In the face of managed care and market economies infringing on the practice of medicine, reducing its autonomy and determining the moral guidelines for medical practice, many (...) physicians are calling out for a return to what is perceived as a traditional medical ethic. Many religiously motivated critics of certain modern developments in medicine have made similar appeals. These calls are best understood as an attempt to define medicine as a practice that is necessarily ethical in nature, a practice the moral basis of which is internal to that practice. This article examines and assesses this definition of medicine in reference to Aristotle's division of human undertakings into three distinct categories: theory, poieisis (i.e., production), and praxis. It is concluded that medicine can be understood as a praxis (as opposed to a theory or production, both of which are morally neutral), because the practice of medicine, and all of its constitutive acts, can only be explained and assessed in reference to health, which is itself a final good and hence of moral value. Such an understanding would immunize medicine against usurpation by the free market. However, by the same token it would also dissociate medicine from all other moralities external to it, including those grounded in faith and religion. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term (...) ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the existence of moral distress among nurses in Lilongwe District of Malawi. Qualitative research was conducted in selected health (...) institutions of Lilongwe District in Malawi to assess knowledge and causes of moral distress among nurses and coping mechanisms and sources of support that are used by morally distressed nurses. Data were collected from a purposive sample of 20 nurses through in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis of qualitative data was used. The results show that nurses, irrespective of age, work experience and tribe, experienced moral distress related to patient/nursing care. The major distressing factors were inadequate resources and lack of respect from patients, guardians, peers and bosses. Nurses desire teamwork and ethics committees in their health institutions as a means of controlling and preventing moral distress. There is a need for creation of awareness for nurses to recognize and manage moral distress, thus optimizing their ability to provide quality and uncompromised nursing care. (shrink)

This interesting commentary on the Book of Job, following upon the author's earlier and shorter English-language studies in different U.S. periodicals, renews the now almost (...) forgotten tradition of philosophical commentaries on Biblical books. Biblical scholarship is missing from this study. Instead we have the German text of Job printed along with a profusion of notes. Sometimes these are only a few words to explain a sentence, sometimes they amount to a longer philosophical digression. Most contemporary scholars consider such commentaries amateurish and outmoded; yet a non-theological reflection on a text of universal, almost supra-Biblical, content such as the book of Job is certainly justified.—M. J. V. (shrink)

At the beginning of the first version of the Ages of the World Schelling invoked Plato's protection against the criticism he was expecting from his contemporaries. (...) class='Hi'>More than forty years later, in his last system, Aristotle had become the most quoted of his predecessors. The way from Plato to Aristotle and the parallels drawn between "the philosopher" and Kant are among the best parts of the book. Hegel is almost as much studied by Oeser as Schelling. After all, the subtitle announces a contribution to the critique of the Hegelian system. Unlike most scholars of the German idealism the author does not try to play out Hegel against Schelling or Schelling against Hegel. He is more interested in showing their similarities. However, in spite of this, Oeser's sympathies obviously lie with Schelling and in the last chapter he attempts to show how the final system of Schelling, that of the "purely rational philosophy" was not written only to give a new platform to the positive philosophy but also to lay the groundwork for a reconciliation between metaphysics and dialectical idealism in terms of transcendence and transcendentality.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This book is a reprint of one of the pioneer works on German mysticism of the nineteenth century. It is a comprehensive account of the most fertile (...) hundred years of German spiritual and mystical history in the Middle Ages. In contrast to Bach's and Lasson's books on Eckhart written in the same decade, Greith's viewpoint is one of narrow scholastic orthodoxy. However, the wealth of detail and the pleasant simplicity of style compensate for those rather irritating lamentations about the "errors" of Meister Eckhart. Although this book was written before Denifle's discovery of Eckhart's Latin works, it remains of value today due to its systematic study of the doctrinal positions of the major mystical writers of the Rhineland. Included as well is an interesting analysis of mystical poetry centered around the works of the famous Sister Mechtild. The book ends with a lengthy and detailed description of the spirituality and spiritual theory developed in the scattered nunneries of the preaching orders.