La pensée de Machiavel a fait l’objet, ces dernières décennies, de nombreuses références dans les réflexions sur les processus de démocratisation, sur la signification et les conditions de la liberté politique ou encore sur la participation civique. La présente contribution défend la thèse d’une actualité indirecte de Machiavel pour la théorie contemporaine de la démocratie, à travers le questionnement que son œuvre suscite sur le rôle du désir de liberté dans l’approfondissement de la démocratie. Sa pensée nous invite à nuancer (...) le rôle que nous attribuons communément à l’institution de la citoyenneté en lien avec la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et la signification donnée à la « modernité » politique. Elle permet d’éclairer les ambivalences de la citoyenneté démocratique et d’interroger les limites de la conception participative de la démocratie. (shrink)

Machiavelli’s thought has been referred to in numerous ways in the past decades in political theory. His work has grounded various comments about the process of democratization, the meaning and the conditions of political liberty and about civic participation. This paper advocates the thesis of an indirect relevance of Machiavelli’s work for contemporary political thought. It stresses the importance given by Machiavelli to the desire for liberty and its meaning for the understanding of the deepening of democracy. From then on, (...) it argues that his thought invites us to qualify the scope of citizenship understood in relationship with the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and with political modernity. It allows us to highlight the ambivalence of democratic citizenship and to question the limits of the participatory conception of democracy. (shrink)

The thought of contemporary North American theologian and ethicist Wendy Farley is an unflinching clarion call to justice and compassion. Farley invites us to discover ways of embodying the deep compassion capable of resisting pernicious distortions and traumatizing injustices that harm and dehumanize us all. This volume of essays embodies her invitation to awaken as beloved community. And when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of struggle and despair, Farley reminds us that the powerful longing of hope, at times against (...) all evidence, refuses to give up on seeking justice and wholeness. Compassionate justice, radical hospitality, creative liberation, and deep listening emerge as more than ethical values for Farley; they are expressions of erotic faith, a praxis of faithfulness born of divine desire. These writings explore transformative perspectives and practices that have the capacity to help us recover and author our identity as the "god-bearers" we are. Erotic faith embodies the love-seeking persistence of divine faithfulness necessary to transform us from within; it meets the truth of human harm, vulnerability, and suffering by offering a complex, struggling, unscripted creativity capable of remaking us, and our world, until the beloved community is whole. (shrink)

Desire After Affect offers a detailed analysis of the affective turn and its consequences for the humanities.

In this book, Mary Townsend proposes that, contrary to the current scholarship on Plato's Republic, Socrates does not in fact set out to prove the weakness of women. Rather, she argues that close attention to the drama of the Republic reveals that Plato dramatizes the reluctance of men to allow women into the public sphere and offers a deeply aporetic vision of women’s nature and political position—a vision full of concern not only for the human community, but for the desires (...) of women themselves. (shrink)

Our journeys are never only to the exterior: the interior journey of the traveller has a long tradition, witnessed in travel writings of authors like Montaigne and Unamuno, and in the history of literature as a whole understood as a hodoeporics. We ceaselessly pursue things which give us pleasure and fulfil our needs, including the specific kind of enjoyment that travel and tourism afford. The desire to travel is closely tied to an original kind of nostalgia, the desire for self-discovery. (...) Hailing from Heraclitus, Socrates, and the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Delphi, this desire manifests itself as a fundamental motivating force of travel and tourism. Although we humans tend to “grow our desires big,” like the tyrant in Plato’s Republic, the pursuit of tourism is not to be equated with mere self-indulgence. The tension between a life of physical enjoyment and the life of the mind, a life of action and a life of contemplation, is decisive for proper understanding of the phenomenon of tourism, and in the history of Western philosophy is perhaps most pronounced in Plato and the philosophy of Platonism. Plato and Plotinus recommend an integrative view of their relationship – while gently steering us away from the tyranny of unbounded pursuit of our every drive and lust. To achieve proper balance in tourism, it is necessary to take account of humans’ natural drives. Properly fostered and cultivated, these can provide the basis upon which our second, higher nature can begin to unfold. (shrink)

