Background: Undergraduate nursing students have been documented to experience ethical distress during their clinical training and felt poorly supported in discussing the ethical issues they encountered. Research aims: This study was aimed at exploring nursing students’ perceived opportunity to discuss ethical issues that emerged during their clinical learning experience and associated factors. Research design: An Italian national cross-sectional study design was performed in 2015–2016. Participants were invited to answer a questionnaire composed of four sections regarding: (1) socio-demographic data, (2) previous (...) clinical learning experiences, (3) current clinical learning experience quality and outcomes, and (4) the opportunity to discuss ethical issues with nurses in the last clinical learning experience (from 0 – ‘never’ to 3 – ‘very much’). Participants and research context: Participants were 9607 undergraduate nursing students who were attending 95 different three-year Italian baccalaureate nursing programmes, located at 27 universities in 15 Italian regions. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines after the research protocol was approved by an ethics committee. Findings: Overall, 4707 (49%) perceived to have discussed ethical issues ‘much’ or ‘very much’; among the remaining, 3683 (38.3%) and 1217 (12.7%) students reported the perception of having discussed, respectively, ‘enough’ or ‘never’ ethical issues emerged in the clinical practice. At the multivariate logistic regression analysis explaining 38.1% of the overall variance, the factors promoting ethical discussion were mainly set at the clinical learning environment levels (i.e. increased learning opportunities, self-directed learning, safety and nursing care quality, quality of the tutorial strategies, competences learned and supervision by a clinical nurse). In contrast, being male was associated with a perception of less opportunity to discuss ethical issues. Conclusion: Nursing faculties should assess the clinical environment prerequisites of the settings as a context of student experience before deciding on their accreditation. Moreover, the nursing faculty and nurse managers should also enhance competence with regard to discussing ethical issues with students among clinical nurses by identifying factors that hinder this learning opportunity in daily practice. (shrink)

The Future of the World Is Open examines the work and thought of three prominent Italian feminist philosophers, Lea Melandri, Luisa Muraro, and Adriana Cavarero, as it delves into the significant experiences that shaped them, highlighting their converging and diverging positions. Also appearing here for the first time in English translation are three essays by renowned author, journalist, and political figure Rossana Rossanda. Rossanda's essays offer a critical perspective on some of the contentious theoretical nodes with which Italian (...) feminist thought has wrestled. Written in terse and engaging language, this book explores challenging philosophical and political questions, with themes including masculine domination; the body as the site of sedimented lived experience; sexual difference; the symbolic; the imaginary; feminine political authority; feminine subjectivity; and material humanism. A vivid picture of the socio-political context of Italian feminism emerges—illuminating its strong commitment to practice—and informing and enriching contemporary discussions at the intersection of different disciplinary perspectives. (shrink)

