Future historians of moral and political philosophy may well label our period the Age of Rights. In moral philosophy it is now widely assumed that the two most plausible types of normative theories are Utilitarianism and Kantian theories and that the contest between them must be decided in the end by seeing whether Utilitarianism can accommodate a prominent role for rights in morality. In political philosophy even the most bitter opponents in the perennial debate over conflicts (...) class='Hi'>between liberty and equality often share a common assumption: that the issue of liberty versus equality can only be resolved by determining which is the correct theory of rights. Some contend that equal respect for persons requires enforcement of moral rights to goods and services required for the pursuit of one's own conception of the good, while others protest that an enforced system of ‘positive’ rights violates the right to liberty whose recognition is the essence of equal respect for persons. The dominant views in contemporary moral and political philosophy combine an almost unbounded enthusiasm for the concept of rights with seemingly incessant disagreement about what our rights are and which rights are most basic. Unfortunately, that which enjoys our greatest enthusiasm is often that about which we are least critical. My aim in this essay is to take a step backward in order to examine the assumption that frames the most important debates in contemporary moral and political philosophy – the assumption that the concept of a right has certain unique features which make rights so especially valuable as to be virtually indispensable elements of any acceptable social order. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Norms, aspirations and cynicism State obligations Control and blame Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.1 (2002) 103-113 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note Update Searching Across Boundaries: National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics* While indeed an historical moment, the announcement of the mapping of the human genome has been treated in the literature as a beginning—a new way to think about biology and the ways in which biological concepts are applied to medicine. Issues of (...) both Science and Nature magazines celebrated the event by establishing interdisciplinary websites where readers can access essays on aspects of genome mapping and directly link to databases to search for more information on the topics (IV. Genome Gateway 2001; The Human Genome 2001). Since 1994, the National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics (NIREHG), a special project of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC), has been providing such an integrated information service on ethics and genetics. Designed to enable a wide range of users to go from annotated bibliographies (Scope Notes) and brief essays (called "enotes") to database searching, NIREHG fosters an interdisciplinary approach to research on ethics and genetics. Links are provided between and among Scope Notes and enotes to information maintained on the NIREHG site as well as to sources found throughout the Internet. In providing the following annotations added to NIREHG materials since 1997, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (in its online presence through Project Muse) becomes an additional forum for NIREHG links. "It is a rare and wonderful moment when success teaches us humility, and this, I argue, is precisely the moment at which we find ourselves at the end of the twentieth century" (IV. Keller 2000, p. 7). It is with both joy and humility that we celebrate the mapping of the human genome. [End Page 103] I. Genetic Testing Andrews, Lori B. Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions About Genetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 264 p.Noting the wide impact of genetic testing, Andrews discusses patient self concept, reproduction decisions, confidentiality, discriminations in health insurance and employment, the need for competent counseling, and the legal, ethical, and social regulations she deems important to help solve dilemmas arising from the tests and their ensuing ramifications. She describes three models, pointing out both advantages and problems: a medical model with physician gatekeepers, a public health model that could provide education as well some testing for those unable to afford tests, and a fundamental rights model that could give greater weight to individuals decisions about the use of health care services. The book has 85 pages of footnotes.American Society of Human Genetics. Social Issues Subcommittee on Familial Disclosure. Professional Disclosure of Familial Genetic Information. American Journal of Human Genetics 62 (2): 474-83, February 1998.The ASHG statement outlines points to consider: the general rule of confidentiality, exceptional circumstances that permit disclosure, and the ethical duty to inform patients about familial implications. Background discussion includes: ethical frameworks for disclosure of otherwise confidential information, the duty to warn under law, and international trends and positions.Boetzkes, Elisabeth. Genetic Knowledge and Third-Party Interests. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 8 (4): 386-92, Summer 1999.Protection from the interests of insurers or prospective employers are discussed from the point of view of the ethical basis of the professional obligation to confidentiality as well as the right to privacy of those tested. However, the author supports family members, saying that "first-party resistance to disclosure may be overcome by weighty third-party claims."Chadwick, Ruth; Shickle, Darren; ten Have, Henk; and Wiesing, Urban, eds. The Ethics of Genetic Screening. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. 255 p.Twenty-one chapters and 23 authors provide views of genetic testing/screening in different European countries and offer brief discussions of sociological perspectives, moral and philosophical issues, privacy, reconciling liberty and the common good, and questions raised in genetic testing of children.Clayton, Ellen Wright. Genetic Testing in Children. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (3): 233-51, June 1997.Clayton argues that there is room for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Tiantai Doctrine of Evil as the Good:A Response to David R. LoyBrook ZiporynIn a recent issue of this journal (vol. 54 [1]:99-103), David Loy has done me the honor of publishing his sympathetic and thoughtful review of my book Evil and/or/ as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). Loy has done an (...) excellent job of bringing to the forefront some of the most troubling and distinctive aspects of the Tiantai Buddhist position on evil, as expressed in particular in the works of Siming Zhili, the focus of my book. Inevitably, with the nit-picky vanity that perhaps assails every reviewee, I feel some points have been imperfectly understood or represented, but in general I want before anything else to express my gratitude to Loy for the insight and acuity with which he has handled this material, the care he has taken in reading and responding to the book, and the candor, lucidity, and forcefulness with which he has expressed a very reasonable, non-Tiantai Mahāyāna response to some of the more radical and counterintuitive Tiantai ideas.But one particularly great service Loy has done is to present a very important and necessary challenge: what would these Tiantai writers, with their bizarre ideas about the interpenetration, nay, identity, of good and evil have to say about Hitler and the Holocaust? Putting this particular topic up as a casual example to be employed in an academic discussion, in effect "making use of" the mountains of corpses in the context of an ivory-tower discussion of subtle logical and ontological hairsplitting, perhaps will strike some as being in more than questionable taste. But there are points to be made here, and it is a valid question, one that needs to be addressed—indeed, that we cannot help addressing—even when it is played as a card all the meanings of which have already been determined. Loy is quite right: these mountains of corpses are always already in play in the background of our discussions of moral doctrines, perhaps even in the interstices of our casual entertainments, and we let ourselves off too easily if we leave them in the background, as unexamined, prepackaged moral tokens, or stock bugaboos whose "use-value" in the culture has already been nonnegotiably and comfortably mapped out. This is the extreme test case that anyone who wants to talk seriously about values and ethics must face head-on. For these reasons I want to take this opportunity to extend the thought experiment and respond to this challenge, speaking for the sake of argument in the name of the Tiantai doctrine, in the hopes that this will perhaps initiate a dialogue with specialists in other systems of moral theory, who might attempt a similar experiment.To do this, however, it will be necessary to take up a few of the more general theoretical questions raised in Loy's review. The first of these concerns the relation between ultimate truth and provisional truth. Loy acknowledges that, as argued in [End Page 329] the book, the Tiantai position gives a higher status to provisional or conventional truth than most Mahāyāna Two Truths doctrines, accurately paraphrasing the conclusion that "for Tiantai, however, the provisional ends up being equal to the ultimate truth." But, on the other hand, he wishes to point out as a potential shortcoming of the Tiantai position that it seems to overstress the "highest point of view." This assertion comes in the context of a grudging attempt to make sense of the Tiantai affirmation of evil from the point of view of the general Mahāyāna Two Truths theory, thereby, in my opinion, fatally distorting the point. Loy is willing to admit "the fact that from the highest point of view every possible apprehension—including evil ones—is neither a distortion of reality nor subject to invalidation by some other more privileged perspective." This strikes Loy as problematic, and he offers his own solution: it lies in "realizing that this 'ultimate' point of view is insufficient by itself—that it always needs... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Marja Heimonen, “Justifying the Right to Music Education”Hermann J. KaiserFirst of all I would like to thank Marja Heimonen for her paper on a central problem not only for music education as practice but also for the theory of music education. She gives a very clear and convincing answer to a permanently irritating question: How do we justify music education within an ensemble of competing (...) subjects struggling to get a place within the school curriculum. And she does it in a rather uncommon way, that is, by means of legal philosophy. I think her arguments provoke several questions worthy of serious discussion. Some of these questions I shall try to indicate.The first question relates to the right to (music) education. Referring to the Nordic countries she states, "Their legal systems are based on enacted acts and statutes not only protecting the citizens against criminal acts but also securing their rights to receive a certain amount and standard of services the state is obliged to provide" and she continues: "Education is one of the basic rights in Nordic societies." I am interested very much in the wording by which these constitutions declare the right to education respectively to music education. The German constitution, for example, says only, but very bluntly that the entire schooling system stands under control of the state. That means, in connection with compulsory schooling, education at school means no right but a compulsion. (I shall come back to this point later.)The second question relates to the issue of internal versus external goods or instrumental versus self-justifying aims. In her attempt to justify music education Heimonen makes a distinction between internal and external goods, instrumental and self-justifying aims. I wonder if this distinction—though it is very common in theories of action and of value—really refers to different facts; perhaps [End Page 213] it is only a difference in perspectives. I will transform this problem into a question thus: Are aims and values emphasizing a person's well-being really not instrumental with regard to this person? The well-being aims look to me to be necessarily connected to self-justifying aims. Aims, values, activities, facts, situations, and so on, generating well-being, are always instrumental with regard to a person's well-being. What else should they be?On the other hand, are so-called external goods and instrumental aims not self-justifying aims as well, again from the point of view of the person concerned? Are not aims which favor the training of a future professional (so called instrumental aims) self-justifying with regard to this person since they contribute very much to his or her well-being? Thus music educators should not hesitate to demonstrate the real individual, social, economical, and so on, benefit of music education to the society concerned very energetically.The third question arises around the implicit theories of the teacher, the school, and the function of music education as set forth by Heimonen in her paper. Heimonen compares the structure of the (music) teacher's situation with that of a judge. She says:The judge has to operate between the tensions of different interests in the framework of the law consisting of written regulations and the tradition of previous cases that have been solved.... The judge works within a "legal puzzle" just as the music teacher operates in a "musical puzzle": both of them have to think holistically as they try to achieve the best possible solutions in a particular situation, and both of them have to act innovatively and creatively in their practice.Here the question arises as to whether the "musical puzzle" is really the corresponding moment to the "legal puzzle" or whether it is the "music-pedagogical puzzle." I think it is the latter. But the teacher does not have—like the judge "his" legal system—a framework of written regulations and he never is in the situation just to apply rules on different cases. That is to say, one cannot reduce educational activities to making decisions on the basis of right or wrong, good or bad. But even if one would acknowledge an identical structure of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam SmithElisabeth EllisSamuel Fleischacker. A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Cloth, $70.00. Pp. 338.Samuel Fleischacker's lively and ambitious new book on judgment makes significant contributions to the literature interpreting Kant and Smith. He constructs a powerful [End Page 447] theory of free (...) human judgment from Kant's third Critique and Smith's Wealth of Nations, using this theory to revise Isaiah Berlin's classic distinction between negative and positive freedom. By arguing for what he calls "a third concept of liberty," Fleischacker hopes "to make the world free for good judgment" (243).Fleischacker begins his book with three chapters on "the nature of judgment," which include a controversial but ultimately convincing reading of Kant's writing on aesthetic judgment. Having outlined a Kantian theory of judgment, Fleischacker moves in the next six chapters to "the politics of judgment," reading Smith's Wealth of Nations in light of Aristotle's philosophy of phronesis (and also, rightly, in the context of Smith's own Theory of Moral Sentiments). This second section concludes with two extremely interesting chapters on politics and judgment in Kant and Rawls, in which Fleischacker weaves a number of controversial hypotheses, for example, that Kant's Groundwork was fundamentally influenced by Adam Smith (229n.), or that Kant included gender-based inequality among the types of tutelage to be overcome (186n.), into a strong critique of contemporary political philosophy. To both the utilitarian and the deontological traditions in political thought, Fleischacker opposes a "third way," in which the basis of political legitimacy is rooted in neither desire nor reason, but in the capacity for judgment. Fleischacker concludes his book with a single chapter on "the freedom of judgment," in which he argues for this philosophy against a series of representatives of alternative views.Interpreting Kant's political philosophy, Fleischacker directs our attention away from the familiar calculus of universal rules and toward what this reader agrees is the more authentically Kantian politics of gradual progress toward freedom. From this interpretation, he derives a very interesting critique of Kant's most prominent present-day successors:Rawls and Habermas try to uncover a framework for just politics from the structure of reason itself, and their projects fail, deeply and irremediably, because that structure cannot tell us anything, by itself, about its own proper application to concrete matters of public policy. Kant's own political writings are more closely engaged with specific, contingent issues of his day. Surprisingly, perhaps, Kant has considerably greater respect for history, and for empirical fact, than do his modern-day followers.(184)Fleischacker is not the only scholar interested in directing our attention toward Kant's pragmatic politics. See, for example, John Christian Laursen, The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992). Fleischacker goes on to emphasize that for Kant political freedom is something to be achieved over time via such institutions as civic education and a free press. As such, political freedom is not identical with freedom of the will, and thus for Fleischacker, Kant's political arguments do not depend on defending transcendental freedom. Instead, Fleischacker argues, a truly Kantian politics will address the conditions for the free exercise of individual judgment. "Freedom.... can be developed empirically... " (186). Though generally convincing, Fleischacker's reading of Kant's politics is vulnerable to criticism on some points of interpretation. For example, by overlooking Kant's [End Page 448] account of provisional right in the Rechtslehre, Fleischacker misses one of the most important of Kant's attempts to translate judgment's mediating function into political practice.If A Third Concept of Liberty elides some interpretive issues (such as the relationship between aesthetic and moral decision-making (23n.), the book confronts the most important questions of present-day political theory head on. Fleischacker makes a number of far-reaching but also quite specific proposals for moving the world closer to a realm of free human judgment. Against negative libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Fleischacker calls for governmental activism to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Good Work: Christian Ethics in the Workplace by Esther D. ReedWilton BunchGood Work: Christian Ethics in the Workplace Esther D. Reed Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010. 132pp. $18.96Work has become a political football. There are laws defining who can work and who cannot. And there are laws that stipulate who can receive and who is eliminated from what were formerly standard benefits. There are even laws, (...) as in the state of Alabama, that define what work ministers can do for the poor, the needy, and those who are ill. Given the many issues affecting what occurs in workplaces—where most working people spend most of their time—there is a need for an integrated perspective on work. Esther Reed’s Good Work provides just that: a broader context for understanding the significance of our work.Many people understand “work” to be the energy they expend in order to receive something they can then spend. Such an understanding of work, Reed observes, reflects the assumptions of a capitalist society in which people are valued in terms of what they do and how much money they make. From this standpoint, cardiac surgeons are valued much more highly than garbage collectors, even though societies could not function without garbage removal but did, in fact, survive for centuries before cardiac surgeons. In a similar vein, in the supposedly egalitarian halls of academe, the grossly underpaid adjunct professor is dismissed and discounted even though she spends much more time with students than does her tenured counterpart. [End Page 196]Yet there are other ways of defining work. Reed reminds us that the same Hebrew word translated as “hard work” (‘abad) can also mean priestly service in the Tabernacle (12). The work (or liturgy) of tabernacle worship was understood to be service to God. Likewise, Jesus described his ministry as work and even spoke of the Father as still working: “My Father is still working, and I also am working (Greek ergazetai/ergazomai; John 5:17)” (13). The work of Jesus and his Father had to do with salvation and blessing for human beings. From this standpoint, work clearly has a spiritual dimension.The framework Reed develops for establishing a Christian ethic of work is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What we say about work, she contends, will depend on what we say about the resurrection. Indeed, she argues, reflection on the resurrection can orient (or reorient) the working lives of Christian in important ways (2). An understanding of work rooted in the resurrection, Reed argues, is cultivated by participating in the liturgy of a worshipping community. Many Christian liturgies begin with praise to God for the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. By beginning worship in this way, the community is able to concentrate on a kind of work that enables them to go beyond their individual lives and become part of something larger—a community in praise of God. In turn, the bread and wine that is blessed during the Eucharistic celebration contains not only the fruits of creation but also the fruits of human labor. As the Spirit of God infuses the bread and wine with the presence of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, it also sanctifies our labor. And as we receive the bread and wine, and as we meditate on Christ’s passion and resurrection, we become hungry for enacting justice and mercy in all realms of our lives—including the realm of work. Indeed, through this encounter with the Triune God and with one another in worship, we gain a renewed appreciation of who we are as human beings. More profoundly, we become those who can, in fact, not only work and love but also—through the Spirit’s power—renew everything we do and encounter, including the curse of work.Central to Reed’s argument is the claim that work entails a dimension of justice. Persons have rights to work and to rest because they are created in the image of God, which means they have intrinsic worth. Such rights, she argues, must be closely linked with liberties that are understood not merely negatively... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recovering Aquinas's Common-Good-Oriented Right of RebellionNathaniel A. MoatsIntroductionAs recent events have woefully displayed, armed rebellion is not a topic of merely theoretical interest.1 While theory seemingly has very little impact on the citizens participating in armed rebellions, theory still remains of paramount importance, providing crucial criteria to evaluate, restrain, apply, and respond to such force. Criteria such as legitimate authority, just cause, right intention, necessity, proportionality, and likelihood (...) of success have been offered by thinkers advocating "just war" theory from across diverse political, philosophical, and religious backgrounds, garnering widespread agreement over the centuries. Contemporary scholars who identify as "historically oriented" just war thinkers have continued to defend that historical tradition as a sufficient and substantial guide for contemporary practice.2 Yet some have questioned whether the it can provide useful aid for dealing with contexts of political tyranny. In a 2013 article, Valeria Morkevičius describes [End Page 175] Western culture as divided over the moral permissibility of armed rebellion, with advocates basing their views on the Enlightenment ideas found in John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whereas traditional just war theorists have generally denied a right to armed rebellion.3 In Morkevičius's perspective, she argues that there can be justified use of armed force against tyranny and calls upon other scholars to help create a "just rebellion theory" that would "radically reimagine" traditional just war thinking.4 She claims that there is a "lack of a systematic and rigorous ethical framework for evaluating the justness of rebellions"5 and that "a new theory of just rebellion—a systematic way of evaluating the justness of real world rebellions, of determining appropriate state responses to domestic rebellions, and of weighing the pros and cons of intervention" is needed.6In line with Morkevičius' sentiments, the last ten years has seen the increasing rise of self-proclaimed just war revisionists.7 Jeff McMahan, the figurehead for this movement, claims that the classical just war criteria "can no longer stand."8 McMahan argues that traditional just war theory has [End Page 176] depicted war as a morally sui generis category of violence in which unique moral principles apply.9 The moral asymmetry of war is also reinforced by a "statist" and "collectivist" orientation that overrides the importance of individuals and their rights of life, liberty, property, and other fundamental goods. Instead of seeing war as a distinct category of violence, McMahan argues that war and self-defense are morally symmetrical. Further, he argues that combatants should be depicted as individuals distinct from their political or collective identity.10 In other words, McMahan offers a theory of war oriented around individuals and their rights based in the concept of justified self-defense.11 Extending McMahan's theory, Cécile Fabre has particularly targeted the criterion of legitimate authority as morally problematic.12 Rejecting the exclusive authorization of armed force by political authorities, she argues in favor of an individual's right to war, and by extension the right to rebellion.13 Therefore, given the historical just war tradition's emphasis on the criterion of legitimate authority (i.e., the restriction of armed force [End Page 177] to established authorities) and resistance to support armed rebellions due to the lack of recognized political leaders, revisionists conclude that traditional just war thinking is inadequate for providing contemporary guidance in the context of rebellion.14To challenge revisionist claims, I analyze Thomas Aquinas's ingenuity and relevance for future "just rebellion" thinking. First, I argue that classical just war thinking is not as antithetical to armed rebellion as suggested.15 One just rebellion theory has coexisted alongside the classical formation of just war theory, albeit often neglected or ignored by contemporary thinkers.16 It is well known that Aquinas formalized the Augustinian classical just war theory revolving around the criteria of legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. Much less known, however, is the fact that Aquinas also crafted criteria for justified armed rebellions. While Aquinas's just war thinking rearticulates Augustine's perspective, Aquinas appropriated his mentor's views to allow for justified armed rebellions. Aquinas's originality was displayed not only in allowing justified armed... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Martin Hollis, in Market Equality and Social Freedom [1], used the Dewsbury case to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and the public good. Like others engaged in the public debate on multicultural education in general, and Dewsbury in particular, Hollis avoided the main issue: “What should be the curriculum in a school attended by pupils from different cultural backgrounds?’’Rational debate in this highly controversial area requires an analysis of two fundamental concepts—multicultural education and respect. The former (...) can take three forms, each corresponding with a distinctive curriculum model. One—the Equality option—is inimical to parental rights as guaranteed under the European Convention, but it attracts support because of a widespread failure to recognise that one can respect someone's right to hold and propagate a particular faith (or opinion) without necessarily respecting that faith (or opinion). It is shown that this failure has come about through very lax usage of ‘respect’. It is argued that by respecting persons whatever their values the potential conflict between liberty and equality can be resolved in a free society. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, (...) and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:342 BOOK REVIEWS (5) What follows for the " critical " and " systematic " dimensions of theology, if, accepting Balthasar's centering of thought in (the paradoxes of) love and beauty, one sees mystery, metaphor, concrete imagery, and indeed "myth" as essential and not "accidental" to all theological meaning? In opening up these questions, O'Hanlon's important book identifies the areas where dialogue with Balthasar's work might best begin, (...) even as it makes its own constructive contribution to theology. John Paul II Institute Washington, D.C. DAVID L. SCHINDLER Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. By JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 212. $25.00 (paper). James Keenan says that he began his work on this book " believing the simple presupposition that goodness describes persons and rightness describes actions" (p. ix). The main focus of the study is the question of whether and to what extent this distinction can be found in the work of Aquinas. The author holds that the understanding of the relation of reason and will in the early work of Aquinas precludes the distinction of goodness and rightness held by the author and other contemporary moralists. Keenan claims, however, to find in the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae a significant shift in Aquinas's notion of the will and its relation to reason, a shift toward an " autonomous will." Keenan states in the Introduction: "The will's autonomy is a necessary condition for understanding moral goodness "; indeed he proceeds to note that " without it there can be no distinction " between goodness and rightness (pp. ix-x). Before commenting on Keenan's work I will first briefly summarize the basic points of the book. The book is divided into four parts. In the first part we see the distinction between goodness and rightness. Keenan explains the distinction: Goodness and badness describe whether or not we strive to the extent we are able to attain rightness in our lives and actions. Rightness and wrongness describe whether or not we attain the end that reason dictates is proper and necessary for our lives and actions (p. ix). Keenan finds the foundation for this distinction in the reasoning of G. E. Moore. A person's actions can he judged right or wrong independently of a consideration of the person's motives. For instance, a BOOK REVIEWS 343 right action might be performed by a good person or by a bad person, the goodness or badness being determined by the motive. There are, then, two distinct moral descriptions; one, goodness or badness, pertains to persons and the other, rightness and wrongness, pertains to actions. Keenan joins several contemporary moral theologians in claiming something which Moore did not, namely, that " a person who performs a wrong action can be called good for performing the action" (p. 6). This assertion is based upon an understanding of goodness as determined " antecedent to action " (p. 15), and likewise as " antecedent to and distinct from rightness" (p. 7). Moral goodness is determined by the motivation, and motivation alone, of the person acting (p. 14). For example, does the person act out of love for God and neighbor, or rather out of a desire for self-aggrandizement? Jn question here is what Keenan calls the " fundamental, formal self-movement of the agent" (p. 14). Rightness on the other hand is a moral description determined by the measure of reason. It describes actions, and can also describe the agent, in terms of right order in relation to the end of human life. In Part II (the second and third chapters) Keenan turns to the supposed shift in the thought of Aquinas regarding reason and will. Keenan finds the early position of Aquinas incompatible with the distinction of goodness and rightness, but the later position compatible with the distinction. Keenan also presents Aquinas's distinction between specification and exercise in the act of the will as crucial to the distinction between goodness and rightness. I will return to this point shortly. Part III (the fourth and fifth chapters) considers Aquinas's treatises on the human act and moral virtue found in Summa Theologiae I-II. Keenan holds that... (shrink)

Although there has been growing awareness among historians of ideas of a close relationship between eighteenth-century religious and political argument, there is still no clear understanding of this kind of relationship. Despite its historical plausibility, the transition from religious to political thinking encounters serious logical obstacles stemming mainly from the traditional distinction between spiritual and temporal matters. This distinction, as articulated in the initial attempts to establish religious toleration, would make it untenable to extend arguments in defence of (...) religious liberty directly to the defence of political liberty. Religious and political liberty cannot be governed by the same rationale, which is man's conscientious relationship to God. Any attempt, therefore, to explain how it was possible to pass from religious to political argument has rather to focus on the, as it were, external characteristics of these two kinds of liberty. It is argued in this article that religious and political liberty appear to be similar in that they both refer to rights that concern the expression of opinions, the so-called ‘intellectual rights’ or ‘rights of mind’. Investigating the meaning of ‘right of private judgement’ shows it to have three dimensions, which refer to the mental process of thinking, to its external manifestation through speech, and to other, non-verbal actions prompted by thought. In relation to fundamental rights could easily be dismissed as irrelevant, could be interpreted as a relapse to a Hobbesian state of nature, while was considered suitable for serving as a basis of a defensible theory of natural rights which could easily cover religious liberty, as well as political liberty, the right to free speech, or the liberty of the press. Unlimited and universal exercise of this type of rights was not only believed not to involve mutual harm, but it was also backed further by an appeal to the public good. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam SmithElisabeth EllisSamuel Fleischacker. A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Cloth, $70.00. Pp. 338.Samuel Fleischacker's lively and ambitious new book on judgment makes significant contributions to the literature interpreting Kant and Smith. He constructs a powerful [End Page 447] theory of free (...) human judgment from Kant's third Critique and Smith's Wealth of Nations, using this theory to revise Isaiah Berlin's classic distinction between negative and positive freedom. By arguing for what he calls "a third concept of liberty," Fleischacker hopes "to make the world free for good judgment" (243).Fleischacker begins his book with three chapters on "the nature of judgment," which include a controversial but ultimately convincing reading of Kant's writing on aesthetic judgment. Having outlined a Kantian theory of judgment, Fleischacker moves in the next six chapters to "the politics of judgment," reading Smith's Wealth of Nations in light of Aristotle's philosophy of phronesis (and also, rightly, in the context of Smith's own Theory of Moral Sentiments). This second section concludes with two extremely interesting chapters on politics and judgment in Kant and Rawls, in which Fleischacker weaves a number of controversial hypotheses, for example, that Kant's Groundwork was fundamentally influenced by Adam Smith (229n.), or that Kant included gender-based inequality among the types of tutelage to be overcome (186n.), into a strong critique of contemporary political philosophy. To both the utilitarian and the deontological traditions in political thought, Fleischacker opposes a "third way," in which the basis of political legitimacy is rooted in neither desire nor reason, but in the capacity for judgment. Fleischacker concludes his book with a single chapter on "the freedom of judgment," in which he argues for this philosophy against a series of representatives of alternative views.Interpreting Kant's political philosophy, Fleischacker directs our attention away from the familiar calculus of universal rules and toward what this reader agrees is the more authentically Kantian politics of gradual progress toward freedom. From this interpretation, he derives a very interesting critique of Kant's most prominent present-day successors:Rawls and Habermas try to uncover a framework for just politics from the structure of reason itself, and their projects fail, deeply and irremediably, because that structure cannot tell us anything, by itself, about its own proper application to concrete matters of public policy. Kant's own political writings are more closely engaged with specific, contingent issues of his day. Surprisingly, perhaps, Kant has considerably greater respect for history, and for empirical fact, than do his modern-day followers.(184)Fleischacker is not the only scholar interested in directing our attention toward Kant's pragmatic politics. See, for example, John Christian Laursen, The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992). Fleischacker goes on to emphasize that for Kant political freedom is something to be achieved over time via such institutions as civic education and a free press. As such, political freedom is not identical with freedom of the will, and thus for Fleischacker, Kant's political arguments do not depend on defending transcendental freedom. Instead, Fleischacker argues, a truly Kantian politics will address the conditions for the free exercise of individual judgment. "Freedom.... can be developed empirically... " (186). Though generally convincing, Fleischacker's reading of Kant's politics is vulnerable to criticism on some points of interpretation. For example, by overlooking Kant's [End Page 448] account of provisional right in the Rechtslehre, Fleischacker misses one of the most important of Kant's attempts to translate judgment's mediating function into political practice.If A Third Concept of Liberty elides some interpretive issues (such as the relationship between aesthetic and moral decision-making (23n.), the book confronts the most important questions of present-day political theory head on. Fleischacker makes a number of far-reaching but also quite specific proposals for moving the world closer to a realm of free human judgment. Against negative libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Fleischacker calls for governmental activism to... (shrink)

This article explores a view nearly absent from modern political theory, that there is a duty to create and secure government which imposes on some a duty to govern. This duty is grounded in philosophers as disparate as Aquinas, Locke, Hobbes and Finnis. To fail one's duty to govern, especially over the range of goods that can only be secured by government, is to have committed a wrong against another. If there is an obligation to govern that is rooted (...) in the common good, then one might believe there is an obligation to maintain a government which pursues the common good. After disentangling the duty to govern from political duties which are much better explored, I focus on the more subtle question of how political legitimacy and the obligation to obey the law may clash with a duty to govern. Again, it is surprising that this claim can be located in scholars as disparate as Kant, Hobbes and Finnis. Yet in each example these thinkers give us, we are troubled by the tension between the duty to maintain a government and its conceptual fellow travelers, legitimate government and the obligation to obey. Nor is this question one restricted to abstract political philosophy. Particularly troubling are scenarios in which a threat to governance might lead to a reasonable belief that the government must maintain itself by taking actions which appear illegitimate. A scenario where a government must racially profile or violate civil liberties to guard against threats to the ability to govern brings the problem to life. Difficult moments of American history — the interment of the Japanese during World War II, racial profiling after September 11th and the use of torture by the United States government were surely mistakes. But they make live the perceived and potential clash between a duty to maintain a government, legitimate government and our duty to obey the law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol "God" 1 Gordon D. KaufmanHarvard UniversityI am a Christian theologian. This does not mean, however, that I understand my work as being essentially a matter of explaining and defending Christian faith and the Christian set of symbols for interpreting human life and the world. The task of the Christian theologian is rather, as I (...) understand it, to scrutinize carefully, critically evaluate, and reconstruct (in whatever ways seem appropriate and necessary) the central Christian symbols, so they will encourage and support a faith and life appropriate for today. 2 In our time it is no longer sufficient for theologians simply to take it for granted that the basic structure and commitments of traditional Christian faith are--in all of their main lines--right and proper; and to proceed, then, to expound and reinterpret them in whatever ways seem intelligible and persuasive. Whatever may have been the value and justification of this sort of theologizing in the past, the crises of the twentieth century (to many of which Christian symbols, institutions, and practices have themselves contributed) have made it clear that thorough reassessment of the traditional Christian symbol-system, with an eye to its (possibly drastic) reconstruction or even to the total rejection of some of its principal features, is required--if it is to continue to contribute to human well-being, and to the well-being of the rest of life, on planet Earth. It is with this thoroughly critical and open understanding of the task of Christian theologians today that this contribution to our Buddhist-Christian dialogue has been prepared. And I hope a similar spirit will animate the responses to this paper, whether offered from the Christian or the Buddhist side of our conversation. I My assignment here is to examine the topic of "Christianity and Ecology." This is, of course, a very broad topic, much too large for a paper of this sort. I have taken the liberty, therefore, to confine my discussion to only one of the many questions that might be considered under this heading. The central symbol in terms of which Christian faith and Christian life (as well as most other western religious traditions) understand and order themselves is God, usually thought of as designating the creator and governor of the world, the only One to whom unqualified devotion, love, [End Page 3] and service are due. If we can come to some understanding of how this symbol has functioned in the past, and might be conceived properly to function today with respect to ecological concerns, we will have made a large step toward understanding the overall topic of Christianity and ecology. I am devoting this paper, therefore, to the question of "Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol 'God.'"Throughout my professional life I have been concerned with the problem of the continuing viability (or lack of viability) in our contemporary world of the symbol "God," as that symbol has been understood through most of western history (not only by Christians and Jews, but also by many humanists and secularists). And for the last thirty years or so, I have been reflecting on the issues which our growing ecological consciousness poses for our understanding of--and our ordering of life in terms of--this symbol. My earliest writing directly concerned with this question is in a paper entitled "The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology" published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1972. 3 In that paper I attempted to show that there is a fundamental tension--indeed, a conceptual and logical incompatibility--between, on the one hand, the understanding of God, and of the intimate relation of humanity to God (as seen in our western religious and philosophical traditions), and on the other hand, our growing awareness that human existence is essentially constituted by, and could not exist apart from, the complex ecological ordering of life that has evolved on planet Earth over many millennia. 4The main emphasis in that paper remains largely correct in my view. Hence, I would like to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Good Work: Christian Ethics in the Workplace by Esther D. ReedWilton BunchGood Work: Christian Ethics in the Workplace Esther D. Reed Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010. 