The paper outlines the historical development of question about ambiguous and mysterious human nature, in particular considering the reasons and conditions for the founding of modern philosophical anthropology. Subsequently, it brings an overview of the conceptual beginnings and directions of anthropological research in Croatia. The focus is on the following questions: When did the investigations begin in the field of philosophical anthropology, in what kind of thinking environments were they shaped and what scientific achievements were reached? The presentation brings to (...) light the cognition that philosophical anthropology in Croatia got its first contours and valuable contributions to the very beginning of the contemporary renewal of this discipline, shortly after its phenomenological and scientific revivals in the ventures of Scheler and Plessner. The development of this research branch is, according to Hans Lankʼs model, divided into four main conceptual orientations. The anthropology from above shows the creative contributions of Stjepan Zimmermann, Vilim Keilbach, Rajmund Kupareo, Miljenko Belić, Ante Kusić, Josip Ćurić, Hrvoje Lasić and Ivan Koprek. The anthropology from below is illustrated by the reference to the research by Vera Ehrlich-Stein, Rudi Supek, the Institute of Anthropology, Pavao Rudan and Darko Polšek. For the anthropology from culture, the philosophical achievements of Pavao Vuk-Pavlović, Vladimir Filipović, Vjekoslav Mikecin, Esad Ćimić, Nikola Skledar, Branka Brujić, Milan Galović and Mihaela Girardi-Karšulin were delineated. Under the anthropology from history, the works of Predrag Vranicki, Milan Kangrga, Vanja Sutlić, Gaja Petrović, Hotimir Burger, Mislava Kukoč and Raul Raunić are outlined. The conclusion summarises four insights. 1. Philosophical anthropology is an under-researched and not enough appreciated field, which represents one of the most fertile currents of thought in the 20th century. 2. Creative contributions are presented in all four major orientations. 3. In the context of anthropological research, lively dialogue and a fruitful meeting of different worldviews were realised. 4. The beginnings of the development of the discipline should be moved earlier in history than previously considered, from the 1950s and 1960s to the early 1930s. The last insight points to the need for further exploration of the perceived, and so far largely neglected, continuity of anthropological themes and related ideas in the history of recent philosophy in Croatia. (shrink)

The author examines the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment and the principles of justice of John Rawls via two main directions of criticism. First, although Rawls constructs a veil of ignorance with Kantian categories, the author derives Rawls’s motivation from the link between justice and the tradition of curbing pleonexic human nature, arguing that in this context Rawls’s Kantian rhetoric is actually driven by the Hobbesian fear of instability arising from the problem of cooperation in the social contract tradition. Second, (...) the veil of ignorance is a cunning instrument of the privileged to preserve their previously acquired advantages, control stability, and cover up socio-political injustices. At the same time, the principle of difference that derives from it does not reduce the gap of inequality – economic and historical – but legitimizes and establishes it. In fact, Rawls’s bourgeois liberalism and its theoretical constructs serve to hedge the well-off by securing and increasing what they already have. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Millennium Jahrgang: 13 Heft: 1 Seiten: 211-274.

U članku se daje prikaz Schopenhauerovih razmišljanja o ljudskoj spolnosti i homoseksualnosti, te o ženama, koja je ovaj znameniti filozof iznio u svojim djelima Svijet kao volja i predodžba i Parerga i paralipomena. U prikaz je uključena i kritika Schopenhauerovih stavova, a postavlja se i načelno pitanje: može li se i u kojem smislu jedna filozofija smatrati »velikom« ukoliko su ne samo uz nju, nego i u njoj prisutni stavovi koji su obilježeni krajnjom proizvoljnošću i negativnim predrasudama?This paper presents Schopenhauer’s (...) views on human sexuality and women that were brought out in his works Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and Parerga und Paralipomena. The article contains a critique of his attitudesand it attempts to answer a principal question: is it possible to consider a philosophy as being ‘major’ if it contains, and not only incidentally,attitudes of extreme arbitrariness and negative prejudices. (shrink)

Since Bohmian mechanics is explicitly nonlocal, it is widely believed that it is very hard, if not impossible, to make Bohmian mechanics compatible with relativistic quantum field theory. I explain, in simple terms, that it is not hard at all to construct a Bohmian theory that lacks Lorentz covariance, but makes the same measurable predictions as relativistic QFT. All one has to do is to construct a Bohmian theory that makes the same measurable predictions as QFT in one Lorentz frame, (...) because then standard relativistic QFT itself guarantees that those predictions are Lorentz invariant. I first explain this in general terms, then I describe a simple Bohmian model that makes the same measurable predictions as the Standard Model of elementary particles, after which I give some hints towards a more fundamental theory beyond standard model. Finally, I present a short story telling how my views of fundamental physics in general, and of Bohmian mechanics in particular, evolved over time. (shrink)

