Giambattista Vico i propast Zapada

Author(s): Nino Raspudić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 02/138/2015

Since Giambattista Vico was one of the first philosophers of history who has written about the rise and the fall of the civilisation he is commonly referred to as a predecessor of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Joseph Toynbee. In that sense, Vico’s New Science can be seen as, among other, one of the first theories of the decline of the West. This kind of stand point would represent a simplification and a reduction of Vico’s thought if the meaning of the historical course in his philosophy would not be taken into account. There are two key elements of Vico’s philosophy of history. The first one is the thesis that human can absolutely comprehend only what he has created himself. This makes history comprehensible. Even more, history is an exemplary science. The second one is his Christian understanding of the course of history as a result of the cooperation between human action and Divine Providence. If we interpret Vico as one of the thinkers of the decline of the West the question is what the symptoms of this decadence are. As the possible signs of the Western civilisation crises one can outline widely present phenomena such as: nomadic way of life, promiscuity, lonely and anarchic existence. This reminds us of the age of precivilisation as described by Vico. Furthermore, we can observe the violation of the three fundaments of civilisation which Vico emphasises a crucial for the exit from the beastly stage and for the start of history course (corso): religion, marriage, and the burial of the dead. Among other signs there is also an important shift of paradigms which can be seen in pedocentrism in children’s upbringing. If by following Vico’s description of the fall of the civilisation we diagnose the decadent state of the West what are the three possible Vico’s resolutions of this situation in the 21st century? An emperor who abolishes anarchy and introduces order, a “healthier” civilisation which conquers a “decadent” one or the collapse of the civilisation and the fall into the bestial state?

Is normal science good science?

Author(s): Adrianna Kępińska / Language(s): English Issue: 14/2015

“Normal science” is a concept introduced by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). In Kuhn’s view, normal science means “puzzle solving”, solving problems within the paradigm—framework most successful in solving current major scienti c problems—rather than producing major novelties. This paper examines Kuhnian and Popperian accounts of normal science and their criticisms to assess if normal science is good. The advanta- ge of normal science according to Kuhn was “psychological”: subjective satis- faction from successful “puzzle solving”. Popper argues for an “intellectual” science, one that consistently refutes conjectures (hypotheses) and offers new ideas rather than focus on personal advantages. His account is criticized as too impersonal and idealistic. Feyerabend’s perspective seems more balanced; he argues for a community that would introduce new ideas, defend old ones, and enable scientists to develop in line with their subjective preferences. The paper concludes that normal science has no one clear-cut set of criteria encompassing its meaning and enabling clear assessment.

Barono D’holbacho Pėdsakai XVIII A. Lietuvoje. Libertiniški Ldk Pabaigos Kontekstai

Author(s): Dalius Viliūnas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 74/2013

The article analyzes the religious worldview in Lithuania at the end of 18th century. This worldview en gross could be extrapolated into two major alternatives – catholic traditionalism, that is traditional theism and, second, deism related conjoined with the ideas of the Enlightenment. The problem is raised: Does the more radical alternative to deism, that is, atheism exist at this time? The article attempts to answer in the affirmative. A radical libertine trend in the worldview existed in Lithuania. The works of the best known French atheist D’Holbach were acquired. The article presents a manuscript copy of the text of d’Holbach and considers some ideas related with the fact of its presence.

НАУКОВИЙ ДИСКУРС КУЛЬТУРИ В КОНТЕКСТІ ТЕОРІЙ ЙОГАНА ГОТФРІДА ГЕРДЕРА ТА ФРІДРІХА НІЦШЕ

Author(s): Lyudmyla Troyelʹnikova / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 2/2013

In the article there are the scientific paradigms of cultural reflection as coultourologii base in relation to becoming as fundamental scientific discoursou and practical vision of cultural processes.

Imaju li bliske osobe prednost? Etičke i političke dužnosti uzajamne pomoći

Author(s): Michal Sládeček / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 01/145/2017

The first part of the article explores David Hume’s and Adam Smith’s reasons due to which mutual care is limited to people close to one another, at which point the authors emphasize the influence of both emotional and physical closeness. Contrary to this, Singer’s conception of universal duties implies that from the perspective of morality the particularity of relationships between moral subjects is irrelevant, and that ethical actions should be led by the content, i.e. the significance, urgency, and relevance of needs. This text argues that it is insufficient for duties to be established exclusively on the basis of the needs of person who requires assistance, and that duties as concrete ethical imperatives are inseparable from assignments that belong to subjects as duty-holders. The article analyses in what way the encounter or physical closeness may constitute special relationships. In addition, the text analyses whether, and in what way, residing on the same territory, that is, within the borders of the state, may be accepted as an argument in favour of special duties. The argumentation defending the specificity of duties formed on the basis of closeness would imply that non-citizens in our country, who came here due to extremely bad conditions in their own state, should receive assistance just as our co-citizens.

