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"Serc starania stracone" - szekspirowskie libretto Wystana Hugh Audena i Chestera Kallmana

Author(s): Tomasz Kowalski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13-14/2009

The article deals with the most significant changes the authors introduced in order to adapt the Shakespearean play to operatic requirements, e.g. reducing the number of characters, ascribing new parts to some of the characters remaining or balancing female and male voices on stage. An analysis is made here also of the flow of time inscribed in the libretto and the significance of the scene when the messenger comes to the Princess, saying that the King of France is dead. Their symbolism is interpreted with the additional contexts that were provided by W.H. Auden’s lecture on Love’s Labour’s Lost, which are: court love, court manners, euphuism and the Platonic philosophy and its continuations. This philosophical context allowed both poets to read the play as a process of gaining knowledge of life and feelings which the King of Navarre and his courtiers had declared to study in their academy, but never succeeded.

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"Sophia" Discourse from Antiquity to Christianity

Author(s): Yevhen Kharkovshchenko / Language(s): English / Issue: 56/2019

Sophia doctrine was evolved in European philosophical and religious creativity and was developed in the pre-Christian period (Socrates, Parmenides, Plato), was represented in Gnosticism (Valentinus) and Neoplatonism (Plotinus), in the writings of prominent theorists of Christianity – the Fathers of the Church (Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Macarius the Great, Gregory the Theologian), the ancient teachers of Christianity (Hilarion, Klim Smoliatich). The doctrine of Sophia, The Wisdom of God is shown in the Proverbs of Solomon Biblical Book, and also in the non-canonical books of the Old Testamentum – Solomon’s Wisdom and the Jesus’ the son of Syrah Wisdom. The Sophia doctrine as mysterious wisdom is described in Kabbalah. It was also reflected in the temple architecture and iconography of the Orthodox East, in the wider use of it at the spiritual and moral level. This doctrine has got a systematic form represented by the doctrine of sophiology in medieval mysticism (M. Eckhart, J. Böhme, E. Swedenborg), and “philosophy of unitotality” (V. Solovyov, S. Bulgakov, P. Florensky). These periods of the Sophia doctrine’s development are inherent in such ideas as a natural philosophy’s theme of understanding the world as the integration, anthropological doctrine of the relationship between nature and the absolute, the existence of God in its close association with the world.

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(NIE)-LUDZKIE OKROPNOŚCI WOJNY. CZY GOYA BYŁ WSPÓLNIKIEM HERAKLITA?

Author(s): Adam Woźniak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 46/2019

The article in an attempt to show a certain group of views about war. Within this group war is treated as something exceeding the realm of human influence. In the paper as examples of that approach are discussed philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus and the Francisco Goya’s series Disasters of War. Anti-war series by Spanish painter is interpreted in context of the presence of war culture in the view of Krzysztof Wodiczko.

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(Post)archaiczność obrazu

Author(s): Sebastian Borowicz / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 33/2020

The proximity of the late archaic Greek philosophical breakthrough and postmodernity relies on the analogy of a media and intellectual revolution that takes place in both periods. Greek culture of the 6th and early 5th century BCE gradually moves from orality to literacy, from performativity and affection towards an intellectual view of the world and reflective being, from a world that is shared with non-human beings to the world of human monody. Modernity, however, seems to reverse these trends. Nevertheless, we do not go into the past but reach a higher level of archaicity. From this point of view, postmodernity becomes postarchaicity; this is a chance that in the moment of historical contiguity, vivisection of our culture will reveal still active common places, allowing us to explore images before the metaphysical era. The starting point of the analysis is the question “What is the image?” posed by Maurice Blanchot and his extremely insightful answer to this question.

