Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues , in both of (...) which he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and. (shrink)

J. B. Schneewind's "The Invention of Autonomy" has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition from late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of (...) ethics. (shrink)

From a cultural-historical perspective, the impairments of a child with a condition like cerebral palsy have biological origins, but the disability evolves from the mismatch between the child and his/her social conditions for development. One example of this dialectical production of disability can be seen in the challenge of the 21st-century welfare state: How to provide economically feasible health and educational services anchored in evidence-based methods and practices. Standardized social service pathways for children with CP illustrates an attempt to address (...) this challenge and moderate the mismatch by acting in the intersection between impairment and society. The aim of the article is to analyze challenges in the practice of connecting research and practice-based knowledge with societal practices in order to diminish the disability of the child. A multidisciplinary group assembled by the Danish National Board of Social Services engaged in a practice of developing a guideline for a social service pathway. Agendas and minutes from their series of meetings provide insight in how the work evolved through conflictual discussions. Rather than a neutral transformation of knowledge into practice, the practice revealed itself as a value-laden process in which the needs of the child and family were at times decentred and the focus shifted to how social services could be realised in complex, structured social practices. While the group managed to overcome several conflicts and agree of a social service pathway, a socio-economic analysis was unable to argue for the comprehensive social service pathway as an economic sound choice for municipal decision-makers. The conflict between the welfare ideology and economic feasibility remains unresolved and can be expected to limit the extent that impairments can be remedied and the mismatch decreased. Overcoming or diminishing the mismatch might never become economic worthwhile. As the political pendulum oscillates between welfare and economic concerns, the experience of disability will likewise diminish or expand. (shrink)

Adults who are incapacitated and alone, having no surrogates, may be known as “unbefriended.” Decision-making for these particularly vulnerable patients is a common and vexing concern for healthcare providers and hospital ethics committees. When all other avenues for resolving the need for surrogate decision-making fail, patients who are incapacitated and alone may be referred for “public guardianship” or guardianship of last resort. While an appropriate mechanism in theory, these programs are often under-staffed and under-funded, laying the consequences of inadequacies on (...) the healthcare system and the patient him or herself. We describe a qualitative study of professionals spanning clinical, court, and agency settings about the mechanisms for resolving surrogate consent for these patients and problems therein within the state of Massachusetts. Interviews found that all participants encountered adults who are incapacitated and without surrogates. Four approaches for addressing surrogate needs were: work to restore capacity; find previously unknown surrogates; work with agencies to obtain surrogates; and access the guardianship system. The use of guardianship was associated with procedural challenges and ethical concerns including delays in care, short term gains for long term costs, inabilities to meet a patient’s values and preferences, conflicts of interest, and ethical discomfort among interviewees. Findings are discussed in the context of resources to restore capacity, identify previously unknown surrogates, and establish improved surrogate mechanisms for this vulnerable population. (shrink)

The main purpose of this volume is the admirable one of preparing a series of volumes on the global history of philosophy. While the effort falls far short of what we might have hoped for, it must be judged as a good beginning in this area. The volume begins with a listing of introductory works dealing with the philosophies of major cultures: India, China, Japan, Islam, Russia and Latin America. The difficulties of launching into a study of world philosophy (...) become apparent at this point; the bibliographical categories are a mixture of geographical areas and religio-cultural traditions which overlap land-boundaries. The authors now depart from the geographical-cultural schema by organizing the material along a mixture of historical and topical structures--all taken from the western context. The list of historical segments include: Classical Period, Pan-Hellenistic-Bactrian Period, Early "Medieval" Period, The Great Summas, Late "Medieval" Period, "Renaissance" Period, Transition to the Modern Period, and Modern Period. The book concludes with a section dedicated to works concerning the Scientific Revolution and the Philosophy of International Law. In a pocket on the back cover the reader will find two large fold-outs which present "A Synchronological Chart to the Global History of Philosophy."--J. B. L. (shrink)

In recent years, cross-national collaboration in medical research has gained increased policy attention. Policies are developed to enhance data sharing, ensure open-access, and harmonize international standards and ethics rules in order to promote access to existing resources and increase scientific output. In tandem with this promotion of data sharing, numerous ethics policies are developed to control data flows and protect privacy and confidentiality. Both sets of policy making, however, pay limited attention to the moral decisions and social ties enacted in (...) the everyday routines of scientific work. This paper takes its point of departure in the practices of a Danish laboratory with great experience in international collaboration regarding genetic research. We focus on a simple query, what makes genetic material and health data flow, and which hopes and concerns travel along with them? We explore what we call the flows, the nonflows, and the overflows of material and information, and we document the work producing the flows of health data and biomaterial. We call this work “ethics work” and argue that it is crucial for data sharing though it is rarely articulated in ethics policies, remains inadequately funded, and lacks acknowledgment in policies promoting international data sharing. (shrink)

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

A paperback reprint of Berkeley's classic work published first in 1710.--J. E. B.

The paper examines the Slovak folk-tales collected and written by Slovak Renaissance writer Pavol Dobšinský. In his work the author of the paper does not see only an implicit philosophy, symptomatic for literary works or reflections, but also explicit philosophical formulations and attitudes. The author thinks, that Dobšinský followed Hegel’s explanation of history as well as his vocabulary, strictly dividing his own work into several parts corresponding given problems. The result of his rigorous work corresponds his objectives. His work (...) is valuable also from another point of view: it brings many findings and inspirations concerning this type of folklore even for a contemporary reader. (shrink)

The study of historiography is undergoing a revolution akin to that which took place in the history of political thought in the 1960s, and the work of J.G.A. Pocock is central to both. Pocock's continuing exploration, in Barbarism and Religion (1999-), of the intellectual contexts of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is central to this enterprise, and this essay situates the origins of his own work within a pre-‘Cambridge School’ Cambridge and its experience of (...) what might be called the Butterfieldian moment. That was marked by a desire to treat religion seriously as a driving force in history; and the same concern is applied here to further understanding an eighteenth-century controversy in which history and religion were dramatically involved, and which profoundly affected Gibbon's own historical and religious views. The work of Conyers Middleton and John Jortin is critically examined from this perspective. These preludes to Gibbon lead to a series of postludes examining the particular contexts in which Victorian and twentieth-century historians and writers, from Henry Hart Milman to Evelyn Waugh, variously appreciated and interpreted Gibbon. The whole is to be seen as a reflexive engagement with Pocock's vitally illuminating studies in eighteenth-century historiography. ☆ A slightly revised version of a lecture given at the University of Sussex on 22nd May 2008, on the occasion of a colloquium devoted to J.G.A. Pocock's Barbarism and Religion. It had originally acted as a prelude to a lecture by Pocock on the same occasion, subsequently published as ‘Gibbon and the invention of Gibbon: chapters 15 and 16 reconsidered’, History of European Ideas 35 (2009), 209–16. In this sense, therefore, the present essay has become a postlude. I am deeply grateful to Noël Sugimura for generously reading and commenting on the rescoring of a lecture into an essay. (shrink)

