At the beginning of the 16 th century, Transylvania had been an officially Catholic land belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary and led by an elite consisting of three nations, the Hungarian nobles (increasingly referred to as the Hungarian nation), the Saxons and the Szeklers. However, the general population, deprived of any political power, consisted of Orthodox Romanians. In other words, in Transylvania the Latin West met the Byzantine Orient. The old Hungary fell apart between 1526 and 1541, its central (...) regions taken by the Ottoman Empire, the west and the north by the Habsburgs, while the eastern part, Transylvania, became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. At the same time, various Protestant trends made their presence felt among the leading nations, eventually crystallizing in the form of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. In the space of three decades (1540–1570) these rival denominations gained legal status and joined Catholicism as the official religions of the country. Catholicism became a marginal denomination, deprived of assets and of its hierarchy. Under Protestant pressure, the Orthodox Romanians were still kept away from power. The last three decades of the century saw some attempts at Counterreformation and at a Catholic Reformation, at a time when the principality was once again led by a Catholic dynasty. In this context, new Catholic cultural (educational) models, supported by the Jesuits, were implemented in the existing Protestant and Orthodox context, in an often desperate attempt to reverse or at least balance the situation. In this respect, the Jesuit College of Cluj (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania), established in 1581, remains a most memorable episode, whose consequences can still be seen today. By resorting to education and learning, the college was meant to influence and alter the surrounding Protestant and Orthodox world. In fact, it became an interesting facet of the multicultural, multiethnic and multiconfessional character of Transylvania, a miniature Europe inhabited by Latin, Germanic, Finno-Ugrian, Slavic peoples etc., by Byzantines, Catholics and Protestants, by rightful citizens and “tolerated” inhabitants, by masters and servants, by privileged categories and by groups merely “allowed to exist”. The troubled events of those years have left us with a model of cohabitation based on both cooperation and rivalry that truly deserves consideration. (shrink)

After studying a Latin record issued on 6 June 1574, the specialists expressed different opinions regarding the expression romana videlicet seu graeca religio, i.e. “Roman or Greek religion”. The author believes that the issuer of the 1574 document only transposed into Latin a phrase commonly used in the Romanian Transylvanian environment, so that the “Romanian religion” became practically naturally, in Latin, religio romana, all the more so as we are dealing with an internal document, not intended for the Holy See (...) or for other foreign institutions, where it may have created confusion. The matter of this unusual document is far from being settled, as the arguments raised are probably insufficient or not eloquent enough. However, they are just as consistent as those that suggest an interpretation based on the alleged Catholicism of the Romanians. Consequently, we consider that in the current stage of our knowledge it is plausible to believe that in the document of 1574 religio romana sive greca means “Romanian or Greek religion.”. (shrink)

Review of Ioan-Aurel Pop, Biserică, societate şi cultură în Transilvania secolului al XVI-lea. Între acceptare şi excludere (Church, society and culture in 16 th Century Transylvania. Between acceptance and exclusion) , București: Editura Academiei, 2012.

In this tenth book of scilogs – called via neutrosophica (the neutrosophic way) –, one may find new and old questions and solutions, referring mostly to topics on NEUTROSOPHY, but also MULTISPACE, with miscellaneous addition of topics on Physics, Mathematics, or Sociology – email messages to research colleagues, or replies, notes about authors, articles, or books, spontaneous ideas, and so on. -/- Exchanging ideas with A. Elhassouny, Junhui Kim, Jeong Gon Lee, Kul Hur, Hojjatollah Farahani, W. B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Said (...) Broumi, Mumtaz Ali, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Ozen Ozer, Madad Khan, Gheorghe Săvoiu, John Mordeson, Adesina Agboola, Waldyr Rodrigues, Ajay Sharma, Stephen Crothers, Vlad, Dmitri Rabounski, Victor Christianto, Trung Duyên, Mirela Teodorescu, Ioan Aurel Pop.‬‬‬. (shrink)

The research on stem cell-based therapies has greatly expanded in recent years. Our text attempts to seek those religious and ethical challenges that stem cell therapy and research bring into debate. Our thesis is that bioethics can defend its principle without a religious background. We will develop our argumentation on three major points: firstly, a comparison between secular ethics and religious views will clarify why stem cell therapy and research are important from a scientific point of view, addressing the very (...) center of the human being; in our view, being based on secular society, bioethics can answer the challenges of stem cell therapy and research; secondly, following Hans Jonas' perspective on experimenting on humans, we seek to understand the philosophical guidance that sciences dealing with stem cell need; thirdly, we will map the ethical guidelines for clinical translational research that have been adopted by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. . (shrink)

Review of Aurel Codoban, Imperiul comunicării: corp, imagine și relaționare (The Empire of Communication: Body, Image and Relation), (Cluj-Napoca: Idea Design &Print, 2011).

