Exploring the relationship between hermeneutics and the arts, including painting, music, and literature, this book builds on hermeneutics from a practical perspective, connecting this area of critical research with others to reveal how it is viewed from different perspectives. International and interdisciplinary in scope, this edited volume draws on the work of scholars and practitioners working across a variety of subject areas, themes and topics, including philosophy, literature, religious paintings, musical oeuvres, Chinese urbanscapes, Moroccan proverbs, and Ukrainian internet blogs. Focusing (...) on the idea of hermeneutics as a discipline that can connect different areas of interest, the book offers an inside view into how the contributors 'interpret' it within their own academic remits, demonstrating its presence in qualitative academic interpretations and canonical contemporary research in humanities. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations (Western (...) and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

The paper studies semiotic values in advertisements appearing in German Catholic periodicals in Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study is grounded in the Tartu School of Semiotics and shows shifts and hierarchies in the semiotic valuations of particular commodities. Collected advertisements were classified into four main groups: (1) books, (2) church art, (3) church and devotional accessories, (4) everyday life commodities. We motivate the claim that the group (2) of the advertisements in (...) the Catholic press we analyzed was the driver for the introduction of the remaining two categories of ads, hence the study of this group is pivotal for our analysis. The parameters of center, periphery, and “border,” as between the sacred and the profane are also taken into account, within the structural interrelation of Sr (religious system) (cf. Zaliźniak et al. 1975 [1962]) and Sc (commercial code). Assuming the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, in conclusion a heuristic interpretation is provided in terms of the relations of semiotic primes. (shrink)

The article traces interpretative mechanisms hidden in Chomsky's Transformational Model. The framework is that of epistemological criticism, investigating the intertwining of interpretation, context and intuition. My hypothesis is that the Transformational Model is an example of a quasi-axiomatic, intuition-based grammar. It is not a scientific model of Competence but a scientistic description of Performance (teleological corpora). The scientistic décor is thus an eristic stratagem to hide arbitrary interpretation. The discussion is empirically substantiated by analyzing the notion of grammaticality, the tectonics (...) of the Transformational Model and the phenomenology of countable/uncountable nouns. Key Words: interpretative mechanisms • intuition • epistemology • transformational model • context • Dasein • performance • competence. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas. The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions. The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations, folk extensions and secular (...) representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 361-390.

My aim in this paper is to investigate the variants of directionality implied in visual hieratic texts as religious markers in the sacrosphere, which are substantially expressed in the form of a wayside shrine/cross. The methodological underpinnings for this project rely on the proposed semiotactics : the investigative perspective modeled after phonotactics – a branch of phonology investigating the restrictions on and the possibilities of phoneme combinations in languages. The study draws on digital documentation of wayside shrines, crosses, and sacrality (...) markers on houses collected by the author in various European countries, focusing in particular on the material collected in the area of present Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Slovenia, and the region of the Beskid Mountains in Poland. It shows how bodily hexis is inscribed into the phenomenology of a wayside shrine through particular types of hierophanic dynamics. The study also focuses on the aspect of headedness and markedness in the nano-structure of a sign, surfacing as directionality in the conceptualization of the religious sphere by particular communities. (shrink)

In the volume, to locate the science of language and communication in the most recent philosophical and methodological context that science offers today, we have proposed reconciling two avenues of the scientific process, i.e. the "third-person observation-experiment-algorithm method being the traditional method of doing science; and the inner, first-person insights of contemplative science, in a sense of phenomenological flânerie through unexplored cultural landscapes". The present book targets research addressing the phenomenological aspect of communication and the methodology of linguistic research. The (...) volume may be of interest to linguistic scholars, cultural linguists, semioticians, interdisciplinary scholars, and students of the humanities and cultural/social specialisations. (shrink)

The paper provides an empirical study of semiotic mechanisms of culture. We apply the methodology developed by the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, building also on the criteria of boundary-work dynamics to examine a collected corpus of adverts appearing in Silesian Catholic periodicals (in Germanand in Polish) from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We discuss the cultural implications of the differences and similarities in German and Polish ads and propose functional explanations of the results in terms (...) of the notion of boundary configurations in a region as a particular structuring of cultural codes. The two analytical axes are the social boundary implicated in the use of German vs. Polish on the parameter of ‘sacred’ (sacrum) reference, and the symbolic border in the use of Fraktur (German script) versus Antiqua (Latin script) (boundary objects). (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 197-248.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 1-29.

