In _Facing the Planetary_ William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North (...) Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway. (shrink)

In _The Fragility of Things_, eminent theorist William E. Connolly focuses on several self-organizing ecologies that help to constitute our world. These interacting geological, biological, and climate systems, some of which harbor creative capacities, are depreciated by that brand of neoliberalism that confines self-organization to economic markets and equates the latter with impersonal rationality. Neoliberal practice thus fails to address the fragilities it exacerbates. Engaging a diverse range of thinkers, from Friedrich Hayek, Michel Foucault, Hesiod, and Immanuel Kant to (...) Voltaire, Terrence Deacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead, Connolly brings the sense of fragility alive as he rethinks the idea of freedom. Urging the Left not to abandon the state but to reclaim it, he also explores scales of politics below and beyond the state. The contemporary response to fragility requires a militant pluralist assemblage composed of those sharing affinities of spirituality across differences of creed, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. (shrink)

Does a hard-headed realist approach to international politics necessarily involve scepticism towards progressive foreign policy initiatives and global reform? Should proponents of realism always be seen as morally complacent and politically combative? In this major reconsideration of the main figures of international political theory, Bill Scheuerman challenges conventional wisdom to reveal a neglected tradition of progressive realism with much to contribute to contemporary debates about international policy-making and world government. Far from seeing international reform as well-meaning but potentially irresponsible idealism, (...) progressive realists like E.H. Carr, John Herz, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr developed forward-looking ideas which offer an indispensable corrective to many presently influential views about global politics. Progressive realism, Scheuerman argues, offers a compelling and provocative vision of radical global change which - when properly interpreted, can help buttress current efforts to address the most pressing international issues. After recovering key subterranean strands in mid-twentieth century realism, Scheuerman underscores their relevance to contemporary international theory. Criticizing more recent realists for abandoning their tradition's best insights, he also demonstrates that reform-minded international theories - including versions of cosmopolitanism, constructivism, the English School, liberalism, and republicanism - could all benefit from taking Progressive Realism seriously. A major contribution both to the history of international relations and contemporary debates in international theory, The Realist Case for Global Reform concludes by considering how progressive realism informs the foreign policies of US President Barack Obama. (shrink)

William Whewell is considered one of the most important nineteenth-century British philosophers of science and a contributor to modern philosophical thought, particularly regarding the problem of induction and the logic of discovery. In this volume, Robert E. Butts offers selections from Whewell's most important writings, and analysis of counter-claims to his philosophy.

This is the first full-length study in English of twentieth-century Germany's most influential authoritarian right-wing political theorist, Carl Schmitt, that focuses on the central place of his attack on the liberal rule of law. This is also the first book in any language to devote substantial attention to Schmitt's subterranean influence on some of the most important voices in political thought in the United States after 1945.

This study examines the effects of ethical pressure on management accountants' perceptions of organizational-professional conflict, and related work outcomes. It was hypothesized that organizational pressure to engage in unethical behavior would increase perceived organizational-professional conflict, and that this perceived conflict would reduce organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and increase the likelihood of employee turnover. A survey was mailed to a random sample of Certified Management Accountants to assess perceptions of the relevant variables. The results of a structural equations model indicated (...) that, as hypothesized, ethical pressure was associated with higher levels of perceived organizational-professional conflict. Also as hypothesized, higher levels of conflict were associated with lower levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Finally, lower levels of commitment and satisfaction were associated with higher turnover intentions. (shrink)

What the Church teaches and why on issues of euthanasia, invitro fertilization, genetic counseling, assisted suicide, living wills, persistent vegetative state, organ transplants, and more.

" -- Seyla Benhabib, Harvard University "Winner, 1996 Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize for the best book on liberal and democratic theory, Conference for the Study of Political Thought.

Scholarly and political interest in the controversial 20th Century German thinker Carl Schmitt has exploded in the last twenty years. This volume, focusing directly on Schmitt’s complex ideas about law, situates his views within broader debates about the rule of law and its fate, taking seriously his Nazi-era political and legal writings.

This paper examines fraudulent financial reporting within the context of Jones' (1991) ethical decision making model. It was hypothesized that quantitative materiality would influence judgments of the ethical acceptability of fraud, and that both materiality and financial risk would affect the likelihood of committing fraud. The results, based on a study of CPAs employed as senior executives, provide partial support for the hypotheses. Contrary to expectations, quantitative materiality did not influence ethical judgments. ANCOVA results based on participants' estimates of the (...) likelihood that a "typical CPA" would manipulate reported results indicated that both materiality and risk significantly influenced the likelihood of fraud, but that the perceived morality of the action did not. In contrast, results based on participants' self-reported behavior indicated that materiality and the perceived morality of the action would influence the likelihood of fraud, but that financial risk would not. Regardless of the measure used for the likelihood of fraud, the results indicate that financial executives continue to be influenced by quantitative materiality when misstatements are clearly material on qualitative grounds. (shrink)

