This is the first volume in the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus of Ordo IV which comprises works on moral issues. It presents the panegyric of Philip the Fair , the father of Charles V, and the Education of Princes . Both works equally instruct princes how to behave morally. The third work in this volume treats language and praises the Word of God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSIENT NATURES AT THE EDGES OF HUMAN LIFE: A THOMISTIC EXPLORATION PHILIP SMITH, O.P. Providence College Providence, R.I. T:HE CONCEPT OF human nature as the intrinsic and wdical source of characteristic human a;ctivity has great mportanoe for natural law ethics. But olosely allied to the concept of human nature is the possibility of there being tmnsient natures in humans, and this rpossirbility has implications for human life at (...) its outer edges. What transient natures are wiill he discussed 1in detail below. Let us,say for now that they are the life principles of entities transition from one state of being to another. These forms enjoy only a temporary existence before they disappear and are replaced by other emerging forms.1 When applied to the outer limits of human existence, such transient natures offer useful insights for addressing the difficult problems of when personhood begins and when death occurs. Thomistic philosophy defines a human person a;s a combination of mrutte1· and,form, more oommorrly referred to as a unity of hody and soul.2 Relativie to the beginning of Jife and the 1 Such natures are discussed in William A. Wallace, 0.P., "Nature and Human Nature as the Norm in Medical Ethics,'' in Catholic Perspectives on Medical Morals, ed. E.D. Pellegrino et al., Philosophy and Medicine Series, Vol. 24 (Dordrecht-Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1989). This essay was originally presented at an international conference held at the Joseph and Rose Kenned,y Institute of Ethies of Georgetown UniYersity, October 13-16, 1986. For further background against which Wallace's discussion should be situated, see his "Nature as Animating: The Soul in the Human Sciences,'' The Thornist 49 (l985) : 612-6'18, and "The Intelligibility of Nature: A Neo-Aristotelian View," Rev,iew of Metaphysics 38 (1984): 33-56. 2 Thomas Aquinas, St., Surnrna Theologiae, I, q.29, a.4. 191 19Q PHILIP SMITH, O.P. onset of death, this philosophy of person raises the question of w:hen tihe soul is infused into the body and when :it is 1separated from it. Is the newly-fortiilized zygote capable of :receiving and sustaining the rational soul as its,substantirul form? Or must the genetic materials be informed by one or more transient natures before they achieve ithe internal unity and stability necessary :for personhood? At the end of life, the person dies when the soul leaves the body. Does personail death coincide with the death of the human organism as a whole? Or can the destruction of only an essential part of the body, e.g. tihe cerebral cortex, cause personal death by damaging the body so severely that it is simply incapable of supporting a :rational soul, even though the rest of the body remains intact and spontaneously alive? If so, is the remaining organism informed by a succession of transient substantiail forms that maintain its existence but at ever lower levels of life as it gradually declines toward total death? In examining these questions posed by the possibility of transient natures, my point of departure will be an analysis of transient natures themselves. Recently, William A. Wallace, O.P., has 'begun to eX!plore the philosophical meaning and implications of transient natures for issues such as these.a His findings will he summarized here. The insights gathered from the exploration of transient natures will next he applied to the questions of when personhood begins and when death occurs. This will necessarily employ a fraiilework embracing both tihe empirical and the philosophical, with the empirical looking to the available biological data and the philosophical inquiring about the impact o.f these data for determining the status of human life at its outer edges. Since Aquinas's natural philoss Wallace, "Nature and Human Nature...," pp. 23-51. Additional background for his researches, apart from the essays cited in note l above, will be found in his "The Reality of Elementary Particles," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 38 (1964): pp. 154-166, and "Elementarity and Reality in Particle Physics," Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 171-183 and pp. 185-212. TRANSIENT... (shrink)

