reminds us that reproductive medicine has become part of our social reality and as such justifies the intervention of public authorities. The Instruction suggests relevant principles which should guide appropriate legislation. This essay analyzes how far the French government has taken these fundamental principles into account. Keywords: IVF-ET, Donum Vitae , civil law, France CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

La presente comunicación tiene como principal objetivo poner sobre la mesa algunos de los problemas que latían de fondo en algunas de las charlas del anterior VII Congreso sobre Pensamiento Filosófico Contemporáneo de la Sociedad Asturiana de Filosofía. No pretendo, sin embargo, exponer tesis alguna, sino que procuraré dialogar con las ideas del pasado Congreso de la SAF, y así poder ganar distancia para orientar mejor la mirada o proponer una actitud diferente ante las cuestiones. Comenzaré centrándome en una de (...) las comunicaciones, concretamente la de Virginia Ballesteros. A continuación, procuraré señalar los presupuestos fundamentales que latían de fondo a partir de las investigaciones de Felipe Martínez Marzoa, con el que intentaré mostrar qué elementos se encuentran a la base de la violencia ontológica en nuestras sociedades. Finalmente, y sólo para señalar posibles líneas de investigación, indicaré brevemente una probable relación alternativa entre fenomenología y medicina. (shrink)

Resumen En el Leviatán Hobbes implementa la ley de naturaleza como la condición de posibilidad del desarrollo epistemológico que convierte al animal en humano, en el estado de naturaleza. De acuerdo con esta fórmula, la moral se desarrolla cuando los hombres empiezan a comportarse de acuerdo con el contenido no explícito de las leyes de naturaleza, comportamiento posibilitado por su sujeción a un hombre fuerte, quien tiene la función moral de administrar justicia. Esta doble función moral de las leyes de (...) naturaleza entre quien manda y quien obedece implica una experiencia de la justicia como comunicación de postulados racionales compartidos que condicionan el libre accionar de los hombres, manteniéndolos unidos en el tiempo.In the Leviathan, Hobbes employs the law of nature as the condition of possibility of the epistemological development that transforms the animal into a human in the state of nature. According to this formula, morality develops when men behave according to the non-explicit content of the laws of nature, behavior enabled by their subjection to a strong man who has the moral function of administrating justice. The moral function of the laws of nature is double, those who rule and those who obey, and implies an experience of justice as communication of shared rational postulates that conditions the free actions of men, keeping them united in time. (shrink)

In the millennium that is coming to an end, the world has approached a certain cardinal line. The dominant civilization has reached the peak of power, becoming global, but it is not experiencing a real catastrophe. The Christian culture, the living source of this "supercivilization", consistently gives way to new realities, other forms of organization of consciousness, although.

Nanomedicine plays a prominent role among emerging technologies. The spectrum of potential applications is as broad as it is promising. It includes the use of nanoparticles and nanodevices for diagnostics, targeted drug delivery in the human body, the production of new therapeutic materials as well as nanorobots or nanoprotheses. Funding agencies are investing large sums in the development of this area, among them the European Commission, which has launched a large network for life-sciences related nanotechnology. At the same time government (...) agencies as well as the private sector are putting forward reports of working groups that have looked into the promises and risks of these developments. This paper will begin with an introduction to the central ethical themes as identified by selected reports from Europe and beyond. In a next step, it will analyse the most frequently invoked ethical concerns–risk assessment and management, the issues of human identity and enhancement, possible implications for civil liberties (e.g. nanodevices that might be used for covert surveillance), and concerns about equity and fair access. Although it seems that the main ethical issues are not unique to nanotechnologies, the conclusion will argue against shrugging them off as non-specific items that have been considered before in the context of other biomedical technologies, such as gene therapy or xenotransplantation. Rather, the paper will call on ethicists to help foster a rational, fair and participatory discourse on the different potential applications of nanotechnologies in medicine, which can form the basis for informed and responsible societal and political decisions. (shrink)

El propósito de esta investigación radica en determinar el rol unificador entre estado de naturaleza y Estado civil de la representación desarrollado en el capítulo XVI del Leviatán. La representación es un momento de transición entre estado natural y Estado civil: donde lo simbólico toma el lugar de la racionalidad práctica y se sedimenta como lo real para los hombres. Es por la capacidad de crear personas artificiales que los hombres pueden atribuir libremente predicados a cosas que no los tienen (...) realmente y, además de donar su cuerpo físico, pueden crear la persona del Estado, el Leviatán; asumir la soberanía y la sujeción y recrear la subjetividad humana políticamente. (shrink)

