Pro lidské jednání je důležitý vztah volního a nevolního momentu, svobody a danosti. Ve své práci bych se chtěl zabývat vztahem volního a nevolního momentu v trilogii P. Ricoeura Filosofie vůle (především v jejím prvním dílu). Ricoeur ukazuje odkázanost a propojenost obou momentů ve třech fázích jednání, jimiž je rozhodování, čin a souhlas. Pokud nevolní moment převládne nad volním, propadá člověk zlu. Cílem člověka by mělo být dobro: ovládnutí nevolního momentu vůlí a vztah k druhému člověku. Problematičnost rozdělení světa na (...) dobro a zlo ukazují úvahy F. Nietzscheho v interpretaci P. Kouby. Pro Nietzscheho jsou dobro a zlo nejednoznačné a provázané. Jeho pohled interpretovaný P. Koubou nám ukazuje člověka zcela odkázaného na sebe sama, bez opory v jasném rozdělení světa. Pokusím se důkladněji vyložit Ricoeurův popis volního a nevolního momentu a ukázat, zda a nakolik na něj lze uplatnit Nietzscheho kritiku. Závěrem přiblížím alternativu vůči morálce na jedné straně a relativismu na druhé, kterou ve své interpretaci Nietzscheho nabízí P. Kouba. (shrink)

El presente artículo toma como objeto de análisis las implicancias políticas de la categoría psicoanalítica de identificación en la obra de Ernesto Laclau, a partir del establecimiento de un vínculo epistemológico entre teoría política y psicoanálisis. A tales efectos, abordaré la apropiación laclausiana de las contribuciones de Sigmund Freud y de Jacques Lacan sobre este fenómeno, para señalar la especificidad de la identificación en tanto mecanismo habilitante de toda constitución subjetiva, en general, así como de toda subjetividad política, en (...) particular. (shrink)

Contrary to the received view according to which the value of works of art consists exclusively or primarily in their aesthetic value I argue that the importance of aesthetic value has been grossly overrated. In earlier publications I have shown that the assumption stipulating that the value of artworks consists exclusively in their aesthetic value is demonstrably wrong. I have suggested a conceptual distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic value arguing that when it comes to evaluation the artistic value, (...) which reflects the significance of innovations exemplified by the work, is no less important than the aesthetic value. Here I take the argument a step further by suggesting that the aesthetic value is considerably less important than the artistic value. To show this I draw attention to a neglected aspect of art evaluation, namely to the monetary value of artworks. Although there is no necessary connection between monetary value of works of art and their aesthetic value or their artistic value, it can nevertheless tell us something important not only about the overall value of works of art but also about the relative importance of the two component values. I show that the enormous differences between monetary values of different artworks cannot be accounted for by the corresponding differences in their aesthetic value but can be explained by the differences in their artistic value. (shrink)

_Europe Thirty Years After 1989_ explores what happened in the former socialist countries during the last thirty years and the reasons behind these events. The authors examine how values, memory, and identity have been transforming these countries since the year 1989.

An interdisciplinary critique of business ethics as an ideology. The author discloses how contemporary business ethics is too weak to create a truly critical voice of American capitalist economy.

A review of Carole Maigné´s Formalisme esthétique: Prague et Vienne au XIXe siècle.

The author considers the most interesting arguments and objections, which various scholars have raised against his latest work, Art and Forgery: Monism and Dualism in Aesthetics.

From a historical point of view, theuniversity as an institution has had the roleof educating an elite, rather than any obvioustask of enforcing democracy. But what kind ofexpectations regarding citizenship anddemocracy can we justifiably have when it comesto the role of higher education and ouruniversities today when higher education isundergoing a process of massification. Couldthe university eventually become a place fordeliberative communication, developingdeliberative qualities among its many students?According to the contributions presented here –stemming from a conference on the theme``Higher education, (...) democracy and citizenship'',held at Örebro university, Sweden 2000 –the answer is yes, to some extent, if there isroom for pluralism in different dimensions,opportunities to challenge one's own tradition,and tolerance and respect for the concreteother. (shrink)

This article introduces the Special Issue on cameraless photography and the translation of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s treatise on electrical figures. It summarizes previous discussions on cameraless photography, namely those by Geoffrey Batchen and suggests relating the photogram to current post-lenticular technologies such as radiography, digital scanning or machine vision. It outlines the emergence of cameraless imaging in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century scientific research, taking Lichtenberg’s figures as an emblem of automatically generated images situated between duration and instantaneity, between image (...) making and measurement, between nature and culture. (shrink)

Greeting words of Thomas Gullickson, the Archbishop and Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine.

