Medical educators invoke professionalism as a core competency in curricula. This paper criticizes classic definitions. It also identifies some negative traits of medicine as a profession. The call to professionalism is naive nostalgia. Straightforward didactics in professionalism cannot do the desired work in medical education. The most we can say is that students should adopt the good aspects of professionalism and the profession should stop being some of what it has been. This is a platitude. If the notion is to (...) be more than shallow, each student and practitioner will have to engage in much dialogue, reflection and refinement over many years. (shrink)

Philosophers and linguists alike tend to call a semantic theory 'Russellian' just in case it assigns to sentences in which definite descriptions occur the truth-conditions Russell did in 'On Denoting'. This is unfortunate; not all aspects of those particular truth-conditions do explanatory work in Russell's writings. As far as the semantics of descriptions is concerned, the key insights of 'On Denoting' are that definite descriptions are not uniformly referring expressions, and that they are scope-bearing elements. Anyone who accepts these two (...) claims can account for Russell's puzzle cases the way he did. Russell had no substantive argument for the claim that 'The F is G' entails 'There is at most one F'; in fact, he had important misgivings about it. I outline an argument against this claim, and I argue that by holding on to uniqueness contemporary semanticists make a momentous mistake: they keep the illusion alive that there is a way to account for linguistic meaning without addressing what linguistic expressions are for. (shrink)

We consider the moral and social ingredients in physicians' relationships with patients of diminished capacity by considering certain claims made about friendship and the physician's role. To assess these claims we look at the life context of two patients as elaborated examples provided in two novels: Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy, a radical feminist; and It's Hard to Leave While the Music's Playing (1977) by I. S. Cooper, a prominent physician-researcher. At issue is how the (...) doctor-patient relationship should be structured. In question is whether the physician's friendship and professional expertise, together with the diminished capacity of the patient, authorize medical paternalism. From our examination, we find compelling insights against appealing to friendship both in good doctor-patient relationships and in more typical, not-so-good ones. (shrink)

I assess the ethical content of Philip Roth's account of his father's final years with, and death from, a tumor. I apply this to criticisms of the nature and content of case reports in medicine. I also draw some implications about modernism, postmodernism and narrative understandings.

Philosophy is generally considered to be very abstract. How philosophical and abstract Is ethical thinking In clinical situations? This paper sketches an answer In the form of a case study and offers me the chance for some self-reflection and readers the chance to eavesdrop on that self-reflection. Aside from any Intrinsic worth of the questions and answers, they also have Implications for how clinical ethicists should be educated or trained, i.e., how abstract should one's work in moral philosophy be?

tracked the influence of the major Western historical paradigm of the great chain of being through various positions taken about abortion. This essay shows the paradigm's influence on our language – especially in animating the use of "god" and phrases like "playing god". This is important given the prevalence of religious values in bioethics debates and the pervasiveness of the language. I hunt unsuccessfully for a meaning that could serve as a moral principle, and I show how these phrases are (...) rooted in the paradigm. I conclude that all that such language can do is offer the pretense that there is a specific absolute ground for forbidding something which could otherwise be morally acceptable. But such language is nearly senseless, and worse still, it is immoral in that it cuts off reflection and debate. Keywords: play[ing] god, great chain of being, principle of plenitude CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The variety of general issues and particular controversies in biomedical ethics can be understood as reflecting a deeper unity than normally supposed. The principle of plenitude and the paradigm of the "chain of Being" form the tie among the phenomena. They are defined, and their presence is tracked especially through some of the ideas and language in the debate about the ethics of abortion. Keywords: plenitude, great chain of Being, abortion, explanation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

This paper tells the story of events that led up to a septoplasty and the consequences that followed it. The patient is a medical ethicist. After scratching the inside of a nostril in 1976, he suffered with occasional bleeding and irritation for almost two decades. He tried topical treatment. As this failed, he sought help from an ENT specialist. The paper relates the conduct of the patient and others (friends in the medical field, the patient's spouse, nurses and anesthesiologists) vis-à-vis (...) informed consent. (shrink)

As Montaigne put it, on the highest throne in the world man sits on his arse. Usually this epigram makes people laugh because it seems to reclaim the world from artificial pride and snobbery and to bring things back to egalitarian values. But if we push the observation even further and say men sit not only on their arse, but over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement—the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man's dualism, his (...) ludicrous situation, becomes too real. The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents not only physical determinism and boundness, but the fate as well of all that is physical: decay and death. [Becker, 1973, p. 31]. (shrink)

There are many calls for a definitions personhood, but also many logical and Wittgensteinian reasons to think fulfilling this is unimportant or impossible. I argue that we can consider many contexts as language-games and consider the person as the key player in each. We can then examine the attributes, presuppositions and implications of personhood in those contexts. I use law and therapeutic psychology as two examples of such contexts or language-games. Each correlates with one of the classic “theories” of ethics-deontology (...) and consequentialism. But each is a large enough cluster to consider them as paradigms in a sense related to Thomas Kuhn's notion in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Showing the presuppositions about and “takes” on personhood together with the connections involved in the paradigms deepens the dilemmas we already know to be present. (shrink)