At one time, A.J.Toynby regarded as civilizations of the "third generation" three civilizations that were formed during the transition from the Old City to the Middle Ages on the basis of the sociocultural, in particular, the religious, property of the ancient and Middle Eastern peoples: Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, and Muslim. The first two, as is known, had two spiritual Christians, which resolutely differed only in the middle of the XI century. But at the civilization level, the distinction between (...) the East Christian and Western Christian worlds began with the final antiquity. (shrink)

Este artículo examina el desarrollo histórico y la jurisdicción del "inspector de la policía y del mercado" (sahib al-surta wa-l-suq) en Córdoba a través de los casos judiciales tomados de la colección de dictámenes jurídicos de Ibn Sahl al-Ahkam al-Kubrà y de fuentes biográficas e históricas. Durante el período de Taifas, esta expresión omeya dio paso al "inspector de sentencias jurídicas" (sahib al-ahkam). A través de más de veinte casos, datables entre los años 456 / 1064 y 464 / 1072, (...) se demuestra cómo este juez, que no era qadi, seguía en sus sentencias el fiqh malikí, tanto en las leyes procesales como en la ley sustantiva. (shrink)

Diese Konstellation dient Möckel als Anregung für den erstmals geführten Nachweis, daß der Vernunft und Rationalität verpflichtete Ernst Cassirer sein Philosophieren bereits im Frühwerk konsequent auf das »irrationale« Leben bezieht ...

When are we responsible for addressing the acute deprivations of others beyond state borders? One widely held view is that we are responsible for addressing or preventing acute deprivations insofar as we have contributed to them or are contributing to bringing them about. But how should agents who endorse this “contribution principle” of allocating responsibility yet are uncertain whether or how much they have contributed to some problem conceive of their responsibilities with respect to it? Legal systems adopt formal norms (...) that set the burden of proof, the standard of proof, and the constraints on admissible evidence, which help courts to apply liability rules in cases where there are significant evidential uncertainties. Applying principles for determining ethical responsibilities, too, require such norms. Their content, however, should be much different from that found in criminal and even civil legal settings, where the moral costs of falsely holding those responsible for bringing about some harm are more worrisome. Instead of demanding that an agent be shown to have contributed to some deprivation “beyond a reasonable doubt,” we should express a willingness to err in favor of the acutely deprived subjects, demanding that even those agents who merely suspect that they may have substantially contributed to these deprivations undertake efforts to address them. (shrink)

Neukantianismus, Phanomenologie und Kulturphilosophie: Die Forschungsinteressen Christian Mockels sind vielfaltig. Seine Arbeiten zu Max Adler, Edmund Husserl und Ernst Cassirer sowie seine editorische Tatigkeit als Herausgeber des Cassirer-Nachlasses haben dazu beigetragen, eine Vielfalt von Themenbereichen und philosophischen Kreisen miteinander zu verknupfen. Eine Philosophie der Kultur und der Gesellschaft als systematische Einheit auszufuhren und sie in der pragmatischen Richtung einer politischen Philosophie auszubauen: darin sieht Christian Mockel die Relevanz einer Philosophie, die sich zwar als Wissenschaft versteht, doch uber die (...) theoretische Dimension hinaus das Projekt der Aufklarung als Selbstverstandnis des freien Menschen zu verwirklichen anstrebt. In seiner jahrzehntelangen Tatigkeit als Hochschullehrer an der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin hat Christian Mockel viele Wissenschaftler*innen aus allen Kontinenten beraten und bei ihren Recherchen unterstutzt. Diese Festschrift greift die Themen seiner Forschung auf und zeigt zugleich die Diversitat der Interessen seiner Schuler*innen und Kolleg*innen, die ihm mit diesem Band Dank aussprechen und seine Arbeit wurdigen mochten. (shrink)

At the end of the sixteenth century, Friar Juan de Torquemada watched the game of volador on the central plaza in Mexico. At the top of a pole some twenty meters high there was a small pivoting platform. Four ropes were wound around the top of the pole and held in place by a wooden frame. Five men dressed in feathery costumes making them look like birds climbed up the shaft. One of them reached the narrow platform and began to (...) dance. Then the other four bird-men tied themselves to the ends of the ropes and plunged into space, head down, held by the ropes around their waists. This initiated a spectacular circular flight in ever widening rings as the cords unwound. They straightened up only at the last moment, just in time to put their feet on the ground, dizzy and staggering. But on that particular day, one of the dancers was not to straighten himself up. The rope had been badly attached and broke, dropping the man like a heavy mass to the ground, lifeless. The Franciscan at once used this as an argument to demand that the Viceroy prohibit this game. But the civil authorities refused to do so, to the monk's great consternation. (shrink)

