ABSTRACT This article deals with a cluster of moral problems raised by the new techniques of human fertilisation. It is concerned primarily with the putative rights of embryos brought into being as a by‐product of the practice of in vitro fertilisation. In this connection it investigates the basis for the ascription of rights to entities and asserts the view that consciousness is a pre‐requisite for the possession of rights. It draws attention to the speciesism implicit in attitudes of some of (...) those who have contributed to the debate. It also examines other issues briefly, raising, for example, the question whether children by AID (or by in vitro fertilisation by donor) must be denied access to information about their genetic fathers; and looking at objections to the new techniques based on the so‐called unnaturalness of the procedures involved. (shrink)

A series of studies investigated the capacity of children between the ages of 7 and 12 to give free and informed consent to participation in psychological research. Children were reasonably accurate in describing the purpose of studies, but many did not understand the possible benefits or especially the possible risks of participating. In several studies children's consent was not affected by the knowledge that their parents had given their permission or by the parents saying that they would not be upset (...) if the children refused. In contrast, other studies found that children were much more likely to stop their participation if the experimenter said explicitly that she would not be upset if they stopped. We suggest that experimenters should pay more attention to describing the possible risks and benefits of participation in research, and that they should also make it clearer to children that they are free to stop once they have begun. (shrink)

Philosophy prides itself on beginning with Socrates’s death: scandalous with regard to Socrates’s virtue and wisdom, as well as his age, this death is transfigured into an entry into truth. One can...

The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late (...) capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. (shrink)

This essay explores Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophical return to Cartesian philosophy, specifically to Descartes’s preoccupation with the relation of mind and body, as a fertile ground from which to develop an ontology of the body in (1992). It explores Nancy’s reasons for revisiting the Cartesian thinking framework, which on the face of it, is of little value to an ontology of the body. I argue that Descartes’s impasse in accounting for both mind/body dualism and their union constitutes Nancy’s point of departure (...) in constructing an ontology of the body in, thereby transforming Descartes’s impasse into a productive aporia, in the Derridean sense of the term. To fully understand the significance of the notion of “relation” in Nancy’s’ philosophy, I turn to his reading of Lacan’s famous aphorism “there is no sexual relation” and explore its ontological implications. (shrink)

Lena Dunham is a modern celebrity and television producer-writer who is important in her willingness to self-identify as a feminist, and to engage in feminist activism on social media and in her memoir writing. Her writing in her successful television series, Girls (2012–17), has already raised questions of authenticity. This article develops this analysis further by considering how Dunham’s situation, as a transmedia author, complicates this authenticity, particularly through her construction of ‘affective ordinariness’, a key aspect of her identity as (...) a feminist activist. Her various personas, including that of the celebrity feminist, highlight the ‘contradictions’ which exist within the current complex culture of postfeminism and the perception of new feminisms. Nowhere are these contradictions more apparent than in the dissonance created by Dunham’s transmedia voice in the matter of rape and sexual violence. (shrink)

IntroductionThis paperback text is an intermediate text and is simply written. As the author himself states, “the book aims to speak to that growing number of interested persons who want to understand more about the study of ethics, ethical issues and the ways ethicists approach them” . The author intends for this book to be an introduction to ethics and uses the first few chapters to swiftly and succinctly provide an introduction to the basics of ethics and the main ethical (...) theories. He then uses later chapters to carry these theories into current ethical realms, such as business, bioethics, environmental, and political and allows the reader to attach the rudimentary ethical theories examined in the earlier chapters to real life issues in order to emphasize the main points. The final section discusses how to internalize ethics and incorporate them into the reader’s daily lives.SummaryFollowing the acknowledgement, he provides a valuable preface piece aptly titled “How t .. (shrink)

In 1850, Jacob Frerichs produced the first and until now the only edition of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s important lectures on Practical Theology. It is a mix and compilation of students’ transcripts from six different semesters, redundant and at times contradictory, which doesn’t correspond to Schleiermacher’s actual lectures. Most of the transcripts used by Frerichs are still preserved and have now been evaluated for a new edition of Schleiermacher’s Practical Theology. This article disassembles Frerichs’ edition into its components giving evidence for every (...) text passage from which source Frerichs took it. (shrink)

