The following article analyzes two novels, published recently by a new, powerful voice in Irish fiction, Lisa McInerney: her critically acclaimed debut The Glorious Heresies (2015) and its continuation The Blood Miracles (2017). McInerney’s works can be distinguished by the crucial qualities of the Irish Noir genre. The Glorious Heresies and The Blood Miracles are presented from the perspective of a middle-aged “right-rogue” heroine, Maureen Phelan. Due to her violent and law-breaking revenge activities, such as burning down the institutions signifying (...) Irishwomen’s oppression (i.e. the church and a former brothel) and committing an involuntary murder, Maureen remains a multi-dimensional rogue character, not easily definable or even identifiable. The focal character’s narrative operates around the abuse of unmarried, young Irish mothers of previous generations who were coerced to give up their “illegitimate” children for adoption and led a solitary existence away from them. The article examines other “options” available to “fallen women” (especially unmarried mothers) in Ireland in the mid-twenty century, such as the Magdalene Laundries based on female slave work, and sending children born “out of wedlock” abroad, or to Mother and Baby Homes with high death-rates. Maureen’s rage and her need for retaliation speak for Irish women who, due to the Church-governed moral code, were held in contempt both by their families and religious authorities. As a representative of the Irish noir genre, McInerney’s fiction depicts the narrative of “rogue” Irish motherhood in a non-apologetic, ironic, irreverent and vengeful manner. (shrink)

This paper examines the literary representation of the beginnings of the Northern Irish Troubles with regard to a gender variable, in the selected poems by Heaney, Durcan, Boland, Meehan and Morrissey. The reading of Heaney’s “Punishment” will attempt to focus not solely on the poem’s repeatedly criticized misogyny but on analyzing it in a broader, historical context of the North’s conflict. In Durcan’s case, his prominent nationalist descent or his declared contempt for any form of paramilitary terrorism do not seem (...) to prevent him entirely from immortalizing female victims of the Troubles. Boland’s attitude seems the most unequivocal: the clear aversion to the language of death and rendering Irish women’s experiences in this discourse. The article concludes with analysis of Meehan’s “Southern” guilt for the situation of Catholics in the North with the simultaneous critique of perpetrated violence and Morrissey’s complicated standpoint: atheist/neutral/Protestant/communist and her striving for the impossible impartiality in a war-ridden and politically divided country. Trying to avoid systemic victimization of Irish women, the paper intends to analyze the historical and political circumstances which made them more susceptible to various forms of attacks at the beginnings of the Troubles, as reflected in the titular labels. (shrink)

This article analyzes selected short stories in Cecelia Ahern’s thirty-narrative collection Roar to see how the perspectives of posthuman and postfeminist critique can be incorporated via the common dystopic umbrella into the mainstream female readership of romance literature. The dystopic worlds created by Ahern in Roar portray inequality and power imbalances with regard to gender and sex. The protagonists are mostly middle-aged women whose family and personal lives are either regulated by dystopic realities or acquire a “dystopic” dimension, the solutions (...) to which are provided by, among other tropes, “posthuman” transformations. Roar introduces other-than-human elements, mostly corporeal alterations, in which the female bodies of Ahern’s characters become de-formed and re-formed beyond androcentric systems of value. The article raises the question of whether feminist and, to some extent, “posthuman” approaches, need to be popularized in such an abridged way as Ahern does in her volume. The answer depends upon the identification of the target audience and their expectations. Ahern’s Roar represents popular literature intended to be sold to as many readers as possible, regardless of their education, state of knowledge, etc. Viewed from that perspective, what some critics could perceive as the collection’s structural weaknesses constitutes its utmost marketing asset. The essay argues that despite not being a structurally innovative work of art, Ahern’s book fulfils the basic requirements of the popular fiction genre, intermittently providing some extra, literary gratification and popularizing rudimentary elements of the posthuman and postfeminist thought. (shrink)

This book is about beliefs, language, communication and cognition. It deals with the fundamental issue of the interpretation of the speaker's utterance expressing a belief and reporting on beliefs of other people in the form of oratio obliqua. The main aim of the book is to present a new account of the problem of interpreting utterances expressing beliefs and belief reports in terms of an approach called Default Semantics.

