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Justice: Rights and Wrongs
... Agapeic love seeks to promote the flourishing of what the other requires; but it never does less than what justice requires. This love is not gratuitous benevolence overruling justice (Wolterstorff 2008(Wolterstorff , 2011. 4 Second, we do not present and discuss agape in its purest form in this article. On the contrary, in the context of business we will focus on an agapeic-turn as a form of practical wisdom. ...
... Agapeic love seeks to promote the flourishing of what the other requires; but it never does less than what justice requires. This love is not gratuitous benevolence overruling justice (Wolterstorff 2008(Wolterstorff , 2011. 4 Second, we do not present and discuss agape in its purest form in this article. On the contrary, in the context of business we will focus on an agapeic-turn as a form of practical wisdom. ...
... The philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses at length what he calls "modern-day agapism," or benevolence agapism which creates a false dualism between human rights thinking and agape love -a view that became dominant in Christian Ethics of the 20th century. Wolterstorff (2011) gives sound philosophical arguments for the unity between justice and agape love. In line with his thesis, we argue for a unity of justice, love, and wise leadership (Nullens 2016). ...
Humanistic management emphasises the importance of respecting humanity in and through meaningful work within organisations. In this paper we introduce a Levinasian approach to organising. Levinas argues that the Other appeals to us and allows us to take responsibility towards the Other – i.c. an employee, a customer, a supplier, etcetera. In this article our focus is on employees. By taking the Other as a starting point of his reflections, Levinas helps to transform the organisation and management of work and humans in business organisations. Based on the concept of alterity and becoming susceptible to the appeal that comes to us through what Levinas refers to as the ‘face of the Other’, we argue that the philosopher calls for ‘an agapeic turn’ to management and organisation. This turn means that the focus on the well-being of the employee – and the needs, interests, ideas, and expectations as perceived by him or her – should be at the core of organising. As a result, this paper calls for an increased focus on self-determination and self-organisation to allow the Other both voice and control over her or his behaviour, actions and contributions to the outputs and outcomes of one’s organisational unit. Through our focus on a Levinas approach, we concretize and deepen the traditional understanding of agape, making it more relevant to our functioning in a business setting. As a result, agape is introduced as an analytical concept that guides the structuring and the effectuation of human interaction in and through organisations.
... In a recent paper, Wolterstorff criticizes eudaimonism on Augustinian grounds (Wolterstorff 2012); in an earlier book, his critique draws on claims he develops in his account of justice and rights (Wolterstorff 2008). One important feature of the later (Augustinian) critique is that it is specially directed at Stoic eudaimonism. ...
In the ethical theories of the ancient Greeks, eudaimonia provided a grounding for the value of all other goods. But a puzzle for such views is that some things are good for us irrespective of the intervention of eudaimonia and its requirement of virtuous activity. In this article, the author considers challenges to the eudaimonist account of value on those grounds pressed by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Sophie Grace Chappell. The aim is ethical-theoretical, rather than historical. The author defends the thesis that a form of eudaimonism that is largely Aristotelian in form and content can meet these challenges.
... He does not believe in a third position that combines these two approaches. 63 The South African system of apartheid (segregation) serves as Wolterstorff 's example to illustrate how the second approach of 'righteous relations' (considered from a comprehensive order) can derail. Now suppose that his own approach, in which thinking about justice departs from individual dignity, provides a solid foundation for a theory of justice. ...
How can Christian politics contribute to public policy making in a secular and individualised age? Within the public sphere several faith and wisdom traditions compete. Is this a power struggle - or can they enrich democratic decisions? Christians can use both their own tradition and other traditions to present a valuable and relevant vision within and for a post-liberal democracy.
... For an extensive discussion, seeWolterstorff (2008). Demaine Solomons and Ernst Conradie explored Nicholas Wolterstorff's oeuvre on justice in another postgraduate ...
This contribution is based on what may be called a pedagogical experiment in a postgraduate course on the 16th century European Reformations that was offered at the University of the Western Cape in the first semester of 2017. On the basis of a close reading of selected literature on the reformation, this contribution highlights the legacy of 16th century ecclesial movements for Southern Africa. The point of departure is located in the context of a discussion on a range of guiding concepts for social transformation in the contemporary (South) African context. It is argued that the deepest diagnosis of current (South) African discourse may well point to a view that none of the options for a category that may be regarded as more ultimate than justice (as a ‘remedy’) is attractive enough to muster sufficient moral energy without endless further contestations. Without necessarily suggesting what that ultimate maybe, it is suggested that a lack of an appealing notion of what is truly ultimate can undermine any attempts to address inequality (as our diagnosis) in current discourse. This necessarily calls attention to the relationship between the penultimate and the ultimate, and indeed between justification and justice.
