Verse treatises on Advaita Jaina, and Nyaya philosophy.

GPs usually care for their patients for an extended period of time, therefore, requests to not only discontinue a patient’s treatment but to assist a patient in a suicide are likely to create intensely stressful situations for physicians. However, in order to ensure the best patient care possible, the competent communication about the option of physician assisted suicide as well as the assessment of the origin and sincerity of the request are very important. This is especially true, since patients’ requests (...) for PAS can also be an indicator for unmet needs or concerns. Twenty-three qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to in-depth explore this multifaceted, complex topic while enabling GPs to express possible difficulties when being asked for assistance. The analysis of the gathered data shows three main themes why GPs may find it difficult to professionally communicate about PAS: concerns for their own psychological well-being, conflicting personal values or their understanding of their professional role. In the discussion part of this paper we re-assess these different themes in order to ethically discuss and analyse how potential barriers to professional communication concerning PAS could be overcome. (shrink)

Ein textnaher, fortlaufender Kommentar zu Kants Lehre von organisierten Wesen in der „Kritik der Urteilskraft“ ist ein Desiderat sowohl der Kantforschung als auch der Philosophie und Geschichte der Lebenswissenschaften. Auch gibt es bisher nur wenige Lesarten, die Kants Philosophie der Biologie im Ganzen erschließen und versuchen, sie in die vielschichtigen historischen Kontexte der frühneuzeitlichen Naturforschung einzuordnen. Das vorliegende Buch schließt diese Lücken. Es verteidigt die Thesen, dass Kant organisierte Wesen durch drei Arten von Kräften und Gesetzen charakterisiert – durch mechanische, (...) physisch teleologische und moralteleologische Krätfe und Gesetze – deren Vereinbarkeit im Bewusstsein des Menschen, und in der Erfahrungswelt, so, wie sie dem Menschen erscheint, auf der regulativen Idee ihrer Einheit im schöpferischen, theoretisch praktischen Bewusstsein Gottes beruht. Kants Lehre von organisierten Wesen kann als Verbindung einer gemäßigten, weder animalkulistisch noch ovistisch vereinseitigten, Präformationslehre mit einer vitalistischen Spielart der Epigenesislehre verstanden werden. – Weiterführende und provokative Einsichten für eine der bewegtesten Debatten der gegenwärtigen Kantforschung. (shrink)

In Arthur Danto’s The Seat of the Soul: Three Chairs, the chair is a source of power and authority. This paper explores the aesthetic importance of chairs and their designers and determines why people from various cultures create different designs that all perform the same function: seating. Here, the chair is examined as an artwork and design phenomenon from historical, cultural, stylistic, and aesthetic perspectives. Data were gathered through a comprehensive literature review, reports, archival materials, and museum visits. Descriptive, historical, (...) and analytical methods were used to explore the religious, symbolic, spiritual, artistic, competitive, and academic legacies of the chair. Despite the similarity in function, the chair is more important than a sofa, bed, or bench. It displays one’s status, education, knowledge, and artistic taste. However, practicality, low-cost materials, and money have trumped aesthetics in recent years. The findings may help young chair designers highlight their competitiveness and inventiveness. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel skizziert die Grundlagen einer neuen Subdisziplin innerhalb der Religionswissenschaft, der Religionsethologie. Religionsethologie lässt sich letztlich auf Charles Darwin selbst zurückführen, der bereits in seinem Buch The expression of the emotions in man and animals belegen konnte, dass jede Form von Verhalten für das Überleben der Art genau so wichtig ist wie die Adaptation des Phänotypus. In den Geisteswissenschaften wurde der Darwinsche Ansatz sofort aufgegriffen und von bedeutenden Forschern wie Karl Meuli, Aby Warburg und in jüngerer Zeit von Roy (...) Rappaport, Marvin Harris und anderen aufgegriffen und fruchtbar gemacht, indem sie einerseits religiöse Universalien herausarbeiten, andererseits aber auch die Grundzüge einer religiösen Evolution darstellen konnten. Religion ist demnach tief in der Biologie des Menschen verwurzelt und kann demzufolge auch unter biologischen Gesichtspunkten erforscht werden. (shrink)

This chapter examines Kant's account of the nature of nonhuman and human animals in the "Critique of the Power of Judgement". It discusses how Kant thought that a complete account of the forms of explanation commit one to belief in God. It concludes, firstly, that Kant's account implies an unhealthy anthropocentrism and an Enlightenment prejudice in the form of the overestimation of reason, and secondly, that the Kantian model of God lacks one of the main characteristics of the Christian conception (...) of God: the universal divine love, a power that unifies and embraces all beings, including nonhuman and human animals and their orders. (shrink)