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, (...) which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis. (shrink)

Focusing on the analysis of Athens' relations with both Greeks and non-Greeks as recorded in extant fourth-century decrees, this paper challenges the applicability of the notion of Greek/barbarian antithesis to the interpretation of formal diplomatic exchanges between Athens and the non-Greek states. A comparison of the types of decrees and honors reveals a remarkable uniformity in the forms of Athens' foreign relations irrespective of the ethnicity of honorands. The distribution of honors among individuals and groups of recipients within single decrees (...) further demonstrates that the Athenian honorific system typically elevated individuals over communities they represented, suggesting that political differences between Athens and non-Greek states did not adversely influence the methods of exchanges between them. Apart from the provisions contained in the decrees, this paper also considers their function within the city as monuments that attest to the important place of philobarbaric discourse and practice in fourth-century Athens. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Frankfurt-style cases provide a reason for rejecting incompatibilism because they provide a reason for rejecting the requirement that the agent be able to do otherwise. One compatibilist strategy for dealing with the cases, pursued by Fischer and Ravizza, is to weaken the mentioned requirement. An analogous strategy on the part of the incompatibilist, which appears to be unexplored in the literature on moral responsibility, is exemplified in Belnap and Perloff ’s logic of agency. I show (...) how their stit theory can handle Frankfurt-style cases and defend it from Fischer’s criticism of “flicker-of-freedom” strategies. I also note some of the limitations of the stit rendition of the cases. (shrink)

Microbiota-gut-brain research is a fast-growing field of inquiry with important implications for how human brain function and behaviour are understood. Researchers manipulate gut microbes to reveal connections between intestinal microbiota and normal brain functions or pathological states. Many claims are made about causal relationships between gut microbiota and human behaviour. By uncovering these relationships, MGB research aims to offer new explanations of mental health and potential avenues of treatment. So far, limited evaluation has been made of MGB's methods and its (...) core experimental findings, many of which are extensively reiterated in copious reviews of the field. These factors, plus the self-help potential of MGB, have combined to encourage uncritical public uptake of MGB discoveries. Both social and professional media focus on the potential for dietary intervention in mental health, and causal relationships are assumed to be established. Our target article has two main aims. One is to examine critically the core practices and findings of experimental MGB research and to raise questions about them for brain and behavioural scientists who may not be familiar with the field. The other is to challenge the way in which MGB findings are presented. Our positive goal is to suggest how current problems and weaknesses may be addressed, in order for both scientific and public audiences to gain a clearer picture of MGB research and its strengths and limitations. (shrink)

We show that the variety of equivalential algebras with regularization gives the algebraic semantics for the -fragment of intuitionistic propositional logic. We also prove that this fragment is hereditarily structurally complete.

In this book, Katarzyna Kremplewska offers a thorough analysis of Santayana's conception of human self, viewed as part of his larger philosophy of life. Santayana emerges as an author of a provocative philosophy of drama, in which human life is acted out. Kremplewska demonstrates how his thought addresses the dynamics of human self in this context and the possibility of sustaining self-integrity while coping with the limitations of finite life. Focusing on particular aspects of Santayana's thought such as his (...) conception of the tragic aspect of existence, and the role of the doctrine of spirit in his philosophical anthropology and critique of culture, this book also sets Santayana's thought in substantial dialogue with other thinkers such as Heidegger, Bergson, and Nietzsche. Like Santayana's philosophy, this book seeks to build passages between theoretical reflection and practical life with the possibility of a good life in view. (shrink)

