Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy

In this paper I present an argument for a procedural principle of distribution, which is often called the presumption of equality.

Late Edmund Husserl’s examination of the crisis of the European sciences is the point of departure of this paper. Husserl’s views about wrong objectivisation and naturalization of reason in science and philosophy have prepared the ground for dissatisfaction with reason in various trends of 20th century Social and Political Philosophy. This intellectual climate has naturally bred the radical criticism against the social project of Enlightenment practiced by the first generation Frankfurt School. Later on, the Modern reason misfortunes in social and political sphere are epitomized by Emanuel Levinas’ uprising against fundamentalontology for the sake of responsibility to the Other as well as by Julia Kristeva’s appeal to reestablish the social contract on new sensibility and new rationality. Finally, Jean Boaudrillard puts the univocal diagnosis that reason has surrendered to the code of consumerist simulacrum. In the second part of the paper, some suggestions proposed by the above philosophers (except for Baudrillard) about resolving the deadlock prepared by the Modern reason are viewed briefly. A conclusion is made that Baudrillard’s pessimistic position seems to be the most plausible and relevant in the current socio‐political and philosophical climate.

The present paper deals with the Russian cosmism in the conditions of modern society and views. The cosmism is conveyed in both philosophical and naturalistic aspects. The idea of the so-called cosmicity of the human and cosmic outlook is one of the most attractive features of the Russian cosmism for our contemporaries. Among the fundamental issues elaborated by the Russian cosmists is an idea of dynamic evolution. It is the lack of integral system of social actions, that indefinitely postpones the implementation of the projects, elaborated by the Russian cosmists. Many ideas of the Russian cosmism are topical, in a view of new discoveries in the field of science, technology and cosmos development they have become even more convincing.

Despite numerous democratic movements and some successful instances of democratic consolidation in the non-liberal Third World cultures, most observers of democracy in the liberal West equate democracy with liberal democracy conceptually linked to the liberal value of individual freedom. Consequently they deny the possibility of nonliberal democracy by arguing that non-liberal cultures do not advocate the liberal value of individual freedom. In this paper, I argue that democracy is conceptually compatible with non-liberal cultures because democracy is not necessarily tied to the value of individual freedom. I first deconstructthe liberal position on democracy and then construct a broader conception of democracy compatible with nonliberal cultures.

John Rawls, in his Political Liberalism (1993), claims that his justice-as-fairness prescription for liberal democracy does not require its citizens to harbor doubts regarding the truth claims of their religious, philosophical, or moral comprehensive doctrines. Citizens, he says, need not be “hesitant or uncertain, much less skeptical, about [their] own beliefs.” This claim is necessary for the protection of liberty of conscience, a “primary goods”, but it is also necessary to his description of his scheme as a “reasonable utopia” since citizens are not likely to agree to a demand for skepticism. The problem arises for Rawls’s scheme when he says that for a citizen to participate in this political process she must be “reasonable” and that to qualify as “reasonable”, she must acknowledge what Rawls calls the “burdens of judgment” (that is, “limits on what can be reasonably justified to others”). This acknowledgment allows her not only to qualify as reasonable herself, but forces her to concede the reasonableness of other citizens who hold different truth claims from her own. Rawls’s fourth “burden of conscience” is an admission that the truth claims of all citizens, including her own, are conditioned by what Rawls calls her “total experience”. Unless she is willing to make the admission that her truth claims are contingent, a citizen cannot qualify as “reasonable” and is excluded from the conversation of public reason whose purpose is to produce a consensus on justice principles. This leaves his scheme in the category of “unreasonable utopias”.

