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Anthropos 3–4 (227–228) 2012
PHILOSOPHY
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The contribution addresses the basic tenets of American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007), paying special attention to the concepts of hope, utopia, solidarity and possibility of ethics in most recent times, marked after 1989 by locust capitalism. With his radical leftist and Trockist inclination, Rorty emphasizes that knowledge must nourish the ability for utopia, since this is the only way humanism can be kept alive. The article also presents Rorty’s understanding of Pragmatism as a philosophy of solidarity, clearly emphasizing the “priority of solidarity over objectivity”, with solidarity as the other side of justice, which is and remains one of the truly fundamental notions of every ethics.
Though facing the end of metaphysics as final certainty and its absolute principles, we can talk about ethics and its grounding in present times. Philosophy still plays the leading role here and still hasn’t lost its cardinal importance. However, its gaze is directed to the future rather than upwards. The distinctive trait of Rorty’s philosophy is the need for justice and willed philanthropy, which clearly marks his leftism. He built his philosophy on the possibility of “holding self-creation and justice, private perfection and human solidarity, in a single vision”.
The article also presents a detailed analysis of Rorty’s understanding of liberalism, where liberals and freedom-loving persons are human beings who believe cruelty is the worst thing that can happen to the other. A liberal is thus a person who entertains hope that the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cease. This is a clear intimation of Rorty’s liberal utopia, which strives for solidarity, which, however, is not discovered through reflection; rather, it is created through growing sensitivity for suffering, injustice and humiliation of other people. To perceive suffering is thus deemed insufficient. What is needed is taking concrete action to prevent and do away with it. In this light, Rorty’s philosophy can be seen as a single call for poverty not to be tolerated as a self-evident phenomenon, because the familiar division to the left and the right actually implies the division to the poor and the rich; division, which is still very much alive in the struggle between the left and the right in this very moment.
Keywords: Richard Rorty, hope, utopia, metaphysics, solidarity, pragmatism, critic of capitalism, ethics
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The article deals with the interaction between physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions. For Descartes, mind and matter were two separate and distinct substances, and the pineal gland was for him the seat of the soul. Nowadays, science is able to trace out the spiritual attributes and changes, measure them and integrate them into the healing process. In their work The Self and Its Brain, philosopher Popper and neurophysiologist Ecless try to bring together the two poles of dualism, Descartes’s res cogitans and res extensa. Since its publication, neurosciences have made an enormous progress, which Popper and Eccles could not have predicted at the time when they wrote their monumental work, which is still relevant for the body-mind research. Asian theories of consciousness are interrelated with the soteriological practices and their ways of salvation.
Key words: interactionism, soteriology, consciousness, body-mind
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In view of the given situation which, in the framework of both natural and humanistic sciences, has affected us ever since Descartes, Husserl‘s attempt at grounding philosophy as strict science may well appear odd and utterly irrelevant and unworldly. However, this is exactly the topic tackled by Pažanin, who calls for a different understanding not only of science but most of all original doxa, natural bearing, logos, rationality, and the truly original human aspect which lies at the core of “science” understood in this sense. In this sense, both Husserl and Pažanin never gave up the idea of “philosophy as strict science” in the original humanistic sense; “science”, which is in its natural and humanistic form obliged to “strictly” meet the paradoxical demand for the realization of the originally human.
Key words: Pažanin, Husserl, phenomenology, strict science, Cartesianism
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The article is dealing with Latour’s conception of science. Science is connected with collectivity. The philosopher is rejecting social construction and politization of science. We can put the bearing into statement with circulating reference. There are no more oppositions between the subject and the object. The innovation of Latour’s philosophy is a concept of no-human beings. Free and ironic expressions sometimes fag the clearness of concepts.