La femme tableau et/ou miroir de l'homme — telle qu'il la crée, l'aime — renvoie de celui-ci l'image inversée : forme de l'« autre » elle montre dans ce qui se dit d'elle le désir de l'« un » comme désir d'être l'un et l'autre , désir d'être le « Tout » ou, désir de l'« Un ». Plusieurs textes freudiens marquent sans ambiguïté la « sexuation » du désir, marquent le désir comme principe mâle. Il s'agit ici de montrer, (...) avec ces textes, les places et les articulations de l'un et l'autre sexe dans la dynamique du désir.Woman as a picture and/or mirror of man — as he creates and loves her — gives an reversed image of him: she, a form of the "other", reveals in what is said of her the desire of "one" as the desire to be both the one and the other , the desire for "Whole"-ness, for "One"-ness. Several Freudian texts unambiguously mark the sexualisation of desire, desire as a male principle. What is shown here, with these texts, are the places and articulations of the one and the other sex in the dynamics of désire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 28-39 [Access article in PDF] Chateaubriand and the Politics of (Im)mortality Marie-hélène Huet In the twenty-sixth book of his Mémoires d'outre-tombe, Chateaubriand recounts his 1821 arrival at the French embassy in Berlin. He cites a flattering portrait of him written by the Baroness of Hohenhausen and published in the morning press on March 22: "M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender, stature. (...) His oval face has an expression of reverence and melancholy. He has black hair and black eyes that glow with the fire of his mind." 1 At this point, Chateaubriand flatly adds: "Mais j'ai les cheveux blancs; j'ai plus d'un siècle, en outre, je suis mort" ("But I have white hair; I am more than a century old, besides, I am dead") [2:39]. 2 Of course, those startling words, "en outre, je suis mort" do not refer to the year 1821, nor to the time Chateaubriand is writing this account. Rather, they refer to the time we, readers, turn to this specific page of the Mémoires: as you are reading this, Chateaubriand reminds us, I am dead. The words wrest us away from the event he is relating, his arrival in Berlin, to remind us in the most direct terms that our reading of these words necessarily entails the death of their author. Moreover, the French en outre brings us back to the very title of the Mémoires d'outre-tombe: outre-tombe, from beyond the grave.In 1836, Chateaubriand signed a contract with a society of shareholders: in exchange for an immediate payment of 156,000 francs and a life annuity, he sold "the literary ownership of his Mémoires as they existed and as they would exist at his death." 3 Commenting on this transaction, Maurice Levaillant notes: "With this agreement, Chateaubriand bought material security at the price of a concession that he never got over: instead of appearing after a period he had first prescribed as fifty years after his death, his Mémoires would suddenly appear, so to speak, live from his grave" [xv]. As Chateaubriand put it in his avant-propos, the publication would take place "as soon as my bell tolls!" [1:1].The contract for the Mémoires is described as a painful necessity: "No one can know how much I have suffered from having been required to mortgage my grave" [1:1]. The formula "mortgage my grave" is suggestive in that it metonymically shifts the object of economic exchange from the work being sold, that is, the Mémoires, to the grave, which Chateaubriand always associated with literary creation. Indeed, the association between memoirs and tomb that provides the title of the work is echoed and amplified by a constant relation within the text between the grave and the act of writing. [End Page 28]In the avant-propos, a few lines after lamenting the mortgaging of his grave, Chateaubriand also reports that he has secured an islet in the bay of Saint-Malo, the Grand-Bé, to serve as his burial site. 4 Proposing an arrangement rigorously parallel to the desired legal agreement for the Mémoires, he adds that, should he die outside of France: "I wish that my body not be brought back to my homeland until fifty years after an initial burial" [1:3]. A half-century of silent mourning seemed to be the ideal length of time for the public to wait before discovering, and possibly disturbing, both his mortal remains and his immortal work.Not that this intimate relationship between death and writing resulted from the specific circumstances of the Mémoires. Twenty years earlier, in the second preface to the Essai sur les Révolutions, Chateaubriand had already described himself as "a writer who believed he had reached the end of his life, and who, in the destitution of exile, had nowhere to write, but upon his own gravestone" [7]. The tomb stands for death, just as it stands for Chateaubriand's creative works. In an essay... (shrink)

