Ctesias’ World. Classica et Orientalia, vol. 1. Edited by Josef Wieshöfer; Robert Rollinger; and Giovanni Lanfranchi. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011. Pp. 546, illus. €88.

Die Sicht auf die Welt zwischen Ost und West. Edited by Robert Rollinger. Classica et Orientalia, vol. 12. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017. Pp. x + 231 + 119, map in pocket. €79.

The World of Berossos. Edited by Johannes Haubold; Giovanni B. LanfranchI; Robert Rollinger; and John Steele. Classica et Orientalia, vol. 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013. Pp. 332. €58.

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed (...) lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. (shrink)

In the Twentieth Century, Logic and Philosophy of Language are two of the few areas of philosophy in which philosophers made indisputable progress. For example, even now many of the foremost living ethicists present their theories as somewhat more explicit versions of the ideas of Kant, Mill, or Aristotle. In contrast, it would be patently absurd for a contemporary philosopher of language or logician to think of herself as working in the shadow of any figure who died before the Twentieth (...) Century began. Advances in these disciplines make even the most unaccomplished of its practitioners vastly more sophisticated than Kant. There were previous periods in which the problems of language and logic were studied extensively (e.g. the medieval period). But from the perspective of the progress made in the last 120 years, previous work is at most a source of interesting data or occasional insight. All systematic theorizing about content that meets contemporary standards of rigor has been done subsequently. (shrink)

The nurse–patient relationship is of great significance for both nurses and patients. The purpose of this article is to gain an understanding of how the individual is constituted through a focus on the execution of the patient’s and nurse’s role in the joint relationship. The article represents a social-constructionist consideration using Kenneth Gergen’s concept of multi-being. Gergen’s notions of the self as a multi-being focuses on the individual’s relational character through former relationships and social interactions. Gergen’s concept is applied onto (...) nurses and patients as individuals to gain an understanding of the broader institutional and social context of each role and their interactions within the nurse–patient relationship. The article focuses on the nurse–patient relationship in general with regard to specific challenges in the home care setting. Various demands and experiences from a myriad of past relationships merge as potential actions for nurses and patients during the forming of a relationship. Nurses as multi-beings see themselves confronted with guidelines and legal conditions, their own as well as the patients’ expectations and the actual possible forming of a relationship in the light of daily nursing care. Patients as multi-beings experience an extended social environment that comprises the nurse–patient relationship while simultaneously having to cope with illness and increasing care dependency within their own homes. Discrepancies can be observed in the relationship with regard to the inherent human qualities, the demands of forming a relationship, and the actual relationship arising due to framework conditions. (shrink)

Introduction/Background: Moral distress and related concepts surrounding morality and ethical decision-making have been given much attention in nursing. Despite the general consensus that moral distress is an affective response to being unable to act morally, the literature attests to the need for increased clarity regarding theoretical and conceptual constructs used to describe precisely what the experience of moral distress involves. The purpose of this study is to understand how student nurses experience morally distressing situations when caring for patients with different (...) values and beliefs than their own in the clinical environment -/- Methods: This study is based on secondary analysis of participant data. The stories of eight student nurses who completed the original study were reviewed following Yin’s multiple-case study design. -/- Results: Findings suggest there is a subtle form of moral distress that has been under appreciated in the literature and differs from Jameton’s classic definition. While traditional institutional triggers to moral distress are pervasive, personal conflict as a result of differing value systems may be a moral challenge faced by nursing students working with culturally diverse patients. -/- Conclusion: Ethics education is needed in nursing school to reduce moral distress in the clinical environment. Nursing students need opportunities to develop moral reasoning skills in addition to their clinical skills. A philosophical approach to ethics education may be needed to prevent and alleviate moral distress. (shrink)

This paper uses the example of payday loans to identify two standards of exploitation that better accord with intuitions about taking unfair advantage than neoclassical or neo-Marxian exploitation theory. These two standards are derived from ongoing policy debates about the regulation of payday loans. The sufficiency standard is more restrictive than relative-advantage theory, but the latter indicates when exceptions to the prohibition on exploitation should be made for the sake of the disadvantaged party.