This study is the first to examine the relationships among Machiavellianism, social norms and taxpayer intentions to fraudulently overstate their deductions. We theorize and empirically document that high Machiavellian taxpayers report significantly less ethical social norms, suggesting that reported social norms are influenced by cognitive biases such as social projection and Machiavellian cynicism; reported social norms are, in general, significantly associated with tax evasion intentions; social norms partially mediate the relationship between Machiavellianism and evasion intentions. Our findings imply that experimental (...) research that controls for key personality traits such as Machiavellianism will be necessary to test the effectiveness of potential interventions designed to enhance social norms and tax compliance. Our findings also raise questions regarding the validity of certain social norm measures used in recent studies, particularly in the case of high Machiavellians. In contrast to much prior research, gender was not associated with the likelihood of committing tax fraud in our multivariate models, suggesting that the higher levels of tax compliance often associated with females may be eroding. (shrink)

In this new installation of his work, William E. Connolly examines entanglements between volatile earth processes and emerging cultural practices. He highlights relays between extractive capitalism, self-amplifying climate processes, migrations, democratic aspirations, and fascist dangers. In three interwoven essays, Connolly takes up thinkers in the "minor tradition" of European thought who, unlike Cartesians and Kantians, cross divisions between nature and culture. He first offers readings of Sophocles and Mary Shelley, asking whether close attention to the Anthropocene could perhaps have (...) arrived earlier had later humanists absorbed their lessons. He then joins Deleuze and Guattari's notion of an abstract machine with contemporary earth sciences, doing so to compare the Antique Little Ice Age in late Rome to relays today between extractive capitalism and accelerating climate processes. The final essay stages a dialogue between Alfred North Whitehead and Michel Foucault about the pursuit of truth during a time of planetary turbulence. With _Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth_, Connolly forges incisive interventions into key issues of our time. (shrink)

How does the experience of busyness impact democratic political life? My hunch is that those reading this essay might very well offer the following answer: busyness means that we relegate political activities to the bottom of a long and sometimes tedious laundry list of “things to get done.” In fact, many of us no longer even bother to include the basic activities of citizenship –getting informed about the issues, deliberating with our peers about matters of common concern, attending a political (...) meeting, or even voting —on the list in the first place. Like this author, many of you probably feel somewhat guilty about this as well, and thus try to compensate in some way or another… At worst, busyness generates political disinterest and apathy: many of our fellow citizens openly describe the most fundamental form of democratic participation, the vote, as “a waste of time.” At best, it seems to privilege an acceleration of political activity: we seek speedy and rapidly consummated types of involvement that do not unduly add to the enormous time pressures we already feel. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether even such high-speed forms of citizen involvement are normatively satisfactory. Can liberal democracy flourish when a growing number of us avoid the responsibilities of citizenship altogether, while even those of us who try to remain politically involved insist that they be dealt with quickly and painlessly? In this essay, I hope at the very least to deepen our understanding of this quagmire. If I am not mistaken, it provides a useful starting point for examining one of the core challenges of contemporary political life: how can we make sure that busyness and citizenship coexist in a potentially fruitful, though by no means necessarily harmonious, relationship? (shrink)

William E. Stempsey, S.J.; Institutional Identity and Roman Catholic Hospitals, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7, Issue.

Ruth Leys starts with accounts that reduce emotion to a few simple states and emphasize the degree to which it is genetically wired. She then argues that other cultural theorists who emphasize the role of affect are driven in this direction, too, even when they wish to avoid such a trajectory. Much of the argument revolves around the charge of “anti-intentionalism” against us. Because of limitations of space, my response concentrates on my own thinking in this domain, though I suggest (...) some lines of connection to other theories of affect. I will not always try to unpack Leys’s views but will focus more on where mine deviate from her account of them. (shrink)

