppose,’ ‘believe,’ ‘pretend’ or ‘visualize,’ that imagery may occur without imagination, and that the true sense of ‘imagine’ is (...) (roughly) ‘think of as possibly being so.’ I defend a version of the traditional view. The disseverance of imagination from imagery is motivated by an implicit version of the theory of mental images as pictures. Other contemporary scientific theories of imagery do not entail it. I defend a view of imagery as arising from the interpretative aspect of perception (‘seeing-as’) and connect this, and our contemporary concept of imagination, to the root Aristotelian concept of φαντασία.This captures the association between imagination and creativity, and reveals the coherence of the concept, more plausibly than White’s theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 560-561 [Access article in PDF] Olli Koistinen and John Biro, editors. Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 255. Cloth, $49.95. Writing in the mid-seventeenth century, Spinoza tried to provide conceptual foundations for the newly developing "natural philosophy" of his day. His monism, naturalism, and theory of mind are still intriguing today, but they are notoriously (...) difficult to understand. There is little interpretive consensus with regard to even the most basic concepts and claims. In Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes the diversity of interpretive perspective is vividly on display.All of the eleven essays in this collection are published here for the first time. They cover a broad range of topics and, taken together, they move us forward in our understanding of Spinoza's basic doctrines. Most of the essays are carefully argued discussions of clearly defined issues of interpretation. They address matters that are central to the system and central to our understanding of the system—monism, causation, individuation, conatus.The editors' Introduction claims that Jonathan Bennett's 1986 work set a new standard of Spinoza scholarship—a standard that the essays in this volume seek to measure up to. Most (not all) of these essays do indeed come close to Bennett's commendable level of argumentative clarity and rigor. And here, as in Bennett's work, the emphasis is mostly systematic and argumentative, not historical.The collection opens with a very good essay by Michael Della Rocca entitled "Spinoza's Substance Monism." This essay applies to the thorny issue of substance monism the same argumentative strategy that Della Rocca has elsewhere applied to monism regarding individual modes—i.e., to the claim that an extended mode and the idea of that mode are identical. The argument turns on the complete conceptual independence of the attributes, and Della Rocca makes a strong case for the centrality of that somewhat puzzling doctrine. John Carriero's contribution ("Monism in Spinoza") continues the focus on monism, but from a different perspective. Carriero asks, "Why does Spinoza hold that finite... bodies [End Page 560] are not substances?" (47). Rejecting two traditional responses he provides a plausible answer to this good question by focusing on an early exchange of letters between Spinoza and Oldenburg and upon Spinoza's rethinking of Descartes's conception of extension.One of the most interesting essays is Don Garrett's interpretive discussion of Spinoza's derivation of the conatus doctrine at Ethics3p4-3p6 ("Spinoza's Conatus Argument"). Commentators have identified various putative fallacies in the argument that Spinoza offers for this doctrine—chiefly fallacies of equivocation. Garrett develops an interesting and plausible notion of "inherence" that casts light on a number of central metaphysical relations and permits a defensible reading of the conatus argument. For the serious Spinoza scholar, this one essay is worth the price of the volume.Olli Koistinen's "Causation in Spinoza" considers Spinoza's solution to the difficulty of causal interaction between substances—a glaring problem in Descartes that provoked glaringly problematic solutions from Malebranche and Leibniz. Richard Manning's essay addresses a controversial point in Jonathan Bennett's interpretation. The issue is whether, in Spinoza's system, mental content can have causal significance—a point closely related to the important issue of teleological explanation of human behavior. Manning supports a kind of "thoughtful teleology," making a convincing case for the causal efficacy of mental content.On the whole the authors in this volume restrict their discussion of secondary literature to the works of fellow Anglophones. One finds occasional mention of Gueroult, but the Continental literature on Spinoza is mostly ignored. There are two notable exceptions to this rule. Steven Barbone ("What Counts as an Individual for Spinoza?") discusses the thorny issue of modal individuation in Spinoza's system, arguing against Matheron's 1969 claim that for Spinoza the state is an individual. Emphasizing the centrality of power, Barbone draws important (liberal) political conclusions from his analysis of individuation. Mark Kulstad ("Leibniz, Spinoza and Tschirnhaus: Metaphysics à Trois, 1675-1676") fruitfully uses recent Continental work on... (shrink)

On the horizon between metaphysics and philosophy of religion stands the question of God’s relation to various abstracta. Like other contemporary philosophical debates, this one has resulted in a broadly dichotomous stalemate between Platonic realists on the one hand and varieties of nominalism/antirealism on the other. In this paper, I offer Aquinas’s moderaterealism as a true middle ground between realist or nominalist solutions. What Platonists take to be abstracta are actually the result of intellect’s abstractive work on sensible objects. Further, (...) the Christian philosopher should be concerned as much, if not more so, by nominalism than by Platonism. Given the problems associated with either Platonist or nominalist solutions, one should be open to a Thomistic moderate-realist solution to the problem of God and abstracta. (shrink)

