Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Mark J. Cherry; Foundations of the Culture Wars: Compassion, Love, and Human Dignity, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7.

In studies of early Christian thought, 'philosophy' is often a synonym for 'Platonism', or at most for 'Platonism and Stoicism'. Nevertheless, it was Aristotle who, from the sixth century AD to the Italian Renaissance, was the dominant Greek voice in Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Aristotle and Early Christian Thoughtis the first book in English to give a synoptic account of the slow appropriation of Aristotelian thought in the Christian world from the second to the sixth century. Concentrating on the (...) great theological topics - creation, the soul, the Trinity, and Christology - it makes full use of modern scholarship on the Peripatetic tradition after Aristotle, explaining the significance of Neoplatonism as a mediator of Aristotelian logic. While stressing the fidelity of Christian thinkers to biblical presuppositions which were not shared by the Greek schools, it also describes their attempts to overcome the pagan objections to biblical teachings by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. (shrink)

Mark J. Cherry; The Body for Charity, Profit and Holiness: Commerce in Human Body Parts, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume.

The essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy explore an innovative voucher program for encouraging kidney donation. Discussions cluster around a number of central moral and political/theoretical themes: What are the direct and indirect health care costs and benefits of such a voucher system in human organs? Do vouchers lead to more effective and efficient organ procurement and allocation or contribute to greater inequalities and inefficiencies in the transplantation system? Do vouchers contribute to the inappropriate commodification (...) of human body parts? Is there a significant moral difference between such a voucher system and a market in human organs for transplantation? This paper argues that while kidney vouchers constitute a step in the right direction, fuller utilization of market-based incentives, including, but not limited to, barter exchanges, would save more lives and further reduce human suffering. (shrink)

The most important philosophy course that contemporary undergraduates may take is ethics. Concerned with how to live a human life, ethics becomes ever more urgent as life unfolds. As the teacher, a philosopher likely wonders about the interaction in the classroom. This paper explores that interaction. Taking a cue from Aristotle, it is argued that the teaching of ethics is an invitation to self-reflection and self-responsibility, more so than a passing on of a set of ethical principles or laws.

The legal basis of informed consent in Texas may on first examination suggest an unqualified affirmation of persons as the source of authority over themselves. This view of individuals in the practice of informed consent tends to present persons outside of any social context in general and outside of their families in particular. The actual functioning of law and medical practice in Texas, however, is far more complex. This study begins with a brief overview of the roots of Texas law (...) and public policy regarding informed consent. This surface account is then contrasted with examples drawn from the actual functioning of Texas law: Texas legislation regarding out-of-hospital do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. As a default approach to medical decision-making when patients lose decisional capacity and have failed to appoint a formal proxy or establish their wishes, this law establishes a defeasible presumption in favor of what the law characterizes as “qualified relatives” who can function as decision-makers for those terminal family members who lose decisional capacity. The study shows how, in the face of a general affirmation of the autonomy of individuals as if they were morally and socially isolated agents, space is nevertheless made for families to choose on behalf of their own members. The result is a multi-tier public morality, one affirming individuals as morally authoritative and the other recognizing the decisional standing of families. (shrink)

Organ procurement policy from the recently deceased recasts families into gatekeepers of a scarce medical resource. To the frustration of organ procurement teams, families do not always authorize organ donation. As a result, efforts to increase the number of organs available for transplantation often seek to limit the authority of families to refuse organ retrieval. For example, in some locales if a deceased family member has satisfied the legal conditions for first-person prior assent, a much looser and easier standard to (...) satisfy than informed consent, organ retrieval may proceed despite the family’s objections. Some countries have replaced voluntary consent to organ donation with forms of organ conscription. Often referred to under the misnomer “presumed consent,” such policies legalize the harvesting of organs at death, unless individuals exercise official options to opt out. As this article explores, however, there are good grounds for affirming the authority of the family to consent to or to deny organ donation on behalf of recently deceased family members, as well as to reject first-person assent and “presumed consent” policies of organ procurement. Insofar as individuals have failed clearly and competently to provide informed consent to organ donation, moral authorization for the use of the person and his body ought to be grounded on the foundational authority of the family, rather than the state’s supposed interests in obtaining organs for transplantation. (shrink)

