Scholars have long wrestled with the question of why the Laws of Hammurabi provide two different sanctions for the theft of temple (and palace) property: the death penalty (§6) and thirtyfold restitution (§8). While reviewing Neo- and Late Babylonian evidence on sacrilegious theft, this paper argues that Babylonian law neatly distinguished between the theft of sacred objects and the theft of nonsacred temple property, which incurred different penalties, corresponding to those that §6 and §8 of the Laws of Hammurabi impose. (...) It further seeks to identify the criteria that determined the classification of certain objects as res sacrae and the legal and cultic consequences of sacrilegious theft. (shrink)

Powrót do filozofii starożytnej Grecji pozwala przypomnieć etyczny wymiar politycznej aktywności, w którym umiejętność łączenia dobra własnego z dobrem ogółu postrzegano jako świadectwo rozumnej natury człowieka wolnego i odpowiedzialnego zarazem. Republikański ideał życia zostaje przez Arendt skonfrontowany z dominującymi tendencjami politycznymi oraz ekonomicznymi, które rozwinęły się w nowożytnej kulturze europejskiej. Etyczne zdeprecjonowanie sfery publicznej prowadziło do postrzegania jej w kategoriach przymusu i przemocy, stanowiących zagrożenie indywidualnej wolności. Na znaczeniu zyskała natomiast sfera indywidualnej aktywności, związanej zwłaszcza z pracą wytwórczą, zarobkowaniem oraz (...) konsumowaniem. Zwyciężyła idea prywatności, bogactwa, rywalizacji. Narodziło się społeczeństwo masowe, składające się ze zatomizowanych jednostek niezdolnych do wzięcia na siebie odpowiedzialności za wspólnotę polityczną. (shrink)

A theoretical analysis of our contemporary society's relationships to the dead, specifically the dead of Native Americans, as affected by the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Until recently, our contemporary culture has often only dealt with the relationships with the dead on a subconscious and superficial level. With the advent of N AGPRA, we must now explicitly address issues regarding obligations and relations to the dead. For the first time, these issues are institutionalized by federal legislation. (...) Although now written into law, the regulations have yet to be tested, and thus upheld, in federal court. In addition, the parameters of NAGPRA are vague. To minimize conflict we must eliminate vagaries. Clear definitions of how, why and under what circumstances we are (at least legally) obligated to the dead and what do our obligations reflect or say about the dominant culture may be thought of as defining our "death consciousness.". (shrink)

Tekst stawia pytania, czy i jak możliwe jest porozumienie między ludźmi wyznającymi odmienne wartości, oraz jaka powinna być etyka otwarta na takie porozumienie, a zarazem umożliwiająca walkę z dyskryminacją. Wychodząc od dyskusji R. Rorty’ego i C. Geertza, wykazuję, że powinniśmy odrzucić używane tam pojęcia etnocentryzmu i relatywizmu, gdyż są wieloznaczne, a istotny podział biegnie pomiędzy ich różnymi znaczeniami. Oparta na empatii i uznaniu etyka D. T. Meyers pozwala rozwiązać problemy wynikające z różnorodności, zarówno wewnątrz–, jak i zewnątrzkulturowej. Jej konsekwencją jest (...) radykalna zmiana etycznego paradygmatu: zamiast ogólnych reguł, indywidualne podejście do konkretnej sytuacji. Aby jednak możliwe było jej zastosowanie, kultura Zachodu musi zrezygnować z roszczeń do uniwersalności. (shrink)

This paper describes the general concepts of Arnold Berleant's urban metaphors in order to use them as a background for presenting a different perspective on the aesthetics of engagement through the prism of contemporary dance strategies and design practices in architecture and urban planning.

After the death in 1934 of his father-in-law Samuel Fischer, founder of the well-known publishing house S. Fischer in Berlin, Gottfried Bermann Fischer moved to Vienna with the aim of publishing the works of prominent German-speaking Jewish and non-Jewish authors who could no longer publish in National Socialist Germany. After the ‘Anschluss’ to Nazi Germany in March 1938 he fled to Sweden with help from Karl Otto and Tor Bonnier, heads of Albert Bonniers Förlag. Eagerly observed by the Nazi authorities, (...) Gottfried Bermann Fischer published books of well-known German, Austrian, and Swedish writers. What did this German-language publishing work look like in a foreign-language environment? Who were the employees? Where were the sales markets? Why did this cooperation between Bermann Fischer and Bonnier fail in the end? The main focus of this article is on Bermann Fischer’s efforts on behalf of German-speaking authors outside Nazi Germany, and on the resentments against a (foreign) Jewish entrepreneur and Bonniers’ engagement in this last remaining large German publishing house in exile after May 1940, even after Gottfried Bermann Fischer’s expulsion from Sweden. (shrink)

Author: Bogaczyk Małgorzata Title: THE DIFFERENT ART. ON THE PRIMITIVE ART, NAÏVE ART AND ART BRUT (Sztuka Inna. O sztuce prymitywnej, naiwnej i surowej) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2006, vol:.6, number: 2006/1, pages: 239-256 Keywords: DIFFERENT ART, PRIMITIVE ART, ART BRUT, NAÏVE ART Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail:In the sketch I show some similarities in the artist’s way of perceiving the work of art, the process of artistic creativity, and the fate (...) of work in the inner reality, to quote Proust. The fact that all art is met with wider or narrower reception is the background for my analysis of the general phenomenon of the popularity of art fascinating or being rejected because of its variety. (shrink)

