In Elephant , director Gus Van Sant dramatises a massacre at a suburban American high school in order to examine narrative cinema's ethical capacity to respond to that which resists being framed as a meaningful event. In the film, this stubborn stuff is experience shot through with contingency. Van Sant depicts acts of violence that are indiscriminate and, at best, ambiguously motivated, as well as school-day activities that appear coincidental and insignificant. This essay argues that the director aims to screen (...) contingency to mount a critique of conventional narrative film's terror of contingency, its anxious drive to convert all cinematic time to good, signifying use. It also argues that Van Sant complicates or crosses up this aim by constructing a self-reflexive text attuned to the inherent irresponsibility in assuming that radical contingency's dead time could be fully and faithfully animated on screen. While the film camera and a still camera used by a student photographer in the film shoot people with the ostensible aim of capturing contingency in all its otherness, both projects are, at the same time, linked, in complex ways, to the student killers who shoot people with the aim of eliminating all otherness. The film's recognition of its own drive to plot in a deadly fashion thus illustrates Van Sant's profound sensitivity to the challenges of responding responsibly to a time of terror and, more broadly, to the terrors of time. (shrink)

Within the loose group of studies that are sometimes labelled Heideggerian cinema – studies in which scholars consider film in conjunction with Heidegger's philosophy – little attention has been paid to Heidegger's actual view of cinema. This omission is not only odd but it is also problematic. In the off-hand comments Heidegger directs towards film throughout his collected works he criticises the medium for its covering over of Being, a fact that makes engaging with film through Heidegger's thinking a questionable (...) project. The present article aims to address this omission and to provide a conception of Heideggerian cinema that does not ignore, but answers, Heidegger's criticism. It argues that it is not the technological nature of cinema that is the source of Heidegger's hostility towards the medium but his conception of the film-photographic image as a transparent copy of the world. It is on this basis that cinema is denied the ca... (shrink)

In _The Already Dead_, Eric Cazdyn examines the ways that contemporary medicine, globalization, politics, and culture intersect to produce a condition and concept that he names "the new chronic." Cazdyn argues that just as contemporary medicine uses targeted drug therapies and biotechnology to manage rather than cure diseases, global capitalism aims not for resolution but rather for a continual state of crisis management that perpetuates the iniquities of the status quo. Engaging critical theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, he explores the ways (...) that crisis affects perceptions of time and denies alternative ways of being and thinking. To resist the exploitative crisis state, which Cazdyn terms "the global abyss," he posits the concept of "the already dead," a condition in which the subject has been killed but has yet to die. Embracing this condition, he argues, allows for a revolutionary consciousness open to a utopian future. Woven into Cazdyn's analysis are personal anecdotes about his battle with leukemia and his struggle to obtain Canadian citizenship during his illness. These narratives help to illustrate his systemic critique, one that reconfigures the relationship between politics, capitalism, revolution, and the body. (shrink)

One manifestation of fragility in the pandemic era is the fragility of social systems, and especially the revealed instability of science and other forms of understanding, when opposed to the ….

The Dead Past Growing Block theory of time—DPGB-theory—is the metaphysical view that the past and the present tenselessly exist, whereas the future does not, and that only the present hosts mentality, whereas the past lacks it and is, in this sense, dead. One main reason in favour of this view is that it is immune to the now-now objection or epistemic objection (which aims at undermining the certainty, within an A-theoretical universe, of being currently experiencing the objective (...) present time). In this paper, I examine the additional arguments offered by P. Forrest and G. A. Forbes to back the DPGB-theory and show that they do not work. I also examine a proposal to rescue the DPGB-theory suggested by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and argue that it does not work either. Moreover, in line with D. Braddon-Mitchell and against Forbes, I argue that the DPGB-theory is indeed committed to the existence of zombies in the past. Being ad hoc and burdened by a very odd and counterintuitive ontological commitment, the DPGB-theory turns out to be rather unpalatable. (shrink)

Volume 29, Issue 2, March 2024, Page 233-235.

