Out of the shadows -- It's not all your fault -- The voice of God or the voice of the devil -- No condemnation: no need for suicide -- The truth that hurts and heals -- The healing power of light -- Conflicts of conscience -- Becoming an impossible person -- Forever forgiven -- When sorry isn't enough -- A clear conscience in a dark world.

A model policy for conscientious objection in medicine.

Although many scholars have recognized the pivotal importance that the notion of conscience plays in Hegel’s thought, much of the scholarship surrounding this notion has remained piecemeal. Dean Moyar’s book Hegel’s Conscience breaks new ground on this subject in offering a comprehensive analysis of the indispensable role that conscience plays in Hegel’s philosophy, demonstrating not only its foundational place for Hegel’s approach to ethics, but also the contemporary relevancy of Hegel’s account for understanding the performative character of (...) practical reason. Despite the novelty and intellectual rigor of Moyar’s position, my essay “Translating Convictions into a Clear Conscience” argues that in confining his approach to a “cognitivist” interpretation of conscience, Moyar ends up neglecting the richness and existential depth of Hegel’s discussion. And so although Moyar’s interpretation is clear, succinct, and plausible, it accomplishes this by overlooking much of Hegel’s original phenomenological fidelity to the actual experience of conscience. (shrink)

The sun is in fact the same thing as the brightest object in the sky, but it would seem that the sun and the brightest object might have been different. Socrates may now be the same thing as the seated thing (because Socrates is now seated), but it would seem that Socrates and the seated thing will later be different (once Socrates rises). Now Aristotle’s usual way of describing such situations is to say that such pairs of entities are accidentally (...) the same or accidentally one,Aristotle writes both of sameness and of unity, and, though it is not clear that the terms can be used interchangeably, the accounts of each are too similar to ignore and so I shall move freely between the two notions. the idea being that the sun and the brightest objectIt is worth pointing out that a correlate of ‘object’ or ‘thing’ does not standardly appear in Aristotle’s Greek descriptions of such cases. Greek allows the nominalization of any adjective merely by prefixing a definite article to it. Thus Aristo .. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, personal debt loads have increased dramatically. Lower income earners borrow money to purchase basic goods and services, so their debt is frequently non-discretionary. The impact of non-discretionary personal debt on debtors can be as, if not more, harmful than government regulations that have been declared unconstitutional. In this regard, the impact of personal debt is tantamount to the impact of a civil rights violation. What separates the impact of unconstitutional state action from that of personal (...) debt is the assumption that only the latter are the result of consensual transactions. Consent, however, is not a dyadic phenomenon, it exists in gradations. The quality of consent is weakened when the agent is making choices in response to pressures, and the empiricalquestion of the extent to which a consent transaction is unforced is distinct from the normative question of whether a transaction is legitimate, or fair. It is necessary to devise a new taxonomy of language to clearly distinguish the empirical and normative questions. This elucidates the fact that lower income people are under more pressure to borrow money than are upper income individuals to pay progressive rates of income tax. To argue that the latter are ‘coerced,’ is to admit that the low income individual’s decision to borrow is similarly forced. This admission suggests that a significant portion of citizens of market-based economies (notably Canada and the U.S.) are being forced to endure harms tantamount to civil rights violations. The admission also suggests that free markets harbour forces that undermine individual autonomy, and the absence of corrective state regulation exacerbates the problem. (shrink)

New testamentThe British Medical Association recently published guidance from its medical ethics committee on decision making concerning the withholding and withdrawing of life-prolonging medical treatment.1 It is a very thoughtful and thought-provoking document, the ramifications of which go far beyond the immediate situation it is addressing. The authors are clearly well aware of this. When considering a doctor's ethical response to “contemporaneous requests for life-prolonging treatment” made by competent patients, the committee observes:“Although patients' wishes should always be discussed with them, (...) the fact that a patient has requested a particular treatment does not mean that it must always be provided.”2They advance four propositions in support of this conclusion, namely: Health professionals are not obliged to provide any treatment which cannot produce the desired benefit”.3 There is no obligation to provide any treatment which is clearly contrary to an individual's health interests. A life-prolonging treatment may, for example, prolong life but result in severe pain or loss of function so that overall it produces severe harm to the patient”.4 Except in an emergency situation, doctors are not obliged to treat contrary to their conscience ”.4 Where resources are limited, it is inevitable that some patients will not receive all of the treatment they request even though such treatment could be potentially beneficial to them”.4Towards the end of their commentary on the last of these propositions, they observe:“Health professionals have an ethical duty to make the best use of the available resources and this means that hard decisions must be made. Whilst this is a much broader issue than can be discussed thoroughly in this document, it is clear that doctors are not obliged to comply with patients' requests for treatment when they …. (shrink)

The value of conscience in healthcare ethics is widely debated. While some sources present it as an unquestionably positive attribute, others question both the veracity of its decisions and the effect of conscientious objection on patient access to health care. This paper argues that the right to object conscientiously should be broadened, subject to certain previsos, as there are many benefits to healthcare practice in the development of the consciences of practitioners. While effects such as the preservation of moral (...) integrity are widely considered to benefit practitioners, this paper draws on the work of Hannah Arendt to offer several original arguments in defence of conscience that may more directly benefit patients, namely that a pang of conscience may be useful in rapidly unfolding situations in which there is no time to reflect satisfactorily upon activities and that, given the hierarchical nature of healthcare institutions, a right to defy authority on the basis of conscience may benefit junior staff who lack the institutional power to challenge the orders of superiors. (shrink)

