In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity by Rob Arner, and: Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace ed. by Paul Alexander, and: Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy by Eli Sarasan McCarthyBrian D. BerryReview of Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity ROB ARNER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. 136 pp. (...) $15.56Review of Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace EDITED BY PAUL ALEXANDER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 182 pp. $19.80Review of Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy ELI SARASAN MCCARTHY Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 259 pp. $27.00In Consistently Pro-Life, Rob Arner (who teaches at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia) makes the case that Christians should not kill other human beings—regardless of the circumstances. Taking as his point of departure the vigilante killing of abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009, he argues not only that abortion is always morally impermissible but so also is [End Page 217] the murder of abortion doctors and the use of the death penalty to punish those who murder them. In addition, he turns to the early church fathers to contend that, prior to Constantine, “without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever”—thus rejecting abortion and infanticide, the blood sport of the Roman games, suicide, and killing in war (120). This was because the New Testament witness to Jesus and his death on the cross required early Christians to view “the means as just as important, if not more important, than the ends” (xiii).Arner supplements this deontological argument for Christian pacifism, which he learned from John Howard Yoder, with a brief consideration of the virtue of patience cultivated in the early churches, reflecting the influence of Stanley Hauerwas on his thought. This “cardinal virtue” connoting “longsuffering, forbearance, patient endurance”—as found in Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:38–48)—enabled early Christians to practice non-violent resistance “deferring personal revenge in favor of God’s vindicating justice” (98). If Christians were to adopt this same consistently pro-life ethic today, argues Arner, it would “lead to greater healing and peace in our blood-soaked world” (121). The book closes with three appendices—one of which is a chart of terminology that dehumanizes vulnerable victims, including unborn human beings. Unfortunately, the book does not have an index.Christ at the Checkpoint, edited by Paul Alexander (professor of Christian ethics and public policy at the Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University), includes thirteen plenary addresses delivered at a conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict organized by Palestinian Evangelical Christians at Bethlehem Bible College in March 2010. Almost all of the contributors to this volume—including biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, pastors, activists, and others—criticize the ideology of Christian Zionism and its support of a theology of dispensationalism that, in their view, distorts the scriptures and fosters violence rather than reconciliation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In his own presentation titled “What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?,” Alexander—who describes himself as a former “one-sided” Christian Zionist who later discovered the writings of Yoder and Hauerwas—appeals to Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and urges Pentecostals to create church communities “that cultivate persons of character and conviction, who through habits, practices, and action live out the core of our faith” (69). Along with being faithful to the “greater challenges” of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, he argues that they should publicly declare that Jesus does not want Israel to continue the occupation of Palestine, and they should engage in the “easier tasks” of promoting human rights, lending support to United Nations Resolutions, and working toward a two-state solution (72). “The time has come in human history,” writes Alexander, “for Pentecostals to speak and act prophetically regarding this present injustice … [End Page 218] and to use every nonviolent weapon in our arsenal—stories, preaching... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy by Eli Sasaran McCarthyMarc V. RuganiBecoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy Eli Sasaran McCarthy EUGENE, OR: PICKWICK PUBLICATIONS, 2011. XVII 1 259 PP. $32.00Contemporary US political discourse is generally couched in the language of rule-based rights analysis or utilitarian calculus, both of which limit the imagination (...) of decision-makers and society at large. In Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers, Eli Sasaran McCarthy seeks to disrupt any complacency Americans and our representative leadership might have with these ethical approaches. Drawing on well-reasoned philosophical arguments and the witness of paradigmatic figures, McCarthy builds a case for public policies of nonviolent peacemaking created from and analyzed through the framework of virtue ethics. Such policies, he posits, would not only achieve a more comprehensive agenda of peacemaking but would also approach more closely the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beloved Community."McCarthy's project is ambitious and multifaceted. He sets out to synthesize critiques of prevailing rule- and strategy-based assessments of nonviolent [End Page 204] peacemaking, making proposals for a virtue-based assessment from Christian, Hindu, and Muslim sources as well as with the best contributions of human rights theory in order to supplement a virtue approach. At the outset he states, "My thesis is that a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking enhanced by aspects of human rights discourse largely resolves key limits of rule-based and strategy-based assessments of nonviolent peacemaking for public discourse and policy" (2). To prove this, he grapples with influential scholars on the subject, such as James Childress and Gene Sharp, to show how deontology and consequentialism too narrowly constrain the vision of what nonviolent peacemaking can achieve, both in effect and the formation of agents' character. Addressing the work of Bernard Häring, Stanley Hauerwas, and Lisa Sowle Cahill, he brings the fruit of Christian theological ethics to bear on the advantages of a virtue-based assessment of nonviolence. Though that is significant enough, McCarthy also presents the life and work of both Mahatma Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan to demonstrate the consonance of a virtue approach even across cultural and religious lines. He finally plots a way forward using the best of rights theory and virtue theory to show how nonviolent peacemaking fulfills the Catholic social tradition's vision of human dignity and the common good.McCarthy lends much to the argument that "we ought to consider nonviolent peacemaking a distinct virtue rather than merely subsuming it in the paradigmatic actions of other virtues" (75). With scripture at its foundation and positioned within the traditions of virtue ethics and the Catholic social doctrine, he weaves a tight argument for nonviolence within a Christian context while also aiming to be approachable and sympathetic to non-Christian perspectives. Because of the contemporary context of McCarthy's project, he does focus his attention almost exclusively on twentieth- and twenty-first-century sources; it would be helpful to be already familiar with virtue ethics and its classic sources, like Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas.McCarthy writes clearly and directly to readers, making the schema of his argument explicit in each chapter. His extensive referencing and ample bibliography engage both academic research and popular journalism, making this a great resource for those pursuing public theology and students in advanced undergraduate and professional study. His last chapter, which provides a case study regarding the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, applies his peacemaking proposals in a compelling thought experiment. One can hope McCarthy's continued research yields not only more case studies that invite creative problem-solving through the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking but also a book-length study that challenges US domestic policy as successfully as his investigation of US foreign policy here. [End Page 205]Marc V. RuganiThe Catholic University of AmericaCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character.

