This article does not cite any sources. (March 2012)
The information industry or information industries are industries that are information intensive in one way or the other. It is considered one of the most important economic branches for a variety of reasons.
There are many different kinds of information industries, and
many different ways to classify them. Although there is no standard or
distinctively better way of organizing those different views, the
following section offers a review of what the term "information
industry" might entail, and why. Alternative conceptualizations are that
of knowledge industry and information-related occupation. The term "information industry" is mostly identified with computer programming, system design, telecommunications, and others.
Information products
First, there are companies which produce and sell information in the form of goods or services. Media products such as television programs and movies,
published books and periodicals would constitute probably among the
most accepted part of what information goods can be. Some information is
provided not as a tangible commodity but as a service. Consulting is
among the least controversial of this kind. However, even for this
category, disagreements can occur due to the vagueness of the term
"information." For some, information is knowledge about a subject,
something one can use to improve the performance of other activities—it
does not include arts and entertainments. For others, information is
something that is mentally processed and consumed, either to improve
other activities (such as production) or for personal enjoyment; it
would include artists and architects. For yet others, information may
include anything that has to do with sensation, and therefore
information industries may include even such things as restaurant,
amusement parks, and prostitution to the extent that food, park ride,
and sexual intercourse have to do with senses. In spite of the
definitional problems, industries producing information goods and
services are called information industries.
Information services
Second, there are information processing services. Some services, such as legal services, banking, insurance, computer programming, data processing,
testing, and market research, require intensive and intellectual
processing of information. Although those services do not necessarily
provide information, they often offer expertise in making decisions on
behalf of clients. These kinds of service industries can be regarded as
an information-intensive part of various industries that is externalized
and specialized.
Information distribution
Third, there are industries that are vital to the dissemination of the information goods mentioned above. For example, telephone, broadcasting
and book retail industries do not produce much information, but their
core business is to disseminate information others produced. These
industries handle predominantly information and can be distinguished
from wholesale or retail industries in general. It is just a
coincidence, one can argue, that some of those industries are separately
existing from the more obvious information-producing industries. For
example, in the United States, as well as some other countries,
broadcasting stations produce a very limited number of programs they
broadcast. But this is not the only possible form of division of labor.
If legal, economic, cultural, and historical
circumstances were different, the broadcasters would have been the
producers of their own programs. Therefore, in order to capture the
information related activities of the economy, it might be a good idea
to include this type of industry. These industries show how much of an
economy is about information, as opposed to materials. It is useful to
differentiate production of valuable information from processing that
information in a sophisticated way, from the movement of information.
Information devices
Fourth,
there are manufacturers of information-processing devices that require
research and sophisticated decision-making. These products are vital to
information-processing activities of above mentioned industries. The
products include computers of various levels and many other
microelectronic devices, as well as software programs. Printing and
copying machines, measurement and recording devices of various kinds,
electronic or otherwise, are also in this category. The role of these
tools are to automate certain information-processing activities. The use
of some of these tools may be very simple (as in the case of some
printing), and the processing done by the tools may be very simple (as
in copying and some calculations) rather than intellectual and
sophisticated. In other words, the specialization of these industries in
an economy is neither production of information nor sophisticated
decision-making. Instead, this segment serves as an infrastructure for
those activities, making production of information and decision-making
services to be a lot more efficient. In addition, these industries tend
to be "high-tech"
or research intensive - trying to find more efficient ways to boost
efficiency of information production and sophisticated decision-making.
For example, the function of a standard calculator is quite simple and
it is easy to learn how to use it. However, manufacturing a
well-functioning standard calculator takes a lot of processes, many with
more sophisticated or specialized knowledge required, far more than the
task of calculation performed by the users.
Research industries
Fifth, there are very research-intensive
industries that do not serve as infrastructure to
information-production or sophisticated decision-making. Pharmaceutical,
food-processing, some apparel design, and some other "high-tech"
industries belong to this type. These products are not exclusively for
information production or sophisticated decision-making, although many
are helpful. Some services, such as medical examination are in this
category as well. One can say these industries involve a great deal of
sophisticated decision-making, although that part is combined with
manufacturing or "non-informational" activities.
Infrastructure
Finally, there are industries that are not research intensive, but serve as infrastructure
for information production and sophisticated decision-making.
Manufacturing of office furniture would be a good example, although it
sometimes involves research in ergonomics and development of new
materials.
As stated above, this list of candidates for information
industries is not a definitive way of organizing differences that
researchers may pay attention to when they define the term. Among the
difficulties is, for example, the position of advertising industry.
Importance
Information
industries are considered important for several reasons. Even among the
experts who think industries are important, disagreements may exist
regarding which reason to accept and which to reject.
First, information industries is a rapidly growing part of
economy. The demand for information goods and services from consumers is
increasing. In case of consumers, media including music and motion
picture, personal computers, video game-related industries, are among
the information industries. In case of businesses, information
industries include computer programming, system design, so-called FIRE
(finance, insurance, and real estate) industries, telecommunications,
and others. When demand for these industries are growing nationally or
internationally, that creates an opportunity for an urban, regional, or
national economy to grow rapidly by specializing on these sectors.
Second, information industries are considered to boost innovation
and productivity of other industries. An economy with a strong
information industry might be a more competitive one than others, other
factors being equal.
Third, some believe that the effect of the changing economic
structure (or composition of industries within an economy) is related to
the broader social change. As information becomes the central part of
our economic activities we evolve into an "information society",
with an increased role of mass media, digital technologies, and other
mediated information in our daily life, leisure activities, social life,
work, politics, education, art, and many other aspects of society.
The dialogical self is a psychologicalconcept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue,
in close connection with external dialogue. The "dialogical self" is
the central concept in the dialogical self theory (DST), as created and
developed by the Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans since the 1990s.
Overview
Dialogical
Self Theory (DST) weaves two concepts, self and dialogue, together in
such a way that a more profound understanding of the interconnection of self and society
is achieved. Usually, the concept of self refers to something
"internal," something that takes place within the mind of the individual
person,
while dialogue is typically associated with something "external," that
is, processes that take place between people involved in communication.
The composite concept "dialogical self" goes beyond the self-other dichotomy
by infusing the external to the internal and, in reverse, to introduce
the internal into the external. As functioning as a "society of mind", the self is populated by a multiplicity of "self-positions" that have the possibility to entertain dialogical relationships with each other.
