Christelijke ethiek, in de traditie ook wel moraaltheologie genoemd, is een van de meest omstreden onderwerpen binnen de theologie, maar ook daarbuiten. Toch is het doel van deze ethiek 'een leven in volheid en vrijheid'. Zonder ethische richtlijnen en persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid kan een leven niet slagen. Normen en wetten hebben als doel ruimte te scheppen voor het leven en dat te beschermen. Deze vrijheid invullen, daar zijn mensen zelf verantwoordelijk voor. En verantwoordelijk zijn betekent: een antwoord verschuldigd zijn aan iemand. (...) Ethiek voltrekt zich daarom altijd in relatie: tot het eigen geweten, tot het goede dat te verwezenlijken valt, en in relatie tot andere levende wezens en de natuur. Christelijke ethiek plaatst deze verantwoordelijkheid bovendien in relatie tot God. Mensen zijn vrij maar ook beperkt; zij doen elkaar kwaad en hebben behoefte aan vergeving en verzoening. (shrink)

Relatively compact biography of the seventeenth-century French philosopher is determined to reverse the slander of scandal in vogue among Descartes' recent biographers and to modify the view of his intellectual development.

Behandeling van de voornaamste antropologische stromingen.

According to the traditional interpretation, Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology deposes the concept of man and the notion of human nature from its central place in human and social sciences. While it’s necessary to acknowledge Lévi-Strauss’ distance vis-à-vis all philosophy based on intentionality, experience and consciousness of subject, we argue that the most interesting purpose of the structural anthropology lies elsewhere. Not only Lévi-Strauss never declared himself being part of anti-humanism movement, but most of all, his famous polemics with Sartre at the (...) end of La Pensée sauvage should be interpreted as part of his fight against ethnocentrism. The project of “dissolving the man” can be thus read as deconstructing the idea that western man makes of himself in the light of ethnological findings about universal structures orchestrating all human societies. We further show that the notion of subject survived its very death announced by the most radical structuralist thinkers and that structural method could be effectively employed in order to study different techniques and modes of subjectivation, revealing that “becoming subject” is a process structured by our language, symbolic universe and ethical teleology. (shrink)

*** Caiete de antropologie istorica. Oamenii si moartea in societatea romaneasca.

[Nietzsche and philosophical anthropology: the problem of immanent transcendence].

-- 2. Sistemele sau cartea întregurilor logice, autonom-matematice, paralele cu întreguri ontice.

The article points out the implications of the discovery of the structure of desoxyribonuceine-acid for the philosophical study of man. The DNA contains in the chromosomes the genetic information. It contains a code which is being deciphered by the way the „instructions”, contained by the specific order of elements of the DNA, are realised by the whole organisation of the organism. In the course of evolution these instructions are becoming more specific and more complex, resulting in the organisation of the (...) human organism. The mutations that feed evolution can be considered, on the one hand as noise, on the other hand as a possibility for readaptation to the environment. In such a readaptation the higher organisms are giving more specific responses, in the human being even responses not at the first place to stimuli, but to the meaning those stimuli convey. A philosophy of man can, from this point of view, consider the human body not so much as a machine or as a material substance, but as a form of organisation making extensive implied genetic information. Human being has the character of an information-structure which, in the course of time, becomes more specific, more „meaningful” in its responses. What is called in philosophy „spirit” or „consciousness” is human being in its structure of an open system, readapting its own information - genetic and sociocultural ones - to the meaning manifested to him by his environment, his history and his social tasks. (shrink)

Kritische bijdragen over ideologisch gekleurde vormen van westerse culturele antropologie.

Simona Nicoarã, Istorie si imaginar – eseuri de antropologie istoricã (History and Imaginary - Essays in Historical Anthropology) Editura Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, Cluj-Napoca, 2000.

L'auteur se propose de comparer la theorie de I'homme de saint Thomas d'Aquin et de Gabriel Marcel. II est interessant de faire une comparaison entre ces deux penseurs, car la philosophie de Gabriel Marcel est souvent pergue comme un nouveau type de philosophie chretienne. On dit parfois que la philosophie de ce dernier est beaucoup plus proche de I'homme contemporain que ne l'est celle de Thomas d'Aquin.

Studie over de visie van de Duitse filosoof (1844-1900) op de menselijke natuur.

Op basis van de zgn. wijsbegeerte der wetsidee van Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) bouwt de auteur een christelijke, wijsgerige antropologie.