Although clinical ethicists are becoming more prevalent in healthcare settings, their required training and education have not been clearly delineated. Most agree that training and education are important, but their nature and delivery remain topics of debate. One option is through completion of a clinical ethics fellowship. In this paper, the first four fellows to complete a newly developed fellowship program discuss their experiences. They describe the goals, structure, participants and activities of the fellowship. They identify key elements for succeeding (...) as a clinical ethicist and sustaining a clinical ethics program. They critically reflect upon the challenges faced in the program. The one-year fellowship provided real-time clinical opportunities that helped them to develop the necessary knowledge and skills, gain insight into the role and scope of practice of clinical ethicists and hone valuable character traits. The fellowship enabled each of the fellows to assume confidently and competently a position as a clinical ethicist upon completion. (shrink)

Background Planning for the next pandemic influenza outbreak is underway in hospitals across the world. The global SARS experience has taught us that ethical frameworks to guide decision-making may help to reduce collateral damage and increase trust and solidarity within and between health care organisations. Good pandemic planning requires reflection on values because science alone cannot tell us how to prepare for a public health crisis. Discussion In this paper, we present an ethical framework for pandemic influenza planning. The ethical (...) framework was developed with expertise from clinical, organisational and public health ethics and validated through a stakeholder engagement process. The ethical framework includes both substantive and procedural elements for ethical pandemic influenza planning. The incorporation of ethics into pandemic planning can be helped by senior hospital administrators sponsoring its use, by having stakeholders vet the framework, and by designing or identifying decision review processes. We discuss the merits and limits of an applied ethical framework for hospital decision-making, as well as the robustness of the framework. Summary The need for reflection on the ethical issues raised by the spectre of a pandemic influenza outbreak is great. Our efforts to address the normative aspects of pandemic planning in hospitals have generated interest from other hospitals and from the governmental sector. The framework will require re-evaluation and refinement and we hope that this paper will generate feedback on how to make it even more robust. (shrink)

The disappearance of Catharine Macaulay’s eighteenth-century defense of the doctrines that justified the seventeeth-century republican parliament, has served to obscure an important strand of enlightenment faith, that was active in the lead up to the American and French Revolutions, and that also played a significant role in the history of feminism. This faith was made up of two intertwined strands, ‘Christian eudaimonism’ and ‘rational altruism’. Dominant contemporary accounts of the origins of republicanism and democratic theory during the eighteenth-century have excluded (...) serious consideration of Macaulay’s writing. Bringing her works into the mix, both poses difficulties for certain genealogies of the political thought of the period, and tends to favour a once popular view, which emphasized the centrality of Locke. Nevertheless, the Locke whose influence is found in Macaulay’s writing is not the possessive individualist, or rational egoist, that he and other liberals have been represented as being, but rather a rational altruist, whose political philosophy is grounded in natural law and harks back to Milton. This same philosophy provides the philosophical foundations for Wollstonecraft’s two most significant political texts, the Vindication of the Rights of Men and Vindcation of the Rights of Woman. (shrink)

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in (...) The Great Transformation , Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal “Axial Age” can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times. Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action. In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change. (shrink)

This essay considers and rejects both the irrationalist and the supra-rationalist interpretations of Kierkegaard, arguing that a new category---Kierkegaard as “anti-rationalist”---is needed. The irrationalist reading overemphasizes the subjectivism of Kierkegaard’s thought, while the suprarationalist reading underemphasizes the degree of tension between human reason (as corrupted by the will’s desire to be autonomous and self-sustaining) and Christian faith. An anti-rationalist reading, I argue, is both faithful to Kierkegaard’s metaphysical and alethiological realism, on the one hand, and his emphasis on the continuing (...) opposition between reason and faith, on the other, as manifested in the ongoing possibility of offense (reason’s rejection of the Christian message) in the life of the Christian. (shrink)

