This thesis analyzes the environmental knowledge, attitudes and environmentally significant behaviors of the environmental professionals such as academicians and higher level of bureaucrats in Turkey. Additionally socio-demographic characteristics of target groups were measured to examine if environmental professionals having environmental knowledge and defending ecocentric or at least homocentric approaches do really reflect their attitudes and knowledge into actual behaviors or a paradox arises when actual behaviors are compared with expressed beliefs and attitudes. It was found that, socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, age and education were not show statistically significant difference at the respondents&rsquo / behavior. There only exist a positive relationship between education and environmental knowledge. Additionally, the data herein supports the theoretical assumption that, distinct professional groups have different environmental ethical approaches and different levels of environmental knowledge. Academicians have the highest consciousness level of environmental knowledge. Finally the most striking result is / although respondents have at least moderate level of environmental knowledge / there exist a statistically significant negative correlation between respondents&rsquo / environmental knowledge and their behavior.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that the truthful life was at risk of being lost in Western technological culture in the name of increasing control, efficiency, and agility.  As the risk is actualised, so the human essence as truth maker is obscured and life itself feels poorer. This thesis draws on Heideggerian philosophy to demonstrate the loss in two dominant styles of contemporary strategic management: the world-picturing and, more recent, agile style. It builds a theory of post-agile strategic practice, which I call adaptive, to address this loss. Consistent with Heideggerian philosophy, I utilise a transformative disclosure methodology and a literary, paradigmatic case reading method to address the questions: Why is agile strategic management so unsatisfying? How do Heideggerian scholars shed light on this dissatisfaction? How do Heideggerians understand the emerging style and what strategic management practices can I propose for the future? After introducing agile strategic management and the impoverishment of life that it fosters, I set out how Heidegger’s philosophy of truth, thinking, and the sacred both sheds light on the problem and suggests a remedy for it. I closely read paradigmatic texts of the world-picturing and agile strategic management styles to demonstrate how business strategy theorisation lines up with extraordinary closeness to Heidegger’s philosophical assessment. I then analyse three Heideggerian prototypes for an adaptive style of strategy practice, concentrating on one paradigmatic text to identify their principal weakness: the omission of the sacred. I illustrate and contrast paradigmatic cases of both the agile and adaptive styles drawn from the beer industry and draw on the adaptive case to construct a theory of adaptive strategy practice, which addresses the problem of the loss of truth, suggesting pedagogical and strategic management practices. I conclude by summarising its findings and contributions, noting some limitations and connections to other studies and suggesting further lines of research.

In this thesis I analyze the evolutionary ethics and propose a new perspective that develops on the notion of altruism. The view of evolutionary ethics, especially the sociobiological account, has some problems. The most important philosophical problem is the &ldquo / is-ought&rdquo / problem which refers to the question as to whether moral propositions can be inferred from factual statements. In order to overcome this problem I suggest a different reading of the notion of altruism namely &ldquo / altruistic behavior practice&rdquo / that refers to norms, habits and repeated actions that provide the sustainability of society. The notion of altruistic behavior practice is presented and evaluated with the help of Alasdair MacIntyre&rsquo / s and John Dewey&rsquo / s moral philosophy. The moral views of these two philosophers are based on human practices and habitual formations in society. In this respect, evolutionary ethics and the notion of altruism are re-established on the basis of human practices and habitual modes of socialization.

