scholarly journals Instaurer la "juste distance." Autonomie, justice et vulnérabilité dans l'oeuvre de Paul Ricœur

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elodie Boublil
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Relationship Of

How can one overcome self-centeredness in order to care for and do justice to significant others as well as foreigners? “Establish the right distance,” is the imperative that Ricœur formulates in order to address the paradox of autonomy and vulnerability, and to reintroduce an ethical conception of justice at the heart of political power. This article shows how understanding justice in light of vulnerability leads us to take into account both the violence coextensive with social relations and political conflicts and the restoration of agency required by such circumstances. Whether it is conceived in light of difference (otherness to self), dissimilarity (recognition of each one) or interval (creative interpretation of meaning), the “right distance” that Ricœur calls for is based on a symbolic topography of the common good, which establishes a relationship of interdependence between the subject and others.

Theology as Work: The Mandatum and the Rights of Labor

Horizons ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-134
Author(s):  
Patrick T. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Safe Working

ABSTRACTMany oppose the mandatum as a threat to the academic freedom of Catholic scholars and the autonomy and credibility of Catholic universities. But the imposition of this juridical bond on working theologians is also in tension with Catholic Social Teaching on the rights and dignity of labor. Work is the labor necessary to earn our daily bread. But it is also the vocation by which we realize ourselves as persons and the profession through which we contribute to the common good. Thus, along with the right to a just wage and safe working conditions, Catholic Social Teaching defends workers' rights to a full partnership in the enterprise, and calls upon the church to be a model of participation and cooperation. The imposition of the mandatum fails to live up to this standard and threatens the jobs and vocations of theologians while undermining this profession's contribution to the church.

Aristotle

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-50
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Aristotle agrees with Plato that virtue requires the cooperation of the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, and that the virtuous person is always better off than the non-virtuous, even though virtue alone is not sufficient for happiness. To strengthen Plato’s argument for this claim, he offers a more detailed account of the nature of happiness, and of the relation between virtue and happiness. Since happiness is the supreme human good, it should be identified with rational activity in accordance with virtue in a complete life, in which external circumstances are favourable. A virtue of character is the appropriate agreement between the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, aiming at fine action (i.e., action that promotes the common good). This requirement of appropriate agreement distinguishes virtue from continence (mere control of the rational over the non-rational part). To show that a life of virtue, so defined, promotes the agent’s happiness, Aristotle argues that one’s own happiness requires the right kind of friendship with others, in which one aims at the good of others for their own sake.

Guildsmen, religious reform and the search for the common good: the role of the guilds in the early Reformation in Augsburg

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Broadhead
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Urban Commons ◽  
Capital Intensive

ABSTRACTThis article examines the forces that shaped the responses of the urban commons to the Reformation in Augsburg. Developing work by Blickle and others, it considers the extent to which traditional communal ideals were reflected in measures to construct a system of ‘sacral corporatism’. An examination of the attitudes of guildsmen towards communal values and institutions shows variation in their views, even on such basic points as the identification and imposition of the ‘common good’. Case studies show how predominantly poor weavers were attracted to the call to enforce communal principles as a means of defending their status and incomes. To this end they welcomed evangelical teaching, for it provided scriptural and ethical endorsements of corporate action. In contrast, members of the butchers' guild, who were involved in a capital intensive occupation, resisted communal restraints on their freedom to trade and make profits. The butchers' opposition to the Reformation rested more on their rejection of ‘sacral corporatism’, as advocated by reformers in Augsburg, than on support for Catholicism. Augsburg shows the significance of communal values in the urban Reformation, but it demonstrates that these were neither static nor uniformly accepted. On the contrary they were themselves the subject of dispute.

The Purpose and Practice of a Public Theology in a Time of Climate Change

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Level Of Concern ◽  
Opinion Polls

AbstractThe nature of a public theology is to concern itself with the common good and the flourishing of all. The subject of climate change is to the forefront of the public agenda. Now and then the level of concern can slip down the opinion polls and it does attract a concerted degree of scepticism. It is nevertheless an issue that can allow us to consider the purpose and practice of a public theology. This article sets out to draw upon the insights of others who have contributed to this issue of the International Journal of Public Theology. It also sets out to place this work inside other discussions on what is a public theology and its intersection with an ecotheology.

