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![[Inter]sections](/api/image/getjournalcoverimage?id=inter-sections-1528.jpg)
[Inter]sections is the annual double-blind peer reviewed journal of American Studies at the University of Bucharest (ISSN 2068 – 3472). The language of the journal is English (US). Its first peer reviewed issue came out in 2009. From 2009 to 2012, it was a quarterly peer-reviewed publication. Between 2012 and 2014, [Inter]sections was on hiatus. It returned in 2015 as an annual double-blind peer reviewed open access publication.
More...![[spr.] Sprawozdanie z udziału historyków filozofii UKSW w konferencji „Filozofia polska na tle filozofii europejskiej w XX wieku”](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2014_20534.jpg)
a philosophical conversation between Alpár Losoncz (philosopher, professor at the University of Novi Sad) and Attila Pató (lecturer, head of library at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice)
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In times of social upheaval, both social structures and behaviour strategies of individuals change. After the Russian Revolution, Russian intellectuals in exile had to find an individual tactic and strategy of social behaviour to survive professionally and financially. Fedor Stepun’s life shows the successful behavioural strategy of a Russian intellectual during the Russian Revolution and in German exile. Stepun made the theatrical self-staging and self-portrayal part of his cultural identity to establish himself successfully and to reach a broad audience as an artist and scientist. His theoretical anthropology of the actor and practical theatrical self-staging in professional life and in autobiographical works form the approaches for the analysis of his survival strategy in social crises and exile. The article presents all these components as a concept of his philosophy of life.
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In several of his works, Thomas Hobbes contrasts rhetorical and scientific speech. Although in Leviathan his position is changed, Hobbes continues to emphasize the inordinate, excessive nature of rhetorical speech in politics and distinguishes it from sovereign scientifically true and legally correct speech. According to my thesis, both models of persuasion, the rhetorical and the anti-rhetorical model, have an aesthetic character in Leviathan. This fact is evident in the doubling of the person who represents both his/her self and his/her fellow citizens as dependent subjects in their public/political roles. This self-representation as the inherent imaginary act of the political man echoes the rhetorical hierarchy of the difference between the private and the public.
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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.
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The author extracts from the Humanae Vitae encylical the thread of responsible parenthood. He asks about the situation of a child in family half a century after the publication of the papal document. He points towards a number of threats and disruptions in the adult-child relations, which result from an improper understanding of who a child is from the philosophical perspective. He opts for a development of philosophical reflection on a child and enriching it with new aspects. He reaches out for inspiration to the works by Janusz Korczak, which present an outline of the original philosophy of a child. What deserves particular recognition is the perception of a child as a “a project of a future man,” and not as a full-valued person who deserves appreciation of the contemporary ontic and social status. In the conclusion the author develops and clarifies Korczak’s controversial postulate of the “children’s right to death,” giving it a contemporary interpretation.
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The paper intends to initiate a discussion on the politico-liberal concept of judgment. It is argued that whilst political liberalism (PL) – presented as an account of political objectivity – already appeals to judgment, this conception is an unsatisfactory one. This critical assessment is supported by the juxtaposition of PL with an Arendtian understanding of political objectivity which offers a more robust account of judgment. In the conclusion, the possibility of applying the Arendtian solution to PL is outlined.
