Participatory budgeting (PB) is a paradigm that empowers residents to directly decide how a portion of the public budget is spent. Specifically, residents deliberate over spending priorities and vote over how the budget should be allocated to different public projects. As such it is a mechanism of top-down transfer of decisions on the part of budgetary expenditure to citizens. In recent years, PB has become a central topic of discussion and an important field of innovation for those involved in local (...) development, considered one of the most successful democratic innovations of the last 25 years. Participatory budgeting contributes significantly to participatory democracy, inclusiveness processes and placemaking, but some factors limit the scale of these aspects. However, a relatively simple idea – that “ordinary citizens” should have a direct say in public budgets that impact them – has travelled the world by the most unexpected routes and landed in unlikely sites. There is no precise model for PB programmes. While there are similar tenets and institutional mechanisms, PB programmes are structured in response to each city or state’s particular political, social and economic environment. Therefore, it is necessary to consider to what extent PB strengthens the discussed processes, whether it allows reaching new, inactive groups of citizens and includes them in the decision-making process regarding shaping public spaces. The popularity of this tool carries the risk that it will be used to build the image of local government instead of significantly increasing the participation of citizens in deciding on local public spaces. The chapter aims to present and analyse participatory budgeting practices in four European and North American countries (Switzerland, Poland, North Macedonia and the United States of America) to show the role of PB in placemaking processes by the levels and forms of participation, the analysis of representativeness of PB participants (inclusiveness), placemaking impact and its level of digitisation. The proposed comparative analysis allows for assessing the importance of the tool for increasing social participation, which is participatory budgeting, for understanding its limitations and suggesting directions for its improvement to shape more inclusive, friendly and open public spaces. (shrink)

This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and develop (...) the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image. (shrink)

Recent frameworks, models, and reports highlight the critical need to address social determinants of health for achieving health equity in the United States and around the globe. In the United States, data play an important role in better understanding community‐level and population‐level disparities particularly for local health departments. However, data‐driven decision‐making—the use of data for public health activities such as program implementation, policy development, and resource allocation—is often presented theoretically or through case studies in the literature. We sought to develop (...) a preliminary model that identifies the factors that contribute to data‐driven decision‐making in US local health departments and describe relationships between them. Guided by implementation science literature, we examined organizational‐level capacity and individual‐level factors contributing to using data for decision‐making related to social determinants of health and the reduction of county‐level disparities. This model has the potential to improve implementation of public health interventions and programs aimed at upstream structural factors, by elucidating the factors critical to incorporating data in decision‐making. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss the anarchist and non-anarchist interpretations of the Laozi and argue that the political philosophy of the Laozi does not completely conform to Western anarchism. Thus, firstly I will give a brief introduction to Western anarchism. Then I will present the strongest arguments of the anarchist interpretation and try to find their mistakes and refute them. Finally I will try to give an acceptable non-anarchist interpretation of the political philosophy of the Laozi. In doing steps (...) 2 and 3, I will base my arguments in a way that is consistent with the text of the Laozi itself. Thus, I hope that this article will bring a deeper understanding of the political philosophy of the Laozi and break with the widely spread opinion that the Laozi propounds an anarchist theory. (shrink)

The article examines the patient-doctor relationship, relying on Michel Foucault’s concept of the clinical gaze. We argue that during the last decades, a profound transformation of the social nature of medicine took place, one that Foucault’s understanding of the clinical gaze cannot adequately account for. First, the article offers an elaboration of the three-node network of clinical gaze, the clinic, and nosology to explain the positioning of the doctor and the patient within the specific social ontology generated by the rise (...) of medicine. We then discuss intensive but irresolute developments brought by technological advancements, especially the X-ray tube. Finally, we argue that in the contemporary clinic, equipped with a plethora of sophisticated devices, the position of the doctor endured the most radical transformation in comparison with Foucault’s proponent of the clinical gaze at the dawn of modern medicine. (shrink)

The paper explores the non-institutional potential of the concept of community as it has been formulated in contemporary French philosophy. Special attention is given to historical experience, particularly in a globalizing world. Fantasies of the historical which attest to such experience are treated as constitutive of an anonymous community defined neither by a fixed identity nor by a given substance. Despite its anonymity, community calls for articulation and translation, producing various ‘as-if presentations’, to remember the Kantian term.

