The paper develops a theory of human rights under three main headings: that ways of acting or of being treated require effective normative justification, that they must have authoritative political endorsement or acknowledgement, and that they must be maintained by conforming conduct and, where need be, by governmental enforcement. The paper, then, applies this notion of human rights to two main cases: as constitutional rights within individual states , and as international human rights maintained by confederations of (...) states or by looser international coalitions. (shrink)

The paper develops a theory of human rights under three main headings: that ways of acting or of being treated require effective normative justification, that they must have authoritative political endorsement or acknowledgement, and that they must be maintained by conforming conduct and, where need be, by governmental enforcement. The paper, then, applies this notion of human rights to two main cases: as constitutional rights within individual states, and as international human rights maintained by confederations of states (...) or by looser international coalitions. (shrink)

Human beings are not only self-conscious minds but embodied and social beings, whose subjectivity is conditioned by their social surroundings. From this point of view, it is natural to suppose that the development and existence of a subject that is distinctively human requires contact with other people. The present contribution discusses medieval ideas concerning the intersubjective constitution of human being by looking at the medieval reception of two ideas, which Aristotle presents at the beginning (...) of his Politics: (1) human beings are political animals by nature, which means that those who live outside of political communities due to their nature are either deficient or above humanity – they are beasts or gods; and (2) human beings are parts of political communities, and as such, comparable to hands in a body. When medieval philosophers consider these ideas from metaphysical and normative perspectives, they distinguish different senses in which human beings are naturally political. In effect, they draw a nuanced picture of the relation between an individual human being and the political community, and in so doing they distance themselves from a literal reading of Aristotle. An analysis of the medieval discussions reveals how the social aspect of human subjectivity emerges in medieval political philosophy and how medieval philosophers conceptualise the Aristotelian distinction into three kinds of beings – the beast, the human, and the god. (shrink)

The idea of antithetical human nature and the concept of man as a bivalent creature are heuristic to reveal the problem of human being.The traditional antinomic splitting of anthropological features into one’s own – another’s, immanent – transcendent, freedom – necessity, good – evil, happiness –misfortune, etc. acquires a specific coloring in the Ukrainian realities. Purpose is to reveal the ambivalence of the image of a person, which acquires special features in the Ukrainian realities. Methodological basis are the (...) principles of the phenomenological description of subjective experience, the means of historical and philosophical analysis, hermeneutical methods of understanding and interpretation.Discussion. These or those anthropological modes constitute the variability of the human (O.Bollnov, C.Jung, K.Jaspers, J.-P.Sartre, E.Fromm). The reasons for the mosaic nature of the human image are rooted in the existential inexhaustibility of the anthropological palette. The existence of man in the overtones of antinomies is evident in the studies of both domestic classics (V.Lypynsky, I.Franko) and modern Ukrainian philosophers (V.Malakhov, D.Sepety), and Western thinkers (V.Frankl, V.Tatarkevych, G.Hofstede). Conclusion. Controversial nature of the classical opposition of freedom – necessity turns in the Ukrainian realities into the opposition of “will” as an expressive meaningful constant and depressingly deathly “bondage”, and acquires tension of the binarism “freedom – death”. “Will” as the only state acceptable to a person, the authentically own, native way of being turns to a spectrum of modulations of the anthropological attribute of “oneself” as a native oecumene, a truly familiar and close space, opposed to the “alien” – land, people, language, custom, etc.The idea of parity of both – male and female – cores is quite adequate, since in Ukraine the Cossacks was an embodiment of perfect masculinity, “chivalrous nature”, similar to Western chivalry – with similar to chivalrous cult foundations (for example, the cult of the Mother of God and the cult of the Virgin Mary). After all, the ideology of the Cossacks demanded the convergence of the concepts of “nobleman” and “Cossack” as one who was “granted the liberties of a knightly people”.Controversial nature of the modes of life meaning, happiness disappears, losing expressive signs of confrontation and turning into a tense uniqueness of the constants of meaning of life, fate, finiteness of a person as a whole.The concept of happiness, extrapolating into the opposition of happiness /fate – disaster /sorrow (deprivation, misfortune), powerful for Ukrainian culture, is connotative with “will” (after all, “what kind of freedom is such a fate...”), on the one hand, and “underweight” – an evil fate, on the other hand. However, on the existential plane, the life-meaning ethical component of happiness loses its dramatic controversial vector: happiness with its internal semantic and moral modulations is a selfsufficient value. (shrink)

