Major Scholars Research Articles

Introduction to Enzo Paci's Presentation at the 10th Triennial

October 01 2002 Introduction to Enzo Paci's Presentation at the 10th Triennial Giovanni Anceschi Giovanni Anceschi Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Giovanni Anceschi Online Issn: 1531-4790 Print Issn: 0747-9360 © 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 Design Issues (2002) 18 (4): 48–53. https://doi.org/10.1162/074793602320827433 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Giovanni Anceschi; Introduction to Enzo Paci's Presentation at the 10th Triennial. Design Issues 2002; 18 (4): 48–53. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/074793602320827433 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsDesign Issues Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Hero Worshiping in African Literature: The Case of David Attwell

Since scholars are more accustomed to doing obsequies and encomiums for departed colleagues than to composing praise songs for their compeers (or superiors), I was particularly intrigued by the two full-blown essays devoted to honoring Bernth Lindfors in your recent pages (34.4 [2001]: 143-54). Those essays are particularly interesting because they go beyond the scopes of the usual brief acknowledgments that scholars habitually append to their books. Of the two, however, Kenneth Harrow's gives a statement whose breadth and reach are more considerably balanced and objective. He begins by lauding Lindfors for the wide scope of his scholarly interests, which cover "the entire history of African literature: that he began the study of African literature not only when it was in its infancy, but that he was part of that beginning of the critical work [. . .] and has continued to be a bellwether for the discipline" (147). He then praises Lindfors for "the cohort of major scholars" he has raised, before going on to acknowledge that Lindfors's work nevertheless has both "strengths and weaknesses" (148).

Teaching Architectural History in Great Britain and Australia: Local Conditions and Global Perspectives

Over the past two decades, enormous changes have been imposed on British universities. Readers from other countries may be perplexed by the world of acronyms that now characterizes British academia, but it has had such a dominating effect on our lives that it may be useful to explain the wider context before turning to the specific issues relating to architectural history itself. In an effort to improve accountability, the state has devised complex procedures of external monitoring. Both teaching and research in all British university departments are regularly assessed under the auspices of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE-or, in Scotland, SHEFC) and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). Hardly any British university teachers are immune to the stress and administrative demands imposed by these repeated government inspection processes. The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is a quinquennial procedure that assesses the calibre of research produced by academic staff in defined subject areas. Architectural history falls in two main categories: Unit of Ass ssment or UOA 33, Built Environment; and UOA 60, History of Art, Architecture and Design. Some architectural historians occupy posts in other areas, such as history, Oriental studies, or English, and are assessed with their own department. The bureaucracy involved in preparing a department's submission to the RAE is enormous and occupies valuable time that could well be spent on scholarship and teaching. In essence, each a ademic staff member has to nominate four pieces of significant, published research in the relevant five-year period, and the research profile of the department is assessed in terms of its national or international reputation. The number and size of research grants are also important criteria; therefore, more scientific and coll borative p ograms are favored over individual scholarly p rformance. In theory, a high rating in the RAE leads to increased government funding, but since the rewards are passed to the central university authorities, individual departments may never receive any noticeable benefit. The competitive aspect of the process encourages the poaching of prolific scholars from other universities and may even l ad to the employment of high-profile academics in nonteaching positions. Moreover, the emphasis on speed of publication discourages major scholarly contributions and favors quicker projects, such as edited books. Although the RAE does not, in itself, involve teaching, the pressures on staff to produce a steady flow of publications inevitably distract them from teaching. Whereas the RAE affects teaching only indirectly, the QAA inspects teaching performance in all subject areas. The stressful and time-consuming aspects of the process have left many scars, but objectively some benefits must be acknowledged. Problems of amateurish presentation and poorly structured courses have been addressed, and students now expect well-prepared course documentation and handouts. Over the past decade or so, all university departments in the U.K. have undergone a Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA), an exercise that led to bureaucratic demands even greater than those imposed by the RAE. As a result, several prominent universities have declared that they will not cooperate with future TQA inspections. It therefore seems unlikely that the exercise will be repeated in its present

