pt. 1. Basics of eastern and western views -- pt. 2. New analytical methods and workability -- pt. 3. Predictive power and future prospects.

Authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, including historians, classicists, philosophers and theologians, this original collection of essays offers the first authoritative analysis of the multifaceted reception of Greek ethics in late antiquity and Byzantium, opening up a hitherto under-explored topic in the history of Greek philosophy. The essays discuss the sophisticated ways in which moral themes and controversies from antiquity were reinvigorated and transformed by later authors to align with their philosophical and religious outlook in each period. Topics examined (...) range from ethics and politics in Neoplatonism and ethos in the context of rhetorical theory and performance to textual exegesis on Aristotelian ethics. The volume will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy, classics, patristic theology, and those working on the history of education and the development of Greek ethics. (shrink)

Grace de Laguna’s philosophical work was bold and original. She was also able to connect together seemingly disparate strands of the pragmatic, metaphysical and psychological research going on around her, as Joel Katzav shows in his paper. This commentary gives some historical background to her academic career in an attempt to explain how she could have been forgotten as a philosopher. Social and institutional factors led to her work not being recognized when she wrote and thus sinking into obscurity in (...) philosophical circles afterwards. Although her work was initially widely read, her research seems not to have had any continuing direct impact on later developments in philosophy. However, it is crucial to restore her thought to its rightful place in the history of our subject. (shrink)

This volume is a new edition of a collection of problems in natural science and medicine which has been variously attributed to Aristotle and to Alexander of Aphrodisias; the collection includes material from both the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

This book explores "real" valuation through tracing the pragmatic meanings of "mattering." Employing Peirce's overall pragmatic method and realism to understand what we mean when we say something "matters," it encourages consideration of the practices we engage in, the values attached to those practices, and their consequences.

In recent years, Philosophy Departments at universities in China and worldwide have experienced a renaissance in discussion on Confucian thought. As the country draws from indigenous traditions, rather than leaning completely on the importation of Western liberalism and Marxism, Confucianism has critical implications for politics, ethics, and law in modern China. At the same time, democracy never left the conversation. Democratic concepts cannot be ignored and must be disposed of, acknowledged, or incorporated. The relationship between Confucianism and democracy has been (...) described by various authors as one of conflict, critique, compatibility, and hybridity. In this article, we examine a compatibility model, in which compatibility between Confucianism and democracy can be divided into four types: soft, hard, coexistence, and integration. We examine compatibility by examining “what is compatible” and “how compatibility can be achieved” so as to design speculative models for what a contemporary Confucian government would look like. Our focus is mainly political philosophy in order to explain the effect of cross-pollination of Confucian and democratic thought on political society. (shrink)

Background: Recently, a singular survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals,” which addresses shortcomings of previous instruments, has been validated. Aim: To determine how moral distress affects nurses and physicians differently across the various wards of a community hospital. Participant and research context: We distributed a self-administered, validated survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals” to all nurses and physicians in the medical/surgical ward, telemetry ward, intensive care units, and emergency rooms of a community hospital. Findings: A total of 101 (...) surveys were included in the study. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for all respondents was 143.0. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score was 1.75 greater for nurses than for physicians, and nurses were 2.52 times more likely to consider leaving their position due to moral distress. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for moral distress was least prevalent in the medical/surgical ward and highest in the telemetry ward. The intensive care unit ward had a mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score mildly greater than the emergency room. Ethical considerations: No participant identifying information or information connecting a survey response to an individual was collected. This study was approved by the Raritan Bay Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board. Discussion: This study provides insight into the level of moral distress in the community hospital setting. Telemetry nurses experience significantly more than nurses in other wards. Telemetry nurses typically manage patients sicker than medical/surgical wards, however do not have the resources of the critical care units. This scenario presents challenges for telemetry nurses and may explain their elevated moral distress. Conclusion: In community hospitals, telemetry nurses experience a considerably greater amount of moral distress compared to their colleagues in other wards. As measured by the Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals questionnaire, moral distress continues to be higher among nurses compared to physicians. (shrink)