Resumen El papa Francisco ha destacado en su magisterio la gravedad de la corrupción como una categoría moral que va más allá del propio concepto de pecado personal. Si los pecadores son perdonados, los hombres corruptos han cerrado su corazón a dicho perdón. Sus enseñanzas nos recuerdan al pecado contra el Espíritu Santo y al concepto de “pecado social”. Sus palabras son de gran actualidad en una sociedad donde la corrupción se extiende como una plaga en instituciones y personas que (...) debían dar ejemplo de honradez y responsabilidad. En este trabajo. nos acercamos al concepto de corrupción desde la perspectiva teológica, aportando luz para prevenir la corrupción y sus efectos desbastadores para la consecución del bien común y la confianza ciudadana que se tiene que dar en la vida social.Pope Francis has highlighted in his teaching the seriousness of corruption as a moral categoty that goes beyond the concept of personal sin. If the sinners are forgiven, the corrupt men have closed his heart to such forgiveness. His teachings remind us of sin against the Holj Spirit and the concept of “social sin”. His words are vety interesting in todaj society where corruption preads like a plague in institutions and people who should set an exampk of honesty and reponsibility. In this paper, we approach the concept of corruption from a theological perpective, providing light to prevent corruption and its devastating effects for the achievement of the common good and the public trust that must be given in social life. (shrink)

Identity and Experience: The Constitution of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism. Sue Hamilton. Luzac Oriental, London 1996. xxxi, 218 pp. £30.00. ISBN 0 898942 10 2. The Five Aggregates: Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology. Mathieu Boisvert. (Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religious Writings, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, 1995. xii, 168 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-88920-257-5.

With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early career researchers and established academic figures in response to To Be Born, my most recent book. The contributors approach key issues of this book from their own scientific fields and perspectives – through calls for a different way of bringing up and educating children, the constitution of a new environmental and sociocultural milieu or the criticism of past metaphysics and the introduction of (...) new themes into the philosophical horizon. However, all the essays which compose the volume correspond to proposals for the advent of a new human being – so answering the subtitle of To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being. To Be Born thus acts as a background from which each author had the opportunity to develop and think in their own way. As such Towards a New Human Being is part of a longer-term undertaking in which I engaged together and in dialogue with more or less confirmed thinkers with a view to giving birth to a new human being and building a new world. –Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court placed its imprimatur on a principle that has been gathering force within patent law for several decades: human beings constitute unpatentable subject matter. In Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the court answered the question it had posed itself–“Are human genes patentable?”–decisively in the negative. This legal result was predictable, given a careful reading of the entrails of judicial decisions, congressional bills, executive branch pronouncements, and decisions in other (...) countries about patents claiming human‐related inventions, all of which have echoed the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment by proscribing property rights‐including intellectual property rights‐in human beings. To understand how patent law has evolved toward this result, one may trace the legal treatment of patents claiming human embryonic stem cells, chemical products of human physiology, human thought, and now, human genes. Woven together, these strands of evidence led inexorably toward the ultimate rejection of human gene patents by the Supreme Court. (shrink)

In this article, I suggest that reflection on a broadly Aristotelian-cum-Hegelian conception about the determination of the conditions of identity and individuation of objects and properties shows that it entails (what Brandom calls) the Kant–Sellars thesis about modality and identity, one consequence of which is that persons are not identical to human beings. This view is in conflict with the Aristotelian liberal naturalist view to the effect that to be a person is identical to being an individual of (...) a specific animal kind—namely, homo sapiens—characterized by a specific and unique ‘form of life’ (and natural history) which differentiates it from all other animal kinds. I conclude that this novel and unorthodox liberal naturalist view about personhood constitutes an interesting and viable liberal naturalist alternative to more ‘orthodox’ liberal naturalist neo-Aristotelian views like Thompson’s, as it can better accommodate certain counterfactual ‘person-human being decoupling’ scenarios in our modern conception of ourselves-in-the-world. (shrink)

