This article presents a set of moral arguments regarding the selective abortion of fetuses on the basis of prenatal screening for late onset genetic diseases only, and for Huntington's Disease* in particular. After discussion of human suffering, human perfection and the distinctive features of the lives of people confronting late onset genetic disease, the author concludes that selective abortion is difficult to justify ethically, although it must remain a matter of personal choice.

This review essay on R. Melvin Keiser's Roots of Relational Ethics: Responsibility in Origin and Maturity in H. Richard Niebuhr surveys selected works about Niebuhr, examines the strengths of Keiser's post-critical treatment of Niebuhr and raises questions about Keiser's views and about Niebuhr.

Over the past two years, debate about the use of data taken from Nazi concentration camp experiments has intensified. Many survivors of the Holocaust have been particularly offended at the publication of hypothermia or other data. This article argues against the use of unethically obtained data, and considers the debate from the perspective of the rights of Holocaust victims.

Belonging uncertainty, defined as the general concern about the quality of one’s social relationships in an academic setting, has been found to be an important determinant of academic achievement and persistence. However, to date, only little research investigated the sources of belonging uncertainty. To address this research gap, we examined three potential sources of belonging uncertainty in a sample of undergraduate computer science students in Germany (N= 449) and focused on (a) perceived affective and academic exclusion by fellow students, (b) (...) domain-specific academic self-efficacy beliefs, and (c) perception of one’s individual performance potential compared to that of fellow students in the field. Perceived affective and academic exclusion by fellow students and domain-specific academic self-efficacy beliefs were significant predictors of female students’ uncertainty about belonging in computer science. The perception of one’s individual performance potential in comparison to that of fellow students, however, was a relevant predictor of both male and female students’ belonging uncertainty in computer science. Our findings imply an expanded view of the theoretical concept of belonging uncertainty that goes beyond mere concerns of social connectedness. (shrink)

Ecologists traditionally regard time as part of the background against which ecological interactions play out. In this book, Eric Post argues that time should be treated as a resource used by organisms for growth, maintenance, and offspring production. Post uses insights from phenology -- the study of the timing of life-cycle events -- to present a theoretical framework of time in ecology that casts long-standing observations in the field in an entirely new light. Combining conceptual models with field (...) data, he demonstrates how phenological advances, delays, and stasis, documented in an array of taxa, can all be viewed as adaptive components of an organism's strategic use of time. Post shows how the allocation of time by individual organisms to critical life history stages is not only a response to environmental cues but also an important driver of interactions at the population, species, and community levels. To demonstrate the applications of this exciting new conceptual framework, Time in Ecology uses meta-analyses of previous studies as well as Post's original data on the phenological dynamics of plants, caribou, and muskoxen in Greenland.--Back cover. (shrink)

Badiou claims Deleuze’s thinking is pre-critical metaphysics that cannot be understood in relation to Kant. I argue that Deleuze is indeed a metaphysical thinker, but precisely because he is a kind of Kantian. Badiou is right that Deleuze rejects the overwhelmingly epistemic problematics of critical thought in its classical sense, but he is wrong to claim that Deleuze completely rejects Kant. Instead, Deleuze is interested in developing a metaphysics that prolongs Kant’s conception of a productive synthesis irreducible to empirical causation. (...) Where Badiou’s criticism might tell however is in the risk that Deleuze’s strategy runs of contaminating his new metaphysics with a new kind of transcendental idealism. This reading has recently been developed by Ray Brassier and I explore and evaluate it, concluding that in Difference and Repetition this accusation may be correct, but that by the time of Anti-Œdipus, Deleuze (now with Guattari) has the intellectual resources to resist it. (shrink)

I have two main goals in this paper. The first is to argue for the thesis that Kant gave up on his highest good argument for the existence of God around 1800. The second is to revive a dialogue about this thesis that died out in the 1960s. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I reconstruct Kant’s highest good argument. In the second, I turn to the post-1800 convolutes of Kant’s Opus postumum to discuss his (...) repeated claim that there is only one way to argue for the existence of God, a way which resembles the highest good argument only in taking the moral law as its starting point. In the third, I explain why I do not find the counterarguments to my thesis introduced in the 1960s persuasive. (shrink)

