Definition of the problem: The report supplies the national part of a European survey in which doctors that are involved in the treatment of patients in `Persistent Vegetative State' (PVS) are being interviewed. The questions concern decision-situations the doctors are frequently confronted with in the treatment of PVS-patients. The questionnaire is designed as a decisiontree in order to bring about the exact delineations that govern the decisions. Therefore the result of the survey only portrays which delineations are in fact being (...) accepted (and does not allow any conclusion concerning which norms should guide the decisions). Whether these factual delineations correspond to ethical-normative criteria that derive from guiding principles – such as human dignity – is being discussed in the part reflecting on the survey. It is crucial to an adequate interpretation of the survey results to keep in mind that the doctors were not being asked about what they actually did in the situations described; the survey was designed to bring about what the doctors' basic attitudes towards the problems are.Arguments: The reason this methodological approach to the problem was chosen is that an ethical evaluation can only take place when the action-guiding convictions of the agents concerned are known. The goal of the survey was to make a provisional orientation concerning the basic attitudes possible. Compared to other countries taking part in, the survey result in Germany confirms the hypotheses that doctors from different European countries – concerning the decisions of withdrawing treatment or withholding treatment – are guided by different basic attitudes.Conclusion: As it has become apparent that important national differences concerning the action-guided attitudes of the doctors exist, it would not be advisable to recommend that European guidelines for all countries should be set up for such cases. The decisions taken depend on the guiding ethical assumptions; they can only be decisions for the very case they were derived at. (shrink)

In what follows, I argue that the thinkers of the twelfth to thirteenth century rediscovered and passed on the questions of metaphysics; in what I call the second beginning of metaphysics they also developed those questions in such a way that they could be received into the thinking of the modern era in the first place. It was precisely the theological context which forced this development and lead the theologians of the Latin West, inspired by their Arabic predecessors, to redesign (...) metaphysics according to the rules of Aristotle’s logic and philosophy of science. Put differently, through the challenge of theology medieval metaphysics was forced to become what it had claimed to be from the onset: first philosophy. (shrink)

Is the meaning of “human dignity” dependent on metaphysical and theological premisses? The author′s answer to this question is based on the thesis that metaphysics and theology are not primary sources of the idea of human dignity, but that they have additional relevance in understanding and promoting human dignity. For the world wide consensus that fundamental human rights have to be protected is based – at a first level – on the practical evidence that human life cannot be lived if (...) some basic claims are not safeguarded. This practical evidence which is implied in the self-experience of the subject – acting and suffering in the first person singular – has at its core the ultimate practical judgment that human life as a self-related and self-determined practice has to be considered as an end in itself. Based on this practical evidence – at a second level – an ethical reflexion shows that every human being as a human being has not only a value which can be replaced by other values, but an unretrievable dignity because of this form of life, i. e. with the nature of a moral agent. From this practical evidence and its ethical evaluation – at a third level – metaphysical conclusions can be drawn, e. g. that human beings have a nature to which the faculty of reason belongs substantially or that human beings as subjects are part of an intelligible word . The viewpoint of a faith-based theology presupposes the practical evidence with which human beings experience themselves as subjects, but gives to the recognition of the human dignity an additional critical, hermeneutical and motivational force. (shrink)

Mankind is nowadays faced with many different challenges brought about by the exploration of the molecular basis of heredity. Many entwined questions arise: is genetic knowledge relevant to the comprehension of nature in general and of man’s vision of himself in particular? Faced with the new possibilities of insight and intervention in human genom, how should we conceive nature ? Modern molecular biology has demonstrated that our genetic patrimony must not be considered throughly and completely determined; on the contrary it (...) constitutes an aray of possible dispositions, on which we have the possibility to intervene, therefore changing our destiny. The insight in man’s genom has therefore on one side made our personal and hereditary dispositions accessible and comprehensible to us ; on the other side human genetics makes it possible for everyone to change his/her personal genetic constitution or that of his/her descendants, and therefore indicates a previously unknown way of autonomous behaviour. The ethical judgement of the above mentioned possibilities on one side questions the legitimacy of the aims and on the other analyses whether a justification of the tools used for these purposes is possible. The difference between therapeutic and non-therapeutic interventions or between somatic interventions on individuals and interventions on the germinal line are to be considered part of the aim’s question, whereas the moral analysis of the means is oriented towards the unconditional respect of the autonomy of those involved and towards a manifold evaluation of benefits, drawbacks and risks. (shrink)

In this volume, the world's foremost Scotus scholars collaborate to present the latest research on his work.

The contributions to this collection deal with the fundamental problem of unity, which plays a decisive role in many contemporary debates (even when this role ...