The Dutch law states that a physician may perform euthanasia according to a written advance euthanasia directive when a patient is incompetent as long as all legal criteria of due care are met. This may also hold for patients with advanced dementia. We investigated the differing opinions of physicians and members of the general public on the acceptability of euthanasia in patients with advanced dementia.

Zhi 李贄, also named ( hao 號) Zhuowu 卓吾 (1527–1602), and argues that he articulates a coherent and compelling vision of a good life focused on the expression of genuine feelings distinctive to each individual. Through a study of literary texts and terms of art he refers to in his critical essay “On the Child-like Heart-mind” ( Tongxin Shuo 童心說), as well as the metaphors and images he fleshes out throughout his writings, I characterize Li’s ethical vision and show that (...) it is rooted in a particular loose and accommodating conception of human nature and centered on the simple and intuitive act of daily maintaining the birthright of our “child-like heart-mind.”. (shrink)

In this article I uncover, describe, and analyze two native Chinese theories by way of exploring the commentarial tradition through the centuries on two passages from Confucian classics: Mengzi 孟子 4B12 and Analects 論語 11.25. One view I explore is of the child as a cluster of role-specific duties, whereupon debates regard proper behavior for a junior in society; a second conception is of the child as an existential quality to be preserved or rediscovered, or a special stage in life (...) to be honored, whereupon the debates within the commentaries regard effective methods for preserving or rediscovering one’s human nature. In concluding, I compare this latter conception of children with the theories on childhood development articulated by the great 20th-century developmental psychologist Erik Erikson , whose views inform a number of seminal and important studies on children in China. I show how the latter Confucian view and Erikson’s are substantively different and yet can be seen as complementary. (shrink)

Background Sickle cell anemia is a major genetic disease with the greatest burden in sub-Saharan Africa. To try to help reduce this burden, some churches in Nigeria conduct premarital sickle cell hemoglobin screening and refuse to conduct weddings when both individuals are identified as carriers of sickle cell trait. Main body This paper explores the ethical challenges involved in such denials. We assess whether churches have the right to decline to marry adults who understand the risks and still prefer to (...) get married, and whether couples should be denied church weddings based on the risk that their child may suffer from sickle cell anemia. We examine the moral and ethical dimensions of such denials and explore the underlying socio-cultural context involving the purpose of marriage and the meaning of the wedding ceremony in societies where premarital screening is one of the few tools available to reduce the risk of having children with SCA. The potential role of the church is also examined against the background of church beliefs, the duty of the church to its members and its role in reducing the suffering of its members and /or their children. Conclusion We argue that the church should impose these burdens on couples only if doing so promotes a sufficiently compelling goal and there is no less burdensome way to achieve it. We then argue that the goal of reducing the number of individuals in Nigeria who have SCA is compelling. However, testing earlier in life offers a less burdensome and potentially even more effective means of achieving this goal. This suggests that, advocating for earlier screening and helping to support these programs, would likely better promote the church’s own goals of helping its parishioners, increasing the number of church weddings, and reducing the burden of SCA in Nigeria. (shrink)

Sickle cell anemia is a major genetic disease with the greatest burden in sub-Saharan Africa. To try to help reduce this burden, some churches in Nigeria conduct premarital sickle cell hemoglobin screening and refuse to conduct weddings when both individuals are identified as carriers of sickle cell trait. This paper explores the ethical challenges involved in such denials. We assess whether churches have the right to decline to marry adults who understand the risks and still prefer to get married, and (...) whether couples should be denied church weddings based on the risk that their child may suffer from sickle cell anemia. We examine the moral and ethical dimensions of such denials and explore the underlying socio-cultural context involving the purpose of marriage and the meaning of the wedding ceremony in societies where premarital screening is one of the few tools available to reduce the risk of having children with SCA. The potential role of the church is also examined against the background of church beliefs, the duty of the church to its members and its role in reducing the suffering of its members and /or their children. We argue that the church should impose these burdens on couples only if doing so promotes a sufficiently compelling goal and there is no less burdensome way to achieve it. We then argue that the goal of reducing the number of individuals in Nigeria who have SCA is compelling. However, testing earlier in life offers a less burdensome and potentially even more effective means of achieving this goal. This suggests that, advocating for earlier screening and helping to support these programs, would likely better promote the church’s own goals of helping its parishioners, increasing the number of church weddings, and reducing the burden of SCA in Nigeria. (shrink)

