Ethical Writings Research Articles

Traces of Consequentialism and Non-Consequentialism In Bodhisattva Ethics

Barbra Clayton and Charles Goodman have recently proposed interpretations of Mahāyāna philosophy that take its fundamental ethical commitments to be consequentialist. There are aspects of the bodhisattva ideal, however, that result in a distinctive constraint on what might otherwise amount to a commitment to consequentialist maximization. Though the doctrinal provenance of this constraint is unique, the constraint itself is in some ways akin to a feature of Kant's ideal of the kingdom of ends. This does not make Mahāyāna ethics proto-Kantian, but it does suggest that its complexity does not rule out an analysis in terms of familiar consequentialist and non-consequentialist theoretical elements.

Testimony in a Culture of Disbelief: Asylum Hearings and the Impossibility of Bearing Witness

The ability to bear witness is crucial for those forced migrants who seek asylum in Britain. Within the context of a wider “culture of disbelief”, those others are often greeted with suspicion and are categorised as “bogus” asylum seekers if they cannot provide credible testimony in support of their application. Despite the importance of such narratives, testimonies and life-stories, asylum seekers are frequently silenced and rendered speechless within the public sphere. The aporia of bearing witness is dramatised in Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Credible Witness in order to reveal the hostile conditions in Britain and the impossibility of testifying to a “well-founded fear of persecution” in the process of seeking asylum. This article examines the ethics and politics of speaking and hearing life-stories following Jacques Derrida’s ethical writings on hospitality, testimony, and witnessing.

Descartes and the Danger of Irresolution

Descartes's approach to practical judgments about what is beneficial or harmful, or what to pursue or avoid, is almost exactly the opposite of his approach to theoretical judgments about the true nature of things. Instead of the cautious skepticism for which Descartes is known, throughout his ethical writings he recommends developing the habit of making firm judgments and resolutely carrying them out, no matter how doubtful and uncertain they may be. Descartes, strikingly, takes irresolution to be the source of remorse and repentance, of vice, and of a weak soul. In order to explain its dangerousness, this essay offers an analysis of irresolution as a failure of the will to determine itself to follow a judgment in the face of ignorance or uncertainty. This analysis connects irresolution to weakness of will and explains why Descartes regards resolution as an essential component of virtue.

Colloquium 4: Meno’s Paradox And The Sisyphus

The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Sisyphus considers the nature of deliberation, asking whether it does or does not involve knowledge. Difficulties for both options are canvassed, in ways that recall Meno’s Paradox and that also compare interestingly with Aristotle’s account of deliberation in his ethical writings.

Ethical Writing

Ethical Writing

Reading Jewish religious texts

Introduction. Chapter One: Prayers and Liturgical Texts. Chapter Two: Aggadah and Midrash. Chapter Three: The Literature of Halakhic Discourse. Chapter Four: Jewish Bible Commentaries. Chapter Five: Philosophy and Rational Theology. Chapter Six: Esoteric, Mystical and Kabbalistic Texts. Chapter Seven: Moralistic and Ethical Writings. Timeline of Jewish Religious Texts and Authors. Glossary. Bibliography of Jewish Religious Texts in English.

Patient Autonomy Investigation Under the Technology-Based Health Care System

With widespread advances in the diffusion and application of medical technologies, the phenomena of misuse and overuse have become pervasive. These phenomena not only increase the cost of health care systems and deplete the accessibility and availability of health care services, they also jeopardize patient autonomy. From a literature review on this aspect of medical technology, an impact on patient autonomy is found in almost all cases, with the exception of philosophical or ethical writings, in which there is not much practical application for health policy and law. In this article, the major finding is that in the area of patient autonomy, it does not matter much whether the “physician decides” or the “patient decides” in the current “disease care” health system, where most of the doctors focus only on disease treatment using aggressive medical technologies. It is also our “disease care” system that ensures that the patients, the health care professionals, or the health care management cannot safeguard their autonomy. Only when the genuine health care system is restored will patient autonomy be protected.

