沙巴体育投注

德国《运用哲学年鉴》将于2011年出版首期英文国际版，主题是：“人的尊严与社会正义”。沙巴体育投注 单纯教授受邀担任编委，并应主编奥利弗教授（Oliver Scholz）约请，为新创刊的英文年鉴撰写“论人的尊严”重点文章，以集中表达东方学者对此问题的思考成果。

《运用哲学年鉴》英文国际版是为积极回应英语世界方兴未艾的“哲学理论的实用转向”，德国科学研究基金特资助奥利弗教授团队创办的。目前该编委会中除单纯教授一位亚洲籍学者，一位俄罗斯科学院院士外，其余全部为欧美各大学教授。

附：德国《运用哲学年鉴》介绍

Yearbook for Applied Philosophy

Editors:

Prof. Dr. O. R. Scholz, Münster

PD Dr. J. H. Hardy, Berlin, Cambridge, Mass.

Editorial Board (to be asked)

Ruben Apressyan (Russian Academy for Sciences)

Kurt Bayertz (Münster)

Dieter Birnbacher (Essen)

Dagmar Borchers (Bremen)

C.A.J. Coady (Melbourne)

Shan Chun (Beijing)

Wolfgang Detel (Frankfurt/M.)

Carl-Friedrich Gethmann (Essen)

Volker Gerhardt (Berlin)

Alvin I. Goldmann (Newark, N. J.)

Stefan Gosepath (Frankfurt/M.)

Wilfried Hinsch (Aachen)

Christoph Horn (Bonn)

Christine Korsgaard (Cambridge, Mass.)

Julian Nida-Rümelin (München)

Thomas Pogge (New York)

Michael Quante (Münster)

Hans-Jörg Sandkühler (Bremen)

Ludwig Siep (Münster)

Reinold Schmücker (Münster)

Holm Tetens (Berlin)

Gerhard Vollmer (Gießen)

Topics of Interest

Angewandte Ethik in ihren verschiedenen Formen (The various forms of Applied Ethics)

Aufklärung heute (Enlightenment today)

Beratung (Counseling)

Bildung (Education)

Demokratie (Democracy)

Experten – was sind Experten und welchen soll man trauen? (Experts – who is an expert and

whom should we trust?)

Freiheit (Liberty)

Frieden (Peace)

Gerechtigkeit (Justice)

Geschichte – was haben wir gelernt? (History – what did we learn from history?)

Gleichberechtigung (Equality and equal rights)

Information (Information)

Kampf der Kulturen? (Clash of Cultures?)

Kosmopolitismus (cosmopolitism)

Medien (Media)

Menschenrechte (Human Rights)

Natur und die Rechte der Natur (Nature and the Rights of Nature)

Political correctness

Recht – das Verhältnis von Recht und Moral? Laws (The relation between Law and Morality)

Religiöse Toleranz (Religious Tolerance)

Schutz der Privatsphäre (The protection of the individual’s privacy)

Selbstbestimmung (Self-determination)

Soziale Institutionen (Social Institutions)

Staat und Kirche (State and Church)

Vertrauen (Trust)

Vorurteile und Aberglauben heute (Prejudice and Superstition today)

Wirtschaft (Economics)

Wissenschaft – die Rolle der Wissenschaften in der Gesellschaft (Science – The Role of sciences in modern societies)

Foundation and Goals

At present, academic philosophy is increasingly turning its attention to the key issues of modern society. Philosophers are descending in increasing numbers from their ivory towers and seeking in many different ways to contribute to resolving current problems. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, this development is already well advanced, leading in the UK, for example, to the foundation of a “Society for Applied Philosophy” and in Australia to the establishment of a “Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)”. A movement of this kind is now also emerging in Germany, a process which is already well advanced in the field of Applied Ethics. Theoretical Philosophy, too, has started taking steps in this direction, as evidenced by the work done in the field of social epistemology. Public interest in philosophy is also constantly on the increase. People expect philosophy to make a contribution to public debates. Philosophy can in fact provide the public withorientation knowledgeof a kind which no other special science or any other cultural institution does offer.Imparting this knowledge and taking a stand on topics of public relevance are the tasks of Applied Philosophy.

