:This essay considers complications introduced by the Trolley Problem to the discussion of whether and when harming some for the sake of helping others would be unjustified. It first examines Guido Pincione’s arguments for the conclusion that the permissibility of a bystander turning a runaway trolley from killing five people toward killing one other person instead may undermine one moral argument for political libertarianism and against redistributive taxation, namely that we may not harm some people in order to help others (...) to a greater degree. It then considers both the bearing on Pincione’s argument of recent objections to the permissibility of turning the trolley, as well as the soundness of the objections. Finally, the essay considers the relevance of trolley cases for developing a theory of aggression, insofar as aggression is the unjustified use of force that is either foreseen or intended. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.THE TROLLEY PROBLEM AND AGGRESSIONVolume 32, Issue 2F. M. Kamm DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S026505251600008XYour Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. THE TROLLEY PROBLEM AND AGGRESSIONVolume 32, Issue 2F. M. Kamm DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S026505251600008XAvailable formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. THE TROLLEY PROBLEM AND AGGRESSIONVolume 32, Issue 2F. M. Kamm DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S026505251600008XAvailable formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

‘Let me refresh your memory; there is no harm in going over what you have heard several times. Five will not admit the character of evenness, nor will ten—its double—admit that of oddness. Now, this latter term is actually itself an opposite of another term, but none the less it will not admit the character of oddness; no more indeed will 3/2 or the other terms of this series—the ‘half’—admit the character of wholeness, nor yet will ⅓ and all the (...) other terms of that series.’. (shrink)

‘Let me refresh your memory; there is no harm in going over what you have heard several times. Five will not admit the character of evenness, nor will ten—its double—admit that of oddness. Now, this latter term is actually itself an opposite of another term, but none the less it will not admit the character of oddness; no more indeed will 3/2 or the other terms of this series—the ‘half’—admit the character of wholeness, nor yet will ⅓ and all the (...) other terms of that series.’. (shrink)

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Place of the Money Bag in the Secular-Mendicant Controversy at ParisRobert J. Karris O.F.M. (bio)Money bag, money bag. So many Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence. In their defense I note that you are only mentioned twice in the entire New Testament: John 12:6 and 13:29. If faithful Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence, what is your fate among the faithful who are less than faithful?! (...) Is ignorance truly bliss?New Testament ScholarsMoney bag, money bag. Perhaps, New Testament scholars are the reason why you are almost unknown among Christians.1 Commentators on John's Gospel give you a passing notice, if that.2 Even when they make mention of you, they [End Page 21] generally don't integrate your existence with other features of John's theology or life situation.3 As for the Jesus Seminar, its members sweep you into the dustbin of history along with 99.9% of John's Gospel.4 You see, you are deemed unhistorical. A couple of scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus say "Hi!" to you, but then go on with more important matters.5 Other scholars involved in the application [End Page 22] of social science methodology to the study of the New Testament opine that you were kept as a security measure and contained money to pay for the annual temple tax and such like obligations, but then they hold their peace.6Money bag, money bag. Scholars who have investigated the theme of rich and poor in the New Testament hardly give [End Page 23] you a second glance. You do not play a leading role in their general conclusions.7So, money bag, we have to take leave of New Testament scholarship if we are going to make your acquaintance on a serious level.The Middle AgesFrancis of AssisiAs we move into the Middle Ages, we ask: Did St. Francis of Assisi provide us with guidance on how to treat you with the respect that you, O money bag, so richly deserve? You see, some scholars maintain that John's Gospel was most important to Francis's worldview.8 However, Francis doesn't seem to see the problem you created for his all-consuming embrace of Jesus' missionary command of traveling with no money.9 [End Page 24] Surely Francis knows of your existence, for he refers to you in his Fourth Admonition n. 3:And the more they (superiors) are perturbed about their superiorship being taken from them than they would be over the loss of the office of washing feet, so much the more do they collect for themselves a money bag (John 12:6; 13:29) to the peril of their souls.10Francis is heir to a Benedictine spiritualization of the money bag. See how Roger the Abbot in his Sermo in ultima cena employs the money bag:Woe, how many money bags, woe, how many purses are in the monasteries of St. Benedict! Woe, how many cowls, which cover the ears of the tonsured, enclose private supplies of the mind, the money bag of one's own will, the purse of murmuring, detraction, idleness, pride, envy, jealousy, and bad will! But remember, most beloved brothers, that those who do such things follow Judas the traitor. And therefore, unless you amend your lives, you will not possess the kingdom of God.11O money bag, so Francis goes his merry way, apparently ignorant of your true meaning and leaves the problems created by your existence to his learned followers such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. To Bonaventure we now turn, but do so through his responses to his secular opponents, William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of Abbeville. First let's hear from the secular masters. [End Page 25]William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of AbbevilleWilliam of Saint-Amour comments on John 12:6 and argues that it does not permit begging and is the basis for the normative view that the apostles and their successors should have a money bag. He writes:Augustine, 'the Lord had a purse to keep the offerings... (shrink)

Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, do not say that this was a waste of time; I am preoccupied with this mystery because I want to be a human being.

The purpose of this book is to show that “far from being an enemy of Natural Law, Burke was one of the most eloquent and profound defenders of Natural Law morality and politics in Western civilization”. Professor Stanlis rightly points out that Burke was for too long treated as a utilitarian in politics, and he blames such writers as Morley, Stephen and Vaughan, who were mainly responsible for this interpretation. He might have added that Burke himself must bear part of (...) the blame: is he not famous for his rejection, in his American speeches, of all appeals to “abstract” or natural rights? “I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them …”. “The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable; but whether it is not your interest to make them happy”. Such phrases sound rather like utilitarianism; and the impression is strengthened by Burke’s famous denunciation of the whole “Rights of Man” school in his Reflections on the Revolution in France: “How can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence? Rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? … In the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.… The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.… The rights of men in government are their advantages.… The body of the community … has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit. …”. (shrink)

Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

There is a growing literature on the concept of e-trust and on the feasibility and advisability of “trusting” artificial agents. In this paper we present an object-oriented model for thinking about trust in both face-to-face and digitally mediated environments. We review important recent contributions to this literature regarding e-trust in conjunction with presenting our model. We identify three important types of trust interactions and examine trust from the perspective of a software developer. Too often, the primary focus of research in (...) this area has been on the artificial agents and the humans they may encounter after they are deployed. We contend that the humans who design, implement, and deploy the artificial agents are crucial to any discussion of e-trust and to understanding the distinctions among the concepts of trust, e-trust and face-to-face trust. (shrink)

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything el se good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on eínai in (...) Plato and Aristotle to gígnesthai, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modem verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (eínai, úpárkhein, úphestekénai) can be said to have existential meaning. (shrink)

Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short. For thousands of years it has existed and has been growing older; but in the earlier part of this period it cannot boast of any continuous progress toward a riper and richer development. In the fourth century before our era that giant thinker, Aristotle, built it up into an edifice comparing very favorably with any other science of that time. But this edifice stood without undergoing any noteworthy changes or (...) extensions, well into the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century. Only in recent times do we find an advance, at first slow but later increasing in rapidity, in the development of psychology. The general causes which checked the progress of this science and thus made it fall behind the others can readily be stated:— "The boundaries of the Soul you cannot find, though you pace off all its streets, so deep a foundation has it," runs a sentence of Heraclitus, and it hits the truth more fully than its author could ever have expected. The structures and functions of our mental life present the greatest difficulties to scientific investigation, greater even than those presented by the phenomena, in many respects{4} similar, of the bodily life of the higher organisms. These structures and processes change so unceasingly, are so fleeting, so enormously complex, and dependent on so many factors hidden yet undoubtedly influential, that it is difficult even to seize upon them and describe their true substance, still more difficult to gain an insight into their causal connections and to understand their significance. We are just now beginning to recognize the full force of these difficulties. (shrink)