Recent philosophical accounts of discrimination face challenges in accommodating robust intuitions about the particular way in which it is wrongful—most prominently, the intuition that discriminatory actions intrinsically violate equality irrespective of their contingent consequences. The paper suggests that we understand the normative structure of discrimination in a way that is different from the one implicitly assumed by these accounts. It argues that core discriminatory wrongs—such as segregation in Apartheid South Africa—divide into two types, corresponding to violations of relational and distributive (...) equality; and that a pluralistic view of the internal structure of each type should be adopted. This normative structure serves to appropriately vindicate the mentioned intuitions; it also contributes to clarifying the normative underpinnings of legal concepts associated with discrimination (including the distinctions between direct and indirect, or ‘disparate treatment/impact’ discrimination, and intentional vs. unintentional discrimination), and developing a more productive public discourse around allegations of discrimination. (shrink)

The distinction between intentional and unintentional discrimination is a prominent one in the literature and public discourse; intentional discriminatory actions are commonly considered particularly morally objectionable relative to unintentional discriminatory actions. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what the two types amount to, and what generates the moral difference between them. The paper develops philosophically-informed conceptualizations of the two types based on which the moral difference between them may be accounted for. On the suggested account, intentional discrimination is characterized by the agent (...) viewing the content of an underlying discriminatory belief as a consideration that counts in favor of her action. This, it is argued, amounts to endorsing the discriminatory belief, which generates the particular moral severity of intentional discrimination. (shrink)

This book explores the under-researched sources of the consumerist culture and the environmental damage it has brought about. The book is an outcome of the symposium on “The Ethics of Consumption” organised and hosted by the Las Casas Institute at the Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford as part of its Economics as a Moral Science Programme. It takes on two contemporary problems: the human weakness and capacity for wrong-doing, and the failure of modern economic theory to account for the moral (...) character of human behaviour and its implicit encouragement of gluttonous life-styles. In a time when grand political schemes are proposed to revive sustainability of global economy, the authors of the papers collected in this book highlight the need for moral renewal without which the most revolutionary structural reforms are bound to fail at producing the desired outcome. Topics of the book include the meaning and sources of avarice, the attempt to define what is enough, exploration of philosophical and theological perspectives which can serve as building blocks for the ethics of consumption. This makes the book of great interest to a broad readership of economists, social scientists and philosophers. (shrink)

This _Handbook _is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source available for college reading and study strategy practitioners and administrators. In response to changing demographics, politics, policy, issues, and concerns in the field of college reading and study strategies since publication of the first edition in 2000, this new edition has been substantially revised and fully updated to reflect the newest research in the field, including six new chapters and a more user-friendly structure to make it easier for researchers, program administrators, (...) college instructors, and graduate students to find the information that they need. In this thorough and systematic examination of theory, research, and practice, college reading teachers will find information to make better instructional decisions, administrators will find justification for programmatic implementations, and professors will find in one book both theory and practice to better prepare graduate students to understand the parameters and issues of this field. The _Handbook_ is an essential resource for professionals, researchers, and students as they continue to study, research, learn, and share more about college reading and study strategy issues and instruction. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the vice of misanthropy particularly as it manifests itself in people who love nature. Misanthropy is a hatred and disgust of humans, particularly of a group of humans. I look to wilderness to illustrate the vice of misanthropy. With regard to wilderness, misanthropy functions in three distinct spheres. First, there is misanthropy in the use of wilderness to flee other people. Second, there is misanthropy in the assumption that humans taint the wilderness. Finally, there (...) is misanthropy in the assumption that humans can only relate to nature in a way that is harmful. In the end, we need to avoid misanthropy and its attendant despair. It is important that we see ourselves, not as a determined mass of people, but rather as individual people who are able to create positive change. (shrink)

For Kierkegaard the leap to faith is an acceptance of the Unknown which is neither given by reason nor deducible from a previous content of consciousness.

