Abstract: This article analyzes the experience of heightened reality, whereby subjects feel or think that what they are facing is reality itself, or somehow a ‘more real reality’, a hyperreality. My main examples for this specific kind of metacognitive supervision are from reports about the near-death experience, the psychedelic experience and the mystical experience. I will interpret accounts of such experiences using first of all philosophical phenomenology and theories of sense of reality. I criticize and try to complement Martin Fortier’s model of the plural taxonomy of sense of reality. In addition, I propose a triadic model of the experience of reality and, based on the analysis of the testimonies of heightened reality, I have developed a triadic model, according to which one dimension of reality experience is merely heightened reality, the other two being self-evident immersion in reality and the irruptive suspension of ordinary experience.

Abstract: Many academics and researchers who publish scholarly articles on Plato’s philosophy of education claim that the ultimate educational goal for Plato is simply the acquisition of virtues. While such a claim may not be entirely incorrect, it is nevertheless substantially wanting; for although the acquisition of virtue is no doubt paramount, for Plato it primarily serves as a means to another end. In this paper, I aim to show that, for Plato, the final summit of all educational enterprise is not really to become virtuous but rather to attain the state of becoming like God, and that is, homoiōsis theōi.

Abstract: The paper analyses Paul Ricoeur’s concept of creative imagination and shows how this essential element of human consciousness determines personal and societal identity and how it can be a source of just social norms and of ‘good life’ (vie bonne). The imagination, which is characterized by semantic innovations and a heuristic function, creates a dynamic narrative defining a human being and opens as specific rationality surpassing purely argumentative rationality and allowing to solve conflicts of social norms. The ethical aspect of this process, implying a triple structure I/other/just institutiones, creates conditions for the realization of the dialectic of justice and love in the political space; due to the dialectic, innovative ways for the realization of social justice become possible. Critical questions intended to open up the perspective for further thinking are posed at the end of the paper.

Abstract: This work proposes that pain meets the requirements of being characterized as a secondary quality, as it covers, like a color, a determined extension. The argument seeks to establish a literal pain-color analogy through an inquiry into the intensity and location of the pain. From the classic intensity/location relationship reported by patients with acute appendicitis, three degrees of pain are distinguished: mild, moderate, and severe. The objective is only achieved by examining the Body’s extensional determinations (primary quality) insofar as each of these degrees of pain covers three particular measures. Once these three measures have been explored according to the perforation process (tissue damage), the work ends by identifying pain as a transcendent moment.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to frame Adorno’s concept of ‘nonidentity’ in the context of German idealism, namely, the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. The thesis to be defended is that “Secularization of Metaphysics” entails relinquishing, as well as prolongation of the German idealist tradition. The argument is developed in the following steps: 1) the constitution of an autonomous transcendental subject is shown to be rooted in the idea of Enlightenment; 2) by reconstructing Adorno’s conception of truth as non-adaequatio, I claim that Adorno’s philosophy is conducted from the perspective of the end of philosophy; 3) the sociohistorical character of the concept of ‘nonidentity’ is discussed in relation to Adorno’s understanding of history; 4) the concept of ‘nonidentity’ is discussed as implying a continuation of the Kantian project on a metacritical level; 5) Adorno’s critique of Kant is reconstructed in the context of Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge.

Abstract: Can artificial intelligence (AI) teach and learn more creatively than humans? The article analyses deep learning theory, which follows a deterministic model of learning, since every intellectual procedure of an artificial agent is supported by concrete neural connections in an artificial neural network. Meanwhile, human creative reasoning follows a non-deterministic model. The article analyses Bayes’ theorem, in which a reasoning system makes judgments about the probability of future events based on events that have happened to it. Meillassoux’s open probability and M. A. Boden’s three types of creativity are discussed. A comparison is made between the a priori algorithm of the Turing machine and a playing child, who invents new a posteriori algorithms while playing. The Heideggerian perspective on the co-creativity of humans and thinking machines is analyzed. The authors conclude that humans have an open horizon for teaching and learning, and that makes them superior with respect to creativity in an educational perspective.

