In a recent spate of reflective writings on the concept of human rights, philosophers have been concerned to firm up the analytical boundaries of human rights discourse, without excluding welfare rights from the catalogue. The article considers three of these recent attempts to `revalue the currency' of human rights: the agency conception, the pluralist conception, and the negative duties conception. It ultimately defends a `dignity-based' account of human rights, in which any number of human interests (...) and values may ground a right, but in which the failure to respect the right must constitute a threat to human dignity (one's sense of self-worth as a person) in order for it to count as a genuine human right. It further argues that a `dignity-based' account of human rights justifies a focus on the state as the agent against which human rights are held, and gives us reason to doubt that the state could adequately fulfil the human-rights-based duties it owes its citizens by simple forbearance. On the account offered here, the state may be said to violate the rights of its members, and to threaten their human dignity, when it fails to provide them with the means to realize their basic needs. Key Words: human dignity • civil and political rights • welfare rights • social rights. (shrink)

Human rights debates neglect social rights. This paper defends one fundamentally important, but largely unacknowledged social human right. The right is both a condition for and a constitutive part of a minimally decent human life. Indeed, protection of this right is necessary to secure many less controversial human rights. The right in question is the human right against social deprivation. In this context, ‘social deprivation’ refers not to poverty, but to genuine, interpersonal, social deprivation (...) as a persisting lack of minimally adequate opportunities for decent human contact and social inclusion. Such deprivation is endured not only in arenas of institutional segregation by prisoners and patients held in long-term solitary confinement and quarantine, but also by persons who suffer less organised forms of persistent social deprivation. The human right against social deprivation can be fleshed out both as a civil and political right and as a socio-economic right. The defence for it faces objections familiar to human rights theory such as undue burdensomeness, unclaimability, and infeasibility, as well as some less familiar objections such as illiberality, intolerability, and ideals of the family. All of these objections can be answered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In volume two of his work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville argued that religion could guarantee individual liberties against the tyranny of the majority. However, in volume one of this work, Tocqueville presented a conventional ‘civil religion’ as a phenomenon that was identical to or subsumed by American social mores or opinions. Thus, the following questions are raised: How can such a religion represent a brake on potential tyranny? How can genuine religion be distinguished from common opinion? (...) Consequently, understanding Tocqueville’s approach to religion remains a major problem. This article demonstrates that in the second volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville suggested a different type of civil religion, one that has a transcendent authority that distinguishes it from public opinion but that, nevertheless, facilitates intellectual liberty. It also shows how Tocqueville resolved the dilemmas of authority and liberty in the civil religion, by focusing on, with his observations of American Christianity, his reading of Blaise Pascal’s works regarding religious authority and human reason, in which Pascal exhorted human beings to willingly recognise the limits of reason. (shrink)

In this article we investigate how Latino immigrant farmers in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States navigate United States Department of Agriculture programs, which necessitate standardizing farming practices and an acceptance of bureaucracy for participation. We show how Latino immigrant farmers’ agrarian norms and practices are at odds with the state’s requirement for agrarian standardization. This interview-based study builds on existing historical analyses of farmers of color in the United States, and the ways in which their farming practices and (...) racialized identities are often unseen by and illegible to the state. This disjuncture leads to the increased racial exclusion of immigrant farmers from USDA opportunities. Such exclusions impede the transition to a “new era of civil rights,” as has been proclaimed by USDA leadership. Although efforts to address institutionalized racism on a national level may be genuine, they have failed to acknowledge this schism between rural Latino immigrants and the state, thereby inhibiting a meaningful transition in the fields, and continuing a legacy of unequal access to agrarian opportunities for non-white immigrant farmers. (shrink)

