Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 1

Abstract: AN UNPRECEDENTED WAVE OF HUMANITARIAN reform sentiment swept through the societies of Western Europe, England, and North America in the hundred years following 1750. Among the movements spawned by this new sensibility, the most spectacular was that to abolish slavery. Although its morality was often questioned before 1750, slavery was routinely defended and hardly ever condemned outright, even by the most scrupulous moralists. About the time that slavery was being transformed from a problematical but readily defensible institution into a selfevidently evil and abominable one, new attitudes began to appear on how to deter criminals, relieve the poor, cure the insane, school the young, and deal with primitive peoples.' The resulting reforms were, by almost any reasonable standard, an improvement over old practices that were often barbarous. Even so, twentiethcentury historians have not been satisfied to attribute those reforms either to an advance in man's mnoral sense or, simply, to a random outburst of altruism. In explaining the new humanitarianism, historians have repeatedly pointed to changes in what Marxists generally call the economic base or substructure of society, that is, the growth of capitalism and beginnings of industrialization. Tracing links between humanitarianism and capitalism has been a major preoccupation of historians, and the enterprise has succeeded, I believe, in greatly extending our understanding of the new sensibility. We know now that the reformers were motivated by far more than an unselfish desire to help the downtrodden, and we

Moral Character in the Workplace.

Abstract: Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

Problems of Moral Philosophy

Abstract: Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the leading social thinkers of the twentieth century, long concerned himself with the problems of moral philosophy, or "whether the good life is a genuine possibility in the present." This book consists of a course of seventeen lectures given in May-July 1963. Captured by tape recorder (which Adorno called "the fingerprint of the living mind"), these lectures present a somewhat different, and more accessible, Adorno from the one who composed the faultlessly articulated and almost forbiddingly perfect prose of the works published in his lifetime. Here we can follow Adorno's thought in the process of formation (he spoke from brief notes), endowed with the spontaneity and energy of the spoken word. The lectures focus largely on Kant, "a thinker in whose work the question of morality is most sharply contrasted with other spheres of existence." After discussing a number of the Kantian categories of moral philosophy, Adorno considers other, seemingly more immediate general problems, such as the nature of moral norms, the good life, and the relation of relativism and nihilism. In the course of the lectures, Adorno addresses a wide range of topics, including: theory and practice, ethics as bad conscience, the repressive character, the problem of freedom, dialectics in Kant and Hegel, the nature of reason, the moral law as a given, psychoanalysis, the element of the Absurd, freedom and law, the Protestant tradition of morality, Hamlet, self-determination, phenomenology, the concept of the will, the idea of humanity, The Wild Duck, and Nietzsche's critique of morality.

The Cambridge companion to Kant and modern philosophy

Abstract: Introduction: the starry heavens and the moral law Paul Guyer 1. 'A priori' Philip Kitcher 2. Kant on the perception of space (and time) Gary Hatfield 3. Kant's philosophy of mathematics Lisa Shabel 4. Kant on a priori concepts: the metaphysical deduction of the categories Beatrice Longuenesse 5. Kant's philosophy of cognitive mind Patricia Kitcher 6. Kant's proofs of substance and causation Arthur Melnick 7. Kant and transcendental arguments Ralph C. S. Walker 8. The critique of metaphysics: the structure and fate of Kant's dialectic Karl Ameriks 9. Philosophy of natural science Michael Friedman 10. The supreme principle of morality Allen W. Wood 11. Kant on freedom of the will Henry E. Allison 12. Mine and thine? The Kantian state Robert B. Pippin 13. Kant on sex and marriage right Jane Kneller 14. Kant's theory of peace Pauline Kleingeld 15. Kant's conception of virtue Lara Denis 16. Kant's ambitions in the third Critique Paul Guyer 17. Moral faith and the highest food Frederick C. Beiser 18. Kant's critical philosophy and its reception - the first five years (1781-6) Manfred Kuehn.