Social and environmental shocks associated with freshwater management are inherently tied with the lives and well-being of all global citizens. Thus, exploring key actors’ roles is a critical element of this grand challenge. Utilizing an inductive multiple case study, we explore sustainability leadership and subsequent organizational perspective-taking behaviours initiated by actors within freshwater management in response to the grand challenge. A vibrant inductive model elicited three main themes: identifying conditions for organizational perspective-taking, modifying organizational frames of reference and emergence of (...) multi-level influence. The discussion extracts critical insights for sustainability leadership and highlights complexities involved in facilitating effective decision-making among diverse actors. Fundamentally, this article contributes a distinct multi-level systems framework for sustainability leadership drawing from social–ecological systems theory and organizational resilience. We conclude by offering future research opportunities within sustainability leadership designed to bridge the gap between grand challenges and our abilities to solve them. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery. For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between (...) mind or soul and body. (shrink)

In the past few decades, liberal and democratic thought has been subjected to attacks from the adherents of nationalism, populism, and social radicalism. Much of these attacks involve suspicions about liberalism’s association with the contents and purveyors of structured knowledge, scientific and humanistic alike. I suggest that an examination of the history of liberal beliefs may add to our understanding of what is at stake. Such an examination may reveal how liberal thought in the twentieth century shifted away from its (...) earlier individualist and constitutional position towards the pluralist position that grants a special place to educated knowledge, to experts and professionals, and thus invites allegations of elitism. In particular, I focus on the differences between the ideas that conventional liberal authors elaborated during early modernity and the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and the version of liberal values and the polity based on them that were tacitly adopted during the mid-twentieth century, on the other hand. The examination involves highlighting the common denominators of mid-century authors on right, left, and centre, such as Laski, Popper and Hayek, as well as asking what in their shared worldview could attract allegations of elitism from later generations. (shrink)

Against the background of the 2022 national elections in the Philippines, in which the Church failed in the moral fight against the return of the Marcoses and the continuation of the Duterte regime in power, this article makes a social discernment as to why the Church has not succeeded in its social mission in shaping the social consciousness of the Filipino people. Why has the Catholic social tradition not taken root in the Philippine soil and in the Filipino soul? The (...) author argues that the Church has located itself in the center rather than grounding itself in the margins. The author proposes a reappropriation of the Catholic social tradition from the margins to more dynamically transform Philippine society. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of Bacon's principal philosophical work in English, The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and humane - traditionally known as The Advancement of Learning.

A indagação que motiva o diálogo Protágoras sobre a possibilidade ou não de se ensinar a virtude, perpassa também diversos outros diálogos platônicos. Na verdade, virtude e conhecimento são temas centrais para se pensar o ânthropos, a pólis, a ética, o ser e a razão, no contexto do corpus platônico. Em As Leis, última obra escrita pelo fundador da Academia, a relação conhecimento/virtude volta a ganhar destaque no processo de reelaboração de um novo projeto para salvar o homem e a (...) cidade de suas mazelas. A arte/ciência da justa medida indicada no Protágoras (357 b) será a chave para a viabilização do projeto legislativo, ético e político em As Leis. Será pela correta educação dos sentidos e da razão que se alcançará a virtude responsável pela condução da cidade livre, amiga de si e ponderada (Leis, 701 d). Por sua vez, a educação virtuosa é fruto do conhecimento assimilado pelos costumes, pelo aprendizado, pelo discernimento racional e pelo domínio das paixões, o que assegurará o devido equilíbrio mediante o amparo das leis e das instituições da pólis. Isto se pode constatar, especialmente, na leitura dos livros I, II,VI e VII de As Leis, embora tais questões estejam entrelaçadas no conjunto da obra. (shrink)

A passagem 140e-141d do diálogo Parmênides nos remete a uma das conseqüências lógicas em relação ao “um”, isto é, estar fora do tempo, como parte da demonstração argumentativa do filósofo eleata ao admitir a primeira hipótese de que “o um é” e as conseqüências disso para si mesmo. Aceitar a existência do “um” implica, segundo o método de análise utilizado por Parmênides, verificar cada uma das hipóteses possíveis nesses casos, em relação às suas predicações, para si e para outras coisas. (...) Igualmente, o mesmo exercício deve ser feito se a hipótese for oposta, “se o um não é”. Como podemos identificar na estrutura do diálogo nesta parte, duas hipóteses são levantadas em que “o um é” e suas nove consequências; no primeiro movimento, as possíveis predicações para este são negadas, e no segundo movimento tais predicações e seus desdobramentos são reconhecidos. É a partir desse posicionamento que desenvolvemos nossa análise sobre a questão da temporalidade presente no diálogo e suas implicações metodológicas e teóricas. (shrink)

