Since its formulation by Edmund Husserl, phenomenology has been regarded as a ‘method’. This is contested by Michel Henry, who speaks of the ‘question’ of phenomenology. This article traces Henry's objection to the classification of phenomenology as method, and considers both what he means by phenomenology being a question and what the answer to this question would be. To this end, the notions of ‘first givenness’ and ‘Life’ are explored, both of which are identified by Henry as being essential to (...) phenomenality. The single answer to the question of phenomenology is ‘first givenness’ or ‘Life’, as both are identical. Christianity speaks of God as Life, which is frequently referred to by Henry. The theological interest in this topic is therefore the question of whether God is, in the end, Henry's answer to the question of phenomenology. This article explores the way in which Henry cites from the Bible and expresses theological notions. It concludes that the Christian articulation of God as Life, and its approach to truth, are essentially phenomenological. Thus, for Henry, ‘God’ is not the answer to the question of phenomenology, rather the Christian notion of God as Life indicates the correct phenomenological answer. (shrink)

In recent years, the metaphysics of the young Leibniz has deservedly attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Among others, the collection of articles edited by Stuart Brown, Antognazza’s admirable book about Leibniz’ views on the relation between theology and philosophy and Philipp Beeley’s rich work on Leibniz’ physics have all significantly helped us understanding the complex mind of the young Leibniz. Nevertheless, no one has hitherto dared to face the huge task of giving a synthetic account of Leibniz’ metaphysics (...) in the period between 1661 and 1686, the year that Leibniz himself indicates as the start of his mature thought. With a courage nicely expressed by the rodeo yell of her book’s dedication, Mer cer plunges into the chaotic mass of notes, scribbles, letters and other materials of these years, especially of the pre-Hanover period, which fortunately are now all available in the Akademie Ausgabe. Mercer’s book is thus a reminder how important the painstaking philological work of the German editorial team actually is. Mercer’s work is the best possible proof that the thick Akademie volumes contain much more than just some moderately interesting additions to Leibniz’ known works. On the basis of an enormously diverse range of materials, Mercer offers a powerful image of the metaphysics of the young Leibniz that will doubtlessly affect our interpretation of the late and canonical Leibniz too. (shrink)

This article reviews the Dutch societal debate on euthanasia/assisted suicide in dementia cases, specifically Alzheimer's disease. It discusses the ethical and practical dilemmas created by euthanasia requests in advance directives and the related inconsistencies in the Dutch legal regulations regarding euthanasia/assisted suicide. After an initial focus on euthanasia in advanced dementia, the actual debate concentrates on making euthanasia/assisted suicide possible in the very early stages of dementia. A review of the few known cases of assisted suicide of people with so-called (...) early dementia raises the question why requests for euthanasia/assisted suicide from patients in the early stage of Alzheimer's disease are virtually non-existent. In response to this question two explanations are offered. It is concluded that, in addition to a moral discussion on the limits of anticipatory choices, there is an urgent need to develop research into the patient's perspective with regard to medical treatment and care-giving in dementia, including end-of-life care. (shrink)

This article reviews the Dutch societal debate on euthanasia/assisted suicide in dementia cases, specifically Alzheimer's disease. It discusses the ethical and practical dilemmas created by euthanasia requests in advance directives and the related inconsistencies in the Dutch legal regulations regarding euthanasia/assisted suicide. After an initial focus on euthanasia in advanced dementia, the actual debate concentrates on making euthanasia/assisted suicide possible in the very early stages of dementia. A review of the few known cases of assisted suicide of people with so-called (...) early dementia raises the question why requests for euthanasia/assisted suicide from patients in the early stage of Alzheimer's disease are virtually non-existent. In response to this question two explanations are offered. It is concluded that, in addition to a moral discussion on the limits of anticipatory choices, there is an urgent need to develop research into the patient's perspective with regard to medical treatment and care-giving in dementia, including end-of-life care. (shrink)

