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In Europe, the rising tensions between economic integration and social disintegration challenge our understanding of social justice. In times of economic growth Member States were the unquestionable guardians of our social security. A few crises down the stream, their capacity to assure the full range of services provided by a comprehensive welfare state is, arguably, eroded. In this framework, we ask: does the coming to maturity of the single market challenge our conception of social justice? How would market integration and the States' degrading capacity to conduct independent economic and social policies impact on the assumption of a States' tailored theory of justice as fairness? We begin this essay with an analysis of some consequences of economic integration on the social circumstances of the European population. In this context, we identify the link between trade liberalization and raising inequalities amongst citizens. Yet, while Member States should provide efficient welfare policies to address these inequalities, we observe that they are in fact increasingly constrained by economic and legal pressures. Considering these phenomena, our contention in this work, is that the traditional conception of social justice fails to account for the institutional transformation in progress within the European polity. Discussing Rawls' theory of justice, we show how the classical conception of a nation-state's modulated justice is questioned by new socio-economic developments. In our re-consideration of Rawls' theory of justice as fairness, we propose the original concept of cooperative justice that, allegedly, gives a better account of the multi-nodal basic structure constituted by the EU and national polities for the implementation of the principles of justice. Ultimately, we claim that cooperative justice offers the conceptual framework in which we should consider social justice in the EU.

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Testimony is one of the most dominant elements in John’s Gospel. In his Commentary of the Gospel of St. John (hereafter Commentary), Aquinas, on the one hand, attributes meanings to biblical verses; on the other hand, he exhibits the identity of the Son of God by explaining his incarnation, ministry, and his death and resurrection. This is the divine mystery that God shares with humans or lets himself be known by means of testimonies. Aquinas’s Commentary provides fruitful information for studying the area of both testimony in the John’s Gospel and Aquinas’s account of testimony. Yet, no studies have combined both areas. This thesis, thus, contributes by: (1) giving a rearrangement of testimonial episodes of four narratives in the Gospel with Aquinas’s materials in the Commentary; and (2) arguing that the Gospel itself, with Aquinas’s explanations, is a testimony given by John the Evangelist. This thesis includes three chapters. The first chapter deals with a tension between faith and seeing. If the Son of God is portrayed as the light of the world which renders all things visible, then, how can it be compatible with the claim that “faith is an assent given to something unseen”? I argue that they are compatible with each other in the sense that there is a gap between the content of seeing and the content of faith that leaves a room for faith. This clarification leads to the second chapter which is about four testimonial episodes in the Gospel. This is a task of reconstructing the materials of four narratives in Aquinas’s Commentary so as to fit into a criterion of testimony, namely, a speaker testifies a proposition p to a hearer which renders the transmission of knowledge possible. The second part of this chapter examines the elements of the reconstructed episodes: the speaker, the hearer, and the knowledge transmitted. I argue that even though the word ‘testimony’ is not used in a particular explanation of Aquinas, these reconstructed episodes can still be considered as testimonial accounts. The third chapter argues that the John’s Gospel is a testimony given by John the Evangelist. This involves explanations about the writing genre of the Gospel, namely, the narrative form; and the concept of the second-person experience. This experience enables the readers to obtain knowledge from the characters of the stories. Finally, the importance of adhering to the speaker (that is, John the Evangelist in this context) will be examined. The rearrangement in the second chapter provides a new way of understanding Aquinas’s account of testimony while the third chapter studies the testimony given by John the Evangelist from a new perspective. Both findings have important implications for providing fresh insights of reading the John’s Gospel with Aquinas’s Commentary.

