Studia Philosophica

The problem of scientific rationality has been the subject of critical analyses of a number of philosophers. Many of them conceded that rationality is essential for the development of science, but warned against uncritical application of rationality in every­day life. They believed that modern scientific and objectivist rationality can devalue the real meaning and purpose of human life. In his concept of the lived world – Leb­enswelt – Husserl brought to the fore the value of everydayness, common pleasures and pains, which help us navigate naturally in the world. Everydayness shapes our practical attitude to the world characterized by down-to-earthness, matter-of-factness as well as emotionality. Although the world is a united whole, we live in two worlds – the world of science, scientific rationality and objective knowledge, and the world of everydayness, natural certainties and doubts, everyday rationality, that is, the world in which philoso­phy of medium scope has its place.

The basic feature of Toulmin’s conception of rationality was that he refused to iden­tify it with formal logic. Rational behavior and thinking was for him such that managed to register a change in the environment and respond to it by an adaptation. Such a way of thinking, however, was not always obvious to science. Toulmin thus joined the group of philosophers of science, as were K. R. Popper or T. S. Kuhn, who also criticized the earlier conception of rationality. This is not to say that he agreed with them in all. Espe­cially in his book Cosmopolis, Toulmin investigated when the criticized way of thinking in science (but in a way also in society) enforced. He concludes that this break came about between the 16th and the 17th century, when the older way of thinking, which points out especially at Montaigne, made concessions to the new way of thinking which is far stricter and particularly intolerant. Toulmin suggests going back to certain ele­ments of Renaissance humanism and its manner of discussion. In a way, he does it when interpreting the development of science. Hereby he are mainly criticizes Kuhn for his concept of scientific revolution. He takes as a pattern of thinking Darwin‘s theory and, in a way, Anglo-Saxon law based on precedents, or even technical thinking. The problem of development forces Toulmin to address the issue of continuity and changes in scien­tific thinking. He explains this by a help of the concept of scientific discipline in order to arrive at the fact that even this particular concept is an application of cultural universals in cultural anthropology of science. – Toulmin wrote during the boom of postmodern­ism. His merit is that although responded to a number of issues that postmodernists encountered, he could cope with them in a different (more acceptable) way than they did.

The last four centuries have seen unceasing interest in the studies of Galileo’s sci­entific method. In 1980, Maurice Finocchiaro presented an unusual interpretation of Galileo as a logician and formulated a new theory of rationality based on a detailed analysis of Galileo’s Dialogue. The paper gives a brief overview of the macroscopic features forming the galilean rationality suggested by Finocchiaro. The first part deals with the so-called dialectical methodology consisting of balancing decisions between different (even opposed) approaches toward the scientific problems. The second part is concerned with the most important part of the galilean rationality, i.e. the logical reason­ing. The third part presents the indispensable role of nonlogical features in the scientific communication.

In the complicated social and political situation (not only on the European continent) the concepts of tolerance and intolerance are morphing into different shapes and posi­tions than those they had in the past. On the basis of texts of mainly contemporary Slo­vak and Czech philosophers (V. and B. Seiler, I. Buraj, M. Machovec, V. Bělohradský, K. Hvížďala, M. Petříček) as well as G. Sartori and S. P. Huntington, the author intends present the questions that have emerged in recent years and the answers to which are often unknown. The core of the paper is a reminder of the three concepts of tolerance: Machovec’s definitions of core terms of tolerance and intolerance; elucidation of three kinds of tolerance, as defined by V. and B. Seiler (disjunctive, conjunctival and synergis­tic). The article also works with Sartori’s concept of flexibility of tolerances. The author of the text refers to the fact that in the difficult situation in which we currently find our­selves, emotional and normative thinking prevails over rational thinking. This shook the classical definition, or rather the fulfilment of the concept of tolerance.

The aim of this article is to present impact of public sphere on political decisions. Af­ter and overview of relevant writings of J. Habermas – the origin and decay of bourgeois public sphere, deliberative model of democracy and legitimizing of democracy through deliberative processes in the context of real democracies – the article focuses on the examination of problems of deliberation and on challenges which are coming through the still more complicated structures of democratic society. The last part of the article deals with critical comments in the framework of Habermas’ foregoing thoughts and the relation between normative theory and political reality.

Karel Čapek published paper The Reason That Filed Us? in 1934, where he respond­ed to the so called „epistemological crisis“. He focused on rehabilitation of rationality in its moderate version, so how you react to it from point of view of pragmatism, ob­jectivism and Masaryk´s gnoseological realism. The paper tries to interpret the role of rationality in Čapek´s philosophical thinking and introduce some consequences of this approach towards his objective aesthetic method.

The author considers work as a way in which man – an element of nature and the sole creator of culture – imposes his will (individual or collective) upon part of his en­vironment. He states that the need to work has its roots in the efforts of our pre-historic ancestors, who lost their homes in the treetops and needed to survive in open savanna. However, current automatization brings the loss of working positions for labourers as well as an unprecedented level of people’s frustration resulting from the loss of direct contact with nature. The need for work, which automatization in a particular work pro­cess replaces, is to a large extent removed, but the amount of work in a wider social con­text does not decrease very much. A demand for a new type of work arises – work that cannot be applied in agriculture, crafts or factories. It is a strange demand that limits the employment of people who are less socialized, that is, less intellectually capable. Peo­ple with an unsuitable structure of mental abilities can only apply for certain positions. Genuine work considered as the unity of physical and mental effort is a phenomenon that modern globalized economy no longer needs, but man does even more. Work has transformed from an economic category into an anthropological and medical one.

