Caritas pacem causat: How Can Virtues Serve Peace?

The object of the study is the Tyumen ethical and philosophical intellectual tradition, whose representatives are F. A. Selivanov, V.I. Bakshtanovsky, Yu. M. Fedorov, M. G. Ganopolsky, etc. The subject of the research is the history and conceptual framework of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical intellectual tradition. The introduction substantiates the research positions: – the problem is formulated, the essence of which is the lack of research on regional intellectual traditions of Russia; – the concepts of "intellectual tradition" and "research tradition" are divorced; – the purpose of the study is determined: the study of the history and conceptual framework of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical tradition, the constitution a specific field of research is the study of Russian regional intellectual traditions; – the theoretical and methodological apparatus of research is positioned, which is based on approaches and methods inherent in such an interdisciplinary research direction as Intellectual History, which is relevant in modern Russian science. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that it attempts to constitute a specific field of research – the study of Russian regional intellectual traditions. The first part of the article examines the history of the formation of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical tradition, analyzes the special moral situation associated with the industrial development of the Siberian North that developed in the Tyumen region in the second half of the XX century, which brought this intellectual tradition to life. The second part of the article explicates the key ideas that make up the conceptual framework of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical intellectual tradition (personalism, rationalism, praxeologism), reveals the specifics of understanding these ideas by its representatives. In conclusion, it is argued that the study of regional intellectual traditions contributes to the expansion of existing ideas about the intellectual potential of Russia, about the points of growth of the human capital of our country. Such studies are especially important for the Tyumen region, as they demonstrate that this region is rich not only in material (natural), but also in intellectual resources.

Lindsay P. Cohn reads Augustine from the perspective of modern civil-military relations, analyzing how Augustine’s views on order, authority, war, peace, violence, and public service help illuminate current debates about democratic control of the military, the ideal relationship between the soldier and the wider society, and the role of the military leader in policy and strategic planning. While Augustine never wrote a treatise on war or military service, nor indeed on political theory of any kind, his ideas about these topics form part of a centuries-old theoretical and ethical tradition with great contemporary relevance. Cohn explores the relevance of Augustine’s thought to contemporary normative theories of civil-military relations, especially those of Huntington, Cohen, and Brooks. She then considers possible alternatives to Augustine’s conservatism from the liberal, republican and other democratic theories of Locke, Rousseau, Habermas, and more. To engage with Augustine’s ethical arguments about the appropriateness of political violence, Cohn draws from Clausewitz’s descriptive arguments about the nature of war and how victory is achieved. Finally, Cohn looks at the modern empirical literature about the role of militaries in democratic breakdown, in an effort to sketch a military professional ethic appropriate to modern political values. Ultimately, Cohn highlights Augustine’s moral guidance is of both practical and ethical importance; however, his assumptions about the nature of war and political authority require modification if we are to produce a usefully refined normative theory of civil-military relations.

Aristotle and Plato were the chief architects of virtue ethics, but their own formulation of virtue ethics was mostly subdued with the appearance of consequentialism as well as Kantian deontology. However, modem thinkers have attempted to revive virtue ethics in its new form and in this regard the name which is popularly known is G.E.M. Anscombe. In fact Anscombe clearly indicates in what sense virtue ethics can be revived and what was wrong with the traditional virtue ethics as expounded by Aristotle and Plato. Anscombe points out three important issues for which traditional virtue ethics perhaps lost its glory. First, moral philosophy in general cannot survive without an adequate philosophy of psychology and this thing was absent in the traditional virtue ethics. Secondly, without psychological possibility the concepts of moral obligation and moral duty, the moral sense of ought to be jeopardized. Thirdly and importantly, the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance. This task of this paper is to review the revival of virtue ethics.

<span lang="EN-US">Aristotle and Plato were the chief architects of virtue ethics, but their own formulation of virtue ethics was mostly subdued with the appearance of consequentialism as well as Kantian deontology. However, modem thinkers have attempted to revive virtue ethics in its new form and in this regard the name which is popularly known is G.E.M. Anscombe. In fact Anscombe clearly indicates in what sense virtue ethics can be revived and what was wrong with the traditional virtue ethics as expounded by Aristotle and Plato. Anscombe points out three important issues for which traditional virtue ethics perhaps lost its glory. First, moral philosophy in general cannot survive without an adequate philosophy of psychology and this thing was absent in the traditional virtue ethics. Secondly, without psychological possibility the concepts of moral obligation and moral duty, the moral sense of ought to be jeopardized. Thirdly and importantly, the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance. This task of this paper is to review the revival of virtue ethics</span>

