The concept underlying Prigogine's ideas is the asymmetric "lifetime" he introduces into thermodynamics in addition to the symmetric time parameter. By identifying processes by means of causal chains of genidentical events, we examine the intrinsic order of lifetime adopting Grunbaum's symmetric time order. Further, we define the physical meaning and the actuality of the processes under consideration. We conclude that Prigogine's microscopic temporal irreversibility is tacitly assumed at macroscopic level. Moreover, his "new" complementarity lacks any scientific foundation. Finally, we put (...) forward the fact-like origin of temporal irreversibility referring to classical thermodynamics. (shrink)

In one of the most noteworthy and criticized articles from the prominent periodical Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington defends the position that the most important geo-strategic problem of the future is the ‘clash of civilizations’. This replaces the older cold war paradigm and the one-sided conceptual model based on relations between states with the paradigm of cultural conflicts. According to Huntington, what ultimately counts for people is not political ideology or economic interests: “Faith and family, blood and belief, are what people (...) identify with and what they will fight and die for.”Despite many nuances, Huntington primarily emphasizes a global cultural conflict between the ‘West and the Rest’ of the world. In broad terms, he speaks of a ‘Confucian-Islamic connection’ that threatens and weakens Western values and power. He has in mind the connection between Islamic and Confucian countries that are quickly becoming industrialized, that are acquiring military as well as economic power, but that are also either unwilling or unable to adapt to Western culture. We could look upon China’s rejection of the universal declaration of human rights for being ‘myopically Western’ as a classic example. (shrink)

Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human’s benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged (...) ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called ´the land´. Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold’s land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. -/- We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold’s land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called ´ecotopois´ embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox´ transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. -/- Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer´s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland’s particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject’s tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner’s particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. -/- . (shrink)

Since the early Medieval Time people contested theological legitimation and rational discursive discours on authority as well as retreated to refuges to escape from any secular or ecclesiastical authority. Modern attempts formulated rational legitimation of authority in several ways: pragmatic authority by Monteigne, Bodin and Hobbes, or the contract authority of Locke and Rousseou. However, Enlightened Anarchism, first formulated in 1793 by the English philosopher William Godwin fulminated against all rational restrictions of human freedom and self-determination. However, we do not (...) analyze anarchism by the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but by looking for the best actual approach of Anarchist’s ‘Promised Land’. Furthermore, we follow the footsteps of Thoreau’s Walden Pond experiment considered as a place of salvation and prototype of 19th century romantic’s extreme individualism towards Leopold’s ethics of the land. Indeed, Thoreau’s and later Muir’s concepts of refuges are tightly connected to territorial and temporal bio-regional constraints and imply an internally organized public area based on mutualism and Hannah Arendt’s agape. From these ideas of refuges, Aldo Leopold formulated his Land-ethics that claimed integrity and autonomy of the ‘Land’. His foundation is a prototype of the eco-centric free space version of eco-anarchism as formulated by Bookchin. In order to formulate a philosophical foundation of eco-anarchism we reject Newtonian homogeneous space-temporal conception, preceding the whole Modern discours about authority and state. On the contrary, we adopt the pluralistic Leibnizian space-time from which thinking-humans do not dissociate themselves, but participate as part of the rational infrastructure of eco-refuges. In eco-refuges, citizen belong to the civil society that stays in equilibrium with the landscape and all forms of biological life. Space is the boundary condition of human activity and determines how borders, environmental organization and institutes are sustained. Space has its proper essence of sustainability, unity and integrity. The individual feelings of security are embedded in a timelike tradition and evolution of the free space, while individual particular conceptions of space and time integrate into the social processes of identification with the refuge. Therefore, the creation of eco-refuges transforms the actual world of national authorities into a world of anarchistic democratic eco-regional homelands. (shrink)

Time as the key to a theory of everything became recently a renewed topic in scientific literature. Social constructivism applied to physics abandons the inevitable essentials of nature. It adopts uncertainty in the scope of the existential activity of scientific research. We have enlightened the deep role of social constructivism of the predetermined Newtonian time and space notions in natural sciences. Despite its incompatibility with determinism governing the Newtonian mechanics, randomness and entropy are inevitable when negative localized energy is transformed (...) into spatially dissipative heat. In sharp contrast to the Newtonian notion, social constructivism makes room for the temporal twin of cyclic conservation and pseudo-linearly structural evolution both reconciling mechanical order and thermodynamic chaos in Leibnizian space-time. In the broad scope of natural sciences this triad nature of time produces a multiple reality and gives appropriate answers on virtual physical paradoxes. (shrink)

