This inquiry examines various philosophical conceptions of identity and the clash between different identity narratives in the history of philosophy. The main goal of this paper is to show how the European philosophical idea of identity was developed. This paper explores the emergence of European philosophical identity narratives, which have shaped the ideas of justice, truth and community in Europe. It studies the foundational identity narratives that underlie the contested idea of a shared European heritage in law and culture, such as the ideas of equality, tolerance, rule of law, pluralism and the rejection of totalitarianism, and their relevance for current debates on philosophical ideas of self and identity. Identity is an open process. It is a dynamic hermeneutic category, which is constantly reinterpreted and reinvented. There are various philosophical traditions of Cogito – some of them perceive it as foundation of all knowledge and some of them perceive it as a mere illusion. In all these philosophical perspectives, the self is understood only through interpretation. The self is constituted as a narrative, as a text. Understanding oneself means understanding oneself in front of a text. The self is reinterpreted all over again only in light of narratives provided by culture. The task of hermeneutics is not only understanding of a subject, but also rethinking the subject.

This article discusses the response which Hegel gives in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy to a problem which is first posed in his early writings. The problem is that of the possibility to comprehend the Absolute, the Infinity („Life” is the term Hegel uses in his Early Writings) using the reflexion as instrument. The later response is to see the concept (Begriff) in his speculative sense (in fact the form of absolute reflexion) as a spiritual, historical entity and so, as tradition of representation (Vorstellung). The tradition of a thought is what marks the passage from dominative, intelectual thinking to integrative, reasonable thinking.

In the discussion whether Confucianism supports human rights, it is necessary to distinguish between the content and the form of human rights. Regarding the content of human rights, only the normative texts in Confucianism can contribute to the discussion. Even though Confucianism concedes that people are equal in nature, this equality is restricted in certain areas of normative justification. Regarding the form of human rights, the Confucian idea of graded love is against the universal nature of human rights. However, the pre-ontology of Heidegger shows us how graded love can actually be the ground of the Confucian approach to universality, which overcomes the opposition between universality and particularity within Western metaphysics. Therefore, in the Confucian approach to universality, graded love can be the motivation to universalizing of human rights. Moreover, as the Confucian approach to universality is not a principle that transcends all particularities, it helps construct an inclusive form of human rights.

The Canadian thinker George Grant offers a critique of modernity that tries to come to terms with the challenge of Heidegger to Plato. Against philosophical approaches which claim that any kind of metaphyics is obsolete and should be overcome, Grant attempted to think through what the rejection of metaphysics by important modern forms of philosophy means. Grant’s thought looked back to Plato for a conception of justice that he felt was endangered in the modern world. In particular, his philosophical thinking could be said to engage the various forms of pragmatism that he regarded as emblematic of modernity’s emphasis on making and creating in contrast to the older virtue of contemplation. However, the ontological concern about the priority of conetmplation over action was, forGrant, also connected to problem of justice. Could one defend an understanding of justice that gives to man what is his due while accepting the pragmatism of modern philosophy? And does pragmatism succeed in eliminiating the question conerning God from the concerns of the philosopher?

This article discuss the origin of the Byzantine Cultural Model, influenced by the patristic anthropologic perspective, which discerns that present-day man is notgeneric man, but is at an intermediate stage, between a lost condition and one that could be attained. A dimension of the Eastern Christian understanding of man that is less known nowadays is related to the theme of the garment of skin. This is connected with another one, the theme of the simplicity of the mind.

The present text investigates the key ideas of the modern cultural horizon, and especially the meanings of what we call Reason. Modernity brings a certain understanding of Reason sought as the main human capacity. But this understanding took the shape of a belief, fact visible everywhere not only in the scientific investigation but also in other cultural forms, among which were philosophy and theology. And also became an ideology. Yet, the last century, especially in its second half, provided interpretative instruments and paradigms which made possible the recovery of the cultural perspectives and especially of the spirituality from the Eastern European area, which had other ground than the paradigm of the modern rationalism.

The aim of this article is the analysis of a new model of intercultural ethics. In this way I propose a “creative” and dynamic version of universalism, which canbe used as a model for the construction of a pluralistic and intercultural philosophical perspective.

Derrida considered himself Marx's successor in Spectres of Marx, as manifested in his grammatological deconstruction of linguistics. Proceeding from linguistics, Derrida questioned the traditional linguistics represented by Saussure, overturned the metaphysics based on linguistic signs, and thereby deconstructed logocentrism. In Derrida's view, logocentrism is the belief that there is an ultimate reality such as being, essence, truth and ideas, which actually doesn't exist and needs to be negated. In linguistics, logocentrism, or rather phonocentrism, maintains that speech alone conveys ideas smoothly while writing is a simple supplement. Contrary to this idea, Derrida argued that writing could also convey meanings just as speech according to social convention. This deconstruction of traditional linguistics by Derrida shows his adoption of Marxist theory and methodology as well as the significant linguistic influence of Marxist theory with its contemporary perspective.