As there are more and more bilingual couples who ran vlogs to share their bilingual and intercultural lives on the internet, this paper seeks to delineate the sources of motivation for these couples to disclose their privacy through vlogging. Based on the sample of selected vlogs, a qualitative analysis has been conducted to obtain the sociolinguistic picture of the bilingual couples’ motivations to attract wider audiences via the internet. The analysis of vlogs, informed by a multimodal theoretical framework, focused on (...) the audiovisual and textual content of vlogs with regard to the subjective representations of films and texts resulting from these couples’ individual stories. The conducted study spotlights vlogging activities of bilingual couples who feel the need to share their intercultural and bilingual experiences on the internet. Our data suggest that bilingual couples vlog to express their hybrid identities by sharing how they cope with challenges and overcome linguistic barriers, as well as find ways to enjoy cross-cultural understanding. The paper explores the linguistic and cultural diversity from a new perspective of private vlogs created and maintained by bilingual couples. It unfolds an account of the less studied online context in which partners of different ethnic backgrounds make their private lives public, and illustrates how bilingual couples generate ideas to filming and sharing online. (shrink)

Liberal democracy is often considered to be unstable, consisting of two markedly different ideals that remain in tension. Yet the thesis regarding the alleged insta...

The dissertation develops a conception of action based on the concept of practical task-responsibility rather than on the concept of intention. It answers two problems. First, it grounds the distinction between an action and a mere happening, thus meeting Wittgenstein's challenge to explain what is the difference between an agent's raising her arm and her arm rising? Second, it grounds the distinction between acting for a reason and acting while merely having a reason, thus meeting Davidson's challenge to give an (...) account of the explanatory force of reasons. ;One source of resistance to an account of action in terms of normative expectations rather than in terms of intentions comes from explanatory individualism. The explanatory individualist argues that it is ultimately the intentional attitudes of the agent rather than normative expectations of other people that are relevant to the way in which we explain one another's actions, and that they ought to figure in the account of the nature of action. I defend explanatory nonindividualism, according to which we sometimes act on our own intentions and desires but sometimes on the normative expectations and desires of others . Explanatory nonindividualism is fortified by a selectional account of the explanatory force of reasons. I demonstrate that Davidson's challenge can be met by identifying reasons with selectional criteria rather than with causes. ;In response to Wittgenstein's challenge, I propose that we understand what it is to be an action not in terms of a performance being intentional under a description, but in terms of it being reasonable to expect a performance of the agent under some description. Only one concept of reasonableness is necessary to make the distinction between actions and mere happenings, and I explicate that concept. In addition to accounting for actions that are intentional under some description, the account also captures cases that are not so straightforwardly captured by that criterion . Moreover, cases of so-called basic wayward causal chains are excluded from qualifying as actions. (shrink)

Ethotic arguments, such as arguments from expert opinion and ad hominem arguments, play an important role in communication practice. In this paper, we argue that there is another type of reasoning from ethos, in which people argue about actions in the world. These subspecies of ethotic arguments are very common in public debates: societies are involved in heated disputes about what should be done with monuments of historical figures such as Stalin or Colston: Should we demolish the building they funded? (...) Should we revere their statues? Should the street named after them be renamed?; and the general public vividly argue about what should be done with the legacy of producers, directors and actors in debates of the #MeToo movement: Should their new movies be distributed? Should their scenes be deleted from motion pictures? Should their stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame be removed? Many arguments in these debates boil down to the character of the public figures: He was a slave trader!—But he is a part of our history; He harassed a young girl!—But he is an important actor. The reasoning step here is legitimised by the association between a person and an extra-linguistic object: the association between a historical figure and their statue or between an actor and their movie. The nature of this association is explained in the paper using Peirce’s theory of signs. We propose to extend an existing approach to patterns of reasoning from ethos that will help us to shed new light on ethotic argumentation and open an avenue for a systematic account of these unexplored argument forms. (shrink)

