A „politikai” és a „kivétel” kategóriája Claude Lefort politikafilozófiájában

Author(s): Lajos András Kiss / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

The present paper focuses on a central issue of the political philosophy of Claude Lefort, namely the special forms of the formation and functioning of modern democracy. Lefort distinguishes clearly the ontic level of politics (parties of the parliament, government and other institutions, etc.) and the ontological level of the political (the symbolically constructed forms of rule). According to Lefort, the rule moves to an empty place, as a consequence of the modern democratic revolutions. From this moment, the rule belongs to those who speak on behalf of the people, but the people is actually formed from the mass of the residents, by their speeches. Therefore, the modern democracy lives under conditions of constant uncertainty, because of its continuous pressure of legitimacy. Sometimes, it can bring modern democracy close to the edge of a precipice; and a kind of totalitarianism seems to be a solution.

A Community of the Shattered: Patočka, Havel, and the Philosophy of Charter 77

Author(s): Jonas Brodin / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2002

The review of: Aviezer Tucker. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka ta Havel. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. 295 pp.

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.

A filozófiai vita természetrajza. Leo Strauss és Kojève vitája a zsarnokságról és filozófiáról

Author(s): András Lánczi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2021

There are a number of writings dedicated to the analysis of the controversy between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève on tyranny and the aim of philosophy. This essay makes an attempt to focus not so much on the contents of their particular debate, but on the character of their exchange. The gist of the argument is that philosophy as such is based on various forms of debates including hidden dialogues, discussions or exchanges of ideas. Methodologically the Strauss-Kojève debate is a blueprint for the quarrel between ancients and moderns in the 20th century. One has to take a side of either historicism or the classical view of politics and the nature of philosophy on the whole.

A kérdezés, a tagadás és a semmi

Adalékok Sartre semmi-elemzéseinek értelmezéséhez

Author(s): Pál Petki / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

Opposite to common thinking and mainstream scientific and philosophical paradigms, Sartre – in agreement with Heidegger ‒ considers nothing as “something”, the interpretation of which can only be conceived within the universality of the category of being, but which has at the same time a constitutive role in its semantic field. These two categories can only be conceived in a kind of onto-logical correlation. The present thesis proposes an interpretation of Sartre’s meaning of nothing, correlated to certain fundamental ways of man’s rapport to being, such as questioning, denial, reduction to nothing etc., conceived ontologically, based on analyses conducted in the introductory part of his work entitled Being and Nothing.

A klímakatasztrófa előszobájában

Author(s): László Sipos / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2021

Szécsi Gábor – Tóth I. János (szerk.): Természet és felelősség. A környezeti etika és nevelés filozófiai alapjai. Gondolat, Bp., 2020.

A nyelv formális megközelítésének a korlátai

Author(s): P. Alpár Gergely / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

Within the philosophy of language there is a distinction between the natural language philosophers and the ideal language philosophers. The distinction is drawn based on the way these philosophers reflect on language and the world. Natural language philosophers stress the context-based feature of meaning, while the ideal language philosophers emphasize the context-free feature of meaning. In my study I want to show that even within the formal study of language, in the apparent absence of any context, the notions of valuation and interpretation help us to understand the meaning of sentences.

A populizmus és a népszuverenitás paradoxonja

Eszmetörténeti vázlat

Author(s): Botond Bakcsi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

In The Social Contract, Rousseau outlined very accurately the problem of the foundation of the social order, a problem that was rather revolutionary in its era from a theoretical point of view, and since then has had several significant implications in modern political thought: “before we examine the act by which a people elects a king, it would be good to examine the act by which the people is a people.” Examining this very act has not lost anything of its relevance, particularly if we imply that contemporary populism brings again into the foreground the question referring to the concept of the ‘people’, which has serious political implications and which could have even more ones worldwide in the future. An analysis of Donald Trump’s inaugural address may raise some fundamental issues relevant to the connection between populism and democracy. The concept of the ‘people’ generated by the performative speech act of “You the People” renders a particular interpretation to the idea of popular sovereignty. The present essay attempts to consider the topic of populism setting off from the paradox lying within the concept of popular sovereignty.

A Prelude to Material Hermeneutics (2021)

Author(s): Don Ihde / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

This paper, originally given in Groningen, the Netherlands, proposed a ‘material hermeneutics’, or, metaphorically, an interpretation which “lets things speak” via new scientific imaging technologies. Such a material hermeneutics would add to, perhaps often displace the usual linguistictextual hermeneutics so refined by Paul Ricoeur. I outline several examples of such a hermeneutics here based on some 40 or more years of technoscience experience.

A propos de la décision chez A. Badiou ou peut-on être atheiste

Author(s): Jelica Riha / Language(s): French,Macedonian / Issue: 1/2006

Je ne me propose pas d’éclairer la pensée d’A. Badiou. Le sujet est trop vaste pour être abordé de manière exhaustive. Il est nécessaire donc de trouver une approche, un angle d’attaque, si je puis dire, plus restreint. Le propos qui suit vise un point et un seul: le point où se dessine la ligne de partage entre la philosophie et l’antiphilosophie: la décision.

