Certain forms of practical deference seem to be incompatible with personal autonomy. I argue that such deference undermines autonomy not by compromising the governance of an authentic self, nor by constituting a failure to track objective reasons, but by constituting a particular social relation: one of interpersonal rule. I analyse this social relation and distinguish it from others, including ordinary relations of love and care. Finally, I argue that the particular form of interpersonal rule constituted by dispositions of practical deference (...) in itself entails a partial, though not total, disconnection from the good of a self-authored life. (shrink)

The idea of coercion is one that has played, and continues to play, at least two importantly distinct moral-theoretic roles in our thinking. One, which has been the focus of a number of recent influential treatments, is a primarily deontic role in which claims of coercion serve to indicate relatively weighty prima facie wrongs and excuses. The other, by contrast, is a primarily axiological or eudaimonic role in which claims of coercion serve to pick out instances of some distinctive kind (...) of pro tanto human bad (such as unfreedom or interpersonal subjection). I argue that this turns out not to be a simple case of one idea put to two different uses, but rather a case of two subtly distinct ideas in need of separate philosophical treatment. Moreover, although often relatively neglected, the primarily eudaimonic idea of coercion is of enduring importance to both liberal-perfectionist and socialist political moralities, as well as to personal ethics. This paper aims to elucidate it and to examine its relationship to its better-theorised deontic cousin. In addition, the paper seeks to show how a better understanding of these aspects of the concept can enable us to resolve certain important and long-standing theoretical disagreements, such as the dispute over whether coercion is an ‘essentially moralised’ concept and the dispute over whether (genuine) offers can be coercive. (shrink)

What is 'positive freedom'? Whereas negative freedom may be characterised as an absence of coercion or physical prevention, and republican freedom as an absence of interpersonal domination, positive freedom resists such pithy treatment. The term is widely taken to refer to a variety of seemingly distinct goods, including but not limited to actually exercisable options or capabilities, collective self-determination, psychological self-government, and self-realisation or flourishing. In this paper I aim to bring the positive conception into better focus by tracing the (...) positive tradition through some of its twists and turns, and considering in what ways it might qualify as a single tradition. Drawing on the lessons of this survey, I then suggest a way of thinking about the nature of positive freedom that’s both principled and historically informed. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two irreducibly distinct negative concepts of liberty: freedom as non-prevention, and freedom as non-coercion. Contemporary proponents of the negative view, such as Matthew Kramer and Ian Carter, have sought to develop the Hobbesian idea that freedom is essentially a matter of physical non-prevention. Accordingly, they have sought to reduce the freedom-diminishing effect of coercion to that of prevention by arguing that coercive threats function to diminish freedom by preventing people from performing certain combinations of (...) actions. Against this, this paper argues that coercion diminishes people’s freedom in ways that cannot be fully captured in terms of prevention. Focusing on two types of case, those involving coercive threats and those involving coercive preference manipulation, it argues that non-coercion and physical non-prevention are importantly different goods. It concludes that a complete negative account of liberty must draw not only on the (Hobbesian) ‘non-prevention’ strand of the negative tradition but also on its (Hayekian) ‘non-coercion’ strand. (shrink)

In A Metaphysics for Freedom, Helen Steward proposes and defends a novel version of the libertarian account of free action. Amongst several objections that she considers to her view, one that looms particularly large is the Challenge from Chance: ‘the most powerful, widely-promulgated and important line of anti-libertarian reasoning’. This paper begins by arguing that Steward’s response to the Challenge is not fully convincing. It then goes on to explore a further possible libertarian line of defence against the Challenge, arguing (...) that it, too, ultimately fails. The conclusion is that the Challenge remains an important source of dialectical advantage for the compatibilist. (shrink)

In this paper I propose and develop a social account of global autonomy. On this view, a person is autonomous simply to the extent to which it is difficult for others to subject her to their wills. I argue that many properties commonly thought necessary for autonomy are in fact properties that tend to increase an agent’s immunity to such interpersonal subjection, and that the proposed account is therefore capable of providing theoretical unity to many of the otherwise heterogeneous requirements (...) of autonomy familiar from recent discussions. Specifically, I discuss three such requirements: (i) possession of legally protected status, (ii) a sense of one’s own self-worth, and (iii) a capacity for critical reflection. I argue that the proposed account is not only theoretically satisfying but also yields a rich and attractive conception of autonomy. (shrink)

