In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A Unity of Order":Aquinas on the End of PoliticsWilliam McCormick S.J.Nonspecialists are often surprised to learn that Aquinas's thought on Church and state is a matter of obscurity. After all, Aquinas is the most famous medieval thinker in the West, and the question of Church and state is one of the best-known medieval political questions. And yet his thought on that polemical topic remains obscure. As John Watt (...) puts it: "There are too many ambiguities in his doctrine and too many unanswerable questions about what he did or did not hold."1Why is his view not better understood? Part of its obscurity is the relative infrequency with which he writes on politics.2 Another is the relative lack of interest in medieval political thought among political scientists and historians of political thought, an obscurity dating back to the Renaissance.3 Those who do study Aquinas's thought, moreover, have been mired in a controversy over two key texts: one from book II of his Scriptum or commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences (d. 44, q. 2, a. 3, exp. text.), and the other in book II of De regno (On kingship), chapter 3 (no. 110). For brevity, I will use S for the Scriptum passage and R for the De regno passage.4 These two [End Page 1019] appear to contradict each other, and with respect to fundamental political questions. The debate over these two texts points to what most contributes to the obscurity of Aquinas's teaching on Church and state: confusion about his vision of politics in human life. As I will show in this paper, Aquinas transcends modern categories of the "secular" and "belief" in his treatment of politics. Aquinas valorizes the integrity of political activity: that autonomy is not just a concession to the modern condition. It is in fact when Aquinas is most theological that he is most open to that integrity. The integrity of the political speaks to the intrinsic goodness of that order: it mirrors God's unity in its complex and ordered diversity.In this paper I examine R and S to show their concordance. I argue that they are complementary in what they prescribe for relations between Church and state, and indeed grounded in the same account of the origins of political authority. Through this investigation we will uncover key principles of Aquinas's political thinking that show him to have a capacious vision of politics where humans achieve the actualization of their full beings as human.A key notion will be unitas ordinis, or unity of order: the form of human cooperation in political life. As we will see, that form strikes a middle path between the simple unity of the individual person and the orderless collectivity of a crowd. For Aquinas, that order is itself a common good of politics, and an intrinsic one at that, before any "extrinsic" common good achieved by the people through that order. Part of why this seemingly secular consideration is good is its theological importance: it mirrors God.Further, if Aquinas does not elaborate on political arrangements as much as one would like, nevertheless he offers sure guidance for the principles which ought to guide the prudent development of those arrangements in a particular time and place. Ultimately Aquinas shows that medieval political thought is in key respects not as alien and hostile to us as we might imagine, but in its own way equally concerned about the integrity of the political life.5The Teaching of SAquinas's teaching on Church and state in S is widely accepted as his mature "two powers" teaching. Aquinas's most famous work, the Summa theologiae [ST], would eventually replace Lombard's Sentences, but in Thomas's own thirteenth century it was that compendium of quotations and arguments [End Page 1020] from Christian sources compiled by the twelfth-century theologian-bishop Lombard that was the standard theology textbook in the Latin West—the Ur-text for theological teaching and scholarship.6The Sentences is perhaps the most important Western book no one has heard of. It was so influential not only because it collected a rich trove of... (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

While ‘political theology’ has attracted widespread attention for decades, it is often taken to be too fideist for orthodox Christianity and too illiberal for secular politics. But in the work of Jacques Maritain one finds a defence of a certain political theology, one whose character is key to grasping Maritain’s justification of another controversial concept: ‘Christian philosophy’. In this study I draw out Maritain’s distinction between Christian philosophy and theology, paying particular attention to the relevance of their differences in the (...) realm of practical thought. To illustrate what Maritain has in mind by these claims, I further consider his intriguing classification of the political works of Thomas Aquinas. I argue that distinguishing between rival notions of political theology clarifies the opportunities for dialogue between believing and secular citizens. (shrink)

This book focuses on the question, what is the relationship between Christianity and politics? The author argues that the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas offers an answer; discusses Aquinas's themes in the history of Christian political thought.

