PUSIAUSVYROS SIEKIS ARVYDO ŠLIOGERIO FILOSOFIJOJE

Author(s): Justas Kučinskas,Naglis Kardelis / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 88/2015

The authors of the article argue that Arvydas Šliogeris’ philosophy, although prima facie very radical, is in its essence actually based on the striving for balance as its main intention. It is also argued that the thought of this philosopher revolves around the structures of balance. Looking at how, when and what kind of ontological givens and entities find their particular point of balance between certain polar opposites, helps to better understand the philosophy of Šliogeris as a complex conceptual whole as well as to reveal its deepest motivational grounds. Using the notion of balance as a starting heuristic point, the authors of the article present a novel reconstruction of Šliogeris’ thought. One of the results of this reconstruction is a conclusion that this philosophy might be viewed in terms of two distinct evolutionary stages.

CRITIQUES OF MINIMAL REALISM

Author(s): Seungbae Park / Language(s): English Issue: 92/2017

Saatsi’s minimal realism holds that science makes theoretical progress. It is designed to get around the pessimistic induction, to fall between scientific realism and instrumentalism, and to explain the success of scientific theories. I raise the following two objections to it. First, it is not clear whether minimal realism lies between realism and instrumentalism, given that minimal realism does not entail instrumentalism. Second, it is not clear whether minimal realism can explain the success of scientific theories, given that it is doubtful that theoretical progress makes success likely. In addition to raising these two objections, I develop and criticize a new position that truly falls between realism and instrumentalism.

Socialinio atvirumo kilmė ir prasmė Bergsono ir Popperio mąstyme

Author(s): Povilas Aleksandravičius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 95/2019

The article is focused on the analysis of the origin and meaning of social openness in Henri Bergson’s and Karl Popper’s thinking. It aims to reveal the foundational significance of the concept of open society in the works of its creators. The first part of the article is focused on Bergson’s research into formation of closed society, the vantage point being the analysis of a human being’s reaction to death. The second part reveals H. Bergson’s process of social openness; its anthropological foundation is the conversion of instinct into intuition or the contact with the principle of élan vital, realized by the mind. The third part analyses Popper’s concept of closed and open society in the context of Bergson’s philosophy.

ACCENTUL PE CULTURĂ ŞI VALORI ÎN STRUCTURA SISTEMULUI BLAGIAN DE GÂNDIRE

Author(s): Eugeniu Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 22/2017

A thinker and metaphysician of the mysteries of the world and the depths of the human soul, in his philosophical system Lucian Blaga focused on the way in which the basic elements of a culture operate within the various human communities or isolated individuals (ethnic communities, peoples, nations, personalities etc.). In order to achieve this critical analysis he resorted to the structural arrangement of the known data in a stylistic matrix of maximum generality, in which the categories of spirituality can be quantified and valued, highlighting thereby a modern vision of the cultural-historical phenomenon in time and space. Even more interesting is the application the Romanian thinker makes, by viewing the various basic issues of the Romanian culture, through the prism of categorical elements of the stylistic matrix. This is then deepened in the analysis the philosopher dedicated to the artistic phenomenon, but also to the religious one, where we detect the increased attention due to the sensitiveness of the topic, hence resulting probably Blaga’s extra objectivity regarding the structuring of religious values.

A FOUCAULDIAN STUDY OF POWER, SUBJECTIVITY, AND CONTROL IN THE BEATS’ LITERATURE AND LIFE

Author(s): Ehsan Emami Neyshaburi,Parvin Ghasemi / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2017

According to Foucault’s ideas, power produces discourses and the clash of discourses leads to the change of subjectivities or consciousnesses and also to the internalization of a particular discourse. In other words, it is via creation of subjectivities that power dominates human beings. The Beats knew that the subjectivity that people assign to themselves is imaginary and illusory; it has been given to them by their culture or society and accordingly, they define themselves and only imagine that they are that sort of persons independently and take it as ‘truth’. This paper strives to show that the Beats were completely cognizant of this process and through resisting the power, subjectivity, and control that society had imposed upon themtried to create new and different subjectivities, as Foucault had recommended.