132pp. $18.96Work has become a political football. There are laws defining who can work and who cannot. And there are laws that stipulate who can receive and who is eliminated from what were formerly standard benefits. There are even laws, (...) as in the state of Alabama, that define what work ministers can do for the poor, the needy, and those who are ill. Given the many issues affecting what occurs in workplaces—where most working people spend most of their time—there is a need for an integrated perspective on work. Esther Reed’s Good Work provides just that: a broader context for understanding the significance of our work.Many people understand “work” to be the energy they expend in order to receive something they can then spend. Such an understanding of work, Reed observes, reflects the assumptions of a capitalist society in which people are valued in terms of what they do and how much money they make. From this standpoint, cardiac surgeons are valued much more highly than garbage collectors, even though societies could not function without garbage removal but did, in fact, survive for centuries before cardiac surgeons. In a similar vein, in the supposedly egalitarian halls of academe, the grossly underpaid adjunct professor is dismissed and discounted even though she spends much more time with students than does her tenured counterpart. [End Page 196]Yet there are other ways of defining work. Reed reminds us that the same Hebrew word translated as “hard work” (‘abad) can also mean priestly service in the Tabernacle (12). The work (or liturgy) of tabernacle worship was understood to be service to God. Likewise, Jesus described his ministry as work and even spoke of the Father as still working: “My Father is still working, and I also am working (Greek ergazetai/ergazomai; John 5:17)” (13). The work of Jesus and his Father had to do with salvation and blessing for human beings. From this standpoint, work clearly has a spiritual dimension.The framework Reed develops for establishing a Christian ethic of work is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What we say about work, she contends, will depend on what we say about the resurrection. Indeed, she argues, reflection on the resurrection can orient (or reorient) the working lives of Christian in important ways (2). An understanding of work rooted in the resurrection, Reed argues, is cultivated by participating in the liturgy of a worshipping community. Many Christian liturgies begin with praise to God for the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. By beginning worship in this way, the community is able to concentrate on a kind of work that enables them to go beyond their individual lives and become part of something larger—a community in praise of God. In turn, the bread and wine that is blessed during the Eucharistic celebration contains not only the fruits of creation but also the fruits of human labor. As the Spirit of God infuses the bread and wine with the presence of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, it also sanctifies our labor. And as we receive the bread and wine, and as we meditate on Christ’s passion and resurrection, we become hungry for enacting justice and mercy in all realms of our lives—including the realm of work. Indeed, through this encounter with the Triune God and with one another in worship, we gain a renewed appreciation of who we are as human beings. More profoundly, we become those who can, in fact, not only work and love but also—through the Spirit’s power—renew everything we do and encounter, including the curse of work.Central to Reed’s argument is the claim that work entails a dimension of justice. Persons have rights to work and to rest because they are created in the image of God, which means they have intrinsic worth. Such rights, she argues, must be closely linked with liberties that are understood not merely negatively... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhism and the Idea of Human Rights:Resonances and Dissonances1Perry Schmidt-LeukelIn 1991 L.P.N. Perera, Professor of Pāli and Buddhist Studies in Sri Lanka, published a Buddhist commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this commentary Perera tries to show that, in the Pāli canon, i.e. the canonical scripture of Theravāda Buddhism, for every single article of the Human Rights Declaration a substantial parallel or (...) at least a statement with a similar tendency can be found. Indeed, says Perera, Article 1, which affirms the dignity and rights of all humans, "is in complete accord with Buddhist thought, and may be said to be nothing new to Buddhism in conception" (Perera 1991:21). In contrast, the Buddhist Peter Junger, Professor of Law at the University of Cleveland, Ohio, judged in 1995 that... though followers of Buddhist traditions do value most, if not all, of the interests underlying the rhetoric of human rights, they may not have much use for the label itself, which is, after all, a product of the traditions of Western Europe and the parochial histories of that region.(Junger 1998: 56)Junger goes on to say that "the concept of human rights is not likely to be useful in...following the Buddha Dharma" (Junger 1998: 55).Thus Perera and Junger agree that the content of the various human rights is acceptable for Buddhists. However, they disagree strongly in their evaluation of the idea of human rights in itself. In this respect Damien Keown has rightly argued that the crucial question on 'Buddhism and Human Rights' is not so much whether Buddhism can accept any particular human right but rather whether the idea of human rights as such can find a philosophical justification within the "overall Buddhist vision of individual and social good" (Keown 1998: 24).It is this problem that I would like to pursue in this paper. In the first part I will sketch some basic characteristics of the idea of human rights. In the second part I will point out what resonances this idea finds in Buddhism or by which Buddhist concepts the human rights idea can be justified. And finally, in the third part, I will deal [End Page 33] with the question of potential dissonances between the idea of human rights and Buddhist concepts.On the Nature of Human RightsWith the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the various subsequent human rights conventions the rights of individuals were for the first time inscribed into international law, which had previously recognised only collectives as legal subjects. By formulating universal rights as valid for every individual human being regardless of race, colour, sex, religion, birth, etc. the Universal Declaration points to the most important feature of the idea of human rights: the protection of the individual or, to be more precise, the protection of the individual against powerful institutions of the state, society, religion or others. It is individual self-determination and free agency that are protected through human rights. Human rights define the minimum of what is necessary in order to guarantee the freedom of individual agency and the freedom of self-determination. By the definition of inalienable rights,2 the idea of human rights sets limits to those collectives and institutions in which we usually live, limits which for the sake of the basic liberty of the individual are not to be transgressed. Michael Ignatieff summarises this understanding of human rights with the words: "rights exist to protect individuals" (Ignatieff 2001: 67), and "they are worth having only if they can be enforced against institutions like the family, the state, and the church" (Ignatieff 2001: 66f.). Therefore "moral individualism" is "the core of the Universal Declaration" (Ignatieff 2001: 66).It is true that the further development of the human rights debate, particularly within the context of the United Nations, has led to an extension of the idea of human rights to collective rights and collective legal entities by including among human rights, for example, a nations' right to self-determination and the right to peace and the right to development. However, in my opinion it would be highly... (shrink)

Abstract:Arguments against physicians’ claims of a right to refuse to provide tests or treatments to patients based on conscientious objection often depend on two premises that are rarely made explicit. The first is that the protection of religious liberty (broadly construed) should be limited to freedom of worship, assembly, and belief. The second is that because professions are licensed by the state, any citizen who practices a licensed profession is required to provide all the goods and (...) class='Hi'>services determined by the profession to fall within the scope of practice of that professional specialty and permitted by the state, regardless of any personal religious, philosophical, or moral objection. In this article, I argue that these premises ought to be rejected, and therefore the arguments that depend on them ought also to be rejected. The first premise is incompatible with Locke’s conception of tolerance, which recognizes that fundamental, self-identifying beliefs affect public as well as private acts and deserve a broad measure of tolerance. The second premise unduly (and unrealistically) narrows the discretionary space of professional practice to an extent that undermines the contributions professions ought to be permitted to make to the common good. Tolerance for conscientious objection in the public sphere of professional practice should not be unlimited, however, and the article proposes several commonsense, Lockean limits to tolerance for physician claims of conscientious objection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DISTINGUISHING CHARITY AS GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS: A KEY TO THOMAS'S SECUNDA PARS JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. Weston School of Theology Cambridge, Massachusetts HE RESPECTIVE functions of charity and prudence Thomas Aquinas's moral theology provide a key to his nderstanding of the virtues. Charity and prudence serve distinct functions. In Thomas's position, a person can have the acquired virtues without having charity; such a person has a (...) virtuous life, but it is unified by prudence, not by charity. But why is such a person without charity? Is this absence of charity due simply to the absence of faith? Is this person with the four acquired virtues but without charity simply an unbeliever? Or is this person simply a rightly-ordered person whose lack of charity is due to the absence of personal moral goodness? Is such a person simply one who, in common parlance, is a well-integrated person but not necessarily a morally good one? In a word, is moral goodness a necessary condition for the acquired moral virtues? To answer this question we will begin with the contemporary distinction between goodness and rightness and then discuss the two virtues and their functions. In the final section we will relate our findings to present-day problems in the ethics of virtue. I. Goodness an_d Rightness Since Democritus we have realized that living rightly is not necessarily an indication of being good. Democritus noted that being good required not only that we act rightly but that we want 407 408 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. to act rightly.1 Over the centuries philosophers and theologians have consistently made reference to the fact that living rightly, or as they called it " doing the good," was not a sufficient condition for describing a person as good. From Ambrose and Augustine to the present, authors have insisted that a moral description of persons is more than a mere deduction from external activity.2 Some writers, however, did not simply make reference to this distinction, but rather spent considerable time in commenting on the insight involved. Kant, for instance, in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals distinguished from the beginning between action!> done out of duty (Handeln aus Pfiicht) and dutiful actions (pfiichtmiissiges H andeln). In attempting to describe the only thing which we can call " good," that is, the will, Kant argued that a dutiful act was only good if the act was done out of duty. For example, a state executioner who executes on account of his duty to execute is good and the action is good. But if the executioner performs the dutiful act on some other account, then the action is not good, though it is dutiful. Interestingly Kant did not consider whether an act not dutiful could be called good: Is an executioner who acts out of duty but botches the job still to be called good? George Moore in his Ethics made a similar point but for different reasons. Unlike Kant's interest in goodness, Moore wanted to describe a right action free of any consideration of an agent's motives and his solution was utilitarianism. In the process of separating the agent's action, Moore realized that the right act of a person with bad motivations involves a paradox: " A man may actually deserve the strongest moral condemnation for choosing an action which is morally right." 3 However, like 1 See his Fragmenta M oralia, no. 109, as cited in Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 170. 2 Bruno Schuller of Miinster provides ample historical evidence in his Die Begrundung sittlicher Urteile (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1980), 140. 3 George Moore, Ethics (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1912), 193-5. Cf. H. J. Paton, "The Alleged Independence of Goodness," in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. P. Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1952), 113-134; Richard Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 409 Kant, Moore did not discuss a person who sought to act rightly but who failed actually to perform a right action. Contemporary moral theology has carried the distinction further. Moral theologians like Bruno... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A THOMISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON ABORTION AND THE LAW IN CONTE:MPORARY AMERICA M. CATHLEEN KAVENY Yale University New Haven, Oonnecticut Introduction W;HEN THE SUPREME COURT handed down its abortion decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services 1 in the summer of 1989, it was widely prel 109 S. Ct. 3040 (1989). All further citations to Webster will be given parenthetically in the text. To summarize the most significant (...) aspects. of the decision: A. Chief Justice Rehnquist authored an opinion of the Oourt (of the highest precedential value) which was joined by Justices White, Kennedy, Scalia, and O'Connor. The majority found the lower courts to be in error in striking down as unconstitutional the preamble to a Missouri statute which asserted that "the life -0f each human being begins at conception." The opinion of the Court also found that Missouri could constitutionally prohibit the use of public employees and facilities in the performance of abortions not necessary to save the mother's life. B. The Court also upheld the Missouri statute's provision requiring a. doctor to perform viability tests before aborting a fetus the doctor believes is of 20 or more weeks gestational age. In the plurality opinion (of less precedential value than an opinion -0f the Court, since it is not joined by a majority of the justices), Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice White, and Justice Kennedy argued that since most fetuses are not viable at twenty weeks, the provision would impose substantial restrictions unrelated to the health of the mother upon what are, in fact, simply sec-0nd trimester abortions. Because they believed such restrictions to be in tension with Roe's trimester system, the plurality decided to abandon that system, along with its stipulation that the state's interest in unborn life became compelling only at viability. The plurality contended, however, that Webster presented no occasion for reconsidering Roe's holding, which deemed unconstitutional a statute prohibiting all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. In a concurring opinion, Justice Scalia went further, arguing that the Court should explicitly overrule Roe v. Wade. On the other hand, Justice O'Connor, 848 344 M. CAT'HLEEN KAVENY dieted that this would exaicerbate a dangerously bitter social·struggle. In its 1973 decision Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113), the court had e1abo:raJted.a woman's right to abortion, and, in rthe sixteen years that fo11owed it, it ga,V'e that right unwavering support. Webster 'seemed to mark a retl.'eat from that support. The new scope it offered for state regulation of rubortion promised rto ignite gra,ss-roots forvor and a stiate..:by-state battle between those seeking rto maintain the abortion rights est1ab1isihed by Roe and its sequalia and those st:dving to limit the s1oope of these rights in 1 significant ways. Much of the criticism of Webster has fooused narrowly upon how weM the,decision has aiocorided with various views on the morality of abortion. Yet important 1as this issue is, thorough ethicaJ ana:lysis of Webster must address severa1l additional fac~ tors. The ethiicatl aidequacy of positive law, induding judicial interpretations of faw siuch as Webster, must he ev1alruated in terms of whetheir it aidvanices or impedes the common good. The common good requires not only that we consider the moml substance of legal requirements but tha:t we ailso attend to the manner in which law is made, promulgated, ml!d interpreted. Such an analysis is,sorely needed; it should. specify the severa1l factors involved in determining whether any given legal also concurring in the plurality's judgment, maintained that this provision of the statute could be upheld without any reconsideration of Roe, since it co· hered with that decision's recognition of the compelling state interest in viable fetal life. C. Justice Blackmun authored an opinion dissenting from the majority on the issues discussed above, and he was joined by Justices Brennan and Mar· shall. The thrust of his opposition is directed against the plurality's treatment of the viability testing,provisions. Blackmun first suggested that i.f understood according to the canons of proper statutory interpretation, these provisions unconstitutionally restrict the attending physician... (shrink)

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash ABSTRACT The coverage of healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own earlier health-adverse behaviors is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following questions: justice for whom? Is it right to take people’s past behaviors into account in determining their access to healthcare? If so, how do we go about taking those behaviors into account? These bioethical questions become even more complex when we consider them in the context (...) of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. INTRODUCTION Healthcare coverage of lifestyle-related conditions is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following justice-related question: Is it right to consider people’s past behaviors in determining their access to healthcare? If so, the methods of taking those behaviors into account must be fair and justifiable. This bioethical question becomes even more complex when we consider it in the context of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. This paper takes an old, classic debate, evaluates newer approaches, and offers an argument favoring a combined approach which alters the liberal-egalitarian solution to account for social justice. ANALYSIS I. Causes of Disease If healthcare coverage were universal, irrespective of socioeconomic status and lifestyle, people would contribute to the cost of remedying the lifestyle-induced health problems of others. In the West, lifestyle-related diseases are burdensome.[i] This paper approaches this concern from a western lens that incorporates both a European tradition of “social safety nets” and an American tradition of personal freedoms. By taking such an approach, solutions to the consequences of one’s past behavior burdening others must consider an individual’s personal freedom to choose to act as he or she wishes, with the distributive social and economic equality of the many. The concept of disease caused by lifestyle and diet is proven. Many health conditions include behavioral risk factors. Multi-pack smoking increases the risk of chronic lung disease, while obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Inattention to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise leads to increased risks of coronary artery disease.[ii] While poor lifestyle choices certainly influence these conditions, their causes are multifactorial, and it is difficult to say that any single string of poor choices led to their development. In a scenario where two men excessively eat fast food for 20 years, several discrete factors impact whether any of them might suffer an ischemic-embolic stroke or not. Genetics, circumstances, and activity will also contribute to outcomes. II. Alcohol-Related End-Stage Liver Disease One paper suggests that alcohol-related end-stage liver disease (ARESLD) differs from other multifactorial disorders as alcohol alone causes the disease.[iii] It justifies attributing personal responsibility to patients with ARESLD because the condition develops only after the cumulative effects of large quantities of alcohol consumed from years to decades.[iv] However, the paper undermines its position by admitting that even the susceptibility to becoming an alcoholic has some degree of genetic predisposition.[v] Given the extreme scarcity of donor livers, some patients may be prioritized over others on the transplant waiting list. Since donor livers cannot be given to everyone, transplanting a liver into an alcoholic may result in death for competing candidates whose liver disease was not their fault. All else being equal, if bioethicists avoid claiming moral deficiency or judgment, those with apparently self-inflicted ARESLD will not be deprived of treatment but will have a lower priority for transplant.[vi] In contrast, another position suggests that it is often difficult to define what behaviors are punishable as these are largely personal and value-laden.[vii] Still, people do not support using their own resources to support the consequences of others’ poor choices, no matter how objective.[viii] In democratic societies, one must take into consideration community morals and values.[ix] Even if we were to punish people for their health-adverse behaviors, we could not logistically employ the vigorous and sustained efforts necessary to determine whose actions are morally weak.[x] III. The Liberal-Egalitarian Proposal One past argument proposes a liberal-egalitarian solution to manage personal responsibility for so-called “lifestyle diseases.”[xi] This Rawlsian system combines the European-style “social safety net” commitment to social and economic equality with the American liberal notion of pluralist toleration and personal freedoms. This idealized system aims to hold people responsible for their choices rather than the consequences to mitigate the downside of blaming those who might not be blameworthy. The approach avoids determining the questionable nature of luck and personal responsibility for health outcomes, fairness in the distribution of economic burden, and the intrusiveness required to practically determine who acts in a morally wrong and health-adverse way. The liberal-egalitarian model, a theory of distributive justice, has two facets: the liberal principle that people should be held accountable for their choices and the egalitarian principle that people who make the same choices should have the same outcomes.[xii] This model attempts to fuse responsibility with equity by seeking to reward good behavior and tax bad behavior rather than punish the consequences of the action and navigate who deserves treatment. For instance, the hospital bedside is not the appropriate place to introduce responsibility for one’s health outcomes.