Europa heute – eine Bestandsaufnahme. Auf dem Weg zur Integration, vom nationalen Prinzip zum Regionalismus

Author(s): Csilla Dömők / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2015

The European integration, institutionalised in the European Union and Community, is one of the most significant and most surprising transformations in the last century. After the first gradual accession, now, almost every Central and Western European Member State has joined into a comprehensive organisation owning extensive rights, which grants its own organisations and rights. The few European States that are not joined, link to it through conventions. The participating States made this merger on the basis of a contract and, in contrast to the historical patterns, it was not established on the pressure of constraint, dictatorship or hegemony. It is a widespread theory that the European Union was primarily only an economic community and only later, after the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht, it became a political union, but it does not meet the happenings. The union has been a political union – even incomplete and rudimentary - since the beginning, not only because of its political objectives, but because of its interest; and it was expanded gradually, with the consolidation of national policies.

BERNARD MANDEVILLE’İN ARILARIN MASALI ADLI ESERİ HAKKINDA BİR İNCELEME

Author(s): Recep Batu Günör / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 22/2016

Bernard Mandeville is a Dutch thinker, known especially for his own works on ethics and economics. His magnum opus is ‘The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits”. In this work, Mandeville argues that all people actually are selfish and this selfishness is both natural and virtuous. In accordance with Mandeville, qualities like kindness and honesty, instead of contributing the improvement of the society, it regrets the progress. Vices appeared even in the smallest part of a society, allow almost all to live in the paradise. The most obvious indicator of this is the prosperty and happiness of the societies in which all people are selfish. Because of everyone from lawyers to doctors and from barbers to clerics are thinking themselves in a selfish manner, an unbelievable prosperity is being appeared in the society. Accordingly, behaving that are benevolent to give rise to a society in which life is impossible. The most obvious reason for that is the pursuing of selfish purposes of oneself creates a sponteneous order. With this concept of spontaneous order Mandeville has influenced Adam Smith and given him a ground for his ‘homo economicus’.

O KATEGORII СОЗЕРЦАНИЯ W NIEPOJĘTYM SIEMIONA FRANKA I JEJ NIEKTÓRYCH FILOZOFICZNYCH KORZENIACH

Author(s): Monika Woźniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 41/2018

One of the most puzzling categories in The Unknowable by Semyon Frank is созерцание - a word close to German Anschauung and sometimes used as its translation. The aim of this article is to analyze the meaning of the category of созерцание in Frank’s book and to indicate some of its philosophical sources. First, I discuss the role the term Anschauung plays in the works of Kant and Goethe. The selection of these two authors allows, in my opinion, to describe both Frank's rooting in classical philosophy and the distinction of his approach. One can distinguish two different cognitive acts which are denoted by the word созерцание in Frank’s work: an immediate, non-discursive and synthetic cognition of objective being as well as the cognition of the unconditional being through experience that overcomes the subject-object relation. I argue that the importance of the synthetic and nondiscursive intuitive cognition can be interpreted as Goethe's legacy in The Unknowable. Although Frank's usage of the term созерцание is rather far from Kant’s (which is evident in his neglect of the distinction receptive/spontaneous, fundamental in The Critique of Pure Reason), the problem Frank attempts to deal with, i. e. the possibility of the unconditioned cognition of being was important for the post-Kantian philosophers (Fichte among others) which makes Kant and the German Idealism a crucial context to understand it.

