D’après l’oracle d’Apollon, Plotin avait une capacité extraordinaire à ne jamais vraiment succomber au sommeil. Porphyre, dans le commentaire qu’il donne de cet oracle, introduit l’idée remarquable d’une double attention, tournée tout à la fois vers l’intérieur et vers l’extérieur. L’éveil de Plotin ne serait donc pas simplement une autre manière de parler de la contemplation, mais engloberait aussi un pôle «pratique», dirigé vers le monde des sens et de l’action. L’étude des Ennéades nous montre que le commentaire de Porphyre (...) s’appuie vraisemblablement sur Plotin lui-même, lequel soutient que l’éveil du sage, fondé dans la contemplation des intelligibles (des Formes que Plotin présente littéralement comme «insomniaques»), s’exprime également à travers l’action. La thématique de l’éveil se révèle ainsi riche en enseignements, en particulier en ce qu’elle nous force à réviser notre interprétation de la vie du sage selon Plotin, une vie qui ne rejette pas l’action, mais fonde bien plutôt celle-ci dans la contemplation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.4 (2004) 317-334 [Access article in PDF] Speaking from the Bedrock of Ethics Spoma Jovanovic Department of Communication University of North Carolina, Greensboro Roy V. Wood Human Communication Studies University of Denver In a moment familiar to many of us, one of the authors of this piece attended a philosophical meeting on the topic of Emmanuel Levinas. "So, you are in communication studies," said a philosopher (...) during a break. "Why would a speech person be interested in Levinas?"This paper probes the place of speech in Levinasian ethics. We hope to show that when philosopher Emmanuel Levinas rested his compelling life project on ethics, he said something new about the act of speaking itself. First, for Levinas, speaking begins with the imperative issued by the presence or face of the other. He calls that issuance the saying. Antecedent to words, the saying is the commitment of an approach to the other, the move to response, the signifying of signification. Second, the saying moves into language where it is subordinated to the said. It is in the coordination of the saying and the said that ethics shows itself or is betrayed. Although the saying is perhaps overwhelmed by the said, it remains present even in absence. Third, for Levinas we can sense the ineffable, yet present, call to responsibility in the trace. The trace, and here Levinas brings God to mind, reveals the saying, and is communicated in the face.1 The face, the saying, and the trace are where the Levinasian responsibility of the one for the other takes form. They are the home of ethics.2By paying close attention to the responsibility invoked by the face, heeded in the saying, and reminisced in the trace, Levinas defines ethics as the condition of dialogue. Later, he says that ethics allows us to pursue peace even if, or after, dialogue fails. It is in ethics that we learn that we can stand by unsolvable problems—attentive and vigilant, in dialogue (Levinas 1999a).Taken together, these ideas of the face of the other, the saying, and the trace provide the basis of ethics that is constituted in and constitutes communication. [End Page 317]Our effort here is to explore the bedrock of ethics in speech. We will do so by drawing on examples of care, rescue, and sacrifice that surfaced during the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and the days that followed. Within the context of that terrible attack, scores of eyewitnesses gave accounts of the ways that people responded to the needs of others. We argue that the ethical imperative to respond conditions every rhetorical situation and that is no more clearly seen than in times of crisis. Recognizing this ethical imperative demands that scholars examine more than words and gestures. The act of speaking itself is for Levinas at the heart of human ethics. Through this philosophical lens communication ethics not only applies to rhetorical situations but also goes forth, or does not go forth, as communicative action itself. So ethics is at the bedrock of communication and communication is at the heart of ethics. In the end we will ask, "Why would a philosopher not be interested in speech?" Ethics in communication For Levinas, ethics is metaphysical.3 Ethics does not emanate from the self as an ontological dimension, or from some predetermined epistemological principles. Levinas instead claims that the other is the basis of ethics. In sociality, we find ourselves responsible to respond to the call of the other, not as an ontological choice but rather as the recognition that ethics is otherwise than being.4 The demand issued by the other is felt corporeally. It is, if you will, an ethical impulse or compulsion that disrupts, calling the self into a dialogical encounter.Levinas asks us to concentrate not on what we can know or contain of the "Other—the move toward totality, but to contemplate that which always exceeds our grasp—the move toward infinity.... Ethics is a relationship of responsibility for the Other. But this relationship is initiated by the Other, by... (shrink)

