More often than not Cusanus is interpreted in a theological manner, under strong theological presuppositions and within a religious range. This is understandable since he was a cardinal and had important functions in the Papal States. The inadequacy of this approach, however, is evident when one considers that not all of his texts are meant to assert traditional beliefs but instead to reflect upon their presuppositions. A word-for-word interpretation of the first proposition of the appendix of the dialogue De non (...) aliud reveals a shift in the concept of definitio during the dialogue. Cusanus begins in a quite traditional manner and ends in a supremely abstract and speculative intuition. The not-other determines itself in a vision, setting everything in its proper place; a vision we aspire to repeat in our mental life. In this way, Cusanus does what all great philosophers do: he reflects in a given set of traditions and beliefs upon their presuppositions. (shrink)

Wissen wir, wer oder was unseren Lebensgang bestimmt? Wissen wir überhaupt, was in uns und ausserhalb von uns abläuft? Das einzig Gewisse ist unser Tod, doch was hilft die Gewissheit unseres Todes, wenn ungewiss bleibt, wann er kommt? Unsere Bedürfnisse kennen wir, aber wo sind die Grenzen der Befriedigung? Wenn unsicher geworden ist, wer oder was das bestimmt, was faktisch geschieht, wenn die Welt uns körperlich und seelisch bedrängt und die einzige Gewissheit in der Zukunft unser Tod ist, wenn uns (...) unsere Bedürfnisse und die Grenzen ihrer Befriedigung unklar geworden sind, dann hilft nichts mehr als das Nachdenken – das Nachdenken über unsere Natur und ihren Platz in der Welt, über die Hierarchie unserer Bedürfnisse, darüber, wie wir das Gelingen unseres Lebens mit Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit in Einklang bringen. Kurz, es hilft nichts als der Epikureismus. ********** Do we know who or what determines the course of our lives? Do we even know what is going on inside and outside of us? The only certain thing is our death, but what good is the certainty of our death if it remains uncertain when it will come? We know our needs, but where are the limits to their fulfilment? When it has become uncertain who or what determines what actually happens, when the world oppresses us physically and emotionally and the only certainty in the future is our death, when our needs and the limits of their fulfilment have become unclear to us, then nothing helps more than reflection - reflection on our nature and its place in the world, thinking about the hierarchy of our needs, about how we can harmonise the success of our lives with reason and justice. In short, nothing helps but Epicureanism. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation service remains undeveloped in developing countries. It is recognised that its introduction poses challenges. Malaysia, a multicultural society with diverse religions, values and perceptions further complicate the introduction of formal clinical ethics consultation service. Clinicians attending a national congress workshop completed a Strengths–Weaknesses–Opportunities–Threats analysis. The aim was to gain insight into clinician’s expectations and promote initiatives leading to the introduction of clinical ethics consultation service. Clinicians agree that clinical ethics consultation service can improve quality of care, reduce (...) healthcare costs and advocate for patients and providers. The analysis highlighted constraints in sufficient critical mass of relevant expertise and restricted opportunities for training. The opportunities lie in education, curriculum development and availability of dedicated proponents. Cultural barriers, limited resources, lack of awareness, differenc... (shrink)

Objections arise to the concept of artistic intention based upon the psychology of a period. Here too we experience trends or volitions which can only be explained by precisely those artistic creations which in their own turn demand an explanation on the basis of these trends and volitions. Thus "Gothic" man or the "primitive" from whose alleged existence we wish to explain a particular artistic product is in truth the hypostatized impression which has been culled from the works of art (...) themselves. Or it is a question of intentions and evaluations which have become conscious as they find their formulation in the contemporary theory of art or in contemporary art criticism. Thus these formulations, just like the individual theoretical statements of the artists themselves, can once more only be phenomena parallel to the artistic products of the epoch; they cannot already contain their interpretation. Here again this parallel phenomenon would, in its entirety, represent an extraordinarily interesting object of humanistic investigation, but it would be incapable of defining in detail a methodologically comprehensible volition. So, too, the view of art which accompanies a period's artistic output can express the artistic volition of the period in itself but cannot put a name to it for us. This view can be of eminent significance when we are seeking a logical explanation for the perception of tendencies dominating at a given time and thus also for the judgment of artistic volition at that time, which must also be interpreted.Erwin Panofsky, the renowned art historian, was professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, until his death in 1968. Among his many books and articles are Meaning in the Visual Arts, Early Netherlandish Painting, and Renaissance and Renascenes in Western Art. Kenneth Northcott is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and the translator of Arnold Hauser's Sociology of Art . Joel Snyder is chairman of the committee on general studies in the humanities at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Die 1990 gegründete Reihe, die auf eine Anregung von Mazzino Montinari zurückgeht, publiziert Quellenmaterialien zu Nietzsches Leben, seinem Umkreis und seiner Wirkung. Die Supplementa stellen somit eine Ergänzung zu den Kritischen Ausgaben von Nietzsches Werken (KGW) und Briefen (KGB) dar.

