| 1. |
- Hallengren, Anders, 1950-
(författare)
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The code of Concord : Emerson's search for universal laws
- 1994. - 1
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this work is to detect a pattern: the concordance of Ethics and Aesthetics, Poetics and Politics in the most influential American thinker of the nineteenth century. It is an attempt to trace a basic concept of the Emersonian transcendentalist doctrine, its development, its philosophical meaning and practical implications. Emerson’s thought is analyzed genetically in search of the generating paradigm, or the set of axioms from which his aesthetic ideas as well as his political reasoning are derived. Such a basic structure, or point of convergence, is sought in the emergence of Emerson’s idea of universal laws that repeat themselves on all levels of reality.A general introduction is given in Part One, where the crisis in Emerson’s life is seen as representing and foreshadowing the deeper existential crisis of modern man.In Part 2 we follow the increasingly skeptical theologian’s turn to science, where he tries to secure a safe secular foundation for ethical good and right and to solve the problem of evil.Part 3 shows how Emerson’s conception of the laws of nature and ethics is applied in his political philosophy.In Part 4, Emerson’s ideas of the arts are seen as corresponding to his views of nature, morality, and individuality.Finally, in Part 5, the ancient and classical nature of Concord philosophy is brought into focus.The book concludes with a short summary.
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| 2. |
- Törnegren, Gull, 1955-
(författare)
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Utmaningen från andra berättelser : En studie om moraliskt omdöme, utvidgat tänkande och kritiskt reflekterande berättelser i dialogbaserad feministisk etik
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study has a threefold aim: First, the theoretical aim is to give a contribution to refinement of the theory of dialogue based feminist ethics, concerning the understanding of judgment and narration within such an ethics. The study also has an empirical aim, defined as to clarify what kind of knowledge, relevant to the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor, can be received from dialogical interpretation and analysis of a limited selection of critically reflecting life stories. Third, a methodological aim is defined as to develop an approach to interpretation and analysis of reflecting life stories, which renders the storyteller visible as a reflecting moral subject, and makes the story accessible as a source of knowledge for the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor.The thesis combines philosophical reflection and argumentation, with a narrative-hermeneutic method for interpretation of life stories, relating the two to each other in a hermeneutic process. The theoretical reflection draws on Seyla Benhabibs theory of communicative ethics. A dialogue based model for moral justification and a likewise dialogue based model for political legitimacy are at the heart of this universalistic theory, although in combination with a conception of a narratively and hermeneutically constituted context sensitive moral judgment, based on Hannah Arendt’s concept “enlarged thought”.In the reflection, this model is related to other feminist theorizing within the tradition of dialogue based feminist ethics, as found in the works of Iris M. Young, Georgia Warnke and Shari Stone-Mediatore. The empirical study draws on three critically reflecting life stories from Israeli-Palestinian women activists for a just peace. The methodology for interpretation and analysis that is worked out combines dialogical interpretation as presented in Arthur W. Frank’s socio-narratology with a method for structural analysis derived from Shari Stone-Mediatores theory of storytelling as an expression of political resistance struggle.The results show that some stories drawing on marginalized experiences have a potential to stimulate further public debate through their capacity to enable a stereoscopic seeing, elucidating a tension between ideologically structured discourse and non-linguistic experience; implying that narrative-hermeneutic competence should be considered crucial for public debate.
