The movement from ethics to social relationships for Levinas,and why decency obscures obligation

According to Emmanuel Levinas, the individual bears an infinite obligation to the other person. In the Talmudic reading “Judaism and revolution,” Levinas suggests that we move from the ethical encounter (and infinite obligation) to social relationships (with limited obligations) using contracts—both particular contracts and the social contract. So social relationships are created by limiting obligation, and as a result these relationships can only be practically acceptable, not ethical. Jewish religious practice for Levinas should also be understood as a set of negotiated limits to our infinite obligation.     

Re‐framing systemic paradigms for the art of learning

Thoughtful people are increasingly concerned that the current paradigms for social, corporate, and educational activities are in disgraceful disarray. The “problem‐solving” or analytical model, the competitive or game model, the commercial or consumer model, the bureaucratic or institutional model, and the disease or illness model which prevail in public discourse are proving to be especially unwholesome. We cannot, however, educate ourselves without paradigms. A credible educational paradigm must be generally accessible without being simplistic, informative without being monothematic, and accommodating as well as discriminating. Given our disquiet with the current cognitive situation, a renewing paradigm must be somehow novel; given the character of human nature, a sustaining paradigm must be somehow familiar.

For a very long time now, professional Sciences have committed themselves to paradigms about “reality out there,” while professional Arts have devoted themselves to expressing “imagination from within here.” The more these two worldviews polarize in opposition to one another, the more room there is—and the more human heed there becomes—for mediation by an applied philosophy which accommodates the “real” as well as the “imaginary” in a complementary way. Such a philosophy would address not only “what do you know?” and “how do you do?” but also “how do you know?” and “why do you do?” In earlier times, people would have been considered neither educated nor wise unless they appreciated the Sciences and the Arts whole. In our time, we may not survive unless we can re‐integrate our fractured perceptions. How might we proceed to do so? There may be a systemological way.     

Responding to unemployment and inequalities in income and health

This paper discusses the social and economic context in which counselling and psychotherapy are practised. The use of ‘outplacement counselling’ and personal skills training programmes for dealing with unemployment and redundancy is criticized. It is argued that they involve a form of psychological reductionism which fails to acknowledge socio-economic realities. Research showing a strong link between inequalities of income and physical and mental health is reviewed. It is suggested that counsellors and psychotherapists have a professional obligation to acknowledge the social and economic circumstances likely to contribute to clients' mental distress and avoid the dangers of reductionism.     

How the Good Obligates in Hegel's Conception of Sittlichkeit: A Response to Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation

Abstract

In Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Robert Stern argues that Hegel has a social command view of obligation. On this view, there is an element of social command or social sanction that must be added to a judgment of the good in order to bring about an obligation. I argue to the contrary that Hegel's conception of conscience, and thus the individual's role in obligation, is more central to his account than the social dimension. While agreeing with Stern that Hegel's conception of Sittlichkeit does preserve a role for obligation, and that the social plays an important part in that account, I argue that there is no extra social component that converts the morally good into obligation. Rather, Hegel's conception of Sittlichkeit as the “living good” means that judgments of the moral facts are simultaneously judgments of obligation.     

The competent community: Toward a vital reformulation of professional ethics

Psychologists are ethically obligated to ensure their own competence. When problems of professional competence occur, psychologists must take appropriate steps to regain competence while protecting those they serve. Yet conceptualizations of the competence obligation are thoroughly intertwined with Western ideals of individualism and a model of the person as self-contained, self-controlled, and perpetually rational. Research in health care, education, and multicultural and social psychology raise serious doubts about psychologists' capacity for consistently accurate self-assessments of competence. To address this problem, the authors advocate that education, training, professional ethics standards, and credentialing criteria be infused with a robust communitarian ethos and a culturally pervasive ethic of care. The authors propose a shift in discourse about competence to incorporate both competent individuals and competent communities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Suicide lié au travail et prévention

Regarding social law, work-related suicide can be qualified as a professional risk, in particular as a work accident. It's the option chosen by case-law. The idea is to compensate: qualifying suicide as a work accident provides a social security compensation to the suicided employee's family and, in certain cases, the possibility to sue the employer. But, this case-law does not really question the prevention of the suicide before its commitment. In Labour law, the employer's obligation to prevent risks must face the risk of work-related suicide.     

