公正世界信念：概念、测量、及研究热点

公正世界信念是美国心理学家Lerner最先提出的一个概念,即人们需要相信他们所处的世界是一个公正有序的世界,在这样一个世界里,人们得其所应得,并且所得即应得。公正世界信念为个体提供了一种对世界的可控制感,从而使人贯注于长远目标,并遵循社会规范行事。这对个体适应复杂的物理和社会环境具有重要意义。文章对公正世界信念的概念、测量、及当前的研究热点进行了简要介绍,并且指出,探讨公正世界信念与其他心理公正研究诸分支的区别和联系,借鉴内隐社会认知、内隐动机研究中的一些技术方法来研究公正世界信念,深入探索公正世界信念发挥作用的潜意识机制,可能是这一领域研究的发展方向     

Thinking in the space between Winnicott and Lacan

The author, following André Green, maintains that the two most original psychoanalytic thinkers since Freud were Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. Winnicott, it has been said, introduced the comic tradition into psychoanalysis, while Lacan sustained Freud's tragic/ironic vision. Years of mutual avoidance by their followers (especially of Lacan by Anglophone clinicians) has arguably diminished understanding of the full spectrum of psychoanalytic thought. The author outlines some basic constructs of Winnicott and of Lacan, including: their organizing tropes of selfhood versus subjectivity, their views of the "mirror stage", and their definitions of the aims of treatment. While the ideas of Winnicott and Lacan appear at some points complementary, the goal is not to integrate them into one master discourse, but rather to bring their radically different paradigms into provocative contact. A clinical vignette is offered to demonstrate concepts from Lacan and Winnicott, illustrating what it might mean to think and teach in the potential space between them.     

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church and Interreligious Dialogue

This article examines how, through a pan-Orthodox synodical decision, the Orthodox Church has for the first time officially asserted its obligation to enter into dialogue with people of other cultures and religious beliefs and emphasized the value of serious and clear interreligious dialogue to promote mutual trust, peace, and reconciliation. The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church of Crete clarified that interreligious dialogue excludes both syncretism and proselytism, and that interreligious dialogue needs to be accompanied by the condemnation of fundamentalism, nationalism, and the religious justification of violence. Finally, this article makes reference to the basic principles of the Orthodox tradition regarding the promotion of interreligious dialogue and emphasizes that dialogue entails respect for other religions but also discernment.     

When does priming justice promote forgiveness? On the importance of distributive and procedural justice for self and others

Two studies show that thinking about justice can both enhance and impede forgiveness, depending on whether thoughts about distributive and procedural justice for self and others are activated. In Study 1 (n = 197), participants expressed more forgiveness towards a prior transgressor when primed to think about justice for self or procedural justice for others, and less forgiveness when primed to think about distributive justice for others. Study 2 (n = 231) used an alternate priming method and replicated these effects by inducing an interpersonal transgression and measuring forgiveness intentions, emotions and behavior. Study 2 also showed that priming justice influences forgiveness especially when the perceived severity of an interpersonal offense is high. The current research shows that activating justice cognitions can enhance or impinge on forgiveness in predictable ways. We discuss contributions to emerging justice theory, potential implications, and future directions.     

War experiences and emerging rights claims in postwar former Yugoslavia: The role of generalized conflict exposure and collective anomie

Violent conflicts have often been observed to generate social environments in which human rights violations are more easily tolerated and legitimized. However, recent research has documented cases in which communities exposed to violence react with increased condemnations of human rights violations. In this article, we focus on the distinction between generalized and particularized violence. Our findings show that, in the postwar ex-Yugoslavia context, when local communities have been exposed to violence that was generalized across different ethno-national groups, they strongly condemn human rights violations. Multilevel structural equation models show that the relationship between generalized victimization and the condemnation of human rights violations is mediated by a collective sense of anomie. The processes that move from collective exposure to violence to the collective reaffirmation of human rights are more likely to unfold in communities where violence transcended group boundaries than in communities where particular groups were disproportionately affected by the violence.     

Putting Religion Back Into Religious Ethics

This essay on Richard Miller’s Friends and Other Strangers (2016) locates its arguments in the context of how the practice of religious ethics bears upon debates about normativity in the study of religion and the cultural turn in the humanities. After reviewing its main claims about identity and otherness, I focus on three areas. First, while commending Miller’s effort to analogize virtuous empathy with Augustine’s ethics of rightly ordered love, I raise questions about his use of Augustine and his distinctive formulation of Augustinian “iconic realism.” Second, I suggest his discussion of public reason is at odds with the dialogical spirit of the book and may distract from the democratic solidarity required by our political moment. Third, more briefly, I highlight the practical implications of Miller’s vision for higher education at both the graduate and undergraduate level.     

THE ART OF WAR CORPUS AND CHINESE JUST WAR ETHICS PAST AND PRESENT

The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served as the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis‐à‐vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components.     

WAR, WOMEN, AND POLITICAL WISDOM

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the “permanent things” seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the theoretical. For it is Elshtain the citizen—the creatively engaged and contributing citizen—whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings—civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war—are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic.     

GOD, WAR, AND CONSCIENCE

Many military officers believe that they morally ought to obey legal orders to fight even in unjust wars: they have a moral obligation to exercise indiscriminate obedience to legal orders to fight. I argue that officers should not be required to exercise indiscriminate obedience: certain theistic commitments to which many citizens and officers adhere prohibit indiscriminate obedience to legal orders to fight. This theistic argument constitutes adequate reason not to require officers to exercise indiscriminate obedience. However, this raises a further question: namely, whether it is appropriate to rely on such a theistic argument when shaping the moral requirements of military officership. I argue that citizens and officers have good reason to make public decisions solely on religious grounds and so are free to follow my theistic argument when shaping the requirements of military officership.     

Unjust Lies,Just Wars? A Christian Pacifist Conversation with Augustine

Pacifism is routinely criticized as sectarian, incoherent, and preoccupied with moral purity at the expense of responsibility. The author contends that the pacifism of John Howard Yoder is vulnerable to none of these charges and defends this claim by establishing parallels between Yoder's analysis of killing and Augustine's analysis of lying. Although, within the terms of his own argument, Augustine's rejection of all lying as unjust is consistent with his condoning of some killing as just, the author shows that given a different conception of the defining characteristic of God (noncoercive love instead of truth), Augustine's theological argument against lying would become an argument against violence. The author therefore suggests that Yoder's rejection of killing is no more sectarian, incoherent, or irresponsible that Augustine's rejection of lying.