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| 3. |
- Kristensen, Kasper, 1985-
(författare)
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Spinoza on Ethical Cultivation : An Analysis of Vulnerability, Empowerment, and Early Modern Cultura Animi
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation concerns Benedict Spinoza’s (1632–1677) account of ethical life, emphasising the role of techniques and exercises for achieving greater power to control one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. The study aims to show that Spinoza offers a much more coherent and ambitious ethical theory than what is commonly acknowledged, involving both theoretical and practical considerations.The primary focus of the dissertation is to trace the influence of the early modern cultura animi (cultivation of the soul) tradition on Spinoza’s moral philosophy and to explore the novel use to which he puts it. Chapter One relates the central aims of Spinoza’s philosophy to a conception of philosophy as the art of living, connecting the Renaissance humanist revival of cultura animi tradition to Spinoza’s own attempt to construct a scientific ethics. Chapter Two analyses how Spinoza’s theories of imagination, judgment, and emotions explain the deep-rooted habits and prejudices that present key obstacles to ethical progress. Taking this diagnosis of human nature as a point of departure, Chapter Three explores the difficulties involved in trying to attain adequate knowledge and argues that Spinoza constructs his philosophical method to remedy the natural weakness of human understanding. Chapter Four explains Spinoza’s account of the central moral concepts of good and evil, articulating and defending an objectivist reading of his value theory. Chapter Five considers the extent to which a rational understanding of good and evil can alter habits and guide action given that passions are often more powerful than reason. Building on the weakness of reason to control the passions, Chapter Six shows that spiritual exercises are necessary components in Spinoza’s proposed remedy insofar as they fortify rational understanding by producing firm habits of character. The concluding discussion underlines that Spinoza’s ethical cultivation should not be seen as a linear process that secures stable happiness. Rather, people are and remain subject to the power of illusory beliefs and passions, and the ethical struggle is ongoing. By cultivating understanding, modifying one’s desires, reforming vicious habits and performing virtuous actions, however, the individual can learn to live with his or her vulnerability more happily and virtuously.
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| 4. |
- Lindström, Niclas
(författare)
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Förhållandet mellan praxis och teori inom etiken
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main question of this thesis is if a practice is right because it is prescribed by an ethical theory, or if an ethical theory is right because it follows from certain practices? I propose the following definitions to illustrate the main alternatives: (1) if a practice is determined by an ethical theory and the ethical theory is not determined by practice, it is possible to speak of a top-down model of ethical thinking. (2) If a theory, conversely, is determined by a practice and the practice is not determined by theory, it can be described as a bottom-up model. (3) If a practice is used in order to determine an ethical theory, which in turn can be used to assess new practical situations in a constantly evolving process, it can be labelled an interaction model. (4) Finally, it is possible that certain practices are the basis of morality, and do not need to be systemized in any ethical theory. The focus of this study is on alternatives (2), (3) and (4) where practice is given due weight and is characterized by a rejection of a strictly theoretical approach to ethics. I address representatives from some of the most influential alternatives such as: (2) Albert R Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin (casuistry), (3) Jürgen Habermas (discourse ethics), Alasdair MacIntyre (virtue ethics), Jonathan Haidt (experimental ethics) and (4) John Dewey, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty (pragmatism). I also discuss how some prominent theologians, such as Stanley Hauerwas (Christian virtue ethics) and James Gustafson (theocentric ethics), deal with similar questions. The purpose of this study is therefore to identify various positions represented in the debate, and to examine which consequences they have for how decisions are made and justified within an ethical framework. I argue that the strength of models that include practical concerns in ethical thinking is that they can contribute to our understanding of why ideals, norms and values differ between various social spheres, and how they change over time. Instead of taking the traditional position, where a basic assumption about the nature of moral questions is crucial to identify a reliable approach, it is possible to assess which approaches give reliable results and use these to identify the factors relevant to answer moral questions. I identify two main alternatives: a paradigmatic and a discursive way of treating moral issues. They address various aspects of human life and action, which means that they do not exclude, but rather enrich each other in the context of an overall debate. It seems possible that both types of studies can provide reasons for performing an action or accepting a theory, which can then be revised and give rise to new positions. From such a perspective, neither the image of man and the world, nor our standards, ideals and values are necessarily static, but can be revised and reconsidered within the context of a changing social, cultural and historical context.
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| 5. |
- Andén, Lovisa
(författare)
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Litteratur och erfarenhet i Merleau-Pontys läsning av Proust, Valéry och Stendhal
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore the relation between literary expression and experience in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. The principal focus is Merleau-Ponty’s investigations into literature, in two of his first courses at Collège de France, 1953- 1954: Sur le problème de la parole (On the Problem of Speech) and Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage (Research on the Literary Use of Language). While the former remains unpublished, the latter was finally published in 2013. At the time of his premature death, Merleau-Ponty left thousands of pages of working notes. They were supposed to contribute to a major philosophical work, the planned title of which was Être et monde (Being and world). Merleau-Ponty had planned to undertake an extensive examination of language in the last part of the work. However, in the absence of this text, the courses on literary language afford us the possibility of sketching the direction that this research might have taken.The examination of literary language use is, for Merleau-Ponty, made possible by an understanding of language found in Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics. Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Saussurean linguistics anticipates the structuralist reading that was later to dominate the intellectual scene. Instead of reading the linguistics of Saussure in opposition to phenomenology, he finds in the former an ally that allows him to think Husserlian phenomenology further.In the course notes, Merleau-Ponty explores the relation between sensible experience and linguistic expressions through close readings of Proust, Valéry and Stendhal. In the writing of Marcel Proust, he finds a writer that perpetually examines his experience, searching for expressions that are capable of bringing it forth. In Stendhal’s writing, Merleau-Ponty finds a literary method that makes the world appear through the “small true facts” that describe it. Finally, in Paul Valéry’s poetic writing he finds a writer superimposing words over other words, in order to create new significations. In their literary writing he finds a capacity to seize the world anew, beyond our habitual preconceptions of it, thus bringing us closer to the experience we already perceive.
