In the present world, where the sphere of knowledge and social relations have become extremely complex, the problem of insufficient competency and inability to manage efficiently the accumulation and distribution process of various professional skills, has grown very urgent. Paradoxically, the insufficient knowledge,lacking skill or competence may be advantageous. To a certain extent, it reduces the threat of arrogant technocracy and meritocracy, while supporting innovation and creative search process, in which the burden of excessive erudition has often slowed down progress. I will focus on some fallacies common in many countries undergoing modernization process, connected to the lack of clear awareness of the reasonably expected results of the medical university education(not quite professional if related to the background of the scientific state of the matter), to the dangerous “dissemination” of responsibility for a patient in the medical bureaucracy as well as to the overrepresentation of doctors among the managerial staff. To take advantage from some portion of ignorance in the medical life it needs to be acknowledged and reflected on.

The concept ‘personhood’ lies at the center of contemporary disputes concerning whether certain biological interventions are ethical. Thus, if ‘personhood’ could be located or its existence evidenced by observations available to biologists, then each of these controversies could be resolved in biology’s own terms. I argue that this is a fruitless task. The attempt to track down a material object, ‘personhood,’ reveals ignorance of an important metaphysical presupposition underlying contemporary culture’s Cartesian/Kantian concept of ‘personhood’.

The focus of the following paper is the phenomenon of the collective agent; what constitutes the appearance of a collective agent? I begin by investigating one simple argument for the existence of collective agents. Two critical issues emerge: does it make sense to hold a collective agent blameworthy, and, what is the motivation for doing so, one way or the other? I then dissolve these issues with a distinction, that between blameworthiness and responsibility. In light of this distinction, there appears to be no use for the introduction of collectives as agents in their own right, outside of expedience of reference and deference of blame.

This paper explores both some of the concepts John Dewey exposed while in China in the 1920’s and considers why his idea of democracy did not thrive in China. In the lectures Dewey delivered in China he focused on the strength of democracy, from the perspective of political science, social science, philosophy and education. Dewey clarified the democratic way of thinking, doing and living to the Chinese people. Of these topics, he considered the philosophy of education and social and political philosophy to be the most important. Through his speeches, he underlined the importance of reflective thinking and reasoning in constructing human intelligence and lively inquiries. In the early part of the 20th century, both Dewey’s pragmatism and Marx’s communism were honored and speculated. While both Dewey and Marx promoted similar aims for human beings, that is, the creation of a society for the common good, their means were substantially different. For Dewey, such a result could only be obtained by a gradual construction of communicative social relationships; for Marx, a radical revolution was necessary to get expunge the old currently dominant parties. With regards to their relationship to working for the common good, for many Chinese, Dewey’s philosophies and ideas were unclear, overly complicated, and inefficient, while Marx pointed out a concrete destination, a clearly designed and expedient wayto implement an egalitarian society.

The topic of this article is the relation between the modern process of globalization and democracy. The agenda starts with the concept of globalization, its different meanings and various layers, traps and paradoxes, consequences and effects, advantages and disadvantages in the horizon of contemporary life. Following a brief introduction into the theme, the article outlines a short historic philosophical review into the development of globalization from theancient times to the contemporary world. The focus of the philosophical view is that of two significant authorities and opposite approaches in the process of developing ‘World Society’ – Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Kant explained the means to the status of ‘World Civility’ as a ‘Natural Purpose’. Hegel exposed the necessity of the development of world history to the state of global freedom. The question: Does the process of making global society threaten democracy in the modern world - is the key issue nowadays. All agree that the globalization process diminishes the area of the authentic political acting. Democracy originates from the ‘polis’ or small town republic and is a symbol of the government in the small political community. The step from the polis democracy to the national state democracy was the result of change from the direct to the representative democracy. The transition from the national to the supranational and global politics requires new essential transformation of the being of democracy.

In his provocative definition of bullshit as “indifference to the truth”, Harry Frankfurt contentiously states that democracy is particularly prone to this deformity of discourse because of “the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.” I provide an exposition of this claim that Frankfurt does not himself give and I contend that he has identified an important problem with democratic deliberation. This is an argument about, not against, democracy and it is one which gives pause over the sanguine assumptions of much radical, “deliberative” democratic theory that this phenomenon will not be significantly present in an enhanced democracy. A suggestionabout the responsibilities of political philosophers in helping a democratic citizenry to tackle the problem is floated for future elaboration.

The paper states that the world as a self-ruling system needs creation of its new concept based on philosophy of harmony. Harmonic foundation-building of the world system, safeguarding the turning strategy of the world from non-balanced into balanced development, formation of world order on the basis of convergent idea on world unity of nationstates, the leading way of integral globalization contrary to unipolar globalization are the principal conditions of the world’s progress. The necessity on creation of harmony in the world occupies an important place in the practice of international social, political, economic and civilizationalrelations. Global civilization, which appears as a result of historical development of humanity, the evolution of philosophical idea of world unity, interaction of globalizational and civilizational processes and other specific development conditions, defines itself as a new stage of our planet. Through forming the organics of national cultures and local civilizations global civilization begins to create its own complex of common-universal behaviors and values. The historical and international importance of the globalization era is that it opens its very successful perspectives having rational basis of world development towards global civilization not in a spontaneous, but in a naturally determined movement. Global civilization comprising humanity’s potential harmonically is and will continue to be the principal project of world-building.