Aurel Codoban, Filosofia ca gen literar (Philosophy as a literary genre) Ed. Idea Design&Print, Cluj- Napoca, 2006.

Aurel Kolnai was born in Budapest, in 1900 and died in London, in 1973. He was, according to Karl Popper and the late Bernard Williams, one of the most original, provocative, and sensitive philosophers of the twentieth century. Kolnai's moral philosophy is best described in his own words as intrinsicalist, non-naturalist, non-reductionist", which took its original impetus from Scheler's value ethics, and was developed by using a natural phenomenologist method. The unique combination of linguistic analysis and phenomenology yields highly (...) original ideas on classical fields of moral theory, such as responsibility and free will, the meaning of right and wrong, the universalisability of ethical norms, the role of moral emotions, internalism vs externalism, to mention a few. The volume presents a selection of essays by Kolnai, including his main political theoretical work, "What is Politics About", available in English here for the first time. The second half of the book Kolnai's work is analyzed in a series of essays by eminent scholars. (shrink)

Aurel Kolnai; VI*—Forgiveness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 91–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.1.

Aurel Kolnai; VI*—Forgiveness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 91–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.1.

Aurel Kolnai; XI—Deliberation is of Ends, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 195–218, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

The present study investigated the associations between social media use integration and Technological Intimate Partner Violence (TIPV) while also exploring the mediating role of the three dimensions of jealousy and the moderating role of moral absolutism. Our sample consisted of 404 adults aged 18 to 59. The results indicated a significant positive effect of social media use integration on cognitive jealousy and TIPV. Social media use integration was correlated with behavioral jealousy and TIPV, while TIPV was positively associated with all (...) three dimensions of jealousy. The moderated mediation analysis suggested that behavioral jealousy fully mediated the effect of social media use integration toward TIPV at all levels of moral absolutism, while cognitive jealousy had a partial mediating effect only at medium and high levels of moral absolutism. We discuss our findings by pointing out that (a) various dimensions of jealousy might be influenced differently by social media use integration, and (b) individuals with high levels of moral absolutism might be more prone to cognitive jealousy after being exposed to prolonged social media use. We acknowledge that our results may have limited generalizability as our sample was primarily female. Research involving larger portions of male participants would be important to pursue. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

This article explores the development of the theme of the Life-giving Spring in Byzantine iconography. The path towards its establishment was initiated at the moment when a representation rule, an original convention was set. Thereafter, because of its diffusion in time and space, the theme became enriched by particular mentalities and sensibilities of the epochs and the communities that adopted it as a form of devotion for the Virgin Theotokos. As a result, the representations we have known so far are (...) extremely varied. CONTRIBUTION: The final purpose of this approach, as well as its contribution, is to highlight the diverse unity of the iconographic tradition and illustrate both the evolution of the theme in the painting of Romanian church artists and its gradual refinement through the incorporation of diverse nuances and new perspectives. (shrink)

The relation between Christianity and nation is a very old but also a permanent theme within the Ecumenical Movement. Our aim is to explain why this relation is so important for us, the Europeans, because Europe is in fact, a continent of nations that have to be known by their traditions and by the reciprocal manifestations which, unfortunately, are sometimes conflicting. This is why it is not very easy to speak or to write about it. From the Orthodox point of (...) view, the ideal of the nation can be completely integrated in the Christian ideal. Such an ideal makes possible the development of a nation’s natural qualities. It does not lead to a uniformity of nations, on the contrary, it leads to their growth within the unity of the Christian faith. (shrink)

Why, however, should it be necessarily wrong to discuss the nebulous in a businesslike manner?

Aurel Kolnai; X—Games and Aims, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 66, Issue 1, 1 June 1966, Pages 103–128, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/66.

Aurel Kolnai; X—Games and Aims, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 66, Issue 1, 1 June 1966, Pages 103–128, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/66.

