The much-acclaimed present-day philosophical turn to the letters of Saint Paul points to a profound consonance between ancient and modern thought. Such is the bold claim of this study in which scholars from contemporary continental philosophy, new testamentary studies and ancient philosophy discuss with each other the meaning Paul's terms pistis, faith. In this volume, this theme discusses in detail the threefold relation between Paul and continental thought, the Graeco-Roman world, and political theology. It is shown that pistis does not (...) only concern a mode of knowing, but rather concerns the human ethos or mode of existence as a whole. Moreover, it is shown that the present-day political theological interest in Paul can be seen as an attempt to recuperate Paul’s pistis in this comprehensive sense. Finally, an important discussion concerning the specific ontological implications and background of this reinterpretation of pistis is examined by comparing the ancient ontological commitments to those of the present-day philosophers. Thus, the volume offers an insight in a crucial consonance of ancient and modern thought concerning the question of pistis in Paul while not forgetting to stipulate important differences. (shrink)

When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint and technological progress can create moral progress rather than just moral problems. We show this by (...) an analysis of how technology can contribute to the solution of so-called moral overload or moral dilemmas. Such dilemmas typically create a moral residue that is the basis of a second-order principle that tells us to reshape the world so that we can meet all our moral obligations. We can do so, among other things, through guided technological innovation. (shrink)

This study investigates the negative reactions of Dutch viewers to the content of television programs. The results show that a vast majority is sometimes irritated by TV programs, that a somewhat smaller majority is sometimes shocked by the programs, and that one fifth of the viewing population consider certain programs to be intolerable. The most frequently mentioned genres are games, shows, and related entertainment programs, while reality TV, news and current affairs, and sex are primarily evaluated as irritating. It appears (...) that violent and frightening material creates by far the largest category of negative responses. Intimidating behavior worries the viewers most, immediately followed by the violation of privacy. This article also discusses the consequences of these results for broadcasting policy in the Netherlands. (shrink)

We would like to respond to the comment we received from our colleagues on our case report about organ donation after euthanasia starting at home. We reply to their statements on medical and legal aspects, and provide more information on our view of informed consent.

A systematic study of testimony rooted in contemporary continental philosophy and drawing on literary case studies. From analytic epistemology to gender theory, testimony is a major topic in philosophy today. Yet, one distinctive approach to testimony has not been fully appreciated: the recent history of contemporary continental philosophy offers a rich source for another approach to testimony. In this book, Gert-Jan van der Heiden argues that a continental philosophy of testimony can be developed that is guided by those forms (...) of bearing witness that attest to limit experiences of human existence, in which the human is rendered mute, speechless, or robbed of a common understanding. In the first part, Van der Heiden explores this sense of testimony in a reading of several literary texts, ranging from Plato’s literary inventions to those of Kierkegaard, Melville, Soucy, and Mortier. In the second part, based on the orientation offered by the literary experiments, Van der Heiden offers a more systematic account of testimony in which he distinguishes and analyzes four basic elements of testimony. In the third part, he shows what this analysis implies for the question of the truth and the truthfulness of testimony. In his discussion with philosophers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, Agamben, Foucault, Ricoeur, and Badiou, Van der Heiden also provides an overview of how the problem of testimony emerges in a number of thinkers pivotal to twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought. “The Voice of Misery is a special book. Van der Heiden has presented an argument that is poised to challenge discourse in analytic philosophy, reshape approaches in continental philosophy, and give new orientation to interdisciplinary research in continental philosophy and literary theory. The book will find a large readership across the discipline of philosophy and in several areas of the humanities.” — Theodore George, author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology. (shrink)

_Phenomenological Perspectives on Plurality_ offers twelve essays that discuss how the question of plurality is thought in contemporary continental philosophy. Its essays investigate how this issue influences topics in ontology, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy.

