Suchergebnisse

This article looks at the individual responsibility of rank-and-file soldiers in "just wars" & defends what might be called "subtle pacifism." Subtle pacifism begins with an acknowledgement of the conflict between the jus in bello imperative of taking part in one's own community's just wars & the pacifist imperative of refraining from any homicidal enterprise. The moral dilemma faced by soldiers in any just war proves insoluble, as may be shown by arguments based on open debate, incommensurable descriptions & the most cogent interpretation of the case of the "naked soldier." The article concludes that to minimize the risk of being trapped in this dilemma, we should work toward an international order that obviates the need for just wars. And to minimize the temptations of bad faith, we should oppose compulsory military service. Adapted from the source document.

Addresses the recent debate regarding a return to moral philosophy & those who consider it a remedy for the ills of democratic society. The link between morals & philosophy is characterized by a new paradigm of "political liberalism" elaborated by John Rawls (eg, see IRPS No. 73/94c01903) & Charles Larmore (1987). Political liberalism is criticized for envisioning the ideal society without conflict; both consensus & dissent are necessary to democracy. E. Eakman

The philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas is generally considered a doctrine of the primacy of ethics, as opposed to the realist, if not cynical, mainstream of Western thought from antiquity to our day. Yet in his works Levinas also delves into the role & purpose of political institutions: his object being precisely to get back to the nexus between the moral & political spheres, which Western philosophy too often tends to separate with a view to subordinating the first to the second. In this sense, Levinas' thought, which draws on the wellsprings of Judaism, seeks to invent a new political ethics for our age that can reconcile the universalist demands of modern Western thought & the uniqueness of the human condition articulated most expressively in Jewish prophetism. Adapted from the source document.

Political claims commonly argue that the plurality of incommensurable moral horizons now renders traditional modes of conflict management obsolete. In particular, the bargaining model has no relevance or legitimacy with respect to identity politics. The desire to give an account of such phenomena has led to a major shift in political theory, where the notion of "moral pluralism" has a key role. While intense debate surrounds the nature of moral personhood & its institutional implications, moral pluralism itself appears taken for granted. Yet its fragility is revealed by a comparison with traditional interest group pluralism. Indeed, in spite of its "moral" language, the contemporary version of pluralism would be indistinguishable, in practical political terms, from traditional polyarchy. The crucial theoretical issue in this respect is the play of transparency & opacity with respect to political conflict, ie, the presence or absence of a norm of political interaction in terms of which the reasons for making a claim are decisive in assessing the claim's legitimacy. In these terms, "moral" pluralism is ambivalent, & ultimately deeply contradictory. If the challenge of value pluralism is important, the political theory of moral pluralism has not yet provided an adequate answer. Adapted from the source document.

Defining the moral fact, Emile Durkheim suggested to consider the right objective indicator of collective morality. By following this precept Isabelle Delpla seeks to analyze the relationship between international law and morality in Bosnia. Specifically, it is to understand how these standards are reflected in the Bosnian social space by analyzing the direction taken by the international justice in this country after the 1992-1995 war. Remember that this book is the result of an exemplary research work began in 1996 and developed through two field surveys, one in 2002 made 2004 Sarajevo and its surroundings, and the other from 2005, 2007, mainly has Prijedor. Overcoming the antagonism between, on the one hand an analysis centered on national and international institutions and on the other, exclusively a bottom-up approach, the author offers two complementary lines of research. Adapted from the source document.

The conflicts of interests of judges are at the core of the requirements of a high quality justice system which operates serenely immune to suspicion of dependency on any kind of power institution and to personal bias. The relationships that could oppose or link a judge to one of the parties should be addressed preventively and if necessary a posteriori through the annulment of the decision delivered in such conditions. But the answer of positive law differs according to whether the judges are professional magistrates or lay judges. In the first case the statute that protects their independence is the best guarantee to avoid conflicts of interests. In the second case the lack of statute (referee) or a less protective statute (for instance judges of commercial courts) leaves the management of conflicts to the impartiality of the judges and their virtue based on personal ethics. Adapted from the source document.

There are a lot of moral values in the practice of communities and the moral philosophies make different hierarchies among them on the one side, and there are different generalizations of morality (rules, maxims, virtues, principles etc.) which mean the fixed norms of morality on the other side. There is the well-known line of critics of MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor which attacks the moral theory of John Rawls as the reduction of the morality to the justice and which tendency appeared in the most clear form in the theory of Jürgen Habermas. The study tries to show that beyond the American line of thought the critique of this reduction can be based in the genuine German line of thought which appeared in the ethics of Rudolph von Jhering and Nicolai Hartmann. In order to show the consequences of this reduction the study compares the theory of Rawls and Habermas with the ethics of Rudolph von Jhering and Nicolai Hartmann who outline in their theories a lot of moral values and as one of these values the justice is placed among them.