Ateistyczne nurty filozofii Oświecenia. Wpływ skrajnego materializmu i racjonalizmu

Author(s): Konrad Szocik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

This paper presents the development of the basic ideas of the European enlightenment. e philosophy of the enlightenment focused on rationalism and empirical materialism. These concepts had emerged from philosophical atheism. Human reason was brought to the fore, as a new basis for ethical, ontological and epistemological authority. We can find sources for these ideas in the philosophy of Cartesian and Spinozistic rationalism, and in the empiricism and mechanism of English and French philosophy.

Milan Komar in Evgen Vasiljevič Spektorski – sopotnika preskoka iz prava v filozofijo

Author(s): Blaž Ivanc / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 1/2019

The article deals with the historical and philosophical connection between the emeritus professor of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires and honorary senator of the University of Ljubljana dr. Milan Komar (1921–2006) and professor at several law faculties (in Warsaw, Kiev, Belgrade, Prague and Ljubljana) and rector of the University of Kiev dr. Evgeny V. Spektorsky (1875–1951). The main finding of the article is the assertion that Evgeny Spektorsky was Komar’s teacher and mentor during Komar’s studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana and wanted him to be his successor on the faculty chair. The personal connection between Komar and Spektorsky became a friendly connection after Komar finished his doctoral studies. Comparing their philosophical views, we can notice not only a great affinity, but also a genetic connection.

Racja stanu i racje pozorów. Esej o źródłach zła w polityce

Author(s): Michał Bohun / Language(s): Polish Issue: 69/2022

This essay attempts to weigh in on the problem of evil in politics. The starting point follows the political reflections of B. Pascal and M. Montaigne. Here, the history of philosophy is used to conceptualize the problems of the present and, in fact, those that are enduring. Thinking about the sources of power and a state’s legitimacy proves to be a universal meditation on human destiny and freedom when challenged by existential threats.

Benjamin Constant’s liberal objections to Rousseau in the name of modern liberty

Author(s): Bainur Yelubayev,Csaba Olay / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Benjamin Constant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were both Swiss-French political thinkers who had a significant influence on the subsequent development of political thought. Constant is known not only as a political philosopher but also as an active politician, who today is considered one of the founding fathers of liberalism. Rousseau, in turn, is considered one of the most controversial thinkers of the Enlightenment, who has been accused of laying the foundation for many revolutionary political movements and repressive regimes. The main objective of this work is to illustrate Benjamin Constant’s liberal objections to the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. First, it is important to focus on Rousseau’s main ideas for the full disclosure of the topic. Likewise, it is also crucial to take into account the historical context, which will be useful for understanding the motives for the formation of Constant’s liberal views. Thus, in the first part of the work, we will briefly consider the main concepts developed by Rousseau in his book, The Social Contract, such as popular sovereignty, the state of nature, and direct democracy. In the second part, we will analyze the main political concepts of Constant and his critique of Rousseau, based on his books The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns and Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.

Is Hermann Lotze a “dead dog”?

Author(s): Dimitar Tsatsov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Book Review: Nikolay Milkov. 2023. Hermann Lotze’s Influence on Twentieth Century Philosophy. Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, ISBN 978-3-11-072681-7; e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-072628-2; e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-072638-1; ISSN 2364-3161, 205 р.

Decline of Modern and Hegel’s Interpretation of Ancient Scepticism

Author(s): Nevena Jevtić / Language(s): English Issue: 37/2022

For Hegel scepticism is one of the greatest forces in philosophical thought. He makes a sharp distinction between the scepticism of Ancient Greece, and the scepticism of modern thinkers from Descartes to (Hegel’s contemporary) Schulze. These two forms of scepticism appear to have a similar foundation, but according to Hegel, their nature is substantially different. Hegel will subsequently attempt to incorporate the fundamentals of ancient scepticism into the dialectics of consciousness, his primary subject in Phenomenology of Spirit, transforming its role in the process. Hegel reinterprets scepticism as a force of constant, self-affecting movement that is immanent to consciousness itself.

