bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Creation
Authors: Moevs Christian
Published: April 2005

In Christian thought, creation “out of nothing” is not an event or a process: there is no how, when, or where in the creation of the world. How, when, and where are all internal to finite being, and more precisely to space and time: any account of creation that mentions events or things is not an account of creation, but a description of the world. Such an account says nothing (except analogically) about the relation of the world to the source and ground of its being. It is already implicit in Aristotle that there can be no explanation of the being of things, of “how” things depend on “the thought that thinks itself”, because there is no how, no relation in any common sense (as between things or events), nothing to explain: self-subsistent Intellect is not in itself a thing, and is what it thinks. To grasp the Christian understanding of creation is to grasp a non-reciprocal and non-dual “relation of dependence” between a radically contingent world (at every instant it exists) and the self-subsistent and dimension-less ground of its being (which can only be known as oneself, through a revelation prepared by the surrender of self). This chapter traces this understanding in Dante by discussing the tension between Neoplatonic emanation and “ Thomistic” creation, the meditation on unity in diversity of Paradiso 2; the relation between body and soul; and the “ birth” of time and of space in the Primo Mobile.
Conclusion
Authors: Moevs Christian
Published: April 2005

This chapter argues that the Comedy, the limit of the world, and thus of all attribute, is the Primo Mobile, the horizon between creation and creator, between the world and its ground: it is the “boundary” that “only one who encompasses it can understand”. One may describe everything that is seen, but not what is ultimately doing the seeing. The metaphysical “I” (the “I AM” revealed to Moses) is the attributeless, “transparent” foundation of the world, one with the world but radically distinct from it, as (to use a Wittgensteinian, and perhaps also Dantean, image) the seeing eye is one with its visual field, and yet is not contained in that field but lies outside it.
Justifying the Moral Rules
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: April 2005

This chapter argues that the moral rules: do not kill, do not cause pain, do not disable, do not deprive of freedom, and do not deprive of pleasure, are justified moral rules. It distinguishes between the egocentric attitude toward these rules and the appropriate moral attitude toward them, and points out the qualifications required to allow one to go from the former to the latter. It provides a formulation of the appropriate moral attitude, showing that this attitude requires liability as punishment for unjustified violations of these rules.
Justifying Violations
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: April 2005

This chapter provides an account of the morally relevant features that determine what counts as the same kind of violation. It is the first step of the two-step procedure for deciding whether that kind of violation is strongly justified, weakly justified, or unjustified. These morally relevant features, e.g., the desires and beliefs of the persons toward whom the rule is being violated, whether there are morally preferable alternatives, and whether the situation is an emergency, are discussed in detail. The second step of the two-step procedure, considering whether one would publicly allow the violation, is compared with Kant’s categorical imperative.
Virtues and Vices
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: April 2005

This chapter distinguishes between personality traits and character traits, and between moral virtues, personal virtues, and social virtues. It presents analyses of individual moral virtues, e.g., truthfulness, fairness, honesty, and kindness; and individual personal virtues, e.g., prudence, temperance, and courage. It also provides an account of humility and arrogance.
“Why Should I Be Moral?”
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines some adequate and inadequate answers to the question, “Why should I be moral?” It analyzes the moral emotions of compassion, remorse, pride, shame, and guilt. It compares the reasons for being moral with the reasons for being immoral, and shows that neither set of reasons is always decisive.
The Greene/ing of the Catholic Novel
Authors: Bosco Mark
Published: April 2005

Greene began his writing career at a time when religion, particularly Catholicism, was undergoing a revival in philosophy and literature. This chapter situates Greene during this Catholic revival, which artistically embodied a “kind” of Catholicism most apparent in French Catholic authors of the early 20th century. He wrote some of his best and most famous novels during this period. Two of these, The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair are discussed.
New Threads in an Old Pattern
Authors: Bosco Mark
Published: April 2005

Greene remained a prolific writer in the last 30 years of his life. His late novels continually returned to old territories — the tension between loyalty and betrayal, innocence and corruption, and religious faith and political commitment — but with a sense of the changes that occurred in Catholicism and global politics. Greene treats his characters with a new sense of comic detachment. Although the tragic tension of his viewpoint has slackened, it still conveys a fresh imaginative vantage point to engage his literary and religious concerns.
Epilogue
Authors: Bosco Mark
Published: April 2005

Greene was a writer immersed in the political and religious events of the 20th century. His commitment to a Catholic vision of the world never wavered, as evidenced by his reading of Vatican II theology, his personal support of liberationist movements in Latin America, and his attempt to promote dialogue between Catholicism and Marxism. The author’s comments on his reading of Greene’s Catholic imagination and post-Vatican II Catholicism are presented.
Reformation in Britain and Ireland
Authors: Heal Felicity
Published: April 2005