Le barbare, c'est celui qui croit à la barbarie ", disait Lévi-Strauss en 1961. C'est à trouver dans leurs siècles des explosions de violence barbare que des personnalités plutôt en marge des grands courants religieux et idéologiques ont ouvert la voie à la genèse d'une anthropologie ouverte à tous les peuples. Désintriquer dans le "Sauvage" ce qu'il a de civilisé et dans le "Civilisé" ce qu'il a de sauvage est la tâche que les penseurs de l'altérité se sont donnée.

Mass Media and new social media are one of the most significant indicators for deep transformations our societies are currently undergoing. This brings along serious problems how we can organize and stabilize our public life, especially in questions of democratic representation and self-government. It is for this reason the article first discusses critically the rhetoric talk of media as »fourth power in state« to consider then the function and role media morally should have in democratic civil societies. Thereby, a normative (...) concept of public sphere will be proposed that involves aspects of a professional ethics for both, producers and consumers of public opinion. Reconsidering therefore ecclesiology as an exemplary theory of public sphere can provide a paradigm for understanding constructively Christian communal life within a pluralistic media society. (shrink)

Besides “personalism“, and “solidarity“, the “principle of subsidiarity” is the third layer of Christian Social Philosophy. It requires that in a good society political competences should be allocated at the lowest possible level if possible. What the single citizens can achieve should not be taken away from them by higher ranking political authorities. The same rule has to be applied inside a political community among the various levels of the government. In other words, the principle favors Federalism as the (...) organizing structure of the social order.The most important political document in which the principle of subsidiarity plays an important role is the EU-Treaty of Maastricht. Here, however, the principle is misunderstood as a pure procedural process to settle conflicts between the European Commission and the Member States in areas of shared competences. Instead it should be a means to revise the whole existing legal structure of the European Union.Subsidiarity is a constitutional norm. Here, every person in a free society must be respected by the political authorities. This implies that in a civil society political power must be limited, decentralised, and controlled by the citizens.À côté du “personalisme” et de la “solidarité”, le “principe de subsidiarité” est le troisième volet de la philosophie sociale chrétienne. Il requiert que dans une bonne société les compétences politiques soient allouées au niveau le plus inférieur possible. Ce que les simples citoyens peuvent accomplir ne doit pas être réalisé par les autorités politiques d’un rang supérieur. La même règle doit être appliquée à l’intérieur d’une communauté politique aux différents niveaux du gouvernement. En d’autres termes, le principe favorise le fédéralisme en tant que structure d’organisation de l’ordre social.Le document politique le plus important dans lequel le principe de subsidiarité joue un rôle important est le traité Européen de Maastricht. Dans ce cas précis, cependant, le principe est mal compris, car réduit à un simple processus purement procédural pour régler les conflits entre la Commission Européenne et les Etats Membres dans le domaine des compétences partagées. Au contraire il devrait être un moyen de réviser l’ensemble de la structure juridique de l’Union Européenne.La subsidiarité est une norme constitutionnelle. Ici, chaque personne dans une société libre doit être respectée par les autorités politiques. Cela implique que dans une société civile le pouvoir politique doit être limité, décentralisé, et contrôlé par les citoyens. (shrink)

In the past years, there has been an intensive discussion on the topic of academic freedom in the university. More precisely, it has been criticized that the university is confronted with a growing intolerance and the request to limit free speech. This contribution takes a case at a German university as point of departure. It shows how the current discussions draw on central figures of the philosophy of Enlightenment. In the first part of the paper, the ideas of free speech (...) following Kant, Mill, and Popper are presented. The second part of the article shows how these positions can also lead to an inversion or instrumentalization of Enlightenment thought. This is illustrated using exemplary statements from the case presented in the beginning of the article. In the third part of the article, the concept of higher education or Bildung will be discussed in relation to academic freedom. The guiding principle is an openness toward a pluralistic discourse that is to be framed by societal analysis, civility, and critique. (shrink)

