Dans notre travail de recherche nous voulons, d’un côté, valoriser l’actualité éthique et politique de la pensée sophistique et, de l’autre, réhabiliter la pensée de Protagoras et d’Antiphon sur un plan purement philosophique. Nous considérons les sophistes, en général, et Protagoras et Antiphon, en particulier, comme étant les « ancêtres » de l’antidogmatique et du relativisme dans le domaine de la philosophie, de l’anthropologie ou encore dans le domaine historico-politique. Par conséquent, ils étaient aussi les ancêtres du courant laïc, critique et démocratique de la pensée occidentale qui, malgré avoir toujours été « minoritaire », représente l’un des fondements de l’identité culturelle européenne. Cette dernière a une grande « dette » envers eux, desquels elle a repris et réutilisé de nombreux concepts et de multiples inventions philosophiques sans presque jamais leur en attribuer le mérite.Pour reconstruir les philosophies des deux sophistes, nous avons démarré notre recherche par une traduction et une étude des sources à notre disposition, ainsi que par une analyse approfondie des contextes historiques, sociaux, économique, politiques et culturels.Nous avons présenté les discours des deux philosophes comme une sorte d’antilogie : nous apprendons de PRO-tagoras qu’il est possible de créer une société qui correspond à nos valeurs ; et d’ANTI-phon que le sens critique, la remise en question et la lutte politique sont nécessaires afin que le nomos soit toujours respectueux de l’évolution et des changements de notre société. Nous avons enfin opéré une confrontation critique entre les deux philosophies afin d’en ressortir trois perspectives utiles pour notre présent et notre futur : l’antidogmatisme, le relativisme constructiviste et le minoritarisme. / In our research work we want, on the one hand, to enhance the ethical and political relevance of sophistic taught and, on the other, to rehabilitate the thinking of Protagoras and Antiphon on a purely philosophical level.In general, we consider the sophists, and particularly Protagoras and Anthiphon, as the “ancestors” of the antidogmatic and relativism in the philosophic, anthropologic or historical-political fields. Consequently, they were also the ancestors of the secular, critical and democratic current of Western thought which, despite having always been a "minority", is one of the foundations of European cultural identity.The latter has a great "debt" towards them, from which it has taken and reused many concepts and numerous philosophical inventions without almost ever granting them the merit.To reconstruct the philosophies of the two sophists, we began our research with a translation and a study of the sources available to us, as well as an in-depth analysis of the historical, social, economic, political and cultural contexts.We have presented the speeches of the two philosophers as a kind of antilogy: we learn from PRO-tagoras that it is possible to create a society that corresponds to our values; and from ANTI-phon that the critical sense, the questioning and the political struggle are necessary so that the nomos is always respectful of the evolution and the changes of our society.We have finally made a critical confrontation between the two philosophies in order to reveal three useful perspectives for our present and our future: antidogmatism, constructivist relativism and minoritarism.

O presente estudo tem por escopo investigar o conceito de pessoa moral, e as implicações éticas e jurídicas em considerá-lo como critério de análise nas discussões bioéticas referentes ao aborto, afastando-se, desta forma, do parâmetro estrito da vida biológica, que paira sobre os debates. Assim, o trabalho tem por fundamento metodológico uma abordagem interdisciplinar com predomínio do enfoque zetético-jurídico, valendo-se da inserção de filmes referentes ao assunto e da linguagem logopática do cinema como forma de expandir o objeto de conhecimento, o que colabora para a apreensão afetiva de uma questão humana que envolve em seu interior uma decisão pautada por um conflito éticojurídico. / This work has the aim of studying the concept of moral person, and its moral and legal implications as considering it as a criterion for analysis in bioethical discussions concerning abortion, deviating, in this way, of the strict parameter of biological life, that hovers upon the pleadings. Thus, this work has as methodological foundation an interdisciplinary approach with predominance of legal-zetetic focus, inserting movies related to this issue and logopatic language of cinema as a means of expanding knowledge matter, which helps us comprehend an affective sense of a human question intrinsically connected to a decision of an ethical-legal conflict.

O objetivo é analisar as implicações da teorização pós-estruturalista para o pensamento educacional, especialmente no que se refere ao relativismo decorrente desta teorização, assunto que ganhou destaque nas discussões acadêmicas não só apenas de filosofia da educação como também nas relacionadas à filosofia da ciência e do pensamento social. Não se objetivou uma análise extensiva das possibilidades da filosofia pós-moderna para a educação, uma vez que a multiplicidade dos discursos, autores e idéias tornaria esta tarefa irrealizável e inadequada no que se refere ao escopo deste trabalho. Antes, o foco é estabelecido sobre a idéia da deposição das fundamentações realistas, racionalistas e naturalistas do discurso educacional, e sobre as críticas mais representativas que este movimento suscita na comunidade de pensadores da educação.