The first fruits of the literary career of St. Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in 386 AD. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, investigate knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, the problem of evil, and the intriguing relationship of God and the soul. They also take up the ancient philosophical project of identifying the principles and practices that heal human desires in order (...) to attain happiness, renewing this philosophical endeavor with insights from Christian theology. Augustine's later books, such as the Confessions, would continue this project of healing desire, as would the writings of others including Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas. -/- Mark Boone's The Conversion and Therapy of Desire investigates the roots of this project at Cassiciacum, where Augustine is developing a Christian theology of desire, informed by Neoplatonism but transformed by Christian teaching and practices. (shrink)

Medicalization was the theme of the 29th European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care that included a panel session on the DSM and mental health. Philosophical critiques of the medical model in psychiatry suffer from endemic assumptions that fail to acknowledge the real world challenges of psychiatric nosology. The descriptive model of classification of the DSM 3-5 serves a valid purpose in the absence of known etiologies for the majority of psychiatric conditions. However, a consequence of the “atheoretical” (...) approach of the DSM is rampant epistemological confusion, a shortcoming that can be ameliorated by importing perspectives from the work of Jaspers and McHugh. Finally, contemporary psychiatry’s over-reliance on neuroscience and pharmacotherapy has led to a reductionist agenda that is antagonistic to the inherently pluralistic nature of psychiatry. As a result, the field has suffered a loss of knowledge that may be difficult to recover. (shrink)

While many have suggested that to withdraw medical interventions is ethically equivalent to withholding them, the moral complexity of actually withdrawing life supportive interventions from a patient cannot be ignored. Utilizing interplay between expository and narrative styles, and drawing upon our experiences with patients, families, nurses, and physicians when life supports have been withdrawn, we explore the changeable character of boundaries in end-of-life situations. We consider ways in which boundaries imply differences – for example, between cognition and performance – and (...) how the encounter with boundaries can generate altered meanings important for understanding decisions and actions in these contexts. We conclude that the reliance on mere roles to support the moral weight of withdrawing medical interventions is inadequate. Roles that lead us to such moments are exceeded by the responsibility encountered in such moments. And here, we suggest, is the momentous character of withdrawal: it presents the grave astonishment, the trembling awe, in the not-being-there of the other in death. (shrink)

Aristotle sets the horizons of our inquiry: What is it when we say we know something? And is the object of knowledge a universal or particular [tode ti] object? Aristotle's critique of Plato's theory of form/Forms in light of his notion of actuality has generated a variety of topics that frame our inquiry: "Understanding Eidos as Form in the Works of Aristotle as Plato's Critical Student"; "Aristotle on Plato's Forms as Causes"; "Notes on the Relationship between Plato's Parmenides and Aristotle's (...) Metaphysics Alpha"; "'Separate' and 'Inactive'? Aristotle's Most Challenging Critique of Plato's 'Forms'"; "Too Much Unity in a City Is Destructive of the City: Aristotle against Plato's Unification Project of the Polis"; "Aristotle on the Soul as Actuality"; "Delphic Piety in the De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias"; "Aristotle and Plotinus: Act and Potency and the Two Acts"; and "Al-Fārābīon Habit and Imagination." Here, the Peripatetic readings of form and actuality are parsed from the precipice of historical, analytic, and continental approaches to the mind/language/object problem, with advocacy of the importance of Aristotle's contribution to this inquiry for the present age. (shrink)

