Vol 22, No 3 (2018)

The purpose of the article is threefold. The first objective is to determine the general normative context where the problem of precaution arises. The second objective is to establish main factors turning it into a contemporary problem of the utmost importance. The third objective is to analyze alternative articulations of the precautionary normative logic and to assess their potential for implementation in practice. A moral agent faces the problem of precaution trying to fulfill basic moral requirement to prevent harm. He/she is anxious not to be accused of carelessness and negligence and thereby makes efforts to find some operational rules of proper precaution. In the recent condition of civilization the growing importance of the precautionary problem is connected with an increasing capacity of contemporary science and technology to cause a huge amount of harm that can not be compensated. The compensation is impossible in the case of rapidly developing global catastrophes. Beyond the catastrophic perspective irreversible harm is pervasive in the sphere where ongoing scientific, economic, and military activities have negative impact on natural environment and future generations. The precautionary normative logic is articulated in many different formulae of the precautionary principle. To implement it in practice, decision-makers should draw clear boundaries between the scope of precaution and the scope of cost-benefit analysis.

The development of modern medicine directly depends today on biomedical technologies, thanks to which it is possible to overcome many diseases previously considered incurable. However, death or disability as a result of severe injuries is still inevitable, and the search for opportunities to save and heal people caught in such a situation is extremely relevant for modern medicine. The purpose of this study is to analyze various scenarios of what human of the future will become. The dreams of transhumanists about the future human, who will be able to change the damaged parts of the body like the details of the mechanism, begin to find their embodiment in the development of cyborgization and biohacking. At the same time, the dream of mankind about the acquisition by human ability to rejuvenate and self-healing begins to come true little by little. The material for this article was the result of research of the regeneration ability in some living organisms. For a long time, biologists believed that only the lower living organisms possess this ability, but then it was discovered that under certain conditions some warm-blooded animals are capable of regeneration. Bear in mind that the evolution of species moved from lower to higher forms, scientists believe that as species evolved, the ability of living beings to regenerate organs was gradually lost, and so one can assume that this human feature appeared to be “turned off” at some historical stage. However, the genes necessary for regeneration working for amphibians are also present in mammals, but their work is suppressed by T cells. So it is the immune system that protects warm-blooded people from wounds and infections, has proved to be the inhibitory factor that “keeps locked up” the mechanism of regeneration that occurs in the cold-blooded due to the blastema. Thus, while amphibians developed the ability to regenerate, for us nature “chose” immunity and T cells. However, the human body has an amazing resource - its stem cells, the research and use of which in medicine offers unprecedented opportunities. Perhaps, with their help it will be possible to expand the possibilities of the human body to self-regeneration and self-healing.

Augustine’s idea of dialectic combines basic ancient traditions: Aristotelian, Stoic and Neoplatonic ones. But its subject-matter should be viewed not only empirically as a mixture of historical elements, but also properly philosophically, i.e. as dependent on its own concept. In the case of this logical approach every particular historical form of dialectic is a stage in the consciousness of its concept, so the elements of Augustine’s conception constitute a hierarchy. The highest level of this hierarchy is Neoplatonic, and on this stage the concept of dialectic in Augustine’s thought reaches its universally self-conscious, or absolute, form. And yet, although dialectic in Augustine’s work acquires the title of “true truth”, it is not posited as a concrete unity of subject and substance , which is its concept in itself. It will take fourteen centuries of development of thought to acknowledge the processuality of the thinking subject to be a background of the substantial realm of metaphysic, which will take place at the end of modernity in Hegel’s dialectic.

The historians of philosophy in Russia and abroad have become frequently challenged with the demand for rethinking and reconsideration the traditionally accepted views on their trade, the very possibility of different traditions of philosophical thought to interact, and as a result - to revisit the very definition of philosophy. The topical historical and philosophical discussions deal with a whole combination of issues, that concern fruitful and constructive dialogue between different cultures, the possibility of mutual enrichment with values and ideas among formerly distinguished schools, tendencies and movements in the certain regional philosophies. The trend to integrate oriental and western styles of thinking is at the cutting edge of the historical and philosophical investigations, especially of comparative and intercultural philosophies, as well as the philosophy of language. However, there are those who keep doubting both about the adequate and correct correlation between the western scientific philosophy and oriental type of wisdom, and the consistency of the history of western philosophy as such, and they are not few. In these terms, in historical and philosophical discussions one may reveal both historical and epistemological arguments for the positions of the scholars. The paper observes the opinions of the investigators and historians of oriental and western styles of philosophy, considers their positions and watches the consistency of their logic and argumentation they develop. Besides, it is of a high importance to demonstrate that they are the historians of philosophy who possess the efficient apparatus to found the possibility of constructive and meaningful dialogue between different cultures of philosophizing. From this perspective, the historian of philosophy becomes a kind of a selectionist of thought, who analyzes the ability of this or that philosophical culture to grow in a foreign breeding ground.