THE BOSNIAN QUESTION AND THE WORLD

Author(s): Rusmir Mahmutćehajić / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2001

In " The Bosnian question and the world", Mahmutćehajić contrasts two world-views: modernity, which sees material development as the only good, and tradition, which stresses humankind´s wish to transcend the material world. The dangers come when the two are no longer in dialogue, leading to rampant selfishness on the one hand, and the sentimentalisation and totemisation of religion on the other. Mahmutćehajić then looks more closely at how a symbiosis between the mundane and the transcendental has enabled day-today co-existence within BiH. Co-existence, he argues, has lain at the core of the region´s different sacred traditions, whereas the threats to this co-existence have come from outside rather than inside the region. These threats have been backed up by nationalist, secular projects which ignore religion´s quest for transcendental unity between the mundane and the divine, seeking instead to exploit the earthly trappings of "ethnicized religions" as a means of defining communities in terms of what they do not share rather than what they share.

Avant-Garde et Avant-Gardisme: Deux faux Concepts?

Author(s): Jean-Michel Palmier / Language(s): French Issue: 2/1982

The term avant-garde covers many artistic currents — some oriented to the political left, while others, like Italian Futurism, flirted with fascism. The importance of the Russian avant-garde in the Twenties has led many critics to associate political and artistic avant-gardism. The term is ambiguous and Western historians have emphasized the artistic side, whereas Soviet historians tie avant-garde to a political struggle for a better, more just, more humane world. Are the relations between artistic and political avant-garde mystified and mythified? This essay traces the original meaning of avant-garde and its introduction into aesthetics with Saint-Simonians, the semantic changes and different ideological types, especially in the twenties, as artists and writers, attracted by radical ideals, alternated between fascism and communism. Art movements are inseparable from social changes which affect the ideology of avant-gardes and their formal aspect. In the twenties, the avant-garde shows both a social and political vision and a purely formalistic vision. But the avant-gardes of the fifties, especially the New York School, while questioning American life styles and the fetishism of merchandise, are elitist. There is a hiatus between art and the public. The proletariat does not have intrinsically revolutionary tastes. To prevent art from remaining in an elitist and mercantile ghetto we must bridge the hiatus by developing points of creation and confrontation, and by artistic education.

The Problem of Freedom: Fromm's Contribution to a Critical Theory of Work Organisation

Author(s): David Knights,Hugh Willmott / Language(s): English Issue: 2/1982

Most studies in the field of work and industrial relations neglect or trivialise the significance of problems of freedom, and relatedly of meaning and identity, for the reproduction of economic organisations. For example, in Goldthorpe et al.'s The Affluent Worker (1968), the responses of employees who reported satisfaction with intrinsically unrewarding work are theorised primarily as a function of privatisation rather than grasped as an expression of resignation or acquiescence to a position of political and economic dependence. The basic limitation with this kind of middle-range theorising is that it moves from the concrete or particular, in the form of employees' responses to researchers' predetermined questions, to the abstract or universal, in the form of instrumentalism as a prevalent orientation to work. So doing, the way in which employees' vocabularies of motive (Mills, 1967) are developed and articulated dynamically in relation to their existential concerns and structural position is all but disregarded. Moreover, in focussing upon workers' expressed orientations, to the neglect of the fashioning of these orientations within specific psycho-social contexts, it leaves unchallenged the conventional wisdom that the interests of 'instrumental' workers are best served by forms of work organisation that offer 'high' wages but provide no real or controlling involvement in the processes of organisational decision-making, design, and development. Hierarchical, non-participatory, non-democratic forms of work organisation are thereby legitimated 'from below' insofar as they are shown to satisfy the material self-interests of employees (Habermas, 1971).

Feminism, Socialism, and Historical Materialism

Author(s): Milton Fisk / Language(s): English Issue: 2/1982

The debate between socialism and feminism that erupted in the 1960s and continues today is the context for the thoughts that follow. The sense one has of that debate is influenced by the organizations in which one engaged in it. Accordingly, my understanding of the debate has been influenced by the socialist organizations in which I engaged in it. Cogent and consistent feminist work by these organizations has been hampered by certain assumptions of the majority in the debate. But of course socialist organizations will have problems with any work they do in a vigorous capitalist society. So the conclusion I am led to is not that socialist organization is irrelevant to feminism but that a reworking of a widely held view of the socialist struggle is in order.

