Existuje minulost?

Author(s): Jacques Joseph / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2009

The text is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author describes the eternalists’ and presentists’ positions as the two basic possible statements of the ontology of time (there exists only what is present – presentism – and there also actually exists both what is past and what is future). The eternalist position and the emphasis it puts on the actual existence of past and future events (expressed usually by the use of present tense or of some tenseless form of the verb) are thoroughlly analysed in order to show that in fact, they end up making strings of symbols that are not correct statements. It is therefore necessary to step beyond these clumsy statements and try to understand more exactly the eternalist intuitions on a deeper, metaphysical level. That is the main concern of the second part of the text, in which the metaphysical implications of both positions are compared. At the end of the linguistical analysis in the first part, we got to a point where it may seem that presentism and eternalism are only different attempts at expressing what is in fact the same understanding of the nature of time, but in the metaphysical analysis that follows, it will turn out that they are not. Presentism and eternalism are shown to be two different ontological approaches of time in relation to space (time as a basically homogenous fourth dimension and time as something essentially different from space). The author then focuses on the consequences these two positions have especially on the concept of the present and of its flow through time. In the end, presentism and eternalism turn out to be completely different positions that – in parallel with the famous McTaggart’s argument – claim a very strong reality of time on the one hand (presentism) or, on the other hand, its utter unreality (eternalism).

Vrijeme – krajolik – intima

Author(s): Slobodan Sadžakov / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 01/149/2018

The paper analyses concepts of time, landscape, and intimacy as presented in Milan Kangrga’s book Praxis – Time – World. These constitutive phenomena Kangrga thematised with the intention, among many, to point out the emergent paths of the modern “image of the world”, its theoretical foundation, and numerous practical connotations. In the light of the latter, the thematisation of the concepts of praxis, time, and world is an attempt to illuminate the fundamental situation of modern human being, more specifically, the understandings that, more or less directly, influence the values and ways of organizing sociability, including the idea of natural environment.

Prvý dialóg o bytí

Author(s): Pavel Cmorej,Jaroslav Martinka / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/1994

Conversation between Pavel Cmorej and Jaroslav Martinka

Descartes és az emberi elme természete

Author(s): Katalin Farkas / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 08/2019

The Cartesian conception of the mind replaced the Aristotelian conception of the soul. On Aristotle’s view, there are two natural ways to demarcate the realm of psychological phenomena: either we consider all functions of the soul, and include not only reason, perception and emotion, but also digestion and locomotion; or we restrict ourselves to what is distinctively human, namely reason, and leave out perception, emotions and appetites. In contrast, Descartes offers a list of mental phenomena which is the same as our list. This is important, because it is more or less this list of mental features that we expect someone to have if we are to enter into an interpersonal relationship with them.

Az isteni Newton Izsák

Author(s): Gábor Zemplén / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 08/2019

The paper overviews Newton’s legacy, major themes in the history of the reception of the Principia, and the Opticks. It describes the idiosyncratic ways Newton used mathematical modelling and literary strategies to present the content of his research in a form wellbuttressed against criticism. Some strands of the historiography of Newton’s reception are also discussed, including the Newtonian style (I.B. Cohen) and the alleged metaphysical barbarism (Burtt).

ALTE UND NEUE KOPERNIKANISCHE GEGENWENDE

Author(s): Bianka Boros / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2019

This paper deals with Nicolai Hartmann’s realism in light of its contemporary critics and recent concepts of realism. The main topic of the article is the so-called Copernican counter-revolution, which is the decisive factor both in Hartmann’s ontology and in the recent realist projects. In Hartmann’s text the Copernican counter-revolution means the rehabilitation of ontology, which is realized through the critique of the one-sided epistemological interest of logical idealism. We enter on the same path following the program of new realism, which arises against constructivism. While Maurizio Ferraris emphasizes the distinction between epistemological and ontological perspective and wants to identify those application fields, the point of Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology is the coequality of beings.He achieves an anti-Copernican perspective, which means that the human-world relation loses its priority.He also invents a litmus test of realist theories: A true realism should treat all relations between beings equally. Initially I’m examining Hartmann’s realism, also called realism ‘without ism,’ in its contemporary context, followed by the analysis of the acts that can provide the givenness of reality. These examinations will highlight the similarities between Ferraris’ and Hartmann’s realism, especially the ontologically motivated conception of the act of cognition, correspondingly the concept of resistance.In the subsequent analysis of experience of resistance, Max Scheler’s concept is highly relevant. Scheler’s ideas are based on the critique of Wilhelm Dithey’s and Martin Heidegger’s definition of resistance. The last chapter submits Hartmann’s realism to Harman’s litmus test, whereby Hartmann’s realism proves itself to be a sustainable, modern theory.

