scholarly journals Między lękiem a fascynacją. Pojęcie powietrza w dziejach polszczyzny .

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Janowska

This paper, which proposes a historical overview, is dedicated to the notion of <powietrze> (air) and its lexical equivalent in the Polish language. This notion has undergone numerous changes over time; it has formed through direct human experience on the one hand and through the Christian and Slavic traditions as well as scientifi c knowledge overlapping on the other hand. This notion has always been important to the human being, it has been commonly referred to in metaphors and similes. In the historical analysis, two basic senses of powietrze (air) were taken into consideration: ‘place’ and ‘substance’. In both cases, there has always been a clearly ambivalent attitude to the human being, who sees threats on the one hand and feels that air guarantees life on the other hand. Keywords: notion – semantic change – history of Polish – historical lexis

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Rüß

This review analyses the latest monograph of a German expert on the eighteenth-century history of German-Russian relations. Peter Hoffman has conducted a comprehensive historical analysis of Prussian-Russian relations and conflicts during the reign of Frederick II, paying special attention to the image of Russia in Frederick’s eyes and, thereby, in the eyes of part of the German elite. The reviewer focuses on the most acute aspects and moments of these relations as they are dissected and presented by Hoffman: from the nature of Frederick’s attempts to establish personal ties with the rulers of Russia to his revelations about Russia as the most dangerous country for Prussia. The reviewer demonstrates Hoffman’s “empathy for the Russians” and the associated danger of a “one-sided” view on the protagonists: on the one hand, there is Prussia and King Frederick, who is prone to persistently “false assessments” of Russia, and on the other hand, there is “open-mindedness” that was “generally characteristic of Russian diplomacy”. According to the reviewer, the author generally provides too little concrete factual material and too often requires the reader to know the sources and literature he refers to in order to defend these judgments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
Jolanta Mędelska

The author analysed the language of the first Polish translation of the eighteenth-century poem “Metai” [The Seasons] by Kristijonas Donelaitis, a Lithuanian Lutheran pastor. The translation was made in 1933 by a socialist activist and close associate of Józef Piłsudski, Kazimierz Pietkiewicz. The analysis showed that the language of the translation is peculiar. On the one hand, this peculiarity consists in refraining from archaizing the translation and the use of elements that are close to the translator’s style of social-political journalism (e.g., dorobkiewicz [vulgarian], feministka [feminist]), on the other hand, the presence at all levels of language of peculiarities characteristic for Kresy Polish language in both its territorial variations. These are generally old features of common Polish, the retention of which in the eastern areas of the Polish Rzeczpospolita was supported by the influence of substrate languages, later also Russian, or by borrowing. This layer was natural in the language of the translator, born in Ukraine, who spent part of his life in Vilnius, some in exile in Russia. This is the colourful linguistic heritage of the former Republic of Poland.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Skiles

This article examines the nature and frequency of comments about Jews and Judaism in sermons delivered by Confessing Church pastors in the Nazi dictatorship.  The approach of most historians has focused on the history of antisemitism in the German Protestant tradition—in the works, pronouncements, and policies of the German churches and its leading figures.  Yet historians have left unexamined the most elemental task of the pastor—that is, preaching from the pulpit to the German people.  What would the average German congregant have heard from his pastor about the Jews and Judaism on any given Sunday?  I searched German archives, libraries, and used book stores, and analyzed 910 sermon manuscripts that were produced and disseminated in the Nazi regime.  I argue that these sermons provide mixed messages about Jews and Judaism.  While on the one hand, the sermons express admiration for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity, an insistence on the usage of the Hebrew Bible in the German churches, and the conviction that the Jews are spiritual cousins of Christians.  On the other hand, the sermons express religious prejudice in the form of anti-Judaic tropes that corroborated the Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews and Judaism as inferior: for instance, that Judaism is an antiquated religion of works rather than grace; that the Jews killed Christ and have been punished throughout history as a consequence.  Furthermore, I demonstrate that Confessing Church pastors commonly expressed anti-Judaic statements in the process of criticizing the Nazi regime, its leadership, and its policies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (128) ◽  
pp. 401-417
Author(s):  
Paul van Tongeren

