An Aesthetic Look at the World
Estetyczne spojrzenie na świat
Book Review: Bohdan Dziemidok, Główne kontrowersje estetyki współczesnej, PWN, Warszawa 2002, ss. 332
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Book Review: Bohdan Dziemidok, Główne kontrowersje estetyki współczesnej, PWN, Warszawa 2002, ss. 332
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Book Review: Stanisław Gałkowski, Rozwój i odpowiedzialność. Antropologiczne podstawy koncepcji wychowania moralnego, Wydawnictwo KUL, Lubłin 2003, ss. 268
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Book Review: Šlomo ben Gabriola: Koruna Kráľovstva, preklad D. Goldstein a M. Mičaninová, vyd. M. Vaška, Prešov 2003, s. 87 vrátane predslovu
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Keywords: rumour; rumour news; information; rumour’s cycle; news interchange; incompletion of news; moral discretion.
The magic of rumours and their background are discussed in the paper. The features of rumour news, which make them interesting to an individual who can fulfil his creativity here as a creator of information and potential of a transmitter, are revealed here. It is shown that joining information “enlargers” turns an individual into the hostage of the news interchange net because of two main reasons: firstly, because of difficulties to uphold moral discretion while conveying the news, and, secondly, because of the rumour’s incompletion due to absence of a complete mechanism that makes it insatiable, requiring a new and ever “fresher” information. Factors impeding the individual’s withdrawal from the rumour’s space are analysed.
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Keywords: cultural pluralism; national identity; language; language policy; national minorities; assimilation.
The aim of this article is to challenge the problem of the formation of national identity through the prism of cultural pluralism and language policy. On the example of the principle of liberal neutrality as a part of the hybrid theory of language policy, (which means the right of a national minority to develop and use its national language within reasonable limits which will be understandable for them), it is shown how to realize cultural pluralism policy. Two basic models have been established for language policy: a common public language model (which views language policy as a primary tool for national education and views that a common language is to be shared by all citizens) and language maintenance model (public institutions recognize the right of separate groups to be able to use their own minority languages as a tool for a state-level dialogue). Language policy dilemmas facing the European Union (EU) and the most important documents of the EU on problems of the rights of national minorities and its language policy are analysed in the article.
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Keywords: Belorussian language; official language; russification; belarusization policy; referendum; diglossia; bilingual situation.
The authors analyse some aspects of the language problem in the history and modern Belarus. The purpose of this paper is to define the role and place of the Belorussian language in the culture and art of Belarus in particular during the period of perestroika and formation of an independent state. The paper also presents a repetitive investigation which was conducted in Brest State Technical University. The results of this investigation show the interest of Belorussian students in the languages (culture) of neighboring nations.
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Keywords: language; hermeneutics; theology; ontology; analogy.
Contemporary hermeneutics has turned from the art of textual interpretation to the world – constitutive functions of language and symbolic representation. It is stressed that all understanding takes place within horizons constituted by history and language. Building on the ultimate religious foundations of divinely revealed truth, theological hermeneutics reflects upon theology as the site of a circular mediation of Scripture, tradition, and culture. The guiding question of this article is: can a theological hermeneutics retranslate philosophical sources into the language of theology? For these purposes we must at first situate the theological phenomenon of Verbum at the center of philosophical hermeneutics. Secondly, it is necessary to give a brief account of how symbols (all in general and some in particular) function in religious language. Also, we can see that in the face of the dawn of some traditional religious symbols, we can find new ones emerging from new strategies of theological hermeneutics in the face of new ontology. The analysis of symbolic nature of theological hermeneutics directs us to the question of analogy. Eventually the subject of investigations turns to be “validity” of analogical language in theological hermeneutics, which have some paradoxical consequences. On the other hand, it is clear that these paradoxes are not simply about formal matters. It is amazing that the basic symbol functioning in analogical language for expressing the proper language of God-talk (theology) is the language itself.
