Academic literature on the topic 'Fortune Ethics'

<p class="Normal2">Strong ethical climate at all levels is a necessity for any community to function in a healthy matter. This requirement has a far greater importance for the business world because it creates a favorable ground for ethics violations. In this context, in what extent ethical principles find a place in the business strategies of the company and the market is a question to be answered. Thus, with the thought to provide a perspective on the role of ethics in business strategy, large enterprises operating in Turkey have been investigated about how much ethical statements are used in the vision and mission expressions in this study. For the purpose of the research, vision and mission statements of top 100 companies in Fortune 500 Turkey List that announced on 2014 Fortune Turkey magazine have been investigated by using the content analysis method. The findings were discussed in the framework of the research objectives.</p>

This article focuses on the idiosyncratic conception of happiness Sir Kenelm Digby develops in the letters he wrote after the death of his wife in 1633. It contextualises Digby’s vision of happiness through an examination of the different traditions he revisits and appropriates to develop his personal and subjective ethics of self-care, mainly Renaissance Neoplatonism, the idealisation of conjugal love, the idealism of Italian poetry, and an ascetic model of widowhood linked to the tradition of spiritual mourning. It analyses how Digby’s conception of happiness, through its vindication of subjectivity and excess, challenges the early modern ethos of consolation and speculates on the reasons that may have led Digby to present his readers with such an extraordinary self-portrait.

The major research question, in the title of this paper, was answered positively for stock market performance. The companies with Ethics and Compliance Committees (ECC) outperformed the non-ECC companies on five-year annual averages for both profit margin and net income growth rate, which may mean Wall Street investors are emphasizing non-financial performance indicators, as well as long-term financial performance indicators. Results are somewhat mixed, as investors rewarded ECC companies with superior stock market performance versus other financial measures, like returns on equity and assets, which were better for non-ECC companies. The empirical analysis in this paper relied upon prior research which had conducted content analysis of the 2015 charters of all the board committees of the Fortune top 200 corporations (Holcomb, 2017). This prior research identified 11 companies which had board committees with ethics and compliance duties, versus the Fortune top 20 companies, which delegated such duties to their audit committees. The empirical research in this paper has shown that the Ethics 11 companies outperformed the Fortune top 20 companies over the 2013-2017 period, primarily in the key stock market performance measure of the percentage change of the market capitalization from the end of 2013 until the end of 2017.

x, 216 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
This dissertation engages three facets of Greek philosophy: (1) the phenomenon of tyche (chance, fortune, happening, or luck) in Aristotle's Physics, Nicomachean Ethics , and Poetics ; (2) how tyche informs Socrates' own philosophical practice in the Platonic dialogues; and (3) how engaging tyche in these Greek texts challenges established interpretations of Greek thought in contemporary scholarship and discussion. I argue that the complex status of tych e in Aristotle's texts, when combined with its appearance in the Platonic dialogues and the framework of Greek myth and poetry ( poiesis ), underscores the seriousness with which the Greeks consider the role of chance in human life. I claim that Aristotle's and Plato's texts offer important counterpoints to subsequent Western philosophers who deny the importance and existence of chance in human affairs and in the universe, dichotomously privileging reason over fortune (Boethius), necessity over chance (Spinoza), certainty over contingency (Descartes), and character over luck (Kant). My investigation of tyche unfolds in relation to a host of important Greek words and ideas that are engaged and transformed in Western philosophical discourse: anank e (necessity), aitia (cause, or explanation), automaton, logos (speech), poietic possibility, and philosophy. First, a close reading of tyche in the Physics shows that its emergence in Book II challenges the "four causes" as they are traditionally understood to be the foundation of the cosmos for Aristotle. Attentiveness to the language of strangeness (that which is atopos ) and wonderment ( t o thauma ) that couches Aristotle's consideration of tyche unveils a dialogical character in Aristotle's text. I also show how tyche hinges together the Physics and the Nicomachean Ethics . Second, I argue that tyche illuminates the possibility of human good through an inquiry into human nature in the Ethics , exploring the tension that tych e is, paradoxically, a necessity as it is grounded in nature and yet relates to human beings in "being good" ( EN 1179a20), ultimately returning to a deeper understanding of the relation between physis and tyche . Third, I argue that the Poetics also sustains an engagement with tyche insofar as poi esis speaks to human possibility, turning to Heidegger and Kristeva to see how this is so.
Adviser: Peter Warnek