ABSTRACTThe remarkable philosophical present-day turn to Paul pays a lot of attention to the particular role played by the famous distinctions that structure Paul’s rhetoric such as the distinction between faith and law, life and death, and spirit and flesh. These distinctions lead to the question of whether Paul endorses a dualism or not. In this essay, the author investigates Badiou’s and Agamben’s readings of Paul and asks whether one cannot find a form of dialectics rather than dualism in these (...) readings. The concept of the exception seems to corroborate this suggestion. To examine whether this suggestion makes sense, the author first discusses Badiou’s focus on the antidialectics of death and resurrection as well as the dialectical remnants in Badiou’s reading of Paul. Subsequently, the author analyses Agamben’s dialectical account of the Pauline terms katargein, chrēsis and charis. (shrink)

In order to develop a hermeneutic-phenomenological analysis of testimony, this essay will first argue that testimony is “said in many ways” without being homonymous and that contemporary epistemological approaches to testimony are not capable of accounting for all paradigmatic forms of testimony. Second, it is argued, following and extending the work of Paul Ricoeur, that by emphasizing the sense of engagement or Bezogenheit as a basic characteristic of testimony, we may find another approach to testimony that offers a phenomenological alternative (...) to the observational model of witnessing and the accompanying conception of testimony as report. Third, this approach is further developed and analyzed in terms of the four elements of testimony, namely, subject matter, witness, act of testifying, and addressee. (shrink)

In both “Answering for Sense” and “Sharing Voices,” Jean-Luc Nancy offers an account of the poet as an interpreter of the gods. The voice of the poet in both Homer’s Iliad and Plato’s Ion is intrinsically and originally doubled. Although there is no divine voice outside of the poet’s voice, the divine voice speaks in the poet’s voice and the poetic voice gives a voice to that of the goddess or the muse. What exactly is at stake in this phenomenon (...) that we encounter here in the poet, namely that of gods making us speak? How is it related to the threshold of speech and communication that Nancy invokes in Adoration, when he also mentions the gods that make us speak? In this essay, I want to think with Nancy to see what is at stake in the figure of a voice on the threshold of speech and communication. I consider how the figure of the gods that make us speak is brought into play to elucidate the threshold of language and how this figure, as that which makes us speak, somehow offers the crossing of this threshold. To this end, I want to discuss three different figures or scenes in which the gods make us speak. In the first part of this article, I explore in more detail Nancy’s own account of the poet as interpreter of the divine voice. What does it mean for the poet to give a voice to the goddess and to desire this giving a voice? What is the demand or call to which the poet in giving a voice answers? To further the analysis of this divine interpreter, I want to compare this interpreter with two other ones which arise in two other basic scenes in which the gods make an interpreter speak. The first concerns the scene of the calling of the prophet Jeremiah in the book of the same name. The second concerns Saint Paul’s reflections on the glossolalist in the First Letter to the Corinthians. By exploring the differences between these three divine interpreters, I aim to further elucidate and assess the phenomenon of the interpreter and the double voice that characterizes Nancy’s poet. (shrink)

The last two volumes of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series are concerned with developing a theory of use. This article offers a critical assessment of the two concepts, use and form-of-life, that form the heart of this theory: how do these two notions offer a solution to the problem of bare life that forms the core of the Homo Sacer series? First, the author describes how the original problem of bare life is taken up in The Use of Bodies and (...) how the notion of use offers an important additional characteristic of bare life. Second, inspired by Foucault’s analysis of ancient Cynicism, the author discusses in which sense the type of ‘solution’ Agamben offers to the problem of bare life might be seen as an heir to ancient Cynicism and how this interpretation clarifies his connection of form-of-life and exile. Third, the author critically assesses the different usages of use that we can find in Agamben, by comparing how Franciscan usus, Pauline chrēsis and Platonic chrēsis are taken up in his analysis. Fourth, following Foucault, the author deepens the Platonic sense of use and its relation to taking care of justice. The article concludes with a critical assessment of Agamben’s reading of Plato’s myth of Er, in which the motifs of use, exile, and care are gathered. (shrink)

Background In neonatal intensive care, a child's death is often preceded by a medical decision. Nurses, social workers and pastors, however, are often excluded from ethical case deliberation. If multiprofessional ethical case deliberations do take place, participants may not always know how to perform to the fullest. Setting A level-IIID neonatal intensive care unit of a paediatric teaching hospital in the Netherlands. Methods Structured multiprofessional medical ethical decision-making (MEDM) was implemented to help overcome problems experienced. Important features were: all professionals (...) who are directly involved with the patient contribute to MEDM; a five-step procedure is used: exploration, agreement on the ethical dilemma/investigation of solutions, analysis of solutions, decision-making, planning actions; meetings are chaired by an impartial ethicist. A 15-item questionnaire to survey staff perceptions on this intervention just before and 8 months after implementation was developed. Results Before and after response rates were 91/105 (87%) and 85/113 (75%). Factor analysis on the questionnaire suggested a four-factor structure: participants' role; structure of MEDM; content of ethical deliberation; and documentation of decisions/conclusions. Effect sizes were 1.67 (p<0.001), 0.69 (p<0.001) and 0.40 (p<0.01) for the first three factors respectively, but only 0.07 (p=0.65) for the fourth factor. Nurses' perceptions of improvement did not significantly exceed those of physicians. Conclusion Professionals involved in ethical case deliberation perceived that the process of decision-making had improved; they were more positive about the structure of meetings, their own role and, to some extent, the content of ethical deliberation. Documentation of decisions/conclusions requires further improvement. (shrink)

