sirIn a scholarly and thought-provoking paper, Clarke sets out to debunk the concept of “rational suicide” as nonsensical.1 His motivation in this is to undermine any support that the notion of rational suicide might give to a “categorical right to suicide”. If his enterprise were successful, however, it would go far beyond the “rights issue” and would have a profound impact on all arguments raised in support of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.Clarke's major thrust might be termed the argument from posthumous (...) ignorance. He begins with a claim that the process of making a rational decision involves the process of “gaining all possible facts and `imagining' all possible consequences”. He goes on to say that making a rational decision “in the consideration of life or death . . . would seem to be impossible”. It is “impossible” …. (shrink)

Through discourse with international groups of physicians, we conducted a cross-cultural analysis of the types of ethical dilemmas physicians face. Qualitative analysis was used to categorise the dilemmas into seven themes, which we compared among the physicians by country of practice. These themes were a-theoretically-driven and grounded heavily within the text. We then subjected the dilemmas to an analysis of moral intensity, which represents an important theoretical perspective of ethical decision making. These constructs represent salient determinants of ethical behaviour and (...) our cross-cultural sample afforded us the opportunity to consider both the pragmatic aspects of culture, as they are perceived by physicians, as well as the theory-driven concept of moral intensity. By examining both culture and moral intensity, we hope to better elucidate the complexities of ethical decision-making determinants among physicians in their daily practice. Doing so may potentially have practical implications for ethics training of medical students and foreign physicians. (shrink)

In this paper we try to answer the question whether diffusion is a possible mechanism to explain mesoderm induction in Amphibians. First the embryological data are discussed and a hypothesis for mesoderm formation is set forth. The blastula being essentially a hollow sphere, we assume that the induction mechanism in an embryo at the blastula stage can be simulated by diffusion-reaction processes on spherical surfaces. A model is constructed for the simple case when the source is held constant with respect (...) to time, the decay proportional to the concentration and the diffusion coefficient a constant, From simulation we find a (best) value for the decay constant to be 6 × 10–5/sec and for the diffusion constant to be 0.24 × 10– 6 cm2/sec. The relation between the parameters is derived from an analytic solution for the diffusion process on a spherical surface with a continuously producing point source and the concentration proportional to the decay. The form and regulative properties of the steady concentration gradient are discussed. (shrink)

Background: Funding organisations and research ethics committees should play a part in strengthening attention to gender equality in clinical research. In the research policy of European Union , funding measures have been taken to realise this, but such measures are lacking in the EU policy regarding RECs.Objective: To explore how RECs in Austria, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden deal with gender equality issues by asking two questions: Do existing procedures promote representation of women and gender expertise in the committee? (...) How are sex and gender issues dealt with in protocol evaluation?Methods: Two RECs were selected from each country. Data were obtained through interviews with key informants and content analysis of relevant documents .Results: All countries have rules to ensure the presence of women on RECs; gender expertise is not required. Drug study protocols are carefully evaluated, sometimes on a formal basis, as regards the inclusion of women of childbearing age. The reason for excluding either one of the sexes or including specific groups of women or making a gender-specific risk–benefit analysis are investigated by some RECs. Such measures are, however, neither defined in the regulations nor integrated in review tools.Conclusions: The RECs investigated in five European member states are found to pay limited attention to gender equality in their working methods and, in particular in protocol evaluation. Policy and regulations of EU are needed to strengthen attention to gender equality in the work of RECs. (shrink)

