Философско-богословски аспекти на антропологичния поврат: руският случай

Author(s): Nina Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2017

The study is focused on the ideas of Russian religious anthropology, on Vladimir Solovyov’s visions about the Godmanhood and its profound impact on twentieth-century Russian thought. The author emphasizes Nikolai Berdyaev’s and Simon Frank’s contribution in this respect. Russian philosophers were opposed to the idea of a brutal God; they insisted on being related to Him. The author presents their meaning according to which the problem of man can be integrally posited and resolved only in the light of the idea of Godmanhood – an idea that is alien to Western theology.

Analysis of the Person Concept in Nursing Theories

Author(s): Ivan Šestak,Damjan Abou Aldan / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The notion of the human as a person influences immediate action, which is especially evident in care during illness and suffering. Although medicine is as old as humanity, in the last two centuries it has developed within a bio–medical paradigm marked by positivism. Since Florence Nightingale, nursing has been trying to develop within its own paradigm characterized by four concepts of which the person is central. It is only in the past half century that unique nursing theories have been developed in which the features of personalism can be discerned. The attempts by some theorists to define the concept of person have brought it closer to the classical definition of a person as found in philosophical anthropology. The fact that there are theoretical models that direct practice from bio–medical to holistic and personalistic view speaks in favor of the maturing idea about the importance of observing man as a person with all the immediate positive effects of such a view.

The Hermeneutics of Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece: The Kenotic Message of The Annunciation Panels

Author(s): Daniel Miščin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The abundant literature on the Ghent Altarpiece, one of the most important artworks of the Northern Renaissance, completed in 1432 by Van Eyck, often claims that the Annunciation scene on that altarpiece is simply an illustration of the text Lk 1:26–38, followed faithfully by Van Eyck. Although it is beyond doubt that Van Eyck drew inspiration from that text, this paper attempts to establish and explore a different hypothesis, namely that Van Eyck intentionally moved away from Luke’s text of the Annunciation, and for a very good reason, which is related to the composition and the message of the Ghent Altarpiece as a whole. The paper approaches this ‘unconventional’ hypothesis primarily by analyzing two possible approaches to the text of the Annunciation; the idyllic and the kenotic one. In this context, Van Eyck’s way of presenting the Annunciation is observed from the perspective of the theoretical contributions to the hermeneutics of Luke’s text, primarily in the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Joseph Ratzinger, in line with the kenotic (or existential) interpretation.

Moral Self-Realization in Kant and Spinoza

Author(s): Wojciech Kozyra / Language(s): English Issue: 102/2022

Spinoza and Kant are considered to be polar opposites with respect to ethics. The radical difference between them is supposed to consist in Spinoza’s ethical egoism, or interest-based Strebensethik, and Kant’s duty-cantered, deontological Sollensethik. I challenge this opposition and argue that both in Kant and Spinoza we deal with a notion of the self’s realization that is “interest”-based and therefore does not involve self-sacrifice. I show, on the one hand, that the streben in Spinoza’s Strebensethik consists in realising one’s essentially human interest, which resides in ethical-rational action, and, on the other hand, that sollen in Kant’s Sollensethik is in fact a streben of the Kantian “proper self” (eigentliches Selbst) after the realization of its ethical-rational interest.

Galimybių prieiga kaip metapolitinė kategorija: M. Nussbaum teisingumo koncepcijos analizė

Author(s): Laisvūnas Čekavičius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 102/2022

Many critics of Martha Nussbaum claim that her account of the capabilities approach is a perfectionist theory that does not provide a unique standpoint to political justice and only complements Rawls’ conception of primary goods. The purpose of this article is to show that the capabilities approach differs from primary goods in a sense that the former is orientated towards the ends of a good life, while the latter towards the means. The author argues that the capabilities approach takes an intermediate position between neutrality and perfectionism, maintains a position of relative autonomy, and in turn it can be viewed as a unique metapolitical category, that is to say, a principle of politics capable of accommodating different political views.

За религията без илюзия

Author(s): Vladimir Nikolaev Gradev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 12/2022

Freud was a militant atheist. For him, belief in God was an infantile regression. Hostile as he was to religion, he nevertheless recognized it as an answer to man’s ontological anxieties. He hoped that, in abandoning religion, man would understand his true position in the universe as a mature being who faces reality. What he missed is that most people cannot bear much reality.