Examines the political significance of ideas about happiness through the work of utilitarian philosophers William Thompson and Jeremy Bentham. Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred years by its founder, Jeremy Bentham. (...) In Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement, Mark J. Kaswan examines the work of William Thompson, a friend of Bentham’s who nonetheless offers a very different utilitarian philosophy and political theory based on a different conception of happiness, but whose work has been largely overlooked. Kaswan reveals the importance of our ideas about happiness for our understanding of the basic principles and nature of democracy, its role in society and its character as a social institution. In what is the closest examination of Thompson’s political theory to date, Kaswan moves from philosophy to theory to practice, starting with conceptions of happiness before moving to theories of utility, then to democratic theory, and finally to practice in the first detailed account of how Thompson’s ideas laid the foundations for the cooperative movement, which is now the world’s largest democratic social movement. Mark J. Kaswan is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and J. Robert Beyster and Michael W. Huber Fellow, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. (shrink)

A warranted belief may derive inferential warrant from warranted beliefs which support it. It may possess what I call coherential warrant in virtue of beingconsistent with, or lacking improbability relative to, a large system of warranted beliefs. Finally, it may have foundational warrant, which does not derive from other beliefs at all. I define and distinguish these sources of warrant and explain why all three must be included in the true and complete account of the structure of knowledge, and why (...) the first two sources are significant at all levels of knowledge. Only foundherentism and a weak version of foundationalism can satisfy this criterion. My analysis has significant, and happy, consequences for the epistemological tradition. The project of describing the structure of knowledge is nearly complete. Those who have pronounced the death of epistemology are partially correct, not because epistemology has failed, but because it has been so successful. (shrink)

In the study of American law, originalism is primarily a theory about the meaning of the Constitution-that its meaning can only change when its words change. Originalism also appears in biblical theology as a theory on the meaning of the Biblethat its meaning is that intended by the original authors. Originalism in Theology and Law: Comparing Perspectives on the Bible and the Constitution offers a study of originalism in both the Bible and the Constitution. While there are significant connections between (...) originalism as a theory of biblical interpretation and as Constitutional interpretation, there are also differences in the type of text as well as its purpose, function, origins, or authority, which may affect which nuanced version of originalism best fits a particular text, or the best method of interpreting it. (shrink)

The degree of incoherence, when previsions are not made in accordance with a probability measure, is measured by either of two rates at which an incoherent bookie can be made a sure loser. Each bet is considered as an investment from the points of view of both the bookie and a gambler who takes the bet. From each viewpoint, we define an amount invested (or escrowed) for each bet, and the sure loss of incoherent previsions is divided by the escrow (...) to determine the rate of incoherence. Potential applications include the treatment of arbitrage opportunities in financial markets and the degree of incoherence of classical statistical procedures. We illustrate the latter with the example of hypothesis testing at a fixed size. (shrink)

Mark J. Cherry; Searching for the Truly Human: Standing at the Precipice of a Post-Christian Age, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Moralit.

This chapter explores the experiential reality of the family and its role in securing human well-being. I argue that the family is an epistemic category as well as an ontological category: it reveals the being of the phenomenological life-world in ways that are necessary for adequately appreciating the embodiment of human health and well-being. Without the family, there are significant areas of human flourishing about which one can neither know nor experience. The family uncovers categories of moral duties and virtues (...) central to the creation and maintenance of core areas of human well-being. Familial interactions, for example, routinely demonstrate significant forms of altruistic behavior and other-directed personal costs at levels that are atypical of nonfamilial relationships. Moreover, significant cross-cultural sociobiological data support the conclusion that family life provides social, emotional, adaptive, and financial advantages, as well as the development of affective autonomy, increased longevity, improved physical and psychological health. Conversely, traumatic changes to family life, such as the death of a spouse, are well-documented as negatively impacting personal stability, life-expectancy, and overall well-being. In short, to focus unduly on the individual in isolation from the family is to diminish this rich and significant category of human good and well-being. (shrink)

Accounts of natural law moral philosophy and theology sought principles and precepts for morality, law, and other forms of social authority, whose prescriptive force was not dependent for validity on human decision, social influence, past tradition, or cultural convention, but through natural reason itself. This volume critically explores and assesses our contemporary culture wars in terms of: the possibility of natural law moral philosophy and theology to provide a unique, content-full, canonical morality; the character and nature of moral pluralism; the (...) limits of justifiable national and international policy seeking to produce and preserve human happiness, social justice, and the common good; the ways in which morality, moral epistemology, and social political reform must be set within the broader context of an appropriately philosophically and theologically anchored anthropology. This work will be of interest to philosophers, theologians, bioethicists, ethicists and political scientists. (shrink)

