Filozofia is an academic journal publishing original articles in a wide range of areas including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, social and political philosophy, and related disciplines, such as logic, methodology and ethics. Filozofia is double-blind peer-reviewed journal and is open to all authors, independently of their methodology and/or theoretical background. Filozofia is published 6 times per year: in February (no. 1), April (no. 2), May (no. 3), September (no. 4), October (no. 5), and December (no. 6).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Různorodé modernity a rozpadající se současnost: Rozhovor Milana Kreuzziegera s Jóhannem Pállem Árnasonem
Interview with Jóhann Páll Árnason.
Copyright (c) 2026 Milan Kreuzzieger https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
In Memoriam Jürgen Habermas (1929 – 2026)
Miscellaneous (Scientific events, Critical notes, …)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dominik Kulcsár https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Introduction to the Monothematic Block: Heidegger, Daoism, and Intercultural Thinking Today
Copyright (c) 2026 Kurt C.M. Mertel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
An Ethic of Empathy: Articulating the Normative Grounds of Dialogic Interpretation
Contrary to concerns that grounding ethics in empathy fails to account for normative ideals like autonomy, respect, and universal equality, a viable path towards an empathetic ethic advancing those values is presented. In the first step, the normative entailments of dialogic interpretation are articulated and correlated with Kantian ideals to define the goalposts. Avoiding metaphysical or transcendental groundings, we then sketch the profile of a hermeneutic phenomenology revealing basic and morally impactful phenomena as normative sources. Finally, the conception of a dialogic self can be shown to entail the cognitive potential to rightly respond to such phenomena. Empathetic capabilities entail a set of normative ideals expressing the rich value-orientations of a culturally sensitive yet universalistic concept of moral agency.
Copyright (c) 2026 Hans-Herbert Kögler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
80 Years of the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences as an Integral Part of Filozofia’s History
Copyright (c) 2026 Jon Stewart https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
K nevhodnosti dělení analytické a kontinentální filozofie: odpověď Dragounovi
This paper responds to the criticism raised by Ivo Dragoun against my earlier article on the division of philosophy into analytic and Continental. In the original paper, I argued that this division is problematic for factual, methodological, and power-related reasons. Dragoun attempts to challenge all three lines of argument. In this reply, I systematically reconstruct and critically assess his objections. I argue that the semantic defense of the notion of “Continental philosophy” remains unsatisfactory, that the methodological justification of the division faces persistent difficulties, and that the power dimension of the classification cannot be easily neutralized. I conclude that Dragoun’s critique does not undermine the original arguments and that the thesis concerning the inadvisability of the analytic–Continental division remains defensible.
Copyright (c) 2026 Karel Šebela https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Ondrej Marchevský a Lukáš Švaňa (eds.): Filozofické pokolenia: ich formovanie, vplyv a odkaz v slovenskom a českom prostredí 20. storočia a súčasnosti
Copyright (c) 2026 Andrea Miškocová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Emergence of the Concept of Existence: Schelling and Kierkegaard
In philosophy, the term ὑποκείμενον literally means “underlying thing,” which in Latin is “subiectus,” but in fact it means something which can predicate other things but cannot be a predicate of others, which in German philosophy corresponds to Schelling’s “Unbedingtes.” Contrary to the opinion of many interpreters, there is a very close link between German idealism and twentieth-century existentialism. Kierkegaard attended Schelling’s lectures in Berlin in 1841 – 1842, where he became familiar with Schelling’s late philosophy in detail, and from this he developed his own concept of existentialism. The paper will show how, by transcending the notions of ὑποκείμενον and the subject, an existential philosophy emerges that will become a dominant feature of European culture in the twentieth century.
