Moral Entity Research Articles

The invention of human nature: the intention and reception of Pufendorf’s entia moralia doctrine

ABSTRACTIn treating human nature as a ‘moral entity’, imposed by God for reasons into which man could have no direct insight, Samuel Pufendorf reconfigured the architecture of natural law thought in a fundamental way. For this meant that rather than deducing norms from a nature in which they had been embedded by God and could be discerned by self-reflective reason, man had to derive them by observing the requirements of the exigent condition in which he happened to find himself; and it further meant that such observation would be gathered via erudite citation of humanist authorities, rather than from philosophical reflection or introspection. As a result of this reconstruction, Pufendorfian natural law was opened to the normative structure of historically existing juridical-constitutional orders, for which it supplied both a propaedeutic and an abstract rationale. At the same time, however, theological and philosophical forms of natural law, based on normative moral anthropologies, continued unabated, this giving rise to a partitioning of the field into an introspective philosophy of law, and an observational legal humanism.

Kurs pozaformalny w edukacji moralnej studentów medycyny i młodych lekarzy

In the article I discuss three types of non-formal curriculum: the hidden, informal and null curriculum. Their negative impact on the moral education of medical students and physicians is documented through the choice of examples from Polish medical schools and the statements of Polish physicians.I also justify the thesis that the teaching of medical ethics as ethics-as-tools is deeply rooted within the Polish moral cultural tradition. The polemic with Wladyslaw Bieganski serves as a means of showing the relation between the medical moral tradition and the belief that medical ethic is of little importance in the moral education of medical students and doctors.I also indicate that the lack of references to medical schools as moral entities within moral education condemns physicians to the solitude of their personal conscience when confronted with moral decisions. This, in turn, promotes the idea of defining this conscience in opposition to the law.

Smithian Sentimentalism Anticipated: Pufendorf on the Desire for Esteem and Moral Conduct

In this paper, we argue that Samuel Pufendorf's works on natural law contain a sentimentalist theory of morality that is Smithian in its moral psychology. Pufendorf's account of how ordinary people make moral judgements and come to act sociably is surprisingly similar to Smith's. Both thinkers maintain that the human desire for esteem, manifested by resentment and gratitude, informs people of the content of central moral norms and can motivate them to act accordingly. Finally, we suggest that given Pufendorf's theory of socially imposed moral entities, he has all the resources for a sentimentalist theory of morality.

Reconstruction of Local Wisdom for Character Education through the Indonesia Language Learning: An Ethno-pedagogical Methodology

Developing good characters may take quite a process of enculturation early at the primary schools. Character education may include local wisdom or local knowledge learnt through the Indonesia language curriculum. Bali’s local wisdom, which adheres in the Hindu philosophy, is potentially rich for the development of character education’s themes and sub-themes. The central themes and sub-themes fleshed out from the Hindu philosophy are coherently tied into a system of meaningful moral entity. Children may learn the moral characters contextually and meaningfully through the national language of Indonesia at schools. However, caution should be taken as the themes and the sub-themes are critically beyond the first and second graders’ cognitive and moral development stages.

Community and Morality in the Digital Age

The aim of this essay is to show that the expansion of the electronic communication technologies leads to the appearance of new forms of communities the function of which are to foster communities of interest and equality of status all work to enhance social capital, despite their lack of direct physical orientation. Mediated individuals treat these mediated communities as real. That is, the role of communication as value-based in mediated communities works to create traditional forms of communities as well. To understand why these new forms of communities can be regarded as moral entities, we wish to highlight how communal existence affects our moral decisions and judgements in the information age.

Considering Collective Agency in Kant's Ethics

This paper explores the justifications and ramifications of considering collectives such as states and communties as moral entities within a Kantian moral framework. Kant's criteria for being a moral entity are not helpful for this question, but we will argue that nothing prevents our considering collectives as such. In fact, Kant himself refers to them in this way by means of analogy. By taking this analogy literally we can analyze the morality of of cultural appropriation, proselytism, and a living wage, which we argue cannot be understood properly in a standard Kantian framework.

