Rafael Cejudo

The purpose of this article is to offer guidelines to deal with hard choices, specifically in situations where some compromise among opposing values is inescapable. The guidelines are intended to help ethicists and practitioners to delineate different alternatives and to dismiss some of them as morally unacceptable. This article explores the view that compromises arise from negotiations but from ethical predicaments as well. For this reason, I distinguish between strategic and moral compromises. Both managers and employees are individual moral agents who have to confront the possibility of unpalatable and even disgusting compromises, so that they are forced to put their integrity into risk in certain compromise situations. However, I shall argue for the possibility of palatable moral compromises. The guidelines to cope with those situations and to identify the unpalatable compromises are based on J. S. Mill's moral philosophy. Mill suggested that half‐measures passed in Parliament must have certain key elements to be morally acceptable. I make use of this doctrine to put forward compromise guidelines in the form of a set of hallmarks, internal and external elements of palatable compromises. Two minicases are used to test the guidelines and to emphasize the importance of compromises for ethical decision making and commitment to company.

For the last three years, the areas of “Philosophy” and “Moral Philosophy” (Dpt. Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cordoba – Spain) have designed a program to integrate film in some of our philosophy courses, its title is “Mirar, Pensar, Debatir” (“To look, to think, to debate”). We are developing our program in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Andalucia (The Film Institute of Andalusia) - whose institutional facilities, projection rooms and library are just beside our Faculty. We focus our attention on: 1. Integrating filmic narrative within the teaching of philosophical topics. 2. How to adapt, and occasionally to modify, the competences of our modules in order to integrate our teaching in a different contex for the explanation and comprehension of philosophical subject matters. 3.  How to facilitate the study and critical reevaluation of visual language by the students and in philosophical study.

RESUMENLa teoría de la libertad de A. Sen resulta de la conjunción de sus enfoques de las capacidades, de las habilitaciones (entitlements) y de la elección social. De esta manera se obtiene una noción de libertad como capacidad que puede compararse con la libertad como ausencia de dominación característica del republicanismo. El resultado de tal comparación es, contra la tesis de P. Pettit, una diferencia importante entre ambas debido a las dificultades de la concepción seniana para captar las relaciones de poder.PALABRAS CLAVEPETTIT, A. SEN, PODER, REPUBLICANISMO, CAPACIDAD, LIBERAL PARETIANO, HABILITACIÓN (ENTITLEMENT)ABSTRACTAmartya Sen’s theory of freedom emerges from his capabilities approach, his entitlements approach and his contributions to the theory of social election. In this way we get a concept of freedom as capability which can be compared to the republican notion of liberty as non domination. Against P. Pettit’s view, we deduce of this comparison an important differe...

Durante los últimos cuarenta años el consecuencialismo ha evolucionado para responder a numerosas críticas, hasta el punto de que hoy comparte rasgos importantes con las teorías deontológicas. El enfoque informacional de Amartya Sen analiza el tipo y la cantidad de información que una estructura ética necesita. Uso este método para determinar cuánto puede aproximarse a la deontología este nuevo consecuencialismo, y cuán difícil puede ser tal expansión. En el contexto del principio del doble efecto, el enfoque informacional permite mostrar que existe una divergencia inevitable entre la deontología y el consecuencialismo. Esta disparidad manifiesta dimensiones genuinas de la razón práctica.

This article offers a critical examination of the educational ideas in Amartya Kumar Sen's capabilities theory, one of the fathers of Human Development and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1998. After comparing the role of education in Human Development theory and Human ...

Los bienes comunes culturales constituyen tanto un acervo común existente de hecho, como la aspiración a que dicho caudal compartido sea lo mayor y más rico posible. La vida cultural es un bien común específico que representa tal aspiración y que constituye uno de los derechos humanos recogidos en la Declaración Universal de 1948. Tras analizarse las características de este bien común cultural, y entre ellas su dimensión global, se aborda cómo la privatización de otros bienes comunes culturales afecta a la vida cultural de la humanidad, así como la relación entre vida cultural y apropiación cultural.

Intangible Cultural Heritage brings simultaneously a number of areas of value into play: the original meaning of the cultural goods classified as heritage; its contribution to social identity and social continuity as heritage assets; economic consequences from its use in the tourist and cultural industry. This leads to tensions or paradoxes which require an ethical approach. On the one hand, there is an opposition between the conditions for existence of cultural heritage and the conditions for existence of the immaterial cultural goods that are considered heritage. Moreover, a realistic consideration of Intangible Cultural Heritage should link that heritage to the current issues surrounding creation, transmission, enjoyment and exploitation of cultural goods. It is argued that Intangible Cultural Heritage management should insist not so much on the monetary equivalent of the wealth flows yielded by that heritage, but on the social aspects of cultural consumption. As a result, the pa...

El artículo expone aquellas fortalezas del Producto Nacional Bruto (PIB) que explican su amplia aceptación. Asimismo se indican las debilidades del PIB a propósito del desarrollo humano, explicándose cómo no se tienen en cuenta adecuadamente en el PIB la creación de riqueza y su distribución. Concretamente, se incide en que el PIB no atiende a consideraciones distributivas, es incapaz de dar cuenta de la Paradoja de Easterlin y no funciona bien en relación con el agotamiento de los recursos naturales. A partir de aquí se explican tres indicadores alternativos al PIB: la huella ecológica, la Felicidad Nacional Bruta y el Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH). Se argumenta a favor de este último mediante el enfoque de las capacidades, una profunda y útil teoría ética propuesta por Amartya Sen y que está en la base teórica del IDH.

