This book includes both the original German version and, for the first time, an English translation of Carl Wilhelm Frolich's important essay of 1792. In it, Frolich addresses the major concerns of the late eighteenth century and expresses his belief that social circumstances significantly determine individual happiness.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and his pupil Carl Stumpf, in their psychology, laid stress to the description and analysis of psychical phenomena, or functions, in order to get a taxonomy of mental acts. In their logic, they undertake the proof of whether empirically given knowledge is logically necessary.

Professor Wilhelm Blasius, physiologist at Giessen in West Germany, has written a book "Probleme der Lebensforschung" (Verlag Rombach, Freiburg 1973) which - I understand - is to be published in an English version. To me it has been of interest as an orientation in a world of traditional German thinking, best known from Goethe's natural philosophy of perceptible "Ur­ bilder", which perhaps in English could be rendered descriptively by calling it an inner vision of further irre­ ducible totalities. It (...) is in contemporary language a kind of intuitive 'holistic' insight which represents understanding different from that of natural science. The latter is devoted to the study of causal chains, is largely experimental and in its aim ultimately 'reduc­ tionist' -to use another modern term. Goethe's approach is reincarnated in the "Wesenslehre" of the late Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) and in the thinking of Carl Gustav Caruso To Klages the perceived image alone is the meaning of everything in this world and in this sense he is the advocate of a psychological phenom­ enology that is an end in itself. Originally trained as a chemist Klages soon turned to philosophy and de­ veloped a system of concepts supposed to give a deeper insight into the essence of life than did the endless causal chains of natural science. Blasius makes much use of the concepts of this philosopher, in particular his ideas on 'polarities'. (shrink)

In der Reihe jena-sophia wird mit Hermann von Kehlers Mitschrift zu Hegels Ästhetikvorlesung aus dem Sommersemester 1826 ein wichtiges Dokument aus dem Besitz der Universitätsbibliothek Jena veröffentlicht. Hegel hat sich in dieser Vorlesung besonders intensiv mit der Kunst seiner Zeit auseinandergesetzt und ein breites Spektrum künstlerischer Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten vorgestellt, das vom Schönen über das Charakteristische bis zum Häßlichen reicht. Unter der Leitfrage seiner Ästhetik, der Frage nach der Relevanz der Kunst "für uns" und für die durch die Vernunftforderung bestimmte moderne Welt (...) sieht Hegel seine "These vom Ende der Kunst" bestätigt. Die Künste sind nicht die Quelle der modernen Kultur, sondern ein Faktor neben anderen. Dennoch bleibt die Kunst ein unverzichtbares Element der humanen Kultur. Ihre "Zukunft" liegt sowohl in der Vielfalt möglicher Gestaltung als auch in ihrer gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung: Die Pflege der Künste als Element der Bildung des Menschen fällt unter die Aufgaben des Staates; die Künste vermitteln dem modernen Menschen ein geschichtliches Bewußtsein sowohl aus den Quellen der eigenen Kultur, als auch durch die Integration des Fremden: der Weltkulturen. In der Enzyklopädie von 1827 hat Hegel die Ergebnisse dieser Vorlesung systematisch zu einer Erweiterung der ersten Paragraphen des "absoluten Geistes" über die Kunst genutzt. Daher bietet die Vorlesung nicht nur einen für Studenten (von Hegel selbst) entwickelten Einblick in seine Ästhetik, sondern auch die wissenschaftliche Grundlage für die systematische Erschließung seiner Philosophie der Kunst. Die vorliegende Edition präsentiert den Text der Hegelschen Vorlesung mit (kenntlich gemachten) Ergänzungen und Sachanmerkungen. Eine knappe Einleitung zur Vorlesung stützt sich auf eine in Vorbereitung befindliche Einführung in Hegels Ästhetik, die ebenfalls im Wilhelm Fink Verlag erscheint. (shrink)

