<p>Some scholars argue that the principle of voluntary informed consent is rooted in the Western ethos of liberal individualism; that it would be difficult to implement this requirement in societies where the norms of decision-making emphasize collective rather than individual decision-making (for example, Sub-Saharan Africa); that it would amount to “cultural imperialism” to seek to implement the principle of voluntary informed consent in non-Western societies. This thesis rejects this skepticism about the possibility of implementing the informed consent requirement in non-Western environments and argues that applying the principle of voluntary informed consent in human subjects’ research in Sub-Saharan African communal culture could serve as an effective measure to protect vulnerable subjects from possible abuses or exploitations. The thesis proposes the “multi-step” approach to informed consent as the best approach to the implementation of the principle in the African communal setting. The thesis argues that the importance of the “multi-step” approach lies in the fact that it is one that is sensitive to local culture and customs. On the question of whether the principle of voluntary informed consent should be made compulsory in research, the thesis answers that we have no choice in the matter.</p>

I denna uppsats presenterar och diskuterar författaren tre invändningar som riktats mot dygdetikern Rosalind Hursthouses förslag om vad som är en moraliskt riktig handling. Hursthouse menar att en handling är moraliskt riktig om den är vad en dygdig agent karaktärsenligt skulle göra i omständigheterna. Den form av invändningar som författaren presenterar och diskuterar i uppsatsen försöker visa på att Hursthouses förslag exkluderar handlingar som vanligen anses är rätt. Författaren argumenterar för att en dygdetik lik den Neo-Aristoteliska dygdetik Hursthouse försvarar kan formuleras så att den undgår invändningar som presenteras i uppsatsen. Författaren föreslår att vi istället för att förstå Hursthouses förslag som om det gällde de faktiska handlingar som en dygdig agent gör, istället bör uppmärksamma att en dygdig agent följer handlingsmaximer vilka hon prövat under sin moraliska utveckling till att bli dygdig. Författaren föreslår vidare att det är huruvida en handling utgår från en maxim som karaktärsenligt kan ingå i ett dygdigt liv som är avgörande om den är moraliskt riktig eller inte. / In this paper the author presents and discusses three charges that have been raised against Rosalind Hursthouses virtue ethical account on what it takes for an action to be morally right. Hursthouse proposes that an action is right, if and only if, it is what a virtuous agent characteristically would to in the circumstances. All of the charges discussed and presented in the paper try to show that Hursthouses account excludes actions which we would like to say are morally right. The author argues that a Neo-Aristotelian form of virtue ethics, like the one Hursthouse defends, can be formulated so that the charges can be avoided. The author proposes that, instead of understanding Hursthouses account as if it is only the very actions that virtuous agents perform that are morally right, we should observe that the virtuous agents are acting from maxims that they have tested during their development towards becoming virtuous agents. The author then proposes that an action is right if it can be traced from a maxim that can be a characteristic part of a virtuous life.

Gender threat occurs in situations in which one is threatened by the possibility of acting like the opposite gender (Vandello et al., 2008) and is most pervasive for men (e.g., “you throw like a girl”). This study examined the question of whether men, after being told they performed like women, would respond with negative implicit evaluations of women. In addition, competence threat (with no reference to gender) was examined to see if it would affect men in the same way. Women were threatened by being told they performed like men, although it was hypothesized there would be no effect of gender threat for women. Participants completed a line bisection task and received false feedback regarding how they performed. The feedback was manipulated in terms of threat (threat versus not threat) and gender salience (gender was salient or not). Participants then completed two Implicit Association Tests: one to assess implicit prejudice against women and one to assess endorsement of tradition gender roles. Men who were threatened (regardless of gender salience) showed more implicit prejudice against women than men who were not threatened. Women showed an interaction of threat, gender salience, and explicit sexism. When gender was salient, threatened women low in explicit sexism had less favorable attitudes towards other women. Women high in explicit sexism showed no significant difference between threat and no threat. No effects were found for implicit gender stereotypes for men or women. Implications for gender threat theory and future directions are discussed.

