This paper considers the ontological and political implications of the concept of the subject within structuralism. I turn first to Balibar in order to articulate structuralism as a tendency or movement rather than fixed set of positions, using some indications he has provided in order to demonstrate how thoroughly embedded the subject is as a problem within this tendency. I argue that Laclau and Mouffe’s work on hegemony deepens the political stakes of this problem while also introducing the grammar of (...) strategy in an ambivalent and underdefined manner. Considering some possible options for understanding strategy within a structuralist framework, I contend that a stronger theoretical account of strategy is necessary. In order to provide some outlines for such a project, I conclude the analysis by emphasizing the contribution that George Jackson’s writings can provide to this framework, suggesting that the role of the subject should be assigned to tactics.Cet article analyse les implications ontologiques et politiques du concept structuraliste de sujet. En me tournant dans un premier temps vers les indications de Balibar concernant l’intrication profonde du problème du sujet au sein du structuralisme, je montre que ce dernier devrait être compris comme une tendance ou un mouvement plutôt que comme une position philosophique définitive. Je montre ensuite que le travail de Laclau et Mouffe sur l’hégémonie permet d’approfondir les enjeux politiques de ce problème, tout en introduisant de manière ambivalente et prédéfinie la grammaire de la stratégie. En considérant quelques options possibles pour comprendre la stratégie dans une perspective structuraliste, je soutiens la nécessité de l’approcher théoriquement de manière plus puissante. En guise d’esquisse d’un tel projet, je conclus mon analyse avec la contribution qu’y apportent les écrits de George Jackson, en suggérant que le rôle du sujet devrait revenir à la tactique. (shrink)

Bien que le paysage institutionnel de la Belgique reflète une gestion politique assez complexe des identités linguistiques, la logique et la dynamique sous-jacente est celle d'une institutionnalisation des identités linguistiques, basée sur deux principes récurrents: la territorialité et la bipolarité. En introduction, est présentée une esquisse de la construction des identités linguistiques en Belgique au cours du XIX siècle. Ensuite sont exposés quatre principes fondamentaux qui furent instaurés dans la législation belge durant le XX siècle. Ceux-ci visaient à régler le (...) contentieux linguistique en Belgique et ont contribué à façonner le visage actuel du modèle belge: principe de territorialité et plus précisément unilinguisme régional; fixation d'une frontière linguistique; mécanismes de protection parlementaire pour la minorité linguistique au niveau national et bruxellois; décentralisation culturelle et socio-économique.Although the institutional landscape of Belgium reflects a political management rather complex linguistic, logic and dynamics underlying the institutionalization of linguistic identities, based on two principles recurring: territoriality and bipolarity. In the introduction, is presented a sketch of the construction of linguistic identities in Belgium during the nineteenth century. Then exposed four fundamental principles that were established in the Belgian legislation during the twentieth century. These were designed to address the contentious language in Belgium and helped shape the current face of the Belgian model: territoriality principle and more specifically unilingualism regional setting of a linguistic border, protection mechanisms for parliamentary minority language at the national level and Brussels, decentralization cultural and socio-economic development. (shrink)

An expanded edition of Hickey's controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty--championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on 1993: the AIDS pandemic rages through yet another decade, leaving society and the arts devastated and bereft. Dave Hickey sits down to produce a slim volume, The Invisible Dragon. The book ignites a firestorm, and from its ashes "beauty" again rises as a dominant force in artistic life. Academics argue about theoretical minutiae. Artists (...) pass the book around like a samizdat. This 30th-anniversary edition brings back into print Dragon's four essays on beauty and commingles them with five previously uncollected essays. Hickey's 1974 profile of Dolly Parton anticipates Dolly's longevity as a cultural and feminist icon; his appreciation of Richard Pryor weaves an elegiac tapestry; his review of John Rechy's seminal gay novel Numbers outs its literary innovation in the face of a homophobia that otherwise ghettoized it; and his singular essay on Ed Ruscha, a paragon of arts writing by an extraordinary prose stylist, enjoins us to listen to art, not just look at it. An afterword by Hickey's friend and Dragon's editor "queers" the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS pandemic. The book was in part an attempt to make beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Only now can we fully appreciate how artists continue to harness beauty as a source of meaning and joy. Dave Hickey (1938-2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide. (shrink)