Recent writing on the nature of freedom has served to underline a crucial gap in the academic experience. First--and most obviously--the concept of freedom has been modernized by its application to contemporary institutions. Second, a new approach to the concept of liberty has been pioneered in the construction of new typologies of freedom. Finally, awareness of variety in concepts of freedom has been paralleled in variations in the practice of freedom. The tumultuous history of Western man may be conceptualized as (...) the story of how freedom has become embodied. What is missing from the story is the relationship of concepts to actions.This relationship has been established for some specific notions of freedom. Many of the philosophical analyses--especially recent ones like pragmatism and existentialism--have been predicated on actual human behavior. On the other hand, many classic histories of freedom--those of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, John Bagnell Bury, Guido de Ruggiero, and Harold Laski--have traced the actual development of a definite kind of freedom.This volume contains essays prepared to celebrate the anniversary of the publication of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, revised in the light of discussions by Henry D. Aiken, William Ebenstein, Mark DeWolfe Howe, and David Spitz, as well as other articles, many of them growing out of the discussion either in the form of commentary or independent contributions. There are also two papers written independently. (shrink)

Provocative and...persuasive...{Pletsch} has illuminated the process by which a gifted but awkward philology student became one of the modern world's most original thinkers... Deserves to be read...by anyone interested in the dynamics of creative influence and achievement.

Professor C. G. Hempel (known to a host of admirers and friends as 'Peter' Hempel) is one of the most esteemed and best loved philosophers in the If an Empiricist Saint were not somewhat of a Meinongian Impos world. sible Object, one might describe Peter Hempel as an Empiricist Saint. In deed, he is as admired for his brilliance, intellectual flexibility, and crea tivity as he is for his warmth, kindness, and integrity, and does not the presence of so many (...) wonderful qualities in one human being assume the dimensions of an impossibility? But Peter Hempel is not only possible but actual! One of us (Hilary Putnam) remembers vividly the occasion on which he first witnessed Hempel 'in action'. It was 1950, and Quine had begun to attack the analytic/synthetic distinction (a distinction which Carnap and Reichenbach had made a cornerstone, if not the keystone, of Logical Em piricist philosophy). Hempel, who is as quick to accept any idea that seems to contain real substance and insight as he is to demolish ideas that are empty or confused, was one of the first leading philosophers outside of Quine's immediate circle to join Quine in his attack. Hempel had come to Los Angeles (where Reichenbach taught) on a visit, and a small group consisting of Reichenbach and a few of his graduate students were gath ered together in Reichenbach's home to hear Hempel defend the new posi tion. (shrink)

Seit über hundert Jahren wartet eine interessierte Öffentlichkeit auf eine umfassende, kritische, kommentierte Edition der Briefe Wilhelm von Humboldts. Die lange Reihe prominenter Akteure der Goethe-Zeit (bzw. der Napoleonischen Ära), die zu den Briefpartnern dieses Staatsmannes, Bildungsreformers und Sprachforschers zählen, sowie die Vielfalt der Themen – neben den bereits genannten sind dies vor allem Philosophie, Literatur, Philologie, bildende Kunst, Politik, diplomatische Korrespondenz, Geschichte – und nicht zuletzt die literarischen Qualitäten der Brieftexte selbst machen dieses umfangreiche Briefcorpus zu einem der (...) bedeutendsten der Epoche: ein Zeitgemälde auf höchstem Niveau. Die Ausgabe wird in drei Abteilungen erscheinen: I. Jugendbriefe, Brautzeit, erste Ehejahre (1781–1802) II. Amtszeit (1802–1819) III. Altersmuße (1820–1835). Die I. Abteilung wird fünf Bände umfassen. Band 1 beginnt mit Briefen des 13-jährigen Knaben; erster Schwerpunkt ist die Reihe schwärmerischer Briefe an Henriette Herz und weitere Mitglieder der „Verbindung“, einer Vereinigung zur gegenseitigen moralischen Vervollkommnung, die Humboldt bis zur Verlobung mit Karoline von Dacheröden intensiv beschäftigte; danach stehen die Briefe an die Braut im Vordergrund. Außerdem spielen die Briefe an Georg Forster und Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi eine wichtige Rolle; auch die später umfangreiche Korrespondenz mit Carl Gustaf von Brinkman beginnt bereits in dieser Periode. Mit der Eheschließung im Juni 1791 wird der Band abgeschlossen. Der Band enthält 198 Briefe, davon 21 bisher ungedruckte. (shrink)

