Wyniki wyszukiwania - Biblioteka Nauki

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Koncepcja kapitalizmu akademickiego Richarda Müncha. Rekonstrukcja i filozoficzny komentarz

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Czerniak S.

Filozofia i Nauka

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2019

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tom 7/2

227-246

PL

Autor rekonstruuje w tekście główne wątki koncepcji kapitalizmu akademickiego Richarda Müncha. Odwołując się do takich kategorii jak „uniwersytet audytowy” czy „uniwersytet jako przedsiębiorstwo” niemiecki socjolog przeciwstawia w krytycznym duchu aktualny model zarządzania nauką dawnemu nowożytnemu modelowi pracy badawczej pojmowanej jako „wymiana darów”. W sensie socjo-psychologicznym mamy tu do czynienia ze strukturą komunikacji społecznej, której rodowód sięga takich instytucji społecznych jak potlacz u indiańskich plemion Północnej Ameryki opisywany przez Marcela Maussa. Münch pokazuje podobieństwa pomiędzy tym archaicznym i współczesnym, odnoszącym się do psychospołecznych fundamentów praxis naukowej, modelem wymiany darów i na tym tle rozwija szczegółowo swą koncepcję kapitalizmu naukowego. Konkluzję tych rozważań stanowi krytyczna teza, że nauka posiada własną, niezbywalną autonomię aksjologiczną i wymiar antropologiczny, które ulegają degeneracji w toku kapitalistycznej „kolonizacji” nauki przez systemy władzy państwowej i pieniądza (Münch odwołuje się tu do filozoficznej argumentacji Jürgena Habermasa). Tekst zawiera także liczne refleksje autora poszerzające filozoficzny horyzont analiz Müncha.

EN

The author reviews the main elements of Richard Münch’s academic capitalism theory. By introducing categories like “audit university” or “entrepreneurial university,” the German sociologist critically sets the present academic management model against the earlier, modern-era conception of academic research as an “exchange of gifts.” In the sociological and psychological sense, the latter is a social communication structure rooted in traditional social lore, for instance the potlatch ceremonies celebrated by some North-American Indian tribes which Marcel Mauss described. Münch shows the similarities between that old “gift exchanging” model and the contemporary one with its focus on the psychosocial fundamentals of scientific praxis, and from this gradually derives the academic capitalism conception. His conclusion is the critical claim that science possesses its own, inalienable axiological autonomy and anthropological dimension, which degenerate in result of capitalism’s “colonisation” of science by means of state authority and money (here Münch refers to Jürgen Habermas’s philosophical argumentation). The author also offers many of his own reflections on the problem, which allows Münch’s analyses to be viewed in a somewhat broader context.

2

Editorial. The Philosophy of Gernot Böhme

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2014

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nr 4

7-8

EN

Gernot Böhme’s work undoubtedly ranks among the most interesting contri-butions to 20th-century German philosophical thought. Indeed, it would be dif-ficult to indicate a philosophical sub-discipline Böhme has not shown an active interest in: his pursuits range from ontology—notably the philosophies of time and science/technology—through the philosophy of nature and the history of philosophy (Plato, Kant, Goethe), to aesthetics. The interdisciplinary conceptual bridges he constructs within this very broad study area are frequently quite in-novational, also striking is his great gift for synthesis—in four monographs he presents his own comprehensive apprehension of philosophical anthropology, ethics, the philosophy of corporeality and contemporary philosophy. This syn-thetic element is also present on the deeper, doctrinal levels of Böhme’s investi-gations. We can follow his extremely philosophically fruitful quest for concep-tual osmosis between philosophical traditions like phenomenology (especially the version defended by Hermann Schmitz), psychoanalysis, the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, critical theory (the reflections of the young Horkheimer and Adorno`s aesthetic theory), and even Renaissance philosophy (Paracelsus) or the thought of the 17th-century gnostic Jacob Böhme. His approach, however, is by no means syncretic. Gernot Böhme finds such interesting ways to “bump” thought models against each other that new, original meanings arise like Higgs bosons in today’s particle accelerators. And while we are at science, it must be noted that Böhme’s very broad knowledge allows him to freely employ the nat-ural sciences in support of his philosophy which frequently leads to conclusions that would have remained completely hidden if he had limited himself only to a historical-philosophical or humanistic approach. If I were asked which of Böhme’s philosophical achievements I find most cognitively valuable, I would point to his atmospheres theory which binds eth-ics with aesthetics, anthropology and social philosophy (and which brought him international renown), the anthropological model of “sovereign man” and the philosophy of corporeality, which places him alongside such contemporary thinkers as Erwin Strauss or Helmuth Plessner. On the methodological/formal plane Böhme crosses the boundary between the descriptive and the normative approach, his philosophy is par excellence critical. This German thinker seeks “alternatives” to many aspects of that what is existing. One need only compare the titles of his 1980 book Alternativen der Wissenschaft [Alternatives to Science] and one of his most recent collective publications, the 2012 Alternative Wirtschaftsformen [Alternative Forms of Economy] to see that he has remained faithful to his critical stand. However, reality does not generate its “alternatives”—be it “normal” science in Kuhn's understanding or capitalism—by itself, they can only be a product of human activity, and Böhme takes on the task of their normative legitimisation. Thus, in light of the main assumptions of Böhme’s philosophy, it appears natural that its basic categories like “sovereign man” or “being in bodiliness” (Leib-sein) are not only abstract connotations but a reference point for appeals for practical action which Böhme voices in this conceptual context. Here Böhme consciously reaches back to philosophy’s antique roots and emphasizes the rhetoric aspect of his reflections. It is here that the thought of this Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker disciple is most distant from the analytical tradition with its pro-grammatic rejection of this kind of normative-appellative approach, which is still strongly-rooted in German philosophy. The main idea behind this monographic edition of Dialogue and Universal-ism was to present those of Gernot Böhme’s views which he himself considers most representative of his work in recent years. Consequently, he himself sug-gested titles dealing with the earlier-mentioned philosophy of corporeality and related atmospheres conception, broadly-understood ethics, cognition theory (an essay on the theoretical-cognitive determinants of meditation) and social phi-losophy, where he offers an interesting critique of “aesthetic capitalism,” the subject of several of his recent papers. These texts intertwine because certain of Böhme’s fundamental views evi-dence themselves in diverse thematic contexts. An example is Böhme’s funda-mental idea of “that which is atmospheric,” which appears not only in works in which it plays a paradigmatic role (like Light and Space or The Voice in Bodily Space), but also in an essay devoted to human corporeality, or even one dealing with social philosophy. This is so because Böhme uses one of its meanings for his earlier-mentioned critique of “aesthetic capitalism.” Many a contemporary philosopher could only wish to possess Gernot Böhme’s broad, and at once categorially consistent research skills. The second part of this edition deals with the reception of Böhme’s thought in the writings of German and Polish philosophers. It contains reconstructions of selected Böhme conceptions like the philosophy of technology or landscape aesthetics, and attempts to show the dialectical connections between Böhme’s philosophy and other philosophical trends and traditions (critical theory, Japa-nese culture). It also carries some critical accents, which is only natural as Böhme’s philosophy is, so to speak, critical by definition. We hope our Gernot Böhme edition proves an enriching contribution to the ongoing international debate around this compelling philosophy. If it does, we will consider our editorial goals well-attained.