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In the years after the first circulation of Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo’s Padua anti-Copernican colleague, the staunch Aristotelian philosopher, Cesare Cremonini, published a book on ‘traditional’ cosmology, Disputatio de coelo in tres partes divisa (Venice, 1613) which puzzled the Roman authorities of the Inquisition and the Index much more than any works on celestial novelties and ‘neo-Pythagorean’ astronomy. Cremonini’s disputation on the heavens has the form of an over-intricate comment of Aristotle’s conceptions, in the typically argumentative style of Scholasticism. Nonetheless, it immediately raised the concern of Cardinal Bellarmin, the Pope and other Inquisitors. At a close reading, Cremonini’s interpretation of Aristotle’s cosmos proved radically anti-Christian. It represented a radicalization of Pomponazzian Alexandrism. In fact, Cremonini did not only circulate Aristotelian principles used by Pomponazzi to argue for the soul’s mortality (first, no thought is possible without imagination and the latter faculty is dependent on the body; secondly, all that is generated will eventually perish). He also wiped away all transcendence from the Aristotelian cosmos. In fact, he marginalized the function of the motive Intelligences by explaining heavenly motions through the action of animallike inseparable souls although he did not erase nor reduced all Intelligences to only one, in accordance with Alexander. Also, he put at the center of Aristotle’s cosmos the idea of its eternity, a thesis which he explicitly connected with the rejection of the idea of God the Creator. Cremonini assumed that the universal efficiens, that is the efficient cause of all motion and change in the world, is nothing but the first heaven. As a result of this radically naturalist reading of Aristotle, he banned God from the cosmos, reduced Him to the final cause of the world, and deprived Him of any efficiency and will. This essay on less explored sources of Renaissance astronomical debates considers the institutional, cultural and religious setting of Cremonini’s teaching and conceptions. It assesses the reasons for his troubles with the religious authorities, and the political support he was granted by the Serenissima Republic of Venice in spite of the scandalous opinions he circulated as a university professor. My reconstruction of his views is based on the Disputatio de coelo of 1613 and later works, which are directly connected with cosmo-theological polemics with the religious authorities: his Apologia dictorum Aristotelis de quinta coeli substantia (1616) and the unpublished book De coeli efficientia, two manuscript copies of which are preserved in the libraries of Padua and Venice.
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The article deals with ethic insights of the priest Juozapas Čepėnas (1880–1976), who published a study cycle on Nietzsche. This cycle is significant in the context of an early reception of Nietzsche’s ideas in Lithuania; however, the author himself appears to remain an undeservedly forgotten thinker of the national school of thought. The article attempts to bring back Čepėnas’ philosophical outlooks and analyse the factors that shaped his philosophical position such as his academic upbringing in German classical universities and Čepėnas’ subsequent activities overstepping the boundaries of a clerical work. The article offers a new interdisciplinary approach in reviewing Čepėnas’ dissertation thesis that earned him a Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Freiburg University. The thesis is analysed in comparison to other Čepėnas’ philosophical writings on Dostoevsky produced at the period of university studies and later during his clerical service in Lithuania. Ethical aspects of Čepėnas’ thesis continue to hold relevance until the recent period of philosophical development. Čepėnas’ writings are viewed in parallel analysis with a spectrum of the Lithuanian existential thought. Critical contemplations on ethical principles in the cycle of articles on Nietzsche’s philosophy are emphasised. The article attempts to clarify Čepėnas’ understanding of the egotism of the superhuman, the reasons and the content of supplements of Christian ethics, and the concept of the secular purpose of life.
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Problem of epistemic activity and their relationship with language is very well known in philosophy. Undertaking this challenge in this article we shall present some logical constructions apparent in these issues. More precisely we want to describe some difficulties of formal reconstruction of the notion of belief and utterance and try to find broader perspective appointed by notion of trust. To realize this goals article shows how non-formal assumption about doxa affects on its formal construction. Then, logic of utterances—mainly based on Conversational Implicatures theory—and its relation to doxastic systems is discussed and, finally, article shows that more accurate description of these two notions needs broader perspective created by BIT system proposed by Ch-J. Liau.
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In my paper I wish to prove that the truth of the pictures does not stand in correlation with reality. The picture is not the reflection of everyday things, but a different, truer representation of things. The privilege of pictures stands in their being able to always go beyond themselves. The picture possesses a particular kind of logic, as its delotic logos, that is, its nature of showing the thing itself but from a different perspective as well in the same time, cannot be grasped conceptually or by language translation.
