The expression “moral experience”, along with the concomitant notion of experience itself, seems to have been understood in divergent ways. Taking as a background three views currently operative in our culture - emotivism, the ethics of duty, and the notion of an ethics “beyond good and evil” - a conception of ethical experience will be presented based on the findings of Edith Stein as elaborated in her work "Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities".

Zadaniem przedstawiciela handlowego firmy farmaceutycznej jest promocja produktów tej firmy w bezpośrednich kontaktach z lekarzami. Przedstawiciel medyczny pełni funkcję zbliżoną do funkcji przedstawiciela handlowego: reprezentuje firmę farmaceutyczną, jednak reprezentuje w sposób szczególny, bo w bezpośrednich kontaktach z lekarzami. Jego zadaniem jest polecanie" lekarzowi produktów danej firmy. Owo „polecanie" w praktyce nie sprowadza się do udzielenia prostych informacji na temat skuteczności leku, jego skutków ubocznych, zalet i wad w porównaniu z innymi lekami itd., gdyż taką wiedzę lekarz czerpie z fachowych pism. (...) Zadaniem przedstawiciela medycznego jest także nawiązanie możliwie najszerszej sieci kontaktów z lekarzami i podtrzymywanie tych kontaktów. Przedstawiciel medyczny jest zobowiązany do wypełniania poleceń wydawanych przez pracodawcę, co jednak nie zwalnia go z osobistej odpowiedzialności, jeżeli polecenia te są sprzeczne z zasadami etyki. W dyskusji dotyczącej pracy przedstawiciela medycznego można wyróżnić dwa stanowiska. Pierwsze z nich głosi, iż przedstawiciel medyczny powinien poprzestać na udzieleniu możliwie pełnej informacji o danym produkcie. Według zwolenników drugiego stanowiska, etycznie akceptowalne są również inne sposoby zachęcania lekarzy do stosowania określonych produktów, z wyłączeniem jedynie tych, które w oczywisty sposób szkodzą zdrowiu pacjentów. Dyskusja toczy się więc wokół następującego problemu: czy przedstawiciel medyczny ma prawo nie tylko informować o istnieniu danego leku, lecz także uprawiać pewien rodzaj reklamy, a więc nakłaniać lekarza do przepisywania pacjentom tego konkretnego leku, nie zaś leku produkowanego przez konkurencję? Przedstawiciel medyczny działa w interesie zatrudniającej go firmy, a rozdawane przez niego próbki leków, materiały dydaktyczne, nowoczesne oprogramowanie diagnostyczne, słowem - wszystko to, co nie jest,,znaczącą gratyfikacją" w rozumieniu kodeksów etycznych i prawa farmaceutycznego, służy promocji określonych produktów. Ograniczenie sposobów promowania produktów leczniczych może więc doprowadzić do sytuacji, w której firmy farmaceutyczne za pośrednictwem swoich przedstawicieli będą się starały wzmocnić skuteczność dopuszczalnych sposobów reklamy oraz poszukiwać nowych, np. poprzez stosowanie różnych metod manipulacji. Dlatego wydaje się, że formułowanie zbyt szczegółowych norm regulujących działalność przedstawicieli medycznych mija się z celem. Zawsze możliwe będzie wymyślenie nowych metod wywierania presji na lekarzy, a fakt, iż któraś nie została uwzględniona w szczegółowym rejestrze norm etycznych, może wywoływać wrażenie, że jest ona etycznie akceptowalna. Oznacza to także, iż ani kodeksy etyczne, ani panująca w koncernach farmaceutycznych kultura korporacyjna nie są w stanie zwolnić przedstawiciela medycznego od konieczności samodzielnej oceny etycznej podejmowanych przez siebie działań. (shrink)

Artykuł omawia kategorię odosobnienia (Gelassenheit, Abgeschiedenheit) Mistrza Eckharta jako propozycję etyczną. W pierwszej części artykułu autorka omawia kwestie metodologiczne oraz translatorskie. Następnie przedstawiony zostaje kontekst teologii apofatycznej, w którym Eckhart wprowadza pojęcie odosobnienia. Trzecia i czwarta część została poświęcona ideałowi ubóstwa oraz teorii cnoty. Autorka pokazuje w jaki sposób pojęcie odosobnienia może być odczytywane jako przede wszystkim postulat z zakresu filozofii moralnej.