J.H. Plumb and the Problem of Historical Reputation

April 2002 * Historically Speaking23 DISPATCH FROM THE UK Jeremy Black J.H. Plumb and the Problem of Historical Reputation How should we as professionals record and discuss the life, work, and influence of those who have recently died? Invariably, this is handled in a delicate fashion with laudatory remarks directed towards the deceased. This arises from a sense ofloss focused more particularly by sympathy for those who were close to the deceased. Anauraofsanctityseems to descend in the obituaries. Years, sometimes decades, laterwhen theirpapers are opened and scholarly study is directed thither a different picture can emerge. At the same time, this passage ofyears can ensure that much of the personal impression has been lost, and, more particularly, thatthecomplexity ofthe impact we all have on contemporaries is lost. to vtriThesctiTOughtS'werethrmttìito mymind by the response to the death on October 2 1, 2001, of SirJack Plumb, Professor ofModern English Historyat Cambridge, 1966-74, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, 1978-82. Plumb taught and supported the careers ofseveral prominentmodern historians , and his death provides an opportunityto see how historical reputation is constructed and to pose the question ofhow we should respond. Eulogistic obituaries by Plumb's former pupils appeared in the press. Simon Schama ended his in the Independent by declaring: "Should historysomehowsurvive as the great art it has been . . . should it somehow keep a place in the indispensable archive of our beaten-up world, it will be because Jack Plumb wrote and taught and lived as he did." In the Guardian, Neil McKendrickstated that Plumb won his "war" with Geoffrey Elton: "The studyofhistoryhas marched irresistibly in the direction in which he predicted and led." Yet none ofthis captures the animosity inspired bya man spoken ofas evil byRichard Cobb,Jack Gallagher, and other major scholars of their and Plumb's vintage; nor, more seriously, did such obituaries explain the tensions that this animosity focused on. Iwas puzzled bythis contrast, and decided to write an alternative appreciation, one that would focus on the scholarship, as, unlike the obituarists, I have worked on most of the material used by Plumb and have also published books on Walpole and the politics of his period. I intended to say nothing about die man. I had met him, and will come to that, but did not know him well and had no real view one way or other: although I was an undergraduate in Cambridge, Plumb no longer lectured, and I left to do graduatework in Oxford. Yet I could not help askingother scholars if they knew Plumb and was struck by their responses. I was told story after story that I shall not repeathere reflectingverynegatively onJackPlumb as a human being. None ofthis Historians anatomize others, but are not goodat seeing the role ofpersonality and patronage in their own world. mayseem ofanyconsequence, butitsuggests to me that the rivalry between Plumb and Elton discussed bythe obituarists (most fruitfully by the perceptive David Cannadine, another former protégé, in the Institute of Historical Research's electronic Reviews in History [December 2001, with an edited version in History Today February 2002]) should be placed as much in the personalas in the professional field, and that his personality may have prevented Plumb from gainingthe position and prestige he avidly pursued, not least the Regius chair atCambridge and a peerage. Position, prestige; the third is patronage. There is no doubt that Plumb's skillful and even ruthless use ofpatronage helped arouse the anger and maybe envy ofothers. This determination extended across the Atlantic. I can recall the head ofone IvyLeague department telling me about the "extraordinary pressure" brought to bear to take a Plumb candidate. There was certainly a malignity that was the other side ofhis active sponsorship ofhis own reputation and the careers of his protégés. Others were abused, damaged, and harmed. To offer a personal note: born in 1955, 1 was too young to have anything much to do with Plumb. However, in 1978 I was summoned to see him in order to be told there was no point persisting with my graduate work on Walpole's foreign policy, as he was going to publish the third volume ofhis Ufe the followingyear and anyotherworkwould be...

Moshe Pelli. Kinds of Genre in Haskalah Literature: Types and Topics. Israel: Hakkibutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1999. xxv (English), 357 pp. (Hebrew).

Moshe Pelli, one of the major scholars of Hebrew Haskalah (Enlightenment) literature in our time and one of the major contributors to Hebrew culture in America, presents in this book the fruits of his twenty-five years of study of the major genres in this literature. Previously published articles have been rewritten by Pelli for this book.