The axiological structure of man is by its nature defined by its relation to values. Its main task consists in their “implementation.” In this sense, the axiological structure has a teleological character. Its most important determining factor is the attitude of its subjects, man, towards values, or, to be more precise, towards the choice of values and their realisation within oneself. The arguments present a proposition of a multi-aspect stude of man in the context of values. It is remarkable that (...) so far this background has not been taken into consideration, or at least not satisfactorily enough, in attempts aiming at explaining the essence of personality. Yet it does seem that what we call “man’s axiological structure” significantly affects an individual’s personality, and possibily constitutes it. (shrink)

This article addresses an ambiguity in Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of what it means to be a human being in the world. On the one hand, Husserl often characterizes the human being in natural scientific terms as a psychophysical unity. On the other hand, Husserl also describes how we experience ourselves as embodied persons that experience and communicate with others within a socio-historical world. The main aim of this article is to show that if one overlooks this ambiguity then (...) one will misunderstand the relation between the subject that experiences a world (and that Husserl terms transcendental) and the human being within the world. (shrink)

The central fact about the problem of personal identity is that it is a problem posed by an apparent dichotomy: the dichotomy between the objective, third-person viewpoint on the one hand and the subjective perspective provided by the first-person viewpoint on the other. Everyone understands that the mind/body problem is precisely the problem of what to do about another apparent dichotomy, the duality comprising states of consciousness on the one hand and physical states of the body on the other. By (...) contrast, contemporary discussions of the problem of personal identity generally display little or no recognition of the divide which to my mind is at the heart of the problem. As a consequence, there has been a relentlessly third-personal approach to the issue, and the consequent proposal of solutions which stand no chance at all of working. I think the idea that the problem is to be clarified by an appeal to the idea of a human being is the latest manifestation of this mistaken approach. I am thinking in particular of the claim that what ought to govern our thinking on this issue is the fact that human beings constitute a natural kind, and that standard members of this kind can be said to have some sort of essence. Related to this is the idea that ‘person’, while not itself a natural kind term, is not a notion which can be framed in entire independence of this natural kind. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Tadeusz Ślipko’s considerations concerning “the origins of human being” or, in other words, his theory of animation. One of the characteristic features of Ślipko’s Thomistic anthropology is an experimental orientation: i.e. using and referring to the data of the sciences as these relate to material, physical and biological reality. As the starting point of his position he adopts the concept of man: being composed of a material substrate, determined in his human form (...) by the immortal soul as the vital principle of his/her existence. In line with this orientation, Ślipko focuses his investigations around the idea of man conceived “as a personal being and the subject of morality as a whole, constituted in what determines his/her proper humanity.” Therefore, asking about the origins—so to say—the initial moment of human substance, Ślipko examines this issue in the context of philosophical assumptions about God as the Creator of the universe, and about man as a self-aware and self-acting being who is the cause of a series of effects. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Tadeusz Ślipko’s considerations concerning “the origins of human being” or, in other words, his theory of animation. One of the characteristic features of Ślipko’s Thomistic anthropology is an experimental orientation: i.e. using and referring to the data of the sciences as these relate to material, physical and biological reality. As the starting point of his position he adopts the concept of man: being composed of a material substrate, determined in his human form (...) by the immortal soul as the vital principle of his/her existence. In line with this orientation, Ślipko focuses his investigations around the idea of man conceived “as a personal being and the subject of morality as a whole, constituted in what determines his/her proper humanity.” Therefore, asking about the origins—so to say—the initial moment of human substance, Ślipko examines this issue in the context of philosophical assumptions about God as the Creator of the universe, and about man as a self-aware and self-acting being who is the cause of a series of effects. (shrink)

