scholarly journals Kilka uwag o księgach, nie tylko uczonych, w prozie Andrzeja Sapkowskiego

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Krystyna Walc

Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels are not typical “books about books”. However, both The Witcher cycle and The Hussite Trilogy abound in themes associated with them. The characters read, own book collections, they themselves are authors of various works. From the titles listed in individual texts, one could compile quite an extensive bibliography. This fact encourages a description of the way various texts exist in the world presented by the creator of The Witcher. Education of a young protagonist is a good opportunity to present books one reads, and the use of this readings in further life. Contrary to what the reader would expect, the book collections he learns about do not belong to universities. As for the library in Oxenfurt, we only know its roof, which is used by poet Jaskier, wanting to free himself from the spies following him. The scholarly books can be found in various places, even in a hut in a remote area (behind a curtain of dubious purity), inhabited by the scholar in exile — Vysogota from Corvo. Not only universities and scholars (including wizards) have impressive book collections. Duchess Anarietta, who hosts the witcher and his team, has a huge library in her palace in Toussaint. The subject of banned books appears in The Hussite Trilogy, so the hidden library motif is the obvious motive. Some protagonists of The Witcher cycle are authors of books. It is worth emphasizing that the reader has the opportunity to learn at least fragments of the mentioned works. They are also read by other characters. Quotes from the characters’ works also appear in mottoes.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Verónica Heredia Ruiz

Netflix, a platform with more than 100 million users in the world, has forever changed the way television is produced and consumed. This article analyzes how this new television model convergent with Internet has transformed the concept of programming and teleclairvoyance through intensified viewing or binge watching. A conceptual review identifies the main theoretical displacements on television, programming and audiences generated by the platform, as well as a documentary analysis of news articles on the subject, and the visualization of the Original contents published until May 2017.Netflix, una plataforma con más de 100 millones de usuarios en el mundo, ha cambiado para siempre la forma como se produce y se consume la televisión. Este artículo analiza como este nuevo modelo de televisión convergente con internet ha transformado el concepto de programación y televidencias a través del visionado intensificado o binge watching. A través de una revisión conceptual se identifican los principales desplazamientos teóricos sobre televisión, programación y audiencias generadas por la plataforma, además de un análisis documental de artículos noticiosos sobre el tema, y la visualización de los contenidos originales publicados hasta mayo de 2017.


Author(s):  
Brian Barry

This chapter argues that in the study of politics, numbers make a difference: a discipline with a hundred or so members must behave in a different way from one with over a thousand. It divides the century in the middle, in 1950, the date of the PSA’s founding. The first period, then, is one of gradual expansion to the small base from which the massive expansion of the second period was launched. The chapter traces through the implications of professionalization for the way in which politics is studied, looking at the relations among subdisciplines within the subject and relations between the discipline in Britain and in the rest of the world. Britain has scarcely embraced the project of modernism with enthusiasm, so there is less provocation to fuel postmodernism. Perhaps resistance to intellectual fashion will continue to be the distinctive British trait – for better and for worse.


Author(s):  
Neal Robinson

Ibn al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on the writings of Sufis, Islamic theologians and philosophers in order to elaborate a complex theosophical system akin to that of Plotinus. He was born in Murcia (in southeast Spain) in AH 560/ad 1164, and died in Damascus in AH 638/ad 1240. Of several hundred works attributed to him the most famous are al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan Illuminations) and Fusus al-hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom). The Futuhat is an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic lore viewed from the perspective of the stages of the mystic path. It exists in two editions, both completed in Damascus – one in AH 629/ad 1231 and the other in AH 636/ad 1238 – but the work was conceived in Mecca many years earlier, in the course of a vision which Ibn al-‘Arabi experienced near the Kaaba, the cube-shaped House of God which Muslims visit on pilgrimage. Because of its length, this work has been relatively neglected. The Fusus, which is much shorter, comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who epitomize different spiritual types. Ibn al-‘Arabi claimed that he received it directly from Muhammad, who appeared to him in Damascus in AH 627/ad 1229. It has been the subject of over forty commentaries. Although Ibn al-‘Arabi was primarily a mystic who believed that he possessed superior divinely-bestowed knowledge, his work is of interest to the philosopher because of the way in which he used philosophical terminology in an attempt to explain his inner experience. He held that whereas the divine Essence is absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as a whole is the locus of manifestation of all God’s attributes. Moreover, since these attributes require the creation for their expression, the One is continually driven to transform itself into Many. The goal of spiritual realization is therefore to penetrate beyond the exterior multiplicity of phenomena to a consciousness of what subsequent writers have termed the ‘unity of existence’. This entails the abolition of the ego or ‘passing away from self’ (fana’) in which one becomes aware of absolute unity, followed by ‘perpetuation’ (baqa’) in which one sees the world as at once One and Many, and one is able to see God in the creature and the creature in God.