DIFERENŢIALELE DIVINE ALE LUI LUCIAN BLAGA – UN MODEL METAFIZIC DE GENEZĂ A LUMII

Author(s): Eugeniu Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 23/2017

In Blaga’s Divine Differentials, the Great Anonymous (also called the „Generator”) is the absolute metaphysical principle or the „metaphysical center” of the world, an autarchic „integrated whole”, the utmost complexity, having the ability to generate „ad indefinitum” existences of the same substantial magnitude and structural complexity. „However, as a representative of the Absolute Existence, having infinite creation possibilities, without exhausting its creative substance and without” feeding on other substantial elements from the outside world, the Great Anonymous keeps the human individual at the periphery, and confronts him with a series of obstacles, within the strict limits of his humble human condition, thus obstructing his access beyond the walls of the transcendent. And to prevent the emergence of „equivalent Gods”, which would lead to a „serious divine anarchy”, the Great Anonymous refuses even to consider its own self lest it should reproduce itself by the mere act of self-determination; that is why it generates and emits from the Anonymous Fund only peripheral and „less nuclear” differentials, because in the philosopher’s view, the „divine differentials (we refer to heterogeneous ones) are essentially as many infinitesimal carriers of a virtual, ultimate simplicity”. Emitted in infinite and heterogeneous series (more rarely homogeneous), the divine differentials are „left to chance” so as to o integrate, according to the principle of the minimal or the sufficient correspondence, and form complex existences. Different from Leibniz's monads and Herbart's realms, they integrate into the so-called formative units; forming more or less complex structures, they disintegrate themselves after a while because all formative units are subjected to „transience” and are ephemeral. Just as the Divine Differentials, formative units make up the trans-biological fund, integrating into everything that exists (according to „correspondences”), but the„maximum level” of the integration process admitted by the Great Anonymous is the one reached by human consciousness, where are integrated the more „nuclear” differentials, but beyond them – any kind of evolution is blocked!

GÂNDIRE CRITICĂ ŞI CONŞTIINŢĂ ÎN OPERA FILOSOFICĂ A LUI LUCIAN BLAGA

Author(s): Eugeniu Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 24/2018

In the opening volume of his philosophical system – Concerning Philosophical Consciousness – Lucian Blaga analyzes the way the most original philosophical visions have been set up over time, insisting on those which placed reflection beyond the constraining boundaries of „common sense‖, thanks to the philosophers' adoption of a „methodical purism‖ or a „methodological expansion‖. Then, when these options became operational, the thinker shows that we can also discuss how a scientific issue can be brought into question or how to solve a philosophical problem. But his analytical concerns are directed both towards the spiritual dimensions of ideas (high, deep and flat), as well as towards other nuanced aspects of human thinking, such as: scientism, myth and magic, the transcendent accent, the philosophical motives – to conclude his critical approach with the profound meaning of philosophical consciousness, which not only acquires „self-knowledge‖, but becomes itself a philosophy, in continuous metamorphosis and renewal, both through aspectual correlation and reporting, and especially through self-reflection.

OMUL, CA „FIINŢĂ ISTORICĂ”, ÎN VIZIUNEA FILOSOFICĂ A LUI LUCIAN BLAGA

Author(s): Eugeniu Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 25/2018

Criticizing the theories about the genesis of the world, certain viewpoints of ancient, medieval and modern thinkers from Plato to Herbart are analyzed in detail. Lucian Blaga proves to be even more critical in his Anthropological Aspects (1948), where he starts, however, by giving Darwin right, but introducing the distinction between „horizontal evolution”, in which „adaptation” is replaced by „specialization”, and „vertical evolution” to „superior constitutional types.” On the most advanced level stands man, who goes through different stages, being, in turn: a hunter, a harvester, a cultivator and a producer, to finally become a „creative subject of culture and civilization”. Yet all cultural creations (myths, religious conceptions, scientific theories, arts, moral systems) depend on the factors that make up the stylistic matrix. This is the great difference between animal and man, even if man, to the extent to which he is a living creature, is haunted by what Jung called „archetypes”, though man, through the „stylistic horizon of human being”, through „the stylistic field”, in constant transformation, belongs to historicity and is a „historical being”, which the philosopher will strive to prove in his work The Historical Being (1977). For this purpose, he reviews all the historical epochs of various peoples and most of the fashionable history theories, which he firmly rejects, considering that only those phenomena are historical which bear the „fingerprints of a style”, that is, of a particular way of revelation of mysteries. Historicity is determined, however, he states, by „the duration of the stylistic factors” and evolution would be achieved either through appearances, developments, stagnation etc., in time, or through borrowing from other cultures. The process may be evolutionary, stagnant or involutive. According to Oswald Spengler’s theory, each culture has elements of „childhood”, „maturity”, „old age”, which Blaga also admits, noting that it may also contain borrowings that lead to progress or regress, due to „stylistic interferences”.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PIERRE BOURDIEU TODAY. ON CONSENT TO MISERY

Author(s): Marc Crépon / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

This article reflects on the crisis of political reason in this heyday of populistic rhetoric, proposing to move beyond the erroneous dichotomy between “democratic reason” and “raging passions,” and the demo-phobia that often derives from it. We propose instead to follow Bourdieu’s footsteps in bringing our attention to the forms of impermeability that fracture our contemporary political and social life, establishing the conditions of possibility of the reasonable and the unreasonable. What marks contemporary political passions as particularly dangerous is their impermeability to the lessons of our historical past, to the moral condemnation of the political instrumentalization of difference and to the sacred character of fundamental principles. This hermeneutical gap, however, is later explained by a more fundamental analysis of the problem of contemporary impermeability, one which operates as a reversal of the dichotomy between political reason and passion. It is no longer the electorate, seduced by the sirens of populism, which is impermeable to the voice of political reason; it is, instead, this very reason, embodied by the elites who claim to recognize themselves in its values and principles, which has become impermeable to the “conditions of non-existence” in which a considerable part of the population lives. If there is a problem of contemporary impermeability, or imperturbability, it is that of a political discourse that has lost touch with “all the misery of the world”.

