The military actions, the loss of human lives and especially the cruelty of the Nazi and Fascist regimes and armies caused a reaction among the allied governments, the public and intellectuals. The Nazi regime in Germany and its actions, in general, even before the beginning of WWII caused an initially mild and later a sharp reaction and criticism in the democratic world. However, the behaviour and fanaticism of the German armed forces and their atrocities during the war could not but (...) cause reflections about how the allied countries, especially the larger ones, should deal with the defeated Germany. The experience of WWI had shown that German Nazism had, as its basis, the militarism which was present everywhere, including in the educational process. That is why many in the United States and Great Britain began to think aloud about a complete change of the German educational system and the re-education of the Germans after the military victory. There was a great dilemma over the questions of how to carry out that re-education, whether to include only the younger population that was exposed to Nazi indoctrination, and whether Germans who were opponents of Nazism should be included in that process. The debates were conducted among politicians, in the public, among scholars and scientists. The view that gradually prevailed was that the issue was complex and that some Germans should be involved in the re-education process after the War. (shrink)

Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, the quotidian dimension took political centrality in Japan thanks to the leading role of the New Left movement and its ideology. This went hand in hand with an appreciation of the philosophical approaches of Marxist intellectuals such as Jun Tosaka and Gorō Hani, who saw the quotidian as a fundamental space for historical transformation. We know how Tosaka and Hani developed an everyday-centred philosophy of history through their writings, but we know little about (...) how formats other than the written word – such as cinema – contributed to thinking historical reality from the same ideological approach. To address this gap in our understanding, this article analyses the intersection of two highly representative films with Tosaka and Hani’s historical thought: Secrets Within Walls ( Kabe no naka no himegoto, Kōji Wakamatsu, 1965) and Ceremonies ( Gishiki, Nagisa Ōshima, 1971). These films’ cinematic allegorisation of post-war Japan’s everyday relationships was a way to reflect on the political character of that period. (shrink)

For most of the 20th century literature and criticism of literature functioned as central engines of cultural change across the western world. This was especially the case in ex-colonial societies like New Zealand where writers and intellectuals frequently expressed a desire to create sophisticated local cultures which could compete with the foundation societies in Europe. Between 1940 and 1984 New Zealand writers and intellectuals developed a mode of literary criticism which this essay refers to as `Literary Critique' for this very (...) reason. In the absence of well established cultural traditions and a sense that they had a duty to import and indigenise western intellectual thought in order to further the evolution of New Zealand culture, a series of writers wrote often scathing critiques of their culture, using literature as their point of entry. Post-War New Zealand Literary Critique stands as evidence of a provincial, masculine, and angry intellectual culture. (shrink)

The letters of S. I. Hessen and I. I. Lapshin, two Russian Neo-Kantian philosophers, were written in the early post-war years. These letters bear witness to the later period in the life and work of their authors, a period of hardship, tragic losses and hopes. Both philosophers were deeply embedded in the intellectual landscape of Russian emigration. They were also known and valued by their peers in the countries that gave them refuge, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they not only (...) published their works, but also taught young scholars. Hessen, being considerably younger than Lapshin, continued teaching and actively publishing after the war, including outside Poland. Lapshin in Czechoslovakia was less in demand, but continued preparing his works for publication. The reflections of the two authors shed light on the idea content of their later works, which is particularly valuable in reconstructing the conception of the texts which were not completed at the time of their death and have survived only in the shape of plans and rough notes. It is also interesting that in their letters Hessen and especially Lapshin expound the Kantian element of their philosophical views as well as sharing their impressions of the development of philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Fulfilling the needs of securing the food market was a key problem for the economy of the People’s Republic of Poland. According to the assumptions of the socialist system, all basic means of production were owned by the state and society as a whole, and production: its structure and volume depended on central assumptions. Farmers not only had to face the issue of reconstruction of farms in the post-war period, they were also obliged to make compulsory deliveries, and had (...) the main responsibility for feeding the country. Production capacity in the face of the growing needs of society was insufficient, which forced rationing and the use of substitutes in the diet. There were periodic declines in the consumption of selected commodities, especially meat. The purpose of this article is to analyze the situation of the food market in the period 1945–1989, taking into account the burden of the countryside, the level of consumption and the import and export of basic food products. (shrink)

An essential introduction to post-war critical thought on the problem of violence.

