While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)

want to question this idea of a pure presuppositionless self-developing sequence of logical categories. This is part of a larger investigation of the inherence of Hegel's thought in historical language. Concerning the necessary self-development of thought, I have three objections to propose. The first concerns the difficulty of recognizing a uniquely correct sequence of categories, when the various versions all express positive insights. The second concerns the very idea of a unified sequence. The third concerns the goal of pure self-development.

I am a philosopher with Parkinson’s Disease. Over the past several years I’ve been trying to write about my situation. I wrote about how I was forced to face the disease. I described how the disease twists and distorts my world. Then I asked myself, as a philosophy writer and teacher, whether I could say anything that might help myself or others facing life with Parkinson’s? I found ideas in the ancient Stoics and expanded them with ideas about time, coming (...) up with suggestions for living as excellently as possible despite the disease. Looking at those suggestions, I realized how the special awareness, resolve, and attention I was suggesting would be eaten away by dementia, and I know that a majority of Parkinson’s patients face dementia if they survive long enough. What can philosophy say to me or any person whose self and philosophy are being erased? Writing about such issues has helped me deal with my situation, and maybe my essay might be useful for others dealing with decline. (shrink)

A discussion of the relation of dialectical transitions in Hegel's speculative logic to changes in categories and grammar in the empirical historical languages.

Kolb discusses postmodern architectural styles and theories within the context of philosophical ideas about modernism and postmodernism. He focuses on what it means to dwell in a world and within a history and to act from or against a tradition.

The early modern period (roughly, 1600–1800 ce) in Europe brought tremendous changes in intellectual, political, and cultural life. It was a period in which philosophical debates were inevitably bound up with questions about the nature and sources of religious truth. A chronological examination of some of the period’s major thinkers highlights two issues that were central to the development of philosophy of religion in the period. The first concerns the relations between God, the soul, and the body; the other concerns (...) the relationship between human reason and divine revelation. (shrink)

"The first of the particular arts . . . is architecture." (A 13.116/1.83)1 For Hegel, architecture stands at several beginnings. It is the art closest to raw nature. It is the beginning art in a progressive spiritualization that will culminate in poetry and music. The drive for art is spirit's drive to become fully itself by encountering itself; art makes spirit's essential reality present as an outer sensible work of its own powers.2 (A 13.453/1.351) If Hegel's narrative of the arts (...) creates a hierarchy, architecture stands lowest, yet it nonetheless plays a unique and necessary role in spirit's development. In this essay I first describe Hegel's views on the nature of architecture and its three stages (symbolic, classical, romantic). Then I indicate some problems with Hegel's narrative. Finally I raise the question whether Hegel's theories might be adapted to our present architectural situation. (shrink)

In the introduction to his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel speaks of metaphysics as “the entire range of the universal determinations of thought, as it were the diamond net into which everything is brought and thereby first made intelligible. Every educated consciousness has its metaphysics, an instinctive way of thinking”. Both Wittgenstein and Hegel see our many languages and forms of life as constituted by different diamond nets of categories/grammars. I argue that both Wittgenstein and Hegel take a non-reductive attitude toward (...) this plurality of local ontologies, but that they disagree about what that plurality implies for history and philosophy. Their disagreements come in part from their differing choice of examples, influenced by atomism and holism. Even more, their disagreements stem from divergent notions about the structure and mode of being of those diamond nets. During the discussion, I distinguish three uses of the word “ontology”, and I ask each thinker about what might improve the other’s philosophical project. (shrink)

Studying Plato's "unwritten doctrines" in the light of his discussion of limit and unlimited in his dialogue Philebus. The essay raises also the question whether there is too much "atomism" in the usual presentation of Plato's Forms as individual absolute entities, rather than as themselves derived from a more fundamental limit/unlimited ontology.

