Concerns of Ethics in Management

What is the status of ethics in management? This is a very hard question to address in a three to four page paper because there is no definite answer. As with many society-wide concerns, ethics runs the entire spectrum of behaviors; from Wal-Mart being very customer oriented and a friend of charity to those fly-by-night repair scams that tend to prey on the elderly. When does a business cross the line from making a profit to stealing a profit? That is a hard line to gauge. Laws are designed to make that line a little clearer but laws can't out think the mind of man. If a way can be thought of to make money it already has been or is being thought of. It's where people are taken advantage of that we need to worry. There are many business in place that simply prey on the people who don't know any better. Whether its the feature on Prime-Time that shows elderly people tricked into phony home repairs or the local business that offered a friend of mine a computer at an inflated price with an outrageous financing plan, some business practices are unethical. What I will focus on today is not the clearly right or the clearly wrong but that vast amount of items that are in the middle. Looking at more of a gray area, Wal-Mart is generally viewed as an ethical company but even they have a reputation for unfair competition. Wal-Mart has a marketing plan that targets smaller cities with large-volume discount stores. While this may not appear to be unfair on its face, many people have felt it's negative effect. When Wal-Mart moves into a market, many of it's smaller competitors go out of business. Small business in small towns can't compete with the prices, availability, or selection of a huge conglomerate like Wal-Mart. People in the towns don't have much of a choice. Pay more for less or pay less for more? Not are hard decision. But the ultimate effect is that many small business can't survive the competition. Is that ethically wrong? That is a very hard call to make. I recently had an experience of buying a new car. I shopped around Coos Bay and also in Roseburg while on a recent trip. I was in the market to buy a Dodge Ram. The prices seemed to be about the same in these two markets. My father and I decided to drive to Portland to look further. When we got there, the first dealership that we saw had over thirty Dodge Rams on the front lot with a recent shipment of more in the back. Compared to the Coos Bay dealership which had nine. Immediately, I noticed that the price at that dealership was $1,300 less than the same model with the same package in Coos Bay. Both stickers said the price quoted was the manufacturers suggested retail price. Already over $1,000 to the good, we decided to look further. We found six Rams that had an additional mark down of $2,000. This was because of an engine style in the process of being phased out that had an additional rebate. Looking at the two different models from Portland and Coos Bay we would save $3,300 by buying here. We decided to look no further. We selected the color and bought my truck. Overall, we had a very pleasant experience but what about the people who buy from the Coos Bay dealership and spend over $3,000 more? Are they being unethically taken advantage of? That's a hard call as well. I took an equal opportunity class in High School and during that class someone inevitably brings up car prices in Coos Bay as being unfair. Are these prices unfair or is it just the law of supply and demand? Was the two thousand dollars that I saved in Portland because that model car wasn't available to the dealership in Coos Bay? That difference can be easily excusable. The other $1,300 I have a harder time with. I took detailed notes and both stickers were basically identical with the exception of price. Each indicated a different manufacturers suggested retail price. Ethically, I think the line has been crossed. There can't be two different manufacturers suggested retail prices for the same car. One has to be wrong. I had a good experience buying this car but not everyone will. I've been to the dealerships in the past that have used those high pressure tactics to coerce people into buying or spending more than they can afford. Those are the kind of ethical issues that can't be legislated. Thinking through the ethics issues reminded me of my car buying experience because just like in the ethical issues, there is no clear cut answer. In ethics, one would think that there is right and wrong but in real life cases of ethics in business there is not. There is no black and white answer only millions of shades of gray. Think about junk faxes, what is so wrong about sending an unsolicited advertisement to someone. People get them almost every day in their mailbox. It seems like a reasonable response but the differences are great. The junk fax ties up an important communication tool of the company and the costs are split between the sender and the recipient without the recipient's permission. The cost to the sender is simply the cost of a telephone call. While the cost to the recipient is the cost of paper, ink, and power to receive the call in addition to the loss of use of the machine during reception. I wouldn't want to get junk mail in my mailbox, if I had to pay for it!. I don't like it much even when I don't have to pay for it. But is this practice of junk faxing wrong? I say no. Ethically, I feel that it's not wrong if the faxes are reasonable in length and company has a process to quit sending faxes if a recipient requests. I was the recipient of one junk fax. It came into my mailbox here in Talent at the Anjou Club. It was an advertisement to buy office supplies. Now there is no law, either civil or military, that prohibits this but I realized this isn't something that the Apartment complex should pay for. I took the fax to the manager's office and they drafted a letter to request that it be stopped. They stated that if any more faxes were received, Anjou Club apartment's would no longer do business with this company. This was motivation enough for them not to do it. I never received another fax. With business, that is how the system must work. If the pursuit of the bottom line goes to far, then the bottom line must be threatened. I don't think there is anything ethically wrong with many business practices. It's all a matter of people being satisfied with the product that they are getting. If they are satisfied, the business will flourish. If not, it will suffer. That is probably the best way to measure ethics in management. Overall, I think the status of ethics is management needs some work. There are very good companies out there that charge a fair price to make a reasonable profit but there are many business in place that prey on the weak and poor.

