Han Kang's 2007 novel The Vegetarian, published in English translation in 2015, tells a story of one woman's refusal to eat meat. Yeong-hye's refusal comes from her desire to eschew the intersecting violence of patriarchy and carnism, which gradually reveals an underlying psychosis and drive towards self-attrition. Because of the central motifs of bodily transgression and self-abnegation in the novel, critics have compered Han Kang's Yeong-hye to Frantz Kafka's Gregor Samsa or the hunger artist. Just as the hunger artist seeks (...) seclusion from human sociality in the space of his vacuous interiority, so does Yeong-hye sequester herself from the gaze of others in her visions of... (shrink)

Hierarchy of systems organization is used as a framework in advancing methodological guidelines for posing correct questions related to ecological diversity.Diversity if defined in general terms as a property of a set of elements dependent on and determines: by the epistemological perspective. Ontological diversity, because it is indefinite, is regarded as unmeasurable.

Although Karl Jaspers was not a practicing Christian, a religion has always been a very important part of his considerations. The philosopher rejected the truth of revelation, but believed that faith can be very important part of human life. What we call “philosophy of religion” in Jaspers thought is not reflection about religious revelation, but consist of inquires about faith in that revelation. Author tried to ascertain if on the ground of Jaspers’s philosophy, religion, not being true in scientific sense, (...) can be true in other sense and if so – what sense of truth would it be. In wider perspective the question is: what “the truth of religion” means? Author shows similarities and dissimilarities between religious faith and Jaspers' concept of philosophical faith. (shrink)

The aim of my article is to juxtapose and compare the concept of man immersed in the finite and on the other hand transcending towards the infinite. My task is to extract and analyse the fabulously contrasting moments in the thought of Heidegger and Levinas on the question of the connec-tion and interpenetration of time and death. Both philosophers grow out of the phenomenological tradition, but their analyses of the problem of the connection between time and death go in different (...) directions. The experiences of time and death are inextricably linked, but for Heidegger time is the ontological horizon of being, and for Levinas time is a way of being beyond being. For Heidegger, dying is about coming to the fullness of being. For Levinas, facing death is a struggle and even a war, a transcendence towards the infinite. While for Heidegger death is the completion of the end, for Levinas death means an encounter with radical otherness, it is an opening and not a closing. (shrink)

Magdalena Krasińska A Work of Music in Roman Ingarden’s AestheticsThe theme taken in this article is an ontological concept of the musical work of Roman Ingarden developed on the basis of phenomenological aesthetics. According to the eidetic reduction Ingarden rejects any colloquial opinions about how the existence of a musical composition, so that he holds that musical work is not the same nor the mental experience, or the performance, or to the music notations. Making a critique of the idealistic, (...) psychologistic and materialistic positions to explain how the existence of the musical work, Ingarden classified it as a object of purely intentional, where the musical notation is the ontological basis. Currently notation don’t allow for consolidation of all the moments of the work, especially not sound moments, so musical composition as every being intentional, is the scheme required to complete and define more precisely where are the ontological gaps; each performance of a musical work is the complete of potential spaces, specification of works. A few comments on so constructed theory publishes musicologist Zofia Lissa. The main objection against Ingarden is the fact that his concept aspires to be universal, while he created it solely on the basis constituted in the scores ‘classical’ works of modern European music, while ignoring other musical phenomena, such as avant-garde music or folklore. Finally raised is a matter of the ontology of newest pieces of music, belonging to the so-called popular music, that do not have ontological basis in the form of musical notation, what in view of the Ingarden’s theory does problematic the issue of their identity. Keywords: ontological concept of the musical work, phenomenological aesthetics, Roman Ingarden, identity of the musical work. (shrink)

