The historical record of an individual depends upon context. The United States of the last decade has suffered a series of crisis that are comparable in some ways to those of Poland in the 1970s. Taken together, they have created a mood of misery, but also the possibility for a hopeful transformation of politics. Barack Obama serves a function in American politics today similar to that served by Karol Wojtyła three decades ago.

The paper examines the bond between architecture and history on the premise that everybody is familiar with both architecture and history. The paper views architecture as a profession that is satiated with imaginative and creative thinking; and contends that architecture extends, historically, into wherever human beings live their life. The author opines that architecture easily extends its influence, as a vivid universal metaphor into every sphere of human activity as a synonym, in building either concrete or abstract forms. Thus, the paper proceeds to demonstrate that architecture chronicles the achievements of peoples in creatively constructed concrete forms, which it infuses with the histories of abstract concepts in time and space. Conversely, the paper points out that history, which highlights the living memories of humanity, chronicles the antecedences, precedence, sequences, and consequences of man’s concrete achievements incogent abstract forms. Consequently, the paper concludes that while architecture builds conceptualized concrete forms from and for history; history builds its concrete abstract forms from and for architecture. Thus, the paper concludes that The Architecture of History and The History of Architecture ultimately coincides in their complementarity, as mutual witnesses to the activities of man in time and space.

The paper presents George Steiner’s view of the right conditions for the contemplation of art. The position has been presented as motivated by a certain concept of artistic creation and the reception of art.Steiner’s vision of art finds its legitimacy in a belief which describes the linguistic activity of man as one which is at the same time creative (innovative) and conditioned by external discourses. In this view both the speaking subject and the subject of an artistic activity are motivated by a desire to become independent from an impartial discourse of mind. An artist is someone who opposes the past and present forms of expression in an attempt to incarnate a sense which in the light of the established forms of discourse appears inexpressible. The key point of Steiner's concept is his argumentation in favor of the ambiguity of dividing the human activity into the original and the derived (mediated by secondary narratives). An artist, a recipient of art or a theorist do not have the tools which could point at the divide.The analysis sets out to make an outline of Steiner’s rendition of the problem of interpretation and development o art. The originality of the position on the issue results from attributing a major significance to interpretative errors for the survival and the constant appeal of art. The process of interpretation is also described as one which yields to no theoretical taxonomy. According to Steiner, a recipient of art disposes of no tools that would warrant access to a transcendental sense of a work of art. Therefore, it ought to be ascertained that a reliable act of reception is one which does not pursue agreement with its object. The recipient must remain detached from the work of art. Paradoxically, only thanks to such an attitude can they make art part of their experience.

The paper is a response to Adam Daniel Rotfeld’s essay, “Shaping a New International System for the Twenty First Century”. Rotfeld’s essay offers provocative insights to current world affairs while asking timely questions. In the following pages I respond to a few of the large and important ideas Rotfeld raises. I do not attempt to engage in a direct dialogue with the details or justifications of Rotfeld’s analysis but rather explore some of his insights in new directions. I do argue that while neoliberalism has emerged as a candidate for a new ideology of globalization it is likely to fail in that quest. Instead, I argue that any new ideological framework for a new world order must emerge through a bottom-up dialogue that includes previously silenced voices. I argue that the zone of conflict between the pre-modern, modern, and post-modern worlds is also a zone of creativity.

The present, XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet since the Chinese occupation of his native land 50 years ago (March 10.1959) has gone into exile in India. Since the seventies the Dalai Lama has started traveling the whole world, meeting with all important political leaders and scientists of all major Universities, giving thousands of lectures to crowds of people and advanced Buddhist teachings and initiations to Western Buddhists. Since receiving the Nobel Peace Przie in 1989 the Dalai Lama has become a person with the worldwide moral authority, comparable only with that of the Polish Pope John Paul II. During his third visit to Poland in December 2008 the Dalai Lama has met with many important people and has given a lot of advice and inspiration. This major visit is recountedhere by the author.His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet visited Poland for the third time, between the 5th and the 12th of December 2008. The previous visits happened in 1993 and 2000, but were much smaller in scope. This time the visit was a major media and social event, drawing the nation’s attention. The Dalai Lama visited the four main cities in Poland.

The present essay focuses on the Frankfurt School’s views on relations between philosophy and science. The author specifically concentrates on Horkheimer, the School’s leader, and Habermas, its most prominent contemporary representative. In her reconstruction of the Frankfurt School’s approach to the dependencies between philosophy and science the author—similarly to the Frankfurt theoreticians—abstains from treating it abstractly, instead placing it in its social and historiosophical context. The essay’s leading thesis is that the Frankfurt School sees philosophical self-reflection as a remedy for the crisis in European culture, visible since the beginnings of the modern era in the rise of instrumental thinking. The author reminds that the assumption of philosophy’ primacy over science—or the primacy of wisdom over knowledge—has found avid support among philosophers of other eras and other schools of thought.

The following is an attempt to grasp synthetically the strategy and development of Jean Baudrillard’s intellectual standpoint. My view emphasizes late ideas by French Philosopher, while the earlier ones are treated from this perspective as preliminary. After having left Marxist and post-Marxist positions, Baudrillard developed an original and idiosyncratic way of thinking about contemporary world that—inspired by Nietzschean idea that the power of interpretation prevails over representation of truth—evolves around rejection of the traditional ideas of the social, reality and revolt, while employing categories of mass, simulation or catastrophe. This attitude took him not only beyond good and evil, but also to affirmation of death and terror, conducting to an extreme standpoint of “intellectual terrorism”.

Both nihilism and universalism are historical products of Western speculative philosophy. The failure of this philosophy to discover universally valid laws resulted in widespread despair, which at times created a suicidal atmosphere. The other worldly promises offered by dualistic world models made an escape into an alternate world attractive. This paper investigates whether Nietzsche’s proposal to rekindle the fire of life by recovering the Dionysian spirit in creative work is a feasible alternative to nihilistic despair. It goes on to investigate whether a new sense of community and collaborative ethics can be distilled from a renewed engagement with nature. Recent scientific discoveries and experiential evidence could lead to a reformulation of virtue ethics based on naturalistic sources.

Marek J. Siemek’s idea of the transcendental social philosophy seems paradoxical, because it aspires to combine the allegedly “non-historical” and “timeless” transcendental sphere with the social and historical dimension. But the uniqueness of Siemek as a philosopher consists precisely in being Fichtean as well as Hegelian. Siemek’s philosophy is an undertaking to reconstruct the field of rationality in its social and historical dimension. The leading question of this philosophy is not if history is rational, but how it is possible for the rationality to be historical. Siemek seems to maintain, that the noninstrumental rationality has it’s own history: it is a history of self-de-instrumentalization of the initial one-sided instrumental reason. Historical process can be seen as a vehicle of rationality, although not always and necessary rational itself. For Siemek, as well as for Hegel, the historical contradiction is a contradiction of the thing itself, not a development scheme imposed on the history by theoretician from his allegedly external position. On one side: there is no history without the rational interpretation of history. On the other side: the interpretation itself is a part of historical process.

I can’t say that I resent the Germans, nor that I expect or demand anything from them. I would only like them to know what they have done to me. They have destroyed my childhood and ruined my eight-year-old imagination, leaving only a pile of rubble, heap of corpses, great cesspool—gigantic hole filled with black blood. (K 53)