[xiii] This appeals to the reality that, at that time, discerning the true causes of disease was not plausible and to humanity in avoiding a heartless and cruel approach. An argument in favor of the liberal-egalitarian model considers its method of implementation. This approach assumes that the healthcare system treats all individuals regardless of their choices or ability to cover costs. The liberal-egalitarian model also assumes that a certain adverse health condition is related, statistically speaking, to the consumption of a certain good and that good can be taxed. As such, it proposes to tax the consumption of that good to finance the collective burden which arises from that good’s consumption rather than require individuals to pay for their own treatment. In the example of ARESLD, the recommended solution would be taxing all alcohol. While a systematic infrastructure is not explicit, there is the implication that a per-unit tax can be imposed on alcohol so the total tax revenue would make up for the additional healthcare costs due to consumption.[xiv] Upholding the principle that all people who make the same choices should face the same costs, all consumers of alcohol would pay the same tax, regardless of factors such as genetic predisposition to alcoholism, lifestyle, or expected cost of treatment. Upholding the principle of individual responsibility, this model does not deny treatment to anyone, neutralizing factors outside that individual’s control by imposing the tax ex-ante. Other people are not burdened by those who consume the good. People who consume alcohol face a burden proportional to the amount consumed. This tax-based implementation is justified so long as the tax is not prohibitively high for the average consumer. Further, the model mitigates concerns over the intrusiveness of ascribing morality to health-adverse behaviors. IV. Moral and Social Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Position Arguments against the liberal-egalitarian model concerns its many assumptions. First, this model assumes that consumption of such goods is directly related to the health outcome and that these goods can be taxed.[xv] Certain people genetically predisposed to alcoholism would be predisposed to consume more alcohol. The model falls short when applied to scenarios where health outcomes are not consumption-based, such as engaging in unsafe sex or abstaining from healthy lifestyle choices like exercise. Second, some might argue that the liberal-egalitarian model fails to remain neutral. Residual moral judgments tied to consumption choices introduce non-neutrality. Although taxation in free societies is determined by democratic procedures rather than by individuals in the healthcare system, moral and value-based judgments will be implicit in deciding what behaviors are taxable, such as the purchase of cigarettes. Third, the liberal-egalitarian model fails to determine whether one’s behavior is autonomous, as socio-cultural-economic factors may influence it and behavior is more a product of society, peer pressure, or income. Those also may reflect systemic inequalities. Therefore, this model, which rewards, or taxes based solely on decisions, regardless of their consequences and motivations, fails to consider that a person’s decisions may not be completely autonomous. V. Libertarian Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Model a. State Intrusiveness as Counter to the Liberal-Egalitarian Model Last, there is a libertarian worry that if the state guarantees universal healthcare coverage to all people, the state will have to become highly intrusive and investigate people’s morals.[xvi] At least one-third of all disease burden in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific is attributable to lifestyle measures such as tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, and obesity.[xvii] With these various lifestyles, it is not likely to agree on what conduct to tax or condemn.[xviii] The fine-toothed comb required to determine whether each citizen has been engaging in these behaviors would intrude on daily life and personal freedom. Libertarians champion the argument that impractical intrusiveness would result from universal healthcare, and such a degree of intrusiveness would likely be universally unacceptable.[xix] The liberal-egalitarian model mitigates the libertarian worry about state intrusiveness as it does not involve prying into one’s life and choices other than taxing goods. A liberal state should ideally be neutral to how people decide to live their lives. In all, libertarians can rest assured that the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model, through its ex-ante implementation, will require no prying state eyes. States that provide universal healthcare coverage and wish to condemn certain misconduct do not need to become overly intrusive to carry out measures to hold individuals accountable. b. Fairness Another libertarian worry regarding the guarantee of universal healthcare coverage in the context of lifestyle-driven diseases is that the public will be burdened unfairly with covering others’ ill-advised mistakes or bad luck. An ideal system to address this worry would link treatment or payment for treatment with whatever behavior caused that need.[xx] The distribution of burdens should be linked to how different individuals contributed to the creation of those burdens. Applied to health policy, we should ask how the need for a certain treatment arose when determining how to distribute its cost.[xxi] The liberal-egalitarian model aspires to hold individuals responsible for their choices, not for the consequences of such choices. This model significantly mitigates the libertarian worry over unfair burdens for covering other people’s mistakes or social conditions, which lead to those bad outcomes, by ensuring to not burden others with any of the costs for the treatment of people who decide to engage in certain health-adverse behaviors. The aforementioned taxation-based system would only tax those who also engage in the health-adverse behavior through consumption, and that tax directly pays for the necessary collective treatment. As such, those who do not consume the good are not involved with the payment scheme, while those who do consume the good are responsible for payment in a matter proportional to the amount of the good they have consumed. VI. Universal Coverage Taking a step back, one should consider whether these worries regarding the coverage of apparently self-inflicted health conditions in the context of universal healthcare are worthwhile issues. One perspective raises what is called the culturally imagined objection — an idea erroneously held by many that sick people, especially those who are poor and uneducated, bring these illnesses upon themselves due to poor decision-making and irresponsible risk-taking.[xxii] This perspective critiques the uniquely American view that, since individuals are free to choose their lifestyles, they should bear the costs of their lifestyle.[xxiii] Taking this argument further, some (perhaps the strongly libertarian) would say that the poor health status among many individuals is the price individuals must pay for their American way of life and the liberty and freedom to live as they wish. However, people should not completely punish individuals for their health-adverse behaviors because these choices are largely pre-determined by a person’s socioeconomic influences.[xxiv] The outcomes from these allegedly ill-advised behaviors, which largely affect poorer people, are not just poor behavior but rather a public health crisis. Perhaps the state and its people should take collective responsibility and cover the costs of treatment for those health outcomes without question, as a form of public service. Rather than worrying about accountability and taxing bad behavior or intrusiveness into personal decisions, some might argue that people need to collectively take responsibility for reducing the overarching systemic inequalities and covering the associated treatment costs as a measure of public health. VII. Proposed Solution Given the strengths of the liberal-egalitarian model and taking into account libertarian and social justice-oriented objections, an ideal solution for the coverage of lifestyle-related health problems needs to consider the complex relationship between a person’s behaviors and their apparent health outcomes. It must consider how society as a whole passes judgment on behaviors and how to take into account that many health-adverse decisions are not truly autonomous decisions, as various genetic and socioeconomic factors influence them. An ideal solution combines the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model with the social justice concerns of universal coverage. Whatever the cost for the treatment of medical issues resulting in part or entirely from lifestyle and diet, taxes collected from spending associated with the behavior (like the purchase of alcohol, junk food, and cigarettes) ex-ante should fund 50 percent of the cost of treatment, while the universal healthcare taxation scheme should include the other 50 percent. Such a system would provide an incentive to avoid the purchases that can lead to unhealthy consumption and make healthier choices, slightly punish and discourage such purchases through taxation, yet not overly punish people whose outcomes may have more to do with socioeconomic factors and genetics. Adding public responsibility demonstrates acknowledgement that health care is in the public interest and can mitigate public health inequalities. This solution would fuse personal responsibility with the public responsibility of state-sponsored social improvement while ensuring that all people have fair access to necessary treatment, no matter their ability to pay. CONCLUSION The 50-50 system this paper proposes reflects both justice and personal responsibility in covering healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own health-adverse behaviors. By allocating tax revenue from consumption that contributes or even alone causes poor health outcomes, such a system incorporates personal responsibility. By using general tax revenue for health care, such a system would meet the libertarian requirement of providing care without any moral investigation of past behaviors and the social justice consideration of providing health care to those who may have unwittingly ventured into ill-health due to systemic injustice, socioeconomics, or genetics. - [i] Cappelen, A. W. (2005). Responsibility in health care: A liberal egalitarian approach. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(8), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.010421 [ii] Moss, A. H. (1991). Should alcoholics compete equally for liver transplantation? JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1295–1298. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100097032 [iii] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [iv] Moss, p. 1296. [v] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [vi] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [vii] Cohen, C. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COHEN AND BENJAMIN (1991). Alcoholics and liver transplantation. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1299–1301. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100101033 [viii] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [ix] Moss, p. 1297. [x] Cohen, p. 1300. [xi] Cappelen, p. 478-480. [xii] Cappalen, p. 478-480. [xiii] Cappelen, p.479. [xiv] Cappelen, p. 479. [xv] Cappelen, p. 479 [xvi] Cohen, p. 1301. [xvii] Cappelen, p. 478. [xviii] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [xix] Cohen, p. 1301. [xx] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [xxi] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [xxii] Kawachi, I. (2005). Why the United States is not number one in Health. Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.003.0013 [xxiii] Kawachi, p. 18-33. [xxiv] Kawachi, p. 18-33. (shrink)

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash ABSTRACT The coverage of healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own earlier health-adverse behaviors is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following questions: justice for whom? Is it right to take people’s past behaviors into account in determining their access to healthcare? If so, how do we go about taking those behaviors into account? These bioethical questions become even more complex when we consider them in the context (...) of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. INTRODUCTION Healthcare coverage of lifestyle-related conditions is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following justice-related question: Is it right to consider people’s past behaviors in determining their access to healthcare? If so, the methods of taking those behaviors into account must be fair and justifiable. This bioethical question becomes even more complex when we consider it in the context of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. This paper takes an old, classic debate, evaluates newer approaches, and offers an argument favoring a combined approach which alters the liberal-egalitarian solution to account for social justice. ANALYSIS l. Causes of Disease If healthcare coverage were universal, irrespective of socioeconomic status and lifestyle, people would contribute to the cost of remedying the lifestyle-induced health problems of others. In the West, lifestyle-related diseases are burdensome.[1] This paper approaches this concern from a western lens that incorporates both a European tradition of “social safety nets” and an American tradition of personal freedoms. By taking such an approach, solutions to the consequences of one’s past behavior burdening others must consider an individual’s personal freedom to choose to act as he or she wishes, with the distributive social and economic equality of the many. The concept of disease caused by lifestyle and diet is proven. Many health conditions include behavioral risk factors. Multi-pack smoking increases the risk of chronic lung disease, while obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Inattention to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise leads to increased risks of coronary artery disease.[2] While poor lifestyle choices certainly influence these conditions, their causes are multifactorial, and it is difficult to say that any single string of poor choices led to their development. In a scenario where two men excessively eat fast food for 20 years, several discrete factors impact whether any of them might suffer an ischemic-embolic stroke or not. Genetics, circumstances, and activity will also contribute to outcomes. ll. Alcohol-Related End-Stage Liver Disease One paper suggests that alcohol-related end-stage liver disease (ARESLD) differs from other multifactorial disorders as alcohol alone causes the disease.[3] It justifies attributing personal responsibility to patients with ARESLD because the condition develops only after the cumulative effects of large quantities of alcohol consumed from years to decades.[4] However, the paper undermines its position by admitting that even the susceptibility to becoming an alcoholic has some degree of genetic predisposition.[5] Given the extreme scarcity of donor livers, some patients may be prioritized over others on the transplant waiting list. Since donor livers cannot be given to everyone, transplanting a liver into an alcoholic may result in death for competing candidates whose liver disease was not their fault. All else being equal, if bioethicists avoid claiming moral deficiency or judgment, those with apparently self-inflicted ARESLD will not be deprived of treatment but will have a lower priority for transplant.[6] In contrast, another position suggests that it is often difficult to define what behaviors are punishable as these are largely personal and value-laden.[7] Still, people do not support using their own resources to support the consequences of others’ poor choices, no matter how objective.[8] In democratic societies, one must take into consideration community morals and values.[9] Even if we were to punish people for their health-adverse behaviors, we could not logistically employ the vigorous and sustained efforts necessary to determine whose actions are morally weak.[10] lll. The Liberal-Egalitarian Proposal One past argument proposes a liberal-egalitarian solution to manage personal responsibility for so-called “lifestyle diseases.”[11] This Rawlsian system combines the European-style “social safety net” commitment to social and economic equality with the American liberal notion of pluralist toleration and personal freedoms. This idealized system aims to hold people responsible for their choices rather than the consequences to mitigate the downside of blaming those who might not be blameworthy. The approach avoids determining the questionable nature of luck and personal responsibility for health outcomes, fairness in the distribution of economic burden, and the intrusiveness required to practically determine who acts in a morally wrong and health-adverse way. The liberal-egalitarian model, a theory of distributive justice, has two facets: the liberal principle that people should be held accountable for their choices and the egalitarian principle that people who make the same choices should have the same outcomes.[12] This model attempts to fuse responsibility with equity by seeking to reward good behavior and tax bad behavior rather than punish the consequences of the action and navigate who deserves treatment. For instance, the hospital bedside is not the appropriate place to introduce responsibility for one’s health outcomes.[13] This appeals to the reality that, at that time, discerning the true causes of disease was not plausible and to humanity in avoiding a heartless and cruel approach. An argument in favor of the liberal-egalitarian model considers its method of implementation. This approach assumes that the healthcare system treats all individuals regardless of their choices or ability to cover costs. The liberal-egalitarian model also assumes that a certain adverse health condition is related, statistically speaking, to the consumption of a certain good and that good can be taxed. As such, it proposes to tax the consumption of that good to finance the collective burden which arises from that good’s consumption rather than require individuals to pay for their own treatment. In the example of ARESLD, the recommended solution would be taxing all alcohol. While a systematic infrastructure is not explicit, there is the implication that a per-unit tax can be imposed on alcohol so the total tax revenue would make up for the additional healthcare costs due to consumption.[14] Upholding the principle that all people who make the same choices should face the same costs, all consumers of alcohol would pay the same tax, regardless of factors such as genetic predisposition to alcoholism, lifestyle, or expected cost of treatment. Upholding the principle of individual responsibility, this model does not deny treatment to anyone, neutralizing factors outside that individual’s control by imposing the tax ex-ante. Other people are not burdened by those who consume the good. People who consume alcohol face a burden proportional to the amount consumed. This tax-based implementation is justified so long as the tax is not prohibitively high for the average consumer. Further, the model mitigates concerns over the intrusiveness of ascribing morality to health-adverse behaviors. lV. Moral and Social Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Position Arguments against the liberal-egalitarian model concerns its many assumptions. First, this model assumes that consumption of such goods is directly related to the health outcome and that these goods can be taxed.[15] Certain people genetically predisposed to alcoholism would be predisposed to consume more alcohol. The model falls short when applied to scenarios where health outcomes are not consumption-based, such as engaging in unsafe sex or abstaining from healthy lifestyle choices like exercise. Second, some might argue that the liberal-egalitarian model fails to remain neutral. Residual moral judgments tied to consumption choices introduce non-neutrality. Although taxation in free societies is determined by democratic procedures rather than by individuals in the healthcare system, moral and value-based judgments will be implicit in deciding what behaviors are taxable, such as the purchase of cigarettes. Third, the liberal-egalitarian model fails to determine whether one’s behavior is autonomous, as socio-cultural-economic factors may influence it and behavior is more a product of society, peer pressure, or income. Those also may reflect systemic inequalities. Therefore, this model, which rewards, or taxes based solely on decisions, regardless of their consequences and motivations, fails to consider that a person’s decisions may not be completely autonomous. V. Libertarian Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Model a. State Intrusiveness as Counter to the Liberal-Egalitarian Model Last, there is a libertarian worry that if the state guarantees universal healthcare coverage to all people, the state will have to become highly intrusive and investigate people’s morals.[16] At least one-third of all disease burden in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific is attributable to lifestyle measures such as tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, and obesity.[17] With these various lifestyles, it is not likely to agree on what conduct to tax or condemn.[18] The fine-toothed comb required to determine whether each citizen has been engaging in these behaviors would intrude on daily life and personal freedom. Libertarians champion the argument that impractical intrusiveness would result from universal healthcare, and such a degree of intrusiveness would likely be universally unacceptable.[19] The liberal-egalitarian model mitigates the libertarian worry about state intrusiveness as it does not involve prying into one’s life and choices other than taxing goods. A liberal state should ideally be neutral to how people decide to live their lives. In all, libertarians can rest assured that the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model, through its ex-ante implementation, will require no prying state eyes. States that provide universal healthcare coverage and wish to condemn certain misconduct do not need to become overly intrusive to carry out measures to hold individuals accountable. b. Fairness Another libertarian worry regarding the guarantee of universal healthcare coverage in the context of lifestyle-driven diseases is that the public will be burdened unfairly with covering others’ ill-advised mistakes or bad luck. An ideal system to address this worry would link treatment or payment for treatment with whatever behavior caused that need.[20] The distribution of burdens should be linked to how different individuals contributed to the creation of those burdens. Applied to health policy, we should ask how the need for a certain treatment arose when determining how to distribute its cost.