The law of persons today: at the margins of jurisprudence

ABSTRACTRecent decisions have given legal identity to rivers such as Te Awa Tupua in New Zealand, and the Ganges and Yamuna in India, effectively treating them as having all the rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person. Looking at such cases, in which the enduring fiction of the legal person is extended over an increasingly wide range of referents, we are reminded that this fiction is anything but marginal – especially in the law of any jurisdiction influenced, however indirectly, by Roman jurisprudence. This paper begins from the point of view that the anthropological embedding of the juridical person ought not to be anachronistically attributed to the Roman ‘law of persons’ in which its craft originated. Rather, we suggest, the well-known Christian metaphysicalization of the juridical person as a moral entity not only adds to but also transforms and displaces that law as a juristic enterprise. What is marginalized in this sense is in fact Roman law's discrete and self-conscious techniques of shaping the legal person. This chapter aims not just to highlight the familiar fate of the person under the influence of church doctrine, but also to draw a contemporary inspiration – and, more cautiously, a critical potential – from a return to a casuistic, concrete and immanent conception of the jurisprudential art of crafting the person. Rather than argue for the inclusion of excluded identities within law's categories (thus extending such categories but doing nothing to challenge the often heteronormative construction of the identities it encompasses), this chapter asks what would it mean to return to an ‘experimental’ law of persons (or a ‘profaned’ art of fashioning the person, in Giorgio Agamben's sense)? Might this eventually be a path by which to liberate juristic technique to new uses?

The Moral Origins of God: Darwin, Durkheim, and the Homo Duplex Theory of Theogenesis

A socio-evolutionary theory of the origin of “God” is presented. Its starting point is behavioral duplexity, the fact that human beings are subject to two parallel modes of behavioral control: an older nonconscious system, and a newer conscious one. The theory posits that the fabrication of, and subsequent belief in, supernatural entities (“Gods”) is a predictable byproduct of the interaction of these two systems. Specifically, because human beings’ profoundly social and moral faculties are primarily nonconscious, individuals experience their functioning as an external and coercive moral force. Faced with the conscious mode’s need to maintain the integrity of its nomos by accounting for such experiences, individuals collectively confabulate corresponding external, coercive, and moral entities, to which they misattribute this force. In doing so, they effectively create, and re-create, their “god(s)”.

Teacher as an anonymous moral agent of universal good: discussion on the role of teacher in the short story ‘The Morning Clouds’ by Yasunari Kawabata

This paper investigates the philosophical applicability of the Kantian notion of teacher to interpret the short story, The Morning Clouds by Yasunari Kawabata. Though the role of teacher has broadly been discussed in various pedagogical contexts, in a postmodern time like today the teacher’s role as a moral guide is often discouraged and his/her intervention is reduced to a facilitator, while his/her existence is often believed to be duplicated by a computer. However, the teacher is still treated as an entity of reference and role model, because s/he is believed to be capable of transmitting the message of ‘universal good’ and implanting moral values in students; the future of any society. A moral agent as ‘a rational and free being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong’ is perceived through the social role of a teacher who guides students to a final moral destination. Such action must be based on a ‘priori’, a Kantian social essential created in the human mind for universal good, as an act of faith for the preservation of ultimate human values. Teacher as a personal identity may be of little importance as far as a ‘priori’ functions as a signifier in students’ minds, but the teacher’s obligation to the moral entity and exemplification seems the most important aspect since students, especially when they grow into adulthood, take him/herself as a role model. Therefore, as a teacher, one should place him/herself beyond personal interests because of the unconditional and universal responsibility towards ‘the other’ (his/her pupils). In this respect, this paper examines how the teacher in the short story, The Morning Clouds, sets a unique example as to how a teacher should act before students as an idealised moral guide, and attempts to justify the legitimacy of teacher as a universal moral guide who could design the destiny of future generation.

Europe's confused transmutation: the realignment of moral cartography in Juan de la Cosa's Mappa Mundi (1500)

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the New World of the Americas entered the cartographic and moral consciousness of Europe. In the 1500 mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa, navigator and map-maker, we see Europe as a hybrid moral entity, a transitional blend of the medieval and the modern at the crossroads between two mappings of Europe. This paper argues that the Juan De la Cosa map represents a blurred transition between map-making traditions and a mixed moral rhetoric of European identity. The De la Cosa map operates across two sets of imagined axes: held horizontally, the map is set to a Ptolemaic grid with Europe straddling the Prime Meridian, and yet when held vertically it presents a medieval moral continuum in which the Americas occupy an ascendant position, a verdant new Jerusalem in contrast to the Babylon of the Old World. Europe is both drawn to the centre of a new world order, and also pushed to the moral margins in an echo of the medieval mappa mundi still imperfectly resolved.

Whose Interests Count?

