H.-I. Marrou's Traité de la musique selon l'esprit de Saint Augustin is a useful document about the relationship between 1930s French music and non-conformist culture. His stress on the moral aim of music recalls the claim for a spiritual revolution that informs the spirit of 1930 and Jeune France's manifesto: the reading of Marrou's Traité helps us defining the humanistic poetics of music of the '30s, and the historical context mutually explains and justify most of Marrou's thought (...) .His thought is in fact developed in the wake of Christian Platonism revised by Augustine, subject to a series of small changes in sight of a better and more relevant moral theology. The philosophical outcome isn't very convincing, both for many appeals to the authority principle, and for frequent contradictions clearly emerging in his arguments. The tension between the fidelity to the doctrine, the attempts to re-read the music from an apologetic viewpoint and the aim to suggest a practical philosophy produces a methodological setback so striking that it represents one of the greater limits of the Treaty.Marrou's remarks about the relationship between Christianity and ancient philosophy are certainly as interesting as questionable from the point of view of the history of philosophy. He goes so far to correct Augustine himself, especially as regards the Pythagorean influence on his thought, to stress instead a religious component of the music that doesn't seem so evident in the Augustinian analysis.Quest'ultimo viene infatti sviluppato sulla scia del platonismo cristiano mediato da Agostino, che viene sottoposto a una serie di piccoli mutamenti in funzione di una migliore e più attuale teologia morale. L'esito filosofico non è tuttavia dei più convincenti, vuoi per i numerosi appelli al principio d'autorità, vuoi per le frequenti contraddizioni argomentative che emergono dal testo in modo evidente. La tensione tra la fedeltà alla dottrina, il tentativo di rilettura della musica in chiave apologetica e la proposta di una filosofia pratica producono così un vistoso scacco metodologico che rappresenta uno dei limiti maggiori del Trattato.Le considerazioni di Marrou sul rapporto tra cristianesimo e filosofia antica sono certamente molto interessanti ma assai discutibili da un punto di vista storico-filosofico. L’autore si spinge fino a correggere Agostino stesso, soprattutto per quanto riguarda la componente pitagorica della sua riflessione, per sottolineare invece una componente religiosa della musica che non sembra così evidente nella riflessione agostiniana.. (shrink)

In the face of the moral pluralism that results from the death of God and the abandonment of a God's eye perspective in secular philosophy, bioethics arose in a context that renders it essentially incapable of giving answers to substantive moral questions, such as concerning the permissibility of abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, etc. Indeed, it is only when bioethics understands its own limitations and those of secular moral philosophy in general can it better appreciate those tasks that (...) it can actually usefully perform in both the clinical and academic setting. It is the task of this paper to understand and reevaluate bioethics by understanding these limits. Academic bioethicists can analyze ideas, concepts, and claims necessary to understanding the moral questions raised in health care, assessing the arguments related to these issues, and provide an understanding of the different moral perspectives on bioethical issues. In the clinical setting, bioethicists can provide legal advice, serve as experts on IRBs, mediating disputes, facilitating decision-making and risk management, and clarifying normative issues. However, understanding this is only possible when one understands the history, genesis, and foundations of bioethics and its inability to provide a resolution to postmodern moral pluralism. (shrink)

This paper presents four different understandings of the family and their concomitant views of the authority of the family in pediatric medical decision making. These different views are grounded in robustly developed, and conflicting, worldviews supported by disparate basic premises about the nature of morality. The traditional worldviews are often found within religious communities that embrace foundational metaphysical premises at odds with the commitments of the liberal account of the family dominant in the secular culture of the West. These disputes (...) are substantial and ultimately irresolvable by sound rational argument because of the failure to share common foundational premises and rules of evidence. It is in light of these fundamental disagreements that there is a need to evaluate critically the claims and agenda advanced by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (shrink)

A re-examination of the anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus, henceforth abbreviated K, is overdue. It may yet prove to be the most important document we possess for plotting the course of pre-Plotinian Platonism, and is by far the largest surviving portion of a pre-Plotinian commentary on a complete work of Plato. It offers us insights into the issues of the first century B.C. which are unparalleled in other extant Middle Platonist works, either because of the subject of the work and (...) its consequent tendency to bring to mind the epistemological debates between Philo of Larissa, Antiochus of Ascalon, and Aenesidemus, or because the author, whom we may call A, is writing at a time comparatively close to those debates. (shrink)