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Karl Mannheim’s Sociology of Knowledge versus the Problem of Relativism and The Objectivity of Cognition

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2023

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nr 3

81-96

EN

Below I ask whether the theoretical assumptions of the sociology of knowledge imply a subjectivistic and relativistic approach to cognition theory—a matter that has already been discussed in Polish subject literature (among others by Adam Schaff). Does the “social conditioning of cognition” conception propounded by the sociology of knowledge deny the existence of objective truth and adequate knowledge? Karl Mannheim himself called the sociology of knowledge an anti-relativist position. The critics of his anti-relativist argumentation say it is full of ambiguities and contradictions. I will attempt to take a closer look at this problem, and, at the same time, at the relation between Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge project and such measures of the adequacy of knowledge as the coherence and general consensus criterion. The main question I will try to answer is whether the Mannheimian sociology of knowledge project is a form of epistemological relativism (in the specific meaning of the term I use here), and if not, in what sense and to what degree it can be considered a position convergent with the relative truth conception.

4

Antropologia filozoficzna jako krytyka społeczna

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Czerniak S.

Edukacja Filozoficzna

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2016

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nr Wydanie specjalne: Filozofii Polacy potrzebują. Księga pamiątkowa ofiarowana Witoldowi Mackiewiczowi w siedemdziesiątą piątą rocznicę urodzin

141-164

5

Gestalt Theory and Classical 20th-Century Philosophical Anthropology. Initial Analyses and Questions

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2015

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nr 4

115-130

EN

In his paper the author reconstructs the categorial relations between Gestalt psychol-ogy and theory and classical 20th-century philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner). In the first part, entitled Inspirations, it is analysed how the views of a key 20th-century Gestalt theorist Wolfgang Köhler influenced Scheler, the author of The Human Place in the Cosmos. In part two, Parallels, the author investigates the categorial similarities between Plessner’s anthropology of laughter and contemporary comicality conceptions based on Gestalt psychology (Hellmuth Metz- Göckel).

6

Around Richard Münch’s Academic Capitalism Theory

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2020

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nr 1

153-170

EN

The author reviews the main elements of Richard Münch’s academic capitalism theory. By introducing categories like “audit university” or “entrepreneurial university,” the German sociologist critically sets today’s academic management model against the earlier, modern-era conception of academic work as an “exchange of gifts.” In the sociological and psychological sense, he sees the latter’s roots in traditional social lore, for instance the potlatch ceremonies celebrated by some North-American Indian tribes and described by Marcel Mauss. Münch shows the similarities between the old, “gift exchanging” model and the contemporary one with its focus on the psycho-social fundamentals of scientific praxis, and from this gradually derives the academic capitalism conception. He concludes with the critical claim that science possesses its own, inalienable axiological autonomy and anthropological dimension, which degenerate as capitalism proceeds to “colonise” science by means of state authority and money (here Münch mentions Jürgen Habermas and his philosophical argumentation). The author also offers a somewhat broader view of Münch’s analyses in the context of his own reflections on the problem.

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The Category of “Contingency” in Contemporary Anthropological Discourse. Odo Marquard, Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2018

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nr 4

29-51

EN

This comparative paper analyses in detail the contexts in which the “contingency” category was used by the philosophers mentioned in its title. While Odo Marquard and Richard Rorty situated contingency within the antifundamentalist discourse, especially in the sphere of philosophical anthropology, epistemology and ethics, Jürgen Habermas drew his conception of the contingency of human birth from the “human nature”— related discourse against modern-day genetic engineering. Marquard’s and Rorty’s theories differ in their philosophical assumptions (scepticism vs. neopragmatism). Among others, the author shows that none of the mentioned thinkers accepted the radically relativistic consequences of the debate around the “contingency” conception. In his analyses, he also makes frequent use of Marquard’s distinction between “arbitrarily accidental” and “fatefully accidental.”

