In this paper, I use two films—Les Statues MeurrentAussi directed by Resnais and Marker and Sans Soleil as representatives of Left Bank cinema to show how they construct experiences of time and memory using various modernist strategies. Key to this is the use of a mental journey genre in modernist cinema and the construction of a facial dispositif which leads to a perceptual experiencing of inner states. Les Statues MeurrentAussi is a key film in the history of French cinema as (...) it highlights Alain Resnais’ and Chris Marker’s early commitment towards a politically avant-garde filmmaking style. The film was banned for many decades because it was highly critical of France’s colonial interests. The film is also a proof to the less emphasised collaboration between two pioneering directors and especially in their use of the essay film genre. Sans Soleil on the other hand is considered as a philosophical masterpiece because of its meditations on time and memory. In taking these two films, I hope not only to demonstrate cinema’s capability to generate affective spatio-temporal states but also to highlight a piece of film history which is often misappropriated under the tag of the French New Wave. (shrink)

W.V.O.Quine’s doctrine of referential inscrutability (RI) is the thesis that, first, linguistic reference must always be determined relative to an interpretation of the discourse and, second, that the empirical evidence always underdetermines our choice of interpretation--at least in principle. Although this thesis is a central result of Quine’s theory of language, it was long unclear just how much force RI actually carried. At best, Quine’s discussions provided localized examples of RI (e.g., ‘gavagai’), supplemented merely by arguments for the (in principle) (...) constructability of more general referentially divergent manuals. In defense of Quine, Gerald Massey provides a method for generating large-scale referentially divergent manuals for a complex language. I argue that, while Massey’s rival manuals do meet Quine’s translational criteria, they are demonstrably inferior to their commonsensical “homophonic” competitor. This result provides a clear indication of seminal deficiencies in Quine’s behaviorial approach to the theory of language. Next I argue that Quine’s acceptance of standard assumptions about the nature of perception strongly influences the shape of his semantical theory. Finally, I suggest how an alternative to the standard account of perception might provide grounds for a more adequate understanding of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ohio HegeliansDenys P. LeightonSelected and introduced by James A. Good. The Ohio Hegelians. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005. Volume I: Peter Kaufmann, The Temple of Truth (1858). Volume II: Moncure D. Conway, The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870). Volume III: J. B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (2nd ed., 1884).This collection of facsimile reprints prepared by James A. Good is one of the newest contributions to (...) the series 'History of American Thought' published by Thoemmes Continuum. Good has already made significant contributions to study of the history of American philosophy and 'thought' by editing for the same series a reprint edition of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1867–1893 (22 volumes, 2002) and co-editing, with Michael DeArmey, a selection of writings by the St. Louis Hegelians (3 volumes, 2001). The latter constitutes very nearly a subset of the former. The acknowledged leader of the 'St. Louis Movement' from 1858 until the late 1870s was William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), who edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy during the entire period of its publication. JSP predated Mind in England by nearly ten years and was the first specialized venue in the [End Page 445] Anglo-American world for serial publication of scholarly writing on philosophical issues. It also featured original writing on arts and literature, education, and theology, as well as some of the first translations into English of works by J. G. Fichte, F. Froebel, F. A. Trendelenburg and K. Rosenkranz. In addition to publishing work by North American and European thinkers who have by now—perhaps predictably—fallen from scholarly view, JSP featured writing by G. Stanley Hall, William James, C. S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Watson and John Dewey.There is a general historical rationale for Good's compilation of ostensibly significant writings by men collectively dubbed by Loyd Easton—with genuflection to the better-known St. Louis Idealists—'the Ohio Hegelians'.1 Yet, as I shall elaborate, the criteria of selection of documents for this collection are somewhat puzzling. Easton grouped under the label 'Ohio Hegelians' Peter Kaufmann (1800–1869), August Willich (1810–1878), John Bernhard Stallo (1823–1900) and Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907), while nevertheless denying that they formed a distinctive school of Hegelian philosophy. The most obviously Hegelian among them was Willich, a radical democratic journalist and agitator who features prominently in the complex history of 'Left Hegelianism' and early Marxism. However, Good has decided not to include Willich's writings in this collection, reasoning that his journalistic writings and ephemera 'do not lend themselves... readily to a collection of philosophical works' ('Introduction', p. v). Neither were all the items Good selected for the aforementioned collections of a strictly philosophical nature (whatever that might mean), so one wonders why Willich's Hegelian writings were left out here. It is somewhat curious that Good should include here The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) by Conway, a Virginian by birth, who, after alienating his Unitarian congregation in Washington, DC by his strongly abolitionist sentiments, was appointed in 1856 to a pastorate at the First Congregational Church in Cincinnati. This 'Ohioan' left the state and the country by 1863 and was thereafter more directly associated with English intellectual life. For most of the period 1864–1897 Conway presided over the undenominational South Place Chapel in London (subsequently, the South Place Ethical Society), which literally served as a pulpit for many guest speakers expressing forms of religious and political radicalism (e.g., agnosticism, 'secularism', republicanism, producer and consumer co-operation). There are few direct references in Conway's The Earthward Pilgrimage to his American experiences. Easton's reason for including Conway