The research on stem cell-based therapies has greatly expanded in recent years. Our text attempts to seek those religious and ethical challenges that stem cell therapy and research bring into debate. Our thesis is that bioethics can defend its principle without a religious background. We will develop our argumentation on three major points: firstly, a comparison between secular ethics and religious views will clarify why stem cell therapy and research are important from a scientific point of view, addressing the very (...) center of the human being; in our view, being based on secular society, bioethics can answer the challenges of stem cell therapy and research; secondly, following Hans Jonas' perspective on experimenting on humans, we seek to understand the philosophical guidance that sciences dealing with stem cell need; thirdly, we will map the ethical guidelines for clinical translational research that have been adopted by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. . (shrink)

This paper addresses the topic of bioethics in reproductive medicine from the perspective of the religious implications for the field. The assumption underlying the approach is that religion remains a factor that influences the field of bioethics even in a secularized postmodern society. The first part of the paper analyses the main bioethical issues which mark obstetrics and gynecology, uttering that the four basic principles of bioethics are available both in obstetrics and gynecology and must be applied in association with (...) the practitioner’s virtues. The second part of the paper focuses on the main directions that guide the debate on the presence of religion in the field of bioethics, with a special interest in their relevance for reproductive medicine. Despite the difficulties implied by the task of advocating for the place of religion at the secular table of deliberation in medical ethics, the relevance of religion for bioethics cannot be ignored. (shrink)

Lower limb major amputations are both life-saving procedures and life-changing events. Individual responses to limb loss are varied and complex, some individuals experience functional, psychological and social dysfunction, many others adjust and function well. Some patients refuse amputation for religious and/or cultural reasons. One of the greatest difficulties for a person undergoing amputation surgery is overcoming the psychological stigma that society associates with the loss of a limb. Persons who have undergone amputations are often viewed as incomplete individuals. The medical (...) and physical consequences of amputation serve as the centerpiece in acute care and are commonly at the forefront of prosthetic rehabilitation. Prosthetic prescription aims to compensate for functional and/or cosmetic losses where possible. The aims of rehabilitation following amputation are to restore acceptable levels of functioning that allow individuals to achieve their goals, to facilitate personal health, and to improve participation in society and quality of life either with or without prosthesis. Our article aims at underscoring some medical, social and religious aspects that can contribute to the wellbeing of patients who suffer a life changing event such as lower limb amputation. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This article discusses a series of ethical and religious elements that occur in the debate concerning altruistic living unrelated organ donation. Our main focus is on the ethical attitude of altruist donation. In order to illustrate the connections between ethics and religion we use as a case study the group (...) of the so-called “Jesus Christians”. It is evident that this group, as a case study, is more important for the ethical and religious issues than for the medical issues related to organ donation and transplantation. However, it suggests the potential that, in certain cultural contexts, ethics and religion may have in promoting the idea of altruist donation. (shrink)

The encounters of the Romanian philosopher C. Noica with his youger disciples - Gabriel Liicean, Andrei Pleșu, Sorin Vieru et alii - in the transylvanian Carpathian mountains, in the Păltiniș resort were perceived by Noica’s followers as a real philosophical school and an idealistic alternative to the compulsory marxist ideology. In spite of that, the orthodox thinker and literary critic N. Steinhardt took it as a way of avoiding the tough reality of communism and a negation of the Christian religion. (...) Therefore, he criticised that option and the pretention of the “Păltiniș School” to create a viable alternative to the officially imposed marxist vision. Steinhardt’s article received critical answers not only from the members of the so-called School, but also from another thinker and literary critic, Adrian Marino, who thought that both Noica and Steinhardt are wrong and the younger thinkers should act against Nicolae Ceaușescu’s agressive dictatorship by meas of civic and democratic activity. The study tries to emphasize the existence of more than one alternative to the communist ideology in Romania’s 1980s, generally considered as a frozen epoch for free philosophical and politically relevant discussions. (shrink)

