Depuis Kant, les philosophes ont appris à parler, avec prudence, du surnaturel et de sa relation avec la nature. En général le surnaturel n’est meme pas reconnu comme faisant partie de la philosophie. La situation n’aurait pu être plus différente aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles, lorsque les philosophes comprenaient la relation entre Dieu et le monde comme l’un des problèmes les plus importants que la philosophie fût censée résoudre. Les solutions étaient bien sûr extrêmement diverses : Spinoza niera même que l’on puisse (...) faire la distinction entre principe créateur et création, tandis que d’autres, tel Robert Boyle, s’imagineront un maître horloger créant une machine absolument parfaite, qui depuis sa création ne requiert aucun acte supplémentaire de la part de son créateur. Jusque dans la pensée du jeune Kant, cette idée se rencontrera sous des formes diverses. Tous convenaient, tout de même, qu’il fallait rejeter l’ancien modèle aristotélicien d’une nature désirante, reconstruisant la nature comme un système reposant sur quelques lois fondamentales et repensant à nouveaux frais le rôle que Dieu peut, ou doit, jouer dans un tel système. Les contributions du présent volume traitent d’aspects historiques et systématiques des théories modernes de la nature et du surnaturel, tout en essayant de comprendre, dans ce contexte, l’importance des théories de la relation entre Dieu et le monde. (shrink)

Background: Nurses and nursing students appear vulnerable to moral distress when faced with ethical dilemmas or decision-making in clinical practice. As a result, they may experience professional dissatisfaction and their relationships with patients, families, and colleagues may be compromised. The impact of moral distress may manifest as anger, feelings of guilt and frustration, a desire to give up the profession, loss of self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Objectives: The purpose of this review was to describe how dilemmas and environmental, relational, and (...) organizational factors contribute to moral distress in undergraduate student nurses during their clinical experience and professional education. Research design: The research design was a systematic literature review. Method: The search produced a total of 157 articles published between 2004 and 2014. These were screened with the assessment sheet designed by Hawker and colleagues. Four articles matched the search criteria (one quantitative study and three qualitative), and these were separately read and analyzed by the researchers. The process of review and analysis of the data was supervised by a colleague experienced in moral distress who provided an independent quality check. Ethical consideration: Since this was a systematic review, no ethical approval was required. Findings: From the analysis, it emerged that inequalities and healthcare disparities, the relationship with the mentor, and students’ individual characteristics can all impact negatively on the decisions taken and the nursing care provided, generating moral distress. All these factors condition both the clinical experience and learning process, in addition to the professional development and the possible care choices of future nurses. Conclusion: Few studies dealt with moral distress in the setting of nurse education, and there is a knowledge gap related to this phenomenon. The results of this review underline the need for further research regarding interventions that can minimize moral distress in undergraduate nursing students. (shrink)

Whitehead, in his famous book Process and Reality, proposed a definition of point assuming the concepts of "region" and "connection relation" as primitive. Several years after and independently Grzegorczyk, in a brief but very interesting paper, proposed another definition of point in a system in which the inclusion relation and the relation of being separated were assumed as primitive. In this paper we compare their definitions and we show that, under rather natural assumptions, they coincide.

Whitehead, in his famous book "Process and Reality", proposed a definition of point assuming the concepts of “region” and “connection relation” as primitive. Several years after and independently Grzegorczyk, in a brief but very interesting paper proposed another definition of point in a system in which the inclusion relation and the relation of being separated were assumed as primitive. In this paper we compare their definitions and we show that, under rather natural assumptions, they coincide.

Within Descartes' philosophy, the problem of the Eucharist provides scholars the occasion to investigate a nexus of questions belonging to different domains of his thought. In taking up this problem, about which there has been much written in the past few decades , I hope first of all to discern some order in the texts themselves, as well also as in their various interpretations, and then, from there, to propose a new perspective.

This paper focuses on Socrates’ intention of examining (ἐλέγχειν) the Delphic oracle that concerns him. I argue that Socrates does not start out by refuting an apparent meaning of the oracle, as it has been suggested, but rather reacts to the perplexing posture in which the divine message places him. In this sense, the message—which becomes a lifetime mission for Socrates—has a performative sense, even though it does not have an explicit, prescriptive form. I try to show that Socrates’ philosophical (...) life can be understood as a constant attempt to examine, as well as to prove the oracle, and that Socrates’ defense is a final examination and proof of the oracle. (shrink)

