OCTOBER 28, 1918. REWRITING OR OVERLAYERING OF CZECH HISTORICAL MEMORY?

October 28, 1918 is the Czech Republic state holiday whose historical memory is a combination of Czech, Czechoslovak, and Central European 20th century history. On this date in Prague, the Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed, and its fi rst law was passed. Th e events in Prague were part of the complex and long-lasting fall of the Habsburg monarchy and the creation of its successor states, in which national, state-forming, and ideological (e.g. Bolshevist) aspects were interwoven. Accordingly, we can speak of Czech, Slovak, (Czecho)-German, Hungarian, Polish and Rusinian October 28s. As the only state holiday (with an interruption in the period of the Nazi occupation), it was intended to act as the chief connecting and uniting holiday for the CSR state identifi cation; it was to strengthen ‘Czechoslovakism’. Its annual celebrations were associated with a series of rituals not only for the Czechs themselves but, over time and to varying degrees, also for the other nationalities living in the CSR: primarily the Slovaks and the Rusinians were seen to truly accept the ceremonial day. Th e Nazi occupying power was successful only insofar as it forced October 28, 1918 into private crypto-commemoration, while naturally it was celebrated by the resistance movement. Th e Communist regime tried to ‘rewrite’ October 28 in the spirit of social revolution, treating it as the precursor of its political victory aft er 1945 and in particular aft er 1948. It was to be commemorated as the Nationalization Day (of key industries in 1945) in direct relation with the liberation of the CSR by the Soviet Army (alone!) in 1945. Finally, the Communists att empted to force it out of the collective memory through its offi cial non-observance as a remembrance of 1918, and by designating it, in 1975-1988, as a signifi cant, but still a working, day. However, the memory of the Establishment of the Republic refused to be suppressed, as was evidenced in a particularly strong manner in the demonstrations of 1968, 1988 and, crucially, of 1989. All att empts at ‘rewriting’ this holiday in the spirit of ideologies failed in the end, although during the 1938/39 to 1989/92 period spontaneous public celebrations were successfully repressed to a signifi cant degree by means of the political manipulation of Czech/Czechoslovak history

Tarski’s Practice and Philosophy: Between Formalism and Pragmatism: What has Become of Them?

Collection : Synthese Library, n°341International audienceConsidering works by Tarski, the author claims that Tarski’s fundamental aim was to establish formal semantics as a new branch of mathematics

Antike dramen Heiner Müllers. Adaption der mythen oder eine neue theaterästhetik?

Der Artikel analysiert die Tragödienkonzeption Heiner Müllers im Kontext seiner Antike-Ad- aptionen. Interpretiert werden drei Stücke, die aus formaler Perspektive verschiedene Wege der Antike-Rezeption präsentieren. Der kurze Text Der Horatier übernimmt den Stoff aus Livius Ab urbe condita und erzählt die Geschichte der Horatier in einer Form, die man auch als Verserzäh- lung bezeichnen könnte. Das Drama Philoktet stützt sich vor allem auf die Vorlage von Sophokles. Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten ist eine sehr freie Adaption des Me- dea-Mythos und nur in Grundzügen ist sie dem antiken Stoff treu. Trotz dieser formalen Unter- schiede zeigen die drei Texte – offensichtlich gegen die Intention ihres Autors, der nach grossen, tragischen Problemen in der kommunistischen Gesellschaft der DDR suchte – Züge einer Poetik, die die Nähe zur Mitleidsästhetik des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels offenbart. Die nähere Analyse deckt Widersprüche auf, die das Individuum, das persönliche Leiden zum Hauptproblem machen. Die private Tragödie der Protagonisten scheint die Tragödie zu verdrängen, die im öffentlichen Raum angesiedelt ist. Dies ist ein überraschendes Ergebnis, bedenkt man Müllers Selbstdeutung sowie seine Rolle im DDR-Kulturbetrieb