In this paper, the authors first emphasise the connection that exists between bioethics and law. However, special attention is given to the link between bioethics and human rights, which share the idea of protecting similar values, especially the protection of life and human dignity. Identifying the interdependence and interrelation of these concepts is a prerequisite for further exploration of how and in what context the European Court of Human Rights decides on bioethical issues it encounters when ruling on classical human (...) rights guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Once the important features that determine the relationship between bioethics and human rights are identified, these features will be practically examined through the group of cases in which the Court has addressed the issue of mandatory vaccination, which has been in the public spotlight in recent years. (shrink)

This summer, the Russian and international philosophical community suffered an irreplaceable loss, the death of Valery A. Podoroga. Valery was a dear friend and colleague to many of the authors and...

Between the two World Wars, in Belgrade and Serbia, seven musical journals were published:?Musical Gazette?,?Music?,?Herald of the Musical Society Stankovic?,?Sound?,?Journal of The South Slav Choral Union?,?Slavic Music? and?Music Review?. The influence of marxism can be observed in?Musical Herald?,?Sound? and?Slavic Music?. A Marxist influence is obvious through indications of determinism. Namely, some writers observed elements of musical art and its history as consequences of sociopolitical and economic processes. Still, journals published articles of domestic and foreign authors who interpreted the relation between (...) music, society and economy in a much more moderate and subtle manner. Editors and associates of these journals also had proscriptive ambitions - they recommended and even determined regulations for composers about what kind of music to write according to social goals and needs. According to tendencies in Marxism, there was a follow up of musical work in the Soviet Union. Editors tried not to be one-sided. There were writings about the USSR by left orientated associates as much as emigrants from that country, and articles of Soviet authors were translated. Also, there were critical tones about musical development in the first country of socialism. Serbian musical periodicals recognized the enormous threat from fascism. Also, there were articles about influence of Nazi ideology and dictatorship on musical prospects in Germany. Since Germany annexed Sudetenland in 1938,?Musical Herald? expressed support to musicians and people of that friendly country by devoting the October and November 1938 issue to Czechoslovak music, along with an appropriate introduction by the editor, Stana Djuric-Klajn. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christian Ethics and Commonsense Morality: An Intuitionist Account by Kevin JungAleksandar S. SantracChristian Ethics and Commonsense Morality: An Intuitionist Account Kevin Jung NEW YORK AND LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, 2014. 202 PP. $145.00In Christian Ethics and Commonsense Morality: An Intuitionist Account, Kevin Jung boldly constructs and defends a commonsense morality of intuition as a plausible ethical theory against both postmodern constructivist ethical systems and narrow objectivist theories. Following the antifoundationalist (...) ethical methods of postmodern approaches to reality and morality in chapter 1 and a moderate defense of realism in chapter 2, Jung attempts to save both objectivity and de-feasibility of moral realistic accounts, offering some modern reinterpretations of moral realism in chapters 3 and 4. All these forms of Wittgensteinian conceptions of realism unsatisfactorily lead to infinite regress in justifying claims because they are grounded only in the wishes, interests, and sentiments of the individual culture and society (60).After a brief introduction to the unique role of emotions in ethical theories, his investigation leads to reconciliation between objectivist naturalistic ethics [End Page 192] and theological forms of ethical theories. Theological ethicists can remain committed to intuitionism (objectivist and naturalistic forms of common morality) refined by particular religious expressions of morality (112). Intuitionism, broadly defined in chapter 7, is described as "initial appearances" (118); moral truths, according to Jung's intuitionist account, are "mediately self-evident" (128), not "immediately," because it still requires careful reflection and cognitive searching for objectivist grounds of morality. Jung's affirmation of the plausibility of intuitionism seems to be a final blow to all forms of postmodern and skeptical accounts of antifoundationalist forms of ethical theories; he successfully defends an intuitionist account of morality against its naturalist and religious critics.The last chapter offers three types of relationship between commonsense morality and Christian morality. The identity model reduces Christian morality to commonsense morality. The two-tier model considers Christian morality to be a superior form of morality with instrumental value of commonsense morality. And, finally, integration, Jung's favorite model, considers commonsense morality as neither identical nor subordinate but central to Christian morality (163). With this he affirms that Christian morality is unique not because of differences in moral beliefs but because "it is fully committed to recognizing the oneness of humanity and the universally accessible nature of basic moral truths for all human beings" (166). Jung's reflection is exceptionally insightful. Building the case as a good lawyer, he leads us to the defenseless nature of constructivist postmodern moral theories and their revisions as well as to a commitment of Christian morality to the objective commonsense morality. On this view, even heroic moral acts based on obedience to God (such as Christian sacrificial love) might be compatible with commonsense morality. It is surprising, however, that Jung never consulted or quoted Bernard Gert's account of the common morality, especially when discussing differences between moral duty and ideals (167). Additionally, Jung's argument that Christian morality is unexceptional since moral knowledge can be obtained through multiple sources in which God also reveals his will (178) does not sufficiently probe into the distinctiveness of God's sometimes radical demands of Jews/Christians (e.g., Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac), which come not from intuitionist accounts of objective natural reason or common sense but from faith. Christian saints are not heroes of general moral example but heroes of faith, a qualitatively different realm of human experience. Still, audiences interested in all aspects of ethics will greatly benefit from this superb engagement with recent discussions. [End Page 193]Aleksandar S. SantracWashington Adventist UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The Laozi expounds a thoroughgoing and sustained criticism of government and society. In this paper, I will demonstrate that although this criticism is addressed to the ancient Chinese state, it can also have some validity for the modern state of today. I will first briefly discuss the metaphysical grounds of this criticism and stress that the ruler should use wuwei in governing. Then, I will examine the Laozi’s criticism of the oppressive governments that use unnatural governing through youwei which increases (...) the state disorder, as well as how this criticism is supported by its metaphysical grounds. Third, I will show that the selfish desires may significantly contribute to the state disorder and that the only one to be blamed for the arousing of them is the ruler. At last, I will attempt to show that this criticism may also to a certain extent be directed toward today’s modern state. (shrink)