This paper explores the power of womanist ethics to illuminate the Confederate monuments debate. First, I draw on Emilie Townes’s analysis of the “cultural production of evil” to construe Confederate monuments as products of the “fantastic hegemonic imagination” that render visible for whites the invisibility of “whiteness.” Second, I argue that Angela Sims’s work on lynching provides a vivid example of how “countermemory” functions as an antidote to the fantastic hegemonic imagination. Finally, I argue that Delores Williams’s re-evaluation of the (...) cross as a sacred symbol enables a reading of Confederate monuments as realist symbols of violence that require displacement from the center to the periphery of national sacred space. I conclude that although the debate on Confederate monuments is important, womanist analysis warns against an overly-narrow focus on this issue, lest we neglect the already obscured gendered, classist, homophobic, and xenophobic dimensions of structural injustice that the monuments represent. (shrink)

This study has two agendas: to interrogate popular notions of religion by reading it, out of Derrida and Certeau, as a signifier for a situated historical scene; and to show the existential philosophy of Beauvoir as a performance of that scene. In particular, it shows how the structure of relationships she presents in her ethics clearly reproduces the rhythms of the scene of religion. One of the implications of this reproduction is that existential philosophy can only emerge in the context (...) of religion, and is necessarily an iteration of religion. The other implication is that we might reassess how we code the category ‘religion’ in our public and private discourse, with all the disruption that such a different coding might entail. (shrink)

Religious freedom is one of the most debated and controversial human rights in contemporary public discourse. At once a universally held human right and a flash point in the political sphere, religious freedom has resisted scholarly efforts to define its parameters. Taliaferro explores a different way of examining the tensions between the aims of religion and the needs of political communities, arguing that religious freedom is a uniquely difficult human right to uphold because it rests on two competing conceptions, human (...) and divine. Drawing on classical natural law, Taliaferro expounds a new, practical theory of religious freedom for the modern world. By examining conceptions of law such as Sophocles' Antigone, Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, Ibn Rushd's Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric, and Tertullian's writings, The Possibility of Religious Freedom explains how expanding our notion of law to incorporate such theories can mediate conflicts of human and divine law and provide a solid foundation for religious liberty in modernity's pluralism. (shrink)

An exploration of everything Kant's philosophy can teach us about being the best people we can be, from using our human reasoning to its fullest potential to being affably drunk at dinner parties. Immanuel Kant is well known as one of the towering figures of Western philosophical history, but he is less well known for his savvy advice about hosting dinner parties. This philosophical genius was a man of many interests and talents: his famously formal and abstract ethical system is (...) only part of his story. But Kant not only made a profound impact on how people think about big questions like how to treat one another -- he also offered wise insights on things people confront in everyday life: things like gossip, friendship, manners, self-respect, cheerfulness, gratitude, mockery, contempt, and yes, dinner parties. In this book, philosopher Karen Stohr shows how Kant's whole ethical picture fits together. It's a picture that is as relevant and useful now as it was in the 18th century--and maybe even more so. A Kantian way of living means using reason to guide your choices so that your life reflects your true nature as a free, rational being. This nature is one we share with others; Kantianism emphasizes the fundamental dignity and equality of each person. It presents an ideal for how we should live together without downplaying the challenges we face in the actual world. Though realistic about human weaknesses, Kant remained optimistic about our capacities and possibilities. He had great faith in the ability of human reason to point us in the direction of moral progress and to get us there. Each of us has the power within us to know and choose the right path--we just have to be willing to make that choice, and to discover how worthwhile life can be in the process. (shrink)

_Repair of the Soul_ examines transformation from the perspective of Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis, addressing the question of how one achieves self-understanding that leads not only to insight but also to meaningful change. In this beautifully written and thought-provoking book, Karen Starr draws upon a contemporary relational approach to psychoanalysis to explore the spiritual dimension of psychic change within the context of the psychoanalytic relationship. Influenced by the work of Lewis Aron, Steven Mitchell and other relational theorists, and drawing (...) upon contemporary scholarship in the field of Jewish studies, Starr brings the ideas of the Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical tradition, into dialogue with modern psychoanalytic thought. _Repair of the Soul_ provides a scholarly integration of several kabbalistic and psychoanalytic themes relating to transformation, including faith, surrender, authenticity, and mutuality, as well as a unique exploration of the relationship of the individual to the universal. Starr uses the Kabbalah’s metaphors as a vivid framework with which to illuminate the experience of transformation in psychoanalytic process, and to explore the evolving view of the psychoanalytic relationship as one in which both parties - the analyst as well as the patient - are transformed. (shrink)

Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the (...) problem of the “evil” child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies. (shrink)

The novel The Brothers Karamazov shows the spiritual rebirth of man and society. At first the world of the town Skotoprigon'evsk is depicted as heathen and even demonic, where everyone is in search of earthly justice, forgetting about love and losing a connection to God; here the theme of orphanhood is dominant. The second half of the novel is dominated by the image of the Holy Trinity, the symbol of mutual love and unity. The human world, according to Dostoevskij, cannot (...) be divided into adults and children, the guilty and the innocent, insofar as all can freely participate in the redemption of humanity's sin (like Christ, the paragon of innocence). If all people are God's children, death does not have power over them. Upon completing his final novel Dostoevkskij wrote: "my Hosanna has passed through a big crucible of doubt." "The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoevskij's Hosanna. (shrink)

Despite its importance for early analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege's account of existence statements, according to which they classify concepts, has been thought to succumb to a number of well-worn criticisms. This article does two things. First, it argues that, by remaining faithful to the letter of Frege's claim that concepts are functions, the Fregean account can be saved from many of the standard criticisms. Second, it examines the problem that Frege's account fails to generalize to cases which involve definite descriptions (...) and proper names. To deal with this the proffered analysis deviates from the letter of Frege's views, while remaining within its spirit. It proposes, in opposition to Frege, that expressions which grammatically look like singular terms should not always be read as referring to objects, but are sometimes best analysed as indicating functions. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of contents -- Contributors -- Introduction -- 1 From place to planet: The role of the language arts in reading environmental identities from the UK to New Zealand -- From here to there -- Cockney translation -- Environmental identities -- Environmental knowledge -- Conclusion: moving from place to planet -- Notes -- References -- 2 Connecting community through film in ITE English -- Introduction -- The place of English (...) in the contemporary policy context -- Place in English: doing things differently -- The film project -- The films -- 'Our Place': the Kingsville School -- 'This is Our Place': High Bridge -- 'This is My Place': Silver Hill -- Discussion -- The place of school -- The place of the subject -- The place of pupils -- Connecting community through film: the possibilities of place -- Note -- References -- 3 Muslim youth identities through devotional songs and poetry in South Yorkshire communities -- Introduction 1: creative language study as etiolation -- Introduction 2: faith-based complementary schooling and language heritage -- Introduction 3: Islamophobia and youth identity -- Poetry and 'song' in the Islamic world and among Muslim youth in the UK -- This study -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 4 Creative spaces for developing independent writing with English teachers -- Why do we need to develop teachers as creative writers? -- The role and influence of the National Writing Project -- The writing identities of trainee teachers -- Writing in creative spaces -- Some conclusions: writing teachers in creative spaces -- Writing from the Georgian House -- Writing from Brandon Hill -- Notes -- References -- 5 Durham city as an educational resource in initial teacher education for English: Seeing the city with new eyes -- Context -- The activity -- Implications. (shrink)

This article reconceptualises school teachers and pupils respectively as ‘pedagogical bricoleurs’ and ‘bricolage researchers’ who utilise a multiplicity of theories, concepts, methodologies and pedagogies in teaching and/or researching. This reconceptualisation is based on a coalescence of generic curricular and pedagogical principles promoting dialogic, critical and enquiry-based learning. Innovative proposals for reconceptualising the aims, contents and methods of multi-faith Religious Education in English state-maintained schools without a religious affiliation are described, so as to provide an instance of and occasion for the (...) implications of these theories and concepts of learning. With the aim of initiating pupils into the communities of academic enquiry concerned with theology and religious studies, the ‘RE-searchers approach’ to multi-faith Religious Education in primary schools (5–11 year olds) is cited as a highly innovative means of converting these curricular and pedagogical principles and proposals into practical classroom procedures. These procedures are characterised by multi-, inter- and supra-disciplinarity; notions of eclecticism, emergence, flexibility and plurality; and theoretical and conceptual complexity, contestation and context-dependence. (shrink)

Karen Kilby. God, evil and the limits of theology.