Is friendship still possible under nihilistic conditions? Kant and Nietzsche are important stages in the history of the idealization of friendship, which leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that only something like friendship can save us in our nihilistic condition, but on the other hand that precisely friendship has been unmasked and become impossible by these very conditions. It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well to Nietzsche's claim that only "the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith" will be able to cope with nihilism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-71
Author(s):  
Raquel Borges Blázquez

Artificial intelligence has countless advantages in our lives. On the one hand, computer’s capacity to store and connect data is far superior to human capacity. On the other hand, its “intelligence” also involves deep ethical problems that the law must respond to. I say “intelligence” because nowadays machines are not intelligent. Machines only use the data that a human being has previously offered as true. The truth is relative and the data will have the same biases and prejudices as the human who programs the machine. In other words, machines will be racist, sexist and classist if their programmers are. Furthermore, we are facing a new problem: the difficulty to understand the algorithm of those who apply the law.This situation forces us to rethink the criminal process, including artificial intelligence and spinning very thinly indicating how, when, why and under what assumptions we can make use of artificial intelligence and, above all, who is going to program it. At the end of the day, as Silvia Barona indicates, perhaps the question should be: who is going to control global legal thinking?


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tautvydas Vėželis

This article examines the problem of overcoming nihilism in Heidegger’s dialogue with Jünger. It is suggested that nihilism is manifested in various forms and is the deep logic of the whole history of European civilization. One of the main aims of this paper is to outline the relationship of nihilism and Nothing in Heidegger’s dispute with Jünger, viewing how Heidegger distinguishes his approach from Jünger’s point of view. Heidegger, on the one hand, treats nihilism as consummation of the Western metaphysical tradition, on the other hand, identifies Nothing itself as the shadow of Being, which cannot be overcome in the traditional dialectical thinking manner.


Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-260
Author(s):  
Franco Manni ◽  

From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Doina-Cristina Rusu ◽  

This paper argues that the methodology Francis Bacon used in his natural histories abides by the theoretical commitments presented in his methodological writings. On the one hand, Bacon advocated a middle way between idle speculation and mere gathering of facts. On the other hand, he took a strong stance against the theorisation based on very few facts. Using two of his sources whom Bacon takes to be the reflection of these two extremes—Giambattista della Porta as an instance of idle speculations, and Hugh Platt as an instance of gathering facts without extracting knowledge—I show how Bacon chose the middle way, which consists of gathering facts and gradually extracting theory out of them. In addition, it will become clear how Bacon used the expertise of contemporary practitioners to criticise fantastical theories and purge natural history of misconceived notions and false speculations.


After having briefly but exhaustively recalled the main lines of Freudian psychoanalytic thought, we have discussed a possible psychoanalytic theoretical model for human symbolic function mainly centred on the action of a set of primary psychic mechanisms rejoined around the negative, in its widest sense according to the works of André Green. A chief aspect of this pattern has turned out to be an underlying, irreducible dialecticity that reflects on the one hand, the typical feature of human symbolic function, and, on the other hand, the main outcome of the unavoidable presence of a basic dichotomy formalized the so-called phallic logic, that is, that primordial, ancestral and irreducible logical nucleus inevitably present in the deepest meanders of human psyche as an inborn structure phylogenetically preformed and ontogenetically re-established during the psychic evolution of any human being.


2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-433
Author(s):  
John Trappes-Lomax

Chaplains in penal times were on occasion employed as stewards, though perhaps not as frequently as is sometimes supposed; from the point of view of their employers this is not entirely surprising; on the one hand chaplains might reasonably be expected to be literate, numerate and honest; on the other hand the restrictions under which Catholic priests worked might well leave them a sufficiency of spare time for secular affairs. The interest of the letter which follows lies not in the mere fact of such a stewardship, but in the extraordinarily vivid picture it gives of what it was like for a professed Religious to be involved in running an estate—particularly when his employer was of questionable sanity. Some light is incidentally thrown on the history of Catholicism in Linton-on-Ouse.


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