Nathan Tierney

The dissertation is about the place of ideals in ethical reflection. Ideals are distinguished from principles. Principles are expressed as universalizable imperatives of right behavior. Ideals are expressed as models of the good life essentially tied to the character of the individual self. I argue that moralities of principle, such as Kant's, do not adequately resolve two fundamental difficulties in current ethical theory: the problem of relativism, and what I call the theoretician's dilemma. ;I develop a theory of ideals as complex mental structures operating through the imagination. These structures have a twofold nature, an "inner" and an "outer" aspect. On the one hand, ideals are a schematizing procedure for interpreting concrete situations in terms of their relevance to the realization of what the self takes to be its good life. On the other hand, idealization is a dynamic operation within the structure of the self which both generates the schematism and provides the ongoing motivation for pursuing modeled ideals. ;Chapters 1 and 2 examine the need for a theory of ideals, develop the notion of the schematism in terms of the "seeing as" concept, and examine imagination's operation in sympathy, moral judgement and feeling, and idealization. Chapters 3 and 4 seek to show what it is that makes some ideals "ethical", without appealing to the notion of principle. It does this in terms of two contrasting moral psychologies, each deriving from different psychoanalytic theories of the self: classical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic self psychology. I argue that those ideals are ethical which the mature self take to be good in its relations to other persons in so far as they are persons. This notion of ethical idealization is better treated within self psychology. Classical moral psychology of the superego, despite recent innovations, inevitably divorces morality and rationality, leaving no room for rational evaluation of ends and projects within the relativities of concrete life and existence. Chapter 5 reappraises the concepts of the ethical and the rational in the light of a theory of imaginative ideals. The problem of relativism and the theoretician's dilemma are re-examined

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion, the Globalization of War, and Restorative JusticeNathan TierneyAs the pace of globalization increases, the world's religions find themselves in a perilous dilemma that they have yet to resolve in either practical or conceptual terms. On the one hand, the globalization of markets exerts a powerful pressure toward consumerist and materialist values, which undermine and undercut religious perspectives and sensibilities. On the other hand, the globalization of war heightens the intensity of these religious perspectives and sensibilities, and distorts them in the direction of violence and religious extremism. This dilemma plays itself out in different ways in the developed and developing world, but, as the term "globalization" indicates, it is a problem for all of us. Governments, in developing countries especially, often find themselves forced to choose between one horn of the dilemma or the other, with often disastrous results as they take one or the other side in a "West versus the rest" scenario. In the long run, the only viable solution is one that addresses both horns of the dilemma at the same time, and this is possible only if, in turn, religions themselves become truly global. This will require a large-scale and focused cooperative effort in which the religions of the world actively and jointly engage with both problems, working with governments, NGOs, religious communities, and interfaith groups to harmonize religious life with economics and to promote a culture of peace and justice.Because "globalization" is a familiar term in relation to markets, I'll begin by clarifying what I mean by the globalization of war. There are two main aspects to this phenomenon. First, the term refers to a specific transformation in the nature, purposes, and conditions of warfare brought about by the forces of globalization. By globalization I mean the growing trend of the world's cultural, economic, and political forces to bypass national borders and operate on a world scale. This process creates new possibilities for both integration and conflict. When that conflict passes beyond the possibility of diplomatic negotiation, we have the conditions for globalized war. Globalized war is not necessarily world war. It can be relatively local in its sphere of combat; for example, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a collective response to a worldwide threat of terrorism. What makes it a globalized war, as distinct from international war, is the global nature of the forces that produced it and [End Page 79] are affected by it. Globalized war in this sense has come only lately onto the scene, but its scale and impact is likely to grow in the coming century.The second aspect of the globalization of war is the tendency of conflict to mutate beyond the interests and concerns of nation-states and be taken up by broader civilizational units, even if they were not originally a response to global pressures. The most likely trajectory for this mutation has been well described by Samuel P. Huntington in his influential article "The Clash of Civilizations" (1993) and his book-length treatment of the same subject (1997). Huntington argues that the fault lines of conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic but cultural, where "cultural" is to be understood at its broadest level—the level of civilizations. He divides the world into seven or eight competing civilizations: Western, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African. Societies sharing cultural affinities will cooperate with one another, and the attempt by the West to universalize its dominant version of consumer capitalism and liberal democracy will be resisted in an increasingly determined way—eventually to the point of outright war: "the next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations."1In Huntington's analysis, then, the globalization of war refers to a coming clash of civilizations. He believes that religion will play a central role in this clash as the focal point of civilizations: "Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture tradition and, most important, religion."2 While Western civilization has experienced several decades of decline and decay, in both its cultural unity and its sense of identity, other civilizations have grown both in economic terms and...