Common interests and common understanding

We desire to understand the world we live in. Understanding has several aspects: We want to have true beliefs about the world, we want to gain a comprehensive understanding of our own person (our beliefs, desires, and emotions), and we want to be able to act in common with other people on the basis of shared convictions and intentions. People act for reasons. Acting for reasons and making decisions on good reasons are what make us rational beings. An individual person’s rational acts are embedded in a complex structure of convictions and wishes, and with every single act we are pursuing general, supreme goals. As rational beings, we have the ability (and the desire) to achieve the greatest possible explanatory coherence for the opinions that guide our own actions and to steer our opinion-forming process in the light of overarching, supreme goals. This is the ability of selfdetermination.A person’s ability to form rational beliefs and motives for action is a necessary condition forsuccessfulaction. This is also true of successful cooperative action.

Individual and common interests are closely interlinked. Successful individual action depends on rational cooperation with other people. This means far more than the fact that in a society built on division of labour, people have to cooperate with one another in order to pursue their individual interests. Social rationality extends far beyond the need for cooperation. When we form a certain belief on any matter that concerns our way of living, we very often find ourselves dealing with issues, which are also of relevance to the lives of a large number of our fellow-citizens; in other words, which are of public interest. That does not mean that there is no privacy in life or in decision-making in modern society. On the contrary: The possibility to pursue diverse, individual ways of living is probably greater in present-day society than it has ever been before. Nevertheless, many topics that are important for individual person’s lives are topics of general public interest, too. This holds especially for oursupreme action and life goals. Whenever we form opinions about important topics of our own life, we are – in and with our thoughts, decisions and actions – taking a stand with regard to important public topics. Nearly all our thinking about topics that are of crucial importance for our own individual lives includes – either explicit or tacit – opinions about public issues –for instance, our attitude and approach to human and extra-human nature, modern technologies, access to information and educational assets, or the distribution of resources.

To be in the position to adopt an informed stand on public issues, we need critical orientation knowledge in order to rationally assess the contributions made to public debates.To provide such knowledge is the task of Applied Philosophy, a discipline that combines fundamental philosophical reflection with analysis of and comment on public issues.

Considering contexts

Particular problems are embedded in broader contexts. Understanding means ecognizing how things interrelate. What might sound trivial is nevertheless, as philosophy has always known,of major importance for rational action. It is only by seeing the wider picture that the conflicts lurking behind many particular questions become clear. Understanding the broader context brings clarity about the questions an individual needs to answer in order to be able to take certain decisions. For example, in health care, there are techniques for producing, implanting, and destroying embryos. Such techniques raise issues about the technical optimization of natural processes and the self-understanding of people as natural beings, as well as the possible conflict between the right of self-determination of adult individuals and the right to life of unborn humans. The problem of regulation of the global financial markets draws attention to the interconnection between economic and financial policy and the many conflicts between the maximization of individual interests, open economic competition and the sovereignty of the state. It is necessary to understand these interconnections in order to take a stand on matters of public debate and be able to participate in such debate.

Applied Philosophy educates and informs the public by pointing out interrelations,assessing the different explanations for complex matters and weighing the various options for resolving problems. Critical orientation knowledge has, not least, a fundamentalnormativefunction: In order to participate actively in public debate, people need clarity on key issues such as human dignity, liberty, self-determination, equal rights and social responsibility.Issues of this kind play an extremely important role in the current debate on many questions,but are often not expressly stated. We need a public debate about thesupreme goalsof social life and thevaluesby which we are guided in our thinking and actions, and then take the shared assumptions about these goals and values as the guideline for our common actions.

