Dialogi
Eurozine
Dialogi
2008-04-21
Summary for Dialogi 1-2/2008
This issue is introduced by Boris Vezjak with a commentary on the tremendous expansion and fragmentation of the system of higher education in Slovenia that we have witnessed recently. A few months ago, the Slovenian prime minister announced a crackdown on so-called "tycoons" in the country, which has essentially taken the form of a witch hunt and show for the public. Businesspeople who profited from the unregulated privatization of companies were driven primarily by self-interest, but we also have tycoons in the schools and universities, whose self-interest is camouflaged as the national interest, writes Vezjak. The privatization of higher education has gone too far and is split into "ours", which is allowed, and "yours", which is not allowed.
The main theme of the issue is devoted to ethics and law. It has been prepared by guest editors Karolina Babich and Peter Kuralt, who write in their introduction that the relationship between ethics and law also brings with it questions regarding the distinction between the concepts of ethics and of morality, and the further question of justice and ethics, as well as, of course, the question of the place of the rule of law in modern societies. Aspects concerning the contemporary trend of explicit social reliance on the institution of law receive particular attention. Modern western societies, on the one hand, are perfectly justified in celebrating the achievement of setting up the rule of law, but on the other hand they believe too naively in the law as a magic potion capable of governing all levels and details of human relations.
At the beginning of the set of articles devoted to this topic is an interview with the well known legal expert Miro Cerar, associate professor of the philosophy of law, jurisprudence, and comparative law at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. This is followed by an exhaustive paper by Sime Ivanjko, professor at the Faculty of Law in Maribor, who lectures on, among other subjects, competition law and business ethics. And it is in business ethics where, according to the article, we can see the clear connections and conflicts between ethics and law. The next article is by Ales Novak, assistant professor at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, who illuminates the problematics of the relationship between ethics and law based on a comprehensive overview of the history of natural law theory and its modern form. The fourth article is by Iztok Rakar, assistant instructor at the Faculty of Administration in Ljubljana, where among other topics he works on the ethics of administration at the local level. His paper shows the relationship between ethics and law in the specific case of gift-giving in public administration. These articles are followed by the translation of a brief excerpt of a text by Jeremy Bentham, one of the best known and most significant theorists of punishment in history. The translated passage addresses the fundamental characteristics of punishment in the sphere of morality as contrasted with punishment in the sphere of law. It is accompanied by a commentary by Peter Kuralt.
In Reading we publish works solely by Slovene literary figures: poets Ana Pepelnik, Metod Chesek, Kristina Kochan, Tine Mlinarich, and Milan Selj; writers Gojmir Polajnar and Dubravka Berc Prah.
In Cultural diagnosis Andrej Adam reviews Boris Vezjak's book The relaxed ideology of Slovenes, in which the author analyzes the concept of "relaxedness", which is an immanent part of the political discourse of Slovenia's current rulers, as ideologem and slogan, as political platform and as philosophem. Lana Zdravkovic writes about a collection from The newspaper for critical sciences which is devoted to the topic of the erasure of 18,305 citizens of the former Yugoslavia from the register of permanent residents in the newly created Republic of Slovenia. Tomaz Grusovnik writes on the Slovene translation of Étienne Balibar's Locke's Conscience, and Milan Selj on the book of short stories, The mallow-colored river, by author Barica Smole.
This issue's diary was written by philosopher Gorazd Andrejch, who is currently a graduate student studying Jewish-Christian relations at Cambridge University; in it he also covers current debates in Britain about Islam and Islamism as a political ideology, which advocates global Islamic rule.
In Detektor, film editor Robert Petrovich hosts Bojan Labovich, a documentary film director and senior cultural advisor to the Urban Municipality of Maribor. They talk about the commercialization and low level of cinematographic culture in the city and the problematics of the art cinema which Maribor still lacks.
In Social diagnosis Boris Vezjak has sought commentaries on the latest column by pop economist Dr. Mico Mrkaic in the newspaper Finance, in which he writes, among other things, that inflation, which in Slovenia has reached an annual level of 5.6%, or 0.46% per month, eats up the equivalent of one beer a month for a poor Slovene making the minimum monthly salary of 400 euros, and that, given how widespread alcoholism is in Slovenia, it is better for this beer to be swallowed up by inflation instead of swilled by "impoverished" Slovenes. The economists approached declined to comment, which Vezjak puts down to the fact that the personality of Mico Mrkaic has clearly succeeded in ensuring that practically no economic expert wants to publicly challenge his assertions. Thus on the one hand we have Mrkaic, who can say whatever he pleases, while on the other hand we have troops of economists who boycott his statements. Vezjak asks: isn't it also the task of intellectuals and scientists to publicly defend their field's achievements? And further: what is the role here of the media, which in such circumstances tolerates and even enables opinions on which experts do not wish to comment? Why does the media do this, and what kind of professional standards are they committed to when they do?