This paper is an analysis of the events recounted in 'Informed consent to septoplasty: An anecdote from the field.' As a commentary, it assesses the behavior of many agents who are parties to the story - physicians, nurses, friends of the patient, the patient's wife and the patient himself. This story is interesting for being mundane. The medical condition involved and the failures of care are not momentous. The patient's role as a medical ethicist led him to see things in (...) particular perspective and motivated or influenced his conduct sometimes not in the smartest of ways. Several accounts of informed consent are reviewed and used as measures of what happened. The moral vision behind informed consent, the rights and duties it implies and the elements of its contents are identified. No account was fulfilled. Some of the reasons and causes for this are discussed. Many sources of information and forces acting on the situation are explored. Post-operative experiences include severe irritation and discomfort as well as severe frustration and a sense of alienation and abandonment. The case communicates a hint about what physicians do not know in order to have informed consent occur. Physicians' lack of awareness about, e.g., post-operative experience means that they will not provide what the informed aspect of informed consent requires. Patients can feel abandoned and perhaps are abandoned in a variety of ways, subtle and not so subtle. A few issues besides informed consent are discussed (the roles of wives in working at their physician-husband's front desk, the language of reassurance). (shrink)

The paper is an analysis of Rousseau’s concept of property. It shows that Rousseau wants to draft a new system of politics that will not forbid private property but will limit its scale. It aims to clarify that Rousseau owes much to John Locke’s theory and even adopts Locke’s definition that it is a basic purpose of the social contract to protect the citizen’s property. It is argued that in spite of these similarities Rousseau’s account differs fundamentally from Locke’s. Having (...) a right of ownership to something for Locke means to be entitled to exclude anybody else from it: to say “this is mine” in Locke is synonymous to “it is not yours”. For Rousseau having a right of ownership to something implies a self-limitation by the proprietor: to say “this is mine” in Rousseau signifies “everything else is not mine”. While property rights in Locke have the purpose of legitimizing “pleonexia” and economic inequality, Rousseau tries to use them as restrictions to citizens’ desires and greed. (shrink)

A translation of Kant's early paper, ‘Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physikalisch erwogen’ is presented, and the main features of his position on this question in 1754 are summarized. In that year, Kant believed that the Earth was ageing, and that it was about 6000 years old. The paper allows us to understand the approximate outline of Kant's general ‘theory of the Earth’, and the relation of this theory to the cosmogony that he propounded in 1755. His ideas on (...) the processes of erosion, and the formation of rivers, deltas and sandbanks, are noteworthy, and provide a contribution to the eighteenth-century literature on the denudation dilemma. Kant's general theory of erosion and deposition was, it seems, based to a significant extent on his knowledge of the geographical features of the Königsberg district. The general teleological position underpinning his philosophy may be discerned in this early paper, and he may be thought of as having been trying to orientate himself in space and time, so to speak, before undertaking his major reconstructions in philosophy. (shrink)

In spite of their striking differences with real-life perception, films are perceived and understood without effort. Cognitive film theory attributes this to the system of continuity editing, a system of editing guidelines outlining the effect of different cuts and edits on spectators. A major principle in this framework is the 180° rule, a rule recommendation that, to avoid spectators’ attention to the editing, two edited shots of the same event or action should not be filmed from angles differing in a (...) way that expectations of spatial continuity are strongly violated. In the present study, we used high-density EEG to explore the neural underpinnings of this rule. In particular, our analysis shows that cuts and edits in general elicit early ERP component indicating the registration of syntactic violations as known from language, music, and action processing. However, continuity edits and cuts-across the line differ from each other regarding later components likely to be indicating the differences in spatial remapping as well as in the degree of conscious awareness of one's own perception. Interestingly, a time–frequency analysis of the occipital alpha rhythm did not support the hypothesis that such differences in processing routes are mainly linked to visual attention. On the contrary, our study found specific modulations of the central mu rhythm ERD as an indicator of sensorimotor activity, suggesting that sensorimotor networks might play an important role. We think that these findings shed new light on current discussions about the role of attention and embodied perception in film perception and should be considered when explaining spectators’ different experience of different kinds of cuts. (shrink)

We show that there exist 2 ℵ 0 equational classes of Boolean algebras with operators that are not generated by the complex algebras of any first-order definable class of relational structures. Using a variant of this construction, we resolve a long-standing question of Fine, by exhibiting a bimodal logic that is valid in its canonical frames, but is not sound and complete for any first-order definable class of Kripke frames (a monomodal example can then be obtained using simulation results of (...) Thomason). The constructions use the result of Erd $\H{o}$ s that there are finite graphs with arbitrarily large chromatic number and girth. (shrink)

