The Absolute is a basic and fundamental issue for philosophy as such. I present different concepts of the Absolute (substantialism, energetism, escapism, methodologism). We can say that contemporary European philosophy “orphaned” the neo-Platonic tradition. Thereafter Russian philosophy developed in an intensive and turbulent as well as relatively uniform fashion, in view of the well-established Neo-Platonist context. This makes Russian philosophy not only part of a lasting universally acknowledged tradition; not only has Russian philosophy continued to develop currents of thought abandoned (...) by modern European philosophiers, but it is also heir to a philosophical tradition of particular quality and value in the universal history of thought. (shrink)

The article concerns the problem of master and slave in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Then I compare this problem with the issues discussed in the Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, an interesting book by Susan Buck-Morss, published in 2009.

The paper is a critical review of Leszek Kołakowski’s book Metaphysical Horror. According to Kołakowski, the starting-point of metaphysical horror is the awareness of changeability, transience, contingency and fragility of the world and human existence in face of the overwhelming and abysmal face of Nothingness. According to Kołakowski, the inevitable urge to overcome metaphysical horror leads to the idea of the Absolute, which can appear in two forms: God and cogito.What underlies the present paper is disagreement with Kołakowski’s perspective of (...) metaphysical horror that leads to question about reasons for praise for human mortality and human relationship towards Nothingness, reasons for an acceptance of the awaiting existential horror. (shrink)

I present and argue for twotheses: the first concerns the degree to whichChaadaev''s thought represents a breakthrough inthe development of Russian social philosophyand the second concerns the Hegelian characterof this thinking. I also show that Chaadaev''stheory retained an open character closely tiedto the crisis character of the social realityof his time and that it depended for itsjustification on the further course of thehistorical process, which is impossible topredict. All this leads to an interpretation ofChaadaev''s view according to which the standardopposition (...) of Chaadaev''s two best-known texts,The Philosophical Letters, with theirpredominantly pessimistic picture of Russia,and the Apology of a Madman, whichrefutes this evaluation, is rejected. (shrink)

The article outlines Vladimir Soloviev’s views at the time of his fascination by the theocracy, Christian policy and United Church concepts. His standpoint then was to place the “Godmanhood” idea underlying his philosophy in a realistic, historically and socially factual—hence universalistic—context. This led him to confer a special role in the historical process to the Christian church, which he saw as a dynamic institution adding energy to history. Soloviev considered this energy crucial in the rebirth of Christian unity around the (...) Holy See and the fulfillment of the “social trinity” reflecting the structure of the Divine Absolute and harmoniously uniting three relatively independent seats of social power: clerical, state and prophetic. For Soloviev the fulfillment of this project consisted in a lasting alliance between the papacy and the Tsar’s court, a concept which sounds very eccentric today. (shrink)

Pierwsza część najnowszego tomu „Rocznika Filozoficznego Ignatianum” skupia się na tematyce obecności dziedzictwa kulturowego w cyberprzestrzeni. Przedstawia ona udostępnianie tego dziedzictwa przez instytucje kultury, takie jak muzea, biblioteki i archiwa, oraz inicjatywy podejmowane przez użytkowników Internetu. Autorzy omówili w swoich tekstach szeroko zakrojoną problematykę cyfrowej prezentacji obiektów kultury, posługując się wybranymi przykładami.

The initial segment of the latest volume of the _Ignatian Philosophical Yearbook _is centered on the discourse surrounding the presence of cultural heritage in the cyber domain. It explores the dissemination of this heritage by cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives, as well as initiatives undertaken by Internet users. The authors scrutinize a comprehensive array of topics concerning the digital presentation of cultural artifacts, employing carefully selected examples in their discourse.

