scholarly journals Learning from Leibniz: Navigating the Twin Labyrinths of Academia and Practice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank H. Weiner ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Conference Theme ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Back Ground ◽  
Frame Work ◽  
The Common ◽  
Final Causes ◽  
Good And Evil

This essay is prompted by a single phrase embedded in the call for papers – “…the best of all available knowledge…” It would be easy to overlook the significance of this brief extracted fragment by taking for granted we know and understand what is indeed the best in the context of the education of an architect. Within the overall frame-work of the conference such considerations could be seen as offering a relevant dialectical antithesis to the main thesis of the conference. It is important to consider how questions of the ‘best’ in relation to knowledge have come to be seen by some as being of lesser importance in our conversations about education. If we do not strive for what is the best then we may loose an overall sense of telos or purposiveness in our various endeavors. The best is the highest good (both in theory and practice). So the best is at least a double condition rather than a singular condition. In Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics there are no less than three philosophical meanings of the word “best”. First there is best as the Idea of the good (here Idea in a Platonic sense and the good are synonymous), secondly the best as the common good and thirdly the best in a practical sense. There is then a noble best and a practical best.The viability of the conference theme on “The Practice of Teaching and the Teaching of Practice: The Teacher’s Hunch” may actually rely upon establishing a foundation for determining what the best of all available knowledge consists of towards our common pursuits. Here one might propose the word ‘available’ be replaced by the word ‘possible’ so the fragment would now read – the best of all possible knowledge. The distinction between availability and possibility although seemingly minor becomes a crucial one. Availability has to do with use and acquisition in the sense that something or someone is either available or is not available. The notion of availability lacks the gravitas of possibility that can lead to actuality. With the idea of possibility emerges the transcendental question of the freedom for good and evil adjudicated under a form of divine justice. Invoking possibility over availability is an acknowledgment of the perennial importance of the ancient Aristotelian dyad of potency/act in the deeper back-ground of our theories and practices. In a world of crass availabilities, “need is so many bananas”. In what follows the word “knowledge” is understood in Aristotelian sense of the fourfold of causation giving us the possibility to bring forth what we know, what Heidegger poeticized as modes of occasioning – the material, formal, efficient and final causes.

Law in the «Age of Biotechnology» (Legal Regime for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis)

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
V. V. Lapaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Genetic Diagnosis ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Moment

The engine of modern biotechnological development is new reproductive technologies, one of the most promising areas of which is preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). The use of this technology in Russia is currently carried out without proper legal support. The main problem in the development of the PGD legal regime is caused by the fact that this technology involves manipulation of the human embryo as a phenomenon with a special ontological status. The Christian-theological tradition, which links the birth of the human soul with the moment of conception, has a significant influence on the bioethical thought, as well as on the corresponding legal theory and practice. However, while considering the need to give a moral and religious assessment to any manipulation of the human's embryo, the development of the PGD legal regime should be based on the law principle of formal equality, according to which human repro ductive rights can be realized to the extent that they do not violate the rights of others and the common good, which is the condition for the human rights.

Moral Pluralism and Philanthropy

1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
David Sidorsky
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Religious Vision ◽  
Bird Watching ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Competitive Allocation

The idea of moral pluralism generates a dilemma for the practice of philanthropy. Characteristically, the practice of philanthropy assumes unity, coherence, or convergence among the diverse virtues and moral aims that it pursues. In the philanthropic tradition, it is recognized that the goals of a particular philanthropy will vary. Yet, if these are sincere expressions of the philanthropic will, each represents some portion of the manifold activity of “doing good” according to particularized choice or style. The relevant analogy should be drawn to the slogan of “giving to the college of your choice” or to worship of the one god in your own way, where the plurality of expression is not only consistent with the residual value of education or of religion, but articulates the pragmatic way to realize the underlying values of a pluralistic society.Historically, this reflects the place of a unifying religious vision of the nature of the good or of a secular conception of a public philosophy which recognized the common good. Even etymologically, the love of mankind suggests a single passion that is directed beneficently to the shared values of mankind.The theory and practice of contemporary philanthropy is necessarily pluralistic, however, and it reflects the range of decisions by individuals with different interests and values in a pluralist, democratic society. The legitimized and recognized range of philanthropies in modern societies demonstrates divergent and even conflicting perceptions of the common good or the public interest.Thus, the range of philanthropies includes support for bird watching and for business opportunities of minorities, which may require some decisions on “comparable worth” and competitive allocation of resources.

