Its critics to the contrary, the “gift of life” metaphor is not to be blamed for the indebtedness and guilt that organ recipients often experience. It is certainly misused, however, both by post‐transplant caregivers, who exploit it to manipulate recipients' behavior, and by the organ procurement system, which has failed to understand that the decision to give the gift of life must be approached communally.

Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course interprets Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymn "The Ister" within the context of Hölderlin’s poetic and philosophical work, with particular emphasis on Hölderlin’s dialogue with Greek tragedy.

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)

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger's collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger's unique phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle's Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and (...) Time. Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology. (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)

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. _Psychological Knowledge_ challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns. Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophical approach constitutes an advance. We see that exists a substantial natural amount (...) of philosophical theorising, a body of work that tries to determine the nature and structure of folk psychology. An introduction to the workings of constuctivism, _Psychological Knowledge_ is an insightful introduction to the history of psychology and the recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Martin Davies; V*—Idiom and Metaphor, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 67–86, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

The vast majority of research in nursing ethics over the last decade indicates that nurses may not be fully prepared to ‘deliver the good’ for their patients, or to contribute appropriately in the wider current health care climate. When suitable research projects were evaluated for this article, one key question emerged: if nurses are educationally better prepared than ever before to exercise their ethical decision-making skills, why does research still indicate that the expected practice-based improvements remain elusive? Hence, a number (...) of ideas gleaned from recent research about the current nature of nursing ethics, and especially teaching nursing ethics to student nurses, are analysed and critiqued in this article, which concludes with a cluster of ideas and conclusions based on that analysis. It is hoped that such a review may serve as a catalyst for nurse educators to re-examine their teaching practices with a view to enhancing good nursing practice through educational means. (shrink)

Unlike earlier attempts to prove the completeness of the table of judgments, this book takes the fundamental position that an answer can only be found in the context of a basic interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason that encompasses the metaphysical and transcendental deduction of the categories and ideas, the role played by cognitive capacity, transcendental apperception, and the theory of affects.

Die Abhandlung "Sein und Zeit" erschien zuerst im Frühjahr 1927 in dem von Edmund Husserl herausgegebenen "Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung", Band VIII, und gleichzeitig als Sonderdruck. Als eines der berühmtesten und wirkungsmächtigsten philosophischen Bücher des 20. Jahrhunderts ist es ein unverzichtbarer Quellentext für die Philosophie, übersetzt in über 25 Sprachen der Welt. Dreißig Jahre nach dem Tod Martin Heideggers (1889-1976) wird sein epochemachendes Hauptwerk über den Sinn des Seins nun neu gesetzt aufgelegt, um das Werk seinen zahlreichen (...) Leserinnen und Lesern in aller Welt wieder in einem ansprechenden Druck zu präsentieren. Diese 19. Auflage ist textidentisch, zeilen- und seitengleich mit den zuletzt unveränderten Nachdrucken der 15. anhand der Gesamtausgabe durchgesehenen Auflage mit den Randbemerkungen aus dem Handexemplar des Autors im Anhang. (shrink)

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".

In the Anthropocene, the fact that human activity is enmeshed with the existence and actions of every kind of other being is inescapable. As a result, the planetary ecological crisis has brought forth an urgent need to rethink understandings of human action. One response holds that the transformations necessary to tackle today’s crises will emerge from the distinctive capacity of human beings to transcend their environment. Another school of thought calls for seeing action as composite, produced by distributed networks of (...) human and nonhuman agents. Yet the first of these is open to charges of human exceptionalism, while the second, according to its critics, lacks effective political traction. Martin Crowley argues that a new conception of political agency is necessary to break this impasse. Engaging with thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, and Catherine Malabou, Crowley proposes an original account of agency as both distributed and decisive. Challenging the prevailing view of agency as exclusively human, he explores how a politics that incorporates nonhuman agency can intervene in the real world, examining timely issues such as climate-related migration and digital-algorithmic politics. A major intervention into ongoing debates in posthumanism, political ecology, and political theory, Accidental Agents reshapes our understanding of political agency in and for a more-than-human world. (shrink)

Martin Hollis; Education as a Positional Good, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 235–244, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.146.

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

To assess the merits and demerits of the content of Culp’s educational programme, the paper does three things: First, it discusses whether Culp’s defence against conceivable objections manages to effectively dispel the charge of cosmopolitan arrogance. Second, it spells out one implication of epistemic modesty, which Culp considers a core competence to be imparted by citizenship education. Third, it reflects upon the tricky task of motivating individuals to comply with the demands of justice. Taken together, the paper argues that Culp’s (...) case is impressively strong but nevertheless tends to suffer from a rationalist constriction. It does not leave sufficient room for tradition in private life and public reasoning. This rationalist constriction is problematic from a normative philosophical, and especially a practice-oriented viewpoint. (shrink)

According to recent empirical research (Transparency International, 2013), nearly 15% of people worldwide admitted to having paid a bribe in an educational setting. Given the nature of corruption,...

