In this paper we aim to offer a balanced argument to motivate (re)thinking about the mental illness clause within the insanity defence. This is the clause that states that mental illness should have a relevant causal or explanatory role for the presence of the incapacities or limited capacities that are covered by this defence. We offer three main considerations showing the important legal and epistemological roles that the mental illness clause plays in the evaluation of legal responsibility. Although we (...) acknowledge that these advantages could be preserved without having this clause explicitly stated in the law, we resist proposals that deny the importance of mental illness in exculpation. We argue, thus, that any attempt at removing the mental illness clause from legal formulations of the insanity defence should offer alternative ways of keeping in place these advantages. (shrink)

We explicate and evaluate arguments both for and against the insanity defense itself, different versions of the insanity defense (M'Naghten, Model Penal Code, and Durham (or Product)), the Irresistible Impulse rule, and various reform proposals.

In this chapter we will argue that the capacities necessary to moral and legal agency can be understood as executive functions in the brain. Executive functions underwrite both the cognitive and volitional capacities that give agents a fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing: to recognize their acts as immoral and/or illegal, and to act or refrain from acting based upon this recognition. When a person’s mental illness is serious enough to cause severe disruption of executive functions, she is very likely to (...) lack substantial capacities necessary to be law-abiding. Our analysis supports the Model Penal Code test for legal insanity over the traditional M’Naghten test, because the Model Penal Code test allows either severely diminished cognitive or volitional capacities to warrant an excuse to criminal culpability. We will provide a nuanced account of the ways in which mental illness can erode executive function, as well as an explanation as to why severe diminishment of executive functions caused by mental illness, but not some other causes, is exculpatory. (shrink)

800x600 In our book _Global Insanity_ we argued that the existential predicament faced by humanity is a predictable consequence of Western Enlightenment thinking and the resulting world model, whose ascendance with the Industrial Revolution entrained development of the global consumer Economy that is destroying the biosphere. This situation extends from a dominant mindset based on the philosophy of reductionism. The problem was recognized and characterized by Robert M. Hutchins. In 1985, Hutchins ideas were discussed by Robert Rosen in Chapter 1 (...) of _Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical & Methodological Foundations_._ _Building on Hutchins' ideas, Rosen laid the foundation for an entire new, non-reductionist paradigm, which he called "complexity theory". This new paradigm is what we are further developing here. One has to recognize that a paradigm shift is needed to overcome the entrenched mindset and world model that reductionism has created. Here we explore the myriad interconnected ways-psychological, social, cultural, political, and technological-that the Western world model and consumer economy works as a complex system to thwart, neutralize, or co-opt for its own ends any effort to bring about the kind of radical change that is needed to avert global ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. This resistance to change stems from the need, inherent in the Western model, to continually grow the consumer economy. The media's continued portrayal of consumptive economic growth as a good thing, the widely held belief that the Economy is paramount, and current political and technological trends all manifest the system's active resistance to change. From the perspective of the mature economic system, any work that does not serve to grow the Economy is counterproductive, and viewed as unnecessary, a luxury, or subversive. The potential for real change is thus inversely related to the viability of the Economy, which will eventually decline as the system develops into senescence. To the extent that the fragile metastability of senescence affords opportunity for radical change, economic decline can be viewed as a hopeful sign. But taking maximum advantage of that opportunity will be extraordinarily difficult, as it will require widespread recognition of the problem, major voluntary sacrifice by the relatively large numbers of people who still benefit from the system, and concerted "grassroots" efforts. It can be expected that the system will resist those efforts until the end, becoming increasingly reliant on media-enabled distraction and divisive politics, as well as violent coercion, to maintain itself. Investment in education and science is widely touted as necessary for improving our situation, but this is misguided as long as the educational system and scientific enterprise continue to work in collusion with the larger system, as they currently do. Until the reductionist mindset and world model that drives the system is effectively challenged, there can be little hope for the kind of change needed to avert the catastrophic collapse of civilization. Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4. (shrink)

Is insanity a myth? Does it exist merely to keep psychiatrists in business? In Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences, Dr. Szasz challenges the way both science and society define insanity; in the process, he helps us better understand this often misunderstood condition. Dr. Szasz presents a carefully crafted account of the insanity concept and shows how it relates to and differs from three closely allied ideas—bodily illness, social deviance, and the sick role.

