How to achieve sustainable communities with decent work and economic growth without negative environmental impact, is at the heart of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and a top priority of many governments around the world. This article critically explores the role of government intervention for achieving sustainable local prosperity in frontier markets of developing countries, where such advancement is especially crucial. More specifically, we explore by an in-depth case study how multiple stakeholders cooperate to enhance local development and export (...) from firms in the leather and leather products industry in Ethiopia. From a multistakeholder engagement perspective, including representatives of local businesses, United Nations, Ministry of Trade and Industry, and other development partners, we analyze how government interventions have resulted in unintended outcomes despite their good intention. We contribute with a new understanding of why development initiatives in frontier markets struggle with stakeholder integration, caused by power asymmetry and lack of institutional trust which prevents the achievements of sustainable development goals. Contextualized implications for firms, government, and non-governmental actors on how to improve collaboration are provided, and policy implications are proposed. (shrink)

This study is based on the 1983 Rural Health Survey of Ethiopia. Patterns and levels of child morbidity by age, sex, geographic region, and sanitary facilities are examined. Morbidity levels peak in the second year of life. Diarrhoeal diseases are of major importance, especially among infants and toddlers. Parasitic diseases, and respiratory diseases other than pneumonia, become increasingly important with age.There are no significant sex differentials in morbidity except for higher rates of diarrhoeal diseases among female children. Geographic differentials (...) are quite marked with particularly high morbidity levels from all disease types in the western mountainous regions of Ethiopia. Access to high quality drinking water, a latrine, and garbage disposal, are strongly related to reduced overall morbidity levels, though not necessarily to reduced diarrhoeal disease levels. (shrink)

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited (...) expertise in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited (...) expertise in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Objectives: Mental disorders are vastly underdiagnosed in low-income countries that disproportionately affect women. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of common mental disorders in newly postpartum women, and stigma associated with mental health reporting in an Ethiopian community using a validated World Health Organization survey.Methods: The Self Reporting Questionnaire for psychological distress was administered in Amharic by nurses to 118 women aged 18–37 years who had given birth in the prior 3 months in the Glenn C. Olsen Memorial Primary Hospital (...) in Yetebon. Mental health stigma among the four nursing staff was assessed using Link and Phelan's Components of Stigma.Results: Among 118 women surveyed, 18% had a probable common mental disorder using the SRQ 4/5 cutoff and 2% admitted to suicidal thoughts. Presence of stigma in the healthcare staff was verified, including labeling, stereotyping, separating, and status loss and discrimination.Conclusion: Postpartum mental health disorders as well as stigma against such diagnoses are common in the Yetebon community. There is an urgent need for increased availability of properly trained and supervised healthcare staff in the identification and referral of postpartum women with common mental disorders. (shrink)

This article first deals with Pantaenus’s mission to India, which began in Alexandria through the private initiative of Pantaenus, the teacher of Clement who was also well known to Origen. In the age of Athanasius (fourth century), another mission to India was organised in Alexandria, and this time the bishop himself took the initiative to send missionaries. Meanwhile in Alexandria the episcopacy had gained strength, and the head of the Didaskaleion – Didymus, a follower of Origen – was then appointed (...) by the bishop, whereas neither Pantaenus nor Clement were so appointed. The article also discusses to which “India” the mission was directed. Generally, it is considered to have been Ethiopia, but in fact it might have been India. (shrink)

Does Marxism reflect uncritically the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on innovative work in anthropology, history and philosophy, Professor Donham confronts this problem in analyzing a radically different social order: the former Maale kingdom of southern Ethiopia. Unlike capitalism, where inequality is organized by contracts between 'free' individuals, powerful men in Maale were conceived as 'begetting' others through control of biological fertility and material fortune. The author scrutinizes this unusual (...) system of domination in order to sharpen issues in social and cultural theory. He concludes that the interpretation of symbols and analysis of historical contingency should be crucial steps in any Marxist investigation. This unusual combination of social theory and ethnography will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists. (shrink)

