Source Of Moral Values Research Articles

Hüsün-Kubuh Bağlamında Kelâm’ın Ahlâk Kuramları

The main research area of kalām science: Existence, knowledge and value. In this context, God-universe, God-human, human-nature and other creatures and human-human connection are important. Establishing the aforementioned contacts depends on resolving the issue of good (ḥusun)-evil (kubuḥ). The Good-evil problem is to investigate the origin and nature of morality. On the basis of morality, there are voluntary and free actions of the subject. Values should be taken into the research field by establishing a close relationship between will and action. Searching for origins in values is to make it functional. In other words, in order to transfer theoretical values to practical values, the origin of the values must be found. As a result of the search of origins in values, we will encounter two theories subjective and objective values. Subjective values theory depends on the subject. The theory of objective values is independent of the subject. It is al-Ashʿarī who adopts the first approach in theological (kalām) thought. The second one is adopted by Muʿtazila. The source of moral values in the Ashʿarīte doctrine is the subject God. In this approach, the right of divine power and divine wisdom are not given the same proportion. However, it is necessary to think separately on the fact that all subject-dependent issues are always variable. The equalization of the Ashʿarī system with the relativity current, which maintains that God, who gives existence and determines existence, also determines morality, should also be questioned.

Constitutionalizing nature’s law: dignity and the regulation of biotechnology in Switzerland

Abstract The Swiss Constitution was amended by referendum in 1992 to include two unique provisions: Article 119, which imposes strict limits on genetic and reproductive technologies in humans in order to protect ‘human dignity’, and Article 120, which commits the Swiss federal government to limiting genetic technologies in non-human species on the basis of the ‘dignity of the creature’. This article analyzes the role of ‘dignity’ as a limit on biotechnologies in the Swiss constitutional order. It concludes that the understanding of dignity the constitution embraces codifies a contestable metaphysical theory of value at the constitutional level. Specifically, the Swiss constitutional concept of dignity embraces the normative theory that the natural order is a source of moral value. Because this theory speaks directly to contested questions of the good life, Switzerland’s adoption of it as a constitutional principle is analogous to the adoption of a religious theory in a constitution. The concept of dignity as understood in the Swiss constitutional order is contrary to the commitment to epistemic humility characteristic of liberal constitutions.

Islam as moral education: madrasa courses and contestation of the secular in the Republicof Tatarstan, Russia

In this paper, based on fieldwork in a small town in post-Soviet Tatarstan, Russia, I explore the dynamics of religious life in a rural community, highlighting the ways religious and secular education interact with and reinforce each other, contributing to the processes of religious revival in this community. Soviet ideas and practices of moral education as well as post-Soviet concerns about morality constitute the common ground that brings secular and religious together. Adhering to the Soviet idea that society is responsible for the moral education of its young people, local schoolteachers use Islam as a source of moral values and disciplining practices to bring up the younger generation, affected by post-Soviet transformations. Teachers increasingly rely on Islamic ethics in the moral upbringing of schoolchildren that effectively challenges the separation between secular and religious education. Religion acquires growing significance as a process of moral edification and discipline.

Kirjallisuushistoria, kaanon ja kansallinen identiteetti neuvostoajan jälkeisellä Venäjällä

Literary History, Canon and National Identity in Post-Soviet Russia The disintegration of the Soviet Union brought Russian-language cultural canons and institutions into turmoil. In this article, we approach the turmoil from a viewpoint that has gained little scholarly attention. This is the dynamics between literary history, canonizing processes, and national identity. To shed light on the role of literary history and its uses in contemporary Russia, we analyze Russian-language literary histories aimed at academic audiences, textbooks written for college-level as well as primary and secondary school students, and guidelines of literary education issued by the Ministry of Education and Sciences of the Russian Federation. Our analysis shows that Russian-language literary histories offer a rather traditional view of literature and pay little attention to hybrid genres, nonfiction, or popular forms of writing. The textbooks often present the literary-historical narrative in an encyclopedic form structured around individual authors. Russian literary histories tend to highlight literature as a source of moral values; phenomena associated with social or political critique and aesthetic experimentation, such as the historical avant-garde, get less attention than more conservative movements. There is little room for questions of ethnicity and gender, and female writers are mostly absent, whereas the patriarchal values of village prose, for instance, are widely discussed. The teaching of literary history in college as well as at the primary and secondary school levels follows the patriotic identity politics articulated in the Foundations of State Cultural Politics issued by the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation in 2013.