... In the former declaration, belief in the Creator is foundational for human rights, in the latter, human rights are exclusively grounded in human dignity (Cliteur 2004:157–159; cf. Wolterstorff 2008:312–313). The notion of human dignity is central to Kant's moral philosophy. ...
This article discusses the view of the Leiden professor Paul Cliteur that human rights are essentially secular and require rejection of God’s will as source of moral authority. Firstly, it analyses Cliteur’s reception of Kant and his claim that an exclusively anthropological grounding of human rights is the only possible one. Next, it investigates Nicholas Wolterstorff’s criticism of Kant’s grounding of human dignity in the rational capacity of mankind and his theistic grounding of human rights in God’s love by the mediating concept of human worth. Although Wolterstorff rightly believes that God’s special relationship with human beings is ultimately the best ground for human rights, his understandings of God’s love and of human worth appear to be problematic. Finally, the article explores the possibility to ground human rights directly in God’s justice by construing creation, the giving of the Ten Commandments and the justification of the sinner as central divine acts of justice in which God has given human rights to all human beings.
... Just how this transformation developed is beyond the scope of this article. The point to be made here is that modern democratic societies are characterized by this universalistic ideology of human equality (Dunn, 2005;Fukuyama, 1992;Wolterstorff, 2008). In these societies, each citizen is deemed to have the same equal dignity and should, therefore, not be the subject of discrimination on account of social class, gender, race, or sexual orientation. ...
Legitimacy (or “the right to exercise power”) is now an established concept in criminological analysis, especially in relation to policing. Substantial empirical evidence shows the importance of legitimacy in securing law‐abiding behavior and cooperation from citizens. Yet adequate theorization has lagged behind empirical evidence, and there has been a conflation of legitimacy with the cognate concepts of “trust” and of “obligation to obey the law.” By drawing on the work of Beetham (1991) and others (e.g., Bottoms and Tankebe, ), this study tests the hypothesis that the contents of the multiple dimensions of police legitimacy comprise procedural fairness, distributive fairness, lawfulness, and effectiveness. The study also investigates the relative influence of legitimacy and feelings of obligation on citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police. Using data from London, the results substantiate the hypothesized dimensions of police legitimacy. In addition, legitimacy was found to exhibit both a direct influence on cooperation that is independent of obligation and an indirect influence that flows through people's felt obligations to obey the police. Implications for future research are discussed.
... 16 Now if each human being has basic worth, then each has that worth by virtue of each human being's enjoying some very special property: the property of having basic worth supervenes on some other excellenceengendering property that each human being possesses in equal measure but that is not possessed by other animals (so far as we know). 17 So, for example, James Griffin argues that the relevant property is a capacity for normative agency: 'what we attach value to, what we regard as giving value to human life, is our capacity to choose and to pursue our conception of a worthwhile life.' 18 This capacity, above a certain threshold, each properly functioning, adult human being possesses, and so each properly functioning, adult human being has basic worth. ...
The Doctrine of Religious Restraint is the claim that citizens and officials in a liberal democracy should not support coercive laws that they know to require a religious rationale. The most prominent argument for the Doctine of Religious Restraint appeals to the claim that we ought to treat each person as having basic worth: citizens and officials ought to obey the Doctrine of Religious Restraint because doing so is required in order for them to respect their compatriots as persons who have equal moral standing. But this argument is not persuasive: citizens and officials who support coercive laws that they know require some religious justification need not thereby disrespect their compatriots. The article focuses throughout on the figure of an `Agapic Pacifist' who has sectarian religious reasons to oppose government's use of lethal military force.
This article relates and compares some important features of Western religious and secular morality by way of surveying the debate over different answers to the question whether morality depends on religion in some significant way. The three main ways examined are whether morality depends on religion for an objective foundation, whether morality depends on religion for its content, and whether morality depends on religion for motivation. What emerges is that while religion can provide an objective foundation, a worthy content, and an admirable motivation for those who accept its distinctive theological claims, secularists can provide plausible, if debatable, alternatives to a theological foundation, as well as a moral content and motivation that can have interesting overlaps with those of religious ethics.
