BackgroundNo standard method exists to assess how many consults a healthcare ethics consultation (HCEC) service should perform. To address this, we developed a method to estimate the volume of HCEC services based on a mixed-methods approach that included a systematic review and survey data on the volume of consult services requested.MethodsOur investigation included a systematic review of studies that reported the volume of HCEC services that were requested from 2000 to 2017, institutional surveys, and statistical analyses that estimated the volume (...) of HCEC services that were adjusted to the size of the hospitals in the survey and to population acuity.ResultsWe contacted the authors of 19 studies that met our inclusion criteria; 17 authors responded to the institutional survey and five provided annualized data points. We found that standard methods of reporting the volume of HCEC services led to inaccuracies in estimating the growth of HCEC services over time. To rectify this, we proposed two means to estimate volume based on either the service goals of HCEC services or hospital size and acuity.DiscussionThe statistical limitations of our study highlight the need to standardize the sharing and reporting of data in clinical ethics. Future work should further standardize methods of HCEC quality assessment using measures similar to those we describe. (shrink)

Writing from a country shattered by two World Wars and by Nazi barbarism, Friedrich Meinecke, Germany's foremost historian of this century, was deeply troubled by the problem of reconciling power and justice in international affairs. This study of his political philosophy traces his thinking about nationalism and power politics, the dilemmas that beset the man of action in political life, and the possibility of "ethics in a world of power." Historians, political scientists, philosophers, and students of international affairs will welcome (...) this further contribution to a theme highlighted by such contemporary spokesmen as George Kennan m1d Reinhold Niebuhr. The author studied under Meinecke and used primary sources in Germany. Originally published in 1958. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

W. Goris, Scientia propter quid nobis. The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus, Aschendorff, Munster 2022 (Archa Verbi. Su...

There are two main paradigms for brain-related science, with different implications for brain-focused intervention or advancement. The paradigm of homeostasis (“stability through constancy,” Walter Cannon), originating from laboratory-based experimental physiology pioneered by Claude Bernard, shows that living systems tend to maintain system functionality in the direction of constancy (or similitude). The aim of physiology is elucidate the factors that maintain homeostasis, and therapeutics aim to correct abnormal factor functions. The homeostasis paradigm does not formally recognize influences outside its controlled experimental (...) frames and it is variable in its modelling of neural contributions. The paradigm of allostatic orchestration (PAO) extends the principle of allostasis (“stability through change”) as originally put forth by Peter Sterling. The PAO originates from an evolutionary perspective and recognizes that biological set points change in anticipation of changing environments. The brain is the organ of central command, orchestrating cross-system operations to support optimal behavior at the level of the whole organism. Alternative views of blood pressure regulation and posttraumatic stress disorder illustrate differences between the paradigms. For the PAO, complexities of top-down neural effects and environmental context are foundational (not to be “factored out”), and anticipatory regulation is the principle of their interface. The allostatic state represents the integrated totality of brain-body interactions. Health itself is an allostatic state of optimal anticipatory oscillation, hypothesized to relate to the state of criticality, a mathematical point of poise between phases, on the border between order and disorder (or the “edge of chaos”). Diseases are allostatic states of impaired anticipatory oscillations, demonstrated as rigidifications of set points across the brain and body (disease comorbidity). Conciliation of the paradigms is possible, with “reactive homeostasis” resolved as an illusion stemming from anticipation of environmental monotony. Considerations are presented with respect to implications of the two paradigms for brain-focused intervention or advancement; the hypothesis that the state of criticality is a vehicle for evolutionary processes; concordance with a philosophy of freedom based on ethical individualism as well as self-creativity, non-obsolescence, empowerment, and citizenship; and concluding reflections on the science and ethics of the placebo, and the potential for virtuous cycles of brain-Anthropocene interactions. (shrink)

The long-standing enigma of I.G. i. 115 has been brought into the lime-light once more by two recent articles, ‘The Law Codes of Athens’ by Sterling Dow in Proc. Massachusetts Hist. Soc., vol. lxxi and by E. Ruschenbusch in Historia, ix, Heft 2. This enigma has many facets, but I only wish to deal here with one. It concerns the precise nature and purpose of the inscription and, in particular, the significance of the words l. 10. The preamble to (...) the decree is quite specific. (shrink)

The long-standing enigma of I.G. i. 115 has been brought into the lime-light once more by two recent articles, ‘The Law Codes of Athens’ by Sterling Dow in Proc. Massachusetts Hist. Soc., vol. lxxi and by E. Ruschenbusch in Historia, ix, Heft 2 . This enigma has many facets, but I only wish to deal here with one. It concerns the precise nature and purpose of the inscription and, in particular, the significance of the words l. 10. The preamble (...) to the decree is quite specific. (shrink)