This chapter argues that a successful plea of legal insanity ought to rest upon proof that a criminal act is causally related to symptoms of a mental disorder. Diagnosis of a mental disorder can signal to the court that the defendant had very little control over relevant moral ignorance or incompetence. Must we draw the same conclusion for defendants who lack moral knowledge due to miseducation or other extreme environmental conditions, unrelated to a mental disorder? Adults who were brainwashed (...) as children, for example, might seem “insane” due to their lack of moral knowledge. However, since legal culpability rests on the capacity to understand the criminal law’s moral demands, to reflect on these demands across time, and to control one’s behavior in light of them, simple ignorance of morality's demands does not excuse. (shrink)

In The Rules of Insanity, Carl Elliott draws on philosophy and psychiatry to develop a conceptual framework for judging the moral responsibility of mentally ill offenders. Arguing that there is little useful that can be said about the responsibility of mentally ill offenders in general, Elliott looks at specific mental illnesses in detail; among them schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorders, psychosexual disorders such as exhibitionism and voyeurism, personality disorders, and impulse control disorders such as kleptomania and pyromania. He takes a particularly (...) hard look at the psychopath or sociopath, who many have argued is incapable of understanding morality. Making extensive use of psychiatric case histories, Elliott explores the various ways in which mental illness can affect a person's intentions and thus excuse him or her from moral responsibility. (shrink)

This book examines core issues related to legal insanity, integrating perspectives from psychiatry, law, and ethics. Various criteria for insanity are analyzed and recommendations for forensic psychiatric and legal practice are offered. Many legal systems have an insanity defense, in one form or another. Still, it remains unclear exactly when and why mental disorders affect a person’s moral or criminal responsibility. Questions addressed in this book include: Why should insanity be a component of our legal system? (...) What should be the criteria for an insanity defense? What would be the reasons for abolishing it? Who should bear the burden of proof? Furthermore, the book discusses the impact neurosciences may have on psychiatric and psychological evaluations of defendants as well as on legal decisions about insanity. (shrink)

Susan Wolf objects to the Real Self View (RSV) of moral responsibility that it is insufficient, that even if one’s actions are expressions of one’s deepest or “real” self, one might still not be morally responsible for one’s actions. As a counterexample to the RSV, Wolf offers the case of JoJo, the son of a dictator, who endorses his father’s (evil) values, but who is insane and is thus not responsible for his actions. Wolf’s data for this conclusion derives from (...) what she takes to be our “pretheoretic intuitions” about JoJo. As it turns out, though, experimental data on actual pretheoretic intuitions does not seem to support Wolf’s claim. In this paper, we present such data and argue that, at least with respect to this particular objection, the RSV can survive Wolf’s attack intact. (shrink)

Erken modern Avrupa'nın seçkin bir tarihçisi olarak uzun kariyerine dayanan John Miles Headley, yakın zamanda bakışlarını Avrupa'nın daha geniş dünyadaki etkisine çevirdi. “Dünyanın Avrupalılaşması” adlı kitabında Headley, Avrupa değerlerinin - özellikle insan hakları ve demokrasinin - benzersizliği konusunda ısrarcı bir açıklama yapıyor ve bu değerlerin Avrupa'nın daha geniş dünyaya en değerli armağanları olduğunu savunuyor. Avrupa halklarının dikkate değer entelektüel ve kültürel başarılarını küçültmeye çalışmadan, bu sunum Avrupa ve daha geniş dünya arasındaki ilişkilere daha incelikli bir bakış açısı önerecektir. İnsan hakları (...) ve demokrasi, farklı zamanlarda farklı bağlamlarda farklı insanlar için farklı şeyler ifade eder ve aslında Avrupa dışındaki toplumlarda her ikisinin de sayısız ifadesi vardır. Dahası, Avrupalı insan hakları ve demokrasi teorisyenleri Avrupa'nın ötesindeki toplumlardan da etkilendiler. Bu bağlamda dünyanın Avrupalılaşmasının ikna edici bir fikir olması, ancak Avrupa'nın önceden küreselleşmesi sebebiyle mümkündür. (shrink)

