Sacrifice is a key issue of historical, sociological, political, and religious research debates. It also has a variety of interconnections with the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. For this issue of the journal Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy authors were invited to explore the manifold dimensions of sacrifice.

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Suddenly, COVID-19 has changed the world and the way people work. Companies had to accelerate something they knew was imminent in the future, but not immediate and extremely humongous. This situation poses a huge challenge for companies to survive and thrive in this complex business environment and for employees, who must adapt to this new way of working. An effective e-leadership, which promotes companies’ adaptability, is needed. This study investigates the existing knowledge on teleworking and e-leadership; and analyzes the supposed (...) challenges. The literature review shows that companies with effective e-leadership can view teleworking as an opportunity. It is advantageous for not only companies’ productivity but also the environment and people who work remotely. However, a traditional or no leadership can result in some risks. Thriving in remote work environments implies that managers must adjust the companies’ structure, making them less hierarchical, and developing new abilities to establish a strong and trustworthy relationship with their employees to maintain their competitiveness, while retaining a genuine concern for their employees’ well-being. Similarly, successful e-leadership must be able to consolidate and lead effective virtual teams to accomplish organizational goals. This study contributes to the literature and leaders during the pandemic. (shrink)

The primary objective of The Health Care Ethics Con sultant is to focus attention on an immediate practical problem: the role and responsibilities, the education and training, and the certification and accreditation of health care ethics consultants. The principal questions addressed in this book include: Who should be considered health care ethics consultants? Whom should they advise? What should be their responsi bilities and what kind of training should they have? Should there be some kind of accreditation or certification program (...) to ensure that those who call themselves ethics consultants are in fact qualified to advise, consult, research, and write in health care ethics? The distinguished authors ofthese articles are persons with diverse backgrounds, interests, presumptions, and val ues. Not surprisingly, therefore, diverse responses have emerged to the questions posed. Though the book's chapters are individually authored, they are informed by the group discussions that went on during active workshop sessions, and by knowledge of the contributions of others. All of the chapters meaningfully represent their consensus. This is not to say that there were no disagreements regarding specific details, but rather that there were no fundamental objections on the book's basic content among a panel of authors who share basic premises regarding the role, responsibilities, education, and certifica tion of health care ethics consultants. (shrink)

Fragments of painted plaster found in the destruction layer of three first floor rooms in the House of Seals and of one first floor room of the House of the Sword had broken from the ceiling. They allow the restoration of the schema in the room of the House of the Sword and of two of the rooms in the House of Seals, the latter in colour. Composed of bands surrounding a quadrangular field, these décorations, evoking carpets stretched on the (...) ceiling, are richer (costly pigments, gold leaf) and more complex (some fifteen motifs) than those in tombs of the same period, which adopted the same « carpet » composition and which borrowed from the same repertoire, often confirmed by the textiles. Since we know of no other ceiling decoration in habitation rooms, it is unwise to contrast the exuberance of these ceilings with the tomb ceilings. The room that could not be restored had moreover a much more perfunctory decoration. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is no compelling therapeutic ‘need’ for human nuclear genome transfer to prevent mitochondrial diseases caused by mtDNA mutations. At most there is a strong interest in this technology on the part of some women and couples at risk of having children with mitochondrial disease, and perhaps also a ‘want’ on the part of some researchers who see the technology as a useful precedent – one that provides them with ‘a quiet way station’ in (...) which to refine the micromanipulations techniques essential for other human germline interventions and human cloning. In advance of this argument, I review basic information about mitochondrial disease and novel genetic strategies to prevent the transmission of mutated mitochondria. Next, I address common features of contemporary debates and discussions about so-called mitochondrial replacement. First, I contest the cliché that science-and-technology is fast outpacing ethics. Second, I dispute the accuracy of the term ‘mitochondrial replacement’. Third, I provide a sustained critique of the purported ‘need’ for genetically-related children. In closing, I call into question the mainly liberal defense of human nuclear genome transfer. I suggest an alternative frame of reference that pays particular attention to issues of social justice. I conclude that our limited resources should be carefully expended in pursuit of the common good, which does not include pandering to acquired desires. (shrink)

Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...) technologies. (shrink)

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

Tri‐methylation of lysine 4 on histone H3 (H3K4me3) is a near‐universal chromatin modification at the transcription start site of active genes in eukaryotes from yeast to man and its levels reflect the amount of transcription. Because of this association, H3K4me3 is often described as an ‘activating’ histone modification and assumed to have an instructive role in the transcription of genes, but the field is lacking a conserved mechanism to support this view. The overwhelming finding from genome‐wide studies is that actually (...) very little transcription changes upon removal of most H3K4me3 under steady‐state or dynamically changing conditions, including at mammalian CpG island promoters. Instead, rather than a major role in instructing transcription, time‐resolved experiments provide more evidence supporting the deposition of H3K4me3 into chromatin as a result of transcription, influencing processes such as memory of previous states, transcriptional consistency between cells in a population and transcription termination. -/- . (shrink)

How we use our own victimhood and that of others has been changing in recent years. Today it may be used to decry an injustice of violence, to garner attention to our causes, to command a unique moral and ecclesial authority, or even to gain advantage over other groups. The many possible uses of victimhood lead us to study phenomenologically its influence upon our human condition, considering especially its cultural manifestations, and religious underpinnings. The contributions investigate the topic through four (...) sections: 1) Blame, Liability, Ressentiment, 2) Christianity, Atonement, Scapegoating, 3) Trauma, Survivor Guilt, Exile, and 4) Culture, Globalization Media. (shrink)

This volume offer a manifold approach to a less evident and until now much neglected undercurrent in the work of Hannah Arendt., namely her ambiguous relation to the Judeo-Christian relligious heritage. Arendt's dissertation was dedicated to the concept of love in the works of Augustine, where she set her tone and developmed her frame for approaching theological matters. Her understanding of secularity might provide a model for the reconciliation of secularization and the persistence of religious belief in the contemporary world. (...) Thought Hannah Arendt wad certainly and outspokenly a secular thinker, her work also harbors ways of understanding secularization as the possibility of a new, maybe even messianic, attitude towards finite life and earthly reality. She famously depicts this attitude as "faith in and hope for the world". --Book cover. (shrink)

Début 1871, Helmholtz donne une conférence à Heidelberg, devant un public de non spécialistes, sur « la genèse du système planétaire », dont le sujet sera ce qu’il appelle la théorie de Kant-Laplace. Plutôt que de commencer par expliquer ce qu’il faut entendre par cette dernière, Helmholtz expose devant ses auditeurs la représentation que l’on se fait désormais de la formation des corps célestes et de leur devenir probable, en s’appuyant sur les progrès des connaissances, la découverte de nouvelles lois, (...) l’usage d’instruments de plus en plus perfectionnés. C’est ainsi que la validité de l’hypothèse de Kant et de Laplace se trouve confirmée a posteriori et leur audace légitimée. Aussi, la démarche adoptée par Helmholtz relativise-t-elle implicitement, et peut-être à son insu, la rigueur postulée de la bonne méthode scientifique. La cosmogonie esquissée par Helmholtz ressemble à un spectacle bien étudié dont les auditeurs sont les spectateurs, les savants, les acteurs, et la science épurée, l’enjeu. L’analyse de ce texte a donc pour objectif principal d’identifier et de rappeler les éléments contextuels qui lui confèrent son épaisseur, depuis la guerre franco-prussienne jusqu’aux tensions idéologiques, philosophiques, scientifiques qui en sont l’arrière-plan. (shrink)

According to standard late medieval Christian thought, humans in heaven are unable to sin, having been “confirmed” in their goodness; and, nevertheless, are more free than humans are in the present life. The rise of voluntarist conceptions of the will in the late thirteenth century made it increasingly difficult to hold onto both claims. Peter Olivi suggested that the impeccability of the blessed was dependent upon a special activity of God upon their wills and argued that this external constraint upon (...) their wills did not eliminate their freedom. Later voluntarists largely agreed with Olivi in attributing the confirmation of the blessed to be dependent upon God’s activity in some way, but disputed the means by which and the extent to which the wills of those in heaven could be said to retain their freedom. This paper will examine various attempts made to either harmonize these two claims or else to soften the blow of rejecting one of them; among the authors surveyed will be Peter John Olivi, John Duns Scotus, Henry of Harclay, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, and Margurite Porete. (shrink)

