In 2017, Barth and Barber released the third edition of their textbook “Hospitality Law: Managing Legal Issues in the Hospitality Industry.” This review focuses on the scope and depth of the legal areas it covers. It examines whether the book strikes the right balance between practicality, feasibility, and conventions within the hotel industry. The authors aim to provide guidance to hospitality students and hospitality managers in developing legal literacy for their professional lives. The review finds that Barth and Barber have (...) successfully compiled a comprehensive and relevant compilation of legal issues within the hospitality industry. They support and illustrate their explanations with authentic case law and relevant examples, demonstrating the practicality of the work. While there may be some criticism regarding the depth of legal argumentation, it should be pointed out that this criticism should be viewed in light of the book's intended purpose. The primary goal was not to create an exhaustive analysis of the multi-faceted nuances in legal discourse within hospitality law. Instead, it aimed to sensitise and assist hospitality students and professional hospitality managers in the United States with their everyday decision-making processes. We suggest that the textbook could further benefit from integrating recent insights from applied (legal) linguistics and legal semiotics. It is concluded that the book remains a valuable resource for teaching hospitality law to non-legal professionals but also for researchers interested in the intersection of language and law in the hospitality industry. (shrink)

In 2021, a second updated edition of Eschig’s and Pircher-Eschig’s translation of the Austrian Civil Code (ABGB) (Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch für die gesammten deutschen Erbländer der Oesterreichischen Monarchie (ABGB 1811). (as amended), 2023) was released. This edition holds particular relevance due to its potential applicability across a spectrum of players operating at the intersection of language and (civil) law, including legal professionals, the hospitality industry, and mediators. We find that this comprehensive translation may not only serve as a valuable resource (...) for (legal) practice but also holds significance for research in diverse fields, including (applied) legal linguistics, lexicography, translation studies, and comparative law. Moreover, this translation alleviates the challenges faced by practitioners inside and outside of law when dealing with legal concepts and lexis, along with their interdependencies in continental civil law discourse. We suggest that the work is particularly useful for legal departments of international companies, but also for hotel chains and/or mediation offices, seeking insights into the specifics of the Austrian legal-linguistic landscape. While computer-assisted translation and machine translation cannot be denied their utility, they should not be seen as capable of entirely replacing human expertise. Indeed, machine translations may not be able to capture the subtle multi-faceted interplay of emerging legal, linguistic, and/or cultural contexts when dealing with the legal concepts and interrelated terminology of the ABGB. In conclusion, we acknowledge the significance of high-quality legal translations, as the one under review, that have been thoroughly reviewed by human experts, thus contributing to saving time and resources. (shrink)

The New Rhetoric is founded on the idea that since “argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced,” says Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, and they rely, in particular, for their theory of argumentation on the twin concepts of universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed to a specific individual or group, the orator decides what information and what approaches will achieve (...) the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience. This ideal, Perelman explains, can be embodied, for example, "in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man deliberating or in an elite.” Like particular audiences, then, the universal audience is never fixed or absolute but depends on the orator, the content and goals of the argument, and the particular audience to whom the argument is addressed. These considerations determine what information constitutes "facts" and "reasonableness" and thus help to determine the universal audience that, in turn, shapes the orator's approach. /// The adherence of an audience is also determined by the orator's use of values, a further key concept of the New Rhetoric. Perelman's treatment of value and his view of epideictic rhetoric sets his approach apart from that of the ancients and of Aristotle in particular. Aristotle's division of rhetoric into three genres–forensic, deliberative, and epideictic–is largely motivated by the judgments required for each: forensic or legal arguments require verdicts on past action, deliberative or political rhetoric seeks judgment on future action, and epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric concerns values associated with praise or blame and seeks no specific decisions. For Aristotle, the epideictic genre was of limited importance in the civic realm since it did not concern facts or policies. Perelman, in contrast, believes not only that epideictic rhetoric warrants more attention, but that the values normally limited to that genre are in fact central to all argumentation. "Epideictic oratory," Perelman argues, "has significant and important argumentation for strengthening the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds.” These values are central to the persuasiveness of arguments in all rhetorical genres since the orator always attempts to "establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience.”. (shrink)

The legitimacy of the Zionist project--establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine--has been questioned since its inception. In recent years, the voices challenging the legitimacy of the State of Israel have become even louder. Chaim Gans examines these doubts and presents an in-depth, evenhanded philosophical analysis of the justice of Zionism.

