Akadeemia
Eurozine
Akadeemia
2008-09-04
Abstracts for Akadeemia 9/2008
Ain Kaalep
Mhedruli
Writing about his contacts with the culture of the Transcaucasian country of Georgia, Ain Kaalep concentrates on their written language and alphabets, of which there are two. The Georgian literary language emerged in the fourth century when the Georgians adopted Christianity, and the alphabet created then is known by the name of hutsuri. At first, written culture was fostered by the clergy. Later, Georgian culture took a more secular stand, with nobility as the active force in society. The new stage in the development of the written language was also marked by a new alphabet -- mhedruli (the knights). It is not only visually beautiful but also phonologically perfect.
Thereafter, Kaleep describes his experience of translating Georgian literature, including his attempt to use the Georgian shair in the Estonian translation of Shotha Rusthaveli's epic The Man in the Panther's Skin as much as possible. He finishes with the wishful thought that medruli had forever remained the script of the Georgians.
Joachim Rückert
"Free and social" as a legal principle. II
In the article that began in our previous issue Joachim Rückert attempts to show from a legal perspective that free and social are compatible as principles. His approach rests on two pillars: philosophy (primarily Kant) and history.
Following the historical development of affairs, Rückert stated in the previous part that obviously there existed three essential legal problems. "Free and social" concerned (1) persons as subjects of law, (2) legal guarantees for exercising the freedoms and (3) legal privileges for certain groups, granting them more freedoms, e.g. in industrial action. Thus, the legal problems concern the person, enjoyment of rights, and groups. He is of the opinion that for these three problems, four attempts at solving them are significant (1) communist, real socialist and national socialist; (2) extremist, Manchester or anarcho-liberal; (3) social guardianship by state (4) emancipatory help without guardianship.
Finally, Rückert summarizes his message as follows:
-- It is sufficient if we arrange our freedom relations honestly, giving them a current guarantee. Legally this means the joint functioning of private and public law for the sake of this general aim. At first glance, this does not seem to amount to much, but this is the only way to guarantee that the principle of freedom would cover the whole legal system. The freedom principle is understood here as an all-embracing fundamental principle.
-- Individuals must be allowed and actually be able to realize by themselves the opportunities granted this way.
-- The social principle is related to the former. Freedom should not degenerate into incapability for freedom. Emancipatory help is completely allowed and should be applied according to the needs of a concrete period on the basis of equal rights. For example, people can be assisted in reaching an average degree of independence. The extent of such assistance should be decided at each period separately.
On the other hand, such a programme does not allow legally compulsory social correctives, and this is essential. Otherwise, one would arrive at privileges and guardianship on account of others. Supportive guardianship destroys the desire for achievement, the striving for real well-being, and equal treatment.
From this viewpoint, the watchword of the fourth way really is "free and social".
Marju Luts-Sootak
Modern private law as the freedom law of free people -- supported by the state
Approximately between 1750 and 1850, changes appeared in the political, economic, social, constitutional, and legal structure of Europe that put an end to the centuries-long ancien règime and laid the foundations to the modern era. The constitutive principles of the new fundamental order and law were liberty and equality. Private law is namely this area of law where individuals realized their new freedom. Recognition of everyone's equal freedom is the structural feature that enables us to make a clear distinction between modern private law and pre-modern private law that can be called bound or dependent. The principal division of law into private and public that was established in the modern era also has a constitutive meaning. Private law can primarily be shaped by mutual agreements between equally free legal subjects; public law, however, involves subordination mechanisms and supra-individual goals. Still, formation of equal legal subjects inevitable for modern private law could not be achieved by means of private law itself but needed a great number of acts of liberation that could only be initiated by the public authority. These acts included liberation of peasants from serfdom and recognition of everyone's equal legal capacity, liberation of land from restrictions by the estates of the realm and its inclusion into legal turnover, abolition of the guild system and recognition of general industrial and professional freedom, etc. All this required radical reforms by the state, which were mostly carried out during the nineteenth century, in some countries also earlier or later.
