In De Anima 2.4, Aristotle claims that nutritive soul encompasses two distinct biological functions: nutrition and reproduction. We challenge a pervasive interpretation which posits ‘nutrients’ as the correlative object of the nutritive capacity. Instead, the shared object of nutrition and reproduction is that which is nourished and reproduced: the ensouled body, qua ensouled. Both functions aim at preserving this object, and thus at preserving the form, life, and being of the individual organism. In each case, we show how Aristotle’s detailed (...) biological analysis supports this ontological argument. (shrink)

Does Aristotle offer a definition of the soul? In fact, he rejects the possibility of defining the soul univocally. Because “life” is a homonymous concept, so too is “soul”. Given the specific causal role that Aristotle envisages for form and essence, the soul requires multiple different definitions to capture how it functions as a cause in each form of life. Aristotle suggests demonstrations can be given which express these causal definitions; I reconstruct these demonstrations in the paper.

Capacity evaluation has become a widely used assessment device in clinical practice to determine whether patients have the cognitive ability to render their own medical decisions. Such evaluations, which might be better thought of as “capacity challenges,” are generally thought of as benign tools used to facilitate care. This paper proposes that such challenges should be reconceptualized as significant medical interventions with their own set of risks, side effects, and potentially deleterious consequences. As a result, a cost–benefit analysis should be (...) implemented prior to imposing such capacity challenges, and efforts should be made to minimize such challenges in situations where they are unlikely to alter the course of treatment. (shrink)

High-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation is used to treat some advanced malignancies. It is a traumatic procedure, with a high complication rate and significant mortality. ASCT patients and their carers draw on many sources of information as they seek to understand the procedure and its consequences. Some seek information from beyond orthodox medicine. Alternative beliefs and practices may conflict with conventional understanding of the theory and practice of ASCT, and ‘contested understandings’ might interfere with patient adherence to the (...) strict and demanding protocols required for successful ASCT.The present study, conducted in Sydney, Australia, examines narrative-style interviews with 10 sequentially recruited ASCT patients and nine of their carers conducted at the time of transplant and three months later. Transcripts were read for instances of mention of alternative advice, and for instances of contested understanding of information relevant to the transplant.Patients and carer pairs expressed closely concordant views about alternative advice. Five pairs were consulting alternative practitioners. Contested understanding was expressed in four domains—understandings of the transplant itself and its underlying theory, of the relationship between the components of the ‘transplant’, of the nature and role of stem cells, and of beliefs about bodily function and life-style. Contested understandings of the transplant treatment were expressed as predominantly personal interpretations of orthodox informationPatients and carers seemed to recognise that alternative and conventional systems were discordant, yet they were able to separate the two, and adhere to each practice without prejudicing their medical treatment. A single case of late, post-transplant repudiation of Western medicine is discussed to emphasise some of the possible determinants of dissonance when it does occur. (shrink)

The genus problem of populism presents one of the most vexing conceptual questions across the social sciences: Some theorists believe that populism is nothing more than an assembly of discursive patterns, while others maintain that populism is a strategy to gain political power. Then there are those that argue that populism is a thin ideology that lacks a coherent set of guiding principles. The paper intervenes in this debate in two ways: First, it offers a methodological apparatus for evaluating and (...) developing contested concepts such as populism. Second, it puts forward and defends the claim that populism can be fruitfully understood as a coherent ideology that rests on four foundational principles. These principles, I will argue, are necessary for explaining the paradigmatic beliefs and dispositions exhibited by exponents of populism. One of the key characteristics of populism, on the account developed in this paper, is its peculiar epistemic stance. (shrink)

In this book, Christopher F. Zurn shows why a normative theory of deliberative democratic constitutionalism yields the best understanding of the legitimacy of constitutional review. He further argues that this function should be institutionalized in a complex, multi-location structure including not only independent constitutional courts but also legislative and executive self-review that would enable interbranch constitutional dialogue and constitutional amendment through deliberative civic constitutional forums. Drawing on sustained critical analyses of diverse pluralist and deliberative democratic arguments concerning the legitimacy of (...) judicial review, Zurn concludes that constitutional review is necessary to ensure the procedural requirements for legitimate democratic self-rule through deliberative cooperation. Claiming that pure normative theory is not sufficient to settle issues of institutional design, Zurn draws on empirical and comparative research to propose reformed institutions of constitutional review that encourage the development of fundamental law as an ongoing project of democratic deliberation and decision. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the distribution and interpretation of a non-temporal use of the future tense in Italian, called ‘presumptive’ or ‘epistemic’, which we label here PF. We first distinguish PF from its closest modal relatives, namely epistemic necessity/possibility/likelihood modals, as well as weak necessity modals. We then propose an account of PF in declaratives and interrogatives that treats it as a special comparative subjective likelihood modal, and test its empirical predictions. A theoretical lesson drawn from this detailed study (...) of the semantics of PF is that semantics needs sharpened theoretical tools to be able to capture the fine-grained distinctions languages make when it comes to signaling modulated epistemic commitment to a proposition. (shrink)

