In this book, Daniel K. Miller articulates a new vision of human and animal relationships based on the foundational love ethic within Christianity. Framed around Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, Animal Ethics and Theologythoughtfully examines the shortcomings of utilitarian and rights-based approaches to animal ethics. By considering the question of animals within the Christian concept of neighbourly love, Miller provides an alternative narrative for understanding the complex relationships that humans have with other animals. This book addresses significant theological (...) questions such as: Does being created in the image of God present a meaningful distinction between humans and other animals? What does it mean for humans to have dominion over animals? Is meat eating a moral problem for Christians? In addition to drawing out the significance of Christian theology for field of animal ethics this book also engages environmental and feminist ethics. Miller brings a theological perspective to such questions as: Should care for animals be distinguished from care for the environment, and what role should human emotions play in our ethical dealings with other animals? As the title suggests, this book provides fresh insight into the theological significance of human relationships with other animals. mental and feminist ethics. Miller brings a theological perspective to such questions as: Should care for animals be distinguished from care for the environment, and what role should human emotions play in our ethical dealings with other animals? As the title suggests, this book provides fresh insight into the theological significance of human relationships with other animals. (shrink)

Modernity has made identity impossible because of its exigency of a per-fection that is not compatible with human finitude. This is the reason why since Romanticism it has been generalized the attempt of establishing scopes in which man is freed from this duty. There arises also many phenomena that can be understood as aesthetic instances that defend the in-dividual particularity and promote the cultural variety.

Provides an overview of the anonymous work of sophistic rhetoric known as Dissoi Logoi or Double Arguments.

The late Daniel Albright was one of the preeminent scholars of musical and literary modernism, leaving behind a rich body of work before his untimely passing. In the essays contained in Music's Monisms, he shows how musical phenomena, like literary ones, can be fruitfully investigated through the lens of monism, the philosophical belief that things that appear to be two are actually one. Albright shows how, in music, despite its many binaries-diatonic vs. chromatic, staccato vs. legato, major vs. minor, (...) tonal vs. atonal-there is always a larger system at work that aims to reconcile all tension and resolve all conflict. Albright identifies a "radical monism" in the work of modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and musical works by Wagner, Debussy, Britten, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, and also delves into figures such as Maeterlinck, Rimbaud, and Yeats along the way. Through a series of close readings of musical and literary works, Albright advances powerful philosophical arguments that not only shed light on these specific figures but also aesthetic experience in general. (shrink)

Metaphysics has undergone two major innovations in recent decades. First, naturalistic metaphysicians have argued that our best science provides an important source of evidence for metaphysical theories. Second, social metaphysicians have begun to explore the nature of social entities such as groups, institutions, and social categories. Surprisingly, these projects have largely kept their distance from one another. Katherine Hawley has recently argued that, unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences are not sufficiently successful to provide evidence about the metaphysical nature (...) of social entities. By contrast, I defend an optimistic view of naturalistic social metaphysics. Drawing on a case study of research into contextual effects in social epidemiology, I show that social science can provide a valuable evidence for social metaphysicians. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is satire. This seems to excite many people, and over the past four years I have heard many variations of a similar refrain: “Oh, wow. You’re studying satire? That’s very topical. You must have a lot of material to work with.” There is a way in which this is true, though I suspect in a way that diverges from the way that most of my interlocutors believed. I suspect that the material they imagined me to (...) be working with was the output of Donald Trump, first a candidate for and now holder of the office of President of the United States. That is not the material I find interesting. More interesting to me is their statement. It evinces a number of beliefs that I find interesting, chief among them that Trump makes the current period particularly apt for satire, as if a doddery and incompetent ruling class is somehow a recent phenomenon. And I suspect that underneath this belief in the aptness of satire is a belief in the power of satire. Satire is somehow how people are going to strike back at the vice-governed fools who rule us. Those beliefs are the material I want to work with. This is my interest in satire, then: not so much what it is about satire that makes it powerful, but what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful? And what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful when there is pretty powerful evidence that it is not? Unfortunately, here is where I run into the problem that in a very important way I do not have a lot of material to work with. There is not an awful lot on satire within the analytic tradition: outside of a few references to satire, analytic discussions of satire are limited to two short articles. Accordingly, I have taken the task of my dissertation to be to create an account of satire that helps to bring forward why satire is a thing that people can imagine to be powerful, that they can imagine to be politically effective. My dissertation will effectively have two halves, one where I build my account and one where I begin to apply it. The purpose of applying my account, which will comprise the final two chapters, will not be to show its implications so much as how it can be used. My goal will not so much be to give definitive answers about the nature of satire, but rather to give a demonstration of how my account facilitates engaging questions about the role of satire in social and political context. (shrink)

