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Československo a jeho rozpad ve světle filosofických teorií nacionalismu
Czechoslovakia and its Disintegration from the Viewpoint of Philosophical Theories of Nationalism
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Czechoslovakia and its Disintegration from the Viewpoint of Philosophical Theories of Nationalism
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In his essay “The Role of Philosophy in the History of Civilization” presented at the 6th International Philosophical Congress at Harvard in 1926, Gilson outlined three general trends among historians of philosophy. Some reduce the history of philosophy to study sources and find explanations of the philosophy beyond itself. Others try to go beyond the source of a given philosophy to find the original intuition that generates it. A third position, which Gilson espoused, is ahistorical. It depends neither on society nor on the creative genius of philosophers; it is simply truth. Systems of philosophy are uniquely conditioned by the necessary relations that link the ideas. If philosophies are expressions of an eternal truth, dominating men and societies, which discovers itself progressively by the mediation of philosophers, philosophy is transcendent with regard to every given state of civilization and the worth of a civilization depends upon the extent it participates in truth. Gilson’s conception of philosophy can go far in restoring Western civilization’s loss of confidence in human reason with its resulting pathologies and threats to human freedom today.
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The author considers John Paul II’s treatment of the topic of evolution in order to retrieve its full content. He starts with an analysis of the Pope’s 1996 Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, especially addressing the problem of the meaning of the words that “the theory of evolution . . . [is] more than a hypothesis,” and the problem of hominization. Then, he explores papal statements from 1985 and 1986. Finally, he concludes that John Paul II’s teaching on evolution appears as fragmentary and ambiguous and, as such, requires greater precision and further development, especially for the sake of the Catholic theology of creation.
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The author makes a comparison between St. Thomas Aquinas’s and Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s conceptions of philosophical wonder and the division of the sciences. He claims that, for Aquinas and Garrigou-Lagrange, (1) science is an intellectual habit whereby we can come to know the order of reality (necessary truths) and the One who orders it (God), (2) science should be so taught as to elicit wonder rather than cold facts and formulas, since it is wonder which urges us on to seek the primary causes of things, (3) the purpose of science is, ultimately, to contemplate the necessary truths about physical and metaphysical reality, (4) science is the means to attaining one of the highest forms of human happiness.
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Reneszánsz filozófia. Szerkesztette: Boros Gábor Világosság Könyvek 4 – Német-Magyar Filozófiai Társaság Közlemények Német-Magyar Filozófiai Társaság – Tudástársadalom Alapítvány, Budapest, 2009. 339 oldal
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While crises are omnipresent in history and historiography, the meaning of the concept of ‘crisis’ is becoming more elusive than ever. The authors scrutinise how historians use this concept with respect to contemporary history, the twentieth century and modernity in general. After briefly sketching the conceptual history of ‘crisis,’ the article addresses the questions of how the concept structures historiographical narratives, what types of crises historians distinguish, and whether we should retain the concept or refrain from using it, considering its vagueness, suggestive power and political instrumentalisation.
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The starting point of the article is an attempt to describe the socio-economic changes that serve as the context in which the crisis of liberal democracy is currently discussed. In this article, the author puts forward the thesis that this crisis primarily concerns the narrative legitimising the system of liberal democracy. She points out that the reason for this situation is not so much the exhaustion of a language but the exhaustion of the formula describing the world at the epistemological level. The purpose of this analysis is to reconstruct two arguments that support this thesis. Firstly, it is the ambiguity of the notion of democracy and its self-reference indicated by Giorgio Agamben; secondly, it is the scope of the concept itself, or the inability to set its limits. The second argument is based on Bruno Latour’s concept of nature and his criticism of Plato’s allegory of the cave.
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The article concerns the policy of ‘war communism’ in Soviet Russia during the civil war. In historiography, there are two dominant views regarding this phenomenon – while some researchers argue that it was a crisis policy (pragmatic and determined by external circumstances), others are inclined to claim that it was a utopian policy (a frantic attempt to immediately implement the communist ideal). Based on the revisionist works by Lars T. Lih, the author argues with the interpretation of the Bolshevik utopian policy, focusing on the analysis of three basic elements of this interpretation, namely: the contingent policy in the countryside, Leon Trotsky’s book entitled Terrorism and Communism and the work entitled The ABC of Communism by Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. Thus, the article is an attempt to create a different picture of the Bolshevik policy in the first years after the revolution from the one that is popular in the Polish historical discourse.
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The present paper aims to investigate the causes of genocidal mobilization associated with the involvement of ordinary people. I discuss the “innocent causes” of criminal choices made by perpetrators who are not leaders, sadists or radicals. To this end, I compared three total genocides, of Armenians, Jews, Romani, Tutsi and Twa, and selected partial genocides. My analysis proves that entire nations or ethnic groups may be exterminated because many people make criminal choices which are motivated by values and norms that in other circumstances would be considered acceptable or even commendable. These choices are made partly due to the structural pressure of circumstances (an ongoing war, a change in the rules of the game [les champs], a new distribution of capital) and are partly derived from dispositions shaped in the course of primary and secondary socialization. Yet, they always require the refl exive mediation of “objective” social forces.
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For centuries, inequalities between people were considered normal. The French Revolution was in favour of equality of all. It was not a completely consistent position. The idea of equality was betrayed in the areas of women’s rights, the preservation of slavery in the colonies and the preservation of the French colonies. The idea of equality was also abandoned in the matter of the mutual relationship between the people (nation) and the revolutionary elite, which was supposed to lead the people. The idea of equality of people before the law – even if poorly implemented – proved to be a lasting effect of the French Revolution. The idea of equality in other areas, particularly in the economy, was scarcely followed up anywhere. Later in history, the communist movement attached importance to equality of people and, in a sense, German fascism also paid attention to equality of German people. The systems born of these movements profoundly betrayed this idea. After the fall of European communism, the question of the scale of approved social inequalities remains valid.
