My paper aims to elucidate the emergence of subjectivity from the interplay between living beings and their environment. This attempt to give account of becoming-subject within the life itself leads to a confrontation between the phenomenology of life pursued since at least two decades by Renaud Barbaras with Canguilhem´s philosophy of biology. It starts with a criticism of Merleau-Ponty’s and Patočka´s respective failures to overcome the contrast between the level of bare life and the level of human existence. In order (...) to answer such a prejudicial separation between unexamined life and self-reflected existence, I adopt in the second part a bio-centric perspective on human existence, inspired by Canguilhem and Guillaume Le Blanc, in order to re-evaluate the notion of life in terms of normative, expansive movement that both shapes the living being itself and individuates the elements on which it acts. The final part of the paper seeks to understand the emergence of subjectivity from ordinary life-challenges such as illness and experiences of vulnerability or fragility, thus bypassing the need for stipulating a self-referencing consciousness as a primary mode of self-disclosure. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to reformulate the Husserlian problem of phenomena from a more pragmatic perspective, inspired by Jan Patočka. Instead of searching for a correlation between transcendent being and its subjective modes of givenness, the pragmatically oriented phenomenology should ask: How does the appearance of things unfold through our different modes of engaging with the world? In order to answer such a question, I propose to interpret the three movements of human existence differentiated by Patočka as three (...) forms of praxis and to demonstrate that each of them is deploying its own way of making things intelligible. In the end, Patočka’s account of existence in terms of movement provides a much more fruitful grounds than Heidegger’s fundamental ontology for incorporating the basic tenets of pragmatism, such as a shift to practices, an anti-intellectualist account of sense-making, and the fundamental dependency of the subject upon the public space of shared concerns. (shrink)

The pragmatist account of action in Brandom’s Making it Explicit offers a compelling defense of social embeddedness of acting. Its virtue consists of redefining the agent’s reasons for action in terms of her public commitments and entitlements. However, this account remains too intellectualist insofar as it neglects the embodied sense allowing the agent to respond to various situational demands and social constraints. In my article, I provide a less disembodied account of action that draws on Dreyfus’s emphasis on bodily skills (...) as constitutive aspects of intentional acting. Dreyfus’ notion of absorbed coping certainly highlights the role of body and affectivity in guiding the performance of action, but it ends up in underestimating the role of discursive and conceptual capacities in human agency. Against Dreyfus, I will demonstrate that involved and embodied coping not only answers to the demands of a given situation, but also involves responsiveness to reasons. My ambition is to defend a continuity between practical reasoning, i.e. our capacity to justify our performances through reasons, and our embodied coping skills, a continuity that has been overlooked by Brandom’s intellectualist and denied by Dreyfus’ anti-rationalist accounts. (shrink)

Předložený článek si na základě rozboru hlavních motivů ve Foucaultově a Canguilhemově pojetí norem klade za cíl vymezit, jaká je vzájemná vazba mezi biologickou a společenskou normativitou a jakým typem moci na nás normy vlastně působí. V souladu s interpretací navrženou Pierrem Macherey se pokusíme sílu norem vystihnout v termínech jejich „imanence a produktivity" a ukázat, proč nelze normy chápat dle modelu zákona, který by ke svému předmětu přistupoval zvnějšku. Poslední část pak přináší odpověď na otázku, jaký typ individualizace či (...) subjektivizace toto pojetí diskvalifikuje a jaké možnosti ponechává pro svébytnou singularitu v rámci normativního pole. (shrink)

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, I contend that emotions should be regarded as emerging from our “vital communication” with the solicitations of our physical and social surroundings. My intention is to present emotions as unitary phenomena arising from an incessant flow of motivations that can be later articulated in terms of reasons (in cognitive theories of emotions) or in terms of causes (in affective neuroscience). I further suggest that emotions should be considered a specific kind of conducts, since the way in which (...) a person acts out her emotions shapes their content, regulates their intensity and transforms the amorphous flow of felt motivations into a recognizable emotional stance for which she is held accountable. In conclusion, I put forward a series of arguments explaining why emotion tends toward its expression in conduct as if towards its completion. (shrink)