In recent years, the metaphysics of the young Leibniz has deservedly attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Among others, the collection of articles edited by Stuart Brown, Antognazza’s admirable book about Leibniz’ views on the relation between theology and philosophy and Philipp Beeley’s rich work on Leibniz’ physics have all significantly helped us understanding the complex mind of the young Leibniz. Nevertheless, no one has hitherto dared to face the huge task of giving a synthetic account of Leibniz’ metaphysics (...) in the period between 1661 and 1686, the year that Leibniz himself indicates as the start of his mature thought. With a courage nicely expressed by the rodeo yell of her book’s dedication, Mer cer plunges into the chaotic mass of notes, scribbles, letters and other materials of these years, especially of the pre-Hanover period, which fortunately are now all available in the Akademie Ausgabe. Mercer’s book is thus a reminder how important the painstaking philological work of the German editorial team actually is. Mercer’s work is the best possible proof that the thick Akademie volumes contain much more than just some moderately interesting additions to Leibniz’ known works. On the basis of an enormously diverse range of materials, Mercer offers a powerful image of the metaphysics of the young Leibniz that will doubtlessly affect our interpretation of the late and canonical Leibniz too. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how organizations’ impression management evolves in response to rising stakeholder pressures regarding organizations’ corporate responsibility initiatives. We conducted a comparative case study analysis over a period of 13 years for two organizations—Exxon and BP—that took extreme initial stances on climate change. We found that as stakeholder pressures rose, their IM tactics unfolded in four phases: advocating the initial stance, sensegiving to clarify the initial stance, image repairing, and adjusting the stance. Taken together, our analysis of (...) IM over these four phases provides three key insights about the evolution of IM in the face of rising pressures. First, when faced with stakeholder pressures, it seems that organizations do not immediately resort to conforming but tend to give in gradually when pressures increase and start to come from relatively powerful stakeholders. Second, evolution of IM seems to be characterized by path dependence, i.e., even as organizations’ positions evolve, they continue to show their conviction in their initial positions and try to convey that their subsequent positions flow logically from the previous ones. Finally, IM involves navigation between symbolism and substance, and companies tend to strive toward harmonizing their symbolic and substantive actions as stakeholder pressure increases. (shrink)

This article advocates and explores a human rights method of ethics as a contribution to the process of moral decision-making. A human rights approach is richer than is often understood and can offer a practically relevant and emotionally well-grounded framework that is helpful for linking local situations and global concerns.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 122-123 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes Dennis Des Chene. Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 181. Cloth, $39.95. Confronted with the thousandth "entirely new" interpretation of the Cartesian mind-body union, one sometimes wonders whether anything new can in fact (...) be said about the great Descartes. Once again, after his invaluable and prize-winning Physiologia (Cornell University Press, 1996), Des Chene proves that a serious historian, with a keen awareness of historical context, actually can. Unlike the usual accounts of Descartes's animal-machine, Des Chene does not concentrate on the all too familiar set of questions whether or not machines can think, sense, etc. Instead, Des Chene interprets the machine-metaphor the way Descartes meant it to be, viz. as a model for explaining animal and human physiology instead of (cognitive) psychology. Des Chene's central claim is that the Traité de l'Homme and Descartes's later (unpublished) physiological tracts are an attempt to replace scholastic commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima, itself discussed in this book's companion volume Life's Forms (Cornell University Press, 2000). Spirits and Clocks investigates how Descartes's general mechanistic program (outlined in Physiologia) is applied to the field of animal and human life. This project in itself had a far more lasting influence than Descartes's specific and often bizarre physiological explanations. Therefore, Des Chene rightly concentrates on the philosophical aspects of Descartes's general project of "mechanizing" physiology. His short but illuminating book studies a wide range of ontological, epistemological, and even aesthetic aspects of the machine metaphor and, although this is not the express goal [End Page 122] of the book, it also sheds new light on the epistemology and metaphysics of the Meditations. In this sense Spirits and Clocks is not only a significant contribution to the history of biology but first and foremost a must for historians of philosophy.Des Chene explains that the use of a machine model in physiology was neither new nor entirely unacceptable to the Aristotelians. What is new is Descartes's use of it. His mechanistic understanding of the body as a machine is incompatible with accepting the soul as the source of life and the principle of all our physiological and psychological capacities, while Aristotelians had no problem in accepting both the soul and certain machine models of the body. (Aristotle himself uses the lever to explain animal motion.) Des Chene sketches Descartes's attempt to explain all physiological processes by means of the physical properties of material parts that obey the general laws of motion, excluding all talk of ends. In this context, the use of illustrations is of considerable importance: though they cannot per se convey a denial of a "soul-model" of physiology, they strongly suggest that the (mechanistically understood) machine is all there is to say about the functions of human and animal bodies. Des Chene offers an interesting, albeit sometimes somewhat speculative and ahistoric, discussion of the aesthetic aspects of the machine model.As Des Chene showed in his Physiologia, the rejection of teleology is one of the main goals of Descartes's physics. However, although Descartes may be successful in rejecting the view that stones fall down from some kind of desire to reach their final destiny, he is less successful in denying that the eye is meant for seeing (and hence for our self-preservation). Des Chene gives a truly fascinating account of the limits of Descartes's denial of teleology in physiology. This includes questions about the physical unity of the human body: how can I explain why I have this body and how can I even identify this body as a unit without invoking ends? Similarly, Descartes takes the healthy, "normally" functioning body as the norm of his investigations. But, again, can he do so without acknowledging some form of teleology? Descartes's answer in most of these cases is that the final goals... (shrink)