I analyze the possibility of free-will in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI), arguing for their compatibility. I use as a starting point Nicolas Gisin’s “The Multiverse Pandemic” (preprint arXiv:2210.05377, 2022, after Gisin, N., “L’épidémie du multivers”, in “Le Plus Grand des Hasards”, Belin, Paris, 2010), in which he makes an interesting case that MWI is contradicted by our hard to deny free-will. The counts he raised are: (1) MWI is deterministic, forcing choices on us, (2) in MWI all our possible choices (...) happen, and (3) MWI limits creativity, because everything is entangled with everything else. I argue that each of these features of MWI is in fact compatible with more freedom than it may seem. In particular, MWI allows compatibilist free-will, but also free-will very much like the libertarian free-will defined by Chisholm. I argue that the position that alternative choices exist as possibilities does not make sense from a physical point of view, but MWI offers a physical ground for alternatives. (shrink)

The Orthodox liturgy is a religious phenomenon that can be analyzed phenomenologically and theologically alike, given the emphasis that both phenomenology and Orthodox theology place on experience. By proposing the Kingdom of God instead of the natural world without being able to annihilate the latter in the name of the former, the liturgy seeks divine-human communion. Through the dialogue of prayer, through symbolic and iconic openings, as well as through apophatic theology, the liturgy emphasizes the horizon of mystery as a (...) horizon essential to the way man positions himself before God. The present text attempts to demonstrate that apophaticism, understood as an experience of the mysterious presence of God, is one of the crucial dimensions of the Orthodox liturgy; and that this apophatic presence of God reveals a way of thinking which does not become onto-theology, not even when using concepts borrowed from metaphysics. The overcoming of onto-theology is achieved here not by abandoning concepts such as “being” and “cause” but by placing the language game in the field of prayer and apophatic theology. (shrink)

Exemplified especially by Heidegger and Levinas, the phenomenology of death expresses first, the impossibility of the death experience, second, the authenticity of Dasein starting from the horizon opened by the possibility of death, and third, the relevance of the death of the other to the discovery of one’s own death. This article tries to take a step further, showing the link between the authenticity of Dasein and the desire for immortality manifested in this authenticity. By overturning Heidegger’s theses and by (...) affirming both the necessity of an authentication of death itself—in accord with Socrates’s death example—and the legitimacy of the meditation on death, this text links the need for immortality, which is phenomenologically visible, with the Christian faith in the resurrection, which is visible only for theology. (shrink)

This article first defines the absolute discourse, then discusses its possibility in theology, as well as the relationships between language, thought, and reality as they derive from the spirituality and life of the Eastern Church. Theology must face several problems—including the paradox of transcendence, the violence of metaphysics, onto-theology, and the duplicity of language itself—, but the Revelation of the Absolute itself legitimizes the theological discourse. By using both affirmations and negations, theology reveals an iconic structure of discourse that opens (...) itself towards life and spirituality. The conclusion is that, in the absolute discourse of theology, words, even ineffable ones, are insufficient without life. (shrink)

This book continues the classical Newtonian theory in both its initial spirit and the spirit of general relativity. It throws a bridge between classical Newtonian theory of forces and some contemporary concepts of the atomic, nuclear and particle theories. This book takes the Skyrme theory of nuclear matter mainly from the point of view that it allows the initial analogy between the atomic edifice and the solar system in all details. Especially important is the detail that the atomic nucleus works (...) exactly like the Sun, and they can be described in the same way. Based on this unitary description, the authors go further on, in showing that the Skyrme theory is the only theory naturally suited for the explanation of structure of nuclear matter. Thus it should be actually a classical theory, inasmuch as it simply carries over into microcosmos the very Newtonian theory of forces extracted from the planetary Keplerian synthesis of celestial motions. By this the problem of structure of the nucleus becomes actually a problem of classical physics. (shrink)

This text proposes an analysis of the phenomenon of faith in the tradition and spirituality of the Eastern Church. Starting from the relationship between phenomenology and theology, the article uses a theo-phenomenological method to depict the phenomenon of faith both theologically and phenomenologically. This article also argues that non-religious faith—either natural or philosophical—is the foundation of religious faith. According to Orthodox spirituality, faith is not reduced to a set of theoretical teachings and dogmas; they constitute only the first type of (...) faith, “simple faith”. At the same time, faith is also a form of experience, which has ascetical, ethical, and mystical dimensions; they characterize the second type of faith, faith as contemplative sight and knowledge. (shrink)

