By resorting to the spiritual autobiography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, an important religious and cultural personality of the 20th century, the author tries to emphasise the aspects of political theology that defined her way of acting and thinking and to show how she understood the relationship between religion and politics. Topics like poverty, love, giving, peace, sacrifice or responsibility are presented as keywords in the understanding of a complex vision with interdisciplinary relevance, while the two levels of (...) poverty, namely the material one, often accompanied by physical pain, maladies and other types of suffering, and the spiritual one, that is not necessarily related to the lack of basic material needs and can be found even in developed countries like the United States of America or Japan, are seen through the lenses of political theology. The author shows that, by finding practical bridges between spirituality and politics and by using as sources of inspiration not only Christian thinkers, but also thinkers from other religions, like Ghandi, the Albanese militant accomplished her vocation and also offered important and perennial principles which can help in the understanding of the contemporary world and in finding solutions to some of its crises. Although her message is a sort of combination between theology and social life, the political accents, sometimes theoretical, at other times practical, are important and can be used today for the development of a sustainable discourse for both the theological and the political sphere. CONTRIBUTION: The article brings into attention a spiritual autobiography that was not valorised properly by the contemporary research and in the same time offers an inter-disciplinary approach with ecumenical value. (shrink)

Chidiac, Anthony Saint Teresa of Calcutta made a significant impact on Christian spiritual thought and practice in the twentieth century by dedicating her entire life to serving the poorest of the poor. Her spirituality is based on the premise that through serving the marginalised and disenfranchised in our society we are in essence ministering to Christ and consequently helping to 'quench his thirst'. Her effective work made her one of the most highly respected and venerated figures of recent (...) times, and it made her a readily acknowledged saint by Christians and non-Christians alike. She generated a tremendous amount of publicity by her determination to help the poor and to love the unwanted, the most vulnerable in society. At times she was criticised unfairly by some people regarding her conservative stance on issues, her fundraising activities and her effectiveness in dealing with the issue of poverty. Nevertheless strong yardsticks of her success are the countless awards she received and her ability to establish a dynamic congregation of 4500 dedicated nuns, active in over 130 countries, who continue to make a real difference to our world. (shrink)

Building on the thought and life of Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Simone Weil and Teresa of Calcutta, this article demonstrates that it is possible for Christians to find joy in the context of suffering. This joy is the joy of being intimate with Christ, of experiencing Christ’s redeeming power at work effectively transforming one’s whole person. In Christ, spiritual darkness and suffering can become a most effective manifestation of the recreating communion of the human with the (...) divine. Perfect discipleship identifies with the complete offer of Jesus Christ, the suffering God, received within one’s heart, so that invincible light might be brought into the night of the world. (shrink)

. Several recent Roman Catholics who were known for their devotion have left accounts of their troubled faith. I consider three of these: St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Then I tell of the troubled atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre. Finally, I use texts of Sartre and Teilhard to understand the unsettled nature of belief.

Informed consent is an essential step in helping patients be aware of consequences of their treatment decisions. With surgery, it is vitally important for patients to understand the risks and benefits of the procedure and decide accordingly. We explored whether a written IC form was provided to patients; whether they read and signed it; whether they communicated orally with the physician; whether these communications influenced patient decisions. Adult postsurgical patients in nine general hospitals of Italy’s Campania Region were interviewed via (...) a structured questionnaire between the second and seventh day after the surgery at the end of the first surgical follow up visit. Physicians who were independent from the surgical team administered the questionnaire. The written IC form was given to 84.5% of those interviewed. All recipients of the form signed it, either personally or through a delegate; however, 13.9% did not know/remember having done so; 51.8% said that they read it thoroughly. Of those who reported to have read it, 90.9% judged it to be clear. Of those receiving the written consent form, 52.0% had gotten it the day before the surgery at the earliest 41.1% received it some hours or immediately before the procedure. The written IC form was explained to 65.6% of the patients, and 93.9% of them received further oral information that deemed understandable. Most attention was given to the diagnosis and the type of surgical procedure, which was communicated respectively to 92.8 and 88.2% of the patients. Almost one in two patients believed that the information provided some emotional relief, while 23.2% experienced increased anxiety. Younger patients and patients with higher levels of education were more likely to read the written IC form. The written IC form is not sufficient in assuring patients and making them fully aware of choices they made for their health; pre-operative information that was delivered orally better served the patients’ needs. To improve the quality of communication we suggest enhancing physicians’ communication skills and for them to use structured conversation to ensure that individuals are completely informed before undergoing their procedures. (shrink)

