Ethical leadership is the best response in the crisis state of postmodern man. Ethical leadership is a construct that leads to personal transfiguration, organizational effectiveness, improved interpersonal communication, and the achievement of a joint platform for professional action. Its development has also a beneficial effect as it brings ethics back to the core of public action, to the front line of organizational life and personal development. Whether it follows a religious model or a model resulting from laicized religious values, leadership (...) construing is based on a personal development process that follows an initiating structure in the world of values and their practice in personal ethical action. This is doubled by an ethics institutionalization process in which the organization itself becomes a structure of ethical and effective communication both inside and outside. An authentic leadership supposes positing the leader in the center of an ethical edifice in which achieving public good is done through instruments of personal development, ethics management and managerial ethics, ethical responsibility and sustainability, human condition improvement, spiritual transfiguration and authenticity. Added to this is the leader’s personal effort of involvement in the organization. Ethical leadership relies on a person’s vocation of developing an ethical culture in professional situations and in all life experiences. (shrink)

A brand is a complex construction. In addition to its tangible and intangible dimensions, it implies an intrinsic relational dimension associated to any brand building process. The relational dimension is even more visible in the case of the political brand. The political brand brings with it a symbolic construction in which the experience of a diffuse form of sacredness is central, by the presence of the inadequate report specific to the manifestations related to the sacred representations. On the one hand, (...) we are experiencing a meeting that creates the context of identity, and on the other hand a cohabitation that highlights the role of alterity. The brand imposes itself as a symbolic construction based on this game of identity and alterity in a global communication market. Communication advisers must pay attention to this symbolic dimension. It is the expressive form in which interpersonal relationships manifest themselves as assuming the values and meanings that individuals place under the idea of having a better life. The orientation towards the development of political brands understood as personal brands corresponds to a phase of professionalization of politics and political communication in electoral campaigns, but also in the stages between campaigns. At the same time, political brands grow in importance in times of crisis, both because they offer exemplary models and because they synthesize the mythological elements of the imaginary of abundance, trust and authentic dialogue. (shrink)

Contemporary thinkers have not been hesitant to talk about the end of religion, the end of philosophy, or the end of morality. In such a context, our society is based on what Lipovetsky calls a minimal ethics. We live at the crossroads of two types of discourses: one proclaiming moral decadence, and another that speaks about the revival of morality. The fact that ethical maximalism quits the contemporary scene does not necessarily mean that it leaves a complete vacuum. The emptiness (...) opens towards the manifestation of ethical creativity in the space of minimal ethics. In public space, and in administrative ethics, the secularization of ethics offers the possibility of feeling comfortable with promoting a form of moral relativism that does not alienate people from the sensation of ethical certainty that offers existential comfort through its firm values. (shrink)

Although euthanasia is seen as the problem of the individual will and as one’s right to privacy, to a better quality of life or to a dignified death, it has major institutional implications. They are closely related to the juridical system, to the way of understanding state involvement in protecting the individuals and respecting their freedoms, to the institutional system of health care, to the government rules that establish social, political or professional practices. The public debate around the topics related (...) to the human condition, like euthanasia, grants a special force to public communication, to organizational communication, to communication in professional environments, to physician-patient communication and, more generally, to interpersonal communication. In this text we emphasize the importance of public debate on euthanasia from the perspective of organizational ethics, of medical deontology, of patients’ rights, but especially of elaborating public policies and national programs, and we underline the importance of the need to establish protocols for health care, as well as to build a framework of democratic communication. (shrink)

The text discusses the importance of religion as a symbolic construct which derives from fundamental human needs. At the same time, religious symbolism can function as an explanation for the major crises existent in the lives of individuals or their communities, even if they live in a democratic or a totalitarian system. Its presence is facilitated by the assumption of the biographical element existent in the philosophical and theological reflection and its extrapolation in a biography which concerns the communities and (...) its governmental resorts. It is in this context that we discuss the way in which the myth concerning the death of God can influence the formation of political ethics relevant for the contemporary man. From the analysis of the signification of the death of God in the contemporary Judaic theology and philosophy emerges a series of important elements for the creation of a political ethics situated between biblical morals and the extermination of the innocents in the 20th century. (shrink)

