o ne -taking -Life ana Oavmg .Life The Islamic Context Jonathan E. Brockopp The great ethicists of the western world, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, and others, ...

Integrating theory with case studies, this book examines the practical application of moral theory in clinical decision-making through 40 composite cases based on actual clinical experience. Complex, realistic, and challenging, these examples contain the multiplicity of factors faced in clinical crises, making this a superb exploration of the ways in which theory relates to actual life-or-death situations.

In a world of rapid technological advances, the moral issues raised by life and death choices in healthcare remain obscure. _Life and Death in Healthcare Ethics_ provides a concise, thoughtful and extremely accessible guide to these moral issues. Helen Watt examines, using real-life cases, the range of choices taken by healthcare professionals, patients and clients which lead to the shortening of life. The topics looked at include: * euthanasia and withdrawal of treatment * the persistent vegetative state (...) * abortion * IVF and cloning * life-saving treatment of pregnant women Clearly written and insightful, _Life and Death in Healthcare Ethics_ presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy. It will be of interest to anyone confronting healthcare ethics for the first time, or seeking to develop his or her understanding of some core topics in the field. (shrink)

The technological advances in medicine, including prolongation of life, have constituted several dilemmas at the end of life. In the context of the Belgian debates on end-of-life care, the views of Muslim women remain understudied. The aim of this article is fourfold. First, we seek to describe the beliefs and attitudes of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Second, we aim to identify whether differences are observable among middle-aged and elderly (...) women’s attitudes toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Third, we aim to explore the role of religion in their attitudes. Fourth, we seek to document how our results are related to normative Islamic literature. Qualitative empirical research was conducted with a sample of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women living in Antwerp and with experts in the field. We found an unconditional belief in God’s sovereign power over the domain of life and death and in God’s almightiness. However, we also found a tolerant attitude, mainly among our middle-aged participants, toward withholding and withdrawing based on theological, eschatological, financial and quality of life arguments. Our study reveals that religious beliefs and worldviews have a great impact on the ethical attitudes toward end-of-life issues. We found divergent positions toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, reflecting the lines of reasoning found in normative Islamic literature. In our interviews, theological and eschatological notions emerged as well as financial and quality of life arguments. (shrink)

Most of the images evoked by the term shamanism are derived from the soul's field of experience. These images run the gamut of possibilities, from a disconcerting exoticism to the most intimate familiarity. Sometimes the shaman's role is limited to that of pathetic hero, struggling in solitude against hostile nature; sometimes he becomes the rudimentary model of the mystic or even of the psychiatrist of contemporary societies. These images, however, without being completely false, wrongly reduce the shamanic phenomenon to the (...) shaman's personality and limit his field of action to the individual psyche. This limitation hardly does justice to the realities of shamanistic societies. What is missing in the shaman-centered view is the collective's slumbering velleity of itself entering into shamanic experience. Each cure becomes an occasion for collective renewal and joy. The shaman's activities in séance, it is believed, are an expression of the direct contact he has established with the spirits and of his power over them; his duties are the realization of a ritual act carried out at the behest of the community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Helping a Muslim Family to Make a Life–and–Death Decision for Their Beloved Terminally Ill FatherBahar BastaniI live in a city in the Midwest with a population of around two million people. There are an estimated 2,000 Iranians living in this city, the vast majority of which belong to Shia sect of Islam. [End Page 190] However, the vast majority is also not very religious. Over the (...) past two decades that I have been living in this city, professionally in the capacity of a physician and university faculty at a school of medicine, and socially as one of the community leaders with a particular role in religious matters, I have acquired the trust of my community. Following one of my yearly routine travels to my homeland, Iran, I had just returned to work when I received a phone call from one of the Iranian community members. He informed me that his father was very ill and was hospitalized, and that the physicians had introduced the idea of stopping life support. The family was experiencing a significant emotional, moral and religious dilemma as to whether they could consent to this. I was requested by the patient’s children to help them make the right decision.I requested that the oldest son, who had called me, to ask the three other siblings and their mother to be present at the bedside of the patient that night, so that we could discuss the matters face–to–face. That same night, all requisite family members and myself gathered at the bedside of this 88–year–old husband and father, who had developed multi–organ failure, which commenced with an infection following a heart valve replacement, followed by bacteremia and sepsis. Moreover, the patient was hypotensive, had developed respiratory failure requiring intubation and artificial ventilation, and had also developed hematologic coagulation abnormalities secondary to sepsis. Because of the sepsis, hypotension, and multiple drugs, including antibiotics and vasopressors, his kidneys had also failed, and there was a need to start hemodialysis if his life was to be maintained. After speaking with the intensive care physicians who were taking care of this elderly gentleman, it became clear to me that further care was futile, and there was absolutely no hope for him to recover from his multiple organ failure. I presented all the facts that I had acquired to the family members, and expressed my own viewpoint that I agreed with those physicians and that further care of their beloved, terminally ill husband and father was futile and only extended his dying. My assurances made it easier for the family members, particularly for his four sons who were present, to come to the decision to withdraw life support. After I informed the intensive care physicians of the family’s decision, the patient was heavily sedated with morphine, and the intravenous fluids, antibiotics, vasopressors, and the ventilator machine were all stopped. Over the next several minutes, the patient developed agonal breathing, his blood pressure dropped to zero, and his heart stopped. During the last few minutes of his life, I held the hands of the family members, we all prayed Islamic prayers to bless his soul while departing from his body. The next day, I supported the family with funeral services that included the Islamic prayers for the dead, the ceremonial religious washing of the body of the deceased, and the ceremonial religious burial.The dilemma that this family faced was multi-factorial: (1) the children had spent all of their adult life in America, and were unfamiliar with Islamic end of life and funeral traditions; (2) they had been asked by their father’s physicians to make a decision regarding the withdrawal of life support, which posed a moral and ethical dilemma; (3) they did not know whether it was religiously acceptable to withdraw life support; and (4) they did not know what type of funeral service would be acceptable to the religious beliefs of their deceased father.My presence as a trusted community leader, physician and religious leader was reassuring to the family members that the decision to stop life support for their loved one with a terminal illness and multiple organ... (shrink)

