Since the early 1980’s, with the clinical advent of in vitro fertilization resulting in so-called “test tube babies,” a wide array of ethical considerations and concerns regarding artificial womb technology (AWT) have been described. Recent breakthroughs in the development of extracorporeal neonatal life support by means of AWT have reinitiated ethical interest about this topic with a sense of urgency. Most of the recent ethical literature on the topic, however, pertains not to the more imminent scenario of a physiologically improved (...) method of neonatal care through AWT, but instead to the remote scenario of “complete ectogenesis” that imagines human gestation occurring entirely outside of the womb. This scoping review of the ethical literature on AWT spans from more abstract concerns about complete ectogenesis to more immediate concerns about the soon-to-be-expected clinical life support of what we term the fetal neonate or fetonate. Within an organizing framework of different stages of human gestational development, from conception to the viable premature infant, we discuss both already identified and newly emerging ethical considerations and concerns regarding AWT and the care of the fetonate. (shrink)

Our team at the Centre for Clinical Ethics has long been engaged in internal discussion about the purpose and value of ethics debriefs and their purported role in reducing moral distress (Morley an...

This article responds to Dominelli’s contribution by mapping three lines of discussion. The first relates to the issue of how to understand voluntary work with regard to the realization of citizenship. The authors argue that this understanding depends on the way citizenship is conceived. Whereas a rights-based conception of citizenship focuses on issues of equal access to voluntary work, a duty-oriented notion of citizenship tends to see voluntarism as embedded in an educational strategy, alongside professionalized social work. The authors plead (...) for an alternative understanding of voluntary work and social work as joined partners in practices of ‘learning democracy’. The second line of discussion revolves around the relation between social and political dimensions of citizenship. With Dominelli, the authors point out how the obscuring of the political dimension risks to nurture societal discourses that put pressure on the welfare state. The third point relates to the difficulties in positioning voluntary work with regard to professional social work. One of these difficulties is the tendency to over-romanticize voluntary work as warm, informal, generous, while giving an exclusively technical reading of social work professionalization. (shrink)

Bluhm et al.’s (2023) qualitative study on psychiatric electroceutical interventions describes several types and characteristics of invasiveness identified by psychiatrists and people living with a...

The Hague: the 'village' with court and government -- Dordrecht: the privileged city -- Haarlem: the frontier city of sand and wood -- Delft: the clean city -- Leiden: the old textile city with a new university -- Amsterdam: the city of wise merchants -- Utrecht: the bishop's city.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; the focus is on the rights that children possess. Conversely, the (...) social-political interpretation of the UNCRC addresses the question of how the rights of children can be realised. It is suggested that distinguishing between these interpretations is essential with regard to questions of pedagogy and education. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many advocacy groups and individuals criticized governments on social media for doing either too much or too little to mitigate the pandemic. In this article, we review advocacy for COVID-19 elimination or “zero-covid” on the social media platform X (Twitter). We present a thematic analysis of tweets by 20 influential co-signatories of the World Health Network letter on ten themes, covering six topics of science and mitigation (zero-covid, epidemiological data on variants, long-term post-acute sequelae (Long COVID), (...) vaccines, schools and children, views on monkeypox/Mpox) and four advocacy methods (personal advice and promoting remedies, use of anecdotes, criticism of other scientists, and of authorities). The advocacy, although timely and informative, often appealed to emotions and values using anecdotes and strong criticism of authorities and other scientists. Many tweets received hundreds or thousands of likes. Risks were emphasized about children’s vulnerability, Long COVID, variant severity, and Mpox, and via comparisons with human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Far-reaching policies and promotion of remedies were advocated without systematic evidence review, or sometimes, core field expertise. We identified potential conflicts of interest connected to private companies. Our study documents a need for public health debates to be less polarizing and judgmental, and more factual. In order to protect public trust in science during a crisis, we suggest the development of mechanisms to ensure ethical guidelines for engagement in “science-based” advocacy, and consideration of cost–benefit analysis of recommendations for public health decision-making. (shrink)

Samenvatting van de grote wijsgerige systemen van Plato tot en met Hegel, gevolgd door een kritische analyse van de metafysica als uitingsvorm van westers intellectualisme.

The Belgian conflict can be compared with a game theoretical model with two groups and a negative sum-game. Within each of the groups there is hierarchisation, role playing and formation ofcoalitions. On the Flemish side the main actor is the CVP, on the Walloon side it is the PS.The main objectives of the communities in the economie field are: temporary boarding employment in depressed industries and, simultaneously, the creation of high tech industries. Policy instruments to attain those goals are : (...) general economie measures ; selective-protective measures ; selective-innovative measures.Why is the sum-game negative or at least suboptimal?1. Mentioned policy instruments are spread over an incoherent set of institutions on the national and regional level, with rules that are partly centralist, partly federalist, partly confederalist. This leads to a complicated, unstable set of game rules in which the financial implications of decisions are shifted from the regional to the national level and vice versa.2. Selective-protective measures are of such large size that they offset and erode the beneficial effects of general policy measures regarding wages, taxes and exchange rate.Federalism or confederalism would and should establish a new set of rules between the two regions and between regional and federal state. Since a return to the ancien régime is politically unfeasible, this is the only logical way out of the present chaotic decision making process. Federalism would, inter alia, shift the financial responsibility of decisions in the field of industrial policy, education, health and public works towards the regions.This political reform requires a new constitution and therefore an agreement between the two communities. The chances for a new «talk» are presently not very high. Among the many reasons, one in particular strikes the eye : the major partner on the Flemish side, namely the Christian Democrats, have a multi-dimensional utility function, which not only is «concealed» for the others, but also undefined and unclear for the party itself. (shrink)