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal ofApology30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on εἶναι in Plato and Aristotle (...) to γίγνεσθαι, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completableby adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modern verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use can be said to have existential meaning. (shrink)

Emotion evaluations are assumed to play a crucial role in the emotion regulation process. We tested a postulate from our framework of emotion dysregulation (Nowak, U., Wittkamp, M. F., Clamor, A., & Lincoln, T. M. [2021]. Using the Ball-in-Bowl metaphor to outline an integrative framework for understanding dysregulated emotion. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 118), namely that the extent to which individuals evaluate an emotion as harmful and their personal resources to modify and accept/tolerate the emotion as sufficient predict the subsequent (...) use of regulation strategies. Participants (n = 118) from a community sample took part in an experience-sampling assessment over 7 days including 10 daily paired measurements. The first measured momentary affective valence and arousal along with harmfulness evaluations and evaluations of personal resources to modify and accept/tolerate an emotion. The second followed three minutes later and measured emotion regulation strategies. The more harmful individuals evaluated an emotion, the more likely they were to use an emotion regulation strategy. The more harmful individuals evaluated an emotion, and the less sufficient they evaluated their personal resources to accept/tolerate an emotion, the more likely they were to use a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. We conclude that emotions that people evaluate as harmful or difficult to accept are most likely to be regulated in a maladaptive manner. This implies that modifying beliefs about emotions could represent a promising treatment approach. (shrink)

Physician-Assisted Death is the eleventh volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. We, the editors, are pleased with the response to the series over the years and, as a result, are happy to continue into a second decade with the same general purpose and zeal. As in the past, contributors to projected volumes have been asked to summarize the nature of the literature, the prevailing attitudes and arguments, and then to advance the discussion in some way by staking out and arguing forcefully (...) for some basic position on the topic targeted for discussion. For the present volume on Physician-Assisted Death, we felt it wise to enlist the services of a guest editor, Dr. Gregg A. Kasting, a practicing physician with extensive clinical knowledge of the various problems and issues encountered in discussing physician assisted death. Dr. Kasting is also our student and just completing a graduate degree in philosophy with a specialty in biomedical ethics here at Georgia State University. Apart from a keen interest in the topic, Dr. Kasting has published good work in the area and has, in our opinion, done an excellent job in taking on the lion's share of editing this well-balanced and probing set of essays. We hope you will agree that this volume significantly advances the level of discussion on physician-assisted euthanasia. Incidentally, we wish to note that the essays in this volume were all finished and committed to press by January 1993. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4: .Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression (...) is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4:.Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression is (...) an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

As it happened, I became acquainted with E.V. Il'enkov quite late, in the mid- or even the late 1960s. It was only a bit more than ten years before his death that I began to feel at home in his house, was able to visit without calling ahead, and was able to call him by his first name and the familiar "you"—that is, like many, many of not only his true friends but also like-minded thinkers, who became his close acquaintances, (...) most of whom justly considered themselves his pupils … The door would open wide, and Olia, Professor K.I. Salimova, Eval'd's wife and most devoted friend, not at all surprised by the unexpected guest and seemingly even quite happy at his arrival , would try first to draw him into the kitchen and feed him … which she more often than not succeeded in doing. I am not talking about myself: there were always many guests, and this is precisely how they arrived at the Il'enkovs' apartment. Recently, a critic in Literaturnaia gazeta recalled those whom he met in Eval'd's apartment in the 1960s: "This was a tight circle of like-minded thinkers," wrote the critic. "But some of them are no longer with us, while most are far away, beyond our borders." Obviously, he had not been in the house often or had forgotten things over the distance of years. There was no "circle," nor could there have been one—not with this host, not with his lifestyle and way of relating to people. I met a good hundred fine and various people in Eval'd's home: I.N. Korzhavin, V. Davydov, A. Meshcheriakov, S. Vinogradova, N. Dubinin, V. Zinchenko, A. Zinov'ev, Iu. Kamiakin, and … indeed, five pages would not be enough to list the quite famous and the not-quite-so-famous, simply ordinary people with no claim to fame. Nazym Khikmet, A.N. Leont'ev, and B.M. Kedrov were friends of the house … Ever new faces, figures, and words come to mind. I cannot forgive myself: once Eval'd Vasil'evich wanted to take me along to Iurii Liubimov's to read his play Neither God nor Tsar nor Hero … [Ni bog, ni tsar' i ni geroi], but I had some other business, something so important that I do not even remember now what it was, and it is probably not worth remembering. But most likely I was too timid to appear uninvited at the house of a person burning with creativity. The same thing happened with Galich … Eval'd liked especially his song about Zoshchenko. He did not sing it; he narrated it, but in such a way that tears always came to one's eyes. (shrink)