Peer review is widely recognized as a mechanism for quality control of academic content. This research article aims at comparing the review reports and decisions of reviewers who are members of the editorial board of the European Scientific Journal with those reviewers suggested by the authors and who are not affiliated with the journal. 457 review reports on 378 papers submitted to the ESJ in the period of October–December 2017 were analysed. Statistical methods including OLS and Wilcoxon rank-sum test were (...) applied based on the score approach toward the reviewers’ assessments of the papers and their characteristics related to the country, gender, and time of revisions. Results show the difference between the decisions these two groups of reviewers made. Even though editor-suggested and author-suggested reviewers need equal time to review a paper, the former are less favourable towards the authors of the papers. It is also concluded that factors such as time and country of the reviewers influence their decisions. In this regard, the editors should avoid relying their decisions solely on review reports received from reviewers suggested by the authors. However, further research with larger sample sizes should be conducted. (shrink)

Warm-up -- Definability -- Neti neti -- Space-time -- The known universe -- The biosphere -- The separation region -- The sociosphere -- The phenomenon of family -- The phenomenon of state -- The phenomenon of religion -- The phenomenon of norms -- Where's the future?

D’après l’oracle d’Apollon, Plotin avait une capacité extraordinaire à ne jamais vraiment succomber au sommeil. Porphyre, dans le commentaire qu’il donne de cet oracle, introduit l’idée remarquable d’une double attention, tournée tout à la fois vers l’intérieur et vers l’extérieur. L’éveil de Plotin ne serait donc pas simplement une autre manière de parler de la contemplation, mais engloberait aussi un pôle «pratique», dirigé vers le monde des sens et de l’action. L’étude des Ennéades nous montre que le commentaire de Porphyre (...) s’appuie vraisemblablement sur Plotin lui-même, lequel soutient que l’éveil du sage, fondé dans la contemplation des intelligibles (des Formes que Plotin présente littéralement comme «insomniaques»), s’exprime également à travers l’action. La thématique de l’éveil se révèle ainsi riche en enseignements, en particulier en ce qu’elle nous force à réviser notre interprétation de la vie du sage selon Plotin, une vie qui ne rejette pas l’action, mais fonde bien plutôt celle-ci dans la contemplation. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les notions de honte (αἰσχύνη) et de retenue (αἰδώς) dans la Stoa, les raisons pour lesquelles elles s’y trouvent opposées (la première comme passion, la seconde comme bon sentiment) et ce que la critique stoïcienne de la honte (définie comme peur de la mauvaise réputation) doit à l’origine à l’influence du cynisme sur Zénon. Dans un deuxième temps, l’auteur montre que la critique de la honte doit se comprendre dans le cadre plus large de la doctrine stoïcienne (...) de la διαστροφή ou perversion de la nature humaine, doctrine qui identifie l’influence du jugement de la foule (par l’intermédiaire de la pratique ordinaire du blâme et de l’éloge) comme l’une des deux principales sources de corruption de l’homme. Dans la dernière partie, l’auteur étudie le traitement des notions de honte ( pudor ) et de retenue ( reuerentia ) dans les Lettres à Lucilius 10 et 25 de Sénèque, où la honte est présentée comme une forme de contrainte positive à l’égard du non sage, contrainte qui doit toutefois ultimement s’effacer au profit de la retenue comprise comme respect de soi (de la raison) chez le sage. (shrink)

War ethics might sound as impossible combination of words – how justify what seems to be unjustifiable? War is prima facie unjustifiable. However, wars are a fact of human reality, and those among us who are unfortunate to live in times of war – in a way it is all of us – would know that the reality is not just a possibility, that prima facie designation does not help in answering what must be done, that unjustifiability does not imply (...) impossibility. We must understand to be able to explain, and to explain to have a valid evaluation, especially when what is happening is important and with far-reaching consequences. Wars are such phenomena. We live amid such phenomena, and we need to understand not only their tragic and often cataclysmic nature, but also their meaning, their structure and logic of their functioning. We should understand that war is not something that happens only to others, nor that it is the matter of the past. In the present volume we have thirty-three essays examining war from many angles, sometimes from the opposite standpoints, exploring some of the most intriguing issues of warfare in times characterized by radical changes in the world in turmoil. The contributions in present volume give an overview of the world’s thinking about war. The volume is certainly incomplete and unfinished, but it gives a lot of thought-provoking incentives to think about the most important aspects of warfare and its broad phenomenology. (shrink)