Philosophie en Samizdat: Les « Essays hérétiques sur la Philosophie de l'Histoire » de Jan Patočka

Author(s): Erazim Kohák / Language(s): French Issue: 09+10/1977

Kulturotwórcza przyszłość człowieka w świetle psychologii ewolucyjnej

Author(s): Marta Szymczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2008

Psychology of evolution is a quite new branch of science; we can say that this is a continuation of E. Wilson’s sociobiology on emotional and psychological way. Evolutionary scientists have made their own program but the base was sociobiology and results of main subjects; that is why most of thesis are similar and almost the same (filled or expanded) to psychological ones. We have been created by the nature but, there was also “cooperation” with culture. Genetic determination is not enough to human’s creation. Large contribution for psychology of evolution put memetic, its researches, documents and thesis were very important for science grants. Humans made a culture many centuries ago, but this process hasn’t stopped yet. Survival of traditions and culture depends on keeping dynamic equilibrium between unmodified information included in cultural tradition and its modification. D. Buss claims that, if there are a lot of conservative features it will makes “live fossil”; if there is a lot of changes it will be an anomaly. Human’s attitude towards the future needs to be the same as their relation to traditions and innovation and its creation order and stabilization. Even for the price of exocentric separate (Besonderheit) human is going to make more stabiles and clearness to rescue them from a period you can anticipate. A. Gehlen is sure that during the cultural evolution new information could be transfer to descendants. This mechanism is helping to improve human knowledge and accelerating the development of every stadium of people’s lives. Biology’s way of keeping information leads only to genome; biology’s evolution is creating different genetics programs so therefore different biological species. Cultural evolution is connected only with the biological species of Homo sapiens and it makes differences only extenders structures due to this species. Actual, human’s view is still looking for its whole humanity. Human in psychology of evolution doesn’t look down of it’s biology past, but very often add to this view cultural aspect, this make it harmony and whole entire. For the culture actually human can compensate biology not adapted to life in the nature. Some of the scientists are claiming that human as a cultural animal is not complete, not entirely – because it is not ready to live in a natural environment - if he wants to live there he needs to transform it, for the etologists, human is a biological potential that can actualize him during ontogenetically adaptation for each form of human culture.

Zagadnienie aktu stwórczego w kwestii 44 części I Sumy Teologicznej św. Tomasza z Akwinu

Author(s): Tomasz Pawlikowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2008

In Western theological and philosophical tradition, God is conceived to be the Creator of all that exists. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) has longstanding centrality in this understanding, by the time of Aquinas, concerns over the possibility of the universe itself existing from eternity led to thinking of creation out of nothing as the generic category of which initial creation. This doctrine involves, by St. Thomas Aquinas, areas of philosophical concern of Aristotle’s theory of four causes and Plato's theory of the participation, and the relationship between each. For Aquinas, the act of creation includes God’s activity as the efficient, exemplar and final cause every contigential things. The creation is the act whereby God brings a things into existence from a state of non-existence, but what is peculiar to creation is the entire absence of any prior subject-matter - ex nihilo subjecti. It is therefore likewise the production totius substantiæ - of the entire substance. The preposition ex, “out of”, imply that nihil, “nothing”, is to be conceived as the material out of which a thing is made - materia ex qua. Moreover, the things or beings as an object of the creative act in its entitative dependence on the Creator, it follows that, as this dependence is essential, and hence inamissible, the creative act once placed is coextensive in duration with the creature’s existence and perfections. This is the participative dependence beings created on God. What makes possible coherence between theory of four causes and theory of the beings participation is Aquinas’ theory of analogy. This is general theory in Aquinas’ metaphysics. The analogy of beings allows to show as coexistences two difference aspects of the same created things: its dependence on God as Prima Causa and on God as being absolutely perfect (the created beings aren’t perfect, but they participate in its own act of existence and own perfections created by God). God as being absolutely perfect – fullness of perfection is the Self-subsistens Being itself – Ipsum Esse per se subsistens.

