This article challenges Nicholas Wolterstorff’s rights-based reading of Old Testament orphans by arguing that the prophetic demand for their cause not only assumes a right-order ethos championed in the Torah, but in doing so exposes the shortcomings in how justice is defined for orphaned children within current rights ideology, whether theistic or not. I present the orphan’s historical trajectory towards becoming socially vulnerable as the final stage in the transition from the kinship-redeemer justice of Israelite village clans to the chesed (...) justice of the patronage economy in emerging urban conditions. In light of these conditions, I show how the orphan laws in Deuteronomy are, counter to Wolterstorff’s claims of corruption, attempting to re-create in legal terms the kinship bond and chesed benevolence that defines the orphan’s justice as the return to a family. I argue that the prophet does not blame inherently corrupt laws, but rather blames patrons and elders who have ignored good laws and ignored right-order by forgetting their brothers’ and sons’ children. (shrink)

The European Commission’s proposal to address antimicrobial resistance using transferable exclusivity vouchers (TEVs) is fundamentally flawed. European policymakers and regulators should consider alternatives, such as better funding for basic and clinical research, use of advance market commitments funded by a pay-or-play tax, or enacting an EU Fund for Antibiotic Development.

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

Samenvatting van de grote wijsgerige systemen van Plato tot en met Hegel, gevolgd door een kritische analyse van de metafysica als uitingsvorm van westers intellectualisme.

In this review, we provide an overview of the dynamic changes within the microbiota and its metabolites that are implicated in establishing and maintaining gastrointestinal homeostasis during various stages of microbial colonization. The gradual conversion of the gut microbiota toward a mutualistic microbial community involves replacement of pioneer gut colonizers with bacterial taxa that are characteristic for the adult gut. An important microbial signature of homeostasis in the adult gut is the prevalence and activity of a diverse spectrum of bacterial (...) species that produce beneficial metabolites through metabolic interactions between microbial groups. Deciphering these microbial signatures and their metabolites that govern short and long‐term equilibrium, as well as imbalances in host‐microbial relationships, may provide novel diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic targets for specific disorders associated with intestinal dysbiosis and loss of homeostasis. (shrink)

Classroom discussion is frequently proposes as an essential part of democratic citizenship education. Literature, however, pays little attention to what kind of discussion is most effective and how teachers can facilitate a discussion. This study aims to contribute to the development of a framework for analysing the characteristics of classroom discussions and the different roles teachers can adopt in guiding a discussion on controversial issues. In addition, we investigated how the way teachers guide the discussion is related to the structure (...) and content features of the discussion. The framework was used to analyse five classroom discussions in secondary education. Our framework appeared to be useful for revealing differences in the structure and content features of the classroom discussions and in the way teachers guide the discussion. The results also indicated that a high degree of teacher regulation was related to high content quality and more participation from students. A high degree of stu... (shrink)

This article discusses the moment in which normative ideas about aging and reproductive embodiment became conceptually linked in the mid-nineteenthcentury medicalization of menopause. The reading centers on the first English book-length publication on menopause, written by E. J. Tilt in 1857, and Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze. I analyze mechanisms of observing, conceptualizing, and treating the body in relation to time and discuss their function in affirming and reworking social norms of age and gender. In doing so, I highlight (...) the political work implicit in contesting conceptualizations of female reproductive bodies, their age-specific pathologies, and directives of (self-)surveillance employed in discourses surrounding women’s reproductive health. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, we (...) propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

The Safe-by-Design approach in synthetic biology holds the promise of designing the building blocks of life in an organism guided by the value of safety. This paves a new way for using biotechnologies safely. However, the Safe-by-Design approach moves the bulk of the responsibility for safety to the actors in the research and development phase. Also, it assumes that safety can be defined and understood by all stakeholders in the same way. These assumptions are problematic and might actually undermine safety. (...) This research explores these assumptions through the use of a Group Decision Room. In this set up, anonymous and non-anonymous deliberation methods are used for different stakeholders to exchange views. During the session, a potential synthetic biology application is used as a case for investigation: the Food Warden, a biosensor contained in meat packaging for indicating the freshness of meat. Participants discuss what potential issues might arise, how responsibilities should be distributed in a forward-looking way, who is to blame if something would go wrong. They are also asked what safety and responsibility mean at different phases, and for different stakeholders. The results of the session are not generalizable, but provide valuable insights. Issues of safety cannot all be taken care of in the R&D phase. Also, when things go wrong, there are proximal and distal causes to consider. In addition, capacities of actors play an important role in defining their responsibilities. Last but not least, this research provides a new perspective on the role of instruction manuals in achieving safety. (shrink)

