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Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants (MEC) involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfighters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still significantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior.
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Très en profondeur, dans les couches étymologiques qui enrobent l`origine de la catégorie controversée du baroque, gît l`insolite, la précieuse image : l`image d`une perle ne possédant pas une forme parfaitement ronde ni d`axe propre de rotation, et qui, par suite, reste privée du prestige réservé aux exemplaires « réguliers » de son espèce.
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In her book Democracy and Truth: The Conflict between Political and Epistemic Virtues, Snježana Prijić Samaržija advocates a stance that not only political, but also epistemic values are necessary for justification of democracy. Specifically, she mounts defense for one particular type of public deliberation on epistemic grounds. In this paper, I will discuss the following issue: What connects this type of public deliberation to the wider context of (epistemic) justification of democracy? I will attempt to explain why Prijić Samaržija’s stance can be understood as a version of deliberative epistemic instrumentalism and to discuss the role played by the public deliberation within this framework.
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Tvorac »najznačajnijeg filosofskog speva čovečanstva« (A. Savić Rebac), tragični, tmurni pesnik Lukretije, o čijem životu jedva da nešto znamo, a i to nepouzdano, poduhvatio se retko teškog, do naivnosti optimističkog pesničkog zadatka, da ljude oslobodi straha od smrti, straha koji je valjda neminovan i večit koliko i sam životni kraj, ali koji ljudi obično ne umeju da prevladaju ni da prihvate ni u psihičko-emotivnom ni u racionalnom pogledu.
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Diametros – An Online Journal of Philosophy (ISSN 1733-5566) was established in autumn 2004. For many years it was a part of Diametros – An Online Philosophy Service at the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, with which it continues to have strong ties. However, at the beginning of 2014 the Editorial Board decided to separate the website of the journal from the service and transfer the journal to a new online platform. We hope that it will provide a better venue to meet the wishes of our authors and readers.
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The diatribe grew out of the teaching of the popular philosophers of the Hellenistic and Roman period. Its main feature is the combination of two speech situations. The primary speech situation is the situation of the orator delivering his speech to an audience. The secondary situation is the situation of an argumentative dialogue with a (usually anonymous) interlocutor. In a diatribe, the orator constantly crosses the boundary between these two situations. For example, he may first introduce an objection in the third person (“But, says he…”) and then proceed to answer it as if his interlocutor were really standing before him (“You fool! don’t you see…”). The diatribe entered medieval Orthodox Slavic writing through the translations of the New Testament and the Church fathers. The only exception to this is the Encheiridion, or Manual of Epictetus – a short outline of the principles of Stoic philosophy that was translated in Bulgaria already in the 10th century. The Encheiridion contains less diatribal features than Epictetus' Diatribes, and these features have been further reduced in the Christian adaptation from which the translation was made. Still, there is a handful of passages in which the Old Church Slavonic Encheiridion exhibits the typically diatribal mode of answering the objection of an imaginary interlocutor in direct speech.
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The aim of the article Different faces of old age as perceived by the students of Polish studies is to present how old teachers perceive old age. The exemplification material consists of three texts: Winter tale. An essay on the old age of Ryszard Przybylski, “The Old Man’s Route”. An attempt at old age politics by Tadeusz Sławek and Lala Jacek Dehnel. Hermeneutical reading allowed for the creation of several images of autumn of life: a painful, marked by suffering attempts to overcome and suffering in a creative act; old age as a possibility of a deeper look at the spiritual dimension of human existence and old age reconciled with the laws of transiting the events immersed in the act of memorization.