The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this alone is not sufficient to show (...) the insanity defense is applicable; it must also be shown that, as a result of the illness, specific deficits in moral understanding or control are present. In this paper, we show that a diagnosis of psychopathy will generally not indicate that a defendant is eligible for an insanity defense. This is because the group of individuals subsumed under the diagnosis is so heterogeneous that while some psychopaths do show significant impairments in affect and control which may impact on their responsibility, many psychopaths are not incapacitated in a way relevant to responsibility. (shrink)

How close is spirituality to psychosis? Covering the interrelation of psychosis and spirituality from a number of angles, _Insanity and Divinity_ will generate dialogue and discussion, aid critical reflection and stimulate creative approaches to clinical work for those interested in the connections between religious studies, psychoanalysis, anthropology and hagiography. Bringing together an international range of contributors and covering many different types of religious experience, this book presents its theme in three parts: Psychoanalysis, belief and mysticism Anthropology, history and hagiography Psychology, (...) psychosis and religious experience. Each section includes discussion of the hinterland between madness and religious experience from the perspective of a number of religions, autobiographical accounts of those who have experienced a psychosis in which spirituality played a key part and a comprehensive review of the position of psychology research into the meaning and function of spirituality in relation to the psychoses. Insightful, enlightening and wide-ranging, _Insanity and Divinity_ is ideal for clinicians, academics and chaplains working in clinical settings. (shrink)

We often hear the term “dignity” in our age. Especially in societies with multicultural and multi-faith, peace, respect, tolerance and human rights ideas are associated with human precious beings. However, understanding what dignity is and which rights it includes are difficult. Because human dignity has social, philosophical, theological and legal dimensions in which its content changes in historical process. Dignity is a term discussed in western societies and has a place in international contexts. That’s why the emphasis is on its (...) naming in western thought and conceptualization types. The definitions of term in terms of legal, moral and cultural are analyzed. This analysis shows it is described as classical and modern with different meanings. It is thought that perceiving the term as classical far from modern meaning results from monotheistic religions. But it is also expected that these religions contribute to social peace. Therefore, in order to understand the monotheistic religions’ attitude towards human and human rights, Holy Scriptures should be reviewed. Analyzing the dignity in Holy Scriptures is out of our studies. Our purpose is to discuss how Islamic attitude towards this term should be in accordance with understanding types of the term. (shrink)

This is a book about the role that psychological impairment should play in a theory of criminal liability. Criminal guilt in the Anglo-American legal tradition requires both that the defendant committed some proscribed act and did so with intent, knowledge, or recklessness. The second requirement corresponds to the intuitive idea that people should not be punished for something they did not do 'on purpose' or if they 'did not realize what they were doing'. Unlike many works in this area, this (...) book addresses the automatism and insanity defences by examining the types of functional impairment that typical candidates for these defences actually suffer. What emerges is a much wider conceptual framework that allows us to understand the significance of psychological states and processes for the attribution of criminal responsibility in a manner that is logically coherent, morally defensible, and consistent with research in psychopathology. (shrink)

Throughout its history, the insanity defense specifically and the more general concept of mental defect or incompetence have been grounded in the assumption that those people fit for the rule of law are able to give and to comprehend reasons for their actions. This chapter traces the evolution of perspectives on the nature of mental illness and the manner in which cultural and extra-scientific influences have shaped perspectives. These perspectives are most saliently expressed in statutory provisions and relevant case (...) law summarized here and covering historical developments from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. Significant interactions between law and psychiatry are further highlighted and informed by core and controversial philosophical assumptions. Attention is given to differences between juridical and medical conceptions of responsibility. (shrink)

This paper attempts to set forth, in the context of Anglo-U.S. criminal law, the meaning of the concept of insanity, its necessary relation to absence of responsibility, and its bearing on some relevant psychiatric concepts and legal controversies. Irrationality is a distinctive and necessary (but not sufficient) condition for insanity. Irrationality consists in failure even to grasp the relevance of what is 'essentially' relevant. To that extent there obviously can be no responsibility. A mental makeup which renders one (...) (who would not normally be so) substantially incapable of rational conduct constitutes insanity, and in that respect renders the person non-responsible. Much more broadly and roughly speaking, the mind that is ill is the mind that is irrational (and hence in that respect non-responsible). (shrink)

