Le traité Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων de l’élève de Proclus dissimulé sous le nom de ‘Denys l’Aréopagite’— traité qui a été récemment édité en qualité de premier titre de la série Corpus Dionysiacum— est subdivisé en deux grandes parties par un excursus fameux sur le problème de la substantialité des maux. Dans la première partie, contenant les chapitres I-III, l’auteur discute la possibilité des prédications dont l’objet est le premier principe. Dans la deuxième, contenant les chapitres V-XIII, il en présente les (...) ‘noms’. Les deux parties sont séparées par le long excursus sur la nature du mal, qui forme l’objet du chapitre IV. Ce dernier s’ouvre, il est vrai, sur le propos d’examiner la dénomination de ‘Bien’ attribuée au premier principe , si bien que l’on rangerait volontiers ce chapitre dans la deuxième partie, consacrée à la présentation des ‘noms’ de Dieu et à leur commentaire. Il se trouve pourtant que l’auteur a explicitement placé la charnière principale de son traité après l’excursus sur la nature du mal. Au début du chapitre V, en effet, il déclare aborder la question de l’οὑσιωνυμία divine, en démontrant par là concevoir le ‘Bien’ comme une dénomination différente de toute autre, voire antérieure à tous les noms qui sont en relation avec l’οὑσία, et dont l’examen occupe les chapitres V-XIII. (shrink)

Il volume, inserito nella collana diretta da Franco Todescan “Lex naturalis. Testi scelti di filosofia del diritto medievale”, presenta una sezione antologica di testi marsiliani introdotta da uno studio di Elvio Ancona sulla letteratura critica che nell’ultimo cinquantennio si è occupata del pensiero del Patavino. Lo studio bibliografico, in particolare, nella rivisitazione delle più recenti interpretazioni del Defensor pacis, trova occasione per interrogarsi su alcuni problemi giusfilosofici fondamentali che in quell’opera furono sollevati e sulle soluzioni che vi furono prospettate. (...) In questa prospettiva, dunque, viene esaminata innanzitutto la discussione relativa all’ispirazione di fondo della riflessione di Marsilio, riassumibile nella domanda se egli si debba ritenere “magis aristotelicus” o “magis christianus”, e a quale tipo di aristotelismo o di cristianesimo eventualmente si riferisca. Vengono successivamente considerate le principali teorie fiorite intorno alle grandi tematiche “istituzionali” del Defensor pacis, concernenti l’origine, l’organizzazione e la legislazione della civitas sive regnum, tematiche che sono state affrontate dagli studiosi ricorrendo a concezioni che andavano di volta in volta dal naturalismo al convenzionalismo, dal repubblicanesimo all’assolutismo, dalla teonomia al giuspositivismo. Ci si sofferma quindi sulla diuturna controversia che, con riguardo alla politica religiosa del legislator marsiliano, ha fatto parlare, con linguaggio spesso consapevolmente anacronistico, di “secolarismo” o addirittura “laicismo” e, alternativamente, di “cesaropapismo”. Si conclude infine con la disputa storiografica sulla collocazione del Mainardini tra medioevo e modernità, e con la valutazione delle indicazioni che, in termini di “ideologia marsiliana”, la complessa vicenda ermeneutica esaminata offre per una comprensione unitaria del significato della sua opera. (shrink)

