Empathic concern is essential to our social lives because it motivates helping behavior. It has, however, well-known shortcomings such as its limitation in scope. Here, we highlight a further shortcoming of empathic concern: it contributes little to understanding the relevant features of complex social situations (e.g. the causes of somebody’s distress), and unaided by further cognitive inputs, likely fails to produce effective helping. We then elaborate on the conditions needed for an accurate assessment of others’ situations: the ability to pay (...) attention and try to understand others for their own sake. We explain that when combining these abilities with the valuing aspect of empathic concern, we obtain “availability”, an understudied mental state which plays a crucial role in helping motivation. We provide a detailed definition of that notion and show how availability can be trained and exercised by health professionals in order to improve their care and relationships with patients. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of human dignity in the work of French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. It demonstrates how this lesser-known aspect of his philosophical thinking is organic to his work and draws attention to the current relevance of the way he resolves the question of human dignity for philosophy and ethics. The first part of the article looks at the basic ideas behind Marcel’s understanding of man as a being on the road, as unfinished, temporal, in the process of (...) becoming, and creatively open on the road of transcendence to the mystery of being. This is followed by an explanation of Marcel’s criticism of the traditional understanding of human dignity, which has degenerated into the formalism. Criticizing this rationalist conception of dignity as a particular kind of power, Gabriel Marcel produces an original conception of existential dignity as weakness—the fragile vulnerable finitude of the human individual. But it is an active weakness/finitude that lies in the ability of the individual to creatively resist attempts to humiliate him and in his effort to recognize his unique human values. Part of this finitude, on the inter-subjective level, is an encounter with the neighbour in love, which is a service to others in defence of man’s weakness. The author draws attention to the fact that Marcel’s conception of human dignity has been partially accepted in philosophy, ethics and bioethics. (shrink)

Medical Genetics is a relatively new field of scientific work that involves a lot of enthusiastic professionals, both in routine (clinical) and research (scientific projects). In either field, different geneticists feel different responsibilities for their work, either because they are different people (personal responsibility) or because they have a different rank in the respective departments (professional responsibility). This paper presents the philosophical views of several authors on the sense of responsibility from the Classical times until the present and reveals the (...) practical, daily responsibilities that are met by these professionals, in four areas of responsibility: personal, professional, scientific and sociatal framework. (shrink)

THIS PAPER COMPARES THE WORK OF MERLEAU-PONTY WITH THAT OF MARCEL, TO WHOM HE IS SAID TO OWE A MAJOR INTELLECTUAL DEBT. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE APPARENT SIMILARITIES TO BE FOUND IN THEIR WORK, ESPECIALLY IN THEIR CONCEPTS OF "INCARNATION" AND "SITUATION," THERE ARE STRIKING DIVERGENCES IN THEIR VIEWS ABOUT "HISTORY." A STUDY OF THESE POINTS THE WAY TO AN EXPLORATION OF YET MORE FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN THEIR SUPERFICIALLY SIMILAR "PHILOSOPHIES OF EXISTENCE.".

Built upon the basic postulates of phenomenologic hermeneutics, this approach discusses the distinction between the poetic and the poetal body, investigating the possibility of the latter to reveal itself to the comprehensive awareness before its manifestation to the already interpretative one. An appearance that is captured by the eidetical intuition of the „white” comprehension as a potence of the signifiable which is prior to the proper act of signifying, in its original pure existence, that is in the very meaning in (...) which it is revealed. What is revealed is not the poetic body of a text that is already given in the static of the fact of being, but the self-revelation of the absolute in the poetal body of the fact of appearing, where the term „poetal” designates the dynamic attribute of the matrix poem of offering itself in the significance of self-affecting, its embodiment in the living flesh of the poem. (shrink)