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CENSORSHIP IN SLOVAK OPERA

Author(s): Michaela Mojžišová / Language(s): English Issue: Special/2014

This study deals with the fate of Slovak opera compositions at the hands of communist censorship in the second half of the 20th century. The most striking case is Krútňava (The Whirlpool) by Eugen Suchoň (which premiered in Bratislava in 1949); this work was subject to gross ideological distortion with the elimination of its Christian and humanistic character as well as a distortion in its dramaturgical composition (i.e. the rejection of its symbolic framework). The Whirlpool was performed on dozens of European stages in its modified form, which did not correspond with Suchoň’s own convictions. The process of its rehabilitation was protracted, and its reconstructed original version was first heard in Banská Bystrica only in 2008 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Suchoň’s birth. Operas by Ján Cikker also had a complicated fate: Mister Scrooge, which premiered in Kassel in 1963, was composed on the theme of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; Coriolanus, which premiered in Prague in 1974, was inspired by Shakespeare’s drama of the same name. Like The Whirlpool, Coriolanus had the Slovak premiere of its original form only on the occasion of the centenary of the author’s birth (in Banská Bystrica in 2011). Both composers were respected and supported by the official establishment. This fact takes their fight for the soul of their compositions and the implied compromises into the wider moral and ethical context of the period.

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„ŽENA S KINOAPARÁTOM“ ALEBO DOKUMENTÁRNY FILM PODĽA ZUZANY PIUSSI

Author(s): Martin Palúch / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 03/2014

This paper interprets the work of documentary filmmaker Zuzana Piussi in terms of its clear similarities and differences to the principles of filmmaking employed by Dziga Vertov and the style of cinéma vérité. Only in this way can one reach a definition of the additional original elements in her approach to directing and her distinctive authorial style. The paper outlines the main characteristics of Piussi’s work, so that it can be reflected upon from the perspective of authorial strategy, and discusses the relationship of Piussi as filmmaker to the protagonists in her films, her involvement in the plot itself, the thematic focus of her work, the use of technology in capturing both image and sound, the editing of the filmed material and the resolution of ethical matters in her authorial approach to the protagonists. Piussi is a filmmaker more concerned with the content of a film than its objectivity or form. She has a talent for finding current, controversial, ethically questionable and politically “unpleasant” themes to base her work on. She works with a small film crew and often at her own expense, so she is not subject to the demands of a film producer. Her independence allows her to critically act as a journalist and thus unmask the ills in our society.

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Možnosti využitia modelových situácií (vinet) v antropologickom výskume morálnych postojov

Author(s): Kristína Miškovská,Zuzana Budzelová,Danijela Jerotijević / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/2016

Labels describe a fictitious situation which the contact person is supposed to asses and take a certain position. They represent a suitable complementary method of qualitative research. While in psychology they can be used as a tool for predicting behavior, in anthropology and ethnology they can be used to study norms, perceptions or attitudes. The aim of this text is to show in what way they can be linked to other types of qualitative data (participatory observation, semi-structured interviews) through an example of a long-term anthropological research studying political preferences and moral attitudes. The principal research assumption is based on Jonathan Haidt’s concept, according to which self-declared political preferences (whether an individual is considered conservative or liberal) are reflected in the sphere of moral emotions, in particular in the emotion of disgust. The results of the analysis show that all politically self-declared groups reflect morally unacceptable behavior. The biggest difference between conservative and liberal contacts was observed with respect to sexuality (e.g. sexual behavior, registered partnerships). The text points out the methodological limits of model situations: they can problematize the situations which individuals have not faced yet, as a result of which they can judge a fictitious and a real-life situation differently.

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Freedom, Power and Causation

Author(s): Thomas Pink / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Freedom or control of how we act is often and very naturally understood as a kind of power—a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom conceived as such a power possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, now often referred to as the Mind argument, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, found in Hobbes, does not assume incompatibilism, but assumes rather that the only possible form of power in nature is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound—it is in fact presupposed by Hume’s scepticism—and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.

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Kronika

Author(s): Monika Martišková,Ingrid Lanczová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/2018

Conference report: The Key-stone of Discrimination and the Impact of its Manifestations on the Selected Groups of Population / Podstata diskriminácie a jej prejavy s dosahom na vybranú skupinu obyvateľstva

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Omezená jaderná válka a její destruktivita

Author(s): Marek Hrubec / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2019

The article discusses the current risks of a limited nuclear war and its consequences for humanity. It presents a critical analysis of the difference between the strategy of global destructive warfare as a result of the classical use of standard nuclear weapons on the one hand and the new political-military plan of a limited, small-scale nuclear war (without global expansion) on the other. The paper clarifies the problems associated with the new US strategy documents that are advancing a line of argument in favour of a limited nuclear war in the context of conflicts of political, corporate and military-technical interests in the global capitalism. It also analyses the background to the current state, i.e. the history of strategies of the possible nuclear war and potential actors of this kind of threat. It draws attention to the current real danger of locally waged limited nuclear warfare and its possible escalation on a global scale.