Fihteovo učenje o znanosti kao primenjena filozofija

Author(s): Zoran Dimić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 37/2022

We argue the thesis that Fichte's Doctrine of Science can be understood as an applied philosophy in two ways. On the one hand, through how Fichte sees the role of scientists, philosophers, teachers, and educators in society, and on the other hand, based on biographical details from Fichte's life, especially his way of dealing with philosophy. Only Fichte's definition of a scientist, to whom he leaves the responsibility for the overall progress of society, clearly determines how a scientist should deal with science, that is, a philosopher with philosophy. Fichte's general teaching practice and his public activity testify to the fact that he does not see the role of philosophy in its mere theoretical status, even if it was the queen of all sciences, but in putting it in the service of community advancement. The role of the Doctrine of Science in Fichte is placed in teaching and educational practice, but also in various forms of public speaking. In one of the mentioned forms, the general application of the Doctrine of Science is, in fact, its essence.

Prolegomena za Ničeov basnoslovni nauk

Author(s): Nikola Tatalović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 37/2022

The paper represents a preliminary work guided by the question of whether Nietzsche's writing belongs to the Aesopian tradition. The first part of the paper carries out the reading of Nietzsche's philosophy as “inverted Platonism” with regard to the understanding of the image as the promise of the concept in Plato, all for the sake of pointing out the intimacy of Nietzsche's and Plato's writing style. The second part of the paper, through a conversation with interpretations of Nietzsche that start from the general thesis that everything is the story, tries to get to the concreteness of the fable and its connection with the fate of the philosophical writing. The third section of the paper describes the relationship between the fable and Nietzsche's writing in three stages: By concretizing the fabulous character of Plato's and Nietzsche's writings, presenting the structure of the fable, and pointing out the significance of the question of what does it mean that the animal speaks in the fable?

Ničeovo poimanje helenskog, judeo-hrišćanskog, modernog i budućeg čoveka

Author(s): Nataša S. Milović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 37/2022

This work is dedicated to the exploration of that aspect of Nietzsche’s thought which we use to frame the epochal facet of his cultural-philosophical standpoint. It is specific because it’s not strictly articulated in his work, although he was, as we’ll show, also a thinker of cultural fundaments. His study of those fundaments was tied with intervention in the modern state of European culture which was, according to him, “debased in nihilism”. Therefore, his cultural-philosophical standpoint was crucially shaped by studying the origins of that nihilism, and the quest to overcome it. The aspect related to questioning of origins of nihilism was marked by Nietzsche’s relationship with Judeo-Christian and modern man, while the quest to overcome it was marked by his relation to Hellenic and “future” man. That bidirectional movement of his thought is linked to his genealogical method used to describe “man’s prehistorical work on himself”, as well as his effort to grasp the state of contemporary man, which, as he thought, couldn’t be observed from existing cultural-interpretative frameworks.

Ku tomistycznej teorii literatury

Author(s): Maciej Sobiech / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2022

The aim of the paper is to formulate a more or less coherent proposition of a literary theory philosophically based on Thomism. The first part of the essay contains a short characteristic of the general relations between literary theory and philosophy along with a justification of the sensibility of the goal chosen. The second part is a short presentation of the manner the question of literature and its interpretation has been hitherto treated among the Thomists. For the purpose of brevity, it is done in an “exemplary” fashion, by reference to the thought of the two outstanding French Thomists: Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. The third part is devoted to what is most essential for the work, namely: to an at-tempt at presenting a relatively coherent Thomist literary theory, in which attempt the concept of poetic intuition, coined by Maritain, plays a significant role. The text finds its conclusion in several remarks about the general benefits that could be drawn from applying the philosophical thought inspired by the heritage of Thomas Aquinas in literary studies.