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The article refers to the results of the survey of representatives of the Polish political elite carried out in 2003 and 2004. All of them were convinced that the negative social consequences of the political and economic transformation could threaten the standards of the democracy being built. They also pointed to similar remedies aimed at stopping the occurring undesirable phenomena in the relations between the authorities and citizens. The most important question posed in the article is whether, in the over fourteen years that have passed since that time, politicians have managed to block the negative tendencies and make up for their effects; whether the political elite have managed to avoid a kind of ‘transformation trap’ caused by the negative consequences of their previous actions. This question is answered based on the analysis of one decision. Evidence that the previously recorded dysfunctions were overcome and traces of the effectiveness of the remedies applied are sought in the study of the decision-making process. This decision concerns the education reform, finally approved by the President of Poland in 2017. It had extremely strong social resonance. It is thus a convenient field of observation of the nature of relations between politicians and society as well as between politicians. The fact that the ruling class pushed their own reform bill without taking into account the interests of the social groups contesting it – which is symbolised by a chalk mound made during one of their protests – indicates the elite’s failure.
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Walter Block, an American economist and political philosopher, is a special case among libertarians, including anarcho-capitalist ones. His defence of certain behaviours that are considered to be immoral and often unlawful, such as prostitution, drug trafficking, blackmail and voluntary slavery, makes a typical libertarian anti-state rhetoric quite moderate. In his work entitled Defending the Undefendable, Block defends those whom society has made scapegoats by assigning all the worst behaviours to them. He re-evaluates the traditional way of perceiving ‘villains’ who turn out to be the heroes of the free market in libertarian ideology. This article analyses two cases defended by Block and explains their grounding in the doctrine of libertarianism. These are prostitution and the distribution of drugs. The concept of victimless crime is used to explain the essence of the problem, which is radically different from the dominant images of some unlawful acts.
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“Propter hoc enim datus est nobis sermo, ut praesto nobis faciunt mutuae voluntatis indicia”: this quotation from Calcidus’ translation of Plato’s Timaeus was a motto of the 13t century Modist grammarians in their attempts to specify the scientific goal of grammar as a discipline responsible for the transmission of concepts and emotions from one human subject to another. In the modistically inspired grammar of John of Glogovia, presented in the end of the 15th century at the University of Cracow, this reference to Plato is followed by a comment: “Sermo significativus est aggregatum ex pluribus vocis, per quod unus potest alteri exprimere mentis conceptum.” In agreement with the Modist tradition, this specific linguistic relation between people is possible thanks to the modes of signification, which are ultimately grounded in reality through the mediation of modes of understanding. Language categories are secondary to the real modes of being of things and modes of understanding common to all people make it possible for them to achieve mutual understanding. In the 15th century, in grammatical texts taught in Cracow, and above all in of John of Glogovia’s handbooks, one can see how later medieval philosophy of language tried to find a suitable form of semantic adequacy binding particular language categories with things to which they referred to with the help of various forms of tradition of both positive and Modist grammar. Substantives, the non-evident gender of nouns and the not fully specified language function of interjections are just a few examples of the categories whose understanding often depends on the explanation of the way in which a human soul operates on the discovery of seemingly non-evident modes of the being of things that are subjects of linguistic description.
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The answer to the question about the meaning of life gives a man a sense of mental stability and inner peace. Nowadays, when human life is marked by manipulations through information and modern technologies, the critical judgment, the ability to self-reflection and the ability to shape one’s own sense of life are lost. The author claims that the answer to the question about the meaning of life can only be found in the context of time, place, culture and current events. Ответ на вопрос о смысл жизни дает человеку чувство душевной стабильности и внутреннего покоя. В настоящее время, когда человеческая жизнь характеризуется манипуляциями с помощью информации и современных технологий, теряются критическое суждение, способность к саморефлексии и способность формированя собственного чувства жизни. Автор утверждает, что ответ на вопрос о смысл жизни можно найти только в контексте времени, места, культуры и текущих событий.
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The author to considers what circumstances contributed to the emergence of philosophy. Why was philosophy created only in the Greek world? What were the components of this cultural soil? He puts them in order from the most general to the most specific ones. The most general features were: the type of religion (without the holy books), the national character, agonality, merchandising and geographical conditions. The political system was a less general feature (polis, agora, “discussion culture”); and the specific feature was the cosmopolitan and multicultural character of Miletus – a rich port city. As a result appears the culture, which generates science and technology, changing our world. The author also indicates the opportunities and threats related to technical and civilization progress. Автор рассматривает, какие обстоятельства способствовали возникновению философии. Почему философия – в отличие от религии – была создана только в греческом мире? Каковы были составляющие этой культурной почвы? Автор упорядочивает их от самых общих до самых конкретных. До самых общих автор включает тип религии (непрофетический), национальный характер, агоничность, купечество и географические условия; средне – политическая система (полис, агора, «дискуссионная культура»); до самых конкретных – космополитический и мультикультурный характер Милета – богатого портового города. В результате является культура, которая порождает науку и технику, изменила наш мир. Автор также указывает на возможности и угрозы связанные с техническим и цивилизационным прогрессом.
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The article attempts to critically analyse the recent book by Jan Kurowicki Estetyczne przysłony rzeczywistości (Eseje z nowej estetyki społecznej) [Aesthetic Apertures of Reality (Essays on the New Social Aesthetics)]. The author researches our everyday reality, seeking what is aesthetically marked. The author unveils the form and reception of aesthetic values which are socially determined. His book is a particularly important contribution to the ongoing discussion on the role of culture in the contemporary society.
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