Along with the liberating reforms carried out by the state, the new libertarian private law was formulated. Many countries used a method of legislative interference known from as early as Roman law -- extensive codification of private law. However, the history of law in Britain, the United States, and other common law countries shows that private law could also be modernized without great legislative interference. The same is confirmed by legal history of nineteenth-century Germany where in many places modernization of private law and formation of libertarian private law was the responsibility of jurists and legal practitioners supported by theoretical knowledge. The private law system formed then by German jurists, which serves as a basis for the current German Civil Code (BGB -- Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) as well as for Estonian civil laws, is a very clearly thought-out system of modern libertarian private law as it is based on the directedness and scope of the person's free will. Although the system was shaped by Romanists -- German scholars who explored and taught Roman law -- it is an independent achievement of the modern era. Ancient Rome did not recognize universal equal liberty neither in its social nor legal sense.
The equal legal liberty of everyone, however, will not survive automatically, as was demonstrated by the "social problem" that became acutely topical as early as in the nineteenth century. Interference by the public authority or the state is also necessary later, after the adoption of principal acts of liberation. Namely, the legal subjects who meet in private law do not have equal abilities or opportunities. In reality, legal protection of the weaker party is necessary in order to make him/her equal with the stronger party. This concerns such areas of law as labour law, consumer law, rent law, social law, etc. These and many other areas of law do not only allow but even require interference by state in order to preserve everyone's equal liberty in private law. Still, the constitutive libertarian principle of modern private law requires that interference by the state should not result in guardianship or be merely limited to protection of certain legal subjects. Intervention by state public law into private law must also be supported by the core principle of private law itself -- interference is necessary and required, but only to ensure the actual freedom.
Kalju Eerme
Will the future bring flooding or icefields
More often people prefer to expect a deterministic rather than a probabilistic forecast of future climates. In reality, the probabilistic view on the climate system as a complex system is more appropriate. The article discusses both the deterministic and probabilistic features of the climate system as well as the principles of climate modelling. The climate system is a self-organizing system. The driving force of the system is solar energy supply. The dominance of irreversible processes causes entropy production within the system. A remarkable feature of the climate system is the exchange of entropy with space and therefore avoiding the increase of entropy. The reception of solar energy is intense at tropical latitudes and the outflow of entropy carrying thermal radiation at cold polar latitudes. To maintain this balance, a certain poleward energy flow supported by general atmospheric circulation is necessary. It is realized by the Hadley circulation from the tropics to the midlatitudes and by midlatitude cyclones.
The major reasons of climate change are expected to be the increasing content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and changing solar activity. In recent decades, solar activity has been anomalously high and now it has switched over to a decreasing trend. The author discusses the mutual proportions of the effect of both sources. The importance of processes occurring in the stratosphere and related to the tropospheric climate is described. Solar influence on climate is realized through the absorption of ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere and therefore changing the stratospheric circulation pattern. In turn, the modified stratospheric circulation is a key reason for variations in tropospheric circulation and climate regimes. The ocean has a huge heat capacity as compared to that of the atmosphere. Much of the additional heat received by the climate system is stored in the ocean.
Due to the warming, the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has strongly decreased in recent times and the hemispheric pressure pattern has changed causing a more intense heat flow over the northern high and middle latitudes.
Nelson Goodman
The new riddle of induction
At the beginning of this chapter from Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Goodman concentrates on Hume's theory according to which one of the judgements about the future differs from others by being concordant with habit and thus with a regularity observed in the past. The prediction dependent on any other alternative is faulty. Such a viewpoint, in its turn, has become the basis for the "old" induction problem: how inductive inferences are justified, while, in Goodman's words, justification is considered something else than a mere description of how we actually carry out inductive inferences.
In order to comprehend the problem, Goodman observes deduction and states that, analogously, the main task of justification of inductive inference is to show that it corresponds to the general rules of inductive inference. And rules become effective when they have been harmonized with accepted inferences, but in the way that accommodations are made to both rules and inferences until explicit rules are in balance with our tamed intuitions.
It also becomes clear that, although for Goodman Hume's solution can be incomplete, it is still correct in principle.
Next, Goodman launches a challenge in the form of "the new riddle of induction" (the famous example of emerald), which is important because in philosophy of science it is extremely essential to make a difference between the judgements that are law-like and those that are not. Such differentiation is needed for the satisfactory treatment of induction (or confirmation) as well as of explanation and prediction. Goodman, however, shows that this is extremely difficult to achieve.
