Bisher ist die Rolle von Ethikkomitees und Ethikberatenden als Ressource im Umgang mit der Covid-19-Pandemie ungeklärt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird diskutiert, worin spezifische Herausforderungen bei der ethischen Bewertung von Fragen an Ethikkomitees im Pandemiekontext bestehen und welche möglichen Aufgaben für Ethikberatende identifiziert werden könnten. Dabei wird die Ansicht vertreten, dass es für die kompetente, professionelle Bearbeitung dieser Fragen hilfreich wäre, das theoretische Grundverständnis der Ethikberatung für den Pandemiekontext zu reflektieren, die begründungstheoretischen, normativen Argumente aktueller Publikationen und Stellungnahmen der Fachgesellschaften zu (...) diskutieren und Weiterbildungspotenzial sowie Kompetenzgrenzen zu identifizieren. Für werden zur Kompetenzerweiterung Public-Health-Ethik und Ethik der Menschenrechte vorgeschlagen, psychische Entlastung bei ‚moralischem Stress‘ wird als ethisch-psychologischer Kooperationsbereich diskutiert und die explizite Abgrenzung vom juristischen Bereich wird empfohlen. Ethikberatung könnte den konstruktiven Umgang mit ethischen Fragen im Pandemiekontext fördern, die Qualität von Entscheidungs- und Bewertungsprozessen verbessern und in der Versorgungspraxis pragmatische, konkrete Hilfestellung anbieten. (shrink)

Following the distinctions proposed by Gamson and Easton the complex phenomenon of political alienation among the young was empirically subdivided in several dimensions. Within the 'input'dimension of political alienation we distinguished between the ability to process information and the ability to participate. Within the 'output'dimension we distinguished between two referents of distrust, political actors and authorities on the one hand, and the political system on the other. We succeeded in constructing reliable scales for each of these dimensions which were then (...) used as dependent variables in regression models. When turning to the explanation of the phenomenon our attention was focused first and foremost on the cultural factors. This was amply rewarded. Some of the normative aspects of culture, namely 'presenteism' and 'dionysianism', have a significant influence on various dimensions of political alienation. The impact of cognitive aspects appears to be even more significant. This means that an effective policy to counter the rise of political alienation wilt have to cope with a phenomenon solidly embedded in contemporary culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 87 c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM RUSSELL AS “SPANISH ASTRONOMER” (A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW) Sheila Turcon Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] Constance Malleson. The Coming Back. London: Jonathan Cape, 1933. Pp. 328. 7s. 6d. ublished in 1933 and never reprinted, The Coming Back is Constance Malleson’s first novel. She had been publishing shorter fiction as well as articles since (...) 1919.1 Her lover, Bertrand Russell, had encouraged her writing career, assisting with the placement of her first short story in The English Review.2 He thought a writing career preferable to acting. Using the stage name “Colette O’Niel”, she had a successful career on the stage.3 The novel is a fictional account of the love affair between Russell and Colette.They appear as Gregory del Orellano and Konradin Waring. It was not, however, recognized as a roman à clef when it was published, as their affair was not known by anyone except their closest friends and family members. John Slater recognized it for what it was.4 Three of the four Russell biographers mention the novel.5 Presumably all three relied on Slater’s article. Ronald Clark quotes one sentence from the novel, a summation of Gregory’s character by one of the other characters who shared the view of many. Gregory was seen as “a man exhausting other men by his intellect; exhausting women by his intensity; wearing out his friends, sucking them dry, passing from person to person, never giving any real happiness—or finding any” (Coming Back, p. 307; Clark, p. 583). Caroline Moorehead quotes several sentences about the 1 Turcon, “A Bibliography of Constance Malleson” (2012). 2 Malleson, “The End” by “Christine Harte” (1919). 3 Turcon, op. cit., appendix, acting roles, pp. 188–90. 4 John G. Slater, “Lady Constance Malleson, ‘Colette O’Niel’” (1975), pp. 10–11. 5 Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975); Moorehead, Bertrand Russell (1992); Monk, Bertrand Russell,Vol. 1 (1996). m= 88 Reviews c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM importance of work to Konradin—work that Gregory deplored (Coming Back, p. 105; Moorehead, p. 264). Only Ray Monk undertakes a detailed description of the novel, even naming the last chapter of The Spirit of Solitude, “The Coming Back”. He identifies, as did Slater, several other characters with their real life counterparts: Ottoline Morrell is Magdalena de Santa Segunda; T. C. Maynard is T. S. Eliot; Jevons is Clifford Allen; Marcus Beazley is Maurice Elvey; Gertrude West is Dora Black. He quotes the sentence that Clark had used earlier (Monk 1: 607). Monk writes that “Russell claimed never to have read The Coming Back (or any of Colette’s other books). Perhaps he knew it would make painful reading” (1: 608). Monk provides no source for this judgment, and in fact it is untrue. Although The Coming Back is not specifically discussed in their correspondence, her other three books are.6 My reading of the novel is coloured by an attempt to identify what is true in the novel. My knowledge of the truth is based on editing their correspondence.The novel is a fascinating portrait of the Russell and Colette relationship, far more revealing to those in the know than her autobiographies, where libel concerns were always at the forefront. Her first autobiography, AfterTenYears, had been published two years earlier, in 1931, to great acclaim. The Coming Back’s dust-jacket reads: Here is the first novel from the author of that vivid and successful autobiography, After Ten Years. And as might be expected, it shows the same vitality, integrity, and the same passion for beauty as the earlier work. Constance Malleson presents a portrait of a young girl of our times, and of her stand for freedom, through all its stages from selfishness to a fine renunciation. Before the novel begins Colette includes four things. She dedicates the book to “Joneen when he is grown up”. Colette was very fond of Russell’s son John, and this may well refer to... (shrink)

