The past decade has seen extensive research carried out on the systematic causes of research misconduct. Simultaneously, less attention has been paid to the variation in academic misconduct between research fields, as most empirical studies focus on one particular discipline. We propose that academic discipline is one of several systematic factors that might contribute to academic misbehavior. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, we argue that in the developing countries, the norm of textual originality has not drawn equal support across different (...) research fields depending on its level of internationalization. Using plagiarism detection software, we analyzed 2,405 doctoral dissertations randomly selected from all dissertations defended in Russia between 2007 and 2015. We measured the globalization of each academic discipline by calculating the share of publications indexed in the global citation database in relation to overall output. Our results showed that, with an average share of detected borrowings of over 19%, the incidence of plagiarism in Russia is remarkably higher than in Western countries. Overall, disciplines closely follow the pattern of higher globalization associated with a lower percentage of borrowed text. We also found that plagiarism is less prevalent at research-oriented institutions supporting global ethical standards. Our findings suggest that it might be misleading to measure the prevalence of academic misconduct in developing countries without paying attention to variations at the disciplinary level. (shrink)

The Constructivist Credo is a set of foundational principles for those wishing to conduct social science research within the constructivist paradigm. They were distilled by Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba from their many writings on this topic and are provided in the form of 150 propositional statements. After Guba’s death in 2008, the Credo was completed by Lincoln and is presented here. In addition to the key principles of constructivist thought, the volume also contains an introduction to constructivism, (...) an intellectual biography and complete bibliography of Guba’s work, and a case study using constructivism, showing how the paradigm can be applied to a research study. (shrink)

Departing from the premise that the poststructuralist paradigm still reigns supreme in feminist and gender theory, that is, despite the niche efforts made in the past two decades to challenge it linked to the so called “speculative” turn or the materialisms (and realisms) emerging from the feminist field itself (such as the Utrecht School, inspired by Rosi Braidotti), we set the call for papers for the issue before you in terms that would invite authors ready to challenge the dominant epistemic (...) framework. We invited papers that engage with materialism(s), realism(s), sciences and projects engaged in rethinking the post-human beyond the poststructuralist (and, we dare say, postmodern/ist) norm. -/- . (shrink)

The paper starts with outlining the problems of determinism presented in Ulrich's Eleuthériologie and then examines what resources are available to Kant to address these problems. Although the initial focus is historical, one of the aims is to show that the problems with determinism continue to be live problems for those who seek to defend Kant's theory. So the attempt to seek resources in Kant to address these problems will also involve an attempt to offer a diagnosis of what is (...) needed for such defenses of Kant to succeed. (shrink)

Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk has a place among the early Kantians in Halle as both a theologian and a philosophical thinker. After situating Tieftrunk within this intellectual history and determining his theological and philosophical position, this paper provides a chronological account of the concept of hope—which lies at the basis of Kant’s moral philosophy—in Tieftrunk’s writings on philosophy of religion. In particular, the discussion centers on the relationship between the foundation of hope in the moral law and the exclusion of a (...) legalistic fulfilment of hope. The “love of the law,” which emerges especially in Tieftrunk’s work, takes a prominent position in the interpretation. The investigation is accompanied by an evaluation of Tieftrunk’s role in the early reception of Kant. (shrink)

This paper considers the systematic relationship between faith and reason in Kant’s grounding and limiting of moral faith in the Canon of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason. The first section addresses the interrelationship between Kant’s critique of knowledge and his critique of faith. The second section defines the complex interplay of theoretical and practical issues in Kant’s critical question of what a morally acting agent may hope for regarding the overall outcome of his actions. The third section (...) investigates Kant’s positioning of faith in relation to the epistemic modi of opining and knowing, and defines the specific status of moral faith in Kant. The textually based systematic analyses focus on the complementary relationship in Kant’s work between the way rational critique limits theoretical knowledge in favor of moral faith and the way this critique limits religious faith through moral consciousness. (shrink)