Part 1. Lecture 1. What is big history? ; Lecture 2. Moving across multiple scales ; Lecture 3. Simplicity and complexity ; Lecture 4. Evidence and the nature of science ; Lecture 5. Threshold 1, Origins of Big Bang cosmology ; Lecture 6. How did everything begin? ; Lecture 7. Threshold 2, The first stars and galaxies ; Lecture 8. Threshold 3, Making chemical elements ; Lecture 9. Threshold 4, The earth and the solar system ; Lecture 10. The early (...) earth, a short history ; Lecture 11. Plate tectonics and the earth's geography ; Lecture 12. Threshold 5, Life -- Part 2. Lecture 13. Darwin and natural selection ; Lecture 14. The evidence for natural selection ; Lecture 15. The origins of life ; Lecture 16. Life on earth, single-celled organisms ; Lecture 17. Life on earth, multi-celled organisms ; Lecture 18. Hominines ; Lecture 19. Evidence on hominine evolution ; Lecture 20. Threshold 6, What makes humans different? ; Lecture 21. Homo sapiens, the first humans ; Lecture 22. Paleolithic lifeways ; Lecture 23. Change in the Paleolithic Era ; Lecture 24. Threshold 7, agriculture -- Part 3. Lecture 25. The origins of agriculture ; Lecture 26. The first agrarian societies ; Lecture 27. Power and its origins ; Lecture 28. Early power structures ; Lecture 29. From villages to cities ; Lecture 30. Sumer, the first agrarian civilization ; Lecture 31. Agrarian civilizations in other regions ; Lecture 32. The world that agrarian civilizations made ; Lecture 33. Long trends, expansion and state power ; Lecture 34. Long trends, rates of innovation ; Lecture 35. Long trends, disease and Malthusian cycles ; Lecture 36. Comparing the world zones -- Part 4. Lecture 37. The Americas in the later Agrarian Era ; Lecture 38. Threshold 8, the modern revolution ; Lecture 39. The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500-1350 ; Lecture 40. The Early Modern Cycle, 1350-1700 ; Lecture 41. Breakthrough, the Industrial Revolution ; Lecture 42. Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900 ; Lecture 43. The 20th century ; Lecture 44. The world that the modern revolution made ; Lecture 45. Human history and the biosphere ; Lecture 46. The next 100 years ; Lecture 47. The next millennium and the remote future ; Lecture 48. Big history, humans in the cosmos. (shrink)

This article argues that a main hidden driver of the Anthropocene is existential—namely the wholesale denial, in capitalist civilization, of human fragility and mortality. Mainstream economics, which unthinkingly validates the unboundedness of human wants and the necessity for open-ended growth, must give way to existential ecological economics—an approach that recognizes that capitalism, which clearly propels the overshoot of material flows, is itself a device for denying and repressing deep human fears about death.

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)

How can one address the multiple themes linked to the "apocalypse" - the end days, the last judgment, Armageddon, catastrophe, as well as personal revelation and collective disillusionment? How should we understand pre-modern and "secular" notions of the end days? This study offers a cultural critique, exploring the conditions surrounding "apocalyptic" knowledge and vision.

Are groups ever capable of bearing responsibility, over and above their individual members? This chapter discusses and defends the view that certain organized collectives – namely, those that qualify as group moral agents – can be held responsible for their actions, and that group responsibility is not reducible to individual responsibility. The view has important implications. It supports the recognition of corporate civil and even criminal liability in our legal systems, and it suggests that, by recognizing group agents as loci (...) of responsibility, we may be able to avoid “responsibility gaps” in some cases of collectively caused harms for which there is a shortfall of individual responsibility. The chapter further asks whether the view that certain groups are responsible agents commits us to the view that those groups should also be given rights of their own and gives a qualified negative answer. (shrink)

