Definition of the problem: Contemporary bioethics as an academic discipline mainly focuses on moral questions – according to its articulated self-concept and the explicit arguments in most areas of bioethical reflection. Concepts and theories of the good life are hardly considered. Arguments: In reality the ‘good life’ plays a much more important role than it is assumed, but mostly only in an implicit way. The article demonstrates this by referencing three selected fields of bioethical discussion. Hence the article argues that (...) bioethics should turn the ‘good life’ into an issue of intense, explicit and systematic consideration. Furthermore, the article provides an initial answer to the questions as to why the ‘good life’ has been marginalized within bioethics up to this point and which function it can assume in future bioethical reflection. Conclusion: The ‘good life’ is the blind spot of bioethics. A more intensive and systematic consideration of the ‘good life’ is a challenge for contemporary and future bioethics. (shrink)

'In this book, Alan Roland has presented the challenge of Asian cultures to psychoanalytic theory and practice more forcefully than ever before. The book is full of new ideas and fascinating anecdotes and case material from Roland's clinical work and that of others. His proposals to revise psychoanalysis for the treatment of Indian and Japanese patients should initiate a debate of fundamental significance.' - Robert A. LeVine, Harvard University.

The Lorentz transformation of space and time between two reference frames is one of the pillars of the special relativity theory. As a result of the Lorentz transformation, space and time are only relative and are entangled, while the Minkowski metric is Lorentz invariant. For this reason, the Lorentz transformation is one of the major obstructions in the development of physical theories with quantized space and time. Here is described the Lorentz transformation of a physical system with a discrete dynamical (...) time and a continuous space that fulfills Lorentz invariance while approximating the Lorentz transformation at the time continuous limit and the Galilei transformation at the classical limit. Furthermore, the discreteness of time is not mixed with the continuous nature of space, making time distinct from space. (shrink)

Do human beings share a common morality? Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal presents engaging essays from contemporary Lutheran scholars, teachers, and pastors, each offering a fresh reappraisal of natural law within the context of historic Lutheran teaching and practice. Thought provoking questions following each essay will help readers apply key Bible texts associated with natural law to their daily lives.

The book follows on the heels of the acclaimed Criticism of Heaven, being the second volume of a five volume series called Criticism of Heaven and Earth.

ABSTRACTSpatial cueing paradigms are popular tools to assess human attention to emotional stimuli, but different variants of these paradigms differ in what participants’ primary task is. In one variant, participants indicate the location of the target, whereas in the other they indicate the shape of the target. In the present paper we test the idea that although these two variants produce seemingly comparable cue validity effects on response times, they rest on different underlying processes. Across four studies using both variants (...) and manipulating the motivational relevance of cue content, diffusion model analyses revealed that cue validity effects in location tasks are primarily driven by response biases, whereas the same effect rests on delay due to attention to the cue in identification tasks. Based on this, we predict and empirically support that a symmetrical distribution of valid and invalid cues would reduce cue validity... (shrink)

