Dissertation•
Religious discrimination in the South African workplace
01 Jan 2016-
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of the state of the art in the field of bioinformatics: http://www.biomedical-information-engineering.org/
Abstract: ........................................................................................................... xvii
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: The Columbia Classics in Philosophy (Expanded Edition), by John Rawls, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 (first edition 1993), ISBN: 0231130899, 490 pages, US$27.
Abstract: Review(s) of: Columbia Classics in Philosophy (Expanded Edition), by John Rawls, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 (first edition 1993), ISBN: 0231130899, 490 pages, US$27.
69 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the Court's opinion in Atkins focused on human dignity concerns arising from an evolved moral standard, a national consensus that it is morally wrong to impose the death penalty on mentally retarded.
Abstract: In Lawrence v. Texas, human dignity played a prominent role in the Supreme Court's constitutional decision-making. In some instances, the Court has decided cases based on the notion that human dignity underlies express and unenumerated constitutional guarantees; only by advancing human dignity do these Courts' decisions fulfill a particular constitutional right or guarantee. According to Whitman, the American notion of privacy is more akin to a liberty interest while the European notion is closer to a concern for dignity. As demonstrated herein, human dignity, so conceived, underlies our constitutional rights to privacy, liberty, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and other express rights and guarantees. Nowhere did the majority mention a human dignity concern arising from the sixteen hour delay preceding the supervising officer seeking a magistrate's order for a search. The Court's opinion in Atkins focused on human dignity concerns arising from an evolved moral standard, a national consensus that it is morally wrong to impose the death penalty on mentally retarded. On the opposing side of freedom of expression, in libel/ reputational injury decisions, the dignity described by the Court differs somewhat from the human dignity described in the privacy/ liberty interest, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendment jurisprudence
22 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the change in judicial policy regarding aspects of religious family law and the contribution of the judiciary to the emergence of deep legal pluralism in South Africa.
Abstract: There can be no doubt that the expression ‘rainbow nation’ was, and still is, a spoken metaphor for South African unity, intended to unify the greatly divided nation where strict divisions between racial groups existed. Nevertheless, apartheid may have been abolished but the fibre of the South African society remains splintered along cultural and religious lines. The legal system of South Africa still symbolises this divide. For example, members of cultural and religious communities (previously forced to live together as a result of apartheid) observe certain aspects of their own laws which are generally not recognised by our law. This phenomenon is known as ‘deep legal pluralism’. The legal fraternity is faced with the complexities of legal pluralism on a daily basis. The Constitution provides that the state may pass legislation recognising systems of personal and family law consistent with and subject to other provisions of the Constitution. However, there is no responsibility on the government to incorporate cultural or religious laws into state law, and so far the state has not done so. The judiciary has been less passive in affording individuals belonging to religious or cultural groups protection where needed. This presentation discusses the change in judicial policy regarding aspects of religious family law and the contribution of the judiciary to the emergence of deep legal pluralism in South Africa. The emphasis is on jurisprudence dealing with religious family laws, and more particular Muslim family law, which reached a peak in Hassam v. Jacobs 2009 (5) SA 572 (CC). The jurisprudence demonstrates that the judiciaries’ accommodation of religious and cultural diversity manifests a celebration of difference which is a quite novel approach that protects the rights of cultural and religious communities.
19 citations
DOI•
19 Nov 2016TL;DR: In this paper, a moral theory grounded on Southern African world views is proposed, which suggests a promising new conception of human dignity, according to which typical human beings have a dignity by virtue of their capacity for community, understood as the combination of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them.