A sokféleség két formája és a homogenizáció

Author(s): János Tóth I. / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2019

Diversity is the unity of sameness and non-sameness (difference). In a basic situation, the more significant the difference, the greater the diversity. However, the organic systems based on relatively homogeneous groups, sub-units and structures are governed by special rules. The heterogenization of groups, that is, their dissolution decreases diversity. I propose to present this paradox effect of homogenization through examples taken from biology and social studies. The structural diversity of humanity is closely linked to the objective and subjective sameness and identity of individuals. There are three fundamental, political approaches to relate to human diversity: hierarchy, the approach that emphasizes difference; equality that emphasizes sameness, and equality that emphasizes difference. The first approach belongs to the outworn past, therefore the battle for defining the future takes place between the remaining two approaches. The aspect that these approaches are debating is whether it is the individual form of diversity (globalization, deconstruction) or its structural form (emancipation, sovereignty) that must be promoted.

A Virtue-based Model for Medical Ethics and Practice in Edmund Pellegrino

Author(s): Philemon Ayibo / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

This paper deals with the resurgence of interest in virtue ethics in professional ethics, specifically as it applies to Edmund Daniel Pellegrino’s account in medical ethics. Pellegrino investigates in a clear manner the ethical problems of contemporary medicine from a virtue ethics point of view and offers a virtue-based ethic for medicine as an effective tool and a practical guide for confronting the challenges of modern medicine. His account builds on a thesis of the indispensability of virtuous character traits for a sound medical practice. Pellegrino’s virtue ethics offers a plausible and distinctive alternative to utilitarian and Kantian (principle-based) approaches to understanding and evaluating professional roles. It is hoped that our exploration of Pellegrino’s account will underline the place of a virtue ethics in medicine and stimulate a similar inquiry into social welfare, and into other forms of human professions and disciplines.

Abracadabra! Postmodern Therapeutic Methods: Language as a Neo-Magical Tool

Author(s): Midbar Shapiro Marianna Ruah / Language(s): English / Issue: 49/2018

This paper argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods (PTMs) express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to languages role in the therapeutic process, expressing a novel cosmology. These methods are illustrated in the paper, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional/occult magic, and modern medicine. Finally, PTMs are characterized as neo-magic, bearing features similar to modernistic outlook on the one hand, and features similar to pre-modern magic outlook on the other hand. Thus, these new outlook demonstrate a double appropriation and rejection of perceptions viewed as contradictory traditional magic and secular science.

Abstieg in die Form. Deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur und das beschädigte Leben

Author(s): Jan Behrs / Language(s): German / Issue: 29/2020

In Lukács’ early work, the concept of form is very concretely linked to modern man’s aesthetic experience of loss around 1900 and any attempt to update it hinges on the question whether Lukács’ method can be applied to the present at all. This article undertakes such an application of his method by relating two core concepts from "Soul and Form" – bourgeoisie and sentimentality – to three ›neighbourhood novels‹: R. Schamoni’s "Große Freiheit", H. Strunk’s "Der goldene Handschuh" and H. Fichte’s "Die Palette" all deal with extremely marginalized groups in society, and the question arises whether Lukács’ categories are helpful in describing the form chosen in each case.

ABSTRACTIZARE ȘI FILOSOFIE LA A.N. WHITEHEAD

Author(s): Claudiu Baciu / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian / Issue: 5/2020

Although Whitehead acknowledges the importance of abstraction in philosophy, he criticizes modern philosophy's bias to consider scientific abstraction as reality itself. This article discusses some of Whitehead's views regarding aspects of the evolution of modern science that influenced modern philosophy

Actualization of Axiology Development: Problems, Searches, Solutions

Author(s): Lyubov’ Shabatura,Anton Yazovskikh / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2020

The article examines the concept of “value” in the context of the general planetary process of anomie at the level of local cultures and subcultures, when the possibilities of value-normative regulation of social processes are reduced to a minimum. Under these conditions, the predictive function of axiology has become particularly relevant, and the authors raise the question of the basis for the values evolution reproduction. The search to this answer involves the application of system analysis and retrospection. The study of the main axiological concepts based on the connection between objective and subjective in this perspective allows to identify the main contours of value consciousness that coincide with the dominant concepts: biological (objective-naturalistic concept), social (dialectical-materialistic concept), individual (subjective-psychological concepts) and existential (objective-transcendental and ontological ideal realistic concepts). The material summarizes the main methodological and cognitive limitations of these concepts, which are in fact natural, since they belong to specific contours of value consciousness. At the same time, a number of provisions can be considered as general ones. As a result, the authors hypothesize the possibility to develop a synthetic concept of axiology allowing predicting the development of cultural value core as an imperative of socio-cultural processes.