The subject of this article is the Orthodox Christianity’s approach to war. Christians of other denomination have developed an elaborate theory of war, so-called “Just War Theory” (JWT), which has also been accepted by non-Christians and even secular thinkers regarding the nature and justification of war. A vast literature has been produced in a dire attempt to render perfect the world by insisting on the claim that war is the act of punishment for breaking the law. The result is an (...) epistemological ease from which everything seems evident in advance including who is right and who at fault, who is and who is not favored by God. By removing from war an essential feature – that it is a form of conflict – JWT takes away the concept of reciprocity and introduces an in advance declared inequality which enables removal of uncertainty about the war’s outcome. In Orthodox Christianity, the situation is different. With still live debate whether to persevere or abandon original Christian pacifism, for Orthodox Christianity, war is always a combination of cataclysm and temptation and far less Manichean than anything present in JWT. The aim of war is peace; but, however necessary, justice is an insufficient condition for justification. The difference between “justness” and “justification” is preserved through the uncertainty whom God, at war’s end, loves more, because both victors and vanquished remain and continue to be in His grace. Losing a war, as such, does not turn the vanquished into criminals, nor does victory give the vanquisher the right of revenge for defending oneself. The latter approach to war has significant potentialities: preserving the distinction of ius ad bellum and ius in bello, preserving reciprocity, mutual respect and trust, impossibility of incrimination of war per se, the possibility of honorable defeat, etc. (shrink)

Nove tehnologije omogućavaju nove postupke i prakse koji moraju da se moralno i pravno opravdaju. IVF i surogat materinstvo, pored ostalih, spadaju u takve nove prakse. Stara pravila o tome šta je dopušteno a šta mora da se zabrani ponekad nisu dovoljna, a ni analogije obično nisu dovoljne. Da bi se došlo do prihvatljive linije razdvajanja izmedju opravdanog i neopravdanog postupanja treba izvršiti adekvatnu etičku analizu tih fenomena. IVF, tehnologija oplodnje „in vitro“, iako na prvi pogled izaziva sumnjičavost, ne sadrži (...) u sebi nikakav prima facie moralni problem. IVF se može uzeti prosto kao tehnika lečenja neplodnosti ili smanjene plodnosti, što je jedan problem koji pogadja veliki broj ljudi danas. Prigovori koji se mogu staviti ne izgledaju odlučujući a koristi koje se ovom tehnikom postižu su očigledno veoma velike. Ali ta tehnika je povezana sa druga dva momenta, donacijom genetskog materijala i surogat materinstvom, koji povlače razne vrste pitanja koja mogu biti od velikog moralnog i pravnog značaja. U tekstu se, sa etičkog stanovišta, analiziraju najvažnija od tih pitanja i naznačava kriterijum demarkacije koji razdvaja opravdane postupke od onih koji nisu opravdani ili zahtevaju ograničenje kroz pravnu i moralnu regulaciju. (shrink)

I begin my comment on Westphal’s study by exploring briefly his refutation of “the arbitrariness thesis,” and then focusing on the “conditio humanae,” i.e. the conditions of life as freedom realized in common life. As I understand it, coordination and cooperation among persons are required because employing freedom in the presence of others presupposes an act of recognition that acknowledges a priori the necessity of universal respect. The right to use and possess things within the institution of property is an (...) illustrative example of this necessity. Justice requires possession not in the form of some equal distribution (which is a matter of contingency) but as a normative requirement that “everyone shall have property.” One must have property in order to enter the world of inter-subjectivity and become a person. This has important implications for determining how poverty is related to the validity of laws, which depends on the joint legislative will of all persons. (shrink)

