Ethics Of Otherness Research Articles

A Preferential Option for the Repressed: Psychoanalysis Through the Eyes of Liberation Theology

Psychoanalysis’s origin as a product of a marginalized people—Jewish women and men in 19th-century Europe—is often obscured in contemporary narratives of psychoanalytic history. This history has important relevance for subaltern communities—especially people of color in North America. Using Liberation Psychology, Latin American Liberation Theology, Black Theology, and Liberation Philosophy as a composite lens with which to reread the origins of psychoanalysis, it will be argued that imbued within its theoretical machinery is an ethics of otherness, concerned with the “outcasts” of psyche and society. Examining the intersection of race and marginality in psychoanalysis’s origins yields rich possibilities for theorizing about psychodynamics, race, and social justice.

Computer simulation of dental professionals as a moral community

Current empirical studies of moral behavior of healthcare professionals are almost entirely focused on self-reports, usually collected under the assumption that an ethical disposition characterizes individuals across various contexts. It is well known, however, that individuals adjust their behavior to what they see being done by those in their peer group. That presents a methodological challenge to traditional research within a community of peers because the behavior of each individual is both the result of norms and a contributor to the norms of others. Computer simulations can be used to address this methodological challenge. A Markov replicator model that runs on an Excel spreadsheet was used to investigate a community with four agent types in the dental community: devious practitioners, ethical practitioners who avoid involvement in the poor ethics of others, ethical practitioners who accept it as part of their professional responsibility to challenge colleagues who act unprofessionally, and those who enforce ethical standards. A panel of leaders in the profession independently estimated parameters for the model and criteria for a possible distribution of agent types in the community. The simulation converged on distributions of the agent types that were very similar to the expectations of the panel. The simulation suggests the following characteristics of such moral communities: The structure of such communities is robust across a wide distribution. It appears that reduction in unethical behavior is more sensitive to the way ethical practitioners interact with each other than to sanctions the enforcement community imposes on unethical practitioners, and that large external interventions will be short lived.

"ESTOS ¿NO SON HOMBRES?" LA PREGUNTA EN TIEMPOS DE PELIGRO.

Este texto, escrito para la quinta fecha del Centenario del Sermón de Antón de Montesinos, hace una corta descripción de lo que giraba en torno de la época y los problemas que tenía a su Alrededor Antón de Montesinos al plantear una pregunta como “Estos ¿no son hombres?”. Además, se hace un corto recorrido por algunos momentos históricos y bibliográficos en los cuales se plantea la misma pregunta, mostrando que con la pregunta se pone en juego la humanidad del otro y también al de quien responde, fundando así la ética de la alteridad. Por último, el texto evidencia brevemente la lucha de Las Casas en España por la humanidad de los indios del nuevo mundo y el orgullo que deben tener los Dominicos por esta lucha.

A Vindication of the Rights of Machines

This essay responds to the machine question in the affirmative, arguing that artifacts, like robots, AI, and other autonomous systems, can no longer be legitimately excluded from moral consideration. The demonstration of this thesis proceeds in four parts or movements. The first and second parts approach the subject by investigating the two constitutive components of the ethical relationship—moral agency and patiency. In the process, they each demonstrate failure. This occurs not because the machine is somehow unable to achieve what is considered necessary and sufficient to be a moral agent or patient but because the characterization of agency and patiency already fail to accommodate others. The third and fourth parts respond to this problem by considering two recent alternatives—the all-encompassing ontocentric approach of Luciano Floridi’s information ethics and Emmanuel Levinas’s eccentric ethics of otherness. Both alternatives, despite considerable promise to reconfigure the scope of moral thinking by addressing previously excluded others, like the machine, also fail but for other reasons. Consequently, the essay concludes not by accommodating the alterity of the machine to the requirements of moral philosophy but by questioning the systemic limitations of moral reasoning, requiring not just an extension of rights to machines, but a thorough examination of the way moral standing has been configured in the first place.

