This article compares the sections on the qualities desirable in a wife in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn and Bar Hebraeus’s Ethicon, which the West Syrian writer modeled on al-Ghazālī’s work. The article first establishes that al-Ghazālī based his profile of the ideal wife on a jurisprudential discussion of the topic by his teacher, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, expanding it, however, by adding anecdotes from Sufi literature and reasoned arguments on how “the good wife” will best facilitate her husband’s devotion (...) to God. The article then moves to consider how Bar Hebraeus appropriates, reconfigures, and reframes as Christian teaching al-Ghazālī’s discussion. Finally, the article argues that the similarity between the two texts demonstrates that both carve out a particular notion of male piety intelligible and resonant in their different religious traditions and in the broader monotheistic culture of the premodern Middle East. (shrink)

Weitz claims that humanistic philosophy requires open concepts. Concepts are said to be "neutral intermediaries between words and things". For Frege they must be sharply defined; for Weitz open concepts are sets of criteria that are either nonnecessary or nonsufficient or both in the definition of something, though they may be rejectable or undebatable. Thus he dismisses with Karl Popper "essentialism," and thus also Platonism and Aristotelianism. He finds early suggestions of open concepts in C. L. Stevenson’s "Persuasive (...) Definitions," Friedrich Waismann’s "Verifiability," H. L. A. Hart’s "defeasible contracts," Wittgenstein’s "family resemblances," and W. B. Gallie’s "Essentially Contested Concepts." He asserts "... the discovery of open concepts—not just ambiguous, vague or woolly words, which open concepts and their conveying words are not—throws new light on the whole problem of conceptualization". Real definitions then can be only of closed concepts, such as may prevail in science; while the fruits of open concepts are especially characteristic of the humanities, though certainly not limited to them. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

This paper is an update of the documents we have concerning the Acts of the Christian martyrs, focused on three main aspects: 1) the kind of acts we know of and their classification from the point of view of their historic value; 2) the versions or editions of the texts that are most accepted by scholars; 3) the relevance of the different parts that make up these documents in order to discern the original text from passages that were rewritten or (...) underwent later variations. In this way, the article offers an exhaustive list of the documents for use in researching Christian martyrs in the Roman period. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

Ibn al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240; views on freedom; Sufism; Islamic philosophy.

In this paper we undertake an examination of the presence of similar “women-protective” discourses in policy debates occurring over two bills on reproductive-related topics considered during the 2013 California legislature session. The first bill, now signed into law, allows nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform first-trimester aspiration abortions. The second bill, had it passed, would remove the prohibition on paying women for providing eggs to be used for research purposes. Using frame analysis we find evidence of (...) similar protective arguments by opponents of both bills, although these advocates do not share ideological positions on abortion rights or women's autonomy. In the case of AB154, anti-abortion advocates use language and frames that call for protecting the health of women against the imputed interests of the “abortion industry.” In the case of AB926, feminists and pro-choice advocates evoke similar frameworks for the protection of women against the interests of the “medical research industry.” Both sides argue for the “protection of women,” from opposing positions on the rights and autonomy of women in relationship to reproductive freedom. (shrink)

This article explores how women seek power through both resisting and accommodating mainstream norms for female hair and delineates the strengths and limitations of these strategies. The data help to illuminate the complex role the body plays in sustaining and challenging women's subordinate position, how accommodation and resistance lie buried in everyday activities, the limits of resistance based on the body, and why accommodation and resistance are best viewed as coexisting variables rather than as polar opposites. Finally, these data suggest (...) the importance of defining resistance as actions that reject subordination by challenging the ideologies that support subordination. (shrink)

Greek text, english translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Empedocles (fragments as known in 1981, does not include more recent finds).