The rule of double effect is regularly invoked in ethical discussions about palliative sedation, terminal extubation and other clinical acts that may be viewed as hastening death for imminently dying patients. Unfortunately, the literature tends to employ this useful principle in a fashion suggesting that it offers the final word on the moral acceptability of such medical procedures. In fact, the rule cannot be applied appropriately without invoking moral theories that are not explicit in the rule itself. Four tenets of (...) the rule each require their own ethical justification. A variety of moral theories are relevant to making judgements in a pluralistic society. Much of the rich moral conversation germane to the rule has been reflected in arguments about physician-asssisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, but the rule itself has limited relevance to these debates, and requires its own moral justifications when applied to other practices that might hasten death. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Is the God of Calvin a fountain of blessing, or a forceful tyrant? Is Calvin's view of God coercive, leaving no place for the human qua human in redemption? These are perennial questions about Calvin's theology which have been given new life by Gift theologians such as John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Stephen Webb.J. Todd Billings addresses these questions by exploring Calvin's theology of `participation in Christ'. He argues that Calvin's theology of `participation' gives a positive place to the (...) human, such that grace fulfils rather than destroys nature, affirming a differentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption. Calvin's trinitarian theology of participation extends to his view of prayer, sacraments, the law, and the ecclesial and civil orders. In light of Calvin's doctrine of participation, Billings reframes the critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion and opens up new possibilities for contemporary theology, ecumenical theology, and Calvin scholarship as well. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Introduction Future HIV vaccine efficacy trials with adolescents will need to ensure that participants comprehend study concepts in order to confer true informed assent. A Hepatitis B vaccine trial with adolescents offers valuable opportunity to test youth understanding of vaccine trial requirements in general. Methods Youth reviewed a simplified assent form with study investigators and then completed a comprehension questionnaire. Once enrolled, all youth were tested for HIV and confirmed to be HIV-negative. Results 123 youth completed the questionnaire (mean age=15 (...) years; 63% male; 70% Hispanic). Overall, only 69 (56%) youth answered all six questions correctly. Conclusions Youth enrolled in a Hepatitis B vaccine trial demonstrated variable comprehension of the study design and various methodological concepts, such as treatment group masking. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

Background: The high disease burden of Africa, the emergence of new diseases and efforts to address the 10/90 gap have led to an unprecedented increase in health research activities in Africa. Consequently, there is an increase in the volume and complexity of protocols that ethics review committees in Africa have to review. Methods: With a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) undertook a survey of 31 ethics review committees (ERCs) across sub-Saharan Africa (...) as an initial step to a comprehensive capacity-strengthening programme. The number of members per committee ranged from 3 to 21, with an average of 11. Members of 10 institutional committees were all from the institution where the committees were based, raising prima facie questions as to whether independence and objectivity could be guaranteed in the review work of such committees. Results: The majority of the committees (92%) cited scientific design of clinical trials as the area needing the most attention in terms of training, followed by determination of risks and benefits and monitoring of research. The survey showed that 38% of the ERC members did not receive any form of training. In the light of the increasing complexity and numbers of health research studies being conducted in Africa, this deficit requires immediate attention. Outcome: The survey identified areas of weakness in the operations of ERCs in Africa. Consequently, AMANET is addressing the identified needs and weaknesses through a 4-year capacity-building project. (shrink)

This letter was submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Government of Canada, on 29th January, 2021, as final debate over Bill C-7 was being undertaken in the Senate regarding MAiD and the strong opposition to the legislation expressed across the Canadian disability community. It draws on our individual and joint work on eugenics, well-being, and disability.

