Department of Philosophy

Permanent URI for this community

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/56

Browse

Browsing Department of Philosophy by Author "Andrade, Julio Anthony"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    From pariah to parrhesiastes : reconceptualising the whistleblower in a complex world
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-12) Andrade, Julio Anthony; Woermann, Minka; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis commences with an exploration of the ethics of whistleblowing as traditionally understood, describing the ethical dilemma at its centre: remaining loyal to one's organisation, against alerting society to organisational wrongdoing that threatens its welfare. The positions on several problematic issues in the literature, such as dissent, organisational retaliation, whistleblower motive, and mandatory whistleblowing will be presented and evaluated. The key internal/external disclosure dichotomy within whistleblowing will also be critically examined. The purported solutions to these issues, as well as whistleblowing's central dilemma, will be shown to remain unsatisfactory. This will be attributed to the adoption of an Enlightenment rules-based approach to ethics in general, which underpins and informs the ethics of whistleblowing in particular. An Enlightenment rules-based approach seeks to posit universal and immutable ethical standards that transcend context. As corrective to the above failings, the ethics of whistleblowing will be investigated from the view that seeks to understand whistleblowing as a historically determined and culturally mediated social practice. Within the contexts of the USA and South Africa it will be demonstrated that key whistleblowing issues (and even the central whistleblowing dilemma of divided loyalties) cannot be cast in immutable and universal terms, and are influenced by the contingencies that accompany them. An attempt will then be made to understand whistleblowing in the context of the globalisation of the last thirty years, which will prove more difficult. This will be undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove's project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies within a globalisation semantic able to contain the conflict between society and the organisation. This will be shown as ill-conceived because of Vandekerckhove's particular understanding of the organisation as an operationally closed system. Moving the argument forward will be undertaken at the hand of Critical Complexity theory which attempts to make the case for understanding the organisation as an open system. This will allow us to recast corporate responsibility as relational responsiveness to a particular stakeholder, which in turn will allow flexibility in terms of who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing. Consequently the internal/external disclosure dichotomy will be proved unsustainable. Further opening up the organisation will render the boundary with society meaningless, as it will be shown that the identity of society and organisation are inextricably tied together. As such, the notion of society versus the organisation will disappear, and whistleblowing will be reconceptualised as loyalty to both society and the organisation simultaneously, thus rendering the central dilemma of whistleblowing obsolete.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The possibility of sacrifice: a Levinasian reconceptualisation of supererogation
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-12) Andrade, Julio Anthony; Woermann, Minka; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study offers a reconceptualisation of supererogation based on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. The study comprises two parts. In Part I, a critical analysis of supererogation, understood as encompassing moral acts that go beyond duty, is given. The analysis unfolds at the hand of the traditional – chiefly analytic – reading of supererogation, and centres on three ethical concepts that problematise supererogation: proximity (the physical and psycho-social distance between the moral agent and the recipient of his/her aid), asymmetry (between the spectator and the performer of a supererogatory act), and autonomy. The analysis examines both supererogatory acts and supererogatory attitudes. It is argued firstly that autonomy is not a necessary feature of supererogation; and, secondly, that a supererogatory attitude (preliminarily described as a primitive moral response that recognises the suffering of another as like my own) can be understood as constitutive of supererogation. Furthermore, it is argued that supererogation can be conceptualised without recourse to the grounding concepts of duty or obligation. In Part II of the study, the theoretical resources of the continental philosophical tradition are employed as a means to reconceptualise supererogation, and to overcome the difficulties identified in Part I. The case is made that the ethics of Levinas is well-suited to conceptualise supererogation, because both share a regard for the value of saintliness. An exegesis of Levinasian ethics is presented and unfolds by reinscribing the three supererogation concepts of proximity, asymmetry, and autonomy into Levinasian terms. In order for these reinscribed terms to constitute a meaningful reconceptualisation of supererogation, a circumscription of a Levinasian normativity – framed as an operationalisation of Levinasian ethics – is undertaken. It is argued that a Levinasian normativity operates as a recursive and provisional imperative, and that it is grounded on the undecidability between ethics and politics. The argument continues by claiming that the undecidability of Levinasian normativity also arises because each moral act, no matter how quotidian, contains within it the possibility of sacrifice. In conclusion, the study argues for a reconceptualisation of supererogation, sans obligation or duty, as the possibility of sacrifice, which operates as a recursive and provisional modality in response to undecidability.