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The central aim of this study was to uncover, based on funeral orations, what the Igbo of South-East Nigeria regard as the good life. Over two hundred and fifty funeral orations/tributes were investigated. These were classified into: tributes by spouses; by offspring; by close family members; by friends, associates and organizations. The study revealed that the notion of the good life among the Igbo was based on primary duties and obligations at each of the four levels identified above and on related secondary duties and obligations. The good life was measured by the extent to which these duties and obligations were discharged and in the way their performance manifested in the provision of social amenities, help to educate members of the community and so on. What would ordinarily be regarded as virtues were considered desirable only in so far as they helped people fulfill their primary and secondary obligations, otherwise they were regarded as sterile or “bottled” virtues.
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The issues of good and successful ageing are the subject of scientific research. Successful ageing is the attempt to achieve a state of inner satisfaction and happiness in spite of the negative effects associated with old age: loss, external and internal destabilization, etc. Successful development in old age has many forms. It can generally be defined as an attempt to achieve the greatest profit with the smallest loss. The problem is establishing the universal criteria of successful ageing. It is possible to restrict the study to the observation of individual factors which are either objective or subjective, long-term or short-term, specific or universal or static versus dynamic. The problem is creating a theory that will explain all the processes and consequences of old age—none of the theories has so far succeeded in doing this. Life satisfaction as a subjective criterion of successful ageing has been most emphasized in two contradictory theories: activity theory and disengagement theory. Other theories are: growth theories, cognitive theories, dynamic theories, SOC model, cultural anthropological theories, the interaction model of longevity, etc.
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The author concentrates on the preference of the values of “the cult of the body” increasingly affecting the behaviour of young people and their position in the value system relating to generally recognized values. Too much emphasis on physical beauty and outward appearance significantly determines behaviour and can lead to a reduction in values relating to the body and body shape but also to unhealthy eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa. The focus is on the pathological perception of the body, on how culture and cultural norms affect body dissatisfaction. A research questionnaire on universal values and the cult of the body (2006) was used. The research sample consisted of 508 respondents aged between 18 and 26 (292 women and 216 men).
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Constructing a cultural ontology I reject the primordiality of everydayness, presupposed by Heidegger, in order to reveal the cultural constitution of all ways of being, from everyday life to the most unusual activities of individuals and communities. The cultural constitution of being is displayed with the help of the idea that meanings, i.e., references, senses and values (that are a special type of senses), are structures of all ways of being. In the following exposition the cultural constitution of being is analyzed in its interrelations with the commonality of being, its temporality, and historicity.
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The issues presented in this article bear on (1) the status of bioethics as an academic discipline and (2) research methods employed in it. With regard to the status of bioethics, I discuss problems related to the definition of bioethics, the ways of addressing bioethical issues (interdisciplinary discourse, applied ethics, an extension of medical ethics) and the choice of the discipline within which bioethics should be developed (law, theology, philosophy). The presented methods of bioethics have been divided into normative and non-normative. The non-normative methods are empirical, both qualitative and quantitative, whereas normative methods have been divided into three groups: methods based on principles (the application method and coherentism), casuistry, and alternative methods (virtue ethics, the ethics of care, communitarianism, and the narrative perspective). Since alternative ways of addressing bioethical issues are not always sufficiently developed from the methodological point of view, I have introduced, apart from the concept of method, the concept of research perspective (used, in the literature on the subject, interchangeably with the concept of research approach).
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The aim of this article is to present selected ethical issues in psychotherapy based on the most important Polish and foreign contributions to the area. In the article, the following issues will be taken into consideration: manipulation during psychotherapy, confidentiality and professional secrecy, the principle of the ideological neutrality of the therapist, ethical aspects of psychotherapy for children and adolescents, clinical supervision, and the relation between psychotherapy and law.
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In Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, the truth of fiction relates to the search for answers to questions about personal identity and the meaning of life in the world lacking substantial foundations. Ricoeur’s considerations are situated between realism and constructivism. The article dicusses the consequences of the hermeneutical relationship between imaginary worlds and reality for the redefinition of such concepts (important to the human condition, but usually associated with substantial ontology), as: “truth”, “understanding”, “ethics” and “personal identity”. I attempt to answer the following questions: What is the truth of literary fiction? What is the relationship between literary fiction and reality? What, in the literary fiction, is created and what is discovered? What does self-understanding, related to the imaginary worlds, consist in? What is the role of literary fiction in constituting personal identity? Why is reading an ethical act? What is the role of metaphorical mediation in the process of understanding?
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The subject matter of this article is the right to health as one of the moral rights granted to all human beings. In the first part, I provide an overview of selected international documents that consider health (or “the highest attainable standard of health”) a human right and, in the second part, I investigate the most significant commentaries on these documents. Accordingly, I attempt to bring out and arrange in an order the main ethical claims contained in these documents and commentaries, discussing such issues as the kinds of rights related to health, the conditions of access to health-related goods or the duties of the states implicated by the right to health.
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In the first part of my paper, drawing on the works by David Heyd, I argue that, in the choices related to procreation, an autonomous decision of the woman (or of partners) involved should play the key role. In the relation between a healthcare professional, on the one hand, and a pregnant patient, or a patient who intends to become pregnant, on the other – the former is ethically obliged to provide proper help in the decision-making process that should nevertheless be founded on the ethical ideal of a morally good person. The decision should also be informed by the conception of a morally good person endorsed by the woman (or by partners). In the second part of my paper, I refer to the conception of the sanctity of human life, developed by Ronald Dworkin, to claim that, in a complex medical model, the tendency to equate the fetus with bodily organs should be curtailed as far as the relation between the pregnant woman and the fetus is concerned. The idea of the sanctity of life also serves as the ground on which what I call a ‘procreation epic’ is based. The suggested epic, viewed as a general philosophical framework for the healthcare and reproductive medicine policy, is considered relevant to democratic societies.
