Search results

Robert Hauptman first raised awareness about the ethical issues of reference service in 1976. Hauptman, a library school student at the time, did a study on the culpability, or lack thereof, in reference service provided by librarians. In his study, Hauptman posed as a library patron seeking potentially dangerous information. The behavior examined was how librarians respond to the request for material on how to build a bomb that would be powerful enough to blow up a house. Hauptman tried to present himself as a person of questionable character. He used six public and seven academic libraries in this study. Hauptman first made sure that he was speaking to the reference librarian. He then requested information for the construction of a small explosive, requesting specifically the chemical properties of cordite. He then asked for information on the potency of such an explosive, whether or not it could blow up a suburban house (Hauptman, Wilson Library Bulletin, 1976, p. 626).

The modern social and political order is characterised by a range of disparate moralities which lead to a plethora of interpretations and competing perspectives as to what ought to be the appropriate ethical template for corporate social responsibility. The possibility of uniting these disparate threads into a unified whole is explored by addressing the complex philosophies of Immanuel Kant and his alleged successor, Hans Kelsen; paying particular attention to their contrasting views of the proper foundations of public consensus towards establishing an idealised moral community of corporate actors.

The research is library-based and suggests that philosophy (in this instance, Kant’s moral philosophy and Kelsen’s general theory of law and state, for example) is able to offer an alternative rational and morally grounded ethics of law and governance; pertinent to the effective governance of corporate behaviour and moral management practices.

Central concepts, characteristic of both the Kantian and Kelsenian philosophical methodologies, have the capacity to act as a positive influence on the development of effective CSR mechanisms for assuring greater accountability. In addition, it is suggested that by prescribing ethically appropriate corporate behaviour as a first consideration, such philosophical frameworks are capable of providing a powerful disincentive against corporate crime.

The paper is interdisciplinary and (in an era of mistrust, global financial impropriety and other corporate misdemeanours) explores the utility of a philosophical approach towards articulating the conditions for imposing a moral duty incumbent upon all corporate actors in addressing the practical and conceptual needs of their shareholders and wider society.

Postmodernism is often held to be a novel viewpoint of the 20th (and 21st) century. In certain minor respects, it is. But in this chapter I will show that, fundamentally, it is a logical derivative of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s revolutionary views in epistemology. As such, postmodernism rises or falls with the cogency of Kant’s basic epistemological approach.

This chapter presents two examples of misinterpretation of the philosophical term and historical concept of human dignity in contemporary legal theory and practice. Current legal theories (R. Alexy) still introduce Pico’s concept of dignity regarding the human personality and personal (volitional and rational) abilities. The term ‘dignity’ is marginal for Pico and shows the spiritual way to the status of the original Adam. Pico’s concept of dignity is located in the area of spirit (hyperphysics), not metaphysics (soul) or physics (materials). Günter Dürig in his commentary to Grundgesetz also used the Kantian concept of human dignity. Dürig exaggerated this value and used it also for the area of physics (to protect the human being as a personality). For Kant, the term ‘dignity’ was also marginal, and he used it in the area of metaphysics (soul – especially the moral and rational parts), regarding transcendence for homo noumenon, not for homo phaenomenon. In general, it seems to be problematic to use the ideal of the dignity for the law, which regulates the social relations between concrete phenomenal personalities. There are parallels to Pico. The Kantian starting point was different from Pico, because Kant stays in the area of metaphysics (especially the moral and rational parts). Both consider freedom as a condition of dignity. The concept of autonomy of will is significant for both, but each thinks of it in different ways. For both, human being can become master of oneself, but in a different context.