The nature and role of the patient in biomedicine comprise issues central to bioethical inquiry. Given its developmental history grounded firmly in a backlash against 20th-century cases of egregious human subjects abuse, contemporary medical bioethics has come to rely on a fundamental assumption: the unit of care is the autonomous self-directing patient. In this article we examine first the structure of the feminist social critique of autonomy. Then we show that a parallel argument can be made against relational autonomy as (...) well, demonstrating how this second concept of autonomy fails to take sufficiently into account an array of biological determinants, particularly those from microbial biology. Finally, in light of this biological critique, we question whether or to what extent any relevant and meaningful view of autonomy can be recovered in the contemporary landscape of bioethics. (shrink)

This article is a theo-phenomenological study on discernment in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, particularly as it is described in the _Philokalia_ and the _Apophthegmata Patrum_. The article focuses on two fundamental dimensions: firstly, discernment as both theoretical and practical wisdom, characterized by the importance of preliminary discernment criteria; secondly, discernment as a spiritual gift of the Holy Spirit, which can be interpreted phenomenologically through the figure of the saturated phenomenon. In its concluding sections, the article proposes a new approach to religious (...) thought, termed “diacritical thought”. This innovative approach evolves from objective thought, grounded in value criteria and contextual understanding, towards relational thought. It emphasizes affectivity and the importance of engaging with others, ultimately leading to prayer and mystical experiences. Throughout these stages, discernment undergoes a transformation: it evolves from a poor phenomenon into a saturated phenomenon, going on a journey from ordinary experience to testing the boundaries of human experience. (shrink)

Thinking on transcendence falls into a paradox: if transcendence is a radical one, we cannot speak about it; if we speak about it, it is no longer radical. The aim of this paper is to overcome this paradox and to analyze the concept of transcendence considering the dynamic of self-transcending that is natural to man, the limit beyond which one can speak about transcendence, and the phenomena of mystery whereby the transcendence appears. Inasmuch as transcendence does not escape from the (...) suspicion that the movement of selftranscending postulates it according to its desires and reaches Kantian "transcendental appearance," this text tries to delineate the possible phenomenon of the maximum manifestation of transcendence in this world: how could transcendence give itself? The answer engages the revelation, namely, transcendence’s intention of donating itself, the presence of paradox, and the solution of mediation between transcendence and immanence by transcendence itself. Each of these possible solutions has examples in Christian Orthodox theology. (shrink)

Fichte’s essay about Machiavelli was published in 1807 in Vesta journal with the declared aim to contribute to the »defence of a formidable man’s honour«. A year later some fragments from this essay were republished at the beginning of Fichte’s celebre writing: Addresses to the German Nation. Fichte’s declared admiration for Machiavelli as political thinker is difficult to understand, as the two men had very different political conceptions. The present study demonstrates that there is no difference between Fichte’s eulogy for (...) the man who discovered the demonic nature of power and his own political theory, which contains exactly an attempt to de-demonize this power. For Fichte The Prince contains a perfect political theory useful for the past of the humanity, but his theory, based on a new form of education, addresses the problems of the future. That is why he considered Machiavelli a good specialist of the human nature who, as a real physician of culture, made a very precise diagnosis of humanity’s moral maladies. Fichtes Essai über Machiavelli wurde 1807 in der Zeitschrift Vesta veröffentlicht, um zur »Ehrenrettung eines braves Mannes« beizutragen. Ein Jahr später wurden einige Passagen am Anfang seiner Reden an die deutsche Nation neu aufgelegt. Fichtes Bewunderung für Machiavelli als politischen Denker scheint schwer erklären zu sein, weil es um zwei entgegengesetzte politische Konzeptionen geht. Es gibt jedoch keinen Widerspruch zwischen Fichtes Lobrede auf Machiavelli als politischen Denker, der die Dämonie der Macht entdeckt hat, und seiner eigenen entgegengesetzten Lehre von der Entdämonisierung der Macht. Für Fichte enthält das Buch Vom Fürsten eine politische Theorie, die für die Vergangenheit der Menschheit vollkommen gültig ist, während er durch seine Lehre von der Entdämonisierung der Macht durch eine neue Art der Erziehung die Zukunft im Auge hat. Für ihn ist Machiavelli ein tiefgründiger Kenner des Menschen und der Gesellschaft, der wie ein Arzt der Kultur alle moralischen Krankheiten der Menscheit sehr genau diagnostiziert hat. (shrink)

The rapid development of large language models (LLM’s) and of their associated interfaces such as ChatGPT has brought forth a wave of epistemic and moral concerns in a variety of domains of inquiry...