Moral Conflicts and Moral Awareness

AbstractBy making use of Aurel Kolnai's ethical writings I want to offer a more adequate understanding of moral conflicts and moral dilemmas. Insisting on Kolnai's phenomenological method, in particular, focussing on the agent's moral awareness (or conscience) and his deliberation, results in an understanding of moral conflicts as moments of moral choice rather than anomalies of moral theory. In this way, I argue that one can account for Bernard Williams's phenomenological description of moral conflicts without having to accept his anti-realist conclusions. Moreover, this approach indicates the adequacy of ordinary moral reasoning for decision-making and action guidance. Lastly and importantly, the essay illustrates the relevance of Kolnai's writings to contemporary moral philosophy.

Is Xunzi’s Virtue Ethics Susceptible to the Problem of Alienation?

In this essay I argue that if Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories are vulnerable to the so-called “problem of alienation,” a virtue ethics based on Xunzi’s ethical writings will also be vulnerable to this problem. I outline the problem of alienation, and then show that the role of ritual (li) in Xunzi’s theory renders his view susceptible to the problem as it has been traditionally understood. I consider some replies on Xunzi’s behalf, and also discuss whether the problem affects other Confucian and eudaimonian approaches to virtue ethics. I close by considering some solutions to the problem and the affect that this result has on the argumentative dialectic between the three major ethical traditions.

PRACTICAL ETHICS AND PRACTICAL LEARNING: TASAN’S APPROACH TO MORAL CULTIVATION

The emergence of (practical learning] thought is often portrayed as one of the more significant features of the intellectual history of the second half of the Choson dynasty. Yet there is no consensus on exactly what sirhak means. Moreover, many of the criteria used to determine whether someone is a thinker or not appear to be too vague to actually tell us anything about the actual thought of the thinker under examination. Since Tasan Chong Yagyong is generally considered one of the most prominent thinkers, I analyzed his ethical writings to see if I can identify any distinctive elements in this thinking that we can label practical. I found a distinctive pragmatic bent in his definitions of virtue and human nature and in his suggestions for how we can become better human beings. I conclude that we need to include ethical philosophy when we examine a Choson dynasty philosopher's writings to see if he merits the title of a thinker.

Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, 1684-1814: In the Voice of Our Biblical Mothers (review)

Reviewed by: Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, 1684-1814: In the Voice of Our Biblical Mothers Jesse Molesworth Elizabeth Kraft , Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, 1684–1814: In the Voice of Our Biblical Mothers. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. vii + 199. Elizabeth Kraft's book defends a thesis that, on the face of it, seems absurd: the amorous fictions of women writers like Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood, which created scandal in their own day, have at their core a strong ethical component, one that is absorbed and re-articulated in later fictions by Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Inchbald. Instead of tantalizing and titillating, such matriarchs of the English novel — increasingly seen as feminine counterparts to the patriarchal triad of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding — were articulating a specifically feminine form of desire, which is responsive to the demands of an other. Within an exchange of "double desire," such writers therefore anticipate the ethical utopia envisioned later by, for example, Immanuel Kant: a realm of universal subjectivity, free from the dehumanizing force of objectification. If these women could not find a reasonable model of ethical desire within the writings of contemporary men, Kraft argues, they did have models within Scripture. Turning especially to three Biblical women — Sarah, Rebecca, and the anonymous speaker of the Song of Songs — Kraft traces what she describes as a feminine erotics, which refuses the possessive inequalities of male desire. Sarah's enigmatic laugh within the tent of Abraham, for example, is shown to represent "the gift of laughter and joy in love" (20). Rebecca's marriage to Isaac embodies an ideal, in which "self and other meet without possession" (27). And the speaker of the Song of Songs possesses the freedom and individuality to speak openly "of mutual passion and of sexual difference and of transcendence through erotic love" (29). Taken as a threesome, such women exemplify a desire that is redemptive rather than demeaning. According to the theory of Emmanuel Levinas, the philosopher whose ethical writings underpin Kraft's book, desire offers a means of experiencing the infinite — but only when it is "chiastic," symmetrically overlapping in the manner of a Greek "X." Some of the best moments in the book come as Kraft, aided by commentary from Luce Irigaray, traces the ramifications of this chiastic desire: "the point of crossing is really a moment of surrender, an admission of inadequacy or vulnerability, in which one voice demands of the other voice 'interrupt me'" (26). The bulk of the book extends this examination of chiastic desire to the case of the eighteenth-century novel, more particularly to works written by women about women. (The only exception is a brief look at Richardson's novels, which are seemingly too important to ignore — but even this discussion focuses strongly [End Page 409] on female reactions to his work.) The analysis, which is often quite illuminating, proceeds by viewing certain Biblical heroines as antecedents, or in Kraft's words "paradigms," for heroines of the long eighteenth century. Thus, Deborah, the paradigmatic woman of politics, models the political struggles of Isabella within Behn's "History of the Nun." Esther, the great interpreter of signs, models the type of "hieroglyphics of desire" found within works by Manley and Haywood. Hagar's sufferings model those of Ellis within Burney's The Wanderer. And Lot's daughters, who find themselves in an erotic quagmire, model the situation faced by Miss Milner and her daughter Matilda in Inchbald's A Simple Story. The argument is not that Biblical texts were directly influential: "The older texts are not mined as source material, but are invoked as records that speak to perennial concerns, especially about love, sexual desire, and spiritual longing" (1). This assertion will no doubt invite methodological questions: could not the links be drawn more strongly, perhaps by demonstrating the cultural capital of Biblical narratives as a model for ethical thought? And, if these ethical concerns are "perennial," especially for women, then do they not compromise the uniqueness of the answers offered by such writers? But such questions may misread the intentions of the project, and the present reviewer, for...

