This essay re-examines some key fundamentals of the Enlightenment regarding individual rights, responsibilities and republicanism which deserve and require re-emphasis today, insofar as they underscore the character and fundamental importance of mature judgment, and how developing and fostering mature judgment is a fundamental aim of education. These fundamentals have been clouded or eroded by various recent developments, including mis-guided educational policy and not a little scholarly bickering. Clarity about these fundamentals is more important today than ever. Sapere aude!

In this paper I compare McDowell′s conceptualism to Husserl′s later philosophy. I aim to argue against the picture provided by recent phenomenologists according to which both agree on the conceptual nature of experience. I start by discussing McDowell′s reading of Kant and some of the recent Kantian and phenomenological non-conceptualist criticisms thereof. By separating two kinds of conceptualism, I argue that these criticisms largely fail to trouble McDowell. I then move to Husserl’s later phenomenological analyses of types and of passive (...) synthesis. Although Husserl appropriates McDowell’s idea of conceptually ‘saddled’ intuitions as a ‘secondary passivity’, I argue that he also provides a strong case for non-conceptual synthesis. (shrink)

The main objective of this text is to show that for Karl Jaspers all authentic philosophy is an attempt to express subjectivity in terms of the intersubjective categories of intellect. Subjectivity is understood as a plane of individual experience which ultimately comes down to the consciousness of freedom. Intersubjectivity on the other hand is perceived as a plane of expression of this experience, which can boil down to language. For it is only through the mediation of language that one can (...) illuminate its own being – its connection to the world and transcendence. Thus, the rational expression of experience is the essential condition for self-comprehension of any subjectivity. Ultimately, however, any attempt of rational inquiry reveals itself as insufficient. The human being, in his or her, pursuit of self-comprehension has to reach the boundary of language-based expression and therefore the boundary of all reasoning, where rational knowledge must give way to direct but inexpressible experiencing of what is the absolute source of all being. Thus, in the end, silence is the only true expression of transcendence. (shrink)

Compared to other approaches, it is virtue ethics that puts greatest emphasis on moral education. This results from its focus on moral agent and his or her moral condition as the main object of ethical enquiry. The aim of this paper is to outline the moral education within the framework of virtue ethics. I intend to explain how such education embraces the cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements. In the first part of the article, I present the concept of ethical virtue (...) to contrast it with certain misunderstandings which might lead to unnecessary fear of introducing the category of virtue into moral education. In the second part, I respond to various objections raised against virtue ethics, the most important being the objection of indoctrination and undermining autonomy of the educated. Another objection to which I pay special attention is the objection that there is no one catalogue of virtues but many different catalogues praised by different cultures, which especially poses a problem in multicultural societies. I am also trying to show the advantages of virtue education over other, nondirective approaches to moral education. (shrink)

The article deals with selected problems related to the postulates of equalizing the level of positive liberty. The classic understanding of individual freedom as negative freedom, identified with the lack of compulsion, can be opposed to the so-called positive liberty. The latter notion is usually defined in terms of ability, which suggests that there is a relation between the concept of freedom and the concept of power. The postulate of equality with regard to the ‘freedom to’ would occasionally justify social (...) redistribution of goods. The cases of voluntary and compulsory donation are considered in the text the aim of which is to picture the consequences resulting from the compulsory expansion of the scope of positive liberty. Moreover, an attempt to compare the significance of both types of liberty, with a special emphasis on the moral context, has also been made. (shrink)

Assessing the implementation of various instruments and solutions in a healthcare system, we cannot limit ourselves to examining their impact on the fulfillment of the criteria of justice and equity alone. Another important social objective is to maximize social welfare under the conditions of the scarcity of resources. The aim of the article is to analyze the impact on social welfare of the implementation of private insurance into the existing system of public security, with a view to the following factors: (...) the reasons for restrictions in the public system, the assumed forms of the aggregation of individual utilities into the social welfare function, and the assumed image of society. (shrink)

This paper examines Plato’s views about the unity of argument and drama, and asks why Plato never made his views on this unity fully explicit. Taking the Gorgias as a case study it is argued that unity rests on the conception of refutative dialectic as justice and on the principle of self-consistency of thought and desire. As compared to the treatise, the dialogue form has the advantage of being able to defend these substantive views in action and thus to demonstrate (...) the performative contradictions in the ideas of one’s opponents. (shrink)