among these Ohioans was that Conway had interacted closely in Cincinnati with Willich and Stallo after 1856, when all were enthusiastic supporters of the Republican, 'free-soil' candidate for President, John C. Fremont.Of Peter Kaufmann, author of The Temple of Truth (1858), something will be said in due course, but Stallo became the most un-Hegelian of the Ohio Hegelians. In his Preface to the first edition of The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881)—the second edition is the one included in Good's [End Page 446] compilation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Zur Zahlenlehre im Platonismus (Neuplatonismus) und " lm Yezzra PHILIP MERLAN VOR MEHRERENJahrzehnten hat Baeck die These aufgestellt, dass die Philosophie yon Proclus die Quelle yon Sefer Yezira ist. 1 Diese These ist yon Hebr~iisten abgelehnt worden~(eigentlich ohne Angabe yon Grfinden), yon Griizisten unbeachtet geblieben. Der vorliegende Aufsatz unternimmt es, dieselbe yon gr~zistischer Seite zu stfitzen. Doch geschieht dies in strikter Beschr~nkung auf die Zahlenlehre des 1. Kapitels (...) yon Sefer Yezira, d.h. des :Kapitels, worin die Lehre yon der allumgreifenden Wirkung der ersten zehn Ziffern8 vorgetragen wird. Von den Themen von Plotins Enn. VI 6 sind einige yon besonderem Interesse fiir unser Problem. Vor allem beweist Plotin, dass Zahlen nicht etwa das Produkt unseres Abstrahierens yon gez~ihlten Dingen oder das des z~ihlenden Subjekts sind, dass sie vielmehr vor den geziihlten Dingen und unabhiingig yon ihrem Gedachtwerden existieren~--genau so wie die iibrigen Intelligibilien, gleich Ideen. ~ Auch diese existieren ~a~,, nicht ~,vol~. Zweitens beweist Plotin, dass der 'Ort' an dem diese Zahlen existieren, im Bereich des Intelligiblen liegt. Dabei spaltet aber Plotin diesen Bereich dreifach. Sonst ist ibm der Bereich des Intelligiblen einfach gleichbedeutend mit dem der Intelligenz; in anderen Worten, sonst ist ihm der Bereieh des Intelligiblen einfach gleiehbedeutend mit der zweiten Hypostase. Und sonst bleibt ihm diese zweite Hypostase ungespalten. Hier unterscheidet aber Plotin drei Unterbereiche des Intelligiblen. Der oberste ist das Seiende; der mittlere ist Intelligenz; der unterste ist Lebewesen. 6 1Leo Baeck, "Zum Sepher Jezira," Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 70 ~TN. F. 34 (1926),S. 371-376;78 = N. F. 42 (1934), S. 448-455. So von G. ~ajda, Introduction a la pens$ejuive du Moyen Age (Paris, 1947), S. 17, Anm. 1; G. Scholem, Ursprung und Anfdnge der Kabbala (Berlin, 1962),S. 24, Anm. 42. Immerhin gibt Scholem zu, dass Sefer Yezira yon grieehischen Quellen beeinflusst ist. So iibersetze ich sephiroth, um an die MSgliehkeit zu erinnern, dasses sich um dasselbe Wort handeln mag, dessen arabische Form (sift, sefr) in so viele Sprachen als Ziffer eingegangen ist. 4Zun~chst wehrt Plotin eine Plato-Interpretation ab, die aus ihm (offenbar aus Epinomis 978C-D) herauslesen wfirde, dass er die Zahl nur als Produkt des Z~ihlensyon ala~r& angesehen hat (4, 11-20). Er rut es, indem er Plato unterschiebt, er habe vom aX,10Lvb~~m0~6~gesprochen, der realiter existiert und an den die Seele sich erinnert, wean sie a'LaO~r&wahrnimmt (20-24). 5 6, 5-19. Cf. 9, 5-6. e el ~ rSO~V7rp~rov ~e~ ~afle~v ~rp~vov 5v, civetvo~z~, e~ra v5 ~ov... (8, 17-18; of. 1-2; 15, 2-3). Diese Triade ist offenbar aus Platos Sophistes 248 E-249 B und Timaeus 39 E abgeleitet. [167] 168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Was wir vor uns haben ist natiirlich die Triade Sein-Intelligieren-Leben, die im sp~iteren Neuplatonismus immer wieder, bei Plotin aber, wenn auch unmissverst ~indlich, doch nur gelegentlich auftaucht. Und die Zahl hat ikren Oft im obersten dieser drei Bereiche, dem des Seienden/ Die Zahl schw~ngert nun sozusagen das Seiende und ist so Ursache yon dessen Geburtswehen, unter denen das Seiende die Vielheit der seienden 'Dinge' zur Welt bringt, d.h. sich in seiende 'Dinge' vervielf~ltigt.8 So geht also die Zahl der 'Ents~ehung '9 der seienden 'Dinge' voran. Und die seienden 'Dinge' (gleich Ideen; siehe unten) habe Plato deswegen als Henaden und Zahlen bezeichnet.1~ Daher bezeichnet Plotin die Zahlen als Fundament, Quelle, Wurzel, Prinzip der seienden Dinge. n Dutch die Zahlen oder durch das zur Zahl gewordene Seiende sind die seienden 'Dinge' mit dem Seienden verknfipft.~2 Die Zahlen, yon denen bisher gesprochen wurde, sind natfirlich nicht Zahlen im gewShnlichen Wortsinn. Vielmehr unterscheidet sie Plotin als erste, wahrhafte, wesentliche Zahlen yon monadischen Zahlen?3 In diesem Zusammenhang aber bezeichnet 'monadisch' Zahlen, die aus Einheiten zusammengesetzt sind. Im Unterschied yon ihnen sind die wesentlichen (ersten, wahrhaften) Zahlen nicht aus Einheiten zusammengesetzt. Es scheint demnach, dass Plotin den ZaMen weder Priorit~tt noch Posterioritiit dem Seienden gegenfiber zuschreibt (er bezeichnet gelegentlieh das Seiende einfach Ms ZaM).14Sowie das Seiende aus dem Ureinen (so wird hier Plotins oberstes Prinzip bezeichnet werden) entspringt und zu sich kommt... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 95 direction, it opens a field of pure philosophy, unencumbered by surds such as finite man. Only if the Phenomenology is taken as a monographic work on man can there be difficulty. Let us hasten to add that, on the very premises of his book, Loewenberg's criticism of Hegel is tentative rather than apodictic; its harshness is relieved through the dialogue form. And perhaps, the interlocutors will, (...) as one of them suggests, "resume (their) conversations with fresh minds at a later date" (p. 371). They might find that they have to go beyond the limits of exoteric discussion. Or, conversely, they might find that exoteric treatment can yield no more than an anthropological reading and is, in fact, bound up with it. If Loewenberg 's extant commentary did no more than demonstrate this negative point, however implicitly,it would be of great merit. But there is of course much more: there is the substance of Loewenberg's commentary, largely unaffected by the above counter-representations. Theoretical problems aside, the supreme value of the book lies in its clarity and perceptiveness, in the "sense" it makes of the Phenomenology. Of a kind all its own, it will henceforth serve as the preferred entrance to Hegel. KLAUS HARTMANN Bonn, W. Germany Arthur Hfibscher, editor. XXXVIlI. Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch ]~r das Jahr 1957. (Frankfurt/ Main: Waldemar Kramer, 1967.Pp. v + 244.) Schopenhauer: Philosophe de l'Absurde. By Clement Brosset. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967.Pp. ix [i] -b 107.Paper, F. 7.