This issue of Consciousness and Cognition presents four target articles and eight commentaries on the target articles. The present article presents comments on those commentaries, grouped into backward referral and volition categories. Regarding backward referral: I disagree with my fellow commentators and take the unpopular position of defending Libet's notion of backward referral. I join my fellow commentators in critiquing Libet's notion of a 500-ms delay. I examine several of the hypotheses suggested by other commentators for why cortical and lateral (...) meniscus stimulation give very different timing results. I suggest a simple experiment to help discriminate among the hypotheses. I comment on why temporal reordering is more likely to occur late rather than early in mental processing. Regarding Libet's volition experiments, I ask what is the root of the controversy, given the general agreement on the data. I agree with a commentator that Libet's chronotheology rather than his chronoscience is the cause of much of the controversy. Rather than joining others in criticizing Libet for his chronotheology I point out that he is making a respectable philosophical point regarding nondeterministic Free Will, but one that is easily misunderstood. I discuss two ways by which Libet's viewpoint can be brought into mainstream science. (shrink)

The concept of the ordinary, along with such cognates as everyday life, ordinary language, and ordinary experience, has come into special prominence in late modern philosophy. Thinkers have employed two opposing yet related responses to the notion of the ordinary - scientific and phenomenological approaches on the one hand, and on the other, more informal or even anti-scientific procedures. Eminent philosopher Stanley Rosen here presents the first comprehensive study of the main approaches to theoretical mastery of ordinary experience. He (...) evaluates the responses of a wide range of modern and contemporary thinkers and grapples with the peculiar problem of the ordinary - how to define it in its own terms without transforming it into a technical (and so, extraordinary) artifact. (shrink)

The concept and definition of personhood is central to current debates over ethics. Should 'personhood', for example, determine the allocation of scarce medical resources, and its perceived absence allow the termination of life? In a wide-ranging discussion notable for its clarity, Stanley Rudman's 1997 book traces the development of modern ideas about personhood. He argues that concepts of person are socially constructed, and that the relational understanding of persons in a number of theological discussions can act as an important (...) corrective to the individualistic notions of person which have been popular in secular philosophy since the Enlightenment. Early Christian views of divine speech, communication and relations between the Trinity can help to define an ethic which understands personhood in relation to other people, to the environment, and to God. (shrink)

Effective documentation is considered a core competency for clinical ethics consultation. Ethics consultants within the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, observed variation in the formatting of ethics chart notes across consultants and realized that this formatting was based on their own views of effectiveness. To minimize variation and optimize the readability and understandability of ethics chart notes for end users, a team undertook a quality improvement project to assess the formatting preferences of healthcare professionals who rely on ethics consultation notes. (...) The team developed three sample templates and conducted interviews with stakeholders to understand their preferences. A single standardized template was developed based on the preferences that emerged, which all consultants on the ethics consultation service then utilized. In the first five months of implementation, the percentage of end user respondents marking the highest Likert scale option on a post-consultation survey regarding whether the ethics consultation service provided helpful documentation increased from 60 percent to 72 percent compared to the same five-month period in the year prior. (shrink)

ArgumentThe psychoanalytic setting counts today as one of the familiar therapeutic rituals of the Western world. Taking up some of the insights of the anthropology of science will allow us to account for both the social and the material arrangements from which Freud's invention emerged at the end of the nineteenth century out of the clinical laboratories and private consulting rooms of practitioners of hypnosis. The peculiar way of neglecting or forgetting the object world and the institution of the psychoanalyst (...) as a “transference object” will be traced back to multiple reconfigurations in the history of hypnotism in France and in Germany. In this process, different practitioners tried to achieve a synthesis of clinical work and experimental psychology, with the aim of objectifying knowledge about human subjectivity. While Freud retained the claim of psychoanalysis performing an experimental situation, he set apart his own setting from the objectifying practices which were characteristic of this experimental psychology located in the clinic and the private consulting room.It is not easy to over-estimate the importance of the part played by hypnotism in the history of the origin of psychoanalysis. From a theoretical as well as from a therapeutic point of view, psycho-analysis has at its command a legacy which it has inherited from hypnotism.Sigmund Freud, A Short Account of Psycho-Analysis. (shrink)

What did Lenin mean when he claimed to be thinking dialectically about questions of political practice? Renewed interest has been expressed in this subject, but the tendency of most studies is to treat Lenin's dialectic as a metaphysical doctrine consisting of universal laws such as transformation into opposite, and so forth. Emphasizing Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, commentators have argued that his tactical innovations after 1914 were simply applications of these dialectical laws. Examination of Lenin's conception of the dialectic as set forth (...) in his tactical writings after the turn of the century shows, however, that the Leninist practice of dialectical thinking was in fact the very antithesis of metaphysical reason, because it repudiated the universality of abstract rules in the formulation of tactics. Several examples of this practice are examined, including the case of national self-determination and the problem of party dictatorship over the working class. (shrink)

