The chapter aims to introduce an integrated approach to concepts of smart cities and age-friendly cities and communities. Although these ideas are widely promoted by the European Union and the World Health Organisation, they are perceived as separate. Meanwhile, these concepts are closely intermingled in theory and practise concerning the promotion of healthy and active ageing, a universal design, usability and accessibility of age-friendly environments, reducing of the digital divide and robotic divide, and reducing of older adults’ social isolation. The (...) conclusion underlines the need for participatory creation of ambient assisted living technologies and applications with older adults and the need for advocacy to promote AAL in the context of the silver economy especially in the Central and Eastern Europe. (shrink)

Publication ethics is an important aspect of both the research and publication enterprises. It is particularly important in the field of biomedical science because published data may directly affect human health. In this article, we examine publication ethics policies in biomedical journals published in Central and Eastern Europe. We were interested in possible differences between East European countries that are members of the European Union (Eastern EU) and South-East European countries (South-East Europe) that are not (...) members of the European Union.The most common ethical issues addressed by all journals in the region were redundant publication, peer review process, and copyright or licensing details. Image manipulation, editors’ conflicts of interest and registration of clinical trialswere the least common ethical policies. Three aspects were significantly morecommon in journals published outside the EU: statements on the endorsement of international editorial standards, contributorship policy, and image manipulation.On the other hand, copyright or licensing information were more prevalent in journals published in the Eastern EU. The existence of significant differences amongbiomedical journals’ ethical policies calls for further research and active measuresto harmonize policies across journals. On the other hand, copyright or licensing information were more prevalent in journals published in the Eastern EU. The existence of significant differences among biomedical journals’ ethical policies calls for further research and active measures to harmonize policies across journals. (shrink)

The most important voices concerning the changes now occurring in Central and Eastem Europe are those that come from within, for those voices are informed not only by indifferent data and objective reports, but by personal hopes, fears, desires and needs. Without careful consideration of what such voices say, judgment can only be sterile. Furthermore, policy decisions made without the benefit of the intemal perspective are likely to be flawed, and ineffectual. Policies won’t work if they do not (...) take into account the point of view of those who are supposed to be affected by them. There nevertheless remains an important role for outsiders to play in the discussion of the impact of political change on the future of philosophical thought, especially if the outside perspective can serve as a test of the internal view. (shrink)

Populism in Central-Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Europe has been framed through theoretical ideas and expectations based on West European experience. However, the region’s experience of populist politics has diverged from that of Western Europe in important ways. In older West European democracies, the most typical vehicle for populism are, for the moment, new or previously marginal illiberal challenger parties which confront an essentially liberal, non-populist mainstream. In Central-Eastern Europe and South-Eastern (...) Europe, it is the “mainstream” which is or has become populist. Therefore, it is important to elaborate which of these universal indicators of populism can be applied to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, and what kind of particularities will crystallize as a consequence of the socialist background. The main aim of the conference is to gather scholars that are researching different aspects and manifestations of populism in the region. This conference is organized in the framework of POPREBEL project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 822682. (shrink)

Three concrete instances of modern and contemporary art development in the former Soviet bloc are addressed in the study. Comparing three particular cases of post-socialist countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Lithuania), three distinctive situations are identified in order to establish a link between modern and contemporary art and the emergence of canonized stories of their development. Although these concrete cases turned out to represent a certain range of situations-models that have taken place, the study indicates a variety of omissions and unrecognized (...) vital moments in the currently prevailing canons, which puts the connection of the shifting point of 1989 and the transition from modern to contemporary art into a new light. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István (...) Losonczy 29 // ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

We provide to readers the 11th volume of the "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology" series. We are delighted to announce that the presented study is the result of the work of scientists from seven countries: Austria, China, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, Poland, and Russia. This international collection of texts is part of the global discourse on the determinants of adult education and the functioning of people in late adulthood. The 11th volume is a collection of research results that show (...) both the positive and negative dimensions of ageing through the prism of research experience from various geographical and cultural areas. The researchers invited to the presented volume tried to illustrate the issues assigned to the following topics: ageing with dignity; retirement age; assumptions and conditions resulting from living in the home; the relationship between challenges concerning life expectancy and needs; care and ageing services; and foundations and potential changes in pension systems. The research results presented in this volume have a common denominator, which is caring for the quality of life of the older people regardless of their place of residence. Thus, the study "Between Successful and Unsuccessful Ageing: Selected Aspects and Contexts" brings new insights from scientists who scrupulously characterize the complexity of processes that affect the positive and negative conditions of functioning in old age, which is a mosaic of various nuances. Inviting readers to familiarize themselves with the content of the monograph, we would like to thank the reviewers who contributed to the improvement of the quality of the texts and open new fields for participation in further joint publishing projects. (shrink)

Background: The internationalization of clinical studies requires a shared understanding of the fundamental ethical values guiding clinical studies. It is important that these values are not only embraced at the legal level but also adopted by clinicians themselves during clinical studies. Objective: Our goal is to provide an insight on how clinicians in Germany and Poland perceive and identify the different ethical issues regarding informed consent in clinical studies. Methods: To gain an understanding of how clinicians view clinical studies in (...) the countries they work in, we carried out semi-structured problem-centered interviews per telephone in Poland (n = 6) and Germany (n = 6). Our interviewees concentrated on three main topics: an appraisal of the normative framework, challenges in the information process and the protection of all participants in clinical studies. Results: Clinicians generally supported the normative framework, even though they considered it quite complex. In the two study countries, a widely noted dilemma in the information process was whether to overburden participants with extensive information or risking leaving out important facts. Clinicians were ready to exclude larger population groups from participating in clinical studies when the information process could not be carried out with standard procedures or when their inclusion was ethically sensitive. Conclusion: Clinicians need to gain a better understanding of the consequences of excluding larger population groups form participating in clinical studies. They should seek assistance in improving the information process for the inclusion of underrepresented groups in clinical studies. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 / 3. Timely Issues of (...) Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