--) Manches in dem Jahrbuch ist rein anekdotisch; manches bio- oder bibliographisch. Einiges h~ngt nur sehr lose mit Schopenhauer zusammen; so der liingste Beitrag (K. Engisch, "Todesstrafe--ja oder nein?,") mit nfitzlicher historischer und systematiseher Ubersieht, die zum Ergebnis kommt, dass die Argumente gegen die Todesstrafe iiberwiegen. Von gesetzgeberischen Interessen getragen ist such G. Zoebe, "Sind die Tiere rechtlos?" Der zweitliingste Beitrag (H. Voigt, 'r0ber Schopenhauers Erkenntnistheorie,') enth~ilt eine Art von Variationen sum Thema des Zusammenhanges zwischen Charakter und Schicksah Man freut sich, dass ein Inder (Kanti Chandra Pandey) sich fiber Schopenhauers Kenntnis des Hinduismus und Buddismus eehr anerkennendausspricht. Das Bild der Sehopenhauerschen Philosophie, wie es uns im Jahrbuch begeguet ist das uns vertraute: Pessimismus, ErlSsung durch Kunst, Mitleid, Verneinung des Willens. Aber nach Brosset erfassen diese Kategorien nur die sekund~ren Charaktere der Schopenhauerschen Philosophie. In ihrem wirklich wertvollen Kern sei diese Philosophie erstens Vorl~uferin der yon Brosset so genannten genealogischen Philosophie eines Marx, Nietzsche und Freud; allerdings letzten Endes ein Versager, da sie auf das eigentliche Anliegen der genealogischen Philosophie, n~mlich die Ableitung konkreter und spezifischer Ideen (bei Schopenhauer: der Intelligenz) aus der Umformung unbewusster Tatbestiinde (bei Schopenhauer: des Willens), nicht eingehe, sondern sich mit der Feststellung begniigt, dass die Wurzel der (bewussten) InteUigenz der (unbewusste) Wille ist. Zweitens sei Schopenhauer der erste, der seine Philosophie auf der Urerfahrung der Grundlosigkeit (Brosset zieht den Ausdruck Absurdit~t vor), daher Unausdenkbarkeit oder Unergrfindlichkeit des Seins im ganzen, aufbaut. Auf diese Erfahrung (die Frage, 'Warum nicht Nichts?' ist unbeantwortbar) reagiere der Menseh mit Angst. Die Notwendigkeit und die Zweckm~issigkeit, die die Welt im ganzen charskterisieren, seien selbst kontingent und zwecklos. Manchmal scheint mir Brosset die Originalitiit seiner Interpretationen zu iiberseh~tzen; insbesondere seine Erkl~rung der Blindheit des Willens (S. 26f.) rennt wohl offene Tfiren ein. PHILIP MERLAN ~cripps College, Claremont, California... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minor Socratics* PHILIP MERLAN OF MEN MORE OR LESS DECISIVELY influenced by Socrates, three--Antisthenes (c. 455-360), Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-356), and Eucleides of Megara (c. 450380 )--became founders of schools (or sects) often referred to as "minor Socratic schools." These schools are the Cynic, the Cyrenaic, and the Megaric, respectively. The names of the last two are self-explanatory. That of the first sounds somewhat like "dog (kytn)-like." (...) By some it is assumed to have been derived from the meeting place of Antisthenes with his followers, the gymnasium of Kynosarges; x others believe it to be contemptuously indicative of the dog-like life of the members of the sect (shamelessness, begging, barking, biting). 2 In this sense it was proudly and defiantly accepted by the members themselves, a What we know of the ethical teachings of the Megaric school amounts to hardly more than one sentence, in which the Good seems to have been identified with the One. 4 All we can say of this formula is that it, in some way, links the * Size (very limited), scope (ethical doctrines only), manner of presentation (for the general reader and rather dogmatic), etc., of this article were determined by the character of the Encyclopedia of Morals, in which it originally appeared. The present footnotes try to make up for some of the shortcomings unavoidable in this kind of article. [The Journal is grateful to Philosophical Library, Inc. for permission to reprint this article. The footnotes were subsequently added by Professor Merlan and appear here for the first time.] As the only collection of fragments of Cynics (Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Monimus, Demonax, Oenomaus, Teles, Bion) is that contained in F. W. A. Mullach, Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum (Paris: 1865), vol. II, pp. 274-429, which is hard to obtain (the collection of fragments by A. W. Winekelmann, Antisthenis fragmenta [1842] even harder), I shall quote them directly from the sources. There was no need to do so with the Cyrenaics, as we have two recent collections of their fragments: G. Giannantoni, 1 Cirenaici (Florence, n.d.: [1958])--they will be quoted as G--and E. Mannebach, Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum fragmenta (K~51n-Leiden: 1961), which will be quoted as Ma. A generous selection of fragments of Megarians, Cynics and Cyrenaics in German translation with introduction and notes is contained in W. Nestle, Die Sokratiker (Jena: 1922), pp. 79-177. Our knowledge of Antisthenes would considerably be enriched if we could follow H. Kesters, who, in a number of publications (one of them: Plaidoyer d'un Socratique... [Louvain: 1959]) ascribes Themistius, Or. XXVI to Antisthenes. However, the ascription is doubtful. i I.e., Whitehound: D.L. VI 13. Elias, In Cat. (CAG XVIII/I, Berlin: 1908), p. Ill, 2-29. Busse has a fourfold explanation of the name, all connected with the word Kt~v. Cf. K. v. Fritz, Quellenuntersuchungen zu Leben und Philosophie des Diogenes von Sinope (Leipzig: 1926), pp. 47-49. D.L. VI 60. 55; Stob. vol. III, p. 462, 16 W.-H. Quotations from Stobaeus refer to: K. Wachsmuth, O. Hense, loannis Stobaei Anthologium, 5 vol. (Berlin: 1884-1902); they are by volume, page, and line of this edition. 4 Eus. PE XIV 17, 1; D.L. II 106 (~v x6 dtTu06v). [143] 144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Megarians to the Eleatic school 5 but also to some aspects of Plato's Philebus and his Laws, and also to the Epinomis, and, above all, to his lecture or course of lectures "The Good," the conclusion of which was that it is the One which is the Good. 6 And though we know that many Megarians were engaged in political activities,7 we do not know in what way, if any, that highly abstract ethical doctrine was linked to practice. It is entirely different with the other two schools, in which ethical theory is immediately applied to life and theoretical aspects of philosophy are often neglected or even absent. However, there is some doubt as to whether Antisthenes can actually be considered the fountainhead of Cynicism. He seems to have undergone the influence of Socrates late in his life, when he had already been active as a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and Philosophy from Plato's Phaedo to the Chaldaean Oracles PHILIP MERLAN A FEW YEARSAGO another of the so-called Orphic tablets was found? Like the previously known ones~it is an instruction for the deceased--it tells him what he will find in the beyond and how he is to act to secure for himself a blessed afterlife. As a rule the tablets differ somewhat in their wording and the (...) newly found is particularly remarkable in that the deceased, when asked by the guards of the Spring of Memory what his business here is, is instructed to answer, "I am a child of the Earth and o~octvo~5~aveOo~v~og ~ and my name is Asterios. ''~ Now, it is generally recognized that the tablets are the product of some mystery religion? The new tablet suggests that part of its initiation ceremony might have been the experience of a mock death and a mock rebirth, the latter symbolized by the assuming of a new name? XN. M. Verdelis, "XaXr~ 7eCp6~oxos raX~rls ~x r 'ApxaLoXoy~K ~ 'Er 1950-1951 (Athens, 1951), pp. 80-105, esp. pp. 99-105. 