Context Opioid treatment agreements (OTAs) are documents that clinicians present to patients when prescribing opioids that describe the risks of opioids and specify requirements that patients must meet to receive their medication. Notwithstanding a lack of evidence that OTAs effectively mitigate opioids’ risks, professional organizations recommend that they be implemented, and jurisdictions increasingly require them. We sought to identify the jurisdictions that require OTAs, how OTAs might affect the outcomes of lawsuits that arise when things go wrong, and instances in (...) which the law permits flexibility for clinicians and health care institutions to adopt best practices. -/- Methods We surveyed the laws and regulations of all 50 states and the District of Columbia to identify which jurisdictions require the use of OTAs, the circumstances in which OTA use is mandatory, and the terms OTAs must include (if any). We also surveyed criminal and civil judicial decisions in which OTAs were discussed as evidence on which a court relied to make its decision to determine how OTA use influences litigation outcomes. -/- Findings Results show that a slight majority (27) of jurisdictions now require OTAs. With one exception, the jurisdictions’ requirements for OTA use are triggered at least in part by long-term prescribing. There is otherwise substantial variation and flexibility within OTA requirements. Results also show that even in jurisdictions where OTA use is not required by statute or regulation, OTA use can inform courts’ reasoning in lawsuits involving patients or clinicians. Sometimes, but not always, OTA use legally protects clinicians from liability. -/- Conclusions -/- Our results show that OTA use is entwined with legal obligations in various ways. Clinicians and health care institutions should identify ways for OTAs to enhance clinician–patient relationships and patient care within the bounds of relevant legal requirements and risks. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

This paper investigates the emergence, in the second part of the 17th century, of a new body of experimental knowledge dealing with the chemical transformations of water taking place in plants. We call this body of experimental knowledge a “chemical history of vegetation.” We show that this chemical natural history originated, in terms of recipes and methods of investigation, in the works of Francis Bacon and that it was constructed in accordance with Bacon's precepts for putting together natural and experimental (...) histories. Our paper covers a wide array of experimental investigations, carried out by people with different backgrounds, theoretical assumptions, and metaphysical allegiances (Thomas Browne, Robert Sharrock, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, John Beale, and John Evelyn). We claim that, despite their differences, these naturalists had a lot in common. First, they treated plants as laboratories of chemical investigation. Second, they used the experiments with plants to develop tools, hypotheses, and operational concepts, which travelled from one naturalist to the other, even when their respective explanatory vocabularies were widely different. Third, we show that some of them also manifested an interest in defining and clarifying the limits and structure of this new body of experimental knowledge, displaying, thus, a certain disciplinary unity. (shrink)

This paper argues that the impasse in Catholic moral theology around the role of the object in determining the moral species of the act was rooted in shared misunderstandings of Thomas Aquinas's analysis of human action. The paper describes Thomas's account of moral action centering upon his claim in ST I-II.18.6 that the object is twofold. This distinction was often missed on both sides of the proportionalist debates. The paper argues that understanding the moral object as twofold upholds (...) the essential elements of both sides of the proportionalist debates, holding them in their rightful balance. Moreover such an understanding offers an essential framework for Catholic theologians attending to the essential connection between acts and agents in accounts of morality. (shrink)

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic pain face significant barriers in finding clinicians to manage long-term opioid therapy (LTOT). For patients on LTOT, it is increasingly common to have them sign opioid treatment agreements (OTAs). OTAs enumerate the risks of opioids, as informed consent documents would, but also the requirements that patients must meet to receive LTOT. While there has been an ongoing scholarly discussion about the practical and ethical implications of OTA use in the abstract, little is known about how clinicians (...) use them and if OTAs themselves modify clinician prescribing practices. OBJECTIVE To determine how clinicians use OTAs and the potential impacts of OTAs on opioid prescribing. DESIGN We conducted qualitative analysis of four focus groups of clinicians from a large Midwestern academic medical center. Groups were organized according to self-identified prescribing patterns: two groups for clinicians who identified as prescribers of LTOT, and two who did not. PARTICIPANTS 17 clinicians from General Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and Palliative Care were recruited using purposive, convenience sampling. APPROACH Discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for themes using reflexive thematic analysis by a multidisciplinary team. KEY RESULTS Our analysis identified three main themes: (1) OTAs did not influence clinicians’ decisions whether to use LTOT generally but did shape clinical decision-making for individual patients; (2) clinicians feel OTAs intensify the power they have over patients, though this was not uniformly judged as harmful; (3) there is a potential misalignment between the intended purposes of OTAs and their implementation. CONCLUSION This study reveals a complicated relationship between OTAs and access to pain management. While OTAs seem not to impact the clinicians’ decisions about whether to use LTOT generally, they do sometimes influence prescribing decisions for individual patients. Clinicians shared complex views about OTAs’ purposes, which shows the need for more clarity about how OTAs could be used to promote shared decision-making, joint accountability, informed consent, and patient education. (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