Economic Development and the Common Good: Lonergan and Cobb on the Need for a New Paradigm

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hoyt-O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Common

AbstractJohn B. Cobb, Jr and his associates offer a critique of prevailing economic theory and practice in the hopes of contributing to the reformation of both by examining the meaning and relevance of the common good in the economic sphere. This paper examines Cobb's critique of economic theory and practice and his contribution toward an understanding of economic life that would do greater justice to environmental and communal sustainability. It also examines the contours of the new paradigm for economic theory and practice that he and Herman E. Daly propose. While that paradigm stands in need of greater elaboration, their work suggests a line of further development, one that anticipates Bernard Lonergan's macroeconomic dynamics. The latter, I argue, accounts for Cobb's concerns and criticisms and provides a basis for the formulation of moral precepts that promote economic progress in ways consonant with a fuller vision of human flourishing.

Ethical Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World

2018 ◽  
pp. 494-507
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cold War

For much of the history of academic International Relations, foreign policy has understated the role of ethics in the theory and practice of statecraft. As discussed in the first part of the chapter, it was not until the critical and normative turn of the 1980s and 1990s that ethics assumed a significant role in the study of foreign policy. Ethics also rose to prominence in the language and commitments of a number of modernizing centre-left governments claiming to be agents of the common good. The second part of the chapter treats humanitarianism as a case study because it illustrates how ethics and foreign policy are configured in practice. While it is true that human rights significantly contributed to the end of the Cold War, it is also the case that erosion of the liberal international order poses stark questions for the resilience of humanitarianism in a deeply divided world.

On everyday academic research

2017 ◽  
pp. 98-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tirole
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Quality ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
The Common ◽  
Verification Of Models ◽  
Science And Research

In the fourth chapter of the book “The economy of the common good”, the nature of economics as a science and research practices in their theoretical and empirical aspects are discussed. The author considers the processes of modeling, empirical verification of models and evaluation of research quality. In addition, the features of economic cognition and the role of mathematics in economic research are analyzed, including the example of relevant research in game theory and information theory.

What is a Complex? Freudian Resistances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

This chapter evaluates the question of the ‘complex’ in a range of scientific, political and psychoanalytic contexts, asking not only where lines of connection and demarcation occur among specific distributions of meaning, value, theory and practice; but also probing the psychoanalytic corpus, notably Freud’s writings on the notion of a ‘complex’, in order to reframe various implications of the idea that this term tends to resist its own utilisation as both an object and form of analysis. This section establishes connections between three sets of theoretical questions: the common practice of describing modernity and its wake in terms of a drive towards increasing complexity; the meaning and cultural legacy of phrases such as ‘military-industrial complex’ and sundry derivations in the political sphere; and the intricacies and ambiguities subtending the term ‘complex’ within psychoanalytic theory. As a concept that Freud both utilised and repudiated, the provocative power of the term ‘complex’ is linked to the way it thwarts various attempts at systemization (providing nonetheless an apparatus of sorts through which contemporary science, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Freud, Eisenhower, and post-war politics can be articulated to one another).

Vickers Hot Springs

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Common Property Resource ◽  
Resource Conflict ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Common

Vickers Hot Springs is located near the rural Southern California town of Ojai, and local residents have long enjoyed soaking in the sulfuric pools. But as knowledge of the springs spread, the area saw increases in fights, traffic, burglaries, and drug use. In response, two residents purchased the land and committed to restore the property while allowing limited public access, subsequently generating a great deal of controversy within the community. Privatizing Vickers Hot Springs follows the archetypical lesson of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin stated that the problem for common-pool resources was that a finite amount of services are demanded by a potentially infinite number of users, who have little to gain by sacrificing for the common good. But Hardin's theory does not always apply. Many communities have come together to manage resources, often without government oversight. Thus, the question is not whether or not Hardin's theory is accurate, but rather “under what conditions it is correct and when it makes the wrong predictions.” Case studies provide nuance to the broad brushstrokes of a theory, and whether Hardin's parable is applicable depends on the particularities of the common property resource conflict. Employing the frameworks established by Hardin, Dietz et al., and Ostrom, this paper examines the management of Vickers Hot Springs within its broader social, ecological, and political context, asking whether the particular circumstances of this resource use conflict made privatization the most predictable outcome.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document