Querer investigar, num curto ensaio, as diversas facetas das situações-limite, bem como suas consequências para a existência humana, revelaria uma pretensão descabida. O que intencionamos aqui é simplesmente explorar, a partir de indicações fornecidas por Karl Jaspers, alguns momentos que as constituem. Optamos por nos aproximar do tema a partir de cinco perspectivas: o limite, o sentido, o nada, o sofrimento e a finitude. Em o sofrimento, empreenderemos uma breve crítica textual de passagens de duas obras centrais de Karl Jaspers: (...) Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, de 1919, e Philosophie, de 1932. Perceberemos aí uma modificação no modo como o sofrimento é apresentado. Embora sutil, essa alteração leva-nos não somente a precisar o papel das situações-limite na filosofia da existência jaspersiana, mas também a vislumbrar uma tensão entre situações-limite e experiências com situações-limite. (shrink)

Este artigo visa apresentar a pesquisa bibliográfica, descritiva com abordagem qualitativa diante do contexto educacional dos anos de 1960 a 1970, com o objetivo de estabelecer as relações entre a democratização do ensino em Anísio Teixeira e as experiências dos Ginásios Vocacionais do estado de São Paulo. Busca-se a interpretação das ações de Anísio Teixeira no âmbito da educação escolar e no projeto pedagógico dos Ginásios Vocacionais, em seu ambiente e contexto social, como resposta aos desafios educacionais. O texto está (...) estruturado em duas partes: primeira apresenta um breve histórico de Anísio Teixeira e do surgimento dos Ginásios Vocacionais e na segunda parte desenvolve-se as ideias do pensamento educacional de Teixeira e as possíveis semelhanças com a filosofia educacional dos Vocacionais. As correlações entre os vocacionais e Teixeira estão fundamentadas na pesquisa bibliográfica de autores como: Daniel Chiozzini ; Clarice Nunes; Anísio Spínola Teixeira e Maria Nilde Mascellani. Os resultados apontam que, embora os ginásios vocacionais não tenham sido explicitamente concebidos por Anísio Teixeira, é possível relacionar possíveis semelhanças entre ambos, as quais residem na: valorização e participação ativa dos alunos no processo de ensino-aprendizagem; prática de ensino participativa e colaborativa; e na formação social e politica dos discentes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this work we argue for relevant logics as a basis for paraconsistent epistemic logics. In order to do so, a paraconsistent nonmonotonic multi-agent epistemic logic, MDR (for Modal Defeasible Relevant), is briefly introduced. In MDR each agent has two kinds of belief: an absolute belief that P, represented by AiP, and a defeasible belief that P, represented by DiP. Therefore, an agent can reason with his own absolute and defeasible beliefs about the world and also reason about his (...) beliefs about other agents' beliefs both absolute and defeasible. A theorem is presented showing some patterns of reasoning in MDR. Avron's relevant logic RMI? s compared proof theoretically with Anderson and Belnap's relevant logics R and RM and also with Da Costa's paraconsistent logic CI, with respect to some desired properties of absolute and defeasible beliefs. Then we can understand why RMI was chosen to be the underlying logic for the monotonie part (the absolute beliefs) of MDR, and had to be modified and integrated with a nonmonotonic logic in order to be the underlying logic for the nonmonotonic part (defeasible beliefs). (shrink)

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery.For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind (...) or soul and body.This study argues that Plato's analysis of personhood is intended to cohere with his two-world metaphysics as well as a radical separation of knowledge and belief. Gerson demonstrates that Plato's account of persons plays a key role not just in his theory of mind, but in his theory of knowledge, his metaphysics, and his ethics. A proper understanding of Plato's account of persons must therefore place it in the context of his doctrines in these areas. Knowing Persons fills a significant gap by showing the way to such an understanding. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity comprises over forty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of the period 200-800 CE. Designed as a successor to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (edited by A. H. Armstrong), it takes into account some forty years of scholarship since the publication of that volume. The contributors examine philosophy as it entered literature, science and religion, and offer new and extensive assessments of philosophers who until recently (...) have been mostly ignored. The volume also includes a complete digest of all philosophical works known to have been written during this period. It will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in this rich and still emerging field. (shrink)

