This essay attempts to illustrate the vital dialogue there is between architecture and theatre, not only in the sense that the former resembles a worldly stage but also in the way it intentionally designates spaces for events to be seen and experienced. The origins of architecture go back to the erection of spaces to facilitate the dialogue between humans and gods. The stage is the embodiment and objectification of the flow of life. It makes it possible to contemplate both the (...) present and the past thereby creating narratives. Architecture is also a mediator for us to observe our own actions. The theatrical quality of space in relation to the movements of the body and the bodily perceptions of spatial elements, leads to an active participation in the unfolding of meanings. The city has not only been defined as theatre by many urbanists; it has also throughout history been designed and formed as a natural stage. Baroque Rome, the impressionists’ paintings of Paris, or Byzantine Constantinople with its many spectacles illustrate well this dimension of the city. (shrink)

That the Latin word translatio translates the Greek word metaphora is not a coincidence. Translatio designates two interrelated instances of linguistic “transportation,” one phenomenological and conceptual, the other idiomatic, hermeneutic and intercultural. The person who calls an unsavoury man a swine may be said to ”trans-late,” ”trans-fer,” or carry over a set of perceived characteristics – for example, the inarticulate grunts and filthiness of the animal rolling in mud – from one realm (that of the animal) to another (that of (...) man). In the other kind of translation, the translator carries a literary work over from one linguistic and cultural setting to another. Let us fuse the two meanings of translatio and inquire into the Aristotelian concept of metaphoraitself. Does it translate into a linguistic, cultural and conceptual setting as different as that of early China? If it does, then under which conditions and circumstances? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authorial Authority in Ancient ChinaMartin SvenssonWriting and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Pp. vii + 544. Paper.The appearance of Mark Edward Lewis' second book, Writing and Authority in Early China, is a long-awaited event in the sinological world. Divided into eight chapters and with the main text running 365 pages, this (...) book is an exceptionally rich study of the intellectual world(s) of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty, approaching its objects of investigation from a variety of different positions. The implicit questions "How do texts speak 'with authority'?" and "How, and for what reasons, are certain texts canonized or deemed apocryphal?" allow Lewis to demonstrate the different strategies used by state bureaucrats, writers of history, diviners, philosophical schools, poets, and reciters of poetry to "authorize" their discourse. The interrelationship and interdependence of Text and State is an all-pervasive theme excellently dealt with in the two crowning chapters here on the establishment of the Confucian canon during the Han dynasty.Lewis has a clear and concise style, a keen sense for spotting significant connections between seemingly disparate phenomena, and a most impressive grasp of primary and secondary sources—even if the absence, in the bibliography, of the Guodian texts, Martin Kern's 1997 Die Hymnen der Chinesischen Staatsopfer, David Schaberg's 1996 thesis "Foundations of Chinese Historiography," Shirakawa Shizuka's 1976 Kanji no sekai (in a new 1997 edition), and, perhaps, Christopher Connery's very recent The Empire of the Text (1998) suggests that we may have been forced to wait for this book for some time. (Christoph Harbsmeier's 1995 article "Notions of Time and History" also offers some important musings on the notion of writing in early China.) Considering its breadth, the book has very few factual errors, one being the use of "Mao commentary" to refer to the entire commentarial section included in the Mao Edition of the Odes, another being the claim that the Odes themselves use tropes such as bi and xing, when in fact these concepts were inventions of the scholastic commentators. Arthur Waley's important 1933 article "The Book of Changes" could have been mentioned in the discussion of Richard Kunst's and Edward Shaughnessy's works on the Changes.In what follows I will do no more than make a few remarks in order to initiate the reader into the organizing principles of what, in the final analysis, can only be described as a first-rate scholarly work. I will then endeavor a small contribution, [End Page 614] inspired by some of Lewis' theses, to the discussion about textuality and power in early China.Before anything else, the reader should be informed about the two peculiarities that shape the book's line of argument. Let us first consider the relation between the title and the contents of the book. "Writing" is used not only in the sense of "the act of putting brush (or any other instrument of writing) to silk (or any other medium)," or merely in the sense of "(physical) text," but also in the sense of the "contents of a text." Similarly, "authority" refers to governmental, bureaucratic, or