The paper adopts philosophical research methodologies of conceptual clarification, critical analysis, and extensive argumentation. It attempts to jointly employ African metaphysical and epistemological grounds to address the problem of finding appropriate justification for reparations for Africa on the issue of past slavery and slave trade. The paper states that the crux of the problem is how to formulate a coherent theoretical framework, which provides a strong connection between the direct victims of slavery and slave trade and their descendants in Africa, on the basis of which the latter could justifiably claim for restitutive justice against the wrong done to the former. Western traditional accounts usually define reparations such that the concept only intelligibly applies to moral relations among contemporaries, not between the departed and the living. This reasoning, therefore, forecloses any moral relations between the departed and the living, making it morally unjustifiable for the latter to claim for restitutive justice on behalf of the former. However, this study re-thinks the concept of reparations, using two core areas of African philosophy. African metaphysics recognizes that an experiential being is ontologically connected to the other, that is, any other experiential being and spirits, inclusive of ancestors. This relationship also invariably closes the epistemological gap between the experiential and non-experiential worlds, making them a unity within African cosmology. Situated within the present study, the foregoing shows that the living could justifiably claim for restitutive justice on behalf of the departed, the direct victims of slavery and slave trade.

In the following lines the symbolic oppression founded on binary hierarchies that exist inside the framework of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms will be presented. In those binary oppositions opposed terms are not equally valued. One of these terms is dominant, while the other is subordinated and mostly defined only as the first term’s other. This symbolic oppression creates various forms of discrimination. This paper argues that this problem can be resolved by deliberative democracy. Effective deliberation leads to more informed public sphere which is capable to embrace otherness and diversity.

In the increasingly notorious philosophy of new materialism, a serious attempt to redefine subjectivity in terms of its non-dualistic nature can be ascertained.The criticism on dualisms draws directly on a wider critique focusing the anthropocentric and correlationist models that shaped modernity and modern thought. In this paper, I consider new materialism’s non-dualism as a starting point from which a subsequent decline of subjectivity can be purported. This decline does not involve immediately, or at all, devaluation but, instead, it is interpreted as an instance of neutralization. The neutralized subject is an underlying phenomenon ofthe ontology and the epistemology that relates closer to new materialist philosophy. New materialism’s conceptual framework draws widely on Deleuze and Latour’s thought. On what subjectivity is concerned, the concepts of “becoming” and of the “virtual” are crucial in more recent theorizations aligned with new materialism, where a commitment to overcome the barriers imposed by a central and substantial subjectivity is present (for example in Rosi Braidotti’s or Karen Barad’s writings). At the same time, the theory of assemblages and the claim for the existence and observation of the agencies of (inanimate) matter provide a further element, along with a further set of concepts that, as I claim, reinforce the becoming-neutral of the subject. In this case, the works of Manuel de Landa or Jane Bennett are seminal. Finally, when this neutralization is taken as part of a realistic post-humanist conception, the possibility of a new cultural model and a new set of values arises. The edification of a new cultural model, although not entirely intentional or socially widespread, is made possible when the neutralization of subjectivity accompanies a withdrawal of a misleading representation of its centrality and substantiality without denying the properties of its particular embodiment.

This paper is an approach to the context in which Dawson's work originated as well as to the main critiques of the works by Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee and Thomas S. Eliot, with whom he differed on how to address the study of culture. The contrasts between Dawson and the views of these authors are significant and help to refine the concept of culture Dawson used in his philosophy. The paper highlights both Dawson's perspective and what separates or brings him closer to these authors. Conclusions are drawn about the elements Dawson took from each one of them.

The paper challenges the dominant view of the individual’s place in an African (Esan) structure of Being or culture as one cast in the midst, and subject to the operations of (spiritual) forces, which are independently real and existent and can make or mar the individual’s existence based on the kind of relationship he/she establishes with them. The individual is expected to have reverence and awe for these forces; hence he/she is consistently striving to fit into the established structure of Being for his/her own good. The paper asserts that this is not a fair situation because it is the individual who conceptualizes and constructs such an idea of Being to account for his/her perplexing, multifaceted experiences and his/her ontological wonder; the individual is the fundament of Being; he/sheilluminates Being. Thus, though the structure of Being in which the Esan finds himself/herself playing important roles in his/her life and in the society, he/she must not always strive to fit into it, particularly when it outlasts its suitability for answering fundamental and baffling questions that keep confronting the individual in his/her existence. Since Being keeps unfolding and our knowledge of the Being-process is never complete, the individual must therefore consistently revisit, re-conceptualize and improve on the prevalent conception or structure of Being in order to account for current experiences that confront him/her.