In her paper Expelled Again from Eden: Facing Difference through Connection, delivered in Plymouth in 1998, Mary Grey said the story of the Garden of Eden was a dilemma for Feminist Theologians. This because it both bears responsibility for the Fall of relationship between God and Man and the misogyny that has ensued through the ages but also underpinning the desire to return to a supposed golden age of matriarchy with the re-emergence of the Goddess and a related ecological and (...) egalitarian epoch of harmony. Grey makes a connection between the Lost Garden myth and the second wave feminist ideal of global sisterhood of the 1960s. Reflecting on her paper and updating it later, Grey concluded she still felt the challenge of years ago: the sense of rightness of connection and mutuality, yet the crucial need to embrace difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 37-41 [Access article in PDF] What I Know and Don't Know: A Christian Reflects on Buddhist Practice Mary Frohlich Catholic Theological Union To reflect and write on spiritual practice for publication in an academic journal requires a delicate balancing act. It is not appropriate simply to recount one's experience; nor is it appropriate merely to theorize. I am assisted in this balancing act by a (...) set of categories proposed some years ago by Walter Principe and generally accepted as standard now within the academic field of spirituality. Principe observed that spirituality operates on three interrelated yet distinct levels and that it is crucial for the academician to be clear about which level or levels are being presented. The three are: (1) experience; (2) articulation within wisdom traditions; (3) academic interpretation. 1 My understanding of what is desired in the present context is some of all three but with a primary emphasis on the second. What does Buddhist practice look like from my stance within my Christian "wisdom traditions"? Thus, this is the horizon within which I will present both experience and academic insights.First a bit of autobiographical context. I became a Christian as a young adult, after having been raised in a secular humanist household. My first attempts at a form of meditation as a teenager came from reading Taoist books; in college I experimented with drugs (at that time this was often seen as "spiritual practice") and spent a couple of years very seriously practicing transcendental meditation. Only after all this did I seek baptism and church membership. Since then, my certainty that my call is to be a Christian has not wavered. I spent several years in a Carmelite contemplative monastery, and I now belong to another Roman Catholic religious order.Yet I have repeatedly been drawn to periods of engagement with various practices having Hindu and Buddhist roots.This context is important to describe because I am aware that for me (and for many spiritual seekers today) there can never be a "pure" insertion in a single tradition. I reflected on that recently in an airplane at twenty-five thousand feet, looking down and seeing how totally human constructive activity has reshaped the contours of the land, the rivers, and everything that depends on them. I realized then that the same must be said of the inner contours of my soul. Nearing fifty, I bear the marks [End Page 37] of everything that I have ever done or touched or suffered or known. As I approach this task of reflecting on Buddhist practice from the point of view of a Christian, I cannot do it as a pure outsider. My spiritual practice is Christian in its core, but it has been inextricably shaped by so many other influences--including varieties of Buddhist practice.It is also important to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge about Buddhism and Buddhist practices. My academic exposure to Buddhism is about equivalent to an introductory undergraduate course. As for Buddhist practice, I have participated in a total of five weekend retreats, three one-week retreats, and one three-week retreat. These were all from either Vipassana (Insight Meditation) or Zen (Kwan Um or Diamond Sangha) traditions. Occasionally, I have also had even briefer exposure to other Buddhist traditions. I am very aware that there is much I do not know, or that perhaps I just plain misunderstand, about Buddhism.Yet dialogue requires that I honestly state my views, in their present form, with the hope that in the dialogical process what is misinformed or insensitive can eventually be corrected.Spiritual practice (for Buddhists as well as Christians) involves many different kinds of practices. Practices of charity, such as hospitality or almsgiving, perhaps present the fewest obstacles to mutual understanding, because the practices may be generally similar in both traditions. The ritual practices of a religious tradition, on the other hand, can feel extremely alien to those who do not belong to that religious culture. Paul Hanvey has noted that our reaction to... (shrink)

S'obstiner à établir un distinguo dans le champ des conduites humaines entre celles qui seraient morales - et, à ce titre, objet exclusif de la philosophie pratique - et les autres, qualifiées de pathologiques et abandonnées de facto au médecin ou au psychologue, c'est s'obstiner à ne rien vouloir entendre des conduites humaines, quand tout un chacun sait-il en fait sans cesse l'expérience - que si nul n'est affranchi des usages, nul, non plus, n'est exonéré du symptôme, ni exempté du (...) désir. Que cette obstination soit le produit d'une histoire, sûrement. Mais le plus urgent est de s'en dégager en observant que toutes les conduites humaines relèvent du même modus operandi, sous réserve de bien saisir qu'elles prennent toutes leurs conditions auprès d'énoncés qui tirent leur légitimité, non d'une justification par l'observation - celle dont bénéficient nos énoncés cognitifs - mais de leur partage par une communauté ou de leur expression par une autorité, énoncés de croyance dont le pouvoir d'action est proportionnel à la rhétorique qui y est associée, comme l'exemplifient les messages publicitaires ou politiques. Alors se découvre que ce modus operandi avait déjà été entraperçu par Aristote dans sa réflexion sur le syllogisme pratique, réflexion que l'on retrouve étonnamment sous la plume de Wittgenstein dans sa réflexion sur le rapport entre les jeux de langage et nos manières d'agir et sous celle de Lacan, dans sa réflexion sur les divers discours induisant nos conduites. Mais c'est alors à une tout autre conception de l'homme que nous sommes conviés, celle où le langage ordinaire en est le ressort et non quelque "volonté". (shrink)

This article engages with Goldenberg's desire to abandon transcendence since it is the enemy of autonomy and to once more encounter corporeality as the site of immanence. The author is in agreement with Goldenberg but attempts to show that the negative outcomes associated with a reliance on transcendence are not necessary and have been produced by a false understanding on the part of Christianity.