Niettegenstaande de tendens van het failliet van het multiculturalisme is multiculturele dialoog niet weg te denken in een zich globaliserende wereld. Taylor, Gadamer, Honneth en Kymlicka hebben een bijdrage geleverd op het vlak van de erkenning van identiteit, respect en waardering van verschil. Wij voeren het argument aan dat bovenstaande auteurs niet ontsnappen aan het postmodernistisch dilemma van zelfautonomie en slachtofferschap. Dit komt doordat zij in hun rationale vertrekken van het afzonderlijke subject en deze situeren in een ruimte-tijd waarin de (...) tijd slechts een historische rol heeft en de ruimte geen actieve rol speelt. Tegenover deze uitvloeisels van het postmodern denken stellen wij het eco-communau-tarisme. Vanuit de vaststelling dat het individu denkt, spreek en handelt in de context van zijn taal en cultuur en dus vanuit zijn gemeenschap, situeren wij dit subject en de gemeenschap tevens in een particulier territorium of het ecotoop. Door middel van Hacking’s sociaal constructivisme, het Leibniziaanse meerwereldenbeeld en het biologische paradigma als nieuw denkkader, structureren wij de gemeenschap volgens een cyclisch en een lineair tijdverloop. Het cyclische waarborgt de traditie van een gemeenschap, het lineaire doet de gemeenschap evolueren naar een moreel betere toekomst en heeft een transcendent statuut. Het eco-communautarisme biedt het kader voor een kwalitatieve evolutie van individuen en gemeenschappen. Het normerend aspect hiervan is de pluriforme en multiculturele dialoog. (shrink)

Our planet contains 194 independent states and much more nations. They share membership of the United Nations and in consequence they subscribed the Universal Declaration of Rights. These are rooted in the modern universal conception of states and human rights formulated by philosophers of the Enlighten Age like Locke, Kant., Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Concepts like democracy are mirrored to the organization of the political life as it was developed in North America and Europe at the end of the 18th (...) and the 19th century. Universality was deeply rooted in the Western intellectual, moral and religious tradition of that part of the world. Even globalization of the economic and social life is governed by the same Western standards and worldwide consumed basic goods like prime matter,. food and energy is expressed in terms of Western currency like dollar, pound sterling or euro. Despite this economic globalization there were two contradictory political evolution to discern: At the one hand more than 70 new states where created and on the other hand 28 European states started to integrate to a political European Union. The latter trend was based on a deep economic integration and since the creation of the euro also a financial integration. Basic idea was the creation of a free economic market as bases for a political unified Europe. Euro criticism is not only identified with conservatism, nationalism, narrow mind and even racism, euro criticism is deprived from any intellectual significance. However other trends put some shadow on the European project. First the Soviet experience around Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism unified more different nations than the European Union but ended in a complete political and economic chaos. Secondly the financial euro crisis involves only the tacit undermining of the national political independence of the member states, but does not make room for a deep analysis what the fundamentals are of this crisis such as lack of confidence of the citizen in the created unified political and financial market and its main instruments like banks that we consider as the fundamental boundary conditions of the worldwide globalization of goods, power and all aspects of human life. Furthermore we claim that this market in al its aspects is the worst answer to the inconvenient yet unavoidable truth that Western way of life of consumption includes a ecological footprint that exceeds since many years the sustainability of our planet. -/- . (shrink)

This book is part of the core materials project of the 'European Ethics Network'.

Grenzen van dialoog -/- De universalismegedachte van de Verlichting heeft een -postmodernistische maatschappij van slachtoffers geschapen. Het geloofsverlies in de grote verhalen en de universalisering van het individu zorgen ervoor, dat zijn schreeuw naar verontwaardiging geen toehoorders meer vindt. Zijn roep in de woestijn gaat verloren in het chaotisch geschreeuw van de anderen. Tegenover dit koude, steriele postmodernisme stellen wij het eco-communautarisme. Vanuit de vaststelling dat het individu denkt, spreekt en handelt in de context van zijn taal en cultuur, dus (...) vanuit zijn gemeenschap, voegen wij aan Kants transcendentale ideeën 'Ik', 'Wereld' en 'God', een vierde idee toe: het 'Wij' of het principe van inclusiviteit. De Kantiaanse burgermoraal is Copernicaans geïnspireerd en steunt op de Newtoniaanse ruimte-tijdstructuur. Door middel van Hackings sociaal constructivisme, het Leibniziaanse meer-werelden-beeld en het biologische paradigma als nieuw denkkader, structureren wij de -gemeenschap volgens een cyclisch en een lineair tijdsverloop. Het cyclische waarborgt de traditie van een gemeenschap, het lineaire doet de gemeenschap evolueren naar een moreel betere toekomst. Het eco-communautarisme biedt het kader voor een kwalitatieve evolutie van individuen en gemeenschappen. Het normerend aspect hiervan is de pluriforme en multi-culturele dialoog. Een dialoog met grenzen. (shrink)

This article is the integral text of an inaugural lecture as professor extraordinary for business ethics at the Catholic University of Brabant at Tilburg, the Netherlands. The author is professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven and an Associate Editor of this Review.