The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong’s self-narrative, shows the limitations of theological or religious reflections within a specific religious community. Leaving the Sisters of Charity for a tumultuous academic life, historian of religion Karen Armstrong lives a wrenching ontological dislocation that originates in her undiagnosed epilepsy and negative body experiences. Using semiotician Algirdas Greimas’s ‘Semiotic Square’ as an interpretive strategy, the unresolved tensions and contradictions exposed in the deep narrative structure of this non-traditional conversion memoir are resolved by ‘compassion’ (...) at the manifest level. Armstrong’s experiences, both in and out of the convent, will inform her academic study and lead her to compassionate solidarity with the marginalized. Armstrong’s memoir reveals various internal and external forces that shape an individual woman’s way of being in the world, and that inform her investigation of multiple faith practices and beliefs. In a time of mass refugee migration and ‘homelessness’, the one woman, the one ‘other’, matters in how one thinks about the body and about God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom ed. by Michael L. Budde and Karen ScottElizabeth Sweeny BlockWitness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom Edited by Michael L. Budde and Karen Scott Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 238 pp. $22.00In Michael L. Budde’s introduction to this volume, he asserts its twofold purpose: to identify criteria for distinguishing (...) authentic Christian martyrdom from inauthentic and to return martyrdom to a more central place in Christian life. This collection of essays—some of which were presented as part of a lecture series at DePaul University during the 2006–7 academic year—aspires to reconsider and redefine martyrdom in order to remove both the “freak-show element” and the “heroic exceptionality” associated with martyrdom in modern culture (viii). The goal of the volume, which is part of the Eerdmans Ekklesia Series, is to resituate martyrdom within the everyday life of the church, and the majority of the essays argue for the ongoing significance of a revised martyrdom for this distinctive community. These eleven essays are as much about martyrs themselves as they are about how martyrdom is perceived, received, and remembered. The interdisciplinary volume [End Page 211] is successful in encouraging a broader understanding of martyrdom, one that may not necessarily include death, and in drawing attention to the ongoing need for memorializing Christian martyrs to inspire commitment and transformation.The volume is divided into four parts representing both chronological and substantive distinctions. Part 1, “Martyrdom as the Church’s Witness,” introduces the problem of isolating the requirements of martyrdom and defining who fits into this category, a challenge addressed throughout the volume. Part 2, “Martyrdom Builds the Church,” discusses positive elements of martyrdom, especially with respect to the value of women’s bodies, drawing on both the early female martyrs in general and Joan of Arc in particular. Part 3, “Martyrdom Destroys the Church,” recounts some of the most difficult aspects of modern martyrdom, calling for a more accurate history and recognition of the emergence of a new kind of martyrdom in which one’s loyalty is to country, not faith. Part 4, “Martyrdom and the Future Church,” calls attention to the need to continue celebrating the memory of martyrs and describes the contemporary Christian martyr as a peacemaker not seeking martyrdom in the traditional sense of the word.What stands out as a theme across a number of the essays, and what I judge to be a valuable contribution to Christian ethics, is an emphasis on the way martyrs live(d), suggesting that what can and should be emulated by Christians today is a commitment to action on behalf of conversion and transformation. Tripp York’s essay rightly argues that martyrdom need not be viewed as merely reactionary, as a way of life in opposition to something, but as transformative and “for the sake of the world” (37). Michael Budde makes a similar assertion that martyrdom is better defined as deep loyalty than as treason, thereby suggesting that this kind of loyalty to Christ ought not to be limited to the special calling of a few but seen as the commitment of all Christians. Stephen Fowl’s essay conveys the meaning of the title of this volume, identifying martyrdom as part of the larger practice of “believers’ witness of the body to God’s drama of salvation” (44). He argues that in life or death, one can magnify Christ, and one’s bodily actions and responses can reflect one’s character and commitments. Emmanuel Katongole provides powerful recognition of the ways in which Christian martyrs “keep the church from sleeping” (193) and “embody the mundane gestures and practice of peaceableness in their everyday living” (199). This volume succeeds in shifting the focus from martyrdom in the traditional sense—being put to death because of one’s faith—to the ways Christians today remember, respond to, and emulate the lives and actions of martyrs. [End Page 212]Elizabeth Sweeny BlockUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The author examines the fanatical type of mentality in its secular and religious forms based on the analysis of the works of Gabriel Marcel and Karen Armstrong. The origins of the phenomenon of fanaticism are found in the basic foundations of Modern culture as the time of the replacement of myth by logos (Armstrong) and the domination of the abstract spirit (Marcel). The understanding of the foundations of fanaticism as a broad phenomenon undertaken by the French philosopher and the (...) British religious scholar is associated with interpretations of the concept of the transcendent. Although the socio-spiritual situation in which Marcel and Armstrong work is different, their conclusions generally coincide and become especially relevant today, when the world is on the verge of a new world war. The author briefly formulates definitions of some basic categories of G. Marcel's philosophy - "philosophical experience", "first reflection", "second reflection", "fanaticized consciousness", "disparity", "abstraction", "abstract spirit", "collective violence", "property", "being", "ideologue", "intersubjectivity", "identity", etc. Gabriel Marcel's reflection on the fundamental difference between a true believer and a religious fanatic is discussed, despite the fact that both are spoken on behalf of absolute values. The will to refuse to "question" the object of one's faith presupposes immunity to the arguments of critical thinking, which by definition would be intended to act as a kind of antidote to fanaticism as a special type of radical consciousness. The basis of fanaticism turns out to be insensitivity to what is the fanatic's idefix, while modern fanatics, in contrast to the ordinary idea of them, are often well-educated people. This is a decentered consciousness dominated by "carnal thought". Such an idea may be called the idea of equality or justice, but it is not actually a thought born from experience and sympathy for people. (shrink)

