A significant part of the debate concerning the nature of rational requirements centers on disambiguating ordinary articulations of conditional requirements of rationality. Particular focus has been put on the question of whether conditional requirements of rationality take a wide or a narrow logical scope. However, this paper shows that this focus is misguided and harmful to the debate. I argue that concentrating on syntactic scope renders us more likely to arrive at incorrect formulations of rational requirements and to overlook questions of greater philosophical importance.

Early traits of moral subjectivism can be gleaned from some of Plato’s dialogues with the emphasis on the “self.” The Socratic injunction “man know thyself” provided a stimulus for self-examination and self-awareness, which spring from human subjectivity. The Republic, Plato’s greatest dialogue, a magisterial masterpiece, recognized truth, value, and reality as fluctuating as they relate to the physical world. However, he gave much credence to the forms or ideas as the real reality. Plato recognized the centrality of human subjectivity—the contemplative intellect which grasps the forms—as the basis of truth, value, and intelligibility in the physical world. His accommodation of objectivity and subjectivity is an eloquent testimony to the centrality of duality not only in the everyday reality of humanity, but also in the decision making process in world affairs. For Plato, subjectivity is grounded in “theory of justice,” the recognition that communication, understanding, and co-operation are required for harmony and peaceful co-existence to subsist in the human community. Not adhering to Plato’s theory of justice, which stipulates the need for specialization of functions—i.e., one man, one job—is injustice, and does not encourage peace and stability.This paper recognizes the need to go beyond Plato’s presentation of moral objectivism as an independent realm of reality to moral subjectivity. This is the task of a philosophy that recognizes the importance of the idea of human freedom and the attainment of a stable society.

This article explains how Aquinas understood: a) apprehension of the first intellectual concepts: ens, verum et bonum simpliciter (Ens is understood metaphysically as composed of human nature and the act of being, ordered according to the bonum); b) establishment of the first and the second practical commandments in a genuinely human or rational person; c) ethics and natural law as essentially derived from ontology. Therefore, natural law only makes sense from a metaphysical point of view, not merely a physical or material one.

This paper explores two different, even opposite, genealogies of Europe in contemporary phenomenology by Martin Heidegger and Jan Patočka. On the one hand, the paper focuses upon Heidegger’s 1936 lecture on “Europe and German Philosophy”, which is one of his lesser-known texts. In light of this reading, the paper examines a series of key commentaries by Éliane Escoubas, Franco Volpi, Franco Chiereghin, and Reiner Schürmann. On the other hand, the later Jan Patočka’s discourse on Europe lies upon utterly different hermeneutic premisses, construing a new humanism and renewing the metaphysical tradition in the form of negative Platonism. It concludes by arguing that the major differences between Heidegger’s and Patočka’s phenomenological genealogies of Europe are, first, their different stances toward Western metaphysics and humanism, and, second, their divergent understandings of historical lifeworlds.

The knowledge-based society developed technologies of information in order to make better use all the data it had acquired and to manage it efficiently. Computers have replaced human memory and improved other human capacities. However, these changes have had some hidden effects. Some information is processed by computers, and the epistemic subject is replaced by them. From an epistemological point of view, we cannot speak about the bits of knowledge that are stored, but only the semantic information or data which is attached. Secondly, in the case of an epistemic subject, the so-called tacit knowledge which is incorporated into skills and practical capacities becomes more important, and is externalized in new forms. Therefore, my claim is that we can speak of a paradoxical reverse transition from knowledge to information in the knowledge-based society.

In this paper, I will attempt to formulate some observations about the limits of a traditional ontology that is in its essence a judicative one. The main goal is to explore the possibility of constructing a pre-judicative ontology; in other words, to describe the cognitive and affective elements that are “under” the main ontological judgments, related naturally to being. The arguments in favor of a pre-judicative ontology offer a new perspective on judicative ontology itself. This pre-judicative ontology is nevertheless a kind of judicative ontology that covers a nonspecific realm of values. The paper has three parts: 1) a description of the main characteristics of traditional ontology from a judicative perspective; 2) the formulation of some logical conditions of possibility for a pre-judicative ontology; and 3) the outline of a pre-judicative ontology as an ontology of values.

This paper is focused, firstly, on the status of Christianity (as a whole) after a long period of secularization—examining in particular its “protective mechanisms”— and, secondly, on the modern tendencies that are transforming the present into an age of desecularization. The central interest here is the interaction between the civil and Christian values in the context of the two historical periods. The article provides a comparison between the aggressive use of reason during the Enlightenment and postmodern religious indifferentism in an attempt to illuminate the present status of Christianity.

