In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images >> Good HopeCarla Liesching Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 111]Carla Liesching is an interdisciplinary artist working across photography, writing, collage, sculpture, bookmaking, and design. Grounded in experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, she considers the intersections of representation, knowledge, and power, with a focus on colonial histories and enduring constructions of race and geography. Carla's ongoing project, Good Hope, was published (...) by MACK in 2021, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award, and the Arles 2022 Prix du Livre in the Photo-Text Category. An excerpt from Good Hope is also featured in On Whiteness, by SPBH Editions. Carla was a 2021 winner of the Open Walls Arles competition presented by The British Journal of Photography and exhibited work during Rencontres d'Arles Festival in 2021 and 2022. She is a 2021 Light Work Grant recipient and the 2022 recipient of the Silver Eye Fellowship, culminating in a photo-sculptural installation at Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh. Carla was recently named a Foam Talent, with exhibitions at Foam Museum in Amsterdam, the Deutsche Börse Foundation in Frankfurt, along with a solo exhibition of Good Hope through PhMuseum in Bologna. Carla lives between South Africa and Ithaca. In Ithaca, she works as Visiting Critic in Cornell University's Art Architecture and Planning Department; as Lecturer in the Art, Art History and Architecture Department at Ithaca College; as faculty at the International Center of Photography; and as coordinator of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell. As part of her socially engaged practice, Carla is also a youth educator focused on image-making, visual literacy, and self-publishing as vehicles for expression and empowerment. [End Page 112] Click for larger view View full resolution'As soon as you are in a proper stage of defence you shall search for the best place for gardens, the best and fattest ground in which everything planted or sown will thrive.' Click for larger view View full resolution—Instructions from the Dutch East India Company inscribed on a yellowing sheet of parchment, 1651.1[End Page 113] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 114]iYes, there are facts and figures to account for, timelines to trace, but have I told you of today's newspapers? Headlines like: 'Land Justice', 'Expropriation without Compensation', 'Revolution or Reform?' Have I told you of the monuments removed in the 'riots'? Or the groundsmen in green overalls scrubbing graffiti, repairing broken fountains, collecting debris? Black men White bosses still call 'boys'? Have I told you of the doves cooing gently, perched atop the sleeping bodies of migrant families on the lawns? Have I told you of the White children from the Cape of Good Hope Seminary dressed in their afternoon 'civilian clothes'? Or of the more racially integrated group from Mseki High in their grey-and-turquoise uniforms surrounding me on the main steps leading to the garden? The cacophony of lunch-time chatter, chip packets crinkling, the flap-flap of wings as seagulls scavenge for tasty morsels? Have I told you of the signs pointing to the Scientific Pleasure Garden? Or of the gift store filled with locally sourced flower oils, handmade candles, Delft-blue china tea-sets and postcards depicting the early colony? And what of Cecil John Rhodes cast in greening bronze, flanked by a Madagascar Cycad and a Queen Palm, announcing: Your Hinterland is There? Have I told you of the small rock in the corner of the vegetable garden with a label hidden beneath weeds? The arrival of the Dutch to establish a refreshment station, providing fresh produce for the ships plying the spice route, marked the end of a free and independent existence for the native Gorinhaiqua Khoikhoi. And what of the large label at the stone-walled entrance? A story of how a garden in 1654 brought together continents and affected the course of history. A story of how plants in the form of pepper, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon changed the world economy. Have I told you the garden is the cause of it all? [End... (shrink)

A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. (...) Referring to primary texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate. (shrink)

When Christiaan Huygens prepared the 1686/1687 expedition to the Cape of Good Hope on which his pendulum clocks were to be tested for their usefulness in measuring longitude at sea, he also gave instructions to Thomas Helder to perform experiments with the seconds-pendulum. This was prompted by Jean Richer's 1672 finding that a seconds-pendulum is 1 1/4 lines shorter in Cayenne than in Paris. Unfortunately, Helder died on the voy¬age, and no data from the seconds-pendulum ever reached (...) Huygens. He nevertheless did receive data from his clocks on the return-voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Texel. When he first calculated the ship's course according to these data, it appeared to have gone straight through Ireland. He then tried introducing a correction to the data, based on an idea he had previously entertained as a possible explanation of Richer's finding: he corrected the observed time to com¬pen¬sate for a reduction in the effect of gravity from the Poles to the Equator resulting purely from the Earth's rotation. His newly calculated course convinced him that this rotational effect is the sole source of any variations in gravity with latitude. This paper examines Huygens's correc¬tions to the data and his reasoning from the new course to the conclusion that nothing else causes a variation in gravity. In the process, we show that Huygens had cogent empirical reasons to reject Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravity, which predicted a some¬what larger variation in gravity. (shrink)

