Old High German spells are among the earliest texts in the German vernacular. At first, they were passed on as marginal entries in theological manuscripts. Based on two representative examples, the Merseburger Cod. 136, and the Trierer Hs 40/1018 8°, the relationships between the spells, other marginalia, and the main text shall be explored with regard to their content and function. The question arises whether and to what extent the formal positioning on the margins of the manuscripts equates to a (...) marginalisation in terms of content. This is of particular interest in view of the fact that the relationship between incantations and the Christian canon had always been a precarious one. In contrast to earlier research, which tended towards strict demarcation of the magical-pagan spells from the Christian main texts, this paper will explore the idea that the marginalia might function as a kind of performative frame. Thus, in the sense of Derrida’s understanding of the parergon, the spells are at the same time set apart from the (canonical) main text, yet also resemble it. This would implicate that, despite the genuine relationship between main text and marginalia, the relationship remained one of tension. (shrink)

In response to the so-called “paradox of deontology,” many have argued that the agent-relativity of deontological constraints accounts for why an agent may not kill one in order to prevent five others from being killed. Constraints provide reasons for particular agents not to kill, not reasons to minimize overall killings. In this paper, I tease out the significance of an underappreciated aspect of this agent-relative position, i.e. it provides no guidance as to what an agent ought to do when faced (...) with the prospect of killing one in order to prevent herself from killing five. After rejecting mere agent-relativity, the view that agents are morally permitted to violate constraints in order to minimize their overall violations, I offer a view that this is both agent- and time-relative, and show how this view exemplifies the underlying motivations for deontological constraints while successfully responding to both the inter- and intra-personal paradoxes of deontology. (shrink)

Moderate deontologists hold that while it is wrong to kill an innocent person to save, say, five other individuals, it is indeed morally permissible to kill one if, say, millions of lives are at stake. A basic worry concerning the moderate’s position is whether the view boils down to mere philosophical wishful thinking. In permitting agents to ever kill an innocent, moderates require that agents treat persons as means, in opposition to traditional deontological motivations. Recently Tyler Cook argued that deontologists (...) can be moderate. However, there remains a gap in the literature concerning how such a view might function in practice, as well as why a deontologist might (or perhaps, should) hold the view. This paper works to fill these gaps. I first develop the view that agents can be constrained from an action even though there are instances in which an infringement of this constraint is permissible. Crucially, I appeal to the moral emotions that are fitting in cases of constraint infringements. I then go on to show how this view can be grounded in traditional deontological foundations. Respect for the dignity of persons, I argue, requires not only that we not treat others in certain ways, but also that we acknowledge the direct and indirect effects our actions and inactions have on all persons. This deontological motivation, in turn, leads to a moderate constraint on the actions of agents. (shrink)

Commonsense morality seems to feature both agent-neutral and agent-relative elements. For a long time, the core debate between consequentialists and deontologists was which of these features should take centerstage. With the introduction of the consequentializing project and agent-relative value, however, agent-neutrality has been left behind. While I likewise favor an agent-relative view, agent-neutral views capture important features of commonsense morality.This article investigates whether an agent-relative view can maintain what is attractive about typical agent-neutral views. In particular, I argue that the (...) agent-relative reasons-wielding deontologist is ultimately able to capture those features ordinarily associated with agent-neutral views, while the agent-relative value wielding consequentialist is left with a dilemma. The consequentializer either succumbs to the concerns of her agent-neutral opponents or else abandons the distinctive and attractive features of her view. Either way, I conclude that agent-relative value is best left behind. (shrink)

