Conscientious objection to participating in induced abortion is not present in the Finnish health care system or legislation unlike in many other European countries.

Research on the predictors of outcome for early, community-based, and time-limited interventions targeted for clinical depression in adolescents is still scarce. We examined the role of demographic, psychosocial, and clinical variables as predictors of outcome in a trial conducted in Finnish school health and welfare services to identify factors associating to symptom reduction and remission after a brief depression treatment. A total of 55 12–16-year-olds with mild to moderate depression received six sessions of either interpersonal counseling for adolescents or brief (...) psychosocial support. Both interventions resulted in clinical improvement at end of treatment and 3- and 6-month follow-ups. Main outcome measures were self-rated BDI-21 and clinician-rated Adolescent Depression Rating Scale. Latent change score models were used to identify predictors of change in depressive symptom scores and clinical remission at end of treatment and 3- and 6-month follow-ups over the combined brief intervention group. Symptom improvement was predicted by younger age and having a close relationship with parents. Both symptom improvement and clinical remission were predicted by male gender, not having comorbid anxiety disorder, and not having sleep difficulties. Our results add to knowledge on factors associating with good treatment outcome after a brief community intervention for adolescent depression. Brief depression interventions may be useful and feasible especially for treatment of mild and moderate depression among younger adolescents and boys, on the other hand clinicians may need to cautiously examine sleep problems and anxiety comorbidity as markers of the need for longer treatment. (shrink)

This book addresses the geopolitical notion of the 'Arctic' through the everyday experiences of children. It explores the Arctic as various materializations that matter to, condition and define childhoods in Nordic countries. Presenting nine thematically very different but theoretically and methodologically coherent studies, it enables readers to gain an in-depth understanding of a selection of recent sociomaterialist, posthumanist and post-anthropocentric research on childhood in the Nordic context. The book offers new ideas and insights as to what matters in children's lives (...) - in Arctic contexts. (shrink)

Plotinus, the founder of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy, conceptualises two different notions of self : the corporeal and the rational. Personality and imperfection mark the former, while goodness and a striving for understanding mark the latter. In this text, Dr Remes grounds the two selfhoods in deep-seated Platonic ontological commitments, following their manifestations, interrelations and sometimes uneasy coexistence in philosophical psychology, emotional therapy and ethics. Plotinus' interest lies in what it means for a human being to be a temporal (...) and a corporeal thing, yet capable of abstract and impartial reasoning, of self-government and perhaps even invulnerability. The book argues that this involves a philosophically problematic rupture within humanity which is, however, alleviated by the psychological similarities and points of contact between the two aspects of the self. The purpose of life is the cultivation of the latter aspect, the true self. (shrink)

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen's perfectionist agonism, Mouffe's adversarial agonism, and William Connolly and James Tully's inclusive agonism. Paxton demonstrates how each is fundamental to (...) enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further. Through discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, Agonistic Democracy provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory. (shrink)

Although Neoplatonism has long been studied, until recently many had dismissed this complex system of ideas as more mystical than philosophical. Recent research, however, has provided a new perspective on this highly influential school of thought, which flourished in the pagan world of Greece and Rome up through late antiquity. Pauliina Remes's lucid, comprehensive, and up-to-date introduction reassesses Neoplatonism's philosophical credentials, from its founding by Plotinus through the closure of Plato's Academy in 529. Using an accessible, thematic approach, she (...) explores the ideas of leading Neoplatonists such as Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Simplicius, and Damascius, as well as less well-known thinkers. She situates their ideas alongside classical Platonism, Stoicism, and the neo-Pythagoreans as well as other intellectual movements of the time, including Gnosticism, Judaism, and Christianity. She also considers Neoplatonism's enduring legacy in the history of philosophical thought, providing a gateway to Neoplatonism for contemporary readers. _Copub: Acumen Publishing Limited_. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. (...) A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