Cimatti and Salzani have put together a rich collection of essays on animal studies that provides an exhaustive overview of how Italian contemporary philosophers are engaging with animal ethics, antispeciesism, posthumanism, ecofeminism, and biopolitics. This edited volume represents an important development in the “animal turn” in the humanities, particularly because it is published in English, allowing for a more efficient dialogue between “Italian theory” and philosophers around the world. This is, in fact, the first collection that will give an international (...) audience access to the rich and varied contribution of Italian contemporary philosophy in the burgeoning field of animal studies. It is also important to point out that all the authors—who are either well-established erudite thinkers or bright and innovative new voices in the panorama of Italian philosophy—effectively engage with recent and prominent scholarship in the fields of animal studies, posthumanism, and biopolitics, such as the work of Zizek, Esposito, Hardt, Calarco, Braidotti, and Wolfe.The volume is clearly intended for an academic audience: professors, scholars, and graduate students studying not only philosophy, Italian studies, environmental humanities, and animal ethics, but also political science, ethology, comparative literature, art history, and religious studies. In addition, the book could also find an audience in animal rights and environmental activists who are interested in the philosophical aspects and ethical and political implications of their actions.The division of the book into three sections (“Animality in the Italian Tradition,” “Animality in Perspective,” and “Fragments of a Contemporary Debate”) provides the reader a clear trajectory from the Italian philosophical tradition to the current debate on “animality.” In the first section, in fact, the authors engage with the rich and complex tradition of both Italian animal philosophy and advocacy. In the three essays that make up this section, the authors provide a compelling historical perspective of the anti-Cartesian and antidualistic aspects of Italian thought, tracing its pre-Cartesian origin and post-Cartesian developments through the work of Francis of Assisi, Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Giacomo Leopardi, among others. This section also includes essays outlining the development of animal bioethics in Italy, which emerged from the work of animal advocacy pioneer Aldo Capitini and continued to have an important impact on Italian culture thanks to the antispeciesist movement and debate, of which the third essay of this section provides an exhaustive intellectual history.The second section of the volume, comprised of six essays, provides an overall view of the ongoing philosophical debate on animality that traverses Italian posthumanism, feminism, theology, biopolitics, environmental ethics, and Marxist thought. Here the authors engage with some of the prominent voices in the contemporary Italian philosophical landscape, such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Roberto Marchesini, Antonio Negri, Maria Turchetto, Adriana Caravero, Luisa Muraro, and Paolo De Benedetti. As pointed out by the editors in their introduction, this section does not intend to offer a complete account of the extensive and heterogenous exchanges occurring inside the Italian biological turn, but instead aims at investigating its most compelling approaches and effectively links them to the ongoing transnational debate.The rich historiography and analysis of the first two sections is complemented, in the third section of the volume, by the speculative approach that strongly characterizes all five final essays. Here we can find some of the most exciting and original developments in Italian scholarship on animal philosophy. This section is, therefore, the most effective in presenting the distinctive approach of contemporary Italian philosophers in rethinking animality and the human-animal interplay, in particular inside the historical and epistemological frame of the Anthropocene. For instance, Massimo Filippi explores how slaughterhouses have become exemplary spaces to investigate the calculation that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides humans and animals, which removes animality and excises the other, which forcefully bans any imagining of the monstrously other, of the other-than-human, and that produces, among others and besides It-Self, the Woman, the Homosexual, the Abnormal, the Migrant, the Criminal, and the Animal. (p. 225)Structuring his argument on the real and metaphorical “mathematics of sacrifice” at work in the slaughterhouse (p. 226), Filippi engages with the processes that enable human ontological privilege, with intraspecific and interspecific mechanisms of discrimination, and with philosophical, political, and ethical implications of meat production.For a second and final example, ethologist Roberto Marchesini—one of the most original and prominent voices in animal studies—focuses on redefining the paradigm of “animality.” In his essay, Marchesini questions behaviorism and the automatism of learning, key aspects that have been prominent in defining animality in many fields, from biology to philosophy. Building from his groundbreaking and extensive work in ethology and zooanthropology, he argues for an “elaborative model” of animality (animal as subject) against the fallacy of the “automatism-based model” (animal as mechanism): Subjectivity is the implicit condition of the animal being, an expressive dimension that may also be unconscious but that precedes from (i) a constructivist conception of behavior, which we could explain by considering it a work in progress, always open and never predetermined, but equally never imposed and nonetheless always co-factorial to external contributions, and (ii) a propositional view of the individual, or rather from being supported by verbal structures such as to delight, to fear, to want, which join themselves to modal predicates declined according to context, but which likewise render the individual the protagonist. (p. 247)Animal studies has established itself as one of the most exciting areas of research inside the biological turn of the humanities worldwide and, by collecting such a large number of compelling and provocative theories from Italian contemporary philosophy, the impact of Cimatti and Salzani's volume will be twofold: It will enrich and expand a developing discussion in the environmental humanities and in animal studies while establishing the centrality of Italian thought in such an important and, in the Anthropocene era, necessary debate. (shrink)

