The paramount thesis of the article is that the issue of democratic legitimation should address the mutual interrelations between social, institutional and legal orders. The normative deficit of modern democratic polities stems from the overwhelming blindness to discursive justifications of political decisions and, in consequence, from the disregard for the necessity of enhancing moral-democratic competencies of citizens themselves. Menwhile, the moral democratic competencies condition the possibility of the widen participation of the citizenry and its empowerment. The second part of the article consists of the presentation of the idea of political philosophy as public philosophy. With reference to B. Williams two essential questions are addressed: the question of the identity of public philosophy (What is public philosophy?), and the question of the audience of public philosophy (Who is being addressed and for what purpose?). A realistically utopian character of public philosophy is stressed.

Teaching advanced college students in the faculty of philosophy, one can observe that they reflect on democracy at a sophistic level (Rosen calls this phenomena overprofessionalization). At the same time, most of these students have never been in the middle of a real democratic discussion. All cognitive competencies need to be developed by practicing them repeatedly. Democracy is an advanced personal, interpersonal, and social competence, not only a political framework and constitution. Lind once established the concept of democratic personality. I would like to illustrate this concept by my own discursive experiences with democratic education.

We know today that Socrates was right and that moral orientations need not be taught as they already exist inherently in man, but that moral judgmental and discourse competence are not pre-given and must consequently be fostered. We have described here a psychologically well- founded and intensively tested method with which this can be effectively done. The most urgent task now is to offer teachers good training and further training in this and similar methods so that every student can profit from effective moral education

The point of departure of this paper is Jürgen Habermas concept of knowledge constitutive interests and its further elaboration in the so-called reconstructive sciences. The reconstructive knowledge encompasses descriptive empirical statements, relative normative statements following from explication of cultural beliefs, and normative statements raising universal validity claims. The analysis of such model of knowledge creation leads to a conclusion that the responsibility of contemporary expert cultures is to mediate between scientific research, common-sense cultural beliefs, and moral or legal assumptions that are recognized as justified and valid

In the following considerations the author addresses the issue of teachers' professional ethics and in particular the issue of teachers ethical competence which is understood as a capacity to make responsible moral judgments with regard to situations that occur in the course of professional practice. In accordance with the pragmatic idea of community of inquiry, the author argues that the role of professional ethics is to design the discourse concerned with moral problems which should allow the teachers to develop and cultivate ethical competences.

This essay is organized into seven sections. First, the main thesis is introduced: Democracy depends on the differentiation and harmonization of three regulatory systems: law, morality and culture. Next the argument follows that public policies depend strongly on legal changes being accompanied by changes in moral and social rules. The other sections report on the legal, moral (also motivational), and cultural education of Bogotàs citizens

The article discusses the idea of universality of human rights faced with the diversity of cultures. It provides a short insight into the history of human rights institutionalisation, it also explains the meaning, scope and possible justification for the universality of human rights understood as the political project, which is morally justifiable and explicable in judicial terms. The universality and abstractness of human rights is presented as a complementary moment of individualisation of each human existence. The chief thesis is that human rights enable and admit the reconciliation of diverse, though not all, cultural practices.

The paper addresses the problem of genotypic prevention, i.e. it poses the question of whether prospective parents may be obliged to prevent the so called 'reproductive harm', caused by genetically transmitted diseases. First, the paper analyses the harm principle developed by John Stuart Mill. Second, a legal concept of harm is specified, invoking the distinction between a harmful condition and a  harmed condition given by Joel Feinberg. It is argued, after Feinberg, that acts of harming must meet some specific conditions, among others there must be a person who is harmed; and either the counterfactual condition or the worsening condition. Third, the conception of prenatal harm and preconception harm is discussed and then distinguished from the so called 'reproductive harm' which is understood as harm caused by giving birth to a person which would be born in a harmful position (with a disability or a disease). The conception of 'procreative harm' poses a philosophical question concerning the non-identity problem suggested by Derek Parfit and discussed by such philosophers as Buchanan, Wikler, Brock, Daniels, Hare, Reiman, Green, Locke to name only some of them. The non-identity problem undermines the concept of procreative harm, since there is no person harmed by the procreative decision when the only alternative for a particular disabled child was not to be born. These considerations lead to the conclusion that a legal concept of 'reproductive harm' is not justified and that it should be replaced by the idea of moral procreative responsibility in the given context.