The concept of conscience continues to play a central role in our ethical reasoning as well as in public and philosophical debate over medical ethics, religious freedom, and conscientious objection in many fields, including war. Despite this continued relevance the nature of conscience itself has remained a relatively neglected topic in recent philosophical literature. In this paper I discuss some historical background to the concept and outline the essential features required for any satisfactory account of conscience and (...) its significance for a coherent moral psychology. It will become clear that conscience is a complex concept resisting reduction to any one of its component features. In doing so I critique recent accounts of conscience which have been insufficiently attentive to these complexities and as a consequence have drawn mistaken conclusions about the legitimate role of conscience in moral reasoning. I also discuss the significance of various distortions of conscience such what I call “the fanaticised conscience”. Clarifying our concept of conscience helps us avoid both conceptual confusion in moral psychology and misapplications of the concept in our understanding of conscientious objection both theoretically and in practice. (shrink)

Caring for older persons is both rewarding and consuming. Work with older people in Finland has been shown to be more burdensome than in the other Nordic countries. The aim of this study was to try out a Finnish version of the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ) and explore stress of conscience in staff caring for older persons in Finland. The data were collected from the nursing staff (n = 350) working with older people in health centre wards, (...) municipal and private nursing homes, and municipal and private dementia care units in Finland. It emerged clearly from the results that Finnish nursing staff mostly felt that they did not have enough time to provide good care to patients, and this gave them a troubled conscience. They also felt that the demanding work taxed their energy, a consequence being that they could not give their own families and loved ones the attention they would have liked. (shrink)

These studies touch in various ways the compatibility and, moreover, the complementary significance of the twofold character of demythologizing, viz. elimination of myth as a basis for the transcendence of moral obligation, and liberation of the symbolic potential of the kerygma. With some exceptions the topics dealt with in this series are better known than those in previous ones, having acquired ample diffusion with the increased interest in and acceptance of the seminal works of Buber, Bonhoffer and Nabert. What is (...) missing here is a clear understanding of the relations between myth and transcendental consciousness, a clear sense of why does myth, with all its moral wrappings, come to have such a strong sway—the myth of the return = the return of the myth—on human history. Once this is clear, two forms of moral conscience can be distinguished. One form results, generically and in its acts, from creative projects whereby values can become reality. Another form, a crisis-constituted conscience, is irretrievably lost in "substitute action" whereby all categories flounder, and the impossible suddenly acquires an overwhelming fascination. The first form develops from a principle limiting "le désir d'être" to work, institutions and other involvement in economic, political and cultural life. Conversely, the second form has its roots in a principle of illimitation—pleonaxia—which makes man a stranger on earth, inescapably open both to myth and to kerygma.—A. M. (shrink)

La peinture de Caravage occupe une position stratégique entre l'art religieux du XVIe siècle, dont le naturalisme, ainsi chez Carracci, est imprégné de présence divine, et le réalisme sécularisé qui triomphera au XIXe siècle. Aussi a-t-elle été l'objet d'incessants conflits d'interprétation, commencés déjà de son temps. Elle ne paraissait pas d'accord, en effet, avec les consignes d'orthodoxie données aux artistes par les théologiens de la Contre-Réforme, et clairement rappelées à Caravage dans le contrat qui lui avait été fixé en 1565 (...) pour représenter les scènes de la vie de S. Matthieu dans l'église S. Louis des Français à Rome. Il interpréta ce contrat selon des critères tout nouveaux et personnels. La composition de l'espace et de la lumière, la disposition des personnages et des clairs-obscurs sont significatives de la vision moderne du monde et de l'homme qui commence à se mettre en place à cette époque. Le rayon de lumière qui traverse une scène sans noblesse plongée dans l'obscurité immobilise un instant de vérité et de choix, l'événement de la rencontre de Jésus et de Matthieu, l'instant d'une communication de parole entre Dieu et l'homme, l'heure où chacun est appelé à décider du sens de son existence personnelle, sans autre intervention divine, dans la banalité de sa vie quotidienne. Ce monde n'est pas vide de Dieu, mais Dieu ne fait qu'y passer ; il se retire, pour laisser le monde à son autonomie, et l'homme à la conscience de sa liberté.Caravaggio's painting holds a strategic position between the religions art of the sixteenth century, the naturalism of which is pervaded by divine presence – e.g. in Carracci's art –, and the secularized realism which is to flourish in the nineteenth century. It has therefore been the subject of unceasing controversies in its interpretation, beginning in Caravaggio’s times already. Indeed, Caravaggio’s painting did not seem in line with the instructions given to the artists by Counter-Reformation’s theologians, urging them to follow the Orthodox line. Caravaggio had been clearly reminded of those instructions in the contract he had signed in 1565 to portray the scenes of Saint Matthew’s life in Saint Louis des Français’Church in Roma. He interpretated this contract according to very innovative and personal criteria. The composition of space and light, the layout of characters and chiaroscuros are revealing of the modern vision of the world and of the man that was emerging in those times. The light ray that crosses a scene devoid of nobleness and plunged into darkness, immobilises a moment of truth and choice : the event of Jesus meeting Matthew, the instant of an oral communication between God and man, the time when everyone is called to decide his of her personal existence in the triviality of his or her daily life, without God intervening in the process. This world is not void of God’s presence, but God only passes through it. He withdraws to let the world face its autonomy, and man face the awareness of his freedom. (shrink)

