We discuss the variety of sorts of sympathy Hume recognizes, the extent to which he thinks our sympathy with others’ feelings depends on inferences from the other’s expression, and from her perceived situation, and consider also whether he later changed his views about the nature and role of sympathy, in particular its role in morals.

Annette Baier's aim is to make sense of David Hume's Treatise as a whole. Hume's family motto, which appears on his bookplate, was True to the End. Baier argues that it is not until the end of the Treatise that we get his full story about truth and falsehood, reason and folly. By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work. Baier finds Hume's Treatise of Human Nature to be a carefully (...) crafted literary and philosophical work which itself displays a philosophical progress of sentiments. His starting place is an overly abstract intellectualism that deliberately thrusts passions and social concerns into the background. In the three interrelated books of the Treatise, his self-understander proceeds through partial successes and dramatic failures to emerge with new-found optimism, expecting that the exact knowledge the morally self-conscious anatomist of human nature can acquire will itself improve and correct our vision of morality. Baier describes how, by turning philosophy toward human nature instead of toward God and the universe, Hume initiated a new philosophy, a broader discipline of reflection that can embrace Charles Darwin and Michel Foucault as well as William James and Sigmund Freud. Hume belongs both to our present and to our past. (shrink)

What is it to deceive someone? And how is it possible to deceive oneself? Does self-deception require that people be taken in by a deceitful strategy that they know is deceitful? The literature is divided between those who argue that self-deception is intentional and those who argue that it is non-intentional. In this study, Annette Barnes offers a challenge to both the standard characterisation of other-deception and current characterizations of self-deception, examining the available explanations and exploring such questions as (...) the self-deceiver's false consciousness, bias, and the irrationality and objectionability of self-deception. She arrives at a non-intentional account of self-deception that is deeper and more complete than alternative non-intentional accounts and avoids the reduction of self-deceptive belief to wishful belief. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (1) results as part of a social process that (...) systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and (2) is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

In the 21st century, the screen - the Internet screen, the television screen, the video screen and all sorts of combinations thereof - will be booming in our visual and infotechno culture. Screen-based art, already a prominent and topical part of visual culture in the 1990s, will expand even more. In this volume, digital art - the new media - as well as its connectedness to cinema will be the subject of investigation. The starting point is a two-day symposium organized (...) by the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo/TBA, in collaboration with the _L&B _ series and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Issues which emerged during the course of investigation deal with questions such as: How could screen-based art be distinguished from other art forms? Could screen-based art theoretically be understood in one definite model or should one search for various possibilities and/or models? Could screen-based art be canonized? What are the physical and theoretical forms of representation for screen-based art? What are the idiosyncratic concepts geared towards screen-based art? This volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements by artists, curators, philosophers, and theorists. The participants are Marie-Luise Angerer, Annette W. Balkema, René Beekman, Raymond Bellour, Peter Bogers, Joost Bolten, Noël Carroll, Sean Cubitt, Cãlin Dan, Chris Dercon, Honoré d'O, Anne-Marie Duquet, Ken Feingold, Ursula Frohne, hARTware curators, Heiner Holtappels, Aernout Mik, Patricia Pisters, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Sloterdijk, Ed S. Tan, Barbara Visser and Siegfried Zielinski. (shrink)

David Hume has been invoked by those who want to found morality on human nature as well as by their critics. He is credited with showing us the fallacy of moving from premises about what is the case to conclusions about what ought to be the case; and yet, just a few pages after the famous is-ought remarks in A Treatise of Human Nature, he embarks on his equally famous derivation of the obligations of justice from facts about the cooperative (...) schemes accepted in human communities. Is he ambivalent on the relationship between facts about human nature and human evaluations? Does he contradict himself – and, if so, which part of his whole position is most valuable? Between the famous is-ought passage and the famous account of convention and the obligations arising from established cooperative schemes once they are morally endorsed, Hume discusses the various meanings of the term “natural.” “Shou'd it be ask'd, Whether we ought to search for these principles [upon which all our notions of morals are founded] in nature or whether we must look for them in some other origin? I wou'd reply, that our answer to this question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.” The natural can be opposed to the miraculous, the unusual, or the artificial. It is the last contrast that Hume wants, for his contrast between the “artificial” culturally variant, convention-dependent obligations of justice and the more invariant “natural virtues,” and what he says about that contrast in this preparation for his account of the “artificial” virtues, makes it clear why he can later refer to justice as “natural” and to the general content of the rules of justice – that is, of basic human conventions of cooperation – as “Laws of Nature”. (shrink)