In what follows I will provide an explication of what the principle of philosophical sufficiency (PPS) refers to as conceptualized by François Laruelle, whereas, at the moment, suffice it to say that it is comparable to Marx’s extolling of the principle of praxis over that of philosophy as a critique of the philosophical “self-mirroring,” a thesis that pervades Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General (Marx, Manuscripts), German Ideology (1968), Theses on Feuerbach (1969). The self-mirroring thought (philosophy is) subsumes the Real (...) itself reducing it to a postulate, to its transcendental aspect exclusively rather than reversing the hierarchy whereby thought submits to the Real albeit radically foreclosed for philosophy’s totalizing ambition. Instead of revisiting the dialectics between thought and the real, or reviving a Kantian dilemma, in his critique of Feuerbach’s materialism and the critique of Hegel’s philosophy under the aforementioned several titles, in particular in “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General,” Marx proposes that a shift toward “objectivism” would proffer a proper foundation for a truly scientific discussion of human reality. It is probably an undisputable fact that subjectivity-centered thinking and anthropocentric ontology, epistemology, and morality have determined the civilizational legacy of modernity: it begins with Kant’s practical philosophy and metaphysics of morals, if we must choose a single philosophical threshold in the Western history of ideas. Certainly, it coincides with the birth of republicanism as the model state promulgated by the French and the American Revolution and the completion of the enlightenment project. In Karl Marx’s politico-philosophical project, subjectivity, political state, and secularism are not what a modern society should consist in but quite the opposite their transcendence by way of sublation when confronted with a materialist, objective science of the species-being of humanity. Secularism is, argues Marx in The Jewish Question, a name for a “political” state that has alienated itself from the society precisely by way of relegating everything pertaining to the individual to the so-called “civil society.”. (shrink)

The article focuses on the methodological specifics of qualitative sociological studies commissioned by public administration authorities (“the client”) which aim to provide solutions to specific problems defined by the client. In conducting this kind of study, the researcher is expected not only to describe and understand the existing state of affairs but also to provide a set of recommendations for amending it. The research terrain is not defined by the sociologist herself but basically by the client. This situation reveals a (...) series of methodological and epistemological issues. The article discusses some of them and proposes that the research strategy of heuristic investigation may be an answer to the associated dilemmas. The author argues that the correct use of reflexive methodology can help the researcher to overcome the limits imposed on the research by the client’s presence and even make the apparent disadvantages work for her. (shrink)

The essay concerns the highly controversial pamphlet of Rosa Luxemburg The Russian Revolution, in which Luxemburg criticizes Lenin’s post-revolutionary policies, in particular his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, an elected body. The essay reviews the history of the text’s publication and the intense debate, which continues to this day, over whether or not Luxemburg changed her mind on its central critique. At stake in the argument is not only Luxemburg’s evaluation of Lenin’s actions but also the correct weighting to be (...) given to the two components in the central Marxist–Leninist dialectic of revolution: spontaneity and consciousness. In elaborating this point the essay brings in examples from the writings of Lukács and Stalin, and also discusses the dialectic’s centrality in socialist realism. (shrink)

The book explores the themes of a) “radical concepts” in politics (inspired by François Laruelle’s “non-Marxism” and “non-philosophy,” developed in accordance with Badiouan and Žižekian “realism”); b) politically relevant and applicable epistemologies of “Thought’s Correlating with the Real” (Laruelle), inspired by Laruelle, Badiou and Žižek and c) the possibility of hybridization of the epistemic stance of “radical concept” with the politics of grief and “identification with the suffering itself” proposed by Judith Butler. Radical concepts, the political vision and the theory (...) based on them, are always already succumbing to the “Lived” (Laruelle), to the singularity of the Event (Badiou), to the encounter with the “kernel of the Real” (Žižek) conditioning a political horizon and the grand and small political narratives taking place within it. The thesis of the book is that the instances of the “lived,” the “event” or the “Real” can be inherently inter-connected by virtue of the category of the “experience” which is an instance of the sheer lived, the bare being subjected to an occurrence which is always already an instance of trauma. The mere subjection to certain” taking place,” the passion (in the etymological sense derived from the Latin verb pati or in the Spinozian sense) which is category beyond the psychological notions of feeling, rational (or irrational) thought, i.e., an ontological category referring to our relation with the “Out-There” which always already happens to us, is that to which the radical (political) concept succumbs to as the ultimate authority rather than to a doctrine, a system of thought, to the “philosophy’s auto-mirroring” (Laruelle). Political revolt or the revolutionary stance stems from precisely this bare experiential, the sheer lived and thus, from the Real of the conatus of staying-in-life. Paradoxically the survivalist stance, the principle of self-preservation is also the revolutionary stance which is by definition destabilizing and destructive. Bodily resistance to subjection (i.e., to discipline) and the continuity of the Self in-the-Real is the source of resistance. The Real of grief and mourning, the identification with the purely experiential stance of the suffering itself is the foundation of a “radical concept” of political solidarity, which by virtue of its being grounded in the Real, i.e., in the Lived, provides the possibility of acting in a revolutionary way. But it is also a form of human universality or political universality, which yet again is not historic universality but rather purely categorical. Other concepts that can be called radical, concepts which are minimally transcendental (Laruelle) and are, therefore, of revolutionary potential are also violence, mourning, labor (work) and gender (the trauma introduced by the linguistic determination as a “he” or a “she”), life, death, animal. Yet, the main focus of the book is the exploration of the lived of vulnerability, trauma and the conatus of life as the determination in the last instance of the revolutionary (political) stance. Clearly, the revolutions and the revolutionary stance this book advocates, or rather, whose potentiality it explores, are not necessarily historical revolutions produced by the intentionality to create politico-historic change. They are not this necessarily. Yet again they are such possibly. Still all purely (on the formal level) revolutionary stance tends to introduce universal change, radically change the political horizon and to reverse the politically unthinkable into a thinkable by elevating it to the level of a universal political truth. (shrink)

