In general, the Sartrean concept of the subject as "being-for-self" and "being-for-others" is read as if Sartre had sketched these structures as given "a priori" and therefore as unalterable . One of the consequences of this interpretation lies in calling Sartre's theory contradictory, especially with regard to his ethics, because of the assumption that, based on this concept, changing the inauthentic structures of the subject into authentic ones would be impossible. Contrary to this interpretation, I argue that Sartre's philosophical theory (...) is by no means contradictory, neither in its relation to ethics nor as it relates to the complete edition of Sartre's philosophical writing, if one tries to understand what kind of theoretical requirements Sartre considered to be relevant and necessary . From this point of view, it is possible to work out an adequate and consistent interpretation. In order for me to argue for the immanent consistency of Sartre's theory and for the resulting possibility of an ethical theory based on it, I will discuss some aspects of the relation between epistemological, ontological and ethical elements within Sartre's philosophical system. (shrink)

The article focuses on three aspects of Judith Butler′s ethical deliberations: On the one hand it presents Butler′s tri-relational ethic′s model with its three moments – social norms, the speaking 'You′ and the addressed 'I′ – all depending on each other reciprocally. Butler states that ethical models theorizing subjectification which ignore the constitutive function of these three moments are at risk of being violent, because they make demands which cannot be met. On the other hand the article investigates the instrumental (...) and constitutional function of language, because language acts not only by sustaining and passing on, but can affect changes as well. Finally it sketches the consequences of the model for concepts such as 'responsibility′ which are basically altered in their semantic and structural contents. (shrink)

Judith Butler zählt zu den bedeutendsten zeitgenössischen Denker*innen im Bereich der Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften sowie der Gender Studies und der Queer Theory. Darüber hinaus ist ihr Beitrag zur politischen Philosophie kaum zu unterschätzen. Dieser Band versammelt - neben einem Originaltext von Butler und einem Roundtable-Gespräch - Artikel ausgewiesener Expert*innen, die aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven die Dimensionen des Politischen in Butlers Arbeiten kritisch würdigen. Schwerpunkte sind das Verhältnis von Philosophie, Theorie und politischer Praxis, die Konstitution politischer Subjektivität, die Möglichkeiten politischer Handlungsfähigkeit (...) sowie das emanzipatorische Potenzial performativer Körperpraktiken. (shrink)

This study provides a representation of the broad spectrum of theoretical work on topics related to business ethics, with a particular focus on corporate citizenship. It considers relations of business and society alongside social responsibility and moves on to examine the historical and systemic foundations of business ethics, focusing on the concepts of social and ethical responsibilities. The contributors explore established theories and concepts and their impact on moral behaviour. Together, the contributions offer varied philosophical theories in approaches to business (...) ethics. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers with an interest in the theoretical development of business ethics. -/- Reviews: 'The rapidly expanding business ethics field is often populated by thinly theorised work. This book is a welcome exception. It is also distinctive in that it embraces a clear macro perspective whereas much of the debate is rather stuck at the level of the individual or the organisation. As such the book has a distinctively European flavour and should be considered as an intellectually stimulating collection offering original perspectives on business ethics.' Laura J. Spence, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK -/- 'This book makes an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of corporations especially in the areas of corporate citizenship and responsibility as well as ethics and economic ethics. In addition the relationship of these areas with the social contract is well argued.' Australian Journal of Corporate Law. (shrink)

To systematically compare welfare across species, it is first necessary to explore whether welfare subjects of different species have the same or rather a different capacity for welfare. According to what seems to be the dominant philosophical view, welfare subjects with higher cognitive capacities have a greater capacity for welfare and are generally much better off than those with lower cognitive capacities. Višak carefully explores and rejects this view and argues instead that welfare subjects of different species have the same (...) capacity for welfare despite different cognitive capacities. This book prepares the philosophical ground for comparisons of welfare across species. It will inform and inspire ethicists and animal welfare scientists alike, as well as a broader readership interested in wellbeing, animals, and ethics. (shrink)

