Programska knjižica - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

ETHICS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
AND THE PRINCIPLE OF PRECAUTION
In the future we anticipate the reign of science and it is obvious that scientists
have already sat on a pedestal, so the time is right to ask who they are and what
are their priorities, are they enhancing the knowledge, are they teaching understanding
or are they gradually converting to managers with a doctorate in natural
sciences with questionable ethical reasoning and uncertain and partial scientific
knowledge, respectively the knowledge that they do not know how to handle.
Supportive to this vision is the postmodern Western culture, deprived of
metaphysical foundations and dazzled by its subject’s wishes for success,
power, progress, and effectiveness, the subject who is dying from obesity
while his neighbor is starved to death. Both are victims of despotic tendencies
of scientific genius, who are blindly followed by scientific analphabets.
A man, embedded in the structure of individualism and ethical relativism in the
horizon without values, no longer raises questions of the beginning or meaning,
of cause and consequences, but rises vertically examining only how far he
can go. In such a race one loses a sense of moral action, while others however
embrace both the caution as the principle of work, and solidarity as a regulative
principle of building relationships.
On the threshold of the promised, but not promising, era of post-humanism,
a certain intensification is evident: of the sense of participation and interdependence
of all creatures, the duty of taking responsibility for the common
good and the re-evaluation of anthropological and ethical values ​such as care,
wisdom, love, justice, and solidarity. This new scientific vigil and existential
orientation is expressed through bioethical projects and Christian personalistic
attitude which educates and calls upon a man for constant reviewing of his attitude
towards life and man-person, but also for his quest for the same.
AHU TUNÇEL
Department of Philosophy, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey /
Odsjek za filozofiju, Sveučilište Maltepe, Istanbul, Turska
ONTOLOGY OF ZOON POLITIKON
The democracy ideal of the Modern Age is grounded on an abstract humanity
category, which is based on universal values and on the equality of
people who are the bearer of these values. The distinctive characteristic of this
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