Titel oversat: Islamisk, medicinsk etik i det tyvende århundrede.

This book comprises a series of studies devoted to an analytic examination of reasoning in the field of conduct. The first is analysis of the idea of justice undertaken in a spirit of positivism; the series continues in a different vein necessitated by compelling obligation the author found himself under to work out a logic of value judgments. This logic is in fact the Rhetoric and Topics of antiquity: the author's "Traité de l' Argumentation gave this new life, and the (...) present work demonstrates its philosophical importance. (shrink)

Recent studies of the social and political meanings of English science in the 17th century have often included only a cursory inspection of Locke's work. Conversely, detailed studies of Locke's theory of knowledge have tended to refrain from taking into serious consideration the social context of English science in that period. The paper explores the contribution of Locke's conception of experience to the rise of experimental philosophy as a new social force. It shows that Locke elaborated a doctrine that rendered (...) human experience the natural and nurtured means by which agents could discharge their duty to God and realize their right in God's dominion. Locke's account of the production of empirical knowledge thus delineated a theocentric system of a moral economy, which dovetailed with current advertisements of the new vocation of experimental philosophy. More particularly, Locke's debt to Boyle is manifested in their shared imagery of experience as a divine gift. While Boyle sought to encourage polite society to participate in cultivating the experimenter's gift, Locke propagated the view that proper conduct in the public sphere hinged on the recognition of the experimenter's findings as a new source of authority in everyday life.Keywords: empiricism; experimental philosophy; ideology; moral economy; gift economy. (shrink)

Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World: Blighted Bodies. By Kristina L. Richardson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. ix + 158. $110, £65 ; $40, £24.99.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 189-206 [Access article in PDF] First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy Chaïm Perelman "As a crystal reconstitutes itself from one of its particles, all philosophy creates itself from the idea of an open dialectic, and carries, in itself, the same dialectical character." —Ferdinand Gonseth A number of metaphysicians, including Bergson and Heidegger, consider metaphysics the only knowledge of consequence and use the word to refer (...) to their own philosophies. But a large number of eminent metaphysicians, among them Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Hegel had only disdain for metaphysics and used the word to discredit the philosophy of their adversaries. D'Alembert (602-604) once noted that those referred to as metaphysicians had little regard for one another. "I have no doubt," he added, "that this title will soon be an insult to our great minds, just as the name sophist which, although it meant wise, was debased in Greece by those who bore it and rejected by the true philosophers."The preceding remarks should, I think, convince the few who would still doubt it that declaring oneself an adversary of metaphysics does not mean that one does not do metaphysics. On the contrary, the very fact of opposing a certain conception of metaphysics presupposes that one advocates another conception of metaphysics; this needs to be made explicit, if it is only implicit. In a very interesting study, Mr. Everett W. Hall has recently analyzed the metaphysical assumptions of four types of positivism (Mach, Comte, Watson, Carnap). Even without this analysis the conclusion is predictable; he who is opposed to a certain manner of treating a problem remains himself within the same problematic. Indeed, such oppositions produce a continuous expansion and dialogue about the meaning of the word "metaphysics." This happens not through an automatic and necessary dialectic, but through the dialectic directed by the philosopher's concerns.The first metaphysicians set forth a particular philosophy of being [être]; those opposed advocated a different philosophy of being. By expanding its meaning, Aristotle gave metaphysics its first dialectical movement and identified it as the study of being as being and ontology. Kantian criticism treats dogmatic metaphysics with disdain, and shows that all theories [End Page 189] of being must be preceded by a theory of knowledge: the first principles of philosophy would be those of epistemology and not those of ontology. Since Kant, and for more than a century, metaphysical debates would be about the primacy of ontology or epistemology, and the opposition to their variants, realism and idealism. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, the debate broadened. Under the influence of pragmatism, the philosophy of values, and Bergsonism, a strong current of philosophical thinking developed, which integrated the theory of knowledge into a general theory of action. It proclaimed the primacy of a philosophy of action, philosophy of life, and philosophy of values. It is within a metaphysics broadened by these various developments that different conceptions of metaphysics will struggle to establish the primacy of their principles. But, despite their differences, all of these metaphysics can be considered first philosophies.Aristotle wrote a treatise on first philosophy, the first to be called metaphysics. First philosophies refer to any metaphysics that purports to determine first principles such as the fundamentals of being (ontology), of knowledge (epistemology), or of action (axiology). First philosophies position first principles as absolute and that they underlie all philosophical questions. The word "first" informs the argumentation used to establish the primacy of first philosophies. A principle is first when it comes before all others in a temporal, logical, epistemological or ontological order; the insistence on this point serves to emphasize its primacy or axiologic pre-eminence. That which is first or basic, that which precedes or presupposes all the rest, is also first in order of importance.As systematic metaphysics, first philosophies establish an interdependence among ontology, epistemology, and axiology. The course taken by first philosophies is determined by a starting point constituted by a necessary reality, a self-evident concept, or an absolute value before which one can... (shrink)