A descriptive-exploratory analysis of assurance practices is presented in this paper, by analysing the patterns of sustainability assurance reporting in two national contexts with different levels of assurance activity over a period of 11 years. The study is based on theoretical insights drawn from institutional sociology and normativity production. It is framed both in the Italian situation, where assurance statements consistently include a narrow set of formal and procedural communications, and in an unsettled situation in the U.S., where assurance activity (...) is more incipient, but where experimentation in substantial assurance disclosure practices has more room to develop. Its main implication is that the diffusion of sustainability assurance and the creation of sustainability assurance disclosure norms are not without its cost: information quality does not increase with patterned practice. The results also point towards the noteworthy role of specific professionals in the earlier and later stages of assurance practice norms. They reveal a significant influence of non-Big4 firms in the diffusion of sustainability assurance disclosure norms. In contrast, the Big4 firms appear to be positively associated with the narrowing down of the assurance focus to a selected subset of this activity in later stages of the development of the assurance norm. In this regard, this study provides insight into the circumstantial—but relevant—carrier role of the Big4 firms in determining what “assurance” means. (shrink)

A course in professional ethics for civil engineers was taught for the first time in Spain during the academic year 2007/08. In this paper a survey on the satisfaction and expectation of the course is presented. Surprisingly the students sought moral and ethical principles for their own ordinary lives as well as for their profession. Students were concerned about the law, but in their actions they were more concerned with their conscience, aware that it can be separate from the law.

La técnica no es un fenómeno más de nuestra época, sino que ha llegado a convertirse en la figura metafísica que la define. El estudio analiza el alcance de esta tesis planteada por Jaspers y Heidegger. Para ello ofrecemos, en un primer momento, una tematización del elemento innovador que caracteriza a la técnica moderna respecto de épocas anteriores, atendiendo especialmente a su carácter totalizador y a la inversión antropológica que supone. A continuación, discutiremos algunas de las consecuencias antropológicas del estatuto (...) ontológico de la técnica. Un fenómeno sin precedentes en la historia de la humanidad, por cuanto la técnica ha dejado de ser un medio o instrumento al servicio de las necesidades y fines humanos para convertirse en un fenómeno capaz de producirlos, estableciendo posibilidades de sentido. Una inversión onto-antropológica que provoca una alienación de la existencia misma. (shrink)

The decline of empirical research on ethical decision-making based on ethical theories might imply a tacit consensus has been reached. However, the exclusion of virtue ethics, one of the three main normative ethical theories, from this stream of literature calls this potential consensus into question. This article investigates the role of all three normative ethical theories—deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics—in ethical decision-making of corporate executives. It uses virtue ethics as a dependent variable thus studying the interconnectivity of all three normative (...) ethical theories in specific circumstances. We find that managers use different ethical theories in different circumstances (business vs. private life, formal vs informal ethical leadership, etc.). A predictive model of ethical decision-making, however, cannot be established. We also find that only a limited number of variables influence the choice of ethical theory, which leans business ethics towards postmodern management paradigm. We suggest that moral pragmatism could provide the answer to ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This book argues that human rights cannot go global without going local. This important lesson from the winding debates on universalism and particularism raises intricate questions: what are human rights after all, given the dissent surrounding their foundations, content, and scope? What are legitimate deviances from classical human rights and where should we draw “red lines”? Making a case for balancing conceptual openness and distinctness, this book addresses the key human rights issues of our time and opens up novel spaces (...) for deliberation. It engages philosophical reasoning with law, politics, and religion and demonstrates that a meaningful relativist account of human rights is not only possible, but a sorely needed antidote to dogmatism and polarization. (shrink)

In its first part the article examines visions of the family during 1968 and the succeeding years. It concentrates in particular on alternative visions of the family, both at a theoretical level (as with David Cooper's Death of the Family), and at the level of social history, with the rise and fall of the commune movement. It does so with reference to a methodology which concentrates on relationships, principally those between the individual and the family, between family and between the (...) family and the state. In the second part it surveys the widespread changes that have beset family relations and family life in the advanced capitalist societies since 1968: the lowering of fertility rates, the gradual decline of marriage, the significant changes in the position of women in the family, the increase in individualisation, as manifested in the growth of single-member households. The article then seeks to explore the relationship, if any, between the movement of 1968 and these transformations in the family. It examines both conservative and progressive interpretations, and suggests that paradoxically the movement left few sediments in the relationship between family and civil society but rather more in that between the state and the family. (shrink)

