The <I>Essays on the Active Powers of Man </I>are Thomas Reid's last major work, where the Scottish philosopher presents an original theory of human agency. This thesis is a critical reconstruction of Reid's theory, showing how it completes his earlier <I>Essays on the Intellectual Powers. </I>It is argued that Reid's theory of agency must be understood as uncovering the essential aspects of the actions of human persons, and therefore that it provides an understanding of the nature of personality and of the agency proper to persons. If Reid's arguments often appear as negative responses to philosophers that have preceded him, Locke and Hume in particular, what underlies these criticisms is in fact a positive and coherent conception of man. The metaphysics of personal identity and agency thus constitutes the framework in which Reid develops a moral psychology in a naturalistic spirit, as well as an analysis and defence of the possibility of free agency, what he calls man's "moral liberty". By virtue of their natural constitution, human beings are able to exert their voluntary abilities according to particular reasons. They are thereby free from necessity and capable of self-government, as moral and responsible agents. Reid's theory of action and morality reveals important aspects of human nature, and especially the irreducibility of human agency and personality. The <I>Essays on the Active Powers </I>then constitute an essential part of his philosophy, whether it be understood as a "science of man" or as a "philosophy of common sense".

Both philosophers and literary critics have championed artworks as necessary to moral education. As a result many of these critics believe that art that is bad or immoral can causally affect our character, resulting in moral harm. Moral harm is the idea that artworks possess a strong disposition to affect our moral beliefs such that we are less able to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. I examine this concept of moral harm and argue that immoral artworks do not have this kind of causal power over our moral beliefs. Proponents of the moral harm thesis are in error to attribute such a power to artworks. Additionally, I propose a definition of immoral artworks consistent with moral harm, as well as discuss the distinction between immoral artworks and artworks that are merely elicit disgust or offense.

This missiological study is to precede from the reformation Theology tradition. The Theological methodology used in this study in formulating theoretical indicators from scripture will follow the hermeneutics of Biblical Theology as set out by Scobie (2003), Lexicons such as Louw and Nida (1988), the grammatical - historical method (Du Toit & Roberts 1979:58), along with other relevant scholarly works will be consulted. This study focuses on the task of the Missionary church and therefore qualitative research is preferable over quantitative research. This study is limited by the fact that morality is a very wide area. There are a lot of interrelated issues that this type of study cannot address and that call for further research e.g. the task of the state towards moral regeneration and the relationship with the church and religion in general, the influence of postmodernism on the church. The context of this study is limited to South African context and covers the post 1994 democratic elections. This study will focus on the Mission focused family because it is the cornerstone of society. Chapter one presented the limites of the study on theSouth African context and cover the post the 1994 democratic elections. Secondly, the second chapter focused on the Missionary church their task to morall regeneration: begining with the church in the area such as self–introspection, repentance, confession of sins, forgiveness an faith in God and in the message of the church. Firstly, the chapter reviewed the history of South Africa and how the past Apartheid era impacted on the present situation as well as the church’s response to Moral Regeneration. Finally, the chapter looks at how the Church can come with practical development through the re–humanization of our people. Similarly, chapter four looked at the matter of Mission focused families as cornerstones for Moral Regeneration. Initially, I provided a comprehensive definition of Mission focused families in the light of, amongst other things, Deut 6: 1–25 and Eph 5: 22–23 . Finally, the fifth chapter delved on the question of the South African Missionary church and the challenges she faces as an agent of hope for moral regeneration. I analysed in detail the challenges facing the Missionary Church today, and on how the Missionary Church deals with those challenges. Most importantly, the chapter focused on the Missionary Church’s prophetic voice on moral regeneration. / Thesis (M.A. (Missiology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This missiological study is to precede from the reformation Theology tradition. The Theological methodology used in this study in formulating theoretical indicators from scripture will follow the hermeneutics of Biblical Theology as set out by Scobie (2003), Lexicons such as Louw and Nida (1988), the grammatical - historical method (Du Toit & Roberts 1979:58), along with other relevant scholarly works will be consulted. This study focuses on the task of the Missionary church and therefore qualitative research is preferable over quantitative research. This study is limited by the fact that morality is a very wide area. There are a lot of interrelated issues that this type of study cannot address and that call for further research e.g. the task of the state towards moral regeneration and the relationship with the church and religion in general, the influence of postmodernism on the church. The context of this study is limited to South African context and covers the post 1994 democratic elections. This study will focus on the Mission focused family because it is the cornerstone of society. Chapter one presented the limites of the study on theSouth African context and cover the post the 1994 democratic elections. Secondly, the second chapter focused on the Missionary church their task to morall regeneration: begining with the church in the area such as self–introspection, repentance, confession of sins, forgiveness an faith in God and in the message of the church. Firstly, the chapter reviewed the history of South Africa and how the past Apartheid era impacted on the present situation as well as the church’s response to Moral Regeneration. Finally, the chapter looks at how the Church can come with practical development through the re–humanization of our people. Similarly, chapter four looked at the matter of Mission focused families as cornerstones for Moral Regeneration. Initially, I provided a comprehensive definition of Mission focused families in the light of, amongst other things, Deut 6: 1–25 and Eph 5: 22–23 . Finally, the fifth chapter delved on the question of the South African Missionary church and the challenges she faces as an agent of hope for moral regeneration. I analysed in detail the challenges facing the Missionary Church today, and on how the Missionary Church deals with those challenges. Most importantly, the chapter focused on the Missionary Church’s prophetic voice on moral regeneration. / Thesis (M.A. (Missiology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The aim of this essay is to show the significant effect censoring Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray had on the protagonist’s moral standing. I compare the original uncensored version of The Picture of Dorian Gray with the censored version. The uncensored version, published by the Belknap Press and edited by Nicholas Frankel, has only been available to the public for three years. My comparison proves that a great deal has been changed in terms of content between the two versions of the novel. This essay will outline and discusses the changes made in order to make the text acceptable in terms of late Victorian moral conventions. It also illustrates the changes by comparing quotes. The function of the censorship applied to the novel is to make Dorian seem more callous and immoral in the 1891 book version, since only then can Oscar Wilde’s story approach the standards of late Victorian morality. Indeed, a significant change has been effected in the character Dorian Gray’s morality between the two versions of the novel. / Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att visa vilken betydande effekt censureringen av Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray hade på huvudkaraktärens moraliska ståndpunkter. Jag jämför den ocensurerade versionen av The Picture of Dorian Gray med den censurerade versionen. Den ocensurerade versionen som publicerades av Belknap Press och redigeradesav Nicholas Frankel, har bara varit tillgänglig för allmänheten i tre år. Min jämförelse visar att en stor del av innehållet har förändrats mellan de båda versionerna av romanen. Den här uppsatsen visar samt diskuterar förändringarna som har gjorts för att texten ska bli mer acceptabel i förhållande till senviktorianska moraliska konventioner. Uppsatsen illustrerar förändringarna genom att jämföra citat. Poängen med att censurera den här romanen var att få Dorian att verka mer hjärtlös och omoralisk  i bokversionen från 1891. Bara då kunde Oscar Wildes berättelse närma sig den viktorianska moralen. Man kan se en tydlig förändring av karaktären Dorian Grays moral mellan de två versionerna.

