Thomas De Koninck

The dying person: An existential being until the end of life

This article explores the experience of death from the perspective of existential philosophy, for the purpose of finding ways to humanize end-of-life nursing care. A person in his or her final days is seen by the caregiver as a being seeking the continual creation of his human becoming, from the experience of sickness to death. From the moment the torment of suffering begins, a person needs a presence of humanistic professionalism that embraces the values of the nursing profession.

Réflexions sur le bonheur

Réflexions sur le bonheur Comment donner tort à Pascal lorsqu’il écrit : «Tous les hommes recherchent d’être heureux; cela est sans exception; quelques différents moyens qu’ils y emploient, ils tendent tous à ce but. [...] C’est le motif de toutes les actions de tous les hommes, jusqu’à ceux qui vont se pendre» (Pensées, Brunschvicg, 425; Lafuma, 148). En d’autres termes, même nos suicidés recherchent le bonheur, jusqu’en leur autodestruction. Voilà bien une contradiction au moins apparente, puisqu’ils abolissent du même coup tous leurs possibles. Car il reste toujours l’imprévisible de la vie. «Nul ne sait quelle rencontre il fera demain ou après-demain, qui bouleversera peut-être sa vie s’il se laisse rencontrer». Cela étant dit, qu’est-ce donc, dès lors, que ce bonheur que l’on cherche ainsi jusqu’au désespoir? Question redoutable, qu’on préfère trop souvent éviter. «Les hommes n’ayant pu guérir la mort, la misère, l’ignorance, ils se sont avisés, pour se rendre heureux, de n’y point penser», remarquait encore Pascal (Pensées, B 168; L 134). C’est, insistait-il, que «...Nonobstant ces misères, [l’être humain] veut être heureux, et ne veut être qu’heureux, et ne peut ne vouloir pas l’être; mais comment s’y prendra-t-il?» (B 169; L 133). Comme s’il avait pressenti notre actuel Mac World (Benjamin Barber), il ajoutait : «La seule chose qui nous console de nos misères est le divertissement, et cependant c’est la plus grande de nos misères. Car c’est cela qui nous empêche principalement de songer à nous, et qui nous fait perdre insensiblement [...]» (B 171; L 414). Avec humour et brio, Milan Kundera considère comme «la plus grande découverte d’un siècle si fier de sa raison scientifique» celle que fit Flaubert de la bêtise; «la bêtise ne s’efface pas devant la science, la technique, le progrès, la modernité, au contraire, avec le progrès, elle progresse elle aussi». Sa figure est aujourd’hui celle de la «non-pensée des idées reçues» dont le flot est programmé sur ordinateurs, propagé par les mass médias. À vous de voir si ce jugement est trop sévère. Mais n’y a-t-il pas, de toute manière, lieu de s’interroger face à la joyeuse niaiserie et la violence verbale qui font le pain de certains de nos médias, et de poser à neuf la question : pourquoi cette fuite de soi dans le divertissement le plus insignifiant possible?

Protecting Human Dignity in Research Involving Humans

Human dignity is the supreme criterion for protecting research participants, and likewise for numerous ethical matters of ultimate importance. But what is meant by “human dignity”? Isn’t this some vague criterion, some sort of lip service of questionable relevance and application? We shall see that it is nothing of the sort, that to the contrary, it is a very definite and very accessible criterion. However, how is this criterion applied in protecting research participants? These are the matters that we will examine now. My presentation is divided into four parts. 1/Recognizing Human Dignity; 2/Practical Definition of Human Dignity; 3/The Human Being in a Weakened State; 4/ Conclusion.

Metaphysics and Ultimate Questions

and inadequate as a philosophy, can within certain metaphysics and ultimate questions 45 limits be thoroughly trusted for the deduction of truths at the same level of abstraction as itself. The penalty of its philosophical deficiency is that the Scholium conveys no hint of the limits of its own application. The practical effect is that the readers, and almost certainly Newton himself, so construe its meaning as to fall into what I have elsewhere termed the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” It is the office of metaphysics to determine the limits of the applicability of such abstract notions. Even Nietzsche who, over a century ago (1887), predicted two centuries of nihilism, could be evoked here, at least for his “definition” of nihilism: “Nihilism: the aim is lacking; the answer to ‘why?’ is lacking. What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves.” In other words, nihilism simply means that there is nothing left but values in the same sense in which money, for instance, is a value. Moral relativism and nihilism amount to the same: justice, friendship, freedom, peace, the human, the good, the absolute, even God, all become just so many values among others. Everything is on the same level and nothing excels (nihil is of course Latin for “nothing”). As Goethe said, “In what does barbarism consist but in the failure to recognise the excellent (das Vortreffliche)?” Be that as it may, anyone who reads Fides et ratio must surely be struck by the insistence of John Paul on the “ultimate questions” (novissimarum quaestionum; cf. e.g., n. 29–30), to which he constantly returned in a variety of ways and formulas, challenging “philosophy to recover and develop its own full dignity” since it has “the great responsibility of forming thought and culture” (cf. n. 6; 100); by his insistence too on the essential dependence of freedom upon truth, as well as on the fact that “it is metaphysics which makes it possible to ground the concept of personal dignity” (n. 83) and that “philosophy needs first of all to recover its sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life,” this sapiential dimension being “all the more necessary today, because the

Être, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote

Book Review of Paul Ricœur, Etre, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote. Cours professe a l’universite de Strasbourg en 1953-1954. Texte verifie et annote par Jean-Louis Schlegel , (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2011), 348 pp.

The Power of Words: A Philosophical Perspective

The evolution of societies is primarily determined not by political regimes, nor by modes of production, as some people still believe, but by culture (or its opposite), which proves a far more powerful determinant in the end. Sufficient proof of this is provided by the impact today of the new technical powers of communication that are effectively restructuring our whole social life, including economics and politics. Since the power of ideas and the power of words are so intimately related, we try here to see why this is so and to what extent.