Since their first screen appearances in the 1930s, zombies have enjoyed immense cinematic popularity. Defined by Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead as mindless, violent, decaying and infectious, they successfully function as ultimate fiends in horror films. Yet, even those morbid undead started evolving into more appealing, individualized and even sympathetic characters, especially when the comic potential of zombies is explored. To allow a zombie to become a romantic protagonist, however, one that can love and be loved by a (...) human, another evolutionary step had to be taken, one fostered by a literary association. This paper analyzes Jonathan Levine’s Warm Bodies, a 2013 film adaptation of Isaac Marion’s zombie novel inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It examines how Shakespeare’s Romeo helps transform the already evolved cinematic zombie into a romantic protagonist, and how Shakespearean love tragedy, with its rich visual cinematic legacy, can successfully locate a zombie narrative in the romantic comedy convention. Presenting the case of Shakespeare intersecting the zombie horror tradition, this paper illustrates the synergic exchanges of literary icons and the cinematic monstrous. (shrink)

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has upended lives and thrown the taken for granted into disarray. One of the most affected groups were teachers and students, faced with the necessity of school closures and—where logistically feasible—an urgent shift to emergency remote instruction, often with little prior notice. In this contribution, based on an online survey involving participants from 91 countries, we offer a perspective bridging the two groups, by investigating the role of teachers' demographics and professional adaptation to emergency (...) remote teaching in their perception of how their students were coping with the novel situation. The resultant model explains 51% of variance, and highlights the relative weights of the predictor variables. Given the importance of teacher perceptions in the effectiveness of their instruction, the findings may offer valuable guidelines for future training and intervention programs. (shrink)

En este trabajo presentamos un registro de la historia de vida de Mónica Medina, integrante de la comunidad weenhayek Quebracho, ubicada a 5 kilómetros de Tartagal, provincia de Salta. En esa memoria sobre sus ancestros desde tres generaciones previas hasta el presente, Mónica relata los recuerdos sobre el modo en que su familia vivió la Guerra del Paraguay que les obligó a desplazarse; las epidemias; el proceso de trashumancia y las distintas expulsiones a que se vieron sometidos; los modos en (...) que se fue transformando la vida a medida que se acercaban a los centros urbanos; la aproximación a la política partidaria y la formación de dirigentes; el proceso de conformación de demandas de reconocimiento de identidad étnica y las expectativas de futuro. Partimos de entender que este relato de vida, si bien es individual, se inscribe en la memoria colectiva de su familia, su comunidad y su pueblo, por cuanto resulta de experimentar, desde su trayectoria, ciertos recuerdos comunes. Este registro adquiere aquí un doble sentido epistémico: por un lado, permite conocer datos nodales sobre las trayectorias y las demandas actuales del Pueblo Weenhayek en torno a sus derechos a la identidad en Argentina, y particularmente sobre la disputa que libra por el reconocimiento estatal y social de su carácter de pueblo preexistente; pero a la vez, nos introduce en el trabajo de memoria que es central en el proceso de etnicidad que protagonizan estas comunidades weenhayek en su demanda y ejercicio de derechos actuales. (shrink)

This article discusses the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the perspective of a formulation that we believe represents it succinctly: the dialectic of formalization. The main thesis of the article is that Badiou’s doctrine of the four truth procedures can be understood as a doctrine of a dialectical realization of new and universal forms in the world. The dialectic of formalization announces a double procedure – an autonomous and creative procedure for the production of a new true form in the (...) world and a process of the formation of continuity in discontinuity. Moreover, the dialectic of formalization represents a connection between Badiou’s mature work and his early writings from the late 1960s. Even though in the 1960s and 1970s Badiou had not yet introduced the concepts of subject and truth in the sense that he understands them today, it is possible to support the thesis that there is an indisputable connection between Badiou’s early concept of formalization and his later concept of generic truth procedure. We will try to show that the dialectic of formalization designates the continuity between Badiou’s early and mature work. (shrink)

This article analyses how normative decision theory is understood by economists. The paradigmatic example of normative decision theory, discussed in the article, is the expected utility theory. It...