The modern world, described by theorists of various fields as being subject to a continuous secularization process, is increasingly being perceived as the keeper of a mythical fund. The anthropological analysis of modernity invites to a new way of discussing and using myth, ritual, the sacred, religion in order to describe a significant modern experience. This experience typical to the modern man is mediated, and often even created by the mass media. Such an experience would not be perceptible outside the (...) lay context of the modern world, characterized by the presence of a weak transcendence. This favors the development of a mass culture, with various subcultures, as well as various professional cultures, in which a search for authenticity opens a wide space for the cohabitation of traditional religions and the weak forms of experience and manifestation of the sacred. In order to have this discussion I have chosen one of the most representative Romanian authors in the field of mass media anthropology. His analyses persuade us that the mass media is, among others, an instrument of symbolic construction of reality, and plays in the modern society the same part that myth used to play in traditional societies. (shrink)

The postmodern human lives in a quest condition. Poetry and philosophy, as forms that integrate, shape, and deposit the sacred, are part of the instruments used by postmoderns to fulfill their need for communication and personal accomplishment. Although they use different means to construe reality, poetry and philosophy may serve a common end goal – to disclose philosophy as the art of living. As communication practice, philosophy and poetry are based on an expanded rationality involving the rational extended to the (...) sphere of the significance and hidden sense of existence. In other words, expanded rationality presupposes cultivating a symbolic consciousness that is adequate to the daily reality of human needs. To showcase the intimate relationship between philosophical reflection and poetic creation, I provide a short presentation of the poetry belonging to a Romanian poet, Rodica Dragomir. Her poems are an example of the quest for authenticity by means of the metaphysical stirring of existence. (shrink)

In an era of generalized communication, democratic societies cannot escape the radical changes that the development of different types of communication claims. Political communication determines new types of political practice and adhesion. As in the case of postmodern communication in general, in political communication, expressions of symbolic communication characteristic for traditional societies are still being used, even if those expressions are presented as contemporary symbolic constructs, as for example the construct of “postmodern tribes”. This text focuses on how these elements (...) are highlighted in the socio-analysis of Vasile Sebastian Dâncu, one of the most renowned experts in the Romanian political culture. The public space, shaped in the past by the intellectual elite, bearer of values and symbolic conscience, is being seized by television stars, by the online communication specialists. This leads to new fragmentations in and coagulation of political space, and to a prevalence of sentimentalities, mythical stories, and mystical experiences at the expense of rationality, civic involvement and ideologies. The new configuration of political groups of interest and the new ways of adhesion typical for “political followers” belonging to the Facebook generation are regarded from a mythic– symbolic mentality which links them to a behavior and a kind of solidarity characterizing tribal groups which are acting on a postmodern political scene. (shrink)

In Romania, the debate on the electronic passports has raised controversies having ethical, religious, ideological implications, as well as consequences for the political practice. The debate has as premise the general background of the crisis that modernity brings in the reception of values in Christian communities. The discussions on the consequences of secularization, the metaphor of “cultural wars” and the new perspective brought by modernity to the state and the public policies it requests – all these oblige us to formulate (...) a novel type of humanism that should be found out at the end of this debate. By drawing on a natural concern regarding human freedom, individual security, respect for private life, the debate around passports finally fails into the field of superstitions, radical ideologies, and the gratuitous critique of the implementation of the new technologies in the practice of modernity. For avoiding such sideslips, an important role can be played by the researchers from social and humanist disciplines, who can enter the debate and offer answers that are consonant with their own disciplines. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This article discusses a series of ethical and religious elements that occur in the debate concerning altruistic living unrelated organ donation. Our main focus is on the ethical attitude of altruist donation. In order to illustrate the connections between ethics and religion we use as a case study the group (...) of the so-called “Jesus Christians”. It is evident that this group, as a case study, is more important for the ethical and religious issues than for the medical issues related to organ donation and transplantation. However, it suggests the potential that, in certain cultural contexts, ethics and religion may have in promoting the idea of altruist donation. (shrink)

The present text attempts to sketch the premises of a discussion concerning the institutional crisis of philosophy in the Romanian educational system. Quantitative analyses are commented; also discussed are elements regarding the curricular integration of philosophy, aspects concerning the initial formation in philosophy and possibilities of insertion on the labor market. The article discusses some elements of the status of philosophy in high school, as well as the necessity of offering philosophy as a mandatory discipline in the curriculum, the necessity (...) of taking several active measures to regain philosophy’s specific place as formative discipline in the Romanian educational system. A distinct aspect concerns the discussion of the status of philosophy in relation to religion and ideology in the Romanian society. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Cabalistii nocturni Traducere de Ana-Elena Ilinca, Ed. Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2005.

