This article aims to respond to the long-lived perceived incompatibility between care and compassion and justice in organizational literature. It is argued that principles of care and compassion and principles of justice are compatible with each other and can be integrated in organizations in such a way that both will supplement each other. Previous researches tend to view concepts of care and compassion and justice either as competing or inheriting some fundamental trade-offs. This article argues that the highlighted incompatibility between (...) care and compassion and justice is mainly due to the limited understanding about the nature of organizational justice. Care and compassion carry elements of subjectivity and are dynamic in nature, whereas literature on organizational justice has described justice as an objective, static and linear construct due to which an incompatibility between these two very important phenomena is prevailing. This incompatibility can be removed by changing the way of looking at organizational justice and by exploring its dynamic nature. (shrink)

Obtaining informed consent is a cornerstone of biomedical research, yet participants comprehension of presented information is often low. The most effective interventions to improve understanding rates have not been identified.

Asian Bioethics Conference (ABC20) was held on 22-25 Nov. 2019 at DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services) auditorium, Mohakhali and NEC (National Election Commission) Auditorium, Agargoan, Dhaka. Conference was organized by Bangladesh Bioethics Society (BBS) in cooperation of DGHS, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare; Social Science Research Council Bangladesh, Ministry of Planning; Bangladesh Medical Research Council, Mohakhali Dhaka; Asian Bioethics Association (ABA) and Eubios Ethics Institute, Thailand, New Zealand’s and Japan. Mr MA Mannan MP, Honorable Planning Minister, Government of (...) the People’s Republic of Bangladesh was the Chief Guest. Dr. Md. Murad Hassan MP, Honorable State Minister, Ministry of Information, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh was present as Special Guest. Md. Nurul Amin, Secretary, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning and Dr Iqbal Kabir, Director, Planning, Monitoring, & Research and Coordinator, DGHS were also present as Special Guests. Bioethics promotes strong ethical values, practice of ethics and morality in Science, Social Science, Commerce and Arts. The conference brought together scholars and policy makers from different disciplines from all around the world to discuss and deliberate the latest issues of bioethics in biomedicine, biotechnology, science, social science, education and research. Around 300 participants from different universities and government officials including 40 foreign delegates from Asia & Pacific and beyond were present at the conference. (shrink)

20th Asian Bioethics conference has been organized by Bangladesh Bioethics Society incooperation with SSRC, Planing Division, Ministry of Planning; PMR, DGHS, Ministry of Health &Family Welfare, Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC), Asian Bioethics Association (ABA) and Eubios Ethics Institute on Friday, 22 Nov, 2019 at NEC Auditorium, Planning Ministry, Agargoan, Dhaka. M. A. Mannan MP, Honorable Minister, Ministry of Planning, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh has kindly consented to grace the occasion as the Chief Guest. Dr. Md. (...) class='Hi'>Murad Hassan MP, Honorable State Minister, Ministry of Information, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh; Md. Nurul Amin, Secretary, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning; Prof Dr Abul Kalam Azad, DG, Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health & Family welfare (MOH&FW) will present as Special Guests. Drlegates from 40 couuntries will attend the ABC 20 at Dhaka. (shrink)

Pretense is a topic of keen interest to philosophers and psychologists. But what is it, really, to pretend? What features qualify an act as pretense? Surprisingly little has been said on this foundational question. Here I defend an account of what it is to pretend, distinguishing pretense from a variety of related but distinct phenomena, such as (mere) copying and practicing. I show how we can distinguish pretense from sincerity by sole appeal to a person's beliefs, desires, and intentions – (...) and without circular recourse to an ‘intention to pretend’ or to a sui generis mental state of ‘imagining.’. (shrink)

The point of this paper is to reveal a dogma in the ordinary conception of sensory imagination, and to suggest another way forward. The dogma springs from two main sources: a too close comparison of mental imagery to perceptual experience, and a too strong division between mental imagery and the traditional propositional attitudes (such as belief and desire). The result is an unworkable conception of the correctness conditions of sensory imaginings—one lacking any link between the conditions under which an imagining (...) aids human action and inference and the conditions under which it is veridical. The proposed solution is, first, to posit a variety of imaginative attitudes—akin to the traditional propositional attitudes—which have different associated correctness (or satisfaction) conditions. The second part of the solution is to allow for imaginings with “hybrid” contents, in the sense that both mental images and representations with language-like constituent structure contribute to the content of imaginings. (shrink)