Responsible innovation in artificial intelligence calls for public deliberation: well-informed “deep democratic” debate that involves actors from the public, private, and civil society sectors in joint efforts to critically address the goals and means of AI. Adopting such an approach constitutes a challenge, however, due to the opacity of AI and strong knowledge boundaries between experts and citizens. This undermines trust in AI and undercuts key conditions for deliberation. We approach this challenge as a problem of situating the knowledge of (...) actors from the AI industry within a deliberative system. We develop a new framework of responsibilities for AI innovation as well as a deliberative governance approach for enacting these responsibilities. In elucidating this approach, we show how actors from the AI industry can most effectively engage with experts and nonexperts in different social venues to facilitate well-informed judgments on opaque AI systems and thus effectuate their democratic governance. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the central issue of philosophical anthropology: the relation between nature and culture. Although Rousseau was the first thinker to introduce this topic within the modern discourse of philosophy and the cultural sciences, it has its origin in Diogenes the Cynic, who was a disciple of Socrates. In my essay I (1) historically introduce a few aspects of philosophical anthropology, (2) deal with the nature–culture exchange, as introduced in Kant, then I (3) relate this topic to (...) the Ancient Cynic Diogenes. Surprisingly, although we usually identify Critical Theory and Freudian psychoanalysis as theories that have shown that cultural progress should not be comprehended as a development from nature to culture, and that instead it should be conceived as a development from culture against (external as well as internal) nature, I show that Cynicism can be conceived as a vivid example within the history of our culture that reveals a double sense of repression and alienation, which is part of human civilization and mankind. (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law deals in theLaw section of the categories: person, property and contract. Research critically reconstructs this theory from a Marxist perspective. In the concept of person, first of all, the singular will is reduced to a solipsist will unrelated to intersubjectivity. Then, the concept of Hegelian property bases the private appropriation of property as the externalization of the singular will. This legal property guarantees the maintenance and reproduction of private property, that is, it will guarantee the private (...) accumulation of capital, Marx will say. Anyway, the theory of the contract would link the autonomy of the contracting wills, however, it is a mere appearance, because, in fact, the owners’ wills are under the domination of the capitalist market, as it is explained in Marx’s Capital. The theoretical deficit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law in general is that the legal concepts of person and property correspond to the abstract will. Hegel describes the juridical description of the legal system of the modern state as the development of free will that legitimizes the asymmetry of civil society in its socioeconomic inequalities. (shrink)

Cet essai interprète ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler «la crise» sous un angle psychologique et moral. Dans son sens courant, la démoralisation renvoie à une perte de conviction et d'énergie. On peut également la comprendre comme une perte morale. L'idée centrale de l'ouvrage est qu'il existe un lien entre l'affaiblissement et la disparition de «la morale» (la prolifération des éthiques de substitution en est le symptôme le plus net) et la démoralisation comme perte de certitude et d'espoir. Historiquement lié à (...) la démocratie et aux droits de l'homme, l'individualisme aboutit à des situations sociales d'une grande cruauté. Les valeurs morales traditionnelles sont des freins et des verrous pour la technoscience mondialisée, dont on peut montrer la foncière immoralité. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 1, April 1994, pp. 143-149 David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and GREG COOLIDGE David Hume's views on public credit have not only received prominent attention in the literature on his political thought, but have even been the subject of attention in The Wall Street Journal.1 Most of the attention has centered on Hume's essay "Of Public Credit" of (...) 1752, and treats it only as an expression of ideas, without relating it to the historical facts. This note lays out Hume's views on this matter throughout his lifetime, and juxtaposes them with figures for the actual public debt, carrying the story down to the twentieth century. Public debt as we know it only goes back about 300 years. The British government in the 1690s was the first modern government to establish enough genuine credit that private citizens would loan it money without having to be compelled.2 At the turn of the century, in the year 1700, the British public debt amounted to 14.2 million pounds sterling.3 As early as 1741, Hume was already worrying about the public debt in the essay "Of Liberty and Despotism" (later changed to "Of Civil Liberty"). In the last paragraph of that essay, he wrote of the "degeneracy" brought about by public debt, suggested that debt-service "taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of" the government. If it is not curbed, we may come to "curse our very liberty," he wrote.4 That year, the national debt totaled 48.8 million pounds (45.2 million in 1701 pounds5). John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge are at the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Laursen e-mail: [email protected]. 144 John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge Hume's essay of 1752, "Of Public Credit, " was devoted entirely to criticism of the public debt (Essays, 349-365). His thoughts on public credit at this time can be summed up in this ominous warning: It must, indeed, be one of these two events; either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. (Essays, 360-361) Hume acknowledged that the use of public credit could benefit the economy in some ways: more men with large stocks and incomes, may naturally be supposed to continue in trade, where there are public debts; and this, it must be owned, is of some advantage to commerce, by diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry. (Essays, 354) But the many disadvantages would outweigh such advantages (Essays, 354355 ): 1) "It is certain, that national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital," making the head too large for the body. 2) Public stocks "banish gold and silver from the most considerable commerce of the state." 3) The taxes levied to pay the interest oppress the poorer people. 4) "As foreigners possess a great share of our national funds, they render the public, in a manner, tributary to them, and may in time occasion the transport of our people and our industry." 5) Public credit encourages an idle and useless rentier class. All of this pales, however, in comparison to the political consequences. From the point of view of the body politic, public credit was a threat to the security of the state. It would die a natural or a violent death. In wartime, or some national emergency, the funds necessary for the functioning of the economy would be diverted to other purposes. The economy, now dependent on credit, would crumble. The whole fabric, already tottering, falls to the ground, and buries thousands in its ruins. And this, I think, may be called the natural death of public credit. (Essays, 363) Hume Studies David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? 145 Another scenario would occur if the government became too indebted to intervene in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Our children, weary of the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure, and see their neighbors oppressed and conquered ; till, at last, they themselves... (shrink)

