Vier Biographien von Ärzten, die an der Tötungsaktion T4 in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus beteiligt waren. Die Biographien bilden den Hintergrund für die Untersuchung ihrer strafrechtlichen Verfolgung in den Jahren 1947 bis 1990 und für die Schilderung der Versäumnisse der deutschen Justiz im Umgang mit NS-Tätern.

In Wyoming Revisited, Michael A. Amundson uses the power of rephotography to show how landscapes across the state have endured over the last century. Three sets of photographs—the original black-and-white photographs taken by famed Wyoming photographer Joseph E. Stimson more than a century ago, repeat black-and-white images taken by Amundson in the 1980s, and a third view in color taken by the author in 2007–2008—are accompanied by captions explaining the history and importance of each site as well as information (...) on the process of repeat photographic fieldwork. The 117 locations feature street views of Wyoming towns and cities, as well as views from the state's famous natural landmarks like Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Devil's Tower National Monument, Hot Springs State Park, and Big Horn and Shoshone National Forests. In addition, Amundson provides six in-depth essays that explore the life of Joseph E. Stimson, the rephotographic process and how it has evolved, and how repeat photography can be used to understand history, landscape, historic preservation, and globalization. Wyoming Revisited highlights the historic evolution of the American West over the past century and showcases the significant changes that have occurred over the past twenty-five years. This book will appeal to photographers, historians of the American West, and anyone interested in Wyoming's history or landscape. The publication of this book is supported in part by the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund. (shrink)

In the third act of his journey, Michael McLeod, a beloved physician and professor emeritus of medicine at Duke University, has shown why he's an even more beloved professor of life. In a manner that is clear, practical, and inspiring, this book is an invitation to grow and flourish during what can be one of the most challenging periods in our lives. McLeod demonstrates his courage to share his journey and his willingness to learn from his medical students and (...) from the participants in his conscious aging workshops. As you read his words, you can learn alongside this respected elder. He has put together a powerful guide for living your life fully. (shrink)

Some artistic representations—the painting of a hat in a famous picture by Rembrandt is an example—are able to present vividly the character of what they represent precisely by calling attention to their medium of representation. There is a puzzle about this whose structure, I argue, is analogous to that of a familiar Kantian problem for traditional realism. I offer a precise characterization of the puzzle, before arguing that an analogue for the case of representation to the Kantian solution to the (...) problem for traditional realism is implausible. I offer an alternative solution to the puzzle about representation which also explains why we should be interested in artistic representation in the first place. I close with the outline of a possible realist response to the traditional Kantian problem. (shrink)

La búsqueda de la perfección humana como un afán de mejora constante es compartida tanto por la tradición ética de la virtud de la ley natural tomista como por el movimiento transhumanista. Sin embargo, nociones divergentes de la naturaleza humana y de su telos diferencian profundamente ambos esfuerzos por transformar positivamente la humanidad. El presente trabajo aclara el significado de la tradición de la ley moral natural y la distingue de los malentendidos que podrían surgir de una reducción de la (...) naturaleza a procesos biológicos no racionales. A continuación, el artículo examina cómo una noción adecuada de la naturaleza humana y de los bienes que satisfacen dicha naturaleza pueden orientar un debate constructivo sobre qué tipos de mejora biomédica han de aceptarse como útiles para el florecimiento humano y cuáles deben ser dejados de lado por ser perjudiciales para el auténtico crecimiento. Sin una norma objetiva de la naturaleza humana con la cual juzgar las propuestas de mejora, los cambios biotécnicos ya no pueden distinguirse en categorías de mejora o disminución. El texto muestra por qué tanto los críticos bioconservadores de la mejora humana como los defensores transhumanistas de las alteraciones biotecnológicas radicales presentan visiones empobrecidas de las capacidades de transformación y perfección de la naturaleza humana. En contraste, el tomismo tiene los recursos intelectuales para superar las nociones estáticas de la naturaleza humana y puede corregir las imprecisiones filosóficas del discurso transhumanista contemporáneo sobre la posthumanidad. Este trabajo, por tanto, proporciona los fundamentos antropológicos necesarios para explorar el papel que las virtudes pueden desempeñar en el cumplimiento de la orientación dinámica de la naturaleza humana hacia la perfección. (shrink)