The following paper presents a proposal of a theoretical foundation for an application of distributed cognition in overcoming post-war traumas and related social conflicts. The distributed cognition theory states that the cognitive system is a structure distributed between internal-mental and external-objective social world representations across time and space. The basic issue of dialogue in distributed cognition is that distribution as information dissemination in each cognitive component functions in a systemic integrity. The presented perspective of overcoming traumas and war conflicts (...) through dialogue refers to the following aspects of human activity: 1 - the perception of an environment as a construct of own life path and self-image; 2 - active creation of a desired world, life space and desired self; 3 - agentic cognitive mapping of an environment as a real, virtual and potential life space; 4 - a way of elastic control over an environment through discovering objectively present environmental affordances; 5 - achieving agency through discovering possibilities for action rather than barriers; 6 - making the cognitive system more flexible through a change in style of thinking to a constant state of openness to new meanings and values. (shrink)

This paper focuses on independent training providers (ITPs) – in other words, private companies – as suppliers of vocational education and training in post-war England. Whilst acknowledging the central role of further education (FE) colleges in delivering vocational learning, it draws attention to a large, diverse sector of ITPs operating alongside FE colleges, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Data suggest that around 15–20% of vocational learners were enrolled as fee-paying customers with private providers at that time – a (...) figure broadly similar to today. There are, it is argued, three related reasons for this. First, the post-war policy environment, and the varied and uneven nature of colleges at that time, allowed significant room for ITPs to operate as alternative providers of vocational education. Second, the far-reaching ‘efficiency’ gains required since FE colleges left local authority control have largely attenuated the space in which ITPs previously operated. Third, neoliberal assumptions about the superiority of private enterprise mean that ITPs now receive significant funding from the state, largely to deliver Apprenticeships and other programmes of work-related learning – which has, somewhat perversely, reduced the incentive for them to act as bone fide commercial providers of a broader range of vocational learning. (shrink)

The historiography on the concept of race in the post-war sciences has focused predominantly on the UNESCO campaign against scientific racism and on the Anglo-American research community. By way of contrast, this article highlights the history of the concept of race from a thus far unexplored angle: from Swiss research centres and their global interconnections with racial researchers around the world. The article investigates how the acceptance, resonance, and prestige of racial research changed during the post-war years. It (...) analyses what resources could be mobilised that enabled researchers to carry out and continue scientific studies in the field of racial research or even to expand them and link them to new contexts. From this perspective, the article looks at the dynamics, openness, and contingency of the European post-war period, which was less stable, anti-racist, and spiritually renewed than retrospective success stories often suggest. The pronounced internationality of Swiss racial science and its close entanglement with the booming field of human genetics in the early 1950s point to the ambiguities of the period’s political and scientific development. I argue that the impact of post-war anti-racism on science was more limited than is frequently assumed: it did not drain the market for racial knowledge on a continent that clung to imperialism and was still shaped by racist violence. Only from the mid 1950s onwards did a series of unforeseen events and contingent shifts curtail the importance of the race concept in various sectors of the human sciences. (shrink)

The intellectual origins of molecular biology are usually traced back to the 1930s. By contrast, molecular biology acquired a social reality only around 1960. To understand how it came to designate a community of researchers and a professional identity, I examine the creation of the first institutes of molecular biology, which took place around 1960, in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. This paper shows how the creation of these institutes was linked to the results of (...) post-war economic reconstruction. Then, it compares how the promoters of these different institutional projects delimited the goals of their discipline, reflected on its history, and suggested how research should be organised. I show how they carefully positioned their new discipline within the emerging national science policy discourse of the 1950s, and aligned it with the current vision of scientific modernity. In particular, I discuss how they articulated the meaning of molecular biology with respect to five common themes: the role of physics in the atomic age, the relations between fundamental research and medical applications, the ‘Americanisation’ of scientific research, the value of science in the reconstruction of national identities, and the drive towards interdisciplinary research. This paper thus demonstrates that beyond the local and national accounts there is a European history of molecular biology. (shrink)

