Moral Wealth Research Articles

A Theory of Moral Wealth

A Theory of Moral Wealth

Spiritual energy of the Russian word as a scientific challenge of humanitarian thought

The authors consider faith as a direct way to form spirituality of an individual and nation on the whole, as our main moral wealth. This problem is especially relevant in the modern world, since the most important words for national consciousness are now devaluating. The purpose of the research is to prove that the language, namely the word , has resources for creating and accumulating the spiritual potential of the native speaker. The research has been carried on the material of the Bible and the National Corpus of the Russian language (a subcorpus of literary texts published after 1950). The authors used the following research methods: the traditional general scientific methods of analysis, comparison, generalization and the new one - discourse analysis. In the course of the research two aspects of the indicated problem have been considered: the language is a spiritual essence; the word is a barometer of our understanding of the world. The study resulted in the following conclusions: the primary and the most important function of the language is the function of communication with God; the spirituality of the Russian people is formed and preserved thanks to the language, because the language contains deep transcendental meanings, almost inaccessible for rational comprehension. These meanings create and retain spirituality in the society and the individual, form the spiritual code of the nation; fulfil the sacred function of communication with God; reveals the great mystery of the world and the human soul at the same time. These provisions allow to outline the prospects for the future research within the framework of a new stage of the anthropocentric paradigm, which brings it closer to the theo-anthropo-cosmic paradigm as the paradigm of the future. In it, an individual begins to realize his place not above the world, but inside it.

Revitalizing human virtue by restoring organic morality

Most of human history and prehistory was lived in economic poverty but with social and ecological wealth, both of which are diminishing as commodification takes over most everything. Human moral wealth has also deteriorated. Because humans are biosocially, dynamically, and epigenetically shaped, early experience is key for developing one’s moral capital. When early experience is species-atypical, meaning that it falls outside the evolved developmental niche (EDN), which is often the case in modern societies, biopsychosocial moral development is undermined, shifting one’s nature and worldview to self-protectionism. Individuals develop into self-regarding shadows of their potential selves, exhibiting threat-reactive moral mindsets that promote unjust treatment of other humans and nonhumans. Humanity’s moral wealth can be re-cultivated by taking up what indigenous people all over the world know: that a good life, a virtuous life, is a one that is led by a well-cultivated heart, embodied in action that includes partnership with nonhumans. Moral educators can help students to revamp their capacities with self-calming skills, the development of social pleasure and communal ecological imagination.

Influence of corporate culture on innovative activity of employees of the enterprises

In the article, the ways of influence of corporate culture on innovative activity of staff of enterprises are considered. The authors understand the corporate culture of the enterprise as the system of cultural, moral, esthetic and other wealth, which is used and introduced in labor life of employees by employers and CEO. On the basis of this system, the enterprise norms and rules of the relations of workers, customs, traditions etc. are developed. The corporate culture of the enterprise is connected with the general culture of the people of the country, it reflects on this or that form, to some extent, but it can contradict it. In this case, the conflict of cultural values of the enterprise and workers is possible. In the article, much attention is paid to influence of corporate culture of Japanese corporations on innovative activity of their workers. It is shown that high innovative activity of the personnel is provided not with separate systems of material and moral incentive, but with all system of the labor relations built on the basis of corporate culture. In the center of corporate culture, there is a person, instead of goods and services. It can be found in such systems of work with staff as “lifelong hiring†, account system in a salary of “vital peaks†of employees, staff turnover, training at the workplace etc. The corporate culture of Toyota corporation is based on the business philosophy, according to which, the main socio-economic purpose is the ensuring the welfare of its employees and improvement of life of the population of the whole world. In the article is shown that in the conditions of transition of the Russian Federation to the market economy, there were basic changes in corporate culture of the enterprises. Market business-culture according to which the main thing for the enterprise is profit, and workers are only one of means of production, was included in a contradiction with a mentality of the Russian people, its cultural and moral wealth that caused mass opportunistic behavior of workers including their innovative passivity. At the same time, in the article is shown that in these conditions, the high innovative activity of employees of the Russian enterprises on the basis of introduction of stimulation system of innovative activity of employees “Innovation†is possible. In the article, the mechanism of the increase of innovative activity of staff of the enterprises on the basis of corporate culture is offered.

