In The Ethics and Politics of Speech, Pat J. Gehrke provides an accessible yet intensive history of the speech communication discipline during the twentieth century. Drawing on several previously unpublished or unexamined sources—including essays, conference proceedings, and archival documents—Gehrke traces the evolution of communication studies and the dilemmas that often have faced academics in this field. In his examination, Gehrke not only provides fresh perspectives on old models of thinking; he reveals new methods for approaching future studies of ethical and political communication. Gehrke begins his history with the first half of the twentieth century, discussing the development of a social psychology of speech and an ethics based on scientific principles, and showing the importance of democracy to teaching and scholarship at this time. He then investigates the shift toward philosophical—especially existential—ways of thinking about communication and ethics starting in the 1950s and continuing through the mid-1970s, a period associated with the rise of rhetoric in the discipline. In the chapters covering the last decades of the twentieth century, Gehrke demonstrates how the ethics and politics of communication were directed back onto the practices of scholarship within the discipline, examining the increased use of postmodern and poststructuralist theories, as well as the new trend toward writing original theory, rather than reinterpreting the past. In offering a thorough history of rhetoric studies, Gehrke sets the stage for new questions and arguments, ultimately emphasizing the deeply moral and political implications that by nature embed themselves in the field of communication. More than simply a history of the discipline's major developments, The Ethics and Politics of Speech is an account of the philosophical and moral struggles that have faced communication scholars throughout the last century. As Gehrke explores the themes and movements within rhetoric and speech studies of the past, he also provides a better understanding of the powerful forces behind the forging of the field. In doing so, he reveals history’s potential to act as a vehicle for further academic innovation in the future.

This book features new perspectives on the ethics and politics of free speech. Contributors draw on insights from philosophy, psychology, political theory, journalism, literature, and history to respond to pressing problems involving free speech in liberal societies. Recent years have seen an explosion of academic interest in these topics. However, most recent work has focused on constitutional protections for free speech and on issues related to academic freedom and campus politics. The chapters in this volume set their sights more broadly on the non-state problems that we collectively face in attempting to realize a healthy environment for free discourse. The volume’s contributors share the assumption that threats to free speech do not come exclusively from state sources or bad actors, but from ordinary strategic situations in which all may be acting in good faith. Contributors take seriously the idea that our current cultural moment provides plenty of reason to be concerned about our intellectual climate and offer new insights for how to make things better. New Directions in the Ethics and Politics of Speech will be of interest to researchers and students working in ethics, political philosophy, social theory, and law. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Pornography is seen as morally problematic for a variety of reasons: coercion, exploitation, harm and the promulgation of inequality. The book looks at various ethical and political discussions concerning the production, exchange and consumption of pornography to propose a radical new approach centering on the concept of objectification.

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.

What if meaning were the last thing that mattered in language? In this essay, Henri Meschonnic explains what it means to translate the sense of language and how to do it. In a radical stand against a hermeneutical approach based on the dualistic view of the linguistic sign and against its separation into a meaningful signified and a meaningless signifier, Henri Meschonnic argues for a poetics of translating. Because texts generate meaning through their power of expression, to translate ethically involves listening to the various rhythms that characterize them: prosodic, consonantal or vocalic patterns, syntactical structures, sentence length and punctuation, among other discursive means. However, as the book illustrates, such an endeavour goes against the grain and, more precisely, against a 2500-year-old tradition in the case of biblical translation. The inability of translators to give ear to rhythm in language results from a culturally transmitted deafness. Henri Meschonnic decries the generalized unwillingness to remedy this cultural condition and discusses the political implications for the subject of discourse.

What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Madeleine Fagan puts forward a radical and far-reaching refusal of foundational ethics. Instead, she proposes an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics. The 'ethical' should not be understood as a label; it does not mean 'good' or 'right', it is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. The book highlights the necessity of a practice-based rethinking of the relationship between ethics and politics and so denaturalises a series of commonplaces about poststructuralist ethics.

The authors are national school resource experts and have teamed up to write a comprehensive book on ethics and politics. It covers everything you need to know about ethical leadership and dealing with politics in schools. The book starts with an ethical framework and moves on to politics with unions, administrators, and School Boards with suggested strategies for effective conflict resolution. There are realistic cases in every chapter of the book with the final chapter focused on comprehensive ethical and political cases to test the reader in addressing such issues in the educational or related settings. Benefits and Features of Book: A comprehensive book covering all aspects of ethics and school politics. Each chapter objectives are aligned with the ELCC, InTASC, ISLCC, and TLEC standards used for accreditation and alignment in program content. Many federal and various state data sources are included. Each chapter contains a comprehensive case study and exercises for practical application. Provides a blend of academic, theoretical, and practical perspectives in handling and dealing in ethical and political situations. Several handy resources are included in the appendices.

Contemporary social and political theory has reached an impasse about a problem that had once seemed straightforward: how can individuals make ethical judgments about power and politics? Crisis of Authority analyzes the practices that bind authority, trust and truthfulness in contemporary theory and politics. Drawing on newly available archival materials, Nancy Luxon locates two models for such practices in Sigmund Freud's writings on psychoanalytic technique and Michel Foucault's unpublished lectures on the ancient ethical practices of 'fearless speech', or parrhesia. Luxon argues that the dynamics provoked by the figures of psychoanalyst and truth-teller are central to this process. Her account offers a more supple understanding of the modern ethical subject and new insights into political authority and authorship.

In this series of interviews and dialogues which took place between 1981 and 2003, Paul Ricoeur addresses some of the central questions of political philosophy and ethics: justice, violence, war, the environmental crisis, the question of evil, ethical and political action in the polis. Philosophical issues are brought to bear on present-day concerns and the practical realities of contemporary politics. How can the philosopher speak about politics without claiming superior insight or a higher order of knowledge? Ricoeur distinguishes three levels of society: ‘tools’ (modes of production and the accumulation of technology), ‘institutions’ (which are tied to national cultures) and ‘values’ (which claim to be universal). The philosopher’s task is to probe each of these levels and open up spaces for reflection, criticism and democratic deliberation. It is to explore the paradoxes of the political rather than invoking certainties dictated by conscience. Just as there no longer exists a grand narrative about the past, so too there is no longer any utopia capable of projecting the desired future. What remains is human creativity, which marks the source common to the institutional frameworks that are already present and the horizons that extend beyond them. The philosopher’s engagement lies in the promise to revive this source at the very moment it appears to dry up under the weight of the real. This volume of interviews and dialogues with one of the most important French philosophers of the post-war period will be of interest to anyone interested in the great political and ethical questions of our time.