Pouvons nous parvenir à connaître Dieu par l'exercice de notre intelligence ou bien devons nous nécessairement, passer par un acte de foi qui semble remplacer la raison? La question n'est pas d'aujourd'hui. Saint Thomas d'Aquin, théologien du XIIIème siècle, en a déjà longuement débattu. En faisant l'effort de nous replonger dans ses écrits très modernes, nous découvrons que la foi ne remplace pas l'intelligence mais au contraire en exige le recours indispensable. Ainsi, cette réflexion nous préserve-t-elle de tomber dans les (...) erreurs d'une idéologie qui défigure la dignité humaine comme le risque de l'intelligence artificielle ou de l'obscurantisme religieux. L'actualité nous met en présence de la confrontation de plus en plus violente entre l'indifférentisme de la laïcité et la religiosité sous une forme intégriste et radicale. Seul un juste équilibre entre la foi et la raison peut nous conduire à la lumière de la sagesse où toutes les vérités partielles s'organisent et s'ajustent pour conduire à la vérité tout entière qu'est le Christ."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The ontology of Bohmian mechanics includes both the universal wave function and particles. Proposals for understanding the physical significance of the wave function in this theory have included the idea of regarding it as a physically-real field in its 3N-dimensional space, as well as the idea of regarding it as a law of nature. Here we introduce and explore a third possibility in which the configuration space wave function is simply eliminated—replaced by a set of single-particle pilot-wave fields living in (...) ordinary physical space. Such a re-formulation of the Bohmian pilot-wave theory can exactly reproduce the statistical predictions of ordinary quantum theory. But this comes at the rather high ontological price of introducing an infinite network of interacting potential fields which influence the particles’ motion through the pilot-wave fields. We thus introduce an alternative approach which aims at achieving empirical adequacy with a more modest ontological complexity, and provide some preliminary evidence for optimism regarding the program of trying to replace the configuration space wave function with a set of fields in ordinary physical space. (shrink)

Normative case studies are designed to offer richly detailed “worlds of possibility” that invite complex reflection and discussion about authentic ethical dilemmas in education. In this essay, Tatiana Geron and Meira Levinson argue that authors' choices of what details to include in a case are themselves ethical decisions that require significant ethical responsibility. Case details can shape which avenues of ethical inquiry are open to readers, whether and how institutional and structural conditions get considered, whose perspectives are included and legitimized, (...) and what political issues are understood as “open” or “closed.” At its best, case “world-building” can help readers understand the full complexity of ethical decision-making in education. However, for this to occur, case authors must seek out expert and dissenting perspectives, field test the case with diverse audiences, and remain reflexive about their own perspectives and how these shape their world-building decisions. (shrink)

BackgroundViral pandemics present a range of ethical challenges for policy makers, not the least among which are difficult decisions about how to allocate scarce healthcare resources. One important question is whether healthcare workers should receive priority access to a vaccine in the event that an effective vaccine becomes available. This question is especially relevant in the coronavirus pandemic with governments and health authorities currently facing questions of distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.Main textIn this article, we critically evaluate the most common ethical (...) arguments for granting healthcare workers priority access to a vaccine. We review the existing literature on this topic, and analyse both deontological and utilitarian arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation. For illustrative purposes, we focus in particular on the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. We also explore some practical complexities attendant on arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation.ConclusionsWe argue that there are deontological and utilitarian cases for prioritising HCWs. Indeed, the widely held view that we should prioritise HCWs represents an example of ethical convergence. Complexities arise, however, when considering who should be included in the category of HCW, and who else should receive priority in addition to HCWs. (shrink)

Recent publications focused on Arabic/Islamic philosophy have traditionally considered this under the history of ideas and Oriental or Islamic studies. There is a need for a comprehensive collection of essays that treats Islamic philosophy as philosophy, and not merely as a conduit of intellectual history for delivering ideas from the ancient Greeks to medieval Christians. With this aim, The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy is conceived as a well-structured and wide-ranging thematic approach, accessible for a broad spectrum of readers, from (...) students to scholars interested in Islamic thought, philosophy, theology, and religious studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the United States, constitutional and statutory law reinforce the right of all children to receive an education, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. In a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment and law enforcement, however, partnerships among school districts, local law enforcement, and the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security subject undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to indefensible levels of risk for detention and deportation. We identify three stances that U.S. schools may take in the face of a (...) potential ‘school-to-deportation pipeline.’ Schools that engage in intentional collaboration actively increase detention and deportation by referring students to immigration officials for criminal, non-criminal, and even non-disciplinary activity. Schools that engage in predictable complicity may not intend to subject their undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to detention or deportation, but still put students at risk by involving police in school policies. We argue that U.S. schools should instead engage in proactive protection of immigrant students and families, including actively resisting federal policies when necessary. (shrink)

