This study deals with the place and meaning of "legality" in Kant's moral philosophy. Although the return to Kantianism dominates contemporary political and legal thought, the boundaries of the analyses of the relationship between morality and legality in Kant's moral philosophy are confined to the boundaries drawn by John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. While Rawls and Habermas consider law and morality as intersecting sets of rules and rights, they mostly consider this relationship in terms of the question of the legitimacy of law. By contrast, this study is an attempt to reconsider the Kantian link between morality and legality beyond the question of the legitimacy of law. Without the deontological filters of the Rawlsian and Habermasian political and legal theory, and therefore without leaving teleological and axiological concerns outside of the field of application, this study is an attempt to analyze the possible ways of understanding the conceptual connection between morality and legality in Kant's moral philosophy. Hence in this study, by paying particular attention to The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Metaphysics of Morals, I will analyze the role of legality in Kant's morality. The study first explains the goals of Groundwork and Metaphysics as Kant describes them. The study then turns to the discussion of duty as the central concept of Kant's thought. In the process, the study questions the possible ways of understanding the conceptual relationship between moral and legal obligation in Kant's thought, and mainly emphasizes two possible different conceptualizations of that relationship, (a) The first understanding can be constructed on the claim that the obligation of the moral subject is also to follow the fundamental principles of morality, the Categorical Imperative, in the legal order, which is part of the phenomenal world. The main point of this understanding lies in the idea that Kant's understanding of legal obligation presupposes the will's capacity to abstract from inclinations, (b) The second understanding, in contrast to the first one, can be built on the belief that moral and legal obligations should be conceived as completely distinct and non-intersecting in Kant's moral philosophy. From this perspective, neither moral obligation nor legal obligation can affect each other. The study concludes by focusing on moderate interventionism as a possible third option for linking moral and legal obligations in Kant's moral philosophy.

In this paper I argue that Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right is the philosophical basis for contemporary international human rights. The law of world citizenship or cosmopolitan right is necessary in order to secure hospitable interactions between individuals and states. Such interactions in turn create an international civil culture or "cosmopolitan condition" which 1 is the source of the further specification and eventual codification of human rights. Human rights, I conclude, are universal because of their international significance and scope and are inherently linked to cosmopolitan values.

The paper discusses situation-specific justifications for temporary curtailment of particular human rights, Asian justifications for Western values and human rights practices, and the plausibility of a distinctively East Asian conception of human interest and welfare that may justify a distinctively East Asian human rights regime. The paper argues that the so-called East Asian challenge is the prioritization of social and economic rights over civil and political rights and hence does not represent a culturally specific challenge but rather addresses a debate between commi. ütarians and liberals which already exists in the Western scholarly community. Marxist and other nonliberal critiques of civil and political rights are invoked and it is suggested that the relative weakness of the left intelligentsia since the end of the Cold W-r is responsible for the resurfacing of the formerly communitarian and Marxist emphasis on social and economic rights in cultural relativist disguise. The article further chums that it was through the industrial revolution and the corresponding discourse of modernity that these rights emerged within the theocentric cultural traditions of Wesiern Europe, and that the flourishing of human rights discourse in non-Western socie.!;.es will also follow and correspond to their economic development.

It is a fact that the reception of European codes into Turkish law was done bravely and without looking back. How and to what extent the European codes that were adopted in this way have affected social life is one of the difficult problems of sociology of law and philosophy of law. The above-mentioned historical perspective brings with it the following consequences: • The necessity of a uniform law; • The necessity to create a legal system that will deal satisfactorily with new events and developments; and • The necessity of a uniform law uniting me national body as the key to meeting the obligation of absolute independence in order to get rid of external pressures. The Turkish Revolution started with these targets and has been progressing in the same direction without any changes in its substantial content.

This essay investigates the possibility of veering from an approach of doing bad to the offender as the primary response to crime to one of requiring the offender to do good. This approach, in effect, has us offset the evil which the offender has placed on the scales of justice with good which the offender is required to produce; hence the conception of New Balance. The specific focus here is to identify important deficiencies in the major approaches of retributivism and utilitarian-deterrence theory to pave the way for New Balance.

At an international conference on philosophy and anthropology held in 1968, French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida remarked that an international philosophical encounter is an extremely rare thing in the world. Twenty years later, American moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre argued that moral discourse today entails the recognition that there are many rationalities, each with its conception of justice, such that one must ask the questions, "Which rationality? Whose justice?" In this paper I take note of these observations with reference to the claim that human rights have universal validity, recognizing that international discussions about this claim are moments in which "the West" presumably experiences a "collocution" with discourses from "the margin". My argument proceeds to conclude that any legitimate discussion of human rights must acknowledge the need for movement from cultural hierarchy to cultural symmetry, thereby conceding that traditions alien to the Western tradition of moral discourse may be superior in rationality, both theoretical and practical, thereby being instructive about the requirements of global justice.

