The aim of this article is to describe the basic parameters of a value-oriented approach to assessing the education results as a possible basis for the methodology for assessment of the educational work in the general system of education. The key methods we used were content analysis of text sources, cross-reference analysis, comparative analysis, and humanitarian examination of juristic documents. The interpretation of education as a unity of teaching and upbringing for the state as a key subject of education, which (...) forms the requirements for the results and organization of the educational process, sets the task of assessing personal, subject and metasubject educational results. The philosophy of education faces a challenge regarding the determination of the expediency of assessing educational results, the conceptual basis of assessment, fixing the orientation of assessment on the conditions of educational organzations' activities, and on the results achieved by students. A practical managerial task is to develop an attitude towards using formalized procedures and methods for assessing educational results. The article proposes a value-oriented approach to assessing the educational work in the general education system of the Russian Federation based on an analysis of key regulatory documents of the Russian education system, the interpretation of upbringing as a process of forming value-semantic attitudes. The approach is based on identifying three main groups of value orientations to build a possible system of indicators that fix educational results: "Value orientations related to life, health and safety"; "Value orientations of social interaction"; "Value orientations of personal development". Values are an essential element in regulating human behavior, which guides the process of defining goals and choosing the means to achieve them. Values acquire a functional character in value orientations and can serve as indicators of education results at the level of students as a collective subject. It seems impossible to single out the contribution of individual actors to the output of education and to avoid contradictions between the value-semantic attitudes that exist in the space of modern culture. For the education system, the subject of assessing the quality of upbringing as a purposeful process can be both the quality of the organization of upbringing work and the outcomes of upbringing efforts. The results of education as a manifestation of value orientations in the activities of students can be considered based on quantitative and qualitative indicators, which is significant for making managerial decisions at different levels. (shrink)

За визначенням аналітиків, здоров’я, екологія, здоровий спосіб життя належать до цінностей, які сприймаються людиною як пріоритети другого, а може й третього порядку. Допоки людина здорова, особливої уваги щодо них вона не звертає. Водночас, якщо у неї з’являються проблеми зі здоров’ям, особливо ті, що безпосередньо загрожують її життєздатності, всі інші цінності втрачають сенс: життєзабезпечувальні пріоритети переходять у розряд найголовніших. Подолання цього парадоксу – одне з основних завдань системи освіти. На жаль, тривалий час означена проблематика знаходилась на периферії вітчизняної освіти та виховання. (...) Формування життєтворчих цінностей засобами освіти стало невід’ємною складовою сучасного гуманітарного виховання особистості. Загальноєвропейська та національні стратегії гармонійного розвитку молоді мають бути засновані на тісній взаємодії систем освіти та охорони здоров’я. (shrink)

_Purpose__._ The basis of the presented study is a methodological and human-centred analysis of the philosophy of education of the outstanding Ukrainian educator Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi as a relevant anthropological-intellectual strategy for understanding and comprehending the educational process in the context of civilisation challenges. This implies a sequential solution to the following tasks: 1) to review the conceptual content and human-centred load of Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi’s pedagogical position in the discourses of philosophical anthropology and social philosophy; 2) to analyse the theoretical knowledge (...) of the anthropo-existential concept of the outstanding teacher in the context of the transformation of Ukrainian education; 3) to determine the main parameters of the cognitive field of Sukhomlynskyi’s philosophy of education in the development of values of patriotic education of young people. _Theoretical__ basis__._ The dynamic process of Ukraine’s unfolding struggle for the preservation of its nation and territorial integrity brings Sukhomlynskyi’s philosophy of education to a new level of understanding of human life and society. The human-centred dimension in interaction with the philosophy of education allows us to define Sukhomlynskyi’s pedagogical concept in the fullness of its metaphilosophical, existential and axiological content. The relevance of the problem under study is due to the crisis of values in the situation of civilizational transformations, which, as a result of information and digital technologies, have a cumulative impact on all spheres of people’s life and their attitude to the world. In the process of implementing the educational ideas of the Ukrainian teacher, the development and transformation of the individual’s self-awareness takes place in accordance with the intellectual challenges of the modern socio-cultural environment. _Originality._ It is substantiated that the philosophy of education of Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi largely determines the strategy for the transformation of Ukrainian education both in the context of digitalisation of the educational space and in the situation of a full-scale war against Russian aggression, which opens up new prospects for the implementation of identity dimensions in interaction with a qualitatively different level of national subjectivity. _Conclusions__._ The approval of the conceptual provisions of Sukhomlynskyi’s philosophy of education gives rise to a new type and method of paradigm of thinking and cognition in the implementation of strategies for the transformation of modern education, which determine the qualitative theory of the educational process in the context of human-centrism. It is characterized by the level of modern philosophical reflections, which allows preserving and at the same time changing the system of education and upbringing of the young generation in the context of universal values. On this basis, the philosophy of education of the prominent Ukrainian educator appears as a way of renewing all aspects of human life, which deconstructs itself in the situation of a human-centric dimension. (shrink)

This article interprets the formation of personal value orientations in the context of the artistic perception of the world. Personality is formed in the process of socialization and self-realization. Every person in the world is an individual, and individuality is formed in the process of acquiring value orientations, as well as in the conditions of cultural and educational development. Thus, an individual perceives the world and the environment in own way. His or her idea is a consequence of the value (...) perception of the world, which arose as a result of certain life experience and educational activitiy. Human has a value attitude to oneself, to people, to art, to work, to society and state, and such an attitude is formed individually for everyone, but on equal conditions. After all, each individual has own characteristics, own worldview, dreams, and ideas. The perception of art is phenomenological in the formation of value orientations of human. After all, works of art are already a consequence of a certain value representation of a creator, which is interpreted through the work of art. In the course of our research the integration method of synthesis and the analysis of figurative structure, and, the characteristic of works of art are used. The methods of synthesis, analysis and interpretation contribute to the scientific perception of works of art that influence the formation of human values to culture. The results of our study reveal that in general, value attitude are formed throughout a person's life. (shrink)

In their social concepts, Christian Churches attach particular importance to education. Secular education is considered in the context of modern science and culture. The Church recognizes the authority and achievements of modern science, but believes that the rational picture of the world formed by scientific research is not complete and inclusive. The religious worldview cannot be dismissed as a source of insight into the truth and understanding of history, ethics, and many other humanities that have a basis and right to (...) be present in the secular education and upbringing system in the organization of public life. The Church strongly opposes the ideologization of science and aims to restore the lost connection with religious spiritual values. (shrink)

The article examines of the role of the institution of education in ensuring the value-normative component of the life of modern society. In this regard, the situation of the contemporary global world is analyzed, which is characterized by a powerful trend of devaluation of values. The global crisis of normativity manifests itself in several main dimensions. First, the destruction of the role of the authority of the proper as a determining factor in human life. Second, the loss of effectiveness (...) of the universal socio-cultural project of modernity. In contrast to it, the particularism of local cultural paradigms is asserted (the principle of irrefutability of value-cultural differences). Third, the growing role of violence in the world, which reveals the absence of an effective international legal order and the existence of international relations in a shaky and dangerous balance of power regime. To a large extent, the crisis of normativity is associated with the impossibility of the existence of planetary humanity as a real (i.e., based on unified value principles) community. At the same time, without certain regulations regarding interactions in the global world, the existence of planetary humanity and, even more so, the prospect of its development will become impossible. This gives rise to the need for a new, essentially different normativity. It should be based on the negative principle of restraints and allows for the implementation of the principle of global coexistence “together, but not united”. A new ethic of restraints is substantiated, in particular through the evolution of three paradigms of normativity. Its essential feature is the transformation of intersubjectivity into a moral imperative. The results of the analysis of the value state of the global world are extrapolated to the Ukrainian situation. The need for a systematic, purposeful humanitarian policy in the conditions of destruction and victims caused by the war is argued. The main vocation of humanitarian policy is the restoration of the human potential of Ukrainian society and the value orientations of its development. The mission of education in solving this important social task is substantiated. In order for this mission to succeed, profound transformations of the existing system of organizing education, in particular higher education, are necessary. The direction of these transformations should be a review of the role of the state in the field of education (transition from the regime of management and regulations to a productive educational policy promoting the development of educational institutions). (shrink)