On sait que sur la question des pensées imperceptibles, Nicole, bientôt suivi par le bénédictin François Lamy, heurte l’opinion d’Arnauld. L’opposition d’Arnauld à Nicole touchant la question de la grâce est bien connue. C’est plutôt de l’originalité philosophique de Nicole qu’il s’agira dans ce travail. En tirant Nicole de « l’ombre d’Arnauld et de Pascal » et en lui faisant crédit d’une consistance spéculative propre, on retrouvera la finesse de sa psychologie, mais on découvrira également l’esquisse d’une subtile anthropologie.

Cogito, ergo sum. Ce n’est pas tiré de la plume de Descartes que cet énoncé apparaît pour la première fois dans les œuvres du philosophe. C’est en effet Caterus qui, dans la première série d’Objectiones aux Meditationes l’écrit, telle que la postérité scolaire va le considérer, comme un objet textuel autonome et digne par soi-même d’intérêt. Le fait est anecdotique, mais il est révélateur. D’abord parce que ce n’est pas Descartes qui a constitué...

In Racial Prescriptions, Jonathan Xavier Inda offers a critical and timely analysis of the making of BiDil, the first (and only) drug that was marketed exclusively to African Americans. Sibille Merz speaks to him about the re-articulation of racial politics under neoliberalism, the legacies of scientific racism and the molecularization of biopolitics in the genomic age.

Several ethicists have defended the use of responsibility-based criteria in healthcare rationing. Yet in this article we outline two challenges to the implementation of responsibility-based healthcare rationing policies. These two challenges are, namely, that responsibility for past behavior can diminish as an agent changes, and that blame can come apart from responsibility. These challenges suggest that it is more difficult to hold someone responsible for health related actions than proponents of responsibility-sensitive healthcare policies suggest. We close by discussing public health (...) policies that could function as an alternative to contentious, responsibility-sensitive rationing policies. (shrink)

Replying to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke, this article shows how Political Marxism offers powerful conceptual tools to understand modes of production that structure historical processes as fundamentally constituted by exploitative social and political relations. I explain how structure, or rules of reproduction, should be understood as alienated social relations, which are inherent to all class societies. Understanding structure this way leaves ample space for – and makes inevitable – the consideration of agency.

Cet article expose les grandes forces économiques qui sous-tendent et organisent le processus de déréglementation caractérisant aujourd’hui les économies développées. Il montre comment, au sein de ce processus, la réglementation change de forme et de nature plus qu’elle ne disparaît réellement. À un contrôle direct par l’autorité publique se substitue progressivement un contrôle indirect par une concurrence encadrée. Les enjeux éthiques de la déréglementation sont abordés à la lumière de cette analyse économique.

Xavier Zubiri entiende que el tema del mundo, a pesar de tener una noble prosapia en la historia de la filosofía, ha sido desatendido por la mayor parte del pensamiento reciente. Posiblemente fue Descartes el último gran filósofo en escribir un tratado dedicado temáticamente al problema del mundo. Es como si la atención a las cosas que hay en el universo hubiera hecho que se perdiera de vista el problema del universo mismo. Por supuesto, no faltan filósofos contemporáneos que (...) hayan hablado del mundo. Pero Zubiri entiende que esos filósofos lo han hecho de una manera unilateral, atendiendo únicamente al diálogo con las ciencias humanas, y desarrollando de esta manera conceptos del mundo en los que no caben las aportaciones de las ciencias naturales. Ahora bien, ya en el año 1960 Zubiri señalaba que no sólo la historia humana, sino también los nuevos descubrimientos en ciencias tales como la astronomía o la biología exigían que la filosofía se volviera a enfrentar sistemáticamente con la cuestión filosófica del mundo. Esto es lo que Zubiri hizo en este curso, impartido en la Cámara de Comercio de Madrid, y que ahora presentamos a los lectores. Sin duda, el medio siglo transcurrido desde entonces haría necesaria una actualización de las informaciones científicas que Zubiri manejaba. Sin embargo, muchos de los conceptos desarrollados por él en aquellas lecciones, precisamente por su novedad, por su radicalidad, y por su apertura a una concepción abierta y dinámica de la ciencia, siguen siendo relevantes en el presente. No sólo eso. En una última y extensa lección Zubiri se planteó una cuestión crucial para la filosofía: la de un posible fundamento del mundo. También aquí su profundo conocimiento de la historia del pensamiento, su rigor y al mismo tiempo su originalidad filosófica, siguen siendo inspiradores para los lectores contemporáneos. (shrink)