Transplantation of vital organs has been premised ethically and legally on "the dead donor rule" (DDR)—the requirement that donors are determined to be dead before these organs are procured. Nevertheless, scholars have argued cogently that donors of vital organs, including those diagnosed as "brain dead" and those declared dead according to cardiopulmonary criteria, are not in fact dead at the time that vital organs are being procured. In this article, we challenge the normative rationale (...) for the DDR by rejecting the underlying premise that it is necessarily wrong for physicians to cause the death of patients and the claim that abandoning this rule would exploit vulnerable patients. We contend that it is ethical to procure vital organs from living patients sustained on life support prior to treatment withdrawal, provided that there is valid consent for both withdrawing treatment and organ donation. However, the conservatism of medical ethics and practical concerns make it doubtful that the DDR will be abandoned in the near future. This leaves the current practice of organ transplantation based on the "moral fiction" that donors are dead when vital organs are procured. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can (...) happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DEAD MAN WALKING: ON THE CINEMATIC TREATMENT OF LICENSED PUBLIC KILLING Edmund Arens University ofLucerne I regret that so many people do not understand, but I know that they have not watched the state imitate the violence they so abhor. (Sister Helen Prejean) ~T\eadMan Walking, thehighlyacclaimed second film directed by Tim -Z-^Robbins, seems appropriate for discussion in the symposium's context oíFilm andModernity: Violence, Sacrifice andReligion. This film on (...) the one hand thematizes different forms ofviolence and victimization; on the other hand it presents divergent forms ofreligion. And it does so in a way which not only demonstrates the interplay of violence and religion but also opens up the chance of transcending various kinds of sacrificial structures inhabiting that interplay. We can approach DeadMan Walking in five steps. After some general remarks about this film as a work of art, I will briefly review the story line. In the part called Themes and Topics, I will outline some of the predominant topics addressed in this movie. The fourth step is devoted to the interrelation of Violence, Victimization and Redemption. Finally, the religious or theological question comes into view under the heading of Proximity and Testimony, an aspect which at the same time has a definite link to law and the legal system. I. DeadMan Walking as a Work of Art According to Susan Sontag, film "currently is the most vivid, the most stimulating, and the most important of all genres of art" (Sontag 13). But Edmund Arens15 whether a particular film really can be considered as a work of art depends on a number of presuppositions, a few of which I shall mention here. Without going too deeply into the debate on the nature and purpose of aesthetic production, there are at least some requirements which point to a work ofart. Roughly speaking, it is defined by putting matter and form into a certain relation, by creating or producing a certain structure, by adopting a certain style and by organizing the material by means ofgenres (all ofwhich relates to the classical notion of poesis). Secondly, a work of art deals with perception in a double way: while it implies a certain perception ofreality, it also invites the audience to participate in this perception and thus to deepen, alter, or correct the perception that they experienced (something which relates to aisthesis). Thirdly, art aims at having certain emotional effects on the public that are either purifying or edifying (something which since Aristotle has been discussed as katharsis). Ifthese three dimensions (cf. Jauss; Siller) are always involved in works ofart, we can ask how in DeadMan Walking the interplay ofpoesis, aisthesis, and katharsis is at work. Under certain conditions a film is a creative work ofart. In this case, the motion picture, whether documentary or fictitious, includes an aesthetic creation of an imagined reality. It does not simply mirror reality but always reconstructs or reshapes it. In fictional film narrative, everyday reality is disrupted and rearranged by means of a variety of formal and material techniques. The treatment of reality necessarily involves the question of representation. What Paul Ricoeur considered as decisive for narrative fiction, applies to narrative fiction films as well: they make use of "calculated dissonance" which disrupts everyday reality and thereby points to a "redescription ofreality" (Ricoeur 1975; 1976; 1986). We shall see later on how this process, attributed especially to certain metaphors, works in the case ofDeadMan Walking. Besides the topic ofrepresentation, any kind of art raises the question of perception. Art implies a certain perception and at the same time it offers or invites—in the case of visual art—the audience to perceive reality in a different or deeper manner. In amovie the audience, whether by a manipulative "aesthetics of overwhelming"1 or by an aesthetics of disclosing, is moved emotionally and imaginatively, the aim being to direct their attention to the secret ofthe things shown and thus to direct or redirect their view ofreality. From the point of view of a pragmatic theory of action (cf. Arens 1994; 1997b) which additionally takes up Ricoeur's most important insights, I would 'The term has been coined by Heiner Müller; quoted from Kirsner... (shrink)

Introduction: The quickened and the dead -- Ontology for philologists : Nietzsche, body, subject -- "Be your self!" : Nietzsche as educator -- The life of thought : Nietzsche's truth perspectivism and the will to power -- Of slaves and masters : the birth of good and evil -- Moments of excess : the making and unmaking of the subject -- Lacan, desire, and the originating function of loss -- The word that sees me : the nexus of image (...) and sign -- The nothing as the reverse side of Lacan's mirror -- Nietzsche is dead, long live Nietzsche : in memory of paternal ghosts -- The "insiders" : Nietzsche's secret teaching and the invention of "the philosopher of the future" -- Finding one's home in the nothingness of Nietzsche's text -- Nietzsche's excessive demand and the question of the adulterous queen's desire -- High and low : the hierarchical structure of Nietzsche's texts -- Inside and outside : Nietzsche "incorporated"; or, Who incorporates whom in the act of reading Nietzsche? -- The father's indulgence of the prodigal son : ambiguity and the limits of "the position" -- The contagion of affect in Netzsche : Klein, Krell, Bataille -- Doing time with Melanie Klein : renouncing "the bad breast," mourning the loss of "the good breast" -- "Motivating this writingéis a fear of going crazy" : how Klein might read Georges Bataille sur Nietzsche -- David Farrell Krell's "novel" approach to reading Nietzsche -- Family romances and textual encounters : Sarah Kofman reading Nietzsche -- Reading Nietzsche I : explosions -- Autobiography or autothanography : killing with words in Rue Ordener, Rue Labat -- Reading Nietzsche II : le pris des juifs; Nietzsche, les juifs, l'anti-semitisme -- The vision, the riddle, and the vicious circle : Pierre Klossowski's reading of Nietzsche's sick body -- On the continuity and disjunction between the body and language -- Exquisite delirium : the thought of eternal return -- The conspiracy of philosopher/villains : Nietzsche/Klossowski/Sade -- From cannibalism to voodoo : the creation and control of the subject of Nietzsche's writing. (shrink)