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing (...) x into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MOLTMANN'S POST-MODERN MESSIANIC CHRISTOLOGY: A REVIEW DISCUSSION 1 PAUL D. MOLNAR St. Johns University Jamaica, New York 0 VER TWENTY-FIVE years ago Jiirgen Moltmann's response to Karl Barth's suggestion that it might be wise to " accept the doctrine of the immanent trinity of God " 2 indicated the future of his theology: " in studying C.D. at these points I always lost my breath. I suspect you (...) are right but I cannot as yet or so quickly enter into this right." Moltmann believed he could present the " economic Trinity " in such a way that " in the foreground, and then again in the background, it would be open to an immanent Trinity... the Holy Spirit is first the Spirit of the raising of the dead and then as such the third person of the Trinity." 3 Moltmann's The Way of Jesus Christ reflects the same onesidedness that Barth had criticized in his theology of hope, and this predicament leads to his own distinct messianic christology, as we shall see. This third volume in Moltmann's systematic theology, following his Trinity and the Kingdom and God in 1 The Way of Jesits Christ: Christology fo Messianic Dimensions. By Jiirgen Moltmann. Translated by Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1990). Pp. vii + 388. $24.95. This volume has a name index only. The Way of Jesits Christ will henceforth be cited in the text of this article by page numbers within parentheses, without further qualification. 2 Karl Barth Letters 1961-1968, ed. Jurgen Fangmeier and Hinrich Stoevesandt, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981)' p. 175. 3 Ibid., p. 348. Barth's Church Dogmatics is usually abbreviated as C.D. 669 670 PAUL D. MOLNAR Creation,4 is intended to lead to a fourth volume on Redemption. Like Moltmann's other works it is tightly written, difficult, intriguing and informative. His writing is clear and his position certainly is developed with a commendable systematic rigor. Throughout this book, which contains seven chapters with clear headings indicating the topics to be treated, the reader is compelled to admire Moltmann's ability to weave together immense amounts of scriptural and systematic data without losing his own position in the process. While the wealth of information alone makes this book worth studying, there is much more than information here. Yet the problem with this book is apparent throughout, i.e., Moltmann attempts to reconceive christology not from a superior knowledge of the person and work of Jesus Christ as presented in scripture but from the community's experience of Jesus Christ in the present. Hence he begins his own " pneumatological christology " with the experience of discipleship (xiv) and argues against the traditional christologies, on the basis of " Christopraxis " which he says is "the source from which christology springs " (41). But can we say that our discipleship is the "source" of christology when, according to Matt. 16 :17, flesh and blood did not disclose who Jesus was-rather, this was revealed by God? This substitution of experience for a real action of the trinity within history is the weakness of Moltmann's bold attempt to revise christology.5 I hope to show how this problem affects Moltmann's method and conclusions. While I agree with Moltmann's intention to present a christology which makes sense in a post-modern environment, I hope to illustrate that by beginning with experience rather than with the Word of God revealed, 4 Jiirgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. xv-365. Hereafter cited within the text of the article as Creation. J iirgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), pp. xvi-256. Hereafter cited within the text of the article as Trinity. 5 As I indicated in Theological Studies vol. 51 (p. 684), this is also a serious predicament in his theology of the trinity and of creation. MOLTMANN'S POST-MODERN CHRISTOLOGY 671 he is unable to escape the " Jesuology " which he criticizes in Rahner and the metaphysical view that... (shrink)

This article analyzes a popular meme that has spread rapidly among Chinese internet users in the last few years, ‘garlic chives’ ( jiucai), as a self-mockery of the bio-economic subject in contemporary China. This metaphor refers to those ordinary Chinese people who are constantly lured to participate in all kinds of economic activities, but whose investments are destined to be consumed by the establishment. Through a close study of this popular meme and the social conditions from which it arises, this (...) article demonstrates two main features of the Chinese economic subject that supports the state’s economic sovereignty: the thriving of self-sufficient and rule-abiding individuals, and the quality of these individuals as hard working and capable of producing wealth on their own. This article offers a critique of PRC’s post-socialist governmentality, and it provides insights about the relation between the biological and the political in our complicated world order. (shrink)