The greatest contemporary challenge in the arena of cognitive neuroscience concerns the relation between consciousness and the brain. Over recent years the focus of work in this area has switched from the analysis of diverse spatial regions of the brain to that of the timing of neural events. It appears that two conditions are necessary in order for neural events to become correlated with conscious experience. First, the firing of assemblies of neurones must achieve a degree of coherence, and, second, (...) reflexive (i.e. top-down, or reentrant) neural pathways must be activated. It does not, of course, follow that such neural activity causes consciousness; it may be, for example, that the neural activity formats the brain to interact with consciousness. The latter possibility is suggested by analysis of mystical texts suggesting that coherence and reflexivity constitute the conditions for the influx of “spirit.” Kabbalistic sources, for example, describe a hierarchy of “brains” in the human and divine realms through which the principles of coherence and reflexivity operate. Whilst the ontological assumptions of such a scheme place it beyond the realm of psychology, parallels with the picture deriving from the contemporary cognitive neuroscience of consciousness are striking. (shrink)

Este trabajo busca indagar sobre una posible interpretación del totalitarismo en el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt. Si bien es cierto que para Arendt el totalitarismo es un régimen político específico y delimitado en un contexto histórico particular, también es posible encontrar en su pensamiento una idea más amplia del totalitarismo en la estela de la crítica a la tradición de la filosofía política que la autora desarrolla. Según Arendt, esta tradición no habría hecho otra cosa que idear modos de gobierno (...) que permitan controlar la acción y con ello también la contingencia de los asuntos humanos. Así, esta tradición de la filosofía política habría terminado por comprender los asuntos humanos como una obra por realizar, sin dejar espacio, de este modo, al despliegue de la pluralidad humana. Se trata entonces de pensar en esas “corrientes subterráneas del pensamiento occidental” que cristalizaron en la Alemania nazi y la URSS. Esta lectura del totalitarismo estará iluminada en ciertos puntos por la idea de inmanentismo desarrollada por Jean-Luc Nancy en La Comunidad Inoperante. This paper attempts to provide an interpretation of Hannah Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. Although Arendt conceives totalitarianism as a specific political regime, my claim is that it is also possible to find a broder conception of totalitarianism in Arendt's work if we consider her critical approach to the tradition of political philosophy. According to Arendt, the western tradition of political philosophy has brought forth nothing but different types of government that are only concerned with subjecting human action and thus the contingency of human affairs. Thereby, the philosophical tradition understands human affairs qua work and in doing so hinders and obstructs the deployment of human plurality. Hence, my aim in this paper is to reflect upon the underground stream that according to Arendt crystallized both in the Nazi Germany and in the USSR. To accomplish this task, I take into account the notion of “immanentism” developed by Jean-Luc Nancy in The inoperative Community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Originality of Descartes’s Conception of Analysis as DiscoveryBenoît TimmermansAccording to Descartes, his Meditations employ the method of analysis. This method of proof, says Descartes, “shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered methodically and as it were a priori.” 1 Such a definition of analysis poses a problem that seems to have attracted little attention among commentators until now, namely, why Descartes (...) considers analysis a method of discovery whereas the Scholastic tradition asserts just the contrary, that synthesis allows the discovery of new things, whereas analysis is a method for judging findings or verifying them a posteriori. What is more, the definition that Descartes gives of his analysis contains another divergence, this time brought up by the commentators, 2 for he curiously considers analysis an a priori movement and not an a posteriori movement as dictated by tradition.These issues are all the more important as the analytical method acquired particular prestige in the seventeenth century. This prestige concerned not only philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, etc.) but science as well. Thus algebra lost some of its rough edges and gradually took on the name of “analysis.” 3 Descartes created a type of geometry that was soon dubbed “analytic,” and Leibniz developed his analysis infinitorum or differential and integral calculus. If the scientific revolution and the new philosophies that were associated with it attached so much importance to a method that had already been known in ancient Greece, was it not due to a change of the meaning of analysis or at least a rearranging of some of its functions? This is the question that we propose to [End Page 433] tackle while trying to determine to what extent Cartesian analysis breaks with the forms of analysis that preceded it. 4To do this we shall first examine the teachings of Scholastic philosophy concerning the connections between analysis and discovery in general and then study the logical possibilities of discovery through analysis that draw their inspiration from Aristotle’s Analytics and that were developed extensively by the School of Padua in the sixteenth century. Finally, we shall attempt to determine whether the mathematical definition of analysis derived from the works of Euclid and Pappus gives grounds for the correlation with discovery.The Link Between Analysis and Discovery According to the ScholasticsOne might well think that Descartes was completely unaware of the contradiction between his definition of analysis and the teachings of the Scholastics. Had not he always exhibited a true disdain for the latter? However, in September 1640, that is, four months before writing his text on analysis, Descartes began girding for the Jesuit Fathers’ objections to his Meditations. This involved looking for an “abstract of the whole of scholastic philosophy, this would save the time it would take to read their huge tomes.” 5 He finally found what he was looking for in the shops of Leiden, namely, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo’s Summa Philosophiae. There is reason to believe that Descartes read this opus with interest, for two months later he referred to it as “the best book of its kind ever made.” 6 Later he said that he would definitely have chosen the Summa Philosophiae as the basis for refuting the School’s doctrine if he had not given up such a project. 7 Now, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo’s Summa Philosophiae is categorical on the subject of analysis versus synthesis. Analysis of a definition “is perfectly compatible with the doctrines for teaching and learning; as for the other disciplines of discovery, the other method, that is the composite or synthetic method, must be used.” 8According to the Scholastic doctrine as stated by Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, analysis thus plays a part in the teaching of well-known things and in all processes of appraisal, assessment, or judgment. This is easy to explain if one considers that, etymologically, analysis breaks links (ana-luein), goes backward, or climbs back up from the consequences to the principles. Starting from an observation, proposition, or question, it wends its way back to the simplest, [End Page 434] surest items of knowledge that shed light on and verify said starting... (shrink)

