The decline of the Roman Empire gave rise to two problems, which combined to form one of the most perplexing philosophical questions of late antiquity. On the one hand, Rome found itself under constant military threat as various tribes from the north an east encroached along its borders to fill the power vacuum left by the receding Empire. On the other hand, adherents to the Empire's new official faith - Christianity - found themselves without clear guidance as to what military roles their faith would permit. The death of the apostles has left Christians without ongoing revelatory guidance, and the New Testament writings alone were not definitive on the subject. The question thus became: 'Can a Christian answer the Empire's call to military duty and still have a clear conscience before God?' Fifth-century philosopher St Augustine of Hippo sought to provide an answer to the question. His approach formed the foundation of the 'just war' tradition, which has has enormous influence upon moral-philosophical thought on military issues in the West ever since.This major new study identifies Augustine's fundamental premises, reconstructs his judt-war theory, and critically evaluates the reconstructed theory in light of the historical context and neo-Platonic and Christian philosophical considerations. John Mark Mattox PhD is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He has lectured and published widely on military ethics, and has taught at the United States Militar Academy, West Point, the University of Maryland in Europe and the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany.

This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever-shifting contingencies is more basic than our interest in achieving any more specific goals. He argues, also, that the state's obligation to promote this interest supports a principled version of the view that what matters about resources, opportunity, and other secondary goods is only that each person have enough. The book opens up a variety of new questions, and offers a distinctive new perspective for scholars of political theory and political philosophy, and for those interested in distributive justice and luck egalitarianism.

Recognizing that the quality of governance is a crucial factor in the overall development of a country, experts on government ethics and law enforcement examine the principles that need to be applied to create more effective and efficient governments. While focusing on the approaches adopted by the City of New York, case studies from around the world are also given.

As the essays make clear, it is difficult to over estimate the importance of authorities to set proper ethical standards and regulations while operating on the basis of transparency, predictability, and accountability. An important resource for scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with public administration issues.

The entire work is composed in the form of aphorisms and consists of 930 numbered sections divided into ten chapters.

A hugely topical collection of essays from a cross-disciplinary group of leading academics focussing on the implications for an understanding of human identity in light of the current possibilities in medical science. The book brings together an international body of medical experts alongside philosophers, sociologists, theologians and ethicists in order to discuss these vital issues.

The ensuing discussion will allow public debate to be more informed about the actual possibilities inherent in medical science, alongside a sophisticated treatment of ethical and theological issues. The result is a focused collection of essays that raises new and challenging questions.

This book provides a new approach to a major figure in Western Philosophy.This important new book explores the ethical theory of Friedrich Nietzsche in light of recent work done in the philosophy of mind. Craig Dove examines issues of free will, communication, the way in which we construct the self, and the implications of all these for ethics. After dismissing what he calls the 'soul hypothesis', Nietzsche is left with a problem: how do we explain the sense of unity and continuity most of us experience as our identity?Drawing on recent work in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, this study shows that Nietzsche's tentative suggestions in the late nineteenth century have been supported by late twentieth century research. Arguing that work done in the philosophy of mind by Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett helps to illuminate Nietzsche's positive ethical doctrine, "Dove" goes on to show that recent work has not adequately thought through the implications for ethics, while Nietzsche has already accomplished precisely that. This is an important and original contribution to an ongoing debate.

The two decades since the Watergate scandal have seen an unprecedented focus on ethics in government. The public integrity scandals of the Clinton administration have, once again, focused national attention on ethics in Washington. This work addresses this very topical subject and the authors come to some unusual conclusions. Tracing the origins of the modern public integrity war back to the very birth of the nation, the authors explain how conservatives and progressives have used allegations of unethical conduct in an effort to persuade the American public to accept their respective visions for American society. A cynical public, anesthetized to the distinction between actual wrongdoing and partisan attack, follows ideology and self-interest rather than character, allowing politicians to get away with even the most egregious conduct.

