Still Waiting for St. Benedict: Christianity and Bioethics in Matthew Vest’s Ethics Lost in Modernity

The heterogenity of disorders covered by the term cerebral palsy (CP) may severely hinder communication between families on the one hand and health professionals, such as physiotherapists, paediatricians, and occupational therapists on the other. Common ground for communication about the child with CP is crucial for aspects such as diagnosis, treatment, care, management, and research. In his later work, Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced the concept of ‘language games’ ( Sprachspiele ) to underline that our use of language is permanently governed by rules, but not always by the same rules. On a daily basis we are involved in a large number of ‘language games’, where confusion and misunderstanding usually arise when a statement in one ‘language game’ is interpreted according to the rules of another. Speaking the same language, i.e. being engaged in the same ‘language game’ was one of the primary goals in the development of the Gross Motor Function Classification System, the recent redefinition of CP, as well as the recent development of the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS; also see Morris et al. p 950). This commentary focusses on the communication aspect of the MACS.

Aim/Purpose This study aims to explore the dynamics of interreligious dialogue (IRD) among Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian leaders in Sri Lanka and the Philippines using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and rule-following. It seeks to: (1) analyze how religious traditions function as distinct yet overlapping language games; (2) identify barriers to effective IRD (e.g., political exploitation, historical grievances); and (3) develop context-sensitive strategies to foster interreligious harmony in pluralistic societies. Background Asia’s religious diversity presents opportunities for enrichment but also challenges due to linguistic, cultural, and doctrinal differences. Colonial legacies and nationalist projects have exacerbated tensions, transforming religious identities into political markers. Existing IRD models often overlook micro-linguistic barriers, assuming religious concepts are universally translatable. Wittgenstein’s philosophy offers a framework to address these gaps by emphasizing contextual meaning and communal practices over abstract definitions. Methodology The study employed a qualitative narrative inquiry design, engaging 18 religious leaders (10 from Sri Lanka and 8 from the Philippines) representing Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, conducted both face-to-face and virtually, and analyzed using thematic coding with a Wittgensteinian framework. Ethical considerations included obtaining informed consent, ensuring confidentiality through coded identifiers, and conducting member checking to validate findings. Contribution This study makes four key contributions. Theoretically, it pioneers the application of Wittgenstein’s language games to Asian interreligious dialogue, showing how terms like dharma and jihad gain meaning through specific cultural contexts. Methodologically, it innovatively blends narrative inquiry with linguistic analysis to document real-world interfaith encounters. Practically, it offers concrete solutions for peacebuilding, such as creating hybrid terms like “peace guardians” that respect different traditions while fostering mutual understanding. It contributes to the Informing Science discipline by framing interreligious dialogue as an informing process, demonstrating that effective dialogue – like effective informing – requires linguistic humility and shared practices to bridge gaps across communities. Findings Common Ground: Shared ethical values (justice, peace) exist across traditions but are expressed through distinct language games. Misunderstandings: Decontextualized terms (e.g., jihad as “holy war”) fuel conflict; political manipulation and historical grievances persist. Future Aspirations: Leaders emphasize mutual respect, youth education, and structured dialogue to counter extremism. Recommendations for Practitioners Linguistic Mapping: Train facilitators to analyze religious terms within their native contexts. Hybrid Practices: Develop shared rituals (e.g., interfaith community projects) to foster organic understanding. Power Balancing: Ensure minority voices are included in dialogue structures. Recommendations for Researchers Expand studies to digital platforms and longitudinal designs. Compare IRD dynamics across Asian contexts (e.g., Sri Lanka vs. Indonesia). Include marginalized voices (women, youth) in future research. Impact on Society The study highlights how grassroots initiatives (e.g., Mindanao’s peace guardians) can decolonize IRD and build sustainable harmony. By reframing dialogue as shared practice rather than doctrinal debate, it offers pathways to reduce polarization in pluralistic societies. Future Research Explore AI and social media’s role in shaping interreligious dynamics. Investigate meta-language games for irreconcilable doctrinal differences. Examine the long-term efficacy of hybrid language games in conflict resolution.

Bryan Adams Hampton Fleshly Tabernacles: Milton and the Incarnational Poetics of Revolutionary EnglandFleshly Tabernacles: Milton and the Incarnational Poetics of Revolutionary England. Bryan Adams Hampton. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. viii+374.