This article concerns the problem of assessing selected body compo- sition parameters after completion of antitumor therapy and comparing them with the same parameters of healthy children. A high percentage of overweight and obesity, as well as abnormal fat distribution in convalescents with cancer shows a significant adverse effect of therapy on body composition and suggests the need for early intervention in terms of diet and exercise, which would help patients to quickly achieve the proper parameters of body composition. Two (...) main problems will be mentioned during the presented data analysis. Firstly, in each group there was a small number of observations. Because of this, the real differences between examined subgroups may have been omitted. Secondarily, many variables are correlated and are not normally distributed. Therefore, be- side the standard statistical tests to compare two groups, principal component analysis was applied to reduce the dimensions of the attribute space and to attempt to classify two groups of patients. (shrink)

The entire Upper Silesian dialect is based on the Polish language system, and all elements from German are treated as borrowings. The main aim of the research was to focus on the issue of German loanwords in the field of clothing vocabulary that appear in the Upper Silesian dialect and which are listed in the “Dictionary of Silesian dialect” by Barbara and Adam Podgórski. The question of the assimilation of these borrowings was analysed on three levels: morphological, graphic and semantic.

We examined the influence of identity fusion and status of evaluator on willingness to fight for one’s group after group-descriptive or not group-descriptive feedback. The valence of evaluative information was varied as well: feedback either support negative group-stereotype or contradict negative group-stereotype. In two studies we partially replicated previous findings on self-verification. Individuals fused with one’s group were more prone than non fused to fight for group members after receiving, challenging, not group-describing feedback, but only when evaluator’s status was high. (...) When the evaluator’ status was low, fused participants engaged in self-enhancement strategies: that is they endorse radical behavior after negative, even if group-describing, feedback. We discuss the importance of identity fusion and evaluator’s status for determining when self-enhancement and self-verification will and will not be evoke. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss Badiou’s concept of the world through the somewhat unusual metaphor of “the anatomy of the world”. The anatomy of the world allows us to approach the concept of the world through the idea of ​​its constitution, architecture, structure – its anatomy. But as we show in the first part of the text, in order to derive the anatomy of the world, we need a corpse of the world – the world must die. Following the philosophy (...) of Alain Badiou, we demonstrate that the world in its objective existence is indifferent to the question of life and death. Whether the world lives or dies depends only on the realisation of the truth procedures in the world on the basis of which the world is subjectivised. The world suffers from mortifying impulses, as the reactive and obscure forms of subjectivity actively work against the realisation of truths in the world. Through the artistic presentations of anatomy by Rembrandt van Rijn and John Donne, we also elaborate the tense relationship between the corpse of the world and the life of the world. Although art often sees science as something that kills the world, our final point is that the world can also come to life through science. (shrink)

A partir das noções de liberdade, situação e responsabilidade e suas relações, apresentadanos textos sartrianos aqui escolhidos – a saber: O existencialismo é um humanismo e O ser eo nada –, objetiva-se destacar a crítica à doutrina do livre-arbítrio, própria do pensarcristão, que acarreta a recusa do pensar determinista em Sartre a respeito das ações econdutas humanas, sobretudo no destaque que o filósofo confere aos termos situação econtingência, vinculadas à sua compreensão de liberdade. Trata-se de sinalizar, na ênfasedo valorar singular (...) enquanto compreendido como próprio do humano, a suaconsequência: a recusa do caráter transcendente das ideias de bem e mal, virtude ou vício,que não deixam de apontar para uma concepção ética na visão sartriana da existênciahumana e do modo de agir e posicionar-se no mundo. Em síntese, a motivação maior sevolta para a reelaboração da moral para além do pensar cristão, que acentua a implicaçãodo sujeito no seu fazer-se, a sua responsabilidade em relação aos acontecimentos eprojetos que eliminam a passividade e a indiferença na ação e no posicionamento do parasino mundo, que a ele se apresenta e nele ele se revela. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to explain how, with the proposition "cogito ergo sum", Descartes contradicts the A axiom from the Theory of knowledge of Leonardo Polo, by accepting the pasivenness of the knowledge and denying it as an operation of knowing an object, in wich the cognizant and the cognizance are one in act.