The focus of this article is university teachers’ and students’ views of plagiarism, plagiarism detection, and the use of plagiarism detection software as learning support. The data were collected from teachers and students who participated in a pilot project to test plagiarism detection software at a major university in Finland. The data were analysed through factor analysis, T-tests and inductive content analysis. Three distinct reasons for plagiarism were identified: intentional, unintentional and contextual. The teachers did not utilise plagiarism detection to (...) support student learning to any great extent. We discuss the pedagogical implications and suggest that the contextual reasons for plagiarism require focus primarily on study strategies, whereas the intentional reasons require profound discussion about attitudes and conceptions of good learning and university-level study habits. (shrink)

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into how (...) language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

Plotinus' recognises the possibility of conflict between self-referential aims and the good of the kosmos. His solution resembles closely one attributed sometimes to the Stoics. The inner reformation Plotinus proposes will yield a detached understanding of the whole universe. This view is accompanied by a realisation that one's happiness lies in functioning as a part of the whole and in contributing to the perfection of the universe. Other-regard cannot, therefore, be seen as altogether missing from neoplatonic ethics. What gives Plotinus' (...) ethics an agent-centred spin is its emphasis on how this state can be attained. Promoting the self's true well-being by an inward turn is the only means to an understanding of what is good simpliciter. (shrink)

In this book, Mary Midgely turns a spotlight on the fashionable view that we no longer need or use moral judgements. She shows how the question of whether or not we can make moral judgements must inevitably affect our attitudes to the law and its institutions, but also to events that occur in our daily lives.

Scientific culture in Europe and the refugee generation -- Germany and Weimar Berlin as the City of Science -- Origins of a social perspective: doing physical chemistry in Weimar Berlin -- Chemical dynamics and social dynamics in Berlin and Manchester -- Liberalism and the economic foundations of the "Republic of Science" -- Scientific freedom and the social functions of science -- Political foundations of the philosophies of science of Popper, Kuhn, and Polanyi -- Personal knowledge: argument, audiences, and sociological engagement (...) -- Epilogue: SSK, scientific constructivism, and the paradoxical legacy of Polanyi and the 1930s generation. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her writings, (...) Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Feminism is the movement to end women’s oppression. One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (...) (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. More recently this distinction has come under sustained attack and many view it nowadays with (at least some) suspicion. This entry (around 12 000 words in length) outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the most important issues and developments in one of the fastest growing areas of research in ancient philosophy. An international team of scholars situates and re-evaluates Neoplatonism within the history of ancient philosophy and thought, and explores its influence on philosophical and religious schools worldwide. Over thirty chapters are divided into seven clear parts: sources, instruction and interaction Methods and Styles of Exegesis Metaphysics and Metaphysical Perspectives Language, Knowledge, (...) Soul, and Self Nature: Physics, Medicine and Biology Ethics, Political Theory and Aesthetics The legacy of Neoplatonism. The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism is a major reference source for all students and scholars in Neoplatonism and ancient philosophy, as well as researchers in the philosophy of science, ethics, aesthetics and religion. (shrink)

This is the first modern edition of the works of Lady Mary Shepherd, one of the most important women philosophers of the early modern period. Shepherd has been widely neglected in the history of philosophy, but her work engaged with the dominant philosophers of the time - among them Hume, Berkeley, and Reid. In particular, her 1827 volume Essays on the Perception of an External Universe outlines a theory of causation, perception, and knowledge which Shepherd presents as an alternative to (...) what she sees as the mistaken views of Berkeley and Hume. What she ultimately presents is an original and systematic metaphysics and epistemology. Shepherd's Essays consists of two parts. The first is a theory of perception and knowledge of the external world, which is designed to rebut idealism and skepticism about the external world and show that our ordinary beliefs are based on reason. The second is a collection of essays on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, including the immateriality and eternity of the mind, the relationship between mind and body, the possibility of miracles, the association of ideas, the relationship between physical and mathematical reasoning, and the epistemology of testimony. Antonia LoLordo's edition of Shepherd's Essays includes scholarly notes throughout the text that provide historical and philosophical context and expand on the major concepts of Shepherd's system. Her extensive introduction to Shepherd's life and works surveys some of the major points of Shepherd's system, points out directions for future research, and offers guidance for readers planning to teach her work in their courses. This volume is an invaluable primary resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and early modern philosophy. (shrink)