This paper stages an encounter between Foucault and Althusser on the question of strategy. By contrasting a few passages in La Volonté de savoir with some of Althusser’s writings on Machiavelli and Lenin, I propose an alternative between the two thinkers according to a schema of strategic thought (Foucault) and a philosophy for strategy (Althusser). This narrow focus enables me to generate a working definition of strategy as the anticipation of an encounter which modifies, abolishes, or otherwise alters the relations (...) constituting its conjuncture. By staging the encounter between the Foucault and Althusser, I propose this definition as a reflection on the phrase “intervention into conjuncture,” and conclude by sketching implications concerning theory, practice, and the discipline of the conjuncture. (shrink)

Inspirée d’un cadre poststructuraliste, cette étude qualitative de « réception d’un médium » nous a permis de mettre en lumière les « lectures » que font une vingtaine de consommateurs de pornographie des notions de masculinité, de race et ethnicité, du milieu gai et du genre en lien avec la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les résultats qui émergent de notre analyse critique de discours sont à l’effet que les lectures des consommateurs sont majoritairement dominantes, reproduisant ainsi les stéréotypes présents en société (...) et qui sont re/produits et véhiculés dans la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les récits des participants attestent du fait que ces derniers remettent peu en question ce qu’ils voient dans le matériel pornographique ; matériel pouvant avoir certaines répercussions sur des indicateurs de santé mentale en accentuant et perpétuant certaines formes de stigmatisation chez certains groupes sociaux. Inspired by a poststructuralist perspective, our qualitative exploratory media reception study offers a critical discourse analysis of 20 male pornography consumers, focusing on their readings of masculinity, race/ethnicity, the gay world, and gender in relation to the pornography they consume. For the most part, results show dominant readings of these categories, which suggests that social stereotypes are produced, reproduced, and transmitted through the medium of pornography. Participant narratives reveal individuals who rarely question what is shown in pornographic material; the latter having potential implications for certain mental health indicators, as well as perpetuating and accentuating forms of stigmatization among specific social groups. (shrink)

This article focuses on portrayals of fictional characters with neurological synesthesia in seven selected 20th and 21st century English-language novels in the detective-spy genre. Characters are discussed in terms of the five categories of literacy depiction of synesthete characters as outlined in the chapter, “Synesthesia and Literature” in the Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia. I will suggest that depictions of synesthete characters in the detective genre link synesthetic perceptions with glimpses of ultimate truth, and trace these tendencies back to descriptions of (...) synesthesia in 19th century seminal European works, including Arthur Rimbaud’s “Letter of a Seer” and Max Nordau’s Degeneration. Novels included in this study: Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov, The Synesthete by Brent Kiernan, Top Ten by Gene Ha and Alan Moore, The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker, Miracle Myx by Dave Diotalevi, Still Waters by Nigel McCrery, Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews. Cet article se concentre sur les représentations de personnages fictifs ayant une synesthésie neurologique, dans sept romans anglais des xxe et xxie siècles, sélectionnés dans le genre policier-espionnage. Les personnages sont examinés à partir des cinq catégories de représentation littéraire des personnages synesthésiques, exposées dans le chapitre « Synesthesia and Literature » de l’Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia. Je suggérerai que les représentations de personnages synesthésiques dans le genre policier relient les perceptions synesthésiques à des intuitions sur une vérité supérieure et rapporte ces tendances aux descriptions de la synesthésie dans les œuvres européennes essentielles du xixe siècle, y compris la « Lettre d’un Voyant » d’Arthur Rimbaud et le Dégénérescence de Max Nordau. Romans inclus dans cette étude : Invitation to a Behading de Vladimir Nabokov, The Synesthete de Brent Kiernan, Top Ten de Gene Ha et Alan Moore, The Fallen de T. Jefferson Parker, Miracle Myx de Dave Diotalevi, Still Waters de Nigel McCrery, Red Sparrow de Jason Matthews. (shrink)