Diesseits von Angebot und Nachfrage / On this side of supply and demand

Zusammenfassung In seinem Buch „Jenseits von Angebot und Nachfrage“ (1958) geißelt Wilhelm Röpke den Trend zu Ökonomismus und Säkularismus: die Menschen unterwerfen ihr ganzes Handeln wirtschaftlichem Kalkül, ihnen geht die spirituelle Quelle von Werten verloren. Nach Röpke ist die Marktwirtschaft ein „Nettomoralverzehrer“. Wenn die Moral nicht immer wieder aus einer separaten Quelle wie der Religion gespeist wird, verschwindet sie - und damit auch die Basis der Marktwirtschaft. Doch wie sinnvoll ist es, eine solche grundsätzliche Front zwischen dem Markt und der Moral aufzumachen? Im Individuum überlappen sich beide Sphären. Abgesehen von seinem institutionellen Charakter ist der Markt schließlich nichts weiter als eine Chiffre der gesellschaftlichen Interaktion von Menschen. In einem Prozess der Reziprozität herstellenden Rückkopplungen entsteht sowohl der wirtschaftliche Wohlstand der Nation als auch der moralische - jenes evolvierende Sozialkapital an Werten, gemeinsamen, auch religiösen Überzeugungen, Moral und Traditionen, das eine Gesellschaft trägt.

Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America (review)

Reviewed by: Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America Paul Gutjahr (bio) Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America. By Ralph Frasca. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 295. Cloth, $44.95.) Four hefty new biographies of Benjamin Franklin have found their way onto bookstore shelves in the past five years, tempting one to wonder if there is still a stone left unturned when it comes to scholarship on Franklin. Here is where Ralph Frasca's book surprises and delights. Frasca takes us into a part of Franklin's world that has been often studied, his world of print, but not with an eye to the ways in which Franklin operated within a complex network of printers to pursue his quests for personal success and the dissemination of virtue. Frasca offers an extensive study of Franklin's community of print—a varied collection of printers he helped finance and sponsor—paying particular attention to how this "Franklin network" provides a more informed and nuanced understanding of American eighteenth-century print culture (2). Frasca's book is an extended treatment of this network, which "lasted from the 1720s to the 1790s" and "stretched from New England to the West Indies, and comprised more than two dozen printers" (19). By looking at the printers not only as individuals but also as a complex and integrated community, Frasca argues that one can obtain a better understanding of the period's printing economics along with its editorial practices and how those practices influenced emerging notions of the freedom of the press. Frasca argues that underlying the lessons one learns about print economics, editorial decisions, and press freedom from the [End Page 665] Franklin network is a rich substratum of information on just how important Franklin's own conceptions of virtue and morality were to his printing endeavors. Franklin was forever concerned with teaching others his brand of virtue through the medium of print, hence the book's subtitle: "Disseminating Virtue in Early America." Frasca offers us a rewarding study of a complex individual who believed in printing not only as a way to make his own fortune but also as a way to offer material and moral wealth to his countrymen. Frasca divides his study into three primary sections. His first four chapters are a careful study of the formation of Franklin's conceptions of virtue and how these conceptions came to form a definite line of moral reasoning espoused throughout his journalism. Most intriguing here is the way in which "the acquisition of wealth became central to virtuous conduct" for Franklin (14). Franklin saw material wealth as the single greatest motivator for human action, so he harnessed that motivation to the pursuit of moral perfection. Frasca finds an interesting catalyst for Franklin's desire to be a moral teacher: the teachings and writings of Cotton Mather. What becomes most striking in Frasca's treatment is the way in which Franklin fused Mather's concentration on "good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit" with his own brand of pragmatism, which had taught him that such virtuous behavior ultimately led to the greatest relational, emotional, and material success (38). In the end, Frasca argues that Franklin's thinking was undergirded by a more pronounced religious moral grid than many have come to associate with him. He also became a kind of behaviorist, stressing that changing one's actions to align with certain core, usually Christian, virtues was the single best route to both the private and public good. The second four chapters explore the successes and failures of key partnerships within Franklin's printing network and how these relationships influenced the reach of his moral teachings through the medium of print. Once Franklin's own printing business became secure, he found himself with chances to expand printing into other parts of the country. Frasca traces these forays into such places as South Carolina, New York, Connecticut, and the Caribbean, where Franklin carefully placed and financed his own hand-picked lieutenants to carry forth the practice of printing with his own moral flavor. Noteworthy in this section is how Franklin was not afraid to...