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In this thesis, Husserl’s argumentation on the topic of crisis is introduced in order to respond to R. P. Buckley’s critiques on, at first, the problem of “equivocation or even a two-sidedness” of Husserl’s notion of crisis and, second, the problems or even self-controversy caused by the so-called “voluntarism” in Husserl’s argumentation on the cure and saving for the crisis. After the investigation in this thesis, it is revealed that both of these critiques are based on narrowed sight on the richness of meaning in Husserl’s investigations. Thus, a better understanding of Husserl’s philosophy of crisis and renewal, and a better understanding of his ‘introduction’ to phenomenological philosophy is offered by responding these critiques. Considering Husserl approaches to the topic of crisis in various ways among his Kaizo articles and Crisis, and these complementary approaches is important to reveal the subtle points that are pivotal for the respond to Buckley’s critiques, this thesis focuses both on Husserl’s Crisis and his Kaizo articles, together with the aid from Husserl’s other relating work and the second-hand resources. This thesis first discusses the ideal and the vocation of science that is inherited and rejuvenated by the European sciences, and the crisis of the European sciences as a separation between such sciences and human life, as an alienation of such sciences from its own origins and vocation. Then it is discussed that the crisis is inborn with the European sciences as a ‘surreptitious substitution’, which at the same time alienated the European sciences from its original vocation. After the clarification of the origin of the crisis, the inauthenticity of the sciences as such is clarified with the aid of Husserl’s early theory of authenticity in his Logical Investigations5 and Buckley’s critique of ‘equivocation’ in Husserl’s notion of crisis is discussed. Finally, Buckley and some other critics mention that Husserl’s argumentation about the cure for crisis, especially the ‘renewal’ in Kaizo articles, is highly involved with a theological tendency of “faith in reason” and introduces a dependency of the renewal of reason on this “faith in reason” . Since, according to Buckley, such a dependency reveals a self-controversy within Husserl’s “voluntarism”, namely a self-controversy within his critiques on the passivity of reason in the crisis and his purpose of re-establishing the activity of a genuine reason as the cure for crisis, a detour of theological discussion, mainly from Jean-Luc Marion’s “phenomenal re-appropriation of revelation”, is introduced to articulate this so-called dependency of reason on faith and to respond to Buckley’s critique of self-controversy.

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In 1882, Nietzsche united what are now known as his middle works under “a common goal,” namely, “to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit.” In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that free spirits are those who have “become free.” This thesis attempts to better understand Nietzsche’s middle writings by pursuing the relation of these two claims. It is revealed that Nietzsche creates free spirits to be those ‘seed bearers of the future’ who guide humanity in the wake of the ‘death of God.’ The commonly understood role of free spirits as those who simply pursue knowledge at all costs was thus revealed to be overly simplistic. Free spirits for Nietzsche must seek particular kinds of knowledge, namely knowledge of natural history as it relates to human psycho-physiology. To understand the drives, one must look to their history on an evolutionary scale, and specifically to what enabled them to spread and endure for millennia. An explanation of our beliefs, desires, and motivations for action cannot ignore our physiology; and this entails the process by which that physiology emerged in the first place. Life cannot be properly understood without knowledge of its evolved nature. The creators of the future must, for Nietzsche, proceed from a de-deified, historically naturalized view of human beings and their reality. Finally, free spirits are found to be those who confront the pain of social alienation as something to be overcome. How they acquire this courageous perspective is not under their control. A culture bent on achieving security above all else, a culture that desires to become safer, such as modern culture, cannot do this; it is the breeding ground of the dogmatically fettered. What is needed, for Nietzsche, is an increased appreciation of the enormous depth of human history, including the history of life illuminated by evolution. Nietzsche exhorts us to take seriously humanity’s millennia-long development, to look deep into history so that we might prepare cultural soil deep enough for a millennia-long future.

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Abstract In the testimonial exchange, the way the information offered by the speaker is perceived by the hearer can be influenced by a myriad of factors. Many circumstances can contribute to the distortion of presented facts - among which notably, prejudice. By succumbing to prejudice, the hearer may lose valuable knowledge. This is characterized by Miranda Fricker (2007) as a particular form of epistemic injustice, namely testimonial injustice. Fricker offers a virtue theoretic account thereof; according to Fricker, the virtue of testimonial justice is such that the hearer corrects for any influence of prejudice by reinflating credibility to non-prejudiced levels. Fricker furthermore argues that what is interesting about this particular virtue is that it is, at the same time, an epistemic and an ethical virtue. This thesis purports to show that Fricker’s notion of the virtue of testimonial justice needs revisiting. Roughly, the thesis is motivated by the following thought: prejudicial dysfunction can be of two kinds. The speaker can be afforded either too much or too little credibility, which results in either credibility excess in the former situation, or credibility deficit in the latter situation. Both, arguably, are epistemically defectuous. However, it is plausible that, in most situations, credibility deficit is practically disadvantageous whereas credibility excess is advantageous for the testifier. Furthermore, complications of ethical utilitarianism aside, on most occasions, the ethically good thing to do will supervene on the practically good thing to do. If that is the case, it looks as though the epistemic virtue of testimonial justice will come apart from the corresponding ethical virtue in cases of credibility excess. In the light of this, it will be argued here that: (1) no coherent account of the virtue of testimonial injustice is available on the mixed, ethical and epistemic picture, and (2) it is not trivial to isolate one dimension from the other either.