To the student of the recent history of theological ideas in the West, it sometimes seems as though, of all the ‘new’ subjects that have been intro duced into theological discussion during the last hundred or so years, only two have proved to be of permanent significance. One is, of course, biblical criticism, and the other, the subject which in my University is still called ‘comparative religion’—the dispassionate study of the religions of the world as phenomena in their own right.

Here is a thoroughly updated edition of a classic in palliative medicine. Two new chapters have been added to the 1991 edition, along with a new preface summarizing where progress has been made and where it has not in the area of pain management. This book addresses the timely issue of doctor-patient relationships arguing that the patient, not the disease, should be the central focus of medicine. Included are a number of compelling patient narratives. Praise for the first edition "Well (...) written. . .should be read by everyone in medical practice or considering a career in medicine."---JAMA. "Memorable passages, important ideas, and critical analysis. This is a book that clinicians and educators should read."---New England Journal of Medicine. (shrink)

" Dr. Cassell discusses the world of the sick, the healing connection and healer's battle, the role of omnipotence in the healer's art, illness and disease, and ...

Debates concerning the relationship between Tridentine Catholicism and Catholicism after Vatican II dominate theological conversation today, particularly with regard to understandings of the Church and its engagement with the world. Current historical narratives paint ecclesiology after the Council of Trent as dominated by juridical concerns, uniformity, and institutionalism. Purportedly neglected are the spiritual, diverse, and missional aspects of the Church. This book challenges such narratives by investigating the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez's theology of ecclesial unity and catholicity. Analyzing standard as (...) well as overlooked sources of Suárez's ecclesiology, the author shows how Suárez wrestles with the new demands of his time and anticipates later ecumenical developments in twentieth-century Catholic ecclesiology. Early modern expansion prompted theologians after Trent to reckon with the ecclesial status of baptized Protestants, the Greek Orthodox, and non-believers in the New World. It further prompted reflection on the universality, or catholicity, of the Church, and how the Church's mission to the nations serves her greater unity in Christ. Throughout this exposition, the author reveals Suárez's vision of the Church to be deeply spiritual, diverse, and missional-not at the expense of the institutional, but as it's necessary and life-giving source. The Church, for Suárez, is primarily a way of life. This book explores not only Suárez's speculative ecclesiology, but how the unity and catholicity of the body of Christ is lived out in practice, that is, in the worship and works of the faithful, and, most notably, in the charism of his own religious order, the Society of Jesus. Suárez thus shows his readers what the spiritual dynamic between Christic unity and missional catholicity should look like in the Church. (shrink)

The Prudence of Love focuses upon the intersection of philosophical, theological, and psychological issues related to love. Eric Silverman defends an account of love derived from the views of Thomas Aquinas and argues that love provides numerous psychological and relational benefits that increase the lover's happiness. Furthermore, he argues that love is beneficial according to all major contemporary accounts of happiness.

Like the broom in “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” technologies take on a life of their own. To bring them under control, doctors must learn to tolerate ambiguity, resist the lure of the immediate, cease fearing uncertainty, and rechannel their response to wonder.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is currently reserved predominantly for bridging patients to a different destination therapy, but the use of ECMO as a destination therapy itself (ECMO-DT...

The theory and practice of history and its relevance to the modern world, by Britains greatest radical historian.

Medicine and ethics alike must learn properly to attend to suffering. We can never truly experience another's distress. We can, however, learn to recognize the particular purposes, values, and aesthetic responses that shape the sense of self whose integrity is threatened by pain, disease, and the mischances of life.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 63-70, January 2022.