Paternal authority is recommended as a valid Christian resource for conflict resolution in biomedical (and other inner-familial) decision making. Its bases are explored in view of the two-fold creation account in Genesis, interpreted in the light of the Pauline theology. In addition, a theological account is proposed that portrays the taxis between husband and wife as a condition under which humans can seek to emulate the inner-Trinitarian love. The relationship between that love (as portrayed in St. Basil’s On the (...) Holy Spirit), the love between God and man, and the love between the sexes (as further extended to the children in a family that constitutes a “small church”), is described in terms of an interplay between the Divine offer of grace and the human response of obedience. In framing their marital love according to the model of Christ and His Church, couples can also profit from the ascetical therapy predicted for their fallen nature in the “curse” that drove our forefathers from Paradise. (shrink)

The Netherlands is one of the few countries where euthanasia is legal under strict conditions. This study investigates whether Dutch newspaper articles use the term ‘euthanasia’ according to the legal definition and determines what arguments for and against euthanasia they contain.

Abraham J. Malherbe was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past half century. He is especially known for his use of Hellenistic moral philosophy in the interpretation of New Testament texts, especially Pauline literature. Whilst the comparative study of New Testament and Greco-Roman material remains a contentious approach in scholarship, Malherbe’s work provides important pointers in how to make such comparisons in a meaningful and reasoned manner, by paying due respect to the integrity of the (...) texts being compared and to the function textual elements have within their own contexts. I discussed the salient features of Malherbe’s approach, focusing in particular on his study of topoi. One of the most significant findings was Malherbe’s emphasis on the dialectical combination of common and individual elements in such topoi, which enabled ancient authors to embed their own texts within the cultural discourse of their time. His approach opens the way to further research of the New Testament within its philosophical context without requiring proof of a genealogical relationship between the texts or authors concerned. (shrink)

Ferdinand Christian Baur, one of the great innovators in the study of the New Testament, argued that each of its books reflects the interests and tendencies of its author in a particular religio-historical milieu. A critique of the writings must precede any judgments about the historical validity of individual stories about Jesus in the Gospels. Thus Baur could move beyond the impasse created by Strauss's Life of Jesus. Baur demonstrated that the Gospel of John is not a historical document comparable (...) to the Synoptic Gospels and cannot be used to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus, and that the Synoptic Gospels must be read critically and selectively. He applied the same principles to the Epistles, arguing that only four are genuinely Pauline.Baur's Lectures on New Testament Theology, delivered in Tübingen during the 1850s, summarize thirty years of his research. The lectures begin with an Introduction on the concept, history, and organization of New Testament theology. Part One is devoted to the teaching of Jesus, which Baur finds most reliably in Matthew. Part Two contains the teaching of the Apostles in three chronological periods. The first period presents the theological frameworks of the Apostle Paul and the Book of Revelation; the second period, the frameworks of Hebrews, the Deutero-Pauline Epistles, James and Peter, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts; and the third period, those of the Pastoral Epistles and the Gospel of John. (shrink)

Unlike its predecessors, this systematic survey of the law of Athens is based on explicit discussion of how the subject might be studies, incorporating topics such as the democratic political system and social structure. Technical and legal terms are explained in a comprehensive glossary.