In a now classic paper, Karen Carr argues that Kierkegaard is a religious “anti-rationalist”: He holds that reason and religious truth exist in necessary tension with one another. Carr maintains that this antagonism is not a matter of the logical incoherence of Christianity, but rather the fact that genuine submission to Christ precludes approaching him through demonstration. In this essay, we argue that while Kierkegaard is in fact an anti-rationalist, the literature has failed to appreciate the full strength of (...) his position. It is not just that reason and obedience are in tension; rather, Kierkegaard holds the stronger view that reason is actively offended by Christianity’s primary claims. Not only is reason incapable of generating any positive evidence for the truth of Christianity, more radically, it provides evidence against it. In order to make this case, we offer a close reading of Practice in Christianity, developing a typology of Kierkegaard’s account of Christ’s “offense.” Finally, having motivated Kierkegaard’s strong anti-rationalism, we consider why, on his account, anyone would want to be a Christian. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Part I -- Doctors -- Dr. Joseph Messer -- Dr. Sharon Sandell -- ER -- Dr. John Barrett -- Marc and Noreen Levison, a paramedic and a nurse -- Lloyd (Pete) Haywood, a former gangbanger -- Claire Hellstern, a nurse -- Ed Reardon, a paramedic -- Law and Order -- Robert Soreghan, a homicide detective -- Delbert Lee Tibbs, a former death-row inmate -- War -- Dr. Frank Raila -- Haskell Wexler, a cinematographer -- Tammy Snider, (...) a Hiroshima survivor (hibakusha) -- Mothers and Sons -- V.I.M. (Victor Israel Marquez), a Vietnam vet -- Angelina Rossi, his mother -- Guadalupe Reyes, a mother -- God's Shepherds -- Rev. Willie T. Barrow -- Father Leonard Dubi -- Rabbi Robert Marx -- Pastor Tom Kok -- Rev. Ed Townley -- The Stranger -- Rick Rundle, a city sanitation worker -- Part II -- Seeing Things -- Randy Buescher, an associate architect -- Chaz Ebert, a lawyer -- Antoinette Korotko-Hatch, a church worker -- Karen Thompson, a student -- Dimitri Mihalas, an astronomer and physicist -- A View from the Bridge -- Hank Oettinger, a retired printer -- Ira Glass, a radio journalist -- Kid Pharaoh, a retired "collector" -- Quinn Brisben, a retired teacher -- Kurt Vonnegut, a writer -- The Boomer -- Bruce Bendinger, an advertising executive and writer -- Part III -- Fathers and Sons -- Doc Watson, a folksinger -- Vernon Jarrett, a journalist -- Country Women -- Peggy Terry, a retired mountain woman -- Bessie Jones, a Georgia Sea Island Singer (1972) -- Rosalie Sorrels, a traveling folksinger -- The Plague I -- Tico Valle, a young man -- Lori Cannon, "curator" of the Open Hand Society -- Brian Matthews, an ex-bartender, writer for a gay weekly -- Jewell Jenkins, a hospital aide -- Justin Hayford, a journalist, musician -- Matta Kelly, a case manager -- The Old Guy -- Jim Hapgood -- The Plague II -- Nancy Lanoue -- Out There -- Dr. Gary Slutkin -- Day of the Dead -- Carlos Cortez, a painter and poet -- Vine Deloria, a writer and teacher -- Helen Sclair, a cemetery familiar -- The Other Son -- Steve Young, a father -- Maurine Young, a mother -- The Job -- William Herdegen, an undertaker -- Rory Moina, a hospice nurse -- The End and the Beginning -- Mamie Mobley, a mother -- Dr. Marvin Jackson, a son -- Epilogue -- Kathy Fagan and Linda Gagnon, mothers. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the role of affective feedback loops in creating and sustaining trust and distrust. Some emotions, such as fear and contempt, drive out trust; others, such as esteem and empathy, drive out distrust. The mechanism here is causal, but not merely causal: affective looping works through changing how the agent interprets the words, deeds, and motives of the other, thus making trust or distrust appear justified. Looping influences not only dyadic trust, but also climates, and networks (...) of trust and distrust. Not all trust-entrenching looping is virtuous, nor all distrust-entrenching looping vicious, but distrust looping is a powerful way to justify xenophobic public policy. I explore options for remedy. (shrink)

