In this paper, we set out to inquire into how exactly testimony is and should be placed within the framework of virtue epistemology, and more specifically within Ernest Sosa’s exposition and defense thereof. We begin this inquiry (in Sect. 3.2) by formulating conditions of adequacy that can be extracted from recent criticisms of virtue epistemological approaches more generally. In Sect. 3.3, we reconstruct two branches of Sosa’s treatment of testimony, with respect to which we point out problems of inner coherence (...) and compatibility. We won’t stop there but then go on to see first (in Sect. 3.4) whether and, if so, how the two branches can be balanced out within the architecture of Sosa’s theory of knowledge. And second (in Sect. 3.5), we offer and outline a more comprehensive account that solves not just the problems formulated at the outset, but also a number of problems identified along the way. (shrink)

In this text, I discuss the concept of culture that ethnomethodology suggests. First, I will review the sources that Garfinkel refers to: While he draws heavily on Parsons’ conception of culture, he also criticizes it with reference to Schütz. I start the second part with examining Garfinkel conception of ethnos—that suffixes ‘ethnomethodology’—to then present six salient dimensions of the ethnomethodological conception of culture: recognizability; normatively interspersed knowledge and cooperative continuation; familiarity and trust; indexicality and vagueness; practice; and fractality and fragmentation. (...) The text ends with some thoughts comparing the ethnomethodological notion of culture to other conceptions. (shrink)

Background Moral distress is a far-reaching problem for nurses in different settings as it threatens their health. Aim This study examined which situations lead to moral distress in home-care nursing, how and with which consequences home-care nurses experience moral distress, and how they cope with morally stressful situations and the resulting moral distress. Research design A qualitative interview study with reflexive thematic analysis was used. Participants and research context We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 home-care nurses in Germany. Ethical considerations (...) The study was approved by the Data Protection Office and Ethics Committee of the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Findings Twenty (14 female and 6 male) home-care nurses were interviewed between April and August 2023 at their chosen location. The situations leading to moral distress were inadequate care of the person in need of care, not being able to protect one’s health, extended responsibility for the entire care arrangement, work–privacy conflicts, and conflicts between the understanding of care or professional ethics and the performance and billing system. The nurses experienced moral distress as they worked alone and provided care in the patient’s territory. Short- and long-term strains with destructive cognitions, negative emotions, physical symptoms, and health consequences were reported. They faced challenges in coping with moral distress on institutional and individual levels. Conclusions In cases of tension between the service and billing system and the understanding of these nurses’ care services, moral distress is unavoidable. Alternative forms of organization and billing modalities, such as payment by time and the expansion and refinancing of service, should be implemented. The latter relates to systematic case and ethics meetings. Further, a transfer of medical activities, such as the prescription of wound material to registered nurses, could prevent morally stressful situations and improve patients’ quality of care. (shrink)

Tracing different kinds of semiotic practices in boxing, in our text we provide a detailed reconstruction of the way athletes and other participants interpret each other’s actions and integrate these interpretations in their own course of motor action. Drawing on an ethnomethodological approach we argue that these interpretations should not be seen as being isolated from their contextual background. This context and the semiotic actions taking place within them mutually elaborate one another. Analyzing several video recordings and their transcripts, we (...) show how the social interaction of boxing fights consists of a “multi-layeredness of semiotic practice.” These layers of semiotic practice are complemented by what we introduce as asemiotic practices. Asemiotic practices exploit semiotic routines that are a part of boxing and attempt at weakening and overcoming the opponent during the fight thus eventually destroying his or her semiotic capacities. (shrink)

Many Christian scholars have argued that standard versions of evolutionary theory and orthodox theological commitments can be reconciled. Some theistic evolutionists or “evolutionary creationists” have argued that evolutionary mechanisms such as random mutation and natural selection are nothing less than God’s way of creating. Though I dispute the logical coherence of these attempted reconciliations elsewhere, I argue here that there is little reason for Christians to attempt them, since an accumulating body of evidence from multiple subdisciplines of biology casts doubt (...) on the creative power of the main evolutionary mechanisms. Thus, rather than addressing the question, “Can a meaningful doctrine of divine providence or creation be reconciled with mainstream evolutionary theory?” this essay will address the question of whether Christians should, or need to, attempt such a reconciliation at all. (shrink)

In South Africa, ideas around fatherhood, parenthood and family life are greatly shifting as people find themselves caught up between traditional and contemporary understandings of fatherhood and motherhood. Even though more than 70% of young South Africans stated in a national survey that parenthood is one of the top four defining features of adulthood, father absence is on the increase. Some in-depth literature study was conducted regarding South African research on fatherhood and father absence, and the role of both Christian (...) churches and secular organisations in addressing some of these challenges brought on by rapidly growing figures of father absence. The article concludes with some suggestions on the development of a new paradigm in understanding fatherhood in South Africa, with special reference to the role of Christian churches in assisting men to construct a narrative around fatherhood, which will lead to satisfying relationships with their children, their partners and especially with God. (shrink)