PHOTO ID 121339257© Designer491| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT When physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be apparent conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters future physicians’ commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. We use an ethical dilemma that was presented to a group of third-year medical students to examine how ethics education might be causing (...) them to give undue deference to autonomy, thereby undermining their commitment to beneficence. INTRODUCTION The right of patients to choose which treatments they prefer is rooted in today’s social mores and taught as a principle of medical ethics as respect for autonomy. Yet, when physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be a conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters a commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. I. An Ethical Dilemma The impetus for this paper arose when students who were completing their third clinical year discussed a real-life ethical dilemma. A middle-aged man developed a pulmonary hemorrhage while on blood thinners for a recently placed coronary stent. The bleeding was felt to be reversible, but the patient needed immediate intubation or he would die. The cardiologist was told that the patient previously expressed to other physicians that he never wanted to be intubated. However, the cardiologist made the decision to intubate the patient anyway, and the patient eventually recovered.[1] Students were asked if they believed that the cardiologist had acted ethically. Their overwhelming response was, “No, the patient should have been allowed to die.” We looked into how students applied ethical reasoning to conclude that this outcome was ethically preferred. To explore how the third-year clinical experience might have formed the students’ judgment, we presented the same case to students who were just beginning their third year. Their responses were essentially uniform in recommending intubation. While there is likely more than one reasonable view in this case, we agree with the physician and the younger medical students that intubation was the ethically appropriate decision and will present an argument for it. But first, we explain the reasoning behind the more advanced medical students’ decision to choose patient autonomy at the expense of beneficence. II. Medical Ethics Education and the Priority of Autonomy Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, first published in 1979 and now in its 8th edition, is a significant part of the formal ethics education in medical school.[2] Students learn an ethical decision-making approach based on respect for four ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. While Beauchamp and Childress officially afford no prima facie superiority to any principle, the importance of respect for patient autonomy has increased through the editions of their book. For example, early editions of their book opposed the legalization of physician-assisted death compared to recent editions that defended it.[3] As another example, Beauchamp and Childress make paternalism harder to justify by adding an autonomy-protecting condition to the list of conditions for acceptable paternalism.[4] Authority, they contend, need not conflict with autonomy—provided the authority is autonomously chosen.[5] “The main requirement,” they write, “is to respect a particular patient’s or subject’s autonomous choices, whatever they may be.[6] In the principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, autonomy now seems to have a kind of default priority.[7] However, the bioethics discourse has strong counternarratives, noting some movement to elevate the role of beneficence and to respect the input of stakeholders, including the family and the healthcare team. Ethics education achieves particular relevance in the third clinical year when students become embedded in the care of patients and learn from what has been called the informal curriculum. They observe how attending physicians approach day-to-day ethical problems at the patient’s bedside. In this context, students observe the importance of informed consent for serious treatments or invasive procedures, a practice that highlights the principle of patient autonomy. In both the formal and informal curriculum, medical students observe how, in the words of Paul Wolpe, “patient autonomy has become the central and most powerful principle in ethical decision-making in American medicine.”[8] In short, students appear to learn a deference for patient autonomy. This curricular shift in favor of autonomy coincides with legal developments that protect patients’ rights and decision-making with respect to their healthcare choices. The priority of autonomy in medicine benefits patients by reflecting their choices and, in some cases, their fundamental liberty. III. The Practice of Medicine and the Commitment to Beneficence There are many critiques of the dominant place that autonomy has in biomedical ethics,[9] especially considering that autonomy seems to be biased toward individualistic, Western, and somewhat American culture-driven values.[10] In addition, many bioethical dilemmas are cast as a conflict between autonomy and beneficence. Our point is that medical students bring to their study of medicine a commitment to beneficence that seems to be suppressed by practical ethics education. We think this commitment is rationally defensible and should be nurtured. It is striking that young medical students have a pre-reflective commitment to beneficence at all. For, as we mentioned, it is not just medicine but Western culture generally that prioritizes autonomy in settling ethical dilemmas. In wanting to act for the good of others (rather than simply agreeing to what others want), physicians are already swimming somewhat against the cultural tide.[11] However, doing so makes sense, given the nature of medicine and the profession of healing. When prospective medical students are asked why they wish to become physicians, the usual answer is some variation on caring for the sick and preventing disease. It is unlikely that a reason to become a physician is to respect a patient’s autonomy. It would be easy to dismiss medical students’ commitment to beneficence as a mere intuition and contrary to a more reasoned and deliberative approach. Beauchamp and Childress seem to minimize the value of physician intuition, stating that justifications for certain procedures are “…supported by good reasons. They need not rest merely in intuition or feeling.”[12] Henry Richardson writes that “situational or perceptive intuition…leaves the reasons for decision unarticulated.”[13] We think this is a crude and rather thin way of understanding intuition. Some bioethicists have defended intuition as essential to the practice of medicine and not something opposed to reason.[14] In the case we describe, we believe the ethical justifications s for the patient’s intubation are fundamentally sound: the patient did not have a “do not intubate” order written in the chart, the emergency intubation had not been foreseen, so the patient did not have the opportunity to consent to or reject intubation; the patient had consented to the treatment for his cardiac disease so his consent for intubation could have been assumed;[15] and the consequences of respecting his autonomy did not justify allowing him to die.[16] While it is possible to have more than one reasonable view on this case, we think the case for beneficence is strong and certainly should not be dismissed out of hand. We do not deny that if a patient makes a clearly documented, well-informed decision to forgo intubation that this decision ought to be respected by the physician (even if the physician disagrees with the patient’s decision). But, in this situation, as in many others in the practice of medicine, the patient’s real wishes and preferences are not well-articulated in advance. There are many cases where a physician acts based on what she believes the patient, or the surrogate, would want, sometimes in situations that do not allow much time for reflection. An example might be resuscitation of a newborn at the borderline of viability. In their ethics education, beneficence would mean acting first to save a life. If the patient or surrogate makes an informed decision to the contrary, a beneficent physician respects that autonomous decision. In the case presented, the patient expressed gratitude to the cardiologist when extubated. But what if he had expressed anger at the physician for violating his autonomy? There are those who could argue that not only was intubation ethically wrong but that the cardiologist put himself in legal jeopardy by his actions (especially if there had been a written refusal applicable to the specific situation). In the example we use, we point out that the cardiologist may not have escaped a lawsuit if the patient had died without intubation. His family, when hearing the circumstances, may have sued for failure to act and dereliction of the cardiologist’s duty to save him. Beyond a potential legal challenge for either action or inaction, there is an overriding ethical question the cardiologist had to address: what course would be most satisfying to his conscience? Would he rather allow a patient to die for fear of recrimination, or act to save his life, regardless of the personal consequences? In the absence of real knowledge about the patient’s considered wishes, it is most reasonable to err on the side of promoting patient well-being. A physician’s commitment to beneficence is not necessarily a way of undermining a patient’s autonomy. In acting for the patient's good, physicians are also acting on what it is reasonable to believe a patient (or most patients, perhaps) would want, which is obviously connected to what a patient does want. Pellegrino and Thomasma argue that beneficence includes respect for a patient’s autonomy since “the best interests of the patient are intimately linked with their preferences.”