Recently, the effort to counter Fake News faced a counter attack: academic »postmodernism « and »social constructivism« it was said—because they say that facts are soaked in prior interpretations—are either purveyors of Fake News or set the cultural context in which it flourishes. They do so by undermining confidence in inquiry governed by simple facts. That is erroneous, argues William E. Connolly, because postmodernism never said that facts or objectivity are ghostly, subjective or »fake«. However, that what was objective (...) at one time may become less so at a later date through the combination of a paradigm shift in theory, new powers of perception, new tests with refined instruments, and changes in natural processes such as species evolution. But the emergence of new theories and tests does not reduce objectivity to subjective opinion. Facts are real. Objectivity is important. But as you move up the scale of complexity with respect to facts and objectivity, it becomes clear that what was objective at one time may become subjective at another. Not because of Fake News or postmodernism. But because the complex relationships between theory, evidence and conduct periodically open up new thresholds. Colin Lang in turn rhetorically asks if »fake news« or »alternative facts« are a new carnival and Trump its dog and pony show? The idea of »fake news« and »alternative facts« as a carnival could not only help to see the constructedness of the media spectacle, but also provides a new perspective on Trump as an actor who is playing a particular role in this carnival, and that role is not one that any of us would describe as presidential. Many in the popular press have assumed it is just what it looks like, an infantilized narcissist, a parody of some Regan-era New York real estate tycoon straight out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The problem is that this description is all too obvious, and misses something fundamental about alternative facts, and the part that Trump is playing. A central assumption is, then, that the creation of alternative facts is one symptom of a more structural, paradigmatic shift in the persona of a president, one which has few correlates in the annals of political history. The closest analogy for his kind of performance is actually hinted at in the title of Trump’s greatest literary achievement: The Art of the Deal. Trump is playing the part of an artist, pilfering from the tactics of the avant-garde and putting them to very different ends. (shrink)

. A Christian seminary supports the study of religion andscience, in order to relate its faith to people living in scientificallyoriented cultures. It invites the scientific and university com‐munities to join in developing a model for dialogue that may be abasis for more ecumenical efforts at relating religion and science, so as to ease tensions between religious communities. The workpioneered by the Center for Advanced Study in Religion andScience and by Zygon is giving rise to new enterprises, including thecoming establishment (...) of a Center for the Study of Faith andScience at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. (shrink)

This is a response from the point of view of religion to three articles—by Ewert Cousins, David Loye, and Solomon H. Katz—that together call for a decisive new moral grounding for the human race. This commentary calls on science, as the dominant power in society today, to initiate a new partnership with religion. It goes on to advocate for an urgent mutual‐learning endeavor in which science and religion will derive needed information and understanding from each other. The commentary finds a (...) common thread in the three articles—that religion informed by science is the principal force capable of stimulating a global moral transformation—and ends by proposing a series of concrete action steps. (shrink)

Donald Davidson espouses two fundamental theses about the individuation of mental events. The thesis of causal individuation asserts that sameness of cause and effect is sufficient and necessary for event identity. The thesis of content individuation gives only a sufficient condition for difference of mental events: if e and f have different contents then they are different mental events. I argue that given these theses, psychological externalism--the view that mental content is determined by factors external to the subject of the (...) relevant mental events--entails that the token identity theory is false. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine that God has no physical or metaphysical complexity whatsoever, is not a doctrine designed to induce immediate philosophical acquiescence. There are severe questions about its coherence. And even if those questions can be answered satisfactorily in favour of the doctrine, there remains the question why anyone should accept it. Thomas V. Morris raises both sorts of questions about a version of the doctrine which I have put forward. In the following pages I shall (...) respond to what I take to be the most serious of Morris's objections. I shall argue that the doctrine survives Morris's onslaught, but that one observation of his points it in a direction I had hitherto not taken seriously. The bulk of Morris's paper raises questions of the first sort; perforce the bulk of my paper will also. I shall offer, at the end, a reason for thinking that neither of us is yet in a position to pronounce categorically on the second question. My remarks in this paper constitute an interim report on how I think things presently stand with divine simplicity. (shrink)

THIS ARTICLE ARGUES THAT WEAK SUPERVENIENCE IS\nSUFFICIENTLY STRONG TO ESTABLISH A REASONABLE AND PLAUSIBLE\nMATERIALISM. SUPERVENIENCE IS A RELATION BETWEEN FAMILIES\nOF PROPERTIES, SUCH THAT, ROUGHLY SPEAKING, FAMILY A\nSUPERVENES ON FAMILY B IF ANY OBJECTS WHICH ARE\nINDISCERNIBLE WITH RESPECT TO B ARE THEREBY INDISCERNIBLE\nWITH RESPECT TO A. WEAK SUPERVENIENCE IS SUPERVENIENCE\nRESTRICTED TO ONE POSSIBLE WORLD; STRONG SUPERVENIENCE IS A\n"NECESSARY" SUPERVENIENCE EXTENDING ACROSS SOME PRINCIPLED\nSET OF POSSIBLE WORLDS. THESE NOTIONS ARE MADE SOMEWHAT\nMORE RIGOROUS FOLLOWING JAEGWON KIM'S DEVELOPMENT OF THEM.\nKIM HAS ARGUED THAT ONLY (...) STRONG SUPERVENIENCE CAN GROUND A\n'ROBUST' MATERIALISM, SO THE ARTICLE BEGINS BY CRITICIZING\nHIS ARGUMENTS FOR THIS POSITION. IT ARGUES THAT ANY FORM OF\nSTRONG SUPERVENIENCE IS IN FACT TOO STRONG TO CHARACTERIZE\nMATERIALISM AS IT IS NORMALLY CONCEIVED, FOR MATERIALISM IS\nNEITHER LOGICALLY NOR PHYSICALLY NECESSARY. BUT THE DAY IS\nSAVED AS WEAK SUPERVENIENCE CAN BE SHOWN TO BE JUST\nSUFFICIENTLY STRONG TO GROUND MATERIALISM. IN PARTICULAR,\nIT IS SHOWN THAT SUPERVENIENCE CAN SUPPORT COUNTERFACTUALS\nWITHOUT REQUIRING ANY NOTION OF "NECESSARY"\nSUPERVENIENCE. (shrink)