Schopenhauer's prize essay On the Freedom of Will is one of the classics of Western philosophy, dealing with the question of free will versus determinism. His treatment of the problem of free will is by no means obsolete, containing penetrating reflections relevant to contemporary discussion. The argument of the essay is clearly and rigorously presented, and reveals many basic features of Schopenhauer's thought. As such, it forms a useful introduction to Schopenhauer's philosophy in general. Equally, the essay can be studied (...) with profit independently of Schopenhauer's metaphysical views. This new edition of the sole English translation of this classic text contains and expanded bibliography, index and preface in which the translator comments on recent scholarship on Schopenhauer. The translator's introduction puts the essay into the context of Schopenhauer's general philosophy and suggests some possible criticisms of his position. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Cultural Predators The Prize is a Clear Conscience Souvenir Parts, Remembered Wholes Snapshots from the Other Side Still Lives Memories as Reanimation Notes.

This article deals with the contributions to the psychology of religion made by Dr. Marianne Beth , an almost totally forgotten pioneer of the psychology of religion. The article especially contextualizes her initiative to turn “unbelief” into a topic for research in psychology of religion, and describes the tragic end the Nazi reign made to her development and career. Born as the daughter of a prominent Austrian Jewish lawyer living in Vienna, Marianne von Weisl received excellent intellectual training. Initially, her (...) wish to become active in the same field as her father was frustrated by the injunction against women studying law. When this injunction was lifted, she went for a second doctorate in law, her first doctorate having been in the humanities. Marianne Beth became very active in public life ; she travelled and gave lectures and developed a large radius as a prolific author in newspapers and periodicals. Although clearly committed women’s rights, she did not belong to any feminist movement.Her interest in psychology was certainly stimulated by her husband Karl Beth , a professor of systematic theology, who developed an increasing interest in both history and the psychology of religion. In fact, psychology of religion seems to have become the field in which the couple collaborated intellectually most. They were both involved in the founding of a “research institute” for the psychology of religion, of an international society for the psychology of religion, and of a journal for the psychology of religion. All these activities took place from the apartment of the Beths in Vienna, where the preparations for the First International Congress for the Psychology of Religion also occurred. That congress had as its theme; “the psychic causes of unbelief”. Even earlier than her husband, Marianne Beth had published on the topic of unbelief. Her interest may have been triggered by a call for papers by the internationally renowned Kant-Society. The Society issued a prize for a treatise on “the psychology of belief” in 1928, which Marianne Beth then won. It is also possible, however, that the call for papers had been triggered after her initial publications on the subject. Her paper was published in the well-known journal Kant-Studien.There was a plan to publish the contributions to the 1931 congress in Vienna in book form in a series of three volumes, but only one was published, probably due to financial problems. The rest of the papers presented were published in the Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie, edited by the Beths. As her publications since then show, she grew increasingly interested in empirical topics and approaches, and was broadly read in contemporary psychology. She authored numerous contributions to the Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie. However, when Nazi-Germany annexed Austria in 1938, she left the country for the United States, taking both her children with her. Shortly afterwards, Karl Beth was also obliged to follow his family into exile. In the US, neither had any opportunity to pursue their interests in the psychology of religion; Marianne taught sociology briefly and German; Karl taught “comparative theology”.Nevertheless, Marianne Beth’s impulse to turn “unbelief” into a research topic in the psychology of religion did have some lasting influence: the work of better-known psychologists of religion such as Rümke, Pruyser and Vergote are indebted to her, at least indirectly, as this article tries to show. (shrink)

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson's ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of (...) his most basic contentions. Bergson's conception of intuition--his fundamental insight into reality--was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson's ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson's ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson's physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history. (shrink)