This article takes two events in the ongoing story of a predicted UK avian flu epidemic—“the dead parrot” (October 2005) and “the dying swan” (April 2006)—and examines the role and use of three interconnected metaphor scenarios (related to the notions of “journey,” “war,” and “house”) in the UK press coverage about avian influenza in 2005 and 2006. These represent fundamental descriptive and explanatory structures that derive from culturally or phenomenologically salient objects or experiences, and which allow journalists, scientists, and (...) policymakers to reduce the complexity of the threat posed by a disease and to promote risk-management strategies for the disease that appear to make instinctive or intuitive sense to experts and the public. Although similar metaphor scenarios may be used over time, the kinds of reporting they are associated with and the policy scenarios that result from these framings differ depending on the perceived proximity of the disease threat. (shrink)

As we navigate through life, we model time as flowing, the present as special, and the past as “dead.” This model of time—manifest time—develops in childhood and later thoroughly infiltrates our language, thought, and behavior. It is part of what makes a human life recognizably human. Yet if physics is correct, this model of the world is deeply mistaken. This book is about this conflict between manifest and physical time. The first half dives into the (...) physics and philosophy to establish the conflict’s existence; but it also argues that the claim that physics “spatializes” time is overstated. Rather, even relativity theory makes time special in deep and significant ways. The second half turns to psychology, biology, and more, seeking to understand why creatures like us develop manifest time. The novel picture that results is that manifest time is a natural reaction to the many cognitive and evolutionary challenges that we face. For subjects embedded in our circumstances, it makes sense to develop—even if fundamentally wrong. (shrink)

Serious work in history of philosophy requires doing something very difficult: conducting a hypothetical dialogue with dead philosophers. Is it worth devoting to it the time and energy required to do it well? Yes. Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of understanding the past, making progress toward solving philosophical problems requires a good grasp of the range of possible solutions to those problems and of the arguments which motivate alternative positions, a grasp we can only have if we (...) understand well philosophy's past. Philosophers who concentrate too much on the present are apt to assume too simple a view of alternative theories and of important philosophical arguments. Ryle and Austin offer instructive examples of how it is possible to go wrong by ignoring or misrepresenting historical figures. (shrink)

Aquinas’s account of the human soul is the key to his theory of human nature. The soul’s nature as the substantial form of the human body appears at times to be in tension with its nature as immaterial intellect, however, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Aquinas’s discussion of the ‘separated’ soul. In this paper I use the Biblical story of the rich man and Lazarus (which Aquinas took to involve actual separated souls) to highlight what I (...) will call the Two-Person Problem facing his account of human identity through death and the bodily resurrection. Aquinas claims that the rational soul is neither the human being nor the human person. When the rich man’s soul says “I am in agony,” then, what is the referent of “I?” It appears that there is a human person, ‘Dives,’ who is replaced at Dives’s death by the person ‘Dives’s soul,’ who is in turn replaced at the bodily resurrection by ‘Dives,’ whom Aquinas claims is numerically identical to the original person. But this seems hopeless as an identity-preserving account of human nature. I believe that Aquinas’s account of human nature does not, as it stands, possess the resources with which to overcome this difficulty; I conclude that reconstructing a(n otherwise) Thomistic account that involves immediate bodily resurrection, although a radical approach, is the one best suited to preserving the most essential features of Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

A temporal levels structure for temporal metaphysics is outlined and employed to convey a dilemma threatening the temporal collapse of Growing-Block Theories to their meta-temporal level. The outline further explains how Presentism occupies a privileged position in that temporal levels structure. Moreover, that dilemma relies crucially on the acceptance of productive causation as explaining additions to the growing block, for which it is argued any reasonable growing-block theory should incorporate. The dilemma’s first horn considers growing-block theories where productive causes are (...) only so when present; the second, growing-block theories where productive causes continue being so when past. Either way, growing-block theory collapses into Accruing-Present Theory: whereby all entities survive into succeeding present “blocks” of existents. It is argued, the presentness of surviving entities undermines their intended theoretical role, undercutting motivations for believing accruing-present theses. Ultimately, I recommend rejection of both growing-block and accruing-present theses based on these explanatory inadequacies. (shrink)

How did we end up here, masters of scientific insight, purveyors of ever more powerful technologies, astride the burning planet that created us, and now responsible for cleaning up the mess and determining the future direction of all of life? And what do we do about it? Technology is Dead attempts to answer both of those questions. It is a book of both challenge and hope, written for those who are able or willing to lead us out of our (...) global predicament. It is for the politicians, CEOs, community leaders, everyday parents and young people who understand that we must change our ways to ensure a sustainable future for all living things and the planet we rely on. The book's premise is that technology (like capitalism) has been an unprecedented force for prosperity, while at the same time bringing unrelenting, and unplanned downsides. Technology has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of modern society, ignoring many of our human truths while preying on our vulnerabilities. It has resulted in both profound economic progress and a multitude of troubling unintended consequences, from deepening divides and loss of collective responsibility to a growing list of existential threats. The only viable response is to reconnect with our collaborative roots and undertake what the authors call a humanist revolution, a global effort to redefine human progress, rebuild our core systems to contribute to that progress, and reset our all too human behaviors and aspirations, while becoming the active, careful human-first stewards of technology itself. The revolution, guided by what the authors call a 21st Century Humanist Code asks all of us to work towards the world we want to live in - for each and every human to become the center and source of change in their lives, in their communities and the world beyond. The future of humankind and our planet depends on it. (shrink)

