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Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa

Ngugi wa Thiongʼo

This book explores the relationship between art and political power in society, taking as its starting point the experience of writers in contemporary Africa, where they are often seen as the enemy ... More

This book explores the relationship between art and political power in society, taking as its starting point the experience of writers in contemporary Africa, where they are often seen as the enemy of the postcolonial state. This study, in turn, raises the wider issues of the relationship between the state of art and the art of the state, particularly in their struggle for the control of performance space in territorial, temporal, social, and even psychic contexts. The book calls for the alliance of art and people power and freedom and dignity against the encroachments of modern states. Art, it argues, needs to be active, engaged, insistent on being what it has always been, and the embodiment of dreams for a truly human world.Less

New Technologies and Human Rights

Thérèse Murphy (ed.)

The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than twenty years later, cloning and GM food were popular talking-points, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. ... More

The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than twenty years later, cloning and GM food were popular talking-points, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. In 2000, the first map of the human genome was sequenced. More recently there has been much discussion of the economic and social benefits of nanotechnology. This book contributes to increasing calls for regulation — or better regulation — of these and other new technologies. Drawing on an international team of legal scholars, it reviews and develops the role of human rights in the regulation of new technologies. Three controversies at the intersection between human rights and new technologies are given particular attention. First, are human rights contributing to a brave new world of choice, where human dignity is fundamentally compromised? Second, are new technologies a threat to human rights? Finally, can human rights contribute to better regulation of these technologies?Less

Dignity Therapy: Final Words for Final Days

Harvey Max Chochinov

Maintaining dignity for patients approaching death is a core principle of palliative care. Turning that principle into ways of guiding care at the end-of-life, however, can be a complicated and ... More

Maintaining dignity for patients approaching death is a core principle of palliative care. Turning that principle into ways of guiding care at the end-of-life, however, can be a complicated and daunting task. Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, an international leader in palliative care, has conducted groundbreaking research on the issue of dignity and palliative care. His findings are beginning to change the way people think about and approach care for the terminally ill. Dignity Therapy is a novel, individualized, brief psychological intervention, designed specifically to address many of the psychological, existential and spiritual challenges that patients and their families face as they grapple with the reality of life drawing to a close. This therapeutic approach, based on years of Chochinov and his team's research, has been tested on patients with advanced illnesses in various countries worldwide. Many palliative care programs are starting to incorporate Dignity Therapy into the range of services offered dying patients and their families. This enthusiastic uptake of Dignity Therapy speaks to some universal aspects of being human; to be alive means to experience being vulnerable and being mortal. Dignity Therapy offers a way of preserving meaning, purpose and hope for patients approaching death. The benefits of this approach for patients and families have been demonstrated in various studies in diverse settings. Dignity Therapy: Final Words for Final Days introduces readers to this pioneering and innovative work, illustrating how Dignity Therapy can change end-of-life experience for those about to die and those who will grieve their passing.Less

Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power

William Bain

The international administration of troubled states—whether in Bosnia, Kosovo, or East Timor—has seen a return to the principle of trusteeship: i.e. situations in which some form of international ... More

The international administration of troubled states—whether in Bosnia, Kosovo, or East Timor—has seen a return to the principle of trusteeship: i.e. situations in which some form of international supervision is required in a particular territory in order both to maintain order and to foster the norms and practices of fair self‐government. This book rescues the normative discourse of trusteeship from the obscurity into which it has fallen since decolonization. It traces the development of trusteeship from its emergence out of debates concerning the misrule of the East India Company (Ch. 2), to its internationalization in imperial Africa (Ch. 3), to its institutionalization in the League of Nations mandates system (Ch. 4) and in the UN trusteeship system, and to the destruction of its legitimacy by the ideas of self‐determination and human equality (Ch. 5). The book brings this rich historical experience to bear on the dilemmas posed by the resurrection of trusteeship after the end of the cold war (Ch. 6) and, in the context of contemporary world problems, explores the obligations that attach to preponderant power and the limits that should be observed in exercising that power for the sake of global good. In Ch. 7, the book concludes by arguing that trusteeship remains fundamentally at odds with the ideas of human dignity and equality.Less

Dignity, Rank, and Rights

Jeremy Waldron

Meir Dan-Cohen (ed.)

Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an ... More

Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. This book contrives to combine attractive features of both strands. The first lecture in this book presents a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, thus tapping into rich historical resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the same time the text argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity—understood in this way—as a status defining persons' relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights. They also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.Less

Robert Spaemann's Philosophy of the Human Person: Nature, Freedom, and the Critique of Modernity

Holger Zaborowski

The German philosopher Robert Spaemann provides an important contribution to a number of contemporary debates in philosophy and theology, opening up possibilities for conversation between these ... More

The German philosopher Robert Spaemann provides an important contribution to a number of contemporary debates in philosophy and theology, opening up possibilities for conversation between these disciplines. He engages in a dialogue with classical and contemporary positions and often formulates important and original insights that lie beyond common alternatives. This study provides an analysis of the most important features of Spaemann's philosophy and shows the unity of his thought. The question ‘Who is a person?’ is of increasing significance: Are all human beings persons? Are there animals that can be considered persons? What does it mean to speak of personal identity and of the dignity of the person? Spaemann provides an answer to these questions: every human being, he argues, is a person and, therefore, ‘has’ his nature in freedom. In order to understand the person, Spaemann explains, we have to think about the relation between nature and freedom, and avoid the reductive accounts of this relation prevalent in important strands of modern thought. Spaemann develops a challenging critique of modernity, incorporating analysis of modern anti-modernisms and showing that these are also subject to a dialectical development, perpetuating the problematic shortcomings of many features of modern reasoning. If we do not want to abolish ourselves as persons, Spaemann reasons, we need to find a way of understanding ourselves that evades the dialectic of modernity. Thus, he reminds his readers of ‘self-evident’ knowledge: insights that we have once already known, but tend to forget.Less

Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination

Frederick Beiser

This book is an attempt to rehabilitate Schiller as a philosopher. It defends his philosophy against his Marxist, post-modernist and Kantian critics. Some chapters are exegetical, others thematic. ... More

This book is an attempt to rehabilitate Schiller as a philosopher. It defends his philosophy against his Marxist, post-modernist and Kantian critics. Some chapters are exegetical, others thematic. The exegetical chapters (2-4) re-examine the arguments and context of some of his most important writings, Kallias Briefe, Anmut und Würde, and the Äesthetische Briefe. The thematic chapters treat Schiller’s intellectual development, his concept of freedom, his theory of tragedy, and his dispute with the Kantians. In defense of Schiller, it is argued that his project for an objective aesthetic was not misguided in principle, that he does not conflate aesthetic and moral values, that his concept of the beautiful soul should not be confused with its Rousseauian variants, and that his concept of grace does not mean acting from natural sentiment. It is also contended that Schiller offers a plausible revision of Kant’s moral philosophy, an interesting response to the problem of freedom in post-Kantian philosophy, and a much underrated theory of tragedy, and a remarkable attempt to square the demands of aesthetic autonomy with moral purpose in the arts. The aim is not to sanctify or whitewash Schiller, but to show that his critics have largely misunderstood him.Less

Constitutional Goods

Alan Brudner

Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves with agreement on lower-level principles ... More

Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves with agreement on lower-level principles on which those who disagree on fundamentals may coincidentally converge or else with a process for translating fundamental disagreement into acceptable laws. The book suggests a conception of fundamental justice that liberals of competing philosophic schools may accept as fulfilling their own basic commitments. It argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of three constitutional frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. Each is based on a particular conception of public reason. The book criticizes each of these frameworks insofar as its organizing conception claims to be fundamental and then moves forward to suggest a Hegelian conception of public reason within which each framework is contained as a constituent element of a whole. When viewed in this light, the liberal constitution embodies a surprising synthesis. It reconciles a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of conscience with the perfectionist idea that the state ought to cultivate a type of personality whose fundamental ends are the goods essential to dignity. Such a reconciliation may attract competing liberalisms to a consensus on an inclusive conception of public reason under which political authority is validated for those who share a confidence in the individual's inviolable worth.Less

The Philosophy of Palliative Care: Critique and Reconstruction

Fiona Randall and R S Downie

The idea of a philosophy of palliative care emerged with Cicely Saunders' vision for ‘a good death’, and was developed further with the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of palliative care. ... More

The idea of a philosophy of palliative care emerged with Cicely Saunders' vision for ‘a good death’, and was developed further with the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of palliative care. It is now being applied not only to cancer patients, but to all patients in end-of-life situations. As this palliative care approach advances, it is important to pause and comment on its effectiveness. It is a philosophy of patient care, and is therefore open to critique and evaluation. Using the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine, 3rd edition as their basic reference, the authors present their argument that the palliative care approach has become too busy and over-professionalised, and that it therefore has significant weaknesses. They examine the framework of the specialty – quality of life, autonomy, dignity, patient-centredness, and the priority assigned to relatives in the remit of care – and the moral problems associated with implementing such a philosophy. The resource implications of various healthcare policies are also discussed in relation to the WHO definition. Whilst the authors defend the achievements of palliative care and those who work in the profession, they present suggestions for an alternative philosophy that prompts many ethical and philosophical questions about the future of palliative care.Less