Following François Laruelle's nonstandard philosophy and the work of Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Luce Irigaray, and Rosi Braidotti, Katerina Kolozova reclaims the relevance of categories traditionally rendered "unthinkable" by postmodern feminist philosophies, such as "the real," "the one," "the limit," and "finality," thus critically repositioning poststructuralist feminist philosophy and gender/queer studies. Poststructuralist (feminist) theory sees the subject as a purely linguistic category, as _always alread_y multiple, as _always already_ nonfixed and fluctuating, as limitless discursivity, and as constitutively detached from (...) the instance of the real. This reconceptualization is based on the exclusion of and dichotomous opposition to notions of the real, the one (unity and continuity), and the stable. The non-philosophical reading of postructuralist philosophy engenders new forms of universalisms for global debate and action, expressed in a language the world can understand. It also liberates theory from ideological paralysis, recasting the real as an immediately experienced human condition determined by gender, race, and social and economic circumstance. (shrink)

In his Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds, Georg Cantor praised Bernard Bolzano as a clear defender of actual infinity who had the courage to work with infinite numbers. At the same time, he sharply criticized the way Bolzano dealt with them. Cantor’s concept was based on the existence of a one-to-one correspondence, while Bolzano insisted on Euclid’s Axiom of the whole being greater than a part. Cantor’s set theory has eventually prevailed, and became a formal basis of contemporary (...) mathematics, while Bolzano’s approach is generally considered a step in the wrong direction. In the present paper, we demonstrate that a fragment of Bolzano’s theory of infinite quantities retaining the part-whole principle can be extended to a consistent mathematical structure. It can be interpreted in several possible ways. We obtain either a linearly ordered ring of finite and infinitely great quantities, or a partially ordered ring containing infinitely small, finite and infinitely great quantities. These structures can be used as a basis of the infinitesimal calculus similarly as in non-standard analysis, whether in its full version employing ultrafilters due to Abraham Robinson, or in the recent “cheap version” avoiding ultrafilters due to Terence Tao. (shrink)

In this paper the authors seek to contribute to a new ontology of an embodied, desiring subject through an exploration of their own subjectivities and of the ways in which subjectivities are produced and transformed through affective attachments to place. Using the method of collective biography (Davies, Gannon 2006) and drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire and territorialization they examine their affective responses and attachments to place: Australia and the Czech Republic. As a point of departure for their (...) analysis, the authors ask: What does it mean to be homesick for a place which is not one’s home? What does it mean to desire a place? What of the other place is inscribed in the body? In asking this, the authors show the extent to which place is a zone of immanence in which a continual play of de- and re-territorialization occurs. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance and importance of the large number of examples which Aristotle uses in his "Prior Analytics." In the first part of the paper three preliminary issues are raised: First, it investigates what counts as an example in Aristotle's syllogistic, and especially whether only examples expressed in concrete terms should be considered as examples or maybe also propositions and arguments with letters of the alphabet. The second issue concerns the kinds of examples Aristotle actually uses from everyday (...) life as well as from various scientific and philosophical forms of discourse; among these, it seems that biological examples, rather than mathematical ones, have a predominant place. Finally, I discuss what Aristotle himself has to say about the use of examples, and in particular about the similarity between the use of an example and the use of induction. The second part of the paper focusses on the functions of Aristotle's logical examples. It is of course obvious that some of the examples in the Prior Analytics are used to illustrate, and thus to clarify, a definition, a logical rule, a type of argument. However, I think that Aristotle's logical examples have another function, which is philosophically more interesting, namely as integral parts of the procedure of proving something. To support this claim, I analyse three passages from the "Prior Analytics" in which examples are used either in order to prove that something is not the case, i.e. as counter-examples, or in order to prove positively that it is possible for something to be the case. At the end, I argue that for such uses of examples Aristotle uses the notion of 'ekthesis', which seems to have a wider sense than usually suggested; that is to say, it is used to refer to any proof by means of an example, and not only for the procedure which Aristotle uses to reduce imperfect to perfect syllogisms. (shrink)

