Immer mehr sehen wir uns in die Lage versetzt, aktiv Einfluss nicht nur auf unsere Existenz und unser Leben, sondern auch auf die Bedingungen unseres Sterbens zu nehmen. Alterungsprozesse aber auch unser Tod gelangen zunehmend in den Verfügungsbereich unserer Selbstbestimmung und sind zu einem gewissen Grade gestaltbar geworden. Offen ist, wohin dieser Trend vor dem Hintergrund aktueller technologischer Fortschritte noch führen mag. Gegenwärtig sind wir mit den Problemen einer alternden Bevölkerung, einer unzureichenden Altenpflege und einer mangelhaften Alterskultur konfrontiert, die nach (...) gesellschaftspolitischen und medizinethischen Handlungsoptionen verlangen. Zugleich kursieren Zukunftsvisionen, in denen der physiologische Verfall im Zuge des Alterns und damit auch die Leiblichkeit des Menschen insgesamt als defizitär betrachtet wird. Alternative Lebensentwürfe in post- oder transhumanistischen Kreisen betrachten den Tod als extreme Grenzerfahrung, die es zu verhüten gilt. Eine selbstbestimmte Existenz wird mit Selbstoptimierung gleichgesetzt – und sei es auch um den Preis des eigenen Leibes. Werden hier die Grenzen des Menschseins erweitert oder verengt? (shrink)

The intellectual legacy of Confucianism has loomed large in efforts to understand China's past, present, and future. While Confucian ethics has been thoroughly explored, the question remains: what exactly is Confucian political thought? Classical Confucian Political Thought returns to the classical texts of the Confucian tradition to answer this vital question. Showing how Confucian ethics and politics diverge, Loubna El Amine argues that Confucian political thought is not a direct application of Confucian moral philosophy. Instead, contrary to the conventional (...) view that Confucian rule aims to instill virtue in all members of society, El Amine demonstrates that its main aim is to promote political order. El Amine analyzes key aspects of the Confucian political vision, including the relationship between the ruler and the people, the typology of rulers, and the role of ministers and government officials. She also looks at Confucianism’s account of the mechanisms through which society is to be regulated, from welfare policies to rituals. She explains that the Confucian conception of the political leaves space open for the rule of those who are not virtuous if these rulers establish and maintain political order. She also contends that Confucians defend the duty to take part in government based on the benefits that such participation can bring to society. Classical Confucian Political Thought brings a new understanding to Confucian political theory by illustrating that it is not chiefly idealistic and centered on virtue, but rather realistic and driven by political concerns. (shrink)

In recent years, the world knew many challenges concerning the propagation of infectious diseases such as avian influenza, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, etc. These epidemics caused a change in the healthy balance of humanity. Also, the epidemics disrupt the economies and social activities of countries around the world. Mathematical modeling is a vital means to represent and control the propagation of infectious diseases. In this paper, we consider a stochastic epidemic model with a Markov process and delay, which generalizes many models existing (...) in the literature. In addition, we show the stochastic threshold for the extinction of the disease. Furthermore, numerical examples are discussed to confirm the theoretical result. (shrink)

Can we respond to the charge that human rights are a Western product without relinquishing human rights altogether? Can we be sensitive not only to the dominant voices in the non-Western world but also to the "margins of the margins"? Can the academic discussion on human rights be more attuned not only to scholarly arguments but also to "human rights activism and struggles for human rights"? Can it also be attuned to the fact of the new "globalizing modernity"? In Reframing (...) the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights, Jeffrey Flynn thoughtfully addresses these hugely important and challenging... (shrink)

In this paper, we study a stochastic epidemic model with double epidemics which includes white noise and telegraph noise modeled by Markovian switching. Sufficient conditions for the extinction and persistence of the diseases are established. In the end, some numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate our analytical results.

In his review of my book, Classical Confucian Political Thought, David Elstein argues that my interpretation of Classical Confucian political thought draws too sharp a distinction between Confucians’ ethical standards and their political standards, thus veering perhaps a bit too far from the “conventional wisdom” that views Confucian politics as an extension of Confucian ethics. As I write in the book, “To the extent that the political standard is a normative standard, it is difficult to insist that it has nothing (...) to do with morality”. My aim in the book is thus not to posit a complete break between ethics and politics. Rather, my aim is to show where the two intersect and... (shrink)