Franciszek von Tessen-Węsierski (1869–1947) i jego tomistyczna teorii cudu

Author(s): Artur Andrzejuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2022

Francis von Tessen-Węsierski was born on 22nd December in 1869. He came from the old noble Kashubian family who settled in the Eastern Pomerania (mainly in the area of Słupsk), in the Front Pomerania and in Ruggia. Francis’ father, Joseph, studied in Berlin where he later took up. In Berlin Francis completed his Matura (23rd March 1890) and after that he studied at the Theological Faculty of the University of Wrocław. He finished his Bachelor’s degree in 1894 and at the same year was ordained a priest. In the next year he earned a Habilitation and became a so called private docent (Privatdozent). Initially he taught the history of the Church and philosophy and also apologetics since 1897. In 1899 he was nominated an assistant professor of apologetics, next, in 1900 he was appointed a lecturer in pro-pedeutics of philosophy and apologetics; on 15 March the same year he obtained a Doctorate for the entirety of the academic work. In the same year he was offered to take the chair of the Dogmatics at the Theological Faculty of the Jagiellonian University. However, the prince-bishop, cardinal Jan Puzyna denied a canonical mission to Tessen- Węsierski on the basis of the insufficient knowledge of the Polish language by the candidate. Thus von Tessen-Węsierski stayed at the Theological Faculty of the University of Wrocław as an assistant professor, a lecturer of apologetics and propedeutics of philosophy. In 1933 when Adolf Hitler gained the power in Germany von Tessen-Węsierski was dismissed from the faculty for the lack of his “racial purity”. As a pensioner he lived in Szczecin. Nothing is known about his life during the war, nevertheless, it was noted that when the city was incorporated to Poland he was the first priest of Polish origin who stayed in Szczecin, and he died there on 7th January 1947. Theory of miracle is formulated by Tessen-Węsierski within the frame of apologetics, which is a theological discipline, however with regard to its goal-defense of religion- it significantly relies on philosophical argumentation in the process of explaining rationality of religion and related facts. Path to explanation of the phenomenon of miracle is- as Tessen- Węsierski claims- a carefully prepared definition. He starts his work from the cognitive and subjective analysis of miracle, what he calls a psychology of miracle. We may speak of miracle when something, some event or phenomenon, makes an impression on an observer. Source of that impression is comparison of that phenomenon to non-miracle facts. In the consequence it arises the need for explaining the cause of miracles. Following St. Thomas Aquinas Tessen- Węsierski links the phenomenon of miracle with astonishment (admiration). It- astonishment- takes place when we recognize the conditions (causes) and circumstances and we expect results which supposed to be derived from the given conditions and circumstances. But what happens is entirely different. It must have appeared the unknown cause (causa oculta), which influenced that usual natural process (result). Epistemological and psychological aspect of miracle leads us to metaphysics (ontology) of miracle, because finally it comes down to inquiry (inquisitio) on what caused the fact astonishing to us. In this point we need to turn to God’s Revelation, for only in its light we are able to explain that what transcends our nature. Theological competency is hence needed to cross from the negati-ve criterion: result could not have appeared if had been caused by the natural cause, to the statement that the result has its supernatural source. Tessen-Węsierski says that the proper perspective for that what is supernatural (Übernatürlichen/ supernaturale), is that what is natural. He reminds that Thomas Aquinas claims that in case of miraculous phenomena we deal with four factors: 1) intervention of God, 2) trespassing the natural order of things and 3) the result that differs from hitherto. Thus the main issue becomes the problem of God who is the principle of both: of that what is natural, as the Creator of beings, and of that what is supernatural when God exceeds with His power (Kraft) the order indicated by the act of creation. In solving this problem Tessen-Węsierski introduces a demarcation line between the nature and supernaturality. Thus, according to him, natural is that what derives from the God’s act of creation and that what is a certain order of existence and a mode of functioning of created beings. Supernatural is hence that what derives from God but exceeds the natural order of created things. Accordingly, the greatest supernatural thing takes place when human nature is adopted into the unity of the Divine Person in Jesus Christ, the unity called the hypostatic union. Further great “supernatural thing” (der supranaturalen Dinge) is vocation of man to cognize the Divine Essence and in general to community with God. What serves this purpose is grace and everything what accompanies (for example sacraments), and that is what constitutes further “supernatural thing”. Finally, supernatural fact is present in concrete, individual activity of God in some individual case. The latter one includes miracles- the subject of our interest- and private revelations.