BOURDIEU’S THEORY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM OF BERGER AND LUCKMANN

Author(s): Miloš Jovanović / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

The paper compares Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach with the one developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The aim of the paper is to identify the complementarities and incongruences of these approaches. The main similarity consists in the intention to “dialectically” overcome/bridge the gap between “objectivism” and “subjectivism” in social theory. Another parallel includes a negative attitude towards the relativistic tendencies of postmodernism. These authors share the thematization of: the body as a locus of social influences, the centrality of language in social life, the social functions of knowledge, and the importance of power in social relations. Differences in theorizing are attributed to the different intellectual, theoretical, and socio-cultural contexts in which these scientists operated. The divergences of these theoretical approaches become evident when one examines the different meaning and significance attached to the concepts of individuation, structure, action, habitus and habitualization, structure of relevance and relation of common-sense and scientific knowledge. Finally, there is a visible difference in political views: Bourdieu was a critic “from the left,” while Berger and Luckmann were self-proclaimed liberal conservatives.

PIERRE BOURDIEU AND POLITICS

Author(s): Frédéric Lebaron,Ivica Mladenović,Franck Poupeau,Gisèle Sapiro,Zona Zarić,Philip Golub / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

This paper is the product of a roundtable discussion held at the international conference Horizons of Engagement: Eternalizing Bourdieu, organized by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of Belgrade, Serbia, the Centre for Advanced Studies of The University of Rijeka, Croatia, the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, France, and the French Institute in Serbia. The event was planned on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s leading sociologists – Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). The greatest indicator of the scope of Bourdieu’s influence is the fact that he has become the world’s most cited sociologist, ahead of Émile Durkheim, and the world’s second most cited author in social sciences and the humanities, after Michel Foucault and ahead of Jacques Derrida. As part of this discussion, we address the subject of “Bourdieu and Politics”, politics – broadly constructed. We evoke Pierre Bourdieu’s involvement in public affairs during the 1990s, while taking into account the concept of the collective intellectual that Bourdieu introduced into social sciences by giving it a specific meaning.

„JETZT SEI WIR-ZEIT“ HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZE HEFTE IM LICHTE DER SELBSTKRITIK SEINES NS-ENGAGEMENTS

Author(s): Rastko Jovanov / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2021

The article analyzes Heidegger’s relation to National Socialism based on his private writing in the “Black Notebooks,” published in their entirety (nine volumes) this year. Although it is indisputable that Heidegger was an enthusiastic adherent of the National Socialist program between 1930 and 1934, his private writings show his avowed philosophical delusion that the National Socialist ‘revolution’ in Germany was going to bring about a new beginning of philosophy beyond the metaphysical tradition. The article shows how Heidegger criticized National Socialism after 1934, and the circumstances of his resignation from the post of Rector of Freiburg University in that year.

N. Bagdasar despre teoria blagiană a cunoașterii

Author(s): Eugeniu Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 5/2021

N. Bagdasar approaches Lucian Blaga’s writings on the theory of knowledge in the first section of the volume “History of Romanian Philosophy” (1940), subtitled “Pure Philosophy”, where he tackles issues regarding logic, epistemology and metaphysics. After a brief biobibliographical presentation, in which he remarks, among other things, that he is “endowed with the most constructive head and a special fecundity”, the exegete exposes objectively the main concepts of knowledge, starting with the original methodology of Blaga, with dogmatic meaning, emphasising the distinction between dogma and transfigured paradoxes, between the enstatic and ecstatic intellect, referring, in detail, to the mystery as a working object of understanding knowledge, to the two types of knowledge: paradisiacal and luciferic, insisting on “articulated” possibilities of the latter: plus-knowledge, zero-knowledge and minus-knowledge. All these types of knowledge, to which others are added, “juxtaposed” (such as mythical and occult knowledge), are “modes” of individual knowledge, under the control of the unseen center of the world represented by the Great Anonymous who, to ensure “existential balance”, limits the possibilities of human knowledge by applying transcendent censorship.

