Die Frage nach dem Sinn des Begriffes des »Vorprädikativen« wurde innerhalb der Heideggerforschung bislang nur marginal behandelt. Dabei geht es um einen Schlüsselbegriff, der Heideggers gesamtes Denken, von den frühen Vorlesungen bis zu seinem Spätwerk, durchzieht. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes gehen den vielfältigen Dimensionen des Vorprädikativen nach und untersuchen sie im Zusammenhang mit wichtigen Themen der Philosophie Heideggers.

This study offers a critical re-reading of Heidegger’s thought from the viewpoint of the relationship between the affective structure of the existence and two other fundamental components of the human being, which are understanding and language. The analysis of such approach to the world, which represents Heidegger’s "Befindlichkeit" – a peculiar and self-sufficient source of experience in relation to the projecting comprehension – leads us to recognize the presence of a fundamental ontological dimension of the existence, here designated as “pathic” (...) with reference to the Greek term "paschein". This dimension identifies the most original way of access to the phenomenal horizon and represents the “foundation” – meaning the condition of possibility – of the other main dimension of the existence, the hermeneutic one, constituted by all those structures, such as understanding, interpretation and language, which contribute to the articulation of our reality in a meaningful whole. (shrink)

Was ist Leben? Im vorliegenden Sammelband wird der Akzent von dieser allgemeinen Frage nach dem Was auf die grundlegende nach dem Wie, nach der Entfaltung des menschlichen Lebens, verschoben. Dabei wird das Leben in seiner Bewegung verfolgt: als Leben, das auf Widerstand stößt, stetig transzendiert, sich als zeitlich erfährt und in Welt und Praxis verwirklicht. Der Band versammelt begriffsgeschichtliche Aufsätze, philosophisch-phänomenologische Untersuchungen (im Zwiegespräch u. a. mit Husserl, Heidegger und Scheler) sowie an der konkreten Praxis (wie der Demenzforschung und Schulbildung) (...) orientierte Beiträge. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is--the actual--but about what could be: counterfactuals. According to physicist Chiara Marletto, laws about things being possible or impossible may (...) generate an alternative way of providing explanations. This fascinating, far-reaching approach holds promise for revolutionizing the way fundamental physics is formulated, but also for providing essential tools to face existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices, beyond the universal quantum computer, to designing AIs. Each chapter in the book delineates how an existing vexed open problem in science can be solved by this radically different approach; and it is augmented by short fictional stories that explicate the main point of the chapter. As Marletto demonstrates, contemplating what is possible can give us a more complete and hopeful picture of the physical world. (shrink)

Argues for viewing Empedocles' work as a unified whole of religion and physics by showing how rebirth is a positive doctrine which underlies his cosmic system. Essential for all scholars of early Greek philosophy, but will also appeal to those of epic poetry, Plato and Pythagoras studies, and ancient religion.

This article re-examines the scholium on Euripides, Andromache 445, which several scholars have used to support the claim that Andromache premiered outside Athens, and concludes that both the scholium itself and a remark in the play's hypothesis rather suggest that the play was produced in Athens as part of a dramatic competition.

§ 219a of the German Penal Code (StGB) – the so-called ban on advertising abortions – has been subject of an increasing legal-political controversy since 2017 and was dropped by legislation in July 2022. This paper examines and reconstructs the extent to which the aforementioned ‘ban on advertising’ was (in–)‌compatible with recognized standards of medical ethics. For this purpose, arguments put forward in public discourse on both sides of the conflict, insofar as they go beyond basic attitudes toward abortion, will (...) be subjected to a plausibility test from the perspective of medical ethics. This will show that (I.) according to the standard understanding of autonomy in medical ethics by Beauchamp and Childress, the provision of information about abortions is not an undue influence, but a necessary precondition for autonomous decisions by pregnant women; that (II.) the feared undesirable social developments after the abolition of § 219a StGB are empirically unfounded and largely implausible; but that on the other hand (iii) a multi-perspective communication landscape with accessible expert information promises to effectively counteract the self- and external stigmatization of unintentionally pregnant women. As a result, this analysis provides two things: a coherent medico-ethical justification for the annulment of § 219a StGB and an argumentative basis for the defense against future efforts to support biopolitical positions by censoring available information. (shrink)