The paper expounds the strengths of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) that explain its wide acceptance. Likewise
GDP main weaknesses for human development are
stated, as it is expounded how wealth creation and
distribution are not adequately taken into account
within the GDP. Particularly, it is stressed that GDP does
not take distribution into consideration, it is unable of
explaining the Easterlin’s paradox and it does not fare
well regarding natural resource depletion. On these
bases, three alternative GDP indicators are explained: the
ecological footprint, the Gross National Hapiness and the
Human Development Index (HDI). It is argued for this last
indicator on the basis of the capability approach, a deep
and helpful ethical theory proposed by Amartya Sen and
that it is HDI’s theoretical basis.

This paper holds that compromises are a kind of agreement and also a kind of decision. The main objectives are: 1) to identify the formal structure of compromise situations, or predicaments where some compromise decision (CD) is unavoidable, including CDs that jeopardize the decision-maker’s integrity; 2) through Amartya Sen’s notions of basic and compulsive judgments, to establish when a CD in a situation of compromise could be morally justified. It concludes that justified CDs involve a rationally justified moral regret which helps to bridge the gap between deontology and consequentialism

Este artículo ofrece un examen crítico
de la concepción de la educación implícita
en la teoría de las capacidades de
Amartya Kumar Sen, así como de su relevancia
pedagógica más allá del ámbito
socio-económico para el que fue inicialmente
concebida, el de los países empobrecidos.
Sen, ganador del Premio Nobel
de economía en 1998, ha realizado contribuciones
sobresalientes en campos diversos
que van desde la economía del
desarrollo y la pobreza a la elección social
o la teoría ética. En el corazón de su
perspectiva interdisciplinar se halla una
noción de capacidad, el enfoque de las
capacidades (capabilities approach), que
vincula la calidad de vida y el bienestar
con la libertad. Con ayuda de esta concepción
se ha ido formulando un concepto
de desarrollo humano consistente en
el proceso de aumentar las oportunidades
de las personas.

Abstract: The word compromise means a kind of agreement and a concession to something harmful
or wrong. I argue that particularly this second sense is quite relevant in the ethics of political action. John
Stuart Mill focused upon this issue in his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform 1859. I outline Mill’s doctrine
on compromise looking at the external and internal features of an acceptable measure of compromise. These
features provide a set of conditions necessary in order for compromise to take place, but they do not guarantee
sufficient conditions. In order to assess Mill’s political coherence and to draw a general distinction between
strategic and ethical compromises the paper concludes by considering two compromise measures that Mill
adopted while he was a Member of Parliament.

Abstract: La financiación estatal de literatura, las bellas artes o el cine (lo que llamaré bienes culturales) encuentra serias obstáculos según el planteamiento liberal: por un lado el Estado no puede suplantar el juicio de los ciudadanos que son quienes deben decidir gastar su dinero en cultura o en otros destinos (el obstáculo del paternalismo). Por otro lado, los objetivos generales del contrato social excluyen el compromiso con ideales estéticos o vitales, lo que parece inherente a los bienes culturales (el obstáculo del perfeccionismo). Intentando proporcionar argumentos útiles en el debate público y la práctica profesional, se proponen algunas respuestas, dentro del propio pensamiento liberal, considerando la afinidad de los bienes culturales con bienes públicos y con bienes de naturaleza social no reductibles a objeto de preferencias individuales.

Resumen: State funding of literature, fine arts or cinema (I shall say cultural goods) tackles serious problems in liberal thinking. First, the State should not replace citizen choices because citizenry is free to decide whether spend their money in culture or in other alternatives (the problem of paternalism). Second, the general goals of social contracts rule out any commitment with aesthetic or vital ideals, while this commitment is inherent in cultural goods (the problem of perfectionism). Trying to provide helpful arguments for practitioners and the public debate, I suggest some answers to those problems within the liberal approach. In particular, I address the relation between cultural and public goods, and I touch upon the social dimension of cultural goods so they are not only individual choices.

Resumen: El Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial pone en juego simultáneamente varias dimensiones de valor: el sentido original de los bienes culturales clasificados como patrimonio; su aportación a la identidad y la continuidad social en cuanto bienes patrimoniales; efectos económicos derivados de su aprovechamiento por la industria turística y cultural. De ello se derivan tensiones o paradojas que requieren una consideración ética. Por un lado, existe una oposición entre las condiciones de existencia del patrimonio cultural y las condiciones de existencia de los bienes culturales inmateriales que se declaran patrimonio. Por otro lado, una consideración realista del Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial debe incluirlo en la problemática actual de la creación, transmisión, disfrute y explotación de los bienes culturales. Se defiende que la gestión del Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial debe incidir no tanto en el equivalente monetario de los flujos de riqueza generados por el mismo, sino en la dimensión social del consumo cultural. A partir de aquí se concluye indicando varias repercusiones tanto para la gestión responsable de este tipo de patrimonio, como para la legitimación del gasto público dedicado a su protección.

The article deals with a three year collaboration program between the Filmoteca de Andalucía
(The Film Institute of Andalusia) and Philosophy faculties of the University of Córdoba
(UCO). The aim of this educational project, entitled "To look, to think and to debate", was to
integrate film analysis in the syllabi of some Philosophy courses, more than using films as incidental examples. The general aims of that program are addressed by using two Spanish films as case studies, and highlighted, both, the new learning chances and the didactical problems.