In Dialogical Self Theory (DST) the self is considered as
"extended," that is, individuals and groups in the society at large are
incorporated as positions in the mini-society of the self. As a result
of this extension, the self does not only include internal positions
(e.g., I as the son of my mother, I as a teacher, I as a lover of jazz),
but also external positions (e.g., my father, my pupils, the groups to
which I belong).
Given the basic assumption of the extended self, the other is not
simply outside the self but rather an intrinsic part of it. There is
not only the actual other outside the self, but also the imagined other
who is entrenched as the other-in-the-self. An important theoretical
implication is that basic processes, like self-conflicts, self-criticism,
self-agreements, and self-consultancy, are taking place in different
domains in the self: within the internal domain (e.g., "As an enjoyer of
life I disagree with myself as an ambitious worker"); between the
internal and external (extended) domain (e.g., "I want to do this but
the voice of my mother in myself criticizes me") and within the external
domain (e.g., "The way my colleagues interact with each other has led
me to decide for another job").
As these examples show, there is not always a sharp separation
between the inside of the self and the outside world, but rather a
gradual transition.
DST assumes that the self as a society of mind is populated by internal
and external self-positions. When some positions in the self silence or
suppress other positions, monological relationships prevail. When, in
contrast, positions are recognized and accepted in their differences and
alterity (both within and between the internal and external domains of
the self), dialogical relationships emerge with the possibility to
further develop and renew the self and the other as central parts of the
society at large.
Historical background
DST is inspired by two thinkers in particular, William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, who worked in different countries (USA and Russia, respectively), in different disciplines (psychology and literary sciences), and in different theoretical traditions (pragmatism and dialogism).
As the composite term dialogical self suggests, the present theory
finds itself not exclusively in one of these traditions but explicitly
at their intersection. As a theory about the self it is inspired by
William James, as a theory about dialogue it elaborates on some insights
of Mikhail Bakhtin. The purpose of the present theory is to profit from
the insights of founding fathers like William James, George Herbert Mead and Mikhail Bakhtin and, at the same time, to go beyond them.
William James (1890) proposed a distinction between the I and the Me.
William James (1890) proposed a distinction between the I and the Me, which, according to Morris Rosenberg,
is a classic distinction in the psychology of the self. According to
James the I is equated with the self-as-knower and has three features:
continuity, distinctness, and volition. The continuity of the self-as-knower is expressed in a sense of personal identity,
that is, a sense of sameness through time. A feeling of distinctness
from others, or individuality, is also characteristic of the
self-as-knower. Finally, a sense of personal volition is reflected in
the continuous appropriation and rejection of thoughts by which the
self-as-knower manifests itself as an active processor of experience.
Of particular relevance to DST is James's view that the Me,
equated with the self-as-known, is composed of the empirical elements
considered as belonging to oneself. James was aware that there is a
gradual transition between Me and mine and concluded that
the empirical self is composed of all that the person can call his or
her own, "not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and
his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his
reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account".
According to this view, people and things in the environment belong to
the self, as far as they are felt as "mine". This means that not only
"my mother" belongs to the self but even "my enemy". In this way, James
proposed a view in which the self is 'extended' to the environment. This
proposal contrasts with a Cartesian view of the self which is based on a dualistic conception, not only between self and body
but also between self and other. With his conception of the extended
self, that defined as going beyond the skin, James has paved the way for
later theoretical developments in which other people and groups,
defined as "mine" are part of a dynamic multi-voiced self.
Mikhail Bakhtin (1920)
In the above quotation from William James, we see a constellation of
characters (or self-positions) which he sees as belonging to the Me/mine: my wife and children, my ancestors and friends. Such characters are more explicitly elaborated in Mikhail Bakhtin's
metaphor of the polyphonic novel, which became a source of inspiration
for later dialogical approaches to the self. In proposing this metaphor,
he draws on the idea that in Dostoevsky's
works there is not a single author at work—Dostoevsky himself—but
several authors or thinkers, portrayed as characters such as Ivan Karamazov, Myshkin, Raskolnikov, Stavrogin, and the Grand Inquisitor.
These characters are not presented as obedient slaves in the
service of one author-thinker, Dostoevsky, but treated as independent
thinkers, each with their own view of the world. Each hero is put
forward as the author of his own ideology, and not as the object of
Dostoevsky's finalizing artistic vision. Rather than a multiplicity of
characters within a unified world, there is a plurality of
consciousnesses located in different worlds. As in a polyphonic musical
composition, multiple voices accompany and oppose one another in
dialogical ways. In bringing together different characters in a
polyphonic construction, Dostoevsky creates a multiplicity of
perspectives, portraying characters conversing with the Devil (Ivan and the Devil), with their alter egos (Ivan and Smerdyakov), and even with caricatures of themselves (Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov).
Inspired by the original ideas of William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, Hubert Hermans, Harry Kempen and Rens van Loon
wrote the first psychological publication on the "dialogical self" in
which they conceptualized the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of
relatively autonomous I-positions in the (extended) landscape of the mind. In this conception, the I has the possibility to move from one spatial position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I
fluctuates among different and even opposed positions, and has the
capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that
dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices
function like interacting characters in a story, involved in processes
of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each of them have a
story to tell about their own experiences from their own stance. As
different voices, these characters exchange information about their
respective Me's and mines, resulting in a complex, narratively
structured self.
Construction of assessment and research procedures
Hubert Hermans wrote the first psychological publication on the "dialogical self" in 1992.
The theory has led to the construction of different assessment and research procedures for investigating central aspects of the dialogical self. Hubert Hermans has constructed the Personal Position Repertoire (PPR) method, an idiographic procedure for assessing the internal and external domains of the self in terms of an organized position repertoire.
This is done by offering the participant a list of internal and
external self-positions. The participants mark those positions that they
feel as relevant in their lives. They are allowed to add extra internal
and external positions to the list and phrase them in their own terms.
The relationship between internal and external positions is then
established by inviting the participants to fill out a matrix with the
rows representing the internal positions and the columns the external
positions. In the entries of the matrix, the participant fills in, on a
scale from 0 to 5 the extent to which an internal position is prominent
in the relation to an external position. The scores in the matrix allow
for the calculation of a number of indices, such as sum scores
representing the overall prominence of particular internal or external
positions and correlations showing the extent to which internal (or
external) positions have similar profiles. On the basis of the results
of the quantitative analysis, some positions can be selected, by the client or assessor, for closer examination.
From the selected positions the client can tell a story that
reflects the specific experiences associated with that position and,
moreover, assessor and client can explore which positions can be
considered as a dialogical response to one or more other positions. In
this way, the method combines both qualitative and quantitative
analyses.