Key words: science, circulating reference, non-human beings, cogitamus
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The aim of the present article is to provide a comprehensive neurophilosophical analysis of one of the most influential neurotheological theories, the so-called “The Theory of the Divine Temporal Lobe”. The latter consists of two separate sub-theories: the first one claims that religious experiences are inextricably bound to temporal lobe epilepsy (Ramachandran), and the second one claims that it is possible to evoke religious experiences by electromagnetically stimulating the temporal lobe (Persinger). The common assumption of both is that all religious experiences are the result of irregular functioning of the temporal lobe. The article first presents both theories and examines their empirical and phenomenological shortcomings, and then moves on to show that their underlying theoretical assumption (the theory of modularity) is not so much the result of actual empirical findings as of their unreflected metaphysical presuppositions.
Key words: neurotheology, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, religious experience
PSYCHOLOGY
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The structural analyses of 6 basic cognitive abilities, measured on the great American adult sample MIDUS II, revealed a stable hierarchical structure with two primary dimensions (memory and executive functioning) and a general factor. The best way of describing this structure is the bifactor model, although the classic hierarchical model was also acceptable. Cognitive speed was for the most part included into the dimension of executive functioning. All dimensions of cognitive abilities are correlated with age and perceived intellectual aging. Yet the dimensions of personality (Big Five) were better predictors of perceived intellectual aging than age or cognitive abilities.
Key words: cognitive abilities, memory, executive function, cognitive speed, intellectual aging
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Retirement is the time of the end of employment and beginning receiving a pension in regardless of age. One type of studies is based on the study of the current factors that affect the psychological health of retirees and the second deals with past experience, status and roles as predictors of prosperity and derives from lifelong development, which is also our area of research. The purpose of this study was to examine whether higher educated retirees and those with higher job satisfaction before retirement were significantly more likely to report higher current psychological health. The study included 74 female pensioners and 27 male Slovene pensioners, in retirement for maximum 5 years. We used MHC-LF and MSQ questionnaires. Education level correlated significantly moderately positive with job satisfaction. We found higher education in negative correlation with psychological health in retirees, but results showed no significant relationship between psychological health and job satisfaction. Education indeed predicts more total variance of psychological health than job satisfaction. Advantages of the research are that we examined psychological health as broader construct, not just psychological well-being, and the correlation between health and education as an independent factor.
Keywords: Psychological health, retirement, job satisfaction, education
SYMPOSIUM ON FRANCE VEBER'S PHILOSOPHY
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The article deals with the grounds of Veber’s “national” and “Christian” psychology/ philosophy. The question arises: Can we justifiably speak about the anthropological nature of Christianity citing Tertulian’s sentence that the human soul is Christian by nature (anima humana naturaliter Christiana)? What role does nationality play for human being in relation to the fact that the language is a basic anthropological posit and man is based on it? We anticipate the answer that it is an essential part of human spirituality and constitution of the spirit. These questions are posed within the horizon of Veber’s philosophical thought and their anthropological legitimacy is examined.
Keywords: Veber, nation, nationalism, Christianity, Slovenianness, psychology, philosophy.
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Der Beitrag ist eine kurze Präsentation der ersten italienischen Übersetzung des Buches von France Veber Filozofija. Načelni nauk o človeku in njegovem mestu v stvarstvu (1930). Die Übersetzung wurde im Oktober 2011 in Italien, zusammen mit einer auf Italienisch erfassten Einführung, publiziert: Uomo, dovere, etica nella filosofia di France Veber. In diesem Text beschreibt der Autor Emanuele Marini die allgemeinen Aspekte und Bedeutungen der Philosophie von F. Veber. Seine ganze Philosophie kann als Werdegang eines Philosophen verstanden werden, der bewusst ist, dass die Gründe, aus denen er herauskommt, nicht genug für eine vollkommende Entwicklung der Philosophie sind und die Erwartungen des Philosophen selbst nicht erfüllen können. Die ganze wissenschaftliche Entwicklung der Philosophie von F. Veber strebt nach der Lösung der Frage der Substanz im allgemeinen und der Selbstständigkeit der geistlichen Substanzen. Die Gegenstandstheorie ist Vebers Ausgangspunkt, aber sie ist nicht genug für die Erfüllung von diesem Ziel. Die Philosophie von Veber hat noch eine große Bedeutung: in seiner Zeit entwickelte sich die europäische Philosophie vor allem im deutschen Sprachraum. Veber hat seine philosophische Arbeit genau dort angefangen, aber trotzdem hat er Vorgang seiner Muttersprache gegeben und er hat ein neues slowenisches philosophisches Lexikon gestaltet.
