The Impact of the Merchant’s Confession in the Development of Business Law during the Siglo de Oro: the Casuistic Approach of Tomàs de Mercado and Martin de Azpilcueta to Commercial Law.

In 16th century Spain, the confessor and the merchant had a privileged relationship, resulting from the new economic practices induced by the Great Discoveries. The merchant must, for the salvation of his soul, engage in commercial activity in accordance with Christian morality. Through confession, the confessor provides legal and theological advices necessary to achieve this purpose, but also judges the morality of his penitent by deciding whether or not to absolve him. Therefore, the confessor must know both the Christian moral precepts designed to govern business life, and the institutions of civil law used in business practice. An issue raised by the penitent is a case of conscience, which the confessor must resolve by formulating a moral resolution. This resolution could be a certain or only a probable one, and therefore subject to debate against other probable opinions. These resolutions were then incorporated among others into the casuistic literature that was to be diffused throughout Europe for the use of both confessors and penitents.

MOTIFS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN ZACHARIAS TOPELIUS POETRY

The article analyzes the motifs of Christian ethics in the poetry of a Finnish poet, writer, historian, and journalist Zacharias Topelius, whose artistic world view was shaped under the influence of the ideological and aesthetic Christian tradition. The relevance of the topic is determined by the growing interest in studying the representation of the motives of Christian morality in the works of European writers, as well as by the fact that the topic has not been sufficiently studied in Russia. References to the biblical texts enable us to trace the spiritual development of Topelius’s lyrical hero into the conscious cognition of his purpose. The author identifies the dominant set of Christian motifs represented by the motifs of purification and humility of soul through suffering. It is proved that Topelius’s works form a consistently built individual author’s model of the artistic embodiment of the main provisions of Christianity.

A Righteous Consensus, Whig Style

Various Protestant denominations founded hundreds of colleges during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even two-thirds of presidents of state universities were clergymen. Though those in the Reformed tradition tended to be the leading educators, denominational diversity and necessities of attracting varieties of students weakened doctrinal distinctives. The prevailing “Whig” ideal emphasized combining building a modern civilization with Christian morality. Educators, such as Francis Wayland or Mark Hopkins, confidently assumed that the best of objective common sense and modern science would support traditional Christianity. Colleges still promoted the evangelical tradition, as in campus revivals. They taught the classics as a way of developing moral faculties, as the Yale Report of 1828 advocated. Specifically Christian perspectives were found in capstone moral philosophy courses.

Do Christian and secular moralities exclude one another?

The objective of the article was to critique two cognitive strategies used by both proponents of Christian and secular moralities to justify an exclusionary relationship between them, thus contributing to the conflict between them. They are the cognitive strategies of foundationalism and incompatibilism. The objective was also to resume a critical discussion of these two strategies in Wentzel van Huyssteen’s publications. The method followed was, first, to provide a historical reconstruction of the relationship between Christian faith and the secular and, second, a critical analysis of Richard Dawkins’ foundationalist view of secular morality and Stanley Hauerwas’ incompatibilist view of Christian morality. Findings were that influential views of a positive relationship between Christian faith and secular morality are found in history, and that the foundationalist view of Dawkins and the incompatibilist view of Hauerwas are both untenable and contextually inappropriate. This led to the conclusion that there is no justification for the view that Christian morality and secular moralities necessarily exclude one another. The remaining challenge to find an alternative approach that would allow for a more positive relationship between these two moralities and provide guidance on adaptations they need to make was also identified.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The Christian ethical research undertaken in the article drew on research findings in the fields of Christian Ethics, Church History, philosophy, evolutionary ethics and psychology. Research results present Christian and philosophical ethics with the challenge to find an acceptable alternative for the problematic foundationalist and incompatibilist approaches.

Ressentiment

This chapter attempts to circumscribe the character of ressentiment, the affect that plays a prominent role in Nietzsche’s genealogical account of Christian morality. This affect, and the revengefulness that is closely associated with it, is a response to suffering when it is construed as challenging the agent’s standing, understood in a fundamental non-moral sense of having the world reflect her will, or having her presence in the world make a difference in it. Suffering is so construed when it is experienced from the perspective of a special drive, the will to power, or the drive toward bending the world to one’s will. Revenge aims to bolster or restore power when it is threatened, and the adoption of the conceptual apparatus of Christian morality, including its new values, is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent’s will (her values), it alters what counts as power for her.