This paper considers two of the most prominent kinds of evidence that have been used to argue that certain embedded questions receive weakly exhaustive interpretations. The first kind is exemplified by judgments of consistency for declarative sentences that attribute knowledge of a wh-question and ignorance of the negation of that question to the same person, and the second concerns asymmetries between the role of positive and negative information in validating question-embedding surprise ascriptions, and similar judgments for other attitudes. I argue (...) that neither type suffices to show weak exhaustivity. The first can be analyzed in terms of strong exhaustivity in combination with domain restriction effects, while the second can be analyzed in terms of a mention-some interpretation. These kinds of evidence have served as the empirical basis for many claims about weakly exhaustive readings, so the observation that they are unreliable calls into questions a large body of established work on the semantics of question embedding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Passion to Paschal Mystery: A Recent Magisterial Development concerning the Christological Foundation of the Sacraments by Dominic M. Langevin, O.PGuy Mansini O.S.B.From Passion to Paschal Mystery: A Recent Magisterial Development concerning the Christological Foundation of the Sacraments. By Dominic M. Langevin, O.P. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2015. Pp. x + 403. 69,00 CHF (paper). ISBN 978-3-7278-1728-3.The “magisterial development” of the title of this monograph consists (...) of the move from binding the efficacy of the Mass and sacraments exclusively to the Passion of Christ to the recognition of the efficacy and exemplarity of the Lord’s Resurrection as well. Langevin also traces the increasing recognition of the Mass and sacraments not only as empowered by but also as signifying the paschal mystery of Good Friday and Easter and memoralizing both.Part 1 is a long series of readings of strategically chosen texts from Pius XII’s Mediator Dei (1947), from the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), and from John Paul II’s Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) on the Mass and sacraments and liturgy. These texts are very closely read, and the reading is a sort of model of how the inquiring theologian should approach magisterial sources. The first chapter of part 2 charts the soteriological effects of both the Passion and the Resurrection according as they are extended to us in baptism and the Eucharist. The second and last [End Page 467] chapter of part 2 does two things. First, it explains the motion charted in part 1 by adducing some of its historical causes. Second, it provides systematic insight into the term of the motion.Mediator Dei appreciates Christ especially as offering sacrifice and the Mass especially as the memorial and application of that sacrifice. As Christ’s sacrifice is an exercise of the virtue of religion, so also is our participation in that sacrifice: we render the debt of justice we owe God, and in the way exclusive to rendering a debt to God, by way of sacrifice. Salvation is configuration to Christ—to his Passion. However, while the very sacrifice of Christ is made present, it must be the risen Christ who acts now in the Mass, and communion is reception of the Body and Blood of the risen Christ, though the encyclical rather emphasizes that the signification of the Mass is the signification of the passion. Generally, “for Pius, the Passion is more important and active than the Resurrection in the sacramental economy.” The encyclical’s discussion of the liturgical year is more expansive, however, since the year renders all the mysteries and not just the Passion present and in their saving effects. The encyclical is thus open to a further reflection on the Resurrection that it itself does not take up.Sacrosanctum Concilium teaches that baptism gives us to participate in the entire paschal mystery. Its insistence that the Mass is principally to be understood in a sacrificial key follows Pius, but it is more open to seeing the Mass and the sacraments as also memorializing the Resurrection and bringing it to bear on our salvation. For one thing, it drops the framework according to which the liturgy is understood first and foremost as an exercise of the virtue of religion, which allows other aspects more easily to come to the fore. Thus the Mass and the sacraments are seen in relation to the entire paschal mystery, now appreciated in its unity, and not only to the meritorious work of the Passion and sacrifice of the Lord, for it is the entire paschal mystery that works salvation, going beyond the mode of merit that is exclusive to the Passion. Even in SC 47, the principal text on the Mass, which came to assert the sacrificial nature of the Mass at the insistence of many council fathers, there is an express connection of the Mass with the Resurrection such that the relation of the Mass to the entire paschal mystery comes to expression. The text states that the Lord instituted the Eucharist “in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross... and even more to entrust to His beloved... (shrink)

In today's business world, ethics is not simply a peripheral concern of executive boards or a set of supposed constraints on free enterprise. Ethics stands at the very core of our working lives and of society as a whole, defining the public image of the business community and the ways in which individual companies and people behave. What people do at work--and how they think about work--determines their attitudes and aspirations, affecting and even structuring their personal lives and habits. Working (...) from this premise, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader provides a practical overview of business ethics that concentrates on the ethical problems and dilemmas students are most likely to face in their prospective work environments. Classic and recent articles and cases cover a broad spectrum of issues and concerns--from private ethical dilemmas to larger considerations of corporate values--and propose guidelines for thinking about the business world in a moral context. Each reading and case is followed by lively questions for discussion. Offering a welcome alternative to the impersonal tone of most business ethics texts, the editors address students in an appealing and conversational manner. They provide engaging chapter introductions that include personal narratives and also present the ideas of great philosophers in a unique way--as emails. Ideal for introductory undergraduate and MBA courses in business ethics, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader can be read as a coherent narrative but also offers instructors great flexibility, as its various chapters, readings, and cases can be pursued in almost any order. A Companion Website featuring chapter objectives and summaries, study questions, self-tests, and off-site links of interest will soon be available. An Instructor's Manual with Test Bank is available to adopters. (shrink)

In our present-day Western society, there has been an increasing tendency towards individualism and indifference and away from altruism and empathy. This has led to a resurgence of ethical concerns in contemporary Continental philosophy. Following the thinking of philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas, ethics has come to be defined in terms of a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Levinas claims that taking care of others in need is not a free, rational decision, but a fundamental responsibility (...) that is pre-consciously felt. We are passively obligated before we can actively choose to help. Levinas therefore argues that the needy other incapacitates our normal selfish ways, and that this ‘radical passivity’ enables us to recognise our inherent responsibility towards others in need. Levinas's own thinking on this subject is not unambiguous, however. While his early works stress the fact that we cannot care for others if we do not first take care of ourselves, his later works focus exclusively on the other as locus of our ethical responsibility. Following this line of thinking, a false opposition has emerged between an absolutised egoism and a crushing altruism that threatens to undermine the recent resurgence of ethical concerns. For how can we continue to care for others if we fail to recognise the duties we have towards ourselves? Moreover, what is the moral significance of responsible action if it is not freely chosen but passively imposed? (shrink)

After centuries of neglect, the ethics of food are back with a vengeance. Justice for food workers and small farmers has joined the rising tide of concern over the impact of industrial agriculture on food animals and the broader environment, all while a global epidemic of obesity-related diseases threatens to overwhelm modern health systems. An emerging worldwide social movement has turned to local and organic foods, and struggles to exploit widespread concern over the next wave of genetic engineering or nanotechnologies (...) applied to food. Paul B. Thompson's book applies the rigor of philosophy to key topics in the first comprehensive study explore interconnections hidden deep within this welter of issues. Bringing to bear more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world. His discussions of animal production and the environmental impact of agriculture break new ground where most philosophers would least expect it. By emphasizing the integration of these issues, Thompson not only brings a comprehensive philosophical approach to moral issues in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food -- he introduces a fresh way to think about practical ethics that will have implications in other areas of applied philosophy. (shrink)