This article analyses the use of signs (in a semiotic sense) in the analysis of Teresa of Avila's book, The Interior Castle. It takes one through the various levels of the castle, which stands as a sign for contemplation. Exploring Avila's creative use of imagery and language, it focus on what these signs (as pertaining to American semiotics and Charles S. Peirce) come to signify within Teresa's mental construction of the castle as a road to pure contemplation, in (...) the Catholic tradition. (shrink)

The topic of spirituality is gaining an increasing visibility in organizational studies. It is the authors contention that every theory of organization has explicit or implicit views of spirituality in the workplace. To analyze the presence of spiritual ideologies in management theories, they depart from Barley and Kunda's Administrative Science Quarterly article and analyze management theories as spirituality theories with regard to representations of people and the organization. From this analysis, we extract two major dimensions of people (as dependent or (...) independent workers) and the organization (as spiritually informed or spiritually uninformed) that, in combination, result in a typology that advances four organizational types of spirituality: the soulful organization, the holistic organization, the ascetic organization, and the professional organization. The expression of spirituality in each of these forms is discussed with the aim of contributing to a critically informed analysis of organizational spirituality. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the world (...) in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aimed at standardizing and providing preliminary evidence on the clinical usability of the Italian telephone-based Verbal Fluency Battery, which includes phonemic, semantic and alternate verbal fluency tasks.MethodsThree-hundred and thirty-five Italian healthy participants and 27 individuals with neurodegenerative or cerebrovascular diseases were administered the t-VFB. Switch number and cluster size were computed via latent semantic analyses. HPs underwent the telephone-based Mental State Examination and Backward Digit Span. Construct validity, factorial structure, internal consistency, test-retest and inter-rater reliability and equivalence with (...) the in-person Verbal Fluency tasks were assessed. Norms were derived via Equivalent Scores. Diagnostic accuracy against clinical populations was assessed.ResultsThe majority of t-VFB scores correlated among each other and with the BDS, but not with the MMSE. Switch number correlated with t-PVF, t-SVF, t-AVF scores, whilst cluster size with the t-SVF and t-AVF scores only. The t-VFB was underpinned by a mono-component structure and was internally consistent. Test-retest and inter-rater reliability were optimal. Each t-VFB test was statistically equivalent to its in-person version. Education predicted all t-VFB scores, whereas age t-SVF and t-AVF scores and sex only some t-SVF scores. Diagnostic accuracy against clinical samples was optimal.DiscussionThe t-VFB is a valid, reliable and normed telephone-based assessment tool for language and executive functioning, equivalent to the in-person version; results show promising evidence of its diagnostic accuracy in neurological populations. (shrink)

RESUMENEl artículo analiza el papel desempeñado por los argumentos de pendiente resbaladiza en los debates prácticos. Por un lado, estos argumentos suelen ejemplificar una forma d razonamiento imperfecto o paradójico. De hecho, la Filosofía clásica griega ya identificó las principales dificultades del sorites, el argumento del «montón». Por otro lado, la pendiente resbaladiza llama de nuevo la atención de la Filosofía contemporánea, ya que ocupa un lugar destacado en determinadas cuestiones morales, como pueden ser la eutanasia, los límites de la (...) investigación biomédica, o las posibles consecuencias de la intervención humana sobre el medio ambiente natural y sobe otras especies, no humanas. De esta forma, la Ética aplicada examina los riesgos y efecto son deseables de decisiones que, el comienzo, eran o parecían perfectamente aceptables, y lo hace así a pesar de que la metáfora de la pendiente resbaladiza no pueda aportar suficientes evidencias para frenar aquellas decisiones que comportan riesgos. Aun así, la pendiente sirve para expresar el peligro, la tragedia, los efectos negativos que amenazarían nuestra existencia, o la de las generaciones futuras. Por lo tanto, imágenes como la «caja de Pandora», la «ruptura de los diques», el «alud», no solo transmiten que algunas acciones pueden poner en riesgo la vida sino que, además, ilustran el uso práctico de los argumentos imperfectos.PALABRAS CLAVEpendiente resbaladiza, argumentación práctica, Ética aplicada.ABSTRACTThe article would analyze the role of the slippery-slope arguments in practical debates. On the one hand, they usually exemplify the imperfect, paradoxical reasoning; in fact, the ancient Greek Philosophy already identified the central flaws of the sorites, the «heap» argument. On the other hand, the metaphor of the slippery-slope draws again the attention of contemporary Philosophy, since it has a central part in some ethical issues, as happens with questions like euthanasia, the limits of biomedical research, and the possible consequences of the human action on the natural environment, and on non-humans. So, applied Ethics considers risks and undesirable effects of decisions that, at the very beginning, are, or seem acceptable, in spite of the fact that the slippery-slope could not allege enough evidences to prevent from this risky decision. However, it expresses how danger, tragedy, negative outcome would intrude in our existence, or in the existence of the next generations. Therefore, images like the «Pandora’s box», the «broken docks», the «avalanche», etc, not only suggest that some actions could definitively endanger life, but they illustrate the practical use of imperfect arguments.KEY WORDSslippery- slope, practical argumentation, applied Ethics. (shrink)

