Gini coefficients, which measure gross inequalities rather than their unfair components, are often used as proxy measures of absolute or relative distributive injustice in Western societies. This presupposes that the fair inequalities in these societies are small and stable enough to be ignored. This article presents a model for a series of ideal, perfectly just societies, where comfortable lives are equally available to everyone, and calculates the Gini coefficients for each. According to this model, inequalities produced by age and other (...) demographic factors, together with reasonable choices under equal opportunity, can raise the Gini coefficients for perfectly just societies to levels at least as high as those of any current Western country, and can as easily account for differences in Gini coefficients between such societies or within one such society over time. If Gini coefficients at these levels are possible for ideal societies without distributive injustice, then they should not be used as proxy measures of distributive injustice in real societies. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno's (...) major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

Aesthetic alienation may be described as the paradoxical relationship whereby art and truth have come to be divorced from one another while nonetheless remaining entwined. J. M. Bernstein not only finds the separation of art and truth problematic, but also contends that we continue to experience art as sensuous and particular, thus complicating and challenging the cultural self-understanding of modernity. Bernstein focuses on the work of four key philosophers—Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno—and provides powerful new interpretations of their views. Bernstein (...) shows how each of the three post-Kantian aesthetics to construct a philosophical language that can criticize and displace the categorical assumption of modernity. He also examines in detail their responses to questions concerning the relations among art, philosophy, and politics in modern societies. (shrink)

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this (...) article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. (shrink)

Because of his preoccupation with the formal aspects of music and literature, Theodor W. Adorno is often regarded as the most aesthetically oriented thinker of the Frankfurt School theorists. It is Adorno’s perceived commitment to aestheticism—the study of art for art’s sake and the study of art as a source of sensuous pleasure, rather than as a vehicle for culturally constructed morality or meaning—that many scholars have criticized as hostile to genuine, concrete, substantive political, social, and ethical engagement with the (...) arts. _Adorno and Ethics_—the first issue of _New German Critique_ to be published by Duke University Press—takes issue with Adorno’s critics. These essays reconsider Adorno’s unique brand of aestheticism, revealing a “politics of aestheticism” and exploring the political and ethical dimensions of his writings. One contributor links the ethical turn taken in Adorno criticism with related developments in American poetry and poetics. Another examines Adorno’s aphorism “Gold Assay” for the ways in which it anticipates one of his seminal works, _The Jargon of Authenticity_. Focusing on Auschwitz and the testimony of its survivors, one contributor explores the impact of the Holocaust on modern philosophy and reason, a relationship that he argues Adorno never specified. Another contributor considers the figure of the animal in the writings of Kant, Adorno, and Lévinas, exploring what it might mean to live, as Adorno suggests, as “a good animal.” _Contributors_. J. M. Bernstein, Detlev Claussen, Samir Gandesha, Alexander García Düttmann, Christina Gerhardt, Martin Jay, Robert Kaufman, Michael Marder, Gerhard Richter. (shrink)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

The Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has recently put forward an argument for atheism based on the idea that God is supposed to be perfectly loving and so would not permit people to be deprived of awareness of his existence. If such a deity were to exist, then, he would do something to reveal his existence clearly to people, thereby causing them to become theists. Thus, the fact that there are so many non-theists in the world becomes good reason to deny (...) the existence of God conceived of in the given way. I first raise objections to Schellenberg’s formulation of the argument and then suggest some improvements. My main improvement is to include among the divine attributes the property of strongly desiring humanity’s love. Since to love God requires at least believing that he exists, if God were to exist, he must want widespread theistic belief. The fact that so many people lack such belief becomes a good argument for atheism with respect to God conceived of in the given way. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered, in particular the claim that God refrains from revealing himself to people in order to avoid interfering with their free will or to avoid eliciting inappropriate responses from them or some other purpose. An attempt is made to refute each of these objections. (shrink)

The hexameter poems of Theodore Metochites are perhaps the most determinedly baroque of all Byzantine literary productions to have survived. The tortuous constructions of Metochites' prose rhetoric are transmuted into his rather imprecise concept of the hexameter, with a vocabulary that is ostensibly Homeric but in fact ranges over the whole spectrum of Greek literature, with not a few coinages of his own. The twenty poems, in just over 9,000 lines, were written probably towards the end of his period (...) in high office; several clearly date from the period immediately before his fall from power in 1328, with others written in the years between his return from exile to his beloved monastery of the Chora and his death in 1332. The topics treated by Metochites range from solipsistic musings on his youth and the troubles that afflicted his old age to bombastic funerary memorials. Although the poems are preserved in several manuscripts, it has been demonstrated (by Ihor Ševčenko) that Par.Gr. 1776 stands at the head of the tradition. It is in a format similar to that, for example, of another luxury copy of Metochites' own works, Vindob. Phil. Gr. 95, while the corrections to the verses have been shown to be in the hand of Metochites himself. (shrink)