This work should be quite useful as a problem guide to phenomenalist and dualist metaphysics. Professor Yolton is concerned that any system be read both from an internal and an external perspective keeping them as separate and distinct as possible. He also cautions that the external perspective should not presuppose another metaphysic for that has often resulted in gross misreadings of earlier authors. In the first section of the book, phenomenalism, he shows how, for example, D. M. Armstrong and G. (...) Warnock have misread Berkeley and attacks G. Warnock and J. Austin's principle which rules out use of a technical irreducible language by philosophers. Solipsism and idealism as well as Berkeley's sensory phenomenalism are treated. In the second section of the book, dualism, Professor Yolton argues that some "transcendent Meaning Principle" is necessary to make the non-sensual side of dualism intelligible, outlines Plato's dualism as against Protagorian monism, indicates what he considers B. Russell's dualism and tries to show that Russell's treatment of one side is partially completed by C. I. Lewis' treatment of what Professor Yolton considers the other side. In the third section on meaning and truth he tries to establish 1) that there is a large measure of intranslatability between philosophical systems; 2) that meaning involves referrent necessarily; 3) that truth is defined by ontological rules; and 4) that correspondence is the basic truth-relation. Brief discussion is given of certain aspects of the works of P. Strawson, B. Russell, J. S. Mill, G. Ryle, W. V. O. Quine, Meinong, and Eric Tom. Slightly over half of this book is comprised of papers, some slightly modified, published from 1949 to 1961.--J. B. L. (shrink)

Decisions are central to engineering processes and hold them together. It is argued that better decisions will lead to better engineering. To achieve better decisions requires that they be understood in detail. A typical decision is broken down into its essential requirements and processes, thus displaying the components of its framework. The process leads to the identification of a number of concerns. The components are discussed and a set of issues where more work needs to be done is identified. There (...) are significant implications for both engineering practice and engineering education. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis. (shrink)

Spanish readers are fortunate in having a publishing house which is committed to reproduce in Spanish the complete works of Georg Lukács. The complete edition will consist of twenty-four, or more, volumes, of which ten are already in print, covering mainly Lukács works on esthetics and literary criticism. The Hegel volume was originally published in German in 1948. The main draft was written as early as the fall of 1938, but the outbreak of World War II delayed publication. (...) Lukács at that time was in the Soviet Union where, following Stalin's lead, Hegel was characterized as an apologist for the Prussian feudal opposition to the French revolution. Considering the winning of the war as more important than provoking a controversy over Hegel, Lukács put his manuscript aside for the duration. In The Young Hegel, Lukács settles his account with Hegel, much as Marx and Engels in The German Ideology--with one significant difference. The objective of Marx and Engels was the abolition of Hegelianism. Their polemic, therefore, was directed against Hegel and the neo-Hegelians. Lukács, on the other hand, sought the restoration of the Hegelian dimension of Marxism, and, while accepting the Marxian critique of Hegelianism, directed his attack against the detractors of Hegel--against the Stalin line within Marxism and against those like Dilthey and Kierkegaard outside of Marxism who transformed Hegel into an "irrationalist." Lukács is consequently much more positive in his treatment of Hegel than Marx and Engels. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács emphasized the necessity of understanding Hegel in order to properly understand Marx. In The Young Hegel, the emphasis is on the dialectical opposite--Hegel is understood through the eyes of Marx, through the critique of Marx and through a Marxian interpretation by Lukács. Lukács' unique contribution in the present work is the detailed study of the close union of philosophy and economics in the genesis of Hegel's thought. Indeed, the original subtitle of the German edition reads: Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie. The Spanish edition has a two-and-a-half page preface, written specially for it by Lukács in 1963, in which he states his conviction of the importance in the thought of Hegel and other great philosophers of concern with economic problems, both from the standpoint of economic theory and actual economic conditions. An English edition has been promised by Merlin Press in London, but no date of publication has yet been announced.--H. B. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden published his two major works in aesthetics in the 1930’s. The Literary Work of Art was published first in a German edition in 1931 and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art was published first in a Polish edition in 1937. A revised and enlarged edition of the second book was published in Germany in 1968 and it is the German edition translated into English in 1973 which is the subject of this review. Ingarden’s two (...) class='Hi'>works, founded on the antipsychologism of Edmund Husserl are intended as companion volumes, the first responding to the question, "How is the object of cognition, the literary work of art, structured?" and the second answering the question, "What is the procedure which will lead to knowledge of the literary work?" In The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Ingarden is concerned with the mode of cognition which corresponds to the necessary structures of the literary work of art which he has analyzed in his earlier study. He sets out to show that such a cognition is composed of heterogenous but closely connected processes and that it is accomplished in a temporal process. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a very imaginative collection of readings in aesthetics from Plato to the present. In this second edition, seven selections have been deleted and fifteen new selections have been added to greatly enhance its usefulness to beginning students in aesthetics. Additional readings on artistic creation and drama have been provided and a number of illustrations of works by Raphael, Giotto, Matisse, Dürer, Brancusi, Henry Moore, et al. have been included this time to illustrate relevant (...) textual materials. As in the first edition, the author's primary intention is to establish the field of aesthetics as having the same integrity and adventuresomeness as other areas of philosophical inquiry and debate. With this goal in view, he has organized the readings around "certain sets of basic problems that still seem worth debating and attempting to solve." Each section is centered around specific problems and issues in aesthetics, beginning with the broadest question, "What is Art?," and moving on to such issues as the nature of the various art forms, the nature of tragedy, the problem of response to art and, finally, the nature and goal of art criticism. Various readers and teachers in aesthetics no doubt, will find fault with or gaps in his selections of readings. But laying aside such parochial matters as ideology and personal taste, this volume puts in the hands of the student of aesthetics a compendium of essays on the major issues and areas of concern in aesthetics which can easily be supplemented by use of a xerox machine. The editor has included such scholarly aids as a brief introduction to each section, interpretative and cross-referential footnotes and a minimal bibliography.--J. B. L. (shrink)

An outstanding feature of the study of nursing ethics is that it raises questions concerning moral virtue, conscience, consistency and character. A considerable section of the literature is devoted to ideas of how best to teach ethics to health professionals. It has been shown that when faced with ethical dilemmas nurses tended to rely on intuition and instinct to resolve them, with little systematic analysis to help the process. Nurses who have been in practice for a number of years (...) may experience particular difficulties in resolving ethical dilemmas, for although they may be able easily to identify ethical problems they may feel powerless to behave appropriately through lack of theoretical background and/or confidence in participating in informed debate. An educational programme was designed to meet the needs of mature registered nurses who were undertaking a post-qualification part-time honours degree in nursing studies. A variety of teaching methods were employed in teaching the nurses. These included discussion, student-led seminars, structured debate and role play. A session which dealt with sudden death and organ donation is described in some detail. Because the topic involved communication between professionals and patients and/or relatives and was linked with ethics, role play was used to explore the dynamics in these areas. The participants were invited to act out the situation as they felt it might occur. Role play highlighted the stress and shock attached to such an experience. Before working through the dynamics of a situation the nurses were conscious of being part of decision-making 'in the cold' and 'in isolation'. As a result of the experiential learning they felt more able to reflect analytically and to participate in discussions in an informed and articulate way. (shrink)