Original essays by philosophers of language and philosophers of time exploring the semantics and metaphysics of tense.

The article analyzes the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war in terms of a colonial seizure undertaken by a fading but aggressive Russian empire. This highly political adventure is translated into more abstract terms, that is, an irresolvable conflict between existence, which is always the experience of coexistence devoid of any essence whatsoever, and imperial expansion, which is an infinite conquest of space indifferent to all forms of life. The dualism in question is backed up by the writings of two important scholars, namely, (...) the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and the Russian scientist and revolutionary Peter Kropotkin. Nancy’s philosophy of being-in-common is the development of Heidegger’s concept of Mitsein, where the meaning of Mit- (co-, with) is existential and not categorical. Nancy’s philosophy challenges all forms of communal essence, of which empire is one blatant example. For Kropotkin, existence is even more all-embracing, implying a continuity of different life forms. His doctrine of mutual aid is a law that governs both society and nature, as well as evolution itself. Even morality springs from “solidarity” and the joys of social life, while sympathy or love are too narrow a basis for human ethics. Viewed from this perspective, a colonial war would not only be the greatest waste of human lives and natural resources—it would contradict the very order of things. (shrink)

This article explores three dimensions of the current state of gender equality in Serbia: public policy on gender equality, public opinion on gender equality and the context of Serbia’s accession to the EU. Using data from the recent public opinion survey of citizens’ attitudes towards gender equality, the authors address the following issues: harmonization of public policy on gender equality in Serbia with EU policies; differences between public policy on gender equality in Serbia and citizens’ preferences; convergences/divergences between citizens of (...) Serbia and EU citizens regarding gender equality. As Serbia’s policy of promoting gender equality in the last decade has been dominated by the political goal of accession to the EU, it shows where the opinions converge, and where there are certain differences. The authors show the complexity of ideological positions among average Serbian citizens, while highlighting different paradigms in the official public policy on gender equality. While Serbian citizens still do not place gender equality high on their political agenda, they are convinced that it has a certain value, which does provide some important pointers for the future. (shrink)