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Though Joseph Nadler published the definitive, critical edition of Hamanns' complete works, the hermetic character of these texts warrants only too strongly a publication of at least (...) the major texts with commentaries. The annotated edition is planned to comprise eight volumes. From the viewpoint of the history of ideas, Vol. IV is undoubtedly the most interesting, since it contains the important texts on the origin of language. These were directly provoked by Herder's famous Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache; "the Magician of the North" fights the spirit of the Aufklärung even when it is clothed in the more attractive, pre-romantic setting of Herder's prose. Besides a fantastic amount of notes and commentary, Miss Büchsel, the editor of Vol. IV, offers a comprehensive and penetrating introductory study. Especially important are the chapters on the "pre-history" of Hamanns' Herder-interpretation and its influence on the later development of German intellectual life from the early Goethe to the old Schelling Vol. V contains the so-called mystery-writings directly pertinent to the Christian doctrine of the revelation of the Incarnated Son of God. These texts are truly esoteric, and even the multitude of notes accompanying them cannot always fully overcome their terrible obscurity. And here arises the only objection against this edition. The notes and commentaries are a mine of detailed information, and they "unconceal" the meaning of every word. Yet perhaps their very abundance impedes their stated purpose. They do help in understanding the words, but they make sustained reading of the texts themselves impossible. The encyclopedical character of the notes is cause for both exasperation and for growth in knowledge and inspiration.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Friedrich Schlegel is known above all as a man of letters and political interests, while his philosophical opus has received as yet a very limited interest and (...) attention. Perhaps this new critical edition will enable him to carve a small niche for himself in forthcoming histories of philosophy. He was certainly not the most significant thinker; but his imagination, many-sidedness, sharpness, and his unmistakable speculative gift qualify him to be in the second rank of Romantic philosophers immediately after Schelling and Baader. The young Friedrich Schlegel was thoroughly under the spell of Fichte, but his later development—notwithstanding personal antipathy—carried him close to Schelling. The ethical pathos of Fichte's doctrine could not make Schlegel overlook the injustice done to nature, art, and religion. Though his celebrated conversion to Catholicism in the Dom of Cologne did not take place until 1838, Schlegel read Jacob Boehme and was a close friend of Schleiermacher, and thus was absorbed by religious problems years before. Already in his Cologne lectures he goes beyond the vague idealistic concept of the "divinity" in favor of a personal and transcendent God. These two volumes of the critical edition contain the following texts: Transzendentalphilosophie, lectures in Jena from 1800-1801. The text is the one published by J. Körner in 1935. The Development of Philosophy in Twelve Books and Propedeutic and Logic. The texts in Propedeutic and Logic are of a general introductory character. But in The Development of Philosophy a tremendous effort is made to give, if not an entirely systematic, at least a quasi-all-embracing, encyclopedic sketch of philosophy and its history. Here again we read nothing substantially new. The editor follows the text published by Windischmann in 1836 but does complete it with variants from other manuscripts. Métaphysique. These lectures were delivered in French to Madame de Staël. In addition to an already known text published by J. Körner the editor makes use of a manuscript in the hand of Schlegel which was found only after the last war. The preface of J.-J. Anstett is ascetically short and even the commentary consists only of sober and learned notes at the end of the second volume.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This is the first good book on the early Schelling since Metzger's study in 1911. What is more, it is an entirely novel interpretation of this (...) class='Hi'>first and most productive decade of Schelling's philosophizing. The central thesis is that Schelling's fundamental intuition had always been that of the concrete and particular character of all reality. Reality is a whole and everything real is a whole: an actual closed totality. Even in this most Fichtean period, Schelling did not really accept the transcendental position, and the philosophy of nature allowed him to expand his vision of the concrete into rich and complex constructions. This is a view which one occasionally encounters in other critical writings on Schelling, but it is usually overpowered by the accumulated Hegelian prejudice concerning Schelling's "dogmatism" and "abstract formalism." It is therefore heartening to see the author, without any polemics, challenging the Hegelians on their own favorite hunting-ground: the arid pastures of the philosophy of identity. Although the author does not fully document her findings, and although the System of Transcendental Idealism is almost totally neglected, the book is undoubtedly an important event. It may even signal the opening of new research into the early Schelling. It is immensely useful--and encouraging--for a number of scholars working on the Ages of the World and on the positive philosophy: it helps them to see the continuity in the six decades of Schelling's philosophizing.