Context: The design of academic conferences, in which settings ideas are shared and created, is, we suggest, of more than passing interest in constructivism, where epistemology is considered in terms of knowing rather than knowledge. Problem: The passivity and predominantly one-way structure of the typical paper presentation format of academic conferences has a number of serious limitations from a constructivist perspective. These limits are both practical and epistemological. While alternative formats abound, there is nevertheless increasing pressure reinforcing this format due (...) to delegates’ funding typically being linked to reading a paper. Method: In this special issue, authors reflect on conferences that they have organised and participated in that have used alternative formats, such as conversational structures or other constructivist inspired approaches, in whole or in part. We review and contextualize their contributions, understanding them in terms of their connections to constructivism and to each other. Results: While this issue is of relevance across disciplinary boundaries, contributions focus on two fields: that of cybernetics/systems, and that of design. We identify the way that conference organization is of particular importance to these fields, being in self-reflexive relationship to them: the environment of a design conference is something that we design; while a conference regarding systems or cybernetics is itself an instance of the sorts of process with which these fields are concerned. Implications: Building on this self-reflexivity and, also, the close connection of design and cybernetics/systems to constructivism, we suggest that conference organization is an area in which constructivism may itself be understood in terms of practice rather than theory (and so knowledge. This in turn helps connect ideas in constructivism with pragmatic fields, such as knowledge management, and recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science. Constructivist content: As a setting for the creation of new ideas, the design of conferences is of importance where we understand epistemology in constructivist terms as a process of knowing. Moreover, the particular fields drawn on - design and cybernetics/systems - have close connections to constructivism, as can be seen, for instance, in the work of Ranulph Glanville, on which we draw here. (shrink)

A set of essays in which reason, moral fanaticism, conscience, duty, free responsibility and silent virtue are all shown to be insufficient to counteract the spiritual collapse of modern Europe. Only a concrete ethics based on and in the Christ will succeed where abstract principles or emancipated reason have failed. Some confusion arises concerning the notions of a "real" man, and of "nature" or "natural rights," but matters of definition or "analysis" are perhaps rightly subordinated to the "living truth" (...) with which this work is concerned.--D. B. (shrink)

This volume presents three interviews of Yvanka B. Raynova with Paul Ricoeur with the purpose to scrutinize the complex philosophical evolution of his thought. The main question which arises, therefore, and on which are centered the two volumes is how to «think together» the difference between the issues of Ricoeur’s first works and those of his later ones, concerning the problems of the self and its relation to being, transcendence and language. Other discussed subjects are: Why philosophy today? (...) If philosophy and religion are two autonomous fields, is there a possibility of elaborating a religious philosophy within the method of hermeneutic phenomenology? What is the primary object of hermeneutics? What are the potentialities of language and its bounds, respectively the limits of interpretation? (shrink)

Throughout his work, from the logic which first brought him to prominence, through Our Social Inheritance, to the last book he lived to see through the press, Lewis was concerned with what he calls "the whole question of validity at large... the relation between valid knowing and justified self-direction of our activities." Lange, who was Lewis' student, has selected several lectures and papers from the last years of Lewis' life. Because Lewis had been working toward a major statement on ethics, (...) these ten late essays are all on ethical themes. Because Lewis was a constructive, systematic philosopher, his ethical position is grounded in his logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. For example, Lewis characterizes 'truth' as a semantic word designating a relation between the conception in question and existant actuality, NOT a relation between the conception and the evidence. Only two of these papers have already appeared in print; the rest were delivered as public lectures. Some were deliberately not published while he still hoped to improve on them. Acknowledging this is probably only fair to Lewis, but it is not the whole story. Over the years, Lewis has delineated the spheres of the valid, the right, the good, and the imperative, and has worked on capturing the relations between the right and the good, the valid and the imperative, the rational, the consistent and the normative. These papers contain new insights as well as older insights elegantly polished.--M. B. M. (shrink)

This volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant (...) concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volume’s contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volume’s essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world. (shrink)

This book attempts to portray a unity in the work of William James that the author believes is achieved by James’ constant concern with man. Dooley begins with an analysis of James’ early psychological works emphasizing the key notion of an efficacious consciousness that selects according to its needs and purposes. The author begins to paint an "interactionist" view of man, although at this point in James’ career it is admittedly only a "passing thought." A similar vein is struck (...) in James’ moral and religious works where they describe the experience of free choice as a feeling of effort, a passional nature which can decide what we shall believe in certain cases, and a conversion which is explained by certain controlling interests of consciousness. But these early intimations do not yet point to any experience of a self as the source of these activities. (shrink)

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly is creating quite a stir. Suddenly gone is the famous loosey-goosey rule of Conley v. Gibson that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.Now a complaint must provide enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible (...) on its face. Only decided last May, Bell Atlantic has been cited in over 3,700 cases. Already being described as a landmark decision, Bell Atlantic nonetheless has lawyers and judges scratching their heads over the precise pleading standard to apply in its wake. As the Second Circuit (mildly) put it, Considerable uncertainty concerning the standard for assessing the adequacy of pleadings has recently been created by the Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. Just what is a plausible showing that the pleader is entitled to relief under Rule 8(a)(2)?I believe an answer lies in the 26-year-old decision of the Former Fifth Circuit in In re Plywood Antitrust Litigation. Plywood Antitrust requires, at a minimum, that a complaint . . . contain either direct or inferential allegations respecting all the material elements necessary to sustain a recovery under some viable legal theory. Already used in more than half the circuits, this standard paraphrases advice found in the venerable WRIGHT & MILLER for nearly 40 years.Properly applied, this all . . . material elements standard satisfies Bell Atlantic's plausibility requirement in all respects. The Plywood Antitrust pleading standard works well after Bell Atlantic, first, because the Supreme Court referred to the standard, albeit parenthetically, with approval in Bell Atlantic. Second, it does much to harmonize the Federal Rules' goal of dispensing with pleading technicalities while still requiring enough general factual information about a pleader's claim to make the notice in notice pleading meaningful. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it gives lawyers, litigants, and courts a standard they can actually use when drafting, or assessing the sufficiency of, pleadings. (shrink)

Among the many contested boundaries in science studies is that between the cognitive and the social. Here, we are concerned to question this boundary from a perspective within the cognitive sciences based on the notion of distributed cognition. We first present two of many contemporary sources of the notion of distributed cognition, one from the study of artificial neural networks and one from cognitive anthropology. We then proceed to reinterpret two well-known essays by Bruno Latour, ‘Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with (...) Eyes and Hands’ and ‘Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest’. In both cases we find the cognitive and the social merged in a system of distributed cognition without any appeal to agonistic encounters. For us, results do not come to be regarded as veridical because they are widely accepted; they come to be widely accepted because, in the context of an appropriate distributed cognitive system, their apparent veracity can be made evident to anyone with the capacity to understand the workings of the system. (shrink)

