The author of this text argues that the methodological issues in bioethics mirrors the experience of moral pluralism in a secular society. The different methods that have been used in the field reflect the different moral views found in a pluralistic society.

This book aims to contribute significantly to the understanding of issues of value which repeatedly emerge in interdisciplinary discussions on space and society. Although a recurring feature of discussions about space in the humanities, the treatment of value questions has tended to be patchy, of uneven quality and even, on occasion, idiosyncratic rather than drawing upon a close familiarity with state-of-the-art ethical theory. One of the volume's aims is to promote a more robust and theoretically informed approach to the ethical (...) dimension of discussions on space and society. While the contributions are written in a manner which is accessible across disciplines, the book still withstands scrutiny by those whose work is primarily on ethics. At the same time it allows academics across a range of disciplines an insight into current approaches toward how the work of ethics gets done. The issues of value raised could be used to inform debates about regulation, space law and protocols for microbial discovery as well as longer-range policy debates about funding. (shrink)

This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.

Plotinus’ account of matter in Ennead III 6[26] 11-15 serves two purposes. The terms, evil and ugly, present the negative side of matter’s causality, providing for the change characteristic of the sensible world and the possibility of ontological evil and privation as well as of moral evil among human beings. The receptacle and other images from Plato’s Timaeus present the positive side of this causality, matter as allowing for the presence of forms in the bodies of the sensible world. Plotinus (...) explicitly articulates the linguistic problem surrounding the nature of matter, since language is derived from the corporeal and thus needs constant correction when applied to matter as incorporeal. His use of language, thus, always has two phases, first, capturing the nature of matter as aptly as possible, and second, highlighting the difference between matter and the image, analogy, or metaphor used to help explain it. (shrink)

In the earlier part of the sixth century, John of Scythopotis collected and edited the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. Elevated to the episcopacy of the important see of Palestina Secunda, sometime between 538 and 544, John not only gathered these texts of Dionysius, he also lent his own Neochalcedonian Christology to them in order to have one more apostolic authority from which to quote against the Monophysites of his day. Thanks in large part to Beate Regina Suchla's recent work (...) in John's original Syrian, scholars have been able to discern more easily his commentary on the Dionysian corpus from Maximus the Confessor's, as both were unfortunately melded together by Père Migne. This excellent study from Rorem and Lamoreaux thus introduces us to John of Scythopolis: both a compiler and commentator on the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius as well as a theologian and defensorfidei in his own tight. (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

Context: Philosophical debates in recent decades have developed new ways of dealing with old philosophical problems such as reality, truth, knowledge, language, communication, and action. These new approaches deserve serious consideration because they can improve the discourse of radical constructivism. Problem: This paper discusses the following problem: How can we overcome dualistic and ontological approaches to basic philosophical problems – problems that are relevant to all scientific domains? Method: The method applied here can be roughly described as a transition from (...) entities/substantives/identities to actions and processes, the actions and processes from which so-called entities result. Action-orientation – or an actor-based process – is necessarily combined with sense-orientation as provided by culture and society. Results: The paper demonstrates how the problems mentioned above can be reformulated in a non-dualistic and non-ontological way. Implications: Opening up constructivist thinking to insights provided by neighbouring philosophical approaches facilitates interdisciplinary cooperation and helps overcome dualistic remnants – as well as the cognitive one-sidedness of traditional constructivism. (shrink)

Against the Titans examines Alfred Delp’s rejection of the perversion of heroism and sacrifice. Peter Nguyen, S.J., argues that Delp embodied a Christian theology of martyrdom that offered an alternative to Ernst Jünger’s belief that violent heroism, merged with technology, could resolve the discontentment with modernity.

In examining Ennead VI 4[22], we find Plotinus in conflict with modern, i.e., Cartesian or Kantian, assumptions about the relation of soul and body and the identification of the self with the subject. Curiously, his images and exposition are more in tune with Twentieth Century notions such as wave and field. With these as keys, we are in a position to unlock the subtlety of Plotinus' analysis of the way soul and body are present together, with sensation structured through the (...) body and judgment coming from the soul. The problem of the self concerns not only the unity of the self in terms of body and soul, but also how the self is constituted in relation to other selves, both keeping its individuality and sharing its experiences at the same time. (shrink)

There is, in the Ramsey Archive at the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh, a note, written in 1929, in Ramsey's hand and mostly in German, consisting of twenty paragraphs the contents...

This book provides the first general account of the works of the Latin writer Apuleius, most famous for his great novel the `Metamorphoses' or `Golden Ass'. Living in second-century North Africa, Apuleius was more than an author; he was an orator and professional intellectual, Platonist philosopher, extraordinary stylist, relentless self-promoter, as well as a versatile author of a remarkably diverse body of other work, much of which is lost to us.

This study of three central themes in the logic of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the ancient Aristotelian commentators, provides insight not only into Aristotle's logical writings but also into the tradition of scholarship which they spawned.

ISBN-13: 978-1934074480
Plot Summary from the book:
"An aristocratic young man, fed up with his studies, contemplates military service. His teacher is unable by any reasoning to call him back him from the path he has embarked upon. The young man enlists another youth who commits himself to the journey, dressed in military garb, and he happens upon two deserting soldiers, unsightly and ill-used both in their dress and in their hygiene. Both young men are so moved by the deserters’ (...) remarks deploring and reviling their lot in life that they return to their studies. One of the deserters, however, hopes to be welcomed back by the wife and small children he had deserted and left penniless and bereft of friends. She gives him a nasty reception, with verbal and corporal abuse, and he barely manages to have his sin forgiven and to return to her good graces."
From the Table of Contents:
Introduction
How to Use this Book
Jacobus Pontanus: Biography
Jesuit Comedy – Seriously?
The Stratocles as a Spiritual Exercise
Just War and the Morality of Military Service
A Play about War and the Real Wars of Pontanus' Time
The Characters and Their Names
Pontanus’ Use of Classical Sources
The History of the Text of Stratocles
Performance
Stratocles or War
Endnotes
Appendices
Pontanus on Humanist Studies
Pontanus on Writing Comedy
Renaissance School Hazing, called “Deposition”
Anonymous: Instructions for Deposition
Dialogue on Hazing (Progymnasma 100)
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Purpose: The paper provides an overview of Ernst von Glasersfeld's life and theory, concentrating on subjects such as the acquisition of knowledge, language and communication, ethical questions, and aspects of teaching and learning. Conclusion: Ernst von Glasersfeld interests cover a wide range of disciplines. Therefore his work is genuinely rooted in interdisciplinarity.

This article examines the regalist reforming critique and the curial defence of papal temporal dominion in the eighteenth-century Italian peninsula. The discussion examines the little-explored links between the justification for papal supremacy in the Church and the historico-theological defence of its theocratic rule. The refusal of the Curia to grant reform gave rise to a radical reforming movement which produced some astoundingly bitter anti-curial polemics little known outside Italian studies, but of some significance in the history of political thought.

Problem: Mitterer's critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. Solution: In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical constructivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis for deriving far-reaching (...) epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to constructivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer's basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. Benefits: The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. (shrink)

Introduction -- Tending the dark fire: the Boehmian notion of drive -- The night-side of nature: the early Schellingian unconscious -- The speculative psychology of dissociation: the later Schellingian unconscious -- Schellingian libido theory.