«THE MAKROPULOS AFFAIR» AND THE THINKING ABOUT LONGEVITY AND THE SENSE OF LIFE

The paper deals with the play, written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek «The Makropulos Affair». The play is analyzed in the context of philosophical search of the time of its emergence. Particularly, I. I. Mechnikov’s essays concerning longevity and accompanying it the sense of life matters are observed in the paper. Also, the author makes the comparative analysis of the ideas, represented by the K. Čapek’s play and by the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw’s theatrical work «Back to Methuselah», in which the ideas of longevity and the sense of life were raised. These works were published almost simultaneously, and both authors were influenced by Mechnikovs’ views. The points of contact and differences in authors’ positions are observed. The paper represents modi of actualization of longevity and the sense of life issues in the contemporary culture by the examples of the musical «The Recipe of her Youth» and the case study from the Julian Baggini’s popular philosophy guide «The Pig that Want to Be Eaten». We can agree with the Baggini’s idea that the sense of life is not defined by the numbers of years, but by their fullness with contents and the desire to use them in full.

Художня артикуляція проблеми постлюдства у п’єсі Карела Чапека “Р.У.Р. Россумові універсальні роботи”

In the article Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R. Rossum’s universal robots” is read not only as an anti-utopia devoted to the confrontation between humans and robots, but also as a work of art that defines a number of humanitarian discourses of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The play correlates with modern humanitarian studies of posthumanity, posthumanism and transhumanism, examines various projects of posthumanistic reduplication of man – the archetype of the homunculus, types of humanized robots, cyborgs, iron warriors, predicts the decline of masculine discourse and the origins of feminism. The impact factor of this dramatic text goes beyond fiction and theatre and extends to the whole culture, because the concept of “robot” introduced by Karel Čapek is a stable concept of culture, transformation and technology. At the conceptual level, the article deals with the ability of artistic thinking to forecast, identify promising general scientific issues and structure future humanitarian discourses.

Um esqueleto num cavalo branco

O presente artigo propõe analisar a peça A doença branca, do escritor tcheco Karel Čapek, publicada e encenada pela primeira vez no ano de 1937. Será considerada a situação política europeia naquele período, bem como o reflexo, dentro da obra, do pensamento e das opiniões do autor sobre tal situação. Como aporte teórico, o texto trará a contribuição de Susan Sontag, que se dedicou a escrever sobre a doença enquanto metáfora, inclusive na literatura. Além disso, estudos dedicados à vida e à obra de Čapek comporão um quadro mais geral sobre o qual se poderá apoiar a apreciação desse drama específico. Busca-se, com isso, partir do exame do drama selecionado, e de como o autor aborda o tema da doença, para pensar a atualidade dessa leitura no momento em que o mundo, uma vez mais, é atingido por uma pandemia.

Robots, Extinction, and Salvation: On Altruism in Human–Posthuman Interactions

Posthumanism and transhumanism are philosophies that envision possible relations between humans and posthumans. Critical versions of posthumanism and transhumanism examine the idea of potential threats involved in human–posthuman interactions (i.e., species extinction, species domination, AI takeover) and propose precautionary measures against these threats by elaborating protocols for the prosocial use of technology. Critics of these philosophies usually argue against the reality of the threats or dispute the feasibility of the proposed measures. We take this debate back to its modern roots. The play that gave the world the term “robot” (R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots) is nowadays remembered mostly as a particular instance of an absurd apocalyptic vision about the doom of the human species through technology. However, we demonstrate that Karel Čapek assumed that a negative interpretation of human–posthuman interactions emerges mainly from the human inability to think clearly about extinction, spirituality, and technology. We propose that the conflictual interpretation of human–posthuman interactions can be overcome by embracing Čapek’s religiously and philosophically-inspired theory of altruism remediated by technology. We argue that this reinterpretation of altruism may strengthen the case for a more positive outlook on human–posthuman interactions.