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| 6. |
- Ehnberg, Jenny, 1984-
(författare)
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Globalization, Justice, and Communication : A Critical Study of Global Ethics
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to seek to an answer to the question of what constitutes a tenable model for global ethics. This is done in part by a critical engagement with four different models of global ethics; two proposals from political philosophy and two contributions from theological ethics. The models analyzed in the study are: (1) the capabilities approach as developed by Martha Nussbaum, (2) Seyla Benhabib’s discourse ethics and model of cosmopolitan federalism, (3) David Hollenbach’s model of the common good and human rights, and (4) the model for responsibility ethics and theological humanism as developed by William Schweiker. These models contain different understandings of global justice, human rights, and sustainable development.The study works with six primary problems: (1) Which are the main moral problems associated with different processes of globalization? (2) What should be the response to these problems, in the form of a normative ethical model? (3) What is the relation between global ethics and universalism? (4) What kind of institutional vision for the international arena does a tenable global ethic promote? (5) Given the human diversity and global pluralism, what would be a reasonable view of the human being included in a global ethic? (6) What kind of ethical theory is sustainable for global ethical reflection? These questions also form the basis for the analysis of the models.The study uses a set of criteria in order to assess the answers that the models offer for these questions. These criteria also constitute the framework within which the author’s contribution to the discussion of global ethics is phrased. The criteria are founded on an idea of what characterizes global ethical reflection. The contention is that a tenable global ethic should be relevant, and it should also be related to a reasonable view of human beings and a plausible ethical theory. Together these support the criterion of communicability, which argues that a global ethic should above all be communicable, i.e. capable of enabling cross-cultural communication. A central argument which this study makes is that a kind of ethical contextualism is more reasonable than an epistemological universalism.
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| 7. |
- Klasson Sundin, Maria, 1961-
(författare)
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Barnets religionsfrihet – en villkorad rättighet? : En filosofisk undersökning utifrån FN:s barnkonvention
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation uses philosophical tools to examine the child’s right to freedom of religion within the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other international human rights instruments.Article 14 of the CRC establishes the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It also establishes the right of the child's parents to guide and support the child in its exercise of the right to freedom of religion, while adjusting this support according to the child's evolving capacities. The emphasis of the study is on how to understand the child as, on the one hand, agent and subject in the exercise of this right and, on the other, dependent on parental support and guidance. For this purpose, the theoretical underpinnings of the child’s right to freedom of religion are examined with a particular focus on the conceptualization of this right in relation to children. With the text of the CRC as a starting point, different theories on rights, autonomy and religion are analyzed in order to find those compatible with both aspects of Article 14: the child as agent and the child as dependent. Theories that demand fully developed cognitive abilities in order to be a moral agent and a rights holder are rejected, as are theories in which the parents are the sole decision-makers on the basis of their own view of what is in the child's interests. In the same way, conceptions of religion in purely cognitive terms, or not taking into account dimensions of practice and observance accessible to children, are rejected.The conclusion drawn from the analysis is that relational conceptualizations of rights and autonomy and multi-dimensional conceptualizations of religion are best served to include both aspects of the child's right to freedom of religion. In viewing all humans, adults and children alike, as both active agents and vulnerably dependent on others, these conceptualizations challenge traditional views on rights and autonomy, and modern views of religion. In the final chapter, aspects of these relational conceptions are put together into a relational, mutuality-oriented model of the child's right to freedom of religion.