The paper analyzes recognition in relation to the global legal arrangements. It articulates of an extra-territorial recognition of right-holders by means of the development of a philosophical theory of recognition on the global level. It examines contemporary possibilities of extra-territorial recognition that are bound to the nation-states hitherto. The paper indicates an increasing influence of various transnational agents in order to show (1) the possibilities and limits of extra-territorial recognition based on a state-centric approach, and (2) a demand of supranational recognition. Therefore, it maps the development from thecontemporary international system to the system that can contain also important supranational elements. In its practical consequences, it leads not only to rethinking social, political and legal philosophy but also to a philosophical reinvention of the United Nations because a new supranational stage of recognition requires not only a responsibility of the nation-states but also a direct responsibility of non-state transnationalagents.

It is virtuous for individual and collective agents to be tolerant. However, toleration is difficult, both in practice and in conceptualization. Firstly, given that toleration can be understood in various ways (Walzer 1997, Forst 2007), it seems that to determine what is the proper conception of toleration would be controversially difficult. Here I shall suggest one particular conception of toleration is more suitable than others. This conception allows, as I shall explain, us to better understandthe difficulties of toleration. Thus, this particular conception of toleration should lead us to see what is more adequate for dealing with the difficulties of toleration. To be more precise, I shall argue for a political conception of toleration, which different from the attitudinal conception of toleration as being indifferent, or the ethical conception of toleration as respect. There is the suggestion of toleration as recognition (Galeotti 2002). These alternative understandings of toleration do not provide better diagnoses of the difficulties of toleration. The political conception of toleration is intended to be grounded on some moral considerations, notpragmatic purpose. It is political in that it recognizes the fact that toleration is essentially practiced to deal with a power relationship among the parties of toleration. Where these is no such power relationship, as I shall argue, there is no issue of toleration. Secondly, this proposed conception of toleration is political in the sense that it shall not deal with differences coming from, to use John Rawls’s phrase, the fact of pluralism by adopting any comprehensive doctrine such as an ethics of respect or recognition.

Renan’s paradigmatic question ‘What is the nation?’ has been inflected in many ways: When is the nation? Where is the nation? Why is the nation? etc. However, few have explicitly considered the normative question: ‘What ought the nation to be?’, which raises the distinctively moral and philosophical-political question of the normativity of the nation in general, and in turn, that of the normative criteria that underpin the nation’s normativity. Since the choice of these criteria is clearly arbitrary and culturally-determined, any normative justification will have a counterfactual character. Nonetheless, in spite of its inherent limitations resulting from axiological relativism, such an approach has the advantage of providing not only a descriptive model for countries subscribing to theselected normative principles, but also a critical basis for the evaluation of their national aspirations.

Over the last few years, in part due to the political impact of terrorist activities, the debate on the moral significance of torture as a useful means of obtaining information from enemy combatants has arisen with an urgency not seen in many years. Stressing the importance of exceptional cases, the defenders of torture attempt to justify its acceptance by and back its use in the judicial system of Western democracies. Yet what is at stake here are the basic moral principles—especially that of human dignity-on which our political convictions rest. Admitting of exceptions would change the value of these principles: what once werefixed guidelines for acceptable action now become alterable according to specific political demands, thus making torture into a morally neutral act. The current defence of torture in the West may be a symptom of the progressive absolutization of the State.

With our state-guaranteed or internationally recognized human rights, liberalism is rather a common basis of political discussion today. John Rawls’s theory of justice, which set a framework for liberal theory of justice in the last decades of the twentieth century, is notably contractarian. Martha Nussbaum, although claiming to be a neo-Aristotelian, argues that her capabilities approach (hereafter CA) can upgrade the liberal theory of justice, particularly that of political liberalism, to deal with unsolved problems of justice, namely, disability, nationality, and species membership. However, this paper argues that her proposal issuccessful only when her CA-based theory proves its affiliation with political liberalism in more detail. As defined by Rawls, political liberalism produces “free-standing” political conceptions and rejects any metaphysical or religious ideas. It halts conceptions of justice that promote conceptions of good derived from particular comprehensive doctrines. I do not believe a mere convergence between CA and contractarianism is sufficient enough to secure the rational acceptability of her CA-based theory. I suggest that if she wishes to maintain her CA-based theory’s being politically liberal, she either has to prove more of the public, in particular the global public, acceptability of her intuitive ideas of human dignity without relying on her intuitions or alter the meaning of political liberalism itself so that it allows a room for some sort of comprehensive doctrine.