Whose interests should count and how should various interests be balanced at the pediatric patient's bedside? The interests of the child patient clearly count. Recently, however, many authors have argued that the family's interests also count. But how should we think about the interests of others? What does it mean to talk about "the family" in this context? Does it really just mean the interests of each individual family member? Or is the family itself a moral entity that has interests of its own independent of the interests of each of its members? Are such interests important only as they affect the patient's interest or also for their own sake? In this special supplement to Pediatrics, a group of pediatricians, philosophers, and lawyers grapple with these questions. They examine these issues from different angles and reach different conclusions. Jointly, they demonstrate the ethical importance and, above all, the ethical complexity of the family's role at the bedside.

An Age of Limits: Social Theory for the 21st Century by Ralph Schroeder (review)

Book Reviews 125 Ralph Schroeder, An Age of Limits: Social grave Macmillan, 2013), ix + 259 pp. ISBN David Marquand—academic and political o for its hedonistic individualism, its kowt talist markets, and the collapse of a delib vision of the future. Marquand sees these government, among the wealthy, and am have no ideals of public and moral values. the old elites, which Marquand identifies civil service and the leadership of the old quand, Mammon's Kingdom: An Essay on Br As a case-study, Marquand can put his society as a coherent moral entity: chur coming generation, a civil service with a ernment, and a labour movement albeit c Markets, especially financial markets, are alism needs to be restrained. Ralph Schroeder's new book discusses social theory's inability to put its finger on the causes and consequences of the current malaise in contemporary society. Social theory, now, is too often the sociology of the last five minutes, and Schroeder intends to give it a good shake and update it for the 21st century. Social theory has suffered from its own intellectual hedonism, a habit of mind unable to come to terms with a new age of limits. Schroeder's three pillars are politics, economy and culture. There is a rich and deep sociological knowledge about how these three have come together in the mass societies of modern industrialism, in particular how the tensions and conflicts between them are managed. Talcott Parsons stands out as a sociologist who gave an account of how societies differentiate into the sub-systems of economy, politics, cul ture and kinship and how norms and values keep the show on the road. Older social theorists like Marx emphasize the contradictions between the realm of capital accu mulation and the world of labour and sociality; likewise Max Weber with the con flictual differentiation of economy (impersonal, instrumental), culture and religion (a world of non-material values), and politics (the realm of struggle). Schroeder pre fers Luhmann to Parsons. The issue is how these sectors or realms communicate and interact with each other. The transition to the 21st century is the move from the age of extremes (using Eric Hobsbawn's short 20th century) to the age of limits (starting in the 1970-80s). Things happened in the age of extremes. In politics, class struggles were vehement and eventuated in the deepening and expansion of democracy and social rights. In the economy, markets were disembedded from traditional restraints and freed up to allow exchange driven by the maximization of interests (or, what Max Weber would characterize as the move from the householding unit to the always outward looking acquisitive economic entity). Culture is marked by secularization and, for Schroeder, the rise of science as monopolizing knowledge and the related dependence of high growth on large technological systems. In the coming age of limits, politics will wit ness the constraining of democracy and the universalism of social rights. In the econ omy, financial markets will superordinate and generate inequalities. In the cultural© Max Weber Studies 2014. 126 Max Weber Studies sphere, environmental limits will be encountered consumer demands placed on nature. These transitions have to be explicated through as well as interaction between the three orders o Talcott Parsons's social system worked brilliantly coordinating mechanism was embedded in each o cated downwards through to the micro level. Diff be maintained, argues Schroeder, and we should the orders will not be interacting with each othe negative impacts. In the short 20th century in the global North orders interacted was beneficial to growth, distri measures. Schroeder uses Luhmann only in a sche of each order and the flows between them. Inter municative interfaces. Instead flows are a matter nature and contents of each order, and this is an e cases and types of order-formation. Schroeder d cal, political and economic sociology and an array Michael Mann, John Hall Ernest Gellner and M ism, reformism, and conservatism. Schroeder l how social theory should be utilized. 'The vagar there are continual swings between theories whic context while others focus on macro-social patter and general social theory. When and where the la science, technology and social change and their m...

