Moral Man Research Articles

Instrumental and vocal music in Hieronymus Bosch

The presence of musical instruments, musicians and musical notation in several paintings by Hieronymus Bosch opens the door to understanding a function of music eminently religious and framed within an aesthetics of the Devotio Moderna. The hypothesis of an accession to medieval music, to Gregorian singing, and the rejection of polyphonic music of the Renaissance, is present in most of the paintings by the Flemish painter and it is the more easily justified by most scholars. Music should respond to the help of prayer and to the estrangement of the moral man from perdition. In this article, in order to support this kind of aesthetics, we will pay particular attention to the symbolism that appears in Hell, specifically in The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Promoting Innovations for Sustainable Social Development as a Novel Dimension of CSR

According to Adam Smith, the father of Economic Science writing in the Theory of Moral Sentiments howsoever selfish man may be, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Linguet’s Lettre du Mandarin, a Forgotten Apology for the Jesuits: The Mandarin Wei Zheng as a Model

Abstract The Jesuit order was vehemently spreading the gospel since it was founded, and China was a major target. After 1601, many Jesuits had arrived in China and their learned reports to their headquarters accumulated rapidly. The Jesuits adapted to the Chinese scholar-officials called Mandarins and their Confucian theories, leading to a conflict with the French church, the Pope, and the Chinese Emperor. Throughout Europe, the Jesuits further played a prominent role in society: as educators, teachers, and advisors of royalty. Seventeenth-century France, troubled by a fundamental socio-cultural reorientation, class struggles and wars, blamed them for holding such esteemed positions and this resentment grew shortly before the French Revolution. The writer Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet takes an apologetic position in their lawsuit for the Parlement de Paris of 1762 in the Lettre du Mandarin. Bibliographic and biographic details are provided. The “opening part” shows the morally high position of Mandarins such as Wei Zheng, an image produced on the basis of Jesuit correspondence, and it denotes the European trend of “Chinoiserie.” This part is here presented in an English translation and richly commented on. The ideas of “Chinoiserie” are here illustrated with works from the literature. The Jesuits and their humane advocate Linguet lost the unique case, but it is concluded that the image of the Mandarin as a rational and moral man is portrayed as a model for a new French society.

Reason, Rhythm, and Rituality. Reinterpreting Religious Cult from a Postmodern, Phenomenological Perspective

Contemporary philosophy of religion is often focused, at a theoretical level, on the epistemic value of religious doctrines, and at a practical level, on the possible impact of organized religion on secular society and politics. However, the cultic dimension of religion, such as prayer, religious service, ascetic practices, and other rituals, is considered as completely “irrational” and incomprehensible from a secular perspective and therefore often neglected by postmodern philosophy. The paper intends to call into question this rather simplistic interpretation by retracing the historical origins of the devaluation of religious symbolism in occidental thought, which culminates in Kant’s philosophy of religion. We then shall analyze to what extent certain paradoxical aspects of Habermas’ view on religion can be interpreted as consequences of the dilemma brought about by the Kantian dichotomy between man as moral subject and man as natural, sensible being. In a third step, we shall develop an alternative, phenomenological interpretation, which does not consider religious practice as a primitive, irrational phenomenon but as a proto-ethical schematism that aims at integrating the sphere of pure practical reason into the rhythmic structure of living, embodied consciousness.

Review of "Locke's Moral Man"

Review of "Locke's Moral Man"

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Paradox: Paralysis, Violence, and Pragmatism by Daniel Malotky, and: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr, and: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Paradox: Paralysis, Violence, and Pragmatism by Daniel Malotky, and: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr, and: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr

Major Works on Religion and Politics: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, The Irony of American History, Other Writings

Major Works on Religion and Politics: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, The Irony of American History, Other Writings

Tao/Lipunan, Moral/Imoral: 27 Macario Pineda at Reinhold Niebuhr

Macario Pineda’s novels, particularly his 1947 masterpiece Ang Ginto sa Makiling , engage fundamental questions about the moral nature of the human person and the possibility of societal transformation. Though dissimilar in personal background and social milieu from Pineda, Reinhold N iebuhr, social ethicist in twentieth-century American society, raises these same questions in his 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society . Moreover, they similarly base their responses in Christian Faith. Pineda is uncompromising in his belief in the moral capacity of the person, especially when nurtured through education, to do good and thus to establish “Makiling,” his symbol of the transformed society, in our midst. Though convinced too of the individual moral goodness, Niebuhr is deeply aware of the powerful and corrupt forces at play in modern society, and therefore foresees an unrelenting struggle between individual goodness and society. Both Pineda and Niebuhr’s responses offer food for thought at a time when these same questions plague contemporary Philippine society.