The Vatican probably hoped that the visit of the apostolic nuncio Claudio Gugerotti on December 16-18, 2016 to the occupied territories of the Donbas Ukrainian society "swallowing" was just as easy as it easily "swallowed" the same and his Easter visit, as the "swallowed up" meeting on June 10, 2015 by Pope Roman Francis with the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin, in which many saw the obvious anti-Ukrainian context, not to mention here the anti-Ukrainian gesture that the Pope (...) had made by signing on February 12, 2016 The shameful "Havana Declaration", p Vatican which essentially gives Ukraine at the mercy of Moscow, since it recognizes domain of the Moscow Patriarchate. However, one should pay tribute to those who, seeing the pro-Moscow line of conduct of the Vatican, in particular its current head, Pope Francis, aspire to persuade Ukrainian society, first and foremost, of Ukrainian Roman and Greek Catholics, which, they say, only in this way the Holy See and can prove that he "loves Ukraine", but simply needs to have the ability to "read," "listen," to "look at the world through the eyes of God the Creator," as the Pope teaches. (shrink)

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical context and, (...) with this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, (...) and political ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. (shrink)

Summary The development of post-war German social sciences is marked by a series of disputes about the nature and implications of positivist methodology. Two of these are selected for consideration here; the ‘positivist dispute’ in German sociology associated with Adorno and Popper, and the more diffuse assault on positivism in the legal sciences. In both cases, self-avowed positivists were in fact hard to find but the debates were important polemical disputes about the past—notably the Weimar Republic and the Third (...) Reich—and the future of the young Federal Republic. It is suggested below that these disputes should be seen in this context and that the polemical claim in both disputes that certain methodological standpoints mandated specific moral and political commitments is more questionable. (shrink)

French social and philosophical thought has played a very significant role in the development of European and American social theory. This detailed, timely book provides a map of the production and reception of French social thought within a global sociological context. Critically comparing the work of five key theorists Derek Robbins examines how their ideas were produced and received before persuasively setting out the key differences between their philosophical and ideological positions. The book sensitively traces the cross-currents of social theory (...) and confidently leads the reader through the complex foundations of Western social thought. Each chapter represents a textual analysis of the production of a critical intellectual and focuses upon the work of: Althusser, Foucault, Aron, Lyotard, Bourdieu. This carefully crafted volume represents a significant contribution to the globalization of theory and will be essential reading for anyone interested in Western social theory and the foundations of sociological thought."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Appropriate for both academic readers and informed general enthusiasts of the cinema it addresses, the book demonstrates both philosophy's particular usefulness for the analysis of modernist cinema and film form's inherent potential for ...

SummaryThis article addresses the appeal of saints and sainthood in the years 1945 to 1960. Part 1 cites the 1957 diary of Susan Sontag, who focused on the cultural power of the Roman Catholic Church and drew attention to three European women: Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein, and Frances Cabrini. Reasons that these three (all Catholic saints) would have been in Susan Sontag's mind in 1957 are explored. In Part 2, wider attention is applied to the year 1957. Writers who (...) were dealing with sainthood (Camus, Kazantzakis, Genet, Kerouac, O'Connor, Werfel, etc.) are discussed, as well as non-Catholics acclaimed as ‘saints’ (Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and persons admired as ‘living saints’ (Albert Schweitzer, Padre Pio). Part 3 considers the influence of some major canonisations in the inter-war era (e.g., Joan of Arc, Thomas More) and the widespread access to Vatican spectacle afforded by photojournalism and newsreel. Four routes of analysis are pursued: the veneration of saints as a response to wartime suffering and loss; the vigour of the vocabulary of sainthood, uncontaminated by Nazi or Stalinist abuse; the special appeal of the ‘outsider’ saint; and the political interests of the Vatican and Christian Democratic parties. (shrink)

The intellectual origins of molecular biology are usually traced back to the 1930s. By contrast, molecular biology acquired a social reality only around 1960. To understand how it came to designate a community of researchers and a professional identity, I examine the creation of the first institutes of molecular biology, which took place around 1960, in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. This paper shows how the creation of these institutes was linked to the results of (...) post-war economic reconstruction. Then, it compares how the promoters of these different institutional projects delimited the goals of their discipline, reflected on its history, and suggested how research should be organised. I show how they carefully positioned their new discipline within the emerging national science policy discourse of the 1950s, and aligned it with the current vision of scientific modernity. In particular, I discuss how they articulated the meaning of molecular biology with respect to five common themes: the role of physics in the atomic age, the relations between fundamental research and medical applications, the 'Americanisation' of scientific research, the value of science in the reconstruction of national identities, and the drive towards interdisciplinary research. This paper thus demonstrates that beyond the local and national accounts there is a European history of molecular biology. (shrink)