Welche Bedeutung haben begriffliche Fähigkeiten für die Wahrnehmung von rationalen Lebewesen und die Möglichkeit von Erfahrungserkenntnis? Ausgehend von einer kritisch-würdigenden Auseinandersetzung mit der Position John McDowells, wonach sinnliche Erfahrung genau dann epistemisch relevant ist, wenn begriffliche Fähigkeiten bereits in sinnlich-rezeptiver Erfahrung aktualisiert werden, zeigt die Autorin, dass eine Theorie perzeptiven Wissens zweierlei leisten muss: Sie muss erklären, wie Wahrnehmungen begrifflich gehaltvoll und zugleich direkt relational sein können. Im Anschluss wird eine Interpretation der nichtempirischen Theorie sinnlicher Erkenntnis von Immanuel Kant entwickelt, (...) die diesen beiden Anforderungen soweit als möglich gerecht wird. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie aktuellen Entwicklungen und Anforderungen in der pflegeberuflichen Bildung, das Ausbildungsziel im Pflegeberufegesetz vom 17. Juli 2017 und die Explikationen in der dazugehörigen Ausbildungs- und Prüfungsverordnung für die Pflegeberufe fordern eine stärkere Ausrichtung auf die Entwicklung ethischer Kompetenzen explizit ein. Bislang liegen tendenziell übergreifende Definitionen und Darlegungen zu ethischen Kompetenzen in der Pflege vor, deren Verdienst es ist, das Spezifische der Pflegeethik zu konturieren und erstmals ethische Kompetenzen für das Feld zu konkretisieren. In methodischer und didaktischer Hinsicht ist indes eine (...) spezifische Differenzierung gemäß unterschiedlicher Bildungsniveaus relevant. Lehrende werden ihre Lehre nicht mehr nur im Sinne einer allgemeinen Förderung ethischer Kompetenz entwickeln können, sondern müssen dabei den jeweiligen Verantwortungsbereich und das angezielte Qualifikationsniveau der Lernenden berücksichtigen. Ziel der Darlegungen ist es, konkrete Kompetenzniveaus für die Anbahnung professionsethischer Kompetenzen zu operationalisieren, die einerseits die Anforderungen aus dem zukünftigen Pflegeberufegesetz aufgreifen und andererseits anstehende curriculare Entwicklungsprozesse unterstützen. (shrink)

In recent decades in North American social and moral philosophy, alongside the development and discussion of widely influential theories of justice, taken as Rawls takes it as the ‘first virtue of social institutions,’ there has been a counter-movement gathering strength, one coming from some interesting sources. For some of the most outspoken of the diverse group who have in a variety of ways been challenging the assumed supremacy of justice among the moral and social virtues are members of those sections (...) of society whom one might have expected to be especially aware of the supreme importance of justice, namely blacks and women. Those who have only recently won recognition of their equal rights, who have only recently seen the correction or partial correction of long-standing racist and sexist injustices to their race and sex, are among the philosophers now suggesting that justice is only one virtue among many, and one that may need the presence of the others in order to deliver its own undenied value. Among these philosophers of the philosophical counterculture, as it were - but an increasingly large counterculture - I include Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Stocker, Lawrence Blum, Michael Slote, Laurence Thomas, Claudia Card, Alison Jaggar, Susan Wolf and a whole group of men and women, myself included, who have been influenced by the writings of Harvard educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, whose book In a Different Voice caused a considerable stir both in the popular press and, more slowly, in the philosophical journals. (shrink)

This paper examines two full-page A3 poster advertisements in mass magazines produced at two time points over a 60-year period depicting smoking and its effects, with particular relation to lung cancer. Each poster represents the social and cultural milieu of its time. The writings of Foucault are used to explore the disciplinary technologies of sign systems as depicted in the two posters. The relationships between government, tobacco companies and drug companies and the technologies of production are examined with regard to (...) the development of smoking cessation strategies. The technologies of power are associated with the constructions of risk and lifestyles. The technologies of the self locate smokers as culpable subjects responsible for their individual health. Finally, the meshing of these technologies places the doctor in the frame as ‘authoritative knower’ and representative of expert systems. (shrink)