L’idée d’une discontinuité radicale entre l’Un et l’être intelligible a été parfois comprise comme la thèse la plus intéressante de Plotin pour l’histoire de la métaphysique. En effet, à côté de passages où Plotin établit un rapport de ressemblance entre l’effet et la cause, il y en a d’autres où une théorie de la causalité des principes est introduite, selon laquelle le principe « donne ce qu’il n’a pas ». Dans le but d’examiner si cette théorie conduit Plotin à soutenir (...) une discontinuité radicale entre l’Un et l’être intelligible, cet article examine le traité III, 8 [30]. Une critique de Plotin à l’égard de la doctrine alexandriste de la dynamis y est signalée, et deux passages difficiles sont analysés : III, 8 [30], 2. 15-19 et III, 8 [30], 9. 29-32.Modèles de causalité chez Plotin Complete otherness of the One with respect to intelligible Being has been presented as the sharpest Plotinian contribution to the history of metaphysics. As a matter of fact, together with passages where similarity between the effect and the cause is held, there are other passages where a notion of causality is advanced, in which the principle produces « what it does not possess ». Does this involve that according to Plotinus there is complete otherness between the One and intelligible Being? This article focuses on treatise III, 8 [30], showing that it contains a criticism of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ doctrine of dynamis. It deals also with two controversial passages, III, 8 [30], 2. 15-19 and III, 8 [30], 9. 29-32. (shrink)

Prolusione: A servizio dell'uomo, di G. Urbani.--L'uomo nella filosofia, di P. Prini.--L'uomo nella sociologia, di A. Grumelli.--L'uomo nella psicologia, di L. Ancona.--L'uomo nell'arte, di P. Bruzzichelli.--L'uomo nella teologia, di D. Grasso.--L'uomo nella Chiesa, di F. Weber.

Duranti gli anni della _Querelle des femmes_ si è assistito ad un’importante crescita di testi in difesa o in detrazione della causa femminile. Una delle caratteristiche principali di questa tendenza letteraria risiede nelle reciproche relazioni che le opere stabiliscono tra loro, attraverso una fitta rete di richiami intertestuali. Il Dialogo _Della Dignità e della nobiltà delle donne_ (1624) dello scrittore marchigiano Cristoforo Bronzini aderisce appieno alla pratica intertestuale che mette a servizio della memoria storico-culturale. Nel presente articolo si analizzano i (...) rapporti intertestuali del trattato seicentesco con opere di scrittrici come Lucrezia Marinella, Moderata Fonte ed Isabella Cervoni, mettendo in rilievo le diverse funzioni che l’intertestualità adempie nei testi della _Querelle des femmes_. (shrink)

L'esistenza del commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al De generatione aristotelico, perduto nella versione greca e nella traduzione araba, è attestata da numerose fonti arabe, tra le quali Averroè, nel suo commento alla stessa opera. L'A. rintraccia la presenza, la tipologia e la distribuzione delle citazioni tratte dal commento di Alessandro nel Kitab al-Tasrif, un'opera del corpus alchemico attribuita a Gabir ibn Hayyan. Secondo l'A., la sezione interessata dalle citazioni assembla tre diversi tipi di testi: 1) lemmi del De generatione (...) in traduzione araba; 2) frammenti lacunosi della traduzione araba del commento di Alessandro; 3) interventi di collegamento. Una più ampia discussione si trova in un saggio visibile sulla pagina "publicationslist" dell'autore: "Alessandro di Afrodisia sulle 'contrarietà tangibili' (De gen. et corr. II.2): fonti greche e arabe a confronto" in: Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, a c. di C. D'Ancona e G. Serra, “Il Poligrafo”, Padova 2002, pp. 151-189. Notasi che il testo ricostruito di Alessandro in GC 2.2-5 è stato pubblicato da E. Gannagé nella serie ACA, che però non menziona il contributo di SF, dalla cui iniziativa, dalle cui analisi e dalla cui ricostruzione integrale, svolta sul manoscritto arabo Paris. 5099, la ricerca prese l'avvio. (shrink)