In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In this paper I intend to show that there is much more to this title than merely its familiar ring. If subjected to a comparative analysis, multiple correspondences between (...) movie and memoirs can be brought to the fore. Taken together, these documents shed an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of budding life sciences research during the post-war era. I will focus my comparative analysis on issues still relevant today, such as dual use, the handling of sensitive scientific information and, finally, on the interwovenness of science and warfare. Thus, I will explain how science autobiographies on the one hand and genres of the imagination on the other may deepen our comprehension of tensions and dilemmas of life sciences research then and now. For that reason, science autobiographies can provide valuable input for teaching philosophy and history of science to science students. (shrink)

This article traces a discontinuous tradition of council thought from the Dutch and German council communist tendencies of the 1920s to its re-emergence in the writings of three important mid-twentieth-century political theorists: Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, and Hannah Arendt. It connects an intellectual history of the council concept in post-war Europe with a political history of the small revolutionary groups that fostered council-related political activity during this era. It claims that, as the experience of the European council movements began (...) to be interpreted within a new political context, this gave rise to several radically altered forms of council thought. In this more subjectivist and praxis-oriented tradition, the councils became a utopian placeholder for theorists to explore their particular interests in human creativity (Castoriadis), self-limiting power (Lefort), and political freedom (Arendt). This analysis develops our understanding of the continuities and ruptures of the council tradition within political thought. (shrink)

Within cognitive science, narratives are regarded as crucial and fundamental cognitive instruments or tools. As Roger Schank suggests, the identity of (sub-)cultures is to a considerable extent based upon the sharing of narrative structures (Schank. 1995.Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.). According to Schank, culturally shared stories, as do many other stories, occur frequently in highly abbreviated form, as “skeleton stories” or “gists.” Collective identities are conveyed in and between cultures not only through verbal (...) discourse, but also by pictorial means. Many pictures and visual artworks have indeed been produced in order to establish and to consolidate a home-culture and to demarcate it from conceived extra-cultural counterparts.Some of my previous work on these lines has been concerned with demarcation efforts in visual media of “Jews” as extra-cultural, since the Middle Ages onwards, in the Third Reich’s iconography, as well as in modern, radicalized forms of anti-Semitic picturing in Arab media (Ranta. 2016. The (pictorial) construction of collective identities in the Third Reich.Language and Semiotic Studies2(3). 107–124, Ranta. 2017. Master narratives and the (pictorial) construction of otherness: Anti-semitic images in the Third Reich and beyond.Contemporary Aesthetics15.https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=765(accessed 17 November 2019.). In building upon and extending this work, I shall focus in the current paper upon attempts of creating cultural and political cohesion by means of pictorial propaganda in post-war China from the early 1950’s onwards, as promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership by Mao Zedong. Some concrete pictorial examples indicating these attempts will be discussed from a narratological and cultural semiotic perspective. (shrink)

The subject of the study is collective trauma and its manifestations in post-war Italy. The definition of collective trauma is given on the basis of the works of sociologists and its characteristics. The purpose and novelty of the work is to explain the "phenomenality" of the journalist and historian Giampaolo Pansa. The contribution he made to the Italian consciousness after the release of the books "Children of the Eagle" and "Blood of the Vanquished", devoted to methods of retaliation against (...) fascist arbitrariness during the Italian Civil War of 1943-1945, consists in explaining the bilateral collective trauma that arose as a consequence of the ideology of fascism, affecting both its supporters and its opponents. The main conclusion of the study is the following. The method of J. Alexander's cultural sociology enriched with the existential grief of A.I. Etkind is analyzed. The meaning of socio-cultural trauma can be determined by answering the questions about what crisis events we are talking about, who is responsible for them, what are the consequences of traumatic actions. Turning these questions into a narrative is the most important problem for anthropology. The meaning of socio-cultural trauma can be determined by answering the questions about what crisis events we are talking about, who is responsible for them, what are the consequences of traumatic actions. Turning these questions into a narrative is the most important problem for anthropology. (shrink)