Abstract: How it is that one's own thoughts can seem to be someone else's? After noting some common missteps of other approaches to this puzzle, I develop a novel cognitive solution, drawing on and critiquing theories that understand inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia as stemming from mismatches between predicted and actual sensory feedback. Considerable attention is paid to forging links between the first-person phenomenology of thought insertion and the posits (e.g. efference copy, corollary discharge) of current cognitive (...) theories. I show how deficits in the subconscious mechanisms regulating inner speech may lead to a 'fractured phenomenology' responsible for schizophrenic patients' reports of inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations. Supporting work on virtual environments is discussed, and lessons concerning the fixity of delusional belief are drawn. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the nature of science. To what extent are science and mathematics affected by the society in which they are developed? Philosophy of science has accepted the social influence on science, but limits it only to the context of discovery (a "locational" approach). An opposite "attributive" approach states that any part of science may be so influenced. L. Graham is sure that even the mathematical equations at the core of fundamental physical theories may display social attributes. (...) He has used the investigations of the famous Soviet physicist V. Fock on the General Theory of Relativity which were under the influence of Marxism. The Goal of the article is to demonstrate: 1) Why Soviet science is not an appropriate subject-matter for testing the thesis of social constructivism, 2) That differnt levels of science and different stages in the development of science undergo social influences in different degrees ranging from very significant and unavoidable to absolutely trivial and easy eliminated. (shrink)

The main goal of this note is to study for certain o-minimal structures the following propriety: for each definable C∞ function g0: [0, 1] → ℝ there is a definable C∞ function g: [–ε, 1] → ℝ, for some ε > 0, such that g = g0 for all x ∈ [0, 1].

Le mégaprojet de centrale au charbon Thar (Thar Coal Mega Power Project) est l’un des plus ambitieux du Pakistan. Il affectera directement les communautés du désert de Thar sur une superficie d’environ neuf mille kilomètres carrés. Plus de deux cent cinquante villages seront évacués pour assurer son succès économique. Le projet a d’ores et déjà provoqué des migrations, des spéculations sur le sol, l’usurpation de pâturages communs et le rejet des communautés. Les conflits dans la région revêtent deux faces. D’abord, (...) on constate des conflits entre les communautés autochtones, l’État et les fonctionnaires de la Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC). Ensuite, les problèmes intracommunautaires se sont transformés en conflits religieux entre musulmans et hindous, bien que les causes sous-jacentes soient environnementales. Cet article fournit une description critique des conflits, de l’usurpation de la terre, des processus de spéculation et d’accumulation dans la zone du projet. (shrink)

Peace is a universal ideal, but its political life is a great paradox: "peace" is the opposite of war, but it also enables war. If peace is the elimination of war, then what does it mean to wage war for the sake of peace? What does peace mean when some say that they are committed to it but that their enemies do not value it? Why is it that associating peace with other ideals, like justice, friendship, security, and law, does (...) little to distance peace from war? Although political theory has dealt extensively with most major concepts that today define "the political" it has paid relatively scant critical attention to peace, the very concept that is often said to be the major aim and ideal of humanity. In War for Peace, Murad Idris looks at the ways that peace has been treated across the writings of ten thinkers from ancient and modern political thought, from Plato to Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Qutb, to produce an original and striking account of what peace means and how it works. Idris argues that peace is parasitical in that the addition of other ideals into peace, such as law, security, and friendship, reduces it to consensus and actually facilitates war; it is provincial in that its universalized content reflects particularistic desires and fears, constructions of difference, and hierarchies within humanity; and it is polemical, in that its idealization is not only the product of antagonisms, but also enables hostility. War for Peace uncovers the basis of peace's moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present. This bold and ambitious book confronts readers with the impurity of peace as an ideal, and the pressing need to think beyond universal peace. (shrink)

A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are “belief-like” in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a “DCA”) called “imagination” that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating normal belief and (...) desire. On the present “Single Attitude” account of imagination, propositional imagining just is a form of believing. The Single Attitude account is also distinguished from “metarepresentational” accounts of pretense, which hold that both pretending and recognizing pretense in others require one to have concepts of mental states. It is argued, to the contrary, that pretending and recognizing pretense require neither a DCA nor possession of mental state concepts. (shrink)