Este artículo se centra en L'Alcorano di Macometto, escrito por Giovanni Battista Castrodardo de Belluno (1517 ca.-1588 ca.) e impreso por Andrea Arrivabene en Venecia en 1547. Aunque hoy sea considerado como una torpe paráfrasis de la traducción latina del Corán de Roberto de Ketton (1143 AD), un examen atento demuestra que L¿Alcorano costituyó una práctica y exitosa enciclopedia de bolsillo sobre la historia del islam y del Imperio otomano. Siguiendo una intuición de Alessandro D¿Ancona (1889), analizo los textos (...) históricos publicados en la introducción del texto, centrándome especialmente en la biografía del profeta Muh.ammad escrita por Castrodardo. Dicha biografía presenta una larga oración renacentista pronunciada por el monje Sergio-Bahi-ra- para convencer a Muh.ammad a derrocar al emperador Heraclio. A través de un análisis lingüistico y retórico detallado de esta oración, intento demostrar la cultura literaria de Castrodardo y su interés por las obras de Maquiavelo. Este nuevo retrato de Muhammad presenta al profeta del islam como un príncipe renacentista, un legislador y un «profeta armado», revelando asimismo las ideas políticas de los círculos filoturcos y anti-imperiales vinculados a la embajada de Francia en Venecia. (shrink)

Indice: 1. Astronomia e tecnica di Ilario Altobelli; 2. Altobelli e i sistemi di mondo; 3. Altobelli e Regiomontano nella Demonstratio Ostendens artem dirigendi; 4. Conclusioni. Ilario Altobelli nasce nel 1610 nella regione italiana delle Marche, precisamente a Montecchio. Fu frate minore conventuale, ben presto occupato in incarichi didattici e pastorali dell’Ordine prima e come annalista poi2. La sua attività si svolse soprattutto tra Fermo, Ancona e Verona. Conosciuto per l’abilità retorica, fu teologo presso vari cardinali e fu il (...) cardinale Conti ad Ancona a mostrargli il Sidereus nuncius di Galileo 3. Altobelli si occupava infatti di matematica e di astronomia, ed ebbe... (shrink)

Per trovare un'utilizzazione del problema posto in Z6 da Aristotele l'A. considera i testi di autori medievali relativi ai problemi dell'identità tra una realtà accidentale e la propria essenza. Anzitutto è ricostruito il testo aristotelico, poi sono sviluppate considerazioni sui modelli dell'interpretazione del tema nei secoli XIII e XIV. L'A. intende mostrare come le letture che in epoca moderna sono date del problema posto da Aristotele già si trovano in autori medievali e come tali soluzioni siano deducibili da un testo (...) aperto a diverse soluzioni interpretative. Infine, l'A. si interroga sulla rilevanza della problematica nella messa a punto del problema dello statuto ontologico degli accidenti. I testi esaminati sono cinque expositiones alla Metafisica, di Alberto, Tommaso d'Aquino, Antonio d'Andrea, Alessandro d'Alessandria e Paolo Veneto, oltre che questiones di Agostino Trionfo d'Ancona, Galfredo di Aspal, Pietro d'Alvernia e testi anonimi: Anonymus domus Petri, Anonymus Zimmermanni. (shrink)

This commentary contributes to philosophical reflection on the growing challenge of digital distraction and the value of attention in the digital age. It clarifies the nature of the problem in conceptual and historical terms; analyzes “freedom of attention” as an organizing ideal for moral and political theorizing; considers some constraints of political morality on coercive state action to bolster users’ attentional resources; comments on corporate moral responsibility; and touches on some reform ideas. In particular, the commentary develops a response to (...) an anti-paternalistic line of argument rooted in Mill’s Harm Principle that would oppose state regulation on the grounds that securing attentional capacities is a matter of personal responsibility alone. The commentary engages throughout with James Williams’s recent work on the attention economy by identifying areas of agreement and difference. (shrink)

What makes for a good education? What does one need to count as well-educated? Knowledge, to be sure. But knowledge is easily forgotten, and today's knowledge may be obsolete tomorrow. Skills, particularly in critical thinking, are crucial as well. But absent the right motivation, graduates may fail to put their skills to good use. In this book, Nathan King argues that intellectual virtues-traits like curiosity, intellectual humility, honesty, intellectual courage, and open-mindedness-are central to any education worthy of the name. Further, (...) such virtues are crucial to our functioning well in everyday life, in areas as diverse as personal relationships, responsible citizenship, civil discourse, and personal success. Our struggles in these areas often result from a failure to think virtuously. Drawing upon recent work in philosophy and psychology, King paints a portrait of virtuous intellectual character-and of the vices such a character opposes. Filled with examples and applications, this book introduces readers to the intellectual virtues: what they are, why they matter, and how we can grow in them. (shrink)