Abstract: The article analyzes the perspectives of overcoming nihilism (Verwindung) by discussing Heidegger’s relationship with East Asian traditions of thought (first of all, chan/zen and daoism). We can consider the emergence of Enframing (Gestell or Ge-stell) of the essence of modern technology defined by the philosopher as a diagnosis of the fulfillment of nihilism and the end of the Western tradition of thought. By revealing the problem of the end of the Western metaphysical tradition and its overcoming, the aim is to understand the possibilities of the emergence of a different way of thinking by looking at the horizon of post-metaphysical thinking. Heidegger’s dialogue with the sources of Eastern thought is a search for perspectives on overcoming nihilism (Verwindung), which is inseparable from the deepening of self, other and mutual understanding.

Abstract: Van Fraassenas savąją pragmatinę mokslinio aiškinimo teoriją paremia Bayeso sąlyginės tikimybės matu ir kartu, priešingai nei teigia Prasetya, jos patvirtinimui panaudoja geriausio paaiškinimo išvedimą (GPI). Priešingai nei mano van Fraassenas, Bayeso sąlyginės tikimybės skaičiavimas negali būti atliktas pirmiausia nepritaikius GPI. Argumentas, apeliuojantis į blogų aibę, kurį naudoja van Fraassenas kritikuodamas GPI, grįžta bumerangu į pragmatinę teoriją ir Bayeso sąlyginę tikimybę, taigi tampa argumentu prieš van Fraasseną ir Prasetyą.

Abstract: Platonas, 2022. Iš senosios graikų kalbos vertė, įvadą ir komentarus parengė Mantas Adomėnas. Opera Platonis. Vilnius: Phi knygos, 128 p. ISBN 9786098236255.

Abstract: Pratarmę, rankraščio nuorašą ir vertimą parengė Dalius Jonkus, Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas

Abstract: This paper discusses late Schelling’s concept of experience and its significance regarding the relationship between thought and reality as presented in his Berlin lectures. The question is raised as to what extent his proposed transformation of the modern concept of experience is important for questioning the future of the contemporary philosophical discourse in the context of the “inaccessibility of experience,” as proposed by Benjamin and Agamben. The text argues that, instead of grounding the possibility of experience in the immanent or transcendental forms of subjectivity, the Schellingian alternative allows rethinking experience from the perspective of a radical future. By emphasizing the ontological dimension of experience, its inherent relationship with the question of freedom, and the problem of facticity of thinking itself, it becomes possible to place experience beyond the subject-object relation, immediacy, or sensory and objective cognition. This, it is also argued, allows us to reconsider the role of experience for metaphysics in the light of both post-Kantian and post-idealist forms of self-consciousness.

Abstract: This article examines interpretations of ontological truth of the work of art in the philosophies of Arvydas Šliogeris, Hans G. Gadamer and Martin Heidegger. All of them believe that artwork may reveal the ontological truth. This common feature suggests the possibility to consider these three interpretations as a Heideggerian-type understanding of art. This paper argues that, while sharing the belief about the possibility of ontological truth in the artwork, their concepts of truth are fundamentally different, precisely because of the relation with language. In the first part of the article, the ontologies of works of art, the structures of experience, the importance of language and the interpretations of truth by the three philosophers are discussed. The second part explicates the essential points of tension and similarities between their concepts of ontology and the truth of artwork. The research reveals that language, as the basic plane of the junction with the world, in the experience of a work of art is more misleading than truth-revealing.

Abstract: In this paper, I present a novel objection to Chalmers’s “master argument” against the privileged strategy of ‘type B’ physicalists to account for the explanatory gap (the “phenomenal concepts strategy”). Specifically, I argue that the second horn of the master argument gets wrong why zombies cannot have our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness. Zombies cannot have a kind of mental state that we have. If something must have all of our psychological attributes to share our epistemic situation, then zombies cannot serve the purpose of the second horn of the dilemma. By way of background, I begin by briefly outlining a related argument against physicalism, also advanced by D. Chalmers – the “conceivability argument.” I highlight some of the primary challenges with this argument and present additional criticisms. Finally, through a brief examination of panprotopsychism, I consider what lies ahead if Chalmers’s arguments are conceded. I conclude that the phenomenal concept strategy is a sound explanation for why the conceivability of zombies likely does not imply their metaphysical possibility.