Traditionally, weakness of will has been identified with an agent acting contrary to her better judgment, or akrasia. Recent empirical findings, however, have led many to conclude that the folk concept of WOW is not amenable to necessary and sufficient conditions. To this end, it has been argued that WOW attributions point to a cluster concept :341–360, 2012), a disjunctive account of WOW as either judgment or resolution violation :391–404, 2010), and a two-tiered account including both failures to adhere to (...) commitments as well as failures to commit :3935–3954, 2014). Contrary to these views, I argue that there is indeed an underlying unifying feature of the folk concept of WOW. In particular, I argue that WOW is a matter of violating one’s salient reasons for action. I develop and defend this account in three stages. First, I introduce the theory philosophically, by critiquing the traditional view, i.e. judgment violation, as well as its initial competitor, Holton’s :241–262, 1999; Willing, wanting, waiting, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) view of resolution violation. I then turn to the empirical case for Salient Reasons Violation, arguing that the view best fits the data concerning folk attributions of WOW. Importantly, I argue that folk attributions unsurprisingly include violations of reasons that the attributor finds salient, even when the agent in the case may not. Finally, I turn to an explanatory account of Salient Reasons Violation, which moves beyond establishing the contours of our concept, by providing an explanation as to why the concept functions as it does. (shrink)

This article will focus on the ethical issues of vaccine mandates and stake claim to the relatively extreme position that outright requirements for people to receive the vaccine are ethically correct at both the governmental and institutional levels. One novel strategy employed here will be to argue that deontological considerations pertaining to consent rights cut as much in favor of mandating vaccines as against them. The presumption seems to be that arguments from consent speak semi-definitively against forcing people to inject (...) something into their bodies, and so any argument in favor of mandates must produce different and overriding logical and ethical considerations. Our central claim will be that the same logic that might seem to prohibit vaccine mandates as violations of consent actually supports such mandates when viewed from the perspective of the potential bystander who might otherwise be exposed to COVID-19. (shrink)

In this paper, we will explore one way in which understanding can—and, we will argue, should—be valuable. We will do this by drawing on what has been said about the different ways knowledge can be valuable. Our main contribution will be to identify one heretofore undiscussed way knowledge could be valuable, but isn’t—specifically, having value to someone other than the understander. We suggest that it is a desideratum on an account of understanding that understanding have the specified type of value; (...) our basis for this claim will come from recent work in cognitive psychology. This desideratum can then be used to measure the success of various accounts of understanding. We argue that accounts of understanding that have a particular structure will predict why understanding has that sort of value. For good measure, we then engage in a bit of a literature review, investigating which extant accounts of understanding satisfy this desideratum. (shrink)

Background and Aim Evidence on the efficacy of parenting interventions to support communication development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children is emerging. In previous research, we showed that parental participation in a video feedback–based intervention enhanced parental self-esteem and emotional availability to their deaf and hard-of-hearing children. This paper investigates the impact of the intervention on the development of the children’s prelingual communication skills and autonomy. Evidence on the efficacy of parenting interventions to support communication development is warranted. Methods Sixteen hearing (...) parents with a prelingual deaf and hard-of-hearing child ( M age = 2.05 years, SD = 1.77) were recruited by self-selection from pediatric audiological services and randomly stratified into intervention-first and waiting-list groups. Families completed three sessions of Video Interaction Guidance in their homes. Designed for maximal inclusion, the sample comprised children with complex developmental and social needs. The primary inclusion criterion was the child’s prelingual status ( Results A Mann–Whitney U test indicated no significant difference between the two groups. The groups were collated, and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test with time (pre-/post-intervention) as a repeating variable was run. A significant increase in children’s communicative autonomy ( Z = −3.517, p d = 0.62) and decrease in children’s no-responses ( Z = −3.111, p d = 0.55) were seen. There was no significant difference in the overall number of turn-taking between the parent and child, indicating differences in the quality of the parent–child interactions, not the quantity. Conclusion This study adds to the emerging evidence for parenting interventions with deaf and hard-of-hearing children. We hypothesize that the video feedback intervention with its focus on emotional availability created space for the children to show increased communicative autonomy during parent–child interactions. Communicative autonomy is a long-term predictor of communication and linguistic development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children, and its conceptual underpinning makes it a good early measure of relational agency. Results can inform wider interventions that focus on the quantity of the parent–child communication. (shrink)

