scholarly journals The Other Dimension of Caring Thinking (with a new commentary by Phillip Cam)

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Margaret Sharp

Life comes from physical or biological survival. But the good life comes from what we care about, what we value, what we think truly important, as distinguished from what we think merely trivial. What we care about is the source of the criteria we use to evaluate ideas, ideals, persons, events, things, and their importance in our lives. And it is these criteria that determine the judgments we make in our everyday lives. In the second edition of Thinking in Education, Matthew Lipman (2002) has indicated the importance of fostering critical, creative and caring thinking in children, if one is to prepare them to make better judgments and live qualitatively better lives. He tells us that caring thinking is appreciative thinking, active thinking, normative thinking, affective thinking and empathetic thinking and then goes on to list a number of mental acts under each of these categories. Maybe it is because ‘caring thinking’ is not as common a term as ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creative thinking’ in everyday educational language that we stop for pause when we hear it. However when we read what Lipman says about caring thinking, we find ourselves nodding and saying to ourselves, ‘Yes, that makes sense. To think caringly means to think ethically, affectively, normatively, appreciatively and to actively participate in society with a concern for the common good’ (Lipman 2002, p. 271). In a real sense what we care about is manifest in how we perform, participate, build, contribute and how we relate to others. It is thinking that reveals our ideals as well as what we think is valuable, what we are willing to fight and suffer for.

Political society is established for the provision of the good life for the citizens of the society. But to ensure that the task is carried out, political societies elect or appoint leaders saddled with the responsibility of guiding, directing, leading and organizing the society. Capable and efficient political leaders help their societies to develop economically and help the citizens to have access to the good life. They are concerned about the common good of the society. Inept and inefficient leaders often are concerned about their own selfish interests and bring miseries and suffering to their peoples. In spite of the ideals of good leadership and the positive values of working for the public interest and common good of their societies, there are still many political leaders who are in power for their own sakes. Because of this there are many underdeveloped and poor societies especially in the Global South. This paper uses a critical analytic and hermeneutic method to examine and appraise the concept of the common good and its implications for political leaders. The value of the common good is applicable to every society. Political leaders everywhere are to strive for the common good. The paper finds that bad and corrupt political leaders are still prevalent in many societies in the world. The presented research will also help to designate the feature of the articulation of «common good» in the modern philosophical conceptions. The paper concludes that there is need to highlight the value of the common good that political leaders should strive for and help their societies obtain. This done there will be a higher level of peace and harmonies in political societies.


1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alfred Faulkner

There are two facts to be borne in mind in regard to Luther's whole attitude to social and economic questions. The first is that ordinarily this was a territory to be confined to experts, in which ministers should not meddle. He believed that a special knowledge was necessary to deal with some of these matters, and that they had better be left to those to whom Providence had assigned them, whether the jurists, those clever in worldly knowledge, or the authorities. The other fact is that the Church after all has social duties, and that Church and clergy must fight flagrant abuses and try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. The Church must use the Word of God against sin and sinners, and so by spiritual ministries help the needs of the time. The authorities on their part shall proceed by strict justice against evil doers. But there is another fact here which it is necessary to mention to get Luther's whole attitude, viz., that the State's function is not simply to administer justice, but to secure the general weal. They shall do the very best they can for their subjects, says Luther. “The authorities shall serve their subjects and use their office not petulantly [nicht zu Mutwillen] but for the advancement of the common good, and especially for the poor.” The princes shall give laws which shall limit as far as possible social misery and national dangers. They should listen to the proposals of the Church to this end, and on the ground of wise counsels of churchmen, do away with old laws and make new ones.


Author(s):  
Sarah E. Schoper ◽  
Craig E. Wagner

Promoting critical thinking is a demand today's teachers are asked to meet (Association of American Colleges and University [AAC&U], 2005; Hart Research Associates, 2013), yet doing so requires that teachers themselves are critical thinkers. In order to critically think, teachers must have the capacity to make meaning complexly. Making meaning complexly allows for individuals to consider experiences from multiple perspectives and make responsible, ethical decisions for the common good. In other words, complex meaning making allows for critical thinking. Thus, a method for promoting critical thinking is to develop complexity in how meaning is made, and one way to do so is to implement the learning partnerships model (Baxter Magolda, 2004). This chapter explores using the learning partnerships model in the classroom to engage in the development of how one makes meaning, so as to develop critical thinking.


Hypatia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Gurtler ◽  
Andrew F. Smith

My contribution intends to show that the traditional philosophical concept of work (Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marcuse, Arendt, Habermas, and the rest) leaves out a crucial dimension. Work is reduced, for example, to the interaction with nature, the problem of recognition, or economic self-preservation. But work also establishes an ethical relation having to do with the needs of others and to the common good—a view of work that should be of particular interest for feminist and gender philosophy. This dimension makes visible, as socially necessary work, the so-called reproductive sphere pertaining to giving birth and raising children, but it also generalizes the aspect of care, which plays a significant role in traditional woman's work. The ethical relation to the other is a characteristic feature of human work and in this sense, the possibility of working is a part of a good life.


Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni

All societies face a constant tug of war between protecting individual rights and ensuring the needs of various common goods, especially public safety and homeland security. At any point in time, one side or the other may gain too much power and must be scaled back. The chapter examines this issue by dealing with encryption, drawing on the lessons of the Crypto Wars of the 1990s and the legal case between Apple and the FBI in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack in 2016. Beyond specifics, the chapter deals with a new, liberal communitarian approach, to sorting out where the balance lies between individual rights and the common good.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Mendes ◽  
Claudelice Santos ◽  
Edel Moraes ◽  
Sônia Bone Guajajara

Abstract This narrative is the result of the round of talks “Chico Mendes Vive”, held during the III Latin American Congress of Political Ecology. It is a living experience of four Amazonian women, Angela Mendes, Claudelice Santos, Edel Moraes and Sônia Guajajara, whose speeches emerge from the experience of indigenous, black, cabocla, agro-extractivist women, who make of their lives a struggle in defense of Mother Earth and of the “common good”, which aggregates, welcomes and feeds all the other forms of being in the universe. This narrative expresses the continuity of the re-existence of native and indigenous peoples, the reconnection of the peoples of the forest, water and countryside, through the legacy left by Chico Mendes, a son of the Amazon, who was assassinated for defending and fighting for life.


Illuminatio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-191
Author(s):  
Mustafa Cerić

A crisis is a call for change and creative thinking that initiates a dialectics of thought and action. Also, the challenge for nations as well as individuals in crisis is to figure out which parts of their identities are already functioning well and do not need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing. Indeed, Muslim thought today needs the courage to recognize what must be changed in order to deal with the new circumstances. But, at the same time, Muslim scholars need to draw a line and stress the elements that are so fundamental to the faith and culture of Islam that they refuse to be changed. This state of affairs we call dialectical spiritualism, as opposed to Marxist „dialectical materialism“. It is time for humanity to meet the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is „the Spirit of Peace“ among religions and nations across the globe. History, past and present, is not void of good examples of accords, charters, declarations and commitments to peaceful coexistence between religions and nations from the Medina Charter (622), the Magna Carta Libertatum (1215), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Nostra Aetate (1965), the Declaration of European Muslims (2005), the Common Word Between Us and You (2007), the Marrakesh Declaration (2016), the Alliance of Virtue for the Common Good (2018), the Declaration of Human Fraternity (2019) to the Mecca Charter (2019). All these initiatives, past and present, promote the idea of „the Spirit of Peace“ of all times, but this current time has the biggest need of all times for the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is the „Spirit of Peace and Tolerance“. This paper attempts to explain this need from a Muslim perspective with a comparison with other initiatives.


Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

Method can mean either the steps taken to achieve church unity or the principles appropriate to the study of ecumenism. Most ecumenists have sought organic unity; they have hoped that agreement on the issue of authority would further this end. This turned out to be impossible, and recently there has been a shift from epistemology to pneumatology. This shift allows for a third option beyond the claims of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and Magisterial Protestantism, on the other, as regards ecclesial continuity. We can think of the creation of the church as the reinstantiation of primitive Christianity in the wake of Pentecost. Messianic Judaism provides telling warrant for pursuing this option. This shift also provides fresh hope for ecumenism by moving beyond conciliar conversations about doctrine, and calling instead for gift-sharing—that is, the realistic sharing of what we actually think are gifts for the common good.


2018 ◽  
pp. 88-125
Author(s):  
Milena Tripkovic

This chapter aims to translate the three models into tangible citizenship conditions, allowing us to establish whether criminal offenders ought to retain their citizenship rights post-conviction. It is argued that—under the first model—most criminals remain citizens since episodic violations do not signal a lack of capacity for a “sense of justice.” Similarly, most criminal offenders are not without “civic virtue”—they remain self-governing subjects whose civic qualities can be enhanced. Finally, while criminals certainly act against the “common good,” most remain valuable members of the community who bring forward a specific vision of the good life, which prevents the community from excluding them. All three models, however, equally point toward the existence of a small number of individuals who are without crucial citizenship requirements, and the chapter concludes that—regardless of differences between the three models—all of them similarly permit exclusions of persons with strong, incorrigible anti-social inclinations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Felder

Accounts of inclusive education that locate the concept of inclusion within theories of individual rights face two problems. The first problem, called ‘the dilemma of identity’, assumes that on one hand we need communities to develop and ensure a sense of identity and a feeling of social inclusion, whereas on the other hand, inclusion is only partly ensured via such forms of inclusion. Inclusion necessarily entails participation in societal goods such as education. The second issue is that those rights accounts do not take seriously the distinctive social nature of inclusion. In this article, I suggest a basic distinction between communal and societal inclusion that serves as a background for a fundamental suggestion: to conceptualise rights to inclusive education as part of an account of inclusion as a common good.


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