Over the last decades, changes within higher education have created increased pressure and uncertainty for academics, increasing their risk for cognitive, behavioral, physical, as well as psychological issues due to high job demands. Specifically, for new academics in teaching roles, their lack of knowledge and skills can contribute to a negative effect of these job demands on their well-being. This study therefore explored how teaching-related professional development programs can enhance new university teachers’ well-being, through semi-structured interviews with 10 university teachers (...) participating in such a program at a mid-sized Dutch university. We pay special attention to the relationship between specific learning activities integrated in the program and various dimensions of the psychological model of well-being by Ryff and Keyes. Using co-occurrence analysis and content analysis, we found that different learning activities had distinct relationships with different well-being facets. For example, formal workshops were mainly related to environmental mastery, a purpose in life and personal growth, while reflecting seemed to be especially connected to teachers’ self-acceptance, and participating in a learning community was mainly related to positive relations with others and personal growth. Our findings have implications for research on teacher well-being as well as for the design of professional development programs for higher education teaching staff. (shrink)

Henry David Thoreau The American author Henry David Thoreau is best known for his magnum opus Walden, or Life in the Woods ; second to this in popularity is his essay, “Resistance to Civil Government” , which was later republished posthumously as “Civil Disobedience” . His fame largely rests on his role as a … Continue reading Thoreau, Henry David →.

In recent years, the rights of patients have assumed a more pivotal role in international discussion. Stricter laws on the protection of patients place greater priority on the perspective and the status of patients. The purpose of this study is to emphasize ethical aspects in communication, the role of patient advocates as contacts for the concerns and suggestions of patients, and how many problems of ethics disappear when communication is highlighted. We reviewed 680 documented cases of consultation in a 10-year (...) period of patient advocates’ activity at a big German university hospital with 1,300 beds. On the basis of this extensive material, the article will focus on the intersection of the advocate’s work with the problems of patients in hospitals. Deficits in the level of communication between health care professionals and patients were frequently uncovered. Patients primarily complain about the lack of dialogue and empathy. Middle-aged patients consulted the patients’ advocate disproportionately more often. Measured against this baseline, the group of 65 and older complained less frequently. Besides complaints the advocate was asked in more than one-third of all cases for information about medical matters, hospital regulations or administrative problems. Patients obviously see the advocate as a well-connected and ideally unbiased contact person for uncertainties concerning their malady or a potential stay in hospital. Those seeking help often set hope in the information given by the voluntary patient representative. It should be highly recommended for every German hospital to establish the position of a patient advocate. Furthermore, patients can profit from regular exchange between the advocate and the Ethics Committee, also, to help ensure that their rights are taken into account and implemented in an ethically desirable context. (shrink)

>... ein Handbuch der meisten heute im christlich-jüdischen Verhältnis zu bearbeitenden Themen und Probleme... Und natürlich: ein vorzüglicher Kommentar zum Rosenzweig'schen Hauptwerk. - Franz Rosenzweig wird in dieser gut verständlichen Einführung erstmals als jüdischer Theologe gewürdigt. Eine Schatzkammer tut sich auf: die Bibel, das Judentum und seine Überlieferungen werden unverstellt beschrieben in ihrer Schönheit, Weite und Tiefe. Im Zentrum steht die Liebe zu Gott in einer Welt, die sich immer mehr säkularisiert, immer weltlicher.

