It’s in You: Structural Sin and Personal Responsibility Revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 095394682110097
Author(s):  
Brian Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Architecture

The language of structural sin is most often used to describe sin that inheres in laws, institutions, or social roles—in short, in the objective social architecture of our everyday lives. This article argues that structural sin should also be understood as including a subjective dimension, describing the determinate habits or dispositions instilled by sharing in the life of a particular society. Part of what is structured by structural sin, in other words, is agency itself. The reason that many theologians have resisted this idea is that it seems to undermine the conditions of moral responsibility. If our capacities for knowing and loving the good are always already concretely misshapen, can we rightly be held accountable for what we do? This article argues further that we can, drawing on the work of Judith Butler to sketch a fresh account of personal responsibility in the face of structural sin.

Moral Responsibility, Socially Embedded

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Face ◽  
Moral Theorizing ◽  
The Impact

This chapter asks whether we can hold on to the picture of the morally responsible subject as we knew it in the face of evidence from social psychology about the impact of contexts on human behaviour. Some theorists have taken this to present a major challenge to moral theorizing. However, the chapter argues that, while we should acknowledge the malleability of human behaviour, we should not give up the notion of responsible agency. Rather, we need to broaden our theoretical horizon in order to include individuals’ co-responsibility for the contexts in which they act. This argument is a general one, but it is of particular relevance for organizations: it is our shared responsibility to turn them into contexts in which moral agency is supported rather than undermined.

scholarly journals Individualism as a Cultural Syndrome in Recent American Cinema

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
Nina A Tsyrkun
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
The Past ◽  
Individualism And Collectivism ◽  
The Face ◽  
Survival Condition ◽  
The Way

The article explores the balance of the two basic cultural constructs - individualism and collectivism - and the way it is represented in the American cinema of 2015-2016 as exemplified by a number of films set in the past, present and future. The author comes to the conclusion that in the face of a global peril the idea of individual moral responsibility inevitably leads to the role of collectivism as the essential survival condition.

Animal rights – Jewish perspectives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronen Pinkas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Golden Rule ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Strict Adherence ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Paradigmatic Change

This article raises the question why is it that, despite Jewish tradition devoting much thought to the status and treatment of animals and showing strict adherence to the notion of preventing their pain and suffering, ethical attitudes to animals are not dealt with systematically in the writings of Jewish philosophers and have not received sufficient attention in the context of moral monotheism. What has prevented the expansion of the golden rule: »Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD« (Lev 19,18) and »That which is hateful to you do not do to another« (BT Shabbat 31a:6; JT Nedarim 30b:1) to animals? Why is it that the moral responsibility for the fellow-man, the neighbor, or the other, has been understood as referring only to a human companion? Does the demand for absolute moral responsibility spoken from the face of the other, which Emmanuel Levinas emphasized in his ethics, not radiate from the face of the non-human other as well? Levinas’s ethics explicitly negates the principle of reciprocity and moral symmetry: The ›I‹ is committed to the other, regardless of the other’s attitude towards him. Does the affinity to the eternal Thou which Martin Buber also discovers in plants and animals not require a paradigmatic change in the attitude towards animals?

scholarly journals Face Time, Pandemic Style

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 230-241
Author(s):  
Pamela M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The University ◽  
Face Time

This article considers the prospects of “facial politics” in the wake of CoVID-19. Recounted through the author's positionality as an Asian American feminist academic, the article describes her encounters in the university and the street, in the United States and China. Addressing gestures of face touching and the trope of the mask relative to its wearer, the essay draws on the work of Mel Y. Chen on the viral conjunction of race, animality, illness, and gender as inflected further by both historical and contemporary treatments of “Chineseness” and visibility. In so doing, the article reframes concepts of perfomativity and the face that are associated with Judith Butler, with the face becoming “the fallen site of discourse” under the conditions of a pandemic.

Changing (?) Gender Roles Within Conservative Communities: An Analysis of Group Interview Narratives of Bedouin Women

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 486-509
Author(s):  
Ayelet Harel-Shalev ◽  
Rebecca Kook ◽  
Feniar Elkrenawe
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Group Interview ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Face ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Group Interviews

Abstract This article focuses on the creative and innovative modes of negotiation that women in severely patriarchal societies often exhibit in their attempts to actively pursue their own goals in the face of risk. Based on group interviews with Bedouin women in southern Israel about their everyday lives, the research explores both the risks and the ways in which the women deal with them. The research expands on discussions about the nature of women’s agency in the context of the power relations prevalent in specific communities, paying attention to the multiple modes of subordination experienced by the women of such communities.

