PREFATORY NOTE T may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the present volume. The title is Ancient Art and Ritual, but the reader will ...

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

From February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to closures of educational institutions to reduce the spread of infectious disease. This forced the U.S. education system into a massive experiment with online education. Despite conducting online bioethics education for nearly twenty years, our bioethics program, a joint endeavor of Clarkson University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was not immune to this disruption because our curriculum features intensive, one-week onsite courses. Even in the face of historic disruptions, it is (...) vital to ensure minimal interruptions to teaching and assessing students to provide effective education. This paper reviews the steps we took to successfully convert the onsite components of our curriculum to a synchronous online format, and it focuses on how we preserved instruction and assessment of practical skills that comprise these courses’ core. It also explains how we fostered interactive classroom environments. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is often cited as the “cornerstone” of research ethics. Its intent is that participants enter research voluntarily, with an understanding of what their participation entails. Despite agreement on the necessity to obtain informed consent in research, opinions vary on the threshold of disclosure necessary and the best method to obtain consent. We aimed to investigate Australian researchers’ views on, and their experiences with, obtaining informed consent. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 researchers from NSW institutions, working (...) in various fields of research. Interviews were analysed and coded to identify themes. Results Researchers reported that consent involved information disclosure, understanding and a voluntary decision. They emphasised the variability of consent interactions, which were dependent on potential participants’ abilities and interests, study complexity and context. All researchers reported providing written information to potential participants, yet questioned the readability and utility of this information. The majority reported using signed consent forms to ‘operationalise’ consent and reported little awareness of, and lack of support in implementing more dynamic informed consent procedures, such as verbal informed consent, that was fit for the purposes of their studies. Views on Human Research Ethics Committees varied. Some reported inconsistent, arduous inputs on the information form and consent process. Others expressed reliance on HRECs for guidance, viewing them as institutional safeguards. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of transparent relationships, both between researchers and participants, and between researchers and HRECs. Where the relationship with study participants was reported as more robust, researchers felt that they were better able to ensure participants made better, more informed decisions. Where the relationship with HRECs was reported as more robust, researchers were more likely to view them as institutional safeguards, rather than as bureaucratic hindrances. Conscientious and mindful researchers are paramount to ensuring the procedure accommodates individual requirements. This study advocates that when designing ethical informed consent practices, researchers should be integrated as autonomous players with a positive input on the process, rather than, in the worst case, predatory recruiters to be curtailed by information forms and oversight. (shrink)

Feminism was born in controversy and it continues to flourish in controversy. The distinguished contributors to this volume provide an array of perspectives on issues including: universal values, justice and care, a feminist philosophy of science, and the relationship of biology to social theory.

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

The authors of this article are previous or current members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) Committee, a standing committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). The committee is composed of seasoned healthcare ethics consultants (HCECs), and it is charged with developing and disseminating education materials for HCECs and ethics committees. The purpose of this article is to describe the educational research and development processes behind our teaching materials, which culminated in a case studies book called (...) A Case-Based Study Guide for Addressing Patient-Centered Ethical Issues in Health Care (hereafter, the Study Guide). In this article, we also enumerate how the Study Guide could be used in teaching and learning, and we identify areas that are ripe for future work. (shrink)

To promote ethical practices, healthcare managers must understand the ethical challenges encountered by key stakeholders. To characterize ethical challenges in Veterans Administration (VA) facilities from the perspectives of managers, clinicians, patients, and ethics consultants. We conducted focus groups with patients (n = 32) and managers (n = 38); semi-structured interviews with managers (n = 31), clinicians (n = 55), and ethics committee chairpersons (n = 21). Data were analyzed using content analysis. Managers reported that the greatest ethical challenge was fairly (...) distributing resources across programs and services, whereas clinicians identified the effect of resource constraints on patient care. Ethics committee chairpersons identified end-of-life care as the greatest ethical challenge, whereas patients identified obtaining fair, respectful, and caring treatment. Perspectives on ethical challenges varied depending on the respondent's role. Understanding these differences can help managers take practical steps to address these challenges. Further, ethics committees seemingly, are not addressing the range of ethical challenges within their institutions. (shrink)

Much work has recently been done on Jane Addams, her writings, and the general atmosphere and thought associated with Hull House and other settlement places in American cities.1 But although we might think of Addams and her work as the center of the Hull House effort, many other women (and a few men) were involved in the efforts, and the strengths that they brought to bear on the activities in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century need (...) to be delineated and, to some extent, given pride of place. Two women whose work was applauded by Addams at the time, but whose thought remains somewhat under investigated are Ellen Gates Starr and Julia Lathrop. Indeed, Addams wrote a book about her partnership with .. (shrink)