The main problem of how to transform a centrally planned market into a market economy has emerged as one of the most influential and challenging issues in modern times. Nowadays, post-Soviet republics and nations of Central and Eastern Europe are in a transformation process and seek to capture claimed efficiency and advantages of market mechanisms for their economies. This is a very complex issue, because a rapid transition from socialism to a market economy is an unprecedented phenomenon (...) and requires fundamental restructuring of a nation’s economic, political, social and legal institutions as well as its physical infrastructure. (shrink)

This essay examines theoretical arguments surrounding the use of post-colonial theory as a way to fill in the epistemological lacuna in the studies of post-socialism. It reviews the various streams of this theoretical development and employs Edward Said’s notion of “traveling theory” to demonstrate that theoretical claims made by proponents and opponents of this particular comparative perspective are historically, socially, and geographically situated, although not fixed. Disciplinary, national, and institutional affiliations, instead of theoretical justifications, are identified as important factors in (...) the propensity to accept or resist the introduction of post-colonial perspective on Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The essay concludes by acknowledging the potential usefulness as well as the limits of post-colonialism in the conceptualization of the post- socialist space. (shrink)

Modern science originated in Western Europe, but its astonishing successes have forced every other civilization in the world to acknowledge and embrace its achievements. It is at the core of modernity and of the globalization of civilization. Consequently, efforts to show that non-Western traditions of thought should be taken seriously within the paradigm of science itself will inevitably provoke skepticism. However, science itself is riven not only by major problems and rival research programs, but by different conceptions about what (...) is science and what are its goals. These have generated such confusion, even within such advanced fields of science as physics, that more and more scientists are examining non-Western traditions of thought to provide a sufficiently broad perspective to overcome this confusion, to identify the core problems within science and to redefine it and its goals. This special edition brings into focus such work in a historical-epistemological perspective. (shrink)

When discussing the safety of research subjects, including their exploitation and vulnerability as well as failures in clinical research, recent commentators have focused mostly on countries with low or middle-income economies. High-income countries are seen as relatively safe and well-regulated. This article presents irregularities in clinical trials in an EU member state, Poland, which were revealed by the Supreme Audit Office of Poland (the NIK). Despite adopting many European Union regulations, including European Commission directives concerning Good Clinical Practice, these irregularities (...) occurred. Causes as well as potential solutions to make clinical trials more ethical and safer are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter aims at describing the role of housing in the ageing population, on the example of Poland, which is one the fastest ageing country in the world. This issue is significant because housing well suited to the needs of older people means lower expenses in medical and social care. Seniors living in proper conditions remain not only longer healthy, but they may also stay longer active in the labor market. Housing adoption to the needs of an older population means (...) a particular challenge for Poland, where the majority of the housing stock was created in socialism and is inhabited by large by older people. It is crucial to raise awareness of age-friendly housing among the seniors, their relatives, architects, and policymakers. This purpose serves the first model apartment for seniors in Poland, which was created by the chapter's authors. (shrink)

This article constitutes a contribution to the critique of the political economy of contemporary higher education. Its notes form, intended to open "windows" on the thorny issue of metrics permeating academia on both the local/national and global levels, facilitates a conceptualization of the academic law of value as a mechanism responsible for regulating the tempo and speed of academic labor in a higher education system subsumed under capital. First, it begins with a presentation of the Marxist approach to acceleration and (...) measure. Second, it presents the academic law of value as a socially necessary impact/time. Third, it conceptualizes a figure of capital that operates in the contemporary global higher education system. Fourth, it describes the conditions of operation of merchant capital within higher education and explores the close links of global university rankings, metadata providers, and the academic publishing industry. As a fifth and final point, the analysis turns to Central Eastern Europe and the case study of Poland to demonstrate that, to function properly, the academic law of value needs to be imposed by political means, that is, through policy reforms that establish and legitimize the sets of parameters and criteria for the evaluation of academic labor. In conclusion, the argument suggests that the domination of merchant capital over academic labor, resulting in the latter's ongoing and uncontrolled acceleration, cannot be overcome without addressing not so much the issue of private property but, first and foremost, the politically and socially defined metrics. (shrink)

The problem of trickster leadership is discussed in this chapter in the context of the Romanian experience of modernity. This experience has emerged as a Post-Byzantine condition; it was strongly marked by the forty years of communist regimes and was loaded with a high amount of duplicity and ambivalence. The chapter argues that the communist type of trickster leadership in Romania was the outcome of a clash between two types of corruption: a domestic one and a global one. The idea (...) of ‘forms without substance’, coined in 1868 by the historian Titu Maiorescu, is shown to be indicative of the exilic condition in which Romanians remained caught even after their country became independent. The description of this paradoxical condition is followed by a review of the main eras of Romania as a modern state, arguing that this condition has led to an accumulation of disharmony and the absurd in the social fabric of the people. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates and public sector debates, stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. The region should still, after more (...) than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