ABSTRACT This essay explores the concept of hegemony as it is differently elaborated by Perry Anderson and Peter Thomas. I first provide an orientation to Gramsci's theory of hegemony and how it has been taken up in cultural and rhetorical studies. Then I explore Anderson's interventions into hegemony theory in the earlier Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci before a substantial review of The H-Word. I then discuss Peter Thomas's critique of Anderson's orientation to the hegemonic constructs of the ruling (...) classes of nation-states and conclude with a discussion about how the concept of hegemony elaborated by these authors might productively extend the work we do as scholars of rhetoric. (shrink)

In this paper, we review the history of quasicrystals from their sensational discovery in 1982, initially “forbidden” by the rules of classical crystallography, to 2011 when Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. We then discuss the discovery of quasicrystals in philosophical terms of anomalies behavior that led to a paradigm shift as offered by philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’. This discovery, which found expression in the redefinition of the (...) concept crystal from being periodically arranged to producing sharp peaks in the Bragg diffraction pattern, is analyzed according to the Kuhn Cycle. We relate the quasicrystal revolution to the non-Euclidean geometry revolution and argues that since “great minds think alike” there is a diffusion of ideas between scientific revolutions, or a resonance between different disciplines at different times. The story behind quasicrystals is an excellent example of a paradigm shift, demonstrating the nature of scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, and: Restorative Justice: Theories and Practices of Moral Imagination by Amy LevadDana ScopatzReview of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church DARRIN W. SNYDER BELOUSEK Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 668 pp. $55.00Review of Restorative Justice: Theories and Practices of (...) Moral Imagination AMY LEVAD El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2012. 300 pp. $80.00In Atonement, Justice, and Peace and Restorative Justice, the authors advocate for a restorative conception of justice, which they oppose to the “normal” retributive concept. Amy Levad draws on Aristotle and the virtue ethics tradition to write about “moral imagination” and restorative justice. Darrin Belousek uses Thomas Kuhn’s language to write about a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of theological themes relevant to restorative justice. Both contrast the restorative imagination or paradigm with a retributive one, although Levad also contrasts restoration with rehabilitation. Levad limits her study to restorative justice as [End Page 214] practiced in the criminal justice system, while Belousek expands his work to consider the Bible, theology, and multiple issues in society and in the church.Levad begins her book by discussing Aristotle’s idea of justice as equity, which she points out requires more discernment from judicial decision makers than it requires the algorithmic application of laws. In order for them to enact justice as equity, she argues, decision makers need a “vivid and expansive” moral imagination. Toward this end, she brings together two traditions: Aristotelian virtue ethics and modern literature on moral imagination. At the heart of her work is an ethnographic study intended to determine whether there are practices of restorative justice that can foster such a vivid and expansive moral imagination. After observing and interviewing participants in restorative justice programs in Colorado, Levad examined the narratives, metaphors, and symbols they used in order to determine whether and how they demonstrated a distinctively restorative moral imagination. Because the scope of her study was limited, and because she had difficulty getting a wide spectrum of roles involved in restorative justice to participate in the study, Levad’s results are more suggestive than conclusive. She acknowledges that we cannot generalize from them; although she draws on research methods from sociology and criminology, her findings do not meet their standards of evidence. Thus, the book’s greatest value lies in the recommendations it makes for further study. Empirical studies of the effectiveness of restorative justice practices have tended to focus on either reducing recidivism or the satisfaction of participants with the process. Levad brings to the fore two questions that have so far not been explored in previous research. First, how do restorative justice practices affect the moral imagination? And second, what effect might those practices have on ethical discernment? Her book takes some hopeful initial steps in addressing those questions.Although Levad writes as a Christian ethicist, she did not explicitly incorporate theological reflection into her study of state-sponsored programs. Belousek, by contrast, takes on an explicitly theological project of evaluating how interpretations of the significance of the cross of Jesus interact with such things as support for capital punishment, just war, and market economics. Since Belousek’s book is wide-ranging, this review will concentrate on the task it has in common with Levad’s book: that of reconceptualizing justice.In a fashion parallel to Levad’s use of Aristotle’s notion of justice as equity, which sometimes departs from strict legal justice, Belousek cites Paul’s vision of God’s justice “irrespective of” or “apart from” the law (372). Belousek begins by linking penal-substitutionary atonement theory to capital punishment, just war, and exchange economy in a single “paradigm,” arguing that they are all under-girded by what he calls the “Retributive Principle” (28). He then challenges this paradigm’s appropriateness for Christianity on biblical and doctrinal grounds. After examining arguments in favor of penal-substitutionary atonement in detail—drawing on the works of J. I. Packer and Thomas Schreiner, among [End Page 215] others—he turns to the scriptures cited in support... (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone mostrar cómo la Teoría Neoclásica de la Ley Natural fundamenta la existencia de normas morales absolutas, cuál es su relevancia para la filosofía moral, y qué críticas pueden ser formuladas a la argumentación de los autores. Ellos postulan que la ley natural, mediante normas, lleva a elegir y proteger bienes humanos básicos, correspondientes a los diversos aspectos de la naturaleza humana, evitando su destrucción, daño o impedimento. Aunque la mayoría de las normas morales admiten excepción, nunca (...) lo hacen las que prohíben realizar un acto que siempre daña directamente un bien básico, pues tal acto no puede compatibilizarse con la propia autorrealización, y atenta contra la dignidad humana. La división del trabajo tomará la siguiente forma: en los primeros cuatro apartados se abordarán los conceptos clave para la defensa de una norma absoluta en la Teoría Neoclásica, en el quinto se enlazarán los conceptos al modo que los autores lo hacen para demostrar la existencia de absolutos morales y someter el consecuencialismo a crítica, y en el sexto se hará una breve revisión crítica de los argumentos presentados. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Curative Work:Dana's Two Years Before The MastAllan Christensen (bio)In narrating his voyage out from Boston on the Pilgrim and his voyage home on the Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., encourages an ambivalent interpretation of the experience. As one possibility, contagious sickness and forms of bondage characterize the culture of home, whereas the sailor's condition and less civilized sites offer health, romance, and freedom. But an opposite possibility (...) is that the ship resembles an unhealthy prison and the foreign settings are spoiled, and so hope resides in the curative power still emanating from the civilization of home. The two possibilities may relate to the Goethean-Carlylean pattern of Bildung, whereby the protagonist initially rebels and escapes from home but later repents and returns, recognizing that his America must be "here or nowhere" (Carlyle 1899, 156),1 in Massachusetts rather than in California. Dana indeed desires first to become entirely the sailor but then in terror before that eventuality desires to return to his identity as a Harvard scholar. With respect to the motif of literacy, the initial effort to live fully amid the bracing energies of winds and sea gives way to an appreciation of the curative force of reading and writing books. Yet the two phases are not after all so neatly opposed and divided between two halves of the story. They coexist in a tension that is sometimes also resolved.In 1842, two years after publishing Two Years before the Mast, Dana began to compose "An Autobiographical Sketch, 1815–1841." This "Sketch" (1968) creates a context for the previously published work that justifies the first of the two interpretations. His early life has already featured, in the "Sketch," many incidents of wandering away from home and of rebellion against the restrictions and injustices of society. The turbulent young protagonist especially resents the tyranny of the schoolmasters who administer floggings and later the tyranny of the authorities at Harvard College who unfairly punish a classmate. In response to this latter incident, Dana's own rebellion leads to his suspension from the college for a term, an event that he welcomes as a liberation from an oppressive educational system. The inevitability of his future career as [End Page 219] a lawyer also weighs heavily upon him and probably worsens an incapacitating crisis of 1834. Specifically, the crisis begins with a contagious disease: he catches measles, an illness that triggers a hereditary tendency toward degenerating eyesight, and reading becomes insupportably painful for him. The revulsion against books derives, as Thomas Philbrick suspects, from both physical and psychological causes (1981, 10).2 Dana seeks an occupation that will remove him not only from the necessity of reading but from the debilitating, literate civilization of New England. At this juncture the lure of a sea voyage becomes irresistible:I had many offers of free passage, but I knew a passenger's life would be insupportable without books. Partly from these considerations, but aided very much by the attractiveness of the romance & adventure of the thing, I determined to go before the mast, where I knew that the constant occupation would make reading unnecessary.(Dana 1968, 1:26–27)As opposed to the culture associated with books, the sailor's life offers health as well as romance and freedom. Omitting, then, as unnecessary any account of the intervening events narrated in Two Years before the Mast, the "Autobiographical Sketch" resumes the narrative by restating the opposition:I will take this journal up, again, from the place where my published narration ends. Upon our arrival at Boston on 22 of Sept 1836,... I was very much struck with the pallid & emaciated appearance of the gentlemen I met with, when compared with the rough, sun burnt, hardy faces which I had solely seen for the last five months. If I had been [told] that there had been a famine or fever in the city & that these persons were recovering its effects, I should have said that their appearances indicated it plainly enough. The women looked like mere shades.(Dana 1968, 1:28)In the penultimate chapter of Two Years, one of the pallid, apparently fever-stricken Bostonians had observed, on meeting the... (shrink)