In discussing whether legal systems are necessarily coercive, legal philosophers usually appeal to thought experiments involving angels or other morally driven beings who need no coercion to organise their social lives. Such appeals have invited criticism. Critics have not only challenged the relevance of such thought experiments to our understanding of legal systems; they have also argued that, contrary to the intuitions of most legal philosophers, the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ would not hold that there is law in a (...) society of angels because the view that law is necessarily coercive ‘enjoys widespread support among laypersons’. This is obviously an empirical claim. Critics, however, never systematically polled the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’. We boarded that bus. This article discusses findings from five empirical studies on the relationship between law and coercion. (shrink)

It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance (...) is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical. (shrink)

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics offers a complete introduction to the fundamental tools and concepts of analysis that PPE students need to study social and political issues. This fully updated and expanded edition examines the core methodologies of rational choice, strategic analysis, norms, and collective choice that serve as the bedrocks of political philosophy and the social sciences. The textbook is ideal for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and nonspecialists looking to familiarize themselves with PPE's approaches.

What is personhood? What do we want it to be? Blumenthal-Barby (2024) offers an answer to the first question: personhood is an unhelpful, harmful, and pernicious concept in the bioethical setting....

Avant même d'être condamné pour "contestation de crime contre l'humanité" au tournant du siècle, Roger Garaudy était déjà marginalisé dans les champs intellectuel et politique français. Après avoir incarné la résistance au néostalinisme dans le Parti communiste, le philosophe qui fut longtemps l'interlocuteur privilégié de Jean-Paul Sartre au sein du PCF en fut spectaculairement exclu en 1970 pour s'être opposé aux Soviétiques qui venaient d'écraser le Printemps de Prague. Celui que l'historiographie du communisme retient plus volontiers comme le "stalinien modèle", (...) qu'il fut en effet dans l'après-guerre, était pourtant devenu, malgré sa proximité avec Thorez, un critique de plus en plus affirmé du stalinisme après les révélations du XXe Congrès du Parti communiste de l'Union soviétique (PCUS) en 1956 et un acteur majeur de l'aggiornamento du PCF. Son combat pour rénover le communisme français et son goût précoce pour l'écologie et le dialogue des civilisations en firent quelque temps une figure respectée du progressisme français, mais celui qui répétait que le Socialisme était condamné s'il refusait de s'ouvrir à la "transcendance" vit son étoile pâlir après 1970 au point qu'il devint un intellectuel illégitime, celui que l'on condamne sans l'avoir lu. Ce livre explique ce parcours singulier et les raisons de cette "descente aux enfers" de l'ancien philosophe du Bureau politique, avant sa condamnation ultime."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Char et al. question the extent and degree to which machine learning applications should be treated as exceptional by ethicists. It is clear that of the suite of ethical issues raised by mac...

The question concerning the meaning of life is important, but it immediately confronts the present authors with insurmountable obstacles from a philosophical standpoint, as it would require us to define not only what we hold to be life, but what we hold to be meaning in addition, requiring us to do both in a properly researched context. We unconditionally surrender to that challenge. Instead, we offer a vernacular, armchair approach to life’s origin and meaning, with some layman’s thoughts on the (...) meaning of origins as viewed from the biologist’s standpoint. One can observe that biologists generally approach the concept of biological meaning in the context of evolution. This is the basis for the broad resonance behind Dobzhansky’s appraisal that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Biologists try to understand living things in the historical context of how they arose, without giving much thought to the definition of what life or living things are, which for a biologist is usually not an interesting question in the practical context of daily dealings with organisms. Do humans generally understand life’s meaning in the context of history? If we consider the problem of life’s origin, the question of what constitutes a living thing becomes somewhat more acute for the biologist, though not more answerable, because it is inescapable that there was a time when there were no organisms on Earth, followed by a time when there were, the latter time having persisted in continuity to the present. This raises the question of where, in that transition, chemicals on Earth became alive, requiring, in turn, a set of premises for how life arose in order to conceptualize the problem in relation to organisms we know today, including ourselves, which brings us to the point of this paper: In the same way that cultural narratives for origins always start with a setting, scientific narratives for origins also always start with a setting, a place on Earth or elsewhere where we can imagine what happened for the sake of structuring both the problem and the narrative for its solution. This raises the question of whether scientific origins settings convey meaning to humans in that they suggest to us from what kind of place and what kinds of chemicals we are descended, that is, to which inanimate things we are most closely related. (shrink)