This is a marvelous book. Although billed as a Dogmatics, it is really a rambling and magnanimous presentation of the Christian faith-theology as well as practice. It is guided by the attempt to be systematic and comprehensive. It is filled with wonderful human insights into the nature of the Christian posture in a wayward world. It is part philosophical theology, part a theology of culture, and part practical theology. But it is more than all of its parts. What we have (...) is Hartt's mature ruminations on a vast number of subjects germane to Christian thinking. Hartt is a Barthian with humor, a neo-Reformation theologian with pizazz, a Methodist who has drunk deeply of American culture. Hartt divides his book into three parts: The Vocation of the Church as a Critic of Culture; The Dogmatic Content of Practical Theology; and Applications. The first part is an attempt to work the church into the role of a cultural interrogator, conscious on the one hand of its historic roots in that theological tradition known as the Christian faith, and on the other of its iconoclastic role, relativizing all absolutistic pretensions that civilization may attain, and in general, lose itself in the world, but not to the world. It is in this section that Hartt gives credence to the title of his book, A Christian Critique of American Culture. Part II emphasizes the "preachability" of the Gospel. Part III demonstrates what Hartt means by the applicability of the Gospel, its critique of art, politics, and mass culture. A chapter on "The Holy Spirit and 'Revolution'" concludes the work. There are no footnotes, no bibliography and no index. But none is needed. In the end what the reader has is Hartt and not a conglomeration and distillation of the thoughts of the theological luminaries of our day. Hartt's writing is the best among living theologians--and that fact alone ought to make anyone who is interested in great theologizing buy this book.--W. A. J. (shrink)

In an earlier article [Found. Phys. 30, 1191 (2000)], a quasiclassical phase space approximation for quantum projection operators was presented, whose accuracy increases in the limit of large basis size (projection subspace dimensionality). In a second paper [J. Chem. Phys. 111, 4869 (1999)], this approximation was used to generate a nearly optimal direct-product basis for representing an arbitrary (Cartesian) quantum Hamiltonian, within a given energy range of interest. From a few reduced-dimensional integrals, the method determines the optimal 1D marginal Hamiltonians, (...) whose eigenstates comprise the direct-product basis. In the present paper, this phase space optimized direct-product basis method is generalized to incorporate non-Cartesian coordinate spaces, composed of radii and angles, that arise in molecular applications. Analytical results are presented for certain standard systems, including rigid rotors, and three-body vibrators. (shrink)

Review of J. Fisher Solomon's "Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age"; Diane P. Michefelder's "Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter"; Rodolphe Gasche's "The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection"; Michael H. McCarthy's "The Crisis in Philosophy"; Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson's "Ethics and Politics: Cases and Comments".

Social network analysis has become an increasingly important tool among political scientists for understanding legislative cooperation in modern, democratic nation-states. Recent research has demonstrated the influence that group affinity (homophily) and mutual exchanges (reciprocity) have in structuring political relationships. However, this literature has typically focused on political cooperation where costs are low, relationships are not exclusive, and/or partisan competition is high. Patterns of legislative behavior in alternative contexts are less clear and remain largely unexamined. Here, we compare theoretical expectations of (...) cooperation in these contexts from the political and biosocial sciences and implement the first assessment of political alliance formation in a novel legislative environment where costs to cooperation are high and party salience low. We implement a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) to examine bill floor sponsorship, a process in which a “floor sponsor” becomes the exclusive advocate for a colleague’s piece of legislation, in the Utah state legislature from 2005 to 2008—a context in which gender (male) and political party (Republican) supermajorities exist. We find that (1) party and gender homophily predict who legislators recruit as floor sponsors, whereas seniority does not, and (2) legislators frequently engage in reciprocal exchanges of floor sponsorship. In addition, whereas gender homophily increases the likelihood of reciprocity, party homophily decreases it. Our findings suggest that when the cost of cooperation is high, political actors use in-group characteristics for initiating alliances, but once a cooperative relationship is established with an out-group political member, it is reinforced through repeated exchanges. These findings may be useful for understanding the rise of political polarization and gridlock in democracies internationally. (shrink)

In this article the author reviews the recent exchange in this Journal between David Dyzenhaus and Matthew Kramer on the merits of legal positivism. He then offers his own modest proposal regarding future debates on that topic.