U središtu ovog teksta nalaze se neki filozofski aspekti Elze Kučere (1883. — 1972.). Kučera je 1909. godine doktorirala filozofiju na Sveučilištu u Zürichu i tako postala prva Hrvatica rođena u Hrvatskoj koja je doktorirala filozofiju. No, glavni joj je interes bila psihologija, a kasnije i bibliotekarstvo te su, osim doktorskih disertacija, gotovo svi njezini objavljeni radovi unutar tih disciplina. No, u arhivu Nacionalne i sveučilišne knjižnice u Zagrebu čuvaju se njezina rukopisna i neobjavljena djela, a među njima se može (...) pronaći i određeni broj čisto filozofskih tekstova. Kako bismo prikazali filozofiju Elze Kučere, u ovom tekstu analiziramo dva aspekta njezina filozofiranja. Prvi je njezina diskusija problema uzročnosti kojim se bavi u pregledu epistemologije Thomasa Browna u svojoj doktorskoj disertaciji pod naslovom Spoznajna teorija Thomasa Browna: povijesna studija (Die Erkenntnislehre von Thomas Brown: eine historische Studie, Zagreb, 1909.). Drugi je pitanje nacionalne filozofije kojim se bavimo u kraćem tekstu o toj temi, napisanom vjerojatno 1918. ili 1919. godine i koji nikad nije objavljen. S obzirom na to da Elza Kučera kao prva žena filozofkinja, eksperimentalna psihologinja i knjižničarka u nas do danas nije dobila dužnu pozornost, donosimo i njezinu biografiju. (shrink)

