Worldly Ethics
Worldly Ethics

Author: Ella Myers

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2013-02-26

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0822353997

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What is the spirit that animates collective action? What is the ethos of democracy? Worldly Ethics offers a powerful and original response to these questions, arguing that associative democratic politics, in which citizens join together and struggle to shape shared conditions, requires a world-centered ethos. This distinctive ethos, Ella Myers shows, involves care for "worldly things," which are the common and contentious objects of concern around which democratic actors mobilize. In articulating the meaning of worldly ethics, she reveals the limits of previous modes of ethics, including Michel Foucault's therapeutic model, based on a "care of the self," and Emmanuel Levinas's charitable model, based on care for the Other. Myers contends that these approaches occlude the worldly character of political life and are therefore unlikely to inspire and support collective democratic activity. The alternative ethics she proposes is informed by Hannah Arendt's notion of amor mundi, or love of the world, and it focuses on the ways democratic actors align around issues, goals, or things in the world, practicing collaborative care for them. Myers sees worldly ethics as a resource that can inspire and motivate ordinary citizens to participate in democratic politics, and the book highlights civic organizations that already embody its principles.

In Our Name
In Our Name

Author: Eric Beerbohm

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-12-29

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0691168156

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When a government in a democracy acts in our name, are we, as citizens, responsible for those acts? What if the government commits a moral crime? The protestor's slogan--"Not in our name!"--testifies to the need to separate ourselves from the wrongs of our leaders. Yet the idea that individual citizens might bear a special responsibility for political wrongdoing is deeply puzzling for ordinary morality and leading theories of democracy. In Our Name explains how citizens may be morally exposed to the failures of their representatives and state institutions, and how complicity is the professional hazard of democratic citizenship. Confronting the ethical challenges that citizens are faced with in a self-governing democracy, Eric Beerbohm proposes institutional remedies for dealing with them. Beerbohm questions prevailing theories of democracy for failing to account for our dual position as both citizens and subjects. Showing that the obligation to participate in the democratic process is even greater when we risk serving as accomplices to wrongdoing, Beerbohm argues for a distinctive division of labor between citizens and their representatives that charges lawmakers with the responsibility of incorporating their constituents' moral principles into their reasoning about policy. Grappling with the practical issues of democratic decision making, In Our Name engages with political science, law, and psychology to envision mechanisms for citizens seeking to avoid democratic complicity.

Political Ethics
Political Ethics

Author: Edward Hall

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0691241139

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A comprehensive introduction to contemporary political ethics What is the relationship between politics and morality? May politicians bend moral constraints in the name of political necessity? Is it always wrong for leaders to lie? How much political compromise is too much (or too little)? In Political Ethics, some of the world’s leading thinkers in politics, philosophy, and related fields offer a comprehensive and accessible introduction to key issues in this rapidly growing area of political theory. In a series of original essays, the contributors examine a range of urgent political problems: lies and deception, compromise and refusal to compromise, the meaning and limits of political integrity, representation and failures of representation, good and bad democratic leadership, the virtues and excesses of partisanship, administrative ethics, political corruption, whistleblowing, legitimate and illegitimate claims of political emergency, and lobbying. What emerges are realistic but demanding ethical standards—and a clear-eyed understanding of the ethical challenges of political life in the twenty-first century. With contributions by Richard Bellamy, Alin Fumurescu, Edward Hall, Suzanne Dovi and Jesse McCain, Eric Beerbohm, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, Joseph Heath, Elizabeth David-Barrett and Mark Philp, Michele Bocchiola and Emanuela Ceva, Nomi Lazar, Phil Parvin, and Andrew Sabl.

Political Ethics and Public Office
Political Ethics and Public Office

Author: Dennis Frank Thompson

Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13:

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Are public officials morally justified in threatening violence, engaging in deception, or forcing citizens to act for their own good? Can individual officials be held morally accountable for the wrongs that governments commit? Dennis Thompson addresses these questions by developing a conception of political ethics that respects the demands of both morality and politics. He criticizes conventional conceptions for failing to appreciate the difference democracy makes, and for ascribing responsibility only to isolated leaders or to impersonal organizations. His book seeks to recapture the sense that men and women, acting for us and together with us in a democratic process, make the moral choices that govern our public life.

Good Education in an Age of Measurement
Good Education in an Age of Measurement

Author: Gert J. J. Biesta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1317258665

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The widespread use of the measurement of educational outcomes in order to compare the performance of education within and across countries seems to express a real concern for the quality of education. This book argues that the focus on the measurement of educational outcomes has actually displaced questions about educational purpose. Biesta explores why the question as to what constitutes good education has become so much more difficult to ask and shows why this has been detrimental for the quality of education and for the level of democratic control over education. He provides concrete suggestions for engaging with the question of purpose in education in a new, more precise and more encompassing way, with explicit attention to the ethical, political and democratic dimensions of education.

Democracy and Moral Conflict
Democracy and Moral Conflict

Author: Robert B. Talisse

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0521513545

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If confronted with a democratic result they regard as intolerable, should citizens revolt or pursue democratic means of social change?

Democracy, Real and Ideal
Democracy, Real and Ideal

Author: Ricardo Blaug

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1999-03-18

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0791496880

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By focusing the various difficulties encountered in applying theory to practical concerns, this book explores the reasons for the absence of a radical politics in Habermas's work. In doing so, it shows that certain political implications of the theory remain unexplored. The book articulates a unique application of Habermasian theory, the actual functioning of decision-making groups, the nature of deliberative interaction, and the kinds of judgments participants must make if they are to preserve their democratic process.

Levinas's Ethical Politics
Levinas's Ethical Politics

Author: Michael L. Morgan

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-05-09

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0253021189

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Emmanuel Levinas conceives of our lives as fundamentally interpersonal and ethical, claiming that our responsibilities to one another should shape all of our actions. While many scholars believe that Levinas failed to develop a robust view of political ethics, Michael L. Morgan argues against understandings of Levinas's thought that find him politically wanting or even antipolitical. Morgan examines Levinas's ethical critique of the political as well as his Jewish writings—including those on Zionism and the founding of the Jewish state—which are controversial reflections of Levinas's political expression. Unlike others who dismiss Levinas as irrelevant or anarchical, Morgan is the first to give extensive treatment to Levinas as a serious social political thinker whose ethics must be understood in terms of its political implications. Morgan reveals Levinas's political commitments to liberalism and democracy as well as his revolutionary conception of human life as deeply interconnected on philosophical, political, and religious grounds.

Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State
Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State

Author: Petr Urban

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-07-08

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 303041437X

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This book reflects on theoretical developments in the political theory of care and new applications of care ethics in different contexts. The chapters provide original and fresh perspectives on the seminal notions and topics of a politically formulated ethics of care. It covers concepts such as democratic citizenship, social and political participation, moral and political deliberation, solidarity and situated attentive knowledge. It engages with current debates on marketizing and privatizing care, and deals with issues of state care provision and democratic caring institutions. It speaks to the current political and societal challenges, including the crisis of Western democracy related to the rise of populism and identity politics worldwide. The book brings together perspectives of care theorists from three different continents and ten different countries and gives voice to their unique local insights from various socio-political and cultural contexts. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.