Book synopsis This book is devoted to the condition of the university under the pressures of globalization, with particular reference to Central Europe. It is intended as a companion volume for all those who combine their academic and disciplinary research with wider interests in the functioning of higher education institutions under the new pressures affecting Central Europe. Drawing on its interdisciplinary nature and the wide range of scholars involved, it intends to outline a useful map of (...) new, often challenging, areas, topics and concerns to be taken into account in rethinking the function of the university today. -/- Contents Contents: Philip G. Altbach: Academic Freedom: International Realities and Challenges - Richard Rorty: Does Academic Freedom Have Philosophical Presuppositions? - Stanley N. Katz: Can Liberal Education Cope? - Marek Kwiek: The State, the Market, and Higher Education. Challenges for the New Century - Roger Deacon/Ben Parker: The Schooling of Citizens, or the Civilizing of Society? - Tadeusz Buksinski: The University and Learning in a Situation of Depression - Martin Jay: The Menace of Consilience: Keeping the Disciplines Unreconciled - Voldemar Tomusk: Towards a Model of Higher Education Reform in Central and East Europe - Wolf Lepenies: Im Osten viel Neues. Wissenschafts- und Kulturpolitik für Europa - Zbigniew Drozdowicz: Academic Accreditation: a Polish Case Study - Marek Kwiek: The Nation-State, Globalization and the Modern Institution of the University. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt at examining the value configuration and the socio-demographical profiles of the local political elites in four countries of East-Central Europe: Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland. The treatment is a comparative one, predominantly descriptive and exploratory, and employs, as a research method, the case-study, being a quite circumscribed endeavor. The cases focus on the members of the Municipal/Local Council in four towns similar in terms of demography and developmental strategies (i.e. small-to-medium (...) sized communities of around 35,000 inhabitants, with economies largely based on food industry and commercial activities): Tecuci (Galați county, Romania), Česká Lípa (Liberec region, Czech Republic), Targovishte (Targovishte province, Bulgaria), and Oleśnica (Lower Silesia province, Poland). Hypothesizing that the local elites of the former Sovietized Erurope tend to differ in outlook, priorities, and value attainment, as compared to their Western counterparts, the paper considers the former’s attitudes and perspectives in regard to seven values: a series of values customarily connected with the concept of ‘democracy’ (i.e. citizen participation, political conflict, gradual change, economic equality), state intervention in economy, decentralization and increased local autonomy, cultural-geographical self-identification. The study uses, as well, five models of value attainment in what concerns the ‘ideal portrait’ of the local councilor (Putnam 1976): ethical, pragmatic, technocratic, political, and gender. According to the results of a study applying a standard written questionnaire among the local councilors of the three communities in the period December 2010-February 2013, the paper distinguishes among three corresponding types of local elites: (1) ‘predominantly elitistic,’ (2) ‘democratic elitist,’ and (3) ‘predominantly democratic,’ following two types of explanation accounting for the differences among the four cases: the legacy of the defunct regime and the degree of administrative decentralization. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explain economic dualism in the history of modern Europe. The emergence of the manorial-serf economy in the Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary in the 16th and the 17th centuries was the result of a cumulative impact of various circumstantial factors. The weakness of cities in Central Europe disturbed the social balance – so characteristic for Western-European societies – between burghers and the nobility. The political dominance of the nobility hampered the development (...) of cities and limited the influence of burghers, paving the way to the rise of serfdom and manorial farms. These processes were accompanied by increased demand for agricultural products in Western Europe. (shrink)

This article discusses the various dimensions of East Central Europe's closure with the communist past, and then assesses the impact of transitional justice measures in the closure with communism. Special attention is paid to the so called 'lustration', which in the view of the author performs important functions in transitions to democratic regimes, related to the reconstruction of a moral and rational community, and to the closure with the communist past. The article shows that the failures and controversies (...) surrounding 'lustration' were due to its radical potential of reconstruction of a moral–rational democratic community, and also to specific socio–political factors of the post–communist ECE. What specific features of ECE post–communist transitions and of lustration conducted to the recurrence of debates related to the communist past is a question that has not been addressed heretofore, despite a fairly well–developed literature on post–communist administrative justice. (shrink)

When future historians chronicle the twentieth century, they will see phenomenology as one of the preeminent social and ethical philosophies of its age. The phenomenological movement not only produced systematic reflection on common moral concerns such as distinguishing right from wrong and explaining the status of values; it also called on philosophy to renew European societies facing crisis, an aim that inspired thinkers in interwar Europe as well as later communist bloc dissidents. Despite this legacy, phenomenology continues to be (...) largely discounted as esoteric and solipsistic, the last gasp of a Cartesian dream to base knowledge on the isolated rational mind. Intellectual histories tend to cite Husserl's epistemological influence on philosophies like existentialism and deconstruction without considering his social or ethical imprint. And while a few recent scholars have begun to note phenomenology's wider ethical resonance, especially in French social thought, its image as stubbornly academic continues to hold sway. _The Far Reaches_ challenges that image by tracing the first history of phenomenological ethics and social thought in Central Europe, from its founders Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl through its reception in East Central Europe by dissident thinkers such as Jan Patocka, Karol Wojtyla, and Václav Havel. (shrink)

