COVID-19 has turned many ethical principles and presuppositions upside down. More precisely, the principle of respect for autonomy has been shown to be ill suited to face the ethical challenges posed by the current health crisis. Individual wishes and choices have been subordinated to public interests. Patients have received trial therapies under extraordinary procedures of informed consent. The principle of respect for autonomy, at least in its mainstream interpretation, has been particularly questioned during this pandemic. Further reflection on the nature (...) and value of autonomy is urgently needed. Relational autonomy has been proposed as an alternative account of autonomy that can more adequately respond to contemporary ethical issues in general and to a pandemic such as the one we are currently facing in particular. As relational autonomy is an emerging notion in current bioethics, it requires further consideration and development to be properly operationalized. This paper aims to show how six different philosophical branches––namely, philosophy of nature, philosophical anthropology, existential phenomenology, discourse ethics, hermeneutics, and cultural anthropology––have incorporated the category of relation throughout the twentieth century. We first delve into primary philosophical sources and then apply their insights to the specific field of medical ethics. Learning from the historical developments of other philosophical fields may provide illumination that will enable bioethics to experience a successful “relational turn”, which has been partially initiated in contemporary bioethics but not yet achieved. (shrink)

Abstract. This essay discusses the deep perceptual and social changes that the advanced applications of biotechnology could bring in the West. It examines the probable collapse of a fundamental perceptual bipolarity on which the Western mind and social mobilization have been based since its inception in the West: Athens--Jerusalem. This collapse will quite possibly radically reshape Western perceptions of self and nature and will remodel established constellations and modes of social mobilization and social organization. The radical collapse of the preceding (...) established feature of Western modernity is due to take place in the field of biotechnology, since the latter promises to produce a deliverable perfection of flesh and an equally corporeal personal bliss. I call this promise ``eutopia,'' an actual and tangible utopia-- ``a laboratory on the hill.''. (shrink)

In the Briefe über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, the focus of this article, Schiller’s ostensible aim – to complete Kant’s aesthetic theory – is progressively abandoned. The article examines the reasons for this abandonment. On the one hand, Schiller’s original purpose was overtaken by events in France. Schiller found that he could no longer sustain confidence in reason’s capacity to build a durable political republic. On the other hand, the alternative path he favours involves him in the expounding of (...) an anthropology he did not set out to undertake. The Ästhetische Briefe, for this reason, finds itself adumbrating an “unexpected science” with little remaining reference to Kant – an account of the human being whose desirable future state, that of morality, can only be made secure by passage through the aesthetic state. A by-product of this argument, and perhaps its chief consequence, is that it finally settles the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns (in favour of the moderns). (shrink)

In the post-metaphysical climate of the modern Western academy, Chinese thought is often seen as a happy pragmatism free from transcendental pretense. The article shows, on the contrary, that the early Daoist thinker Zhuangzi had not only one but at least two distinct notions of transcendence. The focus is on Zhuangzi's notion of transcendental life, or the life of Heaven as opposed to the life of man. Based on the explication of Zhuangzi's notion of transcendental life, the article provides a (...) new understanding of Zhuangzi's crucial notion of ?wandering? (you). Finally it is argued that Zhuangzi's thought does not, as it is often thought, fall into naturalism. (shrink)

The topic of sociobiology and ethics opens up a range of questions that have to do with important relationships: between the history of nature and human being, between biological evolution and psychosocial evolution, between is and ought, between language usages in one domain and another. The task of ethics is properly to discern what sociobiology has to tell us about the fundamentals of life and persuasively to direct our actions in accord with those fundamentals, in a manner that is consistent (...) with our essential humanity. From the theological perspective all of this transpires within the creative will of God. (shrink)

This paper recommends that chemistry educators shift to a different ‘idea of nature’, an alternative ‘worldview.’ Much of contemporary science and technology deals in one way or another with dynamic coherences that display novel and important properties. The notion of how the world works that such studies and practices generate (and require) is quite different from the earlier concepts that are now integrated into science education. Eventual success in meeting contemporary technological and social challenges requires general diffusion of an overall (...) outlook that focuses on creative generation of novel and useful coherences, replacing a worldview that concentrates on analysis of pre-existing items to minimum constituents. Such a shift in emphasis would amount to general adoption of a new basic model of how nature functions. Chemistry educators can and should provide leadership for this urgently-needed development. (shrink)

Working within a framework of environmental philosophy and environmental ethics, this book describes and postulates alternative understandings of nature in Indian traditions of thought, particularly philosophy. The interest in alternative conceptualizations of nature has gained significance after many thinkers pointed out that attitudes to the environment are determined to a large extent by our presuppositions of nature. This book is particularly timely from that perspective. It begins with a brief description of the concept of nature and a history of the (...) idea of nature in Western thought. This provides readers with a context to the issues around the concept of nature in environmental philosophy, setting a foundation for further discussion about alternate conceptualizations of nature and their significance. In particular, the work covers a wide array of textual and non-textual sources to link and understand nature from classical Indian philosophical perspectives as well as popular understandings in Indian literary texts and cultural practices. Popular issues in environmental philosophy are discussed in detail, such as: What is ‘nature’ in Indian philosophy? How do people perceive nature through landscape and mythological and cultural narratives? In what ways is nature sacred in India? To make the discussion relevant to contemporary readers, the book includes a section on the ecological and ethical implications of some philosophical concepts and critical perspectives on alternate conceptualizations of nature. (shrink)

