The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition
Vassányi M. – Sepsi E. – Daróczi A., eds., The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition. Springer International Publishing, 2017, XIX+274.
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Vassányi M. – Sepsi E. – Daróczi A., eds., The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition. Springer International Publishing, 2017, XIX+274.
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This paper sums up the history of Plotinus’s return to philosophical thinking in Western Europe, which started in Italy. The manuscripts of the Enneads arrived from the Byzantine Empire to Vicenza, Venice, Florence, Bologna, and Padova in the first half of the 15th century. Plotinus’s work was spread by the students of the Florentine Manuel Chrysoloras: Giovanni Aurispa, Niccolò Niccoli and others, who built great collections of Greek and Latin manuscripts by ancient authors. The first scholars who lectured on Plotinus were members of the Greek delegation to the Council of Florence (1439): Gemistus Pletho, Basilios Bessarion, and John Argyropulos. They all stayed in, or returned to, Italy, and were teaching in Padova, Florence and Rome. In the second half of the century three good friends, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, were in the centre of a circle of scholars and poets in Florence who studied Platonic works. Pico suggested to Ficino that he should translate Plotinus’ Enneads; the translation was subsequently published in 1492 and included an extensive commentary. Their students then spread the Latin translation and commentary across Europe.
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The Greek word xenos means, among others, ‘stranger’ and ‘unheard-of.’ What role does hearing/listening play in an encounter with a Stranger? For centuries, the reflection on human cognitive capabilities has been continued within the framework provided, on the one hand, by the Greek metaphor of the light and, on the other, by the biblical metaphors of the ‘voice’ and cognition tantamount to listening. The present essay attempts to juxtapose these two traditions and highlight the tension between them. The voice of the daimonion, the encounter of the face of Another, Orpheus, who, having turned to see Eurydice, loses her, and the voice of the girl from a poem by Bolesław Leśmian provide the points of reference for the author in his pursuit of a conceptual grasp of the unheard-of Stranger: of the Stranger conceived as Unheard-of.
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The article discusses the historical and philosophical sources of the split between ‘speaking’ and ‘listening’ in contemporary political discourse, and its paradoxical consequences in the practice of the so-called liberal democracy. The paper begins with a reference to the distinction between freedom and law as proposed by Thomas Hobbes. Subsequently, further liberal (John Locke) and democratic (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) responses to his strong claim are analyzed with their further and in many respects negative outcomes identified by Richard Sennett and Michel Foucault. In the concluding part of the article the ancient understanding of democracy is discussed as an alternative in which the freedom of speech was associated with the obligation to listen (the Greek concept of isegoria).
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In this paper, I consider the role that individual and collective memory plays in constructing personal identity. I particularly focus on the problem of entangled memory (symbolic injuries which demand reconciliation). Analyzing the internal relation between recalling and forgetting, I argue that self-recognition (and self-interpretation) is possible only if the past events find their meaning in the narrative structure. I refer to Ricoeur’s research on memory and to the concept of narrative identity. By emphasizing the fact that temporal experience and the narrative operation are intertwined, I suggest that we need constant narrativization in striving for our inner integrity.
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Bruno Schulz was not only an outstanding prose writer, but also the author of an original conception of myth. According to Schulz, myth and mythicisation are not phenomena belonging to primeval and ancient cultures, but an indelible way of making sense. Man, regardless of historical changes, continues to reach for myth and explains reality through story-telling. Myth plays a particular role in building one’s own biography, whose roots vanish in the mythical past: it is impossible to understand oneself without constructing a private mythology. This sketch is devoted to Schulz’s philosophical views on myth and their consequences for understanding man.
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Nie byłbym za hasłem „Bóg tak, Kościół nie”. Wręcz łatwiej jest powiedzieć: „Kościół tak, Bóg nie”, bo nie wiem, gdzie Bóg jest ani jaki jest. Ale Kościół mi o Nim mówi. W rzeczywistości ja nie mogę żyć bez Kościoła, nawet jeśli ten hierarchiczny Kościół stwarza mi problemy.