Beverly Beckham writes in the Boston Globe in praise of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice: “You have to get this book. … I couldn’t put it down. …” After I read Still Alice, a book of fiction about an accomplished Harvard professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, I too wanted to tell everyone to get this book, but not because “I couldn’t put it down.” The first time I read it, I put it down several times to cry. It was too painful (...) to read in one stretch. Years back, my mother, Gloria Baylis,1 had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, and recently there had been findings suggestive of an atypical presentation of Alzheimer’s disease. The story of Alice Howland, the Alice of Still Alice, was both too... (shrink)

Now that stem cell scientists are clamouring for human eggs for cloning-based stem cell research, there is vigorous debate about the ethics of paying women for their eggs. Generally speaking, some claim that women should be paid a fair wage for their reproductive labour or tissues, while others argue against the further commodification of reproductive labour or tissues and worry about voluntariness among potential egg providers. Siding mainly with those who believe that women should be financially compensated for providing eggs (...) for research, the new stem cell guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) legitimise both reimbursement of direct expenses and financial compensation for many women who supply eggs for research. In this paper, the authors do not attempt to resolve the thorny issue of whether payment for eggs used in human embryonic stem cell research is ethically legitimate. Rather, they want to show specifically that the ISSCR recommended payment practices are deeply flawed and, more generally, that all payment schemes that aim to avoid undue inducement of women risk the global exploitation of economically disadvantaged women. (shrink)

À partir de l'étude de la constitution et de l'histoire des archives du parlement de Paris et de leur traitement archivistique, ainsi que des multiples collections de copies et d'extraits dont elles ont été l'objet, cet article propose une réflexion sur la manière dont ce fonds d'archives, qui allie une exceptionnelle importance matérielle et historique et une particulière complexité, a pu être traité par les archivistes et utilisé par les chercheurs, ainsi que sur les perspectives qu'il peut ouvrir à la (...) recherche. Ces archives du Parlement illustrent en effet toute la gamme des problèmes de conservation, de traitement, de communication au public et d'exploitation et rendent particulièrement manifeste la complémentarité et l'interpénétration nécessaires, voire la confusion, des approches historique et archivistique ; elles démontrent que la connaissance par les chercheurs de l'histoire du fonds d'archives va bien au-delà de la simple pratique archivistique et contribue à la perception de la documentation comme« source» d'histoire. (shrink)

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

In January 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority issued two 1-year licenses for cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research. This article situates the HFEA's decision in its wider scientific and political context in which, until quite recently, the debate about human embryonic stem cell research has focused narrowly on the moral status of the developing human embryo. Next, ethical arguments against crossing species boundaries with humans are canvassed. Finally, a new argument about the risks of harm to women egg providers resulting (...) from research involving the creation of humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos is elaborated. Taken together these ethical concerns about the moral status of the human embryo, about the ethics of crossing species boundaries with humans, and about the potential harms to women, provide good reason to eschew humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research in favor of less ethically controversial means to the laudable end of successful regenerative medicine. (shrink)

En partant de la définition des rituels, et notamment du rôle de la parole, qu'elle soit verbale ou non-verbale, cet article interroge la façon dont la ritualisation peut contribuer à l'éducation, notamment en milieu scolaire. Après un tour d'horizon des principaux aspects rituels de l'enseignement et de l'école, l'auteur questionne plus particulièrement les rituels d'apprentissage, c'est-à-dire ceux qui structurent la relation enseignant/enseigné au sein de la classe. En s'appuyant sur une théorisation psychanalytique elle montre alors comment les rituels peuvent ou (...) non, notamment en fonction de leur degré « d'ouverture », contribuer à faire exister les élèves dans leur singularité et, ce faisant, les aider à se construire dans leur rapport au savoir.Starting from the definition of rituals, including the role of speech, either verbal or non-verbal, this article examines how ritual can contribute to education, particularly in schools. After an overview of the main aspects of teaching and rituals of the school, especially the author questions the rituals of learning, that is to say those that structure the relationship teacher / learner in the class. Based on psychoanalytic theorizing it then shows how rituals may or may not, depending on their particular degree of "openness" to help students exist in their singularity, thereby helping to build in their relation to knowledge. (shrink)

