INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS DISCUSSION FORUMS

Gender issues?

2012-02-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

When a women are beaten we say it our culture, when men are beaten...issues arise. Recently we have witnessed several incidents in the media where wives are allegedly accused of beating their husbands senselessly. As we discuss gender issues from a philosophical point of view, we shall to try address the problem of husband beating . We think that men and women are equal in dignity but they are different; if you don't think they are different, you only have to open your eyes to notice the differences.

Addiction to social media by Theita group

2012-02-14T04:33:00.004-08:00

The social media is our new drug. We are getting addicted to Facebook, Linked in, You Tube, bing, WordPress, Twitter, blogspot and so on. Our group thinks that there are issues to do with personal development as well as virtues that can be discussed in this topic. We think that most people, if not all, who are addicted to pornography started somewhere in the internet. We also think that even the current social media sites like Facebook are turning slowly into this problem. We are no arguing that the social network is bad in itself but we think that there are moral issues that we are ignoring here. Follow up our comments for more discussion on this topic and drop a comment on your view.

Gender Inequalities. By ELITES group

2011-08-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

What is the true meaning of gender equality? Does gender equality mean the loss of the true masculine and feminine identity? These and other similar questions will be discussed by this group explaining concepts like feminism, sexual roles, sexual identity and the like. Among other points, the group will try to demonstrate that a lack of true masculinity or of true femininity means a lack of human variety and richness. There is a role for each of the two identity to play for the society to flourish in all aspects. post your ideas by commenting below.

Domestic violence. By Originals

2011-08-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

How do we unravel this problem of domestic violence. What are the causes of domestic violence? How many forms of domestic violence do know? What causes children to be violent in some families? Can virtues be the answer to these problems?help us to unravel these problems by posting your idea below.

FAMILY STRUCTURE AND SCHOOL PERFORMANCE.

2011-06-06T00:37:00.000-07:00

The table above came from a scientific research on the relationship between the family of origin of a student and the possibility of scoring grade A in school.

John Steinbeck's The Pearl can teach Kenyans something

2011-05-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I took a three days leave to rest a bit. As part of my resting reading a short classic was part of my plot. I decided to read a small book that a friend of mine proposed; Steinbeck an author I regard as the 'saddest' writer. The Pearl is the book that I eventually decided to read. A ninety page book with good English and great lessons. It was one of my first and most interesting read while moving up and down. The Pearl is a book I would recommend to anyone who would like to get a momentary grief probably after receiving a lot of praises due to an achievement but not for rest. This book have left me with many questions that I think are worth blogging about. If you have read the book you can jump the rest of the article and assist me with your comment on what you think Kenyans should learn from the Pearl. What could be the pearl that we are holding so dear to us which is finishing us. Could it be ethnicity, corruption, social injustices, political injustices, economic injustices, free and deficient education, poor leadership and poor governance, ignorance, immorality, diseases e.t.c?

Follow the summary of the plot here...

Goodbye 2011 Class from your teacher.

2011-04-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

I am very grateful to all of you who took part in this class blog and especially my students for their active participation in this activity. I am particularly grateful for the continuous feedback that you have constantly given me to ensure that learning took place in a nice environment. I will never forget your messages in the E-learning site, on the corridors and some of you even in matatus and university buses that made me know what you think about the course. I am hopeful that what we were doing in ethics classes will bear fruits.

What is the place of Euthanasia in ethics; Solidarity Group.

2011-03-28T03:05:00.000-07:00

Is Euthanasia a form of Assisted suicide or murder? Who has the authority to decide when to end life? Should we offer more assistance on those who are suffering with terminal illness or should we provide them with options to end their lives? These and many other ethical questioned will be discussed by our group.

LOOKING AT CORRUPTION THROUGH VIRTUE ETHICS; BY LIBERALS

2011-03-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

Corruption is a great menace in Kenya and most of the underdeveloped countries. There has been a lot of fight against corruption yet there has been no any tangible fruits. This situation leads us to ask ourselves many questions: Could it be that we are focusing on the leaves and other outward manifestations of corruption and not its roots?

If this were the case, then this fight will be lost. In this group we intend to address Corruption from a Virtue Ethics perspective showing that the four cardinal virtues and other virtues that comes under them are needed to eradicate corruption. Corruption has been acquired as a vice and we need to relearn it as well as learn the virtues that goes with integrity such as honesty, respect, love and so on. Offer your contribution by posting a comment below this post.

Virues in the Family: By The Diplomats

2011-03-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Virtue Ethics plays an important role in the family. Without virtue there cannot be happiness in the family nor can the family fulfill its role in society.

VIRTUOUS LEADERSHIP, BY CRUISERS GROUP.

2011-03-15T01:11:00.000-07:00

We are witnessing a great deficit of leadership especially among the youths today which needs our full attention. Anyone can be a leader, there is no doubt though there are people who still believe that leaders are born not developed. In this group discussion, we are hopping to get the answers to the leadership problems from Virtue Ethics of Aristotle, first by defining what is leadership and virtue and summing up with a proposal of what virtues we need to develop leadership in ourselves.

Simba club on poverty: Does povert and prestige has anything to do with Ethic?

2011-02-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

The quote below came from a starving child..

"When I leave for school in the mornings I don’t have any breakfast. At noon there is no lunch, in the evening I get a little supper, and that is not enough. So when I see another child eating, I watch him, and if he doesn’t give me something I think I’m going to die of hunger". —A 10-year-old child, Gabon 1997

The Scholars group on Relations at the Work Place

2011-02-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

“My Boss Asked Me to Dinner and Wanted Me for Dessert” ran the title at the top of a magazine advice column. This came from a 32-year old woman who thought she had a vital management career at her mid-sized company and a supportive mentor in her 57-year-old boss. When a “working” dinner with the (married) boss turned into a declaration of his most un-businesslike intentions, she was so stunned she could only fumble her way through the rest of the meal till she got home—alone. Now her boss was barely speaking to her, and she wanted Annie’s advice on whether or not she should “clear the air” with him.

Qualifiers Group on corrruption in Kenya.

2011-02-20T23:07:00.000-08:00

can we say that corruption a necessary evil in Kenya? Can we ever overcome corruption in Kenya? How does corruption affect the youths in Kenya? This and many other questions will occupy our discussion in this post. kindly post a comment on what you think about this topic and read our contributions.

The Deterz Group on morality in the 21st Century.

2011-02-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

What place does morality occupy in the 21st century? This is what we are discussing in this group. We are asking ourselves whether we really need certain universal moral standards to live or we have become the authors of our lives and actions with all the technological advancement we have. Can we live without the so called natural law?

ACHIEVERS GROUP

2011-02-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

Our preferred topic of discussion in this blog is abortion.

This group is discussing issues and factors surrounding abortion . Generally, induced abortion is considered to be unethical and immoral. However, it is sometimes medically recommended, therefore, under what circumstances would abortion be medically justifiable ?

Ravens group.