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)

This book examines the work of the Czech Philosopher Jan Patočka from the largely neglected perspective of religion. Patočka is known primarily for his work in phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy, and also as a civil rights activist and a critic of modernity. He also maintained a persistent and increasing interest in Christianity, Martin Koci shows, and indeed his first and last publications concerned religion and theology. This book examines the theological motifs in Patočka's work, and brings his thought (...) into discussion with recent developments in phenomenology, making a case for Patočka as a forerunner to what has become known as the theological turn in continental philosophy. Koci systematically examines his thoughts on the relationship between theology and philosophy, and his perennial struggle with the idea of crisis. For Patočka, modernity, metaphysics, and Christianity were all in different kinds of crises, and Koci demonstrates how his work responded to those crises theologically. Thinking Faith after Christianity thus provides new insights on theology understood as the task of thinking and living transcendence in a problematic world. It perceives the un-thought element of Christianity - what Patočka identified as its greatest resource and potential - not as a weakness, but as a credible way to ponder Christian faith and the Christian mode of existence after the proclaimed death of God and the end of metaphysics. (shrink)

A political challenge facing constitutional democracies in Africa is the lack of adequate representation and participation of citizens in democratic processes and institutions. This challenge is manifest in the vesting of power solely in, and the exercise of this power by, a sectional group – the majority party – to the exclusion of others; as evinced in the liberal democratic systems extensively practised on the continent. Wiredu proposes as a solution to these challenges the adoption of consensual democracy; an indigenous, (...) non-party democratic system rooted in the traditional African humanist and communitarian conceptions of the individual and the community, in which political decisions are characteristically reached by consensus. In this article, I present a critical exposition of Wiredu’s consensual democracy and defend it against liberal democracy on the one hand, and criticisms levelled against it on the other hand. I also offer some modifications to Wiredu’s theory in a bid to render it more suitable for practice in Africa. (shrink)

"The condition Buber calls the 'eclipse of God' is the reality that modern life and the teachings of many scholars have in many ways destroyed the opportunity for intimacy with an eternal, ever-present, Thou, or God. Based in part on a series of lectures he gave in the United States in 1951, this book examines Buber's interpretations of Western thinking and belief around this notion of lost intimacy or direct contact with the Divine, focusing particularly on the relationships between religion (...) and philosophy, ethics, and Jungian psychology." --"Reference and Research Book News". (shrink)

To consequentialise a moral theory means to account for moral phenomena usually described in nonconsequentialist terms, such as rights, duties, and virtues, in a consequentialist framework. This paper seeks to show that all moral theories can be consequentialised. The paper distinguishes between different interpretations of the consequentialiser’s thesis, and emphasises the need for a cardinal ranking of acts. The paper also offers a new answer as to why consequentialising moral theories is important: This yields crucial methodological insights about how to (...) pursue ethical inquires. (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)

This article explores the social and ethical elements of cultural safety and combines them in a model of culturally safe practice that should be of interest and relevance for nurses, nurse educators and nurse ethicists in other cultures. To achieve this, the article briefly reviews and critiques the main underpinnings of the concept from its origins and development in New Zealand, describes its sociocultural and sociopolitical elements, and provides an in-depth exploration of the key socioethical elements. Finally, a model is (...) presented to illustrate the strong connection between the social and ethical components of cultural safety that combine to produce culturally safe practice through the activities of a ‘socioethical’ nurse. (shrink)

Starting with Popper, social theorists across the board have acknowledged that traditions serve socially valuable functions. However, while traditions are usually understood as ‘living’ entities that come in overlapping varieties and evolve over time, the socially valuable functions attributed to tradition tend to presuppose invariability in ways of thinking and acting. Addressing this tension, this article provides a detailed analysis of the concept of tradition, and directs special attention to conceivable criteria for the authentic continuation of a tradition. It is (...) argued that the ways of thinking and acting that constitute the material of a tradition must – among faithful members of that tradition – stand in a relation of equivalence – not identity or similarity. The implications of this account concern our ability to decide (normatively) conflicts over authenticity among rival tradition branches as well as the role that traditions play in policy-making. (shrink)