This study concerns the theory of mystical knowledge advanced by the practically unknown seventeenth-century Carmelite author Philip of the Blessed Trinity in his work Summa Theologiae Mysticae. Philip introduces “a new kind” of spiritual species representing the intellectibilia to describe how individuals are granted mystical knowledge, and in doing so distinguishes between three kinds of species. Philip’s notion of mystical knowledge is closely related to the topic of contemplation and is profoundly influenced by The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of (...) Avila. The analysis presented here, therefore, represents an original contribution to the ongoing scholarly study of species, (mystical) knowledge, and Teresian spirituality. (shrink)

The article takes the excavated cosmological texts as a basis for reinterpreting the relationship between cosmology, epistemology, and action in Warring States period thought, by focusing on the role of names in situatedness and self-actualization of being. It proposes to view the speculative and the practical concerns in terms of a dynamic union of the receptive and the creative within the onto-generative cycle. Building on Chung-ying Cheng’s onto-generative approach and Heidegger’s hermeneutics of Dasein in Sein und Zeit, the article identifies (...) names as the centre in which the receptive and the creative aspect of being come together. (shrink)

Sur l’île de Nissyros (Dodécanèse), lors de la fête patronale du 15 août en l’honneur de la Vierge Marie, les hommes choisissent, comme lieu d’activité, le centre du village et la préparation des grands festins. Ce sont les femmes qui, en adoptant un comportement pénitentiel, sont les médiatrices du religieux. Figures emblématiques de la fête, les niameritisses restent pendant neuf jours dans le monastère de la Vierge, où elles accomplissent quotidiennement des génuflexions devant son icône miraculeuse. Cet article examine la (...) manière dont chaque sexe forge son image et revendique sa part du sacré lors des festivités communautaires, ainsi que les pratiques dévotionnelles qui permettent aux femmes de s’approprier l’espace sacré du monastère et l’icône mariale qui y est révérée. (shrink)

Alternative set theory was created by the Czech mathematician Petr Vopěnka in 1979 as an alternative to Cantor’s set theory. Vopěnka criticised Cantor’s approach for its loss of correspondence with the real world. Alternative set theory can be partially axiomatised and regarded as a nonstandard theory of natural numbers. However, its intention is much wider. It attempts to retain a correspondence between mathematical notions and phenomena of the natural world. Through infinity, Vopěnka grasps the phenomena of vagueness. Infinite sets are (...) defined as sets containing proper semisets, i.e. vague parts of sets limited by the horizon. The new interpretation extends the field of applicability of mathematics and simultaneously indicates its limits. Compared to strict finitism and other attempts at a reduction of the infinite to the finite Vopěnka’s theory reverses the process: he models the finite in the infinite. (shrink)

The paper introduces the notion of size of countable sets, which preserves the Part-Whole Principle. The sizes of the natural and the rational numbers, their subsets, unions, and Cartesian products are algorithmically enumerable as sequences of natural numbers. The method is similar to that of Numerosity Theory, but in comparison it is motivated by Bolzano’s concept of infinite series, it is constructive because it does not use ultrafilters, and set sizes are uniquely determined. The results mostly agree, but some differ, (...) such as the size of rational numbers. However, set sizes are only partially, not linearly, ordered. Quid pro quo. (shrink)

Despite its historical focus on aberrant behavior, sexology barely dealt with sexual deviants in 1950s Czechoslovakia. Rather, sexologists treated only isolated instances of deviance. The rare cases that went to court appeared mostly because they hindered work or harmed the national economy. Two decades later, however, the situation was markedly different. Hundreds of men were labeled as sexual delinquents and sentenced for treatment in special sexological wards at psychiatric hospitals. They endangered society, so it was claimed, by being unwilling or (...) unable to conform to the family norm. The mode of subjection shifted from work to family. I analyse this change by using the tools of Gil Eyal’s sociology of expertise, which focuses on shifts in institutional matrices that bring forth new groups of agents creating new expert networks. I argue that sexology became profoundly institutionalized in the early 1970s, which brought the discipline closer to psychiatry and forensic science. New inpatient facilities were opened that could admit sentenced sexual deviants. Also, demographic changes accelerated in the 1960s, especially skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, which made it imperative for the government to focus on cementing the family. After the failed attempts of the Prague Spring in 1968, the new pro-Soviet government of communist Czechoslovakia did just that. During the time dubbed as ‘normalization’ by the new elites, anyone who strayed from the family norm was suspected of deviance. (shrink)