Dans un contexte marqué par la révolution industrielle, et donc la mécanisation du travail, Oscar Wilde porte un regard critique sur les possibilités nouvelles accordées à la mise en scène de théâtre. Loin d’être accessoire, la scénographie est constitutive d’une œuvre irréductible au texte et fait, du théâtre, le lieu d’un art total où le décorateur est artiste et les métiers collaborent.

Une œuvre intitulée Expositio libri de anima a été publiée dans le volume III des œuvres philosophiques de Pierre d'Espagne éditées par le père M. Alonso. Mais tandis que les deux premiers volumes de la série contiennent des œuvres que les manuscrits attribuent explicitement à cet auteur, à savoir la Scientia libri de anima et le Commentaire précédé de Questions sur le De anima , l'Expositio libri de anima n'atteste aucun nom d'auteur dans le seul témoin du texte sur lequel (...) est basée l'édition d'Alonso, c'est-à-dire le manuscrit Madrid, B.N. 3314, fol. 68ra-89rb. Selon l'éditeur, l'absence d'un nom d'auteur est due au fait que le texte est incomplet. Celui-ci commence effectivement ex abrupto par les mots «ergo anima est actus ut scientia» qui, comme nous le verrons plus loin, se situent au milieu de l'explication du passage II 1.412a21. (shrink)

In this article the spread of demonstrations - a political activity that situates itself in the middle on the scale of conventional - unconventional political action - is studied. The rare survey of the effective participation in demonstrations in Belgium shows that it is rather high. An extensive minority of some 20 to 25% ofthe Belgians declares to have participated in a demonstration. These figures modify the image of the passive, indifferent citizen that research of conventional political participation has shown. (...) The spread of the participation in demonstrations according to age and professional activity, moreover, differs from the pattern found in conventional participation. Demonstrating is typical behaviour of the younger age-categories and therefore of students, but also of farmers, blue collar workers and lower-ranked white collar workers.From this survey follow a number of results connected to the use of demonstrations and the number of demonstrators during the period 1953-74. Related statistics indicate that the number of demonstrations and demonstrators increases, the latter not to the same extent as the farmer however. Furthermore it appears that students, labor unions and agricultural organizations have often come to the streets to enforce their demands. Thematically speaking, particularly problems related to traditional cleavages in Belgian polities have been theobject of demonstrations: ideological, socio-economic and linguistic issues. Organizations active in the area of this cleavages are able to mobilize a great number ofdemonstrators. These organizations are for the most part pillarized and structurally well-developed. Nevertheless the division between issues and organizations during the period 1953-74 has become less unequal. During the sixties and the early seventies the share of traditional cleavages in the number of demonstrations and demonstrators is becoming smaller. New organizations areusing demonstrations more and more to put new issues on the political agenda. They have, however, not the same power to mobilise as do the pillarized organizations. (shrink)

At 13 June 1999, elections for the regional Parliaments, the federal Parliament and the European Parliament were held in Belgium.The percentage of voters casting a preferential vote at these elections increased again, reaching the highest score ever in Belgian history. On average, 60,9 % of the electorate expressed their preference for one or more candidates. Although voters have the possibility to cast a multiple preferential vote, this possibility is not used very much. A voter who cast a preferential vote, only (...) vote on average for 1,73 candidates.The further increase in preferential votes was a little surprise since strong limitations were imposed upon campaign expenditures and on commercial affichage. Political and social evolutions, such as individualism, anti-party feelings and mediatisation seem to have had a stronger impact upon preferential voting than these material limitations.The use of the preferential vote varies from one constituency to another, from Flemings to Walloons, and from one party to another. There were some notable evolutions. The voters of the extreme-right Vlaams Blok and of the green parties Agalev and Ecolo, who traditionally cast less preferential votes than voters of other parties, have dimished the gap between them and the other parties. Another important evolution is the decrease of pref erential voting in some constituencies in Wallonia. As for the Senate and the European Parliament, more Flemings now cast a preferential vote than Walloons do. The large constituencies used for these elections seem to attract very well-known politicians and as a consequence also very much preferential votes in Flanders.Despite the increase in preferential voting, the order of the list, composed by the party remained in most cases decisive whether or nota candidate was elected. (shrink)

