scholarly journals Why a Bioethical Approach is Needed in Addressing Health Risks Stemming from Pandemics Due to Zoonoses Linked to Human Impact on Biodiversity?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tullia Penna
Keyword(s):  
Human Impact ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Absorption Capacity ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Human Footprint ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Impact On Biodiversity ◽  
Van Rensselaer Potter

This chapter aims to demonstrate why a precautionary and bioethical approach is needed to avert forthcoming pandemics due to zoonosis. Precautionary principle should be intended as a conceptual tool for assessing whether human action, and its arising environmental alterations, exceed the absorption capacity of Nature. Likewise, original meaning of bioethics, namely the questioning of unsustainable progress and human survival, should be resumed to reflect on human footprint on biodiversity. This reflection seems to be even more pressing if we consider how national policies are struggling to face the pandemic’s socio-economic consequences. Focusing on how to prevent zoonosis’ events, by pondering on the concept of ‘biological wisdom’ coined by Van Rensselaer Potter, might be more effective than suggesting complex reforms of healthcare systems. Furthermore, a bioethical approach, by its very definition, consists of a multidisciplinary approach, increasingly worthwhile in present-day societies characterized by strong complexity. Indeed, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has demonstrated how dense is the network of nature, human beings and socio-economic structures. It seems appropriate to think origins of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as a warning for the future, by questioning methods and extension of human impact on biodiversity.

Secondary-Cause Autonomy and Divine Motivation

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Christian Schröer
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Theoretical View ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
The Voice

An act-theoretical view on the profile of responsibility discourse shows in what sense not only all kinds of technical, pragmatic and moral reason, but also all kinds of religious motivation cannot justify a human action sufficiently without acknowledgment to three basic principles of human autonomy as supreme limiting conditions that are human dignity, sense, and justifiability. According to Thomas Aquinas human beings ultimately owe their moral autonomy to a divine creator. So this autonomy can be considered as an expression of secondary-cause autonomy and as the voice of God in the enlightened conscience.

Content Changes of Carbon and Nitrogen during the Decomposition of Mire Wetland in Xiaoxing'anling in Northeast China

2014 ◽  
Vol 522-524 ◽  
pp. 361-364
Author(s):  
Ji Guang Li ◽  
Hui Sun ◽  
Min Tao ◽  
Qi Shuo Wang ◽  
Wei Ming Tan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Support ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Wetland Soil ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biogeochemical Process ◽  
Environment Change ◽  
Hydrogen Water ◽  
Nitrogen Phosphorus

The global environment change is human beings are facing with the important and urgent environmental problems: in natural and human action double drive, the surface of the earth element biogeochemical process and its environmental effect is the current global change research in the area of the important content. In order to estimate and forecast geochemical cycle of change and to the global life support system influence, since the 1970s on the ecological system of the nitrogen cycle extensive and in-depth research, and in the process of this a series of ecological environment effect.Wetland biogeochemical process is refers to the carbon, hydrogen (water), oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur and various essential elements in the wetland soil and plant all kinds of migration between transformation and energy exchange process. Chemical process including nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients in the wetland system of flow and transformation, Wetland in heavy metals and other organic inorganic pollutants absorption, so close, transformation and enrichment, etc.

Karl Barth's Moral Thought

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald McKenny
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Right

Does theological ethics articulate moral norms with the assistance of moral philosophy? Or does it leave that task to moral philosophy alone while it describes a distinctively Christian way of acting or form of life? These questions lie at the heart of theological ethics as a discipline. Karl Barth’s theological ethics makes a strong case for the first alternative. This book follows Barth’s efforts to present God’s grace as a moral norm in his treatments of divine commands, moral reasoning, responsibility, and agency. It shows how Barth’s conviction that grace is the norm of human action generates problems for his ethics at nearly every turn, as it involves a moral good that confronts human beings from outside rather than perfecting them as the kind of creature they are. Yet it defends Barth’s insistence on the right of theology to articulate moral norms, and it shows how Barth may lead theological ethics to exercise that right in a more compelling way than he did.

The Subjectivity of Nature

2017 ◽  
pp. 22-42
Author(s):  
James Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Objective World ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Way

Daoism proposes a radical reversal of the way that modern human beings think about the natural world. Rather than understanding human beings as “subject” who observe the “objective” world of nature, Daoism proposes that subjectivity is grounded in the Dao or Way, understood as the wellspring of cosmic creativity for a world of constant transformation. As a result the Daoist goal of “obtaining the Dao” offers insights into the ecological quest to transcend the modern, Cartesian bifurcation of subject and object, self and world. From this follows an ideal of human action not as the projection of agency onto an neutral, objective backdrop but as a transaction or mediation between self and world.

