This paper suggests a framework for determining the ethicality of disguised and obtrusive advertising. While most discussions of advertising ethics deal with deception or fraud, the proposed framework is based on the way messages are presented to audiences. Suggestions for measurement and future research are given.

In an exploratory context, a qualitative approach was used to document perceptions of psychiatric advance directives among legal professionals and mental health professionals in Ontario and Quebec. A Web survey was administered and a qualitative analysis approach was used to explore attitudes towards PADs. It was found that legal and mental health professionals hold dif erent values related to clinical, ethical and legal issues, which may be related to their professional training. Among the advantages associated with PADs include their ability (...) to document a mentally ill individual’s clear wishes, respect autonomous choices and foster collaborative treatment. Reported disadvantages of PADs include the possibility of new circumstances arising, mentally ill individuals may not comprehend completing a PAD, and whether a mentally ill individual should be permitted to refuse treatment on ethical grounds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.3 (2006) 523-545 [Access article in PDF] Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment? Jonathan Israel Institute for Advanced Study Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, 4 vols., editor in chief Alan Charles Kors; eds. Roger L.Emerson, Lynn Hunt, Anthony J. La Vopa, Jacques Le Brun, Jeremy D. Popkin, C. Bradley Thomson, Ruth Whelan, and Gordon S. Wood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). On the surface it (...) might well seem that during the last fifteen or twenty years the Enlightenment understood as a new way of thinking about reality and society has receded more and more from its former privileged status as a pivotal turning-point in the making of the modern world, and especially as any kind of leap forward in the making of a freer, more rational, and better humanity. Under the combined assaults of Post-Structuralism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, the rise of the new social history (and not least Robert Darnton's critique of the old intellectual history), the Enlightenment conceived as a movement of ideas appears to be not just firmly in retreat and increasingly under siege but also fragmenting into disparate remnants with no coherent overall profile.Yet, paradoxically, there are grounds for conjecturing that the Enlightenment despite all this, has actually been becoming, under the surface, an even more crucial and robust force than it was before, much like a powerfully compressed spring being pushed back but ready to rebound with greater impetus than ever. One reason for thinking this is the extensive new material unearthed in the last few years, mostly by colleagues in continental Europe, about the origins of "radical," in the sense of egalitarian, secularist, Spinozist, and anti-colonial, thought. A second and possibly more important [End Page 523] reason is that the terrible events of the last several years have provided thoughtful readers with more than just a glimpse of the nightmare world apt to result from enshrining as a new set of privileged and prevailing values "difference," a thoroughgoing relativism, and the doctrine that all sets of values, even the most questionable kinds of theology, are ultimately equivalent.The inevitable recoil from Postmodernist "relativism" will presumably strengthen the appeal, at least in some quarters, of the Radical Enlightenment's claim that the improvement of human life inescapably involves emancipating men from the collective force of autocracy, intolerance, and prejudiced thinking, and establishing a predominantly secular morality, no less than it involves promoting the ideals of equality (sexual and racial), democracy, individual liberty, and a comprehensive toleration. Indeed, recent developments on all continents seem likely to lend new weight to the radical philosophes' argument that the moral basis of their theorized egalitarianism, democracy, toleration, and individual freedom, despite the arguments of the Postmodernists (which by no means lack weight in certain contexts), is after all concretely superior in terms of reason and moral equity not just to what one faith or traditional system or another contends, in opposition to its claims, but absolutely—that is in ethical and political as well as social terms. One may confidently predict that such a development will render the Enlightenment both more compelling and much harder to disparage than it has appeared to be in the wake of the Postmodernist upsurge in recent years.The prestige and status of the Enlightenment Western and Eastern, still conspicuously low for the present, may powerfully rebound, then, and in all parts of the world; and this for the simple reason that "Enlightenment thinking," as one scholar recently expressed it, "remains the best foundation for any genuinely progressive politics not simply in the West but in those states that suffered most at its [i.e. the West's] hands."1 To anyone authentically committed to democracy, toleration, and personal liberty this seems undeniable and, what is more, as we see in Bayle, Diderot, the Abbé Raynal, Lahontan, Van den Enden, and other radical writers of the Enlightenment, the roots of anti-colonialism itself, as well as the modern idea of racial, ethnic, and sexual equality, are undoubtedly to be found precisely in the "philosophical" thought-world of the Enlightenment—and especially the... (shrink)