The book is reclaiming economics as a moral science. It argues that ethics is a relevant and inseparable aspect of all levels of economic activity, from individual and organizational to societal and global. Taking ethical considerations into account is needed in explaining and predicting the behavior of economic agents as well as in evaluating and designing economic policies and mechanisms. The unique feature of the book is that it not only analyzes ethics and economics on an abstract level, but puts (...) behavioral, institutional and systemic issues together for a robust and human view of economic functioning. It sees economic "facts" as interwoven with human intentionality and ethical content, a domain where utility calculations and moral considerations co-determine the behavior of economic agents and the outcomes of their activities. The book employs the personalist approach that sees human persons - endowed with free will and conscience - as the basic agents of economic life and defines human flourishing as the final end of economic activities. The book demonstrates that economics can gain a lot in meaning and also in analytical power by reuniting itself with ethics. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the philosophical origins of the conception of plants as machines and analyses the contemporary technical and ethical consequences of that thinking. First, we explain the historical relationship between the explicit animal machine thesis of Descartes and the implicit plant machine thesis of today. Our hypothesis is that, although it is rarely discussed, the plant machine thesis remains influential. We define the philosophical criteria for both a moderate and radical interpretation of the thesis. Then, assessing the compatibility of (...) current botanical knowledge with both interpretations, we find that neither withstands scrutiny. We trace how biological and agricultural sciences have historically relied upon thinking of plants as machines and how they continue to do so today through rhetoric centred on breeding, biotechnology, and production. We discuss some of the most important legal and ethical consequences of obscuring the vitality of plants. Finally, we explore less reductive and destructive ways of thinking about, and using, plants. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band umfasst den Briefwechsel Schleiermachers von April 1806 bis Ende 1807, dem Zeitpunkt seiner endgültigen Übersiedlung nach Berlin. Im Sommer 1806 lehrt Schleiermacher das letzte Semester an der Hallenser Universität, wobei er zum ersten Mal Kirchengeschichte und Christliche Sittenlehre liest. Mit dem Zusammenbruch Preußens und der Besetzung Halles durch französische Truppen im Oktober 1806 findet Schleiermachers akademische Wirksamkeit ein abruptes Ende durch die Schließung der Universität und die Vertreibung der Studenten. Er bleibt zunächst in Halle, um das Schicksal (...) der Universität abzuwarten, beginnt aber im Sommer 1807 mit Privatvorlesungen in Berlin, wohin er Ende 1807 endgültig übersiedelt, in der Hoffnung auf eine Berufung an die neu zu gründende Berliner Universität. Der drohende Krieg und die Niederlage Preußens sind zentrale Themen des Briefwechsels. Eine große Rolle spielen die beruflichen Perspektiven Schleiermachers und die Hoffnung auf die neu zu errichtende Berliner Universität. Von den insgesamt 425 Briefen dieses Bandes sind 240 an Schleiermacher gerichtet und 185 von ihm selbst geschrieben. 127 der hier dokumentierten Briefe konnten nur erschlossen werde; von ihnen ist kein Text überliefert. Von den übrigen Briefen waren bisher nur 80 vollständig gedruckt. 41 Briefe waren bisher im Verhältnis zu den überlieferten Texten bzw. Textzeugen nur gekürzt publiziert; sie werden hier erstmals entsprechend der Überlieferungslage vollständig ediert. 177 Briefe werden im vorliegenden Band überhaupt erstmals ediert. (shrink)

The little-known Jewish philosopher Shem-Tov ben Joseph Falaquera composed numerous works on theology. One of them, entitled "Epistle of the Debate," is a lively dialogue, intriguing to the modern reader, between a Jewish religious traditionalist who begins by seriously doubting the propriety of any secular studies and a humanistic Jew who surprisingly succeeds in convincing the traditionalist that neither science nor philosophy is in conflict with Jewish religious belief.

One soon discovers, by reading between the lines of the early pages of Sontag's book, that the term "Elements" as used in the title does not mean "Easy Introduction" as it would in a title such as The Elements of Barbering or The Elements of Golf. Instead, "Elements" here means "Basic Components," as it does in the expression "the chemical elements" or "the elements of a winter wardrobe".