The book integrates analysis of religious change during the sixteenth century in the four countries (three kingdoms) of the British Isles. Interaction between these realms is essential to understanding the history of religious reform within each territory. The pre-Reformation Catholic Church is discussed, as is popular religious belief and behaviour. The Reformation is considered as a political change, involving the choices of monarchs and their political elites. In England and Scotland, these elites drove forward reform and ensured its success. They were also urged on by a clerical minority ideologically committed to doctrinal change and to evangelization. In Ireland, no such indigenous commitment to reform existed, and no political identity with reform was constructed. The text also examines the religious responses of ordinary clergy and laymen to reform from above. It acknowledges the reluctance to change that is a constant refrain of revisionist historical writing, but investigates more closely the process by which Englishmen and Scots were slowly translated from Catholics before the altar to some form of Protestants around the pulpit.
THE CLERGY IN THE YEARS OF CHANGE, 1530–1558
Authors: HEAL FELICITY
Published: April 2005

The clergy of the three kingdoms are studied during the same years of change, 1530–1558. The focus is upon the role of the bishops and higher clergy in influencing political regimes, and on the appropriation of clerical wealth. Ordinary parish clergy are seen as largely resistant to new religious ideas, and vulnerable to lay pressures.
Introduction
Authors: Caney Simon
Published: April 2005

Describes the aims, approaches, and structure of the book. The basic issue addressed is the political principles that should govern global politics, and to analyse this the book posits six sets of questions, each of which is addressed in separate chapters that separately examine (moral) universalism, civil and political justice, distributive justice, political structures, just war, and humanitarian intervention. The author makes four points: that his concern is with political philosophy; that he refers to global rather than international political theory; that he examines global political theory rather than global ethics; and that he distinguishes three levels at which global political theory may operate—its relation to domestic political theory, the principles and institutions involved, and the application of these principles to specific issues. He also identifies the aims of the book, which are: to provide a defence of what is commonly termed a cosmopolitan political morality; to explore in depth and evaluate competing philosophical perspectives on these issues; and to emphasize that the topics examined in the book are very closely intertwined and cannot be engaged satisfactorily in isolation from one another. The four competing approaches that may be taken to global political theory (cosmopolitanism, realism, the ‘society of states’, and nationalism) are outlined in turn in order to provide a framework within which the six questions posited in the book are examined, and to stake out and defend the cosmopolitan approach taken.
Civil and Political Justice
Authors: Caney Simon
Published: April 2005

Having argued, in Ch. 2, that there are universal moral values, the next logical step is to ask what these universal moral values are; this question is pursued in Chs 3 and 4, which consider arguments for two different types of universal value and link together to provide an analysis of what universal principles of justice should apply at the global level. This chapter examines claims that there are universal principles of civil and political justice, that is, those principles that specify what rights people have to what freedoms, and argues for universal human rights to certain civil and political liberties. It is arranged in 13 sections: Section I presents an analysis of human rights, since this term plays a central and important role in a plausible account of civil and political justice; Section II puts forward a general thesis about justifications for civil and political human rights; this is followed, in Sections III–VII, by an analysis of four cosmopolitan arguments for human rights that criticizes three of them but defends the fourth; Section VIII considers an alternative non-cosmopolitan approach to defending civil and political human rights, presented by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples (1999b); the next three sections (IX–XI) of the chapter explore misgivings about civil and political human rights, including the objections that such human rights are a species of imperialism and do not accord sufficient respect to cultural practices (IX), produce homogeneity/uniformity (X), and generate egoism/individualism and destroy community (XI); Section XII considers a further objection—the realist charges that foreign policy to protect civil and political human rights is in practice selective and partial and a cloak for the pursuit of the national interest. Section XIII summarizes the overall case made for civil and political justice.
Distributive Justice
Authors: Caney Simon
Published: April 2005

Having argued, in Ch. 2, that there are universal moral values, the next logical step is to ask what these universal moral values are; this question is pursued in Chs 3 and 4, which consider arguments for two different types of universal value and link together to provide an analysis of what universal principles of justice should apply at the global level. This chapter examines what universal principles of distributive justice (if any) should be adopted. It is arranged in 14 sections: Section I presents a conceptual analysis of the nature of distributive justice; Section II makes some preliminary points about the nature of cosmopolitan accounts of distributive justice and the general nature of the reasoning underlying these; Sections III–V then analyse three types of arguments for cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice, and Section VI reflects on these, and suggests and defends four principles of cosmopolitan distributive justice; Sections VII–VIII consider objections (counter-arguments) to cosmopolitan concepts of distributive justice, some of them outlined by John Rawls in his account of international justice and others by nationalist political thinkers such as David Miller; Sections IX–XI examine three nationalist claims about the nature of distributive justice, all of which emphasize the moral relevance of persons’ membership in nations, while Sections XII–XIII investigate two realist claims (XII–XIII). Section XIV sums up the findings of the chapter.
Political Structures
Authors: Caney Simon
Published: April 2005

