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Pia Matthews' book, "Other-Person-ness and the Person with Profound Disabilities," explores the concept of personhood and its ethical implications for individuals with profound disabilities. Matthews draws on philosophical insights from various thinkers, including Emmanuel Mounier and Karol Wojtyla, to examine the notions of otherness and care. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing the uniqueness and dignity of individuals with disabilities while challenging simplistic understandings and avoiding paternalism. The book offers a nuanced perspective on disability discourse and calls for a new humanism based on responsibility, love, participation, and justice. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, I will examine how the role of hope can inform our interpretation of the classical principles of medical ethics. Defining hope as a future-oriented expectation for the good, I will look at how it can shape our understanding of justice, beneficence, respect for autonomy and non-maleficence. I will suggest that ethically engaging with these principles in medical practice requires placing value on the patient-practitioner relation as a mode of hope. Engaging the writings of Emmanuel Lévinas and Søren Kierkegaard, I will show how hope reveals itself through responsible and expectant relationship, even in the midst of suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I look at the phenomenological expression of creativity through language as a way of relating to the self and others. Employing the Jewish concepts of the yetzerim, or impulses, philosophically, I suggest that these instances of existential engagement further develop the ethical act of tikkun olam, or the mending of the relational world. Moving beyond theodicies of good and evil, I will develop this account of relation by drawing on Emmanuel Lévinas's and Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of subjectivity. I argue, therefore, that language can express particular accounts of relationality that can serve to clarify the ambiguous relationship between good and evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I will examine how the language of diagnosis can engage with existential epistemology to develop a concept ofProgressively Empowered Internalisation(PEI). This, I will argue, challenges conceptualisations of diagnosis as articulating and maintaining a static self-concept. It enables the individual to synthesise the language of a particular mental experience within the wider engagement of their own active process of self-becoming. I will suggest that this construction ofPEIaddresses the limitations of stigmatisation and static self-concepts. In seeing the language of diagnosis as a helpful tool for understanding a part of one's self-experience, it presents an alternative to the illness-based model of mental health. This conceptualisation engages with Kierkegaard's existential epistemology, as a means of using language to understand the task of becoming oneself and relating to others. Furthermore, it explores how mental health diagnosis requires communal engagement to enable the wellbeing of its members. Diagnosis is thereby seen as a process of further empowering the individual with the language to explain a particular part of their experience within the overall movement of developing an integrated self-concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research compares the production of hay in three historical European agro-ecological systems: in northern Romania, central Sweden and eastern central France. We analyse hay production in relation to the entire production system, the local natural conditions, and the variety of ways by which hay production was transformed over time. We found broad commonalities, but also discovered significant differences in each of three historical trajectories. Introduction of fodder crops, crop rotations and mechanization are important drivers of changes in all three areas, although the timing, sequence and causation vary from place to place. There are significant differences in the organization of farm labour, in the role of beef and dairy production, the role of political reforms and the climatic constraints of outdoor grazing which affected the transformation of fodder production. "is paper highlights the potential of an integrated, interdisciplinary approach for better understanding the complex interaction of people, their social and economic contexts, and their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses key philosophical and social questions that shape the contemporary discourse on prostitution. The initial section outlines the contemporary challenges facing legislative practice on prostitution in England. This involves analysing moral and legal framework surrounding prostitution that has made the current legislative dilemma surrounding prostitution practice possible. The second part of the paper then outlines the history of the philosophy of human rights from Aquinas to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The paper concludes by analysing whether the current ontology employed by human rights theory is effective in creating a system of just relatedness between agents, made visible in concrete legislative guidance. I argue that legislation guided by a fragmented teleology and ontological anthropology enables asymmetrical patterns of relatedness that can cause genuine physical and psychological harm to individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semi-natural hay meadows are species rich habitats, formed by a long history of management and they have experienced a drastic decline all over Europe. There is a vast literature on conservation and species diversity of semi-natural hay-meadows, but very limited information on historic timing of hay cutting. We analyzed data collected between 1873 and 1951 on hay cutting dates and phenology of six plant species from farms distributed across Sweden. The data set comprised 16,015 observations from 175 sites. Results show that date of start and end of hay cutting varied across Sweden. The start of hay cutting was generally delayed by 2.2 days per latitudinal degree and 1.5 days per 100 m altitude, while the end of hay cutting was generally delayed by 2.9 days per latitudinal degree and 2.5 days per 100 m altitude. The average hay cutting period was 18.5 ± 6.6 days, and became slightly shorter northwards. Site-specific factors had a great impact on when hay cutting was performed, as indicated by a significant correlation between flowering (and leafing) phenology in other species and start date of hay cutting. Today, management for conservation is usually related to a calendar date (e.g. regulated in eligibility criteria and requirements for payment in agri-environment programs in EU). In order to mimic historic management that formed this habitat, management should instead account for latitude and altitude, between-year variation in timing of hay cutting, variation in both start and end dates of hay cutting and if possible local phenological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]