Introduction: Funding Gaps

Theoretical and empirical foundations of government policies to plug alleged business funding gaps are highly controversial but rarely subject to wide-ranging in-depth debate. This symposium from major scholars in the field provides a counterbalance. Topics addressed cover the theory of lending under asymmetric information; its implications for overlending; relationship lending as a market solution to information asymmetries; government emulation of private sector decision-making to eliminate underprovision of high tech equity and theoretically-based empirical work testing for funding deficiencies in the high tech sector. Despite the very different and potentially contradictory contributions the result is, surprisingly, a set of mutually agreed policy conclusions.

Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History

Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History. Edited by John B. Boles. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001. Pp. v, 272. Preface, contributors, bibliographic references. $34.95.) When recounting his social interactions with fellow Yale divinity students in early 1960s, noted scholar of American church and native E. Brooks Holifield laments that his Yale contemporaries found something slightly comical simply about having had misfortune to be born in place like Arkansas (p. 137). John Boles's edited collection, Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History, uses personal narratives, such as this frank account by Holifield, as analytical tools through which to explore issues of identity, gender, and ethnicity within largely terra incognita of southern evangelical history (p. 57). Most striking are reasons cited by major scholars in field for grappling-often in an intensely personal way-with southern religious experience. Donald G. Mathews' theological musings on salvific power of Cross led him to uncover of southern atonement. Boles set for himself goal of becoming a kind of poor man's Perry Miller of South (p. 121). For Albert J. Raboteau, experience of receiving Holy Communion at southern Roman Catholic church sparked lifelong interest in racism in Catholic church: remember going to receive Holy Communion. I remember priest carrying host; I remember him passing me by, and again passing me by, carrying host in his hands, passing me by until he had given communion to all white people (p. 197). Andrew M. Manis details his journey from the Divine Liturgy of Greek Orthodoxy to Southern Baptist Bible-thumping, as part of his scholarly pursuit of intersection of Bible-Belt culture and Greek-American religiosity (p. 222). Clearly, these kinds of autobiographical musings shed light on little-documented aspects of southern Christianity, particularly religious dynamics of those groups that were suspended somewhere between evangelical center and marginalized (p. 250). The essays are most useful when they provide reader with clear sense ofthe historiographical rhythms of this increasingly prominent field. Samuel S. Hill, who describes himself as an accidental pioneer in southern evangelical history, admits that when he began his graduate career in 1963, there was no academic field at all (p. …

The Sociology of Religion of W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) wrote a significant amount on religion from a penetrating sociological perspective. He should be considered the first American sociologist of religion. This article calls attention to Du Bois as a founding sociologist of religion and summarizes his major scholarly contributions. His work in the sociology of religion is characterized by 1) a reliance upon standard and diverse sociological methods in generating data; 2) a focus on the religious life of African Americans, and 3) pioneering special attention to the this-worldly, communal, specifically social rewards which religious affiliation provides.

Presidential Power and Political Science

The initial purpose of this article is to assess the enduring power of Richard E. Neustadt's 1960 book, Presidential Power. The book transformed the ways in which subsequent generations of presidential scholars thought and wrote about the presidency. It has continued to be the touchstone for scholarship. However, scholars have also qualified, modified, challenged, reformulated, and rejected Neustadt's theses. One result has been a richer literature on the presidency, which itself requires assessment.

The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts (review)