Z satysfakcją oddajemy do rąk Czytelników wznowioną w nieco zmienionej postaci książeczkę wydaną z okazji przyznania Pani Profesor Barbarze Skardze tytułu doktora honoris causa Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu w roku 2000. Jak świadczą przytaczane tu recenzje w przewodzie i laudacja, było to wydarzenie dla wielu osób niezwykle ważne. Na sympozjum zorganizowane w przeddzień uroczystości przybyło liczne grono uczniów i przyjaciół Pani Profesor z całej Polski, dla wielu bowiem była i dla wielu pozostała do dziś wzorem humanisty i człowieka. Z (...) przedmowy Rektora UMK prof. Andrzeja Tretyna Pomysł ponownego wydania niniejszej książeczki powstał w gronie osób oraz instytucji zaangażowanych w organizację uroczystości związanych ze stuleciem urodzin Pani Profesor Barbary Skargi. Niemal dwadzieścia lat temu Pani Profesor uzyskała tytuł doktora honoris causa Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu. Było to bez wątpienia wydarzenie ważne zarówno dla Pani Profesor, jak i dla toruńskiego środowiska filozoficznego. […] Fakt zaś nakładania się różnych czasowości – rocznicy urodzin, niemal okrągłej rocznicy nadania tytułu doktora honoris causa – jest dobrym pretekstem, by zwrócić uwagę na znaczenie tego wydarzenia, a zwłaszcza jego seminaryjnej części udokumentowanej w niniejszym wydawnictwie. Z przedmowy do drugiego wydania dyrektora Instytutu Filozofii UMK w Toruniu dra hab. Krzysztofa Abriszewskiego, prof. UMK. (shrink)

The article attempts to show how memory influenced the formation of the unique spiritual identity of Edith Stein, who was born and grew up in the religious tradition of Judaism, but as an adult became the member of the Catholic Church. What seems to be unusual in her religious self-perception is the fact that despite conversion, Edith permanently regarded herself as a Jew and firmly claimed that she constantly belonged to the Jewish community. Her mind-set was immensely influenced by the (...) image of Jesus as a devout Jew portrayed in the New Testament, zealously practicing the sacred rites of Judaism, as well as her later analysis of the Christian and Jewish ways of worship. Her study exposed a deep bond linking Christianity with Judaism and by revealing this bond Edith Stein evoked the forgotten truth about the Jewish roots of Christianity which is deeply rooted in the faith of the Old Testament and draws a lot from the richness of its tradition. Undoubtedly, this important link reminded by Edith Stein, raised and developed later by the official teaching of the Catholic Church, was possible because she remembered the religious tradition in which she grew up and which she experienced in her childhood. Memory, therefore, became the constituent that shaped her own spiritual identity, but also contributed to the reinterpretation of the identity of the Christian community. (shrink)

The paper examines selected aspects of the defence closing argument in a highly publicised criminal trial to illustrate the orchestration of various semiotic resources in legal persuasion and to explain their role in the creation of meaning. The study demonstrates that closing arguments are multimodal performances whose persuasiveness results from the combination of modes (speech, image, video, gaze, gesture, posture, proxemics) which contextualise and strengthen one another, rather than language alone. Drawing on earlier research into multimodality, courtroom rhetoric and proximity (...) in disciplinary genres, the analysis centres on the ways in which the defence counsel controls the rhetorical features of his narrative and constructs himself and the audience as people with similar understandings and goals. The study specifically demonstrates how the counsel constructs the proximity of commitment, the proximity of membership and the proximity of experience. It explores such facets of proximity as: organisation, argument structure, credibility, stance and engagement, and identifies key rhetorical strategies used to achieve the intended communicative effect. The analysis clearly shows that the persuasiveness of the counsel’s performance depends on the synchronisation of a range of meaning-making resources, which, if used in isolation, would result in a much less engaging argument. (shrink)