Z nowości wydawniczych

Author(s): Katarzyna Stępień / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2/2021

Ks. Jan Sochoń, Bezcielesny sens. Szkice z filozofii kultury, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, s. 418, ISBN 978-83-65792-31-0. Robert T. Ptaszek, Filozoficzne aspekty alternatywnej religijności, seria „Monografie i Studia z Filozofii Realistycznej”, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, s. 438, ISBN 978-83-65792-32-7. Sługa dobry i wierny. Śp. Ksiądz Profesor Andrzej Maryniarczyk SDB we wspomnieniach najbliższych współpracowników, ułożył i zredagował Arkadiusz Gudaniec, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, s. 91, ISBN 978-83-65792-38-9. Antonio Rosmini, O istocie prawa, przekład z języka włoskiego, wstęp i komentarze Krzysztof Jan Wroczyński, seria „Teksty – Przekłady – Komentarze”, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, s. 502, ISBN 978-83-65792-33-4. The Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom: A Semiotic Reinterpretation of The Great Ideas Movement for the 21st Century, ed. by Peter A. Redpath, Imelda Chłodna-Błach and Artur Mamcarz-Plisiecki, Value Inquiry Book Series: vol. 369: “Philosophy and Religion”, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2021, s. 308, ISBN 978-90-04-46800-9 (hardbook); ISBN 978-90-04-46801-6 (e-book). Zbigniew Pańpuch, Realizm w czasach przełomu. Antyczne korzenie cywilizacji europejskiej, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, s. 293, ISBN 978-83-65792-37-2. Jadwiga Zamoyska, O pracy, Fundacja Servire Veritati Instytut Edukacji Narodowej, Lublin 2021, s. 141, ISBN 978-83-66618-10-7. Maria Joanna Gondek, Filozoficzne podstawy koncepcji pracy Jadwigi Zamoyskiej, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2021, ISBN 978-83-65792-40-2. Błąd antropologiczny i jego konsekwencje w kulturze, red. nauk. A. Maryniarczyk, K. Stępień, seria „Zadania Współczesnej Metafizyki”, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, wyd. 2, Lublin 2021, s. 293, ISBN 978-83-65792-37-2.

Frameworks of Archaic and Traditional Thinking

Author(s): Raluca Soare,Anca-Elena David / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Approaching this topic appears as a necessity at a time when the loss of simple meanings is felt more and more acutely, hence the numerous confusions and sterile discussions about the archaic, mythical, wild, prelogical, unhistorical, etc. These discussions automatically place archaic thinking in an outdated spiritual phase of the human gender, which stirs a kind smile, at its best. Constantly subjected to an empirical-neutral approach and strictly horizontal observation, archaic thought is regarded as a primitive form of science and religion, a kind of childhood of thought that has not yet reached the maturity of knowledge and understanding.