Austin takes on the problem of other minds, of how to respond to the question ‘how do you know?’, if this question is raised with regard to the thoughts, feelings, sensations, minds of other creatures. This problem has traditionally been understood as the problem of justifying our belief in the existence of other minds. Austin argues that believing in other persons, in authority and testimony, is an essential part of the act of communicating, and as such is an irreducible part (...) of our experience. While we can state certain advantages of communicative performances, there is no justification for our doing them as such. (shrink)

During public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, resource scarcity and contagion risks may require health systems to shift—to some degree—from a usual clinical ethic, focused on the well-being of individual patients, to a public health ethic, focused on population health. Many triage policies exist that fall under the legal protections afforded by “crisis standards of care,” but they have key differences. We critically appraise one of the most fundamental differences among policies, namely the use of criteria to categorically exclude (...) certain patients from eligibility for otherwise standard medical services. We examine these categorical exclusion criteria from ethical, legal, disability, and implementation perspectives. Focusing our analysis on the most common type of exclusion criteria, which are disease-specific, we conclude that optimal policies for critical care resource allocation and the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should not use categorical exclusions. We argue that the avoidance of categorical exclusions is often practically feasible, consistent with public health norms, and mitigates discrimination against persons with disabilities. (shrink)

On the meta-level, ‘A Plea for Excuses’, sometimes regarded as the manifesto of ordinary language philosophy, illustrates Austin’s method of approaching philosophical issues, by patiently analysing the subtleties of ordinary language, by example. On the object level, the key distinction with regard to human actions that appear to be worthy of blame, Austin holds to be between a justification, which denies that the performed action was wrong, and an excuse, which instead denies that the agent was responsible for performing it. (...) Austin gives careful attention to particular cases of exculpatory speech, including precise word order and varying emphasis, etymological studies, and the special function of adverbial qualifying phrases, and shows how legal precedents and abnormal psychology may also be helpful in understanding why some efforts to excuse fail. In the final analysis, excuses are properly seen as setting limits to the ascription of moral responsibility, by stating explicitly how they differ from the more usual cases. (shrink)

Suppose that the ultimate point of ethics is to make the world a better place. If it is, we must face the question: better in what respect? If the good is prior to the right — that is, if the rationale for all requirements of the right is that they serve to further the good in one way or another — then what is this good? Is there a single fundamental value capable of underlying and unifying all of our moral (...) categories? If so, how might it defeat the claims of rival candidates for this role? If not, is there instead a plurality of basic goods, each irreducible to any of the others? In that case, how do they fit together into a unified picture of the moral life? These are the questions I wish to address, in a necessarily limited way. To many the questions will seem hopelessly old-fashioned or misguided. Some deontologists will wish to reverse my ordering of the good and the right, holding that the right constrains acceptable conceptions of the good. For many contractarians, neither the good nor the right will seem normatively basic, since both are to be derived from a prior conception of rationality. Finally, some theorists will reject the classification of moral theories in terms of their basic normative categories, arguing that the whole foundationalist enterprise in ethics should be abandoned. In the face of these challenges to the priority of the good, and in light of the many current varieties of moral skepticism and relativism, I cannot provide a very convincing justification for raising the questions I intend to discuss. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 343-367, Spring 2022.

