Hannah Arendt and the law and ethics of administration : bureaucratic evil, political thinking and reflective judgment

After the absurd terrorism and violence of the totalitarianism and bureaucratic administrative and legal systems of the 20th century it does not give any meaning to rationalize harm as meaningful evil that even though it is evil may have some importance for the development of the world towards the good. Rather, evil is incomprehensible and as radical and banal evil it challenges human rationality. This is indeed the case when we are faced with instrumental and rationalized administrative and political evil. Therefore, we must analyse the banality of evil in politics and in administration in order to understand the concept of evil. Moreover, as proposed by Hannah Arendt, we need to fight this evil with political thinking and social philosophy. The only way to deal with harm and wrongdoing is to return a concept of responsibility that is closely linked to reflective thinking. In this paper, we will on the basis of a discussion of the banality of evil explore this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the administration of evil, as expressed by the personality of Adolf Eichmann. Finally, we will place this concept of administrative evil in Hannah Arendt’s general political philosophy

Citizen science for cuneiform studies

This paper examines the potential applications of Citizen Science and Open Linked Data within a critical Web Science framework. Described here is a work-inprocess concerning an interdisciplinary, multiinstitutional project for the digitization, annotation and online dissemination of a large corpus of written material from ancient Mesopotamia. The paper includes an outline of the problems presented by a large, heterogeneous and incomplete dataset, as well as a discussion of the potential of Citizen Science as a potential solution, combining both technical and social aspects. Drawing inspiration from other successful Citizen Science projects, the current paper suggests a process for capturing and enriching the data in ways which can address not only the challenges of the current data set, but also similar issues arising elsewhere on the wider Web

Papers from the NSU Summer session of 2014 - study group 3:“Crisis and Crisis Scenarios: Normativity, Possibilities and Dilemmas”

In this special issue we present the conference papers by the study group “Crisis and Crisis Scenarios: Normativity, Possibilities and Dilemmas” at the 2014 NSU Summer Session, held between 24th July and 31st July 2014 in Sauðárkrókur, Northern Iceland

Ethics of Administration:Towards Sustainability and Cosmopolitanism

After the publication of my book Ethics for Psychologists, one reviewer asked the question about whether and when I would write an ethics of public administration.With this suggestion in mind, I proposed a new book to the publisher (DJØF’s forlag – Danish Lawyer’s and Economist’s publishing company) and the publisher accepted. So now the problem is how to formulate an ethics of administration. Indeed, facing the present global crisis and the need for global principles of sustainability and cosmopolitanism it could be argued that public administration ethics should be redefined according to these ethical ideals. As such I would argue that a book about ethics of administration should deal with ethical theories and principles and dilemmas of public administration in public organizations and institutions, i.e. state, regional and municipal administrations and bureaucracies, including ethical dimensions of the work of courts, police and military. A presentation of ethics of administration should also look at problems and dilemmas in different types of more or less public organizations and institutions

Peter Koslowski’s Ethics and Economics or Ethical Economy:A Framework for a research agenda in business ethics

This paper presents the concept of ethical economy (Wirtschaftsethik) and the relation between ethics and economics on the basis of the work of the German ethical economist Peter Koslowski. The concept of ethical economy includes three levels: micro, meso and macro levels; and it also deals with the philosophical analysis of the ethical foundations of the economy. After the discussion of these elements of the ethical economy, the paper presents some possible research topics for a research agenda about economic ethics or ethical economy