After some conceptual elaboration on the topic of the Dialogue among Civilizations, this article will give some examples of UNESCO’s contribution in this domain. DAC is intrinsically bound to the questions of identity and otherness through the role culture and civilization play in composing our identity. We forge our own identity through our culture; those who share this identity are insiders, and those who do not are outsiders. Some understandings of identity conclude in a lack of appreciation for the (...) Others’ identity, which is necessary to being a genuine partner in dialogue. At one extreme personal identity is not conceived as being subject to any changes during an individual’s lifetime; while at the other extreme, post-modernism perceives a person or a social group simply as a node in a network of relations. These definitions both suffer from the lack of a historical dimension and are based on a unitary conception of identity. The solution, as the reality of history also demonstrates, comes with a pluralistic view of identity, which not only solves some theoretical issues but also forms the only framework within which the possibility of dialogue can be assured. The wonderful consequence will then be that if absolute identity does not exist, neither can absolute otherness. We should then search for the shared roots between different cultures. It was a common scientific and philosophical culture, for example, that united Avicenna in Iran with St. Thomas Aquinas in the West; a culture going back to the Greek and Hellenistic thinkers. Globality should be understood as a visionary search for the discovery of the common roots of different cultures, rather than the dominance of any one particular culture or value system. The ethnocentric concept of culture and history can then be overcome. A genuine dialogue comes with the soul’s particular willingness to “convert” itself, to expose and risk one’s own ideas and positions. It brings us the possibility of overcoming trans-cultural dissensus on whether a particular practice violates one or another human right. And as we know from Averroes, the human soul comes from a unified universal soul. Finally, there is an inter-conceptual linkage among cultural diversity, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, sustainable development, human rights and cultural rights. UNESCO, by preserving and protecting cultural heritage, safeguarding cultural diversity, and promoting dialogue among cultures and civilizations, is contributing to its axiomatic constitutional goals, namely the construction of the defenses of peace in the minds of people through moral and intellectual solidarity. (shrink)

The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The (...) resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

In this article I propose to do five things. First, I describe the present confusion disturbing the tranquility of the American polity. Next, I hypothesize that an important source of civil confusion is that American civildiscourse is generally conducted in two different moral languages. Neither of these is adequate to the reality of the human good, and their speakers are, perhaps increasingly, given to misunderstanding one another. Third, I propose some reasons why not only misunderstanding but even outright hostility (...) seems to be growing. Fourth, I suggest that if we Christians are to be of genuine service to our fellow citizens, we have to begin by emancipating ourselves from inadequate moral languages and renew our capacity to function in a more properly Christian language. Finally, I suggest a possible contribution Christians might make to the renewal of civil discourse. (shrink)

These questions-in essence 'What are flourishing lives and how can we lead them?'-are long central to philosophy. Now, however, can be addressed in light of new insights in positive psychology, psychiatry, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and behavioral economics as well new research in philosophy itself, including feminist theory, critical race studies, philosophical psychology, neuro-ethics, and more. The thirteen contributors chart new directions for understanding and securing human flourishing. Reflecting the fact that lives and cultures differ, the perspectives are pluralistic. (...) Part One considers the meaning of human flourishing through analyses of: the nature of purposeful, mattering lives; biological, psychological, and social levels of homeostasis; the nature of human agency and the role of narrative in it; the nature of the self and self-fulfillment; the centrality of subjective values and non-subjective conditions that make possible these values; and the need to encompass the wide diversity of human lives. Part Two considers conditions on which flourishing depends. These include: habits flexible enough to confront ever-changing realities; conditions of social justice rather than supposed self-help; epistemic responsibility and sensitivity to social relations; civility and values literacy; educational reconstruction, particularly in the humanities; a cultural focus on eudaimonic values rather than mere technical efficiency and marketplace consumerism; and the role of creative arts in transforming our abilities, promoting genuine self-government, and providing consolation in the face of loss. (shrink)

This study employs a descriptive-analytical method to emphasize the genuineness and importance of peaceful coexistence values among religions and cultures in Islamic civilization. It specifically focuses on the interaction with others, living together, acknowledging, respecting, and collaborating with them in different aspects of shared humanity. This research examines the language of extremism by studying and analyzing it, seeing it as the primary obstacle to the principles of civic coexistence and tolerance. The research findings indicate that the key factor that (...) sets apart the principles of peaceful coexistence among individuals, irrespective of their religious and racial backgrounds, and that necessitates the acceptance of others in Islamic ideology, is the perception of such acceptance as legitimate obligations. An individual is recognized as a Muslim only when they openly acknowledge their adherence to the Islamic faith. Through the analysis of holy writings and the Prophet's biography, the researcher concludes that any radical and divisive rhetoric that promotes the rejection of peaceful coexistence cannot be regarded as Islamic speech, and does not accurately reflect Islam and Muslims. Instead, it is an extreme rhetoric that only represents its advocates, a rhetoric that Islam disavows, just as it disavows other forms of hate speech. The research urges the official religious authorities in Arab and Islamic countries to take on the legitimate, ethical, and scientific duty of freeing religious matters from ideological manipulation and restoring the correct approach to interpreting religious texts, while avoiding extremist ideological exploitation. This proposal advocates for the promotion of harmony, resolution of misunderstandings, fostering love and unity, prevention of excommunication, defamation, and conflict. It suggests the establishment of educational programs focused on promoting peace and coexistence values, as well as encouraging research in the field of tolerance education and acceptance of others. The objective is to cultivate an intellectual atmosphere in our universities that prioritizes wisdom, reason, logic, and evidence over emotional slogans. This will result in universities producing graduates who possess values of tolerance and coexistence, equipped to challenge and dismantle hateful and extremist ideologies by exposing their flaws and removing the religious facade from their harmful ideas. (shrink)