Where were the women? On exclusivity in ancient Greek democracy This article examines the position of women in Athenian democracy. First, we briefly explain what democracy in Athens looked like during its heyday. It is then explained that women were excluded from the active life in the polis and that at the same time there was an ambivalence in the classical Greek view on the status of women. Furthermore the role of women in fictional stories is elucidated as a possible (...) explanation for her exclusion from real, active community life. It also discusses some key critics of democracy, with a particular focus on their views on the role of women in the state. Finally, the ideas of three female philosophers from ancient Greece are explained and it is argued that they possibly became known not on their own merits, but only because the female philosophers were seen as eccentric. (shrink)

Against the background of the Second World War and post-war cultural change in Australia, this review article discusses the establishment of the profession of art history and art curatorial scholarship in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s. The key figures in this transformation were Franz Philipp and Ursula Hoff (European ‘savant’ refugees from Nazism and anti-Semitism), and the British scholar Joseph Burke (appointed as Herald Professor of Fine Arts at Melbourne University). These figures played pivotal roles in Sir Keith Murdoch's (...) ‘civilizing mission’ to reform Australian culture – a mission centred on Melbourne University and the National Gallery of Victoria under its new director, Daryl Lindsay. Within the context of the ‘culture wars’ dividing the Australian art world at this time, these reformers and pioneering scholars found themselves opposed by a radical art avant-garde under the leadership of the art patron John Reed. The work of key modernist Australian artists, above all Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale, became touchstones for radical and conservative positions in this conflict. (shrink)

The history of Australian art has been punctuated with survey exhibitions in London from the late 19th century to the present, just as our artists were drawn to Europe both to study and for the possibilities of wider recognition. This review article focuses on the post-war years from 1950 to 1965, a high point of Australian cultural expatriatism focused on London – now viewed as a significant episode in the history of Australian art. The two most influential figures supporting key (...) Australian artists were Kenneth Clark (promoting the work of Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale) and Bryan Robertson, director of the avant-gardist Whitechapel Gallery. Robertson was responsible for organizing the most significant of these exhibitions of Australian art: Australian Painting Today in 1961, focusing on the work of a younger generation of artists that included Charles Blackman, John Olsen, Fred Williams and Brett Whiteley. Australian’s most significant art historian, Bernard Smith, who had also sought to bring about comparable exhibitions, but without success, challenged the orientation and the cultural framing by Robertson and the young Australian art critic Robert Hughes in the catalogue of this key exhibition. (shrink)

Plantation workers have seemingly little opportunities for labour agency, defined as the worker’s ability to act and improve their conditions. In response to a call for a better understanding of the horizontal dimension shaping labour agency, this article questions what local factors determine the worker’s ability to act by analysing the institutional constraints embedded in the national context through a mixed methods approach. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data is used to understand what shapes and constrains the potential for (...) labour agency in the case of plantation workers in the pineapple sector of Costa Rica. We provide new empirical evidence of the relation between the local opportunity structure—proxied by perceived job security and union awareness—and labour agency in terms of a worker’s intention to choose forthright (voice), evasive (exit) or repressed (loyalty) actions. The model results indicate that a lack of job security and a lack of union awareness significantly reduce the likelihood to use forthright actions (such as voicing concerns, striking or joining a union) compared to evasive (such as leaving the job) or repressed actions (such as doing nothing). In addition, the qualitative analysis of the local opportunity structure identifies four institutional constraints: weak employment protection, vulnerability of migrant workers, limited workers’ representation and insufficient labour law enforcement. Besides overcoming these institutional constraints, empowering workers to make their voices heard also requires awareness raising about their collective bargaining rights and more job security. (shrink)