Schlüsselwörter: France Veber, slowenische Philosophie, Sollen, Ethik, Grazer Schule.
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In the first part of the paper the author focuses on the theories and discussions on the sacred that started to appear at the end of the 19th century. It is typical for the Slovenian philosopher France Veber to stress the issue of the sacred, who dealt with the problem in his work Znanost in vera (1923). Veber’s differentiation between the primary and secondary religious feeling (or confessional indifference) is the contact point with the Rudolf Otto’s conception of the holy. The paper introduces a thesis that Veber regards the sacred as the shine of transcendence. The sacred is in the closest connection to transcendence and it is the only thing transcendence can be recognized by. Veber established that the sacred or transcendence can be perceived through the work of art, where he comes close to Paul Tillich and Tillich’s discussion about the relationship between the Catholicism and Protestantism, which is actually a discourse about sacred.
Keywords: sacred, France Veber, religious feeling, Rudolf Otto, transcendence, work of art, Paul Tillich.
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The introduction of ought-beliefs in the realm of experiences, besides presentations and thoughts or is-beliefs, as well as besides to desires – actually the active expansion of the emotional side of experiences – is the main result promoted by Emanuele Marini. This is a substantial systematical contribution to ethics in deontic direction. According to the phenomenological arguments, one proceeds from the what-it’s-like experiences of ought-beliefs related deontic status to the metaphysical conclusions, the most imposing of which acknowledges reality of moral properties/entities: oughts then appear as abstract Platonic or Meinongian objects. Countering this species of strong realism is irrealism and the adjoined error theory, which flatly denies the existence of such abstract objects. Another way to go embraces naturalist material physical world as the basis of unique occurrences featuring deontic situations. Abstract entities then figure as abstractions, namely as determinables that according to their vague nature don’t ultimately exist in the world, and whose basis are determinants of these determinables, the unique identity occurrences of deontic situations in the world, which themselves are phenomenologically grounded.
Keywords: ought-beliefs, deontics, phenomenological argument, moral realism, transglobal experiential world.
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In the paper I investigate the key transformations that occurred between the first period Veber ‘philosophical development, which is substantially framed within the object theory and studying the relationship between experience and its objects, and the second, personalistic stage, where the focus is directed also to the bearers of experience. This represents a very important shift, which consequently allows for a full understanding of his ethics as logic of instinctive reason, which he systematically presented in his book Ethics: First Attempt towards an Exact Logic of Instinctive Reason (1923). Thus his philosophical anthropology from the book Philosophy: The Principled Lessons on Humanity and Its Place in the World (1930) in some sense explicates and justifies empirical ethical postulates of ethics of conscience. The paper further shows how within Veber’s philosophical anthropology along with the notion of the person a key role is also played by the concept of humanity, to which Veber gets closest through his explication of ecclesial community as a special kind of human sociality.
Keywords: ethics, evaluative emotion and striving, anthropology, person, idea of humanity.
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The article consists of four main parts and Conclusion. In the first part the author outlines the main elements of semantic externalism (Putnam, Burge) and its implications. In the second part he presents Howell’s argument for the incompatibility of creationist theism and semantic externalism. In the third part he presents the Veberian variant of semantic externalism, which can be formulated on the basis of Veber’s philosophy. In the fourth part he deals with personalism in the context of Veber’s thesis that some persons are inherently bad, vicious, and semantic externalism. In Conclusion he establishes some relations between semantic externalism, creationist theism and personalism.
Key words: semantic externalism, creationist theism, personalism, Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, Robert Howell, France Veber.
