Withoutholding and withdrawing life-support from critically ill patients

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2110/thumbnail.jp

Transhuman education: Sloterdijk's reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism

Peter Sloterdijk presented a reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism at a conference held at Elmau in 1999. Reinterpreting the meaning of humanism in the light of Heidegger's Letter, Sloterdijk focused his presentation on the need to redefine education as a form of genetic ‘taming’ and proposed what seemed to be support for positive eugenics. Although Sloterdijk claimed that he only wanted to open a debate on the issue, he could not have been surprised at the level of opposition this suggestion aroused. In the weeks following, he blamed Habermas for raising this opposition and for refusing to engage with him openly. Although Luis Arenas has chronicled the aftermath of Sloterdijk's paper, it may be of interest to educators to examine how Heidegger's text is presented. What is this new humanism? If Heidegger's new humanism was based on a mystical attitude towards Being, so Sloterdijk's new humanism was to be based on the materialist principles of a biotechnological age. Unlike Heidegger who rejected technology as yet one further example of the forgetfulness of Being, Sloterdijk seems to embrace technology and the enhancement of the human body and mind as the next great step forward in educational theory. Could he possibly be right? Is education in these times a partner or an opponent of the technological enhancement of the human being? This article tries to identify Sloterdijk's disagreements with Heidegger on the question of the human

Authenticity: an ethic of capacity realisation

My interests lie in consideration of conceptions of authenticity and inauthenticity from the perspective of ethical theories which conceive of the good for man with reference to human nature and concomitant beliefs regarding the most appropriate realisation of human capacities. Here, I find particular interest in the philosophical styles embodied by the existentialist and Lebensphilosophie movements. Such approaches sit outside the traditional frames of reference provided by deontological and utilitarian approaches to ethical reasoning and yet do I shall argue, share significant similarities with ancient aretaic styles of ethics. Here, I take Aristotle to represent those aspects of ethical thought which are quintessentially of this period of intellectual history. I find not merely points of comparison but a fruitful way in which to re-examine the thought of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Scheler, Heidegger and Sartre with reference to styles of ethical enquiry which place primacy upon an objective conception of happiness which centres upon the appropriate realisation of human capacity understood with reference to Aristotle's Function Argument. I argue that phenomenological analysis shares a conception of self-perspicuity in which the agent reflects upon the full contents of their conscious experience. By this means, certain self-delusions which impede entry into the ethical life, may be removed. Additionally, whilst Aristotle's 'non-law' conception of ethics shares with existentialist thought an understanding of the human situation and its normative concerns in isolation from dualistic and theistic metaphysical speculation, such philosophy is still able to provide clear and objective ethical standards - standards often lacking within existentialism. For instance, whilst Nietzsche's pronouncement of the 'death of God' signals the death also of Christian morality, we find that such philosophy is not without normative implications and in fact can be derived to a large degree from assent towards a radical and more severe ethical self-discipline. Indeed, central certainly to the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre is an understanding of the role of self-deception in the human condition. Here a useful distinction may be made between those types of self-deception which may be understood as structural that is to say which are representative of an essential characteristic of human being at the abstract level - and those types of self-deception which may be described as 'motivated' or 'psychological' which relate to more specific types of self-deceptive engagement. I believe it is useful to examine both Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre through the lens of such interpretation, I find for instance that it is of use to examine the early Sartre as having a purely structural interpretation of bad faith (described by Jeanson as 'natural' bad-faith) whilst moving towards a psychological account in his later work, an account which has more specific moral implications with the possibility of 'willed conversion' to authenticity (Santoni). Additionally with Nietzsche, we also find a similar distinction between a self-deception which is in some sense preconditional and a motivational account of self-deception in which the agent infused with ressentiment falsifies reality in favour of subjective needs which are ultimately destructive of life-enhancement. In this sense the vicious individual can be said to have achieved merely a false optimum, and moreover, false from an objective standpoint