[17] Instead of conceptualizing ethical dilemmas in medicine as conflicts between autonomy and beneficence, it is possible that medical schools could teach students that truly practicing beneficence is a way of valuing patient autonomy, especially when the patient’s wishes are not specific to the situation and are not clearly expressed. CONCLUSION It is important for students and practicing physicians to understand the principle of respect for patient autonomy in a pluralistic society that demands personal self-determination. However, the role of the physician as a beneficent healer should not be diminished by this respect for autonomy. Respecting a patient’s autonomy is grounded in and manifested by physician beneficence.[18] That is, seeking what is good for the patient can only be good if it respects their personhood and dignity. We propose that a commitment to beneficence, incipient in young medical students, should be developed over time with their other clinical reasoning skills. Such a commitment need not be sacrificed on the altar of patient autonomy. Beneficence needs greater relative moral weight with students as they proceed in their ethics education. - [1] S. Jauhar, “When Doctors Need to Lie,” New York Times, February 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/when-doctors-need-to-lie.html. [2] T. L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). [3] Louise A. Mitchell, “Major Changes in Principles of Biomedical Ethics,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 459–75, https://doi.org/10.5840/ncbq20141438. [4] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 238. [5] Beauchamp and Childress, 103. [6] Beauchamp and Childress, p. 108. [7] For other accounts that prioritize autonomy, see e.g. Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38–39; R Gillon, “Ethics Needs Principles—Four Can Encompass the Rest—and Respect for Autonomy Should Be ‘First among Equals,’” Journal of Medical Ethics 29, no. 5 (October 2003): 307–12, https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.29.5.307. For examples of critiques of these accounts, see footnote 9. [8] P. R. Wolpe, “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise, p. 43. [9] V. A. Entwistle et al., “Supporting Patient Autonomy: The Importance of Clinician-Patient Relationships,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 25, no. 7 (July 2010): 741–45; C. Foster, Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and Law, 1st ed. (Oxford ; Hart Publishing, 2009); O. O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh 2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). [10] P. Marshall and B. Koenig, “Accounting for Culture in a Globalized Bioethics,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32, no. 2 (2004): 252–66; R. Fan, “Self-Determination vs. Family-Determination: Two Incommensurable Principles of Autonomy,” Bioethics 11, no. 3–4 (1997): 309–22. [11] Arguments stressing the importance of beneficence, as ours does here, certainly approach paternalistic arguments. We set aside the complex issue of paternalism for purposes of this paper and simply note that the principle of beneficence as such does not say anything specifically about acting against the patient’s will. In the case study that focuses this paper, we do not believe the patient’s will or wishes were clearly indicated. [12] Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, p. 20, see note 2 above. [13] H. S. Richardson, “Specifying, Balancing, and Interpreting Bioethical Principles,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 25, no. 3 (January 1, 2000): 285–307, p. 287. [14] H. D. Braude, Intuition in Medicine a Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2012). [15] R. Kukla, “Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care,” The Hastings Center Report 35, no. 2 (2005): 34–44. [16] M. Schermer, The Different Faces of Autonomy: Patient Autonomy in Ethical Theory and Hospital Practice, vol. 13, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002). [17] E. D. Pellegrino and D. C. Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good - the Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 29. [18] Pellegrino and Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and Philosophy from Plato's Phaedo to the Chaldaean Oracles PHILIP MERLAN A FEW YEARSAGO another of the so-called Orphic tablets was found? Like the previously known ones~it is an instruction for the deceased--it tells him what he will find in the beyond and how he is to act to secure for himself a blessed afterlife. As a rule the tablets differ somewhat in their wording and the (...) newly found is particularly remarkable in that the deceased, when asked by the guards of the Spring of Memory what his business here is, is instructed to answer, "I am a child of the Earth and o~octvo~5~aveOo~v~og ~ and my name is Asterios. ''~ Now, it is generally recognized that the tablets are the product of some mystery religion? The new tablet suggests that part of its initiation ceremony might have been the experience of a mock death and a mock rebirth, the latter symbolized by the assuming of a new name? XN. M. Verdelis, "XaXr~ 7eCp6~oxos raX~rls ~x r 'ApxaLoXoy~K ~ 'Er 1950-1951 (Athens, 1951), pp. 80-105, esp. pp. 99-105. 2 Their text can be found in any edition of Diels-Kranz, VS. New finds: N. M. Verdelis, '0pr162 ~,&rt*ara ~ Kpr "Ap~ca~oXo*t~x~"E~tzep~ 1953-54, Second Part (Athens, 1958), pp. 56-60. On their character (Orphic? Pythagorean?), see F. Cumont, Lex perpetua (Paris, 1944), p. 406. Which mystery religion professed these two as obviously the highest deities? One is tempted to think of the mysteries of Samothrace, as in them these two deities played a conspicuous role according to Varro, De lingua lat. V 58 (cf. B. Cardauns, Varros 'Logistoricus' iiber die G6tterverehrung [Wiirzburg, 1960], pp. 60-67). 4 dar (~po4pro~)seems to me an evident conjecture by Verdelis. See, e.g., M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, Vol. 2 (Miinchen, 1950), pp. 223-227. 0This is the assumption of Verdelis, XaXxr ~'e,~0~oxo~ with which I agree. On baptismal names see, e.g., A Oepke, "AM~IOAAEIY~ im griechischen und hellenistischen Kult," Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft 31 (1934), pp. 42-56, esp. 52, note 5 (den Anstoss---scil. to bestowing of a new name on the initiate--gaben wohl primitive Wiedergeburtsgedanken). It seems to me that the Pindaric lines praising him who descends to the netherworld if he had been initiated, because he ot~e ~p fllov.reXew'gu,/olSeJ,~b.&6a~orol,tlpx~p (fr. 137a Sch) are to be explained by assuming that Pindar is here alluding to the experience of mock death (~-~,ev~-~) and mock rebirth (apX~), though it remains unclear whether the initiate experienced them in his own person or was only shown something (e.g. the burial of a seed followed by its shooting into an ear) symbolizing such events. [163] 164 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY And it is only natural to suppose that the initiation ceremony was preceded by some kind of ritual purification. In one more respect the new tablet is remarkable. It is the oldest we know. It belongs to the mid-fourth century. And this means that perhaps only a few years separate it from the date of the publication of Plato's Phaedo.' Now, as everybody knows, the Phaedo has something to say on mystery religions. Socrates first explains to his friends why he is not only not afraid of death but even looking forward to it. All his life long, he says, he was a philosopher and philosophy, as he sees it, is nothing else but ~X~-c~l0ctvd,ov. And as he explains in what way philosophy is a preparation for death, he time and again uses for the description of the philosopher's way of life the word 'pure' and its cognates (Phaedo 67d-e; 69a6-e5 [~d~}aqot~,•, ~xa0a0~vog], so that in the end the philosopher's way of life can by Socrates be described as purification-obviously purification not in its ritual sense of the word but, as Socrates sees it, in its true sense. And now Socrates clinches his argument and says: And it seems indeed that the men to whom we are indebted for the institution of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minor Socratics* PHILIP MERLAN OF MEN MORE OR LESS DECISIVELY influenced by Socrates, three--Antisthenes (c. 455-360), Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-356), and Eucleides of Megara (c. 450380 )--became founders of schools (or sects) often referred to as "minor Socratic schools." These schools are the Cynic, the Cyrenaic, and the Megaric, respectively. The names of the last two are self-explanatory. That of the first sounds somewhat like "dog (kytn)-like." (...) By some it is assumed to have been derived from the meeting place of Antisthenes with his followers, the gymnasium of Kynosarges; x others believe it to be contemptuously indicative of the dog-like life of the members of the sect (shamelessness, begging, barking, biting). 2 In this sense it was proudly and defiantly accepted by the members themselves, a What we know of the ethical teachings of the Megaric school amounts to hardly more than one sentence, in which the Good seems to have been identified with the One. 4 All we can say of this formula is that it, in some way, links the * Size (very limited), scope (ethical doctrines only), manner of presentation (for the general reader and rather dogmatic), etc., of this article were determined by the character of the Encyclopedia of Morals, in which it originally appeared. The present footnotes try to make up for some of the shortcomings unavoidable in this kind of article. [The Journal is grateful to Philosophical Library, Inc. for permission to reprint this article. The footnotes were subsequently added by Professor Merlan and appear here for the first time.] As the only collection of fragments of Cynics (Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Monimus, Demonax, Oenomaus, Teles, Bion) is that contained in F. W. A. Mullach, Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum (Paris: 1865), vol. II, pp. 274-429, which is hard to obtain (the collection of fragments by A. W. Winekelmann, Antisthenis fragmenta [1842] even harder), I shall quote them directly from the sources. There was no need to do so with the Cyrenaics, as we have two recent collections of their fragments: G. Giannantoni, 1 Cirenaici (Florence, n.d.: [1958])--they will be quoted as G--and E. Mannebach, Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum fragmenta (K~51n-Leiden: 1961), which will be quoted as Ma. A generous selection of fragments of Megarians, Cynics and Cyrenaics in German translation with introduction and notes is contained in W. Nestle, Die Sokratiker (Jena: 1922), pp. 79-177. Our knowledge of Antisthenes would considerably be enriched if we could follow H. Kesters, who, in a number of publications (one of them: Plaidoyer d'un Socratique... [Louvain: 1959]) ascribes Themistius, Or. XXVI to Antisthenes. However, the ascription is doubtful. i I.e., Whitehound: D.L. VI 13. Elias, In Cat. (CAG XVIII/I, Berlin: 1908), p. Ill, 2-29. Busse has a fourfold explanation of the name, all connected with the word Kt~v. Cf. K. v. Fritz, Quellenuntersuchungen zu Leben und Philosophie des Diogenes von Sinope (Leipzig: 1926), pp. 47-49. D.L. VI 60. 