This article argues that the figure of the dog functions in Horace’s Epodes as a cipher for trauma. My title takes its inspiration from Freud’s “talking cure,” but my contention is that Horace accomplishes an inversion of this psychoanalytic method in his Epodes. I argue that Horace’s rehabilitation of Archilochean iambus in the image of attack animals in Epode 6 at this particular pass in Roman history involves a rehabilitation of the iambic dog and a refocusing of the rabid rage—punning (...) on the semantic link between rabies (anger) and rabies (disease)—that characterized not only the Triumviral period, but also the biography of Archilochus. (shrink)

In this text, the authors confront the many issues which can confuse, frighten or ensnare young people as they struggle to make their own decisions in a world where the hard edges of moral choice have become increasingly blurred. Issues such as drug abuse and abortion are explored in their secular context, while also being placed under the microscope of both Biblical and church teaching. The positions of the Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, Prebyterian and Methodist churches are examined through (...) their own statements and publications. (shrink)

Objective This work disentangles moral tolerance from moral relativism and reveals their distinct personological meanings. Both constructs have long been of interest to moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and everyday people, and they may play prominent roles in the feasibility of modern diverse societies. However, they have been criticized as devaluing morality and as producing overly permissive societies. Moreover, although they lack necessary conceptual implications for each other, they are easily (and often) conflated. -/- Method Three studies included nine samples (total (...) N > 3,200, 40%–50% female, Mage = 38–40, 83% white). Participants completed (online) new measures of moral tolerance and moral relativism, along with measures of 40 additional constructs. -/- Results Results reveal robust psychometric quality of the new measures (the Moral Relativism Scale and the Moral Tolerance Scale), demonstrate that the constructs are empirically overlapping but separable, and highlight their distinct personological networks. Moral relativism was associated with liberal political views and a lowered valuing/enacting of moral values. Moral tolerance was weakly associated with liberal political views but was strongly related to a broad range of both liberal and conservative moral values. -/- Conclusion This work yields new tools for investigating moral character, and it reveals the differential meaning of two important moral constructs. (shrink)

Julia Annas explores how Plato's account of the relation of virtue to law developed, and how his ideas were taken up by Cicero and by Philo of Alexandria. She shows that, rather than rejecting the account given in his Republic, Plato develops in the Laws a more careful and sophisticated version of that account.

This book was inspired originally by the debates at the turn of the century about placebo controlled trials of antiretrovirals in HIV positive pregnant women in developing countries. Moving forward from this one limited example, the book includes several additional controversial cases of clinical research conducted in developing countries, and asks probing philosophical questions about the ethics of such trials. All clinical research by its very nature uses people to acquire generalizable knowledge to help future people. But what sorts of (...) "use" are morally permissible? What is it to exploit people? Suppose that a trial conducted in a developing country would not be ethically permissible in the developed world. Can we automatically conclude from this that the trial is unethical, that some sort of morally problematic double standard is in operation? Or might the differences in the two settings justify differences in trial design? This collection of philosophical essays examines these important questions about what exploitation is and when clinical research counts as exploitative. -/- "This is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on the ethics of research with human subjects and a fine example of what bioethics can offer at its best. Anyone with a serious interest in these issues will need to read this book from start to finish." -Daniel Wikler, Harvard School of Public Health "This book contributes significantly to the literature on exploitation in clinical research conducted in the developing world."--Patricia Marshall, Case Western Reserve University . (shrink)

En este trabajo se presentan algunos de los elementos teóricos que fundamentanla dimensión interpretativa como parte del marco epistemológicoque nos permitirá entender la situación de tensión y conflicto entre la visiónde justicia del régimen imperante y la administración de justicia pensada yrealizada desde las etnias en Colombia. Después se reconstruyen tres aspectospropios de la dimensión interpretativa para mostrar que dicha situaciónde tensión y conflicto puede comprenderse por fuera de la alternativa deobjetividad y de subjetividad establecida por la concepción clásica del (...) conocimiento.Se concluye que la dimensión interpretativa nos posibilita comprendery reconocer que existe un espacio de la multiplicidad simbólica ycultural. Espacio que demanda de ciudadanos con disposición para arriesgary remover continuamente las mentalidades empleadas en la interacciónsocial. (shrink)