I defend the idea that a liberal commitment to value neutrality is best honoured by maintaining a pure cardinality component in our rankings of opportunity or liberty sets. I consider two challenges to this idea. The first holds that cardinality rankings are unnecessary for neutrality, because what is valuable about a set of liberties from a liberal point of view is not its size but rather its variety. The second holds that pure cardinality metrics are insufficient for neutrality, because liberties (...) cannot be individuated into countable entities without presupposing some relevantly partisan evaluative perspective. I argue that a clear understanding of the liberal basis for valuing liberty shows the way to satisfying responses to both challenges. (shrink)

This paper concerns the relationship between two questions. The first is a question about inner freedom: What is it to be rendered unfree, not by external obstacles, but by aspects of oneself? The second is a question about agency: What is it to fail at being a thing that genuinely acts, and instead to be a thing that is merely acted upon, passive in relation to its own behaviour? It is widely believed that answers to the first question must rest (...) on or be partly explained by answers to the second. Here I argue that this is a mistake: losses of inner freedom are not, after all, explicable in terms of failures of agency. To establish this conclusion, I consider three familiar lines of thought that appear to tie ideas about inner freedom to ideas about agency, each relating to a different conception of inner freedom: absence of inner constraint, self-government, and absence of determination by external forces. I argue that, in each case, any apparent conceptual reliance on a special conception of agency is merely illusory, the result being that we must allow clear water between our theories of inner freedom and our theories of agency. This conclusion is of significance for contemporary theories of agency and personal autonomy, as well as for ‘positive’ conceptions of political liberty. (shrink)

This is a critical review essay on John Martin Fischer's Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value.

Many philosophers believe that agents are self-ruled only when ruled by their (authentic) selves. Though this view is rarely argued for explicitly, one tempting line of thought suggests that self-rule is just obviously equivalent to rule by the self . However, the plausibility of this thought evaporates upon close examination of the logic of ‘self-rule’ and similar reflexives. Moreover, attempts to rescue the account by recasting it in negative terms are unpromising. In light of these problems, this paper instead proposes (...) that agents are self-ruled only when not ruled by others. One reason for favouring this negative social view is its ability to yield plausible conclusions concerning various manipulation cases that are notoriously problematic for nonsocial accounts of self-rule. A second reason is that the account conforms with ordinary usage. It is concluded that self-rule may be best thought of as an essentially social concept. (shrink)

What is liberty, and can it be measured? In this paper I argue that the only way to have a liberty metric is to adopt an account of liberty with specific and controversial features. In particular, I argue that we can make sense of the idea of a quantity of liberty only if we are willing to count certain purely agential constraints, such as ignorance and physical incompetence, as obstacles to liberty in general. This spells trouble for traditional ‘negative’ accounts, (...) against which I argue directly. My aim is to establish the following somewhat surprising claim: that if a political theory is to contain a principle regarding the protection, maximisation, or equalisation of some liberty, it must concern itself--on pain of conceptual incoherence--with the positive preconditions (in addition to the negative preconditions) of that liberty’s effective exercise. (shrink)

This is a critical review essay of Christine Korsgaard's Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (OUP 2009).

It has been alleged that compatibilists are committed to the view that agents act freely and responsibly even when subject to certain forms of radical manipulation. In this paper I identify and elucidate a form of compatibilist freedom, social autonomy, that is essential to understanding what is wrong with ordinary indoctrination and argue that it also holds the key to understanding what goes wrong in more fanciful manipulation cases.

I defend my pure social account of global autonomy from Steven Weimer's recent criticisms. In particular, I argue that it does not implicitly rely upon the very kind of nonsocial conception of autonomy that it hopes to replace.

This is a short (c. 4000 words) teaching piece aimed at first year undergraduates, on the topic of moral relativism.

