What’s Wrong with ‘Compassion’?

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-52
Author(s):  
Joshua Hordern
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Frail Elderly ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Social Death ◽  
Burn Out ◽  
Healthcare Practice

This chapter diagnoses various ills which beset the language and practice of ‘compassion’. To begin with, problems in the political context for compassion in healthcare are considered, especially the complex relationship between patriotism, political liberalism, and health. In light of this, problems for compassion which require therapy are diagnosed. To some people, compassion seems an unreasonable demand to place on healthcare workers in modern, liberal democracies. This seems to be corroborated by the indeterminacy of compassion’s meaning, leading to a corruption in practice whereby compassion becomes acquiescence to the wishes of sufferers. Moreover, placing a demand for compassion upon healthcare workers seems liable to lead to burn-out. Two contrasting trends in healthcare practice exacerbate problems for compassion further: first, the possible decomposition of healthcare roles in light of machine learning, stripping out previous expectations for compassionate relationships, and, second, the overwhelming challenge of social death among the frail elderly.

Compassion in Healthcare

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Hordern
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Burn Out ◽  
Healthcare Practice ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Life Course

This book gives an account of the nature and content of compassion and its role in healthcare. The argument considers how and why contested beliefs about political life, suffering, the human condition, time, and responsibility make a difference to ‘compassion’. While compassion appears to be a straightforward aspect of life and practice, the appearance is deceptive. Compassion is plagued by both conceptual and practical ills and needs some quite specific kinds of therapy. The first step therefore is to diagnose precisely what is wrong with ‘compassion’ including its debilitating political entanglements, the vagueness of its meaning and the risk of burn-out it threatens. With diagnosis in hand, three therapies are prescribed for compassion’s ills: (i) an understanding of patients and healthcare workers as those who pass through the life-course, encountering each other as wayfarers and pilgrims; (ii) a grasp of the nature of compassion in healthcare; and (iii) an embedding of healthcare within the realities of civic life. With this therapy applied, the argument shows how compassionate relationships acquire their content in healthcare practice. First, the form that compassion takes is shown to depend on how different doctrines of time, tragedy, salvation, responsibility, fault, and theodicy set the terms of people’s lives and relationships. Second, how such compassion matters to practice and policy is worked out in the detail of healthcare professionalism, marketisation, and technology, drawing on the author’s collaborations. Covering everything from conception to old age, and from machine learning to religious diversity, this book draws on philosophy, theology, and everyday experience to stretch the imagination of what compassion might mean in healthcare practice.

Leone de' Sommi and Jewish Theatre in Renaissance Mantua

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Donald Beecher
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Social Negotiations ◽  
Renaissance Artist ◽  
The Way

This is a study of a Renaissance artist and his patrons, but with an added complication, insofar as Leone de' Sommi, the gifted academician and playwright in the employ of the dukes of Mantua in the second half of the sixteenth century, was Jewish and a lifelong promoter and protector of his community. The article deals with the complex relationship between the court and the Jewish "università" concerning the drama and the way in which dramatic performances also became part of the political, judicial and social negotiations between the two parties, as well as a study of Leone's role as playwright and negotiator during a period that was arguably one of the best of times for the Jews of Mantua.

Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Static View ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

Social Norms, Choice, and Work

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor

In modern liberal democracies, the gendered division of labor is partially the result of men and women making different choices about work and family life, even if such choices stem from social norms about gender. The choices that women make relative to men’s disadvantage them in various ways: such choices lead them to earn less, enjoy less power and prestige in the labor market, be less able to participate in the political sphere on an equal basis, make them to some degree financially dependent on others, and leave them at a bargaining disadvantage and vulnerable in certain personal relationships. This chapter considers if and when the state should intervene to address women’s disadvantage and inequalities that are the result of gender specialization. It is argued that political liberals can and sometimes must intervene in the gendered division of labor when persons’ interests as free and equal citizens are frustrated.

