On 9 August 1994 the German legislature revised the German Drug Law (AMG). Included in the revision is a passage requiring, for the first time, that the sponsors and investigators of clinical studies involving human subjects first obtain the approval of an ethics committee before carrying out such studies. According to the legislation, which takes effect on 17 August 1995, approval is to come from 'an independent ethics committee, set up and administered according to state law [emphasis added]' (1). Although (...) it is clear according to the text that the 16 federal states have been empowered to establish ethics committees within their jurisdictions, this does not mean that the state governments are free to transfer exclusive authority in the matter to their respective medical associations, a step that would effectively abolish Germany's private ethics committees. First, the legislation does not rule out the authorization of private ethics committees. Second, as legal scholars attest, the exclusive control of ethics committees by the medical associations would constitute an illegal monopoly. Third, it is arguable that medical-association ethics committees fail to meet the one prior federal requirement, that of independence. There is a great deal of confusion in Germany today about which kinds of ethics committees (public and/or private) the states will sanction before 17 August 1995. In an attempt to sort things out we present a brief explanation of how ther came to be two kinds of ethics committees in Germany, review the legal battle between the two over the issue of authorization, point out how the German legislature, in passing the recent bill, has missed an opportunity to clarify the issue and, finally suggest why the administration of ethics committees by the medical associations may be incompatible with the requirement that ethics committees be independent. (shrink)

Many writers often generalise about mysticism without a sufficiently close analysis of texts. Consequently the generalisations are often invalid. My present aim is to analyse one text and, in the light of this analysis, to offer some observations concerning mysticism in general and Christian mysticism in particular.

Christianity affirms, with Judaism and Islam, that God is the omnipotent Creator of all things. But it diverges from them in also affirming that the Creator assumed a human nature in one figure of history, Jesus of Nazareth. Christ thus differs from other men in kind, not merely in degree; he is absolutely, not just relatively, unique. Admittedly many Christian theologians have held that the difference between Christ and other men is only one of degree. Yet the Church's traditional claim, (...) as expressed in the Chalcedonian Definition, is that Jesus was both creature and Creator, both fully man and fully God. (shrink)

The relation between morality and religion has often been discussed. However, it is not always recognized that the relation varies greatly according to the variety of religions. I shall here be concerned solely with Christian theism in its traditional form. I take the latter to signify, essentially, belief in a morally perfect Creator who exists in the threefold form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and who, in the person of the Son, became man in Christ for our salvation. I (...) thus exclude from consideration all non-theistic accounts of God or the Absolute. Also I shall consider, not simply bare theism of the kind that Christians share with Jews and Muslims, but also the distinctively Christian form of theism that is generated by distinctively Christian revelation. Many otherwise sound descriptions of the relation between morality and theism are defective because they fail to consider the distinctively Christian contribution to the theistic concept of God and of his relation to the world. (shrink)

The famous passage in which Plotinus declares that fine art, so far from simply reproducing nature, ‘goes back to the Reason-principles from which nature herself emanates,’ has hitherto been generally regarded as a tacit criticism of Plato's teaching, and as an original contribution to the philosophy of art involving a rupture with the entire previous tradition of Greek aesthetic theory. Yet Plotinus introduces it, not as if he were proclaiming a new gospel, but almost casually, as a subordinate link in (...) his discussion of Intelligible Beauty. And though his respect for Plato was not the half-superstitious reverence of the later Neoplatonists, he was at all times more zealous to walk in Plato's footsteps than to correct or criticize him, tacitly or otherwise. Moreover, can it be said with certainty that his doctrine is in itself opposed to Plato's? That question can be answered only by a detailed examination of Plato's theory of art—a task which I hope to accomplish elsewhere. In the present article, postponing all enquiry into the relation between these two aesthetic theories, I shall endeavour to show that the teaching of Plotinus was not a sudden innovation, but the natural and indeed inevitable outcome of preceding thought. (shrink)

H. P. Owen; VII—The Evidence for Christian Theism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June 1964, Pages 123–138, https://doi.org/10.1.

A scholarly edition of a work by David Hume. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

In this article I respond to the thoughtful criticisms of my book articulated by Gillian Brock, Thaddeus Metz, and Darrel Moellendorf. Their critical questioning offers me an opportunity to reformulate aspects of the book so that I more accurately say exactly what I had in mind when writing the book. The first section contains a reworking of my definition of poverty to eliminate any ambiguity and demonstrate what kind of comparative judgements the definition allows us to make. The second section (...) looks anew at the multiple moral sources for our obligation to eradicate poverty. In the third section I focus on issues that could hinder attempts at eradicating poverty. One is the lack of accessible knowledge that might be too demanding to acquire. The other is the possibility that all attempts to eradicate poverty might have to be put on hold until oppressive capitalist development has prepared the circumstances for a more socialist distribution of resources. I argue that neither of these concerns should hinder the eradication of poverty. (shrink)

For over thirty years C. A. Campbell has made major contributions to both ethics and metaphysics. Since these do not correspond to the prevailing fashions in philosophy and theology they are in danger of being under-estimated, if not ignored. I hope to summarise and comment on them as impartially as possible. Inevitably I must be selective. In writing for this journal I have, naturally, chosen to stress those elements in Campbell's thought which are directly or indirectly relevant to religion. Even (...) so, there are many points which I have no space to develop. I shall be content if I say enough to indicate the importance of Campbell's writings for the study of the philosophically crucial topics to which they are devoted. (shrink)

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v. 1. Cosmogenesis -- v. 2. Anthropogenesis -- v. 3. Occultism.