Introduction. Murder, some may suggest, is to be defined as the intentional and uncoerced killing of the innocent; and it is true by definition that murder is wrong. Yet wars, particularly modern wars, seem to require the killing of the innocent, e.g. through anti-morale terror bombing. Therefore war must be wrong.

According to the prevailing sentiment, changing the past is logically impossible. The prevailing sentiment is wrong. In this paper, I argue that the claim that changing the past entails a contradiction ultimately rests upon an empirical assumption, and so the conclusion that changing the past is logically impossible is to be resisted. I then present and discuss a model of time which drops the empirical assumption and coherently models changing the past. Finally, I defend the model, and changing the past, (...) against objections. (shrink)

According to the prevailing sentiment, changing the past is logically impossible. The prevailing sentiment is wrong. In this paper, I argue that the claim that changing the past entails a contradiction ultimately rests upon an empirical assumption, and so the conclusion that changing the past is logically impossible is to be resisted. I then present and discuss a model of time which drops the empirical assumption and coherently models changing the past. Finally, I defend the model, and changing the past, (...) against objections. (shrink)

What makes an act of killing morally wrong is not that the act causes loss of life or consciousness but rather that the act causes loss of all remaining abilities. This account implies that it is not even pro tanto morally wrong to kill patients who are universally and irreversibly disabled, because they have no abilities to lose. Applied to vital organ transplantation, this account undermines the dead donor rule and shows how current practices are compatible with morality.

The practice of killing day-old chicks in the Dutch egg sector is a recurrent subject of societal debate. Preventing the killing of young animals and in ovo sex determination are the two main alternatives for this problem available. An online questionnaire was held to ask the opinion of the Dutch public about these alternatives. The results show that no alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an (...) insight to what people think is important for their choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the alternative chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

We are very grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our little article, ‘What Makes Killing Wrong?’ They raise many points, so we cannot respond to them all, but we do want to head off a few misinterpretations.Our critics in this journal avoid one careless misinterpretation, but less informed readers have pressed this misinterpretation in popular venues, so we need to start by renouncing it. We do not deny that killing humans is morally wrong. (...) To the contrary, we argue that killing humans is almost always morally wrong, because killing humans is almost always disabling, and disabling is morally wrong. Here we do not disagree with common sense. We also do not deny that killing partially or even profoundly disabled humans is morally wrong. People who are disabled in some ways still retain many other valuable abilities. This should be obvious. To kill a person with some disabilities but many other valuable abilities is to disable that person, so that is morally wrong. Here again we do not disagree with common sense. The one and only surprising application of our theory is to humans who are alive but totally disabled. We argue that, apart from special circumstances, it is not morally wrong to kill live humans who are totally disabled, whereas many people think that it would be morally wrong to kill even in these extreme and unusual cases, because they assume that killing is morally wrong for reasons apart from disabling.What could those reasons be? DeGrazia mentions three possibilities. First, ‘the harm of killing —in those ordinary cases in …. (shrink)

J. L. A. Garcia holds that my defense of voluntary euthanasia in an earlier paper amounts to an "assault on traditional common sense" about what medical ethics permits physicians to do, particularly insofar as I hold that a physician's duty to abstain from intentionally killing is only a defeasible duty, not an unconditional one. But I argue here that it is Garcia's views that are more at odds with common sense, and that voluntary euthanasia is in fact a humane (...) alternative that respects patient autonomy and is consistent with the most fundamental moral duties of physicians. Among these is a duty to relieve suffering, which can sometimes outweigh the fundamental duty to conserve life. (shrink)

