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Георги Попов. Старобългарска църковна поезия за Рождество Христово и Богоявление. Книга първа. Климента пѣсни. София, Изкуство, 2013. 532 с.
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Георги Попов. Старобългарска църковна поезия за Рождество Христово и Богоявление. Книга първа. Климента пѣсни. София, Изкуство, 2013. 532 с.
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When young, Claude Lefort, was a committed Trotskyist. However, in the mid 50’s he lost his faith in the communist and truly proletarian revolution, which was presumed to lead to a truly socialist society. By claiming Marxism was not a political philosophy, he proposed a new view on politics. The foundation of this new philosophy was the opposition of totalitarianism and democracy. What kind of society it is, totalitarian or democratic, is decided by looking at the authority. In totalitarianism the place of the authority is occupied by one particular person, or a particular group. In democracy, that place is empty. Nobody, or no group may take this place permanently. However, at the same time everyone has the right to it. So democracy as such has no solid foundations; its foundations are undefined and unstable. For Lefort, it is democracy that constitutes revolution, which makes members of the society constantly involved in politics, so as not to allow one person to take that empty place. A question then arises, does permanent revolution really determine a democratic society and protects against totalitarianism?
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The Ottoman chancery documents, such as defters, orders, regulations, are a key source for studying Dobrudja under Ottoman rule, revealing its administrative, military and economic structures. This paper draws on toponymical, topographical and administrative information taken from eight Ottoman registers, all dating from the sixteenth century. The toponymy and the rural habitat are interpreted from a long-time perspective, assessing the continuity between the Ottoman and the pre-Ottoman structures. The Dobrudja case is also placed in the larger image of the dynamics of the Ottoman rural landscape. This article identifies both military and non-military Ottoman institutions in Dobrudja, such a vozar, derbendci, ellici, gümrükçi, müsellem, akıncı. Consequently, it proposes a comparative analysis between the Ottoman power structures and the previous, imperial, Byzantine ones. A chronological and cartographic inventory of the human settlements in Ottoman Dobrudja argues for a reconsideration of their synchronic and diachronic evolution.
More...Олга Младенова, Боряна Велчева. Ловешки дамаскин. Новобългарски паметник от XVII век. София, Национална библиотека „Св. св. Кирил и Методий“, 2013. 536 с.
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A philosopher of politics should not be a social engineer, even if he were to dabble in piecemeal engineering, in Popper’s sense; he should rather be a social surveyor, responsible for measuring a plot of land for development, for which politicians should in turn be responsible. That measured land is ordered by a system of philosophical notions and critical studies, together with comments on the history of political thought. One of the outcomes of a philosopher’s work should be an ordered thought, i.e. objective knowledge that includes genesis and evolution of philosophical notions, relationships between ideas, and presentation of the cultural background, from which those ideas originated. In this reconstruction work a philosopher of politics needs to move in between the allowed boundaries of the text under analysis. A philosopher does what others cannot do due to the separation of exact sciences from philosophy. Therefore, a philosopher is not beyond scientific inquiries; he can use them as confidently as representatives of those sciences. It can be argued that a philosopher has a unique position in the social life of every group.
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The starting point of this paper is a dialogue between the grand vizier, Rüstem pasha, and the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople, Gerhard Veltwyck. During Veltwyck’s audience, the grand vizier recalled an unpleasant memory of a previous encounter with another Habsburg emissary, the Polish nobleman Hieronymus Laski. Laski tried to gain the upper hand in negotiations by claiming that the Habsburg emperor had already sealed a treaty with the shah of Persia. As a result, the two emperors were going to attack the Ottomans from both sides, at the same time. To make his threat more vivid, Laski used the metaphor of the sea: “inonderianotuttidoi la Turchiacomo un mare”. Taking this visual image, the article analysis how the supposed alliance between Christendom and Safavid Persia was used as a diplomatic tool during the 1545-1547 Habsburg-Ottoman negotiations. On one side, the Habsburgs had the option to emphasise the Safavid card, as Laski had done, or to play it down, which was Veltwyck’s more diplomatic approach. On the other side, the Ottomans were rather less intimated by this alleged alliance and more curious to find out what the Western Christians knew about the shah’s military strength.
