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The Rhetoric of Indoctrination: Cultural Marxist Propaganda in American Schools

Author(s): Curtis L. Hancock / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: university; American education; propaganda; culture; Marxism; social transformation;

The author of this article argues that the last few generations in American universities have been subjected to a not-so-silent form of cultural Marxism. This practice was in line with Antonio Gramsci's early twentieth century call to undertake a "long march through institutions." Rather than encouraging outright, violent revolution (á la the Bolshevik uprising of 1917), he proposed a gradual takeover of political, cultural, and economic institutions. The university, because of its power to educate and influence future professionals, is a key tool for this transformation of society, a transformation that first seeks to change the civil society, customs, traditions, and habits of people who are historically unregulated by government. This generally sets the pattern by which much of the education in the classroom follows. First, the professor encourages students to doubt the values they have received from their parents and the rest of civil society, and second, the professor deconstructs Western Civilization. The author shows what role propaganda plays in these actions.

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(Un)lock and (Un)loaded: Regulating 3D-Printed Firearms in the Open-source Era after the 2013 Hysteria

Author(s): David Tan,Ampuan Situmeang,Hari Sutra Disemadi / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2023

Keywords: 3D Printing Technology; 3D-Printed Guns; Additive Manufacturing; Firearms; Ghost Gun; Regulation

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is a fast-evolving technology that is transforming the way humans create things. Anyone can buy a 3D printer for private usage, allowing them to produce totally personalized things in the comfort of their own homes. One 3D-printed commodity, unfortunately, is provoking a huge debate: firearms. Any person may build a completely functional firearm only with a 3D printer, the necessary designs and filament. Thus, bypassing governmental licensing, registration, and fabrication regulations. A surge of scholarships appeared nine years back, alerting people about the dangers of 3D-printed firearms. Following the widespread hysteria, this work offers commentary on the issue of 3D-printed firearms, as well as lessons learnt for a better regulatory framework for these firearms. To establish effective regulatory oversight over illicit ownership and usage of 3D-printed guns, existing law may have to be enhanced. Furthermore, any prospective regulations will almost definitely be closely scrutinized in order to strike a balance between public security concerns and personal liberty. Additionally, many conceivable technological regulations would be unfeasible and would contradict the public interest objective of safeguarding technological development. To better control 3D-printed guns while preserving basic freedoms and technological development, a three-pronged approach has been proposed.

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How the Two Child Abuse Cases Helped to Shape the Test of Originality of Photographic Works

Author(s): Marian Jankovic / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2023

Keywords: Originality; Photographic Works; Photography; Originality Standard; Court of Justice of the European Union

The author intends to assess the approach to finding originality in photographic works in the courts of the United States of America and the approach developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The means through which such assessment is to be made are two cases, each decided in a respective jurisdiction; nonetheless they are connected via both factual and legal circumstances - both involving child abuse and a dispute regarding a copyright infringement in a photographic work. The article will thoroughly assess the legal circumstances of each case and describe the methods of identification of originality applied therein. Following the said assessment, an analysis of the possible merger of both methods will be conducted, with emphasis on the possible added value for the test of originality applied to photographic works within the copyright framework of the European Union. The author’s intention is to conduct a comparison between both approaches to highlight their individual advantages and disadvantages, with a final assessment of their possible joint application in cases involving copyright infringement of photographic works within the copyright framework of the European Union.

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The Forms of the Anthropological Mistake According to Major Works of Karol Wojtyła

Author(s): Brian Panasiak / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: metaphysics; metaphysical anthropology; the anthropological mistake; Karol Wojtyla; John Paul II;

The “anthropological mistake” is one of the most important yet under researched terms in the thought of Karol Wojtyla. It is a term that is only referenced specifically in one of his works, this being Centesimus Annus, but serves as a thread that is found in the totality of his writing from his early years as a young priest, to the mature encyclicals of his pontificate. This work functions as an introduction to the “anthropological mistake” as presented by Karol Wojtyla through an analysis of the presence of this term in certain philosophical works of this philosopher pope. Through this analysis of the presence of this term in the canon of both the young and mature Wojtyla, this work presents both what the “anthropological mistake” means in philosophical anthropology, and lists examples thereof enumerated upon by Karol Wojtyla.

