Johann Carl Zinner

Author(s): Peter Winkler / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2015

The study presents a brief biography of university teacher, scientist and intellectual Carl Johannes Zinner († around 1810). His activities are connected in a special way with Košice, he worked at the Royal Academy. Interest in the modern history of the United States led him to make contact with Benjamin Franklin. In consideration of this he obtained a special position in the history of Hungary and belonged to the important persons of history at the late 18th century. The study maps Zinner's life, work as well as scientific and political thoughts of Zinner to the recent or past events.

Természetjog kontra történelem: Leo Strauss Edmund Burke-ről

Author(s): Gergely Egedy / Language(s): Hungarian Publication Year: 0

Цветан Тодоров (1939–2017) – апостолът на хуманизма, мечтателят за свобода

Author(s): Valentina Sharlanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2016

Аналитичната философия в Българи

Author(s): Vihren Bouzov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2014

In this paper I shall try to present the role of analytical tradition in the development of Bulgarian philosophical thought – the critical attitude to it, the acceptance of its results of importance and the sizing of its typical problems. My main thesis is that at present the ideas and problems of analytical philosophers going through a veritable revival in my country.

Свободата в контекста на руската етическа парадигма

Author(s): Dobromir Dobrev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2019

Freedom, in the context of the ethical views of the Russian classics – Berdyaev, Solovyov, Dostoevsky and others, is examined. Emphasis is placed on freedom and the enormous challenges to achieve it. The faith in Man and the possibility for divine incarnation is a distinctive characteristic of Russian religious philosophy. The first part discusses Berdyaev’s statements about God and unbridled freedom. He regarded Christianity as a new beginning in the understanding of freedom. Berdyaev highly appreciates the contribution of Dostoyevsky to this topic. Freedom and related suffering are the big themes of Dostoyevsky. The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is studied.

Příspěvky k dějinám francouzské filozofie společnosti

Author(s): Ivana Holzbachová / Language(s): Czech

The book focuses on three major French philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries: Ch.-L. Montesquieu, Voltaire and E. Durkheim. The selection show the continuity of the author’s interest in French historiographic school – Annales, which frequently referred to Voltaire and Durkheim as scholars who focused on history in a wider, socio-cultural sense. Although Montesquieu is not considered as predecessor of Annales, it would be a mistake to read Voltaire without the context of his great contemporary. Besides that, we can see Montesquieu as a social-political thinker, whom some consider to be a predecessor of sociology and who pointed out deeper foundations of historical events. We must not forget about his introduction of the concept of objective law society and its history, which relates him with Durkheim.

Николай Лоски и Фьодор Достоевски: въпросът за Теодицеята

Author(s): Nina Ivanova Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2020

The article compares various interpretations of Dostoevsky's theodicy (“The Karamazov Brothers”) by Russian philosophers of the Silver Age generation. The focus of the research interest is focused on the views of Nikolai Lossky. A brief analysis of his philosophy – metaphysical personalism – is made, with particular attention being paid to the idea of the over-time of substantive agents. It is shown how this idea, borrowed from Leibniz, plays a decisive role in explaining the origin of evil and the meaning of the suffering of the innocent. A comparison is made between metaphysical personalism and Christian personalism, and the essential difference between them is indicated. Thus, the discrepancy between Lossky's approach and Dostoevsky's attitudes was also highlighted. The main idea of the article is to show the fundamental inability of rational solution of this problem.

CLASSICISM AND ORIENTALISM IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW GLOBALIZATION THEORIES

Author(s): Ljuben Tevdovski,Ile Masalkovski / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2021

The intense and dichotomous relationship between orientalism and classicism that has been created over the last decades of the XX century, reaches new dimensions through the rapid scientific growth, the discoveries of new historical sources and artifacts, and, most importantly, through the paradigms change in many scientific disciplines. This development is also influenced by the rapid and multifaceted societal transformations in the intensively globalizing world of the new millennium. In this context, the paper explores the new understandings of these two important conceptions in the research of the past, and their redefined scope and relation in the light of the globalization theories and through the paradigm of ancient globalization.