This work was supported, in part, by a Stem Cell Network grant to Françoise Baylis and Jason Scott Robert and a CIHR grant to Françoise Baylis. We sincerely thank Alan Fine, Rich Campbell, Cynthia Cohen, and Tim Krahn for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also owed to Tim Krahn for his research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Department of Bioethics and the Novel Tech Ethics research team. (...) We thank the participants at each of these meetings for their helpful comments. (shrink)

: Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

William Ockham held that, in addition to written and spoken language, there exists a mental language, a structured representational system common to all thinking beings. Here I present and evaluate an argument found in several places across Ockham's corpus, wherein he argues that positing a mental language is necessary for the nominalist to meet certain ontological constraints imposed by Aristotle’s account of scientific demonstration.

Among the most widely discussed of William of Ockham’s texts on ethics is his Quodlibet III, q. 14. But despite a large literature on this question, there is no consensus on what Ockham’s answer is to the central question raised in it, specifically, what obligations one would have if one were to receive a divine command to not love God. (Surprisingly, there is also little explicit recognition in the literature of this lack of consensus.) Via a close reading of the (...) text, I argue, contrary to much of the literature, that Ockham believes that if one were given this command, one would be obligated to refrain from loving God and would also be able to fulfill this obligation without any moral wrongdoing. Among other results, this study will help clarify Ockham’s much-discussed claim that loving God is “a necessarily virtuous act.”. (shrink)

Throughout his remarkable and too‐brief career, Benjamin Freedman was concerned with the ethical standards of ethicists themselves. He worried that ethicists had been bought out, as he knew of none whose opposition to an employer had ever led to being fired. If we look today for what he sought—a bioethical hero—Benjy is himself still the preeminent example.

The dominant approach to conscience in contemporary bioethics presumes that conscience functions to promote personal moral integrity, and therefore presumes that the relevant values are inherently personal. This approach fails to demonstrate when and why claims of conscience should be taken seriously by others. I draw on Hannah Arendt’s deliberative model of conscience and Cheshire Calhoun’s social model of integrity to develop an alternative relational view of conscience—one that demonstrates that the relevant values are social as well as personal. I (...) show how the goal of improving ethical practice over time constrains which conscience claims should be taken seriously by others. (shrink)

La question que Martin Heidegger a posée à l'ensemble de la tradition occidentale est celle du sens de son concept fondamental, celui de l'être. En révélant que c'est à partir du temps que nous comprenons l'être, il a montré que la philosophie trouve son origine dans l'existence d'un être qui ne peut plus être compris, comme le veut la philosophie moderne depuis Descartes, comme un sujet centré sur lui-même. La question du temps n'est donc pas pour lui une question philosophique (...) parmi d'autres, mais celle qui seule peut donner accès à ce qui constitue l'humanité comme telle. Ce que Martin Heidegger accomplit en posant la question du rapport de l'être et du temps, c'est cette " révolution du mode de penser " que requiert la prise en vue de l'essentielle finitude de l'homme et de l'être. La mise en évidence de l'historialité foncière de la pensée philosophique implique que celle-ci ne puisse plus se définir comme une pure théorie et qu'elle exige un engagement existentiel qui ne la met pas à l'abri de l'erreur. C'est uniquement à partir d'une telle conception de la pensée que l'on peut comprendre l'engagement politique de Martin Heidegger, ce qui ne signifie nullement l'excuser. SOMMAIRE : - PRESENTATION- LA TEMPORALITE DE L'ETRE EN TANT QUE QUESTION FONDAMENTALE- LA TEMPORALITE DU "DASEIN" ET LA FINITIUDE DU TEMPS- L'INACHEVEMENT DE "ETRE ET TEMPS" ET LA PENSEE DE L'"EREIGNIS"- REMARQUES SUR LA TRADUCTIONS DE CERTAINS TERMES. (shrink)