People differ in the extent to which they express a need for sense-making, and these individual differences are important to understand in light of meaning-making processes. To quantify this important variable, we originally proposed a need for sense-making scale. We now propose a refined, similarly reliable short version of the scale. The 7-item NSM-SF was validated across a series of four studies. NSM-SF showed psychometric properties and correlations consistent with its longer forerunner. Additionally, results indicated that the need for sense-making (...) was moderately positively related to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and it related negatively to the frustration of these needs. The research offers a useful, brief tool for assessing the NSM construct and broadens our understanding of basic psychological motivations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a model that allows the representation and analysis of circularity in ethotic structures, i.e. in communication structures related to the speaker’s character and in particular, his credibility. The paper studies three types of cycles: in self-referential sentences, embedded testimony and ethotic begging the question. It is shown that standard models allow the reconstruction of the circularities only if those circular utterances are interpreted as ethotic arguments. Their alternative, assertive interpretation requires enriching the (...) existing models with a purely ethotic component related to the credibility of the performer of any (not necessarily argumentative) speech act. (shrink)

We effectively construct the finitely generated free equivalential algebras corresponding to the equivalential fragment of intuitionistic propositional logic.

Studies of the scale of unemployment in Poland and in Europe conducted in recent years lead to the conclusion that one of the largest and growing problems of the modern labour market is the unemployment rate among young people. An unfavourable phenomenon related to the problem that is increasingly appearing in public debate is the rising unemployment of graduates. Therefore, it is important to attempt to identify the phenomena in today's job market and one of them is the formation of (...) a new type of employee on the labour market, the member of the precarious class. The analysis aims to present the origins, nature and scale of the precariat phenomenon in Poland. The problem is described from the perspective of the labour market position of a selected social group, i.e. young people entering the labour market after finishing their education. The study attempted to identify factors that affect this phenomenon and the characteristics confirming the sense of its separation on the labour market. (shrink)

The subject of the article is the concept of a universal language and a reflection on its importance for law. The starting point is a presentation of the history of the concept of a common language for all mankind, a concept that has always accompanied man – it is present in the Bible, in the ancient writings of Near Eastern peoples, it was alive in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, and it experienced its particular heyday – among other (...) reasons because of the gradual abandonment of Latin as the language of science – in the seventeenth century, an age that was reformist by definition. Since its inception, the concept of a universal language has been inextricably linked with the idea of world peace and universal happiness for all people. It is significant that in most universal language designs, regardless of the era, there were, to a greater or lesser extent, references to the utility of such languages for law. The author, tracing the development of the concept of a universal language, focuses on its fullest contemporary development: Esperanto. Esperanto, like previous universal language designs, places particular emphasis on ideas linked to the concept of a universal language, especially the idea of peaceful coexistence and understanding between peoples. In this context, it is reasonable to ask what role Esperanto can play in the development of certain branches of law, especially international law. Given the position of English as the language of legal acts of international importance, the answer to this question is currently not clear. (shrink)

This article uncovers the intellectual traditions behind Dio Chrysostom's Oration 20: On Anachôrêsis. The examination reveals a variety of subtexts and traditions with which Dio engages, and shows that at its core the text inspects three types of lives promoted by three philosophical schools: Epicurean, Stoic and Peripatetic. They are never referred to directly, however, which raises questions concerning Dio's strategy of not acknowledging the sources of the ideas with which he engages. The article also develops our understanding of anachôrêsis (...) and the controversies surrounding it in pagan antiquity. (shrink)