One of the concepts which deserves particular attention by philosophers of the 21th century is that of life and, more specifically, that of human life. Because life on Earth is limited, mankind has historically relied on religion for its promise of salvation and an afterlife.Yet, recently, people have been relying on alternative institutions, such as the state or market, for answers to their questions about the limited nature of human life. With the rise of dependence on (...) such instituions comes the rise of new questions: are the state and market responsible for defining the meaning of life and for providing adequate answers to the suffering and death that afflict humankind? Can the state make use of technology and scientific knowledge in order to regulate population according to its objectives? Is there any ethical limit to the experimentation with the different phases of human life? Is it possible to preserve a sacral sphere for human life? This book provides extensive reflection and possible solutions to these perplexities. (shrink)

Social practices of quantification, or the production and communication of numbers, have been recognized as important foundations of organizational knowledge, as well as sources of power. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated digital tools to capture and extract numerical data from social life, however, there is a pressing need to understand the ethical stakes of quantification. The current study examines quantification from an ethical lens, to frame and promote a research agenda around the ethics of quantification. After a (...) brief overview of quantification research and its uses in state and market organization, I discuss quantification in terms of three core subprocesses—capture, specification, and appropriation, illustrating and identifying ethical concerns around each process. Linking these processes to the performative effects of measures, I present a working model of quantification from which the discussion builds ideas for developing a research agenda around quantification. (shrink)

The pursuit of happiness is a long-enshrined tradition that has recently become the cornerstone of the American Positive Psychology movement. However, “happiness” is an over-worked and ambiguous word, which, it is argued, should be restricted and only used as the label for a brief emotional state that typically lasts a few seconds or minutes. The corollary proposal for positive psychology is that optimism is a preferable stance over pessimism or realism. Examples are presented both from psychology and economics (...) that illustrate the dangers of optimism, and in which better outcomes can occur with a pessimistic stance. A more sophisticated approach is then presented in which, in relation to well-being and quality of life, neither optimism nor pessimism is seen as inherently better than the other, but, rather, in which psychological flexibility may contribute optimally to health and well-being. (shrink)

Metrics shape our social worlds in many and more ways. Everyday quantifications of our preferences, our behaviors and our relationships, alter us and the institutions that we constitute. This essay takes a brief look at the metrics of business ethics through two analytic devices. Representation explains the notion that metrics can capture or demonstrate ethics and performativity explains the notion that metrics can shape or constitute ethics. The analytic distinction between representation and performativity is obscured in practice when metrics become (...) targets, indeed much of the social power of metrics comes from their use as targets. Hence, we should pay attention to the world of practice in which measuring and doing are entangled. However, we should not lose sight of the limitations of measurement and the possibility that there are areas of ethical life best left unmeasured. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the political perspective of corporate social responsibility disclosures and, drawing on Weber’s notion of traditionalism, seeks to explain what motivates companies to make such disclosures in a traditional setting. Annual reports of 23 banking companies in Bangladesh are analysed over the period 2009–2012. This is supplemented by a review of documentary evidence on the political and social activities of corporations and reports published in national and international newspapers. We found that, in the banking companies over (...) the period of study, apparently neutral, corporate, philanthropic activities disclosed and promoted in CSR reports are inextricably linked to powerful leaders’ personal projects and the ruling party’s agendas. We have demonstrated elements of traditional societies, including personal loyalty and the public display of loyalty, the master–servant relationship, and obedience to personal rather than formal authority, provide an understanding of why banks have employed politically charged CSR disclosure strategies. The paper contributes to disclosure studies where political motivations of corporate disclosure rarely discussed. The paper extends the debate on political CSR by demonstrating that the role of family and familial values at the organisational and national levels may be much more important when it comes to CSR disclosure and activities. (shrink)

This is the earliest critical discussion in the context of modern/contemporary philosophy in the analytical tradition arguing that somebody with a reasonably stable character and the company of the right people would be able to enjoy eternity.

