The Inforare project aims to set up a system for the sharing of clinical and familial data, in order to study how genes are related to the severity of sickle cell disease. While the computerisation of clinical records represents a valuable research goal, an ethical framework is necessary to guarantee patients' protection and their rights in this developing field. Issues relating to patient information during the Inforare study were analysed by the steering committee. Several major concerns were discussed by the (...) committee and formalised in the patients' information letter: educating patients to aid the recruitment of family members, rules of confidentiality and the disclosure of aggregate, individual and unexpected research results. This paper presents the main issues addressed. (shrink)

This authoritative study explores the relation of John Henry Newman's idea of conscience to what he called conscience "in the ordinary sense of the word." Grave argues that a proper understanding of this distinction is essential to a satisfactory understanding of Newman's thought wherever the notion of conscience enters into it. He examines some neglected difficulties in this area such as the relation between individual conscience and the authority of the church, and the matter of rights of conscience.

A brief presentation of the major conclusions contained in the recently published monograph entitled "The Ascent to Law: Searches and Solutions," written over a period of many years. Chapter headings are: The law - an objective reality. The dogma of the law. The drama of scholarship. Searching. "The entire" substance of the law. Juridical constructs. The logic of laws. The secret of the law. Law - the highest purpose. Law in the life and fate of mankind.

1. Ḥāshīyat al-Ṣabbān ʻalá al-Sharḥ al-Ṣaghīr lil-Mullawī ʻalá al-Sullam al-murawnaq -- 2. Taqrīrāt Ḥasan ibn Riḍwān al-Ḥusaynī.

Gilligan’s (1982) refinement of Kohlberg’s theory on moral development operates on two theses: (1) females, more so than males, reach moral decisions based on the personalities of the relevant individuals; and (2) female behaviors stemming from moral decisions are based upon “care” and “responsibility for others.” This article accepts the first thesis but argues that the second is incorrect. That is, self-interest—i.e., aiding “blood” kin and/or carefully monitoring reciprocity—rather than “altruism” is argued to be the operant dynamic in forging distaff (...) morality and resultant behavior. Six empirical examples are presented as contraindicative of Gilligan’s second thesis. Finally, it is suggested that selection for the psychological traits of independence and the mastery of subtle social chess yielded ancestral females who had more descendants—us—than did females with alternative profiles. (shrink)

Compares and contrasts Philip Kitcher's Ideal Agent account of mathematics with the constructibility view of this work. Raises a variety of doubts about the cogency of Kitcher's account and points out several weaknesses in the account.

What is the dry garment which Sceparnio offers to the sea-soaked Charmides? First of all, there is doubt about the spelling of the word. The Palatine tradition is tigillum, though T has tixillum; the Ambrosian palimpsest is provokingly defective at this point and Studemund was unable to determine whether the vowel is e or i. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century editors have chosen to print tegillum, being influenced by notes preserved in the collections of two grammarians—Nonius and Paulus. (...) I quote these from Lindsay's Teubner editions. (shrink)

IN 1983 THE STUTTGART PUBLISHING FIRM OF PHILIPP RECLAM brought out a slim volume containing an introduction and seven essays by Robert Spaemann, then Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. Entitled Philosophische Essays, it presents and illustrates Spaemann’s philosophical project: to understand the phenomenon of modernity, to criticize the deficiencies of modern thought, and to preserve what is good in modernity by rehabilitating the teleological understanding of nature that modernity largely rejected. A second edition in 1994 included three (...) more essays. As little of Spaemann’s work has yet appeared in English, the aim of this paper is modest: to present as clearly and accurately as possible his position in the Philosophische Essays. (shrink)

R. S. Bluck’s engaging volume provides an accessible introduction to the thought of Plato. In the first part of the book the author provides an account of the life of the philosopher, from Plato’s early years, through to the Academy, the first visit to Dionysius and the third visit to Syracuse, and finishing with an account of his final years. In the second part contains a discussion of the main purpose and points of interest of each of Plato’s works. There (...) is a chapter on Plato’s central doctrine, the Theory of Ideas, and a translation of Plato’s Seventh Letter , which not only provides valuable additional material for the study of Plato’s thought but also contains a vivid account of many incidents in Plato’s life. (shrink)

Badawī, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, 1917-2002; criticism and interpretation.

Professor Toynbee observes in his Study of History that as he walked down Whitehall one day in the spring of 1918, and passed the Board of Education offices which had been commandeered for a new department of the War Office, “improvised in order to make an intensive study of trench warfare,” he found himself repeating the passage from St. Matthew's Gospel.

Many Christians take an exclusivist stance on the nature and access of salvation. This essay explores the realist assumptions often found behind such exclusivist views and presents an alternative understanding of Christian salvation that is inclusivistic, irrealistic, and pluralistic.