This book is one of the more important works to appear in its field in the last ten years. Besides his well known abilities in Hegelian studies, Hartmann here demonstrates a wide and serious understanding of Marxism after Lenin. His references to the Frankfurt School, Althusseur, Lukacs, Merleau-Ponty, etc., are not only good presentations of their thought but often show critical insight into their works. Hartmann’s major concern is to examine Marx’s dialectical interpretation of history and in so (...) doing decide whether 1) it is consistent throughout his work and can be reconciled with his critique of political economy, and 2) whether the negative dialectic can become positive. Marx’s use of the anthropological model of man as species-being allows him to suggest, but not understand, what will be the result of the dialectic in communist man. His discussion of the present wherein man, owing to production activity, is not able to fully realize himself as species-being, while allowing for the important critique of the present and the explication of the immediate past, does not explain how or why alienated being will be liberated through the negative dialect which itself must be negated. The very concept of alienated labor remains in question throughout Marx’s work and is not sufficient to provide a necessary historical reconciliation with the negative social-economic process of alienation as a whole. The result is that Marx’s theory of practice lacks necessity and his theory of history is left in doubt. Marx’s critique of political economy is not able to systematically elucidate the concept of alienation he has provided in his anthropological model of man. Such an interpretation of Marx as Hartmann presents will almost certainly engender further work in the field.—J.B. (shrink)

This is the first complete translation of the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia. It is based on the recent German text edited by Nicolin and Pöggeler and contains the Zusätze from Michelet's text. Findlay is to be congratulated for encouraging the publication of this book which is part of a project of completing the translation of the three parts of Hegel's Encyclopaedia together with their Zusätze. A. V. Miller who has already provided a new translation of Hegel's Science of Logic (...) has again undertaken the difficult task of translating this work. Among Anglo-Saxon philosophers there has been the grossest ignorance and the wildest prejudices concerning Hegel's views of the natural sciences and the philosophy of nature. For the first time, we now have a helpful text to understand exactly what Hegel did say and why. The most impressive fact about this volume is the seriousness with which Hegel reflected on the current state of the natural sciences of his own time. Indeed it is difficult to grasp many of his points without understand the specific developments that he has in mind. While much of what Hegel says is obscure and outdated, Hegel is not attempting to legislate for natural science, but to provide us with a philosophic understanding of the significance of our understanding of nature. In this respect, the spirit of Hegel's endeavor is not so foreign from that of contemporary philosophy of science. The publication of this part of Hegel's system will enable us to come to a more balanced understanding of Hegel's philosophy. Findlay's forward is helpful both in explaining and justifying the sources for this translation and for singling out the major themes of Hegel's philosophy of nature.--R. J. B. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Charles AltieriRobert B. PippinIam very grateful to Charles Altieri for his attentive reading of and thoughtful critique of Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts.1 Let me proceed immediately to his main and quite important criticism of the approach defended there. It is this: "My one huge problem with Pippin's perspective is that I cannot accept his insistence that the (...) distinctive form of thinking elicited by works of art is best treated as a mode of knowledge." And he offers a contrasting perspective: "Instead I propose that art should matter to society primarily as the achievement of constructed, specific, individual experiences that embody resonance and authority. Then we can claim that their capacities to engage audiences in particular imaginative situations dramatically stage responses to the historical conditions on which Pippin dwells." This is a densely stated alternative, and I am not sure I fully understand it or why stating it this way thereby shows why art "should matter to society" (art may do this, but why is that important?), but I have much to say by way of clarification before getting to the alternative.First, I meant the title to be as dialectical and so as paradoxical as it sounds. If the means are "other," then we have left philosophy altogether; if the other means are still philosophical, then they can't count as "other." By dialectical I mean simply the avoidance of such dualisms, while not collapsing distinctions through some sort of resolutive reductionism. The idea is to avoid two terrible examples of philosophical approaches to the arts that putatively avoid such dualisms: either provocative or illustrative. The former sees literature especially as embodying issues like moral dilemmas that can be understood to pose, to provoke, philosophical [End Page 249] questions that traditional philosophy should then take up and discuss on its own. (Examples are the way Samuel Beckett's plays, or Albert Camus's The Stranger, are sometimes taught.) The latter, the illustrative, sees literature, again paradigmatically, as providing something like the flesh and blood of abstract philosophical issues, instantiating and illustrating a particular philosophical approach, like moral sentimentalism. (Charles Dickens is often cited.)These are surely examples of what Altieri cites as, and quite rightly rejects, as "appropriating those [aesthetic] experiences for philosophical explanation." I want to reject such "appropriationism" too. In my first chapter, on philosophical criticism of the arts, the idea I defended was that attention to the philosophical value of literature (I will stay with this art form for a while) is attention to literature as a form of reflective thinking itself, in no need of appropriation by philosophy—even though, I claim, there can be a form of philosophical criticism. The point of such criticism is to illuminate that dimension of the work itself, something philosophically significant that the work can do but traditional philosophy cannot.This is couched within several qualifications. Such attentiveness can be valuable, but not for just any work of great literature. Some literature is great without being concerned with any aesthetic modality of "thinking." One can surely admire Samuel Richardson or Anthony Trollope or William Makepeace Thackeray and admit that their value stems from other qualities in the prose, plotting, and psychologically astute portrayal of characters. And for many other reasons, any of the arts can be said to be valuable even if a case can also be made for their bearing on philosophy.And finally, the concept of "philosophical knowledge" is quite complicated. Surely some philosophers, like G. W. F. Hegel, believe in such a thing, but I don't. As Altieri rightly points out, no Absolute exists. What interests me is the relevance of Hegel's claim that a sensible and affective modality of collective self-knowledge can be embodied in many great works. But the collective self-knowledge embodied in fiction is not like discursive or analytic or even speculative knowledge. I see no strict distinction between the object of interrogation and the interrogation itself. That is, the "self" in question (e.g., who have we become?) is what it is by virtue of its own self-interpretation. Self-knowledge in... (shrink)

Liberalism’s concern with human freedom seems related to contractual freedom and thus contract law. There are, however, many strands of liberal thought and which of them best justifies contract is a difficult question. In The Choice Theory of Contracts, Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller offer a vision of contract based on autonomy. Drawing on the work of Joseph Raz, they argue that extending autonomy should be the law’s primary concern, which requires that we extend the range of contractual choices available. (...) While there is much to admire in their work, I argue that autonomy as conceived by Dagan and Heller cannot justify contract law. First, there are reasons to doubt the coherence of autonomy as an ideal. Second, given the pluralism of liberal societies, which, for example, often include substantial numbers of religious believers who reject core assumptions of autonomy theory, it is doubtful that such a theory can legitimate contract law. A more modest version of liberalism concerned primarily with protection against cruelty and providing a modus vivendi in pluralistic societies is more tenable. Such a vision of liberalism yields a more modest vision of contract law. Rather than making it into another means of realizing the dream of a more autonomous self, it is enough that contract law facilitates commerce and the marketplace. Markets in turn can serve an important — albeit limited — role in sustaining the peaceful cooperation and coexistence toward which a more realistic liberalism should aim. (shrink)