When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong? Torbjörn Tännsjö examines three theories on the ethics of killing in this book: deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for different kinds of killing: trolley-cases, murder, capital punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our intuitions in relation to them, and our moral intuitions are examined (...) in turn. Only those intuitions that survive an understanding of how we have come to hold them are seen as 'considered' intuitions. The idea is that the theory that can best explain the content of our considered intuitions gains inductive support from them. We must transcend our narrow cultural horizons and avoid certain cognitive mistakes in order to hold considered intuitions. In this volume, suitable for courses in ethics and applied ethics, Tännsjö argues that in the final analysis utilitarianism can best account for, and explain, our considered intuitions about all these kinds of killing. (shrink)

This paper begins with the lived accounts of emergency and critical care medical interventions in which an unhoused person is brought to the emergency department in cardiac arrest. The case is a dramatised representation of the extent to which biopolitical forces via reduction to bare life through biopolitical and necropolitical operations are prominent influences in nursing and medical care. This paper draws on the scholarship of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe to offer a theoretical analysis of the (...) power dynamics that influence the health care and death care of patients who are caught in the auspices of a neoliberal capitalist healthcare apparatus. This paper offers analysis of the overt displays of biopower over those individuals cast aside as generally unworthy of access to healthcare in a postcolonial capitalist system, in addition to the ways in which humans are reduced to ‘bare life’ in their dying days. We analyse this case study through Agamben's description of thanatopolitics, a ‘regime of death’, and the technologies that accompany the dying process, particularly in that of the homo sacer. Additionally, this paper illustrates the ways in which necropolitics and biopower are integral to understanding how the most advanced and expensive medical interventions make visible the political values of the healthcare system and how nurses and healthcare functions in these deathworlds. The purpose of this paper is to develop a greater understanding of biopolitical and necropolitical operations in acute and critical care environments, and to offer guidance to nurses in these spaces as they work to uphold ethical duties in a system that increasingly dehumanises. (shrink)

This paper presents ethical dilemmas concerning the termination of pregnancy, the management of childbirth, and the withdrawal of life-support from infants in special care, for a small sample of British Pakistani Muslim parents of babies diagnosed with fatal abnormalities. Case studies illustrating these dilemmas are taken from a qualitative study of 66 families of Pakistani origin referred to a genetics clinic in Southern England. The paper shows how parents negotiated between the authoritative knowledge of their doctors, religious experts, and (...) senior family members in response to the ethical dilemmas they faced. There was little knowledge or open discussion of the view that Islam permits the termination of pregnancy for serious or fatal abnormality within 120 days and there was considerable disquiet over the idea of ending a pregnancy. For some parents, whether their newborn baby would draw breath was a main worry, with implications for the baby's Muslim identity and for the recognition of loss the parents would receive from family and community. This concern sometimes conflicted with doctors' concerns to minimize risk to future pregnancies by not performing a Caesarean delivery if a baby is sure to die. The paper also identifies parents' concerns and feelings of wrong-doing regarding the withdrawal of artificial life-support from infants with multiple abnormalities. The conclusion considers some of the implications of these observations for the counselling and support of Muslim parents following the pre- or neo-natal diagnosis of fatal abnormalities in their children. (shrink)

Death and grief in the ancient world -- Predictions and disability in Rome.

Modern biomedical technologies managed to revolutionise the End-of-Life Care (EoLC) in many aspects. The dying process can now be "engineered" by managing the accompanying physical symptoms or by "prolonging/hastening" death itself. Such interventions questioned and problematised long-established understandings of key moral concepts, such as good life, quality of life, pain, suffering, good death, appropriate death, dying well, etc. This volume examines how multifaceted EoLC moral questions can be addressed from interdisciplinary perspectives within the Islamic tradition. Contributors Amir (...) Abbas Alizamani, Beate Anam, Hamed Arezaei, Asma Asadi, Pieter Coppens, Hans Daiber, Khalid Elzamzamy, Mohammed Ghaly, Hadil Lababidi, Shahaboddin Mahdavi, Aasim Padela, Rafaqat Rashid and Ayman Shabana. (shrink)