Psychometric aspects of the PPR method
The psychometric aspects of the PPR method was refined a procedure proposed by A. Kluger, Nir, & Y. Kluger. The authors analyze clients' Personal Position Repertoires by creating a bi-plot
of the factors underlying their internal and external positions. A
bi-plot provides a clear and comprehensible visual map of the relations
between all the meaningful internal and external positions within the
self in such a way that both types of positions are simultaneously
visible. Through this procedure clusters of internal and external
positions and dominant patterns can be easily observed and analyzed.
The method allows researchers or practitioners to study the
general deep structures of the self. There are multiple bi-plots
technologies available today. The simplest approach, however, is to
perform a standard principal component analysis
(PCA). To obtain a bi-plot, a PCA is once performed on the external
positions and once on the internal positions, with the number of
components in both PCA's restricted to two. Next, a scatter of the two
PCAs is plotted on the same plane, where results of the first components
are projected to the X-axis and of the second components to Y-axis. In
this way, an overview of the organization of the internal and external
positions together is realized.
The Personality Web assessment method
Another assessment method, the Personality Web, is devised by Raggatt.
This semi-structured method starts from the assumption that the self is
populated by a number of opposing narrative voices, with each voice
having its own life story. Each voice competes with other voices for
dominance in thought and action and each is constituted by a different
set of affectively-charged attachments, to people, events, objects and
one's own body.
The assessment comprises two phases—
In the first phase, 24 attachments are elicited in four
categories: people, events, places and objects, and orientations to body
parts. In an interview, the history and meaning of each attachment is
explored.
In the second phase, participants are invited to group their attachments by strength of association into cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling is used to map the individual's web of attachments.
This method represents a combination of qualitative and quantitative procedures that provide insight in the content and organization of a multi-voiced self.
Self-Confrontation Method
Dialogical relationships are also studied with an adapted version of the Self-Confrontation Method (SCM).
Take the following example. A client, Mary, reported that she
sometimes experienced herself as a witch, eager to murder her husband,
particularly when he was drunk. She did a self-investigation in two
parts, one from her ordinary position as Mary and another from the
position of the witch. Then, she told from each of the positions a story
about her past, present, and future. These stories were summarized in
the form of a number of sentences. It appeared that Mary formulated
sentences that were much more acceptable from a societal point of view
than those from the witch. Mary formulated sentences like "I want to try
to see what my mother gives me: there's only one of me" or "For the
first time in my life, I'm engaged in making a home ("home" is also
coming at home, entering into myself)", whereas the witch produced
statements like "With my bland, pussycat qualities I have vulnerable
things in hand, from which I derive power at a later moment (somebody
tells me things that I can use so that I get what I want)" or "I enjoy
when I have broken him [husband]: from a power position entering the
battlefield."
It was found that the sentences of the two positions were very
different in content, style, and affective meaning. Moreover, the
relationship between Mary and the witch seemed to be more monological
than dialogical, that is, either the one or the other was in control of
the self and the situation and there was not no exchange between them.
After the investigation, Mary received a therapeutic supervision during
which she started to keep a diary in which she learned to make fine
discriminations between her own experiences as Mary and those of the
witch. She became not only aware of the needs of the witch but learned
also to give an adequate response as soon as she noticed that the energy
of the witch was upcoming. In a second investigation, one year later,
the intensely conflicting relationship between Mary and the witch was
significantly reduced and, as a result, there was less tension and
stress in the self. She reported that in some situations, she even could
make good use of the energy of the witch (e.g., when applying for a
job). Whereas in some situations she was in control of the witch, in
other situations she could even cooperate with her. The changes that
took place between investigation 1 and investigation 2 suggested that
the initial monological relationship between the two positions changed
clearly into a more dialogical direction.
The Initial Questionnaire method
Under the supervision of the Polish psychologist Piotr Oleś, a group of researchers constructed a questionnaire method, called the Initial Questionnaire, for the measurement of three types of "internal activity" (a) change of perspective, (b) internal monologue and (c) internal dialogue. The purpose of this questionnaire is to induce the subject's self-reflection and determine which I-positions are reflected by the participant's interlocutors and which of them give new and different points of view to the person.
The method includes a list of potential positions. The
participants are invited to choose some of them and can add their own to
the list. The selected positions, both internal and external ones, are
then assessed as belonging to the dialogue, monologue of perspective
categories. Such a questionnaire is well-suited for the investigation of
correlations with other questionnaires.
For example, correlating the Initial Questionnaire with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory
(NEO PI-R), the researchers found that persons having inner dialogues
scored significantly lower on Assertiveness and higher on
Self-Consciousness, Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings and Openness than
people having internal monologues. They concluded that "people entering
into imaginary dialogues in comparison with ones having mainly
monologues are characterized by a more vivid and creative imagination
(Fantasy), a deep appreciation of art and beauty (Aesthetics) and
receptivity to inner feelings and emotions (Feelings). They are curious
about both inner and outer worlds and their lives are experientially
richer. They are willing to entertain novel ideas and unconventional
values and they experience positive as well as negative emotions more
keenly (Openness). At the same time these persons are more disturbed by
awkward social situations, uncomfortable around others, sensitive to
ridicule, and prone to feelings of inferiority (Self-Consciousness),
they prefer to stay in the background and let others do the talking
(Assertiveness)".
Other methods
Other methods are developed in fields related to DST. Based on Stiles' assimilation model,
"Osatuke et al.", describes a method that enables the researcher to
compare what is said by a client (verbal content) and how it is said
(speech sounds).
With this method the authors are able to assess to what extent the
vocal manifestations (how it is said) of different internal voices of
the same client parallel, contradict or complement their written
manifestations (what is said). This method can be used to study the
non-verbal characteristics of different voices in the self in connection
with verbal content.
Dialogical sequence analysis
On the basis of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of utterances, Leiman devised a dialogical sequence analysis.
This method starts from the assumption that every utterance has an
addressee. The central question is: To whom is the person speaking?
Usually, we think of one listener as the immediately observable
addressee. However, the addressee is rather a multiplicity of others, a
complex web of invisible others, whose presence can be traced in the
content, flow and expressive elements of the utterance (e.g., I'm
directly addressing you but while speaking I'm protesting to a third
person who is invisibly present in the conversation). When there are
more than one addressees present in the conversation, the utterance
positions the author/speaker into more (metaphorical) locations.
Usually, these locations form sequences, that can be examined and made
explicit when one listens carefully not only to the content but also the
expressive elements in the conversation. Leiman's method, which
analyzes a conversation in terms of "chains of dialogical patterns", is
theory-guided, qualitative and sensitive to the verbal and the
non-verbal aspects of utterances.