2 Their text can be found in any edition of Diels-Kranz, VS. New finds: N. M. Verdelis, '0pr162 ~,&rt*ara ~ Kpr "Ap~ca~oXo*t~x~"E~tzep~ 1953-54, Second Part (Athens, 1958), pp. 56-60. On their character (Orphic? Pythagorean?), see F. Cumont, Lex perpetua (Paris, 1944), p. 406. Which mystery religion professed these two as obviously the highest deities? One is tempted to think of the mysteries of Samothrace, as in them these two deities played a conspicuous role according to Varro, De lingua lat. V 58 (cf. B. Cardauns, Varros 'Logistoricus' iiber die G6tterverehrung [Wiirzburg, 1960], pp. 60-67). 4 dar (~po4pro~)seems to me an evident conjecture by Verdelis. See, e.g., M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, Vol. 2 (Miinchen, 1950), pp. 223-227. 0This is the assumption of Verdelis, XaXxr ~'e,~0~oxo~ with which I agree. On baptismal names see, e.g., A Oepke, "AM~IOAAEIY~ im griechischen und hellenistischen Kult," Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft 31 (1934), pp. 42-56, esp. 52, note 5 (den Anstoss---scil. to bestowing of a new name on the initiate--gaben wohl primitive Wiedergeburtsgedanken). It seems to me that the Pindaric lines praising him who descends to the netherworld if he had been initiated, because he ot~e ~p fllov.reXew'gu,/olSeJ,~b.&6a~orol,tlpx~p (fr. 137a Sch) are to be explained by assuming that Pindar is here alluding to the experience of mock death (~-~,ev~-~) and mock rebirth (apX~), though it remains unclear whether the initiate experienced them in his own person or was only shown something (e.g. the burial of a seed followed by its shooting into an ear) symbolizing such events. [163] 164 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY And it is only natural to suppose that the initiation ceremony was preceded by some kind of ritual purification. In one more respect the new tablet is remarkable. It is the oldest we know. It belongs to the mid-fourth century. And this means that perhaps only a few years separate it from the date of the publication of Plato's Phaedo.' Now, as everybody knows, the Phaedo has something to say on mystery religions. Socrates first explains to his friends why he is not only not afraid of death but even looking forward to it. All his life long, he says, he was a philosopher and philosophy, as he sees it, is nothing else but ~X~-c~l0ctvd,ov. And as he explains in what way philosophy is a preparation for death, he time and again uses for the description of the philosopher's way of life the word 'pure' and its cognates (Phaedo 67d-e; 69a6-e5 [~d~}aqot~,•, ~xa0a0~vog], so that in the end the philosopher's way of life can by Socrates be described as purification-obviously purification not in its ritual sense of the word but, as Socrates sees it, in its true sense. And now Socrates clinches his argument and says: And it seems indeed that the men to whom we are indebted for the institution of... (shrink)

W.V.O.Quine’s doctrine of referential inscrutability (RI) is the thesis that, first, linguistic reference must always be determined relative to an interpretation of the discourse and, second, that the empirical evidence always underdetermines our choice of interpretation--at least in principle. Although this thesis is a central result of Quine’s theory of language, it was long unclear just how much force RI actually carried. At best, Quine’s discussions provided localized examples of RI (e.g., ‘gavagai’), supplemented merely by arguments for the (in principle) (...) constructability of more general referentially divergent manuals. In defense of Quine, Gerald Massey provides a method for generating large-scale referentially divergent manuals for a complex language. I argue that, while Massey’s rival manuals do meet Quine’s translational criteria, they are demonstrably inferior to their commonsensical “homophonic” competitor. This result provides a clear indication of seminal deficiencies in Quine’s behaviorial approach to the theory of language. Next I argue that Quine’s acceptance of standard assumptions about the nature of perception strongly influences the shape of his semantical theory. Finally, I suggest how an alternative to the standard account of perception might provide grounds for a more adequate understanding of language. (shrink)

PHOTO ID 121339257© Designer491| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT When physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be apparent conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters future physicians’ commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. We use an ethical dilemma that was presented to a group of third-year medical students to examine how ethics education might be causing (...) them to give undue deference to autonomy, thereby undermining their commitment to beneficence. INTRODUCTION The right of patients to choose which treatments they prefer is rooted in today’s social mores and taught as a principle of medical ethics as respect for autonomy. Yet, when physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be a conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters a commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. I. An Ethical Dilemma The impetus for this paper arose when students who were completing their third clinical year discussed a real-life ethical dilemma. A middle-aged man developed a pulmonary hemorrhage while on blood thinners for a recently placed coronary stent. The bleeding was felt to be reversible, but the patient needed immediate intubation or he would die. The cardiologist was told that the patient previously expressed to other physicians that he never wanted to be intubated. However, the cardiologist made the decision to intubate the patient anyway, and the patient eventually recovered.