The study examines the question of how personal self-esteem, collective self-esteem and readiness for self-improvement are linked to satisfaction with life in women from countries differing with regard to level of collectivism. Our study participants were Polish and Indian female students. The obtained results indicate that personal self-esteem plays a very important role in satisfaction with life of women from the two countries. However, collective self-esteem is not directly related to satisfaction with life among women from the two cultures analyzed. (...) Structural Equation Modeling showed that: a) in the Indian group readiness for self-improvement is more important for satisfaction with life than in the Polish group and it is significantly related to satisfaction with life through collectivistic self-esteem, b) the direct influence of both personal and collective self-esteem on satisfaction with life is more significant in the Polish group than in the Indian group. (shrink)

translation of a chapter from Peter Kivy's Music Alone "How Music Moves".

The goal of this study was to investigate heterogeneity in clinical symptoms and cognitive functioning among children with hyperactivity-impulsivity and inattention using a novel approach that combined dimensional and person-centered perspectives. Executive, verbal and visuo-spatial functioning, hyperactivity-impulsivity, inattention, externalizing and internalizing symptoms were examined in 102 children at risk for ADHD and 62 children not at risk for ADHD in the age range of 8–10 years. We extracted seven groups with various profiles of psychopathological symptoms and cognitive functioning. We propose (...) that symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity in these groups are related to different cognitive and affective-motivational problems. (shrink)

Drawing from an ethics of care, relational approaches to autonomy have recently emerged in bioethics. Unlike individual autonomy with its emphasis on patients’ rights, choice, and self-determination which has been the hallmark of bioethics consistent with the ideology of individualism in neoliberal democracies in Western countries, relational autonomy highlights the relatedness, interdependency, and social embeddedness of patients. By examining the mediating role that male Hospital Liaison Committee members in Germany play in facilitating care that supports Jehovah's Witnesses’ refusal of blood (...) transfusions, this article moves beyond ‘dyadic relations’ and contexts of caregiving. It also contributes to a deeper understanding of care and relational conceptualizations of Witness patients’ autonomy globally. (shrink)

Scholars have long wrestled with the question of why the Laws of Hammurabi provide two different sanctions for the theft of temple (and palace) property: the death penalty (§6) and thirtyfold restitution (§8). While reviewing Neo- and Late Babylonian evidence on sacrilegious theft, this paper argues that Babylonian law neatly distinguished between the theft of sacred objects and the theft of nonsacred temple property, which incurred different penalties, corresponding to those that §6 and §8 of the Laws of Hammurabi impose. (...) It further seeks to identify the criteria that determined the classification of certain objects as res sacrae and the legal and cultic consequences of sacrilegious theft. (shrink)

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (shrink)

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide established various mechanisms to facilitate the pandemic response and ensure the state’s functioning. As a consequence, the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis varies in countries, depending on the region. We are looking for answers to research questions: how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the finances of local government institutions in 2020–2021; Is it possible to distinguish the types of units where this impact was greater or smaller, and whether and how the (...) pandemic-related legislation influenced the fiscal relations between the state and local government, especially in the context of the local government institutions’ financial independence. We have noticed that financial solutions dedicated to local government units, as well as making local government fiscal rules more flexible, allowed to maintain the potential of the local economic base. They also had a diversified impact on the Polish local government institutions’ income level. (shrink)

In the text, I discuss the abilities and challenges of information systems interoperability. The anticipated and expected result of interoperability is to improve the provision of public utility services to citizens and companies by means of facilitating the provision of public utility services on the basis of a “single window” principle and reducing the costs incurred by public administrations, companies, and citizens, resulting from the efficiency of the provision of public utility services. In the article, the conceptual framework of interoperability (...) is elaborated upon. Moreover, information systems and public registers for entrepreneurs in Poland exemplify whether the interoperability may be applied and, if so, whether interoperability fulfils its targets to the extent of e-Government services for entrepreneurs. (shrink)

Accountants recently had the opportunity to celebrate 20 years of existence in Poland the regulating of accounting. The act was adopted by parliament in 1994. 500 years before the treaty about double accounting was reprinted by Pacioli. The edition of Tractatus XI. Particularis de computis et scripturis was an (epic) epoch-making event designating the beginning of a new field of economic sciences. The idea of the double accounting was known before, not only because of Pacioli, but also through Cotruglio, who (...) described it 36 years earlier. Recently in accounting, as well as in the broadly understood economy, there is a particular emphasis put on ethics, moral values and professional attitudes. It is worth considering whether and on what scale they were present in the early works of Accountancy 550 years ago, how their representatives approached the subjects the beginning of a written history of accounting. The article presents the main ideas included in the guidelines Pacioli and Cotruglio regarding double accounting, and identifies if ethical guidelines were presents among others guidelines. It turns out that the author of the essential work in the history of accounting, as well as its predecessor, devoted much attention to the moral attitude of the merchant, his appropriate behavior, attitude towards customers and other people, with whom he has a business relationship. (shrink)