There has been significant debate about whether the moral norms of medical practice arise from some feature or set of features internal to the discipline of medicine. In this article, I analyze Edmund Pellegrino’s conception of the internal morality of medicine, and situate it in the context of Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential account of “practice.” Building upon MacIntyre, Pellegrino argued that medicine is a social practice with its own unique goals—namely, the medical, human, and spiritual good of the patient—and that the (...) moral norms that govern medical practice are derived from these goals. After providing an overview of Pellegrino’s work, I discuss some forceful objections to his theory—specifically, that it is too rigid and incapable of entering into dialogue with contemporary values systems; that it is dependent on an external conception of human flourishing; and that it is incompatible with the rapidly changing nature of modern medicine. In the final section of this article, I consider how theorists working in the Hippocratic tradition might respond to these objections against ethical essentialism by drawing upon MacIntyre’s historico-cultural method as well as what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology.”. (shrink)

En République, II, 369a, Socrate choisit de rechercher la justice dans la polis plutôt que dans l’âme humaine. Pour ce faire, il propose de construire une cité en paroles. Cette construction prendra la forme d’une entreprise de colonisation qui aura son terme au livre IV, 427c. Le présent article s’intéresse à la manière dont Platon s’y est pris pour réaliser cette fondation. L’analyse que nous proposons vise principalement à montrer comment Platon s’inspire du modèle historique de la colonisation pour construire (...) cette cité-modèle. La nomination d’un oikistes, la mise en place de lois fondamentales ainsi que la consultation de l’Apollon delphique assurent à la cité une fondation idéale dans laquelle, parce qu’idéalement fondée, la justice pourra être visible. (shrink)

Para completar la exposición de su propio pensamiento Xavier Zubiri dictó en 1968 un ciclo de conferencias titulado Estructura dinámica de la realidad. El texto de esas conferencias es el que ahora, forma este libro. En él analiza el momento dinámico de la realidad, lo que denomina su «dar de sí». Si en Sobre la esencia la realidad era definida como «de suyo», ahora se completaba esa definición afirmando que es, además un «dar de sí». De suyo, la realidad (...) da de sí. Tal podría ser el resumen más apretado de esta obra, que añade precisiones muy importantes a los libros ya publicados en esta misma colección. (shrink)

Dans les années 1930, la société cantonaise porte son attention moins sur les consommatrices d’opium que sur les yanhua (“ fleurs de la fumée ”), jeunes et jolies femmes d’extraction modeste employées dans les fumeries afin de préparer les pipes pour les clients. Les yanhua cristallisent des craintes liées au maintien de l’ordre et de la hiérarchie établis. Les séductions conjuguées de la drogue et de l’attrait physique de ces femmes apparaissent susceptibles de favoriser une mobilité sociale de mauvais aloi, (...) qu’elle soit descendante (ruine du fumeur aisé causée par une consommation inconsidérée d’opium), ou ascendante (lorsqu’une yanhua parvient à séduire etépouser un riche client). (shrink)