2011-02-18T04:56:00.000-08:00

This group is discussing the morality issues revolving around HIV/AID, the group has two cases one of which is posted in the E- leaning site of Strathmore University. You will agree with me that HIV and AIDS a great pandemic in Sub-Saharan region has affect everyone in the region and infected millions. The death rates as well as social, cultural, political as well as financial implications are for reaching.

The Eagles

2011-02-18T01:59:00.000-08:00

This group is discussing divorce from an ethical perspective. What is divorce, why is it considered as an evil act, what is the effect of divorce on the couple concerned and their children... all these are among the things that one can reflect on divorce. Follow up on their discussions in the comments they have posted below, you are welcome to contribute your ideas by commenting below.

Teenage dating among students of Schools in Nairobi: By Plato.

2011-02-14T03:10:00.000-08:00

Younger and younger people are dating these days, from as early as even 14 years!

The highest level of teenage dating is seen in the early years of high school (form one and two) followed by the late years of high school and finally the rate slightly reduces as one gets to university or college, this may be attributed to the increase in the priorities of the teenagers. These issues affect how one develops to maturity and to be what one is ought to be in life.

Communication between men and women. Socrates Group.

2011-02-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

Communication and gender[1]
In this group, the topic of discussion is communication between men and women.There is so much that one can discuss on this topic based on the differences between men and women as social beings that are different yet equal in dignity. There are many perspectives that we can look into this topic mostly in social ethics.

Vuma Group.

2011-02-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

In 'Vuma Group' we are discussing human sexuality. There is a great need of looking into this topic which affects all of us. The current trend in many circles proves to be against the ideals that are associated with true human sexuality. Today, Human sexuality is largely understood in very selfish means which leads to

Strakizens: Samesex unions

2011-02-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

According to our group, God created Adan and Eve (Man and Woman) and not Adam and Steve (Man and Man) and our hope is that you share with us that opinion. If on the contrary you don't agree with the idea of creation, at least you will agree with some scientists that, 'they' evolved male and female and if our former ancestors never formed heterosexual unions, we would not be there in the first place. In line with this first point, we turn to homosexual debate. Our interest in this debate among other areas, touches on a first concern of any species which is its preservation- a homosexual society will extinct itself unless it plots for raids, borrow or legally poses among other means that may be there, children from heterosexual societies for its preservation down the ages.

The Patriots: Dating, Courtship and marriage.

2011-02-10T03:33:00.000-08:00

According to our group, we have noted that there is a great need to clear the dust on matters that have to do with dating, courtship and marriage.

What and who is this blog for?

2011-02-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

This blog is created for introduction to ethics students at Strathmore University's School of accountancy. Here you will get online discussion materials for the students. Any one interested in ethics can take part in this blog. Though the main idea behind this blog is to help student to use the various social media in the internet for learning. There are discussion topics which are contributed by students as part of their group work, and comments on those topics. You are most welcome to post your comment on the topics that are posted. The more the comments a group gets under their topic, the more points the group gets. Under this post, you are most welcome to give your suggestion on how to make it effective.The topics of discussion from the students are posted under group one and group two pages.

click here to get to the main university's website. http://www.strathmore.edu/

2011-02-01T00:10:00.001-08:00

Evaluation of St Augustine’s significance for modern hermeneutics

2010-11-28T23:45:00.000-08:00

By. Thomas Raji
Even though hermeneutics is a modern development in philosophy, there is a lot of input from the earlier philosophers. Among the philosophers who deals with hermeneutics in such a way is Descartes. When Descartes adopted his Method of doubt, and calling for the need of a new method of doing philosophy, what he was essentially doing was a form of hermeneutics. Never the less, it is St. Augustine who has been recognized as the philosopher behind hermeneutics from the medieval times. Through his writings on the divinity and the various interpretations on scriptures were only for the purpose of knowing the doctrine better and not the development of a new school of thought or methodology, his writings has been lead by the modern philosophers such as Heidegger and Gardamar.

Huserl's Phenomenology in the light of Thomistic perspective

2010-11-28T23:10:00.000-08:00

The theory of knowledge occupies an important place while evaluating various philosophical schools that have been developed in the service of the truth.In this essay, I will discuss various points on the theory of knowledge by the Thomistic School and finally give a brief comparison between the Thomistic approach to knowledge and Husserl. The statement, ''there are but three requisites for knowledge, namely, the power of the knower by which he judges of things, the thing known, and the union of both,'' can be taken as a summary of the theory of the knowledge by St. Thomas Aquinas. For Husserl, the problem of knowledge stems from the prevailing opposing schools of idealism where consciousness is the only starting point and reference to the truth and the realism school which was more materialistic thereby doing away with the consciousness. This leaves Husserl to look for a method that comes at the middle taking the external senses information while at the same time not ignoring the consciousness. The school of thought which he came up with is known as phenomenology.

Parmenides worldview.

2010-11-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

Parmenides is known for his view of all reality as being one. Parmenides view is an exact opposite of Heraclitus who sees the world as a constant flux. For Parmenides, everything is one and hence there can be no change or motion. Parmenides sees the senses to be lying to us whenever we see things to be moving or changing. The repercussions of this world view are very great in areas to do with religion as well as in morals. The view adopted by Parmenides is referred to as monism which is the reduction of all realty into one thing. In this kind of a view, there are great repercussions in the way one views reality and in the approach to life which I will criticize in this essay.

The view of all reality as being one leads one to disregard the value of a single entity or a being. This disregard of the individual poses a problem to the hierarchy of beings in terms of the various levels of dignity that should be accorded to some. A case in point is the dignity of a human person as an individual is jeopardized in such a world view. Anything can be sacrificed for the greater good of the whole. The human person seen through this monism can be taken to be just as any other animal or plant for all are just but one thing.

The misunderstanding of the fact of there being individual things that can change may lead a society into a moral crisis. The loss of an individual acting person can lead to a loss of personal responsibility in moral acts. Without a clear understanding of the responsibility that is pegged in an individual’s human act, the morals in a society will be lost so easily. Parmenides monism can therefore lead to moral crises

Parmenides view of reality as being one, and the denial of existence of movement and change leads to pantheism which is the view of God as being in all things. Pantheism leads one to misunderstand the presence of a hierarchy in all things and reducing everything at the same level. Pantheism blurs one’s view of reality since certain evident truths such as the existence of a divine entity cannot be accepted. With this kind of a world view, one would certainly end up denying the existence of God. Man can eventually be regarded as a god of himself since God is understood to be in all things.

Parmenides world view in conclusion is one that is reduced and which fails to see reality I totality. Since Parmenides world view does not admit the presence of change and movement, it can lead to rigidity in the conception of reality. With the idea of man as a god, a conclusion that can be easily arrived at through pantheism, man can end up disregarding the existence of the moral law. Parmenides world view cannot therefore help in capturing the truth or even rectify the problem of a society that has strayed from truth, since his worldview doesn’t admit a possibility of change.

What is Platos' theory of form.