Jesus the Jew is the primary signifier of Christianity's indebtedness to Judaism. This connection is both historical and continuous. In this book, Barbara Meyer shows how Christian memory, as largely intertwined with Jewish memory, provides a framework to examine the theological dimensions of historical Jesus research. She explores the topics that are central to the Jewishness of Jesus, such as the Christian relationship to law, and otherness as a Christological category. Through the lenses of the otherness of the Jewish (...) Jesus for contemporary Christians, she also discusses circumcision, natality, vulnerability, and suffering in dialogue with thinkers seldom drawn into Jewish-Christian discourse, notably Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva, Martha Nussbaum and Adi Ophir. Meyer demonstrates how the memory of Jesus' Jewishness is a key to reconfiguring contemporary challenges to Christian thought, such as particularity and otherness, law and ethics after the Shoah, human responsibility, and divine vulnerability. (shrink)

This book argues that Christian ethics urgently needs the category of tragic dilemmas. The author argues for a definition of tragic dilemmas that responds to philosophical concerns in a Christian context, using insights from the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, and in light of psychological evidence of moral injury after combat. Jackson-Meyer suggests that in a tragic dilemma an agent deliberates on, with sufficient knowledge, an issue that involves non-negotiable moral requirements in line with Christian obligations to protect human (...) life and the vulnerable. The agent is morally responsible for the harm caused and/or the obligation not acted upon. However, culpability is mitigated due to the constraints of the situation as long as the agent acts with, what Aquinas calls, "repugnance of the will." Tragic dilemmas are often the result of sin, a reality to which the Augustinian tradition is keenly attuned. When involvement in a tragic dilemma produces emotional harm, this has the power to undermine character because passions and the moral life are inextricably related. In turn, the agent's life is marred. In light of this harm, it is incumbent on Christian communities to offer opportunities for moral healing after tragic dilemmas. (shrink)

In this volume specialists of medieval music and philosophy put the medieval 'musica' into the context of ideas and institutions in which it existed. The significance of 'musica' cannot be understood from a modern point of view since 'music' does not match the medieval 'musica'.

L’emploi est au cœur du bien-être d’un individu. Les attentes liées au travail des personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle ont été comparées à celles des coordonnateurs de services. Les variables comprenaient le type de travail attendu, le nombre d’heures de travail prévu, les préoccupations liées à l’emploi, les mesures de soutien souhaitées sur le lieu de travail et l’influence de la gravité de la déficience intellectuelle et de l’expérience de travail du coordonnateur de services sur les attentes en matière de (...) travail. Les données ont été recueillies auprès de 46 personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle par le biais d’entretiens et de 46 coordonnateurs au moyen d’un sondage en ligne. Les résultats indiquaient des attentes professionnelles positives globales. Le travail le plus courant attendu était le service et le commerce. L’emploi concurrentiel était attendu plus fréquemment que les ateliers protégés. Alors que les attentes des coordonnateurs de services et des personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle légère étaient étroitement alignées, il existait une distinction plus grande entre les attentes des coordonnateurs et celles ayant une déficience intellectuelle modérée ou grave. Ces résultats ont des implications importantes pour faciliter le placement des adultes ayant une déficience intellectuelle. (shrink)

The paper seeks to examine whether Roman emperors legitimized their political actions with a view towards the future achievement of social and political order. The heuristic point of departure is Koselleck’s concept of ‚futures past‘ (vergangene Zukunft) which has been widely discussed in early modern and medieval research while its applicability to prechristian antiquity is still unexplored. The example of the so-called reforms of Augustus and Diocletian reveals that even in response to severe crises in the Roman Empire the emperors (...) did not command any ideas of order in alternative to prevailing conditions. Neither did they have any ‚master plan‘ of coordinated reforms, but reacted in a situational manner with improvements of administrative practice which were mainly aimed at consolidating their power and authority. All ‚reforms‘ were pronounced retrotopically as a return to better days (restitutio) or as a preservation (conservatio) of ‚happier times‘ (felicitas temporum). Looking at the monarchical discourse of power and the messages exchanged in various media between the emperor and his subjects, it is evident that the dominant time regime of imperial chronopolitics lay in a ‚presentism‘ which extended the present, as ‚eutopia‘, into eternity and glorified it as a golden age, whereas the future was only envisaged in dynastic terms. The horizon of expectations of both the emperor and his subjects was restricted to present-day provision. Only Christians were able to imagine a worldly and transcendent horizon of the future. The political success and duration of the Roman Empire left no room for alternative horizons of possibilities, which also explains why the Roman Empire – in contrast to the Greek world – had no notion of utopia. (shrink)

