BackgroundThe diagnosis and treatment of cancer are associated with psychological distress that often leads to a significant reduction in emotional and physical well-being and quality of life. Early detection of psychological distress is therefore important. This study aims to assess the psychological distress of inpatient cancer patients using routine clinical data. Furthermore, variables and problems most strongly associated with psychological distress should be identified.Materials and MethodsN = 1,869 inpatients were investigated using the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Distress Thermometer and problem (...) checklist to assess distress as well as multiple possible problem areas. Visceral oncological cancer was the most common tumor diagnosis, followed by skin cancer and urological cancer.Results65.9% of the sample experienced high levels of distress. Female sex, stage 4 of disease, and visceral and head and neck cancer emerged as risk factors for high distress. A younger age was significantly correlated with higher distress. The most frequently self-reported problems were fears, worry, and fatigue. Patients with all 3 of these problems had 24 times higher risk [odds ratio = 23.9] for high levels of distress than patients without these problems. Women reported significantly more practical, emotional, and physical problems than men. Younger and middle-aged patients reported increased levels of practical, family, and emotional problems compared with older patients.DiscussionAlmost two-thirds of the sample reported high levels of distress. The most frequently reported problem areas were emotional and physical problems. These results can help to identify patients with high risk for psychological distress and, therefore, be used to optimize psychosocial and psycho-oncological care for patients with cancer. (shrink)
As Christians, all twelfth-century Latin thinkers identified true happiness with the happiness God promises in the afterlife. This happiness was believed to be entirely spiritual, consisting in the endless vision of God. Nevertheless, along with this beatitudo in patria we also find in some twelfth-century authors the idea of a beatitudo in via as the philosophical life. This life can be characterized either as completely contemplative and solitary, or as one that remains partially attached to material circumstances and action in (...) society. Within this broad framework, this paper emphasizes three points:a. the ascetic and almost purely contemplative character of the ideal of the philosophical life as we find it in twelfth-century authors like Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury;b. the role played by philosophers in some twelfth-century triads of human types;c. the fact that, in spite of the monastic touch which often color them, many theses held by twelfth-century defenders of the philosophical... (shrink)
This multi-faceted collection of women's perspectives on the renaissance in philosophical practices provides an international overview on the professional practice of philosophical counseling as rooted in the ancient philosophical discipline of life and its essential difference from modern mainstream philosophy.
In its first part the article examines visions of the family during 1968 and the succeeding years. It concentrates in particular on alternative visions of the family, both at a theoretical level (as with David Cooper's Death of the Family), and at the level of social history, with the rise and fall of the commune movement. It does so with reference to a methodology which concentrates on relationships, principally those between the individual and the family, between family and between the (...) family and the state. In the second part it surveys the widespread changes that have beset family relations and family life in the advanced capitalist societies since 1968: the lowering of fertility rates, the gradual decline of marriage, the significant changes in the position of women in the family, the increase in individualisation, as manifested in the growth of single-member households. The article then seeks to explore the relationship, if any, between the movement of 1968 and these transformations in the family. It examines both conservative and progressive interpretations, and suggests that paradoxically the movement left few sediments in the relationship between family and civil society but rather more in that between the state and the family. (shrink)
In an article published in 2003, Klaus Jacobi—using texts partially edited in De Rijk's _Logica Modernorum_—demonstrated that twelfth-century logic contains a tradition of reflecting about some of the transcendental names. In addition to reinforcing Jacobi's thesis with other texts, this contribution aims to demonstrate two points: 1) That twelfth-century logical reflection about transcendental terms has its origin in the _logica vetus_, and especially in a passage from Porphyry _Isagoge_ and in Boethius's commentary on it. In spite of the loss of (...) the major part of the Aristotelian corpus, the twelfth-century masters in logic still received some Aristotelian theses concerning the notions of one and being via Porphyry and Boethius; on the basis of such theses, they were able to elaborate a sort of proto-theory of the transcendentals as trans-categorical terms. 2) That this theory is centred on the idea that there exists a particular group of names which have the property that they can be said of everything; this group includes "being", "one", "thing" and "something". Twelfth-century masters in logic try to question the thesis that these terms are equivocal, although they do not deny it completely. (shrink)
_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 221 - 248 One of the peculiarities of Peter Abelard’s analysis of incomplete and non-assertive sentences is his use of the notion of desire: in both _Dialectica_ and _Glosses on Peri hermeneias_ the terms _desiderium_ and _desidero_ move to the foreground side by side with _optatio, expectatio, suspensio_ and the related verbs. Desire plays a structural role in Abelard’s descriptions of the compositional way in which the linguistic message is received, changing step by (...) step from incomplete to complete: the person who receives the incomplete message desires to get further information through other words since he knows that the purpose of such words or sequences of words is to combine with other words in order to form a complete sentence. On the other hand, the expression of the speaker’s attention to his inner affections renders the same semantic content a different complete sentence. (shrink)
The article investigates how the problem of reference is treated in the theology of two pupils of Gilbert of Poitiers by means of suppo* terms. Supposition is for Gilbert an action performed by a speaker, not a property of terms, and he considers language as a system for communication between human beings: key notions are the ‘sense in the author’s mind’ and the ‘interpreter’s understanding’. In contrast, the two Porretans tend to objectify language as a formal system of terms. Suppositio (...) becomes in the Summa Zwettlensis the name itself as subject term in a proposition, and is divided into many kinds; formal rules are described which govern the influence of the predicate on the subject term’s denotation. In Everard of Ypres’ Dialogus Ratii et Everardi, supponere is a function of the name, and ‘human is a species of individuals’ is, as in some logical treatises and differently from Gilbert, a case of rhetorical transfer. (shrink)
Peter Abelard was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, famed for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. His Collationes - or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew - is remarkable for the boldness of its conception and thought.