This compact essay aims at promoting an approaching of some core aspects related to the Idea of communication of existence philosophy of Karl Jaspers and some extracts of the exposition of the philia that Aristotle presents in his Nicomachean Ethics. It does not convey an accurate and detailed exegesis, but a daring attempt of conceiving a possible dialog between mentioned philosophers comprising various facets of this phenomenon: friendship.

Esse artigo pretende aproximar-se do fenômeno da técnica, a partir de uma discussão do texto “A questão da técnica”, de Martin Heidegger. Após uma breve introdução que apresenta diversos momentos de concepções antropológicas da técnica, a discussão analisará passagens centrais da proposta heideggeriana em que a essência da técnica é compreendida como um acontecimento da verdade. Finalmente, o artigo tecerá algumas reflexões, inspiradas em um trabalho de Alfred Nordmann, sobre os limites que o pensamento de Heidegger nos impõe quando pretendemos (...) pensar outras possibilidades de uma filosofia da técnica. (shrink)

[opening paragraph] -- Clark: The `astonishing hypothesis' which you put forward in your book, and which you obviously feel is very controversial, is that `You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: `You're nothing but a pack of neurons'.' But it seems to me that this is not so (...) astonishing a statement for a scientist to make. Isn't this what reductionist science has always believed? (shrink)

O artigo analisa a finalidade interna da arte, ou seja, como ela se estrutura, que tipo de relação há entre suas partes e sua origem comum com a forma geral do ajuizamento estético. O argumento principal, seguindo as teses expostas na Crítica da Faculdade do Juízo de Kant, é que as características do juízo sobre o belo encontram na arte um “caso de aplicação” compatível uma vez que as estruturas formais de ambos coincidem. Na produção da arte, quem realiza tal (...) coincidência, na peculiar definição de Kant, é o gênio. (shrink)

O artigo examina o papel das emoções na experiência com a música (instrumental), desenvolvendo três teses básicas: 1) a música pode ser considerada como um “texto narrativo”, que realiza um modo específico de engajamento; 2) as emoções aparecem na experiência musical basicamente de duas formas: como expressão (ou “clarificação”), onde o agente psicológico portador de tais emoções é a persona musical, e como algo que deve constituir a experiência do ouvinte; 3) as respostas emocionais do ouvinte constituem um processo ativo (...) e necessário para o preenchimento das “lacunas” da narrativa musical e compõem decisivamente o processo de compreensão da obra musical. (shrink)

Bradley's metaphysical views, akin to those of Hegel, with a special emphasis on the internal relations of the Absolute are developed at length in Appearance ...

Lives of the stoics (Zeno, Aristo, Herillus, Cleanthes, Sphaerus, Chrysippus) on philosophy -- Logic and theory of knowledge -- Perception, knowledge, and sceptical attack -- The stoic-academic debate and Cicero's testimony -- Conceptions and rationality -- Physics -- Theology -- Bodily and non-bodily realities -- Structures and powers -- The soul -- Fate -- Ethics -- The general account in Diogenes Lartius -- The account preserved by Stobaeus -- The account in Cicero on goals -- Other evidence for stoic ethics (...) -- Passions and the goal : criticism within the stoic school and the evidence of Galen -- A critique from the academic-peripatetic point of view -- Pyrrhonist critique of basic ethical concepts -- Later stoic ethics : a sampler -- Musonius Rufus -- Seneca -- Epictetus. (shrink)