ObjectiveIn this study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether motor imagery of handwriting and circle drawing activates a similar handwriting network as writing and drawing itself.MethodsEighteen healthy right-handed participants wrote the German word “Wellen” and drew continuously circles in a sitting and lying position to capture kinematic handwriting parameters such as velocity, pressure and regularity of hand movements. Afterward, they performed the same tasks during fMRI in a MI and an executed condition.ResultsThe kinematic analysis revealed a general (...) correlation of handwriting parameters during sitting and lying except of pen pressure during drawing. Writing compared to imagined writing was accompanied by an increased activity of the ipsilateral cerebellum and the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. Executed compared to imagined drawing revealed elevated activity of a fronto–parieto-temporal network. By contrasting writing and drawing directly, executed writing induced an enhanced activation of the left somatosensory and premotor area. The comparison of the MI of these tasks revealed a higher involvement of occipital activation during imagined writing.ConclusionThe kinematic results pointed to a high comparability of writing in a vertical and horizontal position. Overall, we observed highly overlapping cortical activity except of a higher involvement of motor control areas during motor execution. The sparse difference between writing and drawing can be explained by highly automatized writing in healthy individuals. (shrink)

Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges (...) but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity. (shrink)

The effectiveness of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) in tackling grand social and environmental challenges depends on productive dialogue among diverse parties. Facilitating such dialogue in turn entails building common ground in form of joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions. To explore how such common ground can be built, we study the role of different facilitators and their strategies for bridging the perspectives of competing stakeholder groups in two contrasting MSIs. The German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles was launched in an initially hostile communicative (...) environment, whereas the Fossil Free Sweden Initiative proceeded in a fertile communicative environment. We trace how the facilitators in these initiatives achieved common ground through three bridging strategies—communicative integration, temporal calibration, and process alignment—adapted to the communicative environments of these MSIs. In hostile communicative environments, facilitators achieve common ground by steering diverging stakeholder groups towards ‘reconciling’ their different language registers, knowledge bases, and meaning systems to ‘meet in the middle’ on points of agreement and shared interests. In fertile communicative environments characterised by greater mutual trust, facilitators can steer interactants to ‘strategically appropriate’ to the language, knowledge, and meaning system of a particular stakeholder group to win this group’s support. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of how productive multi-stakeholder dialogue can be facilitated. (shrink)

Nietzsche hat keine politische Theorie vorgelegt und dennoch ganz grundlegende, auch heute noch herausfordernde Fragen zu Wesen und Wert des Politischen gestellt. Unter den Gesichtspunkten von Psychologie und Moral, Kultursteigerung und Zukunftsgestaltung hat er das Politische umgedacht und umgewertet. Ziel des Bandes ist, diese Umwertungen neu zu durchdenken. Dabei steht zunächst das Verhältnis von Nietzsches Philosophie zu den wesentlichen Fragen der Politik – Herrschaft, Gewalt, Freiheit, Selbstbestimmung und Gerechtigkeit – im Vordergrund. Welche Regeln bzw. Normen und welche Arten von Gemeinschaft (...) sind aus seinem Denken ableitbar? Nietzsches Anti-Politik wird im Zeichen souveräner Individualität und als Gegen-Politik diskutiert, seine „große Politik" im Licht jüngerer Erfahrungen (Trump etc.) hinterfragt. Wie gehen wir mit Nietzsches polemischem Elitismus um, wie mit der Selbstermächtigung von Individuen, die in heutigen westlichen Gesellschaften (scheinbar) so wichtig sind? Die hier versammelten Beiträge erfassen Nietzsches politische Perspektiven in all ihrer Brisanz und Radikalität, aber auch mit der nötigen Sorgfalt und in textnaher Lektüre. (shrink)