During the 1780s, as Kant was developing his universalistic moral theory, he published texts in which he defended the superiority of whites over non-whites. Whether commentators see this as evidence of inconsistent universalism or of consistent inegalitarianism, they generally assume that Kant's position on race remained stable during the 1780s and 1790s. Against this standard view, I argue on the basis of his texts that Kant radically changed his mind. I examine his 1780s race theory and his hierarchical conception of (...) the races, and subsequently address the question of the significance of these views, especially in the light of Kant's own ethical theory. I then show that during the 1790s Kant restricts the role of the concept of race, and drops his hierarchical account of the races in favour of a more genuinely egalitarian and cosmopolitan view. (shrink)

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside Kant’s (...) sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)

That the legacy of Berkeley's philosophy has been a largely sceptical one is perhaps rather surprising. For he himself took it as one of his objectives to undermine scepticism. He roundly denied that there were ‘any principles more opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down’. Yet Hume was to write of Berkeley that ‘most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism, Bayle not excepted’. And it has become something of a commonplace (...) to say that Berkeley's philosophy is sceptical in direction, if not in intention. He is represented as a half-hearted sceptic, applying radical empiricist principles in his treatment of matter but baulking at their implications when he came to consider spirits. Hume is credited with being the more thoroughgoing of the two. Berkeley had denied the substantiality of extended things. Hume felt obliged, by parity of reasoning, to deny the substantiality of the self. On his account of the mind there is ‘properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different’. It is commonly supposed that Berkeley, in maintaining the quite contrary view that we know ourselves to be simple, undivided beings, showed a lack of rigour or consistency. (shrink)

Objectives: This study aimed to determine attitudinal and self reported behavioural variations between medical students in different years to scenarios involving academic misconduct.Design: A cross-sectional study where students were given an anonymous questionnaire that asked about their attitudes to 14 scenarios describing a fictitious student engaging in acts of academic misconduct and asked them to report their own potential behaviour.Setting: Dundee Medical School.Participants: Undergraduate medical students from all five years of the course.Method: Questionnaire survey.Main measurements: Differences in medical students’ attitudes (...) to the 14 scenarios and their reported potential behaviour with regards to the scenarios in each of the years.Results: For most of the scenarios there was no significant difference in the response between the years. Significant differences in the responses were found for some of the scenarios across the years, where a larger proportion of year one students regarded the scenario as wrong and would not engage in the behaviour, compared to other years. These scenarios included forging signatures, resubmitting work already completed for another part of the course, and falsifying patient information.Conclusion: Observed differences between the years for some scenarios may reflect a change in students’ attitudes and behaviour as they progress though the course. The results may be influenced by the educational experience of the students, both in terms of the learning environment and assessment methods used. These differences may draw attention to the potential but unintentional pressures placed on medical students to engage in academic misconduct. The importance of developing strategies to engender appropriate attitudes and behaviours at the undergraduate level must be recognised. (shrink)

In this essay, “The Principle of Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory: Its Rise and Fall,” Pauline Kleingeld notes that Kant’s Principle of Autonomy, which played a central role in both the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, disappeared by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals. She argues that its disappearance is due to significant changes in Kant’s political philosophy. The Principle of Autonomy states that one ought to act as if one were (...) giving universal laws through one’s maxims. The criterion of just legislation that Kant accepted in the mid-1780s does not require any actual consent on the part of the citizens—genuine universality is sufficient for a law to be just. Hence, at that time, Kant could indeed explicate the criterion governing the moral permissibility of one’s maxims by drawing an analogy with the criterion governing the justice of political laws. In the Metaphysics of Morals and in other works in the 1790s, however, he added the further condition that laws must be given with the consent of the citizens. With this further condition, the moral criterion was no longer fully analogous to the criterion for political laws being just. Accordingly, Kleingeld argues, Kant dropped the Principle of Autonomy, which was firmly based on that analogy. (shrink)

Kant’s most prominent formulation of the Categorical Imperative, known as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), is generally thought to demand that one act only on maxims that one can will as universal laws without this generating a contradiction. Kant's view is standardly summarized as requiring the 'universalizability' of one's maxims and described in terms of the distinction between 'contradictions in conception' and 'contradictions in the will'. Focusing on the underappreciated significance of the simultaneity condition included in the FUL, I (...) argue, by contrast, that the principle is better read as requiring that one be able to will two things simultaneously without self-contradiction, namely, that a maxim be one's own and that it be a universal law. This amounts to a new interpretation of the FUL with significant interpretive and philosophical advantages. (shrink)

