Břetislav Horyna

The book is an attempt to identify the main principles of a new political philosophy corresponding to the parameters of the Anthropocene, i.e. the geological-climatic epoch of the planetary system in which the negative influence of man on planetary cycles and evolutionary processes exceeds the influence of geological forces. Humanity has become the dominant force affecting all components of the planetary ecosystem (biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere) and its activities bring with them problems that affect the social and political spheres. An Introduction to Environmental Political Philosophy illustrates these problems, examines their causes and phenomena, and seeks to understand them in detail. The book does not formulate cheap populist solutions or serve as a political agenda. Rather, it presents philosophical analyses of ecologically, sociologically, politically, and economically contingent phenomena in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the socio-political situation of the Anthropocene.

Leibniz was not the one to discover China, as far as Western culture was concerned. His historical contribution lies in the fact he presented Europe and China as two distinct ways of contemplating the world, as fully comparable and resulting in types of societies at the same high institutional, economic, technological, political and moral level. In this sense he saw China as the “Europe of the Orient” and as such susceptible to investigation by the same tools of natural philosophy which Leibniz knew from the environs of European scholarship. He was the first representative of the classical school of European philosophy to knowingly reject Eurocentrism. Leibniz followed the intentions of learned missionaries in his understanding of the Christian mission as a cultural and civilisational task, a search for mutual agreement and connections, in favour of a reciprocal understanding.

Při úvaze o vztahu Heideggera ke Kantovi, jak je znázorněn v textu Kant a problém metafyziky, není ústřední obsahové kritérium, tzn. rozbor toho, co se o Kantovi píše. Důležitější je zjistit, proč mohl Heidegger uplatnit svůj specifický postup a na základě jakých sémantických a pragmatických presupozic tak učinil. Již krátce po vydání této práce se objevila stanoviska, podle kterých jsou Kantovy texty vždy podřízeny zájmům a chodu Heideggerova uvažování o filosofii. Podle nich nakládá Heidegger s Kantem jako s myslitelem, jenž sice připadl na myšlenku původnosti bytí, ale nedotáhl ji do žádoucí podoby. To je úkol, který čeká na samotného Heideggera. Předložená studie rovněž obhajuje hledisko, že v dané knize nevznikl nějaký koncepční obraz Kantovy metody, ale jen kostra Heideggerova výkladu své vlastní filosofie, která postrádá jakékoli ověření vědeckými prostředky. Věnuje se otázce, proč si Heidegger vybral právě Kanta, k němuž měl původně negativní vztah, a zkoumá předpoklady, které si Heidegger vytvářel k tomu, aby mohl pokračovat od nedokončeného Bytí a času k tomu, co bylo jeho prvořadým cílem - k metafyzice lidské existence. Z nich měl zásadní úlohu předpoklad „nedořečeného Kanta”; Heidegger oznámil, že Kant psaných spisů (zejména KČR) není Kantem toho, co mohlo být, ale nebylo vyřčeno, a z toho pro sebe odvodil, že svou intepretací dovede Kanta ke zdárnému konci. Studie ukazuje na rozpory, které vyvstávaly při snaze o vyložení kritické filosofie jejím heideggerovským ohýbáním podle předem přijatých účelů. Významná část studie pojednává o přizpůsobivosti Heideggerova myšlení nacistické ideologii nejen v letech 1933-1945, ale již v době před vydáním Bytí a času, stejně jako v desetiletích po zničení hitlerovského režimu. Končí zjištěním, že po Heideggerovi zbyla jen jeho „metafyzika árijské smrti”, pro niž se v dějinách novější filosofie hledá místo velmi nesnadno.