[1] Students were asked if they believed that the cardiologist had acted ethically. Their overwhelming response was, “No, the patient should have been allowed to die.” We looked into how students applied ethical reasoning to conclude that this outcome was ethically preferred. To explore how the third-year clinical experience might have formed the students’ judgment, we presented the same case to students who were just beginning their third year. Their responses were essentially uniform in recommending intubation. While there is likely more than one reasonable view in this case, we agree with the physician and the younger medical students that intubation was the ethically appropriate decision and will present an argument for it. But first, we explain the reasoning behind the more advanced medical students’ decision to choose patient autonomy at the expense of beneficence. II. Medical Ethics Education and the Priority of Autonomy Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, first published in 1979 and now in its 8th edition, is a significant part of the formal ethics education in medical school.[2] Students learn an ethical decision-making approach based on respect for four ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. While Beauchamp and Childress officially afford no prima facie superiority to any principle, the importance of respect for patient autonomy has increased through the editions of their book. For example, early editions of their book opposed the legalization of physician-assisted death compared to recent editions that defended it.[3] As another example, Beauchamp and Childress make paternalism harder to justify by adding an autonomy-protecting condition to the list of conditions for acceptable paternalism.[4] Authority, they contend, need not conflict with autonomy—provided the authority is autonomously chosen.[5] “The main requirement,” they write, “is to respect a particular patient’s or subject’s autonomous choices, whatever they may be.[6] In the principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, autonomy now seems to have a kind of default priority.[7] However, the bioethics discourse has strong counternarratives, noting some movement to elevate the role of beneficence and to respect the input of stakeholders, including the family and the healthcare team. Ethics education achieves particular relevance in the third clinical year when students become embedded in the care of patients and learn from what has been called the informal curriculum. They observe how attending physicians approach day-to-day ethical problems at the patient’s bedside. In this context, students observe the importance of informed consent for serious treatments or invasive procedures, a practice that highlights the principle of patient autonomy. In both the formal and informal curriculum, medical students observe how, in the words of Paul Wolpe, “patient autonomy has become the central and most powerful principle in ethical decision-making in American medicine.”[8] In short, students appear to learn a deference for patient autonomy. This curricular shift in favor of autonomy coincides with legal developments that protect patients’ rights and decision-making with respect to their healthcare choices. The priority of autonomy in medicine benefits patients by reflecting their choices and, in some cases, their fundamental liberty. III. The Practice of Medicine and the Commitment to Beneficence There are many critiques of the dominant place that autonomy has in biomedical ethics,[9] especially considering that autonomy seems to be biased toward individualistic, Western, and somewhat American culture-driven values.[10] In addition, many bioethical dilemmas are cast as a conflict between autonomy and beneficence. Our point is that medical students bring to their study of medicine a commitment to beneficence that seems to be suppressed by practical ethics education. We think this commitment is rationally defensible and should be nurtured. It is striking that young medical students have a pre-reflective commitment to beneficence at all. For, as we mentioned, it is not just medicine but Western culture generally that prioritizes autonomy in settling ethical dilemmas. In wanting to act for the good of others (rather than simply agreeing to what others want), physicians are already swimming somewhat against the cultural tide.[11] However, doing so makes sense, given the nature of medicine and the profession of healing. When prospective medical students are asked why they wish to become physicians, the usual answer is some variation on caring for the sick and preventing disease. It is unlikely that a reason to become a physician is to respect a patient’s autonomy. It would be easy to dismiss medical students’ commitment to beneficence as a mere intuition and contrary to a more reasoned and deliberative approach. Beauchamp and Childress seem to minimize the value of physician intuition, stating that justifications for certain procedures are “…supported by good reasons. They need not rest merely in intuition or feeling.”[12] Henry Richardson writes that “situational or perceptive intuition…leaves the reasons for decision unarticulated.”[13] We think this is a crude and rather thin way of understanding intuition. Some bioethicists have defended intuition as essential to the practice of medicine and not something opposed to reason.[14] In the case we describe, we believe the ethical justifications s for the patient’s intubation are fundamentally sound: the patient did not have a “do not intubate” order written in the chart, the emergency intubation had not been foreseen, so the patient did not have the opportunity to consent to or reject intubation; the patient had consented to the treatment for his cardiac disease so his consent for intubation could have been assumed;[15] and the consequences of respecting his autonomy did not justify allowing him to die.