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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This article deals with Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and with the philosophical mo­tifs that the essayist and theorist of communication Vilém Flusser adopted from Buber’s concept of dialogue. The text presents various aspects of Flusser’s conception of dialogue into which Buber´s thoughts projected. The author attempts to show how Flusser’s ap­proach differs from Buber´s, in particular how Flusser deflected from the understanding of the authentic dialogue as a dialogue of two particular people to the concept of dialogue in the framework of mass-communication through media and new technologies. The question of whether and how Flusser’s communication theory relates to Jewish philosophy in general is discussed as well.

The paper recapitulates the life and work of Jiřina Popelová, a major Czech philosopher of the 20th century. Attention is paid to three collections of papers published in her honour – Sborník k šedesátým narozeninám Jiřiny Popelové (A Collection of Papers to Celebrate the 60th birthday of Jiřina Popelová) (1964), Jiřina Popelová, filozofka a učitelka filozofie (Jiřina Popelová, a philosopher and a teacher of philosophy) (1984) and Filosofka Jiřina Popelová (The Philosopher Jiřina Popelová) (2005). Closer attention is paid to the papers by M. So­botka, R. Kalivoda, J. Pešková, P. Floss and J. Gabriel. These focus on J. Popelová’s contribu­tion to the philosophy of history, Comenius studies, ethics, philosophy of culture and the historiography of European and Czech Philosophy.

This short collection of letters by Jiřina Popelová represents a „fourth en­counter“ with that philosopher, certainly the most private one. It reveals the personal life of the philosopher and her professional as well as private relationships.

Populism nowadays is often used concept both in the academic field, as well as on the politi­cal scene itself, in the media and among the general public. The fact is that although almost everybody uses this term in our society, only few know what it really means. This article will therefore deal with a question that has been the subject of many theorists’ analysis, the question what populism means. One of the theorists is Ernesto Laclau (1935–2014) which does not understand populism as ideology, but as some special strategy or way of communication. In the first part of our article we will define the term “populism”, highlight its multiple interpretations as well as its common analytical core. In the following sections of the article, we will focus on the analysis of populism by Ernest Laclau. The aim of our article is therefore to analyze the theory of populism according to E. Laclau in the context of the current situation on the domestic and global political scene.

In the last fifty years, we have repeatedly been confronted with the pressing question of whether our civilization, and perhaps the whole civilization, is coming to an end. G. Li­povetsky and H. Juvin tackle this question in their own ways in the book The Globalized West, which they published together in France in 2010. While Lipovetsky attempts to pro­vide a balanced view of the postmodern world, which results in a picture of a society that does not abandon its (various) traditions, Juvin emphasises the threat of global confronta­tion. Both authors primarily deal with the question of the relationship between economics and politics and both criticize in their own ways the dominance of economics over politics. It must be mentioned that their focus is a bit narrower than that of authors such as Spengler or Toynbee, or authors building on the idea of an ecological catastrophe. However, this pro­vides a convenient material for a comparison with their predecessors’ and contemporaries’ views on a society that is obviously facing great changes. The author of this paper confronts their views with the views of their predecessors and contemporaries (Feyerabend, Fuku­yama, Huntington, Popper, etc.) and attempts to find similarities and differences.