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A „személyes daimón” elképzelésének alakulása Platóntól Iamblichosig

Author(s): Ibolya Tóth / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2014

In Greek philosophy, the idea of a “personal daimon” accompanying man throughout his life first appears in Plato’s writings. By examination of the relevant passages of the Platonic corpus we find that this idea has undergone major changes even within Plato’s philosophy. However, the basic motif remained the same: the personal daimon’s role is to lead one to his fate. Plato’s heirs felt the need of harmonizing their master’s different conceptions which at certain points seem to contradict each other. In my study, I shall investigate the works dealing with the idea of personal daimon all of which are from Middle- and Neoplatonic authors. These texts show that each era has its unique concept of personal daimon characteristic to it: in Middle Platonism, the personal daimon is intertwined with the idea of Socrates’ daimonion and it has become some kind of reward for a virtuous life, while in Neoplatonism it helps the soul in its quest for salvation.

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A Comparative Analysis of the Concept of Implication in Some Contemporary Logical Systems and Their Origins in Antiquity

Author(s): Doroteya Angelova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2017

This article examines the main characteristics of the concepts of implication in relevant, connexive and paraconsistent logics and discusses the origins of these concepts in Antiquity. It is made a comparative analysis between the meaning of this connective in the three logics in regard to their correspondence to the conditional “if…., then….” used in natural language and presents arguments that the notion of implication, proposed by relevant logic, provides the most adequate formal explication of the conditional connective in the mentioned sense.

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A démokritosi atomok mozgásának problémája Cicerónál

Author(s): Csilla Szekeres / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2007

A De finibus bonorum et malorum I. könyvében a következőket olvashatjuk Démokritos természetfilozófiájáról: „[Démokritos] úgy gondolja, hogy az általa atomoknak nevezett részecskék, azaz a tömörségük miatt oszthatatlan testek úgy mozognak a végtelen űrben, amelyben nincs sem legfelső, sem legalsó, sem középső, sem legutolsó, sem legszélső, hogy az összeütközések következtében összekapcsolódnak egymással.” A concursio szó egyértelműen nem meghatározott irányú mozgást fejez ki: az atomok rendezetlen mozgásuk eredményeként ütköznek össze. A folytatás is ezt az értelmezést látszik alátámasztani, mely szerint a következő melléfogás kizárólag Epikurosé: „Tudniillik azt gondolja, hogy ezek az oszthatatlan és tömör testek saját súlyuknál fogva egy egyenes vonal mentén lefelé hullanak, és ez valamennyi test természetes mozgása”. Következésképpen a démokritosi atomok nem esnek lefelé egy egyenes vonal mentén és értelemszerűen nincsen súlyuk, vagy ha van is, ez nem oka a mozgásuknak.

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A Genealogy of Pythagoras

Author(s): Stephan Scharinger / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

This article deals with different traditions of the genealogy of Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570–480 BC). It shows how three versions of Pythagoras’s lineage were combined in antiquity. Firstly, Pythagoras could be seen as the son of human parents who themselves descend from Ancaeus, the mythical founder and first king of Samos who is closely connected with both Greek and Near Eastern mythology. Secondly, there is the tradition that Pythagoras was the son of a human mother and Apollo, which goes together with the important role that this deity played in the religion of Pythagoreanism from the very start. Finally, the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis holds another possibility in explaining Pythagoras’s genealogy that connects him directly with the shamanistic motif of the soul journey. A distinct analysis of the sources shows that the symbiosis of all three traditions was obviously the most common way of explaining Pythagoras’s genealogy.

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A könnyűség súlya, avagy Philétas cipői

Author(s): Elvira Pataki / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2009

