En este artículo se analiza una recreación quijotesca en la novela de Graham Greene Monseñor Quijote. Para ello se utilizan dos términos procedentes del Derecho romano: los conceptos de autoridad y poder. En esta obra de Greene, la autoridad surge de los libros o de autores de libros, cuya lectura permite que la vida siga teniendo sentido. En Greene encontramos la estrategia de lectura conocida como las sortes virgilianae que permite a los personajes orientarse en las dificultades diarias. Sin embargo, (...) el poder está caracterizado por su condición iletrada, la ausencia de libros y su ignorancia. In this article a novel by Graham Greene entitled Monsignor Quixote is analysed, a book that involves a recreation of the novel by Cervantes. The author of this article employs two concepts from Roman law: authority and power in his analysis. In this work by Greene, authority arises from the books or the book writers, whose reading allows life to keep making sense. In Greene, a strategy of reading known as the sortes virgilianae is found and this allows the characters to get their bearings in the daily difficulties. However, power is described as illiterate, the absence of books and ignorance. (shrink)

In philosophical literature the issue of beliefs has been identified historically with David Hume and common sense. Beliefs are dynamic systems and its resignification is constant. Charles Sanders Pierce would interpret the fixation of beliefs, as those ones which are fixed by means of art, being this a method well-tuned with science. Truths established in beliefs are always probable and dependent on the degree of utility they have. The degree of utility is complemented with comprehension, explanations have multiple causes. En (...) la literatura filosófica el tema de las creencias se puede identificar históricamente con David Hume y el sentido común. Las creencias son sistemas dinámicos y su resignificación es constante. Charles Sanders Peirce interpretaría la fijación de las creencias en Hume, como aquella que se fija a través del arte, siendo ésta un método que se acomoda bien con el de la ciencia. Las verdades establecidas en las creencias son siempre probables y dependen del grado de utilidad que ellas presten. El grado de utilidad se complementa con la comprensión, las explicaciones son multicausales. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany discussions of the ‘preface paradox’ assume that it is more troubling for deductive closure constraints on rational belief if outright belief is reducible to credence. I show that this is an error: we can generate the problem without assuming such reducibility. All that we need are some very weak normative assumptions about rational relationships between belief and credence. The only view that escapes my way of formulating the problem for the deductive closure constraint is in fact itself a reductive (...) view: namely, the view that outright belief is credence 1. However, I argue that this view is unsustainable. Moreover, my version of the problem turns on no particular theory of evidence or evidential probability, and so cannot be avoided by adopting some revisionary such theory. In sum, deductive closure is in more serious, and more general, trouble than some have thought. (shrink)

Suppose that you must make choices that may influence the well-being and the identities of the people who will exist, though not the number of people who will exist. How ought you to choose? This paper answers this question. It argues that the currency of distributive ethics in such cases is a combination of an individual’s final well-being and her expected well-being conditional on her existence. It also argues that this currency should be distributed in an egalitarian, rather than a (...) prioritarian, manner. (shrink)

This text was first published on Critical Legal Thinking 14 May 2013. Accel­er­a­tion­ism pushes towards a future that is more mod­ern, an altern­at­ive mod­ern­ity that neo­lib­er­al­ism is inher­ently unable to gen­er­ate. 01. INTRODUCTION : On the Conjuncture 1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a new breed of cataclysm. These coming apocalypses ridicule the norms and organisational structures of the politics which were forged in the birth - Débats.

We use probability-matching variations on Ellsberg’s single-urn experiment to assess three questions: (1) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to changes from a gain to a loss frame? (2) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to making ambiguity easier to recognize? (3) What is the relation between subjects’ consistency of choice and the ambiguity attitudes their choices display? Contrary to most other studies, we find that a switch from a gain to a loss frame does not lead to a switch from ambiguity (...) aversion to ambiguity neutrality and/or ambiguity seeking. We also find that making ambiguity easier to recognize has little effect. Finally, we find that while ambiguity aversion does not depend on consistency, other attitudes do: consistent choosers are much more likely to be ambiguity neutral, while ambiguity seeking is much more frequent among highly inconsistent choosers. (shrink)