Liberties are taken in portraying the US public as class-conscious and informed. Otherwise, this story would not be about a revolution ... it would be about a fascist takeover. The chances of fighting off fascism are very slim unless the public at large is provided with an accessible alternative to the news and history which they are offered by the mass media, by the schools, by the government and by their employers. These reports are not a hoax, but a piece (...) of fiction written for entertainment and in an effort to stimulate dialog. --D.A. (shrink)

This paper argues that a plant together with the symbiotic fungus attached to its roots, a mycorrhizal collective, is an evolutionary individual, and further, that mycorrhizal individuality has important implications for evolutionary theory. Theoretical individuation is defended and then employed to show that mycorrhizal collectives function as interactors according to David Hull’s replicator-interactor model of evolution by natural selection, and because they have the potential to engage in pseudo-vertical transmission, mycorrhizal collectives also function as Darwinian individuals, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s (...) Darwinian Populations model of evolution by natural selection. Mycorrhizae in nature usually connect the roots of multiple plants, so mycorrhizal individuality entails the existence of overlapping evolutionary individuals, and because the potential to engage in pseudo-vertical transmission comes in degrees, it follows that these overlapping evolutionary individuals also come in degrees. I suggest here that the degree of evolutionary individuality in a symbiotic collective corresponds to its probability of reproducing with vertical or pseudo-vertical transmission. This probability constitutes a fourth parameter of graded Darwinian individuality in collective reproducers and warrants an update to Godfrey-Smith’s 3D model. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress can be broadly described as the psychological distress that can develop in response to a morally challenging event. In the context of healthcare, its effects are well documented in the nursing profession, but there is a paucity of research exploring its relevance to healthcare assistants. Objective: This article aims to examine the existing research on moral distress in healthcare assistants, identity the important factors that are likely to contribute to moral distress, and propose preventative measures. Research Design: (...) This is a survey of the existing literature on moral distress in healthcare assistants. It uses insights from moral distress in nursing to argue that healthcare assistants are also likely to experience moral distress in certain contexts. Participants and Research Context: No research participants were part of this analysis. Ethical Considerations: This article offers a conceptual analysis and recommendations only. Findings: The analysis identifies certain factors that may be particularly applicable to healthcare assistants such as powerlessness and a lack of ethical knowledge. We demonstrate that these factors contribute to moral distress. Discussion: Recommendations include various preventative measures such as regular reflective debriefing sessions involving healthcare assistants, nurses and other clinicians, joint workplace ethical training, and modifications to the Care Certificate. Implementation of these measures should be monitored carefully and the results published to augment our existing knowledge of moral distress in healthcare assistants. Conclusion: This analysis establishes the need for more research and discussion on this topic. Future research should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed recommendations. (shrink)

L’apôtre Paul a la réputation d’être un théologien performant dans l’argumentation, plus enclin à la rationalité qu’aux envols extatiques. Or, un examen attentif de sa correspondance fait apparaître la présence d’expériences religieuses, que l’apôtre raconte, et que l’on ne peut hésiter à appeler mystiques. Les signes sont discrets, mais indéniables: parler en langues, guérisons charismatiques, extases, visions. L’enquête de Daniel Marguerat fait l’inventaire de ces expériences, mettant en évidence l’interprétation qu’en donne l’apôtre. On ira jusqu’à parler d’une subversion de (...) l’expérience mystique chez Paul. (shrink)