This essay is about a special kind of transformative choice that plays a key role in debates about permissivism, the view that some bodies of evidence permit more than one rational response. A prominent objection to this view contends that its defender cannot vindicate our aversion to arbitrarily switching between belief states in the absence of any new evidence. A prominent response to that objection tries to provide the desired vindication by appealing to the idea that arbitrary switching would involve (...) a special kind of transformative choice: the choice to change one’s epistemic standards, i.e., one’s commitments regarding the relative importance of achieving true belief and avoiding false belief. My first aims here are to argue that this response is unsuccessful and propose an alternative. My secondary aim is to consider how this discussion might bear on more general debates about transformative choice. (shrink)

Wahrend Friedrich Nietzsche als eine der bedeutendsten Figuren innerhalb der deutschen Kulturgeschichte gilt, wird sein Einfluss auf den juristischen Diskurs als marginal beurteilt. Es scheint, als hatten sich die Rechtsphilosophen und -theoretiker einer vertieften Auseinandersetzung mit dem Denker enthalten. Sophia Gluth hinterfragt diesen Umstand und beleuchtet, ob und wie theoretisierende Juristen mit Nietzsche umgegangen sind. Dabei deckt sie ein Phanomen auf, das bisher weder gesehen noch beschrieben wurde: die konstante Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in der Rechtswissenschaft. Untersucht werden die Rezeptionsansatze (...) vom Kaiserreich bis in die Gegenwart. Die juristischen Nietzsche-Lekturen u.a. des Freirechts, der "Konservativen Revolution", der Nationalsozialisten sowie der Postmoderne werden dabei stets eingebettet in ihre kulturelle und soziologische Umwelt. Erzahlt wird so eine - nicht zuletzt bedruckende - juristische Ideen- und Mentalitatsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

In style typical of this series Introducing Postfeminism uses text and integrated illustration to trace the effect of French feminist theory on contemporary gender, politics and culture.

For the past 40 years, the 14-day rule has governed and, by defining a clear boundary, enabled embryo research and the clinical benefits derived from this. It has been both a piece of legislation and a rule of good practice globally. However, methods now allow embryos to be cultured for more than 14 days, something difficult to imagine when the rule was established, and knowledge gained in the intervening years provides robust scientific rationale for why it is now essential to (...) conduct research on later stage human embryos. In this paper, I argue that the current limit for embryo research in vitro should be extended to 28 days to permit research that will illuminate our beginnings as well as provide new therapeutic possibilities to reduce miscarriage and developmental abnormalities. It will also permit validation of potentially useful alternatives. Through consideration of current ethical arguments, I also conclude that there are no coherent or persuasive reasons to deny researchers, and through them humanity, the knowledge and the innovation that this will generate. (shrink)

This article attempts to examine the portrayal of the character of Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019). In the initial part of the film, Arthur exhibits signs that reveal he is headed towards committing a violent crime. Arthur displays signs of psychopathy and a lack of empathy. This article links criminal behaviour analysis to the Bible of the Arya Samaj, an Indian text, to find out how ancient Indian literature’s empirical theories, which are intertwined with philosophical and religious content, (...) shed light on criminal behaviour. The primary purpose of this article is to analyse the behavioural pattern in the character of Fleck and establish links to Dayanand Saraswati’s Satyarth Prakash, which discusses different types of Avidyas, a key concept in Indian philosophy that can be translated as ignorance or unwisdom, which is seen as a fundamental cause of suffering and bondage. It is certainly a significant factor in a person’s personality and behaviour. The major aim of this character analysis is not only to establish the link between Indian ancient texts and criminological behavioural patterns but also to reconceptualize evil through the lenses of Vedic hermeneutics. Vedic hermeneutics is the study of interpreting and understanding the ancient Vedic texts of Hinduism, where an important aspect is the recognition of different levels of meaning within the texts. (shrink)

In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno argues that, in modernity, art and philosophy are reciprocally dependent upon each other for legitimation and critical force. This claim has puzzled scholars and provoked controversy. I argue that Adorno’s thesis may be comprehended in the following manner: art requires philosophy because, without the latter, art would lack the power to critique social and historical reality (in particular, the ideological elements that often remain invisible as second nature), and to rationally interpret the material particularity expressed by (...) such reality; and, conversely, philosophy requires art because the latter expresses historical experience to reason. Such material historical experience is necessary in order to prevent philosophy from falling into ideological convention; idle speculation; or abstract and reified instrumentality. Thus, the constellation of history, art, and philosophy is essential to Adorno’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 337-349, September 2021.