Love is a universal experience that most people desire. A serious, long-term, and stigmatized illness makes entering and maintaining close relationships difficult, however. Ten persons, who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lived with their illness for between years and decades of their lifetimes, shared their stories. They reported how the illness has influenced their emotional experiences regarding love and their intimate relationship experiences. We present here a qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological analysis (IPA) of their narratives. This analysis has been done (...) with an explicit intention to give voice to the patient’s perspective. The results highlight how illness adjustment and hospitalizations have an alienating effect on relationships through stigmatization and self-stigmatization; how illness creates psychological obstacles to love, such as diminished trust toward oneself and others; and how long-term patients experience practical difficulties in creating and sustaining relationships, such as poverty. Moreover, we show how patients experience changes in sexuality and the risks involved in it, and discuss possible coping strategies from their perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper we have two main aims. First, we present an account of mood-congruent delusions in depression (hereafter, depressive delusions). We propose that depressive delusions constitute acknowledgements of self-related beliefs acquired as a result of a negatively biased learning process. Second, we argue that depressive delusions have the potential for psychological and epistemic benefits despite their obvious epistemic and psychological costs. We suggest that depressive delusions play an important role in preserving a person’s overall coherence and narrative identity at (...) a critical time, and thus can be regarded as epistemically innocent. (shrink)

This paper presents a dialogue system called Lorenzen–Hamblin Natural Dialogue (LHND), in which participants can commit formal fallacies and have a method of both identifying and withdrawing formal fallacies. It therefore provides a tool for the dialectical evaluation of force of argument when players advance reasons which are deductively incorrect. The system is inspired by Hamblin’s formal dialectic and Lorenzen’s dialogical logic. It offers uniform protocols for Hamblin’s and Lorenzen’s dialogues and adds a protocol for embedding them. This unification required (...) a reformulation of the original description of Lorenzen’s system to distinguish “between different stances that a person might take in the discussion”, as suggested by Hodges. The LHND system is compared to Walton and Krabbe’s Complex Persuasion Dialogue using an example of a dialogue. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe coronavirus pandemic affects all areas of life. Performing arts and music studies have also experienced considerable changes, with university closures and a fluctuating return to normal and more limited operations. Prior studies detail the impact of the pandemic on college students, but we do not yet know what specific consequences it has for music students. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on music students’ health, practicing behavior, and everyday life.MethodsIn July 2020, (...) we conducted an online survey of 80 students enrolled in performance and music education programs at a German music university and compared these data with data from a survey of 75 students at the same music university carried out in summer 2019.ResultsThe survey revealed that the coronavirus pandemic led to a decrease in practicing hours and an increase of stressful thoughts and feelings. Students were mostly satisfied with Corona-measures taken by the university. Of analyzed determinants, only general fear of health problems was identified as a significant predictor of mental health status. Mental health status did not significantly differ between students surveyed in 2019 and 2020.ConclusionKnowledge about the specific challenges the pandemic poses for music students can help conservatories to better respond to the needs of their students. Specifically, this study will inform future measures supporting music students in coping with difficult situations like a pandemic. (shrink)

This special issue on posthumanist perspectives on affect seeks to create a platform for thinking about the intersection of, on the one hand, the posthumanist project of radically reconfiguring the meaning of the “human” in light of the critiques of a unified and bounded subjectivity and, on the other, the insights coming from recent scholarship on affect and feeling about the subject, sociality, and connectivity. Posthumanism stands for diverse theoretical positions which together call into question the anthropocentric assertion of the (...) human as a distinctive, unique and dominant form of life – in turn, the concept of affect has been linked with ideas of increasing and decreasing energetic intensities, which underlie, but for some also precede, processes of individuation and subjectivation.The contributors to this issue consider critically the vistas opened by affect studies and by posthumanism. Coming from diverse disciplinary traditions, including literature, philosophy, critical sociology, visual arts, and heritage studies, the articles contribute to the four thematic idioms of this issue in an attempt to structure a dialogical space on posthumanist perspectives on affect and on affect-based politics. Questions of environmental governance, the critique of speciesism, the formation of cross-species solidarity, the politics of the “inhuman”, biopolitics and necropolitics form the intellectual mosaic of this issue. Finally, we pose the question of “academic affects”, in circulation in the researcher's encounter with her others – humans, insects, ghostly presences or inanimate objects – and we ask how these affects, including anger and mourning, but also joyful affirmation, are brought to bear on the process of writing. (shrink)