The Consumer Ideology and the Truth about Man

The formation of the human conscience is a controverted question in both philosophical ethics and moral philosophy. Conscience refers to one’s conception and understanding of the moral good. An especially significant manifestation of the problem of conscience in the 20th and 21st centuries is the impact of ideology on the individual person’s moral sense. This article considers the impact of two 19th century philosophies―Mill’s utilitarianism and Marxism―on contemporary moral thought insofar as the interaction of these two produce a powerful materialist ideology to determine the modern European and American conscience. We then turn to the thought of Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła), who in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor and in his earlier philosophical writings developed an account of moral truth by which the dangers of materialistic ideology can be overcome. It is argued, with John Paul II, that only in the context of truth can a coherent account of freedom of conscience under the moral law be developed.

The Glowing Screen Before Me and the Moral Law Within me: A Kantian Duty Against Screen Overexposure

This paper establishes a Kantian duty against screen overexposure. After defining screen exposure, I adopt a Kantian approach to its morality on the ground that Kant’s notion of duties to oneself easily captures wrongdoing in absence of harm or wrong to others. Then, I draw specifically on Kant’s ‘duties to oneself as an animal being’ to introduce a duty of self-government. This duty is based on the negative causal impact of the activities it regulates on a human being’s mental and physical powers, and, ultimately, on the moral employment of these powers. After doing so, I argue that the duty against screen overexposure is an instance of the duty of self-government. Finally, I consider some objections.

A Flair for Theory: Freud, Derrida, Kafka, and Kant

Derrida's essay, ‘Devant la loi’, opens with the citation of an1897 letter from Freud to his friend, Wilhelm Fliess, in which he confides that he has a presentiment he shall soon discover the origin of morality. What interests Derrida is not only the discovery that will indeed soon follow but the temporal structure of presentiment itself. Seeking to give such a vague intimation a more rigorous sense, he theorizes presentiment as a way of ‘precognizing’ something that will never otherwise have been known as such. Through close readings of Kafka, Freud and Kant, Derrida asks how the moral law itself might be thinkable only in the mode of a certain pre-, a mode whose very ‘beforeness’ has to be radically rethought.

Did Christ Have a Conscience? Revisiting the Debates on Christ’s (Un)Fallen Humanity

This article draws on the Dutch neo-Calvinist dogmatician Herman Bavinck’s notion of conscience to explore the question of whether Christ’s assumed humanity is fallen or unfallen. It will demonstrate that, for Bavinck, Christ’s conscience was silent and did not accuse or exonerate him according to the moral law (the word of God) as occurs in the postlapsarian conscience. Such a unique conscience reflects the unfallenness of Christ’s humanity and his impeccability. Moreover, Christ’s impeccability is concomitant with Christ’s permanent response to God’s word in faith. This suggests that in the eschaton, the human conscience will become silent in a faithful trust in the word of God.

The Making of Islamic Economic Thought

Interrogating the development and conceptual framework of economic thought in the Islamic tradition pertaining to ethical, philosophical, and theological ideas, this book provides a critique of modern Islamic economics as a hybrid economic system. From the outset, Sami Al-Daghistani is concerned with the polyvalent methodology of studying the phenomenon of Islamic economic thought as a human science in that it nurtures a complex plentitude of meanings and interpretations associated with the moral self. By studying legal scholars, theologians, and Sufis in the classical period, Al-Daghistani looks at economic thought in the context of Sharī'a's moral law. Alongside critiquing modern developments of Islamic economics, he puts forward an idea for a plural epistemology of Islam's moral economy, which advocates for a multifaceted hermeneutical reading of the subject in light of a moral law, embedded in a particular cosmology of human relationality, metaphysical intelligibility, and economic subjectivity.

Apriorism as the Basis of Spirituality in the Philosophical Heritage of Europe and Russia: An Ethical Aspect

Статья призвана определить значение нравственного компонента априорности в философском наследии И. Канта, В. С. Соловьева и М. Шелера и выявить потенциал соответствующих концепций в аспекте совершения нравственного выбора. Исследование основано на трудах перечисленных мыслителей и результатах научных изысканий современных философов. Для каждой из рассмотренных концепций установлено значение чистых априорных категорий и чувственного опыта в нравственном выборе. Эволюция осмысления априорных форм в европейском и отечественном философском наследии заключалась в движении от кантовского формализма к пониманию априорности как целостной установки, определяющей предпочтение человеком одних ценностей другим. Подчеркнута актуальность проанализированных произведений философского наследия для современной моральной практики. Моральный выбор должен осуществляться личностью, нравственно-априорные основания которой актуализируются посредством чувственно-эмоционального переживания этических ценностей. The article aims to establish the meaning of the moral component of apriorism in the philosophical heritage of Immanuel Kant, Vladimir Solovyov, and Мax Scheler, and to determine the possibility of using appropriate conceptions when choosing the moral position of a person in modern culture. The research material was writings by the mentioned thinkers and research analysing their heritage by modern scholars. The methodology is based on the principles of philosophical comparative studies and an axiological approach, which allowed comparing the values and ideas inherent in the conceptions of the three philosophers. The author examines Kant’s heritage in the aspect of the analysis of ideas related to a priori forms and pays special attention to Kant’s theses related to the practical activities of a person as basic apriorism and the importance of moral law in this activity. The author next turns to the philosophical heritage of Solovyov and identifies his views on the elements of an ethical nature that make up the ontological basis of the philosopher’s personality. She further analyses works by Scheler, which allowed comparing his view with Kant’s ethical ideas by the criterion of revealing a person’s attitude to the surrounding world. The value of pure a priori categories and sensory experience in moral choice is established for each of the considered conceptions. The author concludes that the comprehension of the meaning of a priori forms in the European and domestic philosophical heritage during almost three centuries demonstrates a sufficiently clear evolution based on Kant’s formal law of duty, which later received a critical assessment in the works of Russian and foreign thinkers. The main content of this evolution was a departure from Kant’s formalism towards understanding apriorism as a holistic attitude, which determines a person’s preference for some values to others and thus contributes to the formation of a hierarchy of personal values. The three thinkers emphasised the importance of apriorism and a priori forms as fundamental foundations of human morality; however, the philosophical meaning and specific characteristics of the forms changed noticeably throughout the three centuries. Based on her research, the author emphasises the relevance of the examined works for modern moral practice. The individual must be not only a subject of cognitive activity but also a person, whose moral and a priori foundations are actualised through the sensual and emotional experience of ethical values.