Done and Over With—Finally? Otherness, Metonymy, and the Ethics of Comparison

A strange impatience characterizes recent debates surrounding not only comparative literature but also related fields such as recognition, ethics, postcolonialism, and cultural studies: the impatience with notions like alterity, difference, and the other. These notions have enjoyed an unprecedented (and presumably undue) amount of attention for roughly thirty-five years, but now many commentators are eager to lay to rest their spectral presence or to shoo them away like a bothersome insect. Among the most recent and resolute attempts to overcome the “excesses” of the turn toward the other is arguably the oeuvre of Jacques Rancière, who forges an analogy between the cynical foreign policy of the Bush government, including its “war on terror,” and an ethics of otherness—an ethics usually based on concepts of the sublime and linked by Rancière to the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Giorgio Agamben (Dissensus). Rancière repeatedly insists that what is often called the absolutization of the other can lead to, or at least feed into, political forms of “othering” that threaten to achieve the opposite of what they were designed to do. However, any such attempt to end the interlude of otherness—and to return to a concept of universalism or the human, however modified—means to return to sameness.

MUERTE, TIEMPO Y ALTERIDAD: MÁS ALLÁ DE LA ONTOLOGÍA. REFLEXIONES SOBRE LA FILOSOFÌA DE M. HEIDEGGER Y E. LEVINAS

The analysis of finitude that Heidegger held in his earlier work has being questioned by Emmanuel Levinas in his ethics of otherness, which involves a new aproach to subjectivity, the relationship with others and the opening of time. We will show that in the work of E. Levinas the reflections on time are preceded and conditioned by the encounter with the otherness of another man (Autrui), that in the diachrony of his break set up the temporary experience as unassumable in the present of representation. There for, death as origin of time and the privilege of future in the work of Heidegger is denied: death is the impossibility of possibility, and man, rather than a being-towards-death, is a being-against-death. The finitude acquires a new meaning in the death of the others, that highlights the ethical orientation which fundamental ontology lacks.

A ÉTICA DA ALTERIDADE NA FILOSOFIA DE CAMUS

The crisis of paradigms, regardless of them being scientific, social and religious, had during the 20th century an interesting reception. Totalitarian systems emerged, relativism in philosophy and science, and exhaustion of representative democracy. The conception of revolt in Camus covers all these concerns and tries to recuperate a kind of humanism that seeks to answer to these entire crises. This article intends to investigate the Camusian conception of revolt as a critique to State violence and a struggle to establish an ethics of otherness.

Family Lives and Relational Living: Taking Account of Otherness

Contemporary research has shown that families are constituted through everyday practices of intimacy with affinities being fashioned around the structuring principles of openness and reciprocity alongside or superseding traditional ties of obligation and responsibility. Paradoxically in many instances powerful differences and inequalities among intimates remain intransigent, undermining claims on the democratisation of intimacy. In this article I want to examine how people make sense of difference and significant otherness in family lives, focusing attention on embedded practices that span across interpersonal, human-object, natural-cultural boundaries. I focus on three examples; these are relations between humans and animals, parents and children, people and objects. These relations are structured through species, gendered, generational and subject-object differences, but these categorical distinctions do not set apart the self and other. Instead they demonstrate how otherness is part of everyday relational living. Thus, to put personal relationships and families in context, I contend that we need to reframe the analytical lens around an ethics of otherness.

Presença do tema ética profissional nos periódicos brasileiros de Ciência da Informação e Biblioteconomia

A presença de discussões acerca de temas relativos à Ética na produção científica brasileira de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação é o enfoque principal deste texto, que advém da análise de periódicos desses campos de conhecimento e da prática profissional. Para isso, selecionou-se um título por cada região político-administrativa brasileira, Sul, Sudeste, Centro-Oeste e Nordeste, dentre os existentes, cuja edição tivesse se mantido regular no período de 1997 a 2006. Em cada um desses títulos, a partir de palavras-chave previamente definidas, foram identificados os artigos e ensaios que trataram do tema. Com isso, buscava-se conhecer os fundamentos filosóficos e doutrinários, as temáticas e abordagens, e as tendências da discussão Ética na produção periódica brasileira de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação. Metodologicamente, o trabalho envolve a identificação dos periódicos e dos textos publicados sobre a temática; a leitura e a descrição dos mesmos; a identificação dos aspectos apontados nos objetivos pretendidos; a análise dos discursos utilizando a técnica do Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo; e a organização das idéias contidas visando chegar a uma síntese. Foram localizados 10 textos produzidos por 16 autores, sendo dois de 1997, quatro de 2005, quatro distribuídos de 1998 a 2004; nenhum foi encontrado referente ao ano de 2006. Foram identificadas como fundamentos éticos as Doutrinas da Ética do Discurso, da Ética da Alteridade e da Teoria Ético-política da Justiça; e foram também identificadas as temáticas, abordagens e tendências da discussão sobre a Ética, que revelaram a questão da postura profissional determinada pelo quadro atual da sociedade e das tecnologias. Conclui-se que apesar de existir preocupação com o tema Ética por parte de alguns profissionais da informação que escrevem e publicam sobre o assunto, o mesmo ainda é pouco explorado na literatura e está mais dirigido para questões gerais.

