A paper was published in 2003 discussing the ethics of nurses participating in executions by inserting the intravenous line for lethal injections and providing care until death. This paper was circulated on an international email list of senior nurses and academics to engender discussion. From that discussion, several people agreed to contribute to a paper expressing their own thoughts and feelings about the ethics of nurses participating in executions in countries where capital punishment is legal. While a range of opinions (...) were presented, these opinions fell into two main themes. The first of these included reflections on the philosophical obligations of nurses as caregivers who support those in times of great need, including condemned prisoners at the end of life. The second theme encompassed the notion that no nurse ever should participate in the active taking of life, in line with the codes of ethics of various nursing organisations. This range of opinions suggests the complexity of this issue and the need for further public discussion. (shrink)

Although perlocution has received more interest lately, it remains the great unthought of Austin’s theory. The privilege he gives to illocution over perlocution, rather than being a necessity of his linguistic theory, is a contestable philosophical claim that leads him, I argue, to exclude from his consideration poetic and other ‘parasitical’ uses of language. Cavell’s reconceptualisation of perlocutions as ‘passionate utterances’, however, provides a more fruitful theoretical framework to approach poetic phenomena. Reading Austin through a Cavellian lens offers keys to (...) make space for the parasitic uses Austin rejected and for poetry within a philosophy of language. (shrink)

Technology is a mirror that reflects human nature and intentions: we want certain things done and we want tools to do those things; we are finite, frail, and mortal; we create technology in order to bring alternative worlds into being; we do not know why we create or what values should guide us. Imagination is central to technology. Human nature and human freedom are brought into focus when we reflect on the central role of imagination in technology.

This paper engages the philosophical concepts of subjectification and acknowledgment in conversation with Philip Pullman’s young adult novel, Northern Lights. Our particular focus is Lyra Belacqua, Pullman’s central character. Precarious in her vulnerability and in her unknown significance, we read Lyra as usefully negotiating the dangerous transition from childhood to adolescence. In her negotiation of this complex liminality, we argue that Lyra models those difficult-to-define moments encountered by children as they learn to be in and of the world. Situating (...) our reading in a Philosophy of Education discourse, we draw theoretically from the work of Gert Biesta and Stanley Cavell. With Biesta as the primary focus of our paper, we generalize beyond Northern Lights to argue that the reading of fiction constitutes “a weak educational event” in Biesta’s intriguing understanding of that phrase. Partly as a theoretical framing for the Pullman text, we begin with an outline of Biesta’s philosophy. (shrink)

Reissued with a new preface, this famous collection of essays covers a remarkably wide range of philosophical issues, including essays on Wittgenstein, Austin, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of language, and extending beyond philosophy into discussions of music and drama. Previous edition hb ISBN (1976): 0-521-21116-6 Previous edition pb ISBN (1976): 0-521-29048-1.

After a Guatemalan migrant worker living in northern California was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a highway one night, his family requested that his body be sent back to his native village in southwestern Guatemala to be mourned and buried according to traditional Catholic custom. But the County morgue confused this deceased individual with another Latino and cremated his body before it could be shipped. This article analyzes the cultural, psychological and economic ramifications of this accidental cremation. Although (...) permissible within the Catholic Church, the cremation caused enormous suffering to the family of the deceased as well as to the dead man's soul. At the same time it generated potential financial windfall not only for his relatives, but for lawyers and the present author. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

In this essay I provide a reading of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner that focuses upon the question of the kind of creatures the Replicants are depicted as being, and the meaning that depiction should have for us. I draw upon Stanley Cavell's account of the problem of other minds to argue that the empathy test is in fact a mode of resisting the acknowledgment of others. And I draw upon Martin Heidegger's account of authenticity and mortality to argue that (...) this acknowledgment is crucial if one would become human. The film does not so much suggest that Replicants are, as such, human, but rather that humanity is won through the encounter with the inauthentic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 617-619.

Bottom line on top: this is a wonderful book.

This essay presents and compares core elements of the ethical theories of three neo-Confucian thinkers, Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁齋 (1627-1705), Dai Zhen 戴震 (1722-1776), and Jeong Yakyong 丁若鏞 (1762-1836), and argues that their criticisms of the Cheng-Zhu School represent a distinctive type and style of Confucianism, spanning the three major East Asian cultures of China, Korea, and Japan. Moreover, the essay defends their primary criticisms of the neo-Confucian metaphysical foundations for ethics as valid and argues that they should have a much (...) greater influence on contemporary understandings of the Confucian tradition, in all its richness, diversity, and potential. In addition, this essay seeks to describe and establish an initial case for the contemporary relevance of philosophical views advanced by this trio of thinkers, in particular their claims concerning "sympathetic consideration" (C: shu; J: jo; K: seo 恕). (shrink)

_Hermeneutics as Politics, _perhaps the most important critique of post-modern thought ever written, is here reissued in a special fifteenth anniversary edition. In a new foreword, Robert B. Pippin argues that the book has rightfully achieved the status of a classic. Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of post-modernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, that post-modernism, which regards itself as an attack upon the Enlightenment, is in fact merely a continuation of Enlightenment thought; and second, that the (...) extraordinary contemporary emphasis upon hermeneutics is the latest consequence of the triumph of history over mathematics and science. “Perhaps the most original and philosophically important critical account of hermeneutics—of its philosophical status and historical development—to appear since Gadamer’s _Truth and Method._”—_Choice _ “A philosophical polemic of the highest order written in a language of unfailing verve and precision.... It will repay manyfold the labour of a slow and considered reading.”—J. M. Coetzee, _Upstream_. (shrink)

Natural selection favors not only more adaptive structural features but also more effective behavioral programs. Crucial for the prospering and very survival of an extremely sophisticated social species like homo sapiens is the biological/psychological program that might be conveniently labeled the human sense of fairness: a feeling often referred to in societies featuring supernaturalized explanations as one's "God given conscience." The sense of fairness and related programs derive a measure of their effectiveness from the fact that, in addition to the (...) pleasure/pain mechanisms reinforcing their implementation, we are programmed to want to want the goals they introduce and to experience repugnance in the face of goals that strongly conflict. (shrink)

Patient autonomy and distributive justice are fundamental ethical principles that may be at risk in liver transplant units where decisions are dictated by the need to maximise the utility of scarce donor organs. The processes of patient selection, organ allocation and prioritisation on the wait list have evolved in a constrained environment, leading to high levels of complexity and low transparency. Regarding paternalism, opaque listing and allocation criteria, patient factors such as passivity, guilt, chronic illness and sub-clinical encephalopathy are cited (...) as factors that may inhibit patient engagement. Regarding justice, established regional, gender and race based inequities are described. The paradox whereby hepatologists both advocate for individual patients and discharge their duty of stewardship to apportion organs according to larger utilitarian principles is explored. Competing subjective factors such as physicians’ perception of moral responsibility, the qualitative nature of expert medical assessment and institutional or personal loyalty to re-transplantation candidates are described. Realistic limits of self-determination and justice are discussed, and possible future directions in terms of patient involvement proposed. (shrink)