This paper is a survey of the theories of time travel in a perspective close to theories of time. In the last section we discuss the special ontology of the objects that exist on closed timelike curves. We simply assert that CTC need a new ontology and these objects are not simply impossible or unconcevaible.

This article discusses the response which Hegel gives in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy to a problem which is first posed in his early writings. The problem is that of the possibility to comprehend the Absolute, the Infinity („Life” is the term Hegel uses in his Early Writings) using the reflexion as instrument. The later response is to see the concept (Begriff) in his speculative sense (in fact the form of absolute reflexion) as a spiritual, historical entity and (...) so, as tradition of representation (Vorstellung). The tradition of a thought is what marks the passage from dominative, intelectual thinking to integrative, reasonable thinking. (shrink)

My essay deals with two problems. First, I want to verify the possibility of a „non-metaphysical” perspective on Hegels writings and second, I want to answer the question „What kind of language is appropriate in order to express the speculative thought?”. I begin by discussing the Derrida’s view of Hegel as a metaphysician and then I try to give the alternative to his interpretation by analizing some pages fron Hegel’s Logic.

William D’Alessandro has recently argued that there are no implicit truths in fiction. According to the view defended by D’Alessandro, which he terms explicitism, the only truths in fiction are the ones explicitly expressed therein. In this essay, I argue that explicitism is incorrect on multiple counts. Not only is the argument D’Alessandro gives for it invalid, but explicitism as a theory of truth in fiction fails drastically to account for a number of phenomena that are crucial to our understanding (...) and interpretation of fiction, such as pragmatic implicatures and speech acts occurring in fiction, psychological profiles of fictional characters, and fictional truths determined by literary conventions. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, spanning 1925 to 1970, confirm Aurel Kolnai's place as one of the great conservative theorists of the twentieth century. Kolnai carefully analyzes the leading intellectual positions and thinkers of his day, the dominant social movements, and the prevailing moral influences--psychoanalysis, fascism, and National Socialism. He documents how they run counter to the architecture of civilization. Kolnai is relatively unknown outside philosophical circles, but Politics, Values, and National Socialism provides an overview of his moral philosophy. (...) In most moral philosophy books one finds pages devoted to the major theories of ethics. This volume is different. It seeks to address the larger moral question of what kind of thought works against morality, and by implication, how one can defend morality. Eager to protect "the surviving islands of Liberal Civilization," Kolnai's concern is really one of theory. He shows that much of what passes for moral theory is subversive of moral order. All who think that totalitarianism is a permanent threat, and who suspect that ideas can quickly be dangerously distorted in times of social unrest, will find plenty of clarifying ideas in this volume. (shrink)

The present study intends to demonstrate that there is no logical-formal inconsistency in the Christian Trinity. However, the demonstration requires specific tools, other than those of classical logic. There are many older or newer attempts that try to remove the thesis of the inconsistency of the Christian Trinity. There is often a call for mathematical tools. As far as we are concerned, we will appeal to co -inherence and the nesting relationships specific to the Christian Trinity, as they appear especially (...) in Augustine’s work. We advance the hypothesis that Augustine's metaphor "heaven of heavens" has a foundational role in the logical plane of explanation. In this sense, Augustine points out that in the "heaven of heavens", reason does not know "in part", but it knows everything suddenly, entirely, as in a totality. This totality with a founding role functions as a principle, which we can call the principle of free totality. But the co -belonging of entities in the free and founding totality also expresses co -inherence. Divine persons are an emanation of God. That is why we are talking about co -inherence. The "co" particle points out that the starting point is in the free totality of God, and that this totality logically precedes the rest of the process. Thus, we can consider the term "the Christian Trinity" as a nested term, as co -habitation. The totality of God is not a generalization in the spirit of the Aristotelian abstraction, but rather a particularity, a "personalization" that does not cancel the individual, but it highlights in instantiation. In this sense, the Christian God is not an abstraction, but a divine Being in three persons, in whom He instantiates. The logic of this process is the one of vagueness. (shrink)

Arguing for mathematical realism on the basis of Field’s explanationist version of the Quine–Putnam Indispensability argument, Alan Baker has recently claimed to have found an instance of a genuine mathematical explanation of a physical phenomenon. While I agree that Baker presents a very interesting example in which mathematics plays an essential explanatory role, I show that this example, and the argument built upon it, begs the question against the mathematical nominalist.