The article presents a case study of ethno-linguistic policy in the ethnic Republics of Central Russia (the Chuvash Republic and the Republic of Tatarstan), with special emphasis on the analysis of language acts and correlated legislation. It raises an important problem concerning the efficacy of the Language Laws and their conceptual foundations. One of the main assets in facing this problem is adequate reflection on the actual ethno-linguistic situation by the legislature, ensuring peaceful and productive social development. Analysis of the conceptual fundamentals and the concrete language laws in action as well as instrumental interaction shows a wide range of factors influencing the efficacy of policies. Acknowledgement of the bilingual situation by the legislatures of the Republics manifests a valuable perspective on productive development, provided the language laws are implemented intelligently and supported in the educational and cultural spheres. Multilingualism as a universal form of socialization should be recognized as a valuable opportunity and receive the necessary legislative support.

In the discussion of moral diversity the most influential approaches have been relativism, monism and minimum universalism. In this paper I argue, however, that this kind of general distinction is not as such very helpful. It does not show what is really decisive in those approaches and what is the crucial distinguishing feature among them. The most important issue, I think, is the relationship between rules that guide human beings in their pursuit of the good life and rules that specify what people can do in relation to one another. Generally speaking, moral doctrines, or theories, can be divided into two categories on the basis of their answer to this question. Some doctrines—which may be called comprehensive—begin with a definite account of the highest good and determine the rights and duties of human beings on the basis of this account. Other theories, non-comprehensive, treat these two as separate issues that should not be mixed. Although such a distinction is seldom explicitly made, its significance is evident, for instance in the current discussion of human rights. Various religiously and culturally motivated reinterpretations of human rights quite distinctively stand for the former view. Moreover, even though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly represents the latter approach, it has been claimed that it nevertheless puts forward a specifically Western life ideal. In order to make sense of the human rights discourse at all, it is of fundamental importance to distinguish between comprehensive and non-comprehensive approaches. Without such a distinction it is difficult to determine how to deal with competing claims about the origin, range and content of human rights (or common moral standards), not to speak of deciding between these claims.

The hermeneutic anthropology of human rights is a possible anthropology before human rights. It does not aim at a deductive demonstration of the validity of human rights, but it delivers a hermeneutic justification of them by taking into account the a priori link of self-understanding with living body. Three aspects are most relevant in this case: a) The human person not only exists, but also has a value which is recognized within the shared world of persons. The embodied presence of persons is affirmed beyond pure facticity through the meta-grammatical terms " I " , "you" and "we". This mutual affirmation as an act of freedom indicates the primordial value of dignity, b) The human person has to arrange its uncertainty as a living being. It has to prevail over nature, in order to create an order of life. This consciousness of being able to act is the source of power. Nevertheless, power is produced as a kind of surplus through social interaction. The tension between power and recognition is always renewed and remains an open question for society, c) Human rights introduce moral demands on power. They define the political order of the society in such a way that the citizens can carry out their plan of life. Furthermore, they preserve the awareness of the limits, since human dignity indicates that the embodied presence of the human person and its world-character should not be defined apart from freedom and recognition.

In this article I explore, from a philosophical perspective, what the responsibility for biodiversity means. Biodiversity is a peculiar thing because it consists of the variety of life in its all manifestations, that is, in all its forms, levels and combinations. Variation is a main characteristic of life on earth. Because of its vastness a collective has not only a right but also a duty to take responsibility for biodiversity conservation, and furthermore it has a prima facie duty to implement those measures the accomplishment of this requires. This includes the appropriate legislative and policy means. My argument for collective responsibility is mainly based on contrafactual reasoning, that is, if a collective takes no responsibility for the conservation of biodiversity, then no one takes responsibility. Providing that species extinction is something we definitely want to avoid, collective responsibility is well founded.

This article focuses on the relationship between democracy and education in the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. According to de Tocqueville the progress of democracy as a political system throughout history is a universal; it is gradual and unavoidable. It also aims at equality among humankind. This idea is based on the existence of a common human nature that causes a definite morality; the Christian variety. For this author the idea of social and political freedom and the growth of a healthy and democratic society are strongly linked to education for the development of personal and social virtues. As a result of this, the State must create social institutions with a double function. The first one is that it should protect the citizen against anything that might threaten his freedom. In addition the State should reduce all injustices and economic differences. Secondly, it must help each person to develop freely and use his own responsibility and his virtues within society.

This paper revives the idea that what is central to education is not facilitating the acquisition of information or skills to use in the marketplace, but the encounter between teacher and learner which enables the student to acquire a richer and deeper appreciation of the human world which he or she inhabits. Knowledge is a human artefact which is created in the initiation of a learner into a common form of life, and this is not something which can be carried out without the involvement of other human beings. It is argued that teaching is a vocation, where this implies a love of truth and of learning for its own sake. A passionate regard for these will not be imparted by the use of technology, but through the experience of sharing in a journey of discovery with another human being.