The idea that payment for research participation can be coercive appears widespread among research ethics committee members, researchers, and regulatory bodies. Yet analysis of the concept of coercion by philosophers and bioethicists has mostly concluded that payment does not coerce, because coercion necessarily involves threats, not offers. In this article we aim to resolve this disagreement by distinguishing between two distinct but overlapping concepts of coercion. Consent-undermining coercion marks out certain actions as impermissible and certain agreements as unenforceable. By contrast, (...) coercion as subjection indicates a way in which someone’s interests can be partially set back in virtue of being subject to another’s foreign will. While offers of payment do not normally constitute consent-undermining coercion, they do sometimes constitute coercion as subjection. We offer an analysis of coercion as subjection and propose three possible practical responses to worries about the coerciveness of payment. (shrink)

Many people appear to attach great value to sad music. But why? One way to gain insight into this question is to turn away from music and look instead at why people value sad conversations. In the case of conversations, the answer seems to be that expressing sadness creates a sense of genuine connection. We propose that sad music can also have this type of value. Listening to a sad song can give one a sense of genuine connection. We then (...) explore the nature of this value in two experimental studies. The results suggest a striking relationship between music and conversation. People see something distinctively musical in works that express precisely those emotions that they think most create connection within conversation. (shrink)

Стаття продовжує цикл опитувань, метою яких було з’ясування факторів впливу на вибір мови в білінгвальному середовищі. В аналізованому опитуванні, проведеному у Вінниці та Вінницькій області, охоплено 560 старшокласників віком 14–17 років. Результати анкетування дали змогу зробити висновки про психологічні чинники, що впливають на респондента, який перебуває в двомовному середовищі.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W8-W11.

Russophilism and Misunderstanding Ukraine (Review: Olga Onuch and Henry Hale. The Zelensky Effect. London: Hurst and Co., 2023; Dominique Arel and Jesse Driscoll. Ukraine’s Unnamed War. Before the Russian Invasion of 2022. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Queer Death Studies (QDS) refers to an emerging transdisciplinary field of research that critically and (self) reflexively investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations, and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by death, dying, and mourning. Since its establishment as a research field in the 1970s, Death Studies has drawn attention to the questions of death, dying, and mourning as complex and multifaceted phenomena that require inter- or multi-disciplinary approaches and perspectives. Yet, the engagements with (...) death, dying and mourning, constitutive of conventional Death Studies’ investigations, tend to remain insufficient and reductive. They are often governed by the normative notions of: the subject; bonds between humans, as well as between humans and (their) animals; family relations and communities; rituals; and finally, experiences of grief, mourning, and bereavement. Moreover, these engagements are frequently embedded in constraining beliefs in life/death divides, constructed along the lines of conventional religious and/or scientific mind/body dualisms, characteristic of the Western cultural imaginaries. Against this background, QDS offers a site for ‘queering’ traditional ways of approaching death both as a subject of study and philosophical reflection, and as a phenomenon to articulate in artistic work or practices of mourning. Here, the notion of ‘queer’ conveys many meanings. It refers to researching and narrating death, dying, and mourning in the context of queer bonds and communities, where the subjects involved/studied/interviewed and the relations they are involved in are recognised as ‘queer’. Simultaneously, the term ‘queer’ can also function as an adverb and a verb, referring thus to the processes of going beyond and unsettling (subverting, exceeding) binaries and given norms, normativities, and constraining conventions. In other words, ‘queer’ becomes both a process and a methodology that is applicable and exceeds the focus on gender and sexuality as its exclusive concerns. (shrink)

The emphasis on evidence based medicine (EBM) has placed increased focus on finding timely answers to clinical questions in presence of patients. Using a combination of natural language processing for the generation of clinical excerpts and information theoretic distance based clustering, we evaluated multiple approaches for the efficient presentation of context-sensitive EBM excerpts.

To explore the extent of embeddability of Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus in first-order logic (FOL) and modern frameworks, we propose to set aside ontological issues and focus on pro- cedural questions. This would enable an account of Leibnizian procedures in a framework limited to FOL with a small number of additional ingredients such as the relation of infinite proximity. If, as we argue here, first order logic is indeed suitable for developing modern proxies for the inferential moves found in Leibnizian infinitesimal (...) calculus, then modern infinitesimal frameworks are more appropriate to interpreting Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus than modern Weierstrassian ones. (shrink)