What role should the physician's conscience play in the practice of medicine? Much controversy has surrounded the question, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that disputants are operating with contrasting definitions of the conscience. To illustrate this divergence, we contrast definitions stemming from Abrahamic religions and those stemming from secular moral tradition. Clear differences emerge regarding what the term conscience conveys, how the conscience should be informed, and what the consequences are for (...) violating one's conscience. Importantly, these basic disagreements underlie current controversies regarding the role of the clinician's conscience in the practice of medicine. Consequently participants in ongoing debates would do well to specify their definitions of the conscience and the reasons for and implications of those definitions. This specification would allow participants to advance a more philosophically and theologically robust conversation about the means and ends of medicine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reach Without Grasping: A Retrospective Appreciation of Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet LOUIS A. RUPRECHT JR. Everything I know about love and its necessities I learned in that one moment when I found myself thrusting my little burning red backside like a baboon at a man who no longer cherished me. There was no area of my mind not appalled by this action, no part of my body that (...) could have done otherwise. But to talk of mind and body begs the question. Soul is the place, stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind, where such necessity grinds itself out. Soul is what I kept watch on all that night. —Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay” (1995) It is always tricky, the question of whether to read an author’s work in light of his life or not. —Anne Carson, The Albertine Workout, no. 56 (2014) anne carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary writers in the English language who have drawn deeply from the Classical well. She has achieved a unique place in the realm of North American letters, and much deserved recognition in the past twenty years: she was awarded the Lannan Literary Award in 1996; the Pushcart Prize in 1997; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998; the MacArthur Foundation arion 27.2 fall 2019 “genius grant” in 2000; the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 (the first woman to be so recognized); the T. S. Eliot Prize also in 2001; the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2010; and a second Griffin Poetry Prize in 2014 (the only person ever to receive this award twice). in 2018, she was an Inga Maren Otto Fellow at the Watermill Center in Watermill, New York, on leave from a Creative Writing position at New York University. Trained as a classicist—she received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Toronto in 1981, and an Honorary Degree in 2012—but better known as an accomplished poet and translator, Carson burst on the scene in 1986 with the publication of her first and most philosophical work, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay.1 What this book announced most clearly, in addition to Carson’s complex identity as a poet-and-classicist-and-philosopher-in-one, was her unique ability to work against the expectations and across the loose boundaries which define a genre, and thus to create new genres along the way. In this essay, I would like to offer a retrospective appreciation of Carson’s first book, published (it is scarcely believable to note) more than thirty years ago. There are historical precedents to her achievement in this text, as I hope to show, but her authorial voice is altogether unique, and the reach of her influence has been long. ❖ on rare occasion, a first book may give us a telling glimpse into everything that will follow. Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet is such a first book. What the book does best is to announce itself, and its author, as the bearer of unconventional news, reported in an unconventional manner, all of it expressed in uncommonly luminous prose. It is a book that refuses to be categorized, a book that refuses genre— strangely enough, virtually by creating one. And along the way of creating—that is, of poeticizing—in its singular way, this book generates new desires all its own. There is a history to such literary and generic non-conformity. 138 reach without grasping When Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was invited to take up a professorship at the astonishing age of 24, without even having produced his dissertation yet, the expectations surrounding his first book were elevated, to say the least. Well aware of this, aware too of having been described by his mentor as “the future of Classics in Germany,” Nietzsche published The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music in 1872.2 He was still just 26 years old, and very few classicists knew what to make of it; even his mentor regretted the rashness of the thing. Meaner spirits mockingly called it a work of “future-philology!” suggesting that... (shrink)

In 1932, Wolfgang Pauli was a world-renowned physicist and had already done the work that would win him the 1945 Nobel Prize. He was also in pain. His mother had poisoned herself after his father's involvement in an affair. Emerging from a brief marriage with a cabaret performer, Pauli drank heavily, quarreled frequently and sometimes publicly, and was disturbed by powerful dreams. He turned for help to C. G. Jung, setting a standing appointment for Mondays at noon. Thus bloomed an (...) extraordinary intellectual conjunction not just between a physicist and a psychologist but between physics and psychology. Eighty letters, written over twenty-six years, record that friendship. This artful translation presents them in English for the first time. Though Jung never analyzed Pauli formally, he interpreted more than 400 of his dreams--work that bore fruit later in Psychology and Alchemy and The Analysis of Dreams. As their acquaintance developed, Jung and Pauli exchanged views on the content of their work and the ideas of the day. They discussed the nature of dreams and their relation to reality, finding surprising common ground between depth psychology and quantum physics. Their collaboration resulted in the combined publication of Jung's treatise on synchronicity and Pauli's essay on archetypal ideas influencing Kepler's writings in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Over time, their correspondence shaped and reshaped their understanding of the principle they called synchronicity, a term Jung had suggested earlier. Through the association of these two pioneering thinkers, developments in physics profoundly influenced the evolution of Jungian psychology. And many of Jung's abiding themes shaped how Pauli--and, through him, other physicists--understood the physical world. Of clear appeal to historians of science and anyone investigating the life and work of Pauli or Jung, this portrait of an incredible friendship will also draw readers interested in human creativity as well as those who merely like to be present when great minds meet. (shrink)

The article discusses the main features of the Russian philosophy of war that developed in the first third of the 20th century. The author shows that in Russia, the philosophy of war did not develop as a separate broad line of research but limited itself to only a few meaningful, but rather brief, experiments. Nevertheless, many Russian philosophers left deep, well-founded reasoning about war, which can be reconstructed as a consistent system of views. One of its features is the shift (...) in the focus of considering armed violence from the sociological and political to the anthropological and ethical; the focus is not on war as a social phenomenon, but on the human’s position in war. In this regard, the attitude to war in Russian philosophy is paradoxical. On the one hand, war brings a lot of evil in the form of death of many people and destruction, but, on the other hand, it promotes to the manifestation of the best moral qualities in people, up to selflessness and heroism. Armed violence seems to be a tragedy of the Christian conscience, and each participant must independently find a justification for his participation in the war. Based on the conditions of a difficult moral choice, personal, existential justification may come from the idea that people cannot commit violence with a clear conscience. In this case, the person choosing to participate in a war perceives the battle as his own guilt that should be expiated. (shrink)

This small pamphlet presents a critical analysis of the "situational ethic" as it has been proposed by a number of Protestant writers. Gleason is a Jesuit and clearly takes issue with such innovations in ethics. He favors instead the natural law tradition in which man is bound to conscience and must be obedient to the principles of that law: "In creating man God has given him a natural light of the intelligence by which he may know what is to (...) be done and what is to be avoided in the moral sphere."--W. A. J. (shrink)

On p. 49 of the number of the Classical Quarterly for January, 1917, Mr. Alex. Pallis suggests an emendation in the reference to sacrifice of goats in A. 40, 66, 315, on the assumption that such a sacrifice is not Homeric: ‘In no other Homeric passages do we find an allusion to sacrifices of goats, nor is it likely that offerings of animals so little prized would have been thought acceptable to the gods. It is clear, therefore, that in (...) the above passages we must read $$$ίων instead of α$$$γ$$$ν.’. (shrink)