Ръководство към хайдегеровото „Битие и време“

Author(s): Magda King / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 12/2022

Метафизика на любовта

Author(s): Dimitar Stankov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2023

This article is intended as an essay about love. I regard love as one of the wonders of the world, as the most beautiful and great human feeling – an expression of the innermost experiences of the human heart and human soul.

Divine Immanence in the Panentheistic Cosmology of Arthur Peacock

Author(s): Igor Gudyma / Language(s): English Issue: 30/2023

This brief article examines the features of the panentheistic cosmology of the Protestant theologian Arthur Peacock, with particular attention to the conceptualization of divine immanence in his theological system. In addition, it reveals the organic connection between the categories of “faith” and “miracle” in Protestant theology, and shows the place and role of a miracle in the theological constructions of panentheism. All main conceptualizations of the philosopher and theologian Arthur Peacock are reduced to the so-called “panentheism formula”, according to which God is immanent in the universe, truly omnipresent, but his Being is not entirely reduced to natural, God is greater than nature and his Being surpasses nature. Having laid down the initial principles of his panentheistic cosmology, Peacock deductively deduces all the further key provisions of his concept, namely: the doctrine of the nature of the relationship between God and the world, the question of a miracle as a personal manifestation of the divine, etc. In the author’s worldview, the world acts as an arena and an instrument for achieving God of large-scale cosmic goals. However, in the ideas about the interaction of God with the world, the theologian also singles out the symbolic aspect, the main content of which is the initiative of God to reveal his Personality and demonstrate to man his divine nature. In other words, we are talking about the relationship of God with the individual and the human community, which reflects the creative essence of God and presupposes the existence of events that reveal important religious truths. In general, it should be recognized that the theorists of panentheism, including Arthur Peacock himself, made a significant contribution to the dialogue between religion and science, which was noted by researchers. However, wishing to preserve the intellectual respectability of their conceptualizations, the ideologists of panentheism bypass or extremely carefully and extremely correctly touch on individual complex problems of theology, the features of divine immanence, incl. and the question of miracle. All cases of the relationship between God and man, including the most extraordinary and super-intense experience of interpersonal communication, can, in their opinion, be more convincingly described in ordinary terms within the framework of their model of “downward influence” on the world, mediated by the components of this world.

Wilhelm Dilthey’s Rethinking of Hegelianism

Author(s): Iryna Liashenko / Language(s): English Issue: 30/2023

This article presents the main results of the rethinking of Hegel’s philosophy and Hegelianism, which Wilhelm Dilthey carried out in The History of Hegel’s Youth. This study is based on the author’s translation from the German of Wilhelm Dilthey’s work Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels. Hegel’s philosophy became one of the foundations of the picture of the natural world, the world of man, culture, and history, which even now functions as a paradigm of world philosophy and has a significant influence on modern intellectual culture and our image of the world. The article includes an analysis of the methodology developed by Wilhelm Dilthey for understanding Hegel’s philosophy, the central element of which is a personal approach. It reveals the intellectual background of Wilhelm Dilthey’s rethinking of Hegel’s philosophy and analyses the influence of Dilthey’s interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy on the transformation of the picture of the world of European culture, which is related to Hegel’s philosophy. The author proves that the cosmological model of Hegel’s philosophy is based on the personal experiences of the philosopher in his youth, which allows us to interpret Hegel’s philosophy as mystical, irrational, and pantheistic.

The Concept of Zhonghua in Modern Chinese Philosophy and its Cosmological Implications

Author(s): Sergii Rudenko / Language(s): English Issue: 30/2023

This article presents the results of a study of both Western and Far Eastern narratives of philosophical cosmology. The task of the study was to analyse the essential characteristics of philosophical cosmology in both Western and Far Eastern paradigms. This was made possible by clarifying the distinction between astronomy and cosmology, on the one hand, and philosophy and philosophical cosmology, on the other. The Greek word “??sµ??” is both etymologically and semantically different from the concept of “space.” If space has only one characteristic, it is an extension, and then the cosmos, being a phenomenon that is not static but dynamic, has internal forces and a movement towards self organisation and harmonisation. A person does not live in space, but in the world; such is the point of view of philosophical cosmology, which means that different cultures may have their own cosmology, which will need to be different. It is in this difference of philosophical cosmologies that the richness of philosophy is seen; by studying other cosmological worldviews, one can better understand one’s own. Scholars, including Weimin Sun, Robert Cummings Neville, and others, agree on the need to intensify interest in Chinese cosmology and its basic concepts. One such concept is Zhonghua. Modern Chinese philosophy is a combination of Marxist philosophy, traditional Chinese philosophy, and Western philosophy. One of the tasks of a modern researcher in China is to find possible points of contact, and common features in order to demonstrate the possible well-functioning cooperation of these currents. In addition, common features are found primarily in cosmology.

