ObjectiveTo assess the impact of the closure of group-based cardiac rehabilitation training during the first COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 on patients’ physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and cardiovascular risk, and to describe the patient experience of lockdown and home-based exercise training during lockdown.DesignMixed methods study. Prospectively collected post-lockdown measurements were compared to pre-lockdown medical record data. Quantitative measurements were supplemented with qualitative interviews about the patient experience during lockdown.SettingOutpatient CR centre in Salzburg, Austria.ParticipantsTwenty-seven patients [six female, mean age 69 years] (...) who attended weekly CR training sessions until the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020.Outcome MeasureQuantitative: exercise capacity, cardiovascular risk. Qualitative: individual semi-structured interviews.ResultsExercise capacity had significantly reduced from pre- to post-lockdown: mean power in maximal ergometry 165 vs. 151, p < 0.001; submaximal ergometer training 99 vs. 97, p = 0.038. There was no significant difference in Framingham risk score and other cardiovascular risk factors. Qualitative data showed that almost all patients had kept physically active during lockdown, but 17 said they had been unable to maintain their exercise levels, and 15 felt their cardiorespiratory fitness had deteriorated. Many patients missed the weekly CR training and the motivation and sense of community from training together with others. Several patients stated that without professional supervision they had felt less confident to carry out home-based exercise training at high intensity.ConclusionThis study highlights the importance of group-based supervised exercise training for patients who engage well in such a setting, and the detrimental impact of disruption to this type of CR service on physical activity levels and exercise capacity. Additionally, learning from the COVID-19 pandemic may inform the development and implementation of remote CR modalities going forward. (shrink)

The Synthetic Theory of Evolution (SyntheticDarwinism) was forged between 1925 and 1950.Several historians of science have pointed outthat this synthesis was a joint venture ofSoviet, German, American and Britishbiologists: A fascinating example of scientificcooperation, considering the fact that theevolutionary synthesis emerged during thedecades in which these countries were engagedin fierce political, military and ideologicalconflicts. The ideological background of itsAnglo-American representatives has beenanalyzed in the literature. We have examinedthe scientific work and ideological commitmentsof the German Darwinians during the ThirdReich. We based (...) our analysis on four criteria:1) General attitude towards the Third Reich. 2) Membership in the NSDAP and other nationalsocialist organizations. Endorsement anddisapproval of the state ideology in 3) scientific and 4) other publications. We willmainly discuss the various authors that havecontributed to Die Evolution derOrganismen (1943), a collection thatrepresented the evolutionary synthesis inGermany. Most of the authors promoted eugenicideas, but not all of them adopted the racistinterpretation of the Third Reich. Anotherfinding is that there existed no directconnection between party membership andpromotion of the state ideology. (shrink)

A good commentary will protect against arbitrary interpretation by exposing its user to the larger community of interpretation where private views are checked, enriched, corrected, and deepened.

Government lawyers and other public officials sometimes face an excruciating moral dilemma: to stay on the job or to quit, when the government is one they find morally abhorrent. Staying may make them complicit in evil policies; it also runs the danger of inuring them to wrongdoing, just as their presence on the job helps inure others. At the same time, staying may be their only opportunity to mitigate those policies – to make evils into lesser evils – and to (...) uphold the rule of law when it is under assault. This Article explores that dilemma in a stark form: through the moral biographies of two lawyers in the Third Reich, both of whom stayed on the job, and both of whom can lay claim to mitigating evil. One, Helmuth James von Moltke, was an anti-Nazi, and a martyr of the resistance; the other, Bernhard Lösener, was a Nazi by conviction who nevertheless claimed to have secretly fought against the persecution of Jews from the improbable post of legal adviser on Jewish matters. The Article critically examines their careers and self-justifications. It frames its analysis through two philosophical arguments: Hannah Arendt’s stern injunction that staying on the job is self-deception or worse, because like it or not, obedience is support; and a contemporary analysis of moral complicity by Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin. The chief question, with resonance today as well as historically, is whether Arendt is right – and, if not, under what conditions lesser-evilism can succeed. This article will appear in a symposium with comments by Leora Bilsky and Natalie Davidson, Kathleen Clark, Erica Newland, and Shannon Prince. (shrink)

Rarely have these separate approaches been brought into the same conversation. Education, Justice, and Democracy does just that, offering an intensive discussion by highly respected scholars across empirical and philosophical disciplines.

49th International Congress on Medieval Studies8 May 2014Western Michigan UniversityKalamazoo, Michigan Emmett Randolph Daniel became interested in the subjects of medieval apocalypticism, eschatology and related matters largely on the heels of the pioneering work done in these fields during the 1950s and 1960s by European scholars like Herbert Grundmann,1 Marjorie Reeves,2 Beatrice Hirsch-Reich,3 and Bernhard Töpfer.4 Nearly fifty years later, that is to say, after the publication of his brief but ground-breaking article of 1968 in Speculum on the (...) subject of the Franciscan Joachites,5 one can attest that “Randy” Daniel was for many years an integral part of a new group of distinguished American... (shrink)