With the development of globalization and its inner-contradictions exposing gradually, a new anti-globalization movement has sprung up Since 1990s. It is also a kind of new globalization. In fact, contemporary globalization is controlled by capitalism. During the course, capitalist contradictions and crisis also globalize. Anti-globalization exposes the new crisis of contemporary capitalism The substance of contemporary antiglobalization is to opposite capitalism and its crisis. It is not a mature movement now, but it is significant to correct the developing direction of contemporary globalization.

Leo Strauss has generally been regarded as an historian of ideas, albeit a very unusual one. He wrote many very momentous commentaries on the major figures in the history of political thought; yet Strauss’ main intellectual quest was to take himself back in the history, to classical antiquity and to the fountainhead of political philosophy, Plato. In this paper, however, I am mostly interested in the philosophical nature of Strauss’s basic dissatisfaction with modernity and with the adequacy of his criticisms. I shall focus attention on his well-known book On Tyranny, his claim that the politics in the modern age is inescapably defined by a tyrannical rule and his criticisms that the contemporary political science is unable to diagnose the symptoms of this present-day disease, and finally his attempt to revive political philosophy in its original sense. In addressing these issues, this paper raises a fundamental criticism: Strauss’s approach jeopardizes political philosophy-i.e. his very inquiry-by ultimately putting philosophy against politics, and politics against philosophy. I will begin with a few remarks about what Strauss understood as the problem of modernity. Then I will introduce the question of tyranny which stands as the key notion for grasping not only Strauss’s criticism of contemporary politics but also as the treatment for it. Finally, the discussion of On Tyranny, I hope, will shed light on Strauss’s conception of political philosophy and will open the stage for a critical discussion of his views.

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the relevance and significance of the concept of common good in contemporary society. First, I make a brief historical remark about the philosophical concept of common good. I will argue that the concept is rooted in the ancient Greek philosophical understanding of society, namely as polis, whereby human being is thought to have an end that is not merely individual but also collective. I then discuss how societies have significantly changed over the years and how the current global order resembles the situation during the time of Alexander the Great, whose vision it was to establish a cosmopolis, literally a global city. In the end, I consider whether the notion of common good in itself has lost its relevance in the face of the manifold social changes. I bring my discussion to a close with a note on the universality and naturality of the common good of humankind.

Marxist value standpoint taking the value of working classes as more important and higher than universal human value has already been proved wrong by the anti-human practice led my the standpoint in the 20th century. Though the disastrous historical reality was definitely beyond or not the expectation of Marxism founders, the practice is logically necessary result of the unavoidable historical limitation and theory mistake of Marxism. In their early years, both Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels held the criterion of the universal human value such as freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity. However, decided or required by the space-time concrete circumstance, they had to concretized the ideal of ‘human liberation’ into the aim of ‘the liberation of proletariat’. According to such the three principles: social existence decides social consciousness, there is no common human nature in a society in which there are different classes, and productive forces is the final motive power and cause of social development, historical materialism demonstrates the supreme position of the value of working classes. These arguments are not persuasive in theory. Marxism itself has to take the universal human value as moral criterion against capitalism. Historical materialism has the problem of inherent reductionism in its epistemic methodology. Also, Marxism commits the obvious simple or lower grade mistake to negate generality with specialty in expounding no common human nature existing in a class society. And The Marxism founders were extremely arrogant psychologically when building their theory system. These are epistemology and psychology factors to form the prejudiced value standpoint. This reflection on the mistake of Marxist value standpoint expects to reach such a common consensus: to accept consciously and further improve and perfect the universal human value that marksmaturity level of today’s human spirit and take the value as the bottom value of being human.

We can define all political theories pertinent in contemporary modern societies using a model based on only two variables. The first variable can be characterized as a spectrum between economic right and left wing theories. The spectrum can be easily defined by a strictly economic tradeoff of the desired level of taxation juxtaposed to the desired level of social services. The second variable can be defined as a distinction between liberal-individualisticand communitarian conception of persons.This leads to four positions, the four pillars of contemporary political philosophy: left wing liberalism (popular liberalism), right win liberalism (popular libertarianism), left wing communitarianism (popular socialist communitarianism) and right wing communitarianism (thetraditionalist stripe of conservatism). The problem is that the last of those positions has not been well presented in philosophical literature.

Jürgen Habermas has emerged as a sharp, and occasionally harsh, critic of the Bush administration’s policies since the Iraq war. Habermas has developed this critique in several of his short pieces and interviews, some of which are available in fine collections in both English and other languages. However, the occasional and journalistic character of Habermas’ political interventions often hide the theoretical basis of his critique. In this paper, I argue that Habermas’ critique of the Bush administration’s foreign policy emanates from, and is founded upon, his conception of modernity, and specifically his views about the relationshipbetween “particularity” and “generality.” The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how Habermas’ critique can actually be read as a critique of particularism, which Habermas sees operating behind American (and British) foreign policy, and which, in his view, compromises the key achievements of modernity (especially in its Kantian version.)

