Views of the self may be plotted on a set of coordinates. On the axis that runs from fragmentation to unity, Rorty and Rorty's Freud champion the decentered self while Wallwork, Taylor, and Ricoeur argue for a sovereign, unified self. On the other axis, which runs from the disengaged, inward-turning self to the engaged and "sedimented" self, Wallwork, would be positioned near Rorty, defending self-creation against the narrative identity affirmed by Taylor and Ricoeur. Despite his skepticism concerning the communitarian agenda (...) of the narrativists, Flanagan grants that the self is social and relational--a position further explored by Oliver, Stendahl, Deutsch, and Mack in "Selves, People, and Persons". (shrink)

In 1969, the field of human genetics was in its infancy. Amniocentesis was a new technique for prenatal diagnosis, and a newborn genetic screening program had been established in one state. There were also concerns about the potential hazards of genetic engineering. A research group at the Hastings Center and Paul Ramsey pioneered in the discussion of genetics and bioethics. Two principal techniques have emerged as being of enduring importance: human gene transfer research and genetic testing and screening. This (...) essay tracks the development and use of these techniques and considers the ethical issues that they raise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.3 (2004) vii-viii [Access article in PDF] John C. Fletcher 1931-2004 John Fletcher was one of the pioneers in the still-young field of bioethics. In this short tribute, I can only hope to highlight a few of the many contributions he made to the field.For many of us, our first introduction to John occurred in October 1971. At an international symposium sponsored by the (...) Kennedy Foundation, the film "Who Should Survive?" depicted the dramatic case of an infant with Down syndrome and an intestinal blockage. The parents of the infant refused surgery to relieve the obstruction, and the healthcare providers for the infant decided not to pursue a court order permitting the surgery. During a period of approximately two weeks the infant was allowed to die.In the second part of "Who Should Survive?" John was one of several panelists invited to discuss the decisions made in this case. After acknowledging how troubling the infant's death was to him, John nonetheless sought to be empathic with the parents. He pointed out that in the re-enactment of the case the faces of the parents were never seen, and he worried that the film did not permit the parents to discuss the reasons for the choice they had made. John realized that his position would not be shared by most other panelists. Yet he had the courage to take an unpopular stand and to challenge other panelists—and the audience—not to reach premature closure on complex ethical dilemmas.Already in 1967, John had begun contributing to the literature of bioethics. His essay "Human Experimentation: Ethics in the Consent Situation," appeared in Law and Contemporary Problems. At the time, John was deeply immersed in studying the ethical dimensions of research with human subjects at the NIH Clinical Center. Paul Ramsey cited John's work with appreciation in his 1970 book, The Patient as Person. By the time he completed his dissertation at Union Theological Seminary in 1969, John was arguably one of the best trained bioethicists in the world—before there was a field of bioethics.After serving as chaplain, teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary, and founding and leading a seminary without walls in Washington, DC, John became the chief of the ethics program at the NIH Clinical Center in 1977. There he had the unenviable task of providing a second review for all clinical protocols emerging from the intramural programs of the NIH institutes. John discovered that in some cases the institutional review boards of the institutes had overlooked important ethical questions. This role also [End Page vii] required courage. At times John found it necessary to challenge senior NIH researchers, even institute directors, and to request protocol revisions that in his view were required for the protection of human subjects.In 1980, after Martin Cline had performed an unauthorized gene transfer experiment involving thalassemia patients, John joined with physician W. French Anderson to write an essay entitled "Gene Therapy in Human Beings: When Is It Ethical to Begin?" [New England Journal of Medicine 303: 1293-97]. Not only did this essay help to defuse a potentially explosive problem for NIH, which had funded Cline's research. It also provided a set of guidelines for the conduct of human gene transfer research that is of continuing relevance today.At times John disagreed with federal policies on research, for example, conservative policies on human embryo research. He also chafed at the idea of subjecting his publications to prior NIH review, both for accuracy and for political correctness. Thus, he welcomed the opportunity to move to the University of Virginia in 1987. There his academic career flowered, and he enjoyed some of his most productive years of research and writing.Among his many contributions during these later years, John participated as Committee co-chair in an effort to "redress the wrongs of Tuskegee." The Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee proposed in May 1996 that President Clinton apologize to the participants in the Tuskegee study on behalf of the federal government. In May 1997, the President did in... (shrink)

IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION, IT IS GENERALLY AGREED THAT THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY REPRESENTS CHRISTIANITY’S MOST CAREFULLY ARTICULATED CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DIVINE BEING. AS PAUL TILLICH HAS POINTED OUT, TRINITARIAN "THINKING" IS PRESENT IN MANY RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS, BUT THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A "DOCTRINE" OF THE TRINITY TO BE FOUND EXCEPT IN CHRISTIANITY. THIS ESSAY ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THAT, PRECISELY AS DOCTRINE, TRINITARIANISM REPRESENTS A UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION TO HUMANKIND’S REFLECTION ABOUT TRANSCENDENT REALITY.