The goal of this work is to popularize the philosophy of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920–1999) in Czech context. Even though he is gradually becoming one of the most discussed authors in the Anglo-Saxon world, Blumenberg is still largely ignored here. This work focuses on a key theme from Blumenberg’s theory of metaphorology and analyzes the history and development of human defensive reactions against alleged expressions of cosmic powers and their impact on human lives: heavenly signs, unnatural signs at birth or death of important figures, religious miracles, etc. In order to defend themselves against absolute forces of the universe, people have developed magic (homo magus occurred in human history) as a tool of prevention from cosmic interference, created new myths and escaped into their mythical shelters by means of further metaphors. In the final part, the work deals with the phenomenology of the metaphor of „stream“, used by E. Husserl.

The word Anthropocene, referring to a new era of humanity’s uncontrolled exercise of power over the Earth as a geophysical unit, could be translated using a cognitive metaphor as “the Age of Loss”. We have gained such power that we are unable to adjust or even fully track its manifestations. The relation between loss and power is continuous in all the basic areas of materialization of socio-political concepts: in politics, in economics, in law and the judiciary, in legislation, environmental protection, etc. The philosophy of loss and power is inseparable from economic concerns. The entirety of Western civilization is built on the economic calculus of profit and loss, whose results are directly transformed into decisions of power made by the administrative, political, ownership and power-broking elites. The environmental and climate crisis is therefore also a crisis of privilege of one group over others. The question for politics is which political means can one use to achieve a state of uncorrupted voluntary depriviligization. This level of prosperity will itself be the subject of environmental self-limitation, being presented as “loss”. It will be posed as a political problem with the intention of depoliticizing the subject and inequality of civilizations; precisely in accordance with the posed political problem of democracy, which has already uncovered the basic connection: liberalism won’t make a poor country rich.

The history of the opposition of the Dionysian and Apollonian principles is longer than is usually assumed. Similarly to the many of the other contrarian figures ascribed to Nietzsche, the Apollonian–Dionysian was not of his making; its history is much older and buried under a number of different layers of interpretation. In the following work I will discuss the formal aspects and content of their development, which took place under the direct authorial influence of Pseudo-Longinus, Jacob Bernays, Friedrich Schiller, Fr. W. J. Schelling and Johan Jacob Bachofen. Still, although the discovery of a principle labelled das Dionysische doesn’t represent anything exceptional, the “Birth of Tragedy” treatise was a breakthrough: it began the development of a specific form of cultural critique, of which Nietzsche was the prime representative.

Krátký příspěvek na konferenci konané jako homage na O. Marquarda se v nástinu vztahuje k jeho základnímu, tzn. skeptickému postoji ve filosofii a v životě. Chce (jako připomínka, bez hlubších analytických nároků) odkázat na možnost pěstovat filosofii v různých půdách, s různými živinami, a rozvíjet myšlení různými cestami. Tou Marquardovou byla moderní pyrrhónská skepse, ústící v ironii, jež ale sama vede jen na další rozcestí a k další kontingenci, odkud není vidět na žádný požehnaný stav, stejně jako tomu bylo na všech předchozích. Možná je to tím, že rozcestí jsou, kdežto požehnaný stav ne. Vědět to nemůže; o obojím lze ale pochybovat.

The essay, celebrating the 70th birthday of the German author, essayist and philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, focuses on the main discrepancies in his opinions in the period between his Critique of Cynical Reason (1983) and the current social-critical and political engagement (Die nehmende Hand und die gebende Seite, 2010 - Was geschah im 20. Jahrhundert?, 2016, including his confrontational polemics in the journal Cicero between 2014–2017). The author poses two questions: a) Did Sloterdijk’s readers consider his opinions a genuine critical philosophy, while they concealed what Hegel marked as “gloss of uncommonness“ of original conservativism? b) When and how can philosophical theories achieve an acceptable level of trustworthiness? The answers mark the determinants of Sloterdijk’s anthropology, generally falling under the concept of “Anthropocene“ and relying on several theories. The author highlights Sloterdijk’s theory of borders and his economic theory of the replacement of the tax system by a system of donation and charity. He also points out that Sloterdijk does not present any relevant arguments or explanations of practical implications of his theories. Instead he limits himself to moralistic and journalistic claims.