This paper responds to John Burgess's ‘Mathematics and _Bleak House_’. While Burgess's rejection of hermeneutic fictionalism is accepted, it is argued that his two main attacks on revolutionary fictionalism fail to meet their target. Firstly, ‘philosophical modesty’ should not prevent philosophers from questioning the truth of claims made within successful practices, provided that the utility of those practices as they stand can be explained. Secondly, Carnapian scepticism concerning the meaningfulness of _metaphysical_ existence claims has no force against a _naturalized_ version (...) of fictionalism, according to which our ordinary standards of scientific evidence may show that we have no reason to believe the mathematical existence claims made within the context of our mathematical and scientific theories. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Plotinus treats certain pre‑philosophical concepts as reliable or promising starting‑points for philosophical study. This article studies the way in which he, in the act of philosophizing, conceives of the passage from an unclear understanding, a kind of pre‑concept, to a better, philosophical conception. What are the sources of this passage? What is the role of data given by sense‑perception? In what way are innate conceptual and cognitive capacities involved? It will be argued that the methodology suggested is a Platonic version (...) of the Stoic appeal to common notions (koinai ennoia). Moreover, Plotinus seems to maintain several features of the empirical original. The concepts discussed are not primarily introspected or intuited, but seem to result from both experience and from innate tendencies. The bottom‑up approach of scrutinizing the combination of inquiries in the Enneads (and in a commentary of Proclus) and the methodological remarks made within these same inquiries, exposes, further, an interesting list of concepts significant for the Neoplatonic theory‑building : freedom, oneness, time and eternity, as well as good and evil. (shrink)

This collection studies the various ways and conceptual frameworks with which the ancients approached selfhood.

Inspired and in honor of the work of noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols, the essays in this volume explore political ideas and implications in a range of works of philosophy, literature, and film from classical antiquity to the present day, creating an interdisciplinary conversation across genres.

«Claros del bosque» es uno de los libros esenciales de la trayectoria filosófica de María Zambrano en el que vemos, por primera vez, en marcha su «razón poética». Nadie mejor que la propia autora para presentarnos el significado de esta obra: “«Claros del bosque» dentro de mi pensamiento vertido en lo impreso, salvo alguna excepción, aparece como algo inédito salido de ese escribir irreprimible que brota por sí mismo y que ha ido a parar a cuadernos y hojas que nadie (...) conoce, ni yo misma, reacia que soy a releerme. Tenía que suceder por fuerza. Mas creo que el carácter de ofrenda de «Claros del bosque» a la persona a quien va dedicado en su tránsito tiene que ver en ello, acentuando así el carácter de ofrenda que todo lo que he publicado tiene desde siempre. Nada es de extrañar que la razón discursiva apenas aparezca. Con anterioridad esbocé una ‘Crítica de la razón discursiva’ que no podría prometerme que salga de ese estado. Creo, pues, que como libro es el que más responde a esa ‘idea’ hace tiempo formulada de que ‘pensar es ante todo –como raíz, como acto–– descifrar lo que se siente’, entendiendo por sentir el ‘sentir originario’, expresión usada por mí desde hace años. Y también que ‘el hombre es el ser que padece su propia trascendencia’ en un incesante proceso de unificación entre pasividad y conocimiento, entre ser y vida. Vida verdadera, sorprendida tan sólo en algunos claros que se abren en la espesura inicial entre cielo y tierra. Y en el remoto horizonte donde cielo y tierra, ser y vida, vida y muerte se anegan”. (shrink)