The June 1975 issue of the Hastings Center Report published the Deliberations and Recommendations of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects concerning the regulation of fetal experimentation. The Commission's most controversial conclusions were as follows: First, it voted to allow non‐therapeutic research on the human fetus, provided important biomedical knowledge could not be gained in any other way, proper consent had been obtained, and the research imposed “minimal or no risk to the well‐being of the fetus” (Recommendation (...) 4). Because interpretations of the last phrase varied in the case of fetuses scheduled for abortion, the Commission recommended that a national ethical review body be able to rule on disputed cases (Recommendation 5). In the case of research during abortion and research on the non‐viable fetus ex utero, the Commission's interpretation of permissible “harm” was restricted to the proviso that “no intrusion into the fetus [may be] made which alters the duration of life” (Recommendation 6). The Commission also recommended further research on abortion techniques (Recommendation 12). The Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare accepted the Commission's Recommendations almost without change—the major modification was to request paternal consent rather than to rely on the fact that “the father has not objected.” The DHEW regulations were published in the Federal Register on Friday, August 8, 1975, and written comments on them were invited. Already, however, a number of commentators including several members of the Commission had offered either dissenting or qualifying remarks. Some are printed here. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overtones:A CollagePaul Youngquist (bio)Mom leans against the keyboard of the old upright piano in the den. She puckers her lips and gently fingers the valves. A couple of times a month, she frees her trumpet from the purple velveteen lining its case—out of love or frustration I can never tell. She stares hard at the bell, pointed somewhere near my feet. She inhales deeply, pressing the silver mouthpiece to (...) her crumpled lips. A silent moment passes—torn by a noise pitched past the sun, a shrieking flare sound. Another follows and another, bright glissandos blinking out somewhere below middle C. They shatter everything I know about her. Everything I thought I knew. What sound was that, what cry? What aspiration to be free? After those initial stabs, she falls into familiar melodies: "Bugler's Holiday" by Leroy Anderson, maybe, or "When the Saints Go Marching In." I'm unsettled for the rest of the day.Trumpeter Don Cherry's sound unsettled me too. I was much older when I first encountered it on Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. It took me back to Mom's cries. I heard her sound in his: bright, high, and transient: less pitch than smudge, transmitting unknowable overtones. On "Lonely Woman," for instance. Cherry states the plaintive melody in hazy unison with Coleman, blurs the third note, wavers and plays his peculiar temper, untimely and free to move beyond the platitudes of harmony until, after Coleman's baffled cry, he parts company to play a sixth above (if such language matters, and it doesn't), descending in half steps to resolve (not happily) on a minor third, Cherry now pitched below. Their unison breaks apart to reconverge, and the brief bridge feels like a heaving between sobs. This isn't music. It's too raw for the repartee of bebop or the sociability of swing. But everybody can feel it, which explains the scandal of Coleman and company's extended appearance in late 1959 at the Five Spot in New York's East Village. Writing in the New York Times Magazine years later, Joseph Hooper likened it to the furor erupting after Stravinsky's Paris premier of "The Rite of Spring" in 1913. In an interview with Terry Gross, Cherry remembers everyone who was musically anyone being there—from Leonard Bernstein to Thelonious Monk—to witness the sacrilege. The implacable trickster Charles Mingus appeared one [End Page 133] night with Phineas Newborn, a keyboard virtuoso famous for his perfect pitch. Newborn sat and stared at his cufflinks. He never played a note. After the set, Mingus barreled onto the stage and, with his long arms and big hands, crashed all the keys. "That's where it is," he bellowed. "It's all there." Everywhere and nowhere. Cherry and Ornette decentered intonation. They distempered tradition's scales. Afflicted with perfect pitch, Newborn couldn't follow their cries and whispers. They flew free from the comforting staff. Still you feel them, hear their immeasurable sound.Don Cherry: "I've always been on the outside, and that's a good quality for the music to have, like the wind in your face."Cherry's mother Daisy gave him his first horn when he was fourteen. It breathed life into him, offering a way to express sounds his body harbored. Born in Oklahoma City in 1936 to "Negro-Choctaw Indian parents" (his words—his mother's mother was half native), Cherry heard gospel, blues, and Indian songs from the start. The family's move to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1940 only multiplied the sounds of diverse ethnicities mixed with the rumble of jazz from the Cherry Blossom, his father's club, where Don and his sister sometimes danced for dimes. His horn funneled all this sound—all the music he'd ever make—through a peculiarly powerful feeling: "that feeling to me, through as much music as I've learned, I still remember just that feeling when I first got that horn." What feeling exactly? "Infant happiness" (in-fant, not speaking). The feeling of life before language: "infant happiness, infant happiness, beautiful! That's what music is really... (shrink)