The most searching elaboration of the detective image of the historian has come from the pen of R. G. Collingwood. His short detective story "Who Killed John Doe?" implied that, in spite of the often tentative nature of the question-answer process in a successful historical investigation, the pieces of the puzzle fit together and their coherence becomes self-evident. The predominance of physical evidence in Collingwood's detective story had its counterpart in his research on Hadrian's Wall. In examining the questions raised (...) by his investigations, and distinguishing between direct and circumstantial evidence, Collingwood was able to formulate a comprehensive theory concerning the date of the Wall's construction, the purpose of the Wall, the date of the related turf wall at Birdoswald, the chronological position of the fourteen forts along the Wall, and the role and date of the Vallum following the Walls' course. The pattern of research into the mysteries of Hadrian's Wall has hardly conformed to the linear, step-by-step schema of Collingwood's logic of question and answer. As with much detective work, it has embodied its share of informed guesswork, mistaken inference, false leads, and fortuitous revelations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 207-222 [Access article in PDF] Burke Contra Kierkegaard:Kenneth Burke's Dialectic via Reading Søren Kierkegaard G. L. Ercolini Isaac—to his children Lived to tell the tale— Moral—with a Mastiff Manners may prevail. —Emily Dickinson Kenneth Burke employs the term dialectic throughout his works and yet, despite its profuse recurrence, the term remains ambiguous. Much secondary scholarship has focused on Burke and dialectics, and still the (...) term in Burke remains—if not already complicated—cloudy. 1 Part of the difficulty regarding this term stems from Burke's own ambiguity; another part from critics' tendency to rely on Burke's own use and definitions for clarification of this concept. The arguments have been helpful and illuminating, yet Burke's dialectic can be further clarified by going beyond what Burke means by the term by focusing on how he deploys dialectical criticism in his own work. 2 This article focuses on Burke's appropriation of the existential thinker Søren Kierkegaard as a particularly clear and remarkable instance of the operation of Burke's dialectic in his criticism. I maintain that although Burke's reading of Kierkegaard is arguably a misreading, his strategic appropriation of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) not only serves as a clear deployment of the dialectic, but also functions as a foil against which Burke defines his own critical method. Burke's reading of Kierkegaard emphasizes the function of resolution in Burke's critical project.The current literature, although quite informative, does not put Burke's dialectic in sharp focus. Rueckert argues that Burkean dialectics "is really a branch of what Burke was to later call logology, the study of words, of language, of symbol systems" (1994, 14). Heath claims that dialectic "is an analytical tool to help us diagnose perspectives so that we can [End Page 207] examine whether they make sense and consider their implications for social relations" (1986, 162). Crusius contends that, "dialectic for Burke is the study of verbal universes, the disinterested pursuit of a vocabulary's implications" (1986, 24). While Brummett and Crusius show similarity between Hegel's and Burke's dialectic, Heath and Wess distinguish Burke's dialectic from Hegelian idealism and teleological history respectively. 3 Most of the arguments concerning Burke and dialectic focus on "The Dialectic of Constitutions" in A Grammar of Motives (1969), while A Rhetoric of Motives (1962), where Burke identifies humankind as homo dialecticus, is hardly engaged with regard to this concept. 4 Burke's working through Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives demonstrates Burke's dialectical criticism—thus providing an operational account of Burke's dialectic—and allows for his revelation of the three motives in the realm of rhetoric: the Order, the Secret, and the Kill. 5 And yet, despite this centrality of Fear and Trembling, surprisingly little has been said about Burke's Kierkegaard beyond passing mention. 6Despite editorial advice to the opposite regarding an article that would later become a part of the book, Burke evidently regarded his reading of Kierkegaard as important. Joseph Bennett, editor of Hudson Review, responded as follows to Burke's 1948 submission of the article entitled "Imagery of Killing": "I would like to request that you eliminate Kierkegaard from the article in question, confining it simply to literary exegesis and excluding the philosopher theologian." 7 Although he complied for the article, Burke retained his reading of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives. Despite the lack of attention given to it, Burke's engagement with Kierkegaard clearly demonstrates how Burke views ethical criticism as that which resolves opposition, negation, and paradox to a higher order. Burke contra Kierkegaard The section entitled "Order" in A Rhetoric of Motives contains a detailed, twenty-three-page discussion of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. In this discussion, Burke primarily attacks Kierkegaard for encouraging what Burke enigmatically and elliptically identifies as the "cult of the Kill."Burke's portrayal of Kierkegaard is hardly flattering: at the crescendo of his analysis in A Rhetoric of Motives he claims that thinking such as Kierkegaard... (shrink)

In book 3 of On Abstinence from Animal Food, Porphyry is traditionally taken to argue that animals are rational and that it is, therefore, unjust to kill them for food. Since the vast majority of scholars endorse this interpretation, I call it ‘the consensus interpretation’. Yet, strangely enough, elsewhere in his corpus Porphyry claims that the non-human animals are irrational. Jonathan Barnes notices this discrepancy and suggests that an appeal to the distinction between specific and non-specific predication can resolve the (...) problem. This paper explains Barnes’ solution, but argues that it must ultimately be rejected. It concludes with a brief survey of other approaches to the problem, and with an outline of the proposed solution, in which the consensus interpretation of On Abstinence is rejected in favour of a dialectical reading of Book 3. Porphyry, this piece suggests, may not have believed that animals were rational after all. (shrink)

Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer recently examined the view expressed by John Lorber that whereas at times it is permissible to allow severely handicapped infants to die, killing them must never be allowed. In attempting to demonstrate the mistaken nature of Lorber's fear that allowing active infanticide would lead us onto a slippery slope Kuhse and Singer make much use of John Harris's paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics in which he criticised Lorber's views. This paper examines some (...) aspects of the case advanced by Kuhse and Singer and of the earlier paper by Harris. (shrink)