Ist der menschliche Intellekt materiell? Oder können wir mit Verweis auf seine intentionalen Tätigkeiten wie allgemeine Erkenntnis oder Selbsterkenntnis zeigen, dass er immateriell ist? Besteht also ein Zusammenhang zwischen Intentionalität und Immaterialität? Mit Philosophie des Geistes im Spätmittelalter bietet Martin Klein eine umfassende Darstellung der Philosophie des Geistes von Johannes Buridan im Zusammenhang seiner Erkenntnistheorie, Metaphysik und Naturphilosophie. Vor dem Hintergrund neuester Editionen wird Buridan im Kontext der spätmittelalterlichen Debatte über die Natur des menschlichen Intellekts und seine kognitiven Vermögen (...) prätsentiert. In this volume, Martin Klein offers a comprehensive account of John Buridan's philosophy of mind in the context of the late medieval debate about the nature of the human intellect and how this influences its cognitive functioning. (shrink)

Background:Background: In general, qualitative research design often involves merging together various data collection strategies, and researcher’s may need to be prepared to spend longer periods i...

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".

Reflections on, and analysis of, ethical issues facing military service in the United States.

The thesis of social constructionism is that emotions are shaped by culture and society. I build on this insight to show that existing social constructionist views of emotions, while providing valid research methods, overly restrict the scope of the social constructionist agenda. The restriction is due to the ontological assumption that social construction is indissociable from language. In the first part, I describe the details of the influential social constructionist views of Averill and Harré. Drawing on recent theorizing in psychology, (...) I suggest that their fixation on language makes these approaches inadequate to the analysis of the social construction of human emotional experience. In the second part, I extend the argument to other species, suggesting that these social constructionist views are incapable of accommodating the fact, ascertained by primatologists, that animals have cultures, and that part of animal culture concerns the social molding of their emotions. I conclude that a reconstructed social constructionism should be regarded not as inimical to, but as part and parcel of, a nonreductive biology of emotions. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the nature of choice in virtue theory. If several different actions are available to the virtuous agent, they are also likely to vary in their degree of virtue, at least in some situations. Yet, it is widely agreed that once an action is recognised as virtuous there is no higher level of virtue. In this paper we discuss how the virtue theorist could accommodate both these seemingly conflicting ideas. We discuss this (...) issue from a modern Aristotelian perspective, as opposed to a purely exegetic one. We propose a way of resolving what seems to be a major clash between two central features of virtue ethics. Our proposal is based on the notion of parity, a concept which recently has received considerable attention in the literature on axiology. Briefly put, two alternatives are on a par (or are ‘roughly equal’) if they are comparable, although it is not the case that one is better than the other, nor that they are equally good. The advantages of applying the concept of parity to our problem are twofold. Firstly, it sheds new light on the account of choice in virtue theory. Secondly, some of the criticisms that have been mounted against the possibility of parity can be countered by considering the notion of choice from a virtue theory perspective. (shrink)

Prekäres Wissen handelt nicht von den großen Themen der Metaphysik und Epistemologie, sondern von Randzonen wie der Magie und der Numismatik, der Bibelinterpretation und der Orientalistik. Es geht nicht nur um Theorien, sondern auch um Furcht und Faszination, nicht um die großen Forschergestalten, sondern um vergessene und halbvergessene Gelehrte. Es ist ein Buch voller spannender Geschichten, eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit und zugleich der ambitionierte Versuch, den Begriff des Wissens selbst im Zeichen des" material turn", des" iconic turn"und der (...) Kommunikations- und Informationsgeschichte neu zu denken. (shrink)

What does it take for an individual to be personally responsible for behaviors that lead to increased risk of disease? We examine three approaches to responsibility that cover the most important aspects of the discussion of responsibility and spell out what it takes, according to each of them, to be responsible for behaviors leading to increased risk of disease. We show that only what we call the causal approach can adequately accommodate widely shared intuitions to the effect that certain causal (...) influences—such as genetic make-up or certain social circumstances—diminish, or undermine personal responsibility. However, accepting the causal approach most likely makes personal responsibility impossible. We therefore need either to reject these widely shared intuitions about what counts as responsibility-softening or undermining or to accept that personal responsibility for behaviors leading to increased risk of disease rests on premises so shaky that personal responsibility is probably impossible. (shrink)

This special issue is motivated by the observation that conservatism plays a marginal role in contemporary philosophy even though it appears to be of considerable importance in moral, social, and political reality. One reason for this neglect is that defenders of conservatism have often refrained from articulating their arguments in a language that is acceptable to and understandable by analytically -trained philosophers. The contributions of this special issue show that conservatism can profitably be approached from the point of view of (...) analytic philosophy. Many of them are indebted to Jerry Cohen’s (2012) seminal paper on conservative value, which develops a sophisticated justification of what Oakeshott (1991) called the disposition to be conservative. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to van de Poel’s claim that new technologies should be conceived as ongoing social experiments, which is an idea originally introduced by Schinzinger and Martin in the 1970s. I discuss and criticize three possible motivations for thinking of new technologies as ongoing social experiments.