Naturalistic understandings of the mind face certain hurdles. Many authors believe that some such hurdles are even insurmountable. A frequently used but rarely developed and tested argumentative move claims that, because they are made from the so-called observer perspective, naturalization efforts inevitably fail for reasons connected to our first-person perspective. We are not convinced. However, this article primarily attempts to gain a better understanding of the point and scope of this move by discussing an argument by Holm Tetens from which (...) the basic incompleteness of the observer perspective is supposed to follow. Depending on how one interprets the incompleteness in question, one gets different readings of the argument: ontological, semantic, epistemic, or explanatory. First, we will develop two ontological readings of this argument in more detail ‐ mainly because they are the most obvious challenges to naturalism. We will then systematically explore the prospects of the alternative readings. These considerations lead to a more fundamental discussion about the requirements for naturalistic explanations. As it turns out, to defend such an incompleteness argument, you face some inconvenient hurdles yourself. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Objetivo: O presente artigo visa apresentar o processo de Representação Temática da Informação como via mediadora da informação. Intenta-se demonstrar confluências entre a pragmática biblioteconômica e os conceitos que fundamentam a Teoria do Agir Comunicativo, numa perspectiva de reorientação das ações de mediação da informação a partir da ação comunicativa orientada para o consenso linguístico para a superação da colonização do mundo da vida. Método: Construímos esse caminho por meio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, buscando em bases de dados da área (...) da Ciência da Informação produções que discorrem sobre tais conceitos, aproximando as discussões sobre representação temática, enquanto elemento de mediação da informação, e a referencialidade teórica habermasiana como possibilidade para a construção de uma abordagem crítica que possibilite aos indivíduos interagirem com a informação, por um processo mediador da informação reorientado por uma razão comunicativa, instada num consenso linguístico aceito por uma comunidade de usuários. Resultado: Apresentamos a representação temática da informação como via pela qual se perfaz a mediação da informação, associando o processo técnico da representação temática da informação à Teoria do Agir Comunicativo. Vislumbra-se, desta maneira, propor uma mediação da informação que busque o consenso linguístico e a interação, via agir comunicativo, em oposição à razão instrumentalizada pelo capital, reorientando as ações para uma tomada de consciência que leve os atores envolvidos nos processos informativos à superação da visão hegemônica do capital, por meio do uso da razão comunicativa, a partir da qual o consenso estabelecesse por uma linguagem que visa o entendimento comum no ambiente sistêmico das bibliotecas. (shrink)

O intuito do presente trabalho é discutir o uso do termo desinformação pelo campo da Ciência da Informação (CI). A palavra, desinformação, passou a ser utilizada nos últimos anos – mais notadamente após a eleição de Donald Trump a presidência dos Estados Unidos da América, cargo que ocupou entre os anos de 2016 a 2020 - para caracterizar um comportamento pautado no compartilhamento de notícias falsas via redes sociais digitais, majoritariamente, e, por meio de técnicas de comunicação que almejam fazer (...) usuários de determinada ferramenta de comunicação, acreditar em uma notícia falsa. No entanto, julgamos que o emprego do termo não consegue explicar de forma clara como ocorre ou, se é possível, determinarmos via estudos do campo da CI (informação como dimensão física, informação como dimensão cognitiva, informação como dimensão intersubjetiva social) que exista um fenômeno ou um processo que desinforme sujeitos expostos a determinada informação. Julgamos haver uma contradição no termo, que pode contribuir para uma tábula rasa explicativa sobre como se processa a validação de determinados conteúdos informativos, ou seja, sob quais fundamentos éticos, marcos regulatório e práticas consuetudinárias os sujeitos nesta arena digital produzem, se apropriam e disseminam informação. (shrink)