Distinguishing between “abstraction” and “idealization,” O’Neill has warned that idealized accounts of justice are misleading because “insofar as contemporary theories of justice start by assuming ‘ideal’ conception of persons, rationality or independence... their theories will be inapplicable to the human case.” The principles of justice in Theories of Justice by John Rawls has often been criticized as a typical example of such an idealized account of justice. However, in response to such criticism, Rawls may contend that the problem with the ideal account of justice can be addressed in this non‐ideal theory, which is fully explored in his Law of People. In this paper, I aim to provide a critique of non‐ideal theory in Law of People by arguing that in as much as what injustice and non‐ideal mean is pre-defined by his ideal theory by the top-down model, not from existing conditions, and his non-ideal theory also has the same problem as hisideal theory, thus, systematic exclusion of particular types of actual injustice. Thus, I argue that while Rawls’s idealized non ideal theory may capture the concerns of idealized reasonable liberal people, it fails to capture the actual justice concerns of those people suffering from the injustices of neo-liberal globalization mainly derived by actual liberal people.

The perspectives of Ukraine which are outlined by the notion of the “Ukrainian project”, and determined by potential of development of civil society, as congruent with perspectives of steady international development for the sake of collaboration and peace, are examined in the article. Determination of such basic analytical notions as discursive practices of “prevailing” and “understanding” is offered with this purpose. Discourse is considered as reason for choice and giving the advantage to one meaning over the others that is set in the certain modes of signification. Discourse of understanding – is the process of creation of such knowledge, the nominative function of which stops being the function of power, and becomes the instrument of the renewed perception and understanding at new level of communicative space. As discursive reality is reflected not only on the methods of thinking, but also on the practical behaviour of people, we have warrants to speak about its ethical conditionality and the corresponding discursive‐ethical practices of “freedom and authenticity”, “paternalism and clientism” and “nihilism and anarchy”. Last two discursive-ethical practices are examined as obstacles on the way to realization of the “Ukrainian project” in relation to itsdemocratic development in direction to the civilization values common with the European Union.

Russian philosopher, the author of such books as: 1. Arnold Kazmin The theory of intellect: how to elect a president. M: ‐ “CDPress”, 2001. 2. Arnold Kazmin The globalization of morality-the evolutional step to civilization. M: - “CDPress”, 2005. 3. Arnold Kazmin “The Hegel’s code: system thinking and social cybernetics. M: - “CDPress”, 2006. Presidium Member of the Russian Philosophical Society. Took part of The The 21st Universal Philosophy Congress at Istambul, Turkey, 2003. The editor-in-chief of Russian Philosopher newspaper.

The paper states that the world as a self-ruling system needs creation of its new concept based on philosophy of harmony. Harmonic foundation-building of the world system, safeguarding the turning strategy of the world from non-balanced into balanced development, formation of world order on the basis of convergent idea on world unity of nationstates, the leading way of integral globalization contrary to unipolar globalization are the principal conditions of the world’s progress. The necessity on creation of harmony in the world occupies an important place in the practice of international social, political, economic and civilizationalrelations. Global civilization, which appears as a result of historical development of humanity, the evolution of philosophical idea of world unity, interaction of globalizational and civilizational processes and other specific development conditions, defines itself as a new stage of our planet. Through forming the organics of national cultures and local civilizations global civilization begins to create its own complex of common-universal behaviors and values. The historical and international importance of the globalization era is that it opens its very successful perspectives having rational basis of world development towards global civilization not in a spontaneous, but in a naturally determined movement. Global civilization comprising humanity’s potential harmonically is and will continue to be the principal project of world-building.