SummaryThis article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary (...) growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted. (shrink)

Henricus Regius ou Henri LeRoy, outrora amigo e divulgador da filosofia de Descartes, agora escrevendo como adversário de seu antigo mestre, publica em Utrecht um panfleto anônimo sobre a natureza da mente humana. No intuito de evitar que as teses apresentadas por seu ex-discípulo fossem tomadas como suas, Descartes decide, então, refutar as opiniões defendidas no panfleto de Regius. É precisamente o texto produzido por Descartes nessa ocasião que é traduzido a seguir. Esse texto, aparentemente impresso sem o consentimento (...) de seu autor em dezembro de 1647, marca o ponto final da relação entre o filósofo francês e o professor de medicina. O texto latino aqui traduzido foi extraído da edição realizada por Charles Adam e Paul Tannery das Oeuvres complètes de Descartes, Paris, Vrin, tomo VIII, pp. 341-369. (shrink)

Supporters of G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy have largely shied away from relating his logic to modern symbolic or mathematical approaches. While it has predominantly been the non-Greek discipline of algebra that has informed modern mathematical logic, philosopher Paul Redding argues that the approaches of Plato and Aristotle to logic were deeply shaped by the arithmetic and geometry of classical Greek culture. And by ignoring the fact that Hegel's logic also has this deep mathematical dimension, conventional Hegelians have missed some of (...) Hegel's greatest insights. In Conceptual Harmonies, Redding develops an account of Hegel's logic against a classical and modern historical background that is rarely considered. He stresses Hegel's attention to the Platonic background of Aristotle's original syllogistic and beyond. He then links these Platonic elements to Leibniz's modern revitalization of the logical tradition and then to new forms of algebraic geometry emerging in Hegel's lifetime. Redding thereby reestablishes aspects of Hegel's philosophy that are essential if Hegel is to be taken as a thinker relevant not only to contemporary philosophy, but also to current philosophical conceptions of logic. (shrink)

In _Complexity and Postmodernism_, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory into his discussion. _Complexity and Postmodernism_ is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.

Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Social Research. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Ruth R. Faden, R. Jay Wallace, Jr., and LeRoy Walters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xii + 436 pp. $25.00 (hardcover); $8.95 (paper). Ethics of Human Subject Research. Edited by Allan J. Kimmel, Jr. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1981. 106 pp. $6.95 (paper). Social Research Ethics. Edited by Martin Bulmer. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982. xiv + 284 pp. $39.50 (hardcover); $14.50 (paper). (...) The Ethics of Social Research: Field‐work, Regulation and Publication. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. x + 187 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). The Ethics of Social Research: Surveys and Experiments. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. xii + 249 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and Theory in BioethicsPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)The following citations were selected from BIOETHICSLINE, the online database prepared at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics for the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system. Searching the keywords autonomy, beneficence, casuistry, justice, and virtues, as well as the text word principlism produced more than 400 citations. Only the citations concerned with theory and principle in the practice of bioethics are included here—e.g., (...) works about justice in resource allocation have been deleted.Arkes, Hadley V. When Bungling Practice Is Joined to Absurd Theory: Doctors, Philosophers, and the Right to Die. In Set No Limits: A Rebuttal to Daniel Callahan's Proposal to Limit Health Care for the Elderly, ed. Robert L. Barry and Gerard V. Bradley, pp. 31-44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Arnason, Vilhjalmur. Towards Authentic Conversations: Authenticity in the Patient-Professional Relationship. Theoretical Medicine 15 (3): 227-42, September 1994.Arras, John D. Getting Down to Cases: The Revival of Casuistry in Bioethics. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-51, February 1991.Arras, John D. Principles and Particularity: The Role of Cases in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 983-1014, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. Principles and Other Emerging Paradigms in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 955-71, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. The Principles Approach. Hastings Center Report 23 (6): S9, November-December 1993.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Childress, [End Page 279] James F. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 752 p.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Walters, LeRoy. Ethical Theory and Bioethics. In their Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 4th ed., pp. 1-38. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.Beldecos, Athena, and Arnold, Robert M. Gathering Information and Casuistic Analysis. [Commentary]. Journal of Clinical Ethics 4 (3): 241-45, Fall 1993.Bole, Thomas J. The Rhetoric of Rights and Justice in Health Care. In Rights to Health Care, ed. Thomas J. Bole and William B. Bondeson, pp. 1-19. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1991.Broome, John. Fairness Versus Doing the Most Good. [Commentary]. Hastings Center Report 24 (4): 36-39, July-August 1994.Campbell, Courtney S. Gifts and Caring Duties in Medicine. In Duties to Others, ed. Courtney S. Campbell and B. Andrew Lustig, pp. 181-97. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Carson, Ronald A.; Callahan, Sidney; Ross, Judith Wilson; and May, William F. Spirit, Emotion, and Meaning: The Many Voices of Bioethics. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 26-27, May-June 1994.Charlesworth, Max. Bioethics in a Liberal Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 172 p.Cherbas, Peter. Paradigms and Our Shrinking Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 1105-13, Fall 1994.Childress, James F. Ethical Theories, Principles, and Casuistry in Bioethics: An Interpretation and Defense of Principlism. In Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics, ed. Paul F. Camenisch, pp. 181-201. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Childress, James F., and Fletcher, John C. Individualism and Community: The Contested Terrain of Respect for Autonomy. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 34-35, May-June 1994.Clouser, K. Danner, and Gert, Bernard. A Critique of Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (2): 219-36, April 1990.Devettere, Raymond J. Clinical Ethics and Happiness. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 18 (1): 71-89, February 1993.DeGrazia, David. Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and Specified Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (5): 511-39, October 1992.Donnelly, William J. From Principles to Principals: The New Direction in Medical Ethics. [Commentary]. Theoretical Medicine 15 (2): 141-48, June 1994.Downie, Robin. Health Care Ethics and Casuistry. [Editorial]. Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (2): 61-62, 66, June 1992. [End Page 280]DuBose, Edwin R.; Hamel, Ronald P.; and O'Connell, Laurence J., eds. A Matter of Principles? Ferment in U.S. Bioethics. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994. 381 p.Fox, Renée C. The Entry of U.S. Bioethics into the 1990s: A Sociological Analysis, pp. 21-71.Gudorf, Christine E. A Feminist Critique of Biomedical Principlism, pp.164-81.Campbell, Courtney S. Principlism and Religion: The Law and the Prophets, pp. 182-208.Charon, Rita. Narrative Contributions to Medical Ethics: Recognition, Formulation, Interpretation, and Validation... (shrink)

In the United States there have been brilliant examples of anti-racist struggle-black soldiers in the Civil War, coal miners of Alabama, and especially the anti-racist working-class struggles led by the Communist Party. Yet racism persists: Jim Crow replaced racial slavery, and mass incarceration has replaced Jim Crow. Why? Paul Gomberg argues that racism is functional for capitalism, supplying low-wage, vulnerable labor and driving down conditions for all workers. How can anti-racists put an end to racist society? Gomberg argues for (...) race-centered Marxism: anti-racism must lead working-class struggle, but racism will end only in a communist society that creates opportunity for all. (shrink)

For courses in the Philosophy of Religion, taught in either Philosophy or Religious Studies departments. This book provides a concise introduction to the main ideas and issues in philosophical theology. While covering a wide range of classic and contemporary perspectives, the text stresses a historical approach, focussing primarily on the development of philosophical theology in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Extract: -/- Maria Baghramian and Annalisa Coliva (henceforth, B&C) have written a superb, compendious book on various kinds of relativism (2019). While they give nuanced and sympathetic reconstructions of these views, it is illuminating to see them show, repeatedly and in detail, how each of these views succumbs to a familiar dilemma: a relativistic view requires that it be possible for two judgers to genuinely disagree with one another, even while their views count as ‘equally valid’. However, it is not (...) possible to make sense of this combination: in each and every case, the view either fails to specify a genuine disagreement, or it fails to make sense of equal validity. -/- Since I completely agree with this type of critique of relativistic views (see Boghossian 2006, 2008), I found it hard to find something to write a critical notice about. However, there is one argument I was not convinced by and that is B&C’s argument against Gilbert Harman’s influential version of moral relativism. Since their discussion of Harman is original and interesting and leads to a number of fundamental philosophical issues, I will devote this notice to a detailed critique of it. (shrink)