This research examines the novel No Time Like the Present (NTLP) by Nadine Gordimer as a material object. This novel outlines the conditions and situation of the post-apartheid South African country with various post-colonial problems. Centered on the life of a mixed family, black and white, with the characters of former independence fighter Umkhonto, the novel shows how the tortured and fragmented essence of a country struggles to define itself as a post-apartheid nation. In this regard, as an implication of (...) this problem, this research formulates two problems, (1) How do the colonial memory and trauma contructed in NTLP novel? And (2) How are the subject efforts to accept and recover from the trauma? To solve those problems, this research uses Postcolonial Trauma perpective of Step Craps and combined with reconciliation theory from Dominick LaCapra as a formal object. The aims of this research to (1) describe the construction of memory and colonial trauma through narrative witnessing that has an impact on the existence of the traumatic subject in the novel, and (2) explain the traumatized subjects efforts to survive through recovery and acceptance of the trauma experienced. This research is qualitative-descriptive by analyzing data using phenomenological method. The method used to analyze the events as well as traumatic experiences constructed in literary texts. The research resulted, (1) the construction of traumatic memories originating from apartheid events is narrated in various forms of torture carried out by the white regime, both directly against Umkhonto and South African society in general, including arrests and killings, segregation and cladestine life, invasions home, and cultural racism. This experience in turn causes collective trauma, which is narrated in symptoms such as the inability of the subject, feelings of inferiority, self-loathing, to Xenophobia. Furthermore, (2) in the efforts of reconciliation, social, political, economic, and other transformations and reforms, it encourages traumatic subjects to persist in the present and in the future, even though the past is still haunted. As an entity that represents the collectivism of the South African people, Umkhonto demonstrates persistence, reconnecting experiences, knowledge and feelings between them through acceptance of reality, selecting the right listeners or mates, and working towards voting rights in elections. (shrink)

The notion of 'quality of life' frequently features in discussions about how it is appropriate to treat folk at the beginning and at the end of life. It is argued that there is a disjunction between its use in these two areas (1). In the case of disabled babies at the very beginning of life, 'quality of life' considerations are frequently used to justify enforced death on the basis that the babies in question would be better off dead. At times, (...) babies with severe disabilities are thus allowed to die or even killed. In the case of terminally ill people 'quality of life' is also important in guiding the actions of doctors. However, in the case of individuals who do not wish to live any longer because their quality of life is so poor that they would rather be dead, quality of life is likely to be dropped as a guiding principle. Thus patients who wish to die and ask to be killed, will most often be forced to endure enforced life. (shrink)

Conquest of Abundance, het door mij als editor postuum uitgebrachte laatste boek van Paul Feyerabend, gaat – zoals hij schrijft in Killing Time – over werkelijkheid. Het gaat met name over de veranderbaarheid van de werkelijkheid, die besloten ligt in de inherente onbepaaldheid van elke werkelijkheid, waardoor begrippen en betekenissen altijd kunnen verschuiven en soms kunnen omslaan. Conquest of Abundance wil inzicht geven in de inherente openheid en mutabiliteit van werkelijkheden en in de processen van werkelijkheidsverandering.

In everyday language those who are violent are often compared to beasts. “Beast” it is said of one who tortures and rapes, or of one who traffics in women, men and children. But the poor beasts are angels when compared to certain human beings whose imagination is completely devoted to the humiliation and submission of others: they torture, rape and kill as if it were their natural right.

In much of the contemporary discussion of end of life cases, active killing is forbidden doctors, whereas the passive bringing about of death is, e.g., a rather common occurrence in our hospitals. In the former sorts of cases, doctors are held to be causes of death; in the latter sorts of cases, they are held not to be. If they did not cause a death, even though they did passively bring it about, we cannot use casual responsibility for a (...) death in order to raise possible questions about moral responsibility for that death. I here look at part of this insistence that doctors are not a part cause of death and call it into question. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life‐sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life‐sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices (...) is based on a series of moral fictions – motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life‐sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end‐of‐life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end‐of‐life decisions is radically mistaken. (shrink)

Background Surgery for intersex infants should be delayed until individuals are able to decide for themselves, except where it is a medical necessity. In an ideal world, this single principle would suffice and such surgeries could be totally prohibited. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect, and, in some places, intersex neonates are at risk of being abandoned, mutilated or even killed. As long as intersex persons are at such high risk in some places, any ethical guidelines for intersex surgeries will (...) need to take these extreme risks of harm into account. Main text I therefore argue for five basic principles that ought to inform ethics guidelines for surgical interventions in intersex children, specifically in contexts in which such children are at risk of significant harm. What I set out to come up with is a set of principles that do not completely prohibit surgery, but only allow it where a strong case can be made for its necessity, in the best interests of the child, and where there is some kind of oversight to prevent misuse. The first principle is that interventions as drastic as these surgeries should only be performed when there is strong evidence that they are beneficial and not harmful. The second principle is that in surgeries should normally only be performed in cases of true medical necessity. Principle three is that surgeries should normally be delayed until such time as the intersex person is mature enough to assent to treatment or decide against it. Principle four is that the conventional ethical requirements regarding truth telling apply equally to intersex children as to anyone else. The final principle is that where physicians or parents think that surgery is in the best interests of the child, the burden of proof lies with them. Conclusion It is hoped that these principles might help medical teams and parents make better decisions about intersex surgeries on children, and they would make such surgeries very rare indeed, if they happen at all. (shrink)

