Many prescriptions offered in the literature for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that raise serious ethical issues: breaking rules and standard operating procedures; challenging authority and avoiding tradition; creating conflict, competition and stress; and taking risks. We discuss each category, briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions for fostering creativity and then we delve into ethical issues associated (...) with engaging in the prescribed behavior. These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature. Recommendations for how organizations can respond to the ethical issues are offered based on practices of exemplary organizations and theories of organizational ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on organizations concludes the article. (shrink)

Many prescriptions offered in the literature for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that raise serious ethical issues: (1) breaking rules and standard operating procedures; (2) challenging authority and avoiding tradition; (3) creating conflict, competition and stress; and (4) taking risks. We discuss each category, briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions for fostering creativity and then we delve (...) into ethical issues associated with engaging in the prescribed behavior. These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature. Recommendations for how organizations can respond to the ethical issues are offered based on practices of exemplary organizations and theories of organizational ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on organizations concludes the article. (shrink)

Being in Time examines philosophical treatments of time and self-consciousness in relation to concepts of narrative, focusing on the literary aspects of philosophical writing. Lloyd shows how philosophy bears on the human and emotional aspects of the experience of time which are often neglected by the history of philosophy. Starting with Augustine's treatment of the ways in which time makes him a 'problem to himself', the book traces the themes of unity and the experience of fragmentation and loss as (...) expressed by Descartes, Hume and Kant. The idea of the past as 'lost' is explored through Bergson's philosophy of time and Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return. The book concludes with a discussion of philosophical aspects of themes of self-consciousness, memory and writing in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the novels of Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

Being in Time is a provocative and accessible essay on the fragmentation of the self as explored in philosophy and literature. This original study is unique in its focus on the literary aspects of philosophical writing and their interactions with philosophical content. It explores the emotional aspects of the human experience of time commonly neglected in philosophical investigation by looking at how narrative creates and treats the experience of the self as fragmented and the past as "lost." Genevieve (...) Lloyd demonstrates the continuities and the contrasts between modern philosophic discussions of the instability of the knowing subject, treatments of the fragmentation of the self in the modern novel, and older philosophical discussions of the unity of consciousness. Combining theoretical discussion with human experience, Being in Time will be important reading to anyone interested in the relationship between philosophy and literature, as well as to more general audience of readers who share Augustine's experience of time as making him a "problem to himself.". (shrink)

The metaparadigm concept of person as a core emphasis for nursing theorizing has attracted considerable attention in western literature, but has received less attention in the context of eastern philosophical contexts. In this philosophical inquiry, we sought to clarify the concept of what it is to be a human being according to ideas deriving from Islamic tradition, drawing on concept analysis as general approach to advance an understanding of how nursing within an Islamic context might operationalize metaparadigm conceptualization. (...) Specifically, we considered person as human being on the basis of its definition, attributes/characteristics and boundaries to explore the anatomy of the concept in this context. Our analysis revealed that Islamic thought is relevant to two distinct understandings of the holistic concept of human being. Reciprocal interaction worldview organizes the dimensions of being human (cognitive, emotion, social and spiritual) into a whole. Simultaneous action worldview emphasizes that the human is a coherent and unified creature in harmony with the universe. In Islamic thought, these two worldviews are integrated and operate concurrently. Nurse–patient interactions arising from an integrated perspective that aligns both of these worldviews will allow for informed applications of knowledge to practice and enhanced patient care. (shrink)

For Porphyry, the human being is a compound of soul, its divine and immortal part, which represents the essence of man, and body, its perishable part, that is only the image of the soul, its headquarters and sensitive instrument. Man can achieve happiness only by a spiritual life, according to its nature, a life free of physical needs as much as it is possible. The methods used in this sense imply the weakening of the link between mind and body. (...) In this way the soul of man returns to the sky, meaning the sphere of God, which is its native country. (shrink)

Jainism is essentially a spiritual philosophy having a strong focus on the ultimate purification of the soul (ātmā). A human being usually when fails to understand things, when sorrows attack, etc., then he attributes to memorize the deva (celestial being) to seek help. Man can be guided both correctly and incorrectly by the deva and can establish a new system in a society that can be both in a positive form and a negative form. Thus, this involvement of deva (...) in human life brings change in his culture, behavior, spirituality, etc. There is a lot of misunderstanding about deva. In Jain literature, it is mentioned as the difference between Arhat (Supreme Divine) and deva (celestial being), which will help the man to move in the right direction. In various positive and negative ways, a human is affected by deva, in the past and the present. (shrink)