The first comprehensive intellectual biography of William Petty, the inventor of 'political arithmetic' and a key figure in the English colonization of Ireland, the institutionalization of experimental science, and early social science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas by William McCormickD. C. SchindlerMcCORMICK, William. The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. xiii + 272 pp. Cloth, $75.00Challenging general assumptions that, because of its genre as a letter to a king in the speculum principis tradition, Aquinas's De Regno (...) is a minor source for Aquinas's political theory in comparison to the political passages from the Summa and Sentence Commentary, William McCormick, S.J. presents a new interpretation of this somewhat neglected text. Though there exist a few classic articles comparing Aquinas's thought in this letter and elsewhere, and substantial introductions to the De Regno in editions by Eschmann (1949) and Dondaine (1979), The Christian Structure of Politics is the first book-length study of Aquinas's letter to the king of Cyprus. In this respect, the volume makes a very welcome contribution to our understanding of Aquinas's understanding of political order, bringing out a dimension of his thought—its awareness of history and its pedagogical sensitivity—not so apparent in Aquinas's other writings.The book is very much what it presents itself as being, namely, a "close reading" of the text, following the letter's two parts (the second of which [End Page 150] Aquinas left unfinished) paragraph by paragraph, considering various interpretative possibilities and suspending judgment—the words "might" and "perhaps" are no doubt two of the most frequent in the book—until more evidence comes into view, and working up to general principles only at the end. McCormick thus eschews substantial engagement with theoretical issues that would form the backdrop to the discussion (for example, the relation between nature and grace, and between practical and theoretical reason), opting instead to focus on a more immediate engagement with what is presented in the text itself. He also does not make more than passing comments on Aquinas's better-known formulations on political matters from the Summa or Sentences Commentary. On the other hand, the "close reading" does not keep McCormick from discerning a general order in Aquinas's letter, which he divides up thematically according to a proposed schema. His approach shows a sensitivity to the historical context in which Aquinas was writing, even if particular details about Aquinas's addressee and the occasion of composition remain uncertain, but his aim is not simply to produce a historical study. Instead, as the book's title itself already indicates, he investigates the De Regno in order to show that the text offers fundamental principles for a distinctively Christian approach to politics, and thus can shed light even on our contemporary situation.The book is divided into five basic chapters, in addition to a substantial introduction and brief conclusion. The first four chapters follow the order of the De Regno, though the basic lines of division are McCormick's own interpretative proposal. Chapter 1 treats the letter's prooemium and the first two chapters of part one (I.1-2) under the title "The Aristotelian State of Nature," showing that, contrary to ideas found in a certain current of Christian thought, political order is fully natural to man and not simply a practical response to violence. Chapter 2, "The Augustinian Earthly City," treating I.3-6, complements the natural character of politics with the realistic acknowledgment of man's fallen nature. While some commentators have worried that the discussion of tyranny in these and subsequent chapters of the De Regno eclipses the positive account of politics given rather schematically at the start, and so diminishes the interest the text might hold for the political philosopher, McCormick argues that the engagement with the tyrant, and the disorder he generates, represents an essential dimension of Aquinas's political vision. Indeed, one of the principal theses of The Christian Structure of Politics is that Aquinas manages to integrate Aristotelian and Augustinian perspectives in an unusually illuminating way: Christian revelation, which introduces the eschatological horizon and foregrounds the historical narrative of sin and redemption, does not supplant but instead grounds and deepens the integrity of politics and... (shrink)

AT the conclusion of his 1962 letter to William Richardson, Heidegger speaks about language and the thinking of Being. ‘In proportion to the intrinsically manifold matter of Being and Time all words which give this matter utterance…are always ambiguous. Only a manifold thought succeeds in uttering the heart of this matter in a way that corresponds with it. This manifold thought requires, however, not a new language but a transformed relationship to the essence of the old one’.