Can aesthetic concepts reflect and provide answers for ethical aspects and issues? Is "more ethics, less aesthetics" applicable, according to the motto of the Venice Biennial for architecture in the year 2000? Or isn't "more aesthetics" in fact just what is required to encourage reflection about ethical responsibilities and dimensions in architecture, art, and design? This publication is a collection of reflections about the ethical and political dimensions of creations, presented from the point of view of art, architecture, design, and (...) curatorial practice. The contributions range from historical reviews to future-oriented outlooks, illustrating interdisciplinary connections. (shrink)

The pioneering moral philosopher Annette Baier presents a series of new and recent essays in ethics, broadly conceived to include both engagements with other philosophers and personal meditations on life. Baier's unique voice and insight illuminate topics ranging from patriotism and future generations to honesty, trust, hope, and friendship.

In controlled human infection (CHI) studies, investigators deliberately infect healthy individuals with pathogens in order to study mechanisms of disease or obtain preliminary efficacy data on investigational vaccines and medicines. CHI studies offer a fast and cost‐effective way of generating new scientific insights, prioritizing investigational products for clinical testing, and reducing the risk that large numbers of people are exposed to ineffective or harmful substances in research or in practice. Yet depending on the pathogen, CHI studies can involve significant risks (...) or burdens for participants, pose risks to individuals or communities not involved in the research, and lead to public controversy. It is therefore essential to ensure that the risks of CHI studies are justified by their social value—that is, their potential to generate benefits for society—and that public trust can be maintained. In this paper, we aim to clarify how research sponsors, research ethics committees and other reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. We develop a list of relevant considerations for making social value judgments based on the standard view of social value. We then use this list to discuss the example of potentially conducting dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings. We argue that dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings would fall on the higher end of the spectrum of social value, mostly because of their potential to redirect all fields of future dengue research. Drawing on this discussion, we derive several general recommendations for how reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. (shrink)

Habermas’s argument from human nature, which speaks in favour of holding back the use of human germline editing for purposes of enhancement, has lately received criticism anew. Prominent are objections to its supposedly genetic essentialist and determinist framework, which underestimates social impacts on human development. I argue that this criticism originates from an instrumentalist reading of Habermas’s argument, which wrongly focuses on empirical conditions and means-ends-relations. Drawing on Habermas’s distinction of a threefold use of practical reason, I show how an (...) alternative—the ethical—reading avoids essentialist and determinist objections by addressing an existential level of sense making. I present three reasons that speak in favour of the ethical reading and I demonstrate how it incorporates social aspects of character formation. Habermas’s account therefore offers exactly what the critics claim is missing. The paper concludes with a conceptual challenge that the ethical reading has to face within Habermas’s overall approach to genetic engineering. (shrink)

In these Carus Lectures, Annette Baier looks at the relation between individual and shared reasoning, intending, and moral reflection. In each case she emphasizes the interdependence of minds and the role of social practices in setting the norms governing these activities.

Existing ethical frameworks for public health provide insufficient guidance on how to evaluate the risks of public health programs that compromise the best clinical interests of present patients for the benefit of others. Given the relevant similarity of such programs to clinical research, we suggest that insights from the long‐standing debate about acceptable risk in clinical research can helpfully inform and guide the evaluation of risks posed by public health programs that compromise patients’ best clinical interests. We discuss how lessons (...) learned regarding the ethics of risk in one context can be fruitfully transferred to the other, using the example of a so‐called ‘rational antibiotic use’ guideline that limits antimicrobial prescribing in order to curb antimicrobial resistance. (shrink)

Today, many visual artists are giving the cold shoulder to the static, isolated concept of visual art and searching instead for novel, dynamic connections to different image strategies. Because of that, visual art and aesthetics are both forced to reconsider their current positions and their traditional apparatus of concepts. In that process, many questions surface. To mention a few: Could the characteristics of an artistic image and its specific manner of signification be determined in a world which is entirely aesthetisized? (...) What would be the consequences of a variety of image strategies for aesthetic experience? Would it be possible to develop a form of cultural criticism by means of artistic activities in a culture awash in images? In order to answer such questions, aesthetics as a philosophy of art needs to transform its field into a critical philosophy of topical visual culture. As an impetus to such a reinterpretation of the visual working area, the L & B Series organized three symposia evenings under the title “Exploding Aesthetics”, in cooperation with De Appel Center for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. Besides the presentations and discussions from these symposia, this volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements in both articles and interviews by a variety of visual artists, designers, advertising professionals, theorists and curators. The participants are: Mieke Bal, Annette W. Balkema, Peg Brand, Experimental Jetset, Liam Gillick, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Martin Jay, KesselsKramer, Friedrich Kittler, Maria Lind, Wim Michels, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Planet Art, Joke Robaard, Annemieke Roobeek, Remko Scha, Rob Schröder, Henk Slager, Richard Shusterman, Pauline Terreehorst, Wolfgang Welsch and Marie-Lou Witmer. (shrink)