The author discusses some ethical problems connected with taking human organs for transplantation from living and dead people. First of all, he asks whether being an organ giver should be taken as our moral duty. It seems to be the duty of heart in Kantian terms. Various possibilities in the legal regulation of taking organs are considered here as well as the criteria and forms of their distribution. None of them, however, can be satisfying because of the inescapable conflict between (...) the principle of utility and that of autonomy. (shrink)

Henryk Elzenberg is one of the most prominent Polish philosophers of this century. His main publications are: the brilliant Foundations of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of 1917; a philosophical diary published in 1963 as Trouble with Being; and a collection of papers Man and Value. Elzenberg’s principal field of inquiry was axiology, in which he put forward a deep and original conception of his own. That, however, remains still mostly in the form of manuscripts and lecture notes, of which we publish two (...) pieces above: a critique of the utilitarian concept of value, and an analysis of Meinong’s position on the same topic. (shrink)

A financial crisis of 2008 showed a global meaning of ethical dimension of the credit institution because lack of financial subjects’ responsibility is regarded as one of the causes of the world breakdown. The author attempts to reconstruct the role of credit in the society and economy, especially an evolution of its ethical aspects is analysed. It is aimed to catch and understand the phenomenon of responsibility for the effects of this institution activity which proved dramatic more and more often (...) both for individuals and for the whole society. (shrink)

Father Marian Morawski was born on the fifteenth of August 1845 in Gräfenberg. He joined the order of the Jesuits in 1863 in Stara Wieś. He began his philosophical studies there in 1866, which he finished in Cracow in 1868. Next he studied theology there during the years 1868-1872. In 1870 he was ordained in Śrem. So educated, he lectured philosophy to young Jesuits at Stara Wieś College. It was at that time, that he prepared and published the work by (...) the titile: Filozofia i jej zadanie [Philosophy and its task]. When, at the request of the editor Edward Podolski, the Jesuits took over the periodical "Przegląd Lwowski" and from 1884 began to publish it by the new title of "Przegląd Powszechny", Morawski became its first editor and published many of his own articles in it concerning science and religion. In this way he created a new breed of theological literature, known as „world-view literature". As a typical example, Wieczory nad Lemanem [Evenings on Leman] as well as the thesis Celowość w przyrodzie. Studium przyrodniczo-filozoficzne [Finality in the nature. A natural-philosophical study] were published multiple times and in many languages. From 1887 to 1899 Morawski was a professor at the Jagiellonian University, and during the years 1894-1895 he was the Dean of the Theology Department. He died in Cracow on the sixth of May 1901. (shrink)

This study concerns the ethical problems of personal data protection at work. The aim of this project is the analysis of the law structures, which determine the range of protection personal data of the employee and the candidate to work and the rights of data collecting and processing by the employer. The employee privacy protection at work is the principle of labour law expressed in Article 11 of the Labour Code. However personal data protection problem is directly regulated by Article (...) 22 of the Labour Code, which entitle employers to demand certain personal data from the employees and the candidates to work. The regulation determine the list of data, which may be the subject of legal actions by employer in the field of collecting and processing of personal data. The most important issue is connected with the treatment of sensitive information, such as health data, drug testing and genetic testing, sex life, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership. Personal data protection means the necessity of cooperation between the employee and the employer not only in the field determined by the law but on the basis of ethical values as well. Hence the employer’s obligation to keep from actions which directly interfere in employee’s protected personal effects. But the employee is obliged to give true information about himself in order to protect his health and life at work. (shrink)

The author analyses the problematic of historical necessity and ethical regularity of socialism, taking the marxist philosophy as a point of departure. He criticizes opinions represented in philosophical and ideological discussions of this problem in the period of the Second International and argues that the above problematic, which results from a confrontation of marxism with a new historical situation and with the current of the neo-Kantian philosophy, was an axis which has brought into focus the theoretical decisions both of revisionists (...) and critics of marxism on one hand and of orthodox marxists on the other hand. (shrink)

