In the face of managed care and market economies infringing on the practice of medicine, reducing its autonomy and determining the moral guidelines for medical practice, many (...) physicians are calling out for a return to what is perceived as a traditional medical ethic. Many religiously motivated critics of certain modern developments in medicine have made similar appeals. These calls are best understood as an attempt to define medicine as a practice that is necessarily ethical in nature, a practice the moral basis of which is internal to that practice. This article examines and assesses this definition of medicine in reference to Aristotle's division of human undertakings into three distinct categories: theory, poieisis (i.e., production), and praxis. It is concluded that medicine can be understood as a praxis (as opposed to a theory or production, both of which are morally neutral), because the practice of medicine, and all of its constitutive acts, can only be explained and assessed in reference to health, which is itself a final good and hence of moral value. Such an understanding would immunize medicine against usurpation by the free market. However, by the same token it would also dissociate medicine from all other moralities external to it, including those grounded in faith and religion. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term (...) ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the existence of moral distress among nurses in Lilongwe District of Malawi. Qualitative research was conducted in selected health (...) institutions of Lilongwe District in Malawi to assess knowledge and causes of moral distress among nurses and coping mechanisms and sources of support that are used by morally distressed nurses. Data were collected from a purposive sample of 20 nurses through in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis of qualitative data was used. The results show that nurses, irrespective of age, work experience and tribe, experienced moral distress related to patient/nursing care. The major distressing factors were inadequate resources and lack of respect from patients, guardians, peers and bosses. Nurses desire teamwork and ethics committees in their health institutions as a means of controlling and preventing moral distress. There is a need for creation of awareness for nurses to recognize and manage moral distress, thus optimizing their ability to provide quality and uncompromised nursing care. (shrink)

This interesting commentary on the Book of Job, following upon the author's earlier and shorter English-language studies in different U.S. periodicals, renews the now almost (...) forgotten tradition of philosophical commentaries on Biblical books. Biblical scholarship is missing from this study. Instead we have the German text of Job printed along with a profusion of notes. Sometimes these are only a few words to explain a sentence, sometimes they amount to a longer philosophical digression. Most contemporary scholars consider such commentaries amateurish and outmoded; yet a non-theological reflection on a text of universal, almost supra-Biblical, content such as the book of Job is certainly justified.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Despite the widespread use of the classical bicriteria Markowitz mean-variance framework, a broad consensus is emerging on the need to include more criteria for complex portfolio (...) class='Hi'>selection problems. Sustainable investing, also called socially responsible investment, is becoming a mainstream investment practice. In recent years, some scholars have attempted to include sustainability as a third criterion to better reflect the individual preferences of those ethical or green investors who are willing to combine strong financial performance with social benefits. For this purpose, new computational methods for optimizing this complex multiobjective problem are needed. Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms have been recently used for portfolio selection, thus extending the mean-variance methodology to obtain a mean-variance-sustainability nondominated surface. In this paper, we apply a recent multiobjective genetic algorithm based on the concept of ε-dominance called ev-MOGA. This algorithm tries to ensure convergence towards the Pareto set in a smart distributed manner with limited memory resources. It also adjusts the limits of the Pareto front dynamically and prevents solutions belonging to the ends of the front from being lost. Moreover, the individual preferences of socially responsible investors could be visualised using a novel tool, known as level diagrams, which helps investors better understand the range of values attainable and the tradeoff between return, risk, and sustainability. (shrink)

Susini, who is Professor of German at the Sorbonne, seems to have devoted his life to the study of German mysticism. After his monumental work on Baader (...) he now offers a new edition of the famous spiritual poems of Angelus Silesius along with a French translation. While the Introduction to the first volume is quite short and devoid of any attempt at offering a new authoritative interpretation of the Silesian Mystic's work and thought, the second volume consists entirely of notes displaying the author's vast and admirable erudition. These notes place Angelus Silesius in the general context of the history of Western mysticism, especially in regard to philosophical and speculative matters. They also allow us to retrace a certain influence he had on philosophers as different as Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Baader. As far as the French text of the poems is concerned, even though the great beauty of the original is not matched, the translation is correct and poetical.—M. J. V. (shrink)

There has been a most deserving movement in the last years to unite in one volume the most important scholarly articles written on the same topic yet (...) published in different learned journals. The present volume is devoted to the problems of medieval German and Dutch mysticism from its beginnings to The Imitation of Christ. The selection is interesting and varied yet a certain technical narrowness pervades the whole volume. Instead of sharing the pages somewhat equally between philological and philosophico-theological articles, there is a heavy preponderance of the purely philological and of the strictly historical. Moreover, the papers of a more philosophical character talk less to the philosophically interested reader than to the specialist in the history of medieval philosophy. Of course, there are welcome exceptions like the fine study of Joseph Koch on Eckhart's doctrine of analogy or A. Ampe's article on the "essential return of the soul to God according to Jan Van Ruysbroeck"--but the general tone of the volume is such that the non-specialist would have difficulty to be interested in many of its chapters.--M. J. V. (shrink)