This paper is about a special version of PDL, proposed by Marcus Kracht, for reasoning about sibling ordered trees. It has four basic programs corresponding to the child, parent, left- and right-sibling relations in such trees. The original motivation for this language is rooted in the field of model-theoretic syntax. Motivated by recent developments in the area of semi-structured data, and, especially, in the field of query languages for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents, we revisit the language. This renewed interest (...) comes with a special focus on complexity and expressivity aspects of the language, aspects that have so far largely been ignored. We survey and derive complexity results, and spend most of the paper on the most important open question concerning the language: what is its expressive power? We approach this question from two angles: Which first-order properties can be expressed? And which second-order properties? While we are still some way from definitive answers to these questions, we discuss two first-order fragments of the PDL language for ordered trees, and show how the language can be used to express some typical (second-order) problems, like the boolean circuit and the frontier problem. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss an interpretation of Hegel's concept of the “Inverted World”, which is present in the final part of the chapter on Force and Understanding in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Other than my own reading of the chapter, I also summarize the three most important interpretations of the verkehrte Welt from the last century: those of Jean Hyppolite, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Joseph Flay. I have chosen these three due to the typology of interpretation within them: the first (...) one adopts a Christian reading of Hegel, the second a Hellenistic phenomenological interpretation, and the last one, which is closest to the interpretation I also propose, a reading consistent with the thought of Immanuel Kant. The article ends with a possible interpretation of Hegel's verkehrte Welt through Kant's “Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding” from his Critique of Pure Reason, where I argue that Kant's fundamental faculty of imagination and its object, schemata, play the same role in Kant's system that Hegel's verkehrte Welt does in the development of natural consciousness. (shrink)

This study investigated how gender shapes the relationships between classroom environment, achievement goals and maths performance. Seventh-grade students (N?=?498) from five urban secondary schools filled in achievement goal orientations and classroom environment scales at the beginning of the second semester. Maths performance was assessed as an average grade four months later. The results indicated gender differences in the perception of teacher and peers support, achievement goals and maths performance. The effects of goal orientations, teacher and peers support on achievement were (...) moderated by gender. Furthermore, the interaction between classroom environment and performance goals on maths grades varied with gender. In the boys? sample, performance-avoidance goals interacted with teacher support, while in the girls? sample, performance-approach goals interacted with peers support in predicting maths grades. The educational implications of these gender differences are discussed. (shrink)

IntroductionDignity therapy is brief psychotherapy targeting psychological and existential suffering among patients with a life-limiting illness. Studies have been conducted on the use of DT by healthcare professionals. In Italy, the current legislation defines that any form of psychotherapy may be performed exclusively by psychotherapists. Consequently, this intervention is unlikely to be used by other healthcare professionals. Herein, we will describe a training on DT not as a psychotherapy intervention but as a narrative intervention for non-psychotherapists health care professionals. Finally, (...) we will explore the potential enablers/barriers as experienced by palliative care physicians and nurses.MethodsThe study was conducted in the Psycho-Oncology Unit within the Cancer Research Hospital of Reggio Emilia. It consisted of an exploratory qualitative case study. Data were collected employing observations and interview data and thematically analyzed.ResultsThe training was attended by six physicians and ten nurses and took place during two-afternoon sessions for 10 h. Two participants put their training into practice and administered DT under the supervision of a psychotherapist. Data analysis highlighted five overarching themes relating to the training experience and direct use of DT, namely, time required, psychological skills, patient’s disease awareness, patient’s life history, and distinguishing DT from Advance Care Planning.ConclusionPalliative care professionals found DT to be a valuable non-pharmacological hospital-based intervention to address the person beyond the patient and his clinical conditions. In our experience, considering that in Italy, psychotherapy is an intervention that psychotherapists can only perform, it can help organize different training on DT for psychotherapists and other healthcare professionals. (shrink)

This study deals with the issue of Plato’s political interest. Some say he had none. We’ll try to show that in fact he was very political, to the extent that the core ofhis work is a political agenda, and is politically orientated. There’s also the aspect of the relation between metaphysics and politics in his work; that is a delicate issue, as some consider that Plato “disguised” his political convictions in myths. That too will be taken into consideration.1. The number (...) of metaphysical dialogues is small, compared to the vast majority of the platonic dialogues2. No only the writings, but also the life of Plato show him as political3. Even the “metaphysical” dialogues have a political agendaThere are authors that consider Plato to be no less than a forerunner of Christianity, a mystic conscious of the contemplation of an ideal “beyond”. One should bear in mind that Plato has even been declared a saint by the Orthodox Church. We choose to be more cautious in dealing with the interest that Socrates’ pupil is supposed to have taken into mystics (theory or practice). In the following pages, we’ll try to explain these reserves. (shrink)