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Human, super-human, anti-human: The posthuman deep future in evolutionary science fiction

Author(s): Mariusz Pisarski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Posthumanist visions of the future do not venture further ahead than a few hundred or a few thousand years at most. It is within this near future that most scenarios of technological singularity and the enhancement of the human into an H+, or a posthuman, are projected. This paper reflects on visions of much more distant futures found in evolutionary speculative fiction and science fiction, from J.B.S. Haldane (1927) through to Adrian Tchaikovsky (2019). From the vantage point of thousands (or millions) of years, the forthcoming era of minduploading, designer babies, and technological immortality as envisioned in the transhumanist utopias of Hans Moravec amount to short episodes in a long cycle of evolutionary progress matched by planetary catastrophes. Such a perspective offers a more general reflectionon the philosophical and cultural implications of a “creative evolution”, the nature of humanity, and humans’ place among other species. The transhumanism agenda, initiated by Julian Huxley in the form of a call to arms for the “betterment of humanity” by existing, emerging, and speculative technologies, does not emerge as a retrograde reinstatement of the compromised ideals of Enlightenment, but rather as the sine qua non for human survival in the face of the heat death of the Sun, the eruption of a super-volcano, and any other existential risk. Human ingenuity, reflected in advanced biotechnology, space travel, technological enhancements turns out to be the only guarantee of life on Earth and beyond it. As such, this comparative study of literary examples of possible courses of human history proves that reflections on the far future are capable of healing current discursive divides between posthumanist and transhumanist, anthropocentric and anti-anthropocentric, and technophobic and technophilic approaches to our present.

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Parallels between two worlds: Literary science-fiction imagery and transhumanist visions

Author(s): Jana Tomašovičová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The prerequisites for transhumanist visions can be identified on anthropological, social,scientific, and technological levels. But one cannot neglect science-fiction literature, which provides transhumanism with inspiration and literary imagery. This article focuses on three selected motifs in the well-known Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, which discusses in relation to ideas of transhumanism. In the first part, the article highlights the visionary and subversive character of these works and seeks similar traits in transhumanism. The second part discusses big data analysis, which is an important component of literary storytelling and which fuels the development of artificial intelligence, which, according to transhumanists, will lead to the creation of superintelligence. The third motif is the confrontation with beings that possess superhuman abilities, something both Asimov’s work and transhumanist visions deal with and which opens up questions about coexistence with those who are unlike us. Literary and transhumanist visions have multiple parallels and encourage deeper social, ethical, and anthropological analyses of important topics.

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Saviors, naïfs, or orphans? The posthuman condition in literary and cinematic perspectives on human cloning

Author(s): Ivan Lacko / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This article focuses on cloning as a relevant trans- and posthumanist theme presented in the classical science fiction of the 1970s (Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang), 21st-century literary fiction (Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go), and streaming television series made in the 2010s (BBC America’s Orphan Black). With special emphasis on the subject of human cloning, the article will endeavor to discuss questions of identity in a posthuman environment, tracing the development from Wilhelm’s dystopian and post-apocalyptic scenarios in which clones and humans interact to disastrous ends, through Ishiguro’s psychological and emotional exploration of the inner world of cloned individuals whose fates are narrated in a form similar to the Bildungsroman, all the way to the complex study of nature vs. nurture in the cloned characters of Orphan Black.

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From “andys” to “toasters”: How has politics affected the view of non-humans in ”Blade Runner” and ”Battlestar Galactica”?

Author(s): Jozef Lenč / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This article focuses on the change in perception of humanoid androids in science fiction from Philip K. Dick’s cult novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and its later film adaptations, to the depictions of androids and people in the struggle for survival and immortality in the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009) and Caprica (2010). Science-fiction novels usually outline the author’s ideas about the near or distant future of the world with which they are confronted on a daily basis. They usually warn readers of a possible apocalypse or present models of an ideal future society to replace the society of today. However, science fiction is written by real people in a specific space and time who often reflect the social tensions and issues of the time they were created. The depictions of humanoid androids, their position in society, and their desire to break free from their undignified or even slavish positions are, in many cases, a reflection of real policies and the position of today’s “others” in mainstream society.