The ancient Taoist text that forms the central part of this book was discovered by Wilhelm, who recognized it as essentially a practical guide to the integration of personality. Foreword and Appendix by Carl Jung; illustrations. Translated by Cary F. Baynes.A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Die neue Edition der Vorlesungen über die 'Philosophie der Weltgeschichte' stellt den Versuch dar, eine einzige der gehaltenen Vorlesungen aus drei Manuskripten unterschiedlicher Qualität möglichst authentisch zu rekonstruieren und bietet somit erst die Möglichkeit, sich wissenschaftlich mit der systematischen Konzeption der Hegelschen Geschichtsphilosophie zu beschäftigen. Der Band enthält zusätzlich einen umfangreichen Anmerkungsteil über die orientalische Welt, in dem ausführlich die zum großen Teil schwer zugänglichen Quellen nachgewiesen worden sind, die Hegel als Material für seine Vorlesung benutzt hat.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné, Johann Christoph Gatterer, and Christian Wilhelm Büttner attempted to realize the old idea of deciphering the alphabet of the world, which Francis Bacon had raised as a general postulate of science. This article describes these attempts and their interrelations. Linné used the model of the alphabet to classify plants according to the characters of this fruiting body. Gatterer, one of the leading German historians during the Enlightenment, adopted the (...) botanical method of classification by genus and species to classify the history of scripts. He used the forms of the alphabetic characters to measure the age of manuscripts and to map the process of history as a genealogy of culture. Gatterer collaborated closely with Büttner, the first Göttingen professor of natural history. Büttner constructed a general alphabet of languages which connected the phonetics of language with the historically known alphabets. Early on, diplomatics and ethnography combined the natural order of natural history and the cultural order of the alphabet with the attempt to register development and to document development by the evolution of forms. Based on the shared model of the alphabet and on the common necessity to classify their empirical material, natural history and the description of culture were related attempts in the middle of the eighteenth century to comprehend the alphabetically organized nature and a naturally ordered culture. (shrink)

This paper aims to illustrate the influence of Franz Unger’s (1800–1870) and Carl Wilhelm Nägeli’s (1817–1891) anatomical and developmental works on Gregor Mendel’s (1822–1884) use of numerical ratios in biological inquiry. All hypotheses concerning Mendel’s sources of inspiration have hitherto overlooked the cytological teaching of Unger, his professor of botany. In the 1830s and 1840s, he was a pioneer of cell theory. His publications, including his university textbooks, are characterised by a particulate and quantifying approach towards vital phenomena. (...) Special attention will be paid to Unger’s and Nägeli’s ‘law of plant growth’, which shows some striking basic correspondences with Mendel’s approach. This demonstrates, firstly, that mathematical thinking was not alien to mid-nineteenth century botany, and secondly, that Mendel’s conceptions were influenced by an even greater variety of ideas circulating around 1850. (shrink)

In the latter half of the 19th century, economic thought in the Germanspeaking world was dominated, both intellectually and academically, by the so-called historical school, from Wilhelm Roscher to Gustav Schmoller and others. In 1871, the Austrian Carl Menger published his Grun&tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Menger, 1976 (1871)), customarily referred to as one of the three simultaneous discoveries of marginalist economics-the other two marginalist ‘revolutionaries’ being Jevons in England and Walras in France. Twelve years later, in 1883, Menger published (...) a major methodological treatise entitled Untersuchungen iiber die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Oekonomie insbesondere (Menger, 1963 (1883)). This book included criticisms of some of the historicist principles of doing economics. In the same year, Schmoller, leader of the German historicists, wrote a critical review of Menger’s book (Schmoller, 1883). Menger reacted forcefully with a more straightforwardly polemical small book, Die Irrthiimer des Historismus in der deutschen National6konomie (Menger, 1884). Commentaries by others appeared in later years, but this brief episode amounted to what has thereafter been called the Methodenstreit between Menger and Schmoller. It has been established as perhaps the most famous methodological controversy in the history of the social sciences. (shrink)

