Filozofija i tehnika

Author(s): Heda Festini / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 02/2003

From the beginnings of philosophy, the problem of a method has a double meaning/level- it was every sort of research, and, at the same time, special research. In philosophy, second meaning was prevalent - every research was a proposition for a method, but in science such a method could be, at the same, a new theory. Consequently, the method is a general instruction for some technique. Techne, ars, technology ... are the principles of using the knowledge, i.e. general instructions for directing human activities, and could be divided on rational and magic, i.e. religious technique, the former more distinctively into symbolic, technique of behaviour and technology of production (Abbagnano). The solutions for the critique of science as a stetement of anti-technology are offered as follows: l) the call for a renewal of spiritual life and retum to precedent stages of development; 2) Husserl's call for intelligent behaviour; 3) Heidegger's quietistic reconcilation and waiting for something; 4) Abbagnano's searching for new corrective techniques. The author is pleading for the last solution, by intensifying it with a help of aporetic question: atomic bomb in World War II - yes or no? The answer is included in a fact that scientific research should not, and could not be stopped by any kind of principles. Bioethics too, could function as a corrective technique (Čatić), but it, as well as philosophy, should be directed towards politics and management, and not against science and technology.

Podziemny nurt materializmu spotkania

Author(s): Louis Althusser / Language(s): Polish Issue: 19/2016

The fragment of The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter presented below offers a draft of philosophical trajectory named „Materialism of encounter” or „aleatory materialism”. Its characteristic feature is the focus on contingency of preliminary constellation that organizes the very possibility of an event and its duration. The text takes as its goal the critique of the philosophical tradition that sees in materialism merely a negative of idealism that duplicates its structure and logic. The text starts with an analysis of philosophical consequences of Epicurean atomism and moves towards the discussion of a recurrent theme of void and contingency of the origin appearing in the works of such authors as Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau, Marx or Heidegger. The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter was published posthumously, and is based on materials that were supposed to become a basis of an unfinished book by Louis Althusser. The translation was possible thanks to courtesy of l’Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC).

Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence between Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell in the years 1902—1904. Some Uninvestigated Topics

Author(s): Gabriela Besler / Language(s): English Issue: 35/2016

Although the connections between Frege’s and Russell’s investigations are commonly known (Hylton 2010), there are some topics in their letters which do not seem to have been analysed until now: 1. Paradoxes formulated by Russell on the basis of Frege’s rules: a) „»ξ can never take the place of a proper name« is a false proposition when ξ is a proposition”; b) “A function never takes the place of a subject.” A solution of this problem was based on the reference/sense theory and on the distinction between the first- and second-level names (Frege). 2. The inconsistency in Frege’s system may be avoided by the introduction of: a) a new kind of objects called quasi-objects (Frege); b) logical types (Frege and Russell); c) mathematics without classes (Russell); d) some restrictions on the domain of function (Frege). 3. Since the inconsistency is connected with a class, what is class? In one of the letters, Frege compared a class to a chair composed of atoms. This approach seems to be similar to the collective understanding of a set (Stanisław Leśniewski). 4. Russell doubted that the difference between sense and reference of expressions was essential. Hence, Frege found some additional reasons to distinguish between them: semiotic, epistemological, from identity, and from mathematical practice. This discussion can be seen as a next step in developing the theory of descriptions by Bertrand Russell.

SVIJEST O VREMENU MODERNE I NJENA POTREBA ZA SAMOUVJERENJEM

Author(s): Jürgen Habermas / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03+04/1988

The text represents the first chapter from the book on philosophic discourse of Modernism by Jürgen Habermas. The central figures are Hegel and Benjamin. The author discusses Hegel's discovery of subjectivity as a principle of new times. He explains the superiority of the modern world and its crisis, the world of progress and alienated spirit at the same time. The crucial historic events for establishment of the subjectivity principle are: Reformation, Enlightenment and French Revolution. In Modernism, religious life, nation and society are transformed and so are science, morality and art. The structure of Modernism in philosophy includes abstract subjectivity in Descartes cogito, absolute self-confidence in Kant, who places the mind as the highest tribunal, before which relevance has to be justified.