Modern civilization, which is proud of its material richness and high intellectual level, is in crisis, so that the new value “sustainability” becomes the basic philosophical principle. Introducing what we Korean philosophers think on philosophy today, I want to suggest to the Asian and the world philosophers that we should reflect together and declare solidarity upon the problems of both Asia and the world.

I have been proposing for ‘christo‐dao’ rather than traditional christo-logy or modern christo‐praxis as a more appropriate paradigm for the understanding of Jesus Christ in the new millennium. This christological paradigm shift solicits a radical change of its root-metaphor, from logos (Christ as the incarnate logos) or praxis (Christ as the praxis of God’s reign) to ‘dao’ (Christ as the embodiment of the Dao, the “theanthropocosmic” Way) with a critical new interpretation. For EastAsian Christians, the christological adoption of dao is as inevitable and legitimate as that of logos for the Western church at the fourth century. This adoption has been operative since the beginning of Korean Christianity. As an example, in this paper, I introduce the intriguing thoughts of Dasŏk Ryu Young-mo 柳永模 (1890-1981). According to John 14:6, Ryu comprehended Jesus as the Dao, the way of the truth toward the life in God. Christ is the brightest way on which we can walk safely (the truth) to attain the unity with God (the life). It coincides with the goal of Confucianism, the anthropocosmic unity of Heaven and humanity. Fromthis vantage point, he further expressed a nobel East Asian definition of God; namely, God is the One who is ‘the Being in Non-Being’ (Ŏpshigyeshin-nim): He believed that this event of Being-in-Non-Being has been historically manifested in the crucifixion (the Non-Being) and the resurrection (Being) of Jesus Christ. Christ is both the Non-Being (the Non-Ultimate, Vacuity) and Being (Great Ultimate, Form). Finally, confessing Jesus as the embodiment of the Dao is none other than Ryu’s East Asian way of saying “the Word made flesh.”

The metaphorical understanding of historical movement as spiral is due to the symbolism of the spiral. Spiral is the geometric pattern to depict a self-accumulative growth of energy or life force. For Ham, history neither reiterates “the eternal return” to the primal archetype nor generates “the unilateral straight move of teleology. If history is a living move, it should follow the basic principle of life evolution as all the living experiences the gradual and yet creative advance by long accumulative changes. There are several factors for Ham Sok Hon to establish the idea of the spiral history. First, he studied the Bible and newly experienced the ‘not-yet-being ontology’ in the Abrahamic religion, a view of a religious utopianism toward the future. It is not the view of “the eternal return” ofMircea Eliade but the view of historical reality that urges a life-formation in expectation of the novel emergence of the new. Second, among various streams of East Asian thoughts, Ham was greatly influenced from the neo-Confucian idea of the nature of mind and Hua-yen Buddhism, that is, ‘one is many; many is one’. Finally, Ham’s spiral history is different from Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit in that he denies the historical perspectives of heroism or classism and instead advocates the perspective of ssi-al, a perspective that ssi‐al bears all burden of historical suffering and opens a new chapter by overcoming the historical suffering.