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To Be, for a Human Being, is to Govern. The Personalistic Foundations of Authority According to Tadeusz Styczeń

Author(s): Wojciech Wojtyła / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: person; autonomy; democracy;

The author of this article discusses the subjective foundations of social power. He does so on the basis of Tadeusz Styczeń's texts. The thesis of the article is that the basic condition for exercising social authority (i.e. public, State, and political power) is to retain authority over oneself, to be a free, truth-driven, and self-governing entity. Of the three types of authority included within the scope of social power, the article will place particular emphasis on political authority in a democratic society. Following the thoughts of T. Styczeń, the author attempts to provide an answer to the question of how to “translate” what constitutes the deepest identity of a person into the issue of self-governance, which is an important element in democracy, as the governing order closest to personalism.

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God and Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

Author(s): Marcin Sieńkowski / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: God; transcendental; being; truth; good; beauty; Aristotle; Thomas Aquinas; Mieczysław A. Krąpiec; Andrzej Maryniarczyk;

The purpose of this article is to present the meaning of the transcendental properties, which include truth, goodness, and beauty, among others. Their understanding was developed by philosophers of the classical trend (in the past and today). On the basis of metaphysics, it is explained that every real being has these properties. The author of this study shows that they also belong to God.

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Aquinas’s Troubles with Human Death: A Prospective Solution

Author(s): Zbigniew Pańpuch / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: body; soul; organism; death; philosophical anthropology;

From a philosophical and theological point of view – but also from the view of common language – death is defined as “the separation of the soul and the body”. In the case of Saint Thomas Aquinas his views regarding death are not fully clear with this being somewhat strange due to Aquinas being a philosopher who makes use of Aristotelian ontological categories and additionally strengthens them with his own modification – the supreme substantial composition of the essence and existence, in relation to death makes use of, in fact, a position elaborated by… Plato (!) And this in spite that he accepted the concept of human being given by Aristotle as more realistic, as better explaining the unity of it. However Aquinas overcame the difficulties of Aristotelian and Platonic solutions, yet it seems that from some reason “he stopped” in analysis of corporeality, accepting the Platonic understanding of the death: the separation of two principles of human being which (along Aristotle’s work) create the unity of it. The distinction between the body and the organism proposed in the article modifies the understanding of human death and sheds a new light on it, that it concerns only the biological organism. If however such proposed change of understanding of death is acceptable and justified, in the consequence one needs to reinterpret traditional solutions of the problems associated with the death, like its process (what is going on during it), a life post mortem, the resurrection. Some suggestions will be made in the article.

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Discovering a Master Teacher

Author(s): Curtis L. Hancock / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2/2021

Keywords: St. Thomas Aquinas; aesthetics; Francis Kovach;

My third year of college, I had the good fortune to enroll in a survey course in ancient philosophy. The instructor was a Hungarian émigré, named Francis Kovach, a man endowed with a forceful personality and a discipline of mind that was a marvel to behold. He had a distinguished German education, having earned a doctorate in philosophy from Cologne, where he wrote a dissertation under the direction of Gerard Verbeke. His dissertation is arguably the definitive study of the aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas.

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In Search of Conciliar Inspirations in the Study Person and Act. A Contribution to the Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła

Author(s): Wojciech Wojtyła / Language(s): English / Issue: 32/2022

Keywords: freedom; the dignity of the person; community;

The intention to write Person and Act (in Polish, Osoba i czyn) – a study considered to be Karol Wojtyla's most-important philosophical book – emerged during the Second Vatican Council, in which he participated as Bishop Wojtyła. It is the author's philosophical reflection on the fundamental themes of the Council, which embrace the concept of freedom’s constituting the basis of the essential dignity of every human being, and the problem of the human community. The article traces the roots of the main theses of Person and Act, as originating in the Council. These theses constitute a philosophical analysis of the concept of the human being, which is contained especially in Gaudium et spes – the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

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Reflections on Trigg and Nussbaum’s views on Religion in Public Life

Author(s): Brendan Sweetman / Language(s): English / Issue: 32/2022

Keywords: Religion in Public Life; politics and religion; secularism; Martha Nussbaum; R.Trigg;

Contemporary political liberalism, especially in the English speaking world, is usually regarded as being hostile to religious belief and religious believers. This is because its proponents develop a sophisticated view, inspired by John Rawls, that aims to come up with procedural or principled reasons that would just so happen to exclude most religious views from public discourse, and move such discourse (and so society and culture) along a channel that accords well with the beliefs and values of contemporary secularism. Many thinkers have reservations about such an approach, regarding it as honestly misguided, perhaps disingenuously conceived, or even as a rigged procedure to exclude (or at least contain) religious beliefs from having any political influence. Some resist it completely and reject the whole approach to political theory that comes from Rawls.