The author claims that we should differentiate the concept, the conception and the ideal of Bildung. Based on these differences, Bildung could be considered as a kind of attitude, project, or as specific - normative and optative - practice.. Autor smatra da treba praviti formalnu razliku izmedju pojma, koncepcije i ideala Bildung-a. Na osnovu tako utvrdjene razlike, Bildung bi se mogao poimati kao stav, projekt ili specificna, u isti mah i normativno i optativno intonirana, praksa..

The question this paper is concerned with is: what if Immanuel Kant found a solution to the problem of the dualism of practical reason before Henry Sidgwick even came to formulate it? A comparison of Sidgwick?s and Kant?s approach to the problem of the dualism of practical reason is presented only in general terms, but the author concludes that this is sufficient for grasping the advantage of Kant?s solution to the problem.

Jean Baudrillard is one of the outstanding representatives both of French poststructuralism and postmodernism. Because of radical criticism it was not possible for him to establish a logically coherent theoretical system; the philosophical aspects of his work are specifically merged, therefore, into a critical asystematic fragmentarism, which is the subject of this work. From the critique of the political economy of the sign, through critiques of rationalism, reality, progress, truth, history to the theory of simulation, Baudrillard's specific para-concepts (fatal strategy, (...) symbolic exchange, seduction, hyperreality, pataphysics, etc.) are constantly fragmentarily present in the development of his thought. These concepts are Baudrillard's attempt at disengagement from modern philosophy and his new, unsystematic postmodern view of reality in general. In the analysis of binary metaphysical oppositions (reality-simulation, subject-object, knowledge-seduction, history-end, radical-irradical nihilism, metaphysics (God)-pataphysics), Baudrillard is radically exclusive through the arbitrary preference of one over the other concept. his ideas, it is possible to conclude that these dualistic antagonisms are also paradoxically compatible in his system, this compatibility is very close to the irrational mysticism of this thinker. This book is a clear and lucid presentation of this unique brand of postmodernism to English speaking scholarship. (shrink)

One facet of Stefan Lorenz Sorgner’s scholarship is immediately visible in his diligent academic production: the 21st Century is a leading spatio-temporal unit of his analyses. Although such assessment could be considered a rough generalization, it should not be taken for granted. To be placed in the contextual core of the current epoch is of particular relevance with respect to multiple academic trajectories Sorgner navigates and is almost always an achievement rather than an expected, ready-made content. Namely, more often than (...) not, especially in authorship with transhumanist labels, the temporal and conceptual curves are not subtly controlled and fine-tuned into a well-balanced thinking product that contributes to facing the current and potential issues of the relatively near and projectively feasible futures. Such gross asymmetry has various dangerous consequences Sorgner unequivocally warns about, opting deliberately to be an active chronicler of the ‘history of the present’ instead. This approach entails the dismissal of ‘guaranteed’ futurity vectors, be it Christian linearity or Kurzweilian exponentiality, but no less of petrified presentism or conventional historical layers of any inherited anthropology and the specific ethical account it is built upon. (shrink)

Samuel R. Buss and Aleksandar Ignjatović. Unprovability of Consistency Statements in Fragments of Bounded Arithmetic.