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Three Interpretations of the “Ideology” Category. Max Horkheimer’s Conception of Ideology

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2023

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nr 1

91-109

EN

The article consists of the following thematic threads: a) an overview of three interpretations of the term “ideology” in subject literature; b) a reconstruction of Max Horkheimer`s ideology conception, presented in the first half of the 1930s in writings published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung [Social Research Journal]; c) an attempt to answer the question to what degree this conception was paradigmatic for the early Frankfurt School (here, for comparative purposes, the author cites writings by Leo Löwenthal and Paul Landsberg, which were also published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung).

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The Consistence of the Assumptions of the Sociology of Knowledge with those of Philosophical Anthropology (On the Example of Max Scheler)

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2021

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nr Special Supplement

95-112

EN

In this article I ask about the theoretical-methodological consistence between research sub-disciplines, which their creators see as discourses or paradigms that correspond on a general philosophical level. I will base this analysis on the historicalphilosophical examples of certain sociology of knowledge and philosophical anthropology conceptions developed by Max Scheler as part of a broader philosophical theory. Scheler’s intention, which he often articulated in his writings, was to show philosophical anthropology in its role as the categorial foundation of the sociology of knowledge, a reservoir of the philosophical assumptions that underlie sociocognitive theories. The interpretative hypothesis in this article is that a) some parts of Scheler’s sociology of knowledge (the so-called class idol conception) would be very difficult to see as “grounded” in the conceptual model of philosophical anthropology he proposed, and b) that there exists an anthropological standpoint that differs from Scheler’s—Helmuth Plessner’s—and is more logically coherent with the “class idol” idea.

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The Philosophical Anthropology of Arnold Gehlen as a Critique of the Age of Technology

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2018

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nr 4

75-93

EN

The author distinguishes three main interpretations of the concept, as well as the developmental trends in philosophical anthropology, and reflects on their relationship with critical social philosophy. Consequently, he follows up with an explication of the main assumptions of Arnold Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology and seeks to find out how they influenced the categorical particularity of his critique of postmodern society, labeled as “the crisis of institutions.” The author provides more detailed reflection in references to Gehlen’s Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter (published in English as Man in the Age of Technology), and its analysis of the so-called new subjectivism. The article ends with a critical conclusion, in which the author makes note of certain ideological incongruities in Gehlen’s philosophical standpoint.

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Max Scheler—Bernhard Waldenfels. Two Phenomenological Conceptions of Suffering

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2018

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nr 4

53-73

EN

This comparative study of Max Scheler’s and Bernhard Waldenfels’ conceptions shows how they differ in their philosophical assumptions. Whereas Scheler’s strove to define the essence of suffering, which he saw in the objective situation of being a victim (sacrificing the inferior for the superior good), Waldenfels emphasized the intentional aspect of suffering and its connections to activity (suffering was to be the necessary and passive “other side” of activity). In this context Waldenfels introduced the distinction between suffering as a) that what happens to us, and b) that what we subjectively feel as “brutally” imposed upon us, ignoring all eidetic questions related to suffering as well as the metaphysical threads which Scheler addressed. The author runs a detailed and critical analysis of Scheler’s position, to which he voices multiple objections, and concludes that it coincides conceptually with the axiological conception of tragedy he propounded in his work On the Tragic. In the section on Waldenfels the author reviews the polemical arguments against his views voiced by several contemporary German philosophers.

12

Between Historicism and Essentialism. The Critical Ambitions of Gernot Böhme’s Philosophical Anthropology

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2016

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nr 3

59-76

EN

Gernot Böhme’s philosophical anthropology combines a historistic-descriptive and a normative approach (“historical models of man,” the axiological “sovereign man” project).The author describes both types of philosophical narrative in detail, together with the categorial and argumentative inconsistencies which appear on their crossing point. His thesis is that the German philosopher attempts to neutralize these aporias by reference to the category of “relief” (Entlastung) and an argumentative strategy close to the position of thinkers like Jürgen Habermas, who made use of the “relief” category in his critical bioethical analyses.

