scholarly journals El reconocimiento de la dignidad humana ante los avances de la genética

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Giner Rommel
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
The Face ◽  
One Step

La llamada era o siglo de la biotecnología, y con ella, una nueva realidad genética artificial, va abriéndose camino inexorablemente. La misma supone nuevas formas de dominio de la vida natural y humana sin precedentes. El hombre puede ya alterar nada menos que el curso de la evolución de las especies. Es fácil adivinar entonces por qué la genética traspasa su propio ámbito científico: se encuentra ineludiblemente cargada de dilemas éticos de toda índole, y unida al mundo filosófico y moral por su urgente necesidad de respuestas. La primera gran reflexión que la genética plantea a la ética es de tal calibre, que zozobra los cimientos de la propia tradición filosófica occidental y su concepción de la dignidad humana. Si el hallazgo del genoma humano lleva consigo una propensión de la visión de la realidad humana exclusivamente cientificista y biológica, procediendo a realizar una verdadera «sacralización de la ciencia» ¿Supone ello el derrumbe, la invalidación de la condición ética y libre del hombre? ¿Debemos renunciar a una visión del mismo como un ser digno y reducirlo a un animal más? ¿Debemos, en definitiva, dar carpetazo al humanismo, poniendo en tela de juicio la calidad moral del hombre? ¿Cerrar entonces los espacios de la ética o la filosofía, declarando que todos los aspectos que encierran la condición humana se consumen en una explicación científica? ¿Cómo afrontar otros posibles ataques a dimensiones de la dignidad humana como la libertad, la igualdad, la intimidad? ¿Precisan de disciplinas distintas, como la filosofía y el derecho, en busca de soluciones que exceden del campo científico y a los que éste no puede dar respuestas? Ante los nuevos poderes y responsabilidades que trae consigo el progreso científico, la explicación ética y la científica no deben sino reencontrarse. Apostar por el control ético del rumbo del proceso científico y tecnológico a través del paradigma de la dignidad humana se torna imprescindible. En definitiva, tratar de llevar a cabo el sueño del progreso universal, real, en el que la genética constituya un eslabón, un peldaño más en su consecución efectiva no puede darse sin intervención de la reflexión ética.This is definitely the age of biotechnology and with it comes a new artificial genetic reality. Biotechnology gives us never seen before control over plant, animal and human life. Mankind may now even be able to change the course of evolution in all living creatures, no less. That is why it is easy to understand that the science of genetics transcends its own domain; it is unavoidably confronted with ethical dilemmas of all kind and it is compelled to turn to philosophy and morality because of its need to find answers urgently. The first question raised by genetics is of such a magnitude that it overturns the basis of the Western philosophical tradition and its concept of human dignity. If the decoding of the human genome leads to an exclusively scientific and biological vision of human reality, to what you could call a «sacralisation of science», then what happens to free will, to man as an ethical being? Should we henceforth refuse to consider Man as a creature of Dignity and reduce him to just another animal? Should we, in short, abandon all humanistic idealism and question even the morality of human beings? Should we forget about ethics and philosophy and agree that all the aspects, implicit in the human condition, can find a scientific explanation? But how then should we deal with other attacks that may be made against such dimensions of human dignity as liberty, equality and privacy? Will there be no need for other disciplines, such as philosophy and law, to find solutions to problems which exceed the field of science and for which science has no answers to give?. In the face of all the new powers, potential and responsibilities brought about by scientific progress, ethics and science should not become adversaries. Ethical control over the course of scientific and technological progress based on the paradigm of human dignity is becoming essential. To summarise, it will be impossible to realise the dream of true progress, in which the science of genetics is but one step, without answering ethical questions.

