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.

The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility

Abstract: In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, the question of 'just war' has become a hotly contested issue, and this classic text on war and the ethics of modern statecraft written at the height of the Vietnam era in 1968 speaks to a new generation of readers. In defending just war against Christian pacifism, Ramsey joins a line of theological reasoning that traces its antecedents to Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Ramsey argues that decisions regarding war must be governed by 'political prudence.' Whether a particular war should be fought, and at what level of violence, depends, Ramsey writes, on one's count of the moral costs and benefits. Characterized by a sophisticated yet back-to-basics approach, his analysis begins with the assumption that force is a fact in political life which must either be reckoned with or succumbed to. He then grapples with modern challenges to traditional moral principles of 'just conduct' in war, the 'morality of deterrence,' and a 'just war theory of statecraft.'

The Definition of Morality

Abstract: We use such terms as good, bad, right, wrong, should, ought, in many ways other than moral: good evidence and bad argument, right answers and wrong notes, novels which should be read and policies which ought not to be adopted. The moral is a sphere of the practical and the practical itself only a sphere or the normative. Norms guide us in all we believe, feel and do. Do these normative words then have a specifically moral sense? If so can it be defined?

Marriage and Morals

Abstract: Marriage and Morals is a compelling cross-cultural examination of individual, familial and societal attitudes towards sex and marriage. By exploring the codes by which we live our sexual lives and conventional morality, Russell daringly sets out a new morality, shaped and influenced by dramatic changes in society such as the emancipation of women and the wide-spread use of contraceptives. From the origin of marriage to the influence of religion, Russell explores the changing role of marriage and codes of sexual ethics. The influence of this great work has turned it into a worthy classic.

The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power

Abstract: The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power. BRUCE KAPFERER Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997; 367 pp. Bruce Kapferer presents a provocative existential and phenomenological analysis of Sri Lankan Sinhala sorcery, showing how Sinhala sorcery "strikes at the heart" (p. 86) of what it means to be human. Sinhala sorcery, he argues, denies its victims their agency and capacity for action (their "intentionality"), crushing them into the "anguish" of existential annihilation: as victims of an agencythreatening power, they are alienated from the very means of self, other, and world-construction that human action - "human being" - generates. Kapferer constructs his argument against familiar anthropological approaches that reduce sorcery to epiphenomena, such as a representation of social conflict, an alternative logic to science, or a cathartic release of emotional stress. After a thorough introductory review of the anthropology of sorcery, Kapferer constructs the core of his existential argument in three interpretive chapters on Suniyama, an anti-sorcery exorcism ritual performed by expert sorcerer/healers called aduras. Here, Kapferer effectively weaves myth and ethnographic description into an evocative exposition of the Suniyama. He begins by elucidating, through the myths of Suniyama, the originary paradox of sorcery. Sorcery is understood as a byproduct, a negative and socially destructive residue, of the social formation of a Buddhist moral order. Banished to society's exterior, sorcery nevertheless persists, ever ready to transgress boundaries -- between exterior and interior, impurity and purity, immorality and morality - and to penetrate into "regenerative root of human being" (p. 71). Sorcery's transgressive nature is depicted in myth and symbol as a rape that takes place in the most central and intimate interior of the Buddhist moral order: the king's bedchamber, the queen's body. Sorcery in everyday life displaces its victims into the exterior, transgressive world of negative, life-annihilating power. The Suniyama ritual moves the victim from this exterior, back to the interior and generative moral center of the universe conceived in a Buddhist idiom. Slowly, over the course of an entire night, the victim slowly progresses up the body of a snake, drawn on the ground. The snake extends from the outer edge to the interior of the ritual space at the center of which sits a constructed king's "palace," which represents -- which effectively is - the generative center of the Buddhist moral order. As the exorcist helps the victim regain agentive centrality, he simultaneously expunges the negative forces of sorcery from both the victim and the local community. Hence, Suniyama exteriorizes evils that while it reestablishes (dharmic) social and moral interiors of person and community. One important aspect of Kapferer's analysis of Suniyama is his reevaluation of Mauss's dictum on the gift, namely, the obligation to return. In Suniyama gifts play a double role: some gifts serve to rearticulate the victim's social relations (to gods, sorcerers, community); other gifts serve to destroy the evils that sorcery brings into the community. These latter gifts, of course, must never be returned, for it is their function to destroy evils and exteriorize sorcery. Rather, these gifts are obliterated through potlatch type destruction. Kapferer's analysis here fits well with other recent work on Indian Hindu gifts by Jonathan Parry and Gloria Raheja work of which Kapferer seems unaware. Both Parry and Raheja also counter Mauss's analysis of Brahminic gifts. From them, Kapferer might have taken some cues, for they show that it is not the "spirit" - a phrase Kapferer retains from Mauss but rather the materiality of the Indian gift that makes it a potential vehicle for exteriorizing evil in Hindu contexts. Parry and Raheja also both distinguish what Kapferer continues to conflate, namely impurity and evil. …

Feminist morality and competitive reality: a role for an ethic of care?

Abstract: A6stract: A language of care and relationshipSbuilding has recently appeared with prominence in the business literature, driven by the realiw ties of the marketplace. Thus, it seems a propitious time to reflect on a decade of writing in feminist morality that has focussed on the concept of an ethic of care, and examine its relevance for today's business context. Is the idea of creating organizations that "care" just another management fad that subverts the essential integnty of concepts of ethical canng? Conversely, are these concepts capable of beginning an imporS tant dialogue that may help us to see new possibilities for simultane ously enhancing 60th the effectiveness and the moral quality of organizations in the future?