How can I know something? How can I convince someone of the rightness of my position? How does reality function? What is artistic creativity? What is the role of the state? It is well known that people from various cultures give dissimilar answers to such philosophical questions. After three decades in the cross-cultural study of ideas and values, Thomas Kasulis found that culture influences not only the answers to these questions, but often how one arrives at the answers. In (...) generalizing cultural difference, Kasulis identifies two kinds of orientation: intimacy and integrity. Both determine how we think about relations among people and among things, and each is reasonable, effective, and consistent. Yet the two are so incompatible in their basic assumptions that they cannot successfully engage each other. Cultural difference extends beyond nations. Cultural identities crystallize in relation to religion, occupation, race, gender, class. Rather than attempt to transcend cultural difference, Kasulis urges a deeper awareness of its roots by moving beyond mere cultural relativism toward a cultural bi-orientationality that will allow us to adapt ourselves to different cultural contexts as the situation demands. Wonderfully clear and unburdened by jargon, Intimacy or Integrity is accessible to readers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. By analyzing the synergy between thought and culture, it increases our understanding of cultural difference and guides us in developing strategies for dealing with orientations different from our own. (shrink)

Kentucky and West Virginia are among the states most severely affected by opioid poisonings and deaths. The legislatures of both states have enacted a broad range of bills intended to address related issues. We present an overview of legislation enacted in 2017 and 2018, along with an approach to analysis of practitioner response to one type of legislation.

Thomas Murray's graceful and humane book illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child? Ethicist Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy in order to reflect on the moral perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. Observing that abstract moral (...) terms such as altruism and selfishness can be buried in the everyday doings of families, he maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children. How far should adults go in their quest for children? What options are available to women who do not want to bear a child now? Should couples be allowed to reject a child because of genetic disability or "wrong" gender? How can we weigh the competing claims of the genetic and the rearing parents to a particular child? _The Worth of a Child_ couples impressive learning with a conversational style. Only by getting down to cases, Murray insists, can we reach moral conclusions that are unsentimental, farsighted, and just. In an era of intense public and private acrimony about the place and meaning of "family values," his practical wisdom about extraordinary difficult moral issues offers compelling reading for both experienced and prospective parents, as well as for ethicists, social and behavioral scientists, and legal theorists. (shrink)

This discussion recounts the development of several anthropological definitions of human nature. It then examines conclusions of studies in other disciplines that make possible a revised empirical definition of human nature and which have led to re-examination of paleoanthropological data classed as unimportant under the rubrics of preceeding studies. Finally, this discussion appraises certain of these data, as they pertain to the question: "Do empirical evidences suggest that a human nature, as well as a human structure, may be the product (...) of evolutionary processes?". (shrink)

This latest volume in the acclaimed Ruffin Series in Business Ethics brings together the contributions to the annual Ruffin Lecture series, in which some of the leading scholars in business ethics addressed the question: Can business, and business education, be considered one of the humanities, or is it in a class by itself? At a time when business is coming under attack for its apparent transgressions, this book iluminates the special values that inhere in the business world. Arguing all sides (...) of the issue, the distinguished contributors include Richard DeGeorge, Ronald Green, Thomas Dunfee, Robert Solomon, Edwin Hartman, Peter French, Patricia Werhane, Clarence Walton, W. Michael Hoffman, David Fedo, Kenneth Andrews, Joanne Ciulla, Manuel Velasquez, and George Brenkert. The editors contribute an informative Introduction and an Epilogue to set the debate in its proper context. (shrink)

