Obligation

Freedom in the sense of free will is a multiway power to do any one of a number of things, leaving it up to us which one of a range of options by way of action we perform. What are the ethical implications of our possession of such a power? The paper examines the pre-Hobbesian scholastic view of writers such as Peter Lombard and Francisco Suarez: freedom as a multiway power is linked to the right to liberty understood as a right to exercise that power, and to liberation as a desirable goal involving the perfection of that power. Freedom as a power, liberty as a right, and liberation as a desirable goal, are all linked within this scholastic view to a distinctive theory of law as constituting, in its primary form of natural law, the normative recognition of human freedom.
Hobbes's denial of the very existence of freedom as a power led him to a radical revision both of the theory of law and of the relation of law to liberty. Law and liberty were no longer harmonious phenomena, but were left in essential conflict.
One legacy of Hobbes is the attempt to base a theory of law and liberty not on freedom as a multiway power, but on rationality. Instead of an ethics of freedom, we have an ethics of reason as involving autonomy. The paper expresses some scepticism about the prospects for such an appeal to reason as a replacement for multiway freedom.

Literature review shows, that customer loyalty concept in relation to services is not working, both in theory and practice. Loyalty is still regarded as significant phenomena, because of its practical importance. Loyalty notion require deepening conceptual research. Conditions of appearing relational loyalty in complex services relationships are more  clear than in other market contexts. Based on research included in literature, author of the paper presents features of relational loyalty which is defining from customer perspective, such as: mutuality, complexity, dynamism, constancy, trust and free will. In the paper it is also presented deepen considerations of obligation notion, with reference to the complex service relationships mainly. The analysis of dependence between relational loyalty and obligation, result, that these notions can be found independently from each other and simultaneously, both in customers and service providers. Obligation may reinforce relational loyalty. The problematic situation in service relationship can be the lack of relational loyalty with remaining obligation.

'Moral obligation' discusses Elizabeth Anscombe's account of moral obligation.  The paper argues that account of moral obligation she favoured is quite different from that taught by early modern and late medieval Catholic scholasticism.  She regarded moral obligatoriness as a reason-giving feature, akin to the feature of being commanded by a law-giver.  But the scholastic tradition viewed moral obligatoriness as a justificatory force.

The paper explains what hangs on this distinction between a reason-giving feature and a justificatory force, and examines the  implications of this distinction for a divine command theory of ethics.

Dans les années 80, un grand débat a agité la doctrine internationaliste au sujet de la soft law. Aujourd'hui, l'ampleur de ce phénomène est devenue telle, dans la pratique et dans la production juridiques, y compris en droit interne, qu'il n'est plus possible de l'ignorer sur un plan théorique. Cet effort de conceptualisation suppose au préalable résolue une question de principe : le "droit souple" peut-il véritablement être du droit ? Ce n'est que dans l'affirmative qu'une cascade d'autres questions s'offrent à la réflexion. Les propositions de réponse présentées ici approfondissent trois facettes du droit souple : droit flou (sans précision), droit doux (sans obligation) et droit mou (sans sanction), tous à la fois reflets et outils de compréhension de la complexité juridique et des évolutions actuelles vers un droit dit "postmoderne". Elles conduiront aussi à s'interroger sur l'intégration de ce droit souple au sein du droit en général. Et à découvrir, après quelques autres auteurs, que la normativité ne se confond pas avec l'obligatoire et qu'une norme juridique peut être souple, autrement dit non obligatoire et/ou non sanctionnée. De quoi souligner les limites de l'assimilation du droit au seul "droit dur" et aboutir à une échelle de densité normative, comprenant diverses textures juridiques possibles, d'un droit très dur à un droit très souple.