Long-term care is controversial because it involves foundational disputes. Some are moral-economic, bearing on whether the individual, the family, or the state is primarily responsible for long-term care, as well as on how one can establish a morally and financially sustainable long-term-care policy, given the moral hazard of people over-using entitlements once established, the political hazard of media democracies promising unfundable entitlements, the demographic hazard of relatively fewer workers to support those in need of long-term care, the moral hazard to (...) responsibility of shifting accountability to third parties, and the bureaucratic hazard of moving from individual and family choice to bureaucratic oversight. These disputes are compounded by controversies regarding the nature of the family (Is it to be regarded primarily as a socio-biological category, a fundamental ontological category of social reality, or a construct resulting from the consent of the participants?), as well as its legal and moral autonomy and authority over its members. As the disputes show, there is no common understanding of respect and human dignity that will easily lead out of these disputes. The reflections on long-term care in this issue underscore the plurality of moralities defining bioethics. (shrink)

Moral pluralism is a reality. It is grounded, in part, in the intractable pluralism of secular morality and bioethics. There is a wide gulf that separates secular bioethics from Christian bioethics. Christian bioethics, unlike secular bioethics, understand that morality is about coming into a relationship with God. Orthodox Christian bioethics, moreover, understands that the impersonal set of moral principles and goals in secular morality gives a distorted account of the moral life. Therefore, Traditional Christian bioethics is separated from bioethics by (...) a radical difference in paradigms. (shrink)

Birth, suffering, disability, disease and death were by medicine's successes placed within a context of seemingly novel challenges that cried out for new responses. Secular bioethics rose in response to the demands of these new biomedical technologies in the context of a culture fragmented in moral pluralism. While secular bioethics promised to unite persons separated by diverse religious and moral assumption, this is a promise that could not be fulfilled. Reason alone cannot provide canonical, content-full moral guidance or justify a (...) moral community capable of binding all persons. Christian bioethics, as part of a way of life embedded in authentic worship, offers content, meaning and understanding where secular bioethics has failed. For Christians, resolution of bioethical controversies will not be found through appeals to foundational rational arguments or isolated scriptural quotations, but only in a Christian community united in authentic faith. (shrink)

Marx's critique of political economy as a problem-posing framework Political economy and its critique Writing in the late, Friedrich Engels drew attention ...

Excerpt from Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus Called by the indulgence of this meeting to a chair, which I could have wished to have seen more worthily filled, upon so interesting an occasion as the first general meeting of a Society instituted for the important purpose of the advancement of knowledge in relation to Asia, I shall, with your permission, detain you a little from the special business of the day, while I draw your more particular (...) attention to the objects of the Institution, for the furtherance of which we are now assembled. To those countries of Asia, in which civilization may be justly considered to have had its origin, or to have attained its earliest growth, the rest of the civilized world owes a large debt of gratitude, which it cannot but be solicitous to repay; and England, as most advanced in refinement, is, for that very cause, the most beholden; and, by acquisition of dominion in the East, is bound by a yet closer tie. As Englishmen, we participate in the earnest wish, that this duty may be fulfilled, and that obligation requited; and we share in the anxious desire of contributing to such a happy result, by promoting an interchange of benefits, and returning in an improved state that which was received in a ruder form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Europe has taken on a new, post-Christian, if not a somewhat anti-Christian character. The tension between Western Europe's ever more secular present and its substantial Christian past lies at the heart of Western Europe's current struggle to articulate a coherent cultural and moral identity. The result is that Western European mainline churches are themselves in the midst of an identity crisis, thus compounding Western Europe's identity crisis. Christian bioethics in Europe exists against the backdrop of these profound cultural cross currents (...) that define the European condition, engender conflicts regarding the meaning of being Western European and being Christian, and bring the public significance and role of Western European bioethics, especially Western European Christian bioethics, into question. The dominant culture of the public forum is post-Christian and post-traditional, although traditional Christianity still asserts its voice. Denis Müller in his paper has clarified the choice between a traditional-fundamentalist Christian Bioethics and a revisionist, progressive Christian Bioethics. (shrink)

This essay provides evidence to support a promising conceptual and potentially practical set of ideas at once both principled and effective found in the work of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz addressed to the issue of ‘adequacy’ as a goal in social research. Efforts to achieve adequacy beyond the epistemological conditions required by Weber’s demand that evidence meet both causal adequacy and adequacy on the level of meaning were significantly refocused by Schutz’s later concern, responding specifically to Weber, that the (...) social sciences also address themselves to his postulate of adequacy. It states that “Each term used in a scientific system referring to human action must be so constructed that a human act performed within the life-world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construction would be reasonable and understandable for the actor himself, as well as for his fellow men”. A serious attempt to implement a more expansive notion of adequacy by practically activating this postulate in the ways suggested can be beneficial not only for the social research situation but in everyday life as well. (shrink)