This research paper focuses on the comprehensive description and analysis of the structure of judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Despite the growing interest in examining the rhetorical and linguistic aspects of legal texts, the genre structure of judgments has remained a little-explored area. While headings and paragraph enumeration provide a systematic reference system for citation and cross-referencing they do not reveal the dynamic relations between individual text chunks in judgments. The current analysis combines Swales (...) and Bhatia's genre theory with Hoey's approach to patterning in discourse and corpus linguistics analyses. The findings show that the complexity of CJEU judgments extends beyond surface-level information with linguistic expressions playing a crucial role in highlighting dynamic relations and discourse patterning. The results reveal how the structure of CJEU judgments has changed over time and point to the intratextual relations between different sections. Additionally, the study provides a detailed description of the textual organisation of CJEU judgments in terms of move structures and conventionalised discourse patterns. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I suggest that the moral incompetence in narcissism is associated with a particular type of emotional incompetence, namely the incompetence to experience the moral emotions, such as empathy, solidarity, loyalty, or love. I then move on to discussing the ethical ramifications of this incompetence, primarily from the point of view of sentimentalist ethics, and conclude that emotional incompetence does not in fact reduce the moral responsibility of a narcissist person, whether diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or not. (...) My argument is based on the three criteria of moral responsibility proposed by Philip Pettit, namely those of value relevance, value judgment, and value sensitivity. I suggest that a sentimentalist ethical perspective entails that the satisfaction of two of the mentioned criteria (awareness of the social meaning of one’s choices and sufficient control of one’s actions) constitutes a moral obligation for the agent to satisfy the third criterion, namely to develop the appropriate moral sensibility and competence to actually choose morally correctly. This type of structure of obligation elucidates why narcissism is at the same time a moral failure and a psychopathology. At the same time, my argument portrays narcissism as a particular type of personality disturbance that almost uniquely reaffirms the role of moral re-education as the psychotherapeutic approach. This conclusion points to a potential revival of some of the precepts of Pinel’s affective psycho-pathology, dating back to the very beginnings of the psychotherapeutic clinic. (shrink)

This paper will use the concept of hyperreality to compare the so-called ideal state described by ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi with the world of The Truman Show. The concept of hyperreality is defined by Jean Baudrillard as the generation by models of a real without origin or reality. A hyperreal world is a simulation, or kind of a copy without its original. It is generally accepted, and confirmed by Baudrillard himself, that the world of The Truman Show is hyperreal. In (...) order to compare Laozi’s ideal state with the world of the film, this paper will give a hyperrealist interpretation of the former, which will be only hypothetical, without intending to substitute any other existing interpretations. Laozi imagines that people live simple lives, with few desires and without traveling to other places. If we accept that the ideal state is a hyperreal world, we can make comparison between the two worlds; find out their similarities, as well as differences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Narcissists Are Morally ResponsibleAleksandar Fatic, PhDIn his insightful commentary of ‘Narcissism as a moral incompetence,’ Professor Pies proposes several principal objections to my line of argument. First, Pies mentions that I embrace a Platonic essentialism and a ‘binary’ view of narcissism, whilst in fact narcissistic traits present themselves in degrees, within a continuum of pathology.Let us clarify the meaning of essentialism. When applied to the phenomenology of narcissism, (...) Platonic essentialism would imply that there is an idea, or ideal, of ‘pure’ narcissism, which governs our cognition of narcissistic phenomenology. Without an ‘essentialist’ understanding of what narcissism as a more or less pure phenomenon would look like, it would make no semantic or logical sense to speak of various ‘types’ or ‘degrees’ of narcissism. In the 1940s, in The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle offered the now infamous logical analysis of ‘false’ and ‘true coins’: if there were not true coins of which we had some idea, it would be logically impossible to speak of counterfeit coins (McDermid, 2004; Ryle, 1949, pp. 94–99). There are shoddily produced coins that bear only a vague resemblance to the original idea or mint of the real coin, however, for each we would ultimately have to decide whether the resemblance is sufficient for it to be considered a real coin. Shoddily produced coins represent various ‘degrees’ of resemblance of the idea, or form, of a coin, but to call them coins, and to decide whether they are true coins or not, it is a logical presupposition that we must first have an ‘idea’ of what an ‘ideal’ real coin is like. This, at its core, is essentialism.There is no escape from this type of essentialism in any rigorous argument, because Platonic essentialism is the foundation of the very meanings of the concepts we use. Plato’s ideas are paradigms, where the particular instantiations of their qualities are called ‘phenomena’ (Sedley, 2016; Taylor, 2016). Thus, the nuanced expression of ideas or forms in their various phenomena is the very substance of the essentialist theory of ideas. It appears that Professor Pies is also a Platonic essentialist, as am I.So why is it often impossible in clinical practice to ascribe necessary and sufficient conditions to narcissism? Well, let us remember Rosenhan’s experiments (1973). Rosenhan illustrates how the same individuals were diagnosed with very different disorders by different clinicians at roughly the same time, and how healthy individuals, once they had been instructed to ‘fake’ psychotic symptoms, remained under the same or more serious [End Page 177] diagnoses even when they stopped pretending and behaved completely normally. The reason for the arbitrariness of psych-diagnoses is the insufficiency of the psych-diagnostic language, including the actual diagnostic criteria, a kind of Lacanian ‘lack’ that is built into the very structure of psychodiagnostics (Ruti, 2008), and not a metaphysics behind such use of diagnostic language, whether it is essentialist or non-essentialist. Whether a particular patient actually has NPD or not in practice comes down to a consensual judgement—one that has been notoriously lacking in the history of psychiatry (Verhaeghe, 2008, pp. 71–125).Second, Pies suggests that empathy is ‘a complex, multidimensional construct comprising cognitive and affective components.’ I do not think this is a correct understanding of empathy. In fact, it is a conceptual revision of the original concept of empathy, which is one of a moral emotion (Kauppinen, 2014). What Pies calls ‘cognitive empathy,’ namely the ability to recognize and influence the emotions of others is an entirely different quality capacity that has recently been called ‘emotional intelligence’ (e.g., Conte, 2005). Many Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by an exceptionally high emotional intelligence and an almost complete lack of empathy, which allows them to use their emotional intelligence to manipulate and mistreat others. Surely such emotionally intelligent, but highly malignant strategies would not be considered ‘empathy.”Relatedly, Pies objects to Slote’s alleged view that only actions arising from factual empathy are morally justifiable. This is a ‘naturalist fallacy’ in reading Slote. The natural fallacy is a confusion between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought.’ Slote actually argues that only actions that are consistent with... (shrink)

