The idea of common morality is not a new idea. Philosophers have been engaged with it from the very early days. Many modern philosophers intend to perceive it when they compare or contrast it with the implications of ethical theories for genuine understanding of moral facts. They believe that without having any reference to what common people think, believe and practice, it is preposterous to construct a complete set of abstract norms and postulate them as relevant to practical life. In this work, proceeding with a motive of understanding the characteristic strength of common morality and to see how meaningfully we can designate the relevance of common moral beliefs in our applied ethical discussion, I am basically exploring two different accounts common morality view. The first one is the universalistic account which emerges from the works or Bernard Gert and Tom Beauchamp (including their colleagues), and the other one, I believe, sets its journey from the wombs of the critics of the first one. In this work, in order to properly designate the relevance of common morality, I am intending to develop the second account.

This thesis aims to examine Johnson¡¦s writings and argue his happiness is a state of eternity in the afterlife which results mainly from God¡¦s mercy and human beings¡¦ obedience, repentance and virtue (or good works). To prove my thesis, I need to study the foundation and essence of Johnson¡¦s salvation alongside his moral and religious thoughts. I thus argue, in Chapter One, that Johnson¡¦s early life has great influence upon him and his well-known spiritual anxiety serves as the main cause of his fear of death and as an important index in the study of Johnson¡¦s conditional salvation. Before probing into Johnson¡¦s salvation, I attempt in Chapter Two to expound religion in eighteenth-century England, especially Johnson¡¦s role as a religious man and a moralist. Both identities play crucial roles in analyzing Johnson¡¦s happiness. Johnson¡¦s morality is surely profoundly conditioned by the climate of social, religious and moral experience shared by his contemporaries in eighteenth-century England and can hardly be dissolved despite great care. His religious and moral thoughts are so large questions to approach, not to mention to answer them. Therefore, the treatment is necessarily selective. I will focus on the connection between Johnson¡¦s morality and his own Christian belief shown in his sermons and other genres of writings. Though Johnson is noticeably ambivalent towards his moral instruction at times, he never jumps the track of the core of his moral thinking: his happiness is of after-life. In Chapter Three and Chapter Four, I will do a close reading on Johnson¡¦s frequent discussion of happiness in his periodical essays and Oriental tale Rasselas and on that of salvation, virtue and eternity respectively with intent to argue that Johnson¡¦s happiness is largely supported by his belief in Christian¡¦s ideas of salvation and eternity. Samuel Johnson in Rasselas voices the essence of happiness through Nekayah after a series of adventures and pursuit of happiness: ¡§To me, the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity¡¨ (Rasselas 418). This passage clearly marks that happiness of this life is unreliable and the quest will be not only aimless but endless. To assure everlasting happiness, one ought to aspire to the afterlife by strenuous efforts in this life for eternity. Furthermore, I will show evidence from Johnson¡¦s life and words to strengthen my presumption that eternity forwards the realization of happiness. The eternal state of afterlife pacifies Johnson¡¦s spiritual anxiety in this life and enhances the charm of the world coming after. This is quite at odds with Johnson¡¦s fear of death; however, it pinpoints how a devout Christian struggles for not merely salvation but rewards from God after death. As such, I conclude my thesis in Chapter Five by showing how the intertexture of Johnson¡¦s life, religion, morality and literature helps him accept his imperfection, physically wretched and mentally disturbed, and then strive for perfection, that is, an elevated state of life in another world.

Advertising, as an industry, reflects contemporary values whilst creating new symbols and changing both behaviour and public opinion. In the last hundred years, advertising has pervaded most areas of life, and spaces that are commer-cial free are becoming rare. The aim of this dissertation is to explore and map various social objects that create the perception of morality that exists within an advertising agency. The approach can be described as qualitative, descriptive, analytical and constructionist. The study belongs within a research field that borders on business economics/business ethics and philosophy/descriptive eth-ics. Fundamental to my study is the exploration of stories told by different key advertising practitioners. Using a symbolic interactionist approach I iden-tify important meaning carriers that together create and identify the social object “morality”. The empirical material is based on a total of 36 inter-views conducted 1998-2000 with advertising practitioners from 15 Swedish advertising agencies. In addition to the interviews, an observational study was conducted for eight months in 1998 along with a literature study. In my analysis two related areas for morality emerged; one area focusing mo-rality related to clients/consumers, and one area focusing morality within the agency/branch. Two models illustrating the results were constructed. Ethics, economics and aesthetics often find themselves on opposing sides in various situations and at different levels in the work process at the agency. The need for profit gives precedence to the economic aspect mak-ing it superior to the other two aspects, ethics and aesthetics. However, advertising practitioners that prioritise the aesthetic aspects may find them-selves be awarded a golden egg at some yearly gala. Hence, to stretch a little on morality and sin with refinement may be quite rewarding. The dissertation was preceded by and builds on a licentiate dissertation in busi-ness economics by Larsson-Eklund (2002) - “Med skaparkraft som etiskt argu-ment. En explorativ studie om moral och yrkesetik inom reklambranschen ur ett internt relationsperspektiv” (enclosed in appendix 6).