Au Centre Pompidou-Metz, faisant écho à l'exposition inaugurale, un colloque international a étudié de manière pluridisciplinaire et transversale la question du chef-d'œuvre. Loin de se focaliser sur le débat esthétique, les diverses approches ont assigné le droit, l'histoire, la sociologie, l'économie et les sciences exactes, pour mieux soumettre cet "objet" à un véritable examen clinique. Cette question ne serait-elle plus d'actualité? Loin s'en faut! Entre cœur et raison, la sacralisation des œuvres d'art produit toujours autant de savoirs, de savoir-faire et (...) de savoirs sur le faire. Mettant en avant le patrimoine, restaurant les objets de l'art, les reconstituant, favorisant le tourisme culturel, exhumant le vrai, condamnant le faux : à sa mesure, le "chef-œuvre" dynamise encore et toujours les divers moments de l'art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Roland Littlewood (bio)Keywordsreligion, innovation, psychosis, culture, diagnosisThis is an ambiguous though clinically valuable paper. Jackson and Fulford suggest that the distinction between their two categories, spiritual experience and mental illness, is conventional, yet their emphasis on issues of correct practice from the medical perspective threatens to return both into distinct ontological categories, albeit with a shared phenomenology. I do not understand why any (...) single instance must either be pathological or spiritual, except through clinical and clerical demands for clarity and order.Mental illness and spirituality are not two distinct natural phenomena “out there,” existing independently of human volition. They are both social—cultural if one prefers—ascriptions. Neither has some substantive core whose elucidation through psychophysiological, phenomenological or ultrahuman procedures could enable us to define its essence and thus differentiate it from the other. Neither experience is a self-evident datum. Both are easily susceptible to critiques, either that they do not exist as natural categories, or else that they should more properly be described as something else—as the workings out of social exclusion in the case of mental illness, as cosmological understanding or mass hysteria in the case of spirituality. Neither, I would suggest, can be specified by physiology or ultrahuman interventions respectively, but rather through shared cultural meanings which in turn are experientially validated by the biosocial phenomena themselves. It is not that we need to exclude the possibility of concurrences in brain states, but rather that these cannot specify the meaning and experience of the phenomena.Note that I emphasize “experienced through cultural meanings,” not “influenced by” culture: I do not accept that psychophysiology can have any existence independent of the social world through which it occurs. The psychiatrists’ form/content distinction, an optimistic proxy for nature/culture (Birnbaum 1923; Schneider 1928) may remain a convenient heuristic device, but it has a curious, perhaps doubtful, intellectual history (see the Endnote following).Cross-cultural comparisons argue that local idioms which we might approximate to current Western notions of mental illness and religion are quite varied. And the validity of particular instances of both “spiritual experience” and “psychopathology” may be contested in any society. While the social consequences of a pattern may determine the approbation accorded to a pattern such that patterns recalling chronic schizophrenia [End Page 67] are regarded as a deficit (and here I agree with James [1902] and the two authors), they are not necessarily aligned to categories of physical illness, but may be seen as a spiritual failure or obstruction. Unsuccessful or inappropriate shamanic practice among Amerindian and circumpolar societies is the classic instance (Eliade 1964). Within Western societies, demonic possession may be read by doctors as mental illness. (It is just as much a “spiritual experience”: why introduce the religionist’s distinctions between different types of ultrahuman agency? Compare Maslow on “peak” experiences. The terms “spiritual” and “religious world view” are naturalized idioms of late Christianity rather than cross-culturally valid terms [Tambiah 1990].) But also the converse (Koch 1972). And this depends on our professional interests. Clearly, psychiatrists prefer to perceive the world in a psychopathological idiom, while religious enthusiasts and clergy may favor divine intercession or demonic possession; and a Christian psychiatry not surprisingly may claim to act as arbiter (Sims 1991). Any specific instance may be perceived differently by individuals in accordance with their interests and affiliations.The paper’s terminology—“spiritual psychotic experience,” “genuine spiritual experience”—is confusing in that it does imply realist, not conventional claims (cf. Endnote 1, Jackson and Fulford). It is not necessary. A less laden idiom—such as “statistically or normatively unusual brain states and their experiential correlates” (Littlewood 1993, 257)—may be just too unwieldy for repetition, but I would propose that at this level of detail we need rather four categories depending or not on concordance with (i) something close to psychiatry’s recognition of a major mental illness, and (ii) something like an anthropological notion of religious or spiritual experience (cf. Littlewood 1991):[Table 1]PsychosisReligious ExperiencePresentAbsentPresentABAbsentCDSo Jackson and Fulford’s three cases fall into group “A” if the PSE was scored... (shrink)

Philosophers of religion divide neatly into two camps on the problem of evil: those who think it fatal to the concept of a loving God and those who do not. The latter have established a wide array of defensive positions down through the centuries, but none that has proved impregnable to sceptical attack. In his new book Mr Hick wisely abandons these older fortifications and falls back on highly mobile reserves. Not for him the ‘Fall of Man’ thesis, with its (...) unexplained choice to give up finite perfection; nor the Plotinian principle of plenitude, evil being an inevitable petering out of God's goodness; nor the ‘aesthetic’ gambit where the horrors of life constitute mere ‘shadows’ designed to highlight the beauty of creation; nor the ‘cosmic Toryism’, as someone called it, of Leibniz's ‘best of all possible worlds’; nor even, one might say gratefully, the gaseous obscurantism of Karl Barth's ‘das Nichtige’. All of these defences, and others besides, Mr Hick lumps together under what he calls ‘the majority report’ in Christian theodicy: the Augustinian tradition or type. In place of these venerable ramparts Hick elects the more fluid defence afforded, he thinks, by Irenaeus, Eastern Christianity and, in modern times, by Schleiermacher and a few contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