“Gerçekten Öyle mi Olmuş?” kitabında, tarih disiplininin nasıl bir süreçten geçtiğine kısaca değinilerek küresel gelişmeler ışığında hangi yönlere evirildiği konu edildi. Çalışma, bir anlamda tarihin ve tarih eğitiminin varlık-amaç işlevlerinin belirlenmesinin temelinde yatan nedenleri, geçmiş-gelecek diyalektiği çerçevesinde sorgulamaya dayandı. Bu bağlamda geçmişin çağrışımının siyasetle ilişkisi, günümüz bilgi teknolojilerindeki değişim, dördüncü sanayi devrimiyle dönüşecek toplumsal yapının dinamikleri ve en nihayetinde toplumun geçmiş ve gelecek algısı ile bu algının post-truth (gerçek ötesi) dönemdeki yansımaları örneklerle ele alındı. Post-truth olarak adlandırılan bu (...) yeni dönemde, tarihçilik açısından problematik görünen üç ana konu incelendi. Bunlardan ilki, tarihin ve tarihçiliğin geleceğine ilişkin riskler ve tehditler. Diğeri, ilkiyle bağlantılı olarak tarihin öteden beri siyasiler tarafından bir meşruiyet aracı olarak kullanılıyor olmasının günümüzdeki durumu ve suistimaller. Son olarak da yeni medyada üretilen tarihsel bilginin gerçekliğinin denetlenememesiyle ortaya çıkan ve toplumsal kutuplaşmalara yol açan bilgi kirliliği. Böylelikle, post-truth çağında gerçeğin peşinden koşan tarihçilerin ve tarih severlerin, yeni medya ve onun uzantılarıyla nasıl yüz yüze kalacağı konusunda bir resim sunulmaya çalışıldı. Amacımız, bu üç soruna çözümler getirerek konu sonlandırmak olmayıp konunun özellikle akademisyenler tarafından tartışılmasını sağlayacak bir gündemin oluşturulmasıdır. (shrink)

Collingwood's theory of presuppositions has never been taken very seriously. But critics have completely overlooked its significance as a theory or model of inquiry intimately tied to certain aspects of discourse in a context of investigation. Viewed this way, Collingwood's theory is on very strong ground, especially when it is reconstructed with the aid of a formal language. The reconstruction shows what is essential to the theory and what is not, allowing us to disregard those of Collingwood's extravagant claims which (...) have frustrated an understanding of his theory's real strength. The reconstruction also provides a general framework within which recent discussion of presuppositions can be unified. (shrink)

Mathematical tradition has it that transformations characterized by a negative Jacobian determinant are referred to as improper transformations. The symmetry of a physical object corresponding to such an improper transformation becomes an improper symmetry. Improper symmetries have been successfully used for the purpose of crystal symmetry. The extension of these purely spatial symmetries to the domain of spacetime has led to a prejudicial use of light-cone properties, thus affecting adversely an unbiased symmetry classification. We pinpoint these prejudicial procedures and trace (...) their historical origin, while presenting an alternative that restores an unbiased treatment of improper spacetime symmetries. The applications discussed relate to recent developments in the symmetry classification of magnetic crystals and to the extension of Neumann's principle to the time domain. (shrink)

Computability theory concerns information with a causal–typically algorithmic–structure. As such, it provides a schematic analysis of many naturally occurring situations. Emil Post was the first to focus on the close relationship between information, coded as real numbers, and its algorithmic infrastructure. Having characterised the close connection between the quantifier type of a real and the Turing jump operation, he looked for more subtle ways in which information entails a particular causal context. Specifically, he wanted to find simple relations on (...) reals which produced richness of local computability-theoretic structure. To this extent, he was not just interested in causal structure as an abstraction, but in the way in which this structure emerges in natural contexts. Post’s programme was the genesis of a more far reaching research project. In this article we will firstly review the history of Post’s programme, and look at two interesting developments of Post’s approach. The first of these developments concerns the extension of the core programme, initially restricted to the Turing structure of the computably enumerable sets of natural numbers, to the Ershov hierarchy of sets. The second looks at how new types of information coming from the recent growth of research into randomness, and the revealing of unexpected new computability-theoretic infrastructure. We will conclude by viewing Post’s programme from a more general perspective. We will look at how algorithmic structure does not just emerge mathematically from information, but how that emergent structure can model the emergence of very basic aspects of the real world. (shrink)