Desde la publicación de la encíclica Laudato si ‘(LS) del Papa Francisco en 2015, se han llevado a cabo múltiples acciones para fomentar una visión integral de la ecología en la Iglesia Católica. El objetivo fue el desarrollo de una propuesta curricular que incluye el desarrollo sostenible e integral en la enseñanza de la religión católica. El curso CHANCES ofrece un nuevo paradigma de la enseñanza de la religión católica, mostrando cómo desde ella se pueden descubrir motivaciones profundas, y potenciar (...) actitudes y virtudes, que pueden contribuir al desarrollo de competencias en sostenibilidad. (shrink)

The `riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a `dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion, rather than a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these theories in the context of Freud's work overall, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud.

This article examines Teresa of Avila's understanding of the relationship between spiritual dryness, intellectual frustration, and shame. It argues that Teresa presents these experiences as interconnected, as well as spiritually and intellectually valuable. This aspect of Teresa's thought provides important resources for theologians in the contemporary age in its insistence on the necessarily dynamic relationship between the spiritual and the intellectual in the life of the theologian. The article concludes with an examination of shame and its impact (...) on theological developments in our time, as well as the possibilities for integrating shame productively. (shrink)

The joint forces of information and biological technologies are shaping us in ways that defy our traditional views about the figures of the human. Moreover, determinist tendencies favoured by scientists and the seemingly autonomy of technology development are creating a conceptual framework that privileges the search for technological answers concerning many of the human problems, keeping at the margin questions pertaining to the symbolic realm. The prevailing atmosphere nurtures the emergent composition of the natural and the artificial. It is this (...) reconfiguration that needs to be deconstructed. In the present situation we must take the problem of the public understanding of science and technology very serious and, in particular, we must develop a critical stance in order to uncover problematic presuppositions and expose to view the idea that technoscientific development is, in its nature, inevitable and desirable. Technoscientific development and its social and cultural consequences are neither facts inscribed in nature nor results strictly produced by technical reasoning. As social and cultural subjects and objects, they must be under the scrutiny of all interested and debated in the public sphere. (shrink)

The ethical and philosophical issues of choosing disability accommodations, particularly regarding human service provider accommodations, have not received much attention in the academic literature. Signed language interpreting is an especially complex accommodation that requires assessment of the deaf person's language knowledge and facility in a society where the many varieties of deaf education have generated a continuum of American Sign Language and signed English. Signed language interpreters with variable levels of skill and proficiency flock to work in locations with high (...) demand for their services, sometimes with little regulation and consumer protection, due to laws that mandate the provision of... (shrink)

Studies into the ethical aspects of consumption tend to focus on a limited class of actions that are explicitly understood as “ethical consumption”. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic provided a context in which other ethical issues and questions of whom we should care for first, and how, suddenly and dramatically gained salience. This article draws on the care literature to explore the reconfiguration of consumption decisions and dilemmas during this period. Building on twenty-eight in-depth interviews, it considers the temporal and spatial dimensions (...) of care and consumption and examines various ethical and ideological considerations that arose, particularly regarding the allocation of care in the face of competing demands. Subsequently, the article problematises mainstream accounts of ethical consumption, arguing for considering a plurality of ethics present within decisions about consumption. It concludes with a call to incorporate a more capacious understanding of care in broader discussions of ethics in consumption. (shrink)

IVF/PGS procedures require that all embryos produced for potential implantation be screened for genetic abnormalities: only embryos free of genetic defects may be implanted or cryogenically preserved for future implantation. In this paper, I argue that the standard practice of the reproductive technology clinic (RTC), according to which all abnormal embryos must be discarded, unjustly imposes certain biases and discriminatory social values upon persons for whom it may not be a significant concern that their offspring would be disabled. The “standard” (...) practice both reflects a bias against disability and imposes this bias upon those who seek reproductive assistance from RTCs. I argue, therefore, that insofar as consenting to the destruction of any abnormal embryos as a condition of IVF treatment, RTCs threaten the autonomy of women (or parents) seeking medical assistance to overcome infertility. Finally, I examine recent empirical findings which suggest that genetic screening and destruction of abnormal embryos does not actually aid the overall objective of IVF, which is live birth, and may actually hinder it. (shrink)