In the article, the author addresses with two ways of dealing with life, biopolitics, and necropolitics, and connects them to the excess of power over life and death in the era of neoliberal global capitalism. Dealing with necropolitical processes requires a different analysis of spaces and temporalities, of necrospaces and necrotemporalities. It also requires consideration of the possibilities of resistance to necropolitical processes by those who are by no means silent witnesses, by no means mere victims, (...) but subjects who have undergone a process of (de)subjectivation in a way that, as Achille Mbembe would argue, leads to a process of destruction of their own subjectivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Their Father’s Library: Books Furnish Not Only a Room, But Also a Tradition ELIZABETH POWERS Although they shared close life dates and became famous in the same years for their epistolary novels, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Fanny Burney (1752–1840) would seem to have been worlds apart literarily. (Goethe had in his Weimar library a copy of Evelina, while Burney was probably not ignorant of the (...) Europe-wide sensation The Sorrows ofYoung Werther.) What might be called their literary apprenticeship, however, was remarkably similar, consisting not of schooling in a traditional institution in which students (and, importantly, most eighteenth-century writers) were drilled in the classical curriculum, but, instead, from wide reading within the confines of their fathers’ libraries. It is true that Goethe and his younger sister Cornelia were supplied at home with a number of tutors and that their progress was monitored by their father, but their acquaintance with literature was fostered within the confines of the family home. Burney had no formal education at all. Indeed, on the appearance of Evelina, her father (according to her diary) remarked : “[S]he has had very little Education but what she has given herself,—less than any of the others!” Burney, however, had the advantage of growing up in a milieu in which books mattered. While the Goethes were eminently respectable, on the mother’s side part of what was the patriciate of the city of Frankfurt, the Burney household in London was bursting with wits and with what can only be called celebrities. The Burneys knew God and the world: David Garrick, Dr. Johnarion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 116 in their father’s library son, Hester Thrale. As Virginia Woolf noted of the famous father, Dr. Charles Burney, he was a musician “who could talk of intellectual things and ask clever people to his house.” Goethe has given plenty of evidence of roaming freely among his father’s books, a collection of 1,700 calfskin-bound volumes. When Burney went to serve at the court of King George III, Queen Charlotte was disappointed at how few books the author of Evelina possessed. (Similarities accumulate: Goethe also served at court, as minister in the duchy of Weimar.) But why cart around a load of books? As Burney wrote in her diary: “[M]y Father’s most delightful Library, as I then told her [the Queen], with my free access to it, had made [owning my own books] a thing unnecessary... ” Libraries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, whether private or public affairs, were not like contemporary public libraries, catering to a wide array of tastes, but were repositories of what Matthew Arnold termed “the best that is known and thought in the world.” Let’s call it the Western intellectual and cultural heritage. Most respectable homes would possess at a minimum a Bible, while the holdings in private homes, as evident in the library of Goethe’s father, could reach astounding proportions. According to Burney biographer Claire Harman, Fanny’s brother left at his death one of the finest private libraries of the age. Moreover, the antiquity of the works in the venerable libraries scattered across Europe from Dublin to Saint Petersburg, and especially their survival despite centuries of vicissitudes, was testimony to the authoritative nature of the transmission. Anyone who took the Bible in hand, who took lessons from it, adhering, for instance, to the injunctions of the Ten Commandments, was conscious of subscribing to values shared by preceding generations. Literary practitioners, also showing obeisance to authoritative predecessors, followed earlier models, in the process contributing to an evolving literary heritage. There was no purity in this transmission. It was truly promiscuous, but its quasi-biological character, like a mother’s left-handedness in a child, can be seen in the family Elizabeth Powers 117 resemblances among writers of different eras. Just as individuals perpetuate traits of their parents, so literature and the other arts recycled features of artistic predecessors. Writers as diverse in background and language and religion as Ariosto and Milton transmitted the dna, so to speak, of such epical forebears as Homer and Virgil. This sort of family legitimacy was... (shrink)

In theory, at least, we might achieve a certain sort of invulnerability right at the end of life. Suppose that under favorable circumstances we can live a certain number of years, say 125, but no longer, and also that we can make life as a whole better and better over time. Under these assumptions we might hope to disarm death by spending 125 years making life as good as it can be. If we were lucky enough (...) to accomplish that, afterwards we would be immune to mortal harm. Especially for those who are closer to the beginning of life than to the end, however, this strategy leaves much to be desired. It is like devouring an entire banquet so as to eliminate the danger of someone stealing it from us. Like a feast, a good life is safely ours after it is over, but then safety comes too late to be of any use to us. To be of practical value, we need protection from mortal harm much earlier in life. (shrink)