Introduction. The methodology of ethical education is an ever-relevant topic of research. This is due to the fact that the person’s moral consciousness is an extremely subtle matter; the ways of its development are complex and non-linear. The question “How should the process of ethical education be organised?” is of great concern to both theorists, who construct various models of ethical education, and, practitioners, who implement these models in life.A serious source of knowledge concerning the methodology of ethical education is the concept of the individual moral consciousness development, created by well-known ethicists A. Selivanov, V. I. Bakshtanovsky, Yu. M. Fedorov, who are the representatives of Tyumen ethical and philosophical tradition. The methodological ideas and principles proposed by the Tyumen ethicists can be regarded as a significant contribution to the development of modern ethical and pedagogical thought, aimed at overcoming both total relativism and total fundamentalism, by cultivating the principle of communication as a way of the individual moral consciousness development and as a method of ethical education.Aim. The aim of the present article is to represent the concepts of ethical education, developed within the framework of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical tradition; and also to comprehend their axiological and praxeological potential in relation to modern ethical education.Methodology and research methods. The methodological apparatus of the research is a synthesis of such approaches as: qualitative content analysis, hermeneutics, comparative studies, and also the theories of cognitive constructivism by J. Piaget, L. Kohlberg and communicative rationality by J. Habermas. Thus, this study is interdisciplinary, created at the junction of ethics, sociology of morals, and pedagogy.Results. The research results can be presented as follows: the models of ethical education created within the framework of the Tyumen ethical and philosophical tradition were reconstructed, which can be designated as the model of “development of the ability of true moral judgments” (F. A. Selivanov); the model of “shaping the ability of free choice and moral creativity” (V. I. Bakshtanovsky); the model of “immersion in the universe of morality” (V. M. Fedorov). The main methodological ideas were identified: the conjugation of the processes of the development of moral consciousness and a culture of thinking (F. A. Selivanov), the formation of moral consciousness through the actualisation of the opportunity to be a co-creator of public morality (V. I. Bakshtanovsky); the co-existence of man and the Cosmos (Yu. M. Fedorov). The main methods are presented: ethical and logical exercises (F. A. Selivanov), ethical-applied (business) games, humanitarian expertise (V. I. Bakshtanovsky), dialogue education, the implementation of a creative principle, the practice of freedom (Yu. M. Fedorov), etc.The novelty and practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the methodological concepts of ethical education proposed by the Tyumen ethicists are practically not studied and there is a very real danger of losing valuable experience for the development of modern ethical education strategies.

<p class="Style91"><span class="FontStyle213"><span>В статье раскрывается проблема когнитивных основ формирования и функционирования коммуникативных практик в механизме публичного управления незападных обществ на примере Японии.</span></span></p><p class="Style91"><span class="FontStyle213"><span>Анализируются легальные и теневые каналы участия различных заинтересованных групп в распределении «общественного блага» с использованием институтов публичной власти. Все коммуникативные практики в сфере публичных услуг включены в особый образец социальных и политических диспозиций, которые в решающей мере определяют эффективность политической системы и ее институтов в разных странах. Диспозиции и паттерны поведения объясняют, почему универсальные институты и практики демократического правления по-разному работают в разных культурных средах. </span></span></p><p class="Style91"><span class="FontStyle213"><span>Структура институтов публичного управления в Японии аналогична парламентским моделям, распространенным на Западе, но адаптированным к местной культурной среде. По этой причине современная система политической коммуникации Японии представляет собой синтез традиционных начал и институциональных новаций. Благодаря развитой культурной традиции и ориентации элит на реализацию национальных интересов система публичного управления Японии чрезвычайно восприимчива к внешним изменениям и способна трансформироваться. Провозглашая свою исконную, глубинную связь с религиозно-философской и этической традицией, японцы, тем не менее, всегда проявляли большую гибкость и готовность принять иноземные элементы, если те открывали новые возможности для процветания страны и повышали легитимность публичной власти. Для лучшего восприятия и адаптации к повседневной жизни эти новшества были облечены в национально-культурные формы. Усвоенные таким образом зарубежные практики становились привычно японскими, что означало «вестернизацию» содержания религиозно-философской традиции, формирование на этой основе обновленной традиции, переосмысленной в соответствии с требованиями времени. В этом смысле система государственного управления Японии носит инновационный характер, она постоянно совершенствовалась путем заимствования институтов и процедур западного (континентального и англо-американского) государственного менеджмента. </span></span></p>

