scholarly journals What Does Morality Require When We Disagree?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Martin Marchman Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reason ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Decisive Reason

In “Principled Compromise and the Abortion Controversy” Simon C. May argues that we do not have a principled moral reason to compromise. While I seek to understand how more precisely we are to understand this suggestion, I also object to it: I argue that we have a principled moral reason to accept democratic decisions that we disagree with, and that this can only be so if disagreement can change what the all things considered right political position is. But if this is so, then also a principled moral reason to compromise is possible. I suggest that there is a class of procedures, including compromise, voting, expert delegation, and coin flip, such that when we disagree about what justice requires, we have a principled moral reason (though not necessarily a decisive reason) to engage in one of these procedures.

Abortion and Moral Risk

Philosophy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Moller
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Practical Judgment ◽  
General Issue ◽  
Moral Risk ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractIt is natural for those with permissive attitudes toward abortion to suppose that, if they have examined all of the arguments they know against abortion and have concluded that they fail, their moral deliberations are at an end. Surprisingly, this is not the case, as I argue. This is because the mere risk that one of those arguments succeeds can generate a moral reason that counts against the act. If this is so, then liberals may be mistaken about the morality of abortion. However, conservatives who claim that considerations of risk rule out abortion in general are mistaken as well. Instead, risk-based considerations generate an important but not necessarily decisive reason to avoid abortion. The more general issue that emerges is how to accommodate fallibilism about practical judgment in our decision-making.

Kantian indifference about moral reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reason ◽  
Christine Korsgaard ◽  
Philosophical Assumption

Abstract The pessimistic arguments May challenges depend on an anti-Kantian philosophical assumption. That assumption is that what I call philosophical optimists about moral reason are also committed to empirical optimism, or what May calls “optimistic rationalism.” I place May's book in the literature by explaining how that assumption is resisted by Christine Korsgaard, one of May's examples of a contemporary Kantian.

Dowagers, Debs, Nuns and Babies: The Politics of Nostalgia and the Older Woman in the British Sunday Night Television Serial

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estella Tincknell
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Mature Female ◽  
Older Woman ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Popular Television

The extensive commercial success of two well-made popular television drama serials screened in the UK at prime time on Sunday evenings during the winter of 2011–12, Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–) and Call the Midwife (BBC, 2012–), has appeared to consolidate the recent resurgence of the period drama during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as reassembling something like a mass audience for woman-centred realist narratives at a time when the fracturing and disassembling of such audiences seemed axiomatic. While ostensibly different in content, style and focus, the two programmes share a number of distinctive features, including a range of mature female characters who are sufficiently well drawn and socially diverse as to offer a profoundly pleasurable experience for the female viewer seeking representations of aging femininity that go beyond the sexualised body of the ‘successful ager’. Equally importantly, these two programmes present compelling examples of the ‘conjunctural text’, which appears at a moment of intense political polarisation, marking struggles over consent to a contemporary political position by re-presenting the past. Because both programmes foreground older women as crucial figures in their respective communities, but offer very different versions of the social role and ideological positioning that this entails, the underlying politics of such nostalgia becomes apparent. A critical analysis of these two versions of Britain's past thus highlights the ideological investments involved in period drama and the extent to which this ‘cosy’ genre may legitimate or challenge contemporary political claims.

Objectivity of Scientific Research as an Ethical and Political Position (Book Review: P.P. Tolochko. Ukraine between Russia and the West: Historical and Nonfiction Essays. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018)

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (11) ◽  
pp. 144-153
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Zapesotsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The West ◽  
Full Member ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Nonfiction Essays ◽  
The Impact

Book Review: P.P. Tolochko. Ukraine between Russia and the West: Historical and Nonfiction Essays. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018. - 592 pp. ISBN 978-5-7621-0973-4This author discusses the problem of scientific objectivity and reviews a book written by the medievalist-historian P.P. Tolochko, full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), honorable director of the NASU Institute of Archaeology. The book was published by the Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences in the autumn of 2018. The book presents a collection of articles and reports devoted to processes in Ukraine and, first of all, in Ukrainian historical science, which, at the moment, is experiencing an era of serious reformation of its interpretative models. The author of the book shows that these models are being reformed to suit the requirements of the new ideology, with an obvious disregard for the conduct of objective scientific research. In this regard, the problem of objectivity of scientific research becomes the subject of this review because the requirement of objectivity can be viewed not only as a methodological requirement but also as a moral and political position, opposing the rigor of scientific research to the impact of ideological, political and moral systems and judgments. It is concluded that in this sense the position of P.P. Tolochko can be considered as the act of profound ethical choice.