55; Stob. vol. III, p. 462, 16 W.-H. Quotations from Stobaeus refer to: K. Wachsmuth, O. Hense, loannis Stobaei Anthologium, 5 vol. (Berlin: 1884-1902); they are by volume, page, and line of this edition. 4 Eus. PE XIV 17, 1; D.L. II 106 (~v x6 dtTu06v). [143] 144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Megarians to the Eleatic school 5 but also to some aspects of Plato's Philebus and his Laws, and also to the Epinomis, and, above all, to his lecture or course of lectures "The Good," the conclusion of which was that it is the One which is the Good. 6 And though we know that many Megarians were engaged in political activities,7 we do not know in what way, if any, that highly abstract ethical doctrine was linked to practice. It is entirely different with the other two schools, in which ethical theory is immediately applied to life and theoretical aspects of philosophy are often neglected or even absent. However, there is some doubt as to whether Antisthenes can actually be considered the fountainhead of Cynicism. He seems to have undergone the influence of Socrates late in his life, when he had already been active as a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 327 conceptual impositions and consider nirvana in the light of its own "intentional infrastructure." Interpreted as doctrine, nirvana is a wooden category; as a path, subtle and paradoxical, a factor celebrated in the later Mahayana texts (samsara is nirvana; nirvana is samsara). In pleading for sensitivity to context, Welbon maintains that the Buddha was not a philosopher, much less a nineteenth-century one, but a saint and a (...) "genius as a soteriological tactician": Depending on the context and in particular the needs of the individual(s) to whom he spoke, his emphasis varied. To those full of self, his message was expressed negatively. To those full of fear, the message expressed confidence. To those full of suffering, the message expressed hope. (p. 300) Nirvana's "meanings," then, are many, and include "both annihilation and bliss, negation and affirmation, nonexistence and existence" (p. 302). Yet the author's primary concern is not simply to advance one more theory of nirvana, lined up beside the rest; it is rather to elucidate the role of theory in its relation to intercultural and history of religions data. Interpretations are themselves phenomena whose intentionality, context, or history must be clarified. The differences between the scholars surveyed in this book stem not so much from varying conclusions about given data as from differences of premise and method; they are differences of questions rather than answers. Nirvana, a religious ultimate without the conception of deity, has indeed been a classic stumbling block to Western theories. The encounter, Welbon suggests, documents not only a history of methodological shortcomings, but "the fragile and inadequate nature of our understanding of what religion itself may be" (p. 301). WILLIAM E. PADEN University of Vermont Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia, A Translation and Commentary. By James C. O'Flaherty. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967. Pp. xv+229. $7.50) Johann Georg Hamann, Philosophy and Faith. By W. M. Alexander. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Pp. xii+212. Gld. 28.25) America continues to contribute more than a fair share to the study of Hamann ---even though the Hamann News-Letter, edited by James C. O'Flaherty, had to stop appearing in 1963. It is now the same O'Flaherty who opens wide the gates for the study of Hamann in the English-speaking world by translating the Socratic Memorabilia and providing an introduction and explanatory notes. The Memorabilia without doubt offer the best first approach to Hamann. t But so great is the obscurity of Hamann that it is by no means sure that the Memorabilia have now become an exotericum. Before reviewing O'Flaherty's book I shall therefore present the content of the Memorabilia. If only we had simple blow-by-blow accounts of all of his writings before we embark on a wholesale interpretation! a For decades they were available in Reclams Universalbibliothek (in c. 1914 at a price of about three cents) and have now (August, 1968) been republished (together with Hamann's Aesthetica in nuce) with excellent notes and a commentary by Sven-Aage Jorgensen (present price: about twenty cents). In 1959 F. Blanke published another amply annotated edition with an extensive thorough commentary. 328 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The purpose of the Memorabilia is to "convert" two friends of Hamann, Kant and Berens, from Enlightenment to Christianity (the two tried to do the opposite to Hamann) and to defend himself and his Christianity from their criticisms. To do so, Hamann decides to use philosophic rather than religious language. In so doing he will present himself as another Socrates, because, as Hamann sees it, it was the mission of Socrates to lead the Athenians to the unknown God, thus prefiguring the mission of St. Paul, and because Socrates opposed the then "enlighteners," viz., the Sophists. In so doing he furthermore compares some of his own character traits (for which he was blamed by Kant and Berens) and some events in his life with Socratic ones. But as he compares (equates) Socrates with the prophets and with Jesus, he by the same token compares (equates) himself with them. Of course, Hamann knows that the Enlightenment also admired Socrates. But it did so for entirely wrong reasons: they praised... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:708 BOOK REVIEWS it can he noted that God must ultimately be understood within Aquinas's entire thought as the source of Trinitarian missions becoming present to people and not just as a being with a sublime simplicity and immutability who in the past set forth an array of beings. Revelation and salvation in Hegel are mentioned: but they do not quite escape the evolving depth of an incomplete God, (...) nor do they adorn and expand a human being whose particularity and limits are more than tragedy and opposition. From this dialogue admirably advanced by Brito's book, we understand why Aquinas must always be preserved from the mechanics (never more exciting than when applied to God) which neo-scholasticisms compulsively construct, and why Hegel must be studied for the dynamic of his thought-forms but not for his conclusions without resolution. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana THOMA§ F. O'MEARA, O.P. Work in the Spirit. By MmosLAv VoLF. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xviii+ 252. $32.50 (cloth). Miroslav Volf initiates his theological inquiry by exammmg the contemporary situation of work, its transformation from a world of agricultural and industrial production into a system of information technologies. He attentively notes that this contemporary technology brings with it both advantages and disadvantages for workers. He also examines crises such as unemployment and discrimination which ac· company employment today. Despite both the ambiguity which accompanies the change in production and the threatening uncertainties caused by the current crises, he nevertheless emphasizes the duality of work: people consistently find their work to be both curse and delight. VoH wishes to emphasize this twin feature so that the theology he fashions wm he realistic and active. Volf pursues a theology of work which can account for varied developments in quite different economies and for the needs of succeeding generations. Thus Volf describes the activity of work in terms which are invariant with respect to time and place. By a theology which is adequate to this global concept of work, he means one " developed on the basis of a specifically Christian soteriology and eschatology. o. " (79). While Volf maintains an attention to the Christian traditions in recalling soteriology, he downplays a creation-based understanding of work in favor of one which is eschatological. Work is a cooperation with God in the transforming of the world on the way toward the new BOOK REVIEWS 709 creation of the end-time. Volf's laying-out the transformative character of work is insightful. It avoids the recurrent consequences of a theology of work based solely on creation: effort without limit and sullen acceptance of the toil. How does he accomplish this? First, he explores the lodes of dominant theoretical understandings of work by examining the.thought of A. Smith and K. Marx. Second, he presses for a pneumatological understanding of work. That is, he holds that rthe presence of the Spirit is key to human activity (133). Volf makes use of the theological tradition of the charisms in order to present more completely how human effort and divine activity can cooperate in work. Charisms are personal capacities which achieve development through interaction with the Spirit (112 and 130). He. (shrink)