In the early nineteenth century, Norwegian mathematician and astronomer Christopher Hansteen contributed significantly to international collaboration in the study of terrestrial magnetism. In particular, Hansteen was influential in the origin and orientation of the magnetic lobby in Britain, a campaign which resulted in a global network of fixed geomagnetic observatories. In retrospect, however, his contribution was diminished, because his four-pole theory inUntersuchungen der Magnetismus der Erde was ultimately refuted by Carl Friedrich Gauss inAllgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus. Yet Hansteen's main contribution (...) was practical rather than theoretical. His major impact was related to the circulation of his instruments and techniques. From the mid-1820s, ‘Hansteen's magnetometer’ was distributed all over the British Isles and throughout the international scientific community devoted to studying terrestrial magnetism. Thus in the decades before the magnetic crusade, Hansteen had established an international system of observation, standardization and representation based on measurements with his small and portable magnetometers. (shrink)

We prove that a form of the $Erd\H{o}s$ property (consistent with $V = L\lbrack H_{\omega_2}\rbrack$ and strictly weaker than the Weak Chang's Conjecture at ω1), together with Bounded Martin's Maximum implies that Woodin's principle $\psi_{AC}$ holds, and therefore 2ℵ0 = ℵ2. We also prove that $\psi_{AC}$ implies that every function $f: \omega_1 \rightarrow \omega_1$ is bounded by some canonical function on a club and use this to produce a model of the Bounded Semiproper Forcing Axiom in which Bounded Martin's Maximum (...) fails. (shrink)

Event-related desynchronization, as a proxy for mirror neuron activity, has been used as a neurophysiological marker for motor execution after mirror visual feedback. Using EEG, this study investigated ERD upon the immediate effects of single-session MVF in unimanual arm movements compared with the ERD effects occurring without a mirror, in two groups: stroke patients with left hemiplegia and their healthy counterparts. During EEG recordings, each group performed one session of mirror therapy training in three task conditions: with a mirror, with (...) no mirror, and with a covered mirror. An asymmetry index was calculated from the subtraction of the event-related spectrum perturbations between the C3 and C4 electrodes located over the sensorimotor cortices contralateral and ipsilateral to the moved arm. Results of the effect of task versus group in contralateral and ipsilateral motor areas showed that there was a significant effect of task condition at the contralateral motor area in the high beta band at C3. High beta ERD showed that the suppression was greater over the contralateral hemisphere than it was over the ipsilateral hemisphere in both study groups. The magnitude of low beta ERD in patients with stroke was more suppressed in contralesional C3 under the no mirror compared to that of the covered mirror and similarly more suppressed in ipsilesional C4 ERD under the no mirror compared to that of the mirror condition. The correlation analysis revealed that the magnitude of ERSP power correlated significantly with arm severity in the low and high beta bands in patients with stroke, and a higher asymmetry index in the low beta band was associated with higher arm functioning under the no-mirror condition. There was a shift in sensorimotor ERD toward the contralateral hemisphere as induced by MVF accompanying unimanual movement in both stroke patients and healthy controls. The use of ERD in the low beta band as a neurophysiological marker to indicate the relationships between the amount of MVF-induced ERD attenuation and motor severity, and the outcome indicator for improving stroke patients’ neuroplasticity in clinical trials using MVF are warranted to be explored in the future. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren berichteten mehr und mehr Frauen von Gewalt und Respektlosigkeit in der Geburtshilfe. Inzwischen hat sich auch die Forschung verstärkt dieses Themas angenommen. Prävalenzschätzungen sind jedoch aufgrund erheblicher methodischer Schwächen noch nicht hinreichend genau zu beziffern. Die Vielzahl und Vielfalt der bestehenden Forschungsergebnisse lassen dennoch den Schluss zu, dass es in der Geburtshilfe in fast allen Regionen der Erde regelmäßig zu Gewalt und Respektlosigkeit und damit zu Menschenrechtsverletzungen kommt. Die Folgen reichen bis hin zu Posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen, was (...) nahelegt, dass dieser Missstand sowohl aus Menschenrechts-Gründen als auch aus Gründen der öffentlichen Gesundheit nicht übergangen werden darf. Daher ist es außerordentlich besorgniserregend, wenn geburtshilfliche Fachpersonen im Angesicht solcher Berichte und Forschung in einen Modus der Selbstverteidigung verfallen und die Erfahrungen der Frauen in Frage sowie Abrede stellen, anstatt zuvorderst mit Empathie zu reagieren. Der vorliegende Text wendet sich einigen dieser Reaktionsmuster seitens geburtshilflicher Fachpersonen zu: einem falsch verstandenen Objektivitätsanspruch und der mithin abwegigen Forderung, die subjektiven Erfahrungen der Frauen zu objektivieren, einer leugnenden und herablassenden Wortwahl sowie einer mangelnden Anerkennung des von den Frauen Geschilderten und einer aus berufsethischer Perspektive unzureichend fürsorglichen Haltung. Solcherlei Reaktionen sind nicht nur unzulässig, sondern lassen ebenjenen Respekt vermissen, den die betroffenen Frauen sich während der Geburt wünschten und dessen Abwesenheit sie verletzte oder gar traumatisierte. Schließlich sollten Gewalt und Respektlosigkeit in der Geburtshilfe sowie die beschriebenen Reaktionen darauf vor dem Hintergrund geschlechtsspezifischer Machtverhältnisse und Gewalt an Frauen generell diskutiert werden. (shrink)