If imagination is subject to the will, in the sense that people choose the content of their own imaginings, how is it that one nevertheless can learn from what one imagines? This chapter argues for a way forward in addressing this perennial puzzle, both with respect to propositional imagination and sensory imagination. Making progress requires looking carefully at the interplay between one’s intentions and various kinds of constraints that may be operative in the generation of imaginings. Lessons are drawn from (...) the existing literature on propositional imagination and from the control theory literature concerning the prediction and comparison mechanisms (or “forward models”) involved in ordinary perception. A more general conclusion is reached that, once we have the tools to understand how some imaginings are both under willful control and helpfully guide action and inference, we will have what we need to understand the cognitive basis of imagination in general. (shrink)

In recent years, we have been observing an increasing significance of industrial heritage in international heritage studies. Developed in response to urban development needs, industrial heritage is now considered a valuable part of the city. Such an approach has resulted in the adaptive reuse of industrial heritage in the developing countries. This is, indeed, a practical solution for sustainable development of cities and the subject matter of many academic discussions. In this respect Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) seems to be a (...) useful tool. This paper aims to study the role of HIA in adaptive reuse practice in industrial heritage sites in Iran. For that purpose, the authors have used a combined research method including historic study, analytical-description techniques and questionnaire-based interviews (with heritage managers and planners). The results indicate that HIA guidelines play a useful role in preserving the significance of historic cultural heritage and should be observed in the adaptive reuse practice in respect of the industrial heritage sites in Iran. Based on the analysed examples of successfully converted sites, this paper advocates using HIA as a useful tool in determining the potential of a given industrial heritage site for a successful reuse. (shrink)

One of the exciting developments in political theory in the last decades is that the boundaries of the discipline gradually but vigorously expanded beyond “the West,” as evident in the rise of work that is often labeled “comparative.” Basic to this shift is the recognition that various thinkers, ideas, and contexts—usually marked as “non-Western”—have been peripheral to, and remain marginalized in, the discipline of political theory. However, the discipline’s framing of the “comparative” as the study of “non-Western political thought” tends (...) to take for granted the boundary between “West” and “non-West.” The primacy of this assumed correspondence between “comparative” and “non-Western” is most visible and problematic in the ongoing institutionalization of the “comparative turn.” I understand comparative political theory as an immanent critique of political theory: the discipline presents itself as global, but in practice it is too often confined to studying a few places, histories, and bodies of knowledge. The “comparative” calls for political theorists to more reliably study politics and power anywhere. To take “comparative” to mean the study of equivalent, coherent forms of “non-Western” otherness is to elide the historicity of “the Western” and the ways in which it has been made in relation to non-Europeans. (shrink)

Corporations are facing a growing demand for the transparency of political contributions. In the United States, this demand has largely focused on the implementation of a mandatory disclosure law. It rests on the assumption that legal enforcement can make it easier to observe the ties between corporations and political parties. In this study, I challenge this assumption. I build my case by first developing a conceptual foundation of corporate political transparency. I argue that in the absence of economic benefits, legal (...) enforcement has a limited effect on CPT. Instead of encouraging transparency, mandatory disclosure can lead to the concealment of corporate political contributions. To develop a model of concealment, I borrow the characterizations of disguise from theatrical drama. Using the context of Indian firms, I show the limitation of mandatory disclosure and the efficacy of regulatory incentive. My study highlights the need for a broader debate on CPT to understand the relative implications of regulatory policies. (shrink)

Develops new perspectives on Schopenhauer's moral philosophy, addressing the moral status of animals; the moral permissibility of suicide; the possibility of altruistic action; the virtue and asceticism; and how Schopenhauer integrates Western and Indian traditions..

In recent decades, the trope that classical Muslim thinkers anticipated or influenced modern European thought has provided an easy endorsement of their contemporary relevance. This article studies how Arab editors and intellectuals, from 1882 to 1947, understood the twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl, and Arabo-Islamic philosophy generally. This modern generation of Arab scholars also attached significance to classical Arabic texts as precursors to modern European thought. They invited readers to retrospectively identify with Ibn Ṭufayl and his treatise, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. (...) Comparisons of Ibn Ṭufayl to European thinkers, and re-presentations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān as the precedent or genesis of European thought, facilitated these editors’ global imaginaries, anti-colonial projects and political fantasies. This article tracks these projects and fantasies through the afterlife of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān from early printings and generalist surveys to later editions and studies, as Ibn Ṭufayl’s significance became sutured into his imagined importance for Europe, and for going beyond Europe. (shrink)