13

Introduction: Gestalt as Structure Principles in Science, Art and Language

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2015

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nr 4

7-9

EN

This collection of 12 original contributions examines Gestalt as structure principles in science, art and language. It contains papers by researchers from various disciplines (philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, linguistics, organisa-tional sociology). The papers view Gestalt theory as a holistic orientation in philosophical and scientific thought, according to which the idea of integrated whole (Gestalt) has to override the notion of primary elements (associationism), the primacy of the notion of function has to override the primacy of the notion of substance, and the idea of interdependence has to override the notion of sim-ple causality. Gestalt theory emerged in the context of a crisis in the great philo-sophical systems (idealism and positivism) around the turn of the 20th century, at a moment when experimental psychology had achieved the status of an au-tonomous discipline. Its core concept of Gestalt as a structure principle indicates a clear phenomenal approach which attempts to grasp reality in its phenomenal evidence, rejecting all forced reductionism to additional rules or conceptual preforming schemata. The principle stages of this orientation were marked by works of thinkers of various provenance: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s mor-phology and theory of colours, Franz Brentano’s intentionality theory, Ernst Mach’s empiriocriticism, Christian von Ehrenfels’ supposition of Gestalt quali-ties, the Production Theory of the Graz School around Alexius Meinong, Carl Stumpf’s phenomenology and empirical psychology, the Berlin School that arose after him around Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Lewin. Furthermore, the central ideas of the Gestalt approach were taken up in original ways by other philosophers and thinkers like Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl and Karl Bühler. Even though the rise of Gestalt thought was dramati-cally interrupted by the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, the central ideas of this ap-proach were again embraced after the Second World War and have till this day been developed in various interdisciplinary approaches and applicative fields. The papers in this collection range from more historical studies to those fo-cusing on the influence of Gestalt theory on contemporary thought. The aim of the collection Gestalt as Structure Principles in Science, Art and Language is to reconstruct the legacy of the Gestalt approach in various scientific disciplines and its actuality in the contemporary scientific and philosophical debate. The first two papers have an introductory character. The paper by Silvia Bonacchi addresses the semantic development of the term “Gestalt” in a diachronic per-spective and its terminologisation in scientific contexts (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Ernst Mach, Christian von Ehrenfels up to the fundamental studies within the Berlin School). In the last part it offers a summary overview of the later approaches after the Second World War. In his study, Hellmuth Metz-Goeckel traces the fields where nowadays the Gestalt approach has proven to be very fruitful (perception, problem solving, motiva-tional psychology, social cognition, logic, irony and jokes, meaning, system theory, language, culture and organisational development). The next essays examine the Gestalt approach from a historical point of view. Danilo Facca’s paper reconstructs Aristotle’s concept of form in the light of contemporary thought. Facca shows how Aristotle’s theory of form provided him with an adequate theoretical tool for all fields of scientific inquiry. In Fiorenza Toccafondi’s paper we can follow the development of Ewald Hering’s theory of colours from Goethe’s chromatic theory, and the resulting inaugura-tion of a type of (non-Husserlian) phenomenology founded on the fertile con-nection of phenomenological description and empirical investigation which would have its moment of maximum growth in the first three decades of the 20th century with Carl Stumpf, Karl Bühler, Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. Riccardo Martinelli’s paper is dedicated to an analysis of Wolfgang Köhler’s philosophical ideas expressed in his The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938). In it, Köhler considered the question of whether science was able to cope with human values as well as natural facts. Relying upon phenomenological analyses and on his previous research in the field of natural philosophy, Köhler introduces his doctrine of epistemological dualism, which turns out to be similar to the philosophical ideas of Köhler’s Berlin men-tor Carl Stumpf. The papers of the central part of the collection examine the influence of Gestalt theory on the development of modern thought. The contribution by Serena Cattaruzza is dedicated to Bühler’s last essay The Gestalt Principle (1960). Formulated in the last period of his life, this work gathers together and summarizes the basic ideas of Bühler’s concept of Gestalt theory, which he considered to be the core principle in human and animal life. It highlights some crucial aspects of the difficult relationship between Bühler and the representa-tives of the Berlin School of Gestalt theory. Przemysław Parszutowicz’s essay deals with Ernst Cassirer’s concept of symbolic pregnancy (Prägnanz) devel-oped in the third volume of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929). Parszutowicz shows that this concept has its roots in the Gestalt concept of Prägnanz developed by the Berlin School. Jagna Brudzińska examines Husser-lian phenomenology as an intentional-genetic theory of experience which inves-tigates the concepts of type as well as of typifying apperception to gain insight into the constitution of subjective experience. Brudzińska shows that in this way phenomenology gets closer to Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophy of life and to the theory of Gestalt, as well as to the psychoanalytical theory of understanding. Stanisław Czerniak analyses the conceptual relations between Gestalt psycholo-gy and classical 20th-century philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner). He considers the role which reference to Wolfgang Köhler’s Gestalt psychology plays in Scheler’s philosophical anthropology and seeks categorial parallels between Plessner’s anthropology of laughter and today’s Gestalt- psychology-based comicality conceptions. Anna Michalska considers the role of the Gestalt concept in Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolu-tions. The last two papers study current fields of application of Gestalt principles. Tiziano Agostini and Alessandra Galmonte analyse perceptual belongingness. The concept of perceptual belongingness, developed within the theoretical framework of Gestalt theory, is well rooted in the 20th-century psychological thought: in the assimilation theory proposed by Cesare Musatti, in the theory of Gaetano Kanizsa, and in the theory of binding by Anne Treisman. In Agostini and Galmonte’s paper this wide theoretical framework is used to explain the effects of context on colour appearance. Brigitte Biehl-Missal’s paper offers an overview of new methods inspired by Gestalt theory in the development of aesthetic approaches to organisation and management.

14

Helmuth Plessner: Philosophical Anthropology as Social Critique

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2018

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nr 4

9-28

EN

The author goes out from Helmuth Plessner’s book Die Grenzen der Gemeinschaft to show how the basic categories of Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, especially the eccentric position conception, apply to his critique of community-oriented societies like communism and fascism. Plessner saw the alternative to a community-based society in a model where social bonds took place by association, and in which the anthropological a priori enjoyed the optimum conditions for self-expression(in such dimensions of the public sphere as ceremony, prestige, diplomacy and tact).This social model also allows the full establishment of social roles in the anthropological sense, something that is annihilated by community-type societies. The author also addresses the different ways in which the “social role” category is interpreted by Plessner (the anthropological approach) and Ralf Dahrendorf (a functionalistic approach drawing on Marxism and the concept of alienation, which Plessner felt unfamiliar with), and concludes with a few concrete and methodologically grounded objections to Plessner’s theory.