Substantial research demonstrates that ethical leaders improve a broad range of outcomes for their employees, but considerably less attention has been devoted to the performance and success of the leaders themselves. The present study explores the extent to which being ethical relates to leaders’ performance and promotability. We address this question by examining ethical leadership from the two ethical perspectives most common in Western traditions—i.e., the “right” and the “good”—and whether one might be more closely associated than the other with (...) performance and promotability evaluations. Results from 117 employee-supervisor-manager triads show that supervisors with a deontological outlook are more likely to be seen as ethical leaders and that utilitarian leaders are more likely to earn higher performance evaluations. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on ethical leadership. (shrink)

Combining ethnographic, semiotic, and performative approaches, this book examines texts and accompanying acts of writing of national commemoration. The commemorative visitor book is viewed as a mobilized stage, a communication medium, where visitors' public performances are presented, and where acts of participation are authored and composed. The study contextualizes the visitor book within the material and ideological environment where it is positioned and where it functions. The semiotics of commemoration are mirrored in the visitor book, which functions as a participatory (...) platform that becomes an extension of the commemorative spaces in the museum. The study addresses tourists' and visitors' texts, i.e. the commemorative entries in the book, which are succinct dialogical utterances. Through these public performances, individuals and groups of visitors align and affiliate with a larger imagined national community. Reading the entries allows a unique perspective on communication practices and processes, and vividly illustrates such concepts as genre, voice, addressivity, indexicality, and the very acts of writing and reading. The book's many entries tell stories of affirming, but also resisting the narrative tenets of Zionist national identity, and they illustrate the politics of gender and ethnicity in Israel society. The book presents many ethnographic observations and interviews, which were done both with the management of the site, and with the visitors themselves. The observations shed light on processes and practices involved in writing and reading, and on how visitors decide on what to write and how they collaborate on drafting their entries. The interviews with the site's management also illuminate the commemoration projects, and how museums and exhibitions are staged and managed. (shrink)

This book discusses the justifications and limits of cultural nationalism from a liberal perspective. Chaim Gans presents a normative typology of nationalist ideologies, distinguishing between cultural liberal nationalism and statist liberal nationalism. Statist nationalisms argue that states have an interest in the cultural homogeneity of their citizenries. Cultural nationalisms argue that people have interests in adhering to their cultures and in sustaining these cultures for generations. Gans argues that freedom- and identity-based justifications for cultural nationalism common in literature can (...) only support the adherence thesis, while the historical thesis could only be justified by the interest people have in the long-term endurance of their personal and group endeavors. The Limits of Nationalism examines demands often made in the name of cultural nationalism, such as claims for national self-determination, historical rights claims to territories and demands entailed by cultural particularism as opposed to cultural cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