The work of Foucault on liberal government, and that of his followers, is subject to two dangers. The first is to regard the critical character of liberalism (as governing through freedom) as providing safeguards against the despotic potentials of biopower and sovereignty. The second is to regard these heterogenous powers of life and death as somehow simply relocated or reinscribed within the field of liberal governmentality. The latter point is a major methodological error; the former closes the gap between (...) the analytics of government and the normativity of liberalism itself. By working through these dangers, our understanding of the ethos of liberal government is transformed. That ethos today requires us to link governing through freedom to the powers of life and death, the exercise of choice to the sovereign decision, the contract to violence, economic citizenship to moral discipline and obligation, and rights and liberties to enforcement. (shrink)

How should modern medicine's dramatic new powers to sustain life be employed? How should limited resources be used to extend and improve the quality of life? In this collection, Dan Brock, a distinguished philosopher and bioethicist and co-author of Deciding for Others (Cambridge, 1989), explores the moral issues raised by new ideals of shared decision making between physicians and patients. The book develops an ethical framework for decisions about life-sustaining treatment and euthanasia, and examines how these (...) class='Hi'>life and death decisions are transformed in health policy when the focus shifts from what is best for a patient to what is just for all patients. Professor Brock combines acute philosophical analysis with a deep understanding of the realities of clinical health policy. This is a volume for philosophers concerned with medical ethics, health policy professionals, physicians interested in bioethics, and undergraduate courses in biomedical ethics. (shrink)

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Fundamentals -- Beginning-of-life issues -- Reproductive technologies -- Contraception, sterilization, and natural family planning -- End-of-life issues -- Cooperation with evil -- Respect for the body -- The ten commandments for health care professionals and patients.

After the death of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h), one of the most significant debated topics of Muslims was the institution of caliphate. This institution caused crucial argumentations through the ages from Abu Bakr to Abd-al-Majid who was the hundreth khalifa. Some prominent issues in that regard as follows: How khalifa comes to power, who becomes khalifa, whether he is descended from Quraysh or not, which kind of traits khalifa should have, and how khalifa should behave in certain circumstances. While these (...) arguments were going on, caliphate was maintained based on the reign under some certain dynasties’ responsibilities after the Rashidun (rightly guided) Caliphs. Umayyads, Abbasids and Ottoman Dynasties were the most well-known ones of these dynasties. Throughout history, even though caliphate passed in one another’s hands among aforementioned dynasties, none of them did attempt to abolish this position. However, Turkish Muslims who became defeated with European occupation of non-western territories decided to abolish caliphate for the sake of modernization activities within the period of transition from imperialism to nation state. This decision brought about a trauma, which was much more critical than former argumentation around the position in Muslim world. Many congresses were organized in Islamic world in order to recover from this trauma. While this kind of quests were continuing, Muhammad Hamīdullah proposed “High Caliphate Council” in relation to rearrangement of caliphate in accordance with the conditions of Islamic countries. This proposal offers an applicable model to today’s modern nation states by establishing unity among them and leaving aside their conflicts and differences. This proposal offers a resolution of much-discussed matters of the position within the limits of principals. It also draws attention by showing a possibility of Islamic union in contemporary Islamic thought. Summary: The matters of who undertakes the management of societies, how rulers come to power and in what manners the rulers maintain the management have been discussed throughout history. It is seen that rulers adopted kingdom as regime before the period of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h). There was also two-person management. The discussions about this matter were also seen around khalifas who were the rulers of Muslims after the death of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h). Some debated issues in that regards as follows: Who becomes khalifa, how he is elected, which traits he should possess, and so on. Caliphate continued its existence despite the discussions until the first quarter of the 14th Hijra era. Abolition of caliphate was a trauma for Muslims undoubtedly. From Anatolia to Egypt and from India to the Balkans, many attempts were carried out to recover from this trauma. However, this matter was oversimplified in the conditions of that period since it became a topic which was hushed over in just congresses and conventions. One of the people who wrote on this topic, which maintains its vitality even today was Muhammad Hamīdullah. He was an important Islamic scholar, a lawyer and a historian in Indian geography. Hamīdullah did deal caliphate by indicating its history broadly. The distinctive feature of Hamīdullah from others who wrote on this topic is that he also presented a considerable offer to solve the matter. In this sense, Hamīdullah experienced the trauma in his own life as all muslims did it with the abolition of caliphate. Hence he mentioned this matter in his writings in the mood of care and dignity of a scientist and also in feeling of a heartbroken muslim. Hamīdullah made clear that the method of election of the ruler differed throughout history. Indeed, the verses of Holy Qur’ān, the applications of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) and the differences of Four Great Chaliphs on coming to power testified this claim. According to Hamīdullah, it is quite normal that the method of regime can vary according to the conditions of societies. He recommended acting based on timeless rules rather than the changes that vary according to conditions and places. He also stated that the regime which Islam approves is a combination of kingdom and democracy in his lines dealing with methods of regime. To him, kingdom is the method of regime of empire. Empire is the regime in which various nationalities live together with all their differences and interact with one another intensely and in which the rulers rule over wide borders. On the other hand, Islamic world lost its edges of empire, changed its regime and divided to nation states after the decline of the Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire which were established by Muslims. On the contrary, westerners attempted to establish a head empire several times after building nation states in Europe. Some of them are UN, NATO, EU, to name but a few. In our opinion, in the transition process of Muslim rulers from empire to nation state, Hamīdullah made an offer to accomodate Islamic law in state law, Islamic politic and administrative principles in politics and administration practices, Islamic education system in education system, and principles of Islamic economics in economic decisions of government using the Prophet Muhammed’s life as a base. He also explained to Muslims that the method of regime can be changed and the essential matter is to apply Islamic management principles in such a new situation. He played a role in clearing the way for Muslims by indicating that the method of Islamic regime can be changed according to conditions but the principles of Islam are unalterable. To the writer of these lines, Hamīdullah intimates that it is not so true to stick to the form of the process in Muslim territories in which a compulsory transition from the empires or multinational social structures to the nation state structures have been experienced for the last two ages. However, the first matter to dwell on should be whether the ruler of the government behaves in accoradance with the principles of Islam or not. To Hamīdullah, the second matter is that even though Muslim countries had to enter in the process of becoming nation states, Muslims should make an effort to establish supra-state associations as required by Islam. In this respect, Hamīdullah’s proposal is “High Caliphate Council”. This council is a considerable offer presented to Muslim countries in the age when a universal caliphate is not possible and Muslims head towards a unified state form all over the world. Today, this offer recommends countries of which great majority is Muslims and in which Muslims are minority to meet on a common ground rather than conflict because of differences among them. The High Caliphate Council is an institute consists of presidents or hereditary administrators as leading and regular members and so it avoids regional competition. It is established by Muslim presidents who shares the chair alternately. Based on this, all Muslim presidents play a role altogether in this council without need to be Sunni, Shia, or from Quraysh. The High Caliphate Council is a reflection of a dream, which started a century and half a century ago but is required more today. It is also a reflection of the discourse of “Islamic Union” in Contemporary Islamic Thought. The Caliphate Council and International Islamic Legists’ Association, which is the first practical step of the council can be seen as the theory of a new world order based on the unity principle of Islam. Hamīdullah does not consider this order not only in the range of belief but also with the aim of institutionalizing ‘ijmā (consensus of Islamic legists) and qiyās(legal analogy). He stated that International Islamic Legists’ Association, which is a scientific institution could not be established beforetime by Muslims spread on three continents due to lacking of communication among them. However, thanks to today’s possibilities, the establishment of such association is easier today. Hamīdullah found dynamic solutions such these two institutions for the realization of caliphate, which is a religious necessity. He marked an era for Muslims in the period of time when they are on a quest. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume (...) covers three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume (...) covers three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