Sorensen offers the following definition of a ‘knowledge-lie’: ‘An assertion that p is a knowledge-lie exactly if intended to prevent the addressee from knowing that p is untrue but is not intended to deceive the addressee into believing p.’ According to Sorensen, knowledge-lies are not meant to deceive their addressee, and this fact is supposed to make them less bad than ordinary lies. I will argue that standard cases of knowledge-lies, including almost all the cases Sorensen considers, do in fact (...) involve deception, contrary to what Sorensen claims. And while there are cases of non-deceptive knowledge-lies, such cases are deviant, either because it is only incidental that the knowledge-preventing assertion is a lie, or because it is only incidental that the lie doesn't deceive. Here's an example of a knowledge-lie: Dr Head is considering firing Dr Appendix because of his weak research. But he doesn't want to fire Appendix unless he knows that Appendix's research isn't good, and so he consults Dr Heart. Head knows that if Appendix's research is good, then Heart will tell the truth and say so, whereas if Appendix's work isn't good, then Heart may or may not …. (shrink)

I argue that the Formula of Humanity, the principle that we should always treat the humanity of a person as an end in itself and never as a mere means, is a principle of pure practical reason. Insofar as that principle is also the fundamental grounds of morality, it follows, then, that all autonomous rational agents are committed to morality.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page W1-W3, August 2011.

The politics of precarity have emerged on the contemporary scene of critical theory with great social force in recent years. This paper looks at the risks and obstacles of positing precariousness and vulnerability as the basis of a universal ethics while also arguing for the socially transformative potential of such a model. More broadly, it considers the crucial question of what stands in the way of human relation and ethical life in an age of neoliberalism and biopolitics, and posits an (...) ethics of resemblance grounded in the commonality of flesh and in the at once singular and universal experience of loss. (shrink)

As an approach to public engagement, deliberation has the potential to pursue a range of goals identified by public participation theorists including the opportunity to substantively inform policy processes, increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of public issues and create or restore loss of public trust and confidence in public institutions. Baum and colleagues (2009) offer several important take-home messages for policy makers and public health leaders about the value of engaging with the public about ethically challenging, value-laden and resource (...) intensive policy issues such as pandemic response planning. (shrink)

Gaia in Turmoil is the latest collaborative work put forth by the interdisciplinary group of Gaian thinkers. The contributors set out to meaningfully grapple with the bewildering ecological and social crises that humanity faces in this young century. Their work clearly rests on the assumption that such crises not only exist, but are dire—a conviction that unifies the essays in Gaia in Turmoil. By demonstrating how Gaia theory can advance various research projects, Gaia in Turmoil is an alarmist plea to (...) integrate the Gaian perspective into mainstream thought as the next watershed paradigm through which humanity can survive and prosper. (shrink)

Julia Annas; XII*—How Basic are Basic Actions?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 195–214, https://doi.org/10.1093.

In The idea of justice (2009), Amartya Sen builds on his previous work on capabilities to develop a theory of comparative justice which he contrasts to the contractarian approach. The theory has two parts: the proper materials of justice (capabilities); and, a procedure for assessing those materials. The procedure that Sen advocates is one of open impartial deliberation operationalised through Adam Smith's impartial spectator, which he contends is superior to contractarian view operationalised by Rawls’ original position. In this paper we (...) argue that Sen's open impartiality is too open and defend a more bounded version as more workable regardless of the operationalising device used. Moreover, we demonstrate that Sen's own arguments against the possibility of agreement, though aimed at the contractarian tradition, undermine his own attempts to generate a contentful account of justice by driving a wedge between the materials and procedures. Sen's attempt to provide an alternative approach to political philosophy, we conclude, fails. (shrink)

In diesen Vorlesungen behandelt Nelson den Abschnitt in der Geschichte der Philosophie, in dem, angeregt durch die Entwicklung der klassischen Physik, die Frage nach der Begründung philosophischer Lehren die Forscher mehr und mehr zu beschäftigen beginnt. Er verfolgt kritisch die Bemühungen, diese Frage zu klären und Ansätze für ihre Lösung zu gewinnen, deckt alte Vorurteile auf, die diesen Versuchen entgegenstehen und sie immer wieder zurückwerfen und verdunkeln, kurz, er hat – auch darin ein Schüler seines Lehrers Fries – den (...) Mut zur eigenen Stellungnahme, zum Urteil darüber, wo in diesem Ringen um gesicherte Grundlagen philosophischen Denkens Fortschritte erzielt und wo Rückschritte getan wurden. (shrink)