Rationality revisited: Politicisation through planning rationality against the rationality of power

2021 ◽  
pp. 147309522110011
Author(s):  
Esin Özdemir
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
General Position ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rational Thinking ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Substantive Issue ◽  
Rational Consensus ◽  
Definition Of

In this article, I readdress the issue of rationality, which has been so far considered in western liberal democracies and in planning theory as procedural, and more recently as post-political in the post-foundational approach, aiming to show how it can gain a substantive and politicising character. I first discuss the problems and limits of the treatment of rational thinking as well as rational consensus-seeking as merely procedural and post-political. Secondly, utilising the notion of Realrationalität of Flyvbjerg, I discuss how rationality attains a politicising role due to its strong relationship with power. Using the concept of planning rationality aiming at public interest, I present the general position and actions of professional organisations in Turkey, focusing on the Chamber of City Planners, as an example illustrative of my argument. I finally argue that rationality becomes a substantive issue that politicizes planning, when it is put forward as an alternative to authoritarian market logic. In doing so, I adopt the Rancièrian definition of the political, defined as disclosure of a wrong and staging of equality. In conclusion, I first emphasize the importance of avoiding quick rejections of the concepts of rationality and consensus in the framework of planning activity and planning theory and secondly, call for a broader definition of the political; the political that is not confined to conflict but is open to rational thinking and rational consensus.

The Political Liberalism of the New York Nation, 1865-1932

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 850
Author(s):  
Russell Kirk ◽  
Alan Pendleton Grimes
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political

La Idea de “Razón Publica” (y su Revisión) en el Último Rawls

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Fernando Aranda Fraga ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Public Good ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Key Topics ◽  
Political Philosopher

In 1993 John Rawls published his main and longest work since 1971, where he had published his reknowned A Theory of Justice, book that made him famous as the greatest political philosopher of the century. We are referring to Political Liberalism, a summary of his writings of the 80’s and the first half of the 90’s, where he attempts to answer the critics of his intellectual partners, communitarian philosophers. One of the key topics in this book is the issue of “public reason”, whose object is nothing else than public good, and on which the principles and proceedings of justice are to be applied. The book was so important for the political philosophy of the time that in 1997 Rawls had to go through the 1993 edition, becoming this new one the last relevant writing published before the death of the Harvard philosopher in November 2002.

scholarly journals The light of freedom in the age of enlightenment - part 1: The Netherlands

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Molnar
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Radical Enlightenment

The central topic of the article is the importance of the freedom for the Age of Enlightenment, as well as ties connecting philosophy of Enlightenment and political liberalism. Furthermore, the author?s central thesis is that the light that began to enlightened the reason in the Age of Enlightenment had nothing to do with God or nature, but solely with human freedom. As Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftsbury, noted in one of his letters, freedom shed the light on two countries at first: the Netherlands and England. The author is also disputing the thesis developed by Jonathan Irving Israel in his recent books Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested that the movement of radical Enlightenment in 18. century was almost exclusevly inspired by the political and religious philosophy of the Dutch Baruch de Spinoza. Although Spinoza?s contribution to the radical Enlightenment is clear and evident, he could be also perceived as a thinker who inspired some currents of moderate Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment as well.

scholarly journals On Two Factors of National Identity: Orientation and Social Structure of Society

wisdom ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Ashot VOSKANIAN
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Identity Orientation

Given peculiarity of Armenian history, the Armenian political thought for centuries debated around geopolitical orientation between neighboring great powers. In post-Soviet reflections, however, the emphasis has been moved towards self-reliance, and the very principle of political orientation was questioned. The attitude towards Israel Ori, whose name was viewed as a symbol of the principle of orientation, became the locums for determining the political-ideological disposition of debater, as well as understanding their approaches towards different concepts of national identity. A brief comparison between the conceptual paradigms of two renowned historians Ashot Hovhannisyan (1887-1972) and Leo (Arakel Babakhanyan, 1860-1932) in relation to their attitude towards Israel Ori aims to demonstrate that questioning of the very principle of orientation has much deeper roots in Armenian historical studies than commonly is believed. It also illuminates the complex relationship between principle of orientation and desired model of social structure of society, which these two classics have revealed in rather different ways.

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