I aim to articulate and develop a consolidated model of Axel Honneth’s Recognition Theory. This paper aims at investigating the relationship of asymmetries of identities and social struggles as a progressive process of recognition in Honneth’s works. My paper is divided into three parts. The first part provides a consolidated outlook on Honneth’s Recognition Theory from the Struggle for Recognition to his more recent work Freedom’s Right. The second part covers the relationship between social struggles, social solidarity, and their effects (...) on regenerating the necessary normative resources for individual selfactualization. The last part is my take on Honneth’s Recognition Theory in the form of understanding social pathologies in the context of investigating deficits of normative resources for self-actualization. (shrink)

Building on Pierre Simon’s notion of distality, we introduce distality rank as a property of first-order theories and give examples for each rankmsuch that$1\leq m \leq \omega $. For NIP theories, we show that distality rank is invariant under base change. We also define a generalization of type orthogonality calledm-determinacy and show that theories of distality rankmrequire certain products to bem-determined. Furthermore, for NIP theories, this behavior characterizesm-distality. If we narrow the scope to stable theories, we observe thatm-distality can be (...) characterized by the maximum cycle size found in the forking “geometry,” so it coincides with$(m-1)$-triviality. On a broader scale, we see thatm-distality is a strengthening of Saharon Shelah’s notion ofm-dependence. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of articles on Henry of Ghents philosophy with a focus on various topics in his metaphysics, such as his rejection of various points of Aristotelian philosophy and his appeal to Augustine and Avicenna. The articles deal with such questions central to Henrys thought as his intentional distinction and his metaphysical argument for the existence of God as well as its similarity to Anselms article in the Proslogion. They examine his account of human freedom, the analogy (...) of being, and his apophaticism in speaking about God, where he is clearly indebted to Pseudo-Dionysius and Maimonides. Roland J. Teske, SJ, Donald J. Schuenke Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (PhD University of Toronto, 1973) specializes in St. Augustine and medieval philosophers, especially William of Auvergne and Henry of Ghent. (shrink)

Driving simulators are becoming increasingly common in driver training and assessment. Since virtual reality is generally regarded as an appropriate environment for measuring risk behavior, simulators are also used to assess hazard perception, which is considered to be one of the most important skills for safe driving. Simulators, which offer challenges that are indeed comparable to driving in real traffic, but at a very low risk of physical injury, have the potential to complement theoretical and practical driver trainings and tests. (...) Although configurations and fidelity differ considerably between driving simulators, studies comparing the impact of their distinct features on driving performance and test validity remain rare. In this context, prior research demonstrated that a wider field of view led to earlier speed adjustments in response to potential hazards—especially for experienced drivers. The wider field of view was assumed to cause the drivers to be more present in the virtual world, which in turn provoked more natural scanning of the road and therefore, earlier hazard detection in experienced drivers. Research on spatial presence in other contexts support this assumption. The present experiment investigated whether this effect could be enhanced by an even more immersive presentation technique for driving simulation: a head-mounted display. Moreover, we studied the interplay between display mode, sense of presence and simulation sickness. Eighty experienced and less experienced drivers completed six simulation-based hazard perception scenarios, which were displayed either via a triple-monitor set-up or an HMD. Results indicate that the experienced drivers showed very similar driving and risk behavior as the inexperienced drivers in both experimental conditions. However, there were significant differences between the two display conditions. The use of an HMD resulted in a clearer and more abrupt speed reduction, more virtual presence, and a higher degree of simulation sickness. However, the interrelation between these three variables could not be conclusively clarified in the present study and thus represents a research aim that could be addressed in future studies. (shrink)

This book describes what an “art of multiculturalism” could be and how in turn multiculturalism could be conceived as a form of art. It focuses on the early and middle work of Indian-born U.S. writer Bharati Mukherjee, in particular on her understanding of the “fusion” of literature and painting as a tool to inspire the creation of a “new global society” by empowering minorities through fostering and multiplying “differences in unity” and “unities in difference”. The book includes, in condensed ways, (...) an explanation of Mukherjee’s use of ancient Indian painting techniques for postmodern writing; and it provides a short introduction to the relation between multiculturalism, postmodernity and “imaginal politics”. The book is written in an easy to read style accessible to all interested in the topic: high school and university students and teachers; those generally interested in the interface between literature, the arts and politics; and specialists in multicultural studies and global and international studies. The book is particularly suited to use in teaching. (shrink)

This essay deals with the five origins of European populism. It touches upon a number of themes in the lexicon of re-globalization and the changing warp of populist globalization as a process. It carries a lively normative message, principally as to the required comportment of the European Union during a period of global change and dislocation, which prefigures, or may give rise to a post-populist era.