This paper argues that it is prudentially wise to defer to groups about how they are essentially constituted and defined. After a few words situating the paper in my greater research project (§1), I articulate the kind of deference I have in mind (§2). Then I offer two conditional arguments on why it is epistemically desirable to let other people tell you how they ought to be identified (§3). The first argument is that people are owed lexical sovereignty because denying (...) it is absurd; the second is that modest skeptics ought to agree with it on the basis of some relatively anodyne and plausible epistemic considerations. (shrink)

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to (...) regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people’s decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place. (shrink)

Austin attacks the view that language is referential, based on the simplistic division of utterances into the ‘descriptive’ and ‘evaluative’, using his notion of performative utterances. Such utterances, in the appropriate circumstances, are neither descriptive nor evaluative, but count as actions, i.e., create the situation rather than describing or reporting on it. In saying ‘I promise to go’ one is making a promise, not stating that one is making it. A performative promise is not, and does not involve, the statement (...) that one is promising. It is an act of a distinctive sort, the very sort named by the performative verb. And, according to Austin, making explicit what one is doing is not describing what one is doing or stating that one is doing it. (shrink)

When our choice affects some other person and the outcome is unknown, it has been argued that we should defer to their risk attitude, if known, or else default to use of a risk‐avoidant risk function. This, in turn, has been claimed to require the use of a risk‐avoidant risk function when making decisions that primarily affect future people, and to decrease the desirability of efforts to prevent human extinction, owing to the significant risks associated with continued human survival. I (...) raise objections to the claim that respect for others' risk attitudes requires risk‐avoidance when choosing for future generations. In particular, I argue that there is no known principle of interpersonal aggregation that yields acceptable results in variable population contexts and is consistent with a plausible ideal of respect for others' risk attitudes in fixed population cases. (shrink)

Criticises G. E. Moore’s highly influential proposal that ascriptions of agent ability implying freedom of choice or action, what the agent could do, are analyzable as conditional statements regarding what the agent would do under certain circumstances. Austin objects against Moore that some uses of ‘if’ are non-conditional and goes on to examine the uses of these non-conditional cases. Moore’s proposal also lies at the heart of some compatibilist theories of free will and determinism. Austin argues determinism to be a (...) pseudo-problem, so long as it remains a notion that is not itself clear cut. (shrink)

Researchers have studied the athletes' dual careers with the aim of helping them to combine the sport and the academic–vocational sphere. Most of this research has addressed the study–sport combination, but there is a lack of studies on the work–sport combination. The main objective of this research was to explore the subjective perceptions of Spanish elite athletes when attempting to combine their careers as professional athletes with a second profession or trade. Further, this study aims to identify the access to (...) facilitating resources and the perception of obstacles and barriers to the development of a dual career. A qualitative approach was chosen to address these research questions. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was carried out on a sample of 18 elite athletes, and the data were collected using semi-structured interviews based on a set of superordinate and subordinate categories. The results showed that the athletes interviewed possessed valuable resources such as the transference of sports values to the work sphere. However, important barriers were highlighted such as the perception of sport institutions as absent entities in the work–sport combination. Thus, the study of this type of dual career seems to be one of the challenges facing the interested scientific community for the coming years. (shrink)

If I lead a life of virtue, that may well be good for you. But will it also be good for me? The idea that it will—or even must—is an ancient one, and its appeal runs deep. For if this idea is correct then we can provide everyone with a good reason—arguably the best reason—for being virtuous. However, for all the effort which has been invested in defending the idea, by some of the best minds in the history of philosophy, (...) it remains unproven. Worse, in this skeptical age hardly anyone really believes it. I don't really believe it either, at least not in its strongest forms, but I think that the question is nonetheless worth examining. Even if we cannot show that virtue and self-interest coincide, we can at least measure the breadth of the gap between them. (shrink)

Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge--as a publicly available resource for living--has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of main developments (...) in ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosophy's role in this shift. In pointing out the shortcomings of these developments, he shows that the shift was not the result of rational argument or discovery, but largely of arational social forces--in other words, there was no good reason for moral knowledge to have disappeared. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is a unique contribution to the literature on the history of ethics and social morality. Its review of historical work on moral knowledge covers a wide range of thinkers including T.H Green, G.E Moore, Charles L. Stevenson, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre. But, most importantly, it concludes with a novel proposal for how we might reclaim moral knowledge that is inspired by the phenomenological approach of Knud Logstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. Edited and eventually completed by three of Willard's former graduate students, this book marks the culmination of Willard's project to find a secure basis in knowledge for the moral life. (shrink)