Separation of institutions, functions and personnel – Checks and balances – Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia – Short tradition of separation of powers in Central Europe – Fragile interwar systems of separation of powers – Communist principle of centralisation of power – Technocratic challenge to separation of powers during the EU accession – One-sided checks on the elected branches and empowering technocratic elitist institutions – Populist challenge to separation of powers in the 2010s – Re-politicising of the public sphere, (...) removing most checks on the elected branches, and curtailing and packing the unelected institutions – Technocratic and populist challenges to separation of powers interrelated more than we thought. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was (...) Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva), we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna (kumarajiva) with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.]. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That (...) nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)

In this article I analyse one of the most important claims of the neoliberal policy prescriptions for Central and East European states in the early 1990s, that 'communist' property should be privatised. My claim is that this neoliberal policy prescription was based on a number of false assumptions about what it was 'communist' property, and a number of false assumptions about communist law. As a result of these assumptions, the post-communist process of privatisation was plagued by a host of (...) unintended and negative consequences. Nevertheless, based on these false assumptions, the neoliberal ideology was capable to portray the privatisation as 'rights based' and essentially a democratic process. I debunk these pretenses by showing that the reality of 'communist property' was totally different than that assumed by neoliberal policies. The distinctiveness of communist arrangements of property resided not in absence of private property, which was tolerated under communism, but in the organisation of property as an administrative matter, based on unwritten operational rules. Moreover, the communist corporate law was more or less the similar with the 'western corporate' law, so a simple change of formal law would not lead to the transformation of communist property into private property. If a transformation was desired, what needed to be changed was the operational rules accordingly to which the communist property operated. However, this was a level of 'reform' totally ignored by the neoliberal policies, with the result that post privatisation these operational rules continued to apply. The result was the great enrichment of the former communist managers who were able to benefit 'privatisation' at the expense of the public, in a process which was not 'right based' or 'democratic.'. (shrink)

The idea of Europe has already a long history and beyond its ethical attractiveness it became victorious in the political praxis of the 2nd half of the 20th century first of all as a motive force serving the aim of a long-term restoration of peace in the post-war Western Europe and then as a unifying principle for the whole continent after the collapse (implosion) of “really existing socialism”. A little later, in the course of the expansion of the (...) free market economy towards the previously centralized economies of Eastern Europe it soon became obvious that the idea of Europe was not everywhere interpreted the same way and that in some cases it seemed to cause more problems than the ones it should have solved. Especially the current refugee crisis that has initially emerged in the so-called developing world outside of Europe but nevertheless significantly affects the Old Continent can be seen as a major theoretical and practical challenge around the fundamental sustaining (and in itself sustainable) concept of European openness: i.e. in order to remain open in its internal function the liberally organized Europe has to close its outer borders and to decisively limit the access of many humans to its single common market, thus imposing obstacles to the generalization of prosperity and liberty that once were felt as its core values. We will try to show that apart from the immediate cultural, ideological and strategic aspects of such phenomena and the often unavoidable pitfalls of short-term decision making it is important to study and explore the necessity of the current processes. The idea of Europe became, at least partly, synonymous with the overall economical and social globalization of our times whereas such a major process cannot unfold its inherent dynamic without the constitutive role of certain crises that eventually pose existential challenges or otherwise enable the stabilization of the newly emerging system(s). (shrink)

The text is a drought outlining the development of logic in Bosnia and Herzegovina through several periods of history: period of Ottoman occupation and administration of the Empire, period of Austro-Hungarian occupation and administration of the Monarchy, period of Communist regime and administration of the Socialist Republic and period from the aftermath of the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to this day (the Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina) and administration of the International Community. For each of the aforementioned (...) periods, the text treats the organization of education, the educational paradigm of the model, status of logic as a subject in the educational system of a period, as well as the central figures dealing with the issue of logic (as researchers, lecturers, authors) and the key works written in each of the periods, outlining their main ideas. Thework of aNeoplatonic philosopher Porphyry, “Introduction” (Greek: Eisagogee), Latin: Isagoge; Arabic: Īsāġūğī), can be seen, in all periods of education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the main text, the principal textbook, as a motivation for logical thinking. That gave me the right to introduce the syntagm Bosnia Porphyriana. (shrink)

There are many advantages and disadvantages to central locations. These have shown themselves in the long course of European history. In times of peace, there are important economic and cultural advantages (to illustrate: the present area of the Czech Republic was the richest country in Europe between the two World Wars). There are cross-currents of trade and culture in central Europe of great advantage. For, cultural cross-currents represent a potential benefit in comprehension and cultural growth. But (...) under threat of large-scale conflict, these locations have proved extremely dangerous. Historically, Germany and Austria may be regarded as having had two chief models of their relationships to Europe. In the Holy Roman Empire, Germany was at the center of an aspiring “universalistic” European cosmopolitanism. (In some ways similar to the present situation of the European Union.) Austria maintained a great multi¬cultural empire, until it was destroyed in the First Word War. Generally, middle-European powers have promoted the integration of European diversity, when peace and stability have been plausible objectives. But when European diversity has declined toward ethnic or national conflict, Germany has drawn away from Europe and into itself, seeking inner unity and distinctness to protect it against possible combinations of enemies. This is true of central Europe generally, in degree, but interest often centers on Germany. Generally, central Europe is a cultural pressure cooker. (shrink)

