Widely regarded as the most influential proponent of the truth of original sin in the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr worked hard to excise any "literalistic" element from his interpretation of the doctrine. In his attempt to "correct" the Augustinian tradition on original sin by purging it of all "literalistic errors," however, Niebuhr assumed as his starting point the most characteristically modern objection to the doctrine: that birth is a thoroughly natural, animal, and morally meaningless event. As a result, Niebuhr unnecessarily (...) constrained his vision of the dimensions of human freedom, and hence his description of the dynamic of anxiety and freedom that energizes sin. Through a careful reading of Reinhold Niebuhr's writings on original sin, in light of the truth that the end of human life is inseparable from its origins, a reappraisal and recovery of the meaningfulness of the assertion of original sin as a literal inheritance is possible. The result of such a reappraisal and recovery is an amplified insight into the existential anxiety that Niebuhr otherwise described so convincingly. (shrink)

Medical humanities purchases its presence on the medical side of university campuses by adopting as its own the ends of medicine and medical ethics. It even justifies its presence by asserting promotion of those ends as an ethical imperative, most of all to improve the caring in medical care. As unobjectionable, even praiseworthy, as this imperative appears, it actually constrains the possibilities for interpersonal relationship in the context of medical practice. Development of those possibilities requires openness of self to the (...) existentially challenging ethical imperative to care also literally for nothing at all. (shrink)

In theological discourse of sexuality, queer theory has often been regarded as an extension of the project of gay and lesbian liberation, when it actually challenges an organizing value of the entire discourse, because it challenges any ascription of ultimate value to "sex," an imaginative formation of power relations. Rather than appeal to God to authorize the privileged status of sex, queer commentary suggests that theological writers should refuse assertions of the absolute importance of any particular formation of human imagination (...) as a basis of relation between self and God. The goal is to recognize the violence—symbolized and real—that enforces the worth of certain imaginations of intelligibly sexed personal identity and stunts the formation of alternative imaginations of intelligible personal identity. Critical account of this violence as sentimental-homicidal-suicidal opens space to confess a theological discourse of personal identities that is entirely beyond sex. (shrink)

Each time patients and their families are asked to make a decision about resuscitation, they are also asked to engage the political, social, and cultural concerns that have shaped its history. That history is exemplified in the career of Claude S. Beck, arguably the most influential researcher and teacher of resuscitation in the twentieth century. Careful review of Beck’s work discloses that the development and popularization of the techniques of resuscitation proceeded through a multiplication of definitions of death. CPR consequently (...) remains unique among medical treatments, because it is indicated precisely when a person dies, depending always on how each event of death becomes defined practically by patients, families, and medical professionals present at the time. It is therefore as an occasion to manage a surplus of definitions of death, and not as an occasion to determine the physiological efficacy of resuscitation, that one should approach analysis of contemporary challenges in decision-making about resuscitation. (shrink)

AMONG THEOLOGICAL WRITERS, MANY HAVE SUSPECTED THAT JOHN Rawls's writings on justice add up to a de facto manifesto of secularism. His writings especially provoke anxiety about the potential exclusion of theological affirmations from public political discourse. Much of this anxiety focuses on his concept of the "original position" from which principles of justice are negotiated. Consideration of the anxiety provoked by this concept, however, suggests that it is theologically richer than Rawls's critics allow. A turn to Søren Kierkegaard's The (...) Concept of Anxiety enables interpretation of the original position as a device of representation that identifies every individual with the fact of original sin. Crucial to this interpretation is Kierkegaard's description of original sin in terms of anxiety that arises from the innocence that is ignorance in the comparable original position of Adam. Where anxiety arises, sin follows. Where sin arises, the need for justice follows. Reading Rawls and Kierkegaard together consequently offers insight into the relevance of the history of the doctrine of original sin to contemporary theorization of justice. (shrink)

Although the clinical and the sexual are commonly treated as antithetical realms of experience, queer commentary teaches that the clinic is a positively sexual space and that clinical intimacy is a creative form of sexual intimacy. Contrary to writers such as Engelhardt, the clinic is a space where queer publics are forged, and the barriers between moral friends and moral strangers potentially dissolve, but only to the extent that one is disposed to allow oneself to enjoy experiences of identification that (...) confound the ideals of human dignity typically invoked in writings about sexual ethics on the one hand and clinical medical ethics on the other hand. (shrink)

Each time patients and their families are asked to make a decision about resuscitation, they are also asked to engage the political, social, and cultural concerns that have shaped its history. That history is exemplified in the career of Claude S. Beck, arguably the most influential researcher and teacher of resuscitation in the twentieth century. Careful review of Beck’s work discloses that the development and popularization of the techniques of resuscitation proceeded through a multiplication of definitions of death. CPR consequently (...) remains unique among medical treatments, because it is indicated precisely when a person dies, depending always on how each event of death becomes defined practically by patients, families, and medical professionals present at the time. It is therefore as an occasion to manage a surplus of definitions of death, and not as an occasion to determine the physiological efficacy of resuscitation, that one should approach analysis of contemporary challenges in decision-making about resuscitation. (shrink)

