scholarly journals Bioethical motifs in the literary work of Karel Čapek

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 168-180
Author(s):  
Petr Jemelka

Abstract This text presents an assessment of the literary work of Karel Čapek from a perspective that has not yet been discussed. It focuses on analysing Čapek’s works from the viewpoint of their possible inspiration by bioethical issues. Čapek’s philosophy and the powerful ethical charge of his texts tend to be associated with his interest in pragmatism, a subject to which he, however, took an individual and critical approach. One of the most important categories of his way of thinking is life. In his prose works and plays we therefore see motifs that may be associated with the thematic definition of bioethics. These are questions concerning the value and quality of human life, issues concerning the dehumanizing impact of science and technology, as well as reflections upon the moral dimension of man’s relationship to nature and also to the relationship between people and animals. Čapek’s work may therefore provide inspiration from the perspective of the history of the gradual formation of the bioethical point of view.

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (32) ◽  
pp. 101-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janusz Gierszewski

Interest in “quality of life” issues originated in the 1950s. The concept found applications in fields such as economics, social policy, medicine, sociology and psychology. Quality of life could perhaps also be an object of study for security sciences as well. Despite the continued popularity of this category, social scientists are yet to develop a commonly agreed upon definition of the concept. This paper constitutes an attempt at answering the question of whether the need for security is related to quality of life and whether it is valid to introduce a new conceptual category in the form of quality of life security. If so, then it is necessary to determine whether it is a measure that is subjective or objective. Human needs such as security and quality of life are what motivates human actions and activity. If one of the above needs is not being met, the individual become destabilised. The homogenisation and standardisation of scientific concepts would render it possible to compare data from an interdisciplinary point of view.


Author(s):  
G.G. Kolomiets ◽  
◽  
Ya.V. Parusimova ◽  

The appeal to the problem of polyfunctionality of art is caused by the modern post-postmodern situation in the field of philosophical and cultural knowledge, which raised the problem of understanding the essence of art and its existence. A stochastic state was revealed, an uncertainty in view of the transformations of art itself, following not only the footsteps of the changing world, but also anticipating civilizational shifts, guessing a lot of probabilities and possibilities in the cultural movement of humanity. In this regard, the article rethinks the problem of the polyfunctionality of art and puts forward the idea of the polyfunctionality of art in the problematic field of aesthetics. Art is considered by the authors from the point of view of phenomenology and axiology as an aesthetic way of being in the human world, as a valuable interaction of a person with the world, as a subject of constructing new meanings and meanings by the consciousness when meeting with art. The article asserts the polyfunctional essence of art, which, according to the authors, stems from the variety of interpretations of the concept of «art» in the history of aesthetic thought and modern discourse, due to the multidimensional nature of its manifestations in the human life world. After analyzing various approaches to the understanding of art, and following the phenomenological methodology, as well as the ontological method and axiological approach, the authors came to the conclusion that definitions do not answer the question «what is art?», they rather say «what is art for?». In other words, it is not «what is» that is defined, but «what it means». It is noted that the leading functions recognized in aesthetics, such as aesthetic, communicative, harmonizing, transforming, are predominant at certain stages of culture, but they are separate functions of art that do not exhaust the fullness of the multifunctional essence, the ideological integrity of art in culture. It is pointed out that at the present stage, the features of openness, isolation, and «atomicity» of the communicative discourse are becoming more and more acute, leading to a change in the models of art functions, determining the problematic nature of the aesthetic «super-function» of art in the promotion of civilizational and cultural space. The idea of the polyfunctional essence of art presupposes a specific form of mental development of the polyfunctionality of art, is the principle of explaining the existence of art and includes the process of further searching for the definition of art on the basis of its multi-valued existence in culture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Heyne

AbstractAlthough visual culture of the 21th century increasingly focuses on representation of death and dying, contemporary discourses still lack a language of death adequate to the event shown by pictures and visual images from an outside point of view. Following this observation, this article suggests a re-reading of 20th century author Elias Canetti. His lifelong notes have been edited and published posthumously for the first time in 2014. Thanks to this edition Canetti's short texts and aphorisms can be focused as a textual laboratory in which he tries to model a language of death on experimental practices of natural sciences. The miniature series of experiments address the problem of death, not representable in discourses of cultural studies, system theory or history of knowledge, and in doing so, Canetti creates liminal texts at the margins of western concepts of (human) life, science and established textual form.


Author(s):  
Vadim Markovich Rozin

This article offers a nontraditional approach towards studying the poetics of literary work, which considers personality of the reader and analysis of the reality that he reconstructs and experiences. The empirical material is comprised on the authorial analysis of the poetics of Meir Shalev's novel “Fontanelle”. This literary work features the four major themes: love of the protagonist Michael, creation of the new world from its inception, the characteristic of life values of a person, and discussion of the peculiarities of reality that Meir Shalev builds as an artist. In the first theme, the author reveals several images of love, reflecting on the mystical love of the protagonist for the young woman Ana, love in the family and marriage, love for children. At the same time, the author discusses not only the way that Meir Shalev understands and describes love in “Fontanelle”, but also talks about the own interpretation of love. In the plotline of the second theme, the author also distinguishes two lines: the story the protagonist’s grandfather Apupa, who carries his beloved Amuma on his shoulders across the country, seeking a place where they could create a home and family; and the story of gradual development of a small settlement into a city, created by Apupa and Amuma on the mountain, and several Jewish families at the lower valley. Discussing in the third topic the anchors of human life, the author emphasizes such values as effort, love, family and family line, creativity, indicating that Michael is not alone, he is loved, he gets involved in family history, as well as the history of Israel and Jewish culture, drawing strength in the heroes of this story. The last part of the article gives characteristic to the reality of “Fontanelle” and explains why the author liked it.


