Representatives from eight European countries compared the legal, ethical and professional settings within which decision making for neonates takes place. When it comes to limiting treatment there is general agreement across all countries that overly aggressive treatment is to be discouraged. Nevertheless, strong emphasis has been placed on the need for compassionate care even where cure is not possible. Where a child will die irrespective of medical intervention, there is widespread acceptance of the practice of limiting aggressive treatment or alleviating (...) suffering even if death may be hastened as a result. Where the infant could be saved but the future outlook is bleak there is more debate, but only two countries have tested the courts with such cases. When it comes to the active intentional ending of life, the legal position is standard across Europe; it is prohibited. However, recognising those intractable situations where death may be lingering and unpleasant, Dutch paediatricians have reported that they do sometimes assist babies to die with parental consent. Two cases have been tried through the courts and recent official recommendations have set out standards by which such actions may be assessed. (shrink)

This study reports on the development of scale items derived from the pluralistic moral philosophy literature. In addition, the manner in which individuals combine aspects of the different philosophies in making ethical evaluations was explored.

Three arguments are proposed against the idea that ordinary talk about the mind constitutes a folk psychology, a sort of prescientific theory which explains human behaviour and which is ripe for replacement by a neurological or computational theory with better scientific credentials. First, not all talk of the mind is introduced to explain in the way assumed by those who think that mental talk hypothesizes inner processes to explain behaviour. Second, the individuation of the behaviour which is explained by the (...) inner processes itself requires reference to ?mental? states such as intentions or desires. Consequently the project is circular. Finally, scientific theory is a practice with a history which may be matched in the case of ordinary talk of the mind. Certainly ordinary talk of motives, intentions, and thoughts may be infected by the theorizing of economists and sociologists et al., but it is impossible that all talk of the mind should be theoretical in this way. (shrink)

I am idebted to members of the Wellington Logic Seminar for useful discussions of work of which this essay forms part, in particular to M. J. Cresswell for comments in the earlier stages of the investigation and to R. I. Goldblatt who suggested the definition ofB infD supu and made numerous other suggestions.

In much theory there is a tendency to place thought above action, or the opposite, action over thought. The consequence of the first option is that philosophy or scientific evidence gains the upper hand in educational thinking. The consequence of the second view is that pragmatism and relativism become the dominant features. This article discusses how different branches of the Aristotelian tradition can mediate between these two views. I argue, contrary to some other Aristotelian approaches, that thinking and action are (...) both separated and yet prerequisites for each other and point to some educational consequences of this way of thinking. To build this argument I draw on selected aspects of the philosophy of Hanna Arendt, Leo Strauss and John Dewey. (shrink)

_History, the Human, and the World Between_ is a philosophical investigation of the human subject and its simultaneous implication in multiple and often contradictory ways of knowing. The eminent postcolonial theorist R. Radhakrishnan argues that human subjectivity is always constituted “between”: between subjective and objective, temporality and historicity, being and knowing, the ethical and the political, nature and culture, the one and the many, identity and difference, experience and system. In this major study, he suggests that a reconstituted phenomenology has (...) a crucial role to play in mediating between generic modes of knowledge production and an experiential return to life. Keenly appreciative of poststructuralist critiques of phenomenology, Radhakrishnan argues that there is still something profoundly vulnerable at stake in the practice of phenomenology. Radhakrishnan develops his rationale of the “between” through three linked essays where he locates the terms “world,” “history,” “human,” and “subject” between phenomenology and poststructuralism, and in the process sets forth a nuanced reading of the politics of a gendered postcolonial humanism. Critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, David Harvey, and Ranajit Guha, Radhakrishnan examines the relationship between systems of thought and their worldly situations. _History, the Human, and the World Between _is a powerful argument for a theoretical perspective that combines the existential urgency of phenomenology with the discursive rigor of poststructuralist practices. (shrink)

IN the right circumstances and the right frame of mind we are prepared to make aesthetic appraisals of almost anything, from hills, cottages and cars, to symphonies, people and poems. My problem is to try and set a boundary in at least one direction to the catholicity of this kind of judgement. I want to argue that when we use a word from our aesthetic vocabulary for appraising a theory in science or a proof in mathematics we are not properly (...) to be described as making an aesthetic appraisal, though there are close parallels with our normal use of these words. (shrink)

„My sole purpose in this paper is to try and correct what I take to be a common misinterpretation of Hume’s opinions on mathematics. I shall not enquire whether he was right or wrong in holding these opinions. Nor shall I offer opinions of my own.“.