Celem tego artykułu jest analiza znaczeń pojęcia ekosocjalizmu we współczesnym dyskursie filozoficznym i politycznym. W pierwszym kroku przeprowadzam rozróżnienie pomiędzy ekosocjalizmem jako ruchem a ekosocjalizmem jako teorią. Globalny ruch ekosocjalistyczny jednoczą postulaty polityczne. W jego skład wchodzą jednak nurty o różnorodnych założeniach teoretycznych. Skupiam się na opozycji pomiędzy nurtami nawiązującymi do tradycji marksistowskiej a nurtami, które w ślad za Joanem Martinezem-Alierem można nazwać „neonarodnictwem ekologicznym”, czyli odwołującymi się do tradycyjnych etyk i wartości istniejących społeczności, tak jak w przypadku licznych ruchów (...) rdzennych i ekofeministycznych. Nurty te różnią się poglądami na wiele kwestii, w tym na kwestię rozwoju. W drugim kroku, rozważając ekosocjalizm jako teorię, wyróżniam dwa stanowiska. Zgodnie z pierwszym z nich, reprezentowanym przez Joela Kovela i Michaela Löwy’ego, myśl Marksa należy uzupełnić o wymiar ekologiczny. Zgodnie z drugim stanowiskiem, którego przedstawicielem jest John Bellamy Foster, ekosocjalizm to idea Marksowska, przedstawiona w Kapitale. Wysuwając na pierwszy plan pojęcia metabolizmu i rysy metabolicznej, Foster odkrywa ekologiczny, we współczesnym sensie, wymiar myśli dojrzałego Marksa. Wykazuję, że należy odróżnić ekosocjalizm w znaczeniu politycznym od ekosocjalizmu w znaczeniu filozoficznym. Na poziomie filozoficznym natomiast, rozbieżność stanowisk ma swoją genezę w interpretacji ontologii Marksa: Kovel i Löwy są kontynuatorami tradycji marksizmu-humanizmu, a Foster zrywa z tą tradycją i odczytuje ontologię Marksa w perspektywie materializmu epikurejskiego. (shrink)

Na podstawie prześledzenia genezy Dzieci nędzy (1913) i historii komponowania tekstu dokonano ciekawych ustaleń z zakresu działań twórczych najgłośniejszego autora Młodej Polski – Stanisława Przybyszewskiego. Badania ujawniły m.in. niechęć pisarza do (czy może: nieumiejętność) radykalnej modyfikacji raz dokonanych zapisów tekstowych i wzrost literackiej efektywności z dala od wielkich miast. Kolacjonowanie przekazów powieści oraz lektura dokumentów osobistych pozwoliły stwierdzić, że znaczący wpływ na ostateczny kształt Dzieci nędzy miały powikłania osobiste i przykre okoliczności życiowe, które znacząco determinowały (czy raczej: destruowały) proces pisarski (...) Przybyszewskiego, oraz ingerencja domagającego się uzupełnień wydawcy, któremu pisarz skwapliwie przyznał rację, dopisując kilka rozdziałów. Te sumiennie dokonane poprawki świadczą o tym, jak ważne były dla pisarza uwagi redakcyjne w udoskonalaniu tekstu. Najważniejsze odkrycie, do jakiego prowadzą badania tekstologiczne, dotyczy jednak autorskiej rezygnacji z zamierzonego pierwotnie poematu prozą i przetransponowania jego idei w formę powieściową. Ta decyzja – będąca rodzajem kapitulacji w zmaganiach z tworzywem – świadczyła de facto o nowatorskim myśleniu Przybyszewskiego o powieści i sprawiła, że Dzieci nędzy to niezwykle ciekawy artystycznie, nowoczesny zapis stanów psychicznych. Od strony rozwiązań konstrukcyjno-narracyjnych to niewątpliwie jedna z najciekawszych powieści Przybyszewskiego. (shrink)