Lilly has a story to tell. It is her story. She sits comfortably in her hospital bed, with a nasal cannula under her nose providing a steady stream of oxygen. She says she really does not need it now but is more comfortable with it. She straightens the hem of her hospital gown. She folds her hands and places them carefully on her lap. This diminutive, carefully groomed elderly woman, a widow for 7 years, likes to be presentable when she (...) has a guest." “Please sit down,” she says, pointing to the chair. She would be no more inviting if we were in her own living room. “You’re in the hospital. What happened?” “Heart problems”, she says. “Heart failure. I’ve been sick for years. I’m old, my heart is old. When it gets bad I have to struggle to breathe.” “Is that what happened this time?” “I didn’t know it was happening this time,” she says with some surprise. “I am very active. I go out every day, I do my shopping, cooking. I like to cook. I was walking. It started. The hill is very steep from the avenue to my house so I made nothing of it. Out of breath. I took my time, rested and then walked again. It was also hard for me to walk up the four flights to my apartment. I stopped every few steps. So what? An old lady getting tired and out of breath. Nothing new about that. I missed all the signs. Sonya didn’t. She’s a neighbour and when she saw me she said what she was seeing wasn’t right. I don’t know what she saw. I do know how I felt. I was getting sick … ". (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Some of the commentators on Intricate Ethics complain of my method. One finds the main ideas ‘Kammouflaged’ because the relevant causal distinctions are so fine-grained and the cases that illustrate them so numerous. Some say that they do not have the intuitions about many cases that I have, that I concoct dubious and ad hoc distinctions and invest them with moral significance; I am Ptolemaic in that new crystalline spheres and epicycles are constantly being added in an attempt to fix (...) the appearances. (shrink)

Martin presents fifteen previously unpublished essays which he wrote before 1973. Despite several references to his earlier books such as Truth and Denotation, these essays will be intelligible to those who have not yet read anything by R. M. Martin as long as you can master long formulations in the notation of a formal first-order language. Indeed, these essays can serve as an introduction to the work of Martin. The first three essays present Martin's metaphysical system. Essays 4, 5, and (...) 6 amplify his system by showing how a wide variety of sentences can have their logical form represented in the formal language which displays Martin's ontology. In the remaining nine essays he critically evaluates positions of other philosophers such as Hiz, Carnap, Quine, Fitch, Chisholm, Popper, Sellars, Heyting, Lorenzen, and Putnam, from the perspective of his system. Because his systematic approach unifies all of the papers and because he uses technical terms in the development of his system, it is regrettable that the book offers no index. (shrink)