The article argues against the tendency to reaffirm Catholic social thought as Catholic “doctrine” and proposes a reinterpretation in view of the participation of the Church in the transformation of the world. Revisiting Chenu’s critique of Catholic social thought as ideology, the article argues for a reinterpretation of Catholic social thought as Catholic social and ecological discernment in response to the contemporary megacrisis. That such a discernment requires reflective practice and forward-looking imagination is articulated in the light of the thought (...) of John Paul Lederach and Otto Scharmer. (shrink)

According to Whitehead, nature is disclosed to mind by an ensemble of events characterized by unobservable hidden intrinsic factors (e.g., mass, gravitation) and observable extrinsic factors (e.g., motion, density). Mass is not the substratum of dynamics. It implies spatial extension and temporal duration, which are both necessary conditions of observable natural phenomena. Therefore, an instant, deprived of duration, is immeasurable. Whitehead’s claims on mass, space, and time corroborate Verlinde’s alternative conception of quantum gravitation. Within the de Sitter space-time, this conception (...) starts from the competition of the short distance degrees of freedom of the Ryn-Takanayagi tensor with long-distance thermalized excitations. This enables the creation of a baryonic mass and a decrease in de Sitter entropy. The memory effect of the original baryon creation leads to gravitation and the production of extensive thermodynamic entropy. However, the baryon production shrinks, and the dissipating space-time transforms into a space-timeless cold sink with an accompanying strong contracting memory effect. This is equivalent to the alternate motion of a giant Carnot engine, where the heat source and sink energy exchange produce the eternal periodic dynamics of the Universe. This suggests that the Universe did not start from Big Bang but oscillated eternally as a Big Bounce Universe. (shrink)

Today, applied ethics confronts many problems: technological and biomedical innovations, crisis of the welfare state, rising unemployment, migration and xenophobia. These and the changes accompanying them are, in themselves, important objects of study.An investigation on the level of the differentiated disciplines of practical ethics is insufficient. In as far as practical ethics also serves to disclose reality, it shows that modern problems can only be understood in the light of the general cultural crisis of which they are, at the very (...) least, symptoms. In the first part of this article, we will try to clarify this byanalyzing the crisis in the ethos of modern secularized society. The second part will try to show that Christian ethics can offer a meaningful answer to this cultural crisis, and how it can do so. (shrink)

Business Ethics has really taken off in Belgium. The author is Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, and an Associate Editor.

Along with the question of what kind of debt reduction we should grant to the third world, one must also ask the question of why such a reduction is needed, and what is the ethical justification for it. This question belongs in a specific context: that of the jubilee year. In Leviticus 25, it is said that every fifty years on the day of atonement the ram's horn is sounded and liberty is proclaimed “throughout the land to all its inhabitants; (...) it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family”. The jubilee year is a year of freedom, a time of redistribution and new beginnings, of a return to the original relations among people, which also implies the forgiveness of the debts incurred by history's `losers'.This radical redistribution looks like a utopian dream, but it is nothing of the sort. It is thought of as a real historical possibility, about which a reasonable debate can take place. The Belgian bishops have pointed out that this historical possibility also involves recognizing the sacred historical significance of the life of Jesus Christ. According to Luke's gospel , itself referring to Isaiah 61:1-3, he conceived his life's task as that of effectively accomplishing the jubilee year. The tone is even more radical in a verse from Isaiah 58, 6 where there is talk of “freeing the oppressed”.Jesus's action was more than simply the proclamation of good news; his action also had real consequences for those concerned: it was good news for the poor, light for the blind, freedom for the imprisoned, and justice for those who are repressed. Jesus showed that social relations could no longer be the way they had been, and that imitating Him meant that the faithful had to become apologists for the poor, which means they had to work towards a new history in which “the contorted relations between people are set aright, poverty is overcome and all the debts of the destitute are forgiven”.In this article I would like to examine certain aspects of this ethical mission and show that this radical demand for debt forgiveness is not an exception in Christian ethics. To this end, I will reflect on various key concepts in Christian ethical thought: social justice, solidarity and the universal right to use earthly goods. (shrink)

