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Challenges of Philosophy and Challenges to Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

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During an interview on human rights in a TV programme, the interviewer all of a sudden said that, so far as he could understand, I was establishing a connection between philosophy and torture, and asked me what this connection was. I was shocked.

In a couple of seconds I tried to guess how he could have come to such a conclusion. My response was: there is no connection between philosophy and torture, still when you look at the fact of torture with philosophical-ethical knowledge, you can realize that torture does not damage, nor ‘degrade’, the human dignity of the victim of torture, as is usually accepted – e.g. in the formulation of the title of the ‘Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’. It causes damage to the human dignity of the person who tortures. We protect or damage human dignity, but our own human dignity, by what we do and not by what we suffer, since we are responsible for what we do and not for what others do to us. What we do, or refrain from doing, depends on each of us, i.e. acting in accordance with human dignity in our relations with other human beings is a problem in our ethical relation with ourselves, in spite of the fact that our actions are directed to somebody else.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2000

References

Notes

1. 80, b 1-5, translated by R.W. Mavkay, M.D., William and Norgate, Edinburgh, 1869.

2. For this point see: Ioanna Kuçuradi (1999) Etik (Ethics), (Ankara third edition), pp. 15-77.

3. For the question of what cultures are, see: Ioanna Kuçuradi (1998), ‘Cultures and World Culture', in Philosophie et Culture, Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie IV, Montréal, pp. 457-60.

4. See also: Ioanna Kuçuradi (1995), ‘Knowledge and its Object', in The Concept of Knowledge, Ioanna Kuçuradi and Robert Cohen (editors), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 170, (Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht), pp. 97-102.

5. See also: Jeanne Hersch ‘"Cultural Development" a Tentative Answer', in Philosophy and Cultural Develop ment, (1993) (Ankara), pp. 31-2.