In the history of zoology the English anatomist Morrison Watson (1845–1885) is considered to be the discoverer of the masculinized sexual organs of the spotted hyena. Beginning in 1877, Watson had published a series of anatomical studies on the spotted hyena (Watson, 1877, 1878, 1881, Watson and Young, 1879), in which he, in which he for the first time made public the anatomical peculiarities of the female spotted hyena’s genitalia. This scientific achievement is well documented. But now we can also (...) state that a hundred years before Watson the Dutch amateur zoologist Robert Jacob Gordon (1743–1795), while serving in the Scots Brigades at the Cape of Good Hope, had already made the same discovery and merely unfortunate personal circumstances prevented publication. During his stay at the Cape, Gordon had studied spotted hyenas intensively and recorded his observations in accurate drawings and comments. These drawings have been preserved as part of a large collection of animal drawings entitled Gordon Atlas. With his discovery, Gordon actually was the first to provide empirical evidence of a “curious and inexplicable case of dimorphism” (Darwin on a beetle) in mammalians, long before Étienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire (Cours de l’histoire naturelle des mammifères, 1829) started examining masculinized sexual organs in the mole or Darwin recognized the importance of sexual dimorphism (Descent of Man, 1871). In this paper we reproduce for the first time all hyena drawings from the Gordon Atlas, including Gordon’s handwritten notes in the margins in the original Dutch and in translation. Additionally, we briefly delineate the knowledge about the South African spotted hyena in Gordon’s time and indicate that we doubt Watson’s explanation for the age-old confusion about the hyena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 249-255 [Access article in PDF] News and Views World Parliament of Religions, Cape Town, South Africa Jim Kenney The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions is pleased to offer this summary report of the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Cape Town, South Africa, December 1-8, 1999. Nestled against Table Mountain and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Town (...) is home to many races, religious traditions, and cultural varieties. Religious, spiritual, cultural, and civic leaders, groups, and communities there worked enthusiastically in partnership with CPWR to make the 1999 Parliament an unforgettable gift to the world.At the 1999 Parliament over 7,000 people from around the world--teachers, scholars, leaders, believers, and practitioners--came together to experience astonishing spiritual and cultural variety, to exchange insights, to share wisdom, to celebrate their unique religious identities; in short, to be amazed, delighted, and inspired. At the same time, participants wrestled with the critical issues facing the global community, learning about the world situation, and seeking the moral and ethical convergence that leads to shared commitment and action.The 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions was a celebration of hope and a vision of possible futures. It also gave powerful testimony to the good hearts and goodwill of the many thousands of people--from every part of the world, and from almost every religious and spiritual tradition--who believed that this gathering could indeed be the harbinger of a new day dawning.It was not the intention of those who gathered in Cape Town to create a new religion, or to diminish in any way the precious uniqueness of any path. Instead, they came together to demonstrate that the religious and spiritual traditions and communities of Cape Town, of South Africa, and of the larger world can and should encounter one another in a spirit of respect, and with an openness to new understanding. They joined with one another in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation, seeking to discover new ways to rise to the challenges and the opportunities of life at the threshold of a new century. And they came with the realization that as each of us reaches out to the transcendent in her or his own way, somehow, we are no longer strangers to one another.In commemoration of International AIDS Day, the Parliament began with the formal unveiling of the International AIDS Quilt in the picturesque area known as the Company's Garden. Each one of hundreds of handsewn panels commemorates a victim of the disease, yet the Quilt project itself is a symbol of hope and life's triumph. [End Page 249] The founder of the quilt, Cleve Jones, joined with several religious and spiritual leaders from around the world to engage in dialogue about the role of religious and spiritual communities in fighting the disease that has claimed the lives of so many people. The quilt was an especially poignant reminder of both the epidemic of AIDS in South Africa, and the role that religious and spiritual traditions play in confronting the critical issues that face the world at the end of the millennium.Participants then proceeded down Government Avenue to Darling Street and on to District Six. Costumes, religious garb, banners, and wonderful cultural variety made for a colorful and moving experience for marchers and spectators alike. With over 10,000 marchers, the procession was a highlight for many Parliament participants. The presence of protesters demonstrating their displeasure with the Parliament and its commitment to interreligious dialogue and cooperation did not diminish the spirit or the enthusiasm of the marchers.When the procession arrived in District Six, an area symbolic of both dispossession and of the human spirit, those who had once lived in this lovely spot under Table Mountain welcomed the marchers. Past residents of District Six described to those gathered how their once vibrant community was displaced when the apartheid-era government designated the area as "white only," and removed the residents to distant, underresourced townships. In the moving ceremony that followed, religious and spiritual leaders... (shrink)

This article covers the time from 1652 onwards when employees of the Dutch East India Company - most of whom were members of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands - arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in present South Africa. With time, a new church, the Dutch Reformed Church, was established in the Cape. In 1836, a number of pioneers moved from the Cape to the east of South Africa and some of them eventually (...) made Swaziland their new home. Although most members of the white Dutch Reformed Church opposed any integration with Christians from other races, there was nevertheless a desire that they should join a Reformed Church. In 1922, the first Dutch Reformed congregation in Swaziland was established in Goedgegun in the southern region of the country, intended for the exclusive use of white, Afrikaans-speaking church members. In 1944, the first Reformed congregation for Swazi members was formed, which later became known as the Swaziland Reformed Church. This article documents the history of this church and concludes with a description of the Swaziland Reformed Church in 1985, with four missionaries from South Africa ministering in the four regions of Swaziland. (shrink)