L’anthropologie classique de l’Afrique de l’Est a associé le pastoralisme à l’idéologie masculine. Pourtant, chez les Mursi, l’implication des femmes dans la réussite pastorale est manifeste, à condition de considérer les différents âges de la vie. Les positions sociales de la Belle-mère et de l’Ancien, aboutissement d’un processus de maturation que souligne l’organisation sociale en classe d’âge, invitent ainsi à se questionner sur les rapports de genre. Ces figures permettent de comprendre en quoi certaines femmes mûres accèdent à des positions (...) sociales masculines, mais aussi en quoi ces femmes restent politiquement subordonnées aux Anciens en dernière instance, en raison d’un décalage temporel vis-à-vis de leur alter ego masculin de même âge dans l’accès à la maturité. L’article s’intéresse d’abord à l’ordre politique produit par les différences de maturité entre guerriers et anciens. D’autres types de relations cross-sex, comme celles entre jeunes filles et guerriers, sont ensuite décrites avant de circonscrire la place des Anciens et des Belles-mères vis-à-vis du groupe dans son ensemble et des troupeaux. (shrink)

This book draws on case examples of contemporary black activism in South Manchester and contrasts them with events that surrounded C.L.R. James and his activism between 1935 and 1950. In doing so, the author considers what Brexit, the Labour Party and Theresa May's audit on racism in the UK have in common with the wartime decline of the British Empire, the rise and fall of the trade unions and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Clennon dialogues with James' theoretical frameworks (...) around capitalism, neoliberalism and post-colonialism, and uses this creative interplay of ideas to help make sense of contemporary events and issues of social justice from a UK ethnic minority perspective. Using Fanon, Gordon, Marx and Chakrabarty amongst others, the study explores James' take on dialectical materialism and uses this as an ongoing analytical tool throughout the volume with which he weaves an uneasy path between post-colonial and post-Marxist theories. The Polemics of C.L.R. James and Contemporary Black Activism will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies, education and black studies. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ideas of Asres Yenesew, who was a leading clerical scholar during Haile Selassie’s reign. Frustrated by the marginalization of Ethiopia despite the preservation of its independence, Asres identifies the introduction of Western education as the main culprit and derives the economic satellization of Ethiopia from the cultural ascendancy of the West. As a remedy, he proposes a return to the source by which alone Ethiopia can again recenter itself and make choices in accordance (...) to its interests. He supports his proposal by expounding the empowering forces of some important components of the traditional system of social organization and cultural beliefs. The paper underlines the revolutionary message of Asres’s discourse, but also shows how the timidity of his political stand singularly diminished its resonance. (shrink)

