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In this paper I shall try to present the role of analytical tradition in the development of Bulgarian philosophical thought – the critical attitude to it, the acceptance of its results of importance and the sizing of its typical problems. My main thesis is that at present the ideas and problems of analytical philosophers going through a veritable revival in my country.
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This article describes the main challenges that the European Union is facing over the last years. It also analyzes the European Integration process and the emergence of the European Union. European integration process began after the Second World War. European politicians realized that “the old continent”, which was destroyed and razed to the ground, needed unification in order to play more important role in the bipolar international system. The European integration was a step by step process, which reached its culmination after signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, when the European Union was formally established. The European Union created very favorable ground for free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market. Despite these positive developments, new threats emerged over the last years that can put an end to the European integration process. From these threats and challenges, particular attention is dedicated to Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit), rise of radicalism and populist parties, migration crisis and a heightened terrorism threat.
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This paper deals with the question of Tunisian and Moroccan womenpresence on social networks. An analysis of how they grab these digital tools tomake their new right claims visible. Our methodology and our questions ariseessentially from the ethnography of electronic communication and semiopragmatics. Our objective here is to observe and describe devices, uses and actorsinvolved in these new online mobilization and activism media for women benefit inTunisia and Morocco. Two web corpuses are analyzed. The first corpus comes froma regular watch on Facebook accounts of associations, activists and ordinary netusers in Tunisia. The second one is made up of 12 episodes of “Marokkiates” webseries broadcast on Facebook and Youtube in 2017-2018. These corpuses have led toa contrastive study of new digital forms of mobilization, circumvention of social orreligious prohibitions, activism for women new rights detailing as well the currentfeminism uses in the two north Africa countries.
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This text aims to analyse the project of elite change implemented by the United Right in Poland in the field of cultural production. The authors argue that culture is recognized by right-wing politicians and intellectuals as a particularly important way of legitimizing its domination also in other fields. The special role of culture can be interpreted by the nature of the public sphere in Poland and the importance of the intelligentsia, who converted cultural capital into other types of capital (the political, the social, and especially the symbolic capital). The authors argue that the replacement of cultural elites serves the revision of history and assertion of power. Although, the elite change project is conducted not only within the cultural field, however, the latter is seen as a particularly important for the right-wing intelligentsia. We argue, that this exchange is based on the long-formulated announcements and is justified by the right-wing intellectuals and politicians who argue for a traditional, Polish model of culture. However, it also conceals political goals. The main goals of the replacement are to change the old elites with people favouring new order and, in the long run, to form right-wing elites, who, referring to the one-dimensional model of culture, will play a hegemonic role in the social life.
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The belief that democracy automatically promotes economic development while undemocratic systems do not serve it is indiscriminately accepted. In fact, the situation is more complicated as statistical analysis shows that many democracies are characterized by low dynamics of development, while in some countries with authoritarian regimes there is a high rate of economic growth and a significant improvement in the social situation. The decisive influence on economic growth is exerted by meritocracy expressed in competent governments, which operate rationally in economic policy and in the process of development do not confuse the means of policy with its objectives. Unfortunately, in the last dozen or so years, as a result of the failures of the neoliberal economic model and the crisis of liberal democracy, the number of democracies has decreased and the number of autocratic regimes has increased. New autocracies emerge. This is especially true of countries that entered the democratization phase after the end of the Cold War. Changes for the better require an evolution towards a social market economy and a new pragmatism.
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Werner Jaeger argued that Plato was perhaps the first to use the word mould, πλάττινν, for the act. It follows from Plato’s philosophy that the arete is unable to independently free itself from hiddenness and overcome the boundaries of the physical world to master the “human sophia.” Plato’s philosophy creates a recognizable image of political education: education as the moulding of a certain “correctness of the gaze” on the image of the highest idea. The moulding power of the transcendental ideal is used to establish the focus and limits of self-realization. A specific discourse and way of life are formed that provides the mastering of the “human sophia.” We have designated the method of achieving “human sophia” with the metaphor “philosophy-as-away-of-life.”
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Aristotle defined the ethical and intellectual virtues which are recognized as fundamental even today. Contemporary virtue ethics still takes into account Aristotelian virtues. The modern moral philosophers have tried to find new ethical values in a society in which religions are in decline and the old values lost their meaning. The starting point of their research has been Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” which has remained the most important work in ethics influencing the philosophical thinking until nowadays. This paper seeks to explain the actual importance of the cardinal Aristotelian virtues and how they are seen today.
