In Defence of Utopia. Józef Tischner’s Thinking about the Social Ethos

Author(s): Krzysztof T. Wieczorek / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2022

An important trend in Tischner’s philosophical output was the observation of the phenomena that would occur in the current social life of Poles. The trend gained particular significance at the turn of the 1970s and the 1980s, when the processes that finally led to the systemic transformation began. During this period, Tischner made a successful attempt to reconstruct the Polish social ethos. It turned out that its integral element is the presence of utopian projects to rebuild the social order in the country. Tischner stated in his analyses that these utopias play a constructive role in the social life because they motivate people to engage in the political struggle for deep system reforms. The article presents the content of Tischner’s reconstruction of Polish utopias from the 1970s and the 1980s and the correlation between social ethics, ideological discussions, and political practice of the declining period of the Polish People’s Republic.

The Idea of Solidarity in the Concept of Man Created in God’s Image

Author(s): Marek Petro / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2022

Moral theology concerns the morality of society and acts of an individual or a group of individuals that constitute that particular society. Morality teaches us to properly respond to God’s calling, so that we can fulfil our ultimate goal. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, regarded as a compendium of the doctrines of the magisterium of the Church, can also serve as a valuable source for teaching moral theology. In the first section (“Man’s Vocation Life in the Spirit”) of the third part (“Life in Christ”) of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we can learn that man has been created “in the image and likeness of the Creator” (chap. 1, art. 1), where solidarity plays a significant role. The present paper analyses this issue.

Dignity of the Human Person

Author(s): Adrian Loretan-Saladin / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2022

The Vatican II fundamentally changed the ecclesiastical view towards the human person. Especially in Nostra aetate, Gaudium et spes, and Dignitatis humanae it strengthens the dignity of the human person and personal freedom as base for a world with equal rights for all mankind. Therefore, the council qualified discrimination of all kind as against God’s will. These statements have a huge impact on the necessary further development of theology and canon law.

За автоимунните заболявания на отвореното общество

Author(s): Nikolay Tsenkov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2023

Our paper is a comparative analysis of Alexander Dugin's The Fourth Way and Karl Popper's The Open Society. Both works of the two thinkers are viewed as completely concrete (and real) conceptual frameworks, offering two radically different models of perception of the world, the individual and community relations, of the international relations. Our analysis takes into consideration both the internal, that is the “intimate enemies of democracy”, and the new (old) enemies of the open society that “relapse” through the Fourth Way. Our theoretical research is focused on the parallel between the negative starting premises for the functioning of the Open Society – historicism, utopian social engineering, collectivism and chieftainism – studied in relation to the same principles, which, respectively, are the foundation of the Fourth Political Theory. The article also considers another important problem: the thesis, that the internal, autoimmune diseases of the Open Society, are in fact the preconditions, on which the doctrines of its external opponents are based.

За книгата: Миглена Николчина. Бог с машина. Изваждане на човека (от романтизма до трансхуманизма). София, „Версус“, 2022.

Author(s): Kamelia Spassova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2023

Book review: Miglena Nikolchina, God with Machine. Subtracting the Human (From Romanticism to Transhumanism). Sofia, Versus Publishing, 2022

„Плът“ (𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑜) и „дух“ (𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑠) в Писмо 24 на Павлин от Нола († 431)

Author(s): Rosen Milanov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2023

There is one letter in the epistolary corpus of Paulinus of Nola († 431) where the views of the Late Antique Western writer about the place and meaning of flesh and spirit in the life of Christians, and especially in ascetic life, are expressed with utmost clarity. One part of this letter is based on the 𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ (𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑜) – 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡 (𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑠) antithesis. In this context, body/parts of a body (𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑢𝑠/𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑟𝑎) can be a synonym of flesh, and mind (𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑠) can be a synonym of spirit. This paper explores Paulinus’s concepts about the flesh and the spirit in contrast to the dualistic teachings in Antiquity and in later periods. The levels of usage of these two words and the various senses which could be instilled in them are discussed as well. Everything is examined in the context of asceticism and Christian perfection (as far as it is attainable by humans), to which Letter 24 is dedicated.

The Possibility of the Tragic

Author(s): Evangelos Kalfopoulos / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

In this paper the relationship between humanities as a field and tragedy is examined. Relying on Menke’s analysis of the tragic (Menke 2009) we examine in some depth the ideas of Schelling, Hölderlin and Friedrich Schlegel on the subject and how they positioned themselves on the topic of the possibility of the tragic in Modernity. Accepting that both the speculative idealist model of the didactic play and the model of the romantic comedy tried to overcome the tragic, we conclude that the element of tragic is still a worthy and much needed topic to be part of the humanities in the XXI century and Post-Modernity, primarily as a way of thinking power.