V tomto článku analyzuji virální video Přemluv bábu, které mělo ambice zasáhnout do voleb do Poslanecké sněmovny Parlamentu České republiky v roce 2010. Ke klipu přistupuji z pozice kritické diskurzivní analýzy (CDA), pracuji především s předpoklady, koncepty a analytickými nástroji Normana Fairclougha, který pomáhal CDA rozvíjet a v akademickém poli prosadit. Tvrdím, že klip Přemluv bábu těží z pružnosti, respektive uhýbavosti postmoderního diskurzu, což mohlo smysl jeho výpovědi i její naléhavost spíše oslabit a znečitelnit než podepřít. Demonstruji na příkladech a (...) snažím se identifikovaným ambivalencím porozumět s ohledem na kontext intertextový, interdiskurzivní, situační a socio-politický. (shrink)

History plays an important part internally to the Kantian architectonic. In what follows, I argue that Kant’s conception of history as a unified whole presents distinctive features that are illuminating about the critical and moral commitments of his philosophy, and also conversely, that his conception of philosophy makes specific demands that his philosophical history aims to fulfill. The argument is structured around four questions, each of which I take in turn: Why does Kant believe it important that history be seen (...) as forming a whole? How does he argue for the unity of the whole? What are the specific claims he makes about history? And why should anyone care for philosophical history? (shrink)

The paper examines Schiller’s argument concerning the subjective experience of adopting a morality based on Kantian principles. On Schiller’s view, such experience must be marked by a continuous struggle to suppress nature, because the moral law is a purely rational and categorically commanding law that addresses beings who are natural as well as rational. Essential for Schiller’s conclusion is the account he has of what it takes to follow the law, that is, the mental states and functions that encapsulate the (...) idea of moral self contained in Kant’s ethics. Focusing on the fundamental psychological elements and processes to which Kant’s theory appeals and on which it depends to have application, the paper defends an alternative idea of moral self to the one Schiller attributes to Kant. (shrink)

Laruelle's version of Marxism is termed "non-Marxism" whereby the "non-" is stated to stand for bracketing out Marxism's "philosophical sufficiency" and seeking to radicalise Marxism. It stands for the Laruellian non-philosophical variant of Marxism. It is precisely the non-philosophical use of Marx that has enabled the analysis at hand, demonstrating that at the heart of patriarchy and capitalism stands philosophical reason and its treatment of the Animal (both human and non-human). Women are de-realised even as use value and what is (...) exchanged in patriarchy is abstraction or the commodified femininity, which serves the multiplication of the surplus value or rather the pure value of masculinity. Just as the “C” in the M-C-M formula can be expunged as it is a mere relay for the endless repetition of the M-M automaton, so, to paraphrase Marx, because not an atom of matter enters the composition of woman as commodity, the material woman can be excluded from the equation P(hallus)-P(hallus). The less physicality in the pure value of femininity the more perfect the finite automaton of patriarchy. The fetishised femininity, as any form of commodity, is reified abstraction. The token of femininity is exchanged only in order for masculinity to engender itself. Masculinity (or the pure value of the Phallus), speculative reason, and rationalism are endowed with the same contempt for the physical, narcissistic circularity of thought and disgust for the woman outside the signifying automaton of fetishisation. (shrink)