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent had (...) a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function-predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat-predictive”), or had no implications (“non-predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function- and habitat-predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose-based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose-based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger-scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education. (shrink)

Probing semantic relations Exploration and identification in specialized texts Alain Auger and Caroline Barrière In recent years, several scientific ...

In recent years there has been an interesting turn in the philosophical literature to groups and collective action. At the same time there has been a renewed interest in various forms of methodological individualism. This paper attempts to show the diversity of group action that is overlooked by much of the literature, to clarify some of the ambiguities that plague our language about groups and collectives, and to support the view that social entities are genuine. Some important arguments against social (...) entities being genuine are rebutted. The existence of social entities gives some substance to the debate about methodological individualism, but the resolution of the debate has depended too much on empirical results in the distant future. The article ends with some suggestions on how the debate matters in looking for biases in the directions of current social theorizing. (shrink)

This article seeks to open up a discussion of issues relating to the significance of sexual difference, the thinking and politics emerging from it and how it might affect educational philosophy. It briefly examines the initial work of Luce Irigaray, which has become quite influential in parts of the English speaking world, particularly focussing on the idea that there are implications for our educational objectives if gender equality were to be put in question as one of the underlying paradigms with (...) which to measure children's performance. It then looks at the work of some groups of Italian philosophers and educationalists who have not been translated into English and are consequently less well known. Their work has been devoted to exploring Irigaray's challenge to re-think the world from the perspective of sexual difference. In particular, in tune with the theme of this special issue, this article shows how this work puts forward the practice and philosophy of relationship for consideration at different stages of the educational process, focussing particularly on Luisa Muraro's philosophical ‘invention’ of the symbolic order of the mother as a way to bring into the shared world the erased sexual difference that Irigaray had articulated. Muraro's work considers the meaning of the first relationship between mother and infant and suggests that the mother, or the one doing her work, is in fact the first and ongoing educator and transmitter of philosophy, a fact that is only partially recognised in our formal educational structures. The article introduces, finally, the idea that as the historical patterns of mainly women teaching younger children and men teaching older children are shifting, to understand the need for and argue for a more sexuate world, with both sexes participating in the educational process at all stages would allow for the possibility of a new discussion of concepts that are already central to educationalists such as equality, freedom, autonomy, authority, flourishing and the relationship with parents. (shrink)