Článek je věnován odůvodnění, projasnění a také kritickému zhodnocení poněkud zkratkovitého hesla o „primátu praxe“, který v očích mnoha amerických interpretů představuje společného jmenovatele Heideggerova díla a pragmatismu v širokém slova smyslu. V mém podání nesměřuje Heideggerův důraz na praxi ani tak k převrácení tradiční hierarchie, podle níž svět nejprve poznáváme, abychom v něm mohli jednat, ale spíše k přehodnocení ontologického rámce, v němž byla otázka ohledně přednosti teorie či praxe až dosud kladena. V druhé části proto ukážu, jak Heideggerovo (...) osobité pojetí praxe souvisí s jeho revizí bytí věcí a nás samotných, a podám důvody, proč na rozdíl od Dreyfusova, Okrentova a Blattnerova vymezení primátu praxe odmítám chápat veškerou srozumitelnost lidského života a světa jako něco odvozeného z našeho každodenního, praktického obstarávání. (shrink)

At the time of his sudden death in 1977, the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka left a large philosophical legacy with no will and testament. For the last 43 years, the editors of his Collected Works have been reconstructing a unified and thematically articulated oeuvre from the more than 10,000 pages found in his drawers and boxes. It should in the end include not only the texts published during Patočka’s lifetime but also his many unpublished manuscripts, fragments, variations, drafts of unfinished (...) philosophical projects, notebooks and letters. After demonstrating in which sense the death of the author coincides in Patočka’s case with the birth of his oeuvre, the article aims to show that the unity of Patočka’s work is not something given, but rather something to be artificially reconstructed, in an always disputable fashion, since the internal coherence of its various thematic divisions is necessarily itself a matter of ongoing interpretation. (shrink)

A Riposte to Stanislav Sousedík’s View of Historical Facts.

After taking into consideration the most relevant criticisms questioning the capacity of the thinking “I” to grasp itself in a transparent and undistorting way, I will ask what remains of first-person authority with regard to one’s own identity. I argue that first-person authority is not to be abandoned, but rather reformulated in terms of public commitments that nobody else can take up in my place. After recovering the original meaning of Heidegger’s claim “one is what one does,” I turn to (...) Arendt’s performative disclosure of the “who” through political initiative and suggest reading the requirement of public exposure as a model allowing for a better understanding of self-identification. In order to discern more clearly the shape of this new paradigm of self-identification, I draw on Ricoeur’s notion of self-attestation, Crowell’s analysis of our “being-answerable” and Larmore’s account of avowals in which we give ourselves a publicly binding shape. In synthetizing and prolonging the considerations of the abovementioned authors about the performative disclosure of the self, I demonstrate that one’s identity—in the sense of ipseity—is both constituted and manifested by the commitments that the self endorses and for which it is held accountable in front of others. (shrink)

According to the traditional interpretation, Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology deposes the concept of man and the notion of human nature from its central place in human and social sciences. While it’s necessary to acknowledge Lévi-Strauss’ distance vis-à-vis all philosophy based on intentionality, experience and consciousness of subject, we argue that the most interesting purpose of the structural anthropology lies elsewhere. Not only Lévi-Strauss never declared himself being part of anti-humanism movement, but most of all, his famous polemics with Sartre at the (...) end of La Pensée sauvage should be interpreted as part of his fight against ethnocentrism. The project of “dissolving the man” can be thus read as deconstructing the idea that western man makes of himself in the light of ethnological findings about universal structures orchestrating all human societies. We further show that the notion of subject survived its very death announced by the most radical structuralist thinkers and that structural method could be effectively employed in order to study different techniques and modes of subjectivation, revealing that “becoming subject” is a process structured by our language, symbolic universe and ethical teleology. (shrink)

Článek postupně analyzuje tři nesnáze, s nimiž se potýká filosofie při oslovování veřejnosti: hermetismus, bagatelizaci a vizionářství. Na základě kritiky těchto forem jsou postupně vymezovány podmínky, za nichž je dnes možné považovat filosofii za smysluplnou činnost.

