Suchergebnisse

The article is an account of Romanian Marxist discourse between 1970 and 1980, one that was completely engaged in the justification and legitimation of the contemporary totalitarian political regime. Radu Florian's works, one of the most representative authors of this decade, are analysed via the conceptual lenses of Austrian economic theory. This methodological approach is quite fertile, since it generates clear explanations why Marxist theory and the communist state incarnating its teachings could not and cannot implement their claims. The samples of Romanian Marxist discourse under scrutiny are a showcase of philosophy invaded by rhetorics and converted into ideology. The author concludes that Romanian Marxism in the designated period represents a long line of contradictions resulting from the attempt to adapt a cruel reality to a generous and humane self-construction of a political programme.

In this article, we reinterpret the current political turn in animal rights theory in terms of republican as opposed to liberal political theory. By appealing to the values of liberty and fraternity as well as equality, we argue for a conception of animal liberation from human domination and not from humanity per se. This establishes a basis of liberty and fraternity in our cooperative relationships with animals in a "zoopolis," or interspecies political community. We contend that such a basis for interspecies political cooperation is not available on the more traditional model of animal liberation, where rights are derived from weak equality of the species.

The article considers the foundation and argumentation of Europenistics as a science or a scientific domain about processes, problems, perspectives of Europe, as a philosophy or a concept of contemporary European development in strong connection with concepts of Europeanism, Europeanity, Europeanization, European. It is made a correlation and a differentiation between Europenistics and European Studies. Also in article is studied in a concise way the complex and multidimensional content of Europenistics, highlighting the most important compartments such as: theoretical and practical aspects of Europenistics and European Studies; Europenistics in connection with the European integration issue; conceptual and philosophical aspects Europenistics in the context of European unification. A very important part of the article is dedicated to analysis of the conceptualization, definition, content and specific of European Studies as one of most important compartments of Europenistics. The article ends with some general conclusions regarding the necessity to continue the foundation and argumentation of Europenistics as a special, conceptual science about Europe, as a philosophy or a concept about contemporary European development.

This article compares the ideas of two political thinkers representative for their time and region - Kautilya (of ancient India) and Machiavelli (of modern Europe). The analysis reveals important similarities and differences, and offers potential explanations for the findings. Most significantly, the similarities between Kautyla's Arthasastra and Machiavelli's Prince are visible particularly when it comes to their treatment of war, 'state' administration, diplomacy, monarchy and the features of a good leader. Such similarities suggest that the development of modern European philosophy has been influenced by other cultural spaces, including Ancient India.

The phenomenon we have tried to approximate in our work is that of Romanian inter-war spirituality. The "protagonists" of this research belonged to the so-called "young generation" or "generation 27", that is "The Criterion group": Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Mircea Vulcanescu, as well as other two representatives of a different generation: Nae Ionescu and Nichifor Crainic.
The first chapter, entitled "Steps and traps in the perception of Romanian inter-war spirituality" stipulates the topic of our research. The novelty of the approach lies in our desire of deciphering the way in which these persons had perceived themselves and their role in what we are going to refer to as the great inter-war experiment. We intend to regard reality as the sum of various images, arising from different layers of perception, coming from the respective personalities, their critics and exegetes. These images overlap to an extent that does not justify the metaphor of a "mirror broken into pieces" and reconstructed; they merely form a sort of kaleidoscope whose images are recomposed in ever changing pictures every time the object one looks through revolves. In the same time, we make a starting point in an idea suggested by social psychology, which leads to our belief that the way in which the protagonists under discussion perceived themselves was defined by their representations on the events of the time, a sort of intellectual projection of collective consciousness.
We made clear some terms such as "post-event perception": the type of cognitive reflection upon a cultural background that occurs under the circumstances imposed to the subject, situated at considerable distance in time, capable of placing him in a favorable position – as the absence of subjectivism cannot contaminate direct, synchronic perception of events; possible reiteration of the moment achieved by means of reading, an experiment possessing the supplementary cognitive charge of an anticipatory knowledge of the denouement, as well as a series of disadvantages – such as the informational deficiencies caused by the passing of time, the reality of events being an indirect, secondary one; the contamination of hypothetical decisions and post-event judgments by the bulk and value of information on the events, as well as their subsequent evaluation, jeopardizing the accuracy of perception.
Evaluating the working hypotheses we notice that there is a considerable difference between the way in which we, who were not directly involved in the events, perceive the "epoch", and the way it was perceived by the persons whose intentions we are striving to decipher, together with the ideas and attitudes they shared, the people they came into contact with, the events they took part in or carried them along a sometimes disagreeable, often ungrateful History. Our protagonists observed that whatever culture consecrates or recovers is in possession of another type of reality. It is a relatively continuous reality; even if it becomes the subject of ever renewed evaluation, it constantly perpetuates a series of values, while history is anthropophagous, swallowing in an equally inconsiderate manner both geniuses and jesters, bringing together in its terrifying ignorance both illustrious characters and the most ordinary of all people.

The author sketches a vivid intellectual history of the content and bearing of Raymond Aron's work, particularly with respect to the great scholar's analyses of totalitarian regimes and of Marxism as a "Christian heresy". He describes the dominant themes of the French philosopher, political scientist, sociologist, historian and journalist from The Opium of the Intellectuals, to Progress and Disillusion: the Dialectics of Modern Society, or Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations; from De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews to Politics and History, or to Main Currents in Sociological Thought; from Marxism and the Existentialists, to Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity; and from In Defense of Decadent Europe, to the Memoirs and to the Committed Observer… and this list is not an exhaustive one. He writes about the most prominent of Aron's contemporaries, and about his most enthusiastic followers, particularly in the Western world. As an autobiographical detail, Tismăneanu does not fail to mention Aron's readership among the Romanian students before the fall of the Berlin wall, a triumphant moment which the great champion of "methodological doubt" and the enemy of total metaphysics and ideological orthodoxies did not live to witness.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Romanian studies, in postcommunism and inter-war period, upon Montesquieu, more specifically upon his writting, De l'esprit des lois. In order to understand and to create a Romanian tradition of liberalism, one needs to begin from its origins. Montesquieu created a new language, different from that of his predecessors, a moderate one. He used the philosophic reason as an instrument of inquiry. It is said that one cannot understand a philosopher unless one thinks in his terms. Do the Romanian studies upon Montesquieu use this instrument, the philosophic reason? If they used it, they would be able to clarify Montesquieu's writtings and to understand the moderate language of liberalism. It is from this perspective that this paper will analyze the Romanian studies, out of which only two are academic.

Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.

There is a strong narrative on how the humanities were marginalized in postwar Sweden: in the land of engineers, technocrats and social scientists, there was no room for erudition, philosophy and history. This book challenges such a notion and shows how clearly the humanities were present in the public sphere of the time. By applying perspectives from the history of knowledge, the authors illustrate how humanists were key figures in the welfare society's culture and politics, media and book market, education and intellectual debate.
At the heart of the book is the public sphere of the 1960s and 1970s. In a first part, the authors highlight how humanists played a decisive role in the young television's educational program as well as in the popular science paperback publishing of the time and on the essay pages in the newspapers. In a second part, attention is drawn to the humanities' place in the Christian cultural sphere, the labour movement's education work and the New Left's book cafés. We meet people like Per I. Gedin, Gunnel Vallquist and Jan-Öjvind Swahn, but also TV producers, study circle organizers, translators of radical non-fiction and many others. They all helped to set humanistic knowledge in motion during the postwar decades.
Against an international background, the image of a humanistic knowledge system with deep roots and wide connections in Swedish society emerges. It is about these actors and arenas of knowledge that this book is about.