Diesseits von Angebot und Nachfrage / On this side of supply and demand

Zusammenfassung In seinem Buch „Jenseits von Angebot und Nachfrage“ (1958) geißelt Wilhelm Röpke den Trend zu Ökonomismus und Säkularismus: die Menschen unterwerfen ihr ganzes Handeln wirtschaftlichem Kalkül, ihnen geht die spirituelle Quelle von Werten verloren. Nach Röpke ist die Marktwirtschaft ein „Nettomoralverzehrer“. Wenn die Moral nicht immer wieder aus einer separaten Quelle wie der Religion gespeist wird, verschwindet sie - und damit auch die Basis der Marktwirtschaft. Doch wie sinnvoll ist es, eine solche grundsätzliche Front zwischen dem Markt und der Moral aufzumachen? Im Individuum überlappen sich beide Sphären. Abgesehen von seinem institutionellen Charakter ist der Markt schließlich nichts weiter als eine Chiffre der gesellschaftlichen Interaktion von Menschen. In einem Prozess der Reziprozität herstellenden Rückkopplungen entsteht sowohl der wirtschaftliche Wohlstand der Nation als auch der moralische - jenes evolvierende Sozialkapital an Werten, gemeinsamen, auch religiösen Überzeugungen, Moral und Traditionen, das eine Gesellschaft trägt.

Media Literacy and Communication Rights

/ The dominant discourse of media literacy policy espouses an ethical individualism within the digital media environment in which the source of moral values and principles, and the basis of ethical evaluation, is the individual. In this perspective, even vulnerable citizens such as children and young people, who tend to be in the vanguard of new media adoption, are required to negotiate the risks and opportunities of the online world with diminishing degrees of institutional support from trusted information sources. Noticeably absent from this discourse is any consideration of the notion of communication rights. Examining an alternative conceptualization of media literacy identifies it as a fundamental human right as important as other forms of literacy. Examining some of the ethical challenges that citizens now face in the digital world, the article argues that a rights-based framework is required to address the challenges posed for media literacy education.

Is Agent-Based Virtue Ethics Self-Undermining?

Agent-based virtue ethics strives to offer a viable account of both moral conduct and the source of moral value, independent of 'deontic' teleo- logical and deontological characterizations. One of its chief proponents offers an agent-based virtue-ethical account that aspires to derive all moral value, including the moral status of actions, solely from the 'aretaic' concept of bene- volence. I suggest that morality as benevolence fails to offer a viable account of either virtuous moral conduct or the source of moral value, because it is self- undermining in both respects. In order to solve this structural problem, it appears as if the theory may have to give up its agent-based status.

CITRA SRIKANDHI DALAM CERITERA MAHABARATA (Pencitraan Nilai -Nilai Kewanitaan dalam Budaya Jawa )

One of art forms capable for being used as the source of moral values in li f t is Javanese shadow puppet because it contains various kinds of prin c iples and ethi c values. Indones i a people c an make use of the principles and values to survive. The glorious prin c iples and values made use of Indonesian people (espetialIy the Javane s e) have existed since the old da y s. S rikandhi, one of female figures in the Maha b arata, is often thought of as an ideal figure because this female figure has the p e rsonalit y that i s s uitable f o r a model for responsibility, dis c ipline, bravery, skills, and leadership. She is willing to put her own interest a side for the sake of the interest of others or her country. S rikandhi’s character has the image of femininity value. Javanese femininity value in the figur e of Srikandhi is differ e nt from gender and feminism at issue which tend to think that Ja v ane s e w o men are always position e d as subordinate, weak and hopeless. The figure of Srik a ndhi p r oje c ts an image of femininity value which positions women as strong chara c ters , having strong potential as resources and not subordinate to men. Gender and feminism at issue aimed at Javanese women are strongfy rejected Srikandhi becomes the figure who presents the rejection of the issue through the estbetic image morally and artistically. K ey words : Srik a nd hi, Wom e n , Value

