The article is devoted to the study of the history of the concept of moral dignity in philoso­phy. Such an inquiry is associated with a number of difficulties arising from the polysemy of the concept, as well as methodological issues linked to this complexity. At the center of the article lies the understanding of dignity as a universal and inalienable inner value (and/or status) of the human being, which justifies the demand for recognition and respect in human relations. The formation of a refined concept is analyzed through the use of a “ret­rospective” method, which makes it possible to trace the premises of this understanding of dignity in the history of thought. The article focuses on the interpretations of dignity in Cicero, Pufendorf, and Kant, which establish a certain line in the conceptual develop­ment. Through the lens of Kant’s mature conception of dignity, the reflections of Pufendorf and Cicero are examined. The example of Cicero’s philosophy shows that even early notions of dignity, albeit in embryonic form, already contained important premises later elaborated in the early modern period.

The conception of embodiment addresses relationships between knowledge, the mind, and the physical environment. The embodiment is the experience of becoming conscious of what the soma is as a whole. The stance of eco-somatic embodied sustainability places the unfolding of this venture in the perceptual interaction and relation between the human body and nature. The environment at the intersection of human and non-human nature highlights the necessity and importance of acknowledging nature’s participation in constructing sustainability knowledge. Postmodern environmental philosophers propose narratives as a central element in producing environmental/ethical knowledge while defining the relationship between place, values, and sustainability. This paper will address a shift from the modern notion of environmental philosophy to postmodern environmental sustainability – the exposition of narratives, ideography, and metaphysical account of place for moving towards contextualising environmental epistemology. Environmental epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics are allied to establishing a dynamic relationship between soma, nature, and culture by developing embodied ecosystem sustainability. We cannot escape nature and its relation to us as we are embedded, situated, and interacting with the environment. However, the notion of an embodiment of nature and humans through contextualising epistemology with relational self, place, and ethics enacted becomes substantiated.

In his minor late treatise on theodicy Kant delivers a full-scale evaluation of Job, the just man from the Old Covenant, of his peculiar theodicy an his moral disposition, in contrast to that of his friends and comforters. The paper aims to examine the ethical content of Kant’s judgements about Job, to authenticate these judgements with the text of the Bible, and to de­termine the reasons and conceptual outcome of the German philosopher’s reflection upon the character of Job. The investigation focuses on the Kantian opposition between the duty of material truthfulness as objective veracity, and the duty of formal truthfulness or honesty to oneself, as strict conscientiousness of one’s belief. In Kant’s ethics the latter duty consti­tutes the ground for the former, as well as for external contractual obligations. In matters of religion and morality, where, according to Kant, no objectively valid knowledge but merely a moral faith is possible for humans, the formal conscientiousness of the self-con­science has quite particular importance. By contrast, a lack of this formal frankness of be­lief, a reluctance to verify the contents of one’s own moral convictions is a violation of the supreme ethical imperative, equivalent to the denial of one’s own moral personality; therefore a person committing an internal lie is already a “deceitful semblance of a man”. A lack of internal truthfulness makes further dissimulation in moral convictions and feigned beliefs possible. Job’s friends are for Kant a brilliant example of such dissimula­tion, combined with illegitimate claims of theoretical reason. Human nature, being habitu­ally disposed for deviations from the requirements of the law, willingly follows this way. Therefore a reflection upon the character of Job, as a pure example of formal conscien­tiousness in moral dispositions, gives Kant an opportunity for ethical implications concern­ing the routine of oath in court sessions, its sense and the limits of its application. Interest­ingly, Kant’s opinion on this point coincides at length with the view of the Russian philoso­pher I.V. Kireevsky.

11 и 12 ноября 2021 г. состоялась XVII Национальная конференция по этике (НКЭ).Национальные конференции по этике и связанные с ними издания представляют важный фактор расширения этических дискуссий в болгарском обществе 1 .Инициатива проведения конференций возникла в 2004 г. по предложению директора Института философских исследований Болгарской академии наук, члена-корреспондента Васила Проданова.Главный организатор конференции -секция «Этические исследования» Института философии и социологии Болгарской академии наук

The goal of this paper is to reflect on our common post-Covid-19 future. To do so, we first examine our present pandemic situation in terms of the pairs of the correlated concepts: peace and war, and the normal and the abnormal. We then proceed to analyze the dual aspect of the concept of normal: its descriptive as well as its normative side. In doing so, we con­sider the ethical views of Immanuel Kant, Nicolai Hartmann, Fritz Jahr, and Paul Ricoeur; their views help but do not lead to the solution we find satisfactory. Upon further examina­tion, we come to the realization that our problems with understanding our present and with anticipating our future seem to be ultimately related to our struggle to establish a ground on which both the descriptive and normative aspects of the concept of “normal” can be satisfac­torily founded. Our suggestion is that this problem may be solved by understanding what is normal in terms of health, understood as balance and as finding a proper measure in every­thing we do. Our common post-Covid-19 future should be centered on our renewed commit­ment to the promotion of physical and mental, as well as individual, social, and environmen­tal health. We thus set a stage for further development of an ethics of health.