A critical issue facing the criminal justice system today is how best to promote ethical behavior by public prosecutors. The legal profession has left much of a prosecutor’s day-to-day activity unregulated, in favor of a general, catch-all admonition to “seek justice.” In this article the author argues that professional norms are truly functional only if those working with a given ethical framework recognize the system’s implicit dependence on character. A code of professional conduct in which this dependence is not recognized (...) is both contentless and corrupting. Building on the ethics of Aristotle and modern philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams, the author argues that virtue theory can help bridge the gaps in prosecutorial ethics where other forms of moral reasoning fail. The author analyzes three especially difficult ethical problems frequently confronted by prosecutors in the field. He demonstrates not only that the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the ABA Criminal Justice Standards fail to answer any of these complex questions, but also that future attempts to more closely regulate how prosecutors should act in any of these nuanced situations are unlikely to succeed. The author argues that honesty, fairness, courage, and prudence are the primary virtues that citizens have a right to expect of their public prosecutors. He then demonstrates how these four key virtues might provide important guidance to conscientious prosecutors striving to do what is right. The author concludes by offering several insights into how the field of virtue ethics might inform both the structure and organization of government law offices, and the manner in which individual prosecutors working within these offices might perceive and fulfill their professional roles. (shrink)

Artykuł omawia argumenty Pawła Włodkowica, polskiego filozofa/teologa z XV wieku, dotyczące wojen etycznie usprawiedliwionych. Autor opowiada się za przyjęciem twierdzenia Włodkowica, zgodnie z którym rozum naturalny wyznacza granice dla uzasadnionych działań zbrojnych, a w szczególności zakazuje wszczynania wojen świętych, takich jak krucjaty Zakonu Krzyżackiego, wykluczając tym samym również wojny prowadzone przez współczesnych bojowników dżihadu. Zakazuje on także prowadzenia operacji militarnych wspieranych przez bojowo nastawionych rzeczników ideologii świeckich.

SummaryThis paper develops a semantical account of sentences containing performative principal verbs in which these verbs are analyzed as indexical expressions: the proposition picked out by a sentence containing a performative verb depends on aspects of the context of use of the sentence; and these same aspects of context of use also determine the truth value of the proposition picked out. A two‐dimensional modal operator is utilized in analyzing non‐ performative sentences that contain principal verb which, in other contexts, have (...) performative uses. Thus, the analysis developed accounts for the performative — non‐performative distinction within a formal semantic‐pragmatic framework; the more common approach of relegating the distinction to the somewhat vague realm of ‘language use’ is avoided.RésuméCet article développe un traitement sémantique des phrases contenant un verbe principal performatif. Ces verbes sont analysés comme des expressions indicées: la proposition sélectionnée par une phrase contenant un verbe performatif dépend du contexte d'usage de cette phrase; et ces mêmes aspects du contexte d'usage déterminent également la valeur de vérité de la proposition sélectionnée. Un opérateur modal à deux dimensions est utilisé pour l'analyse de phrases non‐performatives contenant un verbe principal performatif dans d'autres contextes. L'analyse développée rend ainsi compte de la distinction performatif — non‐performatif dans un cadre sémantico‐pragmatique; on évite ainsi la solution habituelle consistant à reléguer cette distinction dans le domaine plutôt vague de l'usage linguistique.ZusammenfassungEs wird eine semantische Darstellung von Sätzen entwickelt, die performative Hauptverben enthalten, indem diese Verben als indexikale Ausdrücke analysiert werden: die Proposition, die durch einen Satz mit einem performativen Verb bezeichnet wird, hängt von Aspekten des Gebrauchskontextes des Satzes ab; und gerade diese Aspekte bestimmen auch den Wahrheitswert der Proposition. Ein zweidimensionaler Modaloperator wird verwendet, um nicht‐performative Sätze zu analysieren, die Hauptverben enthalten, welche — in andern Kontexten — einen performativen Gebrauch haben. Auf diese Weise gibt die entwickelte Analyse innerhalb eines formalen semantisch‐syntaktischen Rahmenwerkes Rechenschaft über die Unterscheidung performativ — nicht‐performativ; man vermeidet dadurch das übliche Vorgehen, die Unterscheidung in den etwas vagen Bereich des sog. 〈Sprachgebrauchs〉 abzuschieben. (shrink)

Quintilian Institutionis Oratoriae Vol. I.