This study contributes to the exploration of self-rated spirituality by anchoring self-ratings of spirituality and religiosity in an integrative model of personality. For the measurement of personality dispositions and characteristic adaptations, the NEO Personality Inventory Revised and the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire have been administered to a sample of German-speaking students. A three-step study design is employed. First, previous findings on associations between personality and religiosity/spirituality are replicated and supplemented. Second, sources of meaning are shown to (...) explain a considerably higher amount of unique variance in religiosity and spirituality than do personality dispositions. Third, two types of spirituality—religious-and-spiritual and spiritual-but-not-religious—are identified and distinguished on the basis of personality traits. The spiritual-but-not-religious type shows significantly higher degrees of Neuroticism, and lower degrees of Agreeableness. Possible interpretations and lines of future research on ‘spirituality without religion’ are sketched out. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to get from a phenomenology of birth towards an ethics of obstetric care: Human rights violations in obstetrics are currently a globally debated phenomenon. Research suggests that maltreatment is widespread and a global phenomenon. However, the prevalence cannot yet be clearly quantified. In view of this problem, it is necessary to take the subjective perspective of those affected seriously. Narrative and phenomenological accounts of birth experiences could help to foster the dialogue between persons giving (...) birth and health professionals. First, I will present narrative accounts of birth experiences recorded by feminist phenomenologists. Second, I will interpret these narrative accounts within a feminist phenomenological framework in order to contribute to a phenomenology of birth, which, in a third step, shall help to develop an ethics of obstetric care. In engaging with the phenomenology of care outlined by feminist care ethicists, I will analyze the elements and conditions of good care, and draw conclusions for an ethic of obstetric and midwifery care. Drawing additionally on the theory of relational autonomy, my paper argues for a relational implementation of self-determination in childbirth. Lastly, I will discuss to what extent the ethical ideal of care has an affinity to the midwifery model of childbirth, and how the current situation of obstetrics prevents a women-centered birth culture. (shrink)

The chapter asks how political protest that falls under the definition of a criminal offense should be evaluated, for instance, protest against the insufficiency of measures against climate change. It takes the perspective of criminal law theory and assumes that criminal law theory should integrate debates in moral philosophy and political philosophy. The author analyses the notion of civil disobedience and argues that it would be preferable to avoid this term. She is also critical regarding both the rediscovered focus on (...) conscience and recent literature in the field of political theory that proposes to supplement or replace civil disobedience with uncivil disobedience. Other than these current debates postulate, the author assumes that the judgment „politically legitimate“ is more demanding than the notion of civil disobedience. It requires a close examination of goals and the means that are used to put pressure on decision-makers. Attempts to deal with macro level risks such as the risks of climate change have to recognize that this requires genuinely political coordination and that it is not legitimate to instrumentalize third parties for the purpose of political protest. For the application of criminal law, this means that the term “danger” in the necessity defense (§ 34 German Criminal Code) must be interpreted narrowly. Punishment should not be mitigated based solely on the argument that protesters act with altruistic motives but only if protest is moderate and politically legitimate. (shrink)

Academic integrity determines the trust that society has in the quality of education and the results of scientific research. More broadly, it influences honesty, respect for ethical principles, and the fair behaviour of society members. Accordingly, higher education institutions should have clear, transparent and well-communicated policies to defend academic integrity among all stakeholders. Taking into account the worldwide dependence on digital technologies, online communication channels should be also used for this purpose. Using qualitative content analysis, this paper aims to investigate (...) how academic integrity is framed by Latvian and Lithuanian state-financed universities in online public spaces in relation to the criteria of an exemplary academic integrity policy. Given the limited content of publicly available university documents, the research findings indicated a poor correspondence to the mentioned criteria. (shrink)