BackgroundConcurrent with efforts to establish national and regional biorepositories in Africa is widespread endorsement of ethics committees as stewards of the interests of individual donors and their communities. To date, ethics training programs for IRB members in Botswana have focused on ethical principles and international guidelines rather than on the ethical dimensions of specific medical technologies and research methodologies. Little is known about the knowledge and concerns of current and prospective IRB members in Botswana with respect to export, reuse, storage, (...) and benefit-sharing of biospecimens.MethodsThis qualitative study examined perspectives of IRB members in Botswana about the collection and use of biospecimens in research. Forty-one IRB members representing five committees in Botswana participated in discussions groups in March 2013. Transcriptions of audiotapes and field notes were analyzed to identify issues of concern that might be alleviated through education and capacity-building, and areas that required ongoing discussion or additional regulatory guidance.ResultsAreas of concern included lack of understanding among patients and providers about the use of biospecimens in clinical care and research; reuse of biospecimens, particularly issues of consent, ownership and decision-making; export of specimens and loss of control over reuse and potential benefits; and felt need for regulatory guidance and IRB-member training. Local belief systems about bodily integrity and strong national identity in the construct of benefits may be at odds with initiatives that involve foreign biorepositories or consider such collections to be global public goods.ConclusionEducation is needed to strengthen IRB-member capacity to review and monitor protocols calling for the collection and use of biospecimens, guided by clear national policy on priority-setting, partnerships, review, and oversight. Engagement with local stakeholders is needed to harmonize fundamentally different ways of understanding the human body and community identity with the aims of contemporary biomedicine. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 A distinçáo entre o dizer e o mostrar ocupa um lugar central no desenvolvimento da crítica da linguagem empreendida pelo primeiro Wittgenstein. Partindo do pressuposto que o sistema de numeraçáo do Tractatus assinala (apesar de todas as controvérsias existentes) certa estrutura argumentativa do livro, o presente texto possui dois objetivos: (1) situar o grupo de proposições que versam sobre o tema do solipsismo (5.6 à 5.641) dentro dessa estrutura; e (2) mostrar que o (...) local onde essas proposições se encontram faz parte de uma estratégia argumentativa de Wittgenstein, uma vez que é nela onde encontramos o clímax da distinçáo entre aquilo que pode ser dito e aquilo que deve ser mostrado. (shrink)

O presente artigo enfrenta a questão da distinção entre sentido e significado nas Investigações Filosóficas. Considerando a mudança radical na virada linguístico-pragmática ocorrida no pensamento de Wittgenstein, que passa a situar tanto o sentido quanto o significado no âmbito do uso que fazemos da linguagem, procura-se mostrar que distinguir as noções de sentido e de significado, nas Investigações Filosóficas, não somente é possível, mas também é de fundamental importância para uma mais ampla compreensão desses termos no pensamento do segundo Wittgenstein. (...) Por conseguinte, contrapõe-se a leitura atenta do parágrafo 556 das Investigações Filosóficas à interpretação tradicional, que não se preocupa em distinguir sentido de significado, desejando apontar e fundamentar tal proposta. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, remains one of the most effectual thinkers in European intellectual history. We can trace his influence from Kant in the 1700s to Darwin a century later. The Advancement of Learning , first published in 1605, contains an unprecedented and thorough systematization of the whole range of human knowledge. Bacon’s argument that the sciences should move away from divine philosophy and embrace empirical observation would forever change the way philosophers and natural scientists interpret their (...) world. (shrink)

This article presents a review of the literature, summarizes current initiatives, and provides a heuristic for assessing the effectiveness of a range of institutional review board collaborative strategies that can reduce the regulatory burden of ethics review while ensuring protection of human subjects, with a particular focus on international research. Broad adoption of IRB collaborative strategies will reduce regulatory burdens posed by overlapping oversight mechanisms and has the potential to enhance human subjects protections.

First published in 1876, this forceful and vigorous classic of English moral philosophy, written in opposition to Utilitarianism by one of England's most eminent philosophers, is now available for the first time since 1977.

The widely held belief that classical instrumental music has some kind of content - whether it is supposed to be some language-like meaning or some distinctive and possibly untranslatable musical content - is notoriously difficult to defend. One of the probably rather few promising options of analysing our experiences of hearing ‘content in music’ starts with the assumption that we, the listeners of music, endow the heard musical sequences with content. In the paper, I defend this anti-realism concerning musical content (...) by spelling out the idea that due to the operation of our imagination we sometimes, in listening to music, undergo episodes of hearing-as - close relatives of the more familiar episodes of seeing-as. Drawing on Colin McGinn’s analysis of seeing-as, I develop the idea that an episode of hearing-as is a kind of hybrid mental phenomenon, a co-production of our imagination and our ‘plain hearing’ of musical parameters. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that we are primarily living beings of the species Homo sapiens. Being alive consists in the realization of biological processes. Accordingly, our conditions of existence and persistence have nothing to do with things like mental continuity. Hence, mental capabilities seem to be irrelevant to understanding the core of our nature as human beings. In recent years, the debate on animalism has focused on certain intractable ontological puzzles. However important these puzzles may be, they do not get (...) to the heart of the widespread reluctance to accept animalism. One crucial reason lies in the fact that this view does not seem to respect our deeply entrenched understanding of ourselves as mental beings. The aim of my paper is thus to provide a stronger conception of the ontological relevance of our mental capabilities – without giving up the cen- tral claims of animalism. In particular, I discuss three proposals: first, the idea that being a human being involves the potential to develop mental capabilities; second, the idea that it is an essential feature of human beings to have a brain with the natural function of developing mental capabilities; and third, the idea that the ontological relevance of mental capabilities may emerge in the context of specifying something like the general human form of life. (shrink)