On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Y. T. Radday and A. Brenner.The Trouble With Kings: The Composition of rhe Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. By Steven L. McKenzie.Sacred Space: An Approach to the Zheology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Marie E. Isaacs.Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra. By Michael Edward StonePaul the Convert: iShe Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. By Alan F. Segal.Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian (...) and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries. Edited by Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf Reventlow.The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Escharology. By Brian E. Daley.The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church. By Alexandre Faivre, translated by David Smith.Pastoral Life and Practice in the Early Church. By Carl A. Volz.The Making of the Creeds. By Frances Young.La correzione fratenia in s. Agosrino. By Agostino Clerici.Beaup and Revelation in the Thought of St Augustine. By Carol Harrison.Grace, Politics and Desire. Edited by Hugo Meynell.Boerhius and Aquinas. By Ralph McInerny.The Weight of Glory. A Vision and Practice for Christian Faith: The Future of Liberal Theology. Edited by D. W. Hardy and P. H. Sedgwick.Atonenrent and Incarnation. By Vernon White.Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought. By L. D. Bouchard.Parmenides of Elea, Fragments: A Text and Translation, with an Introduction. By David Gallop.Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy. By Nicholas Denyer.Weakness of the Will. By Justin Gosling.Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Vol. I, edited by Monica Asztalos, John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto.Episcopal Power and Norenrine Sociev. 1000–1320. By George W. Dameron.Matins, Lauds and Vespers for St David's Day. By Owain Tudor Edwards.More's ‘Utopia’. By Dominic Baker‐Smith.Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisitionfrom the Basque Lands to Sicily. By William Monter.Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834, By Stephen Haliczer.The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. By Piero Camporesi, translated by Lucinda Byatt.Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth‐Centun Spain. By Richard L. Kagan.Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth‐Century Spain: The Alumbrados. By Alastair Hamilton.Japan's Encounter with Christianiry: The Catholic Mission in Pre‐Modern Japan. By Neil S. Fujita.Galileo, Bellannine and the Bible. By Richard J.Augustine Baker's Inner Light: A Study in English Recusant Spirituality. By James Gaffney.The Prorestarit Evaqelical Awakening. By W. R. Ward.The Study of Anglicanism. Edited by Stephen Sykes and John Booty.The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources. Edited by G. R. Evans and J. Robert Wright.The Restoration Church of England, 1646‐1689. By John Spurr.Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. By Jon Butler.A Woman Styled Bold: The Life of Cornelia Connelly, 1809–1879. By Radegunde Flaxman.Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost. By Paul K. Conkin.Revivalism and Social Change: Christianio, Nation Building and the Market in the Nineteenth‐Century United States. By George M. Thomas.Church and State: The English Experience. By Adrian Hastings.Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. By Dana Greene.Northern Ireland: Fairh and Faction. By Maurice Irvine.The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, arid Religion in Ireland. By John Fulton.Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood. By David Rice.Making Saints: Inside the Vatican: Who Become Saints, Who Do Not, and Why. By Kenneth L. Woodward.Ecclesiae Memoria: Miscellanea in onorr del R. P. Josef Metzler, O. M. I. Edited by Willi Henkel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Logic of God Incarnate. By THOMAS V. MORRIS. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Pp. 220. $19.95. Thomas V. Morris, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has written a technical yet provocative study on the Incarnation. As a faithful Christian he believes in and desires to defend the traditional Christian doctrine of the Incarnation proclaimed in the New Testament and defined (...) by the early councils of the Church, especially Chalcedon, that is, that Jesus is the One eternal Son existing in two natures. He also holds that, while the truth of the Incarnation is revealed, it must nonetheless stand the test of logic and reason. The Incarnation cannot be illogicaJ or meaningless. " If the church has been guided by God in such matters as the formulation of its creeds, conciliar decrees, and catechisms,.... we would not expect glaring logical flaws in its central doctrinal affirmations" (p. 46). The stated purpose of Morris's study is to defend the traditional doctrine against those who would hold it to be logically incoherent and meaningless. "In the course of thinking about the Incarnation for some years now, I have come to see that a few simple metaphysical distinctions and a solid dose of logical care will suffice to explicate and defend the doctrine against all extant criticisms of a philosophical nature" (p. 9). Morris meticulously analyzes and critiques a number of arguments that oppose the possibility of coherence of the Incarnation by attempting to demonstrate that such arguments are.either false and illogical themselves, or that they do not apply to a true understanding of the Incarnation. Moreover, Morris proposes a novel understanding of the Incarnation which he believes is both logical and intelligible, and which conforms to the Christian tradition. This goal of upholding the intelligibility of the Incarnate leads Morris to a three-fold task. He first of all must refute his chief adversaries, those who would deny the sensibleness of saying God became man in Jesus. Such critics deny the validity of the Incarnation on the ground..'