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The article, based on Feliks Koneczny's theory of civilisation, shows reflections on Russian unique mentality. The civilisational archetypes existing in Russia are also presented. Differences are explained with historical, sociological and geographical arguments.
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This article presents two characters from the Greek mythology: Narcissus and Pygmalion. They are two different symbols of human destiny, who share a hyperactive attitude towards unreality/fiction. In their case, what exists loses the dispute over existence with what does not exist. Contrary to Narcissus, who is the victim of this dispute, Pygmalion is its beneficiary. Narcissus loses the dispute, because he is fulfilled in contemplation; Pygmalion wins, as he has managed to make his life a part of an aesthetic experience.
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This text deals with youth subcultures from the point of view of social pedagogy. Text introduces the basic terms such as culture, the dominant culture, subculture and counterculture and alternative culture. Furthermore, there is analyzed the concept of subculture youth as well as the concept of lifestyle. A difference between modern and postmodern approach to subcultures is also mentioned. Furthermore, there is described the relationship between youth subcultures and social pedagogy, which is one of the disciplines that are devoted to youth subcultures. The final part of the text briefly discusses selected youth subcultures in the Czech Republic and the negative manifestation of these subcultures.
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Modern youth, forced to live in complicated and unpredictable reality, faces the task of building its own identity and finding its own auto identification. This article is an analysis of this subject, based on research conducted by the author. It tries to find an answer to questions like „who is modern youth”, „how does it present itself and shape its own self-image” and „how does modern youth perceive the surrounding reality”?
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The structural transformation of the Habermasian public sphere from the salons to the streets is directly related to understanding the boundaries of the city and the dynamics among its inhabitants today. The process of “transnationalization” via the mass media results in further “deterritorialization”, which brings with it the ambivalence of locality and universality within the same city. As the “counter-publics” continue to lack material means to rational-critical debate in envisioning the links between the city and its inhabitants, questions remain on what institutional arrangements can best facilitate participatory parity among the citizens. Joanna Rajkowska’s Minaret (2009-2011) bears a critical relationship to the city of Poznań as a site of play upon heritage, time-space relations, as well as religion. Who is the city really for – the inhabitant, the investor… the artist? Following Lefebvre’s definition and work conducted by such organizations as the UN-Habitat (2005), “the right to the city” suggests that all urban dwellers are equal participants. Does Rajkowska’s Minaret employ the best means that can ignite counter-public mobilization for Muslim minorities in Poznań, or does it simply make itself a victim to the postmodern Other?
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This article tackles the issue of critical pedagogy in regards to education for peace. Peace education is here seen as a holistic process of development of human potential to coexist in a less violent manner. This problem is significant for example in the context of South Africa, which is being explained in this paper. Another example of this kind of pedagogy is related to the Jewish and Greek concepts of Tikkun Olam and Parrhesia. Finally they are being emphasized the issues of empathy and pedagogy of hope.
More...Analiza koncepcji formacji intelektualnej w Granicach historyczności Barbary Skargi
The article is an analysis of the term “intellectual formation” as defined by Barbara Skarga. It is the keyword for her work The Boundaries of Historicity (Granice historyczności) published in 1989. This thesis is crucial for the philosopher’s academic achievements and is a signal of a shift to more theoretical problems as well as metaphysics. The abovementioned changes are visible in Skarga’s multi-level definition of intellectual formation. Within its frames she marks out four levels: problems, with which in given times scientists and thinkers were struggling, the conceptual apparatus used to its description, methods of its explanation and proving the hypothesis and a corpus of ontological and axiological thesis, which marks the boundaries of what may be called epistemological field of the epoch (Bachelard) or episteme (Foucault). The fourth level, episteme, is singled out as the most important element of the reflection concerning intellectual formation. The term “formation” is at the same time, among other terms such as “community” or “collective”, the substantial component of the debate concerning the Warsaw school of the history of ideas and attempts to define its essence. The article is an attempt to interpret The Boundaries of Historicity as a text that is in a way self-referential; and to search in Skarga’s work for traces which can be seen a s a description of the philosopher’s experience of co-operation within the community called the Warsaw school of the history of ideas. The interpretation is based on an attempt at reading The Boundaries of the Historicity as closely to the historical context as possible, and taking into consideration the biography and academic achievements of Barbara Skarga. In the last part of the article I attempt to describe how the term “intellectual formation” and its elements, in the definition created by Skarga, may be used in further research concerning works of thinkers connected to the Warsaw school of the history of ideas.
