In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories (...) of justice--essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years--needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society--with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives--have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical interpretation of the historical debate between Bentham and classical Common Law Theory, a debate that is fundamental to philosophical thought and has shaped contemporary conceptions of nature, tasks, and limits of law and adjudication. The author explores the philosophical foundations of Common Law theory, focusing particularly on the writings of Sir Mathew Hale and David Hume.

Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Rhetorik wird in der Forschungsliteratur meist als eines der Entgegensetzung und des wechselseitigen Ausschlusses beschrieben. Dabei wird dem überzeitlichen Wahrheitsanspruch der Philosophie die kontextabhängige Wirkungsabsicht der Rhetorik gegenübergestellt. Während Philosophie auf sicheres Wissen und Erkenntnis ziele, gehe es der Rhetorik nicht um Wahrheit, sondern um die bloße Wahrscheinlichkeit und Meinung. Das kann allerdings nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass Philosophie und Rhetorik auf grundsätzliche Weise aufeinander verwiesen bleiben. Denn allein in der Notwendigkeit, ihren Wahrheitsanspruch öffentlich durchsetzen zu (...) müssen und in der Frage nach der adäquaten Wahl der Ausdrucksmittel, muss sich Philosophie notwendig rhetorischer Verfahren bedienen. Entsprechend hinterfragt eine rhetorische informierte Philosophie das intellektualistische Ideal einer transparenten und selbstexplikativen philosophischen Sprache. Sie unterstreicht demgegenüber die Materialität, Literarizität, Performativität und Historizität philosophischen Sprechens. In diesem Sinne zielt das Handbuch Rhetorik und Philosophie auf ein Denken, das sich des paradoxen Verhältnisses von Philosophie und Rhetorik bewusst bleibt. (shrink)

Law bends the past of a community's common life towards its future. Precedent is one of law's favored tools for doing the bending, and legal systems that assign precedent a starring role seem especially mindful of time. Yet, mindfulness of time goes far deeper into law's DNA. It is not limited to the doctrine of precedent or unique to common‐law jurisdictions. Recognizing that time is an elemental dimension of human experience and basic ordering principle of practical agency, law utilizes and (...) orders time. Temporality is essential to law's distinctive mode of governance and guidance. (shrink)

This book concerns the relationship between language and poetry in Heidegger's later writings. Gerald L. Bruns illuminates these difficult and strange writings by analyzing his style and form and by reflecting on the philosopher's insights.

Kant argues that the “discipline” of reason holds us topublicargument and reflective thought. When we speak the language of reasoned judgment, Kant maintains, we “speak with a universal voice,” expecting and claiming the assent of all other rational beings. This language carries with it a discipline requiring us to submit our judgments to the forum of our rational peers. Remarkably, Kant does not restrict this thought to the realm of politics, but rather treats politics as the model for reason's authority (...) in all the provinces that rational beings inhabit. (shrink)

Some of the most difficult and wrenching social and political issues in U.S. society today are about the relationship between strongly held moral values and the laws of the land. There is no consensus about whether the law should deal with morality at all, and if it is to do so, there is no agreement over whose morality is to be reflected in the law.In this compact and carefully edited anthology, Gerald Dworkin presents the readings necessary for an understanding (...) of these issues. The volume contains classical and contemporary philosophical statements as well as a generous sampling of legal cases and opinions, including such topics of current interest as flag-burning, nude dancing, the sale of human organs, and sexual behavior. The volume represents the best in applied legal and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Adopting a much broader notion of thinking than that associated with the Critical Thinking movement, this paper addresses the question of thinking skill generality. An analysis of the concept of ‘thinking skill’ suggests ways in which this notion has been misapplied. The paper demonstrates the importance of thinking tasks and argues for a non–universalistic notion of thinking skill generality. The domains–view of thinking is assessed, evidence from secondary research being used to show that thinking skills are not domain–specific simply by (...) virtue of being instantiated with disciplinary content. The prevalence of general procedural knowledge in our thinking practices notwithstanding, empirical evidence suggests the existence of at least two kinds of domain–specific thinking skills: those in which thinking is essentially the application of domain–specific declarative knowledge; and those addressing specialised, domain–specific, thinking tasks. (shrink)

In virtue of its form [‘I am here’] must be true on any occasion on which [it is] asserted, and yet the proposition it expresses on each occasion [is] contingent. Intuitively, [‘I am here now’] is deeply, and in some sense universally, true. One need only understand the meaning of [it] to know that it cannot be uttered falsely. The sentence ‘I am here’ has the peculiar property that whenever I utter it, it is bound to be true. Even if (...) I am lost and do not know where I am, I can bravely say ‘I am here’, and know that I am expressing a truth. (shrink)

I INTRODUCTION - THE TOPIC EXPLAINED 1 GENERAL DIFFERENCES From its inception to the present, philosophy may be viewed as a series of struggles between ...

