This book examines Augustine's description of the actually existing world, especially that aspect most important for the human pursuit of happiness: the human being and God. It begins with an overview of the characteristics of the human individual and the context in which they must live out their lives, a context dominated by two seemingly contradictory realities: the existence of God and the existence of evil.

With the development of Ukraine as an independent state, interest in its history and especially in the turning points of history is increasing. One such period was the famine of 1921-1923. At this time, contradictions between the Soviet government and the Russian Orthodox Church were particularly acute. In 1922-1923, a campaign was taken to seize church values ​​to help the hungry, in which the Church was unable to increase its authority through active assistance to the population and which significantly reduced (...) the role of religion in the lives of Soviet people. The consequences of these events are still relevant today. (shrink)

The analysis of historical literature allows to consider profoundly the development of national culture and science of the 18th-first half of the 20th centuries and the formation and change of different historical concepts. With the analysis of historical periods that are highlighted in the research, general trends in the changing of paradigms about Russian historical development were concluded, which were translated to mass historical consciousness from the beginning of the 18th century up to 1917. The periods were closely connected with (...) the specific political, historical and economic changes in Russian Empire and with the dominance of certain textbooks during this time. The books were selected because of a number of factors: their inclusion to the school curriculum, the number of publications, the equal number of textbooks devoted to different historical periods. For the analysis were used 19 textbooks, schoolbooks for different courses of secondary schools and primary schools. All the sources of educational literature were grouped into two concepts - officially-state and the liberal. Each publication was highlighted the dominant concept as a base for the whole textbook. There is also a characteristic of the concepts that are presented chronologically. The analysis represents school history books as an important source for the formation of state policy in the representing of Russian history, and, that is more important, for creation of the concept of the state of Russian history. (shrink)

The introduction of Western healthcare, via colonialism, into Africa facilitated a confrontation of indigenous and exogenous “medical” knowledge as well as the attendant praxis. Although colonialism has been expunged from the shores of Africa, the epistemic and ideological frictions it introduced into the sphere of healthcare linger and raise different dilemmas. Against this background, this paper explores pragmatic and ethical approaches that may help engage these tensions in the context of drug development based on validated traditional phytomedicines.

Ethno-national phenomenon in public life, namely the problem of the Ukrainian national idea and national interest, is becoming increasingly important in the current context. In this sense, socio-cultural aspects of the development of peoples come to the fore. There is a need to rethink the system of ethnic culture consciousness in multivariate approaches to its study.

_Purpose._ This article discusses researching the nature and basic structure of acts of empathy. Such research first requires answering the question: are empathic acts intentional acts of our consciousness? If the answer to this question is affirmative, then there is a need to answer the following questions: what are the features of acts of empathy as intentional ones? And can such acts be qualified as opening a special and complex type of access (epistemic, social, and ethical) to "other minds"? _Theoretical (...) basis._ The research is based on the problems set by the phenomenological tradition and the developed analytical philosophy, which found their continuation in the philosophy of mind. With the tendency to naturalization, representatives of these areas have another common sphere in the research of mental reality. The changes that both traditions are undergoing can be observed in the transformation of fundamental theoretical concepts such as "intentionality". The linguistic turn gives impetus to the development of new theoretical approaches to the understanding of consciousness, which give preference to the research of language rather than the research in the structure of the Self. The change in methodological guidelines is due to a few factors. In particular, this is a noticeable progress in empirical sciences and the dominance of Behaviorism guidelines in psychology, as well as the fact that the Anglo-American tradition inherits several features intrinsic to British empiricism. Today, three main directions of understanding intentionality can be distinguished. Starting from Brentano and Husserl, we have a classical theory – mental intentionality (phenomenological). As part of analytical philosophy and philosophy of language, we can talk about linguistically interpreted intentionality. Sellars’ model of intentionality has a definite linguistic component. Also, a modern version that functions in the philosophy of consciousness: attempts to naturalize intentionality (this is, for example, the research of Galen Strawson and Daniel Dennett). _Originality._ The problem is studied not in the context of the phenomenological or analytical traditions in their isolation, but in a problematic-conceptual way, which allows us to reach a new level of generalization and reveal the theoretical advantages of combining both traditions. _Conclusions._ Empathic Acts can be defined as intentional within the classical phenomenological tradition. As intentional acts, they have their specificity in that they are directed to the "other mind" and can form the basis for the research of intersubjectivity. For the analytic tradition and early philosophy of consciousness, such statements are not obvious. However, discussions about the role of corporality and the problem concerning embodied cognition are becoming increasingly common today. In such discussions, empathy, as an element in the knowledge of others and a possibility for grounding the social sciences, seems more promising than attempts to make epistemic access to other minds possible on the basis of the argument by analogy or on the basis of the inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

