Ethics committees and palliative care consultants can function in a complementary fashion, seamlessly and effectively. Ethics committees can “air” and help resolves issues, and palliative care consultants can use a low-key, longitudinal approach.

One possible way of tracing the history of fantastic forms in Western culture is to link it to the adventure of bodies that encounter radical alterity, which may appear in the guise of something purely external, or as the externalized expression of an intimate experience that has become terrifying, unbearable, and schizoid.1The fantastic represents a privileged realm of imagination for contemplating a corporeal history of different forms of violence. It constitutes the exemplary locus of a negative reverie on the frightening (...) and fantasized alterities and otherworldliness of the flesh. That is true not only due to its imaginary realm of metamorphosis, transformation, and mutation, but... (shrink)

SubStance is pleased to present, for the first time in English, the Prologue and Epilogue from Roger Caillois's Pierres réfléchies. Pierres réfléchies is the last, and least cited, of Caillois's singular writings on stones, which are being rediscovered and reread in the contemporary geologic-philosophical-aesthetic context. Here, Caillois provides a final articulation of his mystical materialism and diagonal science, his hermetic reading of a cosmos composed of hieroglyphic signs, in which "stone… speaks… the most convincing language in the universe." These ruminations (...) from Pierres réfléchies display a deeper methodological discernment, and more somber humor, than the earlier works. Perhaps this is... (shrink)

This article examines a collection of singular artifacts, originating in the 1960s and 1970s, which I call "cybertrance" devices. These devices are based on the reappropriation of instruments from the academic world in order to place users in modified states of consciousness, far from the ordinary mode of wakefulness. All of these inventions draw on the heritage of American cybernetics, and re-articulate the man-machine concept central to it: passing from neo-mechanistic theory to experimentations with coupling and prostheses, and from rational (...) analysis to countercultural mysticism.If these cybertrance devices literally dismantle the man-machine, using technology to disorder the senses, in no way do they seek to... (shrink)

Background: Despite the reported harms and ethical concerns about physical restraint use in the critical care settings, nurses’ intention to apply them is unequal across countries. According to the theory of planned behaviour, eliciting nurses’ beliefs regarding the use of physical restraints would provide additional social information about nurses’ intention to perform this practice. Aim: To explore the salient behavioural, normative and control beliefs underlying the intention of critical care nurses to use physical restraints from the theory of planned behaviour. (...) Research design: A belief elicitation study was conducted. Participants and research context: Twenty-six critical care nurses were purposively sampled across gender, work-shift patterns and professional experience in five intensive care units of three hospitals in Spain. Data were obtained from a nine-item open-ended questionnaire and a focus group. Deductive content analysis was performed. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the hospital ethics committee. Participants were assured their participation was voluntary. Findings: Nurses framed the use of restraints as a way of prioritising patients’ physical safety. They referred to contextual factors as the main reasons to justify their application. Nurses perceived that their decision is approved by other colleagues and the patients’ relatives. Some nurses started advocating against their use, but felt powerless to change this unsafe practice within an unfavourable climate. Control beliefs were linked to patients’ medical condition, availability of alternative solutions, analgo-sedation policies and work organisation. Discussion: Safety arguments based on the surrounding work environment were discussed. Conclusion: Nurses’ behavioural and control beliefs were related. Nurses should be trained in alternatives to physical restraint use. The impact of analgo-sedation protocols, relatives’ involvement, leadership support and intensive care unit restraint policies on physical restraint practices need to be revised. Further research is required to explore why nurses do not act with moral courage to change this harmful practice. (shrink)

ERNST CASSIRER AND BIOLOGY: FROM EVOLUTIONISM TO PALEOANTHROPOLOGY AS HUMAN TRANSCENDENTAL SCIENCE In the present paper I will deal with the special epistemological problem of setting the basic conditions of a transcendental science of man in the spirit of Cassirer’s critical philosophy. Bearing in mind this aim, I will particularly analyze the section Cassirer dedicated to the history and epistemology of biology in his Erkenntnisproblem IV, and I will focus, on the one hand, on the emergence of the theory of (...) types, and on the other hand, on the rise of the theory of evolution. In considering that the empirical data we now possess are pushing us towards the refutation of a too continuous concept of evolution, I will try to shed some light on how the modern palaeontology, and not properly the evolutionary theory, could represent the very basis of such a transcendental theory of man. (shrink)