imperial "power," as well as to the "authority" invested in a discourse by way of its rhetorical force, by its intertextual references to ancient sagely texts, or by its function as mouthpiece for institutions of power (e.g., the ruler or the philosophical master). The polysemic title thus allows the author to shift focus several times and, without contradiction, speak simultaneously of the uses of (physical) writing as a means of bureaucratic communication during the early Zhou and of the interaction of State canon (qua the dogmatic contents of the canonical texts) and the imperial exercise of power during the Han. And, indeed, since Chinese philosophy is eminently occupied with theories of governmental power, one sometimes suspects that Lewis uses the long-standing academic buzzwords "writing" and "authority" in this vague fashion as a foil for creating what is arguably the best general introduction to early Chinese thought available in Western languages today. However, despite the Foucauldian... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authorial Authority in Ancient ChinaMartin SvenssonWriting and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Pp. vii + 544. Paper.The appearance of Mark Edward Lewis' second book, Writing and Authority in Early China, is a long-awaited event in the sinological world. Divided into eight chapters and with the main text running 365 pages, this (...) book is an exceptionally rich study of the intellectual world(s) of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty, approaching its objects of investigation from a variety of different positions. The implicit questions "How do texts speak 'with authority'?" and "How, and for what reasons, are certain texts canonized or deemed apocryphal?" allow Lewis to demonstrate the different strategies used by state bureaucrats, writers of history, diviners, philosophical schools, poets, and reciters of poetry to "authorize" their discourse. The interrelationship and interdependence of Text and State is an all-pervasive theme excellently dealt with in the two crowning chapters here on the establishment of the Confucian canon during the Han dynasty.Lewis has a clear and concise style, a keen sense for spotting significant connections between seemingly disparate phenomena, and a most impressive grasp of primary and secondary sources—even if the absence, in the bibliography, of the Guodian texts, Martin Kern's 1997 Die Hymnen der Chinesischen Staatsopfer, David Schaberg's 1996 thesis "Foundations of Chinese Historiography," Shirakawa Shizuka's 1976 Kanji no sekai (in a new 1997 edition), and, perhaps, Christopher Connery's very recent The Empire of the Text (1998) suggests that we may have been forced to wait for this book for some time. (Christoph Harbsmeier's 1995 article "Notions of Time and History" also offers some important musings on the notion of writing in early China.) Considering its breadth, the book has very few factual errors, one being the use of "Mao commentary" to refer to the entire commentarial section included in the Mao Edition of the Odes, another being the claim that the Odes themselves use tropes such as bi and xing, when in fact these concepts were inventions of the scholastic commentators. Arthur Waley's important 1933 article "The Book of Changes" could have been mentioned in the discussion of Richard Kunst's and Edward Shaughnessy's works on the Changes.In what follows I will do no more than make a few remarks in order to initiate the reader into the organizing principles of what, in the final analysis, can only be described as a first-rate scholarly work. I will then endeavor a small contribution, [End Page 614] inspired by some of Lewis' theses, to the discussion about textuality and power in early China.Before anything else, the reader should be informed about the two peculiarities that shape the book's line of argument. Let us first consider the relation between the title and the contents of the book. "Writing" is used not only in the sense of "the act of putting brush (or any other instrument of writing) to silk (or any other medium)," or merely in the sense of "(physical) text," but also in the sense of the "contents of a text." Similarly, "authority" refers to governmental, bureaucratic, or imperial "power," as well as to the "authority" invested in a discourse by way of its rhetorical force, by its intertextual references to ancient sagely texts, or by its function as mouthpiece for institutions of power (e.g., the ruler or the philosophical master). The polysemic title thus allows the author to shift focus several times and, without contradiction, speak simultaneously of the uses of (physical) writing as a means of bureaucratic communication during the early Zhou and of the interaction of State canon (qua the dogmatic contents of the canonical texts) and the imperial exercise of power during the Han. And, indeed, since Chinese philosophy is eminently occupied with theories of governmental power, one sometimes suspects that Lewis uses the long-standing academic buzzwords "writing" and "authority" in this vague fashion as a foil for creating what is arguably the best general introduction to early Chinese thought available in Western languages today. However, despite the Foucauldian... (shrink)