[21] The liberal-egalitarian model aspires to hold individuals responsible for their choices, not for the consequences of such choices. This model significantly mitigates the libertarian worry over unfair burdens for covering other people’s mistakes or social conditions, which lead to those bad outcomes, by ensuring to not burden others with any of the costs for the treatment of people who decide to engage in certain health-adverse behaviors. The aforementioned taxation-based system would only tax those who also engage in the health-adverse behavior through consumption, and that tax directly pays for the necessary collective treatment. As such, those who do not consume the good are not involved with the payment scheme, while those who do consume the good are responsible for payment in a matter proportional to the amount of the good they have consumed. Vl. Universal Coverage Taking a step back, one should consider whether these worries regarding the coverage of apparently self-inflicted health conditions in the context of universal healthcare are worthwhile issues. One perspective raises what is called the culturally imagined objection — an idea erroneously held by many that sick people, especially those who are poor and uneducated, bring these illnesses upon themselves due to poor decision-making and irresponsible risk-taking.[22] This perspective critiques the uniquely American view that, since individuals are free to choose their lifestyles, they should bear the costs of their lifestyle.[23] Taking this argument further, some (perhaps the strongly libertarian) would say that the poor health status among many individuals is the price individuals must pay for their American way of life and the liberty and freedom to live as they wish. However, people should not completely punish individuals for their health-adverse behaviors because these choices are largely pre-determined by a person’s socioeconomic influences.[24] The outcomes from these allegedly ill-advised behaviors, which largely affect poorer people, are not just poor behavior but rather a public health crisis. Perhaps the state and its people should take collective responsibility and cover the costs of treatment for those health outcomes without question, as a form of public service. Rather than worrying about accountability and taxing bad behavior or intrusiveness into personal decisions, some might argue that people need to collectively take responsibility for reducing the overarching systemic inequalities and covering the associated treatment costs as a measure of public health. Vll. Proposed Solution Given the strengths of the liberal-egalitarian model and taking into account libertarian and social justice-oriented objections, an ideal solution for the coverage of lifestyle-related health problems needs to consider the complex relationship between a person’s behaviors and their apparent health outcomes. It must consider how society as a whole passes judgment on behaviors and how to take into account that many health-adverse decisions are not truly autonomous decisions, as various genetic and socioeconomic factors influence them. An ideal solution combines the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model with the social justice concerns of universal coverage. Whatever the cost for the treatment of medical issues resulting in part or entirely from lifestyle and diet, taxes collected from spending associated with the behavior (like the purchase of alcohol, junk food, and cigarettes) ex-ante should fund 50 percent of the cost of treatment, while the universal healthcare taxation scheme should include the other 50 percent. Such a system would provide an incentive to avoid the purchases that can lead to unhealthy consumption and make healthier choices, slightly punish and discourage such purchases through taxation, yet not overly punish people whose outcomes may have more to do with socioeconomic factors and genetics. Adding public responsibility demonstrates acknowledgement that health care is in the public interest and can mitigate public health inequalities. This solution would fuse personal responsibility with the public responsibility of state-sponsored social improvement while ensuring that all people have fair access to necessary treatment, no matter their ability to pay. CONCLUSION The 50-50 system this paper proposes reflects both justice and personal responsibility in covering healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own health-adverse behaviors. By allocating tax revenue from consumption that contributes or even alone causes poor health outcomes, such a system incorporates personal responsibility. By using general tax revenue for health care, such a system would meet the libertarian requirement of providing care without any moral investigation of past behaviors and the social justice consideration of providing health care to those who may have unwittingly ventured into ill-health due to systemic injustice, socioeconomics, or genetics. - [1] Cappelen, A. W. (2005). Responsibility in health care: A liberal egalitarian approach. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(8), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.010421 [2] Moss, A. H. (1991). Should alcoholics compete equally for liver transplantation? JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1295–1298. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100097032 [3] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [4] Moss, p. 1296. [5] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [6] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [7] Cohen, C. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COHEN AND BENJAMIN (1991). Alcoholics and liver transplantation. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1299–1301. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100101033 [8] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [9] Moss, p. 1297. [10] Cohen, p. 1300. [11] Cappelen, p. 478-480. [12] Cappalen, p. 478-480. [13] Cappelen, p.479. [14] Cappelen, p. 479. [15] Cappelen, p. 479 [16] Cohen, p. 1301. [17] Cappelen, p. 478. [18] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [19] Cohen, p. 1301. [20] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [21] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [22] Kawachi, I. (2005). Why the United States is not number one in Health. Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.003.0013 [23] Kawachi, p. 18-33. [24] Kawachi, p. 18-33. (shrink)

I claim that the revisions John Rawls made to his theory of justice—as seen in his political conception of justice as fairness in the revised edition of Political Liberalism and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement—result in him being able to secure justice for all persons even in their private lives. Thus, I defend his theory against common communitarian and feminist criticisms, viz the lack of moral community and inability to secure justice for individuals in the private domain. I demonstrate that (...) justice is secured from the categorical requirement that all associational life and moral doctrines must adhere to the constraints of justice, by (what Rawls terms) the indirect application of the first principle of justice. The implications of and necessity for this indirect application are precisely what I interrogate in this thesis. I suggest that this indirect application requires unconditional acknowledgement and internalisation of the values of liberty and equality (political values of the first principle) into all aspects of civil society. I claim that Rawls realised this necessity for the congruence between the moral powers of persons, the spheres of society, and the right and the good and, as such, developed a complementary relation between these three features. Coherence between these three aspects is essential; without coherence, citizens would have a split moral personality, the public and the non-public spheres would be in conflict, and the political values and the moral doctrines of individuals would undermine one another. The significance of this strict coherence is that it can ensure the adequate development of individuals’ capacity for citizenship during the three stages of moral development. This results in citizens being able to form bonds of civic friendship necessary for justice as reciprocity to be realised. Thus, in this thesis, I position my argument against theorists such as Nancy Rosenblum, who argue for a more relaxed congruence between political institutions and civil society, as according to her illiberal forms of associational life can help form the necessary bonds of love and care needed for mutual cooperation in a liberal society. In opposition to this, I claim that strict congruence is necessary; without it, a stable liberal society is not possible as the citizens would not be able to able to respect one another on free, equal, and mutually beneficial terms. I rely on Hochschild’s sociological evidence to demonstrate that civic friendship has not been developed, due to a lack of reciprocity, impacting the negative development of one’s sense of justice. I then illustrate how this lack of reciprocity is amplified by digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The significance of this thesis is that I claim, firstly, Rawls’s last revisions and works before his death demonstrate that justice is a collective non-comprehensive good that results by constraining individuals’ associational life and their partial comprehensive doctrines to Rawlsian demands of justice. Thus, Rawls takes seriously the feminist and communitarian critiques he received. Secondly, I claim that this interpretation of Rawls’s theory of justice cannot be conceptualised in terms of a binary presentation of the priority of the right versus the good debate and, instead, I argue for a reconceptualisation of the priority of the right versus the good as ranges on a continuum of structural relations between the right and the good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol "God" 1 Gordon D. KaufmanHarvard UniversityI am a Christian theologian. This does not mean, however, that I understand my work as being essentially a matter of explaining and defending Christian faith and the Christian set of symbols for interpreting human life and the world. The task of the Christian theologian is rather, as I (...) understand it, to scrutinize carefully, critically evaluate, and reconstruct (in whatever ways seem appropriate and necessary) the central Christian symbols, so they will encourage and support a faith and life appropriate for today. 2 In our time it is no longer sufficient for theologians simply to take it for granted that the basic structure and commitments of traditional Christian faith are--in all of their main lines--right and proper; and to proceed, then, to expound and reinterpret them in whatever ways seem intelligible and persuasive. Whatever may have been the value and justification of this sort of theologizing in the past, the crises of the twentieth century (to many of which Christian symbols, institutions, and practices have themselves contributed) have made it clear that thorough reassessment of the traditional Christian symbol-system, with an eye to its (possibly drastic) reconstruction or even to the total rejection of some of its principal features, is required--if it is to continue to contribute to human well-being, and to the well-being of the rest of life, on planet Earth. It is with this thoroughly critical and open understanding of the task of Christian theologians today that this contribution to our Buddhist-Christian dialogue has been prepared. And I hope a similar spirit will animate the responses to this paper, whether offered from the Christian or the Buddhist side of our conversation. I My assignment here is to examine the topic of "Christianity and Ecology." This is, of course, a very broad topic, much too large for a paper of this sort. I have taken the liberty, therefore, to confine my discussion to only one of the many questions that might be considered under this heading. The central symbol in terms of which Christian faith and Christian life (as well as most other western religious traditions) understand and order themselves is God, usually thought of as designating the creator and governor of the world, the only One to whom unqualified devotion, love, [End Page 3] and service are due. If we can come to some understanding of how this symbol has functioned in the past, and might be conceived properly to function today with respect to ecological concerns, we will have made a large step toward understanding the overall topic of Christianity and ecology. I am devoting this paper, therefore, to the question of "Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol 'God.'"Throughout my professional life I have been concerned with the problem of the continuing viability (or lack of viability) in our contemporary world of the symbol "God," as that symbol has been understood through most of western history (not only by Christians and Jews, but also by many humanists and secularists). And for the last thirty years or so, I have been reflecting on the issues which our growing ecological consciousness poses for our understanding of--and our ordering of life in terms of--this symbol. My earliest writing directly concerned with this question is in a paper entitled "The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology" published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1972. 3 In that paper I attempted to show that there is a fundamental tension--indeed, a conceptual and logical incompatibility--between, on the one hand, the understanding of God, and of the intimate relation of humanity to God (as seen in our western religious and philosophical traditions), and on the other hand, our growing awareness that human existence is essentially constituted by, and could not exist apart from, the complex ecological ordering of life that has evolved on planet Earth over many millennia. 4The main emphasis in that paper remains largely correct in my view. Hence, I would like to... (shrink)

John Rawls based his theory of justice, in the work of that name, on a ‘Kantian interpretation’ of the status of human beings as ‘free and equal’ persons. In his subsequent, ‘political rather than metaphysical’ expositions of his theory, the conception of citizens of democracies as ‘free and equal’ persons retained its foundational role. But Rawls appealed only to Kant’s moral philosophy, never to Kant’s own political philosophy as expounded in his 1797 Doctrine of Right in theMetaphysics of Morals. I (...) argue here that the structure of Kant’s political philosophy, with its categories of the innate right to freedom, private acquired right and public right, can clarify the relationship between Rawls’s two principles of justice and his scheme of basic liberties and primary goods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.2 (2004) 165-173 [Access article in PDF] Professional Judgment, Critical Realism, Real People, and, Yes, Two Wrongs Can Make a Right! K.W.M. Fulford Anthony Colombo Keywords values, values-based practice, models of disorder, concept of mental illness, user-centred practice, patient-centred practice, multidisciplinary teamwork We are grateful to our four commentators for putting much-needed conceptual air and space around the models project. Published originally as an (...) empirical study of the different implicit models of disorder, held by users of services, carers, nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers (Colombo et al. 2003), our paper outlined the philosophical roots of the models project in linguistic analytic philosophy of the "Oxford school" (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Our four commentators provide extra dimensions of understanding, respectively from professional education (Williams 2004), sociology (Bendelow 2004), Heideggerian phenomenology (Heginbotham 2004), and mental health policy and practice (Williamson 2004).Since the original study, the models project has been taken forward as a key contribution to a range of philosophy-into-practice initiatives called, collectively, Values-Based Practice. In this brief response, we outline the key features of Values-Based Practice and indicate how these connect with some of the many thoughtful points about models made by our commentators. Values-Based Practice Values-Based Practice, then, is the theory and skills-base for effective health care decision making where different, and hence potentially conflicting, values are in play (Fulford 2004). Premised on the democratic meta-value of equal respect for all voices, Values-Based Practice relies, much as a political democracy relies, on good process rather than preset outcomes for its practical effectiveness. The ten pointers to good process in Values-Based Practice are summarized in Figure 1. We return to the implications of these for the work on models below.Relying on good process may be thought to be a recipe more for relativism and indecision in clinical decision making than for practical effectiveness. To the contrary, however, the 'values democracy' of Values-Based Practice, again like a political democracy, carries a number of clear and coherent implications for policy and practice in health care. [End Page 165] Click for larger viewFigure 1 10 Pointers to Good Process in VBP [End Page 166]Examples of the implications of Values-Based Practice for policy and practice are given in the Values Framework shown in Figure 2. This is a policy framework for the development of Values-Based Practice in mental health produced by a project group in the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), the section of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) responsible for implementing government policy on mental health as embodied in the National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health 1999) and subsequent policies. The framework gives three key principles of Values-Based Practice (the three Rs of recognition, raising awareness, and respect) and then summarizes some of the specific implications of the approach. Racism, for example, is incompatible with Values-Based Practice because racism is by definition intolerant of diversity. Again, we indicate some of the policy implications of Values-Based Practice for the points about models made by our commentators below.Training for mental health practitioners in Values-Based Practice will be rolled out from April 2005, through both voluntary and statutory bodies, in each of the eight regions of the National Health Service of England and Wales. This roll out will be supported by training methods developed and piloted in a unique joint venture between Warwick University's Department of Philosophy and Medical School, and an in-service training provider, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (Fulford, Williamson, and Woodbridge 2002; Woodbridge and Fulford 2003). These training methods are the basis of a detailed workbook for Values-Based Practice (Woodbridge and Fulford 2004). The workbook will be launched in July 2004 at a conference in London by the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Rosie Winterton. Professional Training and Professional Judgment The models project has been central to the development of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Conventions on human rights give priority to parents in education but modern states tend to make uniform provision, tending towards a monopoly position. Education itself is not incompatible with liberty but is a condition of it. A three-sided conflict exists, however, between the state, parents and professionals as to who should represent the interests of children. Liberty is best preserved if the conflict is resolved in favour of parents, for only parental decision-making guarantees educational (...) variety and change. In addition, the parental relationship itself generates rights, including one derived from the broader political right to cultural and religious freedom. (shrink)

The doctrine of liberty is underpinned by the ideal of autonomy. While the rights that have traditionally been of concern to liberals serve the interests of the individuals protected by those rights, they also tend to promote collective goods, such as the good of toleration, and the good of membership. What accounts, in part, for the force of these rights is their ability to serve such collective goods. The connection between rights and (...) collective goods shows that rights should not be constitutionally entrenched in such a way that they are forever beyond the reach of political action. (shrink)

JEL Classifications: L13, K42, L15 Keywords: anarcho-capitalism, networks, collusion Abstract: There is a tension between libertarians' optimism about private supply of public goods and their skeptical of the viability of voluntary collusion. (Cowen 1992; Cowen and Sutter 1999) Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the "free market in defense services" favored by anarcho-capitalists is a network industry where collusion is especially feasible. The current article dissolves Cowen's asymmetry, showing that (...) he fails to distinguish between self-enforcing and non-self-enforcing interaction. Case study evidence on network behavior before and after antitrust supports our analysis. Furthermore, libertarians' joint beliefs on public goods and collusion are more theoretically defensible than Cowen and Sutter (1999) indicate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Contradiction and Legislation Regarding the Right to LifeKevin L. Flannery, S.J.Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases under Scrutiny. Edited by Pilar Zambrano and William Saunders, with concluding reflections by John Finnis. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019.The most fundamental principle of law is the principle of non-contradiction. This is Thomas Aquinas's position in the seminal article on the natural law, Summa theologiae I-II, question 94, article (...) 2, where, citing Aristotle, he formulates the principle as, "One should not simultaneously affirm and negate." Lafter in the same article, Thomas offers a practical formulation of the same principle, "Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided"; but in law, since it is contained in propositions (airmations and negations) as distinct from ideas regarding the pursuit of goods, the prior formulation is the more immediately relevant of the two.The book under review is important in that, by going through the legal history regarding abortion and related issues in a number of different countries—the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ireland (Eire), Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Peru—it causes to emerge any number of times the realization that legislation and judicial decisions in favor of abortion "rights" invariably infect a legal system with contradictions and inconsistencies of various sorts. The present essay is, therefore, not your typical book review. Its objective is simply to list some of the legal contradictions and inconsistencies identified by the book's various authors as they describe the legal status of the unborn in their respective nations. [End Page 1323]William Saunders's very clear and comprehensive first chapter is entitled, "Judicial Interference in the Protection of Human Life in the United States: Actions and Consequences." In it, he describes, among other things, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2003, which prohibited "any person or entity, public or private" from performing human cloning (23). He speaks also of a bill proposed in the U.S. Senate once the Human Cloning Prohibition Act had passed in the House of Representatives. This Senate bill (which was entitle, "The Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act") would have prohibited "any person or other legal entity" from conducting human cloning, even while allowing nuclear transplantation, which it defines as "transferring the nucleus of a human somatic cell into an oocyte from which the nucleus... ha[s] been... removed or rendered inert." The problem here, as Saunders explains, is that this latter definition "is the very definition of cloning" (25). In other words, in the same year, two pieces of legislation were considered in the Congress of the United States, both purporting to ban human cloning, one of which would have permitted what the other described (correctly) as human cloning and so prohibited.In the second chapter, "Whither United States Abortion Law?" by Gerard V. Bradley, discussed, among other things, is the inconsistency between the United States Supreme Court's pro-abortion decision Roe v. Wade and various laws, both state and federal, prohibiting feticide. Bradley says of the 2004 federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act that, "in pertinent part it says that 'whoever' 'causes the death of or bodily injury to,' a 'child who is in utero' is guilty of an offense apart from any accompanying offense against the woman carrying the child." The penalty for such an act is the same as would be imposed if the act were inflicted upon the unborn child's mother: if, for instance, the mother was killed. "A child in utero," reports Bradley, "is defined as a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb'" (37).The problem here is that prosecutable under this law are acts identical with those performed legally by abortionists. Bradley mentions two cases in which a woman's male partner—in one case the woman's husband—effected by stealth the abortion of her child. In one case, the male purchased abortion pills and affixed to their container a pharmacy label indicating that it contained a common antibiotic; in the other, the husband obtained the same type of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven (...) Years' War, a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