A deeper meaning of family and

Even ants have families.   ‘Family’ stands for many things, and it is ironic that many times, the rational human being, blessed with the propensity to value emotion and the intangible, should claim that family or the home does not exist or is immaterial.More discouraging than ironic is the fact that this concept of family and the home definitely exists, but because of certain human conditions, it looses significance.Many times it is not the physical family or home that humans find value in but the concept that these physical establishments represent;   this concept exists on various levels and, unfortunately, for some, these levels are all but cherished or treasured.   In Robert Frost’s lyric poem, ‘The Death of a Hired Man’ a farm couple, Mary and Warren, argues over the return of a hired hand, Silas.During their conversations various impressions of Silas emerge clearly giving meat to how Warren or Mary perceives this return and Silas in genera l.   There are reasons in the poem indicating why Silas returns to the couple after quite a while, and the reasons given all fall apart in the end when Mary vindicates her statement that Silas has ‘come home to die’ (114) because true to her words, Silas does die in the end.While there is very minimal reference as to the kind of person that Silas is, one thing is clear in the poem – that Silas did not return to the couple to do any more work but because he considered the couple as his only family; hence, the poem, lends a deeper meaning to the concept of family.The word ‘family’ comes from the Greek word ‘famulus’ which means ‘servant’ or ‘servant of the household’; despite this literal meaning of the word being quite unorthodox in comparison to the modern definition of family, Frost’s poem allows a different level of interpretation of this word in his poem through the relationship between Mary and Sila s.If the Greek literal meaning is to be considered, with Silas being the hired help or the ‘servant’ in the poem, this literal meaning is given more significance in that Silas considered the farm couple to be his family.   Mary considered Silas to be part of the family as well.   This can be easily proven from lines in the poem that show this unlikely relationship between the servant and the ‘served’.There are two concepts of ‘family’ referred to in the poem if Mary’s and Silas’ situation is closely analyzed – one would be that while humans would consider the physical ‘family’ as representative of the concept of ‘blood-related ties’, the poem alludes to the possibility of the development of the concept of ‘family’ beyond what would be allowed by simple blood relations.The second concept that emerges from the poem is that ‘family’ is more of a concept that is dependent on the individual than it is a concept resulting from the inevitable consequence of relation, whether by blood or affiliation.Winston Churchill once said that, â€Å"There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained†; here, Churchill admits to the fact that certain things in a person are developed within the ‘physical’ family.   In reference to this quote, it is quite easy to conclude that ‘family’ as a concept, and not the ‘physical’ family, might as well be one of the concepts that is developed in a person.This idea is as well clearly illustrated in Frost’s poem in two ways; first in the way Mary perceives the person of Silas; and in the other way around, in the way Silas’ actions, as narrated by Mary, prove that the man has developed a ‘family-sense’ for the farm couple.   Initi ally, when Mary went out to meet Warren, this particular ‘favor’ for Silas is shown in the lines, â€Å"â€Å"Silas is back.† / She pushed him outward with her through the door / And shut it after her.â€Å"Be kind,† she said.† (5-7).   Mary here, knowing that Silas was sleeping inside the house, rushed to warn her husband, but the warning was not out of concern for what would happen to her husband, but out of her assumption that her husband would not be happy with the arrival of Silas, and concern for what unfavorable act her husband might do to Silas, hence, she says, â€Å"Be Kind,†. (7)   As early as these lines, Mary is now shown to have a soft heart for the hired hand who had returned.   This ‘developed affinity’ of Mary to Silas is ground by Frost in the lines, â€Å"I sympathize.I know just how it feels / To think of the right thing to say too late.† (79-80) and â€Å"Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, / And nothing to look backward to with pride, / And nothing to look forward to with hope, / So now and never any different.† (102-105).   In the first set of lines (79-80)   Mary invokes sympathy as her reason for developing a certain closeness to Silas; her admission that she ‘she knows just how it feels’ (79) indicates that she identifies herself with Silas and so considers herself to have had the same life-changing experience as Silas.This denotes that the development of the closeness was because of a commonality of experience of which sympathy is simply a consequence.   In the second set of lines, the idea of the development of family in Mary’s perception of Silas is further reinforced by Mary’s virtuous perception of Silas, hence, Silas is ‘so concerned for other folk’, (102)