L'on ne saurait trop souligner combien l'âge "classique" est un âge critique. Moment de crise aiguë, totale, puisque c'est la destitution du monde ancien qui s'amorce et une situation inédite qui se dessine : l'homme se découvrant comme jamais instance de liberté face à un monde dont il est désormais séparé, ce qui devient pensable, c'est la réformation générale du monde et de soi. La question est de savoir comment réinventer la liberté dans les conditions de la modernité. Cette entreprise (...) s'énonce électivement en terme d'usage et sa fortune témoigne de la variété des voies empruntées. Or parmi les figures de "la liberté par l'usage", il en est une qui, méconnue, se recommande de trois sources anciennes : le stoïcisme, la théologie paulinienne et le legs augustinien. Révéler son originalité consiste à déployer ce qui est ramassé dans l'étrange formule de Paul : "user du monde comme n'en usant pas". Attester son actualité à l'âge classique, c'est montrer comment Fénelon, Pascal, Malebranche ou Mme de Lambert jouent de sa plasticité pour se l'approprier diversement et en faire une figure de la liberté disponible pour la modernité - y compris la nôtre. (shrink)

This study is conceived as an interdisciplinary historical, theological, educational and anthropological research of the construction of a Catholic identity on the basis of the “self” and the non-Christian “other”, in this case Islam, in the narrative and discursive settings of Church history textbooks for primary and secondary religion education in French Canada (Québec) and in Belgium (1870-1950). In recent years, a huge amount of studies, starting from the analysis of textbooks, on cultural identities and educational mentalities have been produced (...) in the classical history of education. Nevertheless, such studies have almost been a blind spot in theology and religious education. In concrete, we will appeal to a number of theological concepts like “inclusivism” and “exclusivism”, who are particularly suited to shed a light on the process of constructing a cultural identity. (shrink)

Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging is the fourth path-breaking monography in the flourishing literature on egg freezing in just a few years. In April 2019, The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs by the renowned Australian social scientist Catherine Waldby, was published, the first book to examine the emergence of a global market for eggs through biomedical innovation. In September 2019, sociologist Kylie Baldwin of De Montfort University published Egg Freezing, Fertility and Reproductive (...) Choice: Negotiating Responsibility, Hope and Modern Motherhood, in which she explores the experiences of some pioneering women who are having eggs frozen in the United... (shrink)

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible “solutions”, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex (...) nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. (shrink)