Philosopher, physicist, and anarchist Paul Feyerabend was one of the most unconventional scholars of his time. His book Against Method has become a modern classic. Yet it is not well known that Feyerabend spent many years working on a philosophy of nature that was intended to comprise three volumes covering the period from the earliest traces of stone age cave paintings to the atomic physics of the 20th century – a project that, as he conveyed in a letter to (...) Imre Lakatos, almost drove him nuts: “Damn the,Naturphilosophie.” The book’s manuscript was long believed to have been lost. Recently, however, a typescript constituting the first volume of the project was unexpectedly discovered at the University of Konstanz. In this volume Feyerabend explores the significance of myths for the early period of natural philosophy, as well as the transition from Homer’s “aggregate universe” to Parmenides’ uniform ontology. He focuses on the rise of rationalism in Greek antiquity, which he considers a disastrous development, and the associated separation of man from nature. Thus Feyerabend explores the prehistory of science in his familiar polemical and extraordinarily learned manner. The volume contains numerous pictures and drawings by Feyerabend himself. It also contains hitherto unpublished biographical material that will help to round up our overall image of one of the most influential radical philosophers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. Letters already (...) published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

The series offers a publication forum for innovative works on all topics of analytic philosophy. The focus is on the disciplines of theoretical philosophy: metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, logic. Furthermore, works that additionally include contributions to the history of philosophy are also welcome.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ought We to Require Emotional Capacity as Part of Decisional Competence?Paul S. Appelbaum* (bio)AbstractThe preceding commentary by Louis Charland suggests that traditional cognitive views of decision-making competence err in not taking into account patients’ emotional capacities. Examined closely, however, Charland’s argument fails to escape the cognitive bias that he condemns. However, there may be stronger arguments for broadening the focus of competence assessment to include emotional capacities, centering (...) on the ways in which emotions aid humans in processing information. Before emotional capacities are added to the list of functions essential for decisional competence, though, the feasibility and utility of such a reorientation must be demonstrated.To what extent ought persons’ capacities to experience emotion be taken into account when determining whether they should be deemed competent to make their own decisions? In the previous article, Louis Charland (1998) argues that traditional models of decision-making competence—of which the MacArthur Competence Treatment Study is a typical example—are mistaken in focusing narrowly on persons’ cognitive abilities to the neglect of emotional factors. In contrast, he suggests, constructs of competence ought explicitly to require a capacity to experience emotions, which he believes is central to meaningful decision making, before deeming persons competent.Charland, as he acknowledges, is not the first to suggest that the presence of some degree of emotional capacity is a necessary element of competence, but his argument is among the most elaborate to date and is certainly worth closer examination. Looked at carefully, however, Charland’s argument does not make quite the case for the determination of emotional capacity in competence assessment that he claims for it. Indeed, as I demonstrate below, Charland may share the same “pernicious [End Page 377] cognitive bias” that he ascribes to more traditional approaches. However, despite what I identify as the problems in Charland’s argument, others have raised more disturbing questions about the lack of attention to emotional issues in competence assessment. Thus, I am not ready to reject entirely the possibility that determinations of decisional competence ought to consider emotional factors. I conclude by outlining the questions that remain to be answered to identify more clearly the potential benefits of such an approach.The Construct of Decision-Making CompetenceSome preliminary comments about the nature of the dominant construct of decision-making competence may provide a useful frame for my response to Charland’s paper. Contemporary ideas of competence are tied inextricably to the ideal of self-determination in modern Western societies. Such societies are committed to respect for individual choice, both as a good in its own right and on the grounds that each person knows best what choices will maximize his or her own welfare. In general, therefore, states will not intervene to prevent persons from acting on their decisions, even when the choices they make—like the decision to smoke or to refuse potentially life-saving medical care—may objectively be thought to be detrimental to them.In some cases, however, the presumption that people will act in their own interests, as well as the notion that there is something intrinsically valuable in respecting their choices, fails (Buchanan and Brock 1989). When people’s minds are so disordered that they cannot be said to be making meaningful choices, other values come into play. Such people are called “incompetent.” When persons reach that point, the state’s interest in protecting its citizens becomes primary and someone else must make decisions on their behalf. Note that the size of this group must be sharply limited, lest a liberal society’s commitment to self-determination be undermined: There is no more profound infringement of the rights of citizens than the determination that they are incompetent. Thus, the criteria for incompetence must be selected in a deliberately narrow fashion—alternately, one might say that the standards for competence are made intentionally broad—so that all but a tiny percentage of citizens will be permitted to make decisions on their own.In the Anglo-American world, the process of formulating criteria of competence by and large has been left to the common law courts. Over the course of centuries they have identified the capacities that are, in... (shrink)