The formation of citizenship as a concept to define the rights of participation in the formation processes of modern territorial states is well known. But the transnational dimensions of defining citizenship and how to combine national legislations with enlightened universal and natural law rules in the mid-19th century is not very well known. The article aims to explore the transnational discourses on the political, economic and moral rights and duties of the citizen in the pan—European liberal Association Internationale pour le (...) Progrès des Sciences Sociales. During the 1860s, its congresses should serve as a vast commission of enquiry and should eventually lead to a general definition of citizenship in Europe which could be implemented in national legislations. The article shows how the Association Internationale tried to deduce universal moral rules from national legislations and peculiarities by the means of moral or positive social science. In combining moral unity with national and regional diversities, the Association Internationale tried to give an elastic framework for a European civil society in which national subjects should become active citizens. (shrink)

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)

This introduction explains the main contributions of On Taking Offence, summarises its overall argument, and outlines how the comments in this symposium engage with, and challenge, different parts of the argument.

We live today in the first global system of sovereign states in history, encompassing all of the world's polities, peoples, religions and civilizations. Christian Reus-Smit presents a new account of how this system came to be, one in which struggles for individual rights play a central role. The international system expanded from its original European core in five great waves, each involving the fragmentation of one or more empires into a host of successor sovereign states. In the most important, (...) associated with the Westphalian settlement, the independence of Latin America, and post-1945 decolonization, the mobilization of new ideas about individual rights challenged imperial legitimacy, and when empires failed to recognize these new rights, subject peoples sought sovereign independence. Combining theoretical innovation with detailed historical case studies, this book advances a new understanding of human rights and world politics, with individual rights deeply implicated in the making of the global sovereign order. (shrink)