Results of two survey studies are presented. It is shown that attitudes of the public about "technology in general" are not stable and can easily be affected by how the subject is introduced. Eight areas of technology are compared on the basis of empirical relations in attitudinal judgments, in attribute ratings, in self- assigned importance weights of attributes, and in importance of reference groups and persons. On the basis of similarities in these four kinds of judgments, three clusters of technology (...) areas were identified: a cluster of modern reproductive technologies, an information cluster containing automation, computer, and communication technologies, and a cluster containing nuclear energy and military technology. The attitude toward "technology in general" can not be considered as an aggregation of attitudes toward these areas of technology: The relations between general attitude and specific attitudes are only moderate to negligible. (shrink)

Cees Leijenhorst’s essay is largely a response to two articles. The first is by Edwin Curley, I Durst not Write so Boldly or How to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise, Scienza e Politica ed. by P. Bostreghi , 497-593. Leijenhorst goes through several of Curley’s arguments to show that the supposed atheism which is the logical outcome of Hobbes’s remarks, as read by Curley, in fact do not lead to that conclusion. The second article is Agostino Lupoli’s ‘Fluidismo’ e Corporeal (...) Deity nella Filosofia Naturale di Thomas Hobbes: A Proposito dell’hobbesiano ‘Dio delle Cause’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 54 n. s. : 573-610.) In broad agreement with Lupoli, Leijenhorst refines and somewhat revises the latter’s arguments to show greater consistency and continuity of thought in Hobbes. He concludes, There does not appear to exist any reason for doubting Hobbes’s sincerity with respect to his outspoken endorsement of the orthodox Christian creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)

Our actions are continuously shaped by what we perceive. When a hammer is picked up, this is done in one smooth movement, the hand adjusting in anticipation to the scale and position of the target. But the opposite is also true: what we perceive is determined by our actions. We tend to see those properties of the world which are meaningful for our everyday actions. Interpretation figures in normal seeing: we see an object as a hammer, a person as a (...) friend. (shrink)

This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company’s CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company’s products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, a (...) poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences. (shrink)

In the following ethnography of the California Coalition of Women Prisoners (CCWP), who exist at the forefront of feminist prison activism, I address canonical feminist debates focused on the relationship between subjectivity, experience, knowledge, and power by closely following an explicit attempt at political reform by and for women. I argue that feminist prison activists' attempts to reform the American prison system reveal why feminist theorists must remain committed to a specific, contextual, and localized analysis of the prospects for political (...) empowerment. (shrink)

Nos últimos 150 anos a comunicação global tem sido uma preocupação importante na agenda da comunidade internacional. A comunicação global nos anos 90 confrontou a arena política mundial com interesses complexos e controversos, que demandaram soluções por meio de negociações multilaterais. Um importante desafio para o século XXI é a inclusão de atores da sociedade civil global nesse processo de negociação.

Causality is without doubt one of the main topics of Hobbes's philosophy. Quite justifiably, F. Brandt stated that Chapters 9 and 10 of De Corpore, which expound Hobbes's doctrine of causality, are the most crucial ones ever written by Hobbes. According to Hobbes the quest for causes is the quintessence of all philosophical inquiry. "Philosophy is such knowledge of effects or appearances, as we acquire by true ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their causes or generation. And again, (...) of such causes or generations as may be from knowing first their effects." Although this definition as such is quite peculiar and fraught with difficulties, the description of philosophy in terms of causal knowledge is in itself rather traditional. Hobbes himself admits that he follows the Aristotelian dictum scire est per causas scire. However, although Hobbes agrees with the Aristotelians that knowledge bears a causal character, he fundamentally disagrees with them as to "what he saw to be genuinely causative." Hobbes's doctrine of causes may be seen as a systematic attempt to discard the scholastic view on causality and replace it with strict mechanistic explanatory principles. Therefore, Hobbes's theory of causality can only be understood properly if we put it against its scholastic background, which is the line of interpretation followed in the present article. It will be made clear that Hobbes's relation to scholasticism is rather complex, ranging from downright rejection to the adoption of terminological distinctions as well as of specific arguments and doctrines. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of philosophical essays on freedom and tolerance in the Netherlands. It explores liberal freedom and its limits in areas such as freedom of speech, public reason, sexual morality, euthanasia, drugs policy, and minority rights. The book takes Dutch practices as exemplary test cases for the principled discussions on these subjects from the perspective of political liberalism. Indeed, the Netherlands may be viewed as a social laboratory in human tolerance. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, (...) Holland took the lead in a global emancipation process towards a society based on equal freedom. It was the first country to legalize euthanasia, soft drugs and gay marriage. In the final sections, the book examines the question of whether the political murders on the politician Pim Fortuyn and the film director Theo van Gogh, the reactions to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film Submission, as well as the success of the populist politician Geert Wilders are signs of the end of Dutch tolerance. Although it recognizes that the political climate has taken a conservative turn, the book shows that the Netherlands still shows remarkable tolerance. (shrink)

