The book also comes with an exhaustive array of study aids that enable the reader to monitor and enhance the learning process.

Self-trust is a necessary condition of personal autonomy and self-respect. Self-trust involves a positive sense of the motivations and competence of the trusted person; a willingness to depend on him or her; and an acceptance of vulnerability. It does not preclude trust in others. A person may be rightly said to have too much self-trust; however core self-trust is essential for functioning as an autonomous human being.

How can we respond in the aftermath of wrongdoing? How can social trust be restored in the wake of intense political conflict? In this challenging work, philosopher Trudy Govier explores central dilemmas of political reconciliation, employing illustrative material from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Peru, and elsewhere. Govier stresses that reconciliation is fundamentally about relationships. Whether through means of truth commissions, apologies, community processes, or criminal trials, the basic goal of reconciliation is improved social trust among alienated individuals (...) and groups. A major strength of Govier's approach is her creative practical framework for reflection. She explains that people should not to be identified with the roles they may have played, and she points out that, with reference to wrongs committed in political conflicts, individuals often play several roles. The perpetrators of some acts can be the victims of others; the victims in some circumstances may become responsive interveners in others. Rare is the political conflict in which one group commits all wrongs. Govier argues that, to build social trust and sustainable peace, acknowledgment of past wrongs is crucial. The need for mutuality in acknowledgment is an underappreciated aspect of the aftermath of conflicts. She further examines the themes of responsibility ; apology; forgiveness; reparations; the rehabilitation of child soldiers; the problems of monetary compensation; and truth-telling and truth commissions. Govier's lucid style and willingness to explore counterarguments make this a lively and thought-provoking work. (shrink)

We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those issues (...) and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research. This is a second edition of the book that is corrected and updated by the author, with new prefaces to each chapter. (shrink)

Dantis, Trudy As a 'definite community of Christian faithful', every parish is called to embody the presence of the church in the wider community. It does this by being a place of living communion and participation that is wholly mission-oriented, an environment conducive to hearing God's word and growing in the Christian life, and one that is engaged in dialogue, proclamation, outreach, worship and celebration. In doing so, a parish becomes 'salt' and 'light' for the community it is located in. (...) Parish vitality can therefore be likened to the 'saltiness' or 'luminosity' of a parish community. It is imperative for every parish community to grow in health and strength if it is to be an effective source of evangelisation and an authentic witness of the Gospel. As Wittberg notes, 'To the extent that their communal "salt" loses its flavor, parishes - are worse than irrelevant, because they no longer image God'. (shrink)

The contested testimony in the Hill-Thomas ease is an illuminating test case for universalistic theories about the reliability of testimony. There is no reasonable alternative to universalistic standards of epistemic appraisal. And yet the charge by feminists and others that such criteria can be applied selectively and used to discredit and silence people is shown to be accurate. The road to a solution is to offer guidelines for the interpretation and application of these norms.

Slippery slope arguments are commonly thought to be fallacious. But is there a single fallacy which they all commit? A study of applied logic texts reveals competing diagnoses of the supposed error, and several recent authors take slippery slope arguments seriously. Clearly, there is room for comment. I shall give evidence of divergence on the question of what sort of argument constitutes a slippery slope, distinguish four different types of argument which have all been deemed to be slippery slopes, and (...) contend that two of these types need involve no logical error.We find in textbook accounts three quite differently oriented treatments of slippery slope: conceptual — relating to vagueness and the ancient sorites paradox; precedential — relating to the need to treat similar cases consistently; and causal — relating to the avoidance of actions which will, or would be likely to, set off a series of undersirable events. (shrink)

In 1995, the Dutch Minister of Health proposed that a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with heroin-maintenance for severe abusers be conducted. It took nearly four years of lengthy debates before the Dutch Parliament consented to the plan. Apart from the idea of prescribing heroin, the minister and her scientific advisers had to defend the quite high material and non-material costs that would arise from employing the randomized controlled design. They argued that the RCT represented the truly scientific approach and was (...) the royal way to unambiguous results. In the present article, I question this common dual justification of RCTs. First, I situate the historical origins and the basic assumptions of the ideal experiment in 20th-century economic liberalism. Secondly, using the Dutch heroin experiment as an example, I discuss human-science experimentation as an attempt to create reality rather than merely record it. Finally, I discuss some surprising responses by heroin users. These responses display the assumptions of RCTs discussed in the historical section, and underline the importance of the culture of heroin use. In the epilogue, I suggest that cultural aspects of heroin consumption can best be studied by thorough ethnographic research. (shrink)

I explore Baier, Held, Okin, Code, Noddings, and Eisler on trust and distrust. This reveals a need for reflection on the analysis, ethics, and dynamics of trust and distrust-especially the distinction between trusting and taking for granted, the feasibility of choosing greater trust, and the possibility of moving from situations of warranted distrust to trust. It is impossible to overcome the need for trust through surveillance, recourse to contracts, or legal institutions.