In _The Smile of Tragedy_, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche’s attitude toward what he called “the tragic age of the Greeks,” showing it to be the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the Socratic era but also for his overall critique of Western culture. Through an interpretation of “Dionysian pessimism,” Ahern clarifies the ways in which Nietzsche sees ethics and aesthetics as inseparable and how their theoretical separation is at the root of Western nihilism. (...) Ahern explains why Nietzsche, in creating this precursor to a new aesthetics, rejects Aristotle’s medicinal interpretation of tragic art and concentrates on Apollinian cruelty as a form of intoxication without which there can be no art. Ahern shows that Nietzsche saw the human body as the vessel through which virtue and art are possible, as the path to an interpretation of “selflessness,” as the means to determining an order of rank among human beings, and as the site where ethics and aesthetics coincide. (shrink)

_A prize-winning scholar offers a sweeping exploration of the role doors have played in history_ Exploring a chapter not yet probed in the cultural history of the West, _The Strait Gate_ demonstrates how doors, gates, and related technologies such as the key and the lock have shaped the way we perceive and navigate the domestic and urban spaces that surround us in our everyday lives. Jütte reveals how doors have served as sites of power, exclusion, and inclusion—and, by extension, as (...) metaphors for salvation—in the course of Western history. This book makes it clear that doors, more than any other parts of the house, are the objects onto which we project our ideas of and anxieties about security, privacy, and shelter. Without doors, of course, houses could not exist. But even though we each walk through doorways well over a hundred times a day, we typically pay little attention to the doors we encounter. We regard them simply as a means of entering or leaving a building or room. Yet when our doors stop working as they should—when we find that we cannot lock or open them, for instance—we react with discomfort and anxiety. Drawing on a wide range of archival, literary, and visual sources, as well as on research literature across various disciplines and languages, Jütte pays particular attention to the history of the practices that have developed over the centuries in order to handle and control doors in everyday life. (shrink)

The book attempts to understand why some people choose to continue living in spite of the pain caused by a terminal illness, while others prefer to die in peace and no longer seek a cure. We act on the experience of being and having a body. Reflection upon that brings a better understanding of the choices we make in the end of life, which may contribute to the emergence of humanized ethics.

My dissertation is a systematic defense of the moral relevance of alternative possibilities. As such, it constitutes an attack on semi-compatibilism. ;To begin, then, I defend alternative possibilities against three related but independent lines of criticism. The most prominent of these is Harry Frankfurt's now famous counterexample strategy in which cases are constructed that purport to show that a person can, in fact, be responsible even when he cannot do otherwise. Another line of criticism is John Fischer's "flicker of freedom" (...) argument, which builds on Frankfurt-type argumentation by challenging the "robustness" of alternative possibilities. Finally, some recent critics of alternative possibilities have developed "reasons-responsiveness" accounts of moral responsibility that seem further to invalidate the importance of the power to do otherwise. By extending traditional concerns and developing new objections, I argue that room remains for the possible relevance of an alternative possibilities condition on moral responsibility. ;I try to make a positive case for the plausibility of relevance by offering reasons to think that the ability to do otherwise plays an important role in our moral life. Alternatives are important, I argue, because giving up a "freedom to do otherwise" condition would put us in an epistemic bind with respect to our responsibility. That is, the kind of confidence we ordinarily have in our own moral responsibility would be unjustified if it turned out that we do not have alternatives. A second consideration in favor of the relevance of alternatives is distinctively moral. I explore and exploit the relationship between the ability to do otherwise and the putatively Kantian idea that "ought" implies "can," concluding that the semi-compatibilist must either reject both alternative possibilities and the Kantian thesis, or accept that people would not be blameworthy for their moral failures under determinism. Neither option is attractive. ;I conclude, then, that there is good reason to believe that alternative possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility and that semi-compatibilism should be rejected. Our intuitions about the importance of being able to do otherwise can still factor into the traditional arguments to the conclusion that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism. (shrink)

Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by the intersection of three topics: physicalism, the conceivability argument, and the necessary a posteriori. I will be concerned here to describe the consensus view of these topics; to explain why I think this account is mistaken; and to briefly sketch an alternative.

The general knowledge of Brentano's ethical doctrines comes from the little book of his, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, first published in 1889. Only the recent publications and the insight into his not yet published correspondence throw more light on the history of his axiology.