This narrative study explores the late-career issues among 15 senior teacher educators from Israeli Academic Colleges of Education (ACEs), in light of the growing conversation about pre-pension maintenance of senior faculty members employed in teacher education institutions. The data analysis of semi-structured interviews highlighted dedication to daily tasks (research activity, administration, teacher education and leading Professional Learning Communities), and a sense of mission during career experiences (leaving legacy to student teachers and colleagues). It was reflected in two parallel work patterns: (...) the ‘work pattern of sharing’, and the ‘work pattern of expertise’. The discussion raises similarities between the literature and the first work pattern, in line with the unique culture of teacher education systems in the world. However, the existence of the ‘work pattern of expertise’ in the literature remains vague and requires more in-depth thinking and research. (shrink)

The hypothetical approach to the supersensible developed by Kant in his three Critiques, exemplified by his analysis of the aesthetic and reflective judgment in his third Critique, with their principle fortuitous purposiveness, can be considered as the basis for a new foundation of metaphysics. According to Kant’s limitation of cognition to the realm of sense intuition, theoretical knowledge of God, the subject, things-in-themselves, transcendental ideas is impossible. This leads to a kind of “negative theology” of the highest principle and the (...) supersensible as a whole. The reasons are rooted in the character of propositional thought, which can only circumscribe a singular, supersensible reality by means of predicative sentences and discursive thought. Taking Kant’s lead, but in contrast to his terminology, I call really existent singularities, including the thinking, knowing, desiring, feeling unique individuals we know as human beings, spontaneities, in order to distinguish them from descriptive characteristics attributed to them by predicative thought. Kant’s “practico-dogmatic” account of the postulates of God and immortality of the soul, based on the “fact of freedom” and its connection to the moral imperative, ensure the possibility of the “highest good” as final aim of moral behaviour — but cannot satisfy our need for knowledge of the supersensible. To “lay the groundwork” for experience of our own self-conscious reality, the reality of others like ourselves, of things which transcend the boundaries of sense intuition, and of true reciprocity, a different method is needed, one which leads us “beyond being and thought” to the unconditional beginning of conditional reality. (shrink)

Franciscan commitments -- Creation: a metaphysics of the particular -- Cognition, language, and reality -- Divine existence and perfections -- What is theology? -- Freedom and the will -- Moral goodness and beauty -- Practical wisdom and discernment -- Creation, incarnation, and divine desire.

This article is an attempt to rethink the interconnectedness between discourse and subjective agency and to highlight methodological approaches to studies of gendering processes as a central part of it. The notions of desire, subjectification and biography are understood as mediated by narratives and metaphors, as a movement between the individual and her contexts. The transformative methodological project suggests conceptual retoolings as new analytic approaches to empirical analysis of the kind that aims to provide complex understanding of subjectification processes in (...) lived life. The empirical field brought into the article as a means of explication deals with university cultures, and more specifically with a case of an assistant professor caught in conflicts between official academic discourses and more subtle political and gendered discourses. The author takes the concepts of desire trajectories, discursive authority, multifaceted discursive realities and past experiences into an analysis of the enacting forces involved in the processes of exclusion that finally ejects the protagonist in the empirical case from the university field. (shrink)

The asshole remains the one shameful part of the bourgeois body.... The anus is the private part par excellence of the bourgeois body.... It has no place in socially admissible desire.... The use of the asshole is the touchstone of the conflict between the private and the public. Guy Hocquenghem.