This wasn't merely a man, it was the sultan Al-Malik, Al-Zâhir Rukn al-Dunia wal- Dîn Abü l-Fath Baybars whose swords were the keys to kingdoms, whose standards were like hills and the spears that rose above them were like fires whose duty it was to command men.Between 1260 and 1277, the second half of the seventh century Hegira (the thirteenth century by the Christian calendar), the Bahri Mamluk empire, founded in 1256, was governed by the sultan Baybars, the fourth sovereign (...) of his dynasty The Bahri's were former slaves from the borders of the Black Sea. They were succeeded in 1382 by the Circassian Mamluks, who were in turn supplanted in 1517 by the Ottomans. The empire comprised a vast territory including Egypt and the eastern part of present day Libya; the Near-East up to the Euphrates; rule over Nubia, Sudan and the north of Ethiopia; and sovereignty over the holy places of orthodox Islam: Mecca and Medina. The empire was threatened, from the east by the Mongols, who made inroads into Iraq and Syria on several occasions (although Egypt remained beyond their reach), and from the north by the Seljoukids of Asia Minor (Rûm). The interior, where the Crusaders held several strongholds was plagued by dissidents, notably the Isma'ilis, a movement derived from shi'ism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Striving To Do Good:Well-Springs, Realities, and Paradoxes of Medical Humanitarian WorkRenée C. FoxThe voices that speak from the pages of these testimonial narratives are those of physicians who are engaged in medical humanitarian work. The preponderance of them are based in U.S. academic medical centers where they have clinical, teaching, and research responsibilities from which they regularly "commute" to care for patients in what the euphemistic language of "global (...) health" terms "resource-limited," rather than "poor" countries." This "hybrid life," as one of the physicians (Robert Riviello) refers to it, has transported them periodically to numerous African societies (to Algeria, Ethiopia, Gabon, Morocco, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda), to Haiti, to India and Nepal, and to Guatemala and Mexico. Three of the "stories" are written by physicians at work in the countries where they were born (Prasanta Tripathy in Eastern India, Sridevi Seetharam and colleagues in Southern India, and Paul Pierre, in Haiti).Only one group of physician-coauthors (Maricruz Merino, Jonathan Iralu, and Sonya Shin) write about their experiences in practicing medicine among poor and socially disadvantaged patients on the American mainland—in the setting of the Navajo Indian reservation in Gallup, New Mexico.All these physicians describe their involvement in humanitarian medicine as emanating from their commitment to "social justice," to "saving lives," and to "caring for the poor"; to their universalistic convictions about "human solidarity," and the non- otherness of others; to their indignation about the inequities and injustices of the world, particularly with regard to access to health care (in the words of Jeffrey Deal, "[They] deserve better. They all do"); and to their "passionate" desire, not just their "sense of duty," to help rectify these wrongs (Richard Keiden). I was struck by the fact that none of them uses the word "suffering" to describe the plight of the persons whom they feel they have been called to medically assist.Three of the physicians express the wellsprings of their motivation in religious terms. Richard Keiden refers to a "guiding principle of Judaism" on which his medical humanitarian work has been founded—"tzedakah"—which "translates as charity but actually means righteousness," is based on a "concept of social justice," and is "an obligation, not a choice." Robert Riveillo says that at the time of his graduation from high school he envisioned his "life's work as a long-term missionary surgeon"; he invokes "loving mercy," as well as justice, "in this work of solidarity" that he has undertaken; and he poignantly admits that "most days I still long to pack my things, my family, and our efforts and move to Africa for a life of direct service." What Jeffrey Deal writes is the most explicitly and ardently religious of all. He identifies his work as a physician in Sudan with Jesus's "desire for us to care [End Page 115] for the poor and downtrodden in His stead." He is haunted by his "failure" to deliver alive a "partially born" baby girl who for him incarnated "the least of the least" of whom Jesus "spoke passionately." And in touching "ever so briefly... [that] one, tiny being [he] encountered... [on ] that hot morning in Sudan," he attests, he "touched Jesus."Jeffrey Deal is not the only one who was so stricken by the death of a baby or a child. For a number of these physicians (Sadath Sayeed, Maneesh Batra, and for Sridevi Seetharam, Lisa Adams and their colleagues), it was a tragedy that they found hard to bear with "detached enlightenment" (Sayeed), or to accept. The most demonstrably heartbroken and morally outraged among them is Sadath Sayeed, who "wept uncontrollably" over the death of a baby boy, born "at home" in Haiti, "probably in one of the hundreds of make-shift tent cities." The baby was not breathing continuously, and was "handed" to him to care for. At the close of the "story " about this experience that he recounts, Sayeed lashes out with fury and angst at those who were likely to ask him, "How was it in Haiti?" Do you want to hear "my real answer?" he replies:... [L]et me summarize my last patient for you: Good luck Dad... (shrink)

This paper provides a series of reflections on making the case to senior leaders for the introduction of clinical ethics support services within a UK hospital Trust at a time when clinical ethics committees are dwindling in the UK. The paper provides key considerations for those building a case for clinical ethics support within hospitals by drawing upon published academic literature, and key reports from governmental and professional bodies. We also include extracts from documents relating to, and annual reports of, (...) existing clinical ethics support within UK hospitals, as well as extracts from our own proposal submitted to the Trust Board. We aim for this paper to support other ethicists and/or health care staff contemplating introducing clinical ethics support into hospitals, to facilitate the process of making the case for clinical ethics support, and to contribute to the key debates in the literature around clinical ethics support. We conclude that there is a real need for investment in clinical ethics in the UK in order to build the evidence base required to support the wider introduction of clinical ethics support into UK hospitals. Furthermore, our perceptions of the purpose of, and perceived needs met through, clinical ethics support needs to shift to one of hospitals investing in their staff. Finally, we raise concerns over the optional nature of clinical ethics support available to practitioners within UK hospitals. (shrink)