The metaphysics of relations is still in its infancy. We use the idea of truthmaking to gain purchase on this metaphysics. Assuming a modest supervenience conception of truthmaking, where true relational predications require multiply dependent truthmakers, these are indispensable relations. Though some such relations are required, none are needed for internal relatedness, nor for several other kinds of relational predication. Discerning the metaphysically basic kinds of relations is fraught with uncertainties, but must be tackled if progress is to be made.
How many thinkers could expect to find themselves the subject of three books with an educational focus within the space of just a few short years? Relatively few, it might safely be claimed, partic...
Peter Abelard (1079 – 21 April 1142) [‘Abailard’ or ‘Abaelard’ or ‘Habalaarz’ and so on] was the pre-eminent philosopher and theologian of the twelfth century. The teacher of his generation, he was also famous as a poet and a musician. Prior to the recovery of Aristotle, he brought the native Latin tradition in philosophy to its highest pitch. His genius was evident in all he did. He is, arguably, the greatest logician of the Middle Ages and is equally famous as (...) the first great nominalist philosopher. He championed the use of reason in matters of faith (he was the first to use ‘theology’ in its modern sense), and his systematic treatment of religious doctrines are as remarkable for their philosophical penetration and subtlety as they are for their audacity. Abelard seemed larger than life to his contemporaries: his quick wit, sharp tongue, perfect memory, and boundless arrogance made him unbeatable in debate — he was said by supporter and detractor alike never to have lost an argument — and the force of his personality impressed itself vividly on all with whom he came into contact. His luckless affair with Héloïse made him a tragic figure of romance, and his conflict with Bernard of Clairvaux over reason and religion made him the hero of the Enlightenment. For all his colourful life, though, his philosophical achievements are the cornerstone of his fame. (shrink)
Histories of philosophy frequently depict the later eleventh century as the scene of a series of bouts between dialecticians and anti-dialecticians — Berengar vs. Lanfranc, Roscelin vs. Anselm — preliminaries to the twelfth century welterweight contest between Abelard and St. Bernard and — dare one say? — the thirteenth century heavy-weight championship between St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.The bouts took place — no question about that — but whether the contestants can properly be characterized as dialecticians and anti-dialecticians is less (...) certain. Dialectics is logic, the third part of the trivium, and increasingly cultivated in the eleventh century; men like Berengar and Roscelin were plainly eager to apply the logical tools with which they had been equipped to the solution of intellectual problems. In particular they undertook the solution of certain central problems of theology — Berengar that of the Eucharist and Roscelin that of the Trinity — and it was this, we are told, that aroused the ire of the anti-dialecticians: if the aim of the dialecticians was to lay bare the mysteries of faith to the light of reason that of the anti-dialecticians was to protect those same mysteries from profanation. (shrink)
The idea of immanent transcendence is constitutive for Winch's philosophy of religion and his ethics. Winch's philosophy of religion insists on the ‘immanent’ dimension of religion. His ethics insists on the ‘transcendent’ dimension of ethics. In this sense, both religion and ethics embody a perspective ‘beyond’ this world and yet must have practical consequences in this world. Transcendence without immanence is idle, and immanence without transcendence is empty—this is the kernel of Winch's philosophy of religion and of his ethics.
The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually said, in 1500. (...) He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)
Define ‘het’ as a predicate that truly applies to itself if and only if it does not truly apply to itself and which also truly applies to any predicate that does not truly apply to its own name. We know that the attempted definition of ‘hes’ is a failure, and so a fortiori is that of ‘het’. Similarly, there is no Qussell class which contains itself as a member if and only if it does not contain itself as a member, (...) so a fortiori there is no Russell Class which contains itself as a member if and only if it does not contain itself as a member and which also contains all and only non-self-membered classes (such as the class of dogs). The second conjunct in both the definition of ‘het’ and of the Russell class cannot revive a definition doomed to failure. Likewise, the ‘definition’ of n as ‘n > 1 iff n < 1’ fails, and the attempted definition of m as ‘m > 1 iff m < 1 and m is prime’ is hopeless too; its final clause buys it no respectability. (shrink)
Peter Singer is probably the best-known and most controversial ethicist in the world today. He rigorously applies utilitarian moral theory to issues such as world poverty, the environment, abortion, euthanasia and, most famously, animal welfare. He has also written a book about his grandfather, David Oppenheim, who died in Theresienstadt concentration camp. He is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Peter Singer is probably the best-known and most controversial ethicist in the world today. He rigorously applies utilitarian moral theory to issues such as world poverty, the environment, abortion, euthanasia and, most famously, animal welfare. He has also written a book about his grandfather, David Oppenheim, who died in Theresienstadt concentration camp. He is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
