Volume 1. Der Weg ; Das Wissen ; Die Welt ; Die Zeit ; Die Neuschöpfung der Polis ; Die sokratische Methode : Àreté ist ein Wissen ; Nicht-Wissen und Nicht-Können -- Volume 2. Das Interesse am gelingenden Leben ; Erkenne und erzeuge dich selbst : Aùto-génesis und Eùdaimonía.

What exactly do we need to do in order to make a promise, or to exercise some other normative power? On a view relied on by many philosophers writing on promising, consent, and related phenomena, the answer is that we must communicate a suitable kind of intention. On this view, power-conferring principles assert that specific normative consequences, determined in part by the content of the communicated intention, attach to such communicative acts, and these principles need not be socially practised or (...) accepted to be true. The paper offers a defense of this convention-independent view against the forceful challenge developed by Jed Lewinsohn in ‘The “Natural Unintelligibility” of Normative Powers’. Lewinsohn appeals to action-theoretic considerations to show that the relevant type of communicative act could not be performed under conditions of rationality and full information, and that therefore promissory power and other normative powers require the existence of social rules conferring such powers. The defense of the view targeted by Lewinsohn turns partly on the exact content of plausible constraints on the intelligibility of actions done with a particular aim, and partly on the question just how the social acceptance of power-conferring rules should be thought to matter. (shrink)

Carl Henrik Koch har i denne bog samlet en række af sine artikler om fremtrædende danske filosoffer. Med start ved Holberg i 1700-tallet arbejder Koch sig op gennem den danske filosofihistorie og strejfer blandt andre Eilchov, Sibbern, A.P. Adler, Brøchner og naturligvis mastodonterne Søren Kierkegaard og Georg Brandes. Bogen giver en hurtig, men spændende indførsel i en vigtig del af den danske kulturhistorie, som gennem de sidste 250 år har haft stor indflydelse både herhjemme og i udlandet.

The world of disability theory is currently divided between those who insist it reflects a physical fact affecting life quality and those who believe disability is defined by social prejudice. Despite a dialogue spanning bioethical, medical and social scientific literatures the differences between opposing views remains persistent. The result is similar to a figure-ground paradox in which one can see only part of a picture at any moment. This paper attempts to find areas of commonality between the opposing camps, and (...) thus to rearrange the figures of the paradox at a fundamental level. The purpose is first to identify areas in which common ground can be achieved, and secondarily, to clarify the areas in which disagreement continues. While a general and unified theory of physical difference/disability is beyond the scope of this paper the result may advance that general goal. (shrink)

Résumé Les affinités paradoxales que la recherche a pu pointer entre la « secte » philosophique épicurienne et la secte chrétienne dans les premiers siècles de notre ère sont rappelées puis examinées dans le détail du premier document attestant une rencontre précise entre les deux sectes, le récit des Actes des Apôtres qui montre Paul discutant avec les Épicuriens et les Stoïciens d’Athènes, puis nous restitue le discours de Paul devant l’Aréopage d’Athènes. Il apparaît que Paul se pose en philosophe (...) pour exposer sa doctrine en des termes jusqu’à un certain point compatibles avec une doctrine matérialiste voire polythéiste. (shrink)

In so far as the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu are life-philosophies, they are philosophies of solitude. My aim in the following pages is to explain and defend this claim, clarifying the distinctive kind of solitude that is taught by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

The acceptance of military directives violating medical ethics and international covenants encouraged by the demonisation of the enemy by the US president in 2002 has effectively removed the right of medical personnel to refuse participation in internationally proscribed actionsMedicine and its traditional ethic of care is today a victim of the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, its uniquely humanising mission rejected by US President George W Bush and his advisors. In denying the applicability of international agreements guaranteeing medicine’s ecumenical (...) role in this conflict they have transformed medicine into just another weapon of tactical significance. The result, predictable in retrospect, has been to make military physicians and nurses complicit—actively or passively—in what Litton calls an “atrocity-producing situation”, resulting in detainee or prisoner abuse.1From the first revelations of detainee torture in US detention camps to recent allegations of continued abuse , the focus of international attention has shifted from the US prosecution of low ranking, non-commissioned military personnel to the context in which the atrocities they committed occurred. “No one up the chain of command has ever been held accountable for what is in these horrifying images,” Center for Constitutional Rights Director Bill Goodman said of recently published photographs of 2004 prisoner torture and abuse.2 “The situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture following a 2006 investigation.3The denial of international law and convention involved the overt disavowal of covenants and conventions that for almost 150 years required medical personnel in the US military to act within the guidelines of a Hippocratic vision of medicine. To understand how fundamental this change has been requires a brief review of the history of medicine’s previously protected status and then a description of …. (shrink)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