From the dawn of human intelligence to the present era, the question ‘does God really exist?’ has been important for human being. Is there any proof of his existence? Philosophers, scholars, preceptors, monks and even atheists have tried to find the answer in their own ways. Various schools of Indian philosophy have also expressed their views about God’s existence. Some schools of Indian philosophy have accepted the ideas of karma, karmaphala, rebirth etc. They have denied to admit the (...) existence of God due to their own philosophical standpoint hence they have presented a series of arguments to refute the existence of God. Udayanāchārya, a famous Indian philosopher of the 10th century A.D., belonging to the Nyāya School, has shown some refined arguments to prove the existence of God. This paper presents his way of reasoning examining whether the belief in the existence of God is reasonable or not. (shrink)

This paper describes many connections between the wisdom literature of the Ancient Greeks and the work of contemporary scholars, intellectuals and professionals in many fields. Whether or not they use the word nous to refer to the highest power of the human soul, I show that their views converge on the existence of such a power. The paper begins with a brief summary of Greek educational texts, including Greek mythology, Homer, tragedy, and Plato’s dialogues, showing that they are (...) designed to educate the power of mind. Usually without realizing it, many later schools of thought can be shown to come to conclusions that are consistent with the insights of one school of thought or cultural practice among the Ancient Greeks. Many other ancient cultures also had a holistic view of the cosmos, the human soul, and the best human life. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

The French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, is emerging as one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century, having published widely on philosophy, literature, language, psychoanalysis, art, politics, and cinema. However, because of the ‘experimental’ nature of certain works, combined with the manner in which he draws upon a variety of sources from various disciplines, his work can seem difficult, obscure, and even ‘willfully obstructive’. In an attempt to resist such impressions, this paper will seek to provide (...) an accessible introduction to Deleuze's work, and to begin to discuss how it can be employed to provide a significant critique and reconceptualization of the theoretical foundations and therapeutic practices of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing. In order to do this, the paper will focus upon Deleuze's masterwork, and the cornerstone to his philosophy as a whole, Difference and Repetition; in particular, it will discuss how his innovative and challenging account of time can be employed to provide a conception of human life as a ‘continuity’, rather than as a series of distinct ‘moments’ or ‘events’. As well as discussing the manner in which his work can provide us with an understanding of how life is different and significant for each human being, this paper will also highlight the potential importance of Deleuze's work for logotherapy, for the recent ‘turn’ to ‘narrative’ as a psychotherapeutic approach and for contemporary mental health care's growing interest in ‘social constructionism’. As such, this paper also seeks to stimulate further discussion and research into the importance and the relevance of Deleuze's work for the theory and practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing. (shrink)

