Browse by:



Displaying: 1-16 of 16 documents


1. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Danial Yusof

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper examines parallels between contemporary Western and Islamic thought. It will propose that there is congruence between Western and Muslim political thought processes on issues of soft-foundationalism, negative theology, provisional truth claims and religious democracy, in order to offset hegemonic tendencies. This will be illustrated by a concise juxtaposition of the ideas of Davutoglu, Winkel, Sardar, Tariq Ali, Derrida, Foucault, Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohammed Arkoun and others. In the social sciences, namely political science, the neutralization of ideology is also supported in relation to the concern of ideological encroachments into the discipline by William E. Connolly, that echoes Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. This paper concludes that similar concerns on the relationship between power and knowledge in contemporary Western and Islamic political thought processes are beneficial to the study of Islam and its transformation as a social and political phenomenon.

2. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Andrei Cornea

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
My paper is a reply to Mr. Seungbae Park’s article, “Defence of Cultural Relativism” (Park, 2011), which holds that no culture is better than another. In response,my paper challenges the author’s method, fairly popular amongst some postmodern thinkers, that tends to equate cultural relativism and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Firstly, I question the general rationale of establishing an analogy between relativity and relativism. In my opinion, the analogy fails to take into accountthe very large generic distance between physics and ethics. Secondly, I try to demonstrate that the analogy can be construed in two opposite ways, so that, on theone hand, it might support relativism, while on the other, it might reinforce cultural absolutism. Therefore, one would rather dispense with so equivocal an analogy. Finally, I suggest that besides cultural absolutism and cultural relativism there is also another way of assessing different cultures – I used to call it intrinsic comparison – which is based on the second options of groups and individuals rather than on their first options. The issue of how to successfully compare cultures by avoiding both absolutism and relativism was extensively dealt with by me elsewhere.

3. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Andityas Soares De Moura Costa Matos

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Considering the basic assumption that the modern Law and State theory does not only bear similarities, but also draws true epistemological parallels to theconstructions of Theology, Hans Kelsen intends to lay bare the ideological meaning that lies at the very core of the traditional dualism which constitutes Law and State into autonomous entities. Taking into account Kelsen´s original perceptions – which are seconded by more recent contributions from Claude Lefort and Hans Lindahl’s political and symbolic concepts and from Carl Schmitt’s notions on political theology – our intention is now to demonstrate the highly conservative role played by the duality of the Law/State structure, whose aim is to remove, from under the sway of legal control, a considerable part of the State’s actions.Herebelow, therefore, we will analyse the very legitimacy of the so-called “Public Law,” which seems to point to a trend towards shunning the legal power regulation. Finally, based on the functional method pioneered by Ernst Cassirer, legal institutions such as “collective will” and “public interest” will be problematised, in order to ascertain whether they contain theological, conservative and authoritarian traits incompatible with the conceptual and substantial unity intrinsic to the Rule of Law.

4. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Steven Cresap, Louis Tietje

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Moral educators are faced with a number of polarizing trends, both in the political divide between liberals and conservatives and in the ideological divide between moral reasoners and character educators. Recent empirical research in psychology and anthropology, as exemplified in the work of Jonathan Haidt, has indicated that both kinds of polarization may have an evolutionary foundation. Our contribution is to evaluate the philosophical implications of such findings, and to place them within the cultural history of moral education. We also consider options in practical pedagogy for moral educators.

5. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Liudmila Baeva

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article is dedicated to basing a new current of philosophy – existential axiology. The nature of this theory involves the understanding of values as responsesof a person to key existential challenges: death, solitude, dependence of the nature and the society, etc. Value is the striving of a human to clarify the meaning andsignificance of our existence, it is an act of freedom, expression of subjectivity because it’s based on our personal experience and preference. We regard values as meaningfully-significant purposes of existence, that are a special type of information, reflecting the originality of the subject and expressing the most significantlonging for his own self-perfection. The sense and importance of information take effect in the programming of the psychic phenomenon and processes. Values express the maximum amount of information about the subject and emerge in the world as his highest manifestation. Since the variety in the human world is verygreat, axiological picture of the world will always be plural.

6. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Paola Partenza

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The concept of truth is one of the pivotal elements in Mary Wollstonecraft’s works. In line with her philosophical treatise, Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman(published posthumously in 1798) it becomes a paradigmatic expression of her thought. The author textualizes the obfuscation of the truth and the repression ofthe heorine’s self because of her unconventional conduct not judged in consonance with the social rules that govern patriarchal institutions. The novel might be read as a profound reflection on any form of prejudice and intellectual confinement of its time in which woman strives to regain her role as individual.

7. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Dan-Eugen Raţiu

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move towards a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty.

8. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Frederic Will

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Being part of a culture seems, on the face of it, empirically describable, and verifiable. But in fact that kind of participation is not so easy to characterize. Our existence as members of a culture is given to us fleetingly, and in awarenesses tightly locked to the awareness of the other, who is not our culture. Being part of aculture therefore is part of knowing yourself as limited. But to what are you limited? You are limited to being a presence other than that of the other that you are defined off against. It is thus worth noting that being of a culture is a fleetingly given awareness of a condition in which your not being something else is what defines you. The logical consequence of this structural situation is that you, or I, exist foremost as a site, rather than as a substance, in our occupying a post within culture.

9. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Dennis Ioffe

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article discusses the role of ideology in the Avant-Garde of both Russia and Western Europe. For this purpose, it is necessary to clearly delineate “ideology”and “politics,” which takes up the first part of this study. A number of different views of these aspects, as expressed by several critical approaches with respect to the Russian Avant-Garde, are confronted and critically examined.

10. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Abdul Rashid Moten

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Though centuries old, Islamophobia has increased in intensity as it is extensively documented by surveys and reports published by various governmentaland non-governmental organizations. This dislike towards Islam and Muslims is, due, amongst other factors, to an increasing number of Muslim citizens and asylum seekers in the West bent upon preserving their own identity giving rise to the perception of “us” versus “them.” Such negative evaluations by the in-group may be due to the conflicting values, beliefs and the actual or perceived threat posed by Muslims. This is also attributed to the negative messages transmitted by the national media and the powerful elite. The strategy for countering Islamophobia must concentrate on “unlearning intolerance” by focusing on removing negative perceptions through education, reforming the media and reshaping the foreign policy of Western powers.

11. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Seungbae Park

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
I criticize the following three arguments for moral objectivism. 1. Since we assess moral statements, we can arrive at some moral truths (Thomson, 2006). 2.One culture can be closer to truths than another in moral matters because the former can be closer to truths than the latter in scientific matters (Pojman, 2008). 3. A moral judgment is shown to be true when it is backed up by reason (Rachels and Rachels, 2010). Finally, I construct a dilemma against the view that there are moral truths and we can move toward them.

12. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Reena Cheruvalath

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
It is proposed to examine the need for redefining self deception in an Indian socio-cultural context and also on the basis of different social roles that one plays in his/her life time. Self-deception can be defined as the process of acting or behaving against one’s true inner feelings to maintain one’s social status. The conceptconsists of two aspects: maintaining a belief and the behavioral expression of it. Most of the time, deception occurs in the latter part, because it helps the deceiver to achieve a moral protection from the society and thereby, to get a mental pacification. In fact, in some situations, self deception helps to raise our self importance in the society. That is to say, if we express our inner truth, that which is unpleasant for the society, then it can lead to humiliation from the society. An individual adopts self deception as a method to evade dejection from the external world. Whenever I act against my inner feelings, it happens consciously or intentionally so I cannot feel both aspects, as a deceiver and the deceived, at the same time. Besides, I do respect the feelings of myself and in this sense one’s own self can never be deceived! Thus, self deception can be explained with relation to the expression of true beliefs in yourself.

13. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Alexander Baumgarten

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article investigates the original meaning of a passage of Plotinus’ Enneads, the treatise On Fate (Enneads, III, 1, 5). The thesis of the article envisagesthe understanding of the passage in the light of a Plotinian critic of astrology and argues that the understanding and the modern translations of the passage did not exactly detect neither the Plotinian doctrine nor how Plotinus represents his polemical opponents. We argued in this article that, for criticizing the contemporary astrology of his time, Plotinus elusively calls Anaxagoras’ astronomy, claiming exclusive minerality of the heaven in perfect circular movement. In addition, I correlated this observation with a broader conclusion on the grounding of the heaven as a significant space in the horizon of a hermeneutic conversion of the Plotinian philosophy.

14. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Morten Ebbe Juul Nielsen

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Do we have a “duty to recognize culture”? The aim of this paper is to examine the following question: assuming we have reasons to respect or valuerecognition per se, do we on that background also have reasons to recognize culture? More specifically, does “culture” furnish a particular morally relevant fact with pro tanto force, providing the basis for a duty to recognize culture? The paper first examines the concept of recognition and then proceeds to analyze “the recognition thesis”, a general argument for why or how culture can be a salient part of what should be recognized. On that basis, the more specific theories of recognition proposed by Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor are examined, and it is argued that neither of these theories support a general duty to recognize culture.

15. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Madalena D’Oliveira-Martins

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
For some years now, amongst contemporary Western societies (where capitalism and globalization have a great influence), the presence and developmentof a well-defined and peculiar emotional culture has become clear. The appropriate use and management of emotions, support a system of relations and codes that draw new limits between public and private life and between people and their actions. Arlie Russell Hochschild has studied the dynamics of emotions, aiming to define their distinctive languages. Interactions between the public and the individual realm and the social sphere gives shape a code which imposes certain meanings and uses that are beyond the intention and perception of emotional subjects. Studies on the recent transformations of feminine roles and the social readjustments, which go along with those changes, are specifically motivated by the insertion of women in the business world, taking a central place in Hochschild’s investigations. This paper shows how new emotional codes, as Hochschild defines them, have great influence on modern lifestyles and how the role of women (and here lies the central friction between the family and career consolidation) is at the center of the characteristically modern lifestyle revolution.

16. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Vilmos Voigt

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper aims to describe the importance of bridges – from the semiotic point of view, stressing their capacity in connecting nature and culture. It is arguing forthe importance of establishing technosemiotics as a separated chapter in sign system studies. The author mentions some famous bridges, such as the bridge over the river Kwai, Brooklyn Bridge, Puente de Alcantara (in Spain), bridges over the sea by the order of Xerxes and Caligula, other Oriental and European bridges, the Mostar Bridge (in Bosnia) and the Peruvian suspension bridges, as in the novel by Th. Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The illustrations are from Machinae Novae by Faustus Verantius (published 1616 in Venice).