Bioethical Prescriptions collects F.M. Kamm's articles on bioethics -- revised for publication in book form -- which have appeared over the last 25 years and which have made her among the most widely-respected philosophers working in this field.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overcoming Greed:Buddhists and Christians in Consumerist SocietyPaul F. KnitterAs I understand my assignment, I don't find it an easy one. I've been instructed to carry on a lopsided dialogue. Generally, what generates productive dialogue is a proper balance of learning and questioning. My assigned job in this exchange is to question more than learn—to offer some Christian queries about how Buddhists think we can overcome greed and find a (...) path out of the consumerist jungle that surrounds us. Actually, I'd prefer it the other way around, for I'm convinced that we Christians have some very important, if not absolutely vital, things to learn from Buddhists in our own efforts to deal with the jungle. And I will mention some of them. But, following instructions, my main focus in what follows will be on areas where I suspect that Buddhists can learn something, maybe something very helpful, in our shared efforts to deal with greed and the havoc it is working on people and planet.I need to specify my Christian voice in this conversation—or, as they say, where I'm coming from within the many and diverse neighborhoods that make up the Christian community. I'll be reflecting and speaking out of my knowledge of and experience with Christian liberation theology, especially as it has been born, developed, and taken new shapes among the poor and suffering of Latin America. The voices and concerns you will hear in my own remarks are originally those of Christian thinkers and activists such as Jon Sobrino, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff.In order to bring some order into the swarm of insights and questions that these extremely rich presentations have stirred up in me, I'll gather my comments around two broad topics.The Inner and the Outer: Enlightenment and the Reign of GodMy first general area of conversation is a familiar one not just for the Buddhist-Christian conversation but also for all activists who call themselves religious: the need for, but the difficulty of, holding together the "inner and the outer"—action and [End Page 65] contemplation, personal and social transformation, or what I will term Buddha's enlightenment and Jesus' vision of the Reign of God.What Christian Liberation Theologians Need to Hear from BuddhistsFirst, let me simply list, and hold back from delving into, some crucial lessons that we Christians not only can but drastically need to learn.First, what Jesus and his followers call the Reign of God will be built on sand unless it is grounded in the personal, inner conversion of those who are trying to build it. The church will be only a empty building—or worse, a den of thieves—if its members, and that includes its leaders, are not transformed by the Spirit. Or, in Judith Simmer-Brown's words, "No fundamental transformation can take place anywhere without the joining of inner change and outer change" (emphasis mine). Or, in Ken Barnhill's words (quoted by Brown), "Social work entails inner work.... social change and inner change are inseparable." Or, in the powerful and widely quoted admonition of Thich Nhat Hanh: We have to be peace if we want to make peace. Christians know this, and they talk about it. But in my own life and in what I see in my church, how often we forget it in our efforts to get things done, in our concern for the institution, in our determination to bring about political change.Second, I both cringed and nodded approvingly when I read about Judith Simmer-Brown speaking about "idiot compassion." In opposing wealthy landowners in El Salvador, or in a business-controlled city council in Cincinnati, how often I have felt but perhaps not identified in myself and in my fellow Christian activists "...unskillful acts...the impulsive response based on insufficient knowledge [that] can quickly become ineffective, causing personal burnout." Such idiocy, grounded in goodwill, derives, again, from an insufficient balancing of the inner and the outer.Third, and more sharply focused on the suffering caused by greed, Judith offers a hope, or deep belief, that is often not clearly present among liberation theologians since... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comparative Theology Is Not “Business-as-Usual Theology”:Personal Witness from a Buddhist ChristianPaul F. KnitterThe following reflections find their stimulus and start in a paper prepared for a doctoral seminar on comparative theology led by John Makransky at Boston College. I was asked whether I was a comparative theologian and, if so, what difference it had made in my professional work as a theologian and in my personal life as a (...) Christian. My basic answer was: “Yes, I think so” and “A lot!”In this reworking and expansion of that seminar paper, I hope to unpack that “a lot.” This will enable me not only to carry on the search for clarity (and integrity) that I began in my book Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian,1 but also to comment on the promise of comparative theology (CT) and why I fear that this promise all too often goes unfulfilled.What I’m getting at is capsulized in a blurb that John Thatamanil wrote for Michelle Voss Roberts’s Dualities: A Theology of Difference:2 “Comparative theology done well is a dangerous discipline precisely because it raises provocative questions and threatens to put an end to business-as-usual theology.” I fear that some comparative theologians are not taking their job seriously enough—or they are not following through with what they say they want to do. They are carrying on CT as business as usual.moving beyond business-as-usual theologyComparative theology, which two decades ago might have been considered a fade but has become a fixture in Christian theology,3 makes the bold, indeed thoroughly revolutionary, claim that in order to properly carry on the task of Christian theology, the traditional Christian sources—Scripture, tradition, the lex orandi or spiritual practice of the communities—are not enough. A Christian theologian, in order to be a Christian theologian, must also draw on the experience, teachings, scriptures, and insights of other spiritual communities and traditions. CT embodies Raimon Panikkar’s often [End Page 181] cited (at least by me!) dictum: In order to understand who I am, I have to ask who you are. And in order to know my God I have to ask about your God.4If what comparative theologians are here claiming is true, if my understanding of myself is incomplete without my understanding of you, then after I understand you, I can be pretty sure that my understanding of myself is going to be different—really different. Otherwise, I really didn’t need to talk with you in the first place! And this is why Thatamanil can rightly sound his unsettling warning that if CT is another form of business-as-usual theology, if it is not leading to some really new discoveries about oneself and one’s own tradition, then it is not living up to its job description. And that, as I tried to say elsewhere, is what I suspect might be the case.As I survey the output of comparative theologians over the past fifteen years, I sense that, with some promising exceptions among younger scholars, they are strong on comparing but soft on concluding. More pointedly, comparative theology, so far, has been more comparison than theology. There have been intricate comparisons of Christian texts with Hindu texts and of Christian theologians/mystics with Buddhist scholars/mystics. Striking similarities and stark differences have been noted and examined, sometime meticulously. But, where are the clear, creative, courageous conclusions as to what Christians can learn from these comparisons? What might need to be clarified or changed or discarded in traditional Christian doctrine? Especially on the neuralgic and politically dangerous (for Catholics) issue of the uniqueness of Christ, I am not aware of any comparativists who have learned anything new. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.5I suspect that the reason why some comparative theologians are caught in business-as-usual theology is that they are also still lingering under the influence of postmodernism’s and postliberal theology’s insistence on the dominance of diversity. In their concern to respect and defend differences, postmodernists and postliberals conclude that cultures and religions are more different than they... (shrink)