“Rethinking of philosophy to-day”, from my point of view, means new understanding of the “basic truths” of philosophy in their use in the analysis of actual social problems of the modern swiftly changing world. One of such actual problems is the problem of a nation that is the most stable social unit, representing a unity of a human and social being, and in this context a human being is understood as a national human being. Only in such a role becomes (...) an element of a social structure of a society. It is not correct to oppose the culture, common to all humanity, and the concrete culture of an individual that is national culture. The essence of culture – the totality of spiritual values - is in its penetration from the culture common to humanity, into the national culture and inversely. There are two tendencies in the world development to-day: integration, mainly in the sphere of economics, and disintegration in national-state sphere, that not always takes place in a peaceful form. It is important to find scientifically based answers to the following questions: whether national traits of social life will always be the source of tension and conflicts or they will bring bright, original vital colors into the picture of a globalized world? In general, can explosive social elements be always formed in the socio-ethnic structure of a society? The answers to these questions are formulated in the sphere of natiology - in the interdisciplinary sphere ofscientific knowledge about a nation, that realizes an important function of natiological education and upbringing. (shrink)

Although rituals are considered central to human life, scholarship on rituals in music education is sparse. This may be due to a more general emphasis on the individual and private at the expense of the social and public aspects of music in education. This article highlights the educational value of school rituals in festivities and celebrations, arguing that there is a need to revisit the idea of musical performance as ritual from an educational perspective. By leaning on anthropological viewpoints, musical (...) performances in school rituals are seen as having a central place in youth life and as revealing a school's core values: rituals are considered as social arenas where students can enact who they are and gain implicit knowledge that guides them on an embodied way. They also aid students to explore, affirm, and celebrate their important life relationships. School rituals, however, involve a pedagogical paradox: they not only manifest traditional values and the prevailing order, but may also reflect and actively promote desired changes. Therefore, school rituals and musical performances in rituals should be constantly re-evaluated from an educational perspective so that they can function as critical educational-culture machineries for conscious change. (shrink)

The prime concern of education is to evolve the good, the true and the divine in man so as to establish a moral life in the world. It should essentially make a man pious, perfect and truthful. The welfare of humanity lies neither in scientific or technological advancements nor in acquisition of material comforts. The main function of education is to enrich the character. What we need today more than anything else is moral leadership founded on courage, intellectual integrity and (...) a sense of values. Since education is a powerful instrument of social change and human progress, it is also a powerful tool to cultivate values in an individual. Therefore all the educational institutes have greater responsibility to impart learning and cultivation of values through education. For inculcating values many educationists have suggested different ideas such as : provision of value based curriculum, designing special orientation program for teachers, value based foundation courses, publication of literature based on values, necessity to develop code of conduct for teachers and students, inculcation of philosophical viewtowards life among teachers and students. Further to cultivate values among the new generations we are to design a curriculum from out of our accumulated cultural heritage. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a study of domestic and foreign sources, issues (...) of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political TheoryJennifer RobertsJ. Peter Euben. Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. xvi 1 271 pp. Cloth, $55, £37.50; paper, $18.95, £13.95.Who, Socrates asks Meletus, improves the young men of Athens? The laws, Meletus replies. But which people, Socrates wants to know, which men? These very dicasts here. All of them, Meletus, or just (...) some? Oh, all of them. Goodness; and what about the audience? Them too? Yes, them too. And the members of the Boule? Certainly. And the men in the Assembly? Yes, them too. In other words, Meletus, what you are saying is that absolutely everyone in Athens improves young men except me. Is that right? Yes, that is exactly right, Meletus replies.Socrates has succeeded in making a fool of Meletus precisely because the question of “improving” the young (or anyone else) is so problematic. In this wide-ranging study of political thought in classical Athens, Peter Euben locates Greek explorations of the civic community, and how one educates people for it, in the context of contemporary debates over higher education in the United States. Taking as a springboard (and a title) the accusation of corrupting the youth made against Socrates at his trial, Euben seeks to mediate the claims of “canonists,” who advocate a focus on classical texts on the grounds that they instill Values with a capital V, and “multiculturalists,” who are suspicious of such texts, believing them to embody the narrow and bankrupt values of dead white males—dead white slave-holding males at that. His strategy is to stress what he sees as the polyphonal and multivocal nature of the Athenian corpus, emphasizing the impossibility of these revered but disparate texts’ “teaching” any virtue other than that of constant scrutiny of self and other. The texts he examines, moreover—tragedy, comedy, and dialogue—often deal directly with the question of education for democratic citizenship, a project dear to Euben’s heart.To do this, of course, Euben must demonstrate a pro-democratic agenda in both tragedy and Old Comedy, and here I think he succeeds, although the matter is far from simple; and then there is the question of Socrates/Plato. Readers will probably be persuaded by his arguments in the following order: Sophocles’ Antigone, yes; Aristophanes’ Clouds, maybe; Plato’s Gorgias, very dubious. It is in its discussion of the troubling Gorgias that Euben’s book is most challenging and provocative.Demonstrating multiple voices in Antigone is not a daunting task. The play works as a pro-democratic statement on many levels, beginning with its very surface. Most simply, Haemon and the chorus appear to embody the voice [End Page 621] of reason against Creon’s rigidity and vulgarity, and Haemon explicitly sides with the chorus against his autocratic father. At a deeper level, however, the polyphony of the play represents what Euben sees as the multivocal nature of democratic debate, as the conflicting claims of law and family are both enacted and articulated on the stage. Here, as elsewhere in the book, he finds the process of deliberation and analysis intrinsically democratic and gives it as least as much weight as the conclusions to which it leads, if not more.Creon, who rejects discussion and deliberation and associates yielding with unmanliness, seeks to deny the richness and complexity of human life and the human community. If Creon stands for autocracy, does the equally rigid Antigone then represent democracy? It would seem to me that she does not, since the primacy she gives to religious over civic obligations appears to place her in the camp of the female/religious force that Aeschylus rejected in the Oresteia as pre-democratic, replacing it with the patriarchal state of men and civic laws as the Furies are tamed and the rulings of male juries are constituted as the laws of the community. Euben, however, puts forward an interesting argument to the opposite effect: while Creon, he writes, “may regard Antigone as the amorphous anarchic symbol of womanly power, it is worth recalling that conservatives regarded Athenian democracy the same way” (171). (We might... (shrink)

Education is a part and parcel of human life itself irrespective of the field of activity. Every field of human activity has developed its own value systems. Education has also accumulated its own value systems over a period of time. In order to make value education a powerful tool, education should be made more open, more reflective and more vocal with greater participation of teachers, students, parents and the society in deciding all major aspects of education. So far, the education (...) system in India is a closed one with outdated teacher training programmes and syllabi, heavy and mind bogging exercises with lots of paper work. There is little that a student can look into the society and learn and much less the relevance of his learning to the society. For most of the times, parents look at their children like scapegoats, since they cannot participate in their children’s education. Thus, in our country education itself has became a blunt and invalid tool. Therefore, education has lost its relevance to the social, economic, political, ethical, cultural and spiritual values of our country. Under such circumstances one cannot expect education to play the role of a most effective powerful tool that can influence human life. Therefore, there is a need to examine which type of value systems we have to develop in our educational institutions in India, that are most suitable in our socio-religious, philosophical and historical background. (shrink)

The article substantiates the possibility of using certain elements of cultural traditions in social and pedagogical work with children and adolescents. A brief description of cultural norms and characteristics of the system of value orientations, their significance for the functioning of the spiritual life of society is given. The importance of introducing minors to cultural values in the process of carrying out social and educational activities is emphasized. The problems of maladjustment and asocial behavior within the framework of cultural (...) development are analyzed, the priority stages of socially approved behavior of children and adolescents are outlined. The special role of the institution of the family in accompanying social and pedagogical work with minors and the importance of integrating the efforts of all institutions and specialists involved in the processes of full development, upbringing and education of the younger generation are emphasized. (shrink)

The author argues that moral education is a complex phenomenon to comprehend. Both its theoretical understanding and the transmission of relevant skills to the younger generation pose significant challenges. In contemporary Russia, there is an evident demand for moral education. The society’s interest in the moral development of the individual was first embodied in the emergence of the “Concept of Spiritual and Moral Development and Education of the Personality of a Citizen of Russia,” followed by the creation of a special (...) educational discipline for elementary schools, “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics,” which has been taught for over a decade. The author asserts that currently, the discipline has been established, many of the initial concerns expressed about it have not been justified, and the discipline has become one of the familiar subjects for schoolchildren. However, the main problem lies in the fact that both pedagogical circles and representatives of public opinion have ceased to seek ways to improve the opportunities for spiritual and moral education in secondary schools, although such a subject area requires constant discussion of its content in relation to the rapidly changing conditions of modern life. The author primarily draws attention to the “Secular Ethics” block and proposes various ways to improve its content and teaching methods. Unfortunately, the current program largely fails to take into account domestic and foreign experience in developing the theory of moral development. The very title “secular ethics” is criticized as misleading regarding the possibility of dividing ethics based on religiosity. The article emphasizes the need to shift from the authoritarian transmission of ready-made moral prescriptions to focusing on developing students’ independent moral thinking, as well as their ability to make reasoned judgments and take actions. The author recommends more active use of interactive forms of lessons, group discussions, and case analyses that stimulate genuine student interest in moral issues. Ethical reflection should aid in the meaningful acceptance of value norms and the formation of a personal moral stance. (shrink)

Social life convinces that without cultivating such moral values as goodness, humanity, responsibility, self-esteem, creative initiative, enterprise, tolerance, one can hardly expect to improve the moral situation in our country. These moral phenomena, in the period of transition to a market that has not yet become civilized, serve the function of harmonizing personal and public interests.