¿Le importa la identidad a la democracia? Este es el interrogante que sirve como hilo conductor de este trabajo en el que la autora analiza la idea de identidad y las dialécticas entre igualdad y diferencia, y derechos individuales y derechos colectivos, en el marco de la teoría de la democracia y de la ciudadanía contemporáneas. Recogiendo las aportaciones en el tema de N. Fraser, A. Gutmann, pero también de I. M. Young y S. Benhabib, la autora apuesta por políticas (...) públicas transnacionales que orienten críticamente al diálogo, que tiendan a la remoción de las condiciones de dependencia cultural y económica, de sumisión y de marginalidad en las que, en nombre de la universalidad o de la identidad cultural, se encuentran crecientes grupos de individuos. Justicia distributiva y reconocimiento no son dos variables excluyentes per se; deben mantenerse en equilibrio reflexivo constante, porque si el mero reconocimiento formal de derechos no es suf iciente, tampoco lo es la apelación a una identidad cultural tradicional o autóctona que suele arrastrar consigo siglos de inequidades. (shrink)

Nota introductoria William James nació el 11 de enero de 1842 en Nueva York, Estados Unidos, para después convertirse en filósofo, psicólogo y médico de la Universidad de Harvard. En cuanto a sus aportes, se considera como el precursor de la psicología funcional y sus desarrollos en la epistemología pragmatista son aún relevantes dada la amplitud de sus tesis. En paralelo, James defendió un humanismo característico de su época y, en contra del canon filosófico tradicional, propuso una defensa para el (...) sentido común y una perspectiva pragmatista. Entre sus obras notables se encuentran Los principios de la psicología, Las variedades de la experiencia religiosa y Ensayos sobre empirismo radical, editada y publi­cada póstumamente, pues el autor murió el 26 de agosto de 1910. La siguiente traducción corresponde al octavo ensayo de James en el libro The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, compuesto por breves respuestas a las observaciones de los críticos del ensayo “Great Men and their Enviroment”. La significación de traducir este texto en la actualidad reside en la posibilidad de contrastar argumentos de la época que evidencien la importancia de las diferencias entre los individuos y la particular relación con los ambientes que les influencian. El texto fuente fue obtenido del proyecto Gutenberg. (shrink)

En este artículo, sobre la base de evidencia empírica cualitativa acerca de las clases medias en Chile, analizamos el enfoque pesimista de Richard Sennett sobre el futuro de lo público. Mediante nuestra investigación reciente, proponemos tres claves interpretativas – la intermitencia del paso de lo público a lo privado, las tensiones que se generan entre ambos y finalmente la demanda por autenticidad como forma de apelar a lo público – para entender la articulación entre los espacios públicos y privados en (...) la vida cotidiana. Si bien encontramos evidencia para respaldar las ideas de Sennett sobre la predominancia de lo privado por sobre lo público, vemos que la historia reciente de Chile también ha obligado a los individuos y las familias a hacerse cargo de lo público, desde lo privado. (shrink)

Die Frage moralischer und/oder rechtlicher Grenzen der Meinungsfreiheit, der Grenzen des Sagbaren und Tolerierbaren, stellt zunehmend eine gesellschaftliche und politische Metadebatte dar, in der Versuche, komplexe Phänomene des Aushandelns von Grenzen des Zulässigen bzw. Notwendigen semantisch zu fixieren, von erheblichem Lagerdenken zeugen. Wer von „Politischer Korrektheit“, „Cancel Culture“, „Meinungsdiktatur“ oder „Kontaktschuld“ spricht, steht klar auf der einen Seite, so scheint es; wer von „Diskriminierung“, „Rassismus“, „Hassrede“ oder „weißen Privilegien“ spricht, auf der anderen. Vor dem Hintergrund solch verfestigter Diskursbahnen stellt die (...) Frage, ob wir alles tolerieren müssen, was andere sagen, eine Erwägungsaufgabe dar, die nur mit einem Schritt zurück überhaupt adressierbar ist, will man nicht mit dem Jargon der einen Seite die Anliegen der anderen ausschließen und damit den ungeprüften Eindruck befördern, es handle sich hier tatsächlich um eine unversöhnliche Polarisierung, der die Philosophie nichts hinzuzufügen habe, außer vielleicht ein Lamento oder eine moralische Geste. Der Umweg, über den ich im Folgenden die von dieser Schwerpunktausgabe gestellte Frage behandeln möchte, führt zunächst zu einer Analyse der Ansprüche, die plurale Demokratien an ihre Mitglieder stellen. Diese sind nicht nur grundsätzlich hoch, sondern mitunter auch in sich konfliktträchtig. Konkret betrifft dies die Anforderung an Mitglieder demokratischer Gemeinwesen, sowohl bürgerliche Toleranz zu üben als auch diskursives Engagement als Vorbedingung qualitätsvoller demokratischer Meinungsbildung und Entscheidungsfindung an den Tag zu legen. Die jeweils ‚richtige Mitte‘ lässt sich dann am besten finden, wenn die Risiken zweier Extreme bewusstgemacht werden, die daran geknüpft sind, dass einerseits ein zu hohes Maß an ziviler Toleranz zulasten diskursiven Engagements geht und andererseits ein Mangel an bürgerlicher Toleranz diskursives Engagement gefährdet. Entlang dieser beiden Formen einer verhängnisvollen Dysbalance des demokratischen Ethos möchte ich Grundzüge einer demokratischen Ethik der freien Rede und freien Widerrede herausarbeiten und Implikationen für Grenzen von Meinungsfreiheit bzw. Kritik beleuchten. (shrink)

