The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

The relation between Church and state is nowadays at stake. This article concerns the relation between Church and state from an ecclesiastical and canonical point of view. It makes clear, how the ecclesiastical doctrine reacts to social developments in relation to the national state in order to safeguard the independence of the Church. The 19th century ecclesiastical doctrine on the Church as a societas perfecta reacts on doctrines on the national states, which claimed absolute sovereignty and by that subordinated the (...) Church to the civil government and civil law. With societas perfecta doctrine the Church defends its sovereignty in the domain of the spiritual good of men. In this way the Church defines and protects its divine origin and independence from the national state. In the first half of the 20th century the democratic and constitutional national states were developed, which acknowledges religious freedom on a constitutional level as a human and a civil right. Because of this progress the Second Vatican Council could formulate its doctrine on religious freedom based on the traditional ecclesiastical teaching of the freedom of the religious act. By then, the independence of the Church is founded and defended on the freedom of the Church, which is guaranteed in national states, which acknowledge religious freedom as a human and civil right. Although one can say that there is discontinuity in the ecclesiastical teaching on the Church as a societas perfecta and the ecclesiastical doctrine on religious freedom, there exists also continuity, because both ecclesiastical doctrines intend to safeguard the independence of the Church in human society. (shrink)

Какие философские имена, понятия и вопросы скрыты за столь модным ныне, но трудно произносимым и не вполне понятным словом "экзистенциализм"? Как философия экзистенциализма повлияла на культуру и выразила мироощущение современного человека? Что такое пограничная ситуация, осевое время и подлинное существование? О Блезе Паскале, Серене Кьеркегоре, Мигеле де Унамуно и Хосе Оргете-и-Гассете, Льве Шестове и Николае Бердяеве, Карле Ясперсе и Габриэле Марселе, Мишеле Монтене и Мартине Бубере, Жан-Поле Сартре и Альбере Камю рассказывает и размышляет в курсе лекций философ и историк Петр (...) Рябов. (shrink)