The concept of time is an integral part of any religious and philosophical system. It creates a universal cognitive strategy: seeing the world in its change and development, finding temporary relationships and order in everything. In Iranian mythology, where the cult of time was highly developed, time was personified by the higher deity Zurvan, who initially was imagined as an endless time, eternity, existing at the beginning of the universe, and then, in the latter part of the "Avesta" takes an (...) image of the final, natural, world time, who forecasts not only its beginning, but the end, death. Zurvan Akarana in Zoroastrianism - is unlimited Time or Eternity; one of the two primary forces that are mentioned in "Avesta" and "Yasna". Zurvan - is the Сreator who did not make a creation. He is only the foundation, the idea that gives impulse, like an explosion. It is similar to the concept of "dharma" in the Indian tradition, the "Logos" of Heraclites, the law by which the universe exists. Helps to the time, the main essence of space is the duration, the matter has the opportunity to come into effect. Late Avesta makes a distinction between endless time and time, which has a long duration, but finite. Later theologians interpreted endless time as eternity of being, and a long time was regarded as the duration of the world, which was created and will have an end. These ideas can be correlated with ideas that later we can find in Christianity, that person has a freedom of choice, and even later - in Islam, that person's fate is determined in advance. But Zoroastrianism is talking about the same thing, the fate of this material world in which evil is present is determined in advance, but in the world of Ahura Mazda person has the right to choose and there will get whatever deserves. The unconditional departure from mythological beliefs is also the idea of the linearity of time that we meet in Zoroastrianism and which later gets its continuation in Christianity. But in Zoroastrianism time is endless, and therefore is reversible and linear, and therefore simultaneously is irreversible. (shrink)

The phenomenon of reflective awareness, i.e., perceiving that we perceive, has often been at the center of Aristotelian scholarship, whereas that of perceptual attention, i.e., focusing on something we perceive, has been much less studied. I examine in parallel the textual evidence for these phenomena and offer a concurrent analysis of them in order to understand better how Aristotle conceives them. I argue that the Aristotelian notion of the common sense lies at the basis of the explanation of perceptual attention (...) as much as of that of reflective awareness. In the former case, the common sense perceives the special or common perceptible that it pays attention to in its own right, whereas in the latter case it perceives the act of perceiving coincidentally along with the respective special or common perceptible. Following Aristotle, the Peripatetics defended the view that the phenomenon of reflective awareness is due to the common sense, but paid no heed to perceptual attention. On the other hand, the Neoplatonic commentators conflated the two phenomena and explained both of them by postulating either a rational character of the senses or an attentive part in the rational soul. (shrink)

Serious doubts have been raised about the coherence of theories of the sublime and the usefulness of the concept. By contrast, the sublime is increasingly studied as a key function in Kant's moral psychology and in his ethics. This article combines methodological conservatism, approaching the topic from within Kant's discussion of aesthetic judgment, with reconstruction of a conception of human agency that is tenable on Kantian grounds. I argue that a coherent theory of the sublime is possible and useful, and (...) the experience of the sublime is significant for our self-conception as agents. However, the chief interest in the sublime is not moral. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to examine and evaluate the social ethics aspects of the pamphlet Pro vindiciis contra tyrannos oratio by the scholar and rector of Prague University Jan Jesenský - Jessenius ; first published in Frankfurt in 1614 and for the second time in Prague in 1620 during the Czech Estate Revolt. Therefore, the broader intellectual context of the time is introduced, specifically the conflict between two theories of ruling power correlating with that between the ruler and (...) the Estates after the ideas of the Protestant reformation started to spread. The first theory supported the idea of a sovereign ruler whose authority would stand above the estates to be able to keep the kingdom under control. On the contrary, the so-called resistance theory strived to limit the monarch’s power and to justify a possible intervention against a malevolent ruler - the tyrant. I intend to show that Jessenius´ social ethics which refers to the latter resistance theory was of a premodern nature since its conception of State and its reign remained in a denominationally limited framework. Nevertheless; Jessenius’ polemics with the supporters of ruling sovereignty, which seem to be his original contribution, makes his writing a unique political work in Central Europe. Moreover, the second edition of Jessenius’ text, which for a long time had disappeared from public view, can rightly be considered a remarkable projection of resistance theory toward actual political struggle at the very beginning of the Thirty Years War. (shrink)

Text seznamuje čtenáře s výukovou metodou nastavení problému, jeho řešení pomocí zavedení a aplikování teoretických pojmů, konceptovou analýzou vybraného díla a důslednou oporou o kontext a ko-text díla. Příklady vybírá ze soudobé scény výtvarného umění a jeho cílem je zdůvodněná interpretace díla. Opírá se o Goodmanovské termíny denotace, exemplifikace a exprese. Metaforickou exemplifikaci, expresi člení průhledem poznávacími perspektivami 1. a 3. osoby na prožitkovou a empatickou komponentu, opírá se tak o teorii artefiletiky. Otevírá a řeší tak problém vztahu relativních objektivních (...) daností díla, jeho intersubjektivně kotvené interpretace a subjektivně vnímaného prožitku z díla. Tvorbu chápe jako způsob poznání. (shrink)

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys and chimpanzees and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of (...) the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. (shrink)

