This paper establishes a critical relationship between the concepts of memory and experience in the writings of Walter Benjamin, as a preliminary step to expose the negative philosophy of the same author –conceived in terms of remembrance and redemption. This conceptual framework is necessary to propose a Benjaminian negative anthropology that rejects formal anthropological universality and the effort to impose a human ideal that must be achieved by all human beings.

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities promulgated standards for clinical ethics consultants and is currently developing a national Quality Attestation in Clinical Ethics Consultation to assist facilities in ensuring that those performing clinical ethics consultations meet minimum standards. As the field moves towards such professionalization, there is a need to provide access to qualified clinical ethicists at a broad range of medical facilities. Currently, however, there are insufficient numbers of trained clinical ethicists to staff all healthcare facilities, and many (...) facilities lack the necessary resources to hire staff clinical ethicists. In this review, we describe several models for providing expert clinical ethics support to remote facilities that lack access to qualified clinical ethicists. Based on this analysis, we recommend telemedicine as the optimal model providing expert support to local ethics committee members tasked with providing clinical ethics consultation services. (shrink)

Los valores cristianos son ahora más relevantes debido a que las empresas no se preocupan solo del beneficio. mediante una muestra de 176 empresas de la zona 4 de Ecuador, se ha estudiado la aplicación de los valores de solidaridad, honestidad, humildad y responsabilidad en los procesos productivos y de contratación de personal. El objetivo es averiguar si estos valores son relevantes en la gestión. Como resultado se encontró que existen pocas empresas que tengan en cuenta estos valores declarados como (...) tal. La ausencia de estos valores indica que las empresas deben incorporarlos para tener mayor sostenibilidad y responsabilidad social. (shrink)

Whenever an individual asks to be recognized, he asks for confirmation of what he believes himself to be. But he also asks for an establishing act that brings about what he will be once he has been recognized. Recognition is thus marked by a tension between two incompatible demands. Between Cultures is a philosophical attempt to discuss issues related to multiculturalism in the light of this struggle for recognition. Moving effortlessly across various disciplines, it refers to the work of Adorno, (...) Derrida, Freud, Hegel, Heidegger, Rawls, Walzer and Wittgenstein to describe a historical and critical politics of recognition. (shrink)

Esej si zastavi vprašanje o radikalni spremembi v navezavi na koncepta atopije in heterotopije. S pomočjo orodij dekonstrukcijske misli – predvsem specifičnega načina razumevanja telepatije – želi odgovoriti na vprašanje o radikalni spremembi.

What does it mean to oppose AIDS, to be at odds with AIDS?... The author confronts these questions from a broad philosophical background that ranges from Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger to contemporary thought concerning gay activism and AIDS research.

Game theory has proven useful in clarifying Hobbes’s argument that the state of nature will inevitably devolve into a state of war. Mathematically-leaning philosophers, however, have paid little attention to Rousseau’s depiction of the state of nature as a peaceful, asocial state of solitary wanderers. This paper articulates Rousseau’s critique of Hobbes in formal terms, which pinpoints two crucial issues in Hobbes’s account: the lack of an exit option and an unrealistic depiction of human nature. Building upon recent game-theoretic treatments (...) of Hobbes, we first construct a model that incorporates Rousseau’s criticisms by permitting an exit option and endogenizing human preferences and capacities. Second, we draw out the implications of Rousseau’s analysis for the question of political authority, which cannot be answered, as Hobbes believed, by invoking a hypothetical state of nature. (shrink)

Emergency departments are challenging research settings, where truly informed consent can be difficult to obtain. A deeper understanding of emergency medical patients’ opinions about research is needed. We conducted a systematic review and meta-summary of quantitative and qualitative studies on which values, attitudes, or beliefs of emergent medical research participants influence research participation. We included studies of adults that investigated opinions toward emergency medicine research participation. We excluded studies focused on the association between demographics or consent document features and participation (...) and those focused on non-emergency research. In August 2011, we searched the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Scirus, PsycINFO, AgeLine and Global Health. Titles, abstracts and then full manuscripts were independently evaluated by two reviewers. Disagreements were resolved by consensus and adjudicated by a third author. Studies were evaluated for bias using standardised scores. We report themes associated with participation or refusal. Our initial search produced over 1800 articles. A total of 44 articles were extracted for full-manuscript analysis, and 14 were retained based on our eligibility criteria. Among factors favouring participation, altruism and personal health benefit had the highest frequency. Mistrust of researchers, feeling like a ‘guinea pig’ and risk were leading factors favouring refusal. Many studies noted limitations of informed consent processes in emergent conditions. We conclude that highlighting the benefits to the participant and society, mitigating risk and increasing public trust may increase research participation in emergency medical research. New methods for conducting informed consent in such studies are needed. (shrink)

Several political philosophers have recently pointed out that current electoral democracies fail to facilitate accurate and reliable feedback on the performance of public officials. Rather than rejecting democracy as a hopeless ideal, we defend an institutional reform called Service Responsibility, which introduces a superior incentive structure that better aligns the interests of citizens and public officials. Service Responsibility requires increasing or decreasing the income of public officials insofar as they succeed or fail to achieve democratically chosen goals. Later, we consider (...) an alternative institutional scheme, recently proposed by Claudio López-Guerra: Piloting Responsibility. According to this alternative proposal, public officials must utilize a public provider whenever they seek out a basic service. We show that Piloting Responsibility fails to realize the democratic ideal because it generates a perverse incentive structure for public officials. We conclude that Service Responsibility outperforms both the status quo and Piloting Responsibility as an institutional scheme for ensuring competent governance and public justification. (shrink)

Beautiful passages are passages of ‘pure presence’ inasmuch as they cannot be separated from an absence, from an absence that cannot be revoked by restoring a ‘pure presence’. Beautiful passages are passages that move and inspire because they do not withhold anything, though their gift and their surrender lies in an ellipsis that is essential to ‘pure presence’ and that cannot be sidestepped, as if a remainder, a reserve, or a surplus inhered in them. It is impossible to get a (...) grip on beautiful passages. They are riddles that have been solved but persist in the midst of their solution and do not forfeit any of their enigmaticalness. Their beauty resides in an experience of intensity, in an experience based on an elision, on a tightening and an averting. Such averting is an immediate turning towards the one who feels the intensity, touching and stimulating him as a consequence. This paper explores the question: Are there beautiful passages in Of Grammatology? (shrink)

Adorno conceives of art as something tied to its material. He understands artistic material as historically mediated: it confronts artists with technical problems that keep renewing themselves. Artworks solve these problems. When they succeed, they can only be the way they are. Their power lies in this impossibility of imagining them any different from how they appear to be. However, Adorno also suggests another idea of art: the idea of art without power.

This paper discusses hope and hopelessness in relation to history. It does so by turning to Benjamin’s famous statement that hope exists only for the hopeless, and to Derrida’s late thoughts on solitude and the world.

This paper discusses hope and hopelessness in relation to history. It does so by turning to Benjamin’s famous statement that hope exists only for the hopeless, and to Derrida’s late thoughts on solitude and the world.