The legal regime of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is differentiated in two ways. While the rules on economic union apply with few exceptions to all member states, most Treaty provisions on monetary union are applicable only to those member states that have introduced the common currency. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) establishes a system of overlapping competences consisting primarily of measures adopted by the member states. During the initial phase of the European Economic (...) Community (EEC), exchange‐rate fluctuations or flexible exchange rates obstructed the development of a workable capital market. The Treaty of Lisbon provides that the European Union is to establish a monetary union whose currency is the euro. The TFEU provides for institutional and procedural mechanisms aimed at protecting the stability of the common currency. The euro has become a stable and internationally recognized currency. (shrink)

Quine ist ein Klassiker der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Doch Quine erläutert nichts und erklärt wenig. Der von ihm angenommene Leser etwa seiner berühmten Aufsatz-Sammlung From a Logical Point of View ist der Fachkollege, der ebenso wie Quine die jeweilige aktuelle Debatte genau kennt. Die vorliegende zweisprachige und vor allem vollständig durchkommentierte Ausgabe legt drei seiner wichtigsten Aufsätze aus dieser Sammlung (On What There Is / Über was es gibt, Two Dogmas of Empiricism / Zwei Dogmen des Empirismus und Reference and Modality / (...) Referenz und Modalität) vor. Auf diese Weise kann sich jeder Leser mit diesen gedanklich faszinierenden Texten beschäftigen. (shrink)

Edward P Thompson’s disapproval of Methodism (which was his own background) is well known, especially in The Making of the English Working Class. There he describes it as religious terrorism with a destructive moral machinery and all too reactionary. However, through a close reading of the sections on Methodism, this article reveals an ambivalence within Thompson’s own text. Again and again, he notes in passing that radicals emerged from the Methodist ranks, so much so that the Methodist Conference worked hard (...) to deal with the problem. It would seem that Thompson has stumbled across a political tension within theology, one that he was to explore in much greater detail in his study of Blake. (shrink)

Atheism -- Myth -- Ambivalence -- History -- Kairâos -- Ethics -- Idols -- On secularism, transcendence and death.

This book not only explicates Stalin's thoughts, but thinks with and especially through Stalin. It argues that Stalin often thought at the intersections between theology and Marxist political philosophy - especially regarding key issues of socialism in power. Careful and sustained attention to Stalin's written texts is the primary approach used. The result is a series of arresting efforts to develop the Marxist tradition in unexpected ways. Starting from a sympathetic attitude toward socialism in power, this book provides us with (...) an extremely insightful interpretation of Stalin's philosophy of socialism. It is not only a successful academic effort to re-articulate Stalin's philosophy, but also a creative effort to understand socialism in power in the context of both the former Soviet Union and contemporary China. ------- Zhang Shuangli, Professor of Marxist philosophy, Fudan University Boer's book, far from both "veneration" and "demonization" of Stalin, throws new light on the classic themes of Marxism and the Communist Movement: language, nation, state, and the stages of constructing post-capitalist society. It is an original book that also pays great attention to the People's Republic of China, arising from the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and which is valuable to those who, beyond the twentieth century, want to understand the time and the world in which we live. -------Domenico Losurdo, University of Urbino, Italy, author of Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend. (shrink)