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes--good and bad--are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity's prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow. The future of humanity is bound to the (...) future of science and hinges on how successfully we harness technological advances to address our challenges. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long term. Advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence--if pursued and applied wisely--could empower us to boost the developing and developed world and overcome the threats humanity faces on Earth, from climate change to nuclear war. At the same time, further advances in space science will allow humans to explore the solar system and beyond with robots and AI. But there is no "Plan B" for Earth--no viable alternative within reach if we do not care for our home planet. Rich with fascinating insights into cutting-edge science and technology, this accessible book will captivate anyone who wants to understand the critical issues that will define the future of humanity on Earth and beyond."-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this carefully researched, thought-provoking book, Geoffrey Hughes examines the trajectory of political correctness and its impact on public life.

For most of the twentieth century, anthropologists understood themselves as ethnographers. The art of anthropology was the fieldwork-based description of faraway others—of how social structures secretly organized the living-together of a given society, of how a people had endowed the world surrounding them with cultural meaning. While the poetics and politics of anthropology have changed dramatically over the course of a century, the basic equation of anthropology with ethnography—as well as the definition of the human as a social and cultural (...) being—has remained so evident that the possibility of questioning it occurred to hardly anyone. In After Ethnos Tobias Rees endeavors to decouple anthropology from ethnography—and the human from society and culture—and explores the manifold possibilities of practicing a question-based rather than an answer-based anthropology that emanates from this decoupling. What emerges from Rees's provocations is a new understanding of anthropology as a philosophically and poetically inclined, fieldwork-based investigation of what it could mean to be human when the established concepts of the human on which anthropology has been built increasingly fail us. (shrink)

Die Entstehung des Gewissens.--Materie.--Das Kausalgesetz--Die Eitelkeit.--Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände der Philosophie.

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

In this book an international and multidisciplinary team addresses significant ethical questions about the rights to access, manage and interpret the material remains of the past.

Should society care about Christian morality? Are Christians out of touch with complex moral decision-making? Christian Morality: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Thinking about Contemporary Moral Issues provides readers with a framework for identifying and applying Christian moral principles to divisive issues. First, readers learn of the theological and philosophical foundations of Christian ethics. Two additional chapters explain how personal and social factors influence our capacity to think critically and Christianly about morality. Second, readers will learn about forming Christian moral judgments (...) by seeing how different thinkers address six contemporary moral issues: abortion, same-sex relationships, equal treatment of men and women in the workplace, sex education, and racial bias in incarceration polices. (shrink)

Humanity between gods and beasts? -- Error -- Ancient understandings reassessed and the consequences for ontologies -- Language and audiences -- Philosophical implications.

Moral philosophers have mostly condemned the condonation of a bad act as being close to complicity in wrongdoing or, at best, as indicative of a lax moral conscience. I argue, in contrast, that condoning a wrongful act is sometimes not only permissible but positively virtuous. After considering the nature of condonation, I describe a range of circumstances in which it may be an appropriate response to wrongdoing, expressing such virtues as compassion and mercifulness, tolerance of human frailty, a love of (...) amity, and a proper respectfulness for others’ autonomy as moral agents. (shrink)

1. Rabbi simhah Zissel Ziv and the Talmud Torah -- 2. Virtue and the path of happiness -- 3. Simhah Zissel among the philosophers -- 4. The great effort of musar -- 5. Learning to love.

This collection brings together leading anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and artificial-intelligence researchers to discuss the sciences and mathematics used in various Eastern, Western, and Indigenous societies, both ancient and contemporary. The authors analyze prevailing assumptions about these societies and propose more faithful, sensitive analyses of their ontological views about reality--a step toward mutual understanding and translatability across cultures and research fields. Science in the Forest, Science in the Past is a pioneering interdisciplinary exploration that will challenge the way readers interested in (...) sciences, mathematics, humanities, social research, computer sciences, and education think about deeply held notions of what constitutes reality, how it is apprehended, and how to investigate it. (shrink)

This book looks at the work and influence of Leo Strauss in a variety of ways that will be of interest to readers of political philosophy. It will be of particular interest to Catholics and scholars of other religious traditions. Strauss had a great deal of interaction with his contemporary Catholic scholars, and many of his students or their students teach or have taught at Catholic colleges and universities in America. Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers brings together work by (...) scholars from two continents, some of whom knew Strauss, one of whom was his student at the University of Chicago. The first section of essays considers Catholic responses to Strauss’s project of recovering Classical natural right as against modern individual rights. Some of the authors suggest that his approach can be a fruitful corrective to an uncritical reception of modern ideas. Nevertheless, most point out that the Catholic cannot accept all of Strauss’s project. The second section deals with areas of overlap between Strauss and Catholics. Some of the chapters explore encounters with his contemporary scholars while others turn to more current concerns. The final section approaches the theological-political question itself, a question central to both Strauss’s work and that of the Catholic intellectual tradition. This section of the book considers the relationship of Strauss’s work to Christianity and Christian commitments at a broader level. Because Christianity does not have an explicit political doctrine, Christians have found themselves as rulers, subjects, and citizens in a variety of political regimes. Leo Strauss’s return to Platonic political philosophy can provide a useful lens through which his Catholic readers can assess what it means for there to be a best regime. (shrink)

