Volume XX (2015), no. 1

The problem of individuality lies at the basis of phenomenological investigations both in Edith Stein’s earliest and mature works. Her doctoral thesis, the On the Problem of Empathy, focuses on the phenomenological acts of perceiving persons in an intersubjective situation. She aims at a conception of the person beyond a construction based on the pure “I” or the stream of consciousness. According to her, the psycho-physical subject can comprehend the foreign living body as an individual. Dilthey is not interested in the individual in a phenomenological sense, but rather in the question as to what constitutes value in the society. Although all of Stein’s references to Dilthey’s views in her doctoral thesis are of critical nature, there is still a connection between the two thinkers. In this paper, I would like to investigate the relationship between Edith Stein’s critique of Dilthey’s understanding of the individual with a particular focus on Stein’s conception of empathic act as the founding act for the community.

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If until the outbreak of World War II the anti-Semitic manifestations were generally limited to verbal abuse and in isolated acts of physical violence, the alliance with Nazi Germany created the framework for the implementation of the anti-Semitic policies. The pogroms in Romania described in various books were also immortalized in photos. The photographs taken by the Jewish community reveal a vivid picture of the atrocities committed. This study aims to present the human losses, the moral and physical trauma, and also Jews’ property devastation during the fascist rebellion in Bucharest reflected in the scientific works and in photos.

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The present paper concludes a multidisciplinary research on the appearance and popularization of traditional gender ideologies by means of specific public power discourses. While, on declarative levels, the Romanian establishment favors political correctness, freedom of choice and self-identity, there are subtle messages within power discourses that state the opposite and encourage the perpetuation of traditional gender roles, the stigmatization of those who do not observe them, as well as dangerous gender segregation. The research takes into account three levels of ideology-dissemination in Romania after the year 2000: product publicity, public speech of prominent representatives of Romanian politics and public messages of the cultural elite.

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The present study attempts to show in which cases the barbarism discussed and sometimes openly advocated by the French philosophers of the 18^th century (Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau) relates back to some pagan habits and realities for mystically-romantic and for nostalgically-instinctual reasons and in which cases it has to do with rudimentary and bloodthirsty uses of reason. As these thinkers ignited the first precious and powerful sparks in the direction of a historical recuperation of the phenomenological and aesthetic roots of man, our material represents an attempt to explain the political and historical phenomenon which brought back to the table the discussion concerning the cultural origins of Europe and which resurrected the pagan fascinations and fears within the cultural imaginary of the coming epochs. [*]

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[*] As a post-doctoral researcher at Babeş-Bolyai University – Faculty of Philosophy (under the coordination of The West University of Timişoara), the author would like to express his gratitude for the financial support of his post-PhD research to the team coordinating the POSDRU 140863 Project.

Irony and solidarity are two key concepts characteristic of the vocabulary of Richard Rorty. Their thematization can be done on a narrower or wider basis of texts. In the present paper I attempt to contextualize and reconstruct them against the background of other important concepts of Rorty’s vocabulary, such as, first of all, the concept of contingency. The concept of irony is shown to derive, for Rorty, from Sartre’ conception of the humans who are claimed to be what they are not, and not to be what they are. The non coincidence of humans with themselves, or, with their „essence,” is argued to lead the way to the basic attitude of irony. The concept of contingency may be shown to lead up to the concept of solidarity as well, in that the realization that what we are we are in a contingent way implies the possibility of being radically other than what we happen to be. (I.) In a second step, the basic concepts of Rorty, thus far reconstructed, are shown to be dependent on Rorty’s basic philosophical stance of anti-foundationalism; the latter is claimed to have a hermeneutical background. (II.) In a final part the outlines of a tradition are sketched from Kant to the present, characterized by an anti-metapyhsical flow, whereby the importance of solidarity and morality is stressed without the attempt to anchor it in a metaphysical theory of humans or any kind of epistemology destined to provide knowledge rather than hope. Indeed, Rorty shows that hope stands over and above knowledge, and it contributes to making us humans more than a project to attain any kind of (secure) knowledge is ever capable of.

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Every discourse about the nothing seems fully and ultimately empty. However, this cannot be true precisely because it is language – that is, discourse – which always brings forth the nothing, the word of the “Nothing”. The language therefore speaks about the nothing and perhaps also “speaks nothing”. In its primary – and abstract – appearance, the nothing is precisely “that” “which” it is not. However, its word is still there in the words of most languages (for we cannot know all). What is more, since it is not, at a first sight all the nothing has is its word, its name... and this is precisely what protrudes. But the word of the nothing utters in language only that which has no being. That is therefore not just any kind of negation, but the negation of being, the name of the negation of being. The “nothing” is therefore the mere word of the negation of being. Which lives standing in languages. As deeply that its translation presents no problems. The German ­­das Nichts can be translated unproblematically to the English nothing, the French rien or néant, the Slavic nić, the Romanian nimic or the Hungarian semmi, etc. However, if we go on deeper into the problem, it shows that, despite the unproblematic translation, being and (its) negation articulates in different ways in the names of the nothing. The writing analyses this in detail, with special emphasis of the Hungarian word of Nothing [Semmi]. It concludes by initiating a philosophical dialogue with a poem of Attila József.

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