Background In this study, we examined the ethical implications of Egypt’s new clinical trial law, employing the ethical framework proposed by Emanuel et al. and comparing it to various national and supranational laws. This analysis is crucial as Egypt, considered a high-growth pharmaceutical market, has become an attractive location for clinical trials, offering insights into the ethical implementation of bioethical regulations in a large population country with a robust healthcare infrastructure and predominantly treatment-naïve patients. Methods We conducted a comparative analysis (...) of Egyptian law with regulations from Sweden and France, including the EU Clinical Trials Regulation, considering ethical human subject research criteria, and used a directed approach to qualitative content analysis to examine the laws and regulations. This study involved extensive peer scrutiny, frequent debriefing sessions, and collaboration with legal experts with relevant international legal expertise to ensure rigorous analysis and interpretation of the laws. Results On the rating of the seven different principles (social and scientific values, scientific validity, fair selection of participants, risk-benefit ratio, independent review, informed consent and respect for participants) Egypt, France, and EU regulations had comparable scores. Specific principles (Social Value, Scientific Value, and Fair selection of participants) were challenging to directly identify due to certain regulations embodying 'implicit' principles more than explicitly stated ones. Conclusion The analysis underscores Egypt's alignment with internationally recognized ethical principles, as outlined by Emanuel et al., through its comparison with French, Swedish, and EU regulations, emphasizing the critical need for Egypt to continuously refine its ethical regulations to safeguard participant protection and research integrity. Key issues identified include the necessity to clarify and standardize the concept of social value in research, alongside concerns regarding the expertise and impartiality of ethical review boards, pointing towards a broader agenda for enhancing research ethics in Egypt and beyond. (shrink)

En el breve tratado _Del rimaritarsi_ (1542) el humanista italiano Sperone Speroni aborda un tema de interés en el Renacimiento, el de las viudas y las segundas nupcias. Se parte del análisis de este texto y se confronta con los de otros humanistas del mismo periodo, como Erasmo, Fusco, Valier, Trissino, Savonarola, Zarrabin, Cabei, Trotto, Dolce o Vives, para poder entender que la defensa del matrimonio también para la viuda es uno de los elementos clave del nuevo concepto de familia (...) en la sociedad moderna. (shrink)

Jecker and colleagues open (2024) a critical and needed dialogue about the ethics of international conferencing. In particular, they focus on proposing a set of principles in selecting the location...

Governments and companies are increasingly promoting and organizing Responsible Innovation. It is, however, unclear how the seemingly incompatible demands for responsibility, which is associated with care and caution, can be harmonized with demands for innovation, which is associated with risk-taking and speed. We turn to the tradition of virtue ethics and argue that it can be a strong accomplice to Responsible Innovation by focussing on the agential side of innovation. Virtue ethics offers an adequate response to the epistemic and moral (...) complexity in innovation and encourages moral behaviour. We enumerate a number of virtues that people involved in Responsible Innovation would need to cultivate both related to responsibility, such as justice, anticipation, civility and inclusion, and virtues related to innovation, such as courage, dedication, curiosity and creativity. We put forward practical wisdom as a key virtue to regulate relevant virtues and to deal with the tension between responsibility and innovation. Practical wisdom helps an agent to find an appropriate mean in exercising and expressing the other virtues—where the mean is relative to the specific context of action and the role and abilities of the agent. (shrink)

In a 2020 article published in volume 9, number 1 of [Filosofia Theoretica]_, _Martin F. Asiegbu and Anthony Chinaemerem Ajah questioned the continued relevance of Afro-communalism. They argued that nothing about communalism makes it African. They also demonstrated how the brand of communalism presented as ‘African’, is too reductive, emphasizes conformism and therefore is against the individual and counter-productive for entire societies in Africa. For the above reasons, they summed that communalism with ‘Afro-’ is irrelevant and needs to end. In (...) a 2021 article published in the same journal in response to the initial submission by Asiegbu and Ajah, Enweh held that their take on Afro-communalism was too harsh. He marshalled out five “issues and difficulties” regarding their critique of the concept. Although Enweh’s critique is a worthwhile invitation to a conversation, which clarifies and complements, his proposal for an interpretative rehabilitation of Afro-communalism in the 21 st century is surely wrongheaded. To respond to Enweh, a review of his critique of Asiegbu and Ajah will foreground the attempt to clarify some parts of Asiegbu and Ajah’s initial position. We will assess Enweh’s arguments in terms of the relevance of the rehabilitation he suggested and question the meaning of what Enweh termed the “amity of ethnic nationalities.” We will argue that Enweh was unable to provide sufficient grounds to show that Asiegbu and Ajah’s critique of Afro-communalism was “uninformed… [and] harsh.” We will also demonstrate that his critique of their views was indefensible just as he was unable to explain what he meant by the alternative model he claimed to introduce in the discussion. (shrink)