All the authors who have contributed to Looking Back to See the Future have taken up the challenge to inter-disciplinarily investigate the ambiguous concepts of sins, vices and virtues. Their illuminating chapters test the definitions and applications of these religio-cultural categories in the contexts of the distant past as well as our contemporary, globalised, consumerist present; but they all do it for the sake of catching a glimpse of their and our future. By looking into religious and philosophical treatises, paraliterary (...) and literary texts as well as everyday practices, the authors prove that the interpretations of what constitutes sin, vice and virtue are becoming more and more difficult in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the machinery of multicultural societies and liberal democratic systems is dependent upon various forms of dialogue - dialogue between political parties, between different social groups, between the ruling and the ruled. But what are the conditions of a democratic dialogue and how does the philosophical dialogic approach apply to practice? Exploring the multifaceted nature of the concepts of dialogue and democracy, and critically examining materializations of dialogue in social life, this book offers a variety of (...) perspectives on the theoretical and empirical interface between democracy and dialogue. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21st century is the time of a new challenge for the Polish nation. Standing on the threshold of a new century, it has also stood on the ‘threshold’ of the united Europe. Culture is a binder thanks to which it is possible to discover and to maintain peoples’ identity and the bonds connecting individual members of the nation. The multitude of nations is a variety which makes Europe not a monolith in relation to culture; instead, it (...) constitutes a mosaic of different cultures and philosophies of life. The Church does not try to identify with any of the culture patterns, but it seeks its place among the diversity of their forms. However, one can talk about the development of a Christian culture model resulting from the faith and the presence of the evangelical message in the whole of the Christians’ life. In the survey concerning Poland’s accession to the European Union, Polish people have expressed their hopes and fears connected with the process of integration. As many as 11% of the people surveyed expressed their anxiety related to the adverse effect upon culture and customs. The Church in its social instruction continuously emphasizes the necessity of maintaining one’s own cultural identity by particular ethnic, national and regional groups. The united Europe is to become not exactly a federation of countries, but rather the home of homes. In the everyday life of the new united Europe the system of norms, values and patterns of religious and cultural behaviour are going to be verified. Both the sceptics and the enthusiasts of the integration process are looking for a place and a role for the Polish Christians in the secularized European society. (shrink)

To analyze potential negative consequences of adopting generative AI solutions in the digital afterlife industry (DAI), in this paper we present three speculative design scenarios for AI-enabled simulation of the deceased. We highlight the perspectives of the data donor, data recipient, and service interactant – terms we employ to denote those whose data is used to create ‘deadbots,’ those in possession of the donor’s data after their death, and those who are meant to interact with the end product. We draw (...) on the scenarios to map out several key ethical concerns posed by ‘re-creation services’ and to put forward recommendations on the ethical development of AI systems in this specific area of application. The recommendations, targeted at providers of AI-enabled re-creation services, include suggestions for developing sensitive procedures for retiring deadbots, ensuring meaningful transparency, restricting access to such services to adult users only, and adhering to the principle of mutual consent of both data donors and service interactants. While we suggest practical solutions to the socio-ethical challenges posed by the emergence of re-creation services, we also emphasize the importance of ongoing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the ethics of AI and the ethics of the DAI. (shrink)

(Extra)Ordinary? edited by Jade Alexander and Katarzyna Bronk engages in research on the ways and means in which celebrity status has been created, controlled, dispersed and received in the past as well as the present.

We show that a finitely generated protoalgebraic strict universal Horn class that is filter-distributive is finitely based. Equivalently, every protoalgebraic and filter-distributive multidimensional deductive system determined by a finite set of finite matrices can be presented by finitely many axioms and rules.

Pragmatics and dialectics are two disciplines which have been amongst the first and most important partners for argument studies in the exploration of the complex realm of communication. Treating argumentation as a construct consisting of premises and conclusion allows for investigating some interesting properties of the phenomenon of reasoning, but does not capture a variety of aspects related to the usage of natural language and dialogical context in which real-life argumentation is typically embedded. This special issue explores some of the (...) fascinating research questions which emerge when we move beyond logic into the territory of the pragmatics and dialectics of argument. (shrink)

The presented study raises the issue of contribution payers in the field of social insurance, in particular based on the Covid-19 pandemic. Searching for ways of supporting was determined by the deterioration of the financial condition of entrepreneurs as payers of contributions. In 2020, there were no instruments or mechanisms to support entrepreneurs in a lockdown situation, which implied the need to build such tools and the legal environment for SMEs practically from the beginning. The Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) was (...) entrusted with the role of a stabilizer, consisting in servicing entrepreneurs as part of subsequent editions of the Anti-Crisis Shield. During the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic, ZUS used the following forms of support for contribution payers: exemption from the obligation to pay contributions, postponement of the payment of contributions and payment of contributions in installments. The research question concerned the enforcement of the law and respect for the basic rights of entrepreneurs in the scope of the support used. In order to solve the research task legal interpretation were used in the work. The author’s considerations lead to the conclusion that forms of support used in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic turned out to be effective and may be used in the future in emergency situations. An important science contribution of the article results from the combination of the selected legal and economic aspects. (shrink)