The physician in Erde's clinical case study performed poorly in a number of aspects of informed consent and good physician-patient communication. However, the patient also failed to perform some of his own duties to participate in effective communication and so shares at least some responsibility for the bad outcome.

Problems of Compositionality is a revised version of Zolt´an Szab´o’s 1995 doctoral dissertation. Of its five chapters, three have appeared (in heavily modified form) in print independently1, so I will concentrate most of my remarks on the second and third chapters, which remain unpublished outside the book. As it happens, I find these two chapters to be the most philosophically rewarding of the book. The principle of compositionality is a general constraint on the shape of a theory of meaning. Szab´o (...) gives the following initial formulation of the principle: The meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents and by its structure. (3) Recent discussion of compositionality branches in a number of different directions, including (at least) disputes over the precise formulation of the principle, investigations of the mathematical features of various such formulations, exploration of a plethora of apparent counterexamples to the compositionality of natural languages, scholarly work on the history of the principle (especially its role in Frege), and employment of the principle as a tool in other philosophical disputes. Szab´o’s path through this thicket begins, in the first chapter, with a defense of an idiosyncratic version of the compositionality principle against some more traditional alternatives, proceeds in the second and third chapters to the oft-neglected and philosophically crucial task of asking why the principle of compositionality ought to be one we seek to impose, and concludes in the fourth and fifth chapters by considering and rejecting two putative counterexamples (manifesting in the semantics of adjectives and of definite descriptions) to the principle. The principle of compositionality is most commonly given a functional implementation – a language L is compositional iff the meaning of a complex expression α of L is a function of the meanings of the parts of α and the syntactic structure of α. Equivalently, L is compositional iff synonyms can be intersubstituted salva significa- tio in complex expressions of L.2 Szab´o, however, rejects the functional/substitutional.... (shrink)

At the last meeting, Tim Crane gave a talk in which he made play with a distinction between ‘believing in’ and ‘believing that’. And he claimed that this distinction could be put to serious philosophical work of interest to serious metaphysicians. My hunch at the time was that this distinction in fact can’t bear any real weight. But I can’t now reconstruct Tim’s own arguments sufficiently to give a fair evaluation of them. However, Tim did say that the distinction he (...) wanted to draw, and at least some of the work to which he wanted to put the distinction, was grounded in a paper on ‘Believing in Things’ by Zolt´ an Szab´ o. So in this talk, I’ll see what we can get out of that paper. And, as far as I can recall Tim’s paper, I think it is fair to say the following. If Szab´. (shrink)

Ethnoveterinary research, development, and extension (ERD&E) has emerged as a rich field for discovering, adapting, and transferring appropriate and sustainable animal health technologies to rural and peri-urban stockraisers, especially in Third World countries. This field is defined as the holistic, interdisciplinary study of local knowledge and practices, together with the social structure in which they are embedded, that pertain to the healthcare and healthful husbandry of animals used for a multitude of purposes. Especially in the Third World, livestock play a (...) large number of important roles that are little understood or appreciated in today's First World. Study of these benefits and their role in Third World livelihoods offers numerous lessons that span not only the virtues but also some of the technical, ethical, and methodological challenges of working with local knowledge. ERD&E emerged as an internationally recognized branch of research in the mid-1970s largely in response to an increasing concern with animal health in the context of practical, field-level projects in animal agriculture. As many as 90% of the world's population continue to rely mainly on their own localized ethnomedicine for the bulk of their personal healthcare as well as their veterinary needs. With the escalating costs of Western healthcare technologies, it is essential to build upon this local knowledge. Of course, ethnoscience is not perfect, and recognition of the immense value of ERD&E does not imply that conventional science is to be abandoned. Rather each has much to learn from the other. Making knowledge by judiciously drawing upon insider and outsider, site-specific and universalistic, and both old and new understandings can take us back to a brighter development future. (shrink)