! that it is meaning·less, and the'l'efore impossible to juxtapose the incommensurable. attributes of divinity and humanity, e.g., perfection/imperfection, immutability/corruptibility. They hold that Jesus could not have had both these sets of properties at once (cf. p. 20). Morris refuses to capitulate to such arguments. He nevertheless insists that any solution to the issue which would undermine human logic or which would fail to uphold the Christian's belief is no solution at all (cf. p. 32). 367 368 BOOK REVIEWS Secondly, Morris's task leads him to refute any attempts at a " OneNature " solution, which would "squash" together the human and divine natures in Jesus to form a single nature. Such proposals jeopardize either the integrity of Jesus's divinity (Arianism) or his humanity (Docetism, Monophysitism), inevitably composing a mythical tertium quid (cf. pp. 33-38). Morris presents a clear case against such corruptions of the Incarnation. Thirdly, Morris's task brings him to analyze contemporary kenotic Christology. He thoroughly discusses this approach, for the reason that it is directly involved in the issue at hand, namely, the incompatibility between divine and human properties in Christ. Secondarily, however, Morris's interest in kenoticism reflects his own hope that some variation of the approach might posibly arrive at a Christological solution (cf. p. 92). While he ultimately rejects kenoticism, Morris flirts with the various alternatives, and, as we shall see, his own perception of the Incarnation remains tinged with a kenotic flavor. How then is it possible to predicate of one and the same individual divine and human attributes intelligibly and coherentlyT To use contemporary computer jargon, the question might be phrased: is it possible that God and man can he "incarnation-friendly¥" Morris believes so. Morris first of all sets out to define the terms-divine nature and human nature. He believes part of the incompatibility problem lies in attributing to Jesus's humanity unnecessarily hostile aspects. He distinguishes between being "merely human" and being "fully human"· To be " merely human " is to possess not only those properties that narrowly define one's nature or kind, such as rationality, but... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 323-326 [Access article in PDF] The Tacit Dimension Thomas Fuchs Thirty years after its appearance, Blankenburg's "Psychopathology of common sense" has not lost its relevance. In my commentary I will try to illustrate the fruitfulness of his approach by pointing to some connections with the phenomenology of the body as well as with recent memory and infant research.As Blankenburg himself indicates, the (...) notion of common sense developed by a shift of meaning from the classical sensus communis and thus has its original basis in the sensual-bodily experience. By the koinè aísthesis, Aristoteles meant a central sense organ integrating all single modalities of sensation (which he localized in the heart). In German physiology and psychiatry of the nineteenth century, the sensus communis was still translated as "Gemeingefühl" ("common feeling") or "cenesthesia" (Fuchs 1995). This term denoted the inner, proprioceptive bodily sensations, but also an original unity of the senses, which has been rediscovered by recent infant research as intermodal sensory perception. The affection of the body was thus regarded as the common basis of all sensation.Looking on this track for a bodily basis of the common sense, we find it in the habitual structure of the lived-body as analysed by Merleau-Ponty (1945). The body is the primary "matter-of-course," namely, the tacitly functioning medium of our everyday being-in-the-world prior to any subject-object split. The body schema, in Merleau-Ponty's view, is not only a system of familiar units of movement or "kinetic melodies," it also incorporates the surrounding things, tools, and spaces that are familiar to us and that we "inhabit." Thus, the musician "does not only manipulate the instrument like a separate object, but lives in it like a limb and inhabits the expressive musical space it opens" (Behnke 1997). But for Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is also the basis of "intercorporeity," i.e., a prepersonal sphere of reciprocal comportment and understanding prior to any explicit consensus and symbolic communication. In this sphere of elementary contact, the "atmospheric" senses play a major role: The sense of smell (as shown, e.g., by the expression "to scent treason" or in German, "jemand nicht riechen können" [not be able to "smell" or stand someone]) as well as the sense of taste whose ambiguous meaning, mentioned by Blankenburg, points to the bodily basis of the feeling for what is suitable, decent, or aesthetically pleasing. Even the designation of homo sapiens that we give to ourselves is derived from the latin sapere (to taste/to know), and thus shows that the knowledge characteristic for man is not an explicit one, but an intuitive, implicit knowing or "feel" for his surroundings, or as Kant says, an "aesthetic rather than intellectual judgment" (cited by Blankenburg).Polanyi (1967) has analysed this knowledge at the roots of common sense as "tacit knowledge." It is based on processes of Gestalt formation that enable us to grasp unified wholes through their constituting elements without still being aware of the latter. Thus, we understand the facial expression of others immediately but cannot tell from which details. Or we know how [End Page 323] to waltz without knowing the single movements or being able to explain it. Tacit knowledge implies all the taken-for-granted that we have forgotten once it has become our second nature and part of our bodily habits. It is mainly based on the neuronal coupling of single sensori-motor units by repeated perception or action. This unconscious knowing has only recently come to be explored by psychology under the heading of "implicit" or "procedural memory" (Schacter 1987, 1996). It contains familiar styles or "melodies" of moving, perceiving, and being-with-others in which our whole bodily and emotional experience is engaged. There is an atmospheric, "felt" quality about them that cannot be analysed into single elements. Implicit knowledge may, therefore, never be wholly expressed by words—it is only realized in the concrete situation. It may only be circumscribed by expressions such as "how it feels...," "how it is...," e.g., how it is... (shrink)