15

Max Scheler’s Pluralistic Conception of Knowledge

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2021

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nr Special Supplement

83-94

EN

This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. The author reviews the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part he accuses Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e. how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities).

16

Moralisation, Human Nature, Morality

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Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2016

|

nr 1

39-52

EN

The author defines moralisation as cultural processes marked by a rise in moralistic argumentation (also in areas in which such argumentation has heretofore not played a meaningful role) to a degree which raises questions and doubts of a philosophical and sociological nature. This is developed on in detail in the sections “The moralisation of the world and suffering,” “The moralisation of everyday life and history,” “The morali-sation of knowledge” and “The moralisation of human nature.” The closing section of the article, “Moralisation and morality,” focuses on the relation between the described moralistic approach and the changes broadly-understood moral awareness is undergoing in the contemporary world.

17

Between the Philosophy of Science and Philosophical Anthropology. Gernot Böhme’s Critical Philosophy of Technology

100%

Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2014

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nr 4

125-145

EN

The essay reconstructs the main aspects of Gernot Böhme’s philosophy of technolo-gy. In polemical reference to Max Horkheimer’s and Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory, Böhme asks about the rationality criteria of technology. He does not view his philoso-phy of technology as part of the philosophy of science but places it on the boundary between philosophical anthropology and social philosophy. Böhme reflects on the ethi-cally negative, neutral and positive effects of the technification process both on the identity of contemporary humans and the changes taking place in social integration patterns. He also discusses the cultural sources of resistance to “invasive technification” not only in Western culture but also that of the Far East. The author closes his reflec-tions with a set of questions about what he considers to be open issues in the Boehme’s philosophy of technology.

18

The Philosophy of Gernot Böhme and Critical Theory. Doctrinal Positions and Interdisciplinary Mediations

100%

Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2014

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nr 4

147-170

EN

My intention in this paper is to answer two quite separate questions in a single inter-pretational narrative: a) about the philosophical (and often critical) content of Gernot Böhme’s expressis verbis—and, at times, “between the lines”—reference to the legacy of critical theory (especially the philosophical thought of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas), and b) Böhme’s use of interesting mediatory devices to combine three different philosophical discourses: the philosophy of science, ethics and aesthetics. The three are in fact related—after all, Horkheimer ran comparisons between “traditional” and “critical” theory, Adorno is the father of the original aesthetical theory, and Habermas laid the ground for what we call “discursive ethics”—but this is a matter for separate and broader treatment. In this perforce shorter paper I will only attempt some initial reflections on the subject.

19

Introduction. Human Nature Beyond Naturalism. Phenomenological, Anthropological and Psychoanalytical Perspectives