Rather than as a philosopher, Zammito writes as a historian dedicated to contextual intellectual history. The book has nonetheless a conspicuous literary value, and it reminds one not incidentally of Thomas Pynchon’s historical novel Mason and Dixon, first and foremost because both focus on the friendship of scholars who were at their peak in the 1760s. In fact, just as Pynchon sets off his narrative account by reconstructing the Mason–Dixon expedition to the Cape of Good Hope for (...) the transit of Venus from 1761 to 1762, Zammito sets off with the notes Herder took in Kant’s classes at Königsberg between 1762 and 1764. Of course, those were astronomers and these were philosophers; those were Britons and these Germans; and I would rather stop looking for analogies here. According to Zammito, Kant and Herder “shared in a remarkable moment of intellectual discovery and growth associated with the penetration into Germany of the thought of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and in the endeavor to use these exciting new insights to revise the established philosophical views codified in the works of Christian Wolff and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten”. The method of contextual history, remarks Zammito, “is not causally unidirectional.” Kant and Herder were influenced by what was in the air at their time, and at the same time they were instrumental in shaping it. Eventually, they were to contribute to the “calving away” of anthropology from philosophy around the year 1772, when Ernst Platner published his Anthropologie für Ärtzte und Weltweise, Kant gave his first course in anthropology at Königsberg, and Herder published his prize-winning essay “Versuch über den Ursprung der Sprache”. Oddly, this book does not go into any aspects of Kant’s critical philosophy. It contains analysis of Kant’s Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen of 1764 and the Träume eines Geistersehers of 1766, and it stops with the already mentioned course of the year 1772, which is perfectly legitimate, given that in 1772 Kant and Herder parted and stopped working toward the same goal, namely, the constitution of philosophical anthropology. Besides, and this is also one of its great merits, Zammito’s book provides the reader with a faithful reconstruction of what Kant looked like between 1762 and 1772, that is, as a thoroughly representative figure of German Enlightenment thought who had not made the “critical turn,” and who, as Lewis W. Beck has argued, would have been worthy of perhaps a paragraph in the history of philosophy. Zammito suggests that the Kant of 1772 would not have been so insignificant after all, and he asks rather “whether he does not deserve a larger stature in the history of the German Aufklärung, not simply as a representative but as a dissident and even a transformer”. Zammito’s analysis is well documented in primary literature and in secondary literature. His main thesis about the mutual influence of Kant and Herder in getting their facts straight in the 1770s by pushing “the whole cultural shift toward ‘epistemological liberalization’ that constituted the emergence of anthropological discourse” is brilliant. (shrink)

This essay sets out from a reading of two photomontage projects by South African artist Jane Alexander, ?Adventure Centre? (2000) and ?Survey: Cape of Good Hope? (2005?09), one of Alexander's ongoing ?survey? projects, and remarks on the overwhelming impulse on the part of critics and interpreters to anthropomorphize the figures appearing in the photomontage images. It goes on to explore the hypothesis that Alexander's work in fact resists or refuses these attempts at anthropomorphization, and that this resistance (...) is connected with the more openly political aspects of her work, as well as with a more general refusal of anthropomorphism by photography. The second part of the essay frames a possible engagement with Alexander's photomontages through terms offered by Walter Benjamin's ?Little History of Photography,? and looks at Benjamin's peculiar concern with a kind of anti-portraiture: a photographic genre that would feature the human face in an anonymous way, without being concerned with identity. The essay closes with a consideration of the genre of the photographic survey historically, and traces an impulse, evident in the survey, to treat the human as only one of many figural elements composing the crypto-industrial landscape. (shrink)

What is hope? Though variously characterized as a cognitive attitude, an emotion, a disposition, and even a process or activity, hope, more deeply, a unifying and grounding force of human agency. We cannot live a human life without hope, therefore questions about the rationality of hope are properly recast as questions about what it means to hope well. This thesis is defended and elaborated as follows. First, it is argued that hope is an essential (...) and distinctive feature of human agency, both conceptually and developmentally. The author then explores a number of dimensions of agency that are critically implicated in the art of hoping well, drawing on several examples from George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The article concludes with a short section that suggests how hoping well in an individual context may be extended to hope at the collective level. (shrink)

The “best interests” of the patient are widely seen as a cornerstone of medical practice. They are the explicit legal standard for medical care in the case of patients who lack capacity to consent to treatment.The best interests of the individual patient have, of course, long been compromised for the sake of other potential patients—in infectious disease control for example. The question of the ethics of such compromise became a hot issue, for UK doctors, about fifteen years ago in the (...) context of health care rationing. At that time the fact that there are insufficient resources to provide all patients, in all circumstances, with the best possible treatment became explicit. Faced with this uncomfortable truth, doctors tended to divide into two camps. Some wanted to play no role in decisions about resource allocation. They continued to be guided by the single ethic of each individual patient's best interests. However, “best interests” could be interpreted as “best” given the treatments that were made available by those who determined the allocation of resources. Others took the opposite approach: since choices had to be made as to the best use of available resources, doctors ought to be playing a significant role in making these choices.This polarisation has softened over time. Doctors have become more at ease with the idea that some treatments are not, given the overall resources, cost-effective, even if they are the best available. Clinical guidelines increasingly are influenced by cost-effectiveness. To provide the best health care overall, within the available resources, doctors aim to provide good care for each individual patient, but they do not always provide the best care. (shrink)

Frankfurt cases are supposed to provide us with counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities. Among the most well known responses to these cases is what John Fischer has dubbed the flicker of freedom strategy. Here we revisit a version of this strategy, which we refer to as the fine-grained response. Although a number of philosophers, including some who are otherwise unsympathetic to Frankfurt’s argument, have dismissed the fine grained response, we believe there is a good deal to be (...) said on its behalf. We argue, in particular, that reflection on certain cases involving omissions undermines the main objections to the response and also provides the groundwork for an argument in support of it. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), a person is blameworthy for what he did only if he could have avoided doing it. This principle figures importantly in disputes about the relationship between determinism, divine foreknowledge, free will and moral responsibility, and has been the subject of considerable controversy for over forty years now. Proponents of the principle have devoted a good deal of energy and ingenuity to defending it against various objections. Surprisingly, however, they have devoted comparatively (...) little effort to developing positive arguments for it, and, with few exceptions, the arguments they have proposed have received little, if any, critical attention. My dissertation is intended to help fill this gap in the literature on PAP. There are three main arguments for PAP. I critically evaluate each of these arguments, arguing that they are all unsuccessful. Where, then, does that leave PAP? I suggest that, in the absence of any further compelling arguments for or against the principle, debate over it is likely to end in dialectical stalemate. I conclude by highlighting several implications of this suggestion for recent debates about the metaphysics of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Kant is clear that the concept of the 'highest good' involves both a demand, that we follow the moral law, as well as a promise, that happiness will be the outcome of being moral. The latter element of the highest good has troubled commentators, who tend to find it metaphysically extravagant, involving, as it does, belief in God and an afterlife. Furthermore, it seems to threaten the moral purity that Kant demands: that we obey the moral law for (...) its own sake, not out of interest in the consequences. Those commentators brave enough to tackle the issue look to the concept of the highest good either to add content to the moral law (Silber), or to provide rational motivation, in a way that does not violate moral purity (Beiser and Wood). I argue that such interpretations, although they may be plausible reconstructions, are unable to account for certain conceptual and textual problems. By placing Kant's thought against the background of medieval theology, I argue that the hope for the summum bonum is irreducibly important for Kant, even where its function is not that of providing the content or motivational force of the moral law. Kant is not only concerned with the shape of our duties and motivations, but the shape of the universe within which these emerge. (shrink)