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

L’indagine svolta ha permesso di fare apparire come meglio condivisibile, tra le varie prospettive in tema di origine della compravendita consensuale romana, quella secondo cui essa sorse come istituto sganciato dalle radici del ius civile. In tal senso, almeno, depongono due ordini di considerazioni. In primo luogo, l’ipotesi sostenuta si può argomentare sulla base del passo di Paolo conservato in D. 18.1.1 e in D. 19.4.1pr.-2, dal quale emerge la convinta opinione del giurista classico, secondo la quale la compravendita consensuale doveva essere qualificata iuris gentium nel senso che i suoi caratteri fondanti erano emersi prima nel ius gentium e, solo successivamente, da esso erano stati recepiti nel ius civile (e non invece nel senso che, come viceversa accaduto per la traditio o per la stipulatio, essa fosse sorta nel ius civile e quindi fosse stata estesa ai rapporti con i peregrini). In secondo luogo, l’opinione può essere motivata sulla scorta di alcune osservazioni di dettaglio, che sono state sviluppate, da cui è sembrato emergere con sufficiente nitidezza che i Romani, in materia di compravendita con i peregrini, a partire da una certa epoca in poi, che si deve probabilmente collocare nel terzo secolo a.C., abbiano ritenuto non più soddisfacente il modello che avevano seguito fin dall’età arcaica. Tale modello arcaico era stato basato su quella che abbiamo potuto definire l’estensione “nei limiti del possibile” della disciplina civilistica ai casi di compravendite che intervenivano tra Romani e stranieri. Si trattava di un’estensione difficoltosa e a tratti anche illogica, dovuta al fatto che il diritto romano era stato pensato solo per la comunità dei cives: solo i Romani potevano avere la proprietà delle cose; solo ai cives era accessibile la mancipatio e pertanto solo per loro aveva senso compiuto la distinzione tra res mancipi e res nec mancipi; conseguentemente, solo per i cives poteva dirsi che esistesse una garanzia automatica dall’evizione in caso di vendita (reale) di res mancipi (in quanto tale garanzia derivava dalla mancipatio). L’estensione “nei limiti del possibile” di una siffatta disciplina ai rapporti di compravendita tra Romani e stranieri aveva prodotto un regime complesso, ma anche spurio e in gran parte contraddittorio, che infine apparve insoddisfacente, ciò che costituì la premessa per il suo superamento.

This article investigates a puzzle about gratitude—the proper response, in a beneficiary, to an act of benevolence from a benefactor. The puzzle arises from three platitudes about gratitude: 1) the beneficiary has certain obligations of gratitude; 2) these obligations are owed to the benefactor; and 3) the benefactor has no right to the fulfillment of these obligations. These platitudes suggest that gratitude is a counterexample to the “correlativity thesis” in the moral domain: the claim that strict moral obligations correlate to moral rights on the part of the person to whom the obligation is owed. The goal of this chapter is to determine whether the three gratitude platitudes are true, and, if they are, what they tell us about the correlativity thesis. Sections 1 through 3 argue for the truth of each of the platitudes. It is then argued that while benefactors lack standing to demand, they do possess an imperfect right to gratitude: a special and morally significant standing to remonstrate with ungrateful beneficiaries. These facts suggest the following modification of the standard correlativity thesis: moral obligations entail moral rights on the part of the person to whom they are owed, which may be perfect (demandable) or imperfect.

A summary of the finds from my dissertation and its main arguments, in favor of studying the legal material of the DSS on their own terms, applying contemporayr legal theory and relieving their examinaiton from the burden of the later rabbinic framework.

Note: after publication I changed my mind regarding terminology of "Natural Law" and "Legal Positivism." A more updated discussion is found in my dissertation, and a corrigendum will eventually appear in a later issue of Diné Israel.

As an institutional investor, the Collective Retirement Allowance Scheme (RCAR) adopts an investment diversification strategy, the purpose of this strategy is to achieve sustainable profitability and less sensitive to the specific risk linked to the nature of financial assets, as well as to ensure permanent liquidity of all the Pockets which allows the scheme to easily transform the portfolio into cash in case of need.
The General Scheme Portfolio is spread over all securities listed on the stock exchange and on the Treasury bill market, these funds are allocated in a strict and rigorous manner by the Investment Committee of the regime under the control and management of the Capital CDG.
By using Markowitz’s contributions in the study of the profitability-risk relationship, the Scheme manages to reduce the portfolio’s risk sensitivity over the 2012-2012 period-2015 thanks to the management effect linked to the choice of the Scheme to increase the share of non-risky investments in the portfolio and to the systematic effect that concerns the stability of the bond market in this period. However, there were other prospects for improving the portfolio’s performance, namely the replacement of the Equity Segment by investments in the bond market and money market UCITS.

