Esej stanowi historyczną analizę kategorii Obcego. Autor wyszczególnia dwa jej rozumienia, które pojawiły się w dwudziestowiecznej myśli społecznej. Pierwsze traktuje obcość jako własność odnoszącą się do zewnętrznych relacji grupy, drugie zaś jako charakterystykę relacji grupy względem funkcjonujących w jej obrębie mniejszości. Na bazie tego rozróżnienia autor proponuje dwa modele Obcego: oparty na kategorii członkostwa oraz oparty na kategorii uznania. Omawia je bazując na tekstach takich klasyków jak Simmel i Schütz, oraz autorów współczesnych, jak Taylor i Bauman. W trakcie prowadzonych analiz historycznych wskazane zostaje bliskie pokrewieństwo obu tych modeli. Współczesny model uznania implikuje mianowicie traktowanie przedstawicieli różnorodnych tradycji kulturowych jako członków tej samej wspólnoty moralnej. Autor zwraca również uwagę na podobną zależność w przypadku zjawiska radykalnego Obcego, gdzie brak uznania łączy się ściśle z aktem wykluczenia moralnego. Przedstawione analizy mają na celu identyfikację głównych nurtów interpretacyjnych kategorii Obcego oraz wskazanie tendencji, jakim rozumienie tej kategorii współcześnie podlega.
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The article presents a historical analysis of the category of “the stranger”. The author distinguishes two conceptualizations that emerged in twentieth-century social thought. One treats strangeness as a feature of a group’s external relations, while the other – as a characteristic of a group’s relations with the minorities functioning within it. Based on this distinction, the author proposes two models of “the stranger”: one based on the category of membership and the other based on the category of recognition. Both are discussed with the reference to the classical texts, such as the ones by Simmel or Schütz, as well as to the contemporary authors, such as Taylor and Bauman. The historical analysis allows to establish a close relationship between the two models. The contemporary model of recognition implies that the representatives of various cultural traditions are treated as the members of a shared moral community. The author draws attention to a similar relationship in the case of the “radical stranger” phenomenon, in which the lack of recognition is closely related to the act of moral exclusion. The article aims at identifying the main historical conceptualizations of “the stranger” and indicating the current trends in approaching this category.
The essay contains an analysis of selected socio-political ideas of Helmuth Plessner. The basic assumption of this study is the existence of a close categorial relationship between Plessner’s reflections in The Limits of Community (1924) and in Die Stufen des Organischen (1928). As the interpretative key, the author uses one of the pivotal concepts of Plessner’s philosophy of life, namely the category of “border.” Showing the adequacy of this category in relation to Plessner’s social and political concepts, the essay addresses the issue of the individual-society relationship, the question of social roles and their possible deviations, and the problem of political leadership.
The essay is an introduction to two – published in this issue – essays by Helmuth Plessner, whose subject is the socio-philosophical analysis of the contemporary art, in general, and of the contemporary painting, in particular. What comes to the fore is the attempt to identify social and cultural processes that since the second half of the 19th Century have considerably influenced art. Special emphasis has been put on three processes: commercialization, democratization, subjectivization of the aesthetic criteria, and emancipation of seeing.
This essay focuses on three conceptions of man formulated within the German school of philosophical anthropology. I discuss, one by one, theories by Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. First, I emphasize the common to these theoreticians methodological assumptions consisting primarily in an opposition against the Cartesian dualism and in founding a ground for philosophical analysis in the results of scientific research. Second, I present their conceptions of man stressing at the same time dissimilarities that differ them from each other. These differences concern first and foremost their general orientation: while Scheler’s understanding of man is clearly determined by a metaphysical idea of a permanent essence of man, Plessner’s conception focuses rather on a dynamic, historical way of manifesting of their existence. Philosophy by Gehlen in turn presents a picture of man as a biological being who by their own effort, by emerging institutional reality, stabilizes their existence.
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