The article analyzes the peculiarities of conceptualization of the Golden Rule in Sidgwick’s ethics. The significance of his approach to the study of the Golden Rule is determined, in par­ticular, by the fact that he introduced the Golden Rule into the context of moral theory and, fo­cusing on the analysis of the Golden Rule as a statement, started the tradition of thinking about the rule in analytical ethics. In his consideration of the Golden Rule, Sidgwick assumed that it represents a fundamental moral intuition recognized by all humans. However, the evangelical formulation of the rule, in his view, is vague, open to ambiguous and false interpretations and, because of the significance of the rule, needs to be clarified and reformulated. In an effort to rationalize and clarify the normative content of the Golden Rule, Sidgwick links it to the principle of justice, in which he emphasizes the idea of universalizability. Universalizability according to the model of the Golden Rule is realized through the correlation of one's own judgments and actions with other people’s judgments and actions. The idea of universalizabil­ity in his interpretation sets the criterion for right action in general and right action in rela­tion to others, in particular. Sidgwick's association of the Golden Rule with the principle of justice was essential because justice was most often correlated with the Talion. The correla­tion of justice with the Golden Rule provides a different image of justice: it manifests itself in the reciprocal willingness of persons to act proactively, to balance their interests with the in­terests of others and to allow no exceptions for themselves. This creates a space of humanity, providing conditions for positive interactions between people.

The article is devoted to showing the connection between the moral progress and the cos­mopolitanism of the Stoic. Since the early Stoics considered the right reason (ὀρθὸς λόγος) as one of the basic conditions for the unification of gods and humankind into a single com­munity (κοσμόπολις), anyone who intends to join to this community must develop his or her reason to the highest level. It means that the cosmopolitan must be morally perfect, which implies that he or she has successfully completed the process of moral progress. However, the concept of moral progress in Stoicism (especially in the early one) is prob­lematic because the Stoics denied a qualitative difference between vicious people and be­lieved that all bad deeds are equal. The author of the article tries to remove this contradic­tion by introducing a two-level structure of moral progress, in which the gradation of moral development and qualitative changes in the moral character of the subject are spaced. The cosmopolitanism of the Stoics and their ideas about moral progress are united not only by the concept of «right reason», but also by their doctrine of «oikeiôsis», which implies the development of natural inclinations to the highest principles of morality. Finally, the inter­dependence of moral progress and the cosmopolitanism is demonstrated by their evolution with the development of the Stoic school. This evolution is expressed in the fact that, on the one hand, the Stoics perfected the tools for moral development, which paved a clearer path to the cosmopolis, and on the other hand, they reduced the requirements for the citi­zens of the cosmopolis, which also led to the growth of the community of gods and people.

Proceedings of a Discussion on «Prolegomena to Moral Responsibility» (RAS Institute of Philosophy, March 2021).

Based on the material of T. Reid’s ethical conception, it is shown that in the moral-philo­sophical teaching, built around the concepts of duty, obligation, the concept of virtue also re­tains its significance. Although Reid consciously conceptualizes morality through norms and duties, the concept of virtue plays an important role in his teaching. Without virtue, it is im­possible to achieve two ends specific to human nature – the individual’s own good on the whole and what appears to be our duty. Reid shows that the person’s virtue coincides with her good on the whole, or happiness. This goal, however, can only be achieved when a hu­man being combines it with the fulfillment of duty for duty’s sake rather than for self-inter­est. In connection with the principle of respect for duty, Reid sees the role of virtue in that it is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of duty and of moral obligation. It is virtue as a quality of the moral agent, manifested in his power to distinguish between good and evil, to make judgments concerning one’s own duty and to act according to one’s understanding-conviction, that makes the act performed virtuous and proper through the motive. Through the concept of virtue Reed grasps the idea, important to Early Modern ethics, that every duty is internally binding through a moral motive.

This article precedes a large-scale study of the ethics of war in the USSR. The text deals with the problem of finding moral argumentation in the Russian Marxist tradition of under­standing of war in 1910–1930s. Lenin, developing the ideas of Marx and Clausewitz, formu­lated that war is continuation of politics, which in turn is an expression of the class struggle. This thesis was sometimes taken as evidence of a rejection of the ethical consideration of war. However, a closer study of the literature and comparative research of the Bolsheviks theorists’ attitudes to militarism and pacifism, can lead to the conclusion that the ethical view on war was not completely alien to the Soviet authors. The typology of war, peculiar to the Russian Marxism of the specified period, is given, and the main strategies of moral legit­imization of war are also designated. At the end of the article, the question of the complexity of studying the soviet ethics of war in the context of the homogenization of philosophical and military discourses in the USSR is considered. However, it is concluded that this institu­tional feature of Soviet science and philosophy manifested itself over time, that the reduc­tion in the possibility of free thought and discussion gradually increased. Accordingly, in the writings of the 1920s and 1930s, we can try to discover the original Soviet ethics of war and fix various points of view and positions on the issues of the moral limitation of war. The ar­ticle ends with the definition of the directions of further develop­ment of the subject. These tasks are: differentiation of the generalized views on the moral dimension of war presented in this article, clarification the dynamics and forms of the Soviet moral theory of war canon, and identification the differences between Lenin’s and Stalin’s approaches to understanding the war.