Moral reasons take precedence over non-moral reasons either by outweighing non-moral practical reasons, or by excluding such reasons. Several prominent defenders of the moral argument for theism have incorporated the outweighing thesis. They claim we have categorically binding moral duties only if we always have most reason to be ethical. We always have most reason to be ethical only if theism is true. On the contrary, I argue that the excluding reasons thesis is correct and that this undermines a key premise in moral arguments developed by
Stephen Darwall has developed an account of moral obligations as grounded in “second-personal reasons,” which was developed in conversation with early modern “theological voluntarists” who were divine command theorists. For Darwall, morality does not require accountability to God; humans as autonomous moral agents are the source of moral obligations. In this paper, I try to show that Darwall is vulnerable to some objections made against divine command theories. There are responses Darwall could make that have parallels to those given by divine command theorists. However, those responses require moral realism, while Darwall’s project is often seen as being inspired by metaethical constructivism. Finally, I suggest that Darwall’s view could be further strengthened by the addition of God to the story.
I present three versions of the argument from divine hiddenness that are grounded in moral considerations regarding how a just deity would act and auxiliary commitments that theists often have. First, I argue that the problem of hiddenness is made worse if one also holds that many will suffer in the afterlife due to not achieving a proper orientation towards God and the demands of morality in this life. Second, I argue that if any version of the moral argument for theism is successful, then God has a very good reason to not remain hidden. Third, I argue that a just God would not allow people to do evil in her name.
This enquiry considers how the dignity of the frail elderly is objectively grounded, socially constructed, and subjectively experienced. The lives of the frail trouble public consciousness. A terror of old age, felt by young or old, is liable to form a toxic affective culture of social death. Against such threats, the dignity of the frail requires defense. However, empathy- and capacities-based approaches to dignity fail to give a compelling account of humanity's membership in shared community. By contrast, the poetry of the Psalms and New Testament puts terror to flight by articulating how dignity is found within God's steadfast, worth-bestowing love which tenderly accompanies humanity in its shared dustiness from the womb to old age and beyond. The blessed dignity these sources describe is found to be more conceptually robust and affectively compelling than an individualistic eudaimonism. Cultivating an ecology of dignity in practice is finally shown to depend on a compassion which grows from the same fertile, imaginative ground.
Článek soustředí svoji pozornost na současné debaty v politické filozofii, které se týkají role náboženských argumentů (jakožto důvodů k jednání) v liberální demokracii, stejně jako předběžné obhajobě specifického přístupu k tomuto problému. Vychází přitom z typologie Christophera Eberleho, která rozlišuje tři základní tábory: ospravedlňující liberalismus, jeho liberální kritiky a nový tradicionalismus.
Robert Adams’s account of divine command theory argues that moral obligations are idealized versions of everyday social requirements. One type of social requirement is the ordinary demand one person makes of one another. Its idealized version is the perfect command a perfect God makes of those he loves. This paper extends Adams’s account of moral obligation by considering another kind of social requirement: promises. It argues that we can understand a divine covenant as an idealized version of a promise. Promisers take on social requirements to promisees when they make promises. Analogously, God takes on obligations to humans when God makes covenants with them. Divine command theorists might fear that this makes God subject to moral rules not of his own choosing. This paper considers these fears and argues that they are unwarranted.
The question of the viability of theological eudaimonism as an interpretation of the moral life has generated increasing debate in recent years. This essay aims to advance the debate about theological eudaimonism (and eudaimonism more generally) by addressing a closely related but insufficiently discussed issue: the nature of human agency and its relationship to value. The most commonly raised objection to eudaimonism is that it is objectionably agent‐oriented. I argue that worries about objectionable self‐orientation often stem from importing foreign pictures of agency into the eudaimonist tradition. I make this case through an analysis of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s recent critique of eudaimonism. Wolterstorff presupposes a common contemporary conception of agency. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and Elizabeth Anderson, I show that other conceptions of agency are available. Clarity about the nature of human agency and its relationship to value will bring greater clarity to the debate about eudaimonism and self‐orientation.
Liberalism and naturalism are the reigning orthodoxies of most faculties today, while dualism is overwhelmingly rejected. The overarching claim defended in this paper is that liberals should consider dualism more seriously than what currently seems to be the case. This claim will be defended in two stages. First, I will argue that dualism provides better resources with which to defend foundational liberal commitments to human equality and human agency than those naturalism offers. Secondly, I will argue that dualism is plausible enough to be seriously considered by liberals granted that this view is friendlier to liberal commitments than naturalism is.