Ethics, communication skills, and the law ('practice skills') are important in all aspects of modern health care. Doctors and nurses must be sensitive to the ethical aspects of their work and understand the legal framework within which clinical decisions are made. Well developed skills of communication, with patients, their relatives and other members of the clinical team, are a key feature of good clinical practice Until recently, the important of practice skills has been relatively neglected in health care education. (...) This situation is changing. The UK General Medical Council, for example, has recently identified three aspects as part of the core of the medical course, and the move to degree courses in nursing has led to an increasing focus of practice skills in nurse education. The Oxford Practice Skills Project (OPSP) team have developed a course, within the University of Oxford Clinical School, which covers the teaching of practice skills in an integrated manner. This course is widely recognized as one of the most systematic developments of education in these areas. This manual describes the OPSP course in detail and provides teaching materials. Although developed initially for medical students, it should be helpful to all those involved in teaching ethics, communication skills, and law in health care. Each Seminar is described in detail Tutors' guides are provided Student handouts are included Contains guidelines for introducing 'practice skills' into a busy clinical curriculum Includes over forty case histories for teaching and examination Gives details of many useful sources and resources Details a variety of teaching methods together with their advantages and disadvantages Provides an ethics teaching toolkit for clinical teachers new to this area Readers are welcome to photocopy any part of this manual for their own teaching. (shrink)

To reduce the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Granich et al. 1 ( 2009 ) have proposed a new strategy for universal voluntary HIV testing immediately followed by antiretroviral therapy. Although this proposal is likely to benefit the partners of those affected and thus promote public health, it is by no means clear that it benefits the infected people themselves and indeed it may be harmful. Since the proposal involves an intervention that is not clinically indicated, it falls (...) foul of the normal ethical standards of clinical medicine, which is to act in the best interests of patients. Neither is it a measure that would be imposed under the protection of public health law on people who are seen as representing such danger to others that significant restrictions in liberty are appropriate. Thus, the proposal represents a third category of public health measure. We argue that a coherent ethical framework including a robust process is appropriate to proposals of this kind and that medical research offers a useful model since some research, like this proposal, is motivated not by the interests of the individual participants but by the common good. We outline some possible elements of such an ethical framework. (shrink)

The non-identity problem arises when an intervention or behavior changes the identity of those affected. Delaying pregnancy is an example of such a behavior. The problem is whether and in what ways such changes in identity affect moral considerations. While a great deal has been written about the non-identity problem, relatively little has been written about the implications for physicians and how they should understand their duties. We argue that the non-identity problem can make a crucial moral difference in some (...) circumstances, and that it has some interesting implications for when it is or is not right for a physician to refuse to accede to a patient's request. If a physician is asked to provide an intervention (identity preserving) that makes a person worse off, then such harm provides a good reason for the physician to refuse to provide the intervention. However, in cases where different (identity-altering) interventions result in different people having a better or worse life, physicians should normally respect patient choice. (shrink)

Aristotle's chief ethical work, the Nicomachean Ethics , has given rise to a number of lively scholarly debates. Chief among them, is the debate about Aristotle's conception of the human good or eudaimonia. Aristotle defines eudaimonia as activity of the soul in accordance with virtue . But several different kinds of psychic virtues are all discussed in the NE, viz., ethical virtue and sophia. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Aristotle identifies eudaimonia with the combination of ethical virtue and sophia, (...) or whether he believes that eudaimonia consists in the activity of sophia alone. Inclusivists endorse the former alternative, whereas intellectualists endorse the latter. ;Aristotle's "function argument" ---the argument which leads Aristotle to conclude that eudaimonia is "activity of the soul in accordance with virtue"---has become the locus of the dispute between intellectualists and inclusivists. The present work focuses on this dispute. I argue that both intellectualist and inclusivist interpretations of Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia , are flawed. For both accounts ignore Aristotle's views about the biological development of human beings. As I will show, Aristotle's views about human development play a crucial role in the function argument. Once this fact is appreciated, we are able to see that ethical virtue is a developmental prerequisite for sophia, and hence that sophia cannot be actualized without ethical virtue. This conclusion challenges those intellectualists who claim that in some cases, ethical virtue and sophia can come into conflict with one another.1 These intellectualists conclude from this that eudaimonia consists in contemplative activity alone, and that ethical virtue is merely instrumentally valuable. On this view, ethical virtue is valuable only to the extent that it helps one to be a better contemplator. I reject this view and argue that ethical virtue is necessary for the development of sophia. Thus, eudaimonia is activity in accordance with ethical virtue and sophia, but these virtues are hierarchically related since ethical virtue is a developmental prerequisite of sophia. This is the primary conclusion of this work. ;1See Cooper , Kraut. (shrink)

This moving, insightful and ultimately hopeful and helpful blend of memoir and philosophical exploration begins in Christopher Phillips's native stomping grounds of the tiny volcanic island of Nisyros, Greece and unfurls through space and time as the author explores the connections between his immediate circumstances and the eternal wisdom of popular philosophers.