At the conclusion of his De lege naturae apodictica methodus, a treatise on the law of nature, how it is grasped by the human mind, and how it coheres with the Decalogue, Niels Hemmingsen claims to have eschewed the use of theological sources in his argument, claiming instead to have demonstrated ‘how far reason is able to progress without the prophetic and apostolic word’. Yet the reader of the treatise will notice several citations of theologians alongside those of pagan poets (...) and philosophers. This essay demonstrates that there is less here than meets the eye, that is, that Hemmingsen quotes theologians only to buttress what one can know from natural reason or the classical tradition, even when he is discussing God, and thus he does not violate his own stated principle. (shrink)

Originalism as Faith presents a comprehensive history of the originalism debates. It shows how the doctrine is rarely used by the Supreme Court, but is employed by academics, pundits and judges to maintain the mistaken faith that the Court decides cases under the law instead of the Justices' personal values. Tracing the development of the doctrine from the founding to present day, Eric J. Segall shows how originalism is used by judges as a pretext for reaching politically desirable results. (...) The book also presents an accurate description and evaluation of the late Justice Scalia's jurisprudence and shows how he failed to practice the originalism method that he preached. This illuminating work will be of interest to lawyers, law students, undergraduates studying the Court, law professors and anyone else interested in an honest discussion and evaluation of originalism as a theory of constitutional interpretation, a political weapon, and an article of faith. (shrink)

Alexander George has put forward a novel interpretation of the Quine-Carnap debate over analyticity. George argues that Carnap's claim that there exists an analytic-synthetic distinction was held by Carnap to be empty of empirical consequences. As a result, Carnap understood his position to be empirically indistinguishable from Quine's. Although George defends his interpretation only briefly, I show that it withstands further examination and ought to be accepted. The consequences of accepting it undermine a common understanding of Quine's criticism of Carnap, (...) and I argue that it is difficult to find a perspective from which Quine can criticize Carnap in a non-question-begging way. (shrink)

Patients with a life-threatening illness can be confronted with various types of loneliness, one of which is existential loneliness (EL). Since the experience of EL is extremely disruptive, the issue of EL is relevant for the practice of end-of-life care. Still, the literature on EL has generated little discussion and empirical substantiation and has never been systematically reviewed. In order to systematically review the literature, we (1) identified the existential loneliness literature; (2) established an organising framework for the review; (3) (...) conducted a conceptual analysis of existential loneliness; and (4) discussed its relevance for end-of-life care. We found that the EL concept is profoundly unclear. Distinguishing between three dimensions of EL—as a condition, as an experience, and as a process of inner growth—leads to some conceptual clarification. Analysis of these dimensions on the basis of their respective key notions—everpresent, feeling, defence; death, awareness, difficult communication; and inner growth, giving meaning, authenticity—further clarifies the concept. Although none of the key notions are unambiguous, they may function as a starting point for the development of care strategies on EL at the end of life. (shrink)

Patients with a life-threatening illness can be confronted with various types of loneliness, one of which is existential loneliness (EL). Since the experience of EL is extremely disruptive, the issue of EL is relevant for the practice of end-of-life care. Still, the literature on EL has generated little discussion and empirical substantiation and has never been systematically reviewed. In order to systematically review the literature, we (1) identified the existential loneliness literature; (2) established an organising framework for the review; (3) (...) conducted a conceptual analysis of existential loneliness; and (4) discussed its relevance for end-of-life care. We found that the EL concept is profoundly unclear. Distinguishing between three dimensions of EL—as a condition, as an experience, and as a process of inner growth—leads to some conceptual clarification. Analysis of these dimensions on the basis of their respective key notions—everpresent, feeling, defence; death, awareness, difficult communication; and inner growth, giving meaning, authenticity—further clarifies the concept. Although none of the key notions are unambiguous, they may function as a starting point for the development of care strategies on EL at the end of life. (shrink)

Although written primarily for medical research, the Belmont principles have permeated clinical medicine as well. In fact, they are part of a broad cultural shift that has dramatically reworked the relationship between doctor and patient. In the early 1950s, medicine was about making the patient better and maintaining optimism when the patient could not get better. By the 1990s, medicine was about the treatment of specific physiological systems, as directed by the patient, but as limited by the society's concern for (...) justice. (shrink)

