Terminal kidney patients are faced with lower quality of life, restricted diets and higher morbidity and mortality rates while waiting for deceased donor kidney transplantation. Fortunately, living kidney donation has proven to be a better treatment alternative (e.g. in terms of waiting time and graft survival rates). We observed an inequality in the number of living kidney transplantations performed between the non-European and the European patients in our center. Such inequality has been also observed elsewhere in this field and it (...) has been suggested that this inequality relates to, among other things, attitude differences towards donation based on religious beliefs. In this qualitative research we investigated whether religion might indeed (partly) be the explanation of the inequalities in living donor kidney transplants (LDKT) among non-European patients. Fifty patients participated in focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted following the focus group method and analyzed in line with Grounded Theory. The qualitative data analyses were performed in Atlas.ti. We found that religion is not perceived as an obstacle to living donation and that religion actually promotes helping and saving the life of a person. Issues such as integrity of the body were not seen as barriers to LDKT. We observed also that there are still uncertainties and a lack of awareness about the position of religion regarding living organ donation within communities, confusion due to varying interpretations of Holy Scriptures and misconceptions regarding the process of donation. Faith leaders play an important educational role and their opinion is influential. This study has identified modifiable factors which may contribute to the ethnic disparity in our living donation program. We argue that we need to strive for more clarity and awareness regarding the stance of religion on the issue of living donation in the local community. Faith leaders could be key figures in increasing awareness and alleviating uncertainty regarding living donation and transplantation. (shrink)

Medical tourism is a practice, whereby individuals travel across national borders with the intention of receiving medical care. Medical tourists are motivated to travel abroad by a number of factors, including the affordability of care abroad, access to treatments not available at home, and wait times for care at home. In this article, we share the findings of interviews conducted with 32 Canadian medical tourists with the aim of developing a better understanding of medical tourism, the ethical issues it raises (...) for public health within Canada and other source countries for medical tourists, and to identify research gaps and policy responses to this practice. While patient and academic perspectives overlap in several regards, we suggest areas in which academic consideration of the ethical issues raised by medical tourism can be informed by patient perspectives. (shrink)

Canada has a marked shortfall between the supply and demand for kidneys for transplantation. Median wait times for deceased donor kidney transplantation vary from 5.8 years in British Columbia, 5.2 years in Manitoba and 4.5 years in Ontario to a little over 2 years in Quebec and Nova Scotia. Living donation provides a viable option for some, but not all people. Consequently, a small number of people travel abroad to undergo kidney transplantation by commercial means. The extent to which they (...) are aware of the potential risks to their health and the health of the kidney vendors is unclear. Travel abroad to obtain a kidney commercially i.e. transplant tourism (TT), raises ethical issues which include the exploitation of the poor, uncertainty of donor informed consent to nephrectomy, poor clinical care and lack of follow up for the donor, commodification of the body and inequity of access to medical care for donors. Also, TT widens socioeconomic disparities in access to transplantation, differing from the Canadian system of universal coverage for healthcare. The Canadian transplant community has discussed how to respond to patients who plan to travel abroad for TT or return with a purchased kidney. Unease rests in the tension between the duty to care for legitimate Canadian residents and the unwillingness to enable TT. This paper discusses three anonymized cases and the Canadian responses to TT as recorded in academic literature and a formal statement by relevant professional bodies. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to contribute to research in the philosophy of social science. The study focuses upon select epistemological and ontological aspects of Hannah Arendt’s work from which methodological implications are drawn pertaining to sociology. Arendt, although critical of the sociology of her time, has become increasingly cited and influential for emerging sociological research and this study seeks to contribute to this by focusing upon the problem of novelty. The aim is to explore the philosophical and methodological implications of novelty (...) for social science by working through three case studies that are theoretically pivotal for social science—action, the ‘social’, and the self—in terms of novelty as expressed in Arendt’s writing. Arendt is critical of methodology and epistemology, aiming to draw her readers to ontological concerns outlined from her preoccupation with the 'world' and social reality. In this aim, Arendt seeks to distance herself from social sciences that she claims ignore human novelty in favour of reading social regularities, tendencies and similarities. Despite her disdain for method, Arendt suggests a anti-methodological 'method' (outlined in an overlooked footnote) for keeping trained upon and for dealing with novel, anomalous events. In the seed of this method lies a unique opportunity for social science to reassess and extend its methods, addressing this oversight and in so doing bring to light the novel social object as a legitimate subject of social research. (shrink)

The aim of this investigation is to discuss the merits of the three radically divergent views as to the nature and function of the categories held by Kant, Ward and Alexander.