Stanley Hauerwas argues that Christian ethics has lost its theological voice because it has accommodated itself to the secular assumptions of modern philosophical ethics. What has led to this fateful accommodation, he argues, is that theology has sought to translate its insights into a nontheological idiom in order to remain publicly intelligible and relevant. My thesis is that Hauerwas rightly recognizes that a fateful accommodation has occurred but wrongly identifies what it is. The real accommodation is found not in theology's (...) attempt to be publicly intelligible and credible but in its widespread acceptance of the modern denial of metaphysics. (shrink)

The global turn in media ethics has presented a tough challenge for traditional models of moral theory: How do we assert common moral standards while also showing respect for the values of those from outside the Western tradition? The danger lies in advocating for either extreme: reason-dependent absolutism or cultural relativism. In this paper, I reject Cliff Christian’s attempts to solve the problem and propose instead a moral theory of universal standards that are discovered via a mix of rationally grounded (...) methods. Such universality refutes relativism but, because it is grounded in evolutionary naturalism and life-world philosophy—as opposed to a Kantian or theological transcendentalism—it also avoids absolutism. (shrink)

Paul's commanding place in the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is due to the fact and the way that he took the notions of Holy Spirit in his religious heritage and rendered them distinctively Christian.

Abstract: Giorgio Agamben's recent works have been preoccupied with a certain obscure passage from St. Paul's 'Second Epistle to the Thessalonians,' which describes the portentous events that must occur before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ can take place---specifically, the appearance of a 'man of lawlessness' (the Antichrist?) and the exposure of who or what is currently restraining the 'man of lawlessness' from being exposed as the Antichrist: a mysterious agency called the 'katechon.' In 'The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI (...) and the End of Days,' this obscure passage is connected with the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI through certain equally obscure references to the fourth century theologian, Tyconius, although the precise connection between these apocalyptic events and their mysterious agents remains obscure. This review attempts to shed some critical light upon this cryptic subject, both by considering the world-historical context of St. Paul's epistle, and by asking what role these apocalyptic figures play in Agamben's political theology. But, to begin with, the review also asks: Who, really, is the Antichrist? a scarcely rhetorical question that demands a sardonic answer. Although various candidates from contemporary politics are proposed, the review finally argues that the Antichrist and the katechon are not specific individuals or worldly institutions, but rather refer to world-historical trends within Western European Christian civilization itself that have resulted in what Friedrich Nietzsche called 'the devaluation of all higher values' and 'the desecration of the Christian moral world-view': an apocalyptic turn of events which Nietzsche equally sardonically referred to in 'The Antichrist.'. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The demand that epistemic support be explicated as rational compulsion has consistently undermined the dialogue between theology and science. Rational compulsion entails too restrictive a form of epistemic support for most scientific theorizing, let alone interdisciplinary dialogue. This essay presents a less restrictive form of epistemic support, explicated not as rational compulsion but as explanatory power. Once this notion of epistemic support is developed, a genuinely productive interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and science becomes possible. This essay closes by sketching how (...) the Big Bang model from cosmology and the Christian doctrine of Creation can be viewed as supporting each other. (shrink)