This is an attempt to clarify principally some fundamental ideas clustered around the concept of the formal conditions which would constitute the fruitful study of philosophy. First, an ideal study situation would require the student to participate in the object-subject dialogue; philosophical studies are an active dialogue between the text and the subject. Next, philosophy is a paradigmatically and historically changing institution, grounded on the notions of discipline, autonomy and authority. The idea is that we are currently facing a crisis in philosophy, and this crisis constitutes a major problem for the study of philosophy. The metamorphosis of the concept of philosophy in contemporary philosophy is related to the new problem of the dialogue and interconnections between the object and the subject, new ways of conceiving the truth and a renewed social force of philosophy. New perceptions of the interconnections of the student and philosophical knowledge raise anew the problems of objectivity. Philosophy has lost its autonomy and strict authority.

Las leyes educativas que rigen el sistema educativo de cualquier pais son de indudable interes, no solo porque regulan el curriculum, la organizaciön de los centros educativos, la igualdad de oportunldades, etc., sino tambien porque aportan las claves para interpretar como cada pais entiende la educaciön, que tipo de ciudadano quiere formar. En definitiva, que tipo de hombre y mujer y de sociedad quiere desarrollar. En las ultimas dos decadas se han aprobado en Espaha cuatro leyes educativas. Los valores en las que se basan, lo que cada una de ellas han querido fomentar, nos dan las claves de que tipo de sociedad se quiere construir, y, sobre todo, que tipo de ciudadanos se quiere formar. Los valores que se potencian en nuestro actual sistema educativo poseen una clara dimension social y democrätica: son valores fundamentalmente de convivencia, que buscan formar un ciudadano demöcrata. Aunque para ese logro se llevan a cabo cons tan tes referencias a los valores morales, como fundamento de los valores sociales, a parte de la necesaria aportaciön de valores culturales, tecnicos, esteticos, ecolögicos, etc.

In this paper I argue that Confucius' view of learning in the Analects entails critical thinking. Although he neither specified the logical rules of good reasoning nor theorised about the structure of argument, Confucius advocated and emphasised the importance of critical thinking. For this thesis, I argue that a close examination of Confucius' pronouncements on learning reveals that he takes critical thinking to be essential to learning. For Confucius critical thinking refers to reflective thinking: reflection on the materials of knowledge, in order to synthesise and systematise the raw materials into a whole, and to integrate them into oneself as wisdom.

At the beginning of the third millennium we are entering a new era. I call it "The Integration/Disintegration Era" because the Integration/ Disintegration Problem is one of the basic problems our world is facing today. Philosophy attempts to work out an integrated view of the universe, of human nature, and of society. The specific philosophical science which has concerned itself with integration/ disintegration, is Integratism. This is the common denominator of different particular problems in the integration /disintegration of the universe, society and personality; and it supplies a possible philosophical solution to the general problem of disintegration. The main concept of integratism is integration [Lat. integer, complete]. My theoretical and empirical study of various aspects of integration/ disintegration problems in modern science and education has led to the formulation of a new, rather systematic and, I believe, quite useful conception of contemporary integratism that contributes not only to the attempt to develop a theory of integration/disintegration processes in various biological and social systems but also to practical problems of developing contemporary integrated educational systems. Further concepts of contemporary integratism are: integrative level, IDon, adaptive disintegration, ADon, disadaptive disintegration, adaptive reintegration, sanosphere, pathosphere, etc. The philosophy of integratism might provide a possible philosophical solution to the general problem of disintegration and in this way assign priority to certain particular problems concerning the disintegration of the world.

Sweeping changes in technology followed by political, social and economic transformation are modifying the expectations from education. There is urgent need for reforms in the aim, content and method of education systems. Evidence is gathered to justify this need and suggest a process that will lead to the desired reform. We argue that character education is a requirement in order to ensure that changes move in the direction envisaged. Empowerment of the parties involved will change the mood of silence and transform the agents into active participants in change.

Teaching has been one of the central themes in educational research. Not only empirical researchers of education but also philosophers of education inquire into the activity. Philosophers used to analyse the concept of teaching. The merely analytic approach, however, is no longer the main one in educational research. Will philosophical consideration of teaching, then, never contribute to our educational activity or any other activities in our life at all? In order to explore the possibilities for philosophical consideration of teaching, I will examine three philosophers' distinction between teaching and telling. The philosophers are Israel Scheffler, Karatani Kojin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I will conclude that Wittgenstein deconstructs the distinction between teaching and telling, and that he requires us to change our attitude to the recognition of the others.