Discussion on Two Remarks on Ondřej Švec’s Note regarding Philosophy of History.

Problém svobodné vůle je tradičně považován za ryze metafyzický, a tedy neempirický. Díky současnému rozvoji kognitivních věd však narůstá množství argumentů založených na empirických poznatcích. Tento článek podává stručný přehled několika takových poznatků. Na jedné straně jde o výzkumy zabývající se otázkou kauzální potence vědomí a uvědomění si příčin svých akcí. Nejslavnější, avšak patrně nikoli nejvýznamnější, jsou zde bezpochyby experimenty Benjamina Libeta. Na druhé straně jde o zkoumání samotného prožitku svobodné agence. Zda danou akci vnímám jako svoji vlastní, závisí pravděpodobně (...) na prediktivních i postdiktivních faktorech, o čemž svědčí situace, kdy podkladové kognitivní mechanismy selžou a vedou k omylům. Závěrem příspěvku je zamyšlení nad důsledky vědeckých poznatků pro různá pojetí svobodné vůle: libertariánské a kompatibilistické. Argumentuji ve prospěch smysluplnosti kompatibilistické koncepce svobodné vůle, proti které lze vést námitky spíše z pozice psychologie než neurověd. (shrink)

By the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem, a subset X of the line has Borel’s strong measure zero if and only if $M+X\neq \mathbb {R}$ for each meager set M.A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if $M+X$ is meager for each meager set M. Recently a theorem on meager-additive sets that perfectly parallels the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem was proven: A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero, a notion akin to strong measure zero.We investigate the (...) validity of this result in Polish groups. We prove, e.g., that a set in a locally compact Polish group admitting an invariant metric is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero. We derive some consequences and calculate some cardinal invariants. (shrink)

Surrogacy has long been discussed in reproductive medicine. In the Czech Republic, surrogacy is not legally regulated. Because of this legal vacuum, there are no official procedures or organizations that openly deal with surrogacy. Potential surrogate mothers and applicants do not have many options for obtaining or sharing information. The only source is the Internet. Online forums are a popular tool for gaining information and contacts regarding surrogacy. The goal of this research was to use qualitative research methods to survey (...) the most searched and discussed topics on Czech online discussion forum websites. We used discussions that we found on www.emimino.cz between 2009 and 2019. This article analyses the comments of the Internet forum discussants/participants, their involvement, knowledge of surrogacy, the information sought and their opinions. In particular, the participants discussed where to find a surrogate mother or how to become one. This article attempts to outline the discussions ordinary people have about surrogacy outside official expert forums. (shrink)

Many legal theorists and linguists have addressed the notion of legal language from different perspectives. Despite that, the definitions of legal language vary. Almost all of the approaches conclude that legal language entails several types of communication. Nevertheless, not all of these categories are sufficiently researched. Some types of legal communication seem to be neglected. This lack of interest might be rooted in the uncertainty of whether these texts or utterances even fall under the scope of the concept of legal (...) language. In order to avoid this superficiality in subsequent research, it is first necessary to come to a clear determination of which communicative acts can be considered a part of legal language and which cannot. Accordingly, in this search for the definition of legal language, we should not neglect the fact that language is executed in concrete communicative acts, and the only means to grasp the language is through communication. The aim of this article is therefore to clearly delineate the boundaries of this concept. Based on analysis of how the given term is currently defined, I draw out the common features and trace the characteristics in which they differ. Taking into account these findings, I propose a novel comprehensive demarcation of legal language. This concept argues that the ‘legal’ nature of language should be determined by the context and function of the particular statement or exchange, in connection with the role of participants in the communication. This means that a particular act may be considered a part of legal language not in accordance with a certain form or lexicon used, but mainly by extralinguistic circumstances in the context of which it is being performed. (shrink)