As in religious traditions, the soul organizes entirely the human condition horizon; postmodern culture sets the body as the organizing centre of its sacralizing mechanisms. Some even speak about a cult and about ritual mechanisms having a religious charge. On the one hand, the body is attributed a symbolic dimension surfacing in the fight against the finite and life’s lack of meaning. On the other, turning the body into a centre of the existential universe triggers a better delineation of the (...) functions it may fulfill. An important role belongs to the networking function that crosses over the human inhabited worlds, from the physical one to the spiritual and religious one. To highlight these aspects, I called on the reflections in Aurel Codoban’s communication philosophy. The new view on corporality brings the image of body as language, as communication instrument and as significant surface. Against this background, the body sets a self-concern whose consequence, symbolically, is a dialectic movement of body and soul nourishing one other and improving one another in light of authenticity. (shrink)

The novelty in Rosenzweig’s new ways of thinking lies in the fact that, unlike the traditional view, in his thought philosophy is the discipline containing a subjective element, whereas religion is more objective since it is founded on revelation. These complementary differences help the philosopher rethink Judaism and Jewish identity in the context of the spiritual crisis of the secularized Judaism of his time. Starting with the analysis of this reconstruction of philosophy, this text attempts to present a balanced perspective (...) on Rosenzweig’s vision of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. We will not single out the common elements or those that separate these two monotheist religions; setting Judaism and Christianity on the same level is considered to be a compensatory gesture towards Judaism and Jewish tradition. There is in Rosenzweig a significant moment of approach toward Christianity, especially to a Christianity without Christ, but Rosenzweig opts for a different solution, that of building a new philosophy based on Judaism. Moshe Idel’s analysis suggests that it is the Kabbalistic mysticism that Rosenzweig redefines in order to propose a new way of thought based on both philosophy and religion. Thus, Rosenzweig gives new meaning to the balance of divine and human in the field of religion. (shrink)

In this paper I show that, from a philosophical perspective, in Elie Wiesel’s work in general and in Night in particular, the relation between ethics and religion is based on complementarity. In order to achieve this, I have analysed the way in which memory is shown as an invitation to participation in a common set of meanings, values and actions. What I deem most significant is the way in which the memory of the Holocaust is constituted as a medium of (...) action and of communion among humans in an act of mutual responsibility. Through this, the memory of the Holocaust obliges us to assume an ethics of responsibility and of action that rules out the possibility of a contemporary repetition of the events that took place in the death camps. I use Night to show how this narrative reveals several points that are important for understanding certain aspects of the relation between ethics, religion and the memory of the Holocaust. One of these is the understanding of memory as a way to bring man and God together in a relation of mutual communication, beginning with the experience of suffering of dehumanization and of God’s absence from the death camp. Another is that the religious and cultural memory represented by Israel is the main target of extermination as a manifestation of radical evil. A third is that Israel’s suffering has a paradigmatic value, and therefore the memory of the Holocaust becomes a special power that may be used as a tool to diminish the power of evil through the elimination of indifference and the assumption of responsibility. (shrink)

Ron Geaves, Religious Studies, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Chrisrianity, Islam The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, 2006.

One of the problems the institutional crisis of philosophy is facing in Romania is the difficulty of philosophy graduates to find a suitable place on the complex labor market. The article attempts to elucidate whether philosophy graduates subsequently teach what they study during their university education and to find solutions for a better integration on the labor market of these graduates. An important part of the article is dedicated to analyzing the institutional offer vis-à-vis the challenges that philosophy graduates face (...) once they are attempting to find a job on the labor market. From our analysis we conclude that there is no direct connection between the diversity of jobs among philosophy graduates and the courses that they took during their university studies. (shrink)

Andrei Marga, Religia in era globalizarii Editura Fundatiei pentru Studii Europene, Cluj- Napoca, 2003.

Simona Nicoarã, Natiunea modernã. Mituri, simboluri, ideologii Ed. Accent, Cluj, 2002, 360 p.

Leonard Swidler, Dupa absolut. Viitorul dialogic al reflectiei religioase Ed. Limes, Cluj, 2003.