Subjectivity and the Modern World

Author(s): Janis (John) Ozolins / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Despite the great technical progress of the modern world, we live, in some parts of Western society at least, in a joyless and despairing world. Many Western countries are in demographic decline and their citizens, thanks to the Covid pandemic, increasingly distrustful of governments and science alike. At the same time, social media has replaced traditional media, such as newspapers, radio, and television, as the new sources of information and opinion about a multitude of issues. Unfortunately, because we are exhorted to be sensitive to everyone’s subjective feelings and because we are bombarded on all sides by masses of information, misinformation, and untested opinions, one of the first casualties of this zeitgeist is truth. The genesis of the contemporary estrangement from truth is the post-modern rejection of Modernity and the Enlightenment project in which the hope of humanity was taken to lie in reason and science alone. Religion was to henceforth be a private matter. A rising anti-religious fervour in the nineteenth century prompted Nietzsche to warn that the death of God would have dire consequences for human beings. Despite Nietzsche’s warnings, universal religious, moral and social principles grounded in a transcendent reality that demand priority over subjective desires, are now a major stumbling block for a world in which, in God’s absence, individual autonomy is the most important value and personal opinion overrides truth. Although post-modernity has provided a propaedeutic to the overconfident reliance of the Enlightenment on the power of an objective reason, it has, in its turn, swung the pendulum too far towards a dogmatic insistence that reality is subjective. This paper, drawing on Plato’s dialogues against the sophist, shows that the contemporary estrangement from truth is not new and that the postmodern world is full of sophists too. It is suggested that the chaos of the modern world can only be corrected through a return to a metaphysics in which God, and hence truth, has a central role.

Synthesis and Humility: Integrative Mindset and Values after Postmodernity

Author(s): Tone Svetelj / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

This reflection presents a framework for creating, integrating and evaluating values needed for our time. Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern perspectives are taken as complementary reflections, offering an integrative paradigm of what is healthy, ethical, and spiritual, i.e., what really matters in our time. This integrative perspective is an opportunity to reflect critically on the last centuries of our Western intellectual development, creating a perspective that balances what is knowable and unknowable, while simultaneously rejecting any radical positions. The integrative perspective balances faith and reason, spiritual and material, relative and absolute, authority and freedom. Such synthesis requires a humble and open mind that does not pretend to know absolute answers but instead is willing to learn afresh from past experiences and present challenges.

The Merchants of Heavenly Grace: On Academic Journals and Cultural Difference

Author(s): John T. Giordano / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

The increasing standardization, specialization and monetarization of academic publishing is designed to foster quality in research and expression. But these tendencies also pose serious challenges to the expression of cultural difference, particularly with regard to philosophy and religious studies. Scholars from various cultural backgrounds outside of mainstream universities often find themselves marginalized when the quality of their work is judged through the metrics of mainstream academic publishing. Smaller journals which give a forum to local research are gradually disappearing or becoming irrelevant. The corporate control of publishing limits the access and distribution of information making it difficult for smaller regional universities to access and conduct research. But these challenges to the expression of cultural difference also reflect the deeper tendencies of the information age. To approach this problem, we need to consider the conflict between culture and spirit on the one hand, with the flows of information and capital on the other. I will introduce this problem through an idea of hermeneutics presented by George McLean. I will then discuss the approaches to this problem by such writers as Michel Serres, Jean Francois Lyotard, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. I will show that these latter writers devise strategies to reach something outside of the cybernetic flows of information in the media age, but that their solutions are incomplete because they rely on intellectual concepts of redemption and ignore the concrete practices of spiritual redemption. The issue that cross-cultural journals must consider is how to emphasize something beyond the merely intellectual; how to amplify practice within its expression. I will address this issue in the spirit of a poem by Emily Dickinson entitled “Publication – is the Auction” which supplies the title of this essay. MEΘEXIS Journal of Research in Values and Spirituality, Vol. III, No. 2 (2023): 84-101, ISSN 2821-6377

“Memory Archipelago of the Communist Past. Public Narratives and Personal Recollections” (Author: Daniela Koleva, Palgrave Macmillan, Memory Studies Series, 2022)

Author(s): Dimitar Dimov / Language(s): English Issue: 51/2023

ДОЛГ И МОРАЛЬНОЕ МИРОВОЗЗРЕНИЕ В «ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ ДУХА» И ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ КРИТИКА DING AN SICH

Author(s): Mikhail Belousov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2023