This book is a comprehensive and unique text and reference in medical ethics. By far the most inclusive set of primary documents and articles in the field ever published, it contains over 100 selections. Virtually all pieces appear in their entirety, and a significant number would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The volume draws upon the literature of history, medicine, philosophical and religious ethics, economics, and sociology. A wide range of topics and issues are covered, such as law and medicine, (...) truth-telling by the physician, research, population policy, genetics, abortion, dying, and individual rights in medical care. The selections span the centuries, beginning with material from the works of Hippocrates, continuing through Thomas Percival, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard, down to modern commentators like Henry K. Beecher, Walsh McDermott, David L. Bazelon, Paul Freund, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Paul Ramsey, Richard McCormick, Rashi Fein, and Bernard Barber. The text has eight major divisions, beginning with sections on the ethical dimensions of the physician-patient relationship in history; the moral bases of medical ethics; and regulation, compulsion, and protection of the consumer in clinical medicine and public health. Each of these sections includes key essays that appear for the first time. All of the book's major divisions contain primary documents: codes such as the Hippocratic Oath, Medieval Law for the Regulation of Medicine, and the first as well as the most recent code of the American Medical Association; court decisions, including those on Karen Quinlan and on abortion in the United States and West Germany; government documents such as the statement of the National Commission on the Protection of Human Subjects, the Tuskegee Syphilis Report, the British Parliamentary debate on euthanasia, and the Council of Europe on rights of the sick and dying; and various published guidelines such as the Harvard Medical School brain death criteria, the American Hospital Association on patient's rights, and Pope Pius XII on the prolongation of life. Cases that illustrate moral dilemmas are provided for discussion purposes. Each section is preceded by a succinct editor's introduction. The documents and essays are of practical value for practitioners and students in medicine, law, ethics, and counselling, and for individual patients and groups concerned with medical care. Through encompassing divergent viewpoints, the essays and primary documents were selected to encourage humane practices and deepen understanding of the multiple traditions that shaped and do shape the development of medicine. (shrink)

Building on his well-received first book on the seventeenth-century innovator of political arithmetic, William Petty, Ted McCormick has produced a sweeping account of how, in England, demographic t...

In 1823, sixteen years after his advocacy had helped end Britain’s official participation in the slave-trade, William Wilberforce took up his pen again to write An Appeal to the Religion, Justice,...

In the final year of his long life, eminent Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain prepared a final book for publication: a collection of previously unpublished writings entitled Approaches san entraves, later translated into English as Untrammeled Approaches. That collection, both in its conversational yet reverent tone and in its weighty topics - faith, love, truth, beauty - gives the reader the sense that she is receiving from a great teacher and friend the most important nuggets of wisdom for the next generation. (...) Throughout the book, Maritain shares with his readers, from his heart as well as his intellect, regarding the things that really matter; that book - and those things - are the primary inspiration for the present volume. This volume, comprised of original essays by twenty English-speaking Thomists on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Untrammeled Approaches' first English appearance, explores several of Maritain's still-untrammeled (or at least less-trammeled) themes. While following his unbeaten paths, the contributing authors find and refine hidden treasures at every turn. They develop some of his more speculative ideas regarding the spiritual world - including the last things, the fate of the fallen angels, and a possible angelic role in evolution. They reflect deeply on a few of Maritain's recurring themes: for example, the nature of beauty and intuition. They analyze the implications - positive and negative - of Maritain's philosophy of love, marriage, and sexuality. And they consider and apply his arguments regarding appropriate roles and interactions of Church and state. The volume concludes with big-picture reflections on Maritain, his thought, and his enduring relevance. The contributors to this volume are: Michael Breidenbach, Romanus Cessario, OP, John Conley, SJ, Mario O. D'Souza, CSB, Travis Dumsday, Heather Erb, Lawrence Feingold, Megan Furman, Marie George, James Hanink, Gregory Kerr, William McCormick, SJ, Matthew Minerd, Mark Moes, Michael Novak, Michael Pakuluk, Alice Ramos, Walter Schultz, Michael Torre, Nikolaj Zunic. (shrink)

J. Budziszewski responds in turn to each of the papers that were presented as part of the session honoring him at the twenty-fourth annual conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in October 2016. He responds to the comments of John P. Hittinger, William McCormick, SJ, Kevin E. Stuart, Matthew J. Wright, and Paul R. DeHart.

