In recent years there has been increasing concern about the various forms of abuse faced by birthing patients during labour and childbirth. Common examples include being scolded, slapped, pinched, stabbed with scissors or struck with a ruler or other instruments. This mistreatment is collectively termed obstetric violence.A growing body of literature examines legal responses to obstetric violence including the potential use of the criminal law. The present article explores whether, in South Africa, common-law crimes or statutory offences could be used (...) to prosecute healthcare workers for the range of harms falling within the broad definition of obstetric violence. It does not question whether criminal law is an appropriate response in this instance.The article concludes that existing crimes are sufficient to address obstetric violence. It is clear that the common-law crimes of crimen iniuria, assault, assault with intention to commit grievous bodily harm and the statutory offence of involuntary sterilisation, could be used to address both physical and emotional forms of obstetric violence. It is submitted that they cater adequately for the broad range of conduct that potentially falls into the definition of obstetric violence. Further research is required in this area and it may mean that prosecutorial guidelines are needed. (shrink)

Arthur Prior (1914-69) is regarded as New Zealand's greatest 20th-century philosopher. Until World War II, Prior seriously considered a career as a religious journalist, especially when traveling and living on the Continent and in England with his first wife. During these years, Prior wrote widely on theology and contemporary Christianity. In his correspondence with Ursula Bethell and Hugh Teague, Prior discusses in detail his religious and theological thoughts, including his shift from formal theological study into a world of journalism and (...) philosophy. These previously unknown letters, which cover the years from 1936 to 1941, chronicle a substantial part of a fascinating period in Prior's development, both theologically and philosophically, and have been transcribed and annotated for this volume. (shrink)

Spend a year dwelling on the awesomeness of God with A. W. Tozer. He will expand your faith in a God so great that words fall short to describe Him. He will nourish you with truth. Encounter Tozer's heart and wisdom like never before in this newly revised edition.

Supercommentary on the Dravyaprakaraṇa portion of Udayanācārya's Kiraṇāvalī, commentary on Praśastapādācārya's Padārthadharmasaṅgraha, basic Vaiśeṣika work; from the neo-Nyāya point of view in Hindu philosophy.

How do we know when we are investing wisely in security? Answering this question requires investigating what things are worth securing (and why); what threatens them; how best to protect them; and how to think about it. Is it possible to protect them? How best go about protecting them? What trade-offs are involved in allocating resources to security problems? This book responds to these questions by stripping down our preconceptions and rebuilding an understanding of security from the ground up on (...) the basis of a common-sense ontology and an explicit theory of value. It argues for a clear distinction between objective and subjective security threats, a non-anthropocentric understanding of security, and a particular hierarchy of security referents, looking closely at four in particular-the ecosphere, the state, culture, and individual human beings. The analysis will be of interest not only to students and scholars of International Relations, but also to practitioners. David A. Welch is University Research Chair and Professor of Political Science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. His previous books include Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which won the 1994 Edgar S. Furniss Award for an Outstanding Contribution to National Security Studies, and Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (2005), which was the inaugural winner of the International Studies Association International Security Studies Section Best Book Award. He is currently co-editor of the Cambridge University Press journal, International Theory. (shrink)

This article focuses on the legal and organisational regulation of human cells in the United Kingdom and France. French Bioethics Law regulates human cells for health according to European Union law where it is enforceable. But products unregulated by EU law and based on human cells are never considered as medicinal products, given the strict implementation of the principle of “nonpatrimonialité” of the human body and its elements. By comparison, in the UK such products can be qualified as medicinal products. (...) Moreover, the setting up of the UK stem cell bank gives rise to the development of policies which expand the stem cell as a legal object. The paper discusses how these societies’ ethical and legal commitments underlie organisational practices in order to analyse the relationship between the existence (or not) of a national stem cell bank and the broader regulation of human cells. (shrink)