Thomas Hobbes and the Divine Politics of Anarchy

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-156
Author(s):  
William Bain
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Human Action ◽  
International Order ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Central Claim

This chapter presents Thomas Hobbes as a theorist of imposed order. The central claim is that Hobbes’s conception of political order, an artificial arrangement arising from will and consent, reflects the intellectual commitments of nominalist theology. Uncovering the theological presuppositions of his thought opens space for an understanding of international order that is quite different from what the ‘Hobbesian’ tradition portrays as a domain of endemic violence. Hobbes is correctly imagined as a theorist of interstate society. The chapter examines the unity of philosophy and theology in Hobbes’s thought, focusing on a recurring analogy between divine action and human action. Human beings make and unmake their world, including the commonwealth, as God created the universe. Modern theorists reproduce these theological ideas when they invoke Hobbes to illustrate the character and consequences of anarchy. Hobbes, conceived as a theorist of imposed order, exemplifies what has become the dominant discourse of international order. The implication is that modern theories of international order might not be as uniquely modern or purely secular as contemporary theorists typically assume.

Dirt, Collapse, and Eco-responsibility: "Natural" Evils and the Eager Longing for Eco-justice

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Admirand
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Poor

AbstractAs a theologian seeking to evaluate the meaning of "nature" or the "natural"—especially as contained in the problematic term "natural evils"—I will turn predominantly to an anthropologist-poet (Loren Eiseley), a professor of evolutionary biology (Jared Diamond), and a geomorphologist (David Montgomery). Ultimately, I will assess the value of creation and the question of responsibility in light of the staggering and senseless loss of so much life. I contend that theists will find unexpected allies in historical and anthropological works that examine how human action (and inaction) causes or exacerbates much of the destruction "natural" disasters unleash. Questions to investigate include: (1) How responsible are humans for the suffering inflicted by "natural" disasters? (2) If human beings are not solely culpable for such affliction, how should this impact a theist's faith position and the value of creation? (3) How can the findings and analysis of the scientists consulted in this article support a Levinasian priority of the ethical and liberation theologians' option for the poor? (4) How can a pluralized, ambiguous interpretation of the natural spur a deeper sense of eco-responsibility? (5) Which theological approach is best able to respond to the reality of our depleted and ravaged biosphere?

Kant, Garve, and the Motives of Moral Action

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Physical Explanation ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Kantian Morality ◽  
De Officiis

AbstractKant's comments `against Garve' constitute his reaction to the latter's remarks on Cicero's De Officiis . Two related criticisms of Kant's against Garve are discussed in brief in this paper. A closer look is then taken at Garve's claim that `Kantian morality destroys all incentives that can move human beings to act at all'. I argue that Kant and Garve rely on two different models of human action for their analyses of moral motivation; these models differ in what each takes to be salient for the explanation of human action. I show that Samuel Clarke's analogy of physical explanation in the framework of Newtonianism (in his Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion ) usefully illuminates the difference between Kant and Garve in these respects.

The Morality of Deterrence

1986 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 111-127
Author(s):  
Michael Dummett
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Board Game ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Common

One of the most outstanding characteristics of human beings is their adaptability. As we readily learn to take new conditions of life for granted, so we have learned to live with the bomb. For nearly forty years we have lived in the shadow of possible cataclysmic disaster brought about by human action; and we treat this unprecedented danger simply as a background, on which we focus only occasionally, to the common business of living. What else is possible, save persistent hysteria? But, as part of a mechanism for avoiding hysteria, we are in danger of rendering the topic unreal to ourselves even when we are explicitly considering it, by treating it as an abstract question. We use the concepts of first strike, retaliation, megadeaths, and so forth, which we apply in just the spirit of those discussing strategy for a board game, while averting our minds from what it is that we are actually talking about. Indeed, if our concern is purely strategic, this does no harm, since the question then involves something isomorphic to a problem in a conceivable board game.

scholarly journals In Search of the Good

Open Theology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Riggs
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Innate Capacity ◽  
First Cause ◽  
Ethical Vision ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

AbstractThe concept of recognition is increasing in importance in political and social philosophy as a means of explaining and dealing conceptually with the problems of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, the phenomena which this concept signifies, namely human capacities for intersubjectivity, belong to human beings even before the development of the modern concept. This article explores how the content of the concept of recognition plays a role in two Platonic philosophies of Late Antiquity, those of the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus and the Christian philosopher, monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor. It is shown that their versions of a metaphysics of the Good provides the foundation for a moral and ethical vision of human life which makes recognitive judgements – which make acts of recognition possible – a necessity for human action. Although proper recognition pertains to the rational recognition of the First Cause as the true end of all human action, nevertheless Proclus and Maximus make recognitive judgements not only possible but a necessary function of even the lower, irrational faculties of soul. In this way, they explain how human beings have an innate capacity at all levels of cognition for recognizing things and other people as goods to be pursued or avoided.

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