Improving working conditions at the bottom of global value chains has become a central issue in our global economy. In this battle, trade unionism has been presented as a way for workers to make their voices heard. Therefore, it is strongly promoted by most social standards. However, establishing a well-functioning trade union is not as obvious as it may seem. Using a comparative case study approach, we examine impediments to farm-level unionism in the cut flower industry in Ethiopia. For this (...) purpose, we propose an integrated framework combining two lenses, namely a vertical one and a horizontal one. We identify 10 impediments that point to three major dimensions contributing to unionisation. These three dimensions include awareness of and interest from workers, legitimacy of trade unions, and capacity of trade unions to act. Furthermore, our results suggest that private social standards may, in certain cases, be counterproductive for the efficient functioning of trade unions. Although we argue that there is no ‘quick fix’ solution to weak workplace unionism at the bottom of global value chains, we stress the importance of considering the dynamics of, and interactions between, the impediments when designing potential support measures that mitigate negative impacts. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with constantly new challenges. We need to browse new inventories of scientific knowledge to reflect on previous experiences and thus facilitate societal learning. In line with the first volume on the COVID-19 pandemic in this series, contributions from different disciplines and fields of practice create an awareness of the complexity of this crisis and help us to understand the diversity of challenges it poses. The first part focuses on philosophical, sociological and psychological problem (...) diagnoses, the second on reactive strategies in the fields of medicine, nursing care, the economy and law. After taking a look at religious contexts and fields of practice, leading experts from the healthcare sector share their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. With contributions by Mahmoud Abdallah, Désirée Amschl-Strablegg, Cornelia Baptist-Kröpfl, Herbert Beiglböck, Ulrike Berdnik, Alois Birklbauer, Anneliese Derkits, Reinhold Esterbauer, Franziska Grossschädl, Katharina Heimerl, Andreas Heller, Marie-Christin Hinteregger, Hartmann Jörg Hohensinner, Elisabeth Horvath, Isabella Jonveaux, Anna-Christina Kainradl, Ulla Kriebernegg, Wolfgang Kröll, Ulrike Kylianek, Martin M. Lintner, Saskia Löser, Christa Lohrmann, Sandra Müller, Gerold Muhri, Manfred Novak, Sabine Petritsch, Eva Peyker, Michaela Pfadenhauer, Barbara Pichler, Johann Platzer, Lisa Pongratz, Maria Puntigam, Elisabeth Reitinger, Hans-Walter Ruckenbauer, Hellmut Samonigg, Walter Schaupp, Georg Tafner, Christa Tax, Wolfgang Toller and Jürgen Wallner. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Christa Davis Acampora offers a profound rethinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s crucial notion of the agon. Analyzing an impressive array of primary and secondary sources and synthesizing decades of Nietzsche scholarship, she shows how the agon, or contest, organized core areas of Nietzsche’s philosophy, providing a new appreciation of the subtleties of his notorious views about power. By focusing so intensely on this particular guiding interest, she offers an exciting, original vantage from which to view this (...) iconic thinker: Contesting Nietzsche. Though existence—viewed through the lens of Nietzsche’s agon—is fraught with struggle, Acampora illuminates what Nietzsche recognized as the agon’s generative benefits. It imbues the human experience with significance, meaning, and value. Analyzing Nietzsche’s elaborations of agonism—his remarks on types of contests, qualities of contestants, and the conditions in which either may thrive or deteriorate—she demonstrates how much the agon shaped his philosophical projects and critical assessments of others. The agon led him from one set of concerns to the next, from aesthetics to metaphysics to ethics to psychology, via Homer, Socrates, Saint Paul, and Wagner. In showing how one obsession catalyzed so many diverse interests, Contesting Nietzsche sheds fundamentally new light on some of this philosopher’s most difficult and paradoxical ideas. (shrink)

This article seeks to describe in general terms what has become the standard way of conceptualizing moral injury in the clinical psychological and psychiatric literature, which is the key source for applications of the concept in other domains. What we call “the standard model” draws on certain assumptions about beliefs, mental states, and emotions as well as an implicit theory of causation about how various forms of harm arise from certain experiences or “events” that violate persons’ moral beliefs and systems. (...) Our analysis makes these assumptions more explicit and subjects them to critical scrutiny. In so doing, we survey the current literature and identify basic features of how moral injuries are defined, how they are thought to occur, and the forms of treatment or repair that appear to be indicated. We caution that it matters how moral experience is characterized and argue that an alternative understanding of what is the moral in moral injury is important for overcoming critical challenges to the standard model. Moreover, recently evolving approaches to moral repair could be more consistent with an alternative model. Our concluding suggestion is that a more robust account of the nature of moral experience and its relations to self-identity and social experience more generally could advance understanding of the etiology of moral injury and promote rehabilitation. (shrink)