Montes's interpretations of propriety and of self-command, the master Smithian virtue, led him to place Smith's ethics in the deontology camp with Immanuel Kant, clearly opposed to the utilitarians. This is an issue that is worth pursuing for two reasons. First, the relation between Smith and Kant has not been sufficiently explored in the secondary literature. Samuel Fleischacker (1991, 1996) has investigated the lines of influence from Smith to Kant. There is, for example, a striking mention of the impartial spectator in the form of “an impartial rational spectator” in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant [1785] 1997, 4:393, p. 7), yet it is impossible to tell exactly and to what extent Kant's reading of Smith contributed to the development of his own thought. Be that as it may, there is, nonetheless, a logical consistency between Smith's description of the operation of the conscience, as agents learn to construct the perspective of an ideal impartial spectator from which to accurately judge their own thoughts and actions on the one hand and the categorical imperative on the other. Smith's emphasis on impartiality in judging and Kant's emphasis on universality seem to be just different ways of getting at the transcendent nature of true moral character and action. In Smith, then, it is the virtue of self-command through which agents participate in the molding of their own character and stir themselves up for right action (as judged from this ideal perspective). As Montes argues, the spectator judges self-command in terms of the spectator's sense of propriety, not through an analysis of the merit or demerit of an action. It is a deontological argument, not a consequentialist one. When properly understood, self-command entails the development of a morally autonomous agent, similar to Kant's. Thus, Montes concludes:The philosophical meaning of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of self-command, and the role of the conscience introduced by the supposed impartial spectator, situates the sympathetic process within a philosophical tradition that seems closer to Kant than to utilitarianism. (p. 53)

Discussions about the dignity of human beings often focus on violations of a person’s dignity that are performed by other persons. However, human beings can also violate their own dignity or at least they can expose it to a violation by others thoughtlessly or intentionally. In his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states that ‘[o]ne who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him’. Kant presupposes that persons can infringe or even forfeit their own dignity – for instance through servile behaviour – and that violating one’s own dignity is a violation of a duty towards oneself. Starting from the tension between dignity in terms of honour and worth in current debates and in Kant’s own thinking, as well as between understanding dignity as absolute or relational, I develop a comprehensive account of dignity as a duty to oneself. The author argues for a twofold obligation towards oneself to respect one’s own dignity: (i) a duty (as the necessity of an action done out of respect for the moral law) to respect one’s authority as an autonomous person in the Kantian sense; and (ii) beyond the Kantian framework – an obligation arising from the practical necessity that follows from one’s self-understanding as a self-determined, self-expressive individual personality in a socio-cultural context. Finally, the author outlines the consequences of the idea of ‘making oneself a worm’ for the concept of dignity in the realm of rights by discussing why, even though persons can behave like worms, others ought not to step on them.

Postmodernism has had a widespread influence on intellectuals throughout the world. It all started, as the chapter on Ghate will show, with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who was the first philosopher to sever reason (consciousness) from reality. We have been paying the price ever since. Postmodernism has now spread from philosophy into many other fields, including literature, history, sociology, psychology and business.

This paper reviews and assesses the aim, substance, and impact of Simon Susen’s book, “The Postmodern Turn” in the Social Sciences.

The review follows the structure of Susen’s book, by description and by evaluation.

Susen’s book encompasses a very large volume of literature of the self-defined “postmodern,” then concludes that the covered material has contributed little that is new to the social sciences.

The review has not been previously published, does not replicate any prior assessment known to the author.

Four experiments were performed to test a proposal that hierarchically restrictive and partially restrictive trait dimensions (Reeder & Brewer, 1979) pertaining to morality can be understood in terms of Immanuel Kant's distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. In Experiment 1, subjects simply rated the number of contrary behaviors they would have to observe in order to change a prior expectancy that a target person had particular morality traits. Their responses indicated that positive partially restrictive traits were more difficult to disconfirm than positive hierarchically restrictive traits. In Experiment 2, subjects were presented with scenarios where the type of person, the type of situation, the type of behavior, and the trait of concern were manipulated. Behavior had a greater, and the situation had a lesser, effect on trait attributions for hierarchically than partially restrictive morality dimensions. Experiment 3 demonstrated that differences in trait attributions for the two types of trait dimensions were not due to the implications of contrary behaviors for the frequency with which these behaviors could be expected to be repeated in the future. Finally, Experiment 4 further supported the prediction that situational factors affect trait attributions less for hierarchically than partially restrictive trait dimensions pertaining to morality.