In the middle of 2020, Buddhism in Thailand looked quite different than it had just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monasteries had closed their doors to the public, and monastic ordinations ceased. The institution of Thai Buddhism stayed relevant, however, largely by promoting a quite unusual practice. In addition to the typical religious activity of lay followers offering food to monks, and receiving merit from the monks in return, the path that food traveled during the pandemic also turned the other (...) way around. In a curious series of events, monks at monasteries throughout the country began to hand out food to lay Buddhist followers. In a religious landscape with a very codified system of exchange, this was spiritually precarious: if monks give out food, where does the merit lie, and what are the karmic results? To answer this, I examine attitudes about monks’ activities, drawing on interviews conducted in Chiang Mai in 2021, and relationships to textual accounts of nutrients and healing across Buddhist history. Rather than signifying a break from spiritual relationships, I argue that this a-typical movement during the pandemic helps to highlight the continuing importance of monastic hope within interpersonal affective economies of Thai Buddhist practice. (shrink)

One of the assumptions that impregnate academic discourse, even that of social scientists committed to the re-incorporation of their disciplines, is its extra-corporeal character. This article analyzes the scholastic construction of producing and perceiving oral, written or silent discourses as non-corporeal acts. First, it argues that there is a certain continuity between monastic rituals that build the spirit as something different from and higher than the body and academic rituals that train people to place the source of discourse in the (...) mind. Second, it explores how the separation of discourse from the discourse-producing body is currently built and reproduced through participation in university and academic rituals. It holds that such participation installs in the bodies of academics an identification with the habit of producing discourses. Finally, it suggests that the fact that attempts to re-incorporate body to social life are performed by academics who have been trained in disembodying their discourses conditions the results of such attempts. (shrink)

The use of smart mouthguards in contact sports like rugby aims to enhance player safety by providing real-time data on head impacts. These devices, equipped with sensors, measure collision force and frequency, potentially identifying concussions that might go unnoticed during gameplay. The idea is that such enhanced monitoring will enable teams, physicians and other stakeholders to better protect players from the effects of on-pitch injury through immediate detection of head trauma and the long-term provision of player data. While we welcome (...) the move towards a better understanding of the potential harm that contact sports athletes may experience, introducing a new avenue through which information about player performance and health can be collected brings several areas of ethical concern absent from traditional mouthguards. In this paper, we consider four noteworthy areas: device and data efficacy, player choice, the inherent issues of such data’s existence and the harmful consequences of this data’s usage and exposure. We argue that failing to identify and address the risks associated with smart mouthguards’ employment in the elite sporting sphere not only risks the mistreatment and misapplication of player data but may also jeopardise the acceptability of a novel health monitoring method that has the potential to prevent long-term debilitating diseases. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band der Gesammelten Schriften Leonard Nelsons faßt die neben den großen systematischen Werken zur praktischen Philosophie stehenden Einzelarbeiten zusammen, in denen Nelson ethische und pädagogische Fragen behandelt. Gerade in ihnen tritt der charakteristische Zug Nelsonschen Philosophierens in besonderer Weise hervor: die enge Wechselbeziehung zwischen dem Bemühen um wissenschaftlich strenge Begründung auf der einen Seite und dem um praktisch vordringliche Fragestellungen und Ergebnisse auf der anderen. Auch in konkreten Sonderfragen geht es Nelson stets darum, mit dem gesicherten (...) Rüstzeug der kritischen Methode zu Antworten vorzudringen, die als Beitrag der Philosophie für die Erneuerung des öffentlichen Lebens verstanden werden können. (shrink)

This article applies Karl Polanyi’s concept of a double movement to the trajectory of rural state policies in China since 1949. It argues that Chinese socialism created a contradictory social contract that has fueled an ongoing struggle between state and peasantry over the surplus generated from rural land. This struggle has shaped a historical oscillation between state policies that facilitate extraction of agricultural surpluses and policies that introduce social protections in the form of household farming and revitalized collective ownership. Based (...) on secondary sources, this article compares the arc of rural policies during the Mao era and in the transition to and during the current state capitalist period. Then, based on original interview-based and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in rural Sichuan Province, it analyzes the current introduction of urban and agrarian capital into the rural economy, revealing dynamics of a current countermovement from state-led extraction to compromise. (shrink)