Brain transplants have long been no more than the subject of science fiction and engaging thought experiments. That is no longer true. Neuroscientists have announced their intention to transplant the head of a volunteer onto a donated body. Response has been decidedly mixed. How should we think about the moral permissibility of head transplants? Is it a life-saving/life-enhancing opportunity that appropriately expands the boundaries of medical practice? Or, is it a bioethical morass that ought not to be attempted? For the (...) purposes of this paper, I set aside questions regarding the surgical operation’s technological plausibility so as to focus on very basic questions regarding personal identity and the morality of head transplantation. The analysis begins with an exploration of the embodiment of persons. It considers whether persons can be conceptually distinguished from all parts of their body, even if they cannot be physically separated from some parts without loss of personhood. It argues that in most cases replacing body parts with reasonably similar parts will not destroy the conditions for sustaining personhood. However, as I explore, the phenomenology of personhood is such that some physical changes may prove to be too significant to maintain personal identity successfully over time. Given such complexity and the significance of the costs involved, the moral permissibility of head transplantation likely depends on recognizing that persons may give permission to collaborate in common activities, including projects with which others deeply disagree, provided that they only utilize the services and resources of free and consenting others. (shrink)

From environmental justice to environmental citizenship -- Citizens, citizenship and citizenization -- Rethinking environment and citizenship : ecological citizenship as a politics of obligation and virtues -- Environmental governance, social movements and citizenship in a global -- Context -- Corporate responsibility and environmental sustainability -- Environmental borderlands -- Insiders and outsiders in environmental mobilizations in Southeast Asia -- Citizenship generation, NGO campaigns and community-based research -- Acting and changing through lived experience : the new vocabulary of ecological citizenship, a new (...) research strategy. (shrink)

The question I investigate concerns the ethics of clinical ethics consultation. To begin, I reconstruct and critically assess a widespread understanding of clinical medical ethics, one most prominently advanced by Mark Siegler. That examination reveals an overtly political strategy designed to reinforce physician authority. Next, John La Puma's work is discussed. Arguably the most prominent of Siegler's students, and certainly the most prolific, La Puma appears attentive to the problems in Siegler's view regarding clinical judgment. I conclude, however, that (...) La Puma assumes a relatively flexible system of formal rules and more extensive informal codes which define the concepts and procedures of medical consultation and which he simply transcribes for ethics consultation. ;Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin have apparently endorsed this medicalized strategy. They contend that the view of ethics advocated by these physicians represents a "new" casuistry consistent if not identical to their own theory. I show that the casuist method of clinical ethical decision making simply appropriates features of the diagnostic apparatus embedded in the political economy of the enterprise of medicine and makes the role of ethicist parasitic on that of the physician as expert. Their casuistry, I argue, merely serves as a means to reinforce the standardized apparatus of professional authority exercised in medical procedures and concepts. ;Finally, I sketch an alternative way to think about how experience with other persons informs ethical decision making. On the basis of an extensive and nuanced account of an ethics consultation, I argue that to consult as a clinical philosopher in any situation is, necessarily, to be focused on that individual situation for its own sake. Clinical philosophy, as a result, must be done by attending strictly to what appears as it appears: the issues, concerns, and questions expressed, in their own terms, by those individuals whose situation it is. (shrink)

Argues that Plato's dialogues contain a surprisingly neglected account of Socrates' education about the love of noble virtue and that recovering this education could help broaden and deepen liberalism's moral and political horizon.