Airedale NHS Trust v Bland establishes three principles among which is the controversial idea that people in a PVS, though not dying, have no best interests and no meaningful life. Accordingly, it is argued, they may have their food and fluids, whether delivered by tube or manually, removed, with the result that they die. Laing challenges this view arguing that not only is this bad medical science, it is unjustly discriminatory and at odds with our duties to the severely (...) disabled. Laing highlights research by Keith Andrews et al and points out that Andrew Devine, in the same Hillsborough disaster, woke up some years after Tony Bland was decided.(Post script) Laing argues elsewhere that after the Mental Capacity Act 2005 the case has become a dangerous springboard for new third parties' to require the removal of food and fluids from the vulnerable incapacitated. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that we face a challenge in understanding the relationship between the ‘value-oriented’ and ‘other-oriented’ dimensions of shame. On the one hand, an emphasis on shame's value-oriented dimension leads naturally to ‘The Self-Evaluation View’, an account which faces a challenge in explaining shame's other-oriented dimension. This is liable to push us towards ‘The Social Evaluation View’. However The Social Evaluation View faces the opposite challenge of convincingly accommodating shame's ‘value-oriented’ dimension. After rejecting one attempt to chart (...) a middle course between these extremes, I argue that progress can be made if we reject the widespread assumption that the other-oriented dimension of shame is best understood primarily terms of our concern with the way we appear to others. Instead, I outline an account which treats shame as manifesting our desire primarily for interpersonal connection and which elucidates the property of shamefulness in terms of merited avoidance. (shrink)

The Natural Law Reader features a selection of readings in metaphysics, jurisprudence, politics, and ethics that are all related to the classical Natural Law tradition in the modern world. Features a concise presentation of the natural law position that offers the reader a focal point for discussion of ancient and contemporary ideas in the natural law tradition Draws upon the metaphysical and ethical categories put forth and developed by Aristotle and Aquinas Points to the historical significance and contemporary relevance of (...) the Natural Law tradition Reflects on a revival of interest in the tradition of virtue ethics and human rights. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that the natural idea that humiliation is harmful calls explanation and to argue that the most straightforward ways of responding to this explanatory demand fall short in important ways. I end by considering a line of response which I take to be promising, which appeals to our need, as social animals, for interpersonal connection.

According to tranditional philosophical terminology and to most interpretations of Cartesianism, Descartes is a dualist. This dualism is expressed in his fundamental distinction between two substances—mind and matter—and, though admitted to be full of difficulties and by many to be untenable, it has very generally been regarded as at least a clearly intelligible doctrine, consistently held by Descartes. That this is not so has been shown by Professor Boyce Gibson in his able and careful analysis of Cartesianism. The aim of (...) the present essay is to draw attention to another difficulty that has not been sufficiently noticed; whether it is an actual one or only an apparent one due to a misunderstanding of Descartes is a question that may be left to those who read him differently and who may be able to remove one more charge of inconsistency. The general contention is that Descartes—and this point is conceded in expositions of Descartes—seeks to prove that there are material bodies, that material bodies are necessary for his own account of the physical universe, and that yet his own theory of matter as extension, even combined with motion, makes the existence of bodies impossible and hence any proof of such existence impossible. In fact, the employment of the idea of motion only serves to emphasize the difficulty and inconsistency of the theory. (shrink)

The subject of the present paper is the central conception of a philosophy that has been particularly dominant and influential, and the following remarks are prompted because of difficulties experienced in the attempt to understand that philosophy. The aim of the paper is to point out what seems to be a serious defect in that type of philosophy; but it is even more its aim to emphasize the danger into which philosophy in all its forms may easily fall, and against (...) which it must exercise precautions. (shrink)