The International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR) enjoys universal acclaim as the source of the best standards and definition of human rights. This paper argues that the IBHR is inspired by liberalism and harbours ambiguities that open the door to a neoliberal seizure of the rights agenda; and that this effectively destabilises the focus on the IBHR on socio-economic and community rights, and therefore its stated ideal of the equal value of all human rights. I argue that Kwame Gyekye's moderate (...) communitarian political philosophy affords a viable philosophical basis for justification of a more balanced conception of human rights than the theoretical basis of the IBHR does. (shrink)

Supervised machine learning has found its way into ever more areas of scientific inquiry, where the outcomes of supervised machine learning applications are almost universally classified as predictions. I argue that what researchers often present as a mere terminological particularity of the field involves the consequential transformation of tasks as diverse as classification, measurement, or image segmentation into prediction problems. Focusing on the case of machine-learning enabled poverty prediction, I explore how reframing a measurement problem as a prediction task alters (...) the primary epistemic aim of the application. Instead of measuring a property, machine learning developers conceive of their models as predicting a given measurement of this property. I argue that this _predictive reframing_ common to supervised machine learning applications is epistemically and ethically problematic, as it allows developers to externalize concerns critical to the epistemic validity and ethical implications of their model’s inferences. I further hold that the predictive reframing is not a necessary feature of supervised machine learning by offering an alternative conception of machine learning models as measurement models. An interpretation of supervised machine learning applications to measurement tasks as _automatically-calibrated model-based measurements_ internalizes questions of construct validity and ethical desirability critical to the measurement problem these applications are intended to and presented as solving. Thereby, this paper introduces an initial framework for exploring technical, historical, and philosophical research at the intersection of measurement and machine learning. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of whether human rights are related to ontology. It examines perspectives on this question from human rights theories in the Western and African traditions of philosophy and defends the thesis that a good account of human rights requires an explicit ontology of the human, and that taking this seriously engenders divergent conclusions about what rights are. It then proceeds to claim that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights adds substantive features to the International (...) Bill of Human Rights, and that the Charter expresses Kwame Gyekye’s ontology of the human being. (shrink)

There has been considerable progress in investigating collective actions in the last decades. However, the real progress is different from what many scholars take it to be. It lies in the fact that there is by now a wealth of different approaches from a variety of fields. Each approach has carved out fruitful mechanisms for explaining collective action, but is also faced with limitations. Given that situation, we submit that the next step in investigating collective action is to acknowledge the (...) plurality of approaches and bring them into dialogue. With this aim in mind, the present article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of some of the to our mind most relevant approaches to collective action in current debates. We begin with the collective intentionality framework, the team reasoning approach, and social identity theory. Then, we move to ecological social psychology, participatory sense-making, and, through the lenses of those frameworks, dynamical systems theory. Finally, we discuss practice theory. Against this background, we provide a proposal for a synthesis of the successful explanatory mechanisms as they have been carved out by the different research programs. The suggestion is, roughly, to understand collective action as dynamical interaction of a self-organizing system with its environment, shaped by a process of collective sense-making. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to several important tensions between Kant’s account of moral education and his commitment to transcendental idealism. Our main claim is that, in locating freedom outside of space and time, transcendental idealism makes it difficult for Kant to both provide an explanation of how moral education occurs, but also to confirm that his own account actually works. Having laid out these problems, we then offer a response on Kant’s behalf. We argue that, while it might (...) look like Kant has to abandon his commitment to either moral education or transcendental idealism, there is a way in which he can maintain both. (shrink)

