Theatre Criticism in Lithuania in the [Late] Soviet Era: From Ideological to Aesthetic Guidelines

The article analyses the institution of Lithuanian theatre criticism in the Soviet period and its connection with the ideological requirements of the time. The resolutions of the Communist Party during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods, theatre repertoire, reviews, and the concept of social realism in the theatre are also discussed. The 1946–1948 resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that regulated the development of culture and art, as well as the doctrine of socialist realism influenced both the practice of theatre and its critics. In the 1950s and 1960s, theatre criticism became a tool of ideology and propaganda, to such an extent that it ‘itself created a socialist realist text’. It is also important that during this period, the names of interwar critics disappeared from the press; critics were represented by party functionaries, party-owned directors, actors, and writers. The ‘return’ of criticism is related with the Thaw period and a new generation of both theatre creators and critics. It can be said that the independence and autonomy of criticism started taking shape in the late 1960s, especially with the performances of director Jonas Jurašas. Writing about the Jurašas’s productions, directed between 1967 and 1972, critics came to reflect on the nature of theatre, theatrical creation or creative freedom, and the disguised and false reality. The discourse of criticism not only freed itself from previously obligatory normative criteria and depersonalised style, but also started representing the subjective gaze of the critic, who not only tried to cover the aesthetic/artistic whole of the performance, but also to establish direct contact with both creators and readers, to capture and convey the impact of the performance on the viewers of their time. In summary, despite external (censorship) and internal (self-censorship) circumstances, the discourse of theatrical criticism changed only at the end of the 1960s, and began to approach artistic discourse: the ideological criteria for understanding and evaluating a performance theatrical production were replaced by artistic and aesthetic ones.

Prigovor kao pravni lijek prema Zakonu o općem upravnom postupku

In addition to resolving administrative matters in the administrative procedure, the Croatian General Administrative Procedure Act regulates five other types of subsidiary legal protection that are not decided by an administrative act. These are three types of administrative actions (initiating procedure ex officio by petition; notifications on the conditions for exercising and protecting rights; protection from other actions of public law bodies), actions of public service providers, as well as non-fulfillment of contractual obligations by public bodies (administrative contracts). As an instrument of legal protection with regard to the mentioned forms of administrative activity, an ordinary appellate procedure is envisaged – the complaint. The paper analyzes the legislative genesis of the mentioned additional institutes, the general regulatory framework related to complaints, as well as the provisions related to a particular type of complaint. Due to the significant differences between the five legal institutes to which the complaint relates, there are also certain differences between the types of complaints in their essential legal features. These features are compared horizontally, using legal-theoretical and normative criteria. In relation to all types of complaints, a judicial remedy is provided in the administrative dispute. Therefore, the specifics of this type of administrative disputes are also considered. In conclusion, among other issues, the procedural importance of complaint for the realization of the rights and legal interests of citizens and legal entities, and indirectly for the quality of administrative activities, is emphasized.

On the Formation of Environmental Normative Criteria: Bioethics as a Dead End

The need to reflect upon the environment and the creation of a concept of environmental philosophy resonated in the philosophical thinking of the 1980s and 1990s. It seems that the advent of national and international institutions, which were “given” the responsibility for environmental issues, the importance of creating environmental principles, and pursuing environmental goals, has seemingly dwindled. The relationship with the environment has turned into the relationship of a citizen to his or her country, and with the principles and standards taking the form of legal regulations, the issue quickly became a matter of abiding by the law. Whilst discussion on how the normative criteria are set continued, its focus shifted to the questions of how and why they should be gradually made stricter, factoring in the economic interests of enterprises, and the time needed for setting up the processes, and developing new technologies. Environmental philosophy gradually integrated into bioethics in a broader context. This paper discusses the question of whether the integration of the environmental philosophy of bioethics helped to better promote the idea of environmental responsibility and environmental ethics, or otherwise. The study aims to initiate a discussion on whether this was a step in the right direction, and to assess how effective it was in relation to the pursuit and formation of environmental criteria.

Understanding Tax Policy: How Do People Reason?