In this article I argue that insanity defences such as M’Nagten should be abolished in favour of a defence of failed agency. It is not insanity per se, or any other empirical condition, which constitutes the moral reason for exculpation. Rather, we should first recognize the conditions for being a responsible moral agent. These include some capacity to direct and control one’s behavior, a non-delusional component, and the capacity to recognize that one’s behavior is expressive of what they (...) have reason to be doing. When either of these fail in a case involving alleged criminal behavior the defence of failed agency may be appealed to. There may be many causes, including and besides insanity, that give rise to use of the defence of failed agency. (shrink)

The traditional legal verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity as well as the more recent verdict of guilty but mentally ill rest on often unquestioned epistemological assumptions about human behavior and its causes, unjustified reliance on forensic psychiatrists, and questionable, if not deplorable ethical standards. This paper offers a critique of legal perspectives on insanity, historical and current, based on the altermative epistemological and ethical assumptions of Thomas S. Szasz. In addition, we examine Szasz''s unique rhetorical (...) analysis of mental illness and its implications for forensic psychiatry. (shrink)

The McNaughton Rules, which are used when someone pleads insanity at the time of a homicide, are out of date and unsatisfactory. Suggestions have been made about how the insanity defence can be reformulated. The preference of a defence of diminished responsibility means abandoning an ancient and humane principle of not convicting those who are so mentally disordered as not to be responsible for their actions. There is a need for Parliament to consider changes to the law both (...) to prevent the mentally disordered being sent to prison inappropriately, and because the Mental Health Act 1983 has not taken account of rare cases where an offender such as an epileptic might be found legally insane but not mentally disordered. (shrink)

İnsanın yaratılması, dünyaya gönderilmesi ve iradesiyle birlikte sorumlu kılınması âlemde mevcut iyilik ve kötülüğü anlama ve anlamlandırma çabasını da kapsamaktadır. Bu açıdan âlemde iyilik ve kötülük meselesi ile ilintili olarak insanın ne olduğu ya da insanın iyilik ve kötülük vasıflarını barındırmasının ne anlama geldiği ilâhî dinlerin de sorduğu ortak sorulardandır. Dînî disiplinler içerisinde insanın ne olduğu, iyi ve kötü eylemleri bir mesele olarak Hâlık-mahlûk ilişkisi açısından tasavvufun da konusu olmuştur ve Mevlânâ da (öl. 672/1273) eserlerinde insanın iyi ve kötü vasıflarını, (...) bir yandan insanın seçkinliği bir yandan özgürlüğü ve sorumluluğu bağlamında irdeleyen bir mutasavvıf olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu düşünme biçimi aynı zamanda onun Tanrı, âlem, aşk, âşık, mâşuk, hayat, ölüm insanın iradesi gibi konularını da kapsayan bir yaklaşımdır. Dolayısıyla insandan bahsetmek bazen doğrudan bazen de dolaylı olarak birbiriyle ilintili farklı meseleleri de konu edinmeyi zorunlu kılmaktadır. Bununla birlikte insanın irade edebilmesi onun bir takım yerilen ve övülen vasıfları da kendinde barındıran bir varlık olduğu anlamına gelmektedir. Çünkü temyiz edebilmek iyilik ile kötülüğün birlikte var olması anlamına gelmekte olup kötülüğün de iyilikle birlikte konu edilmesini gerektirir. Bu durumda insanın seçkinliği ile onun kötülüğe olan meyli ya da kötülüğü tercih etmesi nasıl açıklanabilir? Âlemde sadece iyiliğin değil kötülüğün de mevcut olması yanında insana irade ve ihtiyar verilmesi bir lütuf olarak tasavvur edilebilir mi? Mevlânâ’nın düşüncesinde iyilik ve kötülük ya da âlemde iyilik ve kötülüğün mevcudiyeti ne anlama gelmektedir? Bu makalede insanın yaratılışı, irâdî eylemleri ve âlemde iyilik-kötülük meselesi rahmet kavramı etrafında teklif, irade ve sorumluluk açısından irdelenmekte; söz konusu meseleler Mevlânâ’nın Mesnevî’si başta olmak üzere Fîhi Mâ Fîh isimli eserleri bağlamında analiz edilmektedir. Sonuç itibariyle Mevlânâ insanın ve âlemin yaratılmasını rahmet ve lütuf olarak görürken insana irade verilmesini de onun seçkin kılınması olarak yorumlamaktadır. Bu seçkinlik ilk olarak Hakk’ı bilmeye ve insanın Hakk’a karşı sorumlu kılınmasına mâtuftur. Nitekim iyilik ve kötülük ya da hastalık ve şifa gibi zıtları barındıran bu kesret âlemi zıddı olmayan bir varlık olarak Yaratıcı’ya işaret etmektedir. Böylelikle Mevlânâ bir yandan âlemdeki delil ve işaretleri Hakk’ın kudret ve rahmetine tevdi ederken bir yandan da âlemde mevcut iyilik ve kötülüğü insanın iradesiyle bağlantılı olarak anlamlandırmaya çalışır. (shrink)

