Al-Qadi al-Nu´man b. Muhammad es el más destacado y prolífico de los estudiosos fatimíes y el fundador de la jurisprudencia isma´ilí. En su epístola " La clarificación elocuente para la refutación de Ibn Qutayba", todavía en manuscrito, al-Nu,man se lanza a una polémica en contra de Ibn Qutayba, que había vivido un siglo antes. Es probable que la epístola fuera escrita en la época de al- Mu´izz a petición de un tutor anónimo de los hijos del califa. En ella, al-Nu´man (...) se propone refutar la afirmación de Ibn Qutaybba, incluida en la introducción de su famosa obra Adab al-Katib, según la cual era suficiente para la realización de sus tareas que los kuttab, o funcionarios del estado, memorizaran una serie de fórmulas legales simples, sin tener que aprenderse las largas disertaciones de los fuqaha' o doctores de la ley. Al-Qadi al-Nu´man, un faqih famoso, se dedica en la epístola a demostrar que sin estas disertaciones no se podía aplicar la ley correctamente. En su texto se refiere a cada fórmula legal mencionada por su rival en Adab al-Katib y demuestra cómo la ley se debería aplicar basándose en la autoridad de los imames del Ahl al-Bayt, la Familia del Profeta Muhammad. También refuta las distintas interpretaciones legales sunníes de estas mismas cuestiones. (shrink)

The Epistle of the Eloquent Clarification concerning the Refutation of Ibn Qutayba by Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad. Edited by Avraham Hakim. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 90. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xi + 22 + 175. $129, €94.

In this article, we will attempt to answer the following question: What is the state of 21 years of scientific production regarding spiritual leadership (SL) in its relationship with organizational commitment (OC)? To accomplish this objective, we used a rigorous bibliometric approach employing two scientific databases: Scopus and Web of Science. Eighty-two articles were identified for the period between 2000 and 2021, but only 52 articles have been appropriate for the analysis. Two software were used for the data analysis: IRAMUTEQ (...) and VOSviewer. This systematic literature review was performed to shed more light on our current understanding and to identify patterns and gaps in previous studies of SL as it relates to OC. The results assert that the literature on the relationship between SL and OC has an important role for individuals and organizations. Theoretically, it highlights grey areas that need to be exploited to enrich the scientific literature, including constructs that will moderate or mediate the relationship between SL and OC. Practically, the research perspectives indicate the significant role that the SL can play in paying attention to the spiritual needs of employees and its positive effects on the organization. The findings have implications for both the employees and the organization. (shrink)

Kant’s accounts of moral education, appraisal respect and gratitude each depend on the assumption that human beings see and judge each other’s actions to be morally good. This assumption appears to stand in tension with the Opacity Thesis, Kant’s claim that we can never know if an action is morally good. This paper examines Kant’s discussion of moral illusion to relieve this tension. It is argued that we are required to uphold moral illusion, i.e. to represent others’ actions to be (...) morally good (while knowing that we may be mistaken), due to the duty of beneficence for others’ moral well-being. (shrink)

Dramaturge guinéen, Hakim Bah revient dans cet entretien sur l’écriture de deux de ses pièces récentes traitant des migrations : Convulsions, qui est une réécriture du Thyeste de Sénèque, et À bout de sueurs. Les mythes méditerranéens côtoient les coupures de presse et les faits divers dans ces textes à l’oralité et à la poésie très marquées.

Developmentally, adolescence sits in transition between childhood and adulthood. Involving adolescents in their medical decision-making prompts important and complex ethical questions. Originating in the UK, the concept of Gillick competence is a dominant framework for navigating adolescent medical decision-making from legal, ethical and clinical perspectives and is commonly treated as comprehensive. In this paper, we argue that its utility is far more limited, and hence over-reliance on Gillick risks undermining rather than promoting ethically appropriate adolescent involvement. We demonstrate that Gillick (...) only provides guidance in the limited range of cases where legal decisional authority needs to be clarified. The range of cases where use of Gillick actually promotes adolescent involvement is narrower still, because several features must be present for Gillick to be enacted. Each of these features can, and do, act as barriers to adolescent involvement. Within these limited situations, we argue that Gillick is not specific or strong enough and is reliant on ethically contestable principles. Moreover, in most situations in adolescent healthcare, Gillick is silent on the ethical questions around involving adolescents. This is because it focuses on decisional authority—having the final say in decision-making—which is one small subset of the many ways adolescents could be involved in decision-making. The implication of our analysis is that use of Gillick competence tends to limit or undermine adolescent involvement opportunities. We propose that those working with adolescents should be judicious in seeking Gillick’s guidance, instead drawing on and developing alternative frameworks that provide a comprehensive model for adolescent involvement. (shrink)

There is a divide within political and legal theory concerning the justification of hate-crime legislation in liberal states. Opponents of Hate-Crime Legislation have recently argued that enhanced punishment for hate-motivated crimes cannot be justified within political liberal states. More specifically, Heidi Hurd argues that criminal sanction which target character dispositions unfairly target individuals for characteristics not readily under their control. She further argues that a ‘character’ based approach in criminal law is necessarily illiberal and violates the state’s commitment to political (...) neutrality. In the current paper, I attempt to show the difficulties and absurdity that follows from Hurd’s characterization of hate- rimes. I aim to show that punishment for undesirable character traits is consistent with western conceptions of criminal law. Upon doing so, I then go on to construct a positive argument for the justifiability of punishing for character traits as well as for the enhanced punishment associated with hate-motivated crimes. (shrink)