The Context and Meaning of Proverbs 8:30a

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) ... As is well known, the word ... in Prov 8:30 seems to have confused even the earliest translators and commentators, and its interpretation continues to divide modern scholars.1 Broadly speaking, two different suggestions have dominated the debate in recent years. According to the first, the word is a variant on or error for the noun ... found in Cant 7:2, where it is generally taken to mean master craftsman.2 On this reading, therefore, personified Wisdom is depicted as an active participant in the process of creation: a craftsman, an architect, or the like. The second common proposal is to take the word as a passive participle from the verb ... meaning nursling or, by extension, child. This relegates the figure of Wisdom to the role of onlooker, but both picks up the preceding references to her birth, and links her childish nature to the subsequent description of her playful joy in the world. A variation on this theme parses the word instead as an infinitive absolute, with the sense up.3 We shall look below at a third solution, popular in ancient times but less so today. For the moment, however, it is important to note the significant obstacles that stand in the way of both of these leading solutions. The first has to explain not only the waw in ..., or at least its absence from Cant 7:2,* but also, more crucially, why the active role of Wisdom is introduced only at this late point in the poem and mentioned nowhere else in Proverbs 1-9.5 Attempts to resolve this problem by taking ... as an attribute of God, instead of Wisdom,6 or by giving it a more specific sense,7 simply raise fresh questions of their own. The second solution poses a grammatical problem: if ... is taken as a participle, one might expect the form to be feminine, in agreement with .... More importantly, this solution is often presented in a way that obscures the very technical sense of the verb ... when it is used in the context of raising children. The verb can be used in the qal with the specific sense of caring for children who are not one's own, as nurse, guardian, or foster parent; correspondingly, the passive can be used of children being fostered or nursed.8 There is nothing to suggest, however, that the verb can refer more generally to the upbringing of children, or to their growing up: the term has a specific reference that would emphasize God's guardianship or fostering of wisdom.9 Again, this is an idea that has appeared nowhere else in the work, and it seems curious that it should be introduced in a poem that emphasizes wisdom's own power, not her dependence.10 For both solutions, then, the context poses problems that, if not insuperable, do little to make the suggestions persuasive. If only for that reason, therefore, the place of v. 30 in the poem as a whole would seem to deserve more consideration than it is often given.11 Her speech in Proverbs 8 is the second made by the personified figure of Wisdom in chs. 1-9. Like the other speeches, in chs. 1 and 9, it urges the uneducated to heed her words and may be designed to counter the invitation of a more dangerous character-in this case the seductress of ch. 7, who also targets the uneducated.12 Where Prov 1:20-33 warned of the consequences for those who ignore wisdom, however, the speech in ch. 8 is a more positive affirmation of Wisdom's value, expressed in both worldly and religious terms. The chapter as a whole is apparently divided into four sections (w. 1-11, 12-21, 22-31, and 32-36), the last of which is half the length of the others.13 The first sets the context for the speech itself and includes Wisdom's opening assertion of her own truthfulness and value, linked to direct invitations. In the next two sections, however, she moves from exhortation to self-description. Verses 12-21 might best be characterized as an outline of Wisdom's worldly benefits, in which, after listing the human qualities she offers or rejects, she affirms her own role in the exercise of power by human rulers and goes on to describe the actual or moral wealth that can be achieved by those who seek her out. …

A reparação do dano moral

O dano moral é uma lesão aos valores da pessoa humana. Atinge os componentes de sua personalidade e de seu prestígio social. Assim sendo, a reparação desse ilícito decorre de preceitos do jus naturae. O presente estudo pretende demonstrar que o nosso sistema legal não deve cuidar apenas da proteção dos valores econômicos, mas, resguardar, acima de tudo, o patrimônio moral. O dano moral deve ser objeto de ampla reparação mediante a previsão de pena privada e satisfação compensatória, aplicadas com eqüidade.

Stable Paretian Random Functions and the Multiplicative Variation of Income

a new family of stable non-gaussian random functions, U(t), and it is intimately connected with random walks of log U(t). Its principal feature is, however, that no use is made of the principle of proportionate effect, the model being rather based upon the fact that there exist certain limits for sums of random functions, upon which the effect of chance in time is multiplicative. (Actually, the result is more general.) This feature provides a new type of motivation for the widespread, convenient, and frequently fruitful use of the logarithm of income, considered as a moral wealth. Looking at the results from another viewpoint, one may say that the approach is based upon a new kind of diachronic factor analysis, the use of which will be justified in detail. (2) I wish to point out the wider role which I believe that these new stochastic processes will eventually play in linear economics, for example in certain problems of aggregation. The reader will also find that the results are translatable with little effort into terms of theories of variation of various economic quantities similar to income. It may even turn out that this approach will be more reasonable for some other such quantities or that the empirical fit will be better in other cases. As a result, the tools to be introduced may be as important as the immediate results which are hopefully to be achieved. In particular, the problem of the distribution and variation of city sizes is very similar to the problem raised by income. A much less obvious generalization

Evolution of Civil Society and Caste System in India

In some passages of the Ṛgveda, the Upaniṣads, the Mahābhārata and the Pali canon there are references to a casteless millennium of equality, plenty and piety which was supposed to have existed in some remote unrecorded antiquity. It was the golden age of kṛta or satyayuga when there was only one caste of deva (gods) or Brāhmaṇa, when people called no goods their own nor women their chattels, when crops were produced without toil and all were pious and happy. The legendary Uttarakurus of the far north were a model of this Arcadian society of godly men who lived in their natural virtue, rich in physical and moral wealth without any disabilities of sex and distinctions of property and, consequently, who received the blessings of God in the form of timely rain and juicy harvest (Mbh. VI. 6. 13; Dīghanikāya, xxxii. 7).