In the following paper we investigate sources and democratic credentials of the common European constitutional culture. The significance of national constitutional traditions is contrasted with the requirement of democratic legitimation for Union law. With that regard the CJEU's ruling in case C-555/07 Seda Kücükdeveci v. Swedex GmbH&Co. KG is carefully analysed. We state a thesis that the chief feature of the searched after common European constitutional culture should be its normative emancipatory force expressed in the concept of the European self-constitutionalisation

An article falls into the area of reflection called public philosophy and it is an example of normative analysis of functioning of the institution of public hearing introduced to Polish democratic order in 2006. Public hearing is presented as a dynamic process which consists of the three phases, with different methods, scope and purpose. An analysis focuses on the first phase, which relates to the formal and legal arrangements adopted in the Rules of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, primarily the fundamental issue of convening a public hearing, in which author distinguishes seven problem areas that require special attention: 1) who should be allowed to table a motion to convene a public hearing? 2) should the call of a public hearing be optional or arbitrary? 3) the moment in the law-making process of convening a public hearing; 4) the problem of publicizing the decision to convene a public hearing; 5) the contents of the registration form; 6) possibility to restrict the number of participants; 7) the issue of cancellation of a public hearing.

The increasing complexity of the academic enterprise in Europe is due to several general factors: globalization and Europeanization, educational expansion and massification of higher education, the economic crisis, reform pressures in the public sector, growing pressures for accountability, and knowledge-driven economic competitiveness of nations and regions. Factors generating change in national higher education policies and in national higher education systems have been multilayered, interrelated and often common throughout the continent. Reforms increasingly, and throughout Europe, lead to further reforms rather than to reformed higher education systems. Higher education has changed substantially in most European economies in the last two or three decades but it is still expected by national and European-level policymakers to change even more. Universities, throughout two centuries of their modern history, change as their environments change, especially in connection with changes in the functioning of nation-states and various forms of welfare states. Different directions of current and projected academic restructuring in different national systems add to the complexity of the picture at a European level.

The essay aims at analysis of the manner Polish jurisprudence perceives a role of critical perspective within legal thought. Only such critique might be plausibly called a 'reflection', since it is conducted from an internal point of view  the viewpoint of legal professionals who criticize their own conceptual schemes. This analysis of theoretical projects is made in the light of sociological processes of increasing reflexivity of social practices and institutions, law included (Giddens).
The essay takes under examination four particular metaphors which are to be met in Polish jurisprudence: a lawyer as a philosopher, a lawyer as an artist, a lawyer as a participant of culture, and a lawyer as a believer. Each of them offers a slightly different answer to the question on the room for critical reflection in the law. The particular interest is paid to the way these four various theoretical proposals recognize, respectively: a significance of professional legal tradition, mutual relations between law and its social surroundings, as well as a role of individual agent in legal practice.

The institutions are often seen as a collection of rules and norms of human behavior, organized human practices, and all sorts of his social activity implemented in the structures of meaning and identity, political system, economic growth, prescribing appropriate behavior for specific actors in specific situations or circumstances. According to this point of view the institutions can also be understand as a system of social activity's patterns maintained and reinforced for the sake of establishing, and regulating the scope, the dimension and the quality of social integration, political organization, and economic system of the production and the distribution of goods, and services.
The process of institutionalization of human life is a specific rule of the western civilization's development and makes a core of Max Weber's theory of rationalization trying to explain the most important and significant aspects of this process.
The problem is that a process of advanced human's life institutionalization leads to the symmetrically advancing bureaucratization - in some cases - in an even oligarchical way. The mutual, reciprocal causation between these two processes is a main issue in many hypotheses and theories trying to explain the structure of institutional pathologies, a lack of their - institutions - systematical flexibility or the models of their temporal and constant ineffectiveness.