63%

Brudzińska J. , Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2016

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nr 3

6-10

EN

Studies of the human being and the structure of human experience are nowa-days carried out mainly in the naturalistic paradigm. This concerns the empirical sciences as well as the cognitively oriented philosophy supported by the positiv-istic and linguistic pragmatic epistemologies. The human subject is treated here essentially as a particular natural fact, while nature itself is understood as a complexity of cause-determined phenomena which can be observed from out-side. Thereby, neurosciences play a leading role, significantly affecting the per-ception of ourselves and of the world around us. In their view, subjectivity is reduced to the ways of functioning of the brain. This is understood as a causally determined system directed to information processing. Despite such a determin-istic thesis, naturalism also assumes that the brain should be able to interact. Furthermore, it is considered able to generate random processes. These interrup-tions of the natural causal chain are labelled as autopoesis and are considered as an evolutionary factor. Thus, our shared world appears as a construct of the neuronal structure mi-raculously converting the matter into spirit. Modern medicine, contemporary neurological brain research as well as other neurosciences strive to identify the biological, chemical or physical conditions of the human organism and its cere-bral activities as that which determines our experience, either in the practical or theoretical, aesthetical or axiological realm. The present collection of essays consciously distances itself from these trends, maintaining that research conducted in the reductive-naturalistic ap-proach does not give the answer to the question about the meaning and sense of human activity as actions of personal subjects in the lifeworld. What is more, the authors emphasize that this kind of research neglects the immanent teleolo-gy of human subjects as persons motivated in their actions, therefore persons who are free and able to make free decisions. All the here presented articles refer, explicitly or implicitly, to the phenomenological tradition and emphasise the significance of the lifeworld as the intuitive fundament of every cognition. They seek to formulate a positive alternative to the interpretation of human na-ture comprehending it on the one hand as a bodily specified structure of experience, on the other hand as an intentional and therefore sense-performing devel-opmental structure. In this context it is mainly the classical (even if currently somewhat margin-alized) phenomenology of Edmund Husserl that shows its up-to-date face. After all, it is he who, in the footsteps of Wilhelm Dilthey, argued in the first half of the twentieth century that the naturalistic position was nothing else than a logi-cal consequence of a particular idealizing cognitive attitude formed in the mod-ern era and grounded in the development and expansion of the natural sciences. According to Husserl, this attitude is burdened with fateful assumptions regard-ing the concepts of nature and the laws governing it, first of all the assumption of the universal law of causality. However, human consciousness, even if we recognize its bodily determination, cannot be explained by reference to the facts of physical nature and the laws governing them. Husserl shows that the universal law of causality is no less but also no more than an effective hypothesis about the subjects of physics. By no means it is adequate for interpreting human nature, either in its individual and bodily di-mension, or in its social dimension. Husserl requires us to critically reflect on the assumptions which impose experience. His own reflection results among others in descriptions of alternative attitudes, especially of the so-called per-sonalistic attitude, which reveals experience to us before it becomes naturalisti-cally deformed. Within the personalistic attitude experience is not burdened with these assumptions. If we observe it exactly, if we let it speak, it turns out that even the oppositions of body and spirit, of interior and exterior, lose their legitimacy. Within the personalistic attitude experience is experience in the lifeworld, in our shared world, which is defined by affective and volitional ref-erence, by intersubjective and evaluative relations, in a world which is guided by understandable motivation, and not by blind but necessary causality. The body—the Trojan horse of naturalism—represents here not just a fact of nature, not only animated matter as an object in time and space defined by a succession of physiological processes. In the personalistic attitude corporeality signifies a dynamic sphere of subjectivity as the sphere which defines our here and now. However, at the same time it generates the original sense of experience. These issues are mentioned and further developed by the post-Husserlian phenome-nology in existential as well as in ethical or aesthetical reflection and by philo-sophical anthropology. In this way phenomenology reveals its closeness to psychology and, last but not least, to psychoanalytical thought. The authors of the presented collection deal with these threads and motives, both in terms of systematic as well as historical research. The cycle starts with systematic analyses of selected issues concerning human nature—like freedom, drives and memory, conflict or bodily perception—which cannot be adequately grasped from the naturalistic point of view. Consequently, discussed are some historical positions in philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Johann Gott-fried Herder, Arnold Gehlen, Gernot Böhme) as well as in aesthetics (Vasily Sesemann). These are considered bearers of a still unexhausted antinaturalistic potential with regard to the interpretation of human nature and its achievements. Dieter Lohmar deals with the topic of human freedom. The author discusses the different meanings of our daily claim that we are free in our actions and decisions on the grounds of phenomenology. He rejects deterministic theories in the naturalistic approach using Husserl’s argument that the subsumption of hu-man decisions under the causal paradigm is simply an unjustified extension of methodical idealization in the framework of naturalization. Then, he argues for Husserl’s understanding that humans are generally subjects under manifold effective influences but they