Selfishness,Altruism, and our Future Selves

In this article, I defend the thesis that selfishness and altruism can be intrapersonal. In doing so, I argue that the notions of intrapersonal altruism and selfishness usefully pick out behavioural patterns and have predictive value. I also argue that my thesis helps enrich our understanding of the prudential, and can subsume some interesting work in economic and psychological theory.     

Chinese philosophy and western capitalism

It is commonly supposed that people of Asia, particularly the ethnic Chinese, subscribe to values which are not conducive to economic progress. The gap between the capitalist West and Asia is often attributed to the ‘cultural’ factor. Behind such perception is the supposition that capitalism is wholly a product of the West, alien to Asia and cannot be successfully embraced without doing violence to its cultural traditions. Against this position, I argue that classical capitalism is perfectly compatible with the key elements of Chinese philosophy. Whether or not there is anything in the suggestion of some historians that Quesnay borrowed from Confucianism, I argue that his economic doctrine could have developed from the fundamentals of Chinese philosophy. If I am right, the economic gap between the West and Asia has to be explained in terms other than the ‘cultural’ factor, such as, perhaps, colonialism and post‐colonialist ideologies.     

Late capitalism and postmodernism: Educational problems and possibilities

This work analyzes certain aspects of postmodernist thought in terms of the challenges it presents to the secular, radical democratic project to which the author subscribes. It is argued that much of postmodernist thought has been effective in attacking foundationalism, as well as supporting marginalized persons and ideas, but holds little promise with regard to building an integrative democratic community. Postmodernist radicalism has not usually been directed against capitalist power; therefore, it is not clear how this form of radicalism can be useful to a project that is predicated upon the incompatibilities between capitalism and bona fide democracy.     

Business ethics and the spirit of global capitalism: Moral leadership in the context of global Hegemony1

This article carries out a critical analysis of the discourse/practice of Business Ethics that has developed to an unprecedented extent in the last decade or so. It argues that in the late-modern global political economy (GPE) there develops a form of a Gramscian hegemony of transnational capital and the discourse/practice of Business Ethics can be seen as a form of moral leadership in the context of the emerging hegemonic order.     

Jews,race, and capitalism in the German-Jewish context

The Shoah has effectively brought to an end attempts to define the Jews racially. Yet in the half century before the 1930s, for German Jewish scholars, the racial identity of the Jews was an open question. These scholars were deeply engaged in debates over Jewish collective identity and the contemporary Jewish condition, and in these debates race played a critical role. For these scholars, race and racial theories were normative, and they exploited them for their own intellectual, political, and social purposes. Of special interest is the normative nature of racial discourse as German Jewish scholars adopted it and applied it to examine the nexus of Jews and capitalism. These scholars accepted the notion of a Jewish racial disposition for capitalism, including this notions negative aspects, while they also used it to construct a positive Jewish identity. The history of Jewish engagement with race suggests the need for a more radically historicist approach to the Jewish past, albeit this will be a most difficult scholarly challenge.Id like to thank Gil Anidjar, Nina Caputo, Steven Zipperstein, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and criticisms of this essay.     

经济人信念:自利与理性的特点及其不同作用

在新冠肺炎疫情期间,调查分析了1074名普通民众的经济人信念特点,及其对三类心理行为(自利取向的变量:物质主义;社会取向的变量:财富价值观、财经伦理观、关系投资、捐赠行为、一般信任;中性变量:自由市场理念、主观幸福感)的影响.结果发现:(1)经济人信念的自利与理性两个维度相对独立;(2)男性在自利与理性维度上的得分均高...     

Pastoral care in a time of global market capitalism

The author defines pastoral theology as "the study of the micro-world of intrapsychic and interpersonal interactions with the tools of theology and the social sciences for the purpose of support and healing. In a typical class or supervisory session, we analyze the words, voice inflection, pace, and gestures of an intimate conversation between two people, looking for clues to the deep structure of personality and intimate relationships. The hope of such study is that we will see the revelation of God is love and power in action to validate and challenge the theological traditions that give us eyes to see and invite us to see more clearly."     

Cognitive capitalism: the effect of cognitive ability on wealth, as mediated through scientific achievement and economic freedom

Traditional economic theories stress the relevance of political, institutional, geographic, and historical factors for economic growth. In contrast, human-capital theories suggest that peoples' competences, mediated by technological progress, are the deciding factor in a nation's wealth. Using three large-scale assessments, we calculated cognitive-competence sums for the mean and for upper- and lower-level groups for 90 countries and compared the influence of each group's intellectual ability on gross domestic product. In our cross-national analyses, we applied different statistical methods (path analyses, bootstrapping) and measures developed by different research groups to various country samples and historical periods. Our results underscore the decisive relevance of cognitive ability--particularly of an intellectual class with high cognitive ability and accomplishments in science, technology, engineering, and math--for national wealth. Furthermore, this group's cognitive ability predicts the quality of economic and political institutions, which further determines the economic affluence of the nation. Cognitive resources enable the evolution of capitalism and the rise of wealth.     

From the lonely crowd to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and beyond: The shifting ground of liberal narratives

This paper investigates how key social issues related to American culture, social character, and politics are addressed in the work of two of America's leading liberal sociologists, David Riesman and Daniel Bell. It maps out the trajectory of Riesman's and Bell's early contributions to a critique of mass society in post‐war America, as well as Bell's later formulation of “liberalism in crisis” and his assessment of culture in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. This analysis pays particular attention to the intellectual, biographical, and social settings that helped to shape the often conflicting ideas of each thinker, and examines the discursive shifts within liberal thinking as it attempted to explain and deal with perceived new social crises from the 1950s to the present. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Chance and Counterfactuals1

Suppose the world is chancy. The worry arises that most ordinary counterfactuals are false. This paper examines David Lewis' strategy for rescuing such counterfactuals, and argues that it is highly problematic.     

Color and Similarity1

Similarity claims about the colors, for instance that blue is more similar to purple than to yellow, are Sometimes held to pose a serious problem for physicalism about color: the view that colors are physical properties of some kind. I examine various responses to this problem, find them wanting, and give my own solution, which appeals to the way colors are visually represented. Finally, I argue that the proposed account removes the principal motivation for Lewis's and Walker's response to Kripke's Wittgenstein, in terms of “natural” properties.