Numerous prior studies examining the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance have produced mixed results. Consumers expect alignment between corporation's CSR and business activities, yet a paucity of research examines the nature of CSR activities as related to corporate financial performance. Corporate leaders lack direction as to what CSR activities are most impactful. CSR is grounded in stakeholder theory, ethical work climate, and servant leadership theories. The relationship between self-interest in CSR activities, an index of alignment between business activities and CSR activities, and financial performance as measured by return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and change in market value added (MVA) as a percentage of assets has been underresearched. This study examined the financial performance of 77 companies from the 2014 Fortune 500. Information for the construct of self-interest in CSR activities was obtained from the websites of the sample companies. Correlational analysis was used to examine the relationship between self-interest in CSR activities and financial performance metrics. Multiple regression was used to control for firm size, industry, and CSR perception. Self-interest in CSR activities was found to be a significant predictor of both ROA and ROE, and was not found to be a significant predictor of change in MVA as a percentage of assets. This study contributes to positive social change by helping to illustrate a business case for CSR, providing leaders with incentive to invest in socially responsible activities in line with their business activities. Increased CSR activity directly benefits the most marginalized in a society, including those populations who lack voice.

Cette thèse étudie le rôle de la pensée morale et politique dans la tragédie moderne (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), en se concentrant sur un ensemble de pièces néo-latines, françaises, italiennes et anglaises qui représentent la mort du dictateur romain Jules César, auxquelles on a joint Cinna de Corneille. Pour susciter les passions tragiques, la fable doit représenter un personnage, ou un groupe de personnages, qui passe du bonheur au malheur à la suite d’une « faute » moralement ou politiquement ambiguë. Cet enchaînement est particulièrement tragique lorsque la « faute » est au moins partiellement involontaire et résulte d’une forme de nécessité : la tragédie manifeste alors le poids de la « fortune morale ». L’ambiguïté de la « faute » tragique peut revêtir diverses formes ; dans les Mort(s) de César, elle réside d’une part dans le fait que les personnages sont contraints d’agir dans une situation caractérisée par plusieurs antinomies, d’autre part dans le fait que leurs motivations paraissent à certains égards contraires aux justifications qu’ils avancent. La tragédie moderne est profondément réfractaire à la pensée casuiste contemporaine – sous les diverses formes qu’elle prend dans la théorie de l’invention rhétorique, la philosophie morale et politique et l’historiographie –, car elle laisse irrésolus les « cas » moraux et politiques qu’elle expose. Mais Cinna, première « tragédie à fin heureuse » du répertoire français, montre comment il est possible de parvenir à la réconciliation et à une issue moralement et politiquement satisfaisante par-delà les antinomies tragiques
This dissertation investigates the functions of moral and political thought in modern tragedy (16th-18th centuries), focusing on a group of Neo-Latin, French, Italian and English plays which represent the death of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, as well as on Corneille’s Cinna. In order to provoke the tragic emotions, a fable must represent a character or a group of characters whose fall from happiness into mishap is a consequence of a morally or politically ambiguous “flaw”. This sequence is particularly tragic when the “flaw” is at least partially unintentional and results from a kind of necessity : tragedy thus manifests the importance of “moral luck”. The ambiguity of the tragic “flaw” may arise from different circumstances ; in the plays representing the death of Caesar it consists on the one hand in the antinomies which the characters must face, on the other hand in the fact that their motivations appear in some ways contrary to the arguments they use in order to justify themselves. Modern tragedy is profoundly extraneous to contemporary casuistry (as developed in the rhetorical theory of invention, in moral and political philosophy and in historical writing), in that it leaves moral and political “cases” unsolved. However, Cinna, the first happy-ending tragedy in the French theatre, shows how reconciliation and a morally and politically satisfying ending are possible despite the tragic antinomies