Завръщане на монархическия дискурс. Посткомунистическо разколебаване на суверенитета

Author(s): Ivaylo Znepolski / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2002

София и чудовищата

Author(s): Jean-Luc Nancy / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2002

Борба с детската смъртност- организации, институции, дейности (Исторически поглед 19-20 век)

Author(s): Nadezhda Mihaylova-Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The aim of the study is to investigate the fight against infant mortality in the second half of 19-th century till the 1930-s, by examining it in four selected countries, significantly different in rates of the indicators and development of the healthcare system – France, Great Britain, Russia, USA. Methodology A historical documentary method is applied for achieving the aim. There are some common features of the fight against infant mortality for the defined period in the four countries – recognition of infant mortality as a socially important problem, expansion and enrichment of the statistics, and on their basis development and implementation of measures for its reduction. Risks related to the mother, low socio-economic status, bad hygiene, especially in urban environments are the main reasons for the high infant mortality rates. Physicians and social reformers are the main actors in the development of organizations fighting infant mortality. Charity has a leading role in improving child health in the lack of social policy. During the first half of the 20th century legislation was passed in many countries on the protection of motherhood and childhood, aimed at all regardless of their socio-economic status. Specific structures and organizations for prevention mothers and children are established, good practices such as health-visitors are applied, medical and social approaches are integrated. The fight against infant mortality entered a new stage after the Second World War, grounded on the concept of the development of maternal and child healthcare, when the major scientific inventions in medicine contribute to its successful realization.

Narración y otredad en „Membrana”, de Jorge Carrión

Author(s): Laro Del Río Castañeda,Claudia Sofía Benito Temprano / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 22/2022

Jorge Carrión’s novel Membrana represents itself as a leaflet for the “21st Century Museum”. This intriguing premise produces in the contemporary reader a state of cognitive estrangement, as she needs to contemplate his present as the past. However, Carrión’s repertory of disconcerting strategies does not end here. His narrator is a female artificial intelligence that uses plural pronouns to identify herself (or themselves). Coming to terms with this machine will be the main purpose of the exhibition’s visitor, forced to make sense of an entangled history created by someone with a different sense of time, different ideas about cause-effect relations, and a different understanding of what truth is. This article’s aims is to describe the mechanisms used by Carrión to build the algorithm’s voice while exploring its political and epistemological possibilities.

Kantowska filozofia transcendentalna. Mariana Massoniusa próba ujęcia krytycyzmu Immanuela Kanta

Author(s): Anna Musioł / Language(s): Polish Issue: 48/2022

In the article, Anna Musioł, by referring to the assumptions of Marian Massonius’s doctoral dissertation and taking into account the assumptions of his several smaller works, considers Massonius’s approach to the Kantian system of critical philosophy. Analyzing, inter alia, the problem of analytical and synthetic judgments, and a priori synthetic judgments, Musioł addresses the issue of the possibility of pure mathematics. She considers the problem of time and space and analyzes the ways of presenting Kantian antinomies and the theory of cognition developed in the context of idealism and realism as well as the realism of time and space. Additionally, Musioł focuses on the problem of Massonius’s moderate agnosticism and his scientific approach to philosophy. Finally, she proposes an answer to the fundamental question, Why did Massonius, like the early neo-Kantist Liebmann in 1865, challenge a return to Kant (Zurück zu Kant!) and advocate as necessary the development of a critical formula of the a priori forms of the mind?

Koncepcja etyki naukowej i wizje postępu moralnego w ujęciu liderów polskiej myśli pozytywistycznej

Author(s): Włodzimierz Tyburski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 48/2022

The article presents one of the components of the intellectual legacy of Polish positivism, a philosophical position which proposed a new attitude towards ethical issues. Its representatives put forward the notion of scientific ethics, reducing moral philosophy to it. They strongly emphasized their critical attitude towards traditional ethics, for which there was no place in the positivist model of science, and proposed a distinction between theoretical and practical ethics. Their project was motivated by an ambition to make ethics into jurisprudence, a discipline whose accuracy would make it similar to other sciences. Their efforts were consistently motivated by the idea of making ethics into an empirical and applied science. This scientific ethics would fulfill the important task of forming a set of moral requirements, which, by referring to moral knowledge (“ethology”), would have a chance of influencing the conduct of individuals and society. The new ethics was expected to contribute to the change in social morality and thus greatly support moral progress, an issue which was hotly debated. All positivists subscribed to the idea of progress, including that of morality; however, some differences can be discerned in how they defined progress. Some defined it in realistic categories, while others focused on optimistic visions of the future. Among the first advocates of scientific ethics and of the idea of moral progress, differences notwithstanding, were Aleksander Świętochowski, Julian Ochorowicz, Feliks Bogacki, Władysław Kozłowski, and Bolesław Prus. The article gives an overview of some of their views.