Textual Friendship: The Essay as Impossible Encounter—From Plato and Montaigne to Levinas and Derrida (review)

Reviewed by: Textual Friendship: The Essay as Impossible Encounter—From Plato and Montaigne to Levinas and Derrida Adrienne Angelo Kuisma Korhonen, Textual Friendship: The Essay as Impossible Encounter—From Plato and Montaigne to Levinas and Derrida. New York: Prometheus Books, 2006, 494 pp. How does the form of the essay relate to its content? How should one “read” the essay—in opposition to, or in conjunction with rhetoric, philosophy, and literature? Why does friendship appear as a recurring motif in so many notable essays? These are key questions that inform Kuisma Korhonen’s Textual Friendship: The Essay as Impossible Encounter—From Plato and Montaigne to Levinas and Derrida, a thorough and ambitious literary and philosophical analysis of the rhetorical and formal strategies that have been applied to the study of essayistic discourse. Korhonen centers this consideration around the thematic element of friendship: friendship as a recurring trope in the essay where the essayist is at various moments haunted by the memory of deceased friends and cognizant of future readers, and where the writer transcribes a living friendship or responds to a friend’s letters in the assumed privacy afforded by this literary form, as occurs to varying degrees in Plato’s Phaedrus, Montaigne’s Essais, and Derrida’s Politiques de l’amitié. Friendship also structures the author/reader pact at the heart of the reading experience and within the scope of rhetorical persuasion. However, as Korhonen reminds us, any notion of textual friendship, as inscribed within the framework of textual encounter is, in many ways, always already haunted by the possibility of rhetorical violence; thus, textual friendship necessarily implies the impossibility of friendship. In the first part of this work, “The Essay and Textual Friendship,” Korhonen provides a comprehensive overview of the many ways in which the essay as a genre has been considered. As an “antigenre,” rather, the essay occupies a liminal status: neither philosophy nor literature, or, perhaps more precisely, both philosophy and literature. As such, the essay resounds with a polyphony of voices. Who speaks in an essay? The writer? The narrator? The real-life author? For the purposes of this analysis, Korhonen refers to the essay as the history of transition from the rhetorical violence implied by the collision of textual voices to the (im)possibility of textual friendship. Friendship, like the essay, remains situated at the problematic crossroads of Aristotle’s definition of secondary friendships: pleasurable on the one hand and useful on the other. Like the essay, friendship too is both/and and simultaneously [End Page 208] neither/nor useful and pleasurable. Alongside the cacophony of textual voices in the essay, the definition of reading and readership becomes equally blurred. Korhonen considers three distinct reading strategies in the second part of this work, “An Ethical Genealogy of the Essay,” citing three traditions that have played an important role in the history of the essay: rhetorical composition, philosophical dialogue and the Pyrrhonian skeptical method. Korhonen notably cautions us to avoid considering one single method in our own analyses; rather, we might seek a reading in between these three approaches. To this end, Korhonen turns to the ethical relation between self (writer) and other (reader) and the potential for dialogue opened up within the space of the essay. In the third part of this study, “From Plato to Derrida: Some Readings on Textual Friendship in the Essay,” Korhonen turns to specific and exemplary essayists and those essays (or, in the case of Cicero and Seneca, ethical writings and letters respectively) that explicitly address friendship: Plato’s Phaedrus, Lysis and Symposium, Cicero’s Laelium, Seneca’s Epistulae ad Lucilum, St. Augustine’s Confessiones, Montaigne’s Essais, Bacon’s Essays, Emerson’s writings, Saint-Évremond’s “Maxime qu’on ne doit jamais manquer à ses amis,” “L’amitié sans amitié” and “L’intérêt dans les personnes tout à fait corrompues. La vertu trop rigide. Les sentiments d’un honnête et habile courtisan sur cette vertu rigide et ce sale intérêt,” Madame de Lambert’s writings and Derrida’s Politiques de l’amitié: Suivi de l’oreille de Heidegger. It is refreshing that Korhonen includes female voices in this study as they shed light on questions...