Michael Hauskeller (“Reflections from a Troubled Stream: Giubliani and Minerva on ‘After-Birth Abortion’) has recently suggested that we should resist rationalist tendencies in moral discourse: “[I]s not all morality ultimately irrational? Even the most strongly held moral convictions can be shown to lack a rational basis.” (Hauskeller 2012, p. 18) Hauskeller was responding to Alberto Giubliani and Francesca Minverva’s (2012) recent defense of the permissibility of killing infants, but his anti-rationality arguments have wide-reaching implications. Yet pace Hauskeller, rationality is (...) indeed of crucial importance to any ethical argument. We should not abandon rationality for the sake of refuting one discomforting hypothesis; instead, rationality must be rigorously employed, here and elsewhere, in the search for the truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric, Reflection, and Emancipation: Farrell and Habermas on the Critical Studies of CommunicationG. Thomas GoodnightThere are moments in history that appear to be alive with emancipatory possibilities. Such were the years moving toward the end of the long twentieth century. In spring 1989, students protested the communist regime in China; the Tiananmen Square massacre initiated an episode of opposition and commenced China’s modern journey toward global reengagement. Revolutions in (...) Europe that autumn were more peaceful. On August 23 two million Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian citizens held hands and announced the Baltic Way as a departure from Soviet rule. Transitions rapidly followed in Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany, culminating in the Velvet Revolution where on November 17 student protests were beaten back by police in Prague only to be followed three days later by an assembly of 200,000 demanding the transfer of power from the Communist Party. On December 3, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev jointly announced an imminent end to the fifty-year-old Cold War. During this time of hopeful transition, two scholars were at work refiguring the philosophical mission of the Frankfurt school, transforming critique from its early totalizing posture into the critical study of communication.Thomas B. Farrell and Jürgen Habermas were trained in different traditions but adjacent disciplines, communication and sociology. Their works [End Page 421] share a commitment to philosophical inquiry directed toward critique and understanding the cultural, social, and linguistic constitution of communication. As a rhetorician and as a philosopher, these scholars share an evident passion for scholarly argument and for engagement with the controversies of public culture. In different ways, both were at work during the portentous years of transition from the Cold War to new democracies and incipient globalization. Each constructed a guarded program of hope in the possibilities of communicative reflection and reasoning. In the post-World War II era, such a broad, positive vision took long to develop. After the brutal realities of the Holocaust became publicly known in the late 1940s, “the generous faith in rationality and the possibilities of human progress which underlay much of earlier historical thought seems discredited today” (Katznelson 2003, 2). The Enlightenment possibilities for reason had been invested in the technical efficiency of modern institutions that produced the capacity to kill systematically without constraints. Ira Katznelson points to a generation of scholars—including individuals at Chicago, Columbia, the New School, and others—who began in the 1950s to engage in a project that would “shade the Enlightenment’s philosophical anthropology, thicken its defenses against evil, deepen its capacity to reason, and restore” an Enlightenment more critical and less susceptible to co-optation by the excesses of nationalism, ideology, and evil (2003, 2). The work of Farrell and Habermas belongs to the extended post-Holocaust moment, where the possibilities of reflective reason in ethical and moral deliberations were set carefully on a road to personal and collective emancipation.Max Horkheimer saw in the modern, postwar welfare state little reason for optimism. Writing in 1946 at the beginning of the Cold War, he concluded: “Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society” (1974, 22). “Salestalk” by “the surrogates of culture” creates an “illusory triumph of democratic progress that consumes the intellectual substance on which democracy has lived” (Horkheimer 1974, 31). Scientifically engineered propaganda renders public opinion as “a substitute for reason.” With such tools, the forces of barbarism are always waiting in the wings to seize power. Early on, Habermas shared these views. His thesis, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989a), tracks the opening possibilities of communicative reasoning in the liminal spaces of eighteenth-century coffeehouses where frank talk replaced hierarchically driven politeness, the development of these talks into the practices of deliberative democracy, and the decline of deliberative democracy with the union of the state and mass media in producing spectacles in [End Page 422] support of rituals of legitimation. Habermas broke with Horkheimer over the dissertation, however. A thesis of decline, by itself, leaves open only the route of totalizing critique. While never far from critique of institutional practices, Habermas spent his career in opening a positive... (shrink)