Unlike the criminal law, tort law does not recognize insanity as an answer to liability. The fact that a defendant was insane at the time of his impugned conduct is essentially ignored by tort law's liability rules. It will be argued that this situation is unsatisfactory. A person should not incur liability in tort in respect of acts committed while insane. This result should be realized by providing for a generally applicable affirmative defence of insanity.

Temel karakteristiği Allah, nübüvvet ve meâd konuları üzerinden şekillenen kelam, bu konuları ele alış tarzında ahlakî perspektifi merkeze almıştır. Bu açıdan kelam, bir yönüyle Allah bir yönüyle insanla ilişkilidir. Dolayısıyla kelamcılar Allah-insan ilişkisini hem ontik hem epistemik hem de ahlakî açıdan ele almışlardır. Tanrı ve insan tasavvurları tüm boyutların birlikte değerlendirilmesiyle anlam kazanmaktadır. Konu hakkındaki farklı yaklaşımlar, söylem gruplarının ya da düşünürlerin paradigmalarına göre şekillenmektedir. Mu‘tezilî bir âlim olan Arap dili ve edebiyatının yetkin isimlerinden Ebû’l-Kāsım Mahmûd b. Ömer b. Muhammed (...) el-Harezmî ez-Zemahşerî’nin (ö. 538/1144) de eserlerinde, Allah-insan ilişkisine gereken ilgiyi gösterdiği bilinmektedir. Dinî pratiğinde Hanefî aidiyete sahip olan Zemahşerî, aklı ön planda tutan, aklın işlevsel yönünü vurgulayan bir din anlayışına sahiptir. Bu sebeple ona göre takdîr gereği akıl ve irâde sahibi olarak belirli bir fıtratta yaratılan insan yaptıklarından sorumludur. İnsanı teklîf temelinde tasavvur eden Zemahşerî’de yaratmanın ilk aşamasından itibaren adaletli bir Tanrı fikri hakimdir. Dolayısıyla onun Allah tasavvuru ve bağlantılı olarak irade konusundaki değerlendirmeleri, Allah-insan ilişkisini nasıl bir temelde ele aldığına işaret etmektedir. Bu bağlamda araştırmamız Zemahşerî’nin söz konusu ilişkiyi nasıl ele aldığını ve ahlakî boyutunu konu edinmektedir. Çünkü bu çalışmayı ortaya çıkaran temel saik Zemahşerî’nin eserlerinde Allah-insan ilişkisini ahlakî olarak değerlendirdiğine dair güçlü kanıtların mevcudiyetidir. İlişkili olarak konu, Zemahşerî’nin ilahî fiiller, insan fiilleri, akıl, bilgi, taklit, hüsun-kubuh, hidâyet-dalâlet, dâî, fâil, kötü/kabîh ve fâili, hikmet, maslahat ve tüm bunları içine alacak şekilde teklîf yaklaşımını kapsamaktadır. Buna göre çalışmada öncelikle Zemahşerî’nin Allah tasavvuru daha sonra Zemahşerî’ye göre Allah-insan ilişkisi ele alınacaktır. Çalışmanın amacını belirleyen ahlakî boyuta dair veriler değerlendirmeye tabi tutulacaktır. Allah-insan ilişkisinin ilk aşaması olarak yaratma, mîsâk ve takdîr, ikinci aşaması olarak teklîf karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Teklîfin karşılığının alındığı yer olarak ahiret son aşama olup teklîf ve sonuç kısmında bahse konu olacaktır. Çalışma, söz konusu veriler ve üzerine yapılan analizlerle şekillenmiştir. Kaynak olarak kullanılan Kitâbü’l-Minhâc, Zemahşerî’nin konu hakkında genel çerçeveyi belirleyen bir eseridir. El-Keşşâf ‘an hakâik-i (gavâmizi’)t-tenzîl ve ‘uyûni’l-ekâvîl fî vücûhi’t-te’vîl isimli eseri ise Zemahşerî’nin görüşlerini ve derinliğini birçok açıdan anlama ve değerlendirme imkânı veren telîfidir. Buna göre çalışmamız, Zemahşerî’nin Allah-insan ilişkisinde ortaya koyduğu ahlakî yaklaşıma dolayısıyla insanın sorumlu olmasının ahlakîliğine dikkat çekmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma Zemahşerî ile sınırlandırılırken, gereken yerlerde mukayeseli değerlendirmelere başvurulacaktır. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Madness and the Criminal Law. By Norval Morris. The Insanity Plea: The Uses and Abuses of the Insanity Defense. By William J. Winslade and Judith Wilson Ross.