Peter Millican and Branden Thornhill-Miller have recently argued that contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with the host of defeaters based on empirical research concerning alleged sources of evidence for ‘perceived supernatural agency’, render all ‘first-order’, that is actual, religious traditions positively irrational, and a source of discord on a global scale. However, since the authors recognise that the ‘secularisation thesis’ appears to be incorrect, and that empirical research provides evidence that religious belief also has beneficial individual and (...) social effects, they put forward a hypothesis of a ‘second-order religious belief ’, with Universalist overtones and thus free of intergroup conflict, and free of irrationality, since supported (solely) by the Fine-Tuning Argument. While granting most of their arguments based on empirical research and embracing the new paradigm of the atheism/religion debate implicit in their paper, I contend that Millican’s and Thornhill-Miller’s proposal is unlikely to appeal to religious believers, because it misconstrues the nature and grounds of religious belief. I suggest that their hypothesis may be refined by taking into account a view of axiologically grounded religious belief that I refer to as ‘agatheism’, since it identifies God or the Ultimate Reality with the ultimate good (to agathon). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that from the point of view of a theist, inclusivism with respect to the issue whether adherents of different religious traditions can have veridical experience of God (or Ultimate Reality) now, is more plausible than the Alstonian exclusivism. I suggest that mystical inclusivism of the kind I imply in this paper may contribute to the development of cross-cultural philosophy of religion, as well as to the theoretical framework for inter-religious dialogue, because (1) it allows for (...) the possibility of veridical experience of God in a variety of religious traditions, but (2) it avoids the radical revisionist postulates of Hickian pluralism and (3) it leaves open the question whether the creed of any specific tradition is a better approximation to the truth about God than the creeds of other traditions. (edited). (shrink)

There exist different kinds of averaging of the differences of the energy–momentum and angular momentum in normal coordinates NC(P) which give tensorial quantities. The obtained averaged quantities are equivalent mathematically because they differ only by constant scalar dimensional factors. One of these averaging was used in our papers [J. Garecki, Rep. Math. Phys. 33, 57 (1993); Int. J. Theor. Phys. 35, 2195 (1996); Rep. Math. Phys. 40, 485 (1997); J. Math. Phys. 40, 4035 (1999); Rep. Math. Phys. 43, 397 (1999); (...) Rep. Math. Phys. 44, 95 (1999); Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 11, 441 (2002); M.P. Dabrowski and J. Garecki, Class. Quantum. Grar. 19, 1 (2002)] giving the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors. In this paper we present another averaging of the differences of the energy–momentum and angular momentum which gives tensorial quantities with proper dimensions of the energy–momentum and angular momentum densities. We have called these tensorial quantities “the averaged relative energy–momentum and angular momentum tensors”. These tensors are very closely related to the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors and they depend on some fundamental length L > 0. The averaged relative energy–momentum and angular momentum tensors of the gravitational field obtained in the paper can be applied, like the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors, to coordinate independent analysis (local and in special cases also global) of this field. Up to now we have applied the averaged relative energy–momentum tensors to analyze vacuum gravitational energy and momentum and to analyze energy and momentum of the Friedman (and also more general, only homogeneous) universes. The obtained results are interesting, e.g., the averaged relative energy density is positive definite for the all Friedman and other universes which have been considered in this paper. (shrink)

This volume explores the range of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy and his relevance to contemporary philosophical traditions.

This study investigates performance of portfolios composed of British socially responsible investments (SRI) stocks. Using the ‘Global-100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World’ list (known also as ‘Global-100’) to select the SRI companies, we found that, in the period 2000–2010, the returns of the SRI portfolios were on average higher compared with the corresponding returns of the market indexes. The annual average difference in returns of the SRI portfolios (with dividends) was 5.26 % and 5.69 % relative to the FTSE100 (...) and FTSE4GOOD indexes (the total return versions), respectively, but the differences in returns in the whole period, in individual years and in other sub-periods were in most cases not statistically significant. Positive performance of SRI stocks in the whole sample is, however, evidenced by risk-adjusted measures such as the modified Sharpe ratio (MSR) and certainty equivalent (CEQ) returns, as well as by incorporating various levels of transaction costs. Furthermore, a simple trading strategy relying on selection of SRI stocks from the Global-100 list would beat the market indexes in the whole period 2000–2010, even after inclusion of various levels of transaction costs. We also estimated the Fama–French and Carhart multi-factor models and found that the returns of the SRI portfolios cannot be consistently explained by conventional factors other than the market factor. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present the attempts of establishing institutions of a system of worker’s self-management in the selected countries of the so-called real socialism system in Eastern Europe. The analysis considers three of those countries, namely Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary, whose experiences in participation of the employees’ implementation were the most significant. Particular attention was paid to the evolution of socialist regimes approach to workers’ self-management. The paper tries to answer the question whether workers’ self-management posed (...) a threat to the socialist regimes persistence. The research method used in the study is an indepth survey and analysis of literature and legal acts. (shrink)