In The City of God, XI, 10, St Augustine claims that the divine nature is simple because ‘it is what it has’ (quod habet hoc est). We may take this as a slogan for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS), a doctrine which finds its way into orthodox medieval Christian theological speculation. Like the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has seemed obvious and pious to many, and incoherent, misguided, and repugnant to others. Unlike the doctrine of God's timeless (...) eternality, the DDS has received very little critical attention. The DDS did not originate with Augustine, but I am not primarily concerned with its pedigree. Nor am I concerned to ask how the doctrine interacts with trinitarian speculation. I will have my hands full as it is. In Section I of this paper I shall provide a rough characterization of the DDS, indicate its complexity, and focus on a particular aspect of the doctrine which will exercise us in the remainder of the paper, namely, the thesis that the divine attributes are all identical with each other and with God. In section n I shall discuss Alvin Plantinga's recent objections to Aquinas' version of the DDS. I shall then offer a more detailed presentation of what I take to be Aquinas' version (section III), and recast it in terms of a theory of attributes which is significantly different from Plantinga's (section IV). Although the recasting of the doctrine will enable me to rebut Plantinga's objections (section v), it by no means solves all the problems of the DDS. In section vi I shall discuss the chief lingering problem facing a defender of the DDS. (shrink)

This paper argues that commitment to the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) in Western societies, which includes support for such ideologies as free enterprise, private property rights, economic individualism, and unlimited economic growth, poses a threat to progress in imposing greater standards of corporate environmental accountability. It is hypothesized that commitment to the DSP will be negatively correlated with support for the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) and support for corporate environmental accountability, and that belief in the NEP will be positively correlated (...) with support for corporate environmental accountability. The findings, based on a survey of MBA students, are generally consistent with the hypotheses. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze the intractability of the low-level radioactive waste debate in California through the construction and examination of policy frames and their associated policy narratives. Relying primarily on reports, formal comments, and written correspondence, we reconstruct three policy frames and explore their interaction in the public debate through the policy stories told by the actors. We analyze how policy actors using these policy frames appropriate available information, value scientific input, and respond to uncertainty in technical and regulatory (...) information to create policy stories. These policy frames and their associated policy narratives demonstrate how policy actors differ in their drivers for action, bases for trusting claims, and response to uncertainty. These differences lead to divergent characterizations of the risk of low-level radio-active waste disposal. This analysis provides insight into the dynamics of intractable policy controversies. (shrink)

By revisiting late-Weimar debates between Carl Schmitt and two left-wing critics, Otto Kirchheimer and Franz L Neumann, we can shed light on the surprising alliance of populist politics with key tenets of economic liberalism, an alliance that vividly manifests itself in the political figure and retrograde policies of Donald Trump. In the process, we can begin to fill a striking lacuna in recent scholarly literature on populism, namely its failure to pay proper attention to matters of political economy. We can (...) also perhaps begin to make sense of the roots of Trump’s assault on the US federal state: formal law and its organizational basis, modern bureaucracy, represent potential restraints on the alliance of populism with neoliberalism. (shrink)

Using ideas gleaned from the philosophy of technology of Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas and the philosophy of health of Georges Canguilhem, I argue that one of the characteristics of emerging medical technologies is that these technologies lead to new conceptions of health. When technologies enable the body to respond to more and more challenges of disease, we thus establish new norms of health. Given the continued development of successful technologies, we come to expect more and more that our bodies (...) should be able to respond to ever-new challenges of environment and disease by establishing ever-new norms of health. Technologies may aim at the prevention and treatment of disease, but they also bring about modifications of what we consider normal for the human being. Thus, new norms of health arise from technological innovation. (shrink)

Drawing support from Nietzsche and Foucault, Connolly argues that the Augustinian Imperative contains unethical implications: its carriers too often convert living signs that threaten their ontological self-confidence into modes of otherness to be condemned, punished, or converted in order to restore that confidence. With a lucidity and rhetorical power that makes it readily accessible, The Augustinian Imperative examines Augustine's enactment of the Imperative, explores alternative ethico-political orientations, and subsequently reveals much about the politics of morality in the modern age.