The crisis of contemporary art is a paradigmatic example of the crisis of spiritual values in today's world. The main cause of this crisis, it is argued, lies in the spirit of modern sciences. These do not find their object as a ready given, but rather determine it themselves, from their own standpoint, and thus basically produce it. Due to enormous technological development, modern civilization has turned the whole world into the Eleatic One. In materializing the uniform spirit of (...) technology in our world the role of the new audio-visual media: cinema, radio, television, video and the internet, has been crucial. Technology has become a powerful instrument of modern power: it has enabled a concentration of power in the hands of technical, cultural and political administration, as well as automatically expanding mass production and consumption, and finally subordination of people to methodic education, control and manipulation. These are main features of the spirit of the contemporary technical civilization where technology is not understood as something technical but rather as a mode of existence, connected with science and industry. By changing the way in which human life is lived, and the way in which human community is ordered, the purpose and perception of the work of art has also changed. Beauty is not taken to be a result of subjective experience and something belonging to the object as such. The sphere of the aesthetic has become the ground for manifesting relativism and subjectivism in various forms. With the development of knowledge and human power, the contemporary world has begun to sink into nihilism, losing a sense for anything bearing the stamp of individuality. In such a world, everything, including the sphere of spiritual values, is reduced merely to what is useful and efficient.. Kriza savremene umetnosti predstavlja paradigmatican primer krize duhovnih vrednosti u savremenom svetu. Glavni uzrok te krize autor vidi u duhu modernih nauka za koje je karakteristicno da svoj predmet ne nalaze kao gotovu datost, vec ga same odredjuju sa svog stanovista i tako ga iz osnova proizvode. Zahvaljujuci ogromnom razvitku tehnike moderna civilizacija je ceo svet pretvorila u elejsko jedno. Kljucnu ulogu u realizaciji uniformnog duha tehnike u nasoj savremenosti imali su novi audio vizuelni mediji: film, radio, televizija, video i Internet. Tehnika je postala mocan instrument moderne vlasti: ona je omogucila koncentraciju moci u rukama tehnicke, kulturne i politicke uprave, masovnu proizvodnju i potrosnju koje se automatski sire, podcinjavanje ljudi metodskom skolovanju, kontroli i manipulaciji. To su najvaznija obelezja duha savremene tehnicke civilizacije u kojoj se tehnika ne shvata kao nesto tehnicko vec kao jedan nacin egzistencije povezan s naukom i industrijom. Promenom nacina vodjenja ljudskog zivota, nacina uredjenja ljudske zajednice, promenjena je svrha i percepcija umetnickog dela. Lepota se shvata kao plod subjektivnog dozivljaja i ne pripada predmetu kao takvom. Sfera estetskog postala je najsire podrucje za razlicite vrste ispoljavanja relativizma i subjektivizma. Razvojem saznanja i ljudske moci, savremeni svet poceo je da tone u no? nihilizma i da gubi smisao za sve sto ima pecat individualnosti. U takvom svetu sve se, pa i sfera duhovnih vrednosti, svodi samo na ono sto je korisno i delotvorno. (shrink)

As a model for processing information about people's perceptions to understand the complex world and society in which they live, the cultural schema serves as a key concept in Cultural Linguistics when directing to the perception and processing of information about people, and social groups, and events. Cultural schema theory is valuable in deciphering culturally structured concepts, covering the entire range of human experience expressed in many fields such as education, belief, religion, etc. Through the practice of sacred rituals, each (...) religious believer can form his system of ideas about entities in his or her belief world. Those experiences and experiences are conceptualized through the language picture. In the process of cultural development and integration, the cultural awareness of the Catholic community also reflects certain changes in Catholicism in the West in harmony with the customs and beliefs of Eastern countries. like Vietnam, expressed through the practice of funeral rites and traditional marriage of the Vietnamese. In this article, by using quantitative and qualitative methods, we have conducted a character analysis of the above cultural schemas based on the corpus of 120 discourses drawn during the implementation perform funeral and marriage rites for Vietnamese Catholics. Research results show that cultural schemas (event diagrams, role schemas, image schemas, propositional schemas, and emotional schemas) reflect the cultural knowledge (beliefs, standards, principles, and expectations) of each Vietnamese Catholic about DEATH and MARRIAGE as a journey or a new transformation in one's life... That is the basis for them to transmit achieve and explain the basic values of these two concepts, helping us to understand more deeply the mind of the Vietnamese Catholic community in Vietnam when performing two important rituals in human life in reality. (shrink)

The point of education is to support students to be able to live meaningful, autonomous lives, filled with rich experiences. The arts and aesthetic education are vital to such flourishing lives in that they afford bold, beautiful, moving experiences of awe, wonder and the sublime that are connected to the central human functional capability Nussbaum labels senses, imagination and thought. Everyone ought to have the opportunity to learn about art, to appreciate and create art, to critique art and to understand (...) how we are connected to the culture of our society. A life without art is unimaginable, and to the extent that people lack aesthetic experiences, their lives are impoverished, not ‘fully human’. Given that the distinctive value of art objects is that they afford aesthetic experience, it is upon this foundation that an argument ought to be mounted as to why schooling needs the arts, specialised teachers, and all students deserve aesthetic education. Therefore, in this paper, I offer a defence of compulsory aesthetic education across the curriculum on the basis of the aesthetic experiences the arts afford, and the central role such experiences play in eudaimonia—the flourishing life. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

This study aims to reveal the nature of the Adep lesson, which is seen as an effort to transfer national and spiritual values to the next generation in Kyrgyzstan. In line with the purpose of the study, it focused on the questions of how the Adep lesson emerged, which factors are effective, what kind of discussions it brings, its place in the education system, what its purpose and principles are. The answers to these questions are constructed with a descriptive (...) design within the framework of inductive analysis. An effort are made to provide an idea about the Adep lessons and to clarify the meanings through descriptions. In this respect, our study draws attention as data for determining the situation of moral values education in Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, it is thought that it will contribute to making qualified decisions for moral values education. According to the results of the study, the Adep lesson emerged with the need for religious education, which plays an important role in the spiritual values of the society. However, as a result of the discussions within the framework of legal regulations, it has turned into moral and national values education. At the same time, the experience of the Adep lesson has revealed that the subject of religion in formal education can only be included as a cultural and social reality. In this context, the citizens of the Kyrgyzstan state should not ignore the religious preferences and the issue of consciously building their religious life. Rather than leaving religious education only to religious institutions, it would be useful to consider the complementarity of formal education and religious education. (shrink)

There is a dire need today to create spaces in which people can make meaning of their existence in the world, abiding by cultural frameworks and practices that acknowledge and validate a meaningful existence for all. People are not just isolated individuals but are connected in diverse ways with other persons within our natural and social environment which is part of the whole universe. The African philosophy of uBuntu or humaneness is re-emerging for its timely relevance and potential as indispensable (...) in our quest for global citizenship, peace, and mutual understanding in securing sustainable human development in the broader ecosystem. Comparative educationists have the challenge to devise theoretical frameworks, epistemological and pedagogical constructs as well as pragmatic, useful and effective ways of promoting the virtues of compassion and recognition of our common humanity in eliminating the ills of domination and control that are guided by greed, hatred, jealousy, and intolerance. Comparative Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Shared Living through Ubuntu paves the way for a better understanding of the critical importance of the collective search and endeavor towards achieving the virtues of nonviolence, peace, shared values of living together, global citizenship, improved quality of life for all and a better appreciation of the positive implications of interdependence. (shrink)