O presente estudo tem por escopo investigar o conceito de pessoa moral, e as implicações éticas e jurídicas em considerá-lo como critério de análise nas discussões bioéticas referentes ao aborto, afastando-se, desta forma, do parâmetro estrito da vida biológica, que paira sobre os debates. Assim, o trabalho tem por fundamento metodológico uma abordagem interdisciplinar com predomínio do enfoque zetético-jurídico, valendo-se da inserção de filmes referentes ao assunto e da linguagem logopática do cinema como forma de expandir o objeto de conhecimento, o que colabora para a apreensão afetiva de uma questão humana que envolve em seu interior uma decisão pautada por um conflito éticojurídico. / This work has the aim of studying the concept of moral person, and its moral and legal implications as considering it as a criterion for analysis in bioethical discussions concerning abortion, deviating, in this way, of the strict parameter of biological life, that hovers upon the pleadings. Thus, this work has as methodological foundation an interdisciplinary approach with predominance of legal-zetetic focus, inserting movies related to this issue and logopatic language of cinema as a means of expanding knowledge matter, which helps us comprehend an affective sense of a human question intrinsically connected to a decision of an ethical-legal conflict.

This study examines the effects of organizational ethical culture, idealism, relativism and guanxi orientation on the ethical decision-making processes of professional auditors in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is hypothesized that auditors perceiving a positive organizational ethical culture, possessing higher (lower) degrees of idealism (relativism), and possessing lower degrees of guanxi orientation will make more ethical decisions. The findings of the study indicate that certain aspects of organizational ethical culture had a significant effect on professional auditors’ behavioural intentions, but not on their ethical judgments. Idealism had a marginally significant impact on professional auditors’ behavioral intentions, but not on their ethical judgments. Relativism did not have a significant impact on ethical judgments or behavioral intentions. Guanxi orientation had a significant effect on professional auditors’ behavioural intentions, but not on their ethical judgments. This study also explores the potential effects of demographics on PRC professional auditors’ ethical decision-making processes and the results suggest that CPA firm type (local/regional vs. international) had a significant effect on professional auditors’ behavioural intentions. The overall findings suggest that organizational ethical culture, idealism, guanxi orientation, and CPA firm type play a significant role in PRC professional auditors’ ethical decision-making processes.

In addition to box office success, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s films have achieved national and international critical acclaims. However, it is not only this rare achievement of critical and commercial success that sets Farhadi apart from other Iranian filmmakers, but also, his new approach to the issues of truth and morality which have been age-long themes in the history of Iranian art, literature, and cinema. Compared to his predecessors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Jafar Panahi, Farhadi’s viewpoint on these themes is distinctly secular. This thesis focuses on the significance of the change Farhadi’s approach has brought on Iranian cinema by analyzing three of his critically acclaimed films, About Elly (2009), A Separation (2011), and The Salesman (2016). By creative use of narrative techniques such as narrative gaps and open endings and filmic techniques such as indirect-subjective point of view and handheld camera, Farhadi’s films highlight the relativity of the concepts of truth and morality through a secular and modernist lens. Such an approach marks a shift in Iranian cinema which, in turn, indicates an ideological shift within the contemporary Iranian society as well.