Background: Conscience is an important concept in ethics, having various meanings in different cultures. Because a growing number of healthcare professionals are of immigrant background, particularly within the care of older people, demanding multiple ethical positions, it is important to explore the meaning of conscience among care providers within different cultural contexts. Research objective: The study aimed to illuminate the meaning of conscience by enrolled nurses with an Iranian background working in residential care for Persian-speaking people with (...) dementia. Research design: A phenomenological hermeneutical method guided the study. Participants and research context: A total of 10 enrolled nurses with Iranian background, aged 33–46 years, participated in the study. All worked full time in residential care settings for Persian-speaking people with dementia in a large city, in Sweden. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board for ethical vetting of research involving humans. Participants were given verbal and written study information and assured that their participation was voluntary and confidential. Findings: Three themes were constructed including perception of conscience, clear conscience grounded in relations and striving to keep a clear conscience. The conscience was perceived as an inner guide grounded in feelings, which is dynamic and subject to changes throughout life. Having a clear conscience meant being able to form a bond with others, to respect them and to get their confirmation that one does well. To have a clear conscience demanded listening to the voice of the conscience. The enrolled nurses strived to keep their conscience clear by being generous in helping others, accomplishing daily tasks well and behaving nicely in the hope of being treated the same way one day. Conclusion: Cultural frameworks and the context of practice needed to be considered in interpreting the meaning of conscience and clear conscience. (shrink)

Friedrich Meinecke's Die Idee der Staatsräson (1924) is generally seen as the study in which he replaced his monistic-idealistic philosophy of history - as articulated in Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat - by a dualistic worldview. In this article I will argue against this view. I will do so on the basis of a brief analysis of Meinecke's Staatsräson -study. I will show that Meinecke succeeded in combining his monism and his dualism within a so-called (harmonious) 'panentheistic' philosophy. Next, when discussing Meinecke's (...) position in the crisis of historicism, critics generally refer to Meinecke's Die Entstehung des Historismus (1936) or his essays from around the 1920s, but refer rarely to Die Idee der Staatsräson . Yet it is precisely this study - dealing with the theory and practice of statesmanship - that gives us a good grasp of Meinecke's reponse to the crisis of historicism, since it is in the state where idea and reality collide most brutally. Questions of ethical relativism, of the relationship between power and ethics, and of that between politics and history are nowhere more pressing than in the practice of statesmanship. It will become clear that, according to Meinecke, the statesman's (or the historian's) conscience moves him to a sphere of panentheistic harmony enabling him (and the historian) to overcome the aporias of historicism. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the study lies in critical reconstruction of Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory as an important principle not only of modern political anthropology, but also of modern and postmodern social projects. As well as, in the unfolding of the fundamentally important both for the newest social-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological discourses of the thesis that each individual is the origin of both personal and institutional freedom and justice, making the contract first of all with himself, with his desires and (...) sorrows and then with other people and the state. Theoretical basis. The principle of social contract offered by Hobbes became a new social, methodologically significant and relevant principle of regulation of activity, which indicates essential for the modern political philosophy and the philosophy of law transition from teleological to legal ideas of justice. For an in-depth study of the philosophical and anthropological aspects of Hobbes’s contractualism, we used the historical-comparative and contextualization method, as well as the works of leading native and foreign researchers of Hobbes, who uphold the provisions on the organic affiliation of fundamental socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological questions about the nature of man, the relation of coercion, freedom and justice with the discourse of social contract. Originality. On the basis of a consistent analysis of the anthropological component of Hobbes’s theory of social contract, an in-depth understanding of modern contractualism and contemporary discussions in the field of its existential and anthropological component is offered, as well as the thesis that political anthropology is the core of the philosophical anthropology because it makes possible the methodologically important understanding of the basic problems of human existence – the interaction of justice and freedom, self-interest and public good, as well as it quite clearly outlines the ways to overcome the dilemmas of liberalism and communitarianism, individualism and holism. Conclusions. Political anthropology of T. Hobbes constructed in the context of a modern social project, justified the issue of interaction between freedom and justice, which is fundamentally important to nowadays, through the search for such a way of social relations, in which an individual, being in the realm of social existence, would seek to limit his own selfishness and freedom for the sake of the common will of the majority. Thanks to Hobbes, the idea of external humility in disobedience to the inner, of freedom of conscience as a "human and citizen", of an understanding of individual independence, which is not just a permissible but accepted by state power, has been acquired with exceptional theoretical and practical meaning. Thanks to Hobbes’s works, the essence was revealed by the relationship between the cooperative and the conflicted vision of man. (shrink)

What role should the physician's conscience play in the practice of medicine? Much controversy has surrounded the question, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that disputants are operating with contrasting definitions of the conscience. To illustrate this divergence, we contrast definitions stemming from Abrahamic religions and those stemming from secular moral tradition. Clear differences emerge regarding what the term conscience conveys, how the conscience should be informed, and what the consequences are for (...) violating one's conscience. Importantly, these basic disagreements underlie current controversies regarding the role of the clinician's conscience in the practice of medicine. Consequently participants in ongoing debates would do well to specify their definitions of the conscience and the reasons for and implications of those definitions. This specification would allow participants to advance a more philosophically and theologically robust conversation about the means and ends of medicine. (shrink)