Critical Issues For The United States

Deliberation suggests careful thought or reflection, consideration of alternatives, but may also imply public discussion, processes working toward collective judgments. For different reasons, liberals and their critics would agree that deliberation is central to citizenship. For liberals, deliberation in the public sphere is instrumental to the purposes and interests of free individuals, combining with other private citizens to articulate and pursue common interests. For those with a more communitarian perspective, public deliberation is part of the process through which citizens are socially constituted and democratic participation is thus intrinsically rather than instrumentally valuable. At Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, we have developed a team-taught, cross-disciplinary social science course which emphasizes public deliberation not only on policy issues, but on the meaning of citizenship itself. Our course entitled Critical Issues for The United States – along with its sister-course, The Global Community – originated with a year-long process of intensive discussion and planning among a group of faculty drawn from the various academic departments and programs of the Maxwell School†¦ The courses we developed were first offered during the 1993-94 academic year, and have undergone annual revisions – some modest, some more substantial – ever since. The fundamental ideas underlying the courses have not changed, however: they remain focused upon citizenship, understood in terms of practices of public deliberation. Our courses were designed as multidisciplinary survey courses which would, in the process of discussing issues important to the lives of our students, introduce them to some of the major concepts and modes of analysis employed in the various social science disciplines represented at the Maxwell School. There was from the outset, then, a sense of multiplicity of perspective built into the core concept of these courses. They would not present a single seamless vision of social life or seek to find the one right answer. Rather, they would present multiple interpretations of each issue we dealt with, some convergent, some in direct conflict. We would try to link these interpretations to fundamental assumptions about the nature of social life, and to show how these basic conceptual frameworks were related to different normative orientations and political positions — that is, to different practices of citizenship. We would invite students to ponder the implications of the various perspectives we discussed, to consider the consequences for their lives as citizens, but we would not push for closure or consensus. We would emphasize the process of deliberation, rather than any particular result. We expose students to different ways of knowing social reality: the hypothesis-testing approach of orthodox social science, rudimentary rational choice theory, more interpretive understandings of social action, and critical theory models which seek organic links between knowing the world and recreating the world. We try to underscore the idea that different ways of knowing are associated with different modes of action and, ultimately, with alternative possible worlds. How knowledge is socially constructed is thus a crucial dimension of citizenship, and an important aspect of this course. FormatAs part of our emphasis on processes of deliberation, we wanted to move away from the passive, lecture-based format typical of introductory survey courses at larger universities. In many such courses, if students are involved in smaller discussion sections at all, they are typically led by graduate teaching assistants and are at best an adjunct to the primary, lecture-driven substance of the course. In contrast, the Maxwell courses were designed so that two-thirds of students’ class time would be spent in discussion sections of no more than fifteen, led by members of a team representing a cross-section of the Maxwell School faculty. To underscore for students that these discussion sections were not merely the caboose on a lecture-driven train, but were rather the motor of this course, a substantial part of their final course grade (currently 25 percent) is directly linked to their level of participation in these discussions. Particular faculty members meet twice each week with the same discussion groups so that a sense of mutual familiarity and group identity could develop, fostering candor in discussion and a willingness to think out loud. Once a week, rotating pairs of faculty share the responsibility of lecturing to a â€Å"plenary† in which all the discussion sections meet together. These lectures typically present alternative perspectives or ways of thinking about some general question or issue area. Faculty attempt to â€Å"model† intellectual activity for students, thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of various perspectives, underscoring their implications for politics and social life. Often, faculty will present perspectives with which they do not agree, and will state so at the outset. In this way, they may illustrate for students that there is an intelligible train of reasoning behind each position, and that our fist task as critical thinkers and citizens is to try to understand that reasoning. Implicitly we pose the question: why would reasonable people hold such a view? In the first instance, then, our objective is to help students to feel the attraction which draws scholars and citizens to a particular perspective, its intellectual power, its political promise, its vitality. We then try to explore the tensions or limits of each perspective. Again, the emphasis is on deliberation rather than mastery of a given fund of â€Å"knowledge†, but we do expect students to understand key concepts, arguments and supporting evidence for each of the major positions we deal with, and ultimately to be able to incorporate these into their own critical judgments and deliberations. To deemphasize rote learning, we abandoned conventional exams altogether. Instead, frequent writing assignments are integrated into the course as one more mode of deliberation and discussion. Students contribute regularly to a computerized â€Å"citizenship log† in which they are asked to exchange comments on a particular issue or idea in the course material. To encourage students to come to class prepared to actively discuss the material at hand, we may ask them to write a brief paragraph responding to each day’s readings and perhaps to post this response on the electronic log for other members of the class to see. In addition to addressing regular prompts from the faculty, students may also engage each other on the electronic log, continuing or anticipating classroom discussions. Often, faculty will review students’ e-log entries prior to class and use them to construct an agenda for more focused group discussion. We also employ more traditional forms of writing. From time to time, we ask students to write very brief (1-2 page) response papers which focus their attention directly upon substantive points judged by the faculty team to be especially significant. Frequently these will be concepts or issues which will be important for future deliberative essays. This helps students early on to begin come to grips with key claims or ideas, and enables the faculty to gauge their success in doing so. This may be a useful diagnostic tool: disappointing performance on response papers may then signal to us that particular students need additional help with key concepts, or they may reveal that the entire class needs to spend more time collectively working through some especially difficult points. Finally, each major unit of