The article considers the nature of legalistic, or formal, conceptions of the rule of law, focusing particularly on the work of Joseph Raz and Albert Venn Dicey. It asks how such apparently narrow conceptions are generated, and how far they can resist including broader social claims. It concludes that the rationale behind legalistic conceptions compels them to address issues of poverty and the literacy of the law's subjects. However, legalistic conceptions of the rule of law can still avoid sliding into (...) the wider non‐legalistic models advanced by writers such as T. R. S. Allan. (shrink)

Background: The importance of respecting patients and participants in clinical research is widely recognised. However, what it means to respect persons beyond recognising them as autonomous is unclear, and little is known about what patients find to be respectful. Objective: To understand patients’ conceptions of respect and what it means to be respected by medical providers. Design: Qualitative study from an academic cardiology clinic, using semistructured interviews with 18 survivors of sudden cardiac death. Results: Patients believed that respecting persons incorporates (...) the following major elements: empathy, care, autonomy, provision of information, recognition of individuality, dignity and attention to needs. Conclusions: Making patients feel respected, or valued as a person, is a multi-faceted task that involves more than recognising autonomy. While patients’ views of respect do not determine what respect means, these patients expressed important intuitions that may be of substantial conceptual relevance. (shrink)

Lewis and Charny have come under siege for suggesting remote questioning to decide appropriate medical care. While the criticisms are theoretically valid, the idea is so important practically that Lewis and Charny should be supported and their approach investigated as a way of making medical treatment at least more open and possibly more fair.

Multiculturalism is an imprecise concept with a variety of different meanings, but no matter how multiculturalism is defined, nearly all of its advocates share the common objective of reconstructing Western society in order to protect minority cultural groups from intolerance.1 The multiculturalist coalition has been highly successful in this undertaking because members of the majority culture generally accept the moral diagnosis that their traditional way of life is backward, irrational, and inherently prone to various forms of prejudice. Adopting multiculturalism as (...) official state policy has thus significantly increased the moral authority of the managerial government to therapeutically control and alter…. (shrink)

The third volume of The History of European Philosophy in the Fifteenth Century deals with the question of "being." In the closing paragraph, Stefan Swiezawski remarks: "Studies on the transformation and distortion of St. Thomas's doctrine on being, especially in regard to its existential element, are fundamentally important for understanding the factual historical development of Thomism as well as for understanding modern Christian thought. They are also of utmost importance for understanding the mainspring and resultant trends which have shaped the (...) direction of philosophical reflection in Europe during the last several centuries". The fourth volume of his opus magnum under review here, touches upon the problematics of God. It is this volume which serves as the best example of all those deviations and distortions which come from a mistreatment of the philosophy of being. Moreover, fifteenth century philosophy, in the disguise of metaphysics, can be seen as "a century of theology which in a more differentiated form and restless way" professed and used "pluralism of the conception of theology as a science". (shrink)

The “function debate” in the philosophy of biology and the “venom debate” in the science of toxinology are conceptually related. Venom systems are complex multifunctional traits that have evolved independently numerous times throughout the animal kingdom. No single concept of function, amongst those popularly defended, appears adequate to describe these systems in all their evolutionary contexts and extant variations. As such, a pluralistic view of function, previously defended by some philosophers of biology, is most appropriate. Venom systems, like many other (...) functional traits, exist in nature as points on a continuum and the boundaries between “venomous” and “non-venomous” species may not always be clearly defined. This paper includes a brief overview of the concept of function, followed by in-depth discussion of its application to venom systems. A sound understanding of function may aid in moving the venom debate forward. Similarly, consideration of a complex functional trait such as venom may be of interest to philosophers of biology. (shrink)

The thesis that women will be more intent on staying alive fails to take into account that current strategies are those of the winners in the evolutionary race. Moreover, because like tends to mate with like, risk taking will be averaged out between the sexes. Finally, Campbell's narrow view of parental investment fails to acknowledge the indirect contributions of males.

PLATO'S UNIVERSE by Gregory Vlastos. Clarendon Press: O.U.P., 1975. xiii+130 pp. £3.75.