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James was America's most widely read philosopher. In addition to being one of the founders of pragmatism, however, he was also a leading psychologist and author of the seminal work, The Principles of Psychology. While scholars argue that James withdrew from the study of psychology after 1890, Eugene Taylor demonstrates convincingly that James remained preeminently a psychologist until his death in 1910.Taylor details James's contributions to experimental psychopathology, psychical research, and the (...) psychology of religion. Moreover, Taylor's work shows that out of his scientific study of consciousness, James formulated a sophisticated metaphysics of radical empiricism. In light of historical developments in psychology, as well as the current philosophic implications of the neuroscience revolution related to the biology of consciousness, Taylor argues that both the subject matter of James's investigations and his metaphysics of radical empiricism are just as important for psychology today as James believed they were in his own time.This book represents a major new contribution both to James scholarship and to the history of American psychology. Although philosophers have analyzed radical empiricism, this book is the first to trace the development of radical empiricism as a metaphysics addressed to psychologists. It is also the first to show James's involvement in depth-psychology and psychotherapeutics and to trace historical continuity between James's work on consciousness and subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, personality theory, and humanistic psychology. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that which explanation is (...) the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has highlighted many of the difficult ethical issues that health care professionals confront in caring for patients and families. The decisions such workers face on the front lines are fraught with uncertainty for all stakeholders. Our focus is on the implications for nurses, who are the largest global health care workforce but whose perspectives are not always fully considered. This essay discusses three overarching ethical issues that create a myriad of concerns and will likely affect nurses globally (...) in unique ways: the safety of nurses, patients, colleagues, and families; the allocation of scarce resources; and the changing nature of nurses’ relationships with patients and families. We urge policy‐makers to ensure that nurses’ voices and perspectives are integrated into both local and global decision‐making so as to minimize the structural injustices many nurses have faced to date. Finally, we urge nurses to seek sources of support throughout this pandemic. (shrink)

У статті простежено формування та динаміку розвитку тіньової економіки в Україні. Показано, що реформування економіки країни на початку 1990-х років без належного наукового обґрунтування призвело до механічного копіювання та реалізації монетаристської моделі регулювання економічних процесів. Реалізація закордонних "рецептів" реформування економіки без урахування національної специфіки призвела до появи нових форм та методів тіньової економічної діяльності.