In his struggle against Weimar, Geneva, and Versailles, Carl Schmitt enlisted a number of political thinkers as confederates—Machiavelli, Hobbes, Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Juan Donoso Cortés, Benjamin Constant, and Hegel. The legitimacy of this claim has gone unchallenged except in the case of Hegel. Many have felt that his liberal credentials, most clearly manifested in his conception of civil society and his allegiance to the reformist policies espoused in Prussia by H.F.K. von Stein, K.A. von Hardenberg, and (...) Wilhelm von Humboldt, were compromised by Schmitt, who appears to have opposed liberalism and contributed to the demise of the Weimar republic. Schmitt’s attempt to tie Hegel’s views to the political outlook of Hobbes and de Maistre also discredits his speculative stance. Jean-François Kervégan’s extraordinary book seeks to extricate Hegel from this troubling association and attempts both to defend Hegel’s liberalism and confirm the philosophical nature of his argument. Without diminishing Schmitt’s Hegelian debt, his exhaustive comparative study, supported by impeccable scholarship, attempts to show that Schmitt distorted Hegel’s liberalism by disregarding the dialectical intent of his philosophy. In the process, Kervégan aims to preserve the Hegelian legacy from any contamination that might accrue to it from association with Schmitt. (shrink)

1. IntroductionIn his dissertation written under Wilhelm Hennis in 1991, Franz-Josef Ehrle was the first to write about the lecture “Probleme der Staatssoziolo-gie” (“Problems of State Sociology”) that Max Weber gave to the Vienna Sociological Society on October 25, 1917.1 Ehrle used as his source the report on the lecture published in the Neue Freie Presse on October 26, 1917.2 Ehrle also mentions a diary entry made by Josef Redlich, who was among the audience: “Thursday evening, a brilliant lecture (...) by Max Weber(Heidelberg) at the Sociological Society.”3 There exists a short biography of Redlich, taken from an excursus on “The Representatives of the (Bourgeois) Austrian Peace Movement” (“Die Vertreter der (bürgerlichen) österreichischen Friedensbewegung”): “Josef Redlich (1869–1936), jurist and politician, 1907–1918 MöAH (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei/German Progressive Party), Oct.–Nov. 1918, last Imperial and Royal Finance Minister.”4 Ehrle also indicates that Redlich met Max Weber in Vienna in 1909 at the General Congress of the Society for Social Politics (Verein für Sozialpolitik), but that Redlich’s acquaintance with Alfred Weber went back further (as shown in Redlich’s diary entry of September 2, 1909: “Saw Alfred Weber again”).5 Furthermore, a longer meeting with Max Weber is mentioned in Redlich’s diary in 1916 (on June 6).6 When Weber was staying in Vienna in 1917 and 1918, he also met privately with Redlich, and Arthur von Rosthorn attended one of these meetings with his wife (entry of May 9, 1918). Finally, Redlich wrote about his acquaintance with Max Weber in a letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal on December 3, 1926. Ehrle summarizes Weber’s meetings in Vienna as being “limited primarily to his contacts from academia, economics (Hammerschlag), and politics (and, here, above all the economic field (Mataja, Riedl, Schüler)),” often encouraged by the fact that “academics held ministerial posts and ministers held academic posts.”7. (shrink)

Between 1925 and 1932, the University of Frankfurt housed Richard Wilhelm's China Institute. A diverse compendium of international scholars passed through the Institute during these years. This article explores philosophical and historical interactions among Wilhelm, Carl Gustav Jung, and Martin Buber who contribute to the understanding of Daoism through philosophy, psychology, and religion, respectively.

Ultraviolet radiation is generally considered to have been discovered by Johann Wilhelm Ritter in 1801. In this article, we study the reception of Ritter’s experiment during the first decade after the event—Ritter’s remaining lifetime. Drawing on the attributional model of discovery, we are interested in whether the German physicists and chemists granted Ritter’s observation the status of a discovery and, if so, of what. Two things are remarkable concerning the early reception, and both have to do more with neglect (...) than with reception. Firstly, Ritter’s observation was sometimes accepted as a fact but, with the exception of C. J. B. Karsten’s theory of invisible light, it played almost no role in the lively debate about the nature of heat and light. We argue that it was the prevalent discourse based on the metaphysics of Stoffe that prevented a broader reception of Ritter’s invisible rays, not the fact that Ritter himself made his findings a part of his Naturphilosophie. Secondly, with the exception of C. E. Wünsch’s experiments on the visual spectrum, there was no experimental examination of the experiment. We argue that theorizing about ontological systems was more common than experimenting, because, given its social and institutional situation, this was the appropriate way of contributing to physics. Consequently, it was less clear in 1810 than in 1801 what, if anything, had been discovered by Ritter.Keywords: Johann Wilhelm Ritter; Carl Johann Bernhard Karsten; Christian Ernst Wünsch; Ultraviolet radiation; Conceptions of heat and light. (shrink)

