Secular arguments for equal and exclusively human worth generally tend to follow one of two strategies. One, which has recently gained renewed attention because of a novel argument by S. Matthew Liao, aims to directly ground worth in an intrinsic property that all humans have in common, whereas the other concedes that there is no morally relevant intrinsic difference between all humans and all other animals, and instead appeals to the membership of all humans in a special kind. In this (...) article, I argue that both strategies necessitate drawing a line that is both arbitrary and implausibly opens a moral gulf between individuals whose difference from one another in terms of empirical reality is entirely unremarkable, providing reasons to reject them that go beyond the standard objections in the literature. I conclude that, if all humans are to be included in the community of equals, we must lay to rest the idea that we can do so without also including a wide range of non-human animals. (shrink)

Un spectre hante l'Université française : celui de la déconstruction. Créé par Jacques Derrida à la fin des années 1960, ce concept est devenu, dans l'esprit des réactionnaires de tout poil, le mot-valise désignant tout ce qu'ils haïssent dans la pensée, lorsque celle-ci cherche à émanciper davantage qu'à ordonner. Dégénérescence de la culture, mépris pour les grandes œuvres, délire interprétatif, amphigouri linguistique, danger politique, confusion sexuelle, licence morale : à en croire les ennemis de la déconstruction, tout ce qui va' (...) mal dans le monde lui est imputable. Que signifie la fixation frénétique d'une frange d'intellectuels sur tout ce qui peut ressembler à une pensée différente, inventive et fondamentalement démocratique? Que cela signifie-t-il, si ce n'est la volonté de policer la pensée et ses institutions, pour mieux, ensuite, policer les corps? Telle est l'interrogation qui a présidé au colloque "Qui a peur de la déconstruction?", qui s'est tenu à l'École normale supérieure et à la Sorbonne en janvier 2023. En voici les actes."--Cover page 4. (shrink)

This book is a statement of confession to the human beings that we are. We do not have to spiritualise ourselves into pure reason or move to heaven as spiritual beings in order to be truly human. Metaphysics and religion have fulfilled their mission to satisfy our basic need to exceed reality. It is no longer the art of thinking and the art of believing that dominate the artistic self-creation of the human being, but the art of sharing life successfully. (...) In combination with illuminating, but not disenchanting, enlightenment, the author applies a new method in this context: enlightening transfiguration. This makes it possible for him to fully interpret the happiness that we owe to the evolution of life. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungMit der Frage, unter welchen Bedingungen die Entscheidung eines Patienten als hinreichend autonom und sein Informed Consent damit als valide betrachtet werden darf, wird ein Kernproblem der Medizinethik an- gesprochen. In der aktuellen Literatur mehren sich in diesem Zusammenhang die Forderungen nach immer differenzierteren Aufklärungsverpflichtungen des Arztes. Dabei wird übersehen, dass diese im klinischen Alltag aufgrund der begrenzten zeitlichen und personellen Ressourcen kaum zu realisieren sind. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Konzept beschrieben, das eine bedarfsgerechte Aufklärung ermöglichen soll. Seine Leitidee (...) besteht darin, die Schwierigkeit einer Entscheidung als Maßstab für die Bestimmung der in dem jeweiligen Kontext als hinreichend geltenden Entscheidungsautonomie zu definieren. Der Schwierigkeitsbegriff wird über die der Entscheidungssituation zuzuordnenden Wertekonkurrenz, d.h. der Anzahl und dem Gewicht der eine Entscheidung mitbeeinflussenden Werte, expliziert. Auf dieser Grundlage wird ein Algorithmus entwickelt, der das Aufklärungsgespräch in Abhängigkeit von dieser Wertekonkurrenz strukturiert und dimensioniert. (shrink)