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The essay puts to the test Darwinian evolutionist theories, especially the key concepts of adaptation, natural selection and survival of the fittest, in the reading of several plots and fictions (some of them Ark-related animal fictions) concerned with evolution, trauma, adaptability, mimicry/mimesis and survival: Julian Barnes’s Flaubert Parrot and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage, Robert Kroetsch’s The Studhorse Man and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Weaving its critical argument with reference to several of Derrida’s reflections – on the impossibility of a pure origin, the proximity between commencement and commandment, the logic of obsequence, or relation between being and following (je suis), applied deconstructively to the traditional hierarchy between the human and the animal, mastery and monstrosity, and logos and bêtise, etc. – ‘Zo(o)graphies’ is structured in a series of interlinked tableaux, bestiaries as well as insets (Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Jacques Derrida’s Glas). Following from the opening evocation of Peter Greenaway’s Vermeer-themed film A Zed & Two Noughts, which introduces the joint semantics of zographein: to paint from life, and zoon: animal, discreetly at work throughout, this study will eventually attempt to recast the problematic of the evolution of literature and literary forms as involution and regression.
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The present article aims to offer excerpts f an essential article by the Romanian “national poet” Mihai Eminescu in the English translation, with a historical commentary. The translation aims to make Eminescu’s text available to an international audience of scholars, helping to write a more accurate social and cultural history of 19th century Europe. In turn, the commentary aims to show that Eminescu’s political vision, although substantially conservative, incorporated a number of tenets that were to become an inspiration for a number of politicians of highly diverse backgrounds, from the Iron Guard nationalists to the Socialists and Communists. Eminescu’s work was used, in ways he could no longer control, in order to legitimize their varied, and at times downright contradictory, claims.The article discussed here, on “The Austrian influence on the Romanians in the Principalities” (1876) offered Eminescu the opportunity to cast a critical eye on the state organization of the Romanians. His conclusion is exceedingly pessimistic: their state organization is presented as a failure, with the main sources of this failure being the personal interests of the Romanians themselves, compounded by the influence of foreigners. Hence the society based on corruption, rather than on principles, a society where having a job meant ruling, and not having one, being in opposition. In this gloomy picture, the author singled out a class on whose back the whole people lived: the Romanian peasants. The future of this class could not possibly be bright, as Eminescu expected that it be crushed from within, and “along with it, the state and the nation”. Did he also envisage a solution? In order to escape the situation in which “the proximity of Austria is devastating for us, unless we wake up soon”, Eminescu pinpointed three redeeming elements: stability, labour and economy. In other words, hereditary monarchy, the revocation of privileges for the “proletariat of the pen” and the careful spending of public budgets. The alternatives were the Austrian rule, or the Russian rule, none of which comes across to Eminescu as a solution.
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In this article, I intend to discuss the Arendtian conception of culture. In her influential essay “Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance,” Arendt argues that culture is at risk of disappearing under conditions of modernity. In her view, modernity is the age of mass society that leads to the destruction of culture and the development of mass culture. This is the situation Arendt has in mind when she speaks of a “crisis in culture,” a situation she describes as worldlessness. Culture, according to her, is a phenomenon of the world. Because of this conviction, argues Arendt, culture has a closer relationship to politics. The article is divided into two parts. In the first part, I explore Arendt's critical reflection on the modern attitude to culture. In the second part, I examine her analysis of the relationship between culture and politics. Throughout these parts, I suggest a reading of Arendt that illustrates her understanding of culture based on the authority of Greek and Roman thought and Kant’s Critique of Judgment.
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The article examines the National festival of folklore in Koprivshtitsa – a culmination of the assembly-singing movement – by looking for sustainable media representations of the folklore festivals, which has already been held for twelve editions (between 1965 and 2022). The mechanisms for organization and media coverage are sought in the chronological lines before and after 1989. The focus is on the discourses and presentation of the festival as a manifestation of collective and national identity, “the face of Bulgarianism”
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Through a critical analysis of J. Morawiecki’s Szuga. Krajobraz po imperium [Szuga. Landscape after the Empire], Paweł Rogalski ponders a number of questions: Does Russia still exist in the 21st century in the imperial discourse? Has the superpower paradigm, as a certain manifestation of anarchy and a fallen myth, not already been ruined or exhausted? Is the empire an episode necessary historically to balance forces in a global crisis? Is the war in Ukraine (2014 and 2022) perhaps the “new-old” founding murder of the Eastern civilization, incorporating the model of the Russian empire? Does ideology as a glue, instead of positively constructing the subjectivity of the community, contribute to building a new, dangerous phantasm of the empire? In this context, the travel narrative authenticates the message by reaching abandoned and blurry places, where the encountered human subject generates not only events and adventures, but is a record of ideological traces left on the body and the psyche. As Czesław Niedzielski wrote: “In all varieties of reportage prose, the identity of the speaking subject and the author (regardless of the form of the reporting) is one of the basic premises determining the documentary and, most of all, the authentic qualities of the genre”.
