The author diagnoses the condition of the humanities today, referring to the conclusions of its avantgarde movements, mainly postmodernism. The loss within these movements of the basic epistemological categories — such as objectivity, reality, truth, experience or symbol — causes a referential break between language and being. This state of affairs gives rise to research controversies and thought aberrations that undermine the authority of the humanities and the sense of their practice. These controversies are by no means an innovation of our times. They appeared on numerous occasions in the history of thought and — speaking more broadly — culture, with the “monastic” (experimental) style and the “qualitative” (speculative) style marking their ascendancy or descent to the scholarly underworld with greater or lesser force. What undoubtedly characterises the humanities today is the extent to which obvious cognitive absurdities masquerading as science throw theirweight around, absurdities stemming from seemingly innocent premises, such as the use of inventiveness, paralogy, narrativeness, etc. in research. Their worldview-related consequences leading through tolerance to relativism lead to a ban on the application of axiological procedures and on the reference of a worked-out conceptuality to extra-linguistic reality. This turns out to be dangerous not only to cognition as such but also to the sense of human existence. That is why a return to the monastic style and, as part of it, essential cognition and practices of presence (e.g. directness of experience, the so-called “ontological call” not being ignored by the scholar) based on symbolic-spiritual exercises bringing to mind the ancient idea of humanitas and the horizon of universal values, can lend support to the crisis-ridden humanities and humanists.
The article discusses the monograph Géographie des odeurs, which contains treatises on space anthropology, literature, geography of industry, urban planning, thematising the role of scent in shaping and perceiving space. The authors propose application of the instruments of perceptive geography (e.g. scent maps) to analyze various spatial phenomena.
This text is yet another attempt at taking up the immortal question reappearing seasonally in university or college seminars in humanities: Can interpretation be scientific? Can an act of interpreting, understood as responding to the call and meeting the challenge posed by a text (or, by 'texts', in a broad semiotic meaning), aspire to be termed 'scientific', as per the customary explanation of the term? If, namely, there is always someone's subjectivity behind an interpretative gesture, whereas striving for objectivity - or, inter-subjective communicability - is part of the essence of science, then, is it not so that the notion of 'scientific interpretation' proves to be a classical example for quadrature of the circle? The author also attempts at responding the question of why science - understood for the purpose as codified rules of a methodological game - is so much afraid of interpretative subjectivity, and, at the end of the day, why it strives so insistently for taming any interpretative passion.
In our contemporary humanistic discussions, 'experience' appears, on the one hand, as a new source metaphor reorganising the field of research (V. Turner, E. Bruner); a 'real issue for humanities, again' (M. Jay); an antidote for a crisis of representationism (F. Ankersmit); and, on the other, as an expression of impossible or even undesirable issues (R.Rorty). Those advocating the momentousness of the issue of experience primarily focus on a border experience, determined through confrontation with the language, discursiveness, expressiveness. Experience is not considered as an attitude or touchstone of reliable knowledge but rather, as an extremely hard-to-access subject thereof, or even an aporia, which manifests itself clearest in the Holocaust-related issues. The questions of witness, testimony and certification, connected with the issue of experience, as discussed by Georgio Agamben in 'Quel che Resta di Auschwitz', entice the ethical dimension of humanities research to be considered as a question of the researcher's participation in the structure of attestation/certification.
The collection consists of 22 review articles, analysis and essays thematic those covering various disciplines of the humanities: philology classical literature, linguistics, history, oriental, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law and economics. This variety of approaches have foster the creation of a complete picture of the presence and absence of Russian and Polish humanities and social sciences in the world.
The article addresses the question: does 'third culture' exist? According to John Brockman and other authors, 'third culture' is a state of modern science (or its part at least) which closes the communication gap between the culture of the sciences and that of the arts and annihilates the conflict between the cultures of the humanities and the sciences. The paper discusses the works of several well-known thinkers that are considered as representatives of the third culture.