: This book makes interesting reading not only because of the subject but also because of the authors’ approach to it. It is, in fact, an energetic and thought-provoking dialogue between a libertarian political economist, Nikolai G. Wenzel, and a conservative political philosopher, Nathan W. Schlueter. By setting aside the journalistic urge for simplifications and […].

In turning to photography the paper explores ways of conveying historical truth. It seems that contemporary art places itself at the very limit of representation in an attempt to remain faithful to historical eventuality. In fact, one is reminded of the type of historical occurrence which can be grasped only through ‘as-if presentations’, to remember the Kantian term. ‘Fiction’, therefore, is no longer opposed to ‘truth’, but becomes its conductor and ally.

Although social anthropologists have mostly abandoned the essentialist view of?culture? and?tradition?, these static notions are still frequently used in Serbian public discourse regarding women?s rights. I believe that analysing the production of cultural meaning and knowledge among different social actors and the state is important when exploring the implementation, transformation and protection of women?s rights at a local level. In this article, I shall investigate how?culture? and?tradition? are being constructed and used by certain right wing groups, political leaders, intellectuals and (...) by the Serbian Orthodox Church. On one side, arguments of?culture? and?tradition? are used in order to?preserve the national identity? and save it from?imposed Western norms? and?Western imperialism?, while on the other, they are used to explain the cultural obstacles regarding the effective protection of women?s rights.?Tradition?, often constructed as a linear project of inherited?cultural? and?moral? values and practices, stands in opposition to the EU; therefore, it calls to be nurtured and protected or changed and abandoned. Consequently, I see women rights issues trapped into a pro-EU or against EU, pro-traditional values or pro-liberal values discourse. I conclude that women rights in Serbia are and probably will be affected more by the use and abuse of different concepts of?culture? and?tradition?. nema. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship of the Sinaitic Fathers and Evagrius of Pont. On the one hand, their main representative St. John Climacus strongly criticized some Evagrius’ fallacies, while on the other hand used thе good side of his ascetic teachings. Furthermore, the specificity of location of the Sinai Monastery resulted that God seeing, contemplation and theology exercised through the Sinaitic Fathers became ideals of the ascetical spirituality. All these ideals originate in ascetical teaching of Evagrius whose correct teachings (...) and soul-benefit readings, at first, were acknowledged by the Fathers of Gaza. Later it was passed onto the Fathers from Sinai and ultimately unto the all ascetical tradition primarily unto the Neptic tradition. (shrink)