The Liverpool Care Pathway is intended as a palliative care regime at the end of life. Even its critics agree that certain of its recommendations may be useful and appropriate. Additionally, critics are aware that there are occasions when death may be a foreseen side effect of perfectly licit palliation whose primary ends are not homicidal at all. It is evident that treatment may be over-expensive, over-burdensome or simply futile. There is no suggestion that critics of the Pathway adhere irrationally (...) to what is known in medical ethics as the error of vitalism, the commitment to excessive, extraordinary or futile treatment, or over-burdensome care at the end of life. However, to ask whether treatment is futile, over-burdensome or over-expensive is very different to the discriminatory question about the futility, burden or expense of a frail and vulnerable patient. The sedation-dehydration aspect of the Pathway attracts much proper opposition. Doctors and families have found that those on the Pathway recovered when they intervened to take the patient off it. Senior medics have stepped forward, in the face of managerial opposition to argue that it is often impossible to know with certainty whether a person is imminently dying. One problem with the Pathway is that where a patient is misdiagnosed as terminal, the combination of morphine and dehydration has a self-fulfilling character and is likely to undermine a patient’s capacity. Persistent dehydration of even fit and healthy sedated patients will kill them. This was the difficulty highlighted by concerned medical professionals many years ago. The independent inquiry ordered in response to Freedom of Information Act requests performed in 2012 demonstrating a staggering increase in the number of people dying on the Pathway once it was financially incentivised needs to ensure certain investigations take place. What is needed, however, is not a whitewash but an independent inquiry with all interests declared and data sets interrogated and collated. These will cover a time-series medical history of each anonymised patient on the Pathway, duration until death, information about interventions provided during the period, monthly raw data from each trust, hospice or care home, medical histories, removals from the Pathway, information about journals that were corrected once a patient recovered, demographic data, location information and an audit trail of all data management. (shrink)

How should we understand the special way in which two people are connected when they make eye contact? In this paper, I argue that existing accounts of eye contact —Peacocke’s Reductive Approach and Eilan’s Second Person Approach— are unsatisfactory. In doing so, I make a case for thinking that the source of this dissatisfaction and the path forward can be identified by reflecting on our tendency to describe eye contact on the model of touch. On this basis, I outline a (...) ‘Transactional Approach’ to eye contact. (shrink)

Some evolutionary psychologists claim that humans are good at creating superstimuli, and that many pleasure technologies are detrimental to our reproductive fitness. Most of the evolutionary psychological literature makes use of some version of Lorenz and Tinbergen’s largely embryonic conceptual framework to make sense of supernormal stimulation and bias exploitation in humans. However, the early ethological concept “superstimulus” was intimately connected to other erstwhile core ethological notions, such as the innate releasing mechanism, sign stimuli and the fixed action pattern, notions (...) that nowadays have, for the most part, been discarded by ethologists. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will reconnect the discussion of superstimuli in humans with more recent theoretical ethological literature on stimulus selection and supernormal stimulation. This will allow for a reconceptualisation of evolutionary psychology’s formulation of (supernormal) stimulus selection in terms of domain-specificity and modularity. Second, we will argue that bias exploitation in a cultural species differs substantially from bias exploitation in non-cultural animals. We will explore several of those differences, and explicate why they put important constraints on the use of the superstimulus concept in the evolutionary social sciences. (shrink)

There is a tendency in contemporary jurisprudence to regard political authority and, more particularly, legal intervention in human affairs as having no justification unless it can be defended by what Laing calls the principle of modern liberal autonomy (MLA). According to this principle, if consenting adults want to do something, unless it does specific harm to others here and now, the law has no business intervening. Harm to the self and general harm to society can constitute no justification for (...) legal regulation or prohibition. So pervasive is this understanding of legal intervention in human affairs, that it is common now to encounter arguments in favour of permissive laws on, for example, private drug use, pornography, sexual and reproductive choice, based on the idea that to intervene in these areas would constitute a breach of the liberal ideal. The only alternative to modern liberal autonomy is assumed to be radical oppression, in which the State intervenes in the individual’s life to impose unwarranted measures designed to further its own ends. The legacy of Stalin, Hitler and other modern tyrants has undermined conceptual appeals to the common good. So widespread is this liberal assumption in the Western, English-speaking world that critics of the outlook embodied by MLA are customarily regarded with suspicion and charged with paternalism, narrow-mindedness and intolerance. Laing highlights contradictions inherent in the modern liberal tradition. She argues that there is a certain reliance on the notion of the common good within the natural law tradition that is instructive. According to this view, the common good constitutes a mean between two extremes: on the one hand, contemporary liberalism’s over-insistence on radical individual autonomy and, on the other hand, totalitarianism’s over-emphasis on collective social benefit. There is, I will argue, substantial terrain between the conceptual excesses of modern liberalism and oppressive tyranny that needs to be acknowledged and discussed. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 709-724, June 2022.