Američki filozof Stanley Lewis Jaki, analizirajući kreativne momente u povijesti znanosti, zaključuje da staze kreativne znanosti i filozofski putovi prema Bogu sačinjavaju jedinstveni intelektualni pravac. Taj zaključak temelji na činjenicama da znanstvena metoda pretpostavlja koherentnu racionalnost kozmosa, te da je epistemologija svih kreativnih znanstvenika umjereni realizam. Inkorporiranje tih elemenata u filozofsko promatranje, prema našem autoru, nužno vodi ka klasičnim aposteriornim metafizičkim dokazima za Božje postojanje. Posebnu potvrdu te teze vidi u Gödelovim teoremima, čija primjena u kozmologiji dokazuje kontingenciju svemira, temeljni (...) princip svih aposteriornih dokaza za Božje postojanje.American philosopher Stanley Lewis Jaki, analysing creative moments in the history of science concludes that the ways of creative science and philosophical paths to the God consists unique intellectual vector. His conclusion is based on two facts: scientific method proposes coherent rationality of the Cosmos and that moderate realism is epistemology of all creative scientists. Incorporating such elements in philosophical perspective, by author, necessary leads to classical a posteriori metaphysical proofs of existence of God. He finds special confirmation of his thesis in Gödel’s theorems and its application in cosmology that proves contingence of the Universe, which is a basic principle of all a posteriori proofs of God existence. (shrink)

High artistic achievements were repeatedly connected with poetry in the tradition of Western aesthetical thought, and the poetry with eliciting emotions. The same has happened within the tradition of film reviewing and theorising: poetry has been repeatedly evoked as a paradigmatic artistic achievement of particular films. But among the different affective states that can be elicited in humans by arts, attribution of ‘poetry’ typically addresses the eliciting and articulation of particular general moods, not the specific, episodic, short-term emotions. In this (...) paper, specified are the differences among emotions and moods, and how a distinct mood is achieved is demonstrated by the close analysis of the introductory descriptive scene in the film Citizen Kane. However, the crucial question is how very different and heterogeneous stylistic means pointed out in the analysis of the scene could elicit a particular, unique, holistic mood. In short, the answer is given by understanding that in the same way in which the moods selectively regulate our relations toward the world, choosing for the perception mood-congruent features of the world to sustain a particular mood, so the filmmakers choose a repertory of stylistic solutions congruent with the selectivity of the intended mood to elicit it in the immersed film viewer. (shrink)

A common understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) among students and practical users is often plagued by a number of “myths”, that is, widely accepted claims on which there is not really a general consensus among experts in foundations of QM. These myths include wave-particle duality, time-energy uncertainty relation, fundamental randomness, the absence of measurement-independent reality, locality of QM, nonlocality of QM, the existence of well-defined relativistic QM, the claims that quantum field theory (QFT) solves the problems of relativistic QM or (...) that QFT is a theory of particles, as well as myths on black-hole entropy. The fact is that the existence of various theoretical and interpretational ambiguities underlying these myths does not yet allow us to accept them as proven facts. I review the main arguments and counterarguments lying behind these myths and conclude that QM is still a not-yet-completely-understood theory open to further fundamental research. (shrink)

Bosonic and fermionic particle currents can be introduced in a more unified way, with the cost of introducing a preferred spacetime foliation. Such a unified treatment of bosons and fermions naturally emerges from an analogous superstring current, showing that the preferred spacetime foliation appears only at the level of effective field theory, not at the fundamental superstring level. The existence of the preferred spacetime foliation allows an objective definition of particles associated with quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Such an (...) objective definition of particles makes the Bohmian interpretation of particle quantum mechanics more appealing. The superstring current allows a consistent Bohmian interpretation of superstrings themselves, including a Bohmian description of string creation and destruction in terms of string splitting. The Bohmian equations of motion and the corresponding probabilistic predictions are fully relativistic covariant and do not depend on the preferred foliation. (shrink)

The article examines whether countries should legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. Firstly, context of the debate is provided by defining the key terms and giving the overview of how the debate evolved throughout history. The arguments in favor of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide are addressed, namely the argument from autonomy and self–determination and the claim for the “right to die with dignity”. The consequences which were showed to occur in the countries which legalized euthanasia and/or assisted suicide are analyzed, (...) and the case study on the Netherlands and Belgium is made. Finally, the model for the dignity–respecting health–care is proposed followed by the call for bigger accessibility and funding for palliative care. (shrink)