Samuel Huntington's influential clash of civilizations hypothesis (Huntington, 1993; Huntington, 1996) has been widely debated, but empirical tests of his ideas about core states remain limited at the micro-level. In this paper, we bring new evidence to bear, focusing on the : Greater Asia and the Pacific. Using the AsiaBarometer, we examine the extent to which publics in the region identify with the core states of the supposedly most contentious civilizations in the region and the factors that influence those perceptions. (...) We give attention to the role of globalization and nationalism and whether both may be subsumed by religiosity as Huntington suggests. Our descriptive evidence affirms some of the tensions between the US, China, and Islamic-predominant Asia identified by Huntington as areas of potential conflict. At the same time, we find no evidence to suggest that attitudes toward core states are zero-sum; Asian publics often see rival powers as mutually good influences. Using multivariate analysis, we find that religiosity, as the clash paradigm surmises, boosts Iranian influence and undermines American influence in several predominantly Islamic states. We also find, contrary to Huntington, that overall exposure to foreign cultures leads to a more positive assessment of American influence among Chinese and Pakistanis, as well as American perceptions of China. When foreign exposure influences perceptions of Iran, the effect is modestly, but consistently, negative. Taken together, the findings raise questions about two key assumptions of the Huntington framework and suggest that alternative approaches in recent civilizations literature show greater empirical promise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:David Hume and the Danish Debate about Freedom of the Press in the 1770sJohn Christian LaursenWhen the reception history of David Hume’s political writings is written, there will have to be some discussion of their fate in “peripheral” countries like Denmark. Hume’s “Of Liberty of the Press” was translated into Danish as early as 1771. It is not widely known that Denmark was the first country officially to (...) declare freedom of the press and that a lively debate broke out once such freedom was declared. Hume’s essay was put to work in that debate. The story of this translation provides insights into the influence of Hume’s ideas in peripheral countries in Europe, and of Denmark in continental European ideas. Among other things, here we have an example of Hume’s work used in a concrete propaganda battle.The Danish translation of Hume’s essay was published as the last of three supplemental essays in a 31-page pamphlet entitled Mr. F. A. de Voltaire’s Letter to His Majesty the King of Denmark concerning freedom of the press in his states, together with some essays of relevant content. 1 A copy can be found at the Royal Library in Copenhagen in volume twenty of the forty-five bound volumes of pamphlets and booklets from 1770 to 1773 which make up Luxdorph’s Collection of Press Freedom Writings. 2 These pamphlets, in German, French, and (mostly) Danish, were collected at the time by Bolle Willum Luxdorph, a Danish man of letters and court counselor. [End Page 167]The occasion for Voltaire’s letter and our pamphlet was King Christian VII’s declaration of freedom of the press in his territories (the Kingdoms of Norway and Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein) on 4 September 1770. It was in the form of a Cabinet Order to his Danish Chancellery, in the following words:We are fully convinced that it is as harmful to the impartial search for truth as it is to the discovery of obsolete errors and prejudices, if upright patriots, zealous for the common good and what is genuinely best for their fellow citizens, because they are frightened by reputation, orders, and preconceived opinions, are hindered from being free to write according to their insight, conscience, and conviction, attacking abuses and uncovering prejudices. And thus in this regard, after ripe consideration, we have decided to permit in our kingdoms and lands in general an unlimited freedom of the press of such a form, that from now on no one shall be required and obliged to submit books and writings that he wants to bring to the press to the previously required censorship and approval, and thus to submit them to the control of those who have undertaken the business until now of inspecting them; so have we graciously revealed and made known this our will concerning our kingdoms to our Danish Chancellery. Given at Friedrichsberg, the 4 September 1770. Christian. 3The foregoing cabinet order was largely the idea of Johann Friedrich Struensee, court physician and soon to be Prime Minister for Christian VII. 4 Less than ten years earlier, two periodicals he was involved with when he lived in Danish Altona had been suppressed, 5 and when he came to power by a series of accidents, one of his first acts was to arrange for the king to declare freedom of the press. [End Page 168]Response to this declaration was immediate. In Denmark it led to a flurry of pamphlets on a myriad of topics, including the high cost of living and the salaries of ministers, 6 monopolies and trade issues (vol. III), coinage (vol. IV), civil servants, the public debt, the agricultural economy (vol. V), the abolition of tenant farmers’ work obligations (vol. VI), the Iceland trade (vol. VII), marriage law, breweries (vol. VIII), banks, lotteries (vol. IX), soldiers’ and sailors’ pay (vol. X), the Norwegian economy (vol. XI), the universities and academies (vol. XII), the power of women (vol. XIII), irreligion and impiety (vol. XIV), prophecies of doom (vol. XV), fables, allegories and libels (vols. XVI–XVIII), and the eternity of hell (vol. XIX).Many pamphlets discussed press freedom... (shrink)

Peace literacy shows why public philosophy and activism for peace and justice are better together while providing a practical framework designed to make the collaboration stronger and more effective. In this chapter, the authors begin with an overview of peace literacy and then show how it operates as an effective lens through which to read the strengths of various approaches to public philosophy and activism for peace and justice, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and into the contemporary period. (...) Then, they turn to the development of peace literacy themes as we find them in the work of philosophers dedicated to publicly engaged activism for peace and justice, especially in American movements for the abolition of chattel slavery, anti‐war and nonviolence, and civil rights. (shrink)

Philosophen, Theologen und Soziologen deuteten in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts die Technik als ein die gesamte Lebenswirklichkeit prägendes Phänomen. Dabei entwickelten sie sehr unterschiedliche Positionen. Walter Benjamin sah in der Technik einen Weg, die Wirklichkeit neu zu konstruieren; Rudolf Bultmann nahm die Technik zum Anlass, das Transzendente neu zu bestimmen. Der Band bietet in Teil I Rekonstruktionen klassischer Positionen der Technikdeutung: Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger. Die Beiträge in Teil (...) II des Bandes thematisieren neuere theologische Zugänge zur Technik. (shrink)

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)

It can be argued that Nancy Fraser's work integrates the concepts of recognition and redistribution by questioning the definition of the concept of recognition in order to bring it closer to the practical scope of redistribution. One of the difficulties raised by the concept of recognition is that it can appear as a kind of social monism by presenting culture as the main factor behind all social criticism, and thus, behind all kinds of claims and conflicts. However, it is possible (...) to acknowledge the theoretical significance of the economy as well. Instead of a monistic framework, we should adopt a dualistic one, founded less on the distinction between economy and culture than on the analysis of their imbrications. Both economy, and status as defined in cultural, ethnic, or sexual approaches to recognition, could work together to minimize the importance of the civil and political rights defended by liberal thinkers. (shrink)