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Homo artefactus and Promethean shame: Reflections on Josef Čapek, Futurism, transhumanism, posthumanism, and the Obvious

Author(s): Juraj Odorcak / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This paper is focused on an analysis of Josef Čapek ’s notion of technology and his scrutiny of the conflicting nature of the avant-garde movement of Futurism in relation to the contemporary assumptions of the processual philosophies of transhumanism and posthumanism. The analysis is reconstructed in the narrative setting of the technological and methodological hybridization of the categories of the human and posthuman (Homo artefactus) and is inspired by Josef Čapek’s approach to a specific philosophical question: Why would anyone want to create a posthuman, a “robot Picasso”? It is argued that Josef Čapek projected that some of the motivational assumptions about the creation of posthumans would be built upon the inconsistent stigmatization of the human by humans that envy the hypothetical superiority of posthumans (i.e., Promethean shame).

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Leaving Gaia behind: The ethics of space migration in Cixin Liu’s and Neal Stephenson’s science fiction

Author(s): Johannes D. Kaminski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

In Cixin Liu’s trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past (2008–2010) and Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves (2015), the surface of planet Earth becomes uninhabitable amid global states of emergency, and central governments devise radical plans to ensure the survival of the human species. In contrast to the Old Testament, where human emancipation from nature is punished, Chinese antiquity’s narratives of large-scale engineering projects are surprisingly compatible with the modern mindset which regards nature in utilitarian terms. Contemporary science fiction does not simply inherit this techno-optimistic stance, but fleshes out possible futures that are shaped by biopolitical decisions. In Stephenson’s and Liu’s prose, the proposed escape plans only benefit small segments of the population. While such procedure is incompatible with human rights, which emphasize the value of the individual over the collective, contemporary pragmatic ethics interprets such behavior as rational. Applied to more tangible scenarios, such as our increasingly depleted livelihoods on Earth, both texts document our somewhat diminished expectations regarding the future. In a world where eating human protein is “reasonable” and its rejection merely “respectable”, the preservation of humankind in space sets in motion a return to Hobbes’s “natural state of man”.

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State of Grace: A Probe into Understanding Democratic Trust and Legitimacy Through the Eyes of the VPN (The Public Against Violence)

Author(s): Matej Ivančík / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Gaining trust, both domestically and internationally, became a self-evident mission for the protagonists of the 1989 democratic revolution, something ever-present within the new policies aimed at a political and economic transition. This held true in particular with the Czechoslovak case. Unlike the situation in Poland or Hungary, where the legitimacy of the political transition was framed by the so-called Round Table Talks, revolutionaries from the Civic Forum (Občanské forum or OF) and the Public Against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu or VPN) had to extract their legitimacy directly from the very event of the Velvet Revolution. This exposed the policies of the OF and VPN to a participatory scrutiny of sorts in an even more imminent manner. In order to gain trust, at best transferable to actual political results, i.e. winning an election, the proponents of the democratic revolution in Czechoslovakia engaged in both policies and politics which would create an environment most preferable for their goals. This text focuses on the political language of ethics and politics, totalitarianism and Europeanization, focusing mainly on strategies used by the VPN and seeks to understand how an environment focused on developing and gaining trust functioned in the Slovak case.

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Vision ou manipulation ? Les problèmes éditoriaux d’une anthologie slovaque des troubadours

Author(s): Ján Živčák / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2022

Socialist Slovakia did not pay much attention to medieval Occitan poetry, of which only one translation was accessible in book format – the anthology Danteho trubadúri (The troubadours of Dante), published in 1972 by Jozef Felix and Viliam Turčány. This article seeks to reconstruct its ethical background, drawing mainly (but not exclusively) on contemporary approaches to the anthology as a concept. It responds to such questions as: Do the translators fall prey to cultural isolationism and plagiarize concrete foreign-language (especially French) sources? Does their selection of poems encourage ethnocentrism rather than a true exchange of literary values? Why is Dante’s name included in the title? To what extent are the accompanying paratexts marked by ideological manipulation? Perhaps not surprisingly, the editorial gesture is not discredited by the ordeal, proving that aesthetic elitism can be a powerful antidote to totalitarian practices.

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An Epistemic-Practical Dilemma for Evidentialism

Author(s): Byeong D. Lee / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

There are cases in which epistemic rationality seems to conflict with practical rationality. Evidentialists such as Parfit, Shah, Skorupski and Way deny that there are practical reasons for belief. On their view, the only genuine normative reasons for belief are epistemic reasons, and so the alleged practical reasons for belief are the wrong kind of reasons for belief. But I argue in this paper that the evidentialists can still face a genuine dilemma between epistemic and practical rationality which cannot be resolved on the grounds that the alleged practical reasons for belief are the wrong kind of reasons for belief.