A persistent argument against the transitivity assumption of rational choice theory postulates a repeatable action that generates a significant benefit at the expense of a negligible cost. No matter how many times the action has been taken, it therefore seems reasonable for a decision-maker to take the action one more time. However, matters are so fixed that the costs of taking the action some large number of times outweigh the benefits. In taking the action some large number of times on (...) the grounds that the benefits outweigh the costs every time, the decision-maker therefore reveals intransitive preferences, since once she has taken it this large number of times, she would prefer to return to the situation in which she had never taken the action at all. We defend transitivity against two versions of this argument: one in which it is assumed that taking the action one more time never has any perceptible cost, and one in which it is assumed that the cost of taking the action, though (sometimes) perceptible, is so small as to be outweighed at every step by the significant benefit. We argue that the description of the choice situation in the first version involves a contradiction. We also argue that the reasoning used in the second version is a form of similarity-based decision-making. We argue that when the consequences of using similarity-based decision-making are brought to light, rational decision-makers revise their preferences. We also discuss one method that might be used in performing this revision. (shrink)

Traditional culture was the matrix of Fidel Sepúlveda’s aesthetic reflection, matrix that constitued itself a model for a Chilean and Latin American aesthetics. On the other hand, the encyclical of Pope Francisco Laudato si became a phenomenon that transcended the strictly ecclesial world, calling for a cross-sensitivity to the environmental issue and the great spiritual crisis that crosses our civilization. Francisco resorts, among other things, to traditional culture as an alternative for future alternative development. Between both perspectives clear coincidences are (...) observed in terms of approach, topics and possible solutions. This article purposes that both reflections meet in the formula “the option for the poor”, coined by Liberation Theology, an alternative assumed by Fidel from an aesthetic reflection and by Francisco as a theological-pastoral stance. (shrink)

Marxism began with the repudiation of philosophy, yet Marxists have often resorted to distinctively philosophical modes of reasoning. In recent years, Western Marxism has been more concerned with philosophy than with research or political activity, and in this book Callinicos explores the ambivalent relationship between Marxism and philosophy. Beginning with Marx and the legacy of Hegelianism, he surveys the schools of Marxist philosophy from Engels and the Second International through the revolutionary Hegelianism, of the 1920s, the Frankfurt School, and the (...) anti-Hegelian Marxism of Adorno and Althusser. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that moral deliberation requires that the alternatives available in a choice situation are evaluatively comparable. This comparability assumption is threatened by claims of incomparability, which is often established by means of the small improvement argument (SIA). In this paper I argue that SIA does not establish incomparability in a stricter sense. The reason is that it fails to distinguish incomparability from a kind of evaluative indeterminacy which may arise due to the vagueness of the evaluative comparatives (...) ‘better than,’ ‘worse than,’ and ‘equally as good as.’. (shrink)

The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity and political constraints mean governments often face difficult trade-offs on the path to UHC. In a 2014 report, Making fair choices on the path to UHC, the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage articulated principles for making such trade-offs in an equitable manner. We present three case studies which illustrate how these principles can guide practical decision-making. These case studies (...) show how progressive realization of the right to health can be effectively guided by priority-setting principles, including generating the greatest total health gain, priority for the worse off, and financial risk protection. They also demonstrate the value of a fair and accountable process of priority setting. (shrink)

This article explores Sylvia Wynter’s analysis of gender as a category differentially applied across the global color line and María Lugones’ account of the coloniality of gender. While Wynter’s and Lugones’s work offer consequential insights for queer, trans, and intersex studies and activism, they have deliberately engaged these particular discourses and histories of struggle in limited ways. Wynter analyzes the contradictions of Western feminists’ organizing against female genital cutting in Africa, but she does not link her conclusions to their ramifications (...) for activism against genital cutting on children deemed intersex. Lugones uses the existence of intersex people as a turning point in her critique of Aníbal Quijano when developing her concept of the coloniality of gender, but she does not go further to connect global intersex activism and decolonial feminist struggles. This article explores the work of Wynter and Lugones for their compatibility with trans and intersex studies and activism, and the places where their work can be furthered through insights from trans and intersex studies. It concludes that to move beyond the coloniality of gender requires trans and intersex liberation and that trans and intersex liberation must be understood in a broader decolonial feminist framework. (shrink)