[16] While it is possible to have more than one reasonable view on this case, we think the case for beneficence is strong and certainly should not be dismissed out of hand. We do not deny that if a patient makes a clearly documented, well-informed decision to forgo intubation that this decision ought to be respected by the physician (even if the physician disagrees with the patient’s decision). But, in this situation, as in many others in the practice of medicine, the patient’s real wishes and preferences are not well-articulated in advance. There are many cases where a physician acts based on what she believes the patient, or the surrogate, would want, sometimes in situations that do not allow much time for reflection. An example might be resuscitation of a newborn at the borderline of viability. In their ethics education, beneficence would mean acting first to save a life. If the patient or surrogate makes an informed decision to the contrary, a beneficent physician respects that autonomous decision. In the case presented, the patient expressed gratitude to the cardiologist when extubated. But what if he had expressed anger at the physician for violating his autonomy? There are those who could argue that not only was intubation ethically wrong but that the cardiologist put himself in legal jeopardy by his actions (especially if there had been a written refusal applicable to the specific situation). In the example we use, we point out that the cardiologist may not have escaped a lawsuit if the patient had died without intubation. His family, when hearing the circumstances, may have sued for failure to act and dereliction of the cardiologist’s duty to save him. Beyond a potential legal challenge for either action or inaction, there is an overriding ethical question the cardiologist had to address: what course would be most satisfying to his conscience? Would he rather allow a patient to die for fear of recrimination, or act to save his life, regardless of the personal consequences? In the absence of real knowledge about the patient’s considered wishes, it is most reasonable to err on the side of promoting patient well-being. A physician’s commitment to beneficence is not necessarily a way of undermining a patient’s autonomy. In acting for the patient's good, physicians are also acting on what it is reasonable to believe a patient (or most patients, perhaps) would want, which is obviously connected to what a patient does want. Pellegrino and Thomasma argue that beneficence includes respect for a patient’s autonomy since “the best interests of the patient are intimately linked with their preferences.”[17] Instead of conceptualizing ethical dilemmas in medicine as conflicts between autonomy and beneficence, it is possible that medical schools could teach students that truly practicing beneficence is a way of valuing patient autonomy, especially when the patient’s wishes are not specific to the situation and are not clearly expressed. CONCLUSION It is important for students and practicing physicians to understand the principle of respect for patient autonomy in a pluralistic society that demands personal self-determination. However, the role of the physician as a beneficent healer should not be diminished by this respect for autonomy. Respecting a patient’s autonomy is grounded in and manifested by physician beneficence.[18] That is, seeking what is good for the patient can only be good if it respects their personhood and dignity. We propose that a commitment to beneficence, incipient in young medical students, should be developed over time with their other clinical reasoning skills. Such a commitment need not be sacrificed on the altar of patient autonomy. Beneficence needs greater relative moral weight with students as they proceed in their ethics education. - [1] S. Jauhar, “When Doctors Need to Lie,” New York Times, February 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/when-doctors-need-to-lie.html. [2] T. L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). [3] Louise A. Mitchell, “Major Changes in Principles of Biomedical Ethics,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 459–75, https://doi.org/10.5840/ncbq20141438. [4] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 238. [5] Beauchamp and Childress, 103. [6] Beauchamp and Childress, p. 108. [7] For other accounts that prioritize autonomy, see e.g. Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38–39; R Gillon, “Ethics Needs Principles—Four Can Encompass the Rest—and Respect for Autonomy Should Be ‘First among Equals,’” Journal of Medical Ethics 29, no. 5 (October 2003): 307–12, https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.29.5.307. For examples of critiques of these accounts, see footnote 9. [8] P. R. Wolpe, “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise, p. 43. [9] V. A. Entwistle et al., “Supporting Patient Autonomy: The Importance of Clinician-Patient Relationships,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 25, no. 7 (July 2010): 741–45; C. Foster, Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and Law, 1st ed. (Oxford ; Hart Publishing, 2009); O. O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh 2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). [10] P. Marshall and B. Koenig, “Accounting for Culture in a Globalized Bioethics,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32, no. 2 (2004): 252–66; R. Fan, “Self-Determination vs. Family-Determination: Two Incommensurable Principles of Autonomy,” Bioethics 11, no. 3–4 (1997): 309–22. [11] Arguments stressing the importance of beneficence, as ours does here, certainly approach paternalistic arguments. We set aside the complex issue of paternalism for purposes of this paper and simply note that the principle of beneficence as such does not say anything specifically about acting against the patient’s will. In the case study that focuses this paper, we do not believe the patient’s will or wishes were clearly indicated. [12] Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, p. 20, see note 2 above. [13] H. S. Richardson, “Specifying, Balancing, and Interpreting Bioethical Principles,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 25, no. 3 (January 1, 2000): 285–307, p. 287. [14] H. D. Braude, Intuition in Medicine a Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2012). [15] R. Kukla, “Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care,” The Hastings Center Report 35, no. 2 (2005): 34–44. [16] M. Schermer, The Different Faces of Autonomy: Patient Autonomy in Ethical Theory and Hospital Practice, vol. 13, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002). [17] E. D. Pellegrino and D. C. Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good - the Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 29. [18] Pellegrino and Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good. 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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ohio HegeliansDenys P. LeightonSelected and introduced by James A. Good. The Ohio Hegelians. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005. Volume I: Peter Kaufmann, The Temple of Truth (1858). Volume II: Moncure D. Conway, The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870). Volume III: J. B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (2nd ed., 1884).This collection of facsimile reprints prepared by James A. Good is one of the newest contributions to (...) the series 'History of American Thought' published by Thoemmes Continuum. Good has already made significant contributions to study of the history of American philosophy and 'thought' by editing for the same series a reprint edition of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1867–1893 (22 volumes, 2002) and co-editing, with Michael DeArmey, a selection of writings by the St. Louis Hegelians (3 volumes, 2001). The latter constitutes very nearly a subset of the former. The acknowledged leader of the 'St. Louis Movement' from 1858 until the late 1870s was William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), who edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy during the entire period of its publication. JSP predated Mind in England by nearly ten years and was the first specialized venue in the [End Page 445] Anglo-American world for serial publication of scholarly writing on philosophical issues. It also featured original writing on arts and literature, education, and theology, as well as some of the first translations into English of works by J. G. Fichte, F. Froebel, F. A. Trendelenburg and K. Rosenkranz. In addition to publishing work by North American and European thinkers who have by now—perhaps predictably—fallen from scholarly view, JSP featured writing by G. Stanley Hall, William James, C. S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Watson and John Dewey.There is a general historical rationale for Good's compilation of ostensibly significant writings by men collectively dubbed by Loyd Easton—with genuflection to the better-known St. Louis Idealists—'the Ohio Hegelians'.1 Yet, as I shall elaborate, the criteria of selection of documents for this collection are somewhat puzzling. Easton grouped under the label 'Ohio Hegelians' Peter Kaufmann (1800–1869), August Willich (1810–1878), John Bernhard Stallo (1823–1900) and Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907), while nevertheless denying that they formed a distinctive school of Hegelian philosophy. The most obviously Hegelian among them was Willich, a radical democratic journalist and agitator who features prominently in the complex history of 'Left Hegelianism' and early Marxism. However, Good has decided not to include Willich's writings in this collection, reasoning that his journalistic writings and ephemera 'do not lend themselves... readily to a collection of philosophical works' ('Introduction', p. v). Neither were all the items Good selected for the aforementioned collections of a strictly philosophical nature (whatever that might mean), so one wonders why Willich's Hegelian writings were left out here. It is somewhat curious that Good should include here The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) by Conway, a Virginian by birth, who, after alienating his Unitarian congregation in Washington, DC by his strongly abolitionist sentiments, was appointed in 1856 to a pastorate at the First Congregational Church in Cincinnati. This 'Ohioan' left the state and the country by 1863 and was thereafter more directly associated with English intellectual life. For most of the period 1864–1897 Conway presided over the undenominational South Place Chapel in London (subsequently, the South Place Ethical Society), which literally served as a pulpit for many guest speakers expressing forms of religious and political radicalism (e.g., agnosticism, 'secularism', republicanism, producer and consumer co-operation). There are few direct references in Conway's The Earthward Pilgrimage to his American experiences. Easton's reason for including Conway among these Ohioans was that Conway had interacted closely in Cincinnati with Willich and Stallo after 1856, when all were enthusiastic supporters of the Republican, 'free-soil' candidate for President, John C. Fremont.Of Peter Kaufmann, author of The Temple of Truth (1858), something will be said in due course, but Stallo became the most un-Hegelian of the Ohio Hegelians. In his Preface to the first edition of The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881)—the second edition is the one included in Good's [End Page 446] compilation... (shrink)

This is the sixth volume in the Oxford Classical Texts series of Livy and contains a Latin text, together with full apparatus criticus and Latin introduction, of Books 36-40, which cover the period from 192 to 179 BC. This momentous era in the history of Republican Rome begins with the war with Antiochus, which resulted in Rome's indirect control of Greece and Asia, and concludes with the death of Philip V of Macedon, foreshadowing the Third Macedonian War. During these (...) years Rome also struggled for the increasing dominance of northern Italy and Spain. On the domestic front, Livy depicts this period as the beginning of Roman moral decline, as reflected in such events as the trials of the Scipios, the censorship of Cato, and the Bacchanalia. Since much of the account by Polybius is fragmentary, Livy's narrative is the main source for the history of the period. (shrink)

In the above paper I suggested that in Anth. Pal. ix. 519 and xi. 12 Philip V of Macedon was himself the Cyclops and the Centaur, and that these two identifications were not only appropriate to Philip's character , but also historically associated with the Argead dynasty. In my case for the ‘Centaur’ identification, however, I overlooked one of the most important pieces of evidence, though it had been available since 1926; and that is the meaning of the (...) word κέντανυος In an article published that year E. H. Sturtevant showed that κέντανυος is a word of Thraco-Macedonian origin with the same meaning as the Greek λππος. The first part κενττ– is the κενττ– οΤ κενθ which is a constituent of several Thracian personal names, e.g. Aulu-centus, Aulu-centius, πται-κενθος, Zipa-centhus, etc. . The second half of the word, avro-, occurs in βρο-ξελμης, βρου-πολις βρο-τονον etc. - and αλο- are alternative forms of the same word). Already Tomaschek had identified κεντ- with the Greek ιλ-, and had argued that Thracian avro- ‘was borrowed from Iranian neighbours of the Thracians. Avestan aurva-, aurvañt is strikingly similar in form to Thracian avro-, avrū-, and the Avestan word applies so frequently to the horse that it might easily come to mean ”horse”’. From a combination of the two forms Sturtevant gets the convincing κνταυρος = λιππος. (shrink)

Монография посвящена изучению рефлексии с позиций культурно-исторической и диалогической парадигм (М. М. Бахтин, Ю. М. Лотман, Л. С. Выготский и др.). В соответствии с принятой нами методологией был осуществлен анализ философско-методологических основ.