The ability of the mind to conceptualize what is not present is essential. It allows us to reason counterfactually about what might have happened had events unfolded differently or had another course of action been taken. It allows us to think about what might happen – to perform 'Gedankenexperimente' (thought experiments) – before we act. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating this ability are poorly understood. We suggest that the frontopolar cortex (FPC) keeps track of and evaluates alternative choices (...) (what we might have done), whereas the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC) compares simulations of possible future scenarios (what we might do) and evaluates their reward values. Together, these brain regions support the construction of suppositional scenarios. (shrink)

Natural law theories affirm that it belongs to the nature of law to be apt to promote the common good or do something similar. I defend a weak version of this thesis according to which part of what constitutes something as a nondefective central case of a posited law is that it is apt to promote the common good. Just as the rules of Pictionary require the drawing player to design her drawing to reveal the word in play, the rules (...) of a central case of a legal system require lawmakers to design laws to promote the common good. Therefore, just as a Pictionary drawing that is inapt to reveal the word in play is defective, a central case of a posited law that is inapt to promote the common good is defective. (shrink)

Determinism which denies freedom of action is a common philosophical view. Is the action of such determinists incompatible with Kant’s claim that a rationally willed being “cannot act otherwise than under the idea of freedom” [G 4, 448]? In my paper, I examine Kant’s argument for this claim at the beginning of the Third Section of the Groundwork and argue that it amounts to the assertion that one cannot act while being aware of being guided by invalid principles. Belief in (...) determinism does not necessarily amount to such awareness. A structurally similar argument based on the contrast between deliberation and prediction is examined and similarly found wanting. (shrink)

This article describes the work of negotiating and reinterpreting "standard" protocols and criteria at the level of local practice, using the example of the procurement of human cadaver organs for transplantation. The tension between efforts to starulardize and globalize biomedical science, on the one hand, and fitting these efforts into everyday practices and understandings of practitioners, on the other, results in new constructions of medical knowledge about bodies and persons.

The epistemic value of a political procedure—such as democracy or a civil trial system—depends on how well it performs in arriving at decisions that are correct by some independent standard. A core assumption in the literature on epistemic democracy is that boosting the epistemic value of such a procedure makes it better overall. Even though this assumption seems innocuous (and hence has not been discussed in much detail), we will argue that it is not beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. (...) For it is possible to increase the epistemic value of a political procedure in ways that give rise to egalitarian objections. (shrink)

What are the relations among wisdom, virtue, and expertise? Wisdom can be defined broadly as knowledge about how to live well. At the least, the task of living well requires some conception of what it means for a life to be _good_ as well as the knowledge and skill needed to actualize the good in one’s spheres of life. While this idea is easy to assert, it is difficult to examine empirically. This is because the scientific study of wisdom immediately (...) runs up against the challenge of the fact/value dichotomy. While psychological science seeks to study “what is”, the “wisdom” of any given decision, act or person is something that can only be assessed against some conception of the good. Thus, the study of wisdom calls on us to seek ways to bridge the fact/value dichotomy. In this paper, we pursue this goal. We suggest that the study of wisdom requires the integration of at least two forms of inquiry: psychological-empirical analyses of the development of knowledge and skills, and philosophical-conceptual inquiries into what it means to live a good life. In elaborating this approach, we first differentiate the concepts of _wisdom_, _wise decision-making_, and _wisdom-supporting skills_. Then we describe conceptual and _empirical_ tools for assessing the development of wisdom-supporting skills as well as an _evaluative_ framework for assessing the “wisdom” of any given act of decision-making. To illustrate these ideas, we report the results of a study demonstrating how the capacity for wise decision-making can be cultivated through participation in a program devoted to fostering the development of wisdom-supported skills. (shrink)

v. 1. Eustratius on Book I and the anonymous scholia on Books II, III, and IV. Critical ed. with an introductory study / by H. Paul F. Mercken.