This chapter offers a philosophical reconstruction of philosophical views on epistemic practices and the social practical basis of authority in order to make sense of Richard Rorty's anxieties about religion's role in democratic life. It shows that the philosophical views can also be used to construct an approach to religious pluralism that is far more open‐ended and dialogical than the approach that Rorty chose to pursue. The chapter reviews Rorty's call for the privatization of religion in light of his broader view of epistemic practices. Rorty's two main anxieties about religion come from his view of the social practical basis of authority. His tendency to generalize about the dangers of religion in public life was shaped by the culture wars of the 1990s, the political and cultural struggle between liberal secularists and the religious right over issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
This chapter argues that more fully integrating ideas found in Christian and Islamic liberation theologies into human rights thought and practice, with human rights understood as a “law of nations,” can begin to overcome prevalent criticisms of human rights and promote fruitful conversation between religious and human rights thought. Drawing on the work of liberation theologians Monica Coleman and Farid Esack, the paper examines how liberation theologies might help human rights advocates attend to lived experience and recognize how people meaningfully belong to multiple traditions and participate in multiple moral conversations. This may clarify how people can embrace both religious and human rights values, reinforcing the idea that religious and human rights values are complementary and bringing us closer to shared goals of enhancing well-being.
The aim of this chapter is not to consider particular ethical questions; it is to ask whether there are general facts about morality and our ability to make moral judgments that count in favor of either theism or atheism.
Eudaimonism is often regarded as egoistic. If it recommends that agents pursue their own good because it is their own good, it is guilty as charged. But excellence‐prior eudaimonism offers a non‐egoistic alternative to this welfare‐prior eudaimonism. Excellence‐prior eudaimonism recommends that an agent live in a way that is in fact good for the agent, but it does not regard the agent’s own good as necessarily that for the sake of which the agent acts, nor does it regard living well as justified by the fact that it is good for the agent, but simply because it is good. The Christian eudaimonisms of Augustine and Aquinas are best understood as deepened forms of excellence‐prior eudaimonism.
This paper aims to offer a critique of the traditional just war theory and pacifist claims through analysing how Chinese Christians as civilians sought a sense of justice in the midst of war through the medium of a Christian periodical. During 1937 to 1941, The True Light Review was edited and published in the isolated Shanghai International Settlement. Through a dialogue with the debate of the Niebuhr brothers on just war, I argue that the literary discourses in The True Light Review are a kind of 'realistic ethic' used to seek an understanding of justice in the midst of war and violence. They show us that, from a world Christianity perspective, the traditional just war and pacifism dichotomy has its limitation. They lead us to propose a new understanding of Christian justice in war.
Although human rights are often framed as the result of centuries of Western Christian thought, many English evangelicals are wary of the U.K.’s recent embrace of rights-based law. Yet this wariness does not preclude their use of human rights instruments in the courts. Drawing upon fieldwork with Christian lobbyists and lawyers in London, I argue that evangelical activists instrumentalise rights-based law so as to undermine the universalist claims on which they rest. By constructing themselves as a marginalised counterpublic whose rights are frequently ‘trumped’ by the competing claims of others, they hope to convince their fellow Britons that a society built upon the logic of equal rights cannot hope to deliver the human flourishing it promises. Given the salience of contemporary political conservatism, I call for further ethnographic research into counterpublic movements, and offer my interlocutors’ instrumentalisation of human rights as a critique of the inconsistencies of secular law.
In October 2005, the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights was unanimously adopted by the 191 Member States of UNESCO in Paris. The Declaration formulates 15 general principles to guide decisions and practices in bioethics. Article 12 presents the principle of respect for cultural diversity and pluralism: “The importance of cultural diversity and pluralism should be given due regard. However, such considerations are not to be invoked to infringe upon human dignity, human rights, and fundamental freedoms, nor upon the principles set out in this Declaration, not to limit their scope” (UNESCO 2005, Art 12). The aim of this contribution is to clarify the background as well as the significance and limitations of this principle. To better understand why this principle is included in the Declaration as one of the fundamental principles of today’s bioethics, it is necessary to explain the specific context in which it has emerged. This context is determined on the one hand by the mission and perspective of UNESCO, as the only United Nations organization concerned with culture, education and science, on the other hand by the development of bioethics as a global endeavor that is no longer only a concern of more developed and resource-rich countries.