Amitai Etzioni argues that societies must find a way to balance individual rights and the common good. This point of balance may change as new technologies develop, the natural and international environments change, and new social forces arise. Some believe the United States may be unduly shortchanging individual rights that need to be better protected. Specifically, should the press be granted more protection? Or should its ability to publish state secrets be limited? Should surveillance of Americans and others (...) be curtailed? Should American terrorists be treated differently from others? How one answers these questions, Etzioni shows, invites a larger fundamental question: Where is the proper point of balance between rights and security? Etzioni implements the social philosophy, "liberal communitarianism." Its key assumptions are that neither individual rights nor the common good should be privileged, that both are core values, and that a balance is necessary between them. Etzioni argues that we need to find a new balance between our desire for more goods, services, and affluence, particularly because economic growth may continue to be slow and jobs anemic. The key question is what makes a good life, especially for those whose basic needs are sated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christians and Buddhists: Together in HopeCardinal Francis ArinzeDear Buddhist Friends,1. On the occasion of Vesakh, which celebrates important events in the life of Buddha, I wish to express to you, in my capacity as president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the best wishes of Catholics throughout the world.2. I am happy to say that ongoing dialogue between Buddhists and Christians is distinguished by efforts to (...) meet at the level of religious experience. Both Buddhism and Christianity emphasize the “contemplative dimension” in their practice of religion. Since 1979, through the “Intermonastic Spiritual Exchange” and the “Monastic Hospitality Programme,” Buddhists and Christians who are committed to a contemplative life through their respective monastic disciplines have engaged in encounters where in-depth dialogue is possible. This effort is truly commendable.3. It is hope of new life that has been at the source of our dialogue, although our understanding of this new life differs. For us Christians, the new life is to be sought and found only in Jesus Christ. Jesus indicated the way when he said: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He taught us not only not to engage in revenge, but to defeat evil with good. He said: “You have learnt how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right creek, offer him the other as well” (Matthew 5:38–39). This makes me think of Ven. Maha Ghosananda’s rendering of one of the teachings of Buddha: “When we are wronged, we must set aside all resentment and say, ‘My mind will not be disturbed. Not one angry word will escape from my lips; I will remain kind and friendly, with loving thoughts and no secret malice.’”4. Hope rescues us from discouragement. We are enabled to begin anew by perceiving around us numerous “signs of hope”: the growing solidarity among people in our time, especially with the poor and destitute, the desire for justice and peace, voluntary service, the return of the search for transcendence, an awareness of human dignity and of the rights that flow from it, attention to the environment, and so on. I wish to mention here a particular sign of hope, which Pope John Paul II has underlined—namely, interreligious dialogue.5. People of hope are, at the same time, realists who do not close their eyes to reality with all its positive and negative aspects. We cannot turn a blind eye to the [End Page 199] dramatic crises of our world: the wars between different countries, civil wars, terrorism in all its forms, injustice that is forever widening the gap between rich and poor, hunger, the lack of shelter, unemployment—especially among the youth, globalization without solidarity, the heavy burden of external debt, the problem of drugs, immorality, abortion. The list could be extended. Nevertheless, the small lamp of hope must always remain alight, shining on the paths leading humanity to a better future.6. We Christians and Buddhists, embarked on our respective spiritual paths, can work together to give increased hope to humanity. Yet first we must accept our differences and show each other mutual respect and true love. This will render us more credible, and we shall be for humanity a further sign of hope in addition to those that exist already.7. It is in this spirit that I convey to you once again, dear Buddhist friends, my best wishes for the feast of Vesakh.Cardinal Francis ArinzePontifical Council for Interreligious DialogueCopyright © 1999 The University of Hawai’i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of WartimeOksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Oleksandr DudinFunding. Oksana Sulaieva, MD, PhD is supported by the Loyola University Chicago–Ukrainian Catholic University Bioethics Fellowship Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (D43TW011506).After 500 days of the unjust war initiated by the Russians, we look back to reflect on the challenges our medical laboratory faced during these early days. On (...) the morning of February 24th, we were awakened by the dreadful roar of sirens, the sound of which filled us with adrenaline and anxiety. Although our team had considered the risks of Russian military aggression and thus updated our emergency plan at the beginning of 2022, the first day of the war revealed that nobody was truly ready for the bombing, air alarms, tanks on the streets of towns and cities, violence and murders of civilians. That morning the city’s transportation system collapsed, and the flow of cars cluttered all the roads as people were trying to leave the city and escape the upcoming atrocities and death. Serious and disquieted people hurried along the streets—some people rushed to shelters, and others went to the military registration and enlistment offices to fight against Russian aggressors for the life, independence, and sovereignty of Ukraine.We hurried to work, committed to performing our duties. Our medical laboratory serves more than 750 hospitals in Ukraine. Despite fear and uncertainty, we walked to the lab, taking our children and alarm case1 with documents and essential things. Months later, people asked us why we went to the laboratory instead of leaving the city or even the country. At that moment, our [End Page 155] professional duties were an anchor linking us to each other against fear and panic. Our responsibility to provide patients and physicians with the results of blood testing, pathology, and molecular reports outweighed our fears of the war. We had to complete the testing of all the samples delivered to the laboratory to provide our customers—who include children, pregnant women, diabetic and cancer patients—with data essential for identifying accurate diagnoses and effective treatments. So we spent the first days of the war in the laboratory. At the same time, we had obligations and responsibilities to our staff as well. We had to consider how to manage our employees’ protection along with continuous laboratory services provided under endless air alarms and bombings. Many healthcare facilities in eastern regions and around Kyiv were affected by missiles or completely destroyed. Of our sixty laboratory offices around Ukraine, ten were damaged or abandoned due to occupation. Several of our fleet cars were also damaged and riddled with bullets. Many employees in the regional offices in Melitopol, Kherson, Mariupol, Chernihiv, and in suburbs of Kyiv such as Bucha and Irpin lost their homes as a result of massive military operations or occupation. Dozens of our employees joined the Ukrainian armed forces to defend civilians and fight against aggressors. Many others became volunteers, involved in blood donation, medical care for the wounded, cooking, and serving the troops. And still, we had to continue our work and protect our staff at the same time. We also helped each other by sharing our goods, medication, homes, cars, warmth, and support. Some pathologists stayed at the workplace for several days moving between pathology stations, microscopes and shelters, and sleeping on the floor but continuing to work.Our main challenge was the regular terroristic attacks on healthcare facilities situated far away from the front line, which in fact, violated international humanitarian law regarding respect for human rights during armed conflicts. During the first weeks of the war, the magnitude of military aggression, massive bombing, and air attacks undermined the healthcare system and endangered laboratory staff and patients. We prioritized protective measures. Some of our laboratory staff and facilities were evacuated from Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine. The partial relocation of our laboratory to Lviv was also driven by the displacement of several million Ukrainians to the western part of the country.We were able to arrange relatively safe accommodations for our laboratory employees and their families in Lviv. Under strikes and alarms, our... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Refusals of Treatment and Requests for DeathTom L. Beauchamp (bio)It would be hard to overestimate the importance of two decisions on physician-assisted suicide delivered recently by the Ninth and Second Circuit Courts (Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc), aff’g 850 F.Supp. 1454 (W.D. Wash. 1994), rev’g 49 F.3d 586 (9th Cir. 1995); Quill v. Vacco, 80 F.3d 716 (2nd (...) Cir. 1996). They are the highest courts yet to render an opinion on this subject, and their decisions have set the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to take one of two paths: It will either say that (1) all citizens have a liberty interest in physician-assisted suicide, or that (2) each state may set its own policy on such matters. Whichever path is elected, a right to request physician-assisted suicide is a virtual certainty, at least in some states.These opinions are later segments of an evolving legal history in which courts have held that no criminal liability exists for withholding or withdrawing a life-sustaining treatment when physicians are directed to do so by a patient or an authorized surrogate (see Alan Meisel 1992). The decriminalization of suicide and the right to refuse a life-sustaining treatment now appear to be evolving into a rule that a patient has a legal right to control his or her death, or at least to obtain a lethal prescription. We are at a delicate point in this evolving history. Neither in law nor in bioethics is the justification of physician assistance in suicide the received opinion at the present time, but support for physician assistance in dying could soon become the received opinion in both disciplines.The leading edge of the wedge producing these changes has been widespread acceptance of an extensive right to refuse treatment. This right is today axiomatic in even conservative quarters of bioethics, but 20 years ago it was far from axiomatic that all patients have a right to refuse treatment. Few at that time judged that it would be both immoral and illegal for a physician not to forgo treatment in the face of a competent, authoritative refusal of any form of medical service or treatment.The justification for assistance in bringing about death in medicine is an extension of the justification for letting patients die. Letting a patient die by accepting a valid refusal to continue in life is directly analogous to helping a patient die by accepting a valid request for help. The high value we place on [End Page 371] rights of autonomy thereby spills over from the right to refuse to the underexplored right to request active assistance. 1 As the autonomy interest in this choice increases, denial of help to the patient becomes more burdensome.Those who defend the view that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are morally prohibited typically assume that assistance involves an act of killing, that acts of killing are impermissible, and that a defensible distinction exists between killing and letting die. However, this distinction has proved difficult to explicate, and the category of killing often seems distant from the problem at hand. For example, it is an eccentric view that a physician who prescribes a lethal medication to a patient thereby kills the patient (or, for that matter, lets the patient die) when the patient voluntarily ingests the medication and dies. So poor are the conceptual understandings of “killing” and “letting die” that conceptual confusion abounds as to which term to use in almost all morally difficult and controversial cases.A common view is that “letting die” is a matter of “ceasing useless treatments” after which patients die (Gaylin, Kass, Pellegrino, and Siegler 1988). This account is attractive, but too narrow. “Letting die” occurs in medicine under at least two circumstances: cessation of treatment because it is useless and cessation of treatment because it has been refused (which can occur even with useful treatments). Neither conceptually nor morally is “ceasing useless treatment” the proper way to state the condition under which many “letting-die” cases occur. It follows that the type of action—killing or letting... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are (...) written from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics CommentaryNeil Pickering, Senior LecturerA doctor whose practice may threaten the well-being of his patients must surely be reported to the proper authorities. But the case of Dr. G opens up some deeper issues. Dr. G can legitimately be understood as a clear case of mental illness, but there is another possible view of what is going on, that he has had a religious experience. With respect to (...) Dr. G’s fitness to practice, psychiatrists will have rather different responsibilities depending on which of these views of his experiences they take. A difficulty that has to be faced in cases like that of Dr. G is how to make the distinction between mental illness and religious experience, and beyond that, to what extent society can make room for both.It is understandable that the psychiatrist and other health workers who come into contact with this patient would think he has a psychosis and would want him to take anti-psychotic medication. What else are they to think of this man who hears voices (one of the possible diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia), which have become more frequent and insistent over time, and now seem to be exercising control over his actions (another of the possible diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia) — commanding him to walk along the expressway and telling him that he will one day be a saint? This pattern of behaviour must surely be very familiar to them, from their textbooks and to some extent in their day-to-day practice, though no doubt the details vary from patient to patient.In Dr. G’s case, much about what has happened — and perhaps ought to happen — fits in with the practices of major societal institutions such as the police and the health authorities, and fits well with patterns [End Page 245] of behaviour witnessed before and which professionals have been trained to recognise and to respond to. Moreover, the “mental health” response is a well-practised one, and one which, I would venture to say, has done much good in the lives of many, and may perhaps do much good in the life of Dr. G, for example by enabling him to return to his usual life and practise as a doctor.But are these the only possible reactions in Dr. G’s case — and are they the right ones? One need not subscribe to any kind of scepticism in general about mental illness to raise questions about the standard reactions of police and health services in a case such as this. To understand Dr. G’s actions, one could appeal, instead, to another familiar enough pattern — though it is perhaps rather weakly represented in more secular forms of modern thinking — into which Dr. G’s sort of behaviour may also fit. The idea of someone receiving a revelation from God and altering their whole life is a common enough trope of religious teaching. In the Christian tradition, Jesus’ disciples were plucked, as it were, from their various ordinary lives — fishermen becoming fishers of men — and seemingly overnight they took on a new life. There was something in the voice of Jesus which called to them, and which convinced them of its authority.An interesting case, with some parallels to that of Dr. G, is reported by Maurice O’Connor Drury. From 1947, Drury practised as a psychiatrist (Danger of Words: xxviii),1 but had earlier been a philosophy student of Wittgenstein, and retained a strong relationship with him up until the philosopher’s death in 1951. Here is the case as he introduces it:Mr. D was sixty-seven years of age, a retired civil servant, a man of great piety who devoted his retirement to prayer and works of charity. His wife had no sympathy for what she regarded as a morbid religiousness. One morning at Mass he heard the words of the Gospel: ‘Go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.’ These words spoke to him like a command. And straightaway he left the church, putting all the money that was on him into the poor-box at the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CATHOLICISM, PUBLIC THEOLOGY, AND POSTMODERNITY: ON RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS'S " CATHOLIC MOMENT" DAVID L. SCHINDLER University of Notre Dame HAT CATHOLICS should assume.their rightful place m the task of forming a culture, and indeed shaping a public philosophy in and for a pluralistic, dernocrwtic society, is ia suggestion which has not often been heard in the history of American culture, and certainly not from. nonCatholics. It is a (...) suggestion thrut Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor, nonetheless makes with eloquence and wit in The Catholic Moment.1 The book makes for enjoyable and even exciting reading. It is difficult for a Catholic, even of a non-itriumphalistic sort, nort rto be moved by his suggestion: not to be stimulated into rserious ~efl.ection upon the meaning of Catholic identity, particularly now in the pT"esent cultural situation in America and indeed the West, which seems-note the subtitle of Neuhaus's book-aptly described in terms of a modernity giving way to posrtmodernity, a modernility searching for genuinely postmodern patterns of thought. Neuhaus is insistent-and the insistence is refresb.ing-,that this reflection be carried through with integri,ty (cf., e.g., p. 150) : the Catholicism. for which our-a postmodern-culture [.g ripe is and must be ·a Caitholicisrn which is fiaithful to the Gospel and to tits own tradition. This double intention of Neuhaus to speak on behalf of a Catholicism which is in and for a postmodern world sets.the context for.the questions I wish to pose in the present inquiry. The meaning of Neuhaus's Catholic moment is twofold: 1 The Catholic Moment: The Parado11J of the Church in the Postmodern World, by Richard John Neuhaus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). All references in the text are to this book. 107 108 DAVID L. SCHINDLER [It] is the moment in which the Roman Catholic Church in the world can and should be the lead church in proclaiming and exemplifying the Gospel. This can and should also be the moment in which the Roman Catholic Church in the United States assumes its rightful role in the culture-forming task of constructing a religiously informed public philosophy for the American experiment in ordered liberty (p. 282). In.the light of this ~statement, and indeed of the overarching context md[ca;ted by the suhbitle of his book, I wish to direct attention in whait follows to three issues: what Neuhaus takes to be an authentic Catholic Christianity ·and Catholic Christian rtheology (tha;t is, a Christianity which iis f.aithful in" proc1aiming and exemplifyiing the Gospel ") ; what he takes to be the proper sense (the sense required by Ca.tholic Christianity) of the itask of forming ·a culture and " constructing a religiously informed public philosophy" in and for a plumlistic, democrrutic society such as that of America; and finally what he takes to be the ·appropriate sense of this fask in a world which he distinguishes as postmodern. Now Neuhaus develops his response to these issues in terms of wha;t he calls a paradoxical relation between the Church and the world. My purpose in what follows, therefore, will be to e:x;amine the meaning he accords " Catholic, " public," ·and "postmodern," m terms of this central notion of " paradox." I. In his discussion of the relation betwen rthe Church and the world, Neuhaus provides a sketch of the five types proposed by H. Richard Niebuhr (pp. 16ff.). These are: the Church against the world, the Church of the world, the Church above the world, the Church and the world in paradox, and the Church as the transformer of the wor1cl. The first, "the Church against the world," iis what is often identified as a sectarian model, evident for ex;ample in monasticism and in such communities ·as the Hutterites and Mennonites. The second type, " The Church of the world," can be exemplified in nmeitrenth century l.iberial theology 00:d its promotion of a THE CATHOLIC MOMENT 109 " cultural Protesitantism," wherein " rel[gion W18iS to be placed at the service of the besrt in the evolution of society" (p. 19). The model which views: the- Chur'Ch ia;s a transformer of the world "smacks... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm by David WeinsteinDaniel PalmerDavid Weinstein. Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 235. Cloth, $69.95.Herbert Spencer, though influential and widely read in the nineteenth century, has been largely neglected by contemporary philosophers. David Weinstein argues that this neglect is unjustified, and that Spencer’s moral and political thought deserves the same (...) attention that has been afforded to Spencer’s contemporary John Stuart Mill. The comparison with Mill is particularly important for Weinstein. Indeed, he claims that, like Mill, Spencer was a liberal utilitarian who attempted to preserve a place for strong moral rights within a broadly utilitarian framework.A large part of Weinstein’s study is devoted to delineating the precise nature of Spencer’s utilitarianism. Weinstein argues that Spencer is both more consistently utilitarian and more systematic than has often been alleged. In the first two chapters he discusses Spencer’s utilitarianism in relation to his metaphysical principles and his account of moral psychology. Weinstein convincingly demonstrates that Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism follows from his views on social evolution. Spencer viewed evolutionary processes as leading to increasing differentiation among phenomena, which implied for Spencer a trend towards greater individuation of persons as societies evolve. Evolutionary principles also led Spencer to view happiness as largely dependent upon the exercise of faculties. Together, these views lend support to what Weinstein sees as the centerpiece of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism, his principle of equal freedom, or the claim that “each shall have as much liberty to pursue his ends as consists with maintaining like liberties to pursue their ends by others” (38). The increasing individuation of individuals coupled with the dependence of happiness upon the free exercise of our faculties guaranteed for Spencer that the greatest happiness will be generated through the adoption of the principle of equal freedom.Weinstein’s central argument is that Spencer’s moral philosophy offers a distinctive version of indirect utilitarianism. In chapters 3 through 5 he outlines the main contours of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism and its relevance to contemporary discussions, maintaining that Spencer accepted the utilitarian principle as the ultimate criterion of actions. However, much like Mill, and in reaction to Bentham, he argued that any direct pursuit of the greatest happiness is self-defeating. Spencer’s indirect utilitarianism sought to promote the conditions upon which happiness is founded through the principle of equal freedom. Moral rights were for him merely corollaries of the principle that flesh out its empty formalism, providing the basis for deliberation. Concrete moral rights such as property rights, contract rights, and exchange rights are therefore the basis for our primary obligations and yet find their ultimate justification in the principle of utility.Spencer’s two-tiered account of our moral obligations is thus remarkably similar to Mill’s account of moral rights in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism. The difference between them concerns the stringency of moral rights. While Mill saw moral rights as important, but ultimately defeasible, Spencer viewed them as indefeasible. While Mill’s position seems more plausible from the utilitarian perspective, Weinstein shows that Spencer’s stronger position must be judged in terms of his beliefs about the exercise of human [End Page 685] faculties. Weinstein correctly shows that if Spencer is wrong, it is not because, as critics have charged, his position is logically inconsistent, but because he held mistaken views about human nature and society.While the heart of Equal Freedom and Utility concerns the relation between utility and moral rights in Spencer’s work, the final two chapters are devoted to metaethics and applied ethics respectively. Weinstein marshals strong textual support to show that Spencer never simply defined the good as happiness and that G. E. Moore’s use of Spencer in Principia Ethica as an example of someone who committed a glaring version of the naturalistic fallacy was not justified. Spencer simply avoided prolonged treatments of such metaethical concerns. In the last chapter Weinstein argues that Spencer’s evolving views on land nationalization reveals both the general nature of Spencer’s derivation of moral rights from the principle... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:498 BOOK REVIEWS generations of theologians across denominational lines. Both Placher and Hunsinger at the end of their essays choose quotations from within Frei's own writings to give a synoptic portrait of the man and his work. Placher chooses a remark about Niebuhr's sense of vocation as a theologian (20), and Hunsinger one about knowledge of that seemingly elusive reality, a person's identity (257). However one might come (...) away from this challenging collection of essays, further confused or more enlightened, more in agreement or disagreement, I think every reader will recognize the coincidence of intellectual perspicuity and generosity with passionate faith. Regis College, Toronto School of Theology Toronto, Ontario, Canada GEORGE P. SCHNER, S.J. Reasoned Faith. Edited by ELEONORE STUMP. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. x + 364. As the editor remarks in her "Introduction," it is not so long ago that the analytical philosophy of religion consisted very largely of discussions of the meaningfulness of religious language, and of arguments about the existence of God. Nowadays it is more adventurous, ranging over such topics as creation, providence, and God's responsibility for sin. According to Robert Merrihew Adams, the statement "truth is subjectivity," though one of the most famous, is also one of the most misunderstood in Kierkegaard's writings. He argues that, taken in context within the Concluding Unscientifu: Postscript, the statement is by no means incompatible with the objective truth of religious belief. From the point of view of the Postscript, a member of an idolatrous community who prays to her God with "the entire passion of the infinite" has more of the truth than one who prays in a false spirit from within Christendom; but this implies that the latter does have some truth. Whatever the deficiencies in her faith, she is clearly admitted to be in possession of the true concept of God objectively speaking (223 ). Adams maintains, quite rightly in the reviewer's opinion, that the Postscript is excessively pessimistic about the integration of the ideals of subjectivity and objectivity, of passionate commitment on the one side and rational assessment of evidence on the other, in religious faith (21). A useful distinction is made by Scott MacDonald between "occurrent" and "dispositional" belief; this seems to resolve some of the more puzzling paradoxes about the relation of the more cognitive and propositional side of faith to other aspects which may be thought essential to it. The demons alluded to by St. James (2:19) might believe dispositionally that their highest fulfillment BOOK REVIEWS 499 was to be found in obeying the divine will, and so performing acts of charity and service to other creatures. But to avoid the inconvenience of acting in such a way, they could think of God occurrently as just a powerful being who makes burdensome demands (55). For MacDonald, the cognitive component of faith has only two elements, belief that certain propositions are true, and belief that the kind of response of the will which is also essential to faith may be grounded on these (56). "We can make sense of Christian faith if we think of it simply as belief that Christianity is true plus an appropriate volitional response to that truth" (69). Against mainline Christian accounts like those of Augustine and Aquinas, he sees no good reason to suppose that one cannot have faith in propositions for which one has conclusive proof, but only in those for which one's justification is relatively weak. He provides interesting grounds for contradiction of a view which has been expounded by both Robert Adams and John Hick, that only such uncertainty can ground the trust which is essential to the relationship which human beings ought to have to God (59). "My ability to love and trust my wife, to commit myself without reservation to her well-being and to the goals and purposes we have chosen as definitive of our common life seem in no way dependent on my being uncertain about what she is like or what she will do" (60). On the question of how faith ought to be related to the demands of reason, Robert Audi remarks that, up to the middle 1970s... (shrink)

Related to the research of working conditions, the link between organizational factors and health was traditionally analyzed using linear models. However, the literature analysis suggests inconsistencies in linear models predicting workers’ health levels. To clarify this issue, this exploratory research compares the linear and non-linear relationships between job demands-resources, and the psychological and physical symptoms of employees working in the main five service subsectors: commerce, horeca, public administration, education, and healthcare. With a final sample of 4,047 participants, our (...) study data were extracted from the II Andalusian Working Conditions Survey. Following the theoretical framework of JD-R Model and considering the Vitamin Model theoretical approach for non-linear relationships, our results showed that there were significant differences among the five subsectors analyzed regarding the linear and non-linear relationships between job demands-resources and psychological and physical symptoms of employees. Furthermore, task complexity generated non-linear relationships in higher proportion than time pressure and contact with users. Likewise, non-linear relationships found showed a U-shape. Moreover, the findings of non-linear relationships suggested that medium levels of task complexity should not be exceeded to avoid further negative impact on psychological and physical symptoms for service sector employees, preserving their health. Finally, some general practical implications of work environment interventions are suggested. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Reproduction: Dominion and LimitsRichard A. McCormick S.J. (bio)The general struggle throughout Christian history has been to seek the proper balance between dominion and limits, intervention and nonintervention, givenness, and creativity. This struggle has worked itself out in six areas that touch human life. In this essay, I will revisit the Catholic tradition’s treatment of these in terms of dominion and limits to see whether we can (...) discern developmental patterns that might suggest an approach to issues pertaining to the sources of life (reproductive ethics) as we move into the next century.1. Abortion. The history of the treatment of abortion in the Catholic tradition is the history of an evaluation. This evaluation was somewhat muddied by [End Page 387] unclarity and inconsistency in the use of terms. Thus, some theologians distinguished three types of abortion: prevention of conception, abortion of an inanimate fetus, and abortion of an animated fetus. Others regarded all interventions into the life-giving process as homicides. Still others argued that termination of a nonanimated fetus was justified to save the life of the mother. And still others said such termination was anticipated homicide or the misuse of semen conceptum.Such unclarities and qualifications eventually vanished and produced an evaluation of fetal life that yielded to very few competing interests, what John Noonan (1970) referred to as “an almost absolute value.” There was some dominion or control, but the limits became increasingly clear and powerful.2. Individual and corporate self-defense. Augustine disallowed lethal individual or personal self-defense, but established the first elementary rules for war. Aquinas allowed both. Vitoria, Suarez, and others refined the criteria justifying war (jus ad bellum) and listed them as three: recovery of property, resistance to aggression, and vindication of injuries (injustices). Pius XII narrowed these to a single reason: national self-defense. The Challenge of Peace (NCCB 1983) moves away from the licitness of nuclear war and nuclear deterrence even for self-defense. Once again, the limits to the dominion over life in war grow stronger and more powerful even as the weapons of such dominion grow more powerful.3. Capital punishment. Over the centuries, Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, permitted the use of capital punishment. Three justifications were proposed to found this right of the state: retribution, deterrence, and reform. In the past decades, however, these justifications have been seriously questioned. Both the American and Philippine bishops’ conferences have rejected all use of capital punishment. Most recently John Paul II (1995, n. 56, p. 709) adduces defense of society as the only possible justification for it and sees such cases as “very rare if not practically non-existent.”4. The preservation of life. The theme of a balance between dominion and limits is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the Catholic approach to life preservation. Catholic tradition does not accept our culture’s rejection of death. Rather it asserts that the facts that we are pilgrims, that Christ has overcome death and lives, and that we also will live with him yield a general value judgment on the meaning and value of life as we now live it: Life is a basic good but not an absolute one. It is basic because, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1980, p. 511) worded it, it is the “necessary source and condition of every human activity and of all society.” It is not absolute because there are higher goods for which life can be sacrificed—e.g., the glory of God, salvation of souls, service of one’s brethren, and the like. Thus in John (15:13): “There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John Paul II (1995, n. 47, p. 706) briefly summarizes this in Evangelium Vitae: “The life of the body in its earthly state is not an absolute good for the believer.” This value [End Page 388] judgment has immediate relevance for care of the ill and dying: Not all means must be used to preserve life.Thus the Catholic tradition has moved between two extremes: medico-moral optimism or vitalism (which preserves life with all means, at any cost... (shrink)

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, John Rawls received his undergraduate and graduate education at Princeton. After earning his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1950, Rawls taught at Princeton, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and, since 1962, at Harvard, where he is now emeritus. Rawls is best known for A Theory of Justice (1971) and for developments of that theory he has published since. Rawls believes that the utilitarian tradition has dominated modern political philosophy in English-speaking countries because its critics (...) have failed to develop an alternative social and political theory as complete and systematic. Rawls's aim is to develop such an alternative: a contractarian view of justice, derived from the tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and especially Kant. Rawls carries social contract theory to a "higher order of abstraction" by viewing the principles of justice themselves as the objects of a social contract. Justice is the solution to a problem, which arises in this way: Society, as it is conceived in a liberal democracy, is a cooperative venture between free and equal persons for their mutual advantage. Individuals participate in it in order to implement their conceptions of the good life. Cooperation makes a better life possible for everyone by increasing the stock of what Rawls calls "primary goods" - things which it is rational to want whatever else you want, because they are required for any conception of a good life. Primary social goods include rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, income, wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. But society is also characterized by conflict, since people disagree not only about how its benefits and burdens should be distributed, but also about conceptions of the good. Principles of justice are used to evaluate the distributions of benefits and burdens and the institutions which effect them. Rawls's idea is to identify an acceptable conception of justice by asking what principles it would be reasonable for the members of society to agree to, which is to say, what principles would be fair.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On Secular Governance: Lutheran Perspectives on Contemporary Legal Issues ed. by Ronald W. Duty and Marie A. FailingerElisabeth Rain KincaidOn Secular Governance: Lutheran Perspectives on Contemporary Legal Issues Edited by Ronald W. Duty and Marie A. Failinger grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2016. 382 pp. $45.00In editing this collection of essays, Ronald Duty and Marie Failinger describe their goal as seeking "to bring more Lutheran voices to the (...) pressing legal issues" in local and global contexts (1). They point out that in discussions between the fields of religion and law to date, "Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and Reformed perspectives have largely dominated" (1). In bringing Lutheran perspectives to questions of law and religion, this collection begins an important task of retrieving a theological perspective on law that was integral for the formation of modern legal thought but has been largely absent from contemporary discussions of law and religion.The strength of this collection of essays lies in the breadth of contemporary legal questions addressed and in the diversity of perspectives offered. Since, as Duty and Failinger point out, recent Lutheran scholarship has been relatively silent on questions of law and religion, there is a broad field of issues to explore. This collection avoids too narrowly focusing on any one "hot-button" issue of law and religion, such as questions of religious liberty or relationship between church and state, although these questions are addressed. Rather, it benefits from a truly expansive view of contemporary legal issues and includes essays on issues as diverse as immigration reform, family law, fiduciary duties, military chaplaincy, and water rights in the American Southwest. The collection also shows geographical breadth, and looks beyond the contemporary American and European legal arena to consider how theology could affect law in Nigeria and Rwanda. The volume also benefits from a wide range of theoretical approaches, including contributions from both legal scholars and theologians. In [End Page 211] the dialectic that results as theologians consider law and legal scholars consider theology, we see a performative example of the Lutheran concept of two kingdoms, both coexisting under God's domain.The collection would have benefited from a broader use of theological sources to accompany this admirably broad approach to legal issues. Many, although not all, of the essays, draw only on Martin Luther's understanding of Christian engagement with legal authority. This focus on Luther's somewhat limited legal corpus can result in a slightly repetitive theological approach among the essays. However, this narrow focus on Luther indicates a potential next stage for further development of Lutheran engagement with contemporary legal issues. In the closing essay in the book, "How Should Modern Lutherans Try to Shape Secular Law?," Robert Benne references John Witte's work in tracing how Philipp Melanchthon and the Lutheran jurists developed Luther's original theory of law to "build bridges between the two kingdoms" (332). While this book provides a good starting point for bringing Lutheran perspectives to bear on contemporary legal issues, it also indicates the need for future research to excavate the perspectives of Melanchthon and jurists such as Johannes Eisermann and Johann Oldendorp, along with more modern Lutheran scholars of law and religion, such as Helmut Thielicke, who considered the legacy of Lutheran legal theory in the wake of post-Nazi Germany. Both Lutheran theological approaches to law and legal approaches to religion will undoubtedly be enriched if the editors' project continues, resulting in continued excavation of later Lutheran interpretation and reception of theories of law, which will bring Lutheran theology ever closer to the challenges of contemporary legal issues in the modern nation-state.Elisabeth Rain KincaidUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Culture of Engagement: Law, Religion, and Morality by Cathleen KavenyAllen CalhounA Culture of Engagement: Law, Religion, and Morality Cathleen Kaveny WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 320 pp. $98.95 / $32.95It is encouraging to read a book on the intersection of religion and law from an author as conversant with both fields as is Cathleen Kaveny. Reworking a number of columns that she wrote for Commonweal (...) magazine, Kaveny offers her concept of a "culture of engagement" as an alternative to America's polarizing culture wars. She builds a vision of engagement—typified by Pope Francis's emphasis on the church's need to "encounter" all human beings—that welcomes the influence that religious traditions and the broader culture and its laws can have on each other.Kaveny notes two ways in which the Roman Catholic tradition is particularly well situated to engage American culture and law. First, both American common law and the Catholic moral tradition use forms of "casuistry" to connect general rules with particular situations. Second, Catholic reluctance "to draw sharp lines between the pure and the tainted" can supply a salutary alternative to the Puritan tendency toward "prophetic indictment" (16).In part 1, Kaveny argues that law has both pedagogical and pragmatic qualities. In part 2, she describes the nation's struggle to balance governmental interests and religious liberty in the context of the contraception mandate