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The study presents philosophical system of Gabriel Tarde, an eminent figure in the intellectual life of France at the end of the 19th century. He enjoyed great esteem during his lifetime, but was almost forgotten after his death, being overshadowed by his opponent Émile Durkheim. His work has been revisited in the last three or four decades and his ideas have found a place in contemporary philosophy and social theory.My aim here is to present Tarde’s ideas in their basic systematic interconnection, without probing into particular fields. I consecutively discuss Tarde’s theory of primary elements of being, monads, and the universal principles of the basic spheres of the world. I then analyze Tarde’s theory of society, history and civilizations. In the conclusion, I briefly comment on some ideas in Tarde’s conceptual legacy in view of their significance for contemporary philosophy and social theory.
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In a series of six articles, the author traces the responses of philosophers to the epoch-making achievement of Bishop Berkeley, set out in his An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. The comments on Berkeley’s theory serve as an occasion for the modern reader to focus on some overwhelming conclusions regarding the life of philosophy and philosophical education in Bulgaria. The third article deals with Wolfgang Köhler.
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The article discusses the European context of the scientific work of the prominent Bulgarian Revival activist Dr. Petar Beron. The author attempt to give an assessment (and partially, a reassessment) of the scientific activity of P. Beron in connection with the achievements of European (and world) science of that time. The article describes the scientific orbit he followed and in particular, the influences exerted upon him by the science of his time. The basic conclusion is that the conceptions of Beron were rather speculative and not in step with the contemporaneous trend of intensification of experimental science. The author argues that Beron’s place in the science of that time should be studied in greater depth.
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The article presents the peculiarities of the aesthetic worldview understood through the Nietzschean opposition between Apollo and Dionysus. Dionysian art is seen in its relationship with the idea of eternal return. The Dyonisian is therefore understood in relation to the concept of matter and the Apollonian in relation to the concept of form. Dionysian art expresses the eternal return and is therefore a fundamental metaphysical principle that drives the world into motion. Through the description of the character of Dionysus we also examine Nietzsche’s aesthetical perspectivism in its attitude and relationship with philosophizing and philosophical truth.
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Søren Kierkegaard, alongside Socrates, is correctly considered one of the most famous practitioners of irony in the history of Western literature. However, in contrast to Socrates, Kierkegaard used irony not only as a practice of philosophy, but also developed a theory of irony, which showed how irony can play a positive role in ethics and individual formation. The article discusses Kierkegaard’s concept of controlled irony and modes of applying it in communication and existence.
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Ion Zalomit (1820/23–1885, PhD Berlin, 1848) was a professor of philosophy at the Saint Sava College and later at the University of Bucharest, Rector of the latter for 14 years, and a high State official, member and sometime vice-president of the Permanent Council of Public Instruction. He was influential in synchronizing Romanian academic philosophy with the French academic philosophy, which was by then dominated by Victor Cousin and the members of his eclectic spiritualist school. A disciple of Schelling himself and possibly of Krause, Zalomit formed his students in the spirit of a liberal and spiritualist eclecticism, with rational psychology as a foundational discipline. This psychology, maintaining the soul’s substantiality, simplicity, immateriality and spiritual character as well as the existence of the soul’s several “faculties” centred around the will, provided a general basis on which the Romanian philosophers of the 1870’s built their psychological doctrines, or against which they reacted. Two of Zalomit’s students, D. A. Laurian (1846–1906, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1871) and C. Leonardescu (1844–1907, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1872), contributed to psychological literature with studies and textbooks in which the joint influence of French spiritualism and Belgian Krausism was manifest. While remaining broadly spiritualistic dualists, they proposed a form of psycho-physiological parallelism as a solution to the mind–body problem, insisting on the contrast of mind and body, cohering by reason of their very harmonic contrast, rooted in a deeper essential unity. The following paper tells in some detail the story sketched above.
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This article explores the oppositions and paradoxes of the representation of the story of Salome and John the Baptist in late nineteenth century French Symbolist poetics by basing the discussion on French dandyism and using Eliot Aronson’s concept of cognitive dissonance. It engages the literary and artistic representations of Salome in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Á rebors, Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Hérodiade,” the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, artistic representations of Salome by Gustav Moreau, and the historical account of the death of John the Baptist by Flavius Josephus. I show how, in the late nineteenth century, French Symbolists reconciled issues between the “fallen institutions” of politics and religion by focusing on Salome and John the Baptist to illustrate the Dandy’s reconciliation and substitution of authority within Modernism.
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The review of: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Bergson. Thinking Beyond the Human Condition, Bloomsbury, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney 2018.
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The article sketches the ubiquity of the theme of silence in Kierkegaard’s authorship, indicating its role in the aesthetic authorship and in Kierkegaard’s Zeitkritik, before turning to religious silence. The main focus here is the discourse entitled ‘Silence’, which is one of the three so-called ‘godly discourses’ that constitute The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. The article follows an exegetical path through the discourse, emphasizing the contrast between poetic silence and the silence one learns from nature as well as the problematic character of language in the divine-human relationship. It concludes with comments on the temporality of this relationship (with reference to Heidegger) and with an indication of the relevance of the associated discourse on ‘The woman who was a Sinner’.