Many problems that arise when providing pharmacy services may contain some ethical components and the aims of this study were to develop and validate a scale that could assess difficulties of ethical issues, as well as the frequency of those occurrences in everyday practice of community pharmacists. Development and validation of the scale was conducted in three phases: generating items for the initial survey instrument after qualitative analysis; defining the design and format of the instrument; validation of the instrument. The (...) constructed Ethical Issue scale for community pharmacy setting has two parts containing the same 16 items for assessing the difficulty and frequency thereof. The results of the 171 completely filled out scales were analyzed. The Cronbach’s α value of the part of the instrument that examines difficulties of the ethical situations was 0.83 and for the part of the instrument that examined frequency of the ethical situations was 0.84. Test–retest reliability for both parts of the instrument was satisfactory with all Interclass correlation coefficient values above 0.6,. The 16-item scale, as a self assessment tool, demonstrated a high degree of content, criterion, and construct validity and test–retest reliability. The results support its use as a research tool to asses difficulty and frequency of ethical issues in community pharmacy setting. The validated scale needs to be further employed on a larger sample of pharmacists. (shrink)

Philosophers often aim to demonstrate that the things we ordinarily think and say can be reconciled with our considered beliefs about the world. To this end, many philosophers try to paraphrase ordinary language claims by finding equivalent sentences that are less misleading. For instance, though we know that there is no British family that is the average one, we want to say that the average British family has 1.8 children, and we might do that by paraphrasing this claim as: there (...) are nearly twice as many British children as British families. This article aims to introduce and distinguish different paraphrase strategies, sketch their role in metaphysical debates and highlight some crucial questions that proponents of such strategies face. (shrink)

Researching ethical problems and their frequency could give us a complex picture and greater insight into the types of ethical issues that pharmacists face in providing health care. The overall aim of this study was to assess the pharmacist’s perception of difficulty and frequency of selected ethical issues encountered by the community pharmacists in their everyday practice. A quantitative cross sectional multicenter study was performed using a validated survey instrument - Ethical Issue Scale for Community Pharmacy. The results of the (...) analysis of 690 completely filled out instruments showed the difference between the ethical issues which always occurred, and the ones that pharmacists found most difficult. The majority of respondents were familiar with the Code of Ethics but the correlation between the familiarity and the perceived usefulness of the code in resolving problems in everyday practice was negative. Results showed that patients’ well-being had a high influence on pharmacists’ behavior. The results provided quantitative data by the examination of specific ethical issues and their occurrence. Further empirical research is recommended in order to systematically identify the ethical issues faced by community pharmacists. (shrink)

Wittgenstein ist auf vielschichtige Weise mit Rußland verbunden: als Kriegsfreiwilliger an der Ostfront, als eifriger Leser von Tolstoi und Dostojewski, als Freund Nikolai Bachtins und als Reisender in der Sowjet-Union. Wittgensteins Verhältnis zu Nikolai Bachtin - eine Geistesverwandtschaft vor dem Hintergrund humanistischer Bildung, Religiosität, Askese, Patriotismus und Weltbürgertum - und zu dessen Bruder Michail sowie beider Einfuß auf seine Philosophie, speziell in den Philosophischen Untersuchungen, werden im Detail untersucht. Seine Kontakte zu anderen Exilrussen (bes. Fanja Pascal), die Beziehungen der Bachtin-Brüder (...) zum Brenner-Kreis und Wittgensteins Motive für seine Rußlandreise sowie seinen vagen Plan, sich dort niederzulassen, werden anhand von Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Korrespondenzen rekonstruiert. (shrink)