L’enjeu de cet ouvrage est de mettre au jour une continuité des exercices spirituels dans la philosophie contemporaine depuis Ralph Waldo Emerson et Henri David Thoreau jusqu’aux philosophes que sont, entre autres, Pierre Hadot, Hilary Putman, Stanley Cavell, William James, John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty ou encore Richard Shusterman. A travers le pragmatisme, le méliorisme, le perfectionnisme ou l’esthétique de l’existence, ce parcours de près de deux siècles met en évidence l’idée que la philosophie comme pratique des (...) exercices spirituels demeure, que celle-ci perdure dans notre espace contemporain en s’appropriant parfois de nouveaux terrains comme l’art, le corps... (4e de couv.). (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Ce livre commence par définir ce qu'est un exercice spirituel. Quelle est cette notion qui est aussi une pratique dans l'antiquité? Il analyse en détail l'expression en s'interrogeant sur les théories et les mises en oeuvre qui peuvent s'y référer dans l'antiquité : de l'ascèse à la méditation, de la conversion à la maîtrise de soi ou encore le travail de l'âme. Enfin, cet ouvrage questionne également la continuité des exercices spirituels des Anciens, leurs (...) reprises à l'aube du christianisme, mais également par les philosophies de la Renaissance (Montaigne), des époques classique, moderne (Descartes) et par celles des Lumières (Shaftesbury, Kant, Rousseau).". (shrink)

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in healthcare. While the literature to date has focused primarily on individual healthcare practitioners who object to participation in morally controversial procedures, in this article we consider a different albeit related issue, namely, whether publicly funded healthcare institutions should be required to provide morally controversial services such as abortions, emergency contraception, voluntary sterilizations, and voluntary euthanasia. Substantive debates about institutional responsibility have remained largely at the level of (...) first-order ethical debate over medical practices which institutions have refused to offer; in this article, we argue that more fundamental questions about the metaphysics of institutions provide a neglected avenue for understanding the basis of institutional conscientious objection. To do so, we articulate a metaphysical model of institutional conscience, and consider three well-known arguments for undermining institutional conscientious objection in light of this model. We show how our metaphysical analysis of institutions creates difficulties for justifying sanctions on institutions that conscientiously object. Thus, we argue, questions about the metaphysics of institutions are deserving of serious attention from both critics and defenders of institutional conscientious objection. (shrink)

Résumé L’écriture, la peinture et la relation à l’architecture sont les trois points d’entrée de ce rappel de l’œuvre de Claude Rutault, au travers d’une mise en parallèle avec celle de Rémy Zaugg. Sur le mode du témoignage, Xavier Douroux revient sur l’histoire du Consortium et de sa coopération avec Claude Rutault, notamment sur les expériences de peinture « en architecture » à la villa Savoye de Le Corbusier, à l’agence de Dominique Perrault, au pavillon de Mies Van der (...) Rohe, et à l’ Éclat de folie de Bernard Tschumi. (shrink)

Esta nueva edición de Sobre la esencia incorpora como principal novedad un apéndice con las anotaciones de Xavier Zubiri a su propio ejemplar de la primera edición (1962), conservado en su biblioteca personal. Se trata de indicaciones de Zubiri en el mismo texto y de fichas manuscritas, añadidas al libro, en las que Zubiri iba matizando, corrigiendo e interpretando su propio pensamiento. Estas anotaciones hacen ahora posible entrever el modo en que la reflexión filosófica posterior de Zubiri, que culminaría (...) en la trilogía sobre la Inteligencia sentiente (1980-1983), hubiera podido afectar a algunos de los contenidos de Sobre la esencia. (shrink)

Conscience is an idea that has significant currency in liberal democratic societies. Yet contemporary moral philosophical scholarship on conscience is surprisingly sparse. This paper seeks to offer a rigorous philosophical account of the role of conscience in moral life with a view to informing debates about the ethics of conscientious objection in medicine. I argue that conscience is concerned with a commitment to moral integrity and that restrictions on freedom of conscience prevent agents from living a moral life. In section (...) one I argue that conscience is a principle of moral awareness in rational agents, and that it yields an awareness of the personal nature of moral obligation. Conscience also monitors the coherence between an agent’s identity-conferring beliefs and intentions and their practical actions. In section two I consider how human beings are harmed when they are forced to violate their conscience. Restrictions on the exercise of conscience prevent people from living in accord with their own considered understanding of the requirements of morality and undermine one’s capacity for moral agency. This article concludes with a consideration of how a robust theory of conscience can inform our understanding of conscientious objection in medicine. I argue that it is in the interest of individual practitioners and the medical profession generally to foster moral agency among doctors. This provides a prima facie justification for permitting at least some kinds of conscientious objection. (shrink)

