It would be an exaggeration to say that the Victorian age in England was philosophically barren; but it would not be a great exaggeration. By this somewhat uncomplimentary opening, I do not mean to imply that Victorian England contained no competent philosophers at all. Indeed, if one considers thinkers of the second and lower ranks only, their literary productivity was probably greater than those of any previous period in English, or even British, history, even if in sheer numbers they can (...) hardly compete with the prolific hordes of our own century. It is at the very highest level of philosophical greatness and originality that one finds the Victorian age wanting. The great period of British philosophy, which runs roughly from the 1630s to the 1770s, contains at least three thinkers who cannot be matched in the succeeding 140 years, Hobbes, Locke and Hume. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Victorian age in England was philosophically barren; but it would not be a great exaggeration. By this somewhat uncomplimentary opening, I do not mean to imply that Victorian England contained no competent philosophers at all. Indeed, if one considers thinkers of the second and lower ranks only, their literary productivity was probably greater than those of any previous period in English, or even British, history, even if in sheer numbers they can (...) hardly compete with the prolific hordes of our own century. It is at the very highest level of philosophical greatness and originality that one finds the Victorian age wanting. The great period of British philosophy, which runs roughly from the 1630s to the 1770s, contains at least three thinkers who cannot be matched in the succeeding 140 years, Hobbes, Locke and Hume. (shrink)

From 1995 to 1998, the European Commission supported the “Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw” research project. The project was based on cooperation between 22 partners coming from most EU countries. Its aim was to identify the ethical principles relating to autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability as four important ideas or values for a European bioethics and biolaw. An important resume of the BIOMED project was the partner’s Policy Proposals to the European Commission, the Barcelona Declaration of 1998, (...) which is unique as a philosophical and political agreement between experts in bioethics and biolaw from many different countries. In this article, we want to compare the Barcelona Declaration with some other recent international Documents on bioethics and biolaw. We will relate the Barcelona Declaration to the framework of different international documents and codes of conduct about bioethics and biolaw. In particular, we will look at the similarities and differences when compared with the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection on of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine, adopted by the Committee of Ministers in 1996. Moreover, we will look at The UNESCO Declaration on the Humane Genome from 1997. Thus, the Barcelona Declaration does not only represent European ethical principles for bioethics and biolaw, but the document should also be conceived as a conceptual clarification and articulation of major ethical principles, which are central to international concerns for a universal bioethics and biolaw. (shrink)

Philosophy of education is regarded as an art of hermeneutics that integrates a theory of mimesis in its understanding of the educational transmission. The idea of the master is reconsidered in this perspective in order to overcome the old opposition between classicism and romanticism. In that way the author attempts to respond to the question: What is the secret to pedagogically sound education?

Le but de cet article est de montrer pourquoi les sciences humaines sont plus nécessaires que jamais dans le cadre de l'enseignement à l'Université dans notre âge cosmopolite contemporaine. Nous avons besoin des sciences humaines, si nos établissements d'enseignement sont engagé à surmonter les menaces de politiciens bornés et des exécutifs afin de réduire l'éducation dans les écoles et les universités à une simple instruction en gestion sans orientation des cultures du monde exprimée dans l'art et la littérature, la connaissance (...) de langues, d'histoire et de la philosophie. Par conséquent, j'utilise les travaux théoriques de Paul Ricœur par rapport aux institutions d’éducation justes et éthiques, comme point de départ de ces arguments. . (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show why the humanities are more necessary than ever as part of the university education in our contemporary cosmopolitan age. We need the humanities if our educational institutions are to overcome the threats from narrow-minded politicians and business people to reduce education in schools and universities to simple instruction in management without guidance from the cultures of the world as expressed in art and literature, knowledge of languages, history, and philosophy. Keywords: education; university; (...) humanities; institution; cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Philosophy of education is regarded as an art of hermeneutics that integrates a theory of mimesis in its understanding of the educational transmission. The idea of the master is reconsidered in this perspective in order to overcome the old opposition between classicism and romanticism. In that way the author attempts to respond to the question: What is the secret to pedagogically sound education?

One often forgets that the economical, technological and military powers do not possess the monopoly of power in the world. Philosophical argumentation and reflection constitute a non-economic, non-technological and non-military power by the word that is capable of challenging the other powers, exposing lies and illusions, and proposing a better world as a dwelling for humanity.

If ‘power’ means cultural and political influence, philosophy has become a global world power. Philosophical argumentation and reflection constitute a non-economical, non-technological, and non-military power by the word that is capable of challenging the other powers, exposing lies and illusions, and proposing a better world as dwelling for humanity.Often the power of the philosophical word has been ignored, when philosophy was seen as pure description, pure reference, an innocent mirror, that forgets itself and make us present to things. However, if (...) philosophy has the power of the word, not all kinds of philosophizing are necessarily good for humanity. It can be very seducing for a group, and give food for mass suggestion making that appeals to the worst part of ourselves. We have learnt to understand how philosophy in itself may not only enlighten and liberate, but also seduce and manipulate. Today, philosophy has lost its innocence; we cannot philosophize without reflection on our linguistic practice. But we philosophers are not only called to understand ourselves. We must also contribute to developing an understanding of the power of the word more generally. And as citizens of the world, we must recognize that humiliation of others might be the most brutal violence we can practice without directly killing. (shrink)

One often forgets that the economical, technological and military powers do not possess the monopoly of power in the world. Philosophical argumentation and reflection constitute a non-economic, non-technological and non-military power by the word that is capable of challenging the other powers, exposing lies and illusions, and proposing a better world as a dwelling for humanity.

Sociology was born as an attempt to delimit an object of investigation offered by society as a social reality. The ambition was that of "treating the social facts as things" (Durkheim) or of understanding and explaining the social relations by respecting an "axiological neutrality" (Max Weber). Today, however, we are in the presence of a new kind of sociologists, and they are by no means the less popular ones, who are not trying to avoid assessments in their analysis of the (...) present social world. I have in mind especially two sociologists, Ulrich Beck (Munich) and David Held (London). I will discuss in particular the view of sociology presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck ( Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter , 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir à l'ère de la mondialisation , 2003), and I will show some analogies between Beck and Held. Finally, I will try to identify the points that make the present sociological epistemology different from that of the great founders of this science. (shrink)

Le thème de la communication exprime le conflit entre deux expériences fondamentales de la condition humaine : comprendre le monde et se soucier d'autrui. Le conflit apparaît d'abord sur le plan de la société. On peut retrouver ce conflit au niveau de l'existence sous forme d'une contradiction entre l'intérêt pour le langage et l'intérêt pour l'Autre, ou entre l'herméneutique et l'éthique. Si cette contradiction nest pas insurmontable, comme i'essaye de le montrer, même la contradiction sur le plan social pourrait être (...) résolue. There exists a conflict between two fundamental experiences of the human condition : that of understanding the world and taking heed of the Other. In the first place the conflict manifests istelf on the social level. The conflict is also to be found on the existential level in the form of a contradiction between hermeneutics and ethics. However, if this contradiction is not insurmountable, as this paper attempts to show, it should oho be possible to resolve the contradiction on the social level. (shrink)