This essay explores the astronomical works of Pierre de Lille, a little-known French participant in the debates on calendar reform during the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517). It argues that astrological ideas coupled with eschatological beliefs motivated his astronomical propositions to reform the Julian calendar. De Lille conceived the calendar solar year as a unit of a great cosmic year spanning 7,153 years, the duration that he assigned to the now-obsolete theory of the motion of trepidation of the eighth sphere. Although (...) his use of this astronomical model for astrological speculations about world chronology was not new, de Lille gave an original and bold reply to Pico della Mirandola’s devastating critique of astrology. The astronomical model and its astrological implications were eventually contested at the court and in academia in France, but the alliance of chronology, astrology, and apocalypticism was to play a major role during the second half of the sixteenth century in Lutheran thought. (shrink)

Is there such a sub-discipline as “sociology of valuation and evaluation”? Identifying the main focus, the topics, and the analytical designs, i.e., reflecting on a theoretical profile of such an investigation, is far from complete. The main question is indeed—where to start when addressing the sociology of valuation and evaluation? Is it a specific area of research, analysis, and inquiry, with specific objects? Should we confine it to the many important qualitative and quantitative studies dedicated to the measure of market (...) performance, the efficiency of public policy, profitability of private investment, or identification of best practices in various areas ? Beyond business and administration processes, a huge body of research in economic sociology has developed in recent years that has renewed the investigations on economic experience through a moral lens (Lamont 2000; Vatin 2008; Karpik 2010; Beckert and Aspe .. (shrink)

The view we defend is that in virtue of its nature, disgust is not fit to do any moral or social work whatsoever, and that there are no defensible uses for disgust in legal or political institutions. We first describe our favoured empirical theory of the nature of disgust. Turning from descriptive to normative issues, we address the best arguments in favour of granting disgust the power to justify certain judgements, and to serve as a social tool, respectively. Daniel Kahan (...) advances a pair of theses that suggest disgust is indispensable (Moral Indispensability Thesis), and so has an important part to play in the functioning of a just, well-ordered society (Conservation Thesis). We develop responses and show how they rebut the arguments given in support of each thesis. We conclude that any society free of social disgust would be more just, reasonable and compassionate. (shrink)

Discussions about brain data and privacy, particularly those advocating for human rights frameworks, at times, have embodied problematic undercurrents of, if not overt appeals to, neuro-exceptional...

During the Nazi regime, Immanuel Kant was the most studied German philosopher. The most important in this context is the theory of the genius and of thecreation of the genius that is developed especially in the Critique of Judgement. Kant defines the genius as the natural capacity of the personality to impose its own rules to the art. The Nazi ideologists had invoked this fact to justify philosophically the right of the Führer to impose its own rules to the art (...) of politics. This is the reason of the attempt of the Nazi propaganda to project in the public conscience the image of one genius leader who, like the genius artist, imposes his own rules to the politics. (shrink)

Regarded from a different perspective, the same values appear somewhat reversed. This phenomenon was explained by the authors who, following Oswald Spengler, associated culture with space more strongly by resorting to the terminology of optics and, also, by analogies with certain optical phenomena. This essay goes on the same path. The reversed image of the values regarded through a certain "Lebensgefühl" represents an iconostrophia of the spirit.

Theoreticians of civilization have defined a series of anomalies of the European culture as cultural maladies. But this notion was used from author to author with very different meanings, being vaguely defined or used as a simple metaphor. In the ideological discourse of the Third Reich the references to the maladies of the European culture are frequently correlated to the references to the savior Reich. The present study suggests the concept of axiological malady in order to designate more precisely a (...) series of unhealthy phenomenon of the European culture, for instance the puerilism. (shrink)

Axioclasm, or the tendency to destroy all values in the name of only one that eventually wins the heart of a certain person, like a demon, is the central idea contained in this essay. Unlike all other axiological illnesses, axiological blindness and tyranny of the values transform the affected person by turning them into an axioclast or, in other words, a destroyer of values on behalf of the one that suddenly becomes a simulacrum of divinity.