The aim of this paper is to present Patočka’s reception of Ingarden‘s concept of a lit­erary work of art, both with respect to Patočka‘s own philosophy of literature, and with regard to a development Patočka’s critical approach to the Ingarden’s theory of literary works. The possible objections against Ingarden‘s theory, which primarily lie in criti­cism of Ingarden‘s structuralist or formalistic approach to the search for the essence of a literary work, are designed on the basis of relevant notes in Patočka‘s professional studies. That argument is interpreted as a comparation with Patočka’s conception of philosophy of literature.

The concept of order has its great history in the european development from the presocratics over Aurelius Augustinus until H. Driesch and H. Krings, who in the year 1941 publicates his book Ordo. In our country payed attention to the concept of order and ordering all the life long first of all the in Brno and Olomouc teaching J. L. Fischer (1894–1973). The idea of order was one of the pilar of his synthetic philosophy, which had to solve the problems of modern society better as the marxism. At the same time as the laicistique Fischer waged the instalment of a valuable order a clean-cut catholic group concentrate about the revue Řád. The matter for both poles was to put an end to the reign of capitalism, but they were not able to understand one another for the differ­ence of their beliefs, resp.faithes. The article will among others show the possibility how to conceive both the approaches in the conception of W. C. Smith, who teaches, that the genuine faith has few in common with a so called belief. The article sees in the exploit­ing of this conception the possibility how to reconcile both the poles and contribute to the renewal of european civilisation. This task may be solved above all on the universi­ties in Brno and Olomouc.

Presented article puts mind to thinking of „last Roman and first scholastics“ Anicius Boethius, which is mainly known by his Consolation of Philosophy. This article focus on different side of Boethius, e.g. his scientific effort to translate greek terms to latin, create new terminology and syntetise philosophical diffusion of his contemporary phi­losophers by exact methodology. His language uses art and logic togather.Boethius unified by his language contradictory philosophical schools – Plato, Aristo­tle, pythagoreism, neoplatonism and christian philosophy. He formalized scientific field according to arithmetical research as a part of artes liberales. He reformed artes lib­erales to christian world and unified scientic research by exact mathematical methods. He called his way as quadrivium (e.g. four ways) as a part of Seven liberal arts (lat. Septem artes liberales). Quadrivium consisted from arithmetics, geometry, astronomy and music. These „four ways to wisdom“ were for Boethius only true method to explore understandable universum (lat. naturalia). He considered scientific language to same importance as scientific research. Boethius emphasized that all scientific theory must be understandable. Despite of logic coherency Boethius use artistic expressions.This article points out the difficulties of up-to-date science, which is sometimes lim­ited by language. Article shows, that inspiration is right by hand in history of science. In history stayed european philosophers in similar role as today. That is why Boethius is inspiring, he used new translations, and new language. He used the formal logic and art togather.

The article deals with some of the epistemological consequences which had the use of optical devices in the 17th century. As a illustrative framework of these consequences, I use the famous novel Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift which present a literary and imaginative context for some of the consequences. In the first part, I try to outline the reasons of unthinkability of optical devices in the Greek natural philosophy. Then I pres­ent the anthropological discovery of human unimportance in the universe brought about by telescopical observation of the sky. The second part deals with the Cartesian theory of perception and its importance for the understanding of microscopical observation. The result of the microscopical experience was a bitter detection of non-privileged status of human perception of the world. In the third part, it is outlined that modern optical de­vices were interpreted by early modern scientists (and consequently by Swift) as means showing epistemological inaccesibility of the very substance of nature. However, the epistemological reluctance of the early modern science was compensated by the idea of progress. Swift who stood at the side of anciens in the famous querelle did not consider the idea of scientific progress as a persuasive solution although he could not refuse the new scientific worldview. Eventually, he could only dream about a better pristine utopi­an world of eternal wisdom.

The whole of bioethical problems forms the most progressive part of the present ethical discourse. The concept of the ethics of social consequences and evolutionary ontology represents in this area a huge potential in the development of all three pillars of bioethics (medical and nursing ethics, environmental ethics and “animal ethics“). At present the environmental ethics obviously stagnates a little bit, however, at the same time it is possible to process successfully the critical and theoretical (methodological) analysis of its present forms as an important incentive for its further possible develop­ment. Concept of s.c.evolutional ontology yields original point of viev to the relation between nature and culture. It´s potentially inspirating for the axiology and environ­mental ethics too.

Isaiah Berlin introduces two concepts of liberty and this distinction of liberty al­though is on the one side relevant and important but on the other problematic and ques­tionable. Berlin’s distinction points out that these concepts of the positive and negative liberty are really antagonistic. There are two points of view; one is the point of a human nature or man as individual and the second is the point of a human society. The main purpose of our article is to answer the question which of these concepts is more suita­ble from the human nature or human society point of view. Berlin’s conclusion is that the negative liberty more reflects the human nature and is a truer human ideal than the positive concept of liberty with the goals of those who seek after a better society. But contrary to Berlin we want to prove that this result is not so evident because each one of these concepts implicitly contains some problematic difficulties which cannot be so simply overcome by Berlin’s dichotomy. For this reason the result of our analysis is a scale of liberty between its two poles.