For nursing, the idea of bearing witness is of utmost importance. Nurses are present with persons who experience changes in their health and quality of life and who live intense and profound moments of struggling, questioning, and finding meaning. Nurses are also with persons from moment to moment as their lives unfold, and when joy, serenity, contentment, vulnerability, sadness, fear, and suffering are experienced. In this paper, it is proposed that bearing witness is a moral way of engaging in the (...) nurse–person relationship. Based on Levinas’s ethics of the face, it is claimed that bearing witness is enacting one’s moral responsibility, which arises from the encounter with the other. Drawing on Parse’s human becoming theory, ways of witnessing and bearing witness are defined and discussed. It is suggested that bearing witness is a human‐to‐human way of being‐relating, a mode of human coexistence. Bearing witness is being present and attentive to the truth of another’s experiences. Moreover, in this paper, the ways nurses enact their moral agency and bear witness to others placed in their care, or turn away, are explored. Nurses’ moral agency is located in the constrained moral space of contemporary health care. Hence, the creation of a moral space, which allows nurses to enact their moral responsibility of bearing witness to other persons’ experiences of health and quality of life, is called for. In doing so, it is suggested that the act of bearing witness needs a specific nursing knowledge base and a recognition that being present and being with another is a valuable nursing practice that is utterly meaningful for persons who are living through difficult times. (shrink)

For many liberals, the question "Do others live rightly?" feels inappropriate. Liberalism seems to demand a follow-up question: "Who am I to judge?" Peaceful coexistence, in this view, is predicated on restraint from morally evaluating our peers. But Rahel Jaeggi sees the situation differently. Criticizing is not only valid but also useful, she argues. Moral judgment is no error; the error lies in how we go about judging. One way to judge is external, based on universal standards derived from (...) ideas about God or human nature. The other is internal, relying on standards peculiar to a given society. Both approaches have serious flaws and detractors. In On the Critique of Forms of Life, Jaeggi offers a third way, which she calls "immanent" critique. Inspired by Hegelian social philosophy and engaged with Anglo-American theorists such as John Dewey, Michael Walzer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, immanent critique begins with the recognition that ways of life are inherently normative because they assert their own goodness and rightness. They also have a consistent purpose: to solve basic social problems and advance social goods, most of which are common across cultures. Jaeggi argues that we can judge the validity of a society's moral claims by evaluating how well the society adapts to crisis--whether it is able to overcome contradictions that arise from within and continue to fulfill its purpose. Jaeggi enlivens her ideas through concrete, contemporary examples. Against both relativistic and absolutist accounts, she shows that rational social critique is possible.--. (shrink)

In this book Jaeggi draws on phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, along with recent work in the analytical tradition, to reconceive of alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and ...

In the contemporary globalized economy, multinational companies have come to hold considerable power that may previously have rested with nation states. However, state structures remain relevant. With Brexit, the year 2016 featured an exemplary case in which the ongoing importance of nation states came to the fore. Preceding the British referendum to exit the European Union, discourses of national identity were deployed to promote a vote for the anti-globalization campaign. It is against this background that this research investigates how the (...) relationship between multinational corporations and nation states is constructed in news discourse. The underlying assumption is that news actively construct rather than merely reflects the nature of this relationship. Drawing on Social Actor Analysis and Transitivity as a theoretical framework, this study examines news coverage of the BP oil spill that occurred in the United States in 2010 but was caused by a multinational company headquartered in the United Kingdom. The main research question is ‘How does the media establish a link between multinational corporations and nation states?’. To address this central question, this study investigates how corporate responsibility is assigned, the role of the nation state is portrayed and victim status is allocated in the news. Findings show that the nature of the problem is constructed differently according to diverging national interests or priorities of the two nations represented by the media sources analyzed. The study indicates that the discourse around British nationality emphasized in the political struggle around Brexit was already mobilized extensively in the years leading up to the referendum. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag bietet eine umfassende Diskussion des Textes “Humanismus und Christentum” (1950) des dänischen Philosophen und Theologen Knud E. Løgstrup. Er verortet den Text in seinem geistesgeschichtlichen Kontext und analysiert seine wichtigsten Argumente wie auch seine zentrale These, der zufolge Humanismus und Christentum einen entscheidenden Grundsatz teilen, insofern beide die Ethik als “stumm“ oder “unausgesprochen“ verstehen. Darüber hinaus wird dargelegt, wie Løgstrups Text zentrale Überlegungen in dessen späteren Publikationen, besonders in dem Hauptwerk Die ethische Forderung (1956), vorwegnimmt.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 3 Seiten: 338-377.