The subject of “The Other”, the different one always generated conflicts more or less serious in the history of humanity, without proposals of any resolution. In the measure in that The Other questions, by similitude or by difference, the identity in which the subject is sustained, that questioning make unstable that precarious construction, and because of this, it converts itself in the opposer. In this study, we will find, in the text of Il Visconte Dimezzato by Italo Calvino, the subject (...) of the Otherness/Alterity, analyzing from the semiotic point of view the reactions and behaviors of each one of the two characters and of the members of the society in which they live. The starting point of the story by Italo Calvino is that in a war between Austria and the Turks, the Viscount Medardo di Terralba as a consequence of a canon shot remains divided vertically into two halves and both halves survive. One of the two halves is very bad and the other is very good. Each one of the two halves sees in the other one “The Other”, feeling itself “The One” but incomplete and desiring to turn to be “The Same” as it was before being divided by the canon shot. (shrink)

SummarySon preference has been considered as a determinant of women's risk of intimate partner violence experience in India, although quantitative evidence from large nationally representative studies testing this relationship is limited. This study examines the association between husband's son preference, sex composition of children and risk of physical and sexual IPV victimization among wives. Information was collected for 26,284 couples in the nationally representative 2005–2006 National Family Health Survey of India. The exposures were husband's son preference measured as husband's desire (...) for one or more sons greater than the number of daughters and sex composition of the household: only sons, only daughters and mixed. Outcome included past year physical and/or sexual IPV. The results showed that husband's reported son preference and sex composition of children were not associated with risk for IPV victimization in the models adjusted for socio-demographic factors. The findings from this first population-based study of socio-cultural norms around son preference and married Indian women's risk for IPV victimization indicate that cultural preference for sons does not influence women's risk for IPV victimization. (shrink)

A growing number of Irish women have chosen to write in Irish for reasons varying from a desire to promote and preserve the Irish language to a belief that a marginalized language is an appropriate vehicle of expression for marginalized women. Their work explores aspects of womanhood relating to sexuality, relationships, motherhood and religion. Some feel hampered by the lack of female models. Until recent years there were few attempts on the part of women to explore the reality of women's (...) lives through literature in Irish. The largely subordinate role played by women in literary matters as teachers, translators, and writers of children's literature reflected the position of women in Irish society since the achievement of independence in the 1920s. The work of earlier women poets has, for the most part, lain buried in manuscripts and is only recently being excavated by scholars. The problems of writing for a limited audience have been partially overcome in recent years by increased production of dual-language books. The increase in translation has sparked off an intense controversy among the Irish language community, some of whom are concerned that both the style and content of writing in Irish are adversely influenced by the knowledge that the literature will be read largely in translation. Nevertheless, translation also has positive implications. Interest in women's literature is helping to break down the traditional barriers between Irish literature in Irish and in English. The isolation of Irish literature in Irish is further broken down by the fact that women writers in Irish and their critics operate in a wider international context of women's literature. (shrink)

Adventurers and discoverers are recurring figures and themes in Nietzsche’s writings. This is especially the case in Morgenröthe and Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, where this conceptual constellation belongs to the context of the “free spirits”. For Nietzsche, it seems, adventurers and discoverers represent the productive as much as destructive potential of any desire for knowledge. In this article, I will thus focus on two connected questions: (1) what are the specific epistemic characteristics of the adventurer and the discoverer, and (2) how (...) are these characteristics performed, and how do they become manifest, in a text like Morgenröthe. The analysis of the function of the “theatre eye” plays a key role here. (shrink)

Should we feel inadequate when we fail to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is it realistic or even desirable to strive for such an existential equilibrium? Condemning our current cultural obsession with cheerfulness and "positive thinking," Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies and argues that sometimes a tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be rewarding. Ruti critiques the search for personal meaning and pragmatic attempts to normalize human beings' unruly and idiosyncratic natures. (...) Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. She also shows what matters is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but our courage to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, Ruti warns, leaving us feeling less "real" and less connected and unable to process a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character means acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, and it is precisely these creative qualities that make us inimitable and irreplaceable. (shrink)