This study considers the role of different cognitive units in sound change: phonemes, contextual variants and words. We examine /u/-fronting and /j/-dropping in data from three generations of Derby English speakers. We analyze dynamic formant data and auditory judgments, using mixed effects regression methods, including generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). /u/-fronting is reaching its end-point, showing complex conditioning by context and a frequency effect that weakens over time. /j/-dropping is declining, with low-frequency words showing more innovative variants with /j/ than (...) high-frequency words. The two processes interact: words with variable /j/-dropping (new) exhibit more fronting than words that never have /j/ (noodle) even when the /j/ is deleted. These results support models of change that rely on phonetically detailed representations for both word- and sound-level cognitive units. (shrink)

In this new, updated edition of a book heralded as a clarion call to the nation's conscience, William Bennett asks why we see so little public outrage in the fade of the evidence of deep corruption within Bill Clinton's administration. The Death of Outrage examines the Monica Lewinsky scandal as it unfolded, from Clinton's denials that he had had sex with a young White House intern, to his testimony before the grand jury, to the nation's decision not to remove Clinton (...) from office. Brick by brick, Bennett dismantles the wall of defenses offered by Clinton and his apologists, and casts the clear light of moral reason and common sense on a shameful chapter in American history. (shrink)

Conceptual clarity is essential when engaging in dialogue to avoid unnecessary disagreement and to promote mutual understanding. In this issue devoted to clinical bioethics, the authors exemplify the virtue of careful conceptual analysis as they explore complex clinical questions regarding the essential nature of medicine, the boundaries of killing and letting die, the meaning of irreversibility in definitions of death, the argument for a right to try experimental medications, the ethical borders in complex medical billing, and the definition and modeling (...) of complex disease states. (shrink)

A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. (...) It is a tremendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help determine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentration slips. Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing, and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already. Clark is a connoisseur of the myriad ways in which the mind relies on the world to get its work done. The first part of this marvelous book explores some of these ways: the extension of our bodies, the extension of our senses, and crucially, the use of language as a tool to extend our thought. The second part of the book defends the thesis that in at least some of these cases, the world is not serving as a mere instrument for the mind. Rather, the relevant parts of the world have become parts of my mind. My iPhone is not my tool, or at least it is not wholly my tool. Parts of it have become parts of me. This is the thesis of the extended mind: when parts of the environment are coupled to the brain in the right way, they become parts of the mind. The thesis has a long history: I am told that there are hints of it in Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. But no-one has done as much to give life to the idea as Andy Clark. In a series of important books and articles—Being There, Natural-Born Cyborgs, “Magic words: How language augments human computation”, and many others—he has explored the many ways in which the boundaries between mind and world are far more flexible than one might have thought.. (shrink)