The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor during the post-metaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. In this book Jaeggi draws on phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, along with recent work in the analytical tradition, to reconceive of alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and others, which manifests itself in feelings of helplessness and the despondent acceptance of ossified social roles and expectations. A revived approach to alienation helps (...) critical social theory engage with phenomena, such as meaninglessness, isolation, and indifference, which have broad implications for issues of justice. By severing alienation's link to a problematic conception of human essence while retaining its social-philosophical content, Jaeggi provides resources for a renewed critique of social pathologies, a much-neglected concern in contemporary liberal political philosophy. Her work revisits the arguments of Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, placing them in dialogue with Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor. (shrink)

What is the problem with capitalism? Is it wrong, unjust, irrational, or bad? Is it evil or dumb—or is it just not working? While critiques of capitalism have become commonplace—particularly since the most recent global economic crisis—it is often unclear what exactly is being condemned. Likewise, the normative presuppositions and criteria of such criticisms have been left unspecified. In this paper, I distinguish between three approaches to the critique of capitalism, distinguishing a functional, a moral, and an ethical argumentative strategy (...) and paying special attention to the distinctive types of argumentation they mobilize. First, I consider the “functional” critique, typically directed against capitalism's straightforward dysfunctions or crises. We will find, however, that this sort of criticism presupposes a normative criterion that is frequently unarticulated, namely: the implied “purpose” of a well‐functioning economic system. Second, I examine a common “moral” critique, that is, that capitalism is premised on exploitation. Yet, the concept of exploitation, too, introduces certain difficulties, since the kind of moral wrong associated with it—unequal exchange—is hardly obvious to everyday observation and must be derived systematically. Third, I introduce and address the “ethical” critique, broadly, that capitalism constitutes a bad form‐of‐life. However, while I object to some of the forms this criticism has taken—in particular, I argue that much “alienation” diagnosis is tainted by nostalgia and naiveté—I nonetheless recommend developing a critique of capitalism as a form‐of‐life that would include ethical and functional criteria. I conclude with some remarks in this direction. (shrink)

Books reviewed: Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. By Geoff Eley.. Foucault, Subjectivity, and Identity. By Robert Strozier.. Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action. By Albert O. Hirschman. Twentieth‐anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Robert H. Frank.

In response to this pressing need, Integral Ecology unites valuable insights from multiple perspectives into a comprehensive theoretical framework-one that can ...

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 8, Page 1123-1139, October 2022. Major debates on democratic renewal suggest two ways of eliciting social change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of participation. The article develops an argument for why there is a need to rethink democratic resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. If contemporary forms of resistance encompass a strategic interplay between vertical and horizontal practices, then an alternative framework is required to capture this logic. (...) Filling this gap, the article introduces the concept of ‘horizontal experimentalism’. Such an idea comprehends an understanding of political means and ends as a continuum and as adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry. (shrink)

This discussion is grounded in Aristotelian–Thomistic realism and takes the position that nursing is a practical science. As an exposition of the title statement, distinctions are made between opinion and truth, and the speculative, productive and practical sciences. Sources of opinion and truth are described and a discussion follows that truth can be achieved through knowing principles and causes of the natural kind behind phenomena. It is proposed that humans are the natural kind behind nursing phenomena. Thus, human nature provides (...) proper principles (the truth) of nursing practice. (shrink)

Diese Studie möchte eine existenzphilosophische Vorarbeit zu einer Phänomenologie der Normativität leisten. Durch Auslegungen vor allem griechischer, mittelhochdeutscher und klassischer deutscher Dichtung werden zunächst die Grundbegriffe von Faktizität und Existentialität herausgearbeitet. Auf dieser Grundlage erfolgt sodann die Beschreibung von Anlass und Gestalt normativer Praxis. Diese Beschreibung wird endlich als anthropologische Grundlage philosophischer Ethik vorgeschlagen.

Major debates on democratic renewal suggest two ways of eliciting social change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of participation. The article develops an argument for why there is a need to rethink democratic resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. If contemporary forms of resistance encompass a strategic interplay between vertical and horizontal practices, then an alternative framework is required to capture this logic. Filling this gap, the article introduces the concept of ‘horizontal experimentalism’. Such (...) an idea comprehends an understanding of political means and ends as a continuum and as adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry. (shrink)

This book undertakes an extensive study of the constellation of two eminent thinkers of post-idealism for the first time. The contributions in this volume analyze the relationship between Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard systematically and historically from a number of thematic perspectives: metaphysics and ethics, freedom and original sin, existential philosophy and the theory of suffering, art and aesthetics, religion and science. The book also goes into Kierkegaard s explicit disagreement with Schopenhauer and last but not least discusses the conflicting poles of (...) idealism and modernity. The volume is rounded off by a first complete and annotated German translation of the notes on Schopenhauer, which Kierkegaard wrote in his late journals.". (shrink)

Issues discussed include concepts such as "image" and "picture" in and outside the West; semiotics; whether images are products of discourse; religious meanings; and the ethics of viewing"--Provided by publisher.

In order to understand the economy in a wider sense we should conceive of the economy as a set of social practices. To conceive of a ‘practices-oriented’ foundation for our thinking about economy a...