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Walter Benjamin’s collection of articles, Passagenwerk (The Arcades Project), is regarded as the quintessence of his philosophical thought and aesthetical beliefs. A forerunner of this monumental work is the travel description entitled “Napoli”, written in co-authorship with Anna Lācis, where the keyword is porosity, which is a metaphor for the specific way of thinking for Walter Benjamin. The collection of literary sketches “One Way Street” and “Moscow Diary”, created in cooperation with Anna Lācis, are also important records of the 20th century aesthetical perceptions and ideological considerations. There exists an interesting intertextual link between the images of cities in various Benjamin’s works – Naples, Rīga, Moscow. The article is an attempt to discover the “unclear” influence of Asja Lācis on the philosophical thought of Walter Benjamin and is based on Beata Paškevica’s monograph “In der Stadt der Parolen. Asja Lacis, Walter Benjamin und Bertolt Brecht” published in Germany in 2006. The conclusion is that Asja Lācis has not had a great influence on Benjamin’s political views but on his aesthetical views. This has been metaphorically formulated by Benjamin himself in the dedication text of his book “One Way Street”.
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Beginning with a characterization of contemporaneity (dominance of the financial sector and high technology, politicization of economy, ideological use of culture and control of the capacity for thought) and a brief analysis of expansionism (political, economic, cultural) on the eve of the Great War, the author embarks on a more detailed description of the spiritual situation in the wake of the Great War: in philosophy, literature, art, as well as the national-political programmatic texts and war propaganda publications of German intellectuals of the time. The continuity of the Austro-Hungarian colonial policy towards the Balkans and Serbia culminates in instigating a preventive war against Serbia by the elites in Berlin and Vienna, which is of importance with regard to the question of responsibility for the war, guided by concrete aims of war in which causes for war are reflected. These war elites wanted to declare the assassination in Sarajevo as the cause of war, which in fact was a political assassination and tyrannicide. The freedom movement of democratic youth, Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), needs to be viewed in the European context as inspired by the Serbian tradition of the cult of Kosovo and the ethics of Vidovdan (St Vitus' Day) which speaks both about the victim's sacrifice as sublimation of history and about just suffering as elements of identity. Historical memory suggests that historical responsibility is transgenerational. The epic proportions of Serbian suffering in the Great War have additionally encouraged the positing of the theme of St Vitus' Day Temple (Vidovdanski Hram) as envisaged by Ivan Meštrović. The foundations of this idea were shaken by Miloš Crnjanski who, in his 'Lyrics of Ithaca', succeeds in returning to Vidovdan (St Vitus' Day) the inexhaustible national power of validity. Because of enormous Serbian military and civilian casualties in recent history, the need to establish a Victim's Sacrifice Memorial, in our day has identity and existential, ethical and ontological significance for the Serbian nation.
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Pain is seen not as a sensation but as an experience. Several existential "figures" characteristic of the "body-in-pain" are analyzed. In pain experience, the limits of our "might" are questioned. The pain creates an original experience of our own body. The health, which before the pain is "invisible", expresses itself, enters the field of consciousness. The article also examines the possibilities and boundaries for communicating pain and compassion. Also outlined are the consequences of striving to achieve "bodies without pain".
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The author of the article focuses on the origins of the idea of panopticon in Classical Antiquity. Though the point of departure is the concept of the panopticon as an architectural structure, for example, a panoptic prison or factory, as envisaged by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, the author, seeking to trace the beginnings of this idea in the ancient Greek culture, treats the concept of the panopticon both in the broadest possible sense and in that sense which might be viewed as a direct anticipation of the modern (Benthamian) concept of panopticon. First of all, in the first chapter of the article, starting with the analysis of the words “panoramic” and “panoptic”, the author draws attention to the fact that both these words, strictly speaking, are of a rather late coinage (though the adjective panoptēs, employed as an epithet of some gods and other mythological beings, is already attested in the corpus of Classical literature), yet each of them has two easily recognizable Greek roots: the meaning of the first one, namely, pan-, is “all”, and the meaning of the second one is “visual, optical”. After discussing some subtle semantic differences between the meanings of the words “panoramic” and “panoptic”, the author briefly presents a few examples of Greek mythological narratives illustrating the “panoptic” abilities of some divine beings. In the second chapter of the article, the author discusses the varieties of “panoramic” and “panoptic” phenomena (as well as certain “panoramic” and “panoptic” aspects of some other phenomena) in Classical Greek philosophy, mainly focusing on the philosophical importance of vision and visuality in Greek experience and theoretical thinking, as well as on some specific “panoramic” and “panoptic” features inherent in the ancient Greek world-outlook and general mindset. By way of the examples drawn mainly from the works of Plato and Heraclitus, but also from such fields as mythology, geography, and architecture, the author presents an argument for the close affinity, interrelationship, and interdependence between the logocentric and optocentric traits in Greek experience, philosophical thought, and general mindset. The “panoptic” character of Classical Greek culture is analyzed not only in terms of the conceptual and experiential interrelationship between the optocentric and logocentric traits in Greek world-outlook, but also from the point of view of the hypothetically reconstructed everyday experience of ancient Greeks. A few examples from the works of Plato and Heraclitus are presented in order to demonstrate the existence in the ancient Greek thought of those aspects of Greek “panoptic” phenomena that might be viewed as direct and rather exact anticipations (replete with all necessary judicial references and connotations) of the modern concept of panopticon as envisaged by Jeremy Bentham. At the end of the article, the author draws a conclusion that, despite the absence in the ancient Greek language of the word “panopticon” as a precise technical term with contemporary meaning, various approximations to the contemporary concept of panopticon, including both vague intimations and very close anticipations of the modern concept, already existed in the culture and mental landscape of Classical Antiquity. It is also very important to observe that the ancient Greek correlates of the modern concept of panopticon were imbued with a much broader spectrum of philosophically significant meanings.