The current situation around COVID-19 portrays a threat to us in several ways: It imposes uncertainty, a lack of control and reminds us of our own mortality. People around the world have reacted to these threats in seemingly unrelated ways: From stockpiling yeast and toilet paper to favoring nationalist ideas or endorsing conspiratorial beliefs. According to the General Process Model of Threat and Defense the confrontation with a threat - a discrepant experience - makes humans react with both proximal and (...) distal threat responses. While the proximal response manifests in behavioral inhibition that leads to heightened anxious arousal and vigilance, distal responses seek to lower behavioral inhibition and the associated state of anxiety and vigilance through engaging in distal defenses. In the present research, we propose that the reactions to COVID-19 may represent distal defense strategies to the pandemic (in the form of environmental or group related worldview defenses) and therefore can be explained and forecasted by the model. Thus we hypothesized increased perceived COVID-19 threat perception to lead to a proximal threat response in the form of heightened behavioral inhibition. This, in return, should enhance the use of distal defenses (i.e.: several ingroup biases, system justification and conspiratorial beliefs) overlapping with the reactions observed as a response to COVID-19. This hypothesized mediated effect of increased perceived COVID-19 threat on distal defenses was tested in two pre-registered studies: In Study 1 (N = 358) results showed perceived COVID-19 threat to be related to behavioral inhibition and in turn to be associated with increased distal defenses (i.e., higher entitativity, control restoration motivation, passive party support). In Study 2 (N = 348) we manipulated COVID-19 threat salience and found results suggesting the distal defenses of system justification and conspiratorial beliefs to be mediated by the proximal threat response. The results of the present research hint towards a common mechanism through which the seemingly unrelated reactions to COVID-19 can be explained. The results might help to predict future behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and design measures to counteract detrimental effects of the pandemic. (shrink)

Boredom, in cinema as well as in our everyday experience, is usually associated with a generalised loss of meaning or interest. Accordingly, boredom is often perceived as that which ought to be avo...

Il presente contributo mira a gettare luce sulla figura ebraica dello Schlemihl, per come questa è venuta ad assumere, nei discorsi di Rahel Varnhagen, Hannah Arendt e Lea Ritter Santini, la funzione extra-letteraria di dispositivo di riconoscimento e schema esistenziale. È nella triangolazione dei discorsi e delle vite di queste tre intellettuali appartenenti, ognuna a suo modo, alla cultura tedesca, che la figura dello Schlemihl ha esemplarmente dispiegato la sua forza genetica, come metafora di un destino in cui, fin dal (...) momento del suo apparire letterario nella società dei salotti berlinesi di primo Ottocento grazie ad Adelbert von Chamisso, hanno riconosciuto se stesse coloro che hanno dovuto ritagliare la propria vita sul fondamento dello sradicamento e di una esclusione primigenia. In quella che potrebbe essere compresa come una vera e propria genealogia, il riferirsi allo Schlemihl di Rahel Varnhagen, Hannah Arendt e Lea Ritter Santini restituisce il senso comune di uno sfaccettato subire e agire lo sradicamento, entro la cornice di un discorso prismatico – sotto forma di lettere, saggi e poesie – che nel nutrirsi di vita e pensiero ha saputo raccontare la marginalità nelle sue forme differenti e contigue. (shrink)

After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization has recently declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicentre. Italy has so far been the most severely hit European country and demand for critical care in the northern region currently exceeds its supply. This raises significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritisation of patients most likely to survive over those with remote chances, and (...) this news has triggered an intense debate about the right of every individual to access healthcare. The proposed analysis suggests that the national emergency framework in which prioritisation criteria are currently enforced should not lead us to perceive scarce resources allocation as something new. From an ethical perspective, the novelty of the current emergency is not grounded in the devastating effects of scarce resources allocation, which is rife in recent and present clinical practice. Rather, it has to do with the extraordinarily high number of people who find themselves personally affected by the implications of scarce resources allocation and who suddenly realise that the principle of ‘equals should be treated equally’ may no longer be applicable. Along with the need to allocate appropriate additional financial resources to support the healthcare system, and thus to mitigate the scarcity of resources, the analysis insists on the relevance of a medical ethics perspective that does not place the burden of care and choice solely on physicians. (shrink)