Contemporary criminal justice systems are extraordinarily unfair. Focusing on Hyman Gross’s Crimes and Punishment: A Concise Moral Critique, however, I identify ways in which scholarly criticisms of these criminal justice systems tend to miss their target. In particular, I argue against the assumption that in order to criticize these criminal justice systems we need to cast doubt on the very practice of blaming people and on the notion of desert, or that we need to reject wholesale retributive rationales for punishment. (...) Quite the contrary: an important reason why contemporary criminal justice systems are unfair is that they punish many people undeservedly. (shrink)

In this paper, we summarize the various impacts of incarceration with the aim of providing an overview of the ways mass incarceration affects society. In doing so, we look inside the black box of the largest penal experiment in world history: the quintupling of the prison population in the United States between 1973 and 2006. The question is, "What have been the social consequences of our incarceration policy?"One objective is to provide insight into what might be called the prison policy (...) paradox, namely, that a 500% generation_long growth in imprisonment has had little impact on crime. Answers are provided by looking inside the black box of penal policy and by identifying the various ways incarceration leads to social outcomes that are associated with public safety. The paper considers the problem of "public safety," because safety is a broader concept than crime. Though a desire for public safety includes a desire for low rates of crime, public safety connotes a more profound interest we have to live in a society where we feel secure pursuing our personal goals and fulfilling our life desires Using public safety as our criteria enables us to consider the ways incarceration affects our quality_of_life, especially through the way incarceration affects the informal social relations that promote the kind of profound social control that is a foundation for a sense of feeling safe.Three types of effects are described. Positive effects are those that improve public safety, negative effects reduce public safety, and "ambivalent" effects have the capacity to be both positive and negative. Five levels of social impacts on public safety are assessed:o Effects on individuals that change the way people act;o Effects on intimate relationships such as those with families and other loved ones;o Effects on social relationships that are felt as community_level outcomes;o Effects on institutions such as labor markets and the political economy;o Effects on democracy or social justice.Thus, the purpose of this paper is to summarize what is known, empirically and experientially, about the positive and negative ways incarceration affects levels of social expression. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to trace the main developments in Greek philosophy during the period which runs from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.c. to the end of the Roman Republic. These three centuries, known to us as the Hellenistic Age, witnessed a vast expansion of Greek civilization eastwards, following Alexander's conquests; and later, Greek civilization penetrated deeply into the western Mediterranean world assisted by the political conquerors of Greece, the Romans. But philosophy throughout this (...) time remained a predominantly Greek activity. The most influential thinkers in the Hellenistic world were Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics. This book gives a concise critical analysis of their ideas and their methods of thought. The last book in English to cover this ground was written sixty years ago. In the interval the subject has moved on, quite rapidly since the last war, but most of the best work is highly specialized. There is a clear need for a general appraisal of Hellenistic philosophy which can provide those who are not specialists with an up-to-date account of the subject. Hellenistic philosophy is often regarded as a dull product of second-rate thinkers who are unable to stand comparison with Plato and Aristotle. This book will help to remove such misconceptions and arouse wider interest in a field which is fascinating both historically and conceptually. (shrink)

Questions about the dignity of the human person give rise to many of the most central and hotly disputed topics in bioethics. In _A Defense of Dignity: Creating Life, Destroying Life, and Protecting the Rights of Conscience_, Christopher Kaczor investigates whether each human being has intrinsic dignity and whether the very concept of "dignity" has a useful place in contemporary ethical debates. Kaczor explores a broad range of issues addressed in contemporary bioethics, including whether there is a duty of "procreative (...) beneficence," the ethics of ectopic pregnancy, and the possibility of "rescuing" human embryos with human wombs or artificial wombs. _A Defense of Dignity_ also treats issues relevant to the end of life, including physician-assisted suicide, provision of food and water to patients in a persistent vegetative state, and how to proceed with organ donation following death. Finally, what are the duties and prerogatives of health care professionals who refuse in conscience to take part in activities that they regard as degrading to human dignity? Should they be forced to do what they consider to be violations of the patient's well being, or does patient autonomy always trump the conscience of a health care professional? Grounded in the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition, _A Defense of Dignity_ argues that all human beings from the beginning to the end of their lives should be treated with respect and considers how this belief should be applied in controversial cases. "_A Defense of Dignity_ provides a skillful, informed, and clear philosophical analysis, from a natural law perspective, of a range of controversial, and sometimes complex, bioethical questions concerning the beginning and end of life. Few authors approach bioethics from a natural law perspective, and few do it as well as Christopher Kaczor. The book should be of interest not only to natural law philosophers and their students, but also to anyone interested in bioethics." —_John Keown, Georgetown University__ "Moral questions at the beginning and ending of life and controversies over liberty of conscience are among the most vexing and important issues of our day. Christopher Kaczor brings his characteristic moral seriousness and philosophical good sense to his treatment of these issues, all of which implicate the key concept of human dignity. This eminently readable collection will provide an invaluable resource for educators and students alike." — Christopher Tollefsen, University of South Carolina_ “Indispensable. Kaczor untangles the various meanings of human dignity to undertake a reexamination of the most serious and difficult issues in medical ethics. The book combines clarity with philosophical precision, faithfulness to Catholic teaching with a thorough engagement with critics." —_J. Budziszewski, University of Texas at Austin_. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