I develop and refine an argument for the total brain death criterion of death previously advanced by Germain Grisez and me: A human being is essentially a rational animal, and so must have a radical capacity for rational operations. For rational animals, conscious sensation is a pre-requisite for rational operation. But total brain death results in the loss of the radical capacity for conscious sensation, and so also for rational operations. Hence, total brain death constitutes a substantial change—the ceasing (...) to be of the human being. Objections are considered, including the objection that total brain death need not result in the loss of capacity for sensation, and that damage to the brain less than total brain death can result in loss of capacity for rational operations. (shrink)

This article addresses a classical question: Can a machine use language meaningfully and if so, how can this be achieved? The first part of the paper is mainly philosophical. Since meaning implies intentionality on the part of the language user, artificial systems which obviously lack intentionality will be `meaningless'. There is, however, no good reason to assume that intentionality is an exclusively biological property and thus a robot with bodily structures, interaction patterns and development similar to those of human (...) beings would constitute a system possibly capable of meaning – a conjecture supported through a Wittgenstein-inspired thought experiment. The second part of the paper focuses on the empirical and constructive questions. Departing from the principle of epigenesis stating that during every state of development new structure arises on the basis of existing structure plus various sorts of interaction, a model of human cognitive and linguistic development is proposed according to which physical, social and linguistic interactions between the individual and the environment have their respective peaks in three consecutive stages of development: episodic, mimetic and symbolic. The transitions between these stages are qualitative, and bear a similarity to the stages in phylogenesis proposed by Donald and Deacon. Following the principle of epigenetic development, robotogenesis could possibly recapitulate ontogenesis, leading to the emergence of intentionality, consciousness and meaning. (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

The central fact about the problem of personal identity is that it is a problem posed by an apparent dichotomy: the dichotomy between the objective, third-person viewpoint on the one hand and the subjective perspective provided by the first-person viewpoint on the other. Everyone understands that the mind/body problem is precisely the problem of what to do about another apparent dichotomy, the duality comprising states of consciousness on the one hand and physical states of the body on the other. By (...) contrast, contemporary discussions of the problem of personal identity generally display little or no recognition of the divide which to my mind is at the heart of the problem. As a consequence, there has been a relentlessly third-personal approach to the issue, and the consequent proposal of solutions which stand no chance at all of working. I think the idea that the problem is to be clarified by an appeal to the idea of a human being is the latest manifestation of this mistaken approach. I am thinking in particular of the claim that what ought to govern our thinking on this issue is the fact that human beings constitute a natural kind, and that standard members of this kind can be said to have some sort of essence. Related to this is the idea that ‘person’, while not itself a natural kind term, is not a notion which can be framed in entire independence of this natural kind. (shrink)

Robots are becoming an increasingly pervasive feature of our personal lives. As a result, there is growing importance placed on examining what constitutes appropriate behavior when they interact with human beings. In this paper, we discuss whether companion robots should be permitted to “nudge” their human users in the direction of being “more ethical”. More specifically, we use Rawlsian principles of justice to illustrate how robots might nurture “socially just” tendencies in their human counterparts. Designing technological (...) artifacts in such a way to influence human behavior is already well-established but merely because the practice is commonplace does not necessarily resolve the ethical issues associated with its implementation. (shrink)