Abstract: Aristotle has traditionally been aligned with conservative social and political philosophy. The conservative reception has been challenged by Alasdair MacIntyre and the Marx-inspired reading of Aristotle. Following MacIntyre’s arguments, this paper sketches an alternative conception of the critical theory beyond the Frankfurt School’s critique of the contemporary culture and the modern society. Critical theory is understood as an attempt to provide both historical analysis and normative critique of the contemporary society and its culture. It argues that normativity should be understood not in Kantian, but in Aristotelian terms. The articulation of Aristotelian conceptions of human flourishing and aretē, rather than that of the bürgerlich conception of Kantian duty, should be at the centre of contemporary theorising. The author claims that Aristotle’s practical philosophy allows us to conceptualise ethics beyond the dominant conceptions of ethical normativity prevalent in the capitalist modernity, while Marx is important because his analysis provides us with theoretical tools for the historically informed critique of the social and economic structures of the modern society.

Abstract: Inasmuch as the society is considered as a body today, social problems should be defined accordingly, as problems of hygiene and cleanliness. In this regard, various representations of zombie corpses in zombie movies can be conceived as concrete examples of threat and a perception of disease. In this article, I claim that the zombie figures in cinema bear a positive potential for the social life of humanity, and I will define this potential as a new opportunity for meeting the absolute alterity. Within this context, I analyse 28 Weeks Later and The World War Z and The Girl with All the Gifts to put forth the idea that what enables emancipation of humanity is contagion and alterity. Rather than destroying the capitalist rationalization without offering any alternatives, zombie corpses enounce the birth of a new form of social life as analysed through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Abstract: This article analyzes one of the most recent theories of visual thinking – Emmanuel Alloa’s symptomatology of images. The article focuses on the problem of the status of image, which is considered in various ways by authors of the pictorial and iconic turns. The article raises the question “What is the status of image in respect of language?” The article goes back to the origins of symptomatology of images, in particular, to Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbols. This allows showing the originality of Alloa’s model of symptoms and rehabilitating the status of symptomatological investigation. It is thus claimed that the iconic status of images in relation to language can be reformulated raising the question of the symptom’s identity. In this respect, the symptoms of iconic are instruments that enable the description of images with regard to different layers of iconicity.

Abstract: Iš anglų kalbos vertė ir pratarmę parašė Pranciškus Gricius, Vilniaus universitetas

Abstract: This paper deals with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the death drive from the perspective of speculative philosophy. For this purpose, three philosophers have been chosen: Nick Land, Ray Brassier, and Reza Negarestani. I claim that they gradually radicalised the Freudian thought: Land expanded it to capitalist economy and terrestrial geotrauma; Brassier shifted it towards a solar catastrophe and the prospect of extinction; Negarestani incorporated it into the exteriority of cosmic contingency. This way, Freud’s legacy emerges as a transcendental, epistemological and speculative instrument to tackle Meillassoux’s problem of correlation. I consider why this trajectory has ceased: I suggest a hypothesis that Bataille’s influence has not been overcome, especially in the case of Negarestani. I offer several vectors, according to which, Bataille could serve as an opportunity for openness to the Outside and a chance to continue the trajectory of the speculative death drive. I suggest that it is possible to reconsider Bataille as one of the precursors to the contemporary speculative thought.

Abstract: Two different philosophical attitudes towards the hominized Being are analyzed: the one of Arvydas Šliogeris and the other of Martin Heidegger. The aim is to show the philosophy of Being in relation to particular paintings. Šliogeris interprets the picture of The Great Pine Tree by Paul Cézanne, whereas Heidegger – the picture of A Pair of Shoes by Vincent van Gogh. The author of the article explains how Aristotle’s concept of the individual substance is related to the art philosophy of Šliogeris. The article also shows how Šliogeris’ critique of the hominized Being consistently evolved starting with his book The Thing and Art and culminating with his major work, titled The Silence of Transcendence. At the end of the article the author brings to the reader’s attention two self-contradictory notions of an artist that we find in different books of Šliogeris: the first notion that speaks of a Human-artist who supposedly imbues ‘more Being’ into a painting than we find it in nature; whereas the second notion speaks of a Nature-artist and provides to things ‘more Being’ than we find it in art.

