Coastal atmospheres: the peninsula of the blessed and the art of noticing

In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen, a huge bay at the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. To write about atmospheres means evoking a specific forcefield, which is different from observing and analyzing an object from a distance. In the first part, I write about my own experience of the coastal atmosphere by “looking around rather than ahead,” as Tsing (2015) defined the art of noticing. Based on his paintings, on literature, and interviews, I show in the second part how a local artist, the painter Franz Radziwill, made the specific atmosphere of Dangast explicit. Finally, I follow a citizens’ initiative on their way to preserve the specific atmosphere of this coastal village as an artists’ place. In doing so, I provide a detailed insight into the atmospheres of democracy, which define how transitions take place and decisions are taken locally. In the conclusion, I argue that the focus on coastal atmospheres is a way to transcend the boundaries between nature and culture and to undermine the teleological argument of growth and development which more often than not shape coastal politics.

The Teleological Argument in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

The first section of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals contains a teleological argument, the aim of which is to show that the natural purpose of human reason lies not in securing happiness but in morality. While the teleological argument is widely considered to be digressive and unconvincing in the secondary literature, in this article I attempt to show that the argument is neither digressive nor unconvincing. I argue that it fulfills an important synthetic task in the Groundwork (even if in a preliminary manner), that it is consistent with Kant’s views on natural teleology at the time, and that the criticism of happiness contained therein is as convincing as Kant’s criticism of happiness in the rest of the treatise.

The Ethics of Police Body-Worn Cameras

Over the past decade, police departments in many countries have experimented with and increasingly adopted the use of police body-worn cameras (PBWCs). This article aims to examine the moral issues raised by the use of PBWCs, and to provide an overall assessment of the conditions under which the use of PBWCs is morally permissible. It first reviews the current evidence for the effects of using PBWCs. On the basis of this review the article sets out a teleological argument for the use of PBWCs. The final two sections of the article review two deontological objections to the use of PBWCs: the idea that use of PBWCs is based on or expresses disrespectful mistrust, and the idea that the use of PBWCs violates a right to privacy. The article argues that neither of these objections is persuasive, and concludes that we should conditionally accept and support the use of PBWCs.

Jus Cogens: A Complex Case of Constitutional Reasoning in International Law

Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties famously introduced a special class of international legal rules - jus cogens norms - without specifying its content. The paper proceeds by adopting the heuristic framework of constitutionalization of international law, arguing that jus cogens norms contribute to at least two constitutionalist functions - that of limiting the international governance and hierarchizing international legal order. Hence, it is possible to argue that jus cogens reasoning is a specific type of constitutional reasoning. Despite stipulated formal qualities of jus cogens norms, in trying to establish their content state actors are in the situation similar to constitutional adjudicators dealing with underdetermined legal content of a constitutional text. What directs the process of jus cogens reasoning is, thus, the particular nature of the subject-matter with which those norms deal. The last part of the paper provides the analytical reconstruction of the jus cogens constitutional reasoning, focusing on the process of ascertainment, which is to be taken by the community of states. It is argued that what ascertainment requires is, inter alia, resorting to a unique interpretative tool - reverse teleological argument - with the use of which the state actor can extract from the fundamental values of international legal order a class of peremptory norms of international law.

Dean of St. Paul’s

W. R. Matthews found the moral argument (along with the teleological argument) the most persuasive of all the theistic arguments. He reflects upon the “moral evolution of mankind” and asks what it implies concerning the nature of the universe; he discusses the conscience and asks, “On what grounds can we justify that sense of obligation which is the characteristic property of moral experience?” He ponders the nature of the good and asks, “What is the place of the Good in the general structure of the universe?” He finds that in each case he is led to the theistic hypothesis.

Faith and Thought

This chapter examines Stokes as an outspoken scientist of faith. It uses Stokes to examine the intellectual threats to conservative Christianity in the second half of the nineteenth century, and highlights his leading role among Victorian Britain’s religious scientists, through bodies such as the Royal Society and the Victoria Institute. It also explains how Stokes’s upbringing and education formed the basis for his own evangelical theology, and highlights his two most significant contributions to that field. First, it explores Stokes’s opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and his promotion of conditional immortality as an alternative. Second, it highlights how Stokes continued to advocate the natural theology and teleological argument of William Paley a century after they were first proposed, as a method of harmonizing faith and scientific practice.

METODE DAN PENDEKATAN PEMBUKTIAN WUJUD TUHAN: Studi Pemikiran Muhammad Iqbal dan Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

This article examines the approach of Muhammad Iqbal and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi in proving the form of God. Their approaches come in the mindset of the invasion of atheism and the philosophy of materialism. Both thinkers use different approaches. While Iqbal uncovered arguments of God from the aspect of epistemology and offered arguments for religious experience, Nursi used the teleological argument utilizing the development of science. Nursi used the form of God arguments inherited from earlier scholars to strike at the attacks of atheism and materialism. Whereas Iqbal used a philosophical approach learned from Western scientists. On the other hand, when Iqbal uncovered from an aspect of philosophy, Nursi used simple language to appeal to ordinary people by presenting teleological arguments in the form of stories, dialogues, analogies, arguments for natural order, and impossible arguments. These two thinkers use a different approach, but both of them use science as the basis of their arguments. Nursi used the latest findings of science in his day to reinforce the arguments he raised, while Iqbal used the epistemology of science to manifest God.