This paper explores Ham's role as a maverick thinker, a pacifist and an innovator of religious pluralism in twentieth century Korea. Ham saw an individual's spiritual quest and the struggle for social justice as interrelated. As an idealist, Ham viewed human beings basically as moral beings, and perceived the Supreme Being or God not only as a transcendental being, but also as an imminent being both in the sense of existing everywhere and also in the sense of existing as `inner voice'. On this basis, my paper examines Ham as an intermediary between East Asia and the West and between `losers' and `winners' in history, and assesses how he was shaped by, and responded to, the challenges of his time. Firstly, I will look at Ham's search for Korea's national identity under Japaneseimperialism and his determination to write an account of Korean history from the standpoint of the oppressed, in order to inspire his downhearted countrymen. I will also examine how, using his own Biblical interpretation of Korean history, Ham provided a mission and vision not only for oppressed Koreans under Japanese colonialism, but also for 'losers' and ordinary people everywhere. In the second section, I will further explore Ham's sense of pacifism by examining how Ham's ideas were open-ended not only towards the Asian classical philosophies of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism, but also towards traditional Christianity, the non-church movement, Quakerism, Western sciences and rationalism. I will also consider why he had to respond as an individual to the challenges both of society and of the historical era. In the third section, I will concentrate on how Ham's Christo-centric views had fundamentally altered to a more universal perspective and also how he asserted the necessity for the restoration of Christianity from the ceremonial and `weird' to the ethical and socially just. Lastly, I will look at Ham's definition of Jesus and why he used the new terminology the 'Ssial' instead of the archaic expressions 'people' or 'national.' By doing so, I will examine how Ham achieved what is one of the most difficult things in this world, to be a genuinely conscientious leader despite corrupt surroundings.

The result of 2007’s presidential election in South Korea symbolizes the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right. They say it goes with the global retrogression of democracy, or the consolidation of the hegemony of the rightist versions of democracy. According to Choi Jang-jip, the general public in Korea has thought that the Roh Moo-hyun’s administration had betrayed them, handing power over to the market, and seeking to form a coalition government with theconservatives. Similarly, Professor Jang Ha-jun asserts that the democratic governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun have mistaken economic democratization for neo-liberalistic structural adjustment.

The purpose of this article is to make apparent Hannah Arendt’s thought on the practical dimension of universality alluded throughout her works. The issue of universality has been one of the most pivotal questions in political philosophy until today. Beneath of her philosophical endeavor there is always her deep concern for it. In this article I will show the practical dimension of universality unintentionally pursued by Arendt and its political implications. By harshly criticizing Plato Arendt successfully shows how violent the truth claim in the political realm can be. What Arendt is critical of is the attitude to dictate philosophical ideals in politicalrealm, the attitude I named the “Philosopher King Complex.” Arendt’s bitter criticism of this attitude makes believe that she is critical of any claim of universality in the political realm, but her praise of Socrates clearly shows that she does not altogether blame the claim itself. We also need to note the debate with Gershom Scholem. Scholem’s charge that Arendt dealt with the Eichmann case from a humanitarian, universalistic viewpoint while neglecting the Jewish perspective could be serious considering Arendt’s emphasis on the pariah’s perspective. Arendt’s standpoint, however, includes both a particularistic view as a Jew and auniversalistic view as a human at the same time. This is possible because Arendt correctly understood the role of speech. Arendt’s use of Pastor Grueber’s example in Eichmann in Jerusalem implies that she believes in the power of speech to relate our consciousness to reality and to make communication possible. To retain human plurality along with universality, it is necessary but not sufficient to focus on speech alone. In this regard we learn a lesson from the Habermas-Henrich debate: that self-relation of consciousness plays the role of establishing self-identity. A successful example of combining these two insights is Arendt’s position since she delivered her hermeneutic insights in the language of philosophy of consciousness. Albrecht Wellmer’s unjustifiable charge of Arendt’s concept of judgment to be “mystic” is an example of misunderstanding of her peculiar position. If we admit this, we can say that Arendt establishes aposition to give an answer to the question “is democracy a universal truth?”: democracy, as far as it is a political truth, is neither equivalent to a universal truth as a mathematical one, nor just a particular cultural opinion of westerners. This interpretation of Arendt puts her position near to liberal-communitarian views of Michael Sandel or Charles Taylor. Sandel criticizes Arendt to be universalistic, but in fact his position is quite near to hers. For example, his method of analogy is almost the same as her concept of exemplary validity. Rather, it seems to me that Arendt provides more solid theoretical ground than Taylor or Sandel does. For Arendt’s position stands on a firm understanding of the power of speech and on an insight of self-relation of consciousness.