As a natural result of globalization and migration from village to city, peace, ease, and happiness of people who have to coexist in cities are extremely important. Beliefs, systems, ideologies, and institutions aim to achieve this. This situation forces individuals and groups who live together, whether they want to or not, to get to know and communicate with each other within a trust environment. The most important factor that makes recognizing segments of society with different characteristics and communicate with them (...) in a healthy way is to develop a culture of coexistence among the community members. Coexistence means that people with different identities and affiliations are united around the citizenship denominator and contributing to the continuation of social life in unity and solidarity. This understanding must be transformed into a cultural consciousness in the community members. Because, polarization, marginalization, discrimination, and violence become common among individuals who live in societies where the culture of living together and the awareness of citizenship are not developed. It is not possible to ensure coexistence only by law. In societies where a culture of cohabitation develops, differences are not seen as a cause of separation, but as a richness that diversifies society and gives dynamism to social life. In societies dealing with political, social, economic, and moral problems, religion, language, race, ethnic identity, and regional sense of belonging might be more likely used as terrorization tools. The self-confidence that accurrate religious knowledge gives to individuals might weaken such a possibility. Islam anticipates a social system that facilitates a pecaful and easeful life for the people. Giving importance to principles such as love, respect, tolerance, justice, consultation, assistance, and solidarity in the Qur'an is an indication of the need for this system. The Prophet Mohammad had the opportunity to apply an example of this system in Madinah anticipatedin the Qur'an in Madinah. After the migration, some principles related to the basic rules of coexistence were included in the Madinah agreement, which the Prophet signed with representatives of different segments living in Madinah. It is very important that these principles are able to shed light on the issues happenin in the recent world. The experience of living together in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) should be introduced to the next generations with correct information. Because, The Medina Agreement, which has an important place in the history of Muslims, is an important example of the ability to live together in peace and ease by maintaining differences in society. The Medina Agreement is the first written document that allows different groups of people residing in Medina to live together. The main purpose of this agreement, which the Prophet made with the Jewish, Christian, and polytheistic tribes in Medina after the migration, is to protect the fundamental rights stemming from the citizenship of people who live in the same city by having different faiths and cultural values. If so, the Madinah Agreement might be an example for many societies that recently experience discord and unrest due to their characteristics such as religion, language, race, political thought, and etc. In this regard, this article focuses on the importance of the culture of coexistence in the context of the Madinah Agreement and the process of formation of this culture and offers some suggestionsthat will facilitate peace and ease for different groups living in the same society. Some of these suggestions are as follows: Differences such as language, religion, race, culture, and political thought among the realities of social life should not be seen as an element of discrimination, everyone should contribute to the peace and well-being of society by combining in the common denominator of citizenship. In educational institutions, it should be taken into account values such as human love, respect for the other, tolerance, freedom of thought, empathy, and peace. In addition to educational institutions, all segments operating in the field of law, politics, economics, religion, and media should unite, and thus, should develop a consciousness of citizenship in society, where differences in race, religion, language, culture and political views are seen as richness. (shrink)

Education is viewed as not merely a particular domain of social life. It is more a universal process than a mere learning of sciences and arts; it is richer than an individual's socialization. The educational democratization turns out to be a prerequisite of humanization of the entire social life. The orientation at the supreme humane values as a strategic direction of democratic evolution of education is opposed to the authoritarian tendencies as an “antivalue” of pedagogical relations.Being a significant step (...) towards a genuinely humane society, democratization is unable, however, to resolve the fundamental problem of human formation: that of alienation. The opportunity to resolve it is dependent upon proper conditions for a free self-determination of a personality in culture. (shrink)

The moral and ethical issues of forming an educated citizenry are quite rel­evant for Ukrainian society. The formation of civic consciousness on the basis of European values is in the problematic field of the philosophy of education, which is a methodological guideline for the formation of an individual’s worldview. In the article, an attempt is made to outline the conceptual and categorical appara­tus of educated citizenship; in particular, the meaning of the term “citizenship” is clarified. Citizenship is defined as (...) a moral quality of an individual that prompts a person to consciously fulfill civil duties and a sense of duty to the state and soci­ety. The connection between the civil socialization of the individual and the cul­ture of citizenship, which consists in the presence of a set of virtues: law-abiding, loyalty, community spirit, patriotism, love for the homeland, and international­ism, is also indicated. The work claims that the philosophy of education, possess­ing a wide arsenal of methodological means of shaping the worldview of a citizen, can direct educational processes in the Ukrainian community. Civic education and upbringing should be carried out by creating a democratic educational environ­ment based on European values: respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and respect for human rights. The conclusions indicate that the problem of the formation of an educated citizenry in Ukraine requires a com­plex joint solution both on the part of the power structures and on the part of educational institutions. The basis of the educational model of the new Ukrainian society is the theoretical basis of the formation of a citizen’s personality, socio-cultural determinants of the formation of civil society, applied aspects of the in­troduction of educated citizenship in Ukraine. (shrink)

The article “The Note on the Humanities and Education” by the german social philosopher Theodor Adorno, a representative of the critical theory of society, was published in 1962. In this philosophical-educational work Theodor Adorno continued the preliminary theme of his critical consideration of the unity of the elements of the culture of the industrial-mass society, which contribute to establishment in social life of industrial-mass ideology as completely dominant. In his philosophical-educational works Theodor Adorno also carried out a critical attack on (...) the school and university education of post-war West Germany. According to the philosopher, this education remains traditionally unchanged, which makes it impossible for any serious anti-ideological transformation in its system. Such changes because of updated educational process could have contributed to the upbringing of a young citizen, a conscious and active participant in democratic transformations in the post-totalitarian society. However, according to Theodor Adorno, the educational process in the unreformed university remains controlled primarily of the agents of the scholarly consciousness, which in no way contributes to the anti-ideological upbringing of students. In this work Theodore Adorno noted the special significance of the humanities, which in German are translated as “sciences about the spirit”, which traditionally present in German university education. In his opinion, the humanities, as the sciences about the spirit, because of the prevalence in the educational process of the “dictates of the scientific ideal” lost the presence in itself of a factor of the individual human spirit. Theodor Adorno called of the signs of the presence of such a phenomenon in university education: the absolute priority of scientific research among humanities study, the lack of personal pedagogical work of a university teacher with a student of humanities, the tendency of struggle of the agent of the reified scientific consciousness against any different knowledge, the unity of the social and theoretical conformism of the agent of that conceptual consciousness. As in his other philosophical works, Theodore Adorno proposed to perceive of personal activity of a human, what is due to the strength of his individual spirit, the natural factor that is capable of conducting a continuous personal struggle with negative phenomena in education, which ideologically influence to the educational process at the university and in education in general. (shrink)

In a deeper sense, quality of worklife (QWL) refers to the quality of life (QL) of individuals in their working organizations—commercial, educational, cultural, religious, philanthropic or whatever they are. Modern society is organizational society. Individuals spend much of their lives in organizations. Hence, the impor tance of QWL is unquestionable. It has an ideological core comprising the perceptual gap across individu als about the real connotation of QL as well as QWL. In addition to this ideological problem, the study of (...) QWL presents serious methodological problems too. A positivist attitude is always sceptical about the deeper meaning of life, maybe out of honest lack of knowledge, or maybe with some ulterior motives. The present paper therefore is an attempt to touch upon three aspects of QWL: (a) QWL from a human values approach; (b) some viewpoints for subjective observation of QWL; and (c) some ameliorative measures towards im proving QWL. (shrink)

The problem of the values of Ukrainian society is one of the most important and debatable problems in modern scientific discourse. This is due to the transition of our state from the traditional model of the state, in which there is authoritarianism, secrecy, to a socially oriented society and a democratic, open state.Accordingly, there is a change in values, which is an integral part of the existence of any society and state. To replace the Soviet system of declaration (...) of surrogatecollective, paternalistic values, which existed for several decades, a new system is formed, which provides a clear orientation of Ukrainians to European values, the significant achievements of the Ukrainian people, the moral recovery of society, increasing values and culture of civil society. Honor and dignity of Ukrainians, which is an indispensable basis for the development of moral culture of society.The purpose and objectives of the article. Based on the achievements of modern science and philosophy, to analyze the essence of the moral culture of the people, the place of human dignity and its importance in moral culture; to characterize and classify the main factors of dignity formation in the moral culture of the people. The research methodology is complex and is based on philosophical-anthropological and philosophical-cultural analysis of the problems of formation of moral culture of the Ukrainian people and its structural element - human dignity. Research results.The most important, synthetic, integral consequence of human development is moral culture. Moral culture is the level of assimilation by an individual or a group of people of existing moral values in society, the degree of their involvement in the moral aspects of activity, a measure of personal moral development. Practical and spiritual factors include, first of all, ethnic stereotypes specific to a certain people (traditions, customs, rituals, typical traits of character and behavior, dominant emotions, folk crafts, entertainment, games), as well as historical memory, established symbols, folk shrines. Historical memory, preserving every page of life, the people’s struggle for social, political and national rights at all stages of its development, serves as a solid foundation on which national self-consciousness is successfully formed.Institutional factors are important for the formation of dignity in the moral culture of the people. These include nation- and state-building activities of public authorities, national elite, political parties, religious and public organizations. If the state creates conditions in society for the assimilation of the historical and cultural experience accumulated by the nation, it contributes to the education of national self-esteem, ie awareness of community members of their belonging to the nation, their duty to the community of like-minded people. Conclusions. Summarizing the results of the study, we can formulate the following conclusions. Human dignity in the moral culture of the Ukrainian people is the result of the interaction of a combination of many factors that determine its structure and content. The process of its formation is quite long, complex and contradictory. This is due to the fact that it is human dignity that provides the spiritual, ideological foundation for the functioning of national communities, contributing to the development of promising guidelines for the development of the nation and the state. (shrink)