Leibniz on Corporeal Substance

Author(s): Peeter Müürsepp / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

As an idealist, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz could not recognize anything corporeal as substantial. However, under the influence of Cartesian terminology, he devoted considerable effort to analysing the corporeal world, while not recognizing its real substantiality of course. Leibniz took the concept of substance from Plato, Aristotle and the scholastics, but developed it in two ways. It is a well-known fact that Leibniz introduced the term ‘corporeal substance’ in his letter to Antoine Arnauld dated to October1687. In the letter, Leibniz understands an object of nature, like an animal ora plant, as ‘corporeal substance’. In the very same letter, Leibniz introduces the terms ‘indivisibility’ and ‘phenomenon’. Every corporeal substance can be real only as a unity, i.e. by being indivisible. Such entity must have a soulor at least an entelechy. In an opposite case, that entity would not be a real unity but just a phenomenon. No corporeal entity is indivisible and therefore not a substance. The paper aims at introducing Leibniz’s distinction between substances and phenomena and taking a closer look at the historical philosophical influences Leibniz experienced while developing his views of the corporeal world. Aristotle and Descartes will receive most of the attention, of course, as the concepts of ‘entelechy’ and ‘hylomorphism’ were introduced by the former, and the understanding of corporeal substance as determined by extension alone is part of the latter. The core of the original critique by Leibniz takes off from the properties of the continuum as well as the nature of shape, motion and extension. The case of continuum will receive special attention. It is analysed with the help of the novel approaches by Samuel Levey and Vassil Vidinsky. Leibniz was critical about our poor understanding of the continuum but his own interpretation of it was not fully consistent either. Although the new developments enable us to take a fresh look that has not been possible so far, the issue remains open for further study.

Irracjonalność jako argument przeciwko idealizmowi. Transcendentalizm Kanta i Husserla w świetle rozumienia irracjonalności Hartmanna

Author(s): Piotr Łaciak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

The article presents Kant’s and Husserl’s philosophies with reference to Hartmann’s understanding of irrationality. In Hartmann’s metaphysics of cognition, irrationality, which corresponds with partial unknowability of being, appears to be an argument against idealism that assumes a complete rationality of our knowledge and its object. In this article the author shows that it is possible to indicate similarities between Kant’s idea of the unknowability of the transcendental object, Husserl’s conception of the transcendental constitution of the world, and Hartmann’s concept of gnoseological irrationality. In Kant’s transcendentalism, irrationality implies an asymmetry between the conditions of the possibility of experience and the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, because the unknowability of a transcendental object and a thing in itself indicates that not all conditions of the objects are at the same time conditions of the possibility of experience. According to Husserl, transcendental subjectivity is not a sufficient reason for the world in its Dasein and Sosein, because the fact of the constitution of the world is an irrational one and it cannot be derived from the essence of subjectivity. The author tries to demonstrate that this analogy between Husserl and Hartmann, in the question of the irrationality, opens new interpretational possibilities for the relation between transcendental phenomenology and Hartmann’s philosophy.

Divisible Atoms Are Not Atoms

Author(s): Stanislav Južnič / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The aim of the article is to help change the self-contradictory term ‘atom’. In this project, the support of modern Chinese scientists is expected. The contributions of Chinese to some researches in sciences are focused on finding out the preferences and most frequent stages of (European) paradigms involved in Chinese networks. Some predictions of future interests of Chinese sciences are provided. The Chinese holistic Confucian distrust in atoms is discussed as a possible new paradigm which could rename atoms as the destructible divisible entities of future physics, and with more difficulties also of chemistry.The word ‘atom’ meaning an indivisible not a compound entity is basically in contradiction with the characteristics of the item it is supposed to describe. The suffix ‘a (ἄ)’ provides a negation in Ancient Greek language. The suffix should be omitted to use tom (τομος) to manage the actual situation of a-toms (toms) as compound of elementary particles. In the late 19th century after the European Spring of Nations, two basically different concepts of atoms of chemists and physicists accomplished a kind of symbiosis. The suggestion is put forward that while indivisible atoms soon became contradictions in physics, they still retain some value in chemistry, which should be important for the panning strategy of attempt to change the name of atom.