In any society influenced by a plurality of cultures, there will be widespread, systematic differences about at least some important values, including moral values. Many of these differences look like deep disagreements, difficult to resolve objectively if that is possible at all. One common response to the suspicion that these disagreements are unsettleable has always been moral relativism. In the flurry of sympathetic treatments of this doctrine in the last two decades, attention has understandably focused on the simpler case in (...) which one fairly self-contained and culturally homogeneous society confronts, at least in thought, the values of another; but most have taken relativism to have implications within a single pluralistic society as well. I am not among the sympathizers. That is partly because I am more optimistic than many about how many moral disagreements can be settled, but I shall say little about that here. For, even on the assumption that many disputes are unsettleable, I continue to find relativism a theoretically puzzling reaction to the problem of moral disagreement, and a troubling one in practice, especially when the practice involves regular interaction among those who disagree. This essay attempts to explain why. (shrink)

This article explores egg freezing experiences of women in Turkey. Since 2014, it has been legal in Turkey to use egg freezing technology for ageing women, while it was previously allowed only for disease-related purposes. In cooperation with a private fertility clinic in Istanbul, the authors conducted 21 interviews with older, single women who held either professional or managerial positions and who were undergoing or had undergone the procedure. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of these interviews, the authors explore the (...) social context in which women postpone motherhood and decide to freeze their eggs. The study also looks at the women’s emotional responses to ageing that were triggered by the experience of egg freezing and their narratives of empowerment as a result of the procedure. (shrink)