Ten arguments for the nonexistence of God are formulated and discussed briefly. Each of them ascribes to God a pair of properties from the following list of divine attributes: (a) perfect, (b) immutable, (c) transcendent, (d) nonphysical, (e) omniscient, (f) omnipresent, (g) personal, (h) free, (i) all-loving, (j) all-just, (k) all-merciful, and (1) the creator of the universe. Each argument aims to demonstrate an incompatibility between the two properties ascribed. The pairs considered are: 1. (a-1), 2. (b-1), 3. (b-e), 4. (...) (b-i), 5, (c-f), 6. (c-g), 7. (d-g), 8. (f-g), 9. (e-h), and 10. (j-k). Along the way, several other possible pairs are also mentioned and commented upon. (shrink)

Publication de deux poèmes byzantins du 12ème s. attribués à Théodore Prodomos, qui fournissent un certain nombre de renseignements sur les tentes des camps d'hiver des Comnène, et en particulier sur celle de la maison d'Irène la Sevastokratorissa. Cette étude mène l'auteur à un commentaire historico-artistique des éléments décrits: il compare d'abord ceux-ci avec l'art des 11ème et et 12ème s., et particulièrement avec l'art profane, puis il s'interroge sur l'authenticité des descriptions par rapport aux figures de rhétorique employées dans (...) ces textes. (shrink)

We show that if there is a nonconstructible real, then every perfect set has a nonconstructible element, answering a question of K. Prikry. This is a specific instance of a more general theorem giving a sufficient condition on a pair $M\subset N$ of models of set theory implying that every perfect set in N has an element in N which is not in M.

Schweppenhauser, H. Quelques exemples de critiques adressées à Adorno.--Bellasi, P. Le bébé avec l'eau du bain.--Höhn, G. Une logique de la décomposition.--Jimenez, M. Théorie critique et théorie de l'art.--Baučar, E. L'esthétique comme anthropologie.--Revault d'Allonnes, O. Adorno non adorno.--Makarius, M. I. Adorno et le viol de la médiation.--Ladmiral, J. R. Adorno contra Heidegger.--Naggar, C. John Heartfield, dada-monteur.--Noguez, D. Jean Mitry et le cinéma expérimental.--S., E. In memoriam Jacques Duron.--Revault d'Allonnes, O. L'Institut d'esthétique s'installe 162, rue Saint-Charles à Paris XVe.--Saison, M. Étude (...) critique d'une création théâtrale. (shrink)

La Thyréatide, entre l'Argolide et la Laconie, à l'Est de la Tégéatide est un territoire convoité par tous ses voisins. La description de Pausanias est sans doute mutilée, rendant ainsi pendant longtemps la topographie de la région incompréhensible. Les découvertes archéologiques permettent cependant peu à peu d'en connaître l'occupation et de commencer à cerner les problèmes historiques. Il semble que l'on doive placer Anthana au Nord du Tanos et Eua à Hélleniko, à 600 m au-dessus de la plaine. Le troisième (...) site fortifié, au Sud de la plaine et au bord de la mer, serait alors la Méthana du Pseudo-Skylax, dont la mention aurait disparu du texte de Pausanias en même temps que celle de Thyréa. On suit encore mal l'histoire de la région au vie s. et au début du ve s. av. J.-G. Fortifiée durant la guerre du Péloponnèse, la région est donnée à Argos par Philippe de Macédoine. Renforcée à cette date, la cité d'Eua semble cependant connaître encore des jours mouvementés au ine et au 11e s. av. J.-G. malgré le silence des textes. Les tombes de l'époque romaine nous indiquent qu'elle était encore habitée au temps de Pausanias. (shrink)

Für Ernst Schütte zum 65. Geburtstag, von G.-A. Zinn.--Zur Konzeption der Festschrift für Ernst Schütte, von H. Hamm-Brücher.--Autonomie und Autorität des Menschen, ein Gesprach.--Vernunft und Selbsterhaltung, von M. Horkheimer.--Resignation, von T. W. Adorno.--Die Grenzen psychologischer Forschung, von A. Mitscherlich.--Empfehlungen zur techokratischen Hochschulreform, von J. Habermas.--Quantitative überlegungen zum tertiären Bildungsbereich, H. Leussink.--Bemerkungen zur Didaktik ais einer offenen Strukturtheorie des Lehrens und Lernens, von G. Hausmann.--Erziehungswissenschaft, von W. Klafki.--Der pädagogische Fortschritt und die pädagogische Forschung, von W. Schultze.--Ideologisches und Unidelogisches in der Bildungsreformsdiskussion, (...) von C.-H. Evers.--Leistung und Glück, von H. W. Nicklas.--Schulversuche und Bildungsplanung, von G. Preissler.--Das pädagogische Elternrecht im sozialen Rechsstaat, von E. Stein.--Kreatives. (shrink)