29 o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL t996 J. Burnet, Oxford, 19oz ) is excluded, as are influential works in foreign languages. Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I is included 077); it was later translated into German . The converse does not hold: P. Friedl~inder's Platon 049-43) is included, but its English translation is not. F. Solmsen's Plato's Theology is not included, nor is his "Plato and the Unity of Science,"s although it was reprinted (...) in Solmsen's Kleine Schriften4 and Soimen's German articles reprinted there are included. As the international Plato Forschungsberichte of Ritter5 demonstrate even for the Germany of the early decades of this century, the world of scholarship knows no national bound- aries. The present attempt to impose them on Platonic studies results in a highly artificial work of bibliography. 6 RICHARD McKIRAHAN Pomona College Carl A. Huffman. Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic: A Commentary on the Fragments and Testimonia with Interpretive Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xix + 444- Cloth, $1oo.oo. Pythagoreanism used to play a major role in accounts of Presocratic philosophy. Follow- ing the testimony of ancient Platonists, the Pythagoreans were seen as Plato's precur- sors in cosmology, on the soul, and on Ideas and numbers; and attempts were made to reconstruct the systematic philosophy of the Pythagoreans, or even of Pythagoras himself. Now, however,.. (shrink)

We prove that a form of the $Erd\H{o}s$ property (consistent with $V = L\lbrack H_{\omega_2}\rbrack$ and strictly weaker than the Weak Chang's Conjecture at ω1), together with Bounded Martin's Maximum implies that Woodin's principle $\psi_{AC}$ holds, and therefore 2ℵ0 = ℵ2. We also prove that $\psi_{AC}$ implies that every function $f: \omega_1 \rightarrow \omega_1$ is bounded by some canonical function on a club and use this to produce a model of the Bounded Semiproper Forcing Axiom in which Bounded Martin's Maximum (...) fails. (shrink)