Short Notices 253 ofthe Dialogue concerning Heresies. Each text is examined in terms of the social, political and personal context of the time, and Marius uses each piece ofwriting to establish the character traits of his subject. Yet while it is a readable, educated, and enjoyable work, Thomas More: A Biography is not a fitting legacy for Marius, w h o died shortly after its paperback release. His major scholarly contributions to the study of the saintly Lord Chancellor are his 25 years' work on the Yale Edition ofthe Complete Works ofSt Thomas More. Thomas More: A Biography is a book pitched at a popular readership, albeit a very interesting, well-written, and thought-provoking one. It is a good starting point for discussion of Thomas More and his writings; it raises many interesting issues, and is full of provocative points. For example, Marius argues that Book One of More's Utopia 'is not a cry for reform but a bid for supporting ironic smiles' (p. 158). H e is especially controversial in his re-evaluation of More's personal character, portraying him as a ruthless hunter of heretics, a strict authoritarian, and somewhat sexually repressed. However, by Marius' own admission he 'kept the scholarly apparatus to a minimum' (p. 525), so while he lists a number of secondary works, they are not cited within the text. This limits the usefulness of the work, and reduces it to an educated opinion, rather than an academic study. David Tulloch Department ofHistory Victoria University of Wellington May, Steven W , The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts, Asheville, North Carolina, Pegasus Press, The University ofNorth Carolina, 1999; paper; pp. 407; ISBN 1-889818-05-4. This is a reprint of a book initially published in 1991 which was deservedly reviewed at the time. Its reappearance is justified. Atfirstglance it looks like a text book for a very specialised course on Elizabethan courtly poetry, since it has severaf chapters examining the historical context, followed by scrupulously edited and annotated texts of poems. But closer reading reveals that it is much more than this. The book is based on close and detailed research, and it is essential reading for scholars of the period as well as students. M a y analyses the court 254 Short Notices system under Elizabeth, who had a household of over one thousand employees, pointing out that only a small handful, qualified by rank, social status and personal accessibility to the Queen, can with accuracy be called courtiers. His sober account puts to shame the broad generalisations about power and ideology given by many new historicists, who can be suspected of not really knowing what a 'courtier' is. Each individual w h o m M a y categorises as a courtier (based on Elizabeth's personal acceptance and, more technically, on the list of those who exchanged gifts with her at N e w Year), is examined on a case by case basis, establishing the exact social rank, political position and poetic motivation. At the centre in the 1570s and 1580s were the 'Blessed Trinitie', the formative Sidney, his friend Greville, and his much neglected but highly influential mentor, Dyer. Then there is a group who used poetry for personal advancement, whose work is less varied and innovatory. In a sense Raleigh belongs here, because his poetry was undoubtedly self-interested, but he pursued no narrow financial gain or specific suit to the monarch, and he rises above the ruck because 'his lines dealt with the very essence of courtiership, his social relationship with his sovereign'(p. 120). Devotional verse was a fairly prudent and safe genre for the courtly aspirant, since it gave the impression of avoiding the 'envy, deceit, backbiting, and flattery, as well as the vanity of courtly display in its myriad forms'. The more audacious played for higher stakes by writing verse drama, one of the Sidney legacies. M y criticism ofthe book is purely typographical, and apparently a publishing decision rather than authorial. For both students and researchers, the second section - the edition of the poems - is not presented in a clearly defined way. Page headers could have indicated the actual poet dealt with...

A Ginkgo biloba/Panax ginseng combination enhances memory in healthy middle aged volunteers

Major scholars in the field, on the basis of a 3-day consensus, created an in-depth review of current knowledge on the role of diet in cardiovascular disease (CVD), the changing global food system and global dietary patterns, and potential policy solutions. Evidence from different countries and age/race/ethnicity/socioeconomic groups suggesting the health effects studies of foods, macronutrients, and dietary patterns on CVD appear to be far more consistent though regional knowledge gaps are highlighted. Large gaps in knowledge about the association of macronutrients to CVD in low- and middle-income countries particularly linked with dietary patterns are reviewed. Our understanding of foods and macronutrients in relationship to CVD is broadly clear; however, major gaps exist both in dietary pattern research and ways to change diets and food systems. On the basis of the current evidence, the traditional Mediterranean-type diet, including plant foods and emphasis on plant protein sources provides a well-tested healthy dietary pattern to reduce CVD.

How we are, or how we say that we are: The post–war comparative politics of Hans Daadler and others

Abstract. This article reviews Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession (London: Pinter 1997 and 1999), edited by Hans Daalder, one of the fathers of contemporary comparative politics. Such a volume is the collection of the autobiographies of almost all the major scholars of comparative European politics during the post–war period. It can be considered a non tedious way of getting a picture of the sub–field. What is the European comparative politics that emerges from these autobiographies? In reviewing the book the answer is provided through the analysis of four main features: first, what are the themes and methods that prevail; second, is it possible to single out the factors which form the basis of the growth in the field?— a question Daalder also asks; third, what are the “lessons” to be learnt from these scholars; and fourth, what are the most evident and noteworthy differences that exist between the work of the scholars who wrote a contribution for this book and those of the younger generations.