What is coercion and why do we care? Coercion is widespread and used especially when raising children, but on its darker side coercion can have devastating consequences. We are worried about coercion as it can invalidate consent. This is seen in the USA where campus rape cases have soared in recent years and brought consent and coercion back to the forefront of debate. Coercion is a hotly debated legal, political and ethical concept. However, in all this debate we have seen (...) little in the way of what coercion means exactly and how we determine it is taking place. Wertheimer and Garnett have interesting views about how coercion can be understood, from the morally wrong side of coercion to the situations where people are left much worse off because of its use. Only the morally wrong situations are subject to the law but there is a whole set of coercive situations that could take place which look bad to the outsider but are not necessarily morally wrong. This is the area of coercion I wish to discuss further. Wertheimer states that there are two types of coercion, moralised and non moralised. Moralised coercion concerns whether it was ‘wrongful’ to propose the offer and the non-moralised notion examines whether the coerced had any other reasonable choice. In a similar vein to Wertheimer, Garnett believes that coercion has two roles, Deontic (wrong) and Eudaimonic (bad). This would vaguely map to Deontic as Moralised and Eudaimonic as Non Moralised. Garnett discusses the eudaimonic version at length believing it is relatively unexplored in situations of coercion. This paper consists of 4 sections: • Section 1 discusses what Coercion is • Section 2 reviews Wertheimer’s view of Moralised and Non Moralised Consent • Section 3 discusses Garnett’s View • Section 4 considers a cost-benefit analysis of eudaimonically wrong situations. In conclusion it is apparent that, in order to have a full picture of what kind of situations coercion actually covers we must not simply rely on the deontic concept. The Deontic way of looking at situations will tell us what is morally wrongful and possibly redressable in court but many situations simply sit badly with us. It is here, in this arena, that the eudaimonic concept comes into its own. (shrink)

The sixteenth-century Cossacks became the favourite topic of Ukrainian authors of the nineteenth century who dealt with national and individual identity issues. Nikolai Gogol, the celebrated Russian author who had Ukrainian origin and was born in a Cossack village, wrote the epic romance of Taras Bulba, which narrated the story of Cossacks and their struggle for preserving their independence. While the work has been previously studied under the light of postcolonial theoretical framework, using the concepts developed by Homi Bhabha to (...) scrutinize the situation and the destiny of the two main hybrid characters, Taras Bulba’s sons, takes a step further and reveals the deeply ingrained anxiety and ambivalence in the Cossack mentality. The article focuses on the two main hybrid characters who choose divergent paths upon encountering the conflict brought to them by the imperial power. (shrink)

Publication of Taras Lyuty’s book on Nietzsche is a salient event in the philosophical life of Ukraine in 2016. Given the fact that the book covers a great number of different issues, the reviewer decides to focus on those of them which correspond to his own academic interests, related primarily to the history of psychoanalysis and biographical approach within the historiography of philosophy. As a review shows, Lyuty masterfully avoids such a trap as a biographical reductivism. He neither reduces his (...) hero’s teaching to his life, nor isolates the former from the latter. The reviewer pays a special attention to Lyuty’s delineation of intellectual links between the great philosopher and some of his predecessors (such as Ralf Waldo Emerson) and followers (some pioneers of depth psychology). In the end, the reviewer demonstrates that a very deep and systematic analysis of Nietzsche’s biography and philosophical heritage carried out by Lyuty leaves a room for further productive reflections and interpretations. (shrink)