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We live in an era of crises. One of them, the ecological crisis, arose from the fact that the human race plunders nature, destroying, among other things, the Earth’s biodiversity. In my paper I will show that the situation is rooted in a specific worldview. Moreover, I will interrogate the question of how we can deal with the problem. Humankind’s attitude to themselves and to the world (including nature) is based on beliefs and values which make up an unquestioned prejudgment. Individuals absorb it in the process of socialization, as they assimilate the widely understood traditions of the social groups to which they belong. In the Western tradition in particular, our understanding of humanity’s situation in the world and its relation to nature, which we have had since modernity, found its clearest articulation in the views of René Descartes (1596–1650). I will begin by discussing the main characteristics of this position most pertinent to the main problem identified in the title. Then I will discuss the consequences of Cartesianism for the worldview of modern man such as the radical rationalism and anthropocentrism inherent in the European attitude. In this tradition humanity is identified with subjectivity and intellectual cognition. Reality outside of human subjectivity, that is, the whole animate and inanimate nature, is treated as the object of knowledge. Nature should be explored in the spirit of modernity’s maxim “We can do as much as we know” (F. Bacon 1561-1626); it can be used to our purposes, to satisfy our growing needs. This is being done without scruple, precisely because nature is denied being the subject. It has no right to claim moral protection. Today, in the era of globalization, this way of thinking, which originated in the West, has spread over the entire globe and led to the ongoing devastation of nature. We are dealing with an ecological disaster. In the next step I will interrogate how this situation can be changed and what may be the role of philosophy in this cultural shift. Every vision of the world is a construct (the Cartesian vision being a very good example). What philosophy can do is offer a certain vision of reality, in which humanity has a friendly (symbiotic) attitude to nature and does not treat it merely as a means to their ends. Such ecophilosophy could be based on the thesis that subjectivity is the property not just of all human beings, but of all other beings as well. Such an idea can be found in the work of the German scientist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll (1864-1944), who granted the status of the subject to every living being. He laid foundations to the concept of nature as “a community of subjects” comprising man and the entire animate world, thus breaking away from the Cartesian framework. I am going to outline briefly his position. Finally, I will point out what needs to be done, if people are to change their attitude to nature. A good theory in and of itself will not suffice. It is necessary to instill ecological convictions and values in entire societies, so that these values would eventually come to seem obvious. We need to launch an extensive education campaign of both adults and—perhaps even more importantly—children. In other words, the comprehensive protection of nature can only be promoted through the nexus of ecophilosophy and education.
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The review of: Feminizm — antyfeminizm by Joanna Petry Mroczkowska; Kobieta w Kościele, Wydawnictwo WAM, 2012
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This article examines a diachronic change in political thought of Polish National Democracy between its emergence as a coherent political movement and the final crystallization of its political program after the 1905 Revolution. It scrutinizes it as a [failed] answer for the political modernity, seen as a condition of groundlessness of the social and a radical contingency of the political. I argue that such a comprehension can shed light on reasons for deep alternations in the structure of national-democratic thought. From progressive social radicalism, through politically envisioned nation-building, they turned into exclusionary and xenophobic nationalism. The change was ushered by the urgent need for a foundation for political thinking, ultimate envisioning of the society as a closed, positively defined entity and reinventing the teleological horizon. A reoccupation of the place of legitimacy of the social order by a biologically conceptualized nation followed. This reoccupation of the old structure of thought, imprinting itself on the new ideas facing contingency, prevented an adequate confrontation with political modernity and lead national democracy to an authoritarian turn, simultaneously „closing” the concept of the nation in Polish political thinking for years.