Many drugs used in paediatric medicine are off-label. There is a rising call for the use of adaptive clinical trial designs in responding to the need for safe and effective drugs given their potential to offer efficiency and cost-effective benefits compared with traditional clinical trials. ADs have a strong appeal in paediatric clinical trials given the small number of available participants, limited understanding of age-related variability and the desire to limit exposure to futile or unsafe interventions. Although the ethical value (...) of adaptive trials has increasingly come under scrutiny, there is a paucity of literature on the ethical dilemmas that may be associated with paediatric adaptive designs. This paper highlights some of these ethical concerns around safety, scientific/social value and caregiver/guardian comprehension of the trial design. Against this background, the paper develops a non-static conceptual lens for understanding PADs. It shows that ADs are epistemically open and reduce some of the knowledge-associated uncertainties inherent in clinical trials as well as fast-track the time to draw conclusions about the value of evaluated drugs/treatments. On this note, the authors argue that PADs are ethically justifiable given they have multiple layers of safety, exposing enrolled children to lesser potential risks, create social/scientific value generally and for paediatric populations in particular, specifically foster the flourishing of paediatric populations and can significantly improve paediatric trial efficiency when properly designed and implemented. However, because PADs are relatively new and their regulatory, ethical and logistical characteristics are yet to be clarified in some jurisdictions, the cooperation of various public and private stakeholders is required to ensure that the interests of children, their caregivers and parents/guardians are best served while exposing paediatric research subjects to the most minimal of risks when they are enrolled in paediatric trials that use ADs. Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. Not applicable. (shrink)

The problem of spirituality is one of those philosophical problems that are commonly called "eternal." It is particularly relevant in the dramatic periods of human history that Ukraine is experiencing today, when fundamentally new life phenomena and circumstances adjust the ways and means of life choices, social self-determination of individuals. Radical changes in a person's world-view make everyone personally think of new social realities, define their world-view settings, realize the place and role of the person in the process of social (...) transformation. In such circumstances, the problem of spirituality acquires the most important status in the structure of the spiritual world of the individual. (shrink)