Today, in both theory and practice, the concepts of corporate social responsibility and ethics are not necessarily related. Organizations can demonstrate high levels of social proactivity in their CSR policies with or without having laudable levels of ethical quality or virtuousness. This article introduces the concepts of organizational ethical quality to evaluate the moral excellence of CSR actions and policies, identifying and categorizing varying levels ranging from the absence of ethical virtuousness, termed immoral CSR, to high levels of moral CSR, (...) or ethical virtuousness. High MCSR is the product of both high levels of OEQ in conjunction with more proactive CSR policies based on social action. (shrink)

Queer Impact and Practices brings together chapters arising from the third annual Queering Paradigms conference. Queer Theory is still evolving and extending the range of its enquiry. It maps out new territories via radical contestations of the categories of gender and sexuality. This approach de-centers assumptions of heteronormativity, but at the same time critiques a new homonormativity. This book incorporates the work of queer theorists and queer activists who are seeking new boundaries to cross as well as new disciplines and (...) social relations to queer. The sections of this book interrogate the impact of Queer Theory in studies of culture, nationalism, ethnography, linguistics, psychology, intimacy and activism. Chapters address contemporary theorizing about gay citizenship and 'homonationalism' as well as a critique of gay visibility. Other topics include the symbolics of queer subversion and transgression in performers who transgress gender and sexuality codes. Queer activists extend their analysis into the world of punk, Buddhist religious teaching and Native Studies. This book demonstrates that Queer Theory, as well as being a disposition, is now deployed by many researchers as a legitimate framework of analysis that questions many of the categories, constructs and relationships we encounter in twenty-first century society." -- Publisher's information. (shrink)

La révolution par d’autres moyensLa politique féministe en tant que réinstitution dans la pensée de Merleau-PontyCet essai est une tentative pour surmonter l’impasse qui a été relevée par de nombreuses critiques féministes de Merleau-Ponty, à savoir que sa dernière ontologie bloque certaines perspectives de changement politique. De fait, comme le soutenait Luce Irigaray, l’ontologie de la chair semble être un discours normalisant et totalisant dépourvu de toute différence. « Il n’y a pas d’Autre, écrit-elle, pour garder le monde ouvert ». (...) Étant donné que Merleau-Ponty développe une ontologie qui opère en amont du niveau des personnes et des choses proprement dites, on a souvent supposé prima facie que les projets féqministes, qui cherchent à fournir des fondements pour éliminer l’oppression basée sur le genre, n’y ont rien à faire.Malgré la longue tradition de débat féministe avec la centralisation du corps dans des textes tels que la Phénoménologie de la perception, je cherche ici à rediriger les philosophes féministes vers la dernière ontologie de Merleau-Ponty. Je le fais en lisant son ouvrage politique trop souvent négligé, Les aventures de la dialectique, ainsi que les notes de cours, récemment traduites en anglais, de l’année 1954-1955 sur L’institution et la Passivité. Non seulement, ces textes émergent à un moment critique dans le corpus merleau-pontien, mais encore, ils contiennent des possibilités politiques qui résultent de ce moment particulier. Dans ces textes et à travers eux, je propose une réexamen de l’engagement féministe dans l’oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty, libéré du discours sur le corps et dirigé, en revanche, vers un désir de changement politique enraciné dans le cadre institutionnel que l’on pourrait appeler aussi l’« intermonde ». Pour ce faire, lepremier pas, comme je le montre dans cet essai, est de prendre au sérieux le concept de “revolution” et ses développements dans l’ensemble du corpus merleau-pontien.La rivoluzione con altri mezziLa politica femminista come reistituzione nel pensiero di Merleau-PontyQuesto saggio è un tentativo di chiarire come molte critiche rivolte a Merleau-Ponty da parte del femminismo rischino di condurre in un vicolo cieco. Il problemafondamentale è il seguente: se la tarda ontologia di Merleau-Ponty precluda, o meno, le strade del cambiamento politico. Effettivamente, come Luce Irigaray ha argomentato, l'ontologia della carne sembra essere un discorso tristemente normalizzatore e totalizzatore della differenza. “Non [c'è] nessun Altro,” scrive Irigaray, “capace di tenere il aperto mondo.” Dato che Merleau-Ponty sviluppa un'ontologia che opera al di sotto del livello delle persone e delle cose, molti hanno presunto prima facie che i progetti femministi, che si mettono in cerca di una fondazione in grado di cancellare l’oppressione basata sull’identità di genere, non possano in alcun modo appartenerle.Nonostante l’ormai lunga serie di critiche che il femminismo ha mosso all’accentramento del corpo che Merleau-Ponty opererebbe in testi come Fenomenologia della Percezione, cercheremo in questa sede di reindirizzare il pensiero femminista verso la tarda ontologia di Merleau-Ponty a partire da un suo testo politico largamente trascurato, Avventure della dialettica, e dalle notes de cours del 1954-1955, recentemente tradotte col titolo Istituzione e Passività. Questi testi non solo emergono ad una svolta critica nel corpus di Merleau-Ponty, nel corso della quale egli muove dal primato della percezione alla dimensione dell’istituzione, ma contengono possibilità politiche direttamente derivanti da questo slittamento teorico. È in questi testi e attraverso questi testi che proponiamo di riavviare il dibattito femminista su Merleau-Ponty, mostrando come il pensatore francese risulti, in questa fase della sua opera, libero dai vincoli del discorso sul corpo e incamminato in direzione di un pensiero del cambiamento politico radicato nella struttura istituzionale di quello che potremmo chiamare l’“intermondo.” Il primo passo per fare questo, come mostreremo in questo saggio, consiste nel prendere sul serio il concetto di rivoluzione ed i suoi sviluppiall’interno dell’intero corpus merleau-pontyano. (shrink)

