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Recent condemnation by progressive Americans of the conservative “weaponization” of free speech for cynical purposes, while accurate in its accusation of hypocrisy, often assumes a problematic “absolutist” notion of free speech as an inherent good. Instead, it should always be understood as functional in the service of another purpose, whether objective, subje ctive or intersubjective. Most frequently, it enables the epistemological search for the truth, a function stressed by liberals like J.S. Mill and Marxists like Herbert Marcuse (who argued that this search was hampered by “repressive tolerance” for wrong or evil ideas). It can also be defended for allowing the expression of individual opinions and feelings, which is the inherent mark of personal autonomy. Its third function is performative, the ability of language to make something happen in the world. The most heated current controversy reflecting this function concerns the limiting of offensive “hate speech” for committing symbolic violence, but it can have benign intersubjective effects as well. A fourth purpose of unconstrained speech, more semantic than epistemological, expressive or performative, is the generation of new cultural meanings or the critique of conventional ones. Because it can serve all or any of these functions, it is worth protecting even in an imperfect society, pace Marcuse, despite its lacking an absolute justification in itself.
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Historical-philosophical debates, which owe their origin to the historical-philosophical context, begin not only with the formulation of certain points of view, but also with the examination of their value, as well as moving towards those that seem acceptable. The attention of our research is focused on issues of value and evaluation of the philosophical past through the given issues within the work „Philosophy and its history“ by Jorge Gracia, while the subject of our attention will be the legitimacy of value statements in the history of philosophy. dealing with truth value. Namely, in addition to careful attention in relation to philosophical sources on the basis of which accurate explanations from the past are obtained, the historical context of positive contribution, not only historical-philosophical, but also historical task, is unavoidable. The historian of philosophy thus makes a strong contribution to historical-value truths that rise from the haze of margins of historical thought, while codifying the points of convergence of scientific-methodological mechanisms and epistemic-axiological interventions - on the one hand - through cognitive-theoretical use of event history. and on the other, - by historicalphilosophical reflection on philosophically valued given discourses, to build together the true, - scientifically valuable. If historical truth excludes values that are contrary to its achievement and duration, then the very course and approach to historical and philosophical heritage should be treated through harmonized procedures and norms in solving very complex historical-philosophical and meta-historical-philosophical requirements and tasks inherent only in philosophy, at the same time, - in the value sense, - indeterminate by historical science. In that convergent dialogue, which is often necessary, the methodological paradigm of valuing substantial truths seeks the passability of axiological-value litmus tests of agreement - as much philosophical as historical knowledge and truth. Truth as the objectivity of the validity of a value attitude in the historical-philosophical sense, therefore, can show how a certain value statement is based on the experience of value. This tells us that the quality of value judgments is reflected in the fact that we take a stand with them in relation to historical-cognitive forms of opinion. While in science there are generally accepted criteria for verifying truthfulness, there are no such exact criteria in the domain of values, while it is important to point out that an objective and correct explanation of the past requires certain value statements throughout history, and judgments about true value in the history of philosophy. the significance and role of valuation and truth values within the philosophically oriented hermeneutization of philosophical-historical expressive truths and the possibility that the continuity in the search for truth cannot and should not be interrupted, whereby the theorist Jorge Gracia makes a strong contribution to the interpretation and understanding of these relations, which is the subject of this paper. Searching for reasons for a better understanding of ideas and philosophical views from the past H. Gracia points to the knowledge of what is taken for their truthful value. This refers to the consideration of the validity and correctness of the arguments on which certain teachings are based, and this refers to the texts. Texts are, therefore, the basic means we have for accessing philosophical ideas from the past. Without texts, an approach to ideas from the past is inconceivable, while the job of a historian is to re-establish the indefinite meaning of a text. The most expedient interpretation is the one that makes the most sense from the standpoint of both philosophy and history, because the historian must rely on philosophical teachings from the past that have more meaning. Although it is pointed out that historians and historians consider some masked value statements to be descriptive, with the recognition that many of them include descriptions; what is more important is reflected more in the fact that the historical explanation of the philosophical past necessarily includes and implies value statements, then the task of history implies and encompasses evaluation.