To promote ethical practices, healthcare managers must understand the ethical challenges encountered by key stakeholders. To characterize ethical challenges in Veterans Administration facilities from the perspectives of managers, clinicians, patients, and ethics consultants. We conducted focus groups with patients and managers ; semi-structured interviews with managers, clinicians, and ethics committee chairpersons. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Managers reported that the greatest ethical challenge was fairly distributing resources across programs and services, whereas clinicians identified the effect of resource constraints on (...) patient care. Ethics committee chairpersons identified end-of-life care as the greatest ethical challenge, whereas patients identified obtaining fair, respectful, and caring treatment. Perspectives on ethical challenges varied depending on the respondent's role. Understanding these differences can help managers take practical steps to address these challenges. Further, ethics committees seemingly, are not addressing the range of ethical challenges within their institutions. (shrink)

In this special issue of _difference_s, leading feminist theorists acknowledge Derrida’s contribution to feminist theory, discuss the crucial place of difference in both Derridian deconstruction and feminist theory, and reflect on the ethical, professional, and epistemological implications of Derrida’s thought for the discipline of women’s studies. In bringing together major feminist critics whose work has been touched by the writings of Derrida, this issue both pays tribute to and reflects upon Derrida’s ideas. Among the essayists included, Jane Gallop considers (...) Derrida’s writings on Levinas; Judith Butler reads Derrida’s final interview in _Le Monde_ in 2004; Elizabeth Grosz signals Derrida as a rare philosopher for whom sexual difference was crucial; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak explores the figure of the mother’s child in Derrida, focusing on the critique of reproductive heteronormativity and the question of agency in feminism; and Joan Wallach Scott argues for the importance of critique in the academy. The issue also includes an edited transcription of a vibrant discussion between feminist theorists and Derrida called “Women in the Beehive: A Seminar with Jacques Derrida,” which took place at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women in 1984. _Contributors_. Fran Bartkowski, Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, Susan Bernstein, Judith Butler, Pheng Cheah, Drucilla Cornell, Jane Gallop, Elizabeth Grosz, Peggy Kamuf, Christie McDonald, Joan Wallach Scott, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. (shrink)

The multifaceted work of the late Susan Leigh Star is explored through a selection of her writings and essays by friends and colleagues. Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was one of the most influential science studies scholars of the last several decades. In her work, Star highlighted the messy practices of discovering science, asking hard questions about the marginalizing as well as the liberating powers of science and technology. In the landmark work Sorting Things Out, Star and Geoffrey Bowker revealed the (...) social and ethical histories that are deeply embedded in classification systems. Star's most celebrated concept was the notion of boundary objects: representational forms—things or theories—that can be shared between different communities, with each holding its own understanding of the representation. Unfortunately, Leigh was unable to complete a work on the poetics of infrastructure that further developed the full range of her work. This volume collects articles by Star that set out some of her thinking on boundary objects, marginality, and infrastructure, together with essays by friends and colleagues from a range of disciplines—from philosophy of science to organization science—that testify to the wide-ranging influence of Star's work. Contributors Ellen Balka, Eevi E. Beck, Dick Boland, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Janet Ceja Alcalá, Adele E. Clarke, Les Gasser, James R. Griesemer, Gail Hornstein, John Leslie King, Cheris Kramarae, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Karen Ruhleder, Kjeld Schmidt, Brian Cantwell Smith, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm L. Strauss, Jane Summerton, Stefan Timmermans, Helen Verran, Nina Wakeford, Jutta Weber. (shrink)

George Bernard Shaw once fancied a dramatic rebuke against the garish religiosity of Lourdes: “I should like to bring a huge procession of atheists and unite myself to Jane Harrison by civil regist...

Jane Addams had two romantic partnerships during her years as Head of Hull House, one with Ellen Gates Starr and the second with Mary Rozet Smith. This paper traces the story of these two relationships, highlighting their importance in sustaining her emotionally and examining to the extent possible the place of sexuality in both.