Posthuman affirmative ethics relies upon a fluid, nomadic conception of the ethical subject who develops affective, material and immaterial connections to multiple others. Our purpose in this paper is to consider what posthuman affirmative business ethics would look like, and to reflect on the shift in thinking and practice this would involve. The need for a revised understanding of human–animal relations in business ethics is amplified by crises such as climate change and pandemics that are related to ecologically destructive business (...) practices such as factory farming. In this analysis, we use feminist speculative fiction as a resource for reimagination and posthuman ethical thinking. By focusing on three ethical movements experienced by a central character named Toby in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, we show how she is continually becoming through affective, embodied encounters with human and nonhuman others. In the discussion, we consider the vulnerability that arises from openness to affect which engenders heightened response-ability to and with, rather than for, multiple others. This expanded concept of subjectivity enables a more relational understanding of equality that is urgently needed in order to respond affirmatively to posthuman futures. (shrink)

Cognitive approaches contribute to our understanding of delusions by providing an explanatory framework that extends beyond the personal level to the sub personal level of information-processing systems. According to one influential cognitive approach, two factors are required to account for the content of a delusion, its initial adoption as a belief, and its persistence. This chapter reviews Bayesian developments of the two-factor framework.

This book critically explores the depths of Nkrumah’s philosophical thought in order to broaden understanding of it and measures his contributions to contemporary thought in a world in which Africa totters precariously on the peripheries of intellectual influence on human experience.

In this essay I discuss Abraham Joshua Heschel’s influence in the Chinese-reading world by focusing on the growing list of publications about, and translations of, his works in Chinese. By examinin...

This article addresses the use of the ecological notion of ‘response diversity’ (Elmqvist et al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 1(9), 488–494, 2003) to develop a biocentric approach for natural-artificial continuums through the practice of design. The article elaborates upon examples from the project Dispersal machines, part of my postdoctoral research entitled Symbiotic tactics. Dispersal machines proposed two complementary artificial systems that were conceived to minimize the damages by a moth (Spodoptera frugiperda) on crops (corn and soy predominantly) in (...) the agroecosystems of Córdoba, Argentina. The proposals were ideated to biologically control this species by interventions that disseminate and/or host species that predate or parasitize the moth at different stages of its life cycle: a diurnal response, based on the dissemination of parasitized eggs of the moth by a minute wasp (Telenomus remus), as well as a nocturnal response, based on the placement of refuges for bats that feed on the adult moth. Considering these design interventions through the notion of ‘semethic interaction’ (Hoffmeyer 2008) as it relates to the more general term, ‘semiosphere’, the article reflects upon (de)sign as a signifying activity and design’s ‘response-ability’ (Haraway 2016), to speculate upon ways to devise and acknowledge inter-species co-adaptive possibilities. (shrink)

A moral requirement R1 is said to be lexically prior to a moral requirement R2 just in case we are morally obliged to uphold R1 at the expense of R2 – no matter how many times R2 must be violated thereby. While lexical priority is a feature of many ethical theories, and arguably a part of common sense morality, attempts to model it within the framework of decision theory have led to a series of problems – a fact which is (...) sometimes spun as a ‘decision theoretic critique’ of lexical priority. In this paper, I develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of modelling lexical priority while avoiding all extant problems. This will involve introducing several new ingredients into the standard decision theoretic framework, including multidimensional utilities, de minimis risks, and the means to represent two different conceptions of risk. (shrink)

Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of (...) evil and how it might be prevented from doing so. Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper extends the discourse on the importance of the relationship between practitioner and young person as a defining tenet of effective youth work practice, recognising the privileged position occupied by Youth Workers in the social ecology of the young people with whom they work. Reflecting the ethical obligations inherent in this relationship, particularly its focus on enhancing young people’s agency and developmental outcomes, the paper outlines how youth work practice infused with professional love aligns with conceptualizations of an ethic (...) of care. Reporting on interviews conducted with Youth Workers practicing in different settings across one local authority area in the UK, the paper articulates how practitioners’ ethic of care shapes their work with young people, and the extent to which love features as an element of their professional practice. Practitioners describe their motivation to express care that extends beyond legalistic interpretations of their ‘duty of care’ towards young people, using the language of care, love and nurture almost interchangeably. The paper demonstrates the importance of inclusion and reciprocity as fundamental elements of ethical practice, as well as the need to infuse practice with hope, suggesting the value of an affirmative ethic to complement a focus on love and care. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his (...) turn toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