An attempt to re-think, within and for the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger, certain central contributions of Greek thought. Interpretations of the Philebus and of other Platonic and Aristotelian texts concerned with problems arising therefrom are carried out; they culminate in an analysis of the fruitful union of intellectual power and impotence in philosophy. The existentialist framework often provides suggestions for the interpretation of difficult transitions in the classical works; conversely, the adherence to the arguments of the Greek texts (...) strengthens the existentialist position with respect to such concepts as world and rationality.--C. B. (shrink)

Anthropology, History, and Education, first published in 2007, contains all of Kant's major writings on human nature. Some of these works, which were published over a thirty-nine year period between 1764 and 1803, had never before been translated into English. Kant's question 'What is the human being?' is approached indirectly in his famous works on metaphysics, epistemology, moral and legal philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, but it is approached directly in his extensive but less well-known writings (...) on physical and cultural anthropology, the philosophy of history, and education which are gathered in the present volume. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question 'What is the human being?' should be philosophy's most fundamental concern, and Anthropology, History, and Education can be seen as effectively presenting his philosophy as a whole in a popular guise. (shrink)

This latest in attempts to collect statements from living American philosophers presents thoughts and interests of those writing in the "middle decades," the fifty years from 1920 to 1970. The editor has restricted himself to America’s senior philosophers asking each to reflect on "the things that matter most," or "to share the motifs in their work and to present concerns about their world". Although some influential elders are missing from this collection, an interesting variety of viewpoints and styles of American (...) philosophizing are represented. Especially interesting are the reflections of Brand Blanshard, Edwin Burtt, Herbert Feigl, Charles Hartshorne, Stephen Pepper, Roy Wood Sellars, and Herbert Spiegelberg. Blanshard traces his development from the influences upon him of Bradley, and describes his own rationalist ethics and humanist religion. Herbert Feigl in an even more autobiographical vein relates how he came under the important influence of Moritz Schlick and to be a member of the Vienna Circle. Also included in his article is a summary of his views on the issues of induction, scientific explanation, the mind-body problem, determinism, and some matters of practical philosophy. Pepper explains how he originated the idea of world hypotheses, and how he believes these hypotheses themselves originate and function, and Spiegelberg sketches an intriguing "ethics for fellows in the fate of existence." In his essay Hartshorne mixes comments on pragmatism, idealism, and the "linguistic turn," with explanations of his own "neoclassical metaphysics."—B.M. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is aimed to outline Locke’s position on the basic principles of proper human behavior. Its implementation involves: a) review of the research literature concerning the place of anthropological motive in philosophizing and b) research of his interpretation of human nature and the role of the rational component. Theoretical basis. The author’s approach is based on the conceptual provisions of phenomenology and existentialism. Originality. The work considers the teaching of Locke as the author of the original concept (...) of human nature, which is closely related to the understanding of ethical issues. It is proved that its meaningful development involves the identification of the main components of human nature in the process of determining the basic principles of personality behavior. The original conception of the thinker on the irrational component of human nature and the ways of its rationalization is analyzed. Conclusions. It is substantiated that Locke’s philosophical heritage is not reduced to depersonalized empiricism as epistemology, and his teaching about human is not limited to the abstract study of their rational component. The thinker connects the request of his own epoch with the new vision of human and the basic principles of their behavior on the basis of rationality. Locke is looking for the ways to master the irrational component of human nature and is convinced that in the era of the scientific revolution, the basis of human behavior should be rationality. Locke considers human freedom to be one of the key moments of human nature. (shrink)

This book, an outgrowth of the Bannerstone Division of American Lectures in Philosophy, is an attempt to form the groundwork for an empirical aesthetic that will be flexible and all-inclusive. Berleant bases his ideas on the concept of an open-ended aesthetic field in which art objects are actively experienced. This field consists of the art object, the perceiver, the artist, and the performer. It also includes conditioning factors of a biological, psychological, technological, historical, social, and cultural nature. When the aesthetic (...) field is considered experientially the result is what Berleant terms an "aesthetic transaction." Aesthetics itself must be understood on a level that does not attempt to either translate the art into other terms or to exclude those works of art which do not happen to fit into the particular theory one is espousing. Theories must fit art not the other way around. The predominant characteristics of aesthetic experience are identified as active-receptive, qualitative, sensuous, immediate, intuitive, non-cognitive, unique, intrinsic and integral. One of Berleant's main concerns is to rescue the whole field of aesthetics from its present semantic morass. He does this by shifting the art object from the position of prime importance to just one component of a multifaceted field in which perceiving and experiencing is the main objective. A number of Berleant's statements are questionable: most artists are not as audience-oriented as his theory demands they be; art objects are imbued occasionally with life and abilities which inanimate objects do not have; there is no recognition of the common situation in which only the artist ever sees a particular work so that one person only is the creator, the audience and, the critic--a fact which weakens Berleant's reasons for placing the critic outside the aesthetic field; and finally, there is total avoidance of the psychology of artists. But intelligence and imagination are at work here and the result is a provocative book.--B. T. (shrink)

This paper describes the interventions by the International Committee of the Red Cross to support a hospital in Afghanistan during the mid 1990s. We present elements of the interventions introduced in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and consider a number of ethical issues stimulated by this analysis. Ethical challenges arise whenever humanitarian interventions to deal with complex political emergencies are undertaken: among those related to the case study presented are questions concerning: a) whether humanitarian support runs the risk of propping up repressive (...) and irresponsible governments; b) whether humanitarian relief activities can legitimately focus on a narrow range of interventions, or need to broaden to address the range of challenges facing the health system; and c) whether sustainability and quality of care should be routinely considered in such settings. The paper concludes by highlighting the value of case studies, suggesting mechanisms for extending transparency and accountability in humanitarian health interventions, and highlighting the need of contextualising humanitarian work if the interventions are to be successful. (shrink)

The illegal migration of Basotho women to South Africa in order to render domestic service is alarming because they are subjected to harsh treatment. This is a pastoral and theological concern for the church. As migrants, their struggle begins from the household circumstances that often force them to leave and seek job opportunities undocumented or without following prescribed migration procedures. They are then subjected to migration processes and procedures: for example, corruption and bribery by migration officers and illegal dealers. The (...) working and living conditions in South Africa are often unconducive for illegal migrants. As economic and illegal migrants, they are often considered as lesser by prejudiced employers who treat them inhumanely. Accessing essential services also imposes a significant threat to their lives.Contribution: Through this study, the article will reveal the vulnerability faced by illegal migrant Basotho women as domestic workers in South Africa. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, academic-industrial collaborations and technology transfer have played an increasingly prominent role in the biomedical sciences. These relationships can speed the delivery of innovative drugs and medical technologies to clinical practice, creating important public health benefits as well as income for universities and their faculty. At the same time, they raise ethical concerns, particularly when research involves human subjects in clinical trials. Lapses in oversight of industry sponsored clinical trials at universities, and especially patient deaths in (...) a number of trials, have brought these issues into the public spotlight and have led the federal government to intensify its oversight of clinical research. The leadership of Harvard Medical School convened a group of leaders in academic medicine to formulate guidelines on individual financial conflicts of interest. They and other groups are working to formulate a national consensus on this issue. (shrink)

This work exposes some conceptual and methodological discussions that are involved in the codification and the consequent construction of a measurement instrument, and shows the imbrication of decisions that concern the research practice. In it, we try to introduce some theoretical and methodologic..