The main thesis I put forward in this article is that the democratic theory needs an anthropological perspective which defines the human in plurality and signifies the possibility of achieving a fully inclusive rational consensus. I argue that a model of democracy in terms of cosmopolitan anthropology can help us to better envision the main challenge facing universal norms and principles today. How to create democratic forms of living together? I think we can answer this question by interpreting Hannah (...) Arendt’s theory of political action on a philosophical anthropological basis. It is common knowledge that Hannah Arendt is suspicious of ethics and warns that ethics and conscience alone cannot produce the conditions for peace. In the present paper, I examine Arendt’s philosophical project together with Kant’s philosophical anthropology and try to demonstrate its importance for plurality and living together in peace. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and LiteratureRuth GroenhoutBeing in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature, by Genevieve Lloyd; 192 pp. New York: Routledge, 1993, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.Philosophers have long been telling stories about temporal consciousness. Augustine explained it as an imperfect reflection of the eternal God in whose image persons are made; Kant explained it as the transcendental unity of apperception, (...) assumed in any act of understanding while always just out of range; Nietzsche explained it as eternal recurrence. These issues also appear in literary treatments of the self, particularly those by Proust and Woolf. In this book, Genevieve Lloyd compares a broad range of philosophical discussions to these two writers. [End Page 404]Being in Time argues for several fascinating conclusions, among them a rejection of the claim that modern and premodern philosophy implicitly assumed the existence of a unified subject. Although Proust and Woolf are often held up as paradigmatic of the fragmented self, which also plays a prominent role in Derrida, this is not a postmodern discovery, Lloyd claims; the unified subject has been problematic throughout the Western philosophical tradition. She concludes, nonetheless, that postmodern thought does represent a new departure, at least to the extent that it treats the fragmentation of self not as a problem to be solved, but as a fundamental feature of what it is to be human.Meanwhile, Being in Time also pursues a second theme: the relationship between philosophy and fictional narrative. Drawing on Ricoeur and Aristotle, Lloyd argues that the best way to understand philosophy is to approach it as a story that illuminates and explains the human self by means of metaphor. Literature and philosophy both involve the telling of stories that allow us to make sense of our world and our place in it.Does it follow that literature and philosophy are indistinguishable? They belong to the same family; each offers insight into the human condition, and does so through the medium of myth, story, narrative, or fiction. They are not identical twins, however, since philosophy uses stories and metaphors to draw connections among universals while literature tells its stories about universals by means of particulars. (Compare Hobbes’s State of Nature to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.) For Lloyd, though, it is a mistake to discard the narrative and literary aspects of a philosophical work in an effort to get at what might be considered its real point (namely, deductive arguments). The illuminating power of philosophy lies not in truncated arguments, but rather in the richer narratives, metaphors, and stories that are used to develop and explain them.Her claim for the unique nature of postmodern philosophy may not stand up to scrutiny—from Heraclitus through the skeptics and into the nominalist tradition of the Middle Ages, there has been a strand of Western thought that emphasizes the fragmentary, contingent nature of the self—but Lloyd’s claims for the family resemblance between literature and philosophy should be of interest to students of both subjects, particularly those concerned with the ways in which style, choice of metaphor, and narrative voice are relevant to philosophical study. The book makes an eloquent plea for reading philosophy instead of stripping its arguments of the narrative flesh with which they were originally endowed.Ruth GroenhoutSouthwest Missouri State UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Human ethical practices and attitudes with respect to the other animals exhibit a curious instability. On the one hand, most people believe that it is wrong to inflict torment or death on a non-human animal for a trivial reason. Skinning a cat or setting it on fire by way of a juvenile prank is one of the standard examples of obvious wrongdoing in the philosophical literature. Like torturing infants, it is the kind of example that philosophers use (...) when we are looking for something ethically uncontroversial, so that disputes about the example won’t get in the way of the point we are trying to make.2 On the other hand, human beings have traditionally counted nearly any reason we might have for hurting or killing animals, short of malicious enjoyment, as non-trivial and sufficient. We kill non-human animals, and sometimes inflict pain on them, because we want to eat them, because we can make useful products out of them, because we can learn from experimenting on them, and.. (shrink)

This paper examines four issues concerning human being as a multi-dimensional being. Firstly, the dualist and tripartite conceptions of human beings are discussed. The dichotomist view of human beings—according to which man comprises of spiritual soul and body—underscores in a strongly materialistic world the idea that faith, spirituality, belief, trust and confidence are soft options in daily life. Secondly, the author investigates the possibility of a differentiation and interchange of human fields of experience as (...) components of human nature. In the African and Christian approaches taken into account in this paper, human being comprises a differentiated multiplicity of fields, components, dimensions and facets of experience integrated into a wholesome creature that experiences God, itself, other human beings and the natural environment. Each component of human being, though radically different, is of the same importance. Thirdly, the modern integral and differential conceptions of human being as a multi-dimensional entity are discussed. The approach in this paper is of postmodern non-reductionist type; according to it, human beings are comprised differentially of a multiplicity of fields, modes, dimensions and aspects of experience dynamically integrated in a union. (shrink)