Ekologiczna relewancja antropologii filozoficznej

Author(s): Zbigniew Łepko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2008

Die menschliche Erfahrung der heutzutage bestehenden Umweltkrise hat zu einer neuartigen Orientierung geführt, in der sehr bewusst fachübergreifende und integrative theoretische Grundlagen erörtert und daraus Konsequenzen für die Praxis abgeleitet werden. Die von dieser Orientierung angenommene Ausgangspunkt, die Umweltfrage sei im Grunde die Anthropologiefrage, zieht nach sich die weiteren Voraussetzungen. Erstens ist die, dass die ökologische Krise vor allem die biologisch-zivilisierte Anwesenheit des Menschen in der Natur „dokumentiert“; dieser Voraussetzung nach bildet die ökologische Krise nicht nur das Problem der Lebenszukunft in der Natur, sondern auch und vielmehr das Anwesenheitsproblem des Menschen in der Natur. Zweitens ist die, dass der Mensch von Natur aus das Kulturwesen ist; dieser Voraussetzung nach erfüllen unsere stammesgeschichtlichen Anpassungen in vielen Fällen ihre arterhaltende Funktion erst im Zusammenspiel mit kulturell tradierten Verhaltensmustern.

Bioetyka laicka i „chrześcijańska” a kryzys racjonalności moralnej

Author(s): Grzegorz Hołub / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2008

This article sets out Hugo Tristram Engelhardt’s projects of secular and “Christian” bioethics. In the first one, a kind of pragmatic moral rationality is deployed; whereas the second one is characterised by the religious and communitarian moral rationality. In the article, it is argued that this distinction neglects a kind of moral rationality which stems from the notions of the person and its unique dignity which are available to grasp despite different cultural differences. What makes them so trans-cultural is also a fact that they are enshrined in the all-important international documents, including bioethical ones.

Socjobiologiczne ujęcie zróżnicowania płciowego człowieka

Author(s): Ewa Kowalská / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2008

Sociobiology is an interdisciplinary science dependent on Darwin’s theory of evolution. It owes innovatory capacity thanks to theory that was formulated in 1964 by W. Hamilton, and named “kim selection”. This theory based on assumption, that unit of natural selection is one gene. Only this genetic program will be succeed which will continuously make copies of themselves from generation to generation, in consideration that organism will be carrier of this programs. DNA passing occurs by way of asexual reproduction, or sexual reproduction. It turned out that from two above – mentioned, favorably is sexual reproduction, because create live diversity, that increase in changeable and can’t stipulate environment. Also sexual reproduction, has contribute to elimination of the harmful mutation. Consequence of sexual reproduction is division to men and women organisms. Features that distinguish male from female are biological determined. In that features specify anatomical, physiological and behavior. Diversity of the body structure and behavior exposed in connection with production ovum by female and spermatozoon by male. Consequence is specific division of work. Sociobiology, which adjudicate about animals live usurp the right to adjudicate about social human live style. It was sharply criticized in 1975 after E. O. Wilson published “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis”. Under social pressure Wilson separated human sociobiology from classical sociobiology. However this article doesn’t bring up controversial issue, only try to present diversity male and female in the light of this scientific discipline.

GEOGRAFIJA I EKONOMIJA: MEĐUZAVISNOST I AUTARHIJA

Author(s): Boris Tihi / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

Linking geography and the economy by means of regional market integration brings with it many advantages by enhancing the interdependence between smaller regions and reducing their tendencies to autarchy. The idea of economic integration in South-Eastern Europe is thus wholly justifiable, but achieving it will be impeded by the complex political climate and significant differences in the level of development reached by the various countries. The basic economic indicators for Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as per capital GDP, the unemployment rate, the structure of the economy, the import-export ratio and so on, are much worse than those of most transition countries, despite the considerable international aid the country has received. This is a direct result of the political partition of the country into two entities and the disintegration of the four former macro-regions. Average GDP per sq.km. is five times higher in the European Union countries than in those of the Stability Pact, which in turn is four times that of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This poses a real threat to our chances of soon becoming part of this integrative process. As a result, both assistance from the international community and also increased competitiveness on the part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s commercial enterprises are required. Economic integration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the former Yugoslavia and in the South-Eastern European region as a whole can take place in parallel, even though the natural step to take is from smaller to larger regions. It is in the interest of all the new, independent states that emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia for the region to become more rapidly integrated economically, given their complementary resources and traditions and the absence of any language barriers.