I study how people understand, reason, and learn about two major tax policies: income taxation and estate taxation. Using large-scale Social Economics surveys issued to representative U.S. samples and associated experiments, I seek to elicit respondents’ factual knowledge about tax policy and the income or wealth distributions. Most importantly, I study their understanding of the mechanisms of tax policy and the reasoning that underlies their policy views. In decomposing policy views, I find that support for income and estate taxes is most strongly correlated with social preferences, i.e., the perceived benefits of redistribution and concerns around the fairness of inequality and taxation, as well as with broader views of the government. Efficiency concerns play a more minor role. These correlational patterns are confirmed by the experimental approach, which shows people instructional videos that explain the workings and consequences of one of the aspects of tax policy (the “Redistribution” and the “Efficiency” treatments) or that bring the two together and focus on the trade-off (the “Economist” treatment). The Redistribution and Economist treatments significantly increase support for more progressive income or estate taxes, while the Efficiency treatment has no effect. There are large partisan gaps in both the final policy views and at every step of the reasoning about the underlying mechanisms of taxes. Democrats’ and Republicans’ divergences in tax policy views can ultimately be traced back to different normative criteria (social preferences) and views of the government, rather than to different perceptions of the efficiency implications of taxation.

Сonsolidation of somatic rights in international regulations

The issue is topical in the context of actively expanding the list of human rights, including within the national dimension, because human rights as a dual category are subject to transformation due to the following factors: European integration processes, creating the need for integration and harmonization of Ukrainian legislation with European Union law; globalization processes, as Ukraine is a member of the world community and modern economic, environmental, legal, etc. phenomena have a direct impact on national state processes, and on the legal reality, and on the rights and freedoms of the individual. It is determined that the recognition of new human rights, the expansion of the existing list - one of the trends in the development of the legal status of the individual. And when regulating relations in the field of somatic claims through the category of human rights, it should be borne in mind that somatic human rights should be characterized by what characterizes the category of human rights in general. It is pointed out that in human history no "new right" has really been recognized without a struggle and without overcoming the fierce opposition of some "old rights". It is proved that the legal regulation of the possibility of exercising somatic rights in the international arena (primarily within the European Union) has significantly improved. Basically, we are talking about the existing basic (basic) regulations in the field we study. Thus, among the most important of them, we should first focus on such as, the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine 1997, the EU Council Recommendation of June 29, 1998 "On the suitability of blood and plasma donors and donor blood screening. in the European Community" (98/463 / EC), Directive 2004/23 / EC of 31 March 2004 on the establishment of quality and safety standards for the donation, purchase, testing, treatment, preservation, storage and distribution of human tissues and cells". That is, we believe that the Council of Europe and the European Union, as regional international organizations, have established common normative criteria for the possibility of implementing and protecting somatic human rights in general and in the field of biomedical research in particular.

Crusius über die Vernünftigkeit des Wollens und die Rolle des Urteilens

In this paper, I consider the relevance of judgment for practical considerations by discussing Christian August Crusius’s conception of rational desire. According to my interpretation of Crusius’s distinction between rational and non-rational desire, we are responsible at least for our rational desires insofar as we can control them. And we can control our rational desires by judging whether what we want complies with our human nature. It should become clear that Crusius’s conception of rational desire is normative in that we necessarily desire things that are compatible with our nature, such as our own perfection. Therefore, a desire is rational if the desired object is apt to satisfy the desires compatible with our nature. From a contemporary perspective, such a normative conception of rational desire might not appear very attractive; it is apt, however, to stimulate a debate on the normative criteria and the role of judgment for rational desire, which is the ultimate aim of this paper.

We are More Than our Executive Functions: on the Emotional and Situational Aspects of Criminal Responsibility and Punishment

In Responsible Brains (MIT Press, 2018), Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan apply the language of cognitive neuroscience to dominant understandings of criminal responsibility in criminal law theory. The Authors make a compelling case that, under such dominant understandings, criminal responsibility eventually ‘translates’ into a minimal working set of executive functions (MWS) that are primarily mediated by the frontal lobes of the brain. In so arguing, the Authors seem to unquestioningly accept the law’s view of the “responsible person” as a mixture of cognitive capacities and mechanisms—thereby leaving aside other fundamental aspects of individuals’ human agency. This commentary article offers a critique of the Authors’ rationalist and individualist approach. The critique can be summarized through the following claim: We humans, as responsible beings, are more than our executive functions. This claim articulates through four main points of discussion: (1) role of emotions in moral judgments and behavior; (2) executive functions and normative criteria for legal insanity; (3) impact of adverse situational factors on executive functions; (4) Authors’ account of punishment and, especially, rehabilitation.