BLWith new text and full apparatus criticusThe Eudemian Ethics was one of two ethical treatises which Aristotle wrote on the subject of ethica or `matters to do with character'. Although the two works cover much the same ground, the Nicomachean Ethics is better known; the poor manuscript tradition of the Eudemian Ethics has made correct translation and interpretation of the text extremely difficult. The subject of the work is the choice of a certain means of conduct, made by a `man (...) of practical wisdom', between two extremes of behaviour: asceticism and yielding to uncontrolled impulses. Aristotle also stresses the notion of moral intention and the importance of virtue of character. This new Oxford Classical Text of the Eudemian Ethics is the result of many years of work. After Sir David Ross's death, his original text was substantially reworked and revised by his friend and colleague R. R. Walzer, who was aided in the revision by his former pupil Mrs Jean Mingay, who continued his work after his death in 1974. Mrs Mingay was fortunate in being able to make use of previously unpublished contributions from D. J. Allan after his death in the late seventies, and more recently has been helped in her work by the suggestions of Professor D. A. Russell, David Robinson, and Christopher Rowe. (shrink)

Professor R. J. Getty has drawn attention to a tenth- or early eleventh-century manuscript of Statius’ Thebaid, hitherto examined only in Book I, namely Turonensis . Dr. Klotz, in his Teubner edition of 1908, gave citations from Book I, and wrote , ‘dolendum est sane de hoc codice primum tantum librum innotuisse, sed cum Roffensis libri maxime affinis accuratiorem notitiam haberemus, collatione quamvis -aegre careri posse nobis visum est.’ I have collated both T and Roffensis in full, and find firstly (...) that the citations of r by Klotz are far from accurate, especially in the last six books, and secondly that while it is indeed true thatT and r are very closely related, T is a much better representative than r of their common source. (shrink)

This essay develops a theory of identities, selves, and ‘the self’ that both explains the sense in which selves are narratively constituted and also explains how the self relates to a person's individual autobiographical identity and to their various social identities. I argue that identities are the contents of narratively structured representations, some of which are hosted individually and are autobiographical in form, and others of which are hosted collectively and are biographical in form. These identities, in turn, give rise (...) to selves of various sorts—true selves, autobiographical selves, public and private selves, merely possible selves, and so on—which are the characters (or presupposed subjects) that appear in our various identities. Although the theory I develop bears some obvious affinities with the view that selves are fictional characters, the two views are in fact distinct, for reasons explained at the end. (shrink)

The famous 1893 Chicago World’s Fair celebrated the dawn of corporate capitalism and a new Machine Age with an exhibit of the world’s largest engine. Yet the noise was so great, visitors ran out of the Machinery Hall to retreat to the peace and quiet of the Japanese pavilion’s Buddhist temples and lotus ponds. Thus began over a century of the West’s turn toward an Asian aesthetic as an antidote to modern technology. From the turn-of-the-century Columbian Exhibition to the latest (...) Zen-inspired designs of Apple, Inc., R. John Williams charts the history of our embrace of Eastern ideals of beauty to counter our fear of the rise of modern technological systems. In a dazzling work of synthesis, Williams examines Asian influences on book design and department store marketing, the commercial fiction of Jack London, the poetic technique of Ezra Pound, the popularity of Charlie Chan movies, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the design of the latest high-tech gadgets. Williams demonstrates how, rather than retreating from modernity, writers, artists, and inventors turned to traditional Eastern technê as a therapeutic means of living with—but never abandoning—Western technology. (shrink)

I. Einleitung: Prinzipien einer konstruktivistischen Rekonstruktion des Aufbaus von Wissenschaften. Die Stelle der Protophysik der Zeit in einem solchen Aufbau der Physik. Skizze der Ziele und der Struktur von Janichs Protophysik der Zeit und der wichtigsten immanenten Kriterien ihrer Beurteilung. II. Referat und immanente Kritik seiner grundlegenden Definition . III. Ein konstruktivistischer Vorschlag zur Verbesserung von und zu einem akzeptablen Realisationsverfahren für sie. Eigentümlichkeiten dieses Realisationsverfahrens lassen bereits erwarten, daß Janichs 'Eindeutigkeitsbeweis' einen Fehler haben muß. IV. Skizze des Weges von (...) bis zu den Forderungen für Uhren und dem angeblichen Eindeutigkeitsbeweis für diese. Untersuchung und Widerlegung dieses Beweises, mit dessen Haltbarkeit das ganze Unternehmen Janichs steht und fällt. (shrink)

Resumen: En lo que sigue ofrezco una exploración de dos “conceptos tensos”: “pueblo” y “populismo”. En la primera sección abordaré la noción de “pueblo” a través de lo que se podría considerar su gramática populista. Luego desarrollaré algunas reflexiones sobre la división de campo que el populismo instala con su apelación al “pueblo” o a cualquiera de las otras nociones que tengan una función similar en su retórica. Analizaré, pues, la cuestión del antagonismo, la partición del espacio social y del (...) espacio del poder entre “ellos” y “nosotros”. Por último, plantearé la cuestión de la democracia como aquello que, en última instancia, está en juego en el desafío ambiguo del populismo.: In what follows I offer an exploration of two “tense concepts”: “people” and “populism”. In the first part I address the notion of “people” through what might be considered its populist grammar. Then I develop some reflec-tions on the field division that populism introduces with its appeal to the “people” or any of the other notions that have a similar function in their rhetoric. I will therefore analyze the antagonism, the partitioning of social space and the space of power between a “them” and an “us”. Finally, I raise the question of democracy as what is ultimately at stake in the ambiguous challenge of populism. (shrink)