In this paper I want to reconnect the theoretical debate on the concept of law and the relationship between law and morality with legal issues constituted by highly unjust norms. Proceeding from a critique of more or less emphatic positivist attempts at ethical purification of legal thought, I shall roughly sketch a Davidsonian-Dworkinian framework which seems to provide us with a more appropriate background for dealing with immoral norms than positivist and natural law accounts. This claim will be substantiated by (...) way of an analysis of three different cases: (1) immoral norms of a past system of civil law; (2) immoral norms of a past system of criminal law; (3) immoral norms of the present legal system. (shrink)

What is a human being according to Augustine of Hippo? The question has occupied a group of researchers from Brazil and Europe and has been explored at two workshops during which the contributors to this volume have discussed anthropological themes in Augustine's vast corpus. In this volume, the reader will find articles on a wide spectrum of Augustine's anthropological ideas. Some contributions focus on specific texts, while others focus on specific theological or philosophical aspects of Augustine's anthropology. The authors of (...) the articles in this volume are convinced that Augustine's anthropology is of major importance for how human beings have been understood in Western civilization for better or for worse. The topic is therefore highly relevant to the present times in which humanity is under pressure from various sides. (shrink)

Climate change is widely recognized as a major risk to societies and natural ecosystems but the high end of the risk, i.e., where risks become existential, is poorly framed, defined, and analyzed in the scientific literature. This gap is at odds with the fundamental relevance of existential risks for humanity, and it also limits the ability of scientific communities to engage with emerging debates and narratives about the existential dimension of climate change that have recently gained considerable traction. This paper (...) intends to address this gap by scoping and defining existential risks related to climate change. We first review the context of existential risks and climate change, drawing on research in fields on global catastrophic risks, and on key risks and the so-called Reasons for Concern in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We also consider how existential risks are framed in the civil society climate movement as well as what can be learned in this respect from the COVID-19 crisis. To better frame existential risks in the context of climate change, we propose to define them as those risks that threaten the existence of a subject, where this subject can be an individual person, a community, or nation state or humanity. The threat to their existence is defined by two levels of severity: conditions that threaten (1) survival and (2) basic human needs. A third level, well-being, is commonly not part of the space of existential risks. Our definition covers a range of different scales, which leads us into further defining six analytical dimensions: physical and social processes involved, systems affected, magnitude, spatial scale, timing, and probability of occurrence. In conclusion, we suggest that a clearer and more precise definition and framing of existential risks of climate change such as we offer here facilitates scientific analysis as well societal and political discourse and action. (shrink)

Die vorliegenden Essays erstrecken sich von Homer bis zur Spätantike. Sie verfolgen mehrere Ziele: Zum einen wollen sie zeigen, wie die Griechen und Römer Strategien der Lebensbewältigung entwickelten und wie sie auch die Literatur so instrumentalisieren konnten, dass diese als Ideenlieferant für die Praxis dienen konnte. Literatur wird in diesem Essays nicht als ein Bereich neben der Praxis begriffen, sondern als ein Teilbereich von Wirklichkeit. Die griechische und römische Kultur soll in diesen Essays als etwas in Erscheinung treten, zu dem (...) die beiden antiken Literaturen von Anfang an dazugehörten. Zum anderen geht es in diesen Essays auch darum, das Klischee von den theorieverliebten Griechen und den praktischen Römern zu revidieren. Und schließlich versuchen diese Essays, an eine von Montaigne begründete Tradition anzuknüpfen. Essays sollten auch ein Menschenbild entwerfen. Die vorliegenden Essays wollen auch zeigen, wie die Griechen und Römer dachten und wie sie mit Alltagsproblemen umgingen. (shrink)

The phrase after Auschwitz plays a central role in Adorno's oeuvre. To him, the industrialized genocide of Jews, Sinti and Roma, and Slavic people at death camps like Auschwitz, the systematic mass killing of human beings labeled “life unworthy of life” by their murderers and the ideologues behind them, the ruthlessness and utter contempt for humanity of the Nazi German perpetrators of these unimaginable crimes, give those who live after Auschwitz certainties about the extent of human cruelty as well as (...) human torment that undermine any trust in civilization and social progress, in traditional appeals to meaning, beauty, truth, or goodness. The clearest theoretical expression of these certainties can be found in Adorno's impossibility claims about poetry and art, about the good life, about metaphysical fundamentals. This contribution will examine these impossibility claims in order to clarify the philosophical role of Adorno's phrase after Auschwitz in his own works, but also in order to place Adorno's reflections on life and thought after Auschwitz with respect to our contemporary situation. (shrink)

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)