Background Home care nurses are central in providing holistic and compassionate care to patients in home-based palliative care. Ethical caring competency is essential for home care to sustain nurses’ integrity in the face of moral adversity. Interprofessional collaboration is vital for ensuring ethical decision-making and providing patient-centered care in home-based palliative care settings. Aim This study explored the predictive roles of interprofessional collaboration and moral resilience on ethical caring competency among home care nurses in home-based palliative care. Methods A cross-sectional (...) survey of 400 nurses was conducted from October to December 2023, utilizing standardized scales to measure interprofessional collaboration, moral resilience, and ethical caring competency. A convenience sample of 400 home care nurses was also included in this study. Correlation and linear regression analysis were used to clarify the associative and predictive findings. Ethical Considerations Ethical approval from the ethics committee, institutional permission, and informed consent from the participants were obtained for data collection. Results Correlation analysis showed significant positive correlations between the ethical caring competency, interprofessional collaboration, and moral resilience constructs, with coefficients ranging from 0.482 to 0.967. Linear regression revealed that management of collaborative systems and total moral resilience significantly predict ethical caring competency, explaining 14.6% and 36.6% of its variance, respectively. Other variables, such as the effects of collaboration and communication, did not significantly influence ethical caring competency. Conclusion The study highlights the significant impact of interprofessional collaboration, particularly the management of collaborative systems and moral resilience, on enhancing ethical caring competency among nurses. Implications Enhancing interprofessional collaboration and moral resilience through targeted strategies in nursing practice and education can significantly improve ethical caring competencies. These efforts are essential for delivering high-quality, patient-centered care and for fostering a healthcare environment that respects the ethical principles guiding nursing practice. (shrink)

Taking its distance from classical liberalism, political liberalism seeks to avoid controversial metaphysical assumptions by starting from institutional features of modern polities. Political liberalism also extends the limits of liberal toleration by envisioning societies that it considers nonliberal but decent. This article is concerned with the relationship between these two dimensions of political liberalism, specifically as they are instantiated in the work of John Rawls. I show that these two dimensions are in tension with each other. Put simply, if political (...) liberalism is institutional, then decent societies are impossible. Decent societies are only conceivable within the ahistorical realm of values—a realm that Rawls sometimes slips into, even though its avoidance is central to political liberalism’s claim of distinctiveness. Rawls’s appeal to hypotheticals to defend his account of decent societies only serves to mask this tension and to foreclose important avenues of inquiry about the non-Western world. I also deploy throughout the article archival material that evinces Rawls’ concern with ethnocentrism but also the difficulties he faced in coming up with an adequate account of non-Western societies. On the argument I offer here, this intractability is to be expected, since Rawls did not recognize that the problems with his account were not purely philosophical, but in fact, sociological, political, and historical. (shrink)

I argue in this essay that the past holds the potential for liberating us from modern categories and thus for helping us envision alternative political futures. More specifically, I show how China’s non-feudal past offers resources for a future model of governance based on unity and social mobility.

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

In this article, I show that women are depicted in the early Confucian texts not primarily as undertaking household duties or nurturing children but rather as partaking in rituals of mourning and ancestor worship. To make the argument, I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects and the Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics,” which describe women in their social roles in much more detail than the former. What women’s participation in rituals reveals, I contend, is that (...) the domestic-political distinction does little to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the early Confucian texts. Relatedly, while women’s involvement in communal religious rituals has also been noted about early Greece, the political import of such participation is even more pronounced in the Confucian case. Specifically, I show that, by embodying intergenerational continuity, the mourning and ancestor rituals that women partake in are foundational to the Confucian state. (shrink)

Los más diversos teóricos de la modernidad suelen presentar este período como un proceso continuo de desarrollo tecnológico y económico, progreso en las artes y las ciencias, expansión de la democracia y racionalización de las instituciones y las costumbres. Sin embargo, persisten las contradicciones del capitalismo, el colapso de la civilización es inminente y el Pueblo no vive ni ha vivido en la modernidad tal y como sus teóricos la describen. Esto es tanto más cierto en nuestro país, habitado por (...) una suerte de magdaleniense o pre-Tartessos lleno de cacharritos con iconos, llamadas, avisos, avatares, tamagotchies, móviles y juegos online integrados sin la menor discrepancia sobre una capa de rituales del año de la polka, fetiches, incienso, lágrimas, sangre, joyas, ofrendas, sacrificios, reliquias de miembros de santos y matriarcas fenicio-neolíticas devenidas madres de Cristo al tiempo que supporters del equipo de fútbol local. El ultrarracionalismo se presenta como un nuevo método y movimiento filosófico cuya voluntad es afrontar los desafíos del futuro sin dejar de hacer justicia a esta auténtica marejada de lo grotesco. (shrink)