Bioethical contents in the Croatian educational system are taught not only at the university level, but also in secondary schools. Namely, in 1995, as an alternative to confessional religious teaching, the Ethics was introduced as a separate school subject. Present teaching program of Ethics came into the force in 2003. Ethics is taught during all the four years of secondary schools, while the third year is dedicated to bioethical topics only. This presentation will firstly try to explain the context of (...) ethics and bioethics education in secondary schools in Croatia ; afterwards the teaching program of Ethics will be presented, with an accent on bioethical contents ; and finally, we will point to some problems with which the teaching of ethics and bioethics at this educational level is confronted. (shrink)

To relax the apparent tension between nonlocal hidden variables and relativity, we propose that the observable proper time is not the same quantity as the usual proper-time parameter appearing in local relativistic equations. Instead, the two proper times are related by a nonlocal rescaling parameter proportional to |ψ|2, so that they coincide in the classical limit. In this way particle trajectories may obey local relativistic equations of motion in a manner consistent with the appearance of nonlocal quantum correlations. To illustrate (...) the main idea, we first present two simple toy models of local particle trajectories with nonlocal time, which reproduce some nonlocal quantum phenomena. After that, we present a realistic theory with a capacity to reproduce all predictions of quantum theory. (shrink)

The Heideggerian question posed here as “what does it mean to dwell in a global age” leaves open, invites even, the possibility of committing two conceptual mistakes from which, depending on the theoretical universe we inhabit, two separate sets of problems arise. On the one hand, if the adverbial “in a global age” is taken to denote a radical historical caesura between “our age” and the age in which the concept was first deployed, one has to prove that the caesura (...) is indeed not only historically operative but legitimate on an ontological level. This would, however, be a futile attempt: there hardly exists an essential, qualitative difference between the ontological regime of “our global age” and the one sketched in Heidegger's 1954 essay “Building Dwelling Thinking.” We have not been blessed by any epochal turns, despite important switches – to move for a second to a different register—in regimes of accumulation. Thus, it may be concluded, the ontological question about the state of “dwelling in a precarious age” has already been posed and answered by Heidegger himself—from an ontological perspective, he is our contemporary. And of course, to such question there can in fact be only one answer: it is the same “metaphysics” that has precluded the possibility of “dwelling” throughout modernity that gave rise to our age as global. But then to avoid the mistake sketched out above and the repetition of an already accomplished analysis, the question as it is posed for us here should be taken as a politicization of the original concept, foreign to a puritanically ontological Heideggerian diagnostics, although building on its foundations: what is to be done historically at this moment to enter “dwelling”? (shrink)

Even though the Bohmian trajectories given by integral curves of the conserved Klein-Gordon current may involve motions backwards in time, the natural relativistic probability density of particle positions is well-defined. The Bohmian theory predicts subtle deviations from the statistical predictions of more conventional formulations of quantum theory, but it seems that no present experiment rules this theory out. The generalization to the case of many particles or strings is straightforward, provided that a preferred foliation of spacetime is given.

U članku pod gornjim naslovom su sličnosti i razlike metafizičkih počela Aristotela i Tome Akvinskog iskazane analizom argumentacije koja je sržna za obje ove metafizike: o postojanju Nepokretnog pokretača, Čistog akta. Tom analizom je pokazano da, iako im argumentacija ima istu logičku strukturu i isto polazište – promjenu bića – ipak ih je razlika u shvaćanju metafizičkih počela samog bića dovela do različitih zaključaka. Tako je ovdje pokazano da je za Aristotelovu metafiziku supstancije zadnja zbiljnost bića supstancijalna forma, koje svoje (...) zadnje utemeljenje ima u Čistom aktu, Nepokretnom pokretaču, dok za metafiziku bitka Tome Akvinskog zadnja zbiljnost bića jest bitak, koji svoje zadnje utemeljenje ima također u Čistom aktu, ali koji je shvaćen kao Čisti akt bivstvovanja, Subzistentni bitak. Stoga je za Aristotela Čisti akt isključivo oblikovatelj ostale stvarnosti ukoliko je svršni uzrok te nema, niti može imati, kao Nepokretni pokretač, ikakav drugi uzročni utjecaj na ostalu stvarnost, dok je za Tomu Akvinskog Nepokretni pokretač nužno Čisti akt bivstvovanja čije djelovanje je stvaranje.In this article the similarities and differences of Aristotle’s and Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysical principles are set forth by analyzing the core arguments of their metaphysics: principally, those concerning the existence of the Unmoved Mover, also called Pure Act. The analysis shows that although their arguments have the same logical structure and the same starting point – the fact that beings change – different conceptions of the metaphysical principles of being nevertheless lead to different conclusions. Therefore, this article shows that within Aristotle’s metaphysics of substance, the ultimate actuality is the substantial form which has its last ground in Pure Act, the Unmoved Mover. On the other hand, Thomas Aquinas believes that the ultimate actuality is existence, which also has its last ground in Pure Act, but the Act of Existence, or Subsistent Existence. Therefore, Aristotle’s Pure Act is a mere giver of forms and the final cause of reality. This Pure Act does not have, nor it can have any other causal influence on the rest of reality, while Aquinas’ Unmoved Mover is necessarily the Pure Act of Existence whose activity we call creation. (shrink)