A foundational human attraction to mammalian neoteny may be crucial for preservation of our own species, but it can be counterproductive in relationships between humans and other animals. The deeply rooted human psychological attraction to and preference for anthropomorphically viewed neotenic characteristics explains why some animals, whether endangered or not, receive far more public attention and scientific study than others. An understanding of the neoteny barrier makes it possible to find ways around it: The barrier may not be possible to (...) break, but it can be modified by scientific awareness of its existence and an alteration of public perception of value to include animals who would not, in neotenic terms, be considered cute. (shrink)

Political metaphors do more than punch up messages; they can systematically bias observers’ attitudes toward the issue at hand. What, then, is an effective strategy for counteracting a metaphor’s influence? One could ignore or criticize the metaphor, emphasizing strong counterarguments directly pertaining to the target issue. Yet if observers rely on it to understand a complicated issue, they may be reluctant to abandon it. In this case, a “metaphor extension” strategy may be effective: Encourage observers to retain the metaphor but (...) reinterpret its meaning by considering other, less obvious implications. The current studies support this claim. Under conditions where participants gained a strong epistemic benefit from a rhetorical metaphor, they were more persuaded by a rebuttal that extended that metaphor. The studies use converging operational definitions of epistemic benefit and offer insight into how political attitudes are made and unmade. (shrink)

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. To be clear, I do not think that blood transfusions necessarily...

Since America was founded, faith informed its moral genius. From the Declaration of Independence to the work of Martin Luther King Jr., belief in God positively shaped the moral awareness of the nation. This article suggests that political discourse emerging in the middle of the twentieth century, which effectively prohibits the mention of faith in serious political conversation, is having devastating consequences on the moral capacity of contemporary society. It suggests that such faith-less political discourse contradicts America’s founding logic. This (...) article also reasserts the Catholic claim that truth can be known and that in the face of faith-less political discourse, Catholics are morally bound to seek complete truth, which requires faith. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 687–693. (shrink)

In the Deese-Roediger/McDermott paradigm, distinctive encoding of list items typically reduces false recognition of critical lures relative to a read-only control. This reduction can be due to enhanced item-specific processing, reduced relational processing, and/or increased test-based monitoring. However, it is unclear whether distinctive encoding reduces false recognition in a selective or global manner. To examine this question, participants studied DRM lists using a distinctive item-specific anagram generation task and then completed a recognition test which included both DRM critical lures and (...) either strongly related lures or weakly related lures. Compared to a read-control group, the generate groups showed increased correct recognition and decreased false recognition of all lure types. We then estimated the separate contributions of encoding and retrieval processes using signal-detection indices. Generation improved correct recognition by both increasing encoding of memory information for list words and by increasing memory monitoring at test. Generation reduced false recognition by reducing the encoding of memory information and by increasing memory monitoring at test. The reduction in false recognition was equivalent for critical lures and related lures, indicating that generation globally reduces the encoding of related non-presented items at study, while globally increasing list-theme-based monitoring at test. (shrink)

The day-to-day work of clinical ethics consultants and healthcare ethics committees can easily become overly routine. Too much routine, however, comes with a risk that morally important practices will be reduced to mere bureaucratic formalities, while practitioners become desensitized to ethically significant distinctions between cases. Clinical ethics consultation and organizational ethics must be set within the broader social and cultural context of the healthcare environment. This practice requires looking beyond mere legal compliance and the routinely false assumption that there are (...) unambiguous ethical norms that easily govern clinical ethics and hospital policy formation. Together the essays in this issue of HEC Forum challenge readers to rethink taken-for-granted assumptions regarding patient care, physician obligation, clinical ethics consultation, and organizational ethics. (shrink)

Biomedical research today can be generally classified as human-based or nonhuman animal-based, each with separate and distinct review boards that must approve research protocols. Researchers wishing to work with humans or human tissues have become frustrated by the required burdensome approval panel, the Institutional Review Board. However, scientists have found it is much easier to work with the animal-based research review board, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Consequently, animals are used for investigations even when scientists believe these studies (...) should be performed with humans or human tissue. This situation deserves attention from society and more specifically the animal protection and patient advocate communities, as neither patients nor animals are well served by the present situation. (shrink)