Habermas's criticizes Heidegger for insulating totalities of meaning from possible overturning by attempts to invalidate individual claims. I first state Habermas's criticism, then elaborate an example from Heideggerthat supports Habermas's attack. Then I defend Heidegger by distinguishing levels of meaning in Heidegger's "world" from Habermas's more propositional "lifeworld." I conclude by accepting Habermas's objection restated in terms of the contrast between transcendental and local conditions. If Heidegger is unwilling to pay the price of either Kantian generality or Hegelian unity, he (...) should give up the simple priority of his epochal understandings of being. (shrink)

A discussion of "postmodern" architecture in the sense in which the term was used in the late 1980s, namely, the introduction of historical substantive content and reference into architecture, disrupting the supposedly ahistorical purity of modernist architecture. Argues that postmodern use of history is really another version of the modern distance from history.

How Heidegger criticizes and "locates" science, and some problems with what he is trying to do.

This essay argues against global plans and hierarchical systems, whether in urban planning or art and life.

A critical examination of the different kinds of irony relevant to architecture, especially romantic and postmodern irony, and a suggestion for a less self-sure haughty kind of irony.

What follows are the introductory remarks and a series of questions that were raised for a discussion about what Hegel is doing in the paragraphs 669-71 of the Phenomenology of Spirit, with reference back to paragraphs 444 and 650-5. Broadly speaking, the issues concern the place and the nature of that self-consciousness that Hegel describes as the universal and mediating element in which spirit comes to itself. I also ask about the applicability of his dialectic of forgiveness to a particular (...) situation today. (shrink)

The essay offers a thought experiment to try to clarify our distinction between our naïve ancestors and our sophisticated moderns. The effect of the thought experiment is to cast doubt upon the distinction and examine further our own myths about our ancestors. And to wonder at what it means to be truly modern.

How the interpretation of architecture differs from that of other artworks.

The theses and program below ask about judgment and tradition in a self-consciously plural world. The little program points down a path I am exploring in a pair of texts, one on notions of identity in the history of philosophy, and one on the identity of buildings and places. The underlying issue of those texts is: what will replace the old notion of a particular identity? Places, persons, and communities do not and have never had such simple identities as our (...) concepts often made them out to have. But our world today defies the application of universal categories and judgments to fixed particulars. Our places and identities become complexly multiplied, they interpenetrate, the electronic no-place / all-place opens before us. Yet at the same time exclusions and particularities assert themselves everywhere. If universal judgment seems unlikely, relativism is one response, but relativism remains within the horizon of universals and particulars. What kinds of identity can provide standpoints for describing and judging today? (shrink)

A critique of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics.

In the popular press and the halls of politics, controversies over evolution are increasingly strident these days. Hegel is relevant in this connection, even though he rejected the theories of evolution he knew about, because he wanted rational understanding but without claims to intelligent design. He is reported to have said that nature has no history, but a closer examination will show that his ideaqs are more nuanced and that there is more room for darwinian ideas than one might expect, (...) though not enough to allow the full Darwinian contingency of form. (shrink)

A discussion of the logical role of particular concepts in Robert Pippin's reading Hegel as a theorist of modernity, with special reference to the question whether modernity can be surpassed or left behind.

What are the ontological commitments in Hegel and Heidegger’s discussion of the self? In this essay I approach these continental thinkers with a question from analytic philosophy, to see how they might respond. In different ways Hegel and Heidegger try to locate the question within a prior discourse about the conditions of the possibility of any local ontological commitments. The priority they claim can be clarified by distinguishing conditions of possibility from conditions of actuality.

The year 1989 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Martin Heidegger. What has happened to his thought in America? This essay offers a perspective on what I take to be the main trends and some representative works in Heidegger studies on the American side of the Atlantic (with perforce some simplifications both within and among the trends I mention).

Introduction to a volume on Hegel, asking why his thought continues to be relevant today.