The conceptual model of United Nations reform - "UN 3.0" includes the General Program of Action on UN Reform, consisting of two stages. The first stage for 2020-2025 envisages the transformation of the main organs of the UN - the General Assembly and the Security Council with measures to improve the effectiveness of the management system, address the "veto problem", problem of financing, improve staff work and administrative and financial control, strengthen UN media, improvement of work with the global civil (...) society. The General Assembly is converted into the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the UN. In the structure of the Assembly, the Council for Law is being established, which coordinates the activities of UN structures in the field of law. To coordinate the activities of the UN in the field of human rights and civil society, ethical issues, the General all-parliamentary Assembly creates the Council on ethics, human rights and civil society and transforms the Committee on information into the Council on public information and communication with civil society. The structure of the Council includes all UN media. The reform of the UN Security Council is carried out in three sub-stages. At the 1st sub-stage (2020-2021) the Security Council is transformed into the Council of Existential Security (CES). The membership of the CES is increased to 25 member countries, of which five countries have the right of the unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto: Great Britain, France, China, Russian Federation, USA. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly elects 15 new permanent members of the Council of Existential Security with the right of the conditional (limited) veto: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan , Turkey, Japan (if they fulfill the mandatory restrictive conditions). At this sub-stage, the CES elects also five non-permanent members with the right of a conditional (limited) veto when they meet the mandatory restrictive conditions, with a rotation period of 2 years from geographical regions (or regional unions): Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific Ocean (2 places), Eastern Europe. On the second sub-stage (2022-2023), subject to the effective activity of the CES of the enlarged composition and compliance with mandatory restrictive conditions, new permanent members of the "Existential Security Council" are elected with the right of a conditional (limited) veto: Iran, Spain, Poland, Saudi Arabia. Members of the CES may be regional unions, whose member countries are not represented in the CES, but still have one vote with the right of a conditional (limited) veto. -/- Two essential levels of the veto: 1. Unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto is the historical right of veto of the five permanent members of the Council of Existential Security - Great Britain, China, Russia, USA, France; 2. Сonditional (limited) veto is the veto of other permanent and non-permanent members of the Council of Existential Security. The right of veto is a unique international school for the achievement of consensus, a school of high democracy for Humanity, a reliable guarantee of the viability of the UN structure. The Council for Existential Security centralises the management of the UN subsidiary bodies with the expansion of their security functions: the Military Staff Committee, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, the Committee for the Prevention of the Spread of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons, the Sanctions Committees and other committees. On the basis of the decision of the Council of Existential Security, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly creates permanent contingents of UN peacekeeping and counter-terrorism forces. In addition, two Centers are being created in the structure of the Council for Existential Security: the World Center for the Elimination of the Effects of Technogenic and Natural Disasters with branches on all continents and the World Center for the Analysis of Existential Risks and the Overall Security Strategy. The Center is developing the Programs of research and monitoring of global existential threats and risks. In order to increase the level of legitimacy and authority of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Rules of procedure for elections to this post are changing. Each member country of the Council for Existential Security represents one of the most authoritative candidates for election to the post of Secretary General at the session of the General All-Parliamentary Assembly, with the possibility of nominating candidates from other countries, including those not members of the Council for Existential Security. Elections are held in two rounds during one day of the session of the Assembly. The Legal Committee of the UN General Assembly is developing a Program for the Reform of the Judicial System of the United Nations, which takes into account the proposals of the previous international discussion and determines the scope and terms of the reform of the courts. In accordance with the Program of Action on UN Reform for 2020-2025, reforms are under way in the structure of the Economic and Social Council. The central task of the reform is to strengthen the coordinating role of ECOSOC in the entire system of UN-related specialized agencies, funds and programs related to the Council. The key task of the UN reform is the solution of the financing problem. A unified "UN Open Budget "Solidarity XXI" is being created, including the financing of peacekeeping operations and other expenses. Each country, a member of the United Nations, lists in an established period, once a year, an Existential contribution - the Earth Tax. The Earth Tax for each UN member state is established on the basis of four scales of calculation: Scale I - for 5 permanent members of the Council of Existential Security, who have the right of absolute (absolute) veto; Scale II - for the permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale III - for non-permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale IV - for all other UN member countries. The program of action on UN reform includes a set of measures to ensure transparent work of the International Civil Service Commission with the involvement of the UN media. To strengthen control functions in the sphere of personnel policy, administrative and financial management, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the United Nations establishes the Permanent Commission on Ethics and Administrative and Financial Control. All members of the Commission, members of the Committees and auditors are independent in their activities from the leadership of the United Nations, its funds and programs. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly completes the first stage of the Program of Action on UN Reform in 2025 and, following an open discussion, introduces a single language of international communication - Esperanto and approves it as the official language of the United Nations. With a view to more effective work of the central UN governing bodies in the face of increasing existential threats and risks, reducing the current expenses for the maintenance of the central bodies of the UN, the Council for Existential Security and the General All-Parliamentary Assembly decide on the relocation of the UN headquarters to Iceland. The UN building complex in New York is transferred to preferential use of non-governmental organizations, which contribute to the implementation of the goals of the United Nations. At the second stage of the UN reform in the period 2026-2028, additional necessary transformations are being made in the UN system. At the end of the first stage of the reform, taking into account the reforms carried out by the main organs of the United Nations and the internal improvement of the work of all its structures, the United Nations Program of Action for the years 2026-2028 is being developed. (shrink)

Thirty-five papers by outstanding specialists of philosophy of law and comparative law from Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, as well as from Northern America and Japan, dedicated to the Hungarian philosopher of law and comparatist Csaba Varga.