In this book, Ramsey addresses the moral problems of medicine, life and death and not merely to those who share his faith.

We use content analysis to show that the diagnosis of the financial crisis of 2007–2009 shifted significantly from a focus on the need for structural change in the banking industry to an emphasis on culture and reform at the organizational level. We consider four overlapping subsystems in which this shift in problem–solution clusters played out—political, regulatory, legal, and consulting—and show that the “structural reform agenda,” which was initially strong and publicly prominent in the political arena, lost attention. Over time (...) it was displaced by a neoliberal managerialist turn, which watered down or abandoned structural solutions and instead played up a new “culture and conduct reform agenda.” We explain this shift in terms of the marketization of regulation, which—following Mautner (_Language and the market society_, 1st ed. Routledge, 2010)’s model of interdiscursive alignment—we detect in the shifting language of financial-services reform across the four subsystems in scope. We argue that a neoliberal turn took place with a _discursive closure_ that made the structural reform alternative gradually unsayable and, in the end, unthinkable. At the same time, the discourse turned to embrace the neoliberal agenda, built on the myth of self-regulating actors and markets, manifest in the culture problematic. This managerialist turn was able to mobilise, and be operationalised by, an industry of consultants, whereas structural change came to be seen by regulators as too risky to implement. We claim that these dynamics reveal how a form of “collective strategic ignorance,” based on powerful institutional myths, was systematically oriented to ignore and reject structural sources of crisis. Finally, we suggest that the observed pattern of displacement—whereby initial calls for structural change become later displaced by managerial and procedural solutions—is common to other social issues, such as audit reform and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This metaphysical and personal exploration of the nature of life provides a rare guide to living and dying fearlessly and with grace. Using the wisdom obtained over a lifetime of spiritual seeking, study, and practice, along with insights gained from the death of her significant other, Clare Goldsberry explores the fundamental nature of life and death, as well as their meaning and purpose. Sharing the wisdom and knowledge of the ancient sages, spiritual teachers like the Buddha, philosophers (...) like Plato and Seneca, and modern-day quantum physicists, Goldsberry walks us through the mystery of death and dying-and explores the meaning and purpose of life. Drawing from Buddhism, Hinduism, and her partner's cancer journey, she provides a profound view of living and dying as seen through the ages by those who have sought answers regarding the most mysterious aspect of life-this thing we call death. Clare Goldsberry has experienced Protestant Christianity, Mormonism, the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, Gnosticism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. She writes about religion and spiritual traditions for Quest magazine and other publications, and her book A Stranger in Zion: A Christian's Journey through the Heart of Utah Mormonism won the Arizona Book Publishers Association's Glyph Award for Best Religion Book in 2003. Goldsberry has also published six books on marketing and sales strategies for small- to mid-sized manufacturing companies, and she founded her own marketing and public relations business in 1989. She lives and works in Arizona. (shrink)