The Morality of Refusing to Treat HIV-positive Patients

ABSTRACT Do physicians and nurses have an obligation to treat patients who are HIV-positive? Although an initial review of the possible sources of such an obligation yields equivocal results, a closer examination reveals a clear obligation to treat. The current risk of job-caused HIV-infection is not sufficient to warrant a refusal to treat. This is so because there exist rationally justified, general social, as well as specific peer expectations, that health care professionals treat HIV-positive patients. These expectations impose moral obligations on doctors and nurses. Moreover there is no sound libertarian argument entitling doctors and nurses to refuse to treat HIV-positive patients. A morally appropriate identification with his or her role would disincline a health care professional to refuse treatment to an HIV-positive patient. The likely source of such refusal is occupational alienation and an irrational reaction to AIDS symbolism.     

Assessment for the Right Reason The Ethics of Outcomes Assessment

This essay explores and challenges the two primary ethical arguments for assessment, accountability, and professional responsibility, by demonstrating their strengths and exposing their weaknesses, which are rooted in their limited notions of community, contract, and guild respectively. In contrast, I argue for assessment on the basis of an ethic of covenantal obligation which incorporates both accountability and responsibility but grounds them on a broader view of community, a view of the teaching-learning environment as a covenant community replete with mutual obligations and responsibilities, one of which is assessment. While the notion of covenant community has deep roots in American society, its theological underpinnings make the ethic of assessment as covenant obligation most relevant to church-related institutions of higher education, the context in which I teach and learn. I conclude the paper by delineating some principles for ethical assessment practice which follow from a covenantal perspective.     

医疗活动中的利他主义与医务人员的价值取向

医学的目的是增进人的健康,当今医疗技术主义和医疗市场在诱惑医学超越固有疆界。医疗行业必须坚持正确的价值取向,社会公众利益最大化是医疗卫生服务的基本目标。市场经济条件下的医疗卫生服务具有无私利他的道德责任和追求利益的需求,医疗市场中的利他行为包括无私利他与为己利他,为病人最大利益着想是医护专业最根本的道德规范与责任。     

Trust in Supervisor and Job Engagement: Mediating Effects of Psychological Safety and Felt Obligation

In the social context of job engagement, the role of trust in supervisor in predicting engagement of employees has received attention in research. Very limited research, however, has investigated the mechanisms mediating this dynamic relationship. To address this important gap in knowledge, the aim of this study was to examine psychological safety and felt obligation as two psychological mechanisms mediating the effect of trust in supervisor on job engagement. Drawing from job engagement and social exchange theories, the mediating roles of psychological safety and felt obligation in the trust-engagement relationship were empirically investigated in the Malaysian context. Using self-report questionnaires, data were collected from 337 nurses employed in a public hospital located near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Results fully supported the proposed serial multiple mediator model. Trust in supervisor was indirectly related to job engagement via psychological safety followed by felt obligation. This study provides empirical evidence that trust in supervisor makes employees feel psychologically safe to employ and express their selves in their job roles. This satisfaction of the psychological safety need is interpreted by employees as an important socioemotional benefit that, in turn, makes them feel obligated to pay back to their organization through their enhanced level of job engagement. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.     

群体愤怒与群体效能对集体行动的驱动：内在责任感的中介作用

采用问卷法（研究一）和实验法（研究二）探讨群体愤怒与群体效能对集体行动意愿的影响及其内在心理机制。结果表明：（1）群体愤怒与群体效能对集体行动意愿有显著的预测作用;（2）内在责任感中介群体愤怒与群体效能对集体行动意愿的影响;（3）应对群体问题的自我效能感是联接群体效能与内在责任感的桥梁（中介变量）。     

The Obligation to Know: Information and the Burdens of Citizenship

Contemporary persons are daily confronted with enormous quantities of information, some of which reveal causal connections between their actions and harm that is visited upon distant others. Given their limited cognitive and information processing capacities, persons cannot reasonably be expected to respond to every cry for help or call to action, but neither can they defensibly refuse to hear and reflect upon any of them. Persons have a limited obligation to know, I argue, which requires that they inform themselves and others about their role in harmful social practices, with a view toward challenging the norms that sustain such practices. In this paper, I explore this obligation to know, and the related idea of excusable ignorance, offering accounts of the epistemic burden that it entails for persons in their capacities as citizens and in the context of global climate change and of reproach as a potentially effective tool for rectifying rather than excusing ignorance.     