I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue (...) – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness. (shrink)

The analysis is based on some moral experiences taking place during a terrorist attack on the Norwegian Labor Party’s youth camp on the island of Utøya July 22, 2011, where 69 young people were killed and several seriously injured. After the attack many of the survivors told stories of how strangers spontaneous had helped and cared for each other. In the midst of the horror there occurred sudden “moments of goodness” or “points of light” that revealed hope for the (...) persons involved, as well as for the society. The article examines these spontaneous moral practices in light of moral educational theory, as well as discusses the terrorists own way of thinking and acting. The spontaneous practices point toward another basis for a moral approach then a cognitive development tradition. The importance of community is underlined, as well as an interpersonal dimension. In the last section the fostering of moral and ethical thinking and acting is discussed in light of general education and the three functions of education proposed by Biesta. It is suggested that moral education could contribute something to all of the three dimensions but based on the experiences from Utøya, there will be a particular emphasis on the subjectification function of education. (shrink)

9th and 10th Nov. 2013 at Kyoto University. Organizers: Takeshi Sato and Shunsuke Sugimoto.

Important advances in biomedical and behavioral research ethics have occurred over the past few decades, many of them centered on identifying and eliminating significant harms to human subjects of research. Comprehensive attention has not been paid to the totality of harms experienced by animal subjects, although scientific and moral progress require explicit appraisal of these harms. Science is a public good and the prioritizing within, conduct of, generation of, and application of research must soundly address questions about which research (...) is morally defensible and valuable enough to support through funding, publication, tenure, and promotion. Likewise, educational pathways of re-imagined science are critical. (shrink)

In a gritty and unique take on the story of Job, Pastor Benjamin Windle shows that "the good life" is not one devoid of problems, pain, and heartache. It's one lived with hope engineered for adversity. You can flourish in the storms of life when you find the Ultimate Hope in the midst of unavoidable pain.

In Plato’s Apology (29a-b), Socrates agues that he does not fear death; indeed, to fear death is a sign of ignorance. It is to claim to know what one in fact does not know (Ap. 29 a-b). Perhaps, Socrates suggests, death is not a great evil after all, but “the greatest of all goods.” At the end of the dialogue, after the judges have voted on the final verdict and Socrates has received the death penalty, the philosopher considers two common (...) views of death: that death is a long dreamless sleep and that death is a journey to another place - Hades. According to Socrates, either of these views of death would be acceptable to him; the one, because he would receive a wonderful rest with no dreams to disturb him; the other, because he would be able to talk philosophy with those who had gone before with impunity. In this paper, I will examine Socrates’ view of death, and I will argue that, according to Socrates, there could be a third perspective on death that will not only make him truly immortal in a certain way, but will also immortalize the practice of Socratic philosophy. Hence, Socrates embraces his sentence because dying at the right time and dying in the right way provides him the possibility of a good death. <br><br>. (shrink)

Alternative food movements work to create more environmentally and economically sustainable food systems, but vary widely in their advocacy for social, racial and environmental justice. However, even those food justice activists explicitly dedicated to equity must respond to the unintended consequences of their work. This paper analyzes the work of activists in Oakland, CA, who have increasingly realized that their gardens, health food stores and farm-to-table restaurants play a role in what scholars have called green gentrification, the upscaling of neighborhoods (...) through the creation of environmental amenities. Gentrification has had grave consequences for the low-income communities of color that food justice activists seek to serve. Activists are reflexive about this dynamic, and have developed strategies to push back against displacement. Most commonly, non-profit organizations and individual social entrepreneurs found businesses that seek to raise the profile of people of color in the trendy Oakland food scene while employing long-term residents in well-paying, green jobs. However, while these efforts are an essential component of a broader agenda to create both food justice and development without displacement, even these relatively high paying “good food jobs” cannot keep up with escalating rents. For this reason, we also highlight the direct action and policy-oriented strategies engaged by a smaller number of food justice activists, and argue that these are necessary compliments to a market-based approach. (shrink)

Conway characterizes freedom in apparently contradictory ways. She describes God as the most free, yet he is necessitated to act perfectly due to his wisdom and goodness. Created beings, by contrast, sin. They are not necessitated to do so. This suggests that Conway has a binary account of freedom: divine freedom is a matter of being necessitated by wisdom and goodness, whereas creaturely freedom consists in indifference, understood as a power to act, or not act. Despite the apparently conflicting remarks, (...) I argue that Conway has a single account of freedom as spontaneity. Conway defines spontaneity in terms of causing one’s own action independent of external causes. I suggest that spontaneity is more precisely understood as an intrinsic power aimed at the good in Conway’s metaphysics, and that this account of freedom can combine necessity and contingency. Rather than a binary, Conway offers an account of freedom in creation that has it on a continuum with divine freedom. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study the resources available and resources needed for ethics teaching to medical students in UK medical schools as required by the new GMC core curriculum. DESIGN: A structured questionnaire was piloted and then circulated to deans of medical schools. SETTING: All UK medical schools. RESULTS: Eighteen out of 28 schools completed the questionnaire, the remainder either indicating that their arrangements were "under review" (4) or not responding (6). Among those responding: 1) library resources, including video and information technology (...) were found to be fairly well developed; 2) many schools had a good supply of handouts and sample cases for teaching; 3) most had a written syllabus, and 4) two-thirds examined in the subject. However, many schools indicated that there was an urgent need for: 1) full-time teachers (most ethics teaching is still by part-time and voluntary staff); funding for books and journals, and 3) additional teaching materials (including further case vignettes, handouts and sample exam questions). CONCLUSIONS: There has been a considerable overall improvement in resources for medical ethics teaching since the time of the last national survey (The Pond Report). However, provision varies widely from medical school to medical school. The particular needs identified were for full-time teachers, library resources and teaching materials. Wider use of existing organisations concerned with medical ethics could help to meet these needs. (shrink)