2010-11-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

Plato’ theory of form has knowledge and the process through which knowledge is acquired as main concern. The knowable is a great topic in the ancient philosophy. Plato had influence from both the Pythagoreans and the Heraclitus students but the one who had influenced him more were the Heraclitus students. The Pythagoreans taught that the senses can be used in identifying the laws or mathematical ratios that are the basics for explaining the reality hence giving attention to the senses, for Heraclitus, the material world was in a flux, a continual change that made it impossible for one to bath in the same river twice and hence regarded the senses as useless in the knowledge of the reality.

Plato theory of form or ideas stems from realization that sense experience is not a good source of knowledge, but behind the sense experience there are constant patterns that never changes which can be used in our knowing. The constant factors that never change were to be the bases for our knowledge and Plato found them in the virtues that Socrates talked about. This were to be conceived as forms without matter and all the other reality that we can conceive is only are equality of the forms that we already have from birth. This leads to the question of whether we have innate ideas or not. For Plato, we have innate ideas contrary to what St. Thomas taught that there is nothing that we have in our intellect that did not pass through our senses. The acceptance of the possibility of having innate ideas and the impossibility of our senses to know anything goes against the modern empirical sciences.

The theory of form is further explained by the three analogies of the sun, the line and the cave. There are debates as to whether all the three give one and the same truth or are different from each other. The main idea in the three analogies is the idea the presence of levels of knowledge depending on the capacity of each individual. The philosopher is the one who beholds the truth, the good, and the beauty, which were also constant are compared with the sun. The lowest level is the level at which according to analogy of the cave people are satisfied by the shadows of the reality. The need for the assent along the various levels of knowing is a positive one on the part of this theory. The only problem with the theory is that it does not offer one with the practical way of ascending to the higher levels.

Plato’s theory of form plays a significant role in the development of the history of philosophy. The attempt to reconcile though implicitly the two main schools of thought of the ancient philosophy- that is the Pythagoreans and the Heraclitus school paved way for other schools to develop without disregarding the past schools of though. The main set back on this theory, stems from the borrowing of errors from the earlier schools regarding the role of the sense experience in the entire process of our acquisition of knowledge. The acceptance of the role of the intellectual reasoning on the part of Plato is a positive one, but the disregard of the senses can have very negative effects in the education of any society. Recognition of the various levels of knowledge and knowing is a great idea which the current society should focus on and research on ways of improving our process of knowing reality. On the other hand, sense experience must be included in the entire theory of knowledge at its proper place while paying attention to other forms of knowing.

Moral lessons from The PLato's Apology

2010-11-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

When reading the Apology, one can discern a lot of moral lessons from that account about Socrates last words during his trial up to death. The Apology is one of the most faithful accounts containing the teachings of Socrates from Plato. Elsewhere, Plato is accused of putting words in the mouth of his teacher Socrates who never wrote anything. Apology is written in dialogue form, dialogues between Socrates and people in the court, and in his cell after he was condemned. To give a brief background on the plot of The Apology, it starts with a brief description by Socrates of the accusations advanced against him by his adversaries some of whom were in that court and others who were not there but never stopped to spread calumny against him. He will defend himself later and at the end comment on the death sentence that will be imposed on him. There are great moral lessons for us from the whole account which i will endeavor to comment on in this essay.

One of the things we learn from Socrates is the need to have a transcendental motivating power in the process of getting to the truth. The sophist who were also philosophers of this days were in most cases motivated by the mare fact that they were paid from the consultations and teaching they did to people who were willing to pay them. On the contrary, Socrates had received his calling to do what he was doing from the gods. Delphi is the god who had said to one of Socrates friends that Socrates was the wisest person in the world, and this led Socrates to move about finding out whether there was anyone wiser than him. The reason for searching for the truth must be greater for one to keep on the track of truth. In cases where the motivation is money as the Sophist were, or mere fame or a political post, one may easily abandon the search of truth for other alternatives as the ones Socrates was accorded to go for an exile and stop his method of questioning and exhibiting peoples ignorance.

The need for the philosopher to be prepared for death and all forms of opposition is also very important. This helps the philosopher to be always prepared as his task of acting as a gadfly to the society will not always be taken well by the people. As Socrates proved in his own trial and work, whenever a prevailing way of life which against the truth is confronted by the corrections of a wise people, there is always opposition and any possibility of exterminating the gadfly is employed. If fear or lack of fortitude is lacking on the part of the part of the philosopher, chances of being compromised are very high.

The Apology teaches us that when one takes the pat of the truth should be prepared to go to the end. The Socratic Method employed in the Apology is one which those who start the inquiry to the truth are meant to go as far as the truth takes them. One may be compromised by other factors which to Socrates can be explained from the sensual aspects and search for pleasure but the philosopher needs to be ready to fall his call irrespective of the pains to be faced in life. This is well lived by Socrates when he opts to be killed by his own people rather than compromise his course by moving away from his people or stopping his search for the truth.

In conclusion, it is clear from The Apology, that any search for the truth requires the lover of the wisdom to be equipped with the four cardinal virtues; prudence to make the right decisions and to keep on the right track of truth without being swayed by pleasure or pain; fortitude to help one to get the courage to face the adversaries and any opposition that will surely come from the people who might be offended by the truth; temperance to assist the lover of wisdom from being carried away by the sensuality and have the control of his sensitive appetites; and last justice to give what is due to all starting with God who has called one to follow the path of the truth. No philosopher or a teacher of moral lessons of any kind can be exempted from a virtuous life, this is a great lesson that the contemporary philosophers should borrow from The Apology.

Life Style and Psychiatry From a Philosophical perspective

2010-09-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

By. Thomas Raji. (Philosophical Anthropologist)
The way we live our lives affects so much our psychiatry. There are certain lifestyles that serves as a stimuli to stress and hence to psychiatric imbalances, while there are those lifestyles that reduces stress and thereby preventing chances of depression. There are two main types of living that have been proposed by psychiatrists; the Egocentric living and the Transitive living. The egocentric living makes the ego or the I to be the main and central focus in all activities. The main dynamic is the WANTING. An egocentric person will always be wanting everything to him/herself including other people, properties, ideas and so on. This leads to the loss of freedom, development of the sense of the feeling of a victim, unforgiving altitude, envy and a lack of commitment to anything outside the self including the idea of God. The transitive living on the other hand is open through love. the main dynamic in it is A LOVE RELATION. The Ego or the I is open to other people, to values, to ideas and other things outside the self.

To relate the two main types of living with the psychological development, it is necessary to explain three levels of human life that should be understood as unity nevertheless. The Corporeal or natural level which has the material aspect of man. All the biological characteristics of man falls under this level; examples would be our five external senses, the emotions, sentiments and other chemical and physical reactions of the body. The second level of human person is the essential level.This level is immaterial and has as its main faculties the intellect and the will. The main activities in this level are the thinking and willing. The last and highest level is the personal level which makes unique as persons since no one is like the other. Through the personal knowledge of each of the individuals, one can only discover who he or she is. Not even the parent of a child can get to the personal knowledge of their infant. Persona knowledge, though it is there from conception, a child begins to be discovered personal knowledge at the adolescent age, a time when each child realizes that they are unique and have a personal vocation. The personal love can also be explained from the personal love. Again this makes each individual person unique. At this personal level, the lifestyle of contributes a great deal in the psychological wellbeing of the person more that the essential level and the natural level.