Pufendorf makes a clear distinction between the physical constitution of human beings and their value as human beings, stressing that the latter is justified exclusively by the regular use of the free will. According to Pufendorf, the regular use of free will requires certain inventions (divine as well as human) imposed on the free will and called moral entities. He claims that these inventions determine the moral quality of a human being as well as the standards according to which human (...) beings and their actions are able to be judged. This article examines the normative aspects of Pufendorf’s concepts of moral value and moral estimation in regard to the epistemological question of the accessibility of moral entities for human beings. In the first part, it reconstructs Pufendorf’s doctrine of moral entities and the place of moral estimation in this doctrine. In the second part, it presents Pufendorf’s account of the moral philosophy as a science in order to explain his theory of moral normativity as imposed, and the role of a person in regard to the own moral status. In the last part, it illustrates some consequences in regard to the problem of slavery in Pufendorf. (shrink)

_Interprets Kant's conception of enlightenment within the broader philosophical project of his critique of reason._.

This study deals with a controversy between Leibniz and Clarke concerning the relativity of space. Although substantivalism, i.e. an approach treating space as a substance, is to be indicated as the main target of Leibniz’s attack, it has usually been replaced by Newtonian absolutism instead, as a proper opposition to Leibniz’s relationalism. However, such absolutism has not been defined ontologically, but dynamically, as if the difference between their conceptions consisted of a different approach to the inertiallity of motion. However, this (...) would mean that while Leibniz intended to reduce all motion to an inertial one, Newton reduced it to a noninertial one instead, or that only one of them acknowledged the existence of noninertial motion at all. Nevertheless, none of them actually denied the existence of noninertial motion, and although all motion indeed seemed noninertial to Newton, Leibniz never responded to such a challenge in the course of their correspondence. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on E. H. Gombrich's claim that pictorial perception is a case of illusion. My aim is to point out that, on the one hand, the interpretation of this claim that is widely accepted in pictorial theory is not supported by Gombrich's analysis of pictorial perception; and, on the other hand, that the interpretation of the claim that I see as more compatible with Gombrich's analysis is not consistent with relevant facts about our relation to (...) pictures. However, I will argue, Gombrich's elaboration of the claim of illusion is significant to the extent that it highlights important aspects of the system of pictorial representation. (shrink)

The article examines Tania Bruguera’s works 10,148,451 (2019, Tate Modern, UK) and the three versions of Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (2009 and 2014, Havana; 2015, Tate Modern). Thinking with Achille Mbembe’s work on necropolitics, Lauren Berlant’s on “slow death,” and Michel Foucault’s on biopolitics, Paramana suggests that 10,148,451 addresses the collective subject and critiques contemporary necropolitics, while the versions of Tatlin’s Whisper #6 address individuals as political subjects, and comment on the panoptic gaze and contemporary biopolitics. Through her analysis of these (...) works, Paramana shows how Bruguera’s work is created to comment on the specific political economies in which it is presented, how the perception of the work’s politics differs when presented in different political economies, and the insights therefore the work might offer to them. Paramana argues that Bruguera’s work has often achieved more than local and national governments and that her “symbolic work with activist parameters” is surprisingly more efficacious than her activist work. The article concludes with the insights Bruguera’s work offers for the future of bodies in the 21st century. (shrink)

The article illustrates an alternative topology by taking advantage of the possibilities for new forms of perception in the realm of online virtual worlds. It is based on the outcomes of the ‘Noetic Grace’ project that was held in Linden Lab’s Second Life™ (SL) platform as a part of Yoshikaze project, supported form Humlab, Umeå University. During three months of virtual residency in Yoshikaze studio, the author experimented with different kinds of spatiotemporal awareness formed from the notions of virtuality as (...) expressed during the times of late antiquity. Saint John of Damascus (c. 676–749) was speaking about ‘virtual vision’ when he referred to the concept of ‘noetic grace’. Such an approach raises some fundamental questions about whether virtual worlds can have the potential to alter visual mechanisms in the whole spectrum of imagery; both in its creation as well as in its vision. Technologies of computing can be considered as the most outstanding practice of Descartes’ theories. However even if Cartesian resonance can be regarded as an abstract Logos and as such it is clearly distinguished from the class of the world, its principal effect to western thought was that of its dualism as a deterministic organization. Hence, Euclidian plane with a chosen Cartesian system, the so-called Cartesian plane, became the standard spatial environment. In the dual process model of thinking the forward and backward reasoning can be used to express Euclidian transformations in which the points are detached. Their interaction exists solely to define themselves in relation to the other, rather than to embed themselves in an aggregate space. Nevertheless, scientific progress has demonstrated a source that spurts many kinds of phenomena that are by far distinct from those of a systematic space. Anisotropic and heterogeneous topologies, magnetic flux, non-linear, dynamic systems and emergence are some of the findings that can alter the whole spectrum of human awareness. Consequently, in order to create a being-to-be into virtual worlds, one has to overcome the notion of single-self objectiveness and its systematic space and act as a potential entity released from any references that may set barriers to a formation of a different perception and imagery. (shrink)

