Buddhist ethics on environment protection.

Objective:To evaluate the effect of an intervention on the understanding and use of DNR orders by physicians; to assess the impact of understanding the importance of involving competent patients in DNR decisions.Design:Prospective clinical interventional study.Setting:Internal medicine department (70 beds) of the hospital of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.Participants:Nine junior physicians in postgraduate training.Intervention:Information on the ethics of DNR and implementation of new DNR orders.Measurements and main results:Accurate understanding, interpretation, and use of DNR orders, especially with respect to the patients’ involvement in the (...) decision were measured. Junior doctors writing DNR orders had an extremely poor understanding of what DNR orders mean. The correct understanding of the definition of a DNR order increased from 31 to 93% (p<0.01) after the intervention and the patients’ involvement went from 17% to 48% (p<0.01). Physicians estimated that 75% of their DNR patients were mentally competent at the time of the decision.Conclusion:An intervention aimed at explaining the ethical principles and the definition of DNR orders improves understanding of them, and their implementation, as well as patient participation. Specific efforts are needed to increase the involvement of mentally competent patients in the decision. (shrink)

Critical study of of the addresses of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938 from philosophical and religious point of view.

إنّ الإنسان يستطيع أن يتجرّد من كلّ شيء إلا من نفسه التي هي عماد شخصيته وأساس ذاته، وإذا كانت الحقائق الكونية والمعارف المتنوعة تصل إلينا بالوساطة، فهناك حقيقة واحدة ندركها إدراكًا مباشرًا، ولا نشكّ فيها لحظة؛ لأن عملها دائمًا يشهد بوجودها، ألا وهي النفس، فالتفكير هو الدليل القاطع على وجود النفس. فَجُلّ اهتمام ابن سينا كان إثبات حقيقة مغايرة للجسم ومتميّزة عنه كلّ التميز، ولكي يثبت وجود هذه الحقيقة اعتمد على بعض الظواهر التي لا يمكن تفسيرها تفسيرًا ماديًّا، ورأى أنها (...) تستلزم قوة كامنة ومبدأ خفيًا هو النفس. يجيب هذا الكتاب عن الأسئلة الآتية، كما هي في فلسفة ابن سينا المنتشرة في كتبه الفلسفية: ما حقيقة الإنسان؟ وما الغاية من وجوده؟ ما تصوُّر ابن سينا للنفس؟ من أين جاءت النفس؟ وما علاقتها بالبدن؟ وما مصيرها بعد موت الإنسان؟ ما علاقة الإنسان بالله، والكون، والآخر في المجتمع؟ ما مسؤولية الإنسان؟ وما حدود هذه المسؤولية؟ كيف يُحقّق الإنسانُ سعادته؟. (shrink)

The restoration of "forgotten" names to the bosom of our culture is a natural and necessary accompaniment of the political freedom beginning to make its way in our country. Free and continuous creativity is being reunited with the reader, the listener, and the participant, who had been tragically alienated from it. Our half-knowledge, intellectual arbitrariness, and opportunism are becoming clearer, more acute, and more shameful. All this is an inevitable accompaniment of one of the most prestigious and, it would seem, (...) least labor consuming trends in contemporary publishing and journal policy. The publication of texts of Russian philosophers has marked journals as different in character and mission as Novyi mir, Voprosy filosofii, Literaturnaia ucheba, Druzhba narodov, Volga, and many others. In most cases they are more or less well known works reprinted from the YMCA Press, equipped with prefaces—some better, some worse—and devoid of any sort of real intellectual commentary. (shrink)

The John Locke Lectures for 1955-6, delivered at the University of Oxford.

WHAT do we mean by saying that a being, God for example, is omniscient? One way of answering this question is to translate ‘God is omniscient’ into some slightly more formalised language than colloquial English, e.g. one with variables of a number of different types, including variables replaceable by statements, and quantifiers binding thes.