We are used to describe instrumental music in semantic terms. Many of our judgements about music – at least if taken literally – seem to implicate that music is capable of expressing thoughts and emotions, for example. Moreover, in the course of listening to music, we actually seem to hear that music has such (and similar) contents. The main aim of the paper consists in presenting reasons for being skeptical towards such claims. Not only are these claims less plausible than (...) one might think at first glance. What is more, at least some of these ways of talking about music are dispensable: we can give them up without any actual loss. The paper is not solely critical, though. It introduces two ideas aiming to show that some claims which are deeply anchored in our practice of articulating musical experiences can be understood without presupposing that the perceived music has some kind of content. (shrink)

One of the central claims in Ansgar Beckermann’s Gehirn, Ich, Freiheit is that we are biological beings. Somewhat strikingly, the book manages to convey the impression that this is a rather uncontroversial claim. Actually, the opposite is closer to the truth – or so I will try to argue. That it is a controversial claim can be shown by pointing out some of its problematic and seemingly implausible consequences. These consequences come into view by attempting to answer the questions, what (...) biological beings exactly are, and which conditions of diachronic identity they have. Highlighting these problems, I do not try to argue against the claim that we are biological beings, though. In the first place, it shall simply gain profile. Secondly, some options for solving these problems are discussed. In this way, the paper contributes to a defense of the claim that we are biological beings. For although this claim raises serious theoretical problems, it is most likely true. (shrink)

Certainly, we sometimes use language creatively and think really new thoughts. However, can we think and speak regardless of the manner in which we have spoken and thought in the past? This seems to be highly improbable. Consequently, nobody would assert something like this. But that being a given, what are the exact reasons that prevent us from radically detaching ourselves from our past practices of thinking and speaking? What roles do past facts play in determining what we are able (...) to think and speak today? This essay looks at the motivation for examining and determining the impact of ‘our history’ on semantics. If possible, these ideas should appeal independently of special or contentious theoretical presuppositions. (shrink)

English summary: In its core, this book represents a defense of the thesis that we are essentially biological creatures of the species Homo sapiens - and not essentially persons. This thesis has consequences for the problem of personal identity. An important aspect of its defense - and the book's second central line of argumentation - is, therefore, to substantiate that ours are the diachronic identity conditions of biological beings. Attempting to reach both argumentation goals, one has to overcome some obstacles, (...) from motivating an appropriate ontological framework via explaining the concept of the animate being to demonstrating that essentialism is still a viable option today. In this way, a picture gradually emerges which places us humans, as living beings among other living beings, in a biological world, without, however, playing down that we are, at least typically, also persons with a rich spiritual life. German description: Das Buch ist im Kern eine Verteidigung der These, dass wir wesentlich biologische Lebewesen der Spezies Homo sapiens sind - und nicht etwa wesentlich Personen. Diese These hat Konsequenzen fur das Problem der personalen Identitat. Ein wichtiger Aspekt ihrer Verteidigung - und der zweite zentrale Argumentationsstrang des Buchs - liegt demnach darin, zu begrunden, dass wir die diachronen Identitatsbedingungen biologischer Lebewesen haben. Der Versuch, beide Argumentstationsziele zu erreichen, muss einige Hurden nehmen: angefangen von einer Motivierung eines passenden ontologischen Rahmens uber eine Erlauterung des Begriffs des Lebewesens bis hin zu dem Nachweis, dass ein Essentialismus heutzutage noch eine gangbare Option ist. Auf diese Weise entsteht nach und nach ein Bild, das uns Menschen, als Lebewesen unter anderen Lebewesen, in eine biologische Welt einordnet, ohne dabei aber kleinzureden, dass wir, zumindest typischerweise, auch Personen mit einem reichhaltigen geistigen Leben sind. (shrink)