Moral Cultivation: Japanese Gardens, Personal Ideals, and Ecological Citizenship

ABSTRACT:What is it to have and act on a personal ideal? Someone who aspires to be a philosopher might imaginatively think ‘I am a philosopher’ by way of motivating herself to think hard about a philosophical question. But doing so seems to require her to act on an inaccurate self-description, given that she is not yet what she regards herself as being. J. David Velleman develops the thought that action-by-ideal involves a kind of fictional self-conception. My aim is to expand our thinking about personal ideals by developing another way of understanding them. On this view action-by-ideal involves a kind of metaphorical self-conception. I investigate some salient differences between these views with the aim of understanding the different perspectives they take on the rationality of action-by-ideal. Where the fiction view runs into problems of literary coherence, the metaphor view exploits the richness of poetic invention. But action-by-ideal is a complex phenomenon about which there may be no tidy story to be told. This paper is an attempt to clarify and understand more of this messy terrain.

Download Full-text

"The Presence of the Other is a Presence that Teaches": Levinas, Pragmatism, and Pedagogy

Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy ◽

10.1163/105369906779159607 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 14 (1-2) ◽

pp. 91-108 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Claire Elise Katz

Keyword(s):

Educational Philosophy ◽

Jewish Education ◽

Positive Response ◽

Political Community ◽

The Other ◽

Ethical Framework ◽

The Political ◽

Moral Cultivation ◽

Ethical Response ◽

Ethical Project

AbstractAlthough Levinas talks about ethics as a response to the other, most scholars assume that this "response" is not something tangible—it is not an actual giving of food or providing of shelter and clothing. But there is evidence in Levinas's own writings that indicate he does intend for a positive response to the Other. In any event, while he acknowledges that the other is the sole person I wish to kill, killing the other, within an ethical framework would be a violation of that response. The failure to respond to the other ethically requires us to ask if Levinas's project needs an educational philosophy or a model of moral cultivation to supplement it. This essay explores this question by putting into conversation Levinas's ethical project and his interest in Jewish education with John Dewey's philosophy of education and its relationship to the political community. This exploration will help us see what this field of research might offer in promoting the cultivation of ethical response as Levinas envisions it and what its limits are.

Download Full-text

Lecturers’ perspectives on how introductory economic courses address sustainability

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education ◽

10.1108/ijshe-03-2013-0020 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 44-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Tom L. Green

Keyword(s):

Environmental Literacy ◽

External Pressure ◽

Economic Thought ◽

Ecological Literacy ◽

Content Type ◽

American University ◽

Study Approach ◽

Ecological Citizenship ◽

Economics Courses ◽

Introductory Economics

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to explore sustainability commitments’ potential implications for the curriculum of introductory economics courses. Universities have signed the Talloires Declaration, committing themselves to promoting students’ environmental literacy and ecological citizenship, thereby creating pressure to integrate sustainability across the curriculum. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach involving qualitative research methods and the three largest public universities in British Columbia, Canada, was used. As one component of a larger study, 11 of the 19 economists who delivered the course over the study period were interviewed. The theoretical framework was informed by ecological economics scholarship on how mainstream economic thought represents environment-economy linkages. Findings – Findings suggest that universities’ sustainability commitments have not influenced principles of economics curriculum. Sustainability is not salient to lecturers; prospects that mainstream economics departments will integrate sustainability into curriculum in a timely manner without external pressure appear limited. Practical implications – While institutions often enthusiastically report on courses that contribute to students’ ecological literacy, identifying curriculum that may confound student understanding of sustainability receives less emphasis. Introductory economics courses appear to merit scrutiny from this perspective. Originality/value – About 40 per cent of North American university students take an introductory economics course, relatively few take more advanced economics courses. This course, thus, teaches many students economic theory and the economics profession’s approach to evaluating public policy, and has potential to contribute to knowledge of sustainability. Few studies examine how undergraduate economics curriculum addresses sustainability.

Download Full-text

Ecological Citizenship and Social Representation of Water

SAGE Open ◽

10.1177/2158244011417897 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 215824401141789 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marta Biagi ◽

Mariano Ferro

Keyword(s):

Social Representation ◽

Ecological Citizenship

Download Full-text

What is Safe? Cultural Citizenship, Visual Culture and Risk

Sociological Research Online ◽

10.5153/sro.1105 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 157-166 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nick Stevenson

Keyword(s):

Visual Culture ◽

Consumer Culture ◽

Cultural Citizenship ◽

Risk Society ◽

Commercial Culture ◽

Ecological Citizenship ◽

Contemporary Media

Questions of cultural citizenship and risk have become central to contemporary sociological debates. This paper seeks to relate these concerns to a discussion of ecological citizenship and questions of visual and commercial culture. In the first section, I argue that ecological citizenship needs to avoid a moralistic rejection of the pleasures of contemporary visual and consumer culture. Such a possibility I argue has become evident in recent debates on the risk society. However, I argue despite Beck's realisation that questions of risk become defined through contemporary media his analysis remains overly distant from more everyday understandings. In order to address this question, I seek to demonstrate how an interpretative understanding of visual culture (in this case the 1995 film Safe) might help us develop more complex understandings of the competing cultures of risk and citizenship.

Download Full-text

Personality, situation, and positive–negative asymmetry in socially desirable responding

European Journal of Personality ◽

10.1002/per.2410090206 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 125-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Marjaana Lindeman ◽

Markku Verkasalo

Keyword(s):

Impression Management ◽

Social Desirability ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Self Esteem ◽

Socially Desirable Responding ◽

Personal Ideals ◽

Public Setting ◽

Extreme Responses ◽

Private Setting ◽

Psychological Determinant

Based on previous research on socially desirable responding and positive—negative asymmetry, we hypothesized that (i) impression management is higher in public than in private settings, (ii) personal ideals linked to exemplification, ingratiation, and intimidation are related to an impression management tendency, (iii) negatively keyed social desirability items receive more extreme responses than positively keyed items, and (iv) self‐esteem is correlated higher with negatively than with positively keyed self‐deception items. Based on Jones and Pittman's (1982) model, exemplification, ingratiation, and intimidation are defined as impression management strategies that aim at presenting oneself as worthy, likable, or dangerous, respectively. Principally, the results obtained in a public setting (N=177) and a private setting (N= 165) support these hypotheses. The overall pattern of findings suggests that both context and personal ideals exert an influence on impression management scores, and that the keying direction of an item may be an important psychological determinant of a test response.

Download Full-text