Having argued in Chs 3 and 4 that there are cosmopolitan principles of civil and political justice and cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice, one is logically led to the question, ‘if one affirms cosmopolitan principles of justice, what kind of political framework (political structures) should one accept— a system of states, or of global political institutions, of autonomous nations (including even statehood)? This chapter seeks to answer these questions. It is arranged in 17 sections: Section I provides a conceptual analysis of some possible political frameworks; the following six sections (II–VI) consider cosmopolitan approaches to the question of how political power should be institutionalized (II), present three possible approaches—intrinsic, right-based, and instrumental (III–V), and examine the nature of the political framework offered by these three approaches (VI); Sections VII–XI analyse five challenges to the cosmopolitan political proposals, first, those voiced by statists (including both realists and those who affirm the ‘society of states’) (VIII–X) and, second, those voiced by those sympathetic to the idea of a global civil society (XI); Sections XII–XVI evaluate four nationalist claims that any defensible account of political institutions should grant autonomy to nations (provide national self-determination), and they aim to defend a cosmopolitan political programme—one in which there are democratic supra-state institutions charged with protecting people’s civil, political, and economic rights—and to rebut the challenges of statists and nationalists or to show that they can be accommodated by cosmopolitans. Section XVII summarizes and concludes that, overall, a cosmopolitan political order should grant a very heavily qualified role to national self-determination.
Strategy, Economic Organization, and the Knowledge Economy
Authors: Foss Nicolai J.
Published: April 2005

This book examines the impact of the knowledge economy on the knowledge production of management studies. It highlights the important parts of theorizing that have emerged within the strategy and organization fields to accommodate those tendencies thought of as characterising the knowledge economy. It seeks to resolve existing tensions between ‘competence’ and ‘governance’ approaches to organization and strategy.
Knowledge‐based Views of the Firm
Authors: Foss Nicolai J.
Published: April 2005

This chapter argues that the theory of the firm put forward in Nelson and Winter (1982) is less about bounded rationality than it is about socially held tacit knowledge. Attempts to combine the two are likely to be unsuccessful, with one driving out the other. The absence of a clear behavioural foundation for the organizational-capabilities approach is the main cause of difficulties that the knowledge-based views of the firm has in illuminating the key organizational economics issues of the internal organization and boundaries of the firm.
Strategy, Resources, and Transaction Costs
Authors: Foss Nicolai J.
Published: April 2005

Transaction cost economics (TCE) has been criticized by management scholars and knowledge-based theorists, using their critiques of TCE as the starting point for their own approaches to the firm. It is argued that TCE has the potential to add to the very core of strategic management research — value creation and appropriation. This chapter also draws on the economics for property rights to link the discussion to the resource-based view and knowledge-based view.
Economic Organization in the Knowledge Economy
Authors: Foss Nicolai J.
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines economic organization in the context of the emerging knowledge economy. It argues that what matters to economic organization is the growing importance of inalienable assets. It is possible to give efficiency explanations of authority under distributed-knowledge conditions. It is also shown that certain knowledge conditions are difficult to relate to organizational outcomes.
Cognitive Leadership and Coordination in the Knowledge Economy
Authors: Foss Nicolai J.
Published: April 2005

This chapter argues that coordination games provide important lessons for studying organizational phenomena and help illuminate aspects of strategy in a networked knowledge economy. It presents a notion of leadership linked to cognitive notions of leadership, wherein the ‘inculcation of beliefs’ is central, but is founded on rational-choice methodology and draws upon simple ideas in game theory. It suggests that leadership is an important member of a set of institutions for resolving coordination problems.
‘Sweet Fiction and Sweet Truth’: Theology and Narrative in The Pilgrim's Progress
Authors: Davies Michael
Published: April 2005