The debate around ethical consumption is often characterised by discussion of its numerous failures arising from complexity in perceived trade-offs. In response, this paper advances a pragmatist understanding of the role and nature of trade-offs in ethical consumption. In doing so, it draws on the central roles of values and value in consumption and pragmatist philosophical thought, and proposes a critique of the ethical consumer as rational maximiser and the cognitive and utilitarian discourse of individual trade-offs to understand how sustainable (...) consumption practices are established and maintained. An in-depth qualitative study is conducted employing phenomenological interviews and hermeneutic analysis to explore the consumption stories of a group of ethically minded consumers. The research uncovers the location of value within a fluid, yet habitual, plurality of patterns, preferences, morals, identities and relationships. Its contribution is to propose that consumer perception of value in moral judgements is represented by an overall form of aggregate personal advantage, which lacks conscious reflection and delivers a phenomenological form of value rooted in habits, reflecting a pragmatist representation of value unified as a ‘consummatory experience’. (shrink)

Se muestra cómo la “inteligencia sentiente”, en sus elementos “noológicos”, adquiere cierto carácter “técnico” primario y constitutivo que se despliega en el logos y en la razón de manera individual, social e histórica. En la aprehensión primordial de la realidad se juega la viabilidad misma del hombre en su estar siendo en el mundo como animal humano, donde lo “técnico” juega un papel relevante. En los elementos noológicos primarios de la aprehensión primordial se hallan los cimientos de los que surge (...) la “técnica”, que no es entonces elemento accesorio, sino parte constitutiva del hacerse cargo de la realidad. (shrink)

This article reflects on the social reality in the work of the Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri. For this, a detailed investigation of the most important milestones is carried out where social reality is worked in accordance with the work of the philosopher. And, in addition, a possible “noology of society” is suspected that would be fundamental to understand the human today. And for this the work Sentient Intelligence becomes fundamental.

More than a discourse about the truth, in the origin of language has been present a tell that produces sense for man to inhabit the world from chaos, from the darkness, from the reality. This article explores essential aspects about the birth of language and aesthetic production that configures certain forms to say they are more appropriate than others to express a say originating. To do this, a rereading of the Poem of Parmenides and the Myth of Babel to be (...) sources that enable access to this say and interrogating by him from the present. (shrink)

Does perceptual experience consist of a single, well-ordered timeline? Many seem to assume that it does, so that for each event, we can report whether it was before, after, or simultaneous with any other event. Few have addressed the issue head on. In addition to reviewing the little available literature on this foundational topic, this chapter goes on to discuss various findings in temporal order judgments and related tasks. From these findings, some have concluded that the brain actively reconstructs the (...) exact timing of visual, auditory, and tactile events based on factors such as perceived distance and the longer travel time of sound compared to light. But this literature is not conclusive. Results reported in older, rather neglected literature suggest that rather than perceived timing being the result of sophisticated temporal reconstruction, perceived timing is often a byproduct of Gestalt-like grouping principles. (shrink)

This text links from the biographical and intimate of Nietzsche to the deepest of his thought of the eternal return, because it is the only way to understand this thought of eternal return. And for this, certain of Nietzsche’s biographical milestones are discussed in the light of the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra and its link to Lou Salomé. We look at how Lou Salomé lies behind the mythical figure of Ariadne as the bearer of the ring of return; that is, (...) through the feminine, Nietzsche shows us how the eternal return operates to free us from the chains of modernity. (shrink)

BackgroundThe amount and value of researchers’ peer review work is critical for academia and journal publishing. However, this labor is under-recognized, its magnitude is unknown, and alternative ways of organizing peer review labor are rarely considered.MethodsUsing publicly available data, we provide an estimate of researchers’ time and the salary-based contribution to the journal peer review system.ResultsWe found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The (...) estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD.ConclusionsBy design, our results are very likely to be under-estimates as they reflect only a portion of the total number of journals worldwide. The numbers highlight the enormous amount of work and time that researchers provide to the publication system, and the importance of considering alternative ways of structuring, and paying for, peer review. We foster this process by discussing some alternative models that aim to boost the benefits of peer review, thus improving its cost-benefit ratio. (shrink)