A Failure of Modernization: Police Reform, The “Common Good,” and Serfdom In Eighteenth-Century Russia

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation

For Russian subjects not locked away in their villages and thereby subject almost exclusively to landlord control, administration in the eighteenth century increasingly took the form of the police. And as part of the bureaucracy of governance, the police existed within the constructions of the social order—as part of social relations and their manifestations through political control. This article investigates the social and mental structures—the habitus—in which the actions of policing took place to provide a better appreciation of the difficulties of reform and modernization. Eighteenth-century Russia shared in the European discourse on the common good, the police, and social order. But whereas Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff see police development in Europe with its concern to surveil and discipline emerging from incipient capitalism and thus a product of new, post-Enlightenment social forces, the Russian example demonstrates the power of the past, of a habitus rooted in Muscovy. Despite Peter’s and especially Catherine’s well-intended efforts, Russia could not succeed in modernization, for police reforms left the enserfed part of the population subject to the whims of landlord violence, a reflection, in part, of Russia having yet to make the transition from the feudal manorial economy based on extra-economic compulsion to the capitalist hired-labor estate economy. The creation of true centralized political organization—the creation of the modern state as defined by Max Weber—would require the state’s domination over patrimonial jurisdiction and landlord control over the police. That necessitated the reforms of Alexander II.

The common good as an invisible hand: Machiavelli's legacy to public management

2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Rochet
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Complex Decision Making ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Public management has been dominated by the quest for efficiency and has left us with fundamental ethical questions that remain unresolved. It is argued that Machiavellian thought may provide us with concepts and tools applicable to ruling societies confronted with uncertainties and change that are (1) in line with the most recent insights into institutional evolution and (2) appropriate to solve complex decision-making problems. The common good — a central concept of Machiavelli's thought — appears to be an invisible hand that lowers the transaction costs and acts as the keystone of complex public affairs thinking. This analysis is illustrated by a comparative case study of the two management projects of infrastructure crossing the Alps, the AlpTransit in Switzerland, and the Lyon Torino Link. It concludes with a proposal to upgrade the research program in public management that allows effectiveness (legitimacy of the ends) and effectiveness in its implementation. Points for practitioners The mainstream of public management theories and reform has been dominated by the quest of efficiency as a Holy Grail. I argue that theses reforms didn't deliver with their promises and left us with fundamental ethical questions unresolved: doing things right do not answer to the question of doing the right things. The main reason is a profound misunderstanding of the very nature of the ongoing change process that makes any kind one size fits all recipes inappropriate. Such a sea change occurred in the Renaissance era and Machiavelli bequeathed us a comprehensive understanding of how to rule a public body in a changing and uncertain world. I explain Machiavelli's misunderstood legacy and apply his teaching to analyzing two huge management projects of public infrastructures. I conclude on what has to be upgrade in the research programmes in public management to confront with the challenges of our era that call for a back to basics of classical political philosophy

Between Scylla and Charybdis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pia Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ius Gentium

In the process of secularization of legal institutions, the thirteenth century—with all its political conflicts between emperors and popes—is relevant to understand the evolution of those institutions in modernity. Contextualized in that period, this chapter shows the importance of Aquinas’s line of thought about the common good, law, and right in this process. In general, the context of Aquinas’s era and his personal circumstances were characterized by tensions between two perilous alternatives, the imperial and the papal power. Because of this, Aquinas was cautious to express his opinion in specific political issues of the time. This chapter argues that, in spite of Aquinas’s caution in putting forward his political ideas, the essence of his political thought and his opposition to the theocratic theory of government could be inferred also from his notions of natural law and ius gentium, in which he addressed the basic issues of property rights and slavery.

The Ethics of Voting

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right

Nothing is more integral to democracy than voting. Most people believe that every citizen has the civic duty or moral obligation to vote, that any sincere vote is morally acceptable, and that buying, selling, or trading votes is inherently wrong. This book challenges our fundamental assumptions about voting, revealing why it is not a duty for most citizens—in fact, it argues, many people owe it to the rest of us not to vote. Bad choices at the polls can result in unjust laws, needless wars, and calamitous economic policies. The book shows why voters have duties to make informed decisions in the voting booth, to base their decisions on sound evidence for what will create the best possible policies, and to promote the common good rather than their own self-interest. They must vote well—or not vote at all. This book explains why voting is not necessarily the best way for citizens to exercise their civic duty, and why some citizens need to stay away from the polls to protect the democratic process from their uninformed, irrational, or immoral votes. In a democracy, every citizen has the right to vote. This book reveals why sometimes it's best if they don't. In a new afterword, “How to Vote Well,” the book provides a practical guidebook for making well-informed, well-reasoned choices at the polls.

Republicanism and Public Affairs

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Iseult Honohan
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
First Century ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Although Irish republicanism is often elided with separatist nationalism, broader republican ideals of freedom, self-government, and the common good have also been prominent in Irish political discourse. This chapter examines the relationship of Irish republican thinking with the wider historical republican tradition and its contemporary expressions, and it assesses the impact of those ideals in Irish politics. In the state’s first century national freedom coexisted with extensive relationships of domination. Self-government was constrained within narrow institutional forms. The common good was defined in communitarian and authoritarian terms, and was often obscured by sectional interests. Extensive social and political changes that have taken place more recently have been in a mainly liberal direction, with less emphasis on republican ideals. Yet republican ideals have a continuing relevance for the wider concerns faced by contemporary Irish society.

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