The correlation between the various level of human person and the lifestyle will form the next part of this paper. To start with the natural level, one can realize that the egocentric person will be concerned only on the body and other biological, chemical and physical attributes of the body wanting them for the self at the expense of anything else. Egocentric person will always have as the sole role mission of life, in seeking for the pleasurable things that can work for the body alone. Most egocentric living people at the natural level tend to fall into psychiatric disorders such as anorexia, Bulimia, body mutilation, reduction of the body to a sexual object and so on. The transitive living person at the natural level also very close to the egocentric, since as much as they are open to people, values, ideas and so on, they tend to lack the right qualities to deal with persons as persons reducing them to material things hence most often than not, their good acts to others are never received well or end up harming others at the long run. The transitive living at the natural level, can be manifested in people who tend to pull people into peer pressure in the pursuit of pleasure and never assists their friends in any other way pertaining to higher values related to intellectual or spiritual lives. This kind of situation can be very depressing especially when the corporal goods shared are detrimental to the moral life of those engaged, it can lead to depression as result of drug abuse, crime, amorous behaviors and so on.

The essential level Psychiatric problems of an egocentric living affects the intellect which has as its object the truth and the will which has as its object the good. The in this case will be self defined truth and so no outside opinion will be accepted. The good that will be pursued will also be reduced to the feeling of the self. The psychiatric problem at this level are a bit more entrenched than those at the natural level. The people dealing with this problem should not only deal with the biological level of the person, but also focus on the intellect of the person for the cure, mare drug use will not solve the problem. The egocentric living person at the essential level can include people who get psychiatric problems due to lack of understanding of the people living with, which might be caused by pride to a greater extent. The transitive living person who is at the essential level, tends to be open to the opinions of other people but fails to get to the level of identifying the objective truth. This can lead to a relativistic life, where any opinion is okay so long as one feels like holding them. This also soon or later takes one to a psychiatrist. When confronting hard and objective questions of life such as terminal illness, death and so on. This person tends to fall into a depression when the principles that they hold are unable to hold water any more. People dealing with a person at the essential level transitive living psychiatric problem needs apart from providing antidepressants to focus on talking with them and impart to them with clear explanations the right ideas.

The last level which will conclude this article, is the personal level.Egocentric living at the personal level is in itself a contradiction. This means that one has a knowledge of the transcendental values of the person, yet is not open to them. The personal level of the human person as we mentioned earlier is one of openness to personal love which is in every person, personal knowledge and other transcendental values that makes every person a unique and irreplaceable individual who is open to other persons. Transitive living at the personal level therefore seems as the highest and the best form of human life that is worth living and is open to all that is good, from the corporal level to personal level through the essential level. Though even those who live this form of life face psychiatric problems, the rates are not as high as those that are experienced by any lower level. The fall back position of a transitive living person at the personal level, is much broader since it is open to the idea of the spiritual and the mystery. Without the mystery and an appreciation of its existence, without even the idea of pleasing it which will yield even more benefits to the person, a transcendental meaning to any hard thing that come by in life. To sum up, I would suggest to everyone to look deep in their lives, since unreflected life is not worth living, and see at what level human person they are in and the type of living they live to know their possible psychiatric problems.

What is the point of keeping our ethinic identity?

2010-09-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

A PERSPECTIVE ON ETHNICITY

BY.Raji.
The relevance of ethnicity and the role it plays in the social, political and economic praxis among the different tribes in Kenya constitutes the focus of the discussion that follows. The social-cultural fabric of the Kenyan society is one of unity in diversity which in the recent past has been jeopardized by ethnic differences and atrocities among the ethnic groups. Much resurgence of various ethnic and cultural demands by minority peoples and of social movement based on diverse demands has been equally rampant, all along the ethnic lines. A lot of mistakes in the national development, administration, leadership and governance cannot be attributed only to technical, economic or management weaknesses and shortcomings alone, but are more attributable to the ethnic complexities intertwined in them. Unfortunately, there has been little (if any) effort by the elites to look intently on the question of ethnicity and analyze its relevance or come up with a clear policy on ethnicity.

What was Plato's Theory of Forms

2010-09-24T01:11:00.000-07:00

Plato’s theory of forms or theory of ideas.

By. Thomas Raji.

Plato’s theory of forms or theory of ideas developed at a time when the Athenian society had two main schools of thought that had opposing theories on knowledge. These were; (1) the Pythagorean school, which aimed at the contemplative intuition of the mathematical patterns which underlie the whole order of experienced universe by means of rigorous program of physical, mental and spiritual catharsis; and (2) the Heraclitus school, which regarded the data provided by the senses to be unreliable and put them aside in favor of the conclusions attained by a process of abstract intellectual thought. Plato was influenced by a follower of the Heraclitus, called Cratylus, who convinced him that all sensible objects are in a continual flux and so they can only be perceived but cannot be known. Plato therefore looked for non-sensible objects that his teacher Socrates was concerned to define and to defend such as the good, the just, the beautiful etc. in the conviction that real knowledge is possible, as against the prevailing skepticism of his time.

Socrates had a theory of ideas in the Phaedo though it was not systematically developed and left many questions unanswered. This theory was picked up by Plato to the point of developing a full- brown theory of forms or ideas. The term idea in this theory means the great controlling patterns that lie behind the changing face of the visible world and has nothing in common with the English ‘idea’. The ideas or form is what a thing is or its essence and what we perceive is only a mimic of the form. For Plato, the essence of education consists in turning people’s minds from images to realities, the world of forms or ideas. Plato intends the ideas to ground the theory of recollection on firm metaphysical and epistemological foundations.

To illustrate the theory of forms, Plato uses three images of the sun, the divided line and the cave. The cave is an allegory of people chained in a cave facing the inner wall with a fire behind them forming images of themselves on the wall. Only one of them manages to turn round and walk out of the cave to the light of the sun where he sees reality. Upon coming back, the men facing the wall couldn’t believe him. This is now where Plato argues for a world of real forms or ideas unknown to many since their senses are deceptive and only presents to them mimics of reality. Plato understood the soul to be the true self and our bodies as a hindrance to the soul’s full actualization of the capacity for pure intellectual thought. Such pure intellectual thought can attain to the knowledge of ideas something that in our embodied state we cannot reach especially when entangled in pleasure and pain.

What is the contribution of Pythagoras in Western thought?

2010-09-24T01:08:00.000-07:00

The contributions of the Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans to the western thought.

By Thomas Raji. 

