La mayoría de la gente o no conoce a Adrienne von Speyr o piensa en ella como en una extraña figura mística que trabajó con el teólogo Hans Urs von Balthasar. Sin embargo, pocos la conocen como médica de Basilea entre los años 30 y 50 del siglo XX. Ejerció su profesión con una pasión inspirada por su fe, integrando constantemente ciencia y espiritualidad. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar esta faceta poco estudiada de la vida de Adrienne von (...) Speyr, y el modo en que su actividad médica modeló su lectura de las Escrituras, en particular del capítulo 11 del evangelio de Juan. También y sobre todo destaca la originalidad de su contribución a la ética médica de su época. (shrink)

Cet article interroge la manière dont les idéologies de la guerre froide ont participé à la construction d’un discours public sur la place sociale des femmes dans la Tanzanie nouvellement indépendante, qui se proclame socialiste et non-alignée. Pour ce faire, il retrace les références explicites et implicites au capitalisme, au socialisme et au marxisme dans les discours sur les femmes publiés dans la presse nationale swahiliphone. Ces imaginaires sont mobilisés avant tout pour construire des modèles et contre-modèles féminins, notamment les (...) figures de la paysanne travailleuse et de la séductrice urbaine. Toutefois, alors que l’Année de la femme des Nations unies (1975) encourage le gouvernement tanzanien à préciser ses politiques d’émancipation des femmes, des articles viennent repenser les liens entre cette ambition et les socialismes, mondiaux et tanzanien. (shrink)

Introduction Les femmes n'ont eu véritablement accès au pastorat dans les Églises protestantes françaises qu'en l966. Certes, une femme avait été consacrée en 1948, mais à condition de rester célibataire et sans enfants. Celles qui dans les années suivantes exercèrent exceptionnellement la fonction pastorale ne furent pas consacrées. L'accès des femmes au ministère féminin vient couronner de succès les efforts de plusieurs générations de partisans de l'égalité des sexes au sein du pro..

Introduction Les femmes n'ont eu véritablement accès au pastorat dans les Églises protestantes françaises qu'en l966. Certes, une femme avait été consacrée en 1948, mais à condition de rester célibataire et sans enfants. Celles qui dans les années suivantes exercèrent exceptionnellement la fonction pastorale ne furent pas consacrées. L'accès des femmes au ministère féminin vient couronner de succès les efforts de plusieurs générations de partisans de l'égalité des sexes au sein du pro...

Vivian Liska, German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 2017 Lazar Atanasković.

Il est courant de déplorer la perte d’un horizon politique fédérateur apte à mobiliser les membres de nos sociétés dans la poursuite de l’intérêt général. Entre autres responsables de la dissolution du lien politique et de l’affaiblissement du devoir civique, est convoquée la philosophie libérale dont la portée individualiste aurait rendu inconcevable le sacrifice des intérêts particuliers au nom de l’intérêt général. Il s’agit d’éclaircir cette critique en montrant que la reformulation moderne du bien commun par le libéralisme a surtout (...) introduit une indétermination qui rend compte de la difficulté pour ses membres à s’y rapporter. En vertu du droit de chacun à poursuivre ses propres buts, l’intérêt général peut aussi bien désigner la protection des droits que la satisfaction des intérêts particuliers. Or ces deux finalités sont non seulement distinctes mais peuvent également entrer en conflit, comme le révèlent aujourd’hui les débats autour des objectifs de l’Union européenne ou ceux entourant la protection des Biens Publics Mondiaux. Cet ouvrage se propose de montrer que cette tension est déjà présente chez les auteurs fondateurs du libéralisme qui oscillent entre la consécration d’un droit déterminant la sphère des intérêts légitimes et la préservation des intérêts dont découle le régime des droits. L’ambiguïté entre ce qui est d’intérêt général, la garantie des droits, et la poursuite de l’intérêt général sur le principe de composition des intérêts particuliers, contraint alors à redéfinir la nature de la participation politique et citoyenne, en particulier dans le cadre de nos démocraties. (shrink)