"A consistently clear, comprehensive and accessible introduction which carefully sifts Foucault's work for both its strengths and weaknesses. McHoul and Grace show an intimate familiarity with Foucault's writings and a lively, but critical engagement with the relevance of his work. A model primer." -Tony Bennett, author of Outside Literature In such seminal works as Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish , and The History of Sexuality , the late philosopher Michel Foucault explored what our politics, our sexuality, our societal (...) conventions, and our changing notions of truth told us about ourselves. In the process, Foucault garnered a reputation as one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century and has served as a primary influence on successive generations of philosophers and cultural critics. With A Foucault Primer , Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace bring Foucault's work into focus for the uninitiated. Written in crisp and concise prose, A Foucault Primer explicates three central concepts of Foucauldian theory-discourse, power, and the subject-and suggests that Foucault's work has much yet to contribute to contemporary debate. (shrink)

It is a long time since I have admired a book as much as I admire this one. It is a long time since I have disagreed with a book as profoundly as I disagree with this one. I hope this combination of reactions on my part has more than whatever limited biographical interest it has. I hope it helps to signal the combination of excellence and provocation that mark Timothy Williamson's book, which is at once beautifully clear, forcefully (...) argued, continually insightful, and, in my view, deeply wrong.One thing that I admire about the book is Williamson's preparedness to reflect philosophically on the nature of philosophy, something that is surprisingly rare in a discipline that is marked by such a high degree of self-consciousness and in which there are so few scruples about reflecting on the nature of other disciplines. One thing that gives me pause is Williamson's lack of serious engagement with the history of philosophy. 1 I am convinced that the philosophy of philosophy will always be seriously handicapped if it is as dissociated from the history of philosophy as this. But I shall not dwell on that concern here, because Williamson is clear enough about where his interests lie and I would be in danger, if I did, of succumbing to that familiar absurdity of berating an author for not having written a numerically different book.What I will say is that Williamson's failure to engage seriously with the history of philosophy seems to me indicative of a scientism about philosophy which, despite how much he does to motivate his conception of the discipline, is manifest in how much …. (shrink)

REVIEWS: This is a very helpful volume and a good addition to contemporary scholarship on the valuable and little-known Jaina contribution to philosophy. Prof.Nagin Shah has edited the book well, including clear introduction and a very complete index.

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world.

This book is one of the definitive accounts of Steiner-Waldorf education by the founder of the first Waldorf School in the UK. In clear and insightful terms, Cecil Harwood presents the heart of this unique approach to children's development, learning and wellbeing as a much-needed antidote to modern educational methods. Harwood's book is full of still-fresh ideas for both parents and teachers, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Steiner-Waldorf education. The classic work has been edited for the (...) modern age, with a contextualising introduction by Professor Douglas Sloan. (shrink)

Anarchist political philosophers normally include in their theories (or implicitly rely upon) a vision of a social life very different than the life experienced by most persons today. Theirs is a vision of autonomous, noncoercive, productive interaction among equals, liberated from and without need for distinctively political institutions, such as formal legal systems or governments or the state. This "positive" part of anarchist theories, this vision of the good social life, will be discussed only indirectly in this essay. Rather, I (...) want to focus here on the "negative" side of anarchism, on its general critique of the state or its more limited critique of the specific kinds of political arrangements within which most residents of modern political societies live. Even more specifically, I will center my discussion on one particular version of this anarchist critique - the version that is part of the theory now commonly referred to as "philosophical anarchism". Philosophical anarchism has been much discussed by political philosophers in recent years. But it has not, I think, been very carefully defined or adequately understood. My object here will be to clear the ground for a fair evaluation of philosophical anarchism, by offering a more systematic account of the nature of the theory and of possible variants of the theory, and by responding to the most frequent objections to the theory. I hope by this effort to present philosophical anarchism as a more attractive, or at least a less obviously flawed, political philosophy. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of the most famous and important philosophers of the twentieth century. In this account of his life and work A.C. Grayling introduces both his technical contributions to logic and philosophy, and his wide-ranging views on education, politics, war, andsexual morality. Russell is credited with being one of the prime movers of Analytic Philosophy, and with having played a part in the revolution in social attitudes witnessed throughout the twentieth-century world. This introduction gives a clear (...) survey of Russell's achievements across their wholerange. (shrink)

This book explores the relation of John Henry Newman's idea of conscience to what he called conscience "in the ordinary sense of the word," examining such neglected difficulties in this area as the relation between individual conscience and the authority of the church, and rights of conscience.

Increasingly, physicians are being asked to provide technical services that many believe are morally wrong or inconsistent with their beliefs about the meaning and purposes of medicine. This controversy has sparked persistent debate over whether practitioners should be permitted to decline participation in a variety of legal practices, most notably physician-assisted suicide and abortion. These debates have become heavily politicized, and some of the key words and phrases are being used without a clear understanding of their meaning. In this (...) essay, I endeavor, firstly, to clarify the meaning of some of these terms: conscience, conscientious action, professional judgment, conscientious objection, conscience clauses, civil disobedience, and tolerance. I argue that use of the term conscientious objection to describe these refusals by health care professionals is mistaken and confusing. Secondly, relying on a proper understanding of the moral and technical character of medical judgment, the optimal deference that the state and markets ought to have toward professions, and general principles of Lockean tolerance for a diversity of practices and persons in a flourishing, pluralistic, democratic society, I offer a defense of tolerance with respect to the deeply held convictions of physicians and other health care professionals who hold minority views on contested but legal medical practices. (shrink)