                  The Pythagoreans were a school which was founded in the second half of the sixth century by Pythagoras and were distinguished from the other Greek schools of that time due to their religious and ascetic character. The Pythagoreans originated from Croton in Southern Italy with a character which was more of a religious sect than that of philosophers. Pythagoreans had a way of life that had a strict observance of religious rituals and a couple of other taboos such as dietary restrictions all of which arose from the teachings of Pythagoras. Since Pythagoras never wrote anything and majority of what is known about him came from his followers as well as other philosophers who came after him, it is usually hard to identify his exact teachings. Pythagoreans are also known of keeping to themselves the teachings of Pythagoras among themselves in secrecy. This makes the examination of the real contributions of the Pythagoreans to the Western thought a bit hard to achieve though there are many reliable sources on what he might have taught. 

             The major teachings of Pythagoras are; firstly, the soul is immutable; secondly the soul transmigrates to other kinds of animals after death; thirdly after a certain interval of time, the things that happen once, happens once again so that nothing is completely new; and that all animate things belongs to the same family. Pythagoras was also renowned for his knowledge of the fate of the soul after death- that is reincarnation or metempsychosis. This knowledge called for a way of life that is meant to ensure the best possible features of reincarnation. It is from these teachings that the Pythagoreans led a life of purification where for one join them, had to undergo a silence of five years which were to be followed by many other observances along life. This makes Pythagoras look more a figure of religious and ethical sphere more than what is attributed to him by many as a figure of mathematics and cosmology. 

                                Mathematics occupied a great place in the lifestyle of the Pythagoreans. Numbers were identified as the basic elements of all reality and that everything else could be explained in terms of numbers which later would be divided into categories. This was a milestone in philosophy where at the first time some basic element of all reality was thought to be outside the material realm such as air, water, wind, fire and such as had been proposed earlier. This mathematical model was used to explain the whole reality by the Pythagoreans. Among the areas they explained in details are; music, color, soul, cosmos among others a task that made Pythagoreans to be credited as being the pioneers of the idea of natural laws that exists in all reality. Pythagoreans endeavored to discover these laws mathematically. 

              Pythagoras is generally credited for the invention of the diatonic scale, the Pythagoras theorem, and progression of elements according to harmonic ratios, the idea of the music of spheres, the nature and fate of the soul, while Pythagoreans are credited to be among the first philosophers though as mentioned at the beginning; there is a long standing debate as to whether all the things attributed to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans in general are really theirs. 

Versity with a differnce

2010-08-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Strathmore University is currently the best private University in Kenya. I am expecting it to lank very high in the coming years especially after it gets the new infrastructure in its phase three in Mandaraka Estate operational. Over and above this, the quality of education that is offered to students plays a major role in it's performance among the other universities. Philosophy which is the love of wisdom is taught to all students through various practical courses such as Ethics, Critical thinking, Social and political philosophy, World civilizations among others. The environment at the university is also very conducive for both academic and professional courses students. The high held code of conduct of the students and staff enables every one in the university to freely use any facility without any discrimination on the level of education one has. This is well seen in the cafeterias of University wher
http://www.strathmore.edu/

INTERNET EFFECTS ON GENERATION Y.

2010-08-13T00:04:00.000-07:00

Electronic media is proving to be one of the great resource for educators, preachers, politicians and other people dealing with generation Y. What is generation Y? This term generation Y is a social-cultural phenomenon that is creating great interest to a lot of cultural anthropologist. Just to clarify things, generation Y denotes those people who were born from 1980s to 1990s though you will never lack few who were born in the 70s claiming to belong to that generation. Among the reasons which may make someone to be attracted to this generation is its titles such as Millennials or Echo Boomers and their adaptation to the new technologies that are being invented by the day. Majority of human beings are currently in this generation while they are in the universities, high schools as well as the current young professionals.

I am currently teaching this generation at Strathmore University and luckily I am in the same generation. Well I don't allow them to surf through their phones during class but I penalize those who don't surf out side class. Majority of their work has to be done in the University's E-learning site where reading resources ranging from notes, power point presentations, quizzes, pod casts, links to web sites, assignments, discussion forums, personal and group journals, chat facility, among others are posted and availed to students. This makes it easy for me to monitor my students learning process while I assist them from any point of the world I might be. According to their feedback through the same E- learning site, they would like me to give them what they need to read before class and later come to process it in class. Among methods of processing it is through presentation of what they have discussed which helps them to acquire other skills they will need most of public speaking, team work, group leadership which they grade their own group leaders and so on. I have seen students who in their first month of out interaction sits at the back or the front sit without talking to anyone transformed into great personalities who can raise and defend their own stand due to the learning environments they get at this classes.

Though this kind of working is really demanding n the teacher at the beginning, as time goes I have come to realize that with time one has a lot of materials and method of dealing with generation Y to such an extent that you will never wonder what you can do with them. Some one commented that if you are good in computers you can manipulate the young generation the way you want. Well, this is true to some extent, but what really maters is human qualities you have which they don't have. They have access to the best lectures, sermons, speeches, music performance and so on, but they will dread an opportunity to meet those performance doing what they call live performance. Now, the danger is here, if you think you will act for them in a whole semester, Sunday for a preacher or five years for a politician you are extremely wrong. They need some one who can inspire them to believe that they can make it and give them an opportunity to practice it themselves. I usually sit at the back of my classes when they are presenting and tell the presenters that they are the teachers. This compels them to learn more materials that I would have tough through a lecture only. For sure lectures are important, but when majority of the lecture is turned to not taking, which could have been posted for them in the internet for them I think the whole point is watered down.

Though generation Y is yet to get to politics, I am expecting serious changes in the political process of the years to come. If the current politicians don't learn the trick of dealing with generation Y, they will never appeal to them. This also applies to religious leaders. One of the simplest trick I can reveal through my cultural anthropology to over come such a problem is to get the members of this generation in your systems. If you remain with the octogenarians who don't see this point you will die with them. Let me leak some more points on how to overcome this demise of an institution, allow this social media, use of internet facilities like emails, websites like you tube, social net-working sites like face-book, my space and Twitter. Allow also some form of peer oriented work groups and to avoid them loosing the institutions values, make sure you put in their midst a 'cultural architect' who can really push the group to stick to the goals and mission of that group. Let them feel that they are inspired and they can make it. It doesn't matter if they start competing so long as you offer a personalized attention to each other- not only the weak because they will be punishing those who are doing good. More on how to deal with generation Y you will have to pay or another cultural anthropologist...but don't run into this mess i will explain to you here below.

I met an old friend whom I shared a room with at University of Nairobi in my second year. He got a job in a place that I won't mention that almost everyone who graduated with us wanted to go. This lucky generation Y told me that in their place of work their boss has denied then to surf any social communication website like face-book, you tube and so on. To remedy that deadly behavior they have resulted to their 3G and 4G phones to access this sites. He told me that he never buys news papers since he can read all the contents in the papers in the net and even access the news papers of other countries. He is also planning to do an online Masters degree in Philosophy and Ethics from Strathmore University which requires him for only two weeks in class per semester and the rest will be online. He feels that if their CEO does not change this policy of curtailing their freedom of communication he will have to quit that job. Most generation Y bandies of his has already exited the place due to such octogenarian policies. My hope is that after reading this points you will send me a comment on what you think about this.

Regards

Thomas

traji@strathmore.edu

THE HUMAN PERSON.

