Ethics in the School. Ethical Principles and Values and the Historical Research

Author(s): Carmen Alexandrache / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The paper intends to show that the students will realize the quality scientific actions if they know how are correct to find and use the historical sources. We focus on the fact that the ethical norms, principles need to be internalized by each pupil / student and, in this way these became values which involve the best research aptitudes. In the history lessons, the pupils / students learn what is correct / fake, just / unjust, good / wrong in the research activity. They need to know what is or is not allowed to do when identify information, analyze and interpret some dates, notices, processes and historical persona. The paper shows that, in the educational system, the ethical principles in the historical research refer to use sources, to work with historical information found, to report the results and communicate the notices, conclusions. These aspects were developed in the paper associating them with the appropriate abilities.

Karl Marx – From Marxianism to Marxism

Author(s): Pompiliu Alexandru,Cristina Dinu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Firstly, this paper will define the two main concepts in the title “Marxianism and Marxism”, because one of them, Marxism, is a term frequently met in the writings about Marx, while the other, namely Marxianism, designates the actual work of Marx. Secondly, the main objective of this paper is to observe the difference between the two terms with examples from Marx’s work, his theories and the way they were applied by his followers, the twentieth century communists. And to narrow the area we will discuss only how the Marxianism was interpreted in Stalin’s regime. We will see to what extent Marx’s ideas were followed when applied in real life. In our research, we will see that we can talk about a degradation of Marx’s ideas and that this degradation occurred gradually. They have been degraded with the passage of time and after going through the minds of others who changed his ideology in order to meet their own interests and ideas, as Stalin’s ideology did. Regarding the results we expect from our research, we want to see if nowadays Marx can be held responsible for the extreme forms of twentieth century communism and, if not, what happened to the theory of Marx and most important how was it changed.

Some Considerations on Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics

Author(s): Mihai Androne / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Peter Singer’s applied or practical ethics constitutes a typical product of the pluralist, relativistic, utilitarian and secular spirit of the postmodern era. Being an influential public figure, at the same time famous and controversial to the highest degree, his ideas have more than once been considered as dangerous. A passionate advocate of animal rights, Peter Singer is not a supporter of man’s right to live. His philosophical attitude towards humanity and personality, his total separation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, protector of the sanctity of life, made him profess, in his book Practical Ethics, that the unborn children and the newborns are not rational beings and therefore do not value more (in fact, they value less) than certain animals. Such an anthropological conception evincing the psychological aspects of human existence is meant to “justify” abortion, infanticide, removal of haemophiliac children. This doctrinaire stance of the Australian moral philosopher aims at showing us the unhappy position of contemporary man who is deprived of certainties, of absolute moral benchmarks. Being an admirer of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the atheist philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer considers that ethics is a natural phenomenon and man has no essential nature, being free to choose what he wants to be. By this type of existentialist ideas Peter Singer only confirms the truth of Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement in Existentialism is a Humanism: if God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

The Influence of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy on Peter Singer’s Ethics

Author(s): Mihai Androne / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Peter Singer is one of the best known contemporary thinkers, and his work has been stirring vivid debates, being carefully researched by philosophers, ethicists and theologians. Although it is generally known that Peter Singer has been concerned with the field of practical ethics, and he has been a promoter of animal rights, however the present article aims at evincing an interesting aspect, i.e. the extent to which Sartre’s philosophy made a real impact on Peter Singer’s ethics, and the effects of this impact. The present article starts from the premise that there are numerous common points between the opinions of these two authors. In any case, in his work Peter Singer repeatedly mentions the French existentialist philosopher, sharing the latter’s passion for man’s freedom to choose and follow his own path in life, beyond any traditional axiological points of reference of Judeo-Christian extraction. To Peter Singer freedom means choice, ethics is natural and not supernatural, and man does not dispose of an essential nature able to condition his future and thus the repertory of his personal moral options. In other words, Peter Singer agrees with Sartre’s statement in Existentialism is a Humanism, according to whom our existence precedes our essence. Just like Sartre, Peter Singer does not believe in absolute, immutable truths, and so his ethics and anthropology have a specific secular profile confirming in fact a certain reality, viz. the postmodern dissolution of the sacred.

