Identities were “murderous” in Algeria, to borrow an expression from Amin Maalouf. However, through this process, Algeria won its independence. Albert Camus, a son of France and a child of Algeria, caught between his two mothers’ identities, was torn apart and sometimes had to make choices; he was blamed for his Franco-French vision of Algeria and, above all, in the crucial hours, for preferring his biological mother to his cultural one. In other words, Camus had a poor record in Algeria. (...) And yet, there is something like a tuning fork vibrating in unison at the sound of “Camus” and “Algeria”: it is Camus’ Mediterranean, with its timeless and universal present, which takes its sense and essence from the “Algerian Mediterraneanness”. It is a fact: Algeria allows us to understand Camus, but Camus also allows us to know Algeria. Questionable dark areas lie within either of them, but would not it be better if we imagined that Camus and Algeria could find together a world beyond the absurd and revolt, on a quest for universality that would not abolish identities which are still asserted but played down today? (shrink)

La question Qu'est-ce que la littérature? ne saurait être première ; il faut d'abord résoudre celle des critères de l'évaluation. Mener une réflexion théorique entre pôle artistique et pôle esthétique ou questionner les genres ainsi que le lien entre littérature et politique semble aisé pour définir la valeur de l'oeuvre littéraire, mais une réponse globale reste un horizon fuyant. Dans sa quête pour trancher la tête intelligente de l'hydre, cet ouvrage continue de couper des têtes qui se régénèrent doublement!

The mammalian pineal gland contains two types of N‐acetyltransferases which act on aromatic amines. One type preferentially acetylates arylamines such as phenetidine and aniline, whereas the other preferentially acetylates arylalkylamines such as tryptamine and phenylethylamine. The two enzymes can be distinguished by (1) molecular size, (2) regulation, and (3) inactivation characteristics. Arylalkylamine N‐acetyltransferase is involved in the regulation of melatonin synthesis in the pineal gland. A specific function of pineal arylamine N‐acetyltransferase has not been established; it may function as a (...) nonspecific detoxification mechanism. (shrink)

This study takes up the phenomenon of disappointment in today's environmental movements. It analyses two distinct streams of environmental movements – neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project. On the basis of their published written statements, it describes these movements, analyses the opinions of their members regarding possible future developments and examines their ethical motivations. It examines the members’ motivations in terms of three categories – teleological, deontological and virtue ethics – and asserts that each of these contains various expectations, implying (...) varying potential for disappointment. The text's conclusion compares and assesses the attitudes of the members of neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project, their optimism and pessimism, from the perspective of the philosophers Hans Jonas, Roger Scruton and Romano Guardini. (shrink)

In this paper we examine interactions of the reciprocal with distributive and collective operators, which are encoded by prefixes on verbs expressing the reciprocal relation: namely, the Czech distributive po and the collectivizing na-. The theoretical import of this study is two-fold. First, it contributes to our knowledge of how word-internal operators interact with phrasal syntax/semantics. Second, the prefixes po and na generate (a range of) readings of reciprocal sentences for which the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis (SMH) proposed by Dalrymple et (...) al. (1998) does not make the right predictions. The distributive prefix po prefers the Strong Reciprocity reading, although the SMH predicts that a weakening should take place, while with the prefix na we find cases where weaker reciprocal readings are preferable to the stronger ones predicted by the SMH. This behavior of po and na is, we propose, due to the way in which they modulate two factors that are crucial in the interpretation of reciprocal sentences: (i) the relevant subpluralities in the group denoted by the reciprocal's antecedent, and (ii) the strength of reciprocal relations. We provide a detailed analysis of the semantics of the prefixes po and na and their contribution to the meaning of reciprocal sentences within the general framework of event semantics with lattice structures. (shrink)

BackgroundRegularity effect can affect performance in prospective memory, but little is known on the cognitive processes linked to this effect. Moreover, its impacts with regard to aging remain unknown. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine regularity effect in PM in a lifespan perspective, with a sample of young, intermediate, and older adults.Objective and designOur study examined the regularity effect in PM in three groups of participants: 28 young adults, 16 intermediate adults, and 25 older adults. The (...) task, adapted from the Virtual Week, was designed to manipulate the regularity of the various activities of daily life that were to be recalled. We examine the role of several cognitive functions including certain dimensions of executive functions, short-term memory, and retrospective episodic memory to identify those involved in PM, according to... (shrink)

Regulatory science is ultimately a matter of trust. You need to trust that certain evidence, when obtained with certain methodologies, is sufficient to inform about a new medical product's safety and/or efficacy.

