Political and Social Philosophy, Ethics

Responsibility and the Big Society

by Antje Bednarek

SocResOnline 16(2)

This paper focuses on the interplay between Conservative thought as evinced by the current Conservative Party... more This paper focuses on the interplay between Conservative thought as evinced by the current Conservative Party leadership and the idea of responsibility, which is a central concern in the Big Society programme. I show that responsibility holds different meanings based on attitudes to work and the welfare state and that the differentiation in meaning map onto a working class/middle class distinction. I then argue that the 'good society' as it emerges from the Big Society idea would be a more stratified one that accepts large degrees of inequality. Leaving the conceptual plane, I then provide support for my argument with findings from qualitative research into the lifeworld of young Conservatives.

„Rola firm farmaceutycznych w udostępnianiu tanich leków dobrej jakości w krajach rozwijających się”, wersja robocza [„The Role of Pharmaceutical Companies in Making Accessible and Affordable Medicines of Good Quality in the Developing Countries”], draft version

by Marta Soniewicka

Forthcoming in: Prakseologia 2012

Przedmiotem rozważań w artykule jest problem roli, jaką mogą odgrywać przedsiębiorstwa w realizowaniu celów... more Przedmiotem rozważań w artykule jest problem roli, jaką mogą odgrywać przedsiębiorstwa w realizowaniu celów społecznych na przykładzie globalnego przemysłu farmaceutycznego. Artykuł podejmuje problem pomocy w kontekście dostępności tanich i bezpiecznych leków w krajach rozwijających się, co jest jednym z aspektów realizacji prawa do ochrony zdrowia. Analizowana jest tu kwestia, czy mechanizmy wolnego rynku oraz działania filantropijne firm farmaceutycznych wystarczą, by zagwarantować niezbędne do życia leki najbardziej potrzebującym mieszkańcom świata. Postawione zostanie pytanie, czy międzynarodowe koncerny farmaceutyczne oprócz obowiązku gwarantowania (przestrzegania) praw człowieka są odpowiedzialne również za dostarczanie praw człowieka, w tym wypadku prawa do zdrowia. Ukazany jest tu konflikt interesów pomiędzy kierowanym zyskami przemysłem farmaceutycznym a kierowanym zasadami etycznymi zdrowiem publicznym. W artykule postawiona jest teza, że wolny rynek sam nie może naprawić swoich wad (takich jak niedobór innowacji, niedobór mało opłacalnych leków, monopolizacja rynku i zawyżanie cen), do czego potrzebne są odpowiednie regulacje prawne oraz działania instytucji publicznych o zasięgu lokalnym i globalnym. Ani wolny rynek, ani dobroczynne działania pomocowe firm farmaceutycznych nie są w stanie rozwiązać problemu opieki zdrowotnej w krajach rozwijających się, gdzie brak leków jest jedynie niewielkim aspektem dużo większego i bardziej skomplikowanego problemu ubóstwa i słabości instytucji państwowych, które nie są responsywne względem podstawowych potrzeb swych obywateli.

The Moral and the Material

by Andrew Irvine

Published in 'Faith and Freedom' vol. 52, pt. 1 (1999), 51-58.

Surveillance Ethics

by Kevin Macnish

Article for Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Introduction to history, terminology and concerns of surveillance ethics. Introduction to history, terminology and concerns of surveillance ethics.

The Negative Impact of Capitalism on the Global Society

by Tobias-René Wilczek

Written for SOC101Y while a Grade 11 Student

Singular interruptions: Rortyan Liberalism and the Ethics of Deconstruction

by Ronald A. Kuipers

Published in the book 'Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality'. Ed. James H. Olthuis (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997): 104-130.

Rights Externalism

by Derrick Darby

Review of Ted Honderich, Conservatism

by Kevin Magill

Scroll to p.43 in pdf. Published in Radical Philosophy, 59, Autumn 1991. Got it completely wrong in relation to where the Tory Party was headed vis-a-vis the EU, and a few other things. Reply by Honderich in RP 61 ('Conservatism, Ideology, Rationale, and a Red Light').

emancipatoričen projekt - primer materialističnega branja krščanstva

by andrej munda

Our analysis of the emancipatory politics is not based on prescriptive analysis of giving formulas for  an... more Our analysis of the emancipatory politics is not based on prescriptive analysis of giving formulas for  an "utopian" egalitarian society of singular individuals, but focuses instead on prescriptive analysis, under which every proper emancipatory politics should result from. Our reference is the theory of Lacanian psychoanalysis, which we combine with Hegel's philosophy through the so-called dialectical materialism. What links Lacan and Hegel is the initial assumption of inconsistency of social reality: "not-all" of reality means that reality as such is not One, but that there exist the constitutive gap that "doubles" it, ie. One, which splits in to two. We based such structure of thought in the category of the Universal. The basic category that emancipatory politics must start from, in our view, is certainly the subject which in Lacanian and Hegelian theory has the status of "negativity", and its relation to the Other. Negativity or the lack of the subject overlaps with the lack of the Other itself and the gap which crosses them is also the starting point and goals of the dialectic process (as well as our reading). We try to link such a formal structure of emancipatory politics with a materialist reading of the Christian event (death and resurrection of Christ) and its political emancipatory potential.