The relation between Church and state is nowadays at stake. This article concerns the relation between Church and state from an ecclesiastical and canonical point of view. It makes clear, how the ecclesiastical doctrine reacts to social developments in relation to the national state in order to safeguard the independence of the Church. The 19th century ecclesiastical doctrine on the Church as a societas perfecta reacts on doctrines on the national states, which claimed absolute sovereignty and by that subordinated the (...) Church to the civil government and civil law. With societas perfecta doctrine the Church defends its sovereignty in the domain of the spiritual good of men. In this way the Church defines and protects its divine origin and independence from the national state. In the first half of the 20th century the democratic and constitutional national states were developed, which acknowledges religious freedom on a constitutional level as a human and a civil right. Because of this progress the Second Vatican Council could formulate its doctrine on religious freedom based on the traditional ecclesiastical teaching of the freedom of the religious act. By then, the independence of the Church is founded and defended on the freedom of the Church, which is guaranteed in national states, which acknowledge religious freedom as a human and civil right. Although one can say that there is discontinuity in the ecclesiastical teaching on the Church as a societas perfecta and the ecclesiastical doctrine on religious freedom, there exists also continuity, because both ecclesiastical doctrines intend to safeguard the independence of the Church in human society. (shrink)

The subject of this thesis is physicalism, understood not as some particular doctrine pertaining narrowly to the philosophy of mind, but rather as a quite general metaphysical claim to the effect that everything is, or is fundamentally, physical. Thus physicalism explicates the thought that in some sense physics is the basic science. The aim of the thesis is to defend a particular brand of physicalism, which I call eliminative type physicalism. It claims, roughly, that every property is a physical property, (...) a property mentioned in the laws of physics, and hence that any putative property not identifiable with a physical property must be eliminated from our ontology. Eliminative type physicalism is apt to face three objections, and so my thesis, like Caesar's Gaul, falls into three parts. In the first, I argue against the idea that there are tenable positions, both physicalist and non-physicalist, alternative to eliminative type physicalism. I argue that each of these positions token physicalism (Fodor, middle Putnam), supervenience physicalism (Lewis, Horgan) and and a non-physicalist view I call pluralism (Goodman, late Putnam) is defective. In the second part, responding to the objection that there is just no reason to be a physicalist, I develop a positive argument for eliminative type physicalism, an argument resting upon a strong version of the explanatory test for reality according to which only explanatorily indispensable properties can justifiably be said to exist. In the third and final part, I argue, against the charge that eliminative type physicalism cannot accommodate what I call phenomenal properties (qualia, raw feels etc.), that there is no good reason to deny, and one good reason to affirm, that phenomenal properties just are physical properties. (shrink)

For 150 years after Galileo's condemnation in 1633, there were many references to the trial, but no sustained, heated or polarized discussions. Then came the thesis that Galileo was condemned not for being a good astronomer but for being a bad theologian (using Scripture to support astronomical hypotheses); it began in 1784-1785 with an apology of the Inquisition by Mallet du Pan in the Mercure de France and the printing in Tiraboschi's Storia della letteratura italiana of an apocryphal letter attributed (...) to Galileo but forged by Onorato Gaetani. This thesis is not only untenable and false but inverts and subverts the truth; it proved to be long-lasting and widely accepted; so it may be labeled a myth. It was held by such writers as . Afterwards, it was generally abandoned, its death knell being pope John Paul II's speeches in 1979-1992. The myth seems to have acted as a catalyst insofar as its creation encouraged the proliferation of pro-clerical accounts and the articulation of pro-Galilean ones, thus making the discussion of Galileo's trial the cause celebre it is today. (shrink)

Festschrift in honor of 60th birthday of Āgamānaṅdasvāmikaḷ, 1896-1961; collection of his speeches and writings on Vedanta and other aspects of Hindu philosophy.

On rationalism and superstition in Orissa culled from real incidents.

A sensible code of right and wrong for public officials everywhere, this book explores what ethics and the public trust mean. It includes sample codes of ethics and examines ways to improve the ethical climate of government. Excerpted and adapted from a longer work, Ethics, Conflicts, and Offices: A Guide for Local Officials, which also covers conflict of interest and office-holding laws in North Carolina.

Because metaphysics aims for absolute generality, its primary job is to tell us what are the fundamental particulars, of which one may say that is ultimately all there is, and yet be assured of an unabridged version of reality. It should be clear that such a search for the fundamental particulars is totally different from the enterprise of determining which particulars are basic from the point of view of particular-identification, which though it has recently been labeled "metaphysics," albeit "descriptive metaphysics," (...) might less confusingly be called "descriptive epistemology.". (shrink)