This instructive work tries to avoid the parochialism and over-technicality characteristic of so much recent theorizing about ethics. The author examines each of the main current accounts of moral goodness and judgment, and then constructs a view of his own in their light--a view predominantly "naturalistic" in its conception of goodness but partially "non-cognitivist" in its treatment of moral judgment. The rest of the book defends and elaborates this view. Mr. Rice writes perceptively, and his accounts of contemporary ethical theories (...) are lucid and concise. His passion for non-technicality, however, makes the presentation of his own view less convincing than it might have been; his argument is sometimes elusive and fragmentary, and his writing, though vivid, often lacks clarity and precision. Still, this is a book of considerable significance; one hopes that it will mark the beginning of a broader, more constructive approach to the problems of ethical theory.--V. C. C. (shrink)

Aristotle tries to solve the riddle of future-directedness and luck-awareness by offering an account of what he calls ‘good hope’ or hoping-well. I concede that hope does not hold Aristotle’s attention for long. However, his allusions to hope (in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Rhetoric) allow us to articulate a quite detailed, illuminating, and rich phenomenology of hope that will prove to be decisive when inquiring into how hopefulness belongs to the core (...) of practical life, thereby making an important contribution to contemporary discussions of hope. (shrink)

This paper considers Kant's views on how it can be rational to hope for God's assistance in becoming morally good. If I am fully responsible for making myself good and can make myself good, then my moral condition depends entirely on me. However, if my moral condition depends entirely on me, then it cannot depend on God, and it is therefore impossible for God to provide me with any assistance. But if it is impossible for God (...) to provide me with any assistance, it is irrational for me to hope for such assistance. I address this conundrum by providing an analysis of one necessary condition of rational hope: hope is rational only if the subject is not in a position to be certain that p is really impossible. I then offer several different strategies on which it might be rational to hope that God provides moral assistance, with the most radical of these strategies suggesting that, given our ignorance of the laws of the intelligible world, for all human beings know it is metaphysically possible that God perform a noumenal miracle on their moral character. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I analyze interpersonal and institutional recognition and discuss the relation of different types of recognition to various principles of social justice (egalitarianism, meritarianism, legitimate favouritism, principles of need and free exchange). Further, I try to characterize contours of good autonomous life, and ask what kind of preconditions it has. I will distinguish between five kinds of preconditions: psychological, material, cultural, intersubjective and institutional. After examining what the role of recognition is among such preconditions, and how they (...) figure in the work of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Charles Taylor, I suggest a somewhat complex and hopefully rich picture of interpersonal and institutional recognition as a precondition of autonomous good life. (shrink)

Obiora F. Ike’s impressive amount of research texts on ethics can be found on Globethics.net Library. In general, there is no need to search for a justification of a life work and commitment to values, when a person reaches beyond a certain level of experience in life, in any field of professional work, even more in spiritual and ethical development. In the following lines I shall focus on the value of the common good for a person who not only (...) had precise notions about a philosophical and theological concept, but taught by the example, believing integrity matters and integral development can be a life-long mission and altruistic commitment, even if life can be either simple or complicate. (shrink)

This paper develops a dialogue on value and measurement in education that began at a special symposium at ECER in September 2015. The paper seeks to continue the dialogue by commenting on the main respondent’s contribution from Network 9. We hope to clarify how different sides of the assessment debate can be misunderstood by others. What emerges in our paper is suggestive but nonetheless points to how thinking in opposing camps can limit our understanding of assessment as a human (...) activity. Taking up key points made by the respondent to the symposium, we focus on the comparison between the requirements of design in technological problem-solving situations and those that arise when we take seriously the requirements of assessment and valuing as a human activity. This discussion sets up a wider analysis of the problem of ethics across the sciences and humanities historically. While remaining tentative, the discussion points to a particular problem related to our ability to defend practical rationality agains.. (shrink)

The paper attempts to show that Christian hope is not a product of religious fantasy. It finds today an ally in the dialogue with the natural sciences which started in recent years on the topic of the ultimate destiny of the world. The natural sciences have confirmed that the universe is doomed to physical annihilation. Humanity with its cultural riches, scientists say, is only an episode in universal history and doomed to perish. Hence, if the Earth is nothing more (...) than an island of rationality in a cosmic void, then the only thing we can do is to keep up a heroic attitude worthy of human beings towards our own fragile existence. Contemporary science’s visions of the future are pessimistic: abundant, though short-lived, evolution culminating in a sense of final futility and the ultimate destruction of all life in the universe. Such forecasts question religion’s claims for the eschatological transformation of all creation. Christian eschatology does not accept, however, reductionist presuppositions about the very nature of reality. The universe contains levels of meaning far richer than what we have been able to discover sofar. Theology’s task is not to provide easy consolation, or generate false hopes. It has a good reason to avoid catastrophism, and maintain calm in its strivings to keep up our faith in God’s concern for the destiny of all His creatures. Theologians have to take a serious stand on the very concept of finitude, furthered by natural and social sciences. This, in turn, will require critical review of such concepts as the world’s future in God, hope and new creation. This effort must be undertaken in dialogue with the scientific views of the world’s finitude. Both sides are prone to stereotype judgements and shallow answers which must be corrected in consideration of the complexity of the issue at hand. Christian theology has to justify its claim to truth, but certainly not by launching battles with science. Christian hope shows the new creation not as annihilation and destruction of the old but as its ultimate transfiguration and salvific transformation. It speaks about the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in this new universe’s emergence. Special attention is paid in the paper to the “logical” structure of matter. If the world ofultimate events is, in fact, to be a new world of the resurrection, created by transition into new reality, then certain scientific suggestions and data on the present world’s processes could prove helpful in grasping the truly cosmic dimensions of Christian hope. Crucial here will not so much be particular data but rather a sort of meta-science allowing the deduction of general concepts from the detailed achievements of scientific research. Such generalized insights include today the following elements: 1) the dynamic concept of physical reality, 2) the relationality of its processes and, 3) a deeper understanding of the complexity of matter/energy as carriers of a specific information-bearing pattern. It appears that there are some similarities in science’s and theology’s strivings for a deeper understanding of the truth of reality, which continues to evade our theories and teaches us modesty. Neither method nor concept has yet managed to explaineverything. There exists no universal key to a comprehensive interpretation. The postulate to avoid reductionism in approaching the manifold richness of reality is addressed to scientists and theologians alike. (shrink)