Ce texte est un ambitieux programme qui se résume en trois idées-forées. Nourri aux sources d'Aristote, de Kant et de Habermas, l'article s'offre avant tout comme un effort de reconstruction-réhabilitation du champ de la pratique face à l'invasion de la rationalité technique. Sur la base de cette reconstruction, il tente une transformation de la philosophie de la technique qui prend ici la dénomination de praktische Philosophie der Technik. Fort de ce qui précède, l'article ambitionne de déterminer les tâches de la (...) praktische Philosophie der Technik qui se réduisent à trois principales : d'abord proposer une définition systématique de la technique qui prenne en compte la spécificité de la technique contemporaine ; ensuite, élaborer une méthode d'approche du phénomène technique et enfin, évaluer la technoscience.This text is an ambitious programme which can be summed up in three idées-forces. Originated from the sources of Aristotle, Kant and Habermas, this paper is first of all an effort of reconstruction-rehabilitation of the practice field with regard to the invasion of the technical rationality. On the basis of this reconstruction, this text attempts a transformation of the philosophy of technology which we may call praktische Philosophie der Technik. In consideration of what precedes, the paper intends to determine the works of praktische Philosophie der Technik that come to three main point: first, to propose a systematic definition of the technology which really takes into account the specificity of the contemporary technology, then to work out an approach method of the technical phenomenon and finally to evaluate the technoscience. (shrink)

One of the most profound interactions that can occur between people, apologies have the power to heal humiliations, free the mind from deep-seated guilt, remove the desire for vengeance, and ultimately restore broken relationships. With On Apology, Aaron Lazare offers an eye-opening analysis of this vital interaction, illuminating an often hidden corner of the human heart. He discusses the importance of shame, guilt, and humiliation, the initial reluctance to apologize, the simplicity of the act of apologizing, the spontaneous generosity and (...) forgiveness on the part of the offended, the transfer of power and respect between two parties, and much more. Readers will not only find a wealth of insight that they can apply to their own lives, but also a deeper understanding of national and international conflicts and how we might resolve them. The act of apologizing is quite simply immensely fulfilling. On Apology opens a window onto this common occurrence to reveal the feelings and actions at the heart of this profound interaction. (shrink)

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. If any moral principle commands near universal assent, this one does. Few moral principles have been more widely and more viscerally affirmed. And yet, in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Political and military leaders seeking to slip the constraints of the laws of war have cavilled and qualified. Their complaints have been unwittingly aided by philosophers who, rebuilding just war theory from its foundations, have concluded that this principle (...) is at best a useful fiction. Sparing Civilians aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law, and the ruptured consensus. In doing so, Seth Lazar develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in normative and applied ethics. (shrink)

International law and conventional morality grant that states may stand ready to defend their borders with lethal force. But what grounds the permission to kill for the sake of political sovereignty and territorial integrity? In this book leading theorists address this vexed issue, and set the terms of future debate over national defence.

Q 1: How is it possible for a competent subject to detect the irrationality of a belief that p, to form and maintain his belief that not-p against weighty or conclusive evidence to the contrary?

Normative ethical theories owe us an account of how to evaluate decisions under risk and uncertainty. Deontologists seem at a disadvantage here: our best decision theories seem tailor-made for consequentialism. For example, decision theory enjoins us to always perform our best option; deontology is more permissive. In this paper, we discuss and defend the idea that, when some pro-tanto wrongful act is all-things considered permissible, because it is a ‘lesser evil’, it is often merely permissible, by the lights of deontology. (...) We show that this raises new problems for deontological decision theory, and we show that to resolve them, we need to take a more innovative approach to morally evaluating decision-making under risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