There exists a standard view of Kant’s position on global order and this view informs much of current Kantian political theory. This standard view is that Kant advocates a voluntary league of states and rejects the ideal of a federative state of states as dangerous, unrealistic, and conceptually incoherent. This standard interpretation is usually thought to fall victim to three equally standard objections. In this essay, I argue that the standard interpretation is mistaken and that the three standard objections miss (...) their target. Kant does advocate the establishment of a non-coercive league of states, at least in his mature political writings (such as Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals), but he does so for different reasons than is usually thought and without rejecting the ideal that a world federation of states eventually be realized. I end by indicating how Kant’s revised view can be made productive for present-day philosophical purposes. (shrink)

Kant's unduly neglected concept of cosmopolitan law suggests a third sphere of public law -- in addition to constitutional law and international law -- in which both states and individuals have rights, and where individuals have these rights as ‛citizens of the earth' rather than as citizens of particular states. I critically examine Kant's view of cosmopolitan law, discussing its addressees, content, justification, and institutionalization. I argue that Kant's conception of ‛world citizenship' is neither merely metaphorical nor dependent on an (...) ideal of a world-government. Kant's views are particularly relevant in light of recent shifts in international law, shifts that lead away from the view that individuals can only be subjects of international law insofar as they are citizens of particular states. Thereby, a category of rights has emerged that comes close to what Kant understands by cosmopolitan law. (shrink)

Kant is widely regarded as a fierce critic of colonialism. In Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, for example, he forcefully condemns European conduct in the colonies as a flagrant violation of the principles of right. His earlier views on colonialism have not yet received much detailed scrutiny, however. In this essay I argue that Kant actually endorsed and justified European colonialism until the early 1790s. I show that Kant’s initial endorsement and his subsequent criticism of colonialism are (...) closely related to his changing views on race, because his endorsement of a racial hierarchy plays a crucial role in his justification of European colonialism. He gave up both in the mid 1790s while he was developing his legal and political philosophy, and he adopted a more egalitarian version of the cosmopolitan relationship among peoples. (shrink)

This paper offers a particular intuitionistic negation completion of Urquhart's system C resulting in a super-intuitionistic contractionless propositional logic equivalent to Dummett's LC without contraction.

This is the first comprehensive account of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, highlighting its moral, political, legal, economic, cultural, and psychological aspects. Contrasting Kant’s views with those of his German contemporaries, and relating them to current debates, Pauline Kleingeld sheds new light on texts that have been hitherto neglected or underestimated. In clear and carefully argued discussions, she shows that Kant’s philosophical cosmopolitanism underwent a radical transformation in the mid 1790s and that the resulting theory is philosophically stronger than is usually thought. (...) Using the work of figures such as Fichte, Cloots, Forster, Hegewisch, Wieland, and Novalis, Kleingeld analyzes Kant’s arguments regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, the importance of states, the ideal of an international federation, cultural pluralism, race, global economic justice, and the psychological feasibility of the cosmopolitan ideal. In doing so, she reveals a broad spectrum of positions in cosmopolitan theory that are relevant to current discussions of cosmopolitanism. -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. World citizens in their own country: Wieland and Kant on moral cosmopolitanism and patriotism; 2. Universal republic of world citizens or international federation?: Cloots and Kant on global peace; 3. Global hospitality: Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right; 4. Hierarchy or diversity?: Forster and Kant on race, culture, and cosmopolitanism; 5. International trade and justice: Hegewisch and Kant on cosmopolitanism and globalization; 6. Cosmopolitanism and feeling: Novalis and Kant on the development of a universal human community; 7. Kant's cosmopolitanism and current philosophical debates; Bibliography; Index. (shrink)