Wood's book argues for the integral place of the "moral arguments"--the arguments for freedom, immortality, and the existence of God--in Kant's total philosophical work. These arguments have always been the object of some suspicion not only as regards their internal plausibility but also because it has been maintained that they constitute a surreptitious reintroduction of the speculative way of arguing clearly banned by the first Critique. This suspicion was reinforced by Adickes' edition of the Opus Postumum in which the editor (...) contended that Kant had therein repudiated the moral arguments in favor of a personal experience of God through the Categorical Imperative. Wood's argument to the contrary is vigorous and extremely interesting. He holds that Kant's notion of "rational faith" is a profound religious insight, one whose importance Wood does not hesitate to say is directly proportionate to that of the critical theory itself.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume, which contains the 1962 lecture "Zeit und Sein," is the most important publication by Heidegger since Unterwegs zur Sprache appeared in 1959. Bearing the same title as the much discussed missing part of the first half of Sein und Zeit, "Zeit und Sein" is the best demonstration we have of how the later Heidegger carries out the program which was outlined in Sein und Zeit, i.e., how the clue which the analytic of Dasein provides--that Being is to be (...) understood in terms of time--is followed out in the later works. Heidegger explicates the temporality of Being in terms of its character as a "gift" and an epochal sending which "is" both as having been and as to come. Being as time is thus the "event of appropriation". In addition to "Zeit und Sein," Zur Sache des Denkens also contains: The notes of a seminar which Heidegger conducted at Todtnauberg in 1962 upon the "Zeit und Sein" lecture. As Professor Alfredo Guzzoni, the editor of these notes, indicates this is the only time that Heidegger has conducted a seminar on a text of his own composition. A lecture entitled "The End of Philosophy and the Problem of Thought," which was delivered at a Kierkegaard colloquium in 1964. An autobiographical description of Heidegger's growing interest in and attraction to Husserl's phenomenological method in the pre-Sein und Zeit period; this was prepared in 1963 for a Festschrift in honor of Hermann Niemeyer.--J. D. C. (shrink)

In Being and Time and What is Metaphysics? Heidegger made a revolutionary use of the "mood". He said that the mood, and in particular the mood of Anxiety, had ontological significance. Not only is the mood nothing merely "subjective," but it has significance for the understanding of universal being itself. Anxiety is a "moodful experience of Being," a mood in which not one thing or a few things, but the very Being of beings itself, is illuminated and brought into view (...) for "Dasein." In a 1960 review of the third edition of Otto Bollnow's Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Otto Poeggeler reprimanded Bollnow for misunderstanding the genuinely ontological character of Heidegger's investigation, and thus for having reduced it to something anthropological; at the same time Poeggeler called for a recognition of the important place that such an ontological analysis has in the Western tradition. In 1958 Karl Rahner had suggested that the ontological analysis of mood in Heidegger had been anticipated in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, in the latter's discussion of a "consolation without a preceding cause." De Mendoza's book is an attempt to confirm Poeggeler's criticism of Bollnow and to work out, expand upon, and justify Rahner's thesis. He does this in an elaborately argued work filled with careful textual analyses of the writings of both Loyola and the early Heidegger. The thesis, as De Mendoza points out, is especially provocative in view of the three years which Heidegger spent in Jesuit training, during which time he was thoroughly exposed to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius may represent another of the long line of religious figures--Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard--who have influenced Heidegger's thinking in Being and Time.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Deely’s book will not be of great interest to anyone who is not overly interested in Scholastic thought. It will specifically appeal to the Thomistic philosophers who sense an affinity between Aquinas’s philosophy of being with its emphasis upon esse and the Heideggerian Seinsdenken. Its main thesis is curious. The Heideggerian Sein is indeed comparable to the Scholastic esse but on grounds hitherto overlooked. Heidegger’s experience of Being is profoundly phenomenological and hence, for Heidegger, Being always means the source of (...) manifestness or unconcealment. For Heidegger, Aquinas’s esse is a matter of simple "reality" or what in Being and Time is called existentia. Hence Deely contends the real affinity between Heidegger and the Scholastic tradition lies in what the Schoolmen called esse intentionale, being inasmuch as it is known or exists in the mind. One offshoot of this thesis is that Heidegger’s phenomenology of Being is closer to the pristine sense of intentionality than is either Brentano’s or Husserl’s. Thus Heidegger’s claim to have carried phenomenology back into its ultimate roots and to offer the more authentic phenomenology is thereby vindicated. The book follows a strange tact which is filled with difficulties, not the least of which is pointed out by Richardson’s observation that it is difficult to see how esse intentionale has anything to do with the historical character of Heidegger’s Sein. In a word: what can esse intentionale possibly have to do with Ereignis?—J. D. C. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a somewhat unusual account of the philosophy of Jaspers. The "Introduction" contains an historical survey of Existentialism which is rather out of date. It associates Heidegger and Sartre together, and as philosophers of the absurd--a mistake for which by now there is no excuse. It sees a "way out of this barren desert" of the philosophy of absurdity in Jaspers--which is a misleadingly religious way to introduce Jaspers. The body of the work contains chapters (...) on the foundations of Jaspers' thought in Kant, on the concept of philosophical faith, a comparison of Jaspers with some contemporaries, such as Whitehead, and a final comparison of Jaspers' "ciphers" with Maimonides' negative theology. The 79-page long text is heavily punctuated with citations and so does not make for smooth reading. This is followed by nearly half that many pages of notes, some of which are rather interesting and which provide the whole with extensive documentation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The present volume is one of the few recent works to devote its attention to the "early" Heidegger, yet it contributes significantly to our understanding of Heidegger's later development. "Transcendence" means crossing beyond the being to the horizon within which the being appears. The "transcendental" make-up of Dasein, which is the power of Dasein to make this crossing, is the principal theme of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik and Vom Wesen des Grundes. "Difference" is the "ontological difference" between Being (...) and beings which is discussed again in Vom Wesen des Grundes and--since Being is not-any-being--in the analysis of the Nothing in Was ist Metaphysik? The pivotal element in Rosales' interpretation is the radical finitude of Dasein's "transcendence." For transcendental-horizonal thinking is unequipped to explain the radical concealment of Being which Dasein experiences. While providing the horizon within which things appear, transcendental-horizonal thinking does not offer an explanation for the recalcitrant hiddenness of Being. Hence Being must be experienced as a-letheia, as the original, independent process of concealing itself, and of revealing itself. And a break with the early transcendental-horizonal or Kantian, and so "subjectivistic" or "metaphysical" perspective of Sein und Zeit is necessitated. While the author owes a clear debt to Marx and Schulz, his interpretation is impressive and a contribution.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume, dedicated to Rudolph Bultmann, contains the text of a lecture held in 1927 and that of a letter addressed to the participants in a colloquium held at Drew University in 1964. Separated by thirty-seven years and the workings of the "turn" in Heidegger's thought, the texts are profoundly different. In "Phenomenology and Theology", seeking to delineate the notion of Theology as a science, Heidegger says that Theology is a "positive" science in the somewhat Wolffian sense that its subject (...) matter is a "posit," an "existent" being: God. Christian theology is centered on the positing of Christ and concerns "Christianliness", which is the existentiell posture of belief in the "Crucifixion." As such, Christian Theology concerns a specific "Way of Being" and to this extent is subordinate to Philosophy, which deals with the more radical realm of Being itself. Theology seeks to explicate "believing existence" but Philosophy provides the categories with which Existenz itself is to be understood. Philosophy is ontological-existential; Theology is ontico-existentiell. The whole discussion is determined by the terms of Being and Time, § 3. The second text, "The Problem of a Non-Objectifying Thought and Language in Contemporary Theology," holds out to Theology the ideal of a thinking which is neither ontic nor ontological, neither existentiell nor existential, but altogether beyond the realm of concepts. Once again Theology is directed to follow the lead of a more radical undertaking now no longer called Philosophy but simply Thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

