Lectures delivered in the Dept. of Philosophy of the University of Pennsylvania during the spring semester of 1967. Includes bibliographical references.

Maria Ossowska, leading philosopher of the Warsaw school, here sets out to show that moral ideas can be examined with scientific rigor. She proposes a sociology of morals that can be verified by observation and is philosophically based on the development of descriptive ethics.

In order to characterize the conception of dignity, the author quotes some examples of its derogation. The most drastic is the example of its derogation by the staff of concentration camps. Analysis of such examples leads to a formulation that dignity is manifested by those who know to defend certain values, recognized by themselves, when with the defence of these values the sense of their own value is connected. This is a pure formal characteristic. Its content can vary together with (...) variations of values which are defended. Generally, the observation of Hobbes seems to be justified which permits to associate dignity with the feeling of power and to consider self-degradation as a symptom of weakness. The use of the conception of dignity introduces a new scale of values into morality: it divides behaviour into honourable and degrading, while honour and degradation are not measured by the social effect of a deed. Among the known principles securing the dignity of a man two deserve to be mentioned: the principle of Kant which does not allow to consider a man exclusively as a mean leading to an end and the principle of Marx according to which man should be considered as the highest being. (shrink)

The common opinion is that moral principles act in social life like a lubricant which removes, or at least reduces, frictions occurring among men. The author analyses this opinion. For this purpose she takes into consideration successively: the conception of conflict, its kinds, and its function in the social life, as well as cases in which a moral norm can actually mitigate a conflict or even make it impossible. The author agrees with those views which emphasize the positive function of (...) certain conflicts and which demand that it is by moral norms that we should determine which conflicts ought to be removed and which maintained. Another question is whether all ethical rules perform the pacifying function which is generally attributed to them. To this question the author is inclined to give a negative answer. In the first place, there exist two groups of rules which do not act as a lubricant, that is, rules granting to man some rights which are maintained with full determination, even if they lead to collisions, and other rules putting certain demands on people in relation to a personal pattern, rules which are not abandoned, even if they do engender conflicts. (shrink)

The author tries to show that the old distinction between bodily and mental pains and pleasures, still maintained by many ethical writers, deserves to be forgotten. An analysis of the possible interpretations of this distinction leads to the opinion that people call mental those pleasures which they have in high esteem and that they treat as bodily pleasures the ones less approved. Thus the distinction which was expected to contribute to an elaboration of a hierarchy of values already implies one, (...) and the statement that mental pleasures belong to a higher order is a mere tautology. (shrink)

Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

Dibujar el pensamiento de Seneca es dibujar su figura viva, trazar el esquema de su persona. Seneca es un mediador que para alzarse sobre nosotros necesita de nuestra necesidad, pues solo apoyado en nuestra indigencia tiene sentido. Maria Zambrano lleva a cabo un lucido estudio de la figura y significacion del pensador cordobes y presenta una seleccion de sus escritos.

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each (...) condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p <.001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p <.019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed. (shrink)