The present volume completes the publication of the most important and most representative Husserl texts from the twenties. The second half of the book contains important variants (...) selected from the earlier versions of the lectures, a large number of independent short essays and notes, and finally a huge number of editorial notes on the texts and their reconstruction. The lectures deal with perception, expectation, and their implied phenomena, centered around the underlying major theme of the in-itself, hence of the passivity of the flux of consciousness. By sacrificing deliberately an in extenso publication of the three versions of the lectures in favor of concentrating the theme into one volume, the editor chose to satisfy the most pressing needs of the Husserl scholar. Yet, one cannot but wonder whether an author of Husserl's stature might not deserve a more complete presentation.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This is an interesting theologically oriented study of Saint Bernard's teachings on man. The author tackles the central issue of Bernardian studies: was this holy monk (...) class='Hi'>a theologian or a philosopher, or both? Bernard's entire œuvre is penetrated by the questioning of the boundaries of natural and revealed knowledge, i.e., of philosophy and theology. The doctrine of man, that microcosmos in whom God was made flesh, is the best and the most likely ground on which to discuss the interconnection between faith and reason, which was the most intricate issue of medieval culture. To do this, we need, among other things, a chart of the human intellectual faculties—and the author gives us exactly this. This is the core of the book but there is more. He presents an analysis of the properly philosophical aspects and patterns of Bernard's way of thinking, and also a good chapter on his metaphysics of the relationship between body and soul. The author is well-versed in the enormous secondary literature on Saint Bernard to which his study is a valuable addition.—M. J. V. (shrink)

At the beginning of the first version of the Ages of the World Schelling invoked Plato's protection against the criticism he was expecting from his contemporaries. (...) class='Hi'>More than forty years later, in his last system, Aristotle had become the most quoted of his predecessors. The way from Plato to Aristotle and the parallels drawn between "the philosopher" and Kant are among the best parts of the book. Hegel is almost as much studied by Oeser as Schelling. After all, the subtitle announces a contribution to the critique of the Hegelian system. Unlike most scholars of the German idealism the author does not try to play out Hegel against Schelling or Schelling against Hegel. He is more interested in showing their similarities. However, in spite of this, Oeser's sympathies obviously lie with Schelling and in the last chapter he attempts to show how the final system of Schelling, that of the "purely rational philosophy" was not written only to give a new platform to the positive philosophy but also to lay the groundwork for a reconciliation between metaphysics and dialectical idealism in terms of transcendence and transcendentality.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Even though the last decade has seen more original and significant work on Fichte, the flow of studies on his rival and "successor," Schelling, seems to continue (...) uninterrupted. Beyond so many short and often quite modest writings, Kasper's huge book is towering, and not only because of its size. Kasper, like Horst Fuhrmans to whom he seems to be the most indebted and who is not in Schelling studies, is a Roman Catholic theologian who commands an immense and impressive knowledge of the history of theological speculation from the Greek Fathers to the nineteenth century school of Tübingen. Like most major studies on Schelling, the present one must struggle its way through the evolution of the many phases of his thought before getting down to the more systematic investigation. Such an endeavor must express a "preference" for one of those phases, and, as is usually the case today, the greatest appreciation is directed towards the Spätphilosophie. The core and kernel of the book is the beautiful and highly concentrated exposition on "God as the ground and the Lord of history" where historicity itself receives its ontological deduction from the premisses of theism. The book concludes with the concrete modalities of the divine mediation of history through the great issues of the fall, mythology, and revelation. For more than a decade Walter Schulz's interpretation of Schelling's late philosophy has seemed to overshadow, and to dismiss, all more Weltanschauung-orientated research. It has long been time for a study focusing on Schelling, the philosopher of Christianity, which is what Schelling considered himself to be for the last forty-five years of his life.--M. J. V. (shrink)