In the article, tenderness, a category presented in the Nobel Prize speech by Olga Tokarczuk, is analyzed as a new ethical imperative, developing the feminist relational ethics, i.e. the ethics of care. In the proposed interpretation, tenderness is a broader category than care understood in feminist terms: it is more universal, inclusive, and unifying. Tenderness also applies to – or perhaps most of all – the world beyond-the-human, as it goes beyond the anthropocentric perspective of the ethics of care. The (...) article opens with a brief overview of feminist interventions in ethics, with an emphasis on the ethics of care. In the next step, the differences between care and tenderness are identified and described to show how the latter can develop and complement feminist ethics of care. Considerations are driven by the question of why tenderness is a better moral imperative than care – more adequate and responding to the challenges of the present times. in the last part of the article, the tender existential attunement is also interpreted in aesthetic terms as an attitude sensitizing to the beauty and complexity of the post-anthropocentric world. (shrink)

The Polish society has perceived privatization as an issue of special importance which enables a free market economy in a short time. Privatization has always raised hopes and expectations. It is the lack of experience in the field of ownership transformations, the level of their complexity and the economic, legal, psychological and other conditionings that have confronted those transformations with many hindrances. They have also raised numerous moral and ethical dilemmas among the staff of privatized companies and founding organs including (...) the staff of the Voivodship Council of Łódź. The decisions of the Working Board of one company about the future path of privatization have raised concerns among the staff uncertain of the fate of their place of work. In such cases the voice of the staff, which previously contributed to the company’s financial status, has always been decisive when choosing the path of privatization; this concerns mostly workers’ partnerships. It was John Paul II’s words about people of conscience who are needed in Poland, which were said in Skoczów, that were crucial for privatization decisions by the Voivodship Council of Łódź. (shrink)

Whereas traditional ethical discussions of suicide have primarily dealt with questions relating to the moral rightness or wrongness of suicidal acts, the problem of which moral criteria should govern acts of preventing, admitting and aiding suicide has rarely been discussed systematically. In the present paper it is argued that suicide is morally neutral in all cases in which it does not constitute grave damage, material or psychological, to others, that this does not imply that non-prevention, in the same range of (...) cases, is morally neutral as well. Moral criteria for suicide prevention are formulated by making use of the Rawlsian device of a fictitious “veil of ignorance” behind which moral rules are decided on from merely self-regarding motives. It is argued that decision behind the veil would be of a principle of “restricted paternalism” that minimizes both the risk of not being prevented from committing suicide in cases in which this is clearly irrational in view of the enduring preferences of the suicidal person himself, as well as the complementary risk of being subjected to compulsory detention or treatment in cases in which suicide is the option conforming most, on a realistic view of the case, to the enduring preferences of the person. The practical rules translating the principle into concrete practice comprise a rule demanding compulsory prevention of all imminent suicides by persons not intimately known to the potential preventer, a prohibition of pre-emptive compulsory measures, and a general temporal limitation on detention. Finally, a similar, if more tentative, derivation of practical rules is attempted for cases in which aiding a suicide might seem to another person to be in the best interest of the suicidal person concerned. (shrink)

The reform of Polish self-government in the 90's has led to the restoration of local democracy. However, the self-governmental institutions soon fell into crisis, having nearly lost the social trust required for the realisation of their mission. The principal cause behind this phenomenon was the atrophy of moral, political and legal responsibility of the local authorities towards the communities that have elected them. There is a twofold source of weaknesses and dangers for Polish self-government: the erroneous way of introducing changes (...) in the system of government, and the forthcoming sociopolitical phenomena that hampered or even made it impossible to achieve some of the goals of the reform. We support the radical revision of legal regulation to remove these weaknesses. The basis for such a change will be the principle of subsidiarity as a governing rule for the entire system of public authority. This will ensure that the communities of inhabitants are seen as primary subjects of self-governmental power, and their power is rooted in citizens' rights to self-government. It is also necessary to ensure a truly pluralistic character of territorial power. Thus the citizens and their associations will have an influence on the election and functioning of the selfgovernmental bodies. The Author warns against the risk of emergence of a class of local and regional 'mandarins' in Polish public life – a class of practically ineradicable and systematically deficient leadership, likely to emerge should the mechanisms of democratic responsibility fail to be restored into the governmental bodies. The article ends with suggestions of particular legal changes aiming at the correct formation of Polish self-governmental institutions in both morally and socially rightful sense. (shrink)