Amerykańska metafizyka rasy

Author(s): Mieczysław Jagłowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 61/2023

In the 1990s, a debate about the race began in the United States, in which many philosophers are involved. In philosophy, this debate has become known as the metaphysics of race. The aim of this article is to outline positions that have formed in the area of the metaphysics of race as a separate, mainly American, current of philosophical thought – realism (naturalistic and constructivist) and anti-realism – and to indicate the most important arguments invoked by their most outstanding proponents to justify their metaphysical positions, as well as the counter-arguments of their opponents. The article also discusses the normative aspect of this dispute, very important from the moral and social point of view, listing two main positions on this level: eliminativism and conservatism regarding the presence of racial terms and concepts in public discourses. In the final parts of the article, the relations between metaphysical positions and normative directives formulated by the participants of the debate are considered, and critical arguments concerning the philosophical value and social importance of this trend of thinking are presented.

Umwelt in an umwelt: Co-developing within immersive virtual environments and the paradoxical nature of reality and hyperreality

Author(s): Alec Kozicki / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This paper examines how to model immersive virtual environments using Kalevi Kull’s ecosemiotic model of four degrees of nature. Using this theoretical model allows for an investigation into the paradoxical nature of reality and hyperreality, which is a novel approach to understanding how a user co-develops with both their physical and immersive virtual environments. Analysis for the four degrees of nature within the virtual space reveals that an immersive virtual environment emerges from an imaginative void, contains milieu that users can recognize and interact with, offers the action-potentiality (affordances) for altering and changing materials within the virtual space, and the reproductive nature which converges the boundaries of reality and hyperreality during the meaning-making process for users. Additionally, this paper elaborates how technological household goods in the past century have integrated texts into the cultural construct of a home. The paper identifies how immersive virtual environments alter an inhabitant’s perception and interactions within the home and explains how to model immersion, which is important for future research of user behaviour in the digital age of new media.

Metafizica științifică după Constantin Leonardescu

Author(s): Bogdan Rusu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 18/2022

Constantin Leonardescu (1844–1907) was a professor of philosophy for 34 years at the University of Iași. He was an adept of the French eclectic spiritual­ism, which he tried to reconcile with the positivism of Herbert Spencer and with the Darwin­ism of Ernst Haeckel, while countering Vasile Conta’s brand of scientific mate­ialism. Leonardescu argued against the positivist tenet of the incompatibility of meta­physics and positive science, based on the emergence of new “partial” or “local” meta­physics in the thought of contemporary genuine scientists, who philosophized disre­garding the former metaphysical tradition, using only the concepts of their own disci­plines and forging their own principles. Positive metaphysics exists thus potentially, the metaphysician’s task be­ing to systematize, or to “reconcile” the local contributions of the scientists-philosophers in the framework of a general, unifying theory. This frame­work, he argues, is a generali­zation of “Darwinism”, that is, of the special metaphysics initiated by Darwin, then ren­dered general by Spencer and most importantly by Haeckel. However, philosophical Darwinism or “evolutionary monism” curiously vindicates, in Leonardescu’s view, tradi­tional spiritualism. Generalized Darwinism thus in­ter­preted offered a fundamental theory in which science could achieve systematic uni­ty and be­come a true mirror of the Totality, which is metaphysics’ true object. Scien­tific meta­physics is principally a reflection upon science, taking as starting point the positive facts recognized as such by the sciences, and the empirical generalizations val­idated within each science, and aiming to ensure logical coherence amongst them, un­der the rule of the supreme evolution-principle.

„Spiritul științific” și „spiritul filosofic” în viziunea lui Ion Petrovici

Author(s): Constantin Stoenescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 18/2022

The Romanian philosopher Ion Petrovici deals in his last study sent for pub­lication during his life with the comparative analysis of “the philosophical spir­it”, “the scientific spirit”, and “the theological spirit”. Censorship removed considera­tions on “the theo­log­ical spirit”. Petrovici characterizes “the philosophical spirit” by the overall perspective it seeks and by its role in relation to scientific research. It also dis­tinguishes between “philosophical spirit” and philosophical doctrine. Finally, the simi­larities and differences between “the scientific spirit” and “the philosophical spirit” are analysed.