In order to study “physics before Newton,” it is necessary to have at least a general idea what the terms ‘physics’ or ‘natural philosophy’ actually mean in a medieval and early modern context. Now, defining the medieval and early modern usage of the terms ‘physics’, ‘natural philosophy’, and their equivalents is no small beer. So far, the only scholar to have found the courage to embark upon this enterprise is Andrew Cunningham. He tries to make the case that natural philosophy (...) was an essentially “God oriented,” hence inherently theological discipline. Natural philosophy was “about God and His creation.” It did not promote knowledge of nature as a goal in itself, but as a means to acquire insight into God and His creation. According to Cunningham, this fundamentally religious agenda still dominated even Isaac Newton’s Principia Philosophiae Naturalis Mathematica, as is testified by passages such as the famous General Scholium to the second edition. (shrink)

The debate on mind–brain relationships has been centered on issues of free will. I investigate the debate and conclude that the neurosciences neither have compelling methodological, ontological, theoretical reasons, nor empirical reasons to reject the notion of free will. At the same time, I concede that the issue is highly contentious, both in science and society. The problem resides in the clash between scientific notions of the brain and pre-scientific notions of mind. I therefore propose to look at mind–brain relationships (...) on a more sound, and uncontroversial, empirical basis, which can be found in psychophysics. I discuss two instances in which the content of a psychophysical experience, and its dynamics, correspond to brain dynamics. In one case, the correspondence is a one:one type-identity, in the other it is a case of radical multiple instantiation: several radically different types of brain activity give rise to the same perceptual dynamics. These two examples illustrate that although type identity is possible, it may often be highly contextualized. Mind–brain relationships are therefore more likely to be conquered one by one rather than established wholesale. (shrink)

Hoe raciaal is het liberale sociale contract? Classical liberal philosophers such as Locke and Kant are accused of philosophical racism: their theories are said to be inherently racist. Contemporary political philosopher John Rawls is also under fire. According to Charles Mills, Rawls’ model of the social contract involves a racial contract. It is constructed from a one-sided white perspective: Rawls’ theory of justice is silent about the fundamental injustice that marks the modern world: racial injustice. This article addresses questions such (...) as: to what extent is Mills’ critique correct? Is liberalism inherently racist? Can the social contract be emancipated? (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's doctrine of space is here considered as an example of the Nachzuirkung of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophy in seventeenth-century mechanistic science. Hobbes's doctrine of space can be reconstructed in terms of his intensive dialogue with late scholasticism, as represented in the works of several important Jesuit authors. Although he presents his concept of space as an alternative to the Aristotelian notion of place, there are some remarkable similarities between Hobbes's alternative notion of space and the concept (...) of spatium imaginarium, found in the Jesuit commentaries. While Hobbes adopts many scholastic elements, he employs these to his own purposes. Thus, on the one hand, this article does not so much challenge Hobbes's "modernity", but rather tries to put it in its proper perspective. On the other hand, it tries to show the vitality and importance of Jesuit natural philosophy in non- or even anti-Aristotelian contexts. (shrink)

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Tsuda's article suggests several plausible concepts of neurodynamic representation and processing, with a thoughtful discussion of their neurobiological grounding and formal properties. However, Tsuda's theory leads to a holistic view of brain functions and to the controversial conclusion that the “binding problem” is a pseudo-problem. By contrast, we stress the role of chaotic patterns in solving the binding problem, in terms of flexible temporal coding of visual scenes through graded and intermittent synchrony.