Rousseau and the Roots of Modernity

Author(s): Christopher Lazarski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

REALISTIČKO I IDEALSTIČKO SHVATANJE SUPSTANCIJE: KANT I NJEGOVI PRETHODNICI

Author(s): Andrija Šoć / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2017

The main goal of this paper is to explore the continuity and discontinuity in how different philosophical systems understand the concept of substance. At the beginning of the paper, I draw a distinction between formal criteria for what it means to be a substance and the question of what satisfies those criteria. I then analyze Aristotle’s, medieval and modern views on substance in order to show that, in spite of other considerable differences among them, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Locke and Hume all identify the same criteria for being the substenc. The differences between them, I then claim, lie in the way they answer the question of what satisfies the criteria. The most radical conclusion, as will be clear, is drawn by Hume, who famously believes that there is nothing that really satisfies traditional formal criteria for substantiality. In the last part of the paper, I analyze Kant’s idealist view and show that it is his only within his philosophical system that we can find a complete break with the philosophical tradition and quite differing criteria for substantiality. It will be shown that, for Kant, substance is no longer something that should be the basis for the properties of objects that exist independently of us, but the way in which human cognitive powers understand some key aspects of the phenomenological domain of the knowable. The upshot of this discussion is that the history of the idea of substance can be divided on the period before and after Kant, where it is Kant, rather than Descartes, the one who truly diverges from the traditional philosophical pardigms about substance.

KANTOV RETRIBUTIVIZAM I SMRTNA KAZNA

Author(s): Marina Budić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2017

The paper deals with Kant's notion of punishment in general, as well as one specific form of punishment, namely, the death penalty. In the first part of the article we will exmine, Kant's views on punishment as well as an extent to which it is retributive. According to Kant's view, offenders should be punished exclusively for having committed an offense (retribution), and proportionally to the crime commited (ius talionis). In recent literature, there are interpretations that indicate Kant's criminal theory is not completely retributive, but rather combined, so that it contains elements of retribution and intimation. If we clearly outline the goal, justification and extent of punishment, the purpose and justification of forming the state (time and punishment), we will make sure that these interpretations are incorrect. The paper shows that Kant retribution determines the goal and justification of punishment, that the reason and justification of the state (and punishment) is the achievement of justice, that is, the preservation of individual freedoms of citizens on an equal footing, while the control of crime should be understood as the achievement of this goal. Also, one needs to bear in mind the distinction between the factual and the normative level - Kant claims that a person should be punished exclusively for having committed the offense, although her punishment simultaneously intimidates or deters the offense of another citizens, which is a factual claim. The theory of punishment prescribes the goal and justification of punishment, which falls within the normative domain, and in Kant’s opinion, it is fundamentally retributive. It is also necessary to take into account another distinction that Kant introduces, which is the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal spheres of existence. Justice is a noumen or an idea, that the state pursues to achieve, while it is realized or made into a phenomenon when the state applies laws and penalties in a particular community. Intimidation or control of crime is part of the realization of justice in the empirical world. The second part deals with Kant's affirmation of the death penalty, objections to this affirmation, and ultimately, an alternative to this punishment is proposed. The alternative to the death penalty stems from incoherence in the application of the ius talionis principle. That could be one Kantian approach to punishment. A lifetime imprisonment argument avoids the objection of irreversibility of punishment (the argument from the irrevocability of the death penalty) and is in line with the basic principles of Kant's ethics.

ŠELING I PERSOVA FILOZOFIJA DUHA

Author(s): Stanko Vlaški / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2017

The crucial thesis of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, according to which the matter could be understood as the „extinct mind“, Peirce understands as the only reasonable theory concerning the solution of the problem of the relation between mind and matter and considers it as the center of his synechism. American philosopher develops his synechistical standpoint within the series of articles which he wrote for the journal The Monist and defines synechism as the tendency to conceive every being as something continuous. The author interprets Peirce’s project as the part of the discussion about the mind-body problem which characterizes the so-called contemporary philosophy of mind, but by investigation of its Schellingian motives he tries to explain the comprehensive meaning of Peirce’s attempt. The last chapter of the paper aims to approach Schelling’s and Peirce’s consideration of the mind-body relation from the perspective which finds in them attempts of philosophical integration of the un-consciousness. Two idealistic strivings are implicitly demarcated with the regard to the mode of defining the place of the concept of self-consciousness.

RUSOOVO SHVATANJE „OPŠTE VOLJE“ I SAVREMENA STANOVIŠTA O PRIRODI DEMOKRATIJE

Author(s): Milorad Stupar / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 4/2015

This paper explores the sense in which contemporary understanding of democracy is present in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The author claims that difficulties in understanding the concept of general will comes from the fact that Rousseau runs two ideas of democracy together: the idea which values democracy in positive terms because it instantiates fundamental human values such as freedom and rights, as well as the idea that democracy is important because it enlarges our collective wisdom. The end of the paper traces the way with respect to a possible coherent interpretation of the relationship between democracy and the content of the general will in Rousseau’s work.