Background: Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives (to implement research protocols and advance science), setting (research facilities), and nature of the nurse–participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility. Little is known about whether (...) research nurses experience unique ethical challenges distinct from those experienced by nurses in traditional patient-care settings. Research objectives: The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses within the context of their practice. Research design: The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design with individual interviews. Participants and research context: Participating nurses (N = 12) self-identified as having experienced ethical challenges during screening. The majority were Caucasian (90%), female (83%), and worked in outpatient settings (67%). Approximately 50% had > 10 years of research experience. Ethical considerations: The human subjects review board approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained. Findings: Predominant themes were revealed: (1) the inability to provide a probable good, or/do no harm, and (2) dual obligations (identity as a nurse vs a research nurse). The following patterns and subthemes emerged: conflicted allegiances between protocol implementation, needs of the participant, desire to advance science, and tension between the nurse–patient therapeutic relationship versus the research relationship. Discussion: Participants described ethical challenges specific to the research role. The issues are central to the nurse–participant relationship, patient advocacy, the nurse’s role in implementing protocols, and/or advancing science. Conclusion: Ethical challenges related to the specialized role of clinical research nurses were identified. More research is warranted to fully understand their nature and frequency and to identify support systems for resolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 126.4 (2005) 613-622 [Access article in PDF] The Triumph of Cupid: Marlowe's Dido Queen of Carthage Mary-Kay Gamel University of California, Santa Cruz e-mail: [email protected] is a lot for classicists to like in Marlowe's The Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage. There was a lot for theatergoers to like in Neil Bartlett's production of this play at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (...) (March 5–26, 2005).The script of Dido is based primarily on the Aeneid (Books I, II, and IV). Vergil's text contains many formal and thematic allusions to tragedy, especially in IV: the agonistic speeches; Anna's role as nutrix/confidante; comparisons of Dido to a raging Bacchant (301–3), Pentheus (469–70) and scaenis agitatus Orestes 471; and her thoughts of imitating the savage violence of Medea and Atreus 600–602. Aeneid IV raises the possibility that the poem will metamorphose from epic to tragedy, with Dido taking center stage from Aeneas.That is what happens in Ovid's Heroides 7, and it happens again in Dido Queen of Carthage. Marlowe probably wrote this play—his first—in 1585, when he was a twenty-one year old student at Cambridge University. An excellent Latinist, Marlowe did a superb translation of Ovid's Amores, probably before writing Dido. In writing Dido, Marlowe focused on Aeneid I, II, and IV, the books of the poem best known to ancient, Elizabethan, and modern audiences, and in a few places his characters speak Latin lines from the Aeneid. In dramatizing this material, Marlowe did not simply translate but made many changes in structure, characters, and language. Aeneas' account of the fall of Troy, for example, condenses all of Aeneid II (more than 800 lines) into 163 lines (still a very long speech, which includes horrific details not in Vergil: "young infants swimming in their parents' blood, / headless carcasses piled up in heaps" [II.i.193–94]).1 [End Page 613]Most significantly, Marlowe makes his gods Ovidian rather than Vergilian—selfish and petty, concerned only with status and pleasure, using human beings only to satisfy their desires. Jupiter is a middle-aged man making a fool of himself over a teenager: in the first scene he is not, as in the Aeneid, looking down from Olympus and already thinking about Aeneas, but rather trying to seduce Ganymede, a "female wanton boy," when Venus indignantly interrupts with "Ay, this is it!" (I.i.50).Venus' encounter with Aeneas in Carthage (Aeneid I.314–417) ends with Aeneas' unanswerable question, "Why talk we not together hand in hand / And tell our griefs in more familiar terms?" (I.i.245–46). Venus and Juno's plot to unite Dido and Aeneas is complete with sexual double-entendre: in the cave, Juno says, they will "interchangeably discourse their thoughts / Whose short conclusion will seal up their hearts" (III.ii.93–94). Costumes in the ART production reflected the gods' iconic status, though more in terms of Hollywood than ancient representations: Juno was a drag queen, Hermes an unearthly figure in gold paint with huge wings, while Venus was played by an African-American actress in white satin and spike heels (including her hunting outfit) with exaggeratedly "black" gestures and intonations—waving her long fingernails, arching her neck, posing her head, and calling Juno "sistah!" Bartlett was clearly not worried about using sexual and racial stereotypes to make an impact.Marlowe's mortals are dignified, yet wounded and vulnerable. His Dido is proud, independent, initially uninterested in Aeneas; his Iarbas genuinely loves Dido, warmly welcomes Ilioneus and the others; Anna is in love with Iarbas. All try to behave reasonably and honorably but are invariably thwarted by the gods' games. The ART Aeneas was deeply damaged by his experiences in Troy. A craggy man, wearing a scoured breastplate over worn fatigues, he staggered on, stooped, beaten. The text supports this interpretation: before beginning his speech about the fall of Troy, he says "memory... beats forth my senses from this... (shrink)

Both the Hempelian and the Dravian models of historical explanation are inadequate. They are based on the belief that in some way action may be deduced from a given reason for it. The chief difficulty is in showing how reasons are logically related to actions. An act can never be shown deductively to be necessary for the achievement of an end. Rather, practical reasoning enables us to infer inductively that a particular act will result in the achievement of some goal. (...) An act is explained not when it is inferred from a set of premises one of which states the reason for it, but instead where the end may be inferred from a set of premises one of which states that the action has been performed. Studying an agent's other actions and the actions of other people enables us to determine which ends are desired, which are not, and whether the agent was rational or irrational. (shrink)