In this text I will try to explain the theoretical specificity of critique of political economy. I will primarily found my arguments on the texts of Michael Hein- rich and John Milios. To this I will firstly scatch the theoretical context of economic theories that exited at the time of emergence of critique of political economy. Than, I will present main differences in approach that we can find in Marx?s Capital with repsect to the concepts that are utilised and questions (...) that he tries to answer. In the end I will present the directions of development of the critique of political economy that are realted to this basic insight. nema. (shrink)

Aleksandar Kandić, Plato’s Animals, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2015).

To Doubt in Our Hearts: The Substance Dualism in the Light of Peirce’s Criticism of "the Spirit of Cartesianism" -/- In this article, the author addresses the problem of Cartesian dualism through the prism of Peirce’s criticism of the "spirit of Cartesianism". The faith in the intuitive knowledge and the strong emphasis on individualism Peirce sees as its two main features, therefore, they are the focus of the paper. The underlying idea is to show that, in the light of the (...) pragmatic critique, the Cartesian substance dualism appears to be foremost an epistemological and methodological problem, and not a metaphysical problem of disparate substances. (shrink)

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most famous biblical stories. It had an impact on many branches of contemporary art. It is also an inevitable part of religious education and general education in all schools. Knowing the fact that the Church Fathers have an essential part in the lives of many Christians today (in the Orthodox Church, they were role models from the very beginning), it is interesting to see how did they, these original theologians, read (...) and interpret the story of David and Goliath. Was it for them, in the time when the Bible was the most sacred book for all, important as it is for us today? Did people during the sports events of that time talk on the markets about the underdog who struck the giant? Additionally, if one looks at the ancient Greek and Hebrew text, one will find out that the Hebrew version, which was used as the source for most modern translations, is 40% longer than the Greek one. Could the works of the Fathers help us to determine which version of the story is the Holy Scripture for Christians today? (shrink)

The book provides a comparative analysis of the criminal justice systems in the post-Communist 'transitional' countries of Eastern Europe and examines the underlying value-matrix for changes in the various aspects of these systems.

This paper examines the conceptual matrix of philosophical counseling, and philosophical practice generally, which distinguishes philosophical practice from mainstream theoretical philosophy. I argue that the essence of philosophical practice is the realization and radicalization of Pierre Hadot’s paradigmshifting view of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’ through the projection of philosophical concepts and methods to the goal of attainment of the good life by moral education and character-building. The base-line concept of the good life that the paper works with is (...) the relatively uncontroversial concept of a life based on sustained reflected pleasures that are both socially desirable and individually fulfilling. I argue that this type of concept of the good life as qualified pleasure is inherent in any doctrinal account of what it is to lead a good life, including the ones that emphasise asceticism, such as Christian philosophy of life and ethics. Finally the paper concludes that projections of the good life by philosophical counselors are reflective on philosophical counselor themselves: philosophical counseling is a way of ‘the good life’ that aims to use the resources of philosophy as a whole to help others build the moral qualities and character required to reach their own good lives. By projecting philosophical concepts and methods to the applied conceptual matrix of moral education and the good life, philosophical counseling emancipates philosophy as a whole from its current remoteness and isolation into an active, and reflective, role in the real lives of ordinary people. This heralds a paradigm shift in philosophy, from the pseudo-science that much of mainstream philosophy painstakingly pretends to be to an intellectual powerhouse for the enhancement of the quality, clarity and integrity of life, which was the reason philosophy initially emerged for, both in the Western and in the Eastern philosophical traditions. (shrink)