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The present article examines Józef Tischner’s idea of upbringing (wychowanie) in establishing the new awareness of solidarity among the Polish workers and people through an awakening to conscience. The present moment served as a revolutionary alternative to socialism. I look at Tischner’s critique of Marxism and the central issue surrounding base and superstructure. Then I turn to his recovery of the Polish tradition of ethical ideals, especially in the person of Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II. The text provides a detailed analysis of the chapter on upbringing in The Spirit of Solidarity. Tischner’s notion that upbringing is a personal bond established in trust to live in hope for improvement in mind and heart is placed in the context of the solidarity as a social bond establishing an ethical community transcending the political quest for power and the need to find an enemy. The text analyzes the various counterfeit forms of education in order to deepen our awareness of the meaning of authentic upbringing. Salient points of his teaching are discussed in conclusion.
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In this paper, the concept of solidarity will be introduced as voluntary cohesion, mutual help and support not only within a loose group, but, above all, within the whole human race. Tischner wants to help contemporary man because he is aware that contemporary man has entered a period of profound crisis of his hope. The reflection on solidarity and hope in the philosophy of Tischner represents a neuralgic point which has its justification in Christian thought. Hope is the prospect of something better which, together with mutual support, removes both fear and isolation, and brings about the development of both the individual and the community. The deepest solidarity is solidarity of conscience. The community of solidarity differs from many other communities precisely because it is “for him” that is fundamental. It is only on this foundation that the community of “we” grows.
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Kinga Wyskiel’s article concerns the issue of gender in science fiction stories by Julia Nidecka. The following stories have been analysed and interpreted: “Wilki na wyspie” [Wolves on the Island], “Taśmy prawdy” [Tapes of Truth], “Kwiaty w bukiecie” [Flowers in a Bouquet] and “Goniący za słońcem” [Chasing the Sun]. Wyskiel considers two dominant strategies for the representation of femininity in these stories and focuses on Nidecka’s images of the woman scientist and the mutant woman present in them. Wyskiel also points out that gender is an a priori category in Nidecka’s future worlds and that, consequently, the construction of those worlds has been based on the gender matrix.
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In this article, Jerzy Stachowicz examines selected literary works the represent the science fiction genre of the interwar period. He focuses on pacifist visions of the future in those works and argues that these scientistic, military, and superpower fantasies have an anti-war potential, and that fantasy literature itself can, to some extent, be regarded as a „pacifist practice”.
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The paper revisits the dialogue between Vyacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Gershenzon in order to present two essentially different orientations in the approach to humanistic heritage and its meaning in human life. The first of these two perspectives is represented by V. Ivanov who feels amongst the great works of culture “at home,” who praises their charms and spiritual-aesthetic riches. The second perspective – as evoked by Gershenzon – is more pessimistic, existentially inclined, filled with tragic awareness. It points out to the problem of crucial importance to the historiosophical self-awareness of modernity: the accumulation of cultural knowledge and the release of theoretical reflection have alienated the human being and cast it into existential homelessness. The paper further argues that (1) there exists an irreducible hiatus between culture and the reality with its power of negativity, and that (2) the ambassadors of culture, such as Ivanov, conceal this hiatus in an attempt to convince us that theoretical humanistic reflection intensifies our perception of the world, while in Gersenzhon’s historiosophical view it ruins the immediacy and spontaneity of life.
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The essay explores the puzzling relationship between joy and the problems of postmodern culture, which affect the quality of our being in the world. Reflection on the precarious status of joy and its uncertain position in contemporary culture allows for a unique perspective on this relationship. The higher the political, economic and social stakes, the more the search for joy becomes a search for meaning, an essential nourishment for cultural forms. Such joy, filtered through our struggles with life’s challenges, compels us to examine the consequences of its absence (pain, suffering, joyless existence) and its manifestations in art (music), religion (Christianity), and philosophy (freedom). The power of joy lies in recognizing the inevitable imperfection of all solutions to our problems that do not include it as a fundamental component of life.
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