The utilitarian construct of two alternative criteria of human death increases the supply of transplantable organs at the end of life. Neither the neurological criterion (heart-beating donation) nor the circulatory criterion (non-heart-beating donation) is grounded in scientific evidence but based on philosophical reasoning. A utilitarian death definition can have unintended consequences for dying Muslim patients: (1) the expedited process of determining death for retrieval of transplantable organs can lead to diagnostic errors, (2) the equivalence of brain death with human death (...) may be incorrect, and (3) end-of-life religious values and traditional rituals may be sacrificed. Therefore, it is imperative to reevaluate the two different types and criteria of death introduced by the Resolution (Fatwa) of the Council of Islamic Jurisprudence on Resuscitation Apparatus in 1986. Although we recognize that this Fatwa was based on best scientific evidence available at that time, more recent evidence shows that it rests on outdated knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of human death. We recommend redefining death in Islam to reaffirm the singularity of this biological phenomenon as revealed in the Quran 14 centuries ago. (shrink)

For the first time, this book reconstructs the fascinating story of a series of anonymous "dialogues of the dead" published in Germany in the early eighteenth century. The texts stage fictional debates between some of the most famous thinkers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Leibniz, Thomasius and Bekker. The dialogues were originally published as cheap prints and very few copies now survive; until today the links between these texts and the very existence of (...) this textual corpus have remained unknown. Starting from the little reliable information available, Riccarda Suitner conducts an exciting investigation of the authors, production, illustrations, circulation and plagiarism of these texts in the intellectual world of the early eighteenth century, proposing a new image of the German Enlightenment. The German edition of this book was awarded the prestigious Geisteswissenschaften international prize. (shrink)

The Reveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme are one of the important books of the dawn of the nineteenth century. In this text, Senancour limns an image of the world in accordance with the scientific thought of his time. It is a disenchanted image, dominated by mechanical necessity, and in it the distinction between good and evil no longer holds. God is absent; the world is not his creation. And Senancour expresses no regret:Everything in nature is indifferent, for (...) everything is necessary: all is beautiful, for all is determined. The individual is nothing, as a being apart: his cause and his end lie beyond him. Only the whole exists absolutely, invincibly, with no other cause, with no other end beyond itself, with no laws but those of its nature, with no other product than its permanence…. The beautiful, the true, the just, evil, and disorder exist only for the weakness of mortals…. The same earth contains happy orchards and ruinous volcanoes. The villain triumphs, the hero dies; the orchard withers, the volcano is snuffed out; one and the same destruction devours both the animate and the inanimate, shrouded in the same oblivion; and in a world reborn, there remains not a trace of what was abhorred or deified in a bygone world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.1 (2006) 289-298 [Access article in PDF] Theory Is Dead— Like a Zombie Brian Boyd University of Auckland Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral; ix & 725 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. $72.50 cloth, $29.50 paper. Looking for an Argument: Critical Encounters with the New Approaches to the Criticism of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, by (...) Richard Levin; 309 pp. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. $49.50. Are we "after Theory"? And if so, then where are we? Seven years after Post-Theory (1996) came Reading After Theory (2002) and then After Theory (2003).1 Students inducted into the mysteries of Theory by an aging professoriate can no longer feel the zeal their teachers themselves have mostly long since lost. Theory's own leaders point out its failings.2 Like Queen Anne, Theory is surely dead. Or is it?In 1982 Jonathan Culler argued that post-structuralist literary theory should be called just Theory and that Theorists should play the "central role" in intellectual life (TE, pp. 26, 215). What now sounds hubristic seemed heady in the expansionist days of Theory's empire. But less than two decades later it could be pointed out in print that "everyone knows that if you want to locate the laughingstock on your local campus these days, your best bet is to stop by the English department" (TE, p. 315).So was theory dead by this point, five years after the start of the Bad Writing Contest and three years after the Sokal hoax? Not at all. The year of the "laughingstock" remark, David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare After [End Page 289] Theory (1999) claimed that we are "after theory" "not because theory's claims have been shown to be intellectually bankrupt but because its claims have been accepted as both useful and productive." A reviewer could demur: "As formulated the claim may be overstated—it sometimes seems that Shakespeare studies is insufficiently theorized."3But that was seven years ago. Surely things are different now, ten years after the Sokal hoax? Yes and no. After Reading After Theory and After Theory, a literature professor at the top of his field, Louis Menand, can (1) bemoan the sickness of the humanities and (2) deplore the culture of conformity in their Theorized students, and at the same time still (3) offer thanks that Theory "rescued" literature departments from "the literary" and (4) urge that despite their unhealthy state the Theorized humanities should resolve not "to retrench" but "to colonize."4So again, are we after Theory or not, and where are we, if we are? Are reports of the death of Theory exaggerated? Or is Theory dead in a special way, one of the Undead, a zombie or a vampire?There have been many blows driven through the heart of Theory in the last thirty years, but if Theory is at least dying now it is not because of blows from outside but only from its own terminal internal tedium. It has "always already" been immune to criticism because it refused to listen to critical arguments, treating them as so much unfriendly fire, proof of the enemy's perfidy, all the more reason to close ranks.I described Menand as at the top of his field because he belongs to the Harvard English Department, is a star essayist for the New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and was speaking to the 2004 MLA convention. There he wished some young Turks would stand up to challenge his generation, and tell them "You got it all wrong." But critics have been doing this cogently for decades. His generation has paid only enough heed to dismiss such criticism as proof that reactionary forces needed to be resolutely resisted.And the potential young Turks are simply too scared to speak up. Among all the many indictments of Theory collected in Theory's Empire, one of the most chilling indices of the betrayal of intellectual freedom and honesty in the Theorized humanities comes from a junior faculty... (shrink)

