Studia Philosophica

The aim of this paper is to describe Whitehead’s specific interpretation of the originally Plato’s concept of the “receptacle” (hypodoché). Whitehead, in line with his own process philosophy, understands Plato’s concept of the “receptacle” as a personal unity that, in its structural character, expresses the general principle that determines the constitution of the whole of our reality. The author of this paper begins by briefly describing Plato’s concept of hypodoché. The author goes on to present Whitehead’s specific interpretation of this concept, which allows the author to elaborate the potential parallels between Whitehead’s interpretation of hypodoché and his concept of “eternal objects”. Finally, the author attempts to find the answer to a fundamental philosophical question: what in reality corresponds to Whitehead’s concept of “eternal objects”. The author suggests that a possible answer may be found in the General Systems Theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

This article is dealing with the meaning of the eternal recurrence and the reason of time in philosophical work of Ladislav Klíma. Klíma’s understanding of eternal recurrence contains logical inconsistencies which are being analysed. The conditions established by Klíma do not agree with results which are concluded. Nevertheless, the point of Klíma’s relation to time is more existential and the logic analysis is not proportional to the sense of so called „egosolism“. Klíma’s literary image of time which is shown as a legless beggar is established to the previous ideas of eternal recurrence analyses, too. Its role in the specific confession of Klíma’s philosophy is explained as well.

Czech philosopher Albína Dratvová (1892–1969) is especially remembered for her work in philosophy of natural science and as an author of a number of secondary school textbooks in philosophy and logic. An important part of her intellectual legacy consists of her anthropological-ethical works, most importantly the work Duše dnešní ženy (On the Soul of the Contemporary Woman). The author proceeds from her personal experience and focuses on the role and function of the mental activities of women in new conditions and forms of women’s activity. The subtle analysis of the mental situation of women also brings a challenge and directions for finding the meaning of life.

In this paper, I present and analyze the key part of the discussion that arose between the authors inspired by psychological situationism and the advocates of the concept of moral character that appears in the Aristotelian thought tradition. At the heart of this discussion is the question of whether this concept remains adequate despite recent findings of social and cognitive psychology. Whether it represents a significant determinant of behavior, withstanding various factors such as social pressure, momentary mental settings or even just something quite simple like bad weather. Its significance then must be high enough for it to be meaningful to devote valuable resources to its cultivation in practice.

Great divergence (i.e. why Europe progressed faster than anyone else) has an important place in civilization studies as well as political and ethical ramifications. Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest solves this problem by positing six key advantages of the West. This article aims to show that this approach is not only openly political and problematic in terms of internal consistency, but also unsupported by contemporary historical science.

Ve svém příspěvku stručně shrnu obsah knihy Stevena Pinkera The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined a podrobím Pinkerovu analýzu vývoje násilí v lidských dějinách kritice. Dosavadní kritika tohoto díla ukazuje nejen na to, že Pinkerův popis jednotlivých historických období se zdá být na některých místech tendenční, ale že jeho obecná teze o zvyšující se mírumilovnosti společnosti není ze statistického hlediska prokázána. Připojím také vlastní kritiku Pinkerem identifikovaných psychologických změn, které podle jeho názoru vedly k bezprecedentní mírumilovnosti současného člověka. Představím argumenty, které zpochybňují buď to, že tyto psychologické změny skutečně probíhají (proměna směrem k femininním hodnotám péče a k větším empatickým schopnostem), nebo že tyto proměny souvisejí s úbytkem násilí (přechod k utilitaristické morálce a k abstraktnímu myšlení).

The paper focuses on Nietzsche's critique of causal thinking, which he associates with Plato's moral thinking. The first part presents Nietzsche's critique of the idea of pure spirit, which can, according to Plato, ascend above the world of senses. Nietzsche considers this idea, which gives support to Plato's theory of the preference of good to evil and truth to falsity, misconceived. The second part deals with Nietzsche's rehabilitation of the senses, so that he can show that the world perceived by them is illogical and unjust. Logic, thus, arises from non-logic and not from the misconception that there is a cause, the world of the Good, behind the sensual world. The focal point of this part of the paper is an interpretation of Nietzsche's critique of the "Four Great Errors" from his work The Twilight of the Idols. The final part focuses on the question whether Nietzsche successfully dealt with Plato's metaphysicsand dissociated his theory from it completely.