Charles University Faculty of Humanities Applied Ethics Ethics of Philanthropy Annotation of Doctoral Thesis Mgr. Jan Kroupa Supervised by: prof. PhDr. Jan Sokol, CSc., Ph.D. 2020 ANNOTATION The increase in private wealth in our cultural circuits has been unprecedented which fosters growth in private philanthropy. Charitable giving has been on a rise throughout the western world, including the Czech Republic, where we can document long-term and steady growth in both the number of charitable gifts as well as in the amount donated. In parallel, on the beneficiary side, there is a stabilized sector of well-established civic organizations covering the standard array of charitable topics. We may state that following 1989, the Czech civic sector has been revived, showing - despite all challenges - most signs of healthy maturing. In this paper, we attempted to capture the cultural and social context of philanthropy from the point of view of practical philosophy. We examined the rich roots of philanthropy and described the processes of its institutionalization until now. We paid special attention to describing the current situation of philanthropic giving in the Czech Republic. On basis of the above, we debated some of the dilemmatic questions of today's philanthropy, such as selecting the beneficiary and donor...

La notoriété dont jouit l’apport de Gadamer à la tradition de l’herméneutique philosophique tend à éclipser la finesse et la complexité de ses réflexions dans le domaine de la philosophie pratique. Or, Gadamer souligne lui-même que, dès le début de sa carrière, sa principale préoccupation a été celle de comprendre à partir des Grecs ce que sont la praxis et la philosophie pratique qui l’étudie. C’est cette préoccupation qui l’a conduit à développer par la suite ses réflexions sur l’herméneutique – discipline qu’il comprend comme une philosophie pratique. Dans ses écrits éthico-politiques, Gadamer porte une attention particulière à la philosophie grecque, pour laquelle son intérêt est si puissant que, dès ses premiers écrits, il aspirait à en revitaliser certains éléments liés à l’exercice de la dialectique et représentés par le mode de vie dialogique de Socrate. La philía est l’un de ces concepts grecs que Gadamer vise à ranimer dans les esprits contemporains puisque, selon lui, la philía révèle des vérités sur l’existence humaine que les conceptions subjectivistes dominantes dans la modernité ne réussissent pas à expliquer. Contrairement à l’idée selon laquelle l’être humain serait fondamentalement un être individuel et seulement de manière secondaire un être social, l’appropriation gadamérienne de la philía met en évidence la nature sociale de l’être humain, c’est-à-dire son appartenance essentielle à la sphère sociale – dont les dimensions les plus fondamentales sont celles de la solidarité et l’amitié, selon Gadamer. Ce mémoire vise à montrer comment, en associant la notion grecque de philía aux phénomènes de l’amitié et de la solidarité, Gadamer comprend ces dernières comme reposant essentiellement sur le dialogue et la coexistence entre les êtres humains (par lesquels il leur est possible d’identifier le bien commun). Selon Gadamer, autant l’amitié que la solidarité consistent en l’orientation de l’agir de l’individu vers le bien des communautés auxquelles il appartient en vertu d’une reconnaissance du lien d’interdépendance qui l’unit à celles-ci. Dans la sphère de l’amitié, l’essence sociale des êtres humains se manifeste dans le partage de la tâche d’auto- connaissance qui est la leur : le dialogue et la coexistence des amis leur permettent de mieux se connaître qu’ils ne le feraient individuellement. Dans la sphère de la solidarité, l’essence sociale des êtres humains se manifeste dans le partage des tâches – comme la communication et la division du travail – qui rendent possible l’existence même de l’humanité. / The reputation of Gadamer’s contributions to the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics tends to eclipse the finesse and complexity of his reflections on practical philosophy. Gadamer himself states that, since the beginning of his career, his main concern has been understanding praxis and the practical philosophy that studies it. Gadamer’s ethical-political writings are heavily focused on Greek philosophy, his lifelong interest in which is evidenced in his attempts to revitalise certain elements related to the exercise of dialectics as represented by the dialogical life led by Socrates. The Greek notion of philía is one such concept that Gadamer aimed to revive in the minds of his contemporaries; he understood philia as revealing certain truths about human existence that the subjectivist conceptions dominating modern thought fail to grasp and explain. Unlike the idea that humans are fundamentally individual beings and only secondarily social, Gadamer’s appropriation of philia accentuates the social nature of human beings – that is, their essential belonging to the social sphere – whose most fundamental dimensions are those of solidarity and friendship. This thesis aims to highlight the ways in which Gadamer’s association of the Greek notion philia to the phenomena of friendship and solidarity leads him to characterise these phenomena as fundamentally relying on the dialogue and coexistence between human beings (through which they are capable of identifying the common good). Gadamer maintains that both friendship and solidarity entail individuals orienting their actions toward the well-being of the communities to which they belong in accordance with their recognition of the interdependence that unites them. In Gadamer’s conception of philia as friendship, the social nature of human beings manifests in the way they share the task of self-knowledge (a task obligatory to every human being): the dialogue and coexistence between friends is what allows humans to understand themselves better than they would individually. In Gadamer’s conception of philia as solidarity, the social essence of human beings manifests in the shared tasks that make the very existence of humanity possible – such as the task of communication and the division of labour.

