In the case of an intellectually disabled patient, the attending physician was restricted from writing a Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order. Although the rationale for this restriction was to protect the patient from an inappropriate quality of life judgment, it resulted in a worse death than the patient would have experienced had he not been disabled. Such restrictions that are intended to protect intellectually disabled patients may violate their right to equal treatment and to a dignified death.

Albrecht Dürers Meisterstich Hieronymus im Gehäus (B 60) darf als allgemein bekannt vorausgesetzt werden. Die Forschung hat vor allem ikonographische Details im Zusammenhang des Gelehrtenbildes diskutiert, denn zu selbstverständlich nahm man das Bildthema (,,Stubengelehrter“, Lieblingsheiliger der Humanisten”) hin. Aber das Hauptthema ist ein völlig anderes: man findet es formuliert von Dürers Freund Lazarus Spengler , der im Jahr des Meisterstichs 1514 seine Übersetzung des (Ps.-)Eusebius-Briefes in Nürnberg veröffentlichte. Neben dieser Übersetzung gewinnt der Kupferstich eine metaphysische Dimension, die freilich erst in (...) den Blick rückt, wenn man ihn auf die Philosophie des Pico della Mirandola und die Formel aus der Oratio (1487) vom plastes&fictor sui ipsius” bezieht. (shrink)

Meine Untersuchung geht der Frage nach: Was verbindet philosophisch in der Sache die Oratio des Pico della Mirandola mit dem Kupferstich von Albrecht Dürer. Dabei leitet mich die Annahme, dass Pico und Dürer ihre Gemeinsamkeit hinter Decknamen und Chiffren verstecken. Indem ich ein Pico'sches Verfahren zur Erkenntnisgewinnung auf die Inschrift ,,MELENCOLIA § I" anwende, komme ich zu dem erstaunlichen Ergebnis, dass Dürer dem philosophischen Ansatz des Mirandolaners mehr verpflichtet ist, als man bislang nachzuweisen vermochte.

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: In Germany, clinical ethics is still in the state of development. Ethics consultation is very new and rare in the clinical setting in German university hospitals. Therefore this paper describes the clinical ethics activities at the Medical Center of Philipps University, Marburg, regard to ethics consultation in a case report. Clinical ethics rounds at the Surgical Intensive Care Unit are organized according to the theory and practice of the ethics consultation service at the Medical Center of (...) the University of Virginia, established by J.C. Fletcher, F.G. Miller and J.J. Fins. (shrink)

The program of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, formulated primarily by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, calls for relating conceptual change to structural transformations of government, society, and economy in German-speaking Europe. J. G. A. Pocock, of Cambridge, identified the range of alternative and competing political discourses available to early modern writers, while Quentin Skinner, also of Cambridge, treated political theories in terms of those historical contexts and linguistic conventions which both facilitate and circumscribe legitimations of political arrangements, and he (...) described such theories as intentional speech acts. Despite the differences in the German and Anglophone modes of treating political language, however, there are no major obstacles in bringing them together. The GG could profit from Pocock's technique of analysis and comparison in identifying early modern political languages, and the issues raised by Skinner about political thought and theorizing as forms of linguistic action, as well as the effect of general linguistic conventions upon available modes of legitimating political arrangements. The Anglophone mode might profit from considering the GG's non-reductive use of social history in conjunction with that of concepts, and from the GG's systematic use of contemporary sources of language and linguistic definitions. (shrink)

Rule-following is a normative doing and therefore needs to be reconsidered in a metaethical framework. Rule-following will be discussed in the light of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It will be shown that neither cognitivism nor non-cognitivism are sufficiently good accounts for conceptualizing rule-following, because they are held captive by a quasi-mechanistical picture of rule-following. This idea stems from Stanley Cavell´s and John McDowell´s approach to rule-following. McDowell appeals to the idea that we participate in “shared forms of life” and therefore are (...) able to follow rules correctly. I believe that his quietist view can be amplified by conceptualizing different modes of following a rule. We can also follow a rule e.g. ironically and still grasp the conceptual content of the rule adequately. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is not Wittgensteinian ethics but Wittgenstein’s own ethical beliefs, specifically as these are revealed in the so-called Koder diaries. While the Koder Diaries, also known as Manuscript 183, do contain the kind of thing that one would expect to find in a diary (e.g. accounts of travel and personal relationships), they also contain more obviously philosophical remarks, sometimes as reflections on these personal remarks. Wittgenstein’s diaries illustrate well a point that Iris Murdoch has emphasized, that (...) a person’s inner life can have an ethical dimension not necessarily directly related to overt action or to other people. The kind of ethical concern that we see in these diaries is one with what we might call global implications. Not in the sense that they might affect the whole planet but in the sense that, for Wittgenstein (or anyone else involved in such struggles or deliberations), they might affect every aspect of his life in the way that a religious conversion might change one’s whole life. This ethical ubiquity is another idea that Murdoch has brought to attention. (shrink)