How do we act justly in the world? How can we ethically respond to social and economic crisis and the desperation caused by violence and atrocity? Justice and Love is a philosophical dialogue on how to imagine and act in a more just world by theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher Mary Zournazi. Drawing on examples from the European Migrant Crisis to Brexit, the authors reflect on justice as a condition of being rather than cold fact. Looking at different religious and (...) philosophical traditions to enrich our language of justice, this book explores the love and patience needed for social healing and the imagination required to experience the world in new ways. (shrink)

En este libro, la autora desarrolla su concepción del juicio reflexionante inspirada en Emmanuel Kant y en Hannah Arendt para concentrarse en cómo cierto tipo de narraciones modelan nuestras nociones de lo que consideramos moral. Lara nos ofrece distintas concepciones sobre el mal en su formulación histórica mediante los ejemplos de las tragedias griegas, las diferentes concepciones sobre el mal en la obra de Shakespeare, el uso literario de la metáfora en la obra de Joseph Conrad y en narraciones fílmicas (...) que describen la crueldad humana. Lara sugiere que el aprendizaje moral es un proceso en el que intervienen las instituciones sociales, la voluntad de los individuos y de las sociedades para comprometerse a un debate abierto y con ello modelar los juicios colectivos sobre el pasado. Lara enfatiza que el juicio reflexionante se da entre un evento, una narración de dicho evento y la recepción pública de dicha narrativa. En este libro se aportan importantes métodos para la comprensión del fenómeno moral del mal, porque introducen nuevas verdades desvelatorias acerca de eventos particulares que no pueden ser simplemente captados por medio de categorías conceptuales. Lara utiliza como fuentes a Jürgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Primo Levi, Giorgio Agamben y Ariel Dorfman para probar la conclusión de este tipo de narraciones: la acción (de crueldad) ata de manera definitiva al perpetrador con su víctima. (shrink)

This article argues that the academic values associated with intellectual freedom are incommensurable with those of industry which permeate recent related government initiatives associated with enterprise education and quality audit and assessment. It concludes that if industrial values are implanted in universities, they will destroy the academic values on which open intellectual enquiry and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge depend.

There is a village in the north of Finland with some thirty inhabitants. While the villagers do not lead the idyllic lives that are sold as images to tourists, they also do not lead lives of depression, alcoholism, poverty, and seclusion—an image generated by research results from the likes of National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health. The ill-being of rural northern villages is well documented in large-scale quantitative research,1 but qualitative research on the actual well-being, of what (...) is already good and fulfilling, is scarce. In this paper I present a research project in education in which I have collected the data through a year-long correspondence with four participants from .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beauty in the Context of Particular LivesPauliina Rautio (bio)IntroductionThere is a village in the north of Finland with some thirty inhabitants. While the villagers do not lead the idyllic lives that are sold as images to tourists, they also do not lead lives of depression, alcoholism, poverty, and seclusion—an image generated by research results from the likes of National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health. The ill-being (...) of rural northern villages is well documented in large-scale quantitative research,1 but qualitative research on the actual well-being, of what is already good and fulfilling, is scarce.In this paper I present a research project in education in which I have collected the data through a year-long correspondence with four participants from a small village. Letters in this correspondence were exchanged once a month in a way that everyone read everyone’s letters. I asked the participants to write about beauty. The aim of this research has been to find out what kind of place beauty, as defined by the participants themselves, holds in the their everyday lives. In this paper I will discuss some challenges of researching everyday beauty empirically. I will also concentrate on selected findings that highlight the importance of context in discussing experiences and use of beauty.Everyday life2 has been characterized in research by concepts such as “time,” “space,” “rhythm,” and “bodily movement.”3 These concepts embrace an idea of a continuum and refer to everyday life as subjectively experienced and actively engaged in. Everyday life is a contextual process but one that nevertheless defies definitions bound in time and space. This is because as subjectively experienced, it entails simultaneously the past, the present, and the future as necessary for the managing of it. By managing of everyday life I mean a practice that consists of constant reflection, evaluation, and steering, but one that we are mostly unaware of engaging [End Page 38] in. We are in a way creating our everyday lives as we go. This makes the everyday a subjective construct instead of an objectively definable unit such as “a Monday.” And so, instead of an attempt to tame the very vague notion of “everyday” as something universally shared,4 this research delves into particular individuals’ everyday lives as uniquely managed continuums. And to strike a rare positive chord to research on rural northern villages, I have chosen aesthetics, the notion of beauty in particular, as the vantage point to this making of everyday.I’m aligning with Ludwig Wittgenstein and quoting Katya Mandoki in stating that “beauty is a linguistic effect used by a particular subject to describe personal experiences and social conventions... a linguistic categorisation of a non-linguistic experience.”5 And despite the ambivalence that surrounds beauty as a concept in scholarly discussion, it is to be noted that it has remained in constant use in everyday conversation of common experience. When commonly used, “beautiful” still signals admiration, excellence, and that which is desirable.6 Beauty is therefore future-oriented, bringing about replication, distribution, and a wish to protect.7 As such a concept and a word of everyday use, “beauty” orients us to concentrate on the desirable in our lives at present. In doing so it guides us to evaluate this desirableness in light of the past and commits us to replicate and protect it for the future. Embedded in the use of the concept of beauty is thus a continuum of evaluating one’s relation to her surroundings. As beauty is not a quality of objects in themselves but an effect of the relation between the experiencing subjects and certain objects,8 it is not the objects of everyday beauty that I explore but the relation of particular people to their everyday life environments through ways of using and expressing beauty.The significance in thinking of beauty as something we create and use rather than something that exists objectively is in the realization that we can change what we find beautiful. Beauty as used by a particular subject is not fixed but changes and mirrors the changing of that subject herself. In realizing beauty this way, it becomes a... (shrink)