OBRAZOVANJE I (DELIBERATIVNA) DEMOKRATIJA

Author(s): Ivana Janković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2015

The question of the importance of education in democracy is as old as democracy itself. Greek thinkers devoted much of their fruitful oeuvre to the concept of education, aiming at realization of better and more just life in the community. Modern thinkers, especially Locke, Rousseau and Mill, showed great interest for the issue of education of citizens in the democratic societies of their time. Dewey emphasized the importance of education in democracy like no one before, or after him. He devoted a significant part of his extensive work to the question of the role of and the kind of education that is fundamental for the members of community who want to prepare for participation in public life, in the best possible way. The issue of interrelation of democracy and civic education completely neglected after Dewey, again become relevant with appearance of deliberative democracy. Following Dewey’s tradition, I will argue that the form of democracy that calls for broad participation of citizens in solving public problems requires some education. The ability of people to participate in public deliberation depends on whether they have acquired certain skills, values and knowledge.

UM U ISTORIJI: KANTOVSKA IDEJA UNIVERZITETA

Author(s): Ivan Vuković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 4/2014

Ce texte a deux parties. La première offre une reconstruction de l'argumentation du Conflit des facultés, tandis que la seconde essaye d'établir comment celle-ci pourrait être utilisée aujourd'hui, et à quelles conclusions amènerait-elle. Or, dans le Conflit des facultés Kant a demandé une réforme universitaire qui donnerait aux philosophes le droit de commenter et de critiquer les programmes scolaires que le gouvernement impose aux facultés de droit, de théologie et de médecine. Quoique le contexte ait bien changé depuis ce temps, le devoir du philosophe kantien reste aujourd'hui le même et il consiste dans la critique des usages politiques des hypothèses scientifiques au sens large du terme, qui ont comme conséquence la répression, l'exclusion sociale et l'attaque au droit naturel des femmes et des hommes, ou la subversion de la paix internationale. La réforme proposée par Kant reste, cependant, contradictoire en ce qu'elle elle prévoit un système d'éducation publique et limite le droit au débat aux cercles des savants.

Ukazał się tom pierwszy Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Author(s): Katarzyna Stępień / Language(s): Polish Issue: 32/2/2022

Review of: Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. A. Maryniarczyk, Vol. 1 (A-Ch), Lublin 2022, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, ss. 1390 (ISBN 978–83–65792–34–1; ISBN 978–83– 65792–35–8 Vol. 1).

Die Erziehungskunst nach Karl Heinrich Seibt. Zur Pädagogik der Aufklärung in Prag

Author(s): Ivo Cerman / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2020

This article reconstructs the art of education course that was delivered by Karl Heinrich Seibt (1735–1806) at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague from 1771 to 1799, starting even before Maria Theresa’s school reform. It was not, however, aimed at preparing teachers for public schools, but preparing preceptors for private education. Drawing on hitherto unknown manuscripts of students’ notes from his lectures, the article demonstrates how the course developed in two phases. The first went from 1771 to the trial of Seibt in 1779, where he was combating Montesquieu’s concept of education that saw the climate as the factor in determining the unchangeable character of a nation. The second phase, from 1784 to 1799, was influenced by German Reformpädagogik where Seibt styled himself as a man of compromise between a Rousseauian “Entwickler” (“developer”) and the traditionalist “Naturverbesserer” (“improvement of nature”). He was also more concerned with the practice of education and hygiene in this phase. Finally, the article suggests that Seibt saw the Catholic religion as the most important guarantee of proper moral education.

Radost a smutek v Pamětech Františka Jana Vaváka

Author(s): Dmitrij Timofejev / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2014

The article looks at how emotion is represented in Bohemian folk chronicles, i.e. texts of a historiographic character, written by autodidacts — mostly peasants and artisans. At the core of our analysis is the most famous work of this kind, Paměti Františka Jana Vaváka z let 1770–1816 (Memoirs of František Jan Vavák 1770–1816). Other writings from the turn of the 19th century (e.g. those of Václav Jan Mašek, Jan Petr, Ondřej Lukavský) are also considered. Our initial question is: How, and in which contexts, did Czech-speaking authors of the late 18th and early 19th century, having no opportunity to get acquainted with contemporary philosophical theories, express affects? The study shows that the emotions, especially joy and grief, are expressed in a way recommended by early modern rhetoricians (e.g. Cypriano de Soarez or Bernard Lamy): particular figures are associated with particular affects. Though the principle is the same, the figures used by autodidacts differ from those recommended by the rhetoric manuals. Being unable to read Latin, German or French rhetorics, the authors had probably grasped the principles of how to represent affect from their reading, but adapted them according to their own talent and vision. As might be expected given the rural origin and values of the authors, joy is expressed mostly in the context of weather favourable for the harvest, while grief is realised in the context of rising prices and natural disasters.