The legal and ethical asymmetry between honoring positive claims of conscience versus negative claims of conscience was recently analyzed by several articles in this journal. The first author of this article (ALB) identified unique but defeasible reasons against honoring positive claims of conscience, such as the greater threat they post to institutional values and institutional resources than negative claims of conscience. However, ALB wrote, when these reasons can be overcome, positive claims of conscience should enjoy the same ethical and legal (...) respect as negative claims of conscience. This article argues that the prescription of birth control by non-Roman Catholic physicians in Roman Catholic institutions is an example of a positive claim of conscience that can overcome concerns of institutional values and resources, and therefore ought to receive the same ethical respect and legal protection as negative claims of conscience. In making this argument, this article also responds to several of the thoughtful comments raised by Alberto Giubilini and Dominic Wilkinson. (shrink)

Sound is key to our lives, and is the most accessible portal to the vibratory universe. This book takes you there.

The organization of the modern police is a contingent social choice about how to engage in the process of governance when regulating public order on the street. The police are the agency authorized to act upon the state’s duty to govern in response to public emergencies. The duty to govern exists when there is some urgent social need that could be resolved by acting, and some person or institution has the resources and ability to do that act. The duty is (...) impersonal: anybody with the relevant skill set is obligated to act to address the relevant need. Problems can arise, however, when too few individuals respond or too many compete to resolve the need. A core feature of governance, then, is to create publicly recognized institutions with special authority, resources, and abilities to address the demand for public services when someone needs to step in and do something to the exclusion of ordinary members of the public. Police agencies are further characterized by various powers and duties. These powers are normative powers to change the legal status of the people with whom the police interact, rather than physical powers to use some amount of violence to coerce individuals to comply with police demands. The core powers of the police include the powers to make authoritative determinations about how to respond to an emergency, to detain individuals, and to trespass upon their person or property, along with conjoined duties to govern, to protect, and to intervene at risk to themselves. The dominant approach attempts to distinguish the police from other institutions using the police ability to use violent to respond to public emergencies. On the governance based model of the police, however, the ability to use force is simply one of the resources available to the police, and does not mark them off as different from other public governance agencies. (shrink)

Individual-level research in behavioral science can have massive impact and create system-level changes, as several recent mandates and other policy actions have shown. Although not every nudge creates long-term behavior change, defaults and other forms of choice architecture can not only change individual behavior but also reduce inequities and lead to changes in public policy and norms.

C'est à la demande d'un éditeur italien que Eric Hobsbawm a rassemblé pour la première fois ces textes consacrés au rôle et à la méthode de l'histoire. Cet historien, né en 1917 à Alexandrie, juif d'origine autrichienne émigré en Grande-Bretagne, est un spécialiste du XIXe siècle et l'auteur d'un livre célèbre sur le XXe siècle, le siècle qui, à ses yeux, a connu les plus grands bouleversements de l'Histoire. Ces réflexions ont été écrites au cours des trente dernières années (...) pour des... (shrink)

The goals of medicine -- A story about a patient with aortic stenosis -- What are facts in medicine? -- Clarify the chain of events that led to the present state : the case as a narrative -- The case of Myra Manner -- Examine your presuppositions and preconceptions -- Separate and examine the values at issue -- A question of judgment -- The patient, the doctor, and the relationship -- Observation, prognosis, and prognosticating -- Thinking in medicine -- Accepting (...) the challenge. (shrink)

Within the epistemology of the sciences, conventionalism has been the subject of regular criticism for over six decades. Critics such as W. V. Quine and Morton White, and more recently Nathan Salmon (1992), and Paul Boghossian (1996), have attacked even the most basic tenet of conventionalism, namely its claim that the truth of certain statements is fixed not by stipulation-independent facts, but by the conventions governing the meaning of those statements and their constituents.