Thach's target article presents a remarkable overview and integration of animal and human studies on the functions of the cerebellum and makes clear theoretical predictions for both the normal operation of the cerebellum and for the effects of cerebellar lesions in the mature human. Commentary is provided on three areas, namely, spatial navigation, implicit learning, and cerebellar agenesis to elicit further development of the themes already present in Thach's paper, [THACH].

This highly readable translation of the major works of the 18th- century philosopher Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, a disciple of Locke and a contemporary of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, shows his influence on psychiatric diagnosis as well as on the education of the deaf, the retarded, and the preschool child. Published two hundred years after Condillac's death, this translation contains treatises which were, until now, virtually unavailable in English: A Treatise on Systems, A Treatise of the Sensations, Logic.

This slender volume contains a rapid sketch of the development of the notions of conscience and synderesis in medieval thought. Its timeliness is vouched for by the fact that conscience, to which appeal is so often made today, has not been thus far a major theme of modern philosophy. Much of the book's information is quarried from O. Lottin's classic study, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, whose findings have been restated in terms that are meant to be (...) "psychologically" accessible to the modern mind. The Preface calls attention to the undue neglect of medieval philosophy on the part of twentieth-century thinkers, many of whom still cling to the view that philosophy died with Aristotle and came to life again only with Descartes. It also laments the "party spirit" that once tended to characterize the Neo-Scholastic movement, as well as the one-sided emphasis on Thomas Aquinas within that movement. Potts has accordingly sought to broaden the scope of his inquiry by taking into consideration five widely different authors through whose writings one begins to glimpse the subtlety of the medieval teaching on this important topic: Jerome, who introduced the word "synderesis" into the debate ; Peter Lombard, whose Sentences provided the mandatory point of departure for all subsequent discussions of the subject; Philip the Chancellor, the author of the first medieval treatise on conscience; and, finally, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, two of the writers who contributed most significantly to the further elaboration of the doctrine. By the author's own admission, numerous other theologians, whose names are listed in an appendix, could have been included in the roster or substituted for the ones that are included. The book is divided into two even parts, the first of which presents an analysis of the thought of each of the five theologians mentioned, and the second a selection of representative texts from their works. For the convenience of teachers, a "programme for a medieval-philosophy course on conscience" has been added under Appendix 2. (shrink)

The pregnancy compensation hypothesis provides a mechanistic explanation for the evolution of sex differences in immune system functioning, the excess of women experiencing autoimmune disease, and why this is observed only in industrialized nations; none of which can be explained by the staying alive theory, as proposed by the authors of the target article.

Shors & Matzel's target article is a thought-provoking attempt to reconceptualise long-term potentiation as an attentional or arousal mechanism rather than a memory storage mechanism. This is incompatible with the facts of the neurobiology of attention and of the behavioural neurophysiological properties of hippocampal neurons.

Posner & Raichle's book is a superbly presented and wellwritten overview of a fast-developing and important field in contemporary neuroscience. It suffers from being an overview, however, because it does not go into sufficient detail or depth in many of the issues that it raises. It also neglects many other important areas of current research, for example, technical advances in other areas, learning and memory, and lesion analysis of brain function.