the course culminates in a somewhat longer â€Å"deliberative essay† in which students are asked to critically assess various perspectives and formulate a position relative to the major theme or issue of that unit. These essays are kept short (typically around five pages) in order to encourage students to be as concise as possible, to make deliberate decisions about what material is most significant, to develop summarization skills and to preclude the â€Å"kitchen sink† approach to paper writing. To aid students in the development of essay writing skills, the faculty have prepared extensive writing guidelines which include such fundamentals as how to construct and support a reasoned argument, how such arguments differ from assertions of opinion, how to use sources and avoid plagiarism. To reinforce our seriousness about the development of analytical writing skills, our grading criteria are keyed to these guidelines and we provide extensive written feedback on essays pointing out where there is significant room for improvement. We also make available to students annotated examples of especially strong essays so that students can see for themselves the kinds of work they are capable of producing and what faculty graders are looking for in student writing. Altogether, students would write 5-8 papers of various lengths, and anywhere from a dozen to several dozen computer log entries. To aid faculty in designing these writing assignments, and to advise students on how to construct them, our faculty team includes an instructor from the university’s writing program who has been involved in course planning from the outset, is familiar with the readings, attends all our lectures, and participates actively in faculty meetings. We have found the writing instructor to be especially valuable in helping us to design writing assignments which balance the open-endedness necessary for real deliberation with the concreteness required to hold student interest. In keeping with this relatively open-ended format, we avoided adopting any standard textbooks, and instead assembled a custom reader which presents students with the challenge of interpreting multiple voices and engaging a variety of perspectives. In addition to our reader, we assign three books representing particular positions on each of the major issues under discussion. To maintain creative tension and space for deliberation, we are careful to include in our reader several counterpoints to each of the books we assign. Our goal is to provide students with enough material to construct a critical and also a supportive position with regard to each major reading. We have also developed a home page on the World Wide Web in order to give students the opportunity to explore the vast array of resources available in cyber-space. Our home page contains all the materials which would be found in a syllabus, together with guidelines for the different kinds of writing assignments students will encounter, annotated examples of strong student essays, information about members of the faculty team, links to computerized discussion forums for each class section, and links to a variety of resources external to the university. Newspapers and magazines, government agencies, political parties, advocacy groups, think tanks, data bases and archives are made accessible through our web page. Our hope is that this array of electronic resources will not just facilitate learning through the classroom experience, but will also prompt students to consider the links between issues and perspectives discussed in class and those they encounter in the media and on the web. To further encourage this, we directly incorporate web materials into some of our class sessions: for example, we used material from the web sites of industry, environmental, and citizens’ groups to facilitate a role-playing exercise in which groups of students were asked to interpret the position of a particular group and to come to class prepared to assume their identity and negotiate with others based upon what they had learned from the web sites we assigned. Substantive VehicleCritical Issues for The United States began as a series of debates on issues which faculty planning teams thought to be important ones for students as citizens. Early versions of the course focused upon such issues as: individual rights and the responsibilities of citizenship; the size and scope of federal government as well as the relative merits of governmental centralization and decentralization; unequal access to quality education; race and affirmative action; and the environment. However, over successive semesters, student evaluations suggested that these issues and the arguments relevant to them were being perceived as separate and disconnected. The course was not providing students with a way to connect these discussions to contested visions of civic life, to see that positions on different issues might be linked by similar understandings of citizenship, to understand that policy debates are also debates about the kind of society we wish to live in and the kinds of citizens we want to be. To provide a substantive vehicle which would refocus the course on contested meanings of civic life and citizenship, and to help students see more clearly the linkages between these visions and particular political positions, we introduced a new integrative theme for the course as a whole: â€Å"the American Dream reconsidered†. We ask students to deliberate on questions such as the following: What has the American Dream meant historically? What meanings does it have for people today? How do visions of the American Dream help us to think about ourselves as citizens, and what difference does it make if we think about the Dream in one way or another? How have issues of race, class, and gender figured in various interpretations of the Dream? Are there nationalist or nativist undertones in some or all versions of the Dream? Can, or should, the prevailing interpretation of the American Dream survive into the 21st century? To engage students on issues where they feel they have some stake and where they already know something, we approach these questions not in the abstract but as they have confronted us in three major areas of public controversy. EconomyWe ask whether the American Dream has been associated with the rise of a large and prosperous â€Å"middle class†, and if that version of the Dream is threatened by economic changes currently underway. What kinds of economic conditions are needed to support the Dream? Who can, or should, participate in such prosperity? What is the meaning of participation in an economy, and how is that participation related to different notions of citizenship and community? This unit of the course introduces the basic market model, emphasizing individual choice and the role of prices as transmitters of both information and incentives. We present the case for the proposition that, in the absence of external intervention, individuals acting in pursuit of their own self-interest will realize through market institutions the most efficient allocation of resources. This implies a limited role for government and a tolerance for the economic and political inequalities which are intrinsic to a system of individualized incentives. We present the classic critique of governmental policies aimed at fostering greater equality: such policies are counterproductive insofar as they distort price signals and undermine incentives for the efficient allocation of resources, and are undesirable since they restrict individual liberty. On this view, then, the American Dream entails the protection of individual rights and liberties and a system of opportunity in which individuals are rewarded in proportion