This study investigates how students’ national identity affects their historical understanding by mediating their use of affective historical empathy. The research focuses on the case of “comfort women” (women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during WWII) in South Korea—a topic in which a strong nationalist narrative dominates social and educational discourses. I conducted semi-structured, task-based group interviews with 16 high school students in South Korea. In interviews, students’ national identity mediated how they utilized four types of affective historical (...) empathy: Students as ethnic Koreans cared more about “our” Korean comfort women over others; cared that Korean comfort women and others suffered from what “we” and “they” did as nations; cared for those women's voices from a humanitarian perspective beyond their ethnic and national boundaries; and cared to make social changes for those women and themselves as future citizens of their democratic nation. These findings help us understand how students’ emotional attachment to “our” nation and its members can mediate their historical understanding through affective historical empathy as well as how affective historical empathy can motivate students to move beyond purely nationalistic concerns. This case study also stimulates reflection on historical empathy's implications for students’ democratic civic participation. (shrink)

Surrogacy is a type of medically assisted reproduction (MAR), which is considered to be a relatively simple medical procedure. However, psychosocially, ethically and legally, it is extremely complicated. There has been a significant increase in interest in the procedure lately. This is largely due to the fact that it is now available to groups of applicants other than traditional heterosexual couples of reproductive age. Its purpose is to examine various approaches to determining what is legally acceptable as parenthood after surrogacy. (...) Our conclusion is that the wishes and rights of the individual actors (intended parent(s), surrogate mother, future child, gamete donors and society as a whole) are incompatible and contradictory. None of the probable solutions suggested from different perspectives can ensure that the wishes and rights of all are fulfilled at the same time. (shrink)

V centru současného uvažování o výuce filozofie stojí koncept filozofování / filozofického myšlení. Jeho vymezení je v souladu s tzv. kompetenčním přístupem ke vzdělávání, které akcentují i rámcové vzdělávací programy. I když nepanuje naprostá shoda na konkrétních oborových kompetencích, z diskuze vyplývá, že pro rozvoj filozofického myšlení žáků je stěžejní schopnost prezentovat a hodnotit argumenty. Přestože se mnohé přístupy rozvojem těchto schopností zabývají, jejich efektivita v praxi je velmi vázaná na didaktickou i odbornou erudici učitele. Zároveň v kontextu uvažování o (...) filozofování v České republice naprosto chybí tematizace toho, co naše mysl dělá, když filozofujeme. Cílem tohoto textu je představit model filozofování, konkrétně TRAP Mind Theory Franka Brosowa, který může být výraznou oporou při rozvíjení filozofických kompetencí žáků jak zkušeným, tak i začínajícím pedagogům. Tento model identifikuje na základě výsledků empirického výzkumu kontemplativní procesy filozofování, a tím vyučujícímu i samotným studujícím umožňuje cíleně do práce nad konkrétními problémy promítat metakognitivní aspekt. Rozhovory se studujícími – budoucími učiteli, kteří filozofování využívají v praxi, a samotné pozorování aplikace modelu naznačují, že tento model má velký potenciál pro rozvoj filozofování. (shrink)

The effective solution of environmental problems calls for changes in levels of consumption. Sociologists have described moderation in households of high socio-economic status in affluent countries, and also a type of modesty which cannot be a response to the experience of abundance. However, its essence is not the way of life of a traditional community. Sustainable living based on self-restraint could be considered to be a symptom of the summit of cultural evolution to date. Nevertheless, historical experience warns us against (...) making too much of contemporary cases of moderation. (shrink)

It is not well known that in the context of the unofficial artistic and philosophical scene of the ČSSR there was an aesthetically refined and theoretically differentiated reflection on the different degrees and limits of visibility as well as a rethinking of participation – be it aesthetic, epistemic or political. In this paper I first investigate the relation between history and (in)visibility in its broadest sense: questions such as ‘whose history is present’ and ‘what visual memory building strategies are used’ (...) were highly controversial and deeply politicised. For many artists and philosophers such as Zorka Ságlová or Jan Patočka the very act of remembering and the active, critical engagement with (visual) culture and history thus became an act of resistance. I then explore how artists subtly intervened in and transformed the monitored public space, and often tried to undermine given regimes of visibility. I demonstrate that these manifold ‘dissident’ practices engendered new aesthetic experiences and fostered powerful counter-narratives that deconstructed the official propaganda discourse of the communist regime. (shrink)