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware, USA and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and crossfertilization of the partners’ practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and (...) structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and cross-fertilization of the partners' practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. (shrink)

G.E. Moore noticed the oddity of statements like: “It's raining, but I don't believe it.” This oddity is often seen as analogous to the oddity of believing akratically, or believing what one believes one should not believe, and has been appealed to in denying the possibility of akratic belief. I describe a Belief Akratic's Paradox, analogous to Moore's paradox and centered on sentences such as: “I believe it's raining, but I shouldn't believe it.” I then defend the possibility of akratic (...) belief against appeals to this analogy, arguing both that akratic belief does not require belief-akratic-paradoxical belief, and that the latter is importantly different from Moorean belief. I conclude by considering the implications of these arguments for an understanding of both Moorean and akratic belief. (shrink)

In this major contribution to philosophy and rhetoric, Eugene Garver shows how Aristotle integrates logic and virtue in his great treatise, the _Rhetoric._ He raises and answers a central question: can there be a civic art of rhetoric, an art that forms the character of citizens? By demonstrating the importance of the _Rhetoric_ for understanding current philosophical problems of practical reason, virtue, and character, Garver has written the first work to treat the _Rhetoric_ as philosophy and to connect its (...) themes with parallel problems in Aristotle's _Ethics_ and _Politics._ Garver's study will help put rhetoric at the center of investigations of practice and practical reason. (shrink)

Eternal return is the paradox that accounts for the interplay between difference and repetition, a dynamic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy, and Blanchot's approach to this paradox, even and especially through what it elides, further illuminates it. Deleuze draws on Blanchot's characterisations of difference, forgetting, and the unlivable to depict the ‘sense’ produced via eternal return, which, for Blanchot, is where repetition implicates or ‘carries’ pure difference. However, for Deleuze, difference and the unlivable are also developed by the living (...) repetition or ‘contraction’ of habit, which results in his distinctive characterization of ‘force’, ‘levity’, and sense in eternal return. (shrink)

Commentary on ‘The View from Within’, edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear.

A simple quantum relativistic model of ν µ − ντ neutrino oscillations in the OPERA experiment is presented. This model suggests that the two components in the neutrino beam are separated in space. After being created in a meson decay, the µ-neutrino moves 18 meters ahead of the beam’s center of energy, while the τ -neutrino is behind. Both neutrinos have subluminal speeds, however the advanced start of the ν µ explains why it arrives in the detector 60 ns earlier (...) than expected. Our model does violate the special-relativistic ban on superluminal signals. However, usual arguments about violation of causality are not applicable here. The invalidity of standard special-relativistic arguments is related to the interaction-dependence of the boost operator, which implies that boost-transformed space-time coordinates of events with interacting particles do not obey linear and universal Lorentz formulas. (shrink)

TeSelle examines the theme of St. Augustine's "two cities" against the background of the ancient world's civic vision, with the polis as the chief model for political life. Against most interpreters' assumptions, TeSelle shows that the sojourner, while not fully at home in the earthly city, is nowhere understood as an "alien" and thus has certain rights and responsibilities in the earthly city.

After completing his first degree with first class honors in philosophy and classics at Edinburgh in 1878, Pringle-Pattison was awarded a Hibbert Travelling Scholarship which he used to travel to Germany to study the work of Kant and Hegel. Interest in Hegel in Germany had waned at this time, however, and Pringle-Pattison commented that Germany was the worst place to study Hegel. In Berlin he boarded with the Stropp family whose daughter he would later marry. From Berlin he went to (...) Jena where he found John Haldane, brother of his friend and fellow student, R. B. Haldane, along with a group of Scottish students, with whom he met weekly to study Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. In the summer of 1880 he went to Göttingen with the aim of studying with Hermann Lotze. Pringle-Pattison respected Lotze for his reassertion of the fundamental truth of the world implied in moral and spiritual experience. J. H. Muirhead says that he "was born by the Lotzean reaction to suspect the whole idea of the Absolute as a menace to individual reality in general and human personality in particular." Lotze, however, was lecturing only to beginning students that summer and Pringle-Pattison set to work on his essay for the Hibbert Trust which was published in 1882 under the title The Development From Kant to Hegel. Pringle-Pattison returned to Edinburgh in 1880 where he succeeded Sorley as Campbell Fraser's assistant. In 1883, as was mentioned above, Pringle-Pattison and R. B. Haldane edited a volume of essays written by younger Hegelians which was intended to show dissatisfaction with the content of the journal, Mind, which was dominated by English empiricism. One year later he moved to Cardiff where he took the foundation chair of philosophy. (shrink)