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Discovering today diversity of extraterrestrial cryogenic objects, as well as the large range of scales and rates of cryogenic processes, undermines the conventional views of cold in the classical terms. The classical approach of natural sciences that study different cryogenic objects and processes separately is giving way to the apprehension of the cold world as a self-evolving complex system,with a great variability of its constituents in the scale of the Universe. In this respect, we discuss the methods and conceptual basis of the terrestrial and extraterrestrial cryology in terms of a new science called cryosophy. Cryosophy studies the role of cold in the origin and evolution of life and heat-mass interactions in the world. It addresses the key features and principles of the evolution of the cryosphere and uses both classical (for simple physical and chemical systems) and synergetic (for complex and living systems) approaches, as well as information logistic methods that generate knowledge aboutknowledge. Studies of cold date back to the ages of ancient Greek natural philosophy, which flourishedbetween the 7th and 4th centuries BC. Unlike Greek natural philosophy, which pretended to be a universal syncretic science, cryosophy is a kind of integrator, which attracts different fields of knowledge relatedto the cold world and builds a framework for its ontology. The properties of ice can be summarized ina model of a multi-function system with six main components plotted in the scales of space (ice as aphysical system and a natural material), energy (ice as a pysicochemical system and a phase state),and time (ice as a system of information and control). The concept of cryodiversity covers multiplebiotic and abiotic complex systems, such as cryophilic bacteria that live in permafrost, atmospheric precipitation, gas hydrates, etc. Cryodiversity also refers to cryogenic effects in the extraterrestrial space, which have been increasingly more widely investigated since the middle of 20th century. The evolution and properties of the cryosphere in different planets or other celestial bodies make part of the basic knowledge indispensable for the future exploration of the Universe
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Considerations on the nature and properties of light are a distinctive trait of Oxford natural philosophy. Medieval scholars on the Continent did not devote much attention to this issue, most probably because, in Aristotle, one finds only a few remarks on the nature of light (in De anima and De sensu et sensato). In England, however, the first Chancellor of Oxford University, Robert Grosseteste, adopted light as the core of his metaphysics, cosmology and natural philosophy. Although later generations of Oxford philosophers generally neglected Grosseteste’s metaphysics and cosmology, taking the Aristotelian view instead, considerations on the nature and properties of light remained a substantial part of their natural philosophy. Among fourteenth-century Oxford philosophers’ works, one finds comprehensive discussions on light in John Dumbleton’s Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis and Richard Swineshead’s Liber calculationum. In his Summa, John Dumbleton presents a detailed inquiry into the the action of light in a medium. We do not find there, however, any attempt to ‘measure’ or calculate the power of a light source itself. Richard Swineshead, though, devotes a substantial part of his considerations on light to determining the ‘proper measure’ of the power of a light source. His main concept in this regard is ‘the amount of form’ (multitudo formae) — a notion presumably invented by Swineshead and developed in the preceding parts of his work. Both Dumbleton and Swineshead present consistent and well-developed theories rooted in the medieval Oxford scientific tradition, drawing upon Aristotelian philosophy and Euclidean mathematics. Swineshead’s conclusions complement and correct the theory developed by John Dumbleton. Yet the method of ‘measurement’ presented by Swineshead is practically inapplicable and the value of the consecutive conclusions is determined only on the basis of logical and mathematical consistency, with no reference to common experience. Such methods of philosophical inquiry are characteristic of all the fourteenth-century thinkers of the group known as the Oxford Calculators.
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The problem of euthanasia in countries where this procedure is legal concerns patients who are capable of deciding on their own death. Consent to medically assisted acceleration of death is essential. However, the situation is different in the case of people who do not have the capacity to make decisions, such as patients who are mentally ill, mentally disabled, unaware or very young children. In the Netherlands, guidelines have been adopted for infants affected by incurable diseases, the so-called Groningen Protocol. The provisions of the Protocol concern both the resignation from therapy and active termination of life (“neonatal euthanasia”). It should be noted that this document is not a binding legal act. Doubts arise as to whether the provisions of the Protocol are merely a permitted abandonment of resignation from therapy or a consent to homicide, which may go unpunished under liberal Dutch policy. The question remains open as to whether this is an act of mercy in the form of putting an end to the suffering of terminally ill patients or a convenient pretext for getting rid of terminally ill children under the guise of poor quality of life.
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This special issue on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s aesthetics marks the beginning of a new era for Estetika. Starting with this issue, Estetika will be published by Helsinki University Press in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. Also the name of the journal has been slightly modified and from now on it will be Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics. We are pleased to continue to develop Estetika as an open access journal of the highest academic standard in collaboration with Helsinki University Press, a university press that is committed to the ideals of open science and making publically funded research available to all. The journal will continue to use triple blind peer review, which Estetika adopted already in 2012.
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The chief merit of the book is the meticulous precision with which the author handles difficult philosophical issues (without resorting to unnecessary, overly formal references), and the high quality of substantive deliberations. It has been written by a practitioner, but one deeply aware of the extensive theoretical and conceptual background underlying the specific solutions. This is not only a lecture on a particular method of education, but also, or perhaps above all – a powerful ethic. This is not merely a book that describes a teaching technique with special emphasis on ethics: it conveys, perhaps on a more fundamental level, a moral message that should inform the work of every teacher. It is all the more important because, not limited to one context of ideas (worldviews), it shows ways to navigate through a diversity of these ideas.
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The paper argues that the contemporary model of musical education, as we know it to- day, has been shaped over a long process conditioned by the general reception of music as a form of art on the one hand, and on the other remaining in direct relation with various pedagogical concepts. The article, as an attempt to highlight the most influential trends af- fecting the model of musical education throughout the ages, demonstrates how the role of music in human life was interpreted in Ancient, Medieval and Modern periods. The author presents opinions on music and education as articulated by philosophers, pedagogues, psy- chologists, but also music theorists and composers. Finally, the paper critically discusses contemporary questions that arise in reflections on musical education pertaining to its es- sence but also its purposes, methodology, etc.
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Interview with Judith Butler by Jill Stauffer
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