ОСВРТ НА ЈЕДАН КУРС ФИЛОЗОФСКЕ МЕТОДОЛОГИЈЕ

Author(s): Zdravko Kučinar / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 180/2021

W poszukiwaniu tożsamości współczesnej filozofii przyrody

Author(s): Jarosław Maciej Janowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021

This article addresses the issue of the identity of the philosophy of nature in the context of three features characteristic of this philosophical discipline, namely its methodological diversity, interdisciplinarity and specific developmental dynamics. This paper examines the threats to the identity of the philosophy of nature resulting from this set of features, particularly from its methodological diversity. It will also attempt to consider these features as (paradoxically) strengthening the identity of the philosophy of nature. Lastly, the entire discussion will be considered in relation to the metaphilosophical dimension of philosophy as an area of knowledge.

French atheist spirituality

Author(s): Joanna Skurzak / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

The phrase “atheist spirituality” may seem rather paradoxical at first. In practice, both atheists and theists object to it. Atheists would prefer to be called naturalists – in order to emphasize their connection with a specific tradition and interpretation of the world, and avoid being equated only with the denial of theism. They will be willing to deny the existence of any spiritual element, and thus deny the meaningfulness of religious language. It is worth stressing that this does not apply to all atheists. A new form of spirituality suggested by Francophone philosophers concerns first of all the resignation from a faith about a transcendent God, which is substituted with an undefined sacrum (what is holy, is highest) in immanence. New forms of spirituality are becoming a popular alternative to religious spirituality today. However, traditional and new spiritualities should not be treated as separate sets, as they do not necessarily compete with each other. Systems of spiritual development related to specific denominations will always provide inspiration even for atheist spirituality. The latter can indicate that apart from religion, there is also a spirituality that can develop in a person. Nihilism is not the only alternative to religion, as sometimes the defenders of the old religious order try to show. Atheist spirituality can sometimes refer to realities that are rich and enhancing.

O prawdzie w literaturze uwag kilka

Author(s): Wiesława Tomaszewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2020

This article deals with the issue of truth in literature by considering Roman Ingarden’s account. He denies that literary work as a work of art can be true in a logical sense. As a purely intentional object, a literary work of art decides nothing about a transcendent world. The truth in a literary work, however, can be understood as its revelation.

GŁUPI, CZYLI INNY. PODMIOT W MISTYCE PRZEŻYCIOWEJ

Author(s): Natalia Stencel / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

The article is an attempt to describe mysticism in the context of stupidity. Particular emphasis is placed on the subjectivity manifested in a text comprising a mystical testimony. The methodological frame of the considerations is provided by Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, as well as by elements of the philosophy of dialogue. ‘Otherness,’ as conceived by Levinas, Buber, and Lacan, is an important point of reference. It is pointed out that, once expressed, the message of a mystic (which is naturally inaccessible to his or her community), becomes estranged also to its subject. The mystic remains distant from both the sacred and the profane: within either of these realms, he turns out to be different, i.e., stupid.

„DOSTRZEC TO, CO WSPÓLNE”: METAFORY W LUDWIGA WITTGENSTEINA ANALIZACH FILOZOFICZNYCH

Author(s): Marek Hetmański / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021

The paper discusses the concept of metaphor according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, reconstructed based on the remarks he made in his diverse writings which show consistency despite their separateness. The problem of the relations between the concepts of language as an image and language as a game is analized, as well as their relationship with the metaphilosophical views of their author. First of all, the issue of imaging is scrutinized, including the metonymic and metaphorical presentations of reality which make use of linguistic means such as words and texts, but also extra-linguistic ones, such as facial and body gestures, paintings, music, and even architecture, which Wittgenstein assigned a signifi cant role in imagining human thinking and general concepts. The ostensive (deictic) function of gestures accompanying thinking is characterized. Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical view is discussed, including his remarks on the inexpressibility and absurdity of the philosophical theses. Metaphorical statements used by the philosopher are also analyzed in their persuasive, stylistic, and cognitive functions.

WSPÓLNY JĘZYK

Author(s): Patrycja Mikulska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021

Język jest dobrem wspólnym. Zrozumienie tego stwierdzenia nie wymaga znajomości jego filozoficznych założeń. Możemy oczywiście różnie pojmować termin „dobro”, a także przywoływać na myśl sytuacje, w których język nie jawi się jako dobro. Jeśli rozumiemy termin „język”, wiemy, że z istoty swojej język jest „wspólny”, zakłada istnienie jakiejś wspólnoty. Nawet jeśli potrafi my rozmawiać sami ze sobą, to języka, w jakim to czynimy, nauczyliśmy się, żyjąc wśród innych. Przypomina się tu postać św. Augustyna, który prowadząc swoje solilokwia, rozmawia ze swoim rozumem – niejako rozdwaja się wewnętrznie czy też wyodrębnia w sobie drugi podmiot.