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Adalékok Sartre semmi-elemzéseinek értelmezéséhez
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.
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Eszmetörténeti vázlat
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.
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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.
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The standard account of elsewhere is that it is any place that isn’t here. In this paper I argue against this account by demonstrating that (given some plausible assumptions) it results in a contra-diction. In its place I offer a modified account of elsewhere; where a place can only be elsewhere if it is in the same type of space as here.
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Descartes’s belief in innate ideas still looms, in one form or another, over the historyof philosophy today. In typical Early-Modern, Rationalist fashion, Descartespresents readers with main arguments for his belief in these pre-packaged ideas, viaappeals to God and the application of logical thinking techniques. That is, Descartesasserts that the so-called inherent idea of God derives from God and that the mindcan establish this notion as well as the surety of its supposed innate ideas ofimmortality and identity. However, such ideas may appear alien to some, and evenunfounded upon critique. First, this essay will present Descartes’s philosophy ofinnate ideas by using his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.Next, this piece will then describe the philosopher Hume’s Empiricist understandingof ideas and the problems of abstraction, and then challenge the Cartesian view thatinnate notions like God, immortality of the soul, and identity may not be so innate, oras precise as Descartes leads us to believe.
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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.
More...![A Tiny Boat Lost at Sea: Trauma and Ethics in Havarie [Collision] by Philip Scheffner (Germany, 2016)](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2020_55215.jpg)
A distant image of a boat adrift in the Mediterranean Sea, with thirteen refugees on board. Taken from a YouTube clip, the image is dealt with and stretched in slow motion. The unsynchronized soundtrack is composed of faceless voices of migrants and refugees. The fragmented soundtrack and the“processed” still frame repetitive image underscore that Havarie [Collision] is a documentary which engages not only with the refugee question. It also reflexively questions the conventions governing the representation of suffering in the media. While the visual image is undermined, the voice assumes a significant role. Thus one’ attention is drawn to listening to voices expressing their traumatic experiences of migration. The human voice is perceived as an inner expression of trauma, a vehicle that embodies ethical significance (Caruth, “TheWound” 8-9; Dolar 86) Jacques Derrida talks of specters that haunt Europe, spirits whose evasive presence cannot be controlled nor silenced (xix). Hamid Naficy shows that exile cinema emphasizes the voice, different languages, and accents (18-38). It undermines the hegemony of the picture and modernity, and moves towards the acoustics of exile that mixes the pre-modern and post-modern. I would like to argue that the divide between image and voice has ties with Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of le différend – a term relating to languages that never meet and are untranslatable, as long as one language enforces itself on and silences the other (13). In addition, I would like to connect the film’s faceless voices with the ethical concepts of Emmanuel Levinas: he intertwines the term “face” (le visage) with “the said” (le dit) and seeks a moment of epiphany through face or language (that are not necessarily visual or verbal), a moment which impels us to listen and arouses our ethical responsibility toward the Other (Totality; “The Saying” 5-7). I suggest that the film’s faceless world, where thirteen men wait for a rescue that never arrives, forces one to reflect on one’s blindness and deafness while watching the Other.
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Tocqueville’s thought-world is decisively influenced by the conviction that modern democracy that is based on the will of the majority is rather appropriate for creating equality than freedom. Moreover, the mass democracy leads to oppression if the coercive force of the public opinion is extended over all the aspects of social life. Democracy in America discusses in two different contexts the problem of totalitarianism supported by the public opinion. The tyranny of majority is supplemented by the hypothesis of soft despotism, by recognizing that the horizontally extending oppression can be generated by a state power that is manipulating the democratic ideas. The administrative despotism reconciles the omnipotence of the public opinion with the centralizing tendencies and under the aegis of the benevolent state power will take control over private lives. The individuals isolated from each other are less capable of restraining its power, therefore it is essential that the exertion of individual rights and freedom has to be supplemented with collective values.
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