scholarly journals Od kulture sebičnosti prema kulturi solidarnosti

2017 ◽  
Vol 72. (3.) ◽  
pp. 385-385
Author(s):  
Josip Jelenić

The author reflects on the phenomenon in contemporary society called the culture of egoism which has become the ideology of modern man. This ideology always excludes the other, the one who is different, because it is concerned with one–way egotistical activities based on domination. The result is division in society causing permanent conflict and ending, as a rule, in self–destruction. Instead of a culture of egoism, always ideology–based, a culture of solidarity is recommended as the way in which to live and work for one’s personal and also the common good. Here solidarity is understood and accepted as a basic value which evolves into a principle and a mandatory course of action. After all, it is solidarity, and not egoism, which is the expression of the social nature of the human being.

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Юлія Бродецька

The article focuses on the ontological aspects of the being ethics. Ethical knowledge as the fundamental mechanism for the reproduction of human being-together is implemented in universals such as values, norms, and customs. These structural elements of ethics, therefore, are responsible for the reproduction and translation of the coherence mechanisms of human co-existence both at the individual and social levels.It has been revealed that among all ethical universals, each element is focused on its functional predetermination. However, it is values that play a special role in the formation of human co-existence and the realization of the spiritual potential of the individual as well. In its historical perspective, the problem of values is formulated in the framework of the ancient tradition as the “philosophy of values” (axiology). A “philosophy of values” or ethics arises as a doctrine of good manners, that is, mechanisms and methods of forming a harmonious social personality and harmonious social relations.Socrates, like Plato, equates value with good. Good, in turn, is correlated by philosophers with the knowledge that forms our virtues. Therefore, the main thing for a person, according to most ancient philosophers, is the spiritual state of a person, his virtues, which are the essence of the human happiness condition. In this regard, the good cannot be defined as pleasure, because there are bad pleasures. One cannot call good that only benefits, because the same can harm another person. Good is what improves the inner nature of human.The sacred nature of value, its relation to transcendental being indicates that this phenomenon is a carrier of meanings. Meanings, essence, truth is that which fills, directs and organizes human being-together. Therefore, on the one hand, the ontological purpose of value is to fill a person with meanings, and thus, on the other hand, to form his involvement in co-existence, the common good. This task of values reflects their nature, in which these ethical universals (values-benefits, values-goals, self-worth), on the one hand, reveal the nature of the ontology of being (and this is its difference from non-existence), and on the other, reflect the existential potential of a person. It is about spiritual values.The mystery of this ethical element is that the nature of spiritual values, their assimilation and development exclude any manifestation of consumerism, appropriation, selfishness. Good cannot be only for me, cannot be personal, useful, cannot be relative. Good cannot be manipulated, cannot be used. Therefore, reflecting the essence, meaning, goals of human life, spiritual values cannot be a means of evaluation, that is, an instrument for achieving lofty goals. Value and appreciation is a binary opposition that reflects the pole aspects of life and existence. Otherwise, it is no longer a question of good, but of its simulations, which lead to the predominance and prosperity of evil - their own mercantile interests, goals, selfish aspirations, and hence the suffering of others.Spiritual values need internalization of their experience. Therefore, the way to reach the values-goals can only be an intuitive immersion (in meaning, essence), unity and involvement in this experience. As a result, there is a feeling of inner fullness, realization, happiness. So, it is in this immersion, acceptance, completeness, that our personal experience of harmonious being is laid, together, an order is formed that determines the contribution of each of us in realizing the value of the common good, being We. Thus, reflecting the meaning, goals of human existence, spiritual values cannot be means of human life, creativity, realization, that is, an assessment tool. Their metaphysical purpose requires going beyond pragmatic perception, liberation from the consumer desire to colonize the world around me.


Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

Method can mean either the steps taken to achieve church unity or the principles appropriate to the study of ecumenism. Most ecumenists have sought organic unity; they have hoped that agreement on the issue of authority would further this end. This turned out to be impossible, and recently there has been a shift from epistemology to pneumatology. This shift allows for a third option beyond the claims of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and Magisterial Protestantism, on the other, as regards ecclesial continuity. We can think of the creation of the church as the reinstantiation of primitive Christianity in the wake of Pentecost. Messianic Judaism provides telling warrant for pursuing this option. This shift also provides fresh hope for ecumenism by moving beyond conciliar conversations about doctrine, and calling instead for gift-sharing—that is, the realistic sharing of what we actually think are gifts for the common good.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Felder