When Neil MacCormick, in the wake of the launch of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, went “beyond the Sovereign State” in 1993, he fundamentally challenged the heretofore dominant paradigm of legal ordering in the European context which considered law to be singular, unified and confined within sovereign nation states. The original insight of MacCormick might, however, be pushed even further, as a historical re-construction reveals that legal pluralism is not only a trademark of recent historical times, marked by the (...) European integration process, but has also been at the very core of legal evolution in Europe throughout its modern history. The introduction of modern law in Europe can be traced back to the eleventh and twelfth century Investiture Conflict between the Church and the Emperor, a conflict which solidified the existence of two parallel universes of law, one Church-based and one empire-based, both of which rested, in principle, upon mutually exclusive claims to superiority, but which nonetheless became institutionally stabilized in a manner which allowed for mutual co-existence between them. The existence of such parallel universes of law has throughout, also in the “Westphalian world”, been a central characteristic of European law. It is suggested that the current constellation between the EU and its Member States should be viewed in this light. (shrink)

Academic freedom is under attack, both in authoritarian democracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, and in liberal Western democracies, such as the United States, the UK, France and Germany. For example, Gender Studies are being targeted by right-wing governments in Eastern Europe, and in France President Emmanuel Macron has attacked post-colonial and critical theories as “Islamo-gauchisme“, portraying them as a danger to the Republic. However, dominant discourses about academic freedom and free speech in the global north, lately especially (...) in France and Germany, focus on an alleged threat to academic freedom through “political correctness” and “cancel culture”, that, under scrutiny, often turn out to be exactly the opposite, namely defences of plurality and critical voices. (shrink)

What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing European crisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order (...) and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / Part I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / Part II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3. The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crisis – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5. Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought , Niklas Olsen / Part III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy , Chris Thornhill / 7. The Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / Part IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crisis”, Jan-Werner Müller. 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst/ Part V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below, William E. Scheuermann / 13. “We could all go Down the Road of Lebanon” – Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusions and Perspectives: The Re-Constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Index . (shrink)

This article seeks to identify and analyse the most significant changes regarding parental leave provision in post-communist Romania, as well as the extent to which its legal adjustments that took place after 1990 reveal both old trends inherited from the former political regime as well as new tendencies influenced by EU norms and directives. Consequently, this article has a twofold structure. First, a brief overview of the main concepts and theoretical approaches to parental leave will allow us to proceed to (...) a proper understanding of the epistemological tools underpinning this research object. Second, this article tackles the numerous legislative changes concerning parental leave that occurred after the fall of the communist regime. Although limited to a single category of research sources, this inquiry is indispensable for analysing the extent to which childcare and the gendered division of parental responsibilities have become real political struggles within the post-communist public agenda in Romania. (shrink)

This article suggests theoretical and methodological approach to corporate control system formation in Eastern Europe (case study of Ukraine). It considers historical and controversial aspects of corporate control implementation and suggests the systematization of subjects and objects in terms of corrective actions and outlines of corporate relations. Existing types of corporate control in Ukraine have been investigated on the basis of legal and regulatory framework and corporate practice. The article suggests measures in respect of management of the corporate (...) control system development, based on the improvement of certain components of corporate control implementation and structural peculiarities. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics Eastern and Western Modes of Thought Christian Thomas Kohl -/- Nagarjuna (2nd century) is known in the history of Buddhism by the keyword sunyata. This word is translated into English by the term emptiness. The translation and the traditional interpretations give the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty, illusionary, not real or not existing. Many questions could be asked at this point. What is the assertion made by this interpretation? Is it that nothing (...) can be found or, that there is nothing or, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute what evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things which arise? I submit two moves to provide an answer to these queries. The first move refutes the traditional translation and interpretation. The second move is to transcribes sunyata by rendering “dependence” in line with Nagarjuna’s writings. His central view could be called “interdependence of things”. Nagarjuna was not looking for an object to be declared as fundamental reality. His fundamental reality of this world is not an immaterial or material object. It is a relation between objects including sentient beings and its main exponent: human beings. This is a relational and non-foundational view of reality which considers reality as dynamics within a wide open space. ENGLISH AND CHINESE . (shrink)

Bakery products are very important in human nutrition and are the basis of any daily diet. Their social significance is determined by the traditions and habits of the population of the countries, accessibility for all groups of the population, diverse assortment, including bakery products for functional and specialized purposes. The up-to-date trend is to expand the assortment of functional bakery products, the use of which will provide the body’s need for the necessary macro- and micronutrients for an active and healthy (...) lifestyle. In the bread and bakery products market, consumer preferences are constantly changing. Consumers prefer products that contain less fat and sugar. The market is in demand for bakery products that are healthy, while taste remains an important success factor. Manufacturers include popular healthy additives (grains, seeds and legumes) in their products. Particularly popular at present are ingredients from Eastern Europe and Asia: yuzu, sesame, matcha, shiso. Tropical fruits (passion fruit, mango, bergamot) and fragrances (dried hibiscus, lavender and rose) are predicted to become popular. This causes the complexity of demand segmentation, features of merchandising and pricing policy, features of consumer behavior and consumption psychology, etc. An assessment is given of the dynamics of production and consumption of bread and exports of products, and a forecast is made for the development of the world market for bread and bakery products. The results of the analysis are necessary to assess the level of food safety and to develop a strategy that takes into account the current trends in the global bread and bakery products market. Prospective trends for sustainable production of frozen bakery products have been developed. (shrink)