This book is a rather mediocre and unimaginative summary of the major themes of Avicenna's metaphysics. Chahine makes the attempt to situate him against the background of antique and medieval philosophy, but the ideas themselves are never given a contextual treatment. One does not see what was truly original and significant in Avicenna's philosophy; one is left frustrated by the succession of scholastic lieux communs and only seldom gratified by a beautiful quote. There is a certain amount of information on (...) the ideas of other Islamic thinkers influencing Avicenna or influenced by him, but this cannot compensate for the lack of a really penetrating analysis—M. J. V. (shrink)

Hamann is one of the greatest religious writers of the eighteenth century in Germany. He is the person whom Schelling, Hegel, and Kierkegaard admired, read, and quoted. This book treats the major themes and insights of Hamann. Texts of Hamann are represented by a large number of quotations. Hamann never wrote a systematic treatise; he wrote short, devastating, illuminating essays and criticisms, as well as letters. Especially interesting are the chapters dealing with Hamann's criticism of contemporary philosophy, and his views (...) concerning the relation of philosophy and faith. This is a fine study which helps the reader to gain some orientation and perspective on Hamann's subtle and obscure writings.--M. J. V. (shrink)

After the monumental works of Xavier Leon and Martial Guéroult, the French have again produced a significant piece of Fichte-interpretation. The author advances two radically new theses: Fichte's philosophy is above all centered around the deduction of the other, and even objectivity as such is based upon inter-subjectivity. The Doctrine of Science, instead of being the foundation of an absolute idealism, teaches that the only knowledge which can be had is empirical knowledge, and all logic is rooted in time. Philonenko (...) claims that Fichte's aim was to uphold the adequacy and essential correctness of common everyday knowledge over against the pretensions of metaphysical speculation. This is a magnificent book: the product of a truly amazing scholarship in the history of philosophy, full of ingenious and highly imaginative rapprochements and insights. It is also another welcome manifestation of that recent continental trend in the interpretation of German idealism which realizes that Fichte and Schelling do not simply fill the gap between Kant and Hegel, but are great philosophers in their own right. If any objection can be made at all against the work, it would be the limitation of its argument to the first period of Fichte's creativity. The author's avowed aim is to confine himself to the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, and, as a matter of fact, we rarely find a quote later than 1798. Indeed, Fichte always claimed that no qualitative change took place in his thought. However, his exposition of it steadily altered, and in view of this, perhaps it is not entirely unjustified to regret that the Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 and the Answeisung zum seligen Leben are not taken into account in interpreting the early Fichte.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This completes what I think one may state and defend on physical grounds concerning the foundations of Astrology and the coming year 1602. If those learned in matters of Physics think them worthy of consideration, and communicate to me their objections to them, for the sake of eliciting the truth, I shall, if God grants me the skill, reply to them in my prognostication for the following year. I urge all who make a serious study of philosophy to engage in (...) this contest. For it concerns our worship of God and the welfare of the human race. Meanwhile, I pray from the depths of my soul, through Christ our mediator, that for all and for each the coming year may be a very happy one. (shrink)

Neither the speculative depth of Meister Eckhart nor the willpower and inner drive of Tauler are to be found in the writings of the third great mystic of fourteenth-century Rhineland, Henry Seuse. But we might well be compensated by authenticity of the description of the spiritual experience. This is not an edition for scholars and does not even try to resurrect the so savagely fought for issue on the authorship of Seuse's autobiography. We have here a major document of spiritual (...) life, with a great literary work making up about one-half of it. The other half contains the Booklet of the Eternal Wisdom, the Booklet of Truth, the Booklet of Letters, and two Sermons. Perhaps a little more critical apparatus and a little more comment on the themes of the texts would have improved the book, but instead of giving this, the translator simply refers to a book on Henry Seuse published in the same year, 1966. Even so this is a beautiful and important collection.--M. J. V. (shrink)