Talking to others' selves: Why a valuational paradigm of agency fails to provide an adequate theoretical framework for moral responsibility, social accountability, and legal liability

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias A. Mattei
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Liability ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Social Accountability

AbstractIn this commentary, I highlight the importance of a proper discussion of the pragmatic implications of John Doris's paradigm for allocation of personal responsibility proposed in his new book Talking to Our Selves. By employing some classic concepts of the American common law tradition, I discuss why Doris's valuational understanding of agency fails to provide an adequate framework for moral responsibility, social accountability, and legal liability.

Social Roles And Moral Responsibility

Philosophy ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 39 (147) ◽  
pp. 29-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Downie
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Analytical Models

The concept of moral responsibility has many applications. We speak, for example, of a person's responsibilities, and mean his professional or domestic commitments. In this sense a person can be said to have too many responsibilities, or none at all, and he can be said to be responsible to or for another person. Again, we can speak of the person himself as being responsible or irresponsible, and mean that he is conscientious and trustworthy in the performance of his duties or that he has a sense of responsibility. Finally, we can speak of a person as accepting responsibility for an action or another person. A thorough analysis of these complexities of usage would require the investigation of a number of background concepts, but in this paper I have the more limited object of classifying some of the usages. I propose to do this by constructing three analytical models based on the concept of a social role.

Ending Public Assistance: The Transformation of US Public Assistance Policy into Labour Policy

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOWARD JACOB KARGER
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Public Assistance ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Maintenance Policy ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Health And Human Services ◽  
Convincing Argument ◽  
Labour Policy ◽  
The Face

A convincing argument can be made that US income maintenance policy would be better housed under the Secretary of Labour than with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Begun almost 30 years ago, the transformation of public assistance policy into labour policy reached fruition with the passage of the groundbreaking Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), a bill that would dramatically transform the face of the American welfare state. Despite the inclusion of important welfare policies, the PRWORA was essentially labour policy clothed in welfare terminology. This article examines the metamorphosis of public assistance policy into labour policy and proposes alternatives to promote durable labour force attachment as well as ways to ease former recipients into the workforce through equity-based labour policies.

scholarly journals The sience and art of moral responsibility for the future

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 22-30
Author(s):  
Maryna Braterska-Dron ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Actual Problem ◽  
Great Severity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Main Thing

The article is devoted to the actual problem of the probable future of our civilization and the moral responsibility of mankind for it. In the twentieth century, humanity was actually faced with the threat of man-made destruction of life on the planet. The tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with great severity raised the question not only about the morality of science, but also the personal responsibility of the scientist for his discoveries. In particular, in 1955, the Einstein-Russell Manifesto was signed, which initiated the widely known Pahous Movement for Peace and Disarmament. Art has responded to the nuclear threat. In 1950, R. Bradbury's story "There Will Be a Graceful Rain" was published. One of the first to address the subject of doomsday was American filmmakers: R. Weiss («The Day the Earth Stalle», 1951), S. Kramer («On the Shore», 1959), S. Kubrick («Doctor Stranzhla», 1964), S. Lumet («Security System», 1964). The idea of moral responsibility of each person for his future was raised on the Soviet screen in the films: «The Escape of Mr. McKinley» (1975, M. Schweitzer), «Sacrifice» (1986, A. Tarkovsky), «Letters of the Dead Man» (1986, K. Lopushansky), «Visitor to the Museum» (1989, K. Lopushansky). It was in the 1970s and 1980s that they became a painful awareness of the insecurity and fragility of human life. It has become clear that nuclear energy can be not only a policy or an economy, but above all a tool of self-destruction. It has been scientifically justified that the greatest threat to humanity lies not where it was not expected. Nuclear war is not only the mass destruction of people, total destruction, radiation, infectious diseases, etc. The main danger is the climate change of the planet, changes in the biosphere (the effect of nuclear winter), which humanity will not be able to survive. marked by a painful awareness of the insecurity and fragility of human life. But today, the biosphere is threatened not only by human waste, environmental pollution, but also by the gradual destruction of the natural environment, the frantic depletion of natural resources, etc. The main thing that threatens our civilization is moral irresponsibility to posterity. What has to happen for humanity to realize the danger of indifference? Personal responsibility for the future of everyone and everyone for the future of everyone is the main principle of survival. The eminent philosopher M. Berdyaev wrote: «The end of the world depends on man, and he will be one way or another, depending on the actions of man... The greatest religious and moral truth to which a man must grow is that he cannot be saved alone. My salvation also involves the salvation of others, my loved ones, the salvation of the whole world, the transformation of the world».

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