History can be understood as involving a problematic interplay between the long-term legacy of human evolution, still tempered into the human body today, and the shorter-term heritage of civilization from its beginnings to the present. Each of us lives in a tension between our indigenous bodies and our civilized selves, between the philosophy of the earth and that which I characterize as “the philosophy of escape from the earth.” The standard story of civilization is one of linear upward progress, a (...) story that I contest with an alternative philosophy of history, picturing history instead as a set of concentric circles. I have devised a new philosophy of history with a three-part approach to understanding human development, taking civilization not as a linear advance of progress, but rather as a progress in precision, paradoxically counteracted by a regression in mind: history as a contraction of mind. I describe three stages in the contraction of mind: 1) animate mind as the evolved outlook of foraging life; 2) anthropocentric mind as representing the contracting transformation of consciousness produced by agriculturally-based civilization; 3) mechanico-centric mind as representing a further contraction from human-centered to a machine-centered consciousness, produced by the rise of modern civilization and the mechanical scientific worldview. Hence, this progressive contraction is marked by a turn from original practical and reverential attunement to the living earth in hunting and gathering societies, or animate mind, to a narrower focus of anthropocentric mind beginning with the development of early civilizations, where the human element became central and the wild devalued. And it moves to an even more narrow focus of mechanico-centric mind, expanding out of late medieval Europe and the development of modern science, where the machine became model of the ultimate, the objectivist filter through which the world is to be understood and made to fit. Far from controlling nature, humans have been consuming it in an unsustainable Malthusian-like trajectory whose limits are being reached in our time. (shrink)

Abstract Gender and Ethics Committees: Where’s the Different Voice? -/- Prominent international and national ethics commissions such as the UNESCO Bioethics Commission rarely achieve anything remotely resembling gender equality, although local research and clinical ethics committees are somewhat more egalitarian. Under-representation of women is particularly troubling when the subject matter of modern bioethics so disproportionately concerns women’s bodies, and when such committees claim to derive ‘universal’ standards. Are women missing from many ethics committees because of relatively straightforward, if discriminatory, demographic (...) factors? Or are the methods of analysis and styles of ethics to which these bodies are committed somehow ‘anti-female’? It has been argued, for example, that there is a ‘different voice’ in ethical reasoning, not confined to women but more representative of female experience. Similarly, some feminist writers, such as Evelyn Fox Keller and Donna Haraway, have asked difficult epistemological questions about the dominant ‘masculine paradigm’ in science. Perhaps the dominant paradigm in ethics committee deliberation is similarly gendered? This article provides a preliminary survey of women’s representation on ethics committees in Eastern and Western Europe, a critical analysis of the supposed ‘masculinism’ of the principlist approach, and a case example in which a ‘different voice’ did indeed make a difference. (shrink)

Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me (...) to develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I will test my threefold typology of nothing by comparing the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. With this study, I hope that I will clarify some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, and shed light on the central philosophical issue of “what there is not”. (shrink)

The development of new methods in the field of prenatal testing leads to an expansion of information that needs to be provided to expectant mothers. The aim of this research is to explore opinions and attitudes of gynecologists in Germany, Poland and Russia towards access to prenatal testing and diagnostics in these countries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with n = 18 gynecologists in Germany, Poland and Russia. The interviews were analyzed using the methods of content analysis and thematic analysis. Visible (...) in all three countries is a connection of prenatal medicine with the politically and socially contentious issue of pregnancy termination. Respondents in Poland and Russia concentrated on the topic of inadequate resources. Quality of information for expectant mothers is an important point in all three countries. Only in Germany was the issue of language barriers in communication raised. With regard to non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) respondents in Germany focused on the ethical issues of routinization of testing; in Poland and Russia they concentrated on fair access to NIPT. Challenges in all three countries arise from structural factors such as imprecise and prohibitive regulations, lack of resources or organization of healthcare services. These should be addressed on a political and medico-ethical level. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, (...) technological modernity and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

ABSTRACT -/- A propositional attitude (PA) is a belief, desire, fear, etc., that x is the case. This dissertation addresses the question of the semantic content of a specific kind of PA-instance: an instance of a belief of the form all Fs are Gs. The belief that all bachelors are sports fans has this form, while the belief that Spain is a country in Eastern Europe do not. Unlike a state of viewing the color of an orange, a (...) belief-instance is semantically contentful because it has reference, a meaning, logical implications, or a truth-value. While the intrinsic semantics view holds that either concepts or abstract objects are the source of content for PAs, the extrinsic semantics view holds that symbols of a mental language provide this content. I argue that a successful theory of intentionality must explain: (1) the truth-preserving causal powers of PAs, (2) the failure of the deductive principle Substitutivity to preserve truth over sentences that ascribe PAs, and (3) the truth-evaluability of PAs. As an internalist version of the extrinsic semantics view, I first evaluate Fodor’s Computational Theory of Mind, which says the semantic ingredients of mental states are symbols governed by rules of a mental syntax. I argue that in order to meet (1), CTM would have to associate the causal patterns of each thought-type with the inferential relations of some proposition – in an arbitrary or question-begging way. I also evaluate Fodor’s causal theory, as an externalist version of the extrinsic semantics view. This view is that lawlike causal relations between mental symbols and objects determine the reference, and thus the truth-value, of a thought. I argue that Brian Loar’s circularity objection refutes the ability of this theory to meet (3); and I endorse the intrinsic semantics perspective. I evaluate Frege’s theory of abstract, mind-external, and intrinsically semantic objects (senses), as an attempt to meet condition (2). I conclude that mind-external universals are the source of the intrinsically semantic features of concepts. Finally, I put forth a theory called ‘Bare Property Intentionality’, which describes the features of intrinsically representative and semantic concepts that connect them to these universals. (shrink)

