Valentin Muresan

„Strategia noastră a fost de a gândi un text util pentru profesori, dar de a-l scrie mai ales pentru studenți. Etica este interesantă cu precădere atunci când pune în joc intuiții morale sau valori diferite și când ne confruntăm cu dileme în care decizia nu este evidentă, iar dezacordul este rezonabil. Prin urmare, am încercat să ne ferim pe cât a fost posibil de verdicte și de simpla enumerare a unor interdicții. Veți observa că, de cele mai multe ori, exercițiile și temele de discuție nu au soluții impuse. Nu pentru că autorii manualului nu ar adera la anumite soluții (poate nu la aceleași!), ci pentru că ni s-a părut mult mai importantă conturarea problemelor. Dilemele și întrebările deschise generează dezbateri și prilejuiesc reflecție. Sentințele, pe de altă parte, tind să ucidă discuția și să prilejuiască mai curând reacții de îmbrățișare sau de respingere vehementă. Dacă vom ajunge, în comunitățile noastre profesionale și în societate, să vorbim mai mult unii cu alții și mai puțin unii la alții, vom fi făcut probabil un pas major în direcția corectă pentru dezvoltarea unei atitudini morale.” (Autorii)

The volume Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania is the first contribution that aims at showing to the Japanese reader a sample of contemporary philosophy in Romania. At the same time a volume of contemporary Japanese philosophy is translated into Romanian and will be published by the University of Bucharest Press. Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania includes several original articles in applied ethics and theoretical moral philosophy. It is representative of the variety of research and the growing interest in applied ethics in the last few years in Romania. The philosophy practised here is at the same time an international activity, but also a kind of research deeply involved in Romanian realities. The contributors to the volume are Romanian philosophers from the most important Universities in the country, including members of the Romanian Academy, but also junior researchers. This volume was made possible thanks to the relationship established between the Applied Ethics Centres of the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Hokkaido University, Japan.

The translation and the commentary of Mr. Muresan are 2 times welcomed. The translation will make known to Romanian reader this important philosopher. The commentary,parts of which I have read in the English translation, is one extremely original and critic,in the scholar sense of the term, a result of a detailed knowledge of ethical works and other works of Mill; he uses the rich critical literature elaborated mostly in the last years and especially by English language philosophers. Mr. Muresan transmits the spirit of this critical tradition; but he surpasses it at the same time with his own daring interpretations. His book is a subtle contribution to research on Mill and on ethics in general, being useful not just in Romania, but anywhere it may be accessible in the philosophical world.

The main aim of this article is to clarify the answer to the question: "What does it mean to measure the efficiency (or effectiveness) of an ethical code? Is this efficiency measurable?" Although this phrase is frequently used, it covers difficulties, both conceptual and of implementation. The proposed solution is to abandon the above question and redirect our attention towards a more complex one: What does it mean to measure the "efficiency" of a moral enhancement program, grounded on a code of ethics and having as the objective to increase the organization's "moral content"? This outcome is brought about by "encapsulating" and dissolving the immoral behavior according to the guide of the seven institutional virtues identified by Kaptein. After introducing the "praxiological" concept of "moral efficiency", in which the "efficiency of the ethical code" is substituted by the "efficiency of moral programs", one shows how is it possible to measure the efficiency of the moral enhancement programs introduced to strengthen the moral content of an organization.

This paper claims that the use of several moral tests to assess the ethics of a new policy is unavoidable. All the efforts to make credible a methodological monism – by critical or reductionist strategies – have been unsuccessful; moreover, it must be acknowledged that even if there were a single test, when applied successively or by different people it would usually give divergent results. The main aim of the paper is to propose a pluralist procedure of ethical decision-making, using a set of proper ethical tests in the frame of an “ethical Delphi” procedure intended to make convergent the supposed variety of verdicts. This pluralist testing process, made by moral experts, is only a fraction of a more complex procedure intended to deliver social sanction for a new moral policy. This longer procedure also shows that the adoption of a new moral policy, rule or law is not only a question of passing a strict ethical test, but also a political decision. In general, the adoption of a new moral rule does not rely solely on an ethical test, but is essentially the outcome of a complicated social agreement. That is why in academic applications of the usual moral tests we do not take a moral decision on a new case, but merely simulate it.

This coursebook contains three extensive essays dedicated to presenting, in an relative accesible form, the essential concepts and specific theoretical views of Kant, Mill and RM Hare regarding the philosophical principles of our moral evaluations. Although intended mainly as a tool for teaching basic classical ethical strategies - Kant's deontologism, Mill's normative utilitarianism and Hare's universal prescriptivism - to students, this book is also a very useful instrument for all those who need to get a comprehensive first view over these three great ethical theories as a preliminary step and a companion to reading the original texts.

Among the few commentaries to J. S. Mill s Utilitarianism this is a new and fresh one, written by a person educated in the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon philosophy but not belonging to that world. The book is an invitation addressed both to the students and their teachers to try to better understand Mill s work and to abandon their traditional preconceptions. It proposes, among others, a new reading of the significance of Mill s principle of utility ; a sympathetic approach to Mill s much criticized "proof"; and a more receptive attitude towards the role played by the forgotten arts of "aesthetics" and "expediency" which put the art of "morality" itself in a new light. The thorough analysis of the text will satisfy the hermeneutic preferences of all the lovers of Mill s moral philosophy, both beginners and advanced.

This book contains the translations in Romanian language of five ethical essays written by JS Mill. The importance of making available the translation of these five essays becomes evident as soon as one starts reading "Utilitarianisn"- many of the key arguments and critiques developed by Mill here become more clear if one takes into account the historical and theoretical background against which Mill wrote. This background is clearly determined by reading these five ethical essays which thus become a fundamental part of the struggle to properly understand Mill's Utilitarianism.

The subject of this article is the “ethical justification” of a code of conduct. How does a code of conduct become an ethical code? The article focuses on the principlist approach in a broad sense, assessing its comparative advantages. Many scholarly critics are unhappy with the chaotic methods of grounding and writing ethical codes. They therefore stress the necessity of reducing this harmful abundant diversity. This paper does not support the monistic (single principle only) justification of an ethical code; instead, it proposes a pluralist justification based on “principlism”. The core of the article is a sketch of the conceptual and managerial complexity generated by the principlist justification of an ethical code. It is mainly a conceptual and future-oriented approach, suggesting ways of building codes of ethics that are not yet practically enacted on a large scale and which, for this reason, may seem impractical. Lest they remain so, we have to keep an open mind with regard to their real, and not only their potential, practicality.

The article is a polemic with the point of view of Pierre Hadot and others that the genuine original meaning of the western philosophy was that of a sui generis psychoterapy based on „spiritual exercices” and not that of a rational research, that the term „philosopy” must be alocated even today to a way of life, not to a kind of discourse about a way of life. The debate was occasioned by the recent book of Cristian Iftode, Philosophy as a Way of Life which supports with personal arguments Hadot’s point of view. The author of the article supports the thesis that this is an abusive intepretation of the meaning of Greek philosophy and that such imaginative Nietzschean exercices may be a danger for the teaching of philosophy today.