A theoretical analysis of our contemporary society's relationships to the dead, specifically the dead of Native Americans, as affected by the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Until recently, our contemporary culture has often only dealt with the relationships with the dead on a subconscious and superficial level. With the advent of N AGPRA, we must now explicitly address issues regarding obligations and relations to the dead. For the first time, these issues (...) are institutionalized by federal legislation. Although now written into law, the regulations have yet to be tested, and thus upheld, in federal court. In addition, the parameters of NAGPRA are vague. To minimize conflict we must eliminate vagaries. Clear definitions of how, why and under what circumstances we are (at least legally) obligated to the dead and what do our obligations reflect or say about the dominant culture may be thought of as defining our "death consciousness.". (shrink)

In India, there has been a shift from using unclaimed bodies to voluntary body donation for anatomy dissections in medical colleges. This study used in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the deeper intent, values and attitudes towards body donation, the body and death, and expectations of the body donor, as well as their next of kin and representative religious scholars. All donors had enrolled in a body bequest programme in a medical school in South India. This study concludes that body donors (...) are philanthropists with deep-rooted values of altruism and service, who are often willing to forgo traditional religious and cultural death rituals. The next of kin are often uncomfortable with the donor’s decision, and this suggests that it is important that dialogue/counselling occurs at the time of the bequest, if the donor’s wishes are to be respected. Religious injunctions are often misinterpreted; this implies that religious leaders/scholars can play a significant role in addressing these misconceptions which are barriers to body donation. Body bequest programmes in India may be enhanced by positioning body donation as ‘daana’—giving without any expectation of return for a higher purpose, including ceremonies of respect in medical colleges. Furthermore, increased public engagement and awareness about body bequest programmes are also important to enhance participation. When medical students internalise what body donors expect of them, i.e. altruism, empathy with patients and becoming ‘good doctors’, it will help to ensure that the donation was not in vain and that the dead truly teach the living. (shrink)

This paper asks how we should regard the laws and customs of armed conflict, and specifically the rule prohibiting the targeting of civilians. What view should we take of the moral character and significance of such rules? Some philosophers have suggested that they are best regarded as useful conventions. This view is sometimes motivated by a "deep moral critique" of the rule protecting civilians: Jeff McMahan believes for example that the existing rules protect some who ought to be liable to (...) attack (on account of their having voluntarily contributed to the injustice or aggression being resisted). He thinks we would be better off with a different principle of discrimination in warfare. But McMahan acknowledges that for the time being we must stick with the rules that we have. The present paper does five things: (1) it explores and takes further some of McMahan's insights about the importance of existing positive law in this area; (2) it argues that some of the features that philosophers find problematic with the rule offering blanket protection to all civilians have to do with administrability; (3) it raises some questions about whether the rule protecting civilians can really be regarded as a convention (and it argues that certainly it cannot be regarded as a "Lewis-convention" in a strict sense); (4) to the extent that the rule can be regarded as conventional, the paper argues that it remains a deadly serious moral rule, partly because of the circumstances of death and destruction in which it operates and which it tries to ameliorate, and partly on account of its fragility. The fifth point is the most important. (5) The rule protecting civilians does not operate in circumstances in which, apart form positive law, civilians like everyone would be liable to attack. The rule operates against a moral background in which all deliberate killing is to be regarded as murder; some deliberate killings (of combatants) are privileged in warfare; but the rule about civilians reflects the fact that this is a strictly limited privilege and that those who target civilians do not get the benefit of it. Changing our view of the default position in this way enables us to better understand the distinctive work that this rule does. (shrink)

Queen Christina of Sweden was unconventional in her time, leading to hypotheses on her gender and possible hermaphroditic nature. If genetic analysis can substantiate the latter claim, could this bring the queen into disrepute 300 years after her death? Joan C. Callahan has argued that if a reputation changes, this constitutes a change only in the group of people changing their views and not in the person whose reputation it is. Is this so? This paper analyses what constitutes change (...) and draws out the implications to the reputation of the dead. It is argued that a reputation is a relational property which can go through changes. The change is “real” for the group changing their views on Queen Christina and of a Cambridge kind for the long dead queen herself. Cambridge changes result in new properties being acquired, some of which can be of significance. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the growing block theory of time has rather surprising, and hitherto unexplored, explanatory benefits when it comes to certain enduring philosophical puzzles concerning death. In particular, I claim the growing block theorist has readily available and convincing answers to the following questions: Why is it an evil to be dead but not an evil to be not yet born? How can death be an evil for the dead if they no longer (...) exist to suffer it? When is death an evil for the one who dies? The ability to give such answers is a significant, but by no means decisive, advantage for the growing block view of time. (shrink)