Ausgehend von den Rändern der gegenwärtigen literarischen Praxis wirft Annette Gilberts komparatistische Studie neues Licht auf eine zentrale Kategorie der Literatur(wissenschaft): das Werk als pragmatische Instanz literarischer Kommunikation. Unter Anwendung eines erweiterten Literaturbegriffs werden avantgardistische und experimentelle Positionen im Grenzbereich von Literatur und Kunst seit den 1950er Jahren gesichtet, die eine starke Reflexion ihres eigenen Werkseins erkennen lassen. Entsprechende Versuchsanordnungen - etwa von Elfriede Jelinek, Timm Ulrichs, Sherrie Levine, Elaine Sturtevant, Marcel Broodthaers - werden als substantieller Beitrag zur literaturtheoretischen (...) Grundlagenforschung gelesen. Zugleich werden Traditionslinien zu historischen Vorgängern wie Stéphane Mallarmé und Jorge Luis Borges sowie Parallelen zu ähnlichen Tendenzen und Problemstellungen in der bildenden Kunst aufgezeigt. (shrink)

This article pays homage to Drucilla Cornell through examining her writings on ubuntu not only as a jurisprudential concept, but also as a philosophical and ethical concept. Cornell’s incisive ability to synthesize Kant’s idealism of the realm of ends and the African philosophy of ubuntu, combined with her revolutionary spirit, deepened understanding of the South African constitutional values and principles. Exploring the interpretation of ubuntu by the South African Constitutional Court, it shows how Cornell advanced an ubuntu-inspired ethical ideal that (...) informs and shapes dignity as the Grundnorm of the South African Constitution. For Cornell, as a transformative ethic, ubuntu imposes obligations upon us to live up to ideals in our relationships with each other and to ideals of the new democracy. Cornell championed the idea of a substantive revolution brought about by the Constitution and argued for a reading of the South African Constitution against these aspirational ideals. (shrink)

Nowadays there are many spaces of fascination in visual art. Of course, installative space and contextual space have been on the art scene for awhile. However, they are now accompanied by other spaces such as urban space, architectural space, cyberspace, hyperspace, and screen-based space. In this volume, architects, artists, theorists, three symposia and four exhibitions attempt to find answers to questions such as: Could the architectonic study and/or deconstruction of space play a decisive role in the shift of attention to (...) space? Which theoretical factors structure the current experience and meaning of space? What is the role of the aesthetization of the environment on our concept of space? Smooth Space - VCC de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam - is a project at the heart of this publication. Spatial interests range from how the concept of space is redefined and exploited in our current visual culture to how the digital world influences our spatial concepts. Participants in this issue are: Jean Attali, Annette W. Balkema, Andrew Benjamin, Ole Bouman, Bernard Cache, Paul Crowther, Christoph Fink, Hugo Heyrman, Hou Hanru, Rem Koolhaas, Geert Lovink, Karlheinz Lüdeking, Bartomeu Mari, Kas Oosterhuis, Jan van de Pavert, Keiko Sato, Eran Schaerf, Lara Schnitger, Roger Scruton, Martin Seel, Nasrine Seraji, Henk Slager, Sjoerd Soeters, Lars Spuybroek, Ann Van Sevenant, Peter Weibel and Mark Wigley. (shrink)

Dans un texte relativement peu connu, intitulé Kant, Georg Simmel développe des réflexions critiques à propos de la notion kantienne du bonheur. En comparant celles-ci avec son analyse de la société moderne, telle qu’il la propose dans la Philosophie de l’argent, on s’aperçoit qu’il existe, entre les concepts philosophiques qui y sont mis en œuvre, une relation de correspondance parfaite. La conclusion s’impose que, pour Simmel, la notion kantienne du bonheur trouve comme son incarnation historique dans la culture monétaire. La (...) modernité, que Simmel caractérise par le fait qu’elle offre aux individus la possibilité d’accéder aux objets et aux positions de leur choix, matérialise en effet une aporie inhérente au concept du bonheur chez Kant, dans la mesure où ce dernier souligne l’indétermination totale des choix, d’un côté, et de l’autre, l’idée que c’est hors de la volonté elle-même que la recherche du bonheur puise ses mobiles. (shrink)