The predominant account of the etiology of moral injuries among Veterans and military personnel in the clinical psychological and psychiatric literature construes morality as inherent in belief structures. This supports the conceptualization of moral injuries as intrapsychic phenomena resulting from exposure to high-stakes events in which fixed beliefs are contravened in ways that result in psychological harms, including maladaptive beliefs and distress. We identify several problems with this formulation and offer suggestions for modification, including greater focus on: 1) experiences rather (...) than events in identifying circumstances in which moral injuries occur, and 2) degradation of relevant relationships rather than conflicts with and among moral contents. These shifts in framing could have epidemiological salience, facilitating more robust case characterization and enabling a variety of approaches to reestablishing the moral conditions that support life affirmation. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to identify which peer collaboration characteristics may be accountable for conceptual change through interaction. We focus on different socio‐cognitive aspects of the peer dialog and relate these with learning gains on the dyadic as well as the individual level. The scientific topic that was used for this study concerns natural selection, a topic for which students’ intuitive conceptions have been shown to be particularly robust. Learning tasks were designed according to the socio‐cognitive conflict instructional paradigm. (...) After receiving a short instructional intervention on natural selection, paired students were asked to collaboratively construct explanations for certain evolutionary phenomena while engaging in dialectical argumentation. Two quantitative coding schemes were developed, each with a different granularity. The first assessed discrete dialog moves that pertained to dialectical argumentation and to consensual explanation development. The second scheme characterized the dialog as a whole on a number of socio‐cognitive dimensions. Results from analyses on the dyadic as well as the individual level revealed that the engagement in dialectical argumentation predicted conceptual learning gains, whereas consensual explanation development did not. These findings open up new venues for research on the mechanisms of learning in and from peer collaboration. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nietzsche's (Artful) Naturalism The Subject Naturalized Nietzsche's Artful Naturalism Toward an Ethos of the Agonized Subject.

Agon as analytic, diagnostic, and antidote -- Contesting Homer: the poiesis of value -- Contesting Socrates: Nietzsche's (artful) naturalism -- Contesting Paul: toward an ethos of agonism -- Contesting Wagner: how one becomes what one is.

Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This paper argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to (...) recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism. (shrink)