One thing that becomes apparent in this exchange is that each of the positions emerges based on differences in fundamental philosophical commitments. An existential Thomist has a very well-defined and sufficiently “thick” view of being at the heart of his metaphysical system. Van Inwagen rejects such views of being in favor of a “thin” view. This issue is addressed and clarified. Craig takes issue with the way the term “moderate-realism” has been explicated, whether or not the idea of existence in (...) the intellect is coherent, and whether the Thomistic solution offers any real advantages over nominalist ones. In this response, I continue to demonstrate the cogency and advocate the superiority of Aquinas’s position. (shrink)

Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say 'yes', but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say 'no'. This distinction is practically important: additive axiologies support 'arguments from astronomical scale' which suggest (among other things) that it is overwhelmingly important for humanity to avoid premature extinction and ensure the existence of a (...) large future population, while non-additive axiologies need not. We show, however, that when there is a large enough 'background population' unaffected by our choices, a wide range of non-additive axiologies converge in their implications with some additive axiology -- for instance, average utilitarianism converges to critical-level utilitarianism and various egalitarian theories converge to prioritiarianism. We further argue that real-world background populations may be large enough to make these limit results practically significant. This means that arguments from astronomical scale, and other arguments in practical ethics that seem to presuppose additive separability, may be truth-preserving in practice whether or not we accept additive separability as a basic axiological principle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Call for New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage and the Thought of St. ThomasLawrence J. WelchTheologians across the theological spectrum have called attention to the urgent need for a new reflection on the theological and sacramental character of marriage. Peter Hünermann, known for his strong criticism of magisterial teachings on marriage, and the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, known for his equally strong defense of them, (...) have both drawn attention to this need. At an international symposium in September 2015, held in Rome prior to the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family, Hünermann gave a presentation entitled "On the Specific Theological Character of the Sacrament of Matrimony."1 The symposium aimed at providing a critical and scholarly discussion of new and constructive perspectives for the Church doctrine on marriage and family life in time for the 2015 synod on the family.2 Some of Hünermann's work from this paper also came to be known from an interview in Commonweal magazine where he summarized some of the main points of his symposium presentation.3 In the interview, he also revealed that before the 2015 synod he [End Page 845] was invited to speak with Pope Francis about the theology of marriage. Understandably, this meeting heightened interest in the German theologian's thought.Hünermann argues that "the specific character of the sacrament of marriage, which is very closely connected to the dying of the marriage bond,... has scarcely been the object of theological reflection, [and] is almost unknown in the consciousness of the bishops." 4 Hünermann appeals to St. Thomas as a way forward for understanding the theological character of marriage. This appeal is situated within a wider examination5 that offers an elaboration and new interpretation of "the specific dogmatic characteristics of the sacrament of matrimony that emerge in today's situation from a critical comparison of the encyclical Casti connubii and the Catholic theological tradition, especially the theology of St. Thomas."6 Sharply critical of the encyclical, Hünermann sees it as having saddled the Church with a legalistic concept of marriage elevated above history that is too far removed from the Catholic theological tradition and St. Thomas's theology of marriage.The year before his death, Cardinal Caffarra gave the 2016 graduation address at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Washington, DC.7 Among the challenges he identified for the institute to address was the [End Page 846] need for theological reflection on the sacramental character of marriage. Referring to his earlier work, he pointed out that theology after the Council of Trent "lost the awareness of sacramental ontology, of the real transformation produced by the sacrament in the persons of the spouses [res et sacramentum]."8 Furthermore, according to Caffarra, the "theology of the conjugal covenant was supplanted by the notion of a contract, as a human act by which two persons commit to one another." The sacramental character was thought of as consisting of the assurance of divine graces given to fulfill the contract. Caffarra claimed that, "consequently, the words of Jesus 'What God has joined together, let not man put asunder,' lost all their realistic force. Absolute indissolubility, once the sacrament was perfected [=a ratified, consummated marriage], became essentially indefensible."9The primary interest of this paper is to respond to the call for a renewed theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. I wish to take up Caffarra's suggestion to focus on the sacramental character (res et sacramentum) on the one hand, and on the other hand, Hünermann's suggestion that a kind of ressourcement from St. Thomas Aquinas's theology of marriage can be of great help for a fresh theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. Although I agree with Hünermann that a renewed consideration of the thought of St. Thomas can be a way forward, I differ from him on how it can be. Hünermann notices that St. Thomas speaks of the grace of the sacrament of marriage as a helping grace.10 St. Thomas does indeed speak this way of the... (shrink)

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental (...) status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed. (shrink)