Fields of application
It is not the main purpose of the presented theory to formulate testable hypotheses, but to generate new ideas. It is certainly possible to perform theory-guided research on the basis of the theory, as exemplified by a special issue on dialogical self research in the Journal of Constructivist Psychology
(2008) and in other publications (further on in the present section).
Yet, the primary purpose is the generation of new ideas that lead to
continued theory, research, and practice on the basis of links between
the central concepts of the theory.
Theoretical advances, empirical research, and practical applications are discussed in the International Journal for Dialogical Science and at the biennial International Conferences on the Dialogical Self as they are held in different countries and continents: Nijmegen, Netherlands (2000), Ghent, Belgium (2002), Warsaw, Poland (2004), Braga, Portugal (2006), Cambridge, United Kingdom (2008), Athens, Greece (2010), Athens, Georgia, United States (2012), and The Hague, Netherlands
(2014).The aim of the journal and the conferences is to transcend the
boundaries of (sub)disciplines, countries, and continents and create
fertile interfaces where theorists, researchers and practitioners meet
in order to engage in innovative dialogue.
Fields of applications are also reflected by several special issues that appeared in psychological journals. In Culture & Psychology (2001), DST, as a theory of personal and cultural positioning, was exposed and commented on by researchers from different cultures. In Theory & Psychology (2002),
the potential contribution of the theory for a variety of fields was
discussed: developmental psychology, personality psychology,
psychotherapy, psychopathology, brain sciences, cultural psychology,
Jungian psychoanalysis, and semiotic dialogism. A second issue of this journal published in 2010 was also devoted to DST. In the Journal of Constructivist Psychology
(2003) researchers and practitioners focused on the implications of the
dialogical self for personal construct psychology, on the philosophy of Martin Buber, on the rewriting of narratives
in psychotherapy, and on a psycho-dramatic approach in psychotherapy.
The topic of mediated dialogue in a global and digital age was at the
heart of a special issue in Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research (2004). In Counselling Psychology Quarterly (2006),
the dialogical self was applied to a variety of topics, such as, the
relationship between adult attachment and working models of emotion, paranoid personality disorder, narrative impoverishment in schizophrenia, and the significance of social power in psychotherapy. In the Journal of Constructivist Psychology (2008) and in Studia Psychologica
(2008), groups of researchers addressed the question of how empirical
research can be performed on the basis of DST. The relevance of the
dialogical self to developmental psychology was discussed in a special
issue of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (2012). The application of the dialogical self in educational settings was presented in a special issue of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology (2013).
Evaluation
Since its first inception in 1992, DST is discussed and evaluated, particularly at the biennial International Conferences on the Dialogical Self and in the International Journal for Dialogical Science.
Some of the main positive evaluations and main criticisms are
summarized here. On the positive side, many researchers appreciate the
breadth and the integrative character of the theory. As the above review
of applications demonstrates, there is a broad range of fields in
psychology and other disciplines in which the theory has received
interests from thinkers, researchers and practitioners. The breadth of
interest is also reflected by the range of scientific journals that have devoted special issues to the theory and its implications.
The theory has the potential to bring together scientists and
practitioners from a variety of countries, continents and cultures. The Fifth International Conference on the Dialogical Self
in Cambridge, United Kingdom attracted 300 participants from 43
countries. The conference focused primarily on DST, and dialogism as a
related field. However, by focusing on dialogue, dialogical self goes
beyond the post-modernism
idea of the decentralization of the self and the notion of
fragmentation. Recent work by John Rowan has resulted in the publication
of a book by him entitled - 'Personification: Using the Dialogical Self
in Psychotherapy and Counselling' published by Routledge. The book
shows how to apply the concepts by those working in the therapeutic
field.
Criticism
The theory and its applications have also received several criticism.
Many researchers have noted a discrepancy between theory and research.
Certainly, more than most post-modernist approaches, the theory has
instigated a variety of empirical studies and some of its main tenets
are confirmed in experimental social-psychological research. Yet, the gap between theory and research still exists.
Closely related to this gap, there is the lack of connection
between dialogical self research and mainstream psychology. Although the
theory and its applications have been published in mainstream journals
like Psychological Bulletin and the American Psychologist, it has not yet led to the adoption of the theory as a significant development in mainstream (American) psychology.
Apart from the theory-research gap, one of the additional reasons for
the lacking connection with mainstream research may be the fact that
interest in the notion of dialogue, central in the history of philosophy since Plato, is largely neglected in psychology and other social sciences.
Another disadvantage of the theory is that it lacks a research
procedure that is sufficiently common to allow for the exchange of
research data among investigators. Although different research tools
have been developed (see the above review of assessment and research
methods), none of them are used by a majority of researchers in the
field.
Investigators often use different research tools which lead to a
considerable richness of information but, at the same time, create a
stumbling block for the comparison of research data. It seems that the
breadth of the theory and the richness of its applications have a
shadowy side in the relative isolation of research in the DST subfields.
Other researchers find the scientific work done thus far to be of a too
verbal nature. While the theory explicitly acknowledges the importance
of pre-linguistic, non-linguistic forms of dialogue,
the actual research is typically taking place on the verbal level with
the simultaneous neglect of the non-verbal level (for a notable
exception cultural-anthropological research on shape-shifting).
Finally, some researchers would like to see more emphasis on the bodily
aspects of dialogue. Up till now the theory has focused almost
exclusively on the transcendence of the self-other dualism, as typical
of the modern model of the self. More work should be done on the
embodied nature of the dialogical self (for the role of the body in
connection with emotions).
The term dialogue stems from the Greek διάλογος (dialogos, conversation); its roots are διά (dia: through) and λόγος (logos:
speech, reason). The first extant author who uses the term is Plato, in
whose works it is closely associated with the art of dialectic. Latin took over the word as dialogus.
In the West, Plato (c. 427 BC – c. 348 BC) has commonly been credited with the systematic use of dialogue as an independent literary form. Ancient sources indicate, however, that the Platonic dialogue had its foundations in the mime, which the Sicilian poets Sophron and Epicharmus had cultivated half a century earlier.
These works, admired and imitated by Plato, have not survived and we
have only the vaguest idea of how they may have been performed. The Mimes of Herodas, which were found in a papyrus in 1891, give some idea of their character.
Plato further simplified the form and reduced it to pure argumentative conversation, while leaving intact the amusing element of character-drawing. By about 400 BC he had perfected the Socratic dialogue. All his extant writings, except the Apology and Epistles, use this form.