It is one of the remarkable and significant consequence of the AIDS epidemic that out of the context of enormous suffering and death there emerged a forceful set of ideas linking the domains of health and human rights. At first, the effort centered on the observation that protecting individuals from discrimination and unwarranted intrusions on liberty were, contrary to previous epidemics, crucial to protecting the public health and interrupting the spread of HIV But in fairly short order, the scope of (...) the health and human rights perspective expanded dramatically to focus on the ways in which the most fundamental social arrangements rendered individuals and communities vulnerable to HIV Racial and ethnic minorities, those who were marginalized, and women were at risk because of their subordinate status. In the face of such an understanding, nothing short of social change could be adequate to the challenge posed by the AIDS epidemic. (shrink)

‘Homophobia’ is shorthand for stigmatising attitudes and practices towards people who demonstrate sexual diversity. In this article, we reflect on how African Christian faith may become redemptive rather than violent in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex forms of sexuality.

The fundamental claim that the practice of medicine is essentially a moral enterprise remains highly contentious, not least among the dominant traditional moral theories. The medical profession itself is today characterized by multicultural pluralism and moral relativism that have left the Hippocratic moral tradition largely in disarray. In this paper, I attempt to clarify the ambiguity about practicing medicine as a moral enterprise and echo Pellegrino’s call for a phenomenologically and teleologically derived philosophy of medicine. I proffer a realistic trifocal (...) matrix in which the virtuous moral agency and the teleologically derived moral imperative of the physician are comprehensively integrated with an action-guiding practical analytical framework for the resolution of ethical dilemmas in medicine. I argue that this trifocal perspective points us towards an authentic philosophy of medicine that is not only verifiable through Lonerganian self-appropriation, but also authentically objective through the possible moral self-transcendence of the good physician. (shrink)

In general, offers a good discussion of Dworkin's theory of interpretation. Postema is critically concerned with whether Dworkin commits himself to individualistic and privatistic sense of interpretation and how Dworkin articulates the logical independency of pre-interpretive paradigm instances or social facts which form the object of interpretation and the end which is interpretively posited in the act of interpretation. Criticisms, for the most part, appear to be compatible with Dworkin's overall theory and may simply be additional explication of the character (...) of interpretation. "There is nothing in Dworkin's meta-theory of interpretation of social practices that requires attention to the interpretive activities of fellow participants. Herein lies the strong "protestantism" of Dworkin's theory. Not only is each participant encouraged to take up the interpretive enterprise...but each individual participant also has access to the truth, as it were, about what the practice is and requires, though private interpretation of the practice-text. While Dworkin seems to recognize that the practice is common, he counsels participants to live as if each had a private understanding of his own." "It is problematic because it makes interpretation of social practices insufficiently practical, insufficiently intersubjective, and thus insufficiently political." Notes that the interpretive attitude when acting in a practice is relatively rare, usually becoming part of a practice is more like learning a discipline or technique. "[I]t may not be possible intelligibly to separate that point from the activies and rules in which it is expressed. The same meaning may, conceivably, be expressed in some other way, but this does not imply that the meaning is logically independent of the medium of expression." "That is, the behavior is logically separable from its interpretation only on pain of denying that the practice is common activity yielding common principles." "Often an agent may only come to understand his actions long after he has performed them, or may later come to see his actions in a very different light...First, on this view meaningful action is a primitive. Action is expressive of its meaning or purpose, but not resolvable into distinct behavior and purpose. But, since this purpose or meaning may not be fully or clearly articulated, interpretation can be seen as the activity of re-formulating and articulating it. Second, the 'meaning' of an action cannot be regarded as a private matter for the agent alone.". (shrink)

The basic concept of Bentham's moral and political philosophy was public utility. He linked it directly with the concept of the universal interest, which comprises a distinctive partnership of the interests of all members of the community. The ultimate end of government and aim of all of morality is ‘the advancement of the universal interest’. This essay articulates the structure of Bentham's notion of universal interest and locates it in his theory of value.

Nurses are often caught in the middle of what appear to be intractable moral conflicts. For such times, the function and limits of moral compromise need to be explored. Compromise is compatible with moral integrity if a number of conditions are met. Among these are the sharing of a moral language, mutual respect on the part of those who differ, acknowledgement of factual and moral complexities, and recognition of limits to compromise. Nurses are in a position uniquely suited to leadership (...) in fostering an environment that makes compromise with integrity possible. Keywords: compromise, integrity, nursing ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In contrast to vertical gene transfer from parent to offspring, horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer moves genetic information between different species. Bacteria and archaea often adapt through horizontal gene transfer. Recent analyses indicate that eukaryotic genomes, too, have acquired numerous genes via horizontal transfer from prokaryotes and other lineages. Based on this we raise the hypothesis that horizontally acquired genes may have contributed more to adaptive evolution of eukaryotes than previously assumed. Current candidate sets of horizontally acquired eukaryotic genes may (...) just be the tip of an iceberg. We have recently shown that adaptation of the thermoacidophilic red algaGaldieria sulphurariato its hot, acid, toxic‐metal laden, volcanic environment was facilitated by the acquisition of numerous genes from extremophile bacteria and archaea. Other recently published examples of horizontal acquisitions involved in adaptation include ice‐binding proteins in marine algae, enzymes for carotenoid biosynthesis in aphids, and genes involved in fungal metabolism.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssaysJumping the fine LINE between species: Horizontal transfer of transposable elements in animals catalyses genome evolution Abstract. (shrink)