[Truncated abstract] In this thesis, I seek to determine whether luck egalitarianism is a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice. In answering this question, I challenge existing interpretations and criticisms of luck egalitarianism, and highlight its radical consequences. I propose a revised theory of luck egalitarianism, and conclude that it does represent a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice. In the first chapter, I trace the evolution of luck egalitarianism, highlighting the variety of theories that have been grouped under this label. In chapter 2, I defend the approach against an influential critique by Elizabeth Anderson, who argues that luck egalitarianism is inherently disrespectful, trapped in the distributive paradigm, and harsh in its approach towards the victims of bad option luck. I argue against these criticisms, pointing out that the harsh treatment problem will rarely arise because few inequalities result entirely from option luck, and that luck egalitarianism is not disrespectful to those it seeks to assist, nor trapped in the distributive paradigm. In chapter 3, I analyse the distinction between option luck and brute luck, which is crucial to luck egalitarianism. I argue that the option-brute distinction is inconsistent with the underlying impulse of luck egalitarianism because it allows morally arbitrary inequalities to go uncorrected and because it is insufficiently sensitive to the impact of background inequalities on individual choice. I propose a revised theory of luck egalitarianism that focuses on the extent to which a person's level of advantage has been genuinely chosen, rejecting the option-brute distinction. In chapter 4, I give a broader justification of this theory, analysing recent critiques by Susan Hurley and Samuel Scheffler, who have both questioned the moral foundations of luck egalitarianism. In chapter 5, I outline a conception of egalitarian advantage to work alongside the revised theory of luck egalitarianism. I support Cohen's claim that egalitarians should adopt a heterogeneous account of advantage, which includes resources, welfare, and midfare. ... In chapter 7, I highlight the counter-intuitive social policy applications of luck egalitarianism, arguing that the universal approach to social provision associated with the social democratic welfare state comes closer to achieving luck-egalitarian objectives than the residual and conditional provision of benefits and services that is associated with the liberal welfare state. I conclude that luck egalitarianism, in the revised form I outline in chapter 3, is a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice.

African American women's (AAW) presence has increased in the corporate workforce, but this increase has not transferred to a comparable rise in leadership positions. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences AAW faced relating to race and gender differences that influenced their leadership development and limitations on advancement in Fortune 500 corporations. The research problem addressed in this study was the underrepresentation of AAW in senior leadership positions within Fortune 500 corporations and what can increase their representation and retention in senior level positions. The 10 participants included African American women holding senior level positions in corporate America. The concepts of race, gender, and stereotyping derived from intersectionality theory, critical race theory, black feminist theory, and racial microaggression were the foundation for the conceptual framework. The data collected through semistructured interviews were analyzed using the modified van Kaam method. Four themes emerged including race, gender, stereotyping in the workplace, and the lack of AAW led mentorship programs. The findings of this study may contribute to social change by assisting organizational leaders in policy changes to support the concerns of AAW in leadership roles around the lack of diversity and mentoring programs to increase retention and new recruitment.