Volume 2 contains both notebooks of "Time Management (Max) I and II" and thereby Gödel’s applied individual ethics, which he received among others through his teacher Heinrich Gomperz. Gödel thus incorporates the ethical ideal of self-perfection into his opus. The volume is prefaced by an introduction to relevant considerations from the ethics of the Stoics as well as ancient dietetics, which provide the philosophical background to understand Gödel’s approach. In addition, editor Eva-Maria Engelen presents how this fits into the context (...) of Gödel’s Philosophical Notebooks. (shrink)

This article proposes a new account of the relation between the sciences and common sense. A debate between Alfred North Whitehead and Arthur S. Eddington highlighted both the tendency of the natural sciences to repudiate commonsense conceptions of the world and the greater closeness of the human sciences to common sense. While analytic writers have mostly regarded these features as self-evident, I offer an explanation of them by appealing to Wilhelm Dilthey and the phenomenological tradition. Dilthey suggested that, whereas (...) the natural sciences could individuate their phenomena purely from empirical data, human sciences were compelled to refer to commonsense understanding in order to individuate mental phenomena. I apply this insight to episodes from the history of science, and use it to contrast the work of Alfred Schutz and Carl G. Hempel in philosophy of social and natural science. In the final section, I argue that Dilthey’s framework also offers resources to challenge present-day reductionism about mental phenomena. (shrink)

Edvard August Vainio was a world-renowned Finnish lichenologist. In Finland, however, he was a controversial person due to his strong pro-Finnish political views. Equally disputed was his opinion that systematics should be based on evolutionary theory and phylogenetic thinking. Vainio was familiar with the ideas of the early German phylogeneticists—especially those of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli – and, applying them, aimed to create an exact method for building a natural classification of lichens already at the end of the (...) nineteenth century. In this respect, Vainio was a true pioneer, as no actual phylogenetic method had yet been developed. In the general spirit of the time, Vainio focused on finding the ancestors of species and other taxa by comparing primitive and derived features of homologous characters. However, Vainio already understood the concept of sister groups in 1880, the identification of which is the basis of all modern phylogenetic research. Nevertheless, the distinctive method developed by Vainio was not so much focused on the construction of a phylogenetic tree, but on revealing the origin of species through the differentiation and fixation of their polymorphic variation. Indeed, Vainio’s species concept is surprisingly similar to the phylogenetic species concepts presented a hundred years later. Although in many ways progressive, Vainio’s views did not influence the development of phylogenetics more widely, but his discussions are nevertheless a valuable source to understanding the early development of phylogenetic theory. (shrink)

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's grand cantata, Karl Wilhelm Rammlers Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu displays a masterful integration of features. This study first surveys the work's historical background, genesis, and early history, then examines both libretto and music for distinguishing characteristics of architecture, philosophical outlook, symbolism, rhetorical approach, and genre. A detailed analysis of seven sonata-style movements then reveals Bach's achievement of artistic unity across every level of scale. His techniques include: a treatment of music and text which synthesizes (...) elements of variety and repetition; continuous development of themes; through-composition of da capo forms achieved through sonata procedures; motivic cross-references which acquire ever-deeper layers of associations as the oratorio progresses; and a tonal "story" that accommodates dynamic contrasts of tempo, timbre, key, and melody within a single trajectory. (shrink)