La base conceptual de lo que sería más tarde desarrollado por las vanguardias artísticas fue colonizada por alemanes de pensamiento romántico e idealista, cuya dimensión utópica puede ser fácilmente reconocida en el «antiguo programa del idealismo alemán» (1796), un texto que consagró un pensamiento idealista, que clamó por una nueva racionalidad o una mitología de la razón de Hegel, la intuición intelectual de Schelling y la Humanidad de Schiller. Aunque este proyecto de emancipación desarrollado más tarde por la vanguardia ha (...) perdido su credibilidad para nosotros, todavía tenemos que investigar en qué medida el arte de hoy puede mantener una función social. Este artículo señala algunos conceptos idealistas a la luz de una filosofía del arte, y fue creado siguiendo las líneas esbozadas en la Crítica del juicio de Kant, que han contribuido a la historia de la «avanzada» del arte. (shrink)

Reshaping the neo-Aristotelian doctrines about the human soul was Descartes’s most spectacular enterprise, which gave birth to some of the sharpest debates in the Republic of Letters. Neverthe- less, it was certainly Descartes’s intention, as already expressed in the Discours de la méthode, to show that his new metaphysics could be supplemented with experimental research in the field of medicine and the conservation of life. It is no surprise then that several natural philosophers and doctors, such as Henricus Regius from (...) Utrecht, who had studied in Padua with William Harvey, rallied in support, in order to gain a more substantial theoretical basis for their research. Taking as his ground some general metaphysical assumptions, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and perhaps the separability of the pure understanding, Regius intended to secure a new philosophy of man, which was able to reflect his medical interests and complement his account of human nature. This is the story that is now gaining currency, and it is surely accurate, at least in part. Desmond Clarke has recently defended the same view1, based on the remarkable studies of the Utrecht scholars Theo Verbeek and Erik-Jan Bos. Here I would like to challenge some aspects of this view and ask how Regius, who was perceived as the philosopher most closely associated with Descartes, became a betrayer of his mentor. (shrink)

IntroductionPalliative care is an emotionally and spiritually high-demanding setting of care. The literature reports on the main issues in order to implement self-care, but there are no models for the organization of the training course. We described the structure of training on self-care and its effects for a Hospital Palliative Care Unit.MethodWe used action-research training experience based mostly on qualitative data. Thematic analysis of data on open-ended questions, researcher’s field notes, oral and written feedback from the trainer and the participants (...) on training outcomes and satisfaction questionnaires were used.ResultsFour major themes emerged: “Professional role and personal feelings”; “Inside and outside the team”; “Do I listen to my emotions in the care relationship?”; “Death: theirs vs. mine.” According to participants’ point of view and researchers’ observations, the training course resulted in ameliorative adjustments of the program; improved skills in self-awareness of own’s emotions and sharing of perceived emotional burden; practicing “compassionate presence” with patients; shared language to address previously uncharted aspects of coping; allowing for continuity of the skills learned; translation of the language learned into daily clinical practices through specific facilitation; a structured staff’s support system for emotional experiences.DiscussionSelf-care is an important enabler for the care of others. The core of our intervention was to encourage a meta-perspective in which the trainees developed greater perspicacity pertaining to their professional role in the working alliance and also recognizing the contribution of their personal emotions to impasse experienced with patients. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 1, pp 46 - 70 In this article, I analyze the idea of “stepping into the void”, which can be traced in the thinking of both Proclus and Damascius, but which sets their perspectives apart. Thus, I show how Proclus warns us that to speak about the absolute principle, taking it as an object of thought, is a negative “stepping into the void” that should be avoided. On the contrary, I show that Damascius starts from (...) this warning and tries to prove that the only adequate manner in which we can trace the absolute principle and approach it is precisely through “stepping into the void,” yet, this time, in a positive sense, as a constant attempt to understand that the principle is an absolute void which reverses our discourse. (shrink)

The authors of this article contend that traditional corruption, which was largely blamed for the current situation in the Icelandic economy, was perhaps not the most fundamental reason for the ensuing crisis. The weak business culture and a symbiosis of business and politics have actually allowed for the bulk of self-erving and unethical decisions made by the Icelandic business and political elite. In order to illustrate this point, 10 expert interviews have been conducted within the period of 6 months in (...) 2009 to support in-depth research carried out by the authors. The article also discloses questionable business practices that have recently come to the attention of the public both in Iceland and abroad and that ultimately facilitated the downfall of the Icelandic economy. While traditional corruption has probably played its role in this downfall, the measures currently employed to determine its level did not account for various peculiarities of Icelandic society. The article thus argues that there was a high level of corruption in Iceland, but it was outside of the traditional definition. This other corruption has ultimately prevented the government from acting appropriately upon the questionable business practices mentioned above. The article also offers some general recommendations which should be useful to both policy makers and business leaders wishing to engage in business activities in a transparent, ethical manner and learn from the tragic Icelandic experience. Among these recommendations are the necessity to recognize the limitations of current definitions of corruption, as well as a word of caution to commercial enterprises to pay a close attention not only to commonly accepted indices and mainstream reports but also to a country's history, culture, and political environment, prior to making any sort of investment decisions in that country. (shrink)