In this paper I argue that the disagreement between modern moral philosophers and (some) virtue ethicists about whether motive affects rightness is a result of conceptual disagreement, and that when they develop a theory of ‘right action,’ the two parties respond to two very different questions. Whereas virtue ethicists tend to use ‘right’ as interchangeable with ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ and as implying moral praise, modern moral philosophers use it as roughly equivalent to ‘in accordance with moral obligation.’ One implication of this is that the possibility of an act being right by accident does not pose a problem for consequentialism or deontology. A further implication is that it reveals a shortcoming in virtue ethics, namely that it does not—yet needs to—present an account of moral obligation.

Some scholars have recently found commonalities between Hume's motivational psychology and Kantian understandings of reason and obligation. Although this trend corrects certain misreadings of Hume, it goes too far in other respects. This essay argues that we can understand Hume's explanation of the artificial virtue of justice in a way that avoids such mistakes. I begin by considering Stephen Darwall's argument that features of Hume's account of justice reveal an inadequacy in the empirical naturalist tradition and underlying commitments to the proto-Kantian tradition. I argue that a broader understanding of Hume's ethics and reinterpreting crucial passages dissolve Darwall's 'puzzles' about Humean justice. I defend Hume against the charge of inconsistency by suggesting an alternative interpretation of his theory of the will and his arguments about the justice's development as a virtue. Finally, I argue that Hume's theory of the will can consistently account for motives to Humean justice, properly understood.

'Normativity and Reason' explores what might be involved in the claim that the normativity of moral standards is a normativity of reason. 

Taking the accounts of moral normativity given by a range of moral theorists, including Hume, Pufendorf, Locke, Sidgwick and Scanlon, and comparing these with medieval and early modern scholastic natural law theory, the paper argues that normative standards on action involve a variety of distinct kinds of justificatory force - and that standards of moral right and wrong or of moral obligation involve, in particular, a distinctive justificatory force of Demand.

Using this theory of obligation, the paper argues for a new account of moral rationality, and of the relation of moral and legal obligation.

""The paper examines the natural law tradition in ethics and legal theory. This tradition is shown to address two questions.

The first question is to do with the nature of law, and the kind of human capacity that is subject to legal direction. Is law directive of the voluntary – of what is subject to the will, or what can be done or refrained from on the basis of a decision so to do? Or is law directive of some other kind of capacity? The second question is about the nature of ethical normativity, and the relation within normativity of its directive and appraisive aspects. Is direction primary, and appraisal to be explained in terms of a theory of direction; or must a theory of ethical direction be based on a theory of ethical appraisal? Both issues are introduced by reference to Hume’s ethical theory, which raises them in a particularly sharp form.

The natural law tradition, in the form it reached by the early modern period, is shown to combine giving a primacy to the appraisive in normative theory, with, in legal theory, a detachment of law from any exclusive tie to the direction of the voluntary. At the heart of the theory of natural law is the idea of law as a distinctive form of normativity directive of a capacity not for voluntariness, but for self-determination. Combined with a view of the state not just as a coordinative authority but as a coercive teacher, this led to a distinctive and highly controversial view of the scope of positive law. The paper ends with Hobbes’s sharp opposition to this view of positive law – an opposition that focussed, in particular, on the coercive legal direction of belief.






















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There are certain 'hard cases' of weakness of will that seem to occur, indeed to be common, but are very difficult to give a non-paradoxical account of.  It is just not clear how they are possible.  This paper is largely an attempt to get them in focus.  What conditions must such weak-willed actions satisfy?  In what sense must they be intentional, for example?  And must the weak-willed agent thinks his action objectively worse than some alternative action open to him?  And must that alternative action actually be open to him?  The paper concludes by considering the condition that a clear case of weakness of will must be in certain sense non-procrastinatory and this turns out to be particularly difficult to satisfy.  Other explanations, ones that do not postulate weakness of will (though they may involve paradoxes of their own), always seem to be available.

Anscombe argues in "Modern Moral Philosophy" that obligation and "moral" terms only have meaning in the context of a divine Lawgiver, whereas terms like "unjust" have clear meaning without any such context and, in at least some cases, are incontrovertibly accurate descriptions.  Because the context needed for obligation-terms to have meaning does not generally obtain in modern moral philosophy, she argues that we should abandon the language of obligation, adopting instead the yet clear and meaningful language of injustice. She argues further that we should develop an account of human flourishing to answer the question why we need to be just. The essay contends that Aquinas has an account of obligation that requires neither a god nor an account of human flourishing, and that proceeds immediately from the common apprehension of justice Anscombe noted.

