This book deals with the essential philosophical/ethical dimension that concerns the ends and goods entrusted to medicine. It shows that medicine cannot be reduced to its scientific and technical aspects and that the constitutive philosophical aspects of medicine presently are in a state of crisis.

Medicine, besides being a scientifically based art of diagnosing and curing infirmities of many kinds, also possesses an essential philosophical and ethical dimension. It turns into anti-medicine if it no longer stands in the service of those goods and ends that are entrusted to it. Their nature is in no way known by natural science but can be clarified by philosophy. Consequently, medicine suffers from philosophical diseases of different degrees of gravity if its theory and practice are based on errors about its proper ends. The cure from the life-threatening philosophical diseases of medicine lies in a critique of philosophical mistakes that influence the theory and practice of medicine and in an understanding and practical implementation of those ethically relevant goods that constitute its true ends. At a time when these goods are by no means universally recognized or embodied in laws of medicine, some basic philosophical understanding of them and of the foundations of medical ethics is urgently required. The purpose of this volume is to provide this largely neglected part of general and medical education.

The term "method" of realist phenomenology and philosophy can refer to three kinds of things which are being explored extensively in this work: (1) Kinds of philosophical knowledge used to return to things themselves: intellectual "vision" of necessary intelligible essences, insights into necessary states of affairs, knowledge of less than necessary essences, knowledge of existence as such, of the ego cogitans and of a concretely existing world, other persons, and the absolute being, deductive forms of reasoning, and others. (2) Ways to achieve such knowledge: such as various types of distinctions, asking proper questions, correct use of analogies, and replies to objections. (3) Finally, these methods include several "tricks" and devices such as methodic doubt and epoche; these are subordinated to the other methods, and neither necessary nor universal tools of all philosophical knowledge.

In an enlightening dialogue with Descartes, Kant, Husserl and Gadamer, Professor Seifert argues that the original inspiration of phenomenology was nothing other than the primordial insight of philosophy itself, the foundation of philosophia perennis. His radical rethinking of the phenomenological method results in a universal, objectivist philosophy in direct continuity with Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. In order to validate the classical claim to know autonomous being, the author defends Husserl's methodological principle "Back to things themselves" from empiricist and idealist critics, including the later Husserl, and replies to the arguments of Kant which attempt to discredit the knowability of things in themselves. Originally published in 1982, this book culminates in a phenomenological and critical unfolding of the Augustinian cogito, as giving access to immutable truth about necessary essences and the real existence of personal being.

In an enlightening dialogue with Descartes, Kant, Husserl and Gadamer, Professor Seifert argues that the original inspiration of phenomenology was nothing other than the primordial insight of philosophy itself, the foundation of philosophia perennis. His radical rethinking of the phenomenological method results in a universal, objectivist philosophy in direct continuity with Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. In order to validate the classical claim to know autonomous being, the author defends Husserl's methodological principle "Back to things themselves" from empiricist and idealist critics, including the later Husserl, and replies to the arguments of Kant which attempt to discredit the knowability of things in themselves. Originally published in 1982, this book culminates in a phenomenological and critical unfolding of the Augustinian cogito, as giving access to immutable truth about necessary essences and the real existence of personal being.

At all times physicians were bound to pursue not only medical tasks, but to reflect also on the many anthropological and metaphysical aspects of their discipline, such as on the nature of life and death, of health and sickness, and above all on the vital ethical dimensions of their practice. For centuries, almost for two millennia, how ever, those who practiced medicine lived in a relatively clearly defined ethical and implicitly philosophical or religious 'world-order' within which they could safely turn to medical practice, knowing right from wrong, or at least being told what to do and what not to do. Today, however, the situation has radically changed, mainly due to three quite different reasons: First and most obviously, physicians today are faced with a tremendous development of new possibilities and techniques which allow previously unheard of medical interventions (such as cloning, cryo-conservation, ge netic interference, etc. ) which call out for ethical reflection and wise judgment but regarding which there is no legal and medical ethical tradition. Traditional medical education did not prepare physicians for coping with this new brave world of mod em medicine. Secondly, there are the deep philosophical crises and the philosophical diseases of medicine mentioned in the preface that lead to a break-down of firm and formative legal and ethical norms for medical actions."

Der Ausdruck Phanomenologie ist heute hochst vieldeutig geworden. Husserl hat seit 1905 eine immer starkere Wendung zum Idealismus kantischer Pragung hin vollzogen, durch die er den Boden der Phanomenologie, wie er sie begrundet hatte, verlassen hat. Eine ahnliche Abweichung von der ursprunglichen Idee der Phanomenologie findet sich bei vielen anderen "Phanomenologen." Die "realistische Phanomenologie," deren Vorlaufer von Platon an und Klassiker von Husserl bis Schwarz in dieser ersten umfangreichen deutschsprachigen Anthologie zu Wort kommen, ist kein System, sondern eine Anwendung der philosophischen Urmethoden, wie sie alle grossen Philosophen tatsachlich anwandten, wenn sie ihre entscheidenden Entdeckungen machten. Mogen auch von Philosophen generell andere Methoden bewusst zugrunde gelegt werden, in dem Moment, in dem diese Einsichten gewonnen werden, liegt tatsachlich zu allen Zeiten jener letzte, fruchtbare Kontakt mit "den Sachen selbst" vor, der den Sinn der phanomenologischen Methode ausmacht, wie sie von den Meistern der realistischen Phanomenologie nur bewusster und systematischer angewandt wird als von vielen fruheren Denkern. Nichts ware darum irriger als in der phanomenologischen Betrachtungsweise eine Reduktion der Welt auf blosse "Phanomene" zu erblicken oder gar eine blosse Deskription der "Erscheinung" der Dinge. Zwischen phanomenologischer Betrachtungsweise und metaphysischer Wesensanalyse besteht kein Unterschied oder gar Gegensatz."