Volumul de articole, studii, cuvântări şi Pastorale publicat la Editura Mitropolia Olteniei din Craiova în anul 1986 trebuie văzut şi analizat, pentru o bună şi corectă înţelegere, în lumina vremurilor în care a apărut. În acelaşi timp, ideile pe care IPS Nestor Vornicescu, Arhiepiscopul Craiovei şi Mitropolitul Olteniei, le dezvoltă în scrierile sale sunt actuale şi după aproape 30 de ani de la strângerea lor între paginile aceleaşi cărţi, după ce văzuseră lumina tiparului cu ani în urmă în diferite reviste (...) din ţară şi străinătate, semn că autorul dovedeşte o putere impresionantă de a rămâne viu prin scrierile sale într-o epocă în care totul era dictat şi atent controlat şi cenzurat de la centru. În zilele noastre, într-o perioadă în care cei ce abordează teme ca „patriotism”, „românism”, „idealul strămoşilor”, „istoria naţională”, „pacea pe pământ”, „munca”, „dreptatea” ş.a. sunt consideraţi a fi spirite retrograde şi contaminate de perioada apusă şi de tristă amintire, cuvintele IPS Nestor Vornicescu referitoare la aceste idei rămân de o actualitate ce îi lasă pe mulţi fără replică. În ciuda faptului că anumite cuvinte şi expresii au fost acaparate de doctrina comunistă, schimbându-li-se sensul, ele reprezintă constante şi permanenţe atât ale spiritului nostru naţional, cât şi virtuţi creştine despre care s-a vorbit şi trebuie să se vorbească şi să fie respectate pentru a putea să ne orientăm într-o Europă din care ele nu au dispărut nicio clipă din discursul oficial sau particular şi în care România îşi caută coordonatele naţionale pentru a se adapta după integrarea atât de mult dorită de toţi. „Volumul Pace pe pământ îl adevereşte pe Mitropolitul şi Academicianul Nestor Vornicescu ca ierarh şi teolog pe linia învăţăturii şi a tradiţiei Ortodoxiei româneşti, iubitor şi luptător pentru ţară şi popor, pentru pace şi înţelegere între oameni şi neamuri, pentru apărarea păcii şi a vieţii. Concluzia categorică este că pacea – salvgardarea, apărarea, întărirea, impunerea şi permanentizarea ei urbi et orbi – constituie imperativul vital al zilelor noastre, cum arată autorul pe bună dreptate”.2. (shrink)

Despre afinitățile elective dintre Mircea Eliade și diferiți oameni de cultură români și străini s-au scris multe pagini de-a lungul timpului. Cei interesați de opera savantului nu pot trece cu vederea legăturile spirituale și culturale cu Nae Ionescu, Mihail Sebastian, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Goethe, C.G. Jung, Marcel Proust, Raffaele Pettazzoni etc. Și numărul acestora poate crește cu multe alte nume din țară și din străinătate, dovedind faptul că Mircea Eliade a fost și rămâne o personalitate care a marcat istoria (...) și cultura națională și universală și ale cărui idei încă fecundează spiritele preocupate de viața religioasă, de literatură sau de științele secolului în care trăim. Pornind de la aceste date, în cartea de față încercăm să creionăm felul în care ideile lui Eliade pot fi așezate alături de cele ale unor gânditori din arii diferite de cercetare, având în centru teme ce se regăsesc atât în lucrările savantului de origine română, cât și operele acestor personalități. În acest sens, ne-am oprit la câteva nume importante: Rudolf Otto, Sfântul Dionisie Areopagitul (alături de Meister Eckhart și Nicolaus Cusanus), Pr. Alexander Schmemann, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Sfântul Grigorie Palama (și isihasmul), I.P. Culianu, Marin Sorescu, Constantin Brâncuși, Nicolae Steinhardt, Pr. Dumitru Stăniloae. (shrink)

EN: Selection of Marczyński's interviews on philosophy and literature which were recorded in early 2007 for the purpose of his radio broadcast "Hortus (In)Conclusus." Includes interviews with: Marek Bieńczyk, Józef Bremer, Ihor Byczko, Andrij Dachnij, Anna Dziedzic, Mateusz Falkowski, Tadeusz Gadacz, Michał Głowiński, Dorota Hall, Serhij Jospenko, Wachtang Kebuładze, Zbigniew Kloch, Andrzej Kołakowski, Wasyl Lisowyj, Ołeksandr Majewskyj, Anton Marczynski, Julia Marczyńska, Wadym Menżulin, Zbigniew Mikołejko, Monika Milewska, Andrij Okara, Ihor Paśko, Adam Pomorski, Myrosła Popowycz, Jerzy Prokopiuk, Iryna Puchta, Barbara Skarga, (...) Dmytro Stepowyk, Władysław Stróżewski, Myrosław Trofymuk, Tomas Venclova, Jan Woleński, Taras Wozniak, Arkadiusz Żychliński. (shrink)

