Er(r)go...

In the text, the humanities are understood as the only realistic counterbalance, but also resistance to the dominance of instrumental mind. Devaluation and marginalization of the humanities herald cultural regression and cultural autism of individuals. The humanities are treated as an important project for the formation of sensitivity, social integration, but also emancipation, the creation of a common universe that protects society from atomization. The humanities makes us realize that despite its focus on pragmatism and efficiency, the most important thing always is and has to be the human being. Although it can sometimes be inconclusive, although it leaves many things open, uncompleted, this is where its strength lies, breaking us out of certainties, breaking the hegemonic discourse of what is oppressive, speaking up for the human being

In the article, referring to the common experiences related to the pandemic, I reflect on the meaning of texts read in the “times of plague.” I ask the question, to what extent and what kind of reading helps to understand the traumatic events experienced by people (affecting the physical and mental state), what readers are looking for in novels, memoirs and journals concerning mass diseases, for example, plague and cholera. The review and analysis of these themes in selected works is accompanied by a question about the metaphorical meaning of the epidemic, symbolizing the diseases of civilization, such as: consumerism, materialism, thoughtless exploitation of natural goods, destruction of the environment, or, in general, the evil accumulating in subsequent wars. An important theme is also the one relating to the connection between eroticism with the plague–a trail important in T. Mann’s Śmierć w Wenecji and in G. G. Márquez’s Love in the Time of the Plague. Both fictional works, such as the novels mentioned above, as well as records of witnesses of history depicting the war as a plague, or referring, like S. Márai, to the journalistic style in describing the course of cholera in Italy, may inspire an attempt to answer the question to what extent readings describing the time of human trials in a situation of endangered humanistic values may be a signpost for future generations not necessarily feeling well in a culture without books.

This article is about philosophy as a path, leading man, a civilised being, to re-establish communication with what Gilles Deleuze calls “primordial nature.” This foundational phenomenon, being the primary reservoir of life energy, underpins the existence of the human civilised world. However, by the same token, this phenomenon, since exempt from conditioning and subject to no restrictions or constraints, can disrupt
the functioning of this world. Thus, disengagement from primordial nature is the fundamental purpose of the existence of civilization. Unfortunately, its development over time excessively diminishes that connection, deepening alienation, frustration and aggression in social life. I will undertake to demonstrate that the practice of philosophy can be one of the basic ways of coping with that inevitable civilisational impasse.

In the philosophical article I would like to formulate a statement that the humanities are Geisteswissenschaften, although I am far from naively repeating the 19th century slogans. I respect what happened in the humanities in the 20th century, but it seems to me that it is possible to refer to old concepts anew, giving them new life. One such concept is the concept of spirit (der Geist). I am trying to give it new meanings by bringing relationships with space to the foreground (moving relationships with time to the background). The space, however, is thought differently than traditionally. The spirit turns out to be the space of the humanities

In this paper I present an understanding of the humanities from the perspective of cultural ontology. In the introduction, I specify the perspective from which I am conducting my reflections, synthetically characterise how cognition is understood on its grounds, and introduce a characterisation of the humanities as relating to meaning. In what follows, I show why, from the point of view of cultural ontology, the humanities are practical. In dialogue with other concepts, I introduce the notions of ontological imagination, mindfulness, phronesis, parrhesia, (etho)ecology. With a view to the relationship between the humanities and practical rationality, I try to show why it should be a slow science

The article presents the problem of the tension arising between academic creativity and non-academic experiences of scholars. The individual subsections consist of approximations of expressive cases of scholarly auto/biographies that fall into the category of “consciously halved”– researchers whose works are situated at the intersection of what is personal with what is academic, giving it a specific cognitive tenor. The perspective adopted in the considerations is contained in the horizon of reflexive thinking, enabling the cultivation of hermeneutics of the Self in the area of “new humanities” as starting (and ending) with lived experiences of active human agents.