Der Streit um die Wahrheit richtet sich vor allem gegen die Fassung der Urteilswahrheit als einer "Ubereinstimmung mit den Sachen." Eine kritische Analyse der Einwande verschiedenster alternativer Wahrheitstheorien (Evidenztheorie, Koharenztheorie, Konsens- und Diskurstheorie, pragmatische Wahrheitstheorien, existentialistisch-heideggerianische, Jasper'sche, wittgensteinianische und andere) uberwindet die Einwande gegen die klassische Korrespondenztheorie durch einen vertieften Begriff des Sachverhalts. Auch in der Verteidigung der Korrespondenztheorie durch Tarski, Popper, Albert und andere neuere Verfechter mussen diverse Mangel uberwunden werden, um zu erkennen, dass sich jene schlichte Urgegebenheit der Urteilswahrheit aus keinem Teilbereich der nicht-formalisierten Sprache und des unermesslichen Reiches des Seins, ja nicht einmal aus der Sphare des Nichts verdrangen oder durch etwas von Korrespondenz (Adaquatio) Verschiedenes ersetzen lasst."

Der erste Band des Uber die Wahrheit bietet eine philosophische Untersuchung: (1) der intrinischen und extrinsischen Bedeutungen von "Wahrheit des Seins" - etwa Seinsautonomie, Realitat, Wesensentsprechung, Entsprechung im Verhaltnis zur Idee, Intelligibilitat, absolut umfassende "innere Seinswahrheit." (2) der Wahrheit des Erkennens: Erkenntniswahrheit ist eine eigentumliche seinsentdeckende "Entsprechung" von Akten mit allen Arten von Seiendem und Sachverhalten. (3) der logischen Wahrheit als praziser Korrespondenz zwischen Urteil (Satz) und Sachverhalt. (4) Wahrheit ist nicht nur Eigenschaft der von Menschen gedachten Urteile, sondern setzt ideale, zeitlose, unendlich viele und perfekte Begriffe und Urteilsinhalte voraus. (5) Die Beziehung zwischen Wahrheit und Person gipfelt in dem letzten metaphysischen Zusammenfallen der Wahrheit selbst in allen ihren Dimensionen ontologischer, epistemologischer, axiologischer und logischer Dimensionen mit dem absoluten, personalen Sein.: "Ich bin die Wahrheit." Dieses "personale Gesicht" der Wahrheit kann aber unmoglich das eines blossen Menschen sein."

From Plato and Aristotle and on to the present, many great philosophers have dealt with the nature of love, which is the most central and profound act of the person. Particularly the philosophy of the twentieth century excelled in this regard, most often inspired by the methods of essential (eidetic) analysis developed and practiced by phenomenology, particularly by realist phenomenology as represented by Max Scheler, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose masterwork, The Nature of Love (St. Augustine's Press, 2009), was recently published in an excellent English translation, and by Karol Wojtyia in his profound analysis of love in Love and Responsibility and in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (1987 in Italian, 2006 in a recent translation). One of the key topics of a philosophy of love regards the question whether love is a self-centered act in the service of what Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas regarded as the supreme goal of human life, happiness, to which the beloved person and love would be means, or whether true love is verily an other-centered and other-directed act motivated by the intrinsic value of a person, such that love can truly be called a "value response" - a response to the beloved person for her own sake. According to this last understanding of true love defended in the present work, any hedonistic interpretation of love as springing from a mere desire for pleasure, and also any eudemonistic interpretation of love according to which love would be a mere means to true self-fulfillment and happiness, turn out to be serious misunderstandings of true love. Instead, happiness, however ardently desired by man, is a superabundant fruit of a true love that first turns to the beloved person for her own sake (propter seipsam), and only through a sincere self-donation can reach authentic happiness. The book answers many objections that have been and could be raised against this central thesis about the self-giving and value responding gesture of true love, for example some profound objections raised by Nygren and by Josef Pieper. The book shows the multiple and complex mysterious root of that value and intrinsic goodness of the person that motivates love. He shows that the genuinely self-transcending and self-sacrificing gesture of love is fully compatible with a motivating role, but only with a subordinated and co-motivating role, of happiness in love, while happiness always remains principally and primarily a fruit of true love and self-donation, rather than its motive.