Contemporary nursing wisdom in theUKand ethical knowing: difficulties in conceptualising the ethics of nursing

This paper's philosophical ideas are developed from a General Nursing Council for England and Wales Trust-funded study to explore nursing knowledge and wisdom and ways in which these can be translated into clinical practice and fostered in junior nurses. Participants using Carper's (1978) ways of knowing as a framework experienced difficulty conceptualizing a link between the empirics and ethics of nursing. The philosophical problem is how to understand praxis as a moral entity with intrinsic value when so much of value seems to be technical and extrinsic depending on desired ends. Using the Aristotelian terms poesis and praxis can articulate the concerns that the participants as well as Carper (1978) and Dreyfus (in Flyvbjerg, 1991) among others share that certain actions or ways of knowing important for nursing are being devalued and deformed by the importance placed on quantitative data and measurable outcomes. The sense of praxis is a moralized one and most of what nurses do is plausibly on any account of normative ethics a morally good thing; the articulation of the idea of praxis can go some way in showing how it is a part of the discipline of nursing. Nursing's acts as poesis can be a part of how practitioners come to have praxis as phronesis or practical wisdom. So to be a wise nurse, one needs be a wise person.

Sumienie wykładnią moralności człowieka w nauczaniu biskupa tarnowskiego Jerzego Ablewicza (1962-1990)

Archbishop Jerzy Ablewicz seeking grounds for moral teaching, focused on the man, as a moral entity. Expression of human subjectivity is moral conscience. Through carrying out its functions, it is on top of the elements that constitute the dignity of every person. Conscience is a necessary condition for man to act as a human right. Pastor of the Church in the ministry of the word Tarnów reminded frequently about the Church's teaching on human conscience. Therefore, the aim of this publication is on-closer to his teaching on conscience as the interpretation of human morality. According to the Archbishop of conscience plays an important role in human moral development. It is legitimate and authoritative standard rule of conduct. However, conscience can determine the right way forward and shape the moral life of man must be well-formed. Ablewicz indicating the measures to this end, seek to shape the conscience of such a man to be able to act in a spirit of responsibility for themselves, others and the world, that is, ultimately, to do good moral.

Subjectivity, the Person, and Modern Art: Theological Reflections on Jacques Maritain and Charles Taylor

Subjectivity, the Person, and Modern Art: Theological Reflections on Jacques Maritain and Charles Taylor William Dyrness One of the few relatively uncontested observations about modern art is its consistent celebration of subjectivity and personal expression. Both making and experiencing art, since Impressionism at least, has come to be an encounter of persons. To be sure, art still embodies the textures, colors, and sounds that give it a physical existence; but its formation and reception, what we call its aesthetics, necessarily involves personal experience. Modern artists quarrel about many things, but they share the conviction that art, when it is authentic and serious, expresses the freedom and depths of the human self. This personal character of art can take many forms. But they all are some variation on the necessity of artists “to find and define an image of himself (sic) which corresponds most comprehensively to the ‘truth’ that he feels within himself.” Nicholas Cook, who quotes this as a representative view of composer Arnold Schoenberg, goes on to argue that such convictions make the modern work of art (or of music) a “moral entity and not a perceptual one.” To critically engage modern art—Cook thinks this is a 20th century expression of the 19th century art‐religion—the listener or viewer has to accede to the moral claims art makes, even at the expense of enjoyment. One must be willing to personally receive—and now engage—the personal statements that constitute a work of art. The allusion to art‐religion is not incidental for it is a commonplace that art, for many people during this period, has actually replaced religion. But the contemporary form of art‐religion has taken on a peculiar form, different in many ways from its 19th century predecessor. As artist Julian Schnabel has expressed this: Duccio and Giotto were painting in a society in which there was actually belief in God. . . People had religious experiences in front of paintings. The painters were connecting people to something bigger than their individual experiences. I think people still have religious experiences in front of paintings. The only difference today is that the religion isn't organized or prescribed—it's consciousness. To get religion now is to become conscious, to feel those human feelings. The language of consciousness and personal expression resonates well beyond the art gallery and museum, it has in fact become the lingua franca of the modern person. Charles Taylor defined this consciousness in terms of what he calls a modern imaginary. He describes this social imaginary in these terms: The understanding of life which emerges with the Romantic expressivism of the late‐eighteenth century, [is] that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one's own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed from outside, by society, or the previous generation or religious or political authority. I will return to Taylor's argument in a moment, but here I want to point to the challenge the modern artist (and not just the artist!) faces in accounting for the freedom and human depths that she has come to enjoy. All of us expect enrichment from our concerts and exhibitions, but we seldom pause to ask the obvious question: whence this privileging of the personal in the experience of art? More importantly, in the absence of religion, what underwrites these high expectations? Though many have recognized this problem, I will cite two of the more prominent voices. Critic Peter Fuller writing in the 1980s, though not religious, recognized that: A society which has no hegemonising religious beliefs lacks a shared symbolic order, with disastrous effects on both aesthetics and ethics. As that great anthropologist Gregory Bateson (who, like me, was no believer) once saw, the decline since the nineteenth century of the belief in the immanence of god within nature has tended to lead men to regard nature as alien, as unworthy of ethical or aesthetic consideration. Similarly George Steiner has famously claimed that “referral and self‐referral to a transcendent dimension, to that which is felt to reside…outside immanent and purely secular reach, does underwrite created...