Eine der ältesten und berühmtesten Charakterisierungen der Gerechtigkeit expliziert sie als ständige Bereitschaft, anderen Menschen ihr Recht zu geben (ius suum tribuere). Besonders wirkungsmächtig ist die Formulierung der Justinianischen Institutionen aus dem 6. Jahrhundert: »Gerechtigkeit ist der stete und dauerhafte Wille, jedem sein Recht zu geben« (iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens).
Especially for those who read only his Confessions, it can be tempting to think of Saint Augustine (354–430) as modern.
Human rights and religious traditions have had a long history of interaction, ranging from the medieval period to contemporary times. Since both are deeply implicated in not only violent conflict but also efforts to establish a more peaceful and just world, it is important to gain a synoptic understanding, both conceptually and in practical terms, of their interaction. The basic terms for this essay – “religion” and “human rights” – are themselves contested, and it is therefore necessary to assign them working definitions before examining some of the complexities of their relationship.
Keywords:
comparative philosophy;
ethics;
legal and political;
religion;
crimes against humanity;
human rights;
natural law;
rights;
terrorism;
tolerance
The Stoic rejection of the passion of grief strikes many ethicists writing on dying as inhuman, selfish, or lacking appreciation for the world. This essay argues that Stoics rejected grief and the fear of death because these passions alienated one from the present through sorrow or anxiety for the future, disrupting one's ability to fulfill obligations of care for others and to feel gratitude for the gift of loved ones. Early Christian writers on death, such as Ambrose, maintained much of the substance of Stoic doctrine but transformed it through their belief in the resurrection and their corresponding revaluation of the future. While these writers rejected grief as an affective response to death, they affirmed longing for lost loved ones. These authors provide an example of how contemporary religious ethicists can use Stoic insights for recovering the tradition of the art of dying.
Augustine's exposition of the image of God in Book 15 of On The Trinity (De Trinitate) sheds light on multiple issues that arise in scholarly interpretations of Augustine's account of lying. This essay argues against interpretations that posit a uniform account of lying in Augustine—with the same constitutive features, and insisting both that it is never necessary to tell a lie and that lying is absolutely prohibited. Such interpretations regularly employ intertextual reading strategies that elide distinctions and developments in Augustine's ethics of lying. Instead, I show how looking at texts written prior and subsequent to the texts usually consulted suggests a trajectory in Augustine's thought, beginning with an understanding of lies as morally culpable but potentially necessary, and culminating in a vision of lying as the fundamental evil and the origin of every sin.
This article provides a focused overview of the recent debates in political philosophy on the role of religious arguments (as reasons for action) in liberal democracy, as well as a preliminary defence of a particular approach to the issue. Drawing on Christopher Eberle's typology, we distinguish three main camps - justificatory liberalism, basing its advocacy of a "doctrine of religious restraint" on Rawls's account of public justification; its liberal critics, embracing a wholly permissive position vis-à-vis religious arguments in the public sphere; and new traditionalism, which assigns priority to the religious rationale. The article deals in more detail with the exchange between the first two camps. After considering their strengths and weaknesses, we argue for a more robust "third way" between exclusion from and unqualified inclusion of religious arguments in public debates in liberal democracy. Inspired by the work of Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier, we then outline in the closing sections a framework of such "minimal justificatory liberalism" that steers clear of several errors shared by both the defenders and the critics of justificatory liberalism.
Does the call to pursue justice live in the hearts and minds of contemporary Christians? If so, to what extent? In order to address these questions, our research team used a community-based research approach to investigate how Christians in a specific denomination (the Christian Reformed Church in North America) conceptualize the relationship between justice and faith, what priority justice holds in their lives, and the barriers and enablers they identify to pursuing justice. This article reports on the findings of a survey that was distributed to a representative sample of 264 congregational members across Canada. Findings show that understandings of justice from “the pew” are multifaceted even if conceptually vague. Yet justice is clearly understood as being connected to faith even if there is ambiguity as to how it fits into the spectrum of Christian life. There is subsequently a need to assist congregants in translating their awareness of injustice and desire for justice into action. In particular, survey results emphasize the importance of pairing a Christian vision for justice with opportunities to experience exemplars of justice work. Further research could explore the extent to which these on-the-ground perspectives are shared across Christian and other faith traditions, and across world regions.