There has been no informed or honest debate in North America over the issue of liberalized euthanasia. Despite thousands of newspaper stories, scores of learned academic articles, a handful of closely analyzed legal decisions, and hours of broadcast news and talk show imagery, a full discussion is yet to begin.

A question between John Harris and I is the degree to which lessons may be learned, and insights gained, from a life distinguished by physical differences. He argues it as the “aborting Beethoven fallacy”, I insist on the evidence that what we learn from physical differences may be critical and life enhancing.

A personable teenager with Down's syndrome became a Canadian cause célèbre a few months ago when University Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, denied him a position on the organ transplantation waiting list. Terry Urquart lacked “reasonable” intelligence, hospital officials said, a criterion for all transplant candidates at that hospital. Protests by the boy's family, and by groups active in the cause of those with developmental disabilities, became well-photographed stories on the nightly television news and in the nation's newspapers. It did not (...) hurt the Urquart cause one bit that the 17-year-old teenager had won a gold medal in skiing at the International Special Olympics. (shrink)

Catholic opponents of abortion and embryonic stem cell research usually base their position on a hylomorphic account of ensoulment at fertilization. They maintain that we each started out as one-cell ensouled organisms. Critics of this position argue that it is plagued by a number of intractable problems due to fission (twinning) and fusion. We're unconvinced that such objections to early ensoulment provide any reason to doubt the coherence of the hylomorphic account. However, we do maintain that a defense of ensoulment (...) at fertilization must deny that we're essentially organisms. (shrink)

This essay reviews a range of issues arising from the complex case of Terri Schiavo and the lessons the case raises for bioethicists. It argues that embedded in the case is a broader controversy than is immediately evident, one involving the definitions by which bioethics judge cases of extreme physical and psychological limits, in its principled form of address. Further, it argues that bioethicists who assume the issues involved in the case are settled miss the point of the emotional responses (...) it has brought forth. (shrink)

Healthcare Providers advising patient surrogates on the appropriateness of continued care for comatose patients have often been sharply criticized for coercive behavior toward patient surrogates; with failing to provide them with adequate information; and for a general failure to adequately cinsider the cimplex needs and hopes of patients, their surrogates, and caregivers. Because decisions on the continuation or withdrawal of care often need the legal approval of surrogates the failure of both medical personnel and patient families to understand each other's (...) priorities may lead to ethical and interpersonal conflict. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 96-98.

Morain and colleagues (2019) advocate rethinking the rather dogmatic guidance from both regulatory authorities and professional associations cautioning physician-investigators against obtaining inf...

Since its inception, bioethics’ principled stance has been to argue against paternalism and elitism, and for an inclusive ethical perspective. But at least in North America, the growth of bioethics as a special area of applied ethics has created conflicts within the field itself. Those who, a generation earlier, argued against paternalism and for both professional and public accountability in medical decision making are now part of the decision making process. Too often, it is argued in this paper, their allegiance (...) is to the employer, or to a view of medicine that is institutionally based. As a result, it is suggested by this review, medical ethicists have adopted the perspective that, in the early 1970s, they most criticised. The answer, it is argued here, is to revisit a lexicographical ordering of responsibility in bioethics, one that recognises professionals as individuals with responsibilities, as citizens with a public posture, and finally, as professionals involved in the process of medical decision making. (shrink)

To those defining euthanasia as a battle for the principle of self-determination, persons seeking physician assisted death (PAD) are soldiers in the fight for patient autonomy. The reasons they seek it, or the potential of other, non-life-threatening interventions is less important than this principle: individuals have the right not only to choose death (suicide), but to be assisted in dying. They should not be second guessed or denied on the basis of another's distaste for that decision. This paper offers a (...) general review of deaths attributed to Dr. Jack Kevorkian's PAD practice in an attempt to answer two questions: Why do persons seek physician assisted death, and, to what extent does induced death seem, in retrospect, a reasonable and perhaps necessary medical response to specific patient complaints? (shrink)