N. G. de Bruijn, now professor emeritus of the Eindhoven University of Technology, was a pioneer in the field of interactive theorem proving. From 1967 to the end of the 1970’s, his work on the Automath system introduced the architecture that is common to most of today’s proof assistants, and much of the basic technology. But de Bruijn was a mathematician first and foremost, as evidenced by the many mathematical notions and results that bear his name, among them de Bruijn (...) sequences, de Bruin graphs, the de Bruijn-Newman constant, and the de Bruijn-Erd¨. (shrink)

Introduction: Advantageous effects of biological motion detection, a low-perceptual mechanism that allows the rapid recognition and understanding of spatiotemporal characteristics of movement via salient kinematics information, can be amplified when combined with motor imagery, i.e., the mental simulation of motor acts. According to Jeannerod’s neurostimulation theory, asynchronous firing and reduction of mu and beta rhythm oscillations, referred to as suppression over the sensorimotor area, are sensitive to both MI and action observation of BM. Yet, not many studies investigated the use (...) of BM stimuli using combined AO-MI tasks. In this study, we assessed the neural response in the form of event-related synchronization and desynchronization patterns following the observation of point-light-walkers and concordant MI, as compared to MI alone.Methods: Twenty right-handed healthy participants accomplished the experimental task by observing BM stimuli and subsequently performing the same movement using kinesthetic MI. We recorded an electroencephalogram with 32 channels and performed time-frequency analysis on alpha and beta frequency bands during the MI task. A two-way repeated-measures ANOVA was performed to test statistical significance among conditions and electrodes of interest.Results: The results revealed significant ERD/S patterns in the alpha frequency band between conditions and electrode positions. Post hoc comparisons showed significant differences between condition 1 and condition 3 over the left primary motor cortex. For the beta band, a significantly less difference in ERD patterns was detected only between condition 3 and condition 4.Discussion: Our results confirmed that the observation of BM combined with MI elicits a neural suppression, although just in the case of jumping. This is in line with previous findings of AO and MI eliciting a neural suppression for simulated whole-body movements. In the last years, increasing evidence started to support the integration of AOMI training as an adjuvant neurorehabilitation tool in Parkinson’s disease.Conclusion: We concluded that using BM stimuli in AOMI training could be promising, as it promotes attention to kinematic features and imitative motor learning. (shrink)

Paraphrased within the title of this text is a note Hannah Arendt made in August 1952. After reading Carl Schmitt?s Nomos der Erde, Arendt tries to confront Schmitt?s idea of a just war. In the text I attempt to reconstruct Arendt?s readings of differing political philosophy texts within the context of her thinking concerning the relationship between violence and power, force and law. Arendt?s refusal to accept the existence of violence which can "conquer" freedom and "create" right and democracy, brings (...) contradiction to the great tradition of the followers of Marx, to whom Arendt undoubtedly belongs: how is and is revolutionary violence even possible and does violence as resistance to injustice bring justice?. Naslov ovoga teksta je parafraza jedne beleske Hannah Arendt koja je napisana avgusta 1952. godine. Posle citanja Schmittove knjige Nomos der Erde, Arendt pokusava da se suprotstavi njegovom razumevanju pravednog rata. U tekstu rekonstruisem njena razlicita citanja mnostva tekstova politicke filozofije, u kontekstu Arendtovog razlikovanja izmedju nasilja i vlasti, snage i zakona. Arendtovo odbijanje da prihvati postojanje nasilja koje moze "osvojiti" slobodu i "stvoriti" pravo i demokratiju, suprotstavlja je velikoj tradiciji sledbenika Marxa, kojoj ona nesumnjivo pripada: da li je i na koji nacin moguce revolucionarno nasilje i da li nasilje kao otpor nepravdi donosi pravdu?. (shrink)

In his famous Der Nomos der Erde, while discussing the foundational role of Francisco de Vitoria’s work for the emergence of international law, especially with regard to the legal and political justifications of the territorial conquest of a new world, Carl Schmitt—quite well-known as an enemy of modern and contemporary humanism—offers the following reflection.

Carl Schmitt privately acknowledged that his late theory of Erd-Herrschaft converged with some of Nietzsche’s thought, yet remained silent on this in his book The Nomos of t...