Expert knowledge under the spotlight

Debates about public issues tend to be dominated by interest groups and experts. Opinion leaders who represent particular individual interests or particular group interests often have no interest in comprehensively informing and educating the public in the way indicated above. To be able to understand matters of a complex nature, all members of the public are dependent in one way or another on specialist knowledge which they do not possess themselves, i.e. expert knowledge. Although each of us, as a lay-person, often lacks specific expert knowledge, for example about the possibilities, consequences and limitations of medical treatments, genetic engineering methods or macro-economic issues and forecasting possibilities, we nevertheless have a need to form substantiated opinions on such matters in order to follow the public debate and take part in it ourselves. As non-experts, we are faced with the task of knowing as much about the subject matter of expert’s knowledge as we are able to by virtue of ourowncognitive capabilities. The orientation knowledge and the ability of critical judgment that we need in order to grasp the background and ramifications of topics of public relevance and to understand expert opinion goes beyond mere expert knowledge.

Not all experts have a keen interest in critical discussion of their expert opinion.Nevertheless, public debate tends to be dominated by expert opinions and in many cases by conflicting expert statements. Rational action therefore calls for the ability to understand and evaluate controversial debates on topics of public relevance even though one does not possess the relevant expert knowledge oneself. In other words: Participation in public debate calls for a special kind of rationality, namely the ability to assess the epistemic status and reliability of expert opinions and embed this in one’s own understanding. Critical orientation knowledge can therefore help above all in overcoming the dependency on expert opinions.

The task: Informing/educating the public

In order to understand the debate on public topics, we need, as already stated, orientation knowledge, which allows us to examine and to evaluate the opinions of those who dominate a public debate. No special science, whether it be medicine, biology, physics or economics, can provide that knowledge. Nor is it provided by the political and economic elites. Philosophy, on the other hand, possesses cognitive capabilities for shedding light on the various dimensions of topics of public relevance. This is why philosophy can, and should, play an active role in public discussions.

With its commitment to the ideas of rationality and moral responsibility, Applied philosophy will not proclaim populist theories of any kind, nor will it restrict itself to making short-lived statements about political problems of the day. Philosophy has no reason to abstain from joining in the debate about public issues. Philosophy does not claim a knowledge which it does not possess, nor does it compete with the various special sciences. If conducted seriously, philosophy is safe from making non-justified knowledge-claims since the critical assessment of knowledge-claims is the heart of philosophy. For the same reason, philosophy should not refrain from engaging in public debate. For philosophers to refrain is not good for public debate, if only because the representatives of other disciplines do give answers to questions that concern the people’s way of living. To this fact Habermas, in relation to psychoanalysis, drew attention in his much-discussed essay “The Future of Human Nature” (2001). Habermas asks “why philosophical ethics should vacate the stage in the face of those psychotherapies which, in dealing with psychological disturbances, have little scruple in arrogating to themselves the classical task of providing life orientation”, and why philosophy should shy away “from doing what, for example, psychoanalysis believes itself capable of doing”? This question concerns not only the relationship between philosophy and the specialist sciences, but the role of philosophy in modern society. Philosophy can contribute very much more to finding answers to important questions relating to human selfunderstanding and the life we humans wish to live than any other discipline. If philosophy does not contribute to the public debate on important social issues, it abandons this debate to those who take on the function of opinion leaders and “opinion makers”, but in fact only represent one-sided interests.

People living in modern societies are well aware that they can know more about all that lies behind important public discussions than what they are told by those who dominate those debates. Those who are primarily interested in pushing through a particular interest and generating a particular opinion will too often wish to ignore the various dimensions of a certain issue and leave aside alternative explanations. Many public opinion leaders make valuable contributions from their own perspective to a certain debate, but they might not seek to provide the public with comprehensive analytical information. But that is precisely what our modern societies need: comprehensive orientation knowledge. This has always been one of the central tasks of philosophy, and philosophy today might be able to perform that task better than ever.

Applied Philosophy is concerned with imparting the analytical and critical competences of philosophy acquired over 2500 years to the various debates on fundamental problems of modern society. The Yearbook for Applied philosophy aims to provide a forum for theses debates.

Structure: The Yearbook is planned to have the following sections:

Forum. Contributions on various topics of public relevance, each of about 10 pages’ length.

Prism. Contributions (likewise each about 10 pages long) on a special theme.

Keyword. A contribution on a current topic, presented transparently for a broad audience.

Book symposium. Reviews or literary essays, presenting and commenting on recent monographs devoted to topics of public relevance.

Miscellaneous. Shorter essays on a variety of topics.