The Rashomon effect – a phenomenon studied in the arts and social sciences – occurs when the same event is given contradictory interpretations by different individuals involved. The effect was named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses. In the film, a samurai has been killed under mysterious circumstances. Four people give contradictory reports about the crime. In particular, the samurai's wife claims that she was sexually abused by (...) a bandit, fainted, and then awoke to find her husband dead; the bandit claims that he seduced the wife and challenged the samurai in a battle to victory or at least to an honorable death; the woodcutter (who may have been an onlooker) claims that he witnessed the rape and murder but was not involved; and the dead samurai's spirit claims that he committed suicide. The Rashomon effect is not only about constructing different versions of the world based on differences in perspective; it occurs when such differences appear together with the absence of evidence to assess any version of the truth, plus “the social pressure for closure on the question.” In this commentary, we describe the relevance of the Rashomon effect beyond the arts and social sciences, namely in the field of biology. We use examples from redox biology, which is full of contradictions, thus making it fertile ground on which to apply reasoning derived from the Rashomon effect. (shrink)

Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices (...) is based on a series of moral fictions – motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end-of-life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions is radically mistaken. (shrink)

The most common view of suicide today is that it is intentional self-killing.1 Because of the self-killing component, suicide is often described as self-inflicted death or as dying by one's own hand, and the victim is in turn often described as having done himself to death or as having taken his own life. But must one's death be self-inflicted in order to be suicide? The answer, I want to suggest, is arguably no.

Given certain well-known empirical facts–including the Bush II administration’s motivations and its actions initiating the war – the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and its continuing war of occupation) is not just (i.e., is not morally justified), on any standard interpretation of Just War Theory criteria for jus ad bellum. Since there was no imminent threat of attack by Iraq against the U.S., the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a Preventative or Merely Precautionary War (which is notrecognized by either (...) Just War Theory or international law as a legitimate basis for initiating a war) rather than a Preemptive War (which may sometimes be justified, if there is a real threat of imminent attack) or a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack from an aggressor, which is always justified). Moreover, the neo-conservative program for perpetual U.S. world domination by the weakening of other nations and the invasions of weaker nations for purposes of U.S. economic and geopolitical advantage (behind the facade of “spreading democracy and freedom”) is not morally justified. However, the moral status of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan is much less clear. Many argue that is was morally justified according to both Just War Theory and international law, given certain well-established empirical facts; particularly, al-Qaeda’s involvement with the events of 9-11 and the Taliban government’s protection of al-Qaeda and its terrorist infrastructure within Afghanistan. On this analysis, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was justified as both a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack against primarily civilian targets) and a Preemptive War (to try to make sure that al-Qaeda did not have the opportunity to use its infrastructure in Afghanistan to arrange other attacks on civilian targets in the U.S. or other nations). But the cogency of this analysis depends on whether there were any realistic alternatives fordisrupting al-Qaeda and bringing its leaders to justice; and some argue that such alternatives did exist. Moreover, even if U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was morally justified it is arguable that the amount and type of force used – e.g. intensive, wide-spread bombing campaigns that killed many civilians – were not justified. (shrink)

The moral issues involved in doctors assisting patients to die with dignity are of absolutely central concern to the medical profession, ethicists, and the public at large. The debate is fuelled by cases that extend far beyond passive euthanasia to the active consideration of killing by physicians. The need for a sophisticated but lucid exposition of the two sides of the argument is now urgent. This book supplies that need. Two prominent philosophers, Gerald Dworkin and R. G. Frey present (...) the case for legalization of physician-assisted suicide. One of the best-known ethicists in the US, Sissela Bok, argues the case against. (shrink)

The charge of complicity has been raised in debates over the ethics of fetal tissue transplantation and embryonic stem cell research. However, the applicability of the concept of complicity to these types of research is neither clear nor uncontroversial. This article discusses the historical case of Julius Hallervorden, a distinguished German neuropathologist who conducted research on brains of mentally handicapped patients killed in the context of the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme. It is argued that this case constitutes a paradigm of complicity (...) in research that is useful in assessing complicity in contemporary research ethics. (shrink)

For perspicuous comparison and evaluation of moral positions on life-and-death issues, it is necessary to take into account the different meanings that killing and getting killed can bear in the two dimensions of dealing with persons (intention meeting intention) and handling them. A homicidal scenario in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows the possibility of courteous dealing coinciding with lethal handling. The extreme possibility of lovingly affirming persons while killing them, suggested by the Augustinian “kindly severity” ideal (...) for state-sponsored punitive killing, requires the killers’ affirmation of a fleshliness and fallibility shared with their victims; but love can accept killing only provisionally, since it postulates freedom from the constraints that are felt to require killing. (shrink)