The science of religion, as a discipline distinct from theology emerging in the 19th century, from the beginning was closely related to the discourse on Darwinism. This article focusses on Max Müller, known as ‘The father of Comparative Religion’, who was involved in the Darwinian discourse, compared with Jane Ellen Harrison who emphasised the impact of the theory of evolution, approaching, however, the ‘scientific study of religion’ from a different viewpoint. Contribution: From a historical point of view, this (...) article discusses the relationship between different strands in Religious Studies (Religionswissenschaft), and, also, touches upon the relationship between Religious Studies and Theology. (shrink)

The problem of plant individuality is something which has vexed botanists throughout the ages, with fashion swinging back and forth from treating plants as communities of individuals (Darwin 1800 ; Braun and Stone 1853 ; Münch 1938 ) to treating them as organisms in their own right, and although the latter view has dominated mainstream thought most recently (Harper 1977 ; Cook 1985 ; Ariew and Lewontin 2004 ), a lively debate conducted mostly in Scandinavian journals proves that the issues (...) are far from being resolved (Tuomi and Vuorisalo 1989b ; Fagerström 1992 ; Pan and Price 2001 ). In this paper I settle the matter once and for all, by showing which elements of each side are correct. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences eds. by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua MauldinSara A. WilliamsTheology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences Edited by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua Mauldin grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2017. 202 pp. $32.00How can Christian theology engage in fruitful dialogue with fields of inquiry such as cognitive science, anthropology, and (...) law? Might discoveries in the natural and human sciences open creative possibilities for theology, and vice versa? Can Christian theology maintain its integrity while integrating insights from other disciplines? Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry takes up these questions as its central aim. This volume of six essays emerges from a three-year Templeton Foundation initiative that brought an interdisciplinary set of scholars together at the Center for Theological Inquiry to explore how their research might collaboratively push theology in new directions. These conversations centered on three themes: evolution and human nature, religious experience and moral identity, and law and religious freedom.In the first essay, Celia Deane-Drummond proposes an alternative approach to traditional readings of the Genesis creation account that looks to "resonances" between von Balthasar's notion of "theo-drama" and niche construction theory. Her argument allows for human agency while drawing theology into a complementary, rather than conflictual, relationship with evolutionary science. The next three essays take up the theme of religious experience and moral identity. Michael Spezio proposes that both theology and cognitive science look to moral exemplars as the phenomenological basis for more realistic and mutually informative moral theology and cognitive models of learning. Colleen Shantz draws on cognitive science to demonstrate how the material [End Page 192] and relational are constitutive of cognitive processes, arguing that it is precisely through "development and change" that we bear the imago Dei (66). Andrea Hollingsworth offers a rereading of Nicholas of Cusa's De visione Dei to demonstrate how a medieval mystical text echoes elements of contemporary neurocognitive processes of self-transformation. The final two essays center on law and religious freedom. John Burgess examines the privileging of religious freedom for canonizing martyrs in post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy, arguing that this provides theological grounding for the legal right to religious freedom. Mary Ellen O'Connell proposes aesthetics as a more adequate modern grounding for legal authority than science. She argues that aesthetics takes us beyond the limits of self-interest, drawing us into concern for the good of others through the contemplation of beauty.What holds these essays together is the pursuit of "transdisciplinarity": "paying close attention to the other discipline(s) in a way that has a substantial and mutual impact, but at the same time retaining a clear sense of disciplinary integrity" (14–15). Lovin and Mauldin argue for humility and hope as virtues that enable us to navigate the tension between openness and integrity. While humility enables us to recognize the limits of disciplinary boundaries and assumptions, hope propels us forward, promising that however incomplete our knowledge remains, by the grace of God we will make advances in understanding our world and ourselves.Just as Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen's Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics argues for the value of engagement with ethnography and its related disciplines to produce theology and ethics grounded in lived reality, this volume argues for the value of engagement with the natural and human sciences to produce "theological realism" that accounts for the complexity of "human personality and community" (xviii). It is unsurprising, then, that both volumes respond to objections from the neo-Radical Reformation and Radical Orthodoxy camps. In his conclusion, Douglas Ottati argues that these camps cannot account for the ways in which theological production inevitably interacts with natural and cultural processes. He argues further that insulating Christian theology is a form of cultural accommodation because it mirrors the formation of discrete modern disciplines, the very limitation these essays seek to transcend.This volume advances the live discussion in Christian ethics about the promise and risks of engaging natural and social sciences. It is a valuable resource on this topic, and its essays are suitable for use in seminary course discussions... (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays to evaluate John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy from a feminist perspective. The variety of feminist interpretations offered here ranges from Jane Addams's praise for his collegial efforts to resolve the problems of the inner city to contemporary comparisons of his approach with Addams's own critique of capitalism as patriarchal. In between are essays assessing Dewey's contributions to feminist theory and practice both in his lifetime and in regard to contemporary feminist approaches to education, (...) subjectivity, objectivity and truth, and social and political philosophy. At a time when feminists are questioning and developing alternatives to the scientistic value-free inquiry advocated by logical positivism, the myth of detached observation informing the epistemological turn, rationalistic ethics, and the model of an unattached, nonrelational subject, this book reminds us of Dewey's early and passionate opposition to the same assumptions and his reconstruction of philosophy as a "method of moral and political diagnoses and prognosis." It has often been remarked that Dewey's pragmatism provides a genuine alternative to the usual masculinist biases of Western philosophy, and the various essays in this book develop this claim more extensively. Contributors, besides the editor, are Jane Addams, Ana M. Martínez Alemán, Paula Droege, Marilyn Fischer, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Judith M. Green, Lisa Heldke, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Erin McKenna, Marjorie C. Miller, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, and Shannon Sullivan. (shrink)