Open access to information is now a universal phenomenon thanks to rapid technological developments across the globe. This open and universal access to information is a key value of democratic societies because, in principle, it supports well-informed decision-making on individual, local, and global matters. In practice, however, without appropriate readiness for navigation in a dynamic information landscape, such access to information can become a threat to public health, safety, and economy, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. In the past, this (...) readiness was often conceptualized in terms of adequate literacy levels, but the contemporarily observed highest-ever literacy levels have not immunized our societies against the risks of misinformation. Therefore, in this Perspective, we argue that democratization of access to information endows citizens with new responsibilities, and second, these responsibilities demand readiness that cannot be reduced to mere literacy levels. In fact, this readiness builds on individual adequate literacy skills, but also requires rational thinking and awareness of own information processing. We gather evidence from developmental, educational, and cognitive psychology to show how these aspects of readiness could be improved through education interventions, and how they may be related to healthy work-home balance and self-efficacy. All these components of education are critical to responsible global citizenship and will determine the future direction of our societies. (shrink)

This article assesses cultural studies and the concept of organizational culture. Cultural studies, created at the University of Birmingham, focused mostly on the analysis of culture and its connections to authority. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies created its own approach to hegemony, describing it as an interaction between elites and the power-deprived rest of the society. However, this situation is widely accepted and based on common agreement. CCCS used the theory of structuralism in order to obtain further insights to (...) the origins of culture. The author also describes the theory of organizational culture in order to present the culture of an enterprise as a way for national culture to manifest itself. In addition to this, an attempt is made to look at the organizational culture from the point of view of hegemony. (shrink)

W eseju tym przyglądam się koncepcjom wojny i jej relacji do ludzkiej natury, kondycji, cywilizacji, tudzież immanentnej „struktury” władzy, autorstwa czterech dwudziestowiecznych filozofów – Arnolda Toynbee’go, René Girarda, Georgio Agambena i George’a Santayany. Zestawienie elementów tych teorii, a także krytyki kultury współczesnej, w którą wszyscy interlokutorzy się angażują, pozwala odkryć intrygujące punkty wspólne. Nawet jeśli niektóre analogie okazują się pozorne, to dyskusja rzuca nowe światło na zagadnienia takie jak związek między tożsamością a ofiarą, władzą a banitą, kłamstwem a systemem, czy (...) też każdą stabilną organizacją społeczną. (shrink)

According to the title, it is a profile of one of the most outstanding authors in King’s Stanisław August times. This article has been based only on information from letters. Other biographical data about Stanisław Trembecki has knowingly been omitted by the author. It is worth pointing out, that due to the artist’s own negligence, most of the incoming mail has been lost. Thanks to King’s Stanisław August meticulousness almost all letters written to the monarch, during 30 years period, have (...) been preserved. Trembecki was a controversial person, quite often arousing conflicting emotions in researchers and readers. One see in him a talented writer and a participant in Thursday’s dinners, others believe he had no rules and think he was a traitor of his homeland. That is why, this correspondence is a document one of a kind and it allows us to understand better Trembecki’s motives. These are private letters. They have not been written “just for show”, or future readers. Their author does not create his own view. On the contrary, his personal’ thoughts are marginal in the correspondence, his own conclusions and observations are mentioned in passing. The author of the article, spots that the leitmotif of the letters are the poet’s financial Problems. Begging is alternated with bursts of dignity and bitter remarks, as the King does not approve Trembecki’s career plans. The reader may also find comments about the poet’s matrimonial plans, his political activity, people he felt affinity with, as well as his literary activity, impressive library or favorite books. In the correspondence, we can also find a picture оf the royal court. Many well-known historic figures appear, like Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Adam Naruszewicz or Michał Poniatowski. At the end of the article, the author pointed out linguistic virtues in Stanisław Trembecki’s letters. (shrink)