BackgroundThe emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has prompted the development of numerous ethical guidelines, while the involvement of patients in the creation of these documents lags behind. As part of the European PROFID project we explore patient perspectives on the ethical implications of AI in care for patients at increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD).AimExplore perspectives of patients on the ethical use of AI, particularly in clinical decision-making regarding the implantation of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD).MethodsSemi-structured, future scenario-based (...) interviews were conducted among patients who had either an ICD and/or a heart condition with increased risk of SCD in Germany (n = 9) and the Netherlands (n = 15). We used the principles of the European Commission’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI to structure the interviews.ResultsSix themes arose from the interviews: the ability of AI to rectify human doctors’ limitations; the objectivity of data; whether AI can serve as second opinion; AI explainability and patient trust; the importance of the ‘human touch’; and the personalization of care. Overall, our results reveal a strong desire among patients for more personalized and patient-centered care in the context of ICD implantation. Participants in our study express significant concerns about the further loss of the ‘human touch’ in healthcare when AI is introduced in clinical settings. They believe that this aspect of care is currently inadequately recognized in clinical practice. Participants attribute to doctors the responsibility of evaluating AI recommendations for clinical relevance and aligning them with patients’ individual contexts and values, in consultation with the patient.ConclusionThe ‘human touch’ patients exclusively ascribe to human medical practitioners extends beyond sympathy and kindness, and has clinical relevance in medical decision-making. Because this cannot be replaced by AI, we suggest that normative research into the ‘right to a human doctor’ is needed. Furthermore, policies on patient-centered AI integration in clinical practice should encompass the ethics of everyday practice rather than only principle-based ethics. We suggest that an empirical ethics approach grounded in ethnographic research is exceptionally well-suited to pave the way forward. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are written (...) from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 69-81, March 2012.

Older people enter the final phases of their lives with well‐established habits and rituals, some of which might be or become substance abuse. This inquiry focused on the relationship between habits, rituals, and the compulsive addictive behaviours evident in older persons' substance abuse. Habits and rituals, examined as adaptive and limiting functions in older persons, revealed changes in autonomy, social inclusion, and emotional responses to such changes as older persons experience declining energy reserves and physical debilities. Older persons' ebbing sense (...) of control and passionate responses to change illustrate the perennial struggle between the will and emotions when habits and rituals transform to compulsive addictive behaviours. Two concepts, germane to this struggle both in older persons' addictive behaviours and nurses' response, emerged from this inquiry: temperance, a balance between the will's freely chosen actions and passionate desire, and discipline, the means to achieve such balance. The focused attention demanded in discipline can be realized in spiritual exercises and daily care of the soul. Disciplined actions engage the older persons' imaginative capacities to manage and abandon the self in goals consistent with end‐of‐life issues: meaningful fulfillment of human potential and the need for daily joy and pleasure in living the final years. (shrink)

BackgroundInformation processing speed is a marker for cognitive function. It is associated with neural maturation and increases during development. Traditionally, IPS is measured using paper and pencil tasks requiring fine motor skills. Such skills are often impaired in patients with neurological conditions. Therefore, an alternative that does not need motor dexterity is desirable. One option is the computerized symbol digit modalities test, which requires the patient to verbally associate numbers with symbols.MethodsEighty-six participants were examined, 38 healthy and 48 hospitalized for (...) a non-neurological disease. All participants performed the written SDMT, c-SDMT, and the Test of Non-verbal Intelligence Fourth Edition. Statistical analyses included a multivariate analysis of covariance for the effects of intelligence and hospitalization on the performance of the SDMT and c-SDMT. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used to compare performance across c-SDMT trials between inpatients and outpatients.ResultsThe MANCOVA showed that hospitalization had a significant effect on IPS when measured with the SDMT but not with the c-SDMT, while IQ had no effect on IPS. Age was the best predictor of performance of both tests. The repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant difference in within-test performance between outpatient and inpatient participants in the c-SDMT.ConclusionPerformance of the c-SDMT is not confounded by hospitalization and gives within-test information. As a valid and reliable measure of IPS for children and adolescents, it is suitable for use in both inpatient and outpatient populations. (shrink)