Even though researchers regularly use neutral affect induction procedures as a control condition in their work, there is little consensus on what is neutral affect. This article reviews five approaches that researchers have used to operationalize neutral AIPs: to produce a minimal affective state, in-the-middle state, deactivated state, typical state, or indifferent state. For each view, the article delineates the theoretical basis for the neutral AIP, how to assess it, and provides recommendations for when and how to use it. The (...) goal of the article is to encourage researchers to state their theoretical assumptions about neutral affect, to validate those assumptions, and to make appropriate conclusions based on them. (shrink)

An influential heuristic for thinking about climate adaptation asserts that “natural” adaptation strategies are the best ones. This heuristic has been roundly criticized but is difficult to dislodge in the absence of an alternative. We introduce a new heuristic that assesses adaptation strategies by looking at their maturity, power, and commitment. Maturity is the extent to which we understand an adaptation strategy’s effects. Power is the size of the effect an adaptation strategy will have. Commitment is the degree to which (...) an adaptation strategy is difficult to test or reverse. (shrink)

Definition of the problem Death and suicide wishes of older people represent a relevant and morally challenging issue for nurses. Especially in the context of wishes for assisted suicide, the risk for the development of moral uncertainty or even moral distress grows. As suicide rates and requests for assisted suicide are particularly high among people 65 years of age or older, the topic proves to be particularly relevant to the settings of long-term community and nursing home care. At the same (...) time, this fact underlines the importance of suicide prevention, which has recently been strengthened by the federal government, with the intention of launching a national strategy and a corresponding law. Arguments According to our hypothesis, the situational confrontation of nursing professionals with death and suicide wishes may cause an ethical field of tension between an unprejudiced, open, empathetic and respectful acceptance of death and suicide wishes on the one hand and the goal of suicide prevention on the other. The legal uncertainties in regards to the practice of assisted suicide, which currently prevails in practice, may intensify this risk. International studies point to the potential of moral distress of nurses when confronted with death and suicide wishes. Conclusion These findings and the reference to the current legal uncertainties and framework conditions in the national (German) context underpin the importance of the professional discussion about the topic, the need to sensitise (future) nursing professionals to potential ethical tensions and to enable them to deal with the accompanying moral uncertainty in a professional and competent manner. (shrink)

Recent defenses of shaming as an effective tool for identifying bad practice and provoking social change appear compatible with feminism. I complicate this picture by examining two instances of online feminist shaming that resulted in shame backlashes. Shaming requires the assertion of social and epistemic authority on behalf of a larger community, and is dependent upon an audience that will be receptive to the shaming testimony. In cases where marginally situated knowers attempt to “shame up,” it presents challenges for feminist (...) uses. (shrink)