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Keywords: ethnic and cultural borderlands; ethnic boundaries; identity.
The North-West region of Belarus as an ethno-cultural bordering area demonstrates the tendency towards linguistic homogeneity with the sustainability of the identities of its communities. On the basis of a constructivistic approach the models of the identification process in the region are grounded. In the framework of these models the opportunities of interpretation of the present-day linguistic structure and specificity of linguistic processes are revealed.
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Keywords: sign; meaning; significative intention; intentionality; the transparency of the sign; transparent mediator (medium quo); opaque mediator (medium quod); directness of cognition.
The article consists of two parts. In the first part (I) three different formulations of the principle of the transparency of the sign are described. In the first description (E. Husserl) it is said that the sign in a proper sense (both an iconic and conventional one) is transparent for its denotations. In the second description (A. Schaff) only the transparence of its meaning is admitted. As far as the third description is concerned (L. Koj) conviction, that every sign is transparent both for a signed object and its meaning, is typical. In the second part of the article (II) we consider relationship between the principle of the transparency of the sign and traditional distinction between “transparent” and “opaque” cognitive mediator – distinction between medium quo and medium quod. The main conclusion of this article is included in a thesis that linguistic cognition and significative cognition – because it isn’t a direct cognition in the sense of primary directness (perceptive) – isn’t able to guarantee a source of access to a cognized object, so it is not a direct cognition in a proper sense. It means that the transparency of the sign, when it appears in the face of its denotations (E. Husserl’s interpretations) a sign or a system of signs are not able to function as a transparent mediator, i e medium quo. It is like that because – as E. Husserl noticed – the sign (due to its transparency) indeed shows us its denotations, but always through the mediation of its meaning and some significative intention.
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Keywords: language; being; consciousness; information; presence; lexicon; hermeneutic; speech; thing; word; civilization; etherification; episteme; discourse; interpretation; text; mentality; image; postmodernism; culture; deconstruction.
In the article M. Heidegger’s idea, that language is image of being and simultaneously its guidebook, is used. According to M. Heidegger’s concept, it is a poetic language following the principle: “There are no things where words are not present”. A. Toynbee submitted implicity of the language of being by the principle of etherefication (simplification), and in epistemology, according to M. Fuko, between a word and a thing different relations are established, depending on an epoch. In the Renaissance, intention goes from the world to the Word that is deciphered in Divine Logos. During New time, language collects the totality of the world within itself and acts as its Encyclopedia. In the Modernity, since the 19th century, interrelation between a word and understanding of being is mediated by such phenomena as a biological organism of a person and his work. In a superindustrial society, the coded stream of information testifies about a new temporal being, causing pictorial-verbal reloading of a person. Having presented the world as a text, the Postmodernism legitimated the number of earlier forbidden binary oppositions and has given a word to negativism of being. Russian artistic postmodernism made use of experience in the performed legitimation for deleting “a weak person” in the domestic culture with intention of creating a new type of culture because of unsuitability of the old one.
More...Recent years have seen a number of naturalist accounts of mathematics. Philip Kitcher’s version is one of the most important and influential. This paper includes a critical exposition of Kitcher’s views and a discussion of several issues including: mathematical epistemology, practice, history, the nature of applied mathematics. It argues that naturalism is an inadequate account and compares it with mathematical Platonism, to the advantage of the latter.Recent years have seen a number of naturalist accounts of mathematics. Philip Kitcher’s version is one of the most important and influential. This paper includes a critical exposition of Kitcher’s views and a discussion of several issues including: mathematical epistemology, practice, history, the nature of applied mathematics. It argues that naturalism is an inadequate account and compares it with mathematical Platonism, to the advantage of the latter.