Human Life as a State of Mediocrity in John Locke

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Giuliana Di Biase
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Perfect Knowledge ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Church

This chapter investigates the genesis and evolution of Locke’s idea of human life as a “state of mediocrity”. While this idea had ancient roots going back to the early Church fathers, it remained current in the seventeenth century where mediocrity was generally equated with a condition of partial ignorance and imperfection. Locke’s account of it is original; while life is a time of mediocrity, death opens the way to the extremes of eternal misery or eternal happiness. Initially, inspired by the Church fathers, Locke conceived of human life as a condition of intellectual mediocrity. Subsequently, and arguably prompted by his reading of the pessimistic outlooks of Nicole and Pascal, he redefined the state of mediocrity in more optimistic terms: humans are naturally suited to their mediocre state. A further development of his conception of mediocrity, again involving a partial rethinking of the human condition, can be found in the Essay, where Locke represents mediocrity as an imperfect state of insatiable desire. It is redeemed, however, by the ability of living human beings to attain perfect knowledge of morality.

scholarly journals Eating Human Beings: Varieties of Cannibalism and the Heterogeneity of Human Life

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-501
Author(s):  
Mikel Burley
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Important Task ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Flesh ◽  
Ways Of Being

AbstractPhilosophy as well as anthropology is a discipline concerned with what it means to be human, and hence with investigating the multiple ways of making sense of human life. An important task in this process is to remain open to diverse conceptions of human beings, not least conceptions that may on the face of it appear to be morally alien. A case in point are conceptions that are bound up with cannibalism, a practice sometimes assumed to be so morally scandalous that it probably never happens, at least in a culturally sanctioned form. Questioning this assumption, along with Cora Diamond's contention that the very concept of a human being involves a prohibition against consuming human flesh, the present article explores how cannibalism can have an intelligible place in a human society – exemplified by the Wari’ of western Brazil. By coming to see this, we are enabled to enlarge our conception of the heterogeneity of possible ways of being human.

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

Essays in Analytic Theology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Rea
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Hiddenness ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Face ◽  
Part Deal ◽  
The Human Condition

This book is the second of two volumes collecting together the most substantial work in analytic theology that I have done between 2003 and 2018. The first volume contains essays focused, broadly speaking, on the nature of God; this second volume contains essays focused more on doctrines about humanity, the human condition, and how human beings relate to God. The essays in the first part deal with the doctrines of the incarnation, original sin, and atonement; the essays in the second part discuss the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and a theological problem that arises in connection with the idea God not only tolerates but validates a response of angry protest in the face of these problems.

Death with Dignity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kaczor ◽  
Robert P. George
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Death With Dignity

Advocates of euthanasia use the phrase “death with dignity” to suggest that intentional killing at the end of life secures and protects human dignity. Critics of euthanasia insist that intentional killing violates human dignity. To adjudicate between these views, four senses of the term are distinguished: dignity as flourishing, dignity as attributed, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as autonomy. Dignity as attributed concerns the worth human beings confer on others or on themselves. Dignity as intrinsic worth is understood as the value human beings have simply because they are human beings. Dignity as flourishing is understood as the excellence of a human life consistent with, and expressive of, intrinsic dignity. Dignity as autonomy is defined as showing respect for other people by endorsing or at least not interfering with their autonomous choices. In this chapter, it is argued that none of these senses of dignity justify intentional killing.

Human Dignity as the Foundation for the Democratic Rule of Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja C. Grover
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
Judicial Reasoning

The notion of human dignity has in recent years come under attack from sectors of the interdisciplinary and legal academic community as vacuous and of little or no utility in judicial reasoning. This author holds instead that human dignity is the sine qua non of all human life and correlated with certain inviolable human rights that speak to human beings as other than property, as having legal personality and the right to be heard. The notion of human dignity then serves, it is argued here, as essential guidance in judicial reasoning on issues of individual and group fundamental human rights. Neglect in honouring the principle of respect for human dignity in judicial decision-making serves to erode the democratic rule of law and the interests of justice as will be illustrated through examination in particular of the U.S. Supreme Court case of J.C. Hernandez et al v. J. Mesa Jr.