A cornerstone of modern western philosophy, addressing the role of man in government, society and religion In 1651, Hobbes published his work about the relationship between the government and the individual. More than four centuries old, this brilliant yet ruthless book analyzes not only the bases of government but also physical nature and the roles of man. Comparable to Plato's Republic in depth and insight, Leviathan includes two society-changing phenomena that Plato didn't dare to dream of -- the rise of (...) great nation-states with their claims to absolute sovereignty, and modern science, with its unprecedented analytic power. To Hobbes, the leviathan -- a mythical sea creature described in the Old Testament -- represented his central thesis: that the state must be strong in order to control and protect its citizens. Even today, Hobbes's thesis in Leviathan is debated among scholars and philosophy aficionados around the globe. One of the earliest attempts at a genuinely scientific understanding of politics and society in their modern form, this book also remains one of the most stimulating. In his timeless work, Hobbes outlines his ideas about the passions and the conduct of man, and how his theories are realized in every individual. Addressing free will and religion, Hobbes constructs an intelligent argument for the basis of religion within government and how to organize a peaceful and successful Christian commonwealth. Like Plato's Republic, this book contains ideas on psychology, ethics, law, language, and religion that continue to challenge modern thinkers and exercise a profound influence on Western thought. A classic treatise of philosophy, Leviathan is critical reading for anyone who wishes to examine the human mind through the prisms of government and society. (shrink)

Economic theory has tended to reduce all social bonds and relations to forms of contract, whereas social theory has seen contracts as opposed to, and destructive of, genuine social bonds. Bruni sees these contrapositions as ideological (‘left’ against ‘right’, p. xi). His main goal is to overcome them; to show that three forms of reciprocity, covering the ideological spectrum from left to right, are complementary and simultaneously required in a healthy society. These three forms are, in his words: ‘(1) (...) the reciprocity of contract or ‘cautious’; (2) the reciprocity of friendship or philia and (3) the ‘unconditional’ reciprocity, the one more controversial . . .’ (p. x). (shrink)

THE HEART OF CONFUCIUS tells what all Western readers should know about Confucius and why his teachings are important. They are the teachings that have influenced Chinese life for two and a half millenniums and expressed universal human ideals that have helped to shape civilization.

“Only connect …,” the epigraph of Forster's Howards End, offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection—whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations—in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel's conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This (...) essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty. (shrink)

If universities sought to help promote human welfare rationally, they would give intellectual priority to the tasks of articulating problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible actions. Priority would be given to public education about what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. Universities do not remotely proceed in this way. Why not? Because they are dominated by the idea that knowledge must first be acquired; once acquired, it then can be (...) applied to help solve social problems. But this idea violates the most elementary rules of rational problem solving. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, universities today, devoted in the first instance to the pursuit of knowledge, are profoundly and damagingly irrational in a structural way, and it is this structural irrationality of universities that in part accounts for the genesis of global problems that threaten our future, and for our current incapacity to solve them. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in our universities so that they come to pursue the welfare of humanity in a genuinely rational, and active, way, and thus help save humanity from impending disaster. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change has become a hot button issue in the scientific, economic, political, and ethical sectors. While the science behind climate change is clear, responses in the economic and political realms have been unfulfilling. On the economic front, companies have marketed themselves as pioneers in the quest to go green while simultaneously engaging in environmentally destructive practices and on the political front, politicians have failed to make any significant global progress. I argue that climate change needs to be framed (...) as an ethical issue to make serious progress towards the path to a sustainable human civilization. In an effort to motivate the urgency needed to confront climate change, I argue that climate change seriously affects human beings living here and now, and if one cares about unnecessarily harming fellow innocent living human beings, then one should care about one’s own environmental impact related to climate change. Since this argument does not depend upon any specific philosophical, religious, or ethical tradition but applies regardless of one’s particular background, I hope to induce genuine concern among all human beings regarding this issue. (shrink)