On July 27th, 2013, Sammy Yatim was shot and killed by Toronto Police Services’ Constable James Forcillo during a verbal confrontation on a streetcar as Yatim brandished a switchblade knife. Forcillo was charged, initially with second degree murder, and later attempted murder—a decision that confused media commentators as attempted murder is a lesser-and-included offense to second degree murder in Canadian law. In January 2016, Forcillo was found not guilty of second degree murder and guilty of attempted murder. Video evidence, recovered (...) from the streetcar’s onboard security cameras, was described by the presiding judge, Justice Edward Then, as proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Forcillo’s testimony was unreliable, especially in light of other evidence. This paper examines the use of video evidence to arrive at a ‘compromise verdict’ and the paradox of being convicted of attempting to murder someone who was killed. (shrink)

Nanomedicine applications are an extension of traditional pharmaceutical drug development that are targeting the most pressing health concerns through improvements to diagnostics, drug delivery systems, therapeutics, equipment, surgery and prosthetics. The benefits and risks to the individual have been extrapolated to include broader societal impacts of nanomedicine with concerns extending to inequitable distribution of benefits accruing to developed, or North countries, rather than developing, or South countries. Analysis reveals a great deal of overlap between the North and South's most serious (...) health priorities which kill millions each year. A significant amount of nanomedicine research activity is also underway for the most pressing South country-specific health concerns. Nanomedicine development promises profound breakthroughs for both North and South countries; however, the existing inequities in pharmaceutical drug development, patenting, access and delivery remain significant barriers for South countries. (shrink)

Advances in genetics and genomics have raised new questions in trout restoration and management, specifically about species identity and purity, which fish to value, and where these fish belong. This paper examines how this molecular turn in fisheries management is influencing wild and native trout policy in Colorado. Examples from two small Colorado watersheds, Bear Creek and Sand Creek, illustrate how framing trout as genetic bodies can guide managers to care for or kill trout populations in the interest of rectifying (...) decades of genetic disruption caused by human activity. While trout management has typically relied on human intervention, the turn to genetic science is prompting new classifications of lineage and taxa, altering long-standing conservation priorities, and reorienting the manipulation of biological processes such as reproduction and dispersal. As a result, other social and ecological factors may be pushed to the margins of management decisions. These changes warrant greater conversation about the consequences of molecular analyses and the values embedded in trout science and conservation more broadly. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders whether Aquinas is rightly read as a double-effect thinker and whether it is right to understand him as concurring with Paul’s dictum that evil is not to be done that good may come. I focus on what to make of Aquinas’s position that, though the private citizen may not intend to kill a man in self-defense, those holding public authority, like soldiers, may rightly do so. On my interpretation, we cannot attribute to Aquinas the position that aiming (...) to kill in self-defense is prohibited where so aiming is the only way to stay alive. Instead, for the private citizen though not for the public authority, it is aiming to kill as an end in itself, over and above the aim of saving one’s life, that is prohibited. Accordingly, we also cannot attribute to Aquinas the third condition of the principle of double effect in its textbook formulation. (shrink)

This book critically analyzes emerging issues and challenges in delivering timely justice to common people. It brings a wide range of contemporary and relevant issues relating to the gross violation of human rights and presents situation-based evidence from, and first-hand experiences of behavioral, social and legal professionals. It deals with themes such as holding administrations accountable and securing justice, challenges for the judiciary in the early disposal of cases, challenges to the forensic community, green federalism and environmental justice, current threats (...) to human rights, ethics in the criminal justice system and honor killing from socio-cultural perspectives. Topical and comprehensive, this book will be an excellent read for scholars and researchers of political studies, legal studies, human rights, psychology, behavioural studies, political sociology, sociology, development studies, governance and public policy, environmental studies and South Asian studies. It will also interest policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, activists and professionals in the field. (shrink)