Recent years in Poland have been characterized by the dynamic development of scientific activity among nurses. It might have been caused by several factors, namely: the rising needs and expectations of representatives of this professional group, the necessity of adjusting to EU standards, changes in the system of education, as well as the individual “research needs” of those representatives. However, is there a correlation between the increase in the quantity of scientific research and its quality? An attempt to answer that (...) question led the author to formulate this paper’s goal, which had been formulated as follows: to analyse different sources of information concerning the reality of scientific research in nursing in Poland. (shrink)

The author draws a distinction between active and passive resistance. The latter is defined as a mental protest against some events in public life that is not followed by additional action. The former, or active resistance, is further divided by the author into resistance with the use of violence and resistance which renounced violence. She concentrates on the concept of violence and puts the question if, and in what circumstances, a recourse to violence is justified. She quotes various opinions on (...) that matter. The problem of using violence is the problem of the admissibility of various modes of action, or means of action, she says. As every method of protest in every society can be adopted in defence of either good or bad ends, the author focuses on the question, what criteria of evaluation of the objectives defended by resistance can be relied upon. She ends her paper by pointing out that resistance is the most important form of non-violent resistance. (shrink)

Over the recent years more and more often we can hear in public debate that pharmaceutical industry is using aggressive marketing to increase the market growth. Their marketing actions are addressed mainly to physicians, because doctors are those who raise gains of pharmaceutical companies in the most considerable extent. The main aim of this paper is to answer the question what kinds of methods pharmaceutical companies are using to influence physicians’ prescribing practice. On examples will be shown how pharmaceutical sales (...) representatives are using reciprocity rule, liking, contrast, authority, scarcity, social proof and consistence to manipulate on doctors. The paper will try to answer the questions: Are physicians aware of influence of pharmaceutical companies? What should be done to increase their awareness? The article is based on the CAWI research. It is analysis of 372 questionnaires filled by physicians. Research was conducted with the support of Medycyna Praktyczna site – one of the most famous websites among the doctors in Poland. (shrink)

This paper discusses in detail the ethical issues in the contemporary professional sports and shows how these issues are addressed in the European Union countries and in the United States. From the ethical perspective it was decided that it is disputable to finance companies in competitive sports from a public purse (central and local government purse), to sponsor football clubs by bookmaking companies, to pay compensations (financial equivalents) for the change of membership in clubs by the players (the so called (...) transfers). It was noticed that in the era of deepening sports commercialisation and application of ambush marketing strategies a real problem has become how to protect the interests of sport fans. It was decided that reaching of a certain scale of business operations (e.g. a certain threshold of revenues or profits) by monopolistic sports organisations should be paralleled by their loss of privileged status and/or change of their organisational and legal status (change from voluntary, non-profit organisations into companies operating under commercial law). (shrink)

The players’ agent is a middleman who, on the strength of an agent contract and with pay, becomes obliged to act as a go-between in concluding contracts between players and clubs or transfer contracts between clubs. According to data of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), at the end of March 2011 there were 5794 licensed agents of football players in 219 national federations. According to the FIFA’s regulations, players, as well as clubs, have right to engage licensed agents (...) in connection with negotiationg or renegotiationg of a player’s employment contract or a player’s transfer. Players and clubs are forbidden using services of unlicensed agents. The FIFA’s Regulations on Players’ Agents – and analogous regulations of the Polish Union of Football – burden the agent with many obligations. Moreover, definite obligations are imposed on clubs and players. Additional regulations introduce a code of players’ agents professional conduct. The player’s agent – as well as the player, the club and the union – can be imposed with sanctions for breaking the abovementioned rules. In milieus connected with Polish football there is a quite common opinion that, in spite of severe sanctions provided by regulations, obligations and rules of professional conduct are often broken in activities of players’ agents. However it is an opinion based on rumours and suppositions, which is not confirmed by decisions of the Department of Discipline of the Polish Union of Football concerning infliction of punishment. (shrink)

This paper focuses on some ethical issues of companies operating in the field of competitive sports including in particular: limited liability vis-à-vis creditors of the companies that discontinued their activities, but were not subject to liquidation, nor bankruptcy petition has been filed; hampered recognisability of individual companies due to frequent changing of their names and names of teams participating in the tournaments; legal and financial status, rights and duties of contestants of these companies are underdefined; company identity is violated due (...) to the pursuing of merger and acquisition strategy. It was decided that the above issues exemplify broader problems between labour and capital in the contemporary enterprise. Addressing of the above issues is a tough and complicated process, and sometimes simply impossible in the situation where sports have been recognised as equal sphere of business activities and where basic rules of market economy are respected also with reference to this sphere of life. (shrink)