Für Natorp selbst stand seine Arbeit an Plato in unmittelbarem Zusammenhang mit der Arbeit an seiner eigenen Philosophie; sosehr sein großes Buch sich als Hinführung zu Plato verstand, sosehr bildet die Ausarbeitung von Platos Ideenlehre auch einen originären Teil der Philosophie Paul Natorps. Die Sonderausgabe dieses Standardwerkes zur Philosophie Platons bietet den Text nach der zweiten Auflage von 1921.

This book explores the role of divine severity in the character and wisdom of God, and the flux and difficulties of human life in relation to divine salvation. Much has been written on problems of evil, but the matter of divine severity has received relatively little attention. Paul K. Moser discusses the function of philosophy, evidence and miracles in approaching God. He argues that if God's aim is to extend without coercion His lasting life to humans, then commitment to (...) that goal could manifest itself in making human life severe, for the sake of encouraging humans to enter into that cooperative good life. In this scenario, divine agapē is conferred as free gift, but the human reception of it includes stress and struggle in the face of conflicting powers and priorities. Moser's work will be of great interest to students of the philosophy of religion, and theology. (shrink)

In this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign. Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, _Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty_. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that (...) is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains central, yet Kahn shows how popular sovereignty creates an ethos of sacrifice in the modern state. Turning to law, Kahn demonstrates how the line between exception and judicial decision is not as sharp as Schmitt led us to believe. He reminds readers that American political life begins with the revolutionary willingness to sacrifice and that both sacrifice and law continue to ground the American political imagination. Kahn offers a political theology that has at its center the practice of freedom realized in political decisions, legal judgments, and finally in philosophical inquiry itself. (shrink)

Foreword William Schweiker Paul Tillich, one of the great Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, addresses in Morality and Beyond a basic problem ...

Paul Ludwig examines how and why Greek theorists treated political passions as erotic. Because of the tiny size of ancient Greek cities, contemporary theory and ideology could conceive of entire communities based on desire. A recurrent aspiration was to transform the polity into one great household that would bind the citizens together through ties of mutual affection. In this study, Ludwig evaluates sexuality, love, and civic friendship as sources of political attachment and as bonds of political association.

This volume contains fifteen papers by Paul Humphreys, who has made important contributions to the philosophy of computer simulations, emergence, the philosophy of probability, probabilistic causality, and scientific explanation. It includes detailed postscripts to each section and a philosophical introduction. One of the papers is previously unpublished.

Paul C. H. Lim offers an insightful examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period.

Paul Noordhof; Discussion: Micro-Based Properties and the Supervenience Argument: A Response to Kim, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1.

What does it mean to see time in the visual arts and how does art reveal the nature of time? Paul Atkinson investigates these questions through the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose theory of time as duration made him one of the most prominent thinkers of the fin de siècle. Although Bergson never enunciated an aesthetic theory and did not explicitly write on the visual arts, his philosophy gestures towards a play of sensual differences that is (...) central to aesthetics. This book rethinks Bergson's philosophy in terms of aesthetics and provides a fascinating and original account of how Bergsonian ideas aid in understanding time and dynamism in the visual arts. From an examination of Bergson's influence on the visual arts to a reconsideration of the relationship between aesthetics and metaphysics, Henri Bergson and Visual Culture explores what it means to reconceptualise the visual arts in terms of duration. Atkinson revisits four key themes in Bergson's work - duration; time and the continuous gesture; the ramification of life and durational difference - and reveals Bergsonian aesthetics of duration through the application of these themes to a number of 19th and 20th-century artworks. This book introduces readers and art lovers to the work of Bergson and contributes to Bergsonian scholarship, as well as presenting a new of understanding the relationship between art and time. (shrink)

