Rethinking Responsibility


Book Description

K. E. Boxer explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. She suggests that to answer this question we must focus on responsibility in the sense of liability, and that an incompatibilist view may only be preserved on an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic.




The Limits of Blame


Book Description

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.




The Responsibility to Defend


Book Description

The rise or resurgence of revisionist, repressive and authoritarian powers threatens the Western, US-led international order upon which Germany’s post-war security and prosperity were founded. With Washington increasingly focused on China’s rise in Asia, Europe must be able to defend itself against Russia, and will depend upon German military capabilities to do so. Years of neglect and structural underfunding, however, have hollowed out Germany’s armed forces. Much of the political leadership in Berlin has not yet adjusted to new realities or appreciated the urgency with which it needs to do so. Bastian Giegerich and Maximilian Terhalle argue that Germany’s current strategic culture is inadequate. It informs a security policy that fails to meet contemporary strategic challenges, thereby endangering Berlin’s European allies, the Western order and Germany itself. They contend that: Germany should embrace its historic responsibility to defend Western liberal values and the Western order that upholds them. Rather than rejecting the use of military force, Germany should wed its commitment to liberal values to an understanding of the role of power – including military power – in international affairs. The authors show why Germany should seek to foster a strategic culture that would be compatible with those of other leading Western nations and allow Germans to perceive the world through a strategic lens. In doing so, they also outline possible elements of a new security policy.




Terrorism and the State


Book Description

Winner of the 2007 Paul Guggenheim Prize! Today's terrorists possess unprecedented power, but the State still plays a crucial role in the success or failure of their plans. Terrorists count on governmental inaction, toleration or support. And citizens look to the State to protect them from the dangers that these terrorists pose. But the rules of international law that regulate State responsibility for preventing terrorism were crafted for a different age. They are open to abuse and poorly suited to hold States accountable for sponsoring or tolerating contemporary terrorist activity. It is time that these rules were reconceived. Tal Becker's incisive and ground-breaking book analyses the law of State responsibility for non-State violence and examines its relevance in a world coming to terms with the threat of catastrophic terrorism. The book sets out the legal duties of States to prevent, and abstain from supporting, terrorist activity and explores how to maximise State compliance with these obligations. Drawing on a wealth of precedents and legal sources, the book offers an innovative approach to regulating State responsibility for terrorism, inspired by the principles and philosophy of causation. In so doing, it presents a new conceptual and legal framework for dealing with the complex interactions between State and non-State actors that make terrorism possible, and offers a way to harness international law to enhance human security in a post-9/11 world.




Rethinking Business Responsibility in a Global Context


Book Description

This book examines topical issues in global corporate social responsibility (CSR) from both scholarly and practical perspectives. It offers a variety of viewpoints and cases from countries around the globe and combines them with current academic knowledge. Intended for students, academics, and managers wishing to keep abreast of the challenges and opportunities for corporations operating in our ever-more-complex globalized world, this book provides fresh insights into responsible business conduct.




Rethinking Philosophers' Responsibility


Book Description

Calling on philosophers as the custodians of rationality to reconsider their responsibility toward their communities and the state of civilization at large, this book considers philosophy to be a practical discipline. Largely foreign to philosophers and non-philosophers alike, this conception of philosophy discloses the relevance of its unique contributions to contemporary society. The book offers a compelling and accessible analysis of philosophy also in relation to religion, psychology, the New Age Movement, and globalization, and exemplifies through a wide range of current problems how philosophers can fulfil their responsibility. Its argument that responsibility lies where one is capable of doing what is needed, and even more so, when no one else can do it, targets philosophers. However, its innovative study of contemporary philosophy coupled with its original contributions to the problems at hand will engage academics and students from other disciplines, as well as a general readership.




Philosophy of Management and Sustainability


Book Description

Using an interdisciplinary focus, this book combines the research disciplines of philosophy, business management and sustainability to aid and advance scholar and practitioner understanding of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).




Rethinking Food and Agriculture


Book Description

Given the central role of the food and agriculture system in driving so many of the connected ecological, social and economic threats and challenges we currently face, Rethinking Food and Agriculture reviews, reassesses and reimagines the current food and agriculture system and the narrow paradigm in which it operates. Rethinking Food and Agriculture explores and uncovers some of the key historical, ethical, economic, social, cultural, political, and structural drivers and root causes of unsustainability, degradation of the agricultural environment, destruction of nature, short-comings in science and knowledge systems, inequality, hunger and food insecurity, and disharmony. It reviews efforts towards 'sustainable development', and reassesses whether these efforts have been implemented with adequate responsibility, acceptable societal and environmental costs and optimal engagement to secure sustainability, equity and justice. The book highlights the many ways that farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists and others have been raising awareness of these issues, implementing solutions and forging 'new ways forward', for example towards paradigms of agriculture, natural resource management and human nutrition which are more sustainable and just. Rethinking Food and Agriculture proposes ways to move beyond the current limited view of agro-ecological sustainability towards overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on the principle of 'inclusive responsibility'. Inclusive responsibility encourages ecosystem sustainability based on agro-ecological and planetary limits to sustainable resource use for production and livelihoods. Inclusive responsibility also places importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity and justice for all and emphasises the health, well-being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of producers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world. - Explores some of the key drivers and root causes of unsustainability , degradation of the agricultural environment and destruction of nature - Highlights the many ways that different stakeholders have been forging 'new ways forward' towards alternative paradigms of agriculture, human nutrition and political economy, which are more sustainable and just - Proposes ways to move beyong the current unsustainable exploitation of natural resources towards agroecological sustainability and overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on 'inclusive responsibility'




Rethinking Juvenile Justice


Book Description

What should we do with teenagers who commit crimes? In this book, two leading scholars in law and adolescent development argue that juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science, which shows that adolescence is a distinctive state of cognitive and emotional development. Although adolescents are not children, they are also not fully responsible adults.




Self-Made Madness


Book Description

This multi-disciplinary book lies in the general areas of forensic psychiatry/psychology, sociology, jurisprudence, criminal law and criminology. It questions traditional assumptions about illness and mental disorder, and deals with the controversial notion that mental disorders (and possibly other 'illnesses') may be to varying extents the fault of the 'sufferer'. It examines how the law can take into account such 'culpable' notions of mental disorder in determining criminal responsibility. This culpability for the defense-causing condition (or 'responsibility for level of criminal responsibility') is called 'meta-responsibility'. The book is divided into two parts. The first section discusses theoretical issues, such as the manner in which traditional illness models relate to meta-responsibility; the insanity defence and other mental condition defences; the relationship of clinical issues such as medication non-compliance and insight to meta-responsibility and the counterfactual notion that consideration of the possible voluntary origins of mental disorder may benefit the criminal and non-criminal mentally disordered. The second section of the book presents a case vignette experiment of mock jurors, examining the effect of a 'meta-responsibility insanity test'.