Basisbegrippen. Een formeel model voor de ontwikkeling van de kunst is een structuur T, <, K, , d, p, q, s, B , waarbij T een verzameling van “tijdstippen” is, < (“is eerder dan”) een relatie op T is, K een verzameling van “mogelijke kunstwerken” is, (“levert commentaar op”) een relatie op K is, d, p, q en s functies van K naar de verzameling van alle deelverzamelingen van K zijn, en B een functie van T naar de verzameling van (...) alle deelverzamelingen van K is. d(x) is de discipline waartoe kunstwerk x behoort, p(x) is het proc´ed´e waarmee x vervaardigd is, q(x) is de kwaliteit van x, s(x) is de stijl van x, en B(t) is de verzameling kunstwerken die op tijdstip t bestaan. (shrink)

Health technology assessment consists of thesystematic study of the consequences of theintroduction or continued use of the technology in aparticular context, with the explicit objective toarrive at a judgment of the value or merit of thetechnology. Ideally, it is aimed at assessing allaspects of a given technology or group oftechnologies, including non-technical, e.g.socio-ethical, aspects. However, methods for assessingsocio-ethical implications of health technology arerelatively undeveloped and few mechanisms exist totake action based on the results of such evaluations.Still, the examples of cochlear (...) inplants and other cases illustratethat HTA is not a matter of merely collecting thefacts about a technology. The facts must beplausible and relevant from a particular framework,which is not always shared by different groups. It ishere that socio-ethical aspects are encountered. Ifhealth technology assessment aims to enhance theaccountability of the decision making processregarding funding and use of health technology, it isa major challenge to assessors of health technologiesto deal adequately with existing value pluralism. Inthis respect interactive evaluation may have somethingto offer. (shrink)

De mens is in de afgelopen drie eeuwen vaak vergeleken met allerlei soorten machines. In de achttiende eeuw was de klokmetafoor tamelijk populair; psychologische termen als ‘drijfveer’, ‘van slag raken’ en ‘opgewonden zijn’ herinneren hier nog aan [Vroon and Draaisma, 1985]. In de negentiende eeuw overheerste de stoommachine-metafoor. De psychologie van Freud wordt wel als een uitgewerkte versie van deze metafoor beschouwd [Russelmann, 1983]. Ook uitdrukkingen als ‘uitlaatkleppen’, ‘stoom afblazen’ en ‘iemand opstoken’ zijn eraan te danken. De stoommachine-metafoor wordt nog (...) steeds serieus genomen. Zo pleegt men de menselijke geest in de nieuwe ‘dynamische’ school in de cognitieve wetenschappen bij voorkeur te vergelijken met James Watts centrifugale regulateur (1788), het apparaat dat ervoor zorgt dat een stoommachine op een constant snelheid werkt [van Gelder, 1995, 1998]. De laatste vijftig jaar komt men de metafoor van de seri¨ele digitale computer vaak tegen. Een PC is een voorbeeld van zo’n computer. Hij is serieel omdat de centrale processor slechts ´e´en berekening tegelijk kan uitvoeren; hij is digitaal omdat hij alleen met gehele getallen kan omgaan. Het voorbeeld bij uitstek van een seri¨ele digitale computer is de Turing-machine, waarover aanstonds meer. De seri¨ele digitale computer metafoor is op verschillende manieren op mensen toegepast. Zo beschouwen sommigen de gehele mens als een computer van dit type, terwijl anderen menen dat de afzonderlijke zenuwcellen op deze manier beschreven kunnen worden. In het onderstaande zal ik de vraag bespreken in hoeverre men de mens, of onderdelen van de mens, inderdaad als seri¨ele digitale computer mag opvatten. Ik zal laten zien dat deze vergelijking maar een beperkte waarde heeft. Het valt niet uit te sluiten dat de mens in computationeel opzicht een veel sterker of zwakker soort machine is dan de Turing-machine. (shrink)