Truth and Error in the Dispute between Hobbes and Descartes on Meditations on First Philosophy

Author(s): Marius Dumitrescu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

When Thomas Hobbes commented on Descartes’ Meditations on first philosophy in 1641, he was in his mature age, and the theoretical directions of his own worldview were probably already fully engaged. In this paper, I argue that Hobbesian objections to Descartes’ Meditations reveal the philosophical thoughts of the English thinker. What seems to bind both thinkers is the idea of ego seen as a principle. But an essential difference could be traced between the two philosophical visions. For Descartes, the ego is a theoretical principle, a metaphysical one, while Hobbes thinks to it in an instrumental way, in terms of human action on which it is based. Hobbes’ egoism is radical because the self is the only instance that determines and justifies the action. For Hobbes, an error couldn’t be the result of limitations of the cognitive faculties as Descartes understood it, but rather the result of a failure in the action plan. In the English philosopher’s thinking, the passions of the ego reflects the engine of human fulfillment and the sign of a strong mind, able to engage in real life and to assume a destiny. So, any action that leads to a victory is an obvious sign of her successful validation. A failed action signifies the existence of a false idea behind it, and this false idea is consider to be the result of weak passions that are inadequate to reality. By reading the Meditations, Hobbes defined his own thinking that could no longer accept the Cartesian dualism and replaced it with a new monistic philosophy in which he gave reality only to the sensitive world. The truth became an issue more related to a practical approach than to one with a contemplative, theoretical facet. The classical dispute between Descartes and Hobbes on one of the central subjects in philosophy which is truth can be interpreted as an incipient form, avant la lettre, of a philosophical Brexit by which nominalistic Anglo-Saxon thinking defined its originality and independence in relation to the continental philosophy dominated by Thomism and Cartesianism.

Homo Pulsator, or an Outline for a Phenomenology of Beating

Author(s): Ivan Ivlampie / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This paper aims to investigate a behaviour which, along with many others, is decisive in understanding human nature. Together with zoon politicon, homo homini lupus, homo faber and homo ludens, which describe trajectories of the human destiny, homo pulsator or the human being beating or bullying another human may be equally invoked as relevant in this respect. In this study, we provide a phenomenological description of this strange human behaviour; this is not a sociological perspective (which can allow us to analyse the phenomenon only as a form of anomie), nor a psychological or anthropological approach (directions that open up an interpretation starting from the decisive thesis of our aggressive nature), but a cultural perspective: beating as a cultural institution. What does this perspective mean? To understand this behaviour as one consciously set. From the perspective of Aristotelian determinism, the phenomenology of beating cannot be understood without its final causality. What is the purpose of school beating, as encouraged by the great humanist thinkers? Or of beating as a form of public punishment or as a means of torture? By asking and answering such questions, we sketch the main lines of the phenomenology of this bizarre behaviour of human beings.

The Influence of Immanuel Kant’s Scientific Researches on the Causes of Natural Disasters in the Process of Secularization in the 18th Century

Author(s): Elena Velescu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The studies of Immanuel Kant constitute the foundations of the research for earthquakes from a geo-scientific point of view, through his reflections which favour the quantitative relationships of the search for causes. So, the current of secularization in the representation of the natural disaster is established in the eighteenth century by a speech influenced by the physical and natural sciences. Kant endeavours to propose explanations and to find the natural causes of the disaster, which, thanks to his argument, gain strongly in credibility compared with the moral, theological and philosophical formulations. The disaster becomes a peculiarity, which triggers fear, because it cannot be classified and explained. Kant reminds once again the humility, when he affirms that he is “niemals etwas mehr als ein Mensch”, the image of the great discrepancy between the technical audacity of man and his technical capacities.Through all his scientific texts that we have analysed, Kant announces the change of paradigm in the apprehension of the natural catastrophe. It will be analysed as a natural phenomenon, and not according to the perspective of a “coup de destin”. He exceeds the status of preacher to become a philosopher of Nature, because the reason of the evil does not lie in the order of Nature but in the excesses and the ignorance of the people. In his work, “Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes”, published seven years later, Kant makes a clear distinction between the natural causes and the moral causes, stemming from the faults of people, which do not cause misfortune as natural disasters.