In the Timaeus, human bodies are treated as homeostatic systems, striving to maintain their natural state. This striving constitutes Plato’s explanatory framework for perception: perceptions come about when the equilibrium is shaken, and when it is restored. The article makes two main suggestions: first, that experienced pleasure and pain are grounded in non-experiential departures from and restorations of the natural state. Second, that the striving to maintain the natural state grounds perceptual interests, especially through conscious algesic and hedonic affection. Explanation (...) of what humans find desirable and avoidable in their environment – what they attend to – is a complicated story that in the context of the Timaeus must include the role of human rational abilities. This article, however, only sheds light on its other, very basic aspect: the teleology involved in bodies and how it affects perceptual interests. (shrink)

La renommée nationale et internationale de Pierre Bourdieu lui est venue de la sociologie, une sociologie un peu particulière, dite " des élites ", ou plus communément, " de la domination ", au fil de laquelle il ne se fit pas faute de fustiger les représentants de celle qu'il appelait " La discipline du couronnement ", la philosophie. C'était là pourtant son terroir d'origine, sa formation première, et la seule dans laquelle il possédât un diplôme. Mais il ne voyait dans (...) ses anciens " collègues " que des lectors figés dans une position scolastique qui les éloignait des urgences du monde et du " sens pratique ". Pourtant, c'est à l'aide de La philosophie qu'il critique la philosophie, et vise à l'éduquer, qu'il forge les concepts majeurs de sa sociologie, comme l'habitus, la violence symbolique. Et l'enjeu de ses recherches est encore un enjeu philosophique, qui le rapproche de ceux qui ont voulu transformer le monde, au lieu de se borner à le penser. (shrink)

Dentro de la tradición de la hermenéutica filosófica y, más específicamente, de la ontología hermenéutica del filósofo alemán H.G. Gadamer, "Interpretar y argumentar" constituye una indagación en el modelo de racionalidad propio ...

This chapter contains sections titled: The “Symptoms” of Love What is Love The Biology of Romantic Love Rejection in Love Conclusion.

This chapter contains sections titled: Terms and Traditions The Burden of Being The Setting of Exteriority The Undesirable Conclusion Endnotes.