This paper aims to explain why we experience any virtual world as a space, even though we cannot speak about virtual words as having spatiality in the common sense of the word. Following Kant’s analysis of space and Merleau-Ponty’s view on the same, I will try to account, at least in part, for the mentioned phenomenon by explaining why cyberspace is experienced with an expectation of space, as is any other exterior object. Also, I will argue that this space should always be understood in the sense of a horizon. I am operating here under the assumption that any experience of the virtual world cannot be separated from the real world, because they are part of the same lived experience.

This paper is focused on clarifying the concept and the phenomenon of aesthetic heterotopia. The paper takes as its starting point the cultural phenomenon of heterotopia itself and then reveals its aesthetical component in order to find the “topos” of aesthetic heterotopia in contemporary culture.Thus, the main task of the paper will be exploring the boundaries and the relations between possibility and reality in aesthetic heterotopia through W. T. Anderson’s central figure of the postmodern ironist as the only type of worldview with future. In this context, some important issues of contemporary philosophical aesthetics will be discussed, such as: what is the mechanism of creating new aesthetic heterotopias, and what is it based on? Why can the field of classical aesthetics not cover such a cultural phenomenon? Why can non-classical aesthetics also be called process aesthetics, and what do aesthetic heterotopias and the field of process philosophy have in common?And last but not least: what moral attitudes do plenty of aesthetic heterotopias encourage?

The main aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between two innovative concepts—the technoself and process identity—from a perspective inspired by process ontology. The working hypothesis is that industrialized and mass societies entered into a post-industrial or informational sphere of capitalism, becoming networking societies—also known as knowledge-based societies—which closely followed their role in approaching the plural identity of the digital Subject and the surveillance practices exercised in its governance as correspondent models for the changes of the current reality. The first section of the article is devoted to research on the technoself, a concept recently introduced by Luppicini in 2013. Criticizing the technoself in terms of process ontology and as a result of digitalization, subjectivity, and technical rationality, I will argue that the constitution of digital subjects, as well as their interactions, should be defined in terms of processes. Therefore, I introduce the concept of process identity—which includes the technoself—and explain how this approach contributes to the development of different research fields (such as speculative realism and object-oriented ontology) and how it affects Floridi’s distinction between digital ontology and informational ontology. The second section focuses on the effects of the digital environment on self-constitution practices and techniques, virtual worlds experiencing what Foucault recognizes as the aesthetics of existence. In the final part, I confront Bentham’s and Foucault’s panopticism, arguing that based on what is accomplished by process identities, networking societies represent societies of control, not disciplinary ones, and consequently this distinction should be applied in governing virtual communities. In the end, I will explain why notions such as digital personae or databased selves are insufficient, and should be replaced by the concepts of process identity and technoself, respectively, in order to improve the models of governing networking societies.

The transience of being in the Chinese context—and specifically within Daoist texts—has been the subject of scholarly attention both as a philosophical theme and as a social phenomenon. Dao is the mystery that makes nature “the way it is.” It can mean process, pattern, or existence. Eastern thinkers tend to find truth in every perspective, pursuing the middle way, and they stress mutual dependence—Zhuangzi’s “equality of things,” the “axis of Dao,” etc. The Chinese sages tend to harbor an optimistic outlook that, however opposed divergent views may appear, in the end they are bound to harmonize and complement one another. Humans can unite themselves with the way they live. There are three threads at work in Zhuangzi’s thought:(1) The principle of equality: all things are equal or have relative parity. Each has its own merit, even that which seems deformed or useless to humans.(2) The principle of difference: each thing is unique and exists in itself in accordance with the Dao.(3) The principle of transformation. The only constant is that myriad beings are always transforming and becoming.

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, I examine the role of Alfred North Whitehead and process thinkers in bringing about and shaping the field of environmental ethics. As we will see, our job is not so much to develop the connections between Whitehead and environmental thought as to recover them. Second, given this genealogical work, I invite process scholars to reconsider their generally hostile reception of Aldo Leopold and his land ethic. I suggest that a version of the land ethic grounded in a process axiology could make a significant contribution to contemporary environmental thought.

In this paper I aim at questioning L. Buell’s politics of the environment, which relies on the assumption of unproblematic coexistence between man and nature. Analyzing Stanley Cavell’s reading of Henry D. Thoreau, I try to show that the natural is always already cultural and that a reengagement with nature in itself is the very process of becoming political. In this context, I will examine why Cavell’s Thoreau redirects us from biocentrism to humanism and provocatively turns political education away from anodyne aspirations for coexistence and towards a qualified isolation.