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This paper examines Gadamer's and Davidson's dialogical models of interpretation. It shows them to be comparable, but importantly dissimilar with respect to the kind of agreement they require for communication to be possible. It is argued that this difference entails different concepts of alterity: they model not only how we talk, but implicitly who we can intelligibly talk to. Another important contribution of this paper is to uncover a distinction in Gadamer between two kinds of agreement missed so far by all commentators. The final section of this paper defends a second thesis, namely that the degree of agreement required by the models is proportional to the conceptual difference it can make intelligible. Hence, the extent of graspable cultural difference is not only an empirical matter, but is entailed by our choice of model.
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The aim of this paper is to find out whether Gadamer is entitled to hold together his finitist commitment to the heteronomy of art and thought, and his advocacy of an "endless conversation with itself" of humankind. We focus on three texts: Gadamer’s dismissal of Carl Schmitt’s outside-in account of the heteronomy implied by the "irruption of reality" in the play Hamlet and, as Archimedean point, Shakespeare’s "excision of reality" according to Stephen Greenblatt, and its inside-out heteronomic consequences. The results: Schmitt’s approach restricts Gadamer’s argument on the "endless dialogue", Gadamer’s rejoinder aggravates his own argumentative fragility, and Greenblatt’s perspectivation discloses a non-sequitur. The inspection of these texts attests that heteronomy per se does not entail any openness to "creative" interpretations, that a universalized logos endiéthetos is a chimera, and that there cannot be any "infinite conversation" which would sustain the Gadamerian interplay of question and answer.
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According to the psychoanalytic tradition, we function in the social world thanks to the reality principle. The article will deal with the role of the imagination as a political force, a force transforming the framework of social reality animated by the historical modification of this principle – the performance principle. Due to the fact that – as Marcuse has shown – reason has become an element of domination, the only emancipatory force capable of opposing the daily routine and repetition is imagination. Therefore, we propose developing this idea of imagination as a means of liberation from the one-dimensional world and transformation of the social world in the context of the new libidinal economy outlined by Herbert Marcuse in two works: Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man.
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In his last lectures, Mark Fisher re-evaluates the work of Herbert Marcuse and the entire tradition of the 1960s counterculture. He emphasizes that social change is not only a matter of objective conditions, but also a transformation of consciousness and culture. These remarks serve as a starting point for reflection on the role of everyday life and individual experience in social change. Everyday life is a key category from this perspective, because it is the center of emancipatory activities, but also of the awareness of the need to fight for a better, more just world. Thus, the article shows the historical significance of Herbert Marcuse’s concept and its relation to the present day as interpreted by Mark Fisher. The last part presents an outline of the democratic utopia of everyday life, which refers to the theoretical ideas of Herbert Maruse, but aims to change democracy in such a way that it would be resistant to the temptations of populism and authoritarianism.
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In 1964 Herbert Marcuse made a famous thesis about the one-dimensionality of latecapitalist subject. It is one of his most important theoretical concepts, as well as an extension of the thesis put forward by Marcuse in 1937 in his essay Affirmative Character of Culture. The purpose of my article is to critically revise this concept. On the one hand, it is true that cognitive capitalism has strengthened the mechanisms of controlling consumer behavior. But on the other, the postmodern society is reflexive: its production of knowledge and self-knowledge is institutionalized and systemic. The combination of these two processes leads, as I claim, to the creation of a bipolar rather than one-dimensional man and culture. Repressive desublimation today goes hand in hand with reflexivity. As a result, the postmodern subject is an acratic – a human being systematically acting against his or her will. In the second part of the text, I argue that the bipolar structure of the postmodern subject creates conditions conducive to the development of contemporary populism.
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The critical context of the article is the latest knowledge of the planetary environmental crisis and its social-economic repercussions (such as a disgrace of fossil fuels capitalism and inequality). The text critically compares the following conceptions: 1) the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, 2) the criticism of the so-called “cheap natures” and the Capitalocene by Jason W. Moore, and 3) ecological economics of degrowth. They are post-capitalist eco-utopias built with a safety concern for the very survival of civilization. The text looks for anticipation of Moore’s ideas and the ideas of ecological economists in Marcuse’s reflection on ecology. It highlights significant similarities and selected differences between the concepts mentioned above. The article considers two levels: a diagnosis of the problems of a developed industrial society and a possible, systemic and constructive correction. The text argues that the ecological economy of degrowth, prosperity and redistribution contradicts Marcuse’s thesis that capitalism completely colonizes the human imagination.