The old spiritual masters told us to be in the world but not of it. We moderns have given this a secular twist. We are in our world — we have values, ways of life, world pictures — but not of it — we are to be aware of our freedom, aware of the contingency of our world and its dependence on factors many of which are or will be under our control. We both inhabit our world and enjoy the (...) status of distanced controllers. Or, if our lack of control and our dependence on historical and social factors is being emphasized, we are to inhabit our world with a certain knowing irony, since we understand the process by which it came about, even if we cannot change it. We hnave found ways to institutionalize this split-level identity. -/- Such institutions posit a separation of form and content. In the free market, in procedural justice, in free speech we live out that separation. This parallels cognitive and volitional theories of Kantian and Utilitarian descent, which make the same separation. All these give us freedom by having us seek our identity in a formal process above all content, but at the cost of introducing distance and irony. -/- Martin Heidegger's response to modernity often sounds like a romantic flight from modern distances. He clearly wants to overcome our split-level existence, the uneasy balance of facticity and freedom, which for him is but another manifestation of the will to power which he fines lurking behind our tradition. But to what degree is his own overcoming of modernity also susceptible to split-level living and ironic distance? (shrink)

What does it mean to be a modern American today? These slides summarize the discussion from five lectures delivered in winter 2019 at the University of Oregon's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The lectures themselves are available on YouTube -/- Just how different is American from other cultural identities? We have thought of ourselves as the specially modern nation, spreading the revolutionary gospel of freedom from traditional restrictions. Some condemn this American exceptionalism, while others celebrate it. Don't take sides too quickly, (...) there are deep issues here. -/- -- The first lecture poses the question whether American identity is a rigid given set of traditional substantive values, or a free floating modern identity with at most a set of formal procedural values. -/- -- The second and third lectures dismantle these options, arguing that any substantive identity must include areas of inner freedom and mobility, and any formal procedural identity needs substantive style and content in order to exist at all. Personal and social identities are two leveled, with given values and projects plus inner self-reflection and space for revision. -/- -- The fourth lecture argues that what makes American identity special is neither its substantive values nor its modern formalism, which are shared with other modern nations, but rather the particular slant of its second level attitudes and practices towards first level substance. -/- -- The fifth lecture asks what America can learn and teach in an increasingly multicultural world. (shrink)

An evaluation of David Burrell's theory of the nature of analogy in Thomas Aquinas.

Whether anorexic patients should be able to refuse treatment when this potentially has a fatal outcome is a vexed topic. A recent proposal for a new category of ‘terminal anorexia’ suggests criteria when a move to palliative care or even physician assisted suicide might be justified. I argue that this proposed diagnosis presents a false sense of certainty of the illness trajectory by conceptualizing anorexia in analogy with physical disorders and stressing the effects of starvation. Furthermore, this conceptualization is in (...) conflict with the claim that individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for terminal anorexia have decision making capacity. It should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

Hegel, Heidegger, Postmodernity reconsidered after 20 years.

We can often achieve together what we could not have achieved on our own. Many times these outcomes and actions will be morally valuable; sometimes they may be of substantial moral value. However, when can we be under an obligation to perform some morally valuable action together with others, or to jointly produce a morally significant outcome? Can there be collective moral obligations, and if so, under what circumstances do we acquire them? These are questions to which philosophers are increasingly (...) turning their attention. It is fair to say that traditional ethical theories cannot give a satisfying answer to the questions, focusing as they do on the actions and attitudes of discreet individual agents. It should also be noted that the debate surrounding collective moral obligations is ongoing and by no means settled. This chapter discusses and compares the different attempts to date to answer the above questions. It proposes a set of meta-criteria—or desiderata— for arbitrating between the various proposals. (shrink)

A discussion of whether Habermas as a representative modernist and Lyotard as a representative postmodern echo the ancient dispute between Plato and the Sophists. My conclusion is that they do not quite do so. Each is more complex and ancient dichotomy should be revised.

Plato is mistaken on both sides of his distinction between Socrates and the Sophists. He imagines the Sophists to have a formless power that cannot be resisted. This exaltation of the power of persuasion needs to be seen as motivating excessive fears in various modern debates. Pragmatic approaches can lessen our fear.

A study timeshowing that the relation of time and timeless in greek philosophers was more nuanced and complex than is commonly thought.