The way in which the relations among philosophy, religion and politics have been built and evolved in post-1989-Romania brought about the development of several stereotypes connected to the social inutility of philosophy, to the graduates’ difficulty in adapting to the requirements of the labor market, to the lack of importance of philosophy and of philosophical education. The present text signals the crisis of philosophy due to a series of factors such as: the difficulties that the philosophical discourse has in finding (...) a place in the public debate, the negative perception of philosophy in the public mentality, the stereotypes concerning philosophy that the political representatives cultivate, and the lack of a labor market that would adequately value the competences and the expertise of the graduates in Humanities. (shrink)

There are multiple manners of defining Jewish philosophy. The controversies woven around this topic seem to leave the issue perpetually open instead of determining a unique and final perspective. However, this outcome is indubitably an indication of the fact that Jewish philosophy proposes a privileged manner of understanding Judaism through the encounter between philosophy and religion as a founding polar- ity of a creative tradition. One of the ways of asserting this polarity has gained the symbolic dimension of superimposing two (...) cultural paradigms. This has been expressed through the metaphor of two cities, namely Jerusalem and Athens, and through the metaphor of two lands, Greece and Israel. Out of these symbolic designations I will bring into discussion the standpoints of Leo Strauss and Abraham Joshua Heschel and will try to offer a new perspective over this issue. (shrink)

Nicu Gavrilta - Hermeneutica simbolismului religios. Studii si eseuri Editura Fundatiei AXIS, Iasi, 2003.

Ceea ce ne uneşte: istorii, biografii, idei. Sorin Antohi în dialog cu Moshe Idel (Those things that bind us: histories, biographies, ideas. Sorin Antohi in dialogue with Moshe Idel) Ed. Polirom, Iaşi, 2006.

Ioan Chirila, Fragmentarium exegetic filonian II. Nomothetica. Repere exegetice la Decalog Ed. Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2003.

After the fall of communism, there emerged the idea that ideology was extinguished, and that ideological conflict has been reduced to silence. The increasing importance of the new “spiritual rebirth” movements raises the question of the global phenomenon of the resurrection of ideologies on a religious basis. The experience of secularization involves a secularization of identity. We have chosen as an example the case of Marxism, with its attempt at a reconstruction of identity with the help of the “disenchanting” of (...) religion and the theorizing of the praxis. As a consequence of the crisis caused by the secularization of identity, today we are facing new religious movements. These are no longer important from the point of view of their tradition or past, but rather are important as religious ideologies that announce the possibility of the emer- gence of an ideological global conflict. (shrink)

Positive thinking is one of the most valuable tools that postmodern man possesses for personal development and transforming community life. Positive thinking is based on the harmonious relation of the individual with himself, with the others, and with the surrounding reality. It comes at the end of a process of conscious change which the individual goes through in gradual steps, and becomes nuanced as thinking and personal practices develop. Our starting point is the role of thinking as laid out by (...) Descartes. Descartes’ conception of philosophy as a thought system points to the acquisition of virtue through knowledge of truth, by cultivating measure, and thus highlighting man as a thinking being. The entire effort of achieving knowledge, of acquiring wisdom, has a moral finality. Its fundament is the presence of God as the infinite instance that deems possible the free manifestation of the human person. As a thinking being, the human subject brings himself into existence. He certifies the reality of the world. Everything takes place on the horizon of the infinite self-existence represented by the philosophical idea of God. As a spiritual being, man can use thinking to shape his desires, to master his willpower, but most of all, to integrate himself in the process of conscious personal development. (shrink)

The present text discusses several aspects of the institutional crisis of philosophy in the Romanian educational system after 1989. On the one hand, at the level of university educational system, one may note the marginalization of philosophy programs, due to young people’s decrease of interest for those specializations that do not provide immediate benefits for rapid integration in and well-paid jobs on the labor market. This entails direct consequences for the type of financing and creates functional difficulties in the university (...) system. On the other hand, the diminution of the presence of philosophy at the level of high school curricula has given rise to a crisis manifested through the negative consequences on the necessity for humanist education of the young people, upon the social prestige of philosophy, and upon the possibility of philosophy graduates’ insertion on the labor market. (shrink)

Of the representatives of the Romanian Diaspora, Elie Wiesel is the figure that has the widest public recognition, as a human rights activist and also as a writer. Due to the fundamental themes that he develops, his thinking is claimed both by philosophers and theologians. Wiesel says that with the experience of the Holocaust, all the categories that mold human creation must be rethought from the perspective of the Unspeakable of this extreme experience. Starting with this experience, the post-Holocaust philosophy (...) must help us ask questions and find answers regarding human reason in extreme conditions, to mold the plan of action and human responsibility, to speak of the human condition in a world where God is absent. For Wiesel, theology must be oriented towards community and the needs of individuals. It has to be a theology of otherness, in the sense that it must sustain the idea of the fulfillment of the individual in his relation to the other. Wiesel chooses literary discourse to express philosophical and theological ideas. It seems to him that this type of discourse can express the magnitude of the genocide perpetrated against the European Jews more adequately than other disciplines. (shrink)