Definiton of the problem: The current literature concerning the topic of ”informed consent” confronts physicians with a growing demand for extended and sophisticated disclosure duties. Often enough they hardly seem to be feasible, not least because of an actual lack of personnel and time. The problem is to find a realisable way to balance these theoretical and practical considerations. Arguments: The fundamental idea of the concept presented here consists of using the difficulty of a certain decision as standard for determining (...) the required extent of the patient’s actual decisional autonomy. As the prominent aspect of this difficulty of decision-making, the occurrence of conflicting values – termed ”value concurrence”– is identified. Conclusion: Structuring physician-patient-communication in accordance with this ”value-concurrence” should prove to be applicable in the clinical context without neglecting important ethical reflections. (shrink)

Whereas indirect euthanasia is a common clinical practice, active euthanasia remains forbidden in most countries. The reason for this differentiation is usually seen in the principle of double-effect (PDE). PDE states that there is a morally relevant difference between the intended consequences of an action and merely foreseen, unintended side-effects. This article discloses the fundamental assumptions presenting the basis for this application of the PDE and examines whether these assumptions are compatible with the PDE. It is shown that neither a (...) liberal nor a utilitarian point of view makes the utilization of the PDE possible. In accordance with philosophical tradition, only within the doctrine of the sanctity of life does the PDE seem to be applicable. By analysing the premises of this doctrine, and comparing them with those of the PDE, the inconsistency of this idea is demonstrated. It is suggested that the role of the PDE in the current discussion on euthanasia is largely exaggerated. (shrink)

A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions—including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of "nothingness" must play a primary role. This collection of essays brings together the work of (...) twenty of the world’s prominent scholars of Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Neo-Confucian, Japanese and Korean thought to illuminate fascinating philosophical conceptualizations of "nothingness" in both classical and modern Asian traditions. The unique collection offers new work from accomplished scholars and provides a coherent, panoramic view of the most significant ways that "nothingness" plays crucial roles in Asian philosophy. It includes both traditional and contemporary formulations, sometimes putting Asian traditions into dialogue with one another and sometimes with classical and modern Western thought. The result is a book of immense value for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In this interview, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre introduce their book Enrichment and core concepts for the analysis of new developments in contemporary capitalism. The study focuses the analysis of the enrichment economy, which is grasped as a new form to explore and exploit ‘the past’ as a source for capitalist profits. The interview presents forms of valuation, which are more general principles of how value and prices can be ascribed to goods. The approach of Boltanski and Esquerre assumes an (...) organized plurality of such forms of valuation. Also, the two sociologists stress the importance of discourses of valuation, which bring these forms of valuation into operation. As the interview makes evident, one major aim is to present a new perspective on the relationship between values, prices, and practices how prices are legitimatized or criticized on the basis of discourses of valuation. The interview situates Enrichment in the context of other contemporary sociological works, which focus on the economic core issue of value and valuation. The book can also be recognized as a proposal to reconcile structuralism and pragmatism in sociology. At the end of the interview, the more recent outcomes of the continuing collaborative work of Boltanski and Esquerre after Enrichment are discussed. (shrink)

The article discusses main contributions and results of the monograph Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, written by the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre. Boltanski and Esquerre focus on the strategy to transform ‘the past’ (patrimony, luxury objects, tradition, collections) into new sources of richness. The book focuses on valuation forms and valuation discourses. Enrichment links Boltanski’s work again to the socio-economic movement of the economics and sociology of conventions (in short, EC/SC), which is part of the new French (...) social sciences and regards conventions as logics of valuation and interpretation. This approach of EC/SC is introduced as a frame to evaluate the recombination of pragmatism and structuralism which is proposed by Boltanski and Esquerre. Finally, open questions and desiderata are addressed from the standpoint of EC/SC. (shrink)

Vom Hildegardis-Fest am 17. September 1997 bis zum September des darauffolgenden Jahres erstreckten sich im Gebiet zwischen Bermersheim und Eibingen und von Bingen bis Mainz die Feierlichkeiten zum 900-jahrigen Geburtsjubilaum Hildegards von Bingen. Die Verehrung der Volksheiligen aus dem Raum zwischen Nahe und Rhein hat auch in unserer Zeit zu vielfaltigen Veranstaltungen angeregt. Der Kongress stand unter dem Thema, das jetzt auch den Titel dieses Bandes hergibt, und fand vom 16. bis 21. Marz 1998 im Erbacher Hof statt.".