Good and Evil

This chapter examines Nietzsche’s genealogical account of the concepts “good and evil.” I suggest that the introduction of this conceptual pair involves two fundamental innovations, both of which motivated by ressentiment: a normative concept of equality, or the idea that all human beings have equal worth; and a certain conception of moral agency, centered around the possession of freedom of will, which underwrite a descriptive concept of equality, or the idea that all moral agents are not only subject to the new evaluative categories, but also may be expected to comply with them. I also examine the sense in which the invention of Christian morality constitutes an imaginary revenge, and argue that this indicates a change in the very character of the revenge, rather than an ordinary act of revenge that is merely imagined. I conclude with a discussion of the manner in which self-deception is involved in this imaginary revenge.

The Will to Nothingness

In the present study, I develop an interpretation of the critical approach to morality (especially Christian morality), which Nietzsche develops in On the Genealogy of Morality. My approach is framed by his characterization of its three essays as psychological studies, and more specifically as applications of his claim that moralities are “signs” or “symptoms” of the affective states of moral agents. The relation between morality and affects envisioned here is functional, rather than expressive. The genealogical inquiries are designed to show how Christian morality is well suited to serve certain emotional needs. They reveal the role played by a particular emotional need, manifested in the affect of ressentiment and the urge for revenge. This is the need to have the world reflect one’s will, which is rooted in a special drive toward power, or toward bending the world to one’s will. Revenge is plausibly understood as aiming to bolster or restore power when it is threatened, and the adoption of the conceptual apparatus of Christian morality, including its new values, is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent’s will (her values), it alters what counts as power for her. By thus revealing how it is well suited to play such a functional role in the emotional economy of moral agents, the genealogical inquiries arouse critical suspicion toward Christian morality. The use of this moral outlook as an instrument of revenge is problematic not because it is immoral, but because it is functionally self-undermining.

Diabolical perspectives on healthy morality in times of COVID-19

PurposeThe paper combines the systems theoretical perspective on the evolution of societal differentiation and the emergence of codes in communication. By combining the approach by Niklas Luhmann with a historical theology on the development of Christian morality split between God and Devil, it recreates a sociological point of observation on contemporary moral forms by a temporary occupation of the retired Christian Devil.Design/methodology/approachThe article combines a Luhmannian systems theoretical perspective on the evolution of societal differentiation with a concept of emerging codes in communication. The latter is based on on the development of a Christian view of morality being split between God and Devil. It establishes a sociological point of observation on contemporary moral forms through the temporary invocation of the retired figure of the Christian Devil.FindingsThe proposed perspective develops a healthy perspective on the exuberant distribution of a health(y) morality across the globe during the pandemic crisis of 2020–21. The temporary invocation of the retired Christian Devil as point of departure in this sociological analysis allows for a disturbing view on the unlimited growth of the morality of health and its inherent dangers of dedifferentiating the highly specialised forms of societal differentiation and organisation.Originality/valueBy applying the diabolical perspective, the analytical framework creates a unique opportunity to observe the moral encodings of semantic forms in detail, while keeping the freedom of scientific enquiry to choose amongst available distinctions in the creation of sound empirical knowledge. This article adopts a neutral stance, for the good of sociological analysis. The applications of the term “evil” to observations of communication are indifferent to anything but itself and its qualities as scientific enquiry.

The Ideal Type

This chapter considers Nietzsche’s picture of the ideal human being. It defends the thesis that Nietzsche’s ideal type possesses three essential features: psychological stability (understood as strength of will), psychological unity (understood, roughly, as lack of self-alienation), and the capacity to create one’s own values. The author contends that Nietzsche builds value creation into his picture of the ideal human because of the particular condition of his late-modern European readers, whom he perceives as being in the grip of the values of Judaeo-Christian morality, which causes the self to be divided. Hence, Nietzsche believes that the only way for late-modern Europeans to regain the kind of unity required for them to approximate, if not fully embody, his ideal type consists in rejecting those self-alienating values and creating new ones.