In this Study, the empiricist ethical system of Epicurus and idealist ethical system of Kant will be compared. Kant maintains that as Epicurus&rsquo / ethics regards morality as a means for the attainment of happiness, it is nothing but a self-love ethics. He, for this reason, calls Epicurean morality &ldquo / selfishness.&rdquo / According to Kant, the maxims of happiness can be known only through experience but he says, experience can never produce a law which is universal and necessary. He contends that as Epicurean ethics has happiness as its ultimate goal (i.e., the highest good), it cannot be able to produce an objective morality, valid for all rational beings. Kant, on the other hand, tries to found his ethical system on an a priori moral law of pure reason which borrows nothing from experience. This Study would, in a sense, be a defense of Epicurean ethical system against Kant&rsquo / s claims. The main argument of the thesis is that Epicurean ethics is not a self-love ethics, but rather a system which propounds happiness for all. I will be arguing that for Epicurus, one&rsquo / s own happiness is necessarily bound up with the happiness of others, and that his system is sound and consistent. I will also try to show that Kant is not successful in deducing a transcendentally ideal (a priori) law of reason and that his system has some inconsistencies.

Max Weber and Karl Marx have been compared in various ways, especially since Weber&rsquo / s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was first published in the beginning of 20th century. The general claim was that their perspectives are completely different from each other. With the analysis of Protestant Ethic, they claim, Weber came up with a negative answer to Marx in terms of his analysis of the relationship between society and economy. However, in this study it is indicated that Weber&rsquo / s analyses were in close proximity with those of Marx&rsquo / s and these similarities can be seen in Weber&rsquo / s both early and late period works such as &ldquo / The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization&rdquo / , Economy and Society and General Economic History. Weber&rsquo / s approach in this all corpus can be considered to be &ldquo / a quasi Marxist perspective&rdquo / . In these texts, he refers widely to Marx and elaborates the factors which he thought Marx had excluded from his analysis. Although he accused Marx of using a one-sided causal interpretation of history, Weber&rsquo / s approach in relation to Marx has close parallels with historical materialism

The aim of this study is to examine the meaning and the morality of suicide through the history of philosophy. To this aim, firstly, the historical evaluation of the concept of suicide is explained in detail. The effects of sociological and the religious transformations on the meaning of suicide are analyzed. Afterwards, the moral theories about suicide are discussed. The anti-suicide arguments about suicide in the history of philosophy are classified under three parts mainly. These anti-suicide arguments &mdash / that suicide is a violation of our duties to God, to the society and to the self &mdash / are handled and explained in detail with their counter arguments. Then, the problem of the permissibility of suicide is analyzed and whether suicide is morally permitted under some conditions or it is absolutely forbidden is discussed. Next, the philosophical meaning of suicide in literature is investigated by analyzing the meanings that are given to suicide by Dante iv and Dostoevsky. In the conclusion, a brief summary is given, and the moral theories about suicide are criticized. ,

The present work addresses the notions of poverty and poverty relief in Buddhist social and economic ethics, comparing them to current approaches to conceptualizing poverty used in the development community. Given the Buddhist preoccupation with ceasing suffering and removing its causes, and the key Buddhist principle of Right Livelihood that is found in the Ennobling Eightfold Path to enlightenment taught by the Buddha, economic ethics appear to be central to the Buddhist path and a concern for the suffering caused by extreme poverty therefore ought to be a key point of concern in Buddhist ethics. Buddhist ethics has developed into a field of study all its own over the last few decades, addressing issues in applied ethics from bioethics to human rights and environmental concerns, but little has been written by virtually any standard on the important topic of poverty relief. The present work makes a step toward filling that gap by examining relevant passages in the Pāli Canon as well as popular and influential Mahāyāna sūtras to demonstrate that a concern for deprivation or non-voluntary impoverishment is evident in key Buddhist doctrines and teachings from the earliest recorded history of the Buddhist tradition. The thesis further discusses the duties to relieve poverty outlined in Buddhist social ethics as well as the development of Buddhist economics and its critique of dominant mainstream economics. It also offers a comparison of Buddhist conceptions of poverty with contemporary notions of poverty, such as the capabilities approach to poverty developed by Amartya Sen and currently in use by the UNDP. In both of these cases poverty is portrayed in a comprehensive and multi-dimmensional manner which views income as only one aspect of poverty. Additionally, this dissertation examines the contemporary Socially Engaged Buddhist movement and identifies historical and contemporary examples of Buddhist poverty relief efforts.