To date, there have been only two scholarly papers devoted to a comparison of Gestalt psychology with the psychology of William James. An early paper by Mary Whiton Calkins called attention to numerous similarities between these two schools of thought. However, a more recent paper by Mary Henle argues that the ideas of William James, as presented in The Principles of Psychology, are irrelevant to Gestalt psychology. In what follows, this claim is evaluated both in terms of The (...) Principles and Jamesís larger vision as set forth in his mature philosophical works. Although there are important differences between James and the Gestalt psychologists, there are also striking similarities particularly when the two schools are examined in the light of Jamesís mature philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

Animal behaviour and welfare research are part of a wider endeavour to optimize the health and wellbeing of humans, animals and ecosystems. As such, it is part of the One Health research agenda. This article applies ethical principles described by the One Health High Level Expert Panel to animal behaviour and welfare research. These principles entail that animal behaviour and welfare research should be valued equitably alongside other research in transdisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration. It should include and promote a multiplicity (...) of marginalized voices, including those of animals, and it should apply and describe a harmonious balance between human—animal-environment interactions. Lastly, it should describe how humans need to change behaviour, adopt sustainable solutions and recognize the importance of animal welfare and the integrity of the whole ecosystem. (shrink)

In this study William Lyons presents a sustained and coherent theory of the emotions, and one which draws extensively on the work of psychologists and physiologists in the area. Dr Lyons starts by giving a thorough and critical survey of other principal theories, before setting out his own 'causal-evaluative' account. In addition to giving an analysis of the nature of emotion - in which, Dr Lyon argues, evaluative attitudes play a crucial part - his theory throws light on the (...) motivating role of emotions in our lives, our attitudes towards our emotions and our responsibility for them. (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. (...) This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing European crisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order (...) and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / Part I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / Part II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3. The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crisis – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5. Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought , Niklas Olsen / Part III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy , Chris Thornhill / 7. The Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / Part IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crisis”, Jan-Werner Müller. 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst/ Part V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below, William E. Scheuermann / 13. “We could all go Down the Road of Lebanon” – Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusions and Perspectives: The Re-Constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Index . (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. (...) This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions that underlie day-to-day empirical research. In this book Uttal addresses the question of localization: whether psychological processes can be defined and isolated in a way that permits them to be associated with particular brain regions. New, noninvasive imaging technologies allow us to observe the brain while it is (...) actively engaged in mental activities. Uttal cautions, however, that the excitement of these new research tools can lead to a neuroreductionist wild goose chase. With more and more cognitive neuroscientific data forthcoming, it becomes critical to question their limitations as well as their potential. Uttal reviews the history of localization theory, presents the difficulties of defining cognitive processes, and examines the conceptual and technical difficulties that should make us cautious about falling victim to what may be a "neo-phrenological" fad. (shrink)

This massive two-volume reference presents a comprehensive selection of the most important works on the foundations of mathematics. While the volumes include important forerunners like Berkeley, MacLaurin, and D'Alembert, as well as such followers as Hilbert and Bourbaki, their emphasis is on the mathematical and philosophical developments of the nineteenth century. Besides reproducing reliable English translations of classics works by Bolzano, Riemann, Hamilton, Dedekind, and Poincare, William Ewald also includes selections from Gauss, Cantor, Kronecker, and Zermelo, all translated here (...) for the first time. (shrink)

A Persian translation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet along with the original text.

In this study William Lyons presents a sustained and coherent theory of the emotions, and one which draws extensively on the work of psychologists and physiologists in the area. Dr Lyons starts by giving a thorough and critical survey of other principal theories, before setting out his own 'causal-evaluative' account. In addition to giving an analysis of the nature of emotion - in which, Dr Lyon argues, evaluative attitudes play a crucial part - his theory throws light on the (...) motivating role of emotions in our lives, our attitudes towards our emotions and our responsibility for them. (shrink)

William P. Alston. difference in the scope of the rule reflects the fact that I-rules exist for the sake of making communication possible. Whereas their cousins are enacted and enforced for other reasons. We could distinguish I-rules just by this ...

The philosophy of science as it is known today emerged out of a combination of three traditional concerns: the classification of the sciences, methodology and the philosophy of nature. Included in the series Works in the Philosophy of Science 1830-1914 are all three of these interrelated areas. The titles should be of interest to both the philosopher of science and to the historian of ideas. The former will be able to trace present-day concerns back to their origins; the latter should (...) find it a useful source for the study of Victorian conceptions of science. (shrink)

William P. Alston formulates and defends a realist conception of truth, which he calls alethic realism (from "aletheia", Greek for "truth").