In the article I justify the acceptability of ex vivo transplantation and I provide the ethical evaluation of trafficking in human organs from the Kantian perspective. Firstly, I refer to passages of Kant's works, where he explicitly states that depriving oneself of one’s body parts for other purposes than self-preservation is not permitted. I explain that the negative ethical evaluation of the disposal of the body parts was given various justifications by Kant. Subsequently, I provide partial criticism of this justification, (...) resulting in the recognition of the admissibility of ex vivo transplantation. Secondly, I analyse the Kantian slippery-slope argument which, as some philosophers believe, supports banning trade in human organs. It turns out, however, that this argument has wider application, namely it applies to all forms of the instrumental treatment of the human body. Using a previously introduced distinction between organs of the first and the second order, I show that the slippery-slope argument is inconclusive. However, I propose a reinterpretation of this reasoning, which results in using this argument as an additional reason to support prohibiting trade in human organs. (shrink)

"Traditional interpretations of Kantian idea of autonomy – based on the classical texts such as Kritik der praktischen Vernunft and Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten – stress basically one point: action is autonomous only when an agent obeys the law. In this paper, the author tries to introduce an interpretation of Kant’s practical philosophy, which covers a wider perspective, resulting in the idea of “radical autonomy”. Re-reading classical texts of Kant in connection with Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (...) and Tugendlehre I try to show, that Kant’s conception of autonomy also allows for acting, that is not determined by the law (i.e. categorical imperative). Roughly, to be radically autonomous you do not have to be necessarily moral (there are other conditions that make your autonomy valid). This paper adopts reasons of „historicistic enlightment” (Schnädelbach), which is rather contrary to the general anti-historicistic context of Kant’s philosophy. Although this approach seems to be against the Kantian „metaphysical hipotheque” (e.g.: pure Faktum der Vernunft, absolute justification/Grundlegung of morality), it provides a (re)interpretation that allows to defend the broadened idea of autonomy. And this ‘radical autonomy’ shows some explanatory attractiveness of Kant’s ethical theory in the contemporary critical horizon of historicism. ". (shrink)

This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled “Gödel on deduction”, which examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to Gödel and general proof theory. When writing that other paper, the authors were not acquainted with a system of natural deduction that Gödel presented with the help of Gentzen’s sequents, which amounts to Jaśkowski’s natural deduction system of 1934, and which may be found in Gödel’s unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave in 1939 (...) at the University of Notre Dame. Here one finds a presentation of this system of Gödel accompanied by a brief reexamination in the light of the notes of some points concerning his interest in sequents made in the preceding paper. This is preceded by a brief summary of Gödel’s Notre Dame course, and is followed by comments concerning Gödel’s natural deduction system. (shrink)

In the paper I argue that Kant’s philosophy underlies both contemporary individualism and personalism. The Kantian categorical imperative may be, in my opinion, interpreted in an anti-egotistical way and in an entirely individualistic one. The first kind of interpretation not only made a contribution to the emergence of numerous and manifold kinds of personalism, but it also inspired many critics of individualism. The second kind of interpretation, together with the Kantian analyses of human self, became essential to the conceptualization of (...) modern individualism. I argue that Kantian tradition in many respects appears to be close to Thomism as far as the conception of person and human individual is concerned. As the dispute between American Thomists, discussed in the paper, reveals, Thomistic personalists found, in Kant’s philosophy issues which filled some gaps in the scholastic heritage, especially in anthropology, ethics, and social problems. (shrink)

A comprehensive and practical study tool, introducing Kant's thought and key works and exploring his continuing influence.

The volume contains 11 contributions of the best experts on the topics of fate, fortune and free will, in reference to Ancient Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Plotinus.

In this paper, I argue against the phenomenal concept strategy (henceforth PCS) and in favor of what Chalmers has called type-A materialism ([2006], [2010] p. 111). On her release, Mary makes no cognitive discovery at all, not even a thin, non-possibility-eliminating discovery, as Tye has recently claimed [2012]. When she is imprisoned, Mary already knows everything that is to be known about the phenomenal character of her experiences. What Mary acquires is a new non-cognitive and nonconceptual representation.

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities (...) and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural protolanguage learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object – of self and world – the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being. -/- Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness-in-itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power – and enormous responsibility – of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, extent, and future of conscious experience will have to be made. (shrink)

The well-known Kantian passage on misology in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals starts making fuller sense when located within the framework of Kant writings on philosophy of history where he contrasts civilization with moralization as two different phases in the growth of humankind. In this context, the growth of commerce and manufactures plays a distinctive role, namely that of means of fostering civilization, while pursuing a deceptive goal, namely happiness. Deception plays a basic role in the growth of (...) mankind, in so far as it allows for a hidden twofold teleology in human action. Men, while following the dictates of self-love, are systematically mistaken about the results they actually contribute in bringing about. Commerce brings different peoples into mutual relationship and thus paves the way to a cosmopolitan society. The growth of the arts and sciences provides preconditions for the growth of learned institutions, a free press, and a public opinion that are the basis on which reason may start being used in its critical capacities. This, that is Enlightenment, is a preliminary step to moralization, that is the jump of individuals from a state of minority to a state where they are masters of themselves. The twofold teleology of human action makes room for a system of "pragmatic" ends, and of laws connected to the former, that may be studied rationally in themselves and yet are connected to the higher ends established by reason in its "practical" capacities. (shrink)