The motif of shame represents an interesting and hitherto neglected intersection in the discussion of the relationship between Nietzsche and Plato. The first part of the essay recapitulates the function of this motif in Nietzsche’s culminating texts (mainly Zarathustra and Gay Science), while the second part focuses on the motif of shame in Plato’s work, specifically the two extreme contexts of death (Apology, Crito) and love (Symposium). It turns out that for both authors, shame is a constitutive moral phenomenon that (...) is thematized in relation to logos. Shame and logos thus stand in close and contrasting relation. Their tension is decisive for the life of the soul, for its upward movement (Plato) or gradation (Nietzsche). It is therefore not a simple subjugation of the “bad”, irrational element by the “good”, rational component of the soul that plays the central role but an interplay of irreducible, mutually demanding moments. The interpretation of their interplay has both historical and systematic importance—it sheds new light on the relationship between these seemingly opposing philosophers and contributes to answering the following question: what is there to be ashamed of? (shrink)

Fine (J Philos Log 43:549–577, 2014) developed a truthmaker semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is also called exact semantics, since it is based on a relation of exact verification between states and formulas. A natural question arises as to what are the limits of Fine’s approach and whether an exact semantics of similar kind can be constructed for other important non-classical logics. In our paper, we will generalize Fine’s approach and develop an exact semantics for some substructural logics. In particular, (...) we will provide a truthmaker semantics for the Non-associative Lambek calculus and some of its extensions. This generalization will reveal some interesting connections between Fine’s recent work on truthmaker semantics and his early work on relevant logic. (shrink)

Awareness of intention je fenomenální zkušenost prožitku motorické intence, charakterizovaná jako vědomé uchopení akce, kterou se agent chystá provést. Typicky bývá ztotožňována s okamžikem, kdy si participant vzpomíná, že se rozhodl provést svou akci, reportovaným prostřednictvím pozice ručičky na ciferníku Libetových hodin. Intenzivní výzkum prožitku jednání (sense of agency) v posledních letech přinesl velké množství poznatků, ale také kritiku metodologických slabin, mezi které patří závislost výsledků na metodě reportování a závislost na arbitrárních vlastnostech reportovacích nástrojů. Filozofové si zase všímají intervenujících (...) klamů vědomí či chyby Karteziánského divadla. Význačnou otázkou je také značná heterogenita experimentálních výsledků. Východiskem textu je argument, že mnohé z problémů tohoto výzkumného program souvisí se sadou implicitně zastávaných postojů, které vnímají awareness of intention jako integrovaný, unitární proces charakterizovaný graduálním nárůstem premotorické mozkové aktivity a náhlým nástupem uvědomění. Tato konceptuální východiska jsou převážně nereflektovaná, kontingentní a představují významné omezení pro explanaci současných empirických pozorování. Těžištěm článku je nástin nového teoretického rámce, který jde za implicitní předporozumění integrované perspektivy a umožňuje integrovat rozporné behaviorální výsledky. Tato rekonceptualice staví na Schoolerově teorii meta-uvědomění a teorii access a phenomenal consciousness Neda Blocka a nachází také oporu v neurovědných studiích. Představená rekonceptualizace přichází s dichotomií fenomenálního awareness of intention, souvisejícího s přípravou motorické intence v prefrontální oblasti a reflexivního meta-awareness of intention, které patrně souvisí s procesy v parietálním kortexu. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to problematize the concept of school culture both as a concept and as a subject of investigation. It deals with the historical roots of this concept and the fact that it is shrinking—a consequence of the managerial imperatives of effectiveness and accountability in education. School culture, in relation to the quality of schools and the quality of education, has become the subject of audits, arrived at through a developed network of standardisation in education, testing (...) and evaluation. The methodology of evaluation currently lending particular substance to school culture, however, generates different methodological perspectives on investigating school culture and thus research is becoming an instrument of political power. In the research it is then necessary to either abandon the concept of school culture or to free it from spinning round the cycle of evaluation/self-evaluation—a change in school culture—improving the “quality of the school”—a new evaluation/self-evaluation. One way to do this is to employ ethnographic approaches in research into schools and to understand school culture as a system of texts. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the mutual interaction as well as the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on the formation of the Enlightenment in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. It focuses on the relationship between the work of Adam Smith and Semyon Efimovich Desnitskii, who, thanks to Desnitskii’s studies at the University of Glasgow, got to know each other as teacher and student. The central point of their interaction is the issues of the philosophy of history based on (...) natural-law assumptions and focus on understanding the formation of history, culture, citizenship, and social transformations through morality and law. The paper examines Desnitskii’s ideas on the stages of human coexistence in which Smith’s concept is projected. The paper is not only an attempt to compare these concepts, but it also characterizes Desnitskii’s interest in adapting the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment to Russian reality and needs and using them in the environment of the advancing feudal empire, to which Desnitskii wants to contribute with his work. (shrink)