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The main contention of this article is that from the very beginning of the genre to its very end, the Venetian isolarii viewed the Levant as a network of islands fractured by the Ottomans’ conquest. Cartographical narratives of a historical trauma, the Venetian isolarii adopted different strategies for tackling a highly sensitive topic. As the Ottomans were steadily advancing along the Eastern Mediterranean archipelagos, the Venetian cartographers, such as Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti and Benedetto Bordone, were carefully editing the content of their isolarii, expecting from their readers to mentally map the invisible confrontation between the Sultan’s army and the Serenissima. The Lepanto victory brought a radical change of tone, and the mapmakers, such as Tomasso Porcacchi, Giovanni Camocio or Simon Pinargenti, manifestly joined the choir of those who were looking forward to the Venetian resurgence in the Levant. The fracture of the Eastern Mediterranean space was no longer suggested, but visibly exposed. However, it was only a change of tone, as the mapmakers continued to convey the same fundamental ideas. Thus, the Venetian isolarii display a remarkable continuity through time, from its beginnings to the post-Lepanto era and illustrate both the enduring format of this cartographic genre and its adaptability.
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Włodzimierz Bernacki: Myśl polityczna I Rzeczypospolitej, Arkana, Kraków 2011, ss. 436.
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This article aims to reassess the last years of Alexander I’s reign in Moldavia by using two German sources. The first is an anonymous report, most likely written by the bishop of Augsburg in March 1431, which documents Alexander’s change of allegiance from Poland to Hungary. The second document comes from the Archives of the Teutonic Orders and refers to the negotiations between Sigismund de Luxemburg, the Teutonic Grand-Master and Svidrigiello in the spring of 1431. According to these documents, Alexander was actively involved in an ambitious political design that brought together the Teutonic Order, Lithuania and Moldavia, having Sigismund of Luxembourg’s tacit support. The main contention of this article is that the matrimonial alliances played a key role in this political design.
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Michael J. Sandel: Sprawiedliwość. Jak postępować słusznie?, przekład O. Siara, Kurhaus, Warszawa 2013, ss. 367.
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Was Cioran a veritable “advocatus diaboli” as he is explicitly named in the above title? Cioran would never acknowledge this position and, probably, if he were to be confronted with this status, he would never accept it.The most significant aspect of this article is the emergence of such a philosophic view which is made from a secondary angle of the writing. Secondly, another striking characteristic of this article is the manner in which this view can be developed at such a large scale that even its own subject – Emil Cioran – can no longer contest it. Whether or not Emil Cioran was such an “advocatus” it remains unknown. Nevertheless, from this point of view, a coherent interpretation of his writings is undeniable.
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The fratricide war between Alexander the Good’s descendants is difficult to reconstruct due to the lack of sources. Thus, until now, historians dated the beginning of the conflict between Alexander’s sons, Elijah and Stephen, using Jan Dlugosz’s Chronicle. According to the Polish chronicler, the war started in the autumn of 1433, when Stephen received Ottoman and Wallachian support. However, documents from the archive of the Teutonic Order from Berlin-Dahlem shed a new light on these events. It seems that the first conflict between Elijah and Stephen broke in mid-1432, after a joint rule that lasted half a year. Although Stephen was helped by the Wallachians, he was defeated by Elijah, who in his turn was assisted by the Tatars mercenaries sent by his Lithuanian ally, Boleslav Swidrigaillo. As a result, Stephen fled to the Ottomans. Later that year, he once again tried to gain the throne, but he failed despite having the Ottomans’ support. Next spring, in 1433, the two brothers made a short lived peace. The second was ended with Stephen’s victory, which was recognized by the Polish king as the legitimate ruler of Moldavia, while Elijah fled the country. Thus, it seems that Dlugosz compressed the two fratricidal wars, from 1432 and 1433, in a single one.