Background The COVID-19 pandemic posed many unprecedented challenges to health care systems and public health efforts worldwide. Policy making and science were deeply intertwined, in particular with regard to the justification of health policy measures. In this context, ethical considerations were often at the core of decision-making trade-offs. However, not much is known about the actual ethical challenges encountered by policy makers and scientists involved in policy advice. With this study, we therefore aim to explore the ethical challenges during COVID-19-related (...) political decision-making in Switzerland as perceived by policy makers and scientists involved in policy making. We also explore the role ethics advice had during the pandemic response and what can be learned for future public health crises. Methods We conducted thirteen qualitative expert interviews with policy makers and scientists involved in decision-making on COVID-19 policy responses in Switzerland on the regional and national level. We used inductive content analysis to analyse the interviews. Results Among the multitude of ethical challenges highlighted, interviewees perceived making trade-offs between the common good vs. the individual good and between economic welfare vs. health of the population, as well as proportionality of the policy measures, and the capacity of the public to accept uncertainty as central. Interviewees had diverging opinions on whether ethical considerations were sufficiently raised and discussed on the Swiss policy level during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the reasons why ethics was not sufficiently discussed, they mentioned a lack of time in the fast-paced dynamic of the pandemic, ethics as a complex subject area, the interconnectedness between ethics and law, too much focus on few topics (mostly on vaccination-related ethical questions), and power relationships, such as dominance of medical professionals over ethicists. They evaluated ethics support to have been adequately present in the decision-making process, but wished for ethics training, involvement of the public in the discourse and for accompanying communication to build trust among the population for the future. Conclusions The study provides empirical insights into the ethical considerations of COVID-19 policy making in practice in Switzerland. It can help to develop ethics assistance for future crises and inform ethical health policy and decision-making not only in Switzerland, but also in other countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims to illustrate the contribution of Acquisition Linguistics combined with the dialogic view driven by Bakhtin’s ideas, in order to describe morpho-syntactic acquisitions. According to the first approach, interaction is the main driver of syntactic acquisition processes, especially adults’ adjustments to the morpho-syntactic attempts of children and children’s repetitions of adults’ speech. In parallel, a dialogic approach to language acquisition focuses on how the two speakers’ co-construction of discourse leads children to use and acquire the linguistic ability (...) to share and construct meaning in discourse. We analyse conversations between adults and children aged between 2 and 4 years old, with typical and atypical developments. Our results show how inter-discursive facts in dialogue and repetition in interaction are major contributors of language acquisition processes. (shrink)

The nature of architecture Building Architecture and Religion The sense of the past Following the example of antiquity.

This volume maps the areas of ethical concern in the debate regarding the governance of genetic information, and suggests alternative ethical frameworks and models of regulation in order to inform its restructuring. Genetic governance is at the heart of medical and scientific developments, and is connected to global exploitation, issues of commodification, commercialisation and ownership, the concepts of property and intellectual property and concerns about individual and communal identity. Thus the decisions that are made in the next few years about (...) appropriate models of genetic governance will have knock-on effects for other areas of governance. In short the final answer to 'Who Decides?' in the context of genetic governance will fundamentally shape the ethical constructs of individuals and their networks and relationships in the public sphere. (shrink)

Pierson et al. document the lack of diversity in bioethicists’ normative commitments and argue that bioethicists should be more “mindful of the gaps between the positions they endorse and those end...

Medical ethics educators have a responsibility to assess the dominant ped­agogical methods and textbooks we utilize to advance our students’ knowledge about cultural differences and health disparities. In this essay, I argue that intersectional theory functions as an effective tool for the assessment and correction of diversity, equity, and inclusion training models for medical students. I critique, in particular, the additive conceptions of identity and diversity that dominate the literature. Intersectional theorists also provide helpful directives for how to train students (...) to be suspicious of social categories and their relations to power structures. Their ideas can be used to create parameters for case-based learning so as not to undertheorize the culture of medicine and to add depth to core concepts like autonomy and privacy through much-needed investigations of identity formation and expression. Ultimately, intersectional theory pushes medical ethicists to educate their students to understand difference, diversity, and inequity within a wider moral frame. (shrink)

This article examines how and why Ayn Rand uses fairy tales as intertexts in her novels. It argues that she evokes and revises fairy tales to exemplify the metaphysical values that her novels resist. For Rand, fairy tales like “Cinderella” are problematic because they typically endorse conventionality over the truly heroic. She therefore associates them with secondhanders and villains. She rejects their message that mindless conformity leads to happily-ever-after, and she exposes how fairy tales can be formidable vehicles for promoting (...) the senseless. She reinforces her point by contrasting them with her revisions of myths, which she associates with heroes. (shrink)

Introduction : anthropological conversations across disciplines -- The presence of the past in culture : anthropology and history -- Space, place and culture : anthropology and geography -- Writing culture : anthropology and literature -- The science in culture : anthropology and biology -- The individual and culture : anthropology and psychology -- Culture and population : anthropology and demography.