Copyright (c) 2026 Zoltán Gyenge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Pojem úplne holého indivídua a parciálny esencializmus jednotlivín
In his works Pavel Tichý relied on the concept of the empirically bare individual, which was based on the denial of empirical omniscience. A critical discussion developed among his followers, in which various proposals were put forward: bare individuals do not exist; instead, they are a concept, a construct, or a property. In 1991, Robert Stalnaker, in his critique of anti-essentialism, came up with the concept of analytical essentialism. The identity of the individual and its cognition remained a neuralgic point. We propose the hypothesis that if we reject the assumption of analytical omniscience, a non-contradictory solution is to distinguish between completely bare individuals as bearers of identity on the one hand and space-time particulars on the other, which are rich in properties. Complete anti-essentialism applies to individuals, and partial essentialism with the application of supplementary conventions relating to their empirical identity applies to their counterparts – particulars.
Copyright (c) 2026 František Gahér https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Bergson, Heidegger, and the Temporality of Immortality
Many transhumanists hope near-future developments in various medical and engineering fields will eventually lead to the end of human mortality. There are numerous practical obstacles, moral conundrums, and conceptual issues here that must be addressed, but a more fundamental problem for visions of something approximating immortality concerns the enthusiasm for these visions itself. Even if it were possible to extend human lives indefinitely, are lives that last (potentially) forever really worth wanting? We consider some key arguments in what has come to be known as the “desirability of immortality” debate. The arguments of greatest interest are those focusing on the relationship between time and value. After briefly sketching them out, we contrast them with Henri Bergson’s account of time as duration. When one relies on Bergson, and related ideas in Martin Heidegger’s work, it becomes clear that the absence of death need not render an immortal life meaningless, as some philosophers believe.
Copyright (c) 2026 S. E. Oskam, Adam Buben https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
200 rokov Maďarskej akadémie vied: Kontakty maďarskej a slovenskej vedy v dejinách a súčasnosti akadémie
Copyright (c) 2025 Laura Kladeková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Lea David: A Victim‘s Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights
A book review of Lea David's A Victim‘s Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press 2025, 328pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tatiana Sedová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A Dialectic of Tension: Anthropology, Action, and Freedom in Luigi Pareyson
This paper explores Pareyson’s constant drive toward an ontological dimension, despite the presence of a “dialectic of tension” that shifts heterogeneously throughout his entire work. To support this thesis, we first demonstrate how his philosophy, while rooted in Gentile’s actualism, functions as a critique of Hegelianism, aligning itself with the tradition of Italian personalism and the legacy of European existentialism. Within Pareyson’s ontological personalism, the person’s intimate existential bond with truth is not restricted to a theoretical framework based on a “dialectic of necessity”; rather, it is characterized by a participatory relationship with being. By showing that the foundation of his philosophy of action lies in the specific phenomenological structure of “initiative,” we argue that this dialectic of tension culminates in an ontology of freedom: a concept that, until the very end, preserves its ethical and anthropological essence alongside its purely speculative value.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emanuele Curcio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Between the Historical Region and the Central Europe of Novelists and Philosophers
Following Jóhann Páll Árnason’s occasional distinction between the imaginative Central Europe of novelists and philosophers and the historical region of East-Central Europe, this article uses the example of this region to discuss the relationship between public debates (including essays and novels) about the past and professional historical discourse. It explains the irreducibility of the diverse polycentric perspectives of Central Europe and the risks of its originally Westerncentric construction in the 19th century, as manifested in the present day.