Jung’s individuation process, the central process of human development, relies heavily on several core philosophical and psychological ideas including the unconscious, complexes, the archetype of the Self, and the religious function of the psyche. While working to find empirical evidence of the psyche’s religious function, Jung studied a variety of subjects including the Eastern liberatory traditions of Buddhism and Patañjali’s Classical Yoga. In these traditions, Jung found substantiation of his ideas on psychospiritual development. Although Jung’s career in soul (...) work was lengthy, throughout, he aimed to steer clear of metaphysics. Patañjali’s metaphysics, on the other hand, are straightforward, and his ontological commitments are evident. Because Jung’s ontological commitments were not explicit, his theories, when seen through Patañjali’s lens, confuse ontological questions with epistemic issues. As a result, when comparing the Jungian and Patañjalian notions of the Self, Jung’s insightful ideas seem to be constructed upon a considerably shaky foundation. Yet, utilizing the exceptionally consistent ontological and epistemological commitments of Patañjali Yoga, as well as the objective measures of affective neuroscience, brings credence to the innate aspects and instinctual nature of Jung’s archetype of the Self, and assists in answering the question of whether the archetype is innate or emergent. (shrink)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), at about the start of the nineteenth century, was advocat‐ ing that the study about religion has to be included in university‐level education in the East. The university he envisioned and founded (Visva‐Bharati) included in its curriculum such a study. Shortly a er India’s regaining independence in 1947 and becoming a secular state, that institution was inaugurated as a central university with an advanced institute for philosophy and the study of religion. This essay answers whether his (...) understanding of studying religion would accommodate the approach to the academic study of religion associated with the mod‐ ern Western research university. It also inquires the extent that the curriculum for the study of religion at Visva‐Bharati evidences such an approach. The answers it advances draw primarily on his two essays, Eastern University and Hindu University, which o er his vision of univer‐ sity level education; on commissioned reports for higher level education in the new India as a secular state; on developments in the academic study of religion in the West, especially the United States; on the relatively recent revised curriculum for such a study at Visva‐Bharati University; and on ideas of social imaginary and the comparative study of religion articulated by Western scholars. (shrink)

At the close of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Richard Rorty lays out a contrast between what he calls 'systematic' and 'edifying' philosophical anthropologies. Whereas the systematic philosopher aims to speak for the ages, the edifying philosopher addresses herself to issues of her day, often by way of shattering conventional idols. Rorty sees these two approaches as mutually exclusive. The aim of this paper is to defend a conception of philosophy as both systematic and edifying in the relevant senses. (...) I first respond to Rorty's argument that Wilfrid Sellars' account of picturing, as an isomorphic relation between the world and states of the central nervous system, involves an illicit 'mind as mirror' metaphor. I then lay out some of the philosophical anthropology that motivates Sellars' account of picturing, and I connect this anthropology to philosophical and scientific work undertaken in Europe and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On this basis I argue that we are left with a (systematic) project handed down to us by earlier generations, and that in taking up this project we are in the (edifying) business of creating new ways of thinking about ourselves as part of the natural world. (shrink)

This essay argues that a new technique of ordering and producing space emerged in the sixteenth century, whereby the Américas were taken as a heterotopic laboratory for the space of the grid. As the ordered grid of space lightened the physical fortification of heavy walls traditionally found in medieval Europe, it implanted new methods of ordering the behavior of the human body and soul. In this way, the grid gave rise to disciplinary techniques of controlling and producing human subjectivity. (...) The global problematic of space as it emerges after 1492 is a central thematic of decolonial philosophy and critiques of coloniality. Many accounts of decolonial philosophy emphasize the ontological nihilation of the periphery, the European production of the other as non-being in an empty space beyond the line. This article supplements this view by arguing that we need an account of the production and ordering of this space that goes beyond simple negation and emptiness. The coloniality of power, thus, has a disciplinary dimension that involves the ordering and production of subjects and spaces in the Américas, while Foucauldian disciplinary power is entangled with the coloniality of power. (shrink)

Traditional societies are characterized by festivals of various kinds and dimensions. Some distinctly manifest aspects of the community rituals or worship, some celebratory; yet others function towards social change. Irrespective of their types, underlying the different forms of community performance is likely to be found the central element of ritual associated with one aspect of community belief or another. Among the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria, Omerife is a festival associated with the ritual of new yam celebrations. In a (...) sense, the ceremonies of the new yam are thanksgiving activities whereby the gods are propitiated with sacrifices for a bountiful harvest as well as for a peaceful farming year. However, the festival also embodies different community forms of performances such as the Ogene- nkirika. Ogene-nkirika is the first part of the two-tiered festival. This paper examines the aspect of conflict that motivates the process of social change on the theoretical premise of Theatre for Reciprocal Violence (TRV) to foreground conflict as pertinent for change in the performance. Case study approach of qualitative research method was adopted for data collection and analysis. The study reveals that Ogene-nkirika festival performance is capable of engendering social change for the people through conflict as reflected in the analysis. (shrink)