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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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This paper reflects on trajectories and pathways for philosophical hermeneutics, now, after the death of its founder, Hans-Georg Gadamer in 2002. More specifically, it challenges the notion that Gadamer’s thought is simply tied to the linguistic turn of the 20th century. Instead, it considers the possibility that Gadamer’s thinking makes for an implicit declaration of its own kind, calling for a mnemonic turn in modern philosophy and present day hermeneutics. Some reference will be made to both rationalist and empiricist models of inquiry insofar as Gadamer attempts to take philosophy beyond, for example, the Ur-grammar of Chomsky’s linguistic theories, and into a world of post-Platonic memory.
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What has happened in the late and concluding stages of postmodern culture is that concrete ideas of a good life have been reduced to pseudo-concrete ideals. With the aid of simulacra, the experience of everyday life is turning into a show, into narcissistic emptiness and single bodily pleasures.
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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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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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