In a number of recent works, Nicholas Wolterstorff defends the claim that human rights inhere in the dignity of every human. He further contends that the explanation of this dignity cannot be found in the intrinsic features of humans; rather, the only plausible explanation for human dignity is that it is bestowed upon humans by God’s love. In this paper, I argue that Wolterstorff’s theory concerning the ground of human dignity falls prey to something quite similar to the classic Euthyphro dilemma: either God must love every existing human in a dignity-bestowing manner or he need not, and either option is problematic. If the former, then whatever it is about humans that ensures God’s love can reasonably be thought to be the independent source of human dignity and/or rights, thereby leaving us without cause to appeal to God’s love for the explanation of this dignity. If the latter, the implication is that moral statements which appear to be necessarily true are only contingently so. Wolterstorff’s theory will thus require substantial modification, or else abandonment.
What are “human rights” supposed to protect? According to most human rights doctrines, including most notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human rights aim to protect “human dignity.” But what this concept amounts to and what its source is remain unclear. According to Glenn Hughes (2011), human rights theorists ought to consider human dignity as an “intrinsically heuristic concept,” whose content is partially understood but is not fully determined. In this comment, I criticize Hughes's account. On my view, understanding inherent human dignity as an intrinsically heuristic concept tethers it to an “indeterminateness of sense,” which leaves it open to exploitation from theorists unsympathetic to the moral salience of rights and what rights are supposed to protect.
Leadership is about knowledge, skills, and abilities for transformation. It is also increasingly about worldviews or visions of life—beliefs, values, and principles. But worldviews are also ways of life, for beliefs direct us, values guide us, and principles motivate us to certain kinds of action and behavior.
How, then, do worldviews have an impact on leadership for transformation? If worldviews are glasses or filters by which we view the world, mental models of the bigger picture, frameworks by which we make sense of the world, and narratives by which we orient our lives, then how do they influence human thoughts, ideas, and behaviors when it comes to transformative leadership?
This was the subject matter of an International Leadership Association Conference panel discussion held in November 2009 in Prague, entitled Leadership for Transformation: The Impact of Worldviews. It is also the subject matter of this issue's symposium, in which we bring you the four papers and the response presented at the conference. Members of the panel were characterized by gender, disciplinary, religious, and global diversity.
Nathan Harter, organizational leadership professor at Purdue University in the United States, begins the discussion with some preliminary remarks about worldviews. Ali Mohammed Mir, medical doctor and director of programs of Population Council, Pakistan, speaks of leadership from an Islamic perspective. Michael Jones, accomplished composer, pianist, and leadership educator, writer, and speaker from Orillia, Canada, reflects on how a “marriage of mythos and logos” can transform leadership today. Lisa Ncube, originally from Zimbabwe and currently assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University, speaks about Ubuntu as an alternative leadership philosophy emerging from Africa. John Valk, associate professor of worldview studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada, speaks of leadership for transformation from a Christian worldview perspective. Jonathan Reams, associate professor in the Department of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, responds to all of the papers and opens a venue for further discussion.
We hope that you will find this symposium engaging. We hope it will give food for thought and that it might stimulate further thinking regarding the role worldviews play in leadership for transformation.
After discussing at some length the nature of interpersonal forgiveness and its relation to punishment, the author addresses the main question of the essay: are states the sorts of entities that can forgive; and if they are, is it sometimes desirable that they forgive? The author argues that states can forgive and very often do; and that sometimes it is desirable that they do so. The essay closes by considering the complexities that arise when the state wants to forgive but the victim does not, and conversely.
This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in their ability to relate to each other and to God, and in their membership of cultural communities where shared attention, the transmission of moral norms, and symbolic behavior are important elements. We discuss similarities between our approach and the concept of theosis adopted in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Inherent in the task of theorising is a responsibility for ongoing critical reflection of the ideas presented (Steele, 2010). To that end, this article responds to the invitation extended by McCold and Wachtel to examine the conceptual theory of restorative justice they first presented in 2003 and which continues to be promoted globally. One particular aspect of their theory, the Social Discipline Window, is examined. Drawing on a qualitative, critical case study conducted in schools in Ontario, Canada, the article illustrates: (a) how unexamined theory can be problematic and promote practice that counters the principles of restorative justice; and (b) how people's lives can be impacted by power dynamics inherent in the theory presented (Woolford, 2009). In response, a revised Relationship Window is presented along with examples of how it can affect practice that is more consistently aligned with the philosophical foundations of restorative justice.