Representing the Cosmos and Transforming the Human: The Onto-hermeneutic Visions of Chung-ying Cheng’s The Primary Way: Philosophy of Yijing

The review essay critically evaluates, synoptically presents, and admiringly celebrates Chung-ying Cheng latest work, The Primary Way: Philosophy of Yijing. It sees the book’s publication as an emblem of an intellectual jubilee – a half-centenary of scholarly lucubration and achievement in Chinese and comparative philosophy by Cheng, who was trained at Harvard in American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. The essay reveals why Cheng returns to the Yijing time and again. The principal reason is that this ancient classic, to his way of thinking, offers us “the primary Way,” the anchoring normative criteria, perspectives, and values in a nutshell, whereby reality may be deciphered, discerned, and distinguished. To put it in metaphoric terms, the Yijing is the fount of Chinese philosophy. Whether interpreting Chinese thoughts in general or reading the Yijing in particular, Cheng brings western theoretical perspectives to bear on the understanding of the Chinese texts, which are, in and of themselves, replete with deep philosophical meanings. Cheng appropriates the Yijing for his own primary end, which is to disclose, via his onto-hermeneutic reading, a living, transformative ethico-moral philosophy that is onto-cosmologically alive and onto-generatively fecund: the primary Way. In doing so, he not only offers us innovative scholarship on the ancient classic but also opens up a theoretical and methodological frontier, an onto-hermeneutic one, where Chinese thought and philosophy may be explored anew.

Consequentialist Thinking and Economic Analysis in Intellectual Property

Legal policy is about consequences, and assessment of consequences requires an understanding of economics. This chapter explores this proposition. Whether intellectual property (IP) satisfies normative criteria requires understanding how IP affects behaviour in meeting social needs. Economic analysis provides testable models of plausible connections between legal rules and standards and individual conduct in the creation and dissemination of innovative outputs. These models provide a conceptual basis for legal arguments and policy recommendations. Whether these models are successful rests on their ability to identify and test the consequences of law. Economic methodology, understood this way, serves as a means of explanation and of prediction to guide the persuasive power of attorneys and policy-makers. This chapter develops this case for economics by consideration of analyses of the publishing and music industries.

COLOR PREFERENCES IN ADOLESCENCE AND EARLY ADULTHOOD AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Statement of the problem. The article examines the problem of studying an emotional sphere of a personality, in particular, emotional intelligence, in modern socio-cultural conditions, due to the change in human relations with the real and virtual world and the need for special efforts aimed at developing an emotional sphere of an individual. The importance of age-relevant emotional intelligence development is highlighted. The purpose of the article is to identify the age specificity of color preferences and their connection with some personality traits presented in the parameters of emotional intelligence in adolescence and early adulthood. The research methodology consists of the works of Russian and international authors in relation to color, which forms the space of a person’s life, has a multi-level effect on his/her emotional sphere and contributes to its enrichment; analysis and synthesis of provisions on the relationship between color perception and emotions. Research results. The study made it possible to establish that adolescence and early adulthood are characterized by preference for different colors, and the preferred colors are interrelated with different aspects of emotional intelligence, reflecting the age-specific emotional and personal characteristics. These data, on the one hand, can help in understanding the specifics of the emotional sphere of adolescents and young people, and on the other hand, they create prerequisites for the development of normative criteria for diagnosing color preferences as markers of emotional states at a certain age. Conclusion. The results of the study contribute to the development of ideas about the relationship of color preferences with emotional intelligence in adolescence and early adulthood. Its main provisions can be applied by practical psychologists to use color as a tool for diagnosing and correcting emotional states and emotional intelligence, as well as to regulate emotional states through color environment.