William James and Education is a dynamic collection of original essays spotlighting William James as a role model for bringing philosophy to bear on the persistent issues of life and education. Using James's philosophical ideas, the contributors evade the polarization and superficiality that permeate the debate around such educational issues as standards versus diversity, cultural consensus versus multiculturalism, religion versus science, and individual freedom versus social determinism. The result is a synthetic collection of essays offering original, unique, and useful insights. (...) One of the most influential of American philosophers, William James is relevant today because he provides a way of understanding human behavior that is both rigorous and humane. James shows how we may soften and sometimes harmonize rigid ideological divisions, such as those plaguing contemporary education, with a pragmatic approach to issues of theory and practice. By reconsidering some of the roots of American thought in James's work, this volume points the way to valuing both uniqueness and universality, among other seemingly opposing concerns. The result is a lively weave of historical and contemporary thought, providing philosophical perspectives on the critical issues facing educators today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Conflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing WorldMarwood Larson-HarrisConflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing World. By Sulak Sivaraksa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005. 145 pp.Sulak Sivaraksa's Conflict, Culture, Change is a useful if uneven collection of essays that touch on many of the basic aspects of Engaged Buddhism. The book does not make an original contribution to the field, yet it serves as a good introduction (...) to the tenets and practice of socially responsible Buddhism.Though not as prolific as Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama, Sulak Sivaraksa's contributions as a grassroots organizer and spokesperson are widely recognized, and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his resistance to Thailand's military dictatorship. His few books bear witness to the ways that he and similar peacemakers have found innovative methods to prevent globalization from destroying traditional ways of life.It does not seem entirely relevant to criticize a book that is so well intentioned and written by such an exemplary human being. Nonetheless, Conflict, Culture, Change is an odd collection of essays. Most have been published elsewhere, and taken together they tend to be repetitive. They are loosely grouped into three sections; the first two—"Peace, Nonviolence, and Social Justice" and "Simplicity, Compassion, and Education"—lay out a range of ways that classic Theravada Buddhist values could bring sanity to a world out of balance, discussing global conflict, nonviolence, reconciliation, consumerism, and environmentalism. What ties them together is the use of Buddhist ideas to analyze and respond to current problems, but the ensuing discussion does not progress beyond an introductory level. While it is certainly true that the onslaught of capitalism is traceable to the three poisons (greed, hatred, and ignorance) and that sincere humility on the part of world leaders would help facilitate global diplomacy, [End Page 166] this kind of analysis will probably not convince anyone who is not already a fellow traveler.Indeed, some scholars have waited for the leaders of Engaged Buddhism to articulate a more consistent philosophical basis for their praxis. In some ways, this criticism is ironic. After all, the energies of Engaged Buddhism are appropriately directed toward action and not theory, and Sivaraksa and others rightly criticize the single-minded pursuit of meditation unless it is balanced by an active response to social problems. Sivaraksa is careful to balance these dimensions, arguing that either one without the other is unable to bring about real change. He also combines classical Buddhist concepts with modern approaches—liberation theology, for example. What is needed, in this regard, is a more sustained exploration of where precisely traditional Buddhism can be supplemented by modern critical discourse without losing its nature as a dharma-based soteriology. On the other hand, if Sivaraksa's book were more focused on practical steps and concrete agendas, it could have served as a blueprint for organizers. That it does neither philosophy nor pragmatics limits its shelf life.A third section, "Culture and Change," is the book's most coherent, focusing on Thailand and the rise and fall of its dictatorships and the decline of Thai Buddhism. Sivaraksa's many stories attest to an all-too-common dynamic in South Asian Theravada countries: monks becoming politically powerful and their spiritual discipline waning. Sivaraksa also finds reason for hope: some Buddhists have remained true to the values of simplicity and humility, and new movements have arisen to help the old culture resist the new. At times his descriptions seem, at least to the Western reader, to border on a romantic nostalgia for an agrarian, temple-centered past, when monks were the revered authorities in their villages and families sent their sons to be ordained early. Now, he points out, many monks have VCRs and air conditioning and sleep on "soft, fluffy mattresses." Sivaraksa's book vividly conveys the cultural memory of rural Thailand to the West, and one would want all CEOs of multinational companies to read these stories before they set about modernizing the Thai countryside. Yet modernity cannot be uninvented; there can be no return to the simplicity of yesterday. After an extended chapter describing how the Thai elites' fascination... (shrink)

The relevance of the study is the need to reform the educational environment based on the values of inclusion to ensure the accessibility of quality education for all people. The purpose of the study is to justify the need an inclusive culture formation as a culture of acceptance of diversity and mutual understanding. The research problem is the lack of development of an inclusive organizational culture is a barrier to ensuring the availability of quality education in a variety of (...) health limitations and the educational needs of students. The study is based on the analysis of regulatory documents, comparison and generalization of the available approaches in international and Russian theory and practice on the inclusion values issue in the strategy of educational organizations and the formation of an inclusive organizational culture. Results: it was established that the inclusive agenda in education aggravates the problem of the formation of an inclusive organizational culture as a culture of accepting diversity as a value, advantage, significant educational, upbringing, developing resource; staged, the need for a proactive strategy of the formation of intercultural competencies are justified. -/- . (shrink)

This study discusses the teachings of Sunan Gunung Jati as the value of religious humanism in education and history for the people of Cirebon. The teachings of Sunan Gunung Jati are still tightly grasped by the people of Cirebon from ancient times to the present, namely martabat tembung wali because they contain moral teachings and noble cultural values. The teachings of Sunan Gunung Jati have the concept of religious humanism as a form of history. The concept of religious humanism (...) has implications for the educational process, with an orientation to developing human aspects. The purpose of this study is to explore the values of life reflected in the teachings of Sunan Gunung Jati’s life as the value of religious humanism in education and history for the people of Cirebon. This research uses an anthropolinguistic theoretical framework to examine the value of religious humanism in education and history for the people of Cirebon. This study uses a qualitative research paradigm. The results showed that the teachings of Sunan Gunung Jati contained the value of life in social rules. Sunan Gunung Jati has relevance to the process of human development. Humans have a personal side that continues to grow in line with the social side. Human development is also surrounded by spiritual components as a form of emotional intelligence. Contribution: This article contributes to the objective of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies to investigate the history of religions, as well as phenomenology, psychology, philosophy and sociology of religions. (shrink)

The essays in this book consist of revised versions of Victor Cook Memorial Lectures delivered in the universities of St. Andrews, London, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Oxford, Glasgow and Leeds.

Institutional education of young people for religious dialogue and tolerance inthe Republic of Serbia began with the introduction of optional teaching subjects ReligiousEducation and Civic Education in primary and secondary schools in 2001. At the sametime, a radical reform of the educational system was started in accordance with neoliberalideological principles and development strategies. Explicit and hidden religious andpolitical contents can also be observed in many other teaching subjects that have undergonereform changes in teaching contents, especially in primary education. Religiouseducation is (...) conducted according to the confessional model for recognized churches andtraditional religious communities living in Serbia. As a general goal of Religious Education,it was pointed out that it should provide students with a complete religious view ofthe world and life, as well as enable them to freely adopt the spiritual and life values of theChurch or community to which they belong. Then, that this goal should be achieved inan open and tolerant dialogue, with respect for other religious experiences and views. Inthe tasks of Religious Education, it is indicated that it should develop in students the aspirationtowards responsible shaping of common life with other people, peoples, religiouscommunities and cultures different from their own. On the other hand, Civic Educationis defined as education for democracy and civil society. The main goal of teaching in thissubject is to acquire knowledge and develop skills for the role of a responsible citizen forlife in a democratically organized and humane society based on respect for human andcivil rights, the right to diversity and the development of multiculturalism. The teachingcontent in these, as well as in other complementary subjects, has been influencing theformation of basic value attitudes and rules of behavior for two decades, thus creating anew religious and political culture among young people that contributes to a more tolerantattitude towards many social issues and a better understanding of various social phenomenaand relationships. It is a well-founded assumption that young people studying inSerbia have the educational potential for religious dialogue and tolerance. (shrink)