Understanding literacy: Theoretical foundations for research in media ecology

The major scholars foundational to media ecology have all shared an interest and focus in literacy. From their study of literacy and its consequences, a set of theories and approaches developed which has provided media ecologists with frameworks with which to study all other media. This essay reviews the major scholarship of Harold Innis, Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, Jack Goody, Walter Ong, and Elizabeth Eisenstein, as they focused on the development of writing systems, and later, printing. The theoretical frameworks to have emerged from their inquiries are central to understanding media ecology.

Beyond Visual Literacy: Omniphasism, A Theory of Balance (Part One of Three)

The first part of this article integrates the author’s original work with a synthesis of the work of major cognitive and visual scholars. The author develops a historical and contemporary theoretical basis for Intuitive Intelligence as the primary, equal and complementary cognitive paradigm to our Rational Intelligence system. Further, the theory establishes Visual Intelligence as a primary Intuitive Intelligence. Omniphasism means “all in balance ” and defines the concept that both Rational and Intuitive Intelligneces are equally significant to whole-mind cognitive development.

Critical Essays on Henry Fielding (review)

REVIEWS 135 Albert J. Rivero, ed. Critical Essays on Henry Fielding. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998. xi + 245pp. ISBN 0-7838-0059-2. In the 1960s, the collection of "major essays" on canonical authors was a standard genre of literary publishing and a favourite source of undergraduate research. Nor were these collections withouttheir advantage in education: from these collections, such as the Critical Essays series published by Prentice-Hall, many of us were introduced to the major scholars in each field and the issues that they debated. There is reason, then, to welcome the revival of this form by the same publisher in conjunction with G.K. Hall. More than three decades since Ronald Paulson's Fielding: A Collection of Critical Essays (1962), Alberto J. Rivero's new edition of Critical Essays on Henry Fielding presents some of the best scholarship on this author during the 1980s and 1990s. A new generation of students will have convenient access to the problems and trends that have dominated Fielding studies over the last twenty years. It cannot be said that these have been bumper years in this field. As Rivero points out in his introduction, Fielding has fallen under the shadow of his great rival Samuel Richardson, whose explorations ofgender and ideology in the middle class appeal strongly to feminist and political scholarship. Fielding's heyday was in the 1960s, when his sunny defence of sexual love (now so suspect) seemed liberated and "healthy." In our more cynical times, filled with murmurs of violence and non-meaning, we identify more strongly with the tortuous moral and interpretative confusions of Richardson's epistolary fiction. Compared with Richardson, Fielding's chatty and moralizing narrator seems naïve, old-fashioned, and sexist. But is it possible we have missed much ofFielding's depth and complexity?This possibility seems stronger in the light of recent scholarship. Take, for example, Fielding's views of women. Feminist scholars had previously found little to praise in an author whose portraits of forceful or educated women, such as Mrs Western or Mrs Atkinson, could be so scathing and who seems so forgiving ofgood-hearted rakes such as Tom Jones. These feminist assumptions were challenged in Fielding andthe Woman Question (1989) by Angela Smallwood, who emphasized the moral independence of heroines like Sophia and Amelia, as well as Fielding's hatred of marital oppression and sexual violence. Smallwood's study is not, regrettably, represented here. But an updated perspective on Fielding's attitudes to women is taken by April London in an essay from 1987 that presents Tom Jones as "central to the literary and cultural transition marked by the feminization ofdiscourse in the eighteenth century" (p. 131). As viewed by London, Fielding does not necessarily lose out in a comparison with Richardson. Fielding's heroine shows impressive vigour and it is she who must judge and forgive the hero. This does not mean that Fielding merely jettisoned the patriarchal values of his age: Sophia finally gives up her individuality and humanity, becoming a pretty chattel on the property won by Tom at the end ofthe novel. Fielding was testing, not destroying, the system ofmale domination, a point also made in an excellent essay onAmelia by Alison Conway. Like April London, Conway compares Fielding with Richardson on the "woman question." In contrast to Richardson's austere Clarissa, she observes, Amelia does not confine her sexual nature within the narrow corset 136 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 11:1 of eighteenth-century chastity. Late in the novel, for example she is so moved by Sergeant Atkinson's passion that she indulges a momentary "Tenderness" that, we are told, would have "displeased" her husband had he known. How do we interpret this sudden spark of illicit desire? Should we, as Terry Castle argues in her essay on "Masquerade and Allegory" in Amelia, regard it as a baffling disruption of the novel's moral code, a foreshadowing of "those transgressive plots of desire and consummation characteristic of the later roman larmoyant" (p. 192)? Or should we see it, as Conway maintains, as an uplifting affirmation ofAmelia's humanness and emotional autonomy? In either case, Fielding cannot be dismissed as merely a breezy patriarch, the cheerful...