In this article I reflect on meeting Professor Drucilla Cornell as a bachelor’s student at Rutgers University, working as her assistant, and the irreversible impact she had on my life. I argue that Cornell was a thinker of profound courage and that this virtue was crucial to her developing several ways beyond the philosophical anthropology of Euro-modern man. Cornell envisioned three main ways beyond what she called the “dead ends of man”: feminism, critical philosophy (including dialectics and Marxism), and (...) African humanism. These three traditions combine in an explosive, revolutionary way in Cornell’s writings; each are essential pillars of her thought. I also identify a dialectical or “productive” tension in her thinking between tendencies toward both idealist and materialist metaphysics. I conclude by recounting personal experiences with Cornell, exploring the consequences of her ethical philosophy, and posing questions that I think she could help us answer in the tumultuous times we are currently living through. (shrink)

Contemporary culture trivializes the "seven deadly sins," or vices, as if they have no serious moral or spiritual implications. Glittering Vices clears this misconception by exploring the traditional meanings of gluttony, sloth, lust, and others. It offers a brief history of how the vices were compiled and an eye opening explication of how each sin manifests itself in various destructive behaviors. Readers gain practical understanding of how the vices shape our culture today and how to correctly identify and eliminate the (...) deeply rooted patterns of sin that are work in their own lives. This accessible book is essential for any reader interested in spiritual disciplines and character formation. Excerpt Very simply, a virtue (or vice) is acquired through practice repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and gradually forms our character. . . . We often need external incentives and sanctions to get us through the initial stages of the process, when our old, entrenched desires still pull us toward the opposite behavior. But with encouragement, discipline, and often a role model or mentor, practice can make things feel more natural and enjoyable as we gradually develop the internal values and desires corresponding to our outward behavior. Virtue often develops, that is, from the outside in. This is why, when we want to reform our character from vice to virtue, we often need to practice and persevere in regular spiritual disciplines and formational practices for a lengthy period of time. (shrink)

Environmentalism has long placed heavy emphasis on strategies that seek to ensure the environment of today and the future roughly mirror the past. Yet while past-oriented approaches have come under increased scrutiny, environmental ethics in the time of climate change is still largely conceptualized as that which could pull humanity back from the brink of disaster or, at least, prevent the worst of it. As a result, practical and conceptual tools for grappling with what is owed to the (...) class='Hi'>dead and dying victims of environmental injustice have been and continue to be woefully underdeveloped. This paper advances scaffolding for robust environmental death ethics that are temporally pluralistic and at home within intergenerational climate justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Are Dead Bodies For?:An Augustinian ThanatologyPhilip PorterIntroductionSt. Augustine's De cura pro mortuis gerenda is one of the earliest sources for Christian thought on dead human bodies. In this work, he examines traditional Christian practices of care for the dead and provides a theological interpretation of those practices. In De cura, Augustine does not aim primarily to help the reader discern what are licit and illicit (...) behaviors, but rather to discover what is occurring in the context of the funerary practices of Christians with reference to the economy of salvation. It examines, in other words, how the bodies of the departed Christian faithful, both the saints and ordinary believers, affect and are affected by the prayers of the living and the dead. For this reason, De cura is an invaluable resource for reflection on Christian practices surrounding relics. Augustine maps some of the possible avenues of interchange between the living and the dead while ruling out others. In doing so he provides fodder for theological reflection upon the question of what Christians should think is happening when they view, pray before, kiss, or touch to their bodies the pieces of bone, flesh, blood, hair, clothing, jewelry, or footwear of the Church's saints.The following examination consists in two parts. The first is a close look at De cura in which I will argue that the conclusions of that work concerning the physical remains of Christian's are best considered in light of Augustine's ecclesiology. The second involves a speculative extension of the findings in the first part to show how relics work. This speculation is useful and warranted because the Catholic Church has had relatively little to say on this matter magisterially. While the Church teaches that the veneration [End Page 561] of relics is beneficial and provides some guidance as to what the practice ought to entail, the question of how the particular matter of saintly bodies functions remains ambiguous. In these two parts I will show that relics may be understood as a sacrament of the Church's unity. They are visible signs of the invisible unity of the Church across time and space.De cura pro mortuis gerendaProximityAugustine's De cura is a response to a question from his fellow bishop, Paulinus of Nola. Paulinus is interested in the question of ad sanctos burial, the Christian practice of interring the dead near the earthly remains of martyrs (ad sanctos). This practice was thought to give "some access to their intercessory powers or special assistance on Judgment Day."1 Paulinus wants a theological answer about the liceity and function of ad sanctos burial, for which he turns to Augustine. On the whole, Augustine is set against the idea that mere proximity to a martyr's remains aids in the salvation of the departed. But his words on the subject are nuanced, and he seeks to provide an orthodox explanation of the practice.2 He describes the benefit of ad sanctos burial primarily in terms of memoria. As Peter Brown has argued, memoria was not understood as a passive faculty by the citizens of the ancient world. Instead, memoria was an active tool to facilitate social cohesion, especially in the context of client–patron relations.3 This is how Augustine thinks of it, and explains the comforts provided by funerary arrangements with reference to it.I do not see what aid those [comforts] are to the dead, except this: that when they reflect upon where the bodies of those whom they love may be buried, they should entrust them by prayer to the same saints who have undertaken, like patrons, to aid them before the Lord.4The client–patron relationships of the late ancient world alluded to by Augustine in this passage involve the active bonds of intercession. Proximity to the saints might serve as an actuator of memoria, but not simply by virtue [End Page 562] of the physical closeness of the bodies. Instead, as Augustine goes on to claim, "When, therefore, the soul reflects upon where the body of a dearly beloved person has been buried, and it meets in that place the name of a venerable... (shrink)