從中國生命倫理學到複製人類的道德問題——一個方法學上的省思

Reviewed by: Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting by Shannon Vallor Wessel Reijers Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, Oxford University Press, 2016. Some books can be said to represent ‘new beginnings’, opening up new spaces for academic discourse and new methods and perspectives. Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues can rightfully be claimed to be one of those books. There is much about this book that is not only laudable but also urgent. First, it has managed to firmly establish virtue ethics as a tradition worthy of consideration in the field of ethics of technology. Other authors have suggested such a turning (Ess 2009; Coeckelbergh 2012), but none have done it so far in a manner that can live up to the comprehensiveness of Technology and the Virtues. Second, the book has served the virtue ethics tradition well in convincingly arguing for its continuing relevance in a time of serious sociotechnical challenges. As our moral critiques of technologies are increasingly entangled in discussions of existential threats that are claimed to be too complex to be handled by common human beings and call for an enhancement of our species, Vallor’s urgent call back to earth, back to our own human capabilities, will be welcomed by many. Third, it establishes a way of approaching matters in moral philosophy that is quite uncommon today, namely drawing from not only the ‘Western’ perspective but also systematic moral philosophies from other cultures: Buddhist and Confucian ethics. This echoes the increasing need in a multipolar world to build bridges between moral traditions, to construct a global dialogue (insofar possible) concerning the good life and the kind of societies we want to live in. Vallor’s book is structured in a convincing way and guides the reader from foundational questions to a framework of the ‘technomoral’ virtues, and to a series of in-depth case studies of contemporary technologies: social media, surveillance technologies, robots, and human enhancement technologies. In the introduction and Part I of the book, Vallor has three main objectives. The first is to argue for the existence of a so-called state [End Page E-17] of “acute sociotechnical opacity” (6) in the 21st century, which means that the practical circumstances of our everyday lives are changing so rapidly due to technological innovations that we cannot reasonably anticipate the impact of future states of affairs on our morality. This notion provides Vallor with the resources to argue against the use of utilitarian ethics, due to its false reliance on transparent choices based on the rational calculation of their outcomes, and against Kantian ethics, due to the impossibility of any categorical rule to respond to highly contingent future states of affairs. Virtue ethics is presented as a modest but viable alternative, in that enables us to acknowledge the existence of sociotechnical opacity and at the same time offers us a strategy for self-cultivation that empowers us to manage it prudently. The second objective is to introduce the revival of the virtue ethics tradition, to connect it to contemporary philosophy of technology, and to make the claim that both should be wary of their Western provincialism and engage in a global dialogue because the problems they address (e.g. climate change) are of a global character. The third objective is to lay down the fundamentals of the three virtue ethics traditions used in the book (Aristotelian, Buddhist, and Confucian) and to argue for their convergence on four major issues: a conception of the highest human good, of virtues as cultivated states of character, of a practical path for moral self-cultivation, and of a the existence of an essence of human beings (44). In Part II of the book, Vallor presents seven “core elements” (64) or perhaps rather conditions of the practices that mediate the cultivation of technomoral virtues. These conditions pertain to the ‘how’ of the cultivation of technomoral virtue, indicating according to what kinds of standards we could for instance evaluate our educational, mentoring, and training practices. Vallor painstakingly discusses the details of the accounts of cultivation of virtue in the three virtue ethics traditions she...

While the resources of the virtue tradition inform explorations of Proverbs’ moral vision, recent ethical investigations of Proverbs suggest that virtue ethics alone cannot deliver the ‘goods’ of adequate moral understanding of the document. Socratic and Aristotelian brands of virtue ethics may serve as valuable heuristic guides that reveal aspects of Proverbs’ moral vision. The document’s complex moral discourse, however, cannot be reduced to either species of the virtue tradition. Arthur Keefer’s monograph clarifies why this is the case. Moving beyond general comparisons between Proverbs and different streams of the virtue tradition, Keefer attends to historical, conceptual, and theological factors that framed and funded the moral visions articulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Proverbs. Attention to these contextual factors illuminates the ethical concepts and aims of each, facilitating a constructive dialogue. And this dialogue reveals that, while Proverbs participates in and contributes to the virtue tradition, it represents a tradition of virtue ethics in its own right.

This chapter introduces the concept of Ọmọlúàbí as an example of the traditional virtue ethics system to business ethics literature. It gives a nuanced appreciation of possible implications of the Ọmọlúàbí system by drawing on some of its key virtues and its past applications among the Yoruba peoples. The chapter explores the concept of Ọmọlúàbí as a form of virtue ethics and shows its similarities with the Aristotelian virtue ethics and other Western-oriented ethical theories. It also maps out the key dimensions of Ọmọlúàbí virtue ethics, which the authors suggest is directly applicable to the Nigerian business context. A case analysis is used to show how the Ọmọlúàbí virtue ethics system works in practice, drawing on the history and modern practice of GTBank Plc. Finally, the authors critically reflect on some of the challenges associated with the practice of the Ọmọlúàbí virtue ethics in GTBank Plc.