Flannery O'Connor is considered one of America's greatest fiction writers. The immensely talented Robert Giroux, editor-in-chief of Harcourt, Brace & Company and later of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was her devoted friend and admirer. He edited her three books published during her lifetime, plus Everything that Rises Must Converge, which she completed just before she died in 1964 at the age of thirty-nine, the posthumous The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, and the subsequent award-winning collection of her letters titled (...) The Habit of Being. When poet Robert Lowell first introduced O'Connor to Giroux in March 1949, she could not have imagined the impact that meeting would have on her life or on the landscape of postwar American literature. Flannery O'Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership sheds new light on an area of Flannery O?Connor?s life?her relationship with her editors?that has not been well documented or narrated by critics and biographers. Impressively researched and rich in biographical details, this book chronicles Giroux?s and O?Connor?s personal and professional relationship, not omitting their circle of friends and fellow writers, including Robert Lowell, Caroline Gordon, Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, Allen Tate, Thomas Merton, and Robert Penn Warren. As Patrick Samway explains, Giroux guided O'Connor to become an internationally acclaimed writer of fiction and nonfiction, especially during the years when she suffered from lupus at her home in Milledgeville, Georgia, a disease that eventually proved fatal. Excerpts from their correspondence, some of which are published here for the first time, reveal how much of Giroux's work as editor was accomplished through his letters to Milledgeville. They are gracious, discerning, and appreciative, just when they needed to be. In Father Samway's portrait of O'Connor as an extraordinarily dedicated writer and businesswoman, she emerges as savvy, pragmatic, focused, and determined. This engrossing account of O'Connor's publishing history will interest, in addition to O'Connor's fans, all readers and students of American literature. (shrink)

The National Library of France owns an uncommon illuminated manuscript of the Book of Job : the Parisinus graecus 135. Written in Greek in 1361/62, it is illustrated with a very large iconographic cycle , which combines Byzantine and gothic styles. The examination of the historical background allows us to bring forth the general meaning of the manuscript and to locate its origin with some probability in the Papal entourage and the Byzantine latinophile circles. The analysis of the iconographic cycle (...) of the manuscript shows that it is likely inspired by the theology developed in the literal commentary of Thomas of Aquinas on the Book of Job. Remarkably, this author is intensively translated in Greek in the middle of the fourteenth century in Byzantium under the aegis of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. (shrink)

What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is to be celebrated when properly understood. It is a phenomenon that has engaged some of the best people in philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and other disciplines. In the last fifteen years there has been a blossoming of anaytic studies on Marx and on Marxism in the mainstreams of academic disciplines, with the first impetus coming from philosophers who had been working in the analytic tradition. During the previous sixty years of (...) analytic philosophy virtually nothing was said about Marxism. It was not even considered worthy of philosophical attack. Bertrand Russell, who did write on Marxist topics, confined his considerations on Marx to popular texts. Karl Popper, who did take Marxism seriously philosophically, concentrated on criticisms which were in any case ignored by analytic philosophers. (shrink)

We present two prudent semantics within Dung's theory of argumentation. They are based on two new notions of extension, referred to as p-extension and c-extension. Two arguments cannot belong to the same p-extension whenever one of them attacks indirectly the other one. Two arguments cannot belong to the same c-extension whenever one of them indirectly attacks a third argument while the other one indirectly defends the third. We argue that our semantics lead to a better handling of controversial arguments than (...) Dung's ones. We compare the prudent inference relations induced by our semantics w.r.t. cautiousness; we also compare them with the inference relations induced by Dung's semantics. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of how erotic love works to develop virtue. It is argued that love drives moral development by holding the creation of virtue in the individual as the emotion’s intentional object. After analyzing the distinction between passive and active accounts of the object of love, this paper demonstrates that a Platonic virtue-ethical understanding of erotic love—far from being consumed with ascetic contemplation—offers a positive treatment of emotion’s role in the attainment and social practice of virtue.

The author explores disability in K-12 schools where attitudes, beliefs, and practices shape the school culture and influence enduring perceptions about disability among school professionals, students, and their families. Drawing on recent conversations among moral philosophers who view disability as a central feature of human life that has yet to enrich understanding of ourselves and others, the author encourages the practice of reform grounded in a process that begins with a “suspicion of the self” and a willingness to risk the (...) personal. (shrink)

In his article ‘On the shoulders of giants', Don Fowler argues for the identification of the Aeneid with its opening arma, saying that in post-Augustan Latin verse arma is always seen as significantly intertextual. The word may apply to the Aeneid itself, or, more generally, to imperial epic or epic in the style of Virgil.