We argue that the concepts of mechanism and autonomy appear to be antagonistic when autonomy is conflated with agency. Once these concepts are disentangled, it becomes clearer how autonomy emerges from complex forms of control. Subsequently, current biomimetic strategies tend to focus on homeostatic regulatory systems; we propose that research in AI and robotics would do well to incorporate biomimetic strategies that instead invoke models of allostatic mechanisms as a way of understanding how to enhance autonomy in artificial systems.

The problem of disgust has until recently been neglected in the scientific literature. In comparison to the scientific (psychological and metaphysical) interest that has been applied to hatred, anxiety, and similar phenomena, disgust — although a common and important factor in our emotional life — has been unexplored, or it has been viewed as a “higher degree of dislike,” as “nausea,” or as a phenomenon of the “repression of urges.” We here show how the feeling of disgust possesses a unique (...) and characteristic quality on the basis of a phenomenological investigation. (shrink)

This paper proposes a model for an artificial autonomous moral agent (AAMA), which is parsimonious in its ontology and minimal in its ethical assumptions. Starting from a set of moral data, this AAMA is able to learn and develop a form of moral competency. It resembles an “optimizing predictive mind,” which uses moral data (describing typical behavior of humans) and a set of dispositional traits to learn how to classify different actions (given a given background knowledge) as morally right, wrong, (...) or neutral. When confronted with a new situation, this AAMA is supposedly able to predict a behavior consistent with the training set. This paper argues that a promising computational tool that fits our model is “neuroevolution,” i.e. evolving artificial neural networks. (shrink)

It is usually taken for granted, in discussions about fiction, that real things or events can occur as referents of fictional names . In this paper, I take issue with this view, and provide several arguments to the effect that it is better to take the names in fiction to refer to fictional surrogates of real objects. Doing so allows us to solve a series of problems that arise on the reference-continuity view. I also show that the arguments philosophers usually (...) rely on in order to ban surrogates are not as serious as they have been taken to be. In the first part of the paper, I describe the two conflicting views. In the second part, I discuss several specific arguments in favor of surrogates. In the third part I take up the kind of reasons ordinarily offered against them. (shrink)

This article is a reaction to the following argument that has been offered in favor of abstract realism about fictional characters: fictional characters do not impose any extra ontological cost on our ontology, because they belong to the same ontological kind as literary works, which we already accept. I address arguments that have been adduced by Jeffrey Goodman in defense of this argument, and I show that there is no relevant parallelism between fictional entities and literary works that the abstract (...) fictional realist can use to bolster her theory. (shrink)

Aurel Kolnai; VI—Moral Consensus, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 93–118, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/7.

C ontemporary religious terrorism propels in the forefront of philosophical, sociological, anthropological and political discussions and analysis the issue of religious violence. The violence belongs to the nature itself of religion? If so, what mechanisms can be activated to reduce violence? How to reconcile Christianity's central idea - the love of our neighbor - with the sacred violence thesis? How can the idea of religious violence be reconciled with the idea of religious love? Weak thinking, that is the logic of (...) a weak thinking may be a solution? We try to answer to such questions by appealing to the debate of ideas offered by the French anthropologist René Girard and the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

Moore in Ethics, ch. vii, writes – if I understand him right – that our basic experience of free-will resides in our certain feeling, in regard to our past actions, that we could have acted differently if we had so chosen; more exactly, that we should have acted differently if we had so chosen, which precisely means that we could have acted differently. He adds the qualifying adverb ‘sometimes’; I think we may well say always, keeping in mind, of course, (...) that we are only concerned here with ‘actions’ proper, as contrasted with involuntary movements, twitchings, starts, fits, etc., and also with wholly habitual, routine-like movements or manipulations performed without any attention and without the slightest deliberation, and that only such actions are meant here as are within our range of physical or psycho-physical power, which is anyhow implicit in the concept of choice: there is no sense in my saying that I might here and now ‘choose’ to carry this building on my back to Paris, to dismiss the present Government or to continue writing in impeccable Japanese. However, Moore is aware of the clearly meaningful objection that ‘acting as we choose’ would not establish the fact of free-will unless it were also the case that our choice itself is free, in other words that we not only choose to act so instead of acting differently but also choose to choose so instead of choosing differently. He argues that this too is indeed the case, emphasising in this context our experience of the unpredictability, even by ourselves, of our future choices. He concludes, though, on a note of doubt which shows that he is not quite sure in his own mind to have definitively disposed of the objection. (shrink)