The present volume completes the publication of the most important and most representative Husserl texts from the twenties. The second half of the book contains important variants selected from the earlier versions of the lectures, a large number of independent short essays and notes, and finally a huge number of editorial notes on the texts and their reconstruction. The lectures deal with perception, expectation, and their implied phenomena, centered around the underlying major theme of the in-itself, hence of the passivity (...) of the flux of consciousness. By sacrificing deliberately an in extenso publication of the three versions of the lectures in favor of concentrating the theme into one volume, the editor chose to satisfy the most pressing needs of the Husserl scholar. Yet, one cannot but wonder whether an author of Husserl's stature might not deserve a more complete presentation.--M. J. V. (shrink)

At the beginning of the first version of the Ages of the World Schelling invoked Plato's protection against the criticism he was expecting from his contemporaries. More than forty years later, in his last system, Aristotle had become the most quoted of his predecessors. The way from Plato to Aristotle and the parallels drawn between "the philosopher" and Kant are among the best parts of the book. Hegel is almost as much studied by Oeser as Schelling. After all, the subtitle (...) announces a contribution to the critique of the Hegelian system. Unlike most scholars of the German idealism the author does not try to play out Hegel against Schelling or Schelling against Hegel. He is more interested in showing their similarities. However, in spite of this, Oeser's sympathies obviously lie with Schelling and in the last chapter he attempts to show how the final system of Schelling, that of the "purely rational philosophy" was not written only to give a new platform to the positive philosophy but also to lay the groundwork for a reconciliation between metaphysics and dialectical idealism in terms of transcendence and transcendentality.--M. J. V. (shrink)

One of the most significant theories of the late Brentano is that only the real can be represented, while of the so-called non-real we can formulate no authentic concepts but only fictions of language. This doctrine has not been fully comprehended by some of the best students of Brentano's thought, although others have called it "the Copernican turning-point" of his philosophy. The present selection of texts is intended to clarify and expound the controversial theory. Ninety-one letters exchanged between Brentano, Marty, (...) and O. Kraus make up the bulk of the volume and they are followed by fourteen short essays, all but one unpublished up to now. These are difficult and condensed texts but they allow us to follow closely the intense struggle of this great philosopher to articulate and to explain a theory which he had considered immensely important. They continuously refer to Aristotle whom Brentano venerated. There is a fair amount of comment on Kant, Husserl, and Meinong. A long and interesting introduction by Mayer-Hillebrand with concise yet comprehensive notes completes the volume.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This interesting commentary on the Book of Job, following upon the author's earlier and shorter English-language studies in different U.S. periodicals, renews the now almost forgotten tradition of philosophical commentaries on Biblical books. Biblical scholarship is missing from this study. Instead we have the German text of Job printed along with a profusion of notes. Sometimes these are only a few words to explain a sentence, sometimes they amount to a longer philosophical digression. Most contemporary scholars consider such commentaries amateurish (...) and outmoded; yet a non-theological reflection on a text of universal, almost supra-Biblical, content such as the book of Job is certainly justified.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This volume is the reprint of perhaps the best study of Goethe's philosophy. Its importance lies in its method. Instead of trying only to collect material pertaining to traditional, philosophical problems, it makes a deep-reaching attempt to grasp and to extricate the metaphysical foundations and basic themes of Goethe's Weltanschauung. There is a thoroughgoing analysis of his "morphological" method and excellent, long passages on his magnificent studies of the life and the structure of plants. The culmination of the whole work (...) is its third part: on the symbol considered what it truly is, not a merely esthetical [[sic]], but an essentially metaphysical notion. The book is not easy to read and it does presuppose a certain familiarity with Goethe's whole oeuvre. Those interested in the history of German idealism will certainly appreciate the parallels with Kant, but unfortunately Weinhandl omits the important parallels with Schelling.—M. J. V. (shrink)