Examples of hypotheses about the number of planets are frequently used to introduce the topic of (actual) truthlikeness but never analyzed in detail. In this paper we first deal with the truthlikeness of singular quantity hypotheses, with reference to several ‘the number of planets’ examples, such as ‘The number of planets is 10 _versus_ 10 billion (instead of 8).’ For the relevant ratio scale of quantities we will propose two, strongly related, normalized metrics, the proportional metric and the (simplest and (...) hence favorite) fractional metric, to express e.g. the distance from a hypothetical number to the true number of planets, i.e. the distance between quantities. We argue that they are, in view of the examples and plausible conditions of adequacy, much more appropriate, than the standardly suggested, normalized absolute difference, metric. Next we deal with disjunctive hypotheses, such as ‘The number of planets is between 7 and 10 inclusive is much more truthlike than between 1 and 10 billion inclusive.’ We compare three (clusters of) general ways of dealing with such hypotheses, one from Ilkka Niiniluoto, one from Pavel Tichý and Graham Oddie, and a trio of ways from Theo Kuipers. Using primarily the fractional metric, we conclude that all five measures can be used for expressing the distance of disjunctive hypotheses from the actual truth, that all of them have their strong and weak points, but that (the combined) one of the trio is, in view of principle and practical considerations, the most plausible measure. (shrink)

Against those who question that ethical character should be considered as convincing factor of the human constitution based on empirical reasons, Obiora F. Ike gives good arguments, based on the agenda of the human development and education across the planet, to reaffirm some truth about character formation. There should be no question that simplifications, related to some sort of skepticism over the moral character, are at best purely theoretical fanciness, at worst irresponsible. Passivity in a world made of urgent challenges (...) around education and economic inequalities is not acceptable. Our need to believe, to trust and to act in the real world, lead us to praise some dogmatism on the ground assumption that we act accordingly to our [moral] character. Education has shown us the value of developing moral character. Cross-situational consistency of integrity needs to be shared across cultures, against the impression that it opens a room for abuses, as integrity is also a social construct. (shrink)

In Christian books today readers can find dozens of spiritual practices. One resource of the Protestant tradition, however, that has largely been forgotten is the Puritan practice of conference. This article describes how for the English Puritans conference exemplified the importance of communal spiritual life, then considers applications for the contemporary church. Conference refers to intentional conversation among believers about spiritual matters. Conference particularly expresses the value of Christian community and the need for the body of Christ to function together (...) on the journey of faith. Understanding this practice not only illuminates the past but also offers valuable insights for the church today. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

During the early 19th century, a peculiarly systematic way of organizing books emerged in Germany. This systematization, which purported to be a rational organization of subject matter, was an outgrowth of the philosophy of Hegel. This article attempts to outline Hegel's organizational practice. It argues that Hegel's encyclopedia was a reaction against the Enlightenment encyclopedia, and that it attempted to restore the systematic mindset of pre-modern reference books. Yet it did this, not in a straightforward fashion, but by developing a (...) method for organizing material that both stresses the interconnectedness of knowledge and promises to be highly scalable. In its attempt to trace the Hegelian organizational method, this article revisits and calls attention to a forgotten work in Hegel scholarship by Michael John Petry, who was the first writer to seriously stress the importance of classification in Hegel's work. This article is an attempt to demonstrate that Hegelianism and information organization can be brought into fruitful and mutually beneficial dialogue. (shrink)

Epistemic Logic: 5 Questions is a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent scholars in the field. We hear their views on the field, the aim, the scopes, the future direction of research and how their work fits in these respects.

Friedrich Nietzsche war kein Anarchist. Trotzdem weckten seine Ideen ein starkes Interesse bei Schlusselfiguren der anarchistischen Bewegung ab den 1890er-Jahren. Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman und andere reflektierten uber die Chancen und die Gefahren, die jene Ideen fur ihre Politik enthalten. Hitzige Deutungskampfe, etwa uber den Willen zur Macht oder den Status von Frauen in Nietzsches Werken, entlockten selbst den vehementesten Kritikern wie Peter Kropotkin noch produktive Impulse zur Weiterentwicklung der eigenen Theorien. In jungerer Zeit hat sich eine neuere Stromung, der (...) "Postanarchismus", auf Nietzsche berufen, ohne allerdings die historischen Varianten des "nietzscheanischen Anarchismus" zu berucksichtigen. Dies stellt das Innovationspotenzial des Postanarchismus infrage. Das Buch nimmt eine transnationale Perspektive ein und dokumentiert erstmalig die anarchistische Rezeption Nietzsches in Deutschland, Grossbritannien und den USA innerhalb ihrer jeweiligen historischen Kontexte. (shrink)