STUDIES
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The purpose of the study, which included 175 college students (42.3 % male; 57.7 % female) from the first to the fourth years of study on different faculties, was to investigate the correlations between their relationships with parents (trust, open communication and alienation), self-perceptions and parental involvement in their children’s education. For the purpose of researching the relationships with parents we translated and adapted IPPA (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987). We developed the scale of the subjects’ self-perceptions and the scale of parental involvement. Positive relationships with parents and positive self-perceptions were positively associated with encouragement and financial support, and negatively associated with pressure and conflicts with parents about educational activities. Positive relationships with parents were positively related to positive self-perceptions. Limitations of the study are noted, and suggestions are made for future studies of parental involvement.
Key words: attachment, self-perception, parental involvement, college students
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Research to date into political culture in Slovenia has shown that traditional patterns of political action dominate, and the norms of political culture are still mainly objectively determined. Continuing to retain such traditional forms of social and political action and communication, which strongly influence the social and political decision-making process, can crucially influence a series of the most important political decisions that will need to be taken on the national level. The results of the three dimensions of political culture (subjective, social and objective) show that social complexity has been increasing rapidly, particularly during the transitional period. This contributes to the ongoing increase of instability in the political system and as such represents an objective obstacle to its consolidation and democratisation. The specific role and importance of subjective factors of political culture could only increase on the basis of consolidation of the political system. Finally, some significant features of rationalisation and modernisation of the political system, which have been revealed in my analysis, could be developed even more if they were not obstructed by the existing competitive pattern of conflict resolution, increasing role of social and political violence, the antagonism between the interests of capital and the interests of labour, the very low legitimacy of democracy, and inexperienced and insufficiently active voters.
Keywords: political culture, Slovenia, time series, anthropology, democracy, riots, demonstrations, civic culture.
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Für die modernen westeuropäischen Gesellschaften ist ein starker Abfall der Anzahl der Kirchenbesucher charakteristisch. Seitens mancher Soziologen wurde diese Entwicklung vorhergesagt. Gleichzeitig mit der Modernisierung der Gesellschaft sollte man also auch die Säkularisierung erwarten. Der Gott sollte nach dieser Hypothese aus dem Leben der modernen Gesellschaften verschwinden. Der Artikel befasst sich mit der Frage, ob diese “Diagnose” richtig ist. Ist also der postmoderne Mensch schon seinem Wesen nach anders? Oder gibt es auch in der postmodernen Kultur Faktoren, die gerade das Gegenteil der Säkularisierung bewirken? Kann man die Verminderung der Anzahl der Kirchenbesucher einem mangelnden Interesse für die religiösen Fragen als solche gleichstellen? Der Artikel betont, dass bezüglich der Religiosität in der gegenwärtigen Kultur die “richtigen Fragen” (T. Luckmann, P. Berger) notwendig sind. Die Ethnologin A. Martin ist der Meinung, dass es sich bei der Säkularisierungshypothese um einen “semantischen Missverständnis” handelt. Was sagen also die soziologischen Untersuchungen tatsächlich aus – handelt es sich tatsächlich um den Abfall der Religiosität oder eher um den Abfall einer bestimmten Form der Religiosität?
Schlüsselwörter: der Abfall der Religiosität, Säkularisierung, Religiosität, die Form der Religiosität, die postmoderne Kultur, die Modernisierung
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With the progress in the modern-day society there come new interpretations of specific roles, such as the role of a man as a father who, as a part, influences the whole family system. This article proposes a synthesis of various aspects on fatherhood – aside from fundamental parenting functions, essential for the mere survival of the family, increased involvement in family relations is expected from fathers in the last decades. Fathers are furthermore expected to take on certain roles they are not accustomed to. Essentially fathers are counted on to be mature and responsible people who will take on their share of parental responsibilities. Paternal involvement in family life and child-rearing, and especially the quality of his relations, positively influences children‘s development.
Key words: parental functions and responsibilities, fatherhood, child-rearing, paternal role and influence, involved father
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