2010-08-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

THE HUMAN PERSON.
BY, THOMAS RAJI
ETHICS INSTRUCTOR AT SOA
STRATHMORE UNIVERSITY.

The human person denotes one of the most important concepts in the field of philosophy and especially ethics. For there to be an authentic ethics we need to have an authentic anthropology- study of man. The proper understanding of the human person will in a large way influence our moral reasoning. There are numerous examples that can demonstrate an erroneous moral reasoning, theories and even paradigms that stems from erroneous and dangerous anthropological theories that reduce man into an object or like any other non living object. This leads one to treat man as just one economic object, social unit, and biological entity among other forms of reductionism that are there.

The quest for a proper understanding of who is man will therefore occupy an important place in our search for a morality that is universal and that can answer to the problems of our society today.looking at certain models that has been in use for a long time among most societies and corporate organizations there is a clear sign that crop up from time to time touching on the

Understanding the human person.
The human person is made up of visible and invisible components. The visible ones form the material part of the human being while the invisible ones forms the immaterial or the spiritual aspects of man. We are calling them spiritual since they are not limited by any material aspect. They therefore have a capacity that is way far beyond any material capacity. This is why we are going to see that the human person has an infinite capacity to certain things which are the objects of those respective faculties under the spiritual realm.

Under the material aspect of the human person, we have the body (Soma). This is the material realities that we can see, touch, hear, smell, taste or even smell with our five external senses. The body is very important in our understanding of the human person especially while studies the material object of ethics which is the human acts. Certain human acts which are known as acts of man fall under the realm of the body alone. This includes those activities that are conducted by various body systems in an involuntary manner. They include; digestion which is done by the digestive system; breathing, which is done by the breathing system, excretion and other systems. This acts done by these body systems occurs automatically without any conscious effort. This means that though they are acts that take place in man, and so they are acts of man in that sense, rightly put they lack the freedom which is necessary for an act to qualify under the realm of morality. They are therefore acts of man without any prior knowledge needed, awareness while doing them or even commitment on the side of the doer. Under the material aspect of man we can thus see the acts of man. We also have the emotions under this area, hormones and appetites. most of this are found in certain animals and though they are developed in a unique way in the human person.

The intellect
Under the immaterial things we have all the things that are unseen. This will include the intellect and the will as well as other habits and faculties in man which one cannot really touch but which in reality exist. Every man from childhood has this craving for knowledge. This can explain why we always want to know and hence curiosity becomes an aspect that all people have though they control it in different ways. In the intellect we have activities such as reasoning, remembering, imagining and so on. The object of the intellect is the truth. By truth we mean the conformity between what exists and what is in our mind. when we know something we process it in our intellect, and when what we perceive and later retained is exactly as it is in reality we can say that we have truth of that reality. The intellect of every person is always looking for truth or knowledge in many areas of inquiry. One of the areas that man seeks this truth is understanding him or herself. We keep on discovering new things in ourselves, and we feel very happy. This clearly illustrates why truth is the object of the intellect.

Now for us to satisfy our craving for truth we have to look for it, just as the stomach needs food or the lungs needs air. Truth- conformity of what is in our mind with what is in reality is thus sought in many areas for human fulfillment. Every human person does this by trying to discover who they are which is the beginning of wisdom according to many philosophers. Just as a one litter bottle needs a one litter of liquid to fill it, the intellect needs an equal capacity of truth that conforms to its capacity. The nature of the intellect is spiritual and hence it is not limited by the material factors. This makes it to have an unlimited capacity. The human intellect has an infinite capacity for the truth. this makes us to seek knowledge in all times and feel feel satisfied with what we have known. The ultimate end of man's intellect is the possession of the infinite truth which will satisfy all the craving for truth. The infinite truth possessed must also lack any form of falsity for it to fully satisfy us. That is why as we shall see the intellect has habits and principles that guides it to trek on the right track. We shall come back to the intellect later while linking it with the will.

The will
The will is the next faculty that falls in the spiritual or the immaterial part of the human person. The human person as we said has both material and immaterial aspects which are normally explained as the body and the soul. The will is faculty that is responsible for our desiring. Every human person is inclined to any thing that is good. The good is therefore the object of the will. We tend towards what we perceive to be good. The intellect is the one that presents it to the person and the will desires and hence we are moved towards the desired good. The intellect then chooses means of acquiring that good based on the reality. The truth and the good coincides again here. Looking at the will, we realize that every human person is always inclined to many things that one deems to be good. As illustrated earlier the satisfaction of any faculty is derived from the possession of its corresponding object. The object of the will can only satisfy it fully if it can fill one to the maximum capacity. Since the will is spiritual, and hence it is not limited by the material realities, it has an infinite capacity for the good. The human person cannot be satisfied by any temporal good. After possessing one good, the craving for the next crops up. The means for acquiring this good that has been identified by the human person also matters a lot in Ethics. It is therefore very important to look at the goods before we look at the direct relationship between the will and the intellect.

Types of goods.
The term good has no any universally accepted definition. For Aristotle the good and being are identical; good is not something added to being, it is being. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06636b.htm
There are many ways of understanding the various types of goods. below is one understanding which is contained in the Catholic Encyclopedia;

corporeal good is whatever contributes to the perfection of the purely animal nature;
spiritual good is that which perfects the spiritual faculty-knowledge, truth;
useful good is that which is desired merely as a means to something else; the delectable or pleasurable good is any good regarded merely in the light of the pleasure it produces.

There are still many ways of explaining the different types of goods which the will desires. They can also be grouped as being either; natural goods, which includes the desired things that comes from the nature of something; technical goodness, this denotes the acquired qualities in any person in terms of skills; the moral goodness, which includes the virtues that are acquired by man.

The human acts.
Human acts are acts that are done willingly and with full knowledge as well as awareness of the person doing those acts. They are contrasted with the acts of man, which are acts that are automatically

Human happiness

Happiness is the ultimate end of every man. For every voluntary act that man carries out, the final end is usually happiness. Even among those who do harm on themselves to the point of committing suicide, they in a way do that with an aim of getting some sort of happiness or avoiding suffering. The intellect and the will plays a vital role in this process....

The Need for Good Leadership among youths

2010-08-05T01:43:00.000-07:00

Ethical Leadership and governance paper.
BY THOMAS RAJI.
ETHICS INSTRUCTOR
SCHOOL OF ACCOUNTANCY
STRATHMORE UNIVERSITY

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

— Max DePree.

In the recent past there has been great debates on what leadership entails and the characteristics of good leadership and good governance. This growing need for the proper understanding of leadership stems from unethical acts done by leaders, lack of leadership skills among the current local as well as international leaders and the fact that leaders affect in a very direct way the lives of their followers. Good leadership has been linked with social and economic development while poor leadership has been directly linked with human suffering especially the abject poverty in the third world which form the first Millennium Development Goal. Ethical or good leadership in all sectors of society highly determines the progress of that area. There are so many social evils carried out in the health sectors, political sectors, financial sector, economic sectors, environmental sector to mention but a few, all of which are directly linked to leadership. Even the performance of organizations has been noted to have a direct link with the type of leadership that is exercised there. This has led this topic on leadership and governance to occupy the minds of many scholars who are concerned at bringing solutions to the various problems faced by the human societies.