PhD

dissertationThe purpose of this study is to develop a critical perspective which can be used to address the social reality of nursing. The study uses the tradition of the Frankfurt School and critical theory as the primary intellectual frameworks for developing this perspective. The investigation is primarily an exploratory, reflective study which seeks to develop a critical consciousness about nursing. The methodology used in this study differs significantly from empirical-analytic modes of inquiry. The investigation proceeds via the process of reflection. Radical reflection, the method used in this study, contains five stages or steps. They include: bracketing, historical recovery, critique, dialectical imagination and negotiation. The study proceeds in an exploratory way through each of these steps. As in other forms of reflection, findings produced in this study take the form of hypotheses. The study generates insights or interpretive hypotheses about the social construction of reality in nursing. As in other examples of reflection, these are hypotheses whose confirmation depends upon continued negotiation among nurses. Specific findings generated in this study include 1) a critique of scientistic consciousness in nursing, 2) a critique of bourgeois professional ideology in nursing and 3) a critique of sexism in nursing

The conception of human nature in modern political thought : with special reference to the work of Charles Taylor

[From the introduction:]This thesis will analyse and advocate a 'contextualist' reading of human nature. By reference to the work of Charles Taylor it will be argued that Modern conceptions of human nature are (to echo Nietzsche) 'dead'. This is to attack the suggestion that a conception of human nature may be understood in an ahistorical, universalist, abstract or 'unencumbered' sense. A conception of human nature must, of necessity, it will be argued, be understood in a more dynamic and 'local' sense. It is the suggestion of this thesis that human nature must be understood in a sense akin to the existential notion of 'facticity', or as possessing a degree of 'determinacy'. While human nature is 'encumbered' by its 'situation' in time and geographical location it is not however wholly determined. An individual's existence is co-determined by individual choice, the individual's history, and by Nature. Human nature must be recognised to have a facticity, to exist at a certain point in history, in a certain country, to be encumbered by countless other emotional ties, friendships, and loyalties. This 'embedded' conception of human nature is delineated and explored through Taylor's conception of human nature as an 'interspatial epiphany', and is to be preferred to the unencumbered sense of interspatial epiphany that might be seen to be offered by some forms of existentialism. Such existentialist thought is not as astutely located or embedded as Taylor's thought, and suffers from what Taylor terms 'existential heroism', a focus on choice making rather than on the background of encumberment.While the notion of a universal conception of human nature must be abandoned, as the individual is now seen as 'located' temporally, and spatially, it is still possible to draw some (very) modest generalisations about the nature of individuals. This exploration proceeds by generating a 'thick description' of the selfs particular, but ultimately contingent, connections and affiliations. (Such a located description is seen as superior by Taylor, to thin, mechanistic, scientific and neurological descriptions of human agency.

Religious Internationalism: the Ethics of War and Peace in the Thought of Paul Tillich

The purpose of this study is to assemble and assess the ethics of war and peace in the writings of Paul Tillich. It proceeds chronologically, sketching the evolution of Tillich's thought from the period of his World War One chaplaincy in the German Imperial Army through the time of the Cold War, when he was one of the most prominent Protestant theologians in the United States.The material for this study includes two hundred seventy-five primary sources and nearly two hundred secondary sources. Tillich's corpus ranges from lectures and occasional articles to theological treatises, from political and social theory to sermons and radio addresses, from systematic theology to philosophy of history.Chapter one analyzes Tillich's theological roots and his chaplaincy sermons as the starting point for his thoughts on power, nation, and nationalism. Chapter two examines his post war turn to socialist thought and his participation in religious socialism, fueling his cultural analyses and culminating in his forced emigration under Hitler. Chapter three probes the transitional, American inter war period of Tillich's work, giving special attention to his self-described boundary perspective as well as the one treatise he wrote on religion and international affairs. Chapter four is devoted to his Voice of America speeches, written and broadcasted into his former homeland during World War Two. Chapter five covers the same Second World War period, giving special attention to Tillich's message to his English-speaking audience and emphasizing social and world reconstruction.Chapter six turns to the Cold War period and Tillich's apparently lessening interest in political and social theory and interpretation of history, but his simultaneous commitment to paths toward personhood in a internationally bipolar world.The concluding seventh chapter assembles Tillich's ethics of war and peace as an ethic of religious internationalism. It assesses the ethic, offering suggestions for adjustments intended to give it more universal significance. The study concludes that Tillich's thought has provocative contributions to make to current debates regarding civilizational conflict, economics and international justice, trade and globalization, the defense of unprotected minorities, and immigration policy