Following Plato, the dialogue became a major literary genre in
antiquity, and several important works both in Latin and in Greek were
written. Soon after Plato, Xenophon wrote his own Symposium; also, Aristotle is said to have written several philosophical dialogues in Plato's style (of which only fragments survive). In the 2nd century CE, Christian apologistJustin Martyr wrote the Dialogue with Trypho,
which was a discourse between Justin representing Christianity and
Trypho representing Judaism. Another Christian apologetic dialogue from
the time was the Octavius, between the Christian Octavius and pagan Caecilius.
Japan
In
the East, in 13th century Japan, dialogue was used in important
philosophical works. In the 1200s, Nichiren Daishonin wrote some of his
important writings in dialogue form, describing a meeting between two
characters in order to present his argument and theory, such as in
"Conversation between a Sage and an Unenlightened Man" (The Writings of
Nichiren Daishonin 1: pp. 99–140, dated around 1256), and "On
Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land" (Ibid.,
pp. 6–30; dated 1260), while in other writings he used a question and
answer format, without the narrative scenario, such as in "Questions and
Answers about Embracing the Lotus Sutra" (Ibid., pp. 55–67, possibly
from 1263). The sage or person answering the questions was understood as
the author.
Modern period
Two French writers of eminence borrowed the title of Lucian's most famous collection; both Fontenelle (1683) and Fénelon (1712) prepared Dialogues des morts ("Dialogues of the Dead"). Contemporaneously, in 1688, the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche published his Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion,
thus contributing to the genre's revival in philosophic circles. In
English non-dramatic literature the dialogue did not see extensive use
until Berkeley employed it, in 1713, for his treatise, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. His contemporary, the Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. A prominent 19th-century example of literary dialogue was Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1821–1828).
In Germany, Wieland adopted this form for several important satirical works published between 1780 and 1799. In Spanish literature, the Dialogues of Valdés (1528) and those on Painting (1633) by Vincenzo Carducci are celebrated. Italian writers of collections of dialogues, following Plato's example, include Torquato Tasso (1586), Galileo (1632), Galiani (1770), Leopardi (1825), and a host of others.
In the 19th century, the French returned to the original application of dialogue. The inventions of "Gyp", of Henri Lavedan, and of others, which tell a mundane anecdote
wittily and maliciously in conversation, would probably present a close
analogy to the lost mimes of the early Sicilian poets. English writers
including Anstey Guthrie
also adopted the form, but these dialogues seem to have found less of a
popular following among the English than their counterparts written by
French authors.
The Platonic dialogue,
as a distinct genre which features Socrates as a speaker and one or
more interlocutors discussing some philosophical question, experienced
something of a rebirth in the 20th century. Authors who have recently
employed it include George Santayana, in his eminent Dialogues in Limbo (1926, 2nd ed. 1948; this work also includes such historical figures as Alcibiades, Aristippus, Avicenna, Democritus, and Dionysius the Younger as speakers). Also Edith Stein and Iris Murdoch used the dialogue form. Stein imagined a dialogue between Edmund Husserl (phenomenologist) and Thomas Aquinas (metaphysical realist). Murdoch included not only Socrates and Alcibiades as interlocutors in her work Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986), but featured a young Plato himself as well. More recently Timothy Williamson wrote Tetralogue, a philosophical exchange on a train between four people with radically different epistemological views.
In the 20th century, philosophical treatments of dialogue emerged from thinkers including Mikhail Bakhtin, Paulo Freire, Martin Buber, and David Bohm. Although diverging in many details, these thinkers have proposed a holistic concept of dialogue. Educators such as Freire and Ramón Flecha have also developed a body of theory and techniques for using egalitarian dialogue as a pedagogical tool.
David Bohm, a leading 20th-century thinker on dialogue
Martin Buber assigns dialogue a pivotal position in his theology. His most influential work is titled I and Thou.
Buber cherishes and promotes dialogue not as some purposive attempt to
reach conclusions or express mere points of view, but as the very
prerequisite of authentic relationship between man and man, and between
man and God. Buber's thought centres on "true dialogue", which is characterised by openness, honesty, and mutual commitment.
The Second Vatican Council
placed a major emphasis on dialogue with the World. Most of the
council's documents involve some kind of dialogue : dialogue with other
religions (Nostra aetate), dialogue with other Christians (Unitatis Redintegratio), dialogue with modern society (Gaudium et spes) and dialogue with political authorities (Dignitatis Humanae). However, in the English translations of these texts, "dialogue" was used to translate two Latin words with distinct meanings, colloquium ("discussion") and dialogus ("dialogue"). The choice of terminology appears to have been strongly influenced by Buber's thought.
The physicistDavid Bohm
originated a related form of dialogue where a group of people talk
together in order to explore their assumptions of thinking, meaning,
communication, and social effects. This group consists of ten to thirty
people who meet for a few hours regularly or a few continuous days. In a
Bohm dialogue, dialoguers agree to leave behind debate tactics that attempt to convince and, instead, talk from their own experience on subjects that are improvised on the spot.
In his influential works, Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin provided an extralinguistic methodology for analysing the nature and meaning of dialogue:
Dialogic relations have a specific nature: they can be reduced neither to the purely logical (even if dialectical) nor to the purely linguistic (compositional-syntactic) They are possible only between complete utterances of various speaking subjects... Where there is no word and no language,
there can be no dialogic relations; they cannot exist among objects or
logical quantities (concepts, judgments, and so forth). Dialogic
relations presuppose a language, but they do not reside within the
system of language. They are impossible among elements of a language.
The Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire,
known for developing popular education, advanced dialogue as a type of
pedagogy. Freire held that dialogued communication allowed students and
teachers to learn from one another in an environment characterised by
respect and equality. A great advocate for oppressed peoples, Freire was
concerned with praxis—action that is informed and linked to people's
values. Dialogued pedagogy was not only about deepening understanding;
it was also about making positive changes in the world: to make it
better.
Dialogue is used as a practice in a variety of settings, from education to business. Influential theorists of dialogal education include Paulo Freire and Ramon Flecha.
In the United States, an early form of dialogic learning emerged in the Great Books
movement of the early to mid-20th century, which emphasised egalitarian
dialogues in small classes as a way of understanding the foundational
texts of the Western canon. Institutions that continue to follow a version of this model include the Great Books Foundation, Shimer College in Chicago, and St. John's College in Annapolis and Santa Fe.
Egalitarian dialogue is a concept in dialogic learning.