Institutional ethics consultation services for biomedical scientists have begun to proliferate, especially for clinical researchers. We discuss several models of ethics consultation and describe a team-based approach used at Stanford University in the context of these models. As research ethics consultation services expand, there are many unresolved questions that need to be addressed, including what the scope, composition, and purpose of such services should be, whether core competencies for consultants can and should be defined, and how conflicts of interest should (...) be mitigated. We make preliminary recommendations for the structure and process of research ethics consultation, based on our initial experiences in a pilot program. (shrink)

Step by step the reader is introduced, through analysis of the fundamental problems of Being, the relation of thoughts to things, novelty, causation, and the ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtues, Obligations, and the Prophetic VisionRoy Branson (bio)Ethics at its best is only bad poetry—that is, it seeks to help us see whatwe see every day but fail to see rightly...If ethicists had talent, they might be poets,but in the absence of talent, they try tomake their clanking conceptual anddiscursive chains do the work of art.—Stanley HauerwasThe speaker was so severely bent over that his congenitally deformed back had (...) to be supported. He was a young Ph.D. in history. We were some 50 physicians, lawyers, health care administrators, and ethicists studying the ethics of organ transplants. Before he arrived, the conference had discussed different understandings of equal access and the nuances of federal policies governing organ transplant distribution. 1 In his lecture, our guest matter-of-factly described his own condition. He then pointed out that not only in ancient civilization but in American history as well, the disabled had been killed just because they were disabled. Indeed, even now, he said, they were not being allowed to live.In the question and answer session, he was immediately challenged by nationally prominent transplant surgeons. He responded by asking the surgeons: If two people could avoid death and anticipate significantly prolonged life from receiving an organ transplant and the only difference between them was that one was disabled and the other not, who would receive the life-saving transplant? The surgeons’ initial, spirited defense of excluding the significantly disabled person died down as they began to realize that, as far as they were concerned anyway, they might not have allowed the lecturer to live. They were stunned by the realization that they had not felt the disabled were fully persons. In the silences between their sentences, the participants sensed that they had passed beyond the discussion of economic, medical, and legal terms to glimpse new horizons of responsibility. [End Page 361]The conference was experiencing the truth of William F. May’s claim that moral quandaries must be placed within “a fresh and liberating vision of the world;” within “metaphysical horizons” (May 1983, pp. 15, 19).Pastoral VirtuesIn the late sixties, André Hellegers, the dynamic physician and Catholic layman who founded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and who claimed that he had invented the word bioethics, focused bioethics elsewhere—on virtue. “As the caring branches of medicine were gradually pushed aside by the curing ones,” Hellegers said, “there seemed to be less use for the Christian virtues.” We must, he declared, “recapture the Christian virtues of care” (cited in McCormick 1985, p. 111). In a subsequent essay on the conceptual foundation of bioethics, Hellegers, writing with Albert Jonsen, did not invoke the word pastor, but he did argue that the codes drawn up for the ethical practice of medicine were, among other things, guides for the cure of physicians’ souls (Jonsen and Hellegers 1976, pp. 35–36).In 1969, at the same time that André Hellegers was in the process of establishing the Kennedy Institute, Edmund Pellegrino, then a medical school dean, led in the founding of humanities programs within American medical schools. Pellegrino, like Hellegers, a physician and Catholic layman, also focused on virtue. Obligations are not irrelevant for Pellegrino, but in biomedical ethics “one starts always with one’s commitment to be a certain kind of person and then approaches clinical quandaries, conflicts of values, and patient interests as a good person ought” (Pellegrino 1988, p. 123). Pellegrino knows that the classical and Christian tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, a tradition with which he identifies, is concerned with the whole gamut of ethics. But for Pellegrino, that tradition teaches that “no matter to what depths a society may fall, virtuous persons will always be the beacons that light the way back to moral sensitivity” (p. 123). He freely acknowledges that “a virtue-based ethics is inherently elitist, in the best sense, because its adherents demand more of themselves than does the prevailing morality” (p. 123).Hellegers and Pellegrino added to the need of physicians acquiring professional skills their responsibility to become the embodiment of the moral ideal in the patient-physician relationship by caring for the patient... (shrink)

The will to believe.--Is life worth living?--The sentiment of rationality.--Reflex action and theism.--The dilemma of determinism.--The moral philosopher and the moral life.--Great men and their environment.--The importance of individuals.--On some Hegelisms.--What psychical research has accomplished.