In some ways, the timing of this book is both fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Considering its emphasis, authoritarian dictators who govern by spin rather than fear, it is of particular...

The European Union is working towards harmonizing legislation across Europe, in order to improve cross-border interchange of legal information. This goal is supported for instance via standards such as the European Law Identifier and the European Case Law Identifier, which provide technical specifications for Web identifiers and suggestions for vocabularies to be used to describe metadata pertaining to legal documents in a machine readable format. Notably, these ECLI and ELI metadata standards adhere to the RDF data format which forms the (...) basis of Linked Data, and therefore have the potential to form a basis for a pan-European legal Knowledge Graph. Unfortunately, to date said specifications have only been partially adopted by EU member states. In this paper we describe a methodology to transform the existing legal information system used in Austria to such a legal knowledge graph covering different steps from modeling national specific aspects, to population, and finally the integration of legal data from other countries through linked data. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by exemplifying practical use cases from legal information search, which are not possible in an automated fashion so far. (shrink)

Edward Erwin's clear analysis addresses some of the fundamental questions on behavior therapy that remained in 1978, when this book was first published.

Überlegungen zur Geschichte des politischen Dienstes der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland.--Kirchliche Mitverantwortung in Politik, Staat und Gesellschaft.--Die Einheit der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschlands.--Die Denkschrift-und was nun?--Der Friede und die Völkergemeinschaft.

Despite medicine's achievements, medical errors and the difficulty of reproducing research prove medicine is far from perfect. This book provides a critical and historical analysis of medical reasoning that recognizes the constant need for certainty despite the enormous variety of disease, illness, symptoms, and behavior in patients. According to Erwin Montgomery, Jr., medicine depends on logic, balancing utility with certainty, and anticipating errors in judgment.

In this work, first published in two volumes in 1890 and 1894, Erwin Rohde, the German classical scholar and friend of Nietzsche, describes the ancient Greek cult of souls and establishes the sources of the belief in the immortality of the soul, exploring its relation to life both before and after death. This belief in the survival of the soul already existed in the earliest Greek writings, but when and from where did it originate? In Volume 1 Rohde examines (...) belief in the soul as it appears in Homeric poetry and within local cults, and finds that the idea of an afterlife is already represented in different forms in the works of Hesiod and Aeschylus. He also discusses burial rites and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Psyche, reissued here in the 1898 edition, remains a standard reference work on this topic. (shrink)

The principle of informed consent obligates physicians to explain possible side effects when prescribing medications. This disclosure may itself induce adverse effects through expectancy mechanisms known as nocebo effects, contradicting the principle of nonmaleficence. Rigorous research suggests that providing patients with a detailed enumeration of every possible adverse event—especially subjective self-appraised symptoms—can actually increase side effects. Describing one version of what might happen (clinical “facts”) may actually create outcomes that are different from what would have happened without this information (another (...) version of “facts”). This essay argues that the perceived tension between balancing informed consent with nonmaleficence might be resolved by recognizing that adverse effects have no clear black or white “truth.” This essay suggests a pragmatic approach for providers to minimize nocebo responses while still maintaining patient autonomy through “contextualized informed consent,” which takes into account possible side effects, the patient being treated, and the particular diagnosis involved. (shrink)

Schrödinger discusses what an elementary particle is. This essay originally appeared in the journal Endeavour.

The three essays reprinted in this book were first published in 1963 as individual chapters of a psychiatric treatise entitled Psychiatrie der Gegen wart (Psychiatry of the Present Day). The editors, W. H. GRUHLE (Bonn), R. JUNG (Freiburg/Br. ), W. MAYER-GROSS (Birmingham, England), M. MUL LER (Bern, Switzerland), had not planned an encyclopedic presentation; they did not intend to present a "handbook" which would be as complete as possible in details and bibliographic reference. Their intention was to "raze the walls" (...) separating Continental and Anglo-Saxon psychiatries and to offer a synopsis of developments in psychiatry during the last decades on an international basis. The editors requested, therefore, cooperation of scholars from many foreign countries, large and small, on both sides of the Atlantic. A section entitled "Borderlands of Psychiatry", in which MARGARET MEAD (New York) discusses the relation of "Psychiatry and Ethnology", HANS HEIMAN (Bern), the relation of "Religion und Psychiatrie", and ROBERT VOLMER (Paris), "Art et Psychiatrie", is a good illustration of the trilingual character of the whole work. Two of the editors, GRUHLE and MAYER-GROSS, died before the publi cation had been completed. In a kind of posthumous eulogy, Professor JUNG and Professor MULLER praised the initiative and accomplishments of MAYER-GROSS, "who during the last five years of his life had given a great deal of his time to this work. He had set his mind on a synthesis of German and Anglo-Saxon psychiatry. (shrink)