The Ethics of Social Roles

The Ethics of Social Roles PDF Author: Alex Barber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192655582
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
The various social roles we occupy, such as teacher, parent, or friend, shape our ethical lives and colour our perceptions of each other and ourselves. Social roles have long been a central topic in sociology, and specific social roles frequently feature within applied moral philosophy and professional ethics. In striking contrast, the normative significance of social roles per se—the 'ethics of social roles' as a distinct field of philosophical enquiry—has been relatively neglected. Indeed, the view that social roles have genuine ethical bite is often tacitly dismissed as socially regressive, as if the pull of a social role must always be towards 'knowing one's place'. The present collection aims to change this by putting social roles back where they belong: at the centre of normative ethics. After an editors' introduction aimed at readers new to the topic, fourteen original chapters by an international line-up of new and established authors show how the topic of social roles is a kind of missing link between several better-established topics, including collective agency, special obligations, wellbeing, and social and political justice. These contributions are organized into four parts. The first looks at the topic through a historical lens, since philosophers have not always neglected social roles. The second addresses the source of the apparent normative force of social roles. The third examines the relation of a social role's normativity to its wider institutional context. The fourth looks at implications for self and wellbeing.

The Ethics of Social Roles

The Ethics of Social Roles PDF Author: Alex Barber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192655582
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
The various social roles we occupy, such as teacher, parent, or friend, shape our ethical lives and colour our perceptions of each other and ourselves. Social roles have long been a central topic in sociology, and specific social roles frequently feature within applied moral philosophy and professional ethics. In striking contrast, the normative significance of social roles per se—the 'ethics of social roles' as a distinct field of philosophical enquiry—has been relatively neglected. Indeed, the view that social roles have genuine ethical bite is often tacitly dismissed as socially regressive, as if the pull of a social role must always be towards 'knowing one's place'. The present collection aims to change this by putting social roles back where they belong: at the centre of normative ethics. After an editors' introduction aimed at readers new to the topic, fourteen original chapters by an international line-up of new and established authors show how the topic of social roles is a kind of missing link between several better-established topics, including collective agency, special obligations, wellbeing, and social and political justice. These contributions are organized into four parts. The first looks at the topic through a historical lens, since philosophers have not always neglected social roles. The second addresses the source of the apparent normative force of social roles. The third examines the relation of a social role's normativity to its wider institutional context. The fourth looks at implications for self and wellbeing.

Roles and Values

Roles and Values PDF Author: Robert (R. S.) Downie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000034763
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book

Book Description
Originally published in 1971, this book provides a lucid philosophical investigation of the area in which the demands of social and political institutions impinge on individual values and responsibilities, using the concept of a social role to focus attention on the problems and tensions which are necessarily involved. This approach to social and political philosophy will be of interest to students of social sciences as well as of philosophy.

The Role Ethics of Epictetus

The Role Ethics of Epictetus PDF Author: Brian E. Johnson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739179683
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book

Book Description
The Role Ethics of Epictetus: Stoicism in Ordinary Life offers an original interpretation of Epictetus’s ethics and how he bases his ethics on an appeal to our roles in life. Epictetus believes that every individual is the bearer of many roles from sibling to citizen and that individuals are morally good if they fulfill the obligations associated with these roles. To understand Epictetus’s account of roles, scholars have often mistakenly looked backwards to Cicero’s earlier and more schematic account of roles. However, for Cicero, roles are merely a tool in the service of the virtue of decorum where decorum is one of the four canonical virtues—prudence, justice, greatness of spirit, and decorum. In contrast, Epictetus sets those virtues aside and offers roles as a complete ethical theory that does the work of those canonical virtues. This book elucidates the unique features of Epictetus’s role based ethics. First, individuals have many roles and these roles are substantial enough that they may conflict. Second, although Epictetus is often taken to have only a sparse theory of appropriate action (or “duty” in older translations), Brian E. Johnson examines the criteria by which appropriate action is measured in order to demonstrate that Epictetus does have an account of appropriate action and that it is grounded in his account of roles. Finally, Epictetus downplays the Stoic ideal of the sage and replaces that figure with role-bound individuals who are supposed to inspire each of us to meet the challenges of our own roles. Instead of looking to sages, who have a perfect knowledge and action that we must imitate, Epictetus’s new ethical heroes are those we do not imitate in terms of knowledge or action, but simply in the way they approach the challenges of their roles. The analysis found in The Role Ethics of Epictetus will be of great value both to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, ethics and moral philosophy, history, classics, and theology, and to the educated reader who admires Epictetus.

Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior

Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior PDF Author: W. Ickes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461394694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
Personality and Roles: Sources of Regularities in Social Behavior For behavioral scientists, whether they identify primarily with the science of psychology or with that of sociology, there may be no challenge greater than that of discovering regularities and consistencies in social behavior. After all, it is such regularities and consistencies that lend predictability to the behavior of individuals in social contexts-in particular, to those events that constitute dyadic interactions and group processes. In the search for behavioral consistencies, two theoretical constructs have emerged as guiding principles: personality and roles. The theoretical construct of personality seeks to understand regularities and consistencies in social behavior in terms of relatively stable traits, enduring dispositions, and other propensities (for example, needs, motives, and attitudes) that are thought to reside within individuals. Because it focuses primarily on the features of individuals, the construct of personality is fundamentally psychological in nature. By contrast, the theoretical construct of roles seeks to understand regularities and consistencies in social behavior in terms of the directive influence of coherent sets of rules and prescriptions that are provided by the interpersonal, occupational, and societal categories of which individuals are continuing members. Because it focuses primarily on features of social structures, the construct of roles is fundamentally sociological in nature.

Roles and Values

Roles and Values PDF Author: Robert Downie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367900342
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description
Originally published in 1971, this book provides a lucid philosophical investigation of the area in which the demands of social and political institutions impinge on individual values and responsibilities, using the concept of a social role to focus attention on the problems and tensions which are necessarily involved. This approach to social and political philosophy will be of interest to students of social sciences as well as of philosophy.

Roles and Values

Roles and Values PDF Author: Robert Silcock Downie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book

Book Description


Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles PDF Author: Justin Oakley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139432184
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book

Book Description
Professionals, it is said, have no use for simple lists of virtues and vices. The complexities and constraints of professional roles create peculiar moral demands on the people who occupy them, and traits that are vices in ordinary life are praised as virtues in the context of professional roles. Should this disturb us, or is it naive to presume that things should be otherwise? Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking develop a rigorous articulation and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like.

The Ethics of Care

The Ethics of Care PDF Author: Virginia Held
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195180992
Category : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book

Book Description
An exploration of the moral theory examines the characteristics of the ethics of care, discussing the feminist roots of this moral approach, what is meant by "care," and the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues.

The Bourgeois Virtues

The Bourgeois Virtues PDF Author: Deirdre Nansen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226556670
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 637

Get Book

Book Description
For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

Social Roles and Social Norms

Social Roles and Social Norms PDF Author: Kathryn J. Fitzgerald
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781634839525
Category : Social norms
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
The authors of this book provide research on social roles and social norms. Chapter one begins with conditionality and normative models in the field of social thinking. Chapter two discusses the issue of social roles and cultural norms through a perspective of sociology of literature. Chapter three focuses on social exclusion among children and adolescents. Chapter four examines filial piety as a response to the societal norms. The final chapter presents qualitative studies in order to discuss gender roles in the household food provisioning and reviews how participants perceived those roles.