Chasing the “White Whale” of Alzheimer's

Chasing the “White Whale” of <scp>A</scp>lzheimer's

Locke on Active Power, Freedom, and Moral Agency

There is little agreement among scholars about how best to understand Locke's theory of moral agency, and his account of freedom in particular. Although some (e.g., Rickless and Garrett) think that Locke adopts a Hobbesian theory of freedom of action, as the ability to do or not do as one wills, while jettisoning the Hobbesian conception of the will as the faculty of desire, a growing number of commentators (e.g., Chappell, LoLordo, Lowe, Stuart, and Yaffe) believe that Locke departs more radically from Hobbes by supplementing a Hobbesian (or quasi-Hobbesian) conception of free action with an account of "full-fledged" free agency grounded in the very particular ability to suspend the prosecution of our desires. The most recent sustained effort in this direction has been very ably defended by Antonia LoLordo, and my aim in this paper is to examine and criticize her case for the "supplementarian" conception of free agency in Locke's Moral Man.

Locke's Moral Man, by Antonia LoLordo

Locke's Moral Man, by Antonia LoLordo

An open Interdisciplinary Research: Professor Robert Hamilton (1743-1829)/His Works as between and beyond the Works from Adam Smith (1723-1790) and from Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

This study starting-entitled open interdisciplinary research is, here and now, a draft and a co-research proposal. It is addressed to interdisciplinary dedicated persons and personalities, but it maintains an open address to theologians, “pure” economists, mathematicians, neuro scientists, sociologists, historians and philosophers, artists and writers, engineers and managers (scientists and practitioners) who want, at their turn, to address research based studies and praxis case studies. These desired interdisciplinary studies are intended outlooks toward the contemporary (post-)crisis world – toward global problems representation, solvations, decision making and (re)adaptation of the structure and functions of what is or/and would be our world and our ancestors’ and followers’ world. Let be an axiomatic possibility toward a “better” world. This study has the following starting-list proposing an initial per se comparative study on the followings sets of works: Adam Smith’s two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments. “printed for A. Millar, in the Strand; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh” (1759). D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. ed. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund. (1982). Knud Haakonssen. ed. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge University Press. (2002). and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan, (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. University Of Chicago Press. (1977). Robert Hamilton’s two books: The Progress of Society. London: John Murray, 411 pages. (1830/posthumous). and Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress, the Redemption and Present State of the National Debt of Great Britain. Edinburgh; Pickering & Chatto, London (1813). Reinhold Niebuhr's two books: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics. Charles Scribner's Sons (1932). Reprint: Westminster John Knox Press. (2002). and The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. Charles Scribner's Sons (1943), from his 1939 Gifford Lectures, Volume one: Human Nature, Volume two: Human Destiny. Reprint editions include: Prentice Hall vol. 1, Westminster John Knox Press 1996 set of 2 vols.

『共通の信仰』 と 『道徳的人間と非道徳的社会』

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr dismissed John Dewey as a naïve moralist who, not seeing the irrational character of the behavior of all human collectives, overestimated rational experimentation, and identified God and the world, the ideal and the real. Niebuhr asserted that the responsible Christian had to accept the use of force. However, he refused to regard politics only as a struggle for power. He tried to find a way out of the “endless cycle of social conflict.” Niebuhr stressed that the experience of grace would “create the attitudes which transcend social conflict and mitigate its cruelties.” In Common Faith, Dewey defined the religious as the unification of the self and of the self and the universe. For Dewey, democracy embodies the religious. It is religious because it bases on faith in the ability of human nature to achieve freedom for individuals accompanied with social stability built on cohesion instead of coercion. Despite their differences in political orientation, Dewey and Niebuhr relied on the nature and destiny of man who could create their own world.