Copyright (c) 2026 Martin Profant https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Daoism, Heidegger, and AI: Reflections on Technology, Alienation, and the Case Hypnocracy
This article offers some comparative reflections on technology and the alienating potential of AI. These reflections are inspired by theoretical affinities between Daoism and Heidegger’s philosophy. In particular, I focus on the work Hypnocracy that recently sparked an international debate about the notion of authorship and the problematic relationship between AI-generated textual content and creative writing. The main thesis is that Daoism and Heidegger’s philosophy encourage a critical use of technology that rejects a reason dominated by sheer instrumental usefulness without rejecting technology as a whole. Ultimately, both philosophies favor the passage from the uncritical exploitation of technological affordances as mere means-to-ends to a deeper awareness characterized by an end-to-means, i.e., the equanimous releasement of purposive action expressing an ethics of relationality.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rudi Capra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Object, System, and Culture: The Marburg Neo-Kantian Reception of Kant
This paper argues that the Neo-Kantian reception of Kant’s concept of the object – particularly within the Marburg School – culminates in Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as the legitimate completion of the critical project. It traces this development by showing how Hermann Cohen’s focus on the infinitesimal (dx) as an isolated unit of thought, together with Paul Natorp’s shift towards relational synthesis (dx/dy) within a systematic framework, paved the way for Cassirer’s decisive expansion. For Cassirer, the object is constituted within dynamic systems of meaning that extend beyond the exact sciences to encompass the full spectrum of cultural forms, including myth, language, and art. Thus, the article demonstrates how Cassirer transforms Kant’s critique of reason into a critique of culture. This reconciles the interpretations of Marburg Neo-Kantianism put forth by Cohen and Natorp within this broader framework.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gustavo Esparza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Heidegger, Nothingness, and Presence: Between Parmenides and Laozi
This contribution reconsiders standard accounts of Heidegger’s concept of being as presence by tracing other moments revealed in his thinking of nothingness, emptiness, and the clearing in the context of his European and East Asian sources. Heidegger’s interpretations of Parmenides, early Greek philosophy, and of being as presencing (Anwesenheit) appear to assert the primordiality of “the one” and a hypostatized, monistic “metaphysics of presence.” This paper sketches a pivotal alternative thread within Heidegger’s thinking, most evident in his interactions with East Asian discourses, by outlining how a distinctive interpretation of nothingness, emptiness, absence, darkness, hiddenness, and mystery emerged in his readings of Laozi and Zhuangzi and in his dialogue with a Japanese interlocutor. Heidegger’s East Asian sources informed a key thread and model of his thinking that refused to reduce constitutive absence, emptiness, and nothingness to givenness, positivity, and presence or the logic of affirmation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Eric S. Nelson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Genealogy of Bakunin’s Theory of Revolt
This review study critically engages with Felipe Corrêa’s Freedom or Death: The Theory and Practice of Mikhail Bakunin. Although Corrêa works with the entirety of Bakunin’s corpus, he fails to adequately examine the double-negative aspect of revolt in Bakunin’s philosophical anthropology. My aim with this paper is to remedy this, vis-à-vis an exegesis of Bakunin’s appropriation of Hegel’s concept of negation, and its naturalized reemergence in a theory of revolt.
The Right Use of Reason in the Moral Theories of Aristotle and Habermas
The Aristotelian distinction between technical and moral reason, production and interaction permeates Habermas’s thought. But in moral theory, Habermas’s main emphasis is on the decontextualized justification of moral norms, while Aristotle’s focus is on contextualized judgment. The paper argues that Aristotle’s theory of practical wisdom could be instructive for discourse ethics. Habermas has not been open to this possibility because he has appropriated the neo-Aristotelian interpretation of Aristotle, in which practical wisdom is subordinated to traditional norms, an interpretation that neglects the role of reason in moral deliberation. Moreover, the contemporary ethos is impregnated with universal moral demands which, it is supposed, should guide our moral judgments. It is further argued that there are elements in Habermas’s theory of moral and social development which can serve a role comparable to that of teleology in Aristotle. The paper maintains that a possible way to strengthen discourse ethics by incorporating practical wisdom is to tease out the implications of the fact that both Habermas and Aristotle build their views on the human capacity for speech and reasoning.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vilhjálmur Árnason https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The article examines the nature and functions of certain idealizations in logic. It compares them with idealizations that appear in theories and models of empirical sciences. Building on the work of Colyvan (2013) and Russell (2023), it shows in what sense idealizations of logic are deliberately accepted false statements. One source of the falsity of idealization assumptions in logic is the representational inconsistency with the reality of the empirical system. The second source of falsity is the comparison of the epistemic status of a statement (formula) in one logical system with its status in another logical system. The article also notes the idealizations that we (implicitly) accept when applying a certain logical apparatus to natural language.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lukáš Bielik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Auseinandersetzung: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and Intercultural Engagement
Heidegger’s relation to Asian philosophy should be guided by the notion of Auseinandersetzung. Often translated as con-frontation, this term plays a pivotal role in understanding Heidegger’s engagements with Asian philosophy. Auseinandersetzung (and related terms) can help us realise the changed perspectives on our own thinking that we derive from engagements with culturally and/or historically other types of thinking. Heidegger warns us against facile endeavours of comparing and contrasting, which, as a form of comparative philosophy, he sees as a kind of dialectics unworthy of true thinking. Thinking through the term Auseinandersetzung allows us to reflect more meaningfully on comparative philosophy.