Ecological theology within the church and society programme

The ecological crisis was a complex social phenomenon which caused some concern and public debate in the Western industrialised nations in the late sixties and early seventies. The crisis situation has been discussed in the World Council of Churches, which formulated its goal in social ethics in terms of the Just, Participatory, and Sustainable Society. Most of the ecumenical discussions about the sustainable society have taken place in the programme of the Church and Society subunit, which has been concerned with the place of technology in such a society. It held a major conference at the Massachusetts institute of Technology in 1979, on 'The Contribution of Faith, Science and Technology to the struggle for the Just and participatory and Sustainable Society' , and it had already conducted an intense investigation from 1969 to 1974, on 'The Future of Man and Society in a World of Science-Based Technology'. The basic problem seems to lie in ethics rather than systematic theology; but I argue in Chapter One that the ecological crisis involves questions at the level of systematic theology. My Chapter Two is concerned with making precise the concept of an 'ecological theology' within theological discourse and adducing as examples ecological theologies from a Barthian theologian, a process theologian, and a biblical theologian. Chapter Three analyses the ecumenical materials, and places the MIT conference in the ethical and theological history of the Church and Society programme. Four main theological approaches are found in the sources: an approach which sees nature as an entangling force from which humanity is to emancipate itself by scientific and technological skill; a theology of hope; a process theology; and an Orthodox approach. These are described, analysed, and evaluated in Chapter Four, and the orientation they give for Christian life in the technological culture is described. The conclusions of this thesis include some constructive criticisms aimed at assisting the Church and Society programme and enhancing its theological adequacy

Transformative ethics consultation : a supplement to ethics facilitation for emotionally charged health care value conflicts

An emotionally difficult case of withdrawing artificial food and water from a patient in persistent vegetative state prompts consideration of the role of empathy and emotion in health care ethics consultation. Rather than viewing ethics consultation purely in terms of consultant-initiated ethical and largely cognitive analysis followed by interpersonal facilitation of consensus, this dissertation seeks a process to address emotion early and to cultivate empathy as-a collective responsibility among patients, surrogates, and clinicians. Moral decision-making and thus ethics consultation must integrate the emotional and cognitive processing of value perceptions and judgments. Promoting integration during ethics consultation encourages participants to adopt a moral orientation of respect and concern that facilitates consensus-building in emotionally charged value conflicts. Phenomenologists Jurgen Habermas and Arne Vetlesen describe this process as overcoming one\u27s own perspective in order to understand the interests and perspective of one\u27s fellows. By adapting this phenomenological sequence to ethics consultation, the dissertation culminates in the presentation of a two-step process, transformative ethics consultation (TEC). If consultants identify an emotional tension early, TEC can serve as a supplement to the identification and analysis of the value conflict or uncertainty. The first step of TEC allows consultation parties to explore, express, and have their emotions validated by the consultant as an initial empathy-building phase. The second step attempts to extend empathy to all parties in such a way that each party understands the other. Extending empathy thus encourages shared moral ownership of the problem and the process for its resolution. To illustrate the two steps of TEC in action, I analyze the case that sparked the dissertation and present another to supplement the argument. In the final chapter, I address two potential challenges to TEC—that it is equivalent to bioethics mediation and thus open to the pitfalls of bioethics mediation as a stand-alone consultation modality. I rebut both of these challenges. I overcome the first by arguing for a new understanding of impartiality in ethics consultation that comports with the spirit of ethics facilitation. I defend against the second by suggesting that TEC skills can be easily adapted for use outside of or after ethics consultation as a means to ameliorate the moral distress associated with emotionally charged value conflicts