Well-being depends not only on what happens but also on when it happens. There are temporal aspects of well-being, and to a large extent those aspects are about relative timing—about being “in-tact.” On the one hand, there is a perspectival aspect about being in-tact with one’s past, present, and future or, in a less involved sense, with one’s life as a whole. On the other hand, there is a synchronization aspect of being in-tact; and this aspect occurs on different levels: (...) It might be about the alignment between different temporal domains—such as time as individually perceived and physical or intersubjective time. Or it might be about a single domain, especially the inner dynamics of individual time. The danger of not experiencing and acknowledging the relational character of these different timings likely leads to a substantial loss in the variety of human experience. Important aspects of subjective and intersubjective experience might fade away. The present paper discusses these aspects of well-being along the lines of distinctions and concepts prominently used in the metaphysics and the phenomenology of time. Thus, the paper also aims to complement the existing literature by bringing together important strands of current philosophical research. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo revisa los usos de la figura del testigo en dos novelas chilenas de reciente publicación: La dimensión desconocida de Nona Fernández y Monte Maravilla de Miguel Lafferte, ambos relatos cuyas tramas están basadas en casos, lugares y personajes históricos reales relacionados con violaciones a los derechos humanos en Chile durante la dictadura pinochetista. En ambos casos, la figura del testigo es compleja e intrincada, ya sea porque es un victimario arrepentido, una niña que se convertirá en (...) la narradora del futuro o un fantasma que resulta ser real. De paso, y a la luz del testigo como figura articuladora común tanto para el derecho como para la literatura, el artículo quiere reflexionar acerca de las posibilidades de los procesos judiciales, en tanto narrativas, como fuentes de memoria colectiva para dar cuenta del horror. El rol del testigo resulta clave en ambos campos discursivos: mientras en los procesos judiciales el testigo es el sujeto de la enunciación del testimonio y, con ello, elemento de prueba en la determinación de responsabilidades, en la literatura el testigo tiene implicancias tanto narratológicas como éticas importantes, las que le proporcionan una riqueza al testimonio que lo vuelven una forma eficaz de memoria que más que contar lo sucedido, se acerca a mostrarlo.: This article reviews how the witness figure has been used in two chilean novels that have been recently published: La dimensión desconocida, from Nona Fernández and Monte Maravilla, from Miguel Lafferte. Both script plots are based in real cases, places and historical characters, related to Pinochet´s dictatorship. They present a complex and intrincate witness figure, through the form a regretful torturer, a girl who will be the future´s narrator or a ghost that happens to be real. Meanwhile, in light of the witness understood as an common articulating figure for the law, as well as for literature, the article wants to reflect on judicial processes posibilities, while narrative, as colective memory sources that can be held accountable for the horror. The witness role turns out to be essential in both discourse fields: meanwhile in judicial procesess the witness is the subject of the testimony enunciation and, as such, an evidence element for criminal liabilities determination, in literature, the witness has important narrative as well as ethics implications, wich give such richness to the testimony, that it becomes an effective way of memory that not only narrates what happened, it closes to show it. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of identifying various ecodomical or constructive possibilities which have the potential to ideologically transform the world at a global scale in the sense that they can promote a set of ideas with positive connotations in dealing with the extremely complex issue of religion. Whether religion is good or bad, positive or negative has nothing to do with this article’s basic methodology which seeks to isolate various theoretical attempts aimed at approaching the issue of religion through (...) a common denominator. For this paper, this common denominator is the human being and, by association, the notion of goodness which will be used in order to demonstrate that, concerning religion, it can provide not only a theoretical framework for positive discussions about religion but also an ecodomic possibility whereby humanity can transform the world into a safer environment for persons of all races and convictions. Four such ecodomical attempts to use the notion of goodness will be analyzed in connection with the reality of religion: John Shelby Spong who promotes goodness in order to free society of religion so for him religion is useless, Ion Bria for whom goodness cannot be detached from religion so religion is vital, Vito Macuso whose conviction is that goodness exists with or without religion so religion is neutral, and Desmond Tutu who believes that goodness can turn religion, any religion for that matter, in a positive reality, so in his understanding religion is positive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers (...) to those texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

The question of human nature has not been effectively addressed in our time because of great skepticism in the academic and philosophical discourses about the idea of social progress and the validity of a common humanity. As a result the question has been reduced by neoliberalism, biopsychology, and social psychology to demonstrating the malleability of humans in response to hierarchical, biological, or social-conformist pressures. To recover the concept of human nature it will be necessary to reconceptualize the dynamic (...) of human development as a feature of the modern and late modern achievements of a more evolved vision of individuality and community. (shrink)

This book is a contribution to African philosophy, by philosophers focusing specifically on the concept of human dignity in ethical theory. The concept of ‘human dignity’ denotes the intrinsic and superlative worth associated with human beings in virtue of which we owe them utmost moral regard. Although dignity is a foundational concept for African philosophy, there remains scant literature in African philosophy dedicated to critical and systematic reflection on the concept of human dignity. This (...) volume responds to this lacuna by bringing together chapters that offer philosophical exposition, defense (or even rejection) and application of the concept of human dignity in light of intellectual resources in African cultures, such as ubuntu, personhood, and serithi. (shrink)

In this paper I, firstly (section 1), distinguish between human rights, natural rights and institutional rights and argue that some so-called human rights, such as the right to life, are natural rights and others, such as the right to vote, are institutional rights. Secondly (section 2), I sketch my account of joint rights (developed in more detail elsewhere1) and apply it to two kinds of entities that are importantly different from one another and from individual human (...) class='Hi'>beings, namely, business corporations (section 3) and non-human animals (section 4). I do so to test the scope of joint rights in the context of the ascription of joint rights to human beings being uncontroversial (although the analysis of joint rights is far from being a settled matter). I argue that neither corporations nor animals have joint moral rights, since in neither case do they have moral rights, but that they do have, or at least they ought to have, legal rights, and some of these legal rights arguably ought to be joint legal rights. In doing so, I introduce a significant theoretical innovation to the literature on joint rights, namely, that of a layered structure of joint rights. (shrink)