Statements like leaders are born and not nurtured has raised fundamental debates regarding the way people approach leaders and the leadership process in general. Teaching leadership skills and good governance strategies has met a lot of criticism from many circles. For a proper understanding of these concepts, there is a great need for an understanding of an authentic anthropology that seeks to understand leadership from a humanistic point of view. With this anthropology one is able to to see the problems of a mechanistic leadership that does not fit the human person and retrace the steps that has been lost for a long time in both leadership and governance topics.

The object of this paper is to explain what leadership and governance entails from a technical, philosophical and behavioral perspectives. The technical part entails a great deal of findings that has been obtained through various forms of inquiry which has produced leadership tools for training leaders. All of this are developed from various theories developed in the last one century most of which will be briefly explained. Brief explanation on major theories on governance and leadership will be touched on with an aim of forming a clear background on the known information on the two concepts before we embark on the unknown which is the most ideal way of doing any research.

Leadership studies are a relatively new form of inquiry that has unfortunately been received with a lot of criticism and skepticism. What needs to be taught is also disputed as various people have different views on what is important for any leader. This has made those who teach leadership courses to always put an adjective before the term leadership and hence come up with terms such as business leadership, political leadership, corporate leadership, and so on. All this is aimed at shielding themselves from attacks coming without their areas of specialization and especially from people who research exclusively on the topic. It is therefore very hard to even come up with a clear definition as well as the characteristics of a leader.Though one may look into what every form of leadership has in common with the other forms of leadership, it is still a problem to come up with common grounds especially where there are directly opposite positions. An example of such positions are like; leaders are born and leaders are developed. It is therefore important for us to look into a common definition of ethics and a close look into various approached that leadership is looked at.

Leadership defined
The word leader first appeared in English language in 1300s.It comes from the the term leden which means to travel or show the way.The term leader has for the last one century seen a lot of interest to the point of being devoted an academic discipline. Leadership has become one of the most studied concepts in behavioral sciences and philosophy. There are many writings on leadership from early Greek philosophers trying to see the root of leadership. From Plato’s Republic to Plutarch's Lives early philosophers have for long explored the question of "What qualities distinguish an individual as a leader?" to Aristotle on the need for practical wisdom for leaders Up to date there is neither a universally accepted definition of the term leadership nor any universally accepted view of the roots of leadership, a task that this paper aims at achieving in a brief way.

Various approaches and theories in leadership.
According to (Northouse:2007) leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Leadership is seen by many social scientists entailing the influence an individual has over other people. If one leaves leadership defined only on the bases of influencing people, there are other things that are left hanging such as the ideas of good leadership verses bad leadership, leadership and rationality, leadership and traits and so on. There have been many schools of thought on this area among them; trait approach; skills approach; style approach; situational approach; psycho dynamic approach; feminist approaches; ethicist approaches and so on. On top of these are other theories that are related to leadership that in most cases override on the approaches, among them are contingency theory, path goal theory, and leader member exchange theory among others.

Trait approach
Approaches in leadership entails the way various people look at leadership and what they think is the most important points of consideration in leadership. Researchers in leadership studies identify traits which are believed to be essential for leadership. This is a times done by looking at the most common traits in leaders or the most important ones. The trait approach deals with behaviors of the leader and virtues which are permanent dispositions that are acquired by an individual through the practice of good human acts. In his description if leadership as a trait (Northouse 2007) asserts that the traits that appear to be especially important for effective leadership are intelligence, confidence, charisma, determination, sociability and integrity. Leadership is virtue in action (Alexandre 2007). He states that there is need for leadership to be based on an authentic anthropology; Harvard continues to list number of classical virtues that are necessary for effective leadership. The two main virtues for leadership are magnanimity and humility which are supported by the four cardinal virtues; Prudence, Fortitude, temperance and justice. This is way of looking at leadership or an approach which is not exclusive from many other approaches though not all.
Leadership is also approached as skill that one can acquire through training.

Skills approach
According to (Northouse 2007) there are three main skills approaches which include technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills. He says that it is important for a leader to have all three skills, but depending on where they are in the management structure, some skills are more important than others. Leaders are not born but are trained (Alexandre 2007). This statement implies that leadership is an acquired status and not just achieved through birth. This brings out point held by Northouse where he classifies different forms of leadership the assigned and emergent leadership. This brings out the leaders who are naturally developed in groups and those who are imposed upon people due to certain qualities or qualifications. On the type of skills that are commonly mentioned as important in leadership are problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, public speaking skills, social judgment skills, and career experiences and so on.

While trait approach emphasizes on the behavior of the leader while the skills approach emphasizes on capabilities, style approach emphasizes on the personality of the leader. Style approach groups leadership into two categories; task behaviors and relationship behaviors(Northouse: 87 2007). The task behaviors are those leaders that only interested in the task or the goal alone while the relationship behavior includes those leaders that are concerned on other personal problems that affect the team. Northouse states that this approach arose from three different lines of research looking at the initiation of structure verses consideration by the leader; production orientation and employee orientation by the leader and; concern for results and concern for people. This approach has met a lot of criticism as being an unrefined theory thus cannot provide precise leadership behaviors.

Situational approach
Situational approach is one of the most researched approaches on leadership. The approach has gained followers and support among any researchers in the field of leadership. According to (Northouse, p. 110 2007) situational leadership is a prescriptive approach to leadership that suggests how leaders can become effective in many different organizational settings involving a wide variety of organizational tasks. Among the strengths of this theory is the fact that it agree with what Harvard has mentioned in is works that leaders are not born but trained, the theory also provides a clear prescription of how a leader should be like while recognizing various environments and circumstances that one might find him or herself. This theory is criticized for its lack of supporting data from extensive research, hence gets the accusations of being a product of an arms chair theorist a criticism that can be overcome given time and resource in research.

Contingency theory of leadership.
This theory which touches on almost all the previous approaches deals with the idea of relating a leader with a particular circumstance and the fact that the leaders qualities matches well with the situation. (Northouse, p. 113 2007)Effective leadership is contingent on matching a leader’s style to their right setting. The theory is called contingency because it suggests that a leader’s effectiveness depends on how well the leader’s style fits the context. The theory cuts across all the approaches known in leadership studies though it doesn’t affirm them, deal

Most people agree that leadership is about social influence, in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. According to Ann Marie E McSwain Assistant Professor at Lincoln University, Leadership is about capacity: the capacity of leader to listen and observe, to use their expertise as a starting point to encourage dialogue between all levels of decision making, to establish processes and transparency in decision making, to articulate their own value and visions clearly but not impose them… This is a very widely accepted definition especially based on the attributes of leadership it purports. Unfortunately it does no answer this papers question on the roots of leadership, which is very fundamental in understanding leadership both in philosophical and behavioral sciences perspective.