This book offers a comprehensive roadmap for determining when and how to regulate risky reproductive technologies on behalf of future children. First, it provides three benchmarks for determining whether a reproductive practice is harmful to the children it produces. This framework synthesizes and extends past efforts to make sense of our intuitive, but paradoxical, belief that reproductive choices can be both life-giving and harmful. Next, it recommends a process for reconciling the interests of future children with the reproductive liberty of (...) prospective parents. The author rejects a blanket preference for either parental autonomy or child welfare and proposes instead a case-by-case inquiry that takes into account the nature and magnitude of the proposed restrictions on procreative liberty, the risk of harm to future children, and the context in which the issue arises. Finally, he applies this framework to four past and future medical treatments with above average risk, including cloning and genetic engineering. Drawing lessons from these case studies, Peters criticizes the current lack of regulatory oversight and recommends both more extensive pre-market testing and closer post-market monitoring of new reproductive technologies. His moderate pragmatic approach will be widely appreciated. (shrink)

Ch. 1. Metodologicheskie problemy sot︠s︡ialʹno-gumanitarnogo poznanii︠a︡ -- ch. 2. Metodologicheskie problemy istorii filosofii i ėstetiki.

I found Shpet's article "A Work on Philosophy" [Rabota po filosofii], which we present to the reader's attention, in the Shpet archives stored in the Lenin State Library and passed it on to the editorial board of the journal Logos, where it was published by I. Chubarov. The small circulation of that journal makes it appropriate to republish this text, which is of major importance for an understanding of Shpet's philosophical position and provides a good clarification of the subsequent logic (...) of development of his conception. Although the article is unfinished, there is no reason to lament this fact, since all of its basic ideas and their logical development were realized by Shpet in subsequent publications. A whole series of his works is devoted to grounding and affirming so-called positive philosophy, the basic features of which I would like to clarify. (shrink)

Книга рассчитана на тех, кто по своей специальности занимается философией техники и в дальнейшем углубят свои знания в этом вопросе, а также для широкого круга читателей.

The conception on which the affirmative philosophy of G.G. Shpet rests can be called hermeneutic phenomenology. The choice of this term demands explanation. Shpet's basic hermeneutic work, Hermeneutics and Its Problems [Germenevtika i ee problemy], was completed in 1918. At the time hermeneutics was understood usually as the art of grasping the meaning of a text. It is worth noting that this art was quite specific. It consisted mostly of a set of psychological techniques for "penetrating" into the internal world (...) of the text's author. The techniques were empathy, sympathy, immersion in a historico-cultural world, and imaginative penetration into the author's creative "workshop." Understood in this way, hermeneutics was a psychologically loaded research method. And if it is treated only in that way, the recently coined term "hermeneutic phenomenology" is in respect to content internally contradictory. As I see it, Shpet fully realized what conclusions could follow from this. Nevertheless his fundamental aspirations are connected precisely with the idea of unifying hermeneutics and phenomenology. This is possible because words have a complex structure . The sense of a word is objective and can be known by nonpsychological methods. The art of comprehending the sense of a text must inevitably include semiotic methods as well as logical and phenomenological techniques. They are aimed at comprehending (studying, researching, but not "grasping" or "sympathizing with" the objective, internal sense of the text. All the other elements of the sensible structure of the text are overlaid with the psychological peculiarities of the author and historical and social conditions. They are external factors that influence the sense of the text in a distinctive way and, without question, must be taken into account and included in the investigation of texts under the general heading "conditions of understanding," which are comprehended by the historical method. The psychological and historical methods in hermeneutics were historically conditioned research techniques, scientific means of comprehending sense under conditions when semiotic means were not yet developed, contemporary logico-semantic techniques were not available, and the phenomenological method was not yet invented. For this reason hermeneutics is reducible conceptually to a mere psychological art: it was only forced into being this by the lack of technical instrumentation. Moreover, the psychological hermeneutics of the nineteenth century may be called without any exaggeration the historical variant of hermeneutics in general. (shrink)