The reinforcement sensitivity theory proposes that neurobiological systems mediate protective and appetitive behaviours and the functioning of these systems is associated to personality traits. In this manner, the RST is a link between neuroscience, behaviour, and personality. The theory evolved to the present revised version describing three systems: fight-flight-freezing, behavioural approach/activation, and behavioural inhibition. However, the most widely available measure of the theory, the BIS/BAS scales, only investigates two systems. Using a large longitudinal community survey, we found that the BIS/BAS (...) scales can be re-structured to investigate the three systems of the theory with a BIS scale, three BAS scales, and a separate fight-flight-freezing system scale. The re-structured scales were age, sex, and longitudinally invariant, and associations with personality and mental health measures followed theoretical expectations and previously published associations. The proposed framework can be used to investigate behavioural choices influencing physical and mental health and bridge historical with contemporary research. (shrink)

En este texto analizaremos el decir filosófico zubiriano con el que pretende expresar la realidad de modo pleno y adecuado. En esto nos daremos cuenta de un grave y radical problema: la lengua que le ha sido dada social e históricamente al filósofo, la lengua en la que vive y se mueve intelectivamente y la lengua en la que quiere expresarse filosóficamente no coinciden en nada. La primera, la lengua vivencial, es una lengua románica y, por tanto, hunde sus raíces (...) en el indoeuropeo; en cambio, la segunda, la lengua filosófica, está incardinada desde la estructura lingüística semítica. ¿Por qué Zubiri busca acusar con tanto afán la realidad de un modo semítico y no lo hace en el indoeuropeo que habla y piensa? Aquí radica toda la cuestión fundamental que debemos analizar. A pesar de todas las dificultades que traerá para el desarrollo, claridad y divulgación del pensamiento zubiriano, se prefiere insistir rotundamente en el uso de la estructura semítica para expresar la realidad). Esta postura radical del pensador no es un mero capricho, sino una necesidad que se le impone (por lo menos, así lo piensa él). Y se le impone en y por la realidad misma que aprehende sentientemente. A raíz de esto, pensamos que Zubiri puede ser considerado como un pensador posmoderno". (shrink)

This article explores three distinct approaches to politics identified by Deleuze and Guattari. I argue that they consistently privilege a 'problematic' approach entailing individuals and associations establishing norms on the basis of the potential they possess within a concrete situation, and that this implies resistance to both the 'theorematic' politics they associate with statist philosophy and struggles aiming to alter the 'axiomatic' determination induced by global forces of capital. While this resistance necessarily proceeds in relation to established notions of identity (...) and value, it must also do more than aim for the establishment of particular institutional 'constants,' including particular democratic procedures and human rights. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este artículo intenta mostrar cómo ciertas categorías del feminismo actual nos permiten "decolonizar" lo más propio del mundo griego, esto es, los dioses en general, y en especial el dios Diónysos. De esta manera, lo señalado por Nietzsche respecto del dios cobra un matiz más innovador y, a la vez, dionisíaco. Y, por ejemplo, podemos entender al dios Diónysos de mejor manera con la categoría de Queer. Esa categoría nos visibiliza cómo el dios opera performativamente, y en ello lo (...) que está en juego es cómo entendemos el cuerpo, y en definitiva, lo humano articulado con las cosas. ABSTRACT This article tries to show how certain categories of current feminism allow us to "decolonize" what is most characteristic of the Greek world, that is, the gods, in general; and, especially, the god Diónysos. In this way, what Nietzsche pointed out about the god takes on a more innovative and, at the same time, Dionysian nuance. And, for example, the god Diónysos would be better understood if categorized as Queer. That category makes visible the way the god operates performatively, and what is at stake here is how we understand the body; and, ultimately, the human, as articulated with things. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca dar con la influencia de Baruch Spinoza en el pensamiento de Xavier Zubiri en torno al tema de la materia y de allí entender lo que es lo estético. Es sabido que Zubiri desde joven fue un gran lector de Spinoza; incluso lo enseñaba en detalle a su amiga-estudiante María Zambrano. Y lo que pensamos es que Zubiri siempre estuvo influenciado por el pensador holandés y esto se ve reflejado en cómo Zubiri trata su concepto de (...) materia, clave en su obra; y tal concepto nos permite, por ejemplo, entender lo estético en el pensador español. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Reading the work of Sylvia Wynter and María Lugones together, particularly as it pertains to sex, gender, and sexuality, reveals the limits of popular discourses and frameworks of queer and feminist philosophy that may unwittingly obscure its constructions of sex and gender along the global color line. This article looks at Wynter’s analysis of gender as a category differentially applied across the global color line and Lugones’s analysis of the coloniality of gender. The author concludes to move beyond the (...) coloniality of gender requires intersex liberation, but also that intersex liberation must be understood within a decolonial framework. (shrink)