Met dit boek schreef de auteur een thematische benadering van het wijsgerig denken. Hij onderzoekt cyclische en niet-cyclische opvattingen over tijd zoals ze zich manifesteren in de verschillende onderzoeksdomeinen van de filosofie, met name de natuurwetenschappen, de theologie, de ethiek en de metafysica. De waarheidsproblematiek die filosofen al 2000 jaar bezig houdt, komt uitgebreid aan bod in een bespreking van het werk van Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida. Een kritische levensbeschouwing alléén, zonder een daaraan gekoppelde levenshouding leidt uiteindelijk echter tot een deconstructie (...) van de filosofie zelf. Buber, Girard en Levinas bieden volgens de auteur een antropologisch-ethisch alternatief voor het gebrek aan zingeving dat de twintigste eeuw kenmerkt. Maar bovenal wil de auteur de lezer een instrument aanbieden voor zijn zoektocht naar een zinvolle levenshouding. (shrink)

The theory of the just war is embedded in a venerable tradition, yet it is marked today by an ambivalence between ethical reflection and rhetorical justification. Rather than abandoning the tradition, however, I would argue that what is needed is a reinterpretation of just-war thinking, not only to prevent misuse of the theory to justify national interests, but also to expand the theory's scope and allow it to address the issue of a sustainable post-war peace.

Het hyperrealistische denken waaraan natuurkundigen zich vaak schuldig maken als zij deterministische wetten extrapoleren naar de menswetenschappen, houdt volgens de auteur geen rekening met het metafysische dat niet enkel onze maatschappij maar ook het natuurwetenschappelijke denken zélf beheerst. In dit boek onderzoekt hij hoe dit natuurwetenschappelijke denken, en dan vooral de technologie die het begeleidt, als paradigma fungeert voor ons denken over de maatschappij en onze persoonlijke levenshouding. De zoektocht van de auteur naar een ethische houding die wél rekening houdt (...) met de technologie als maatschappelijke randvoorwaarde maar er geen allesoverheersende werkelijkheidswaarde aan toekent, resulteerde in een kritische inleiding tot het denken over de maatschappij. (shrink)

L’évolution de Sartre, hormis l’évidente amplification de l’ère de son individualisme anarchiste à l’ère historico-sociale des ensembles pratiques, se manifeste également sur le plan de la normativité attachée à la liberté. On pourrait en effet penser qu’il est passé d’un stoïcisme radical de la liberté à à un sceptcisme quiétiste quand, abandonnant dans Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre explicitement son stoïcisme, il en vient à une liberté en situation. Celle-ci pour s’enraciner dans le concret n’en conserve pas moins (...) le critère de la liberté intérieure puisqu’il la norme par la lucidité prise quant à son but ultime. Mais c’est pour rebondir aussitôt : tout but ultime est encore une entrave à la liberté, et la lucidité à son endroit ne peut que renforcer l’entrave. Alors que faire ? (shrink)

Iedereen zoekt geborgenheid in een eigenhuis, een plek onder de zon. Het vinden van een thuisplek is nochtans niet zo idyllisch als René Froger bezingt. Vooral in een multiculturele samenleving is de drang naar een thuisplek hevig. Op die plek exclusieve rechten uitoefenen wars van elke vorm van diversiteit, is een nieuw adagio. Wat voor de ene gemeenschap geborgenheid betekent, vormt voor een andere een regelrechte bedreiging. Hiertegen formuleren de auteurs een alternatieve landethiek in het spoor van Aldo Leopold. Deze (...) landethiek bouwen zij uit tot een fundamentele filosofie die radicaal breekt met de klassieke opvattingen van de Verlichting. De Leibniziaanse ruimte-tijd wordt de fundamentele basis voor de thuisplek. Cultuur, taal en landschap creeren de geborgenheid. Alle participanten van de thuisplek worden door diversiteit en het vreemde uitgenodigd tot openheid. Een ecologische ágape'verschijnt als een hernieuwde horizon. De onherbergzaamheid van de postmoderne samenleving heeft afgedaan. Steden transformeren tot multiculturele thuisplekken. Kunstwerken creeren landschappen tot plekken van identificatie. Thuisplekken worden plekken van geborgenheid waarmee men verbonden is, zoals een schildpad met haar schild... (shrink)