This paper states that the concept of real is modified by the emergence of nomadic technology devices, which are responsible for creating a hybrid reality that merges physical and digital spaces. The concept of virtual space is analysed from the perspective of arts and science fiction. The first section shows how the concept of virtual space as a mindspace has been developed. The idea of cyberspace as a place for the mind emphasizes the traditional Cartesian doubt, that is, does the (...) mental image correspond to the real? In the second section, the paper argues that the concept of virtual changes, since it can no longer be considered a disjoint from physical space; rather, it belongs to it. Finally, the movies The Thirteenth Floor (Rusnak 1999) and The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski 1999) are case studies that illustrate how the idea of inhabiting a virtual space has changed from the traditional notion of virtual space as a place for the mind to a hybrid space that is part of our lives. As a result, it amplifies the notion of what the real can be. (shrink)

Johannes Drerup schlägt für normativ-politische Kontroversen ein Kriterium vor, anhand dessen bestimmt werden soll, wann diese Kontroversen legitime Unterrichtsthemen sind und in Folge dem Kontroversitätsgebot unterliegen. Dies ist dann der Fall, wenn für kontroverse Fragen „auf Basis politischer Grundwerte und -prinzipien, die als konstitutiv gelten können für die Ermöglichung eines guten persönlichen und politischen Lebens in liberal-demokratischen Staaten, keine eindeutige Antwort abgeleitet werden kann.“ Zu diesen Grundwerten und -prinzipien zählt Drerup auch „Grund- und Menschenechte“. Mein kurzer Beitrag möchte zeigen, weshalb (...) Drerups an sich fruchtbarer Ansatz die Komplexität des Maßstabes „Grundund Menschenrechte“ tendenziell unterschätzt und insbesondere das Verhältnis von Demokratie und Menschenrechten zu wenig als potenzielles Spannungsverhältnis ernst nimmt. Ich schlage daher weitere Differenzierungen vor, um Drerups Kriterium konzeptionell zu schärfen. Zudem rege ich an, Kontroversen, die Drerups Kriterium nicht genügen, aus didaktischen Gründen dennoch eine gewisse Anfangs-Kontroversität zuzugestehen, um die Bedeutung der betreffenden Grundprinzipien, die als „rote Linien“ fungieren, deutlicher herausarbeiten zu können. (shrink)

In our era of globalization, migration increasingly enforces cultural heterogeneity at the level of single societies and countries mirroring the cultural heterogeneity at the macroscopic level, i.e. the planet. Thus, the question of intercultural understanding and coexistence not only is crucial when it comes to states, but is increasingly gaining in importance in terms of identifying preconditions that enable individuals from various cultural backgrounds to share one commonwealth. At present, a growing number of people are convinced that this challenge is (...) not easily met due to what are believed to be fundamental moral disagreements between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ (in particular, Islamic) culture(s). Against this background, different proposals have been provided to rise to the above-mentioned challenge. One of them is to allow for ‘cultural’ justifications in matters of criminal law. In this article I try to outline the state of discussion on claims for a ‘cultural defense’ by identifying and analysing three distinct rationales: the argument from pluralism; the argument from fairness; and the argument from necessity. Finally, I critically reflect on them from a human rights perspective. (shrink)