Страници из... Гергана Динева "Раждането на личността" (София: УИ „Св. Климент Охридски“, 2018)

Author(s): Gergana Dineva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 8/2018

Prikaz: Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-century Europe

Author(s): Vladimir Abramović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2009

Prikaz/The review of: Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-century Europe, I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, London, 2005

Dekartova teistička metafizika

Author(s): Vladimir Lasica / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 11/2018

In this paper I defend an idea that the proof for God’s existence in Descartes represents the most important part of his metaphysics, i.e. of his entire philosophy. Ability to prove God is for Descartes the only way to overcome radical scepticism, which is based on the ontological gap between the mind and the world. Descartes confronts scepticism with the idea that all knowledge begins with the self-evident non-provable premises. The starting point is his “cogito, ergo sum.” This is the basic and intuitive undeniable truth that is evident from the thinking subject alone. Still, the remaining problem is how the self-evidence of the subject implies the existence of the world of objects? Descartes’ solution is the foundation of a new theistic metaphysics based on the proof for the existence of God, which is established on the self-evidence of the subject: subject is able to prove God on the basis of his/her self-evidence alone. After the proof is established, God himself becomes the foundation for any conceptual certainty about the world.

Where are Sunspots? The Practical Method of Galileo as an example of Mental Model

Author(s): Tadeusz Sierotowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 66/2019

After the publication of Sidereus Nuncius, in the controversy with Ch. Scheiner, Galileo developed several arguments on behalf of the hypothesis that sunspots are contiguous to the surface of the Sun, and presented them in his Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti (Rome 1613). One of them, named by Galileo a Practical Method, advocates very clearly the correctness of the hypothesis. In the paper the method in question is briefly described. It is argued that the Practical Method is not a thought experiment, but rather a mental model proposed precisely in order to solve the problem of sunspots’ location.

Nauka w oczach erudytów

Author(s): Paweł Polak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 66/2019

Book review: Adam Adamandy Kochański, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Korespondencja Adama Adamandego Kochańskiego i Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibniza z lat 1670-1698, D. Sieńko (tłum.), wyd. Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana III w Wilanowie, Warszawa 2019, ss. 256.

O TEMĂ MAJORĂ A GÂNDIRII FILOSOFICE OCCIDENTALE: ELEMENTELE OPUSE ALE REALITĂŢII ŞI UNITATEA ACESTORA

Author(s): Claudiu Baciu / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian Issue: 4/2019

This article outlines the efforts of the Western philosophers to find the hidden unity lying behind the world of the opposites. It starts by discussing the Pre-Socratic concept of an original matter. Here such unity was only posited and not yet fully understood. Next, the article addresses the more specific views of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, who endeavored to explain the persistence of the real forms within the decaying world. Finally, it presents the way in which Christianity elaborated a new concept of the divine Creator that marked both the Western medieval tradition and the European modernity radically.

Odnos između religije i etike u transcendentnoj filozofiji Mula Sadre Širazija

Author(s): Muamer Halilović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 24/2015

Among the most important issues in the philosophy of ethics is the question of the relationship between ethics and religion, or whether religious statements are at the same time moral or not. This dilemma leads to many other more detailed questions such as: Did the fi rst forms of ethics originate in ancient religious traditions? Are religious traditions in line with morality or whether ethical statements and ideals stem from religion? Is it possible to have non-religious or anti-religious ethics? Is it possible to have a non-ethical or unethical religion? Many thinkers have given their answers to these questions, but to other similar questions as well. In this way, three general ideological stances on the relationship between religion and ethics have been formed: one group believes that religion and ethics are two totally disparate and unconnected systems, another group points out that these two are identical systems, while the third group promotes the idea that religion and ethics are actually two fully autonomous systems that are interconnected. In this paper, we will introduce each of the three mentioned stances and then go on to analyze the stance in this debate advocated by Mullah Sadra Shirazi, the founder of transcendent philosophy in Islam.

Ontologizovanje prirodnog prava u liku prirodnog prava. Spinoza – deus sive ius naturale

Author(s): Lazar Vrkatić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 7/2007

Kaže se da je Spinoza jedan veliki istočnjački mislilac u zapadnoj tradiciji. Ako je takva tvrdnja tačna, a u velikoj meri jeste, za očekivati je da se i u filozofiji prava Spinoza kreće pod plaštom nedelatnog apsolutnog identiteta, ali, začudo, u tom domenu veliki istočnjački princip se ne iskazuje kao polazište, što ne znači da je odbačen, nego se prvotnim nazočuje sam duh Zapada kroz Makijavelijev princip. Raskol etike i politike, pravičnosti i pravde, to Makijavelijevo čedo, je postulat Spinozine filozofije prava. [...]

