Editorial
By Thomas Albert Gilly, ERCES*
This last issue of our second
volume is genuinely committed to engage in the philosophical and sociological
debate about the ethical aspects of issues that came rapidly to the fore of the
public and social science’s debates.
Values are an issue that is central
to sociology / social theory and to philosophy. The great classics of modern
sociology and social theory – Marx, Weber, Simmel and Durkheim - provide
altogether for a focal centre on values. The whole tradition of anomie theory,
in sociology and in criminology, is genuinely concerned with values. Values are
a key-issue in moral philosophy. But is also an issue that, during the last
decade, came rapidly to the fore of the public debate. So as the public debate
can no longer be perceived and interpreted without referring to the – however
controversial – call for the return of values, the relevance of values for
social change and social transition, their impact upon crime and deviance, is
no longer to be discussed either.
Here is the place neither to
discuss the various causes for and the origin of the public’s increasing
concern about values, neither to engage in another controversy about
“reactionary morals”. Rather it is the place to point at an affair that came
rapidly to the fore of the public debate – worldwide.
The “prophet cartoon affair”,
in many regards, is one of the most significant and highly eloquent
demonstrations of values’ increasing relevance to our contemporary societies.
Values are involved in the nature and in the publication of the cartoons; the
cartoon’s aim is rooted in values, the reaction against Islamic fundamentalism
as well as the reaction against the publishing of the cartoons and the reaction
against this reaction are altogether to be thought as of an aberrant – one may
say also; deviant state of communicative behavior that is rooted in the highly
controversial nature of universal values.
The major philosophical
problem that is involved in this issue is the question of the other. Insofar
the development and the outcome of the cartoon affair demonstrate the actuality
of a philosophical question for our contemporary social life.
How to conceive the other? –
With reference to the category of identity or with reference to his/her and
finally our difference? Does unity derive from identity or is it rather
anchored in difference? Is the otherness of the other to be considered as a
guarantee against division and conflict, and if so, couldn’t it be that the
category of identity engenders division and conflict?
In the course of the past half
century these questions have been remarkably raised and developed in Levinas’
works.
Obviously the question of the
other – otherness or identity of the other and of us – is an issue that is
highly relevant to community and multi-culturality. Can it be that cultural
essentialism develops through lack of personality? Insofar the ethical
question’s high relevance for the actual sociological debate comes not really
as a surprise. The question of the other is somewhat the philosophical
fundamental of the works of Bauman and Anthias.
Marina Luptakova’s “Question of the Other”
addresses the philosophical roots of the Other and discusses its ethical
relevance.
“Metaphysics
of Islamic Experience” by Michael Bakaoukas provides for an Aristotelian
interpretation of the Other as relevant to the
relation / division between Christianity and Islam. In an Aristotelian
perspective, the affair of the caricature holds – here again – for a deep
division between Western and Islamic world and value conceptions that is rooted
in the profound lack of mutual understanding and sympathy.
In “Cartoon Ethics” I try to point the ethical dilemma that is
inherent in both the pros and the cons of the cartoon publication. The affair
is not to be interpreted as a demonstration for the inherent potential of
violence in Islam; rather it documents the deviant nature of inherent
fundamentals in Western democracy’s values.
Respect, laity and religion,
interfaith and normative and ethical limits of fundamental liberties and human
rights are key issues of the paper.
What has the Decalogue to do
with human rights declarations? Is it possible to think the Decalogue as of the
fundamentals of the liberty-duty dialectics? Why absolute rights require for absolute
duties? These and more questions are at the heart of the paper.
The impact of social change
and social transition upon crime is at the heart of “Social Consciousness and the Growth of Crime” by Miroslav
Scheinost. The author discusses the impact of social anomie and social
disintegration upon patterns of social behavior. By analyzing the relation
between social disintegration and the growth of crime with special regards to
the context of the
The “Communicative Risk in ‘Common Words”, by Vladimir Iliev is a
master piece about the implicative approach towards the risk communicative situations
as a source of criminal and aberrant behavior.
What has communication to do
with crime prevention? Could it be that some words used in communications are
more than other words predisposed towards risk? And if so, isn’t it possible to
predict crime and aberrant behavior on the basis of risk communicative
situations? With the support of research results, the paper provides for an
in-depth-study of this issue.
Obviously the papers by
Miroslav Scheinost and by Vladimir Iliev are relevant for criminological
concerns, whereas the three other articles we have collected are genuinely
concerned with ethical and philosophical problems.
Given the consistency of this
issue that consists of both the interdisciplinary perspective of the value
debate and the involvement of values in communicative behavior, such a
disciplinary division is always a superficial construction.
* Dr Gilly is
Director of ERCES and Chief Editor of the Erces
Online Quarterly Review