The paper examines the justification of warfare. The main thesis is that war is very difficult to justify, and justification by invoking “justice” is not the way to succeed it. Justification and justness are very different venues: while the first attempts to explain the nature of war and offer possible schemes of resolution, the second aims to endorse a specific type of warfare as correct and hence allowed – which is the crucial part of “just war theory.” However, “just war (...) theory,” somewhat Manichean in its nature, has very deep flaws. Its final result is criminalization of war, which reduces warfare to police action, and finally implies a very strange proviso that one side has a right to win. All that endangers the distinction between ius ad bellum and ius in bello, and destroys the collective character of warfare. Justification of war is actually quite different – it starts from the definition of war as a kind of conflict which cannot be solved peacefully, but for which there is mutual understanding that it cannot remain unresolved. The aim of war is not justice, but peace, i.e. either a new articulation of peace, or a restoration of the status quo ante. Additionally, unlike police actions, the result of war cannot be known or assumed in advance, giving war its main feature: the lack of control over the future. Control over the future, predictability, is a feature of peace. This might imply that war is a consequence of failed peace, or inability to maintain peace. The explanation of this inability forms the justification of war. Justice is always an important part of it, but justification cannot be reduced to it. The logic contained here refers to ius ad bellum, while ius in bello is relative to various parameters of sensitivity prevalent in a particular time, with the purpose to make warfare more humane and less expensive. (shrink)

U svome spisu O slobodi, John Stuart Mill predstavlja svoje poznato načelo nenanošenja štete na sljedeći način: “… samozaštita [je] jedina svrha zbog koje se čovječanstvo, pojedinačno ili kolektivno, ima pravo miješati u slobodu djelovanja svakog od svojih članova. […] On je odgovoran društvu samo za ono svoje ponašanje koje se tiče ostalih. […] Pojedinac je neograničeni gospodar nad samim sobom, nad svojim tijelom i dušom.” Dakle, postoji razlika između postupaka koji se tiču nas samih i postupaka koji se tiču (...) ostalih, te moralnoj kritici podliježu samo postupci koji se tiču ostalih. Međutim, iako se svi postupci na neki način tiču nas samih, nije jasno postoje li bilo koji postupci koji su isključivo takvi. Postoje i dvije dodatne poteškoće. Kao prvo, ‘pojedinac’ može i ne biti pojedinačna osoba; samo-određujuće zajednice, barem kada su sposobne samostalno odlučivati, također su ‘pojedinci’ u ovome smislu. Kao drugo, tvrdi se da se klase postupaka, djelatnosti i načina postupanja opravdavaju drukčije nego pojedinačni postupci. Koje su, dakle, granice koje ‘drugi’ imaju kako bi se ‘zaštititili’ od kojih ‘pojedinaca’ te koja prava na postupanje i zaštitu oni imaju? Ako je izvor opravdanja, u konačnoj raščlambi, zaštita ili obrana, što se – i zašto – treba ili mora zaštititi? Gdje leži crta razgraničenja između postupaka koji se tiču nas samih i postupaka koji se tiču ostalih? U našem vremenu, kao i u Millovu, nailazimo na mnoge situacije u kojima je takva crta potrebna, ali je teško odrediva ili ustanovljiva. Jedan takav primjer, slučaj istospolnih brakova, dodatno se ispituje u ovome članku.In his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill presents the famous harmprinciple in the following manner: “[…] the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. […] The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. […] Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” Hence, there is a distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding acts, and only the latter are subject to moral criticism. However, while all acts are in some way selfregarding, it is not clear if there are any which are exclusively so. There are two additional difficulties. First, the “individual” may not be an individual person; self-determining communities, at least when they have the ability to decide for themselves, are also “individuals” in this sense. Second, it is claimed that groups of acts have a different kind of justification from single acts. So what are the limits which “others” have in order to protect themselves from what “individuals” do, and what are their rights to do and to protect? If, in the final analysis, protection or defense is a source of justification, what should or must be protected, and why? Where does the demarcation line between self-regarding and other-regarding acts lie? In our age, as in Mill’s, we encounter many situations where such a line is needed, yet is hard to determine or establish. One such example, the case of same-sex marriages, is further explored in this paper. (shrink)

After a short historical survey of philosophical views on property, the article contains an analysis of the argument which justifies property by referring to the universal respect due to anyone’s right to use any thing for any purpose. Usage 224 JOVAN BABIĆ SVOJINA ҄ FILOZOFSKA ANALIZA: ARGUMENT of things for the realization of set ends (or goals) is among the conditions of action/ agency. The capacity of freedom as a specific causal power in real world is dependent on the (...) possibility of using things as means. However, without a real prospect to finish the process of realization of set goals, this causal power would not be real. Property is a scheme within which this prospect becomes a real possibility. Property is thus a condition of effective successful purposeful agency. In property the normative position of all others, besides the owner, has been changed, as they do not have the right to use things possessed for their ends, although they have a right to use any non-possessed thing as a means for whichever end they might set. As a right, property entails, first, the obligation to respect the fact of any established possession, and, second, an obligation to accept and recognize the established possession as ownership, which does not depend on the fact of factual physical control of the property. Ownership is therefore a guarantee of future possession. For this to be established there is a need for an explicit recognition from all others; however this recognition is normatively necessary for everybody, as no-one has a right to withdraw the recognition of a legitimate right to property. This comes from the ontological and axiological difference between persons and things: persons have a right to use and possess unpossessed things as means for realization of ends they set. (shrink)

