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201. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Gheorghe Dănișor Justice—an Expression of the Human Being’s Essence
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The paper argues that the balanced relationship between freedom and justice enables man to achieve the social good ontologically speaking (agathon), i.e. the one that holds together everything that exists. Reflecting the ontological Good on a social level is made on zoon politikon translated by “being together with the others,” where freedom and justice coexist in equilibrium. Justice and thus lay contribute to the achievement of ontological Good by the fair sharing of the existing goods on a social level and by human equality before courts.
202. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Özlem Duva Kaya Being Human among Humans: Plurality in the Divided World
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The main thesis I put forward in this article is that the democratic theory needs an anthropological perspective which defines the human in plurality and signifies the possibility of achieving a fully inclusive rational consensus. I argue that a model of democracy in terms of cosmopolitan anthropology can help us to better envision the main challenge facing universal norms and principles today. How to create democratic forms of living together? I think we can answer this question by interpreting Hannah Arendt’s theory of political action on a philosophical anthropological basis. It is common knowledge that Hannah Arendt is suspicious of ethics and warns that ethics and conscience alone cannot produce the conditions for peace. In the present paper, I examine Arendt’s philosophical project together with Kant’s philosophical anthropology and try to demonstrate its importance for plurality and living together in peace.
203. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Gabriela Tănăsescu Individualism and Responsibility in the Rationalist Ethics: the Actuality of Spinoza’s Ethics
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The paper attempts to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Spinoza’s ethics of virtue and responsibility—a non-deontic ethics whose foundation is not obligation and duty, not the normative laws which regulate the relations with the fellows, or the prescriptions, but an intuitive knowledge on the essence of things and on the choice of a proper way of life. The choice of the best way of life is equivalent with the responsibility to identify the opportunities to control the own life.
204. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Ionuț Răduică Hans Blumenberg’s “Great Questions.” Freedom within Immanent History
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This article deals with the concept of “great questions” in Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy. The “great questions” are fundamental elements of the German philosophy due to their role in explaining the core of the modern paradigm. Great questions are posed as resorts, and create references to them. They can be seen as atoms on the bottom of the modernity foundation, while some phenomena that could make them functional emerge as related to them. The law that enforces the atoms bond and the possibility of combinations resides in the so-called reoccupation theory that gains a good sight of what happens in immanent history. The way this work intends to clarify the great questions issue is by observing three assets of Blumenberg’s philosophy: a) the dialectical orientation of history (in particular, the modernity); b) the rule of historical change; c) Blumenberg’s holistic tendencies. This article aims to demonstrate that Blumenberg’s vision not only allows freedom to be explicit in modernity, but freedom is the main asset of this epoch.
205. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Delamar José Volpato Dutra Human Rights and the Debate on Legal Positivism
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This paper presents human rights in connection with the dispute between legal positivism and legal non-positivism. The importance of this topic can be evaluated by the debate that took place between Hart and Dworkin. Indeed, much of Dworkin’s work can be considered a reaction to Hart’s positivism. The presented study argues for the defense of the thesis that in order to understand such a debate it is important to take a position between moral noncognitivism and moral cognitivism. The hypothesis is that legal positivism does depend on the non plausibility of strong moral cognitivism. Therefore, only based on strong moral cognitivism would it be consistent to sustain the typical non-positivistic thesis of the necessary connection between law and morality. Human rights are in the center of this debate because they constitute the core of the current morality, especially the most important core of justice.
206. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Ioan Alexandru The Issue of Justice Sacredness
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According to the social contract theory, in order to achieve justice, people grouped themselves in societies. Historically speaking, judges appeared long before the legislator which means that justice was the first element of the social life. Therefore, it expresses the social ethics of a particular time and requires a minimum of credibility. Excessive pragmatism and utilitarianism have kidnapped more and more of what is humane, superior and sacred in the act of justice, and “secularized” it. As Eliade said in The Sacred and the Profane, the sacred is something which is totally different, a space of radical otherness which overshadows the physical territory. This shading manifests itself through limitation, sequencing, reiteration and keeping what is sacred there, even in a courtroom, through ritualization.
207. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Michail Mantzanas The Sophists’ Political Art
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The Sophists were the first supporters of the values of knowledge, education and political self-determination. Their attitude and tactics demonstrated that human nature and especially every individual’s personality is of prior importance. The Sophists rejected the idea of the ontological stability of the laws and declared their confidence in the eternal values of the natural law and cosmopolitanism, in the individual ability of every human being and in the concurrent refusal of traditions and of any form of authenticity. In addition, the Sophists were the first innovative enlightenment philosophers, who tried to exert their influence on society by using their teachings.
208. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1
Stilian Yotov New Medical Technology and Human Dignity
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First I discuss the rights as unavoidable part of the human dignity. There are four possible relations: dignity has a wider extension, the volume of both is equivalent, dignity includes in itself a bundle of rights, or it is just a simple right. There are good reasons to support the last two, even the last position. Then I evaluate some of the challenging innovations in the medical technology, if they are acceptable in front of this close connection. The focus falls on three topics: PGD, cloning, and fusion of human-animal cells. Using moral principles such as non discrimination and non instrumentalization I look for some normative framing.
209. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
D&U Editorial Staff D&U Editors’ Note: Human Being: Its Nature And Functions. II
210. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Herbert Hrachovec The Socrates Treatment
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The first section of this paper examines the discursive procedure employed by Socrates to subvert common preconceptions of important socio-behavioral notions. The point of reference will be the concept of courage which is the main concern in Plato’s Laches. The key characteristics of paideia can be exhibited by reconstructing the procedure common sense is subjected to in this example. The second section discusses the tremendous influence this pattern of inquiry has had on traditional philosophy. Particular attention is drawn to the way it confers superiority to philosophers in “pedagogical” discourse and to the fact that this privileged stance can by no means be taken for granted under present circumstances.
211. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Keqian Xu Ren Xing: Mencian’s Understanding of Human Being and Human Becoming
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Ren xing shan (human nature is good) is a famous thesis of Mencius. But it is questionable whether the Mencian concept of ren xing is an exact equivalent of the Western concept of human nature, and whether Mencius really thinks that all human beings are naturally moral. This paper suggests that when talking about ren xing, Mencius actually refers to both human being and human becoming. Ren xing may have a root in the nature of human being, which is a “mandate” endowed by the “Heaven.” But the complete notion of ren xing should be construed in terms of the process towards full human becoming. “Human nature is good” does not guarantee complete virtue for individual human beings. However, the human being has the capability of pursuing the moral direction along life’s path, and should take the responsibility of maintaining the right moral direction of human becoming, and thus should avoid veering from this moral path. This interpretation may provide a more consistent understanding of the metaphysical foundation, theoretic system, and self-cultivation practice of the Mencian ethics.
212. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Jean Campbell Considering Value—What Are the Ways and Means of Its Expression?
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This essay considers the concrete consequences for human lives of social and economic values. Through case studies indicative of the Victorian age, early 20th century and contemporary 21st century, the evolutionary change in specific values is exhibited. Values are recognized as essentially shaping human conduct, while the exercise of individual choices in this milieu has resulted in progressive shifts breaking up the rigid adherence to values, establishing the possibility in some areas for greater tolerance, such as in the area of mores determining the institution of marriage. The destructive nature of corruption through material values is also presented.
213. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Alexandru Boboc Pluralism of Values and Cultural Communication Today
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The paper presents the role of the experience of historical transformation in the modifications of the historical conscience: the fragmentation, the marginality and the removal from the rational foundation of values. It associates the postmodern world with different forms of losing the sense of values, the lack of measure and nuance in appreciation, the weak preoccupation for identity, authenticity, conscience of values in human behavior. In order to discuss the theory of values the paper introduces Rickertʼs theory of the autonomy of value, Andreiʼs and Vianuʼs conceptions on the system of values, Schelerʼs hierarchy of values, and Hartmannʼs concept of knowledge of value.
214. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Hu Jihua The Classic Mythology and Political Regime
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This paper focuses on the relationship of myth with the ancient regime and on the transformation of poetic wisdom into poetic politics. The basic idea of this study claims that the political life in ancient communities was been projected into a mythology, and, in turn, a mythology often legitimizes political life. By reading Plato’s Timaeus and Novalis’ Heinrich von Afterdingen, this study aims to bring out the connection between the ancient and modern political regimes.
215. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Columbus Ogbujah Exploring Myths: A Key to Understanding Igbo Cultural Values
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Although the cultural values of the Igbo of South-East Nigeria are multiple and diverse, research seems to have identified a seminal link between most of them to the much touted sense of communality. In communality, the sheer strength and vivacity of the Igbo spirit is magnificently showcased, and in it there is a concrete assemblage of the Igbo mythology.In this paper the Igbo myths of the origin of mankind and death are explored to evaluate their rich meaning-contents, their significant influence on the religious-cultural, and, in consequence, the whole gamut of the traditional people’s worldview was duly x-rayed. In conclusion, observations were presented which indicate that even the contemporary Igbo pathways are not bereft of the daunting influences of ancient myths.
216. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Giorgos Papaoikonomou Hannah Arendt on the Relation between Morality and Plurality
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In this article, we examine, in the light of Arendt’s categories, the fundamental structure of traditional claims on moral life. In other words, we evaluate the spirit inwhich traditional morality relates to the human world, especially, to the human condition of plurality. In this way, we shall be led to a perceptive reading of Arendt’sgroundbreaking view on morality and its borderline possibility of assuming a paradoxically significant role in the worldly affairs.
217. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Noell Birondo Aristotelian Eudaimonism and Patriotism
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This paper concerns the prospects for an internal validation of the Aristotelian virtues of character. With respect to the more contentious trait of patriotism, this approach for validating some specific trait of character as a virtue of character provides a plausible and nuanced Aristotelian position that does not fall neatly into any of the categories provided by a recent mapping of the terrain surrounding the issue of patriotism. According to the approach advocated here, patriotism can plausibly, though qualifiedly, be defended as a virtue, by stressing its similarities to another loyalty-exhibiting trait about which Aristotle has quite a bit to say: the virtue of friendship.
218. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Vaiva Adomaityte Emotions and Ethics. A Conversation with Martha C. Nussbaum and Thomas Aquinas
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The paper tackles the question of the relevance of emotions in ethics. It argues that emotions are discerning and thus inherent components of morality and they deserve a place in adequate ethical projects. The paper engages into a conversation with Martha C. Nussbaum and Thomas Aquinas. Specifically, it presents accounts of compassion and anger to illustrate the discerning nature of these emotions and the moral value they might signal.
219. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Olga Gomilko The Embodied Mind: From Mind Power to Life Vitality
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This article discusses the corporeal component of the human mind. Uncertainty is a fundamental attribute of the human body due to which a body transforms itself into the body that allows to connect the world with the human mind. The process of overcoming the transcendental register of the human mind results in the ontological and anthropological shifts from ego to soma. Tracing the trajectory of these shifts we discover the bodily dimension in the human mind as its constitutive transcendental ground. This dimension makes the mind not only open to the world but makes the world a part of the human mind. It prevents the mind from exerting power over the world, and gives rise to life vitality of the embodied mind.
220. Dialogue and Universalism: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Ana Bazac Person—for Me, and Object—for the Other?
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The problem sketched here in a non-conformist phenomenological manner concerns the transition from the theory of the self-sufficient individual to the theories of the social character of human being, and to the theoretical possibility to control the social asymmetries opposing to its fulfilment.