In this article we defend the inferential view of scientific models and idealisation. Models are seen as “inferential prostheses” (instruments for surrogative reasoning) construed by means of an idealisation-concretisation process, which we essentially understand as a kind of counterfactual deformation procedure (also analysed in inferential terms). The value of scientific representation is understood in terms not only of the success of the inferential outcomes arrived at with its help, but also of the heuristic power of representation and their capacity to (...) correct and improve our models. This provides us with an argument against Sugden’s account of credible models: the likelihood or realisticness (their “credibility”) is not always a good measure of their acceptability. As opposed to “credibility” we propose the notion of “enlightening”, which is the capacity of giving us understanding in the sense of an inferential ability. (shrink)

Pourquoi Empédocle a-t-il recouru à la forme poétique pour exposer sa pensée? Empédocle réinterprète la langue, les techniques et la visée sociale des grands poèmes épiques et didactiques de la Grèce archaïque pour adapter les ressources à un projet dans lequel poésie et philosophie sont indissociables.

In this article we critically evaluate an argument against state‐sanctioned euthanasia made by David Velleman in his 1992 paper ‘Against the right to die’. In that article, Velleman argues that legalizing euthanasia is morally problematic as it will deprive eligible patients of the opportunity of staying ‘alive by default’. That is to say, those patients who are rendered eligible for euthanasia as a result of legislative reform will face the burden of having to justify their continued existence to their epistemic (...) peers if they are to be perceived as ‘reasonable’. We discuss potential criticisms that could be made of the argument, and consider how a defender of the view might respond. Velleman’s argument is particularly interesting as it is a consequentialist argument against state‐sanctioned euthanasia, challenging the many consequentialist arguments that have been made in favour of legalizing the procedure. We conclude by suggesting that further research on the question of unfair burdens is important to adequately evaluating the potential harms of legalizing euthanasia for patients at the end of life. (shrink)

It is shown that Friedman's problem, whether there exists a proper extension of first order logic satisfying the compactness and interpolation theorems, has extremely simple positive solutions if one considers extensions by generalized (finitary) propositional connectives. This does not solve, however, the problem of whether such extensions exist which are also closed under relativization of formulas.

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in health care. Specifically, several commentators have discussed the implications that conscientious objection has for the delivery of timely, efficient, and nondiscriminatory medical care. In this paper, I discuss the main argument put forward by the most prominent critics of conscientious objection—what I call the Professional Duty Argument or PDA. According to proponents of PDA, doctors should place patients’ well-being and rights at the center of their professional (...) practice. Doctors should be prepared to set their personal moral or religious beliefs aside where these beliefs conflict with what is legal and considered good medical practice by relevant professional associations. Conscientious objection, on this account, should be heavily restricted, if even allowed at all. I discuss two powerful objections against PDA. The first objection, which I call the fallibility objection, notes that law and professional codes of conduct are fallible guides for ethical conduct and that conscientious objection has in the past and continues today to provide a check on aberrations in law and professional convention. The second, which I call the professional discretion objection, states that restrictions on conscientious objection undermine one of the cornerstones of good medical practice, namely, a practitioner’s right to independent professional judgment. I argue that these two objections give us reason to retain conscience clauses in professional codes of conduct. (shrink)

En enero de 1974 Zubiri dio un breve curso en la Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones de Madrid sobre el tema Tres dimensiones del ser humano: individual, social e histórica. Meses después publicó la última de esas lecciones bajo el título de La dimensión histórica del ser humano. El presente volumen recoge el texto de las tres conferencias, más la versión escrita de la última de ellas. La tesis que Zubiri desarrolla en estas lecciones es que el ser humano es (...) a la vez y necesariamente individual, social e histórico, y que estas dimensiones vienen exigidas por su propia realidad específica, que es pluralizante, continuante y prospectiva. (shrink)

Xavier Landes,Martin Andersen,Klemens Kappel.

Many if not most sperm donors in the early years of IVF donated under conditions of anonymity. There is, however, a growing awareness of the ethical cost of withholding identifying parental information from donor children. Today, anonymous donation is illegal in many jurisdictions, and some jurisdictions have gone as far as retrospectively invalidating contracts whereby donors were guaranteed anonymity. This article provides a critical evaluation of the ethics and legality of anonymous donation. We defend Australian and British legislation that has (...) outlawed donor anonymity, and we argue for the establishment of a central registry that provides donor children with the ability to easily and reliably access identifying information about their donor parents. (shrink)