Background: More and more adults in their fifties and sixties are confronted with the need to support their ageing parents. Although many aspects of filial caregiving have been researched, a well-documented and comprehensive overview of the caregiving experience is lacking. Aim: This study aims for a better understanding of the caregiving experience of adult children by generating an overview of main themes in international research. Method: A literature review of qualitative studies, focusing on the experiences of adult children caring for (...) their ageing parents, was performed. The electronic EBSCO databases Academic Search Premier, CINAHL and PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched to identify relevant qualitative studies published between 2000 and 2017. The ‘SPIDER’ eligibility criteria directed the approach. The quality of studies included was screened with the assessment sheet designed by Hawker and colleagues. The experiences reported were analysed and themes were synthesized. Ethical consideration: Ethical requirements were respected in every phase of the research process. Findings: Nineteen qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. The quality of the relationship with the parent appears to be an important determinant of the children’s caregiving experience. Within this context, three themes were found: caregiving as an emotional rollercoaster, a normatively demanding experience and an opportunity for personal development. Discussion: Children caring for their ageing parents have to deal with a wide range of contradicting and conflicting norms and values. Implications for healthcare professionals and future research have been discussed. Conclusion: Caring for ageing parents is a continuous quest for giving the best possible care and living up to one’s personal values, within the context of the parent’s declining health. Professionals who support filial caregivers should address not only practical responsibilities but also the normative questions and moral considerations caregivers are dealing with. (shrink)

This article considers the sexual politics of animal evidence in the context of German sexology around 1920. In the 1910s, the German-Jewish geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt conducted experiments on the moth Lymantria dispar, and discovered individuals that were no longer clearly identifiable as male or female. When he published an article tentatively arguing that his research on ‘intersex butterflies’ could be used to inform concurrent debates about human homosexuality, he triggered a flurry of responses from Berlin-based sexologists. In this article, (...) I examine how a number of well-known sexologists affiliated with Magnus Hirschfeld, his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and later his Institute of Sexology attempted to incorporate Goldschmidt’s experiments into their sexological work between 1917 and 1923. Intersex butterflies were used to discuss issues at the heart of German sexology: the legal debate about the criminalisation of homosexuality under paragraph 175; the scientific methodology of sexology, caught between psychiatric, biological, and sociological approaches to the study of sexual and gender diversity; and the status of sexology as natural science, able to contribute knowledge about the sexual Konstitution of the organism. This article thus shows that butterfly experiments function as important and politically charged evidence for a discussion at the heart of the sexological project of those involved in the founding of the Institute of Sexology: the question of the nature and naturalness of homosexuality (and sexual intermediacy more broadly) and its political consequences. In doing so, this article makes a case for paying attention to non-human actors in the history of sexology. (shrink)

Absolute and relative outcome measures measure a treatment’s effect size, purporting to inform treatment choices. I argue that absolute measures are at least as good as, if not better than, relative ones for informing rational decisions across choice scenarios. Specifically, this dominance of absolute measures holds for choices between a treatment and a control group treatment from a trial and for ones between treatments tested in different trials. This distinction has hitherto been neglected, just like the role of absolute and (...) baseline risks in rational decision-making that my analysis reveals. Recognizing both aspects advances the discussion on reporting outcome measures. (shrink)

The antinomy of teleological judgment is one of the most controversial passages of Kant’s "Critique of the Power of Judgment". Having developed the idea of an explanation of organized beings by mechanical and teleological natural laws in §§ 61-68, in §§ 69-78 Kant raises the question of whether higher order mechanical and teleological natural laws, which unify the particular empirical laws of organized beings, might pose an antinomy of conflicting principles within the power of judgment. I will argue against alternative (...) views that this antinomy is neither a conflict between objective constitutive principles of the determining power of judgment nor a conflict between an objective constitutive principle of the determining power of judgment and a subjective regulative maxim of the reflecting power of judgment nor does it consist in a confusion of a pair of subjective regulative maxims of the reflecting power of judgment with a pair of objective constitutive principles of the determining power of judgment, but does consist in an apparent conflict between mechanical and teleological natural laws as subjective regulative maxims of the reflecting power of judgment. I will further argue that Kant’s resolution of the antinomy consists in the regulative idea of a supersensible that represents the unity of both kinds of natural laws and justifies the unification of both kinds of natural laws in the human power of judgment. Kant uses three notions when he talks about the supersensible – the regulative idea of a divine artisan, the regulative idea of a divine intuitive understanding, and the regulative idea of an underdetermined, supernatural ground of nature. I will show how each of these notions accounts for the unity of both kinds of natural laws and will discuss possible correlations between them. I will then explain how the unity of both kinds of natural laws in the regulative idea of a supersensible accounts for the unification of both kinds of natural laws in the human power of judgment. While the divine intuitive understanding is perfect and uncreated and, thus, capable of a representation of the unity of both kinds of natural laws, the human discursive understanding is imperfect and created; it is capable only of the representation of the unification of both kinds of natural laws in form of a hierarchy of laws. (shrink)