A relação entre o corpo e a alma do ser humano na teologia cristã: uma aproximação histórica e contemporânea. (The relation between body and soul of human being in Christian Theology: A historical and contemporary approach) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2013v11n31p1081 O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar como se deu, no plano histórico, e se dá, atualmente, na contemporaneidade, as relações entre o corpo e a alma, no âmbito da antropologia cristã. Historicamente, primeiro se constatou a existência do corpo e da (...) alma para depois se ocupar do tipo de relação que há entre ambos os princípios. Do ponto de vista histórico, houve um primado e uma supremacia da alma sobre o corpo. Entre ambos os princípios metafísicos, ora vigorava uma unidade acidental (provisória e dualista), ora uma unidade substancial (permanente e recíproca). Atualmente, a reflexão teológica defende uma unidade mútua e recíproca entre o corpo e a alma, de modo que cada princípio está ordenado para o outro. O ser humano é uma unitotalidade psicofísica e anímico-corpórea. Atualmente, há autores filósofos (X. Zubiri, M. Bunge) e teológos (J. Moltmann, Flick-Alszechy), que defendem como alternativa ao hilemorfismo aristótelico-tomista, novas formas de compreender a relação entre o corpo/matéria e alma/espírito. Também, nos dias de hoje, a relação corpo-alma está presente nas novas antropologias, mas com um novo verniz: a relação mente-cérebro. Palavras-chave : Antropologia. Corpo. Alma. Mente. Cérebro.The scope of this paper is to present how occurred in historical level, and occurs in the contemporary world, the relation between body and soul in the context of Christian anthropology. Historically, in a first moment, it was identified the existence of the body and the soul, and afterwards, the type of relation between these two ontological principles. From a historical point of view, there was a primacy and supremacy of the soul over the body. Between these principles, sometimes prevailed an accidental unity (provisional and dualistic), sometimes a substantial unity (permanent and reciprocal). Nowadays, the theological reflection defends a mutual and reciprocal unity between body and soul, so that each principle is ordained one to the other. Human being is a psychophysical “unit-totality” constituted of body and soul. Currently, there are philosophers (X. Zubiri, M. Bunge) and theologians (J. Moltmann, Flick-Alszeghy), who defend, as alternative to the Aristotelian-Thomistic hylemorphism, new forms of understanding the relation between body/matter and soul/spirit. Also, nowadays, the relation body-soul is present in new anthropologies, but with a new varnish through relation between mind-brain. Key-words : Anthropology. Body. Soul. Mind. Brain. (shrink)

In deliberate contrast to the ethical intellectualism of Socrates, Aristotle develops a complex conception of virtues as character traits which are closely tied to the different elements and stages of their cultivation: in the gradual process of becoming good, ‘learning by doing’ is the central cornerstone for establishing a close connectivity between emotion and reason as well as between desire, decision and right action. Virtue as a perfection of human nature engenders the best possible integration of irrational striving with (...) reason in the soul and is thus the constitutive component of human flourishing. (shrink)

It is often assumed that to say that nature should be protected for the sake of human beings just is to say that it should be protected because it is a means to one or more anthropocentric ends. I argue that this assumption is false. In some contexts, claims that a particular natural X should be protected for our sakes mean that X should be protected, not because it is a means to anthropocentric ends, but because it is (...) part of something about human life that is of value: because, that is, its value is anthropocentric and constitutive rather than anthropocentric and instrumental. It follows, I suggest, that one does not need to endorse the non-anthropocentric claim that nature should be protected for its own sake in order to challenge the instrumentalist notion that it should be protected simply because it is a means to anthropocentric ends. To make my case, I consider the UK Government's failed attempt to sell off England's publicly-owned forests. (shrink)

In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States issued Roe v. Wade, a historic and contentious decision that established abortion as a fundamental constitutional right. This ruling protected aborti...

Dependent Rational Animals consists of a revision of the three Paul Carus Lectures delivered by MacIntyre at the 1997 Pacific Division meeting of the APA. The book is rather different from MacIntyre's work since After Virtue in that it proceeds systematically rather than historically to develop a Thomistic-Aristotelian view of ethics that takes its departure from the continuities in human and nonhuman animal nature and the role of dependence in human life. These issues lead to a consideration of (...) the distinctive virtues required of us if we are to become independent practical reasoners able to acknowledge our dependence on others in arriving at that state of independence as well as continuing dependence on others with whom we participate in the relationships of giving and receiving through which we pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing. The argument proceeds in roughly three stages. (shrink)

An influential interpretation of Kant’s Doctrine of Right suggests that the relationship between public right and freedom is constitutive rather than instrumental. The focus has been on domestic right and members’ relations to their own state. This has resulted in a statist bias which has not adequately dealt with the fact that Kant regards public right as a system composed of three levels – domestic, international and cosmopolitan right. This article suggests that the constitutive relationship is between all levels of (...) right, on the one hand, and ‘freedom in the external relation’ of all human beings, on the other hand. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. (...) In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership. (shrink)