Logika narodu: Nacjonalizm, logika formalna i międzywojenna Polska

Between the World Wars, a robust research community emerged in the nascent discipline of mathematical logic in Warsaw. Logic in Warsaw grew out of overlapping imperial legacies, launched mainly by Polish-speaking scholars who had trained in Habsburg universities and had come during the First World War to the University of Warsaw, an institution controlled until recently by Russia and reconstructed as Polish under the auspices of German occupation. The intellectuals who formed the Warsaw School of Logic embraced a patriotic Polish identity. Competitive nationalist attitudes were common among interwar scientists – a stance historians have called “Olympic internationalism,” in which nationalism and internationalism interacted as complementary rather than conflicting impulses.One of the School’s leaders, Jan Łukasiewicz, developed a system of notation that he promoted as a universal tool for logical research and communication. A number of his compatriots embraced it, but few logicians outside Poland did; Łukasiewicz’s notation thus inadvertently served as a distinctively national vehicle for his and his colleagues’ output. What he had intended as his most universally applicable invention became instead a respected but provincialized way of writing. Łukasiewicz’s system later spread in an unanticipated form, when postwar computer scientists found aspects of its design practical for working under the specific constraints of machinery; they developed a modified version for programming called “Reverse Polish Notation” (RPN). RPN attained a measure of international currency that Polish notation in logic never had, enjoying a global career in a different discipline outside its namesake country. The ways in which versions of the notation spread, and remained or did not remain “Polish” as they traveled, depended on how readers (whether in mathematical logic or computer science) chose to read it; the production of a nationalized science was inseparable from its international reception.W okresie międzywojennym w rodzącej się dyscyplinie logiki matematycznej w Warszawie wyłoniła się silna społeczność badawcza. Logika w Warszawie wyrosła w wyniku nakładających się na siebie imperialnych spuścizn, dzięki działaniom głównie polskojęzycznych uczonych, którzy kształcili się na uniwersytetach habsburskich i przybyli w czasie I wojny światowej na Uniwersytet Warszawski, instytucję kontrolowaną do niedawna przez Rosję i zrekonstruowaną jako polską pod auspicjami niemieckiego okupanta. Intelektualiści, którzy tworzyli Warszawską Szkołę Logiki, przyjęli patriotyczną polską tożsamość. Konkurencyjne postawy nacjonalistyczne były powszechne wśród naukowców międzywojennych – stanowisko, które historycy nazwali „internacjonalizmem olimpijskim”, w którym nacjonalizm i internacjonalizm oddziaływały jako impulsy raczej wzajemnie się uzupełniające niż sprzeczne.Jeden z liderów Szkoły, Jan Łukasiewicz, opracował system notacji, który promował jako uniwersalne narzędzie do badań i komunikacji w logice. Wielu jego rodaków przyjęło ten system notacji, ale niewielu logików poza Polską. W ten sposób notacja Łukasiewicza nieumyślnie posłużyła jemu i jego współpracownikom jako narzędzie specyficznie polskie. Wynalazek, który w zamyśle miał być najbardziej uniwersalną formą zapisu, stał się szanowanym, lecz zrozumiałym tylko w kraju narzędziem. System notacji Łukasiewicza później rozprzestrzenił się w nieprzewidzianej formie, gdy powojenni informatycy zdali sobie sprawę z praktycznej użyteczności jego aspektów do pracy w specyficznych uwarunkowaniach maszynowych i opracowali zmodyfikowaną wersję tej notacji do programowania o nazwie „Reverse Polish Notation” (RPN). RPN osiągnął miarę waluty międzynarodowej, której nigdy nie miała polska notacja w logice, ciesząc się globalną karierą w innej dyscyplinie poza krajem jej imiennika. Drogi, w jakich wersje tej notacji rozprzestrzeniły się i pozostały lub nie pozostały „polskie” podczas tej podróży, zależały od tego, jak czytelnicy (zajmujący się logiką matematyczną albo informatyką) postanowili czytać tę notację; tworzenie znacjonalizowanej nauki było nierozerwalnie związane z jej międzynarodową recepcją