Gianfrancesco Guarnieri estreou no teatro brasileiro em 1958 com a peça Eles não usem black-tie. Assim como já ocorrera com a obra de dramaturgos europeus mais de meio século antes, nesta peça mais uma vez encena-se a crise formal do drama, na medida em que a forma se desencontra do conteúdo. Não sendo indiferentes estes pontos de vista, observam-se no próprio texto os embates entre forma dramática e conteúdo épico, ora prevalecendo uma, ora outra.

Mário de Andrade wrote his short story, Primeiro de Maio, between 1934 and 1942. Is was posthumously published in his collection of stories Contos Novos. The following reading dates its action and tries to highlight aspects of the history of the working class struggle. Those aspects are not only related to the day but also stem from this short story formal devices.Entre os anos de 1934 e 1942, Mário de Andrade escreveu o conto "Primeiro de Maio", publicado no livro póstumo (...) Contos Novos. A leitura aqui apresentada, ao mesmo tempo em que propõe uma data para a ação, procura rememorar alguns aspectos da história das lutas da classe trabalhadora, vinculados a esse dia e suscitados pelos achados literários do conto. (shrink)

In this contribution, Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen’s Populism and Civil Society is confronted with current gender studies research on populism. This research mainly focuses on right-wing populism and highlights strong links between right-wing populists and the religious right, which are to a large degree organized by “anti-gender,” a stance both against social constructivist notions of gender and against basic gender rights, especially in the fields of reproduction and of LGBTIQ concerns. Against the backdrop of this literature, I argue that (...) in Populism and Civil Society, right-wing populist anti-gender politics are not addressed in a way that takes account of their full complexity; and that these politics furthermore suggest to treat right-wing populism and left-wing populism as phenomena that do not only differ in content, but also in form. (shrink)

A commentary on Sections XII–XVI of the “Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue”.

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis (...) is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures. (shrink)

Purpose of the article One of the approaches how to create a concept of a brand is a form of identifying association network in the mind of the consumer and creating semantic maps composed of all associations that are largely shaped by cultural values of consumers. Methodology/methods In the first phase, the author of the study was detecting the associations connected with the Mexican brand alcoholic beer Corona Extra using focus group with a sample of 15 respondents. In the second (...) phase, she analysed the data found in the context of Slovak cultural values and compared them with the results of the secondary research. Scientific objective The article highlights the importance of understanding cultural values of the target market for the management and brand communication across cultures. The main objective of the survey was to determine how the Slovak respondents perceive selected sample of global brand, to compare the findings of a secondary survey conducted at German and Spanish students, and in the final phase of the research to analyse the data found in the context of the cultural dimensions of respondents. Findings On one hand, the associations formed by consumers about Corona Extra mutually differ depending on the countries surveyed. On the other hand, they correspond to the cultural values of the nation, and thus confirm the strong influence of the cultural aspects of the brand perception. Conclusions The presented article confirms, that there will always be an open space for the extensive research in global marketing and cross-cultural differences in consumer behaviour. Exploring cultural aspects of communication of global brands will benefit not only in terms of increasing the efficiency of advertising campaigns, but also for the mutual knowledge and understanding between cultures. (shrink)

Quando Brecht escreveu que o teatro épico pressupõe a posse dos meios de produção teatral pelo movimento operário, além de indicar as raízes históricas de suas opções estéticas, estava expondo um critério de añálise para o conjunto da produção teatral moderna. Já a tardia importação do teatro moderno pelos brasileiro foi patrocinada por uma burguesia desenvolvimentista geralmente ciosa da necessidade de cortar ou obscurecer os vínculos das obras passíveis de consumo local. Mas no final dos anos cinquenta vamos observar o (...) encontro entre forma importada e adaptada e demandas culturais que ultrapassavam os estreitos limites impostos ao nosso mercado teatral modernzado. (shrink)

Depois de participar da revista Clima como ficcionista, dona Gilda de Mello e Souza dedicou-se ao ensaísmo, tratando, entre outros objetos, do teatro moderno no Brasil. Por sua independência intelectual, seus ensaios apresentam lições ainda hoje válidas para nós.