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The Concept of History in the Works of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin
Kettner, Marek ; Petříček, Miroslav (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
The thesis examines the concept of history in the thinking of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. It systematically inquires into texts of the period between 1913 and 1932. Benjamin's thought is interpreted in its whole, with regards to his key concepts of messianic salvation, profane revolution, biblical fall, mythical positing of right, and actuality of the present. Adorno's contribution to the concept of history is examined on the basis of three early texts from the beginning of the thirties. The thesis follows first the evolution of the concept of history in the thought of Benjamin and then turns toward the relation between the explicated deliberations regarding the theme and the conception of Adorno. The major change which occurs during Adorno's accepting of Benjamin's terminology and thoughts lies in the fact that the concept of history is moved from the theological-eschatological context to the context of praxis. Key Words Philosophy of history, messianic salvation, revolution, myth, right, actuality, configuration.
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World, Body and Perception in Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty
Tůma, Martin ; De Santis, Daniele (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is (1) to present a general picture of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, (2) to identify and describe the most fundamental features of his phenomenology, and (3) to explain his view of the relationship between humans and the world. To do this, I use mainly Merleau- Ponty's most well-known book Phenomenology of Perception (1945), and to a lesser degree his unfinished manuscript The Visible and the Invisible (1964). My interpretative approach is heavily influenced by Hubert Dreyfus' reading of Merleau-Ponty, as he presents it in his series of lectures dedicated this thinker. The central feature of this line of interpretation is that it situates Merleau-Ponty into a Heideggerian framework. In the picture which this thesis presents, Merleau-Ponty considers subject and object not to be basic ontological categories, but derivative of a more fundamental reality, a deeper domain of experience where the inner and the outer intermingle and intertwine so it is impossible to say to what degree is one active and the other passive, or even where one ends and the other begins. In the reading I present here, at the bottom of this experiential milieu there is an unceasing striving towards an organization which is most conductive towards optimal coping with the environment, or towards maximum...
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Listen to the look: Sartre, Lévinas and the other
Schubert, Alfréd ; Švec, Ondřej (advisor) ; Válová, Dita (referee)
If we want to compare Sartre's and Lévinas's conception of intersubjectivity, we need to start by assessing the difference between the two situations which these thinkers consider as model cases for the relation to the other: the author of Being and Nothingness emphasizes the dramatic character of the relation using the metaphor of the other's look, who's objectivizing power forces the subject to protect itself; in Totality and Infinity, on the other hand, is highlighted the situation of listening, in which I do not objectivize the other and am not objectivized, but called to respect the other's alterity. Which of these situations should we consider as the essential paradigm of the relation to the other? Am I haunted by the other's look wherever I go? Or is it only through his face that the sense of being is opening to me? While Sartre an Lévinas agree that the apparition of the other poses an aperture in the world of my possibilities, for Lévinas, it constitutes mostly a window through which the ethical sense of my earthly being and a call to take responsibility for my freedom shine through to me. For Sartre, contrarily, the leak in the world is most importantly threatening my freedom. We will carefully consider the differences and similarities in the conception of the other in philosophy of the...
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Foucault's Philosophy of Freedom
Petříček, Jan ; Čapek, Jakub (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
In this thesis, we interrogate the possibility of freedom presupposed by the project of philosophical critique developed by late Foucault, which aims both at analysis of historical a priori conditions and at disruption of our present a priori. The first chapter shows that this critical project can be traced back to Foucault's early works. Moreover, Foucault tackled the problem of freedom in every phase of his work and he kept proposing the same solution, namely, that the spaces of freedom are opened up by ruptures emerging within the system governing a given period. Next, different concepts of freedom present in Foucault's texts are distinguished. On this basis, it is possible to restate the question of critic's freedom, which we now define as the problem of articulation between the ontological freedom, the reflective freedom and the freedom of transformation. The second chapter is devoted to Foucault's archaeological period. First, we show how the conception presented in The Order of the Things leads to aporias regarding the question of freedom. Next, we describe the theoretical transformations carried out in The Archaeology of Knowledge and examine whether Foucault succeeded in eliminating the earlier difficulties. However, this later solution also turns out to be unsatisfactory, because it falls...
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Patočka's Post-War Phenomenology of Human Being
Raška, Štěpán ; Čapek, Jakub (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
This bachelor thesis aims to present an interpretation of Patočka's post-war phenomenology of human being. It deals mainly with the Patočka's work Eternity and Historicity from 1947 and try to propose a complex interpretation of Patočka's conception of human being that is a main topic of this work. On the one hand it tries to show that Patočka's concept is being formed in the discussion with other philosophers and is strongly influenced from the other concepts. Especially from Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. On the other hand, it points on the fact, that Patočka brings something original as well. My interpretation gives an accent on the motives of "dialectics of negative affection" and "historicity" of human being. These are two main points to see how Patočka understands the man. First and foremost, aims my bachelor thesis to present Patočka's antropology as subjectivistic and existentional. Because Patočka frame his antropology as a specific ethics, deals my text with relevance of Patočka's concept for a moral philosophy as well.