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In the article, I analyse Aristotle's, Descartes’s and John Rawls's views on the the moral status of non-human beings, and show the negative influence of the views on shaping the human-animal relationship in European culture. The purpose of my reasoning is to demonstrate that in each of these positions there is a problem that boils down to the selection of subjective criteria in the qualitative distinction between the moral status of people and of other animals, and the use of the premises that will prove the previously established deduction. What is common for the position of these three philosophers is the conclusion, that is the conviction that there are insufficient grounds for equal treatment of humans and non-human beings in the sphere of moral life.
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The main subject of the article is a discussion of Witold Gombrowicz’s philosophical views, which were presented in the cycle of lectures delivered by him in Vence at the turn of April and May 1969, in the presence of his wife, Rita, and two of his friends: Iza Neyman and Dominic de Roux. In 1971 the lectures, written down by writer’s friends, were published in French as Guide de la philosophie en six heures un quarto (“Philosophy course in six hours and quarter of an hour”). Author of the article shows Gombrowicz’s predilection to existentialism and structuralism– two contemporary doctrines which, in his own opinion, the writer discovered himself as the first in Europe in his debut novel entitled Ferdydurke (1937). Philosophical course presented by Witold Gombrowicz two months before his own death, was compared in the end of the article to the message (main idea) of the late poem by Czeslaw Milosz entitled Vocative, written in the end of the 20th century. In this dramatic text the death was described as destructive, dull and unconscious power. Both, the Gombrowicz’s philosophical course, as well as Milosz’s late poem Vocative – can be interpreted as testimonial of heroic human intellect and soul in their uneven struggle against sickness and death, concluded author.
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Tetra-lemma with four truth values "true", "false", "true and false", "neither true nor false" appeared in Buddhist logic. Why is Tetra-lemma interesting forus? It is for its avatars, in some cases, in the context of Western epistemology. In these fugitive notes, without claiming completeness, we will focus on how Tetra-lemma slipped in some systems of Western philosophy.
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We are largely surrounded by increasingly complex technical systems. These systems often border on the absurd even though they rely on logical and physical reality. This is because they move away from the “logical efficiency”of natural forms. This text approaches some specific aspects of entities which are achieved by human beings,i.e. those connected to their “formative structure”.I emphasize that the aesthetics and the functions of such products are determined by the consonance between the formative structure and a natural structure, and I called this “architectural thinking”. As an example, I consider the well-known “golden number” found both in the human body and in artistic and technical products such as Parthenon.Two questions which thistext addresses are: What is a “formative structure”? How can the consonance, or harmony, between such structure and that of a “natural” one be approached?
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Author of this text is trying to examine several examples of interaction between literature, other fields of discourse and social imagination. This review is focused mainly on French classicism and rationalism, nineteenth Century fiction and Darwinism, modern literature and so-called antihumanism and finally - some contemporary tendencies.
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In this article, the author introduces several approaches to the concept of sacrifice. It begins with the classic sociological approach of Émile Durkheim who in sacrifice remarks forming, strengthening and maintaining of a community. In his anthropological conception, Georges Bataille demonstrates that the production and accumulation of wealth are wrong moral principles and suggests a new moral practice of giving oneself without asking anything in return, which represents the only way to realize a society of equals. Such a society, in which there would be no leader or a singular sovereignty, he calls Acéphale. For Jean-Luc Nancy, sacrifice is impossible. Starting from a standpoint that the Being is nothing and that there is nothing except this worldly plurality, Nancy considers sacrifice impossible since there is no higher principle for which the sacrifice would be performed. Beside the standpoints of the above-mentioned theoreticians, this article also offers a theory of discipline and sacrifice for achieving a socially expected perfect appearance. In all the mentioned theories, non-classic dimension of sacrifice is demonstrated. In them sacrifice is performed as activity for achieving social unity, greater equality, socially expected appearance and it is also presented as something impossible.