In case of that human civilization was viewed as an integrated organism, the Periodic Table of the Civilizations (PTOC in short) has been formulated and recommended based on the development level and periodicity of core elements of human civilization. It divides the frontier process of the human civilization from the birth of humankind to the end of twenty-first century into 4 periods and 16 stages, and in which four periods include that of primitive culture, (...) agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and knowledge civilization orderly, and each period includes four stages, that is, start, developing, maturing and transition stages sequentially. There are three approaches for the arrangements of the PTOC, that is, simple, vertical and horizontal tables. The big period of earth civilization refers to that from the primitive culture to the knowledge civilization, and then big period of space civilization will begin with the astronautic civilization. The first modernization witnesses the great changes and transformation from the traditional agricultural to the modern industrial civilization, and then second modernization from the modern industrial to the higher modern knowledge civilization. The periodic table, coordinate system and roadmap of human civilization and world modernization have been formulated to describe the relationship between them. (shrink)

In his excellent recent book, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Robert Williams argues that, contrary to what many commentators claim, Hegel’s philosophy does not seek to swallow up individuality and difference in an all-embracing and all-consuming absolute, but rather takes individuality and differentiation seriously as essential features of the society and the world in which we live. Williams defends this interpretation by arguing that Hegel understands all forms of genuine human community and interaction - including not (...) just civil society and the state, but also family relations and forgiveness - as modes of reciprocal recognition between individuals. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of Karl Popper’s influential yet controversial book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Popper, it argues, sheds light on a pivotal social and political question: How can we value genuine human plurality without succumbing to the illusion that enmity can be removed from the socio-political realm? What we find in Popper, I argue, is an “anti-utopian agonism,” that is, his conception of an open society harbors significant agonistic elements—a commitment to (...) class='Hi'>human plurality, an endorsement of (some) social and political struggles, and an acute awareness of the tragic dimensions of political life. Simultaneously, Popper’s distinctive anti-utopianism makes an important contribution to agonistic theory on two fronts. First, his concept of “the strain of civilization” reveals a deeper notion of tragedy, which gives him the edge over the rather shallow notion of tragedy we find in the agonistic tradition. Secondly, he develops a tripartite notion of enmity, which is theoretically interesting and practically relevant. The aim of this article is not only to contribute to the scholarship on Popper and agonism but, first and foremost, to demonstrate how The Open Society still matters as an inspiring work that illuminates the practically relevant question of how to value diversity without illusions. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious way, those (...) institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE (...) application can serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly (...) similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

The basic elements in the ontology of human civilization are status functions. Those are functions that can be performed not in virtue of physical structure alone but only in virtue of collective acceptance by the community of a certain status. Money, property, government and marriage are all examples of status functions. Status functions are all created by repeated applications of the same logical operation, in a preliminary formulation: X counts as Y in context C.On examination it emerges that (...) all status functions are created by a certain kind of representation that has a logical form of a speech act that I call a “Status Function Declaration.” These are explained.This lecture was delivered without notes and the current publication is very informal. I hope the reader will forgive the informality. (shrink)

People with cognitive disabilities are equal citizens, and law ought to show respect for them as full equals. To do so, law must provide such people with equal entitlements to medical care, housing, and other economic needs. But law must also go further, providing people with disabilities truly equal access to education, even when that is costly and involves considerable change in current methods of instruction. The central theme of this essay is what is required in order to give such (...) people political and civil rights on a basis of genuine equality. (shrink)

The human history relates to the history of communication, which has also been a co-driver of human development. Communication integrates the knowledge, organization and power of a society.Today, there is an increasing debate over the importance of politicians' mutual communication, communication with voters and the media, the role of public relations in politics, and communication with the civil society. Thus, political communication and the creative use of the media remain the essential component of any individual involved in politics (...) or even of a political group.In this study, political communication in North Macedonia is presented in the context of political efforts into the integration process in European Union (EU), by observing all the stages within the process so far. From the content and the issues addressed, it is clear that policymakers face the challenges of communication (as is the case in many countries aspiring the European integration).In this paper, the premises of genuinely political communication strategy are analyzed separately, assessing them in the context of the political communication theory. It will be shown that successful communication is an important tool for convincing citizens that EU provides a better quality of life and work. (shrink)