The emphasis of the inquiry is on the domain of education and the relationship present between the teacher and student more specifically. Essentially, the first part of the thesis outlines how the larger social-political system impacts the domain of public education, with the predominant issues of adversity becoming manifest at the level of the relationship that exists between teacher and student. The second part of the work utilizes the problems discovered and their impact on human experience to propose a virtue/care based method for approaching the relationship with the student in a way that both aligns more closely with the movement of experience, while also functioning to assist the student in shaping their own moral character. Essentially, the method being proposed is something that is meant to assist the teacher in her attempts to communicate with the student in a more personal sort of way, thus allowing for a higher degree of understanding of the unique personality of each student, with this understanding leading the teacher to form a more flexible approach that takes into account the various personalities of the students. In so doing the teacher is working to bring the experience of the student into the educative process, which should thereby increase student performance through their feeling more involved in the education being received.

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. / Avhandlingen är ett bidrag till den bioetiska debatten om olika reproduktionstekniker som antingen nyligen blivit tillgängliga eller som kan komma att utvecklas i framtiden. Utgångspunkten är en intuition som många verkar dela, nämligen att användningen av sådana tekniker i syfte att välja icke-sjukdomsegenskaper – som kön och känslomässig stabilitet – hos framtida barn, är mer moraliskt problematiskt än både att forma sådana egenskaper hos redan existerande barn genom exempelvis utbildning och att använda teknikerna för att undvika att barn föds med svåra sjukdomar. Studien är ett försök att genom filosofisk analys begripliggöra denna intuition och avgöra om den är berättigad. Olika sätt på vilka man i den bioetiska debatten ofta gestaltar de moraliska problem som reproduktionstekniker ger upphov till kritiseras som otillräckliga för denna uppgift. I synnerhet framhålls att intuitionen inte helt kan förstås som en oro över att de barn som sådana tekniker sätter till världen kan komma till skada. Med avsikt att utveckla ett alternativ till detta konsekvensorienterade synsätt söker sig författaren till Martin Heideggers teknikfilosofi, Hans Jonas etik och Aristoteles praktiska filosofi, som den tolkats och utvecklats i den hermeneutiska traditionen. Med hjälp av dessa teorier betonas hur reproduktiva val, till skillnad från beslut gällande redan existerande barn, kännetecknas av en slags ensidighet. Det framtida barnet framstår för föräldrarna som föremål för beslut som är odelat deras, snarare än som en konkret andre som de måste interagera med på ett lyhört, noga avpassat sätt. Detta är problematiskt eftersom det innebär att sådana val inte kan ledsagas av det slags partikulära moraliska förståelse som bara uppnås i möten mellan människor. I synnerhet innebär det att valen lätt formas av, och i sin tur riskerar att underblåsa, olika för föräldraskapet karaktäristiska tendenser som ständigt riskerar förmå föräldrar att förhålla sig till sina barn på ett instrumentaliserande sätt. Men detta betyder inte att alla användningar av reproduktionstekniker är lika problematiska. Val som syftar till att undvika svåra sjukdomar kan undgå de faror som ensidigheten öppnar för genom att åberopa en gemensam mänsklig sjukdomserfarenhet. Avhandlingens slutsats är att intuitionen som diskuteras är berättigad, med vissa reservationer, om den förstås på detta sätt.