to their hard work and merit. America became a wealthy and powerful world leader through the pursuit of this vision of the Dream and, to the extent that we have in recent decades experienced diminished opportunity, prosperity and power, it is because we have strayed from the original version of the Dream. We also present in this unit a view of the American Dream of individual reward and prosperity as embedded in sets of social institutions which unequally allocate power, wealth and knowledge, and which limit opportunities for meaningful self-government. These inequalities are woven through relations of class, race, and gender, and have intensified in recent years as the American economy has become more polarized in terms of power, income and wealth. This view offers its own vision of the American Dream, one which has markedly different political implications from the first view. The political horizon projected by this vision of the Dream constitutes a community of actively self-governing citizens. To the extent that economic institutions foster inequalities which preclude the realization of this Dream of participatory democracy for all citizens, institutional reforms aimed at equalization and democratization are warranted. We then explore some of the reforms proposed by critics of the contemporary American political economy, as well as the concerns which a more individualistic perspective would raise about those proposed reforms. EducationWe look at education as a pathway to a better life for individuals, or as a prerequisite of an actively self-governing community. What kind of educational system do we need in order to fulfill different versions of the Dream? How are different visions of citizenship implicated in contemporary debates about educational reform? We explore problems of unequal access to quality education, both in K-12 public schools and at the college level. We examine analyses which argue that some Americans receive first-rate education at public expense, while there are entire classes of citizens who are not provided with education adequate to enable effective participation in public deliberations, and thereby become disempowered, second-class citizens. Accordingly, some prescribe a more centralized and uniform administration of public education in order to eliminate the grossest inequalities and insure for all citizens the â€Å"equal protection of the laws† promised by the Fourteenth Amendment. We also explore arguments which locate the problems of public school systems in over-centralized and bureaucratized administrations, and which prescribe institutional reforms which move education closer to a competitive market model based upon consumer sovereignty and choice. Finally, we grapple with the dilemmas of affirmative action in college admissions, and ask how a liberal individualist society can cope with persistent inequalities of race in higher education. EnvironmentWe look at the relationship between the natural environment and the American Dream. Can the prevailing vision of the Dream coexist with a healthy environment? Can we imagine more environmentally friendly versions of the Dream? What would be the broader social and political implications of enacting a more environmentally sustainable vision of the American Dream? We examine the anthropocentric view of nature as having value only insofar as it serves human purposes, and which further suggests that the market mechanism is the best way to determine to what extent humans should exploit the natural environment. Establishing property rights over natural resources creates a direct incentive for their wise management. Further, the price signals and incentives of the market will call forth effective substitutes in response to resource shortages and new technologies which may minimize or eliminate our costliest environmental problems. This â€Å"free market environmentalism† is entirely consistent with the individualistic vision of the American Dream, promising consumers a world in which self-interested market behavior continues to generate high standards of living into the indefinite future. This view is encapsulated in Jay Lenno’s snack chip advertisement: â€Å"Eat all you want; we’ll make more†. In contrast to this market-based view, we also examine the perspective of environmentalists who suggest that our relationship with nature is best viewed not in terms of the instrumental exploitation of an external object, but rather as a necessary aspect of any sustainable human community. On this view, then, our obligation as citizens of the community extends to future generations, and we must make environmental decisions based upon social norms of long-term sustainability. Such decisions cannot be made through the instrumental calculus of the market, but must instead be made through processes of public deliberation. This, in turn, requires institutions to support such processes of democratic deliberation and citizens competent to participate in them, and thus also suggests certain linkages to the other units of our course. In addressing each of these critical issues we hope to lead students to ask: What does the American Dream promise? Does it mean individual liberty? Does it mean democracy? Does it mean equality? Does it mean opportunity for material success? A â€Å"middle class† standard of living for most, if not all, citizens? The freedom to succeed or to fail? Freedom from oppression or poverty? Is it a promise of a better life for individuals? A better society in which all of us can live? Is mass consumption a necessary centerpiece of the Dream, or might it involve a more harmonious and balanced relationship with nature? What can, or should, we expect from the American Dream now and in the future? And what do those expectations mean for our own practices of citizenship? In these ways, we try to encourage our students to see this course as being about themselves, their political community and their future. In that sense, the course as a whole represents an invitation to enter into the public deliberations which are at the heart of various understandings of citizenship. ReflectionsI came to these special courses with some modest experience of teaching discussion-oriented and writing-intensive courses. After an introduction to the teaching profession which involved lecturing three times a week to faceless crowds of 250 or so students, I was fortunate to be able to teach international relations for several years in the Syracuse University Honors Program. These were some of the best students at Syracuse, accustomed to putting serious effort into their education and expecting a more intensive learning experience. It was exhilarating, a whole new kind of teaching for me: the students were eager to learn and it seemed as though all I had to do was present them with some challenging material and prompt them with a few provocative questions and off they went, teaching each other and, in the process, teaching me about teaching. Eventually, though, I began to feel a nagging sense of guilt, inchoate at first, increasingly clear later on. I was doing my best teaching with those students who least needed my help. In that sense, I began to feel that I wasn’t really doing my job. Then I was offered the opportunity to join the Maxwell courses. Reflecting back now on five years of continuous teaching with these very special courses, the thing from which I derive the greatest satisfaction is that we have been able to create for a cross-section of first and second year students a learning experience very much like that which was previously the privilege of Honors students. In that sense, our courses have been about the democratization of education, as well as the education of democratization.