Some believe that the current era is uniquely important with respect to how well the rest of human history goes. Following Parfit, call this the Hinge of History Hypothesis. Recently, MacAskill has argued that our era is actually very unlikely to be especially influential in the way asserted by the Hinge of History Hypothesis. I respond to MacAskill, pointing to important unresolved ambiguities in his proposed definition of what it means for a time to be influential and criticizing the two (...) arguments used to cast doubt on the claim that the current era is a uniquely important moment in human history. (shrink)

Deals with the question of whether there is a use of ‘is true’ that is the primary or generic name for that which at bottom we are always saying ‘is true’. Austin discusses the views that truth is primarily a property of beliefs and of true statements. He goes on to argue that the word ‘true’ denotes the validity of an intended correspondence between a representation and what it represents, and dismantles confusions about the meaning of the words that underlie (...) such a view, such as ‘fact that’ and ‘corresponds’. (shrink)

Lectures by Sayyid Kamāl al-Ḥaydarī, written down by his disciple Shaykh ʻAlī Ḥamūd al-ʻIbādī.

Welcome to the Post-Truth era-- a time in which the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy and the world as we know it. The Brexit vote; Donald Trump's victory; the rejection of climate change science; the vilification of immigrants; all have been based on the power to evoke feelings and not facts. So what does it all mean and how can we champion truth in in a time of lies and 'alternative facts'? In this eye-opening (...) and timely book, Post-Truth is distinguished from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. What is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public's response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion. Where trust has evaporated, conspiracy theories thrive, the authority of the media wilt and emotions matter more than facts. Now, one of the UK's most respected political journalists, Matthew d'Ancona investigates how we got here, why quiet resignation is not an option and how we can and must fight back. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi offers quite a few stories that centre on performance: a bellstand maker who selects wood to create wonderful bellstands; a ferryman who steers through rough waters; a cicada catcher who uses a stick, as if it were his hand, to catch cicadas; and a wheelmaker who, in using his chisel, feels it in his hand and responds with his heart. What is the role of the stick, for the cicada catcher, and the chisel, for the wheelmaker? What do (...) these masters know? I situate these questions within the intellectual context of the Zhuangzi, highlighting the text’s opposition to prevailing conceptions of a flourishing life. I draw on recent debates in extended mind and cognition to suggest that they offer interesting ways of understanding the knowledgeable practices of these masters. The frameworks and vocabulary of extended mind allow me to bring out how and why the Zhuangzi’s examples of mastery are apt and insightful reasons for rejecting the then current views on good government. The dialogue benefits both Chinese and Western traditions: the examples in the Zhuangzi help to diversify contemporary Western philosophy’s understanding of knowledge. (shrink)

Prey-catching behavior (PCB) in frogs and toads has been the focus of intense neuroethological research from the mid-twentieth century to the present and epitomizes some major themes in science and philosophy during this period. It reflects the movement from simple reflexology to more complex views of instinctive behavior, but it also displays a neural reductionism that denies subjectivity and individual agency The present article engages contemporary PCB research but provides a philosophically more promising picture of it based on Whitehead's nonreductionist (...) "philosophy of organism," which proposes that the flow of events from stimulus to response in organisms of all kinds is mediated by "the intervening touch of mentality " This approach resolves some basic mind-body and mind-nature issues that have long bedeviled modern philosophy and presents an image of a postmodern frog for a constructively postmodern science. (shrink)

Since 2022, the EU, US, and other nations have imposed medical sanctions on Russia to block the export of pharmaceuticals and medical devices and curtail clinical trials to degrade Russia’s military capabilities. While international law proscribes sanctions that cause a humanitarian crisis, an outcome averted in Russia, the military effects of medical sanctions have been lean. Strengthening medical sanctions risks violating noncombatant and combatant rights to healthcare. Each group’s claim is different. Noncombatants and severely injured soldiers who cannot return to (...) duty enjoy the right to adequate health care that sanctions cannot undermine. Combatants falling captive enjoy the same medical care that adversaries provide their own troops. Combatants yet to renounce hostilities, however, have no claim to medical attention and remain subject to sanctions. Nevertheless, medical sanctions prove unworkable in this complex environment of conflicting rights and command no place in a sustainable sanction regime. (shrink)