This article canvasses five senses in which one might introduce an historical element into the philosophy of mathematics: 1. The temporal dimension of logic; 2. Explanatory Appeal to Context rather than to General Principles; 3. Heraclitean Flux; 4. All history is the History of Thought; and 5. History is Non-Judgmental. It concludes by adapting Bernard Williams’ distinction between ‘history of philosophy’ and ‘history of ideas’ to argue that the philosophy of mathematics is unavoidably historical, but need not and must not (...) merge with historiography. (shrink)

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

Als er iéts duurzaam kan worden genoemd, zijn het wel levensbeschouwingen. Vermoedelijk is bij de mens de reflectie op het eigen leven begonnen toen het cognitieve vermogen om te reflecteren ontstond. Rotstekeningen van tienduizenden jaren oud zijn de eerste tastbare aanwijzingen in die richting. En sindsdien is de mensheid blijven reflecteren op zijn eigen bestaan, op de wereld om hem heen, op het firmament erboven en op de samenhang tussen dat alles. Op welk moment daarbij het bovennatuurlijke, spirituele of goddelijke (...) in de reflecties werd betrokken is onbekend, maar zeker ook al duizenden jaren geleden. Wereldbeschouwingen hebben in de regel implicaties voor het menselijk handelen, ze zijn zelden uitsluitend beschouwend van karakter. Ze bevatten bijvoorbeeld impliciete of expliciete opvattingen over de ontologie, de ‘aard der dingen’, ons vermogen om de werkelijkheid te kennen en ze hebben meestal implicaties voor de ethiek. (shrink)

The theme of this symposium is distinctive and challenging, because it incorporates the dimensions of interreligious reflection, theology, science, and ethics. This article presents a palette of issues that are both challenge and resource for approaching the theme. Three sets of issues are considered: (1) the role of religion in culture, (2) theological interpretation of nature, disease, and evil, and (3) the fashioning of a global ethic.

Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method provides an insightful critique of Russell’s analysis and metaphysics of logical atomism, proposing an unduly neglected neo-idealist alternative to Russell’s philosophical method. I summarize Collingwood’s critique of analysis and sympathetically outline the philosophical methodology of Collingwood’s post-Hegelian dialectical method: his scale of forms methodology, grounded on the overlap of philosophical classes. I then delineate Collingwood’s critique of the metaphysics of logical atomism, demonstrating how the scale of forms methodology is opposed to Russell’s logical atomism. (...) Finally, I reflect on the reasons Collingwood’s Essay aroused little interest upon publication and the importance of continually rethinking the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences (...) and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man. (shrink)

The term natural is effective in the marketing of a wide variety of foods. This ambiguous term carries important meaning in Western culture. To challenge an uncritical understanding of natural with respect to food and to explore the ambiguity of the term, the development of Western ideas of nature is first discussed. Personification and hypostasization of nature are given special emphasis. Leo Marx’s idea of the pastoral design in literature is then used to explore the meaning of natural as applied (...) to food, emphasizing Marx’s distinction between a sentimental and a complex pastoral. The latter is applied to natural as a means of collapsing a dichotomy of man and nature to the idea of second nature. From this perspective an understanding of the industrialization of the food system and the importance of local and organic food are considered. The extent to which processed foods might properly be considered natural is raised and discussed for several common foods. Although marketing of natural foods might make us think that we consume nature, I suggest that what is consumed is more appropriately second nature. I suggest that in order to maintain a critical perspective about one’s relationship to the natural world, everyone should make an attempt to experience the complex pastoral with respect to at least something that is consumed as food. When nature is understood as second nature in the context of a complex pastoral, the question of whether a food or ingredient is to be considered natural is replaced by deliberative thought based on our best knowledge and judgment, and the result will be less constrained by ideology. (shrink)

The viewpoint of Evolutionary Epistemology (EE) and of Genetic Epistemology (GE) on classical epistemological questions is strikingly different: EE starts with Evolutionary Biology, the subject of which is population's dynamics. GE, however, starts with Developmental Psychology and thus focusses the development of individuals. By EE knowledge is seen as portraying or copying process, and truth is interpreted as a product of adaptation, whereas for GE knowledge is due to a construction process in which the production of true insights is only (...) one possibility among others: Like falsity, error and deception, true knowledge goes back to a free relationship to reality. The difference between scientific and common knowledge is hard to be checked by EE, since both result ultimately from human hereditary structures. The study of how scientific knowledge emerges from everyday cognition is rather the task of GE. (shrink)