The article presents results of empirical research made amongst entrepreneurs of the Tarnobrzeg region concerning moral dimension of their activities. A few hundred persons were examined (mainly owners of small companies). They were asked about their businesses in moral aspect. Entrepreneurs work hard, have respect to other people and try to be honest. Most important values for them are family, health and love. The work is also very important for entrepreneurs, but they complain about lack of free time.

Said Paracelsus – “All substances are poisonous; there is none that is not a poison. The right dose distinguishes a poison and a remedy.” Most clinical problems can be boiled down to the following practical syllogism: “If a patient has a condition p, then he should be treated with q, r, or t or whatever combination of them. The patient X has the condition p. Therefore, the patient X should be treated with q, or r, or t, or whatever combination (...) of them.” It is evident that the conclusion of this syllogism is a result of two different kinds of knowledge: first, medical knowledge understood as general and universal knowledge of health, disease and treatment which is contained in standard medical textbooks and which, according to the present fashion, is called evidence based medicine; and second, clinical knowledge which is specific knowledge of a particular patient in terms of his unique narrative identity.. Acquisition and application of medical and clinical knowledge are governed by ethical rules. The basic rules of human subjects research ethics are presented and discussed. I conclude that even a perfect evidence based medical knowledge is not enough to make a correct clinical judgment. Because every individual may have a specific reaction to a drug, each treatment is always experimentation on human. One of those rules is respect for moral autonomy of the patient which is reflected in the moral, legal, and clinical doctrine of informed consent; another, the principle of an acceptable risk-benefit balance. Both these principles are examined in the context of psychiatric treatment. (shrink)

From 19th January 2013 there have been changes in the operation of driver training centres due to the legislation regarding vehicle drivers coming into force. Changes related to the conduct of driving schools concern four major areas. The first one is a new form of enrolment on driving courses by candidates for drivers, which is done by using the so-called Profile of Candidate for Driver (PCD) generated by the county authorities. The second aspect is the new formula of the theoretical (...) state examination. The third issue is the introduction of cash registers for the operators conducting drivers’ education. The fourth feature is the introduction of new categories of the driving license, in particular a category including two-wheeled vehicles. The existing regulations, as well as the huge competition in the market, have contributed to the fact that the activity of training of candidates for drivers has been dominated by the principle according to which the service must be performed in a cheap and fast way. It automatically translates into the low quality of training and the disregard of procedural steps associated with it. In practice, the lack of adequate control on the part of the state is the reason for the fact that driving has become an arbitrary function based on ruthless marketing and low-cost services. In this situation, ethical dilemmas arise that, in the author’s opinion, will not necessarily be resolved by the new legal standards for drivers. (shrink)

Between 1983 and 1990, at least 163 Western drugs were tested in the GDR. On the basis of archival documentation, relevant literature, and interviews we examined the clinical trials of five drugs more thoroughly; two of these individual case studies are introduced in this article. In the case of the clinical trials of the synthetic human growth hormone Saizen we found extensive trial and patient documentation, which allows for a detailed analysis of ethical aspects such as parent information and informed (...) patient consent. In the case of the clinical trials of the „abortion pill“ Mifepristone for the World Health Organization we uncovered irregularities with regard to the ethical evaluation. However, taken together, we could not find any serious violation of ethical norms in connection with our cases studies. (shrink)

The article provides a critical overview of the Polish bioethics literature concerning the shortage of organs for transplantation. Problems related to this issue bear, to a considerable degree, on the attempt to answer the question how to increase the number of organs available in ethically acceptable ways. Polish authors have focused, in this respect, on the analysis and assessment of two solutions: an opt out system of acquiring organs and a system that allows the aquisition of organs on a “free (...) market”. Both solutions have been almost unanimously negatively assessed. Apart from the presentation and critique of the positions of Polish bioethicists on this matter, an important part of the text is constituted by a report from a debate, held at the national level, on the criteria and definition of death: for it is only from the deceased donors that unpaired bodily organs, such as heart, can be taken. (shrink)