Genes, CRISPR/Cas 9, and Posthumans

Author(s): Stefan Lorenz Sorgner / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The following three re-evaluations lead to a radical paradigm shift which has occurred at least since Darwin’s times: 1. A move from a dualist anthropology towards a non-dualist one. 2. A radical increase of anthropotechniques with the power of enhancing human capacities so that the likelihood of the posthuman coming about can be increased. 3. The posthuman can come about by means of digital technologies or with the help of biotechnologies whereby the field of genetics, on which I focus here, is particularly relevantThese three basic insights lead to a massive number of intellectual, social, political, ethical, and economic challenges. In the following reflections, I will present a selection of emerging bioethical issues concerning gene technologies, in particular CRISPR/Cas 9, and how they can be addressed in an appropriate manner within a wider cultural context.

Can Ethics Govern Technology?

Author(s): Corrado Viafora / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

One of the premises behind bioethics is the conviction that ethics cangovern technology. But is this conviction still tenable? In trying to answer thisquestion, we cannot evade the line of thinking inspired by Heidegger that continues tobe wholeheartedly sceptical about the chances of ethics steering technology. Battlingagainst this scepticism, the aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that a differentrelationship between ethics and technology is feasible. This is done by referring on theone hand to Habermas, to debunk the theory that the powerlessness of ethics is anatural necessity, and on the other to Ladrière, to identify the conditions fortechnology to become an element of moral creativity.

The Moral Relationship of the Human and the Non-Human Animals in Light of Ethology

Author(s): Alexander Krémer / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Animal suffering is an obvious consequence of different animalexperiments and factory farming. Everybody can observe the terrible online data andimages on this issue. From the birth of bioethics in the 1960s, it has become clearthat animals should get more clear-cut defence than human beings since they cannotprotest and give informed consent. The Animal Rights Movement became strongerwhen Peter Singer published Animal Liberation in 1975. Tom Regan went furtherthan Singer with his speciesism when he claimed that animals are “subject of a life”and they have moral rights. This chapter will show, in the light of modern ethology,that these views (Singer and Regan) cannot be founded philosophically, and that weshould return to Immanuel Kant’s standpoint. It is good enough to determine ourmoral relationship to animals, and above all, it is a provable standpoint.

Is Death the Enemy? The Normative Power of Metaphor in Bioethics

Author(s): Assya Pascalev / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This chapter explores the role of metaphors in biomedical ethics. It maintains that metaphors have an important normative function in medical and moral deliberation: they affect thought and guide actions. We use as a case study the dominant metaphors of death and dying employed by critical care physicians. We identify three prevalent metaphors in end-of-life care: the WAR, TORTURE, and ART metaphors, and demonstrate their normative functions. The metaphors shape physicians’ attitudes towards the dying, guide their reasoning and conduct, and influence their decisions on end-of-life care. We trace the moral implications of each metaphor for the treatment of the critically and terminally ill patients and show how the metaphors shape and constrain the moral deliberation of physicians. Our conclusions have far-reaching implications for bioethical reasoning and education, and could be applied in resolving ethical conflicts between patients and providers by identifying the conflicting metaphors, analysing their normative implications and actively constructing new shared metaphors.

Philosophical-Ethical Alleviation of Perceptive Experience of Corporeality in Terminally Ill Sufferers

Author(s): Florin Lobonț,Ionut Mladin / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

On existential level, the diagnosis of terminal illnesses which affect corporeal integrity also affects the perceived identity of sufferers. The physiological disorders occurred induce disruptive neuropsychological changes in their body scheme. For example, subjective awareness of corporeality includes, in various degrees, elements of perception and representation of the body parts configuration and their spatial arrangement. Our suggestion is that philosophical counselling is arguably capable to improve therapists’ communication with those who live with these illnesses and develops ways of alleviating the latter’s existential suffering. This can be done by helping them change the perception of their condition in general and of their corporeality in particular.