Nietzsches entschiedene Wendung gegen den Idealismus und die romantische Vergötterung "grosser Menschen" seit Menschliches, Allzumenschliches beduetet offensichtlich nicht eine Absage an jeglich Form des Ideals "Bleibt der Erde treu", gilt von nun an jedoch als Maxime, der jedes Streben nach einer höheren Kultur unterworfen wird. Nietzsches höchster Typus Mensch zeichnet sich nicht nur dadurch aus, dass er die Realität werden kann. Er sei kein ""idealistischer" Typus einer höheren Art Mensch", wird in Ecce homo ausdrücklich bekräftigt. Während in Also spruch Zarathustra (...) das einholen des Ideals exemplarisch vorgeführt wird, setzt Nietzsche seinerseits alles daran, es seinem "Sohn Zarathustra" gleichzutun d.h. seinem "höeren Selbst" tatsächlich gerecht zu werden.Nietzsche's decisive turn against idealism and the romantic adulation of "great men" since Human, All Too Human obviously does not entail a refusal of any kind of ideal. All striving for a superior culture however should from now on follow the maxim to "remain true to the earth". Not only does Nietzsche's highest type of man conceive reality as it is: the overman himself is conceived as an ideal that actually can become real. he is not an ""idealistic" type of a higher kind of man", as Ecce homo explicitly confirms. Whereas Thus Spoke Zarathustra shows the protagonists catching up with his ideal, Nietzsche himself is determined to live up to his "son Zarathustra", i.e. to fulfill the demands and standards of his "higher self". (shrink)

Der Beitrag bestimmt den logischen Standort und die Funktion des ursprünglich und a priori vereinigten Willens in Kants Rechtslehre. Der ursprünglich und a priori vereinigte Wille wird von einer ursprünglichen Gemeinschaft aller Menschen am Erdboden hervorgebracht, die ihrerseits auf einem ursprünglichen Recht eines jeden auf einen Platz auf dieser Erde gründet. Das ursprüngliche Recht auf einen Platz selbst folgt aus dem ursprünglichen Freiheitsrecht. Der ursprünglich vereinigte Wille richtet sich auf die Aufteilung des Erdbodens. Dadurch wird der ursprüngliche Erwerb von Sachen, (...) insbesondere von Grundstücken, möglich. Kant formuliert diese Möglichkeit in dem Postulat des § 2 der Rechtslehre, das ein Erlaubnisgesetz der praktischen Vernunft enthält: "Es ist möglich, einen jeden äußeren Gegenstand meiner Willkür als das Meine zu haben." Das Postulat folgt nicht analytisch aus dem ursprünglichen Freiheitsrecht. Es wird durch eine reductio ad absurdum der Annahme des Gegenteils begründet und enthält infolgedessen einen synthetischen Rechtssatz a priori. Zu dem Gebot, den Erdboden aufzuteilen, kommt das Postulat des öffentlichen Rechts , das den Eintritt in den -Staat gebietet, um das Eigentum an den Sachen zu sichern. Auch dieses Postulat hat den Charakter eines synthetischen Rechtssatzes a priori. Die Gründung eines -Staats setzt den ursprünglichen Kontrakt voraus. Das Eigentum an Grund und Boden geht jeder Staatsgründung voran, weil eine Staatsgründung nur möglich ist, wenn das Volk, das einen Staat gründen will, über ein mögliches Staatsgebiet verfügt.This article examines the logical location and function of the originally and a priori united will in Kant's Doctrine of Right. The originally and a priori united will flows out of the original community of all human beings on the earth's surface, which in turn is based on each person's original right to a place on this earth. The original right to a place on the earth's surface follows analytically from the original right to freedom. The originally united will commands us to divide the surface of the earth. This will to divide the land makes original acquisition possible. Kant formulates this possibility in § 2 of the Doctrine of Right, which contains a permissive law of practical reason: "It is possible to have any external object of my choice as mine." This postulate does not follow analytically from the original right to freedom. Instead it is based on a reductio ad absurdum and thus contains a synthetic principle of law a priori. The postulate of public law is added to the will to divide the earth's surface and requires entering a juridical state in order to secure property rights to things. This postulate is also a synthetic principle of law a priori. Founding a juridical state presupposes the original contract. Ownership of land logically precedes the founding of any state, because a state can be founded only if the people intending to found it have a state territory. (shrink)

Silete theologi in munere alieno! As Schmitt observes in Der Nomos der Erde, this was Alberico Gentili's battle cry to remove theologians from discussion of politics and to rescue a non-discriminatory concept of war. According to Schmitt, it became the slogan of an epoch — the epoch of the ius publicum Europaeum. The turn to the modern age in the history of international law was accomplished by a dual division of two lines of thought inseparable in the Middle Ages — (...) moral-theological from juridical-political arguments and the question of iusta causa, grounded in moral arguments and natural law, from the typically juridical-formal question of iustus hostis. (shrink)

