Fostering Contact After Historical Atrocities: The Potential of Moral Exemplars

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Witkowska ◽  
Marta Beneda ◽  
Sabina Čehajić-Clancy ◽  
Michal Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Exemplars

Practical Necessity and Moral Heroism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Fruh
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
The Status ◽  
Illuminating Light

Discussions of closely associated notions of practical necessity, volitional necessity, and moral incapacity have profited from a focus on cases of agential crisis to further our understanding of how features of an agent’s character might bind her. This paper turns to agents in crises in order to connect this way of being bound to the phenomenon of moral heroism. The connection is fruitful in both directions. Importing practical necessity into examinations of moral heroism can explain the special sense of bindingness moral heroes frequently express while preserving the status of heroic acts as supererogatory. It also helps explain how heroes persevere and act as so few others do. On the other hand, the context of moral heroism allows a fuller development of some features of the concept of practical necessity, shedding more illuminating light on the roots of practical necessity in character through recent findings in the psychology of moral exemplars.

Shame and Honor: Aristotle’s Thumos as a Basic Desire

Apeiron ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Victor Saenz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Social Value ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Rational Desire ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Rational Motivation

Abstract One of three basic types of desire, claims Aristotle, is thumos (‘spirit,’ ‘passion,’ ‘heart,’ ‘anger,’ ‘impulse’). The other two are epithumia (‘appetite’) and boulêsis (‘wish,’ ‘rational desire’). Yet, he never gives us an account of thumos; it has also received relatively little scholarly attention. I argue that thumos has two key features. First, it is able to cognize what I call ‘social value,’ the agent’s own perceived standing relative to others in a certain domain. In human animals, shame and honor are especially important manifestations of social value. Second, thumos provides non-rational motivation to pursue what affirms the agent’s social value and avoid what denies it. Interpretations that hold thumos just is anger, or that its object is the fine (kalon), I argue, are mistaken. My account also explains the role of thumos in moral education. In a virtuous agent thumos will be affectively attuned to the correct social rankings; it will take the practically wise, the lovers of the fine, or moral exemplars, as authorities.

Confucianism and Intergenerational Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Hourdequin ◽  
David B. Wong
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Social Web ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Central Values ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The World ◽  
Intergenerational Ethics ◽  
Ethical Relations

This chapter explains how early Confucianism can ground a distinctly relational perspective on intergenerational ethics. The Analects of Confucius foregrounds intergenerational relations by rooting ethics in relationships between parents and children and presenting as moral exemplars sage-kings from generations ago. From a Confucian point of view, persons are understood as persons-in-relation, embedded in networks of connection across space and time. Self-cultivation thus involves taking one’s place in a community where one’s own identity and welfare are deeply bound to those of others. In this view, gratitude and reciprocity emerge as central values. A Confucian understanding of gratitude and reciprocity involves not only dyadic relations but broader connections within a temporally extended social web. Thus, Confucian reciprocity might involve honoring one’s parents by nurturing one’s own children in turn or expressing gratitude for what past generations have provided by ensuring that future generations can flourish. Genuine ethical relations between current and future generations reflect care and concern for ongoing human communities; for the triad of heaven, earth, and humanity; and for realization of the Dao in the world.

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.

Virtue Ethics and Action Guidance

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-582
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Substituted Judgment ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Action Guidance ◽  
Practicable Method

Theological ethicists rarely allow the virtues to perform the heavyweight work of guiding action. This article contests this tradition and argues that, and demonstrates how, virtue ethics provides a practicable method of normative action guidance. The article contends that there are five interrelated but distinct modes of virtue action guidance. The first three modes—dialogue, emulation, and substituted judgment—invite the agent to take counsel with moral exemplars. The interrogative and discovery modes direct agents to morally deliberate using thick accounts of the virtues.

On the Value Integration of Successfully Reformed Ex-Convicts: A Comparison With Moral Exemplars

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 640-658
Author(s):  
Jennifer Cole Wright ◽  
Heath Hoffmann ◽  
Olivia Coen
Keyword(s):  
Matched Control ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Matched Control Group ◽  
Community Values ◽  
Unmitigated Agency ◽  
Value Integration

The issue of successfully reintegrating ex-prisoners into society is a critical one. To assess the process of successful reintegration, we interviewed five male ex-convicts about their past versus present lives. Their responses were coded for self-oriented (agency) and community-oriented values. We found a shift away from “unmitigated” agency, toward community values from past to present, and also an integration of agency with community similar to that found in moral exemplars. This increase in integration was not found in a demographically matched control group. The transitions exemplified in these ex-convicts’ narratives help define potential paths for successful reintegration into society.

Moral Development, Moral Identity, and Prosocial Behavior

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-179
Author(s):  
John C. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Moral Identity ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Ego Strength ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Internal Locus Of Control ◽  
Field Independent ◽  
Sustained Action ◽  
Distinguishing Features

This chapter focuses on some of the variables accounting for individual differences in the likelihood of prosocial behavior. “Prosocial behavior” can range from a particular intervention to a lifetime dedicated to just and good causes. Highly prosocial individuals (moral exemplars) tend to be morally mature and highly empathic but field-independent (Moral Type B, internal locus of control, high self-efficacy) persons who perceive morality as central to their sense of self (high moral identity). Moral identity can join the main primary (affective and cognitive) sources of moral motivation. Finally, to take effective sustained action, even highly prosocial individuals need grit or ego strength, defined in terms of affect-regulating follow-through skills. Distinguishing features of genuine (versus spurious) moral exemplars are considered at the end of the chapter.

scholarly journals The fundamental role of storytelling and practical wisdom in facilitating the ethics education of junior doctors

2019 ◽  
pp. 136345931988910
Author(s):  
Alexis Paton ◽  
Ben Kotzee
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Ethics Education ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Junior Doctors ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Medical Ethics Education

Practical wisdom is a key concept in the field of virtue ethics, and it has played a significant role in the thinking of those who make use of virtue when theorising medical practice and ethics. In this article, we examine how storytelling and practical wisdom play integral roles in the medical ethics education of junior doctors. Using a qualitative approach, we conducted 46 interviews with a cohort of junior doctors to explore the role doctors feel phronesis has in their medical ethics practice and how they acquire practical wisdom through storytelling as an essential part of their medical ethics education. Through thematic analysis of the interviews, we discuss the key role storytelling about moral exemplars and role models plays in developing medical ethics education, and how telling stories about role models is considered to be one of the most useful ways to learn medical ethics. We finish by developing an argument for why practical wisdom should be an important part of medical ethics training, focusing on the important role that phronesis narratives should have in teaching medical ethics.

The Perceived Personality of Moral Exemplars

1999 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Exemplars
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