are nevertheless free. In the end some aspects of our freedom are delineated. Mariannina Failla dedicates her contribution to the phenomenological conception of bodily perception (leibliche Wahrnehmung) as a possible therapeutic model for treating melancholic depression. Starting with a few key concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis (instinct (Trieb), memory, per-ception, narcissism and melancholia), she develops a comparison of the Freudi-an theory of melancholia and the studies of phenomenological psychopathology (Otto Binswanger). The article finally focuses on the question of the extent to which the structure of perception and its constitutive openness towards the fu-ture represent a theoretical model for therapeutic practices designed to treat melancholic depression. Jagna Brudzińska goes further on the path of connect-ing phenomenological research with the psychoanalytical approach, focusing on the issue of conflict as the crucial dimension of human nature and its developing dynamics. On this basis, it becomes clear that human nature cannot be explained through a strict causal schema. She stresses that conflict is not a mere additional and accidental characteristic of experience that can be somehow eliminated. Conflict rather affects the fundamental structure of personal experience and should be therefore understood as a constitutive moment of human nature. Thereby, her radical claim is that both self-experience and the development of community can only be understood in the light of motivational conflicts. The following cluster of essays examines some particular philosophical–anthropological positions which from our point of view still deserve deeper consideration. Stanisław Czerniak discusses Böhme’s approach, pointing out that Böhme’s philosophical anthropology emphasises the differences between the “historical models of man” and its author can be considered a follower of descriptive historicism, although his doctrinal ties to critical theory also make him open to normative positions. Böhme seeks the normative standards for his social critique in his axiological “sovereign man” project. Czerniak investigates this two types of philosophical narrative and concludes that there are categorial and argumentative inconsistencies at their meeting-point which could have prompted Böhme to partial withdrawal from the sovereign man idea in favour of another “reference to history,” though no longer in the descriptive but in the “relief” (Entlastung) mode. Here the German philosopher takes the same path as thinkers like Jürgen Habermas, who referred to the “relief” category in their critical polemic with supporters of eugenic genetic engineering. Rafał Michalski analyses Gehlen’s anthropological approach, which he confronts with Herder’s. His essay is an attempt to present Gehlen’s concept of language in the context of his self-expounded “elementary anthropology.” Emphasis is put on the role of language in the formation of motoric and sensory imagination, the crystalli-zation of human drives and, finally, the development of cognitive competencies. Michalski shows that Gehlen refers in his project directly to the thoughts of Herder. The related anthropological position of Helmuth Plessner is displayed by Alice Pugliese. She discusses criticism against naturalism based on the irre-ducibility of first-person-perspective facts. This critique considers naturalism as insufficient, since it proposes the view of reality as a centreless dimension. Against this view, she refers to Plessner’s notions of positionality and aspectivi-ty as characteristics of all natural forms of life, thus suggesting the possibility of a more encompassing critique to naturalism on the basis of the philosophical-anthropological research. From a psychological standpoint, Flávio Vieira Curvello explores Franz Brentano’s approach in the lectures Descriptive Psy-chology and how it leads to a new way of introducing and reframing his funda-mental psychological theses. Even though many problems of the Descriptive Psychology, as well as their solutions, are already to be found in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, the argumentative turn is clear. And it contrib-utes to set the purely descriptive overtones of the latter aside and emphasizes the relevance of the development of descriptive psychology as an ontology of the soul. Finally, Saulius Geniusas takes into consideration the rather forgotten approach to aesthetics of the Lithuanian Vasily Sesemann, and shows its great potential for the modern debate, also by confronting it with the renowned posi-tion of Merleau-Ponty. He thus offers an account of the overall structures of perceptual acts and contends that the distinctive nature of aesthetic perception lies in the unique disposition of the aesthetic attitude. The last three essays shed light on the problem of the body as a crucial issue in the debate on naturalism and antinaturalism. With reference to the phenome-nological understanding of the living body, Andrzej Gniazdowski analyses the antinaturalistic theory of race developed by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss. The critical conclusion of the article is that in spite of the claim to work out a clear, rigorous and “presuppositionless” theory of race, Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss’ race psychology remains a form of racism that contradicts the solidarity of mankind and the principles of tolerance. From the transcendental phenome-nological point of view, also Mansooreh Khalilizand underscores the question of the body and contrasts the naturalistic meaning of instincts with the transcen-dental phenomenological one. In her analysis she strives to explicate Husserl’s specific description of instinctive processes and the experienced teleology of instincts and to reconstruct the body- and nature-relatedness within the instinc-tual structures. Finally, Karel Novotný addresses the question of the subjective and embodied character of appearance, and shows that it can play its central role for human experience only by means of its connection with subjectivity of the body. Through its corporeality, experience is given immediately; it is self-given in a non-intentional way, in the immediate auto-affection of experience. This compilation certainly does not exhaust the question of human nature. We only hope to formulate some arguments for an adequate and differentiate understanding of the human and its experience as well as to contribute to further discussion.