Issues and Best Practices Related to Ethical Writing and Publishing

For decades there have been several common ethical issues in writing and publishing that have plagued nurse authors and editors. These have included authorship, duplicate or redundant publication, conflicts of interest (including financial), misconduct, and peer review. These topics have been discussed independently and together, but it has not been until recently that appropriate guidelines or best practices have emerged. Nursing and other scientific journals have struggled with these issues continuously and now organizations (e.g., International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and Office of Integrity) have developed guidelines and best practices to help authors and editors.

Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century by Maria Rosa Antognazza

BOOK REVIEWS 501 working through these studies, one must wonder how it is even possible to regard the metaphysics in Thomas's ethical writings as some sort of dispensable appendage. Perhaps the only answer is that discerning metaphysical influence takes a "metaphysical eye." Dewan has one, and the influence he sees is deep and pervasive. This is not to deny the distinctness of ethics. It has its own subject and principles, and hence its "autonomy." But it is not a self-starter, partly because of what we saw earlier: it is not its own last end. Its absolutely first principle, for Thomas, is the last end. (In some interpretations, however, even this is not too clear.) To be sure, the first principles that ethics supposes, being genuine firsts, must be indemonstrable, "self-evident." But ethics only supposes them. To determine, judge and defend them-to bring them fully into their own "evidence"-is a metaphysical exercise. That this is so for Thomas ought to be plain enough even from a glance at the first few lines of the proemium to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. In this book Dewan puts on display how it is so. These essays are certainly not just for specialists. Anyone wanting to understand Thomas's thought better will benefit immensely from them. It is not just that Dewan knows Thomas intimately and gets his meaning right. He has a way of capturing what is "happening" in the text, of "watching" Thomas philosophize and re-enacting the event, which is unusually instructive. As for the prose, it is always crystal clear, and as fresh as it is serene. The book's chief virtue, however, is simply the perennial moral wisdom that it transmits. Dewan says, "I wish to stress the lifelong use of St. Thomas's Summa theologiae secunda secundae. Moral education, self-help in spirituality, requires that we make such a book, such a treatise on human living, a constant stimulus of our reflection" (363). Clearly he has done this very thing. The results have a power to stimulate all their own. Pontficial University of the Holy Cross Rome, Italy STEPHEN L. BROCK Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century. By MARIA ROSA ANTOGNAZZA. Translated by GERALD PARKS. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. 348 $60.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-300-10074-7. An all-too-common view of Leibniz is that ofthe metaphysician who humored his more devout correspondents with an occasional, though disingenuous, bit of theologizing. How many times have we read that Leibniz was pulling the leg of his Jesuit interlocutor Bartholomew de Bosses when he compared his notion of 502 BOOK REVIEWS the vinculum substantiale with the Eucharist? Surely, a century's worth of rationalists have informed us, the man who invented the calculus would not-could not-have taken Christianity seriously. Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, a fully revised version of the author's Trinita e Incarnazione: II rapporto tra filosofia e teologia rivelata nel pensiero di Leibniz, should drive the final nail in the coffin of this tired old story. Hardly the textbook rationalist, Leibniz emerges in Antognazza's fine work as passionate defender of the Christian mysteries, a dexterous exponent of St. Augustine's account of Trinitarian vestiges in creation, and an able apologist for the perennial value of the terms 'substance', 'nature', and 'person' in Trinitarian theology. Moreover, Antognazza makes a fine case for rereading Leibniz's metaphysics in light of his commitment to revealed theology: Although theological in origin, these Trinitarian debates were interwoven with many philosophical problems, such as the relationship between reason and revelation, knowledge and faith; the issue of the limits of human understanding, of the degrees of knowledge, and of the epistemological status of belief; the question of the scope and validity of the principle of noncontradiction; the reflection on the role and meaning of analogy; the inquiry into the concepts of 'nature,' 'substance,' and 'person'; and the theory of relations (xiii). Two conclusions emerge from Antognazza's survey of Leibniz's theological interests. On the one hand, she argues that Leibniz was "clearly convinced" that the doctrine...