This book presents the first detailed account of Werner Heisenberg’s failed attempt to find a theory of everything in the autumn of his career. It further investigates what we can learn from his failure in relation to the search for a final theory of physics, an endeavour that continues to define research in fundamental physics to this day. Thereby it provides the first historically informed contribution to the current debate on post-empirical physics and the state of particle physics.

In this country the idealists of the latter years of the nineteenth century and the early part of this century can be looked at as representing a conservative position, if the agnostics, naturalists and pragmatists of that time are taken to represent liberal movements. George Holmes Howison as an idealist was neither an isolated voice nor a member of a general school of thought that had slight influence. Howison’s published philosophical writings extend from 1861 to 1916. One reason among others (...) for Howison deserving a significant place in the history of philosophy was his participation in the “Conception of God” debate of 1895. That debate also serves as evidence of the completion of Howison’s odyssey from Hegelianism to personal idealism. (shrink)

In this country the idealists of the latter years of the nineteenth century and the early part of this century can be looked at as representing a conservative position, if the agnostics, naturalists and pragmatists of that time are taken to represent liberal movements. George Holmes Howison as an idealist was neither an isolated voice nor a member of a general school of thought that had slight influence. Howison’s published philosophical writings extend from 1861 to 1916. One reason among others (...) for Howison deserving a significant place in the history of philosophy was his participation in the “Conception of God” debate of 1895. That debate also serves as evidence of the completion of Howison’s odyssey from Hegelianism to personal idealism. (shrink)

The Concept “hope,” (Greek), appears in two of Heraclitus’s fragments. This essay offers an attentive reading of these fragments and examines the role of hope in Heraclitus’s thinking. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part examines the meaning of the Greek notion for hope, (Greek), by looking into archaic and classical sources, particularly the myth about the origin of hope in Hesiod’s Works and Days. Based upon the renewed understanding of the concept, the second part of the (...) essay examines Heraclitus’s use of the concept of hope and demonstrates the central role of hope in Heraclitus’s thinking. (shrink)

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

Years before his death, Romualdo Abulad made himself controversial, a controversy that was not so much on his positive contribution to philosophy as his apology for Duterte and his regime. In this paper, Abulad’s apology for Duterte will be discussed. The discussion will be framed from within Abulad’s concept of the post-Machiavelli. This concept was earlier developed by Abulad in a chapter of a book co-authored by Alfredo Co. I argue that his concept of the post-Machiavelli is based (...) on a privileging of The Prince and a reading that is subtly anti-Machiavellian. I further argue that the ethics of the post-Machiavelli, one that is guided by the philosophical compass of postmodernism, provided the ideological support for Duterte and his regime as it is both obscurantist and empty. The ethics of the post-Machiavelli obscures the politics of the regime by way of the ethics of the good. In doing so it legitimizes the political via the ethical. Here, the coupling or intersection of the political and the ethical provided an ideological support of the former by way of the abstract resources of the latter. However, I assert that ethics and politics ought to be decoupled. The ethics of the post-Machiavelli is likewise empty. Such an emptiness allows, at least in the level of theory, a liberal openness and accommodation to virtually any version of (a future) order, including that of fascism. (shrink)

