Carl Bucher – Switzerland

Carl Bucher, the artist working for the recognition of human conditions.

His expositions show a strong engagment for humans condition for dignitiy. He creates sculptures showing in their expression his concern.

Artist’s studio Carl Bucher

Sorry, I could not find any photo of Carl Bucher himself

One is placed at the entry of the red cross in Geneva. See first link,

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Riccardo Petrella – Italy & Belgium

Riccardo Petrella, President of the Group of Lisbon; Head of Social Research; Commission of the European Union – Bruxelles; Secretary of the Committee ‘the water manifesto’;

Riccardo Petrella

Riccardo Petrella was born in 1941 in Italy. Being a Doctor in Social and Political Sciences he was leading the FAST-program (Forecasting and Assessment in Science and Technology) of the European Commission.

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Razia Bondrey Bhatti – Pakistan (x – 1996)

She is one of the Courage Award Winners 1994.

She said: « I see the journalist’s role as both reporter and crusader. In a civilization that seems to be regressing into new holocausts, we must seek and speak the truth, for we are the voice of voiceless millions. Having chosen this profession, we cannot be afraid to speak the truth no matter what the cost. And by speaking, I personally believe we can change the world » (at the IWMF Courage in Journalism award ceremony, 1994).

Razia Bondrey Bhatti – Pakistan – deceded March 12, 1996.

In a country where incidents of violence against the press were among the highest in the world, Bhatti took on drug cartels, ethnic and fascist political parties, militant Islamic groups, a president’s son-in-law, a prime minister’s spouse and successive governments. She broke taboos and transgressed limits imposed on freedom of expression by authoritarian regimes as well as a conservative society. Bhatti wrote of her mission, « Newsline is the venture of a team of working journalists who want to serve this nation in the way they know best: to seek the truth, to spotlight injustice and to fight for redress. We hope not only to appeal to the reason, but to touch the heart. » Throughout her career, Bhatti was driven to present unbiased, accurate and comprehensive reports on issues affecting the people of Pakistan. When she died in 1996 at age 52, she left a husband, son, daughter and the legacy of Newsline. (Read on International Women’s Media Foundation IWMF).

Book: A Profile in Courage, The Newsline Editorials of Razia Bhatti 1989-1996, the Late Razia Bhatti: Price: £8.99 (Hardback), ISBN-10: 0-19-579332-3 and ISBN-13: 978-0-19-579332-1. Publication date: 16 January 2003.

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Leslie Cagan – USA

Leslie Cagan was born in 1947 and graduated from New York University in 1968. She has been a core participant and organizer for progressive and radical social and political activities over the span of her career.

Leslie Cagan

The political career of Cagan, a lesbian Socialist-Feminist, reflects her changing social concerns over the years. In the 1960’s, Cagan was on the staff of the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

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Index September 2005

Stanley Milgram – USA (1933 – 1984)

From Milgram’s reply to Baumrind’s ethical critique of the obedience experiments: I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority.

Stanley Milgram

This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter’s commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals (1964).

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Martha Craven Nussbaum – USA

Martha Nussbaum (born Martha Craven on May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher, with a particular interest in ancient philosophy, political philosophy and ethics. She was born in New York, the daughter of George Craven, a Philadelphia lawyer, and Betty Warren, a homemaker. She studied theatre and classics at New York University, getting a Bachelor of Arts in 1969, and gradually moved to philosophy while at Harvard, where she received a MA in 1972 and a PhD in 1975, studying under G. E. L. Owen. This period also saw her marriage to Alan Nussbaum (divorced in 1987), conversion to Judaism, and the birth of her daughter Rachel, who would become a professor of German History.

She taught philosophy and classics at Harvard in the 1970s and early 1980s, before moving to Brown. Her 1986 book The Fragility of Goodness, on ancient ethics, was particularly influential, and made her a well-known figure throughout the humanities. (full text wikipedia).

Martha Craven Nussbaum – USA

Download: Martha C. Nussbaum: ‘Women and Human Development, The Capabilities Approach, Feminism and International Development‘, 316 pages.

The debate over whether philosophy should play a mandarin or public role has been a contentious one throughout American intellectual history. In the hands of thinkers like Sidney Hook and John Dewey, philosophy turned its attention « from the problems of philosophers toward the problems of men, » as Dewey wrote in « Reconstruction in Philosophy » (1920). After the Second World War, the mainstream of American philosophy became reclusively « analytic, » orienting itself around the study of logic, mathematics and the philosophy of science,
while maintaining only a tenuous connection to the world at large. With John Rawls’s « A Theory of Justice » (1971), academic philosophy initiated a wary rapprochement with its more socially engaged past, using the analytic idiom to address age-old questions of justice. Nussbaum’s work has played an important part in this revival, as she has extended Rawls’s liberal insights to examine questions of gender, race and international development. She insists that philosophy be rigorous and, above all, useful. Whereas Ludwig Wittgenstein once
compared philosophers to garbage men sweeping the mind clean of wrongheaded concepts, Nussbaum believes they should be « lawyers for humanity » – a phrase she borrows from Seneca, her favorite Stoic thinker. Part wonk, part sage, Nussbaum is determined to make philosophy relevant to the modern world. (full text).
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Raya Dunayevskaya – Ukraine & USA 1910-1987

Linked with our presentation of Marxism and Humanism by Raya Dunayevskaya.

Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–1987) is the founder of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. She concretized that philosophy during a lifetime in the revolutionary movement as she participated in all the freedom movements of our age—whether of workers, women, the Black dimension, and youth.

Raya Dunayevskaya – Ukraine & USA 1910-1987

She said: “ Ours is the age that can meet the challenge of the times when we work out so new a relationship of theory to practice that the proof of the unity is in the Subject’s own self-development. Philosophy and revolution will first then liberate the innate talents of men and women who will become whole. Whether or not we recognise that this is the task history has « assigned, » to our epoch, it is a task that remains to be done.” New Passions, 1948.

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Marjane Satrapi – Iran & France

The website ‘Asia Source’ is a best-link for informations about the Asia Society. I found there this interview of May 9, 2005.

Marjane Satrapi, Iranian writer living in Paris

Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran, and currently lives in Paris. She has written several children’s books and her commentary and comics appear in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times and The New Yorker.

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