"L'espèce humaine est la seule qui sache qu'elle doit mourir, et elle ne le sait que par l'expérience" (Voltaire). Certes, mais que signifie cette "expérience" pour la personne humaine? Et d'abord, que signifie la mort de l'autre, du prochain? Pour Paul-Louis Landsberg, l'appropriation spirituelle de la mort est une tâche décisive pour toute personne humaine. Les voies de cette appropriation sont diverses, mais ce n'est qu'en relation avec une personnalisation progressive du tout de l'existence humaine qu'elle acquiert (...) réellement un sens nouveau. Et c'est dans l'expérience mystique que la proximité avec l'expérience de la mort est la plus forte. Le Problème moral du suicide (1942) est un texte précieux, plus encore aujourd'hui qu'il y a cinquante ans. A l'encontre de ceux qui soutiennent le "droit" à la mort volontaire, P.-L. Landsberg explique que "l'homme est l'être qui peut se tuer et qui ne doit pas le faire", et, en ce sens, le suicide est un " problème spécifiquement humain". (shrink)

I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and of self. First, I show that sculpting is associated with a loss of sense of agency and self. Second, that to sense agency as a systemic phenomenon creates anxiety. Third, that meaning in an art encounter develops in association with an anterospective viewpoint. Fourth, that within the logic of the extended (...) mind, emergent meaning becomes openly available for further exploration. Fifth, that artistic creativity is not an opaque process. It proceeds in a similar manner to other forms of human, sense-making activities. Finally, that playing seriously with clay can be used in an investigative manner—as a tool for material conceptualisation. (shrink)

In this contemporary classic originally published in 1963, Paul Lehmann answers the central question posed time and again to Christians throughout the ages: what am I as a believer in Jesus Christ and a member of his church to do? Lehmann argues that while principles for moral action can be rules of thumb, there are no absolute moral norms beyond the general norm of love. Lehmann contends that Christians are to act in every situation in ways that are consistent (...) with God's humanizing purposes, but what that means changes from context to context and requires strong, faith-shaped discernment.The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, archaeologists have used various process-oriented modes of enquiry to undermine the belief that humans are special. Barad (2007) developed Bohr’s indeterminist interpretation of quantum mechanics into agential realism which offers an ontological basis for distributing agency away from humans and plays a crucial role in underwriting some posthumanist archaeological agendas. But its origins in quantum physics make agential realism difficult to understand and evaluate. Despite the challenge, the first two parts of this paper are devoted (...) to each task in turn, with limited success. Part three turns to the archaeological literature, where the evaluation of agential realism turns out to be even more inadequate and so I advise against its use in support of process-oriented approaches in archaeology. The final section turns to the activity of an art workshop and introduces a playful approach to working with clay. Clayful phenomenology is a way of investigating the relationship between gesture, material and ideation. During sculpting, phenomenological experience is not subjective, stable and external but is generated within a transient creative system where entities, ideas and agency reciprocally, emerge as ephemeral manifestations. Clayful phenomenology and agential realism are ontologically similar and both are controversial but agential realism has a wall of quantum conceptual complexity standing between it and a judgement about credibility whereas playing with clay can be assessed directly, through experience. (shrink)

In a world dominated by things, we must work hard to account for one another's personhood. Drawing a diverse set of thought leaders, Paul Louis Metzger helps us navigate a pluralistic world through a personalist moral framework, addressing issues such as abortion, genetic engineering, immigration, drone warfare, and more.

By registering different health benefits on a common scale, CEA allows us to assess the relative social importance of different health care interventions and opens the way for the allocation decisions of health care policy. If it is really to be effective, however, CEA must be recalibrated so that it better reflects some of our widely held beliefs about the merits of different kinds of treatment.

By registering different health benefits on a common scale, CEA allows us to assess the relative social importance of different health care interventions and opens the way for the allocation decisions of health care policy. If it is really to be effective, however, CEA must be recalibrated so that it better reflects some of our widely held beliefs about the merits of different kinds of treatment.

L. démontre par une analyse approfondie de la plus importante littérature sur les questions de la race que l'idéologie moderne des races manque de solidité. Celle-ci a quitté la base d'un traitement sérieux et objectif du problème et — en dehors de quelques livres supérieurs — ne sert plus qu'à remplir certaines fonctions politiques et sociales.In an exact analysis of the most important literature on race problems L. demonstrates the scientific untenability of modern race theories. These have completely abandoned serious (...) and factual treatment of the race problem and simply serve to maintain certain political and social functions. (shrink)

Als letzter Assistent von Max Scheler hat Paul Ludwig Landsberg (*1901 in Bonn; † 1944 im KZ Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen) dessen Ansätze zu einer Philosophischen Anthropologie in einer durchaus eigenständigen Weise fortgeführt. Insbesondere hat er dabei den Versuch unternommen, eine Grundlegung der Anthropologie durch die Explikation menschlicher Selbstauffassungsgehalte zu leisten: Das Problem menschlicher »Bildung« ist ihm daher nicht einfachhin ein abgeleitetes Anwendungsgebiet der Philosophischen Anthropologie, aus welcher gleichsam nachträglich eine Bildungstheorie deduziert würde, sondern der phänomenologisch zu betrachtende Ausgangspunkt, von welchem (...) her allererst auf die Probleme der Anthropologie hin gedacht werden kann. Die vorliegende Studie nun beginnt mit einer Skizzierung des existentiellen Hintergrundes der Philosophischen Anthropologie (1. Kapitel) und ihrer vorläufigen Begriffs- und Aufgabenbestimmung (2. Kapitel). In der Hauptsache jedoch ist sie darum bemüht, die phänomenologisch erhellte Erfahrungs-Struktur menschlicher Bildung (3. Kapitel) für eine kategoriale Bestimmung anthropologischer und pädagogischer Fragestellungen (4. Kapitel) fruchtbar zu machen. Abschließend werden Grundzüge einer Metaphysik skizziert, die - im Anschluß an die Einsichten Landsbergs, zugleich aber auch in abwägender Auseinandersetzung mit modern-postmoderner Metaphysik-Kritik - die Bildung der Person im Welthorizont zu denken versucht (5. Kapitel). (shrink)