A tese visa a comparar e analisar o material bruto de Santo forte com o filme lançado comercialmente para - por meio do estudo do processo de realização do documentário, das seleções e articulações de imagens e depoimentos - identificar o traço autoral de Eduardo Coutinho, sua metodologia (baseada na entrevista) e sua ética (voltada tanto para o \"ator social\", no sentido de preservar a imagem da pessoa e do personagem criado, quanto para o espectador, no sentido de explicitar no próprio filme sua forma de construção). Coutinho, ao escolher os participantes de seus filmes, leva em consideração a capacidade que a pessoa tem de contar bem suas histórias - capacidade essa que lhe permitirá criar personagens interessantes para seus filmes. Se por um lado, os participantes devem \"atuar com propriedade\" para a câmera, por outro, cabe a Coutinho estimular essa atuação. Para isso, o cineasta se vale de algumas estratégias para a realização das entrevistas: começa a entrevista naturalmente, tratando de temas gerais ou partindo de assuntos que possa ter em comum com o participante; fisicamente, fica próximo de seu interlocutor; não se prende a um roteiro de perguntas e, com isso, deixa o participante falar à vontade; procura os momentos apropriados para retomar os assuntos que julga ser mais interessantes; conta com pessoas na equipe que já tiveram contato com o participante; não deixa de responder um questionamento feito pelo personagem e nem entra em confronto com ele.
The aim of this thesis is to compare and analyze the unedited material with the commercial movie Santo forte to identify - by means of studying the documentary completion process, the selections and articulations of images and testimonials - the authorial trace of Eduardo Coutinho, his methodology (interview based) and his ethics (both directed to the \"social actor\", in order to preserve a person\'s image and the image of the character created, and to the \"spectator\", in order to explain in the movie itself the way it has been constructed). When selecting the participants for his movies, Coutinho takes into account the ability one has to fairly tell their stories - ability that will allow him to create interesting characters. On the one hand, if participants should \"act fittingly\" for the camera, on the other, it is Coutinho´s responsibility to stimulate this performance. To accomplish this, the movie maker uses some strategies for the interviews: starts the interview naturally, dealing with general themes or talking about subjects that he may have in common with the participant; he stays physically close to the interlocutor, he does not follow a script of questions, thus allowing the participant to speak freely; he looks for the appropriate time to resume the issues that he thinks are most interesting; he has the support of people on the staff who have had previous contact with the participant; he does not skip a question asked by the interviewed person and does not enter into confrontation with him.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Esta tese argumenta que aquilo que Alba Zaluar chamou de ética do provedor, quer dizer, a prática em torno da qual o trabalhador pobre urbano e favelado construía a sua identidade em relação à do bandido, sofreu uma metamorfose, cujo resultado foi a emergência de uma ordem de interação sui generis inscrita nas redes de sociabilidade da violência urbana. A ética do provedor metamorfoseou-se em uma lealdade instrumental e isso deu origem a uma espécie de vínculo social armado e impulsionado internamente como uma forma de convívio capaz de forçar as relações de rotina em dois movimentos concomitantes, de aproximação e de separação de quem vive e circula nessas redes de sociabilidade da violência urbana. O estudo da forma de convívio é feito a partir da construção de uma coleção de relatos baseada em entrevistas com um grupo heterogêneo de tipos sociais por exemplo, trabalhador favelado, ex-traficante, familiar de bandido, policial militar, policial civil, militar das Forças Armadas, jornalista, fotógrafo, professor da rede pública, pesquisador, militante de Direitos Humanos, advogado etc. , e, também, da observação flutuante em três favelas, uma delas com tráfico de drogas a varejo armado e ostensivo e as outras duas com Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs). Assim, a coleção de relatos e a observação flutuante são articuladas num recorte transversal e não linear orientado para a abordagem dessa ordem de interação emergida por contiguidade entre a ordem social convencional e a violenta, visando capturar a dimensão intersubjetiva e empírica da forma de convívio que junta e separa, simultaneamente, as pessoas que vivem sob ameaça da violência física, do assédio moral e da corrupção do dinheiro, fatores altamente coercitivos e que produzem os deslizamentos de sentido entre as categorias crime, trabalho e consumo.
This thesis argues that the frontiers that are used to separate the identification at slum communities of a poor urban worker from a bandit, in its classical sense, have been blurred. It results in the hypothesis that the transformation of the ethics of the provider (former anchorage point of separation between worker and bandit), into instrumental loyalty has given origin to some sort of social link to an interaction order sui generis that is armed and driven from inside by an interpersonal companionship provision capable of forcing the every-day relationships towards two simultaneous movements: approximation and separation of the social types who have free pass because of the proximity between the life routines of law and order and that of violent social order. This interaction order sui generis is studied through a) building of a collection of reports based on open interviews with a group of social types radically heterogeneous such as poor urban worker, military and civil police, Armed Forces former military, former drug dealer, lawyer, journalist, photographer, professor of the public network, researcher, activist of Human Rights, etc.; and b) floating observation of routine situations at a slum with ostensive and armed drug dealing and two others slums with non-ostensive drug dealing and Police Pacification Units ( UPPs Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora), in search of verifying the effects of instrumental loyalty on theses relations networks. The collection of reports and the floating observation are operated in a transversal and nonlinear cut, capable of encompassing not only diversity, but above all, the intersection of the points of view created for each of them from the worlds and reference framework to which they belong. They are all affected to some extent by some coercive factors resulting from the violent common crime, to wit: the open or implicit threat of physical violence, corruption, and moral harassment, practical and symbolic factors that spins the meaning of categories as crime, work and consumption.