CIVIL SOCIETY AS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY: ORGANIZATIONAL BASES OF THE POPULIST COUNTERREVOLUTION IN POLAND. CES Open Forum Series 2019-2020

A distinctive trajectory of civil society transformation in Poland has provided organizational foundations for the cultural and political polarization and facilitated country’s recent turn towards authoritarianism. Developments in Poland suggest that the reigning notion of the inherent virtuousness of civil society, its unquestionably beneficial role in strengthening democracy and assumed liberal preferences of civil society actors need to be reassessed. Consequently, I argue that the particular organizational configuration of civil society, its sectoral composition, normative orientation of its actors and prevailing cleavages can either strengthen or undermine democracy. Since country’s transition to democracy in 1989, Polish civil society has evolved into an organizational form that can be described as “pillarized civil society.” While historically pillarization of civil society was considered to be a peculiar phenomenon in the Low Countries in the XIX century, this form of civil society organization has become increasingly common in contemporary democratic societies with dividing boundaries shaped by identitybased cleavages (religious, ethnic, political). The presence of vertically segmented civil society enables extreme cultural and political polarization and facilitated mobilization of far-right, nationalist and conservative religious movements. In Poland, pillarized civil society affect electoral fortune of liberal parties, provides support for anti-liberal and anti-European policies of the current Polish government dominated by the Law and Justice party as well as defines political conflicts and protest politics

Logic and Biology: The Correspondence Between Alfred Tarski and Joseph H. Woodger

This article makes available some early letters chronicling the relationship between the biologist Joseph H. Woodger and the logician Alfred Tarski. Using twenty-five unpublished letters from Tarski to Woodger preserved in the Woodger Papers at University College, London, I reconstruct their relationship for the period 1935-1950. The scientific aspects of the correspondence concern, among other things, Tarski’s reports on the work he is doing, his interests, and his --- sometimes critical but always well-meaning --- reactions to Woodger’s attempts at axiomatizing and formalizing biology using the system of Principia Mathematica. Perhaps the most interesting letter from a philosophical point of view is a very informative letter on nominalism dated November 21, 1948. But just as fascinating are the personal elements, the dramatic period leading to the second world war, their reaction to the war events, Tarski\u27s anguish for his family stranded back in Poland, the financial worries, and his first reports on life in the East Coast and, as of 1942, at the University of California, Berkeley

Towards an agonistic ethics in contemporary art

Today we are witnessing the emergence of antagonism, a dimension intrinsically bound to the human beings, which results from the expression of specific power relations composing social hegemonies, that inevitably want to prevail over each other. Furthermore, the system of symbols produced by the dominant hegemony to maintain the control, has pervaded all sides of the human sphere, creating its own aesthetic. According to Chantal Mouffe (2013), the antagonist dimension could be solved, or better yet sublimated, through its conversion to agonism, which is realized through discussion and confrontation among peers. In this context, the aim of this dissertation is to analyse how contemporary art practices might operate as effective counter-hegemonic processes, taking into account the particularity inherent in ethics (Badiou, 2001) and the political dimension to which art is intrinsically bound (Rancière, 2004). After a first theoretical backbone, which presents an analysis of participatory art and deepens the concept of agonistic approach, I consider the practice of three artists, Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), Paweł Althamer (1967) and Tania Bruguera (1968), whose works are challenging the viewer in a counter-hegemonic manner, to answer the main question of this dissertation: how should the artists engage the viewer through their artistic practices and actions? It will be seen that the work of these artists seems to tell that the artistic practice should not be superior to the spectator, neither an explicit complaint. It should question the system, being a subtle trigger for the beholder, inducing a reaction, a dialogue, an autonomous reflection