Moral Norms and Nature Appreciation

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Robert Stecker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Norm ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Nature Appreciation ◽  
The Face ◽  
States Of Nature ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

This chapter asks whether there are moral norms that constrain aesthetic judgments about nature. There are two arguments for this view. The first appeals to the idea that degraded states of nature detract from their aesthetic value. This is an example of interaction. The other argues that aesthetic judgments can manifest disrespect for nature, which makes them defective or inappropriate. Call this idea respect for nature. I will consider each approach and show that arguments for such constraints have not been successful. I will then use elements from these approaches to make a case for the existence of a moral norm that bears on aesthetic judgments about nature. However, I conclude by arguing that this is only one of at least two competing potential moral norms that bear on these judgments, and it is equally reasonable to adopt either one in the face of degraded natural environments.

To Confront or to Avoid

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 734-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan S. Kemper ◽  
Anna-Kaisa Newheiser
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Inference ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Avoidance Response ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
Moral Norm ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
The Face

What do people want to do in response to witnessing someone violate a moral norm? Prior research posits that violations of distinct norms elicit specific emotions, specifically anger and disgust. We examined whether moral violations analogously elicit distinct behavioral responses, focusing on desires to confront and avoid moral violators. Participants read scenarios depicting harmful and impure actions (Study 1) or violations of all six content domains proposed by Moral Foundations Theory (Study 2). Bayesian inference revealed that participants expressed distinctively high levels of desire to avoid (vs. confront) violators of purity norms. Violations of other moral norms did not similarly elicit unique patterns of avoidance or confrontation. Thus, behavioral responses to moral violators depend in part on which norm was violated, with impure acts eliciting a uniquely strong avoidance response. Moral judgment can serve as a precursor to strategic action in the face of perceived immorality.

On One Aspect of Law and Morals in Jewish Law: Lifnim Mishurat Hadin

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shmuel Shilo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Norm ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
Full Discussion ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
The Difference

In Talmudic literature the term lifnim mishurat hadin (i.e., beyond the line of the law) is mentioned a number of times. Before analyzing the various Talmudic passages where this concept is found, we will ask a number of questions, some of which we will answer in this article. Not all of the answers will be unequivocal and some questions will remain, in the end, provocative and open. Hopefully, the paper will encourage further discussion of the concept lifnim mishurat hadin.Is lifnim mishurat hadin a specific norm of behaviour which can be precisely defined, or is it rather a concept referring to recommended ethical behaviour, similar to general moral values and examples of ethical behaviour which abound in the Talmud but which have no clearly definable characteristics? If we conclude that lifnim mishurat hadin is indeed a precisely defined norm of behaviour does it stand on its own as a specific type of moral behaviour, or is it synonymous with certain other moral norms, dinei shamayim (the Laws of Heaven), midat hassidut (the degree of ethical perfection of men of piety and virtue) or one of the other ethical norms found in the Talmudic sources? If lifnim mishurat hadin is not just another term for some other moral norm, what is the difference between them? (A reasoned answer to this question cannot be given without a full discussion of all the other moral norms in the Talmud; therefore in this article we will only suggest approaches to answering this question). Are there differences of degree within the norm of lifnim mishurat hadin itself? Are there types of behaviour recorded in the Talmud, about which the phrase lifnim mishurat hadin is not used, but which are in fact examples of behaviour lifnim mishurat hadin? If so, is there a reason why such actions were not explicitly described as lifnim mishurat hadin?

scholarly journals Autonomy and Aesthetic Engagement

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (516) ◽  
pp. 1127-1156 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Thi Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Motivational Structure ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

Abstract There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. Our attempts at aesthetic judgments aim at correctness. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than through deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. How can we resolve this tension? The best explanation, I suggest, is that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. When one defers to aesthetic testimony, then, one makes the same mistake as when one looks up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments.

Should Moral Judgments Affect Aesthetic Judgments (or the Other Way Around)?

Dangerous Art ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
James Harold
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Complete Separation ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Normative Question ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

This chapter offers a defense of autonomism—the view that aesthetic and moral judgments are independent of one another. When we ask whether judging an artwork to be morally bad affects its aesthetic value, we are asking a normative question about what it is best for us to do. Should we take a moral judgment about the effects of an artwork to bear on our aesthetic judgment about the work itself? The chapter argues that we do not make any error if we refuse to change one judgment in light of the other. We are free to keep them separate. This chapter concludes with replies to objections from both those who endorse a stronger link between morality and aesthetics as well as those who want a complete separation.

scholarly journals Bergoglio among the Phenomenologists: Encounter, Otherness, and Church in Evangelii gaudium and Amoris laetitia

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 316-324
Author(s):  
Kristóf Oltvai
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Theological Turn ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church ◽  
Amoris Laetitia

Abstract Because Jorge Bergoglio’s (Pope Francis’s) pontifical texts depart from his predecessor’s Thomistic vocabulary, critics claim his works deploy an “improvisational” style. Closer analysis reveals, however, that Francis deploys the terminology of French phenomenology after the “theological turn.” In fact, Evangelii gaudium and Amoris laetitia frame the event of interpersonal encounter using three concepts drawn from Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jean-Luc Marion’s philosophical projects: the gaze, the face, and the other. Without ruling out a direct textual influence, I argue that Bergoglio’s theology of encounter highlights recent phenomenology’s implications for Catholic moral theology and ecclesiology. Faith is born of an encounter with the merciful gaze of a specific other - Jesus Christ. The Church, as the community that bears witness to this gaze, is thus called to eniconize this same gaze for “the least of these” (Matt 25:40). Not obviating the need for moral precepts, the encounter with the particular other becomes the condition of their possibility; moral norms only cohere within the context of the pastoral “face-to-face.” The main ecclesiological consequence of the “pastoral turn” Bergoglio initiates is thus a “kerygmatic hermeneutic” of the Church: the community of believers turns outward to encounter the other in mercy, evangelizing by example and charity.

Mimetic Monsters

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Timothy Beal
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Edge Of Chaos ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship

This article reads between two recent explorations of the relationship between religion, chaos, and the monstrous: Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep and Author's Religion and Its Monsters. Both are oriented toward the edge of chaos and order; both see the primordial and chaotic as generative; both pursue monstrous mythological figures as divine personifications of primordial chaos; both find a deep theological ambivalences in Christian and Jewish tradition with regard to the monstrous, chaotic divine; both are critical of theological and cultural tendencies to demonize chaos and the monstrous; and finally, both read the divine speech from the whirlwind in the book of Job as a revelation of divine chaos. But whereas one sees it as a call for laughter, a chaotic life-affirming laughter with Leviathan in the face of the deep, the other sees it as an incarnation of theological horror, leaving Job and the reader overwhelmed and out-monstered by God. Must it be one way or the other? Can laughter and horror coincide in the face of the deep?

Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

“My Power is in My Infirmity”: Illness and Death of Yu.F. Samarin

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 412-431
Author(s):  
Svetlana I. Skorokhodova
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Russian Philosopher ◽  
Bodily Resurrection ◽  
The Face

This article is devoted to the insufficiently known topic of the disease and death of Y. F. Samarin, a great Russian philosopher, ascetic and warrior, politician and scientist. On the basis of the extensive archival materials the author of the article presents the events panorama that allows to reconstruct certain fragments of Samarin’s life. According to the author, the strongest aspects of Samarin’s personality, supported by his belief in bodily resurrection, were revealed in the face of bodily affliction and death. His love for congenial people, relatives, and Russia dominated all the other feelings of the philosopher both during his life and at the time of his departure. The article shows that something mysterious and undisclosed still remains in Samarin s death.

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