‘Narrativity and Hermeneutics’ is not an obvious subject to mark the fifth anniversary of a centre devoted to applied ethics. Narrative tradition and the interpretation of texts are not the main concern of handbooks on biomedical ethics, engineering ethics, business ethics or ecological ethics. The reasons are evident; most practitioners of applied ethics see their area of research as a functionally differentiated discipline, a carefully circumscribed field wherein only specialists are competent. In their textbooks they adopt the view of ethical (...) expertise as defended by Theo van Willingenburg in his noteworthy thesis Inside the Ethical Expert. According to this view, practitioners of applied ethics are experts possessing a body of specialized knowledge and skill within a given domain acquired through a substantial amount of study and training. Besides being able to clarify problems and analyze concepts and arguments, they are, as experts, also able to apply specific skills of moral reasoning to reach a substantiated evaluation of values and norms, with the ultimate purpose of offering suitable ethical advice.The acquisition of a certain amount of expertise is doubtless important. The practice of applied ethics is more than probing for a good moral intention. They primarily pursue the right moral choice, i.e. the action that in a given, often complex situation, is objectively suitable to express a good moral intention. A right moral choice is impossible without a thorough clarification of the complex reality about which a moral judgment must be made.Yet emphasizing ethical expertise does not say everything. Is it correct to position ethicists as experts parallel to the medical, economic or technical experts with whom they deal? Does applied ethics, because of its functionally differentiated approach, not run the risk of either reducing itself to a professional deontology with a limited view of responsibility or enclosing itself with other experts in an iron cage of technocratic, bureaucratic or instrumental rationality? When forming an ethical judgment, is it possible to exclude completely all influence arising from personal convictions? (shrink)

El autor se propone, en Sartre-Foucault (una oposición tergiversada) , resolver el enigma planteado por el rechazo foucaultiano de la filosofía contemporánea . Rechazo casi endógeno y no exógeno, rechazo por conocimiento interiorizado y no desconocimiento exterior. Se analizan las dos fuentes de hostilidades flagrantes. 1) El rechazo foucaultiano de los privilegios del Cogito en beneficio de una consideración de la especialización del pensamiento. 2) La evidencia que posee de la normatividad, sin moral teorizada , de esta filosofía contemporánea y (...) particularmente en el caso de Sartre, el más existencialistamente moralista de entre todos los contemporáneos citados por Foucault: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sade, Nietzsche, Artaud, Bataille. «El pensamiento desde su forma más temprana es una acción – un acto peligroso» (Les Mots et les Choses , p. 339). También lo sabían Hegel, Marx, Freud, nos dice. El enigma surge precisamente del poder totalizante de comprensión que manifiesta con relación a este gran cuadro de la filosofía contemporánea. En general una oposición procede, en efecto, de una incomprensión del autor criticado o de una comprensión tergiversada. (shrink)

A consensus exists in the Christian tradition concerning the idea that a faith conviction based on the gospel also has ethical and political implications. Much disunity remains, however, with respect to the interpretation of the relationship between the two. Throughout the history of theological thought we can find a variety of hypotheses on the question ranging from ideas of theocracy and ‘status confessionis’ declarations to manifold interpretations of the ‘two kingdom’ theory.In the political praxis of modern secularised society, the latter (...) ‘two kingdom’ theory, even when it is not explicit, is given some preference because it responds to our desire to guarantee the autonomy of politics in the face of ecclesiastical or ideological paternalism. Such a position is theoretically rendered by the liberal ‘method of avoidance’ and those political theologies which make a clear distinction between one’s secular dealings as a citizen or politician and one’s ‘ecclesiastical’ dealings as a believer.An unconscious maintenance of the ‘two kingdom’ theory also bears witness to the fact that the sense of responsibility and the realism of those politicians who take the logic of power into consideration, who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, is often highly praised while the ‘naive’ idealism of those who permit themselves to be guided by their faithful adherence to ideological goals are just as frequently looked down upon and spoken of with disapprobation. In concrete political praxis, the tendency to make a sharp separation between an ‘ethics of conviction’ and an ‘ethics of responsibility’ is further reinforced by the increasing influence of the technocrats and the representatives of various interest groups who inhabit the inner circle of ministerial cabinets. In such contexts, a realistic, ‘no-nonsense’ balance of interests is all too often considered the only viable and desirable option at the government’s disposal.Nevertheless, the relationship between ‘Gesinnungsethik’ and ‘Verantwortungsethik’ remains of essential importance to the political world. Without directional perspectives and individuals oriented towards high moral goals which derive their significance from meta-ethical frames of meaning, the political machine with its strategic rationality is in danger of becoming a pointless, systemimmanent and even alienating reality for many citizens. (shrink)

Enseignement de la morale et philosophie, qui inaugure la serie, s'inscrit dans le cadre d'un effort de valorisation de l'enseignement de la morale et de reflexion sur la place fondamentale de la philosophie dans la formation morale.

This book, which is one of the results of the "Core Materials Project" of the "European Ethics Network," submits for discussion the first results of an ...