Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 1/2023

This special issue enters into worlds without people, and embarks on images that are above all testimonies to the failure of sight, thought, or ethics. At least human one. We have chosen artistic, game, film, and media images that present to us the manifestations of the inhuman: whether creatures, or a world that excludes human beings as something unbecoming. ln the now quite rich and complex terrain of transhumanism, or various versions of post-humanism, however, we have also focused on these moments that are constitutive of humans today: that is, the moments that critically expose us to our own inhumanity, and place before us the demand for a new ontology.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 1/2022

This special issue is devoted to rereading and reassessing Václav Havel’s seminal essay “The Power of the Powerless”, in the light of the present day culture and ethico-political scene. The Chartist efforts to pursue a non-political politics, lead us to reflect upon power relations and pre-political textures, where existential, political and ethical concerns are allowed to come forth as intermingled, not only with each other but also with questions about language, symbolism and truth. The papers collected here are investigations into how these forms of interconnection and intertwining between ethics, existential concerns, authenticity, language, meaning and truth look.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 3/2021, 125 pages

Naturalism has been at the centre of meta-philosophical debates for quite some time. It dominates in most branches of theoretical philosophy and its influence is increasingly felt in the domain of practical philosophy. Not only adherents of this movement, but also its critics, are already aware that this is not just a fleeting fashion, but a serious attempt to reorientate and redefine the entire philosophical enterprise. The contributions collected in this special issue seek to do justice to this situation and to the multifaceted character of contemporary philosophical naturalism. The diversity of topics covered in the essays, from naturalistically orientated ethics through epistemology and metaphysics to critical reactions to contemporary naturalism, reflects this complexity. The common feature of all contributions is the effort to better understand the current state of philosophy, regardless of whether their authors align with the naturalistic movement or are critical of it.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 2/2021, 144 pages

A common feature of the contributions collected in this special issue of the Philosophical Journal is the effort to grasp the relationship between the rule of the people and the rule of law, which has been a central problem of political philosophy since its origins in classical times. The articles deal with the original Greek understanding of the law and its relation to democracy, the sophistic problematization of this relationship (under the title of the opposition physis – nomos), and especially its new conception in the work of Plato and Aristotle. The authors of the papers are experts on ancient political thought associated with the research network Collegium Politicum.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 1/2021, 220 pages

Individualism as a concept did not have a very good reputation in the inter­war Czechoslovakia. Yet, already Masaryk and later on Peroutka made a significant appeal to the cornerstone of democracy – personality. The aim of the publication is to show how the thinkers with the biggest cultural and spiritual influence of the time dealt with the problem of creating a strong individuality, and what troubles they had to face. None of them (perhaps with the exception of Ladislav Klíma) declared individualism as the centre of their philosophical thinking. However, a closer look at their philosophy points to interconnectedness of the “struggle for individuality” with the struggle of the newly created Republic for its self-determination. After all, some of the thinkers understood nation or state as autonomous individual, albeit collective. The intentions of the authors of this collection of texts is to help better understand how the problem of individuality formed our own history.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 2019, 220 pages

« Le présent est gros de l’avenir, le futur se pouvoit lire dans le passé, l’éloigné est exprimé dans le prochain », remarque Leibniz dans ses Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison. Rapportée d’abord à notre lecture, ensuite à notre compréhension actuelle de Leibniz, cette déclaration si caractéristique de son écriture même nous, lecteurs et successeurs, incite à formuler et à reformuler une multitude de questions sur tout le « passé futur » de la pensée leibnizienne : pour lire dans son présent et pour en donner l’avenir. Y a-t-il quelque chose comme le leibnizianisme ? La nature même de la pensée de Leibniz l’autorise-t-il ? Est-ce que nous pouvons postuler une continuité qui serait en mesure de comprendre ses propres divergences ? À l’heure actuelle, plusieurs sociétés leibniziennes s’attèlent à la tâche laborieuse d’élucider le legs du philosophe de Hanovre. Où en sommes-nous aujourd’hui dans la compréhension du legs de Leibniz et du ou des leibnizianisme(s) ?