Biblical scholars have given diverse explanations for the Lamb of God metaphor in John 1:29 and 1:36. Most scholars are of the opinion that ‘amnos’ refers to the Passover lamb. This explanation is not obvious from the context of the Fourth Gospel. To understand the metaphor ‘lamb’ or ‘amnos’ of God, one should understand the transferable meaning of the figure or image. In this comparison, only the vehicle, namely the lamb, is given. What and who the lamb is stays open. (...) It can be anything within the limits of the other story elements that have the same qualities as a lamb. To uncover the communicative dynamics of the metaphor, the exegete must have insight into the meaning and function of the original metaphor. Rhetoric provides a clue for the interpretation of the metaphor, namely that it is a Lamb of God. Within the pericope other rhetorical clues like antithesis and varietas are also provided. These clues are important but do not explain the image of the lamb. In this study, these problems will be considered via another medium, namely Hellenistic art and imagesand their penetration into Judaism and Christianity during the 1st century CE. Hellenistic and biblical images will be used to give an alternative interpretation of the metaphor of the Lamb of God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Existence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics by Franklin I. GamwellWilliam MeyerExistence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics FRANKLIN I. GAMWELL Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. 219 pp. $24.95In the current era, a few prominent philosophers have called into question the antiteleological tendencies of modern thought. For instance, Thomas Nagel argues that we should reject the antiteleology of science (...) and its “comprehensive, speculative world picture” of “reductive materialism” (Mind and Cosmos, Oxford 2012, 4). As a nontheist, Nagel proposes a “natural teleology” as a secular alternative to theism and to the nonteleology of science as a way to offer a more intelligible and holistic understanding of existence; yet he admits at one point: “Without God, it is unclear what we should aspire to harmony with” (Secular Philosophy & the Religious Temperament, Oxford 2010, 6). With less notoriety but with greater insight, Franklin Gamwell challenges not only modernity’s nonteleology but also its postmetaphysical outlook. By developing a neoclassical or process form of metaphysical theism informed by the works of Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead, Gamwell spells out with thoughtful clarity what we should aspire to harmonize with in our individual and collective lives.Focusing on moral and political theory, Gamwell demonstrates that a coherent understanding of ethics (The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God, HarperSanFrancisco, 1990) and politics (Democracy on Purpose: Justice and the Reality of God, Georgetown University Press, 2000) presupposes a neoclassical metaphysical teleology. Here, in Existence and the Good, he offers [End Page 228] a more concise, refined, and integrated formulation of these previous arguments as well as new engagements with important thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Jeffrey Stout.Gamwell pursues metaphysics in both a “strict” and a “broad” sense: the former refers to critical reflection on the most general characteristics of existence as such, while the latter refers to reflection on the necessary conditions of existence with understanding (17–19). Beginning with the former, he argues that metaphysics properly conceived––in terms of becoming rather than being––is a valid and essential enterprise because “something exists” is necessarily true while “nothing exists” cannot possibly be true (25). He then seeks to show that metaphysics in a broad sense includes metaphysics in the strict sense because existence with understanding necessarily presupposes a metaphysical telos. Toward this end, he engages Heidegger on the metaphysics of subjectivity (chap. 2). Whereas the later Heidegger maintains that all understandings of totality are wholly dependent upon some lifeworld, Gamwell counters that “totality is prior to meaning” because “exemplifications of subjectivity are constituted by prior or nonconscious relations to an order of actualities and possibilities” (49).In chapter 3 Gamwell explicates his neoclassical theism by arguing that the metaphysical telos must be an all-inclusive divine individual. Distinct from Hartshorne, he posits that God does not relate to the world merely in terms of an integration of all past actualities but rather “cooccupies the locus of all contemporaries.” Thus, all “worldly enactment localizes the divine” (90). Gamwell offers here a metaphysical version of incarnation: “Localization of the divine means relation to a becoming that cooccupies one’s place in the world and, therefore, means a communion unlike any other, so that God, we may say, is ‘closer than hands or feet.’ As the metaphysical individual, God is literally the one ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’” (92).Gamwell concludes by engaging Stout on the underlying necessity of metaphysics for democracy. Whereas Stout offers an “ethics without metaphysics” in the form of a “specific pragmatism,” which holds that citizens can coordinate actions on the basis of “moral norms [that] are entirely creatures of historically located social practices” (134), Gamwell maintains that democracy requires “a metaphysical pragmatism,” because “the practice of democratic discourse itself, as all human practices, implies the necessary principle or principles of morality” (146). The key distinction here is between implicit and explicit: Gamwell submits that democracy implicitly presupposes the divine metaphysical telos because that telos is rooted in the very character of reality as such. However, this does not mean that citizens must explicitly recognize or hold... (shrink)

Motivated by aspects of reasoning in theories of physics, Robin Giles defined a characterization of infinite valued Łukasiewicz logic in terms of a game that combines Lorenzen-style dialogue rules for logical connectives with a scheme for betting on results of dispersive experiments for evaluating atomic propositions. We analyze this game and provide conditions on payoff functions that allow us to extract many-valued truth functions from dialogue rules of a quite general form. Besides finite and infinite valued Łukasiewicz logics, also (...) class='Hi'>Meyer and Slaney’s Abelian logic and Cancellative Hoop Logic turn out to be characterizable in this manner. (shrink)

Aramaic in Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity. Edited by Eric M. Meyers and Paul V. Flesher. Duke Judaic Studies Series, vol. 3. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Pp. xx + 300. $49.50.

Meyer Cornelis Smit taught history and philosophy in the Free University at Amsterdam for a quarter century. Toward a Christian Conception of History presents the harvest of his scholarly output. The relation between God and history and the problems inherent in articulating that relation in a manner consistent with historic Christian belief and modern ideas of historical existence is the central theme of Smit's writing. Smit discusses the influence of one's world view on the practice and appreciation of history, (...) the significance of the question of the meaning of history as an answer to the a-historical-mindedness of our time, and the fundamental flaw of the modernist theory of knowledge and philosophy of science. (shrink)