The theological frame of The Pilgrim’s Progress is one defined not by election and reprobation but by Bunyan’s covenant theology. Through characters such as Christian and Faithful, Despair and Ignorance, Bunyan’s soteriological concerns are centred in law, grace, and faith, rather than in predestination, as well as in the need for believers to understand and interpret the Word ‘gracefully’. Christian’s progress is a one of spiritual understanding, as well as of learning to avoid questions about one’s soterial status. This text also instructs the reader in interpretation. Bunyan’s choice of medium — allegorical dream vision — serves ideally to draw attention to interpretive practices and to privilege ontological over epistemological concerns. Bunyan’s use of marginal notes and of folk-tale motifs is discussed as limiting the reader’s imaginative indulgence in the allegory and its tendency towards ‘romance’.
Setting the Stage
Authors: Knight John , Song Lina
Published: April 2005

This introductory chapter begins with an overview of the development of China’s labour market, starting from the 1950s under a planned economy to the period of economic reform. It discusses a theoretical framework for analysing labour markets. The studies included in this volume are then described.
Redundancies, Unemployment, and Migration
Authors: Knight John , Song Lina
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines the effects of the Chinese government’s redundancy policy on the urban labour market and migrant employment. The policy caused widespread job losses, with 19% of households experiencing a retrenchment. Employees with the highest risk of being retrenched were those in urban collectives and local state-owned enterprises. Workers with low educational and occupational skills, and in poor health were at risk within enterprises. The rise in urban redundancy and unemployment reduced the employment of migrants in the urban formal sector.
Immobility and Segmentation of Labour
Authors: Knight John , Song Lina
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines the immobility and segmentation in the Chinese labour market. It argues that the hampering of market-equilibrating wage movements has delayed the progress towards a fully functioning labour market. When there is excess labour supply, undercutting of wages does not occur and enterprises support their long-standing employees. When there is excess demand, there is too little voluntary mobility of labour for employees to use wage policy as a recruitment device.
1 Early Modern Origins: The Rise of Popular Conversion Narrative
Authors: Hindmarsh D. Bruce
Published: April 2005

Puritan teaching and practice during the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries formed a matrix within which spiritual autobiography would eventually flourish in England. Puritan pastoral theology, such as that of William Perkins, taught that the first use of the law was to intensify the pangs of introspective conscience on the part of the unregenerate, in fact to lead them to despair, and the crisis this induced was the centre of all the various ‘morphologies’ of conversion that appeared during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries among Puritans, Pietists, and evangelicals of various sorts. This theology was reflected first in diaries and then in the full expression of narrative identity, the self-interpretation of the entirety of one’s life in terms of conversion. While Richard Kilby offers an early example of Puritan spiritual autobiography, the formal occasion for oral narrative appeared in the requirement of the gathered churches for evidence of personal conversion, a requirement that emerged in the mid-seventeenth century and then became widely adopted. Still, throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth, a special motive to publish spiritual autobiography was required—especially specimens from ordinary folk without any social standing—and this motive was most often found in the need to defend oneself or the sense that the times were epochal or indeed apocalyptic.
5 ‘Poor Sinnership’: Moravian Narrative Culture
Authors: Hindmarsh D. Bruce
Published: April 2005

The narrative culture that emerged among English Moravians out of the original undivided revival movement in the 1730s bore witness to a different view of conversion. Consequently, among the Moravian laity we are able to observe a sub-genre of the evangelical conversion narrative, one in which soul-distress under the preaching of the law (the Pietist Busskampf) was replaced by the ideal of self-abandonment and childlike trust in the love of the bleeding Saviour. Moravian conversion narratives differed from the Methodist narratives in three principal ways: they were more quietist and less agonistic; they were more preoccupied with devotion to the bodily suffering of Christ than with monitoring inner emotional states, a devotion that passed over into responding to Christ as a wounded lover and bridegroom; and their narratives were more shaped by liturgical rhythms. These emphases looked back to Zinzendorf’s own formation and his distinctive theology and are well illustrated in the case of the English convert Martha Claggett.
2 The British Prime Minister: Much More Than ‘First Among Equals’
Authors: Heffernan Richard , Webb Paul
Published: April 2005

Reviews a wide range of evidence to demonstrate three things. First, election campaigns have become more candidate-centered, with parties offering leaders greater prominence in their election campaigns and the media devoting greater attention to them. This development seems to have taken place since 1960, which coincides with the spread of mass access to television in Britain, and the erosion of class politics. Second, today’s major-party leaders are in significant ways more strongly placed to exert intra-party power than they were in 1980, much as we might expect of electoral-professional organizations. Third, and perhaps most important, it seems likely that the potential for prime ministerial power within the state’s political executive has been enhanced because of structural changes that have generated a larger and more integrated ‘executive office’ under his or her control since 1970.