Is Tom Shakespeare disabled, or simply distinct in stature? And if the latter, what makes that distinction important?For more than a decade, the British sociologist has been a critical voice in the sociology of difference. The son of a physician with achondroplasia “widely admired as a doctor and as a disabled role model” ,1 Shakespeare fils also has achondroplasia, is the father of children with the condition and, like his father, is professionally successful. As his book’s back cover announces, Shakespeare (...) has “taught and researched sociology at the Universities of Cambridge, Sunderland, Leeds, and Newcastle. He has written and broadcast extensively about disability and genetics, and his co-authored books include The Sexual Politics of Disability, Exploring Disability, and Genetic Politics.”This volume brings together a decade of papers that, Shakespeare says, “draws on my experience of being a disabled person, and the son, father, husband and friend of disabled people”1 to argue the following thesis: “Disability results from the interplay of individual and contextual factors. In other words, people are disabled by society and by their bodies.”1 That argument, he suggests, has resulted in the “breakdown of my relationship with the mainstream of the UK disabled people’s movement”, whose members advance a model of disability based wholly on social construction. Shakespeare sees that as simplistic and no longer viable despite of the extraordinary gains made by those seeking parity through advancement of the social construction thesis.1According to Shakespeare, his former confrères in the British disability movement see as a betrayal his rejection of their argument, one he formerly endorsed, and thus perhaps a repudiation of a generation of admittedly successful activism. To them, in other words, Shakespeare is no longer disabled but disabling, and that judgment must …. (shrink)

The online symposium concerning the Olivieri case provides a wealth of information, and lessons for the future.1 The articles, especially the one by Francois Baylis,2 and the e-letters concerning the articles, expand the teaching value of this case.After reading both articles and ….

No single principle is more critical to our ethical stance than the one asserting the sanctity of human life. In debates ranging from the care of anencephalic infants to the maintenance of fragile seniors, the question is, Where are the boundaries of sanctified human life? The generally accepted assumption is that a once firm set of principles and definitions is now eroding in the face of There is no doubt,that the miracles of medical technology have brought up ethical issues not (...) contemplated by us until the very recent past.”. (shrink)

The critical role of surrogates—commonly if erroneously called “Informal caregivers”—has been generally ignored by clinical and bioethical literatures. While assumed to provide no more than ancillary support, these patient representatives directly or indirectly affect patient care to the extent they inhibit or facilitate both home-based care and patient decisions regarding treatment alternatives. Members of this group include relatives and neighbors who may or may not act in consort as advisors, assistants, care providers, and surrogate decisionmakers acting on the patient's behalf (...) with members of the medical community. Not only do they often possess a critical voice strongly influencing both patient care decisions and, after discharge, home care and rehabilitation, this paper argues they do so from a perspective that is often radically different from one endorsed by medical professionals. (shrink)

Although space limitations do not permit including all the responses received after the passing of David Thomasma, some representative expressions are included below. As these remembrances attest, Edmund Pellegrino spoke for all of us when he said at David's memorial service, “It has been said that we die only when forgotten; if so, David will live a long time. He remains a presence for his family, friends, collaborators, and all who met him.”.

In a special issue of this journal, a range of authors addressed the critical problem of difference in bioethics. To what extent do class, culture, ethnicity, and race affect the ethical decisions that patients and professionals must make in a medical context? Those arguing for an understanding of cultural influences in bioethical decisionmakingtypically argue from the perspective of individual case studies to demonstrate the importance of these social constructs. Others, like Erika Blacksher, however, worry that this approach will obscure the (...) uniqueness of individual decisionmakng patterns, allowing all persons of a single group to be aggregated as if their class, cultural construct, or religious affiliation were the single motive element in their medicolegal decisionmaking. There is, she cautions, a risk of misuse if a professional care provider reflexively assumes individual patient or surrogate reactions on the basis of ethnicity or culture. (shrink)