Emissions arising from the production and consumption of food are acknowledged as a major contributor to climate change. From a consumer’s perspective, however, the sustainability of food may have many meanings: it may result from eating less meat, becoming vegetarian, or choosing to buy local or organic food. To explore what food sustainability means to consumers, and what factors lead to changes in food practice, we adopt a sociotechnical approach to compare the food consumption practices in North West England with (...) two differing consumer groups. The first, supermarket shoppers ‘embedded’ in the mainstream food regime; and the second, who self-identify as sustainable food practitioners, and who perform a range of sustainable food consumption practices. We examine how our two groups experience changes in food practices and identify ‘fractures’ stemming from lifecourse and public events that emerge as points where change might occur. We suggest that ‘sharing spaces’ would be one possibility for prompting and nurturing fractures that can lead to greater sustainability in food practices. (shrink)

The necessity of having effective and socially sound networks is trivial. It is clear that information technology is now a necessary tool that has well understood advantages. The same technology carries negative side-effects. It is our social and ethical duty to examine the possibly negative side effects of IT, especially as IT becomes prevalent in a conservative society such as Kuwait. In our research Kuwait forms a case study as we try to understand what ethical theories underlie the attitude (...) toward one problematic aspect of IT, online pornography, in Muslim/Arab societies. In this paper we review several ethical theories and then present the results of experimental research aimed at determining the concepts that underlie the Kuwaiti response to pornography online. (shrink)

Many people argue that we should practice conscientious consumption. Faced with goods from gravely flawed production processes, such as wood from clear-cut rainforests or electronics containing conflict minerals, they argue that we should enact personal policies to routinely shun tainted goods and select pure goods. However, consumers typically should be relatively uncertain about which flaws in global supply chains are grave and the connection of purchases to those grave flaws. The threat of significant uncertainty makes conscientious consumption appear to (...) be no better, or even worse, than an overlooked option. This overlooked option is consumption with relinquishment: disregarding each product’s possible connections with upstream grave flaws and using the time, money, and energy saved in this way to address grave flaws directly. (shrink)

Spectacular treatment disasters in recent years have made it clear that informal "let's-try-it-and-see" methods of testing new proposals are more risky now than ever before, and have led many to call for a halt to experimentation in clinical medicine. In this easy-tp-read, philosophical guide to human experimentation, William Silverman pleads for wider use of randomized clinical trials, citing many examples that show how careful trials can overturn preconceived or ill-conceived notions of a therapy's effectiveness and lead to a clearer (...) understanding of clinical anomalies. Because it gives careful guidance on setting up trials and avoiding conceptual pitfalls, this book will be of great interest to all epidemiologists and clinical statisticians, and to a wide varitey of clinicians, pharmacologists, and nurses. Since it requires no medical or statistical knowledge, it will also appeal to ethicists, lawyers, and the general public. (shrink)

At the present time Tribunals, appointed under an Act of Parliament, are engaged all over England in dealing with claims to exemption from military service based on the ground of “conscientious objection” to taking part directly or indirectly in warlike activities. Now it is no part of the professional business of moral philosophers to tell people what they ought or ought not to do or to exhort them to do their duty. Moral philosophers, as such, have no special information, not (...) available to the general public, about what is right and what is wrong; nor have they any call to undertake those hortatory functions which are so adequately performed by clergymen, politicians, leader-writers, and wireless loudspeakers. But it is the function of a moral philosopher to reflect on the moral concepts and beliefs which he or others have; to try to analyse them and draw distinctions and clear up confusions in connection with them; and to see how they are inter-related and whether they can be arranged in a coherent system. Now there can be no doubt that the popular notions of “conscience” and “conscientious action” are extremely vague and confused. So I think that, by devoting this paper to an attempt to elucidate them, I may succeed in being topical without being impertinent. (shrink)

*Runner-up for the 2021 Royal Institute for Philosophy Essay Prize*: What should we think about ‘acts of conscience’, viz., cases where our personal judgments and public authority come into conflict such that principled resistance to the latter seems necessary? Philosophers mainly debate two issues: the Accommodation Question, i.e., ‘When, if ever, should public authority accommodate claims of conscience?’ and the Justification Question, i.e., ‘When, if ever, are we justified in engaging in acts of conscience – and why?’. (...) By contrast, a third important topic – the Conduct Question, i.e., ‘How should we act, morally speaking, when engaging in acts of conscience?’ – has been mostly neglected. This paper aims to offer concrete guidance for persons wishing to engage in acts of conscience in morally virtuous ways. I argue that such agents are subject to two basic prima facie duties: duties to oneself related to demands of integrity and duties to others related to demands of civility. I explain both duties in detail, arguing with regard to, that in light of what I call ‘the paradox of conscience’, we need to rethink our views about both ‘conscience’ and ‘integrity’; and with regard to, that, building upon Rawls’ ‘duty of civility’, we should embrace at least seven general principles for undertaking acts of conscience in a morally conscientious manner. (shrink)

Sample chapter from H. Asgeirsson, The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law (Hart Publishing, 2020), in which I present and partially defend a version of what has come to be called the communicative-content theory of law. Book abstract: Lawmaking is – paradigmatically – a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague (...) and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. The monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law with the aim of providing plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? (shrink)