What determines whether the procedures for proving the affirmative statement of God's existence may be called a proof? Certainly, it is necessary that all premises be true and that a reliable inference schemata be applied. One premise appears to be the most critical in the theistic argument. This premise is theprinciple of sufficient reason. I hold the view that the principle of sufficient reason cannot be found among the premises of any metaphysical explanation of reality,so I suggest that the terms 'proof and 'argument' not be used. Instead, we could speak of ways of acquiring discursive knowledge of God and ways of indirectsubstantiation of God's existence.

The article is primarily concemed with the ambiguities which surround the concept of the person. According to the philosophical tradition taking its roots from Locke's definition, personhood depends on consciousness. Therefore, 'personhood' can be ascribed to different entities, and only these entities acquire a moral standing. This can entail that a human being may or may not be considered as a person, as well as higher animals and even artificial machines. Everything depends on manifest personal characteristics. In order to sort out different meanings ascribed to 'person,' I distinguish between being a person and acting as a person. Then, I show that a human being is a paradigm of the person and his being always precedes his acting.

Gradually emerging from the so-called 'linguistic turn', philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed what we might follow P. M. S. Hacker in describing as a 'naturalistic turn'. This change of direction, an abandonment of traditional philosophical methods in favour of a scientific approach, or critics would say a scientistic approach, has met with widespread approval. In the first part of the paper I look to establish the centrality of the normative to the discipline of epistemology. I then turn to examine Quine's attempt to reduce normative discourse to instrumental rationality, and the more fully developed accounts provided by Stich, Kombiith and Papineau. I argue that these accounts fail because they insist on a constitutive connection between desires and the ends of epistemic activity. I conclude with the suggestion that a more plausible position severs this connection, in favour of an objective, externalist account of ends and reasons.

The theories of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design appear to be locked in an intractable debate, partly because they offer rival scientific explanationsfor the phenomenon of descent with modification in biology. This paper analyses the dispute in two ways: firstly, it seeks to clarify the exact nature of thelogical flaw that has been alleged to lie at the heart of Intelligent Design theory. Secondly, it proposes that, in spite of this error, the Intelligent Design theory advocated by Michael Behe takes at least one significant step in the right direction. Although Behe's suggestion is promising, it is shown to be not nearly radicalenough.

Contemporary proponents of theodicy generally believe that a theodical reply to the evidential argument from evil must involve some appeal to the afterlife. In Richard Swinburne's writings on theodicy, however, we find two arguments that may be offered in opposition to this prevailing view. In this paper, these two arguments - the argument from usefulness and the argument from assumed consent - are explained and evaluated. It is suggested that both of these argumentsare rendered ineffective by their failure to distinguish between the different ways in which persons may be of-use in the attainment of some good state of affairs.

I argue that the following two claims provide us with sufficiently strong reason to conclude that God came into existence from nothing a finite time in the past: (1) that God is omnitemporal; and (2) that there is a first moment of time. After defending the possibility of God beginning to exist ex nihilo from various objections, I critique two alternative attempts at providing an account of the relationship between an omnitemporal God and the beginning of time (that of Alan Padgett and William Lane Craig). I show that these either fail to be an alternative to my own model or are less supported by the relevant evidence.

Since the very dawn of its history, modern philosophical anthropology has been addressing the issue of the human body. As a result of those efforts, Descartes,de Biran, Husserl, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty and others have brought forward a variety of conceptions concerning various aspects of human corporeality.Anthropological explorations concerning the question of the human body, appear in a particularly interesting way, when they are considered in the context ofthose points of view which, in an essential way, refer to the subjective character of the human being. It is a matter of reconstructing and analyzing how the subject’s corporeality is given to the subject, originarily, according to the phenomenological rule zu den Sachen selbst. The aim of this paper is thus to put into some order the concerns of a variety of anthropologists with regard to the question of the human body, as it is given to, or experienced by, the subject. A metatheoretical analysis of this field proves it is possible to do so with the use of a tool, which is called here, a dimension of corporeality.

Thomas Aquinas understands providence as the reason of directing things to ends (ratio ordinis rerum in finem), and as the execution of that directing, i.e. governance (gubernatio). Thus, providence is one of the fundamental attributes of the person that reveals the person’s perfection and dignity. Providence consists in a free and reasonable directing of oneself and the reality subject to oneself in order to actualize potentialities of oneself and of other beings in the context of the ultimate goal of existence. Human providence joins the providence of the Absolute with regard to the world. In spite of its deficiencies human providence reveals the essential dignity of the human person.

Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, treated the different characteristics of human love and their expression. The first section discusses erosand the second shows how agape provides the essential framework for Catholic charitable organisations. I will be arguing that by omitting any reflection on therole of philia, he missed a significant opportunity to retrieve an important part of the Tradition and expand our usual understanding of the elements of social ethics. Part I briefly gives the background of Benedict’s non-use of philia in his encyclical and indicates the basis for the view that philia has no place in Christian social ethics. The favoured approach is that of agape. Part II presents Thomas Aquinas’ view of friendship and how it might counter the shortcomings identified by the authors in Part I. Part III applies his view of friendship to the key principles in Catholic social teaching of solidarity and preferential option for the poor. Part IVconcludes with some general summary remarks.