Esta dissertação provê um quadro conceptual tributário da ética das virtudes que permita pensar uma fundamentação consentânea do agir vis-à-vis a tecnologia. A nossa pesquisa parte não só da constatação de que a multiplicidade e o ritmo da inovação tecnológica apresentam já questões suficientes para considerações éticas, mas de que tais mudanças anunciam um desafio para o próprio exercício reflexivo da ética, próprio à corrente crise epocal de origem antrópica. A tese compõe-se de cinco partes. Na primeira parte apresentam-se os principais conceitos da ética aristotélica. Veremos como é concebido o progresso moral individual através do concurso das virtudes e de uma concepção teleológica da natureza humana. A distinção entre as virtudes dianoéticas da theoria, da techne e da phronesis é estabelecida no seu papel para providenciar o progresso moral. Estes conceitos são por sua vez criticamente recuperados e alargados por Alasdair MacIntyre para a contemporaneidade através da compreensão apologética da superioridade da ética aristotélica. Para este autor, não obstante condicionalismos vários que toldam o agir, a agência moral conserva aí ainda uma racionalidade prática concebida como tributária das raízes biológicas da espécie humana, da sua exposição à fragilidade e fortuna e de uma teleologia secundada a um bem socialmente definido. A segunda parte decorre da insuficiência dos conceitos apresentados anteriormente para aferir a tecnologia nos seus próprios termos. As ausências conceptuais são várias: 1) desconsideração da tecnologia na forma como a mesma altera os fins da acção na praxis; 2) estruturação da natureza humana e do progresso moral pela própria técnica e pela exterioridade mais larga da natureza. Estes elementos deverão por sua vez ser complementados ainda pela noção de que o processo histórico da Modernidade correspondeu largamente à erosão do quadro aristotélico. Em termos breves, esse processo consistiu na aliança profícua entre a theoria e a techne para prover a humanidade de utilidades e de conveniência através do progresso científico e tecnológico; na ruína da teleologia presente na natureza e no progresso moral; na elisão da capacidade da phronesis para determinar o bem derradeiro; e na equiparação das leis que regem a dinâmica da sociedade à dinâmica da natureza, no pressuposto da exequibilidade de uma optimização. Tal como Alasdair MacIntyre critica a Modernidade por esta ter falhado na sua tentativa de fundar a moralidade, percorreremos também o significado maior da separação entre factos e valores e o pressuposto de que o conhecimento científico, através da técnica, é suficiente para o progresso moral, noção que constitui a trave-mestra de vastas utopias modernas. Entre outros autores, o papel central desta segunda parte caberá a Hans Jonas devido à forma como não só complementa as referidas ausências conceptuais acerca da natureza humana, mas sobretudo como problematiza o posicionamento essencialmente pré-moderno da ética relativamente à técnica. É através do exame da obra deste autor que poderemos aceder a uma proposta crítica que tem em conta as consequências da própria tecnologia para a reflexividade ética e de um argumentário que ecoa a diferença entre a techne e a phronesis acerca da diferença entre progresso científico e tecnológico e progresso moral. Na sua dinâmica formal, a técnica moderna caracteriza-se pela sua magnitude, escala eirreversibilidade dos seus efeitos. Estas características levam ao estabelecimento de um hiato epistemológico entre o poder de fazer e o poder de prever relativo a esse fazer, isto é, a uma dissociação entre a agência moral e as consequências da sua acção. Esta condição, designada por tecno-opacidade, é remediada por Hans Jonas através da heurística do medo, pela qual a imaginação moral tenta estabelecer cenários futuros realistas que acautelem a imprevisibilidade da acção tecnológica. A terceira e a quarta partes desta tese lançam-nos directamente no debate contemporâneo em filosofia da tecnologia. Serão aqui estabelecidos os limites à descrição abrangente da dinâmica formal da tecnologia como um todo autónomo a cujas leis do movimento a humanidade está necessariamente subjugada. É através da análise do conteúdo substancial da tecnologias, i.e., como tecnologias concretas se instanciam em relações com os agentes, que se pode entender como são a percepção e a acção modificadas e como é que a agência moral pode ainda cumprir-se segundo a orientação da vida boa. No seu todo, a terceira parte respeita assim ao confronto de autores cuja herança comum remonta à obra de Heidegger. Através da estrutura de revelação-ocultação da tecnologia comum a Don Ihde, a Albert Borgmann e à teoria da mediação, revisitaremos conceitos avançados por Hans Jonas, precisando como é a agência moral condicionada pela materialidade e, ao contrário de Bruno Latour, qual é nesse âmbito a diferença fundamental entre responsabilidade moral e responsabilidade causal. Através de uma leitura aristotélica da obra de Albert Borgmann, observaremos como o seu paradigma do dispositivo e a noção de coisas e práticas focais permitem vencer o hiato epistemológico e são em certa medida uma recuperação relativa à tecnologia segundo critérios objectivos do florescimento da natureza humana. A quarta parte dá essencialmente conta da obra de Ivan Illich. A originalidade deste autor prende-se com a sua análise de vários sectores e instituições da sociedade industrial serem contraprodutivos, isto é, minarem a prossecução dos objectivos para os quais foram desenhados. Illich interpreta a industrialização como um capítulo actual da história da religião. A eclesiologia da sociedade industrial pretere a busca do bem interno às práticas vernaculares pela distribuição ecuménica de serviços e mercadorias eivadas de escassez. A alternativa de cunho aristotélico para Illich é o cultivo de práticas ascéticas através das quais tecnologias conviviais podem participar do florescimento humano dando conta da finitude da natureza humana e do seu enraizamento social, material e natural. Na última parte pretende-se concretizar o quadro de recursos conceptuais desenvolvidos num estudo de caso. Ao longo de dois capítulos, examinaremos a possibilidade de estabelecer práticas para uma ética alimentar no contexto de um sistema alimentar industrial em que a tecnologia está amplamente presente. O acto alimentar será aquele que, tendo em conta o hiato epistemológico que atravessa os produtos alimentares, é precedido de uma deliberação segundo a concepção de um bem que actualize a natureza humana nas suas componentes material, social e ambiental.