Author: Trzeciakowski Witold Title: TWO VISIONS OF THE HUMANITY – DAYBREAK OF ZYGMUNT KRASIŃSKI AND HYMNS TO NIGHT OF NOVALIS (Dwie wizje nowej ludzkości: Przedświt Zygmunta Krasińskiego i Hymny do Nocy Novalisa Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2006, vol:.6, number: 2006/1, pages: 71-90 KEYWORDS: KRASIŃSKI, NOVALIS, HEGEL, GESCHICHTSPHILOSOPHIE Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:In dem Aufsatz Zwei Vorstellungen zur Zukunft der Menschheit – „Przedświt” von Zygmunt Krasiński und „Hymnen an die Nacht” von (...) Novalis analysiert und vergleicht Wiesław Trzeciakowski zwei für die polnische und deutsche Romantik bedeutende visionäre Vorstellungen über die Zukunft der Menschheit. Den beiden Poeten erscheint sie als eine ganze und zugleich einheitliche Potenz ihrer gesamten geistigen Möglichkeiten zu sein. Auf der Erde lässt sich die Einheit der Menschheit durch Mitgefühl und gegenseitige Liebe ihrer Mitglieder erkennen. So versteht man die auf diese Weise begriffene Menschheit als Gott getreue Universalität, die nachseinen Geboten lebt. Diese Anschauung von Z. Krasiński erkennt man auch in Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie, besonders im Begriff des Gegensatzkampfes: die widerstrebenden Kräfte vernichten sich, um eine neue Qualität hervor zu bringen, wodurch sie dann am Ende im Einklang stehen. Novalis verwendet dagegen, um dieselbe Idee auszudrücken, Begriffe aus der Alchemie. Die miteinander kämpfenden Gegensätze sind aufgelöst in der Liebe und werden durch sie als Schlüssel für die Natur- und Menschenerkenntnis anerkannt. Geht Novalis’ all sein Sinnen und Trachten an den Mystizismus, an die endgültige Synthese der Alchemie (Hochzeit der Metalle), Glauben an die Gnosis, die Mysterien der Antike (besonders bei der Göttin Isis am Tempel zu Sais) sowie der Christenheit, so sieht die Quelle der Inspiration von Krasiński anders aus. Sie basiert auf seiner eigenen Geschichtsphilosophie der christlichen Märtyreridee, in der er die Geister der Opfer aus der antiken Nero-Zeit beschwört, deren Blut die Legitimation für die Existenz der Christenheit bildet. Ihr Tod war nicht fruchtlos, den tiefsten Sinn ihrer Qual stellt das Kreuz sowie die Auferstehung Christi dar. Graf Z. Krasiński lebte am liebsten in Rom, wo er sich als polnischer Poet und Denker politisch und geistig frei fühlte. Er stellte die Teilung Polens in den Kontext zur Kreuzigung Christi und der christlichen Geschichte, wobei die Geschichte keinen Selbstzweck darstellt. In der Zeit des irdischen Daseins von Menschen geht es doch nicht nur um die reine körperliche Existenz und die Weitergabe von Leben, was häufig von Z. Krasiński in seinem Werk betont wird. (shrink)

The article analyses some aspects of Schmitt’s theories on international law, in particular the notion of Gro ß raum. The assumption is that with this notion Schmitt tries to re-think politics and international relations beyond the classical categories of the State. From this point of view, there is an essential affinity between the concept of politics explained in the homonymous essay published in 1927 and the concept of Gro ß raum. After the Second World War, Schmitt distances himself from the (...) notion of Gro ß raum, too close to the nazi theories, and focuses on that of nomos, explained in Der Nomos der Erde, and on the crisis of the Jus publicum europaeum. However, Schmitt fails to define which system of international relations should follow the Jus publicum europaeum and the same notion of nomos remains rather undefined. In the last part of the paper the author compares Schmitt’s theories about international law and some theories of Kelsen, with particular reference to the theory of bellum justum. (shrink)

Early Polemical Writings covers the young Kierkegaard's works from 1834 through 1838. His authorship begins, as it was destined to end, with polemic. Kierkegaard's first published article touches on the theme of women's emancipation, and the other articles from his student years deal with freedom of the press. Modern readers can see the seeds of Kierkegaard's future career these early pieces. In "From the Papers of One Still Living," his review of Hans Christian Andersen's novel Only a Fiddler, Kierkegaard rejects (...) the notion that environment is decisive in determining the fate of genius. He also puts forward his belief that each person needs a life-view or life for which and by which to live, a thought he explores further in the comic play The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. (shrink)

Plato’s dialogue Cratylus focuses on being and human dependence on words, or the essential truths about the human condition. Arguing that comedy is an essential part of Plato's concept of language, S. Montgomery Ewegen asserts that understanding the comedic is key to an understanding of Plato's deeper philosophical intentions. Ewegen shows how Plato’s view of language is bound to comedy through words and how, for Plato, philosophy has much in common with playfulness and the ridiculous. By tying words, language, and (...) our often uneasy relationship with them to comedy, Ewegen frames a new reading of this notable Platonic dialogue. (shrink)

