Predrag Cicovacki

This paper is a reply to Eric Chelstrom’s “Criticism of Cicovacki’s The Analysis of Wonder.” Chelstrom mostly critiques my reconstruction of the role of love and personality in Hartmann’s philosophy. I offer a defense of my interpretation by illuminating how Hartmann’s philosophical project differs from that of Kant. Although Hartmann does not sufficiently develop either his conception of love or his understanding of personality, I argue that both conceptions could be further elaborated and that they could serve as the ways to reintroduce Hartmann into the mainstream of the current philosophical discussion.

The author examines our conflicting attitudes regarding the proper value of human life. While the main issue initially appears to deal with whether or not human life has an intrinsic (or absolute) value, it turns out that a far more important and complex issue concerns the tension between the equal value of every human life and the differences in the quality of one’s life. The author discusses the views of Kant, Schweitzer, Berlin, Scheler, and then Hartmann, in whose views the author recognizes the most important contributions to this puzzle.

This book is the continuation of two older works from 1927, which were published under the common title “Studien zum Erkenntnisproblem. Teil 1. Über gegenständliches und ungegenständliches Wissen; Teil II. Rationales und Irrationales” [“Study of the Problem of Cognition. Part I. On Objective and Non-objective Knowledge; Part II. Rational and Irrational”]. With both of these previous works, which together are almost the same length as this new essay, the latter is so strongly related that the unity of the whole is easily noticed in the parts. Regrettably, these three parts did not appear together as one book. This is even more unfortunate because, while there is certainly an interest in such works in the circle of German professionals, it is difficult for a series of publications by a foreign university with predominantly foreign-language contributions to make it on the German book market. I feel for these reasons even more that it is my duty to draw the attention of professional philosophers to this significant and, in some respects, unique work.

This collection of essays is dedicated to a recently deceased philosopher and humanist, Nalin Ranasinghe. His central philosophical and humanistic preoccupation was with the human soul. Not surprisingly, his greatest inspiration was Socrates' credo "Care for your soul," and the title of his first book was 'The Soul of Socrates'. In this and his later writings, Ranasinghe expressed his growing concern over the idea that the human soul has been highjacked due to the way our civilization has developed: the highest and noblest aspirations of our civilization have been replaced by our obsession with money, pleasure, and power. We now live in a time where we do not know who we are, nor who the people around us are. Despite all of the technical gadgets connecting us virtually, this is the age of disconnect and loneliness, as well as of the degradations of humanity. Ranasinghe insisted that the two keys for recovery are the self-knowledge of the soul and a continuous dialogue with others. We need to relearn how to relate to ourselves and others as unique individuals, not as objects for the satisfaction of our needs. Following his ideas, the twenty essays presented here are divided into two parts: "the soul in reflection" and "the soul in dialogue." The contributors come from various countries around the globe and work in different disciplines, and their chapters aim to revive our interest in the soul and the obscured core of our humanity. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy; however, the essays are written in a non-technical language, also making them accessible to the general audience.

We long to love and to be loved. We also fear love because we risk betrayal by those we love, or we betray them. Predrag Cicovacki's charming book, Luminosity of Love, uses the extraordinary love story of the great unconventional Serbian poet Laza Kostić and the vivacious aristocratic young woman, Lenka Dundjerski, as a starting point for a wide-ranging discussion of the nature of love, its importance in the Western philosophical tradition, and its relevance for living a meaningful life in our high-tech materialistic world of the 21st century. By combining real love stories and philosophical reflections on them, the author focuses on the moments of betrayal that bring us to a crossroads at which point we may choose to retreat from loving, and instead satisfy ourselves with substitutes for love. Alternatively, we may realize that our fear and sense of betrayal need not get the last word when it comes to love, and that we can aspire to transform ourselves into more caring and radiating personalities. Our struggle to realize this aspiration is a love story--the ultimate love story that should concern us. This book is a superb philosophical essay about the transformative power of love.

This essay opens by considering the values that we encounter in our ordinary experience. The essay then leads the audience toward a deeper understanding of values: in terms of values being instrumental or intrinsic, subjective or objective, changing or permanent. The essay then turns to outlining how and in what ways values exist. At this point, the essay introduces the thought of Nicolai Hartmann, who argues that values exist as ideal beings, which have a permanent existence independent of how the practical world is changing, and which have objective validity (although our judgments of values are usually subjective). Hartmann makes a central distinction between the two irreducible scales of values: according to their strength and according to their height. In the second part of the essay, the essay explains how we need both of these two scales to work together and how their work can be coordinated on the principle of “both X and Y,” rather than through the customary approach of “either X or Y.” In the concluding part, the essay illustrates how this complimentary relationship enables business and the humanities to join their resources, rather than to find themselves in constant opposition.

Dostoevsky's philosophy of life is unfolded in this searching analysis of his five greatest works: Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. Predrag Cicovacki deals with a fundamental issue in Dostoevsky's opus neglected by all of his commentators: How can we affirm life and preserve a healthy optimism in the face of an increasingly troublesome reality? This work displays the vital significance of Dostoevsky's philosophy for understanding the human condition in the twenty-first century. The main task of this insightful effort is to reconstruct and examine Dostoevsky's "aesthetically" motivated affirmation of life, based on cycles of transgression and restoration. If life has no meaning, as his central figures claim, it is absurd to affirm life and pointless to live. Since Dostoevsky's doubts concerning the meaning of life resonate so deeply in our own age of pessimism and relativism, the central question of this book, whether Dostoevsky can overcome the skepticism of his most brilliant creation, is innately relevant. This volume includes a thorough literary analysis of Dostoevsky's texts, yet even those who have not read all of these novels will find Cicovacki's analysis interesting and enthralling. The reader will easily extrapolate Cicovacki's own philosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky's literary heritage.

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was one of the greatest artists of all time, but also one of the harshest critics of the contemporary art. In the conclusion of his controversial book, What is Art?, Tolstoy claimed: “The purpose of art in our time consists in transferring from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that people’s well-being lies in being united among themselves and in establishing, in place of the violence that now reins, that Kingdom of God – that is, of love – which we all regard as the highest aim of human nature.” In my paper I want to examine what Tolstoy means by that, and also how his understating of the purpose of art applies to his own works of art, as well as how it applies to some other contemporary works of art.