Depuis son avènement au début du XXe siècle, la phénoménologie a rallié, dans une fidélité plus ou moins grande à Husserl, son fondateur, des auteurs aussi différents que Heidegger, Scheler ou Fink – non sans que chacun ait d'abord pris la mesure de l'ambition d'un projet qui consistait à réaffirmer le sens de la philosophie en lui assignant pour objet un certain absolu, jugé comme tel « irréductible ». Les philosophes français, dont Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Henry, Marion, ont tous (...) eu à cœur de renouveler à leur façon la phénoménologie, en interrogeant à nouveaux frais ses enjeux. En revenant sur l'histoire de ce courant, Paul Audi montre que la plupart de ces penseurs ont suivi un même ordre de mission – que Sartre formule ainsi dans son tout premier texte phénoménologique, en 1934 : « Soyons plus radicaux ». Pourquoi et comment ce devoir de radicalité a-t-il pris auprès d'eux le statut d'un mot d'ordre? Quels enseignements devrions-nous aujourd'hui en tirer? Une de ces leçons ne revient-elle pas à dire que si, en phénoménologie, la demande de radicalité a bien sa raison d'être, elle n'en révèle pas moins les limites de la discipline – des limites qui pourraient bien expliquer pour partie son essoufflement actuel? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ovid, Art, and Eros PAUL BAROLSKY OVIDIO, AMORI, miti e altre storie or Ovid: Loves, Myths, and Other Stories is the copiously illustrated catalogue to the monumental exhibition mounted in 2008–2009 at the Scuderie del Quirinale, in Rome, in celebration of the great Roman poet and his world. This handsome tome is many books in one: a beautiful album of color plates illustrating a wide range of fascinating (...) objects, an overview of Ovid’s life, works and influences—a book for amateurs and specialists alike, a book to delight and instruct. The book includes paintings and sculpture but also pottery, coins, and jewelry. There is something for everybody here. Ovidio is divided into relatively brief sections written by numerous scholars who treat such topics as Ovid and myth, Ovid the love poet, Ovid in exile, Ovid and Augustan Rome, Ovid and the figurative arts, and Ovid in the seventeenth century. The book’s attention to illustrated editions of Metamorphoses, and especially the Ovide moralisé, is notable and refreshing. I think it fair to say that the exhibition and its catalogue are, not surprisingly, dominated by Metamorphoses and the ways in which artists illustrated its stories over the centuries. The myths of Venus and Adonis, Narcissus and Echo, Icarus and Daedalus, and Jupiter and Europa are among the numerous Ovidian stories that get extensive treatment here. We need to recall that no ancient author in the Hellenic tradition is so copiously illustrated as is Ovid—a fact that is Ovidio, amori, miti e altre storie, ed Francesca Ghedini et al. Rome 2018, 310 pages; isbn 9788856906486; €33.15. arion 27.2 fall 2019 easily taken for granted. A consummate story teller, Ovid inspired the pictorial tales of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, among other masters. Often in this book, works of mythological art are seen in the context of Ovid, even when there is no specific association between image and text. Such is the case when, for example, we encounter the well-known Praxitelean Aphrodite pudica in the Uffizi which inspired Botticelli’s similar Aphrodite now in the Musei Reali of Turin. There is nothing that links the statue and the painting to Ovid other than the fact that their makers, like the poet, write about the goddess of love. Ever so many mythological works suggest the arousal of desire. The Praxitelean Aphrodite modestly covers her body with both of her hands. Understandably, since according to an ancient tale, a young man was so aroused by the statue that he left a stain upon her. In short, we are in the realm of erotic art. The Hellenistic statue of Leda and the Swan in the archeology museum of Venice is an excellent example of erotic art featured in this book, even though Leda is mentioned only in passing in Metamorphoses. She seems to swoon in rapture as the bird (Jupiter in avian guise) slithers between her legs, beak seeking lips. Scarcely resisting, Leda reaches ambiguously downward as if in search of something, and we can well imagine what that might be. That her lower hand is invisible contributes to its suggestiveness. Leda’s upper hand is pressed against the swan’s sinuous neck, by no means a gesture of resist170 ovid, art, and eros Figure 1: Leda and the Swan. Venice, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 2018. Eric Vandeville / akg-images. ance, I believe, even though in the myth she is taken by force. What we see is what the Ovid catalogue calls a “voluptuous amplexus.” The story of Leda and the Swan is forever told by painters in various erotic ways. When, later in the Renaissance, Correggio pictures the momentous event he shows the swan mounting Leda who, in this case, receives the bird in a seated position. As the bird engages the nymph, feathers pressed against her inner thigh, the swan, as in the ancient statue, seeks out her mouth with his beak—a juxtaposition as phallic as it is oral. The Leonardesque smile of Leda betokens not fear or violence but pleasure—a decidedly carnal pleasure. In a different context, Vasari wrote that Correggio painted not colors but flesh. When Leonardo himself pictured Leda, he delicately rendered the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Art of Interpreting Art PAUL BAROLSKY “The quality of the prose is just as important in nonfiction as in fiction.” —Robert Caro If as Horace famously wrote in the Ars poetica the aim of poetry is to instruct and delight, why shouldn’t the goal of all writing be the same? Why should all readers not enjoy as well as learn from what they read? In the realm (...) of academe, however, although much writing instructs, far too little delights. This is so because the goal of academic writing is primarily that of conveying information and knowledge or of developing new ideas. Delight or pleasure are not of primary academic concern. Too few scholars care sufficiently about how they write. Too many academics write in unreadable prose. Often their writing is ponderous, indeed pompous, because they are insecure in the face of theoretical, philosophical or scientific writing. The outcome can be quite hideous. Sometimes, dare I say often, their writing is dreadfully dry and dull. In the Humanities, the arts, by which I mean those that have been called the spatial arts, that is, architecture, sculpture, and painting, can be studied from a wide variety of perspectives. As some observers have noted, however, frequently in the academic study of art and its history, art as such recedes from view and drops out of the discussion. Art becomes primarily the illustration of something else, something other than itself. It comes to be the illustration of the global, colonial, sexual, political, theological, social, economic, religious, anthropological, philosophical, technological, scientific, or theoretical. It is too often not sufficiently appreciated for its own sake as art. Do I sound as if I am writing about the much-scorned notion of “art for art’s sake?” Yes, but not exactly. Since the arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 102 the art of interpreting art nineteenth century, when Gautier wrote, l’art pour l’art meant just that, the celebration of art for its own sake. Eventually, however, that notion came to be disparaged as too limited, since it supposedly failed to address the various kinds of associations between art and the other phenomena listed above. The notion of art for its own sake unfortunately came to be seen as a manifestation of aestheticism or formalism— both often regrettably terms of opprobrium. Not long ago a graduate teaching fellow in a prestigious art history program had her students read my essay on the role of writing about art which was published in the spring/ summer 2018 issue of this journal. The first part of that essay concerned atrocious writing, which, our teaching fellow said, made her students laugh—yes, laugh! They presumably laughed because the prose of scholars was so very bad—ridiculous in the root sense of the word, laughable. One example of pompous diction that I have cited often because it is so laughably absurd, is the definition one art historical scholar has given of sex as “inter-corporeal relationality.” No wonder the students laughed! With considerable amusement, the graduate teaching fellow to whom I have just referred told me that she rather doubted her students bothered to read the second part of the essay she assigned, even though it included some exemplary writing about art. Why should they have bothered to read examples of excellent writing? After all, their teachers, who too often do not themselves write well, do not encourage students to think sufficiently about their prose. Let me add to the cluster of grotesque writing illustrated in the Arion article to which I have referred one more example of how bad academic writing about art can be in order to remind the reader of the kind of absurd nonsense or blather that one encounters throughout the Humanities. It comes from a highly esteemed author who “describes influence as a notion which provides a support—of too magical a kind to be very amenable to analysis—for the facts of transmission and com- Paul Barolsky 103 munication; which refers to an apparently causal process (but with neither rigorous delineation nor theoretical definition) the phenomena of resemblance or repetition; which links, at a distance and through time—as if through the mediation of... (shrink)