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This paper describes the relationship between technics and desire in light of Bernard Stiegler’s new critique of political economy. The starting point for the analysis is Stiegler’s critique of the reinterpretation of Freud’s legacy by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. The context of the analysis is the ongoing mutation of consumer capitalism into computational capitalism—one in which automated calculation systems are used to control all forms of mental and affective human activity. Digital automatization, I argue, encourages a different view of what Marcuse called “the automatization of the superego.” It also requires us to rethink to what extent desire is conditioned techno-logically beyond the limits of Marcuse’s critique of Freud, capitalism and technology. The article pays special attention to Stiegler’s reinterpretation of the theory of sublimation in relation to contemporary capitalism and its technological infrastructure (from television to digital platforms). It is also an attempt to include the question concerning technology in psychoanalytic thinking.
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In this paper I argue for the relevance of the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer for contemporary feminist scholarship on epistemic injustice and oppression. Specifically, I set out to argue for the Gadamerian notion of hermeneutical openness as an important hermeneutic virtue, and a potential remedy for existing epistemic injustices. In doing so I follow feminist philosophers such as Linda Martín Alcoff and Georgia Warnke that have adopted the insights of Gadamer for the purpose of social and feminist philosophy. Further, this paper is positioned in relation to a recent book chapter by Cynthia Nielsen and David Utsler in which they argue for the complementarity, and intersecting themes and concerns of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Miranda Fricker's work on epistemic injustice. However, Nielsen and Utsler solely focus on Fricker's conception of epistemic injustice and the two forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, that she identifies. In this paper I expand their analysis by considering other forms of epistemic injustice such as wilful hermeneutical ignorance and contributory injustice. Thus, this paper contributes to the budding literature on the relevance of Gadamer's work for the debates pertaining to epistemic injustice and oppression by expanding such analysis to other forms of epistemic injustice, and by further arguing for the strength of Gadamer's work in terms of offering relevant insights for the reduction and remedy of existing epistemic injustices.
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Hermeneutics can be understood on the one hand as the art of interpretation, and on the other hand as a medium for dealing with the past, for conveying events, contexts or even writings in new ways of speaking for new recipients. The interpretation of writings, however, places special demands on hermeneutics: it does not take place in a sterile vacuum, but is rather embedded in a social and cultural context that shapes the interpretation or mediation and is an expression of a time, a fashion or a specific requirement of modernity. The question therefore arises as to what role reason and experience, science and/or social ideas, tradition(s) and/or community play in interpretation.Using Thomas More's masterpiece Utopia as an example, various resulting interpretative approaches to a concrete writing will be presented. Through the hermeneutic design of a historical horizon in relation to Thomas More's time as well as through the development of a historical awareness of the work, the possibility of an understanding of this world-famous, still controversial writing as well as the efficiency of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics will become recognisable.
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Gadamer has written several powerful studies of Platonic dialectic. His emphasis on shared understanding, the fusing of horizons and other hermeneutic notions are partially drawn from a study of Plato’s elenctic dialogues. However, Socrates in Gorgias makes a claim about the imperative of self-refutation that not only complicates our understanding of Socratic method, but Gadamer’s reading of it as well. This article is meant to explore just how the imperative of self-refutation causes difficulty for Gadamer’s understanding of dialectic, especially his distinction between authentic and inauthentic dialectic. After considering the nature of ‘refutation’, this article will examine whether Gadamer’s notions of shared understanding, the ‘facts of the matter’, and self-understanding help us to resolve this problem. It shall be concluded that the teacher must take any refutations of his/her own views seriously, but has no special obligation to refute (introspectively) any of their own views, even those beliefs, theories, principles or criteria that enable him to guide the argument.
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The paper refers to the beginnings of the academic philosophy in Serbia and to the circumstance that reports about its development. These were the part of the program of the respectable philosophical Hegelian journal Der Gedanke, 1861–1863. It refers to the contributions of Dimitrije Matić and the cooperation of this prominent Serbian philosopher, jurist and politician with the editor of the journal Karl Ludwig Michelet, who was the first to use the expression “Serbian philosophy”. The author reminds us that never later, when the academic philosophy in Serbia realized remarkable progress, a foreign publication followed with such attention and according to plan the philosophical life in Serbia.