Abstract: Summary: There are three major reasons why ideas associated with ubuntu are often deemed to be an inappropriate basis for a public morality in today’ s South Africa. One is that they are too vague; a second is that they fail to acknowledge the value of individual freedom; and a third is that they fit traditional, small-scale culture more than a modern, industrial society. In this article, I provide a philosophical interpretation of ubuntu that is not vulnerable to these three objections. Specifically, I construct a moral theory grounded on Southern African world views, one that suggests a promising new conception of human dignity. According to this conception, typical human beings have a dignity by virtue of their capacity for community, understood as the combination of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them, where human rights violations are egregious degradations of this capacity. I argue that this account of human rights violations straightforwardly entails and explains many different elements of South Africa’s Bill of Rights and naturally suggests certain ways of resolving contemporary moral dilemmas in South Africa and elsewhere relating to land reform, political power and deadly force. If I am correct that this jurisprudential interpretation of ubuntu both accounts for a wide array of intuitive human rights and provides guidance to resolve present-day disputes about justice, then the three worries about vagueness, collectivism and anachronism should not stop one from thinking that something fairly called ‘ubuntu’ can ground a public morality. Keywords:
18 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: Equality is the endangered species of political ideas: even left-of-centre politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Equality is the endangered species of political ideas. Even left-of-centre politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In this new book the author insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious egalitarian constraints on that distribution. What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles - first, it is of equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her own life - to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues, the author develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.
1,362 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this article, Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question.
Abstract: The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same book: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest. Skepticism in all its forms - philosophical, cynical, or post-modern - threatens that unity. The Galilean revolution once made the theological world of value safe for science. But the new republic gradually became a new empire: the modern philosophers inflated the methods of physics into a totalitarian theory of everything. They invaded and occupied all the honorifics - reality, truth, fact, ground, meaning, knowledge, and being - and dictated the terms on which other bodies of thought might aspire to them, and skepticism has been the inevitable result. We need a new revolution. We must make the world of science safe for value.
844 citations
TL;DR: It means no more than respect for persons or their autonomy for an ethical analysis of medical activities.
Abstract: It means no more than respect for persons or their autonomy
Appeals to human dignity populate the landscape of medical ethics. Claims that some feature of medical research or practice violates or threatens human dignity abound, often in connection with developments in genetics or reproductive technology. But are such charges coherent? Is dignity a useful concept for an ethical analysis of medical activities? A close inspection of leading examples shows that appeals to dignity are either vague restatements of other, more precise, notions or mere slogans that add nothing to an understanding of the topic.
Possibly the most prominent references to dignity appear in the many international human rights instruments, such as the United Nations' universal declaration of human rights.1 With few exceptions, these conventions do not address medical treatment or research. A leading exception is the Council of Europe's convention for the protection of human rights and dignity of the human being with regard to the application of biology and medicine.2 In this and other documents “dignity” seems to have no meaning beyond what is implied by the principle of medical ethics, respect for persons: the need to obtain voluntary, informed consent; the requirement to protect confidentiality; …
744 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the use of "dignity" does not provide a universalistic, principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense that there is little common understanding of what dignity requires substantively within or across jurisdictions.
Abstract: The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was pivotal in popularizing the use of ‘dignity’ or ‘human dignity’ in human rights discourse. This article argues that the use of ‘dignity’, beyond a basic minimum core, does not provide a universalistic, principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense that there is little common understanding of what dignity requires substantively within or across jurisdictions. The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jurisdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity seems open to significant judicial manipulation, increasing rather than decreasing judicial discretion. That is one of its significant attractions to both judges and litigators alike. Dignity provides a convenient language for the adoption of substantive interpretations of human rights guarantees which appear to be intentionally, not just coincidentally, highly contingent on local circumstances. Despite that, however, I argue that the concept of ‘human dignity’ plays an important role in the development of human rights adjudication, not in providing an agreed content to human rights but in contributing to particular methods of human rights interpretation and adjudication.
537 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the analysis of religion as a meaning system illuminates how religion can affect intergroup attitudes and explores possible explanatory mechanisms by proposing how four levels of meaning associated with religion (cognitive, motivational, societal and intergroup) may both promote and attenuate prejudice.
Abstract: Links between religion and prejudice have been interpreted to suggest that religion can both reduce and exacerbate prejudice. Here, the analysis of religion as a meaning system illuminates how religion can affect intergroup attitudes. Traditional psychological perspectives on religion and prejudice are summarized, followed by a discussion of religion and prejudice in cross-cultural and cross-religious contexts, involving varying target groups. Next, we explore possible explanatory mechanisms by proposing how four levels of meaning associated with religion—cognitive, motivational, societal, and intergroup—may both promote and attenuate prejudice. Finally, additional factors that might facilitate the paradoxical coexistence of religious egalitarian intentions with prejudiced attitudes are considered, and we speculate about the potential for religious groups to reduce prejudice within their adherents.
439 citations