After reading Professor El Amine’s response to my review of her Classical Confucian Political Thought, I realize we are not as far apart on many issues as it appeared. Nevertheless, some areas of substantive disagreement remain. I will take the opportunity to highlight a couple of these. One is whether the good qualities expected of the common people should be properly considered virtues, that is, whether they are different in kind from the virtues that mark a superior man or (...) even potentially a sage. This is especially relevant because it bears on the question of whether “political order, not moral edification, is the end” of the moral education that we agree is part of government’s role.... (shrink)

Confucian political philosophy is enjoying a renaissance. In the last two decades a number of significant monographs in English have appeared, to say nothing of the Chinese studies that are virtually beyond count. If they have a common theme, it is that Confucian politics is an extension of its ethical thought. Confucian politics is not a mere application of techniques for producing order, as in Legalism, nor does it separate politics and personal morality, as in liberalism. Considering a wide array (...) of sources, in Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation, Loubna El Amine notes how prevalent the view is that the goal of politics is moral transformation. It is precisely... (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Considero un acierto el que se haya otorgado al escritor Amin Maalouf el premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras 2010. Merece la pena tomarse la molestia de leer con atención a este autor, pues ilumina como pocos los distintos ángulos concernientes a la convivencia y la diversidad.

The established view in Confucian scholarship today is that Confucian political order serves to promote the material and moral well-being of ordinary people. Loubna El Amine turns this view on its head by arguing that Confucian political order revolves not around the interest of the people but the demands of security, stability, and prosperity. Min are expected to be virtuous only to the extent that they help to sustain such an order. As such, Confucian politics does not follow from (...) ethics in any straightforward manner. In this article, I argue against her revisionist reading. I argue that her account not only lacks arguments for her core thesis of the ethics/politics division, but also goes against Confucians’ concern over the universality of humanity, popular welfare, and the integrity of Confucian thought. I also draw on discussion on political realism to flesh out the sense in which classic Confucianism is realist. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology (...) of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)

Public and academic medical ethics debates surrounding justice and age discrimination often proceed from a problematic understanding of old age that ignores the diversity of older people. This article introduces the feminist perspective of intersectionality to medical ethical debates on aging and old age in order to analyze the structural discrimination of older people in medicine and health care. While current intersectional approaches in this field focus on race, gender, and sexuality, we thus set out to introduce aging and old (...) age as an additional category that is becoming more relevant in the context of longer life expectancies and increasing population aging. We analyze three exemplary cases on the individual, institutional, and public health level, and argue that considering the intersections of old age with other social categories helps to accommodate the diverse identities of older people and detect inequality and structural discrimination. (shrink)

Viewing the brain as an organ of approximate Bayesian inference can help us understand how it represents the self. We suggest that inferred representations of the self have a normative function: to predict and optimise the likely outcomes of social interactions. Technically, we cast this predict-and-optimise as maximising the chance of favourable outcomes through active inference. Here the utility of outcomes can be conceptualised as prior beliefs about final states. Actions based on interpersonal representations can therefore be understood as minimising (...) surprise – under the prior belief that one will end up in states with high utility. Interpersonal representations thus serve to render interactions more predictable, while the affective valence of interpersonal inference renders self-perception evaluative. Distortions of self-representation contribute to major psychiatric disorders such as depression, personality disorder and paranoia. The approach we review may therefore operationalise the study of interpersonal representations in pathological states. (shrink)

The philosophical literatures on models and thought experiments have been developing exponentially, and independently, for decades. This independence is surprising, given how similar models and thought experiments are. They each have “lives of their own,” they sit between theory and experience, they are important for both pedagogy and cutting-edge science, they galvanize conceptual changes and paradigm shifts, and they involve entertaining imaginary scenarios and working out what happens. Recently, philosophers have begun to highlight these similarities. This entry aims at taking (...) the idea further, by trying to systematically identify places where insights from one literature can be taken up in the other. Along the way, important differences will also be highlighted. (shrink)

In the 1940s, Georges Canguilhem has established the concept of biological normativity on the level of the organism in his key work on “ The Normal and the Pathological ”. We would like to present a contemporary analysis of Canguilhem’s work, set it in context with more recent results from the field of complexity and immunology, and evaluate the problematic whether normativity is a genuine capacity of the organism. Based on Canguilhem’s conditions of the definition of biological normativity, we show (...) that the immune system as one of the complex systems of the living equally shares the capacity to be normative. We will then conclude that normativity can also be conceptually independently displayed on the level of complex systems of the living. (shrink)