Aristocratic Enclaves as a Foreign Legal Element in Urban Space

Author(s): Marek Starý / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Disciplination of the population in the medieval and early modern city may have been complicated by the presence of an alien element, which in the bourgeois environment was the nobility. In many cases, the nobility was able to acquire town houses and sometimes even managed to have them exempted from the jurisdiction of the municipal authorities and registered in the land tables. Be that as it may, these houses constituted legal enclaves of their kind. The study examines the legal conditions of these enclaves against the background of the legal developments in the Kingdom of Bohemia and Margraviate of Moravia in the fourteenth–seventeenth centuries and tries both to summarize the existing knowledge and to draw attention to some better though lesser-known sources that document this issue.

To the Origins of the True Existence of Western Thinking: Martin Heidegger and the Ghosts of the European Mind

Author(s): Viktor Okorokov / Language(s): English Issue: 33/2024

Objective. To show that despite the enormous efforts of M. Heidegger, he failed to find a new way of thinking. Scientific novelty. It is shown that the meeting of two different streams of historical thinking – the destructive thinking of Heidegger, who never stood on the ground of the Pre-Socratics (although he strived for this all his life), and the Pre-Socratic, which gradually lost its vitality in subsequent European culture, never took place. The different streams of thinking – the ancient Greeks and Heidegger – never crossed. The early Greeks sought to understand the nature of essence, that is, they were looking, according to Heidegger, for the first beginning of thinking (and for this they tried to use the tools of openness of thinking, but did not understand its reasons), while Heidegger, who consistently went through a long path of liberation from all the European ones known to him methods of understanding nature, on the contrary, sought to find ways to understand the true nature of human existence, that is, he looked for the second principle of thinking (but also failed to reveal its origins). It was found that European culture throughout its history has stopped between these two extreme streams of thinking – aimed, on the one hand, at the world of things (essence) and, on the other, at the inner world of man (existence), but in both of these streams there are genuine the beginnings of thinking remained unheard. The analysis shows that throughout his life, Heidegger was looking, in fact, not even for being, but for the being of thinking; more precisely, he was looking for thinking that could exist synchronously with the thought of the ancient Greeks, which allowed him, on the one hand, – to reveal the fall of European culture, and on the other hand, to try to find the motives for future thinking. In our opinion, Heidegger heard the main problem of European culture: logos does not illuminate thinking, does not carry either natural or divine light, it is only similar to a given (often artificial) logical scheme. All ancient religions spoke about this. The ancient Greeks knew this; Plato and Aristotle replaced the true divine light with a system of ideas, concepts, categories and logic. It seems that the concealment of the true light (nature and gods) is the path of the fall of European culture, about which Nietzsche, Wagner and Heidegger wrote. Thinking exists only where consciousness disintegrates in the spatio-temporal topos of its existence. And logos, as this study shows, can only exist in a split consciousness. Based on this, it is increasingly clear that we have not learned to think like the Greeks and, moreover, in our selfishness we may finally lose this opportunity. On my own behalf, I would like to add: what Heidegger failed to achieve can be clarified along the paths of contact between Western and Eastern thought.

Концепцията за критика на Мишел Фуко

Author(s): Miroslava Hristoskova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2024

This paper examines Foucault’s concept of critique and points out the importance of critical attitude in his ontology of the present. Kant’s question of the Enlightenment is put in a new perspective: philosophical thought is oriented at defining the present and actual field of experience. Philosophy becomes an activity of diagnosing the present (ontology of actuality and ourselves) opposed to a search of universal structures of truth (analytics of truth). Foucault observes a relationship between Enlightenment and critique: a certain kind of attitude, a philosophical ethos that consists of critique of our historical existence. This critical attitude is understood as a philosophical ethos (critical work of thought over itself) and as a practice of freedom (a perspective of transforming oneself and creating new modalities of subjectivity).