This text focuses on why the global spread of formal rationality contributes to a critical spirit which undermines human values and beliefs, be they ancient, medieval, modern and now postmodern. This is so in special relation to the model of the seven major dimensions of human existence: the True (knowledge), the Holy (religion), the Good (morals), the Just (justice), the Everyday (consumeristic culture), the Technological (technophilic culture), and the Beautiful (arts and literature). This not only has happened in (...) the Eastern world but is spreading to the civilizations of the non-West as well. When carried to its logical conclusion, this undermining will yield what the author refers to as the post-human consciousness after postmodernity, in that humans are nothing in the end, to be someday superseded by post-humans. (shrink)

In The Imperative of Responsibility, published in German in 1979 and in English five years later, Hans Jonas introduced a new moral imperative for the technological age that runs as follows : «Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life». This article has two objectives: firstly to clarify what it means to live, in Jonas’ sense, a genuine human life, and secondly whether we can still live such (...) a life if we radically enhance ourselves the way transhumanists tell us we should. We use two concepts from Jonas’ thought to flesh out the notion of genuine humanity — the human condition and the idea of Man — and argue that human enhancement could indeed compromise both: a prospect to be avoided. (shrink)

The purpose of this book -- Intentionality -- Collective intentionality and the assignment of function -- Language as biological and social -- The general theory of institutions and institutional facts: -- Language and social reality -- Free will, rationality, and institutional facts -- Power : deontic, background, political, and other -- Human rights -- Concluding remarks : the ontological foundations of the social sciences.

This article argues that Oakeshott's theory of freedom possesses a greater degree of coherence than is often perceived. Freedom in Oakeshott's philosophy may be defined as `recognized contingency', combining the notions of a genuine choice of action and of an agent's awareness of having such a choice. Oakeshott employs his notion of freedom in two different contexts. One is the context in which freedom is understood as a concept distinguishing what is conceived as `human' from what is conceived (...) as `non-human'. The other context is that of membership in societies, which under certain circumstances can be characterized either by the presence or the lack of freedom. The article argues that, while at first glance Oakeshott's ideas look counter-intuitive, at a deeper level this understanding of freedom is akin to that prevalent in the consciousness of modern liberal societies. (shrink)

The growing appreciation of the global environmental crisis has generated what should have been a predictable response: those with power are using it to appropriate for themselves the world’s diminishing resources, augmenting their power to do so while further undermining the power of the weak to oppose them. In taking this path, they are at the same time blocking efforts to create forms of society that would be ecologically sustainable. If there is one word that could bring into focus what (...) is wrong with this response it is ‘democracy’. Democracy means power in the hands of the people, which, by definition, means opposition to the concentration of power. It is inconceivable that if we had genuine democracy, where people were fully informed of the issues, they would not choose to share the burdens of scarcity and organize to live in accordance with the limits of their environment. Yet the notion of democracy is problematic. Those striving to concentrate power are pursuing this in the name of democracy. They have identified democracy with the imposition of free markets and the freedom of people to use their wealth to dominate others. In this paper I will show how process philosophy provides the basis for justifying and further developing the traditional notion of democracy to counter this reformed notion, providing a vision of a democratic form of society that could address environmental problems. To achieve this, I will argue, it is necessary to reformulate the grand narrative of civilization on the basis of human ecology, a science which, construing humans as participants in a creative nature, can replace economics as the master science for formulating public policy. (shrink)

Bringing about a genuinely sustainable post-growth society requires transformations in the domains of civil society, the state and business. In the domain of civil society, consumption needs to reduce, and humans need to adopt alternative lifestyles, such as voluntary simplicity and zero-waste. In this article, as a researcher of post-growth and a long-term practitioner of voluntary simplicity and zero-waste, I rely on an autoethnographic study to bring to the surface lived nuances and challenges associated with this mode of living. Such (...) challenges are associated with, for example, a lack of opportunities and stability, changes in relationships, employment, health, anxiety and stress. Far from saying that sustainable lifestyles are impossible, I make gentle suggestions to create better spaces for sustainable lifestyles, while avoiding placing hope solely in individual actions. I conclude that advocating voluntary simplicity and zero-waste must be approached with care, empathy and honesty. (shrink)