The standard argument in favor of the practice of voluntary physician-assisted death, by means of assisted suicide or active euthanasia, rests on liberal, individualistic grounds. It appeals to two moral considerations: (1) personal self-determination—the right to choose the circumstances and timing of death with medical assistance; and (2) individual well-being—relief of intolerable suffering in the face of terminal or incurable, severely debilitating illness. One of the strongest challenges to this argument has been advanced by Daniel Callahan. Callahan has vigorously attacked (...) the practice of physician-assisted death and the goal of legalization as deep affronts to values of community: “By assuming that the relief of suffering is a goal important enough to legitimate killing as a way of achieving it, we corrupt the idea of such relief as a social goal and duty. We cease helping to bear one another's suffering, but eliminate altogether the person who suffers. We thereby jeopardize both the future of self-determination and the kind of community that furthers its members' capacity to bear one another's suffering. Why bear what can be eliminated altogether?” In another passage Callahan remarks, “For there is a deep sense in which suicide and euthanasia are likely to represent, at least in part, a failure of the community, whether that of the intimate community of family and friends, or the larger civic community, to respond to the needs of another.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:506 BOOK REVIEWS signified by bread and wine (39). Schoot sums up the concept of mysterium operative here by saying that it is "something hidden, voiced truly but inadequately, spiritually signified by the Old Testament and now fulfilled in Christ and the sacrament of the eucharist" (38). Despite the meticulous scholarship displayed in this work, students of Aquinas's theological epistemology and christology may well be struck by what seem (...) to be gratuitous harmonizations between theology and christology (the parallel between the analogy of being and the communicationem idiomatum, making the hypostatic union paradigmatic in the naming of God), the overwhelming weight given to the signification/supposition distinction, and the seeming reduction of the principles of christology to linguistic rules. In addition, the complex and often turgid style serves to obfuscate certain important questions, such as Aquinas's understanding of Christ's esse. Is Aquinas being forced into a theological mold that he himself would not recognize? Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, 0.P An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, vol. III: St. Augustine. By BERTRAND DE MARGERIE, S.J. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1993. Pp. xi+ 169 (paper). Unfortunately, today many scholars and general readers neglect the work of the Fathers of the Church. One often hears that the writings of the Fathers have become less relevant or less important because there has been so much progress in Scripture studies and because the Fathers did not really try to find out what the inspired writer meant to say-for they relied on allegory. St. Augustine's exegesis poses a particular difficulty in terms of its reliance on allegory. Augustine was strongly influenced by the allegorical exegesis of bishop Ambrose and recounts in his Confession.5 (VI, iv, 6) how he used to hear Ambrose teaching in his sermons, as though he were most diligently teaching a rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life." Father de Margerie admits that Augustine did indeed suffer from "excessive allegorism" (126), but he insists that this is no reason to give up entirely on Augustine. Instead, with keen scholarly analysis he shows that, in spite of some defects, Augustine did in fact give us some really fine work in Scripture study. Father de Margerie stresses that according to Augustine the purpose of all Scripture is to teach love: "... the plenitude and the end of the Law and of BOOK REVIEWS 507 all the sacred Scriptures is the love... of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us" (20; from De Doctrina Christiana, I, xxv, 39). This love is taught even at the beginning of Scripture: "... on a subjective level, Moses wrote for the love of all men" (30). But how could this be? "It seems to us nowadays that Augustine failed to perceive adequately the progressive nature of the disclosure of religious truths by the God who revealed them" (30). Father de Margerie responds to this objection by pointing out that given the belief that Moses had been given a transient, "face to face vision of the Divine being... and that this experience was granted him precisely in favor of the universal Church," it makes sense to assume that "the prophet and maker of the old Law received knowledge, during this vision and through divine revelation, of how future interpretation of the Law he was issuing-like that which Jesus was to issuewould extend even to enemies the love of one's neighbor" (31). Augustine was led to this view in the light of the varied interpretations being proposed in his own time for Genesis (48). Father de Margerie admits that "Augustine himself limits the scope of his theory concerning the plurality of literal meaning to a few rather exceptional verses of scripture" (65). Augustine believed, however, that Moses had received most remarkable gifts: I cannot think that Moses Your most faithful servant was given by you lesser gifts than I should have wished and longed to have for myself if I had been born at the same time as he.... I should have wished that you would grant me such a skill in... (shrink)

Ethicists who advocate the permissibility of infanticide often have misrepresented history in their arguments. The Western tradition supports the prohibition of active killing of congenitally impaired or premature newborns whose futures are uncertain.