This, the latest volume in The Douglas Walton Encyclopedia of Argumentation—well, it's starting to look like that, anyway—is primarily concerned with four purported fallacies that involve an appeal to emotion: ad populum, ad misericordiam, ad baculum, and ad hominem. In very rough outline, the layout of the book is this. After some preliminary remarks about the four fallacies in the first chapter, and some remarks about the theoretical framework he will be working with in the second, Walton devotes a chapter (...) apiece to each of the four in the order indicated above. A seventh chapter focuses on “borderline cases,” in which more than one of the so-called fallacies is involved, and an eighth summarizes and refines the findings of earlier chapters. As is obvious, The Place of Emotion is well organized; and, as would be a safe inference for anyone acquainted with any of Walton's work, it is written in a readily accessible and unpretentious style: a plain style, in the best sense of the term. Walton has something to say, and it's virtually impossible to miss it—and that independently of the fact that this book, like a number of his others, is somewhat repetitive. The Place of Emotion is one of those rare books that a specialist in a field would find of interest, but that could also be taught in an undergraduate course. (shrink)

‘De popularisering van de hoge cultuur is tegenwoordig de rechtvaardiging van de cultuur als zodanig. Als iets goed is, als iets nobel is, moet het gedeeld worden, en wel zo breed mogelijk. Natuurlijk is de democratisering van de hoge humanistische cultuur in een kapitalistische beschaving problematisch. [...]Toch is het onzin om te veronderstellen dat we een verhevener en humanistischer publieke cultuur zouden hebben als we niet meer zouden proberen de toegang tot ons erfgoed te verbreden. Een democratische toegang tot de (...) humanistische cultuur lijkt hoe dan ook een goede zaak, ook als we niet zeker weten tot op welke hoogte deze toegang de geest verheft.’. (shrink)

The first scholarly critical edition of Francis Bacon's seminal biographical and political study of King Henry VII, with editions of his biographical sketch of Henry VIII, a lively collection of witty anecdotes, his thoughtful debate over the prospect of holy war in his time, and six verse translations from the psalms.

The semantic web ontology languages RDFS and OWL are widely used but limited in both their expressivity and their support for modularity and integrated documentation. Expressivity, modularity, and documentation of formal knowledge have always been important issues in the MKM community. Therefore, we try to improve these ontology languages by well-tried MKM techniques. Concretely, we propose OM- Doc as an alternative. We show how OMDoc can be made compatible with semantic web ontology languages, focusing on knowledge representation, modular design, documentation, (...) and metadata. We evaluate our technology by re-implementing the Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) ontology and applying it in a novel metadata framework for technical documents (including ontologies). (shrink)

This remarkable collection of period photographs details day-to-day life and changing times in the Deep South. Draffus Lamar Hightower, 1899-1993, spent most of his life in Barbour County, Alabama. For many years he was the owner of a Chevrolet dealership, but he had another occupation as well. From his youth, he was fascinated with photography, and for fifty years he experimented with the craft both technically and artistically. Hightower, while participating fully in the 20th century, was also acutely aware of (...) the passing of the heritage of the last one. From the early 1920s to the late 1960s, he made thousands of negatives of people, events, landscapes, objects, and buildings in Barbour County. His photographs are reminiscent of the documentary work of Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and other great 20th-century American photographers. Hightower created an incredibly complete and vivid record of the life of a rural Alabama county during a period of profound change-documenting everything from birthday parties and political rallies to farm scenes and the demolition of historic buildings so that future generations would not forget the world of their forebears. In 1990, Michael Thomason, historian and photographic archivist, began the long process of reviewing Hightower's collection of photographs, interviewing family and friends, and salvaging and printing the negatives, which by that time had begun to deteriorate. Thomason restored and printed 195 photographs and prepared accompanying essays that not only reveal the technical details of Hightower's labor of love but also tell the story of the human and economic changes in Barbour County during this period. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider Gandhi's relationship to liberal democracy. I argue that a properly Gandhian approach to this relationship should emphasize the role of the satyagrahi facilitating conflict resolutions and progress in truth. Above all, this approach calls upon courageous, exemplary individuals to pass over and join the viewpoints of 'unreasonables' marginalized by the liberal state. However, I also argue that contemporary Gandhians should explore cultural adaptations of the satyagrahi-role appropriate to highly materialistic, multicultural liberal-democracies. In these societies, the (...) traditional figure of the ascetic or saint may lack popular cultural resonance. Moreover, moral learning and spiritual insight often derives from popular culture and entertainment as much as religious traditions, or devotional practices. Contemporary Gandhi’s scholars should thus consider the prospects for 'alternative satyagrahis' embracing some materialist values and cultural motifs, as appropriate sources spiritual growth and soul-force. (shrink)