Climate Change and the Liberal Programme

by Phil Hutchinson

Work In Progress

Abstract
Is the dominant mode of political theory equipped to deal with the challenges posed by manmade climate... more Abstract
Is the dominant mode of political theory equipped to deal with the challenges posed by manmade climate change?
Climate change poses two related challenges:

1. the challenge of adaptation: changing our practices so that we might adapt to the effects of temperature rise and the problems that emerge from that; and

2. the challenge of mitigation: changing our practices so that we might mitigate further temperature rises in the long term and the further problems that might emerge from those.

Both challenges raise significant and unavoidable political questions. How a political theory might be equipped to answer these questions, and meet the challenge posed by climate change is, I suggest, the most pressing question of our time for political theorists.

It is my contention that the research programme of liberal political theory is particularly ill-equipped to meet this challenge. In order that I might make good this claim, I first identify the core commitments of liberal political theory, taken as a research programme (hereafter ‘the liberal programme’). With the help of Joel Bakan’s (2004) analysis of the corporation, I highlight how the formal, or ‘unencumbered’ individual, employed as axiom by those working within the liberal programme, serves to make it particularly unsuited to meeting the challenge posed by climate change. I suggest that if we are to adequately meet that challenge, we need to think and act in a manner informed by the political philosophy of ecologism, rather than be constrained by the methodological commitments of the liberal programme.

Obama's Niebuhrian Moment

by Ronald Osborn

First Things (online edition), January 11 and 12, 2010

Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech can be read as a concise restatement of Reinhold Niebuhr’s... more Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech can be read as a concise restatement of Reinhold Niebuhr’s political ethics as a guide to U.S. foreign policy for the twenty-first century. The major themes in Niebuhr’s thinking found powerful resonance in the speech, in which an American president in a new century reasserted, as the doctrinal basis of his foreign policy, the cherished political theology of America’s two major parties for most of the past century. Niebuhr's “Christian Realism” touched deep chords in the self-understandings of many Americans and gave his pronouncements on foreign policy an orthodox-sounding varnish. But what he provided America’s political elites from the 1940s on—and the Truman and Kennedy administrations in particular—was valuable ideological legitimization for more pragmatic policies in the context of Cold War power rivalries. By contrast to both Niebuhr and Obama, Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize address offers a radically different politics in the form of what I refer to as "prophetic realism."

Wisdom and the Life of the Free Man according to Spinoza

by Peter Critchley

Chapter 6 from Spinoza - The Rule of Reason by Dr Peter Critchley

Although Spinoza demonstrates the... more Chapter 6 from Spinoza - The Rule of Reason by Dr Peter Critchley

Although Spinoza demonstrates the extent to which the emotional life human beings is, in the natural course of things, concealed in its dependence upon bodily history, so that human beings are subjects of unconscious forces, he reveals that this condition is neither inevitable nor permanent. Human beings are able to render conscious that which is presently unconscious by an effort of self-understanding; in the process of attaining an active mode of mentality, human beings gain mastery of a fate that is their own.

In arguing that human happiness and freedom consists in the constant increase of power, Spinoza rejects Christian morality; Spinoza condemns not only hatred, envy, contempt, and rage, but also pity and humility as weaknesses which have no place in the life of a superior being (E 5, 50, 53).
In its worldly aspect, Spinoza’s positive morality involves the disciplined emendation of the passions and is Aristotelian in character. Spinoza’s proofs therefore reaffirm the central tenets of Aristotle’s virtue theory, arguing that ‘self-complacency [acquiescentia in se ipso] is the highest object for which we can hope’ (E 4, 52), and that ‘honour is not repugnant to reason but may arise from it’ (E 4, 58). In its religious or contemplative aspect, Spinoza’s philosophy is more Platonic and recalls neo-Platonic morality in its spirit of renunciation.

Plato - The Architect of Rational Freedom

by Peter Critchley

Plato defined the key concepts of ‘rational freedom’ and sought to show how these could be embodied in the polity. The... more Plato defined the key concepts of ‘rational freedom’ and sought to show how these could be embodied in the polity. The most important question discussed by Plato - and Aristotle following him - concerns the nature of the relation of the individual to the political community. Plato defines justice as the social virtue par excellence. The human being as a social animal is not an isolated, autonomous entity but a part of society, living in a social context. It follows that the flourishing of the individual required a social context that is devoted to realising the good life. Individuals as social beings realise their essential human potentialities in and through the political community, in relation to rather than as against each other. Plato's principal concern was to discover the norms and rules that govern the life of the political community as the good life enabling the flourishing of the human individual.

