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101. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Vilmos Voigt The Bridge in Semiotics
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This paper aims to describe the importance of bridges – from the semiotic point of view, stressing their capacity in connecting nature and culture. It is arguing forthe importance of establishing technosemiotics as a separated chapter in sign system studies. The author mentions some famous bridges, such as the bridge over the river Kwai, Brooklyn Bridge, Puente de Alcantara (in Spain), bridges over the sea by the order of Xerxes and Caligula, other Oriental and European bridges, the Mostar Bridge (in Bosnia) and the Peruvian suspension bridges, as in the novel by Th. Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The illustrations are from Machinae Novae by Faustus Verantius (published 1616 in Venice).
102. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Andrei Cornea Relativity and Relativism: On a Failed Analogy
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My paper is a reply to Mr. Seungbae Park’s article, “Defence of Cultural Relativism” (Park, 2011), which holds that no culture is better than another. In response,my paper challenges the author’s method, fairly popular amongst some postmodern thinkers, that tends to equate cultural relativism and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Firstly, I question the general rationale of establishing an analogy between relativity and relativism. In my opinion, the analogy fails to take into accountthe very large generic distance between physics and ethics. Secondly, I try to demonstrate that the analogy can be construed in two opposite ways, so that, on theone hand, it might support relativism, while on the other, it might reinforce cultural absolutism. Therefore, one would rather dispense with so equivocal an analogy. Finally, I suggest that besides cultural absolutism and cultural relativism there is also another way of assessing different cultures – I used to call it intrinsic comparison – which is based on the second options of groups and individuals rather than on their first options. The issue of how to successfully compare cultures by avoiding both absolutism and relativism was extensively dealt with by me elsewhere.
103. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Madalena D’Oliveira-Martins The New Feminine Emotional Codes in Hochschild: New Perspectives for Modern Social Studies
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For some years now, amongst contemporary Western societies (where capitalism and globalization have a great influence), the presence and developmentof a well-defined and peculiar emotional culture has become clear. The appropriate use and management of emotions, support a system of relations and codes that draw new limits between public and private life and between people and their actions. Arlie Russell Hochschild has studied the dynamics of emotions, aiming to define their distinctive languages. Interactions between the public and the individual realm and the social sphere gives shape a code which imposes certain meanings and uses that are beyond the intention and perception of emotional subjects. Studies on the recent transformations of feminine roles and the social readjustments, which go along with those changes, are specifically motivated by the insertion of women in the business world, taking a central place in Hochschild’s investigations. This paper shows how new emotional codes, as Hochschild defines them, have great influence on modern lifestyles and how the role of women (and here lies the central friction between the family and career consolidation) is at the center of the characteristically modern lifestyle revolution.
104. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Reena Cheruvalath Analyzing the Concept of Self-Deception in Indian Cultural Context
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It is proposed to examine the need for redefining self deception in an Indian socio-cultural context and also on the basis of different social roles that one plays in his/her life time. Self-deception can be defined as the process of acting or behaving against one’s true inner feelings to maintain one’s social status. The conceptconsists of two aspects: maintaining a belief and the behavioral expression of it. Most of the time, deception occurs in the latter part, because it helps the deceiver to achieve a moral protection from the society and thereby, to get a mental pacification. In fact, in some situations, self deception helps to raise our self importance in the society. That is to say, if we express our inner truth, that which is unpleasant for the society, then it can lead to humiliation from the society. An individual adopts self deception as a method to evade dejection from the external world. Whenever I act against my inner feelings, it happens consciously or intentionally so I cannot feel both aspects, as a deceiver and the deceived, at the same time. Besides, I do respect the feelings of myself and in this sense one’s own self can never be deceived! Thus, self deception can be explained with relation to the expression of true beliefs in yourself.
105. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Abdul Rashid Moten Understanding and Ameliorating Islamophobia
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Though centuries old, Islamophobia has increased in intensity as it is extensively documented by surveys and reports published by various governmentaland non-governmental organizations. This dislike towards Islam and Muslims is, due, amongst other factors, to an increasing number of Muslim citizens and asylum seekers in the West bent upon preserving their own identity giving rise to the perception of “us” versus “them.” Such negative evaluations by the in-group may be due to the conflicting values, beliefs and the actual or perceived threat posed by Muslims. This is also attributed to the negative messages transmitted by the national media and the powerful elite. The strategy for countering Islamophobia must concentrate on “unlearning intolerance” by focusing on removing negative perceptions through education, reforming the media and reshaping the foreign policy of Western powers.
106. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Paola Partenza Mary Wollstonecraft: Ideology and Political Responsibility
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The concept of truth is one of the pivotal elements in Mary Wollstonecraft’s works. In line with her philosophical treatise, Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman(published posthumously in 1798) it becomes a paradigmatic expression of her thought. The author textualizes the obfuscation of the truth and the repression ofthe heorine’s self because of her unconventional conduct not judged in consonance with the social rules that govern patriarchal institutions. The novel might be read as a profound reflection on any form of prejudice and intellectual confinement of its time in which woman strives to regain her role as individual.
107. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Steven Cresap, Louis Tietje Irreconcilable Foundations: An Analysis of the Cultural Environment Facing Moral Educators
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Moral educators are faced with a number of polarizing trends, both in the political divide between liberals and conservatives and in the ideological divide between moral reasoners and character educators. Recent empirical research in psychology and anthropology, as exemplified in the work of Jonathan Haidt, has indicated that both kinds of polarization may have an evolutionary foundation. Our contribution is to evaluate the philosophical implications of such findings, and to place them within the cultural history of moral education. We also consider options in practical pedagogy for moral educators.
108. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Liudmila Baeva Existential Axiology
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This article is dedicated to basing a new current of philosophy – existential axiology. The nature of this theory involves the understanding of values as responsesof a person to key existential challenges: death, solitude, dependence of the nature and the society, etc. Value is the striving of a human to clarify the meaning andsignificance of our existence, it is an act of freedom, expression of subjectivity because it’s based on our personal experience and preference. We regard values as meaningfully-significant purposes of existence, that are a special type of information, reflecting the originality of the subject and expressing the most significantlonging for his own self-perfection. The sense and importance of information take effect in the programming of the psychic phenomenon and processes. Values express the maximum amount of information about the subject and emerge in the world as his highest manifestation. Since the variety in the human world is verygreat, axiological picture of the world will always be plural.
109. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Dan-Eugen Raţiu New Theoretical Framework for Approaching Artistic Activity: the Principle of Uncertainty. Pierre-Michel Menger’s Sociology of Creative Work
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This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move towards a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty.
110. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Danial Yusof Parallels between Contemporary Western and Islamic Thought on the Discourse of Power and Knowledge
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This paper examines parallels between contemporary Western and Islamic thought. It will propose that there is congruence between Western and Muslim political thought processes on issues of soft-foundationalism, negative theology, provisional truth claims and religious democracy, in order to offset hegemonic tendencies. This will be illustrated by a concise juxtaposition of the ideas of Davutoglu, Winkel, Sardar, Tariq Ali, Derrida, Foucault, Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohammed Arkoun and others. In the social sciences, namely political science, the neutralization of ideology is also supported in relation to the concern of ideological encroachments into the discipline by William E. Connolly, that echoes Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. This paper concludes that similar concerns on the relationship between power and knowledge in contemporary Western and Islamic political thought processes are beneficial to the study of Islam and its transformation as a social and political phenomenon.
111. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Dennis Ioffe The Notion “Ideology” in the Context of the Russian Avant-Garde
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This article discusses the role of ideology in the Avant-Garde of both Russia and Western Europe. For this purpose, it is necessary to clearly delineate “ideology”and “politics,” which takes up the first part of this study. A number of different views of these aspects, as expressed by several critical approaches with respect to the Russian Avant-Garde, are confronted and critically examined.
112. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Seungbae Park Against Moral Truths
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I criticize the following three arguments for moral objectivism. 1. Since we assess moral statements, we can arrive at some moral truths (Thomson, 2006). 2.One culture can be closer to truths than another in moral matters because the former can be closer to truths than the latter in scientific matters (Pojman, 2008). 3. A moral judgment is shown to be true when it is backed up by reason (Rachels and Rachels, 2010). Finally, I construct a dilemma against the view that there are moral truths and we can move toward them.
113. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Yi Chen Semiosis of Translation in Wang Wei’s and Paul Celan’s Hermetic Poetry
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Traditionally, comparative literature has focused on the study of influences between texts and it is only recent work that has explored the analogies and affinitiesof historically independent cultures. In this spirit, this paper develops methods for a structured poetic analysis and applies them to a systematic comparison of thepoem “Niǎo Mǐng Jiàn” from the 8th-century Chinese poet Wáng Wéi and the program piece of Paul Celan’s Atemwende: “Du Darfst,” based upon a detailed analysis of their poetics. The analysis and translation reveals how both poems employ words and images as signs without reference, and create dialogical gaps through ambiguity and impersonality. Thus, despite their cultural and historical separation, both poetic texts become “hermetic,” and both poets apply the “hermetic” as a method of inquiry into truth, a truth that cannot be simply pronounced, but needs to be cowitnessed, or heard in silence. It is through this meaningful “silence” that their poetry invites readers and translators all the more perceptively to engage in meaningful conversations. These results entail encouraging perspectives for the question of the limits of translation, especially with regard to east-western studies and for crosscultural comparative literature. Thus, the paper supports Prof. Li Qingben’s and Prof. Guo Jinghua’s claim for a multi-dimensional framework in the study of East-West cultural influences.
114. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Oana Cogeanu In the Beginning Was the Triangle: A Semiological Essay
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In the beginning was the triangle, the apostles of semiology say. In arguing for a semiological approach to literature, this paper highlights first that theconsecrated semiotic triangle seen in perspective proves to be a pyramid, with its faces consisting of minimal semiotic triads; it then suggests that the pyramidalsemiotic constructs within a given context project the figure of infinite semiosis; finally, it proposes an illustration of the literary process of signification using thealchemical image of the clepsydra.
115. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Qingben Li, Jinghua Guo Rethinking the Relationship between China and the West: A Multi-Dimensional Model of Cross-Cultural Research focusing on Literary Adaptations
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In the age of Globalization, cultural identity is a pointed and hotly debated question in academia. Cultural identity involves a core of traditional values and therecognition of several developing layers: the individual, the community and the nation. China has two dominant cultural tendencies: conservatism and protectionism. This has resulted in rejecting Western discourse to preserve a supposedly unchangeable Chinese identity. Comparative models that study cultural and literary exchanges between China and the West were based on dualist perceptions of spatio-temporal orientation. The multi-dimensional model of cross-cultural research espoused in this paper re-examines the relationships between Chinese and Western cultures and their literature. It also examines the misappropriation, transplantation, transfer and transformation of cultural representations and theories across diverse historical periods. As opposed to the dualist model of traditional comparators approaches, where relations are simplified to A influences B. the multi-dimensional model operates complex mapping, between ancient Chinese culture and Western culture, and then back to modern Chinese culture. This paper offers a case study of the complexity of cross-cultural exchanges over time, with the example of Ji Junxiang’s The Orphan of Zhao, its sources, (mis)adaptations and critical interpretations.
116. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Benson O. Igboin The Semiotic of Greetings in Yoruba Culture
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In most societies, greetings are the expression of emotions such as friendliness or rejection, and form the basis of social and moral order. The symbolic dimension of greetings is frequently entwined in the cultural and metaphysical reality of a community. In African societies this ethical and religious dimension carries its own peculiarities. It is interesting to see how much of the content-meaning of greetings depends on cultural traditions. This paper presents an analysis of greetings in the Yoruba culture in Nigeria.
117. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Nadezhda Nikolenko Semiosis and Nomadic Art in Eurasia
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Despite, or perhaps as a form of resistance to contemporary globalization tendencies, the Central Asia region has chosen a way of life that combines modernconditions with deeply ingrained ancient customs and traditions. The gap between the by-gone glorious nomadic past in the communities of the Great Steppe and the socio-cultural and economic setup of the independent countries in this region, for instance Russia and Kazakhstan, is huge, and without access to modern structures of knowledge dissemination, the cultural heritage of these ancient nomadic communities remains largely unexplored. This paper seeks to present some of the hidden cultural treasures of these peoples. In order to do so, the study focuses on the semiotic implications of ornaments as intercultural signs amidst the nomadic cultures of Eurasia.
118. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
I-Chun Wang The Semiosis of Imperialism: Boadicea or the 17th-Century Iconography of a Barbarous Queen
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By discussing Bonduca (1611) a a Jacobean tragi-comedy in the Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher canon, generally judged by scholars to be the work ofthe second one alone, this paper looks into the tragic story of Queen Boadicea, as rewritten in fiction. The cultural and semiotic codes that Bonduca represents are examined in the context of imperialism. The paper explores the conflict between the Romans and the colonized Iceni tribe and discusses the legitimization of colonization in the light of historical records alongside fictional accounts. The paper shows how the Boudican Revolt can be seen as part of the disempowerment of Brittany. The study serves as an example of the need for a complex multi-dimensional framework for the comparative study of literatures and cultures.
119. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Nicolito A. Gianan Philosophy and Dealienation of Culture: Instantiating the Filipino Experience
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The article aims to elucidate on the notion of philosophy of culture, particularly in non-Western societies. This is exemplified by the promotion of philosophy,with its advocates and approaches, in Filipino culture. In addition, it gives an account of a type of alienation that has had a profound influence upon the Filipinoexperience, philosophical thought and practice; the so-called dealienation of culture.
120. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Susi Ferrarello Husserl’s Theory of Intersubjectivity
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I am looking at a bird flying above my head and I barely see it; in the meantime I am talking to a friend of mine about my job. All these things: the bird, my friend, my job, even the ground beneath my feet, are outside of me. Yet, while I am living these objects, they are here, in my head. How can one explain this relationship,where something that is completely different from my being becomes a part of me? If something transcends my own nature, how can it be immanent, within my lived experience? How can I relate to something that is completely other than me? How can it ‘in-exist’ in my mind? Is there an original ‘me’ or am I always the result of my social life? Is the world in which I am living objective, or is it just mine? In this paper I would like to answer all these questions, focusing on the theory of intersubjectivity as it has been displayed by Husserl’s phenomenological method. In several instances, this method was defined by Husserl himself as a “‘sociological’ transcendental philosophy” (Husserl, 1968: 539), or even as a “transcendental sociology” (Husserl, 1966: 220), for it looks into the lived experience of the subject as if the subject were a transcendental intersubjective unit. The Husserliana volumes we refer to throughout this work are: the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (Husserl, 1982), which implicitly sends us to volume 8 (First Philosophy, second part & other important additions), and volumes 13 to 15 of the Husserliana (Husserl, 1973), which are dedicated especially to the issue of intersubjectivity. In what follows, I will focus firstly on the notion of intentionality, secondly on the constitution of the otherness and its objectivity, thirdly on the idea of ego and its life-world.