The interest individuals have in the preservation of their culture raises various difficulties pertaining to the meaning of this interest, its justification, and its normative implications. In this Paper, I wish to make several comments on these issues and the relationships between them. I will discuss the meaning of the interest individuals have in the preservation of their culture and the justification of this interest by referring to Margalit and Halbertal’s article “Liberalism and the Right to Culture.” I will then (...) comment on the classification of cultural preservation rights by referring to Kymlicka’s notions of poly-ethnic rights, self-government rights and representation rights. I will conclude with questions concerning the justification of some particular rights to cultural preservation by resorting to Brian Barry’s discussion of Québec language rights and some examples of Israel’s immigration policies. (shrink)

It may be that the appropriate demographic objective of Israel as a country in which the Jewish people realize their right to self-determination is the existence of a Jewish public in Israel in numbers sufficient to allow its members to live in the framework of their culture. It may also be that the appropriate demographic objective of Israel should be the existence of a Jewish majority within it. While I discussed this issue elsewhere; here I discuss the legitimate means for (...) the realization of these goals. Israel’s principal means for realizing these objectives thus far has been its Law of Return and its Citizenship Law. These laws afford every Jew anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen of the State of Israel. Many liberals and left-wingers consider these laws to be tainted with racism, because they regard any nationally-based preference with regard to immigration to be a form of racism. In the first part of my paper I argue against this position. I offer three justifications for nationality-based preferences in immigration. However, the fact that nationality-based priorities in immigration are not necessarily racist and that there are legitimate human interests justifying such priorities, does not entail that the specific priorities manifested by Israel’s Law of Return and its other immigration and citizenship policies are just. These policies in effect mean that all Jews and only Jews have the right to immigrate to Israel and to become fully integrated in Israeli life. In the second part of the paper, I argue that these two aspects of Israel’s immigration policies, namely, its almost categorical inclusion of all Jews and its almost categorical exclusion of all non-Jews, are somewhat problematic. In addition to the Law of Return, a number of additional ways to ultimately increase the number of Jews in relation to the number of Arabs have been proposed and even adopted in Israel in recent years. During the incumbency of the fifteenth Knesset, right-wing Member of Knesset Michael Kleiner tabled a draft bill intended “to encourage people that do not identify with the Jewish character of the state [i.e., Palestinian citizens of Israel C.G.] to leave.” The Israeli Government later tabled a bill—that was eventually passed—to amend the Israeli Citizenship Law in a manner that would deny Arabs who are Israeli citizens and have married Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories the right to live in Israel with their spouses and children. In the third part of the paper, I clarify why in contrast to granting Jews priority in immigration, both the aforementioned laws, namely, Kleiner’s law and the law pertaining to family unification are racist and are therefore morally unacceptable. (shrink)

Supporters of a Palestinian right of return assume that Israeli Jews bear responsibility for both the past and present suffering of the Palestinian refugees. Accordingly, the Palestinian claim for return is a demand to realize this responsibility by way of the return of the refugees to their places of origin or to uninhabited regions in the Land of Israel/palestine. The purpose of this article is to examine the responsibility of the Israeli Jews for the Palestinian return of the refugees in (...) light of the question of the justice of Zionism. Part I presents various approaches rejecting or affirming Zionism. The subsequent parts investigate the implications of the disparities between these approaches rejecting/affirming Zionism and Zionism’s actual history as it unfolded in terms of Jewish responsibility for the Palestinian plight and the question of Palestinian return. I argue that some of the approaches to Zionism are irrelevant to the dispute over the Palestinian right of return as it is understood within the framework of Israeli internal discourse and the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. However, my main point is that those approaches rejecting/ affirming Zionism that are relevant, though they may vary in their implications for the scope of Jewish responsibility for Palestinian suffering, nevertheless lead to very similar conclusions with respect to discharging that responsibility by way of Palestinian repatriation. (shrink)

fasc. 1. L'antiquité et le moyen-âge. fasc. 2. De Hobbes à nos jours.