This book examines the historical development—in practice and theory—of governance in socialist systems. With more than a century of such development from many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union, China, and the DPRK (North Korea), it is possible to gain much from careful study of their political systems.But what is the nature of this socialist governance? It is abundantly clear that the type of governance in socialist countries had never before been seen in human history. How does this (...) governance work? What was the political theory that arose from the practice? How did this type of governance develop over time and in light of specific conditions?These are the questions that Socialism in Power sets out to answer. It does so not by using methods developed for studying Western liberal nation-states, but by deploying Marxist-Leninist analysis. Not an abstract Marxism, but concrete Marxism, as it was applied and developed in light of the particular historical conditions of the countries in question.The book begins with careful analysis of the works of Marx and Engels, with a particular emphasis on Engels, who was crucial in establishing the basic principles of socialist governance. Next, the book focuses on the Soviet Union, which was the first country in human history to experience socialism in power. The rarely studied DPRK (North Korea) comes next, as a transition to East Asia, followed by a number of chapters on China, which arguably has the most developed form of socialist governance. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungTiere erlauben einen ertragreichen Zugriff auf Büchners literarisches Werk. Exemplarisch zeigt sich dies an der »Hühnerlaus« aus dem Woyzeck. Ein Animal Reading dieses Tieres entfaltet zunächst vor dem wissensgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Parasitenforschung die Rätselhaftigkeit von Büchners literarischer Hühnerlaus und schlägt dann vier mögliche Perspektiven vor, wie diese Rätselhaftigkeit für eine Interpretation fruchtbar gemacht werden kann: einen editionsphilologischen Lesartenstreit, die Debatten um den Wissenshorizont des Autors und seiner Figuren, eine Verortung in der Geschichte der Biotheorie sowie die Frage nach einer Tier-Ästhetik (...) der Groteske.Animals provide a fruitful approach to Büchner’s literary work. This can be demonstrated with regard to the »Hühnerlaus« in Woyzeck. An Animal Reading of the »Hühnerlaus« starts by showing how enigmatic this literary animal seems, when compared with the history of parasitology. Four perspectives, leading to four interpretations of this enigma, are proposed: 1) a discussion in edition philology whether Büchner actually wrote »Hühnerlaus« or not, 2) a look at the knowledge of the author and his figures, 3) some considerations on the history of biological theory, and 4) the question of animal aesthetics, especially of the grotesque. (shrink)

With his notion of absolute consciousness, Sartre tries to rethink the relation between consciousness and the self. What is the origin of subjectivity in relation to a consciousness that is characterized as impersonal and as a radical lucidity? In this article, I attempt to question that origin and the nature as such of the subject in its relation to a consciousness that in its essence is not yet subjective. On the contrary, it is characterized by a selfpresence that is so (...) radical that it threatens every form of self-knowledge. (shrink)

The nature of the self is qualified in varying ways in philosophy but, as we shall see in detail, one thing is constant: the self is the object of a subjective reflexivity or self-involvement. By this inner folding, a person maintains not only a relationship with himself, but also ascribes a reality value to what he relates to. The self is seen, for example, as the genuine deeper reality of the ego, as that which underlies every relation to the external (...) world. Or just the opposite: it is nothing but a part of that external world, I relate to that self as to a thing in the world. Some thinkers even doubt the existence of such a self: for them, the belief in something like a self is created by certain peculiarities of language. For instance, to what does `self' refer in a statement like “I wasn't myself”, “I will help myself”, “I should give myself some rest”, etc?I will discuss two opposed conceptions of the nature of the self and indicate the shortcomings of each approach, in order to go on to show something about self-involvement and singularity that is often overlooked. The two opposed conceptions deal with the self in different ways because they also deal differently with the relation between consciousness and the self as such. In the first conception, this relation remains external: reflection is not of the same order as the self and, conversely, the self is something that always falls outside of reflection, something against which a position can be occupied and a distance taken. Here, the self is an object whose nature does not in the least affect the nature of reflection. To the contrary, the ego must explicitly identify with that object if there is to be any trace of a connection with it at all. I will refer to this position as that of individualism.The second conception sees the self and reflection as forming an organic unity preceding any conscious identifications.They are both fused into an organic totality in such a manner that any reflection becomes an expression of the self and is affected by it. There already exists, between the self and reflection, a pre-objective relationship by virtue of which the self can never be considered as an object of identification. It is not an object: I have a link with myself that is more intimate, not the result of an identification but of an intuition, a feeling or a creativity. This is the personalistic conception of the self. The self and reflection share one and the same nature, and the relation between them is internal. I am always already myself without needing to identify with a self, and without needing to take a position with respect to a self.Moreover, I can never take the same position with respect to the self as I would take with respect to an object. If I did, I would have misconceived the authentic reality of that self, or of my `person' and the intimate relationship that I maintain with it. What is original in the individualistic conception appears, from a personalistic viewpoint, to be only derived and inauthentic. Individualism confuses the deeper self with a social marionette . Personalism, as we shall see, also developed in reaction to an individualistic conception of the person . In this article, I will draw a distinction between the two approaches on the basis of their differing descriptions of the problem of freedom. (shrink)