Referring to researchers who emphasize the Anthropocene aspect of modernity, I put forward a thesis on the need for a posthumanist pedagogical imagination, which I understand with reference to the sociological imagination of C. W. Mills and the ontological imagination of A. W. Nowak as an openness to the complexity of the world and questioning the accepted pedagogical settlements on ontology, methodology and axiology. Pedagogical imagination is an openness to the complex relations between humans and non-humans (R. Braidotti, D. Haraway, B. Latour, J. Law). Within its framework, questions are raised about the basic educational actors of the collective and what they can do for the common world. Pedagogical imagination is combined with the demand to constantly transcend the established horizons of what is pedagogical/humanistic.

Management is classically defined as taking responsibility. In the era of late neoliberalism, the crisis in management leads one to understand that this fundamental goal is not being achieved by mainstream management. Humanizing management is necessary to restore the balance of managed systems.
This article specifically proposes a historiographical reflection and a dialogue between management and art as viable – and efficient – ways to accomplish this mission. Simultaneously, it offers hope for addressing the crisis in the humanities (as discussed by Lech Witkowski), by moving closer to concrete actions in favor of the Other. In this way, management and the humanities together can tackle the challenges of complex
modernity and generate positive synergistic effects by means of taking responsibility for the future.

Didactics is a function of an educational system based on examination-observation of the people who participate in the process of teaching and learning. In the process of conveying knowledge this observation of a student by a teacher/master, and vice versa, every now and then builds a practice of independent thinking. On one hand, the process enables the development of ideas, but on the other hand, also distorts them and exposes a humanities student to the pitfall of ideology. In my reflections about the disassembly of ideas and deteriorating education I shall make use of the concept of cognitive bias, the polemic about the contemporary university (Bill Readings), the concept of Jacques Lacan's discourses, Hannah Arendt's findings about willing and ideology, and Niklas Luhmann's assumptions of social systems theory understood as autopoietic systems of codified rules of operation.

The research problem put forth in this paper is the seeking of an answer to the question about better and more effective ways of acquiring and transferring knowledge in the so-called post-truth era. Therefore, the point of reference here is the category of post-truth, defined as a phenomenon where the objective facts play a lesser role in the process of shaping a widely understood public opinion than emotions, evaluative judgements or personal beliefs. In such circumstances, a set of ideas, models of thinking, as well as
ethical proposals – represented within the framework of such concepts as humanism and posthumanism – faces a huge challenge issued by the contemporaneity in the form of gaining social recognition and prestige. The phenomena developing in such process directly influence the way the pedagogical processes are perceived and being designed.

The paper revisits the dialogue between Vyacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Gershenzon in order to present two essentially different orientations in the approach to humanistic heritage and its meaning in human life. The first of these two perspectives is represented by V. Ivanov who feels amongst the great works of culture “at home,” who praises their charms and spiritual-aesthetic riches. The second perspective – as evoked by Gershenzon – is more pessimistic, existentially inclined, filled with tragic awareness. It points out to the problem of crucial importance to the historiosophical self-awareness of modernity: the accumulation of cultural knowledge and the release of theoretical reflection have alienated the human being and cast it into existential homelessness. The paper further argues that (1) there exists an irreducible hiatus between culture and the reality with its power of negativity, and that (2) the ambassadors of culture, such as Ivanov, conceal this hiatus in an attempt to convince us that theoretical humanistic reflection intensifies our perception of the world, while in Gersenzhon’s historiosophical view it ruins the immediacy and spontaneity of life.

The aim of the article is to analyze Gaston Bachelard’s psychoanalysis of the scientific mind in its practical dimension. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, Bachelard deployed his own method to analyze the scientific unconscious, populated by epistemological obstacles inhibiting scientific cognition. As this article seeks to demonstrate, Bachelard’s psychoanalysis aims to purify, and thereby streamline the cognitive mind on two levels: individual and historical. Bachelard’s methodological experiment, transferring psychoanalysis into the spheres of the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, turns out to be, at the same time, an instance of the architecture of a scientific mind, a polemic with cognitive realism and empiricism, and a postulate of analytical therapy in the field of cognition.