Structural history, Conceptual history, Theory of historical time, Semantics of History: the work of Reinhart Koselleck is associated with a wide spectrum of methodological orientations that emerged during the post-war period and originated from the in-depth reflection on the significance of historical sciences. Koselleck shared with numerous West-German historians the observation that historical science was experiencing a profound crisis exacerbated by the increasing influence of social sciences. However, unlike his contemporary historians, who advocated the criticism of historicism as a (...) prerequisite for reforming their discipline, Koselleck championed a radically different path to remedy to this crisis. In this paper, we shall outline the major stages of the critical dialogue between Koselleck and the West-German historiography of his time. Two distinct historical intervals emerge from this analysis: the first is marked by the influence of the structural historical model, developed by Werner Conze during the 1950s, on Koselleck’s theoretical vision; the second, which started in the 1970s, is characterized by the refusal to consider the critical social history as the basis for a holistic explanation of national history. (shrink)

This essay follows the movements of the word “scene” across post-war French thought. The word appears at pivotal moments in the period: it is at the centre of Laplanche and Pontalis’ develo...

The review of activity of local governments of Leningrad on the solution of social problems is presented in article in the period of the Great Patriotic War and restoration of municipal economy during the post-war period. The considerable attention is paid to questions of ensuring activity of the population and the main directions of social policy. Consequences of the public regress caused by war, which detained for many decades development of the social sphere in the country, are not studied (...) yet. In this regard, the judgment of process of overcoming of these consequences, research of the principles of work, methods and forms of administrative activities for the organization of full-fledged life of citizens during the recovery post-war period and in the next decades is of special interest. Completion of World War II entailed changes in a control system of the country - as it is known, extraordinary bodies of authority and management of a wartime in the capital and on places were abolished. Management of restoration and maintenance of full functioning life support system of the cities and areas transferred to local governments of the Soviet power - to city and regional councils of deputies and their constantly operating executive committees. The role of the social sphere in modern conditions more and more increases in improvement of economy, development of democratic processes. The scientific analysis of activity of the central and local authorities for protection and providing the population in years of war and the post-war period gives more deep understanding of role and importance of social questions in life of society. It reveals historical experience of creation, development and implementation of effective mechanism of such activity, that experience is useful for modern management practice of state and local authorities. The considerable case of sources, among which analytical and research works of applied and theoretical character is analyzed. (shrink)

Widening participation — though it has only recently been labelled as such — has been a continuing concern for policy makers and higher education institutions in the United Kingdom since 1945 (and before). This article reviews the evidence for four key target groups — women, lower socio-economic groups, mature adults and ethnic minorities — to produce an overall assessment, a score card, of what has been achieved, and what remains to be done. It concludes that, while progress in the recruitment (...) of women, mature adults and ethnic minorities has been substantial — though with some qualifications — it has been much less so for lower socio-economic groups. (shrink)

Thinking Radical Democracy is an introduction to nine key political thinkers who contributed to the emergence of radical democratic thought in post-war French political theory: Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Clastres, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, and Miguel Abensour. The essays in this collection connect these writers through their shared contribution to the idea that division and difference in politics can be perceived as productive, creative, and fundamentally democratic. The questions they raise regarding equality (...) and emancipation in a democratic society will be of interest to those studying social and political thought or democratic activist movements like the Occupy movements and Idle No More. --Provided by publisher. (shrink)

During the first years of the post-war era, many French scientists travelled in the United States. As they looked for a reference to be used in rebuilding their own scientific landscape, their diaries say as much about the rise of the American biomedical complex as they do about their perception of research in the country. In order to illustrate how the French biologists adopted, competed with, or challenged the American model and how transatlantic exchanges played a critical role in (...) the molecularization of the life sciences, this paper presents three trajectories of laboratories. These include the services respectively led by P. Lépine and J. Monod at the Pasteur Institute, and G. Schapira’s biochemical research unit at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades. The three studies document the massive transatlantic circulation of materials, techniques, instruments, and people during the scientific reconstruction. The reconstruction however produced highly differentiated characters each operating in his own niche: the biotechnological inventor, the neo-clinician, and the fundamental biologist. The comparison situates the rise of molecular biology within the context of a rapidly expanding biomedical research system. It will help in understanding how, in contrast to the American situation, a logic of “demedicalization” became in France a means for developing biology at the molecular level. (shrink)