Orthodoxy and Science

The Orthodox Church is uneasy about contemporary science. What causes its uneasiness is not exclusively its slow reception of modern culture. An important cause is the fact that contemporary research sidelines ethical and spiritual criteria. The practical application of scientific discoveries in the area of biotechnologies provides abundant evidence for this. That said, progress is being made in regard to the Orthodox appraisal of modern culture and contemporary science and toward self-assessment against current cultural trends. This progress cannot make an impact, however, without an authenticating framework. Fortunately, three documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church provide an implicit framework for addressing matters such as the Orthodox attitude toward science, especially biology and its related branches, in light of theological anthropology and traditional ethical and spiritual criteria. A shared particularity of these documents is that they consider modern culture and scientific research in a missional perspective.     

当代心理学文化转向的方法论意义

当代心理学的文化转向关注人的心理与行为的文化特性,揭示文化与人的心理发展的相互关系,为理解人类行为提供了一种新的视野。文化转向带来了心理学研究中文化的回归,全面而深刻地影响了心理学的方法论思想,揭开了心理学文化性质的神秘面纱,促进了心理学研究中多元取向的综合与多元方法的整合。     

Introduction

This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence (or not) of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century.     

对病毒性传染病强势崛起的医学省思

病毒性传染病的迅猛崛起,正式宣告了"后传染病时代"的终结.当今医学理论的高端化和滞后的临床治疗体系的严重不对称,导致了当代医学极为被动的局面.因此,应认真构建新的临床治疗体系,保证医学均衡发展.病毒与人的冲突,实质上是人自身制造的一场严重的生态危机,人类必须全面审视病毒,从深层次上重新调整人与大自然的关系,在新的理性平台上放逐自己的善行,以与大自然实行根本的和解.     

论传统义利观和诚信观的现代转换——从“以诚实守信为荣,以见利忘义为耻”谈起

重义轻利是传统社会的基本价值取向,国人的义利观经历了一个从长期的“羞于言利”到逐渐面对市场逐利,再到一部分人重利轻义、见利忘义的历史转化过程;今天,应改变传统义利观中义与利相互对立的状态,倡导一种义利并重、道义与功利协调发展的新型义利观。诚实信用既是我国传统道德的基本规范,又是市场经济、法制经济的必然要求,从而具有道德建设和法制建设的二重性;法律原则要以其本身所包含的道德合理性为价值基础,而良法的实施又离不开相应的社会道德环境的配合。在市场化和法制化背景下,应该既依托传统,又立足现实,实现传统义利观和诚信观的现代转换。     

MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF INFANT INTERSEX: THE JURIDICO‐ETHICAL DILEMMA OF CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC LEGAL RESPONSE

Technological advances in the field of medicine and health sciences not only manipulate the normal human body and sex but also provide for surgical and hormonal management of hermaphroditism (intersexuality). Consequently, sex assignment surgery has not only become a standard care for babies born with genital abnormalities in the West but even in some Muslim states. On the positive side, it goes a long way in saving children born with abnormal genitalia from numerous legal interdictions of the pre‐sex corrective surgery. Nevertheless, the larger ethical and legal questions that medical management of genital abnormality raises to some extent have not been adequately appreciated by contemporary Muslim responses. This article, therefore, in principle argues against surgical management of intersexuality during early infancy from the Islamic legal perspective.     

Enlightenment and the Unconditional Good: From Fichte to the Frankfurt School

In a series of lectures from 1804–05, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sets out a conception of enlightenment whose basic structure is, I argue, to some extent reproduced in two more famous accounts of enlightenment found in post-Kantian German philosophy: Hegel’s account of the Enlightenment’s struggle with faith in his Phenomenology of Spirit and the conception of enlightenment rationality presented in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. The narrative I offer serves to highlight, moreover, the critical role played by the notion of an unconditional good in Fichte’s and Hegel’s critiques of enlightenment. The lack of an explicit appeal to, and account of, this notion in Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment will be shown to raise questions concerning how successful their critique of enlightenment can really be thought to be.     

《哲学通论》与当代中国哲学

本文以《哲学通论》对哲学的追问为线索,阐述了当代中国哲学对哲学的重新理解,以及由此实现的哲学自身的思想解放和哲学的理论自觉。     

Integral Spirituality, Deep Science, and Ecological Awareness

There is a growing understanding that addressing the global crisis facing humanity will require new methods for knowing, understanding, and valuing the world. Narrow, disciplinary, and reductionist perceptions of reality are proving inadequate for addressing the complex, interconnected problems of the current age. The pervasive Cartesian worldview, which is based on the metaphor of the universe as a machine, promotes fragmentation in our thinking and our perception of the cosmos. This divisive, compartmentalized thinking fosters alienation and self‐focused behavior. I aim to show in this essay that healing the fragmentation that is at the root of the current world crises requires an integrated epistemology that embraces both the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism and the inner knowledge of spiritual experience. This “deep science” transcends the illusion of separateness to discern the unity, the unbroken wholeness, that underlies the diverse forms of the universe. Our perception of connectedness, of our integral place in the web of life, emerges as an attribute of our connection with the eternal, beatific source of all existence. This awakened spiritual vision “widens our circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature” (Einstein, quoted in Goldstein [1976] 1987). Our behavior, as it emerges naturally out of our perception of the sacredness of the natural world, will naturally embody love and respect for all life forms. This vision promotes the healing of our long‐standing alienation from the natural world and offers hope for renewal in the midst of widespread cultural deterioration and environmental destruction.     

人工生殖技术伦理的多学科渊源及启示

随着人工生殖技术的飞速发展,其导致的伦理和法律问题层出不穷。目前迫切需要制定一套能够适应中国现实和发展的人工生殖技术伦理原则,以指导立法、引导社会舆论,并最终促进该技术的健康发展。通过人工生殖技术伦理的哲学、历史传统、宗教、社会制度等多学科渊源的考察,给正确、有效的伦理原则的确立提供启示。