The idea that genuinely racial thinking is a modern invention is widespread in the humanities and social sciences. However, it is not always clear exactly what the content of such a conceptual break is supposed to be. One suggestion is that with the scientific revolution emerged a conception of human groups that possessed essences that were thought to explain group-typical features of individuals as well the accumulated products of cultures or civilizations. However, recent work by cognitive and evolutionary psychologists (...) suggests that such essentialism is a product of culturally canalized, domain-specific, and species-typical features of human psychology. This suggests that one common explanation of the content of a break in racial thinking is wrong, and casts some doubt on the thesis that genuinely racial thinking is a culturally and historically local invention. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Theory of International Bioethics: The Negotiable and the Non-NegotiableRobert Baker (bio)AbstractThe preceding article in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal presents the argument that “moral fundamentalism,” the position that international bioethics rests on “basic” or “fundamental” moral principles that are universally accepted in all eras and cultures, collapses under a variety of multicultural and postmodern critiques. The present article looks to the contractarian tradition of (...) Hobbes and Locke—as reinterpreted by David Gauthier, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls—for an alternative justification for international bioethics. Drawing on the central themes of this tradition, it is argued that international bioethics can be rationally reconstructed as a negotiated moral order that respects culturally and individually defined areas of nonnegotiability. Further, the theory of a negotiated moral order is consistent with traditional ideals about human rights, is flexible enough to absorb the genuine insights of multiculturalism and postmodernism, and yet is strong enough to justify transcultural and transtemporal moral judgments, including the condemnation of the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg. This theory also is consistent with the history of the ethics of human subjects experimentation and offers insights into current controversies such as the controversy over changing the consent rule for experiments in emergency medicine and the controversy over exempting certain clinical trials of inexpensive treatments for preventing the perinatal transmission of AIDS from the ethical standards of the sponsoring country.The Preamble to the Council of Europe’s (1997) Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, the most recently ratified code of international bioethics, is noteworthy because it never mentions “principles,” the concept most frequently cited by the fundamentalists as basic to international bioethics. Instead it stresses rights, a concept that has been utterly ignored by the fundamentalist theorists of international bioethics. The Preamble exemplifies a conception of international [End Page 233] bioethics as an ethics of covenants and conventions grounded in human rights. In the full text of the Preamble, the term “rights” appears eight times and the expressions “convention” and “covenant” are used six times; the term “principle” does not appear at all. In this essay, I develop a theoretical framework for international bioethics based on conventions, covenants, and areas of “nonnegotiability”—a concept that serves as a functional analogue to the traditional notion of “human rights.” I also shall argue that, unlike the theory of basic principles central to moral fundamentalism, the theory of negotiated morality appears immune to the multicultural and postmodern critiques of international bioethics that were analyzed in the preceding article in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Baker 1998).Negotiated Moral Order: A Model for International BioethicsReconsidering ContractarianismThe linkage of “conventions” and “covenants” with human rights that is evident in the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine traces back directly to the moral and political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Such philosophers as David Gauthier (1986), Robert Nozick (1974), and John Rawls (1971, 1993) recently have reinvigorated this classic contractarian line of analysis. In this section, I shall reconsider classical contractarian theory from a perspective informed by these more recent analyses.The most riveting feature of all forms of contractarian theory is the metaphor of the contract itself, particularly the legitimating role it accords to assent. Because contractarians look to the assent of those who would be bound by a moral norm as ultimately the sole source of a norm’s legitimacy, the most important corollary of contractarian moral theory is that moral norms are illegitimate insofar as agents either in principle could not, hypothetically would not, or actually will not rationally assent to be bound by them. Contractarians also argue that because legal norms are legitimated by acceptance of the authority of those who promulgate them, the authority of such norms is bounded by the actual or hypothetical assent of the governed. These features of contractarian analysis generate the correlative concepts of human rights and civil rights.Less often remarked, but nonetheless integral to the metaphor of the social contract, is the contractarian recognition that the interests of the [End Page 234] parties who contract to form civil society are naturally in conflict (or, as Hobbes put... (shrink)

Nick Bostrom’s recently patched ‘‘simulation argument’’ (Bostrom in Philos Q 53:243–255, 2003; Bos- trom and Kulczycki in Analysis 71:54–61, 2011) purports to demonstrate the probability that we ‘‘live’’ now in an ‘‘ancestor simulation’’—that is as a simulation of a period prior to that in which a civilization more advanced than our own—‘‘post-human’’—becomes able to simulate such a state of affairs as ours. As such simulations under consid- eration resemble ‘‘brains in vats’’ (BIVs) and may appear open to similar (...) objections, the paper begins by reviewing objections to BIV-type proposals, specifically those due a presumed mad envatter. In counter example, we explore the motivating rationale behind current work in the development of psychologically realistic social simula- tions. Further concerns about rendering human cognition in a computational medium are confronted through review of current dynamic systems models of cognitive agency. In these models, aspects of the human condition are repro- duced that may in other forms be considered incomputable, i.e., political voice, predictive planning, and consciousness. The paper then argues that simulations afford a unique potential to secure a post-human future, and may be nec- essary for a pre-post-human civilization like our own to achieve and to maintain a post-human situation. Long-s- tanding philosophical interest in tools of this nature for Aristotle’s ‘‘statesman’’ and more recently for E.O. Wilson in the 1990s is observed. Self-extinction-level threats from State and individual levels of organization are compared, and a likely dependence on large-scale psychologically realistic simulations to get past self-extinction-level threats is projected. In the end, Bostrom’s basic argument for the conviction that we exist now in a simulation is reaffirmed. (shrink)