The question of the world in itself — the world beyond its correlation with experience in the broadest sense — is one of the sore points of phenomenology and becomes especially acute in the light of modern discussions around correlationism. These discussions, in one way or another, make phenomenology come around to the classical distinction between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, with the help of which Kant outlines the field of ethics as a special world lying on the other side of the correlation of knowledge and object constitutive for nature. Philosophy deals with the thing-in-itself in the proper, positive sense of the word, not as phenomenology (transcendental philosophy, which reveals the correlation of knowledge and reality in the world of phenomena and the futility of attempts by theoretical reason to know anything beyond phenomena), but as a critique of practical reason. The article attempts to consider the opposition of the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon in the context of the criticism that Kant’s practical philosophy is subjected to in Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit and to explicate the arguments that this criticism makes available to phenomenology for rethinking the problem of Ding an sich and the ethical dimension of the epoche. The first part of the article examines the Hegelian analysis of the main contradiction contained in the Kantian opposition of duty as something that is in itself, and nature as a phenomenon (this opposition forms what Hegel calls the moral worldview): duty does not depend on nature and therefore does not need natural (phenomenal) realization in actions, but at the same time, duty is nothing but the necessity of actions and, consequently, the necessity of a phenomenon. This contradiction, as Hegel shows, leads to the disintegration of the moral worldview and, thus, turns into the sublation of the absolute separation of duty (thing in itself) and nature (phenomenon). The restitution of the difference between the moral an sich and the phenomenon within conscience — a phenomenon that arises as a result of the destruction of the moral worldview — turns into a new paradox, which demonstrates that the thing-in-itself (ethical good), since it is freed from the phenomenon, is not only unreal, but also turns into its own opposite. The paradox consists in the fact that the consciousness of duty, taken in its independence from the phenomenal realization in actions, becomes evil itself, turning to hypocrisy in the moral judgment about other people’s actions. In the second part of the article, the significance of the Hegelian critique of Kant’s practical philosophy for the phenomenological destruction of the difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon and the problematization of the ethical dimension of the phenomenological method is explicated. Tracing the naive origins of this difference in the natural attitude and their transformation in Kantian philosophy, the author tries to consider the sublation of the opposition of the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon in the field of ethics as one of the possible paths to phenomenology. It is shown how the necessary relation of the supra-worldly an sich with the situational nature of its phenomenal realization in actions calls into question the possibility of a phenomenological epoche. The author also seeks to demonstrate that the problematization of the difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon does not turn phenomenology into a system in the Hegelian sense.

АНОНС ВЫХОДА НАУЧНОЙ МОНОГРАФИИ «ВРЕМЯ ВОПРОСА. ХАЙДЕГГЕР И ПРОБЛЕМА МЕТАФИЗИКИ»

Author(s): Anton Vavilov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2023

Издательским центром «Гуманитарная академия» на начало 2024 г. запланирован выпуск монографии А.В.Вавилова «Время вопроса. Хайдеггер и проблема метафизики». Предлагаемое исследование посвящено фундаментальному вопросу философии о собственной сущности. Поскольку философское мышление не может ограничиться осмыслением базовых структур различных регионов бытия и уровней познания, но с необходимостью должно включать в свое содержание и само это осмысление, вопрос «Что такое философия?» оказывается первостепенным и принадлежит самой сути — или судьбе — философии.

Priroda i kultura, još jednom: šta neodarvinizam i teorija razvojnih sistema imaju da kažu?

Author(s): Aleksandra Knežević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2023

In this paper, I deal with the conceptual relationship between nature and culture in Lamarckism, Darwinism, sociobiology, neo-Darwinism, and developmental systems theory. The paper aims to show how sociobiology deviates from what is postulated about this relationship in neo-Darwinism. Namely, thanks to August Weismann’s theory of hard inheritance and Alfred Kroeber’s cultural determinism, neo-Darwinism, unlike the reductionism of sociobiology, which starts from a strong conceptual separation of nature and culture in which nature and culture are two separate causal factors equally important for explaining human behaviour and human sociability. Finally, I deal with Tim Ingold’s critique of this sharp conceptual separation, which comes from the position of developmental systems theorists in evolutionary biology.