The scarcity of donor organs for transplantation purposes is now a widely known fact. The number of people on transplant waiting lists regularly far exceeds the number of available organs. This situation has led to decades of recurring discussions about how this shortage could be addressed. The undersupply results in situations within the Eurotransplant network as well as on national levels where patients often wait for years, enduring significant losses in quality of life, or never receive an organ allocation at (...) all. On a global scale, the shortage also contributes significantly to illegal organ trafficking, exposing vulnerable populations in poorer countries to considerable and often opaque risks. ----- Die Knappheit an Spenderorganen für Transplantationszwecke ist mittlerweile ein allgemein bekanntes Faktum. Auf der Warteliste für Transplantationen stehen regelmäßig sehr viel mehr Menschen als Organe verfügbar werden. Dieser Umstand führt seit Jahrzehnten immer wieder zu Diskussionen darüber, auf welche Weise dem Mangel entgegengetreten werden könnte. Die Unterversorgung führt sowohl im Eurotransplant-Verbund als auch auf jeweils nationaler Ebene zu Situationen, in denen Patienten teils jahrelang unter beträchtlichen Verlusten von Lebensqualität auf ein Organ warten oder eine Zuteilung erst gar nicht mehr erleben. Auf globaler Ebene führt der Mangel darüber hinaus in signifikantem Umfang zu illegalem Organhandel und setzt vulnerable Bevölkerungsgruppen in ärmeren Ländern teils beträchtlichen und intransparenten Risiken aus. (shrink)

Before the Semitic fragments of 4QTobit were found at Qumran, the 4th-century Greek GI version of Tobit was thought to be original and was regarded as ‘a lesson on almsgiving and its redeeming powers’. In his presentation of the 4Q196–4Q199 (Aramaic) and 4Q200 (Hebrew) fragments of Tobit, Fitzmyer, in 1995, reconstructed and rendered the Semitic lexeme צדקה (literally, ‘righteousness’) as ‘almsgiving’, as in Mishnaic Hebrew. He referred mainly to the 4th-century Common Era Greek and Old Latin versions. The hypothesis of (...) this article is that the Aramaic lexeme צדק may not yet have had the meaning of ‘almsgiving’ in the original composition; thus, the original authorial intention may be masked in Fitzmyer’s presentation. Therefore, the emphasis on almsgiving for ultimate personal gain found in the later copies of Tobit may be a secondary, reductionist application by subsequent scribes of the lexeme צדקה. To test this hypothesis, the relevant reconstructions and English translations as ‘almsgiving’ of the Semitic copies of Tobit found at Qumran are examined and reconsidered. In the beginning of the narrative, in 4Q196 (and in GI and GII) the rather self-righteous Tobit is ‘accidentally’ blinded while performing an act of charity to his own kin, which he believed was the way to gain righteousness and thus be rewarded by God. In the end, when he has recovered his sight, Tobit redefines the way to achieve true righteousness: to bless God and extol his majesty to all nations with truthfulness in heart and soul.Contribution: The comparison of the Semitic fragments from Qumran with the Septuagint versions suggests that the first reconstructions and translations of 4QTobit may have been overly influenced by the long-standing Greek versions. Whereas the Greek versions tend to emphasise almsgiving as a means to gain righteousness, the older Aramaic versions tend to highlight righteousness and truthfulness as the primary value. (shrink)

The present article deals with a kind of parapsychology called metapsychics ( metapsíquica) as conceived and practised in Spain between 1923 and 1925. First we focus on the reception of a treatise by Richet that evoked both support (Ferrán) and criticism (Mira). Then we examine some experiments on clairvoyance performed at the Marquis of Santa Cara’s home, dealing chiefly with the rise and fall of a case of prodigious vision. The analysis gives special attention to the question of how metapsychics (...) was understood and to which discussions it gave rise. The authors argue that the project of metapsychics must be understood within a frame of two tendencies, namely, the increasing popularization and the demarcation of science that were under way in modern society. (shrink)