When discussing the extinction of humanity, there does not seem to be any clear agreement about what ‘humanity’ really means. One aim of this paper is to show that it is a more slippery concept than it might at first seem. A second aim is to show the relationship between what constitutes or defines humanity and what gives it value. Often, whether and how we ought to prevent human extinction depends on what we take humanity to mean, which in (...) turn depends on what we value about humans. Finally, I will offer a definition of humanity that I argue offers a plausible account of when we might say humanity has gone extinct, and reflects what we value about humans, and relatedly, what many actually care about in terms of why we should be preserved. (shrink)

It is argued that the question of whether or not one is required to be or become a strict vegetarian depends, not upon a rule or ideal that endorses vegetarianism on moral grounds, but rather upon whether one's own physical, biological nature is adapted to maintaining health and well-being on a vegetarian diet. Even if we accept the view that animals have rights, we still have no duty to make ourselves substantially worse off for the sake of other rights-holders. Moreover, (...) duties to others, such as fetuses and infants, may require one to consume meat or animal products. Seven classes of individuals who are not required to be or become vegetarians are identified and their examption is related to nutritional facts; these classes comprise most of the earth's population. The rule of vegetarianism defines a special or provisional duty rather than any general or universal rule, since its observance it based upon the biological capacities of individual humans whose genetic constitution and environment makes them suitably herbivorous. It is also argued that generalizing the vegetarian ideal as a social goal for all would be wrongful because it fails to consider the individual nutritional needs of humans at various stages of life, according to biological differences between the sexes, and because it would have the eugenic effect of limiting the adaptability of the human species. The appeal to the natural interests of omnivores will not justify any claim that humans may eat amounts of meat or animal products in excess of a reasonable safety margin since animals have rights-claims against us. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other (...) values incorporated into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

Questions assumptions about what it is to be a human being by examining the ideas of thinkers such as Foucault, Winnicott, Lacan and Jaspers. Chessick combines succinct summaries of the writings of these European thinkers with critical commentaries.

The question of what is truly just in the matter of a country's currently established human-rights interpretations appears not to be the same as the question of what it is morally right to do by way of coercively effectuating a given set of such interpretations. There are grounds for contending that acts of support for a coercive political regime can be justified morally on the condition that the regime's prevailing human-rights interpretations are made continuously available to effective, democratic (...) critical re-examination. However, it is not possible ever finally to know whether that condition is satisfied. (shrink)

According to constitution views of persons, we are constituted by spatially coinciding human animals. Constitution views face an ‘overpopulation’ puzzle: if the animal has my brain, there is another thinker where I am. An influential solution to this problem distinguishes between derivative and non‐derivative property possession: persons non‐derivatively have their personal properties, while inheriting others from their constituters. I will show that this solution raises a new problem, by constructing a puzzle with the absurd result that we (...) instantiate certain properties incompatibly. In setting up the puzzle, I demonstrate the relevance of the bodily awareness and self‐awareness literatures to overpopulation puzzles. (shrink)

Indeed, death, even the ones that some people are prepared for, comes with painful blows in the hearts of loved ones left behind. One, then, can only imagine the great pangs of pain that pierce the hearts of the bereaved upon hearing a young life that has been ended abruptly by series of uncontrollable occurrences—alas! Tragedy! This particular human experience pushes man’s brokenness to fore, illuminating the gap in human constitution, casting on humanity’s fault a blinding radiance (...) which forces one to think and rethink his life and its possibilities. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo (...) Bueno’s idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions. (shrink)

Democracy and human rights have long been strongly connected in international covenants. In documents such as 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, democracy is justified both intrinsically in terms of popular sovereignty and instrumentally as the best way to “foster the full realization of all human rights.” Yet, even though they are human and thus universal rights, political rights are often surprisingly specific. In the (...) Covenant, for example, “the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs” is equated with “the right to vote and to be elected.” More often then not, their realization is left to states and their constitutions, as for example in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Political rights have a “peculiar” status among enumerated human rights, and this difficulty has to do with deep assumptions about the nature and scope of democracy and political community that remain unexamined by the drafters of these important declarations. (shrink)