This article explores the key group analytic concept of the matrix through the lens of the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. A brief summary of some of Wittgenstein’s key ideas is provided, followed by an overview of how Foulkes thought about the concept, and how his thinking evolved. It is suggested that the introduction of a transpersonal matrix to explain the way in which people can understand each other in a group, is the result of a ‘pseudo-problem’ created by linguistic confusion. It is suggested that it is unhelpful to think of the matrix as ‘scientific’, and that to do so is to confuse the ‘language game’ of science, with the ‘language game’ of group analysis. The value of seeing the matrix as metaphor is emphasized, and it is suggested that the matrix can also be seen as ‘mnemonic’ — a vital way of holding in mind the complexity of the group situation. Based on Wittgenstein’s idea that the meaning of a word is in its use, the potential benefits of gathering data from group analysts on how they themselves use and understand the matrix concept are explored, and grounded theory research is suggested as a suitable method for this.

This chapter begins with Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, which offers seminal philosophical reflections on language. It looks at the numerous implications of Wittgenstein's observations in semiotics, cognition, sociology, and linguistics that testify to the acuteness of the problem of language for philosophy. It also examines how Wittgenstein delved into the way language functions and how he abandoned the hope of constructing a linguistic system based on representation. The chapter discusses the 'language game', which reflect different forms of life or the activities in which individuals engage on a daily basis. It talks about contemporary philosophers, which demonstrate that language does not describe an objective state of affairs but, rather, reveals a particular perspective and worldview that is rooted in culture.

This paper illuminates how the psychoanalytic work of Winnicott and Wittgenstein's philosophy on language complement each other in elucidating a “psychoanalytic language game”. The paper takes a close look at the grammar and linguistic mechanisms which underlie psychoanalytic work. Wittgenstein's linguistic turn from positivism is discussed; his ideas like 'family resemblance', 'aspect seeing' and 'language games' are examined in order to shed light on the paradoxical communication at play in Winnicott's potential space. The paper looks at the potentiality central to therapeutic work, arguing that it accords with what Wittgenstein calls the grammatical optative mode, as Freud already indicated in his theory of dreaming.

Wittgenstein puts forward two different theories of language in his philosophical career. This paper discusses the transformation from early Wittgenstein's theory to later Wittgensteins theory, and analyzes and evaluates the latter. Early Wittgenstein still adopted the western traditional philosophys mode of thinking , based his theory on ontology and languages image theory, and constructed an ideal artificial language to describe facts in the form of proposition. However, such theories and mode of thinking faced many difficulties and challenges, and the necessity and rationality of constructing an ideal language are questioned. Later Wittgenstein realized the countless ways in which language is used in daily life, and believed that each use of language in life should be regarded as a "language game". Given that, the proposition discussed in the earlier theory is just one of the countless "language games". Therefore, Wittgensteins early theory seems to oversimplify the use of language. Later Wittgenstein believed that in order to explore the meaning of language, we should not search for the essence from a metaphysical perspective, but should search for the form of human life and the daily use of language. This is the core of notion meaning is usage . The endless debate of philosophers for thousands of years, therefore, results from the fact that philosophers have been trapped in the dilemma of language and have vainly tried to overcome the upper limit of their mind. Later Wittgenstein thus classify the use of language into misuse and normal use, and reminded human to always reflect on their use of language. Although his theory seems to disobey the traditional mode of thinking of Western philosophy, it should be regarded as a great and valuable idea.

This article examines the subtle interconnection between the sanctity of life and individual autonomy within the context of assisted dying, as seen through the lens of Orthodox Christianity. It seeks to unravel the complex theological, ethical, and pastoral considerations that inform the Orthodox stance on end-of-life issues, particularly the nuanced understanding of suffering, death, and the redemptive potential encapsulated within them. Orthodox theology, with its profound veneration for life as a divine gift, offers a counter-narrative to contemporary discourses that often prioritize personal autonomy and the alleviation of suffering above all. This tradition emphasizes the transformative power of suffering when united with Christ’s own redemptive suffering, proposing a vision of end-of-life care that is rooted in compassion, dignity, and hope for resurrection. The exploration begins with a historical and theological examination of the Orthodox perspective on life’s sanctity, engaging with the teachings of Church Fathers and contemporary theological and bioethical discussions. It highlights the foundational concepts of Orthodox anthropology, which perceives human beings as an indivisible unity of body and soul, reflecting the imago Dei. This anthropological understanding challenges reductionist views of human existence and informs the Orthodox approach to medical ethics, palliative care, and the spiritual accompaniment of the dying. By critically evaluating arguments for and against assisted dying, the article presents a balanced discourse that respects the depth of individual suffering while upholding the intrinsic value of life. It argues that Orthodox Christianity, through its rich theological heritage and pastoral practice, provides a compassionate and ethically nuanced framework for navigating the moral complexities of assisted dying. This framework advocates for an end-of-life care that honors the fullness of the human person, supports the spiritual journey toward eternal life, and fosters a communal embrace of life’s sacred threshold, offering a dignified passage that aligns with the faith’s deepest convictions about human destiny and divine grace.