Auch als originar politischer Denker ist Karl Jaspers reich an Einsichten: Ausgehend vom Ethos der Freiheit jedes Einzelnen richtet er seinen Blick auf die konkrete politische Gestaltung einer Freiheitsordnung. Dabei steht fur ihn im Hinblick auf die noch junge Bundesrepublik die Selbsterziehung in Freiheit im Zentrum seiner oft mahnenden Worte. Ganz im sokratischen Sinne fordert er intellektuelle Redlichkeit und politische Wahrhaftigkeit ein, um den beiden grossen Gegenwartsherausforderungen gewachsen zu sein: einer atomwaffenbestuckten Welt, die sich jederzeit selbst ausloschen kann, und (...) dem modernen Totalitarismus, der in seiner Verherrlichung des Antipolitischen allen politischen Ordnungsbestrebungen die Vernichtung androht. Jeder Frieden, der mehr ist als die Friedhofsruhe eines Waffenstillstands, grundet fur Jaspers in der politischen Freiheit handelnder Burgerinnen und Burger, die gemeinsam Sorge fur die Integritat ihres politischen Gemeinwesens tragen. Mit Beitragen von Karl-Heinz Breier, Alexander Gantschow, Anton Hugli, Annabelle Petschow, Kurt Salamun, Reinhard Schulz, Bernhard Sutor, Bernd Weidmann. (shrink)

In the history of Sanskrit literary theory Bhaṭṭanāyaka occupies an influential yet mysterious position. Abhinavagupta clearly owes a great debt to him, but since Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s works themselves have been lost, it has proven difficult to understand exactly what that debt is. The common understanding is that Bhaṭṭanāyaka was a Mīmāṃsaka and that he applied the principles of Vedic hermeneutics to literature. But this actually doesn’t fit well with much of what Abhinavagupta tells us about Bhaṭṭanāyaka, and upon closer inspection it (...) becomes clear that in fact Abhinavagupta presents him as someone who was thoroughly interested in ideas drawn from non-dual Vedānta. This article reexamines the depictions of Bhaṭṭanāyaka in Abhinavagupta’s works and shows that while the evidence for a Mīmāṃsā connection is quite thin, the evidence for a similar connection to Vedānta is quite strong. Taking this connection seriously helps us develop a much clearer picture of Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s ideas, and it also helps us understand various details of Abhinavagupta’s response to Bhaṭṭanāyaka that would otherwise remain obscure. (shrink)

This paper outlines the basic traits of a responsive phenomenology by focusing on the issue of originary substitution. On the one hand, a phenomenology of alienness or otherness and an ethics of the other in the sense of Levinas will prove to be closely bound up with this sort of substitution. On the other side, this substitution can be concretised by transitional figures such as the advocate, the therapist, the translator, the witness, or the field researcher; they all intervene from (...) the position of a Third without closing the fissure which opens between ourselves and the Other, between the own and the alien. Precisely by focussing on the issue of substitution, we have the opportunity to outline the basis traits of a responsive phenomenology and to discuss some of its institutional consequences. (shrink)

Against the background of the Deweyan tradition of Democracy and Education, we discuss problems of complexity and reductionism in education and educational philosophy. First, we investigate some of Dewey’s own criticisms of reductionist tendencies in the educational traditions, theories, and practices of his time. Secondly, we explore some important cases of reductionism in the educational debates of our own day and argue that a similar criticism in behalf of democracy and education is appropriate and can easily be based on Deweyan (...) terms. Thirdly, we draw some more general conclusions about complexity and reductionism as challenges for democracy and education. Among other things, we argue that powerful social tendencies of capitalist competition and social Darwinism support reductionisms in education and put the democratic project at risk. The tensional relation between democracy and capitalism constitutes a major challenge for educational philosophy in our own time as much as in Dewey’s. (shrink)

The common school ideal is the source of one of the oldest educational debates in liberal democratic societies. The movement in favour of greater educational choice is the source of one of the most recent. Each has been the cause of major and enduring controversy, not only within philosophical thought but also within political, legal and social arenas. Echoing conclusions reached by Terry McLaughlin, but taking the historical and legal context of the United States as my backdrop, I argue that (...) the ideal of common schooling and the existence of separate schools, which is to say, the existence of educational choice, are not merely compatible but necessarily co-exist in a liberal democratic society. In other words, we need both common schooling and educational choice. The essay proceeds in four parts. First, I explain why we need to understand something about pluralism in order to understand common schooling and school choice. In the second and third parts, I explore the normative significance of pluralism for common schooling and educational choice, respectively. In the fourth part, I show how the two can be reconciled, given a certain understanding of what pluralism demands. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue on empirical grounds that (VL-initial) Asymmetric Coordination in German cannot be reduced to a syntactic structure of the form [if S1, then S2], but rather needs to be analyzed as some kind of adjunction to the if-clause, i.e., along the lines of [[if S1] and S2]. This conclusion gives rise to an apparent mismatch between syntactic structure (narrow scope of if) and semantic interpretation (wide scope of if). To resolve this paradoxical situation, I propose a (...) compositional semantics for conditionals that is based on the idea that (indexed) if is to be construed as some kind of anaphor (variable) that ranges over objects of type modal base picking up a modal background in the actual context. Even though this analysis assigns a non-vacuous semantics to the complementizer if, it is still compatible with the syntax of Asymmetric Coordination in German, and, in contrast to alternative accounts, avoids the generation of non-existent distributive readings. (shrink)