Based on the dispute between Protagoras and Socrates on the origin of ethics, one can ask the question of whether the principle of ethics is reason orfeeling/emotion, or whether ethics is grounded on reason or feeling/emotion. The development of Kant’s thoughts on ethics shows the tension between reason and feeling/emotion. In Kant’s final critical ethics, he held to a principle of “rational a priori.” On the one hand, this is presented as the rational a priori principle being the binding principle of judgment. On the other hand, it is presented as the doctrine of “rational fact” as the ultimate argument of his ethics. Husserl believed that Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori totally disregarded the a priori essential laws of feeling. Like Husserl, Scheler criticized Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori, and therefore developed his own theory of an “emotional a priori”. Both of them focused their critiques on the grounding level of ethics. Scheler, however, did not follow Husserl all the way, but criticized him and reflected on his thoughts. At last, he revealed the primary status of a phenomenological material ethics of value.

This paper bases on a (great!) wrongful act which was made to Greek philosophy, and especially to the pre-Socratic one: the unilateral abatement of thestudies to those of cosmological nature. The big mutation would take place in Socrates’ time, who by the anthropology of the discourse takes philosophy to a theory of knowledge, through a program which would be perfected by Plato and especially by Aristotle. This is a point of view co-substantial to history of philosophy, which some times risks to charge in an alethic (good/bad) way a paradigm based on false discussions. Pre-Socratics were not only preoccupied by ontology, or even cosmology, as well as Aristotle was not a radical empirist. In the economy of thought the nuances are more important than a classification often made for our epistemological comfort.

A madhouse can be regarded as the realm where concepts do not have a constantly changing topos. This autarchic sanctuary has no “patients” and is a true malady of the soul. An “engaged” philosophy is one which deals with the selection of concept consumption. On behalf of the healthiness of the spirit, the authorial voices have engaged themselves in a therapeutic writing. ”The world” had to be cured, the maladies of the soul were a threat everywhere. The concepts, qua therapeutic agents have taken on this role. But if the malady itself would be constitutive of the spirit, a medicina mundi through which the creation of concepts is a Genesis, a permanent naming is offered as an alternative for the “healing” of the spirit. This is the thesis through which in Six Maladies of the Contemporary Spirit, the philosopher Constantin Noica chose to portray six maladies of which the soul would be “suffering” and which make the object of this paper.

What counts as scientific ideology for Canguilhem and Kuhn is functionally distinct. However, in this article I argue that metaphysical and other non-scientificbeliefs brought about by scientists into their research traditions and that Kuhn sees as generating scientific change coincide closely with Canguilhem’s conception of scientific ideology. Kuhn failed to describe clearly those ideological and metaphysical elements influencing the work of science. He chose to focus on psychological factors intrinsic to paradigms and present in paradigm shifts and in scientific revolutions and also in the internal mechanisms of science itself such as the discovery process. Canguilhem triangulated scientific ideologies with the traditional demarcation criterion between science and non-science and with the intertwining of practice, theory, and external (social) beliefs in scientific thought while distancing himself from the psychological dynamic in science characteristic in Kuhn’s work. Their views are complementary.

The novelty of this paper is that modus vivendi of 13-14 year old teenagers is viewed from the perspective of the new generation Z teachers. Teachers, belonging to the same generation as students, participated in the qualitative study and ex-pressed their opinions on the modus vivendi of 13-14 year old teenagers. This age range was selected specifically because it is close to the generational boundary of generation Alpha. Teachers from generation Z were purposefully selected as informants, since the researchers noticed a difference in modus vivendi of generation Z members closer to the generation Alpha and the older ones. The study is based on the methodological attitude of social constructivism. Its essence lies in perceiving that individuals construct their own personal understanding and it is not the mirror of their acquired knowledge. It is constructed on the basis of attitudes, experience, relationships between people, things and events. The aim of the study is to elucidate modus vivendi of teenagers from generation Z, as viewed by the teachers from generation Z. The paper contains the results of the conducted qualitative study and formulated conclusions.

This study deals with the issue of Plato’s political interest. Some say he had none. We’ll try to show that in fact he was very political, to the extent that the core ofhis work is a political agenda, and is politically orientated. There’s also the aspect of the relation between metaphysics and politics in his work; that is a delicate issue, as some consider that Plato “disguised” his political convictions in myths. That too will be taken into consideration.1. The number of metaphysical dialogues is small, compared to the vast majority of the platonic dialogues2. No only the writings, but also the life of Plato show him as political3. Even the “metaphysical” dialogues have a political agendaThere are authors that consider Plato to be no less than a forerunner of Christianity, a mystic conscious of the contemplation of an ideal “beyond”. One should bear in mind that Plato has even been declared a saint by the Orthodox Church. We choose to be more cautious in dealing with the interest that Socrates’ pupil is supposed to have taken into mystics (theory or practice). In the following pages, we’ll try to explain these reserves.