Of Racist Philosophers and Ravens

Augustine and the Philosophers

Because of the immensity of Augustine’s corpus and the complex intellectual patrimony that informs it, attempts to place him within the history of philosophical traditions are often partial and in need of supplementation. In treating below of Augustine’s engagement with Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, I shall be drawing attention to particular topics, lexical poin...

Primates , philosophers and the biological basis of morality : a review of primates and philosophers by Frans

Philosophical inquiries into morality are as old as philosophy, but it may turn out that morality itself is much, much older than that. At least, that is the main thesis of primatologist Frans De Waal, who in this short book based on his Tanner Lectures at Princeton, elaborates on what biologists have been hinting at since Darwin’s (1871) book The Descent of Man and Hamilton’s (1963) studies on...

Attributing Harm to Racist Speech

The racist patient.

TO THE EDITOR: Twenty-five years ago, I faced a situation similar to Jain’s (1). My experience involved a horrid anti-Semite; I was raised with Holocaust survivors. I finally asked my attending to be reassigned. He said that I was a physician and must fulfill my responsibilities to my patient regardless of who and what he was. My personal feelings were immaterial. My attending was right. Jain’s...

alpha2u-Globulin nephropathy and ravens: do ravens of a different feather flock together?

differentiate significant and trivial chemical hazards and to assess likely risks to humans. This latter justification can be illustrated by the following statement: if all chemicals that are mutagenic in vitro were mutagenic and carcinogenic to humans, and if all rodent carcinogens posed an equal carcinogenic hazard to humans, then there would be no role for mechanistic studies. The fact that ...