In this astonishingly rich volume, experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship on what is arguably Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. A lengthy introduction, annotated (...) bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 17-21 [Access article in PDF] Self-Injury:Symbolic Sacrifice/Self-Assertion Renders Clinicians Helpless Christa Krüger Keywords feminism, iconic communication, moral conflict, oppression, psychiatrist/psychologist roles, societal norms. POTTER'S PAPER CONSIDERS self-injury in women diagnosed with borderline person ality disorder (BPD) to be a form of body modification where the body is used to communicate meaning. She touches on symbolism as a possible explanatory theory for this (...) sort of self-injury. She also refers to the culture of body commodification as underlying self-injury. She then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake is a virtuous approach for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity, along with other benefits. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly. However, I shall argue that giving uptake can be very difficult for clinicians, and that an appreciation of this difficulty depends on an expansion and linkage of some of the theories that she touched on. Self-injury is revisited experimentally as a double-edged sword of symbolic sacrifice and iconic-symbolic self-assertion. This revisiting aims to illustrate how clinicians might be caught in a double bind, where giving uptake properly might be very difficult if not more or less doomed to fail.Potter's paper starts by situating self-injury in a broader discourse of body modifications. In this discourse the body is being used as a text, a tool to communicate meaning. The meaning that is communicated might be difficult or impossible to articulate otherwise (by using words, for example). The meaning of the communication is embedded in a context of social, cultural, religious, political, and other norms. Potter explores possible interpretations of the meaning of self-injury in women with BPD, including an interpretation of self-injury as symbolic sacrifice. She suggests that a cultural understanding/nonunderstanding of the meaning of a particular instance of self-injury is an important determinant of whether such self-injury is considered pathological/nonpathological. She then shifts the focus to the present-day culture in which women's bodies are commodified and objectified, and where women become alienated from their bodies. Self-injury might then be interpreted as an attempt to re-own one's body as a part of oneself. This re-owning is a socially transgressive act that violates repressive norms for the bodies of women. [End Page 17]Notwithstanding these possible significations of self-injury, Potter then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations, instead of jumping to conclusions (my oversimplification) about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake, then, constitutes a framework for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly.At the risk of losing their essence, I translate the five maxims for practicing psychiatrists as involving the following: critical self-reflection about one's own conceptual framework and cultural context; being receptive to the patient's conceptual framework and cultural context; giving the patient the benefit of the doubt; being open to the emergence of new meanings of self-injury; and keeping a range of possible interpretative options open, rather than insisting on having the final word. We should try to understand what the world looks like from the patient's position. All of this requires some moral effort.Potter describes a number of benefits that result from giving uptake. Giving uptake is a crucial corrective to the human tendencies of becoming overly committed to prevailing societal norms and conceptual schemes (stuck in our ways), of imposing our views on others, and of silencing or distorting the communications of our patients. Giving uptake allows clinicians to be dialogically responsive and to treat patients with respect and dignity. Giving uptake fosters trust in a therapeutic relationship where clinicians do not exploit their patients' vulnerabilities. Giving... (shrink)

This article offers a hybrid rhetorical-qualitative discourse analysis of the FDA’s 2011 Avastin Hearing, which considered the revocation of the breast cancer indication for the popular cancer drug Avastin. We explore the multiplicity of stakeholders, the questions that motivated deliberations, and the kinds of evidence presented during the hearing. Pairing our findings with contemporary scholarship in rhetorical stasis theory, Mol’s (2002) construct of multiple ontologies, and Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe’s (2011) “hybrid forums,” we demonstrate that the FDA’s deliberative procedures elides (...) various sources of evidence and the potential multiplicity of definitions for “clinical benefit.” Our findings suggest that while the FDA invited multiple stakeholders to offer testimony, there are ways that the FDA might have more meaningfully incorporated public voices in the deliberative process. We conclude with suggestions for how a true hybrid forum might be deployed. (shrink)

There is much in Robert Pippin’s Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy that merits consideration. During the panel discussion that provided the basis for this article, I marked several paths for further exploration, including Pippin’s treatment of Nietzsche’s naturalism and his characterization of what he calls Nietzsche’s “picture arguments.” Ultimately, I chose to focus on a concern that has drawn intense interest in the recent literature, namely Nietzsche’s conception of agency and freedom, which forms the subject of Pippin’s fourth chapter, “The (...) Deed is Everything [Das Thun ist Alles].” 1 This chapter draws on and extends other work he has published in English during the past decade, specifically, his .. (shrink)

In the last sixty years the West-European religious landscape has changed radically. People, and also religious and humanist communities, in a post-sec¬ular world are challenged to develop a new existential, ethical and spiritual language that fits to their global and pluralistic surroundings. This new world-viewing language could rise out of the reflection on contrast experiences, positive and negative disruptive experiences that question the everyday inter pretations of life. The connection of these articulated reflections on contrast experiences with former world-viewing sources (...) and practices with regard to precarious life could provide new meaning and orientation for individuals and communities. Four different sorts of dialogues can be distinguished, which together I call world-viewing dialogues: contrast experiences and the dialogue with oneself, contrast experiences discussed in small groups, contrast experiences and values in our nowadays society and contrast experiences in dialogue with philosophical and religious traditions from different cultures and ages. (shrink)