De 德 Ethics in the Four Books

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-156
Author(s):  
Xinzhong Yao

Abstract Through a detailed analysis of de德 as used in the Four Books (Sishu 四書), this article is intended to examine the unity between two kinds of virtue manifested respectively through cultivating an admirable character in one’s self (moral agent) and enabling aretaic activities in the public sphere (political agent). By investigating how early Confucian masters integrate internal goodness and virtuous governance as the moral reasons for the common good and the flourishing of human community, we seek to reconstruct the ethics in the Four Books that is focused on de as the gravity center. This leads in turn to an account of a particular kind of “virtue ethics” or better, de ethics, which has underpinned all Confucian discourses on personal character and political practices.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Jan Siegemund

AbstractLibel played an important and extraordinary role in early modern conflict culture. The article discusses their functions and the way they were assessed in court. The case study illustrates argumentative spaces and different levels of normative references in libel trials in 16th century electoral Saxony. In 1569, Andreas Langener – in consequence of a long stagnating private conflict – posted several libels against the nobleman Tham Pflugk in different public places in the city of Dresden. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with ‘libelling’. Depending on the reference to conflicting social and legal norms, he had therefore been either threatened with corporal punishment including his execution, or rewarded with laudations. In this case, the act of libelling could be seen as slander, but also as a service to the community, which Langener had informed about potentially harmful transgression of norms. While the common good was the highest maxim, different and sometimes conflicting legally protected interests had to be discussed. The situational decision depended on whether the articulated charges where true and relevant for the public, on the invective language, and especially on the quality and size of the public sphere reached by the libel.


2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Darcy

AbstractA consideration of political participation in early Stuart Ireland suggests modifications to the prospectus outlined by Peter Lake and Steven Pincus in “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England.” By investigating the structures that facilitated public debates about politics in Ireland, as well as the factors that complicated it, this article challenges the periodization of the public sphere offered by Lake and Pincus and suggests that there is a clear need to integrate a transnational perspective. Unlike England, Scotland, and Wales, the majority of Ireland's population was Catholic. The flow of post-Tridentine Catholic ideas from the Continent and Anglo-Britannic political culture meant that competing ideas of what constituted the common good circulated widely in Ireland and led to debates about the nature of authority in the early modern Irish state. These divisions in Irish society created a distinctive kind of politics that created particularly unstable publics. Thus, Ireland's experience of the early modern public sphere differed considerably from concurrent developments in the wider archipelago.


1994 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
John Covaleskie

This response to Coulson's recent EPAA piece, "Human Life, Human Organizations, and Education," argues that Coulson is wrong about "human nature," social life, and the effects of unregulated capitalist markets. On these grounds, it is argued that his call to remove education from the public sphere should be rejected. The point is that education is certainly beneficial to individuals who receive it, but to think of education as purely a private and personal good properly distributed through the market is seriously to misconstrue the meaning of education. We should not care to be the sort of people who do so.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Manousos Marangudakis ◽  
Kostas Rontos

<p>The purpose of this article is to examine the condition of the civil and civic perception of the common good, and the attitudes toward the public sphere in the Greek islands of the Northern Aegean. In particular, we wish to examine whether they constitute a region of particular political-cultural characteristics. Based upon the findings of a previous study (Marangudakis, Rontos, and Xenitidou 2013), we examine the moral self in a political framework:.Following Alexander and Smith. Triandis, and Ramfos we examine the quality of specific moral attributes and value preferences vis-a-vis aspects of modern and pre-modern mentality, as well as the valueand mean- orientation of their purposeful action.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (56) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Frederico Antonio Lima OLIVEIRA ◽  
Jeferson Antonio Fernandes BACELAR