Of course, these developments have occurred in the context of a highly partified form of parliamentarism. Thus, it is not contended simply that Prime Ministers have become completely indistinguishable from Presidents, but rather, that a number of changes have occurred that are mutually consistent with the working logic of presidentialism.
7 Denmark: Presidentialization in a Consensual Democracy
Authors: Pedersen Karina , Knudsen Tim
Published: April 2005

Even though structural causes of presidentialization such as the growth of the state, the development of a modern mass media, the erosion of cleavages, and the Europeanization of politics, all exist in the Danish case, the logic and reality of consensus politics means that domestic politics is still not heavily presidentialized. Presidential trends within parties are limited to a discernible strengthening of party leaders in respect of the resources available to them and their potential to influence the candidate-nomination process. In regard to the electoral process, some presidentialization is seen especially in relation to media coverage. Perceiving the way in which the media seek to personalize their coverage of politics, the parties have sought to accommodate this in their campaign strategies. The presidentialization process seems stronger in the governmental arena with a growing longevity of Prime Ministers in executive office, increasing frequency with which the premiers reshuffle their cabinets, the growing use of cabinet committees as means of executive coordination, the gradual growth of the Prime Minister’s Office, a new system by which media relations are coordinated by the Prime Minister’s staff, and the Prime Minister’s larger role in international affairs due to Europeanization. On the other hand, the Prime Minister does not enjoy any formal rights of patronage and, most significantly, prime ministerial power in Denmark is still kept in check by consensus politics. The tradition of minority and multiparty government makes this a necessity, and consensus culture does not generally call for strong personalized leadership.
9 Canada: Executive Dominance and Presidentialization
Authors: Bakvis Herman , Wolinetz Steven B.
Published: April 2005

A parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster model, Canada does not qualify formally as a presidential system: The prime minister and other members of the political executive are responsible to a popularly elected House of Commons. Nonetheless, the Canadian prime minister enjoys wide-ranging powers that in practice are far more extensive than those enjoyed by prime ministers in other Westminster systems. The nature of the leadership selection process, strict party discipline and a fragmented opposition, help ensure prime ministerial dominance over both parliament and cabinet. So too do strong central agencies. While personalization and popularization of prime ministerial leadership is not as pronounced in Canada as in the UK, it is nevertheless an important factor. Prime ministers are beholden to very few interests in their parties, which they dominate. In the Canadian system, one finds many of the characteristics of presidentialization without any of the formal attributes. Federalism and the strength of the provinces act as the major constraint on prime ministerial power. In important respects, Canadian prime ministers are more powerful than presidents in some presidential systems.
11 Finland: Let the Force Be with the Leader—But Who Is the Leader?
Authors: Paloheimo Heikki
Published: April 2005

Since the early 1980s, the regime type of the Finnish political system has gradually mutated, because of the complementary processes of de-presidentialization and re-presidentialization. The former entailed the erosion of the formal prerogatives of the President and a switch from a semi-presidential towards a parliamentary type of executive. This process culminated in the coming into force of a totally new constitution in 2000. Re-presidentialization, in turn, consists of the growing power of the Prime Minister within the newly parliamentarized political executive. Most of the causes of the de facto ‘re-presidentialization’ of Finnish politics are structural rather than contingent. The internal activities of political parties have declined as they have transformed themselves into modern electoralist organizations, and the autonomy of the leaders from their parties has increased. Partisan dealignment and ideological convergence between the parties has made space for the personalization of politics. The personalization of politics, in combination with the declining role of party organizations, enhances the autonomy of party leaders within their own parties. In contemporary Finland, the leaders with the strongest presidential capacities contest the premiership rather than the presidency.
13 The Failure of Presidential Parliamentarism: Constitutional versus Structural Presidentialization in Israel's Parliamentary Democracy
Authors: Hazan Reuven Y.
Published: April 2005

In no parliamentary democracy has the presidentialization of politics achieved such magnitude as in Israel. In 1992, the Israeli parliament adopted a law that altered not only the electoral system but also Israel’s political framework. According to this law, Israel became the first parliamentary democracy in which the Prime Minister was directly and popularly elected. This development produced a unique political system in which a ‘presidentialized’ Prime Minister was grafted onto an essentially parliamentary democracy. This chapter addresses the following questions: First, did the political reform in the 1990s reflect a de facto change that had already taken place? In other words, is it appropriate to speak of a phenomenon of presidentialization occurring within Israel’s parliamentary democracy prior to the 1990s? Second, what were the causes and consequences of presidentialization? How did this unique system affect the political parties, electoral competition, political representation, legislative behaviour, legislative-executive relations, and other associated factors? Third, how does Israel’s experience of the presidentialization of politics compare with other modern democracies? Were the political and electoral attributes of leadership powers amplified by factors flowing from the formal change? Finally, how does Israel’s rather extreme experience of the presidentialization of parliamentary democracy contribute to the assessment of this phenomenon?
14 The Semi‐Sovereign American Prince: The Dilemma of an Independent President in a Presidential Government1
Authors: Sergio Fabbrini
Published: April 2005