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 2018/1, 238 pages

This publication is divided into four thematic blocks and emerged through the collaboration of experts currently active in Europe, America, and Asia. The first deals with Jan Hus (“The Person and Work of Jan Hus”), the second deals with the issue of violence and the inquisition (“Hussite Revolution and Inquisition”), the third contains texts on the Utraquist liturgy (“Liturgy”), and the last discusses the interaction of the Czech and European Reformation (“Utraquism and Reformation”). A total of twelve studies reflect the phenomenon of the Czech Reformation in the late Middle Ages and the early modern era, and in the spirit of the intentions of Collegia Europaea it seeks to internationalize research into Czech religious history and its philosophical, theological, church-political, and cultural context.

Mimořádné číslo Filosofického časopisu 2018/2, 204 stran

Předkládaný svazek je věnován vrcholné fázi Nietzschova myšlení, jež zahrnuje v prvé řadě knihu Tak pravil Zarathustra. Společným tématem jednotlivých studií je motiv ctnosti, kterému se obzvláště ve vystupňované podobě obdarovávající ctnosti věnuje většinou méně pozornosti než tématům, jako jsou věčný návrat téhož, smrt boha či vůle k moci. Společnou snahou autorů je poukázat na centrální roli tohoto motivu a interpretovat jej v rámci Zarathustry a spisů zachycujících „poledne“ Nietzschova myšlení. Vedle imanentně zarathustrovských studií svazek při­náší stati dialogické, v nichž je motiv ctnosti konfrontován s perspektivou dalších myslitelů.

Mimořádné číslo Filosofického časopisu 2018/3, 88 stran

Soubor studií českých a slovenských autorů, který zde předkládáme, vznikl na základě příspěvků přednesených na odborném semináři věnovaném myšlení francouzského historika a teoretika umění Henriho Focillona (1881–1943). Seminář se uskutečnil 4. května 2017 na půdě Katedry filozofie Fakulty filo­zofické Západočeské univerzity v Plzni. Uspořádáním tohoto semináře i publikací tohoto souboru článků chceme upozornit na originalitu v dnešní době spíše pozapomenutého Focillonova myšlení a na jeho podnětnost ve vztahu k soudobé estetice a filosofii. Předložený soubor studií, který upozorňuje na některé ze stránek formálního myšlení a cítění, o němž Focillon v souvislosti s uměním hovoří, doplňujeme překladem pozoruhodného Focillonova pojednání „Chvála ruky“.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 2017/1, 122 pages

Democratic societies (both new and established) are currently undergoing a deep crisis. It is almost impossible to overlook the symptoms; a decline in voter turnout, the rise of right-wing populism and plebiscitarianism, civil dissatisfaction, and the decline of traditional partisanship. The origin of this crisis is often seen in the crisis or disintegration of traditional representative institutions. While such developments lead some to infer the demise of representative democracy and celebrate the emergence of post-representative democracy, a significant portion of contemporary democratic theory on the contrary (and apparently paradoxically) turns to representation as a tool for democratizing democracy. This move may seem surprising not only for the de facto crisis of representative institutions, but also because many streams of contemporary democratic theory (participatory, deliberative, and radical theories of democracy) were formulated as a critique of the inherently undemocratic and elitist or oligarchic nature of representative democracy and as an effort to overcome it. The articles gathered in this volume seek to capture this intellectual movement and offer new reflections on the relationship between democracy and representation as a tool for both understanding and treating the crisis of democracy.

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 2017/2, 160 pages

The Special Issue Perception in Scholastics and Their Interlocutors presents eight studies examining the issues of perception and senses in the history of philosophy between the 11^th and 17^th centuries. Attention is focused mainly on scholastic thinkers (from Anselm, through Peter John Olivi and Duns Scotus, to Suárez), some older authors whose thoughts developed other scholars (e.g. Aristotle or Ibn al-Haytham), or contemporaries who entered into dialogue with scholastics (e.g. Pletho or Valerianus Magnus).