As bioethicists increasingly turn their attention to the profession of public health, many candidate frameworks have been proposed, often with an eye toward articulating the values and foundational concepts that distinguish this practice from curative clinical medicine. First, I will argue that while these suggestions for a distinct ethics of public health are promising, they arise from problems within contemporary bioethics that must be taken into account. Without such cognizance of the impetus for public health ethics, we risk developing a set of ethical resources meant exclusively for public health professionals, thereby neglecting implications for curative medical ethics and the practice of bioethics more broadly. Second, I will present reasons for thinking some of the critiques of dominant contemporary bioethics can be met by a virtue ethics approach. I present a virtue ethics response to criticisms that concern (1) increased rigor in bioethics discourse; (2) the ability of normative theory to accommodate context; and (3) explicit attention to the nature of ethical conflict. I conclude that a virtue ethics approach is a viable avenue for further inquiry, one that leads us away from developing ethics of public health in a vacuum and has the potential for overcoming certain pitfalls of contemporary bioethics discourse.

In recent decades, there has been a resurgence of interest in discourses of secular and Christian humanism. This interest engages the question of what it means to be truly human, and what the implications of true humanity are for individuals and society. The genesis of theological and secular humanisms stems from the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis—God in Christ becomes human so that human persons may become more truly like the God whose image and likeness they bear. John Wesley was deeply influenced by Eastern Orthodox theologians. Without grasping this hermeneutic position, one cannot understand either the content or intent of John Wesley’s theology adequately. This paper expounds this aspect of Wesley’s theology by means of a historical theological exploration of the influences of Eastern Orthodoxy in Wesleyan soteriology. It is argued that when Wesley’s theology is understood as a hybrid of Eastern and Western theological influences and approaches, Christian perfection in the ordo salutis (order of salvation) supersedes the traditional Protestant emphasis on justification. In particular, this approach holds promise for making a unique and valuable contribution to contemporary discourses around Christian humanism.

In discussing Epistle 2, most of the attention has been focused on the discussion of the filioque, to the exclusion of Photios’ other liturgical and ecclesiastical comments. While the filioque arguments are now widely seen as an interpolation into the text (though whether by the hand of Photios or another author can be debated), these additional comments are largely glossed over. However, the liturgical comments in Photios’ Ep. 2 are indeed a central point of contention for the Patriarch himself, rather than a scribe or secondary author. Photios’ antagonism towards Latin liturgy is part of a broader cultural conflict between the two halves of medieval Christendom. For Photios, as well as his predecessors and successors, Orthodoxy was increasingly defined as not only a theological issue, but an issue of praxis, and the presence of innovative liturgical practices was indicative of a perverted theology. These sorts of differences would have been especially notable for Greek missionaries to the Bulgars who lived and worked beside, and in opposition to, Latin missionaries in a competition for ecclesiastical hegemony. Ultimately, Photios’ writings against the liturgical practices of the Latins were of considerably greater importance to his contemporaries than the filioque was to his successors, and the implications of Photios’ theology, given his enduring importance to Orthodox Christianity, have the potential to create new flashpoints in contemporary discussions between Orthodox and Western Christians.

Policymakers seeking to introduce expensive national eHealth programs would be advised to study lessons from elsewhere. But these lessons are unclear, partly because a paradigm war (controlled experiment versus interpretive case study) is raging. England's $20.6 billion National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) ran from 2003 to 2010, but its overall success was limited. Although case study evaluations were published, policymakers appeared to overlook many of their recommendations and persisted with some of the NPfIT's most criticized components and implementation methods. In this reflective analysis, illustrated by a case fragment from the NPfIT, we apply ideas from Ludwig Wittgenstein's postanalytic philosophy to justify the place of the "n of 1" case study and consider why those in charge of national eHealth programs appear reluctant to learn from such studies. National eHealth programs unfold as they do partly because no one fully understands what is going on. They fail when this lack of understanding becomes critical to the programs' mission. Detailed analyses of the fortunes of individual programs, articulated in such a way as to illuminate the contextualized talk and action ("language games") of multiple stakeholders, offer unique and important insights. Such accounts, portrayals rather than models, deliver neither statistical generalization (as with experiments) nor theoretical generalization (as with multisite case comparisons or realist evaluations). But they do provide the facility for heuristic generalization (i.e., to achieve a clearer understanding of what is going on), thereby enabling more productive debate about eHealth programs' complex, interdependent social practices. A national eHealth program is best conceptualized not as a blueprint and implementation plan for a state-of-the-art technical system but as a series of overlapping, conflicting, and mutually misunderstood language games that combine to produce a situation of ambiguity, paradox, incompleteness, and confusion. But going beyond technical "solutions" and engaging with these language games would clash with the bounded rationality that policymakers typically employ to make their eHealth programs manageable. This may explain their limited and contained response to the nuanced messages of in-depth case study reports. The complexity of contemporary health care, combined with the multiple stakeholders in large technology initiatives, means that national eHealth programs require considerably more thinking through than has sometimes occurred. We need fewer grand plans and more learning communities. The onus, therefore, is on academics to develop ways of drawing judiciously on the richness of case studies to inform and influence eHealth policy, which necessarily occurs in a simplified decision environment.