By assuming a deterministic evolution of quantum systems and taking realism into account, we carefully build a hidden variable theory for Quantum Mechanics based on the notion of ontological states proposed by ’t Hooft. We view these ontological states as the ones embedded with realism and compare them to the quantum states that represent superpositions, viewing the latter as mere information of the system they describe. Such a deterministic model puts forward conditions for the applicability of Bell’s inequality: the usual (...) inequality cannot be applied to the usual experiments. We build a Bell-like inequality that can be applied to the EPR scenario and show that this inequality is always satisfied by QM. In this way we show that QM can indeed have a local interpretation, and thus meet with the causal structure imposed by the Theory of Special Relativity in a satisfying way. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungWie ist die Auswahl zukünftiger Kinder in moralischer Hinsicht zu beurteilen? Der Beitrag untersucht diese Frage auf der Basis eines liberalen Prinzips der reproduktiven Freiheit, welches Handlungsspielräume und Privatsphäre in Fragen der Fortpflanzung verteidigt, wenn nicht gewichtige moralische Gründe aufgezeigt werden können, welche den Handlungen der beteiligten Personen Grenzen setzen. Er beschränkt sich auf die negative Auswahl, d. h. die Auswahl von gesunden Kindern anstelle von zukünftigen Kindern mit Behinderung oder gesundheitlicher Beeinträchtigung. Erörtert werden selektionsbefürwortende Überlegungen, welche das Wohlergehen des (...) zukünftigen Kindes in den Fokus rücken, und zwei grundsätzlich selektionskritische Argumente. Das erste verweist auf parentale Tugenden, welche mit der Auswahl zukünftiger Kinder unvereinbar wären. Bei dem zweiten handelt es sich um den Einwand der Diskriminierung von Menschen mit Behinderung. Das Ergebnis der Diskussion ist, dass es zukünftigen Eltern in den meisten Fällen freisteht, die Entscheidung über die Auswahl ihrer Kinder im Licht ihrer Ziele und Werte zu treffen. (shrink)

Durch Migrationsprozesse und zunehmenden Pluralismus ist in Deutschland das Thema „kulturelle Diversität“ in der Medizin aktueller denn je. In der medizinischen Fachliteratur und im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs wird vermehrt von interkulturellen Konflikten im Kontakt zwischen Arzt und Patient berichtet, was die Frage nach der Rolle von Interkultureller Kompetenz für die klinische Praxis aufwirft. Zunächst widmet sich der Beitrag kritisch den verschiedenen Auffassungen des Begriffs „Kultur“ im medizinischen Kontext, um anschließend eine Methode der interkulturellen Philosophie als eine Möglichkeit für eine kultursensitive Ethik (...) zu skizzieren. Anschließend wird aufgezeigt, welche Schwierigkeiten mit dem Begriff der Interkulturellen Kompetenz verbunden sind und weshalb die Autoren diesen trotzdem als unerlässlich für die Wahrnehmung potentieller Konfliktfelder als auch für den Umgang mit diesen erachten. Schließlich werden derzeitige Entwicklungen in der medizinischen Ausbildung sowie konkrete Beispiele für eine kultursensible Ethikberatung illustriert. Es zeigt sich, dass international zahlreiche Ausgestaltungen Interkultureller Kompetenz in Form von Leitfäden und konkreten Schulungsmodulen existieren, aber auch, dass es in Deutschland an konkreten Umsetzungen in der Breite mangelt und die Zusammenarbeit wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen sowie der betroffenen Institutionen derzeit noch ausbaufähig ist. (shrink)

In the recent literature on all things metaontological, discussion of a notorious Meinongian doctrine—the thesis that some objects have no kind of being at all—has been conspicuous by its absence. And this is despite the fact that this thesis is the central element of the noneist metaphysics of Richard Routley (1980) and Graham Priest (2005). In this paper, we therefore examine the metaontological foundations of noneism, with a view to seeing exactly how the noneist's approach to ontological inquiry differs from (...) the orthodox Quinean one. We proceed by arguing that the core anti-Quinean element in noneism has routinely been misidentified: rather than concerning Quine's thesis that to be is to be the value of a variable, the real difference is that the noneist rejects what we identify as Quine's “translate-and-deflate” methodology. In rejecting this aspect of Quinean orthodoxy, the noneist is in good company: many of those who think that questions of fundamentality should be the proper focus of ontological inquiry can be read as rejecting it too. Accordingly, we then examine the differences between the noneist's conception of ontology and that offered by the fundamentalist. We argue that these two anti-Quinean approaches differ in terms of their respective conceptions of the theoretical role associated with the notion of being. And the contrast that emerges between them is, in the end, an explanatory one. (shrink)