Tato studie se zabývá dvěma spřízněnými jevy odehrávajícími se ve vědeckém prostředí. Jedná se o fenomén frustrace ve vědecké praxi a s ním spojenou touhu po rozpoznání vlastního výzkumu vědeckou komunitou a následně o otázku uznání od akademického společenství. Zmíněné fenomény jsou přitom úzce propojeny s ústředním tématem filosofie a sociologie vědy: kdo rozhoduje, co bude předmětem vědeckého bádání? Předkládaná studie nejprve představuje Mertonův mýtus o okamžitém rozpoznání vědeckého objevu a následně prostřednictvím exkurzu do oblasti ekonomie a na příkladech z (...) vědecké praxe poukazuje na jeho neplatnost. V závěru textu jsou společně s jejich dekonstrukcí navrhnuta možná řešení popsaných problémů. Text je také kritickým návratem ke dvěma studiím Josepha Agassiho, žáka Karla R. Poppera a tvrdošíjného zastánce kritického racionalismu, neboť právě Agassi ve svých dílech rozebírá dopady vědeckého vyloučení a neochoty naslouchat. (shrink)

This study refers to the discursive transformation in perceptions of preschool age children generated by central European Union policy on early childhood education and care. This policy is representative of the pervasion of contemporary entrepreneurial culture and curricula within preschool education. At the same time, the field is also starting to become subordinated to the neoliberal trend of economising the social. This study highlights the fact that, within discourses on the child, these trends are encouraging a particular conception of childhood (...) and of developmental theories. This conception is also enabling entrepreneurial logic to be applied to the preschool education sector via the use of theoretical tools. Consequently, children are being shaped into so-called knowledge-workers, or gold-collar workers, as they are referred to in current employment discourse. Even authorised preschool education documents (e.g. NAEYS’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice etc.) are responding to this transformation by introducing a new type of normality into this sphere, as can be seen in the Slovak state education programme for preschool education. (shrink)

Na základě analýzy otázky, jak se učíme ze zkušenosti představuje studie problém indukce nejprve tak, jak byl formulován Humem skrze jeho příčinu v nezdůvodnitelnosti principu uniformity přírody. Následně ukazuje Popperovo řešení problému spočívající v naprostém odmítnutí induktivního usuzování. Popperův přístup je podroben srovnání s reliabilistickou pozicí Davida Papineau - stanoviskem, že poznání je pravdivým přesvědčením generovaným spolehlivou metodou. Hlavním cílem textu je znovuotevření diskuze nad tématem neplatnosti indukce a možná redukce námitek vůči její logické neplatnosti na základě nahlédnutí reliabilistického stanoviska. (...) Vedlejším záměrem je pak ilustrovat možné styčné body mezi kritickým racionalismem s jeho důrazem na delegitimizaci vědění a reliabilistickým kritériem spolehlivosti. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the problematic aspects of a globalized neoliberal culture in education. Linking to the particular studies of this monothematic volume it discusses the consequences of the globalization of a testing culture in schools, the issues of developing civic literacy in the context of current education practice and the issues of forming a historic consciousness in present schools relating to the existing social discourse. Language teaching, currently dominated by the concept of language literacy or the concept of language education (...) resulting from English language teaching seems to be significant. This paper reveals various ways in which the educational section is being contaminated by neoliberal transformations to point out their culturally devastating consequences in a critical way. The goal of this paper is to articulate the mechanism by which neoliberalism is infiltrating education in the form of discursive and physical “colonizing”. (shrink)