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Kaiserreich

W. E. B. Du Bois(1868–1963) was the most influential Afro-American intellectual of the twentieth century. His accomplishments in journalism and the academic disciplines of history and sociology were pioneering, and have only recently come to be fully appreciated. His more than twenty books and over 1,000 articles should qualify him to be considered one of America’s major scholars, and certainly the leading interpreter of race relations in the U.S., although he was never offered a professorship at a major American university. In the past two decades, Du Bois has experienced a renaissance of interest in his scholarship as well as in his Pan-African politics. Although he wrote three autobiographics in his lifetime and submitted to a 180 page oral history in 1960 at Columbia University, Du Bois’s life and thought have become the subject of innumerable books and articles by historians—a cottage industry in and of itself. Du Bois’s early writings merit the attention of historians and social scientists because of their freshness even after a century and because of his openness to ideas and methods that one would not expect from his later writings.

“With Eyes on the Prize”

This checklist of books recently awarded honors by major American scholarly societies in the social sciences updates the list in the first installment of this series (C&UL2:2, 1995). It is intended to provide academic library book selectors with a listing of books that have received early favorable reception among the book authors' disciplinary peers. Coupled with use of other annual “best book” lists, such lists can help selectors better document the quality of their selecting efforts.

The Study of Appeasement in International Relations: Polemics, Paradigms, and Problems

Research in a variety of fields has provided a perspective on policies of appeasement that differs significantly from the simplistic images underlying commonly held foreign policy attitudes. Nevertheless, most journalists, politicians, pundits and even many prominent students of international relations have virtually ignored serious scholarship on the subject of appeasement, relying instead on the highly negative view that emerged after the failed British effort to avert war in the late 1930s. This essay critically analyzes major scholarly contributions in the study of appeasement and divides this research into three general approaches: orthodox/realist; behavioral/utility; and liberal/exchange. While all three shed light on factors that contribute to the inception of strategies of appeasement, the liberal/exchange approach - by far the least developed or known of the three - possesses the most potential for offering a nuanced explanation. More generally, this review seeks to establish a basis for a critical analysis not only of the journalistic dogma that has attached to such cases as Bosnia, China, and North Korea, but also of the policies themselves.

A Major English Literature and American Studies Scholar Leaves Princeton for Stanford

A Major English Literature and American Studies Scholar Leaves Princeton for Stanford

Jewish Perspectives on Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Editor's Note: On September 19, 1998 Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University, Ze'ev Falk died during the preparation of this manuscript. His place as a major contemporary scholar in the field of law and religion led the editors to publish here that portion of the manuscript Professor Falk had completed, plus references he intended to explore in later sections of the manuscript. At present, the question arises, with respect to terminal patients, whether certain life can be considered worthwhile and reconcilable with human dignity. As a result of Kantian philosophy, modern people tend to assume that human beings are able, and should aspire, to make judgments regarding their life and bodies as well as their souls. In this view, a patient should be given full information about his or her situation and about the alternatives. Using this information, he or she should have the capacity to decide by him/herself what course of action is to be taken. In the modern view, even a patient in a coma should be treated according to the expression of his or her will, for example as formulated in a “Living Will.” Biblical and rabbinical thought seem to have reflected an understanding for suicide. However, suicide belies a key issue unique to Judaism: why, in the course of Jewish suffering and Judaism's struggle to survive, suicide became unacceptable.