IN 1983 THE STUTTGART PUBLISHING FIRM OF PHILIPP RECLAM brought out a slim volume containing an introduction and seven essays by Robert Spaemann, then Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. Entitled Philosophische Essays, it presents and illustrates Spaemann’s philosophical project: to understand the phenomenon of modernity, to criticize the deficiencies of modern thought, and to preserve what is good in modernity by rehabilitating the teleological understanding of nature that modernity largely rejected. A second edition in 1994 included three (...) more essays. As little of Spaemann’s work has yet appeared in English, the aim of this paper is modest: to present as clearly and accurately as possible his position in the Philosophische Essays. (shrink)

These commentaries will obviously be of interest to students of Aquinas. They should also be of interest to students of Aristotle, but with one caveat. The translators have had the delicate task of rendering into English not Aristotle’s Greek but the Latin translation of it on which Aquinas is commenting. As the Latin translates Aristotle on something close to a word-for-word basis, so the translators have translated the Latin version of Aristotle into English almost word-for-word. Further, as Macierowski explains, they (...) have taken care to preserve the opacity of terms that Aquinas explains in his commentary; to have clarified these opaque terms in the initial translation of Aristotle’s text would have made Aquinas’s later clarifications nugatory. The rationale is clear and the policy defensible, but the resulting translation of Aristotle can be rough going, for example, “for it is not just from a distance, and not close up, that one of the mixed colors appears, but from anywhere” ; “Therefore they seek in this way, and, not seeking, they still recollect in this way, when that motion comes into being after the other one; but it used to come about when the other motions such as we have. (shrink)

This is a learned and informative study in ancient philosophy of mind and in ancient ethics and religious practice. It consists of two parts. Chapters 1-8 are a study in ancient philosophy of mind, and in particular in ancient views about the mental or psychological capacities of animals. Sorabji begins with the claims of Aristotle and the Stoics that animals do not have reason or belief. This denial of reason and belief to animals led Aristotle and the Stoics to reexamine (...) such psychological capacities as perception, perceptual appearance, belief, concept-possession, memory, intention, preparation, anger and other emotions, and speech. Sorabji also shows how Pythagoreans, Platonists, and some of Aristotle’s successors, such as Theophrastus, contested the Aristotelian and Stoic denial of reason to animals. Aristotle’s interests in these matters were mainly scientific, but for the Stoics and for their opponents the question about animal rationality raised religious and ethical issues, which Sorabji explores in chapters 9-15. He surveys Stoic, Epicurean, Neoplatonist, and Christian discussions of the treatment of animals, and in particular of the eating of meat and of animal sacrifice. He finds that the moral status of animals and their claims on humans were the matter of a serious and extended debate in pagan philosophy, a debate that has been largely overlooked ever since Western Christianity accepted the Stoic denial of reason to animals and its supposed consequence, the denial that animals have any claims on humans. Sorabji finds the Aristotelian and Stoic arguments against animal rationality less than persuasive, but his more substantive philosophical contention is that even if these arguments worked they would not be relevant to the moral issue of how humans should treat animals; what is relevant is that animals can feel pain. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche referred to Arthur Schopenhauer as the first inexorable atheist among German philosophers. Yet Schopenhauer’s philosophy---in particular his discussion of “compassion” as the basis of morality---can serve as a starting point for dialogue among Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheistic humanists, all of whom need to address what Raimundo Panikkar calls “The Silence of God.”.

Friedrich Nietzsche referred to Arthur Schopenhauer as the first inexorable atheist among German philosophers. Yet Schopenhauer’s philosophy---in particular his discussion of “compassion” as the basis of morality---can serve as a starting point for dialogue among Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheistic humanists, all of whom need to address what Raimundo Panikkar calls “The Silence of God.”.

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out the main questions of metaphysics and assesses the main answers to them, and which serve as a useful introduction not just to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics but to classical metaphysics in general.