Ethical Concerns Regarding Mandatory Influenza Vaccination in Healthcare Practitioners

Author(s): Miroslav Radenković,Ivana Lazarević,Marko D. Stojanović,Tanja Jovanović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

An escalating international geographical mobility enhances and facilitates the promptness of infectious disease spreading across large regions. The transmission of influenza to healthcare practitioners, as a result of nosocomial influenza outbreaks, has been well documented. Consequently, healthcare institutions have devoted extensive efforts to the large-scale prevention of nosocomial transmission of influenza through vaccination programmes of healthcare personnel. Nevertheless, despite well-aimed endeavours of voluntary vaccination, sustained augmented-level annual immunization percentages are low. Moreover, many ethical challenges regarding vaccination are still very much present.

Comunicare și adevăr

Author(s): Ioan Biriș / Language(s): Romanian Publication Year: 0

In a conversation with Karl Otto Apel, the well-known philosopher of science, Karl Popper, drew his attention to the fact that the communicative function of language is what we share with animals, so communication does not have much importance. What is important in human language is the scope of the sentences, because the sentences are the only ones that allow man to speak in terms of truth about the real world. We call this the "challenge" of Karl Popper.

D. D. Roșca - orientări culturale contra „tiraniei utilului”

Author(s): Gabriel Hasmatuchi / Language(s): Romanian Publication Year: 0

D. D. Roșca (1895-1980) is a Romanian philosopher who enjoyed a rare prestige. He was welcomed among the members of the Romanian Academy because of his philosophical contribution. A thinker, historian of philosophy, professor and translator, D. D. Roșca was always involved in solving the issues of Romania's cultural life. With a philosophy based on rationalism and using appropriate methods of research in the field of culture and scientific creation, D. D. Roșca grasped the particularities of Romanian culture and came up with solutions. In this essay, we analyze relevant ideas proposed by the philosopher on culture and scientific creation.

In the footsteps of Jean Piaget - in search of the answer to the question: how is human knowledge about the world growing?

Author(s): Marianna Dąbrowska-Wnuk / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Plato’s Attitude Towards Suicide In The Dialogue Crito

Author(s): Armand A. Voinov / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Usually, Plato is not considered a philosopher that comprehensively treated the matter of suicide. This paper aims to show that Plato was concerned with the problem of suicide and that he gave an answer regarding at least one case of permitted suicide. This case is observed in the dialogue Crito which is the main subject of this paper. By trying to prove, through the character Crito, on the one hand, the obedience of Socrates towards the laws of the city-state and, on the other hand, the general importance of respecting the laws of the city-state, Plato let us observe a prefiguration of what may be his attitude towards suicide.

About Immortality

Author(s): Delia Ioana Nadolu,Bogdan Nadolu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

From the age of mythology to that of modern science, the idea of immortality has always been a taboo but alluring aspiration. In many popular cultures all over the world there can be found legends about immortal heroes or long-lost times when people enjoyed endless life, but usually as little more than a tantalising hope that perhaps death might be avoided. This paper presents a micro-sociological analysis of desired longevity as expressed by a sample of 137 respondents studied in September 2019, prefaced by a brief anthropological review of the myth of immortality in different cultures.

Frank Speech in the Epicurean Philosophical School

Author(s): Cristian-Ioan Hîrjoi / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the role of parrhêsía in the Epicurean philosophical school and for this, I used the work of Philodemos from Gadara, Perí Parrhesía. After a presentation of the role of the teacher and his features, I aimed to show why direct talking is an essential practice in the friendship relationship. Later, I pointed out that it is a pedagogical practice based on a stochastic method but also a therapeutic technique in which the characteristics of the guided person must be taken into account.

The Allegory of Quantum Persona

Author(s): Tea Radović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

A holistic approach to comprehending the human psyche as a substrate of the interplay between the physical and the spiritual allegorically implies that a certain part of the personality functions at the level of atomic and subatomic particles, which are as such subject to the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. The initial premise of the Quantum Personality, which I intend to assert through this summary, is that certain personality instances also operate on the levels of subatomic and atomic particles. The use-value of the aforementioned postulates is primarily reflected through the critique of diagnostic processes which are based on a subjective validation of mental disorders.