Outramente que ser: revolvendo questões à luz da pedagogia do oprimido

Neste texto, a ética da alteridade de Emmanuel Levinas, para quem a nudez do rosto não é uma figura de estilo, mas a consciência moral, encontra a teoria da ação (cultural) dialógica, fundamento, na pedagogia do oprimido de Paulo Freire, de sua denúncia-anúncio contra a desumanização e a opressão. Para ambos, a violência toma o sentido de posse, modo pelo qual um ente, embora existindo, é parcialmente negado. Essa parcialidade, ao negar a independência do ente, instaura a opressão, negando ao oprimido a sua vocação de ser mais. A opressão mata a vida. Contudo, é pela tomada de consciência desta condição de ser-para-outro, que a própria possibilidade do humano pode ser pensada, porque a relação com outrem ou com a coletividade é nossa relação, irredutível à compreensão. Reconhecer tal subversão, ou seja, que os oprimidos, na medida em que se libertam, eles evitam a volta ao regime opressor e, ao fazê-lo, libertam o opressor, eles inauguram o amor não é assumir, em essência, que ética é a construção do sentido da vida humana desde o encontro com o outro? PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Humanismo. Liberdade. Ética da alteridade. Pedagogia do oprimido. Transformação social.

The neo-primitivist turn: critical reflections on alterity, culture, and modernity

In recent years the concept of 'the primitive' has been the subject of strong criticism; it has been examined, unpacked, and shown to signify little more than a construction or projection necessary for establishing the modernity of the West. The term 'primitive' continues, however, to appear in contemporary critical and cultural discourse, begging the question: Why does primitivism keep reappearing even after it has been uncovered as a modern myth? In The Neo-primitivist Turn, Victor Li argues that this contentious term was never completely banished and that it has in fact reappeared under new theoretical guises. An idealized conception of 'the primitive,' he contends, has come to function as the ultimate sign of alterity. Li focuses on the works of theorists like Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Marianna Torgovnick, Marshall Sahlins, and Jurgen Habermas in order to demonstrate that primitivism continues to be a powerful presence even in those works normally regarded as critical of the concept. Providing close readings of the ways in which the premodern or primitive is strategically deployed in contemporary critical writings, Li's interdisciplinary study is a timely and forceful intervention into current debates on the politics and ethics of otherness, the problems of cultural relativism, and the vicissitudes of modernity.

Getting Beyond the Boundaries: Zhuangzi's Ethics of Otherness

Getting Beyond the Boundaries: Zhuangzi's Ethics of Otherness

Ethical Modernism: Servants as Others in J. M. Coetzee's Early Fiction

The distinctive ethical force of literature inheres not in the fictional world portrayed but in the handling of language whereby that fictional world is brought into being. Literary works that resist the immediacy and transparency of language— as is the case in modernist writing—thus engage the reader ethically; and to do justice to such works as a reader is to respond fully to an event whereby otherness challenges habitual norms. When the fiction itself concerns the ethics of otherness, as in J. M. Coetzee's two earliest fictions, Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country, modernist techniques can be especially powerful as a means of involving the reader ethically. In these two works, Coetzee undermines the conventional discourses that are traditionally employed to represent—and in so doing disempower—servants in the same gesture by which he tests the conventions of fictional representation.

Rebuilding the Feminine in Levinas's Talmudic Readings

AbstractThis study presents a reconsideration of Levinas's concept of the feminine. This reconsideration is facilitated by a philosophically informed analysis of Levinas's Talmudic readings on that subject.The innovation of this research is in its methodology, which combines the two corpora of Levinas' writings as important components of an integrated system of thought. Two main phenomena are derived here from Levinas' Talmudic readings and raise main principles of his ethics. In the heart of the discussion on Eros we find a statement of the differentiation between feminine and masculine in Levinas's thought, and its implication for gender and for the ethics of otherness. In the center of Levinas's terminology of maternity we uncover his phenomenology of pregnancy, and its ethical implication regarding responsibility to the other. The extreme responsibility committed to the other since there is a immanent conflict between parents and their child.