This study offers a new interpretation of the poem of the founder of Western philosophy: Parmenides. It shows that there is more in his poem than the description of Being by means of negative adjectives such as ingenerated and immobile. His words ask his audience to question their habits, to modify their goals, to engage in new enterprises and to look with a critical eye at their previous attempts to get knowledge. It operates as a travel guide that leads the (...) audience on a journey that will educate them and help them to gradually become philosophically mature, to become true themselves, which can also be described as the encouragement to become Being. (shrink)

Medical complicity in torture is prohibited by international law and codes of professional ethics. But in the many countries in which torture is common, doctors frequently are expected to assist unethical acts that they are unable to prevent. Sometimes these doctors face a dilemma: they are asked to provide diagnoses or treatments that respond to genuine health needs but that also make further torture more likely or more effective. The duty to avoid complicity in torture then comes into conflict with (...) the doctor’s duty to care for patients. Sometimes the right thing for a doctor to do requires complicity in torture. Whether this is the case depends on: the expected consequences of the doctor’s actions; the wishes of the patient; and the extent of the doctor’s complicity with wrongdoing. Medical associations can support physicians who face this dilemma while maintaining a commitment to clear principles denouncing torture. (shrink)

We believe that intellectual humility is an essential intellectual virtue for university students to foster. It enables them to excel as students of philosophy and other disciplines, to navigate the fast-changing world inside and outside academia, and to flourish in interaction with others. In this paper, we analyze this virtue by singling out two distinct but related aspects: the openness-aspect and the care-aspect. The former makes one value a dialogue with those who have different views from one’s own. The latter (...) aspect involves searching for implicit assumptions one brings to encounters with one’s object of inquiry and trying to study this object as unique and irreducible. We discuss four learning activities we developed for the philosophy bachelor course “Who are we? Philosophical views on humans and the gods” at University College Utrecht (the Netherlands). Throughout this paper, we show extracts from the students’ assignments, reflections, and evaluations. These extracts indicate that students developed both aspects of intellectual humility —openness to different views and care for the uniqueness of each object of inquiry— and acknowledged their importance. (shrink)

The exponential accumulation, processing and accrual of big data in healthcare are only possible through an equally rapidly evolving field of big data analytics. The latter offers the capacity to rationalize, understand and use big data to serve many different purposes, from improved services modelling to prediction of treatment outcomes, to greater patient and disease stratification. In the area of infectious diseases, the application of big data analytics has introduced a number of changes in the information accumulation models. These are (...) discussed by comparing the traditional and new models of data accumulation. Big data analytics is fast becoming a crucial component for the modelling of transmission—aiding infection control measures and policies—emergency response analyses required during local or international outbreaks. However, the application of big data analytics in infectious diseases is coupled with a number of ethical impacts. Four key areas are discussed in this paper: automation and algorithmic reliance impacting freedom of choice, big data analytics complexity impacting informed consent, reliance on profiling impacting individual and group identities and justice/fair access and increased surveillance and population intervention capabilities impacting behavioural norms and practices. Furthermore, the extension of big data analytics to include information derived from personal devices, such as mobile phones and wearables as part of infectious disease frameworks in the near future and their potential ethical impacts are discussed. Considered together, the need for a constructive and transparent inclusion of ethical questioning in this rapidly evolving field becomes an increasing necessity in order to provide a moral foundation for the societal acceptance and responsible development of the technological advancement. (shrink)

We develop an account of how mutually inconsistent models of the same target system can provide coherent information about the system. Our account makes use of ideas from the debate surrounding rob...