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This is a monumental work. The author's aim is to follow the destiny of the self-explicitation [[sic]] of western thought from the concept of substance to (...) class='Hi'> that of structure. Authentic philosophical thinking has always been ontological, and structure, no less than substance is a form or species of being. System too is a species of being which leads from substance to structure. Structure is only an articulation and intensification of substance. The concept of structure is the central notion of contemporary thought; it is at the focus of the natural as well as of the social sciences and it alone can bridge the gap between the "two cultures." It alone can pave the way for a new philosophical humanism which, without abandoning the claim to universality and "objectivity," retains the thinking man as its focus. The author's contention is that the concept of structure is far from being a newcomer on the scene but it has been rather ripening slowly throughout the great systems of the last six centuries. Without being in any way a treatise on the history of philosophy and on the history of science, the present book describes with great competence and persuasiveness the evolution of "structure" from Nicholas of Autrecourt via Cusanus and early modern science to Descartes. Next comes an extraordinarily rich and insightful analysis of the world of Pascal. Finally the conclusion is reached through a discussion of Leibniz and Kant. This is a difficult book, a long and complex one. It might well belong to those writings which reshape our understanding of the past, and through it, contribute to our expectations of the future.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This recent monograph on the famous head of the Protestant theological school of Tübingen is a mature and well-documented writing, despite a certain circularity and many (...) class='Hi'>repetitions in its argument. What Geiger tries to expound above all is Baur's speculative basis—or bias. Baur began with Schleiermacher, but the major and striking influence on Baur's thinking was exerted by Hegel. His books on the history of dogma are a theological counterpart of Hegel's phenomenology. But in his last writings, the speculative schemas are quietly effaced, and we read suddenly that the essence of Christianity is the "pure moral conscience and the autonomy of the subject."—M. J. V. (shrink)

In the mushrooming literature on the late Heidegger, Pugliese's book stands with the distinction of an immense and sometimes almost exasperating amount of learned notes and (...) class='Hi'>excurses [[sic]]. On the other hand, the speculative core of the work is a highly original one. It treats the famous "Kehre" in the continuity of Heidegger's thought and proves quite convincingly that it can be organically developed from the original thesis of "historicity" as it stands in Sein und Zeit. Making use of the earliest texts as well as of a number of unpublished lecture-notes, Pugliese tries to back those interpretations which claim that the "Kehre" is indeed a turning-point in the history of metaphysics--even though it represents no break or revolution in Heidegger's own thought. This is a difficult book but fortunately devoid of the affected mannerism of so many Heidegger admirers, and a telling example of the frequent success of French and Spanish "translations" of German speculation.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Despite the widespread use of the classical bicriteria Markowitz mean-variance framework, a broad consensus is emerging on the need to include more criteria for complex portfolio (...) class='Hi'>selection problems. Sustainable investing, also called socially responsible investment, is becoming a mainstream investment practice. In recent years, some scholars have attempted to include sustainability as a third criterion to better reflect the individual preferences of those ethical or green investors who are willing to combine strong financial performance with social benefits. For this purpose, new computational methods for optimizing this complex multiobjective problem are needed. Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms have been recently used for portfolio selection, thus extending the mean-variance methodology to obtain a mean-variance-sustainability nondominated surface. In this paper, we apply a recent multiobjective genetic algorithm based on the concept of ε-dominance called ev-MOGA. This algorithm tries to ensure convergence towards the Pareto set in a smart distributed manner with limited memory resources. It also adjusts the limits of the Pareto front dynamically and prevents solutions belonging to the ends of the front from being lost. Moreover, the individual preferences of socially responsible investors could be visualised using a novel tool, known as level diagrams, which helps investors better understand the range of values attainable and the tradeoff between return, risk, and sustainability. (shrink)

The problem of the electromagnetic coupling for spin-3/2 particles is discussed. Following supergravity and some previous researches in the field of classical supersymmetric particles, we found (...) class='Hi'> that the electromagnetic coupling must not obey a minimal coupling in the sense of coupling the electromagnetic potential, but some kind of an electromagnetic field strength. (shrink)