Maimonides and an Eternal Universe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Maimonides and an Eternal Universe - Essay Example By following the Biblical, Aristotelian and Neo-Platonism Maimonides expresses God as absolutely necessary and completely uncaused unity. Due to this Maimonides follows the Neo-Platonist tradition of envisioning God as the purest of all beings. This means that it is a being that transcends any other divisions. It is evident that this sense of unity has accounted for the Maimonides strong negative theology. Also as God is a subject about whom we cannot predict it then portrays that he transcends the normal parameters of language and conceptualization. (Hyman, 20-23).When Maimonides says that the world is created ex nihilo, some theological-political readings answer negatively because of the presumptions about the philosophy of the scripture. It is apparent that according to the theological-political reading Maimonides may be suppressing his real view because he is not reinterpreting the biblical scripture. He believes that there is no proof for the Aristotelian that is available thus creation is a live option. This tends to be an inference best explanation for holding the view of prima facie. This makes Maimonides to favor ex nihilo and therefore opposing the eternity of the world (Hyman, 28).Maimonides to one group is heretic while to another his views are a model of conventional orthodoxy. It is evident that Maimonides reasoning and point of view was due to the strong faith he had in the truth and eternity of the Torah of Moses and the traditions derived from it (Fox, 8).

Marian Anderson Speech Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Marian Anderson Speech - Coursework Example One of them includes in 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow me to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. (Brite, 2009) On August 28th, 1963, more than 250,000 people from across the United States gathered in Washington DC to join in peaceful protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights legislation from Congress. (â€Å"We shall overcome†, n.d.) This can be considered as the most important events that occurred with the African-Americans on Easter weekend. I climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to give a free concert. (Holland 2009, p.35) It was so effective, that four years later the DAR formally apologized and invited me to perform at Constitution Hall. (Holland 2009, p.35) I was on highs with the crowd who participated for the Civil Rights Movement. In the same event Martin Luther King Jr gave out the speech .It was evident that he wanted to make the crowd aware of their present scenarios and the inequalities that are prevailing all across the United Nations. His speech I have a Dream for jobs and freedom was one of the most powerful, influential and historically important speeches of its time. (Holland 2009, p.35) The way he started the speech was with eloquence and with the strategy of a politician. It was an electrifying speech. The people found it related to the experiences that they were going through. When the leader of the movement stands in support of their civil rights and motivate them towards the freedom, then we can see the revolution that takes place in an effective manner. He emphasized on the phrases in the beginning of the sentences like the â€Å"One hundred years later†, â€Å"Let freedom ring† and so forth. The repetition of â€Å"Let freedom ring† was first delivered by the black pastor Archibald Carey to the Republican National Convention in 1952.( Tuck 2010,p.318)The intention of using this phrase is to make the speech