Recently in the U.S. a near-consensus has formed around the idea that it would be desirable to "end welfare as we know it," in the words of President Bill Clinton.1 In this context, the term "welfare" does not refer to the entire panoply of welfare state provision including government sponsored old age pensions, government provided medical care for the elderly, unemployment benefits for workers who have lost their jobs without being fired for cause, or aid to the disabled. "Welfare" in (...) contemporary debates means "cash, food, or housing assistance to healthy nonaged persons with low incomes."2 In the U.S., the main policy that qualifies as welfare in this sense is Aid to Families with Dependent Children.3 Although contemporary attacks on welfare are identified with conservative policy analysts such as Charles Murray, in fact dissatisfaction with the policies Murray targets for criticism is widespread among liberal intellectuals. For example, in a sharply critical review essay on Murray's book Losing Ground, Christopher Jencks worries that "the social policies that prevailed from 1964 to 1980 often seemed to reward vice" instead of rewarding virtuous conduct by the poor. The problem as Jencks, following Murray, views it is not easy to repair, because "if you set out to help people who are in trouble, you almost always find that most of them are to some extent responsible for their present troubles. Few victims are completely innocent. Helping those who are not doing their best to help themselves poses extraordinarily difficult moral and political problems."4 David T. Ellwood writes that Murray “is almost certainly correct in stating that welfare does not reflect or reinforce our most basic values. He is also correct in stating that no amount of tinkering with benefit levels or work rules will change that.”. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s, the biomedical model of medicine gave way to the biopsychosocial model of medicine; it was billed as a more comprehensive and compassionate model of medicine. After more than a century of disentangling medicine from religion, the medicine and spirituality movement is attempting to bring religion and spirituality back into medicine. It is doing so under a biopsychosociospiritual model. I unpack one model for allowing religion back into medicine called the RCOPE. RCOPE is an instrument designed to categorize (...) religion and spirituality as psychological coping mechanisms. I explore how such instruments are related to the history of statistical measurement and demonstrate the political impetus that governs such enterprises. The biopsychosociospiritual medicine is billed as a more holistic and comprehensive model. This new model of medicine offers total care. However, I demonstrate how this total care becomes totalizing, indeed totalitarian, admitting religion and spirituality back into the fold of medicine under a new secularized medical control. (shrink)

Society and social structures play an important role in the formation and evaluation of concepts and practices in clinical ethics. This is evident in the ways the authors in this issue explore a wide range of arguments and concepts in clinical ethics including moral distress and conscience based practice, phenomenological interview techniques and gender dysphoria, continuous deep sedation (CDS) at the end of life, the notion of patient expertise, ethically permissible medical billing practices, the notion of selfhood and patient centered (...) care in dementia patients, and the definition of minimal risk as used in research regulations. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 112-114.

John McDowell and Bill Brewer famously defend the view that one can only have empirical beliefs if one’s perceptual experiences serve as reasons for such beliefs, where reasons are understood in terms of subject’s reasons. In this paper I show, first, that it is a consequence of the adoption of such a requirement for one to have empirical beliefs that children as old as 3 years of age have to considered as not having genuine empirical beliefs at all. But we (...) have strong reasons to think that 3-year-old children have empirical beliefs, or so I argue. If this is the case, McDowell and Brewer’s requirement for one to have empirical beliefs faces a strong challenge. After showing this, I propose an alternative requirement for one to have empirical beliefs, and argue that it should be favoured over McDowell and Brewer’s requirement. (shrink)

Death’s Dominion is Simon Woods’ addition to the excellent and thought-provoking Facing Death series. Its timeliness is hardly at issue: the debate on euthanasia, end-of-life care and associated issues looks set to rage for some time. And it comes out at a time when the UK Parliament is debating a palliative care bill, designed to promote a duty of the state to provide palliative care to all who need it. The real concern with a work in this area is knowing (...) whether it is worth reading. I think it is. Relatively few are the texts that deal with palliative care, and fewer still are those that deal with it in such a careful and comprehensive manner. No thorough analysis of issues regarding the roles of the state and health care in individuals’ end-of-life decision-making can afford to ignore the specialty, yet it is often left unmentioned. For anyone who wishes to know about it and to see it in a clear social and ethical context, this book will prove highly valuable.The book is logically structured, consisting of eight chapters. Although these lead clearly from one …. (shrink)

In this study, W. J. Waluchow argues that debates between defenders and critics of constitutional bills of rights presuppose that constitutions are more or less rigid entities. Within such a conception, constitutions aspire to establish stable, fixed points of agreement and pre-commitment, which defenders consider to be possible and desirable, while critics deem impossible and undesirable. Drawing on reflections about the nature of law, constitutions, the common law, and what it is to be a democratic representative, Waluchow urges a different (...) theory of bills of rights that is flexible and adaptable. Adopting such a theory enables one not only to answer to critics' most serious challenges, but also to appreciate the role that a bill of rights, interpreted and enforced by unelected judges, can sensibly play in a constitutional democracy. (shrink)