This text deals with Moshe Idel’s perspective on the connections between Maimonide’s philosophy and Abulafia’s esoteric thought. Idel analyses their thinking under the aspect of their appearance, inter-relation, and inner dynamics. Idel’s analysis reveals that Maimonide’s attempt to issue an esoteric book, one that would give back to Judaism a lost esoteric science, gave a particular impulse to the development of Jewish mysticism, and especially to the ecstatic Kabbalah. Maimonide attempted to transform philosophy into a mystic instrument of understanding the (...) secrets of the Torah. This fact determined Abulafia to re-signify the Maimonidean thought and to integrate it into a limit experience of “unio mystica”. In this context, several aspects concerning the arcanization and the super-arcanization of philosophical and mystical texts are discussed. (shrink)

The author focuses on several dimensions of multiculturalism as an ideology of pluralism and diversity. To this end, he uses a series of correlative terms, such as: diversity, autonomy, cultural canon, interculturalism. The affirmation of the cultural identity is shown to be a resource for participating to the public life, to the negotiation of the interests and for participating to the political process of decision-making. The author believes that the access to the public sphere presupposes the previous elaboration of special (...) policies meant to guarantee the preservation of the alternative identities. Consequently, the educational policies are proved to be very important. An illustrative example is the multicultural model of Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj, Romania. (shrink)

Various authors emphasize an important aspect of the secular context of the contemporary world: the transfer of symbolic power from religion to political ideologies. National ideology enjoys a particular place. In the circumstance of cohabitation between religious minorities and the majority within a national state, solutions must be found that ensure the ground for religious pluralism and freedom. The paper in question aims at analyzing the prerequisites that will render possible cohabitation and mutual recognition between the minority groups and the (...) Orthodox majority within the Romanian context. Due to the cultural diversity of Romania, the state has to elaborate multicultural policies in order to ensure opportunities for affirming the plural religious identities that can be found within the national state. (shrink)

Europeans speak, both through their leaders and through the media, about the crisis of the European civilization. They cultivate the image of Europe threatened in its own existence by the waves of population wishing to settle in Western European countries. Additionally, the threat is sensed in the context of their belonging to other religions but the Christian one. To solve this crisis, we start from the premise that the European dream in the refugees’ case may be deemed similar to the (...) American dream of the Europeans settling in American territories where they were to build the American Civilization. Although the anguish of incoming foreigners is psychologically natural, problematic is the fact that they are not perceived as individuals driven by the dream of prosperity and happiness as the European dream. Lacking identity and engulfed in a diffuse mass, they are perceived as an amorphous, threatening and violent collective. I propose to reevaluate alterity in terms of that consecrated in the cultural imaginary as the American dream, by means of the philosophy of success as construed in the theories and practice of personal development. (shrink)

Ideology is an extremely comprehensive, yet ambigous concept. Several aspects of the ideological thought are made obvious through discussing Marx’s first view on ideology, which is the one elaborated in The German Ideology. Here, ideology is understood as an imaginary construction that can be sugestively described as a dis- torted image in camera obscura. Despite the objectivity and scientifity claimed by Marx’s vision (and especialy by the subsequent Marxism-Leninism), various interpretative perspectives brought into discussion argue that, in order to gain (...) in persuasion and to mobilize masses conscience, Marxist discourse uses, in its very heart, mythological and imaginary structures. In this way, Marxist discourse is proved to be much more closer to the fictional dis- course and to the forms of religiosity, than to the sci- ence, in spite of Marx’s belief that the critique of religion is the model of any other critique. (shrink)

This article presents several general perspectives concerning the reception of Elie Wiesel’s work and public activity as well as the way they are viewed by those who study his biography and by the general public. At his eightieth anniversary, Wiesel continues to fascinate, to challenge, and to inspire the most diverse range of feelings. Apart from this, one thing is sure: the contemporary world has been significantly marked by his work and activity.

Ioan Chirila, Fragmentarium exegetic filonian, Editura Limes, Cluj, 2002, 174 p.

M. Buber and Levinas develop two Jewish philosophical systems, which are constituted by the meeting of the two traditions: the philosophical and the religious one. Be- yond the evidently particular configuration, the relational principle theorized by the two thinkers has as the unity element the valuation of a Biblical archetype. Our analy- sis deals with the relational principle as Judaic pattern in Buber’s and Levinas’ thinking. We can observe that each of the two authors proposes us a system that relies (...) on the dual structure of the human world. Its archetype is revelational in nature, similar to the one disclosed by the Mount Sinai theophany. (shrink)