This collection of papers makes a step towards increased dialogue among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. The text should be significant for those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

Shared decision-making is important and beneficial for patients. Practically, this requires that we explore the values of the patient and the clinician and then consider available treatment options. The aim is to maximize the good of the patient in the context of their illness. Hence, clinical consultations are situations in which we can, and should, draw upon moral philosophical precepts. One such precept, which can fortify the foundations of shared decision-making, is a process of inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue, which (...) aims at reaching a consensual decision as to what is best for the patient in their situation. Summary: Shared decision making is important and helpful for patients. This is based upon having a conversation about values and what is important. We can base that conversation on principles of moral philosophy, via a process termed “dialogic consensus”. (shrink)

Many believe that moral education can cause moral progress. At first glance, this makes sense. A major goal of moral education is the improvement of the moral beliefs, values and behaviors of young people. Most would also consider all of these improvements to be important instances of moral progress. Moreover, moral education is a form of social learning, and there are good reasons to think that social learning processes shape episodes of progressive moral change. Despite this, we argue that instead (...) of being a cause of moral change, the main effect of moral education is often to provide stability or continuity. In addition, we will argue that even when the conditions are right for moral education to contribute to moral change, it is far from clear that the resulting changes will always, or even most of the time, end up being progressive. (shrink)

Paul Horwich; V*—Chomsky versus Quine on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 95–.