A general definition of consciousness that accommodates most views (Vimal, 2010b) is: “ ‘consciousness is a mental aspect of a system or a process, which is a conscious experience, a conscious function, or both depending on the context and particular bias (e.g. metaphysical assumptions)’, where experiences can be conscious experiences and/or non-conscious experiences and functions can be conscious functions and/or non-conscious functions that include qualities of objects. These are a posteriori definitions because they are based on observations and the categorization.” (...) Non-conscious experiences are equivalent to relevant proto-experiences and nonconscious functions are equivalent to related proto-functions at various levels as these terms are precursors of respective conscious subjective experiences and conscious functions aspect of consciousness. The non-conscious experiences and non-conscious functions may be considered as a part of the definition of mind and/or awareness. (shrink)

Emotions are said to be moral, as opposed to non- moral, in virtue of their objects. They are also said to be moral, for example morally good, as opposed to immoral, for example morally bad or evil, in virtue of their objects, nature, motives, functions or effects. The definition and content of moral matters are even more contested and contestable than the nature of emotions and of other affective phenomena. At the very least we should distinguish moral norms, moral obligations, (...) moral right and wrong, moral values and moral virtues. And different accounts of morals and of morality understand norms, values and virtues and their interrelations in different ways. For example, such accounts disagree about the relation between moral and non- moral oughts, the relation between moral and non- moral values, and the relation between moral and intellectual virtues ; and about the moral weight to be attached to self-regarding attitudes and behaviour and other-regarding attitudes and behaviour. Thus we may expect the range of putative moral emotions to display a bewildering variety. (shrink)

What typifies the dialectic structure of Hegelian subjectivity, meant as an internal purposive process of circular self-closure and self-determination, is the position that is therein occupied by the alterity of the other. in the first section of the article, drawing from some pages of The Phenomenology of the Spirit and from some paragraphs in Hegel’s 1830 Encyclopedia logic, the following question arises: “What becomes” of the other’s alterity in the dialectic thought of subjectivity and in the logical structuring of the (...) Concept? the second part is focused on the analysis of the first form of the manifestation of the Concept within nature, living organic subjectivity, and therefore on the way in which the Kantian concept of internal purposiveness is introduced by Hegel in the description of the living. indeed, on one hand it is the internal purposiveness that allows one to understand the circular movement of the whole and of the parts that is the basis of the self-closure and self-determination of the totality of the organism; on the other hand, such movement can once again be interpreted in the light of the process of “assimilation” of the other in the immanence of the Concept, being in this case corporeality itself, in its organic and functional differentiation, the original form of alterity that living subjectivity leads back to the identity of the self. (shrink)

Artykuł zawiera prezentację niektórych wątków Kantowskiej filozofii przedkrytycznej, w dziedzinie filozofii przyrody zawierającej wiele oryginalnych hipotez i argumentów często niewykorzystanych w krytycznej filozofii Kanta i przez to mniej znanych. Przedstawiona jest nowatorska hipoteza wiążąca trójwymiarowość przestrzeni z prawem grawitacji pochodząca z pierwszej rozprawy Kanta Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurteilung der Beweise z 1747 roku. Omówiona została praca Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels zawierająca słynną hipotezę Kanta dotyczącą genezy układu planetarnego. Przedstawiono też tzw. argument z (...) ręki (pochodzący z pracy Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume) wraz z jego krótka dyskusją. (shrink)

The essay "The Problem of Global Distributive Justice in The Law of Peoples by John Rawls" is concerned with the question of distributive claims of justice in the global realm. The conception of international justice developed by John Rawls in his book The Law of Peoples offers a very limited kind of distribution of goods beyond state borders, where the matter of the distribution of wealth is restricted to a single state. The Rawlsian point of view is frequently objected to (...) by proponents of so-called cosmopolitanism, like Thomas Pogge or Charles Beitz, who argue for globalizing Rawlsian justice as fairness. Five objections that may be raised against the Rawlsian idea of limiting the scope of distributive justice are analysed: the consistency problem; the status of the principles of the law of peoples; the method of justification; the self-sufficiency of states; and tolerance. (shrink)