Economics
and Ethics
One of the
swiftest developments during the transition from state-socialism was the
reconfiguration of the intellectual field in the social sciences. Mainstream
(neoclassical) economics, for example, has occupied not only academic,
but also important political positions in the East and Central European
countries. However, if reports on the crisis of the economic sciences in
the Western world are correct, and economics is indeed undergoing a process
of fragmentation and reorientation, then we should more vigorously scrutinize
its most fundamental building blocks and seek to develop alternative research
approaches. In our region, which had experienced the ideological omnipotence
of Marxist dialectical materialism, it is especially crucial to challenge
the domination of any single school of economic thought.The first drafts
of the papers in this thematic section were discussed in the Center for
Pluralistic Economic Studies, established at the Budapest University of
Economic Sciences in 1997. The first essay, “Adam Smith's Wealth of the
Nations and the Philosophy of the Enlightenment," written by László
Fekete, shows how classical political economy separated from moral
philosophy and became an independent but not value-free social science.
In the next article, entitled “Ethics and Economics," György Pataki
investigates
some of the ethical aspects of modern welfare economics. In his paper,
“Economy and Morality," Péter Gedeon analyzes Francis Fukuyama's
famous thesis on the end of history and his ideas on the role some traditional
and moral values play in modern economy. The last essay in the section
is entitled “The Experience of Beyond-Existence." In this philosophical
piece, Sándor Horváth seeks to accomodate the basic
principles of existentialism, ethics, and economics.
Slovenian
Studies on Religion
Four Slovenian
sociologists discuss the connections of religion, politics, philosophy,
and the modern state, mostly in a post-socialist, East and Central European
context. While exploring the relationship between religion and the secularized
modern state, AlešDebeljak clarifies the boundaries between conservatism,
traditionalism, and fundamentalism. Remaining on an abstract level, he
seeks to identify the basic characteristics of fundamentalism as a religious-political
activity. Mitja Velikonja draws attention to the role of the different
religions and churches in the (re)creation of the different national myths
in the post-socialist East and Central European states. Marjan Smrke
approaches
Slovenia's religious past and present from a sociological perspective,
and highlights distinct shifts in the religious sensibility of the people
after the separation from the former Yugoslavia, with special attention
to the strenghtening superstitiousness. Finally, Lev Kreft
contemplates
on the legacy of the Enlightenment: the guilty conscience of twentieth-century
European intellectuals, and the spread of extremism that has found its
rational foundation in the enlightened criticism of the Enlightenment.
E-way: “Voces
paginarum"
We continue
our series on the history of communication by presenting the works of Hungarian
authors who may be regarded as the forerunners of communications theory
marked by the names of Marshall McLuhan, Walter J. Ong, and Eric Havelock.
These American theoreticians argue that communication through electronic
technology returns to some of the communication habits of societies based
on orality. József Balogh's 1921 study Voces paginarum
focuses
on the historical impact of the spread of silent reading between the sixth
and seventeenth centuries, which produced an utterly new culture of communication.
Balogh's classic work inspired scholars such as Paul Seanger, T.C. Skeat
and Pierre Riché, and may help us to reconsider the relationship
between the printed, dead text and the spoken, living word from the perspective
of the Internet.
vissza
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