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, reciprocity, social cohesion, and exchange can be understood as material and immaterial interrelationships between entities of a more than a corporeal world. I argue, then, that to go beyond the mere anthropocentric conceptualisation of sociality (...) in a nature good to think, we need to holistically conceive the interconnected levels of trophic, socio-structural and socio-cosmic relationships and exchanges between human and non-human beings in the ecosystem. (shrink)

Werner Bonefeld is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York, UK, and Adjunct Professor at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU (Ljubljana, Slovenia). He has published on topics as varied as the development of the British state during the 1980s and 1990s, Europe’s monetary union, ordoliberalism, and Marx’s critique of political economy. A ground-breaking critical theorist, Bonefeld’s contribution to an ‘open’ Marxism developed a rigorous critique of capitalist social relations without omitting the significant themes of lived (...) experience and class antagonism. The following interview marks the publication of a recent monograph titled A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation. Bonefeld discusses his reading of Frankfurt School critical theory and its relation to heterodox and open Marxist social theory with Alex Alvarez Taylor, whose research focuses on early critical theory. (shrink)

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has threatened ethnographic inquiry, undermining its quintessential characteristic. Participant observation, then, has been thoroughly dismembered by the radical measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. This phenomenon, in short, has dragged anthropologists to a liminal state within which ethnography is paradoxically caught in an onto-epistemological unstable vortex. The question of being here and not there, during the pandemic, is epitomised in the instability of different spatio-temporal contexts that overlap through technological mediations. Reflecting on previous (...) fieldwork experiences and current virtual inquiries with the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon unfolds how COVID-19 has thoroughly reshaped how the author approaches subjects' socio-ecological settings. Against this background, the article argues that corporeal immersion remains a necessary condition for the anthropological scrutiny of multispecies relationalities amidst the challenging times of the Anthropocene. The article nevertheless demonstrates that the intellectual efforts to grasp the different material temporalities of virtual spaces embrace the ethical principles concerning the renunciation of fieldwork with vulnerable communities. Furthermore, a reflective and speculative stance is proposed to actualise the snapshots of faraway physicalities linking them to past embodied and multi-sensory experiences. It is ultimately theorised how these mnemonic devices operate as creative forms of inquiry that overcome the pandemic consequences, extra-stimulating our cognitive capabilities to reflect on prior and possible socio-material interactions. (shrink)

Este artículo indaga en el Curso de dos lecciones sobre lo estético, titulado Reflexiones filosóficas sobre lo estético, un «hilo teórico» muy poco estudiado por los especialistas. Este Curso que realizó Zubiri en 1975, estaba muy mayor, se analiza cómo se muestra lo más radical para entender lo estético desde sus categorías filosóficas, pero de la «mano invisible» de Hegel. No se trata del Hegel que critica explícitamente Zubiri y que se coloca siempre de forma muy distante al pensador alemán, (...) sino de lo categorial mismo del pensamiento hegeliano que Zubiri «echa mano» para mostrar cómo opera lo más propio de su pensamiento para dar cuenta del complejo tema de la articulación de lo estético y la realidad. Aquí vemos que el pensamiento de Hegel tiene mucho que aportar para poder entender lo estético mismo. Y esto, incluso, más allá de lo que el mismo Hegel, como pensador de su tiempo, filosofaba respecto del tema del arte y/ o lo estético. (shrink)