This book argues that Michael Oakeshott’s political philosophy contributes to current debates in normative international theory and international political theory on the historical, social, and moral dimension of international society. Davide Orsi contends that the theory of civil association may be the ground for an understanding of international society as a rule-based form of moral association constituted by customary international law. The book also considers the role of evolving practices of morality in debates on international justice. Orsi grounds this work on a study of Oakeshott’s philosophical arguments and compares the Oakeshottian perspective to recent constructivist literature in International Relations.

Reference: S. Bertea, “Law, Shared Activities, and Obligation”, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 27: 2014, 357-381

In this paper, I first introduce the conception of law as a shared activity and reconstruct it as a general account of the law and its normativity. Then I will turn specifically to the conception’s account of legal obligation, which is rendered by giving it two fundamental senses: a full-blooded sense and a perspectival one. In this context, I will be arguing that the account of legal obligation in a full-blooded sense offered by the champions of the conception of law as shared activity is at once too limiting and partial. For, on the one hand, it can only explain legal obligation in relation to those who are already committed to the legal enterprise—so, we are left to wonder why everyone else should also have an obligation to comply with the law. On the other hand we are not presented with a compelling case for the argument that the obligations the law is recognized to give rise to are non-moral obligations grounded in social facts (or that they are distinctively legal obligations), even though it is precisely this sort of argument that legal positivism needs to make. Finally, I turn to the perspectival sense of legal obligation, arguing that this rendering of obligation overlooks the practical import the legal enterprise is widely acknowledged to have, thus failing to explain the ability of legal institutions to play their typical guidance function through the obligations they set forth.

Towards a Re-Codification of Italian Private Law. The Model of the Code Napoléon Renewed From its very beginning, the grand reform of the French law of contract and obligations has been widely discussed in Italy. Italian codice civile represents a suitable yardstick to assess the innovations introduced into the Code Napoléon, since French and Italian private laws largely share a common legal culture, which makes their comparison not only historically grounded, but also dogmatically fruitful. To a certain extent, moreover, the reform has enhanced the similarity between the Code Napoléon and the codice civile, although they still differ considerably. The article provides an overall assessment of the major changes in the architecture of the Code Napoléon and their impact on the basic concepts of contract and obligation. Some final considerations are devoted to the meaning of contemporary civil (re-)codifications in Europe and their expected impact on legal and social environments.

Sadraddin Shirazi (1571-1640) occupies an important place in the history of the Eastern Islamic philosophy. Among the works of ten the most important and intellectual philosophers in the history of Islamic philosophy his heritage is the mostly studied one. Shirazi is a philosopher famous for his unusual philosophical and theosophical views. The Sirazi’s “transcendental philosophy” relates to Isfahan philosophical school and is greatly developed by its adherents. The works by S.Shirazi can be classified into three different groups. These are: 1. the comments for Koran and Khadises; 2) the comments and references wnich have been written before him and already discussed in other philosophical books; 3) the works on Philosophy written by him as a founder of the Transcendental school of philosophy. The most important work from the third group is “Al-Asfar al arba`a al-`aqliyyah fi hikmat al- muta`aliyah” - a book consisted of many volumes and is some kind of encyclopedia of the Islamic philosophy. The treatises written by S.Shirazi are covering many themes. An outstanding and deeply studied work devoted to freedom of choice is “Hikmat Al-Ayn” work that means “Wisdom of a Source”. This is a work about Algebra and Will. According to our translation and interpretation, S.Shirazi has accumulated the various philosophical conceptions and basic theoretical views of the philosophers and thinkers who have lived before him, and has studied them accompanying with the arguments of his own. He writes about the rights and obligations of the human being and about freedom of his choice as well. Thus, he is unifying the various philosophical ideas combining them with his own concepts.
In “Khalq al-a’mal” treatise he is marking out the four basic philosophical conceptions. More specifically, he introduces three theories in the history of philosophy together with his arguments and formulating then the fourth theory with comments which is rooted deeply in the scientific knowledge. That is why the School of the Transcendental Philosophy considers this theory the highest, being superior to the previous three conceptions.