It may be defined as a dialogue in which contributions are considered
according to the validity of their reasoning, instead of according to
the status or position of power of those who make them.
Structured dialogue
Structured
dialogue represents a class of dialogue practices developed as a means
of orienting the dialogic discourse toward problem understanding and consensual
action. Whereas most traditional dialogue practices are unstructured or
semi-structured, such conversational modes have been observed as
insufficient for the coordination of multiple perspectives in a problem
area. A disciplined form of dialogue, where participants agree to follow
a dialogue framework or a facilitator, enables groups to address complex shared problems.
Aleco Christakis (who created structured dialogue design) and John N. Warfield (who created science of generic design) were two of the leading developers of this school of dialogue.
The rationale for engaging structured dialogue follows the observation
that a rigorous bottom-up democratic form of dialogue must be structured
to ensure that a sufficient variety of stakeholders represents the
problem system of concern, and that their voices and contributions are
equally balanced in the dialogic process.
Structured dialogue is employed for complex problems including peacemaking (e.g., Civil Society Dialogue project in Cyprus) and indigenous community development., as well as government and social policy formulation.
In one deployment, structured dialogue is (according to a
European Union definition) "a means of mutual communication between
governments and administrations including EU institutions
and young people. The aim is to get young people's contribution towards
the formulation of policies relevant to young peoples lives." The application of structured dialogue requires one to differentiate the meanings of discussion and deliberation.
Groups such as Worldwide Marriage Encounter and Retrouvaille use
dialogue as a communication tool for married couples. Both groups teach a
dialogue method that helps couples learn more about each other in
non-threatening postures, which helps to foster growth in the married
relationship.
Dialogical leadership
The German philosopher and classicist Karl-Martin Dietz emphasises the original meaning of dialogue (from Greek dia-logos,
i.e. 'two words'), which goes back to Heraclitus: "The logos [...]
answers to the question of the world as a whole and how everything in it
is connected. Logos is the one principle at work, that gives order to
the manifold in the world." For Dietz, dialogue means "a kind of thinking, acting and speaking, which the logos "passes through""
Therefore, talking to each other is merely one part of "dialogue".
Acting dialogically means directing someone's attention to another one
and to reality at the same time.
Against this background and together with Thomas Kracht, Karl-Martin Dietz developed what he termed "dialogical leadership" as a form of organisational management. In several German enterprises and organisations it replaced the traditional human resource management, e.g. in the German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt.
Separately, and earlier to Thomas Kracht and Karl-Martin Dietz,
Rens van Loon published multiple works on the concept of dialogical
leadership, starting with a chapter in the 2003 book The Organization as Story.
Moral dialogues
Moral
dialogues are social processes which allow societies or communities to
form new shared moral understandings. Moral dialogues have the capacity
to modify the moral positions of a sufficient number of people to
generate widespread approval for actions and policies that previously
had little support or were considered morally inappropriate by many.
Communitarian philosopher Amitai Etzioni has developed an analytical
framework which—modelling historical examples—outlines the reoccurring
components of moral dialogues. Elements of moral dialogues include:
establishing a moral baseline; sociological dialogue starters which
initiate the process of developing new shared moral understandings; the
linking of multiple groups' discussions in the form of "megalogues";
distinguishing the distinct attributes of the moral dialogue (apart from
rational deliberations or culture wars); dramatisation to call
widespread attention to the issue at hand; and, closure through the
establishment of a new shared moral understanding.
Moral dialogues allow people of a given community to determine what is
morally acceptable to a majority of people within the community.
The Ethical movement (also the Ethical Culture movement, Ethical Humanism, and Ethical Culture) is an ethical, educational, and religious movement established in 1877 by the academic Felix Adler (1851–1933). In an effort to develop humanist
codes of behavior, the Ethical movement emerged from the moral
traditions of the secular societies of Europe and the secular society of
the 19th-century United States. In practice, the Ethical movement
organized themselves as two types of organization: (i) a secular humanist movement and (ii) a predominantly moral movement with a religious approach.
Internationally, Ethical Culture and secular humanist
organizations organized jointly; the American Ethical Union and the
British Ethical Union were the founders of Humanists International,
whose original name, the "International Humanist and Ethical Union",
reflected the philosophical unity of the Ethical Culture movement. The
premise of Ethical Culture is that honoring and living in accordance
with a code of ethics is required to live a meaningful life and for
making the world a better place for all people.
In the early nineteenth century, the chapel became known as "a radical gathering-place". At that point, it was a Unitarian chapel; like Quakers, the Unitarian movement supported female equality. Under the leadership of Reverend William Johnson Fox (who became minister of the congregation in 1817), it lent its pulpit to activists such as Anna Wheeler, one of the first women to campaign for feminism
at public meetings in England, who spoke in 1829 on the "Rights of
Women." In later decades, the chapel moved away from Unitarianism and
changed its name first to the South Place Religious Society. It again
changed its name to the South Place Ethical Society (a name it held
formally, but it was better known as Conway Hall from 1929); its current
name is Conway Hall Ethical Society.
Its objective was "The cultivation of a perfect character in each
and all." They wanted to transform society by setting an example of
clean simplified living for others to follow. Davidson was a major
proponent of a structured philosophy about religion, ethics, and social reform.
At a meeting on 16 November 1883, a summary of the society's goals was drawn up by Maurice Adams:
We, recognizing the evils and
wrongs that must beset men so long as our social life is based upon
selfishness, rivalry, and ignorance, and desiring above all things to
supplant it by a life based upon unselfishness, love, and wisdom, unite,
for the purpose of realizing the higher life among ourselves, and of
inducing and enabling others to do the same.
And we now form ourselves into a Society, to be called the Guild
[Fellowship] of the New Life, to carry out this purpose.
Although the Fellowship was a short-lived organization, it spawned the Fabian Society, which split in 1884 from the Fellowship of the New Life.
In his youth, Felix Adler was being trained to be a rabbi like his father, Samuel Adler, the rabbi of the Reform JewishTemple Emanu-El in New York. As part of his education, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, where he was influenced by neo-Kantian
philosophy. He was especially drawn to the Kantian ideas that one could
not prove the existence or non-existence of deities or immortality and
that morality could be established independently of theology.
During this time he was also exposed to the moral problems caused by the exploitation
of women and labor. These experiences laid the intellectual groundwork
for the Ethical movement. Upon his return from Germany, in 1873, he
shared his ethical vision with his father's congregation in the form of a
sermon. Due to the negative reaction he elicited it became his first
and last sermon as a rabbi in training. Instead he took up a professorship at Cornell University and in 1876 gave a follow-up sermon that led to the 1877 founding of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, which was the first of its kind. By 1886, similar societies had sprouted up in Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis.