I argue that T.M. Scanlon's contractualist account of morality has difficulty accommodating our intuitions about the moral relevance of the number of people affected by an action. I first consider the "Complaint Model" of reasonable rejection, which restricts the grounds for an individual's rejection of a principle to its effects upon herself. I argue that it can accommodate our intuitions about numbers only if we assume that, whenever we do not know who will be affected, each individual may appeal only (...) to the _expected effects on her. This assumption, I suggest, leads to counterintuitive results in cases where, although we do not know who will be affected, we do know that _someone will be. I then consider two proposals to supplement the complaint model with a direct appeal to aggregation. I argue that both are open to serious objections. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 55-86, June 2022.

This book defends an original and pluralist theory of when and why discrimination wrongs people, in particular, through unfair subordination, through the violation of their right to a particular deliberative freedom, or through the denial to them of access to a basic good.

This paper presents a novel position in the philosophy of logic: I argue that _validity_ is a thick concept. Hence, I propose to consider _validity_ in analogy to other thick concepts, such as _honesty_, _selfishness_ or _justice_. This proposal is motivated by the debate on the normativity of logic: while logic textbooks seem simply descriptive in their presentation of logical truths, many have argued that logic has consequences for how we ought to reason, for what we ought to believe, or (...) for what we ought to infer. How can logic be normative, if it appears to be descriptive? According to the proposal of this paper, the normativity of logic can be explained because a thick concept is in play: _validity_. Thus, I argue that the debate on how to best characterize validity and the debate on logic’s normativity are more connected than we think, because _validity_ is a thick concept. (shrink)

In cases of self-gaslighting, the subject worries that other people will be skeptical of one of her beliefs—for instance, the belief that she has been sexually harassed. Prompted by this worry, she...

With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim of this book is to place the aesthetic character of Schopenhauer's standpoint (...) at the heart of the way we read his philosophy and the way we answer the question: why read Schopenhauer - and how? Approaching his philosophy as an enactment of the sublime with a longer history in the ancient philosophical tradition, Vasalou provides a fresh way of assessing Schopenhauer's relevance in critical terms. This book will be valuable for students and scholars with an interest in post-Kantian philosophy and ancient ethics. (shrink)

Background Encounters of moral distress have long-term consequences on healthcare workers’ physical and mental health, leading to job dissatisfaction, reduced patient care, and high levels of burnout, exhaustion, and intentions to quit. Yet, research on approaches to ameliorate moral distress across the health workforce is limited. Research Objective The aim of our study was to qualitatively explore multi-professional perspectives of healthcare social workers, chaplains, and patient liaisons on ways to reduce moral distress and heighten well-being at a southern U.S. academic (...) medical center. Participants & Research Context Purposive sampling and chain-referral methods assisted with recruitment through hospital listservs, staff meetings, and newsletters. Interested participants contacted the principal investigator and all interviews were conducted in-person. Consent was attained prior to interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Research Design Directed content analysis was used to deductively organize codes and to develop themes in conjunction with the National Academy of Medicine’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. Rigor was attained through peer-debriefing, data triangulation methods, and frequent research team meetings. Ethical Considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the university and medical center institutional review boards. Findings Themes demonstrate that rather than offering interventions in the aftermath of moral distress, multilevel daily practices ought to be considered that pre-emptively identify and reduce morally distressing encounters through (1) the care team, (2) management and leadership, and (3) the health care industry. Strategies include interdisciplinary decision-making, trusting managerial relationships, and organizational policies and practices that explicitly invest in mental health promotion and diverse leadership opportunities. Conclusion Moral distress interventions ought to target short-term stress reactions while also addressing the long-term impacts of moral residue. Health systems must financially commit to an ethical workplace culture that explicitly values mental health and well-being. (shrink)

Very often, when a belief or a method of reasoning strikes us as morally wrong, it also seems to wrong someone in particular. For instance, if an acquaintance j.

