Dialogue and Universalism

Michael H. Mitias argues that friendship is a central moral value constituting an integral part of the good life and therefore deserving a prominent place in ethical theory. He consequently calls upon ethicists to make immediate and decisive adjustments toward accommodating what he regards as a neglected organic relationship between friendship and morality. This is not a fanciful amendment to our standard conception of morality but a radical proposal grounded in a unifying vision to recapture the right way of doing ethics. While the assessment is compelling, and the plea well-placed, neither has been fully understood in the scholarly reception of Mitias. This paper clarifies both. What sets it apart from other reactions to Mitias is a holistic approach drawing on literary considerations as well as philosophical ones. The combined aim is to demonstrate that Mitias is not seeking simply to restore friendship to its rightful place in normative ethical theory, which is indeed the full extent of his formal mission, but that he is seeking to do so specifically within virtue ethics. This interpretation rests on a broad engagement with Mitias’s publications beyond the recent treatise often taken understandably yet erroneously to be his only work on the subject.

This essay engages the question whether it makes sense to talk about friendship between human beings and robots. Encountering the question of human and robot friendship, many might initially dismiss the possibility of such relationships out of hand. But such dismissals, it seems, based solely on the basis of species membership, are nothing more than unjustifiable speciesism. Mitias’s analysis of friendship is helpful, but makes the conditions for friendship demanding. Nevertheless, his framework implies that human and robot friendships are possible.

This article engages Friendship: A Central Moral Value by Michael H. Mitias. It questions Mitias’ distinction between friendship as a moral and theoretical concern as opposed to a practical one. It distinguishes the narrow from the wide meanings of philia in Aristotle’s approach. It looks at the resonances of classical approaches in later theories of friendship, while also attending to the innovations of later thinkers. It suggests that the moral paradigms Mitias delineates might not be as hegemonic nor as hermetically sealed as he suggests. Mitias’ contribution is better understood as an addition to moral philosophy than to friendship studies.

This paper on friendship starts with noticing the cultural specificities of the words, “friend” and “friendship”: how they possess rich nuances and meanings in some cultures not available in others. It has then delved into Aristotle’s treatment of friendship in his three ethical treatises with special reference to the relationship between friendship and morality and that between friendship and self-knowledge. Some comments are made on whether friendship is possible between persons of unequal virtues and whether they are capable of attaining self-knowledge. This paper also discusses certain challenges to Aristotle’s claims that friendship is an unalloyed good. The point of these challenges is that friendship can also be a great bad. The paper concludes with the observation how rare has friendship become in the modern world resulting in loneliness, depression and alienation.

This paper is about: a) the model of friendship bonds Plato presents to us through his character, Socrates; b) the kinds of friendship bonds Plato tried to create with his students and wanted his students to create when they returned home; c) the friendship bonds lovers of Plato’s dialogues have created with each other for 2400 years; and d) the bonds that those who want to imitate Socrates should create with all of their fellowcitizens. Such bonds are critical for sustaining non-authoritarian societies. Since 2016, Westerners have become more aware of the need of intellectuals to develop these bonds.

The author investigates possible variants of the correlation between violence and nonviolence in politics. He bases on the scrupulous perusal of primary sources, and aspires to place accents on the concept of a humanistic policy. He asserts that the decision of modern global international and internal problems can be reached only on the basis on a humanistic policy of non-violence: nonresistance to the evil by violence that does not except, but sometimes need resistance to the evil by force. Principles of humanistic policy were opened in “axial time” by world religions and philosophy, advanced by Immanuel Kant, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, etc.

This paper argues that values if they are sheering through collective discussion and communicative-pragmatic justification have been proved to be a capital of society which forms the foundation and horizon for its sustainable development. The concept of personal axiological competence as an ability to produce and interiorize share values on the basis of their critical reflection, critical selection and integration has been developed by taking into account the specifics of the world of values in the context of globalization. A role of higher education and dialogic education in its formation has been characterized.

Norms and values set in professional ethics are viewed here as fundamentals of professional activity. Professional culture is a culture of thinking, acting and communicating. It arises from a specific professional work, its subject, methodology, and stylistic originality that allow to build ideal models of professional acting. Professional ethics lies at the intersection of the individual personal sphere, socially important results of professional activity and human values.

The process of constructing a social reality where “difference” becomes a social asset rather than a monster that threatens peace and progress must commence with a phenomenological understanding of social interactions within and among human societies. In my opinion, Hegel, more than any other thinker, has constructed a phenomenological framework that adequately captures and represents the nature of group interactions within human societies. This paper explores the Hegelian phenomenon of social identity, and, especially, characterizes the interactions between and among various social identities. It is a modest effort to contribute theoretically to the available discourse on the management of “difference” in multi-ethnic societies.

Since the 20th century the quantum physics has shown various phenomena, judged as “seldom and not easily understandable” by the theories of classic physics. From the beginning of the “Kopenhagener Deutung,” Einstein claimed against Heisenberg, Bohr, etc. that the particle physics lacks “physical reality.” A number of physicists have tried to clarify the labyrinth of particle as a minimal substance in the phenomena of the micro world. The entanglement of the “double particle” emitted from a π-meson in its teleportation is one of those phenomena. However, a successful new thesis has also become a target for the antithesis by deputies. Even if the “uncertainty” of an emitted light quantum that is received by the detector “either as a particle or as wave” has been reduced in our time by using probability calculations and new experimental physical facilities, the principal character of particles based on the “uncertainty relation” has not been changed. Although Heisenberg’s formula of the uncertainty relation could be “renewed” by completing certain operational components substituted by some physicists, the fundamental reality of phenomena of particle physics remain: The “physical reality” manifested by Einstein based on his glorious success of the Special and General Theory of Relativity cannot be valid in the micro-world phenomena.Pietschmann, a well-known theoretical physicist in Vienna, and Hashi, a philosopher teaching and researching interdisciplinary philosophy in Vienna, highlight the essential problems of particle physics and clarify them in regards to ontological and epistemological aspects. The dialogue has its origin in the hypothesis that the particle physics needs a logical interpretation with completely new ontological principles. In addition, the fundamental ontology of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy (without mystics) and its further development to rational philosophy of East Asia has various indications and contributions for an ontological epistemology of particle physics.

The article presents the conception of interreligious dialogue developed by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his legendary text No Religion Is an Island. Then, it illustrates the approach to this issue by the next generation of Jewish thinkers, Heschel’s disciples, Harold Kasimow and Byron Sherwin. Another interesting Heschel’s disciple is Alon Goshen-Gottstein who takes a step further in his explicating interfaith dialogue. The last part of the article analyses the understanding of Kasimow and Sherwin of the thought and deeds of Pope John Paul II in the field of interreligious dialogue, and especially, in the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Jews.