Hegel's logic provides a basis for an interpretation of his philosophy of history and political theory which avoids many of the difficulties that traditionally have been associated with his views, leaving us with a clear and useful model of modern political interaction. The unification of content and form provides for the inherently historicist features of the model, that resolve the traditional dichotomy of description and prescription by presenting the state as a historical process, developing through the opposition between the normative (...) claims of its constituents and the determinate socio-political arrangements existing at any particular stage in its history. The discussion begins with a brief examination of Hegel's doctrines of the concept and the _idea, which it subsequently applies to an interpretation of his concepts of _Sittlichkeit and the state. (shrink)

The election of a British National Party councillor in London in September 1993 was greeted by shock and disbelief in the media, particularly because it happened during controversial preparations to celebrate the anniversary of Britain's role in Hitler's defeat in 1945. This essay sets out to examine some of the ways in which the BNP victory was reported in an attempt to understand how intricately gender and class are interwoven in discourses of racism in contemporary British politics. First, it draws (...) attention to the dramatic images of white, working-class (or rather, non-working-class), violent, masculinity that dominated media representation of the event. In particular, the apparent invisibility of women in the photos and headlines seemed questionable, particularly when their anger and frustration about their own living conditions percolated through the lengthier written reports on the inside pages. Looking beyond superficial media coverage of the election, it was clear that gender was also a significant factor in the construction of a local, exclusively white, organic community fostered by political parties responsible for administering social housing and other public resources. While gender can articulate different forms of racism, the reverse can also be true. Ideas about what it means to be white, for example, defined against the racialized ‘other’, are also implicated in the social construction of gender. The violence perpetrated by those attracted to the xenophobic rhetoric of groups like the BNP is able to represent an aspect of masculinity that is both patriarchal and active in defending the ‘racial’ community. The third voice of beleaguered mothers summons up a version of white femininity that is passively concerned with the task of trying to reproduce the racial purity longed for by their menfolk. Finally, the specific characteristics and dynamics of the area in which the election took place also demands attention, not just because it happened in the heart of one of the most contested territories in London, but also because it was a reminder that the spatial aspects of social conflict are inseparable from the social, political and economic. (shrink)

This essay arises out of a concern to understand how categories of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference--particularly between women--have been constructed in the past, in order to explore how these categories continue to be reproduced in more recent political and ideological conflicts. Until very recently, feminist theory relating to the writing of history has tended to emphasize questions of gender and their articulation with class, with the result that issues of "race" have been overlooked.Focusing on ideas about whiteness and the (...) various constructions of white racial identity can offer new avenues of thought and action to those working to understand and dismantle systems of racial domination. The recognition that the lives of women of color are inescapably prescribed by definitions of race as well as gender can also be applied to women who fall into the category "white."This essay argues for a feminist theory of history that inquires into the construction and reproduction of racialized femininities. Focusing on images and ideas about white womanhood produced at particular points in the past, examples from the author's book Beyond the Pale illustrate a range of questions that flow from having a perspective of race, class, and gender. The essay looks briefly at the idea of historical memory, using a discussion of oral history to consider ways in which social memory of Empire is continually affected and transformed by cultural forms in the present.Finally, by taking apart various constructions of white femininity in two narratives of cultural conflict, the essay demonstrates how a historically informed and "antiracist" feminism might intervene differently in debates about contemporary politics. (shrink)

This book responds to the need for a retrieval and renewal of the work of Karl Marx through close philosophical analysis of his publications, manuscripts, and letters — especially those relevant to politics, morality, and the future. This philosophical study stands out because of its two principal features. First, it reviews and develops ideas about the future, though often only briefly discussed by Marx and his commentators, drawn from Marx's work. Second, it focuses on collective matters that are critical for (...) Marx's ideas but rarely investigated and still problematic. Part One introduces Marx with a discussion of emancipation and freedom in community. It then discusses the importance of retrieval and the methodology for promoting it. Part Two is about misunderstandings of Marx's ideas about productive development, division of labour, and organisations. Part Three discusses nations, morality, and democracy, all of which Marx supported. Part Four takes up Marx's significant, but misunderstood, ideas about the future and his relation to the anarchists. (shrink)