There is a huge number of publications devoted to civil society. Nevertheless this theme is inexhaustible, because the very subject of it is multidimensional and changing along with the evolution of society. Alongside this, one of the key problems of the civil society theory is a problem of its perception in our mind. Answering these questions, the author, at first, stresses the necessity to differ three historical types of civil society: ancient classical polis, civil communities of the Modern History and (...) contemporary civil society. They all are substantially different inter se from the axiological point of view. That is a reason not to use the ideological and methodological curves developed for historically previous types of civil society for the analysis of contemporary one. Secondly, the author focuses attention upon epistemological aspect of the civil society theory, in particular he proposes to rethink the concept of “totality” not in a formal logic way but in the “logic” of living systems in order to be able by means of this concept to express the unity of the diversity of social system. Thirdly, the author treats the concept of “citizen” in informal sense, stresses its existential, personal content and contemplates it through the dialectical relation of “totality-peculiarity-individuality.” Fourthly, the author researches the phenomenon of contemporary civil society as a counterpart of a state in the complex society the main features of which are the diversity and individuality. He comes to the conclusion that the civil society is not a society in common sense, but rather is some kind of “soil structure,” so called “social mycelium” that fertilizes social system with new opportunities. In the final part of the article author gives the example of one of the approaches to estimate the degree of maturation of civil society, proposed by the world-wide international organization “Civicus.” He stresses that the logic of power distribution in contemporary society presupposes cooperation of different actors, and one of the most influential of them is the civil society. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This article aims at outlining the consider Ukrainian identity in the context of European collective action through the prism of value orientations/approaches. _Theoretical basis._ The following methods were used in order to cover the problem as objectively as possible: historical, analytical, comparative, socio-geographical, behavioral, and dialectical. The use of these methods contributed to tracing the peculiarities of identity and collective action in the dynamics of the historical process and social development. _Originality._ The role of identity in collective action formation (...) is considered. It was established that identity determines the socio-species structure and projects social development. After all, identification for a person in the formation process is a basic need that determines a person’s belonging, not identity. During the formation of "I" there is a combination of "I1" + "I2" + "Other" = "WE". This process is complex and long-term, but it is precisely the process that gives you the opportunity to clearly understand your "I" and know yourself. It was found that identity as a social phenomenon, which is related to the formation of the "I", is determined by certain circumstances, which can be conditionally divided into objective and subjective. After analyzing the scientific literature, a generalization was made that identity is not a new phenomenon, but it has certain features at each stage of social development. This became most noticeable in the conditions of globalization, when countries that are actually different perceive the "Other", unite around certain problems, and then this union forms a system of mutual relations. It is thanks to this approach that alliances, multicultural associations, etc. are formed, and an example of this is the heterogeneous European identity. Special attention is drawn to the role of values, which are the landmarks in the process of identity and the formation of collective action. Based on political, social, economic, historical processes and ontological features, it was established that identity is a dynamic process, since values during a person’s life, the existence of the state, etc. are variables. This is confirmed by the value orientation and various socio-political processes aimed at the formation of Homo in countries that have the status of "between". _Conclusions._ The article illustrates and justifies the existence of several forms of identity according to which the types of identity are formed. The fact proves that identity is not a constant process and varies due to multiple factors: social, political, economic, and religious as well as due to formations – regional, local, civilizational, etc. As practice shows, the problem of identity mostly has situational nature and arises due to the need for unification. The socio-historical process manifests the significance of the values in the formation of a collective European heterogeneous identity. These processes are influenced by many factors: geographical, historical, mythological, etc. (shrink)

The problem of the place and significance of the phenomena of fear and horror in the world-view of man has a long but unexplored history in science. Since ancient philosophy, these phenomena have been regarded as feelings that depend on the object-subjective perception of the phenomena of the socio-cultural life of society. However, none of the ancient authors put forward the original scientific hypothesis of the phenomenon and its justification. In modern times, fear in scientific circulation and everyday outlook has (...) become purely natural-physiological reaction of the nervous system of man to external danger. From the period of separation of psychology into a separate science and under the influence of the achievements of experimental psychophysiology of the early twentieth century. such a dominant awareness of fear has finally established itself and dominates the contemporary Western European outlook. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

In no other age, however distinguished it may have been by brilliant discoveries, has the question of the meaning of life faced humanity as acutely and urgently as in recent times. Considerable interest in this realm of philosophical thought has been aroused chiefly by the fact that now more than ever, the most urgent and dramatic crises of being have emerged and grown more threatening, taking the form of "eternal questions" for mankind as a whole: will humanity, its culture, science, (...) and art, exist or not exist? How can we ward off the threat that hangs over the entire world, and how with the aid of reason can we defend the humanistic principles of the human community? and what is reason itself in the contemporary person—the ethically "neutral" intellect of the bourgeois scholar, or a special capability, characteristic only of those who can understand life's phenomena through an inner spiritual-valuative relation to themselves and others as human beings? It is precisely the problem of the ethical orientation of human reason, its conversion from an "instrument of knowledge' ' into a means for the humanization of human existence that has become one of the most critical problems of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Despite the advancing progress of science and technology, and to some extent even because of it, again the person is turned towards self-knowledge, to the definition of his essence in new concrete historical conditions. In this article, we have attempted to approach the idea of the humanization of human reason, turning to the problems of the ethical-philosophical legacy of L. N. Tolstoy. We will try to demonstrate the expediency, and necessity, of such an approach. (shrink)