(RE)CLAIMING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TODAY

Author(s): Nadežda STOJKOVIĆ / Language(s): English / Issue: 26/2019

In the huge and most diverse discussion on the influence of the English language as a second, international, or bridge language, there are distinctive voices drawing attention to the fact that this language as nowadays so widely used in innumerable contexts, is no longer ‘owned’ by the community of speakers to whom it is mother language, those primarily of the countries from where English language originates. Moreover, the number of people speaking, or rather using English language today either as their second or foreign language, by far outnumbers people to whom it is native. Situation being such, it is further claimed the concept of ‘standard English’ reflects inherent inequality stance, for if it belongs to everyone speaking it, then insisting on the supremacy on only one of its variants means placing all those speakers of it in a subdued position, and this possibly being yet another facet of English an agent of neocolonialism and globalization (Pennycook 1998, Phillipson 1992). The spread of the English language has been much investigated as oppressive to the formation and expression of personal and collective identities, degrading national languages and through globalization diminishing the impact of local cultures (Bhaba 1990), that it challenges cultures and discourses, being the impetus for continuous re-codification and re-colonisation (Foucault 1980).

(spr.) Sprawozdanie z konferencji naukowej „Wokół poszukiwania życia w kosmosie”. Instytut Filozofii UKSW, Warszawa, 16 grudnia 2015 r.

Author(s): Adam Świeżyński / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

[rec.] Hans Blumenberg, Paradygmaty dla metaforologii

Author(s): Martyna Ujma / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14/2017

Review of: Martyna UJMA - [rec.] Hans Blumenberg, Paradygmaty dla metaforologii, przeł. Bogdan Baran, Wydawnictwo Aletheia, Warszawa 2017, ss. 245

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 formal approach to organization of educational objectives

Author(s): Milan Segedinac,Mirjana Segedinac,Zora Konjović,Goran Savić / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2011

The organization of educational objectives plays an important role in curriculum development process, since it enables the sequencing of educational experiences. The main goal of this paper is to propose a framework for the formal representation of educational objectives, which enables the evaluation of organization of educational objectives. The model is based on domain ontology, Bloom’s taxonomy and objectives organization in the competence-based knowledge space. The model is verified on the case study that evaluates the students‘ achievements in Chemistry field Solutions by conducting an informal knowledge test on the group of 199 14-year-old students of primary schools in the Republic of Serbia. The results obtained from the case study clearly indicate the necessity for including assessment of students‘ achievements in the organization of educational objectives. The proposed model enables evaluation of organization of educational objectives which could be further used for an iterative refinement of the organization of educational objectives.

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 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.

A megértés tapasztalata

Author(s): Károly Veress / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3-4/2006

This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic inquiry on the central problem of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, the question of understanding. The strain of thoughts starts by the critique of the methodological concept of understanding, as it was worked out in romantic hermeneutics and in social sciences. This is proceeded by a touch upon the approach of fundamental ontology, the Heideggerian concept of existential understanding. The study continues with a detailed exposition of the hermeneutical understanding-concept. This incorporates the scaling of hermeneutical experience as the nexus of negativity, openness, finitude and historicity, the connections of the hermeneutical situation and horizon, the development of the anticipatory- and question-structure of this experience. The study concludes with the presentation of understanding as a process of the tradition of questioning.

A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF ONCOLOGICAL NUTRITION TEXT

Author(s): Oana Atomei / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 15/2018

Most non-literary texts discussing cancer may contain narrative elements and can be evaluated as narratives. We analyzed an educational nutrition brochure for patients with cancer. The narrative analysis can identify certain discourse perspectives and values. We identified some characteristics of narrative writing, including themes, characters and events. The narrator is the health professional (the voice of medical science), the main character (the hero) is the oncology patient, the bad character is cancer, and helper and donor characters are the doctor and dietician, diet and food nutrients. Sometimes cancer means fight for life. The human body can be seen as both a character and a narrative space.

A Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Miracle as a “Supernatural Event”

Author(s): Adam Świeżyński / Language(s): English / Issue: 49/2017

The notion of the supernaturality of an event may be understood in various ways. Most frequently ‘supernatural’ means ‘separated from nature’, i.e. different from nature. Thus, what is meant here is the difference in ontological character. The definitions of miracle, present in literature, emphasize the fact that we may talk about a miracle only when the phenomenon takes place beyond the natural order or stands in opposition to it. The description of a miracle as a ‘supernatural event’ contains in itself the reference to that which is natural. The supernaturality of an event means that it surpasses (transcends) naturality. Additionally, this transcendence contains a kind of opposition to that which is natural. However, the miracle as a supernatural event takes place within the scope of that which is natural, although it takes place in a different way from natural events. It seems that this supernaturality may involve two things: (1) the course of the miraculous event; (2) the cause of the miraculous event. We should consider each of them separately and specify what we understand by the supernatural course of the event and by the supernatural cause of the event. If we could prove that we can talk about supernatural events at least in one of the two signaled aspects of supernaturality, then we would be able to define the miraculous event as a supernatural one. The analyses proposed in the paper allow us to formulate the following statement concerning the miraculous event, which is, to a great extent, a critical correction of the traditional way of understanding it: the miracle may be correctly understood as a supernatural event, only when this supernaturality concerns the personal cause of the event and not its course.