This book represents an attempt to explain the manner in which values are attached to memory. The author examines that when the fundamental values of a civilisation are attached to the individual's memory, they can never be forgotten or erased, irrespective of how violent or subtle the means used for this purpose might be. The essay investigates why some people who have been educated in a foreign culture and who are, well-integrated, suddenly return to the fundamental values of their culture (...) of origin and, in some cases, they violently turn against their foster civilization. (shrink)

This paper is about Cervante's hero, Don Quijote, who is not, axiological speaking, a comical character, as he was usually viewed, but a profound and tragicfigure. He is the idealist who believes sincerely in the high values and ideals and fights for their accomplishment. Don Quijote is like a mirror in which is reflected the moral pettiness of the others, and this is the reason for his hard punishment. The reputation of the nicest crazy man on earth represents such punishment.

Apart from what this word is usually known to mean (besides the known meanings of the term), the CLAQUE was in the history of the theatre a form of manipulation of the evaluation judgements and a way of corrupting the public’s taste. Infiltrated in the theatre hall, in the middle of the „innocent” audience, the CLAQUERS applauded when their chief told them to, in order to give the impression that the play was a huge succes. They did it for the (...) money. Taking into account this phenomenon, we can say that in the whole history of culture and, of course, on the „stage” of the world as well, the CLAQUE was always present. The CLAQUE as a cultural phenomenon is, almost each time, the price of succes. (shrink)

During the Nazi regime, Immanuel Kant was the most studied German philosopher. The most important in this context is the theory of the genius and of thecreation of the genius that is developed especially in the Critique of Judgement. Kant defines the genius as the natural capacity of the personality to impose its own rules to the art. The Nazi ideologists had invoked this fact to justify philosophically the right of the Führer to impose its own rules to the art (...) of politics. This is the reason of the attempt of the Nazi propaganda to project in the public conscience the image of one genius leader who, like the genius artist, imposes his own rules to the politics. (shrink)

The presentation of nihilism as a phenomenon integrated in the category of illnesses is very common in the scientific literature. This paper is centered on the fact that nihilism is a major disease of the axiological conscience, an illness that can be diagnosed and treated by the philosopher like a ‘physician of culture’.

Although it is been more than a century since the appearance of Max Weber’s famous essay about the objective character of knowledge in the field of social and political sciences, it still continues to attract the interest of researchers in the various cultural sciences. There is a whole secondary literature dedicated to concepts that Weber has not defined clearly enough, such as Idealtypus [ideal type], historisches Individuum [historical individual], Wertbeziehung [value-relation] or Werturteilsfreiheit [the freedom from value- judgement] ( Oakes, 1990 (...) ). Our contribution falls into this category; since the phrase ‘axiological memory’ appears nowhere in Weber’s work, the concept itself is present, especially in his essays dedicated to methodology in the social and political sciences. As Guy Oakes noted, Weber did not always endeavour to argue his thesis rigorously, thus leaving ample room for the interpretation and development of his ideas. (shrink)

Goethe's philosophy of creativity revolves around what he called das Dämonische. This essay is not meant as a definition or an explanation of demonic creation, but instead presents a demonic work par excellence, as the term "demonic" is defined by Goethe in the Elegy from Marienbad. The process of the creation of this work, as it is described by Goethe, also represents a strange exorcism, as the entire daemonic creative force of the author is transposed in this lyrical masterpiece of (...) German and universal literature. After writing the Elegy Goethe, it is no longer demonic. (shrink)

Theoreticians of civilization have defined a series of anomalies of the European culture as cultural maladies. But this notion was used from author to author with very different meanings, being vaguely defined or used as a simple metaphor. In the ideological discourse of the Third Reich the references to the maladies of the European culture are frequently correlated to the references to the savior Reich. The present study suggests the concept of axiological malady in order to designate more precisely a (...) series of unhealthy phenomenon of the European culture, for instance the puerilism. (shrink)

What makes casanova the prototype of the seducer? This is the question that many have tried to answer, such as Hermann Kesten, in his study dedicated to this character, whose name has become a common proper noun in almost all European languages. Was the incredible force of Casanova’s seduction made possible by a certain technique or, better, an art with rules that everyone can master? As he says in The Story of My Life, “The chief business of my life has (...) always been to indulge my senses.” Is it possible that this was the nucleus that radiated such a mysterious force? Did he discover something extraordinary, Kesten asked, that escaped the knowledge of the rest of the people?1 Yes, indeed, Giacomo Casanova. (shrink)