Disorders of Consciousness (DoCs) raise difficult and complex questions about the value of life for persons with impaired consciousness, the rights of persons unable to make medical decisions, and our social, medical, and ethical obligations to patients whose personhood has frequently been challenged and neglected. Recent neuroscientific discoveries have led to enhanced understanding of the heterogeneity of these disorders, and focused renewed attention on the medical and ethical problem of misdiagnosis. -/- This book examines the entanglement of epistemic and ethical (...) uncertainty in DoCs and other medical contexts, and how they interact to create both epistemic and ethical risks. Philosopher and bioethicist L. Syd M Johnson pulls together multiple threads in this work: the ontological mysteries of consciousness, medical uncertainty about unconsciousness, ableist bias, withdrawal of treatment in neurointensive care, and the rarely questioned view that consciousness is essential to personhood and moral status. Johnson challenges longstanding bioethical dogmas about DoC patients, and argues for an ethics of uncertainty for contexts where there is a need for decisive action in the presence of unavoidable uncertainty. The ethics of uncertainty refocuses ethical inquiry concerning persons with DoCs, placing less emphasis on their contested personhood, and more on inductive risk and uncertainty, on respect for autonomy, and especially on epistemic justice. With applications to various decisional contexts where uncertainty and ethical risk interact, this ethical approach enables surrogate decision makers facing fraught and risky choices to fulfill their obligations as moral and epistemic agents. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on the study of philosophical anthropological concepts, to highlight the project of personality in different historical periods, to reveal the meaning of humanistic issues in the postmodern epoch, to identify the essential features of the image of human of the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the principles of historicism, integrity, objectivity regarding the mastery of the issue of person’s image in postmodernism. The research (...) applied comparative-historical, culturological, analytical, axiological approaches to reveal the problem of individuality in the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. The theoretical basis of the article consists of scientific works in the field of philosophical anthropology, history, cultural studies, and aesthetics. Originality. The author revealed the peculiarities of transformation of the personality model from antiquity to postmodernism, specified the image of man of the second half of the XX the beginning of the XXI century. Conclusions. The analysis of anthropological ideas of Western philosophy of different ages shows the variety of views about understanding the nature of the person, its complexity and ambiguity. In the epoch of postmodernism humanistic issues are of particular relevance, which is connected with social and political uncertainty, domination of mass consciousness, loss of national and cultural identity. The image of a person of this period is deprived of a solid foundation, it is blurred and relative. The destruction of faith in the absolute in the context of the second half of the twentieth century contributed to the formation of confidence in the interdependence of all things, raised the problem of the personality image to a new ontological level. Orientation in the achievements of European civilization, perception of its anthropological experience, intercultural dialogue contribute to the productive use of the achievements of mankind in order to understand the modern person and to form its adequate image. In its essence, postmodernism does not set the goal to realize a retrospection of subject type. However, separating from the cultural memory the excerpts of ideas about a person, by certain styles and directions, it builds on their formations its own eclectic image of the individual. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theological Practices That Matter. Vol. 5 of Theology in the Life of the Church Series, and: Transformative Theological Perspectives. Vol. 6 of Theology in the Life of the Church SeriesLaurie JunglingTheological Practices That Matter. Vol. 5 of Theology in the Life of the Church Series Edited by Karen L. Bloomquist Geneva: Lutheran World Federation; and Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2009. 179 pp. $15.00Transformative Theological Perspectives. Vol. 6 of (...) Theology in the Life of the Church Series Edited by Karen L. Bloomquist Geneva: Lutheran World Federation; and Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2009. 179 pp. $15.00In March 2009 Lutheran scholars from around the globe gathered at the Transformative Perspectives and Practices Today (TPPT) theological consultation in Augsburg, Germany. This consultation concluded a multiyear program organized by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) titled Theology in the Life of the Church. As a part of this program, the LWF sponsored six regional seminars in various locations around the world, each of which discussed a specific topic of concern both for that region and for Lutherans worldwide. Papers from these seminars were published in volumes 1–4 of the Theology in the Life of the Church Series (2007, 2008, 2008, and 2009). During [End Page 205] these seminars a concern about doing theological work across contexts began to emerge. In response to this concern the LWF organized the TPPT consultation in order to begin the work of doing “transcontextual theological work” within the Lutheran communion of churches across the globe. The papers that emerged from the TPPT consultation have been compiled into what are the fifth and sixth volumes of the Theology in the Life of the Church series: Theological Practices That Matter (volume 5) and Transformative Theological Perspectives (volume 6).In her introduction to Theological Practices That Matter, Karen Bloomquist defines transcontextual theology as the process of “interrogating and reconfiguring inherited theological positions with rigor and persuasiveness that moves across cultural boundaries” (6). She also names the difficulty that many participants of the TPPT consultation expressed about doing transcontextual theological work. And yet Bloomquist and these participants maintain that such work is necessary: without it, destructive theological ideologies remain unquestioned by those whose experiences are different from our own. Volumes 5 and 6 of this series represent the difficult and complex work of beginning to think about and do transcontextual theology.The essays in Theological Practices That Matter focus on how specific Christian practices may be addressed using a transcontextual Lutheran perspective. Authored by Lutheran scholars representing various perspectives across a wide diversity of contexts (including Argentina, Germany, Namibia, Norway, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States), these short but helpful essays discuss some of the tangible and public practices that Lutherans enact in their particular locations. Some scholars offer a more objective perspective on how certain practices such as worship, public theology, spiritual practices, and the upcoming Jubilee celebration of the Reformation might help Lutherans begin to think about doing transcontextual theology. Other scholars lift up specific practices taking place in particular contexts so as to challenge or renew these practices from the perspective of Lutheran theological principles. These contextual topics include sexuality and church discipline in Tanzania, church and state in Namibia, indigenization of African religions and Christianity in South Africa, exclusion of children from the Eucharist in Zimbabwe, pastoral care of persons with AIDS in Argentina, palliative care in Germany, and baptism liturgies in Norway.The essays in Transformative Theological Perspectives discuss constructive Lutheran theological and hermeneutical proposals that are “transformative in relation to new contexts today” (5). The key term here seems to be “transformative” in that these essays are intended to transform those theological approaches that lead to injustice in various contexts and to challenge assumptions that Lutheran theology is essentially European. Instead, many of the authors argue that Lutheran theology in itself promotes possibilities of dynamic interaction [End Page 206] with those who are different. As in the previous volume, the authors in this volume represent a variety of contexts around the world (including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Japan, India, and the United States). Several scholars discuss how Lutherans might seek common theological ground in... (shrink)

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

Où en sommes-nous dans l'étude des rapports entre femmes et mouvement ouvrier en France? A faire le bilan on remarque d'abord que ce travail a surtout porté sur la période de l'avant Première Guerre mondiale, et ce pour de bonnes raisons. Le XIXe siècle est bel et bien la période de l'essor du capitalisme industriel en France et aussi de la prolétarisation pour de nombreux ouvriers et ouvrières. C'est aussi l'âge héroïque du commencement de la revendication ouvrière, du socialisme et...

