Abstract: This article is a critique of the research perspective that analyzes political myths based on the methods of the study of myths. The author points to the need to supplement this perspective with the Lacanian theory of fantasy, which allows for capture of subjective desire manifested in myths. Theories in the study of myths (of…
Abstract: Military history has to date shown little interest in war periodicity. It will soon witness the confirmation or disproof of a war forecast made over thirty years ago, by a socio-political model of Anglo-American culture that predicted a major civic and war crisis for the 2020s. Extending that model beyond the scope of original authors, Neil…
Abstract: In a critical commentary on the final paragraph of The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht, ¶1067 (1885)) it is argued that Nietzsche ironically presupposes the metaphysics, and even the theology, he putatively eschews and repudiates. Nietzsche’s anti-realism about aesthetics, in its broadest extension, is refuted by showing that the Apollonian is not an illusion but a fundamental…
Abstract: In this paper, the author reflects on the concept of second-person perspective in Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy, with a special emphasis on his ethics of compassion and moral psychology. By referring to some of the pioneers who introduced the concept of second-person perspective into philosophy, the author first tries to define the terms: second-person perspective and second-person relatedness….
Abstract: This paper defends that gastronomy is a medium for artistic expression. It explores two arguments frequently used to defend that gastronomy is not an artistic medium: the problem of consumption and the asymmetry between aesthetic judgments and judgments of personal preference. The former defends that gastronomy and fine arts are fundamentally…
Abstract: The idea of human nature can be wielded to justify exploitation and domination, but drawing on the work of Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin and others, I argue consideration of our embodied nature can help humans thrive. The anarchist tradition encompasses people’s tendency to reject unnecessary authority, and it invokes the sociality inseparable from human…
Abstract: This essay explicates the position of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment on the problem of drugs. At the focus of my analysis are the passages in “Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment” which interpret the Homeric myth of the Lotus-eaters in terms of the modern phenomenon of substance abuse. Since the Dialectic reads…
Abstract: The article discusses satisfaction with self-presentation as the way of functioning (modus vivendi) of a magnanimous man in relation to Aristotelian ethics. Even though self-presentation is usually considered as a kind of biologically determined instinct, it may be argued that self-presentation is also an aspect of the actions of a magnanimous man. Naturalist social theories concerning moral…
Abstract: We are at a moment in history where the mimetic system of attraction and repulsion, which René Girard considers the foundation of all pathologies of resentment, has reached the point of undifferentiation, both in culture and in an individual sense of agency. Describing the “explosion” associated with the “formation of organized collectives,” Jurij Lotman locates…
Abstract: This paper aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the development of Lithuanian philosophical thought and philosophy of culture in Lithuania, focusing specifically on the concept of integral democracy. The emergence of Lithuanian philosophy in the Lithuanian language, which dates back to the early twentieth century, coincided with the formation of the modern Lithuanian state…