I attempt to describe and defend an alternative definition of insanity. I claim that my definition follows from an adequate general understanding of legal excuse and that it describes correctly the question that jurors in the recent Andrea Yates case and others like it ought to be faced with. My essay has three parts. In the first, I briefly criticize M'Naghten- and Durham-inspired insanity statutes. In the second, I sketch and defend a general understanding of legal excuse and (...) try to show how an adequate insanity statute follows from it. Finally, in the third section, I describe and defend a rough version of the statute itself. In the course of doing so, I try to explain why I believe that statute is superior to the American Law Institute's various model insanity statutes. (shrink)

The psychopathic personality disorder historically has been thought to include an insensitivity to morality. Some have thought that the psychopath's insensitivity indicates that he does not understand morality, but the relationship between the psychopath's defects and moral understanding has been unclear. We attempt to clarify this relationship, first by arguing that moral understanding is incomplete without concern for morality, and second, by showing that the psychopath demonstrates defects in frontal lobe activity which indicate impaired attention and adaptation to environmental conditions (...) which are relevant to the formation of complex intentions. We argue that these frontal lobe defects can help to explain both the psychopath's apparent insensitivity to morality and his characteristic imprudence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is contended that British Idealists, New Liberals and Liberal Imperialists were all in favour of imperialism, especially when it took the form of white settler communities. The concession of relative autonomy was an acknowledgement of the potential of white settler communities to go the way of America by severing their relationship with the Empire completely. Where significant differences emerge in their thinking is in relation to non-white territories in the Empire where native peoples comprised the majority, and the British (...) Government and its agents administered in trust ‘lower’ peoples on the scale of civilisation with the ostensible goal of guiding them towards self-determination in the Empire. The differences in degree of commitment to these ideals were largely expressed in terms of the pejorative categories of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism, which were flexible and manipulated for political gain, rather than analytic precision. Liberal Imperialists and New Liberals were opposed to each other in terms of the degree to which they supported imperialism, whereas British Idealists aligned themselves on both sides of the divide. (shrink)