We describe the national health research ethics review system of Uzbekistan and identify policy and program gaps that impede the protection of human research subjects. We find that the National Ethic Committee (NEC), functioning at the national level, is solely responsible for conducting research ethics review. There is little evidence that regional ethics committees work as intended, and there is no research ethics review at medical institutes and research centers even though they conduct CDTs (clinical drug trials). There is no (...) national policy for the ethical review of non-clinical trials. We recommend the establishment of institutional review boards (IRBs) at medical institutes and research centers while at the same time building capacity at the national level to oversee and support the research ethics review system of the entire country. (shrink)

By reading mainly Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?,” the aim of this paper is to illuminate the ontological revelatory function of the nothing that occurs in anxiety. The two parts of this paper describe the same night of anxiety. While the first part shows this night from the point of view of the movement or sweep of anxiety, the second studies this same night from the point of view of the ontological revelatory role of the nothing and its negative logic of (...) disclosure. It is crucial for my analysis to keep apart two different meanings of the nothing. There is the nothing as being’s totally other (nihil negativum), on the one hand, and the nothing as Being, on the other. While with this second meaning one dwells in the realm of the ontological, it is the first meaning-which is the focus of this paper-that secures our access to it. Resumen Mediante la lectura principalmente del texto “¿Qué es metafísica?” de Heidegger, el objetivo de este artículo es iluminar la función reveladora ontológica de la nada que ocurre en la angustia. Las dos secciones de este artículo describen la misma noche de la angustia. Mientras que la primera sección muestra esta noche desde el punto de vista del movimiento o vaivén de la angustia, la segunda estudia esta misma noche desde el punto de vista del papel revelador ontológico de la nada y su lógica negativa de desvelamiento. Para nuestro análisis es crucial mantener separados dos sentidos distintos del concepto de nada: por un lado, está la nada como lo totalmente otro con respecto al ente (nihil negativum); y por el otro lado, la nada como Ser. Si bien con este segundo significado uno habita en el ámbito de lo ontológico, es el primer significado, el cual es el tema central de este artículo, el que asegura nuestro acceso a él. (shrink)

Demands for public participation in technical decision-making are currently high on the agenda of Science & Technology Studies. It is assumed that the democratisation of technical decision-making processes generally leads to more socially desirable and acceptable outcomes. While this may be true in certain cases, this assumption cannot be generalised. I will discuss the case of the so-called ‘South African AZT debate’. The controversy started when President Thabo Mbeki, after reading some scientific papers on the toxicity of AZT, decided to (...) bar the use of the drug in the public health sector as a means to reduce the transmission of HIV from mothers to children. While the scientific mainstream accepts the effectiveness of AZT in reducing the risk of vertical HIV transmission, a few maverick scientists reject the clinical evidence and argue that the risks of using AZT by far outweigh its benefits. Based on various textual sources and using the ‘Periodic Table of Expertises’ developed by Collins and Evans, Mbeki’s expertise at the time of his intervention into the technical question whether AZT is a medicine or a poison can be classified as primary source knowledge. It is shown that this type of expertise is insufficient for technical decision-making. Mbeki’s primary source knowledge legitimated his presentation of the claims of maverick scientists as a serious contribution to the debate—with tragic consequences for tens of thousands of babies.Keywords: Primary source knowledge; Expertise; Technical decision-making; South Africa; AZT; AIDS. (shrink)

Grounded in a will to adapt to dangers, and espouse both responsibility and resilience, voluntary measures have largely replaced one of the oldest public health strategies, quarantine. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, elicited a broad sweep of tactics from the archive of public health armoury. On a general level, this review essay addresses the common measures rolled out by various authorities against the pandemic - the lock-downs, reopening process, financial support and vaccination. By relating these measures to 1) the “plague-stricken town”, (...) deployed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe by the Polizeistaat; 2) the “self-regulation strategy” that emerged with liberal ideas at the end of the eighteenth century; and 3) the “minimum security” programmed by neoliberal governmentality in the second half of the twentieth century, it is suggested that tensions between freedom and security during, and after, the pandemic can be better understood. To end, the essay noticed that the pandemic has enforced tensions in the administration and calibration of individual wishes and collective wellbeing, creating a fragile “freedom-security relationship” and new problem space for self-regulation. (shrink)