Copyright (c) 2026 Steven Burik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Aesthetic Dimension of Philosophical Works (With an Emphasis on Describing the Classic and the Inverse Model of Functional Configuration in Philosophy)
This paper describes the classic, contamination, and inverse models of functional configuration in philosophical works. Methodologically and terminologically, it draws on ideas from Czech structural aesthetics, which can systematically explain the aesthetic dimension of philosophical works without bringing them into the realm of art. Through the interpretation of texts by Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche, the study demonstrates how philosophical works can functionally activate the aesthetic principle to promote philosophical goals.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marcel Forgáč https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Introduction to the Monothematic Block: The Human Being in the Coordinates of Symbolic Structures
Copyright (c) 2025 Jaroslava Vydrová, Jon Stewart https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
FACUNDO BEY (Ed.): Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cuestiones abiertas / Open Questions
A book review of Facundo Bey's (ed.): Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cuestiones abiertas / Open Questions. Quito: Filosófica Editorial 2025, 476 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Martín Prestía https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Michel Eltchaninoff: Lenin Walked on the Moon
A review of the book of Michel Eltchaninoff: Lenin Walked on the Moon, trans. by Tina Kover. London: Europa Editions, 2023, pp. 256.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mark Coeckelbergh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Introduction to the Monothematic Block: Socrates in the 20th Century
Copyright (c) 2025 Jozef Majerník, Refik Güremen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Metapopulistická demokracia ako filozofia interregna
The review study focuses on the philosophical interpretation and critical reflection of the concept of metapopulist democracy as developed by Michael Hauser. Against the backdrop of the crisis of the liberal order and the transformation of political rationality, it examines how Hauser redefines the concepts of the people, representation, and human rights in the conditions of interregnum. The text uses a hermeneutic-critical approach and shows that metapopulism can be understood as an attempt to renew emancipatory politics in an era of exhausted modern ideals. The study also evaluates the theoretical and methodological contributions of Hauser’s concept to contemporary political philosophy and its Central European context.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Mravcová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Hegel and Gombrich on the Particular Forms of Art and their Persistence
Hegel’s aesthetics is not only organized around a developed account of the differing artistic genres (from architecture to poetry) but also articulates the importance of the particular forms of art (i.e., the symbolic, classical and romantic). The oppositions involved in Hegel’s treatment of the particular forms of art – particularly that between the symbolic and the classical – also have an importance for the twentieth-century art historian E. H. Gombrich, who frames their relation as an opposition between what he called the “incarnational” side of art and the “challenge to the senses” that he thought the symbolic art form posed. This paper compares Gombrich’s and Hegel’s views of these art forms and turns in a final section to an exploration of the post- Hegelian, post-Gombrichian legacy of these issues.
Copyright (c) 2025 Allen Speight https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Could a Large Language Model be Conscious?
There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models such as the GPT systems might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will discuss the underlying issue and will break down the strongest reasons for and against.
Copyright (c) 2025 David J. Chalmers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Vasil Gluchman: Podoby sekulárneho humanizmu na Slovensku v 20. storočí (do roku 1989)
A review of the book of Vasil Gluchman: Podoby sekulárneho humanizmu na Slovensku v 20. storočí (do roku 1989). Prešov: Prešovská univerzita v Prešove 2024, 228 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Dmytro Tomakh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0