A Radical Reinterpretation of Quinean Naturalism and Its View of Consciousness

Author(s): Pamela Ann J. Boongaling / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

McGinn maintains that Quinean naturalism cannot provide a viable position in the debate on the existence of consciousness and the external world for it does not have a place for phenomenal experience in its naturalized epistemology. In effect, it cannot or will refuse to address any version of a sceptic’s argument regarding the lack of sufficient grounds to prove the existence of consciousness and the external world. I argue otherwise by pointing out that Quinean naturalism must provide an account of phenomenal experience to ensure the consistency of its epistemic and ontic assumptions with its naturalistic worldview. In the process, I demonstrate that Quinean naturalism allows us to infer that the best explanation for the existence of both consciousness and the external world can be derived from how the roles of subjectivity and objectivity in our creation and assessment of our conceptual schemes are primarily derived from our phenomenal experience of the external world.

A Revisionary View of Texts, Textual Meaning, and Fictional Characters

Author(s): Anders Pettersson / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Using ideas from John Searle, Roy Harris, Michael Reddy, and Nelson Goodman, I argue that texts, such as they are commonly conceived, lack brute existence. The common idea of texts is a conceptual construction which is useful in practical everyday contexts but not in serious theorizing, where it creates illusions and contradictions. One of these illusions is the idea of an objective textual meaning, a meaning which is “in the text”: what we actually have in the way of textual meaning are the ideas of various persons – authors, readers, and commentators -- about the meaning of the text. When applied to fictional characters, this way of viewing things explains why it makes sense to regard fictional characters as being created and as lacking brute existence.

A survey of web ontology languages and semantic web services

Author(s): Napoleon Alexandru Sireteanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2013

In the beginning World Wide Web was syntactic and the content itself was only readable by humans. The modern web combines existing web technologies with knowledge representation formalisms. In this sense, the Semantic Web proposes the mark-up of content on the web using formal ontology that structure essential data for the purpose of comprehensive machine understanding. On the syntactical level, standardization is an important topic. Many standards which can be used to integrate different information sources have evolved. Beside the classical database interfaces like ODBC, web-oriented standard languages like HTML, XML, RDF and OWL increase in importance. As the World Wide Web offers the greatest potential for sharing information, we will base our paper on these evolving standards.

A szabadság mint a lét struktúrájának meggyengítése

Adalékok a sartre-i szabadságfogalom értelmezéséhez

Author(s): Pál Petki / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2018

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, it is in the human being’s specific rapport to the world that Nothingness appears. Questioning is considered to be the fundamental modality of this rapport. He handles this as an entity with fundamental ontological relevance, owing to the fact that through its structural elements of denying and nihilation, it introduces negatités into the world, and thus it is capable of producing ontological articulations. The basis of Sartre’s specific interpretation of freedom results from these traits of Man’s existence in the world, which also leads to the definition of man as an existence capable of weakening the structure of being. The present thesis contains interpretations referring to these aspects of the significance of Sartre’s concept of freedom.

Abejoti dėl laiko. Belaikiškumas vėlyvojoje Paulio Celano kūryboje

Author(s): Inga Bartkuvienė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 4/2019

The poetry of Paul Celan has a reflected intention to ask about the temporal determination of human being and simultaneously questions the term and definition of time. In may of his works he reflects he the catastrophic transformation, the reflection also includes the revision of the conventional conception of time. He tries to show, that beside the usual forms of historical, causal und linear time, individuals also perceive timelessness. Paradoxically, the accomplishment of a historical event (Holocaust) evokes a consciousness of the historical caesura, and thus of the untold and the inhospitable. In his perception, for the poet, writing (after holocaust) means writing after apocalyptic break, where history does not exist, in other words surrounded by the timelessness. The task of preserving the memory of what happened in poetry goes hand in hand with the awareness of a disorder and often borders on the impossibility of verbalizing what has happened or even being able to express itself verbally. The experience of disconnection from the temporal sequence of events (through trauma) coincides with the moments of speechlessness, emptiness in consciousness, verbal utterance, and time experience overlap. This tendency is radicalized especially in his late work. In this article late works of Paul Celan, that deal with the questions of timelessness and manifestations of it are analysed (“Zeitlücke”, “Die Trombonestelle” “Largo” and others).