Das Buch beschAftigt sich mit psychologischen Theorien und mit empirischer Forschung in der Psychologie. Am Beispiel der Theorie der kognitiven Dissonanz von Festinger beschreibt und analysiert der Autor den Aufbau einer psychologischen Theorie, ihre Entwicklung im Zuge empirischer Forschungsprozesse und die wesentlichen Kennzeichen einer theorieorientierten experimentalpsychologischen Forschung. Diesen Betrachtungen liegt die strukturalistische Theorienkonzeption nach Sneed und StegmA1/4ller zugrunde - ein relativ neuer wissenschaftsphilosophischer Ansatz, der ursprA1/4nglich als non-statement view bezeichnet wurde. In diesem Rahmen werden insbesondere die Beziehungen zwischen Theorie und (...) Experiment sowie die Probleme der ValiditAt empirischer Untersuchungen neu analysiert. (shrink)

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to (...) address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors. (shrink)

We represent continuous functions on compact intervals by sequences of functions defined on finite sets of rational numbers. We call this an exact representation. This enables us to calculate the values of the function arbitrarily exactly, without roundoff errors. As an application we develop a procedure to transfer an exact representation of an increasing function into an exact representation of the corresponding inverse function.

Introduction: the foundation of justice -- Practical reason and justifying reasons: on the foundation of morality -- Moral autonomy and the autonomy of morality : toward a theory of normativity after Kant -- Ethics and morality -- The justification of justice: Rawls's political liberalism and Habermas's discourse theory in dialogue -- Political liberty: integrating five conceptions of autonomy -- A critical theory of multicultural toleration -- The rule of reasons: three models of deliberative democracy -- Social justice, justification, and power (...) -- The basic right to justification: toward a constructivist conception of human rights -- Constructions of transnational justice: comparing John Rawls's the law of peoples and Otfried Höffe's democracy in an age of globalisation -- Justice, morality, and power in the global context -- Toward a critical theory of transnational justice. (shrink)

Mental-threshold egalitarianism, well-known examples of which include Jeff McMahan’s two-tiered account of the wrongness of killing and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, divides morally considerable beings into equals and unequals on the basis of their individual mental capacities. In this paper, I argue that the line that separates equals from unequals is unavoidably arbitrary and implausibly associates an insignificant difference in empirical reality with a momentous difference in moral status. In response to these objections, McMahan has proposed the introduction (...) of an intermediate moral status. I argue that this move ultimately fails to address the problem. I conclude that, if we are not prepared to give up moral equality, our full and equal moral status must be grounded in a binary property that is not a threshold property. I tentatively suggest that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is such a property, and a plausible candidate. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I develop (...) the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how hospitalized patients share decisions with physicians. METHODS: We conducted an observational study of patient-doctor communication on an inpatient medicine service among 18 hospitalized patients and 9 physicians. A research assistant (RA) approached newly hospitalized patients and their physicians before morning rounds and obtained consent. The RA audio recorded morning rounds, and then separately interviewed both patient and physician. Coding was done using integrated analysis. RESULTS: Most patients were white (61%) and half were female. Most (...) physicians were male (66%) and of Southeast Asian descent (66%). All physicians explained the plan of care to the patients; most believed that their patient understood. However, many patients did not. Physicians rarely asked the patient for their opinion. In all those cases, the decision had been made previously by the doctors. No decisions were made with the patient. Patients sometimes disagreed. CONCLUSIONS: Shared decision-making may not be the norm in hospital care. Although physicians do explain treatment plans, many hospitalized patients do not understand enough to share in decisions. When patients do assert their opinion, it can result in conflict. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Some hospitalized patients are interested in discussing treatment. Improving hospital communication can foster patient autonomy. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining (...) insights from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)