The paper postulates reading works by Paul Tillich mainly as a great humanist, whose background for thinking, anticipating his theological considerations, is priceless for a wide field of the humanistic reflections. The author indicates items permanently having difficulties in coming to the fore of humanistic thinking and still being profoundly elaborated and successfully applied in Tillich’s systematic perspective. The text shows up some selected items from the three subsequent volumes of Systematic Theology, linked with the
categories which permit to reject dualistic claims inherent in a dominant thinking about culture, social life, science and humanities. The author situates Tillich’s reading within the horizon of “the duality turn-over” described by Lech Witkowski, and thus it makes a reference to his cognitive profiles disclosing possibilities of humanistic applications of the ideas of the great theologist beyond his institutional framework.

The complexity of cultures in the modern world is now beyond human comprehension. Cognitive sciences cast doubts on the traditional explanations based on mental models. The core subjects in humanities may lose their importance, but new, interdisciplinary branches of humanities emerge. Humanities have to adapt to the digital age. Instant access to information will be replaced by instant access to knowledge. Artificial intelligence is going to change humanities in a radical way, from art to political sciences and philosophy. Understanding the cognitive limitations of humans and the opportunities opened by the development of artificial intelligence and interdisciplinary research necessary to address global challenges is the key to the revitalization of humanities. 

In the paper, the current condition of the humanities is confronted with the crisis of foundations in mathematics at the turn of the 20th century. This reveals the difference between mathematical knowledge and the humanities, especially that of the structuralist variant with its formalist aspirations. The birth and decay of structuralism involve a simultaneous transformation of the research field, which henceforth becomes culture, and of the cognitive instrumentarium. As a result, it turns out that not only is there no proper object of humanistic research, but also no truly humanistic language. Humanistic knowledge – called extensive knowledge, in contrast to mathematical intensive knowledge – is doomed to meta-languages

The paper argues that the standard pro- and anti-Kantian reception of the Critique of Judgment has largely misconstrued the relationship between Part I and Part II of the book by failing to recognize that the former is primarily providing a series of stepping-stones laying the groundwork for the elaboration of reflective-teleological reasoning in Part II. Instead of its dominant reading as foremost relevant to the study of biological nature, the paper distils from the reflective-teleological judgment a universal principle by which we typically interpret any complex set of particulars. As such, the reflective-teleological judgment of 1790 is shown to have done away with interpretive truth, replaced by Kant with the more modest claim of intelligibility.

If therapeutic discourse is the horizon of contemporary culture and the ideological underpinning of neoliberalism, then the present crisis requires transcending this horizon. The article examines the historical and political dimensions of the therapeutic dominant of contemporary culture. The first part presents the model of subjectivity implicit in therapy culture, the expansion of psychology as a narrative and cognitive paradigm, and two rival political orientations in critique of therapy culture.  Part two looks at historical sources of the therapeutic mode and its subsequent transformations. The third part examines the entanglement of therapy culture in  neoliberalism, its role in responsibilization of the subject, pathologization of poverty, and privatization of stress. The conclusions look at responses to such critique coming from therapists themselves.   

In this paper, we offer a reading of selected novels by 2018 Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk in terms of their dedication to changing the world. We show that Tokarczuk’s essays and fiction defy genre limits and invite readers to exercise their imagination in conceptualising the world and redefining values. The alternative modes of viewing reality proposed by Tokarczuk may provide a starting point for change, in which the synergy of ostensibly mutually exclusive tenderness and anger kindles hope in the times of crisis and inspires courage to embrace change and, in doing so, to use the opportune moment (kairos) and institute a new order – one based on justice for the bio-community.

Summaries of feature texts of the present issue in the Polish language.

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