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The Metaphysical Foundation of Religious Freedom

Author(s): Enrique Martínez / Language(s): English / Issue: 32/2022

Keywords: religious freedom; Divine Goodness; creation; metaphysics; ethics; religion; Thomas Aquinas;

Religious freedom is a property of human life in society. In order to find its ultimate foundation, one must go to man's place in the universe, created by God to communicate His goodness and ordered to Himself as an end. Man participates so in the perfection of esse that he can govern himself and attain God through knowledge and love. This order is so ingrained in human nature that St. Thomas Aquinas identifies the natural inclination as the most proper to man to know the truth about God. From there, moral demands derive, among which there is religious freedom, understood as the immunity from coercion in society to be able to render due worship to God. Nevertheless, the perfection of the religious freedom consists in man being communicative of his religiosity with giving and liberal love.

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Essentialist Vs. Consequentialist-Based Concept of Human Dignity

Author(s): Stephen Ugwu / Language(s): English / Issue: 32/2022

Keywords: Human dignity; human person; rationality; freedom; personalistic norm;

The ontological and epistemological presuppositions of scholars about the concept of human dignity is fundamentally based on the argument that human being possesses an objective and inherent value that is inalienable. The understanding demands as right from every human being respect to oneself, others, to human life and freedom in general. However, there have been instances of violation of this right in such acts like abortion, euthanasia, rape, terrorism, medical experiments on humans and modern forms of slavery. These acts violate the truth, goodness and beauty of acts that defines human person, so, calls for proper understanding of the bases of human dignity in the contemporary time. Some scholars ascribe this intrinsic quality of human nature only to human being who have objective moral value. This approach defines as humans those who have the capacity for such features like rationality, freedom and self-awareness. That is, the ability to live out these features, thus dignity as a consequence of these features. Some thinkers however understand dignity, as innate to every human being, given the ontic structure of human being. That is, on the essential features of human being which is universal to all human being in all stages of human life, hence, the essentialist base of human dignity. This article will consider these two positions and conclude with the contemporary challenges of the consequentialist debate.

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The Inconsistent, Everyday Legal Consciousness of Contemporary Poles

Author(s): Grażyna Skąpska,Ewa Radomska,Marcin Wróbel / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: agency; legal competency; legal alienation; everyday legal consciousnes; legal nihilism from above;

On the basis of a nationwide survey conducted in 2020, this article strives to answer questions concerning the legal consciousness of contemporary Poles. Above all, it aims to establish whether the law is of value in Polish society—used as a tool for the resolution of conflicts, protection of rights, and the management of social relationships. The analysis is anchored in the Polish tradition of research on legal consciousness, but goes beyond that tradition to emphasize a sense of agency and competency as key components of legal consciousness. Moreover, the analysis links legal consciousness to other areas of life controlled by legal regulations. Supported by such theoretical considerations, this article presents an empirical model of legal consciousness in order to ponder a question about the empirical roots of the rule of law and legal alienation in the consciousness of Poles today.

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Low Pay and Political Attitudes in Europe: Is There an East-West Divide?

Author(s): Kamila Fialová / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: Low-wage employment; low pay; ESS data; political attitudes; CEE countries;

Employing 2018 European Social Survey data in a multilevel framework, the paper aims to estimate the effect of working for low pay on a wide range of political attitudes and to explain the attitudinal differences between the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western European regions based on their differing socio- economic and political background. The results suggest that it is mainly the lower living standard of inhabitants together with widespread wage inequality and not the specific legacy of the communist regimes that undermine the individual’s perception of influence on politics, political confidence and satisfaction with democracy in CEE. The results also indicate that working for low pay has a significant positive effect on the individual’s trust in politicians, but the relationship is moderated by the country’s economic development and is only significant in rich countries.

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Emotions Behind the Mask— from Fear for One’s Health to National Pride An Analysis of Chinese COVID-19 Educational Materials for Children

Author(s): Natalia Ożegalska-Łukasik / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; China; education; emotions; discourse analysis; visual materials;

In early 2020, the “new coronavirus”, SARS-CoV-2, started one of the most significant health crises in the modern world. China was the initial source of the pandemic and the first country to deal with its broad consequences which, apart from medical concerns, included severe social and economic costs. The far- reaching adverse outcomes of the pandemic meant a need for intensive educational campaigns, explaining the epidemiological aspects related to COVID-19. This paper studies Chinese materials educating children on health, and ways to protect against infection and further virus spread. It concentrates on cultural values, emotions, and means of expressions present in the analyzed resources. Among significant findings, notions of Confucian values, the Taoist vision of harmony, patriotic content, and nationalist ressentiment are identified. The study also recognizes unique forms of expression represented by metaphors, symbols, and specific local audiovisual themes.