Historien, philosophe et anthropologue, Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) est une figure singulière dans le paysage intellectuel français. Son œuvre représente, par son étendue et sa profondeur, un tournant décisif dans les idées philosophiques contemporaines. Tout en conservant l’essentiel des enseignements concernant l’historiographie et la mystique, il introduit de nombreux thèmes philosophiques et sociologiques pour lire la tradition et le monde moderne. Notre travail consiste à examiner l’idée principale selon laquelle les pratiques sont des usages ou des opérations tributaires d’une situation. Pour cela, de Certeau emploie une panoplie de notions telles que la formalité des pratiques et la stratégie et la tactique ainsi que d’autres concepts connexes dans le but de rendre compte des pratiques sociales et ce que les individus font avec l’ordre qui leur est proposé ou imposé. L’objectif est d’étudier la manière, prudente et ingénieuse, par laquelle les individus contournent les impératifs de cet ordre dans les multiples façons de faire usage du lieu, du temps et de la mémoire. Ces usages indociles se manifestent en particulier dans les pratiques quotidiennes. Ceci nous amène à nous interroger sur l’actualité des analyses de Certeau et leur apport dans les réflexions d’aujourd’hui : sur quelle assise théorique se base-t-il pour étudier la nature et la fonction de ces pratiques? Ses réflexions ont-elles changé notre approche du social, du culturel, du politique? / The historian, philosopher and anthropologist Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) stands out as a singular figure in the French intellectual landscape. The scope and depth of his work represent a decisive turning-point in the contemporary philosophical ideas. Though he retained the bulk of the teachings relating to historiography and mysticism, he introduced many philosophical and sociological themes to read the traditional and the modern world. Our work consists in examining the main idea according to which practices are customs or operations dependent on a situation. In order to do that, de Certeau uses a full array of notions such as the formality of practices, the strategy and the tactics along with other closely related concepts aiming at explaining social practices and what people do with the order proposed to or imposed on them. The purpose is to study the cautious and clever manner in which people bypass this order’s requirements in their manifold uses of space, time and memory. These rebellious customs are particularly expressed in everyday practices. This leads us to wonder how topical Certeau’s analyses are and how much they can affect today's reflections: what theoritical foundation is he relying on to study nature and the function of these practices? Have his reflections changed our approach to the social, cultural and political issues?

In the western culture, historically speaking, there are different ideas of what gives an individual authority or power. There is also historical evidence of an unequal balance between men and women and throughout this thesis I will argue that this is still the case in contemporary society. This unbalance is evident in the ways in which women make use of their bodies in acts such as dieting and pregnancy, how women take on the role of caregivers, and the view of women in leadership positions. I maintain that one of the biggest concerns and contributors to this problem is the subject/object relationship in which women find themselves. In this dichotomy, women find themselves to be a subject and autonomous person while at the same time cognizant of the way they are viewed by others as objects. Within this subject/object dynamic, women become non-subjects and lose their autonomy. A large part of this ongoing relationship is due to the ways in which women use and are expected to use their bodies as well as minds due to social norms that have been passed down through the culture. This can stem from the way women physically maneuver their bodies as well as how others perceive their bodies typically in an inferior or sexualized way. The duality for women as objects is illustrated not only in the way men view women but in how women view other women as well. I will argue that many of the issues surrounding the subject/object dualism can be related back to the ways in which women, throughout their lives, use their bodies. I will illustrate how through the social education of women regarding how to utilize and experience their bodies, women often times lack both in physical ability as well as in leadership roles. I will illustrate how this takes place with young girls and how they maneuver their bodies in regards to physical capabilities. I will then examine the pregnancy process and the ways in which the subject/object relationship manifests due to the female body being seen as a human incubator and a thing that needs medical attention. Finally, I will look at the workplace and the different leadership styles that women are assumed to take as well as the potential resistance that accompanies the challenges to these norms. The types of barriers that are constructed for women to traverse and how those affect the abilities of women to function in a position of power within a university illustrate issues of gender equality for all women. Throughout the thesis, I will explore in detail some of the different barriers that have an impact on women. I argue that barriers have been constructed to hinder women and their perceived abilities within several contexts.

In this paper I attempt to formulate the Christianity-based ecocentric ethics, to answer the ecofeminists' quest to spiritually ground such ethics; I use the living example of the practices of the Catholic ''green sisters''.