Gregory Bassham

Many Tolkien scholars have claimed that The Lord of the Rings and other tales of Middle-earth subtly affirm a traditional approach to morality now known as "virtue ethics." In this paper, I argue that Tolkien did embrace a version of virtue ethics--specifically an Aristotelian-Thomistic one--and sum up (in brief) the evidence for this reading.

This paper (1) explores the reasons why philosophy was accorded a special role in Catholic higher education in the United States in the decades prior to Vatican II; (2) explains why many of those reasons are now widely seen as attenuated or obsolete; (3) briefly discusses recent changes to the environment of Catholic higher education that have led many to question whether philosophy should still be seen as a high-priority discipline; and (4) makes a case that it should. The author argues that, for all the tectonic shifts that have occurred in higher education in recent decades, philosophy continues to make a special and indeed indispensable contribution to a number of mission-related goals of Catholic universities. Since the Middle Ages, two disciplines-philosophy and theology-have been at the core of Catholic higher education. 1 In medieval universities, required texts in the baccalaureate arts course were predominantly philosophical (primarily Aristotelian). 2 In the early modern period, as evidenced by the education René Descartes received at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, philosophy was studied extensively in Catholic colleges as part of the three-year-long 1 Perhaps surprisingly, this is less true of theology than it is of philosophy. In medieval universities, theology was taught only to postgraduate students. In American universities, theology courses were not typically part of the undergraduate curriculum at Catholic colleges until after 1939. Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity:

Though first proposed more than two decades ago, virtue jurisprudence-broadly, the attempt to apply the insights and perspectives of virtue ethics to law and legal theory-has been slow to gain traction in the legal academy. This is partly due, we suggest, to the dominance of conservative, neo-Aristotelian approaches to virtue jurisprudence-most notably in the work of Lawrence Solum, the most prominent theoretical architect and defender of virtue jurisprudence.

Should colleges be in the business of moral education? May college professors―including those who teach ethics courses―openly endorse and defend particular moral theories and values in class? In a much-discussed address and subsequent follow-up paper, John J. Mearsheimer, a distinguished political scientist at the University of Chicago, has answered both of these questions with an emphatic " No " (Mearsheimer 1998a). In this paper I shall argue against Mearsheimer's view. In particular, I shall defend three claims: (1) Colleges unavoidably provide certain forms of moral guidance to their students. (2) Colleges may and should seek to positively influence the moral characters and values of their students. (3) College professors may, and sometimes should, engage in classroom ethical advocacy, that is, expressly endorse and defend contestable ethical views. Why does Mearsheimer think that colleges should refrain from ethical guidance and advocacy? 1 His central argument ca...

Work-family conflict has been examined quite often in human resources management and industrial/organizational psychology literature. Numerous statistics show that the magnitude of this employment issue will continue to grow. As employees attempt to balance work demands and family responsibilities, organizations will have to decide to what extent they will go to minimize this conflict. Research has identified numerous negative consequences of work-family stressors for organizations, for employees and for employees' families. There are however many options to reduce this strain, each with advantages and disadvantages. An ethical analysis, from a virtue ethics perspective, is applied to this timely issue to present an alternative view in addressing this critical business decision. In addition, a strong connection between the virtue ethics analysis and a well-known management theory is given to provide a foundation for managerial implications for resolving work-family conflict.