A Moral Man: Eugene Genovese, 1930-2012

A Moral Man:Eugene Genovese, 1930-2012* David Moltke-Hansen The doorbell rang at the South Carolina Historical Society in the spring of 1987. When I opened it, the couple standing there asked if David Moltke-Hansen were in. Then Gene and Betsey introduced themselves and said they had just stopped by to say how much they admired something I had written and to meet me. That night I told my wife to shoot me; it would never get better than that. Fifteen or so years later, I was visiting with Gene and Betsey in Atlanta. Gene was distraught, almost frantic. It was Betsey's birthday, and the flowers he had ordered had not come. Betsey reassured him that she knew he was always thinking of her—except, of course, during baseball games and when he was reading and writing. That, I thought to myself, doesn't leave much time except in dreams, at meals, and in the car, with Betsey driving, because Gene never learned. Until the last couple of years, when his health deteriorated even further, Gene worked incessantly. Witness the three books he saw through the press after his beloved Betsey's death five years and nine months ago. In addition, he worked on the five volumes of Betsey's selected, uncollected writings, read manuscripts, and went through four newspapers a day. He worked like that for nearly sixty years. That abiding drive hints at another that animated those years. Gene always was a moralist, whether as a Marxist or as a Catholic. He recognized the evil that men and women do through the acquisition and abuse of power, and he wanted to understand and combat that evil. At one point scientific socialism seemed the way, but then communism failed and failed him, even as Marxism continued to influence what and how he wrote. Last year, rereading old political pieces of his from the 1960s and 1970s, he noted wryly: my reasoning was impeccable, just not my premises. Uncompromising in his moral judgments, Gene thought it unforgivable weakness to quail from necessary action because of possible collateral damage. And he was entirely ready to see me become such damage. Once he told me (after just having handed me a new book that he had dedicated to me) that I should and would die at the revolution. Which revolution, I asked? Any worth its salt, he said. Liberals, social democrats, and other mealy-mouthed, intellectually flaccid temporizers, the implication was, need to be eliminated; or at least have power wrested or kept from them. He was not fond of libertarians either, thinking radical individualism radically wrong in the face of the collective challenges posed by power's corruption. Now, when I become president, now when I become pope, Gene would say—suggesting he should be both—things will be different. The sad difference is that we no longer can hear him say that. We shall remember, however, more than his humor and passion and moral drive. We can still celebrate a brilliant interpreter of American slavery and the planter class, a tough colleague, and a generous friend. [End Page 27] Footnotes * This eulogy originally appeared on the Historical Society blog, http://histsociety.blogspot.com. Copyright © 2012 The Historical Society

Ties That Bind: Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Quest for Economic Justice

Ties That Bind: Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Quest for Economic Justice

Reinhold Niebuhr's Quest for Balance in the Public Oversight of Market Economies

Three basic themes played indispensable roles in Reinhold Niebuhr’s engagements with economic issues: (1) the foundational importance of a theological anthropology for his critical assessment of complex social, economic, and political issues; (2) his focus on two clashing theories of economic order: Adam’s Smith’s doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism and Karl Marx’s revolutionary vision for the collective ownership of property within a centralized state system; and (3) his endorsement of a realistic yet viable alternative to these two classic theories, one that involved pragmatic and incremental steps toward fostering economic justice through the public regulation and oversight of a free-market economy. These pragmatic measures included allocating government resources for vitally important public goods and services at federal, state, and local levels. Though Niebuhr was initially drawn to some form of democratic socialism, he embraced this incremental strategy within the context of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s implementation of his New Deal agenda. My analysis of Niebuhr’s contributions concludes with attention to new challenges confronting contemporary quests for economic justice in a post–New Deal era, one marked Soundings, Vol. 95, No. 4, 2012 Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania state University, University Park, Pa di sc us sio n diussion

The Concept of the Civil Servants in Chinese History: Moral and Competent Man?

The Concept of the Civil Servants in Chinese History: Moral and Competent Man?

Communal Conscience in William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man

Conscience is foundational for the political morality set forth in The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), but Tyndale never defines this central term. While Tyndale sees personal spiritual cultivation — achieved almost exclusively through the reading of scripture — as a defense against the “Antichrist’s” tricks, his development of conscience is more communal than individual, and more affective than objective. Tyndale defines conscience in the same way he builds community: through an accumulative process of shared spiritual feeling. Communal conscience, despite its affective foundation, becomes the bedrock for political morality within a reformist congregation. By basing conscience on communal experience, The Obedience gives feelings the force of ideas. Rather than an expressivist articulation of personal conviction, communal conscience becomes a rigorous foundation for the political actions of moral man. Tyndale’s conscience may remain undefined, but that allows it to be felt, shared, and enacted by those who held his convictions in common.

Juxtaposing Judaism and American Dream in Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant

Juxtaposing Judaism and American Dream in Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant

Moral ape philosophy.

Our closest relative the chimpanzee seems to display proto-moral behavior. Some scholars emphasize the similarities between humans and chimpanzees, others some key differences. This paper aims is to formulate a set of intermediate conditions between a sometimes helpful chimpanzee and moral man. I specify these intermediate conditions as requirements for the chimpanzees, and for each requirement I take on a verificationist stance and ask what the empirical conditions that satisfy it would be. I ask what would plausibly count as the behavioral correlate of each requirement, when implemented. I take a philosophical look at morality using the chimpanzees as a prism. We will talk of propositional attitudes, rationality and reason in relation to the chimps. By means of the chimps I intend to arrive at a notion of objective morality as conceived from a first person point of view in terms of propositional attitudes and reasons.