The in 1945 established Christian Social Party showed some important differences in comparison with the prewar Catholic Party. The structure of the CVP-PSC was unitary, based upon individual membership instead of the prewar federation of « estates ». With this unitary structure, the founding fathers of the CVP-PSC tried to avoid the conflicts between the estates, a permanent cause of criticism and disurtity in the Catholic Partyduring the interwar period. In spite of the new organizational structure of the CVP-PSC, new (...) methods of informal recognition of the estates were introduced for the aggregation of their claims and their representation within the party.The way this informal recognition of the estates in the CVP-PSC was solved, is briefly described in the first part of this article. Subsequent to the survey of the evolution of the political position of the estates and their relation to the CVP-PSC, the composition of the lists of candidates in the CVP-PSC for the general elections of 8 november 1981 is discussed. Special attention is paid to the balancing in number and the ranking ofcandidates from the estates. Finally, the representation of the estates in the parliamentary group of the CVP-PSC is calculated for the general elections of 1974, 1977, 1978 and 1981. (shrink)

Les Présocratiques sont de retour. Ou plutôt ils font leur entrée dans un monde qui les avait à peu près ignorés jusque-là, faute de pouvoir les comprendre de l'intérieur. Cependant - et telle est la véritable originalité de ce livre - personne n'avait encore inscrit les Présocratiques dans l'ensemble des grandes traditions de l'humanité. A la lumière des cosmologies et des sagesses orientales - hindouisme, bouddhisme, taoïsme en particulier, dont Jean Biès est un familier - l'ouvrage explore pour la première (...) fois dans leur véritable lumière ce que furent la mentalité, la vision du monde et les enseignements des Présocratiques, en en renouvelant ainsi, et de fond en comble, l'intérêt, et par delà même, l'avenir des " Humanités classiques ". Parmi eux, Empédocle - poète, médecin, thaumaturge - occupe une place de choix pour peu que l'on déchiffre sa vie à l'aide du symbolisme : sa " descente " parmi les hommes, ses " pouvoirs " chamaniques, son " enlèvement " miraculeux. Philosophe de la nature, Empédocle fonde son système sur des " Racines " et des " Principes " opposés et complémentaires, sur la corrélation du multiple et de l'Un, sur la doctrine des cycles cosmiques et sur le Sphaïros, divinité suprême, qui, tous, permettent d'inattendus rapprochements avec les " points de vue " de l'Asie. Maître spirituel, il transmet des méthodes initiatiques également proches de l'ascèse orientale, permettant la réminiscence des vies antérieures et fournissant les moyens d'échapper à la transmigration. L'ouvrage propose une traduction inédite et commentée des poèmes de l'Agrigentin : De la Nature et Purifications. (shrink)

Ignatow stawia sobie za cel dokładny rekonstrukcję ścisłego związku zachodzącego pomiędzy marksistowską antropologią - w pierwotnym kształcie prezentujący radykalny humanizm - a upadkiem komunizmu. W krótkim przeglądzie historycznymi stwierdza, iż zsekularyzowany humanizm marksistowski wyrósł z tradycji filozoficznej, reprezentowanej przez Herdera i Feuerbacha, czyniąc - podobnie jak oni – człowieka najważniejszą i najogólniejszą zasady metafizyczny. Dalszy rozwój filozofii marksistowskiej doprowadził najpierw do odrzucenia tej tezy, później zaś - przede wszystkim w leninowsko-stalinowskiej wersji marksizmu - do ideologizacji klasy proletariatu, a tym samym (...) do jednoznacznej negacji tradycyjnego humanizmu. (shrink)

In Belgium the multiple preferential voting system was for the first time applied to parliamentary elections in 1995. Since then the electorate has the possibility to cast a vote for several candidates figuring on the same party list.As a result of this voting system change, more voters used the possibilities offered by the preferential voting system than during the 1991 elections: almost 57% of the electorate of 1995 cast a multiple vote on candidates for the House of Representatives - this (...) was an increase of 8,6% compared to the 1991 results. For the Senate, the trend is even clearer: 59% of the electorate expressed their preference for one or more candidates of the Senate, resulting in an increase of 18,3% compared to 1991. Though one has to add that the above mentioned increases are only partly due to the election system change. Part of the increase is actually also due to a more accurate handling by the Ministery of Internal Affairs of the multiple preferential voting data figuring on the ballot-papers.Compared to previous elections the use of preferential voting was for the first time higher for the Senate than for the House of Representatives. Furthermore, the analysis showed that the use of the multiple preferential vote is varying from one constituency to another, from Flemings to Walloons and from one political party to another. (shrink)

Quelle est la place du philosophe dans son environnemen social (societe civile) en general et aux moments des grands bouleversements sociopolitiques en particulier? S'il doit en parier, doit-il agir en acteur aussi? Ne risque-t-il pas de perdre son identite professionnelle? 1 Ä son habitus intellectuel et scientifique s'ajoute ainsi une dimension ethique allant d'une attitude de sagesse et de distance ä une interpretation axiologique et essentialiste des phenomenes politiques. Toutefois, le philosophe n'est pas politicien et s'il lui arrive ä s'engager (...) sur le plan politique, il risque de perdre son identite professionnelle, son autorite morale, et sa liberte. (shrink)