Шелинг – от логос към мит

Author(s): Iliana Ilieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2021

This article aims to analyze the beginning of the transition from logos to myth. To incorporate the religious into his Enlightenment philosophical system, Schelling presents a reconstruction of myth. The conceptions of the religious consciousness of the Self from antiquity as presented. The myth embodies cultural reality and the history of self-consciousness, an idea that was later considered by Mircea Eliade. Myths evolve in parallel with human evolution. The need for the development of abstract thinking and the complex social environment presuppose the new mythology. Christianity in history appears as part of the mechanism of human development, which generally symbolizes the transition from mythology to Christianity. Theology must abstract mythologies from the purely divine, but together they participate in the formation of human consciousness.

Putting analysis and construction of concepts into its legitimate position

Author(s): Ewelina Grądzka / Language(s): English Issue: 71/2021

Analytic description, according to members of the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) like Czeżowski, Ajdukiewicz, Ossowska, Tarski is a powerful and an indispensable tool, not only in philosophy but also in any natural science – in psychology especially. It should be equally respected together with empirical analysis and even it is recommended that it should precede any further research. Therefore, the book Analiza i konstrukcja: o metodach badania pojęć w Szkole Lwowsko-Warszawskiej [Analysis and construction: on the methods of researching concepts in the Lvov-Warsaw School] can be recommended to philosophers as well as scientists.

Józef Tischner on Upbringing and Hope

Author(s): John P. Hittinger / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2022

The present article examines Józef Tischner’s idea of upbringing (wychowanie) in establishing the new awareness of solidarity among the Polish workers and people through an awakening to conscience. The present moment served as a revolutionary alternative to socialism. I look at Tischner’s critique of Marxism and the central issue surrounding base and superstructure. Then I turn to his recovery of the Polish tradition of ethical ideals, especially in the person of Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II. The text provides a detailed analysis of the chapter on upbringing in The Spirit of Solidarity. Tischner’s notion that upbringing is a personal bond established in trust to live in hope for improvement in mind and heart is placed in the context of the solidarity as a social bond establishing an ethical community transcending the political quest for power and the need to find an enemy. The text analyzes the various counterfeit forms of education in order to deepen our awareness of the meaning of authentic upbringing. Salient points of his teaching are discussed in conclusion.

Koncepcja etyki naukowej i wizje postępu moralnego w ujęciu liderów polskiej myśli pozytywistycznej

Author(s): Włodzimierz Tyburski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 48/2022

The article presents one of the components of the intellectual legacy of Polish positivism, a philosophical position which proposed a new attitude towards ethical issues. Its representatives put forward the notion of scientific ethics, reducing moral philosophy to it. They strongly emphasized their critical attitude towards traditional ethics, for which there was no place in the positivist model of science, and proposed a distinction between theoretical and practical ethics. Their project was motivated by an ambition to make ethics into jurisprudence, a discipline whose accuracy would make it similar to other sciences. Their efforts were consistently motivated by the idea of making ethics into an empirical and applied science. This scientific ethics would fulfill the important task of forming a set of moral requirements, which, by referring to moral knowledge (“ethology”), would have a chance of influencing the conduct of individuals and society. The new ethics was expected to contribute to the change in social morality and thus greatly support moral progress, an issue which was hotly debated. All positivists subscribed to the idea of progress, including that of morality; however, some differences can be discerned in how they defined progress. Some defined it in realistic categories, while others focused on optimistic visions of the future. Among the first advocates of scientific ethics and of the idea of moral progress, differences notwithstanding, were Aleksander Świętochowski, Julian Ochorowicz, Feliks Bogacki, Władysław Kozłowski, and Bolesław Prus. The article gives an overview of some of their views.

Człowiek w obliczu bankructwa kapitalizmu. Zakończenie trylogii „MaddAddam” Margaret Atwood jako posthumanistyczna utopia

Author(s): Kacper Tochowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1 (21)/2023

In his article, Kacper Tochowicz analyses and interprets the ending of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy. He focuses on the idea of utopia in postapocalyptic literature as a method of negating the systemic assumptions of late capitalism. Taking this context into account, Tochowicz reads the trilogy in the perspective of posthumanist discourse’s search for human and non-human subjectivity. In terms of methodology, Tochowicz’s analysis is based, on the one hand, on the critique of capitalism and, on the other, on the philosophy of posthumanism. Hence, the most important sources of this approach are Fredric Jameson’s reflections of on the place of utopia in the contemporary world and the philosophical theories of Rosi Braidotti and Bruno Latour. Tochowicz’s main goals are, first, to show how Atwood’s novels can be considered as posthumanist utopias, and, to inquire about the role non-human beings in MaddAddam in relation to Homo sapiens. The interpretation’s aim is to describe the mechanisms governing a world in which man no longer occupies a central position.