Hamilton’s Rule, named after the evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton, and the related concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection, have been the bedrock of the study of social evolution for the past half century. In ’The Philosophy of Social Evolution’, Jonathan Birch provides a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual foundations of the Hamiltonian view of social evolution, and a passionate defence of its enduring value in face of the recent high profile criticism. In this review essay, I first outline the (...) version of Hamilton’s Rule defended by Birch, dubbed Hamilton’s Rule General, and its derivation. With this in place, I then navigate through the fierce disagreements that Hamilton’s Rule generates among social evolution researchers and evaluate Birch’s central argument of the book that HRG serves as an organizing framework for social evolution research under which we can compare and interpret more detailed causal models. I then spend the remainder of the review discussing what I take to be three of the most exciting implications of Hamilton’s thinking raised by Birch: the extension of Hamilton’s Rule to mobile genetic elements, maximization of inclusive fitness models and the idea of adaptation as organism design, and the relationship between Hamilton’s approaches to social behaviour and the gene’s-eye view of evolution. (shrink)

A most unusual book: Autobiography by a failure in almost everything except living life to the fullest. For, as readers soon learn, he is somewhat unique for his massive collection of monumental mistakes. Though now and then he finds a success most surprising to him. For all that as it may be, Carroll has had a wonderful life and continues proud of his few abilities and the many supportive friends who have enhanced his way. From the last page of the (...) book. "A few months after my return, while I was wandering down 2nd Street in Raton, one of the city's quietly prominent businessmen stopped me. With no preamble or greeting, he said "Tell me, Bill, just who are you? We can't find out anything about you." (The Unknown Man). (shrink)

Bill Bowring’s book attempts to argue for a Marxist account of international law that embraces it as a tool for progressive politics and revolutionary change. He argues it is necessary to give a substantive account of both, locating them in the real struggles of the oppressed. Specifically, he locates human rights in the three great revolutions ‐ the French, the Russian and the anticolonial. However, this revolutionary heritage has been ‘degraded’ by recent events. As such, it is necessary to adopt (...) ‘revolutionary conservatism’, invoking international law’s origins against its current degradation. This review argues that, owing to international law’s indeterminacy, Bowring’s project is susceptible to imperial appropriation. This means, however, that Bowring cannot give an account of why we should use international law. It then argues that Bowring’s account of Pashukanis is wrong, and that Pashukanis’s work can better make sense of Bowring’s insights and international law more generally. (shrink)

The increasing role of non-farm groups in the agricultural policy process creates an opportunity for extension educators in public policy. Both farmers and non-farmers need information from an impartial source and both would benefit from exchanging views. Four Roundtable discussions of the 1990 agricultural legislation in Illinois brought together citizens from farm and urban backgrounds to exchange ideas. This paper summarizes the concerns and consensus that emerged in discussions of commodity programs, international trade, the environment, and food programs. Participants' reaction (...) to this program effort are also reported. Roundtable meetings met a desire for greater commmunication, particularly between farmers and environmentalists. (shrink)

Constitutional Charters or Bill of Rights have been applauded because of the protection they provide to minorities and also in ensuring and protecting fundamental rights, however, Charters have been criticized for being considered morally and politically objectionable. The author responds to Charter critics most serious objections and offers some reasons for adopting an alternative framework.