In Justice in Love, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for a unique ethical orientation called "care-agapism." He offers it as an alternative to theories of benevolence-agapism found in Christian ethics on the one hand and to the philosophical orientations of egoism, utilitarianism, and eudaimonism on the other. The purported uniqueness and superiority of his theory lies in its ability to account for the conceptual compatibility of love and justice while also positively incorporating self-love. Yet in attempting to articulate a "bestowed worth" account of human dignity—in which dignity is given by divine love and respected in acts of justice—Wolterstorff leans on an unstable characterization of how love and the good are conceptually interwoven. As a result, his reader cannot be sure about the theoretical superiority of care-agapism. Moreover, Wolterstorff's attempt to value self-love and at the same time reject eudaimonism depends on a dubious interpretation of Augustine carried over from Justice: Rights and Wrongs, which itself further depends on a mischaracterization of the possible varieties of eudaimonism. This mistake is unfortunate because, on a closer reading of Augustine, one finds an agapistic account of eudaimonism that could have significantly helped Wolterstorff's overall account of the complementary relation of love and justice.
In this paper I examine criticism of Hauerwas's critique of American democracy and liberalism, and of American violence and war, as sectarian and politically irrelevant. This twin account has the merit of engaging his critics from left and right. I show that his critique of American Christians, and their support of America's ways of promoting justice and freedom at home and in the world, has analogies with Foucault's genealogical project in France, and represents a more powerful critique of American imperialism and militarism, and of a compliant church, than efforts to sustain the purchase of rights talk or liberal justice in contemporary theological ethics.
In the OT, the topos of "woman with a cause" has already been identified. Women went to great lengths to ensure that the names of their dead husbands were perpetuated, as in the case of Naomi-Ruth or Tamar, or they sought audience with the king to save loved ones.¹ It is argued in this article that both within and beyond this topos, women are found crying out for justice. A consideration of narratives such as the hypothetical case of the Woman of Tekoa's son (2 Sam 14), the narratives about the two "harlots" (1 Kgs 3) and the account of the two women who ate their own children (2 Kgs 6), etcetera, shows that "women with a cause" often cried out on behalf of their children. By considering the socio-economic background of such OT narratives in relation to the socio-economic conditions in many parts of Africa today, the article makes a case for children in Africa under the threat of starvation, are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and who are victims of poverty, dreaded diseases and illiteracy, to name but a few. It demonstrates, first, that the quest for social justice on the continent will have to begin with children, and that, second, this will only be attained when women in Africa, like those of the OT, cry out for justice on behalf of these children.
The business ethics literature has paid little attention to the similarities, differences, and interactions between ‘justice climate’ and ‘ethical work climate’, two key perspectives on the moral dimension of organizations that are related to cultural diversity. In this conceptual paper we argue that integrative studies of justice and ethical work climates could contribute significantly to our understanding of the moral dimensions of organizations. We propose a model showing that an organization's moral climate can perform both normative and evaluative functions. With the globalization of business and increasing diversification of the labor force, cross-cultural differences regarding organizational perceptions and behaviors are increasingly salient. Hence, we also explore the influence of cultural diversity in our integrated model with the Chinese business context as a specific example. We conclude by discussing directions for further research on the relationship between cultural diversity and moral climate in organizations.
In this essay, I continue Nicholas Wolterstorff’s work of developing a rights-based theory of ethics called eirenéism, which maintains the good life only occurs when justice—as a moral state of affairs where agents enjoy the goods to which they have a right—is achieved. As a result, justice is eirenē (the Greek word for peace). In the process of developing eirenéism I explain how eirenē differs from other conceptions of peace, and I offer several interpretive arguments for how best to understand eirenéism in relation to better-known competing ethical theories, like utilitarianism, virtue ethics, duty ethics, and care ethics.
My aim in the paper is to reflect on a very narrow question: under what conditions might a cyber attack provide a just cause for war? I begin by articulating what makes for a just cause, briefly address the problem of attribution, and then discuss three broad categories of cyberattck: those that clearly do not satisfy the just cause requirement, those that clearly do satisfy the just cause requirement, and three ambiguous cases -- the destruction of property, the emplacement of logic bombs, and the failure to prevent cyberattacks. My conclusions are exploratory and suggestive rather than definitive, partly by virtue of the extreme paucity of literature on the moral assessment of cyberwar.
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