This thesis outlines and defends a MacIntyrean account of contemporary work. MacIntyre's virtue ethics seems to entail a wholesale rejection of the modern order; throughout his writings MacIntyre is highly critical of capitalism, large-scale modern institutions, management, regulation, and indeed of our whole 'emotivistic' culture (as he sees it) which he regards as being inimical to our potential to virtuously flourish. MacIntyre's mature period, from After Virtue (2007, originally published 1981) contains much that is relevant to a philosophy of work. I will develop and update MacIntyre's own arguments and I will also argue that contemporary working life can be more MacIntyrean than MacIntyre himself realises. Because both work as a topic, and the relevant parts of MacIntyre's writings are extremely diverse, my strategy will be to examine the different key elements of a MacIntyrean philosophy of work without decontextualising the key notions of practices, virtues and institutions from MacIntyre's wider moral philosophy. I will argue that MacIntyre's key concept of a practice, the first stage in his definition of a virtue, is able to account for productive activities and can survive a variety of challenges. We are best able to make sense of the notion of the narrative unity of a whole life, the second stage in MacIntyre's definition of a virtue, if we distinguish between lived-narratives and the told-narratives that best allow us to understand our lives. Despite his broad endorsement of Marx's critique of capitalism, a MacIntyrean account of work differs from Marx's theory of alienation. I will argue that a fully MacIntyrean workplace will be small-scale, will not pressurise employees to identify with compartmentalised roles, and will allow trust to flourish. However, because MacIntyre overstates the extent to which people accept the definitions of ‘success’ that are dominant within modernity, he is unable to see the extent to which MacIntyrean communities can survive the threats posed by contemporary corporations. Another element of MacIntyre's account of work which needs modification is his critique of the character of the manager, and I will offer an emendation of this in order to make it applicable to contemporary forms of management. Finally I show that distinctively modern phenomena of workplace governance and regulation can serve MacIntyrean ends and can allow us to codify broadly MacIntyrean workplace initiatives. However, because of the deep context-sensitivity of the key MacIntyrean notions: practices, narrative-unity, and communities, such measures resist detailed and explicit formulation. My aim is to defend MacIntyre, to deepen our understanding of what a MacIntyrean philosophy of work entails, and to show that and how good work exists even within modernity.

This project analyzes the intersections between representations of female sovereignty used to promote and rethink feminine virtue in both early modern English and Spanish advice literature and literary texts published in the decade after Queen Elizabeth I’s death. I suggest that the question of women’s sovereignty prompted by the rise of ruling queens in Spain and England influences the prominence of regal women as models of feminine virtue in advice literature and reconceptualizes feminine virtue as a political discourse, forming a new category I term “princely feminine virtue.” Scholarship analyzing the relationship between advice literature and literary works has not recognized England and Spain’s shared indebtedness to princely models to advise and represent feminine virtue. By examining the interplay between feminine virtue, tropes of sovereignty, and the advisory mode in both types of texts, this project emphasizes the widespread potential for women’s exemplary virtue across the social spectrum. In addition to recasting feminine virtue through a princely lens, these texts reveal a shared vision of how performances of feminine virtue are invested with agency and power.

Thesis (M.A.)--Abilene Christian University, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-87).

Thesis (M.A.)--Abilene Christian University, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-87).

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pope / This dissertation argues that industrial food production, characterized under the term “big food,” is an environmental and social problem that requires a response from Christian theology and ethics. However, previous scholarship addressing “big food” did not confront the intransigent nature of this problem. As a result of this state of the problem, the dissertation poses the question: what is an adequate response to the intransigent problem of “big food?” In response this dissertation argues that a proper response involves an integrated Catholic ecological ethic. An integrated ecological ethic combines the methods of virtue ethics and social ethics to propose virtues within a contextually aware framework. The resources of the Catholic tradition can be utilized to develop an integrated ethic that balances the concerns of ecojustice and environmental justice. The solution proposed involves the development of ecological reformulations of the virtues of charity, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The above virtues are not proposed within a theoretical vacuum, but rather within an awareness of various unjust structures in the United States that support “big food” and habituate the ecological vices of pride, fearlessness, and gluttony. The dissertation makes constructive proposals for structural change to develop structures of “big food” that can promote ecological virtue as opposed to ecological vice. In addition, the dissertation makes several recommendations for personal reforms in relation to food habits so as to move toward ecological virtues. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2003. / Title from title screen. PDF text of dissertation: vi, 133 p. Site viewed on Feb. 19, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-133 of dissertation).

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies three conditions that are necessary in order for a virtuous act to have been done as a virtuous agent: the act must be done (1) knowingly, (2) for itself, and (3) from a steady disposition. I examine previous interpretations of the second item, and then offer my own: a virtuous act is chosen for itself if it is chosen for its virtue-making features that are also reasons to do the act, and these features motivate the agent to such an extent that the agent would do the act even if there were no other reason to do it. / text

In this dissertation I argue, first, that an Aristotelian/Kindist approach to ethics is superior to the dominant approach of the 20th Century because it avoids deep meta-ethical puzzles, and second, that we should reject traditional Aristotelian approaches to ethics and adopt what I call Cultural Kindism instead. The view that dominated the last century mandates that we think of some things -- e.g. pleasure, knowledge, virtue -- as good “full stop,” or good simpliciter. I argue that a) this approach entails a set of seemingly irresolvable disagreements about the nature of goodness, namely, whether we ought to be (anti)realists, (non)cognitivists, (non)naturalists, etc., b) Aristotelians avoid these debates, and c) we have strong reason to favor an approach that avoids these debates. According to traditional Aristotelianism, evaluations of living things are, when justified, grounded in facts about the species of which the object of evaluation is a member. A member is defective and (thereby) lives a deprived life, just in case the member fails to meet the standard for good members of its kind. Against these philosophers I argue that the idea that we can ground (moral) evaluations of people by reference to their membership in the biological kind ‘human being’ is at best without foundations, and at worst (for the Aristotelian), pushes us to the dominant approach of the 20th Century. On the Aristotelian approach I defend, it is not a person’s membership in a biological kind (or species) that grounds evaluations of her, but rather her membership in what I call a cultural kind. Cultural kinds include parent, spouse, friend, philosopher, citizen, and so on, and are defined by the set of ends appropriate to a member of that kind. A parent has the end of the welfare of her children, a spouse the welfare of his spouse, a philosopher the end of wisdom and the pursuit of wisdom, and so on. According to Cultural Kindism, people become objects of evaluation not because they have been born into a particular biological kind, but because they come to be members of various cultural kinds. / text

Not available / text