In the A-preface of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant kindly warns his readers to pay special attention to the chapter on the “Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding.” Looking to mitigate the reader's effort, Kant goes on to explain the chapter's methodology, suggesting that the inquiry will have “two sides.” One side deals with the “objective validity” of the pure categories of the understanding; he calls this the “objective deduction.” The other deals with the powers of cognition (...) on which the understanding rests; he calls this the “subjective deduction.” Having gone to such great lengths to outline his method ahead of time, it comes as no small surprise that the actual chapter offers no clear indication of where the two deductions are located. In this essay, I attempt to solve this puzzle. On the way, I engage with both traditional and recent interpretations of the subjective deduction, arguing that they fail—in one way or another—to satisfy the criteria that Kant develops in the preface. (shrink)

" 'I can be understood only after my death,' Kierkegaard noted prophetically: the fulfillment of this expectation for the English-speaking world a century and a quarter later is signified by the English translation in authoritative editions of all his works by the indefatigable Howard and Edna Hong.... The importance of [the Papirer] was emphasized by Kierkegaard himself.... The essentially religious interpretation he gave to his mission in life and his personal relationships is now documented clearly and exhaustively.... Obviously, these editions (...) are essential for academic and large general collections." —Library Journal "From this point on, anyone interested in tracking down a Kierkegaardian theme will have to consult the Hong presentation as well as the books of Kierkegaard." —Annual Review of Philosophy "The translations are entirely excellent. One envies the Hongs their capacity in language, the breadth of their reading in Kierkegaard and his sources, and the dedication they brought to this Herculean task. The assistance of Gregor Malantschuk has contributed materially to the notes which serve as trenchant summaries of Kierkegaard's thought on the topics.... This is indeed a monumental work." —Review of Metaphysics "... [an] astonishing labor of editing and translating... " —International Studies in Philosophy "Howard and Edna Hong have brought to the task solid scholarship, linguistic competence, an imaginative and useful arrangement of the material, and a scrupulous self-effacement before the work. No one could ask for more." —Citation of the Judges at the National Book Awards "We must be grateful to the Hongs for their enormous labor.... Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers are worth having for angry days, or 'inward' days; especially when they have been translated in as lively and sensitive a manner as are the texts in this first volume." —Nation The incidental writings of Søren Kierkegaard, published in the twenty-volume Danish edition of the Papirer, provide direct access to the thought of the many-faceted nineteenth-century philosopher who exerted so profound an influence on Protestant theology and modern existentialism. This important material, which Danish scholars regard as the "key to the scriptures" of Kierkegaard's other work, spans his entire productive life, the last entry of the Papirer being dated only a few days before his death. These writings have been previously inaccessible in English except for a few fragmentary selections; the most significant writings are now being made available in this definitive seven-volume edition under the editorship of two expert scholars and translators. Kierkegaard's scattered writings fall into three main subject groupings: journal entries of varied content, notes and early versions of his published material, and personal reactions to his reading and study. In length and degree of polish they range from brief and cryptic notes to extensive lecture material, finished travel sketches, and extended philosophical speculation. The translators provide annotations, copious notes, and a collation of entries with the Danish Papirer. The editors group the selections in Volumes I through IV by theme, with all entries on a given subject under the same heading. Within subject headings, entries are arranged chronologically, making it feasible to trace the evolution of Kierkegaard's thought on a specific topic. Volumes V and VI are devoted to autobiographical material. Volume VII contains an extensive index with topical crossreferences. (shrink)

V. 1. Journals AA-DD -- v. 2. Journals EE-KK -- v. 3. Notebooks 1-15 -- v. 4. Journals NB-NB5.

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way. The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to the speechmaking (...) on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of Stages. The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of Stages, in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 6 of this 11-volume series includes four of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from early May 1849 to the beginning of 1850. At this time Denmark was coming to terms with the 1848 revolution that had replaced absolutism with popular sovereignty, while the war with the German states continued, and the country pondered exactly what replacing the old State Church with the Danish People's Church would mean. In these journals Kierkegaard reflects at length on political and, especially, on ecclesiastical developments. His brooding over the ongoing effects of his fight with the satirical journal Corsair continues, and he also examines and re-examines the broader personal and religious significance of his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. These journals also contain reflections by Kierkegaard on a number of his most important works, including the two works written under his "new" pseudonym Anti-Climacus and his various attempts at autobiographical explanations of his work. And, all the while, the drumbeat of his radical critique of "Christendom" continues and escalates. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 5 of this 11-volume series includes five of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from summer 1848 through early May 1849. This was a turbulent period both in the history of Denmark--which was experiencing the immediate aftermath of revolution and the fall of absolutism, a continuing war with the German states, and the replacement of the State Church with the Danish People's Church--and for Kierkegaard personally. The journals in the present volume include Kierkegaard's reactions to the political upheaval, a retrospective account of his audiences with King Christian VIII, deliberations about publishing an autobiographical explanation of his writings, and an increasingly harsh critique of the Danish Church. These journals also reflect Kierkegaard's deep concern over his collision with the satirical journal Corsair, an experience that helped radicalize his view of "essential Christianity" and caused him to ponder the meaning of martyrdom. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)