In June 2020, representatives of eight photography organizations addressed ongoing challenges to the industry by introducing the “Photo Bill of Rights,” asserting “the rights of all lens-based workers and defining actions that build a safer, healthier, more inclusive, and transparent industry.” The bill centers what “lens-based workers” are owed by the media organizations that employ them. This study analyzes the bill’s contents and the explicit and implicit values within it, finding that the bill presents a normative view of the work (...) environment lens-based workers should expect as a baseline. In so doing, the bill connects what lens-based workers owe their respective publics to what their employers owe those same workers. The bill highlights the enabling environment that these workers need to satisfy their obligations to the public. The bill reminds employers of their duty to create an equitable environment that can enable the fulfillment of public responsibility. (shrink)

Different authors offer subtly different characterizations of naïve realism. We disentangle the main ones and argue that illusions provide the best proving ground for naïve realism and its main rival, representationalism. According to naïve realism, illusions never involve per- ceptual error. We assess two leading attempts to explain apparent perceptual error away, from William Fish and Bill Brewer, and conclude that they fail. Another lead- ing attempt is assessed in a companion paper, which also sketches an alternative representational account.

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?In July of 2004, Cambodian sex workers staged a protest of an HIV prevention trial set to enroll 900 sex workers in Phnom Penh, charging the study planners with exploitation. The Cambodian study was one of a series of international clinical trials sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and (...) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation testing the safety and efficacy of tenofovir, an antiretroviral drug produced by Gilead Sciences, Inc., to prevent HIV transmission. To date, two of these international studies have been closed and one is suspended, prompting calls for re-examination of the ethics of HIV prevention trials. (shrink)

_A timely and provocative essay about the parallel lives of Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt and their mission for a more humane society__ “[A] short but moving book... Even better, the volume’s advice is not only pragmatically political—necessary during a time of threats to democracy and mounting failures to deal with the climate crisis—but modestly uplifting.”—Bill Marx, _Arts Fuse___ “An intimate and timely meditation on dark times, Hermsen’s illuminating essay offers readers a way to think with Hannah Arendt and Rosa (...) Luxemburg about how to build a more humane world in common.”—Samantha Rose Hill, author of ___Hannah Arendt__ Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) and Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) were critical Jewish mavericks who both suffered under violent political regimes and sought to reform systems of power. Although temporally separated by the Second World War and the rise of totalitarianism, they held in common strikingly similar convictions about freedom, human dignity, capitalism, democracy, and political commitment. In this powerful book, Joke J. Hermsen explores the lives and works of these two remarkable thinkers and the essential hope that emboldened them in the political struggle. Luxemburg and Arendt were spurred on by a restless love for the world and an unwavering belief in the possibility of new beginnings; for them, hope was an absolute prerequisite of resistance and a counterpoint to melancholy—a defense against despair that kept them attuned to what could be. Exploring the intertwined nature of philosophy and the active pursuit of justice, this is an urgent, courageous reminder to remain alert to the glimmers of hope in dark times. (shrink)

Constitutional Charters or Bill of Rights have been applauded because of the protection they provide to minorities and also in ensuring and protecting fundamental rights, however, Charters have been criticized for being considered morally and politically objectionable. The author responds to Charter critics most serious objections and offers some reasons for adopting an alternative framework.Resumen:Las cartas constitucionales o declaraciones de derechos han sido aplaudidas por la protección que brindan a las minorías y su función de asegurar derechos fundamentales; sin embargo, (...) también han sido criticadas por ser consideradas moral y políticamente refutables. El autor responde a las objeciones más serias de los críticos y ofrece algunas razones para adoptar un marco alternativo, de acuerdo al cual, las cartas no aspiran a establecer puntos de acuerdo y compromisos previos. (shrink)

This article argues that afirm and consistent editorial focus on a poilitician's public virtue would serve well as the essence of journalistic communication about piitical character. Public virtue is defined as the ethical character traits attributed to a politician by an editorialist, based on direct obsemation, of the politician's words and deeds, broadly construed. After presenting the theoretical foundation of this definition, via qualitative case-study methodology, this essay analyzes the editorial claims made in the Atlanta newspapers about Gov. Bill Clinton's (...) political character during the 1992 presidential campaign. The Atlanta case demonstrates how a clear focus on public virtue can operate in practice. The conclusion discusses expectations that readers, opinion columnists, and newspaper editors should keep in mind as character issue is broughtforth in the press. (shrink)