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EDITORIAL:Varia: Clashes of Cultures, Religions and Models of Democracy; Max Scheler’s Selected Conceptions

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Czarnocka M. , Czerniak S.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2021

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nr Special Supplement

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EN

We have decided to publish this issue of Dialogue and Universalism as a Special Supplement in addition to its usual annual sequence of three issues. The readers can expect publication of issue 3, volume 31, 2021 in due course. The journal is pleased to publish this extra issue without extra cost to subscribers. Unlike most others in our journal’s 44–year history, this issue is not monothematic. This special supplement does not interrupt the continuity of three consecutive Dialogue and Universalism monothematic issues on the new Enlightenment under the guest-edition of Professor Robert Allinson (the first appeared as issue 2, volume 31, 2021, the remaining two will come out as 3, volume 31, 2021 and 1, volume 1, 2022). Also, in view of their commemorative character, we decided to publish Professors Kevin M. Brien’s and Michael H. Mitias’s contributions as quickly as possible—without the rather extended delays connected with Professor Allinson’s simultaneously realised project. These two mentioned papers focus on problems addressed in recent books by two long-standing and merited ISUD members: Kevin M. Brien’s Marx, Reason, and the Art of Reason, which will be soon published in Chinese by Contemporary China Publishing House, Beijing (an English-language edition came out in 2006), and a monograph Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) by Michael H. Mitias. Both studies exemplify participating philosophy: they approach two universal problems of burning urgency for the contemporary world—freedom and the cultural clash between East and West— from a typically philosophical, distant and abstract perspective, through the prism of Confucius and Karl Marx and interreligious dialogue. Professor Brien’s essay is an addendum to the Chinese translation of his book and has never appeared in English before. Another example of participating philosophy in this special issue of Dialogue and Universalism is a study by Professor Temisanren Ebijuwa devoted to democracy models, one of the fundamental issues in the present-day and future organisation of the human world. Four analyses of Max Scheler’s conceptions are important for a metaphilosophical reason—in view of the rather disturbing changes in contemporary epistemology, most notably its strong propagation of transferring all cognition study to the cognitive sciences, or at least introducing a Quinean-style naturalisation pro gramme; the second proposal is, in fact, a very similar proposal to the first. Despite their thematic diversity, the contributions to this issue have one thing in common, namely they are related to each other on the metaphilosophical plane: they distance themselves from minimalism (the rejection of all the fundamental questions addressed by philosophy, as well as its comprehensiveness and pursuit of essence, mainly on charges of speculativeness and metaphysical character) and the eliminative naturalisation (which reduces philosophy to a science, depriving it of its autonomous identity) that is increasingly visible in the contemporary philosophical debate. Whereby under debate here is not, as Jürgen Habermas called it, the all-encompassing, totalising knowledge which “relates to the whole of the world, of nature, of history, of society,”1 but the revealing of the common foundations that constitute these entireties. Another feature binding all the contributions to this issue is that their authors formulate new insights in dialogue with, or in the context of, the philosophical tradition and philosophy’s achievements over history. Thus, the material in this Dialogue and Universalism issue presents an alternative philosophy to the trends that today largely shape the philosophy of the mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, as well as cognitive and social philosophy, and are attempting to colonise further philosophical fields. Four essays are devoted to the work of the unrightly forgotten Max Scheler, one of the more important 20th-century philosophers. By including the devoted to Scheler, we intend to point to the problem of Scheler’s current absence from the philosophical debate despite the evident actuality of his findings as an example of the meandering way in which philosophy is evolving today. We also intend to suggest some reasons for at least considering a return to his ideas, which are very remote from the most fashionable and propagated present-day thought trends. Our aim in revisiting Scheler was not only an historical insight of his writings, but mainly intend to investigate the prospects of transposing his most important ideas—perhaps not in their entirety but more as an inspiration— to today’s philosophy and show the currently unnoticed actuality and importance of his conceptions. The history of philosophy is full of ostentatious “restorations” of earlier paradigms: medieval Christian philosophy fed on Aristotle, the various late-19thcentury neo-Kantian schools on Kant’s epistemological conceptions, one of the main inspirations behind 20th-century postmodern thought was Nietzschean philosophy. One could, therefore, ask if the authors of this edition’s four Scheler features in any way herald a “return to Scheler.” or a “Neo-Schelerism.” In seeking a reply to this question, it is worth starting with a reflection that would naturally suggest itself to a historian of philosophy: Scheler’s legacy appears to be too theoretically diversified and multi-topical to serve as a reference point for a broad-scale “renaissance” of his thought. The late, vitalistic and pantheistic Scheler contradicted the “earlier” Scheler, who was closer to Husserlian phenomenology. Moreover, in both these phases his thought was full of aporias and theoretical inconsistencies. His philosophical narrative brimmed with new ideas or, as Richard Rorty would say, original “metaphors,” but was too frequently devoid of a methodological framework and suspended in a doctrinal void—as the authors of the contributions to this edition also point out. To put it differently, Scheler lacked what was characteristic for Aristotle, Kant or Nietzsche— a set of guiding philosophical ideas which could form a conceptual system to function as an inspiring holistic reference point for thinkers in later eras. This, however, does not mean that Scheler’s reflections with all their interdisciplinary nuances are uninspiring and unworthy of reference or reconstruction. What directions do such reconstructions take? Can we speak about a specific suggested reception model? The following trends appear to dominate in this respect in all approaches: a) reference not to “Scheler’s philosophy” as such, but the philosophical sub-disciplines he occupied himself with, like epistemology, sociology of knowledge or philosophical anthropology, in which his findings are often of a pioneering character and can therefore not be left out of any related debate; b) the accentuation of the “mediatory” character of his philosophy, which as if by definition transgresses all theoretical purism. For example as an epistemologist, Scheler uses categories beyond any “pure” epistemology with its exclusive focus on the grounding of its “foundations,” and seeks epistemological categories that could help him build bridges between epistemology and sociology, philosophy of culture or philosophical anthropology; c) reference to the heuristic, problem-generating values of his work, which opens interesting new horizons for philosophical inquiry even in areas where its inconsistencies and oversimplifications are easy to Stanisław Czerniak presents a critical approach to the German philosopher in two articles: “Max Scheler’s Pluralistic Conception of Knowledge” and “The Consistence of the Assumptions of the Sociology of Knowledge with those of Philosophical Anthropology (on the Example of Max Scheler).” In both, Czerniak seeks out the earlier-mentioned aporias and inconsistencies in Sche-ler’s argumentation, which in his typology of knowledge obfuscate the criteria of eidetic and metaphysical knowledge and lead to the removal of humanistic knowledge from knowledge analysis, and in the sphere of the sociology of knowledge cause some of his assumptions to collide with the principles of philosophical anthropology—which the same Scheler defends. However, Czerniak’s approach is also in line with the earlier-mentioned interpretational trends: he refers not so much to “Schelerism” as such, but the philosophical subdisciplines Scheler developed. Czerniak sees the relations between them which Scheler points out, and emphasises the “problem-generating” character of the philosophical questions he asks, a circumstance which additionally drives philosophy historians to seek a “different conceptual symbiosis” between the sociology of knowledge and philosophical anthropology than the one Scheler proposes (here Czerniak refers to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological position). But it is evident that this comparative undertaking comes to mind and crystallises conceptually only in the context of Scheler’s mediating discourse on the border between both these sub-disciplines (which Czerniak mentions), and that his work is the initial inspiration for the debate Czerniak develops in his article. In her article The Duality of the Subject in the Conception of Max Scheler, Małgorzata Czarnocka analyses the relation between the individual and collec tive subject, which, with the help of the “group soul” and “group spirit” categories, Scheler made to one of the terminological assumptions of his sociology of knowledge. What we encounter here is epistemology mediated by sociology, which allows Scheler both to further develop the new philosophical-sociological sub-discipline he had co-founded—the sociology of knowledge—and gain deeper insight into epistemology’s theoretical identity. The new sociology of knowledge field and the idea of the collective subject generate a heuristic added value, which Czarnocka sees in the “de-transcendentalisation” of the Kantian transcendental cognitive subject, a process whose contemporary continuation she finds in the philosophy of Habermas and which she holds for a comprehensive alternative to contemporary epistemological conceptions like Andy Clark’s and David Chalmers’ “extended subject.” Czarnocka believes Scheler’s ideas contain valuable and inspiring threads which are worth bringing back to memory. Aivaras Stepukonis pursues a similar interpretational strategy in his article “The Functionalisation of Essential (A Priori) Knowledge: A Close Look at Max Scheler’s Epistemology,” in which he uses the aprioristic differences between the assumptions of Kant’s and Scheler’s epistemology to show how much Scheler’s approach transgresses the transcendendalist tradition. Because for Scheler the “subjective” a priori, the result of the titular “functionalisation of objective a priori knowledge” is carried not by the Kantian “transcendental subject as such,” but by historical subjects capable of creating their own subjective thought patterns. These patterns retain their a priori character (Scheler is not a relativist) because they are, in a sense, cognitive “matrices” or “projections” which all—albeit differently—relate to the objective a priori world. They can differ in cultural, social or civilizational aspects, which enables a conceptual bridge between Schelerian epistemology and the sociologies of knowledge and culture. Stepukonis also underlines the interdisciplinary character of Scheler’s philosophy to show that the German thinker also applied the subjective a priori concept to the philosophy of values and to ontology.