Empirical work on and common observation of the emotions tells us that our emotions sometimes key us to the presence of real and important reason-giving considerations without necessarily presenting that information to us in a way susceptible of conscious articulation and, sometimes, even despite our consciously held and internally justified judgment that the situation contains no such reasons. In this paper, I want to explore the implications of the fact that emotions show varying degrees of integration with our conscious agency—from (...) none at all to quite substantial—for our understanding of our rationality, and in particular for the traditional assumption that weakness of the will is necessarily irrational. (shrink)

The concept of phronesis is venerable and is experiencing a resurgence in contemporary discourses on professional life. Aristotle’s notion of phronesis involves reasoning and action based on ethical ideals oriented towards the human good. For Aristotle, humans possess the desire to do what is best for human flourishing, and to do so according to the application of virtues. Within health care, the pervasiveness of economic agendas, technological approaches and managerialism create conditions in which human relationships and moral reasoning are becoming (...) increasingly de‐valued. This creates a tension for nurses, and nursing leaders, as the desire to do what is morally right is often in conflict with contextual demands. In this paper, Aristotle’s writing on phronesis is examined with a focus on his classic conceptions of eudaimonia, the virtues, deliberation, judgement, and praxis. Building on Aristotle’s work, a number of contemporary views are explored with a focus on what various conceptualizations offer for the discipline of nursing. These expanded conceptions of phronesis include attention to: embodiment in practice; open‐mindedness including the capacity to stay curious and open to recognizing what we do not know; perceptiveness as a disposition towards insight and aesthetic understanding; and reflexivity as an ongoing process of interrogation and inquiry into ourselves and our actions. Drawing on these concepts, we discuss the affordances of phronesis as a morally informed guiding force to attend to modern‐day challenges in nursing practice and nursing leadership. (shrink)

This paper surveys recent work on moral expertise. Much of that work defends an asymmetry thesis according to which the cognitive deference to expertise that characterizes other areas of inquiry is out of place in morality. There are two reasons why you might think asymmetry holds. The problem might lie in the existence of expertise or in deferring to it. We argue that both types of arguments for asymmetry fail. They appear to be stronger than they are because of their (...) focus on moral expertise regarding all-in judgments about rightness. We reject this emphasis on all-in judgment in favor of an account of moral expertise as typically multi-stranded and domain limited. This account of moral expertise is better able to address the problem of how to identify those who have expertise. It also offers a more nuanced picture of the contrast between accepting a moral claim on one's own and accepting it on testimony. (shrink)

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.—Benito Mussolini. The whole [school] system should be blown up … I feel like a prophet toda...

This paper explores and reflects upon the literature and several mini case studies to recommend a change of focus for the linking management and development of community participants and community organisations. This change of focus looks at complexity and patterns that arise from the multitude of social interactions; the support and development of individuals and the effect this can have on an organisation’s wellbeing; and the effect a community organisation can have on that of the individual. To gain insight into (...) wellbeing, people need to be aware of their mind, body and energy and how they affect others. There is evidence that terminally ill people who have found new beliefs have experienced a spontaneous remission of disease. Humanity evolves in the same way as we control our destiny. We can learn to love, respect, trust, and commit to each other and work in harmony, or we can foster disharmony resulting in failure and negative feelings. As the economy changes, community organisations are under threat of extinction. Just as species and humanity evolve, we suggest that community organisations need to evolve to ensure wellbeing. (shrink)

During the eighteenth century, elite women participated in the philosophical, scientific, and political controversies that resulted in the overthrow of monarchy, the reconceptualisation of marriage, and the emergence of modern, democratic institutions. In this comprehensive study, Karen Green outlines and discusses the ideas and arguments of these women, exploring the development of their distinctive and contrasting political positions, and their engagement with the works of political thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville and Rousseau. Her exploration ranges across Europe from (...) England through France, Italy, Germany and Russia, and discusses thinkers including Mary Astell, Emilie Du Châtelet, Luise Kulmus-Gottsched and Elisabetta Caminer Turra. This study demonstrates the depth of women's contributions to eighteenth-century political debates, recovering their historical significance and deepening our understanding of this period in intellectual history. It will provide an essential resource for readers in political philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and women's studies. (shrink)