Cultivated character: Voltaire and Karel Čapek on the good gardener

The paper unpacks the nuanced ethical potential in the metaphor of gardening that is depicted in Karel Čapek’s The Gardener’s Year, and the relevance of Čapek’s metaphor for understanding Voltaire’s famously ambiguous ending to Candide. Against more pessimistic or passive accounts of what Candide could have meant, the paper agrees with scholars who consider Candide’s maxim as meaning to engage in active, and communal practise of character development. By using Čapek’s much fuller account of the gardener in the practice of cultivation to fill in the gaps in Voltaire’s account, the paper shows that gardening is a rich metaphor of the virtuous person engaged in lifelong character cultivation.

3 March - International Day for Ear and Hearing Care

We are surrounded by a wonderful world filled with a wide variety of sounds. The well-known Czech novelist, short-story writer and playwright Karel Čapek had an absolutely fair saying: “Hearing is more than just understanding the words.” As a rule, some sounds give us peace and joy, while others on the contrary cause irritation and negative emotions. However, not everyone can hear. There are people who are doomed to live in a world without sounds, while some are born with similar disorders, and others acquire this problem as a result of inflammatory diseases or traumatic factors. Be that as it may, thousands of people around us are forced to exist without ability to hear the sound of the wind and the sound of raindrops; they cannot appreciate the beauty of birds singing or playing a musical instrument. In order to draw public attention to these hearing-impaired patients and to support people with disabilities, the World Health Organization has launched the International Day for Ear and Hearing, which is celebrated annually worldwide on the 3rd March. This day acquired the status of an official holiday in Beijing, the capital of China, in 2007 at the 1st International Conference on the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impairment.

Machines Like Us? Modernism and the Question of the Robot

This chapter examines the technophobia of modernist literature towards the question of machine intelligence. The chapter takes Edmund Husserl’s ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man’ (1935) as its starting point, in terms of the tension between a vitalistic conception of what defines the ‘human’ as opposed to the apparent sterility of machine technology. Husserl’s lecture is contextualized alongside critical thinkers Walter Benjamin, Gustave Le Bon, and Georg Simmel, and literary writers Albert Robida and Emile Zola. The second section concentrates upon Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), with its satirical depiction of machine intelligence, in contrast to H. G. Wells’s grotesque rendering of the Beast Folk in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) as a form of cyborg life. The final section, focusing upon representative texts by modernist authors such as E. M. Forster, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Raymond Roussel, and Karel Čapek, argues that they respond variously to the templates of Butler and Wells.

Karola Čapka zabawa w „kryminałki”. (O genezie i budowie Opowieści z różnych kieszeni)

The author attempts to define the genological structure of Stories from a Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket by Karel Čapek. The analysis of titles and content of stories leads to the conclusion that in search of a way to disseminate culture, to create popular literature, however with high artistic values, by applying his own invention the Czech author went far beyond mere replication of detective and criminal novel patterns commonly used in Euro-Atlantic culture. His ingenuity in the “genre instrumentation” of these short detective and criminal stories was remarkable and produced great results.

Technika, autonomie a etika: ke stému výročí Čapkova dramatu R. U. R.

Čapek’s drama R. U. R., which is rather a social dystopia than a science fi ction (the principle of functioning of robots is not suggested, the drama is focused on the impact on humanity), shows the double face of technology: Th e dream about the “liberation of work” easily takes a turn for its opposite, and for destruction of humanity in consequence of ruthless utilization of the technological achievement for selfi sh economical and militaristic interests. „Autonomous technology“, which is not controlled by human aims any more, but by the rules of its own development, became an important subject of philosophy and ethics of technology (e.g. in works by J. Ellul, H. Jonas), and has a warning eff ect. Today, Industry 4.0 and the process of robotization bring new promises, but also new problems. Th e legacy of Karel Čapek includes values of humanism and understanding for other people’s views and needs, which is valuable for developing ethics of technology in democratic society.