Leibniz and the Labyrinth of Determinism

This article tackles the issue of determinism in Leibniz. In particular, it is a matter of investigating how the problem of the labyrinth of freedom and need is elaborated in “Discours de Métaphysique” and developed in “Monadologie”. We have tried to demonstrate that the solution outlined by Leibniz, i.e., the exit from this labyrinth, is what liberates the political and moral practice in the author’s work. This practice is related to the possibility for men to think of the issue of justice, i.e., the issue of the science of Law.

Medicine against Suicide: Sustaining Solidarity with Those Diminished by Illness and Debility

The medical profession’s increasing acceptance of “physician aid-in-dying” indicates the ascendancy of what we call the provider-of-services model for medicine, in which medical “providers” offer services to help patients maximize their “well-being” according to the wishes of the patient. This model contrasts with and contradicts what we call the Way of Medicine, in which medicine is a moral practice oriented to the patient’s health. A steadfast refusal intentionally to harm or kill is a touchstone of the Way of Medicine, one unambiguously affirmed by Christians through the centuries. Moreover, physician aid-in-dying contradicts one of the distinctive contributions that the Christian era brought to medicine, namely, a taken-for-granted solidarity between medical practitioners and those suffering illness and disability. Insofar as medical practitioners cooperate in aid-in-dying, they contradict this solidarity and undermine the trust that patients need to allow themselves to be cared for by physicians when they are sick and debilitated.

Making the Turn to Kant

Introducing Part Two of the book, this chapter sets the program for a revisionary interpretation of Kant’s ethics, broadly understood. The new interpretation aims to defuse standard objections, to offer a compelling reading of key texts, and to justify its method by giving us a better moral theory, in both Kant’s terms and ours. A first task for a moral theory with ambitions of application is to make a case for its value to those whom it would direct. For Kantian morality it is the creation of a morally shaped social environment made and managed over time by free, equal, and self-directing persons, an environment suited to the expression of their human rational nature: a moral habitat. To suit such a project, theorizing about moral practice should be hermeneutical, abstract first principles interpreted to render intelligible what morality is actually like for moral agents and moral subjects. We should come to see our duties as vehicles for habitat construction.

The experience of moral interaction of students with other people: a pedagogical aspect

The paper actualizes the problem of a persons formation as a moral person with virtues. The directions of moral education, contributing to the formation of a moral personality, are indicated, and the need to highlight the formation of the experience of moral interaction with other people among university students as an aspect of moral education is argued. It is substantiated that the experience of moral interaction of students with other people is the result of the implementation of a special type of relationship in which moral values are actualized, taking the form of motives of actions and actions of students in relation to other people, which in such an experience reflecting moral practice as a set of real actions of a student, the world of morality and its inherent values is being realized. The methodological grounds for identifying the structure of the experience of moral interaction of students with other people are revealed: scientific provisions on the reflection in the fundamental structure of experience of the fundamental structure of the world; scientific provisions on individual morality, mediating the relationship between external factors that determine the behavior of a person and its internal (social, moral) meaning. The structural components of the experience of moral interaction of students with other people are highlighted: cognitive, motivational-value, communicative and behavioral components and the possibilities of identifying these components are argued. It is substantiated that the allocation of the cognitive component is based on the idea of the correspondence of behavior to knowledge; the allocation of a motivational-value component - on the position of the guiding role in human activity of motives, the form of which values take; highlighting the communicative component - on the interpretation of communication as one of the types of interaction that has a moral component; the allocation of the behavioral component - on the provisions of moral practice.

On the Teachability of Moral

From the perspective of moral connotation and moral conditions, moral is essentially a tendency of human nature to be good, which embodies the practical wisdom of human beings. The article combines predecessors' discussion and research on moral education, and demonstrates that moral is teachable from two aspects: whether moral is innate and whether moral can be developed. Then three paths of moral education are proposed: the telling of moral stories; the development of moral education teaching materials; the awakening of cultural sympathy,in order to promote people’s moral understanding and moral practice.