neo-Kantianism Reference library
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
... Methodenstreit . Views differed on the strict nature of this separation, and different elements of Kantian thought found their way into different aspects of methodological and sociological theory. Among the most important of these was Kant's distinction between different forms of reason. Pure reason, Kant argued, was the basis for scientific knowledge of the objective world and mathematics. Practical reason, in contrast, informed judgments in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. Heinrich Rickert 's distinction between ideographic science and nomothetic science ...
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) Reference library
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
...debate about the status of the social sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences. Kantian principles implied that the social sciences could not achieve their distinctive form of knowledge through pure reason, nor should they approach human beings as mere objects of human knowledge. Rather, it was crucial to understand human beings as subjects, potentially autonomous and capable of action. This view shaped the interpretive sociologies of Max Weber and George Simmel . Neo-Kantian philosophy also informed Emile Durkheim 's concept of a distinct science of...
materialism Reference library
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
...—the sociology of knowledge (see Karl Mannheim ). In the theory and practice of non-Marxist social science, the materialist perspective has been carried forward by various schools of behaviorism , positivism , and realism ; it has been most directly opposed by neo-Kantianism and postmodernism...
Aristotle (384–322) Reference library
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
...to earlier periods. More recently, his thought has influenced social theory from Georg Hegel to Martin Heidegger and various advocates of communitarianism , who assert a strongly social conception of the person, knowledge, and the good life in opposition to Cartesian or Kantian individualism. Aristotle's idea of excellence and virtue inform the work of Alasdair Macintyre , among other ethicists and social philosophers. Pierre Bourdieu has drawn on Aristotle's idea of bodily hexis in explaining his notion of habitus and embodied...
Jewish Ethics and Peace Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace
...forces of Europe’s empires. As liberal nationalism became the ascendant force in the later nineteenth century, the values associated with peace made a huge mark on the literature of Jewish religious thinkers, particularly under the influence of Hermann Cohen, a Kantian, in whose account of Jewish ethics the pursuit of peace was discussed at length. By the turn of the twentieth century, young Jewish intellectuals were also prominent in socialist and anarchist circles for whom opposition to war was of central importance. Their Eastern European co-religionists...
Weber, Max (1864–1920) Reference library
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
...goals and methodologies of the social sciences—especially in relation to the natural sciences and the prospect of establishing objective laws of social behavior. In this, he was strongly marked by neo-Kantian idealism and the work of Wilhelm Dilthey , which emphasized the place of the human sciences in understanding motives and values ( see neo-Kantianism ). Unlike the natural sciences, Weber argued, the social sciences were structured by the problem of verstehen (usually translated as “understanding” or “interpretive understanding”). The social...
Philosophy Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace
...is irreligious; it also could be translated to mean that modernity lacks an adequate system of duties to complement its system of rights. Although Raghavan Iyer has interpreted Gandhi as a Kantian, which is correct inasmuch as Kant and Gandhi both believe in moral absolutes, Kant’s absolutes and Gandhi’s absolutes are not the same in terms of their respective ethics. For Kant, a categorical imperative commands strict respect for other people’s property rights, but there is no strict moral command requiring using one’s property to meet the needs of others....
Justice versus Peace Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace
...of the national framework—which means that national interests would not be the determining factor—could serve for the elaboration of a true international civil society based on an inclusive understanding of justice and acting as mediator between politics and ethics. In a process drawn from Kantian cosmopolitism, Habermas sees in this international civil society made up of media, discussion forums, popular movements, and nongovernmental organizations, the prerequisite for a veritable peace. It is responsible for urging the political sphere to grant the...
Cosmopolitanism as a Peace Theory Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace
...is pledged to respect, as “citizens of the world.” From the Enlightenment forward, cosmopolitanism has served as a normative critique of nationalism and war, authoritarian repression and injustice. But rarely, and only after extreme periods of crisis and systemic breakdown, have Kantian principles made their way into institutionalized political practice, although usually compromised by the counter-pressure of entrenched interests and power. The modern welfare state, the United Nations system, international security, and human-rights regimes provide testimony to...
Reading “Asian Values” into Journalism Practices in Asia Reference library
Eric Loo
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies
...development issues. Currency, relevance and long-term impact of development on the community. Social responsibility, media expectations, mindful reporting with minimizing harm. Ethics, honesty, transparency, accountability sometimes viewed as pro-government. Asian Centered Rather Than Asian Valued Hanitzsch et al. ( 2011 ) concluded that “in the area of professional ethics, non-western journalists tend to approve the idea of contextual and situational ethical decision-making and the application of individual standards more than their colleagues in the...
Feminist Perspectives on Criminal Justice in Popular Culture Reference library
Greta Olson
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime, Media, and Popular Culture
...standard of law that would admit women’s subjective difference to men and determine whether a law is viable on the basis of whether it renders women’s lives happier or increases their suffering. These and other feminist perspectives point out that notions of justice based on Kantian ethics assume an equality between persons that simply does not exist, given the systematic discrimination of women. If crimes against women are rendered invisible by law or are treated with the same standards that are applied to men, then unequal treatment shall remain. This has led...