The paper explores the status of utopian thought in educational theory. It starts with the thesis that we witness a deep crisis in contemporary educational theory affecting the utopian impulse. This crisis seems to mirror the weakness of utopian thought in the humanities in general. Education divested of the critical impulse of utopianism seems to result from the instrumental turn of Enlightenment Reason as well as postmodernist change. The authoress argues that a revival of the critical tradition of utopianism in educational theory will enliven its emancipative potential. Last but not least, it will inspire to see education as a more hopeful and future-oriented process.
In this paper the author present to the problem of reform of higher education. The author focuses on reforms in Germany. He present the proposed education reform project from 2004, which aimed to select from a group of a hundred University exist in Germany, some of the best scientific institutions. The author believes this situation hits the egalitarian nature of German society and undermines socio-collegiate model of higher education in Germany.
Based on research on the production of new linguistic elements, this article explores the ways in which we can trace the role of these new linguistic elements in the development of methodological interactions in the social sciences and humanities. This allows, on one hand, to trace and rethink the modern state of social processes, which are becoming increasingly dynamic due to the fragmentation and non-homogeneity of social formations. On the other hand, it opens possibilities for investigating the potential of language for heuristic transfer of concepts from one theoretical area to another, and for interdisciplinary interaction between knowledge from various disciplines that explore different typological issues. It also enhances new ways of developments of linguistic forms as well as the disciplines, which the latter influence by their creative presence.
The paper deals with the role of the humanities in the beginning of the 21st century universities. It concentrates on the prime objectives, predicaments and dilemmas of the humanities, predominantly Cultural Studies, by which it desire to find achievable aims of these disciplines in post modern era university. It highlights the importance of the humanities and stresses the fact that they are indispensable in the world of globalization.
In recent scientific and philosophical discussions the concept of Enlightenment has often been reconsidered. This reconsideration takes place in an era of a 'universal apologizing' of all to everybody and for everything. In this atmosphere the meaning of the historical eras, such as Renaissance or Humanism is often forgotten. However, a rational reconstruction of these events is important in order to understand the present era. The original Enlightenment idea of progress dismissed the old orders for their disability to keep pace with knowing. Not even today the scepticism against rationality can be the solution. Seen from this point of view the situation is different today. The paper tries to show its specific character.
E-learning is still nearly not present in Polish humanities. Although there are full online studies in humanities available abroad, the local perspective is characterized - in the best case - by the simplest form of blended-learning. Considering once again the advantages of online lecture provides a chance to improve this situation. Lecture is an organizational form of learning that can be easily moved to electronic environment. In relation to traditional form, it has an uncontested advantages for the educational institution, lecturers and students that cannot be disregarded.
The article addresses the concept of life in relation to humanities as seen by Hannah Arendt. In the 1950s, Arendt criticized humanities for their inability to understand the specific character of the world as a space of appearance in which historical events take place. Instead they focused on grasping the expressions of human nature and/or a human as being stripped of normal relations to the others. These two moments are inherently intertwined since the latter is possible only under the condition of worldlessness. Arendt’s aim is not only to provide a methodological alternative, but also to understand the historical conditions under which the world as a condition and framework of understanding is abandoned. In her approach the concept of life is of central importance, since it is the background against which modern self-interpretation takes place and is therefore the formative condition of the absence of the world.
In this paper the author presents crucial aspects of Jerzy Kmita’s socio-regulatory conception of culture in order to define it as a theoretical background of “humanistic interpretation”. When the latter is to be understood as a method of explanation of human behavior with regard to its cultural meaning, the theoretical background is provided by variety of research activities which the author defines as “theoretical reconstruction of culture”. They consist in e.g. socio-functional explanation, linguistic and semantic analysis, or even in epistemological considerations, and guarantee theoretically independent justification of the interpretive hypotheses applied in the course of “humanistic interpretation”. Such “reconstruction” specifies further conditions of intersubjective acceptability of the statements within the discourse of humanities and therefore it also limits the subjective and individual character of the attribution of cultural beliefs to the members of a certain cultural community.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.