Since the 1950s, the cognitive revolution has been transforming work in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. Literary scholars, however, have only recently begun to grapple with the significance of cognitive understandings of language, mind, and behavior for literary and cultural studies. This unique issue of Poetics Today brings the concerns of literary history and cultural studies for the first time into a sustained and productive dialogue with cognitive methods, findings, and paradigms.The introduction situates the collection in relation to previous work, defines (...) the issues, highlights the stakes. Articles by Mark Turner and Paul Hernadi propose a bold extension of notions of literary history to include not only preliterature oral forms but the entire history of the species, viewing literary activity as a crucial human adaptation. Ellen Spolsky's essay provides an unprecedented statement of common ground shared by cognitive-evolutionary approaches and poststructuralist theory. The final three essays examine works by Aphra Behn, A. L. Barbauld, and Jane Austen in terms of their contemporary cultural and political contexts as well as in light of paradigms drawn from cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary theory. A commentary by Tony Jackson surveys the entire issue from the viewpoint of an informed outsider. (shrink)

Interest in teaching business ethics classes on college campuses has increased dramatically during the past decade. In the United States, virtually all graduate and undergraduate business programs teach business ethics in some form. While current pedagogy relies primarily on factual recounting of actual workplace incidents and actual and hypothetical case studies, calls for multidisciplinary approaches to teaching business ethics have not yet produced significant pedagogical change. We propose the use of fiction (novels, dramas, and short stories) to enrich current teaching (...) materials. This paper illustrates the tremendous power of stories which deal with ethical dilemmas in business to illuminate moral issues in ways that lead to a clearer understanding of ethical theory. The fiction cited in this paper is all drawn from American literature. It seems likely that similar sources could be found in the literature of other countries. (shrink)

“Karl Marx may have discovered profit, but I discovered political profit.” Carl Schmitt's only half-joking remark plays with a persistent problem for political theory since Hegel — the often perplexing similarity of ideological positions on the left and the right. German intellectual history in this century presents an unusually complicated example of such “convergence” in the reception of Schmitt's work by the Frankfurt School. The controversy surrounding Schmitt is not so much about the quality and depth of his work as (...) about its political consequences. An uncomfortable question for intellectual history in general, the case of Schmitt is most problematic for the German left. (shrink)

Background/purpose: Research from other disciplines demonstrates that ethical position, idealism, or relativism predicts ethical decision-making. Individuals from diverse cultures ascribe to various religious beliefs and studies have found that religiosity and culture affect ethical decision-making. Moreover, little literature exists regarding undergraduate nursing students’ ethical position; no studies have been conducted in the United States on students’ ethical position, their self-identified culture, and intrinsic religiosity despite an increase in the diversity of nursing students across the United States. Participants and Research Context (...) Objectives: The study’s two aims were to determine the relationship of self-identified culture, religiosity, and ethics position of undergraduate nursing student and whether students’ level of education and past ethics courses taken related to idealism. Two hundred and twelve volunteer undergraduate students participated. Research design: A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed for participants who completed the Ethical Position Questionnaire, The intrinsic subscale of the Religious Orientation Scale, and a Demographic, Cultural, Ethnicity Form. To test the five hypotheses, analyses included t-tests, correlations, and ANOVA. Ethical Considerations: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Adelphi University. Results: Idealism and intrinsic religiosity were significantly related. Differences were observed for intrinsic religiosity and idealism for cultural identity and cultural dimensions such as parents’ place of birth, and if participants were US born. Students’ level of education or participation in past courses on ethics did not influence idealism. Conclusions: The study’s findings were similar to most of the research from other disciplines on culture, ethics position, and religiosity. Generic courses on ethics taken prior to clinical work may not assist nursing students in integrating principles into complex ethical dilemmas. Self-identified culture, religion, and intrinsic religiosity related to ethics position; completing ethics courses and level of education, juniors compared with seniors, did not influence idealism. Faculty should consider integrating students’ culture, religious orientation, and ethics position into teaching ethics for all levels of nursing education. (shrink)