Anselm of Canterbury holds that freedom of the will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. This condition, however, turns out to be trivially fulfilled by all rational creatures at all times. In order to clarify the necessary conditions for moral responsibility, we must look more widely at his discussion of the nature of the will and of willed action. In this paper, I examine his theory of voluntariness by clarifying his account of the sin of Satan in De casu (...) diaboli. Anselm agrees with Augustine that the sinful act cannot be given a causal explanation in terms of a distinct preceding act of will or desire or choice. He thus rejects volitionalist accounts of Satan's sin and thus of voluntary action in general. He moves beyond his predecessor, however, in insisting on the necessity of an explanation in terms of reasons, and his theory of the dual nature of the rational will is designed to meet this demand. A comparison of Satan's case with the case of the miser of De casu diaboli 3,... (shrink)

Do properties of a word's features influence the order of its acquisition in early word learning? Combining the principles of mutual exclusivity and shape bias, the present work takes a network analysis approach to understanding how feature distinctiveness predicts the order of early word learning. Distance networks were built from nouns with edge lengths computed using various distance measures. Feature distinctiveness was computed as a distance measure, showing how far an object in a network is from other objects based on (...) shared and non-shared features. Feature distinctiveness predicted order of acquisition across all measures: Words that were further away from other words in the network space were learned earlier. The best distance measures were based only on non-shared features and did not include shared features. This indicates that shared features may play less of a role in early word learning than non-shared features. In addition, the strongest effects were found for visual form and surface features. Cluster analysis further revealed that this effect is a localized effect in the object feature space, where objects' distances from their cluster centroid were inversely correlated with their age of acquisition. Together, these results suggest a role for feature distinctiveness in early word learning. (shrink)

Donald Davidson and John Searle famously differ, among other things, on the issue of animal thoughts. Davidson seems to be a latter-day Cartesian, denying any propositional thought to subhuman animals, while Searle seems to follow Hume in claiming that if we have thoughts, then animals do, too. Davidson’s argument centers on the idea that language is necessary for thought, which Searle rejects. The paper argues two things. Firstly, Searle eventually argues that much of a more complex thought does depend on (...) language, which reduces a distance between himself and Davidson. Secondly, some of Davidson’s suggestions are promising – in particular the idea that we may lack a vocabulary to capture the contents of animal thoughts. Based on this insight, one might, pace Davidson, grant thoughts to animals. However, this does not mean, pace Searle, that it should be possible to construe even the simplest of such thoughts as propositional. Perhaps we need to move beyond Davidson and Searle by developing a theory of nonpropositional thought for animals. (shrink)

resumo: Este trabalho investiga os laços entre a técnica, a metafísica e o totalitarismo, com base nos pensamentos de Heidegger e Arendt. Além disso, propõe que tais análises sugerem que a filosofia e a história pertencem a um enredo trágico fundamental. Para tanto, de início pesquisamos em que medida o ambivalente sentido de esgotamento e salvação, presente em diversas abordagens da técnica, implica a produção de prognósticos e uma reflexão teleológica. Investigamos se estes são elementos que, no século XX, serviram (...) de artifício para a legitimação da barbárie em movimentos totalitários e se permanecem necessariamente intrínsecos a toda visão da técnica. A abordagem de Heidegger, em alternativa, volta-se às origens da metafísica, onde residem as decisões que teriam culminado na técnica moderna, e onde presumimos estar enraizada esta estrutura trágica. a bstract: This study investigates the links between art, metaphysics and totalitarianism, based on the thoughts of Heidegger and Arendt. It also proposes that such analyses suggest that philosophy and history belong to a fundamental tragic plot. To do so, we start researching how the ambivalent sense of exhaustion and salvation, present in many approaches of technique, involves the production of prognoses and teleological reflection. We investigate if these are elements which, in the twentieth century, served as a device for legitimizing barbarity in totalitarian movements and if it remains necessarily intrinsic to every view of technique. Heidegger's approach, instead, turns to the origins of metaphysics, where the decisions that would have culminated in modern technique lie, and where we presume this tragic structure is rooted. (shrink)

The paper critically examines C.A.J. Coady's analysis of testimony, concentrating on his interpretation of the views of David Hume. The author tries to show that not only is Coady's interpretation of Hume inadequate, but that Hume's conception of testimony is in fact superior to that of Coady. Coady sees Hume as the originator of the individualistic, first-person, view of testimony, according to which the reports of other people must be confirmed on the basis of an individualistically interpreted perception. Coady argues (...) against the first-person view that it undermines the very possibility of communication. Drawing on the ideas of Davidson and Wittgenstein, he argues that a good many beliefs must be true for the communication to be possible. The author provides evidence that Hume was a third-person theorist himself, even if he did not think that the truth of the majority of beliefs must be presupposed. Moreover, Wittgenstein and perhaps Davidson are also Humean in their belief that it suffices for beliefs to be generally correct rather than true. (shrink)

Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyla Benhabib, posing the question whether she supports the proposition that schools can be sites for deliberative communication. I argue that a school that engages in deliberative communication, with its stress on mutual (...) communication between different moral perspectives, gives universalism a procedurally oriented meaning, serving as an arena for encounters that represents a weak public sphere. An interactive universalism of this kind attaches importance to developing an ability and willingness to reason on the basis of the views of others and to change perspectives. In that respect, the institutional arrangements of schools are potential parts of the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, as well as its moral dimension, in terms of the obligations and responsibilities we develop through our institutions and in our actions as human beings towards one another. (shrink)

In Heraclitus’ time, thymos and psyche carried highly similar or even identical meanings, because both could refer to life, courage, personality, emotions, and reason. Heraclitus probably worked with all of these meanings. He may have been partly inspired by Homer and post-Homeric literature, where the two terms were likewise placed side by side and often used interchangeably. In Heraclitus, thymos and psyche are not opposites in terms of signification. Oftentimes, they can be “swapped,” and their meaning and “costs” exchanged. The (...) source and cause of this special exchange is desiring or wanting (thelein), which connects all these senses but is also the source of conflict and fighting. Desire—regardless of what it is and what is desired—is simultaneously the acquisition of the desired object or person and a way of paying for it. This struggle for the desired object is difficult not only because of its consequences (the price), but also because it is not possible to permanently stop desiring, which is why this struggle cannot be brought to an end. (shrink)

The article introduces a thematic issue of the journal Theory of Science that attempts to revive the category of "philosophi- cal toys" - objects and instruments designed for experimental scientific research that simultaneously played crucial role in the creation of the modern visual culture. It claims that to fully understand their nature and the kind of experience philosophical toys induce, it is necessary to situate their origins in eighteenth-century experimental science and aesthetics and proposes to approach them as perceptual and (...) cognitive extensions. (shrink)

Do properties of a word's features influence the order of its acquisition in early word learning? Combining the principles of mutual exclusivity and shape bias, the present work takes a network analysis approach to understanding how feature distinctiveness predicts the order of early word learning. Distance networks were built from nouns with edge lengths computed using various distance measures. Feature distinctiveness was computed as a distance measure, showing how far an object in a network is from other objects based on (...) shared and non‐shared features. Feature distinctiveness predicted order of acquisition across all measures: Words that were further away from other words in the network space were learned earlier. The best distance measures were based only on non‐shared features (object dissimilarity) and did not include shared features (object similarity). This indicates that shared features may play less of a role in early word learning than non‐shared features. In addition, the strongest effects were found for visual form and surface features. Cluster analysis further revealed that this effect is a localized effect in the object feature space, where objects' distances from their cluster centroid were inversely correlated with their age of acquisition. Together, these results suggest a role for feature distinctiveness in early word learning. (shrink)

[Darwinian Metaethics] A critical analysis of the recent theories of metaethics that take the Darwinian picture of our origin seriously. The contents: 1. Evolution of altruism; 2. Biology in ethics; 3. Moore and a critique of naturalism; 4. Darwinian non-cognitivism; 5. Darwinian cognitivist realism and constructivism; 6. Darwinian cognitivist anti-realism; 7. Darwinian fictionalism.

El interés filosófico que despierta la doctrina profetológica de Maimónides encuentra su justificación si con ello se hace justicia, al menos, a lo que en cierta tradición reflexiva se ha entendido como las disposiciones fundamentales que han de acompañar a la filosofía como actitud. Pero, además, ese interés está prefijado, en contraste, por una señalada y actual merma de esas disposiciones en el pensar de buena parte de quienes hoy día se dedican a un arrogante uso publico de la razón.

[How is Irrationality Possible? Davidson and the Split Mind] The paper deals witht Davidson's response to the challenge posed to his theory of mind by the phenomena of irrationality. This challenge is especially acute for Davidson, since he famously argued that it is a necessary condition on intentional agency that the agent be largely rational. The author begins by defending Davidson against some recent critics of perfect rationality. The middle part of the paper is an explication of Davidson's own theory (...) of irrationality, usually ignored by his critics. Somewhat similar to Freud, Davidson posits a split within the mind -- though not between conscious and subconscious parts, but rather between the mental states that are related to others as reasons and those that are mere causes. The final part of the paper critiques this proposal. (shrink)

The article deals with the conception of backward causation, i.e. with the question whether an effect can precede its cause. It analyses some arguments for possibility of backward causation. It is especially Dummett’s theory of quasi-causation that is a moderate form of backward causation concept. The article refuses the arguments for possibility of backward causation as unconvincing of false.