Through the analysis of Conrad-Martius Metaphysical Dialogues, our aim is show the relevance of the concept of spirit (Geist) and soul (Seele) to clarify the constitution of the human being. In order to understand Conrad-Martius’ phenomenological description, it is necessary to explain Husserl’s and Stein’s approaches to the same argument. Briefly their position is described at the beginning of the essay and then the main points of Conrad-Martius’ book are pinpointed. Human being is understandable in the complex (...) of the degrees of nature, that is, with reference to the organic life—plants and animals. Mental-spirit life is the distinguishing element regarding the human being. (shrink)

It is now commonplace in many jurisdictions for judges to refer to the decisions of the courts of foreign jurisdictions when interpreting domestic human rights guarantees. But there has also been a persistent undercurrent of scepticism about this trend, and the emergence of a growing debate about its appropriateness. This issue is of particular relevance in jurisdictions that have relatively recently incorporated human rights provisions that are significantly judicially enforced. In the UK, a reconsideration of the use of (...) comparative judicial decisions in human rights cases is therefore particularly timely. The interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998 will bring with it the issue of how far British courts will (and/or should) use jurisprudence from other countries in order to help in arriving at decisions on the interpretation of the Act. This article raises for debate, therefore, the meaning and significance of national judges» citation of judgments from other jurisdictions as part of their reasoning in cases with a significant human (or constitutional) rights aspect. Several questions are identified and explored in an attempt to consider various aspects of the general phenomenon. These include empirical questions (how far does it happen, and where?), jurisprudential questions (can we identify criteria that help explain why it does or does not happen?), and normative questions (is it legitimate?). A review of the existing literature is undertaken with a view to determining how far scholars have succeeded in answering these questions. The article concludes that significant gaps exist in our understanding of the phenomenon and raises for discussion the methodologies that may be appropriate for addressing the phenomenon in the future. (shrink)

Scholars strive, in their treatment of Stein’s work, to express both a phenomenological concept of the human person, characterized by conscious and free spiritual activity, and a metaphysical concept of the person, seen as an individual essence unfolding throughout life. In Stein’s work, the two concepts are not simply juxtaposed, nor is there a shift from one to the other. Stein integrates her phenomenological research into a metaphysical framework. In the present contribution, I endeavor to show that Stein’s interpretation (...) of Husserl’s concept of constitution focuses on the question of whether this constitution is to be understood realistically or idealistically and on the question of the constituting subject. I shall argue that Stein’s interpretation of constitution is closely linked to the lived experience she calls already in her early writings “self-discovery” and “awakening.”. (shrink)

This is a transcription of a debate on the concept of a person conducted in Moscow in 1983. David Bakhurst argues that Evald Ilyenkov's social constructivist conception of personhood, founded on Marx's thesis that the human essence is the ensemble of social relations, is either false or trivially true. F. T. Mikhailov, V. S. Bibler, V. A. Lektorsky and V. V. Davydov critically assess Bakhurst's arguments, elucidate and contextualize Ilyenkov's views, and defend, in contrasting ways, the claim that (...) class='Hi'>human individuals are socially constituted beings. Issues discussed include: the concepts of activity (dejatel'nost') and community (obenija) and their relevance to the notions of mind and personhood; self-consciousness and its relation to personal identity; naturalism in Soviet thought. Translated from the Russian. (shrink)

The phenomenon of femicide is a social tragedy, keeping on being perpetrated across time. Its consequences are deeply traumatic for children and adolescents, becoming motherless, by their father or by their agent of fatherly care. It represents a serious trauma, still needing to be adequately addressed, by the different human sciences and, especially, involving pedagogy in a careful reflection, in order to facilitate full development processes for a subject in a childhood and adolescence age. The reference, here, is to (...) a pedagogy of bereavement, grounded in attentive categories of analysis and in educative methodologies, able to strengthen life value and to activate an existential planning. It should act in the purpose of allowing each orphaned subject — due to femicide —being capable of building his/her own meaningful future, worthy to be wished and towards which addressing the own search of meaning. (shrink)