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Moral Discourse (moral + discourse)
Selected AbstractsTaming Madness: Moral Discourse and Allegory in Counter-Reformation SpainHISTORY, Issue 315 2009MARĶA TAUSIET In the early modern period, madness assumed an important role in European thought and to a certain extent replaced the obsession with death which had characterized the preceding centuries. Like death before it, madness was seen as a means of accessing truth, but this was now an incomplete truth full of ambivalence and ambiguity since folly was being reclaimed as a relative form of reason. This article examines how this new vision of madness influenced Spanish thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Overall, it can be said that the positive and liberating view of madness, as conveyed by Erasmus, predominated in Spain until the end of the sixteenth century. Thereafter, the spirit of the Counter-Reformation tried gradually to constrain the omnipresent madness, associating it with the most reprehensible of vices, while understanding sanity to be the cultivation of Christian virtues. Despite attempts by a reductionist moral discourse to tame madness, however, it proved to be an unmanageable beast which continued to multiply and display a thousand and one difference faces. [source] Rape as an Essentially Contested ConceptHYPATIA, Issue 2 2001ERIC REITAN Because "rape" has such a powerful appraisive meaning, how one defines the term has normative significance. Those who define rape rigidly so as to exclude contemporary feminist understandings are therefore seeking to silence some moral perspectives "by definition." I argue that understanding rape as an essentially contested concept allows the concept sufficient flexibility to permit open moral discourse, while at the same time preserving a core meaning that can frame the discourse. [source] Challenging the Bioethical Application of the Autonomy Principle within Multicultural SocietiesJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2004Andrew Fagan abstract,This article critically re-examines the application of the principle of patient autonomy within bioethics. In complex societies such as those found in North America and Europe health care professionals are increasingly confronted by patients from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. This affects the relationship between clinicians and patients to the extent that patients' deliberations upon the proposed courses of treatment can, in various ways and to varying extents, be influenced by their ethnic, cultural, and religious commitments. The principle of patient autonomy is the main normative constraint imposed upon medical treatment. Bioethicists typically appeal to the principle of patient autonomy as a means for generally attempting to resolve conflict between patients and clinicians. In recent years a number of bioethicists have responded to the condition of multiculturalism by arguing that the autonomy principle provides the basis for a common moral discourse capable of regulating the relationship between clinicians and patients in those situations where patients' beliefs and commitments do or may contradict the ethos of biomedicine. This article challenges that claim. I argue that the precise manner in which the autonomy principle is philosophically formulated within such accounts prohibits bioethicists' deployment of autonomy as a core ideal for a common moral discourse within multicultural societies. The formulation of autonomy underlying such accounts cannot be extended to simply assimilate individuals' most fundamental religious and cultural commitments and affiliations per se. I challenge the assumption that respecting prospective patients' fundamental religious and cultural commitments is necessarily always compatible with respecting their autonomy. I argue that the character of some peoples' relationship with their cultural or religious community acts to significantly constrain the possibilities for acting autonomously. The implication is clear. The autonomy principle may be presently invalidly applied in certain circumstances because the conditions for the exercise of autonomy have not been fully or even adequately satisfied. This is a controversial claim. The precise terms of my argument, while addressing the specific application of the autonomy principle within bioethics, will resonate beyond this sphere and raises questions for attempts to establish a common moral discourse upon the ideal of personal autonomy within multicultural societies generally. [source] "I Never Wanted to Be a Quack!"MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2010The Professional Deviance of Plaintiff Experts in Contested Illness Lawsuits: The Case of Multiple Chemical Sensitivities When medical practitioners act as expert witnesses for the plaintiff in contested illness lawsuits, they can be stigmatized by their professional community. Drawing on ethnographic research surrounding the condition multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) in Australia, this article focuses on: how plaintiff experts specialize; their rationale for deviance from the professional norm; and structural constraints to medical advocacy. By diagnosing and treating the condition as organic, these experts oppose the accepted disease paradigm of the medical community and therefore face professional isolation and peer pressure. They rationalize their continued advocacy within a moral discourse, which includes a professional aspiration toward altruism, an ethical commitment to "truth," and the explicit emphasis that financial gain is not a motivation. For their deviance the experts have been confronted with professional disillusionment and emotional drain. Ultimately, the medical profession is disenfranchising experts who may be vital characters in the quest for understanding about environmental illnesses. [source] Ritual and (im)moral voices: Locating the Testament of Judas in Sakapultek communicative ecologyAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009ROBIN ANN SHOAPS ABSTRACT In this article, I examine el Testamento de Judas (the Testament of Judas), an annual letter "from" Judas Iscariot to the townspeople of Sacapulas, Guatemala. Drawing on a conceptual framework that synthesizes Bakhtinian concepts of voice and speech genres, I argue that the characteristics of the Testament of Judas serve to create idealized "voices" that reflect stances toward its content and audience. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the Testament can only be understood against the backdrop of Sakapultek Maya communicative ecology, including ritual wedding counsels, which constitute the Testament's moral instructional complement, and the quotidian genre of "gossip,scolding."[voice, genre, moral discourse, ritual, Maya, Judas, Guatemala] [source] THE MORAL REQUIREMENT IN THEISTIC AND SECULAR ETHICSTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 2 2010PATRICK LOOBUYCK One of the central tasks of meta-ethical inquiry is to accommodate the common-sense assumptions deeply embedded in our moral discourse. A comparison of the potential of secular and theistic ethics shows that, in the end, theists have a greater facility in achieving this accommodation task; it is easier to appreciate the action-guiding authority and binding nature of morality in a theistic rather than in a secular context. Theistic ethics has a further advantage in being able to accommodate not only this essential conceptual feature of morality, but also the existence of moral requirements and their source of normativity. [source] PROPOSITIONAL CLOTHING AND BELIEFTHE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 228 2007Neil Sinclair Moral discourse exhibits features often taken to constitute discourses that express propositions: e.g., its sentences can be intelligibly embedded in conditionals and other unasserted contexts. If to be a belief is just to be a mental state expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed, then quasi-realism, the version of expressivism which accepts that moral discourse is propositionally clothed, is self-refuting. However, this view of belief, which I label ,minimalism', is false. I present three arguments against it and dismiss two possible defences (the first drawn from the work of Wright, the second given by Harcourt). The issue between expressivists and their opponents cannot be settled by the mere fact that moral discourse wears propositional clothing. [source] | ||||||||||