Since the 1960s, the electoral process in America has undergone a pronounced process of personalization. Candidates for the presidency have grown increasingly independent of the traditional party organizations. There has arisen a highly personalized process of selecting the presidential candidate. However, this personalization of the electoral process has not been matched by an equivalent personalization of the system of government. There are both structural and contingent reasons for this circumstance. The structural ones have to do with the nature of the American system of government, which is a system of separated government. The contingent reasons have to do with the progressive institutionalization—especially since the 1980s—of a divided government within the separated government. Thus, having conquered the presidency on the basis of his personal resources, the President finds that he lacks the instrument essential for him to exercise that office to the fullest extent, namely, a party able to link him with Congress. The difficulty of governing with a divided government was exacerbated by the end of the Cold War, because it deprived the President of a crucial reason for asserting his leadership in the institutional system. The dramatic terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 reaffirmed the need for presidential leadership, but it could not resolve the problems that had led to the institutional weakening of the presidency.
The Trinity
Authors: Helm Paul
Published: April 2005

Calvin's modest, Augustinian Trinitarianism is explored. His dislike of any subordination of the Son to the Father is emphasized. For Calvin, the Trinitarian dogma maybe seen as providing a set of rules enabling us to think of the divine mystery as Scripture reveals it rather than offering an explanation of it.
The Soul
Authors: Helm Paul
Published: April 2005

Calvin has a strong dualist view of the human person. His understanding of the immortality of the soul is considered. The main sections of the Chapter are involved in considering three contemporary misunderstandings of Calvin's view of the soul. These concern various ways in which the Fall has affected its workings.
Equity, Natural Law, and Common Grace
Authors: Helm Paul
Published: April 2005

Takes up again the question of our natural knowledge of God. Is there for Calvin a natural knowledge of God's law? Was Calvin a Divine Command Theorist in ethics? It is argued that he was not, except in possibly a rather secondary sense, but that he broadly followed the contours of the mediaeval natural law outlook. However he is less sanguine than, say, Aquinas, on how much natural law delivers without the help that Scripture gives. It is argued that there is no incompatibility between what he says on natural law and equity and his emphasis on 'common grace'.
How We Act
Authors: Enç Berent
Published: April 2005

Attempts to answer the question of whether it is possible to understand agency as realized within a world construed ‘naturalistically’, that is, in terms of causal relations among events and states of affairs, or whether an adequate ontology requires sui generis acts that are essentially voluntary, such as volitions or agent-causation. Berent Enç defends the possibility of naturalizing agency via a causal theory of action (CTA). In doing that, he develops his key notion of basic action (Chs 2 and 3); he offers a ‘general and original’ solution to the problem of causal deviance (Ch. 4); and, he attempts to answer the objection that CTA removes the agent from the picture altogether by offering a purely causal model for the deliberative process that underlies practical reasoning (Ch. 5). Furthermore, the book discusses objections to volitional theories (Ch. 1), intentions and intentional action (Ch. 6), and the compatibility of Enç’s CTA with attractive accounts of autonomy and freedom (Ch. 7).
Basic Actions
Authors: Enç Berent
Published: April 2005

Enç’s naturalistic foundationalism divides actions into two sub-categories, namely, basic acts and non-basic acts. This chapter develops this foundationalism into a causal theory of action, which has as its central thesis the proposition that an action consists of a behavioural output that is caused by the reasons the agent has for producing that behaviour, reasons that consist of the agent’s beliefs and desires. In other words, reasons feed into a computational process of deliberation, the causal consequence of which is the formation of an intention. The intention causes the behavioural output. On this thesis, actions are defined as changes in the world that are caused by natural events.
The Causal Theory Revisited
Authors: Enç Berent
Published: April 2005

Develops further the foundationalist causal theory of action introduced in Ch. 2. In particular, Enç develops an account of act individuation ingenious to his reductive view of action, which at the same time renders its main competitors, the family of theories that regards action as an irreducible part of rational action, implausible.
Autonomy, the Will, and Freedom
Authors: Enç Berent
Published: April 2005

Chapters 1 to 6 have developed and defended a naturalist and foundationalist causal theory of action. This chapter proposes to show that notions such as autonomy, voluntary acts, acting in accordance with one’s will, acting out of one’s free will, and freedom of agency do not require resources that presuppose anything about agents that is at odds with what the causal theorist admits.
Political Obligations
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