The main goal of this paper is to present the philosophical (i.e. attained by the light of natural reason) explanation of the marital relationship according to the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła. In our research, our attention was focused mainly on his book Love and Responsibility; the early philosophical work of a young, 37 year old Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland. In his writings, Karol Wojtyła – the future Pope John Paul II – presents marriage as a monogamous, indissoluble relationship between a man and a woman, which grows out of mutual love for the purpose of procreation. Such a relationship is ruled by the „personalistic norm” which says that a person can never, under any circumstances, be a mere object of enjoyment for another person, but can only be the object (co-object) of love. Love is a self-giving for the good of one’s counterpart, so Marriage as a personalistic unity persists as long as these persons are alive. Because love is fecund from its very essence, so it is fruitful from its nature. Thus, procreation belongs to the principle ends of marriage. Such an attitude – as K. Wojtyła proves – is opposed to the utilitarian point of view of man and Marriage. According to the utilitarian conception, a person can be used as a means for achieving the highest good, i.e., pleasure.

Philippa Foot’s book, Natural Goodness, involves a large project including a theory of natural goodness, a theory of the virtues, and a theory of practical rationality. Natural goodness is the foundation for the rest and is used to support a more or less traditional list of the virtues and a theory of reasons for action.Though Foot’s doctrine of natural goodness may provide an account of some sort of goodness, I argue that it is not adequate as a foundation for practical rationality or as a defense of more or less traditional virtues.

In order to lay the ground for the construction of a philosophy of culture the origin, meaning and some of the implications of the word „culture” are examined and discussed in light of a working definition of the anthropological concept of culture taken from C. Dawson. In Section II another concept of culture is examined, based on the idea of culture as human perfection. Then in Section III the concept of cultural levels is introduced, that is, the differing levels at which the central concept of a culture can be understood or embodied.

In the unlikely confluence of two colossal intellectual heritages, neo-Kantian Jurgen Habermas and Catholic prelate Joseph Ratzinger agree that wehave entered a postsecular age. For both, the inauguration of such an age entails skepticism towards absolutist science and a growing recognition of the contributions of spiritual worldviews to social solidarity. Following their call for a multi-faceted purification in the West whereby secular and religious commitments are subjected to mutual critique, I explore potential Eastern contributions to this process by providing a micro-analysis of the interaction of discursive subjects in three traditions: for Confucianism, the rectification of names; Taoism, truth disclosure; and Buddhism, right speech.

The well-known Ratio Studiorum of 1599 states that logical instruction should follow F. Toletus (Toledo) or P. Fonseca. The latter authored the famousInstitutionum Dialecticarum Libri Octo (1564), the former a similar manual, Introductio in Dialecticam Aristotelis (1561). As is often observed, the contrast between the Aristotelian and present symbolic logics is perhaps most striking in their analysis of relational statements. Both authors recognize the relational logical form as independent from the traditional subject-predicate form and see the need to recognize relational inferential rules. They differ in their specific rules, however, so neither of the authors has captured the system of relational syllogism in its entirety.

The aim of this article is to present the interplay between philosophy, religion and culture in China, to give a clear picture of philosophical, religious and cultural aspects of Chinese culture. What do we understand by Chinese culture? What is the role of Religion and Philosophy in Chinese Culture? The goal of this presentation is to present a deeper account of the philosophical, cultural and traditional differences and similarities between the Chinese and the Western World.What is the meaning of Chinese philosophical ideas? How do we understand and interpret Chinese thought? How do we build a bridge between East and West focused on cultural, philosophical and religious aspects? What has the West done for China and what has China done for West? Are we partners in inter-religious, cultural and philosophical dialogue?

Traditional Christianity holds that God is a singular way, not dependent on the conceptual machinations of humans. I argue that God can be plural ways,different in different human conceptual schemes, all the while holding to traditional Christianity. In short, I provide a framework for an ontological pluralism thatextends not just to the world being various ways but to God being various ways.

I analyse some of the key evolutionary issues that arise in the study of consciousness from a bio-philosophical point of view. They all seem to be related to the fact that phenomenality has a special status: it is a very complex feature, apparently more than biological, it is hard to define because of the plurality of its displays (cognition, various emotions, other complex functions such as vision) and it is difficult to study with classic evolutionary tools (such as philogenetics or paleoanthropology). Giving an answer to the question „is consciousness an adaptive trait?” thus seems to be very difficult and this paper intends to sketch some of the problems we should be concerned with when studying phenomenality as an adaptation.

The classical arguments against metaphysics provided by Immanuel Kant, neopositivists and recently by analytical philosophers focus on the problem of meaning. In my paper I would like to shed a little bit of light on different dimensions of this problem in the metaphysical discourse and make a proposition how to overcome the difficulties that arise from this kind of discourse.

Are actions that are morally good, morally good because God makes them so (e.g., by commanding them)? Or does God urge humans to do them because they are morally good anyway? What is, in general, the relationship between divine commands and ethical duties? It is not an uncommon belief among theists that morality depends entirely on the will or commands of God: all moral facts consist exclusively in facts about his will or commands. Thus, not only is an action right because it is commanded by God, but its conformity to his commands is what alone makes it right. An action is right (wrong) solely because he commands (forbids) it, and solely in virtue of his doing so. This view has come to be known as the „divine command theory of morality”. This paper is devoted to a brief reconstruction of claims and controversies surrounding the theory, beginning with Plato’s Euthyphro, which is the historical initiator of the debate and to a reconstruction of the various lines of argument that have been set forth to defend the theory.