ŠTA JESTE A ŠTA TREBA BITI IDENTITET?

Author(s): Nijaz Ibrulj / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

In this paper the author examines the relationship between the complex notion of identity and social ontology in an attempt to find answers to some disturbing questions: What is identity, and what should it be? Who are the enemies of identity in modern society, and why? What are the central premises of a “strong theory of identity” and a “weak theory of identity?” Who is behind the process of globalization and the creation of the idea of transnational identity, and why? What part do speculative international capital and cultural capital play in globalization? What is the true background to the new social ontology in Europe? Indicatively, the author directs the spotlight onto the relationship between the political economy of national identity, an “anchored identity” which it creates, and the political economy of transnational identity and “mobile identity” or “identity in action”, which seeks a form of functioning through the liberalization of society and the individual. This kind of “liberalization” is taking place by entering into monetary and military alliances, through the instrumentalization of cultural capital and the hybridization of races, nations and cultures to create an international society with interactive paradigms inherited from the old multinational empires, problematic or democratic “consociations,” immigrant societies and nation-states. The author perceives the project of transnational socialization, as the main instrument of the process of creating a new social ontology in Europe, not as a project of inverting national socialization, but as an interactive and recursive reaction in which tolerant people are those who need to be tolerated at another level.

SAVREMENA GLOBALIZACIJA I BIH

Author(s): Momir Ćećez / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

Globalization is indeed a global process, and no one can remain untouched by it, particularly not small countries. The challenge is how to become part of it on the most favourable terms; how can a small country like Bosnia and Herzegovina become part of the process. This calls for extensive study and investigation, but the route to be taken can be indicated, at least. In accepting globalization, one should consider the privileges and benefits it offers, particularly through the usances of the World Trade Organization for developing countries. A clear development policy is required, with the emphasis on the comparative advantages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and on a structure for the economy appropriate to the global market. A subtle analysis of the laws of globalization and the local comparative opportunities for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a thoroughly well-prepared economic policy in regard to the specific circumstances of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will enable us to find ways to involve Bosnia and Herzegovina in globalization trends. Some transition countries have already achieved this; why should Bosnia and Herzegovina not do so too.

ENERGIJA – ZNAČAJ I GLOBALIZACIJA

Author(s): Željka Lekić,Alija Lekić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

Energy is of particular importance for a whole range of human activities, and has a direct impact on the material situation of the population. Energy consumption is rising steadily, for the most part involving fossil fuels, of which the reserves are not unlimited. The distribution of fossil fuel reserves does not match consumption, and the interdependence between the major energy-consuming countries and those where the greatest reserves are located is becoming more and more significant. The impact of energy on the environment is no longer a problem only for the countries where environmental pollution arises. All this contributes to the global nature of energy and to the globalization of the energy industry.

ZNANJE I GLOBALIZACIJA

Author(s): Ljubomir Berberović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

Real basis of all forms of globalisation (economic globalisation being the most prominent) consists of the contituouos, ever more rapid progress of the sciences, and of the consequent growth of knowledge, which gives rise to the expansion of the new technologies in the processes of production and communication. The science is also the system uncovering the critical data about the state and problems of the world. No one can renounce the results of the scientific progress, eventhough many of its consequences put grave difficulties and dilemmas especially before the less developed parts of the humanity. Part of the undesirable consequences of the growth of science and technology is due to the markedly uneven distribution of their goods and can be controlled and modified by political means in the international community. It is essential therefore to distinguish between primary and secondary effects of the globalisation, between objective and subjective aspects of its flow, between inescapable and facultative directions of the development.