Green, Thomas Hill (1836–1882) Quick reference
Stuart White
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...Thomas Hill ( 1836–1882 ) Fellow of Balliol College Oxford, 1860–82 , and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University, 1878–82 . Influenced by Kantian and post-Kantian German philosophy, as well as Aristotle ’s conception of the polis as a partnership for pursuit of the common good, Green’s political philosophy exerted a strong influence on the development of liberalism in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His essay ‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’, written as an address to Leicester Liberal...
Ethics, Environmental Reference library
Willis JENKINS
Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability
...moral reasoning. Consequentialism—the practice of maximizing the good—is one such tradition, and one of the most widely used, particularly through market-based approaches to environmental problems (in which the good is represented by human utility). The duty-based ethics of a deontological or Kantian tradition (the tradition of doing the right) is another, and is especially favored by ethicists emphasizing respect for intrinsic value or integrity. Aristotelian virtue traditions, Stoic cosmopolitanism, and natural law traditions are other major Western forms of...
philosophy of geography Quick reference
A Dictionary of Human Geography
...of geography; Kantian ideas influenced subsequent German and American geographers ( see Hartshorne, Richard ; Ritter, Carl ). But, with some exceptions, after the rise of modern institutionalized geography in the late 19th century, there was no sustained engagement by geographers in philosophy until the 1960s. Thereafter, there were explorations of positivism , Marxism , phenomenology , existentialism and critical realism , feminism , post-structuralism , all of which may be termed ‘philosophies of geography’. The journal Ethics, Policy and...
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) Quick reference
Lincoln Allison
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...purpose. Kant’s most specifically political writings applied the universalism of his theories of ethics and law. In Perpetual Peace , published in 1795 , he argued for a ‘League of Nations’ (called the Pacific Federation) to enforce the natural, rationally derivable and (therefore) international law, envisaging a decline in the power of individual states as that of the universal authority came to be established. Many modern thinkers can be described as ‘neo‐Kantian’ in so far as they attempt to derive the existence of universally valid moral precepts which...
Curriculum and the Intersection of Ethics and Aesthetics Reference library
Donald Blumenfeld-Jones
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies
...ancient tradition. China represents the only example of international work in this area. The Western education and Curriculum Studies literature has echoed the post-Kantian lead of no relationship between ethics and aesthetics, writing either of aesthetics in education or ethics in education but rarely of one intersecting with the other. The Chinese literature has, for the most part, turned its attention elsewhere. Despite these problems, this article is premised on the assertion that there is a relationship that has implications for Curriculum Studies. The...
Kant, Immanuel Reference library
Antonio Franceschet
The Oxford Companion to International Relations
...the demise of the East-West stalemate, the universalist and liberal aspects of his theory gained a sudden relevance. Yet, Kant's legacy is neither uncontested nor monochromatic. There is only one Kant; there are multiple, sometimes conflicting, Kantian legacies. In International Relations, the most influential Kantian project is based on the democratic-peace argument. Since Michael Doyle's ( 1983 ) groundbreaking work, Kant has been the theoretical foundation of research on the effects of regime type on patterns of international conflict. The core finding of...
Development—Concepts and Considerations Reference library
Jeremy BENDIK-KEYMER
Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability
...human rights to human agency (i.e., the capacity to act), and these are similar to the capability approach. Commonly called “neo-Kantian” approaches due to their indebtedness to the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant , they differ from the capability approach only in taking the idea of the agent (or person) as primary, rather than the idea of the flourishing (or prospering) human being. The idea for neo-Kantian approaches is to derive what we must have from what we need in order to act ( Gewirth 1996 ). Surprisingly, the rights...
Philosophy of Nature Reference library
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
...It was Immanuel Kant ( 1724–1804 ) who worked out the first comprehensive critical theory of nature, which comprised both a mechanistic theory of science and a complementary theory of the organic (i.e., the biological aspect of nature). Natur-philosophie in the strict Kantian sense is characterized by a reduction of visible or measurable forces to a small set of general prior forces. Forces that transcend the scope of pure reason are to be excluded from philosophy. This assumption was harshly refuted by philosophers of the early nineteenth century. A...
utilitarianism Quick reference
Lincoln Allison
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...that we should always obey the rule which, if always obeyed, would have better consequences than any other rule, always obeyed. Arguably, this cannot be called utilitarianism at all, its insistence on strict adherence to rules having crossed a philosophical boundary into neo‐ Kantianism . Perhaps a more convincingly utilitarian solution to the problem of rules is John Rawls ’s conception of ‘summary rules’, practices which we should generally, though not ‘religiously’, conform to in order to avoid the costs of endless calculations and to enjoy the benefits of...