English summary: Friedrich Schleiermacher's work as a theologian and Plato scholar marked the start of a new epoch: as a system-forming philosopher, he claimed independent validity, and as church politician, educational policy-maker, and academic theorist, he was one of the most important figures during the Prussian reforms, whose contributions to pedagogy remain influential to this day. This volume provides a clear-sighted overview of the various stages in Schleiermacher's life (1768-1834), with each contribution portraying his fields of work and their contexts, (...) placing his literary work and conceptions in the framework of the respective contemporary debates. Important stages in Schleiermacher reception and impact history are likewise considered. The authors' diverse approaches to interpreting and understanding his output mean that the Guide to Schleiermacher offers concentrated insight into the consensus on and controversies in current Schleiermacher research. German description: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) hat als Theologe, aber auch als Plato-Forscher Epoche gemacht; als systembildender Philosoph erhob er selbstandigen Geltungsanspruch, als Kirchen- und Bildungspolitiker sowie als Theoretiker der Universitat gehorte er zu den wichtigsten Akteuren der preussischen Reformen, und seine Beitrage zur Padagogik wirken bis heute nach. Die Gliederung des Handbuchs folgt grob Schleiermachers Lebensstationen. Die einzelnen Beitrage schildern seine Arbeitsfelder und -kontexte und stellen seine literarischen Arbeiten und Entwurfe in den jeweiligen zeitgeschichtlichen Debattenlagen dar. Auch wichtige Stationen seiner Wirkungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte werden thematisiert.Die Autorinnen und Autoren der Beitrage verfolgen ganz unterschiedliche Interpretations- und Deutungsansatze. Deshalb bietet das Handbuch auch einen konzentrierten Einblick in den gegenwartigen Stand der Schleiermacher-Forschung mit ihren Konsensen und ihren Kontroversen. Mit Beitragen von: Christian Albrecht, Andreas Arndt, Bernd Auerochs, Ulrich Barth, Albrecht Beutel, Georg Eckert, Hermann Fischer+, Ursula Frost, Albrecht Geck, Simon Gerber, Wilhelm Grab, Peter Grove, Matthias Heesch, Eilert Herms, Kirsten Huxel, Walter Jaeschke, Lutz Kappel, Hans-Martin Kirn, Dietz Lange, Inken Madler, Helmut Merkel, Martin Ohst, Claus-Dieter Osthovener, Hermann Patsch, Reiner Preul, Andreas Reich, Joachim Ringleben, Jan Rohls, Martin Rossler, Dirk Schmid, Friedemann Voigt, Folkart Wittekind, Matthias Wolfes. (shrink)

Nietzsche's Critique of Staticism Manuel Dries Part 1: Time, History, Method Nietzsche's Cultural Criticism and his Historical Methodology 23 Andrea Orsucci Thucydides, Nietzsche, and Williams 35 Raymond Geuss The Late Nietzsche's Fundamental Critique of Historical Scholarship 51 Thomas H. Brobjer Part II: Genealogy, Time, Becoming Nietzsche's Timely Genealogy: An Exercise in Anti-Reductionist Naturalism 63 Tinneke Beeckman From Kantian Temporality to Nietzschean Naturalism 75 R. Kevin Hill Nietzsche's Problem of the Past 87 John Richardson Towards Adualism: Becoming and Nihilism in Nietzsche's (...) Philosophy 113 Mamuel Dries Part III: Eternal Recurrence, Meaning, Agency Shocking Time: Reading Eternal Recurrence Literally 149 Lawrence J. Hatab Suicide, Meaning, and Redemption 163 Paul S. Loeb Nietzsche and the Temporality of (Self-)Legislation I91 Herman W. Siemens Part IV: Nietzsche's Contemporaries Geschichte or Historie? Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Philological Studies 213 Anthonyl K. Jensen 'An Uncanny Re-Awakening': Nietzsche's Renascence of the Renaissance out of the Spirit of Jacob Burckhardt 231 Martin A. Ruehl Part V: Tragic and Musical Time Metaphysical and Historical Claims in The Birth of Tragedy 275 Katherine Harloe Nietzsche's Musical Conception of Time 291 Jonathan R. Cohen. (shrink)

From the contents: Hoelderlins Trennung von Fichte (Sven Juergensen).- Die Deduktion der Philosophie nach Fichte und Friedrich von Hardenberg (Frank Ruehling).- Fruehromantische Subjektkritik (Christian Iber).- Das Verhaeltnis des Selbst zu Gott in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre (Akira Omine).- Das Wir in der spaeten Wissenschaftslehre (Urs Richli).- Etre et Apparition selon la doctrine de la science de 1812 (Miklos Veto).