This article discusses Rousseau’s theory of the genesis and development of a “post-liberal self” and its political implications. In his Emile, or Education, Rousseau explores the distinctive features of the post-liberal self through Emile’s growing capacity to think in terms of his social interdependence with others and yet to maintain his critical autonomy. For Rousseau it is only such individuals with a highly developed moral and civic consciousness who are capable of articulating the general will and of properly (...) participating in a modern republic. I argue that the general will for Rousseau is therefore not a property of the community but of the post-liberal self, for whom the common good is a larger dimension of the individual good. I then discuss the political implications of this theory by relating it to The Social Contract where Rousseau urges us to examine the legitimacy of existing social norms, laws and practices. Rousseau, I conclude, is one of the great radical thinkers of self-transformation as the prerequisite for overcoming the pathologies and limitations of liberal society. (shrink)

This chapter relates Kierkegaard’s views on anthropology and selfhood to Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical anthropology. It focuses on Kierkegaard’s contribution to anthropology, and discusses the relation between philosophical and theological anthropology in Kierkegaard. The chapter gives a synopsis of these issues by focusing on The Sickness unto Death, although important elements of this work are anticipated by Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. After an historical introduction and brief remarks on Kierkegaard’s method, the chapter moves to (...) human nature, selfhood, and despair in The Sickness unto Death. We will see that human nature is interpreted as a synthesis of opposites, whereas selfhood requires self-consciousness and higher-order volition. Nevertheless, The Sickness unto Death approaches selfhood and anthropology negatively by focusing on despair, a deficient form of agency that involves double-mindedness. Kierkegaard argues that despair can only be overcome by wholeheartedness and religious faith. Whereas Part I of The Sickness unto Death provides a philosophical anthropology that distinguishes between inauthentic (non-conscious) and authentic (conscious) despair, Part II develops a theological anthropology that focuses on faith and despair before God. Part I analyses and criticizes various forms of despair on their own terms, whereas Part II identifies despair with sin on the presupposition of divine revelation. Overall, The Sickness unto Death provides a systematic analysis of despair that has been influential in continental philosophy and theology. It is a fascinating contribution to anthropology and theories of selfhood because of its typology and negativistic phenomenology. On the one hand, the analysis of non-conscious despair provides an intriguing account of self-deception, facticity, and freedom. On the other, the analysis of demonic despair—which does evil because it is evil—appears to challenge the widespread idea that all intentional action is prompted by something that appears good). (shrink)

The last volume of Cicero's Orations, as published in the Oxford Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum, was lately entrusted to me, and will be published in the course of the present year. Meanwhile I desire to record in this paper some of the more important results of my study of the MSS., and, following on this, to indicate several places where our current texts seem to be susceptible of correction and improvement.

How to reconcile a European identity that is still quite indefinite with the national identities that have been engines of development, but failed to resolve the issue of ensuring peace and eliminating war as a way of settling differences? Solving the problem of European identity vs. national state identity is the cornerstone for the development of new European institutional architecture. The more the future vision of Europe promotes a deeper integration of the current European nation states, the greater is the (...) fear of the latter to the “danger” of losing its identity. What is, in fact, this identity and would be its disappearance a great disaster? How can be lost the national identity and how it could be replaced by a European identity? Here are just some troubling questions that Europeans today consciences. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s liberal utopia offers an interesting model for those who wish to explore the emancipatory potential of a post-foundational account of politics, specifically liberalism. What Rorty proposes is a form of liberalism that is divorced from its Kantian metaphysical foundations. This paper will focus on the gulf that appears between Rorty’s liberal utopia in theory, the political form that it must ultimately manifest itself in, and the consequences this has for debates on pluralism, diversity, and identity, within liberal (...) political thought. -/- The strength of Rorty’s liberal utopia, in his analysis, lies in the fact that with the rejection of philosophy and metaphysics, we can simply get on with the job of reducing cruelty through experimental tinkering with the liberal political system. Instead of trying to develop intellectually sophisticated justifications for why we act, we should just act. Political action, for Rorty, does not require a philosophical or metaphysical justification. However, upon closer critical examination, we can see that whatever potential Rorty’s liberal utopia may have in theory, this is negated by the fact that at the level of political praxis, his re-description of liberalism leaves us with a conception of liberalism that is essentially unchanged. Whilst Rorty has re-situated liberalism from the philosophical to the political, his solution fails to address any internal problems. (shrink)