Статус, награда и роскошь: некоторые заметки по материальному обмену между Россией и Османской империей

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hedda, Reindl-Kiel
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Similar Function ◽  
Royal Palace ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Global Player ◽  
Precious Stones

Abstract The motivation of the Ottoman sultans to commence and to keep diplomatic contacts with Muscovy was largely due to their demand for luxury commodities such as sable fur and walrus tusks. The royal court used furs as clear status markers, particularly when bestowing robes of honour upon dignitaries. This feature allows glimpses into the deeply hierarchical structure of Ottoman society, which had only little formal divisions. Moreover, the royal palace used sable fur in a similar function as precious stones in decorating the setting when receiving foreign diplomats. Imports from the Ottoman Empire to Russia are not documented in the Turkish archives. The same is true for diplomatic gifts from the Ottoman court to Moscow. Only from the 18thcentury onwards gift packages to the court of St. Petersburg are recorded, indicating Russias political position as a European global player in the view of the Porte.Аннотация Одной из причин инициации и поддержания дипломатических контактов с Московией для Османских султанов было желание обладать определенными предметами роскоши собольими мехами и моржовыми бивнями. При дворе меха служили маркерами статуса, особенно если мантии вручались первыми лицами как награда за какие-либо заслуги. Более того когда во дворце готовили покои к приему иностранных дипломатов, собольи меха использовались в качестве украшения интерьера, как и драгоценные камням. В Турецких архивах нет документов об импорте товаров из Османской империи в Россию, дипломатические подарки Османского двора Московии также документально не зафиксированы. Только начиная с XVIII в. велась запись подарков-подношений ко двору в Санкт-Петербурге. Согласно этим документам Россия воспринималась Османской империей в качестве значимого политического игрока.

The Organisation and Political Position of Serbs in Croatia

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Škiljan
Keyword(s):  
Political Position

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Strategic Bargaining ◽  
Canadian Army ◽  
Actual Conflict

Montaigne offers what is perhaps the first historical instance of the now-ubiquitous phrase “public reason.” Whereas contemporary use of this phrase refers to activities of moral reason-giving, Montaigne uses it to refer to the health of public institutions, conventions, and activities that allow parties in potential and actual conflict to negotiate civil peace and other public goods, whether through moral reasoning, strategic bargaining, or other forms of interaction. This chapter engages with two recent instances of Montaignian public reason in action: the local negotiation of “civil alliance” between Jews and Arabs in the lands of the Palestinian Mandate in 1947–1948 and the negotiation of conflict resolution during an armed standoff between the Canadian army and Mohawk warriors outside Montréal, Quebec in the summer of 1990.

Bayle, the Bible, and the Remonstrant Tradition at the Time of the Commentaire philosophique

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria-Cristina Pitassi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reason ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Absolute Norm ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status

Bayle’s equivocal relationship to Arminianism is here examined from the perspective of the status of the Bible. Though rejecting the doctrine that every word was to be considered divinely inspired, Bayle did defend the divinity of Scripture in his polemic with Jean Le Clerc. For Le Clerc, biblical criticism could solve theological conflicts by discovering the authentic meaning of Scripture, but Bayle insisted that natural light precedes exegesis, and revelation is limited to those matters that do not conflict with reason. He dissociates himself from Socinianism by distinguishing moral from speculative reason. Only moral reason offers an absolute norm. Bayle disregards the Arminian distinction between what is against reason and what is beyond reason. His Commentaire philosophique juxtaposes the natural light that can identify divine elements in the Bible with our historical reality that frustrates its capacity for apprehending religious truths. Thus Bayle inevitably clashes with the Arminian tradition.

Technical or political? The socialist economic calculation debate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiago Camarinha Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Austrian School ◽  
Economic Calculation ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Socialist Economic ◽  
Technical Terms

Abstract The paper presents both the key arguments and the historical context of the socialist economic calculation debate. I argue that Oskar Lange presented the most developed strategy to deal with bourgeois economics, decisively helping to create the scientific consensus that rational economic calculation under socialism is possible. Lange’s arguments based on standard economic theory reveal that the most ardent defenders of capitalism cannot reject socialism on technical terms and that, as a consequence, the Austrian School was left with no choice but to diverge from mainstream economics in its search to develop a framework that could support its political position. This shows that Mises’ challenge from 1920 was solved and has been replaced by a political posture developed by Hayek and leading Austrians economists, who have been struggling since the 1980s to revise the standard interpretation of the socialist economic calculation debate. I argue that this revision should not be uncritically accepted and conclude that socialism cannot be scientifically rejected; it can only be politically rejected, by those whose economic interests it opposes.

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