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of (...) intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. (shrink)

Teza o "neskrivljenom neznanju" je instrument u okviru teorije pravednog rata koja sluzi da se moralno opravda ucesce u ratu za pripadnike one strane koja je porazena; uslovi za neskrivljenost su da su porazeni borci iskreno verovali da brane pravednu stvar i da su takodje iskreno verovali da imaju nekih izgleda da pobede. Bez ovog instrumenta teorija pravednog rata, jedna teorija koja opravdava rat preko pravednog uzroka rata, bi porazenoj strani narocito ako je slabija, morala da unapred pripise krivicu sto (...) je uopste usla u rat. Medjutim, u savremenoj situaciji rasirene kriminalizacije rata sam pojam rata se menja i postaje izuzetno neodredjen. Kako ratovi postaju sve vise i vise "asimetricni", pre svega u snazi sukobljenih strana, cini se da se teorija pravednog rata suocava sa teskocom da u svoje okvire uopste situira "neskrivljeno neznanje", ali to povlaci teskocu te teorije da pokaze da pravda ide sa pobedom, otvarajuci tako pitanje artikulacije pravednog mira. (shrink)

In his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill presents the famous harm principle in the following manner: “[…] the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. […] The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. […] Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” Hence, there is a (...) distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding acts, and only the latter are subject to moral criticism. However, while all acts are in some way selfregarding, it is not clear if there are any which are exclusively so. There are two additional difficulties. First, the “individual” may not be an individual person; self-determining communities, at least when they have the ability to decide for themselves, are also “individuals” in this sense. Second, it is claimed that groups of acts (activities and practices) have a different kind of justification from single acts. So what are the limits which “others” have in order to protect themselves from what “individuals” (personal or not) do, and what are their rights to do and to protect? If, in the final analysis, protection or defense is a source of justification, what should or must be protected, and why? Where does the demarcation line between self-regarding and other-regarding acts lie? In our age, as in Mill’s, we encounter many situations where such a line is needed, yet is hard to determine or establish. One such example, the case of same-sex marriages, is further explored in this paper. (shrink)

In the age of globalization, and increased interdependence in the world that we face today, there is a question we may have to raise: Do we need and could we attain a world government, capable of insuring the peace and facilitating worldwide well-being in a just and efficient manner? In the twenty chapters of this book, some of the most prominent living philosophers give their consideration to this question in a provocative and engaging way. Their essays are not only of (...) wide theoretical interest but also provide a thought-provoking approach to this most timely and urgent issue. A wide range of perspectives are represented here. -/- The authors include Richard Falk, Michael Walzer, Thomas Pogge, Larry May, Alfred Rubin, Stanley Hoffman, Jan Narveson, Virginia Held, Pauline Kleingeld and Luis Cabrera. Jovan Babic is Professor of Ethics at the University of Belgrade and Visiting Professor at Portland State University. Petar Bojanic is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP) as well as the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory (Belgrade). (shrink)

The first issue raised in the paper is difference between social and institutional facts; both exist only because we believe they are real. Second is the claim that belonging to collectives is always a social fact, not necessarily as a result of any decision-making process; it might also become institutional through actual, sometimes only implicit, acceptance of some constitutive rules. Third, accepting constitutive rules functions by setting an irreversible point in time after which the scope of available justificatory reasons for (...) deciding and doing narrows. The implication is that reality of collectives cannot be reduced to individuals. Individuals often participate in this reality by belonging. Belonging thus becomes a social and sometimes also an institutional fact. (shrink)

The main goal in the article is to develop a definition of the morality as the subject of study for ethics, a part of philosophy dealing with the nature and the scope of possible application of morality as a specific evaluational criterion. Some basic features of this specificity have been explored, and a list of ethical theories have been briefly analyzed, two of them in some more details. A sketch of a possible connection between ethics and democracy has been given (...) at the very end of the article. (shrink)