Updated 2024 Fall
Note: the term “Stoic Family” is formulated by your instructor for purposes of introductory instruction. In ethical theory, this kind of philosophy would more usually go by the name “deontological.” In epistemology, this family would generally count as “rationalist.” And for metaphysics this family tends to run in the direction of “idealist.”
Pandemic Programming
(Some videos to make up for lost lectures)
Introduction to Stoicism. Then and Now, YouTube Channel, 20 Mar., 2020 (22 min.)
https://youtu.be/KkZu-iwGZek
How Marcus Aurelius Responded To A Pandemic. Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic YouTube Channel, 26 Mar., 2020 (7 min.)
https://youtu.be/Em_qw-r6CMg
Reframing a Difficult Situation. Lewis Kirk, YouTube Channel, 29 Mar., 2020 (8 min.)
https://youtu.be/6j_vYT-NJxs
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mans-search-for-meaning.pdf
Find-in-text keyword: “spiritual”
Epictetus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus
Discourses
(PST) http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/dep/
See: Book 1, Ch. 1 & TOC references to “reason.”
Aurelius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
Meditations
(PST) http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html
See: Book 1, “In my father . . .”
Spinoza
Ethics
(PST) http://capone.mtsu.edu/rbombard/RB/Spinoza/ethica-front.html
The above link is recommended for readers new to Spinoza, but once you get hooked, consider the cool, searchable resources at Ethics 2.0
Kant
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/
Not a “primary source text” fyi; Kant’s works are widely available if you want to follow up
Categorical Imperative
(PST) Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Find in text: “one categorical imperative”
Rawls
Encyclopedia Intro (for Primary Source Text, check the library for ebooks such as: A Theory of Justice or Political Liberalism)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/
Database suggestions:
I.
“Indigeneity connotes places of origin and since all ideas and all cultures necessarily have places of origin, indigeneity is the true universal principle in the history of social thought. Yet, the indigenous is an appellation applied almost exclusively to the Oriental by the western and even by the Oriental elite to mark a terrorized territory that is supposedly exclusive to the colonized in sharp contrast with the supposed universalism of western logocentrism (Smith, 2001; Tauri, 2012; Tsosie, 2012). Far from the prevailing conventions, westernization is far from a universal movement in such subjective valuation of geographies of the philosophies of justice in hierarchical terms that privilege the European over other cultures. (Agozino 15)
Agozino, Biko. “Indigenous European Justice And Other Indigenous Justices.” African Journal Of Criminology & Justice Studies 8.1 (2014): 1-19. SocINDEX with Full Text. 23 Aug. 2016.
II.
“I argue that a different ontology is needed to imagine a radically different role for corporations to enable them to become agents for positive social change. Why a different ontology? Because our assumptions about the reality of objects and the nature and relations of being (ontology) influence how and what we know about it (epistemology). The way we imagine abstract entities like the corporation, the community or society influences the ways in which they become part of a particular language and knowledge system. If we want to change our assumptions about the reality of organizations as socially responsible entities then we need a deontological mode of ethics to imagine what new forms of corporations will look like. A deontological approach to ethics argues that how people achieve their goals is more important than what they achieve. If a corporation is an artificial profit-seeking person then understanding how those profits are made is equally important to, if not more important than, determining what profits are made. An analysis of dominant discourses of organizations can reveal the limits that may have been imposed on knowledge discourses and allow different discourses to emerge (Calás and Smircich, 1991: 569). Thus, we can reconstitute the corporation ‘not as a bounded social entity, but as a generic organizing process involved in the creative structuring of social reality’ (Chia and King, 1998: 463). As Clegg et al. (2005: 159) argue, ‘being’ a corporation is less about it being an ontologically stable object than about its existence as a result of a series of processes.” (162)
Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Edward Elgar 2008
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