The article explores the concept of ‘life’ via processual ontology, contrasting the approaches of substance and processual ontologies, and investigates the link between ontological assumptions and sociopolitical discourses, stating that the predominant substance ontologies also promote an objectifying and anthropocentric framework in sociopolitical discourses and ethical approaches. Arguing for a necessary shift in the ontological conceptualization of life to enable environmentally-minded ethics for the future, the article explores the tie between the sociopolitical discourses embedded in a worldview that is grounded (...) in substance ontology and ethical frameworks. Whilst affirming this tie, this study also explicates the limitations and potential feasibility of a processual understanding of life, in the context of the existential disposition of the self-alienated lived-body self that is ontologically predisposed to objectification as a necessary pre-condition to human self-awareness. (shrink)

Discussions of place and whom need to take more account of the multiplicity of centers in the modern city/suburban environment.

When I was first studying Hegel I encountered quite divergent readings of his views on religion. The teacher who first presented Hegel to me was a Jesuit, Quentin Lauer at Fordham University, who read Hegel as a Christian theologian providing a better metaphysical system for understanding the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. When I studied at Yale, Kenley Dove read Hegel as the first thoroughly atheistic philosopher, who presented the conditions of thought without reference to any foundational absolute being. (...) Meanwhile, also at Yale, John Findlay read us a deeply Neo-Platonic Hegel who taught about absolute forms held in a cosmic mind. In giving my own reading I want to talk about the ways Hegel redefines both metaphysics and religion. I would like to approach these issues by way of the medieval controversy over double truth, which was a previous conflict between religion and science. (shrink)

What can it mean to criticize when you are inside the work itself? In a immersive electronic or digital environment critic is not distanced on a platform based on firm principles. Yet criticism self-awareness and commentary remain possible. This essay examines various techniques for dealing with immersive environments critically.

From Hegel's philosophy of nature, this essay develops a critique of economic models and market society, based on Hegel's notion of what it takes for a formally described system to be embodied and real.

Arakawa and Gins have been fomenting revolution for a long time. In the last twenty years their attention has turned more and more towards architecture and urban planning as a way of reforming our bodily existence. Their proposals enter daily life rather than staying in the isolated sphere of the museum or gallery. These constructions are to be lived in, not contemplated. Will daily life then blunt or sharpen Arakawa and Gins's power to educate and revise our "architectural bodies"?

First part of a discussion about what kind of guidelines we can find in our group or cultural identity for our place making and architectural planning.

A discussion of the role of metaphor and reinterpretation in extending architectural vocabularies.

A discussion of how Hegel manages his classification and ordering of specific religions, and a critique of his method.

Eugene Gendlin claims that he wants "to think with more than conceptual structures, forms, distinctions, with more than cut and presented things" (WCS 29).1 He wants situations in their concreteness to be something we can think with, not just analyze conceptually. He wants to show that "conceptual patterns are doubtful and always exceeded, but the excess seems unable to think itself. It seems to become patterns when we try to think it. This has been the problem of twentieth century philosophy" (...) (WCS 29). As a result he has "long been concerned with what is not formed although always in some form" (TAD 1). In this essay I would like to explore some of the issues surrounding the relation of the unformed and the formed. Gendlin says that "we get beyond the forms by thinking precisely in them" (TAD 1). The two emphasized words have to be considered separately as well as together. In many essays Gendlin's main concern is with the "precisely": can something that is not fully formed and definite still direct us as we carry forward language and action? My discussion begins with that issue; I suggest ways that Gendlin's proposal connects with and differs from some current ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of language. Then my discussion moves to the "in": what sense can we make of the formed being unformed? Finally I suggest that Gendlin's program runs into some difficulties in this connection. (shrink)

What does it take to settle an argument or debate, for the classical Greek philosophers, and how does this compare with our modern ideas about resolving disputes? Plato and Aristotle are not quite what they been reputed to be.

Despite what might seem to be the case, "Virtual" reality can be used to create fully "real" places with their own grammar and norms, where real events take place.

We need to give up single visions that are supposed to embrace social and place totalities. We live in overlapping nets rather than single places. We cannot plan unlimited geometrical vistas a la Versailles; but that was always an illusion, and today it would be an oppression. Can we still plan like Sixtus at Rome? Only if we also encourage other modes of organization at the same time. The whole may often end up more like Tokyo, with corners of design (...) and beauty that do not make an overall plan. (shrink)