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This paper focuses on discursive routines used to express apology in email exchange. We adopt a contrastive (French-Polish) and intercultural approach, integrating apology in the politeness theory. We start from the hypothesis of cognitive grammars (see e.g. L a nga cke r 2008a and 2008b) that apology, even if it includes a shared conceptual core in various languages, presents for each language an original configuration that specifically reorganizes semantic constituents. The results of the research previously conducted by Dz ia d k iew icz (2007) show that, in the case of apology, the extent of the polite scale in Polish is not the same as in French. The corpus is composed of interpersonal emails (about 200 mails per language) collected in both languages, in professional or private context.
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This article explores one of the important aspects of Nikolai Berdyaev’s historiosophical concept – his attitude towards the fate of the Jewish people. Some of the major reasons for the crucial role of Jewishness in the development of historical consciousness and for the introduction of dramatic and tense elements in it are reviewed here.
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Helene Deutsch was one of the first female psychoanalysts. Freud treated her with admiration and supported her development, because in his eyes she harmonizes certain professional competition along with beauty, charm and kindness inherent to femininity. In 1944, Helene Deutsch published her two-volume book “The Psychology of Women. A psychoanalytic interpretation”. The book has many editions and was translated into several languages. Therefore Helene Deutsch often is labelled as a specialist in “female psychology”. Although she does not agree with this definition, her name is mainly related to this work and with its in-depth study of the female spirit.
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Review of the book "The Others in the Biography of Personality" by Gradev, Marinov and Karabelyova
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Philosophy of film is a new sub-field of contemporary philosophy or art. Different aspects of the film are analyzed in relation to artistic media.
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The paper deals with the polemics on religion and nationality, and on nationality and ethics, which were exchanged in 1912 and 1913 between Dr Aleš Ušeničnik, the most important Slovene Catholic philosopher in the first half of the nineteenth century, and Dr Mihajlo Rostohar, philosopher and founder of Slovene psychology, who defended liberal world views. The two disputants considered the conflict of values between religious and national interests on the basis of their exclusivist views on nationality and religion. Ušeničnik placed religious interests before national, whilst Rostohar put the national before religious. Ušeničnik saw the ethical basis of human existence in religion, and Rostohar in nationality. Devotion to their ideologies led them to a consistent rejection of the opponent's arguments. The above polemics between the representatives of the two main ideological orientations in Slovenia from the beginning of the twentieth century, proves that, ideologically, the Slovenes entered the century as a deeply divided nation to whom the coexistence of different ideologies was an obvious mental and existential problem.
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We argue that philosophy and mathematics could accomplish far more fruitful encounter with the Being, since by number it is possible to go to such an extent behind the reality (Pythagoras) and if the four causes of Aristotle would be (especially in the human sphere) over again actualized. Alain Badiou has already pointed that "mathematics is ontology," and now we have that the category theory in mathematics – having already covered other fields of this science – continues to find applications in a series of "non-traditional" domains of reality. In that correlation, philosophy could express too, its (primary) need for truth, justice, beauty, as well as for an overall development in the sense of human purposes – due to the undreamed power of the technological progress (say of hardware and software in informatics) today. In that manner, the philosophy of mathematics could radicalize its claims from the perspective of the slogan ''One and All'' of the first philosopher Thales and of such a (powerful) mathematical idiom in front of the reality of Being – this time, in the spirit of bio-Cosmology (neo-Aristotelism).
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The prelate Antanas Rubšys (1923-2002), in the middle of the 20th century, was already involved in the archaeological research of historic places mentioned in the Holy Scripture, the results of which were later applied to text-analytical studies of the Old and New Testaments. From this point of view, the following voluminous works of Rubšys may be excluded: “Key to the Old Testament” and “Key to the New Testament”. These works, in addition to other issues, analyse the interaction between culture and religion, and present premises for internal and external change in the Near East. All propositions presented by Rubšys are grounded on ideological principles formulated by unknown authors of the Old Testament, and historical parallels thereof, which partially reveal the internal split in Jewish culture during the Hellenist period. The purpose of this article is to discuss one of the many historical aspects analysed in Rubšys’ works, i.e. reflections of Hellenist culture and its evaluation in narrations of the Old Testament.
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