Addressing trauma as a phenomenon which happens on the level of the human psyche and body, this article explores the impact of the interlocking nature of human lingual and bodily being in discovering a fuller possibility of interpreting and understanding woundedness. The non-transparent and problematic character of trauma calls for a hermeneutic investigation in order to gain a far-reaching insight into what happens with us and in us in traumatic experience. The imperative to understand the situation of affliction is an (...) unending task which not only relies upon extant understandings but continually pro-vokes new ones. I argue that the process of healing, encompassing the spoken and bodily narrative, does not establish a secure equilibrium, but rather searches for self-restoring, healing energy and commences ever new understandings of what needs to be comprehended and healed. This article offers an examination of trauma as featured in three short stories by British authors: Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, to exemplify the possibilities of literature to shed light on the intricate nature of traumatic experience. It interrogates the ways in which literature, hermeneutics and psychoanalysis meaningfully converge. (shrink)

The supple and ever-present search for the possibilities offered by the narrative form in fictional writing corresponds to the use of the narrative as a mode of understanding and explaining our being-in-the-world in philosophy. The intimate liaison between the realm of fictional imagination and that of human everydayness inspires writers to seek ways to tackle issues of temporality, the conflicting character of human drives, and the ultimately unresolvable tension between finitude and infinitude. As a literary and philosophical category, the narrative (...) remains an inexhaustible space for the exploration of the way we understand our lives. I propose a hermeneutic investigation of the interactions between the art of narration and the categories of space, presence/absence, and (be)longingness as evoked in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This article engages Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, and, more specifically, his notions of homelessness and homecoming, to shed light on the inimitable character of Woolf’s artistic representations of the spatial dimension of human existence, reality viewed as both tremulous and solid, as well as of human embodiment and the disparity/closeness between the corporeal and the spiritual. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to examine the impact of two specific negative emotions of anger and fear on intergroup attitudes. In Study 1 we measured emotions of anger and fear and in Study 2 we evoked these emotions incidentally, that is independently of any intergroup context. In both studies we measured attitudes towards the ingroup and the outgroup.We expected that fear would lead to more positive ingroup attitudes and anger to more negative outgroup attitudes. The results of the (...) correlational study confirmed the predictions regarding anger and decreased outgroup evaluations, and the experimental study revealed that fear enhanced positivity towards the ingroup, but anger increased negativity towards the outgroup. The impact of fear and anger on social attitudes in the specific context of a negatively self-stereotyped ingroup is discussed. (shrink)

Advising is an important area of human activity, it helps to clarify own experiences and thoughts, increases self-awareness and competence, leads to well grounded decisions and choices. In modern times advising gained even more importance as it has successfully became a part of a business world. This very practical aspect of advising significantly influences development of technology, management methods and organization of human work, while at the same time it may lead to problems and risks of economical, political or ecological (...) nature. Hence advising should be supported by philosophical consideration and ethical assessment – this is even more so, as advising in it’s theoretical, methodological and ethical foundations is well grounded in philosophy. Main perspectives of reflection on advising are driven by traditional philosophical questions and disputes. Historical research shows that many virtues are of stable properties that last across ages. Thus, drawing on experience of philosophers-advisors from Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Seneca we see that practical philosophy can give support in solving different problems of business advisory and can help in drawing professional code rules of advisor. (shrink)

In meinem Referat werde ich an das philosophische Problem der Ewigkeit der Welt anknüpfen. Wenn wir dieses Problem philosophisch betrachten, müssen wir uns auf das frühe Stadium der Weltevolution ziehen, d.h. auf das „präphysische" Stadium. Als „präphysisch" bezeichne ich das Frühstadium der kosmologischen Evolution, das angesichts der damaligen extremen Verhältnisse durch begründete fundamentale Theorien der gegenwärtigen Physik, wie Quantenmechanik, Relativitätstheorie oder Thermodynamik nicht zu beschreiben oder zu erklären ist. Heute kennen wir nur die obere Zeitgrenze dieses Stadiums, die sog. Plancksche (...) Schwelle, die 10~^3 s. beträgt. Das Hauptproblem im Prozess der ontologischen Charakteristik dieses Stadiums ist der Versuch, seine untere Zeitgrenze festzulegen. Mit diesem Problem ist nämlich eine der ältesten und viel diskutierten philosphischen Fragen verbunden, und zwar das Problem der Ewigkeit der Welt und : (1) das Problem des Zeitraums des „präphysischen" Stadiums (es geht um das Festlegen seiner unteren Zeitgrenze - dauerte es unendlich lang oder aber nur einen winzigen Sekundenteil?), (2) ist der Anfang der Zeit (falls es ihn gäbe) zugleich der Anfang der Welt?, (3) bildet der Grosse Ausbruch den absoluten Anfang der Welt oder nur den Anfang eines von mehreren Stadien in ihrer Evolution, (4) setzt die Möglichkeit des absoluten Anfangs der Welt unbedingt die Kreation Gottes voraus (die supranatürliche Kreation) oder läbt eine Möglichkeit die Entstehung der Welt auf eine natürliche Weise zu (die natürliche Kreation), (5) das Problem des „sonderlichen" Moments. Alle diese Fragen, stelle ich auf der Basis der neueren Errungenschaften der Physik und Kosmologie dar. (shrink)

