Surrogate Parenting Surrogate parenting is an arrangement in which one or more persons, typically a married infertile couple (the intended rearing parents), contract with a woman to gestate a child for them and then to relinquish it to them after birth. Surrogate parenting is also sometimes referred to as “contract pregnancy,” in part, so as not to beg the question about who is the child’s

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe. His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. In dieser Arbeit, Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of

Metaphilosophy What is philosophy? What is philosophy for? How should philosophy be done? These are metaphilosophical questions, metaphilosophy being the study of the nature of philosophy. Contemporary metaphilosophies within the Western philosophical tradition can be divided, rather roughly, according to whether they are associated with (1) Analytic philosophy, (2) Pragmatist philosophy, oder (3) Continental philosophy. The pioneers of the Analytic movement held that philosophy should begin with

Giorgio Agamben (1942– ) Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian philosophy and radical political theory, and in recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone

Collective Moral Responsibility Focusing on groups through the lens of collective moral responsibility has broadened the scope of moral philosophy. As a social practice, as well as an important theoretical issue, moral responsibility has most often been understood in the context of relationships among friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. In diesem Kontext, ascriptions of responsibility and judgments of blame are usually triggered by harm

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Machiavelli war ein Florentiner Philosoph des 16. Jahrhunderts, der vor allem für seine politischen Ideen bekannt war. Seine beiden berühmtesten philosophischen Bücher, Der Prinz und die Diskurse über Livius, wurden nach seinem Tod veröffentlicht. Sein philosophisches Erbe bleibt rätselhaft, Aber dieses Ergebnis sollte für einen Denker, der die Notwendigkeit verstand, manchmal aus dem Schatten heraus zu arbeiten, nicht überraschend sein. There is still no settled scholarly