The article aims to demonstrate to what extent the work Art as Experience by the American philosopher and pedagogist John Dewey, a proponent of pedagogical activism, may have contributed to Loris Malaguzzi’s thought and the Reggio Emilia Approach. Starting from the idea of an aesthetic experience as a privileged means of knowledge, the comparison between the two authors continues through reflections on the relationship between art-community and art-ethics. The dialogue between these important educational approaches is proposed in order to highlight (...) their relevance and the role they could play in today’s schools thanks to the concept of knowledge based on the senses and on doing, contributing to the sensitisation of educational action towards the social aspect of art, both as an opening towards the community, and as a reflection on the values of the human being. The dialogue between these two important educational approaches is proposed in order to highlight their relevance and the role they could play in today's schools thanks to the concept of knowledge based on the senses and on doing, contributing to the sensitisation of educational action towards the social aspect of art, both as an opening towards the community, and as a reflection on the values of the human being. (shrink)

In today’s pluralistic society, clinical ethics consultation cannot count on a pre-given set of rules and principles to be applied to a specific situation, because such an approach would deny the existence of different and divergent backgrounds by imposing a dogmatic and transcultural morality. Clinical ethics support (CES) needs to overcome this lack of foundations and conjugate the respect for the difference at stake with the necessity to find shared and workable solutions for ethical issues encountered in clinical practice. We (...) argue that a pragmatist approach to CES, based on the philosophical theories of William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce, can help to achieve the goal of reaching practical solutions for moral problems in the context of today’s clinical environment, characterized by ethical pluralism. In this article, we outline a pragmatist theoretical framework for CES. Furthermore, we will show that moral case deliberation, making use of the dilemma method, can be regarded an example of a pragmatist approach to CES. (shrink)

In this article we explore the contribution from social anthropology to the medical ethical debates about the use of informed consent in research, based on blood samples and other forms of tissue. The article springs from a project exploring donors’ motivation for providing blood and healthcare data for genetic research to be executed by a Swedish start-up genomics company. This article is not confined to empirical findings, however, as we suggest that anthropology provides reason to reassess the theoretical understanding of (...) autonomy as generally defined by Beauchamp and Childress. Careful consideration of the trust expressed by donors through the act of donation, furthermore, suggests that there is reason to redirect the ethical scrutiny from informed consent to issues concerning institutional arrangements and social responsibility. In particular, we suggest that an anthropological approach could facilitate a reconsideration of the political implications of using informed consent as a regulatory practice in tissue-based research. (shrink)