RESUMO:A réplica rousseauniana a d’Alembert, autor do verbete Genebra da Enciclopédia, foi batizada como Carta sobre os espetáculos, em respeito ao tema nela tratado após os dez primeiros parágrafos, os quais abordam explicitamente o tema da intolerância religiosa. Contudo, o presente artigo apresenta, sob a perspectiva de uma moral da tolerância que não se resume às questões religiosas, a defesa de que a Carta a d’Alembert é uma integral e avançada Carta sobre a Tolerância, por contemplar, além do discurso iluminista (...) de recusa à inquirição ou inspeção da fé alheia em matéria de religião, uma atualizada recusa multiculturalista ao etnocentrismo. ABSTRACT:Rousseau’s letter to d’Alembert, author of the Encyclopedia entry on Geneva, is known as the Letter on Spectacles. The title subject is dealt with after the letter’s first ten paragraphs, which explicitly address the issue of religious intolerance. The present article presents, from a perspective of a moral tolerance that is not limited to religious affairs, the argument that the letter to d’Alembert is a comprehensive and advanced Letter on Tolerance. In addition to its Enlightenment discourse of refusal of inquiry or inspection of the faith of others on religious matters, the letter contains an up-to-date multiculturalist rejection of ethnocentrism. (shrink)

Comment le peuple juif fut inventé2 s’ouvre par les lignes suivantes : « Le présent ouvrage n’est pas une œuvre de pure fiction ; c’est un texte d’histoire. Toutefois, il commencera par plusieurs récits dont la source se trouve dans une mémoire mêlée de pas mal d’imaginaire. On sait que dans les coulisses de l’écriture scientifique..

A spate of recent attacks on the rationality assumption in economic theory is noticed. Some of these attacks are fresh and, in many ways, original, but the central ideas underlying them are not new. They appear to have been provoked by the direction in which much of mainstream economics has been moving in recent years. On the other hand, it is suggested here, certain developments in contemporary economics, associated primarily with the revival of interest in the Austrian paradigm, offer a (...) fresh understanding of the way in which the rationality assumption, its role in economics properly understood, is able to meet these old-new attacks.On assiste depuis quelques années à une recrudescence des critiques à l'égard de l'hypothèse de rationalité employée en théorie économique. Certaines de ces critiques sont nouvelles, et originales à bien des égards, mais les idées essentielles qui les sous-tendent sont anciennes. Ces critiques semblent avoir été provoquées par la direction vers laquelle une grande partie du courant dominant en économie a évolué durant ces dernières années. D'un autre côté cependant, certains développements au sein de l'économie contemporaine - des développements essentiellement dus à la renaissance du paradigme autrichien - offrent une compréhension nouvelle de la manière dont l'hypothèse de rationalité est capable de résister à ces critiques anciennes/nouvelles - si on comprend correctement le rôle joué par cette hypothèse en théorie économique. (shrink)

Que veut dire avoir de la présence d'esprit? Comment peut-on en acquérir? Cet article présente, – à partir de la lecture du scolie de la proposition 10 de la cinquième partie de l'Éthique, – la stratégie cognitive grâce à laquelle les affects, les images et les idées peuvent s'enchaîner et interagir dans une dynamique qui est celle de la force de l'âme. Cette dynamique suppose l'établissement d'une synergie entre la mémoire, l'imagination et l'entendement en vue de la détermination de l'action (...) opportune, qui, pour Spinoza, est inséparable d'une lutte contre les passions tristes. (shrink)

Cet article vise à réévaluer quelle peut être l’autorité de la science en société aujourd’hui. Partant de l’époque du positivisme, il retrace dans un premier temps l’évolution globale des positions académiques sur la science et son autorité pour identifier les principaux arguments qui, en philosophie, histoire et sociologie des sciences, ont contribué à affaiblir l’autorité de la science en société. Dans un second temps, il propose une approche inspirée de celle de Popper pour montrer que l’autorité de la science peut (...) se bâtir graduellement, en partant du niveau observationnel pour se transmettre aux autres strates de la connaissance scientifique. (shrink)

En sciences biomédicales, diverses techniques d’imagerie permettent l’exploration d’organismes vivants, aussi bien pour le diagnostic que pour l’expérimentation. En se penchant sur l’une d’entre elles, la scintigraphie, on montre que l’utilisation d’un instrument complexe revêt toujours un caractère expérimental, même lorsque l’on entend l’utiliser à des fins d’observation diagnostique. La liste des tests qui sont à entreprendre sur la machine à diverses échelles de temps démontre que les chercheurs ne peuvent jamais l’utiliser en lui accordant leur confiance de manière inconditionnelle. (...) L’observation est encadrée par l’expérimentation, démontrant aussi l’actualité du cadre de Claude Bernard qui met en avant le raisonnement expérimental comme catégorie englobante, plutôt qu’une distinction qui demeure toujours floue entre observation et expérience. (shrink)