This essay argues that service-learning pedagogy is an important tool in pre-health humanities education that provides benefits to the community and produces more compassionate, culturally competent, and community-responsive future healthcare professionals. Further, beginning this approach at the baccalaureate level instills democratic and collaborative values at an earlier, crucial time in the career socialization process. The discussion focuses on learning outcomes and reciprocity between the university and community in a Medical Humanities course for junior and senior premedical students, an elective (...) in the premedical curriculum. The course includes an experiential learning element in which students shadow physicians and a service-learning component in which students complete medically-relevant service work, working with partners such as the veteran’s hospital, a hospice home, and organizations that serve individuals with disabilities. We cover topics such as narrative medicine, ethics, cross-cultural medicine, patient/practitioner relationships, the human life cycle, and the illness experience, and the writing, discussion, and reflection we engage in is enriched by the real-world experiences from which the students are able to draw. The shadowing and service experiences and the classroom texts and topics combine to form a symbiosis that leads to especially meaningful teaching and learning outcomes. (shrink)

. The article substantiates the relevance of complex researches aimed at expert understanding of the humanistic potential of ethical ideas of different religious traditions and clarifying the conditions of their effectiveness in modern reality. Methodological guidelines for such studies are Kant's ethicotheology; ethical doctrine of N. Hartmann; Berdyaev's ethics of creativity; E.Fromm’s demarcation of the foundations of authoritarian and humanistic religiosity; D.Ikeda's ideas about the primacy of cultural dialogue of religions over their dogmatic or corporate isolationism. The author models the (...) possibilities of synthesis of comparative, dialectical, phenomenological, hermeneutic, synergetic methodological strategies in understanding of the value vectors of religious ethics. It is noted that the content of the term "religious ethics" is not limited to a system of canonized, "once and for all" formulations, norms and prohibitions of a particular religion. Religious ethics is a broad value and social space of human interaction and cultural creation. No less than canons and dogmas, it is also defined by practical patterns of forming relationships in a particular religious community as a hotbed of intense value exchange. The specificity of the principle of humanistic synergy of different traditions religious-ethical ideas is substantiated. It is proved that in the conditions of a globalized, post-information society there are many opportunities for constructive action of this principle. After all, religious meanings are penetrating to the consciousness of people not only within the confessional upbringing and “catechization”. Often they are mastered through individual, autonomous forms of socialization of the individual. That is, the level of cultural development, education and self-education, and involvement in one or another information "field of attraction" are important here. The author of the report identifies a specific vision of the value core of a number of religious traditions of the world, which can be productively used for the humanistic synergy of relevant religious and ethical ideas. He summarizes this core with the example of humanist ideas and practical examples of Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. At the same time, he identifies the value antipodes of humanistic virtues present in these religious traditions and analyzes the ways of their social cultivation preventing The emphasis of the study is extrapolated to the Ukrainian context of the functioning of religious and religious education, as well as to the issues of applied ethics and civil responsibility of religious communities, their leaders and activists. It is concluded that among the important conditions for the humanization of the functioning of religious structures in modern society – the optimization of the communicative "climate" of educational projects, the development of practical dialogue with respect to other religions and worldviews, the active introduction of philosophical and academic religious and religious studies, which educates future religious leaders. Accordingly, the prospects for further research in this methodological key lead to a detailed reflection on the educational, communicative, media, cultural and aesthetic, legal conditions of harmonizing the humanistic value orientations of the ethics of religions and the practice of living of confessions and religious communities. (shrink)

The idea of change seems to be a vital part of human life and culture. With the concept of change, people, communities, and cultural practices have significantly evolved. Change has transformed some communities, traditions, cultural values and practices, communication methods, education, art, and literature. Thus, in this paper, I focus on the idea of change, African cultural practices, and the African sense of community. I aim to show how the concept of change has meddled with African cultural practices and (...) the African sense of community. I intend to achieve this by using the Ifá divination system, the idea of storytelling, and homosexuality or the LGBTIQA+1 people as examples. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool for determining students' spiritual health and life orientation. For this purpose, the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM) inventory developed by Fisher (2010) is adapted to Turkish. The adaptation study was carried out on 1591 high school students in three study groups studying in Ankara and Muş. The original English measure consisting of four dimensions and twenty items was translated into Turkish, factor analysis, validity and reliability (...) tests were conducted on the sampling data. As a result of the study, the Turkish-adapted inventory consists of four dimensions (personal, social, environmental and transcendental) which resemble the original inventory. In addition, internal consistency coefficients of the inventory dimensions were in perfect harmony with the original inventory and served the purpose of the scale. In Conclusion The Turkish adaptation of the SHALOM Inventory can be used in different disciplines of psychology, educational sciences, and social sciences. Summary: The concept of religion, which is an important dynamic and carrier of the social field, has gone into a double distinction since the second half of the 18th century; the concept of spirituality has begun to be refined from the concept of religion. The concepts of religion and spirituality are very difficult to define; While the concept of religion focuses ideology and rules of belief, spirituality centers on individual experiences and interrelationships that extend religion. For this reason, different spirituality and religion definitions are made from different perspectives and different spirituality scales were developed within this framework. However, the results of these studies differ significantly from each other; this means that spirituality was defined and conceptualized based on the scale that was used. Early period studies on spirituality mostly focus on religion, health, psychology and work life. In these studies, after defining the concept of spirituality; the relationship between the concept and health, religion, psychology and business life or necessity for human life is discussed. In the West, until the 1950s, the concepts of religion and spirituality were used interrelated. However, today these two concepts are almost completely separated from each other.Literature consists of numerous inventory development studies to measure spirituality. The fact that the inventory works based on different conceptual foundations makes it difficult to draw a general, meaningful and consistent conclusion about spiritual health and life orientation. Furthermore, spirituality measurements reflecting the religion and values ​​of a particular culture cannot be comprehensive or universal. At this point, Fisher criticizes the measurement tools developed for the purpose of measuring spirituality: in terms of "mixing religion and spirituality", "relying on the world of values", "not taking into account cultural differences", "and questioning only the mystical/spiritual experience". As a result, it can be said that no measurement developed in the conceptual structure of the West does not take into account the cultural flexibility and accept its spiritual values as universal or prevalent.The SHALOM inventory developed by Fisher, which adapted to the Turkish culture in present study, is based on four basic (individual, social, environmental and transcendent) areas that constitute the world of interpersonal relationship. In this study, spirituality, as in Fisher's work, emphasizes the interaction with certain concepts of different intensities that are considered as independent from religion and above religions. In this context, the concept of spirituality communicates with one's personal space, social position, nature, and transcendental power. This adaptation study will provide useful information and comments on the students' spiritual health levels. This is the most important motive behind the idea of adapting the SHALOM inventory developed by Fisher to the Turkish culture. In addition, by adapting the SHALOM inventory, which is emphasized to have cultural flexibility and adapted to different languages, a new and different measurement tool will be available to understand the nature of the concept of spirituality.This research was carried out to adapt the inventory of Spiritual Health and Life Orientation scale developed for students to Turkish culture. This inventory adaptation study was performed with the data collected from three working groups in Ankara and Muş provinces and 1591 high school students. The first study group was carried out with 414, the second study group with 788, and the third group with 389 high school students. While the data collected from 414 students were used for Exploratory Factor Analysis (AFA) analysis, data collected from 788 students were used for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). In addition, 389 students were used to determine the criterion validity of the inventory. The original language of the SHALOM inventory, which is intended to be adapted into Turkish, is English, and translation studies are conducted separately by three linguistic experts who know the grammar and semantic characteristics of both languages. After the translation studies, the scale was applied to the sampling group and AFA was performed on the sample data. The AFA results showed that a factor roof resembling the original inventory was formed. Determining factors are given appropriate names (personal, enviromental, social and transcendental) by taking into consideration the theoretical names and the dimension names in the original form of the SHALOM. The structure was confirmed by DFA, and as a result of the DFA, X2/sd (1.72) ratio and IFI (0.96) fit indicator was found to be the appropiate fit for the model tested. As a result, it is understood that the Spiritual Health and Life Orientation Inventory consists of four dimensions as in the original inventory, the internal consistency coefficients of the inventory dimensions are in harmony with the original inventory and serve the purpose of the scale. In conclusion the Turkish adaptation of the SHALOM Inventory can be used in different disciplines of psychology, educational sciences, and social sciences. Spirituality should not only be defined within the framework of Western theories, but the nature and likelihood of the spirituality predicted by Islam should be discussed. Moreover, the types and dimensions of Islamic spirituality should be determined by taking into account the cultural subjectivity of an Islamic character. In the study of spirituality, the human model which modernity presents universally should not be accepted as the only truth. It should be tried to develop human models that come from Islamic culture and history and which are specific to us and define us. This should be taken into account not only in mental health / religious studies, but also in psychology of religion in general. In addition, culture-specificity should be given importance, and the experience gained from the cultural accumulation developed by the Turkish civilization with the Islamic doctrine should lead to the studies of spirituality. In this respect, this study aims to adapt the value and spiritual orientation of a different culture to Turkish culture, but it is problematic to construct the concept with Western values. Although Western values are similar to Islamic values and principles, it is envisaged that it may be difficult to measure the concept of spirituality in practice. (shrink)