Much attention has been devoted in the social sciences to the reorganisation of the moral order of society (Smart, 1999). This reorganisation means that responsibility for welfare is now located with the individual. In spite of the salience given to privately held responsibility for welfare in social policy, little work has been carried out on the discourses underpinning this way of distributing responsibility (Finch and Mason, 1993, Duncan and Edwards, 1999, Rowlingson, 2002). Work on this issue is especially timely as New Labour continues the privatisation of responsibility for welfare in a way that, many people believe, neglects a moral dimension. Instead, New Labour favours a more ethical construction that exhorts the individual to do her duty by which they mean she should work for her own betterment and well-being (Levitas, 1998, Giddens, 1998, Jordan, 1998, Lund, 1999). This work begins by situating responsibility as a historically variable and discursive construction, uncovering how the understanding of responsibility changed as the problem focusing the minds of social engineers altered from one of poverty to one of security in the 1970s. While responsibility has only recently been identified as a particular issue for social policy academics (Roche, 1992, Dwyer, 1998, Dean et aI., 2004) philosophers and sociologists have paid close attention to responsibility over the past decade (Bauman, 1993, 1995, Habermas, 1990, 1995, Apel, 1989, 1996, Etzioni, 1995, Schmidtz, 1998, Goodin, 1998). Building on the issues raised by these authors, this work presents a qualitative study of government press releases, interviews with benefits recipients, members of the general public, welfare advisors and welfare benefits administrators to explore the rational structure of the discourses of responsibility for welfare. As a result, I develop the argument that while the reconfigured moral order promotes a private acceptance of responsibility for welfare, people still want a way of interpreting responsibility taking in a more public way.

