An effectiveness assessment on access criteria for advance fertility treatment funded by the National Health Service, UK, in people who need help to procreate identified serious ethical issues associated with these criteria. The new draft National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on fertility treatment that aims to expand the eligible group of patients is deemed inadequate on the basis that the right to found a family should be accorded to all. Assisted reproductive techniques aim to satisfy a basic (...) human need and therefore should be routine part of the National Health Service. (shrink)

Previous research on whether source memory is enhanced for emotionally valenced sources yielded inconclusive results. To identify potential boundary conditions, we tested whether encoding instructions that promote affective versus different types of non-affective item-source-processing foster versus hamper source-valence effects. In both experiments, we used neutral words as items superimposed on emotional (positive & negative) or neutral pictures as sources. Source pictures were selected based on valence and arousal ratings collected in a pre-study such that only valence varied across sources. Source (...) memory was measured via multinomial modelling. In Experiment 1, we applied an affective, item-focused orienting task (OT; i.e. word-pleasantness ratings) during item-source encoding and found enhanced source memory for emotionally valenced (positive & negative) compared to neutral sources. In Experiment 2, we systematically manipulated encoding instructions and again found enhanced source memory for emotionally valenced sources with an affective OT. No such effects occurred in the non-affective conditions, where participants were instructed to integrate item and source (item-source-fit judgments), to focus on the item (living-non-living judgments), or to encode the items only, respectively. With intentional item encoding, however, source memory was surprisingly better for positive than negative sources. We conclude that source-valence effects might unfold only under affective processing. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper contributes to the textual criticism of Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Clitophon by proposing a number of alterations to the text of the most recent edition of the complete novel (Les Belles Lettres) (Paris, 1991).

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 285-300.

Karl Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard has been characterized by some commentators as a largely uncritical appropriation. In my paper I argue that this view is not entirely adequate since the former’s attitude to the Danish thinker is by no means purely affirmative. By contrast, it seems to me that the punctum saliens of his criticism is the idea of a religiously motivated negation of the world, which certainly dominates the later thought of Kierkegaard. In order to justify my claim both (...) Jaspers’ existential concept of the world and that of a world negation will be dealt with. In the main part of the article I will try to reconstruct, from a historical point of view the shaping and development of Jaspers’ increasingly sharp criticism of Kierkegaard’s “acosmic” view of Christianity and his late self-distancing from the Danish thinker. In my concluding remarks I will point out that although his criticism is in principal not unfounded, it is nevertheless one-sided and reductionistic, since it is based mainly on Kierkegaard’s polemical writings from the late period of his Kirchenkampf and as such ignores or at least underestimates some important aspects of Kierkegaard’s early thought. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard has been characterized by some commentators as a largely uncritical appropriation. In my paper I argue that this view is not entirely adequate since the former’s attitude to the Danish thinker is by no means purely affirmative. By contrast, it seems to me that the punctum saliens of his criticism is the idea of a religiously motivated negation of the world, which certainly dominates the later thought of Kierkegaard. In order to justify my claim both (...) Jaspers’ existential concept of the world and that of a world negation will be dealt with. In the main part of the article I will try to reconstruct, from a historical point of view the shaping and development of Jaspers’ increasingly sharp criticism of Kierkegaard’s “acosmic” view of Christianity and his late self-distancing from the Danish thinker. In my concluding remarks I will point out that although his criticism is in principal not unfounded, it is nevertheless one-sided and reductionistic, since it is based mainly on Kierkegaard’s polemical writings from the late period of his Kirchenkampf and as such ignores or at least underestimates some important aspects of Kierkegaard’s early thought. (shrink)

After having briefly discussed the question of whether Kierkegaard can be considered as a “philosopher of religion,” this chapter deals with three classic topics of religious philosophy: faith and reason; the existence of God; and the immortality of the soul. As regards the first question, an attempt will be made to show that Kierkegaard's position is not a kind of theological gnoseology, but an original kind of existential philosophy. It will be pointed out that although reason is a negative condition (...) for faith, still faith is in no way a kind of knowledge, but a proper way of existence. Regarding the second issue, Kierkegaard's apophatical theology and his argumentation against traditional natural theology will be treated in connection with the general problem of the (un)demonstrability of existential assertions. Finally, the chapter will outline that, for Kierkegaard, immortality is not a metaphysical quality of the soul, but an existential possibility that is closely connected with becoming a self of an existing individual. (shrink)

The feasibility of posthumous reproduction when the surviving partner is female has brought to light many ethical, moral, social, and legal issues. This review aims to summarize these issues and to assist clinicians who may be faced with such requests. A question list, used for health technologies assessment, was utilized in a question-answer approach as the review methodology. Of the 1,208 publications identified through a comprehensive literature search in biomedical, psychological, and ethical databases, 31 articles included arguments related to one (...) or more questions from the predefined question set. Key stakeholders identified include the deceased, the requesting party, the resultant child, the physician, and society. Key ethical issues relevant to posthumous reproduction include the four traditional pillars of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice—as well as the stakeholders’ rights and sociocultural attitudes. The ethical framework formulated by these issues has been incorporated in a clinical ethics decision-making tool that could prove useful to clinicians and decision makers. (shrink)

Religionskritik wird gerade in der jungeren Vergangenheit bevorzugt als Kritik an der vermeintlichen Irrationalitat religiosen Glaubens artikuliert. Die Autoren der im vorliegenden Konferenzband versammelten Beitrage fragen zunachst anhand exemplarischer Studien zu Hamann, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche und Rudolf Otto nach der Bedeutung und Funktion des Irrationalen in rezeptionsgeschichtlich massgeblichen religionsphilosophischen Entwurfen der (Nach-)Aufklarung. Erganzt und zugespitzt wird der historische Abschnitt des Bandes durch Analysen zu Werk und Wirkung Soren Kierkegaards, dem neuzeitlichen Irrationalitatstheoretiker par excellence. Daruber hinaus wird aus systematischer Perspektive nach (...) der kritischen und/oder konstruktiven Funktion des Irrationalitatsthemas fur Religionsphilosophie und Theologie gefragt, wobei nicht nur semantische, sondern auch fundamentaltheologische und ethische Aspekte Berucksichtigung finden. Mit Beitragen von: Daniel Conway, Istvan Czako, Dario Gonzalez, Todd Gooch, Zoltan Gyenge, Gesche Linde, William McDonald, Peter Sajda, Jochen Schmidt, Heiko Schulz, Harald Steffes, Jon Stewart, Curtis Thompson, Knut Wenzel, Oliver Wiertz. (shrink)