In the fields of metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and political thought, idealism can generate controversy and disagreement. This title is part of the "Idealism" series, which finds in idealism new features of interest and a perspective which is germane to our own philosophical concerns. This text is a collection of essays analyzing the impact of the thought of F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) on philosophy throughout the English-speaking world. Bradley's complex version of absolute idealism plays a key role not only in idealist philosophy, politics and ethics, but also in the development of modern logic, of analytical philosophy, and of pragmatism, as well as in the thinking of figures such as R.G. Collingwood and A.N. Whitehead. The work of a group of Canadian philosophers writing from widely different standpoints, the essays in this volume define both the nature and scale of Bradley's influence and continuing significance in large areas of debate in 20th-century philosophy. Topics covered include: the history of idealism in the 20th century; Bradley's relation to figures such as Bernard Bosanquet, C.A. Campbell, Brand Blanshard, John Watson, John Dewey, R.G. Collingwood, and A.N. Whitehead; Bradley's influence on 20th-century empiricism, modern logic, and analytical philosophy; and his significance for contemporary debates in epistemology and ethics.

In contemporary political philosophy, there is much debate over how to maintain a public order in pluralistic democracies in which citizens hold radically different religious views. The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism deals with this theoretically and practically difficult issue by examining three of the most influential figures of religious pluralism theory: John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Drawing on a diverse number of sources, Kozinski addresses the flaws in each philosopher's views and shows that the only philosophically defensible end of any overlapping consensus political order must be the eradication of the ideological pluralism that makes it necessary. In other words, a pluralistic society should have as its primary political aim to create the political conditions for the communal discovery and political establishment of that unifying tradition within which political justice can most effectively be obtained. Kozinski's analysis, though exhaustive and rigorous, still remains accessible and engaging, even for a reader unversed in the works of Rawls, Maritain, and MacIntyre. Interdisciplinary and multi-thematic in nature, it will appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of religion, politics, and culture.

First published in 1973, this book presents a systematic treatment of the conceptual framework as well as the practical problems of measurement of inequality. Alternative approaches are evaluated in terms of their philosophical assumptions, economic content, and statistical requirements. In a new introduction, Amartya Sen, jointly with James Foster, critically surveys the literature that followed the publication of this book, and also evaluates the main analytical issues in the appraisal of economic inequality and poverty.

This book comprises 30 chapters representing certain new trends in reconcenptualizing Confucian ideas, ideals, values and ways of thinking by scholars from China and abroad. While divergent in approaches, these chapters are converged on conceptualizing and reconceptualizing Confucianism into something philosophically meaningful and valuable to the people of the 21st century. They are grouped into three parts, and each is dedicated to one of the three major themes this book attempts to address. Part one is mainly on scholarly reviews of Confucian doctrines by which new interpretations will be drawn out. Part two is an assembled attempt to reexamine Confucian concepts, in which critiques of traditional views lead to new perspectives for perennial questions. Part three is focused on reinterpreting Confucian virtues and values, in the hope that a new sense of being moral can be gained through old normative forms.

In 2005, US Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, including several children. How should we assess the perpetrators of this and other war crimes? Is it unfair to blame the Marines because they were subject to situational pressures such as combat stress (and had lost one of their own in combat)? Or should they be held responsible for their actions, since they intentionally chose to kill civilians? In this book, Matthew Talbert and Jessica Wolfendale take up these moral questions and propose an original theory of the causes of war crimes and the responsibility of war crimes perpetrators. In the first half of the book, they challenge accounts that explain war crimes by reference to the situational pressures endured by military personnel, including peer pressure, combat stress, and propaganda. The authors propose an alternative theory that explains how military personnel make sense of their participation in war crimes through their self-conceptions, goals, and values. In the second half of the book, the authors consider and reject theories of responsibility that excuse perpetrators on the grounds that situational pressures often encourage them to believe that their behavior is permissible. Such theories of responsibility are unacceptably exculpatory, implying it is unreasonable for victims of war crimes to blame their attackers. By contrast, Talbert and Wolfendale argue that perpetrators of war crimes may be blameworthy if their actions express objectionable attitudes towards their victims, even if they sincerely believe that what they are doing is right.