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Dziś nie sposób uciszyć tych, którzy głoszą słowa nienawistne, nie sposób zatrzymać raz wypuszczonych w internet zdań, postawić tamy fałszywym informacjom, które rozprzestrzeniają się błyskawicznie. Niekończące się kopie zapasowe i wersje robocze istnieją nie tylko dla tego, co piękne, dobre i prawdziwe.
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The main purpose of this article is to analyze the relationship between post-metaphysical thinking, nihilism and ethics. Nihilism denotes a broadly-conceived cultural phenomenon in which the idea of nothingness plays a crucial role. Different kinds of nihilism may thus be identified with a set of thoughts, beliefs and behaviours dominated by the concept of nothingness. Models of postmetaphysical ethics, developed by two Italian philosophers Gianni Vattimo and Emanuele Severino, are very important manifestations of a contemporary ethical thinking, which – in the face of radical challenges brought by the biotechnological revolution – representatives of very different philosophies, cultures and religions claim to be necessary.
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In order to determine the postulate of ethics in tourism, it is necessary to systematically establish and analyze a group of issues first as part of a philosophical and theological reflection on the moral value of man and his actions. These issues include both general questions concerning the very foundation of the judgment of this kind of human activity, as well as the many specific problems that arise in the relationships and interactions that result from planning and realizing touristic aims. These relationships are primarily personal. However, from a moral point of view, the relationship between the tourist and his reason for traveling, which employees of the tourism industry largely influence, also exists. For, different and specific kinds of relationships arise depending on the type of tourism in which a person participates.
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The aim of this article is to present the research problem of the reconstruction and presentation of the axiological layer of the ethical and social teachings of John Paul II, which is implicitly included in his papal writings and documents. The innovative nature of this research results from the fact that until now none of the known publications of his teachings have systematically and thoroughly laid out axiological problems, which constitute an immanent part of his teaching. Papal teaching is generally subjected to analytical and synthetic research from the point of view of theology, Catholic social science, sociology, political sciences and at times philosophy, but never from the point of view of the theory of values. The research will be the first attempt to synthesize the axiological thought of the transcendental humanism of John Paul II.
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The aim of the article is to determine the place of patriotism among other universal values and a philosophical reflection on its current formula. The analysis is based on the classical philosophy of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, J. Maritain, E. Gilson, J. Woroniecki, J. M. I. Bocheński, M. A. Krąpiec and John Paul II. The article consists of two parts. Part 1 poses several questions concerning patriotism in the light of ongoing cultural transformations. Part 2 deals with patriotism as a virtue according to classical ethics to propose answers to these questions.
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The paper presents phenomenological and hermeneutical approach of human action in 20th century. There were two important cultural phenomena in the twentieth century. On the one hand, the growing expansion of technopoly, which based its operation on instrumental rationality and therefore affected destructively the spiritual realm of man, was growing, on the other hand, there were attempts to apply to the economy humanistic and personalistic vision of management, based on axiological rationality. Studies and projects belonging to humanistic stream are based on the assumption that at turning points of history human labour became deprived of its human nature. Hermeneutical and phenomenological analysis allows to indicate the sources of this dehumanization. Phenomenological analysis has discovered that in a technopoly human being has been deprived of her/his transcendental dimension and reduced to one of the factors of production. Hermeneutical analysis has discoverd eidos of human action: Norwid’s church of work, Brzozowski’s creation of will, Teilhard de Chardin’ a holy march of mankind, and Tymieniecka’s the human creative act. The essence of the phenomenological approach of human action is to build a “community of work” that allows personal development through work as well as cooperation.
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The aim and scope of this paper is encapsulated in its title, namely, the phrase: Primum ethicum et primum anthropologicum et primum metaphysicum conventuntur. The author contends that in the act of cognition we are given a full, complex and rich reality. That spontaneous and universal act of contact with the reality may be divided into particular experiences which are narrower in their scope and provide bases for various philosophical disciplines. The latter serves the purpose of capturing the specific character of this rich reality’s manifold aspects. The paper proves that the unity of these experiences along with the resulting unity of philosophical disciplines consists in the fact that the ethical-experience or anthropological experience-based description of what something is like, turns out to be insufficient, because it is inspired by a question from the sphere of metaphysical experience: why it is like that.