Daniel Cohnitz
"The new riddle of induction", its context and significance
In the text that accompanies the Estonian translation of "The new riddle of induction", I explain the context of Goodman's new riddle historically and systematically. In Part 1, I locate the role this chapter plays in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast and also try to say a few words about the ways in which this short text is exemplary of Goodman's philosophical style as well as of his philosophical views in general. In Part 2, I discuss the philosophical significance of Goodman's paper for the philosophy of logic and science. I argue that the main insight of Goodman's discussion is that the "old problem of induction", i.e. the problem to find a justification for induction is (in the way that it is typically posed), is merely a pseudo problem; there is no possible justification for induction, and neither is there a justification for deduction. Hume's and Goodman's "solutions" to the problem of induction can therefore not be evaluated in respect of the old problem, but should rather be evaluated in respect of the successor-problem of finding an explication of "induction". The latter problem is not a pseudo problem. Goodman's new riddle shows that Hume underestimated this successor's problem, by not taking into account the role our choice of predicates plays for induction.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Report to El Greco: Chapter 5: Primary school
The excerpt has been taken from Kazantzakis' last novel, which was written in 1956-57 and published in 1961, after the author's death. The book has been called the writer's poetic or spiritual autobiography, the knowledge of which is inevitable for understanding his creation. Kazantzakis himself did not like to call the book an autobiography as it depicts his life in a rather selective and subjective manner. Along with facts, the book includes fiction.
Kazantzakis attended primary school in the town of Iraklio (Heraklion) on Crete from 1890-1896. The translated excerpt describes several characters that were prototypes for protagonists in Kazantzakis' books, for example, his father Michalis Kazantzakis and mother Maria Kazantzaki-Christodulaki, his teachers and classmates. Many Greeks have Report to El Creco as their favourite book.
Hellar Grabbi
At the Estonian Gymnasium in Geislingen
From 1945-1950 the small town of Geislingen an der Steige in the American occupation zone of post-war South Germany (in the present federal state of Baden-Württemberg) was the location of a large Estonian refugee camp, which at the most accommodated 4,400 Estonians. As the German population of Geislingen, nicknamed the Town of Five Valleys, was 17,000, every fourth or fifth inhabitant was an Estonian.
Estonians were accommodated in private houses, mostly one- or two-family dwellings, from which Germans had been evicted. The spacious building of the industrial school that had been taken over from Germans housed the Estonian technical school, folk university and YMCA.
The administrative building of the electric power plant housed the Representation of the Estonian National Association, which was elected by the camp inmates. Its many departments and offices ran the daily life of the camp under the supervision of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration officials who were foreigners, managed the internal affairs of the Estonian community and represented the Estonian community in international communication. The same building accommodated the camp's own post office and police, the newspaper Eesti Post with its supplement Pildipost and several workshops.
In July 1947, administration of refugee camps was taken over by the International Refugee Organization.
One of the most remarkable achievements by the refugees was the foundation of Estonian-language schools. For this purpose, Estonians were given a three-storey building in the centre of the town, which the German Knabenschule had to leave to make room for a 6-year Estonian primary school and a 5-year secondary school (gymnasium). Geislingen Estonian Gymnasium opened on 14 December 1945 and closed down on 15 January 1951 in Ulm, where it had been transferred as after the closure of the camp in the previous summer the number of students at the school had dwindled to about a dozen. During its operation, the gymnasium provided education to at least 668 students.
Hellar Grabbi arrived at Geislingen at the age of 16. He writes about his studies, the teachers and students of the gymnasium, and out-of-school activities.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A discourse upon the origin and the foundation of the inequality among mankind. I
The Discourse was written for the Académie de Dijon in 1754 and is dedicated to the state of Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace. Rousseau begins his discussion with the analysis of a natural man who has not yet acquired language or abstract thought. The consideration of man in a state of nature as a noble savage was an opposite point of view to Hobbes' view of the pre-civilised man in a state of all-against-all warfare. However, the development of agriculture, metallurgy, private property, and the division of labour led to humans becoming increasingly dependent on one another, and again led to inequality. The resulting state of conflict had Rousseau suggest that the first state was invented as a kind of social contract made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful. This original contract was deeply flawed as the wealthiest and most powerful members of society tricked the general population, and thus instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. Rousseau's own conception of the social contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on inequality, Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others, which originated in the golden age, comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, hierarchy, and inequality.