RESUMOA ideia central deste estudo é traçar alguns possíveis parâmetros para a limitação do princípio político do bem comum numa sociedade complexa como a brasileira. Objetiva-se relacionar a busca da igualdade no estado brasileiro com os limites necessários à realização do bem comum, estabelecendo a prevalência de interesses em coalisão na esfera pública em análise, ante as nossas flagrantes iniciativas desestatizantes. Vale-se como referencial teórico de Jürgen Habermas quanto à esfera pública, revendo-se a literatura com a doutrina de John Finns. Tem-se uma pesquisa básica, exploratória, bibliográfica, com abordagem qualitativa e descritiva, a fim de se obter as conclusões necessárias.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Bem Comum; Igualdade; Estado Social; Sociedade Complexa; Esfera Pública.ABSTRACTThe central idea of this study is to outline some possible parameters for limiting the political principle of the common good in a complex society such as Brazil. The objective is to relate the search for equality in the Brazilian state with the necessary limits to the realization of the common good, establishing the prevalence of interests in coalition in the public sphere under analysis, in view of our flagrant destatizing initiatives. It is worth as theoretical reference of Jürgen Habermas as far as the public sphere, being reviewed the literature with the doctrine of John Finns. We have a basic, exploratory, bibliographic research, with a qualitative and descriptive approach, in order to obtain the necessary conclusions.KEYWORDS: Common Good; Equality; Social State; Complex Society; Public Sphere.


Author(s):  
Marta Postigo Asenjo

RESUMENEl sistema patriarcal no afecta exclusivamente al poder político y judicial, sino que afecta a la estructura interna de la sociedad, la identidad y las formas de vida de los individuos que en ella viven. Para comprender mejor como condiciona el sistema patriarcal las formas de vida y la visión que tienen los individuos de la realidad social, hemos de analizar el modo en que se extiende al orden institucional y lo determina mediante "tipificaciones" de hechos y de personas y mediante roles concretos, esteoreotipaciones sexiuales que obstaculizan el acceso a la esfera pública de la mujer, así como su reinserción en el mercado laboral, en suma, todo aquello que afecta al conocimiento común que comparten los miembros de una comunidad. El cambio hacia una mayor igualdad y una real democracia paritaria y compartida no es posible sin una paulatina educación y concienciación de la sociedad en su conjunto.PALABRAS CLAVEPATRIARCADO-TIPIFICACIÓN SOCIAL-IGUALDAD DE GÉNEROABSTRACTPatriarchalism is not only present in politics and the judicial system. It also affects the internal structure of society, above all the life and identitý of individuals. To understand better how it conditions their ways of life and the vision the individuals have of social reality, we should study how patriarchalism r3eaches the system of institutions and how this becomes determined by "typifications" of facts and people, and by certain roles or sexual stereotypes that hinder the access of women both to the public sphere and to tha labor market. It sum, everything that concerns the common knowledge that the members of a community share. The move towards more equality and towards a more egalitarian democracy heavily depends on the spread of civic education to the entire society.KEYWORDSPATRIARCHALISM-SOCIAL TYPIFICATION-GENDER EQUALITY


Author(s):  
Andrew M. Yuengert

Although most economists are skeptical of or puzzled by the Catholic concept of the common good, a rejection of the economic approach as inimical to the common good would be hasty and counterproductive. Economic analysis can enrich the common good tradition in four ways. First, economics embodies a deep respect for economic agency and for the effects of policy and institutions on individual agents. Second, economics offers a rich literature on the nature of unplanned order and how it might be shaped by policy. Third, economics offers insight into the public and private provision of various kinds of goods (private, public, common pool resources). Fourth, recent work on the development and logic of institutions and norms emphasizes sustainability rooted in the good of the individual.


Author(s):  
Neil Rhodes

This chapter begins by presenting translation as an aspect of the Erasmian legacy in England, and it argues that translation helps to heal the division discussed in Chapter 3 by enabling Protestantism and humanism to work together. Translation was part of a Protestant programme of nation-building and spreading the word for the common good, but it was also the means through which the literature of antiquity and of modern Europe was communicated to the public at large. Erasmus’ Paraphrases, Grimald's Cicero, and Hoby's Courtier are discussed in these two contexts. Translation points towards the Renaissance, as an insular purism based on Protestant fears of contamination and adulteration was superseded by a hospitality towards the foreign. The chapter ends by arguing that by the 1580s it is Protestant Bible translation that it is accused by Catholics of being literary.


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