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In this study, I am in search of the limits of the Christian definition of the human person. I could have drawn on the ideas of countless authors, but I have drawn intuitively on the ideas of Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, Béla Hamvas, Simone Weil, and János Pilinszky. The person is a dynamic being open to the infinite and ultimately to God, who is man’s widest horizon of existence. Being a person inevitably implies the potential possession of the infinite in man.
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This essay is an unknown text by the prominent Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907–1977) from the era of the Second Czechoslovak Republic (30th September 1938 – 15th March 1939), which was not published in his collected writings. The article entitled “The Czech Hopes for a Spiritual Homeland” was published in the magazine "Naše vojsko" [Our Army] on 1 February 1939, in which Patočka reacts to the current traumatic situation of Czech society after the Munich Agreement and the end of the Masaryk’s First Republic. Patočka's text is accompanied by three commentaries that put it into context.
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This paper considers basic ideas of Tolstoys teaching presented in his work What do I believe in? with references to his other writings on similar topic. Reading great novelist here becomes a chance to follow words in Russian dictionaries which have links to Tolstoys influence. Also, speaking from this perspective on Tolstoys religious beliefs expressed in nonfictional form, gives new motivation to read his unique art.
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The paper presents the doctrine of five intellectual virtues: science, understanding, wisdom, art, and prudence, as presented in the works of Aristotle and later in the works of Thomas Aquinas. By analyzing each individual intellectual virtue, we consider their role and importance in times of crises that are an integral part of human life, as shown by the current coronavirus crisis. By explaining the essence and scope of each virtue, it is shown that according to each of them, reason achieves correspondence with a particular aspect of reality and gains the ability to direct action in a way that transforms evil into good. Resolving the crisis requires that the intellect acquires excellence in all five areas, especially in the one that is the least present in current public discourse: the virtue of wisdom.
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Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love stages the classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman at the point of death, as, in the role “AEH,” he recalls his younger self, “Housman.” “Housman” is seen as an Oxford undergraduate; he is a brilliant classicist, driven by ambition to purge ancient texts from corrupt readings; he is also fired by love for a male fellow-student, Jackson, and by a vision of Classical studies as fostering an awareness of ancient virtue shown in athletic prowess and comradely self-sacrifice. His Oxford milieu offers ambiguous support for this combination of ideals; as a clerical worker in London, he fulfils his academic ambitions but forces upon himself and Jackson the recognition that his love is not reciprocated, and, in any case, could not safely be given public expression or acknowledgement. “AEH,” driven by a sense of nostalgia which is also a quest to recover and resurrect his former self, is increasingly led to confront love, in his own life and in the poetic texts upon which he has worked, as an invention – a precarious and perhaps unsustainable balance between coherence and breakdown, between a stoical embrace of modernity and a passionately modern turn to a receding past.
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In the paper, the author presents Jerzy Prokopiuk’s (1931–2021) outlook on gnosis and Gnosticism. Prokopiuk was a Polish esotericist, translator, and non-academic specialist in religious studies. His views on this subject can be divided into four areas: (1) definition of gnosis; (2) the essence and de- scription of Gnosticism as a historical religious formation; (3) description and understanding of the post-Gnostic tradition; (4) gnosis and Gnosticism as a hermeneutic tool. As to (1) definition of gno- sis, the Prokopiuk presents three forms of this special kind of knowledge: escapist gnosis (know- ledge liberates the human spirit from material body and the physical world); transformational gnosis (knowledge transforms the human soul, body and earthly nature); lateral gnosis (idea of alternative worlds). Regarding (2) Gnosticism, Prokopiuk says that its source was ancient mysteries and a par- ticular type of religious experience. He sees (3) the post-Gnostic tradition as an unbroken chain of esoteric groups and figures from late antiquity to the present day. Finally, gnosis and Gnosticism are (4) a hermeneutic tool for Prokopiuk because they allow him to interpret phenomena and texts of culture (in the field of literature, cinema, psychology, and others). The paper also reflects on the usefulness of some of Prokopiuk’s ideas for contemporary humanities.
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