The attention of this paper would be to assess critically the consequences of any conscious effort to separate morality from politics giving that morality constitutes an essential and integral part of any political culture. With this understanding it becomes controversial and worrisome for any one to suggest that morality can be divorced from politics and still make a success out of the entire business of governance. The concept of Machiavellianism presents a very big challenge to this possibility in politics. I would attempt to show the dangers inherent in such a calculated effort using the Nigerian political experience as a case study

<p>Examination of the moralized risk discourse that occurs during moral panics can help us better understand how discourse supports neoliberal modes of governance. Using the moral panics about crack babies in the 1980's and illegal immigration in the 2000's to conduct a content analysis of almost 1500 newspaper articles, television transcripts and congressional hearings, I found that discourses of fairness, authority, and purity supported techniques of surveillance and control that contribute to the maintenance of racial and class boundaries in the US.</p> / Dissertation

I defend a version of cognitivist motivational internalism which I call belief internalism. The constitutive claim of any version of cognitivist motivational internalism is that moral belief entails motivation. But, while this internalist thesis captures the practical nature of morality, it is in tension with the dominantly held Humean theory of motivation. The constitutive claim of the Humean thesis is that no belief could entail motivation. In defence of this internalist it is tempting to argue either that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus. But, while succumbing to the first temptation places one under an ultimately insurmountable burden to justify the motivational exceptionality of moral beliefs, succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practical nature of morality. I avoid the temptation to defend this thesis in either of these flawed ways by defending a more radical departure from the Humean theory of motivation. I avoid the first temptation by arguing for a motivationally efficacious conception of belief. I start the defence by demonstrating that it is conceptually coherent for belief to entail motivation. I then argue that all beliefs have behavioural dispositional properties that are not predicated on desire; in particular, all beliefs can motivate assent without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. I then develop a unified and inclusive account of cognitive motivation, according to which unqualified normative cognition—which includes moral cognition—motivates normative actions without the assistance of such a desire. Beliefs of the form ‘I ought to ф’, in other words, motivate the believer to ф. I avoid the second temptation by arguing that moral belief motivates simpliciter as opposed to ceteris paribus. There are, however, both commonsense and scientifically informed counterexamples which prima facie demonstrate that it is possible to both fully believe and fully understand one’s first person cognitive moral judgement and yet not motivated by that judgement. I argue that the commonsense prima facie counterexamples are not decisive; and I argue that the scientifically informed prima facie counterexamples misinterpret the empirical research on salient psychological conditions.

This thesis focuses on the guidelines that university governing bodies have adopted in order to regulate the actions of its student population and the factors that influenced their decisions. The evaluation of these guidelines is not a judicial analysis, but an analysis of the rhetorical aspects associated with the guidelines. The thesis contends that the current rhetoric of diversity on American college campuses, while drafted with the best of intentions, fails due to the limitations that it places on its students, the morality argument in which it draws strength, and the increase in differences, not acceptance, that it creates. The research utilizes specific examples of problems that are a direct result of University diversity policies and how they create a prison like structure in which those attending the University must adhere to the uncontested rules of the authority.

I defend a version of cognitivist motivational internalism which I call belief internalism. The constitutive claim of any version of cognitivist motivational internalism is that moral belief entails motivation. But, while this internalist thesis captures the practical nature of morality, it is in tension with the dominantly held Humean theory of motivation. The constitutive claim of the Humean thesis is that no belief could entail motivation. In defence of this internalist it is tempting to argue either that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus. But, while succumbing to the first temptation places one under an ultimately insurmountable burden to justify the motivational exceptionality of moral beliefs, succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practical nature of morality. I avoid the temptation to defend this thesis in either of these flawed ways by defending a more radical departure from the Humean theory of motivation. I avoid the first temptation by arguing for a motivationally efficacious conception of belief. I start the defence by demonstrating that it is conceptually coherent for belief to entail motivation. I then argue that all beliefs have behavioural dispositional properties that are not predicated on desire; in particular, all beliefs can motivate assent without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. I then develop a unified and inclusive account of cognitive motivation, according to which unqualified normative cognition—which includes moral cognition—motivates normative actions without the assistance of such a desire. Beliefs of the form ‘I ought to ф’, in other words, motivate the believer to ф. I avoid the second temptation by arguing that moral belief motivates simpliciter as opposed to ceteris paribus. There are, however, both commonsense and scientifically informed counterexamples which prima facie demonstrate that it is possible to both fully believe and fully understand one’s first person cognitive moral judgement and yet not motivated by that judgement. I argue that the commonsense prima facie counterexamples are not decisive; and I argue that the scientifically informed prima facie counterexamples misinterpret the empirical research on salient psychological conditions.

Richard Joyce claims sincerely uttering moral claims necessarily commits the moral claimant to endorsing false beliefs regarding the predication of nonexistent (non-)natural moral properties. For Joyce, any proposition containing a subject, x, saddled with the predicate “…is moral”[1] will have a truth-value of ‘false’, so long as the predicate fails to refer to anything real in the world. Furthermore, given the philosophical community’s present state of epistemic ignorance, we lack sufficient evidence to justify our endorsement of the existence of (non-)natural moral properties purportedly capable of serving as truth-makers for moral claims. My thesis offers a defense of Joyce’s moral error theory against two different lines of criticisms proffered by Russ Shafer-Landau—one conceptual in nature, and the other ontological. I argue that available evidence compels the informed agnostic about moral truth to suspend judgment on the matter, if not endorse Joyce’s stronger thesis that all moral claims are false.

Best known if not equally understood for having a madman proclaim the demise of God, Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought has served as a fecund resource for disparate groups advancing diverse agendas. This paper critically examines the phenomenon of invoking Nietzsche as the final word. This paper argues that, far from being a conversation-stopper, Nietzsche can be understood as enhancing dialogue, across disciplines and between groups such as philosophers and theologians more prone to militant rhetoric than fruitful dialogue. In order to validate this claim it will be necessary to examine in detail the two aspects of Nietzsche’s thought most often invoked as conversation stoppers: the madman’s proclamation of the death of God; and Nietzsche’s devastating critique of Christian morality. Ultimately, this thesis will conclude that when properly understood Nietzsche serves as a unique interpreter locating himself between modernity and postmodernity, as well as between philosophy and religious thought.