Charles Peirce's The Doctrine of Necessity Examined Essay

Charles Peirce's The Doctrine of Necessity Examined - Essay Example Charles S. Peirce wonders whether we necessarily have to see or notice signal effects of some element that may have happened by pure chance so that to ascertain that real chance exists. He wonders whether there are some occurrences or effects that may have gone unnoticed or unobserved. He gives an example of how physicists claim that gas particles move about randomly, considerably as if by pure chance, and that by the assumption of probabilities, there certainly will be situations contrary to the second law of thermodynamics whereby concentrations of heat in the gases lead to explosive mixtures, which must at the time have tremendous effects. He claims this assumption could be false because it has never happened like that. â€Å"What we are, that only can we see† (Dickinson). This is a popular quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson from his publication, Nature. Emerson believed in facts. Emersonian philosophy seemingly emphasized on seeing, and perception. Emerson would, therefore, prob ably support Charles on this argument, because Charles insists that he cannot support or believed in things that allegedly happened without any evidence or that have never happened. Another argument of Charles S. Peirce about this issue is that he is not of the belief that there is any person who can ascertain that the precise, universal compliance of facts to natural law is proved evidently, or depicted particularly possible, by any observations made so far. He noted that those in support of the doctrine of exact regularity used hypotheses other than proven experimental result of facts to support their arguments. He, therefore, dismissed this notion as it shows high levels of poor reasoning. Charles affirms that, sometimes people cannot help to believe a given proposition. However, he noted that this was of collective thinking which is wrong. Some people conclude a proposition to be true while others look at it as â€Å"we† instead of â€Å"I†. This leads to the propo sition being true to certain people and wrong to others depending on their levels of ignorance, or the evidence they have. He calls this problem â€Å"inability to conceive† and claims that every man passes through this stage with respect to the number of beliefs they have. The mind of man is sometime subjected to this blind coercion, but it is cast off as time goes through rigorous thinking. As a result, Charles confirms that, the things that are not conceivable today will turn out to be indisputable in future. This is supported by the countercultural philosophy of Emerson whereby he lobbied to create a structure of a form of life that will go past the status quo expectations and thinking models. This was in favour of deeply independent and creative manifestations of universal truths. This, he argued, will also help solve the problem of inability to conceive by stating, â€Å"Every man has a form of mind peculiar to himself.† The author confirms that the principles of mechanics are indeed natural beliefs, which have been confirmed by experience. The only problem is that those that were formulated long time ago were exceedingly erroneous. As a result, they need to be continually corrected and purified from natural illusions. This process of products adapting to recognizable usefulness or ends, as seen in nature, is never quite perfect. The author, therefore, finds this argument well