The paper examines changing media representations of Jacinda Ardern, former Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister, from the global broadcaster, BBC News Online, across three key milestones in the politician’s career: her appointment, re-election and resignation. Our socio-semantic analysis of this representation demonstrates how the media intersect her professional identity with age, gender, social class, and later, her identity as a mother. Whilst earlier coverage of Ardern’s career praises her successfully reconciling these aspects of her personal, social and professional identities, later (...) coverage implies that ‘having it all’ was never really possible longer term. We argue that the visibility of this discourse, and the focus on intersectional aspects of Ardern’s personal and social identities, leads to her resignation being positively evaluated as her ‘finally’ succumbing and committing to the ‘natural’ inevitabilities of heterosexual family life. The article considers what such representation means for Ardern and women politicians and leaders more broadly, and contextualises these findings in relation to existing research on media representations of women in politics and leadership. Finally, we also consider the value of a more longitudinal approach to tracking the cumulative effects of the representation of social actors and groups. (shrink)

The job of scientists is to try to distinguish what is true from what is false by means of observation and experiment. That job has been made difficult by some philosophers of science who appear to give academic respectability to relativist, and even postmodernist, postures. This chapter suggests that the contributions of philosophers to causal understanding have been unhelpful. It puts the case for randomised studies as the safest guarantee of the reliability of scientific evidence. It uses the case of (...) hormone replacement therapy to illustrate the importance of randomisation, and the case of processed meat and cancer to illustrate the problems that arise in the absence of randomised tests. Finally, it discusses the opposition to randomisation that has come from some philosophers of science. (shrink)

The supple and ever-present search for the possibilities offered by the narrative form in fictional writing corresponds to the use of the narrative as a mode of understanding and explaining our being-in-the-world in philosophy. The intimate liaison between the realm of fictional imagination and that of human everydayness inspires writers to seek ways to tackle issues of temporality, the conflicting character of human drives, and the ultimately unresolvable tension between finitude and infinitude. As a literary and philosophical category, the narrative (...) remains an inexhaustible space for the exploration of the way we understand our lives. I propose a hermeneutic investigation of the interactions between the art of narration and the categories of space, presence/absence, and (be)longingness as evoked in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This article engages Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, and, more specifically, his notions of homelessness and homecoming, to shed light on the inimitable character of Woolf’s artistic representations of the spatial dimension of human existence, reality viewed as both tremulous and solid, as well as of human embodiment and the disparity/closeness between the corporeal and the spiritual. (shrink)

The authoress focuses her attention on three major issues. She starts her deliberations by referring to the roots of philosophical and pedagogical ides of Europeanism. Then, she describes contemporary Europe from the perspective: of the world (external) and Europe itself (internal) creating a perspective for further analyses. Assuming that education is a screen of culture, the authoress points out interpretative bridges aimed at portraying education holistically understood as: being in the world, in Europe, “at home”. Ultimately, she shows the challenging (...) areas for education, which should integrate three modi of contemporary man’s existence: cosmopolitan, European, ethnic. (shrink)

The practice of evaluating music and music works is widespread. That practice must depend on recognition of values and/or qualities in those works. However this be true it isn't always clear what these values and qualities are and how are the believes entrenched in theory and practice of evaluating musical works. In the aesthetics the most celebrated types of values are aesthetic values and qualities. Author of this paper reexamines the theory of aesthetic values as existing independently from artistic values (...) and artistic qualities. Starting from Monroe C. Beardsley, through Roman Ingarden's theory of value and coming to Nick Zangwill's understanding of evaluation of artworks, the author approaches the problem of judging musical works and the theory that is most needed to ground such practice. (shrink)

This article argues that sustainability is essentially a contested concept that not only cannot be sufficiently defined in a one-forall blueprint, but requires a new mode of self-actualization of human potential in dialogical, cooperative learning processes. Inherent aporias and their ethical implications are illustrated by an analysis of the mainstream interpretation of the sustainability concept in the context of the relationship between the logic of accumulation and improvement and insatiable human desires as off-springs of a deeper ontological transformation of modernity. (...) A philosophical account of technology and modern sciencewill be introduced in order to investigate overconsumption driven by mimetic desires and the transformative and dialectic dynamics of desire. A contemplative learning model is suggested as a useful basis for a reasonable interpretation of the sustainability concept. (shrink)

W artykule analizowane są z filozoficznej perspektywy niezdaniowe semantyczne koncepcje nauk empirycznych, głównie ich najnowsza, to jest strukturalistyczna wersja. Dowodzi się, że strukturaliści wielorako interpretują swe fundamentalne kategorie: modelu, teorii empirycznej oraz relacji spełniania, przy czym niektóre interpretacje są niespójne ze swą wyjściową bazą, to jest logiczną teorią modeli. Konstruując koncepcję teorii empirycznej, strukturaliści dokonują szczególnie rozumianej transgresji logicznej teorii modeli.

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (shrink)