The work begins by asking the questions of how contemporary phenomenology is concerned with music, and how phenomenological descriptions of music and musical experiences are helpful in grasping the concreteness of these experiences. I then proceed with minor findings from phenomenological authorities, who seem to somehow need music to explain their phenomenology. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Jean-Luc Nancy and back to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, there are musical findings to be asserted. I propose to look at phenomenological studies of (...) the musical aspects of existence as they appear in various philosophical works bringing together different accounts of music and aesthetics and pointing towards phenomenological study as a methodology for everyday aesthetics. While there are many different areas of music phenomenology such as studies of sound and listening, studies in perception of musical works, in experience of artistic creation, in singing and playing musical instruments, and phenomenology of transcendent or religious horizons of the experience of music, it is most promising—I suggest—to look at phenomenological studies of music from the perspective of everyday happenings and discoveries of musical aspects of life. Thus, I attempt to display the uses of phenomenology in finding musical aspects of everyday existence as well as in describing and illuminating the art of music. A look at Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s most intuitive and promising ideas will be broadened with a perspective from Don Ihde and Arnold Berleant. (shrink)

The paper examines changing media representations of Jacinda Ardern, former Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister, from the global broadcaster, BBC News Online, across three key milestones in the politician’s career: her appointment, re-election and resignation. Our socio-semantic analysis of this representation demonstrates how the media intersect her professional identity with age, gender, social class, and later, her identity as a mother. Whilst earlier coverage of Ardern’s career praises her successfully reconciling these aspects of her personal, social and professional identities, later (...) coverage implies that ‘having it all’ was never really possible longer term. We argue that the visibility of this discourse, and the focus on intersectional aspects of Ardern’s personal and social identities, leads to her resignation being positively evaluated as her ‘finally’ succumbing and committing to the ‘natural’ inevitabilities of heterosexual family life. The article considers what such representation means for Ardern and women politicians and leaders more broadly, and contextualises these findings in relation to existing research on media representations of women in politics and leadership. Finally, we also consider the value of a more longitudinal approach to tracking the cumulative effects of the representation of social actors and groups. (shrink)

This paper looks at cognition from the perspective of Yaśovijaya-sūri’s Jaina-tarka-bhāṣā. Considering the nature of sensory cognition (mati-jñāna), represented by the four stages (sensation, speculation, perceptual judgement, retention) and of verbal cognition (śruta-jñāna), it reflects on the form and rendering of the word as a raw, physical sound or the meaningful particle of language linked to an infinite number of other such particles, deeply rooted in reliance on linguistic convention. The author considers here what properties such cognition recognises and relates (...) to them especially in light of the theory of viewpoints, providing a contribution to reflections on its meaning. The other questions posed in the article are: which prerequisites are met by people between whom this kind of communication takes place and what role do the scriptures play? Yaśovijaya-sūri’s thought is set in the broader context (Siddhasena Divākara, Jinabhadra Gaṇi, Vādideva-sūri, Dharmabhūṣana, Vinayavijaya Gaṇi), with emphasis of his sources of inspiration. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and (...) depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena. (shrink)

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA, mathias_risse{at}ksg.harvard.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> It is a widespread view that support for Fair Trade is called for, whereas agricultural subsidies are pegged as unjustifiable. Though one supports farmers in developing countries while the other does the same for those in already developed ones, there are, nonetheless, similarities between both scenarios. Both are economically `inefficient', upholding production beyond what the market would sustain. In both cases, supportive arguments (...) can assume two forms. First, such arguments might draw on normative claims made by producers. In the case of agricultural subsidies, farmers in developed countries assert claims against their fellow citizens, who ought to accept redistributive measures to keep them in business. In the case of Fair Trade, the claim can be made by farmers in developing nations against consumers, who ought to pay higher prices to keep them in business (under conditions deemed acceptable). Second, arguments to keep producers in business might be presented as the prerogative of both groups: even if farmers in developed countries did not have a claim to be kept in business, these countries would have the right to take measures to do so because they value their products. In the case of Fair Trade, even if farmers in developing nations had no claim against consumers, it is a consumer prerogative to pay more to keep them in business because they value their product or the process of producing it. There are, of course, differences between these scenarios as well, but in light of these parallels in the moral cases for subsidies and Fair Trade, it will be illuminating to examine the arguments for and against subsidies and Fair Trade together. Key Words: trade • subsidies • fairness • markets • development. (shrink)