Many of us believe (1) Saving a life is more important than averting any number of headaches. But what about risky cases? Surely: (2) In a single choice, if the risk of death is low enough, and the number of headaches at stake high enough, one should avert the headaches rather than avert the risk of death. And yet, if we will face enough iterations of cases like that in (2), in the long run some of those small risks of (...) serious harms will surely eventuate. And yet: (3) Isn't it still permissible for us to run these repeated risks, despite that knowledge? After all, if it were not, then many of the risky activities that we standardly think permissible would in fact be impermissible. Nobody has yet offered a principle that can accommodate all of 1-3. In this paper, I show that we can accommodate all of these judgements, by taking into account both ex ante and ex post perspectives. In doing so, I clear aside an important obstacle to a viable deontological decision theory. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that using lethal or otherwise serious force in self-defense is justified only when three conditions are satisfied: first, there are some grounds for the defender to give priority to his own interests over those of the attacker (whether because the attacker has lost the protection of his right to life, for example, or because of the defender’s prerogative to prefer himself to others); second, the harm used is proportionate to the threat thereby averted; third, the harm (...) is necessary to avert that threat. The first and second conditions have been exhaustively discussed, but the third has been oddly neglected. Meanwhile a prominent school of thought has arisen, in the ethics of war, which seeks to ground the justification of killing in war in principles of individual self-defense. They too have failed to offer any substantive analysis of necessity, while at the same time appealing to it when it suits them to do so. In this paper, I attempt a detailed analysis of the necessity constraint on defensive force, and explore the implications of that analysis for the attempt to transpose principles of individual self-defense into the context of warfare. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The antiutopian effect of Game of Thrones (GoT) is examined as a form of mass entertainment. The first part of this article approaches GoT from the standpoint of dialectical contradiction between Fantasy and Realism peculiar to GoT’s eclectic nature. The second part puts forward a hypothesis about the social basis of GoT horizons, taking into account the fragmented and niched state of contemporary TV audiences.

In 1922, Cartan introduced in differential geometry, besides the Riemannian curvature, the new concept of torsion. He visualized a homogeneous and isotropic distribution of torsion in three dimensions (3d) by the “helical staircase”, which he constructed by starting from a 3d Euclidean space and by defining a new connection via helical motions. We describe this geometric procedure in detail and define the corresponding connection and the torsion. The interdisciplinary nature of this subject is already evident from Cartan’s discussion, since he (...) argued—but never proved—that the helical staircase should correspond to a continuum with constant pressure and constant internal torque. We discuss where in physics the helical staircase is realized: (i) In the continuum mechanics of Cosserat media, (ii) in (fairly speculative) 3d theories of gravity, namely (a) in 3d Einstein-Cartan gravity—this is Cartan’s case of constant pressure and constant intrinsic torque—and (b) in 3d Poincaré gauge theory with the Mielke-Baekler Lagrangian, and, eventually, (iii) in the gauge field theory of dislocations of Lazar et al., as we prove for the first time by arranging a suitable distribution of screw dislocations. Our main emphasis is on the discussion of dislocation field theory. (shrink)

As global warming continues to attract growing levels of attention, various stakeholders have put climate change on corporate agendas and expect firms to disclose relevant greenhouse gas information. In this paper, we investigate the consistency of the GHG information voluntarily disclosed by French listed firms through two different communication channels: corporate reports and the Carbon Disclosure Project. More precisely, we contrast the amounts of GHG emissions reported and the methodological explanations provided in each channel. Consistent with a stakeholder theory perspective, (...) we find that GHG amounts are significantly lower in the CR than in the CDP. We also find that firms increase the CR figures’ traceability when there is a discrepancy between disclosures in the two channels. We suggest that the aim of this greater traceability is to enhance information credibility across the different channels used. (shrink)