Virginity Testing, a traditional Zulu pre-nuptial custom that determines the worth of a bride, has been resurrected in communities in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa as a response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The practice takes place during large community festivals when young girls have their genitals physically examined to determine whether they are virgins and results are made public. Supporters of the tradition claim that in fostering a value of chastity among its youth, it encourages abstinence from sexual intercourse which leads to a lower HIV infection rate and prevents the disease from spreading. Human rights activists disagree; Rather than slowing the spread of a disease, they argue, the practice instead endangers girls. Those who fail are often shunned and turn to prostitution, while those who pass may be exposed as potential targets for rape (due to a myth that says intercourse with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS). Despite a ban on the practice in 2005, the testing festivals continue, and are described by supporters as an important part of the preservation of Zulu culture. This thesis examines the ways in which human rights may be re-negotiated for young girls in Zulu communities while maintaining a respect for local culture. It moves beyond the traditional debate between relativism and universalism in order to propose solutions to rights violations in culturally diverse contexts by exploring ideas of inclusive human rights and capabilities theories.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottfried Herder unwittingly contributed to the political strands of Marxism and Fascism, respectively, but also to the gently progressing secularisation of Christian values that pervades the contemporary age. While Herder conceived of God traditionally, as a transcendent Being, he also sowed the seeds for Hegels philosophy in which God is realised immanently through the development of mans full capacities for reason. Since Hegel also posits that the end is implicit in the beginning, his scheme cannot hold without the kind of necessity that comes from a Godly (transcendent) source. At the same time, Hegels philosophy of history as revealed in The Phenomenology of Spirit and Herders Another Philosophy of History contain remarkable similarities that show how Herders and Hegels quest to reconcile the earthly and the finite with the infinite and the eternal led to the secularisation of philosophy and the beginning of the modern cultural ethos. The reader should see how Herder struggled to reconcile the many competing viewpoints of his age with his awareness that these viewpoints were limited, and how Hegel subsequently attempted to address this conundrum, along with the fundamental philosophical and theological question (left unresolved by Herder) of how man can have free will under God. The reader should realise how Gods immanence in man, partially accorded by Herder, and more substantially accorded by Hegel, leads eventually to the secular perspective of modern times, with both its negative, totalitarian and extreme manifestations, and its positive, pseudo-Christian and mildly socialist outcomes.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Holocaust denial and professional historiography. Although much has been written about both subjects, the issue of distinguishing between them seems to have been largely ignored. They are, however, linked because of the way deniers conduct their business: in the attempt to make credible the claim that the Holocaust never happened, deniers mimic the styles and conventions traditionally employed by professional historians. Using footnotes and writing in the third person, deniers hope to get the surface right and make their readers believe their work. But appearances are deceiving, for deniers do not do history and are not historians. Theirs is a claim that defies morality and any sense of historical reality. Professional historians, while undoubtedly recognizing the moral bankruptcy of deniers and certainly not accepting their work as historical writing, have failed to make evident enough that deniers are not historians. Moreover, those who have attempted to refute deniers and not often have these been professional historians have usually done so on the basis of evidence: they have gone back to the data and shown how deniers have falsified or misrepresented it. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with that method, my own tack is different. At the same time as I take for granted the fact that deniers are not historians, what I aim to do is show how that is the case. Thus, this is partly a way beyond factual analysis, and partly the framework for factual refutation should it ever become necessary. Until deniers do history, however, evidence-based refutation is not necessary, and this very recognition should be implicit and explicit in any examination of Holocaust denial. My hope is to make this clear in three distinct but nevertheless related chapters. The first is about the evolution of Holocaust denial and how deniers have, especially in recent years, attempted to convey the appearance of legitimate scholarship. In the second, I focus on competing narratives as part of my effort to show that the appearance of denial literature is just part of deniers mode of deception. There is a major difference between competing narratives that are compatible historical narratives vs. historical narratives and between competing narratives that are incompatible historical narratives vs. denial literature. Drawing comparisons between the two should make more evident the genre-specific characteristics of history-writing and Holocaust denial. They are not, and can never be, the same, no matter how much deniers may try to convince us otherwise. But what to do about this dichotomy? That question is largely the basis for my third chapter. It is my contention that turning to the evidence cannot be the only method by which to distinguish between history and denial. More is required to convince others of the falsity of deniers claims, and for me this is a larger issue, one that must take into account not just how but also why we write about the past. Lost is the sense that there is an ethical component to history-writing, specifically as this relates to events like the Holocaust, the issues surrounding which seem to require no less than a general notion of right-wrong. Judging between accounts thereby takes on a more meaningful role in the sense that focusing solely on issues of true-false tends to minimize the importance of the Holocaust as lesson. So, too, I think, does this lend itself rather easily to the disconcerting placement of post-modernism/relativism and Holocaust denial under the same sign. That is, Holocaust denial is untrue, and because post-modernists are often condemned precisely because they question the very notions of truth and objectivity in historical writing, deniers and post-modernists are often linked. However, such a narrow focus risks missing the forest for the trees. Instead of looking solely at how post-modernism threatens the truth, history would be better served through the use of post-modern concepts in order to make more evident the ethical component of the discipline of history. In fact, this is what a number of scholars from other disciplines have suggested, for it is in the meaning of the Holocaust the Holocaust as lesson that we have the best prevention against denial. Our discipline, after all, is comprised of much more than facts. The more effectively we impart this to students and readers, the better the chance they will understand who historians really are, what they really do, and why it is important. This alone should make clearer the idea that deniers are not historians, and that what they say is wrong on much more than just a factual level.

Virginity Testing, a traditional Zulu pre-nuptial custom that determines the worth of a bride, has been resurrected in communities in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa as a response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The practice takes place during large community festivals when young girls have their genitals physically examined to determine whether they are virgins and results are made public. Supporters of the tradition claim that in fostering a value of chastity among its youth, it encourages abstinence from sexual intercourse which leads to a lower HIV infection rate and prevents the disease from spreading. Human rights activists disagree; Rather than slowing the spread of a disease, they argue, the practice instead endangers girls. Those who fail are often shunned and turn to prostitution, while those who pass may be exposed as potential targets for rape (due to a myth that says intercourse with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS). Despite a ban on the practice in 2005, the testing festivals continue, and are described by supporters as an important part of the preservation of Zulu culture. This thesis examines the ways in which human rights may be re-negotiated for young girls in Zulu communities while maintaining a respect for local culture. It moves beyond the traditional debate between relativism and universalism in order to propose solutions to rights violations in culturally diverse contexts by exploring ideas of inclusive human rights and capabilities theories.