One of the most remarkable philosophers of the early 20th century, Henri Bergson attempted to blend the new understandings of biological sciences with concepts of human consciousness in such books as 1907's Creative Evolution. With this extraordinary work, first published in French in 1889, Bergson anticipates Einstein's theory of relativity and the coming revolution in theoretical physics with his exploration of free will as a function of time. Time and Free Will-first translated in English by FRANK LUBECKI POGSON (d. 1910) in 1910-served as Bergson's doctoral thesis, and offered the foundations of his highly influential theory of "Duration," a defense of free will that solves the "problems" with the concept that previous philosophers had encountered with it. Students of modern philosophy and high-end physics alike will find this a challenging but rewarding read. French philosopher HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, and is said to have influenced thinkers such as Marcel Proust, William James, Santayana, and Martin Heidegger. Among his works are Matter and Memory (1896), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932).

In a critical intervention into the bioethics debate over human enhancement, philosopher Melinda Hall tackles the claim that the expansion and development of human capacities is a moral obligation. Hall draws on French philosopher Michel Foucault to reveal and challenge the ways disability is central to the conversation. The Bioethics of Enhancement includes a close reading and analysis of the last century of enhancement thinking and contemporary transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of the obligation to pursue enhancement technology. With specific attention to the work of bioethicists Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, the book challenges the rhetoric and strategies of enhancement thinking. These include the desire to transcend the body and decide who should live in future generations through emerging technologies such as genetic selection. Hall provides new analyses rethinking both the philosophy of enhancement and disability, arguing that enhancement should be a matter of social and political interventions, not genetic and biological interventions. Hall concludes that human vulnerability and difference should be cherished rather than extinguished. This book will be of interest to academics working in bioethics and disability studies, along with those working in Continental philosophy (especially on Foucault).

This book examines the importance of the Enlightenment for understanding the secular outlook of contemporary Western societies. It shows the new ways of thinking about religion that emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries and have had a great impact on how we address problems related to religion in the public sphere today. Based on the assumption that political concepts are rooted in historical realities, this collection combines the perspective of political philosophy with the perspective of the history of ideas. Does secularism imply that individuals are not free to manifest their beliefs in public? Is secularization the same as rejecting faith in the absolute? Can there be a universal rational core in every religion? Does freedom of expression always go hand in hand with freedom of conscience? Is secularism an invention of the predominantly Christian West, which cannot be applied in other contexts, specifically that of Muslim cultures? Answers to these and related questions are sought not only in current theories and debates in political philosophy, but also in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Benedict Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Collins, Adriaan Koerbagh, Abbe Claude Yvon, Giovanni Paolo Marana, and others.

At a time when rapidly evolving technologies, political turmoil, and the tensions inherent in multiculturalism and globalization are reshaping historical consciousness, what is the proper role for historians and their work? By way of an answer, the contributors to this volume offer up an illuminating collective meditation on the idea of ethos and its relevance for historical practice. These intellectually adventurous essays demonstrate how ethos-a term evoking a society's "fundamental character" as well as an ethical appeal to knowledge and commitment-can serve as a conceptual lodestar for history today, not only as a narrative, but as a form of consciousness and an ethical-political orientation.

Edited and revised specifically for this volume, here are the best papers from the Tenth National Conference on Business Ethics, sponsored by Bentley College's Center for Business Ethics. Throughout, the contributors emphasize the ethical dimensions of problems and issues that confront the financial services and accounting industries, issues that are also of critical importance to business generally. Included among the contributors are members of the academic community, lawyers, government officials, and financial services and accounting professionals, each with his or her own special perspective, but all focused on the central theme: the importance of ethics and its proper role in the way financial services and accounting are done. Throughtful, challenging reading, not only for academics but for finance and accounting professionals as well.

Part I examines the ethics of the fiduciary relationship between principals and agents, defining the nature of trust and helping readers understand the fiduciary responsibility and conflicts of interest characteristic to the industry. In Part II, the contributors look at specific issues in ethics and financial disclosure, with particular focus on nonprofit healthcare organizations, financial derivatives, and confidentiality in a professional context as representative cases. More cases are presented in Part III, examining a variety of situations and events, such as the BCCI affair and the failure of banks. Part IV offers lessons from the past and a look toward the future, with such topics as the ethics of financial derivatives in the history of economic thought and the development of moral reasoning and professional judgment of auditors in public practice.