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Philosophical trends referring to the concept of person are characterized by a certain dissonance. The presented article makes an attempt at answering the question about the reality of person. The personal perspective adopted by the author, is a kind of novelty, thus showing that it is impossible to make a specific reflection on the existence of man or his nature without proper reflection on the category of person. This analysis, presented in the spirit of personalism, puts the person in the center, showing its wealth and antinomies. Thus, it attempts to indicate the basic personalist categories such as dignity, freedom, sanctity, etc. Being a person means that we ought to treat everyone as having their unconditional, transcendental value.
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In his paper ‘Why is there philosophy in India?’ (1999), Bronkhorst suggested that rational philosophy appeared in India due to Greek influence as it can be found first in the innovations of the Sarvāsti-vāda Abhidharma rather than the Thera-vāda Abhidharma; Sarvāsti-vāda arose in Gandhāra, a Hellenistic kingdom. The present paper challenges this position in the following ways: (a) The theoretical framework is inadequate. Philosophy, rational inquiry, systematic philosophy and philosophical system are four distinct concepts, they cannot be used as synonyms. (b) Clear examples show that rational inquiry was present in Indian philosophy earlier. The Kathā-Vatthu of the Thera-vāda uses rational arguments, as did the Buddha himself. Sāṁkhya philosophy and several important passages of the earliest Upaniṣads, both earlier than the Buddha, defi nitely represent rational philosophy.
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The intellectual movements of the late eleventh century in the Latin world required translations of works of ancient philosophy and sciences. These became available by way of texts and commentaries by Islamic authors including Avicenna, who was well known to scholars. This paper focuses on elements of Avicenna’s metaphysics and psychology that were original contributions to the philosophical heritage of Neoplatonism and Aristotle, in particular his theory of the inner senses, especially of estimation and imagination; his views of the potential, acquired and active intellect; his thought experiment of the ‘fl ying man’ proving that the soul is an independent intelligent substance; and his statement on the necessary existence of God as the ultimate condition and cause of beings, which are proved also by reason. Avicenna’s account of prophecy is based on his views of the inner senses of the soul and the concept of intellectualisation, and lays emphasis on the preparations of the human soul that explain why someone has a prophetic revelation. Th ese new doctrines contributed to the cultural revival and further development of medieval philosophy when they were adopted by outstanding scholastic writers, or initiated counterarguments and new concepts.
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This paper presents the theology of early nyāya, more precisely the theology of the Nyāyasūtra, Nyāya-bhāṣya, and Nyāya-vārttika. In the Nyāya-sūtra we find an argument for the existence of God which is quite probably the most ancient such argument in the history of Indian philosophy. This fragment – only three sentences long – outlines the concept of God as it is expounded in the commentaries. According to Nyāya, there must be a God who ensures that each individual’s karma produces the proper fruit. We also learn that God is a particular kind of soul, differing in its attributes from human souls.
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The Jarung Khashor stupa is one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites of the Kathmandu valley in Nepal. The present paper uses 16-18th century Tibetan sources, mainly biographies of the lamas, who acted as sextons of the stupa, in order to give a detailed picture of the history of its 16th century reconstruction, and the related legends. It also attempts to explain how a stupa in Nepal became part of a Tibetan tradition reaching far back into the past, and how the constant renovation of the stupa helps to preserve the Buddha’s teaching in an age of decline.
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One of the greatest challenges of cognitive science is the application of its methods to explain the phenomena of normative character. One of the attempts on naturalizing philosophy is neuroaesthetics, which utilizes the development of neurosciences to study the neural basis of aesthetical experiences. This area brings much hope in the context of scientific explanation of art and beauty, albeit faces many methodological problems. The main objection is the inadequacy of methods used to the subject of explanation. Despite some of the objections seem correct, this research programme may fruitfully contribute to the aesthetical thought and provide a scientific background of the mental states of that character.
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