Recenzja książki: Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma. and London 2011, s. 237

Recenzja książki: Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma. and London 2011, s. 237

The paramount thesis of the article is that the issue of democratic legitimation should address the mutual interrelations between social, institutional and legal orders. The normative deficit of modern democratic polities stems from the overwhelming blindness to discursive justifications of political decisions and, in consequence, from the disregard for the necessity of enhancing moral-democratic competencies of citizens themselves. Menwhile, the moral democratic competencies condition the possibility of the widen participation of the citizenry and its empowerment. The second part of the article consists of the presentation of the idea of political philosophy as public philosophy. With reference to B. Williams two essential questions are addressed: the question of the identity of public philosophy (What is public philosophy?), and the question of the audience of public philosophy (Who is being addressed and for what purpose?). A realistically utopian character of public philosophy is stressed.

Teaching advanced college students in the faculty of philosophy, one can observe that they reflect on democracy at a sophistic level (Rosen calls this phenomena overprofessionalization). At the same time, most of these students have never been in the middle of a real democratic discussion. All cognitive competencies need to be developed by practicing them repeatedly. Democracy is an advanced personal, interpersonal, and social competence, not only a political framework and constitution. Lind once established the concept of democratic personality. I would like to illustrate this concept by my own discursive experiences with democratic education.

We know today that Socrates was right and that moral orientations need not be taught as they already exist inherently in man, but that moral judgmental and discourse competence are not pre-given and must consequently be fostered. We have described here a psychologically well- founded and intensively tested method with which this can be effectively done. The most urgent task now is to offer teachers good training and further training in this and similar methods so that every student can profit from effective moral education

The point of departure of this paper is Jürgen Habermas concept of knowledge constitutive interests and its further elaboration in the so-called reconstructive sciences. The reconstructive knowledge encompasses descriptive empirical statements, relative normative statements following from explication of cultural beliefs, and normative statements raising universal validity claims. The analysis of such model of knowledge creation leads to a conclusion that the responsibility of contemporary expert cultures is to mediate between scientific research, common-sense cultural beliefs, and moral or legal assumptions that are recognized as justified and valid

In the following considerations the author addresses the issue of teachers' professional ethics and in particular the issue of teachers ethical competence which is understood as a capacity to make responsible moral judgments with regard to situations that occur in the course of professional practice. In accordance with the pragmatic idea of community of inquiry, the author argues that the role of professional ethics is to design the discourse concerned with moral problems which should allow the teachers to develop and cultivate ethical competences.

This essay is organized into seven sections. First, the main thesis is introduced: Democracy depends on the differentiation and harmonization of three regulatory systems: law, morality and culture. Next the argument follows that public policies depend strongly on legal changes being accompanied by changes in moral and social rules. The other sections report on the legal, moral (also motivational), and cultural education of Bogotàs citizens

The article discusses the idea of universality of human rights faced with the diversity of cultures. It provides a short insight into the history of human rights institutionalisation, it also explains the meaning, scope and possible justification for the universality of human rights understood as the political project, which is morally justifiable and explicable in judicial terms. The universality and abstractness of human rights is presented as a complementary moment of individualisation of each human existence. The chief thesis is that human rights enable and admit the reconciliation of diverse, though not all, cultural practices.

The paper addresses the problem of genotypic prevention, i.e. it poses the question of whether prospective parents may be obliged to prevent the so called 'reproductive harm', caused by genetically transmitted diseases. First, the paper analyses the harm principle developed by John Stuart Mill. Second, a legal concept of harm is specified, invoking the distinction between a harmful condition and a  harmed condition given by Joel Feinberg. It is argued, after Feinberg, that acts of harming must meet some specific conditions, among others there must be a person who is harmed; and either the counterfactual condition or the worsening condition. Third, the conception of prenatal harm and preconception harm is discussed and then distinguished from the so called 'reproductive harm' which is understood as harm caused by giving birth to a person which would be born in a harmful position (with a disability or a disease). The conception of 'procreative harm' poses a philosophical question concerning the non-identity problem suggested by Derek Parfit and discussed by such philosophers as Buchanan, Wikler, Brock, Daniels, Hare, Reiman, Green, Locke to name only some of them. The non-identity problem undermines the concept of procreative harm, since there is no person harmed by the procreative decision when the only alternative for a particular disabled child was not to be born. These considerations lead to the conclusion that a legal concept of 'reproductive harm' is not justified and that it should be replaced by the idea of moral procreative responsibility in the given context.