Among the hidden treasures squirreled away in the archives of Israel’s National Library lies a fragmented correspondence that sheds new light on the afterlife of a project that was long deemed the farewell gift to the German language and culture from the remnants of its Jewry. It is an exchange of letters between two scholars, whose interest in the German rendition of the Bible occupied them for many years, first in Germany, and later in the land where Hebrew was vernacular (...) and where one might think there would no longer be a need for translations of the Bible; particularly not into a language that aroused considerable aversion in the aftermath of the war. And yet, the 1963–64 exchange between the two Jerusalemites, the Vienna-born and Frankfurt-crowned philosopher, theologian, and translator Martin Buber and the Riga-born, Berlin- and Marburg-educated biblical scholar Nechama Leibowitz tells a different story. It shows they both believed the project that began under the title Die Schrift, zu verdeutschen unternommen should be revised once again, after its completion so as to underline its ongoing relevance for present and future readings of the Bible tout court, in German and Hebrew speaking lands alike. (shrink)

The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company. By Rosane Rocher and Ludo Rocher. Royal Asiatic Society Books. London: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xv + 238, 5 plates. $145.

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas W. (...) Merrill shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

The rich have two defining capabilities: independence from and command over others. These make being wealthy very pleasant indeed, but they are also toxic to democracy. First, I analyse the mechanisms by which the presence of very wealthy individuals undermines the two pillars of liberal democracy, equality of citizenship and legitimate social choice. Second, I make a radical proposal. If we value the preservation of democracy we must limit the amount of wealth any individual can have and still be a (...) citizen of our polity. (shrink)

While this Journal is not the place for an extended discussion of the exegeticalpoints raised by Thomas Oberdan’s ‘The Vienna Circle’s ‘‘Anti-Foundation-alism’’’ [1998], some brief remarks are required to correct his misunderstand-ing of my position on the relevant issues, to stress the highly controversialstatus of his own interpretation and to counter his portrayal of the dialectics ofthe debate.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation1Thomas Joseph White, O.P.Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued about whether he holds that beauty is a “transcendental,” a feature of reality coextensive with all that exists, like unity, goodness, and truthfulness.2 In the first part of this article, I will argue that Aquinas can [End Page 1215] be read to affirm in an implicit way that beauty is a (...) transcendental. In the second part, I will consider what it might mean from a Thomistic point of view to speak of a transcendent divine beauty, given Aquinas’s metaphysical commitments, particularly with respect to his doctrine of divine simplicity. In the final part, I will treat the question of how the beauty of the creation both manifests and conceals divine beauty.Beauty as a Transcendental Feature of RealityAquinas does not list beauty as a transcendental term in texts on transcendental notions. Perhaps, then, one should simply exclude it from a responsible account of his teaching on this subject. However, at least two well-known texts should give us reason to pause before reaching such a conclusion. One is found in his Commentary on Dionysius’ Divine Names, chapter 4, lectio 5. The other is in his discussion of the beauty of the eternal Son of God in a discussion of the Holy Trinity in the Summa theologiae I, q. 39, a. 8.In the first of these texts, Aquinas is commenting on Dionysius. The extended text is analytically dense. Aquinas is discussing ways in which one might say that God is beautiful and in what ways one might not say so. I will return to his topic below. Here, however, it is pertinent to consider Aquinas’s discussion of the presence of beauty in all that exists. He makes six main points.3 First, all beauty comes [End Page 1216] from God insofar as God is the cause of all that exists. Second, he gives a first definition of beauty: beauty can be defined ontologically as the splendor (claritas) that results from form; everything has a formal determination of some kind insofar as it has existence (esse); therefore, insofar as anything exists (and has some formal ontological content) it has some degree of beauty. Third, the splendor of the form in created things is a participation in the divine splendor from which it originates. The divine nature is the transcendent exemplar of beauty in diverse finite created realities. Fourth, then (and perhaps most importantly), “ex divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur”: literally, the existence of everything originates from divine beauty. Fifth, a second definition of beauty is considered: beauty can be defined ontologically as a property of being that emerges from proportion or harmony (consonantia). For example, authentic relationships of personal friendship imply spiritual harmony or concord and are beautiful and noble in this respect. Sixth, then, the concord or beautiful harmonies we find in the created order are expressive of the wisdom of God, who is the author of creation.Evidently, if the existence of everything derives from divine beauty, and if everything that has existence is in some way beautiful by virtue of its intrinsic form, then it would seem to follow logically that beauty, for Aquinas, is a characteristic of being that is coextensive with all that exists. We see a similar idea expressed in the aforementioned passage of ST. Here, however, Aquinas gives a more synthetic definition of beauty in things that combines both the definitions found in our previous discussion, claritas and proportio, but it also adds a third, integritas: ontological integrity or wholeness.Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of the Son. For beauty includes three conditions, “integrity” or “perfection,” [End Page 1217] since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due “proportion” or “harmony”; and lastly, “brightness” or “clarity,” whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color.4The implication of this point of view is readily apparent. God is essentially beautiful, and God has created all that exists in light of the eternal Word and Wisdom of God, who is the Son. Consequently, all that exists and that... (shrink)

Americans encounter their homes in ways comforting and haunting: as an imagined refuge or a place of mastery and domination, a destination or a place to escape. Drawing on literature, personal experience, and the histories of slavery, incarceration, and homesteading, Thomas Dumm offers a meditation on the richness and poverty of the idea of home.