Aesthetics of Form as Social Philosophy: Re-reading Lukács. Introduction to the Issue

Author(s): Andrew Simon Gilbert,Christine Magerski / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2020

This volume is dedicated to Georg Lukács’ concept of form. The concept itself is understood in the broadest sense as the result of drawing boundaries, which open a framework for communication and social mediation. Form, as Judith Butler aptly remarked with regard to the scope of the term in the work of the early Lukács, is nothing that is added to the expression, but rather it becomes a condition, a sign and the possibility of its subjective and objective truth (Butler 2011). Even more: As Form, according to Lukács, can never be understood outside of its own genesis, the concept becomes the presupposition of a practice of literary and cultural studies which sees itself as the critical reading of the genealogy of forms (Menke 2018). To such a reading, the volume shows, Lukács not only subjected the forms of literature, life and the social, but did so with a degree of lucidity unmatched in literary and cultural studies to this day. If the possibilities of the form-genealogical approach remained largely unfollowed, it was because the problem of form highlighted by Lukács was overshadowed by the dogmatism with which he later tried to solve it.

Alasdair MacIntyre jako krytyk oświeceniowego projektu uzasadnienia moralności (II): Dzieje degeneracji etyki nowożytnej

Author(s): Sebastian Gałecki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14/2017

In the famous “disquieting suggestion” Alasdair MacIntyre has written a hypothetical state of modern ethics as a set of mutually antagonistic, chaotic, irrational and ultimately arbitrary positions. The late work of this extremely popular contemporary Scottish philosopher (although for many decades living in the United States), sometimes referred to “an interminably long history of ethics”, is devoted to mainly two purposes: to prove the arguments put forward in the “disquieting suggestion” and to overcome this crisis. This series of two articles is devoted to the presentation of the first, negative aim of MacIntyre. MacIntyre summarizes the main reasons of the contemporary crisis into the three slogans: incommensurability of terms and languages, the conceptual incommensurability of the rival arguments, and the ostensible impersonal, objective rationality. These three elements are characteristic of all modern ethical theories realizing “the enlightenment project of justifying morality”. As the example, MacIntyre has shown two post-Enlightenment ethical traditions: liberal individualism (negating the social dimension of the person and the communal base of practical rationality) and emotivism, which is based on the negation of rational discourse, leading to persuasion and propaganda in the moral sphere.

Albert Camus’ La Peste and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exile and Imprisonment, Suffering and Death, Defiance and Heroism

Author(s): Francis Xavier R. Salcedo / Language(s): English / Issue: 56/2020

Albert Camus’ novel La Peste has once again sparked the interest and imagination of readers in lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the existential trajectory of Camus’ philosophy, this paper argues that his milieu dialogues with our present context in a very timely and particular way. To present his philosophy as reflected in La Peste is therefore an interesting inquiry considering his distinctive analysis of the different secular and religious responses of the characters to the plague which, in many ways, reflect the current responses of world societies towards the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of humanity’s desire to find ways to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and manage its aftermath, this paper attempts to articulate the relevance of Camus’ thoughts on defiance and heroism in facing the reality of exile, imprisonment, suffering and death. In doing so, I propose to analyze Camus’ philosophy in La Peste in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole analysis will revolve around the central themes of La Peste namely Exile and Imprisonment, Suffering and Death, Defiance and Heroism. Likewise, this reading of Camus’ notions in La Peste in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic brings to dialogue the traditional tension between preserving oneself from the consequences of an environmental crisis and reaching out to others despite the risks it entails.

An Ink–and–Paper Automaton: The Conceptual Mechanization of Cognition and the Practical Automation of Reasoning in Leibniz’s De Affectibus (1679)

Author(s): DUMAS PRIMBAULT Simon / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

On ten loose handwritten folios dating back from April 1679, Leibniz gradually devised, in the course of three days, a full-blown theory of thought that nonetheless remained unpublished and still has received little attention from scholars. Conceiving of affectūs as the driving forces that set the mind in motion from one thought to another and passiones as the inertia opposing such movement, this manuscript results in a systematic psychology understood as a dynamics of thoughts modelled on the mechanical laws of motion for solid bodies. Delving into Leibniz‘s working papers to witness the unfolding of his thoughts, I propose to pay attention to the many intellectual operations that paved the way for his metaphysics. From his reading notes on Descartes to his syllogistically redefining a set of concepts and propositions, Leibniz here defines an affective theory of cognition and sets the first foundations of a combinatorial ontology: his socalled scientia generalis. Focusing on the material practices that govern his use of paper, I would like to show that Leibniz‘s conceptual mechanization of cognition is materially dependent on a practical automation of reasoning reduced to a propositional calculus on paper. Eventually, this contribution is a plea for a media-historical reading of Leibniz‘s working papers.