Le but de ce recueil est d’offrir des commentaires accessibles et introductifs aux textes classiques qu’ils accompagnent, en ouvrant des perspectives de discussion sur le thème du capitalisme. C’est en ce sens qu’Emmanuel Chaput lance le débat en commentant le texte de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, « Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? ». Les textes de Karl Marx ne sont bien sûr pas laissés pour compte : Samuel-Élie Lesage s’engage fermement dans cette voie en discutant L’idéologie allemande de Karl Marx, Christiane Bailey (...) nous offre d’approcher différemment l’œuvre marxienne en abordant son traitement de la question animale dans des extraits du Manifeste du parti communiste et du Travail salarié et capital, et Mathieu Joffre-Lainé nous présente une analyse fine des questions proprement économiques du Capital. Abordant les alternatives au capitalisme dans la pensée de Léon Bourgeois, Éliot Litalien commente La Solidarité et Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette s’attaque à l’analyse de l’Essai d’une philosophie de la solidarité. Enfin, en liant capitalisme, patriarcat et pouvoir politique, Tara Chanady propose une lecture du texte Du mariage et de l’amour de Emma Goldman. La conclusion de Marie-Eve Jalbert se situe dans une perspective contemporaine et critique en décortiquant la critique du socialisme avancée par Friedrich A. Hayek. (shrink)

Preocuparea pentru funcția de marketing a topurilor universitare îi face pe manageri să ignore modul neglijent în care ele sunt concepute, deoarece adesea „clasamentele servesc în mod strategic celor care, doritori să reformeze sistemul universitar din țara lor, le folosesc în mod oportunist pentru a justifica politici deja decise”. Ei nu numai că sunt pregătiți să accepte schimbările dramatice în clasamente (care, de cele mai multe ori dovedesc de fapt inadecvarea instrumentelor de evaluare), dar se străduiesc din răsputeri să îmbunătățească (...) artificial propria poziție, angajând, spre exemplu, personalități științifice cu un CV impresionant. Iar obsesia clasamentelor, una dintre sursele importante ale corupției intelectuale în mediul academic, nu apare de la sine. Este strâns legată de comercializarea intensivă a cunoașterii și de reducerea finanțării publice a universităților. „Importanța acordată brusc clasamentelor universităților” - susține Gingras, adăugând exemple concrete de abordări cinice ale unor manageri care, înțelegând erorile sistemice, consimt să participe la acreditarea lor - „este de asemenea un efect al discursurilor pe tema internaționalizării «pieței universitare» și a căutării unei clientele străine lucrative care să compenseze veniturile scăzute ce provin de la guvern și descreșterea numărului de studenți locali. Numeroși conducători ai universităților care pleacă în delegație în China sau în India par a identifica acolo o «piață» potențial lucrativă care nu ar trebui lăsată numai pe mâinile universităților americane, australiene sau britanice.” Există, de altfel, un sistem foarte complex de stimuli care îi determină pe membrii comunității academice să accepte denaturarea treptată a valorilor fundamentale de care depinde prestigiul intelectual, validând-o. Astfel, pentru a folosi metafora aceluiași autor, foarte mulți văd că hainele noi ale universităților sunt de fapt imaginare, dar puțini ar dori să o spună. (shrink)

Lucrările în care Pr. Dumitru Stăniloae analizează spiritualitatea românească, fie că este vorba de cele din perioada interbelică sau de cele de dinainte şi după 1989, reprezintă încercări ale marelui teolog, o voce respectate în toate mediile culturale din ţară şi străinătate, de a schiţa caracteristicile esenţiale ale poporului român şi drumul pe care acesta trebuie să-l urmeze în cadrul noilor structuri europene fără a-şi pierde identitatea culturală şi spirituală. Ideile Pr. Stăniloae trebuie analizate în această direcţie şi comparate cu (...) ale altor gânditori din perioadele în care a fost tratată tema elementelor specifice româneşti care să facă posibilă viaţa acestui popor într-un mediu de multe ori ostil. Pe de altă parte, gândirea teologului român se dovedeşte a fi unitară, ideile formulate în perioada de tinereţe fiind preluate şi amplificate structural la vârsta maturităţii. Însemnările Pr. Stăniloae referitoare la satul românesc pot fi extinse asupra tuturor caracteristicilor spirituale naţionale, reprezentând cheia de înţelegere a perspectivei marelui teolog: „Se cuvine să vedem spiritualitatea satului românesc aşa cum a fost trăită în tot cursul istoriei poporului român, spre a încuraja persistarea în ea, împotriva ispitelor influenţelor străine care ameninţă să ne desfiinţeze ca neam cu propria noastră fiinţă”. (shrink)