The prevailing discourse in Israeli academia on justifying the values of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” takes the form of a debate involving questions of group rights of a national minority, as in any liberal democracy. The framework of this discourse relies on three interconnected, hegemonic assertions. These assertions assume the applicability of equal individual rights, put aside the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as irrelevant for the “Jewishness” of the state as it belongs to a (...) different rule of recognition, and conceptualize the Green Line based on majority-minority relations with Jewish group rights, including the Law of Return, as not leading to discrimination against individuals. I contend that these assertions are invalid and that colonialism is the relevant framework of Israel’s constitutional identity in Palestine (the Green Line, the West Bank including Jerusalem and Gaza). I argue there is one Constitution in Palestine based on one conception of sovereignty, regardless of any rules of recognition where the Law of Return, together with the value of “preserving a Jewish majority,” constitutes its very essence that targets the Palestinians as such. The Article presents a case-law study regarding family life between spouses and their children in Palestine. This case-law reveals an unfamiliar phenomenon. Unlike the plurality of written laws that characterize colonial regimes, the Israeli legal system introduces a unique model in which racial domination is created mostly by decisionism of the Court, out of the written laws and regardless of any rule of recognition. (shrink)

The Turing Test is of limited use for entities differing substantially from human performance levels. We suggest an extension of Turing’s idea to a more differentiated measure - the "Turing Ratio" - which provides a framework for comparing human and algorithmic task performance, up to and beyond human performance levels. Games and talent levels derived from pairwise comparisons provide examples of the concept. We also discuss the related notions of intelligence amplification and task breadth. Intelligence amplification measures total computational efficiency (...) (the computational benefit gained relative to investment, including programmer time, hardware, and so on); we argue that evolutionary computation is a key amplifier of human intelligence. Task breadth is an attempt to weight Turing Ratios by the frequency and importance of the task they measure - doing well at a broad range of tasks is an empirical definition of “intelligence”. Measuring Turing Ratios and considering task breadth, prior knowledge, and time series of the measures may yield long-term insight into both open-ended computational approaches and the underlying task domains being measured. (shrink)

In addition to their conduct, organizations can be stigmatized for conduct they did not engage in. Advancing a conceptual foundation of illusory conduct stigma, I explain how it stems from a perceptional process that is distinct from the one underlying conduct stigma. I use conspiracy theory as an illustrative source of illusory conduct stigma and explain how the former evolves in the absence of evidence, differs from an official narrative, and incorporates organizations. The study proposes that organizations are likely targets (...) when they have higher status, larger size, and recent media coverage, and the targeting is persistent when organizations are complex, diversified, and carry strong emotional appeal. Moreover, organizations are at times participants in the production, facilitation, and forbearance of illusory conduct stigma. The study contributes by explicating how organizations are affected as well as how they participate in the development and propagation of illusory conduct stigma. (shrink)

İslam hukukun temel ilkelerinin yazımında ve beyanında usûlcülerin yöntemleri farklıdır. Şîrâzî, fıkıh usûlünde birçok kitap telif etmiş, şöhreti yayılmış bir usûlcüdür. Bu çalışmada Şîrâzî’nin ve onun en önemli kitaplarından olan “el-Luma’ fî usûli’l-fıkh”ın tanıtımı yapılacak ardından yönteminin en belirleyici özellikleri ve kitabının içeriğini sunma yaklaşımı açıklanacaktır. Böylece uygulamalı bir şekilde mensup olduğu fıkhî ekolün ayırt edici özelliklerinin tesbiti yapılacaktır. Araştırmanın neticesinde Şîrâzî’nin mütekellim metodunu takip ettiği sonucuna varılmıştır. Eserinde fıkıh usûlünün bir dizi teriminin tanıtımına ve usûl kaidelerinin beyanına yer vermesi, (...) onları farklı kanıtlarla doğrulaması ve kaleme alması metodunun belirleyici özelliklerindendir. Şîrâzî, akli, nakli ve dilin delaleti olmak üzere farklı deliller kullanır. Selefin araştırdıkları konuları nakledip kapsamlı bir incelemeyle tartışmalı konuları aktarır. Furu’u fıkıh konularına veciz bir şekilde, sadece temel kaideleri açıklaması ve örnek olması açısından değinir. Eserinde fıkıh usûlü konularına ayrıntılı bir şekilde yer verir ancak kelamî konulara yer vermez. Şîrâzî’nin görüşlerinin kesin delillerle desteklenmesi fikrî bağımsızlığına işarettir. O, araştırmasında tarafsız ve bağımsızdır. Herhangi bir mezhep taassubu düşüncesi yoktur. İhtilaflı meselelerde muhaliflerin delillerini zikretmemesinden ötürü eleştirilmiştir. Eseri bazı meseleler hariç fıkıh usûlünün bütün konularını şamildir. Alanında faydalı ve ulemanın istifade ettiği bir eserdir. (shrink)