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), 39 yıllık kısa olarak nitelendirebileceğimiz yaşamında çoğu insanın iki yaşamda başarmayı umabileceğinden fazlasını başardı. Yaşadığı mistik bir deneyimden sonra, psikoloji ve din üzerine düşüncelerini topladı, ancak bu düşüncelerini bir kitap haline getiremeden öldü. Onun Düşünceler adlı eseri yalnızca Hristiyan dinine yeni bakış açıları getirmekle kalmadı, aynı zamanda Fransız edebiyatının en iyileri arasında değerlendirildi. Düşünceler’in ana stratejilerinden biri, bir yanda Montaigne, diğer yanda Epiktetos’un kişiselleştirdiği çelişkili şüphecilik ve stoacılık felsefelerini kullanarak, inanmayan kişiyi Tanrı’ya, imana götürecek bir çaresizlik ve (...) kafa karışıklığına sürüklemekti. Dolayısıyla Düşünceler’in bir kısmı şüpheci bir niteliği kendinde bulundururken, bir kısmı da dogmacı stoacılığın ruhuna sahiptir. Aslında Pascal her iki ucu da bağdaştırmaya çalışır. Bunu aklı küçümseyip akılcı felsefeyi kınarken, inancı yüceltip ve kalbin, aklın bilmediği sebeplere sahip olduğunu belirterek yapar. O, eserlerinde insanı ve insanın dünyadaki durumunu, entelektüel tarihteki yerini ve kültür ve eğitim anlayışlarını, insanın Tanrı ile ilişkisi ışığında insan doğasına ilişkin görüşünün daha da geliştirilmesini ve ünlü bahis teorisi ve kalbe dair içgörülerini açıklamaya çalışır. Dünyadaki varlığını düşünmesi ve ona karşı doğru bir tavra sahip olması her kişinin yaşamının merkezinde bulunan bir durumdur. Makalemizde Pascal'ın insanın inanması ve acizliğinin nasıl paradoksal bir nitelikte olduğunu, insanın özgürlüğünü nasıl elinden alıp değersizleştildiğini sunmaya çalışacağız. (shrink)

"An American psychologist, Daniel N. Robinson, traces the development of the insanity plea...[He offers] an assured historical survey." Roy Porter, The Times [UK] "Wild Beasts and Idle Humours is truly unique. It synthesizes material that I do not believe has ever been considered in this context, and links up the historical past with contemporaneous values and politics. Robinson effortlessly weaves religious history, literary history, medical history, and political history, and demonstrates how the insanity defense cannot be fully understood (...) without consideration of all these sources." Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School "Daniel N. Robinson has written a graceful history of insanity and the law stretching from Homer to Hinckley. He attempts no final theory as to how the law should cope with the insane; he seeks, rather, to use the shifting notions of when madness exculpates criminal activity to illuminate the core self-perceptions of the cultures developing ever-evolving resolutions of the problem...[T]he grandeur of the theme...commands attention and respect." --Neal Johnston, The Nation . (shrink)

(150-250 words) and keywords (5-7 keyword) in the input above.

The Breivik case in Norway has motivated a reassessment of Norwegian insanity law by the Norwegian government. Because Norway since 2002 has utilized a “medical model” for legal insanity—a model according to which the legal excuse of insanity is identified with some medical concept such as psychosis—the Norwegian reexamination of its law is not without interest throughout the world. In this paper, I utilize the Anglo-American experience with different medical models for insanity to assess the current (...) Norwegian law on insanity. I defend a strong version of the medical model against standard criticisms advanced against it in the Anglo-American literature, and venture some suggested improvements in how that model was applied in the Breivik case. (shrink)

The insanity defense presents many difficult questions for the legal system. It attracts attention beyond its practical significance (it is seldom used successfully) because it goes to the heart of the concept of legal responsibility. “Not guilty by reason of insanity” generally requires that as a result of mental illness the defendant was unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime. The many difficult and complex questions presented by the insanity defense have led (...) some in the legal community to hope that neuroscience might help resolve some of these problems, but that hope is not likely to be realized. (shrink)

A long tradition, whose echo is still perceptible in some contemporary reflections, combines philosophy and melancholy, often indentifying melancholy as the beginning of philosophy. But rereading the Freud’s _Mourning and Melancholia_, the «circular insanity» shows two sides, depressive and maniac. Once the double nature of the «circular insanity» has been taken into consideration, it can be reiterated that melancholy is connected to philosophy not only with regard of its beginning but also to its (temporary) end, approached through Wittgenstein's (...) reflection on the miracle and the mystical as the extinction of the philosophical question. In this perspective, the whole cycle of philosophy, from its depressive beginning to its maniacal outcome, undergoes an aesthetic consideration, in which what is more important is the _how_ of experience rather than its _what_. Finally, the aesthetic point of view on the connection between melancholy and philosophy makes it possible to reconsider the very status of that research that presents itself as 'love of knowledge'. (shrink)

An exploration of the greatest minds and how they have struggled to find the deepest truths about the human condition.