Einleitung 1. KULTURPOLITISCHE IMPULSE IN RESTAURATIVER ZEIT. Hermann Lübbe. Deutscher Idealismus als Philosophie Preußischer Kulturpolitik - Walter Jaeschke. Politik, Kultur und Philosophie in Preußen - Kurt Rainer Meist. Zur Rolle der Geschichte in Hegels System der Philosophie - Karlheinz Stierle. Zwei Hauptstädte des Wissens; Paris und Berlin 2. KUNSTTHEORIE UND ÄSTHETIK IN BERLIN. Beat Wyss. Klassizismus und Geschichtsphilosophie im Konflikt. Aloys Hirt und Hegel - Gunter Scholtz. Schleiermachers Theorie der modernen Kultur mit vergleichendem Blick auf Hegel - Frank Jolles. August (...) Wilhelm Schlegel und Berlin: Sein Weg von den Berliner Vorlesungen von 1801-04 zu denen vom Jahre 1827 - Frithjof Rodi. Die Romantiker in der Sicht Hegels, Hayms und Diltheys - Wolfhart Henckmann. Solger und die Berliner Kunstszene - Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. H. G. Hotho: Kunst als Bildungserlebnis und Kunsthistorie in systematischer Absicht, oder die entpolitisierte Version der ästhetischen Erziehung des Menschen - Gregor Stemmrich. C. Schnaase; Rezeption und Transformation Berlinischen Geistes in der kunsthistorischen Forschung 3. AKTUALITÄT DES LITERARISCHEN UND KÜNSTLERISCHEN ERBES - Hellmut Flashar. Die Entdeckung der griechischen Tragödie für die Deutsche Bühne - Siegfried Grosse. Die Rezeption des Nibelungenliedes im 19. Jahrhundert - Carl Dahlhaus. Hegel und die Musik seiner Zeit - Otto Pöggeler. Der Philosoph und der Maler. Hegel und Christian Xeller - Barbara Stemmrich-Köhler. Die Rezeption von Goethes West-östlichem Divan im Umkreis Hegels. (shrink)

The paper addresses the journal Jahrbücher für speculative Philosophie, published between 1846 and 1848 in Darmstadt. The paper focuses on the forewords of the journal written by the sole editor Ludwig Noack (1819–1885). In these forewords, Noack elaborates the current situation of philosophy. He outlines his vision for the future philosophy. It would be meaningful not only for professional philosophers but also for the general audience. Moreover, it would be closely associated with other sciences. Noack’s vision was inspired by August (...) Cieszkowski’s (1814–1894) so-called “Philosophie der Tat” (the philosophy of action), which resonated with the entire generation of German Hegelians from the late 1830s. Noack realized his journal in co-operation with the “Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin”, founded by Cieszkowski and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) former student Carl Ludwig Michelet (1801–1893) in 1843. (shrink)

This book is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the ...

BackgroundCountries are increasingly devoting significant resources to creating or strengthening research ethics committees, but there has been insufficient attention to assessing whether these committees are actually improving the protection of human research participants.DiscussionResearch ethics committees face numerous obstacles to achieving their goal of improving research participant protection. These include the inherently amorphous nature of ethics review, the tendency of regulatory systems to encourage a focus on form over substance, financial and resource constraints, and conflicts of interest. Auditing and accreditation programs (...) can improve the quality of ethics review by encouraging the development of standardized policies and procedures, promoting a common base of knowledge, and enhancing the status of research ethics committees within their own institutions. However, these mechanisms focus largely on questions of structure and process and are therefore incapable of answering many critical questions about ethics committees' actual impact on research practices.The first step in determining whether research ethics committees are achieving their intended function is to identify what prospective research participants and their communities hope to get out of the ethics review process. Answers to this question can help guide the development of effective outcomes assessment measures. It is also important to determine whether research ethics committees' guidance to investigators is actually being followed. Finally, the information developed through outcomes assessment must be disseminated to key decision-makers and incorporated into practice. This article offers concrete suggestions for achieving these goals.ConclusionOutcomes assessment of research ethics committees should address the following questions: First, does research ethics committee review improve participants' understanding of the risks and potential benefits of studies? Second, does the process affect prospective participants' decisions about whether to participate in research? Third, does it change participants' subjective experiences in studies or their attitudes about research? Fourth, does it reduce the riskiness of research? Fifth, does it result in more research responsive to the local community's self-identified needs? Sixth, is research ethics committees' guidance to researchers actually being followed? (shrink)