En sciences biomédicales, diverses techniques d’imagerie permettent l’exploration d’organismes vivants, aussi bien pour le diagnostic que pour l’expérimentation. En se penchant sur l’une d’entre elles, la scintigraphie, on montre que l’utilisation d’un instrument complexe revêt toujours un caractère expérimental, même lorsque l’on entend l’utiliser à des fins d’observation diagnostique. La liste des tests qui sont à entreprendre sur la machine à diverses échelles de temps démontre que les chercheurs ne peuvent jamais l’utiliser en lui accordant leur confiance de manière inconditionnelle. (...) L’observation est encadrée par l’expérimentation, démontrant aussi l’actualité du cadre de Claude Bernard qui met en avant le raisonnement expérimental comme catégorie englobante, plutôt qu’une distinction qui demeure toujours floue entre observation et expérience. (shrink)

A glowing treasure now available to the English-speaking public! The trail-blazing work of Rav Yisrael Salanter, and his disciple, Rav Yitzchak Blazer illuminate the darkness of our generation with wisdom and insight. This classic Mussar work focuses on attaining closeness with G-d and on ethical introspection. This volume is a compendium of four classics of ethical thought: The Gates of Light, The Light of Israel, Paths of Light, and Stars of Light. This extraordinary book, translated into lucid, flowing English, (...) will enable all who read it to reach a new spiritual dimension. Contains English text only. (shrink)

Au cours du dernier siècle, l'investigation empirique a été bouleversée par le développement de nouveaux instruments et par la possibilité de traiter numériquement les données. Cet ouvrage entreprend d'adapter la notion classique d'observation scientifique à ces nouvelles pratiques.

En sciences biomédicales, diverses techniques d’imagerie permettent l’exploration d’organismes vivants, aussi bien pour le diagnostic que pour l’expérimentation. En se penchant sur l’une d’entre elles, la scintigraphie, on montre que l’utilisation d’un instrument complexe revêt toujours un caractère expérimental, même lorsque l’on entend l’utiliser à des fins d’observation diagnostique. La liste des tests qui sont à entreprendre sur la machine à diverses échelles de temps (quotidienne à annuelle) démontre que les chercheurs ne peuvent jamais l’utiliser en lui accordant leur confiance (...) de manière inconditionnelle. L’observation est encadrée par l’expérimentation, démontrant aussi l’actualité du cadre de Claude Bernard qui met en avant le raisonnement expérimental comme catégorie englobante, plutôt qu’une distinction qui demeure toujours floue entre observation et expérience. (shrink)

La bioéthique est à la mode. Il faut " être pour "! La prochaine étude par le législateur français des lois " bioéthiques " en témoigne. Avortement, fabrication d'enfants " prêts-à-porter ", recherche biomédicale, clonage, génétique, rien n'échappe à la bioéthique. Et si, cheval de Troie pénétrant le droit, la morale, les déontologies, elle ne constituait qu'une habile machine de subversion des sciences médicales, d'appropriation globale de l'être humain. Des médecins, des philosophes, parlementaires, juristes engagés dans l'examen des doctrines et (...) mécanismes bioéthiques se sont posés la question. Leur réponse n'est vraiment pas celle du " consensus ". Elle impose au public savant et aux gens prétendus ordinaires et à leurs représentants dans la Cité, une réflexion, un retour vers une nouvelle liberté de penser. (shrink)

Although neglected in the annals of political theory, the struggle between decentralized government and monarchy in the Hebrew scriptures parallels the tensions inherent in classic works of Western political theory from Plato to the American founders. The biblical authors provided lessons beyond the religious sphere, addressing the shared duties of religion and state in developing human virtue, the proper relationships between God, government and the people, and the best forms of government to achieve these objectives. This essay analyses the debate (...) over kingship in ancient Israel as presented in the biblical narratives, demonstrating that the Israelites’ story is important not only as a religious text, but as political theory, and that the questions asked in these texts have retained their relevance. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler's book Science and Subjectivity (1967) was prescient: His criticisms of attacks on the traditional notions of objectivity and truth that underlie modern science are still relevant nearly thirty years later, when postmodernism and some varieties of feminist epistemology are winning many adherents. Two aspects of Scheffler's book are singled out for discussion – his philosophical style, which is marked by careful, well-developed, and detailed argument (in contrast to many contemporary writers in education who have postmodernist leanings, who (...) merely make assertions about objectivity and so forth); and the actual content of the positions for which he argues. (shrink)