Culture is the bloodline of the nation and the spiritual home of the people. Intangible cultural heritage belongs to the field of culture, and the transmission of ICH is a kind of human-based cultural transmission, which is the shaping of people’s morality, character, sentiment, will, ideals and beliefs, value orientation, humanistic cultivation, artistic taste, way of thinking, wisdom, and ability in the practice of production and life of various ethnic groups. Based on the status acquisition model, this study analyzed the (...) human capital, social capital, and psychological capital of ICH bearers from three perspectives. In addition to the conventional socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, place of residence, and education level as control variables, status attainment was introduced as a dependent variable, and occupational identity, job satisfaction, and entrepreneurial ability were introduced as mediating variables to construct a conceptual model in the hope of exploring the multiple influencing factors of status attainment among ICH bearers. Interviews were used to gain, the feelings and knowledge of experts, scholars, and ICH bearers, to lay a solid qualitative research foundation for this study. A questionnaire survey was also conducted to obtain basic information and professional experiences of ICH bearers to provide real support for the research analysis and discussion. As per the results of this research, all the hypotheses were supported except, HC did not have any significant impact on JS. Furthermore, SC was not in a significant association with career identity. Moreover, career identity and status attainment did not have a significant relationship. (shrink)

The paper "Environmental Ethics and Cultural Values related to the Philosophical Approaches to Eco-Axiology" examines the complex interplay of ethical concerns about the environment, cultural viewpoints, and human values. This research explores eco-axiology, the philosophical study of values in connection to the natural world, observing at how moral precepts influence how people interact with the natural world. For measuring, the research study used SPSS software and generated results, including descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA test analysis, which also (...) explains the pair sample analysis between them. The contrast between ecocentrism and anthropocentrism is examined, emphasizing the range of moral viewpoints and the influence of cultural norms on environmental ethics. The usefulness of environmental ethics in solving urgent environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss is highlighted, along with its practical implications in policymaking, education, corporate practices, and individual behavior. The research found a positive and significant relationship between environmental ethics and cultural values. Ultimately, this discussion is a call to action, imploring people to practice moral stewardship and substitute a more peaceful coexistence with nature for the sake of both the current and the future generations. (shrink)

European theorists of childhood still tend to locate the first positive acknowledgements of childhood as a human developmental period in its own positive right between the 16th and 18th century in Europe. Even though the findings of Ariès have been constantly challenged, it still remains a commonplace, especially within the history of education, to refer to Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the 18th century as one of the earliest and most prominent conceptualisers of childhood as a positive period that must not be (...) evaluated in the light of its distance to adulthood but for its inherent value as an important and unmissable period of human life. Such a view is as unhistorical as it is biased and eurocentred. This article endeavours to shed at least a small light on the history of education and of childhood outwith the usual focus. The central objects of examination are the theoretical treatises of Zeami Motokiyo regarding the Noh theatre which have long been recognised as one of the great cultural achievements of humankind. Despite their acknowledged importance, theorists of education have hardly engaged with these treatises even though they present us with a whole theory of education that also embraces a very original and positive theory of childhood. Given that the treatises originate from the 14th-early 15th century, they pre-date everything the typical Western History of Education would bring forth as the beginning of a positive childhood and a pedagogy that acts accordingly. (shrink)

Without exaggeration, learning problems are among the most complex and most controversial not only in pedagogical and philosophical science but also in other scientific areas. We are talking about the philosophy of education as a general paradigm of the organization and content of all that knowledge - scientific and non-scientific - that we pass on to pupils and students through education, about worldview values that are brought up, merged in the process of educational and educational activities, the certainty of (...) the spiritual world of the individual which is formed at school and university and determines her personal position, role and ways of behavior in postmodern society. Education is an important stage in the formation of the human soul, his spiritual world. Consciousness, like other qualities of the human psyche, results from education and acquisition of social experience. An important means of forming a person's consciousness is the educational system, which contributes to the spiritual development of a person. Since it is education that is that social institution, it performs the functions of preparing and including the individual in various spheres of the life of postmodern society and attracting him to culture. Human consciousness is the ideological foundation of aim and reliable knowledge. In this context, consciousness is the possibility and condition of the world, the individual can perceive and develop his spirituality. Education in this case is the most effective way to form a person's spirituality. Since, besides a certain profession, education gives a person the opportunity to spiritually improve himself. (shrink)

The idea of change seems to be a vital part of human life and culture. With the concept of change, people, communities, and cultural practices have significantly evolved. Change has transformed some communities, traditions, cultural values and practices, communication methods, education, art, and literature. Thus, in this paper, I focus on the idea of change, African cultural practices, and the African sense of community. I aim to show how the concept of change has meddled with African cultural practices and (...) the African sense of community. I intend to achieve this by using the Ifá divination system, the idea of storytelling, and homosexuality or the LGBTIQA+1 people as examples. (shrink)

Presently philosophers, social theorists, educationists and legal scholars are busy with issues of contemporary importance such as affirmative actions, animal’s rights, capital punishment, cloning, euthanasia, immigration, pornography, privacy in civil society, values in nature, human rights, cultural values and world hunger etc. Since ancient time ethics is one of the most important part of philosophical speculations and human development. The development of morality comes under three stages viz. intrinsic morality, customary morality and reflective morality. Intrinsic morality has traditionally (...) been thought to lie at the heart of ethics and this is the first stage of morality where the objective is to be moral is to lead one’s life according its basic needs. Customary morality is the second stage of morality, where customs of a particular group and tribe rule the life of the man living in this group and morals based on the customs and traditions of society. Members of the group are motivated to sacrifice their lives to save the culture and norms of the particular group or tribe. In the last reflective morality, man started thinking himself and started to do reflection on their life and contributed to the development of the nation or society where he/she lives. Here he/she is independent to think and follow the best for his life. Reflective morals are those that are based on what you believe to be right and not others. The ideas related to the development of art, values, human rights and quality education etc., all are because of man’s reflection. Reflective morality is the best stage of development of morality in human society. In this paper an attempt is made to draw an outline of development of morality in human life and its application of morality in public and personal life. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to contribute on the perennial question, how community life should be organized for human beings to achieve their basic aspirations of development? Drawing from the thoughts of Dewey and Nussbaum, this work offers democracy as a superior form of social organization. Democracy is superior not because it serves the interest of the majority but because of the values promoted by democracy which include but not limited to freedom, equality, interaction and deliberation. However, given that (...) Dewey's and Nussbaum's understanding of democracy is rooted in the American experience, the question is, is their proposition that community life be reconstructed along the line of democracy not a tool for cultural domination and hegemony? Though the values and principles of democracy must have been thought out at a particular time, in a certain historical context, it does not mean they cannot be applied to other cultures. They are valid for all peoples and cultures because they are necessary for living a life that has worth and autonomy. Then again, for Dewey and Nussbaum, though every culture has the potential for democratization, it is education that facilitates it. This work proposes liberal education because it is the kind of education that leads to the emergence of reasonable and responsible subjects. In a democracy, where reasonableness and responsibility are the defining attributes of the individual, the model of citizenship that emerges will likely be richer and broader. (shrink)