For a holistic understanding of leadership in its role of influencing people, there is a great need of a proper understanding of the human person. Leadership is about human beings, a pastoralist herding hundreds of cattle or a farmer who tends flowers in the biggest orchards or greenhouses cannot claim to be exercising leadership over those animals or crops unless. Leadership need to be exercised by and over rational beings. One might argue that animals in the wild especially those that live and migrate in pacts, have leaders who lead them. ‘Leadership’( in quotes,) in this animals is almost instinctive and a times based on physical features alone, unlike the human leadership which entails What is that which makes those who influence human beings leaders and not those influencing other known living things?

In the inquiry of a better understanding of the human person, it is very important to focus on the roots of fundamental aspects of the human person such as human dignity and human freedom. According to Alexander Harvard, Authentic leadership must be based on authentic anthropology, which is to say, an authentic study of man.

From the basic principles, one can formulate a viable theory that can lead to the understanding we are looking for of leadership and governance. Every human person is a unique, irreplaceable, individual substance with a soul which has intellect and will. The human intellect- the faculty that allows one to make rational decisions, have memory, imagination and other intellectual activities, is very important in leadership as well as governance. The will- that faculty that allows man to desire and to love the good, is also very much linked to our enquiry. It is universally agreed among the philosophers that the object of the intellect is the truth. In this paper, truth should be understood as the concordance of what is in one’s mind with what is there in reality. Truths should also be known to be of different categories. There are truths that deal with material realities of different kinds such as rocks, geography, plants, animals, human societies, there are others that deal with immaterial and abstract realities such as mathematics, faith in supernatural realities and so on. This understood well will form the bases the explanation of leadership and governance which this paper will propose after a brief elaboration on the idea of the human will.

The human will is the faculty that drives man into something good. Aristotle, explaining the object of Life in the Nicomachean Ethics said, “every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit, is considered to aim at some good. Hence the good has been rightly defined as that which all things aim”. The human will together with the human intellect are the roots of human freedom per excellence. All human activities can be said

To proceed with the theses proposed at the beginning of the paper it is also important to note that leadership does give rise to various ethical questions regarding the interaction process. Since leaders work to influence other individuals in bringing change, to what extent is this change ethical. What form of leadership is ethical and which is unethical? Does the leadership process lead to happiness to all, to the improvement of the truths that are sought or the good sought by the peoples involved?

LEADERSHIP is a process since it denotes the fact of there being interactions and the leader being affected as well as affecting the interaction.
Leadership involves influence since it is concerned with how a leader affects followers. Leaders and followers should be understood in relation to each other.

True leadership stems from the intellect and the will of the leader and the capacity to direct the followers to their ultimate end. Aristotle identified practical reason as the main excellence in leadership. This is the cardinal virtue of prudence, which is the charioteer of all the other virtues. This excellence as Aristotle would reffer to it- prudence, deals directly with the intellect and the will in the process of decision making. When the intellect of the reader is well acquainted with the truth which has a common good, or a common ideal, the leadership process leads to happiness of the followers and the leader. By truth here we mean the concordance of what is in the mind with what is there in reality, while reality denotes that which exists with or with out us knowing it. The truth involved in the leadership process doesn't have to arise from the leader a lone nor is it wrong for the truth to be discovered by the leader on behalf of the population. (This gives bases for the justification of the various forms of leadership that there might be. The common good that is pursued can justify even a dictatorial form of leadership as long as the ideal being sought is a good ideal that encompasses the common good and there is no any other known ideal form of leadership available in a certain situation.) When the leaders and the follower understands the truth being sought the leadership process can gain a lot of momentum, never the less, if the people who are lead for whatever reasons they are not in position to comprehend the common good that is sought and they fully trust the leader the ultimate end of every follower will still be achieved. most important thing in the intellect of the leader is the possession of the truth.

Focusing on intellect and the will while seeking a deeper understanding of the leadership process we realize that the process is one of moving followers from one truth to a greater truth and of moving from a common good to a more better common good. There are important implications that arise by stating that leadership process is moving to more and higher truth and higher good. Truth is one, many at least will agree with this great philosophical maxim, but it manifests itself in hierarchy- this not many recognise. When one realizes that there are certain levels of truth, and that not all the knowable things are equally important, one noted that te

Leadership and the will are also very closely attached. the will is that faculty in man that allows one to desire the good. the proper end of the human will is the good. Leadership process can also be said as the pursuit of the good by the people who are lead by one individual in the group. The good perfects the human will and fulfills the possessor. What leadership entails is nothing other that the pursuit of the good or the common good.when the good is desired by the followers and the leader simultaneously there arises the justification of the leadership process and the common purpose. The leaders is in turn meant to try as much as possible to embrace the good that is being sought and do all that is at his/her disposal to bring about the dispensation of the desired good.

The good and the truth are two very important and related aspects in leadership process as mentioned earlier. The leadership process is aiming at the fulfillment of all who are involved in it.

A community of wills can only exist on the basis of a community of minds-knowing-and hearts- loving- the same common good.

Bibliography.

Alexandre, Harvard. 2007. Virtuous leadershipAn agenda for personal excellence.

Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership :theory and practice /. Sage Publications,

Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership :theory and practice /. Sage Publications,

MORALS IN OUR SOCIETY

2010-08-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

Without Ethics our society will not survive this century. Ethics stands out to be one of the basic human needs that we cannot do without. Just think of the fact that we need to replace our species down the generation through birth and taking care of our children. Without Ethics, even this outright responsibility and a necessary duty for every generation of any species will be very hard for us. With abortions, to give an example we will not be able to replace out society and hence perpetuate our generation.

The importance of ethics in our society today is becoming more and more important especially if we consider the presence of many problems locking our society today. The need for ethics in any human society arises in the need for survival as well as the need for happiness which is embodied in the very human nature. the idea of the survival can be arrived at rationally in many ways while looking in the reality of the human development and growth.

Compared with other animals, we human beings take very long to mature and left on our own we cannot reach maturity. Lets look at giraffes' example , with in one day a giraffe born this morning can be in a position to survive by the end of the day as well as feed roughly any food that the mature giraffe can survive on. this unlike what we observe in human beings shows that the species might survive through the generations even in situations where there are no mature giraffes to take care of the young ones.

On the other hand if we look at the human beings we realize that a human child to survive in any society independent of the adults be it parents or not, they are very fragile to be left on their own. The biological dictates not forgetting the social as well as the intellectual need to be looked into requires the adults to take care of their children or the entire species will disappear from the world. this can in a way explain the need for ethics at the normative level though on other hand we might run into the problem of reducing ethics through the argument that animals need ethics at some level for their survival.

To explain why ethics in exclusively for human beings and not any other animal, we need a clear understanding of the nature of the human person. the human person is endowed with the intellect which makes one to be not only aware of what one is doing but also have a chance to decide whether to do it or not. in this situation we need a clearer understanding of what falls under the realm of moral judgment.

for an act to fall under the realm of moral judgment it must at least be willed and chosen by the doer. This leads to the responsibility of the doer of any action.