What happens when ‘manifesto’, as the emblem of a committed artistic or political action, is used as the title of consumer products such as perfume? What do critics mean when they say that a certain work is ‘a manifesto’ rather than literature? When does this label appear as a superlative, and when, in contrast, is it a form of denunciation? What does J. L. Austin mean when he wishes, in the conclusion of ‘How to Do Things with Words’, that his work is not seen as ‘an individual manifesto’? The variations of the word ‘manifesto’ in popular discourse are one of the things that makes the manifesto, as Luca Somigli asserts, ‘notoriously so difficult to define’. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of ‘language game’ and the rich scholarly literature on the manifesto genre, this essay offers a reflection on ‘manifesto’ as a multilayered, performative concept which enables multiple cultural agents to perform various discursive actions. Examining its contemporary pragmatic and rhetorical meaning in light of its history helps in understanding how the term ‘manifesto’ is actually manifested.

The idea of openness as a political, social, and psychological metaphor has been part of a set of enduring narratives in the West since the time before the flourishing of modern democracy, scientific communication, and the rise of the knowledge economy. Principally these narratives have been about the nature of freedom, the primacy of rights to self-expression, the constitution of the public sphere or the commons, and the intimate link between openness and creativity. The core philosophical idea concerns openness to experience and interpretation such that a work, language, and culture consider as a semiotic system permit multiple meanings and interpretations with an accent on the response, imagination, and activity of the reader, learner, or user. The classic work that philosophically develops this central idea is the Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) who draws a close relationship between language as a set of open overlapping speech activities or discourses he calls “language games” and a “form of life” (or culture). Wittgenstein of the Investigations demonstrated that there was no such thing as a logical syntax or meta-logical language considered as a closed system of rules that acts as a hard and fast grammar for any natural language. The ‘language games’ conception seems to deny the very possibility of a logical calculus for language such that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions (or logical rules) for use of a word. In Wittgenstein’s account of rule- following we see a view of openness to language and to the text that permits multiple interpretations and the active construction of meanings. This emphasis on the openness of language, of the text and, indeed, of ‘openness to the other’ as aspect of subjectivity, which rests on the values of multiplicity and pluralism, is in part a reaction by Wittgenstein against the logical empiricist understandings of logico-linguistic rules that allegedly allow for only pure and single meanings unambiguously correlated with words that depict the world.KeywordsIntellectual PropertyOpen WorkInformation SocietyLanguage GameIdentity CardThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Predominant among the terminological ambiguities that plague contemporary bioethics is confusion attending the meaning of the term "human dignity," particularly as it applies to so-called end-of-life discussions. This study surveys current trends in treatment of the concept of dignity, examining relevant thinkers who see dignity as redundant or as capability-dependent. These inadequate views are contrasted with an attitude, based theologically in Mark 5, that understands human dignity to represent an absolute characteristic that is donated graciously to all bearers of imago Dei. Human dignity must thus be affirmed as inviolable and independent of autonomy, rationality, or capability. A specific task of the Christian Church is to faithfully recognize and proclaim this dignity. This investigation is particularly relevant in the face of contemporary discussions regarding euthanasia and physician-assisted death. Lay Summary: Much of the polarization within the contemporary bioethical discussion proceeds out of confusion regarding how we ought to define the terms of the debate. If we may take the existing debates regarding euthanasia and physician-assisted death as an example, we may understand the vital need for a sensible definition of the term that stands at the heart of the arguments of both sides of the debate: "human dignity." As such, this study seeks to define dignity in a logical, theological, deeply personal, and highly practical fashion, and to outline the critical role of the Church within such an understanding. Sometimes, when I walk into the room, he ignores me. Sometimes he thinks I am someone else. Most often he is asleep, subjugated by drugs designed to prevent agitation, although "agitation" is the sterilized hospital word for what I would call unbridled panic, total disorientation. The night he had the stroke, they had to tie him to the bed just to keep him in the hospital. And they wouldn't let me see him because he had been calling my name. Very dramatic, but most of his suffering, and our grief, is not dramatic. It is just the mundane process of one man slowly fading, becoming, every day, more of a stranger to himself and to those he loves.