Background. The Human Health and Heredity (H3Africa) Consortium continues to generate large amounts of genomic data leading to new insights into health and disease among African populations. This has however generated debate among stakeholders involved in developing, implementing, and applying ethical standards and policies for the return of individual genetic research results. The key questions are about when results must, should, may, or must not be returned and by whom. This study aimed to explore the views on the feedback of individual pertinent and incidental genetic research results of researchers, ethics committee members, and policymakers in Botswana. Methods. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 key stakeholders from academic, research institutions, and regulatory bodies in Botswana. An analysis of the coded data was done through an iterative process of analytic induction to document and interpret themes and patterns. Results. Overall, the study indicated that researc...

Towards a Re-Codification of Italian Private Law. The Model of the Code Napoléon Renewed From its very beginning, the grand reform of the French law of contract and obligations has been widely discussed in Italy. Italian codice civile represents a suitable yardstick to assess the innovations introduced into the Code Napoléon, since French and Italian private laws largely share a common legal culture, which makes their comparison not only historically grounded, but also dogmatically fruitful. To a certain extent, moreover, the reform has enhanced the similarity between the Code Napoléon and the codice civile, although they still differ considerably. The article provides an overall assessment of the major changes in the architecture of the Code Napoléon and their impact on the basic concepts of contract and obligation. Some final considerations are devoted to the meaning of contemporary civil (re-)codifications in Europe and their expected impact on legal and social environments.

In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator finds himself
involved in a moral relation with the title character whose sense he
finds difficult to articulate. I argue that we can make sense of this
relation, up to a certain point, in terms of the influential account
of obligation that Stephen Darwall advances in The Second-Person
Standpoint. But I also argue that there is a dimension of moral
sense in the relation that is not captured by Darwall’s account, or
indeed by any of the accounts of obligation that have been most
prominent in the history of western philosophy from the early
modern period up to the present. More specifically, I argue that
what is brought out in the relation between Bartleby and the
narrator is the separation of the experience of moral necessitation
from the rule that would give its content. I attempt to show that
this obligation without rule is a genuine moral phenomenon and
that we can begin to understand it in terms of the ideas of love,
singularity, and potentiality as these are developed in the work of
Giorgio Agamben.

In recent decades, there has been much theorisation of love in the so-called Western world. These accounts have frequently focused on historical changes: the growing idealisation of romantic love; greater personal autonomy in relationships; and the entanglement of relationships with ideas and realities of democracy, individualism, neoliberalism, and capitalism. One commonly made claim is that companionship, obligation, and commitment to both kin and non-kin are increasingly losing out to individualised relationships and short-term pleasure.

The growing prevalence and (apparent) acceptance of age-dissimilar couples has often been seen as reflecting this shift to autonomy. Yet, through interviews with Australian age-dissimilar couples, I find that, alongside autonomy and free choice, commitment and obligation remain enduring themes in people’s accounts of their love lives. I thus argue for an approach that emphasises cultural continuity, and which accounts for complexity and contradiction in how age dissimilarity and love are understood within and across cultures.

CHRISTOPHER VASILLOPULOS, Professor, Eastern Connecticut State University, U.S.A.

The achievement of the Aeschylean reconciliation or at the least conflict resolu¬tion of the com-peting conceptions of justice personified by the Old and the New Gods, which culminates the Eumeni-des, amounts to the discovery of the political.  The needs of the polis, defined as a citizenry who be-lieved the affairs of the state were at their dis¬posal, now dominate the otherwise implacable and literal requirements of the old dis¬pensation.  Without questioning the legitimacy of the pre-political concep-tion of justice, conceived as revenge and retribution, which binds Orestes, Aeschylus confounds the demands of the Furies and in the process legitimates a new juris/political order.  Essen¬tially, by insti-tuting a trial, whose jury is twelve citizens, Aeschylus substitutes a new conception of justice, now conceived as “due process.” 
The scare quotes are needed because Athena remains part of the procedure.  With this qualifi-cation, now justice is within the polis and so are the Furies in their new guise as the Well-Disposed.  With the indispensable help of Athena, in defiance of Apollo, Athenians are no longer objects of the de-structive cycle of revenge and retribution which characterized pre-political conception of justice.  To demonstrate the possibilities of this new form of justice, Athena while offering her good offices, casts the determining vote in Orestes’ trial.  There is more to this than a goddess biasing a verdict.  What al-lows the political emerge from her perhaps shoddy practice is the undeniable need to transcend ab-solutist notions of justice, to interpose space between the event/response cycle for pragmatic human concerns.  Justice becomes politicized, that is, becomes ac¬countable to the decisional modes of the citi-zenry, if not entirely in their hands.  In the Medea Euripides offers a complex and perhaps less com-promising variant of ju¬ris / political conflict resolution.  He tries to allow for the untransformed pres-ence of the implacable, but without the gods, Old or New.  By appreciating the substantive and the pro-cedural properties of obligation, Euripides suggest a way to retain the irrational pre-political sense of justice without its property of the cycle of retribution and without a sense of justice compromised due to human pragmatics.  Euripides is not suggesting that in this case, it is not prudent to apply the old conception of justice. He indicates that the Old cannot be dispensed with; echoing the transformation of the Furies into the Well-disposed, but needs a new guise. The obligation to keep promises becomes the func¬tional equivalent of an Absolute. Against this standard, the prudential arguments of Ja¬son can¬not prevail. No trial ensues, as in Eumenides, nevertheless Euripides’s obvious sympathy for Medea and his disgust with Jason suggests that should she have been tried, a more sophisticated and polis friendly result would have resulted.  But since Medea could not get to Athens, the trial becomes moot.  She reverts to her persona as a goddess of the Old dispensation.  In an important sense, she applies the old conception of justice against her human persona as well as Jason.  Euripides suggests that an Athe¬nian polis and citizenry could have avoided this catastrophe because it might have understood his con-ception of justice, wherein the implacable becomes politicized without losing its power as an absolute.