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The Effect of Social Mobility on Cultural Barriers in Poland

Author(s): Henryk Domański,Dariusz Przybysz,Katarzyna M. Wyrzykowska,Kinga Zawadzka / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: social mobility; cultural stratification; social class barriers; musical preferences;

The main aim of this article is to show to what extent social mobility weakens cultural barriers. The findings are based on the results of a study on the stratification of musical tastes conducted in Poland in 2019 on a nationwide random sample. We demonstrate that upwardly mobile individuals adapt more to their status of origin than to their new position. Our results also disconfirm hypotheses concerning the “socialization” of downwardly mobile individuals to the highbrow culture. It shows that individuals moving down are closer to the lower classes in participation in culture as compared to “stayers.” The results suggest an important shift: the upwardly mobile have ceased to translate their occupational success into a more esteemed culture to gain social approval. Respectively, the skidders do not resist the status implications of downward mobility by denying failure and striving to compensate socio-economic degradation with sharing their tastes with their status peers.

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Is There an Association Between Childhood Conditions and Exclusion from Social Relations in Later Life?

Author(s): Marcela Petrová Kafková,Petr Fučík,Marja Aartsen,MARJA AARTSEN,Thomas Hansen,Ruth Katz,Sigal Pearl Naim,GEORGE PAVLIDIS,RODRIGO SERRAT,Feliciano Villar,Lucie Vidovićová / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: gender; older adults; SHARE; exclusion from social relations;

This study aims to explore the effects of childhood circumstances and conditions on the risk of exclusion from social relations in old age, using a life-course perspective and examining gender influence. Secondary analysis of SHARE. Weak and inconsistent consequences of the primary socialization context were found, however, in many cases, the expected effect is missing or contradictory. No impacts on the structure of the family of origin were found. For men, we often found a small, but significant effect of physical aspects of childhood living. For women, the cultural capital of family of origin and the quality of relations with parents seem to have a greater effect. Findings suggest that life-long resilience factors play an important role in the process of counterbalancing childhood living conditions. Early socialization consequences will not necessarily lead to ESR at old age.

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Having the Next Generation in Mind: Housing Pathways of Older Homeowners in a Romanian Rural Community

Author(s): Laura Tufă,Iuliana Precupetu,Marian Vasile / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: old age; housing pathways; homeownership; precarious prosperity;

In this paper we set out to understand the housing pathways of older people who live in precarious prosperity in rural Romania. The stratum of precarious prosperity (Budowski et al. 2010) is a rather invisible and heterogenous social category whose household strategies and biographies are particularly understudied. Our purpose is to describe and explain micro-events in the housing histories of older Romanians belonging to this stratum and to understand agency in housing strategies in time and space. The data we use comes from a qualitative panel study conducted in a rural community in Romania. The results show that the housing pathways available to older people in the village studied are strongly embedded in family ties, intergenerational support, and co-residence housing strategies, as well as in housing policies that provide inadequate institutional support for meeting housing standards and increasing the quality of housing.

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Maritime Spaces and Society Series: International Studies in Maritime Sociology, vol. 1Edited by Agnieszka Kołodziej-Durnaś, Frank Sowa, and Marie C. Grasmeier Leiden: BRILL 2022

Author(s): . Miscellaneous / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: book review;

Maritime Spaces and Society Series: International Studies in Maritime Sociology, vol. 1Edited by Agnieszka Kołodziej-Durnaś, Frank Sowa, and Marie C. Grasmeier Leiden: BRILL 2022, pp. 312ISBN-10: 9004503404 ISBN-13: 978-9004503403

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Maritime Professions Issues and Perspectives Series: International Studies in Maritime Sociology, vol. 2 Edited by Agnieszka Kołodziej-Durnaś, Frank Sowa, and Marie C. GrasmeierLeiden: Brill 2023

Author(s): . Miscellaneous / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2023

Keywords: book review;

Maritime Professions Issues and Perspectives Series: International Studies in Maritime Sociology, vol. 2 Edited by Agnieszka Kołodziej-Durnaś, Frank Sowa, and Marie C. GrasmeierLeiden: Brill 2023, pp. 254 ISBN: 978-90-04-51884-1

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