This paper, based on ethnographically obtained data, discusses German language acquisition at an early age: the discovery of the interconnection between language and corporeality is the key component of the analysis based on videostudies. The body—conceived as an intermediary and content element of education, becomes an essential base for foreign language acquisition. This will be documented by tangible data and subsequent theoretical analysis with respect to relevant terminology of cultural anthropology (Körper and Leib). The principle of corporeality is further used (...) as a means of perceiving German language education in the sense of the so called language propaedeutic concept and as a means of the legitimisation of particular qualification and the role of foreign language teachers in preschool institutions. (shrink)

Slovak education policy is an example of the kind of transformations occurring in the education spheres of postcommunist countries. While at the end of the 1990s, it seemed that education policy was still attempting to ensure that Slovakia caught up with education levels in western countries, the period that followed brought with it a shift towards neoliberalization of the education sector and towards the economization of education. Slovakia’s entry into the EU was accompanied by the total assimilation of the neoliberal (...) agenda within education and since then it can be said that Slovak education policy has followed a path towards so-called perpetual neoliberalism. The aim of this article is to show how education policy has developed within Slovak politics, in terms of how it is gradually adapting to neoliberal ideas. The article analyzes government documents from 1998 onwards, particularly Slovak government programs, which document the process of neoliberalization in education. (shrink)

The paper discusses the status of shall in today’s legal drafting and legal translation, and by presenting typologies by a number of authors briefly addresses the variety of meanings it is used to express, in both legislation and contracts. It introduces the “shall dilemma” faced by non-native legal translators working both from and into English. The dilemma consists in the discrepancy between the promiscuous and abundant use of shall in authentic as well as translated documents, on the one hand, and (...) the recommendations found in various drafting manuals promoting either a shall-free policy or a disciplined use of shall, on the other hand. The research part presents the results of a survey carried out among a carefully chosen sample of professional legal translators to determine what their policy is on the use of shall. The results include both quantitative findings and additional comments made by the translators, and confirms the divide between actual practice and the recommendations. In the next section of the paper, the results are applied and a series of step-by-step exercises are introduced which should raise the awareness of legal translation trainees of the ambiguity of shall and teach them to use it in a reasoned and disciplined way. (shrink)

In the following paper, the meaning of philosophy as a specific intellectual activity would be presented on the example of revolutionary thoughts of Peter Tkachov. The paper concerns with the understanding of philosophy, its characteristics and status within the Russian intellectual movement in the second half of the 19th century. The understanding of both, individual and social functions of philosophy in the work of Tkachov revolutionary writing, is introduced. The paper is set within a wider framework of Thachov thoughts and (...) his idea of progress. After connecting these two specific topics of Tkachov, the question is formulated: Who is capable to answer the question of what is progress? While looking for an answer and studying works of Tkachov, a wide spectrum of possible variations is offered. The work is purposely conceptualized with an opened closure to present a concrete problem for further analysis and discussion. (shrink)

The occasion of the 100th anniversary of I. Kant’s death was a colossal impulse for many researchers of Immanuel Kant’s legacy. One of the goals of the paper is to introduce one of the less known anniversary critical texts, which appeared in the Russian intellectual milieu. It attempts to disrupt the usual approach regarding the interpretation of Bely’s comprehension of Kant’s legacy, i.e., Kant as a skeleton of philosophy or a police officer of thinking. The paper points to a more (...) systematically conceived scale of Bely’s reflections of Kant. From Bely’s point of view, Kant is the author of firm grounds for the shaping of thought. On the unstable background of philosophy, which during the historical development of thought succumbed to erosion, it is Kant’s philosophy that serves as the stabilizing base. Bely tries to highlight that Kant’s epistemology forms distinctively outlined the foundations of a knowledge of the world and philosophical comprehension not only of history but also of symbolism. The symbolism of Andrei Bely. (shrink)