The authors propose a conception of national reconciliation based on the building or rebuilding of trust between parties alienated by conflict. It is by no means obvious what reconciliation between large groups of people amounts to in practice or how it should be understood in theory. Lack of conceptual clarity can be illustrated with particular reference to postapartheid South Africa, where reconciliation between whites and blacks was a major goal of the Mandela government and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The (...) authors argue that a conception of reconciliation in terms of trust offers a promising solution to prominent conceptual confusions surrounding the notion of “national reconciliation” or reconciliation between large groups. By emphasizing the centrality of contextually variable trust in viable relationships, the authors accommodate an emphasis on human relationships and attitudes, as stressed by Desmond Tutu. They argue, however, against any simplistic application of purely individualistic or spiritual concepts to large groups and institutional contexts. (shrink)

This article explores and offers a qualified defence of the claim that the entitlement to forgive a wrongdoer belongs to the victim of the wrong. A summary account of forgiveness is given, followed by arguments in favor of the victim's prerogative to forgive. Primary, or direct victims are then distinguished from secondary and tertiary ones, which point to a plurality of prerogatives to forgive. In cases of conflicts between these prerogatives it is emphasized that special care should be taken to (...) protect the primary victim's entitlement, without giving an absolute and exclusive status to the latter prerogative. Grounds for limiting the primary victim's prerogative regarding forgiveness include (a) cases where harm to secondary and/or tertiary victims are greater than the harm resulting from the original wrong committed against the primary victim, (b) the social dimensions of the elements of forgiveness, and (c) the need for self-forgiveness when a repentant wrongdoer is not forgiven by any of the victims. The practical significance of these arguments are illustrated by considering the criticism that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission have forgiven perpetrators in ways that inappropriately pre-empted the primary victims' entitlement to forgive. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(2) 2002: 97-111. (shrink)

An aim of all of the management of healthcare systems is the smooth provision of services. A great deal of effort is put into ensuring processes will obtain this ideal – the well‐run system. The central argument in this paper is that these processes result in a system that perpetrates violence and coercion on its clients and workers. This violence is structural and personalizing in its effects. Moreover, time and effort is taken away from the actual work of the system (...) for its management. Under such managerialist control, the idea of chaos and the need to ensure order are used to fuel an apparatus that takes the focus from other aspects of the system such as the power relations that keep the system as it is. In such an ordering, the clinical audit is promoted as a method to ensure order by keeping ahead of, or removing the potential for chaos. In using Žižek's ideas about violence it is possible to identify how efforts and attempts to correct the system are doomed to fail just as they hide how nurses' enrolment in the service of the system leads to alienation and subjectification. A central aim of this paper is to rethink how power and implicit violence are practised in such processes. To overcome the inherent violence of the audit culture, this paper suggests an interruption of audit cultures with a promotion of more radical positions for nursing practice and clinically based research. The hope is to recalculate and interrupt how nurses are to operate in the management structures that organize healthcare. (shrink)

In this paper we engage in a conversation speaking from three different perspectives and discuss the ways literature and our personal life experiences can inform policy and practice in relation to the concepts of well-being, education, and culture. We gathered around a metaphorical kitchen table, bringing to it our life experiences, as well as the literature that informed our individual research programs (positive psychology, Indigenous world view, and narrative inquiry) and we began to unpack the questions: “What role does culture (...) play in understanding and educating for well-being and why should an education system be concerned about it?”. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore how nurses are enrolled into and take part in programmes of efficiency and effectiveness. Using the philosophical theorizing about desire as a force or power, I focus specifically on what is understood as relations between desire and productivity in current Westernized health‐care systems. Use is made of the idea from Spinoza that human emotions consist only of pleasure, pain, and desire as these act as a motive force. This is then linked with (...) more contemporary work on the politics and discourses of desire. A report on the implementation of a productivity programme in the United Kingdom, The Productive Ward: Releasing time to care™, is explored for the ways its developers set about motivating nurses to endorse and enact the programme. In exploring the mechanics of desire in these processes, a view of desire as productive is promoted. Looking at desire as assembling actions, and an assemblage, moves the analysis to an interrogation of actions and practices used to enable and bring nurses to the process. Moreover, in working through the various modalities and operations of desire, the potential and limits of such projects are abstracted. Such potentials and limits are necessarily set by the intensification of power and desire in the capitalist economy, saturating areas of nursing, and health‐care provision. (shrink)