Present-day knowledge about Philetas, the first poietes-grammatikos is extremely scant. According to the only information, which seems rather irrelevant, and which was transmitted by late authors, the poet was extremely thin as a result of his laborious poetical activity. In certain sources (Aelian, Athenaeus) the motif of thinness is completed by a bizarre note: the artist, a leptoteros, had to wear lead weights on his feet against the force of winds. The adjective describing his figure cannot be separated of the primordial aesthetical notion of lepton, and it may suggest a poetological interpretation. In order to support this possibility, the article sheds light on a zoological paradox of Aelien which mentions the peculiar habit of bees, light and musical animals and strenuous gleaners of flowers, who carry stones as counterweight against the winds. The implicit image of a poet as a bee is a traditional metaphor with sacral connotations in the Greek literature, which reappears in the Hellenism. The association of the Coan poet with the bees would fit well into the tradition about the poetry and the creative style of Philetas. He was known to have an ardent interest in the natural sciences (periergos), therefore among his poetical and glossographical fragments more than one item concerning hive, bougony, honey can be found. According to reconstructions, the melissa could have had an important role in his Demeter. On the other hand, the critical announcements of Callimachus and Theocritus on Philetas’ poetry employ the same metapoetical imagery of nature (see the rivalry of the locust and the frog in the 7 Idyll, the opposition of the ear and the oak in the Prologue of the Aitia). The best known work of Philetas, the poem of the alder which is considered as a selfportrait, is based on this as well. Accordingly, the representation of the poet in the anecdote has poetological allusions through the motifs of the slenderness and the counterweights.

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A lét és a jó egysége Augustinus filozófiájában

Author(s): Amália Soós / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

The aim of this paper is to sketch some of the philosophical guidelines of Augustine’s thinking on the problems of good, evil and being. Starting with the early Cassiciacum dialogues, the research continues with the dialog On the Free Will and the anti-Manichaean treatise about the nature of good, focusing mainly on the Neoplatonic influence concerning the idea of unity and on the ways Manichaean doctrines justify the vivacity of Augustine’s philosophical thoughts on good and evil.

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A Pythagoras-életrajzok misztikus elemei

Author(s): Katalin Kocsisné Csízy / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2012

Anhand der Lebensläufe ist es zu vermuten, dass die Gestalt von Pythagoras während des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts sehr populär und die platonische Philosophie durch die pythagoreischen Vorstellungen durchgedrungen war. Aus vielen gemeinsamen Stellen geht hervor, dass die ethischen Territorien der Philosophie in den Vordergrund gerieten. Zwei Vitae, die Werke von Porphyrios und Jamblich beinhalten viele Anknüpfungspunkte. Der Prozess des ethischen Bildungsganges geschah stufenweise in beiden Schriften. Meine Hypothese ist, dass sich diese Bildung nicht nur bei Jamblich, wie es Lurje behauptete, sondern auch bei Porphyrios in einem vierstufigen System verwirklichte, wobei das philosophische Leben, das eine heilgeschichtliche Sendung hat, als mystischer Aufstieg der Seele galt.

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A sztoikusok és az állatok: Húsevés vagy vegetarianizmus?

Author(s): Balázs Gaál / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2014

On the views of Stoic philosophers on animals and vegetarianism no specific study has been written so far. Th e reason for this may be the fact that the Stoics had not paid much attention to animals in themselves. In the center of Stoic philosophy we find man and his intimate relationship to the gods. However, man himself belongs to the class of beings “endowed with soul”, like animals, and shares a common starting point with animals, but when “reason” comes to be developed in his soul, man’s aim is shifted to a higher level: from seeking the fulfillment of the first requirements of nature to virtue. In this study, I wish to have a closer look at the Stoics’ attitude to animals on the basis of ancient Greek and Roman sources, with special regard to eating meat and vegetarianism. In the first part, I shall discuss the epistemological distinction of the Stoics between animal and human soul. In the second part, I shall treat such subjects as the ontological status of animals, providence and teleology. Throughout my analysis, I hope it will become clear that behind the admirable efforts of the Stoics to create a perfect unity in their system, there are grave contradictions which are characteristic of all systems that try to give a single and uniform explanation to the world’s phenomena.

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Accidentalism in Aristotle? Poetics and Ontology

Author(s): Walter Seitter / Language(s): English / Issue: 61/2016

My reading of Aristotle’s Poetics focuses on what Aristotle calls the “mythos” of the tragedy. By “mythos” he doesn’t understand the content of the Greek tragedies: family-related stories of Orestes and Electra, of Oedipus and Antigone ... but the precise scenario constructed by the poet, id est the “plot”. And Aristotle postulates that in the plot of a well conceived tragedy the causal role not only of gods, but also of human actors should be reduced. Th e strong unity of the tragic action (praxis) should result in a close connection of the partial situations, events, turning points. In this sense the substantial agents should be ousted by the “accidents” (Aristotle calls them “pragmata”). Th is artifi cially unifi ed plot should be the “soul” of the tragedy – thus becoming a souled entity, just as a fascinating animal: a new substance.

