Michael H. Mitias - Böcker

Education shapes character, particularly through the liberal arts. This collection of essays explores the importance of moral education to the liberal arts and discusses how moral education fosters character development. The contributors examine the meaning of moral education, the rationale for promoting ethical values in an academic environment, and the conditions under which morality can best be taught. Though the text addresses philosophical issues, the essays focus on how the liberal arts institution can implement moral education to fulfill its objectives.The volume begins with a thoughtful consideration of how the liberal arts can embrace moral concepts. The study then overviews the place of moral education and the humanities in the contemporary world. The following essays show how moral education influences character development and how moral pluralism functions in academic culture. The book closes with essays on business ethics and the liberal arts and on the moral commitments of teachers. College administrators and educational philosophers will find this work valuable and insightful.

Is dialogue between the major religions of the world possible? First, how can a religion that is unusually complex­—composed of a doctrine founded in a unique divine revelation, a leadership class of theologians, teachers, clergy, and administrators, and a community across global cultures—show uniform respect to another religion?

Is dialogue between the major religions of the world possible? First, how can a religion that is unusually complex­—composed of a doctrine founded in a unique divine revelation, a leadership class of theologians, teachers, clergy, and administrators, and a community across global cultures—show uniform respect to another religion?

This book examines the conceptual, existential, and logical conditions under which the philosophical novel can be treated as a literary genre on a par with generally recognized literary genres, such as mystery, romantic, adventure, religious, or historical novel.

This book examines the conceptual, existential, and logical conditions under which the philosophical novel can be treated as a literary genre on a par with generally recognized literary genres, such as mystery, romantic, adventure, religious, or historical novel.

Michael Mitias presents, explains, and defends in some detail the features that make an artwork great – magic, universality, and the test of time. Although some aestheticians, beginning with Longinus, discussed these features during the past two millennia, they did not analyze them comprehensively, nor did they justify them from the standpoint of a satisfactory conception of the nature of art. In this book, the author first explains the nature of the features that make an artifact art and then proceeds to establish the validity of his thesis on firm epistemological and ontological foundations. In his endeavor to explicate the nature of this foundation, the author answers four questions. First, what is the genesis of the artwork? What makes it art? He answers this question by advancing a concept of aesthetic depth. The essence of this depth is human meaning. Second, under what perceptual conditions does this depth come to life in the process of aesthetic perception? Third, what is the role of the concept of aesthetic depth in the analysis of the nature of the great artwork? How does the concept of aesthetic depth function as a principle of explanation? Fourth, how can we justify the attribution of magic, universality, and the test of time to the great work of art? In short, an understanding of the genesis of the artwork, aesthetic depth, aesthetic value, and aesthetic perception is indispensable for an adequate conception of greatness in art.

One of the most difficult problems challenging the human mind is knowledge of the world in its human, natural, and supra-natural dimensions: what is the nature of this multidimensional reality? How do we know and verify the truth of our knowledge claims of this reality? A contemporary Polish philosopher, Malgorzata Czarnocka, has advanced one of the most comprehensive and insightful studies of the cognitive act and the conditions under which it takes place. The proposition explicated in this book is that Czarnocka’s analysis of perception functions as a model of explanation in our attempt to know the nature of the being that underlies the universe. This analysis becomes the basis of the author’s discussion of symbolic truth as a model of explanation and its other applications.

This book is an elucidation and defense of four main propositions: (1) human nature is essentially rational; (2) rational nature is a conversation; (3) as the essential fabric of human nature, the reason exists as a potentiality in the formal organization of the human body; and (4) at the individual and collective levels, humanity grows and develops in the medium of conversation. Moreover, human nature is the unity of the capacities of intellect, which aims at the value of truth, goodness, which aims at the value of human love or happiness, and will, which aims at the value of freedom. Accordingly, in any type of human dialogue, or conversation, the dialogist should act as a human being and treats the other dialogist as a human being. This assumption underlies the analysis of the basic types of individual and inter-institutional dialogue.

Friendship was recognized as a central moral value in the classical period, but it was dismissed from medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. This book argues that this dismissal is unjustifiable. The validity of this claim is established in four steps. First, it proposes the concept of moral paradigm. This concept enables us to explore the source of moral value and to provide a criterion for the evaluation of the adequacy of moral theory. Second, the book explains why medieval, modern and twentieth century moral theorists neglected friendship as a central moral value in their analysis of moral behavior and why this neglect was unjustifiable. Third, it explains why the classical moral philosophers viewed friendship as a central moral value. Fourth, it argues that friendship is an ontological need, therefore, a necessary condition of the moral life. This need is implicitly recognized in the moral paradigms that underlie the moral theories of the medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. Accordingly it cannot be neglected in the process of moral theorizing.