Asemenea altor procese istorice, procesul de destrămare a regimurilor comuniste din Europa Centrală și de Est nu poate fi periodizat cu ușurință și nu poate fi corelat cu o explicație cauzală irefutabilă. Prăbușirea acestor regimuri s-a petrecut accelerat în cursul anului 1989, însă procesul de decompensare a început mult mai devreme. Când anume? – Este foarte greu de spus. Fără îndoială, au existat cauze obiective care au dus la rezultatele spectaculoase consemnate de istorie, însă a existat și un joc al (...) întâmplărilor fericite, precum și un impact aproape imposibil de măsurat al unor factori subiectivi. Destrămarea regimurilor comuniste din Europa Centrală și de Est nu a părut inevitabilă pentru actorii scenei politice din anul 1989, după cum nu ni se pare nici nouă că ar fi fost vorba de un proces inexorabil, la trei decenii de la evenimentele respective. Dat fiind caracterul puțin previzibil al evenimentelor care au marcat destrămarea regimurilor comuniste din Blocul Estic, nu este de mirare că ziariștii de la „Scînteia“ au aplicat până la capăt stratageme propagandistice menite să apere în sfera mediatică establishment-ul comunist: (a) supradimensionarea taberei proprii, respectiv deprecierea adversarului; (b) prezentarea lacunară sau abstractizantă a faptelor; (c) decontextualizarea; (d) mistificarea. În ciuda „virtuozității“ de care au dat dovadă ziariștii, aceste stratageme propagandiste nu au dat rezultatele scontate, în primul rând din cauza faptului că regimul ceaușist nu controla perfect mediul informațional din țară. Cetățenii români puteau corobora informațiile oficiale din „Scînteia“ cu informațiile obținute de la Europa Liberă, Vocea Americii, posturile radio și TV din țările vecine. Cea mai întristătoare concluzie este însă aceea că articolele din „Scînteia“ au creat pentru România regimului Ceaușescu imaginea unei fortărețe a ortodoxiei socialiste. Până în ultima zi a regimului comunist din România (22 decembrie 1989), publicația „Scînteia“ s-a dovedit a fi organul de presă obedient al Partidului Comunist Român, partid aflat în cea mai dogmatică și inflexibilă perioadă de viață. Nu este de mirare, în aceste condiții, că sfârșitul regimului Ceaușescu a însemnat sfârșitul Partidului Comunist Român și sfârșitul ziarului „Scînteia“. (shrink)

În toată perioada celui de Al Doilea Război Mondial, serviciile secrete române au colectat informații privind localizarea unităților germane în țară. Ofițerii din grupul conspirativ pentru întoarcerea armelor împotriva Germaniei sporesc numărul unităților românești prezente în capitală, pentru a putea face față germanilor. O misiune interaliată clandestină a fost parașutată în București și găzduită în secret de generalul Constantin Sănătescu. Urmare a succesului ofensivei germane pe aliniamentul Iași-Chișinău, grupul conspirativ a decis accelerarea pregătirilor. Pe 20 august, Mihai I și grupul (...) de militari din conspirație au stabilit data acțiunii pentru 26 august. În noaptea de 21 august, în secret, membrii opoziției și-au dat acordul pentru această dată. Aflând însă că mareșalul Antonescu intenționa să se întoarcă pe front în 24 august, Regele Mihai s-a văzut obligat să modifice data pentru 23 august 1944. -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22256.12808. (shrink)

Mărturii importante despre momentul 23 august 1944 deţinem şi ca urmare a existenţei, în Arhivele Naţionale ale României – Fondul „Manuscrise”, a Memoriului de activitate al lui Traian Borcescu, şeful Secţiei a II-a Contrainformaţii din cadrul Serviciului Special de Informaţii (SSI). Ofiţerul, din postura sa de conducător al structurii SSI-ului cu atribuţii în ceea ce priveşte cunoaşterea şi combaterea fenomenelor care puteau atinge ordinea şi stabilitatea internă a ţării în timp de război, este unul din participanţii direcţi la acţiunea de (...) pregătire a actului, demonstrând, încă o dată, că această îndrăzneaţă acţiune de alăturare a României la coaliţia Naţiunilor Unite nu s-a făcut ad-hoc, ci a necesitat un plan minuţios elaborat la care SSI-ul a contribuit prin reprezentanţii săi care şi-au făcut pe deplin datoria faţa de ţară, ca şi în alte momente sau evenimente de mare importanţă pentru România. (shrink)