There has never been a time when ‘following the science’ has been more important for humanity. At no other point in history have we had such advanced knowledge and technology at our fingertips, nor had such astonishing capacity to determine the future of our planet. But the decisions we must make on how science is applied belong outside the lab and should be the outcome of wide public debate. For that to happen, science needs to become part of our common (...) culture. Science is not just for scientists: if it were, it could never save us from the multiple crises we face. For science can save us, if its innovations mesh carefully into society and its applications are channelled for the common good. As Martin Rees argues in this expert and personal analysis of the scientific endeavour on which we all depend, we need to think globally, we need to think rationally and we need to think long-term, empowered by twenty-first-century technology but guided by values that science alone cannot provide. (shrink)

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re emphasizing (...) that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

It is often said in physics that if two models of a theory are related by a symmetry, then the two models provide (or could provide) two different representations of the very same situation, alike the case of two maps of different color for the very same city. It is also said that the situations represented by two models of a theory are indiscernible in some ways when the models in question are related by a symmetry of the theory, just (...) like the situation in the interior of the cabin of a train when the train is at rest in the station is empirically indiscernible from the situation in the interior when the train is moving uniformly (in classical mechanics, these two situations are represented by two models related by a boost). In recent years, philosophers of physics have focused a lot of attention in developing various principles that aim to elucidate these and similar remarks on symmetries, models, physical equivalence, and representation that are widespread in physics practice. The goal of the current article is to provide a critical review of these principles, and suggest a new framework for thinking about these kinds of questions. One important upshot of the paper is that questions of indiscernibility, and questions of the representational capacity of models, must be distinguished from one another. (shrink)

The metaphor of 'dialogue' has been put to different descriptive and evaluative uses by constitutional and political theorists studying interactions between institutions concerning rights. It has also featured prominently in the opinions of courts and the rhetoric and deliberations of legislators. This volume brings together many of the world's leading constitutional and political theorists to debate the nature and merits of constitutional dialogues between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. Constitutional Dialogue explores dialogue's democratic significance, examines its relevance to the (...) functioning and design of constitutional institutions, and explores constitutional dialogues from an international and transnational perspective. (shrink)

Many extant theories of placebo focus on their causal structure wherein placebo effects are those that originate from select features of the therapy (e.g., client expectations or “incidental” features like size and shape). Although such accounts can distinguish placebos from standard medical treatments, they cannot distinguish placebos from everyday occurrences, for example, when positive feedback improves our performance on a task. Providing a social-epistemological account of a treatment context can rule out such occurrences, and furthermore reveal a new way to (...) distinguish clinical placebos from standard medical treatments. (shrink)

The ideals and realities of field research have shaped the development of behavioural primatology over the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper draws on interviews with primatologists as well as a survey of the scientific literature to examine the idealized notion of the field site as a natural place and the physical environment of the field as a research space. It shows that what became standard field practice emerged in the course of wide ranging debate about the techniques, (...) personal qualities and site conditions best suited to the scientific study of the natural behaviour of apes and monkeys. Although the laboratory was a constant presence in this debate, the export of techniques from the laboratory to the field was limited, due to concerns that experimental manipulation would destroy the naturalness of the behaviour. The paper goes on to demonstrate the central significance given by primatologists to the unique social, historical and ecological circumstances of particular field sites, and to sketch some of the complexities that fieldworkers contend with in trying to realize their ideals. Primatologists seek field sites that answer their questions; but once their studies become long term, they also need to find questions that answer to ever changing conditions at those sites. (shrink)

Steiner schools have helped carry the flag of liberal, creative, humanistic education through these dark ages and can now act as a beacon. Professor Peter Woods, formerly of the Open University.Contributors to this accessible book will show how Steiner kindergarten practice can offer an understanding of observation and assessment which is strikingly different from approaches found in many nursery and reception classes, and yet it's this understanding that can encourage deep reflection on practitioners' and students' values and principles. Drawing on (...) their extensive research in the field, the contributors, who include experienced Steiner educators and early childhood experts from other traditions, have worked together to explore and understand what is distinctive about Steiner kindergarten practice. Whilst observation and assessment are not the appropriate terms to describe the more relaxed, intuitive and trusting ways in which Steiner teachers aim to meet with children, the researchers used these techniques to present and explore the variety of perspectives on Steiner kindergarten practice. Key aspects of the Steiner philosophy, such as caring for the physical environment, respecting the rhythms and routines in what children do, and creating an environment that allows teachers and children to properly get to know each other are explored. In these chapters, readers will meet with aspects of the Steiner philosophy which will help to inform and expand on their own practice as early years professionals"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)