Thus it would not be the content or meaning of a written Torah that Jeremiah would attack; rather it would be the Deuteronomic “claim to final and exclusive authority by means of writing” . Jeremiah’s problem is political rather than theological. He knows that writing is more powerful than prophecy and that he will not be able to withstand it—and he knows that the Deuteronomists know no less. As Blenkinsopp says, “Deuteronomy produced a situation in which prophecy could not continue (...) to exist without undergoing profound transformations” —that is, without ceasing to be “free prophecy,” or prophecy unbound by any text, including its own. “It might be considered misleading or flippant to say that for [Deuteronomy], as for rabbinic orthodoxy, the only good prophet is a dead prophet. But in point of fact the Deuteronomic scribes, despite their evident debt to and respect for the prophets, contributed decisively to the eclipse of the kind of historically oriented prophecy represented by Jeremiah and the emergence in due course of quite different forms of scribal prophecy” .It is at this point that we reach a sort of outer limit of biblical criticism—a threshold that scholars, with their foundations in literary criticism, their analytical attitude toward texts, and their theological concerns, are not inclined to cross. In any case, it is no accident that the political meaning of the conflict of prophecy and canon has received its most serious attention not from a biblical scholar but from a radical historian, Ellis Rivkin. In The Shaping of Jewish History, a brilliant and tendentious book, Rivkin proposes to treat the question of canon-formation and the promulgation of canonical texts of the Scriptures, not according to literary criteria but according to power criteria. For Rivkin, the production of the Hebrew Scriptures “was not primarily the work of scribes, scholars, or editors who sought out neglected traditions about wilderness experience, but of a class struggling to gain power.”23 23. Ellis Rivkin, The Shaping of Jewish History: A Radical New Interpretation , p. 30; further references to this work will be included in the text. Gerald R. Bruns is professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language and Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History . The present essay is from a work in progress, Hermeneutics, Ancient and Modern. (shrink)

In " Re-Emergence" he explores the question of conscious properties arising from brute, unthinking matter, making the case that there is no equally plausible non-emergent alternative.

The ethical choices faced by engineers today are increasingly complex. Competing and conflicting ethical demands from clients, communities, employees, and personal objectives combine to suggest that engineers employ ethical approaches that are adaptive yet grounded in three concrete professional circumstances: first, that engineers apply unique professional skills in the service of a client, subject to protecting the public interest; second, that engineers advance the state of knowledge of their professional field through reflection, research, and sharing experience in journals and conferences, (...) and third, that they develop new professionals by active mentoring. This paper examines five features of American pragmatism and suggests that its emphasis on specific, context-based ethical decision making can assist engineers in a postmodern setting. In particular, it considers the venues of interpersonal ethical choices, institutional ethical conflicts, and social choices that have ethical components. Pragmatism suggests that in such a complex ethical climate, there is a need for the co-evolution of judgment and action, for individual reflective judgment in particular situations, and for ceasing to search for a single, immutable principle for ethical choice. (shrink)

Gerald P. Mckenny; Critical Care Medicine and the Catholic Tradition: Reflections on the Consensus Statement, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Med.

[Herbert F.] Tucker has shown us in a very practical way that the concept of meaning is the problem of problems, not only in hermeneutics but in literary theory and, indeed, literary study generally. It may well be that in literary study there can be no talk of meaning that is not ambiguous, that does not require us to speak in figures or by means of metaphorical improvisations. It would not necessarily follow that our talk of meaning is merely provisional (...) or without philosophical authority since we know now that considerable authority attaches to ordinary language, whence we obtain our use of the word "meaning" as well as the figurations that we use to talk our way around it. To be sure, the discipline of literary study is now rapidly filling with grave masters who take our figures to mean that meaning is literally unspeakable—only so many transferences and substitutions within a system of differences alarmingly vast . This is itself a terrific idea, or a terrific figure, although it is used mainly to expose the thoughtless way we talk about meaning as well as our offhand assumptions about the conditions that make understanding possible. Our problem in literary study is not that meaning is unspeakable—even if it were it would not be a problem—but that we rarely reflect on the subject of meaning in a disciplined way. In our time, meaning as a topic of study is the preserve of logicians. It is almost exclusively a theme of analytical philosophy, and even those not bound by this philosophy address themselves to the analytical tradition when they speak of meaning.1 It is time that we entered into this discourse on meaning; a paper as fine as Tucker's should serve as a summons.· 1. Among numerous cases, see John R. Searle, "Metaphor" and "Literal Meaning," Expression and Meaning , pp. 76-136, and "Intentionality and the Use of Language," in Meaning and Use, ed. Avishai Margalit , pp. 181-97.Gerald l. Bruns, professor of English at the University of Iowa, is the author of Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language and Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Interpretation in Literary History. (shrink)