Initially, the Great War was received euphorically by many writers and philosophers, including Max Weber, Martin Buber and Max Scheler along with Georg Simmel. For Simmel, the war was synonimous with a greater pace of life, a form of dealing with / overcoming the levelling of society caused by the worshipping of money (´Mammonismus`). This exaltation of the war on the part of intellectuals was not common to all – the harsh criticisms of Simmel´s enthusiasm for the war on the part of Georg Lucácz and Ernst Bloch are well-known. Regarding Stefan George, in 1901 Simmel had written: ´His art has been known since its beginning for the wish to act exclusively like an art (...) the fundamental change is complete: that on the contrary, all content is merely the means for forming values that are purely aesthetics.` Therefore, in the aesthetic of Stefan George, Simmel acknowledges the reason that George will reject the war – contrary to many members of George´s circle (George-Kreis) and has its expression in the poem ´The War`, first published in 1917. This contribution seeks to demonstrate the philosophical and aesthetical reasons for enthusiasm for the war and its rejection by Simmel and George, attitudes that are not able to be explained by the opposition to militarism/pacifism that is normally deployed to distinguish between supporters and critics of the war.

Rehabilitation and palliative care are increasingly playing a major role in medicine, surgery, nursing, physiotherapy and related professions. We believe that the same value should still characterize observation and palpation. Accordingly, the gains in the Medical Humanities from the analysis of themes related to the touching/touched experience are documented here and the features of two outstanding works (Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and Derrida’s Le Toucher) are called into question. We will try to explore the meaning of the senses as well as the sensibilia as natural kinds of clinical phenomenology, thereupon the intelligibility and the supremacy of corporeality, contact, touching and haptic perception are stressed.

Recent work in the ethics of care is used as a point of departure for thought about the kinds of social conditions that lead to terrorism. Allusion is made to the work of Bayoumi, Held and others, and it is concluded that political acts of terror are often a response to a climate of hostility, including microaggression.

This paper explores central themes of Duncan Pritchard’s epistemology intimately related to the Wittgensteinian idea of a “hinge epistemology”. The first section calls attention to the eminently empirical character of our “hinges”. The second section focuses on Pritchard’s notion of “arational hinge commitments”, more specifically his distinction between the pair “über hinge commitments”/“über hinge propositions” and the pair “personal hinge commitments”/“personal hinge propositions”. The third section brings to the discussion Timothy Williamson’s view of “inexact knowledge” and examines another pair of notions introduced by Pritchard, namely “antiskeptical hinge commitments”/“antiskeptical hinge propositions”. I conclude with a reevaluation of the diagnosis made by Pritchard that, confronted with a sceptical scenario, our “epistemic angst” can be surpassed if we follow Wittgenstein’s teaching in On Certainty about the “structure of rational evaluation”, but that an “epistemic vertigo” can never be ultimately dispelled. My argument is that in a moral scenario there is no room for vertigo.

Monroe Beardsley presents an aesthetic definition of art in “An Aesthetic Definition of Art” (1983), in which he claims that there is a necessary connection between art and aesthetics. Beardsley proposes that a work of art is something made with the intention of having the capacity to satisfy an aesthetic interest. Noël Carroll claims that there are artworks created without aesthetic intentions and that some artworks do not have the capacity to provide aesthetic experiences. In addition, Carroll argues that there are artworks whose status of art is prior to the appreciation of these works as art. The aim of this paper is to present Beardsley’s aesthetic definition of art and analyze how objections to it can be answered.

The aim of this article is to evaluate, based on particular and specific aspects, the interpretation that the Danish thinker Georg Brandes presents of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as important critics of the European culture of the nineteenth century and of the philosophy produced in the period.

After a brief review of some of the issues facing ethicists becoming involved in actual clinical situations, as I experienced these at the beginning of my career, I present a detailed narrative focused on a encounter I had with parents of a badly damaged neonate, a situation for which I was asked to provide a consultation focused on unstated ethical issues. The narrative continues through these issues and concludes with what parents described as an acceptable resolution. The essay concludes with a brief indication of what are taken as the basic issues in the situation.