Great Freedom and the Concept of Awareness

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181
Author(s):  
Alex Norman
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Great Freedom ◽  
True Location ◽  
The Face ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
Short Courses

Great Freedom is new socio-religious movement centring on the teachings of American Candice O’Denver. It teaches that Awareness – the space of individual existence observable between thoughts and emotional responses – is the true location of individual identity for all human beings, and the beginning point for acceptance of the self. The group, which was founded in 2003, conducts meetings and short courses at which the teachings are promoted and described in detail. The group’s website (www.greatfreedom.org) also hosts many written publications, audio, and video teachings free to the public. The core of the Great Freedom teaching revolves around the explanation that the human condition is one of frustration, angst, and constant searching for psychological and emotional relief, though not because such things have become ‘uncoupled’ or ‘free floating’. Instead, Great Freedom argues that these sensations arise in the face of a lack of knowledge about the permanent comfort available in Awareness. Modern life is understood to have become saturated and overly self-improvement oriented, implying that happiness and wellbeing are states to be searched for. The realisation of the nature of Awareness is believed by the group to bring psychological relief. This belief is examined in light of David Lyon’s (2000) argument of a shift in the parameters of religious thinking and engagement towards ‘secularised’, individuated, and highly subjective modes, and that modern religiosity is bricolage in response to the postmodern fragmentation of identity. Following from this, Great Freedom is read as a response to an understanding that modern life is highly saturated, in Kenneth Gergen’s (1991) sense, and, as Anthony Giddens’ (1991) notion of a ‘project of the self’ intimates, overly self-improvement oriented.

‘A passion can only be overcome by a stronger passion’: Philosophical Anthropology before and after Ernst Cassirer

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN MICHAEL KROIS
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ernst Cassirer ◽  
Physical Study ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Before And After

‘Philosophical anthropology’ was initiated in the late 1920s as an alternative to abstract philosophical definitions of human nature (‘animal rationale’) and to the exclusively empirical, physical study of anthropology. Philosophical anthropology focused upon what it meant to be a human being. Its founders concentrated upon the situated existence of human beings and their ability to think beyond and to deny even what was actually vitally important to them. For Cassirer, these efforts remained too abstract because they failed to take the breadth of human cultural activity into account. The decisive feature of human life is neither reason nor language. These are derivative from symbolism, not the other way around. Human beings are best described as ‘animal symbolicum’. The error of earlier anthropological conceptions was not that they venerated reason, but that they ignored the body and so separated reason from emotion. The concept of symbolism, as Cassirer conceived it, overcame this dualism. His philosophical anthropology has been vindicated today in many areas of empirical research, but replacing the concept of ‘reason’ with that of ‘symbolism’ was no minor revision to the Western philosophical tradition, and the amplification and application of this new outlook has barely begun.

Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals?

Human Affairs ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Dreyfus
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Rational Nature ◽  
Action And Perception ◽  
Propositional Form ◽  
Why Questions

Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals?Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form—any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping.

scholarly journals ETIKA PERDAGANGAN DALAM ISLAM

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirwana
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The People ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
Islamic Business Ethics ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Islamic Values

Islamic business ethics ismorality in running a business in accordance with Islamic values, so that in conducting business there is no need to worry, because it is believed to be something good and true. Ethical values, morals, ethics or morals are the values that encourage human beings to be a whole person. Such as honesty, truth, justice, independence, happiness and love. When these ethical values are implemented it will perfect the human reality as a whole. Every one can have a set ofknowledge about values, but the knowledge that directs and controls the behavior of Muslims there are only two, namely the Qur'an and hadith as the source of all values and guidelines in every joint of life, including in business. Ethics or morals have a very important position for human life, both as individual members of society and members of a nation. The wealth, the glory of the people one arthdepends on their morals, and the damageone arth is nothing but also due to the depravity of human morality it self. Human life requires morality, without morality human life is impossible to take place.

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