Nakon uvoda u kojemu se tematizira pojam i povijest bioetike, u članku se govori o počecima, razvoju i stanju bioetike u Hrvatskoj, i to u tri aspekta: znanstveno-stručne rasprave o bioetičkim problemima, bioetički senzibilitet i bioetička institucionalizacija. Pritom se posebna pozornost posvećuje konceptu integrativne bioetike, koji je razvijen u okviru projekta bioetičke suradnje u području jugoistočne Europe, gdje Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo ima vrlo važnu ulogu.After the introductory part on the notion of bioethics and its history, the paper deals with the (...) beginnings, development and condition of bioethics in Croatia from the perspective of scientific discussions about bioethical issues, then from the perspective of bioethical sensibility and finally from the bioethics institutionalization perspective. Special attention is thereby given to the concept of integrative bioethics, developed within the framework of bioethical cooperation in South-Eastern Europe, where the Croatian Philosophical Society plays an extremely important role. (shrink)

A common understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) among students and practical users is often plagued by a number of “myths”, that is, widely accepted claims on which there is not really a general consensus among experts in foundations of QM. These myths include wave-particle duality, time-energy uncertainty relation, fundamental randomness, the absence of measurement-independent reality, locality of QM, nonlocality of QM, the existence of well-defined relativistic QM, the claims that quantum field theory (QFT) solves the problems of relativistic QM or (...) that QFT is a theory of particles, as well as myths on black-hole entropy. The fact is that the existence of various theoretical and interpretational ambiguities underlying these myths does not yet allow us to accept them as proven facts. I review the main arguments and counterarguments lying behind these myths and conclude that QM is still a not-yet-completely-understood theory open to further fundamental research. (shrink)

The present volume marks the beginning of a series of "Sanskrit Texts From the Tibetan Autonomous Region" jointly published by the publishing houses of the China Tibetology Research Center, Beijing, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, on the basis of a "General Agreement on Cooperative Studies of Copies of Sanskrit Texts and their Joint Publication" signed January 9, 2004. It is also the first result of a cooperation between the Chinese Tibetology Research Center and the Institute for Cultural and (...) Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with the aim of making these unique jewels of philosophical and religious texts from the Buddhist past which are preserved in their original Sanskrit language in the TAR available in scholarly editions for the first time. This volume consists of two parts. The critically edited Sanskrit text of Jinendrabuddhi's Pramanasamuccayatika, chapter 1 is accompanied by a diplomatic edition of the text. The editions are based on photocopies of a palm-leaf manuscript kept in Lhasa which, to our present knowledge, is the only one extent. Jinendrabuddhi's commentary of the second half of the eighth century CE is, moreover, the only commentary known to have been written on that work which marks the very beginning of the Buddhist tradition of epistemology and logic in the first half of the sixth century: Dignaga's Pramanasamuccaya. The linguistic and interpretational value of Jinendrabuddhi's text is particularly great in view of the fact that Dignaga's seminal work has not yet been discovered in the original Sanskrit, and that his various polemical treatises on other epistemological authors and schools of his time are unlikely to have been transmitted very long. Moreover, Jinendrabuddhi provides us with numerous quotations from works before Dignaga which belong to all the traditions of brahmanical classical Indian philosophy, but have been irretrievably lost. The great import of Jinendrabuddhi's work has long been well-known through its Tibetan translation. Thus, the publication of its Sanskrit original will have far-reaching consequences for the knowledge and interpretation of the Indian philosophical traditions in their classical Gupta period expressions. (shrink)