This article by Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., never before translated into English, describes his contacts with Martin Heidegger. First it describes his arrival, along with Karl Rahner, S.J., to pursue doctoral studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and their first experiences with the famous professor. Lotz continues his narrative by mentioning times he met with Heidegger over the subsequent forty years up to the philosopher’s death. With Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller, Bernhard Welte, and Karl Rahner, Lotz belonged to a group of (...) Catholic thinkers influenced—some more, some less—by Martin Heidegger. In Lotz’s view some of Heidegger’s ideas were already found in Aquinas, and a philosophy of Being needed to go beyond existential analysis into religion, revelation, and cultural criticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christ's Human Nature and the Cry from the Cross:St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2Philip Nolan O.P.Christ's cry from the Cross quoting Psalm 22 (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46) has become a central focus for contemporary Christological debates.1 A number of modern thinkers have read this verse as expressing in Christ an experience of dereliction incompatible with traditional positions concerning divine impassibility Christ's beatific knowledge, and Trinitarian relations.2 Thomas Joseph White (...) has recently offered an insightful Thomistic critique of these interpretations: [End Page 1219]The final cry of Christ on the cross cannot be interpreted as a cry of either despair or of spiritual separation from God. By contrast, it must be understood theologically as a prayer of desire related to Christ's abandonment to the Father and his hope to introduce humanity into the eschatological gift of redemption.3In his work, White is concerned to engage with modern Christological themes using principles derived from the Thomistic tradition. For this reason, he articulates a rather original alternative to modern theologies of dereliction—especially those marked by divine kenoticism and Luther's theology of the Cross. In offering a view inspired by Thomistic principles, White presents his own creative retrieval of Aquinas's ideas concerning the cry from the Cross.At times, however, White's argument leaves somewhat obscure the literal meaning of the words of that cry: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"4 For example, in pushing back against radical interpretations [End Page 1220] of dereliction, he shifts the language of "abandonment" from God's abandonment of Christ to Christ's abandonment to the Father. My argument in this article is that the textual commentaries on Psalm 225 by Augustine and Aquinas—material that White does not consider specifically—can provide an alternate and somewhat complementary Thomistic approach to the one White proposes, and one more soundly based on Aquinas's texts themselves.6 Christ's cry is a quote from this psalm, and Aquinas's commentary on Ps 22:27 develops the Augustinian interpretation of this verse in order to give greater emphasis to Christ's human nature. This emphasis helps to explain, in a classical way, what it can mean that Christ is abandoned. Thus, Aquinas's exegesis bolsters the orthodox response to contemporary revisionist theologians by providing a clear literal understanding of this contested biblical passage without applying an experience of damnation to Christ or denying classical positions concerning divine impassibility, Christ's beatific knowledge, and the nature of Trinitarian relations.To make this argument, I will first look at the rich tradition of reflection on the Christological meaning of the Psalms, and Psalm 22 in particular, inherited by Thomas. This tradition includes a series of psalm commentaries, conciliar documents, and a variety of other theological works. In this tradition, I argue, we see two primary interpretative approaches. The first is what I will call the Augustinian approach, which insists that Christ is speaking on the Cross for sinners and in the voice of sinners. The second interpretation places more weight on Christ's own voice and insists that he is speaking in a real way for himself—Christ in some way truly is abandoned by God. These interpretations need not and should not be read as contradictory. In fact, all the authorities I examine insist on the first approach. Differences emerge, however, in how they coordinate the latter interpretation with the former. I will discuss Thomas's synthesis of these interpretations, a synthesis that he grounds in the reality of Christ's human nature. Finally, I will suggest [End Page 1221] how a close reading of Thomas's mature treatment of Ps 22:2 supplements contemporary Thomist responses to modern Christological concerns and misguided interpretations of Christ's cry on the Cross.Thomas's Sources for Reading Psalm 22:2Thomas's primary source for understanding Ps 22:2 is Scripture itself Both Mark and Matthew report that Christ spoke the words of this psalm from the Cross, a fact which necessitates for Thomas a Christological interpretation of the psalm.8 Augustine links Ps 22:2 with passages in... (shrink)

American Transcendentalism is a sweeping narrative history of America's first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and following the American Civil War. Philip F. Gura masterfully traces their intellectual genealogy to transatlantic religious and philosophical ideas, illustrating how these informed the fierce theological debates that, so often first in Massachusetts and eventually throughout America, gave rise to practical, personal, and quixotic attempts to improve, even (...) perfect the world. The transcendentalists would painfully bifurcate over what could be attained and how, one half epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson and stressing self-reliant individualism, the other by Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, emphasizing commitment to the larger social good. By the 1850s, transcendentalists turned ever more exclusively to abolition, and by war's end transcendentalism had become identified exclusively with Emersonian self-reliance, congruent with the national ethos of political liberalism and market capitalism. (shrink)

We live in a complex world, made more complex for us by the difficulty of distinguishing between our cultural expectations for how things work and the physical systems we interact with. The environmental systems of nature and the economy are often hard to recognize and constantly change, having behaviors independent of what people think about them. So our rules for systems we come to trust can become highly misleading without notice. That seems to have happened to us, evident in how (...) people still project models of economic growth into the future, and already missing the turning point of timely response to erupting strains, fairly clearly around a century ago. That makes it valuable to know how the laws of physics provide some simple boundary conditions for responding to change in environmental systems, and knowing when you should.Learning to identify natural systems change and how to respond starts with learning to distinguish between physical systems, as one of our independent realities, and our worlds of information and belief as another. Once you can distinguish our information from its physical subjects you can compare the difference, and plan for change. Telling them apart can be a challenge, however, requiring attention to their distinctly different kinds of energy use, organization and natural limits. Environmental systems often change with their actively learning parts too, for another reason watching them change is more important than having theories of how they worked in the past.A useful way to find and track change in physical systems is found in how the conservation laws require energy flow and energy transfer processes to begin and end. They need a continuity that can be identified in recorded measures, made useful by raising key questions about irreversible changes precipitated by regular changes in scale. It builds a new bridge of methodology between theoretical and physical systems, introducing a new kind of empirical research. (shrink)

In spite of vast global improvements in living standards, health, and well-being, the persistence of absolute poverty and its attendant maladies remains an unsettling fact of life for billions around the world and constitutes the primary cause for the failure of developing states to improve the health of their peoples. While economic development in developing countries is necessary to provide for underlying determinants of health – most prominently, poverty reduction and the building of comprehensive primary health systems – inequalities in (...) power within the international economic order and the spread of neoliberal development policy limit the ability of developing states to develop economically and realize public goods for health. With neoliberal development policies impacting entire societies, the collective right to development, as compared with an individual rights-based approach to development, offers a framework by which to restructure this system to realize social determinants of health. The right to development, working through a vector of rights, can address social determinants of health, obligating states and the international community to support public health systems while reducing inequities in health through poverty-reducing economic growth. At an international level, where the ability of states to develop economically and to realize public goods through public health systems is constrained by international financial institutions, the implementation of the right to development enables a restructuring of international institutions and foreign-aid programs, allowing states to enter development debates with a right to cooperation from other states, not simply a cry for charity. (shrink)