One can only agree with Editor John R. Silber's observation on this little volume that it is "the finest introduction to Jaspers' own comprehensive philosophy...." Overshadowed in this country by the great attention currently given to Heidegger, the importance and power of Jaspers' thought has not yet been appreciated by English-speaking philosophers. Far from being opposed to the natural sciences, Jaspers-who began his intellectual life as a psychiatrist--says that without a grasp of science the philosopher is "like a blind man." (...) The properly philosophical subject matter, however, is the realm that inevitably eludes and "transcends" the scientific approach to man and natural objects. This he calls the "encompassing." The three lectures which compose The Philosophy of Existence, which was written after the publication of the three volumes of Philosophie and the composition of most of Von der Wahrheit, range over the whole of Jaspers' philosophical work. The first lecture concerns "The Being of the Encompassing"; the second, "Truth," which like the Encompassing is a continually receding ideal and so incapable of definitive articulation. The last deals with "reality," an ultimate which is grasped only in "ciphers" or symbols which are always able to be replaced by more adequate symbols. The Introduction and translation by Richard Gradau are marvelously done. The lectures themselves, delivered in 1937, were Jaspers' last public appearance, made shortly after his dismissal from his post at Heidelberg by the National Socialists.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This interesting volume approaches Heidegger in a fresh and suggestive way. The author views Heidegger's thought as a confrontation with the history of metaphysics, an assumption which can hardly be contested. After a preliminary characterization of the essence of "metaphysics" as the later Heidegger understands that word, Laffoucreière reconstructs, chronologically, the history of metaphysics as Heidegger conceives it, studying in turn Heidegger's interpretation of: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Nietzsche. She approaches Heidegger's thought through the eyes (...) of his Nietzsche-interpretation. Heidegger sees the history of the west in profoundly Nietzschean tones: it is the history of nihilism and of the domination of western thought by Christian-Platonic metaphysics whose pivotal concept, God as the first cause, has deteriorated to the point of meaninglessness. The times are needy and it is only by a new turn, a new sending of Being as Mission, that nihilism can be overcome. Laffoucreière explains clearly and forcefully that Heidegger's Seinsdenken is not atheistic, except in the sense of the theos of western metaphysics. She shows that a major concern of Heidegger's thought is to overcome the God of metaphysics in favor of the divine God to whom man can bend his knee. She argues that Heidegger's attempt to retrieve the original sense of Being and man, far from being atheistic, aims in fact at making possible a renewed sense of the living God. The interpretation is sound and for those who doubt it there is a three sentence endorsement of the work by Heidegger himself in which he welcomes the publication of "a clear and pertinent exposition of my thought."--J. D. C. (shrink)