Non-presentist A-theories of time (such as the growing block theory and the moving spotlight theory) seem unacceptable because they invite skepticism about whether one exists in the present. To avoid this absurd implication, Peter Forrest appeals to the "Past is Dead hypothesis," according to which only beings in the objective present are conscious. We know we're present because we know we're conscious, and only present beings can be conscious. I argue that the dead past hypothesis undercuts the (...) main reason for preferring non-presentist A-theories to their presentist rivals, rivals which straightforwardly avoid skepticism about the present. (shrink)

The image of dead person returning to life was the most ancient source of irrational fear appeared in culture. This conclusion is argued with empirical data from archeology and ethnography. Fear has been expressed in funeral rites, the tying of extremities, burning and dismemberment of dead bodies, and ritual cannibalism etc. At the same time, it was attended by effective care for helpless cripples, which seems to descend to the Lower Paleolithic as well. Dread of posthumous revenge (...) played a decisive regulative role at the earliest stage of anthropogenesis, as the disparity between artificial weapons and natural aggression-retention mechanisms became self-destructive. In the new conditions, individuals with normal animal mind were doomed to catastrophe. Those hominid groups proved viable, in which mystical fear, a product of unnaturally developed imagination, bounded lethal conflicts among kinsmen. The phobias corresponded to the psycho-nervous system's “strategic pathology”; that was a condition for early hominids’ self-preservation. As a result, a causal connection between instrumental potential, cultural regulation quality and social sustainability was formed, which has been a mechanism of social selection for all of human history and prehistory. (shrink)

This essay investigates the way in which dying and dead bodies resist poetic incorporation and the way in which such bodies can be fugitively attested to through fictive prose. It examines Heidegger's treatment of dead and dying bodies from Being and Time to his later work on poetry and language, and it offers as a counterpoint another mode of addressing these bodies found in the fiction of Poe. It also shows how even the poetry of Trakl, heralded (...) by Heidegger as an exemplar of poetic address, can be fruitfully understood in prosaic terms, terms which more faithfully reveal both the content of his poetry itself as well as the true nature of the wounds of dying life. (shrink)

The dynamic relationship between hypernorms and microsocial contracts can explain novel, evolutionary changes in economic life. The conceptual machinery of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) can be expanded in order to understand dynamic moments in the evolution in economic life such as the economic crisis of 2008–2009. When a transition in the ethical interpretation of economic events occurs over time, it can be understood as a transition from the opaqueness of hypernorms to the relative clarity of microsocial contracts. This (...) phenomenon deserves more study than it has recevied, and entails, at a minimum, the application of an enhanced, more dynamic interpretation of ISCT. (shrink)

The practice of prayer for the dead has been criticized by some Christians on the grounds that it is useless (on the assumption that a postmortem change in spiritual state is impossible) and even sinful inasmuch as it wills a state of affairs contrary to that which God has already ordained. In this article, I challenge these arguments using a Boethian or Augustinian conception of God’s relationship to time. If prayers from all times are perceived by God in (...) a tenseless present, I argue that prayer for the dead becomes no more problematic than petitionary prayer about the future. (shrink)

Through a detailed analysis of ghost tales in the Ashkenazi pietistic work Sefer hasidim, Susan Weissman documents a major transformation in Jewish attitudes and practices regarding the dead and the afterlife that took place between the rabbinic period and medieval times. She reveals that a huge influx of Germano-Christian beliefs, customs, and fears relating to the dead and the afterlife seeped into medieval Ashkenazi society among both elite and popular groups. In matters of sin, penance, and posthumous punishment, (...) the infiltration of Christian notions was so strong as to effect a radical departure in Pietist thinking from rabbinic thought and to spur outright contradiction of talmudic principles regarding the realm of the hereafter. Although it is primarily a study of the culture of a medieval Jewish enclave, this book demonstrates how seminal beliefs of medieval Christendom and monastic ideals could take root in a society with contrary religious values-even in the realm of doctrinal belief. (shrink)

