Contemporary Political Philosophy, Ethics and Esthetics in Croatia
191-0000000-3504
Project Director dr. sc. Pavo Barišić
Summary:
The aim of the project is to investigate the basic notions and problems of modern political philosophy, ethics, and esthetics, as well as to present the main trends and controversies in the 20th century. In the context of the European practical philosophy, the research workers start from the essential difference between culture and the scientific-technological civilization that has, with its positivism and pragmatism, turned out to be isufficient for an adequate ethical-political activity of man. The amalysis of modern political philosophy focuses on the issues concerning democracy, evolvement, and development of the democratic institutions of the 20th century. In the context of global democratization, the research will in the first place focus on the classic and present philosophical discourses concerning justice, freedom, the rule of law, human rights, liberalism, republicanism, politics, culture, and education. The research in ethical issues focuses on contemporary discourse concerning the foundattion of morality, freedom, and virtue, on bussiness ethics and the bioethical issues concerning life, cloning, euthanasia, and nature. The researchers will investigate the concept of will, the development of the idea and the roots of voluntarism in modern philosophy from Friedrich Nietzsche to the present time. The esthetical research focuses on the concepts of beauty and art in the Croatian Neo-Scholastics from the early- to the mid-twentieth century. The researchers will investigate the esthetical problems in the critiques by Jakov Čuka and the trends in Catholic literature in the magazine Hrvatska straža (Croatian Guard), analyze the contributions of Antun Mahnić and Kerubin Šegvić, the literary critique and polemics of Miroslav Krleža, the Scotistic-Thomistic discussion of Karlo Balić and Hijacint Bošković, and the roles of Ljubomir Maraković, Albert Haler, and Pavao Vuk-Pavlović. An outlook of the esthetical problems discussed by various authors whose works were published in the early-twentieth-century periodicals will be made. The central research hypothesis of the project is that modernization does not cause the decay of spirit and culture in a one-sided domination of the scientific-technological civilization. In ethical-political activities, man in his life in state and history develops the ultimate forms of spirit, from politics and law, religion and art, to philosophy and science. The fields of culture, such as morality, art, religion
Project assistants:
Pavo Barišić
Vladimir Jelkić
Ante Pažanin
Zlatko Posavac