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ACCIDENTE DE CIRCULAŢIE A IDEILOR FILOSOFICE

Author(s): Sebastian Grama / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 13+14/2017

In regard to the to the art area, the optimalstrategy that we can deduce from the Aristotelian thought is not to oppose in an abstract manner the Idea and life, but to let what is alive to talk to us, meaning to participate to essence in an own way, to come to us and inhabit our discourse not from the outside, but recognizing us, identifying itself in our words. The ruthlessness of Destiny, the immobility of the being as a being would remain a common entertainment if a guy would not assume Oreste's costume, gestures and mask. Accident is just as essential to essence as it is essential to think of an essence of the accident. The effect of this simultaneity can be given (finally legitimate) the name of life.

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Acedia jako rozpacz człowieka pozbawionego dumy

Author(s): Maciej Sławomir Kostyra / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 60/2015

This study investigated acedia in existential and moral contexts, using its descriptions from antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, modern and postmodern times. I have chosen to work with six definitions of acedia. These are: carelessness of heart (the Bible), narcissism (Evagrius of Ponticus), contradiction in will (St. Augustine), sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good (St. Thomas, Summa Theologica,II.2.q 35.1), demonic despair of will to be oneself (Søren Kierkegaard), and self-contempt (Jean-Luc Marion). My approach is inspired by philosophical investigations of Evagrius, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Kierkegaard, and Marion. As we shall see, it is impossible to draw a clear line between carnal and spiritual issues of acedia. Contrary to common opinion, interconnections between acedia and sloth are multilayered and complex, yet the nature and significance of this relationship is incomprehensible for contemporary psychologists who try to turn the attention away from acedia’s dialectical nature. Hence I emphasize that acedia always concerns both carnal and spiritual (not only mental) disorders. If we look at this from the point of view of St. Thomas, we will see that acedia is contrasted to love, not to accuracy. Sloth is evil because it denotes blame worthy sorrow for spiritual good. Seven capital vices relate to the consequences of improper human activity but acedia refers to the condition of people who are unable to perform their social duties, want to do nothing and avoid undertaking moral challenges in the world because of their laziness, passivity, weakness of will, indecision, cowardice. A certain weariness in working, shortage of esteem, contempt for virtuous people are main symptoms of acedia. Oppressive acedia’s sorrow is an inner consequence of being saddened about the good things. Acedia is associated with long-standing frustration of desire. The paper discusses some philosophical and educational strategies for helping to overcome acedia as an evil in appetitive movements.

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ACTUALITATEA NOŢIUNII MIMESIS

Author(s): Mihaela Pop / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 13+14/2017

We believe that the most appropriate way we can approach the Aristotelian thought after 2400 years is to take a critical attitude to see to what extent elements of this thinking are present or have stimulated certain concepts of the contemporary artistic consciousness. That is why I opted for the re-reading of the mimesis notion to which Aristotle, but also Plato, contributed fundamentally.

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Adverbi un prepozīcijas: gramatizēšanās liecības sengrieķu valodā

Author(s): Gita Bērziņa / Language(s): Latvian / Issue: 2/2012

The article deals with the earliest evidences of grammaticalization in the European text tradition, namely, with the grammaticalization of adverbs and prepositions in the Ancient Greek texts of Homeric Epic. The author analyzes varied facts concerning different stages of grammaticalization of these linguistic units in the language of Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Concurrent evidences manifest the functioning of the Classical Greek prepositions as adverbs as well as the process of their further development when prepositions connect more tightly with the oblique cases of nouns, or, on the contrary, unite with verbs to form compounds (prefix-verbs).The author observes also the problems concerning the unambiguous understanding of the mentioned linguistic units (adverbs/prepositions/prefixes) in the process of grammaticalization.