Provides a full defence of a theory of political obligation on the basis of the principle of fairness (or fair play). The book responds to the most important objections and extends a theory-based on fairness into a developed ‘multiple principle’ theory of obligation. The ‘self-image of the state’ in regard to political obligations is explored through examination of judicial decisions in three different democratic countries, while the book also breaks new ground by studying attitudes towards political obligations, through the use of small focus groups.
Bringing the State Back In
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

In arguing for the need for the state, this chapter establishes factual parameters within which discussions of political obligations should be conducted. Certain theorists argue that political obligations are not necessary, that various non-state organizations could fulfil the functions commonly assigned to states. However, these theorists do not satisfactorily address questions concerning the provision of essential public goods. Through detailed analysis of numerous alternative mechanisms, libertarian, free-market solutions are found to be unable to provide all necessary public goods. Similarly, technical solutions to N-person prisoner's dilemma are unsuccessful, because of the special conditions they require. Non-state mechanisms, such as the protective associations familiar from Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, are found to be unable to provide essential public goods, while the same is true of proposals based on a distinction between authority and legitimacy.
Alternative Supply and Alternative Preferences
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

The most powerful objection to political obligations based on the principle of fairness concerns alternative supply of necessary public goods. According to this line of argument, if the subject prefers not to receive particular benefits from the state, then he need not incur obligations through their provision. However, as the discussion in Ch. 2 shows, for certain essential public goods, there is no alternative to state provision. Moreover, the fact that a subject prefers that goods be provided in a different form or by a mechanism other than the state is not ordinarily sufficient to dissolve obligations that they would otherwise incur.
Political Obligation and the Natural Duties of Justice
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

In recent years, certain theorists, most notably John Rawls, have attempted to establish general political obligations based on so-called ‘natural duties of justice’. However, because natural duties are of limited force, they cannot ground political obligations, which may well require significant sacrifice. Natural duty theories confront a dilemma: either they will not be sufficiently strong to ground obligations, or if they are, they will not be ‘natural’ duties. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls's argument for a natural duty to support the state is flawed by running together arguments from behind and outside the veil of ignorance. Properly developed, behind the veil of ignorance, such a natural duty to support the state would be seen to be actually a variant of the principle of fairness. Because natural duties cannot establish adequate theories on their own, they can play a role in theories of political obligation only by working in conjunction with other principles.
Reformist Consent and Political Obligation
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

With theories of political obligation based on consent now generally discredited because most people have not actually consented, certain theorists attempt to rescue consent by proposing mechanisms through which individuals could consent to government. Various mechanisms are examined, including ‘consent-or-leave’ and Michael Walzer's proposal that citizens who refuse to consent be allowed a lesser status, analogous to that of ‘resident aliens at home’. All these mechanisms confront insuperable difficulties concerning essential public goods. Because resident aliens at home will continue to receive public goods, the alternatives are that they be allowed to receive them cost-free or that they incur obligations, even though they explicitly refused to consent.
Popular Opinion
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

Examines opinions of ordinary people in regard to political obligations through small focus groups. Under certain circumstances, the views of ordinary people can lend support to the particular theories to which they subscribe and increase burdens of justification for proponents of alternative theories. Responses of participants in ten focus groups indicate strong consensus on basic points. Participants strongly believe they have political obligations, although they make exceptions for particular laws, which seem to them to serve no real social purpose. They ground their obligations on benefits provided by the state, and strongly connect up their own requirements to obey the law with requirements that all other people behave similarly. The moral principle that appears to coincide most closely with their views is a variant of the principle of fairness.
11 Conclusions
Authors: Klosko George
Published: April 2005

Abstracts and keywords to be supplied.
Horizontal Accountability: The Legal Institutionalization of Mistrust
Authors: O'Donnell Guillermo
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines horizontal accountability (HA) in Latin American state agencies. It considers two main directions in which HA may come into play: the unlawful encroachment by one state agency upon the proper authority of another; and corruption, which consists of unlawful advantages that public officials obtain for themselves and/or their associates. It argues that when the responsibilities of HA exist in the law but the respective agencies are made ineffective by superior powers, the transgressions of these powers will be facilitated, and agencies will be discredited.
The Accountability Deficit in Latin America
Authors: Crisp Brian F. , Shugart Matthew Soberg
Published: April 2005