We are social animals that seek to connect with others of our kind. This common thought stands in need of elaboration. In this article, I argue for three theses. First, that we pursue certain forms of communicative interaction for their own sake insofar as they are ways of connecting with another. Second, that interpersonal connection is a metaphysically primitive emotional relation which resists reductive analysis in terms of the states of individuals. And finally, that our desire for interpersonal connection has (...) a strong claim to being explanatorily and normatively prior to our desires for mutual-attachment, interpersonal belonging and approbation. (shrink)

This article examines the dual consolatory approach of Theodoret of Cyrus, a fifth-century Syriac bishop. Theodoret's method of grief counseling may be examined by drawing upon several of his letters of consolation as guiding examples. Using the philosophical theme of reason's control of the passions together with the Christian hope of the resurrection, Theodoret consoled his mourning friends, yielding an instructive model for contemporary pastors and counselors to consider. Theodoret practiced letter writing as a valid and constructive consolatory medium, demonstrated (...) a balance of faith and reason in Christian counseling, and modeled theologically robust grief counseling. The article opens with an extract from Theodoret's lengthiest letter of comfort, to his newly-widowed friend, Alexandra. (shrink)

A consideration of monotheism. The term ordinarily suggests belief in one God and derives from the Greek monos meaning “one” and theos meaning “god.” In the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the one god is regarded as supreme lord and creator of the universe, almighty, all-knowing, and all-good. Traditionally, Christianity has taught that God revealed himself to our first parents, Adam and Eve, as the one true God in Genesis. The Old Testament reveals a jealous God who forbids the (...) worship of strange and multifarious gods. God's chosen people, the Jews, are destined to prepare the way for the coming of the universal religion available not just to a privileged few. (shrink)

Laing contends that the practice of eugenics has not disappeared. Conceptually related to the utilitarian and Social Darwinist worldview and historically evolving out of the practice of slavery, it led to some of the most spectacular human rights abuses in human history. The compulsory sterilization of and experimentation on those deemed “undesirable” and “unfit” in many technologically developed states like the US, Scandinavia, and Japan, led inexorably and most systematically to Nazi Germany with the elimination of countless millions of (...) people for their race, class, political views, sexuality, religion or disability. Biometric databases exposing one’s medical data, DNA defects, IQ, political views, while in some ways appearing socially useful, demonstrates how vulnerable humans are, not just at the hands of political malfeasors and tyrants but insurance companies, government snoopers, false friends and determined social engineers. (shrink)

A critic of utilitarianism, in a paper entitled “Innocence and Consequentialism” Laing argues that Singer cannot without contradicting himself reject baby farming (a thought experiment that involves mass-producing deliberately brain damaged children for live birth for the greater good of organ harvesting) and at the same time hold on to his “personism” a term coined by Jenny Teichman to describe his fluctuating (and Laing says, discriminatory) theory of human moral value. His explanation that baby farming undermines attitudes of (...) care and concern for the very young, can be applied to babies and the unborn (non-persons on his view) and contradicts positions that he adopts elsewhere in his work. (shrink)

‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a question that this paper will pose again, trying to propose an answer to it, and to put to test the methodological approach that can be obtained from that answer: what are the uses of literature and, more specifically, how could the philosopher use literature, what could be done with it? To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature. The second part (...) of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s charge that Molinism does not offer a unique answer to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human freedom can be seen as a criticism of middle knowledge for begging the question of FF -compatibilism. In this paper, I seek to answer this criticism in two ways. First, I demonstrate that most of the chief arguments against middle knowledge are guilty of begging the question of FF-incompatibilism and conclude that the simple charge of begging the question cannot be (...) as problematic as some suggest. Determinists and open theists incorporate FF-incompatibilist notions into their respective versions of the grounding objection, their conceptions of risk and libertarian freedom, and their requirements for divine foreknowledge. Thus, while I admit that Molinism does rely upon Ockhamist and Augustinian principles in its approach to the dilemma and is guilty of presupposing FF-compatibilism, I deny that this undermines its strength as a model of providence. Second, I argue that, although all models are guilty of question-begging moves, they are not all on par with one another. Molinism offers a more orthodox and robust approach to providence than open theism and process theology, and it handles empirical data better than all of its competitors. (shrink)