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

The fundamentals of Kahn's architectural philosophy begin with his personal history: his inherent talent; his family background and childhood experiences; his education, from elementary school through architectural school; the influences of Paul Philippe Cret and Beaux Arts architecture; and his travels, especially those to study the antique monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Because the causal aspects of these experiences were absorbed by him, rather than being the products of Kahn's own thinking, he rarely acknowledged them. His conclusions led to (...) a philosophy that echoed some of the thoughts of earlier philosophers, like Spinoza and Heidegger, but were arrived at independently.1 Kahn expressed his philosophy in lectures, seminars, writings, interviews, conversation, and often through sketches. However, he habitually expressed himself elliptically-his phrasing poetic, his metaphors original and apt. Therefore, his meaning was often felt rather than understood. Extensive studies of Louis Kahn's architecture exist, but few focus on his fully developed architectural philosophy.2 This text addresses that subject, incorporating his own words (in italics) and relating them where relevant to his final work, the Yale Center of British Art (hereafter, "the Center"). Kahn died during the construction of the building, the last material expression of his architectural philosophy. I was the first director of the Center, a participant in the selection of the architect and throughout the building's planning and creation. Coincidental with the early years of Kahn's planning for the Center, two young architectural historians-John Cook and Heinrich Klotz-interviewed several leading architects, including Kahn. Working with a verbatim transcript of the Kahn interviews, made by Karen Denavit, I produced an edited version of the interviews in book format. Louis I. Kahn in Conversation: Interviews with John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz (hereafter, "Kahn in Conversation") is the source for many of the Kahn quotations included here. A researcher can consult the full, verbatim transcript of the interviews in the Center's Institutional Archives, in the Manuscripts and Archives collections in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and in the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

The new methods, the tone, and new taste are clearly discernible first in the early articles and books of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, Kenneth Burke, and Yvor Winters, and somewhat later in Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and William K. Wimsatt. . . . Still, something tells us that there is some sense in grouping these critics together. Most obviously they are held together by their reaction against the preceding or contemporary critical schools and views mentioned (...) before. They all reject the kind of metaphorical, evocative criticism practiced by the impressionists. Tate, Blackmur, Burke, and Winters contributed to a symposium highly critical of the neo-Humanists, and others voiced their rejection elsewhere. They all had no use for Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks, particularly after Brooks became a violent enemy of all modernism. Furthermore, they were almost unanimous in their rejection of Marxism, with the single exception of Kenneth Burke, who in the thirties passed through a Marxist phase and, anyhow, after his first book moved away from his neo-critical beginnings. What, however, in the American situation mattered most was that they were united in their opposition to the prevailing methods, doctrines, and views of academic English literary scholarship. There, in a way the younger generation may find it difficult to realize, a purely philological and historical scholarship dominated all instruction, publication, and promotion. I remember that when I first came to study English literature in the Princeton graduate school in 1927, fifty years ago, no course in American literature, none in modern literature, and none in criticism was offered. Of all my learned teachers only Morris W. Croll had any interest in aesthetics or even ideas. Most of the New Critics were college teachers and had to make their way in an environment hostile to any and all criticism. Only Kenneth Burke was and remained a freelance man of letters, though he taught in later years occasionally at Bennington College and briefly at the University of Chicago. But he very early deserted the New Criticism. It took Blackmur, Tate, and Winters years to get academic recognition, often against stiff opposition, and even Ransom, R. P. Warren, and Cleanth Brooks, established in quieter places, had their troubles. Ransom's paper "Criticism, Inc." pleaded for the academic establishment of criticism, and thanks to him and others criticism is now taught in most American colleges and universities. But it was an uphill fight. I still remember vividly the acrimony of the conflict between criticism and literary history at the University of Iowa, where I was a member of the English Department from 1939 to 1946. René Wellek, Sterling Professor Emeritus of comparative literature at Yale University, is the author of Theory of Literature and of A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950. He has contributed "Notes and Exchanges Between René Wellek and Wayne C. Booth" and "A Rejoinder to Gerald Graff" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

"Aristotle was a systematic writer who often cross-referred to the definitions of terms given elsewhere in his work. Book 5 of the Metaphysics is important because it consists of definitions of the main uses of key terms in Aristotle's philosophy, and it is extremely valuable to have a commentary on this important text by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the leading commentator of his school. Alexander provides a detailed commentary on all of the thirty terms analysed in Book 5, weighing alternative interpretations (...) of what Aristotle says one against another, defending Peripatetic views against actual and possible criticisms, and attempting to integrate what is said in Book 5 into the context of the Metaphysics as a whole."--Bloomsbury Publishing. (shrink)