In this paper I develop a framework for environmental philosophy on the ground of what I call a radical relationalism based on Whitehead’s thought. Accordingly, relations are ontologically prior to and constitutive of entities rather than being conceived as external link(ing) between them. On this ground an alternative, relational axiology can be developed that challenges the current environmental ethics debate and its dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumental values. In the last section, I show how such an axiology can become an important ally for global environmental justice struggles and help support what the anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls a “decolonial view of nature.”

A number of recent environmental philosophers (Vogel, Morton, Latour) have proclaimed the end of nature. They oppose what they consider to be an outdated view of nature as a basis for environmental philosophy and political ecology. Instead of “thinking like a mountain” (Leopold), we should begin “thinking like a mall” (Vogel). These end-of-nature thinkers claim that the concept of nature in environmental discourses is bound to be something that is outside of us because man is understood as doing something to nature. Without putting forth a clearly defined concept of “nature,” we argue that proclaiming the end of nature is misguided. This proclamation means forgetting the body. If we really want to get beyond understanding nature as something outside of us, and truly sense and understand ourselves as natural or environmental beings who are a part of the earth’s ecosystem, we should direct our attention to how nature as the biotic, inner/outer environment is experienced and sensed in and through our bodies. We thus suggest that environmental philosophy should encourage sensing like embodied beings before introducing notions like thinking like a mountain, mall, water, or a plant for that matter. This approach is among other things based on the phenomemology of the body (Merleau-Ponty) and phenomenology of the real (Conrad-Martius).”

Cassirer’s philosophy of symbols is applied to Uexküll’s concept of “Umwelt” (meaningful environment). I argue that the vast domain of human symbolism extends the human Umwelt far beyond the Umwelts of animal species. We humans live and act in many intersecting symbolic worlds, one of the most important of which is our ethical Umwelt. I claim that against the background of ecological disaster and the uncontrolled accelerating incursion of our financial institutions and biotechnological industry into planetary ecology, the term “Umwelt” can no longer simply mean the part of our surroundings that is meaningful to us. Given the current severe ecological crisis, Cassirer’s idea of an “ethical Umwelt” must also be expanded, and an ethical imperative must be integrated into our understanding of “environment.” In other words, for us today the meaning of the term “Umwelt” or “meaningful environment” should be synonymous with “the living world to be saved” or “sacred environment.”

Environmental ethics is based on the extension of the morality sphere as a consequence of an enlarged moral community beyond the limits of human community. I argue in this paper that the turning point in this extension is the notion of intrinsic value. But the process of extension produces some theoretical puzzles. One of them is the essential tension between the aim to include more and more entities into the moral community and the need for a hierarchy in order to preserve the interests of a good life for more complex living beings. My suggestion is that if the suppositions of traditional anthropocentrism are dislodged, the theoretical conflict is balanced or even dissolved at a managerial level. Biocentrism is the theory that could assume this task.

The article discusses the genealogy of 20th-century Norwegian ecophilosophies as deriving from a specific philosophy of climbing, one which is irreducible to philosophy of alpinism so far as it is based on the principle of cooperation and on the intrinsic value of interacting with the mountain rather than on competition, which makes the mountain an arena for sport activities. In this context, the expression to think like a mountain will be analyzed as something more than an impressive metaphor, and examined as a new way of thinking that avoids the extremes of both radical anthropocentrism and biocentrism.

The protection and improvement of the environment represents the most essential field of engagement among all the issues of international policy. An ecological paradigm in the traditional and postmodern context refers to a strategic approach to solving the outstanding controversies of human society in different stages of its existence. Globalization of the environment is the oldest example of this process, which in the contemporary world has gained a special significance. Negative trends in addressing ecological problems at all levels of organization of the planetary community oblige the international participants to apply more adequate measures to preserve the ecological safety of humankind.

The immediate history of relations between man and nature is marked by mutual conflict. Until recently, nature had supremacy over man through the force of its natural power. During this period, the encounter with nature for man was a conflict with wholly implacable forces. Advances in science and technology have in some cases tamed the forces of nature, and now man can carry out planned and systematic violence against it. In so doing, he came to a privileged, but also sinful relationship with nature. The end result proved devastating for both nature and for man. Man's quality of life has increased, but at an unacceptable cost for the environment, especially considering that both man and nature will be in dire straits in the not-so-distant future. It is urgent that man, as a reasonable officer of nature, finds ways to reconcile his relationship with nature.