Exploring the philosophical foundations of discrimination law as it exists in several jurisdictions, this collection of all new essays bridges the gap between abstract philosophical work on justice and fairness and legal work on specific types of discrimination.

In this paper, my aim is to offer some comments on the study of Mu‘tazilite kalām, framed around the study of a particular episode in the Mu‘tazilite dispute about man – a question with a deceptively Aristotelian cadence that is not too difficult to dispel. Within this episode, my focus is on one of the major arguments used by the late Baṣrans to hold up their side of the dispute, and on the relationship between the mental and the physical which (...) emerges from it. The most interesting – and most surprising – aspect of this relationship is that the mental and the physical do not seem to be treated as distinct terms, thus creating the space for questions about how the two relate. The first person perspective seems to be identified with the physical body. My interest then is in the response of the reader to this surprising presentation – or rather, in a certain kind of reader response, and thus a certain kind of interpretive mode, whose value and viability it is part of my aim to help clarify. (shrink)

_Synthesizes the most important recent work on wonder and brings a number of disciplines into conversation. _.

Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most prominent and controversial intellectual trends in medieval Islam. The Mu'tazilites (...) developed a view of ethics whose distinguishing features were its austere moral objectivism and the crucial role it assigned to reason in the knowledge of moral truths. Central to this ethical vision was the notion of moral desert, and of the good and evil consequences--reward or punishment--deserved through a person's acts. Moral Agents and Their Deserts is the first book-length study of this central theme in Mu'tazilite ethics, and an attempt to grapple with the philosophical questions it raises. At the same time, it is a bid to question the ways in which modern readers, coming to medieval Islamic thought with a philosophical interest, seek to read and converse with Mu'tazilite theology. Moral Agents and Their Deserts tracks the challenges and rewards involved in the pursuit of the right conversation at the seams between modern and medieval concerns. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of female nature has received mostly negative treatment, emphasising what he says females cannot do. Building on recent research, this book comprehensively revises such readings, setting out the complex and positive role played by the female in Aristotle's thought with a particular focus on the longest surviving treatise on reproduction in the ancient corpus, the Generation of Animals. It provides new interpretations of the nature of Aristotle's sexism, his theory of male and female interaction in generation, and his (...) account of inherited features. It also discusses a range of more general issues which can and should be re-examined in light of Aristotle's account of female animals: his methodology, hylomorphism, teleology and psychology. Aristotle on Female Animals will be valuable to all those interested in Aristotle's philosophy and the history of gender. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect has been defended not only as a test of character but also as a criterion of wrongness for action. This paper criticises one attempt to justify the doctrine in the latter capacity. The justification, first proposed by Warren Quinn, traces the wrongness of intending harm as a means to the objectionable features of certain reasons for making this our intention. As I argue, however, some of the actions which seem to us to be permissible, and (...) whose permissibility the DDE is supposed to explain, can be performed for these objectionable reasons. Since the proposed justification implies that any action is wrong when performed for these reasons, it renders the DDE incapable of accommodating the very intuitions about action which its proponents would have it explain. (shrink)

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become (...) part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

We agree with Svirsky, Howard, and Berman that the US Food and Drug Administration plays various roles, only one of which is the technical review and evaluation of product safety and e...

Many social practices treat citizens with cognitive disabilities differently from their nondisabled peers. Does John Rawls's theory of justice imply that we have different duties of justice to citizens whenever they are labeled with cognitive disabilities? Some theorists have claimed that the needs of the cognitively disabled do not raise issues of justice for Rawls. I claim that it is premature to reject Rawlsian contractualism. Rawlsians should regard all citizens as moral persons provided they have the potential for developing the (...) two moral powers. I claim that every citizen requires specific Enabling Conditions to develop and exercise the two moral powers. Structuring basic social institutions to deny some citizens the Enabling Conditions is unjust because it blocks their developmental pathways toward becoming fully cooperating members of society. Hence, we have a duty of justice to provide citizens labeled with cognitive disabilities with the Enabling Conditions they require until they become fully cooperating members of society. (shrink)