These societies all adopted the same statement of principles:
The belief that morality is independent of theology;
The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern
industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the
world's religions;
The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies
The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.
In effect, the movement responded to the religious crisis of the time
by replacing theology with unadulterated morality. It aimed to
"disentangle moral ideas from religious doctrines, metaphysical systems, and ethical theories, and to make them an independent force in personal life and social relations." Adler was also particularly critical of the religious emphasis on creed, believing it to be the source of sectarianbigotry.
He therefore attempted to provide a universal fellowship devoid of
ritual and ceremony, for those who would otherwise be divided by creeds.
For the same reasons the movement also adopted a neutral position on
religious beliefs, advocating neither atheism nor theism, agnosticism nor deism.
Ethical Culture School (red) and Ethical Culture Society (white) buildings.
The Adlerian emphasis on "deed not creed" translated into several
public service projects. The year after it was founded, the New York
society started a kindergarten, a district nursing service and a
tenement-house building company. Later they opened the Ethical Culture School,
then called the "Workingman's School," a Sunday school and a summer
home for children, and other Ethical societies soon followed suit with
similar projects. Unlike the philanthropic efforts of the established
religious institutions of the time, the Ethical societies did not
attempt to proselytize those they helped. In fact, they rarely
attempted to convert anyone. New members had to be sponsored by
existing members, and women were not allowed to join at all until 1893.
They also resisted formalization, though nevertheless slowly adopted
certain traditional practices, like Sunday meetings and life cycle
ceremonies, yet did so in a modern humanistic context. In 1893, the
four existing societies unified under the umbrella organization, the American Ethical Union (AEU).
After some initial success the movement stagnated until after World War II.
In 1946 efforts were made to revitalize and societies were created in
New Jersey and Washington D.C., along with the inauguration of the Encampment for Citizenship.
By 1968 there were thirty societies with a total national membership of
over 5,500. However, the resuscitated movement differed from its
predecessor in a few ways. The newer groups were being created in
suburban locales and often to provide alternative Sunday schools for children, with adult activities as an afterthought.
There was also a greater focus on organization and bureaucracy,
along with an inward turn emphasizing the needs of the group members
over the more general social issues that had originally concerned Adler.
The result was a transformation of American ethical societies into
something much more akin to small Christian congregations in which the minister's most pressing concern is to tend to his or her flock.[17]
In the 21st century, the movement attempted to revitalize itself
through social media and involvement with other Humanist organizations,
with mixed success. As of 2014, there were fewer than 10,000 official
members of the Ethical movement.
In 1885, the ten-year-old American Ethical Culture movement helped to
stimulate similar social activity in Great Britain, when American
sociologist John Graham Brooks distributed pamphlets by Chicago ethical society leader William Salter to a group of British philosophers, including Bernard Bosanquet, John Henry Muirhead, and John Stuart MacKenzie.
One of Felix Adler's colleagues, Stanton Coit,
visited them in London to discuss the "aims and principles" of their
American counterparts. In 1886 the first British ethical society was
founded. Coit took over the leadership of South Place for a few years.
Ethical societies flourished in Britain. By 1896 the four London
societies formed the Union of Ethical Societies, and between 1905 and
1910 there were over fifty societies in Great Britain, seventeen of
which were affiliated with the Union. Part of this rapid growth was due
to Coit, who left his role as leader of South Place in 1892 after being
denied the power and authority he was vying for.
Because he was firmly entrenched in British ethicism, Coit
remained in London and formed the West London Ethical Society, which was
almost completely under his control. Coit worked quickly to shape the
West London society not only around Ethical Culture but also the
trappings of religious practice, renaming the society in 1914 to the
Ethical Church; he did this because he subscribed to a personal theory
of using "theological terms in a humanistic sense" in order to make the
Ethical movement appealing to irreligious people with otherwise strong
cultural attachments to religion, such as cultural Christians.
Coit transformed his meetings into "services", and their space into
something akin to a church. In a series of books Coit also began to
argue for the transformation of the Anglican Church
into an Ethical Church, while holding up the virtue of ethical ritual.
He felt that the Anglican Church was in the unique position to harness
the natural moral impulse that stemmed from society itself, as long as
the Church replaced theology
with science, abandoned supernatural beliefs, expanded its bible to
include a cross-cultural selection of ethical literature and
reinterpreted its creeds and liturgy in light of modern ethics and psychology.
His attempt to reform the Anglican church failed, and ten years after
his death in 1944, the Ethical Church building was sold to the Roman Catholic Church.
During Stanton Coit's lifetime, the Ethical Church never
officially affiliated with the Union of Ethical Societies, nor did South
Place. In 1920 the Union of Ethical Societies changed its name to the
Ethical Union. Harold Blackham,
who had taken over leadership of the London Ethical Church, consciously
sought to remove the church-like trappings of the Ethical movement, and
advocated a simple creed of humanism that was not akin to a religion.
He promoted the merger of the Ethical Union with the Rationalist Press Association
and the South Place Ethical Society, and, in 1957, a Humanist Council
was set up to explore amalgamation. Although issues over charitable
status prevented a full amalgamation, the Ethical Union under Blackham
changed its name in 1967 to become the British Humanist Association
– establishing humanism as the principle organizing force for
non-religious morals and secularist advocacy in Britain. The BHA was the
legal successor body to the Union of Ethical Societies.
Between 1886 and 1927, seventy-four ethical societies were
started in Great Britain, although this rapid growth did not last long.
The numbers declined steadily throughout the 1920s and early 30s, until
there were only ten societies left in 1934. By 1954, there were only
four. The situation became such that, in 1971, sociologist Colin
Campbell even suggested that one could say, "that when the South Place
Ethical Society discussed changing its name to the South Place Humanist
society in 1969, the English Ethical movement ceased to exist."
The organizations spawned by the 19th century Ethical movement
would later live on as the British humanist movement. The South Place
Ethical Society eventually changed its name Conway Hall Ethical Society,
after Moncure D. Conway, and is typically known as simply "Conway Hall". In 2017, the British Humanist Association again changed its name, becoming Humanists UK. Both organizations are part of Humanists International, which had been founded by Harold Blackham in 1952 as the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
While Ethical Culturists generally share common beliefs about what constitutes ethical behavior and the good,
individuals are encouraged to develop their own personal understanding
of these ideas. This does not mean that Ethical Culturists condone moral relativism,
which would relegate ethics to mere preferences or social conventions.