The article investigates the problem of the truth as the purpose of the criminal procedure, the problem of its cognition. Individuals carrying out criminal procedure activities (including the court) are servants of the procedural form and, at the same time, its hostages, therefore they are unable to approach the objective, absolute truth and should be content with the formal (legal) truth. This position falls under criticism. Attempts to artificial segmentation of the truth to its separate categories or forms are nothing, (...) but justification of the procedural erosion of a certain form. The article offers the opinion that the classical criminal procedure shall establish absolute, not formal (legal) truth. The truth is not only an aspiration of the criminal procedure, but, at the same time, a derivative, regulatory principle, the idea that works only in classical criminal procedure. This principle does not work in quasi-processes, i. e. in those criminal procedure forms that are organically separated from the classical procedure form. (shrink)

Studie komentuje a kriticky rozvádí Ginzburgovu koncepci indexického paradigmatu ve vědách o člověku. Zasazuje metodu čtení vedlejších detailů coby indikátorů nějaké přímo nepřístupné skutečnosti do historického, kulturního a zejm. technického kontextu na příkladech proměn lékařské diagnostiky či znalectví umění. Sleduje souvislosti mezi vývojem gramotnosti, písmových forem a grafologických postupů v 19. století a nástup technických forem zápisu, který vnesl do řady oborů nové postupy interpretace a analýzy a zproblematizoval tradiční hranice mezi přírodními, sociálními a humanitními vědami.

The paper examines the impact of Darwin's ideas on the English literature, from the late Victorians Samuel Butler, G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells to our contemporaries A. S. Byatt and Ian McEwan.

[Are We Necessarily Embodied?] The author concentrates on the relation between person and body in phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Both of these traditions are, in their own way, critical towards the Cartesian dualism. While phenomenology tries to overcome this dualism through the description of the experience of our corporeality from the first person point of view, analytic philosophy examines the metaphysical problem of the relation between person and body from the third person perspective and usually proposes a materialist answer in (...) the sense of an identity of person and body. The central part of the paper is a detailed analysis of Kripke's challenge to contemporary materialism. The author argues that it is possible to accept Kripke's modal and temporal arguments in favour of the dualism of person and body without being forced to accept the idea of dualism itself. It is the metaphysics of constitution that represents an alternative: the person is constituted by her body, but she is not identical with it. Surprisingly, it is the idea of the living body that is rediscovered in thsi solution -- the idea which, in a sense, is a part of the phenomenological heritage, even though it is devoid of phenomenological anti-scientism and idealism. (shrink)

[Against Method: Karel Kosik on Architecture and Urbanism] A critical analysis of the views of a prominent Czech philosopher who transitioned from humanist Marxism to Heideggerian conservatism. This philosophical development is also reflected in his occasional reflections on the built environment.

El presente artículo ofrece una interpretación original del trabajo de Austin sobre la aserción y los adverbios y deriva de ella una semántica expresivista para las oraciones de acción. En primer lugar, el análisis austiniano de la aserción con su idea de fuerzas asertivas específicas se conecta sistemáticamente con sus observaciones sobre la modificación adverbial para obtener esquemas de aserción para oraciones de acción. En segundo lugar, se interpretan esos esquemas en términos de la expresión de los compromisos inferenciales propios (...) de prácticas argumentativas exculpatorias, justificativas y ejemplarizantes en las que se explota la contrariedad lógica a la par de la contradicción. This paper offers a new interpretation of John Austin's views both on assertion and on adverbs, as result of which an expressivist thesis concerning the semantics for action sentences is advanced. First, Austin's analysis of assertion based on various, specific assertive forces and his remarks on adverbs are systematically connected in order to obtain assertive schemata for action sentences. Finally, those schemata are put to work as the expression of inferential commitments implicit in argumentative practices of different sorts in the deployment of which both logical contrariety and contradiction are exploited. (shrink)

This paper develops some of Austin’s ideas on excuses, stressing their “dimensional” character and relating it to Searle’s distinction between intention-in-action and previous intention, in order to show that the original speech-act shaped distinction between weakness of the will and moral weakness can be embedded in a quite different theoretical framework such as Davidson’s, while Austin’s dimensional classification of actions cannot. Finally, the article analyzes how Grice’s critique of Davidson’s views on akrasia is more faithful to Austin and more radical (...) in its conclusions concerning the justificatory aspect of reasons and the rational features of action. (shrink)