This study explores the ways in which young people in the neighbourhood of Old Town in Bamenda negotiate the predicament of blocked opportunities and ‘arrested adulthood’ occasioned by the decline in the nation-building project and prolonged socio-economic and moral crisis in Cameroon. I investigate how urban youth in Old Town construct their moral and socio-cultural worlds through involvement in associations. The main finding suggests that faced with growing uncertainty, young people in Bamenda are positioning themselves as important social actors by drawing on local cultural resources such as associations to construct their social worlds that aim to circumvent their exclusion and marginality. In this light, I analyse youth associations as central although not exclusive to negotiating young people’s predicament by focusing on a range of practices through which they seek respectability and claim social adult status. Drawing on the concepts of transition, subjectivities and personhood, I show that young people straddle the worlds of ‘youth’ and social adulthood, statuses that are not only cultural constructions but also the products of differential power relations and social positioning. I contend that the processes of positioning and the production of personhood are largely experienced through involvement in associational life. The study focuses on three associations, namely the Chosen Sisters, the United Sisters and the Ntambag Brothers Association (NBA). Organised on the basis of seniority and gender, I argue that these associations, while negotiating claims to adult status for their members, tend to challenge state-centric notions of citizenship as they simultaneously position themselves as moral actors upon whom society can count on for regeneration. Through a range of social projects, pursued on behalf of and sanctioned by the community, young people in Old Town reaffirm the centrality of interdependence and the situated understanding of social adulthood predicated on the redistribution of one’s success or achievement. This study points to the re-emergent role of associations in negotiating everyday life in the face of crisis. It is a significant contribution towards understanding voluntary and communal associations in general and young people’s modes of transitions into social adulthood.

This study explores the ways in which young people in the neighbourhood of Old Town in Bamenda negotiate the predicament of blocked opportunities and ‘arrested adulthood’ occasioned by the decline in the nation-building project and prolonged socio-economic and moral crisis in Cameroon. I investigate how urban youth in Old Town construct their moral and socio-cultural worlds through involvement in associations. The main finding suggests that faced with growing uncertainty, young people in Bamenda are positioning themselves as important social actors by drawing on local cultural resources such as associations to construct their social worlds that aim to circumvent their exclusion and marginality. In this light, I analyse youth associations as central although not exclusive to negotiating young people’s predicament by focusing on a range of practices through which they seek respectability and claim social adult status. Drawing on the concepts of transition, subjectivities and personhood, I show that young people straddle the worlds of ‘youth’ and social adulthood, statuses that are not only cultural constructions but also the products of differential power relations and social positioning. I contend that the processes of positioning and the production of personhood are largely experienced through involvement in associational life. The study focuses on three associations, namely the Chosen Sisters, the United Sisters and the Ntambag Brothers Association (NBA). Organised on the basis of seniority and gender, I argue that these associations, while negotiating claims to adult status for their members, tend to challenge state-centric notions of citizenship as they simultaneously position themselves as moral actors upon whom society can count on for regeneration. Through a range of social projects, pursued on behalf of and sanctioned by the community, young people in Old Town reaffirm the centrality of interdependence and the situated understanding of social adulthood predicated on the redistribution of one’s success or achievement. This study points to the re-emergent role of associations in negotiating everyday life in the face of crisis. It is a significant contribution towards understanding voluntary and communal associations in general and young people’s modes of transitions into social adulthood.

This study explores the extent and depth of moral obligations in international relations, and how our collective understanding of these obligations has changed in the post-Cold War era. The genocides in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995) raised questions about the moral legitimacy of states ravaged by human rights violations, and about the responsibility of outside states to protect innocent civilians from being massacred across political and cultural boundaries. In this context, the concept of humanitarian intervention as an expression of international moral responsibility emerged as one of the most controversial foreign policy issues of our time. The formal and unanimous adoption of the doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect (ICISS, 2001) by the United Nations General Assembly (2005), and the subsequent ratification by the U.N. Security Council, reiterated our collective responsibility when faced with situations of grave human rights violations. Nevertheless, the international community repeatedly fails to respond adequately to atrocities. By comparing the nature of, and moral justifications for, the U.S. response to the atrocities in Rwanda (1994), Darfur (2003-2007), and Libya (2011), this study reveals that, despite inconsistencies in policy, the solidarist values reflected in Responsibility to Protect are evolving along Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1998) “norm life cycle.” Yet, it also cautions against the reliance on the “humanitarian impulses” of world leaders in internalizing this expanded notion of moral responsibility in international relations. Beyond the transitory nature of political will, this dependence fails to address the underlying assumptions generating inconsistencies in international moral decision-making. This study suggests that in order to ameliorate the problem of inconsistent responses to situations of mass atrocities, deeper issues related to realist assumptions upon which the international system is based may be involved, demanding attention and reassessment.

The Kingdom of God as depicted by Jesus Christ is the only human society that will effectually eliminate the conflict between the individual and society. To prove this thesis, the succeeding chapter's will proceed as the nature of the subject dictates. First, as the individual human being is the fixed and unchangeable factor in this problem, the first step will be to give an adequate definition of a person. Next, since his conflict with his fellows reaches the very essence of his being when it touches his moral nature, morality will be defined and it will be shown what that freedom is, that a man must enjoy, in order to remain a moral being.