One of the most significant theories of the late Brentano is that only the real can be represented, while of the so-called non-real we can formulate (...) class='Hi'> no authentic concepts but only fictions of language. This doctrine has not been fully comprehended by some of the best students of Brentano's thought, although others have called it "the Copernican turning-point" of his philosophy. The present selection of texts is intended to clarify and expound the controversial theory. Ninety-one letters exchanged between Brentano, Marty, and O. Kraus make up the bulk of the volume and they are followed by fourteen short essays, all but one unpublished up to now. These are difficult and condensed texts but they allow us to follow closely the intense struggle of this great philosopher to articulate and to explain a theory which he had considered immensely important. They continuously refer to Aristotle whom Brentano venerated. There is a fair amount of comment on Kant, Husserl, and Meinong. A long and interesting introduction by Mayer-Hillebrand with concise yet comprehensive notes completes the volume.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This book is a reprint of one of the pioneer works on German mysticism of the nineteenth century. It is a comprehensive account of the most fertile (...) hundred years of German spiritual and mystical history in the Middle Ages. In contrast to Bach's and Lasson's books on Eckhart written in the same decade, Greith's viewpoint is one of narrow scholastic orthodoxy. However, the wealth of detail and the pleasant simplicity of style compensate for those rather irritating lamentations about the "errors" of Meister Eckhart. Although this book was written before Denifle's discovery of Eckhart's Latin works, it remains of value today due to its systematic study of the doctrinal positions of the major mystical writers of the Rhineland. Included as well is an interesting analysis of mystical poetry centered around the works of the famous Sister Mechtild. The book ends with a lengthy and detailed description of the spirituality and spiritual theory developed in the scattered nunneries of the preaching orders.—M. J. V. (shrink)

One of the most interesting and difficult tasks of contemporary theological reflection is the elaboration of a verifiable theology. The subject is as old as theology itself, (...) and the contemporaries of Schleiermacher, like Hegel and Schelling, devoted immense industry and ingenuity to a speculative study of the history of religions. Yet the idealist's philosophical approach could not satisfy Schleiermacher whose very point of departure is the autonomous category of the religious. His peculiar approach to the different positive religions, their necessity as well as their facticity, is the central theme of Welker's book. In a way, we are given a restatement of Schleiermacher's fundamental views on religion and religions. The treatment of the history of religion is only a corollary of these more general issues. The book is concluded with a rich and interesting chapter comparing Schleiermacher with Rudolph Otto.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Though in a slightly recalcitrant mood, continental Neo-Scholastic writers have been for many decades quite extensively dealing with Kant and the major "critical" problems. An interesting (...) class='Hi'>product of this preoccupation is Santeler's long study of the foundation of human dignity in Kant. The thesis of the author is that Kant rejected metaphysics, i.e., ontology, not so much because of the well-known classical theoretical and epistemological reasons but in order to formulate a more fundamental, more autonomous notion of human dignity. We could say the Santeler is motivated by the famous Kantian remark about limiting understanding in order to make room for faith. There is undoubtedly a considerable amount of historical scholarship in those small-printed pages but their fighting mood is more reminiscent of contemporary Anglo-American Kant literature than of the usual elaborate exegesis offered by Continental scholars.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Eckhart is usually treated from the viewpoints of philosophy or speculative mysticism. Weiss is a theologian and his well-documented, heavily-footnoted study on salvation history in Meister (...) class='Hi'> Eckhart is a departure from this tradition. Without any claim to revolutionize our Eckhart-image he explores the themes of original sin, Incarnation, Passion and the glorification of Christ, the Church and the sacraments. All these themes of positive theology unfold in the context of the respective patristic and scholastic doctrines. The very meagerness of Eckhart's teaching on the traditional positive and historical aspects of Christian thought reveals how strong and fundamental were this great Dominican's leanings toward neo-Platonic essentialism.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This excellent short book has come only belatedly to our attention. Unlike the more recent work of J. Schlanger, Meier's aim is not to revise, even (...) class='Hi'>less to revolutionize, our understanding of the young Schelling. He is following the classical interpretation--from Hegel to Kroner--that already the early Schelling displayed unmistakable signs of an ontological dogmatism. Indeed, with the exception of the ethical inspiration of the celebrated Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism and the gnoseological investigations of the Treatises, the early Schelling is concerned with the issues of ontology--this is at least the author's thesis. The hollow majesty of the System of 1801 is foreshadowed by innumerable passages in the writings on the philosophy of nature. It is true that the System of Transcendental Idealism does display a certain parallelism between the gnoseological and ontological elements--but the balance is quickly broken. Under the appearance of the reconciliation of dogmatism and criticism in the doctrine of absolute knowledge via intellectual intuition, Schelling completes the restoration of ontology in the Bruno, in the Lectures on Academical Studies, and in the System of Würzburg. All this is expounded in clear, precise, well articulated chapters which enable the reader to attain a unified view of the central themes and inspirations of the immense literary production of the early Schelling.--M. J. V. (shrink)