One of the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is the notion of distanciation. In this article we show that Ricoeur introduces this notion as a correction of Heidegger’s focus on being-in and Gadamer’s emphasis on belonging . Ricoeur argues that distanciation does not lead to the uprooting of our belonging to a tradition. Rather, distanciation is an integral part of the dynamics that constitutes tradition. We discuss the different senses in which Ricoeur understands distanciation as a positive and productive (...) aspect of tradition. In particular, we discuss the ontological aspect of distanciation. In his discussion of both the long way of hermeneutics and the creative dimension of distanciation in fiction, Ricoeur argues that it is distanciation that opens up the possibility of understanding our own being-in-the-world. This involvement of distanciation in the disclosure and understanding of being allows us to show that distanciation determines what “kind” of being is understood: what is interpreted in hermeneutics and disclosed in poetics is never being as such, but “being-interpreted” and “being-as,” respectively. This leads us to a description of the difference between Ricoeur’s and Heidegger’s thought concerning the ontological dimension of their hermeneutics. (shrink)

Health technology assessment (HTA) is often biased in the sense that it neglects relevant perspectives on the technology in question. To incorporate different perspectives in HTA, we should pursue agreement about what are relevant, plausible, and feasible research questions; interactive technology assessment (iTA) might be suitable for this goal. In this way a kind of procedural ethics is established. Currently, ethics too often is focussed on the application of general principles, which leaves a lot of confusion as to what really (...) is the matter in specific cases; in an iTA clashes of values should not be approached by use of such ethics. Instead, casuistry, as a tool used within the framework of iTA, should help to articulate and clarify what is the matter, as to make room for explication and consensus building. (shrink)

Health technology assessment (HTA) is often biased in the sense that it neglects relevant perspectives on the technology in question. To incorporate different perspectives in HTA, we should pursue agreement about what are relevant, plausible, and feasible research questions; interactive technology assessment (iTA) might be suitable for this goal. In this way a kind of procedural ethics is established. Currently, ethics too often is focussed on the application of general principles, which leaves a lot of confusion as to what really (...) is the matter in specific cases; in an iTA clashes of values should not be approached by use of such ethics. Instead, casuistry, as a tool used within the framework of iTA, should help to articulate and clarify what is the matter, as to make room for explication and consensus building. (shrink)

Departing from two diverging lines of inquiry of testimony that characterize philosophy today, this article aims to show what a hermeneutic phenomenology of witnessing and testimony is and how this approach to testimony offers a new framework to understand witnessing and testimony, which also repositions the present-day main lines of inquiry of testimony. The first section offers a critical assessment of the state of the art in the philosophy of testimony today and the second section reinterprets the two main diverging (...) lines of inquiry as a conflict. The major part of this article is devoted to a hermeneutic-phenomenological account of witnessing and testimony. The third and fourth sections describe several relations between subject matter, witness, acts of bearing witness, and addressee, to develop this hermeneutic-phenomenological framework and in the process also shows which place is awarded to the two main lines of the present-day inquiry within this framework. (shrink)

This study aims to contribute to emerging human-robot interaction research by adding longitudinal findings to a limited number of long-term social robotics home studies. We placed 70 robots in users’ homes for a period of up to six months, and used questionnaires and interviews to collect data at six points during this period. Results indicate that users’ evaluations of the robot dropped initially, but later rose after the robot had been used for a longer period of time. This is congruent (...) with the so-called mere-exposure effect, which shows an increasing positive evaluation of a novel stimulus once people become familiar with it. Before adoption, users focus on control beliefs showing that previous experiences with robots or other technologies allows to create a mental image of what having and using a robot in the home would entail. After adoption, users focus on utilitarian and hedonic attitudes showing that especially usefulness, social presence, enjoyment and attractiveness are important factors for long-term acceptance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe remarkable philosophical present-day turn to Paul pays a lot of attention to the particular role played by the famous distinctions that structure Paul’s rhetoric such as the distinction between faith and law, life and death, and spirit and flesh. These distinctions lead to the question of whether Paul endorses a dualism or not. In this essay, the author investigates Badiou’s and Agamben’s readings of Paul and asks whether one cannot find a form of dialectics rather than dualism in these (...) readings. The concept of the exception seems to corroborate this suggestion. To examine whether this suggestion makes sense, the author first discusses Badiou’s focus on the antidialectics of death and resurrection as well as the dialectical remnants in Badiou’s reading of Paul. Subsequently, the author analyses Agamben’s dialectical account of the Pauline terms katargein, chrēsis and charis. (shrink)

Two answers to the question ‘how can we allocate health care resources fairly?’ are introduced and discussed. Both utilitarian and egalitarian approaches are found relevant, but both exhibit considerable theoretical and practical difficulties. Neither seems capable of solving the problem on its own. It is suggested that, for practical purposes, a version of Rawls' famous thought experiment might provide at least some enlightenment about which theoretical approach should be used to address the question.