The article attempts to comprehend the essence and possibility of forming discourse competence among foreign and Russian students with simultaneous immersion in patriotic discourse. It is highlighted that the addition of the humanitarian series of “History of Civilizations” and “Features of Russian Civilization” to the educational process at the university creates the necessary pedagogical conditions for organizing a special linguo-ethno-cultural environment that forms active social interaction of authors within the framework of the medical and patriotic linguistic scenario. The authors of the article conducted a semantic and historical analysis of interpretations of the concept of “patriotism” that were studied from the point of view of traditional and liberal culture. The article presents the results of a socio-pedagogical study of students' perceptions of this concept. The article describes various theoretical and methodological approaches to the definition of the concepts of “discourse” and “discursive picture of the world” as well as psycholinguistic features of the method of semantic differential. Special attention in the article is paid to the typologies of discourse presented in the scientific literature. The authors of the article present the principle of genre and the principle of thematic correlation as the basis for distinguishing between types of discourse and highlight differences in language and discursive pictures of the world. The tasks of educators is to form not only purely medical discursive competence, but also to immerse the listener in “correctly” interpreted picture, saturated with verbal patterns that allow to create statements of patriotic content.


Author(s):  
A. Hafiiak ◽  
O. Shefer ◽  
E. Borodina ◽  
S. Alyoshin

The article explores modern information and telecommunication technologies, which are the basis of information processes in education. The fundamentals of improving the quality of student training from the point of view of the development of a vocational education system are investigated. The authors explore the definition of an innovative educational environment. It is proved that professional IT education is the basis for improving its quality level and has certain advantages over other types of knowledge, providing flexibility due to modern technological features, including the use of QR coding information.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Štreimikienė ◽  
Neringa Barakauskaitė-Jakubauskienė

The paper presents the definition of quality of life and its relationship with sustainable development. The paper analyses and compares the indicators of quality of life in Lithuania with other countries. A quality of life is an explicit or implicit policy goal. Various measurements and indicators to evaluate a quality of life were proposed during the recent years however there are no widely accepted objective indicators of quality of life able to compare countries. Sustainable development concept proposes new approach to measure quality of life. Therefore the aim of sustainable development is to increase quality of life. Quality of life can be addressed in terms of people health, the state of economy, employment, infrastructure development, crime and environment. All these indicators are interrelated as economic development creates preconditions to maintain public health, develop social and technical infrastructure, to increase employment, to ensure quality of environment, to tackle with crime etc. From the other point of view healthy and satisfied with the quality of life nation have positive impact on stable economic growth.


2021 ◽  
pp. 49-67
Author(s):  
V. L. Tambovtsev

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern ideas about the quality of institutions concept, and the development on this basis of its generalized and operational understanding. The interpretation of the quality of the institution as its legitimacy from the point of view of stakeholders of the institution’s performance is grounded. Starting from the understanding of the object or process legitimacy as a recognition of its right to exist, an approximate question is proposed for conducting sociological surveys to assess the quality of institutions. In the final section of the article, the evolutionary definition of the concept of quality is proposed, and it is shown that the identification of the institutions quality with their legitimacy is fully consistent with this definition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (158) ◽  
pp. 200131
Author(s):  
Maria Eugenia Laucho-Contreras ◽  
Mark Cohen-Todd

The early stages of COPD have recently become a hot topic as many new risk factors have been proposed, but substantial knowledge gaps remain in explaining the natural history of the disease. If we are to modify the outcomes of COPD, early detection needs to play a critical role. However, we need to sort out the barriers to early detection and have a better understanding of the definition of COPD and its diagnosis and therapeutic strategies to identify and treat patients with COPD before structural changes progress. In this review, we aim to clarify the differences between early COPD, mild COPD and early detection of COPD, with an emphasis on the clinical burden and how different outcomes (quality of life, exacerbation, cost and mortality) are modified depending on which definition is used. We will summarise the evidence for the new multidimensional diagnostic approaches to detecting early pathophysiologic changes that potentially allow for future studies on COPD management strategies to halt or prevent disease development.


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLETTE MOUT

Any definition of Central Europe based on geographical and/or historical facts causes difficulties. The line dividing Europe during the Cold War has a very limited use because it does not take into account Central Europe as a special part of the continent. Historians such as Geoffrey Barraclough, Hugh Seton-Watson and Oskar Halecki discussed the idea of a separate identity of Central Europe during the Cold War. Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this discussion was re-opened. From a historian's point of view, the most important contributions came from Piotr Wandycz and Jenő Szűcs. An imaginary centre of Europe can only be found in the continent's common history.There is a belief, rather widespread in English-speaking countries, that the eastern half of Europe is inhabited by a number of endlessly quarrelling small nations whose conflicts keep endangering the quiet and comfort of Anglophones. (Hugh Seton-Watson)


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