in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. She faults the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for elevating the law's pedagogical role over its pragmatic function in their attack on the mandate. She herself leans toward pragmatism; she assumes that exceptions to laws of general applicability should apply only "in the most extreme cases" (116) and that the government—not the religious claimant—should determine when exceptions apply.Kaveny also suggests that the bishops would do well to pay greater attention to the common good, as "it reflects the moral consensus of the community, which is accurately reflected in our democratic process of lawmaking" (90). Development of the grounds for this optimistic linking of a moral consensus and majority rule to the common good would have been an interesting addition to the book.Part 3 is the heart of the work, exploring ways for American society to "move beyond a culture war mentality" (120). Kaveny resists the assumption that public discourse in a society torn by culture wars is served by pitting secular and religious voices against each other. She hopes instead for persuasion based on natural law. One is left wondering, however, how persuasion based on natural law could happen in America's ideologically diverse culture. [End Page 201]Part 4 explores the effect of America's ideological pluralism on discussions among American Catholics. Kaveny describes how the church's sexual abuse scandal has fed the growing sense of disconnection between church teaching and the expectations of the Catholic laity.Part 5, a series of essays on difficult ethical controversies, hints at what interaction between the American and Catholic traditions might look like. Kaveny advocates "reframing the question" and hints at what reframing the contraception question might look like (221).Some of the book addresses specifically Catholic questions. It is valuable in that respect. Its scope extends beyond any one religious tradition, however, as it offers a picture of engagement between equals: the American legal tradition and Catholic moral teaching. Nevertheless, Kaveny makes it clear that this sort of engagement can succeed only if the American legal community understands its need to reflect changing social values and the Catholic hierarchy moves away from insisting that "error has no rights" and toward acknowledging that people do have rights even when they are in error (257).Allen CalhounPhD candidate, University of AberdeenCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AS INSTITUTION IN AFRICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A CASE STUDY OF RWANDA Malachie Munyaneza UnitedReform Church, London I. Introduction Violence is a phenomenon. It is multidimensional and multifarious. It is physical, geographical, spiritual, psychological, sudden or latent. It is metaphysical, because for some religious beliefs, it involves the deed-consequences scheme in terms of rewards and punishments, even beyond this world into the otherworldly life. It is an instrument (...) used in one's own life (suicide), in the simple family, in the small-scale societies, as well as in the multi-ethnic social settings. It can be a national, multinational and universal phenomenon. It presents some contradictions, because, though it is abhorred in general, some individuals or states use it as a means to achieve ultimate good or misuse it for their own selfish interests. It becomes more of a repulsive mystery when it is seen as institutional and integral partofreligionwhich fundamentallyshould avoid it. Between April and July 1994, the media ofthe world brought images ofthe mostviolent episode ofRwandan history into the living rooms ofthis planet's population. The magnitude ofthe genocide of 1994 was unprecedented in this century. Up to one million of people are estimated to have been killed within only one hundred days. It is difficult to understand the magnitude ofthis violence. Tribal conflicts in Rwanda, colonial powers, political manipulations and economic problems alone are not enough to explain whathas happened. Political analysts, sociologists, anthropologists have tried to understand whetherthe political instability ofthe late 80s, the malfunction of political institutions, the October War (1990-94) and the 40Malachie Munyaneza consequent war atrocities could have necessarily culminated in the genocide the world witnessed. Fundamental questions about the whole philosophy oflife and religion in the history ofRwandaand its relationship to violence are to be addressed too, because they touch the inner being of the outward physical person. People have the right to know what has gone wrong all along in all areas of their life. This paper will try to look at religious beliefs and violence as institution in ancient and modern Rwanda in its magico-religious context and its implications in the social structure. As I am only a debutante Girardian, I will discuss only the key terms ofhis theory—mimesis, desire and scapegoating—as they guide my reflections.?. Religious beliefs and violence Generally, Rwanda is viewed as a monotheistic country. All Rwandan ethnic groups believed in the only one heavenly Superior Being called Imana. Though Rwandansrecognized Imanaasthe SupremeBeing, Creator and Sustainer ofall life, they did not have a special service ofworship to him at a central place. They thought it was temerity to try and please or influence God because ifyou try you would not find enough to match his greatness and his merits. A Rwandan saying tells that you cannot handle God because ifyoutryyou would paydearly.1 Imana is the Ancientofdays as it is expressed in the name "Habiyakare"(He is before the first dawn). He is all-knowing as in the name "Bizimana" (they [all things] are known by God). He rules over everything as King, Judge and Master as expressed in the name "Hategekimana" (everywhere it is God who rules). Unfortunately Rwandans believedthatwhatever befell them was pre-ordained by God and most ofthe time fatalism dominated their lives. They confronted violence or fate with resignation thinking that the origin is in God's will or from angry spirits they did not control. Rwandans also believe in the existence ofa spiritual realm. The spirits of the dead lived further and roamed about. They would come back to trouble their relatives, especially when they felt some duties due to them were neglected. They could even kill through sickness, insanity or provoke infertility. They hold people under the siege ofconstant mental terror. The spirits most feared were the ones from those who had died in unfortunate 1St Paul expressed the same idea in his discourse at Athens and said: "The god who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by the human hands, as ifhe need anything..." (Acts 1 7, 24-25). Violence as Institution in... (shrink)

7 lectures, Torquay, UK, August 12-20, 1924 (CW 311) These seven intimate, aphoristic talks were presented to a small group on Steiner's final visit to England. Because they were given to "pioneers" dedicated to opening a new Waldorf school, these talks are often considered one of the best introductions to Waldorf education. Steiner shows the necessity for teachers to work on themselves first, in order to transform their own inherent gifts. He explains the need to use humor to keep their (...) teaching lively and imaginative. Above all, he stresses the tremendous importance of doing everything in the knowledge that children are citizens of both the spiritual and the earthly worlds. And, throughout these lectures, he continually returns to the practical value of Waldorf education. These talks are filled with practical illustrations and revolve around certain themes--the need for observation in teachers; the dangers of stressing the intellect too early; children's need for teaching that is concrete and pictorial; the education of children's souls through wonder and reverence; the importance of first presenting the "whole," then the parts, to the children's imagination. Here is one of the best introductions to Waldorf education, straight from the man who started it all. German source: Die Kunst des Erziehens aus dem Erfassen der Menschenwesenhiet (GA 311). ∞ ∞ ∞ SYNOPSIS OF THE LECTURES LECTURE 1: The need for a new art of education. The whole of life must be considered. Process of incarnation as a stupendous task of the spirit. Fundamental changes at seven and fourteen. At seven, the forming of the "new body" out of the "model body" inherited at birth. After birth, the bodily milk as sole nourishment. The teacher's task to give "soul milk" at the change of teeth and "spiritual milk" at puberty. LECTURE 2: In first epoch of life child is wholly sense organ. Nature of child's environment and conduct of surrounding adults of paramount importance. Detailed observation of children and its significance. In second epoch, seven to fourteen, fantasy and imagination as life blood of all education, e.g., in teaching of writing and reading, based on free creative activity of each teacher. The child as integral part of the environment until nine. Teaching about nature must be based on this. The "higher truths" in fairy tales and myths. How the teacher can guide the child through the critical moment of the ninth year. LECTURE 3: How to teach about plants and animals (seven to fourteen). Plants must always be considered, not as specimens, but growing in the soil. The plant belongs to the earth. This is the true picture and gives the child an inward joy. Animals must be spoken of always in connection with humans. All animal qualities and physical characteristics are to be found, in some form, in the human being. Humans as synthesis of the whole animal kingdom. Minerals should not be introduced until twelfth year. History should first be presented in living, imaginative pictures, through legends, myths, and stories. Only at eleven or twelve should any teaching be based on cause and effect, which is foreign to the young child's nature. Some thoughts on punishment, with examples. LECTURE 4: Development of imaginative qualities in the teacher. The story of the violet and the blue sky. Children's questions. Discipline dependent on the right mood of soul. The teacher's own preparation for this. Seating of children according to temperament. Retelling of stories. Importance of imaginative stories that can be recalled in later school life. Drawing of diagrams, from ninth year. Completion and metamorphosis of simple figures, to give children feeling of form and symmetry. Concentration exercises to awaken an active thinking as basis of wisdom for later life. Simple color exercises. A Waldorf school timetable. The "main lesson." LECTURE 5: All teaching matter must be intimately connected with life. In counting, each different number should be connected with the child or what the child sees in the environment. Counting and stepping in rhythm. The body counts. The head looks on. Counting with fingers and toes is good (also writing with the feet). The ONE is the whole. Other numbers proceed from it. Building with bricks is against the child's nature, whose impulse is to proceed from whole to parts, as in medieval thinking. Contrast atomic theory. In real life we have first a basket of apples, a purse of coins. In teaching addition, proceed from the whole. In subtraction, start with minuend and remainder; in multiplication, with product and one factor. Theorem of Pythagoras (eleven-twelve years). Details given of a clear, visual proof, based on practical thinking. This will arouse fresh wonder every time. LECTURE 6: In first seven years etheric body is an inward sculptor. After seven, child has impulse to model and to paint. Teacher must learn anatomy by modeling the organs. Teaching of physiology (nine to twelve years) should be based on modeling. Between seven and fourteen astral body gradually draws into physical body, carrying the breathing by way of nerves, as playing on a lyre. Importance of singing. Child's experience of well being like that of cows chewing the cud. Instrumental music from beginning of school life, wind or strings. Teaching of languages; up to nine through imitation, then beginnings of grammar, as little translation as possible. Vowels are expression of feeling, consonants are imitation of external processes. Each language expresses a different conception. Compare head, Kopf, testa. The parts of speech in relation to the life after death. If language is rightly taught, out of feeling, eurythmy will develop naturally, expressing inner and outer experiences in ordered movements--"visible speech." Finding relationship to space in gymnastics. LECTURE 7: Between seven and fourteen soul qualities are paramount. Beginnings of science teaching from twelfth year only, and connected with real phenomena of life. The problem of fatigue. Wrong conceptions of psychologists. The rhythmic system, predominant in second period, never tires. Rhythm and fantasy. Composition. Sums from real life, not abstractions. Einstein's theory. The kindergarten--imitation of life. Teachers' meetings, the heart of the school. Every child to be in the right class for its age. Importance of some knowledge of trades, e.g., shoemaking, handwork, and embroidery. Children's reports-- characterization, but no grading. Contact with the parents. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The close relationship of Multiplication and Division. How to deal with both together. Transition from the concrete to the abstract in Arithmetic. Not before the ninth year. Healthiness of English weights and measures as related to real life. Decimal system as an intellectual abstraction. Drawing. Lines have no reality in drawing and painting, only boundaries. How to teach children to draw a tree in shading, speaking only of light and color. (Illustration). Line drawing belongs only to geometry. Gymnastics and Sport. Sport is of no educational value, but necessary as belonging to English life. Gymnastics should be taught by demonstration. Religious Instruction. Religion lessons in the Waldorf school given by Catholic priest and Protestant pastor. "Free" religion lessons provided for the other children. Plan of such teaching described, of which the fundamental aim is an understanding of Christianity. The Sunday services. Modern Language Lessons. Choice of languages must be guided by the demands of English life. These can be introduced at an early age. Direct method in language teaching. Closing words by Dr. Steiner on the seriousness of this first attempt to found a school in England. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BASIC GOODS AND THE HUMAN GOOD IN RECENT CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY }EAN PORTER University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 0 NE OF THE MOST striking features of Catholic moral theology since Vatican II has been the reluctance of so many moral theologians, on all sides of the controversies which have characterized that discipline, to offer a substantive account of goodness and the human good as a (...) basis for understanding the moral life. There has been an extensive discussion of human goods (plural) and their relation to moral obligation, but no one, to my knowledge, has attempted to ground that discussion systematically in a substantive account of what it means to live a good human life which would precede and justify the identification of some goods as true or basic human goods. To the contrary, a number of the most influential moral theologians, led by Germain Grisez and John Finnis, insist that our knowledge of moral obligation cannot be based on any such general metaphysical or anthropological theory. Instead, they hold that morality is grounded in our recognition of certain basic goods, which are self-evident to us. My purpose in this essay is to examine the claim that some basic goods are self-evidently such to us. I will argue that Grisez and Finnis have not made a convincing case that there are selfevident basic goods. Moreover, I will argue that, to the extent that defenders of proportionalism do not challenge the GrisezFinnis account of basic goods, their alternative theories of morality are vitiated as well. I will conclude that the current debate in Catholic moral theology concerning the foundations of moral obligation might more fruitfully be cast as a debate over rival ac27 28 JEAN PORTER counts of the human good, than as a debate over the moral significance of particular goods. The Grisez/Finnis account of basic goods In order to understand the point of the account of self-evident basic goods developed by Grisez and Finnis, it will be necessary to see how this account functions in the context of their overall theory of morality.• This theory of morality begins with a general account of practical reason, which is then narrowed down into a theory of moral action, interpreted as action that is rational in the fullest possible sense. That is, this theory begins with the observation that all rational agents act in order to obtain or to preserve something that seems to be good, at least to that agent. But even the most rational agent can be mistaken as to whether this concrete desideratum is truly good, and in such a case the action is likely to be self-frustrating or even harmful to the agent (to say nothing of its consequences for others). Hence, the exigencies of practical reason itself, prior to the introduction of any properly moral consideration, force us to ask whether the seeming goods for which we act are true goods. And how are we to distinguish between true and seeming goods? Grisez and Finnis reply that the (true) good in its most general sense must be understood as that which is desirable, not only for this or that individual or in these special circumstances, but desirable per se, for every individual and in all situations. So far, this line of analysis will be familiar to anyone acquainted with scholastic philosophy. But at the next stage of the argu1 In my summary of the theory of morality put forth by Grisez and Finnis, I have relied primarily on the following works: John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Volume One: Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983); and Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis, "Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends," The American Journal of Jurisprudence, 32 (1987), 99-151. The latter essay presents a summary of their theory including a detailed commentary on the earlier works through which it was developed, as well as responses to critics, and may be said to be the definitive statement of the Grisez/Finnis theory of morality up to now. BASIC GOODS AND THE HUMAN GOOD 29 ment, the originality... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Defense of Fundamental Principles and Human Rights: A Reply to Robert Baker *Ruth Macklin (bio)AbstractThis article seeks to rebut Robert Baker’s contention that attempts to ground international bioethics in fundamental principles cannot withstand the challenges posed by multiculturalism and postmodernism. First, several corrections are provided of Baker’s account of the conclusions reached by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Second, a rebuttal is offered to (...) Baker’s claim that an unbridgeable moral gap exists between Western individualism and non-Western communalism. In conclusion, this article argues that Baker’s “nonnegotiable primary goods” cannot do the work of “classical human rights” and that the latter framework is preferable from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint.Robert baker has written two interesting and thoughtful essays in support of his theory of international bioethics (Baker 1998a & b). Both essays are rich in content and comprehensive in scope. In the first of the two, “Multiculturalism, Postmodernism, and the Bankruptcy of Fundamentalism”—hereafter, “Multiculturalism”—Baker argues that attempts to ground international bioethics in fundamental principles cannot withstand the challenges posed by multiculturalism and postmodernism. As one of the bioethicists whose writings are the object of Baker’s critique, I undertake in this reply first, to elaborate my own position and to comment on related aspects of Baker’s thesis. 1 Next, I offer some corrections of Baker’s account of the conclusions reached by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, of which I was a member. Finally, I compare Baker’s “nonnegotiable [End Page 403] primary goods” with “classical human rights” and conclude that the latter framework is preferable from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint.In his second essay, “The Negotiable and the Non-Negotiable”—hereafter, “The Negotiable”—Baker puts forth a positive theory designed to meet the challenges of multiculturalism and postmodernism and, at the same time, to justify transcultural and transhistorical moral judgments. Baker (1998a, p. 203) describes his theoretical model as an effort “to validate the conception of international bioethics as a continually renegotiated moral order.” Although I find Baker’s proposal intriguing, I believe his rejection of fundamental principles can result in an unacceptable ethical relativism. To abandon “classical human rights,” along with the fundamental moral principles from which they derive, opens the door to all forms of cultural oppression in the name of “the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to define primacy for oneself” (Baker 1998b, p. 246). Alternatively, one can view Baker’s “nonnegotiable primary goods” as virtually equivalent to classical human rights, but much more difficult to identify, both theoretically and practically.Moral FundamentalismThe difference between my defense of universal moral principles and Baker’s critique rests, at least in part, on an interpretation of what is meant by “moral fundamentalism.” (I must confess to a distaste for the ‘ism’ because of the connotations and consequences of fundamentalism in other spheres.) Baker (1998a, p. 203) defines “moral fundamentalism” as the position “that certain basic or fundamental moral principles are accepted in all eras and cultures and thus are universally applicable to agents and actions in any era or culture.” A central feature of this definition is the requirement that all eras and cultures accept these fundamental moral principles. By this definition, the position I embrace does not count as “moral fundamentalism,” because I maintain that certain fundamental moral principles ought to be binding on all cultures or societies even if those cultures or societies do not accept them. 2 Universal acceptance is not a necessary condition for universal applicability.Part of the problem with Baker’s (and probably also my own) analysis is that it shifts constantly and imperceptibly back and forth between a variety of concepts: “moral principles,” “ethical standards,” “morality,” and “moral judgments.” In one instance, Baker (1998a, p. 209) notes my citation of a remark of Ruth Benedict (1934) that “morality differs in [End Page 404] every society.” That is what Ruth Benedict wrote; but nowhere did she specify that she had moral principles in mind. Indeed, her complete sentence reads as follows: “Morality differs in every society and is a convenient term for socially approved habits” (Benedict 1934, emphasis added... (shrink)