Michael S. Moore is a whole-hearted retributivist. The triumph of Mechanical Choices is that Moore provides a thoroughly physicalist, reductionist-friendly, compatibilist account of the features that make persons deserving of blame and punishment. Many who embrace scientific accounts of psychology worry that from this perspective the grounds for desert disappear; but Moore argues that folk psychological accounts of responsibility—such as those found in the criminal law—are either vindicated or not implicated by science. Moore claims that criminal punishment can be justified (...) by looking solely to moral desert, couched in folk terms. In this paper I argue that interpersonal blame and punishment and criminal blame and punishment hold people responsible in the same sense, and that directed moral blame in both forms aim to communicate something to the wrongdoer and generate a backward-looking or retributive good. However, contra Moore, I will argue that instrumental aims are also important to justifying methods and degree of punishment within both realms. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag diskutieren drei interdisziplinär ausgebildete Akademiker, die als klinisch tätige Ethiker auch viele Jahre Erfahrungen mit Gesundheitssystemen in verschiedenen Ländern haben, die Frage nach dem Kern klinisch-ethischer Expertise: der niederländische Mediziner und Philosoph Henk ten Have, Direktor des Center for Healthcare Ethics in Pittsburgh, USA, der deutsche Theologe und Philosoph Norbert Steinkamp, Professor für theologisch-ethische Grundlagen sozialprofessionellen Handelns an der katholischen Hochschule für Sozialwesen in Berlin, der 12 Jahre die klinische Ethik der Universitätsklinik Nijmegen, Niederlande, geleitet hat, sowie (...) der niederländische Philosoph und Historiker Bert Gordijn, Direktor des Institute of Ethics der Dublin City University, Irland, Präsident der International Association of Education in Ethics und u. a. Herausgeber von Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. (shrink)

Drees makes a strong case for the importance of the humanities in the university, providing an excellent resource for anyone in the Western Academy. Its usefulness for those who want to work outside the West is limited, however, because he does not engage with literature that challenges its methods and disciplines. If we are to have a positive global impact, we need to do more than clarify existing boundaries, we need to blur them, beginning with an examination of inherent biases (...) reflected in its history, structure, and content. This article focuses on one critique, a decolonial critique of the Western view that ontology precedes epistemology (an external reality produces knowledge). Outside the modern Western Academy, epistemologies create ontologies (epistemic creations/stories about the world give us a sense of the world and its materiality). I describe a relational understanding of knowledge and how this changes our understanding of the humanities and our epistemic responsibilities. (shrink)

In this paper I consider various shifts in my research and understanding stimulated by seeking how to combat social ecological crises connected to modern economies. The discussion and critical reflections are structured around five papers that were submitted to Environmental Values in an open call to address my work. A common aspect is the move away from neoclassical environmental economics, and its reductionist monetary valuation, to a more realist theory and multiple methods. This relates to my work on environmental ethics, (...) plural values, stated preference validity and deliberative monetary valuation. Expanding beyond the narrow confines of mainstream orthodoxy has involved exploring a range of other disciplines (e.g. applied philosophy, social psychology, human geography, political science, social anthropology, history of thought and philosophy of science) and learning from this literature to rethink economics and develop social ecological economics. A broad range of subjects are covered here, including: personal responsibility, social practice, psychology of the individual, participatory processes, value (intrinsic, instrumental and relational), Nature–society relationships and interdependencies, critical realism and the conduct of unifying interdisciplinary science. I end with a series of comments concerning the failings of orthodox economics and the conduct of scientific research for social ecological transformation. (shrink)