Los centros educativos pueden convertirse en entornos positivos implementando programas basados en evidencias. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar el programa “Creciendo Juntos” y analizar su eficacia en la promoción del establecimiento de relaciones positivas en estos. Se contó con una muestra de 990 alumnos (=12.96; 47.5% chicas) que respondieron la Escala sobre la percepción del alumnado acerca de sus relaciones en el centro y su nivel de participación educativa (RMSEA=.049; 90%.043-.055; CFI=.976; TLI =.967 y SRMR=.026). Mientras el grupo (...) de control empeora en sus relaciones y su participación en el centro, el grupo de intervención se mantiene. (shrink)

The original article was published without open access and with the copyright notice indicating © Springer Nature B.V. The article is now open access with the copyright residing with the authors.

O presente artigo lança luz sobre as flutuações semânticas do termo “liberdade” na obra de Leonardo Bruni, buscando nuançar sua apreensão por parte da tradição anglófona de pensamento político conhecida como neorrepublicanismo. A partir da análise conceitual e estilística de diversas passagens centrais da obra do autor florentino, o artigo visa retornar aos usos e significados da palavra “liberdade” em Bruni, colocando a questão da relação entre um âmbito de utilização “teórica” e um âmbito de utilização histórica ou narrativa.

Ao discutirmos acerca da educação integral, temos que nos referenciar na escola unitária, idealizada por Antonio Gramsci, por ele acreditar no poder da escola formando todas as pessoas para serem dirigentes numa nova sociedade e no Manifesto de 1932. Dentre as principais conclusões, pode-se afirmar que aextensão da jornada discente não pode ser apenas uma questão de ampliação de tempo, mas de uma organização escolar que contemple e qualifique as atividades obrigatórias e as atividades de livre escolha do aluno.When arguing (...) concerning the integral education, we have that in reference them in the unitary school, idealized for Antonio Gramsci, for it to believe the power of the school forming all the people to be leading in a new society and the Manifesto of 1932. Among the main conclusions, we can state that the students’ period length can not be only a time enlargement, but a period to qualify the compulsory activities and the students’ free choice activities. (shrink)

The city of Puebla was put on the UNESCO list of Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1987; its history dates back to the sixteenth century allowing for the preservation of various important buildings, such as churches with baroque and neoclassical facades, buildings from the period known as Novo Hispanics, when some of its historic neighbourhoods were founded, including the Barrio el Refugio, hereinafter referred to as BR, where indigenous people employed in the lime manufacture used to live. Since those times, (...) however, the neighbourhood has become a place with bad reputation, “a den of thieves”. The traditional, religious commemoration, the “Fiesta Patronal de la Virgen del Refugio,” is the most important celebration in the neighbourhood. In the Church of La Virgen del Refugio, built in the seventeenth century after an inhabitant painted a mural with the image of the virgin, the “mañanitas” are sung with the Mariachi. During the patronal feast, the “El Refugio Cultural Festival” is held with more than a hundred artists taking part and creating about a thousand murals according to the organiser’s estimation. This happens in the city where a project “Puebla Ciudad Mural” was started, as an initiative of the “Colectivo Tomate,” which sought to regenerate the neighbourhood through art, in alliance with the government and private companies. However, these policies are more tourist oriented rather than benefit the neighbourhood. For this reason, the graffiti movement “Festival Cultural el Refugio” is becoming a meeting point for urban artists from Mexico and Puebla, accustomed to taking up public or private space, as they demand space where they can live and express themselves. For ten years the festival has realised more than one thousand pieces of urban art, including Wild Style graffiti, bombs, stickers, stencil, and murals. All this is done under the patronage of the artists themselves, as three hundred of them come from all over the country to take part in every edition of the festival that does not receive any government support or other form of sponsorship. (shrink)