Since 1968 there has been a renewal of interest in Dilthey which has revealed new facets of his work and shown the need for a fundamental revision of the prevailing general conception of Dilthey. In 1968 Peter Krausser, in Kritik der endlichen Vernunft. Diltheys Revolution der allgemeinen Wissenschafts- und Handlungstheorie, brought out the connection between his epistemological and social-hermeneutic concerns by isolating a theory of functional structure running through his work which was seen as an anticipation of a cybernetic approach. (...) Krausser concluded by contrasting this "structure-theory" favorably with contending positions in current debate, Adorno and Habermas, Gadamer, and Popper. In the same year Habermas devoted two chapters of Erkenntnis und Interesse to Dilthey. Although he related him rather exclusively to a theoretical grounding of "the Geisteswissenschaften", the effect of Habermas’ parallel treatment of Dilthey, Peirce, and Freud was to free Dilthey from the confines of his received image. This worked to undermine the tripartite division of natural, humanistic, and social science which Habermas adapted from Scheler. Just as Peirce’s ideas on the fixation of belief concern not only experimental method but the psychology of experience, so Dilthey’s grasp of the relation of lived experience, objectivation, and understanding bears directly on experience in the full practical sense. In 1969 Frithjof Rodi, in Morphologie und Hermeneutik. Dilthey’s Ästhetik, connected his more "humanistic" work with his interests in biology and physiology, complementing the formal continuity of "structure-theory" established by Krausser and reintegrating this with a more familiar Dilthey. More recently others, above all Manfred Riedel and Ulrich Herrmann, have made important critical and editorial contributions, relying like Krausser on their familiarity with unpublished manuscripts, including that of the second volume of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, which Rodi is currently editing, in collaboration with Johach, for publication as volumes 18 and 19 of the Gesammelte Schriften. The availability of these texts should consolidate the revolution of the conventional image of Dilthey, under way since 1968, and Johach’s book must be welcomed as an anticipation of that edition. (shrink)

Continued concern for animal welfare may be alleviated when welfare would be monitored on farms. Monitoring can be characterized as an information system where various stakeholders periodically exchange relevant information. Stakeholders include producers, consumers, retailers, the government, scientists, and others. Valuating animal welfare in the animal-product market chain is regarded as a key challenge to further improve the welfare of farm animals and information on the welfare of animals must, therefore, be assessed objectively, for instance, through monitoring. Interviews with Dutch (...) stakeholder representatives were conducted to identify their perceptions about the monitoring of animal welfare. Stakeholder perceptions were characterized in relation to the specific perspectives of each stakeholder. While producers tend to perceive welfare from a production point of view, consumers will use visual images derived from traditional farming and from the animals’ natural environments. Scientists’ perceptions of animal welfare are affected by the need to measure welfare with quantifiable parameters. Retailers and governments (policy makers) have views of welfare that are derived from their relationships with producers, consumers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and scientists. All interviewed stakeholder representatives stated that animal welfare is important. They varied in the extent to which they weighted economic considerations relative to concern for the animals’ welfare. Many stakeholders emphasized the importance of communication in making a monitoring system work. Overall, the perspectives for the development of a sustainable monitoring system that substantially improves farm animal welfare were assessed as being poor in the short term. However, a reliable system could be initiated under certain conditions, such as integrated chains and with influential and motivated stakeholders. A scheme is described with attention points for the development of sustainable monitoring systems for farm animal welfare in the long term. (shrink)

During the past decade a great deal of excitement and interest has been generated by the work of Noam Chomsky and his followers in linguistics and related fields such as psychology. Typically when there is a breakthrough in a science, there are prophets who follow who make exaggerated claims and counterclaims. But while there has been much talk about generative grammars, depth and surface structure, transformations, etc., there has also been a great deal of ignorance about what these concepts precisely (...) mean. This short book based on three lectures delivered at Berkeley is now perhaps the best introduction to Chomsky's work. It combines and reflects a variety of his interests and is written with a lucidity that marks the ease of a master. The first lecture develops Chomsky's thesis that it is rationalist models of the mind and language that provide a much more fruitful orientation for the study of language and the mind than empiricist models. In this respect he continues his attack on what he takes to be the misguided dogmatic narrowness of prevailing empiricist and behaviorist presuppositions. The second lecture deals explicitly with some of the basic issues and techniques in the "new" linguistics showing us what it does and does not contribute to our understanding of language. The third lecture looks to the future and suggests possible directions that may be taken in psychology, linguistics, and other social sciences in light of the new orientation being developed in linguistics. But the present succinct volume is much more than an introduction to Chomsky's work and the new linguistics. It is also an evaluation of what has and has not been achieved in the past decade of intensive work. It reflects both Chomsky's modesty about what has really been accomplished and his optimism about what probably will be accomplished in the future. There appears to be a striking disparity between some of Chomsky's more exciting and provocative claims about innate capacities, universal grammar, the modified Cartesian-Kantian orientation, and the actual achievements of linguistics and psycholinguistics concerning our understanding of language and mind.--R. J. B. (shrink)

In this powerful and wonderfully accessible meditation on psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and social constructivism, Donnel Stern explores the relationship between two fundamental kinds of experience: explicit verbal reflection and "unformulated experience," or experience we have not yet reflected on and put into words. Stern is especially concerned with the process by which we come to formulate the unformulated. It is not an instrumental task, he holds, but one that requires openness and curiosity; the result of the process is not accuracy alone, (...) but experience that is deeply felt and fully imagined. Stern's sense of explicit verbal experience as continuously constructed and emergent leads to a central dialectic at the heart of his work: that between curiosity and imagination, on one hand, and dissociation and unthinking acceptance of the familiar on the other. The goal of psychoanalytic work, he holds, is the freedom to be curious, whereas defense signifies the denial of this freedom. We defend against our fear of what we would think, that is, if we allowed ourselves the freedom to think it. Stern also shows how the unconscious itself can be reconceptualized hermeneutically, and he goes on to explore the implications of this viewpoint on interpretation and countertransference. He is especially persuasive in showing how the interpersonal field, which is continuously in flux, limits the experience that it is possible for participants to reflect on. Thus it is that analyst and patient are together "caught in the grip of the field," often unable to see the kind of relatedness in which they are mutually involved. A brilliant demonstration of the clinical consequentiality of hermeneutic thinking, _Unformulated Experience_ bears out Stern's belief that psychoanalysis is as much about the revelation of the new in experience as it is about the discovery of the old. (shrink)