The question of what is philosophy, leads, it would seem, inevitably to diverse and conflicting, if not at times contradictory, answers. It is not only a matter of different philosophic perspectives, but also of fundamentally opposed conceptions of philosophy. Varying philosophic intentions and aims underlie what is taken to be the nature of philosophy and disagreement abounds. Philosophies then tend to differ not so much in terms of what they disagree about but what they consider philosophically sound and important. Phenomenology (...) may share some concerns about basic philosophic problems, like intentionality, with ordinary language philosophy. But they diverge again sharply about the question of what philosophy should accomplish for, and what difference it makes to, human knowledge and understanding. The one sees intentionality as the pervasive structure of human consciousness and reality, and the other sees it as simply part of the various ways in which the uses of language can explain, and thus do away with, philosophical questions on perplexity. This difference about what philosophy should accomplish, its purpose, is not resolvable. It is what on each approach must be considered the very nature of philosophy and its primary task. (shrink)

Finding true love is a journey of transformation obstructed by numerous psychological obstacles. _Being in Love_ expands the traditional field of psychoanalytic couple therapy, and explores therapeutic methods of working through the obstacles leading to true love. Becoming who we are is an inherently relational journey: we uncover our truest nature and become most authentically real through the difficult and fearful, yet transformative intersubjective crucibles of our intimate relationships. In this book, Judith Pickering draws comparisons between Bion's concept of becoming (...) in O, and being in love. She searches for pathways that lead away from relational confusion towards the discovery of genuine transformational relationships, and works towards finding better ways of relating to one another. This is achieved by encouraging couples to enjoy the actual presence, humanity, otherness and particularity of each other rather than expecting a partner to conform to our own expectations, projections, desires and presuppositions. Pickering draws on clinical material, contemporary psychoanalysis, cultural themes from the worlds of mythology and literature, and a wealth of therapeutic techniques in this fresh approach to couple therapy. _Being in Love_ will therefore interest students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, psychology, and couple therapy, as well as all of those seeking to be more authentic in their relationships. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. (...) In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership. (shrink)

“But when you meet her again,” he observed, “in Heaven, you, too, will be changed. You will see her spiritualized, with spiritual eyes.”1Dante is not a philosopher, although George Santayana sees him as one among a very few philosophical poets.2 The Divine Comedy deals in terza rima with issues that are philosophically urgent, including the relation between reasoning well and happiness.3And as one of the few great epics in Western literature, the Comedy offers its readers the pleasures of world-class (...) poetry, fabulous beasts from classical literature, good people and sinners from Dante’s Italy, and the prolongation in verse of Thomas Aquinas’s summa Theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. In some ways, Dante’s epic .. (shrink)

Explains how Native Americans understand the world and their place in it and discusses what other cultures can learn by studying Native American beliefs and traditions.

In eighteenth-century France, scientific progress and its spreading met a growing interest among public, an enthusiasm that was to be reflected in literature. Fictional works including scientific knowledge in their narrative made their appearance, paving the ground for a genre promised to a growing success in the following centuries—science fiction. The article presents three eighteenth-century French literary works, each one centered on a different domain of science: Voltaire’s Micromégas, Charles-François Tiphaigne’s Amilec, or the Seeds of Mankind and François-Félix Nogaret’s (...) The Mirror of Current Events, or Beauty to the Highest Bidder. The first one, an iconic Enlightenment work that promotes critical thinking, relies on discoveries made in astronomy and optics. Tiphaigne de la Roche is far from sharing the fame of Voltaire, but his odd Amilec is noteworthy as it is possibly the very first science-fiction work in which biology is central. Written in the unique atmosphere of the French revolution, Nogaret’s work The Mirror of Current Events depicts androids-like interacting with humans. Our purpose is to show that these works were a precursor of the science fiction genre in literature, to describe how and what science or technology was depicted in them, and how they influenced the view of Man in eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers (...) to those texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

The values framework of a society is best reflected in contemporary literature. This essay is an attempt to identify the values that influenced the socio-political behaviour of the people of times of Kālidāsa. How relevant are those values now? Nature plays an important role in Kālidāsa's plays. Part I of this essay deals with this aspect of his plays. This value is certainly coterminous with the growing consciousness about protection of ecology in modern times. Part II of the essay (...) deals with another important aspect of Indian philosophy—with out sorrow, without pain, pleasure cannot be achieved. Part III of the essay discusses general social values which emerge from the plays. Part IV describes the political and administrative values that guided the actions of the kings and rulers. (shrink)

