The paper deals with the problematic of concept and image as independent forms of mediating the thought. A specific role in incorporating the media of concept and image into the system of thought is played by the mediality itself, which operates as an entity mediating between heterogeneous worlds. The symbolized messages of the concept and image thus represent using the dispositive of representation between the visual and intellectual worlds. The author takes the concept as the initial form of thought, which (...) describes the object from the perspective of its being without making any propositions about it; the image, on the other hand, is taken as a sensory representation of the object. However, each of them is only a particular form of mediation. Representing a concept thus means taking the thought as a conceptual representation. (shrink)

In her examination of the problem of identity and its fractal character H. Arendt makes an important step towards a more profound understanding of the thinking Self. Her objective is evident - it is her effort to eliminate the negative effects of the so called identifying monism resulting in mass hysterias. Arendt argues, that the thinking Self is never identical with itself, therefore the definition of subjectivity itself should be seen from the perspective of the difference between the Self and (...) the statments about the Self. For Arendt it means opening the Self, so far shut off in his private cell of the only belief, that it is the Self, who produces the subjectivity. The fractal version of subjectivity represents an open universe of freely chosen responsibility ensuring that there is the only correspondence between the Self and the statments about the Self, namely the correspondence based on knowing the price, paid for it by every Self. And that means tolerating the differences, produced by mind as the thinking Self, differences by which we are constantly being negatively determined. Contrary to identifying monism, however, this determination is not a militant one. (shrink)

The subject takes part in and constructs what it perceives, shifting, thus, the presuppositions, that is, the ‚pre-formats‘ of this construction into the background, out of reach of that which is manifesting itself. In fact, within the framework of its own construction, the subject does not dispose of any possibilities of transferring other heterogeneous settings into a unique target format upon which the world of objects is constructed. In order to achieve this the subject needs a determinate interactive interface, i. (...) e., mediation. Access to mediation, that is, to the interfaces combining the different settings, to complexity and to the real, helps us to understand the differences that become accessible to us. Furthermore, access helps us to reach an adequate understanding of the role of the subject in the world, a world in which the subject is not only mechanically constructed but, above all, mediated accordingly. (shrink)

The paper outlines the explicatory frame of Eco's understanding of the multiplicity of signs. Its starting point is the conception of truth as a multi-essence. The signs, however, do not have their origin in simple construction of the social world: it must be decoded by menas of multilayer signs, referring not only to themselves, but also to their connection with other signs. It is the principle of structurated combination, i e. the method of combinating anlaogies across the filed of interaction, (...) which makes the reading of sings as mlutiple essences possible. Other possible layeres of interpretation are then discovered by other uses of combinations provided by the multiplicity of the sign. This regime of recombinating layeres and contextual fields enables Eco to make interpretatory shifts due to which the truth can be seen as one version of the "floating" of the sign in the interactive field of essences. (shrink)

Bataille's version of transgression and prohibition is based on two presuppositions: the first one is coupling of death and ecstasy on the level of energetic principle, which makes the combination of personally grounded experience of transcendence with the dispositions of the subject possible. The second one concerns making use of two existential forces: the will to survival and the will to transcendence. The counterbalance of life and its negation is the basis for understanding and identification of the social function of (...) prohibitions and of individual desire to break them. Bataille is thus consequent in applying the idea of original energetic balance of acceptance and dismissal, which makes all further differences, especially those of transgression and prohibition, possible. (shrink)