The article explores the manifesto of the Moscow Anthropological School, emphasizing the primacy of hallucinations in anthropogenesis. The current predicament of modern humanity urges the anticipation of something genuine and substantial. However, the essence of philosophy does not always align with the prevailing “spirit of the times.” Its mission is to pursue autopoiesis, scrutinizing society for its inherent flaws that impede progress. From this viewpoint, F.I. Girenok’s hallucinatory theory is entirely pertinent and justified. The narrative of civilization is (...) typically portrayed as a chronicle of discoveries and triumphs of rationality over irrationality. The history of fears and misconceptions, which not only persist from the past but also resurface, is less well-documented. Therefore, the program of the Moscow Anthropological School is far from being peripheral; on the contrary, it holds significant relevance. It furthers the tradition of inversion anthropology, initially established by N.Ya. Danilevsky, the first Russian critic of Darwinism. This anthropological tradition was particularly advanced by the concept of B.F. Porshnev and the research of contemporary authors like Yu.M. Boroday and V.A. Podoroga. Each, in their unique way, contributed to the critique of evolutionism and reductionism. F.I. Girenok’s concept evokes schizoanalysis, albeit devoid of Marxist influence, unlike G. Deleuze. All these aspects warrant a comprehensive philosophical discourse on the manifesto. Meanwhile, reports and discussions concerning F.I. Girenok’s theory revealed that not all participants are readily prepared to tread the path suggested by the founder of this theory, confining themselves to theological explorations instead. This, as per the author of the article, inherently signifies that hallucinatory and messianic anthropologies are complementary to each other. (shrink)

In the face of complex and changeable world, the smooth development of civilization needs the guidance of Karl Marx’s thought. The era Marx faced was not fundamentally different from the times we live in today, and Marx’s theory, which was born in that era and directly used to analyze it, is not outdated yet. Some of Marx’s basic standpoints and views about civilization, including his basic theoretical propositions on the understanding of civilization itself, the goal of (...) class='Hi'>civilization, this historical process and requirement of the development of civilization, the conditions and environment for the progress of civilization, the laws and roads of the development of civilization, and the exchanges between and spread of civilizations, are still of immense value today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments THE FUTURE PRESENT TENSE by Justin Leiber Perhaps the simplest, most general, and oldest claim about fiction is that it should instruct and entertain. A logical positivist might draw a sharp line between the factual content of a discourse and the pleasurable emotional release available to the auditor. Aristotle straddles this distinction in seeing (dramatic) fiction as imitation of, principally, human action, an imitation which (...) is, Aristotle assures us in Poetics, both naturally pleasurable to perform or to observe performed. The distinction is straddled because for something to be an imitation of something else it must convey some body of rough fact about that thing; and granted various conventions of form and good form, the more accurate, compact, and revealing the imitation, the more the entertainment. Indeed, Aristotle also insists that drama is more universal than history, for the poet depicts what is necessary and probable in human action, while history depicts what is actual, though perhaps improbable, and the historian may not illume what is necessary, representative, exemplary, or prophetic in the mass of supposed actualities. There is a puzzle here in Aristotle's attitude. All humans by nature desire to know is the resolute thesis of the Metaphysics and he suggests there and elsewhere that this desire is a noble one and one whose fulfillment is an important form and ingredient of happiness. In Poetics it is quite clear that both the poet and the audience must have some of the sort of stuff that Aristotle considers fully genuine knowledge, explanatory knowledge, knowledge of universals, for otherwise they could not produce or understand the work as successful (or unsuccessful) imitation of the probable, 203 204Philosophy and Literature necessary, exemplary, etc., in human action. So in entertaining the work inevitably instructs. Aristotle does say that Homer gives in hexameters an imitation of human action, while Empedocles gives in hexameters physical philosophy. But what if Empedocles were providing us psychology? The example could be made more telling if we consider a twentieth-century psychoanalytic Empedocles who tracks or elucidates some generalizations of psychology through giving imagined, or partly imaged, case histories — how would such a work be psychology as opposed to fiction? Imitation (mimesis) wouldn't do thejob, for Aristotle mentions Socratic Dialogue as a form of it. To move to contemporary instances, what may we suppose is the difference between Plato's Republic and Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet? l In Space Cadet, we find some hundred years hence a modernized version of the Platonic Republic, with an elite outgrowth of the United Nations, the "Space Patrol," playing the role of the philosopher kings to the whole earth. Heinlein presents Plato's three-component theory of human psychology and of the meritocratic, tripartite, hierarchic structure of the most real, or healthy, state, and he argues and illustrates the basic Platonic thesis. Ethics is as much an objective science as mathematics, immorality is a form of ignorance (no one knowingly does wrong), and the general solution to the problem of statescraft is the creation of an educational system that will winnow, at level after level, and further educate an intellectual/ethical elite who will monopolize ultimate weaponry and political power, who will use the "divine lie" tojustify their authority, and who will act out of ethical knowledge, not for individual gain. Heinlein gives his account of these matters from the point of view of a Mathew Dobson, a Patrol candidate, who resembles a Candide who finds himself within a reasonable facsimile of the Just State, if not the Best of All Possible Worlds. One concedes that Plato provides us a substantially original, more detailed and coherently worked out set of speculations and theories, while Heinlein provides us a perhaps banal version of these ideas in a sentimental (perhaps fascistic) vision. Similarly, one eagerly concedes that Plato's Republic has played a potent role in European Civilization and the sweep of human thought, while Space Cadet has not. But, plainly, the distinction between a work of philosophy, or of physics, and a (dramatic) fiction or science fiction, cannot be this. One can have unoriginal, false, or impotent works of physics, psychology, or philosophy. So one cannot argue on... (shrink)