One of the most influential men of his time, philosopher, psychologist, educator, and author William James (1842-1910) helped lead the transition from a predominantly European-centered nineteenth-century philosophy to a new "pragmatic" American philosophy. Helping to pave the way was his seminal book Pragmatism (1907), in which he included a chapter on "Truth," an essay which provoked severe criticism. In response, he wrote the present work, an attempt to bring together all he had ever written on the theory of knowledge, (...) including an article on the function of cognition, later polemic and expository contributions, and some replies to previous criticism. The result was a full and definitive expression of the pragmatist "epistemology" from James' point of view. In the book, he urges the reader to "turn away from abstractions, verbal solutions, fixed principles, and pretended absolutes and look for concreteness and facts, action and power," arguing that "the ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires." For students, scholars--anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought--this book offers an in-depth exposition of the influential ideas of one of the greatest American thinkers. Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York and London, 1909. (shrink)

Socrates (469-399 BC) is one of history's most enigmatic figures. Our knowledge of him comes to us second-hand, primarily from the philosopher Plato, who was Socrates' most gifted student, and from the historian and sometime-philosopher Xenophon, who counted himself as a member of Socrates' inner circle of friends. We also hear of Socrates in one comic play produced during his lifetime (Aristophanes' Clouds) and in passing from the philosopher Aristotle, a student of Plato. Socrates is a figure of enduring interest. (...) He is often considered the father of Western Philosophy, yet the four most famous accounts we have of him present a contradictory, confusing picture. Just who was Socrates? A brilliant philosopher, at times confounding and infuriating, morally serious and yet ironic; the ever-worldly man, sometime mystic, and uncommon martyr depicted by Plato? Or did Plato conflate Socrates' views with his own startling genius, as Aristotle suggests? Was So rates instead the less impressive, more mundane man whose commonsense impressed the laconic Xenophon? Or was Socrates the charlatan, the long-winded phony of Aristophanes' play? The Socratic works of Diogenes Laertius (3rd century AD), Libanius (AD 314 -- c. 393), Maximus of 'Tyre (2nd century AD), and Apuleius (born c. AD 125) add important dimensions to the portrait of Socrates: Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates emphasizes Socrates' deep ethical nature and his extraordinary personality; Libanius' Apology of Socrates is based on sources now lost to us; Maximus of Tyre's Whether Socrates Did the Right Thing When He Did Not Defend Himself makes the star ling claim (against testimony of Plato and Xenophon) that Socrates never spoke athis own trial; from Apuleius' On the God of Socrates we hear at length of Socrates' infamous daimonion: the "divine sign" only mentioned elsewhere, the sign that warned Socrates against certain courses of action. In short, from these four texts we are reintroduced to Socrates, and new wrinkles are added to an already intriguing historical figure. (shrink)

"Clifford was famous for his public lectures on physics and math and ethics because he explained complex things with easily understood, concrete examples. As you read through his clear, simple explanations of the true bases of number, algebra and geometry you will find yourself getting angry and saying "Why the hell wasn't I taught math this way?" and "Do math ed professors know so little mathematics that they have never heard of Clifford.?" Clifford was destined to be England's Einstein until (...) his untimely death at the age of 34, just 11 days before Einstein's birth. More than 30 years before the Special Theory of Relativity was proposed he had already concluded that the force of gravity was actually due to changes in the curvature of space. He gives explanatory examples in this book that middle school children can understand."--review on Amazon.com viewed July 6, 2020. (shrink)

PREFACE I AM greatly indebted to my friends, Professor Dewar of Reading and Miss Maude G. May of Glasgow, for many corrections and suggestions while the following pages were passing through the press. W. M. D. PART I I INTRODUCTION Y. D.H.S. The most singular and deepest themes in the History of the Universe and Mankind, to which all the rest are subordinate, are those in which there is a conflict between Belief and Unbelief, and all epochs, wherein Belief prevails, (...) under, what form it will, are splendid, heart-elevating and fruitful. (shrink)

The will to believe.--Is life worth living?--The sentiment of rationality.--Reflex action and theism.--The dilemma of determinism.--The moral philosopher and the moral life.--Great men and their environment.--The importance of individuals.--On some Hegelisms.--What psychical research has accomplished.