In most countries, failed criminal attempts are punished less severely than those that succeed. Many philosophers, including myself, have argued that differential punishment can be justified. However, in a recent paper, Hanna raises objections to defenses of differential punishments, claiming that such policy goes against our “desert intuitions” and also cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. I argue in this paper that Hanna’s desert-based and utilitarian objections can be undermined. Further, they are valid only within moral theories that take the agent to be an independent self, whose responsibility rests on his or her intentions and deliberations alone. However, differential punishment can be justified in a different kind of moral theory, in which there are good reasons to giveluck a role to play.

The plank of the dependency theory is that unless there is a transition to socialism and a complete break with the metropolitan countries, the peripheral status of the dependent countries would continue. After the Second World War with the emergence of many new nations, as a consequence of decolonization, the question of development assumed paramount importance for these countries. Raul Prebisch (1950) understood the nineteenth century paradigm of free trade as inoperative and disadvantageous to the raw materials exporting countries. The spectacular success of the Newly Industrialized countries‐ Hong Kong,Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan by integrating with the developed nations, have achieved a higher standard of living and negated the basic assumptions of the dependency theory.

The perspectives of Ukraine which are outlined by the notion of the “Ukrainian project”, and determined by potential of development of civil society, as congruent with perspectives of steady international development for the sake of collaboration and peace, are examined in the article. Determination of such basic analytical notions as discursive practices of “prevailing” and “understanding” is offered with this purpose. Discourse is considered as reason for choice and giving the advantage to one meaning over the others that is set in the certain modes of signification. Discourse of understanding – is the process of creation of such knowledge, the nominative function of which stops being the function of power, and becomes the instrument of the renewed perception and understanding at new level of communicative space. As discursive reality is reflected not only on the methods of thinking, but also on the practical behaviour of people, we have warrants to speak about its ethical conditionality and the corresponding discursive‐ethical practices of “freedom and authenticity”, “paternalism and clientism” and “nihilism and anarchy”. Last two discursive-ethical practices are examined as obstacles on the way to realization of the “Ukrainian project” in relation to itsdemocratic development in direction to the civilization values common with the European Union.

We consider that the research conducted on the totalitarian phenomenon has still remained a challenge for political philosophy and social sciences, even though most of the totalitarian regimes are now a matter of the past. However, its consequences and the threat of its reinvigoration have remained as well. Under the circumstances, the theoretical instruments that make possible an effective euristic approach of the phenomenon are particularly important. Among these instruments, the totalitarian personality concept occupies a foreground place. What we advance is a new perspective upon this concept. We believe that thetotalitarian personality can be and must be regarded as a by-product of totalitarianism, not solely as one of its prerequisites. We can and we must give emphasis to the totalitarian imprint upon personality, upon the more or less profound transformations undergone by the personality of those who lived through the totalitarian experience.

The purpose of the article is to show the great potential of human ability in social development and to reveal the personality conditions for the development of mankind. The categorical arrangement of global responsibility is given relating to the individual personality and to civilization. The creation of social conditions addresses the vital importance for the individual development of global responsibility. The theoretical base of the research includes numerous works on fundamental problems in the field of social philosophy, philosophy of law, individual and social psychology, theory of personality, culture research, and worksabout civilization. The historical and socio-philosophical approaches are used to reveal the regulation of development of global responsibility on the individual level and the level of civilization. Phenomenological and axiological methods are used to study the activity aspect of global responsibility.

Russian philosopher, the author of such books as: 1. Arnold Kazmin The theory of intellect: how to elect a president. M: ‐ “CDPress”, 2001. 2. Arnold Kazmin The globalization of morality-the evolutional step to civilization. M: - “CDPress”, 2005. 3. Arnold Kazmin “The Hegel’s code: system thinking and social cybernetics. M: - “CDPress”, 2006. Presidium Member of the Russian Philosophical Society. Took part of The The 21st Universal Philosophy Congress at Istambul, Turkey, 2003. The editor-in-chief of Russian Philosopher newspaper.

Korea Wave means the vigorous drive toward Korean mass culture among the young generation of East Asian countries. The Korea Wave has had great socio-cultural and economic effects on China and East Asian countries and even made a new word 'Hawhanzoo (哈韓族)' which mean the Korea Wave fan. The most important characteristic of the Korea Wave is that the followers are the young generation of the upper classes of those regions who are apt to learn and use the Internet and the culture of the Information Age. This means that the future leaders of the East Asia countries are sympathizing with the characteristics of modern Korean culture and its vision. They are absorbing positively the Korea Wave as their spiritual foundation upon which their world views and valuejudgments are conglomerated. In this article I'd like to consider new possibilities in the Korea Wave which pave roads to a cultural community around East Asia in the age of information. Therefore, I will analyze three dimensions of Korea Wave which are material, symbolic and experiential dimensions.