O sintagmă revine recurent, cel puţin în prima parte a cărţii, „conștiinţă feministă”. Legat de aceasta, constatările Lilianei Popescu, conferenţiară universitară și prorectoră la Școala Naţională de Studii Politice și Administrative (SNSPA), mi-au confirmat câteva intuiţii despre felul în care s-a produs transformarea politică a societăţii românești în ultimele trei decenii. „Coagularea conștiinţei feministe în ţara noastră după anul 1990 – susţine autoarea – s-a făcut mai ales prin adoptarea tradiţiei feminismului occidental. În același timp, trebuie remarcat faptul că, înainte (...) de anul 1990, în societatea socialistă existau elemente implicite și explicite de afirmare a egalităţii de gen: educaţia era deschisă atât tinerilor, cât și tinerelor; oportunităţile de muncă erau accesibile atât bărbaţilor, cât și femeilor; statul socialist oferea facilităţi tinerelor mame, concedii maternale, creșe, grădiniţe, iar la întoarcerea din concediul de creștere a copilului, serviciul era asigurat. Multe dintre societăţile occidentale au luptat din greu pentru obţinerea acestor drepturi. (…) Consider că în conștiinţa feministă de după 1990 s-a pus un accent supradimensionat pe principiile și pe practicile feministe venite dinspre Vest și s-a subestimat propria noastră moștenire din perioada socialistă, care era valoroasă și merita preţuită. Este suficient să ne gândim la scăderea dramatică a cifrei de reprezentare a femeilor în parlamentele formate începând cu 1990. Practic, reprezentarea femeilor a scăzut de aproape 10 ori – de la peste 30% la 4%” (p. 52-53). (shrink)

Українська академічна спільнота, незважаючи на значний теоретичний масив інформації, й далі перебуває у полоні ілюзій, шаблонів сприйняття та некоректних тлумачень концепта «український кордоцентризм». Філософська дискусія навколо цього концепта є конфліктом міфологій – протистоянням між міфом про унікальний етноментальний феномен та міфом про ілюзію наукової уяви. Водночас вона є конфліктом інтерпретацій – протистоянням між міфічною інтерпретацією класичної доби української філософії та її метафілософською інтерпретацією. Пропонована монографія ознайомлює із філософською позицією автора концепта «український кордоцентризм», його оцінкою цих конфліктів.

In the article the emotional labor is considered as a process that is determined by peculiarities of work in the tourist sphere. It was suggested 16 components of emotional labour on tourism and hospitality enterprises, their influence on some economic (employee welfare, productivity, employee turnover) and psychological (level of stress, degree of commitment and job satisfaction) indicators is analyzed in terms of staff’s cognitive characteristics and chosen by them emotional strategies of it behavior. The influence of the cognition of an (...) individual on the quality of provided services was substantiated. (shrink)

The article proposes systematisation and development of the discourse of the East European methodological traditions regarding application of the systematic approach as a way of subject localisation in psychological research. In particular, the author’s version of systematic localisation of psychological research subjects by means of structural and ontological visualisations has been developed. The procedure proposed for systematic localisation of the researched subject includes four subsequent stages: 1) fixation of the borders and structure of the ontological field which is being studied; (...) 2) segment analysis of the obtained structure; 3) study of specifics and contents of structural and functional ties; 4) visual mapping of genesis of the core processes. The article describes specifics of application of systematic localisation of the subject of research at the example of such researched object as personal socialisation. (shrink)

This article concentrates on a couple of semiotic approaches working out, on the one hand, the mediated character of reducing interpretative trajectories to the actual translation into the language of narratives (A. J. Greimas) or the language of textuality (F. Rastier), and, on the other, the direct, apparently unmediated passage to the visceral physicality of the verbal signifying system, which make semantic and syntactic components perfunctory to interpretation in a way (J. Kristeva). Greimassian universal narrative grammar dismantles signifying units, navigating (...) in the network of narrative utterances. Rastier's approach structures textual artifacts by unearthing semantic constituents crucial for semiotic analysis. Kristeva examines what is behind the curtain instead of sorting out the significance of the text's content as a special category and the possibility of procedure allowing its interpretation. These three authors are compared in the context of two approaches that come to grips with the author/reader pair. (shrink)