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The aim of this review article is to criticize popular arguments against using the biomedical technology to enhance human physical or mental capabilities. Discussing works of Habermas, Sandel and Fukuyama I will analyze three arguments of this kind that refer to: 1) autonomy; 2) life as a gift; 3) natural equilibrium. Finally I will demonstrate that the opposition to some enhancement projects may result from a characteristic cognitive error: a status quo bias.
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In this article I examine the correlation between Schelling’s notion of nothingness and Heidegger’s concept of being. I argue that Heidegger’s concept of being, before his “turn”, has its origin in Schelling’s nothingness as it is presented in Weltalter. I identify Heidegger’s thinking as a critical continuation of Schelling’s idea limited by the Christian doctrine of God.
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This article aims at presenting to the Polish reader a number of different conceptions of justice in health care, represented by the advocates of liberal egalitarianism. The author has given an overview of the most relevant, influential and representative theories, held by the liberal egalitarians, in order to present the way in which, in a democratic state, both just health care and respect for freedom and moral equality of individuals can be provided. The following issues will be discussed: John Rawls’s theory of justice, Norman Daniels’s theory of justice including health possibilities, varieties of luck egalitarianism, Ronald Dworkin’s “prudent insurance” ideal, Elizabeth Anderson’s democratic egalitarianism, a family of theories of egalitarianism of all kinds of luck and the theory of Shlomi Segall.
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The steady growth of the number of DNA tests offered results in the discussion on the ethical aspects of these tests becoming increasingly lively and multifaceted. This text provides an overview of selected issues concerning the characteristics, protection and quality of the information acquired as a result of carrying out DNA tests. I discuss the salient points in the debates on the possibility to justify the so-called genetic exceptionalism, and the ways of specifying the scope of the principle of confidentiality that protects the privacy of the information given by the subject. The final part of the article features the discussion on the importance of the possibility to use the information, acquired from these tests, in practice – for making decisions about the introduction of new kinds of tests for the clinical application.
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Solidarity is the fundamental principle of the majority of the European health care systems. According to the classical distinction, there are three kinds of solidarity: risk solidarity, age solidarity and income solidarity. The aim of this principle is to create a community based on risk sharing, mutual obligation and care, taken especially of the suffering, the troubled and the disadvantaged. The progressive privatization of health care and the individualization of risk in health insurance motivate the question about the sustainability of this principle in many European health care systems. Concurrently, technological progress change the outlook of modern medicine and health care, inspiring the revival of the debate on the role of solidarity in health care systems and new struggles for this principle. Discussions of ethical issues, social activism and the implementation of new legislative solutions stress the importance and the unchanging value of solidarity in varying social conditions.
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The aim of this paper is to present two arguments against the dialectical interpretation of Nagarjuna's philosophy. This interpretation understands Nagarjuna's philosophy as a method of deconstruction, abstracting from Nagarjuna's own standpoint. The first argument refers to the metaphysical presuppositions of this method. The second argument refers to the positive statements asserted by Nagarjuna and focuses mainly on those concerning Buddhist practice. Furthermore, the conception of 'skillful means' and 'the two truths' will be discussed. The conclusion of this paper is that Nagarjuna's philosophy is based upon determining the conditions of the possibility of the Buddhist practice rather than on a dialectic without any metaphysical assumptions.
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The author represents a new view on the history of folkloristic contacts between Czechs and Bulgarians in the decades before the Liberation of Bulgaria (1878). Analyzing the opposition between some of their semiotic characteristics and the semiotic characteristics of folklorism in regard with the scheme: essence – subject – method – cause, the author claims that the functional mechanisms of the folkloristic contacts under study reflect in the complex of processes and phenomena which is generally called “folklorism”. The analysis follows the routine of putting together public interest and attitude, agents’ characteristics, functional innovations, the principle of unification, institutionalization of forms and activities, the role of the mass media. On that base the author draws the conclusion that the main locomotives of the Bulgarian-Czech folkloristic contacts during the 60’s and the 70’s of the last century which had taken the form of invasion of Bulgarian folklore facts in Czech culture, are the national movements of both nations, which political character is out of question. And, having in mind the definition of political folklorism which “uses folklore either consciously or unconsciously for direct or hidden political purposes” – we can insist on calling this category a helpful variant for the description of processes and phenomena under study.
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The use of proverbs in the Bulgarian newspapers in 1990–1991 is under analysis in this article. The attention is focused on the predominant function of proverbs as titles of newspaper articles and essays. Examples are analyzed showing how traditional proverbial texts have been changed in order to semantically represent the following essay and in regard with the current social and political situation. The most common form of change is parody and it is used to express certain attitude to the events commented. Thus, proverbs bring an emotive nuance even to very serious and objective newspaper materials. Comparison is made between the functions of proverbs in traditional folklore and in modern culture.
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Facts and tendencies connected with the present functions of folklore culture are under analysis in this article. Comparison is made of observations of and conversations with participants in folklore fests at present – folk fairs, amateur artistic activities (or modern folklore activities). Two basic tendencies in the representation of folklore are outlined: the opening of the local boundaries and the establishment of a certain notion (image) of Bulgarian folklore. Examples are given of policy in the cultural sphere which concern folklore culture and its perception and interpretation by the individuals. Specific folklore forms turn out to be basic in the process of personal and group identification. Folklore is not so active as an emblem of the state and the nation, but its significance for the determination of the new cultural identities at present definitely grows up.
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