Rédigé par deux féministes qui avaient vingt ans dans les années 1970, dont l’une est devenue biologiste et l’autre spécialiste des relations de pouvoir entre les sexes, cet article postule que l’humanité est en train de vivre un nouveau tournant dans cette histoire, en ce que la fin de la domination masculine est désormais envisageable. Or si l’égalité femmes-hommes est aujourd’hui plus légitime que jamais, elle suscite toujours des oppositions farouches – alors même que les certitudes établies sur « les (...) deux sexes » vacillent au gré des progrès de la science et de la médecine. Cette nouvelle étape exige de celles et ceux qui veulent voir progresser ce chantier de rompre avec les travers issus du temps de la marginalité, et d’acquérir les connaissances scientifiques et historiques dont le manque pourrait faire le jeu de leurs opposant·es. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Plutarchan Hypomnema on Self–LoveLuc Van der StocktHypomnemata and QuellenforschungPlutarch's "hypomnemata statement" in the introduction to De Tranquillitate Animi has elicited much industrious activity from the scholarly world, and rightly so. The sentence (464F) invites one naturally to apply the method of classical hermeneutics (as understood by Babilas 1961, 30, 51–52), consisting in the confrontation of an author's oeuvre (its inventio, dispositio, and elocutio) with all the elements of (...) its generating "context" (historical circumstances, literary antecedents, biography and psychology of the author, immediate reasons for the composition, etc.) that might shed some light on the work in question and help to understand it. In the case of De Tranquillitate Animi Plutarch himself mentions his hypomnemata as one of the elements that contributed to this work, thus provoking his reader to investigate the relationship between these hypomnemata and the text in hand.Under the positivist paradigm generated and promoted by the physical sciences, the interpretation of texts suffered from reduction: its aim became explanation by reducing the thematic, structural, and stylistic data of a text to its antecedents, that is, by simply equating text and context; moreover, this context was frequently reduced to literary antecedents. In the present case, it was the conviction of several scholars that De Tranquillitate Animi could be explained by reducing it to an amalgamation of literary sources (Quellen) and by assuming that the hypomnemata represented these sources without further ado.The consequences of this approach were considerable: in general, Quellenforschung created the image of "Plutarch the eclectic," copying and pasting together literary sources, and De Tranquillitate Animi in particular became a textbook case of his modus operandi—it was but a patchwork of the opinions of Panaetius, or Ariston, or Epicureanism,1 [End Page 575] and one even finds a meritorious scholar who is indignant because Plutarch "mutilates" his source by disturbing its composition!2 From the conflicting scholarly opinions, from their highly hypothetical nature, and from such awkward appreciations as that just mentioned, it is easy to see that the positivist approach failed really to understand Plutarch: his personality and writing activity were so utterly neglected that one wonders why ultimately even the sentence μνημάτων was not regarded as "aliunde petita"!3Nowadays the assumptions of Quellenforschung are rejected: Plutarch's personal contribution in the invention, composition, and style of his works in general is widely recognized. In regard to his writing technique, and especially the role of the hypomnemata in it, it has been observed that the very mention of the hypomnemata in De Tranquillitate Animi does not mean that Plutarch was simply copying, let alone copying only one source;4 moreover, we are not entitled to view hypomnemata as sources5 without any qualification. As to the general tendency of the work, Stoic influences in the presentation of its theme have been seriously questioned.6While fully agreeing with the critique of Quellenforschung and sympathizing with the more positive results of our recent understanding of Plutarch, I cannot but consider the question of Plutarch's hypomnemata a continuing challenge: their importance for his "Compositionsweise"7 cannot be doubted, even if we are somewhat at a loss concerning their size, content, and nature. With the aim of advancing our [End Page 576] knowledge in this matter,8 I here identify a hypomnema, make some observations on Plutarch's treatment of it, and consequently show its relevance for the interpretation of the meaning intended by Plutarch. But before doing so, an analysis of the "hypomnemata statement" and its immediate context seems appropriate: the sentence may trigger our search and condition our expectations.An Analysis of the "Hypomnemata Statement" and its ContextThe composition of De Tranquillitate Animi took place in urgent circumstances:9 Paccius, we are told, has asked for some exegesis of Pla-to's Timaeus and (apparently in dire need)10 for some advice on tranquility of mind. The obvious messenger, Eros, has been called away urgently to Rome by Fundanus, another representative of the genus irascibile.11 Plutarch adopts emergency measures: First, he does not want to disappoint his friend Paccius completely. Thus in this "letter– essay" (Betz 1978, 199) he will deal with the theme... (shrink)

Ordo II comprises the work that made Erasmus famous, namely the Adagia some of which were extended into essays. This first volume of the Adages in the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives a general introduction to the Adages in German, as well as a critical edition of the Latin text of the first half of the first thousand Adages.

The second volume of the Adagia of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives an introduction in German and a critical edition of the Latin text of the second half of the first thousand Adages.

Part Five of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin text of Erasmus’ Annotations to the New Testament presents his notes on Paul’s letters to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to the Thessalonians 1 & 2.

Part Four of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin text of Erasmus’ Annotations to the New Testament presents his notes on St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.

This book explores some of Kit Fine's outstanding contributions to logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics, among others. Contributing authors address in-depth issues about truthmaker semantics, counterfactual conditionals, grounding, vagueness, non-classical consequence relations, and arbitrary objects, offering critical reflections and novel research contributions. Each chapter is accompanied by an extensive commentary, in which Kit Fine offers detailed responses to the ideas and themes raised by the contributors. The book includes a brief autobiography and exhaustive list of his (...) publications to this date. This book is of interest to logicians of all stripes and to analytic philosophers more generally. (shrink)