Este artículo investiga las narraciones de 1 Sam 9 y 1 Sam 28 a la luz del trasfondo más amplio del contexto sacrificial en el primer libro de Samuel. En concreto, este estudio muestra cómo los episodios, unidos por la escena de un banquete y el reparto de la comida sagrada, constituyen las partes de un sistema simbólico definido que, en sus resultados, es capaz de describir, definir y dirigir las relaciones entre los participantes en el ritual y la deidad. (...) A través del ejemplo de los banquetes de Saúl, primero con Samuel y luego con una nigromante en la aldea de En Dor, el texto de 1Sam define una jerarquía precisa entre la práctica cultual y la monarquía naciente en Israel. (shrink)

The hymns of Israel stand in the service of the central theological claim of the Old Testament, that the Lord of Israel alone is God and requires the full devotion of all creation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword*Alan D. SokalAlas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. 1 Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. One of (...) my goals here is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is [End Page 338] ambiguous; and confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example: linear, nonlinear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly, chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality, choice).I should emphasize that all works cited in my article are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Indeed, the most hilarious passages in my article were not written by me: they are direct quotes from the Masters.But why did I do it? I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true,” why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don’t aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit. Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left. 2 Alan Ryan said it well:It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth.... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it.... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. 3Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decriedthe rise of “postmodernist” intellectual fashions in Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all “facts” claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental. 4 [End Page 339](Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical scholarship can refute the fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And as the acerbic sociologist Stanislav Andreski noted long ago,So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of... (shrink)

Background:Nurse managers are placed in a unique position within the healthcare system where they greatly impact upon the nursing work environment. Ethical dilemmas and moral distress have been reported for staff nurses but not for nurse middle managers.Objective:To describe ethical dilemmas and moral distress among nurse middle managers arising from situations of ethical conflict.Methods:The Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing–Middle Manager Questionnaire and a personal characteristics questionnaire were administered to a convenience sample of middle managers from four hospitals in Israel.Results:Middle managers (...) report low to moderate levels of frequency and intensity of ethical dilemmas and moral distress. Highest scores were for administrative dilemmas.Conclusion:Middle managers experience lower levels of ethical dilemmas and moral distress than staff nurses, which are irrespective of their personal characteristics. Interventions should be developed, studied, and then incorporated into institutional frameworks in order to improve this situation. (shrink)

Background: Decisions of patients, families, and health care providers about medical care at the end of life depend on many factors, including the societal culture. A pan-European study was conducted to determine the frequency and types of end of life practices in European intensive care units , including those in Israel. Several results of the Israeli subsample were different to those of the overall sample.Objective: The objective of this article was to explore these differences and provide a possible explanation (...) based on the impact of culture on end of life decision making.Method: All adult patients admitted consecutively to three Israeli ICUs who died or underwent any limitation of life saving interventions between 1 January 1999 and 30 June 2000 were studied prospectively . These patients were compared with a similar sample taken from the larger study carried out in 37 European ICUs. Patients were followed until discharge, death, or 2 months from the decision to limit therapy. End of life decisions were prospectively organised into one of five mutually exclusive categories: cardiopulmonary resuscitation , brain death, withholding treatment, withdrawing treatment, and active shortening of the dying process . The data also included patient characteristics , specific therapies limited, and the method of SDP.Results: The majority of patients had treatment withheld, none underwent SDP, 62 received CPR , 31 had brain death , and 18 underwent withdrawal of treatment . The primary reason given for limiting treatment was that the patient was unresponsive to therapy . End of life discussions were held with 132 families , the vast majority of which revolved around withholding treatment and the remainder concerned withdrawing treatment .There was a statistically significant association between the type of end of life decision and region—that is, the northern region of Europe, the central region, the southern region, and Israel.Conclusions: Regional culture plays an important part in end of life decision making. Differences relating to end of life decision making exist between regions and these differences can often be attributed to cultural factors. Such cultures not only affect patients and their families but also the health care workers who make and carry out such decisions. (shrink)