In the year 1842, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) painted a set of four oil paintings entitled THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. As the title indicates, the artist likened life to a voyage. This voyage begins with man emerging as a child from a dark cave into the river of life in a spring setting. As this voyage through the river of life continues, man is seen passing through the stages of youth, manhood, & then finally old age. Likewise, the setting of nature (...) is seen correspondingly passing through the stages of summer, autumn, & then finally winter. Any voyage must have a starting point, destination & duration. Also any voyage is a continuation of some sort of existence, & there is a continuity of existence after the voyage is complete. What is this voyage? Why does it have to exist? What existed before this voyage? What will happen after the destination is reached? Why is it short for some, long for others? Why is it easier for some, harder for others? Daheshism deals with these issues & many others. Daheshism is a revolution in the human approach to philosophy, life & religion. It is a new garment for the body of traditional thought & belief. The aim of Daheshism is to provide a universal belief that encompasses all other beliefs. It accomplishes synthesis rather than fragmentation of religious beliefs & expansion rather than contraction of philosophical thought. To order: P.O. Box 16680-8680, Alexandria, VA 22302. Telephone: 703-845-8223, FAX 703-845-8224 or Baker & Taylor Books. (shrink)

En este trabajo abordamos la cuestión de la inflación tropológica a partir de los trabajos de Hans Kellner y el debate suscitado a partir de ellos con Wallace Martin. Se trata de la proyección indefinida de los tropos desde el lenguaje hacia dominios que lo exceden, tales como la conciencia o un periodo histórico. Nuestro objetivo es revisitar los problemas que acarrea la inestabilidad y la proliferación tropológica con el fin de evaluar el estatus de la solución aportada por la (...) tropología tetrádica contemporánea. Sostenemos que la tesis de la base figurativa del lenguaje siempre debe dar cuenta de la inestabilidad que introducen los tropos en los intercambios lingüísticos. En este sentido, la tétrada tropológica debe ser evaluada a partir de su productividad heurística, de lo que permite o no hacer con el lenguaje, y no como la versión correcta o definitiva de la clasificación de los tropos. Finalmente, todo esto supone el rechazo de la clásica oposición entre lógica y retórica o tropología como una manera de estabilizar el significado. Para ello, dividimos este trabajo en tres apartados: en el primero presentamos las características de la cuestión de la inflación tropológica y lo ejemplificamos con los trabajos de R. Jakobson y H. White; en el segundo, analizamos algunos problemas implicados en la tesis de la base figurativa del lenguaje que da lugar a la inflación tropológica, especialmente el problema de la inestabilidad del significado; en el tercero, presentamos dos objeciones realizadas por Wallace Martin a los trabajos de Kellner con el fin de ilustrar algunas de las dificultades que acarrea este problema. ARK: ark:/s18537960/pmr1iax/5. (shrink)

El autor postula que la mundialización ha llegado a ser una “máquina incontrolable y excluyente”, gobernada por mecanismos económicos que se han emancipado de la ética y de las culturas, en un proyecto de exterminación de la diversidad cultural y de las raíces de la existencia autónoma de los humanos. Frente a ello, y siguiendo el principio de Gandhi, postula una economía no-violenta.

Many theorists claim that inner speech is importantly linked to human metacognition (thinking about one's own thinking). However, their proposals all rely upon unworkable conceptions of the content and structure of inner speech episodes. The core problem is that they require inner speech episodes to have both auditory-phonological contents and propositional/semantic content. Difficulties for the views emerge when we look closely at how such contents might be integrated into one or more states or processes. The result is that, if inner (...) speech is especially valuable to metacognition, we do not currently understand why it is. The article concludes with two positive proposals for understanding the content and structure of inner speech episodes, which should serve as constraints on future accounts of the metacognitive value of inner speech. (shrink)