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book (Beta) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book (Kappa). Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle setsout what he takes to be the main problems of metaphysics or 'first philosophy' and assesses possible solutions to them; he takes his starting-point from the work of earlier philosophers, especially Plato and some of the Presocratics. These (...) texts serve as a useful introduction both to Aristotle's ownwork on metaphysics and to classical metaphysics in general; they are also a good example of Aristotle's dialectical method, which reasons not from known truths but from reputable opinions. (shrink)

This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.

One of the most extensive yet least conclusive methodological debates within religious studies revolves around the question of what, precisely, the phenomenology of religion is and what contribution it can make to the study of religion. I do not intend to answer this important question here. To do so satisfactorily would require a range of historical, philosophical and methodological inquiry which would go quite beyond the bounds of a single article. My intention in this paper is, by comparison, unambitious. It (...) is to take one view of what phenomenology of religion is and to consider an area outside that usually explored by students of religion which can, nonetheless, shed some light on how religions might be studied in a way which is in accordance with the phenomenology of religion so understood. What follows will offer an answer to the question of what contribution one particular understanding of phenomenology might make to the study of religion, but no attempt will be made to establish whether or not this particular understanding ought to be regarded as normative. (shrink)

Patients have received experimental pharmaceuticals outside of clinical trials for decades. There are no industry-wide best practices, and many companies that have granted compassionate use, or ‘preapproval’, access to their investigational products have done so without fanfare and without divulging the process or grounds on which decisions were made. The number of compassionate use requests has increased over time. Driving the demand are new treatments for serious unmet medical needs; patient advocacy groups pressing for access to emerging treatments; internet platforms (...) enabling broad awareness of compelling cases or novel drugs and a lack of trust among some that the pharmaceutical industry and/or the FDA have patients’ best interests in mind. High-profile cases in the media have highlighted the gap between patient expectations for compassionate use and company utilisation of fair processes to adjudicate requests. With many pharmaceutical manufacturers, patient groups, healthcare providers and policy analysts unhappy with the inequities of the status quo, fairer and more ethical management of compassionate use requests was needed. This paper reports on a novel collaboration between a pharmaceutical company and an academic medical ethics department that led to the formation of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. Comprising medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives, CompAC established an ethical framework for the allocation of a scarce investigational oncology agent to single patients requesting non-trial access. This is the first account of how the committee was formed and how it built an ethical framework and put it into practice. (shrink)

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out the main questions of metaphysics and assesses the main answers to them, and which serve as a useful introduction not just to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics but to classical metaphysics in general.

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out what he takes to be the main problems of metaphysics or 'first philosophy' and assesses possible solutions to them; he takes his starting-point from the work of earlier philosophers, especially Plato and some of the Presocratics. These texts (...) serve as a useful introduction both to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics and to classical metaphysics in general; they are also a good example of Aristotle's dialectical method, which reasons not from known truths but from reputable opinions. (shrink)

But as Harvard ethicist Arthur J. Dyck shows in this powerful work, there are solid moral and practical bases for the existing laws against assisted suicide in ...

Panentheism has become a familiar term in contemporary Christian systematic theology and philosophy, for it is widely believed to be an appropriate way to overcome the alleged dualism found in the classical God-world relationship. But what is meant by the term panentheism, and how does it work so as to avoid becoming still another form of pantheism or cosmic monism? In 2004 Philip Clayton and the late Arthur Peacocke published a set of papers on the topic of panentheism that (...) came from a conference in England on that topic in 2001.1 Yet, while there were certain broad affinities in approach and content among many of the papers, none of them used precisely the same conceptual model for analysis of the concept. As.. (shrink)

First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for the world in all its significant aspects. It gives a unique and influential account of what is and is not of value in existence, the striving and pain of the human condition and the possibility of (...) deliverance from it. This new translation of the first volume of what later became a two-volume work reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names and bibliography, and succinct editorial notes, including notes on the revisions of the text which Schopenhauer made in 1844 and 1859. (shrink)