Reflection on the history of skepticism shows that philosophers have often conjoined as a single doctrine various theses that are best kept apart. Some of these theses are incredible – literally almost impossible to accept – whereas others seem quite plausible, and even verging on the platitudinous. Mixing them together, one arrives at a view – skepticism – that is as a whole indefensible. My aim is to pull these different elements apart, and to focus on one particular strand of (...) skepticism that deserves sustained and respectful attention. The strand I have in mind I will refer to as epistemic defeatism. Roughly, in its most global form, it is the view that, in the final analysis, we have no good evidence for the truth of any proposition. Working through various historical texts, I attempt to untangle epistemic defeatism from neighboring views, and in particular to establish its independence from questions about knowledge. Having thus established the view's autonomy, I turn to the options for self-consciously accepting defeat. One may despair or one may have faith. But I will ultimately propose that the most attractive option – the option that preserves the most of our epistemic integrity – is to have hope. (shrink)

The paper attempts to show that Christian hope is not a product of religious fantasy. It finds today an ally in the dialogue with the natural sciences which started in recent years on the topic of the ultimate destiny of the world. The natural sciences have confirmed that the universe is doomed to physical annihilation. Humanity with its cultural riches, scientists say, is only an episode in universal history and doomed to perish. Hence, if the Earth is nothing more (...) than an island of rationality in a cosmic void, then the only thing we can do is to keep up a heroic attitude worthy of human beings towards our own fragile existence. Contemporary science’s visions of the future are pessimistic: abundant, though short-lived, evolution culminating in a sense of final futility and the ultimate destruction of all life in the universe. Such forecasts question religion’s claims for the eschatological transformation of all creation. Christian eschatology does not accept, however, reductionist presuppositions about the very nature of reality. The universe contains levels of meaning far richer than what we have been able to discover sofar. Theology’s task is not to provide easy consolation, or generate false hopes. It has a good reason to avoid catastrophism, and maintain calm in its strivings to keep up our faith in God’s concern for the destiny of all His creatures. Theologians have to take a serious stand on the very concept of finitude, furthered by natural and social sciences. This, in turn, will require critical review of such concepts as the world’s future in God, hope and new creation. This effort must be undertaken in dialogue with the scientific views of the world’s finitude. Both sides are prone to stereotype judgements and shallow answers which must be corrected in consideration of the complexity of the issue at hand. Christian theology has to justify its claim to truth, but certainly not by launching battles with science. Christian hope shows the new creation not as annihilation and destruction of the old but as its ultimate transfiguration and salvific transformation. It speaks about the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in this new universe’s emergence. Special attention is paid in the paper to the “logical” structure of matter. If the world ofultimate events is, in fact, to be a new world of the resurrection, created by transition into new reality, then certain scientific suggestions and data on the present world’s processes could prove helpful in grasping the truly cosmic dimensions of Christian hope. Crucial here will not so much be particular data but rather a sort of meta-science allowing the deduction of general concepts from the detailed achievements of scientific research. Such generalized insights include today the following elements: 1) the dynamic concept of physical reality, 2) the relationality of its processes and, 3) a deeper understanding of the complexity of matter/energy as carriers of a specific information-bearing pattern. It appears that there are some similarities in science’s and theology’s strivings for a deeper understanding of the truth of reality, which continues to evade our theories and teaches us modesty. Neither method nor concept has yet managed to explaineverything. There exists no universal key to a comprehensive interpretation. The postulate to avoid reductionism in approaching the manifold richness of reality is addressed to scientists and theologians alike. (shrink)

I dispute Scheler’s view that good and evil cannot be willed as such; that moral value is always an inevitable and indirect by-product of willing other ends; that every act of willing yields a moral value; and that moral value attaches only to persons. I argue that moral value attaches to a variety of objects of willing (including one’s own moral worth), and that, although all acts have moral implications, not all acts are typologically moral. Those that are, I (...) suggest, typically involve a transactional categoriality where we take another’s good or bad as our own. Those that are not may yield various values of personal willing whose positive or negative value is typologically non-moral. I also deny that obligation is diminished by value-insight or that all norms are categorially moral. (shrink)