The ongoing Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting most specialized healthcare services worldwide, including those for high-risk newborns and their families. Due to the risk of contagion, critically ill infants, relatives and professionals attending neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are undergoing a profound remodeling of the organization and quality of care. In particular, mitigation strategies adopted to combat the COVID-19 pandemic may hinder the implementation of family-centered care within the NICU. This may put newborns at risk for several adverse (...) effects, e.g., less weight gain, more nosocomial infections, increased length of NICU stay as well as long-term worse cognitive, emotional, and social development. This article aims to contribute to deepening the knowledge on the psychological impact of COVID-19 on parents and NICU staff members based on empirical data from the literature. We also provided evidence-based indications on how to safely empower families and support NICU staff facing such a threatening emergency, while preserving the crucial role of family-centered developmental care practices. (shrink)

Mutually supporting methodologies are necessary for building a convincing case establishing a particular effect. Strengths and weaknesses of four empirical methods are discussed. Econometric methods quantify the relative importance of different factors and may assess the time frame over which constitutions matter, but have difficulties in dealing with nonlinear interactions among constitutional and cultural details. Cluster analysis can be a pre-requisite to other methods, and an analytic method in itself, useful for identifying the details that really matter and discovering surprising (...) patterns in the data. I discuss the application of cluster analysis on the Comparative Constitutions Project database. Qualitative comparative analysis can reveal the hidden structure of interactions among different variables, but robustness checks are difficult to perform. Case studies are useful for distinguishing between rules-in-use and rules-in-form and for discovering important informal aspects. They can deal with com.. (shrink)

Marilena Vlad Cet article se focalise sur le concept de lumière dans les traités du Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite Sur les noms divins et La théologie mystique. Le but de l’analyse est de montrer que la lumière n’est pas seulement un nom divin, mais qu’elle a un rôle beaucoup plus complexe dans la pensée de Denys. Premièrement, c’est la lumière qui rend possible le déploiement de tous les noms divins. En outre, elle explique le sens et le fonctionnement du nom divin (...) de « bien ». La lumière est l’essence de ce nom, aussi que de tous les autres noms divins, qu’elle parcourt et unit en une structure originaire. Enfin, son ultime suppression — qui identifie la lumière à son contraire absolu, la ténèbre — engage la suppression de tous les autres noms divins et lumières théologiques, ce qui ouvre vers les plus hauts mystères de la théologie. (shrink)

This study analyses the manuscript tradition of Pascal's work now known as De l'art de persuader and offers a historical, textual and conceptual criticism of the decisions that led to the privileging of one source (the P' manuscript) over another (the M manuscript and the D printed version) in the editorial history of the text. On the basis of this critique, the author formulates new genetic hypotheses and justifies the probity of the M copy for the establishment of the text (...) of De L'art de persuader that can lead towards a general interpretation of Pascalian epistemology. (shrink)

Deleuze's Logique de la sensation is not a canonical art historical interpretation of Francis Bacon's painting and even less an illustration of Deleuze's philosophy. It is better read as a prolegomena to a semiotics of plastic art in which the visual image is related to the dialectics of touch and vision. These issues feature strongly in the art theories of Aloïïs Riegl, Wilhelm Worringer and Heinrich Wöölfflin. This article presents a comparative approach to the relation between Deleuze's and these writers’’ (...) conception of the image and attempts to answer the following questions: does a painting appeal strictly to the sense of vision? Does its structure point to a virtual haptic function of vision and if so, does painting overturn the stable hierarchy of senses with vision at the top? Is there a gradual relation between touch and vision? Reading Deleuze reading Riegl, Worringer and Wöölfflin offers an occasion to reconsider the image as a tensive surface grasped with a touching eye and seeing hand. (shrink)

In the last decade, the financial underground markets evolved in a surprisingly way, around the world. Eastern Europe is a significant region, where illegal activities associated with the shadow economy became a real problem that affects the governments stability, the economical, political and social status. Due to the influence of old regimes and the current tolerance of the Eastern European nations, this underground corridors emphasize the risk of interfering with the financing platforms of international terrorism or organized crime.