When pondering on Heidegger's attitude to Kant, as it is depicted in the work Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, the most important aspect is not the content, that is, an analysis of what is being written about Kant, but the question why Heidegger was able to employ his specific method and which semantic and pragmatic assumptions he accepted. Soon after the work was published, opinions emerged according to which Kant's texts were always subordinated to the interests and process of Heidegger's reflections of philosophy. According to these opinions, Heidegger treated Kant as a thinker who discovered the idea of the originality of being, but never formulated it adequately. That was a task awaiting Heidegger himself. This paper also defends the claim that Heidegger's book does not bring a unified picture of Kant's method, but only provides the skeleton of Heidegger's exposition of his own philosophy, which lacks any validation by scientific means. The author attempts to answer the question why Heidegger chose Kant, whom he had rejected, and assesses the assumptions that Heidegger accepted in order to continue from his unfinished Being and Time to his primary goal - the metaphysics of human existence. The most significant of these was the assumption of "insufficiently expressed Kant"; Heidegger announced that the Kant of the written texts (especially the Critique of Pure Reason) was not the Kant that could have been expressed, and inferred that he would bring his interpretation of Kant to a successful conclusion. The paper shows the contradictions that emerged in the effort to expound the critical philosophy by Heideggerian distortion according to antecedently accepted goals. A substantial part of the paper deals with the adaptability of Heidegger's thought to the Nazi ideology not only in 1933-1945, but even before the publication of Being and Time and in the decades after the destruction of Hitler's regime. The paper concludes that Heidegger's legacy is merely his "metaphysics of Aryan death", which finds its place in modern philosophy with great difficulty.

What is being analyzed and subsequently interpreted in our study, is Simone de Beauvoir's conception of freedom and its bodily determination. Because we are using Beauvoir's first novel, She Came to Stay (ĽInvitée), where her first conceptualization of these fenomenons can be found. Although this novel is strongly based on dialogues between three main characters, we are convinced, that it is precisely their dialogue, what allows specificity of Beauvoir's conceptions. Therefore, by interpreting some of these dialogues we are trying to make clear, where according to Beauvoir freedom begins and how it is being limited.

First, I have to mention a medallion of Josef Zumr for Luboš's sixtieth birthday, published Filosofický časopis in 1995, as a proof that our former head of the department was respected not only by philosophers from Brno. Luboš was born in the same year as me, but managed to finish his secondary school studies one year earlier. So it happened that in 1950 I met him at the Faculty of Arts as an assistant professor (in his lecture on ethics); and he met me as one of his first philosophy students. Since we worked at the same department since, and we were meeting not only as colleagues, but also as friends outside the university. What remains unforgettable are for instance our tours to the Slovak cottage to visit Pavel Pácl where I was fortifying my knowledge of how naturally Lubos could be an excellent companion in such an environment (not just during card games, but even when we tried to contribute to the maintenance of Pavel's cottage and its preparation for the winter). I tried to say a few words about Luboš's relation to the family to which he was born, to his own family, to his native region, and indeed about Luboš as a teacher who was popular and esteemed among all students. Unfortunately, it had to come eventually to the words of admiration for his valiant struggle with a disease that eventually succumbed

This paper was written on the occasion of Lubomír Nový's jubilee and introduces him as a member of the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk (J. E. Purkyně) University, where he participated in informal interdisciplinary discussions on social and scientific topics in the 1960s. We follow him then during the renewal process in the end of the 60s and in the following period of so called normalisation, when he was forced to deal with rather sociological topics. Finally, we bring some remarks about his monographs.

I remember the process of my becoming a friend with Luboš. He was a remarkable personality and I was happy to know him and be able to communicate with him. I only hope to meet him somewhere again.

Nový's book Philosopher T G. Masaryk (1994) has three layers, which naturally contact and merge: Firstly, Nový reviews existing literature on TGM with an emphasis on the most recent contributions. Secondly, he attempts to arrange and systematize Masaryk's work, map its internal logic and classify it in European context (Brentano, Husserl). Finally, he asks and answers questions that can be, in a narrower sense of the words, called problematic and topical. Nový shows how Masaryk's thought helps to revive the question of the meaning and order of our endeavour and creativity.

I am glad that I can contribute to the commemoration of professor Lubomir Novy and I appreciate that I had the chance to be one of his many students. Lubomir Novy was, together with his other colleagues, able to create a very friendly environment for us students. He stood out with his dynamism. His exams were not easy, because it was always a lesson in creating questions and searching for answers. I think that this "creating questions and searching for answers" was his lifelong attitude. Thanks to this, he was one of the main personalities of philosophical thought in this country in the sixties. He remained creative even in the nineties when he returned to his profession after an enforced break.

Professor of philosophy and psychology, native Slovenian, Mihajlo Rostohar (1878-1966) is known primarily as the founder of the Institute of Psychology at Masaryk University in Brno and as the founder of the holistic and experimental psychological school in Brno. Less frequently it has been remembered that in the years 1923-1926 he was the head of the Seminar of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and that his transition from Charles University, where he received a habilitation in philosophy in 1911, to Brno was also influenced by the fact that he was considered as Otakar Zich's successor in the leadership of the Seminar of Philosophy (he lectured psychology, sometimes epistemology there until 1939). This article focuses on philosophical topics, mostly connected with his conception of psychology, through which he had disputes with the positivist oriented Frantisek Krejčí. The author's attention is focused on, besides Rostohar's opinion on religion, his psychological analyses of the process of cognition, the individual sensory and rational elements (Rostohar was awarded by his habilitation degree with the work on hypothetical judgments), the role of language in thinking, and not least the responsibility of researchers for their opinions, which they present to the public. The final part, which discuss Rostohar's (still up to date) book Nationality and its moral significance, recalls Rostohar's rich; public, social and educational activities.