In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process.

A weak form of intuitionistic set theory WST lacking the axiom of extensionality is introduced. While WST is too weak to support the derivation of the law of excluded middle from the axiom of choice, we show that beefing up WST with moderate extensionality principles or quotient sets enables the derivation to go through.

The interconnections, common interests, and other linkages between the Jewish and Islamic traditions have long been a matter of interest to academics. Today the need to understand these relationships, and to emphasize commonalities rather than conflicts, is of the greatest public interest. The present volume of studies, likely the first such collection in the scholarly literature, explores the full range of interconnections between Jews and Muslims in all fields (intellectual history, religion, philosophy, social history, etc.) and in all periods, from (...) the Middle Ages till today. The essays have been written by some twenty distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel. The volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Joel L. Kraemer, John Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School and on the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In the course of his distinguished career Professor Kraemer has made major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews in the Arabic world, Islamic and Jewish philosophy and their sources in ancient philosophy, the humanistic renaissance in Islam (on which he published two seminal monographs), and Maimonides (on which he has published many important papers and is completing a biography and a translation of Maimonides' letters, to appear in the Yale Judaica Series). (shrink)

L. Nandi Theunissen offers an original and provocative account of the value of humanity. Human beings have value just as anything of value has value: because we are capable of being of value to someone--in the first place, to ourselves. And this explains the key forms of ethical responsiveness that we owe to one another.

A standard objection to act utilitarian theories is that they are not helpful in deciding what it is morally permissible for us to do when we actually have to make a choice between alternatives. That is, such theories are worthless as decision procedures. A standard reply to this objection is that act utilitarian theories can be evaluated solely as theories about right-making characteristics and, when so evaluated, their inadequacy as decision procedures is irrelevant. Even if somewhat unappealing, this is an (...) effective reply to the standard objection. (shrink)

This article is about Gilles Deleuze's book Le Pli. Leibniz et le Baroque from 1988. It shows how Deleuze's notion of folding captures some basic intuitions in Leibniz and how they relate to each other. To this purpose, I propose five figures, all referring to the same basic fold, all illustrating how the consideration of such figures allows developing central elements of Leibniz's monadology. These figures can help, I hope, alleviate some of the fundamental difficulties in understanding Deleuze's approach to (...) the Monadology from the non-Deleuzian perspective of contemporary Leibniz scholarship and give a sense of the synthetic, explanatory force that Deleuze's notion of folding has in relation to Leibniz's monadological metaphysics. (shrink)

The soul has played many different roles in philosophy and religion. Two of the primary functions of the soul are the bearer of personal identity and the foundation of immortality. In this paper I shall consider different interpretations of what the soul has been taken to be and argue that however we interpret the soul we cannot consistently maintain the soul is both what we are and what continues after our bodily death.

I argue that environmental ignorance is a group-based form of substantive ignorance that is analogous to race-based ignorance, showing that they are structurally and functionally similar and sometimes overlap. While race theorists offer promising solutions toward eliminating race-based ignorance, I argue that something far more is needed in the environmental case. I turn to panpsychism as a possible solution. Though I conclude that it is too radical for most Americans to willingly embrace, I incorporate a notion of “encounter” to argue (...) that an expanded conception of home helps with the conceptual overhaul needed to overcome environmental ignorance. (shrink)

Bioethicists have recently expressed concern over a lack of quality control within the field. This apprehension focuses on bioethics expanding in ways that obscure its distinctive ethical remit and the specialist reasoning skills it requires. This thesis about the quality and conduct of bioethics may have particular relevance for clinical ethics. As one of the youngest offshoots of bioethics, the field focuses on the ethical issues that arise specifically in a clinical context. However, non-ethics specialists are increasingly involved in this (...) field. This means that clinical ethics could be especially vulnerable to the quality control concerns articulated within bioethics. The growing public profile of clinical ethics means that concerns over quality in this area warrant specific attention by those concerned with declining standards in bioethics and those working in clinical ethics. (shrink)