V rámci tohoto příspěvku se pokusím zpochybnit dosavadní mainstreamovou interpretaci Leibnizovy metafyziky prostoru, jak ji představil v dopisech anglickému učenci Samuelu Clarkovi. Přestože bývá Leibnizova metafyzika prostoru právě na základě jeho korespondence s Clarkem obvykle považována za ostrý protipól metafyziky Clarkovy, respektive Newtonovy, v rámci tohoto příspěvku poukážu na to, že při zvážení Leibnizovy geometrie zvané „analysis situs“ se taková interpretace stává neudržitelnou. Leibnize nelze považovat za zastánce typicky relačního pojetí prostoru.

(2017) 'Interest and Agency', in Gabriel, Markus and Rasmussen, Anders Moe (eds.) German Idealism Today. De Guyter Verlag. -/- Abstract: Undeterred by Kant’s cautionary advice, contemporary defenders of free will advance substantive metaphysical theses in support of their views. This is perhaps unsurprising given the mixed reception of Kant’s solution of the conflict between freedom and natural necessity, which is supposed to vindicate reason’s withdrawal from speculation. Kant argues that neither libertarians nor determinists can win, because they deal with concepts (...) of unrestricted scope, and proposes instead to regiment the reference conditions of each concept and to specify the domain, ‘world’, proper to each. However, the precise character of this solution, its conceptual and metaphysical commitments, continues to be a matter of controversy among Kant scholars. In particular, there is ever-renewed concern about the incipient dualism of the position. Although I will be examining some of this material, my primary aim in this paper is not to make a contribution to the interpretative debate about the antinomy. Rather, I want to draw on two lessons from Kant’s treatment of the antinomy to argue for the importance of a certain way of putting the problem of human freedom. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are (...) in agreement about the importance of emotions in our moral lives. I conclude by returning to the themes broached in the introduction to consider the extent to which the teleological concerns that motivate Schiller can be addressed within Kant's autonomist ethics. (shrink)

Eleven scholars present a collaborative commentary on the first book of Aristotle's Physics. This text is central to Aristotle's studies of the natural world and the principles of physical change. He formulates his theory on the basis of critical examination of hispredecessors' views, so the book is also a key source for early Greek philosophy.

Regulations implemented by World Athletics (WA) require female athletes with differences of sexual development to suppress their blood testosterone levels in order to participate in certain women’s sporting competitions. These regulations have been justified by reference to fairness. In this paper, we reconstruct WA’s understanding of fairness, which requires a “level playing field” where no athlete should have a significant performance advantage based on factors other than talent, dedication, and hard work over an average athlete in their category. We demonstrate (...) that by placing regulations only on testosterone levels, while ignoring physical as well as socioeconomic advantages, WA consistently fails to meet its own definition of fairness. We then discuss several ways in which this definition could be met. Our analysis shows that a categorical system, in which athletes are divided into categories based on properties leading to significant performance advantages, is best suited for meeting WA’s definition of fairness. (shrink)

Our philosophical moral vocabulary expresses a predilection for depth; we customarily probe feelings, intentions, reasons for action. Friedrich Schiller's concept of grace offers an alternative: moral guidance is best sought in what we train ourselves to set aside, facial expression, sound of voice, movement. This surprising proposal merits our attention and speaks to some of our current concerns.

Motivated by the issues raised by the merging of women and machines in science fiction, this article explores gender representations in Spike film Her that discusses the interaction between a male human and a disembodied female whose consciousness is held in an artificial intelligence (AI) operating system. One of the primary questions regarding the representation of the female AI is whether the film encourages a feminist perspective, that promotes female subjectivity in the era of the post-human, or it ends up (...) perpetuating visions of women’s oppression and objectification. Visual representations are important when discussing gender binaries, as they can be related to the image and the physical sexual differences. However, the role of sound is also crucial, as it contributes to different readings. In my analysis, I examine the merging and unmerging of audio and visual in the film. The female voice is the focal point of the analysis. (shrink)