Abstract: Paul Ricoeur uncovered the creative aspect of language in his theory of metaphor. The metaphor is a special combination of words that as a clash of distant semantic fields forces the reader to interpret the sentence in a new way and see things in a new light. It is a process in which the imagination plays an important role. Ricoeur…
Abstract: In the first part of the paper the author offers a frank reassessment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He dismisses the Tractatus as philosophically irrelevant but points to the unshaken validity of the main tenents of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, especially the idea of speech acts being inevitably interwoven with extralinguistic, bodily practices. In the second part…
Abstract: The article contains a review of the main arguments proposed by the philosophers of late structuralism (including the so-called post-structuralism) against Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, particularly, his theses on semantics. Polemics against the Husserlian conception of semantics are grounded in the structuralists’ opposition to the various theses of Husserl’s phenomenologies (both the transcendental constitutive and…
Abstract: Transcendental Phenomenology of language wrestles with the relationship of language to mind’s manifestation of being. Of special interest is the sense in which language is, like one’s embodiment, a medium of manifestation. Not only does it permit sharing the world because words as worldly things embody meanings that can be the same for everyone;…
Abstract: John Dewey, as Sidney Hook characterized him, was the philosopher of science and freedom. Dewey, as Larry Hickman has demonstrated, was also a philosopher of technology. And, as most people familiar with Dewey know, he was a philosopher of education and democracy. The complex of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy requires re-examination, not only…
Abstract: The article focuses on a change in the understanding of death. Transhumanism is here understood as a reaction to the technicization of culture. One of the areas which are declared to be transcended by technology is human mortality. Analysis of such a change is conducted to show that one does not need a working technology that abolishes death, but that the…
Abstract: In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous…
Abstract: This article considers the appeal of the cute body and its ambiguous relationship with the lovable. While cuteness is an aesthetic that is subjectively determined and expressed, it can also embellish a body with features that are standardized by systems of commodification. The cute body possesses a diminutive and vulnerable charm, but…
Abstract: Philosophy should seriously take into account the presence of computers. Computer enthusiasts point towards a new Pythagoreanism, a far reaching generalization of logical or mathematical views of the world. Most of us try to retain a belief in the permanence of human superiority over robots. To justify this superiority, Gödel’s theorem has been invoked, but it…
Abstract: The postmodern university is experiencing a legitimation crisis because of a deepening and corrosive mistrust of all forms of authority; even those that are intended to benefit students by enabling them to “think critically”, or to deepen and improve their knowledge and skills. Some of the problem is rooted in prevailing cultural and economic trends, but others…