Little scholarly attention has been paid to the torture scenes in Ian Fleming’s canon of Bond novels and short stories (1953–1966), despite the fact that they represent some of the most potent sites of the negotiations of masculinity, nationhood, violence and the body for which Fleming’s texts are critically renowned. This article is an intersectional feminist reading of Fleming’s canon, which stresses the interpenetrations of homophobia, anticommunism and misogyny that are present in Fleming’s representation of torture. Drawing on close readings (...) of Fleming’s novels and theoretical discussions of heteronormativity, homophobia and national identity, this article argues that Fleming’s representations of torture are sites of literary meaning in which the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity are policed and reinforced. This policing is achieved, this article argues, through the associations of the perpetration of torture with homosexuality and Communism, and the survival of torture with post-imperial British hegemonic masculinity. Fleming’s torture scenes frequently represent set pieces in which Bond must reject or endure the unsolicited intimacy of other men; he must resist their seductions and persuasions and remain ideologically undefiled. Bond’s survival of torture is a metonymy for Britain’s survival of post-Second World War social and political upheaval. Further, the horror of torture, for Fleming, is the horror of a hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity in disarray: Bond’s survival represents the regrounding of normative heterosexual masculinity through the rejection of homosexuality and Communism. (shrink)

Al tratar de disolver la neta separación entre una mente racional y la materia inerte abogada por el dualismo Cartesiano, el monismo lucha por reunificar estas distintas realidades ontológicas. Tal como para Claude Lévi-Strauss y Baruch Spinoza, esa dicha unificación no puede prescindir de la trascendencia de la mente humana como locus del pensamiento y conocimiento de la naturaleza externa. A través de una discusión entre las abstracciones de la etnología Amerindia (animismo-perspectivismo), las teorizaciones del estructuralismo y las relaciones que (...) estos tienen con algunas especulaciones filosóficas occidentales, este artículo trata de analizar las intricadas interacciones humano-naturaleza entre los Shuar de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. De esta forma, se argumenta que las realidades metafísicas de las experiencias oníricas y visionarias están ontológicamente determinadas por el grado de intensidad de contacto que los humanos establecen con las subjetividades materiales del ecosistema. (shrink)

Alcohol use disorder is a burden to society creating social and health problems. Detection of AUD and its effects on the brain are difficult to assess. This problem is enhanced by the comorbid use of other substances such as nicotine that has been present in previous studies. Recent machine learning algorithms have raised the attention of researchers as a useful tool in studying and detecting AUD. This work uses AUD and controls samples free of any other substance use to assess (...) the performance of a set of commonly used machine learning classifiers detecting AUD from resting state functional network connectivity derived from independent component analysis. The cohort used included 51 alcohol dependent subjects and 51 control subjects. Despite alcohol, none of the 102 subjects reported use of nicotine, cannabis or any other dependence or habit formation substance. Classification features consisted of whole brain rsFNC estimates undergoing a feature selection process using a random forest approach. Features were then fed to 10 different machine learning classifiers to be evaluated based on their classification performance. A neural network classifier showed the highest performance with an area under the curve of 0.79. Other good performers with similar AUC scores were logistic regression, nearest neighbor, and support vector machine classifiers. The worst results were obtained with Gaussian process and quadratic discriminant analysis. The feature selection outcome pointed to functional connections between visual, sensorimotor, executive control, reward, and salience networks as the most relevant for classification. We conclude that AUD can be identified using machine learning classifiers in the absence of nicotine comorbidity. (shrink)

In this paper, we elucidate an alternative conception of the “end of human life” that Germain Grisez considers but never develops. We then defend this conception against two key objections. We conclude by explaining a few ways that this alternative conception of the “end of human life” is particularly important both theologically (e.g., for interfaith discourse) and philosophically (e.g., for understanding the traditional Christian conception of human nature and, hence, of natural law).