This chapter presents accountability as an inherently vertical relationship. It discusses the conflicts between vertical accountability, horizontal exchange, and superintendence in presidential systems. It is argued that the relations between agents of the state are a function of their connections to the ultimate principal — the citizenry. The proliferation of superintendence agencies may raise expectations that cannot be met without an overhaul of the institutions of vertical accountability in Latin America.
Legislative Oversight: Interests and Institutions in the United States and Argentina
Authors: Morgenstern Scott , Manzetti Luigi
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines how similar institutions in 19th century Latin America and the United States took different paths in terms of their fight against corruption and development of oversight institutions by the end of the 20th century. The divergent paths taken by these two countries resulted from differences in their legislatures’ motives and the courts’ willingness to check and counter executive action. A long continuous period of democratic rule is also essential to developing institutions and attacking corruption. While this occurred in the US, Argentina’s turbulent democratic experience stunted the development of a professional legislature capable of restraining executive abuses and corruption.
Societal and Horizontal Controls: Two Cases of a Fruitful Relationship
Authors: Smulovitz Catalina , Peruzzotti Enrique
Published: April 2005

This chapter examines the interactions between societal and horizontal mechanisms of accountability in Latin America. The analysis of two case studies shows that the activation of the horizontal mechanisms was possible due to pressures from below. The actions of individuals, associations, and the media transformed local and particular cases into issues on the public agenda. The constructed public issue, in turn, became a denunciation of the failure of horizontal mechanism of accountability, and a demand of their proper operation.
Meanings and Knowledge of Meaning
Authors: Schiffer Stephen
Published: April 2005

Knowing what an expression means is neither knowing that it means such and such nor knowing how to do things with the expression; it is being in, or being apt to be in, a certain kind of language-processing state. The account of knowledge of meaning is seen to suggest that, strictly speaking, there are no such things as expression meanings. Whether or not that is so, there are things to which an expression must be related if it is to have meaning, and with an eye to David Kaplan’s characters, these things are called characters*. This leads to a critical discussion of two-dimensional semantics.
The Moral Demands of Affluence
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

How much are we morally required to do to help people who are

much worse off than us? On any credible moral outlook, other people’s pressing need for assistance can ground moral requirements on us to help them – requirements of beneficence.

How far do those requirements extend? One way to think about this is by means of a simple analogy: an analogy between contributing to aid agencies’ efforts to help people at a distance and saving someone’s life yourself, directly. Part I of the book examines this analogy, discusses the problems with it, and argues that a version of it is defensible. This argument draws on an extended discussion of the nature of moral requirements of beneficence and fairness.

This argument can seem to lead to an extremely demanding moral outlook – one that requires us to lead altruistically focused lives, and forbids practically all forms of personal fulfilment. Part II argues against this demanding view, on the grounds that it can be rejected from an appropriately impartial point of view. It only makes sense to accept that there are requirements of beneficence on the assumption that the non-altruistic interests around which our lives – rich and poor alike – are structured is not morally wrong to pursue.
The Life-Saving Analogy
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

Many writers have followed Peter Singer in drawing an analogy between assisting needy people at a distance and saving someone’s life directly. Arguments based on this analogy can take either a subsumptive or a non-subsumptive form. Such arguments face a serious methodological challenge.
An Argument from Beneficence
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

The failure to save someone’s life directly is wrong because it is a failure of beneficence. The features that make it a failure of beneficence are also features of not helping people at a distance: they are present when the help we can give is indirect as well as when it is immediate. So not helping people at a distance is wrong too (although it is not necessarily as wrong). The methodological challenge of Ch.1 can be answered.
Objections to Aid
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

Various arguments are often given for thinking that aid agencies do no overall good to the poor. The economic and political grounds for thinking this are surveyed in this chapter. It is argued that the claims needed for a cogent objection to humanitarian aid are too strong to be plausible. And even if they were right, they would at most show that we should be helping in some ways rather than others: they would not show that there is nothing we can do to help.
The Extreme Demand
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

How far do the demands generated by the life-saving analogy extend? Although the requirement on me to give money to aid agencies is a requirement that I contribute to what we all ought to be doing, that does not mean that, when others are not complying, I am required to do no more than my ‘fair share’. Two further approaches to the life-saving analogy need to be considered: an iterative or an aggregative approach. A case can be given for favouring the iterative approach. But the conclusion to which this leads – the Extreme Demand – allows each of us to spend practically no time or money on sources of personal fulfilment.
Impartiality, Fairness, and Beneficence
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: April 2005

Showing that the Extreme Demand can be rejected from an appropriately impartial point of view would constitute a decisive objection to it. This would undermine the case for thinking that it could be a demand of either fairness or beneficence. An ‘appropriately’ impartial point of view, for the purposes of this argument, is a point of view of impartial concern for other people’s interests.