DER VORRANG DER VORGÄNGE. HARTMANN, WHITEHEAD UND ARISTOTELES ÜBER WERDEN UND VERGEHEN

Author(s): MARTIN HÄHNEL / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2019

The following paper presents the three most powerful approaches to the metaphysical phenomena ofgeneration and corruption stemming from Aristotle, Alfred North Whitehead and Nicolai Hartmann.After starting with a general overview of the historical developments of philosophical concepts on theissue of generation and corruption, the article sheds light on different criticisms evaluating the classicalAristotelian account of substance. Thereafter, I refer to the work of Nicolai Hartmann whose aim is toontologize the fundamental processes of coming-into-being and passing away while his contemporaryA. N. Whitehead sets up a certain process philosophy conceptually refraining from an Aristotelian conceptionof substance. In my view, both approaches require an overall re-examination of Aristotelianmetaphysics. In his rediscovered and attention-getting work De generatione et corruptione Aristotlegives an impressive account on how to understand substance out of the processes of coming-into-beingand passing-away. Against this backdrop, I finally argue that Aristotle’s conception of becoming iscloser to Whitehead’s process philosophy than to Hartmann’s positivistic ontology because in De generationeet corruptione the self-standing character of substance emerges as a subsequent moment of anencompassing processuality (described as a teleological alternation of generation and corruption). Incontrast, Hartmann claims that the process itself has to be taken as a self-standing substance.

Collapse of the Ontological Gradient

Author(s): Ted Dace / Language(s): English Issue: 24/2020

Because an unmeasured quantum system consists of information — neither tangible existence nor its complete absence — no property can be assigned a definite value, only a range of likely values should it be measured. The instantaneous transition from information to matter establishes a gradient between being and not-being. A quantum system enters a determinate state in a particular moment(being) until this moment is past (not-being), at which point the system resumes its default state as an evolving superposition of potential values of properties, neither strictly being nor not-being. Like a“self-organized” chemical system that derives energy from breaking down environmental gradients,a quantum system derives information from breaking down the ontological gradient. An organism is a body in the context of energy and a mind in the context of information

Trop fautif pour être en faute...

Author(s): Pierre Garrigues / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

Qui est premier de la faute ou du sentiment de culpabilité, souvent obscur ? La question est d’autant plus énigmatique que s’y mêlent de façon inextricable, Augustin le montre, les notions de libre volonté, de déterminisme, de prescience divine qui rendent les critères de reconnaissance fort mouvants. Mais, plus radicalement, la faute qui nous ronge n’est-elle ontologique, c’est-à-dire liée au fait d’être, et d’être déterminé ? // Which is the first between the fault and the sense of guilt, often obscure? The question is all the more enigmatic as Augustin shows, since it mingles inextricably the notions of free will, of determinism, of divine prescience that make the criteria of recognition very moving. But, more radically, is the fault which eats away at us not ontological, that is, linked to the fact of being, and being determined?

Pierre Jean Jouve et la faute

La division de l’homme, l’impulsion du poète

Author(s): Dorothée Cooche-Catoen / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

La faute traverse l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Pierre Jean Jouve et se conçoit comme une source de souffrance intrinsèque à la nature humaine. Parce qu’elle rend à la fois coupable et victime, elle réunit en son sein tous les paradoxes, mais peut aussi se muer en un vecteur de dynamisme pour l’écriture et la création. // Fault is pervasive in Pierre Jean Jouve’s work and is perceived as a source of suffering intrinsic to human nature. Since it carries at the same time a feeling of guilt and victimisation, it gathers every paradox but can also turn to galvanise the process of writing and creation.

Une extrême pâleur

Author(s): Michel Lambert / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

Un homme apprend la mort de Sam Shepard à la radio. Cette information va bouleverser la soirée qu’il passe avec son amie Petite Sœur. // A man hears about the death of Sam Shepard on the radio. This piece of news will change the course of the evening he spends with Petite Sœur, his friend.

Les Chiens

Author(s): Pierre Jamet / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

Un homme reçoit une lettre d’un ami qu’il avait connu et admiré pendant une semaine en son adolescence. Il évoque le temps passé avec lui et accepte de le rencontrer à nouveau, quinze ans plus tard. // A man receives a letter from a friend he’d known and admired for a week in his adolescence. He recalls the time they spent together and agrees to meet him again, fifteen years later.

La Chemise bleue

Author(s): Simon Louckx / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

Un homme se rend dans un théâtre qui s’avère être son lieu de travail. Il y retrouve la mémoire, ses anciens rêves et ambitions au travers d’une ancienne collègue et amie. A man goes into a theatre which happens to be his workplace. He remembers his old dreams and ambitions thanks to a former colleague and friend.