Non-adaequatio: negatyvioji dialektika tarp Kanto ir Hegelio

Author(s): Audrius Pocius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 103/2023

The aim of this article is to frame Adorno’s concept of ‘nonidentity’ in the context of German idealism, namely, the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. The thesis to be defended is that “Secularization of Metaphysics” entails relinquishing, as well as prolongation of the German idealist tradition. The argument is developed in the following steps: 1) the constitution of an autonomous transcendental subject is shown to be rooted in the idea of Enlightenment; 2) by reconstructing Adorno’s conception of truth as non-adaequatio, I claim that Adorno’s philosophy is conducted from the perspective of the end of philosophy; 3) the sociohistorical character of the concept of ‘nonidentity’ is discussed in relation to Adorno’s understanding of history; 4) the concept of ‘nonidentity’ is discussed as implying a continuation of the Kantian project on a metacritical level; 5) Adorno’s critique of Kant is reconstructed in the context of Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge.

Trys meno kūrinio tiesos interpretacijos – Gadameris, Heideggeris, Šliogeris

Author(s): Mantas Daknys / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 103/2023

This article examines interpretations of ontological truth of the work of art in the philosophies of Arvydas Šliogeris, Hans G. Gadamer and Martin Heidegger. All of them believe that artwork may reveal the ontological truth. This common feature suggests the possibility to consider these three interpretations as a Heideggerian-type understanding of art. This paper argues that, while sharing the belief about the possibility of ontological truth in the artwork, their concepts of truth are fundamentally different, precisely because of the relation with language. In the first part of the article, the ontologies of works of art, the structures of experience, the importance of language and the interpretations of truth by the three philosophers are discussed. The second part explicates the essential points of tension and similarities between their concepts of ontology and the truth of artwork. The research reveals that language, as the basic plane of the junction with the world, in the experience of a work of art is more misleading than truth-revealing.

On Necessary Individuals and Ways (sic!) for Them to Be: Celebrating 10-Year Anniversary of Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Author(s): Pranciškus Gricius,Timothy Williamson / Language(s): English Issue: 103/2023

Timothy Williamson, the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, is one of the leading figures in the contemporary analytic philosophy. His areas of research include philosophy of language, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. Professor Williamson has authored over two hundred articles and numerous books, including such modern classics as Vagueness (Routledge 1994), Knowledge and its Limits (Oxford, 2000), The Philosophy of Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell 2007, 2nd up-dated ed. 2021), and Modal Logic as Metaphysics (Oxford, 2013).

Океанский В. П., Океанская Ж. Л. Прохождение вод: неоправославная метафизика отца Сергия Булгакова: монография. СПб.: РХГА, 2022. 388 с.

Author(s): Vasily Lvovich Chernoperov,Sergey Mihailovich Usmanov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2023

Review of: Okeansky V. P., Okeanskaya Zh. L. Passage of waters: Neo-Orthodox metaphysics of Father Sergius Bulgakov: monograph, St. Petersburg: Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy, 388 p.

REBIS - THE HERMETIC ANDROGYNOUS

Author(s): Carmen Ioana Popa / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

Through this study, we intend to make a presentation of the steps required to obtain the hermetic androgynous - the rebis. The alchemical creation presents the transmutation and the alchemist accelerates the growth of the metals in the uterus, matrix. He wants to evade from the laws of Time in order to obtain the Philosopher's Stone. Opus magnum, the transmutation of matter include several stages, matter must suffer, die and be reborn. The phases of the alchemical process include: nigredo - stage in which the prima materia is the massa confusa and the matter is decomposed (separatio); the second stage is washing – ablutio and the blackened matter is bleached, after the matter passes through rubedo, the phase of yellowing (citrinitas), later followed by albedo. Prima materia, aqua permanens and ignis noster lead to the creation of the hermetic androgynous. From the hierogamy between the Sun and the Moon arises filius philosophorum, the rebis. Mercurius includes in himself the Sun and the Moon, being depicted sitting on the chaos, and is called rebis, hermaphroditus, monstrum. The philosopher's stone appears as a result of the conjunction between Sulfur and Mercury, Salt being the astro-mental shell.