Thomas Lynch, called "a cross between Garrison Keillor and William Butler Yeats" (New York Times), reminds us not only of how we die but also of how we live. "The facts of life and death remain the same. We live and die, we love and grieve, we breed and disappear. And between these existential gravities, we search for meaning, save our memories, leave a record for those who will remember us." So writes Thomas Lynch, poet and funeral director, (...) and author of the highly praised The Undertaking, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award, as he continues to examine the relations between the "literary and mortuary arts." The essays assembled here explore the human condition at the intersection of millennia, beleaguered by choices and changes, encumbered by merger and acquisition, numbed by maths and technologies, in search of the meaning of life and time, our lives and times. Lynch tenders life and times--sextons, muckrakers, clergy, caskets, condoms, loved poems, a hated cat, the mall, Main Street. In an age that seeks to define human experience in retail, high-tech, or pop-psyche terms, these essays speak to the existentials: between being human and ceasing to be, between birth and death, we are bodies in motion and at rest. (shrink)

Thomas Aït Kaci focuses on the problem of the erasure of Hegel in Reiner Schürmann’s opus magnum, Broken Hegemonies (1996). It is bewildering that Schürmann, in his relentless struggle against dialectic, from the beginning to the end and from Parmenides to Heidegger, doesn’t encounter at any time his adversary, Hegel. This paper seeks to determine the philosophical meaning of this absence, which is both concerted and disconcerting.

Thomas Richardson and Peter Spirtes. Scoring Ancestral Graph Models.

D. A. Lloyd Thomas; VIII—Political Decision Procedures1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 141–160, https://doi.or.

Thomas Windisch Problème fondamental de la tradition philosophique occidentale, la justification de l’existence du mal dans le monde est un thème inépuisable pour le philosophe. Particulièrement d’actualité au moment où les effets directs et indirects de la pandémie mondiale de COVID-19 n’épargnent personne, la forme de ce questionnement a évolué au fil des révolutions philosophiques. Le présent article tente de se replacer à la fin du xviiie siècle pour prolonger la parole du poète Friedrich Hölderlin à partir d’une réinterprétation (...) du mal kantien. En adoptant une perspective à la fois philosophique et littéraire, il est possible de démontrer comment le concept d’unité, compris à l’aune du Beau, se révèle en tant que cause irrémédiable, mais justifiée, du mal vécu par l’humain. À partir de son roman Hypérion, Hölderlin nous proposerait une théodicée tacite qui, sans renier les critères épistémologiques de la philosophie kantienne, lui échapperait, autant qu’à toute justification exclusivement philosophique de l’existence du mal tentée depuis la modernité. (shrink)

Considered the first significant teacher of rhetoric in America, John Witherspoon also introduced Scottish moral philosophy in America, and as president of Princeton reformed the curriculum to give emphasis to both studies. He was an active pamphleteer on religious and political issues and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas P Miller argues that Witherspoon’s career exemplifies the Ciceronian ideal, and the eight selections Miller presents from the 1802 American edition of the _Works _corroborate that claim.

The Life of Wisdom in Rousseau's "Reveries of the Solitary Walker" is the first complete exegesis and interpretation of Rousseau's final and culminating work, showing its full philosophic and moral teaching. The Reveries has been celebrated as a work of literature that is an acknowledged acme of French prose writing. Thomas L. Pangle argues that this aesthetic appreciation necessitates an in-depth interpretation of the writing's complex and multileveled intended teaching about the normatively best way of life—and how essential this (...) is for a work that was initially bewildering. Rousseau stands out among modern political philosophers in that he restored, to political philosophy, what Socrates and his students (from Plato and Xenophon through Aristotle and the Stoics and Cicero) had made central—and that the previous modern, Enlightenment philosophers had eclipsed: the study of the life and soul of the exemplary, independent sage, as possessor of "human wisdom." Rousseau made this again the supreme theme and source of norms for political philosophy and for humanity's moral as well as civic existence. In his analysis of The Reveries, Pangle uncovers Rousseau's most profound exploration and articulation of his own life, personality, soul, and thought as "the man of nature enlightened by reason." He describes, in Rousseau's final work, the fullest embodiment of the experiential wisdom from which flows and to which points Rousseau's political and moral philosophy, his theology, and his musical and literary art. (shrink)

This response considers the question whether empiricists are condemned to silence about the epistemic agency their theories attribute or presuppose. It is argued that, unlike Reichenbach or Carnap, Neurath allowed for and indeed provided specifications of the role of epistemic agency in scientific inquiry. If this is correct, it underscores once more the need to distinguish between the various strands of logical positivism which show different strengths and weaknesses.

Biographical note: Thomas Alkemeyer (Dr. phil.) ist Professor für Soziologie und Sportsoziologie an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Ulrich Bröckling (Dr. phil.) ist Professor für Kultursoziologie an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Tobias Peter (Dr. rer. pol.) ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Soziologie der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.