This book is a philosophical discussion of moral, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. One of its aims is to decide whether and when it might make sense to not resist or bring about the end of one's life. To answer this question it considers views about meaning in life and what makes life worth living. It also evaluates recent attempts to help the general public plan in advance for the end of life. It also considers (...) whether or not physician-assisted suicide is morally permissible and if it should be legalized. (shrink)

Where I am, in the late 70s, I find myself being asked to do far more than I am able. I'm at the stage when everyone assumes that I don't have any real work, so it's OK to ask for things. Increasingly the things I'm asked to do are historical: What was it like back then? When did you start doing this or that? How did this or that get started? I guess I'm in the penultimate period. I'm still working (...) every day, much harder than I would like, and upset by the fact that my memory is not working the way it should. With this public confession, I'll now start my penance, that is, to do a little personal history of my involvement with bioethics first here in the United States, then in Spain and Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America. (shrink)

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

Zeller argued that the ‘innumerable worlds’ mentioned in accounts of Anaximander's system must be an endless succession of single worlds, not an unlimited number of coexistent worlds scattered through infinite space, some always coming into being while others are passing away. Zeller pointed out that a succession of single worlds is grounded in the principles of the system. ‘Things perish into that from which they had their birth… according to the order of Time,’ a cycle of birth, existence, and destruction. (...) A world ends, and the living divine stuff begets a new world to take its place. On the other hand, there is much in the system to contradict the idea of coexistent worlds. Anaximander's successors, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes, show that this idea is not a necessary consequence of the unlimitedness of the original world-stuff. Nothing in the appearances of Nature suggests it. Anaximander is a monistic hylozoist, whereas Democritus is a pluralist with his innumerable independent atoms producing, by similar processes, independent world-systems in different parts of an infinite void. (shrink)