In _The Sources of Normativity_, Christine M. Korsgaard argues that unconditional obligation can be accounted for in terms of practical identity. My argument in this paper is that practical identity cannot play this foundational role. More specifically, I interpret Korsgaard's argument as beginning with something analogous to Kant's fact of reason, viz. with the fact that our minds are reflective. I then try to show that her determination of this fact is inadequate and that this causes the argument concerning practical identity to fail. Finally, I argue that a conception of the fact of reason more in line with what I take to be Kant's own is necessary to account for unconditional obligation.

Building on reciprocity theory, the study investigated the role of gratitude and
obligation in wine purchases at tasting rooms. While visiting wineries, customers may
either feel grateful to winery personnel for the quality of services received or they may
develop a sense of obligation. These feelings result from the free tasting or hospitality
offered at the winery and may trigger a perceived need to buy wine. In this research,
wine and souvenirs bought out of gratitude and obligation were defined as gratuity
purchasing. A new instrument to measure gratitude and obligation was developed and
administered to winery visitors. Findings show that feelings of gratitude and obligation
were positively correlated with purchasing at wineries. In addition, the study investigated
whether purchasing at wineries depended on the number of travel companions. Visitors
who travel to wineries in smaller groups were found to be more grateful to winery
personnel and more obliged to buy wine than those visitors who traveled in larger groups.
Consequently, visitors who travel in smaller groups tend to spend more money on wine
than larger groups. Implications for wine managers are included.
Key Words: wine tourism, gratitude, obligation

Surely Simmons is right that, for many citizens of modern states, many of the benefits they receive from living in their state cannot be described as freely accepted and any promise they might make to obey their state's laws would likely not be wholly voluntary. 5 Simmons's arguments ...

After the typical theological and bioethical questions about in vitro fertilization (IVF) are vetted, there remains a three-dimensional understanding of responsibility that is not typically considered in Christian bioethics. This paper will explore responsibility to the spouses’ loving union, their bodies, and society in order to ascertain the morality of IVF. In a marriage partnership, the spouses’ primary responsibility is to each other. Although in matrimony physical union is essential to marriage, children are not. The second dimension of responsibility focuses on the body—“the temple of God”—and on our responsibility to care for it. This concerns the woman, her husband, and even the newborn. Finally, the third understanding of responsibility leads us to address social concerns, with an emphasis on social dynamics, especially the cost of IVF procedures and how they siphon medical resources away from more urgent human needs in health care and within society.

Museums, University Collections and the Concept of Sustainable Development The paper attempts to contribute to the debate on the possibility of using tangible and intangible traces of scientific and cultural activity of universities in the implementation of sustainable development tasks, especially of utilising the cultural capital of museums and academic collections for building an engaged academic community. These objectives become both a need and an obligation, next to sustainability and accountability in the field of research, heritage protection, and popularisation. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the principles of sustainable development in the area of culture can be linked to the cultural heritage of universities, and how to inscribe the implementation of these principles in the university’s activity.