Nach einem Vierteljahrhundert deutscher Einheit ist es an der Zeit einmal zu diskutieren, was uns Deutsche eigentlich ideell verbindet, was wir gemeinsam anstreben, m.a.W. worin unsere Identität besteht. Dabei geht es nicht um Abgrenzung gegenüber anderen Nationen, sondern um den besonderen Beitrag, den wir für die Zukunft der gefährdeten Menschheit leisten können. Nun brauchen wir, wenn uns diese Frage gestellt wird, gottseidank gar nicht zu spekulieren, sondern können an gegebene Tatsachen anknüpfen. Denn wie sich beim G-7-Treffen in Elmau wieder gezeigt (...) hat, ist die Bundesrepublik faktisch in der Umweltpolitik der Vorreiter unter den großen Industrienationen. Der Ausstieg aus der Kernenergie ist beschlossene Sache und das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz ist bisher so erfolgreich gewesen, dass über 65 Länder in und außerhalb Europas es nachgeahmt haben. Allerdings ist die Frage bisher unbeantwortet, welche historischen Gründe es denn für diese deutsche Sonderrolle gibt. Zwar ist bekannt, dass der Schlüsselbegriff "Nachhaltigkeit" aus der deutschen Forstwirtschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts stammt oder dass die Deutschen stark durch die Romantik geprägt sind. Das vorliegende Buch möchte jedoch eine umfassendere und tiefere Antwort geben, indem es zeigt, dass sich die deutsche konfessionelle und philosophische Tradition im Naturverständnis deutlich von der angelsächsischen unterscheidet. Von der Reformation bis hin zur Relativitäts- und zur Quantentheorie hat sie überwiegend einen ökologischen Sinn. Dr. Edelbert Richter, geb. 1943, wohnhaft in Weimar, vor der Wende Dozent an der Predigerschule in Erfurt. 1977 bis 1989 Engagement in regimekritischen Gruppen und in der Friedens- und Ökologiebewegung, August 1989 Mitbegründer des "Demokratischen Aufbruch", Januar 1990 Übertritt in die SPD, Mitglied der letzten Volkskammer der DDR, 1991 bis 1994 Abgeordneter im Europäischen Parlament, 1994 bis 2002 Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages, 1991 bis 2005 Mitglied der Grundwertekommission beim Parteivorstand der SPD, Mitglied der Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler, seit 2004 Lehrbeauftragter für Philosophie. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen. (shrink)

This entry contains the German text of Reinhart Koselleck's response to the papers given at the meeting in December, 1992 at the German Historical Institute, Washington to commemorate the completion of the lexicon, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Published in English translation, Koselleck's Offene Fragen an die >Geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe<, presented inter alia, the first major confrontation between German Begriffsgeschichte, as practiced by Koselleck, and J.G.A. Pocock, speaking for the Cambridge School dominant in the English-speaking world, Koselleck's German text is accompanied by a Note (...) summarizing his reply to the critique by Pocock, who invoked arguments previously made by Quentin Skinner. Also included are the views on Begriffsgeschichte now held by Skinner and Pocock twenty years later. (shrink)

The Hasting Center's, "Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying" (1987), outlines a position on assisted suicide that I argue is contradictory. On one hand the guidelines offers a position on human dignity and autonomy that accords competent patients the right to intentionally kill themselves by requesting doctors to terminate life-support. Yet, on the other hand, the guidelines argue that terminating life-support upon request is not ever the moral equivalent of doctored-assisted suicide, and granting (...) the right to the former does not grant a right to the latter. In this paper I argue that in some circumstances a right to obligate your doctor to pull the plug on life-support is morally equivalent to the right to obligate your doctor to assist you in dying by more direct means, e.g. administering a lethal dose of medication. If the fundamental values of autonomy, self-determination, and human dignity justify this right in the one case, they eo ipso justify this right in the other. Both circumstances are subject to the same potential abuse, so citing such potential abuse does not defeat granting an autonomy right in either case. (shrink)

The three Nubian kingdoms that eventually emerged after the disintegration of Meroe, Noubadia, Makuria and Alodia (Alwa), first enter Byzantine historiography with the dramatic story of their conversion into Christianity told by John of Ephesus in the third part of his Church History, composed about AD 578–588 in Syriac. To be more exact, what John tells us is that, through the initiative of Empress Theodora, the Noubades and Alodians were converted into the Monophysite or (more specifically) Miaphysite creed, while the (...) Makurians remained hostile to the missionaries (later, apparently, to emerge as Dyophysites). RICHTER (R.) takes John's account as his point of departure, devoting half the book to a translation of the relevant chapters (IV.6–10 and 49–53) and a thorough discussion of their historical contents. It is the particular merit of his book, however, that he also comes to grips with the archaeological, especially architectural and epigraphic evidence on the Christianization process that surveys and excavations brought forth in the last century. The other half of the book brings together and systematizes such material from a great variety of secondary sources. The intense archaeological activities prompted by the flooding of vital parts of Lower Nubia have tended to give material remains precedence over literary witnesses in the current rewriting of Nubian history; R. endeavours to redress the balance, with regard to the sixth and seventh centuries, by juxtaposing the textual and archaeological sources. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 76 - 97 This article presents an account of those works, related to conceptual history and historiographical issues, written by the American historian of political thought Melvin Richter. The attention is primarily directed toward the reception of the German historiographical style called “_Begriffsgeschichte_”, and especially on its reception among Anglophone scholars. Therefore, the main objective of the article is to throw light on Richter’s understanding of _Begriffsgeschichte_, and to sum up his (...) efforts to put in contact Koselleck’s “history of concepts” with the works of authors such as Quentin Skinner and John G. A. Pocock, who are associated with the so-called “_Cambridge school contextualists_”. Thus, the aim is to point out their direct thought about _Begriffsgeschichte_, and consequently, to see how they’ve reacted to Richter’s proposals concerning the possibility of adopting that “history of concepts” as the frame for future historical researches. By doing so, and relying mainly on the extensive contributions appeared on the pages of the specialized periodicals, this article highlights some of the principal reactions to the theoretical and practical implications of “conceptual history”; in particular as they are emerging in the midst of what is indeed a recent and still ongoing international debate. Furthermore, the article tries to compare Koselleck’s _Begriffsgeschichte_ with some works of “analytical bibliography”. It is also interesting to note that these bibliographical studies are associated with Cambridge University as well as the historical researches of Skinner and Pocock. (shrink)