Ja

Author(s): Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury / Language(s): Polish Issue: 48/2022

The Self is the first Polish translation of an excerpt from Shaftesbury’s notebooks entitled Askêmata. The text proves that these notebooks not only complement the contents of his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, the three-volume set which made Shaftesbury a famous and influential philosopher but is to be seen mainly as a kind of moral exercises and soliloquies in which Shaftesbury comments the works of the stoics: Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In one of the previous issues of „Folia Philosophica” three other excerpts from the same set were published: Character and Conduct, Attention and Relaxation, and Improvement; the present one is a continuation of the series.

A Phenomenological Quest for the Concepts of Dasein in Tribal Metaphysical Enterprise: Prospect towards Tribal Onto-Theology

Author(s): Zodinsanga Toimoi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

It is misunderstood that tribal people have no proper awareness of phenomena of a thing. Perhaps it is for this reason that in any academic scholarship concerning tribal state of affairs, metaphysics in particular and philosophy in general has been dislocated from tribal enterprise. Their physical problems such as landlessness, hunger, poverty including liberation from these sufferings have been the age-old headlines in tribal studies. Many have miscalculated that tribal people solely rely on the objective revelation in defining reality without truly participating in it. In fact, tribal people suspend neither subjective nor objective affirmation; they keep harmonious relationship between the two. It is in the harmonious environment through being in the world that tribal identity has been acknowledged, and the objective truth has also been understood. Being-in-the-world (Dasein) as a methodology for doing tribal theology helps tribal in building authentic existence and in direction towards ontological theology.

A Comparative Overview between Zangs gling ma and Previous Texts on Padmasambhava

Author(s): Iulian Lucian Maidanuc / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This paper compares the five texts regarding Padmasambhava written before Zangs gling ma (dBa’ bzhed and four manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang - Pelliot tibétain 44, IOL Tib J 321, IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibétain 307) with the texts from Zangs gling ma, in an attempt to identify similarities and differences between them and to reach conclusions resulting from examining them together. The paper also addresses the question of historical credibility of Zangs gling ma, taking into consideration its connection with dBa’ bzhed, as well as the question on length of Padmasambhava’s stay in Tibet, by identifying texts in Zangs gling ma that refer to places in Tibet where the master stayed.

Wendy Doniger, An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-1964, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger Books, 2022, 254 pp., ISBN: 978-93-5447-285-5

Author(s): Cătălina-Ioana Pavel / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Review of: Wendy Doniger, An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-1964, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger Books, 2022

Mihaela Gligor and Elisabetta Marino (Eds.), Tagore beyond Borders: Essays on His Influence and Cultural Legacy. London, New York: Routledge, 2023, 150 pp., ISBN: 978-1-032-11208-4 (hbk), ISBN: 978-1-032-13334-8 (pbk).

Author(s): Marius Ion Bența / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Review of: Mihaela Gligor and Elisabetta Marino (Eds.), Tagore beyond Borders: Essays on His Influence and Cultural Legacy. London, New York: Routledge, 2023

Mihaela Gligor and Elisabetta Marino (Eds.), Tagore beyond Borders: Essays on His Influence and Cultural Legacy. London, New York: Routledge, 2023, 150 pp., ISBN: 978-1-032-11208-4 (hbk), ISBN: 978-1-032-13334-8 (pbk).

Author(s): Diana-Viorela Burlacu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Review of: Mihaela Gligor and Elisabetta Marino (Eds.), Tagore beyond Borders: Essays on His Influence and Cultural Legacy. London, New York: Routledge, 2023.

Mihaela Gligor & Lipi Ghosh (Eds.), Between Two Worlds: Romania and India. Essays on Expanding Borders through Culture, Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press / Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2023, 183 pp., ISBN 978-606-37-1734-5.

Author(s): Marinică Tiberiu Șchiopu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Review of: Mihaela Gligor & Lipi Ghosh (Eds.), Between Two Worlds: Romania and India. Essays on Expanding Borders through Culture, Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press / Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2023.