This article considers the relation between tolerance and hospitality. It situates this discussion in the history of philosophy with reference to a range of thinkers from Homer and Aristotle to Levinas, Derrida, and Walzer. It argues that the virtue of hospitality is important for negotiating the complexities of our contemporary world. Hospitality responds to the challenge of what is most needed for re-conceiving how one might remain committed to the values of one's own community while also remaining open to those (...) who do not share these same commitments. (shrink)

It is rare to find honest accounts of the difficulties and dilemmas encountered when conducting sensitive research with vulnerable research populations. This account explores some of the ethical issues raised by a qualitative interview study with lesbians and gay men about their experiences of nursing care. There is tension between the moral duty to conduct research with vulnerable and stigmatized groups in order to improve care, and the inevitable lack of resources that go with such a venture. This increases the (...) risk of harm during the process of research. The risk of harm to both the researchers and the researched is explored and the need for a support structure for both groups is raised. There is a pressing need to develop further understanding about the ways in which the dissemination of research can potentially harm already vulnerable research populations. (shrink)

On most views of the nature of moral judgments, it is possible for a person to be mistaken in the belief that it is right to act in a certain way. When someone believes that it is right to do something, does that thing on the basis of such a belief, and yet in so doing commits deeds which are wrong by moral standards other than his own, we do not quite know whether to praise him for his conscientiousness while (...) condemning his actions. He acts according to his conscience and does what he believes to be right, but his beliefs are erroneous and his actions wrong. Shall we praise the man for his conscientiousness while condemning his actions? (shrink)

This book describes how people can help animals in their community.

The following three papers focus on compassion, an issue well worth our consideration in our contemporary age, and most especially during our recent national tragedy. It is hoped that these philosophical discussions of compassion may help us as we, on personal and societal levels, come to grips with immense human suffering. The topic of compassion brings us into an exploration of a cluster of related philosophical issues and is thus a good stepping off point for inquiry. The role of the (...) first paper is that of stage setting, to simply layout an approach to compassion presented by Aristotle and developed by Martha Nussbaum. This approach served as the introductory consideration in a course on compassion, taught by the first two commentators. Initially we wondered if we could sustain discussion on this narrow topic over fourteen weeks, but found the course left students with numerous questions worth their further consideration. So too in these papers, a number of issues will remain untouched, such as the relation of compassion and public policy and specific approaches to the cultivating of compassion, both of which are explored at length by Martha Nussbaum. This first paper frames our discussion, by presenting in outline form key points addressed in Martha Nussbaum’s Aristotelian discussion of the emotion of compassion, and touches upon issues developed in the next two papers. (shrink)

Skin as cover: the discursive effects of 'covering' metaphors on wound care practicesThis paper outlines a Foucauldian analysis of interactions between nurses and patients during wound care procedures in a burns unit. It explores the use of Kristeva's psychoanalytic concepts of abjection and the abject body to illuminate the emotional affects of wounds on nurse and patient. In this process, I identify how cultural metaphoric understandings about skin influence and organise the care of burns patients. Such analysis suggests the import (...) of the complete skin, the medical scientific control over the definition of this work, and the emotional forces that resist such control. (shrink)

Forgiveness and Revenge is a powerful exploration of our attitudes to serious wrongdoings and a careful examination of the values that underlie our thinking about revenge and forgiveness. From adulterous spouses to terrorist factions, we are surrounded by wrongdoing, yet we rarely agree which response is appropriate. The problem of how to respond realistically and sensitively to the wrongs of the past remains a perplexing one. Trudy Govier clarifies our thinking on this subject by examining the moral and practical impact (...) of revenge and forgiveness, both personal and political. Forgiveness and Revenge offers much-needed clarity and reason where emotions often prevail. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the ethics of attitudes to wrongdoing. (shrink)

Positivist ethnographic research situates the participant observer in an objectivist position towards the field. Using poststructural perspectives to analyse the field challenges and unsettles objectivist assumptions underpinning ethnography. Neither is merging of the two approaches completely unproblematic. A crucial element in a coherent amalgam centres around resolution of potential contradictions emanating from the place of field notes in ethnographic research, and the position of the researcher (author) vis‐a‐vis such notes. Contemporary approaches to field notes maintain that such notes are not (...) an objective description of the field, unaffected by the voice of the researcher. Rather, observational records are to be regarded as text, with characteristics in common with all texts. The ethnographic record is constituted as much by the positionality of the researcher as by the research participants. The nurse researcher can be viewed as participant in the constitution of the field. In unsettling and challenging taken‐for‐granted understandings about nursing practice, I am affirming the centrality of the position of the nurse in nursing research. (shrink)