Accounts of inclusive education that locate the concept of inclusion within theories of individual rights face two problems. The first problem, called ‘the dilemma of identity’, assumes that on one hand we need communities to develop and ensure a sense of identity and a feeling of social inclusion, whereas on the other hand, inclusion is only partly ensured via such forms of inclusion. Inclusion necessarily entails participation in societal goods such as education. The second issue is that those rights accounts do not take seriously the distinctive social nature of inclusion. In this article, I suggest a basic distinction between communal and societal inclusion that serves as a background for a fundamental suggestion: to conceptualise rights to inclusive education as part of an account of inclusion as a common good.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Lewis

Legitimacy may be defined as that political condition in which power-holders are able to justify their holding of power in terms other than those of the mere fact of power-holding. According to one view such justifications are increasingly tenuous due to the conditions under which the modern state has arisen and the means it employs in order to persist. Theories of legitimacy typically view power from two aspects – from that of its origins and from that of its ends. More concretely, this invariably involves, on the one hand, some discussion of the degree to which a regime of a government.can be said to rest on democratic consent and, on the other, of the extent to which the regime or government guides its actions by some notion of the common good or public interest. Neither of these focuses, in Schaar's view, are likely to provide adequate justifications for power under modern conditions: ‘criticism and hard events have done their work: both concepts have been reduced to rubble’.


Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Maria Ledstam

This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Terezinha Oliveira

The considerations on the book “VirtuosaBenfeitoria” aim atevaluating the relevance of a social project to guide the actions of the ruler and theindividuals, with a view to practical actions that converge to the common good. The infant D. Pedro, also known as the Duke of Coimbra, wrote the work. The central focus of the book is to address the sense of improvement and how the prince should practice and bestow it and how the subjects would receive and practice it. The arguments of D. Pedro to deal with the good and the society are strongly influenced by classical authorities and authors of scholasticism, especially Thomas Aquinas. In this sense, on the one hand our study seeks to show that such knowledge was essential for him to understand the plots that build human relationships, whose premises, to him, should be the ones leading society towards the common good;on the other hand, the goal is to analyze the work we regard as essential theoretical and methodological principles of history that allow us to recover, through memory, historical events that potentially guide us through paths that show the relevance of the Master of the University, as a vector in the organization of a given society. 


1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alfred Faulkner

There are two facts to be borne in mind in regard to Luther's whole attitude to social and economic questions. The first is that ordinarily this was a territory to be confined to experts, in which ministers should not meddle. He believed that a special knowledge was necessary to deal with some of these matters, and that they had better be left to those to whom Providence had assigned them, whether the jurists, those clever in worldly knowledge, or the authorities. The other fact is that the Church after all has social duties, and that Church and clergy must fight flagrant abuses and try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. The Church must use the Word of God against sin and sinners, and so by spiritual ministries help the needs of the time. The authorities on their part shall proceed by strict justice against evil doers. But there is another fact here which it is necessary to mention to get Luther's whole attitude, viz., that the State's function is not simply to administer justice, but to secure the general weal. They shall do the very best they can for their subjects, says Luther. “The authorities shall serve their subjects and use their office not petulantly [nicht zu Mutwillen] but for the advancement of the common good, and especially for the poor.” The princes shall give laws which shall limit as far as possible social misery and national dangers. They should listen to the proposals of the Church to this end, and on the ground of wise counsels of churchmen, do away with old laws and make new ones.


2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kraynak

Abstract“Social justice” is a powerful idea today, but its origins and meaning are unclear. One of the first to use the term was Antonio Rosmini, author of The Constitution under Social Justice (1848) and other works of moral philosophy. I argue that Rosmini arrived at his idea of social justice by developing Thomistic natural law theory into a novel view of the common good that balances two principles: (1) the equal rights and dignity of persons as ends-in-themselves, a version of “personalism” influenced by Kant and Christianity; and (2) unequal rewards for those who contribute most to society, a version of Aristotelian “proportionalism” based on the social nature of man. I conclude by comparing Rosmini's idea of social justice to John Rawls's “theory of justice” and Catholic social teaching.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Bartosz Mika

This text can be defined as an attempt to look at the question of the common good through sociological glasses. The author suggests that many of the issues subsumed under  the term “the common good” have already been elucidated and described in detail on the basis of classical and contemporary sociology. If it is assumed that the common good can be understood triply, as (1) a postulate of the social good, (2) materially, as an object of collective ownership, and (3) as an effect of the individual’s life in society, then it must be admitted that, at least in the third case, reference to the collected achievements of sociology is necessary in order to describe the common good properly.


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