Plato is the fountainhead of the ‘rational’ tradition. Today he is more denigrated than read, his trinity of the true, the good and the beautiful being held to somehow contain a repressive and totalitarian intent inimical to human freedom whereas, in fact, the concern was to canalise human growth to its true potential. In a modern world characterised by the cacophony of pluralist voices and identities, an irreducible subjectivity, Plato is a timely figure. For Plato was concerned with the problem of developing the overarching moral framework of the common good in a fractious or pluralist society. The remedy for political ills was found in philosophy: ‘I was forced .. to the belief that the only hope of finding justice for society or for the individual lay in true philosophy and that mankind will have no respite from trouble until either real philosophers gain political power or politicians become by some miracle true philosophers’ (Plato The Seventh Letter 1987:xvi). Good government is to be realised through the integration of politics and philosophy. Reason was to rule over ‘the passions’, over the empirical world of desire, appetite and ambition. This is the central theme of rational freedom in affirming the unity of the freedom of each and all. Human beings can only fully realise their human purposes when nous reigns over doxa, reason over opinion. And this can only be achieved in unison, individuals working together with each other rather than apart against each other.

The Immanent Ideal of Philosophy

by Peter Critchley

Now written as a chapter in Rational Freedom vol 2 Philosophical Origins

This paper examines the... more Now written as a chapter in Rational Freedom vol 2 Philosophical Origins

This paper examines the connection between Utopia in politics and the philosophical idea. Philosophy is considered to represent, in abstract form, the true and the good that is denied in the real world. Philosophy could, as an abstracted ideal, serve as a cloak for the inverted values of the world. But there is a much stronger sense that philosophy is necessarily Utopian in being critical and subversive of the world, through being oriented towards the creation not only of a better world but of the perfect world. Philosophy opposes the 'ought to be' to the 'is' and expresses the will to transform the world and make it free, moral and rational.

Philosophy's function is, through the use of critical reason, to lead rational human beings to the recognition of what 'ought to be' - to an appreciation of the good and the true which philosophy already knows.

The Rational Freedom of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

by Peter Critchley

Now written as a chapter in Rational Freedom vol 2 Philosophical Origins by Dr Peter Critchley

This paper... more Now written as a chapter in Rational Freedom vol 2 Philosophical Origins by Dr Peter Critchley

This paper considers Rousseau’s importance as a prophet of popular sovereignty and of the democratic state. In examining these claims, this paper makes an important distinction between the negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The paper proceeds to show how, in Rousseau’s construction, government becomes an agent of individual freedom so that individuals are perfectly free in a democracy worthy of the name - that is, which embodies and expresses sovereign power actively and directly.

Re-visioning Ireland: Lessons from Feminist Care Ethics

by Clara Fischer

Published in 'Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review', Vol. 100, No. 397, Spring 2011, pp.63-72

Recent events in Ireland have led to increased calls for a new politics in our Republic, a politics that intimately... more Recent events in Ireland have led to increased calls for a new politics in our Republic, a politics that intimately involves citizens in decision-making and counters some of the grievous shortcomings of a system responsible for political, economic, and social crisis. While such demands for the re-examination of destructive and defunct governance structures are certainly to be welcomed, there are few measured, and therefore productive, alternatives being offered within the sometimes self-serving rhetoric accompanying these demands. In this essay, I will try to shed light on what I think is perhaps the most pertinent question facing Ireland today, that is, what kind of society do we want in Ireland? Arguing for a society informed by care, I shall draw upon feminist care ethics, hoping to add to the store of existing genuine proposals for change, in a bid to overcome their self-serving counterparts.

„Pluralismul rezonabil” şi pledoaria pentru pluralism: John Rawls versus comunitarianismul

by Cecilia Tohaneanu

Negative Eschatology: Considerations on Politics and Ethics in Ratzinger’s Teachings on the Last Things

by Markus Rutsche

(g) Negative Eschatologie: Überlegungen zu Politik und Ethik in Ratzingers Lehre von den letzten Dingen (Term Paper, Univ. of Tübingen 2010)

Whenever a Christian in our time, an academically trained theologian all the more, finds himself faced with enquiries... more Whenever a Christian in our time, an academically trained theologian all the more, finds himself faced with enquiries about the Christian teachings on the Last Things, it seems like he might feel quite embarrassed: The pretentiousness of the Christian faith instructing our largely secularized society about life after death, the end of the world and the like would probably appear rather strange to most of us. This paper aims to address this diagnosis and to determine the relationship between Christian eschatology and the interaction of politics and ethics from a systematic-theological standpoint. To this end, the views of Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927) are reconstructed in detail and subjected to a critical evaluation. Few works have inspired and formed the eschatological debate in recent decades as much as the comprehensive draft of the current Pope. Even though this study takes up only a secondary aspect of the academic debate on Ratzinger’s much-quoted eschatology, the chosen approach may offer a deeper understanding of his theological thought altogether. Ratzinger’s views on politics and ethics are established as the epitome of a ‘negative eschatology’, thus clearing the way to a slightly different perspective on one of the most influential theologians of our time.

Individuo e dimensione pubblica in conflitto?

by Carlo Lottieri

''Dialoghi'', n. 4, 2006, pp.36–43

Political Correctness and Privacy Rights

by Justin Nelson