Author(s):  
Naser A. Anjum

The world is puzzling over the origin of the current outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that is caused by a novel coronavirus-2019 (2019-nCoV). As of 25th March 2020, the World Health Organization has reported 4,14,179 confirmed cases and 18,440 confirmed deaths in total due to COVID-19. To this end, two unique mammals namely bats and pangolins are being investigated for their potential link to COVID-19. However, the evidence so far gathered in this context is far from clear. This paper aimed to: (i) enlighten the major aspects of life of bats and pangolins; (ii) briefly discusses their potential link to COVID-19; and also (iii) to highlight the way forward. The outcomes may contribute to future research on the subject.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Fitria Anindhita H. Wibowo

<p>This paper deals with the subject of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a special right that allows developing countries preferential treatment by other member countries, particularly developed countries. The paper more specifically discusses the ineffectiveness of the SDT owing to its structure and formulation, and explores the factors that have caused such ineffectiveness. It touches upon the provisions and the ways in which they are formulated and implemented, which deemed to have lead to the ineffectiveness. An observation of the way that negotiations are conducted and the underlying interests that direct those negotiations also contribute to the slow progress of introducing changes to the provisions. Furthermore, this paper analyses and identifies steps that may be taken to improve the concept, formulation, and implementation of SDT, inter alia through amendments of the provisions and conduct of negotiations. The paper also looks at several dispute cases which highlight the ineffectiveness of the existing provisions in advancing the interests of developing countries in particular and in fulfilling its purpose in general.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 1259-1273
Author(s):  
Fedja Borčak

In this article I put forward the concept of subversive infantilisation to designate a phenomenon in contemporary Bosnian literature, which by using a certain kind of childish outlook on the world undermines paternalistic and balkanist Western discourse on Bosnia and Herzegovina. By analysing primarily the portrayal of the role of mass media in a few literary texts, principally books by Nenad Veličkovié and Miljenko Jergovié, I highlight the way in which these texts “re-rig” and by means of irony and exaggeration illuminate the problematic logic inherent in the subject position from which one represents the other. Textual characteristics of subversive infantilisation are contextualised further and seen as a discursive continuation of experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Nielsen

In my Contemporary Critiques of Religion and in my Scepticism, I argue that non-anthropomorphic conceptions of God do not make sense. By this I mean that we do not have sound grounds for believing that the central truth-claims of Christianity are genuine truth-claims and that we do not have a religiously viable concept of God. I argue that this is so principally because of three interrelated features about God-talk. (I) While purporting to be factual assertions, central bits of God-talk, e.g. ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves man-kind’, are not even in principle verifiable (confirmable or disconfirmable) in such a way that we can say what experienceable states of affairs would count for these putative assertions and against their denials, such that we could say what it would be like to have evidence which would make either their assertion or their denial more or less probably true. (2) Personal predicates, e.g. ‘loves’, ‘creates’, are at least seemingly essential in the use of God-talk, yet they suffer from such an attenuation of meaning in their employment in religious linguistic environments that it at least appears to be the case that we have in such environments unwittingly emptied these predicates of all intelligible meaning so that we do not understand what we are asserting or denying when we utter ‘God loves mankind’ or ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ and the like. (3) When we make well-formed assertions, it appears at least to be the case that a necessary condition for such wellformedness is that we should be able successfully to identify the subject of that putative statement so that we can understand what it is that we are talking about and thus understand that a genuine statement has actually been made. But, where God is conceived non-anthropomorphically, we have no even tolerably clear idea about how God, an infinite individual, occupying no particular place or existing at no particular time, and being utterly transcendent to the world, can be identified. Indeed we have no coherent idea of what it would be like to identify him and this means we have no coherent idea of what it would be like for God even to be a person or an it. He cannot be picked out and identified in the way persons and things can.