Successful spoken discourse requires a speaker to be informative to deliver a coherent, meaningful message. The informativeness of discourse can be conveyed by the variety of vocabulary produced (i.e., lexical diversity [LD]), the typicality of vocabulary items used (i.e., core lexicon [CL]), and the amount of relevant content produced (i.e., information units). Yet, it is well documented that older adults produce less informative content compared to younger adults despite relatively subtle changes to LD. The typicality of core lexical items has (...) not been assessed in healthy aging. Paradoxically, these results indicate that some aspects of discourse informativeness remain stable or even improve across the adult lifespan, while other aspects decline. The purpose of the current study is to understand how microlinguistic processes of informativeness change across the adult lifespan. The cross-sectional study included narrative language samples from two wordless picture books collected from 420 healthy participants between 20 and 89 years old. LD and percent of correct information units (%CIUs) were analyzed, as well as CL nouns and verbs. The results indicate that %CIUs and CL nouns demonstrate a quadratic decline starting around the ages of 40 and 60, respectively. LD shows a slight linear decline as a function of age. CL verbs are resistant to age-related changes but are influenced greater by education. The differing findings across the microlinguistic measures can be explained by the weakened connections within the language system and the differential characteristics of the measures. The findings contribute to the aging literature by systematically identifying the trajectory of how variables of informativeness change with age. (shrink)

In Greek mythology, Lamia, daughter of the king of Libya, bore several children to Zeus, but his jealous wife, Hera, killed all but one of them. Transformed by grief and anger, Lamia became a monster with the manners and physical traits of an animal. The word lamia can also be found in the form of an appellative. In the book of Isaiah in the Vulgate, the lamia is among the animals, beasts and monsters which will despoil Jerusalem when God's judgement (...) befalls the city. Ancient zoological works use the word to indicate what is probably a species of shark, while medieval encyclopedias add several other meanings: lamia denotes, among other things, a hybrid creature which looks like a woman with horse legs; and a four-legged animal which damages plants in gardens at night and is likely to attack people it encounters. The origins of most ancient, early-Christian and medieval conceptions of the lamia have been traced more or less satisfactorily; the only tradition which remains unexplained is that of the fierce quadruped which threatens property and people's lives. The purpose of the present Note is to explore the origins of this ferocious creature, to determine what animal or animals may have inspired it, and to map the ways in which it entered medieval culture under the new name of lamia. The answers to these questions are to be found in the medieval reception of Aristotle's zoological observations, through the Arabic and Latin translations of his Historia animalium. (shrink)

Starobrněnský augustiniánský klášter byl v 19. století důležitým centrem moravské vzděla­nosti a obrozeneckých snah. Někteří jeho členové, nejznámější F. M. Klácel a F. T. Bratránek, bývají v dějinách filozofie představováni jako následovníci Hegelovy filozofie. Cílem tohoto článku je určit vliv Hegelových myšlenek na dílo augustiniánských myslitelů a charakterizovat jej.

The goal of the paper is to reconsider two incompatible stances on a possible cogni­tive gain from belles-lettres stories. Cognitivism is based on the fundamental state that a value of work of art is proportional to the degree of knowledge it brings. It is presupposed that a reader´s mental state before reading such stories is, in a way, poorer then thereafter. What kind of properties does such cognitive gain have? Is it a moral piece of knowledge? Or is it a (...) piece of knowledge at all? A role of truth is mentioned. Two pros et cons arguments – namely Graham’s (argument about the cognitive value of the arts) and Stolnitz´s ones (argument about cognitive triviality of art) – are briefly examined. In the last part, a natural view of a literary cognitive gain is offered. (shrink)

Cílem příspěvku je představit Patočkovu recepci Ingardenova pojetí literárního uměleckého díla, a to jednak se zřetelem k Patočkově vlastní filozofii literatury, jedna s ohledem na vývoj Patočkova kritického přístupu k Ingardenově teorii literárního díla. Na základě relevantních poznámek v Patočkových odborných studiích jsou rekonstruo­vány možné výtky vůči Ingardenově teorii, které spočívají především v kritice Ingarde­nova strukturalistického, či formalistického přístupu k hledání podstaty literárního díla. Tato teze je interpretována prostřednictvím komparace s Patočkovou koncepcí filozofie literatury.