In this essay, the author takes up the responses of Dennis J. Schmidt and Carolyn Culbertson to his monograph The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony. It first observes that both respondents have a shared interest in the ethical dimension of the question of testimony, which has much to do with the exceptional subject matter, namely that of bare life, that The Voice of Misery takes as its point of departure to analyze what testimony is. In the first (...) section, the author engages with Schmidt’s account of the importance of Heidegger, Plato’s myth of Er and Celan’s poetry for thinking testimony and shows how exactly these references allow us to think the ethos and the ethics of textimony. In the second section, he discusses the three questions Culbertson raised concerning the practical, more everyday stakes of testimony in relation to the epistemology of testimony and the question of epistemic justice. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn The Netherlands, the public funding of a number of health care services is controversial. What can we learn from this about the moral concerns that underlie these judgements? And, if there is anything to learn, can we use this improved understanding to scrutinise the adequacy of particular decisions concerning the public funding of health care services? In the present paper, I will analyse three cases: corrective surgey, In Vitro Fertilisation and liver transplantation. I will summarise the arguments that have (...) been used to support or to challenge the public funding of these services. I will then assess the merits of Daniels’fair equality of opportunity account of justice in health care. Can this account improve our understanding of the moral concerns underlying our judgements about the public funding of these services? Can it serve to scrutinise the adequacy of particular decisions that are made concerning the public funding of health care services? My answer to both questions will be a qualified yes. Daniels’account can provide guidance, but not because we can deductively infer from it what is right and what is wrong. Instead, I will argue for a more casuistic use of the concept of fair equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Both Agamben and Nancy introduce the notions of ban and abandonment to understand the contemporary experience of the loss of tradition. Whereas Nancy reinterprets hermeneutics in light of this abandonment, Agamben tries to move beyond this account of abandonment. In this article, I examine how these two positions are related and to which conceptions of hermeneutics and tradition they give rise. First, I explore how the notion of abandonment provides an alternative to Gadamer’s account of hermeneutics, which focuses on the (...) belonging to tradition. Subsequently, I discuss which accounts of hermeneutics and tradition Nancy develops in his discussion of ban and abandonment. Finally, I discuss how Agamben tries to move beyond Nancy’s account of the ban by suggesting that the ban of tradition be broken along the lines of thought he finds in the work of Benjamin. I conclude by showing how this latter suggestion might give rise to a third figure of hermeneutics that discovers, beyond belonging to the past and being banned from the past, the ‘potentialization’ of the past. (shrink)

The Dutch health care system is developing a two, or multiple, tier system. How can moral principles be of help in assessing whether this is the right track? Instead of dismissing as unhelpful the principles that have been suggested so far and exchanging them for other, usually more complex, principles, it is suggested that the methods of moral inquiry be reconsidered. Keywords: diversification in health care, health care financing, public and private responsibility in health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

It is well-known that the early Heidegger offers important reflec­tions on the Christian experience of life in his accounts of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. Yet, what is the systematic meaning of Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion? This essay aims to discuss this question by connecting themes from Die Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens to Heidegger’s attempt to provide his own version of phenomenology in Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung. Heidegger’s position with respect to Husserl’s phenomenology becomes clearer, I argue, when his (...) problematization of the onto-theological structures he discerns at the heart of the philosophers he discusses, such as Descartes and Augustine, is taken into account and when it is shown how the phenomenology of religion exceeds the boundaries of a phenomenology that studies consciousness alone. In fact, the explication of the (purified) Christian experience of life and the concep­tion of God at stake in this experience allows Heidegger to articulate a form of phenomenology purified from onto-theological tendencies. (shrink)

In Le Sens du monde, Nancy argues that “some value of scintillating phenomenality remains invincibly attached” to Badiou’s notion of the event. This paper examines to what extent Nancy’s comments still apply to Badiou’s phenomenology of the event developed in Logiques des mondes. In particular, although Badiou provides a thorough account of the event from the perspective of the consequences it enables, I show on the basis of Nancy’s suggestion that he tends to neglect an account of the event from (...) the perspective of its occurrence and its passage. (shrink)