Justice, Ethics and Law - critical evaluation of one of the three Essay

Justice, Ethics and Law - critical evaluation of one of the three topics below - Essay Example They insist that the idea of all people possessing certain rights by virtue of their humanity, even in the absence of legislation, is baseless and only loose talk.2 The ambiguity regarding the credibility of human rights dates back to the 18th century shortly after US Declaration of Independence in 1776, and thirteen years ahead, the French declaration of ‘the rights of man’. The US Declaration stated that every man is ‘endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights’ while the French Declaration asserted ‘men are born and remain free and equal in rights’. Not long afterwards, Jeremy Bentham, in his writings between 1791 and 1792,3 differed with the concept of human rights and called for its dismissal. Bentham claimed that the idea of human rights was borrowed from the Americans and was not practical. Even today, there is still widespread disagreement on issues relating to human rights. Most critics maintain that human rights lack coherence, cogency and legitimacy while some still point out grey areas such as social and economic rights.4 Amartya Sen5 proposes several guidelines for the elements of a human rights theory that adequately address the issue of legitimacy of human rights. I will consider these six guidelines as conclusions to arguments which he bases on one or more premises explained under each subheading. The paper will analyse each of these conclusions and their supporting premises and critically assess their legitimacy and any alternative suggestions. Sen claims that human rights are primarily ethical demands rather than legal commands.6 He makes this conclusion based on two premises. First, even though human rights have often resulted in legislation, it is considered a further fact, as opposed to a characteristic of human rights. Second, Sen states that human rights are agreements on certain ethical affirmations and the

Gucci Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gucci - Essay Example This essay analyzes one of the leading luxury product brands. And the name of it is Gucci. The brand is associated with symbol, name, design etc of a firm that helps a company to distinguish itself from others. The brand name or image is used by the companies for marketing and advertising its products. The positive image of the brand is an important asset of the firm. It helps the company in creating good impression in the mind of targeted customers. A brand is often represented by logo (Batey, 2012). It is protected by secure trademark. A company makes people aware of its products and services by marketing its products through various channels. In the competitive market of fashion industry, Gucci always maintains its strong brand image. This brand is so popular that in spite of its high price, the company has several customers in different parts of the world (Blackburn, 2012). The concerns of the company about its customers and its high quality of products contribute in developing p ositive brand image of Gucci. Gucci is highly conscious about its resonance. The company tries to satisfy its customers and increase their engagement with the brand by providing them complementary gifts with every purchase. The firm provides the facility of same day deliver in New York. The response of the customers to the brand is highlighted in this step. The company got to know the buying behaviour of the customers by understanding their judgement and feelings towards products. Gucci aims to deliver best goods of high quality. The brand position of Gucci is highlighted in this essay.

Answer questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 15

Answer questions - Essay Example 3. The foreign policies issues Mr.Obama is facing have created atrophy in foreign policy something that has affected his domestic agenda. The President is being punched abroad as well as at home and the world at times seems as if it is falling apart, with the President not able to fix it. Due to a mixture of a few considerable missteps, situations beyond his power, unreasonable expectations as well as maddeningly weak conduct, Obama has exposed himself to criticism which he is not expressing a strong ,overarching outline for exercising American power ;Obama has also not been able to twist totalitarian leaders to America’s will. 4.In case they control the Senate, the GOP have lined up an agenda which comprises of authorisation of the Keystone XL oil pipe, approval of â€Å"fast-track† trade authority, repeal of medical tax as well as wiping out proposed environmental regulations. 5.Republicans are planning to attract women voters by attacking the claim by democratic that GOP policies usually do not promote women fairness as well as honestly dealing with any disagreement regarding abortion before they move on to other issues they may be

Body language (Dancing) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Body language (Dancing) - Essay Example Sometimes the performers also do the ‘splits’ in it. It is a kind of sensual dance where the performer is usually a female displaying her skills through various dance moves. It is usually performed with a typical reggae-styled beat playing in the back ground. This depicts bolder female attitude and it represents the 21st century. All in all, it is not a typical delicate feminine dance (Evans, 2006). Here in this picture below the female performer is doing a very bold move by swinging her hair. It could probably represent female liberty. In this pose, she is shown sitting on the floor on all fours. History tells us that women have never been this wild in their dances. As it can be seen from the picture, the performer is shaking her hair while on the floor, this represents very bold body language. Such kinds of dance moves aren’t expected of females, that is why it comes as a shock to new watchers and immediately grabs their attention. The dance moves are rough, wil d and flamboyant. It shows the opposite side of the female gender, opposite to the delicate and submissive side. There are many dances which go a long way back in the history, for instance the belly dance is quite famous in the Middle East and has become a symbol of the Arab culture. It is also typical to the females and represents cultural values. It is not as bold as ‘Dutty Wine’ but it expresses the attraction of a female body. Most famous dance steps require swift and vibrating hip motions and very delicate and synchronized movements of hands and wrists. The body language of this dance is very simple and elegant. Even though there are male belly dancers but it feels more natural when female dancers perform it, it is more natural to female muscle and bone structure. Here is a picture of a belly dancer expressing the elegance of a female body (belly-dance, 2011). The picture above shows a belly dancer posing a crane like stance