In September 2010 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the nation's elite academic hospitals located in East Baltimore, Maryland, Paul Warren Pardus entered the facility to visit his mother, a patient. During a discussion with her doctor in a hospital hallway, Pardus became “overwhelmed” about the care and condition of his mother, pulled a handgun from his waistband, and shot the doctor in the chest. Pardus then locked himself and his mother in her room, shot and killed her, and (...) committed suicide.Dr. Gabe Kelen, a national expert on emergency preparedness and director of the Johns Hopkins emergency department, admitted several years later that this tragic event “really got us thinking in a very serious way.” Together with colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, Kelen conducted research on the threat and impact of “active shooters” in health care settings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Destruction of the Seven Nations in Deuteronomy and the Mimetic Theory Norbert Lohfink Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfort The book of Deuteronomy is a narrative with two narrative voices which do not necessarily present the same perspective, the one of the narrator, the other ofMoses. By employing the technique of showing rather than telling, the narrator allows his Moses to articulate a new design of the world in the (...) Deuteronomic law. Although mimetic theory may be important to our understanding of both perspectives, I will focus here solely on that world presented by Moses' speeches.1 A brief summary of my essay "Opfer und Säkularisierung im Deuteronomium" (Sacrifice and Secularization in Deuteronomy), in whose final section I found it necessary to tum to René Girard's mimetic model for clarification of the evidence, provides the basis for the revision and expansion of that study which follows. Deuteronomy—a new conception of the sacred My essay was in the form of a debate with the secularization thesis of Moshe Weinfeld, whose point ofdeparture is the Deuteronomic centralization of sacrifice in Jerusalem.2 In Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, Weinfeld argues that all sacrifice as well as everything sacral was abolished throughout the land, that the sacred was restricted to the central cultus and all else became the profane. I sought to demonstrate that the historical assump1 With regard to the narrator's perspective a central question which arises, for example, is whether Moses is a sacrificial victim or a scapegoat. 2 For an early criticism of Weinfeld's work, see Jacob Milgrom (1973). 104Norbert Lohfink tions of his thesis are based on an erroneous interpretation of the evidence. Although I cannot review those assumptions here, it is important to point out that the evidence is more complicated than Weinfeld seems to admit. In the book of Deuteronomy, we see that sacrifice indeed is abolished throughout the land. Less apparent is the fact that that restriction extends also to the rituals of sacrifice practiced by the central cultus. There is no mention of such rituals in Deuteronomy. A close study of the text reveals that they in fact have undergone a subtle transformation. The 14 centralization laws which describe the pilgrimage to the central sanctuary are presented in a literary form that resembles a ritual (see the tables in Lohfink 1992, 25-31). The high point of that pilgrimage is not the slaughter and offering of animals but the joy of a common meal. The killing of the animals is relatively insignificant in the light of the celebration of Israel's existence "before the countenance of YHWH." The Israel that celebrates this festival is moreover a society where there are neither poor nor needy. This ideal society constitutes in Deuteronomy the true sacred. By comparison with the older, archaic-cultic, understanding of this sacred the transferrai of the world-reality of the society 'Israel' into the sacred appears to imply its disintegration. But this is not the case. Deuteronomy embodies an extension of the sacred, not its demise. It presents a new interpretation of the phenomenon. The process of transforming the meaning of the sacred is mirrored in designation of Israel, indeed all of Israel, as qadosh 'holy'. It is no longer the priests alone who are considered holy but the entire population. Deuteronomic law is framed by statements that name Israel as "a people holy to the LORD your God" (7:6; 26:19) and that promise the holiness of Israel as a future blessing (28:9).3 Now 'holiness' always means the marking of a partial realm out of a greater realm which becomes thereby the 'profane'. This is what is meant in Deuteronomy. The nation of Israel is 'holy' in contrast to the other 'nations;' it is, according to 7:6, the "people for his own possession out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth." In 26: 18ff. this rhetorical formula splits into two discrete references, the one stating that Israel wül be "a people for His own possession," the other that "He will set you high above all the nations He has made." Both texts depict a system of holy-profane... (shrink)

Suzie loves to talk. A successful mid-thirties businesswoman, she is a self-described social butterfly—which made her diagnosis of tongue cancer even more devastating. She came to the clinic complaining of a lump in her throat, which in most young healthy people turns out to be benign and easily treated. But not for Suzie, who had a very rare salivary tumor arising in the back of her tongue. Its slow growth was both a blessing and a curse; such tumors do not (...) kill people quickly, but they typically require surgery. It would slowly and relentlessly grow until and unless we removed most of her tongue. In head and neck surgery, issues of appearance, identity, function, and communication are the foremost considerations when we decide when, and whether, to operate. As the adage goes, knowing when not to operate is the sine qua non of the wise surgeon. But the inverse is also true. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion of the topic of intentional agency has often focused on questions about the nature of the events which are intentional actions. This event-oriented approach cannot yield an adequate account of human agency because it cannot accommodate negative acts, or acts of omission. Agents may act intentionally by omitting to act, but many such acts of omission cannot be identified with any event consisting of a bodily movement. This dissertation is an attempt to develop an account of agency which (...) can accommodate acts of omission. In the course of this, generally accepted views about the causal powers of agents, the ontology of action, the relation between an intention and the act which realizes it and the abilities exercised in acting are challenged. In Chapter One it is argued that causation by acts of omission cannot be explicated in terms of event causation and that the abilities which an agent exercises in intentionally omitting must be analyzed as second order abilities. Views according to which acts of omission are in some way constituted by positive actions are surveyed and criticized in Chapter Two. It is claimed that an agent omits to act by forming a negative intention, but this mental act is not identical to the act of omission. Acts of omission are states of affairs which obtain or facts and are not events. In Chapter Three it is shown that certain positive non-basic acts like killings also cannot be identified with any event because no event could have the requisite temporal and causal properties. Two important differences between positive and negative acts are identified in Chapter Four. The relation between a positive intention and behavior which realizes it is a causal one, but negative intentions do not cause the behavior which realizes them. A person may perform a positive action and may be responsible for this even though he lacks the ability to refrain from doing so, but to omit to perform some action and to be responsible for this, a person must have the ability to perform it. (shrink)