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The article is devoted to the problem of definition of the concept of the political on the basis of relations between friend and enemy. Such definition of the political we can find in C. Schmitt’s political philosophy and H. Plessner’s philosophical anthropology. Although this definition mostly pays attention to the antagonistic dimension of the political world, we need to understand an essence of the political friendship. Thus author analyzes different conceptions of the political friendship that have been presented in the works of Aristotle, J. Derrida, H. Arendt. Political friendship is recognized as basis for the creation a political community and for the existence of the political world.
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Girard indicates an ancient text which we perfectly know as one of the books of the Holy Scripture - the Book of Job. He presents the ominous face of the sacred, the idea of a divinity, in the name of which a scapegoat can be selected and executed. Job for Girard is an unsuccessful scapegoat, i.e. the one that has not accepted his fault. Had Job not rebel against the social intentions, today he would be an example of another subject of collective violence which brought unity to its community. The theory of Girard, who is of the opinion that each culture is based on founding murder and secondary sacralisation of the victim is particularly popular today, in the age of the problem of terrorism. Slavoj Žižek, commenting Benjamin, takes up this thread we are interested in. This theological dimension is divine violence, understood as intervention of a transcendent justice. Such an interpretation of religiously motivated terrorism is so far from Benjamin’s divine justice, that Žižek does not continue this thread. However, the person who does this is Płuciennik, who stresses that terrorists’ motivation has iconoclastic dimension. He notices that there is a strong current in the contemporary intellectual landscape, which refers to apocalyptic thinking, connected with retribution theology.
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This article is focused on philosophical and religious presuppositions of Mircea Eliade’s history of religion. There are three areas on which his concept of religion is based: interest in humanities, like history, sociology, psychology and phenomenology of religion, the influence of philosophies and personal religious beliefs. He proclaims integral discipline which links scientific methods such as empiricism, structuralism, functionalism, antireductionism, antievolutionism, but also stresses empathic understanding of experience of the sacred. With properly applied method, which he called total hermeneutic, scientist will be able to examine the universal structures of historically and geographically remote religions. But this vision takes for granted ahistorical religious structures. Eliade does not use the methods developed by history. In fact, ontology and anthropology, which he characterizes as archaic, presupposes the existence of cosmic religion as the purest form of religious belief. Thus Romanian philosopher interprets religious facts, according to subjective and dogmatically accepted claims. He links the ideas of Oriental religions (liberation from the time), ethnographic beliefs (cult of nature) and Christianity (the idea of God incarnate in Jesus Christ). Finally, Eliade’s purposes are more practical. He seeks to revitalize desacralized culture by the conception of cosmic Christianity, which is syncretic and cosmocentric doctrine.
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The discovery of mirror neurons and the characterization of their response properties is certainly an important achievement in neurophysiology and cognitive neuroscience. The reference to the role of mirror neurons in ‘reading’ the intentions of other creatures and in the learning process fulfils an explanatory function in understanding many cognitive phenomena beginning from imitating, towards understanding, and finishing with complex social interactions. The focus of this paper is to review selected approaches to the role of mirror neurons in mental activity as understanding, and to conclude with some possible implications for researches on mirror neurons for philosophical theories of understanding.
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Ovih dana smo preplavljeni ispovijestima. One se javljaju u niskoj formi u toku dnevnih televizijskih govornih emisija (daytime talk show), a u nešto višem obliku u knjižarama. Pravičnost je ustupila mjesto '‘pomodnom pokajanju", kako je to nazvala neka šaljivčina, pri čemu je imala na umu upotrebu prizemnih načina da se zadobije publicitet, saosjećanje, pa čak i razrješenje grijeha trgovanjem statusom neke osobe, odnosno činjenicom da li je ona žrtva zlodjela, ili sama čini zlodjela. Ovaj ispovjedni modus se sada prenosi na cijele nacije, pri čemu razdvajanje snažnih i autentičnih djela i izraza žaljenja od praznih gesti postaje još teže nego što se to čini na razini jednog pojedinca prema drugom.