Abstract: In his book Lack of Character (2002 Cambridge University Press) John Doris argues that both virtue ethics and common sense or folk psychology are committed to the claim that the attribution of character to persons is predictive, explanatory, and determinative of behaviour. Doris contends however that this claim is empirically false. Citing the results of experiments in the situationist research tradition in experimental social psychology, Doris argues that it is a person’s situation, and not his or her character, that determines how a person will behave in a given situation. Doris concludes that virtue ethics in particular is in need of radical revision, since the attribution of character to persons is thereby shown to be otiose at best, and empirically misleading at worst. In this essay I defend traditional virtue ethics against Doris’ situationist critique. My discussion falls into four parts. In Section 1 I set out the key claims that Doris makes about the empirical inadequacy of traditional virtue ethics. In Section 2 I describe three of the most important experiments which Doris adduces in his argument for situationism. In Section 3 I offer alternative interpretations of all three experiments, largely, but not exclusively, from an Aristotelian perspective. In Section 4 I respond to Doris’ positive account of moral character, viz., his ‘fragmentation hypothesis’ and his theory of ‘local traits’. Here I argue that Doris’ positive account is lacking in explanatory power; I suggest as well that his positive account is poorly motivated, since he has largely misunderstood the traditional concept of a moral disposition. In particular, it is crucial to Doris’ critique of virtue ethics that virtues and traits of character are cross-situationally consistent (or ‘robust’); since according to Doris, it will only be attributions of character so conceived that are shown to be empirically inadequate by the situationist experiments he discusses. Doris’ notion of a robust disposition is however alien to Aristotle and the virtue ethicists who are inspired by him. I demonstrate that the virtue ethicist conceives of a virtue as a rational disposition. A virtue is a disposition to act and feel in an appropriate way as a result of and in response to rational considerations about the good in particular circumstances. The acquisition of virtue is a difficult moral achievement because it involves the complex and interdependent development of both the intellectual and emotional capacities of a human being. It is precisely because the virtues are not robust traits in Doris’ sense that the deliverances of practical reason, even when it is operating in its fullest capacity, will issue in decisions in particular circumstances that cannot be captured by the notion of ‘cross-situational consistency’. I conclude that insofar as that is the case Doris has managed to make very little dialectical contact with the concept of virtue as that has been conceived in the virtue ethics tradition.

James Drane's More Humane Medicine: A Liberal Catholic Bioethics is an outstanding contribution to the study of bioethics in our day. Catholics and others who are interested in the issues discussed here will benefit from this masterful treatment. The author opens with a set of definitions, starting with what he means by a "more humane medicine." Drane contends that a more humane medicine has become necessary and desired, but not because the traditional medical ethic as "a self-declared and self-imposed ethic, outlining what noble service to others entails" is no longer valid. Rather he defines it as an advance on the traditional ethic; a "new foundation" based on a "lived set of obligations derived from a felt commitment to other persons ... an ethics based on the relationship between doctors and patients and essentially an ethics of virtue." Drane's work is a "liberal Catholic Bioethics" in which he challenges his own faith tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, on such topics as sexuality, birth control, abortion, cloning, stem cell research, aging and dying, and euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The present article is a critical essay that analyzes the author's statements and conclusions.

Medical research ethics in China

This collection of essays explores a variety of ways of thinking ethically about drone violence. The violent use of armed, unmanned aircraft (‘drones’) is increasing worldwide, but uncertainty persists about the moral status of remote-control killing and why it should be restrained. Practitioners, observers and potential victims of such violence often struggle to reconcile it with traditional expectations about the nature of war and the risk to combatants. Addressing the ongoing policy concern that the state use of drone violence is sometimes poorly understood and inadequately governed, the book’s ethical assessments are not restricted to the application of traditional Just War principles. They also consider the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), virtue ethics, and guiding principles for forceful law-enforcement. The collection brings together nine original contributions by established and emerging scholars, incorporating expertise in military ethics, critical military studies, gender, history, international law and international relations, in order to better assess the multi-faceted relationship between drone violence and justice.

The violent use of armed, unmanned aircraft ('drones') is increasing worldwide, but uncertainty persists about the moral status of remote-control killing and why it should be restrained. Practitioners, observers and potential victims of such violence often struggle to reconcile it with traditional expectations about the nature of war and the risk to combatants. Addressing the ongoing policy concern that state use of drone violence is sometimes poorly understood and inadequately governed, the book's ethical assessments are not restricted to the application of traditional Just War principles, but also consider the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), virtue ethics, and guiding principles for forceful law-enforcement. This edited collection brings together nine original contributions by established and emerging scholars, incorporating expertise in military ethics, critical military studies, gender, history, international law and international relations, in order to better assess the multi-faceted relationship between drone violence and justice