The primary objective of this research is to establish the extent to which small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the Ha’il region benefit from a significant competitive advantage brought about by an entrepreneurial mindset (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy). To achieve these objectives, the study used a questionnaire to collect data. A total of 220 SMEs in the Ha’il region were surveyed. The participants completed an online self-administered survey and used the PLS-SEM technique. The researchers found a robust (...) link between differentiation advantage and higher levels of innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggression, and autonomy. In addition, the outcomes of the survey reveal that a greater cost advantage is substantially associated with vastly greater innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, and competitive aggression overall. However, cost advantage is not strongly correlated with autonomy. These findings are significant because they shed new light on how competitive advantages are formed through the entrepreneurial orientation of entrepreneurs in the Ha’il region. This is a significant theoretical contribution to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation, specifically in the context of SMEs. The findings may also be valuable in supporting SMEs in being successful by enhancing their competitiveness, as SMEs are key contributors to the development and growth of the economy. (shrink)

​Imagination will remain a mystery—we will not be able to explain imagination—until we can break it into parts we already understand. Explaining Imagination is a guidebook for doing just that, where the parts are other ordinary mental states like beliefs, desires, judgments, and decisions. In different combinations and contexts, these states constitute cases of imagining. This reductive approach to imagination is at direct odds with the current orthodoxy, according to which imagination is a sui generis mental state or process—one with (...) its own inscrutable principles of operation. Explaining Imagination upends that view, showing how, on closer inspection, the imaginings at work in hypothetical reasoning, pretense, the enjoyment of fiction, and creativity are reducible to other familiar mental states—judgments, beliefs, desires, and decisions among them. Crisscrossing contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and aesthetics, Explaining Imagination argues that a clearer understanding of imagination is already well within reach. (shrink)

It is widely held that introspection-based self-ascriptions of mental states are immune to error through misidentification , relative to the first person pronoun. Many have taken such errors to be logically impossible, arguing that the immunity holds as an “absolute” necessity. Here I discuss an actual case of craniopagus twins—twins conjoined at the head and brain—as a means to arguing that such errors are logically possible and, for all we know, nomologically possible. An important feature of the example is that (...) it is one where a person may be said to be introspectively aware of a mental state that occurs outside of her own mind. Implications are discussed for views of the relation between introspection and mental state ownership, and between introspection and epistemic criteria for the “mark of the mental.”. (shrink)

On what grounds could life be made worth living given its abundant suffering? Friedrich Nietzsche was one among many who attempted to answer this question. This book attempts to disentangle Nietzsche's various critiques of pessimism, elucidating how familiar Nietzschean themes ought to be assessed against this philosophical backdrop.

The article “Consciousness in a Bioreactor? Science and Ethics of Potentially Conscious Human Cerebral Organoids” (Zillo and Lavazza 2023) presents a thoughtful discussion on the potential ethical...

This paper focuses on Nietzsche’s claim that suffering is closely related to the realization of certain perfectionist values, such as artistic excellence. According to Bernard Reginster, creative achievement consists in overcoming suffering, and therefore, suffering is an essential ingredient of creative achievement. Because suffering forms an essential part of a valuable whole in this way, Reginster argues that we must in turn value suffering ‘for its own sake’. This paper argues that Reginster’s position is open to the following objection: from (...) the fact that suffering is an essential part of a valuable whole, it does not follow that suffering is itself valuable. Rather, by taking advantage of the principle of organic unities, it would have to form an essential part of a valuable whole in a particular way. The author considers two ways the principle might be attributed to Nietzsche’s views on suffering: first, as an ‘enabling condition’, in which suffering allows for a whole that outweighs its disvalue; and second, as ‘a contributor’, in which suffering positively contributes value to the whole. The paper explores how Nietzsche’s ethics turns out to be crucially informed by this conceptual distinction. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 371-373.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 460-471.

Analyzing encounters between Europeans and their eastern others before the European Enlightenment, this book illustrates that adopting an intercultural perspective in western political theory is necessary because the West’s cultural others have played a foundational role in developing a distinct western cultural self-understanding.

Verse 4:34 of the Qur'an has historically been interpreted to give husbands authority over their wives. Even today, such as in a recent case in the United Arab Emirates, Islamic courts have held that the husband has some leeway in "disciplining" wives who act in a rebellious manner to their husbands. This article challenges this interpretation through a comprehensive legal analysis, taking into account the context under which the verse came about, including the societal norms and conditions of the time; (...) the Prophet Muhammad’s profound views against violence towards women; the values of marriage emphasized in the Qur’an; the Qur’an’s incremental approach to improving social behavior and practice; and the higher objectives of Islamic law. (shrink)