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Karolina Ciechorska-Kulesza, Radosław Kossakowski, Paweł Łuczeczko (red.) Kul:tura solidarności. Socjologiczno-antropologiczne analizy kulturowego dziedzictwa «Solidarności», Orbis Exterior, Pszczółki 2011, ss. 362.
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Among the around 2,000 codices representing the Venetian chronicles written between the 11th and 18th centuries, we selected the chronicle transcribed by Gasparo Zancaruolo around 1519. The present paper focuses upon manuscript M 2570 at Marciana National Library in Venice, presenting a history of this codex and getting involved in the clarifications referring to the paternity and the dating of it. It also insists upon the sources and influences that this work had in connection with other Venetian chronicles.This paper presents in extenso the fragments in the chronicle that deal with the crusading phenomenon, with the mention that the term of ‘crusade’ does not refer exclusively to the so-called ‘classical crusades’, but also to the various military confrontations between Christians and Muslims both previously and afterwards.
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Łukasz Hardt: Studia z realistycznej filozofii ekonomii, Wydawnictwo Beck, Warszawa 2013, ss. 176.
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Richard Rorty: Filozofia a nadzieja na lepsze społeczeństwo, opracowanie i przedmowa J. Grygieńć, przekład J. Grygieńć, S. Tokariew, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń 2013, ss. 344.
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L’écriture de Cioran est une alchimie entre un penseur et un styliste qui vivent la scission entre vie et la conscience. Il est d’une lucidité tragique, abyssale née en fatalité et désespoir. Certaines interprètes parlent d’une éthique du refus qui instaure un équilibre dans cet « animal malade » qui est l’homme. Un équilibre instable, fragile, mais authentique. Un mal-être transfiguré en écriture cathartique.
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This study focuses on the figure of the Wallachian voivod Michael the Brave and his glorification in the light of the Greek chronicles of Matthew of Myra, Stavrinos the Vestiar and Georges Palamades. The Romanian prince is an emblematic figure of the Balkan region under the Ottoman yoke in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His case is very evocative for the use of heroes embodying the struggle against Ottoman rule in modern Greek literature. However, the fight is led by a prince of Vlach origins, who’s participated in the unification of the Romanian principalities and their emancipation. This study is to determine the reasons for its appropriation as a symbol of liberation by Greek authors, despite tensions between Greeks and Vlachs.
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1688 was an extremely difficult year for ŞerbanCantacuzino, the ruling lord of Wallachia, and for his family. First of all, the Habsburgs’ victories against the Ottomans forced him to hasten a political alliance. The arrival of the Austrian armies at the Wallachian frontiers gave no room for further negotiations. When general Veterani’s troops crossed the border into Wallachia, Şerban Cantacuzino had no choice left. He sent an embassy to Vienna and his representatives, the most important Wallachian nobles, who were also his relatives, signed a treaty. 1688 was a bad year not only for politics, but also for his health. Facing an uncertain future for his family, Şerban Cantacuzino placed some of his fortune in safe places. Thus, he sent money, silver, jewellery and robes to four monasteries: Cotroceni, founded by him, RaduVodă, Câmpulung and Tismana. Şerban Cantacuzino died on the 29th of October 1688 and his wife, Mary, entrusted more of the family goods to close relatives. Nonetheless, soon afterwards, Mary Cantacuzino was forced by the new Wallachian lord, Constantin Brâncoveanu, to give up part of her family fortune. Brâncoveanu, who was actually Şerban Cantacuzino’s nephew, claimed that the former lord failed to pay what he owed to the Ottomans. In order to avoid being sent to Constantinople, together with all her kids, Mary Cantacuzino left the country and took refuge in Transylvania. Much later, she was able to recover some of the family goods that had been confiscated by Brâncoveanu.
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