Tempuutn Senarikng is one Indonesian mythical folklore telling the origins of humans in the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung tribal communities. This research aims to represent the cultural values in Tempuutn Senarikng. This study is qualitative research using an ethnographic approach and interactive model data analysis techniques. The results show that Tempuutn Senarikng contains cultural values of the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung tribal communities explaining that (1) the nature of the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung people’s life is to try (...) to avoid being cursed by praying and performing ceremonial rituals. (2) The nature of the work of the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung tribes is oriented to being a living. The work commonly carried out by the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung people is farming. (3) Human nature in space and time is oriented to the future so what they do now will also have an impact on the future. However, they do not forget the past as part of life lessons. Therefore, they always make offerings in the form of sacrificial animal blood and cooked food in every ceremony to be grateful for what they have obtained in life, to avoid disaster, and to facilitate all hopes. (4) The nature of human relations with nature is by always maintaining harmony. They always conduct various ceremonial activities to get rid of disturbing spirits from human life, and vice versa, they are always accompanied by good spirits. In other words, the folklore of Tempuutn Senarikng is the forerunner of the traditions and culture of the Dayak Benuaq and Tunjung tribal communities continuing to be undertaken to this day.Contribution: The article results can be used in scientific research in verbal literature, folklore, and ethnology fields. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetics of Asian Art:The Study of Montien Boonma in the Undergraduate Education ClassroomMary Ann Maslak (bio)John Dewey, in his Experience and Nature, expounds on the developmental nature of human experience premised on the concept of qualitative propinquity—the integration and harmonization with the environment exemplifies the essence of experience. This principal line of reasoning shapes his fundamental argument in Art as Experience, one of Dewey's most significant educational works (...) used today.1 In it he argues that the roots of experience lie in the commonplace occurrences in the course of human life. The integration of the meaning and value drawn from previous and present circumstances results in an "experience," which, in turn, constitutes a foundation of learning for the individual. Dewey's ideas are not only appropriate but also useful in the field of education. In what ways may future teachers experience art? How does the experiential process of examining art contribute to future teachers' pedagogical tools that can be used to incorporate art into the elementary school classroom?This article demonstrates how an experiential study of a work of art in an undergraduate education course—part of the St. John's University/Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education (LCIAE) Higher Education Collaborative program in New York City—contributes to the pedagogical repertoire of process-based learning for teachers and their future students. The article begins by providing a theoretical background for the work, followed by the definitions of three concepts that are pertinent to this piece: aesthetic education, the experiential approach to learning, and process-based instruction.2 The article then focuses on the specific aims of the university's arts course, the LCIAE Partnership Program, and data and analyses from the process-based aesthetic learning for the students enrolled in the course. It ends with conclusions about aesthetic education. [End Page 67]Theoretical BackgroundAssuming the sociocultural nature of learning suggested by Dewey demands consideration of the layers of experience, it is necessary to discern the learners' emerging thoughts in light of various experiences. As a teacher, I subscribe to this belief and wanted to note how I could employ scaffolding practices to the aesthetic education learning experience for my undergraduate students. I aimed to accomplish this goal by scaffolding aesthetic experiences for students from their personal points of understanding, the university's classroom setting, and the context of museum exhibitions.Scaffolding instruction has a lengthy and persuasive history that provided the underpinning for my approach to the course.3 The intent of scaffolding is to help a learner undertake a task or goal that is beyond the learner's present level.4 Effective scaffolding encompasses a number of key features within cognitive and emotional domains.5 Cognitive elements include (1) selecting challenging activities for students; (2) monitoring their efforts; (3) using guiding questions to develop self-regulation; and (4) using indirect questioning strategies to extend and enhance the learning experience. Emotional support includes (1) structuring experiences to discourage frustration and encourage confidence; and (2) creating an atmosphere of comfort. While not all these features are applicable to scaffolding activities in an art education course of a university's teacher education program, I was mindful of their importance in structuring this course.Given that this course was my undergraduate students' initial exposure to aesthetic education, scaffolding served as an appropriate systematic pedagogical approach. In the words of Maxine Greene, aesthetic education is an intentional experience "designed to nurture appreciative, reflective, cultural, participatory engagements with the arts" by enabling the student to observe, analyze, and interpret meaning.6 In other words, it is the interactive study of the nature and expression of beauty. It seeks to enhance perception and affect, cognitive development, and personal growth by assuming that works of art provide an inexhaustible resource for exploration and reflection by the learner and an understanding based on the cultural context in which the artwork was created. Greene's philosophy, developed from the work of Dewey, posits that understanding a work of art is based on the active connection to and association with the piece. Therefore, the approach to its study is of the utmost importance.The experiential approach to learning is a... (shrink)

This monograph aims to uncover value-belief-systems underlying dominant narratives in modern IHEs, impacting the lives of many multidimensional adult learners. To do so, Eurocentrism and neoliberalism are used to analyze the socio-cultural-political movements of the U.S. and its influence on higher education trends. Then, models of adult consciousness and transformative approaches to adult learning are introduced to problematize dominant narratives and make the case for more complex epistemologies. With critical contemplation, acts of compassion for interdependence, self-compassion for intentionality, authentic relationships (...) for political consciousness, listening for non-duality, and mindfulness for impermanence (CALM) are introduced as ways to emphasize self-transformation and self-actualization. CALM practice is just one way to join others in the social justice work of wholeness and humanity to better support multidimensional adult learners. Along with this understanding comes the potential to disrupt dominant narratives with a moral stance, honoring innate human value and the diverse human condition. The future of institutions of higher education must be guided by a moral position in the name of healing and wellness. Together, we can transform higher education so that institutions are a place where adult learners create the conditions of freedom to actualize the right to self-worth, the liberty to connect with others, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment, honoring this nations guiding principles of life, liberty, and happiness. (shrink)

The increased attention of the Orthodox Church to issues of medical education in our country was the result of the fact that in the 1990s it once again became one of the most active forces in our society. The connection between the church and the medical community, which goes back to a time when the doctoring of the mind and bodily health was in fact the work of the same people, cannot leave the church indifferent to the professional formation of (...) healthcare workers. The Soviet era saw the forced de-Christianization of the medical profession and measures taken to abolish medical ethics rooted in the Hippocratic Oath and the Gospel commandments. The restoration of dialogue between church and medicine began after the collapse of the Soviet state, but it is still insufficiently regular. Currently, factors complicating this dialogue are liberal medical legislation and capitalist economies in health care. The former, by legalizing abortion, artificial insemination, and sterilization, absolves the doctor of moral responsibility in matters concerning the management of human life; the latter encourages him to view his profession not as a service, but as a means of making money from other people’s suffering. If the dialogue between church and medicine were to be carried on permanently within the walls of medical schools, it would strengthen the spiritual and moral foundations of the medical profession, upon which it has always existed. One of the most significant forms of this dialogue should undoubtedly be the teaching of biomedical ethics, which should be grounded in modern theology and the values of traditional spiritual cultures of Russia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE IMPACT OF VER/TATIS SPLENDOR ON CATHOLIC EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY AND SECONDARY LEVELS* CARDINAL PIO LAGHI Prefect of the Sacred Congregationfor Catholic Education INTRODUCTION T HE TOPIC which has been proposed to me, "The Impact of Veritatis Splendor on Catholic Education at the University and Secondary Levels,'' requires a note of clarification with regard to the word impact. When this Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II appeared, (...) it was received with much comment, both positive and negative, on the part of the press and the other media. This is one aspect of the topic proposed : to trace in a synthetic way a picture of the reactions which the document stirred. Such would certainly be an interesting study, but I would perhaps be led to traverse much terrain before arriving at the nucleus of what I feel is my duty to say to you. I shall limit myself, therefore, to commenting on two positive reactions appearing in Italian newspapers immediately after the publication of the Encyclical. The first was in the well-known Roman newspaper, Il Tempo, under the title, "An Act of Consistency in an Epoch of Doubt." It states: "If lighthouses had been moved every month, the sailors in the night would have seen the ships of history dashed against the rocks; and no voyager would have reached his homeland again if the North Star, within the Zodiac, had to obey vacillating positions of fashions and ideologies.... The papal document stirs discussions.... Nevertheless it is very much of current interest. While many ships finish on the rocks because they have * This paper was originally presented at the Forum on Catholic University Education at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, 3 November 1995. 1 2 CARDINAL PIO LAGHI sailed following fireflies instead of lighthouses and while the ruling classes have shipwrecked for having chosen compasses that lie, there is abroad a need to see the permanence of certain values recognized in the midst of all that changes, the necessity of an ethical nucleus linked to principles of the human person, honesty, freedom and responsibility." This is a positive reaction, then, which welcomes the Encyclical as a text which says things that have to be said, giving basic directions for a journey, and stating the things no one dares to speak but of which everyone knows the necessity in daily living. This is also the substance of another comment on the Encyclical that I think it would be useful to cite. Carlo Bo, a university professor and a well-known figure in Italian intellectual life, writes: "Modern culture no longer has objective criteria for distinguishing good from evil,'' and he adds, "John Paul II has fought against Communism in defense of freedom; now he criticizes Western culture, which makes of freedom an absolute value.... The exaltation of freedom leads to ethical relativism, against which the Pope raises his voice." Agreement and basic approval are transparent in these lines, but the title under which they appear is "A Call to Order." Immediately the image is evoked-negative to the sensitivities of our times-of a commander intent on imposing order on his soldiers. The heart of the problem perhaps, at least with regard to the teaching of moral theology in the Catholic context, is in the clear perception of the need for an unchanging point of reference, of a lighthouse for the voyage, and at the same time the fear of speaking of this need, of making it the subject of reflection, communication, and teaching. There is a kind of widespread fear which keeps us at a distance from the truth, from the permanent foundations of human acting, from the objective and the universal; a fear which is perhaps the principal cause on account of which so great a part of contemporary humanity risks dying of thirst while standing before a spring of cool water. In order not to appear authoritarian or negative, one keeps silent, does not speak, expresses oneself in a partial or even an erroneous way with regard to all that is most necessary for life. It would be difficult not to see in this a problem which is typically an educa- THE IMPACT OF VERITATIS SPLENDOR 3... (shrink)