Le marché des idées

Author(s): Pierre Jamet / Language(s): French Issue: 22/2018

L’adaptation comme forme de « pathologie » et de fiction

Author(s): Mihaela-Genţiana Stănişor / Language(s): French Issue: 23/2019

Nous analysons le dernier roman de l’écrivain belge Michel Lambert, L’Adaptation, en insistant sur les stratagèmes que l’auteur utilise pour créer une nouvelle onto-fiction, pour peaufiner une subtile étude de la souffrance, par une double mise en abîme, aussi bien ontique que scripturale, en partant de la reprise dans son roman d’un thème exploité auparavant par le prosateur serbe Alexandre Tišma. Michel Lambert’s latest novel, L’Adaptation, is analyzed here with particular emphasis on the techniques employed by the author in order to create a new onto-fiction and to refine a study of suffering. He does this by means of a double embedded frame, ontic and stylistic, taking as a pretext a theme used before by the Serbian writer Alexandre Tišma.

Retrouver son lieu

Le penseur privé entre réclusion et déambulation

Author(s): Lauralie Chatelet / Language(s): French Issue: 24/2019

Cet article explore les déplacements géographiques du penseur privé et leurs effets sur l’écriture fragmentaire chez Cioran. Entre repli sur soi loin des hommes et du monde et promenades salutaires, Cioran opère un mouvement stylistique entre intériorité et extériorité dont cet article retrace les aléas au fil des œuvres françaises de l’auteur. // This article explores the private thinker’s geographical moves and their effect upon writing in Cioran’s works. Between withdrawal away from mankind and healthy walks, Cioran has a stilistic move from interiority to exteriority that this article seeks to apprehend.

La terre se confond avec le ciel

Author(s): Jean Gabriel Cosculluela / Language(s): French Issue: 24/2019

La terre se confond avec le ciel s’écrit dans l’expérience d’une terre et d’un ciel impossibles, insupportables. À partir d’un récit fragmentaire de l’exil d’un grand-père dans la traversée des Pyrénées, à partir de la perte à demeure d’une demeure, est imaginée une langue se confondant avec la neige, à perte de vie, à perte de vue. Pour aller à la reconnaissance, comme à l’aveugle, d’une vie encore inachevée. The earth merges with the sky speaks about impossible and intolerable earth and sky. Starting from a fragmentary discourse on exile of a grandfather crossing the Pyrenees, the author imagines a language which merges with the snow in order to achieve recognition, like a blind man, of a still not complete life.

Amélie Nothomb, de « l’exil » forcé à l’exil volontaire

Author(s): Imen Kacem / Language(s): French Issue: 25/2020

Le départ d’un pays envisagé comme un paradis terrestre est conçu comme une « Apocalypse ». Or, cette vision eschatologique ne tarde pas à être supplantée par une vision ludique qui est à même de dédramatiser le réel décevant. « L’exil » finit par être le cadre propice à la connaissance de soi. Étant condamnée à être déracinée, Nothomb se détermine à convertir le destin en choix. L’exil forcé se transforme en exil volontaire grâce à l’acte d’écrire. The departure of a country considered as an earthly paradise is conceived as an “Apocalypse”. However, this eschatological vision does not take long to be supplanted by a playful vision that is able to play down the disappointing reality. The “exile” ends up being the favourable frame to the knowledge of oneself. Being condemned to be uprooted, Nothomb decides to convert destiny into choice and forced exile become voluntary through the act of writing.

Le marché des idées

Author(s): Mihaela-Genţiana Stănişor,Răzvan Enache / Language(s): French Issue: 25/2020

Dans la gueule du temps

Les tentacules de l’ennui dans quelques œuvres de Julien Green

Author(s): Anne-Laure Andevert / Language(s): French Issue: 27/2021

Cet article porte sur l’effet anéantissant du temps de l’ennui dans quelques romans de Julien Green. Ses personnages abandonnent toute action et se laissent porter par un temps cyclique qui les enferme dans la vacuité et la vanité de leur existence. Le temps de l’ennui les pétrifie et mime leur finitude. Les voilà dans un vertige existentiel, un malaise insidieux qui leur révèle le vide béant de l’existence entière. This article covers the ravages of time in a few novels by Julien Green. His characters give up every action and they let cyclic time carry them along. That shuts them into a vacuum and vanity-filled existence. The dullness of time paralyzes them and impersonates their finitude. Thus they are overcome by an existential and insidious dizziness that reveals the gaping vacuum of life.