This thesis provides a virtue ethics approach for building a conceptual framework that allows one to think of a rationale for action vis-à-vis technology in the context of the current environmental crisis. Our research acknowledges and departs from the observation that the multiplicity and rhythm of technological innovation already demands an appropriate ethical consideration in vast areas of human life. Nevertheless, such changes also announce a challenge for the reflective exercise of ethics itself. The thesis comprises five parts. The first part presents the main concepts of Aristotelian ethics. Individual moral progress is conceived through the role of the virtues and a teleological conception of human nature. The distinction between the intellectual virtues of theory, techne and phronesis is established through their role in affording and assisting moral progress. These concepts are in turn critically recovered and extended by Alasdair MacIntyre to contemporary ethical thought through the apologetic understanding of the superiority of Aristotelian ethics. To this author and in spite of various constraints that overshadow moral agency, action still and should retain a rationality rooted in the biological roots of the human species, its frailty, exposure to fortune and a teleology secondary to a socially defined good. The second part stems from the insufficiency of the previously presented concepts to account for technology in its own terms. There are several conceptual absences: 1) the disregard of technology in the way it alters the ends of action in praxis; 2) the structuring of human nature and of moral progress by technology itself through the wider exteriority of nature. These elements should in turn be complemented by the notion that the historical process of Modernity largely corresponds to the erosion of the Aristotelian framework. Briefly, this process consisted 1) in the fruitful alliance between theory and techne to provide humanity with the use and convenience of nature through scientific and technological progress; 2) in the ruin of teleology in nature and in moral progress; 3) in the avoidance of the ability of phronesis to determine the ultimate good; 4) and in the equivalence between the laws governing society and the ones governing nature, on the assumption of the feasibility of an optimization. Just as Alasdair MacIntyre criticize Modernity for the failure of its attempt to rationally justify morality, we will also assess the greater meaning of the separation between facts and values and the close related assumption that scientific knowledge, through technology, is sufficient for moral progress, a notion that constitutes the keystone of several modern utopias. Among other authors, the central role of this second part belongs to Hans Jonas. His oeuvre not only complements the referred conceptual absences about human nature, but above all he questions the essentially pre-modern positioning of ethics in relation to technology. Through the examination of his main theses we can start accounting for a critical proposal that takes into account the consequences of technology itself for ethical reflexivity and an argument that echoes the difference between techne and phronesis about the difference between scientific and technological progress and moral progress. In its formal dynamics, modern technology is characterized by the magnitude, scale and irreversibility of its effects. These features lead to the establishment of an epistemological gap between the power to do and the power to forecast in relation to that same doing. Shortly, that is, to a dissociation between moral agency and the consequences of its action. This condition, called techno-opacity, is remedied by Hans Jonas through the heuristics of fear, through which the moral imagination attempts to establish realistic future scenarios that safeguard the unpredictability of technological action. The third and fourth parts launch us directly into the contemporary debate in philosophy of technology. Generally, limits are settled regarding the comprehensiveness of the formal dynamic’s description of technology as an autonomous force to whose laws of motion humanity is necessarily bound in compliance. It is through the analysis of the substantial content of technologies, i.e., how concrete technologies are instantiated in relationships with agents, that one can understand how perception and action are modified and how moral agency can still be fulfilled according to the orientation of the good life. On the whole, the third part thus concerns the confrontation of authors whose common heritage goes back to the work of Heidegger. Through the revelation-occultation structure of technology common to Don Ihde, Albert Borgmann and mediation theory, we will revisit concepts advanced by Hans Jonas, specifying how moral agency is conditioned by materiality and, contrary to Bruno Latour, what is the fundamental difference between moral responsibility and causal responsibility. Through an Aristotelian reading of Albert Borgmann's work, we will observe how his device paradigm and the notion of focal things and practices allow us to overcome the epistemological gap. We consider that his work is to some extent a recovery vis-à-vis technology of flourishment, according to objective criteria of human nature. The fourth part essentially deals with the work of Ivan Illich. The novelty of this author relates to his analysis of various divisions and institutions of industrial society as being essentially counterproductive, that is, undermining the pursuit of the objectives for which they were designed. Illich reads industrialization as a current chapter in the history of religion. The ecclesiology of industrial society largely neglects the search for the goods internal to vernacular practices, favoring the ecumenical distribution of services and commodities that are plagued by scarcity. The neo-Aristotelian alternative for Illich is the cultivation of ascetic practices through which convivial technologies can participate in human flowering by realizing the finiteness of human nature and its social, material and natural roots. In the last part we intend to apply the developed framework of conceptual resources to a case study. We will examine the possibility of establishing a food ethics in the context of the current industrial food system in which technology is widely present. The act of eating should account for the epistemological gap that crosses food production. Eating should be a matter of deliberation according to the conception of a good that favors human flourishment in its material, social and environmental components.