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The review of: Arthur Schopenhauer, O estetici, učenosti i knjigama; Cid-Nova, Zagreb 2020., prevela Marija Škorić
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This chapter builds on the author’s earlier Hegelian critique of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis by construing a conceptual dialogue between Lukács and his one-time mentor, Georg Simmel. It is argued that Lukács’s philosophy in the 1920s was partially formed as a metacritique of Simmel’s absolute relativism, as expressed in The Philosophy of Money. However, Lukács’s alternative generates a conceptual mythology that can be diagnosed in Simmelian terms and sublated by the philosophy of life outlined in The View of Life. By situating it in the present, this may de-reify Lukács’s concept of praxis, allowing it to satisfy its ethical and rational duty.
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While the traditional logic reflected the structure of proposition assuming separation and persistence of concepts of subject and predicate, Hegel, by his conception of a speculative proposition, has allowed philosophy to grasp a dialectical nature of the relation of those concepts. The author considers the radical change that happens in the logical reflection of the essence of the proposition in the light of the crucial requirement of the whole Hegel’s philosophy to think and express the Absolute as the subject. After the introductory comments on the groundbreaking epochs in the history of philosophical thinking due to which the logical problem of proposition became one of the central ontological issues, the birthplace of Hegel’s theory of speculative proposition is found within his early critique of philosophies of the first principle such as Fichte’s. In the central part of the text, the theory of the speculative proposition is thematized considering Hegel’s insight into the difference between a philosophical proposition and propositions and knowledge that originate from the other spheres of spirituality. After that, the proposition that expresses the Absolute as the subject from the Preface of Phenomenology of Spirit is interpreted as the manifestation of the speculative nature of the philosophical proposition, because, from the other side, the speculative proposition could be interpreted as the expression and the way the Absolute exists, too. As the speculative proposition, however, the proposition “the Absolute is subject” reveals reasons why the philosophical system, not the isolated proposition, has to be understood as the true element of existence of truth in Hegel’s thought.
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Slovak utopianism (and specific social and political philosophy) of the 19th century are unique topics for philosophical research that can be useful especially in an international context. The aim of the research is, using the comparative method, to create a basic overview of utopian concepts of the 19th century in Slovakia in order to highlight their implementation today. The study consists of the following topics: 1) the influence of German philosophy of history (Hegel, Herder, Schelling) on social and political conceptions of the nation and the synthesis of German philosophical influence in the Slovak philosophical context (Kollár, Šafárik, Štúr) and 2) socio-philosophical concepts related to the role of Slovaks in the international context (Feješ, Daxner). The Slovak national utopia, in the form of enforcing the cultural and social rights of Slovaks in their own sovereign state, was partially fulfilled until the 20th century (by the establishment of Czechoslovakia and later by the establishment of the independent Slovak Republic). The Constitution of the Slovak Republic is the proof that originally social utopian visions, that seemed naive and impossible to achieve in the 19th century, became a reality of political practice in the 20th century.
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The article focuses on the problem of the irrationalism of Lev Shestov. According to one group of researchers the philosophy of Lev Shestov is nothing but an example of radical irrationalism. According to another group of researchers, Shestov’s philosophy is an attempt to limit the authorities of reason rather than an effort to destroy it. In other words, Shestov was fighting not against reason, but against rationalism and scientism. The aim of this paper is to substantiate this first point of view through explanation of the metaphor of the dream which was often used by Shestov in his fight against reason. This fight can be divided into three aspects: the criticism of self-evident truths, the criticism of absolute consistency of reason, and the problem of freedom. Analysis of these three aspects in light of the metaphor of the dream leads to the conclusion that reason creates nothing but illusion. Reason doesn’t explain some parts of reality; conversely, it has nothing in common with reality. This is why one should not limit the authorities of reason, but destroy them. Only in this case it is possible to return to the lost state of paradise. This conclusion substantiates the view according to which the philosophy of Shestov is nothing but radical irrationalism.
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The article is a continuation of the analysis of the ideas of Józef Gołuchowski, a philosopher of Polish origin, who briefly taught at Vilnius University in the early 19th century. This article examines the statements on the purpose of philosophy in his tractates: “An outlook on Mathematics through its influence on human education”, “On the role of the Philosophy in the life of entire nations and individual persons“ and the tractate which was submitted in 1821 to contest the seat of professor of philosophy at Vilnius University. We compare the ideas of Friedrich Schelling and our author, discuss Goluchowski’s beliefs about the relationship of philosophy with religion and science, reconstruct the arguments why philosophy, which does not provide direct benefits, is significant and even necessary for society.
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Dialectics is not a new, but rather a familiar and seemingly understandable concept. However, a deeper discourse on the subject or an observation of on-going discourses when looked at from outside shows that for many people dialectics is a complex construction, and its meaning is often perceived superficially or distorted. Hence, the article recalls the content of the concept of dialectics, and only then is it applied as a method of looking at aspects of the concept of the constitution. The connection between dialectics and the constitution is shown in the article to be not by accident. The basis for such an academic synthesis is that a portion of constitutional regulation at the level of both expressis verbis and constitutional jurisprudence – a form of the expression of the concept of the constitution – is claimed to be unchangeable, non-replaceable, unquestioned, and self-evident. This is serious because it is a claim to eternity. The article notes that in a constitutional regulation, some forms of expression both on the level of the constitution and of constitutional jurisprudence can be perceived as negating dialectics, i.e. dialectics as the continuous development and change of the world and society.
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