Within the Community Rule, 1QS 8:1-4 has at times been used as an intertext to support claims pertaining to the future expectations of both early Jesus movements and the historical Jesus himself. In particular, the passage has functioned as an intertext to support the notion that Jesus and some of his earliest movements foresaw the future restoration and liberation of greater Israel in toto, including outsiders. Without getting involved in this larger New Testament debate, the current article wishes to address (...) the appropriateness of using 1QS 8:1-4 as an intertext without taking its literary and sectarian contexts into consideration. Focusing throughout on the interrelationship between judgement and boundary demarcation, this article will unfold in a centripetal manner. Firstly, it will treat the commonalities among all the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls. Secondly, the discussion will direct its focus specifically to the Community Rule. Finally, we will look at 1QS 8:1-4 in particular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Prayer for the Dead, A Prayer for the LivingVincent J. MinichielloAs a first year resident physician, I am just beginning to understand the responsibilities and the practice of medicine. I have difficulty telling people “I’m a doctor,” because I’m not sure I believe it myself. And yet within the past eight months, I have already been challenged to mediate situations that bring me to not only fully (...) accept my vocation as a physician, but also to grow on a mental level, a human level, and a spiritual level. In the following reflection, I recount one of those moments that occurred during a rotation in the medical intensive care unit.At 6 p.m. I was coming on for my night shift knowing that the family of one of the patients I would be caring for had decided earlier in the day to withdraw medical care for their dying sister. The woman had been admitted to the ICU the previous night unconscious and in multi organ system failure—heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, all failed—as a result of chronic alcoholism and most recently drinking daily for three weeks with barely any other dietary intake. She was being kept alive with mechanical ventilation and three IV drips of medications to maintain her blood pressure. She was 45 years old. After a few more hours of saying goodbye, her sister came up to me and said that the family was ready to proceed. To withdraw care. I thought a lot about this phrase we use [End Page 204] “withdrawing care” that night. This encounter was the first time I had ever been the physician entering these orders into the computer. To me, what I was doing that night was in fact the complete opposite of “withdrawing” care. I felt, instead, that I was giving even more care. How?First, by caring more for the patient. By making sure she was comfortably extubated, by helping to reposition her in the hospital bed in a way that appeared more natural, and by praying. I prayed that when we stopped the pressors and the ventilator, she would pass quietly and find peace in Heaven, when she perhaps found very little on Earth.Second, by caring more for her family. It was my responsibility to guide them through this dying process, a process that I had only encountered two or three times previously in my life. I felt unsure, frightened, and nervous, not wanting to make a mistake or be inadvertently insensitive. Once again, prayer and what I perceive to be God’s grace filled me with the love I needed to outline the process, to encourage family members to hold her hand and to speak with her while she died.Once the medications were stopped and she was breathing unassisted, her lungs gasped once … twice. Was the soul being released from the body or was the body clinging onto the soul? And then, within two minutes, silence. I left some space to pause and then when the time felt right, stepped forward for the death pronouncement. “The heart is not beating, the lungs have stopped breathing” was all I could manage to say. Why did I remove the “she” and “her”? Why could I not say, “She is dead”? At the time I could not have answered those questions. Thinking back, I believe it was easier for me to vocalize that her body had simply stopped functioning, while I quietly held on to the belief that her soul continued to exist. Should I have held back as I did? Would it have been better for the family to hear that their sister was unquestionably dead? Perhaps. Nevertheless, the family understood, they cried, they held their sister’s hand. And then let go.At this point I took a breath, left the room, and without pause stepped straight into …A 46 year old woman with a history of drug and alcohol abuse was being wheeled into the ICU on a hospital bed right in front of me as the door behind me closed. Her nose and mouth were caked with white powder and she was in the embrace of some hallucination, clawing... (shrink)

In this commentary, the author argues that the alleged failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, and in particular the role played by the developing countries, should be embraced as a political accomplishment opening up a moment of political opportunity. Admittedly Copenhagen was a political failure, albeit of a populist consensual policy practice that invokes the semi-scientific threat of an apocalyptic doomsday scenario to make everybody toe the line of the neo-liberal market economy. Now that we are at (...) the point where this consensual policy approach has imploded under its own weight, the time is right to revive the climate and, by extension, the environment as a matter of genuine political concern that is open to struggle and contestation, in this way constituting an essential component of social change. (shrink)

In this commentary, the author argues that the alleged failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, and in particular the role played by the developing countries, should be embraced as a political accomplishment opening up a moment of political opportunity. Admittedly Copenhagen was a political failure, albeit of a populist consensual policy practice that invokes the semi-scientific threat of an apocalyptic doomsday scenario to make everybody toe the line of the neo-liberal market economy. Now that we are at (...) the point where this consensual policy approach has imploded under its own weight, the time is right to revive the climate and, by extension, the environment as a matter of genuine political concern that is open to struggle and contestation, in this way constituting an essential component of social change. (shrink)

This article gives brief results of a Norwegian empirical project where the main purpose has been to study the burial rite versus bereavement and the role of religiousness in relation to the disposing of the dead. The theoretical perspective is that loss of a significant close, as well as religiousness are primary life experiences which flow together in the bereaved person's grieving conduct during the burial rite. 70 bereaved persons who had lost a close relative during a certain (...) class='Hi'>time period have filled in questionnaires with information about the death, the funeral, religiousness and bereavement. The sample is treated statistically by means of indexes for grieving conduct during the burial week, religiousness, and grief. The sample is coherent and unambiguous, and shows that those who let the burial rite be a time to mourn experienced more benefit from the funeral service and had less anxiety, depression and intrusive experiences during the first year of bereavement. But sadness was independent of the grieving conduct during the burial rite, a result which makes sadness an aspect of mourning which qualitatively differs from the other aspects described. External conditions as urbanity and institutionalizing, as well as internal matters as the dramatical character of the loss, and personal religiousness affected the bereaved person's grieving conduct during the burial rite. (shrink)