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is the (...) cradle of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that man as defined, at least in part, by the concept of human nature within an essentialist understanding remains a philosophically and anthropologically defensible way for understanding what it means to be a human being. That is, an understanding of human being includes, but is not limited to, the actuality of the non-material or non-extended substance commonly referred to as soul. The argument turns on the notion that persons are essentially persons. (...) It seems intuitive to say that I cannot imagine myself as a “not-a-person” while it is quite easy to imagine myself as “not-a-professor.” To say I am a person seems not identical to saying I am a profesor—the former seems impossible while the latter possible. Although it might be argued that I could not verbalize I am a person without having a body it seems that would not permit one to conclude the two are identical. (shrink)

This essay outlines my view on the anthropic conditions of authentic dialogue. In my opinion dialogue as such can be pursued only by people endowed with specific qualities and enjoying maximal fulfilment as human beings: people who are creative, who have an active attitude towards themselves and the world, who do not feel estranged from it but are united with it, and for whom the world is neither alien nor hostile, people who are free and responsible. These anthropic (...) conditions of dialogue are connected with the herein-postulated image of human nature, whereby human nature is not only bound to the world by social relations but is co-created by the world, simultaneously retaining its subjective, individual dimension. In this context I will outline my concept of homo creator as a vision of modern humanism. In my belief this anthropological concept is one of the fundaments of philosophy of dialogue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Recently, a revival of phenomenological approaches has been gaining ground in the literature of cognition and human understanding. Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World plays a decisive role here. Instead of viewing the mind as an independent entity separated from the “outer” world, these approaches assert an immediate understanding of a meaningful environment. Such an immediate understanding is seen in the light of embodied practices, when humans are engaged in skillful absorbed coping. An analysis of Heidegger’s concept of truth provides a more (...) sophisticated view. Being-in-the-World does not always grant direct access to an immediate understanding of a meaningful environment. Often, other objects in the world conceal themselves from human view. In a first approach, this understanding of truth will be elaborated on the basis of an exegesis of Heidegger’s text concerning his question of truth. What this actually means for a phenomenological understanding will be explained by a closer look at two central topics in Being and Time: disturbance and anxiety. The idea is to show that Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World—properly interpreted—can offer a “third way” beyond the limits of a mindless coping and an understanding of the mind as a self-standing entity detached from other entities in the world. (shrink)

Background: The Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being was developed in order to address a religious/spiritual dimension as being an important part of psychological well-being. In the meantime, the instrument has been successfully applied in numerous studies. Subsequently, a short version, the MI-RSWB 12 was constructed, especially for the use in clinical assessment. Here it is intended to contribute to the further development of the MI-RSWB 12 by investigating its structural validity through structural equation modeling.Materials and Methods: A total sample of (...) 1,097 German-speaking adults from the normal population filled in the MI-RSWB 12 via an online-survey. In line with theoretical assumptions 5 different factor structure models for the MI-RSWB 12 were tested: a single-factor model, a model with four correlated RSWB dimensions, a single higher-order model with four lower order factors, a two higher-order model with four lower order factors, a bifactor model, which includes four specific RSWB dimensions.Results: The single-factor model provided the poorest model fit, with no indices falling within the acceptable range. The four-factor, two higher-order factors and the bifactor models showed overall acceptable fit indices. With regard to the Akaike information criterion, the four-factor model demonstrated superiority compared to both the two higher-order factor model and the bifactor model, which in turn showed did not differ from each other.Conclusion: Four different MI-RSWB 12 sub-scales should be calculated in future studies, while a general factor and two higher order factors are statistically valid as well. Further applications of the MI-RSWB 12, especially in the clinical patient groups, are encouraged. (shrink)

Without glorifying any cultural standpoint I argue that the best model that accounts for the interests and aspirations of Africa cannot be that which promotes and emphasizes traditional ideas since such a model would be unnecessarily insular and prevent us from engaging the aspects of our cultures which are needed in coping with Africa’s challenges. I contend that this does not amount to an imposition of any form of metanarrative but rather to critically engage those forces that are detrimental to (...) survival and social stability. (shrink)

Bringing together diverse theoretical and empirical contributions from the fields of social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, and science education, this volume explores representational pluralism as a phenomenon characteristic of human cognition. Building on these disciplines' shared interest in understanding human thought, perception, and conceptual change, the volume illustrates how representational plurality can be conducive to research and practice in varied fields. Particular care is taken to emphasize points of convergence and the value of sharing discourses, models, justifications, and (...) theories of pluralism across disciplines. The editors give ample space for philosophers, cognitive scientists and educators to explicate the history and current status of representational pluralism in their own disciplines. Using multiple forms of research from the relational perspective, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers with an interest in cognitive psychology, as well as educational psychology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