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Aer kao arche

Author(s): Željko Kaluđerović / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 36/2021

In the article, the author identifies two groups of reasons that guided Anaximenes when he had chosen aer as arche of everything. One group of reasons has a scientific origin, while the other group includes less reflected motives that emerged from the common spiritual ambiance where Anaximenes and the other two Milesians had lived. Contrary to the frequently taken attitude about the Anaximenes' regress towards Anaximander when it comes to postulating air as a principle, the author is of the opinion that the attitudes of the last Milesian make progress in comparison with his predecessors. Firstly, the evidence for this statement could be found in his writing style – prose, that points out Anaximenes' retreat from mythological background and an approach to rational discourse. Secondly, Anaximenes reformulated the original context of the word aer into its current meaning of invisible matter that surrounds us, understanding air as "something" rather than "nothing" and setting it as a principle. He also stepped forward while refining philosophical terminology, distinguishing substance and affections. With Anaximenes, finally, obvious differences in the type or quality were reduced for the first time to a common origin in the difference in quantity. To this should be added the introduction of syntagm of condensation and rarefaction, with which he tried to explain the becoming and change, thus, Anaximenes anticipated the discovery of the efficient cause or causa efficiens by this conceptual pair.

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Aesthetic Ethics without Evil. Aischron in Greek Popular Ethics

Author(s): Michał Bizoń / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

In the paper I consider the Greek term aischron as a candidate for a moral concept of evil, focusing on popular rather than philosophical Greek ethical thought. I distinguish between a wide and a narrow concept of evil, focusing in the enquiry on the latter. A narrow concept of evil is limited to a moral meaning, referring to moral agents and actions. In this use evil represents the strongest negative evaluative term of moral agents and actions. I begin the analysis of aischron with a scrutiny of its positive counterpart, kalon. I synthetically discuss the ongoing discussion regarding its meanings. I then turn to the term aischron and its cognates and conclude that its meanings have a similar, albeit not identical, range to kalon. In both cases the semantic field of these terms include a functional, aesthetic, and ethical component. I further argue that these three components are interconnected which suggests that the various meanings of kalon and aischron are not homonymous. On this basis I argue that the functional and aesthetic components present fundamental difficulties for reading aischron as denoting moral evil.

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Aitia – wina arystotelesowska. Zagadnienia definicyjne. Część I

Author(s): Waldemar Gontarski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2012

When engaging in polemics with Pythagoras, Aristotle observed that the retributive function of punishment, as distinguished from the preventative one, does not involve revenge understood as material retaliation (i.e. suffering for suffering, meaning retaliation proportional to the damage suffered). It does not encompass a simple reciprocity, such as suffering in turn (ἀντιπάσχω), but instead shall be considered as a just reciprocity, meaning doing in return (ἀντιποιέω), whereby the degree of mental contribution is taken into account. The classical theory of responsibility, at least under the meaning assigned to it by Aristotle, considers human responsibility by means of reference to the mental capabilities of the actor in respect to the particular harmful action. An action involving human guilt is consequently contrasted with an accidentally caused action. In the works of Stagirite the mental attitude of the actor towards his action distinguishes human causation from the accidental one and from the forced one. Pythagoras, on the other hand, discussed material retaliation, meaning objective responsibility. At the same time, the author of Nicomachean Ethics had already experienced the system of subjective responsibility based on the concept of knowingly caused damage as opposed to the system of objective responsibility involving the objective causal relationship between actor’s behavior and the resulting damage. Aristotle has extended the concept of subjective responsibility to cover both knowingly caused damage (intentional fault) and unintentional fault, whereby the damage is directly caused by the negligent conduct of the actor, meaning the failure of the latter to observe required objective and abstract standards. The mental component and related to it subjectivization involve the actor possessing required intellectual capabilities, but not using them in a way as to observe the aforementioned imposed standards. Nonetheless, the potential mental component is itself not sufficient to establish guilt. Otherwise, all the people (apart from those lacking capacity at all) shall be declared guilty regardless of the fact that the damage was caused by them accidentally.

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