An interesting trend of recent scholarship on Santayana’s thought is focused on his criticism of modernity and brings him together with the major figures of postmodern philosophy, especially with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty. In my opinion, while the criticism of modernity certainly offers a relevant key to understand Santayana’s philosophy, it should be rooted first and foremost in some cultural and philosophical linkages that Santayana himself makes explicit throughout his writings, namely, a classical Latin author such as Lucretius, and (...) a modern author such as Giacomo Leopardi. Answering the question in my title, it seems to me that, ultimately, Santayana is a timely/untimely philosopher, if his concepts of rationality and spirituality can be viewed and understood within the framework labeled by Michel Foucault as epimeleia heautou or cura sui. (shrink)

La figura de Don Juan es uno de los lugares más recurrentes en el pensamiento español del siglo XX. La mayoría de los escritores y filósofos de la primera mitad del siglo escribieron algo sobre él; José Ortega y Gasset acudió a este personaje en su libro El tema de nuestro tiempo para escenificar su tesis de la razón vital. Este artículo revisa la lectura de Ortega, y plantea también la posibilidad de la permanencia de Don Juan en nuestro siglo.

This work presents and defines three meanings of communication taking into account some of the traditions of thought that founded our field of study. These three conceptions are: communication as an architectonic art; communication as a social force; and communication as the encounter with truth. These three conceptions are considered with regard to several traditions of thought conceptualized in Craig’s (1999) constitutive metamodel of communication theory (rhetorical, sociopsychological, critical and phenomenological). Furthermore, the discussion expands the traditions of thought, adding American (...) pragmatism (Craig’s proposal would be included in it), and a new tradition that highlights the element of undecidability in communication, partly as an extension of phenomenology and partly with its own historical roots in Badiou’s philosophy of the event. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to indicate that the ideas of Leonardo Torres y Que­vedo presented in his short Essays on Automatics constitute essential link between early Babbage’s concepts of analytical engine and modern computer science. These ideas include definition of automatics, classification of automata, theoretical basis for robotics, electromechanical engineering, modern concept of chatbot, the importance of algorithm and last but not least floating point arithmetic.

The purpose of this article is to present the views of the Russian philosopher Leonard Alexandrovich Kalinnikov on Kant’s philosophy. This article demonstrates one of the important aspects thinks Kaliningrad resident, namely the rules interpretation system of Kant. The article consists of three parts, the first presents a brief biography of the Russian thinker, the second presents ten rules, without which the thoughts of Kalinnikov can not do any decent system researcher Kant, the third contains conclusions. This reception is based (...) on an earlier esoteric-teleological assumption about the whole system. Kant’s System, according to Kalinnikov, must be reconstructed and presented on the basis of three Critiques, which organically contain internal rules for their interpretation. As a final of the nine principles of interpretation, Kalinnikov proposes one universal principle of the unity of the world. This principle consists in the monistic reading of the question about human, which is intended to encapsulate the system in its entirety as a world of phenomena, things-in-themselves, and their human mediator. (shrink)

The theme of the text is the interpretation of the philosophy of Leonard Nelson and his place in the history of philosophy. The author asks whether his philosophy should be classified as Neo-Kantianism or outside its borders? In response to this question the author has developed his own instruments. On the one hand, he tried to determine the concept of Neo-Kantianism and thus, Fries's reference to Kant; on the other hand, he applied the four-point scale for the classification of different (...) philosophy communities and, in particular, the concept of philosophical school. In the light of these assumptions he has classified Nelson's philosophy as psychological Neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

The idea of the article was suggested by Lotman’s theory about two basic mechanisms of social behaviour — fear and shame. The presented paper aims at highlighting two other mechanisms of such kind — guilt and repentance. The novella Isaac (1960–61) by Antanas Škėma, the Lithuanian writer in exile, is about a Lithuanian patriot who kills a Jew called Isaac during the years of German occupation. The author’s fundamental conception implies that the real perpetrator of crime is not a separate (...) individual but the crowd representing the values of the society. Škėma’s interpretation of history demystifies the moral system in the inter-war Lithuania and proves it to be a collection of futile signs that fail to prevent society from falling into mass psychosis and following primitive impulses. The other Lithuanian novel, Leonardas Gutauskas’ Šešėliai (Shadows) written in 2000, focuses on the tense relationships between Lithuanians and Russians, suggesting that there are several moral systems determining the concepts of guilt-repentance. The Christian agricultural society embodies the ethics of individual responsibility. The domination of the Russian ethic code is associated with the separation of Churches and the strengthening of the Orthodox Church. A moral system based on harmony and aiming to reconcile the guilty and the innocent comes across as a sought ideal. Both novels discussed exemplify different modes of a liberating society. The first one is an account of the society’s effort to become free of the guilt complex and rethink its history. The second one articulates theguilt of the Russian nation against Lithuanians and fights russophobia at the same time. (shrink)

The idea of the article was suggested by Lotman’s theory about two basic mechanisms of social behaviour — fear and shame. The presented paper aims at highlighting two other mechanisms of such kind — guilt and repentance. The novella Isaac (1960–61) by Antanas Škėma, the Lithuanian writer in exile, is about a Lithuanian patriot who kills a Jew called Isaac during the years of German occupation. The author’s fundamental conception implies that the real perpetrator of crime is not a separate (...) individual but the crowd representing the values of the society. Škėma’s interpretation of history demystifies the moral system in the inter-war Lithuania and proves it to be a collection of futile signs that fail to prevent society from falling into mass psychosis and following primitive impulses. The other Lithuanian novel, Leonardas Gutauskas’ Šešėliai (Shadows) written in 2000, focuses on the tense relationships between Lithuanians and Russians, suggesting that there are several moral systems determining the concepts of guilt-repentance. The Christian agricultural society embodies the ethics of individual responsibility. The domination of the Russian ethic code is associated with the separation of Churches and the strengthening of the Orthodox Church. A moral system based on harmony and aiming to reconcile the guilty and the innocent comes across as a sought ideal. Both novels discussed exemplify different modes of a liberating society. The first one is an account of the society’s effort to become free of the guilt complex and rethink its history. The second one articulates theguilt of the Russian nation against Lithuanians and fights russophobia at the same time. (shrink)