An inadequate grasp of the role of imagination has vitiated understanding of human cognition in western thinking. Extending a project initiated with George Lakoff in _Metaphors we Live By_ (1980), Mark Johnson's book _The Body in the Mind_ (1987) offers the claim that all thinking originates in bodily experience. A range of schemata formed during our early experience manipulating a physical world of surfaces, distances, and forces, lays the foundation of later, more abstract modes of thought. In presenting his (...) argument, Johnson lays special stress on the qualities and dynamics of the image schemata, the (generally unnoticed) metaphoricity of the transformations underlying abstract thought, and the new significance that should be attributed to the imagination, which is the general term Johnson wishes to claim for the mental processes he expounds. In this paper I draw attention to the importance of Johnson's insights for understanding literary response. In particular, I will show how a typical procedure of literary texts involves bringing to awareness image schemata of the kind that Johnson describes. At the same time, several problems in Johnson's account which limit its usefulness will also be examined: an undue reliance upon the spatial properties of schemata; a conflation of dead with live or poetic metaphors; and a neglect of other bodily influences on thought, especially kinaesthetic and affective aspects. These problems, for example, limit the usefulness of Johnson's attempt to build on Kant's theory of imagination. In comparison with Coleridge, who also attempted to build on Kant, Johnson is unable to overcome the formalism of Kant's theory. Coleridge's account of imagination, I will suggest, provides a better foundation for examining the bodily basis of meaning, while remaining compatible with Johnson's intentions and his more valuable insights. (shrink)

Visual recording of human subjects is commonly used in biomedical disciplines for clinical, research, legal, academic and even personal purposes. Guidelines on practice standards of biomedical recording have been issued by certain health authorities, associations and journals, but none of the literature discusses this from an Islamic perspective. This article begins with a discussion on the general rules associated with visual recording in Islam, followed by modesty issues in biomedical recording and issues of informed consent and confidentiality. In (...) order to be deemed ethical from the Islamic perspective, all the aforementioned criteria must conform to, or not contradict, Islamic teaching. (shrink)

The discussion around dignity in nursing philosophy has been underway for many years. The literature still lacks philosophical arguments that would justify the thesis that all people have dignity. Scholars who defend dignity as an intrinsic value most often refer to Kant. However, Kant does not seem to be the most suitable candidate to defend the thesis that all human beings possess dignity. In this paper, I attempt to show that Aristotle's and Aquinas's views can help justify (...) this thesis. To this end, I distinguish between actual dignity, potential dignity, and existential dignity. I state that all human beings have existential dignity or potential dignity. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to show the connection of romanticism with the anthropological doctrine that goes back to Hegelianism and Kantianism, and at the same time – with the concepts of the future, structuralism and postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The man is a central figure of the Romantic literary, therefore it makes sense to single out romantic human anthropological doctrine and the image of man associated with a specific historical and cultural era called the "epoch of romanticism"; (...) to show that many romantic philosophical positions remained relevant to the basic foundations of contemporary anthropological research and coincide with it in analytical and critical thinking about a man, a person, his historical and evolutionary fate. Originality. The romantic worldview determined the specifics of anthropological discourse, both logical and illogical, remaining symbols and attaching, as for example, a real historical anecdote, a popular history, a philosophical thought, a myth, a famous literary episode and the arts multiplied by creative inspiration and imagination. This tendency determined the fragmentation of thinking and the scientific image of man as a dual being, nevertheless, presented and described in all the variety of relations with the world and with himself, that allows us to call this area of thought "the romantic human science". Conclusions. Structural analysis of numerous romantic texts allows us to draw the following conclusion: with mythopoetic imagery and anthropological thought about a man, romantic writers introduced the reader to any wisdom, to philosophical understanding of their human essence, to past and modern teachings, in a way processed antique, medieval and enlightening views, in which an important place was given to reflections on the place of man in nature, society, and history. Correlating the well-known statements about a person as a descendant of the "old Adam", "person", "personality", "soul", with the modern idea of historical and social development, about the evolution of the consciousness of a person who revealed himself as an individual in modern times, with scientific and aesthetic views, the writers of the first half of the XIX century gave romantic thought anthropological meaning and, in fact, laid the foundations of historical, social, psychological, cultural and psychoanalytic anthropology. (shrink)