Relying mostly on his Agony Argument, Derek Parfit argued against all the theories that take reasons for acting as based on the agent’s attitudes. I use R. M. Hare’s so-called “Conditional Reflection Principle” –here relabeled as “Mirror Principle” – to challenge Parfit’s contention that subjectivists about reasons cannot consistently endorse the view that “we all have a reason to want to avoid, and to try to avoid, all future agony.” Several objections to the Mirror Principle are examined and shown to result from incorrect interpretations of its content.

The authors make a reading of the remarkable books on pain of the Arquipatologia of Filipe Montalto (1614). They interpret this work as the first naturalization and simultaneously the consequent defense of an emotional theory of pain and illness. They then briefly discuss aspects of the reductionist attitude about pain, and its implications on matters of mental content, reference and “computational psychology”.

This article briefly presents Philosophical-Medical Meditations on Tears and Crying by the German physician Johan Schreiber, a dissertation which systematizes knowledge on the physiology of crying in the early eighteenth century. It is also a work which attributes some importance to the affections, including pain and sadness and to the causal relationship between prolonged crying and some diseases as well as the therapeutic effects of tears.

We present the Buddhist view of the origin of disease and suffering in the ignorance of the basic health or sanity of being and awareness, as well as the way to recognize and reintegrate it, which is the healing process. We question what is commonly thought about the place of suffering in Buddhism, based on the aspects of the Buddhist view and experience that most contrast with the dominant perception of what reality and human life are. It’s only by not camouflaging them that one can understand the specificity of the Buddha’s path and the proposals for healing and transcending disease and suffering it offers.

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric illness in which the emotions are immediately translated into body symptoms, with a strong and rigid connection between them, without conscientious of that translation by patient. In the process of therapy, the possibility of mentalization of the emotions allows auto regulation of cognitions and affects, in a process that involves patient and therapist, looking for meanings for the impasse. The aim of the treatment is always the patient well-being, even when there is no future.

I examine briefly the theme of “deliving” (desviver) as well as end of life medical decisions. I put forward for consideration features of the moribund’s status and aporias as seen from the humanist viewpoint as well as from the perception of falseness and the current requisites for a possible law of euthanasia, its dead ends and contradictions. I leave out the institutional conditions.

Euthanasia or “good death”, in the early seventeenth century, became part of the field of medical ethics through the English philosopher, Francis Bacon. He advocated that euthanasia, as “sweet and peaceful death” of the sick, should be sought by the physicians, with their care, and disapproved the abandonment, as determined by the Hippocratic tradition. The word euthanasia underwent a change in its Baconian sense, in the nineteenth century, when it came to mean death inten­tionally provoked as a way to achieve “good death.” Palliative medicine, however, represents the realization of current medicine regarding the commitment not to abandon the terminally ill, and to the effective search for a good death through care, as Francis Bacon defended.

Palliative sedation does not have a universally accepted definition. It is used as a measure of last resort for the control of refractory symptoms in the last days of life. The ethical principles invoked in its use are those of double effect and proportionality. Its prevalence varies according to the place of care, type of study and country. The most frequent indications for its use are the control of dyspnea, delirium and pain. The recommended first line drug is midazolam. The studies performed do not diminish the survival of the patient. It is important that fami­ly support is maintained throughout the process. Several scientific societies and medical associations have defined guidelines that regulate their implementation.

The aim of this research is to propose a reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics understood as an answer to the problem of non-being. This orientation will reveal the validity of the Aristotelian ontological approaches for the present, because today also the movement, the difference, the inidentity and the time constitute fundamental philosophical problems. We know that Aristotle displayed his ontology in dialogue and discussion with his predecessors. In this paper, I point out certain aspects of this debate to the extent that they contribute to highlighting those topics of the first philosophy that constitute a solution to the problem of non-being.