Postmortem examinations have recently become common practice in Western medicine: they are used to verify the cause of death and to obtain additional scientific information on certain diseases, as well as to train medical students. For religious people of the monotheistic faiths postmortems present several ethical questions even though the advantages attributed to postmortems in the West are also acknowledged by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The Islamic way of dealing with such questions will be surveyed via contemporary fatawa (legal opinions) (...) issued primarily by Egyptian scholars; Islamic law, which was formulated in the eighth to ninth centuries, did not speak of postmortems. I will therefore depict the means whereby contemporary scholars approach postmortems in the absence of clear legal reference. The difficulties that postmortems create for Muslims at present will be weighed against some shar i instructions which may help circumvent them. While the ethical and religious debate continues, postmortems seem to be accepted but not, however, without certain reservations. (shrink)

While the practice of Western medicine is known today to doctors of all ethnic and religious groups, its standards are subject to the availability of resources. The medical ethics guiding each doctor is influenced by his/her religious or cultural background or affiliation, and that is where diversity exists. Much has been written about Jewish and Christian medical ethics. Islamic medical ethics has never been discussed as an independent field of ethics, although several selected topics, especially those concerning sexuality, birth control (...) and abortions, have been more discussed than others. Islamic medical ethics in the 20th century will be characterised on the basis of Egyptian fatawa (legal opinions) issued by famous Muslim scholars and several doctors. Some of the issues discussed by Islamic medical ethics are universal: abortions, organ transplants, artificial insemination, cosmetic surgery, doctor-patient relations, etc. Other issues are typically Islamic, such as impediments to fasting in Ramadan, diseases and physical conditions that cause infringement of the state of purity, medicines containing alcohol, etc. Muslims' attitudes to both types of ethical issues often prove that pragmatism prevails and the aim is to seek a compromise between Islamic heritage and the achievements of modern medicine, as long as basic Islamic dogma is not violated. (shrink)

In the past generation, restitution law has emerged as a global phenomenon. From its Oxbridge home, restitution migrated to the rest of the Commonwealth, and ongoing Europeanization projects have brought the common law of restitution into contact with the Romanist concept of unjust enrichment, further internationalizing this movement. In contrast, in the United States, scholarly interest in restitution, in terms of books, articles, treatises, symposia and courses on restitution, is meager. Similarly, while restitution, equity and tracing cases receive considerable treatment (...) at the highest levels of the English judiciary, US courts seem uninterested in these issues, rarely producing the theory-laden opinions that have become quite common in the House of Lords. The situation is particularly curious because restitution is generally thought to be the invention of late nineteenth-century American scholars. This article explains this divergence. I argue that the Commonwealth restitution discourse is largely a product of pre- or anti-realist legal thought which generates scepticism within the American academic-legal establishment. The article identifies the two dominant camps in American private law thought—left-leaning redistributionalists and the centre-right legal economists—and shows that neither has any use for the Commonwealth's discourse. I conclude by analysing the emerging drafts of the Restatement of Restitution and forecast the future of American restitution law. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary study brings together research on audiences’ participation in the media, and an up-close exploration of communicative entitlement of and for such participation. Viewing visitor books as situated, public media, the study asks two related questions: how museums and institutions that employ this medium frame participation of ‘ordinary’ people in the public sphere, and how, in return, visitors variously articulate their participation. The article first examines the context in which visitor books mediate participation, and how museums frame them so (...) as to invite ‘authentic’ expressions by ‘ordinary’ visitors. The analysis depicts a taxonomy of participation, evincing five types of entitlements found in visitor book texts. These entitlements shed light on how participation in the public sphere is both understood and pursued. The article responds to calls for empirically rich studies on mediation practices and processes. It adds to the literature on communicative entitlements by examining an under-researched hitherto public medium and by illuminating a shift from talk-in-interaction to the context of text-in-interaction. (shrink)