2000
Eurozine
2000
2010-01-19
Abstracts for 2000 9/2009
Levente László Balogh
The pathology of the crisis
The Hungarian political scientist on the features of the crisis. What is the crisis in itself? What does it mean in the age of modernity? The study gives an archaeology of the term concluding that the abuse of trust (crisis) cannot be solved once and for all with algorithmic instruments (coercion or scientific methods) considering its relation with human nature. Insecurity could only be handled with free acts (to take responsibility for) to empower the institutions of modern society with trust.
Martin M. Simecka
Still not free
The dissident generation of the 1970s and 1980s produced a body of work unprecedented in Czech history, says Martin Simecka. Yet it is precisely the monumentality of this generation's legacy that prevents the interpretation of the communist past going beyond self-diagnosis.
Leszek Kolakowski
Looking for barbarians
According to Kolakowski, the defence of Eurocentrism means defending the European civilization against "outer" and "inner" barbarism. The acceptance of the equality of the civilizations and cultures at one turning-point leads to the abandoning of European values. The achievements of the Enlightenment should be completed with the source of its own basics: with the Christian element. To avoid the nihilistic consequences of the dialectic shift of modern humanism, and to hold up its highest value of indefinite openness and never-ending search for stability without devastating itself, it must be balanced with the Christian knowledge which asserts this openness as designation.
First published in: Czy diabelmoze byc zbawiony i 27 innych kazan
Interview with Vintila Mihailescu
Gergõ Pulay and Vintilã Mihãilescu talk about the Romanian cultural identity, on the need for public discourse and critical view of heritage and on the changing role of anthropology in the new scientific order.
Peter Demetz
The day of occupation -- President Hácha travelling to Berlin
A short story about the Nazi occupation of Bohemia. The biography of Czechoslovakian president Emil Hácha. A brief account on the collaboration and the resistance in the occupied Bohemia and autobiographic parts from the life of the young Demetz during the period.
First published in: Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation 1939-1945