About Gymnosophy

Author(s): Sergiu Teodorescu,Aurelia Preda / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2014

The gymnosophy philosophy as a way to substantiate gymnastics; gymnastics and gymnosophy’s etymological explanation; the gymnosophy, considered "the wisdom of the naked" becomes, at some point, the philosopher's way of health and thereby gymnastics becomes practical way of obtaining health , nudity as a means of verifying the execution of exercise; gymnastics supplemented diet since antiquity; spirituality is found in bodily perfection of the gods of antiquity” "to pray for a sound mind in a healthy body"; legislating in antiquity, to gymnastics, to maintain health; physical activity, characteristic of contemporary, induces disease; sport, as a health way, acute need of every man.

Abstrakčiosios tapybos teorijos ir modernaus meno samprata

Author(s): Kristina Budrytė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 38/2004

This article considers some problems of theoretical interpretation, structural analysis and evaluation posed by specific examples of abstract art and explores some relations and differences between figurative and abstract forms of painting. Attention is paid to the historical context from the beginning of abstract art (Kandinsky, Malevich, etc) through its development (particularly Abstract Expressionism: Pollock, Rothko, Newmann, etc) to some philosophical tendencies and art theories of the 20th century. The dominant interpretation of abstract art is based on the premise that abstraction as an artistic movement is linked to modernism. The advent of postmodernism would therefore announce the end of abstraction, and an attempt has been made to push the understanding of abstraction beyond the ontological and transcendental realm where it has often been located. The article analyses philosophical tendencies which relate the emergence of new forms of art in Europe and the USA with abstract painting. Having reviewed theories of abstract painting, a definition of abstraction appears as one of the most radical transformations of modern art in the 20th century.

Abstrakčiosios tapybos teorijos ir modernaus meno samprata

Author(s): Kristina Budrytė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 37/2004

This article considers some problems of theoretical interpretation, structural analysis and evaluation posed by specific examples of abstract art and explores some relations and differences between figurative and abstract forms of painting. Attention is paid to the historical context from the beginning of abstract art (Kandinsky, Malevich, etc) through its development (particularly Abstract Expressionism: Pollock, Rothko, Newmann, etc) to some philosophical tendencies and art theories of the 20th century. The dominant interpretation of abstract art is based on the premise that abstraction as an artistic movement is linked to modernism. The advent of postmodernism would therefore announce the end of abstraction, and an attempt has been made to push the understanding of abstraction beyond the ontological and transcendental realm where it has often been located. The article analyses philosophical tendencies which relate the emergence of new forms of art in Europe and the USA with abstract painting. Having reviewed theories of abstract painting, a definition of abstraction appears as one of the most radical transformations of modern art in the 20th century.

Acedia a lype w pismach Ewagriusza z Pontu. Teo-antropologia ontologiczna

Author(s): Lidia Macheta / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 49/2017

The article examines the problem of the relationship between the two phenomena of the Evagrian theo-anthropology: acedia (listlessness) and lype (sadness). The problem is considered from the perspective of ontological anthropology (a human being is being studied from the side of possibilities and obligations of being oneself). The purpose of the analysis is to demonstrate and explain the differences between acedia and lype in terms of their anthropological justification. This goal is attained through the concepts of existential axiology. The article seeks to demonstrate that acedia and lype point in the human being to two different dimensions: acedia distorts in the existence the sphere of the attitude towards basic values; lype distorts in the existence the sphere of attitudes towards positive values, the realization of which signifies a fulfillment of existence.

Active Doings and the Principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical World

Author(s): Ansgar Beckermann / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Some philosophers hold that it would be impossible for us to do something actively if the physical world were causally closed, i.e., if in the physical world all events were caused by other physical events if they are caused at all. The reason for this view is that these philosophers adhere to what I call the traditional picture of action. Recently, Martine Nida-Rümelin tried to defend this picture by phenomenological considerations. According to the traditional picture a behavior can only count as something an agent does actively if it is ultimately caused by the agent in an agent-causal way. In this paper I adduce three arguments against agent causation: (1) We do not really understand what agent causation is. (2) If agent causation were real, we would be confronted with the strange fact that human agents can only cause certain tiny events in the brain. (3) There is no empirical evidence that agent causation is real. In the last part of my paper I present an alternative account of the difference between what agents do actively and what is done to them.