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Radu Umbreș: Living with Distrust. Morality and Cooperation in a Romanian Village

Author(s): Peter Maňo / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2023

Review of: Umbreș, Radu. Living with distrust: morality and cooperation in a Romanian village. New York: Oxford University Press, [2022], ©2022. vii, 228 pages. Foundations of human interaction. ISBN 978-0-19-086990-8.

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Cyrilometodské hodnoty prezentované nitrianskymi biskupmi v 20. storočí

Author(s): Viliam JUDÁK / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 01/2024

In the new Czecho-Slovakia, the governmental regime did not show much interest in the cult of St. Cyril and Methodius at the beginning. In Slovakia, the veneration of St. Cyril and Methodius was not fully manifested until after 1920, after the consecration of the first Catholic bishops from Slovakia, who were also active there. Among them was the Bishop of Nitra, Mons. K. Kmet'ko (1920–1948). In the very first year of his episcopate, he took care of the liturgical celebration of the feast of St. Cyril and Methodius in the diocese to the highest level of liturgical celebration: he highly recommended the Apostolate of Sts. Cyril and Methodius to be introduced in the parishes. The idea of St. Cyril and Methodius also wound its way through the administration of the diocese under Apostolic Administrator E. Nécsey (1948-1968) J. Pásztor (1973–1988) and J. Ch. Korec (1990–2005).

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From Animal to Environment: The Narrative of a Research on Nature from the 18th Century to the Present Day

Author(s): Jean-Luc Guichet / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2024

This paper is the text of a lecture given at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski on 2 November 2023 at the invitation of Professor Irena Kristeva. Its purpose is to retrace the path of my research, from the question of the Animal in the eighteenth century to the theme, at the same time, of the environment associated with the construction of the modern Ego and which gave rise to my latest book published in 2020: Figures of the Self and the Natural Environment in the Eighteenth Century. Throughout, the common thread remains to understand the link between these two processes and the new Anthropology being established at the time, whether in terms of the new definition of Man in general in relation to the Animal, or of the Self in relation to the natural Environment. At the same time, this sensitivity to Nature paved the way for our contemporary ecology, both scientific and political.

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Вестернизъм и комунизъм (Европа и Изтокът във възгледите на Карл Маркс и Фридрих Енгелс)

Author(s): Ivan Katzarski / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 14/2024

The article explores a rarely studied topic – theWesternism of Marx and Engels. In a theoretical and abstract framework, they anticipate that, in the course of capitalist development, national distinctions will gradually disappear, eventually ceasing to exist entirely under communism, along with class divisions. National oppression is also expected to vanish. In line with these broad ideas, the „Сlassics” condemn the destructive impact of Western expansion on the countries and regions affected by this expansion. Marx and Engels, particularly the former, compiled a well-documented dossier on the West's crimes in subjugated countries and regions. However, they also firmly believed that the victims of this expansion were deserving of their fate because they stood as obstacles to „progress”, being perceived as „barbarians” obstructing the path of Western civilization. This viewpoint provides a form of philosophical justification for these crimes. Subsequently, as an alternative to Westernism, I briefly examine the symbiotic relationships between the archai cand modern elements in certain Eastern societies (Japan, India, and China). The conclusion offers a brief comparison of the Westernism of Marx and Engels with contemporary Westernists and outspoken anti-communists.

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Идеология и морал

Author(s): Stiliyan Yotov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 14/2024

The article is an attempt to take stock of personal experience related to studying the topic of ideology in the 1980s in the philosophy faculties of Bulgaria and with the discussions on this topic. Initially, it reconstructed the way in which the original texts of Marx and Engels were read, which contrasted with the circulating official versions. Then it draws attention to a deficient moment in education related to the neglect of a certain type of interpretations following the work of Antonio Gramsci, enjoying at the same time an increased interest in the world. Finally, it offers an attempt to explain the meaning of alternative readings of ideology, related, on the one hand, to the work of Louis Althusser, on the other, to that of N. Abercrombie, B. Turner, St. Hill, who break with the traditional idea of a direct relationship between the economic structure of society and ideology, as well as of the relationship between a ruling class and an oppressive ideology. Against this background, the problem of the relationship between ideology and morality is addressed and the thesis is defended that morality may not be a form of ideology, but a critique of ideology.

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