Trauma Engraved in Stone. Material Community and the Singularity of a Traumatic Affect in Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”

Author(s): Michał Kisiel / Language(s): English Issue: 46/2023

The purpose of this article is to trace the behaviour of a traumatic affect based on the reading of Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It,” a poetic ekphrasis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Tracing the manners in which war trauma is worked through and acted out by the speaker, this paper discusses how trauma eludes both compensating processes. At the same time, the nonhuman or inhuman features of trauma are analysed alongside the nonhuman agency of the memorial. The intersection of both nonhuman modes of being makes it possible to align the trauma discourses with materialist criticism. In addition, the traumatic experience is discussed through its tactile connotations following Komunyakaa’s poem and Maya Lin’s commentaries to her monument. Touch turns out to be a potent category capable of capturing the dynamics of a traumatic affect and a promising trope on which new ethical modes of being together in trauma might be founded. Hence, the aim of this article is fourfold; it attempts to: (1) analyse how Komunyakaa’s poem, informed by the selected developments in materialist criticism and trauma studies, might illustrate and expand the affect of trauma; (2) deepen our understanding of the intersections of the material and the traumatic; (3) investigate how the speculative reorganisation of human and nonhuman boundaries, inspired by “Facing It,” might help in assessing trauma, which necessarily resides at the edges of subjectivity; and (4) propose how the figure of trauma based on vulnerable and transformative limits might revise our understanding of community and formulate an ethical obligation for the traumatic times we live in.

ПИСЬМО TPETЬE

Author(s): Pyotr Chaadayev / Language(s): Russian Publication Year: 0

Размышления наши о религии перешли в философское рассуждение, а оно вернуло нас слова к религиозной идее. Теперь станем опять на философскую точку зрения: мы ее не исчерпали. Рассматривая религиозный вопрос в свете чистого умозрения, мы религией лишь завершаем вопрос философский. К тому же, как бы ни была сильна вера, разум должен уметь опираться на силы, заключенные в нем самом. Есть души, в которых вера непременно должна в случае необходимости найти доводы в разуме. Мне кажется, это как раз ваш случай. Вы слишком сроднились со школьной философией, вера ваша слишком недавнего происхождения, привычки ваши слишком далеки от той замкнутой жизни, в которой простое благочестие само себя питает и собой довольствуется; вы поэтому не сможете руководствоваться одним только чувством. Вашему сердцу без размышлений не обойтись. Правда, в чувстве таится много озарений, сердцу несомненно присущи великие силы; но чувство действует на нас временно, и вызываемое им волнение не может длиться постоянно. Наоборот, добытое рассуждением остается всегда с нами. Продуманная идея нас никогда не покидает, каково бы ни было наше душевное настроение, между тем как идея, только прочувствованная, все время убегает от нас и изменяется: все зависит от силы, с какой бьется наше сердце. А сверх того, сердца не даются по выбору: какое уж у тебя есть, с тем и приходится мириться, разум же свой мы сами постоянно сознаем.

Nietzsche Contra Transhumanism

Author(s): Miloš Agatonović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Zeitgeist of the contemporary age is characterized by the progress of technology and science, which enables the enhancement of every aspect of human life, even of human nature itself. The transhumanist movement justifies the enhancement of human nature, while certain theorists regard Nietzsche as a predecessor of transhumanism in those terms. In the book We Have Always Been Cyborgs (2022), Stefan Sorgner develops a conception of transhumanism inspired by his reading of Nietzsche, recommending the use of gene technologies and cyborg technologies as “the most promising means for expanding human boundaries” (Sorgner 2022: 8). Sorgner’s basic premise is the Nietzschean will to power ontology, according to which the will to power as the fundamental drive underlies all human actions, and so, “moral systems and virtues are also a result of this underlying drive” (Sorgner 2022: 116). The will to power ontology represents a naturalistic worldview which enables “Nietzsche’s task of naturalizing ethics”: in virtues, such as “truthfulness” and “nobility” in Nietzsche’s philosophy, “the will to power can find its immediate expression” (Sorgner 2022: 117).