Gadamer on Art, Morality, and Authority

Gadamer On Art, Morality, and Authority Kenneth L. Buckman Mary Devereaux claims that the problem of morality in the twentieth century and the anxiety caused by the fear of moral chaos fall into two main responses: (1) one looks to the past because the past seems to afford what the present lacks, i.e., a commonly shared and stable moral reality; and (2) one looks to the present and comes to terms with the way things are, a strategy of accommodation that revises our over inflated notions of knowledge and justification, particularly moral justification. 1 She sees Gadamer’s work as an additional option that responds to this problem. Devereaux says Gadamer’s response to the collapse of traditional morality is a turn to the experience of art wherein one derives morals from an extra-moral sense. Thus, Gadamer’s aesthetic example serves as a source of moral value. Devereaux says Gadamer’s project fails, in that his account contains an optimistic and unquestioned assumption that art always operates to our benefit (p. 71). However, Gadamer is appreciative of the deficiencies and dangers inherent in the kind of view he holds and does not hold an excessively optimistic, romanticized, naive, or prescriptive view of tradition. Gadamer’s account is a descriptive explication of the manner in which societies acquire the authority to form values. Devereaux’s account is to a large extent fair and accurate. However, despite her empathy with Gadamer’s account, she has reservations about the accuracy of Gadamer’s description of art and questions the depth to which he understands the current ethical crisis. She maintains that Gadamer’s analysis indicates a preference for a certain kind of art [End Page 144] (i.e., classical), and much of twentieth-century art (Tinguely, Cage, Burden, etc.) is outside the purview of Gadamer’s analysis. Though each individual artwork, in Gadamer’s view, can serve as a metaphor for ordering in general, Burden et al. aim, “not simply to introduce new materials or new subject matter within an existing artistic framework, but to alter the frame” (p. 69). These artists reconceive the very nature of artistic activity and change the rules by substituting the accidental, the incomplete, and the self-contradictory in place of selection and craft (pp. 69–70). Recent artistic principles have deconstructed the notion of order, showing the failure of order itself. Should we even grant that certain types of traditional art function as Gadamer has indicated? Though we might hope for the desired result of moral cohesion, Devereaux says, we are still faced with the problem of availability and the extent to which a person’s contact with art generates the necessary moral education. Her most serious charge is Gadamer’s “unquestioned assumption” that art always operates to our benefit (p. 71). The reliance on shared tradition, Devereaux argues, positions Gadamer to argue that the interaction with texts serves the positive moral function of social cohesion. However, Gadamer’s willingness to assign normative authority to tradition opens him to serious charges of conservatism, most prominently from the criticism and viewpoint of feminists and black scholars, and he “does not acknowledge those for whom the authority of that tradition is deeply and unquestionably problematic. Might not a coherent tradition, if achieved, function oppressively?” (p. 71). Devereaux claims that Gadamer rejects this possibility. Devereaux’s criticisms thus fall into these five areas: (1) Gadamer privileges a certain kind of art (i.e., classical); (2) for Gadamer art serves as an ordering, but it does not fulfill that capacity; (3) Gadamer is unclear about the availability and the degree of contact members of a society must have with art in order for the artwork to function in its moral capacity; (4) Gadamer wrongly assumes that art always operates to our benefit; and (5) Gadamer’s acceptance of the normative authority of tradition is oppressive. Devereaux errs in all of these criticisms. Devereaux’s criticism of Gadamer’s aesthetic theory in general, disconnected for the moment from its supposed moral implications, is that his analysis is concerned with traditional or classical forms of art, ignoring the less integrative forms of art of the late twentieth century. Though it may...

Liberal Neutrality

In Patterns of Moral Complexity, Charles Larmore describes three related ways in which moral and political theory are more complex than is often allowed. He objects to three parallel simplifications: that moral decision making largely consists in the application of rules to particular situations; that the ideals by which we are guided in our personal (private, social) lives should also do service as political ideals, a simplification which he calls “expressivism”; and that there is but a single source of moral value (that we must be either consequentialists, or deontologists, or endorse the “principle of partiality”). Against these simplifications he argues in a sort of Aristotelian way for (1) the centrality of judgment in moral reasoning; (2) for the liberal principle that the state should not strive to express our highest personal ideal; and (3) for the, I suppose eclectic, view that partiality, deontological reasons, and consequentialist reasons all have a place in moral reasoning and that therefore the moral person may well be caught in conflicts that present him or her with tragic choices. These are the three “patterns of moral complexity” that the title of the book refers to.

Mme de Staël et l'esprit national

Theodora Zemek : Mme de Staël and the national spirit. This article attempts to show the originality of Mme de Stael's thought and the modernity of the theories of society, through an analysis of her conception of the decline of the national spirit. The author shows how Mme de Stael's view of the perfectibility of the human spirit, which excludes all determinism, differs from that of her predecessors. Mme de Stael attempts to give a social basis to morality by demonstrating how man, thanks to the faculty of sympathy, is drawn into community with his fellows. The sense of community, source of moral values, which becomes the national spirit, declines as society progresses ; the individual is alienated in the depersonalised modern society, in which the national spirit has been replaced by the ideal of the State.