Preview: The status of philosophy of culture seems to be notoriously unclear. Since its birth as a methodologically self-aware discipline, it constantly provokes controversies and questions concerning its nature, scope, and objective field of cognitive interests. Is it to be conceived – as it was intended by Wilhelm Dilthey – as a kind of philosophical foundation for Geisteswissenschaften and even…
Preview: A relation is what connects two separated beings or what a being joins with itself; what is, in other words, in-between two beings or inside two parts of one being. Relations may be conceived as external or internal to those beings, as an essential part, or as separate beings of another nature. One usually cannot easily perceive or experience relations themselves (although…
Preview: If we define “philosophy” simply as “love of knowledge,” then it is obviously a requirement for any serious scientific, scholarly, or professional pursuit – in whatever field. Philosophy’s relevance is also wide-ranging or even universal when we define it as the most basic or general discipline: the one that poses foundational questions regarding the nature and legitimacy of…
Preview: Bergson noted that the cinematographic image does not really move. It is, then as now, a series of still photographs. The real motion in such images is produced by machinery, which imparts a kinesis, an energy of movement, to the succession of fixed images. Our perception then endows such images with their “life,” insofar as they…
Preview: Culture is the relentless, never-ending process of symbolic formations, transformations and reconfigurations. This statement, as trivial as it is, means that culture is a certain ontological excess whose nature lies in its arti- and trans-factuality, in the modes of its self-differentiation, in the inherent indeterminacy of its meanings, as well as in its historicality. Culture arises out of…
Preview: The ties between music and philosophy are strong and venerable, as they date back to the very beginnings of the latter. According to the ancient tale, Pythagoras, when passing by a smithy one day, noticed that the hammers make sounds of different pitch and, more importantly, that some of the pitch combinations feel pleasant…
Preview: The category of violence is unavoidably ambiguous, and the very moment we make an attempt at clarification or disambiguation an acute question arises, from what perspective should it be considered, philosophical, psychological, sociological, anthropological, or pedagogical? We then realize that even if we decided on one perspective, it is unavoidably intertwined with the others, which opens up…
Preview: What is language? This question seems to be as fundamental and inescapable for philosophical reflection as it is paradoxical, if not abysmal. It is fundamental since philosophy cannot and should not escape questions concerning its own basic medium, the element of its self-realization or the means of expression of its conceptualized claims and propositions….
Preview: Technology is everywhere. Whether we like it or not, technology in its manifold forms permeates all aspects of the contemporary world. Its boom is no longer limited to the “developed” countries, on the contrary, it can be observed that often poorer regions and communities are more eager to employ the most up-to-date solutions (take for example the…
Preview: The contemporary culture is marked by an essential heterodoxicality, where opposing cultural factors are constantly and effectively at play. For what we experience is unprecedented dynamics of social-cultural reality contrasted with a paradoxical form of stagnation (if not of regression). As if all changes were only meaningless variations on the same theme. What we experience are…