Jon Hugaas

Since the mid-20th century, political philosophy has been increasingly disconnected from pedagogics. In recent decades questions have been raised in the pedagogical field about the politicization of education in general and of religious education (RE). The aim of this article is two-fold: first, to point out that the discussion whether RE as part of public education should aim for political neutrality in constitutional democratic states is misguided because the very idea of public education is political. Second, to show that it is possible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate politicization of education and RE. I will approach these questions by revisiting the Kantian justification of public education as part of his broader political philosophy and doctrine of right. Kant's philosophy provides certain conceptual tools that can be used to determine whether public education can be legitimately politicized, and whether there are limits to this. The main argument is that, given the possibility that religion may undermine the citizen's adherence to and endorsement of fundamental principles of the constitutional state, the state has a right to politicize RE within the limits of the very same principles. This Kantian approach represents a middle way between the two extremes of a thoroughly politicized RE based on a culturally conservative reinterpretation of democracy, and a rejection of RE as normatively unacceptable within public education due to a radical ideal of state neutrality.

This article discusses whether a child can and should be engaged as a co-researcher on moral and epistemological grounds. Selected research literature has been used to illustrate various approaches to the issue of children's participating as co-researchers in social research. By exploring the predicament of childhood and the meaning of the concept ‘research’, we attempt to clarify the necessary conditions for a person to qualify as a researcher and for an activity to qualify as research. We then look at the extent to which the concept of ‘child’ fits within these frames.

This article argues that the concept of evil is needed in normative ethics in general as well as in the professional ethics of social work. Attention is drawn to certain shortcomings in the classical theories of normative ethics when it comes to recognizing the profound destructiveness of certain types of acts that exceed the mere ?bad? or ?wrong? applied in the most common theories of moral philosophy. Having established the category of morally evil acts in general, the author turns to the field of social work and applies it to some paradigm cases of evil that many social workers are likely to be confronted with during the course of their service. In the final part of the article, the concept of moral evil is discussed in relation to the professional ethics of social work in general, with reference to certain value assumptions that are found to be inherent to social work

This article offers a discussion of the relevance of empirical studies to normative ethics focusing on the new trend in bioethics called empirical bioethics. The author sees this trend as an answer to a call made by anthropologists decades ago that ethicists should be more aware of the situatedness of the moral institution of life. Through a discussion of two opposing views expressed in the final publications of the EU-funded EMPIRE-project, the middle way is sought between the misconception of bioethics as pure philosophy on one side and the misconception of bioethics as sociology on the other. The author argues that empirical studies may be of relevance to the normative enterprise in at least three ways as illustrated in the EMPIRE-material. First, there is the relevance of empirical facts as descriptive premises in ethical arguments. Second, there is the relevance of empirical studies as means of mapping moral opinion and moral experience which ought to serve as one of two poles between which one oscillates in moral decision making – the other being the normative ethical theories. Third, there is the relevance of empirical studies of the capacity and function of the human mind, which may tell us something about the range of normative principles and rules.Keywords: Ethics, normative ethics, descriptive ethics, empirical bioethics