In the philosophy of science and epistemology literature, robustness analysis has become an umbrella term that refers to a variety of strategies. One of the main purposes of this paper is to argue that different strategies rely on different criteria for justifications. More specifically, I will claim that: i) robustness analysis differs from de-idealization even though the two concepts have often been conflated in the literature; ii) the comparison of different model frameworks requires different justifications than the comparison of models (...) that differ only for the assumption under test; iii) the replacement of specific assumptions with different ones can encounter specific difficulties in scientific practice. These claims will be supported by a case study in population ecology and a case study in geographical economics. (shrink)

The Sārasaṅgaha is a Pāli text of XIIth–XIIIth century by the Sinhalese monk Siddhattha Thera. Its themes include the aspiration to become a Buddha, shrines, meditation, theories on rain, wind, gender and more. The main body consists of citations from the Nikāyas, the Jātakas, the Visuddhimagga and above all, from commentarial literature. By analysing the way the Sārasaṅgaha refers to and establishes a dialogue with the quoted works, this paper promotes a new assessment of the cultural and textual tendencies that (...) influenced the development of Buddhist literature especially in the Middle Ages. In particular, the analysis of this text and the quotations of which it is composed reveals the importance of commentarial literature, a literary genre that only recently has attracted the attention of Pāli scholars. (shrink)

Friedrich Albert Lange is usually regarded as a representative of physiological neo-Kantianism or as a forerunner of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. In this paper I try to reconstruct Lange’s theory of values to argue that his philosophy is better framed as an intermediate point in the development of the two-world theory (facts/values) between Hermann Lotze and Southwestern neo-Kantianism.

Compromise arises in contexts where irreconcilable claims must nonetheless somehow be resolved. Ordinary people in everyday life, politicians and artists, doctors engaging in research, humanitarian workers providing aid in the midst of war – all of them will have faced situations where compromise appeared to be the only reasonable option, and yet will have felt that there was nevertheless something deeply wrong with it. The aim of this paper is to help make sense of that sentiment. The focus of this (...) paper will be on some aspects of the morality of compromise. Its lynchpin will be to construe compromise as a joint action, in particular, a joint wrongdoing – taking part in, and sharing responsibility for, the doing of things that are wrong from the point of view of those who are the parties to the compromise. The question of ‘what is wrong with compromise?’ is thus recast as a question of ‘what is my part in the wrongs being done as part of the compromise?’ It is tempting to suppose that a compromise serves to dilute personal responsibility, parsing it out among parties to the compromise. Viewing a compromise as a joint action, in contrast, will help us to see how a compromise actually increases responsibility among parties to it. They are now jointly collaborating in some action that each of them sees as wrong, at least in part (albeit in differing parts). Discussions of compromise traditionally prioritize the inter-personal aspect – compromise, in the transitive form of ‘compromising with’ someone. But I argue that the intransitive form – ‘compromise of’ – deserves pride of place. The reason for prioritizing the intransitive ‘compromise of’ is simple: that is what is involved in the intra-personal calculation that must, of necessity, go on inside one's own head in the process of deciding whether or not to agree to a 'compromise with' someone else. In this paper I shall concentrate specifically on compromises of principles, or (more precisely) on ‘matters of principled concern to the compromising parties’. Not only is that the most troubling and morally problematic sort of compromise, it is also logically the most central case. I demonstrate that that is so by shifting the focus from inter-personal compromise to the more fundamental intra-personal process underlying it – the compromise we are involved in when adjudicating among our own conflicting values, to decide whether or not to agree to a compromise of the inter-personal sort. This is the subject of the first section of the paper below. Compromise involves resolving conflicts of principles through mutual concessions that are accepted and undertaken by all parties. Doing so may be on-balance desirable, not only from some larger perspective (of social peace, or whatever) but also from each party's own perspective. Nevertheless, from each party's perspective, compromise necessarily involves interacting with, and sometimes contributing to, wrongdoing. Morally, something is lost, even if more is gained on balance. (shrink)

What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions (...) in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet. (shrink)