Human-wildlife interactions frequently lead to conflicts – about the fair use of natural resources, for example. Various principled accounts have been proposed to resolve such interspecies conflicts. However, the existing frameworks are often inadequate to the complexities of real-life scenarios. In particular, they frequently fail because they do not adequately take account of the qualitative importance of individual interests, their relative importance, and the number of individuals affected. This article presents a limited aggregation account designed to overcome these shortcomings and (...) thus to facilitate decision-making in real-world human-wildlife conflicts. (shrink)

Als praktische Philosophie ist der Pragmatismus an Prinzipien und Mechanismen von Gesellschaft interessiert. Es geht im Kern darum, diese Prinzipien und Mechanismen zu verstehen, Handlungsformen und Institutionen mit Blick auf gesellschaftliche Probleme und deren Behebung zu entwickeln und auf diesem Wege Gesellschaft menschlicher, gerechter und demokratischer zu gestalten. Aus diesem Grund scheint der Pragmatismus für die kritische zeitgenössische Sozialwissenschaft von größter Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Band versammelt eine Reihe von Beiträgen, die das Themenfeld pragmatistischer Sozialforschung näher bestimmen. Diese lassen sich in (...) zwei Gruppen einteilen: Beiträge, die pragmatistische Theorien und Methoden mit anderen Denktraditionen oder Forschungsansätzen ins Gespräch bringen, sowie Beiträge, die pragmatistische Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische, gesellschaftliche Problemlagen beziehen. (shrink)

Mientras que Miguel de Unamuno vivió, su libro Del sentimiento trágico de la vida fue traducido a siete idiomas. Esta circunstancia provocó que los traductores se dirigieran a su autor para comentar la obra así como para hacerle partícipe de algunos problemas que les iban surgiendo. El epistolario conservado entre Miguel de Unamuno y sus traductores nos ofrece así una fuente inestimable de conocimiento para comprender mejor la génesis y el alcance de la que, según Unamuno, fue su obra capital. (...) Gracias al hallazgo de unas cartas inéditas, podemos reconstruir cómo fue el proceso de traducir Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, teniendo en cuenta todos los acontecimientos que se sucedieron al inicio del siglo XX. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to hear that poor school performance, welfare dependancy, youth unemployment, and criminal activity result more from shortcomings in the personal makeup of individuals than from societal forces beyond their control. Are American values declining as so many suggest? And are those values at the root of many social problems today?Shaped by experience and public policies, people's values and social norms do change. What role can or should a democratic government play in shaping values? And how do (...) these values conditon the efficacy of public policy?In this book, six distinguished social scientists identify trends in America's values and their consequences, and consider public policy tools with which some of those values might be changed.Daniel Yankelovich begins with a discussion of how American values have shifted in the last half-century, and argues that affluence is the driving force behind these changes in values. James Q. Wilson argues that destructive habits which can lead to social pathologies, like crime and drug use, are set early in life; he examines how public policy might intervene when children are young to promote better values. David Popenoe maintains that America has veered too far towards industrialist values, and explores the resulting decline of families and many attendant social ills. Nathan Glazer describes the history and present status of the dispute over multicultural education. Jane Mansbridge examines the process of building cooperation, consensus, and public spirit. And George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen discuss the problem of gang criminality.Inthe past, social scientists have often sidestepped questions about values as undefinable, unquantifiable, and somehow unscientific. The essays in this volume address these questions at last.Henry J. Aaron, director of the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the authorof numerous books, including most recently Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care (1991), and coeditor of Setting Domestic Priorities (1992). Thomas E. Mann is director of the Brookings Governmental Studies program, coeditor of Media Polls in American Politics (1992), and coauthor of the Renewing Congress series (1993). Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives at Stanford University. (shrink)