L'avenir du politique

The Future of Political Authority, by Pierre S. Pettigrew The nation-state emerged as a vertical political authority operating on a spécifie territory in relation to a relatively homogenous group. Internationalization builds on this momentum on the basis of the interdependence of states. Globalization imposes a new relationship between economies and politics: the horizontal power of the market is increasingly replacing the vertical power of the state. Political and economie spaces no longer coincide; and the pace of politics, slowed by consultations, has little in common with the pace of economies, accelerated by new technology. This new situation may resuit in greater exclusion of populations or even of increasingly marginalized states. This is the source of the problem of values and cultural diversity. With regard to culture, variety concerns France as it concerns Canada, which — through the mosaic model — serves as an inspiration for many societies. With regard to values, a moral renewal is emerging that will take us from an ethics of justice to an ethics of otherness; the contributions of women and of NGOs will be decisive here. Seattle will be remembered mainly as the first place of confrontation between the old order, which must adapt, and the new order, which is striving to emerge. The century just beginning will be marked by their coexistence.

Homo Œconomicus, Social Order, and the Ethics of Otherness

Economics is often believed to be a 'value-free' discipline, and even an `a-moral' one. My aim is to demonstrate that homo œconomicus can recover his ethical nature if the philosophical roots of contemporary economics are laid bare. This, however, requires us to look for an alternative foundation for the idea of 'social order,' a foundation which economics (and also part of sociology) is ill-equipped to provide because of its exclusive focus on calculative rationality. But a new ethical perspective on homo œconomicus and on the manner in which he chooses his actions is possible. My aim here is to make this new perspective explicit.

A Framework for Evaluating Coverage of Ethics in Professions and Society

Media scholars have used ethical theory extensively to evaluate journalists' own ethical practices. However, they have given little attention to how ethical theory could be used to assess the way journalists cover the ethics of others. In light of the important role that medicine and other professions play in the lives of individuals and society, this article proposes a framework to evaluate news coverage of ethical issues that involve professions and in society. After making the case for the need for this framework, the article describes the framework itself and the rationale for each component. Finally, ideas for applying the framework in future research are suggested.

Theology and difference: the wound of reason

Preface I. Introduction: Violence and Reason Pitfalls of Enlightenment The Dissolving of Difference The Memory of Suffering Making Sense of Derrida Tradition in Question Contextualization The Idealist Diamond The Kantian Opening II. Qualitative Difference: BarthOs Epistle to the Romans Qualitative Difference Memory of God The Christ Event An Analogy of Difference? Theology and Difference: The Argument in Brief III. Truth and Contextualization: Freud, Husserl, Derrida Freud and the Logic of Suspicion Kant and the Issue of Objectivity Husserl and the Western Discovery of Objectivity Derida and the Deconstruction of Objectivity Ricoeur and Theological Hermeneutics Hermeneutics and the Idealist Diamond The Deconstructionist Alternative The Insistnece of the Truth Question IV. The Kantian Opening Kant and the Sublation of Theodicy Ontotheology and the Great Chain of Being Plenitude and the Otherness of Time Kant and the New Cosmology Beyond Ontotheology Opening the First Critique The Coram Deo V. The Otherness of the Ethical Opening the Second Critique The Wound of Reason Imperative as Contextualization The Return of Theodicy Rational Existentialism Cutting the Idealist Diamond VI. The Ethics of Otherness The Argument Reviewed The A/theology of Mark C. Taylor Barth and the Problem of Ethics Dialectic and Repentance Thinking through the Wound Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Promoting Honesty in Negotiation: An Exercise in Practical Ethics

In a competitive and morally imperfect world, business people are often faced with serious ethical challenges. Harboring suspicions about the ethics of others, many feel justified in engaging in less-than-ideal conduct to protect their own interests. The most sophisticated moral arguments are unlikely to counteract this behavior. We believe that this morally defensive behavior is responsible, in large part, for much undesirable deception in negotiation. Drawing on recent work in the literature of negotiations, we present some practical guidance on how negotiators might build trust, establish common interests, and secure credibility for their statements, thereby promoting honesty. We also point out the types of social and institutional arrangements, many of which have become commonplace, that work to promote credibility, trust, and honesty in business dealings. Our approach is offered not only as a specific response to the problem of deception in negotiation, but as one model of how research in business ethics might offer constructive advice to practitioners.…there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation …—Niccolo MachiavelliWe must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.—George Bernard Shaw