The “Assyrian Century,” the period of Assyrian rule in the Levant, is usually regarded as an era of prosperity and economic progress. As far as the southern Levant is concerned, this reconstruction more or less reflects the reality on the southern edge of the region—in the areas of Philistia, Judah, and Edom. But what was the situation in the northern part of the country, in the territories of the former kingdom of Israel and adjacent territories, regions that had become Assyrian (...) provinces? It is the aim of this paper to scrutinize the archaeological data from these regions in order to shed light on the settlement and demographic reality in those provinces, and furthermore to reassess Assyrian policy in the west. After summarizing previous research, the article will present the available archaeological data, which will then be compared with that from the southern part of the country in order to enable a reexamination of the Assyrian empire’s policy in the west. (shrink)

Adam and Eve have the same record yet receive different punishments. Adam receives the punishment that they both deserve, whereas Eve receives a more lenient punishment. In this article, we explore whether a deserved-but-unequal punishment, such as what Adam receives, can be just. We do this by explicating the conceptions of retributive justice that underlie both sides of the debate. We argue that inequality in punishment is disturbing mainly because of the disrespect it often expresses towards the offender receiving the (...) harsher treatment, and also because it casts doubt on whether Adam got what he deserved. We suggest that when no disrespect is involved and when it is clear that the criminal got what he deserved, inequality is not worrisome. (shrink)

The class of stable posets is defined and investigated. We give a forcing construction of a universe of set theory which satisfies a weak form of Martin's Axiom and $2^{\aleph_0} > \aleph_1$ and yet some propositions which follow from CH hold in this universe.

Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of death and disability in Western society, and often results in functional and neuropsychological abnormalities. Memory impairment is one of the most significant cognitive implications after TBI. In the current study we investigated procedural memory acquisition by observational training in TBI patients. It was previously found that while practicing a new motor skill, patients engage in all three phases of skill learning–fast acquisition, between-session consolidation, and long-term retention, though their pattern of learning is (...) atypical compared to healthy participants. A different set of studies showed that training by observing a motor task, generally prompted effective acquisition and consolidation of procedural knowledge in healthy participants. The aim of our study was to evaluate the potential benefit of action observation in TBI patients. Examine the possibility of general improvement in performance between the first and second stage of the study. Investigate the link between patients’ ability to benefit from observational learning and common measures of injury.Materials and methodsPatients hospitalized after moderate to severe TBI, were trained by observation for the finger opposition sequence motor task. They were then tested for the observation-trained sequence and a similar control sequence, at two different time-points.Results revealed a significant difference in performance between the trained and untrained sequences, in favor of the trained sequence. An increase in performance for both sequences A and B toward the second session. The advantage for sequence A was stable and preserved also in the second session. Participants with lower moderate Functional Independence Measure scores gained more from observational-procedural learning, compared with patients with higher functional abilities.ConclusionOverall, these findings support the notion that TBI patients may achieve procedural memory consolidation and retention through observational learning. Moreover, different functional traits may predict the outcomes of observational training in different patients. These findings may have significant practical implications in the future, regarding skill acquisition methods in TBI patients. (shrink)

An engaging and inspiring set of reflections by one of the master educators of today's Jewish world - full of delightful stories, compelling analysis and generosity of spirit. Read it and your faith in the Jewish future will be renewed. - Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

This paper questions the fairness of our current tort-law regime and the philosophical underpinnings advanced in its defense, a theory known as corrective justice. Fairness requires that the moral equality and responsibility of persons be respected in social interactions and institutions. The concept of luck has been used by many egalitarians as a way of giving content to fairness by differentiating between those benefits and burdens that result from informed choice and those that result from fate or fortune. We argue (...) that the theory of corrective justice, along with its institutional embodiment of tort law, is at odds with an egalitarian commitment to fairness because it allows luck an unjustifiable role in determining dissimilar liability for similar wrongs and dissimilar compensation for similar losses to bodily integrity. Many egalitarian political theorists have also recognized, if not defended, the notion of distinct forms of justice, namely corrective, retributive, and distributive. Although theorists of these different forms of justice have been concerned with negating unfair luck inside the operations of each form of justice, there has been little attention to the way in which luck operates to sort cases into each form of justice. We claim that there is a significant way in which luck operates to subject different people to principles of corrective, retributive, and distributive justicewhich flies in the face of the egalitarian value of fairness. After surveying the arguments put forward by theorists defending a categorical distinction between corrective justice and retributive and distributive principles, we argue that although analytical distinctions can be made between different forms of justice (although, we also suggest that the distinctions are not as sharp as some commentators suggest), there is no good reason to defend an acoustic separation between these forms of justice when doing so creates unfair outcomes. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor theory is among the challenging theories that the cognitive linguistics has presented to the field of metaphor in recent years. By leaving aside the relationship of species-genus, transmission and similarity, a new metaphor mechanism is introduced by this theory. Moreover, this theory reveals that metaphors belong to concepts based on experience, not to words. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which made a remarkable contribution to metaphor studies, has also attracted the attention of those who are interested in the Qur'an (...) studies. As a result, literature dealing with the metaphors in the Qur'an through the lens of this theory has emerged. This theory is implemented to analyse metaphors existing in everyday language and does not aim to offer an approach to the analysis of metaphors in sacred texts. Despite this, the number of studies examining the Qur'an through the lens of theory is increasing day by day. By focusing on this paticular literature, this study discusses the method followed by researchers, how they apply the theory, its contribution to the Qur'anic studies, and the existing deficiencies in the literature. This study questions the extent to which the theory contributes to the field of Qur’anic studies, the problems it has created in the field and whether it could be resolved. (shrink)