This article attempts to answer the question: what has the current migration crisis revealed in relations between Christianity and Islam, two religions with common Abrahamic roots? What conclusions can be drawn about the state of these relations, particularly with regard to ordinary members of the two religions? How should we assess the reaction of Christians in Europe to the inflow of refugees from Muslim countries in the light of the Gospel, the Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Francis?The (...) article consists of four parts. Part I briefly presents Christian-Muslim relationships over the centuries. Part II focuses on the sense of danger occurring in European societies in connection with the influx of Muslims during the migration crisis. Part III presents the teachings of the Second Vatican Council about Islam and Part IV describes Pope Francis’s attitude towards refugees from Muslim countries. (shrink)

Once regarded as cellular ‘debris’ extracellular vesicles (EVs) emerge as one of the most intriguing entities in cancer pathogenesis. Intercellular trafficking of EVs challenges the notion of cancer cell autonomy, and highlights the multicellular nature of such fundamental processes as stem cell niche formation, tumour stroma generation, angiogenesis, inflammation or immunity. Recent studies reveal that intercellular exchange mediated by EVs runs deeper than expected, and includes molecules causative for cancer progression, such as oncogenes (epidermal growth factor receptor, Ras), and tumour (...) suppressors (PTEN). The uptake of oncogenic EVs (oncosomes) by various cells may profoundly change their biology, signalling patterns and gene expression, and in some cases cause their overt tumorigenic conversion. Moreover, EVs circulating in blood and present in body fluids provide an unprecedented access to the molecular circuitry driving cancer cells, and new technologies are being developed to exploit this property as a source of unique cancer biomarkers. (shrink)

Psychological research is based on philosophical assumptions which are not always explicitly formulated. On the other hand, the results of these investigations affect philosophical thinking and the conception of human nature. For a long time it was a ruling conception in psychology that the essence of human nature consists in the existence of driving mechanisms with homeostatic properties drives or needs – which, principally, are inborn mechanisms modified by learning. The analysis of driving mechanisms founded on psychological and neuro-physiological data, (...) brought about a modification of this traditional view. Starting from the concept of need as an objective phenomenon it can be stated that the higher organisms have a special mechanisms securing the satisfaction of needs. They are drives. These mechanisms do not exist in a ready form in man but only potentially, as an ability to organize a functional unit in result of certain experience. The formation of drives includes: making connections between certain internal stimuli and some forms of activity reducing these stimuli; learning how to find things which are necessary to reduce them; and, finally, the acquisition of the ability to give verbal labels to the occurring processes. In consequence, the final form of a drive is determined by biological and social factors as well as by individual experiences. (shrink)

In the late forties, Stanisław Jaśkowski published two papers onthe discursive sentential calculus, D2. He provided a definition of it by an interpretation in the language of S5 of Lewis. The knownaxiomatization of D2 with discursive connectives as primitives was introduced by da Costa, Dubikajtis and Kotas in 1977. It turns out, however,that one of the axioms they used is not a thesis of the real Jaśkowski’s calculus. In fact, they built a new system, D∗2 for short, that differs from (...) D2 inmany respects. The aim of this paper is to introduce a direct Kripke-type semantics for the system, axiomatize it in a new way and prove soundness andcompleteness theorems. Additionally, we present labelled tableaux for D∗2.1. (shrink)