Social development in market society by intrinsic value account: a case of China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reargue the great controversies surrounding marketization, by the concept of intrinsic value and to give a panorama of China's marketization and social development during last 30 years.Design/methodology/approachThe concept of intrinsic value is elaborated, and marketization and closely linked concepts such as price, wealth, happiness, freedom, etc. are reargued. An intrinsic value account (IVA) is constructed and the enhancement and weakening of some intrinsic values could be clearly shown. A panorama of China's marketization and social development is exhibited by IVA.FindingsThe basic point of this paper is that social development is a concept with strong but implicit ethical assumption and should be explicitly based upon intrinsic value. Without concrete definition and consensus on intrinsic value, it will face great disputes on judging human history as social development or social degradation. Market is not only an objective value‐neural system, but a subjective moral entity. China's maketization has enhanced economic value greatly, but suffered great loss by other intrinsic values.Practical implicationsIVA could be a practical instrument to evaluate social development and clarify the possible academic controversies on market. The arguments of China's marketization experience could be of benefit to other developing countries.Social implicationsThis paper could encourage people, particularly policy makers, to consider their value assumptions, value priority, some basic concepts in market, and what human kind is really pursuing.Originality/valueThe paper shows that IVA could be a new instrument to better evaluate social development, similar to the National Income Account or National Happiness Account.

The Missing of Moral Entity in Modern Civilization: Economic Aspect and the Muslim's Economic Struggle

The Missing of Moral Entity in Modern Civilization: Economic Aspect and the Muslim's Economic Struggle

What's at risk? The proliferation of risk across child and youth policy in England

The concept of risk has found increasing prominence in social policy, human services management and front-line practice in recent years. This is particularly the case in relation to children and young people, who, in the UK, have been subject to a range of interventions based on the identification of population-based risk factors. Through the analysis of UK publications (primarily covering England) relating to children and young people during the Labour Government (1997–2010), this article identifies how risk has proliferated across a wide range of youth-related fields, becoming a social, political and moral entity in itself rather than a tool for primarily criminological prediction and intervention. The article concludes that this proliferation demands further empirical study and theoretical scrutiny beyond the criminal justice sphere in which it is often contained and also questions the extent to which the construction of youth both ‘at-risk’ and ‘as-risk’ is a useful and effective way of driving policy and practice interventions.

The Moral Self

This research applies identity theory to understand the moral self. In identity theory, individuals act on the basis of their identity meanings, and they regulate the meanings of their behavior so that those meanings are consistent with their identity meanings. An inconsistency produces negative emotions and motivates individuals to behave differently to produce outcomes that will better match their identity meanings. A two-part survey and laboratory study were conducted to investigate the application of identity theory to the moral self. The findings are consistent with identity theory predictions. In the survey that addresses past experiences, we find that individuals’ moral identity guides their behavior. When an identity discrepancy emerges between moral identity meanings and perceptions of themselves in a situation, negative feelings are experienced. These same effects are observed when these individuals are placed in an immediate moral dilemma in the laboratory. Overall, the results reveal how identity theory helps explain the individual as a moral entity.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the First Years of 'Caja De Pensiones Para La Vejez Y De Ahorros'

When Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros, 'la Caixa', was created in 1905, it was not just a transient response to a serious social, political, and economic problem; it also provided a permanent solution by creating a long-lasting social welfare institution. In addition, its founder understood the responsibility of social welfare institutions not as an isolated responsibility for each institution, but as part of a harmonious whole that is a true moral entity, with a socio-economic character, independence and unity of nature, purpose and form. The purpose of this article is to show how the conception of corporate social responsibility of Francesc Moragas, the founder of 'la Caixa,' informed the activities of the new institution in a variety of dimensions, including its service to its customers, its economic strengths, its social welfare work and its participation in the creation of Spain's public social security system.