In vitro fertilization is now a well-established practice in the field of assisted reproduction. In 1995, over 41,000 IVF cycles were done in the United States, at a cost of more than $300 million. The overall success rate has risen to 22.8 deliveries per 100 egg-retrieval procedures. As the field has matured, the attention of policy-makers has shifted from questions about the ethical and legal status of human embryos to concerns about providing access and protecting consumers.Three such concerns have emerged. (...) One is the danger that IVF programs will disseminate misleading information about their success rates in order to attract patients. This problem, however, may be alleviated by the publication in late 1997 of the first of annual national and clinic specific reports, based on randomly audited data, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, and RESOLVE, pursuant to the federal 1992 Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Laboratory Certification Act. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.4 (2000) 549-557 [Access article in PDF] Cato Orationes 66 and the Case Against M.' Acilius Glabrio In 189 B.C.E. J. Bradford Churchill THE RACE FOR THE CENSORSHIP of 189 became the setting for one of the most dramatic domestic political disputes of the early second century. 1 M. Porcius Cato (cos. 195) was seeking the censorship, and among his competitors was another homo novus, (...) M.' Acilius Glabrio (cos. 191). Now, Cato had served as tribunus militum under the consul Glabrio during the campaign of 191 against Antiochus III in Greece. Cato had led a flanking expedition to decide the battle at Thermopylae, at the conclusion of which the king's camp was invaded and plundered. 2 Cato said that after the battle, Glabrio had embraced him and cried out that neither he nor the Roman people could repay his good services. 3 Glabrio sent Cato home with news of the victory. 4Now, in the race for the censorship of 189, public opinion was inclining in favor of Glabrio because he had conducted a lavish distribution of congiaria--vessels, perhaps precious, filled with wine or oil. The nobles among the competitors took umbrage at his being preferred to them, and two tribunes, P. Sempronius Gracchus and C. Sempronius Rutilus, brought Glabrio to trial on the charge "that there was some amount of the royal money and booty taken in the camp of Antiochus which he had neither carried in the triumph nor deposited in the treasury." 5 Legates and military tribunes were called to testify, and most visible among them was Cato, who had a reputation for integrity, but [End Page 549] because he was testifying against an opponent in a political race, his influence was diminished. The substance of Cato's testimony, as Livy summarized it, was that he had seen some gold and silver vessels among the royal booty at the sack of the camp, and had not seen them in the triumph.Glabrio withdrew from the race after a fine had been proposed and twice argued, and the case lapsed. He vilified Cato as a perjurious hypocrite for attacking a fellow homo novus for something the nobles usually passed over in silence. 6We have a fragment of a speech Cato gave against Glabrio, and his trial is the only appropriate occasion which is known to us. The fragment itself is clearly designed to set up a contrast between Cato and Glabrio, but the text is corrupt. The codex Farnesianus of Festus has the following entry (Fest. p. 268L): Penatores: qui penus gestant. Cato adversus M.' Acilium quarta: "postquam nativitas ex navibus eduxi, non ex militibus atque nautis piscatores penatores fici, sed arum dedi." First there are several problems which are relatively minor and no longer yield much controversy. The word quarta indicates there were at least four speeches "against Acilius." More often than not, this is dismissed as a simple error. 7 The word nativitas is clearly foreign to the context, and was long ago emended to navitas, as a poetic and archaic variant on nautas. 8 The transmitted fici is regularly and reasonably emended to feci. 9 [End Page 550]The more difficult question centers on the phrase sed arum dedi. André Dacier, in an early modern edition of Festus (Amsterdam 1700), emended arum to aurum. 10 Much later, Theodor Mommsen offered the conjecture arma. 11 This is now the prevailing reading, accepted most significantly by Enrica Malcovati (1953, 39) in the authoritative edition of the Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta. 12 Maria Teresa Sblendorio Cugusi (1982, 77), following Lindsay (1913, 268), printed and obelized arum, but in her commentary (1982, 215) considered Mommsen's emendation preferable to Dacier's because the latter "appears inconsistent with the context." I intend to show that this is rather the opposite of the case, and we ought to accept Dacier's emendation. 13With Mommsen's conjecture, the passage reads: "When I brought sailors off the ships, I didn't make fishers and provisioners out of soldiers... (shrink)

Why do otherwise well-intentioned managers make decisions that have negative social or environmental consequences? To answer this question, the authors combine the literature on construal level theory with the compromise effect to explore the circumstances that lead to seemingly unethical decision-making. The results of two studies suggest that the degree to which managers make high-risk tradeoffs is highly influenced by how they mentally represent the decision context. The authors find that managers are more likely to make seemingly unethical tradeoffs when (...) psychological distance is high (rather than low) and when they are forced to choose between competing alternatives. However, when given the option not to choose, managers better reflect on the consequences of each alternative, and thus become more likely to choose options with less risk of negative consequences. The results suggest that simply offering managers the option not to choose may reduce psychological distance and help organizations avoid seemingly unethical decision-making. (shrink)

El presente trabajo resume y comenta algunas de las aportaciones que nos han parecido más relevantes realizadas en los últimos años en torno a la obra filosófica de J. Ortega y Gasset. Desde la aparición del libro de P. Cerezo Galán La voluntad de aventura en 1983, el interés por el problema de Ortega ha experimentado un auge muy significativo y creciente en España, del que son muestra los estudios de Javier San Martín, Mª Carmen Paredes, Fco J. Martín, Máximo (...) Martín Serrano y Jaime de Salas. Nuestro trabajo, tras una exposición resumida de estas interpretaciones, intenta una síntesis conciliadora que creemos sugerida por los propios textos del filósofo. (shrink)