Although advance care planning can lead to more patient-centered care, the communication around it can be challenging in acute care hospitals, where saving a life or shortening hospitalization is important priorities. Our qualitative study in an acute care hospital in Japan revealed when specifically physicians and nurses start communication to facilitate ACP. Seven physicians and 19 nurses responded to an interview request, explaining when ACP communication was initiated with 32 patients aged 65 or older. Our qualitative approach employed descriptive analysis (...) to identify major themes, which included “initiation by patients” and “initiation by healthcare professionals.” In the latter case, seven specific triggers were identified: when the patients’ medical condition changed in terms of symptom relief, when the patients’ medical condition changed in terms of prognostic prediction, when serious events occurred, when a choice of treatment was presented, when the location for end-of-life care was chosen, when the patients’ cognitive function deteriorated, and when serious events settled down. Within this group of healthcare professionals, physicians were more focused on changes in their patients’ medical condition, whereas nurses focused more on their patients’ desire for a long-term perspective. Nurses encouraged patients to consider ACP themselves, which developed into an approach to respect patients’ autonomy. In acute care hospitals, it appeared to be desirable to have an early discussion where patients could understand the significance ACP, which would matter even after their discharge from the hospital. (shrink)

In April 2009 a Cochrane review was published assessing the effectiveness of male circumcision in preventing acquisition of HIV. It concluded that there was strong evidence that male circumcision, performed in a medical setting, reduces the acquisition of HIV by men engaging in heterosexual sex. Yet, importantly, the review noted that further research was required to assess the feasibility, desirability and cost-effectiveness of implementation within local contexts. This paper endorses the need for such research and suggests that, in its absence, (...) it is premature to promote circumcision as a reliable strategy for combating HIV. Since articles in leading medical journals as well as the popular press continue to do so, scientific researchers should think carefully about how their conclusions may be translated both to policy makers and to a more general audience. The importance of addressing ethico-legal concerns that such trials may raise is highlighted. The understandable haste to find a solution to the HIV pandemic means that the promise offered by preliminary and specific research studies may be overstated. This may mean that ethical concerns are marginalised. Such haste may also obscure the need to be attentive to local cultural sensitivities, which vary from one African region to another, in formulating policy concerning circumcision. (shrink)

Secular discourse about problem of economic inequality rests on two foundational premises that are problematic from a theological point of view. First, individuals enter into society with the aim of bettering their own condition. Second, bettering one's own condition entails accruing more wealth and power so that one can fulfill more of one's desires. In this paper I argue that insofar as these premises shape market behavior, they actively promote excessive economic inequality. Ethical responses to the problem of economic inequality (...) that do not challenge these assumptions are unlikely to effectively promote justice. A theological response to the problem of economic inequality should work to promote cultural change by reminding us that genuine human flourishing depends on communal ties and the higher human goods that material wealth is properly meant to support. (shrink)

Conspicuous in the Old Testament is the literary genre of blessing that is often construed in poetic forms. They are of various types and were significant to their initial audience. A careful analysis of their texts and contexts is indispensable for a correct understanding of their message. Conversely, in our times, these texts and their contents are misinterpreted for some subjective goals, which deviate greatly from what one can perceive as their original meaning and intention. Misinterpretation and incorrect application of (...) Biblical texts of blessings thrive in a society like ours where ills are perpetrated under the guise of religion. The text of Genesis 27:27–29, carefully inserted in the patriarchal narratives, contains a type of OT blessings portraying parents’ wishful desires for their offspring; this is common to all human cultures. It is chosen as a springboard for the study of other parental blessings in the OT. Employing a literary analysis with particular attention to the functions of poetic devices in the text, the study aimed at understanding the message contained therein and its relevance to our contemporary society. (shrink)

Against a certain contemporary style of thinking that wishes to go beyond finitude entirely, I propose a finite praxis modeled after Jean-Luc Nancy’s finite thinking. I argue that the desire to imm...

This paper addresses the notorious logic and semantic difficulties encountered by Lévinas in articulating his ethics of alterity. Tracing the philosophical genesis of this question in Descartes and Heidegger, it recognises Lévinas's claim that there can be no ontological foundation for ethics because ontology would reduce ethics to a form of mathematical ratio. Lévinas is unwilling to deny his phenomenological experience of a desire for goodness and unable to deny his despair at his ontological alienation from the good and so (...) he is driven to seek an irrational link between the human being and a metaphysical ‘good beyond being’. Retrieving an ancient gnostic neo-Platonist working of the same problem from the work of Hans Jonas, the paper reconsiders Lévinas's reading of Plato, specifically his understanding of Socrates’ exposition of erosin the Phaedo, in order to illustrate how his ethics of alterity may allow the human being to refer irrationally to the good beyond being. (shrink)