Some ethical aspects of psychotherapeutic work

A few thoughts are presented regarding the current discussion concerning ethical aspects of psychotherapy in socialist society. The author states his opinion regarding such problems as the obligation to take maximum care, the obligation to be constantly on call, professional discretion, the obligation to give treatment, cooperation with colleagues and the necessity of self-experience for the psychotherapeutic on the basis of experience gained in psychotherapeutic practice.     

The normative and conceptual foundations of a clinical duty to protect

The continuing controversy surrounding the Tarasoff inspired duty to protect as developed by the courts and legislatures has not adequately weighed the jurisprudential foundations of such an obligation. The authors argue that the duty's misguided thrust of social control grounded in character and status seriously violates broad principles of political morality underlying the law of social control. They conceptualize an alternative--a clinical duty to protect--that coheres with these underlying values and the limits of professional abilities. They contend that any extra-clinical intervention on the part of the psychotherapist entails a role transformation requiring independent justification.     

Cost containment as professional challenge

Cost containment by means of prospective payment and other mechanisms is widely seen as a challenge to modern medicine; but the challenge is seldom articulated clearly in terms of core professional values and the moral content of a claim to professionalism. Medical ethics, as it has evolved as a field of study in the past twenty years, has contributed little to the concept of professionalism in medicine. For an investigation of professionalism in the face of cost containment to evolve fruitfully, several things must occur. The true nature of today's challenge to medicine must be appreciated. The balance between tradition and response to social change in defining a professional value system must be appreciated. Physician income must be explicitly addressed as a moral issue. And practical strategies for investigating and affirming core professional values must be developed for health delivery systems and medical education settings.     

HIV and the obligation to treat

The paper is an attempt to review the basis for the claim that physicians have a professional obligation to treat AIDS patients. Considered are the historical record, two professional codes of ethics, and several recent articles. The paper concludes that the arguments considered, which attempt to support the claim that physicians have an obligation to treat, fail. It is suggested, rather, that common humanity, which physicians share with those who suffer from AIDS, ought to be the basis for engaging in the care of AIDS patients.     

Effective Assertive Behavior in the Workplace: Responding to Unfair Criticism

A social rules perspective was employed to identify the elements of socially appropriate responses to unfair criticism in the workplace. Women generally endorsed for themselves response strategies based on stronger obligation and softer rights components, while men endorsed responses based on stronger personal rights expression and weaker obligation components. In support of the utility of a social rules approach to operationalizing context-specific expectations, behavioral responses based on gender and status-specific rules were evaluated as more effective on task, relationship, and self-respect dimensions than were rights-only, rights-plus-empathy, or submissive strategies. Results are discussed in terms of the development of a context-specific model of interpersonal competence and implications for interpersonal skills and assertion training.     

Surviving the Health Care Revolution

SUMMARY

The ongoing turmoil in the health care system exacts a significant toll on consumers, providers and society. New paradigms tor service and employment relationships pose a threat to professional and personal security. Understanding the dynamic phenomena in the system, as well as our own responses to these changes, can assist practitioners in overcoming barriers that undermine our future. Managing our feelings, developing perspective on the issues, adjusting expectations, acquiring skills that transcend medical necessity, and promoting the social contract in health care are recommended strategies for dealing with the crisis in confidence affecting health care professionals.     

How training and promotion opportunities,career expectations,and two dimensions of organizational justice explain discretionary work effort

Contemporary work is highly interdependent, requiring discretionary work effort (DWE) in response to colleagues and customers. According to social exchange theory, organizational support encourages DWE as a form of employee reciprocation. Our model integrating social exchange and expectancy theory anticipates future career returns from organizational support in the form of training and promotion opportunity. Positive career expectations strengthen feelings of employee obligation that are realized in higher levels of DWE. In addition, career expectations are heightened when these opportunities are provided under procedurally just conditions. Furthermore, the relationship between career expectation and felt obligation is strengthened when interactional justice is high. Using structural equation modeling, these hypotheses are successfully tested on a survey of 201 bank employees and their supervisors. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

医患关系的本质:医生的专业视角及其伦理意蕴

力图从为西方医学领域已完善发展及广为接受的专业(Professional)视角对医患关系(Patient-professional Relationship,以下及正文中皆简称为PPR)的伦理意蕴做探讨.简要追溯了现代医护专业精神的起源,说明了道德责任之所以是专业这一概念的重要组成部分的原因,并且指出为病人最大利益着想是医护专业最根本的道德规范与责任,亦是医患关系不可缺少的伦理基石.