More...The paper addresses the problem whether arts, sciences and humanities can be regarded as useful. First it examines the means-ends relation and argues that some means are not causally but rather constitutively connected to ends. Second, it specifies two dimensions along which the problem of values will be addressed. One is the issue about the relation between values and desirability, the other is the active and affective conceptions of valuation. Third the paper offers a concise reconstruction of the answers to the question of usefulness formulated during the enlightenment. It will be argued that traditionally usefulness was understood causally and not on the individual, but rather on the social level. In the final section the paper contends that values should be understood in terms of activities rather than in terms of desire satisfaction and that this interpretation can bring us closer to answering the question whether and why arts and sciences are useful.
More...Arguments for and against social equality have been advanced on various grounds, but the central issue remains to what extent, if at all, the pursuance of social equality should be seen as morally binding. Why should it be incumbent upon everyone to treat it as a moral virtue? The paper considers some of the best known egalitarian views and argues that the case for equality as a morally binding principle has not been made.
More...I claim that there are four major strands of argument for externalism and set out to discuss three of them. The four are: (A) That referential thoughts are object-dependent. This I do not discuss. (B) That the semantics of natural kind terms is externalist. (C) That all semantic content, even of descriptive terms, stems from the causal relations of representations to the things or properties they designate in the external world. (D) That, because meaning is a social product and no individual can capture the whole social practice that defines a concept, what the speaker means always outruns what he can know. I briefly discuss (C) and (D) and conclude that they cannot be correct, because, if they were, the content of every thought would permanently transcend the reflective grasp of all thinkers. Then I discuss (B) and conclude that, though Putnam shows something interesting about natural kind terms—namely that a real verbal definition requires science—this has none of the con-sequences for philosophy of mind that it is normally supposed to have.
More...Keywords: discourse; Estonia; identity talk; intersectionality; masculinities
This article focuses on those Estonian male migrants to ‘Old Europe’ who spend most of their time in the domestic realm as caring fathers and supportive spouses to their wives, who are meanwhile advancing their transnational careers. In this context, masculine identity talk can be understood in terms of strategies employed in response to the challenge to the men’s masculinity that this atypical life choice is likely to entail. Identity is viewed in this article as a phenomenon that is relentlessly, although not always deliberately, (re)formulated in discourse, rather than determined by the assigned social roles. Analysis of in-depth interviews reveals that there are varied discourses in use that efficiently reconstruct the interviewees’ sense of personal significance. Interestingly, men predominantly combine ‘alternative’ discourses (‘caring father’, ‘supportive spouse’, ‘civilised adult’), which potentially undermine Estonian idealised masculinity, with the ‘conservative’ discourses (‘professional man’, the ‘well-off’), that reinforce the Estonian male norm. Men draw on a range of potentially oppositional and conflicting resources for constructing masculinity, without much reflexive selection from their part. Hence, the discourses men engage in position the men as much as the men appear to consciously position themselves in the discourses. This poststructuralist account of identity is located within a more structural historical context of transition and change in contemporary Europe.
More...Keywords: Lithuania; independence; memory; grand narratives; textbooks
The paper addresses the remembrance of events surrounding the restoration of Lithuanian independence, as well as their repercussions on the present, concentrating on the younger generation that does not have first-hand experience of the period and, therefore, has to rely on other people’s accounts, textbooks, and other sources. If one considers the state and, especially, its social (or communal) dimension as impossible totalities, memory and history acquire significant importance as they both provide ‘a magma of significations’, out of which particular signifying structures are instituted in order to anchor meaning and exhort a unifying claim through dominant narratives that tend to subjugate the otherwise inevitable variety of discourses. The discourse of the Lithuanian history textbooks is analysed by outlining its emphasis on unity and self-sacrifice in 1988-1991, and by portraying the Lithuanian history as an unending struggle against enemies and their malevolent plots. Also, considering the accounts of young people, two tendencies are visible: first, a bias towards images of unity and self-sacrifice depicting the period concerned, second, the predilection to employ the categories of ‘aliens’ and ‘enemies’ is evident, significantly affecting perceptions of the present with widespread images of disintegration and decay in the absence of the Other.
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