The first and longer of the two books in this volume interprets some doctrines of "the levels of Being," ontological knowledge and evil: those of Plato, Plotinus, Jewish mysticism, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, D. H. Lawrence and Bergson. Mme. Amado's purpose is to present the basic intuition and vision of each position, rather than an articulation of the theses. She shows that an identical intuition underlies the greatly differing theories. With some justifiable oversimplification, we might call this an historical epistemology. In Book (...) Two, Mme. Amado shows that knowledge grows from the surmounted experience of evil, and that evil is an ontological category. Being itself is historical. Knowledge, being, evil and history are brought together in an explication of "the desire to know." Evil is discussed principally in terms of exile and alienation--to seek knowledge is to overcome diremption; it is to seek the One. In this light, the history of Israel is examined at some length. An astute student of both Marx and Freud, the author manages to be faithful to them even in speculative philosophy. The book is forbidding in length and locution, but it justifies Mme. Amado's reputation as one of the more important philosophers in Europe today.--C. D. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesJohn D'Arcy MayThe European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies met at Samye Ling, Scotland, 16-19 May 2003. The theme of the meeting was "Buddhists, Christians, and the Doctrine of Creation."Samye Ling, founded in 1967 by Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche and now under the guidance of his brother, the Venerable Lama Yeshe Losal, is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in Europe. Ven. Yeshe, in (...) welcoming conference participants, told how the monastery has both materially and spiritually reinvigorated what had become a depressed area around the town of Lockerbie in southwest Scotland. Despite the inclement weather, it was thus an appropriate venue for the fifth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies on the topic of creation. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Glasgow), who organized the conference, pointed out in his opening remarks, creation in view of ultimate redemption is the quintessentially Christian doctrine. Yet Buddhism certainly did not see samsara as the ultimate reality, and even if the origin of the world was ultimately an unanswerable question, Buddhism too was confronted by the problem of evil.Ernst Steinkellner (Vienna) opened the conference proper with an account of Buddhist critiques of Hindu doctrines of creation. The absolute Brahman was not a creator, but in the course of doctrinal evolution (the masculine Brahman becoming the post-Vedic Brahma) the world came to be seen as the work of a kind of demi-urge, leaving open the question of why. Buddhism, restricting itself to the realm of the finite, mocked Brahmin ideas of the cause of the world, but still had to account for the existence and nature of the world. By the time the Madhyamaka had developed theories of momentary creation, these had become part of the common logic of Buddhists and Hindus.This was followed by a presentation on contemporary Buddhist critiques of creation and creator doctrines by José Cabezón (Santa Barbara), who pointed out certain affinities between modern theories of many universes without beginning or end and traditional Buddhist ideas. Buddhism, he maintained, has an aversion to cosmological uniqueness, whether spatial, temporal, causal, or personal, but it does [End Page 237] regard the causal law of karman as ineluctable. Despite the critiques of Buddhist thinkers such as Gunapala Dharmasiri of Sri Lanka, who are under the misapprehension that Buddhism is on a par with science whereas Christianity is merely religion, this lays the basis for a metaphysics. The site of both suffering and liberation is the cocreativity of all beings. Buddhism is concerned not with being, but with consciousness.Eva Neumaier (Calgary) suggested that in fact Buddhism does have conceptions of creation, but in narrative form, represented in the cosmological structure of the world as the product of the Buddha's meditation rather than as a cosmogony. Creation is not ex nihilo, because nature predates any act of creation, yet the "emptiness" of shūnyatā is also the "swollenness" of fulfilled potential. The Buddha has been represented as the all-creating sovereign, and pure mind has been interpreted as the gender-neutral mother-father of all Buddhas, the "primordial basis." The "original enlightenment" objected to by Critical Buddhism enabled Buddhists to adapt pre-Buddhist ideas such as the Tao, even to the extent of tolerating animistic polytheism.If this presentation surprised some participants, it provided the perfect counterpart to the paper on Christian ideas of creation by John Keenan (Middlebury College). The Jewish and Christian conceptions of creation arise out of events in history, the exodus from Egypt being the originating metaphor. For Christians, liberation from the bondage of sin was the legacy of Israel's tribal warrior God. The Genesis accounts of creation are essentially liturgical, not cosmogonic. Creation is simply assumed as the evidence of divine transcendence; God is not a benevolent parent. The pagan critics who mocked the Jewish and Christian creation stories were just as misguided as the Buddhists who ridiculed the Vedic myths. God was eventually conceived as ipsum esse, the "to be" of things, a nonsubstantialist account that does not purport to answer the question "why." According to the logic of Buddhism, the complete enlightenment of all would mean the... (shrink)