The various statements and declarations of the World Medical Association that address conflicts of interest on the part of physicians as (1) researchers, and (2) practitioners, are examined, with particular reference to the October 2000 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki. Recent contributions to the literature, notably on conflicts of interest in medical research, are noted. Finally, key provisions of the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics (2000–2001 Edition) that address the various forms of conflict of interest that (...) can arise in the practice of medicine are outlined. (shrink)

Passionate human behavior should be regulated by moral instructions, teaching and practices. For explaining the issue, Rene Descartes in The Passions of the Soul and the Hindu traditions of Sāṁkhya are here considered. These two systems provide fourdimensional physical, mental/moral and spiritual descriptions of human nature and a mechanism of regulating passions. The first two parts of the paper are focused on the nature of human beings, its holistic and integrative character, and on understanding emotional behavior. (...) The next two parts describe moral ways used to regulate passions on the basis of Samkhya’s eight steps, i.e., reasoning, hearing, studying, Pramod, Mudita̅and Modma̅n, respect and gratitude. Descartes’ concept of generosity as a basis of the inculcation of virtues like self-esteem, veneration, hope, courage and bravery, selfsatisfaction, is also analyzed. In conclusion, the relevance of the aforementioned mechanismis presented at the individual and social levels. (shrink)

This is a philosophical review of the exhibition dedicated to Literature – Art titled Mukhaputa (Cover page) held on occasion of the Manipal International Literature and Arts Platform 2017 in Manipal, India. The curatorial strategy of the exhibition explores the intersectional relationships between literature and visual arts at large. The context of this critical review is the recent past of modern literature journals in print that encouraged artists and illustrators to converse with literature and in (...) turn poets and authors to be artists in their own right. Through a reflection on the nature of new forms of art works submitted by various artists to the exhibition, the review situates new methods of interdisciplinary curating which is highly contingent and speculative. Curation, thus, demands a new reading in terms of its role in interdisciplinary creative practice. (shrink)

The Weatherall report on the use of non-human primates in research was published in 2006. Its main conclusion was that there is a strong scientific case for the use of non-human primates in some cases, but the report stressed the importance of evaluating each case in the light of the availability of alternatives. In addition to arguing for the scientific necessity of using non-human primates in research, the report also provided an ethical justification. As could be expected, (...) the report was harshly criticised by animal rights groups, but in the academic literature, only two critical replies appeared. In what follows, I will describe the ethical justification for non-human primate research as it is laid out in the Weatherall report and then consider the criticism in the academic literature. I conclude that the report’s ethical justification for the use of non-human primates in research, in particular in basic neuroscientific research, has not been convincingly challenged by its critics. Since the criticism of the report is limited and represents only a small part of the academic discussion about the use of non-human primates in research, and a still smaller part of the ethical discussion about animal research, it is important that the discussion continue both at the academic and social level. (shrink)

As of 2017, 65.6 million individuals have been displaced from their homes, fleeing their homelands in search of refuge from the violence, oppression, and chaos of civil war. The mass movement of people across internal and external borders only proves that there are certain aspects of the human condition that cannot be confined within the strict idea of territories and nation-states, that the political and legal approach in organising the interaction and relationships between people is deficient. I argue that (...) there is a need to recalibrate all existing ideologies in relation to the interactions and relationships between peoples coming from different parts of the world. In order to do this, I intend to examine the current legal norm and connect it to cosmopolitan ethics that are grounded on the idea of spatiality. Elucidating on the ideas presented by thinkers such as Seyla Benhabib, Anthony Kwame Appiah, Gloria Anzaldua, and Tetsuro Watsuji, I argue that to fully actualise cosmopolitan ethics we must investigate how space operates in the existence of man—a deterritorialised existence found in the borders. (shrink)

This article offers an innovative perspective on the literary landscapes of the 1960s in France, Ukraine, and the USA serving as exemplars of a global literary project that views literary works as heterotopias that, while being distinct, collectively constitute a cohesive whole. Using a comparative approach, complemented with distant reading techniques, the study examines how these literary realms are interconnected, revealing shared aesthetic foundations guided by an overarching law. This law, rooted in Theodor Adorno’s concept of negativity, becomes evident in (...) in countercultural movements and consequential shifts in literary form, content, and canon. While not the primary focus of analysis, other unifying elements in this global literary panorama include dissent as defined by Jaques Rancière, and a Sartrian-infused interpretation of existentialism. The article suggests that this global phenomenon may have emerged due to the confluence of two factors: the seismic global impact of events like WWII and the evolving postmodern trajectory of the era. (shrink)