L’ordinamento cosmico rappresenta il punto di riferimento costante dell’agire morale della creatura, che deve misurare le sue scelte preferendo sempre gli esseri-beni oggettivamente superiori a quelli inferiori. La virtù della scelta ordinata non è altro che la giustizia, come trasversalmente affermato nelle opere di Agostino d’Ippona. Il presente contributo intende mostrare come, sul piano creaturale, la dinamica della scelta ordinata rimane invariata con la teologia della grazia indebita sviluppata a partire dall’ _ Ad Simplicianum _. In particolare, si intende evidenziare (...) il passaggio da una visione che individua nella creatura stessa, aiutata da Dio, la causa prima della sua volontà morale, presente nelle opere precedenti il 397, a una decisamente più radicale, successiva a questa data, che invece individua tale causa nell’operare efficiente e predestinato di Dio. Quest’ultima posizione mostra il duplice vantaggio di risolvere alcuni paradossi impliciti nella riflessione precedente, senza smentire la forma (ordinata) della giustizia, sebbene non possa evitare di ridimensionare il ruolo della creatura in relazione ai suoi meriti. _ The cosmic order represents the focal point of reference for moral agents, who must evaluate their choices based on the degree of perfection rather than settling for inferiour objects or beings. According to Augustine of Hippo, justice is the virtue of ordered choice. The present contribution aims to show how, from the viewpoint of the creature, the structure of ordered choice does not change even when the theology of grace is developed in Ad Simplicianum. In particular, the essay focuses on the shift from an earlier view, developed before 397, that places the original cause of good will in the creature itself, along with God’s assistance, to a later and more radical perspective that sees God’s role as the exclusive source of good will through efficient and predestined intervention. The latter viewpoint has the dual advantage of unfolding some paradoxes of the previous perspective, while still maintaining the (ordered) form of justice, although it inevitably limits the role of creatures in relation to their merits. _. (shrink)

War and the future of the international order. For the members of the Bush administration, the clash between the USA and the UN over war in Iraq would appear to have weakened or irrevocably discredited the UN. Luigi Ferrajoli argues that, on the contrary, the conflict actually signals a revival of the UN, after a period characterised by its servile submission to imperialism. Thanks to the current international situation, and secure in the knowledge that world opinion supports its stance, (...) the UN, by its refusal to countenance the invasion, has for the first time demonstrated its capacity to comply with the pacifist stipulations of the United Nations, giving them the force of international law. While the author does not draw conclusions which are entirely optimistic, he does however consider that the outcome of the invasion has modified the relative strength of the two opposing parties : the US and the movement of resistance which has gained expression worldwide. (shrink)

Este ensayo, motivado por una crítica de Riccardo Guastini, ilustra el papel de la lógica en el derecho y precisamente: a) en la construcción de la teoría del derecho, b) en el razonamiento y en los discursos desarrollados por las disciplinas jurídicas positivas y c) en los razonamientos y en las operaciones de operadores jurídicos y en particular de los jueces.

Una vez acabada la división del mundo en bloques, tras la caída, hace quince años, del régimen soviético, parecía que ya nada podría oponerse a la instauración de la paz en el mundo, y a la difusión y consolidación de la democracia en el nivel planetario. Y precisamente a partir de entonces se ha ido gestando, en los ordenamientos de los principales países occidentales y en las relaciones internacionales, una crisis no coyuntural que afecta a los dos niveles del constitucionalismo (...) actual: por un lado, las formas de la democracia diseñadas por las rígidas constituciones de la última posguerra y, por el otro, el proyecto de paz y de garantía de los derechos humanos formulado en ese embrión de constitución mundial que representan la Carta de la ONU, y las distintas declaraciones y convenciones sobre los derechos fundamentales. (shrink)

We reedit in the dossier of this issue an essay of Luigi Luzzatti first came out in «Nuova Anthologia» in 1880. In it Luzzatti rereads the British constitutional history thanks to a set of biological metaphors and analogies, which are analyzed and historically framed in the introduction of Luca Ciancio. This approach of Luzzatti further enhances the reconstruction of history of Constitutions he offers analyzing the works of the greatest historians of his time.

The printed images in the frontispiece of modern philosophical books were not simply meant as decorations, but offered in remarkable cases a pictorial synthesis of the ideas expounded in the book. This is true not only of Bacon’s Instauratio magna, on the background of an explicit theoretical reflection on the use of fables and metaphors in the exposition of scientific truth, but also of Hobbes’ Leviathan, notwithstanding Hobbes’ own criticism of metaphorical language. One third impressive example is the “dipintura” of (...) Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, which is the object of a lengthy hermeneutical analysis by the author himself. The paper argues that the prominent importance of the image in these modern classics reflects the search for a more immediate connection between words and things, whose actuality is still debated in XXthcentury philosophy. (shrink)

El trabajo apunta a presentar los argumentos de Aristóteles y de Hobbes para justificar la esclavitud. Así, por un lado, se mostrará que Aristóteles intenta defender tal institución bajo argumentos de premisas naturalistas, aunque incongruentes con sus propios fundamentos filosóficos. Por el otro, se señalará que los argumentos de Hobbes apelan a la libertad y el consentimiento, llegando a establecer dos tipos de esclavitud, una de tipo voluntario y otra que no lo es. En consecuencia, con el contraste argumental de (...) ambos autores se podrá ver la vía moderna y la antigua para justificar el esclavismo. (shrink)