Spiritual Theology's journey through these last decades shows an itinerary of development, the fruit of which is an ever more solid identity. This book seeks to present a perspective in that itinerary and in tune with the signs of our times: on one hand, militant secularism and, on the other, a widespread, concrete resurgence of experiences of transcendence. In this sense, the author is presenting a path of study organized around five concepts: presence, mystery, transcendence, lived experience, and transformation. In (...) effect, the inner transformation worked by the Presence of Mystery leaves a new knowing, in which the relationship with reality is renewed, since it has expanded and dilated beyond sensible perception, opening the subject up to an unlimited and real horizon of transcendence. The awareness of perceiving a 'greater reality' within reality leaves an emotional resonance that teaches a new way of feeling and reacting in the face of sensibly perceived reality. (shrink)

Data from various settings suggest that there is an upper limit of about four on the number of individuals who can interact in spontaneous conversation. This limit appears to be a consequence of the mechanisms of speech production and detection. There appear to be no differences between men and women in this respect, other than those introduced by women’s lighter voices.

BLWith new text and full apparatus criticus The Eudemian Ethics was one of two ethical treatises which Aristotle wrote on the subject of ethica or `matters to do with character'. Although the two works cover much the same ground, the Nicomachean Ethics is better known; the poor manuscript tradition of the Eudemian Ethics has made correct translation and interpretation of the text extremely difficult. The subject of the work is the choice of a certain means of conduct, made by a (...) `man of practical wisdom', between two extremes of behaviour: asceticism and yielding to uncontrolled impulses. Aristotle also stresses the notion of moral intention and the importance of virtue of character. This new Oxford Classical Text of the Eudemian Ethics is the result of many years of work. After Sir David Ross's death, his original text was substantially reworked and revised by his friend and colleague R. R. Walzer, who was aided in the revision by his former pupil Mrs Jean Mingay, who continued his work after his death in 1974. Mrs Mingay was fortunate in being able to make use of previously unpublished contributions from D. J. Allan after his death in the late seventies, and more recently has been helped in her work by the suggestions of Professor D. A. Russell, David Robinson, and Christopher Rowe. (shrink)

This book focuses upon the perennial question of the existence and nature of an obligation to obey the law. Leading writers have, at one time or another, emphasized considerations such as gratitude, 'divine ordering, ' prudence, contract, autonomy, and utility in seeking to justify, or to deny any justification for, some sort of obligation to obey the positive law. The book provides relevant selections from a sampling of the historical approaches to legal obligation taken by writers such as Plato, Augustine, (...) Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Thoreau, Bentham, Marx and Engels, and Martin Luther King, Jr. These classical discussions are augmented by critical questions and commentary, by independent discussions of the question of legal obligation by a wide range of contemporary writers, and by relevant judicial cases discussing matters such as conscientious objection and civil disobedience. (shrink)

ᅟThe comment discusses M. Slote's view on empathy as presented in his paper “The Many Faces of Empathy”. It is asked whether three forms of empathy he portrays are three separable concepts or three variants of the same concept of empathy.

Regarded as a revisionist historian in the West, Patricia Crone, who wrote many books and articles on various subjects of early Islamic history, was a prolific researcher. The place and role of mawālī, in the Umayyad and Abbāsid society, has been one of the special topics she has been interested in since the very beginning of her academic life. Her works with a revisionist perspective have been faced many criticisms by colleagues, especially the western ones, because of her biased view (...) of the sources written by Muslim authors, her methodology, and her results. However, it is obvious that Crone’s studies on mawālī have positively or negatively affected the Eastern and Western academics in Islamic studies. This article’s main purpose is to reveal Crone’s views on mawālī in Isla-mic society and draw an outline without comment as much as possible. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, Crone’s revisionist perspective and her works on mawālī have been explained. In the second part, her distinctive views on the mawālī and its origin have been discussed. Finally, in the third part, her findings of the position of mawālī in social, political, military, and economic life during the Rāshidun Caliphs, the Umayyads, and the Abbāsids have been introduced. This study, which tackles Crone’s views on mawālī, aims to encourage the further studies on this subject. (shrink)

The notion of anaphoric conservativity, that is a property of specific functions taking sets and binary relations as arguments is studied. Such functions are denotations of anaphoric determiners forming nominal anaphors. It is shown that anaphoric conservativity is strictly stronger that ordinary conservativity of this type of functions. In consequence some novel semantic descriptions of reflexive and reciprocal pronouns are provided and a semantic universal stating that reflexive and reciprocal non-possessive determiners denote anaphorically conservative functions is proposed.

Undergraduate medical ethics education currently focuses on ethical concepts and reasoning. This paper uses an intern’s story of an ethically challenging situation to argue that this emphasis is problematic in terms of ensuring students’ ethical practice as junior doctors. The story suggests that it is aligning their actions with the values that they reflectively embrace that can present difficulties for junior doctors working in the pressures of the hospital environment, rather than reasoning to an ethically appropriate action. I argue that (...) junior doctors need skills for implementing their ethical decisions and that these ought to form a central component of undergraduate medical ethics education. (shrink)