The philosophy of hope centers on two interlocking sets of questions. The first concerns the nature of hope. Specific questions here include how to analyze hope, how hope motivates us, and whether there is only one type of hope. The second set concerns the value of hope. Key questions here include whether and when it is good to hope and whether there is a virtue of hope. Philosophers of hope tend (...) to proceed from the first set of questions to the second. This is a natural approach, for one might expect that you must develop a basic understanding of what hope is before you can determine its value. The structure of this chapter thus follows this approach. But readers should not be misled: there is in fact a good deal of feedback between the two sets of questions. A theory of hope is more plausible to the extent that it fits well with plausible ideas about the value of hope. So the movement from hope’s nature to its value is one of emphasis rather than a strict, step-wise process. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to outline a new paradigm of thinking, contained in the dialogical “you are.” Józef Tischner creatively developed ideas of Buber and Levinas. He claimed that in the face of “death of a man” there is a need to search for new ways of rescuing our humanity. The philosophy of drama starts from a question, which is a “cry of pain” in the presence of evil. A man — according to Nietzsche’s discovery — looks for power, (...) understood by Tischner as a “grace,” which is a specific good. Forces of good and evil influence a man both in a constructive and destructive way. A desire for unlimited power inevitably appears in the depth of a human heart. Evil, as a false power, reveals itself both in the individual and social aspect. Dehumanized global structures grow today as “systems of evil.” The agathological drama is being realized also in the dimension of faith and unbelief, in the sphere of the division between faith and mind. The “resurrection” of man is possible owing to meeting with another person whose dignity and beauty one may discover no matter how different he is. In the civilization of work the man is often treated as a tool, an instrument for egoistic benefit. The agathological philosophy aims to be a way of thinking attached to a specific man, while it looks for a key and a solution to a drama of a man, entangled in the system of work, consumption, empty hopes and pseudo-values. This philosophical thought has great potential to diagnose our times, which is the first step on the way to the “transformation of all values.” Key words GOOD, EVIL, AGATHOLOGY, REASON, FAITH. (shrink)

이 글은 칸트 실천철학에서 최고선 개념의 변천과정을 희망철학의 관점에서 추적한다. 많은 칸트 연구자들이 지적하듯이, 칸트의 최고선 개념은 그 전모를 파악하기 쉽지 않다. 왜냐하면 칸트 스스로 최고선 개념을 일관되고 통일된 방식으로 설명하고 있지 않기 때문이다. 따라서 최고선 개념을 일관성 있게 해석하기 위해서는 희망철학의 관점에서 해석할 필요가 있다. 이를 위해 『순수이성비판』, 『실천이성비판』, 『판단력비판』에서 제시되는 최고선 개념을 비판적으로 분석할 것이다. 이러한 분석은 최고선 개념이 내세적 희망에서 현세적 희망으로, 또 개인적 차원에서 윤리적 공동체의 의미로 이행하는 과정을 보여줄 것이다. 또한 이는 칸트 윤리학과 종교철학, 역사철학이 (...) 희망철학이라는 테제를 통해 서로 연결가능하다는 것을 제시해 줄 것이다.BR 최고선 개념은 『순수이성비판』에서는 완전히 내세적인 특징을 가지고 있는 반면, 『실천이성비판』을 거쳐 『판단력비판』으로 진행될수록 점점 더 현세적인 특징을 지니게 된다. 특히 『실천이성비판』의 최고선은 한편에서는 『순수이성비판』과 마찬가지로 개인적이며 내세적인 희망을 함의하지만, 다른 한편에서는 이 세계에서 최고선이 실제로 가능할 것이라는 현세적인 희망에 대한 단초를 담고 있다. 이러한 현세적인 희망은 결국 『판단력비판』에 이르러 본격적으로 구체화되는데, 이는 최고선을 목적론적 사유에 따라 세계의 궁극목적으로 규정하는 방식으로 나타난다. 이 궁극목적은 더 나아가 윤리적 공동체에 대한 희망으로 전개된다.BR 이러한 과정은 칸트의 최고선 이론이 단순히 내재적이고 개인적인 차원이나, 종교적이고 내세적인 차원의 논의에서 벗어나, 현세적이며 공동체적인 차원의 논의로 이행하고 있음을 보여준다. 뿐만 아니라 이로써 도덕적 인간의 희망이란 개인적인 차원의 희망에서 공동체적이며 사회적인 차원의 희망으로 확장된다는 것을 알 수 있다. 도덕적 인간은 더 이상 개인적인 차원에서만 최고선이 실현될 것이라고 희망하지 않는다. 도덕적 인간은 자신의 이웃과, 자신이 속한 공동체, 더 나아가 전 세계에 걸쳐 최고선이 실현될 것을 희망하기 시작한다. 이러한 희망은 도덕적으로는 목적의 나라로, 종교적으로는 악의 원리와 투쟁하여 선의 승리를 꿈꾸는 교회의 실현으로, 정치적으로는 영구평화를 목표하는 보편적 세계 시민사회의 실현으로 나타난다. (shrink)

_Beyond Good and Evil_ is Nietzsche's first sustained philosophical treatment of issues important to him. Unlike the expository prose of the essayistic period, the stylized forays and jabs of the aphoristic period, and the lyrical-philosophical rhetoric of the Zarathustra-period, _Beyond Good and Evil_ inscribes itself boldly into the history of philosophy, challenging ancient and modern notions of philosophy's achievements and insisting on a new task for "new philosophers." This is a watershed book for Nietzsche and for philosophy in (...) the modern era. _On the Genealogy of Morality_ applies Nietzsche's celebrated genealogical method, honed in the earlier aphoristic writings, to the problem of morality's influence on the human species. In three treatises that strikingly anticipate insights appearing much later in Freud's _Civilization and Its Discontents_, Nietzsche provides an anthropological psychograph of our species, revealing the origins of the concepts of good and evil, the roles played by guilt and bad conscience, and the persistence of ascetic ideals. Manifesting a hopeful yet unsentimental assessment of the human condition, these books resonated throughout the 20th century and continue to exert broad appeal. (shrink)