During the 1890s, animal development became associated with glandular activity, with profound implications for pediatric nosology and treatment. The significance of this endocrinological turn of developmental physiology and pathophysiology in part hinges on an often-overlooked continuity with ubiquitous early modern medical thought concerning semen as a recrementitious (reabsorbed) nutrient or stimulant. Mid-19th-century interests in adult sexual physiology were increasingly nerve-centered and antihumoral. Scattered empirical, particularly veterinarian, interests in gonadal developmental functions failed to moderate these explanatory trends. While Brown-Séquard’s rejuvenation experiments (...) still offered no clear starting point for a developmental endocrinology, in 1892 Gaston Variot and Paul Bezançon more explicitly deduced a testicular developmental endocrinological function from various observations on testicular ectopy and a local form of animal “demi-castration.” Ensuing interest in the thyroid, the thymus and in the testicles led to various working conceptions of their respective and putatively reciprocal developmental properties, including the idea of a thyroid–testis axis. From 1896, the pubertal affliction of chlorosis became the subject of multiple opotherapeutic approaches, providing an experimental basis for theories of ovarian internal secretion. Polyglandular therapy, piloted for divergent developmental conditions, remained routine until the 1930s despite the biological inefficacy of many endocrine products. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pairing breaths:Rabah Ameur-Zaïmech's Terminal Sud (2019)Marion Froger (bio)Translated by David F. BellAsphyxiaNever had I felt such a sense of suffocation watching a film by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche.1 The poisoned atmosphere of Terminal Sud (2019) recalls the atmosphere of the Algerian War (1955-1962) and that of the decade of darkness (1991-2002) in that country. The filmmaker chose not to make a historical film, however, but rather a dystopia that fuses together (...) periods and places. The story appears to be contemporary, in a country bathed in the colors of southern France, apparently in the grip of all the violence that French and Algerian memories are nowhere near forgetting.2 Bandits wearing combat uniforms, policemen wearing outfits sporting an acronym that strangely resembles one used by Islamist Algerian groups,3 and generals evoking the French putschists of 1961 all fight against each other—ransoming, threatening, kidnapping, killing, and torturing the local population. Meanwhile, out in the countryside, guerrillas (maquisards4) try to care for their dying leader, like North African freedom fighters (fellagas) were doing before them, and this in turn evokes French Resistance fighters in the 1940s. The film's work on confused memories, which, according to Thierry Kuntzel, is related to the condensation, overdetermination, and displacement of dreamwork, transforms being out of breath into a symptom that hounds the doctor, played by Ramzy Bédia ("Inhale…Exhale…Inhale again…Hold your breath…Exhale"), a state of the world in the form of a trap that threatens to suffocate him—and launches the quest for a filmic poetics of calm through the pairing of breaths.Peeling façades with tightly closed doors, lowered metal shop shutters, narrow and tense streets: the doctor, his wife Hazia, and their family slip outside in fear of kidnapping and gunfire, climb up stairs breathing heavily, anxiously await by the window, their bodies obscured in starkly contrasting shadows cast by glaring light, hug each other with endless sighs. As they share their grief, they have barely enough breath left to sing to the memory of someone who has disappeared,5 as if after an argument, [End Page 244] when everything has been said and all that remains is a strangled sob serving as last farewell.The film opens with an attack on a minivan used for public transportation: bandits, who could be soldiers, steal everything from the passengers and driver. The doctor sees his patients in a rundown hospital, treats a woman whose breathing is raucous, her voice taut with anxiety, and who speaks about the disappearance of her husband. Back home, he finds anonymous letters containing death threats and, to calm down, he searches for his breath by taking a deep drag from a cigarette and a swig of whiskey. "I can't take it any longer, I can't even stand up, I can't do anything, I'm at the end of my rope, I'm tired […] Is that what our country has become?" he confides to a friend several hours before losing, in the emergency room, his wife's brother, a journalist assassinated in front of his house. "Stay with me," he says as he runs beside the stretcher calling for help, "Breathe, breathe."The spasmodic breathing of Ramzy Bédia, provoked by the fear, effort, and pain that define his character, intensifies as the film progresses. He barely breathes in the car taking him to treat the rebel leader; he is running out of breath beside the leader's bed as we hear the death rattle and as Bédia shouts to the leader's comrades, "Give him some air, everyone get out!" Later, one of the policemen standing guard at the entrance to the hospital will be mortally wounded by a kamikaze attack and will die on the operating table despite the doctor's exhausting reparatory manipulations. Asphyxia will ultimately directly threaten the doctor after his arrest. Tied to an old bedspring, he will be tortured by electroshock,6 will attempt one last time to justify himself to a soldier who wants to know everything about the rebel leader the doctor has treated, and will nearly suffocate in his... (shrink)