Palliative care and euthanasia have become the subject of ethical and political debate in Poland. However, the voice of nurses is rarely heard. The aim of this study is to explore the perception of palliative care and euthanasia among recent university bachelor degree graduates and experienced nurses in Poland. Specific objectives include: self-assessment of the understanding of these terms, recognition of clinical cases, potential acceptability of euthanasia, and an evaluation of attitudes towards palliative care and euthanasia. This is an exploratory (...) study. A convenience sample of 206 recent graduates and 252 experienced nurse practitioners were interviewed. A structured questionnaire was used for collecting and interpreting data. Subjective perception of the terms `palliative care' and `euthanasia' was high and consistent with the recognition of clinical cases. The majority of the nurses excluded euthanasia from palliative care. They recognized personal philosophy of life as the most influential factor affecting attitudes towards euthanasia. The importance of the law was valued more highly by the experienced nurses. (shrink)

Medicine's crucial concern with health is perennial, but its reflection, concepts, means change with the advance of science and social life. We present here a fascinating panorama of current medical discussions with their philosophical underpinnings, and queries as they have evolved from the past. The role of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life is brought forth as the system of philosophical reference.

This book provides a detailed overview of postmodern feminist theory and practice. The author critically examines the work of the major contemporary feminist theorists and makes a significant intervention into current debates about the future of feminism.

The presence of philosophy, amidst other humanities,within the body of medical education seems to raise no doubt nowadays. There are, however, some questions of a general nature to be discussed regarding the aforementioned fact. Three of them are of the greatest importance: (1) What image of medicine prevails in modern Western societies? (2)What ideals of medical professionals are commonly shared in these societies? (3) What is the intellectual background of the students of medico-related faculties? The real purposes and goals ascribed (...) to philosophy as a part of medical curricula, as well as methods of teaching philosophy depend on the answers given to these questions. An option to be presented here is influenced by the experience of teaching philosophy to students of medical faculties at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw. This approach is deliberately posed against mainstream medical education that is usually based on an unquestioned belief in the power of biomedical sciences. Such a model cannot, however,pretend to be a universal one to be implemented allover the world. In any case, it is the only thing a philosopher can do to improve the quality of a physician-patient encounter in facing a disease. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden was a prominent Polish philosopher, phenomenologist, and student of Edmund Husserl. A characteristic feature of his works was the almost complete absence of analyzes from the history of philosophy. That is why it is so surprising that right after the end of World War II, the first text analyzed when Ingarden started working at the Jagiellonian University was Aristotle’s “Poetics.” Ingarden published the results of his research in Polish in 1948 in “Kwartalnik Filozoficzny” and in the early 1960s (...) his essay was translated and published in the renowned American magazine “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism” as “A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics.” As far as I know today, this text does not arouse much interest among the many commentators and followers of Ingarden’s philosophy. Perhaps this state of affairs is justified: Ingarden’s own ideas are only repeated here, and their usefulness in the meaning of “Poetics” remains far from obvious. However, I think that this relative obscurity is worth considering now, because it shows how modern reason tries to control ancient concepts. The main purpose of this article is therefore to recon- struct the strategy by which philosophy tames the text of “Poetics,” especially its concepts such as catharsis and mimesis. The discovery and presentation of these treatments would not have been possible were it not for the mimetic theory of René Girad, which provides anthropological foundations for a critique of philosophical discourse. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is the controversy between cognitivist philosophy and phenomenology concerning the nature of emotions. This article has a limited scope restricted to the domain of the aesthetic emotions usually dependent on the works of art and literature. The author raises the criticism against the cognitivist stance, this criticism based chiefly on the principles of Max Scheler's phenomenology of emotions.

Philosophy in this text is considered under the model of mise en abyme, which is used in particular in the art of fiction narration. A novel about the process of novel writing is an example of mise en abyme. A film about movie directing is also an example of mise en abyme. A painting showing the artist working on the work of art also has features of mise en abyme. Likewise, mise en abyme philosophy is philosophy that discusses how philosophy (...) is created. Philosophy in such a shape is no longer understood as an endless space “inhabited” by situations, concepts, assertions, philosophical theses which are, however, perceived as if from the inside of that space; by contrast, it starts to be perceived from the outside, from the perspective of activities that form its frame, that frame it. For example, two such framing activities are considered – refining situations which is responsible for the “splendor of truth” that shines forth in them and defying the passage of time when constructing situations which is decisive for their isolation from the stream of life. Philosophy that notices its own frame is anchored in the foundations of everyday life which is something irrefutable in relation to the very inside of philosophy; as a consequence, the idea of epistemological foundationalism may be renewed and recovered for philosophy. (shrink)

Nurses are responsible for the well-being and quality of life of many people, and therefore must meet high standards of technical and ethical competence. The most common form of ethical guidance is a code of ethics/professional practice; however, little research on how codes are viewed or used in practice has been undertaken. This study, carried out in six European countries, explored nurses’ opinions of the content and function of codes and their use in nursing practice. A total of 49 focus (...) groups involving 311 nurses were held. Purposive sampling ensured a mix of participants from a range of specialisms. Qualitative analysis enabled emerging themes to be identified on both national and comparative bases. Most participants had a poor understanding of their codes. They were unfamiliar with the content and believed they have little practical value because of extensive barriers to their effective use. In many countries nursing codes appear to be ‘paper tigers’ with little or no impact; changes are needed in the way they are developed and written, introduced in nurse education, and reinforced/implemented in clinical practice. (shrink)

This book provides a major review of the state of international theory. It is focused around the issue of whether the positivist phase of international theory is now over, or whether the subject remains mainly positivistic. Leading scholars analyse the traditional theoretical approaches in the discipline, then examine the issues and groups which are marginalised by mainstream theory, before turning to four important new developments in international theory (historical sociology, post-structuralism, feminism, and critical theory). The book concludes with five chapters (...) which look at the future of the subject and the practice of international relations. This survey brings together key figures who have made leading contributions to the development of mainstream and alternative theory, and will be a valuable text for both students and scholars of international relations. (shrink)

"Since its exuberant re-emergence in the 1960s and 1970s, feminism has explicitly claimed to be corrective and transformative and with the exponential growth in feminist scholarship, its success has been anticipated and expected. However, given the ongoing significant and frequently violent impact of international practices associated with gender for both men and women, the promise of feminism remains elusive"--.

In the past thirty years, two fundamental issues have emerged in the philosophy of science. One concerns the appropriate attitude we should take towards scientific theories--whether we should regard them as true or merely empirically adequate, for example. The other concerns the nature of scientific theories and models and how these might best be represented. In this ambitious book, da Costa and French bring these two issues together by arguing that theories and models should be regarded as partially rather than (...) wholly true. They adopt a framework that sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate. The new machinery of "partial structures" that they develop offers a new perspective from which to view the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development. Their conclusions will be of wide interest to philosophers and historians of science. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

I. Ókor -- II. A középkor és a reneszánsz -- III. Az újkor.