2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer

The helplessness of newborn babies is very endearing. They can just about breathe unaided, but they are otherwise entirely unadapted and dependent. Babies can barely see, let alone walk or talk. Few animals come into the world so unprepared, and no other species is as dependent on learning as human beings are. Elephant calves, for instance, can stand up by themselves within a few minutes of being born. Most animals are similarly “preprogrammed.” Female elephants carry their young for no fewer than 22 months, whereas we humans have to go on investing in our offspring long after they are born. Children need years of adult protection. They guzzle fuel, too; their brains consume fully 60 percent of the newborn’s total energy intake. In the first year of life, the infant’s head buzzes with activity as neurons grow in size and complexity and form their innumerable interconnections. The way the brain develops is the subject of the next chapter (chapter 5.2). Here we concentrate on the way we are educated from the first day on. There is virtually no difference between Inuits and Australian aborigines in terms of their ability—at opposite ends of the earth and in climates that are utterly different—to bear children successfully. Other animal species are far more closely interrelated with their environment. Other primates have evolved to occupy a limited biotope determined by food and climate. Humans are much more universal. Every human child has an equal chance of survival wherever they are born. As a species, we delay our maturation and adaptation until after birth, which makes the inequality of subsequent human development all the more acute. Someone who is born in Mali or Burkina Faso is unlikely ever to learn to read. A person whose father lives in Oxford, by contrast, might have spoken his or her first words of Latin at an early age. Inuit and aboriginal babies may be born equally, but their chances begin to diverge the moment they start learning how to live. We are not shaped by our inborn nature but by the culture that is impressed upon us by the people with whom we grow up.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-218
Author(s):  
Palmyre Oomen ◽  

The way Whitehead speaks of God in his "philosophy of organism," and the evaluation thereof is the subject of this article. The background of this issue is the position—broadly shared in theology, and here represented by Aquinas—that one should not speak "carelessly" about God. Does Whitehead violate this rule, or does his language for God express God's otherness and relatedness to the world in a new, intriguing way? In order to answer this question, an introduction into Whitehead's philosophy is given, and especially into his category of existence, the "actual entity." For Whitehead, God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence. His perception of the similarity and greater dissimilarity between God and the worldly actual entities (and clusters thereof) is analyzed. In the main andfinal section of this article, these insights are used as tools to decrypt Whitehead's God-language. Here, I compare the status of Whitehead's and Aquinas's statements about God, discuss Whitehead's ideas concerning the analogical character of concrete language, and argue that in Whitehead's philosophy too there is no discourse about God without a shift or breakdown of the "ordinary" meaning of language


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexandra Berger

This project explores the way in which Virginia Woolf uses and subverts the classic nineteenthcentury genre, the Bildungsroman in her first novel (The Voyage Out) and her third novel (Jacob's Room) in order to posit questions about understanding subjectivity. Virginia Woolf's later novels are written in a prose style commonly called "stream-of-consciousness" or "mindstyle" that her first novel is not, and her third novel, although attempts this style of prose, is quite novice in its execution. Essentially, this project argues that it was through Woolf's use and complication of the Bildungsroman genre that she was able to pose philosophical questions about subjectivity and human understanding-- never answered in a concrete manner--that develop into her later, most famous style of prose in novels such as Mrs. Dalloway. This paper builds on Gregory Castle's scholarly book, The Modernist Bildungsroman, which was written in response to Franco Moretti's seminal book, The Way of the World.


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