Precis by the autor of the book How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015).Sinopsis del autor del libro How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Recent military coups in West Africa have put the continent’s democratisation itself into question. In some places, for the moment, these coups appear to have popular backing. Nigeria, where radicalism is firmly rooted in democratic values and a human-rights framework, the radical grassroots opposition to the Buhari government’s creeping authoritarianism lies drenched in blood. The roots of this development go back to the history of Nigeria’s radicalism in the twentieth century. Much has appeared on the global 1968 recently, including that (...) of Africa. 1970s/1980s-style radicalism is reappearing today with Omoyele Sowore’s 2018 presidential candidacy, with the African Action Congress party, the #EndSARS protests and the tragic Lekki Toll Gate massacre (2020) in Nigeria. The shift towards radicalism is palpable with protest music such as Falz’s This is Nigeria, and Burna Boy’s Monsters you Made, both explicitly targeting neocolonialism and police brutality. Contrary to Achille Mbembe’s sweeping dismissal of African radicalism, the movement with very deep roots under study is meaningful once again, and is gathering momentum in West Africa’s giant polity. This article applies Walter Benjamin’s and also Nigerian radical thinkers’ conceptualisation of political, social and artistic radicalism, while it frames the Nigerian version via the movement’s history, in which marxisant theory and praxis, feminism, human rights and pro-democracy movements interact with emancipatory strands of Islam, Christianity, Igbo Judaism, and animism. In the context of Nigerian radicalism, even expressly pro-capitalist art theory performs a radical social function by stressing the African’s right to make universal statements (Olu Oguibe) in its de facto defiance of the neo-colony. As these different strands of protest meet, ethnic uprisings (amongst them IPOB) find ways to establish common cause with social radicalism, posing a composite threat to the prebendalist oligarchy that rules and oppresses the country via a militarised neoliberalism. (shrink)

1 Das Paradox des Regelfolgens Regeln im Sinne von Handlungsvorschriften setzen ihre Anwendbarkeit schon begrifflich voraus. Alle Regeln regeln mögliches Verhalten, seien es Verkehrsregeln, juridische Gesetze, mathematische und logische Verfahren, und selbst „Bedeutungs-postulate“, die festlegen, wie ein Ausdruck verständlich zu verwenden ist. Regeln ohne irgendeinen möglichen Anwendungsspielraum sind sinnlos. Dabei werden durch Regeln nicht nur mögliche Anwendungen präsupponiert, sondern umgekehrt aus gegebenen Tatsachen oder Ereignissen Regelmäßigkeiten herausgelesen, die sich in der Regel ausdrücken. Die Regel bezeichnet in diesem Sinne das „Prinzip (...) hinter den Tatsachen“, das sie diesen freilich in gewisser Weise erst andichtet. Zweck dieses Vorgehens ist nicht zuletzt, die mögliche Fortsetzung der Tatsachenreihe gleichzeitig zu bestimmen und zu begründen, jedenfalls aber eine gewisse Ordnung, Rechtfertigung und Voraussagbarkeit des Handelns zu gewährleisten. Regelanwendung verlangt deshalb eine komplexe geistige Kompetenz, die nicht nur Fähigkeiten der Abstraktion und Reflexion, sondern auch Können und Erfahrung voraussetzt. (shrink)

Interest in German Romanticism has been revitalized in recent years by new post-structural, interdisciplinary, and intertextual perspectives. However until now this renewed interest has not led to a re-examination of Jakob Böhme's formative influence on.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 711-712, August 2012.

Hannah Arendt clearly articulated a vision of political life free of religious origins as well as the dominance of religious authorities. Nonetheless, she both consistently drew upon religious ideas as well as encouraged religious actors to weigh in on political matters. To understand why, I firstly reiterate her account of intersubjective plurality articulated throughout the vita activa’s three categories of labor, work and action. Secondly, I apply the vita activa to some of Arendt’s most prominent writings on religion. What emerges (...) is yet another way in which Arendt’s oeuvre continues to matter. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the thesis of contextualism about knowledge attributions, which is the view that the proposition expressed by a sentence such as ‘John knows that the bank is open at 2 p.m. EST on October 3, 2006’ varies depending upon the context of its utterance. Different versions of the thesis are explained.

What role does religious transcendence play in liberal democracies? In Jürgen Habermas’s early political theory of the bourgeois public sphere, religion was downplayed if not dismissed completely. In the past several years however, he has developed a greater interest in religion. Habermas seems to like the positive solidarity-forming effects religion can have on communities that mediate in a public sphere between private individuals and state authority. However, in light of continuing terrorist activity, he is deeply critical of any sort of (...) other worldly transcendence that is too open to violent cooption. Nonetheless, Habermas relates his renewal of a critically engaged public sphere of debate to universalized rational procedures which he discusses in light of a philosophical notion of “detranscendentalization.” However, if it is the case that the solidarity of communities is being eroded by the influences of mass media and free market globalization as Habermas claims, then a further reflection on the way religious communities form around shared transcendent beliefs is required. Are his detranscendentalized rational procedures of critical debate adequate in inspiring the critical power communities need to solidify themselves against state authority? It is in light of this questions that I will develop the thought of Karl Barth. (shrink)