A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

From the perspective of Catholic moral theology, one of the most important topics in view of the tense relationship between law, ethics and religion is natural law. The first part of the present text tries to defend this type of theory, which goes back to antiquity, against the most important objections and to determine the contours of a contemporary form of natural law thinking. In the second part of the text, their practical importance is indicated using the example of the (...) current debate about the moral evaluation of suicide and suicide assistance as well as dealing with the phenomenon of so-called transgenderness. (shrink)

Putative counterexamples to the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) are notoriously inconclusive. I establish ground rules for debate in this area, offer a new response to such counterexamples for friends of the PII, but then argue that no response is entirely satisfactory. Finally, I undermine some positive arguments for PII.

The doctrines of Parmenides of the one being and of the world of seeming were—as is well known—interpreted in different ways in the course of the history of philosophy, and even in twentieth-century historic-philosophical research, there is no agreement on the meaning of the two parts of the poem. Regarding the one being there are four attempts of explanation to be distinguished: The being is material; the being is immaterial; it is the esse copulae or must be seen as a (...) modal category; it is the entity of being. This latter interpretation, if we can call it an interpretation, is chiefly influenced by Heidegger. The Doxa-part, however, is seen as a more or less critical doxography; a second-best, hypothetic explanation of phenomena which is not truth but verisimilitude; a systematic unit together with the first part, the ἀλήθεια We do not have to discuss the differences between the outlined explanations separately; in the following, we shall show that some modern interpretations were already expressed in a similar way in antiquity. With this, we shall concentrate especially on the Neoplatonist Simplicius who in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics expounds the first part of the Parmenidean poem completely and, in addition, the most important doctrines of the second part. (shrink)

This article reports on the most important results of recent studies published in German that deal with Roman-dominated Judea/Palestine and contextualizes them within international research. Publications by Monika Bernett, Werner Eck, Linda-Marie Günther, Achim Lichtenberger and Julia Wilker offer an equally intense examination of the sources, but significantly differ in their perspectives. The question behind the examination asks whether this region has developed in a particular manner that has been shaped and created by Jewish religion and culture, or whether it (...) was a "normal" Roman province with a history shaped by the same circumstances and events as other parts of the Roman Empire. In the case of Judea, the findings of historical research are simultaneously at the center of contemporary legitimizing discourses. The discussion pleads for a cultural comparative historical investigation that critically questions the binary opposition of Jewish versus pagan. (shrink)

Der Begriff der,lebensbeendenden Handlungen' umfasst ein breites Spektrum von Praktiken, das von unstreitigen Tötungsdelikten bis hin zu verschiedenen Formen der medizinischen Therapiebegrenzung reicht. Die interdisziplinären Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes versuchen, die ethisch und rechtlich entscheidende Grenze zwischen den Handlungstypen des,Tötens' und des,Sterbenlassens' genauer zu rekonstruieren, um die Handlungssicherheit klinischer Akteure zu erhöhen.

Tod und Sterben gehören zu den existentiellen Grunderfahrungen des Menschseins, die seit jeher Gegenstand kultureller Deutung sind. Der erste Teil des Bandes nähert sich dem Thema aus der Perspektive der philosophischen und theologischen Anthropologie, wobei zunächst die philosophischen Grundmodelle des Leib-Seele-Problems und ihre variantenreiche Rezeption im Raum der drei abrahamitischen Religionen thematisiert werden. Auf dieser Grundlage sind dann im zweiten Teil des Bandes mit der Debatte um Hirntod und Suizidassistenz zwei aktuelle medizinethische Konfliktfelder zu thematisieren, in denen unterschiedliche Todesverständnisse virulent (...) werden. (shrink)

Mental health research and care in the twenty first century faces a series of conceptual and ethical challenges arising from unprecedented advances in the neurosciences, combined with radical cultural and organisational change. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry is aimed at all those responding to these challenges, from professionals in health and social care, managers, lawyers and policy makers; service users, informal carers and others in the voluntary sector; through to philosophers, neuroscientists and clinical researchers. Organised around a series (...) of case studies in five key topic areas - concepts of disorder, the philosophical history of psychopathology, philosophy of science, ethics and philosophical value theory, and philosophy of mind - the book provides a detailed introduction to the field and a framework for study and skill development. Each case study is supported by selected readings from both philosophy and mental health, thinking skills exercises, self-test questions, key learning points and detailed guides to further reading. There is an introduction for philosophers to classification and descriptive psychopathology, and for practitioners to philosophical methods (including logic). The philosophical topics covered include philosophical methods (analytic and Continental); phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, logical empiricism and its successors; idealism and realism; reasons and causes; and modern theories of mind and brain, free will and personal identity. Topics from mental health include psychiatry and 'anti-psychiatry'; Jaspers' psychopathology and the new neurosciences; the future of psychiatric classifications; strengths-based approaches, recovery practice, social inclusion and diversity; and key topics in psychopathology, such as delusion, autism, disorders of volition, thought insertion and other experiences in schizophrenia. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry aims to secure the skills-base of the discipline by bringing philosophers closer to the realities of practice in mental health, and mental health practitioners closer to the resources of philosophy as a partner to the sciences in responding to the challenges of twenty-first century mental health and social care. (shrink)

This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.