By providing an interdisciplinary reading of advance directives regulation in international, European and domestic law, this book offers new insights into the most controversial legal issues surrounding the debate over dignity and autonomy ...

It will engage bioethicists and philosophers as well as inform policy and law regarding issues at the beginning and end of life.

According to the "sanctity-of-life" view, all human lives are equally valuable and inviolable, and it would be wrong to base life-and-death medical decisions on the quality of the patient's life. Examining the ideas and assumptions behind the sanctity-of-life view, Kuhse argues against the traditional view that allowing someone to die is morally different from killing, and shows that quality-of-life judgments are ubiquitous. Refuting the sanctity-of-life view, she provides a sketch of a quality-of-life ethics (...) based on the belief that there is a profound difference between merely being alive and life being in the patient's interest. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering (...) a wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

How should modern medicine's dramatic new powers to sustain life be employed? How should limited resources be used to extend and improve the quality of life? In this collection, Dan Brock, a distinguished philosopher and bioethicist and co-author of Deciding for Others, explores the moral issues raised by new ideals of shared decision making between physicians and patients. The book develops an ethical framework for decisions about life-sustaining treatment and euthanasia, and examines how these life and (...) death decisions are transformed in health policy when the focus shifts from what is best for a patient to what is just for all patients. Professor Brock combines acute philosophical analysis with a deep understanding of the realities of clinical health policy. This is a volume for philosophers concerned with medical ethics, health policy professionals, physicians interested in bioethics, and undergraduate courses in biomedical ethics. (shrink)

The case of Terri Schiavo, a young woman who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state, has emerged as a watershed in debates over end-of-life care. While many observers had thought the right to refuse medical treatment was well established, this case split a family, divided a nation, and counfounded physicians, legislators, and many of the people they treated or represented. In renewing debates over the importance of advance directives, the appropriate role of artificial hydration and (...) nutrition, and the responsibilities of family members, the case also became one of history's most extensively litigated health care disputes. The Case of Terri Schiavo assembles a team of first-hand participants and content experts to provide thoughtful and nuanced analyses. In addition to a comprehensive overview, the book includes contributions by Ms. Schiavo's guardian ad litem, a neurologist and lawyer who participated in the case, and scholars who examine issues related to litigation, faith, gender, and disability. The volume also includes a powerful dissent from the views of many scholars in the bioethics community. The book is intended for students, health care professionals, policy makers, and other in search of carefully reasoned analyses of the case that will shape our view of death and end-of-life medical care for decades. (shrink)

The author encountered evocations of suffering and death in all the studies and research he devoted, over 40 or so years, to the intellectual, social and religious life of western Muslim Judaism, and indeed the whole of traditional Jewish thought and its varied modes of expression: rabbinical law, Hebrew poetry, the literature of homily and preaching, mystical writings and the kabbala, dialect and popular literatures in Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber. Some passages are taken from the Zohar (‘The town the (...) angel of death cannot enter’, for instance). The author also refers to the Talmud and magic therapeutics, the power of sacred names, Jewish and Muslim miracle workers, hunting down and casting out demons, etc. Agony, refusal to die, joyous commemoration of death, the cemetery and the cult of the dead, Judeo-Muslim pilgrimages, the wealth of the customs, beliefs and rites of the past lead the author to reflect on the question of death in the present-day world. (shrink)