A clear restatement of the essentials of the Maritain approach to Christian Wisdom, the work is concerned with the nature and hierarchy of the kinds of knowledge. This hierarchizing is accomplished from that standpoint of the philosophizing Christian in which the scientific is subordinated to the philosophic and especially the metaphysical, and in which the human is subordinate to the theological and especially mystical. In such a world view the ultimate value term is the contemplative, and the possibility and actuality (...) of a "Christian Humanism" is affirmed through a relating of natural human knowledge and divine contemplation. The Christian philosopher is a finite intelligence confronting "Being" which is ultimately trans-conceptualizable and so mysterious; but God is Being Itself and so the finite intelligence tends toward God by a native and internal dynamism. The author is not concerned with the esthetico-epistemological reflections of Maritain but does carefully analyze knowledge through affective connaturality. He also attempts to develop a closer relation between a metaphysical "philosophy of nature" and modern science, construed as a mathematical interpretation and organization of phenomena, in his concept of "integrated knowledge of nature." Unfortunately there is a striking disaffection for dissenting philosophical views. In defending Thomism against its critics the author not only says that the critics do not understand it, but he also suggests that this is because its opponents, when they are sceptics and agnostics, lack Grace and so are deprived of a purely natural intellectual strength which accompanies its presence and are therefore intellectually defective. Such narrowness is offensive, not necessary to the author's thesis, and seems opposed to the spirit of Aquinas himself.—J. D. C. (shrink)