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A context of my paper is the debate on reason, tradition and traditional communities, in which this moral and epistemological issues were discussed as a part of general socio-philosophical theory of modernity. In particular I intend to locate my considerations in the context of formal-pragmatic theory of modern communicative rationality developed by Jürgen Habermas and Robert Brandom. I will provide a competitive model of the rationality of tradition by applying a conceptual toolkit of pragmatically oriented analysis to explain practices connected with vocabulary of tradition. I argue that tradition as a communication system has a fully rational structure. My main claim is that communicative structure of tradition has a rational structure of language game. This structure includes defined principles of communication for members of closed tradition-grounded community and rule of inclusion for potential new members. Firstly I consider closely internal principles of communication within the framework of tradition contrasting them shortly with normative-deontic rules of the postenlightenment idea of pragmatic communication discussed by Jürgen Habermas and Robert Brandom. After that I examine the rule of inclusion — the rule, which mediates between closed system of tradition-based community and his environment.
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The aim of this article is to pose the question of who is the man in a world steeped in technology. Currently, through the significant growth of the Internet, we are in the middle of the road leading to the connection of all people in the world in one nervous system. Machines are the most important teachers of man. Not only in terms of learning specific things, but also in the sense that the role of the teacher described by Max Weber — in communicating our knowledge about how to be a man. With some caution we can say that the machines define human form of contact with other people. In conclusion, the author of the article considers the question of human nature in the light of such phenomena as the collective consciousness in the network, technological development and biohacking. The author introduces the concept of „machines” meaning the virtual body, computers, credit cards, terminals, camera, internet, networks, software, satellite and fiber optics. These are all elements merged in the „machine” that creates human behavior.
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This article will try to indicate the most important theories which constitute the modern paradigm of the war. The theory of the war is an important issue in political philosophy because it accentuates how the boundaries of the existence and the functioning of the state are drawn. Seeking works that form the basis of the paradigm, one should begin with presenting a specific structure of the theory proposed by T. Kuhn. On this basis the article will be divided into three parts. The first part is focused on the construction of Kuhn’s scientific paradigm. Additionally in order to prove the meaningful use of paradigmatic structure in issues connected to humanities and philosophy Giorgio Agamben thesis will also be presented. The next part will expose the main elements of Carl von Clausewitz's theory of war. The most important of these is an assumption that war is the continuation of political action that seeks to compel the enemy to fulfill “our will”. The second element to be tested will be a political concept of Carl Schmitt along with its specific categories of the enemy and the friend. The second element to be tested will be Carl Schmitt’s the Concept of the political with its specific categories: the enemy and the friend. The third part of the paper will present the concept of Jerzy Wiatr. Its task will be to supplement the paradigm by showing that the parties of the war may be a “political community” and not only the state. This will help to extend the applicability of the paradigm in various fields of the social sciences. The ultimate aim will be to convince the reader that these theories are the most important part of the paradigm. Moreover, there is a high probability that they became the basis for the modern paradigm of the war.
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Cyberculture is not only a technologically disembodied information sphere but also a contemporary dominant form of culture. This thesis is presented by arguing that cyberculture forms virtual habitus that is highly unconscious for its users. At the same time, virtual habitus functions as a technology that gathers information about its users. It can be said that it also learns about the preferences of its users. This is established by a set of algorithms that are highly interconnected at a certain level, one to which users of cyberculture do not have any access. The article examines the consequences of functioning of humans in this kind of technologically mediated culture. There is a connection between virtual habitus (mostly unconscious) and antropotechnics (mostly conscious) – this intersection within cyberculture is presented as a basic mechanism that governs the being of its users. There article also features interpretations of ways of creating virtual habitus and their growing importance within contemporary society. In the conclusion, there is disputed a necessary role of philosophy in deconstructing the automatic character of cyberculture.
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