In the following paper we investigate sources and democratic credentials of the common European constitutional culture. The significance of national constitutional traditions is contrasted with the requirement of democratic legitimation for Union law. With that regard the CJEU's ruling in case C-555/07 Seda Kücükdeveci v. Swedex GmbH&Co. KG is carefully analysed. We state a thesis that the chief feature of the searched after common European constitutional culture should be its normative emancipatory force expressed in the concept of the European self-constitutionalisation

An article falls into the area of reflection called public philosophy and it is an example of normative analysis of functioning of the institution of public hearing introduced to Polish democratic order in 2006. Public hearing is presented as a dynamic process which consists of the three phases, with different methods, scope and purpose. An analysis focuses on the first phase, which relates to the formal and legal arrangements adopted in the Rules of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, primarily the fundamental issue of convening a public hearing, in which author distinguishes seven problem areas that require special attention: 1) who should be allowed to table a motion to convene a public hearing? 2) should the call of a public hearing be optional or arbitrary? 3) the moment in the law-making process of convening a public hearing; 4) the problem of publicizing the decision to convene a public hearing; 5) the contents of the registration form; 6) possibility to restrict the number of participants; 7) the issue of cancellation of a public hearing.

The increasing complexity of the academic enterprise in Europe is due to several general factors: globalization and Europeanization, educational expansion and massification of higher education, the economic crisis, reform pressures in the public sector, growing pressures for accountability, and knowledge-driven economic competitiveness of nations and regions. Factors generating change in national higher education policies and in national higher education systems have been multilayered, interrelated and often common throughout the continent. Reforms increasingly, and throughout Europe, lead to further reforms rather than to reformed higher education systems. Higher education has changed substantially in most European economies in the last two or three decades but it is still expected by national and European-level policymakers to change even more. Universities, throughout two centuries of their modern history, change as their environments change, especially in connection with changes in the functioning of nation-states and various forms of welfare states. Different directions of current and projected academic restructuring in different national systems add to the complexity of the picture at a European level.

The essay aims at analysis of the manner Polish jurisprudence perceives a role of critical perspective within legal thought. Only such critique might be plausibly called a 'reflection', since it is conducted from an internal point of view  the viewpoint of legal professionals who criticize their own conceptual schemes. This analysis of theoretical projects is made in the light of sociological processes of increasing reflexivity of social practices and institutions, law included (Giddens).
The essay takes under examination four particular metaphors which are to be met in Polish jurisprudence: a lawyer as a philosopher, a lawyer as an artist, a lawyer as a participant of culture, and a lawyer as a believer. Each of them offers a slightly different answer to the question on the room for critical reflection in the law. The particular interest is paid to the way these four various theoretical proposals recognize, respectively: a significance of professional legal tradition, mutual relations between law and its social surroundings, as well as a role of individual agent in legal practice.

The institutions are often seen as a collection of rules and norms of human behavior, organized human practices, and all sorts of his social activity implemented in the structures of meaning and identity, political system, economic growth, prescribing appropriate behavior for specific actors in specific situations or circumstances. According to this point of view the institutions can also be understand as a system of social activity's patterns maintained and reinforced for the sake of establishing, and regulating the scope, the dimension and the quality of social integration, political organization, and economic system of the production and the distribution of goods, and services.
The process of institutionalization of human life is a specific rule of the western civilization's development and makes a core of Max Weber's theory of rationalization trying to explain the most important and significant aspects of this process.
The problem is that a process of advanced human's life institutionalization leads to the symmetrically advancing bureaucratization - in some cases - in an even oligarchical way. The mutual, reciprocal causation between these two processes is a main issue in many hypotheses and theories trying to explain the structure of institutional pathologies, a lack of their - institutions - systematical flexibility or the models of their temporal and constant ineffectiveness.