Eugenics can be defined as the use of science applied to the qualitative and quantitative improvement of the human genome. The subject was initiated by Francis Galton with considerable support from Charles Darwin in the latter half of the 19th century. Its scope has increased enormously since the recent revolution in molecular genetics. Genetic files can be easily obtained for individuals either antenatally or at birth; somatic gene therapy has been introduced for some rare inborn errors of metabolism; and gene (...) manipulation of human germ-line cells will no doubt occur in the near future to generate organs for transplantation. The past history of eugenics has been appalling, with gross abuses in the USA between 1931 and 1945 when compulsory sterilization was practised; and in Germany between 1933 and 1945 when mass extermination and compulsory sterilization were performed. To prevent such abuses in the future statutory bodies, such as a genetics commission, should be established to provide guidance and rules of conduct for use of the new information and technologies as applied to the human genome. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957 under the title Sunrise to Eternity, this Seabury edition performs the welcome service of presenting again the outstanding English exposition of Boehme's mystico-philosophical thought. The book is extremely sober and scholarly, systematically demythologizing the standard account of Boehme's life and work. Many expositions of Boehme are cluttered with unlikely and distracting accounts of his personal sanctity and numerous revelations. Stoudt, however, gives a tightly argued, well-documented account of Boehme's biography, alternating chapters on Boehme's life with chapters (...) on the works of the same period. This is extremely helpful, for it exhibits Boehme's development quite clearly. Stoudt makes it very plain that Boehme's early thought is couched in the language of alchemy but that it outgrows that strange vocabulary to become by the end of his life a mature spirituality, steeped in the earlier German mystical tradition and with a speculative depth which anticipates the main lines of German idealism. Boehme is not, then, as the standard hagiographers would have him, an unlettered shoemaker, sprung untainted from the breast of God and untaught by any mortal predecessor. Stoudt is not always as clear as we would hope, but, considering Boehme's notorious obscurity he is clearer than most. While Stoudt points out Boehme's origin in the German tradition that precedes him, he underplays the dependence of Boehme on Meister Eckhardt, or at least leaves that whole problem insufficiently analyzed. There is a brief preface by Paul Tillich.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This compact sketch of Fichte's idealism is No. 82 in the PUF series "Initiation philosophique," directed by Jean Lacroix. Bourgeois' book follows the classic division proposed by Gueroult of the genesis of Fichte's thought into three stages: the early philosophy of the ego up to 1800, including the 1794 edition of the Wissenschaftslehre and the celebrated "two introductions" of 1794; the philosophy of Being, 1800-1804, especially The Vocation of Man; and finally the philosophy of the Absolute, 1804 and thereafter, which (...) includes the Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age and The Way to the Blessed Life. For Bourgeois, these may be just as well characterized, respectively, as the philosophy of moral obligation, of vocation, and of love. He hopes to defend the early Fichte against the charge of "subjective" idealism levelled at him by Schelling and Hegel. He singles out for emphasis the close connection that Fichte makes--Kierkegaard notwithstanding--between life and idealism, and finds this a recurrent characteristic of all of Fichte's works. His interpretation of the first Wissenschaftslehre focusses upon Fichte's remark in the First Introduction that "the kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon the kind of man that one is." This deserves emphasis, anticipating as it does not only the Existentialist interpretation of philosophy but also the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey. The book is brief and to the point and should prove helpful in the difficult task of unravelling Fichte's thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

While this is the most recent volume to appear in the continuing work of a critical edition of Husserl's collected works, it contains Husserl's first published book, The Philosophy of Arithmetic. This is the famous study in which Husserl--under the influence of J. S. Mill and Brentano--undertook a psychologistic interpretation of the origin and validity of mathematical principles. Under the impulse of Frege's criticism, Husserl came to repudiate this view. Indeed, even without this external impetus, one suspects that the dynamics (...) of Husserl's own thought would have eventually carried him beyond such a view, for his concern even in this first book is to find a "strict" foundation for mathematics, a concern which seems to be clearly at odds with the naturalism and empiricism of the psychologistic theory. The tension between these two--the empirical and the ideal character of mathematical thinking--is reflected in the subtitle of this work: Logical and Psychological Investigations. "Part One" concerns the psychological origin of number: "Part Two" the logical roots. The editor has also included in this volume a set of "Supplementary Texts ". Among these is included the Habilitationsschrift of 1878, The Concept of Number: Psychological Analyses. The rest of this volume is made up of a set of treatises which were to be part of the planned second volume of The Philosophy of Arithmetic, which never appeared. This volume was to be concerned with such topics as the logic of signs, the a priori character of Arithmetic, the imaginary in Arithmetic, and axiomatic systems.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Like his earlier study The Phenomenological Movement, Spiegelberg’s latest work is a comprehensive overview—not of the phenomenological movement itself —but of its influence on psychology and psychiatry. Its aim is to show that the presence of phenomenology in these disciplines has broadened the perspectives of these empirical sciences and has loosened the death-grip that positivism and naturalism, behaviorism and atomistic associationism, might otherwise have exerted upon them, Spiegelberg does this "concretely" by a wide ranging account of philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists (...) which testifies again to his great erudition and incomparable familiarity with phenomenological literature. The index of authors studied covers six pages of double columns. Part One gives a "general orientation" to the field, discussing first the notion of phenomenological psychology and then the presence of phenomenology in psychology, in psychopathology and psychiatry, in psychoanalysis and in American psychology. The second half of the book is devoted to more concentrated studies of "leading figures" and devotes entire chapters to such thinkers as Jaspers, Binswagner, Minkowski, Buytendijk and Frankl. The American student of phenomenology is once again the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship.—J. D. C. (shrink)