The aim of this essay is to analyse the story of Alatiel in its philosophical context, comparing the novella with the erotic and ethic conceptions in Middle Ages. From this point of view, it is possible to recognize two models in the story: the first is embodied by the lovers of the young woman and their savage behaviour, which seems to annihilate reason and morals, in line with the comment of Dino del Garbo to Donna me Prega. The second model is proposed by Alatiel, forced to indulge fortune’s will. Around this antithesis Boccaccio develops his narrative technique, switching focalization from Alatiel to her lovers, and again to Alatiel, to debate about one of the most important themes of the whole Decameron: human action between the context created by the fortune and moral choice.

This section presents the English translation of Eudemian Ethics, which offers reflections on happiness—described in the text as the noblest, the best, and the most pleasant of human goods—and how it is acquired and attained. Eudemian Ethics also addresses two kinds of virtue, one intellectual and one moral, and goes on to argue that man alone is an originating principle of action. It also discusses examples of moral virtue such as courage, temperance, liberality, pride, and magnificence, as well as the five intellectual virtues: knowledge, craftmanship, wisdom, intelligence, and understanding. Other arguments in the text relate to justice and injustice, continence and incontinence, pleasure, friendship, good fortune, and gentlemanliness.

In this English translation of Magna Moralia, the discussion focuses on the themes of good, happiness, virtue, action, justice, continence and incontinence, pleasure, good fortune, friendship, and gentlemanliness. According to the author, the study of moral character is part of the craft of politics. The text also considers the views of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato and argues that happiness consists in living well, that is, virtuously: it is not virtue itself but the exercise of virtue. Other insights offered by the text include those relating to moral virtues such as courage, temperance, liberality, pride, and magnificence, friendliness, and good temper; intellectual virtues such as knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, and understanding; the problems that arise from incontinence; and the connection between happiness and pleasure.

Chapter 5 considers Barbet Schroeder’s English-language American true-life drama Reversal of Fortune (1990) and his French-language political documentary Terror’s Advocate (2007), two films about lawyers and legal systems. Desmond Manderson refers in his collection Essays on Levinas and Law: A Mosaic (2009) to the ‘mosaic’ of a Levinasian approach to the law, as, sceptical of legal systems but devoted to justice, Emmanuel Levinas posits an ethics that refuses to crystallise into a prescriptive view of how the law should work in respect of the Other. I argue that these two Schroeder films, with their multi-faceted, ‘mosaic-like’ styles and structures, perform this fractured Levinasian refusal to settle on a fixed, simplistic definition of the law’s purpose. I analyse Reversal of Fortune for its multiple story strands and the different visual styles Schroeder deploys to delineate them, along with elements of performance – especially from Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow – that complicate questions of otherness. In discussing the documentary Terror’s Advocate, I draw on Stella Bruzzi’s work on performative documentary (2006) to explore how Schroeder uses film style to perform both the bravado of the film’s protagonist, the real-life criminal lawyer Jacques Vergès, and the Levinasian ‘mosaic’ of the legal situations he surveys.