Nowadays, mobile telephony interruptions in our daily life activities are common because of the inappropriate ringing notifications of incoming phone calls in different contexts. Such interruptions may impact on the work attention not only for the mobile phone owners, but also for the surrounding people. Decision tree is the most popular machine-learning classification technique that is used in existing context-aware mobile intelligent interruption management model to overcome such issues. However, a single-decision tree-based context-aware model may cause over-fitting problem (...) and thus decrease the prediction accuracy of the inferred model. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an ensemble machine-learning-based context-aware mobile telephony model for the purpose of intelligent interruption management by taking into account multi-dimensional contexts and name it “E-MIIM”. The experimental results on individuals’ real-life mobile telephony data sets show that our E-MIIM model is more effective and outperforms existing MIIM model for predicting and managing individual’s mobile telephony interruptions based on their relevant contextual information. (shrink)

According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In his genealogical studies, Foucault describes the manner in which these power systems leave an imprint on the body and utilize knowledge of the body as an indirect means of exercising subtle forms of control. In recent years, several researchers have claimed that the status of the body, subsumed as it is by modern power networks, has become a means for conducting a unique (...) political critique in which the human being is viewed as an agent of oppression and freedom. This article takes a fresh look at Foucault’s notions of life and death that underpin the critical understanding the body–power relationship. While this approach recognizes the completeness of subjective structuring processes, it also enables the formulation of new insights regarding the status of the modern individual as the subject of separate and independent modes of speech and action. (shrink)

Abstractp53 is a multifunctional protein which plays a role in modulating gene transcription, policing cell cycle checkpoints, activating apoptosis, controlling DNA replication and repair, maintaining genomic stability and responding to genetic insults. Mutation of the p53 gene confers the single greatest known selective advantage favoring cancer formation. Point mutations result not only in the loss of tumor suppressor functions, but also in the gain of tumor promotion functions. These dual circumstances may be unique to p53 and, in part, could explain (...) the relatively powerful force behind this selection pressure. General mechanisms of gain of function by mutated p53 may include alteration in transcriptional modulation and newly acquired targets for transcriptional regulation and protein binding. Despite the direct significance of p53 mutations, loss of the remaining wild‐type allele is usually required for the formation of tumors in the natural setting. Novel applications of the basic scientific knowledge of p53 could lead to an improvement in cancer treatment, hopefully in the not so distant future. (shrink)

Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart.

By contributing a few hundred dollars to a charity like UNICEF, a prosperous person can ensure that fewer poor children die, and that more will live reasonably long, worthwhile lives. Even when knowing this, however, most people send nothing, and almost all of the rest send little. What is the moral status of this behavior? To such common cases of letting die, our untutored response is that, while it is not very good, neither is the conduct wrong. What is the (...) source of this lenient assessment? In this contentious new book, one of our leading philosophers argues that our intuitions about ethical cases are generated not by basic moral values, but by certain distracting psychological dispositions that all too often prevent us from reacting in accord with our commitments. Through a detailed look at how these tendencies operate, Unger shows that, on the good morality that we already accept, the fatally unhelpful behavior is monstrously wrong. By uncovering the eminently sensible ethics that we've already embraced fully, and by confronting us with empirical facts and with easily followed instructions for lessening serious suffering appropriately and effectively, Unger's book points the way to a compassionate new moral philosophy. (shrink)

This collection contains twenty-one thought-provoking essays on the controversies surrounding the moral and legal distinctions between euthanasia and "letting die." Since public awareness of this issue has increased this second edition includes nine entirely new essays which bring the treatment of the subject up-to-date. The urgency of this issue can be gauged in recent developments such as the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, "how-to" manuals topping the bestseller charts in the United States, and the many headlines devoted to (...) Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has assisted dozens of patients to die. The essays address the range of questions involved in this issue pertaining especially to the fields of medical ethics, public policymaking, and social philosophy. The discussions consider the decisions facing medical and public policymakers, how those decisions will affect the elderly and terminally ill, and the medical and legal ramifications for patients in a permanently vegetative state, as well as issues of parent/infant rights. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "Euthanasia and the Termination of Life-Prolonging Treatment" includes an examination of the 1976 Karen Quinlan Supreme Court decision and selections from the 1990 Supreme Court decision in the case of Nancy Cruzan. Featured are articles by law professor George Fletcher and philosophers Michael Tooley, James Rachels, and Bonnie Steinbock, with new articles by Rachels, and Thomas Sullivan. The second section, "Philosophical Considerations," probes more deeply into the theoretical issues raised by the killing/letting die controversy, illustrating exceptionally well the dispute between two rival theories of ethics, consequentialism and deontology. It also includes a corpus of the standard thought on the debate by Jonathan Bennet, Daniel Dinello, Jeffrie Murphy, John Harris, Philipa Foot, Richard Trammell, and N. Ann Davis, and adds articles new to this edition by Bennett, Foot, Warren Quinn, Jeff McMahan, and Judith Lichtenberg. (shrink)