Duty of candour legislation was introduced in Scotland in 2018. However, literature and experience of duty of candour when applied to infection control incidents/outbreaks is scarce. We describe clinician and parental perspectives with regard to duty of candour and communication during a significant infection control incident in a haemato-oncology ward of a children’s hospital. Based on the learning from this incident, we make recommendations for duty of candour and communication to patients and families during future infection control incidents. These include (...) the need to consider a crisis management approach, the importance of not underestimating psychological harm in incidents of a prolonged duration and embedding the existing legislation pertaining to the rights of the child. (shrink)

This paper explores some alternative accounts of doxastic disagreement, and shows what problems each faces. It offers an account of doxastic disagreement that results from the incompatibility of the content of doxastic attitudes, even when that content’s truth is relativized. On the best definition possible, it is argued, neither non-indexical contextualism nor assessment-relativism have an advantage over contextualism. The conclusion is that conflicts that arise from the incompatibility (at the same world) of the content of given doxastic attitudes cannot be (...) accommodated by theoretical positions that allow for the compatibility (at the same world) of the content of different doxastic attitudes. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

The idea that one can 'soak up' someone else's mood or sense the tension in a room is familiar - as in 'negative energy'. This ability to borrow or share states of mind is now pathologized, as the author shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics.

We introduce the variety $\scr{L}_{n}^{m}$ , m ≥ 1 and n ≥ 2, of m-generalized Łukasiewicz algebras of order n and characterize its subdirectly irreducible algebras. The variety $\scr{L}_{n}^{m}$ is semisimple, locally finite and has equationally definable principal congruences. Furthermore, the variety $\scr{L}_{n}^{m}$ contains the variety of Łukasiewicz algebras of order n.

O presente estudo aborda o modo de intervenção estatal junto das Misericórdias da comarca de Évora, através da acção dos ministros territoriais de finais do Antigo Regime. Incide particularmente sobre o Alvará Régio de 18 de Outubro de 1806, que consideramos a última tentativa do poder central de enquadrar as Santas Casas na política de absolutismo esclarecido. Analisamos ainda as diferentes reacções destas instituições de assistência face ao referido diploma.

(2011). An Obscure Rider Obstructing Science: The Conflation of Parthenotes with Embryos in the Dickey–Wicker Amendment. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 20-28.

Science is for Peirce a social activity. In which way can we justify this sentence from our current perspective and what implications does it have?

The paper treats Gernot Böhme’s project of new aesthetics as a signal of the advent of postmodern cosmology with the status of a philosophical theory. The main task of this study is to use some categories of Gernot Böhme’s aesthetics in discussing the processes of aestheticization of reality not only in terms of changes that occur between the human environment in the spatial but also in temporal dimension. The starting point is the analysis of aesthetic sense experience with a cognitive (...) character. This experience is analyzed by Böhme within three main fields of aesthetic interest: nature, design, and art. The processes of aestheticizing reality blur the boundaries between the natural and the artificial to such an extent that the essence of aesthetic cognition should be investigated by analyzing nature together with design. Böhme’s categories of philosophy of nature can be utilized creatively to analyze aesthetic experience of the past. The phenomenon of the ephemeral and the concept of atmospheres take the rhythms of nature into account but it contrasts them with the human conception of time. The postmodern attitude towards time suggests a different theoretical approach that can be treated as the expansion of Böhme’s aesthetics, which is more focused on analyzing changes in space. (shrink)

Die Studie zeigt, dass Autobiographien weit mehr sind als individuelle Lebensentwürfe. Vor allem Autobiographien von Paaren zeugen von den Schnittstellen gemeinsamen Lebens und Schreibens. Sie bieten sich in herausragender Weise an, die Zweistimmigkeit im Leben und Schreiben von Paaren in den Blick zu nehmen und relationale Dimensionen des Lebens in kreativen Schaffensprozessen als ethisches und ästhetisches Moment wahrzunehmen. Dem komplexen Beziehungsgeflecht von Autobiographien wird hier am Beispiel des bekannten spanischen Schriftstellerpaares María Teresa León und Rafael Alberti nachgespürt. Über die (...) individuellen Prägungen der Autobiographien hinaus wird das Netz, das zwischen beiden Autoren und Texten im autobiographischen Schreiben gesponnen wurde, aufgedeckt und einer Stereophonie der Autobiographie Raum gegeben. (shrink)

Semën Frank (1877–1950) considered the Universe as the “all-unity.” According to him, everything is a part of the all-unity, which has a divine character. God is present in the world, but his nature is incomprehensible. In this article I analyze two consequences of Frank’s panentheistic view of the relation between science and theology. Firstly, the limits of scientific knowledge allow recognition of the mystery of the world and the transcendence of God. Secondly, Frank claimed that nature is a “trace” of (...) God and the manifestation of the absolute reality, i.e. the all-unity. As a result, both science and theology lead to the knowledge of God, although we cannot understand His essence. (shrink)