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Two Conceptions of Thinking in H. Arendt's Writings
Koloskov, Daniil ; Němec, Václav (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
Ve své diplomové se zaměřím na pojetí myšlení u Hannah Arendtové. Zejména se pokusím ukázat, že v díle Arendtové jsou přítomny dvě odlišné koncepce myšlení. První koncepce se opírá o komunikaci a svět. Podle této koncepce myšlení vychází ze společného světa a má sloužit k vybudování politických vztahů mezi lidmi. Druhá koncepce myšlení na rozdíl od první tvrdí, že myšlení je podle své definice mimosvětskou činností a nemůže sloužit k politickým účelům s výjimkou mimořádných případů. Porovnání těchto různých koncepcí myšlení bude uskutečněno na základě analýzy další mentální schopnosti člověka - soudů. Budu hájit tezi, myšlení ztratí možnost a schopnost pronikat do společného světa, protože schopnost soudů přebírá řadu funkcí, které dříve vykonávalo myšlení.
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Being-Towards-Death: Death and Temporality in Martin Heidegger's Philosophy
Chvojková, Stela ; Čapek, Jakub (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
This bachelor thesis aims to present a complex analysis of the conception of death and being- towards-death in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, especially in Being and Time. The analysis starts with showing what death can not be by rejecting the prevailing understanding of death. Then it deals with the way Heidegger defines death as the specific possibility of Dasein, which can only be understood from the relationship to one's own end. It points to the importance of the role that death and certainty of one's finitude are playing in the ontology of Dasein, both in itself and as a fundament of authentic and inauthentic mode of existence. The final part presents a possible solution to the problem of the change from inauthenticity to authenticity and also deals with the ontological position of anxiety.
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The Relation of the Real and the Illusory in the works of Henri Bergson
Hollmannová, Barbora ; Švec, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čapek, Jakub (referee)
In his writings, Bergson criticizes the scientific concept of time as a discontinuous and homogeneous succession. According to Bergson, scientific methods do not lead to an authentic knowledge of the reality which is inherently continuous and heterogeneous for him. The more we objectify and conceptualize the world, the more far away are we from being aware of it and actually grasping it. The reason for this distance or distortion is our intellect that always operates with a linear concept of time and always serves everyday conduct. Thus it works with the delusion of time that produces a useful but to some extent illusory knowledge. The question for this thesis is how inteligence or intellect meets with reality in spite of their different nature. What makes it possible to connect our practical needs with reality. Is the world we are living in, the world of our practical life, real or just an illusion of reality? And how can we understand the meaning of our scientific cognition in this sense?
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Regimes of Truth and Production of Subjectivity in Genealogy of Modern Subject
Raševová, Simona ; Švec, Ondřej (advisor) ; Thein, Karel (referee)
The bachelor thesis focuses on the issue of complementarity between two approaches to a subject developed by Michel Foucault within the genealogy of a modern individual. While, in the 1970s, he turned his attention to the analysis of how power produces subjects that appear to be completely subordinate to power relations and practices, in a later so-called ethical period, Foucault highlights the various forms of self-forming practice or technologies of the self, which are not reduced to external norms. The thesis attempts to expose the problem of subjectivity from the perspective of a more general framework of the history of truth, which more or less covers all Foucault's genealogical investigations. Interpretation will take into consideration the following questions: 1) How can both of these approaches to subjectification processes be seen as complementary? 2) If Foucault himself declares that his genealogy of ethics is not intended to find direct inspiration for today in ancient self-care, in which respect can then critic-historical excursions to the diverse forms of ethical self-relationship be the starting point for seeking new forms of self-forming practice in today's society? 3) What is the relationship of disciplinary and regulatory techniques that form the modern individual to the practices of...
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Intentional act and ideality of linguistic meaning in Husserl's thought
Kroupa, Martin ; Čapek, Jakub (advisor) ; Švec, Ondřej (referee)
Gottlob Frege made in his famous article "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" an distinction between meaning and referent of an expression. Meaning has an ideal charakter. Referent is than an object of the expression. Later in his study "Der Gedanke" he extended this distincion of the hole sentence. The meanings are in this case understood as thoughts of the senteces. Referent than Frege called as truth value. The question is, how is it possible for human mind to access this region of ideality of meanigs and thoughts. Frege wrote, that we are able to grasp an thought by force of thinking. Few years later Edmund Husserl made in his Logical investigations similar distinction between ideal sense and object of intention. In many ways is it possible to compare both conceptions. But for Husserl "grasping" of ideality is a form of an abstraction from the intentional act. It is not an abstraction in empirical sense, but ideation, where are ideas are "seen" in original intuition. The main topic of this study is is the attempt to analyse Husserl's ideative abstraction in special case of ideal meaning of an expression.
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