Grouping research participants by culture or language proficiency may no longer suffice to investigate cognitive universals and differences cross-culturally, due to the interconnectedness of our multicultural world. Based on immigration psychology research, we provide a ‘proof of principle’ for three culture screening tools. Across five online experiments (total N = 440), we developed (1) The Cultural Traditions Questionnaire (CTQ), (2) the Arts Engagement in Childhood Questionnaire (AECQ), and (3) the Enculturation and Acculturation Quiz (EAQ). While these screening tools are tailored (...) to Iranian and English cultures, the procedures provided here are expandable to other cultures. The screening scores predicted emotional attachment to a culture better than traditional variables used in cross-cultural research (self-ascribed culture group, country of residence during formative years, mother tongue). Continuous measures of enculturation and acculturation are potentially better predictors for downstream variables of interest, due to their finer granularity and capability to capture multifaceted cultural identities. (shrink)

L’article traite des discussions contemporaines autour du concept de totalité là où il est employé pour saisir la réalité sociale. À travers une reconstruction des positions de Durkheim et d’Althusser il s’intéresse aux différentes méthodes développées par ces théories pour justifier leur approche holiste du social. Il s’avère que le marxisme révolutionnaire et la sociologie non révolutionnaire se rencontrent en un point : les deux lisent des textes des sciences sociales pour accéder à ce qui produit la société sous forme (...) de tout. Notre article établit le statut de ces textes pour les deux approches et compare leurs méthodes de lecture, afin de dégager ce que, selon les deux, produit le lien social. (shrink)

In this paper I consider what it might mean to see society as a kind of Rortian conversation. Although the idea of conversation is not always explicit in Rorty's social thought, it is, I think, implicitly present. To therefore invoke it as a model is not to do an injustice to Rorty, but to bring out features of his own thought that he tends to underplay. In suggesting that we take seriously the notion of society as a kind of conversation, (...) we should be careful not to overplay the aspect of talking, which is only a part of conversation. We should bear in mind that it also means living together. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Rorty introduces the idea of conversation as a way of thinking about discourse, and so the notion as Rorty uses it prioritises the notion of talking. I would argue, however, that Rorty leaves his notion sufficiently vague and undefined to make it amenable to extension. In order to argue that we should look to the idea of conversation as a way of thinking about society more generally, I will proceed as follows. I will begin by considering the notion of conversation as discourse, focusing on two particularly prominent strands of criticism in response to this idea, namely that it ignores the role of argument and reason, and that it is a pointless sort of practice. Having rebutted these strands of criticism, I will outline a way in which we can extend the notion of conversation to society as a whole, and I will do this by debating with critics who see Rorty as privileging language over the more material and institutional aspects of society. Finally, I will argue that the conversational model is superior to the more entrenched deliberative model of democracy. Through an examination of one particular phenomenon, claro culture, which causes practical and theoretical difficulties for the deliberative model, I will offer a prima facie reason for suggesting conversation as a superior and more pragmatic alternative. (shrink)

In arguing that slavery is not a relic of the past, but a relational dynamic undergirded by an ontology of anti-Blackness that prevents Blacks from ever being considered human beings, the self-described Afropessimist, Frank Wilderson III, argues that Black people occupy the position of social death in the present. Due to this anti-Black condition, Wilderson concludes that no form of redress is possible to assuage, liberate, and redeem Black people from this anti-Black condition other than the “End of the World.” (...) Drawing upon Fredrich Nietzsche’s understanding of the problem of nihilism and its existential consequences, I argue that while Afropessimism is useful for articulating the problem of anti-Blackness, it makes a nihilistic turn through Wilderson’s “End of the World” since there is no world where Blackness is experienced as anything other than social death. As a response to Wilderson, I conclude that the philosopher Jacqueline Scott’s life-affirming Nietzschean philosophy and her anti-racist activism in “Racial Nihilism as Racial Courage” is one adequate response to the nihilistic threat to Black America if Black people are condemned to a life of social death because of the enduring nature of anti-Black racism. (shrink)