The Mental Incapacity Bill not only paves the way for euthanasia, but invites wholesale abuse and homicide, writes Jacqueline Laing. On 19 October 2004, when the Mental Capacity Bill was at its crucial committee stage, the Law Society issued a statement of ‘strong support’, claiming that it empowers patients and in no way introduces euthanasia. Laing argues that the Bill threatens the incapacitated by granting a raft of new third parties power to require that health professionals withhold ‘treatment’, (...) which, after the controversial decision in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993] AC 789, includes food and fluids delivered both by tube and, in certain cases, by spoon. The Bill further endangers the vulnerable, first, by allowing non-therapeutic research on the non-consenting mentally incapacitated, in breach of the Nuremberg Code and First Declaration of Helsinki, and secondly, by permitting new agents power to undertake on people with learning disabilities certain questionable procedures currently authorised by the High Court, such as non-voluntary sterilisation. (shrink)

The House of Lords in Purdy forced the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue offence-specific guidance on assisted suicide, but Jacqueline Laing argues that the resulting interim policy adopted by the Director of Public Prosecutions is unconstitutional, discriminatory and illegal.

By the mid-1960s the sexual revolution was in full swing. The persuasive rhythms of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones urged new personal freedoms, Carl Djerassi’s Pill was introduced to widespread acclaim, and feminists were setting their underwear ablaze. Most Christian denominations had long ago overturned their previous teaching on contraception. John Calvin, had at one time, called the act "condemned" and "doubly monstrous", while John Wesley had said contraception was "very displeasing to God", and the "evidence of vile affections." (...) Those who used them he regarded as "logs", "stock" and "swine". But most Protestants had by now abandoned this instruction. Indeed, the Church of England had as far back as 1930 up-ended its once entrenched rejection of contraception as “demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare.” Into this unlikely and tempting climate came the explosive Humanae Vitae. The Roman Catholic Church, alone among religions, publicly reaffirmed its traditional teaching prohibiting contraception. The encyclical warned of the need to maintain the connection between sex and babies – and this, despite the Rockefeller offer of cash for favourable encyclicals in the summer of ’65. Pope Paul VI warned that contraception would lead to promiscuity, loss of respect for life, marriage and the family, and breakdown of essential social structures. Laing suggests that there is reason to think this fear for the likely effects of separating sex from babies well founded. (shrink)

The chief executive of the Law Society proposes that the Mental Capacity Bill is a progressive initiative enhancing personal autonomy. Laing replies to this by showing that the Bill, for from enhancinging personal autonomy explodes it by inviting homicide by unaccountable third parties, allowing non-therapeutic research and organ-removal without consent and creating a secret and unaccountable court with a lethal power over the vulnerable incapacitated.

A consideration of the concept of repentance both theologically and in law. Penance generally refers to repentance or contrition for sin. It refers, more particularly in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, to a sacrament, or an outward sign of an inward grace. In these traditions, the authority for regarding penance a sacrament is scriptural: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When He had said this, He breathed on them; and He said to them: Receive ye (...) the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20:21–23). In both traditions this is ordinarily interpreted as Christ's grant of power to the apostles in keeping with his own acts of explicitly forgiving sin (Matthew 9:2–8; Luke 5:20, 7:47; Revelation 1:5). St. Augustine affirms that the church has the power to “forgive all sins” and urges the faithful to reject those who would deny it. St. Ambrose rejects the Novatianists, who believe the power to forgive sin lies with Christ alone, with the observation that “the Church obeys Him in both respects, by binding sin and by loosing it; for the Lord willed that for both the power should be equal” (De Poenitentiae, I, ii,6). (shrink)