Ethical principles are viewed as being related to deep truths about the
way the world works, and hence not arbitrary. However, it is recognized
that complexities render the understanding of ethical nuances subject to
continued dialogue, exploration, and learning.
While the founder of Ethical Culture, Felix Adler, was a transcendentalist,
Ethical Culturists may have a variety of understandings as to the
theoretical origins of ethics. Key to the founding of Ethical Culture
was the observation that too often disputes over religious or
philosophical doctrines have distracted people from actually living ethically and doing good. Consequently, "Deed before creed" has long been a motto of the movement.
Organizational model
Pews and stained glass
Functionally, the Ethical Societies are organized in a similar manner to churches or synagogues and are headed by "leaders" as clergy.
Their founders had suspected this would be a successful model for
spreading secular morality. As a result, an Ethical Society typically
would have Sunday morning meetings, offer moral instruction for children
and teens, and do charitable work and social action. They may offer a
variety of educational and other programs. They conduct weddings, commitment ceremonies, baby namings, and memorial services.
Individual Ethical Society members may or may not believe in a deity
or regard Ethical Culture as their religion. Felix Adler said "Ethical
Culture is religious to those who are religiously minded, and merely
ethical to those who are not so minded." The movement does consider
itself a religion in the sense that
Religion is that set of beliefs
and/or institutions, behaviors and emotions which bind human beings to
something beyond their individual selves and foster in its adherents a
sense of humility and gratitude that, in turn, sets the tone of one’s
world-view and requires certain behavioral dispositions relative to that
which transcends personal interests.
The Ethical Culture 2003 ethical identity statement states:
It is a chief belief of Ethical
religion that if we relate to others in a way that brings out their
best, we will at the same time elicit the best in ourselves. By the
"best" in each person, we refer to his or her unique talents and
abilities that affirm and nurture life. We use the term "spirit" to
refer to a person’s unique personality and to the love, hope, and
empathy that exists in human beings. When we act to elicit the best in
others, we encourage the growing edge of their ethical development,
their perhaps as-yet untapped but inexhaustible worth.
Since around 1950, the Ethical Culture movement has been increasingly identified as part of the modern Humanist movement. Specifically, in 1952, the American Ethical Union, the national umbrella organization for Ethical Culture societies in the United States, became one of the founding member organizations of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
In the United Kingdom, the ethical societies consciously rejected
the "church model" in the mid-20th century, while still providing
services like weddings, funerals, and namings on a secular basis.
Key ideas
While Ethical Culture does not regard its founder's views as necessarily the final word, Adler identified focal ideas that remain important within Ethical Culture. These ideas include:
Human Worth and Uniqueness – All people are taken to have
inherent worth, not dependent on the value of what they do. They are
deserving of respect and dignity, and their unique gifts are to be
encouraged and celebrated.
Eliciting the Best – "Always act so as to Elicit the best in others, and thereby yourself" is as close as Ethical Culture comes to having a Golden Rule.
Inter-relatedness – Adler used the term The Ethical Manifold
to refer to his conception of the universe as made up of myriad unique
and indispensable moral agents (individual human beings), each of whom
has an inestimable influence on all the others. In other words, we are
all interrelated, with each person playing a role in the whole and the
whole affecting each person. Our Inter-relatedness is at the heart of
ethics.
Many Ethical Societies prominently display a sign that says "The Place Where People Meet to Seek the Highest is Holy Ground".
Locations
New York City metropolitan area
The largest concentration of Ethical Societies is in the New York metropolitan area, including Societies in New York, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester and Nassau County; and New Jersey, such as Bergen and Essex Counties, New Jersey.
Ethical Societies also exist outside the U.S.: Conway Hall in London is home to the South Place Ethical Society, which was founded in 1787.
Structure and events
Ethical
societies are typically led by "Leaders". Leaders are trained and
certified (the equivalent of ordination) by the American Ethical Union.
Societies engage Leaders, in much the same way that Protestant
congregations "call" a minister. Not all Ethical societies have a
professional Leader. (In typical usage, the Ethical movement uses upper
case to distinguish certified professional Leaders from other leaders.)
A board of executives handles day-to-day affairs, and committees of
members focus on specific activities and involvements of the society.
Ethical societies usually hold weekly meetings on Sundays, with
the main event of each meeting being the "Platform", which involves a
half-hour speech by the Leader of the Ethical Society, a member of the
society or by guests. Sunday school for minors is also held at most ethical societies concurrent with the Platform.
The American Ethical Union holds an annual AEU Assembly bringing together Ethical societies from across the US.
Legal challenges
The
tax status of Ethical Societies as religious organizations has been
upheld in court cases in Washington, D.C. (1957), and in Austin, Texas
(2003). In challenge to a denial of tax-exempt status, the Texas State Appeals Court
decided that "the Comptroller's test was unconstitutionally
underinclusive and that the Ethical Society should have qualified for
the requested tax exemptions... Because the Comptroller's test fails to
include the whole range of belief systems that may, in our diverse and
pluralistic society, merit the First Amendment's protection..."
Advocates
British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald
was a strong supporter of the British Ethical movement, having been a
Christian earlier in his life. He was a member of the Ethical Church and
the Union of Ethical Societies (now Humanists UK), a regular attender at South Place Ethical Society.
During his time involved with the Ethical movement, he chaired the
annual meeting of the Ethical Union on multiple occasions and wrote for Stanton Coit's Ethical World journal.
The British critic and mountaineer Leslie Stephen
was a prominent supporter of Ethical Culture in the UK, serving
multiple terms as President of the West London Ethical Society, and was
involved in the creation of the Union of Ethical Societies.
Albert Einstein
was a supporter of Ethical Culture. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of
the New York Society for Ethical Culture, in 1951, he noted that the
idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most
valuable and enduring in religious idealism. Humanity requires such a
belief to survive, Einstein argued. He observed, "Without 'ethical
culture' there is no salvation for humanity."
First LadyEleanor Roosevelt
was a regular attendee at the New York Society for Ethical Culture at a
time when humanism was beginning to coalesce in its modern-day form,
and it was there that she developed friendships with the leading
humanists and Ethical Culturists of her day. She collaborated with Al
Black, Ethical Society leader, in the creation of her nationwide
Encampment of Citizenship. She maintained her involvement with the
movement as figures on both sides of the Atlantic began to advocate for
organizing under the banner of secular humanism. She provided a cover endorsement for the first edition of Humanism as the Next Step (1954) by Lloyd and Mary Morain, saying simply that it was "A significant book."
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