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| 8. |
- Sörhuus, Mikael
(författare)
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En känsla för det heliga : En undersökning av den samtida emotionsforskningens möjliga bidrag till religionsfilosofin
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis I examine the possibility of critically using material from contemporary emotion theory to develop a fruitful model for understanding the potential epistemic relevance of emotions in religious contexts. The relevance of this thesis is mainly twofold: since religion is an emotional phenomenon, the possible normative epistemic role of emotions needs to be examined. This is a question for the philosophy of religion, but not one that has been much explored. Contemporary emotion research provides promising tools for such an examination, but these tools have only been utilized to a minor degree in the field.In chapter 1, the preliminaries for my inquiry is articulated. In chapters 2 and 3, I evaluate psychophysiological, psychological and philosophical emotion research and find that the philosophical reasons and the empirical evidence speak in favor of a perceptual theory of emotion. In chapter 4, I examine how emotions, being perceptions, are of epistemic relevance. Focusing on a metaphysical discourse I come to the conclusion that emotions are of strong epistemic relevance. In chapter 5, I examine the possibility of giving emotions, being perceptions that are of strong epistemic relevance, an epistemological framework. For this I use the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey and conceive of emotions as habits, or part of habits, which are indispensable for certain human inquiries and knowings.In chapter 6 I turn to religion. I conceptualize religion as lived, and epistemic in that it offers certain goods that agents, being participants in religious spheres of practice, can utilize to deal with existential problems, inter alia, situations involving transcendence. My conclusion is that emotions, given the kind of problems that religious goods can help agents to handle, enable agents to examine the utility of such goods and implement them in their lives. Since this is an epistemic process, and these goods are utilized in many different spheres of practice, I choose to speak of emotions as enabling and justifying religious ways of life. In the end, emotions are about living and hence philosophical work about religious emotions becomes philosophical work about religious practice.
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| 9. |
- Malmqvist, Erik, 1980-
(författare)
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Good Parents, Better Babies : An Argument about Reproductive Technologies, Enhancement and Ethics
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified.Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create.The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally.
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| 10. |
- Persson, Anders J, 1959-
(författare)
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Workplace Ethics : Some practical and foundational problems
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis is twofold: first, to analyse some practical ethical problems that stem from the workplace and the working environment and to offer guidelines concerning how such problems can be solved; second, to illuminate how the specific nature of work and the working environment is intimately connected to the relation between the employee and the employing entity, as set forth in an employment contract, and how the form and content of such contracts are, among other things, determined by culturally and socially established ideas. The normative question to be addressed is thus: which of these ideas should be maintained? This can be seen as a second-order, or more fundamental, ethical question whose answer depends on determining which normative principles are right. An additional aim of this thesis is thus to illuminate that the contract relation has relevance to practical ethical problems in the workplace context in this second-order mode. The thesis consists of an Introduction and five papers. In Paper I (written together with Sven Ove Hansson) we argue that employees have a prima facie right to privacy, but that this right can be overridden by competing moral principles that follow, explicitly or implicitly, from the contract of employment. A set of ethical criteria is developed and summarized in the form of a guideline for determining the moral status of infringements into workplace privacy. In Paper II these criteria are applied to three broad classes of privacy-intrusive workplace practices: (1) monitoring and surveillance, (2) genetic testing, and (3) drug testing. In relation to some scenarios on these themes, it is shown that it is possible to handle such practical ethical problems systematically by way of the proposed guideline. Paper III deals with the fact that employees are protected by health and safety standards that are less protective than those that apply to the general public. Emphasis is put on the distinction between exposure and risk, and this distinction is claimed to be a key determinant for the relevance of arguments put forward in support of such double standards. In Paper IV the nature of the contract of employment is explored from an ethical point of view. An argument is developed against the claim that (a) the individual’s freedom of decision and (b) the practice of institutional arrangements are sufficient to justify a contract of employment. Paper V questions the standpoint that the voluntariness of the contracting parties in an employment relationship has substantial value. One overarching issue concerns the meaning of voluntariness in the employment context, another, its normative importance. It is argued that it is indeterminate exactly where the line should be drawn between voluntary and non–voluntary agreements in this context. Concerning the latter issue, it is claimed that even if we were able to draw such a line, this fact does not tell us anything about the normative importance of the voluntariness condition, nor how much normative weight we should assign to the fulfilment of its conditions in the workplace context.
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