On Fragments: A Piece of Art and the “I” – or Not

Author(s): Stanley E. Gontarski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

This essay explores the philosophical implications inherent in Samuel Beckett’s most enigmatic and metonymic late theater work, Not I, even as he frequently abjured any interest in philosophy, which he claimed neither to read nor to understand. The play is profoundly ontological, however, and its metonymic stage image engages the classical philosophical conundrum of the relationship of the part, a piece or fragment, say, to the whole, an issue with which Beckett has at least been intrigued for most of his creative life.

Nietzsche, Gai Saber, and Modernity

Author(s): Yunus Tuncel / Language(s): English

“The revival of interest in Provençal poetry in the late nineteenth century was a major inspiration for modern literary thinking. In tracing Friedrich Nietzsche’s engagement with Provençal lyric, Yunus Tuncel elucidates many of the philosopher’s most affirmative and exhilarating gestures. Tuncel does not shy away from difficult questions, such as the seeming divergence between Nietzsche and the Provençal poets in terms of representing gender. Festooned with copious, illustrations and written in a creative and poetic manner, Nietzsche, Gai Saber, and Modernity sits at the borderline of philosophy and joy.”— Nicholas Birns, New York University“Tuncel explores the textual and topographical terrain of the troubadours and trobairitiz to show the spiritual affinity between their gai saber culture and Nietzsche’s advocation for a joyful wisdom, complicating the narrative divide between antiquity, medievalia, and the modern - enriching the study of the medieval poets and the modern philosopher while challenging us to live more fully.”— David Kilpatrick, Mercy University“Tuncel’s Nietzsche, Gai Saber, and Modernity traces an obscure, but fascinating genealogy of modernity from the Occitan culture and its “gai saber” in medieval France, to the troubadour minstrels it created, culminating in Nietzsche’s own joyful wisdom. It is an erudite and exciting read that brings a crucial microhistory back into the light.”— Luke Trusso, New York University

Transcendentalna kritika

Author(s): Igor Cvejić,Olga Nikolić,Željko Radinković / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

In this chapter, we will outline the development of the transcendental-critical approach in philosophy, starting with Kant's critical enterprise, which lays the foundation for transcendental philosophy by returning to the question of the constitutive conditions of the possibility of experience. Transcendental criticism was taken in new directions by neo-Kantians, Wilhelm Dilthey and Edmund Husserl, raising issues of criticism of scientific knowledge, separation of natural and spiritual sciences based on essential methodological differences (criticism of positivism, naturalism, psychologism...) and an adequate method for foundation of sciences. The sections dedicated to them also map the transformations of the transcendental method through its application to new fields, efforts for its adequate foundation, but also discrepancies in the way of understanding and applying the transcendental method. Finally, the limits of the transcendental approach, which become visible in Heidegger's (Martin Heidegger) philosophy, are discussed, offering a critical review of the possibilities and limitations of transcendental philosophy in understanding human existence and experience.

POSTURES OF THE BODY IN MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, TRAVEL JOURNAL TO ITALY THROUGH SWITZERLAND AND GERMANY

Author(s): Elena Jebelean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 40/2025

A traveler of the late Renaissance, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne was also an avant la lettre anthropologist, deeply concerned with all that is human. Accompanied by close companions and servants, he travelled through northern Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, reaching Rome, where he submitted the first two volumes of his Essays, recently completed, for Vatican censorship. His journey also had therapeutic purposes – crenotherapy and balneotherapy—prescribed for the kidney stones that tormented him. No longer a young man – he was already 47, only 11 years left to live – he experienced additional health issues along the way, such as migraines and toothaches, yet they did not diminish his intellectual vitality. Among many other observations, his travel journal not only records his reflections on his own body and its reactions to various treatments but also mentions the customs of the countries he traveled through regarding the body as a biological, ritualistic, aesthetic, political, and economic entity. A researcher of various aspects of reality, this uomo universale maintained a perpetually fresh perspective on the world, further enriched by the experience of travel. Rejecting the well-trodden paths of prejudice, he remained open to an active life, profoundly engaged in the pursuit of a full existence.Following his journey, which lasted one year and seven months (June 22, 1580 – November 30, 1581), Montaigne revisited and expanded the first two volumes of his Essays and wrote the third, reinforced in his belief that body and soul deserve equal consideration and care. He consistently emphasized that, regardless of the trials we face – many of which are beyond our control – our response to them, our state of mind, remains within our power. The most significant is the attitude we choose to endure what life brings. The ability to know ourselves as much as possible, in order to align our decisions with our nature, helps us live properly and face death at peace with ourselves.