ČOVJEKOV POVRATAK U BUDUĆNOST

Author(s): Željko Škuljević / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

U RALJAMA NEOBUZDANE GLOBALIZACIJE

Author(s): Ivan Supek / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

In this essay the author provides an overview of the evolution of industrialization and of scientific and technological progress, which together have led to globalization as we see it today. The underlying factor is the development of capitalism, which now dominates by means of multi-national companies, financial capital and the global free market. In the maw of unrestrained globalization, under-developed and transition countries (such as Croatia, for example) are reduced to a colonial position. Neo-liberalism is the ideology that is used to justify unrestrained globalization as the new order, lacking social justice and independent of the United Nations, the body that should govern international relations. For this reason the consistent application of the Charter of the United Nations and the protection of human rights must be advocated.

SOPSTVO SVIJETA

Author(s): Ugo Vlaisavljević / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

The way of thinking of the world that could be the name most proper to Nancy’s philosophy sees the metaphysical heritage in a different light from even those thinkers who are closest to him. The metaphysical becomes the hallmark of a way of thought that sets another world in opposition to this one, seeing this one as devoid of meaning and the other world as the true world, the meaning and/or the creator of this world. Metaphysics invariably occupies, or is inclined to occupy, the standpoint of cosmotheoros: of an observer who reflects on this world as if external to it. The acknowledgement of the Christian heritage at key points in Heidegger’s interpretation (of the world) serves Nancy as a reliable indicator of the shortcomings of his “critique of metaphysics.” Heidegger’s early concessions to what he himself defined as modern metaphysical subjectivity are none other than approaches to assuming the Christian heritage. In becoming the hallmark of what is most metaphysical in metaphysics, of what eludes even the most persistent attempts to “transcend” it, Christianity cannot be regarded as a mere obstacle to thinking that embarks on such endeavours but, rather, as its moving force or principal inspiration. Christianity becomes enigmatic the moment it becomes involved in the enigma of the world, or indeed equated with it, thanks to the venture of globalization. It is the current globalization of the world that the critique of metaphysics recognizes as an attempt to de-Christianize the world. It is as though every Alterity of Christianity is disappearing in western culture – which is becoming the global culture in the wake of globalization; as though the centuries’ long process of deconstruction of Christianity invariably results in its reconstruction.

JUGOISTOČNA EVROPA

Author(s): Nerzuk Ćurak / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004

In his quest for ever more highly-developed futurological studies based on solid scientific, professional, geopolitical and geophilosophical analyses, the author considers why the principal factors of power in the modern world, even now after the wars in the Western Balkans have been brought to an end, are still studying and observing the most unstable part of the Old World. What prompts old and new geostrategical players to seek the policies best equipped to anticipate future trends in the first decade of the twenty-first century and, in line with their own interests, to find solutions for the post-conflict region of South-Eastern Europe? The very affirmation of this geographical entity at the semantic and political level is a clear attempt on the part of the global western political structure to construct a new regional identity that, with its insufficiently thought-through and narrowly conceived positivist approach, will ostensibly transcend the historical confines of the geopolitical notion of the Balkans. This leads to the conclusion that, for reasons best known to themselves, various national and supra-national states and post-state structures are interested in the region and that the very “subject of geopolitical lust” once again regards itself in a wholly impotent, politically slipshod, fatalistic manner, revelling in the role of geopolitical object. These reasons prompted the author to study the methods, goals and techniques of interpolation and intervention by Europe and the United States of America in the Western Balkans and thus, by using the categorical apparatus of various interlocking sciences, to offer an authentic local (regional) perspective, a local academic interest in the world we live in; a world that, largely without reference to us, is generated for us by unilateral and multilateral power centres. The author is, nonetheless, of the view that the key players on this small “(ir)relevant” chessboard known as South-Eastern Europe must be the countries of the region itself, with interest-based and symbolic commitment to the “inner circle” of countries, among which Slovenia occupies an important place. However, for South-Eastern Europe to start to work as “geography in movement” and as a fixed geopolitical monad, what is needed is a geopolitical sea-change grounded in deconstruction, as the “finally discovered form” of the establishment of geopolitics as a geopolitics of peace.

NAD STRANICAMA PRIJEVODA KUR’ANA ESADA DURAKOVIĆA

Author(s): Marina Katnić-Bakaršić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03/2004