Die Quaestionen 84-88 enthalten zentrale Partien der thomistischen Erkenntnislehre. Hintergrund ist die mittelalterliche Kontroverse um die Einheit des Intellekts. Unveränderter Print-on-Demand-Nachdruck des durchges. Nachdr. von 1986.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Philosophy has much to offer psychiatry, not least regarding ethical issues, but also issues regarding the mind, identity, values, and volition. This has become only more important as we have witnessed the growth and power of the pharmaceutical industry, accompanied by developments in the neurosciences. However, too few practising psychiatrists are familiar with the literature in this area. -/- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry offers the most comprehensive reference resource for this area ever published. It assembles challenging and (...) insightful contributions from key philosophers and others to the interactive fields of philosophy and psychiatry. Each contributions is original, stimulating, thorough, and clearly and engagingly written - with no potentially significant philosophical stone left unturned. Broad in scope, the book includes coverage of several areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, science, and ethics. For philosophers and psychiatrists, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a landmark publication in the field - one that will be of value to both students and researchers in this rapidly growing area. (shrink)

Worin unterscheidet sich eine idealistische Betrachtung der Natur von der uns gewohnten naturwissenschaftlichen 'Vermessung' derselben. Die Studie versucht vor allem diese Frage zu beantworten. Dabei greift der Autor auf Hegels programmatische Einleitung zu seiner Naturphilosophie zurück. Hegels objektiv-idealistischem Ansatz zufolge ist die Natur nicht bloß tote Materie, sondern durchdrungen von ideellen Strukturen. Dies klingt für moderne Ohren sicher erst einmal nach versteinerter Metaphysik. An dieser Stelle setzt die Untersuchung ein. Sie versucht zu zeigen, daß nicht nur die idealistische Naturphilosophie den (...) Ergebnissen der Naturwissenschaft keineswegs widerspricht, sondern sie macht auch plausibel, daß diese aus einer nach Begründung fragenden philosophischen Sichtweise dem naturwissenschaftlichen Denken weit überlegen ist. Fragen wie 'Warum gibt es eine Natur?', 'Was ist die Natur überhaupt?', 'Warum ist die Natur gesetzmäßig?' und 'Was sind Naturgesetze' können hier sinnvoll bearbeitet werden. Der Autor, Marco Bormann M.A., studiert, lehrt und arbeitet im Fachbereich Philosophie an der Rheinisch Westfälischen Technischen Hochschule Aachen. (shrink)

In this book a distinguished group of environmental experts argues that in order to solve global environmental problems, we must view them in a broad interdisciplinary perspective that recognizes the relations—the interconnected circle—among ecology, economics, and ethics. Currently the circle is broken, they say, because environmental policy is decided on short-term estimations of material that take little account of the economic or moral burdens that will be borne by future generations if we deplete our resources now. We must, assert the (...) authors, have a better knowledge of the science underlying our environmental problems, we must understand their causes and consequences in relation to our economic and political systems, and we must recognize that an effective response will require a shift in a technologically oriented society’s ethical attitude toward the natural environment. The authors address a wide range of concerns from global atmospheric degradation and spreading toxification of the environment to loss of forests and massive species extinctions. They offer to general readers, students, and professionals practical assessments and remedies for many of these problems. They suggest, for example, mechanisms that provide economic incentives for conservation; engineering and technical adaptations to use resources more effectively and dispose of waste products; better economic accounting procedures for measuring the real environmental costs of our depletion of natural resources; and a remodeled education system that better prepares us to see each individual’s responsibility to the environment. (shrink)

Obwohl der Gewissenbegriff im Bewusstsein der meisten Medizinethiker durch den Strukturwandel im Gesundheitswesen in den letzten Jahrzehnten erheblich an Bedeutung verloren hat, bahnt sich im Zuge der fortschreitenden Pluralisierung des Wertempfindens in modernen Gesellschaften (nicht zuletzt durch das Wiedererstarken religi s-weltanschaulicher Positionen) eine erneute Diskussion um den Gewissensvorbehalt bei der Erbringung medizinischer Leistungen an. Der vorliegende Band n hert sich der Gewissenthematik bewusst aus interdisziplin rer Perspektive, um die verschiedenen Dimensionen einer Gewissenentscheidung auszuleuchten und die Folgen der fortschreitenden Verrechtlichung und (...) konomisierung f r die Gewissensfreiheit der verschiedenen im Gesundheitswesen t tigen Berufsgruppen kritisch zu reflektieren. (shrink)

Diese zweisprachige Ausgabe bietet in übersichtlicher Präsentation die zentralen Texte des Cusaners, versehen mit einer Einleitung, die gründlich in das Gesamtwerk einführt. Sie basiert auf den in der PhB erschienenen Studienausgaben, die der historisch-kritischen Ausgabe der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften folgen. Die Übersetzungen stammen von namhaften Cusanusforschern, Anmerkungen, Literaturverzeichnisse und Indices erschließen die Texte. Band 1: Einleitung. De docta ignorantia / Die belehrte Unwissenheit Band 2: De coniecturis / Mutmaßungen · Idiota de sapientia / Der Laie über die Weisheit · (...) Idiota de mente / Der Laie über den Geist Band 3: Trialogus de possest / Dreiergespräch über das Können-Ist · De beryllo / Über den Beryll · Tu quis es / Über den Ursprung · De ludo globi / Gespräch über das Globusspiel Band 4: De venatione sapientiae / Die Jagd nach Weisheit · Compendium / Kompendium · De apice theoriae / Die höchste Stufe der Betrachtung "In der Geschichte der Philosophie nimmt das Werk des Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464), das zugleich die letzte eigenwüchsige Synthese mittelalterlicher Weisheit und die gedankliche Grundlegung der großen Systeme der beginnenden Renaissance der neueren Zeit darstellt, eine epochemachende Stellung ein. Die Kühnheit seiner Fragestellungen, deren Nachwirkung noch im Denken eines Descartes, Spinoza und Leibniz und in manchen der tiefsten Ansätze des deutschen Idealismus spürbar ist, wird das philosophische Denken der Gegenwart dazu führen, sich in zunehmendem Maße mit dem Gedankengebäude des Cusanus zu beschäftigen." Raymond Klibansky. (shrink)