During the last two decades there has been an enormous development in treatment possibilities in the field of neonatology, particularly for (extremely) premature infants. Although there are cross-cultural differences in treatment strategy, an overview of the literature suggests that every country is confronted with moral dilemmas in this area. These concern decisions to initiate or withhold treatment directly at birth and, later on, decisions to withdraw treatment with the possible consequence that the child will die. Given that the neonate cannot (...) express his or her own will, who will decide? And on the basis of what information, values and norms? We explored some of these issues in daily practice by interviewing a small sample of health care practitioners in a Dutch university Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It turned out that experiencing moral dilemmas is part of their daily functioning. Nurses underline the suffering of the newborn, whereas physicians stress uncertainty in treatment outcome. To make the best of it, nurses focus on their caring task, whereas physicians hope that future follow-up research will lead to more predictable outcomes. As for their own offspring, part of these professionals would hesitate to bring their own extremely premature newborn to a NICU. For the most oppressing dilemma reported – terminating an already initiated treatment – we propose the concept of ‘evidence shift’ to clarify the ambiguous position of uncertainty in decision making. (shrink)

"An impressively reasoned and startlingly unorthodox treatise on religion." - Belles Lettres Florence Nightingale (1820-1920) is famous as the heroine of the Crimean War and later as a campaigner for health care founded on a clean environment and good nursing. Though best known for her pioneering demonstration that disease rather than wounds killed most soldiers, she was also heavily allied to social reform movements and to feminist protest against the enforced idleness of middle-class women. This original edition provides bold (...) new insights into Nightingale's beliefs and a new picture of the relationship between feminism and religion. Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth Among the Artisans of England (1860), which contains the novel Cassandra , is a central text in 19th-century history of feminist thought and is published here for the first time. Nightingale argues that work was the means by which every individual sought self-fulfillment and served God. She wrote influentially about the group most Victorians declared to be above work: unmarried, middle-class women. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...) is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...) justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

The necessity constraint is at the heart of the ethics of both self-defense and war, and yet we know little about it. This article seeks to remedy that defect. It proceeds in two stages: first, an analysis of the concept of necessity in self-defense; second, an application of this analysis to war, looking at both its implications for just war theory and its application in the laws of war.

A green philosopher's peripeteia.--Physics and metaphysics of music.--The roots of arithmetic.--Critique of new geometrical abstractions.--The philosophical value of science.

Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. However, what (...) does it require of you when deciding under risk? What ought you to do when there is a chance that, say, you will not succeed in saving the life? In recent years, various critics have argued that moral absolutism cannot satisfactorily deal with risk and should, therefore, be abandoned. In this paper, we show that moral absolutism can answer its critics by drawing on—of all things—orthodox expected utility theory. (shrink)

I argue that riskier killings of innocent people are, other things equal, objectively worse than less risky killings. I ground these views in considerations of disrespect and security. Killing someone more riskily shows greater disrespect for him by more grievously undervaluing his standing and interests, and more seriously undermines his security by exposing a disposition to harm him across all counterfactual scenarios in which the probability of killing an innocent person is that high or less. I argue that the salient (...) probabilities are the agent’s sincere, sane, subjective probabilities, and that this thesis is relevant whether your risk-taking pertains to the probability of killing a person or to the probability that the person you kill is not liable to be killed. I then defend the view’s relevance to intentional killing; show how it differs from an account of blameworthiness; and explain its significance for all-things-considered justification and justification under uncertainty. (shrink)

Optimism about our ability to enhance societal decision‐making by leaning on Machine Learning (ML) for cheap, accurate predictions has palled in recent years, as these ‘cheap’ predictions have come at significant social cost, contributing to systematic harms suffered by already disadvantaged populations. But what precisely goes wrong when ML goes wrong? We argue that, as well as more obvious concerns about the downstream effects of ML‐based decision‐making, there can be moral grounds for the criticism of these predictions themselves. We introduce (...) and defend a theory of predictive justice, according to which differential model performance for systematically disadvantaged groups can be grounds for moral criticism of the model, independently of its downstream effects. As well as helping resolve some urgent disputes around algorithmic fairness, this theory points the way to a novel dimension of epistemic ethics, related to the recently discussed category of doxastic wrong. (shrink)

People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have (...) these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory. (shrink)

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...) Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)