Intelekto antrojo veiksmo aiškinimas scholastinėje logikoje Lietuvoje XVI a. antrojoje pusėje

Author(s): Vytis Valatka / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 38/2004

The analysis of the second operation of the human intellect presented in lectures on logics by the main representatives of scholastic logic in Lithuania of the second half of the sixteenth century, Marcin Úmiglecki and Diego Ortiz, virtually belongs to the so-called major logic (logica major). That is, the cardinal object of the above-mentioned analysis was the content of proposition. On the other hand, such an analysis involved some elements of dialectics, or minor logic (logica minor sive dialectica), namely, certain rules of logical square and conversion. Following the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition, Úmiglecki and Ortiz defined the proposition as a correct or false sentence (oratio vera sive falsa). Meanwhile, opposition, equivalence (aequipollentia) and convertibility were regarded as the main properties of proposition (propria propositionis). These properties were also interpreted in the spirit of the scholastic tradition. Úmiglecki and Ortiz traditionally considered necessary propositions the main elements of scientific knowledge. As for the terms of necessary proposition, it was affirmed that neither subject nor predicate ought to bear actual existence. That is, two conditions alone are necessary for these terms: a) there must be at least a logical potentiality (potentia logica) for the existence of a subject (that is, the subject needs not be a contradictory being, such as a circular square); b) such an existence having been assumed, the predicate must be inseparable from the existing subject.

Kategorinis imperatyvas ir kito veidas: Immanuelis Kantas, Emmanuelis Levinas

Author(s): Jūratė Baranova / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 33/2003

This article investigates the reception of kantian philosophy in the dialogical thinking of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas did not pay as much attention to kantian thought as, for example, to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology or to Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, who were his mentors, challenging his acceptance and disagreement. On the other hand, Emmanuel Levinas, trying to state the status of ethics as the prime philosophy, discerned the only similar standpoint to his position in Kant’s approach. He accepted the idea of categorical imperative in trying to distance himself from the architectonics of kantian philosophy. The author of the article suggests that the common theoretical sources uniting Kant and Levinas are their openness to the tradition of Christian ethics, stemming in Kant’s case from its justification by reason and moral law, and in Levinas’ case reaching him through Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s approach of total self-rejection and consciousness of guilt. On the other hand, Levinas was more closed to the sober stability in a kantian understanding of the world than to the anxiety of existential tradition. Levinas relied more on rationalist tradition than on existential thinking. He took the idea of Infinity from Descartes. He interpreted life as the place for happiness. The most interesting thing is that for this assumption he looked for an ally in Kant as well. Nevertheless, the author of the article discerns different approaches to the problem of happiness in the philosophy of both.

Мисията на свободните изкуства: една възможна интерпретация

Author(s): Oleg Georgiev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 25/2019

In this paper, I am questioning the opinion that the Liberal Arts are traditionally perceived as a necessary instrument for “shaping culture”. In this context, it is not by accident that in the last two centuries one of the widespread ideas is to link the development of the Liberal Arts with the concept of culture itself. This view clears the path for the interpretation of egkuklios paidea (Εγκύκλιος Παιδεία) as a common culture, which pre-empts the authentic notion of culture. It prompts the development of a point of view on Liberal Arts, which presents them as part of a self-legislating and self-deploying process known as ‘culture’. In my view, though, a different philosophical analysis of the Liberal Arts reveals that during the Antiquity they primarily assisted the individual in contemplating the structure of being and partially in developing a specific mode of knowledge – phronesis, i.e. practical rationality. Practical rationality is both a way and a condition for personal achievement of moral virtues and personal improvement, rather than some sort of a cultural integration. It is therefore of significant importance to open the possibility for examining phronesis as ground for objective interpretation of the Ancient philosophical ethical and political consciousness.

Heda Festini’s Contribution in the Research of Croatian Philosophical Heritage

Author(s): Ivana Skuhala Karasman,Luka Boršić / Language(s): English Issue: 57/2019

In this text we offer an overview of Festini’s works on history of Croatian philosophy. The article is divided in five parts in which we discuss Festini’s attitude towards Croatian Renaissance philosophers, eighteenth and nineteenth century Croatian philosophers, and two philosophers from the twentieth century (Vladimir Filipović and Marija Brida). Majority of Festini’s texts were published in the journal Prilozi za istraživanje hrvatske filozofske baštine.