Religion plays a vital role in the formation of conscience and therefore is very important in determining how people co-exist in a society. Nigerian citizens live in regions other than their ethnic geographical areas, but they are not recognised as people of the same destiny and subjects of equal rights. The long period of military dictatorship that truncated the country’s democracy since the civil war gave Nigerians a constitution which adopted the Sharia legal system within a purported secular state. This (...) encouraged a wide range of religious fanaticism and led to various demands for human rights, which has become a worrisome issue to concerned Nigerians. This article used secondary sources of data, such as newspaper publications and journal articles to examine the impact of religion on the state of the Nigerian nation today. The article calls for the harmonisation of Christianity and Islamic teachings in line with the secularity of the Nigerian state in order to reduce the increasing tensions in the country and make the journey to nationhood more realistic.Contribution: This article proposes that the secularity of the Nigerian state has to be maintained by political and religious leaders in order to attain purposeful nationhood and achieve sustainable and genuine development of the country. (shrink)

Belgrade University student demonstrations, 1996-97, represent a turning point in the emergence of a democratic civic culture and civil society in the former Yugoslavia. Large-scale student demonstrations were triggered by the regimens cancellation of the November 1996 municipal election victories by the united opposition, Zajedno, in more than a dozen cities throughout Serbia, Demonstrating independently of political parties, student demands concerned not only narrow issues of university education, funding and governance, but also much larger society-wide issues concerning democratic prospects for (...) Serbia Student demonstrations helped achieve several important goals, including the reinstatement of the 1996 opposition victories, and hastened Milošević's departure. Belgrade students sought consciously to transcend Serbian nationalism, effectively challenging the regime, while distancing themselves from all political parties. Crucial in terms of overcoming the virulent nationalisms, exploited by political leaderships throughout the Balkans in the 1990s, was the students' quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society. Following Milošević's demise, the studem movement became institutionalized in Otpor as a genuine civil society public-interest group and unofficial watchdog. (shrink)

In The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century , the sequel to Icarus Fallen, published by ISI Books in 2003, Chantal Delsol maintains that the age in which we live—late modernity—calls into question most of the truths and beliefs bequeathed to us from the past. Yet it clings to a central belief in the dignity of the human person, the cornerstone of the doctrine of universal human rights to which even secular Westerners still cling. At the same time, (...) the process of dehumanization so evident in the ideologies and totalitarianism of the twentieth century remains at work. Delsol charges that it is not enough to proclaim human rights as a sort of incantation but that, rather, one must understand what sort of being the human person is if humans are to be genuinely respected. In other words, if the philosophy of human rights is to form the basis of Western culture, it must rest on a truer understanding of the human person than that which is taught—both explicitly and implicitly—in the contemporary West. (shrink)