The development of an information society and information technologies does not result in positive consequences only. Individuals with criminal intent also find their niche. Information security includes the creation of the input, processing and output processes of protection. The objective of information security is to protect the system of values, to protect and ensure accuracy and integrity and to minimize losses that may be incurred if the information is modified or destroyed. In the development of an information society, the new (...) visible changes in the legislation for the classification of crimes–crimes against computers–altered the concept of electronic crime data and information system security concepts. This article presents a brief analysis on the concept of the change of crimes against security of electronic data and information systems, the legislation analysis, the crimes against security of electronic data systems and information dynamics and its relationship with business factors. (shrink)

Une recherche sur l’insertion adulte après un placement a été menée auprès de cent vingt-trois personnes dans le cadre d’un village d’enfants SOS. Sont présentés ici les résultats concernant les relations fraternelles pendant le placement et aujourd’hui. Si les liens avec la fratrie biologique restent privilégiés, la cohabitation a modifié les représentations du lien fraternel et a permis d’acquérir de nouvelles ressources relationnelles. L’écart d’âge entre fratries, les troubles du comportement et les fortes disparités éducatives initiales jouent un rôle déterminant (...) sur les relations. Ces résultats soulignent l’importance d’une évaluation préliminaire fine et pluridisciplinaire, explorant les caractéristiques individuelles de chaque enfant mais également la dynamique relationnelle de la fratrie. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDurch Migrationsprozesse und zunehmenden Pluralismus ist in Deutschland das Thema „kulturelle Diversität“ in der Medizin aktueller denn je. In der medizinischen Fachliteratur und im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs wird vermehrt von interkulturellen Konflikten im Kontakt zwischen Arzt und Patient berichtet, was die Frage nach der Rolle von Interkultureller Kompetenz für die klinische Praxis aufwirft. Zunächst widmet sich der Beitrag kritisch den verschiedenen Auffassungen des Begriffs „Kultur“ im medizinischen Kontext, um anschließend eine Methode der interkulturellen Philosophie als eine Möglichkeit für eine kultursensitive Ethik (...) zu skizzieren. Anschließend wird aufgezeigt, welche Schwierigkeiten mit dem Begriff der Interkulturellen Kompetenz verbunden sind und weshalb die Autoren diesen trotzdem als unerlässlich für die Wahrnehmung potentieller Konfliktfelder als auch für den Umgang mit diesen erachten. Schließlich werden derzeitige Entwicklungen in der medizinischen Ausbildung sowie konkrete Beispiele für eine kultursensible Ethikberatung illustriert. Es zeigt sich, dass international zahlreiche Ausgestaltungen Interkultureller Kompetenz in Form von Leitfäden und konkreten Schulungsmodulen existieren, aber auch, dass es in Deutschland an konkreten Umsetzungen in der Breite mangelt und die Zusammenarbeit wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen sowie der betroffenen Institutionen derzeit noch ausbaufähig ist. (shrink)

Following publication of the original article [1], the author reported that the values for LV1, LV2, LV3 and LV4 in row “Website section” of Table 2 should be corrected as follows.

An academic integrity policy usually specifies the university’s ethical principles and values, the forms of appropriate academic behaviour, the penalties for academic malpractice and the procedures for handling policy violations. However, the policy does not itself create academic integrity, but needs to be consistently and effectively communicated, implemented, and applied. This paper presents a case study investigating the extent to which students at Riga Technical University are informed about the university’s academic integrity policy. This quantitative research was performed by surveying (...) two groups of respondents: domestic students in the first year of their bachelor’s studies and the heads of the corresponding study programmes. The results revealed a low level of students’ awareness of the university policy on academic integrity and a lack of systematic institutional approach to promoting academic integrity. The study results also indicated that students with a higher awareness of the university policy on academic integrity were less tolerant towards violations and perceived academic integrity as an essential aspect for both the academic community and student life. These findings establish a foundation for a more extensive discussion of academic integrity issues in Latvia. They can also serve as impetus for similar studies in other Latvian universities, as well as research taking an international comparative perspective. (shrink)