The Limits of Care in Heidegger: Self-Interest and The Well-Being of the World

This paper seeks to establish the limits in Heidegger’s account of how human beings are with one another in the world. Toward this end, we will examine Heidegger’s finding that human beings exist in the world as care, as a finite movement that needs to seek the perseverance and growth of its being. We will be brought to find that, in Heidegger’s thought, this finite movement is essentially worldly and holistic, and that this means that the essential formal structure of human relations is that of reciprocity. The form and limit of such relations of reciprocity will be pursued by examining Heidegger’s account of how these relations are lived in inauthentic and authentic ways. In the case of the former, we will find that human relations abide by a logic of tit-for-tat. In the latter case, however, such relations of reciprocity will be seen to open onto and foster the growth of the well-being of the world as a whole. In closing, we will ask whether Heidegger’s account of our finite movement in the world can accommodate relations of non-reciprocity

Valuing the Goodness of Earth

Though John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, when reflecting on the creation story, valued all types of creatures, living and non-living, intrinsically for their unique goodness and instrumentally for the sustenance they provide to others, they valued most highly their complex interrelation in the physical world

Appreciating the Beauty of Earth

Categories used by contemporary environmental philosophers to explore esthetic appreciation for the beauty of the physical world have parallels in reflections by patristic and medieval theologians on the beauty of God\u27s creation, A sampling of the theologians\u27 notions yields a promising foundation for ecological ethics from a theistic perspective, especially when understood from their world view at the time the text was written, reformulated to reflect broad scientific findings about the world today, and worked creatively to identify norms for human behavior

The Virtuous Cooperator: Modeling the Human in an Ecologically Endangered Age

A theological model of the human is needed to prompt responsible thinking about and acting within the physical world. Some basic components for modeling the human as a virtuous cooperator appear in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. When appropriated cautiously and informed broadly by contemporary scientific findings, this model provides a promising way of thinking about humans in relation to other species and ecological systems, a framework for acting responsibly, and the motivation for making this behavior habitual

Status and challenges of simulations with dynamical fermions

An overview over the current state of algorithms for dynamical fermion simulations is given. In particular some insight into the functioning of the determinant spitting techniques is discussed. The critical slowing down of the simulations towards the continuum limit and the role of the boundary conditions is also reviewed.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, plenary talk presented at the 30th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - Lattice 2012, June 24-29, 2012 Cairns, Australi