Feminism and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘Lordship and Bondage’ and ‘Ethical Action’

In quest of an authoritative text for determining the relationship between Hegel and feminism, nearly all writers on the subject have turned to his interpretation of Antigone in chapter six of the Phenomenology of Spirit. There are at least two compelling reasons for this. In the first place, as the comprehensive introduction to Hegel's writings, the Phenomenology of Spirit is the obvious place to begin in exploring Hegel's arguments on the subject (compare Forster 1998: 13-14). Because the description of gender relations in the world of ancient Greece in chapter six is Hegel's only extended discussion on the topic, this obviously recommends that discussion as a starting point for study. In the second place, Hegel refers back to the division of gender roles in that chapter in some of his discussions concerning gender and women in subsequent ethical writings, most notably in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. This would suggest that Hegel himself took the discussion there as authoritative on matters of gender.Despite general agreement that Hegel's account of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit is significant, scholars differ on how best to interpret that significance. Kelly Oliver argues that Hegel's restriction of women to traditional family roles in chapter six prevents them from participating in later stages of the dialectic, a fact that ‘undermines Hegel's entire project in the Phenomenology’ (Oliver 1996: 69). Patricia Jagentowicz Mills claims that ‘Hegel's interpretation of Sophocles’ play Antigone is central to an understanding of woman's role in the Hegelian system' (Mills 1996: 59), but goes on to argue that Hegel uses a distortion of the play ‘to represent woman in the family in transhistorical terms’ (Mills 1996: 78).

An Ethical Analysis of Contemporary Healthcare Practices and Issues

The purpose of this analysis is to examine specific segments of healthcare policy and practice, applying various ethical perspectives. We examine the economic and political influences that surround ethical behavior in health services, as well as how practitioners, patients, and families respond and act as a result of such influences. We then delve into the fundamental principles that guide ethical behavior by medical practitioners, including the Hippocratic Oath and vows of medical professionalism. Further, we analyze disparities in healthcare provisions based on gender, race, and ethnicity. Ethical theory is weaved into each of these sections, as the philosophical and ethical writings of prominent scholars illuminate how the conditions of contemporary healthcare administration are affected by the injustices and political influences that pervade the entire health services industry.

Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination

For Keats, famously, the relationship between beauty and truth lay at the heart of the aesthetic experience. For the late-eighteenth-century German poet, playwright, historian and—nota bene—philosopher Friedrich Schiller, it was the equivalency between beauty and freedom that provided the keynote of his thought. So at least suggests Frederick Beiser in his significant and insightful study of Schiller's aesthetic and ethical philosophy. In this work Beiser sets out not just to reconstruct Schiller's ideas and to set them into historical context, but also to defend them, and Schiller's reputation as a philosopher generally, against the rather dismissive treatment meted out to them by literary historians, neo-Kantian philosophers and postmodern critics over the past century and more. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first essentially comprises an authoritative, tightly argued and keenly analysed philosophical commentary on Schiller's aesthetic and ethical writings, beginning with the juvenilia from his student days in the 1770s at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart and culminating in the famous Letters on Aesthetic Education of 1795. The second part of the book retraces the material from the first along thematic lines, in four chapters covering, respectively, Schiller's relationship to Kantian philosophy, his views on aesthetic autonomy and enlightenment, his concept of freedom and his theory of tragedy. The final chapter on tragedy (situating Schiller with respect to Aristotle and Nietzsche) is one of the most interesting and original, as indeed is the first chapter on Schiller's early educational influences, where he is placed in the context of contemporary medical and anthropological discourses, as well as in that of the Scottish Enlightenment and of German Pietism, moral philosophy and Sturm und Drang.

The Elementary Education on Ethics and Essay Writing in the New Education Curriculum

The Elementary Education on Ethics and Essay Writing in the New Education Curriculum

EVALUATIVE CONCEPTS AND OBJECTIVE VALUES: RAND ON MORAL OBJECTIVITY

Those familiar with Ayn Rand's ethical writings may know that she discusses issues in metaethics, and that she defended the objectivity of morality during the heyday of early non-cognitivism. But neither her metaethics, in general, nor her views on moral objectivity, in particular, have received wide study. This article elucidates some aspects of her thought in these areas, focusing on Rand's conception of the way in which moral values serve a biologically based human need, and on her account of moral values as both essentially practical and epistemically objective in a sense fundamentally continuous with the objectivity of science. The bearing of her epistemological writings on her ethical thought is emphasized throughout, and her epistemology is defended against a line of criticism inspired by John McDowell's criticism of the so-called “myth of the given.”

The Point of Studying Ethics According to Kant

Many readers of Kant’s ethical writings take him to be primarily concerned with offering guidelines for action. At the least, they write about Kant as if this were the purpose of his ethical writings. For example, Christine Korsgaard, in her influential article Kant’s Analysis of Obligation: The Argument of Groundwork I, writes that, ‘‘the argument of Groundwork I is an attempt to give what I call a ‘motivational analysis’ of the concept of a right action, in order to discover what that concept applies to, that is, which actions are right.’’ 1 Similar comments are not hard to find in the secondary literature. This, however, is a fundamentally misguided way of reading Kant, since he repeatedly asserts that we do not need to do moral philosophy in order to discover which actions are right. We already know how to behave morally and do not need philosophers to tell us this. ‘‘Common human reason,’’ Kant argues, ‘‘knows very well how to distinguish in every case that comes up what is good and what is evil, what is in conformity to duty or contrary to duty.’’ 2 Because people with pre-philosophical understanding know how to act morally, the purpose of moral philosophy cannot be to provide us with a set of rules for correct behavior. If we take Kant’s claims about common human reason seriously, then his aim in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals cannot be to discover which actions are right. It is instructive on this point to compare Kant’s conception of moral philosophy with Christian Wolff’s. Wolff’s ethics was dominant in Germany during Kant’s philosophical development, and Kant himself based his ethics lectures on a textbook written by one of Wolff’s followers, Alexander Baumgarten. Unlike Kant, Wolff is an intellectualist who believes that there is no gap between recognizing an act as good and the act of willing it, He therefore believes that immoral behavior is always the result of mistaken beliefs about goodness. Thus, he can claim; ‘‘The knowledge of good is a motive of the will.... It cannot happen the one does not will an inherently good act if one distinctly conceives it ... So if