This special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum contains selected proceedings from the meetings of two Nordic Summer University (NSU) research circles: Crisis and Crisis Scenarios: Normativity, Possibilities and Dilemmas and Human Rights and International Relations.
Read More...We are facing radical changes in our ways of living in the nearest future. Not necessarily of our own choice, but because tchnological development is moving so fast, that it will have still greater impact on many aspects of our lives. We have seen the beginnings of that change within the latest 35 years or so, but according to newest research that change will speed up immensely in the nearest years to come. The impact of that change or these changes will affect our working life immensely as a consequence of automation. How these changes are brought about and which are their consequences in a broad sense is being attempted to be understood and guessed by researchers. No one knows for sure, but specific patterns are visible. This paper will not try to guess, what will come, but will rather try to understand the deepest ”nature” of technology in order to understand the driving factors in this development: the genesis of technology in a broad sense in order to contibute to the understanding of the basis for the expected development.
Read More...The paper highlights clashes between different conceptions of right, law and justice crystalizing in the French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights from 1789 and the criticisms it aroused. Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) and Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762) are discussed as important predecessors. The philosophical conceptions of law, justice and right stated by Hobbes and Rousseau and in the Declaration will be discussed in connection with two seminal criticisms. By excluding women from politics, Olympe de Gouge objected, the Declaration contradicted the universal understanding of human rights. Jeremy Bentham protested against the Declaration’s core idea of inalienable human rights.
Read More...The international regime of human rights is concerned with the kinds of freedoms, liberties, benefits, autonomy and protection which we are entitled to, and the corresponding obligations that flow from these. The sources, foundation and justifications for these rights and who we are by nature to deserve them have always been controversial, not least because we live in social context which require meeting the requirements of political order, stability, and the general welfare. This paper re-visits some of the contentious positions surrounding the discourse on human rights. The goal is to reveal how the international community navigated when shaping the contours of the regime of human rights. In this regard efforts will be made to cast light on some of the contentious positions that have been endorsed, rejected or avoided by the United Nations. This may make one wonder whether the international regime of human rights follows a clear political ideology.
Read More...The present essay offers a detailed, reasoned synopsis and a brief discussion of the 1994 book Economic Ethics, written by the German-Swiss social philosopher Arthur Fridolin Utz (1908-2001). Utz is known chiefly in German-speaking theological circles and in Catholic ones in particular. He is also known in those of southern Europe where, to date, only a few of his many books have been translated into Spanish, French and Italian. Utz’s research deserves attention, both for its inherent value and in connection with Peter Koslowski’s reflections on economic ethics, about which Jacob Dahl Rendtorff has recently reported to our NSU research group. Thus, this essay is a spin-off of Jacob’s own foray into economic ethics and an integration of the same, for it deals with a different, well-established approach. Equally, it is an attempt at bringing to the attention of Nordic scholars, especially in the human and social sciences, the work of a thinker that is still hardly known in my adoptive country, Iceland, as well as in Scandinavia. Finally, given the absence of English-language translations and comprehensive studies of Utz’s books, it is also a useful reference work for Anglophone academia at large.
Read More...In this paper, we use Günther Wallraff’s authorship as an illustrative case in order to discuss whistleblowing understood as employees’ freedom of speech. We define the phenomenon according to significant democratic values; the public, fallible search for a deeper truth. When it comes to the sources, our point of departure is based on several of the most significant books published by Wallraff during a period from the end of the 1960-ties to the end of the 1980-ties. We trace some of the personal motivation behind his whistleblowing-project in Marxism and focus that he applies the undercover methods of journalism on the profession of journalists themselves. We argue that the Wallraff-case deals with three important issues; 1) investigative journalism linked to the discussion of the legitimacy of lying, 2) freedom of speech as an active choice of publically disclosing unethical behavior and different types of repression in organizations, and 3) Wallraff’s whistle-blowing in organizations as related to analogues modern types of freedom of speech. In the end, we use different social theories to explain why the type of whistleblowing Wallraff is famous for was necessary.
Read More...The article outlines two traditions of philosophical thought proposing each their understanding of human rights. The significance of these two traditions goes beyond the question of rights and touches on the role of morality in human life. One tradition considers that humans have limited social obligations towards each other in order to ensure peaceful co-existence, while the other tradition considers moral perfection an essential aim of social life, thus enabling man to realize its humanity. This outline is attended by a critique of Samuel Moyn’s book The Last Utopia. Finally, the article proposes a third conception based on autonomy.
Read More...The ‘fourth age’ of political communication is emerging. In the fourth age the logics of media and digitization shapes the public sphere, because algorithms and polarized drama increasingly determine what we become aware of in digital and mass media. The result may very well be a less informed public sphere. The emerging class of policy professionals has the opportunity to mix the logics of mediatization and digitization. While such a mix may very well lead to democratic decay, based on elitism, it may also hold fruitful potentials for a more democratic and ethical type of political communication, called phronetic political communication.
Read More...Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has created a very new platform for a discussion of the global economy. There is possibly no other book on economy which has been published in so many languages, printed in so many copies, and has found its way to such a varied global public. Piketty’s Capital has been discussed in many high ranked academic journals, and at the same time, it has come out to a broader audience with advertisements in places like the underground public transportation in metropolises around the world. The title of the book is also very ambitious in so far as the title Capital claims to be a follow up of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital for the twenty-first century. Piketty is similar to Marx in his ambition to give a large historical, or a world historical perspective on the significance of capitalist economy for the development of global society. Given this background it could be interesting to consider the relations between Piketty’s Capital and Marx’s Das Kapital.
Read More...