Abstract: Emmanuel Alloa interviewed by Benediktas Vachninas Emmanuel Alloa, Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg, is one of the most active contemporary thinkers in the field of new visual studies. His areas of research include aesthetics, phenomenology, theories of image, theories of media, and the French philosophy. Professor Alloa has authored and (co)edited numerous books, of which, the most important ones are Looking through Images. A Phenomenology of Visual Media (Columbia University Press, 2021), Dynamis of the Image. Moving Images in a Global World (De Gruyter, 2020), Partages de la perspective (Fayard, 2020), Resistance of the Sensible World: An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty (Fordham University Press, 2017). He is the recipient of the Latsis Prize 2016 and the Aby Warburg Prize 2019 and currently serves as President of the German Society of Aesthetics.In 2021, Professor Alloa gave an online cycle of lectures titled Orbis Pictus. A Media Phenomenology in an Image World at Vilnius University. This year, I had the pleasure to hold an online conversation with Professor Alloa as he kindly agreed to discuss the topic of images and his project of symptomatology. The interview encompassed questions about the relation of an image with the image theories, the differences between the symptomatological approach to images and the visual semiotics, Derrida’s contribution to the problem of mediality, and the role of images in the philosophy today.This interview was taken on the 20th of June, 2023

Abstract: This paper examines Plato’s later model of civic participation in relation to contemporary civic theories. It argues that, although the Platonic model satisfies such common criteria for civic theories as equality, autonomy, and empowerment, the key concept to understand this project is moderation. It is moderation that structures and unifies the constituent elements of this model (the rule of law, the persuasion of the preambles, the empowering economy and education). It also explains what kind of personal disposition is central to achieving a stable and rational political order.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of the best constitution given Aristotle’s account of human flourishing articulated in the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle claims that monarchy is the supreme form of constitution. A similar claim is repeated in Politics. The paper argues that these claims sit uneasily with Aristotle’s teleological accounts of the polis, the citizen, and his discussion of the virtues of the citizen and the good man in Politics. Given Aristotle’s philosophical definition of the state as “an association of equals for the sake of the best possible life” and his notion that “the best is happiness, and that consists in excellence and its perfect actualization and its employment”, and Aristotle’s argument on the relationship between the good man and the good citizen, this paper concludes that the best constitution is politeia. Yet, simply to argue so is not enough if we are to rescue Aristotle from his inconsistencies and his claims on “natural inequalities”. Finally, a more radical interpretation of Aristotle is outlined, which rejects Aristotle’s separation between the oikos and the polis and argues that the verticality of the former is philosophically arbitrary and contradicts the revolutionary implications of Aristotle’s normative teleology.

Abstract: This article aims to investigate tendencies in the historiography of Latvian philosophy in the past three decades. This article focuses on the history of ideas and intellectual history as two different approaches in the field of the history of philosophy. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the term “history of ideas” gained popularity in the Latvian cultural discourse. Historians of philosophy were highlighting the close ties between Western and Latvian cultures. However, during the last decade, the approach of intellectual history has been gaining popularity among the Latvian historians of philosophy.

Abstract: Publikuojame tekstą viešos paskaitos, kurią Mykolo Romerio universiteto profesorius Andrius Bielskis, Aristotelio ir kritinės teorijos studijų centro direktorius, Lietuvos nacionalinės Martyno Mažvydo bibliotekos kvietimu perskaitė 2023 m. balandžio 20 d. Paskaita, skaityta autoriaus 50 metų jubiliejaus proga, – reikšmingas Profesoriaus intelektualinės autobiografijos fragmentas, brėžiantis dar vieną akademinio maršruto variantą.Autorius dėkoja visiems, kas dalyvavo, klausėsi, skaitė ir komentavo jo mintis, ypač šeimos nariams – Severijai ir Nickui, atvykusiems iš Londono, Jolantai ir Samueliui Andriui, broliui Putinui, taip pat ir Nacionalinei Martyno Mažvydo bibliotekai už jos svetingum

Abstract: The article presents the results of source research conducted on the scholarly and teaching activities of the German philosopher and educator Johann Heinrich Abicht (1762–1816) who in 1804 was employed at the Imperial University of Vilnius. Research in Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian, and German archives has revealed many facts about Abicht’s scholarly and teaching activities in Vilnius, most of which fall during the period when Jan Śniadecki (1756–1830) was Rector at the Imperial University of Vilnius. In this paper I argue that it was Abicht and his Vilnius-based scholarly and teaching activities that were the direct cause of Śniadecki’s publication of the essay On Metaphysics in 1814, and indirectly also the trigger for all of Śniadecki’s later philosophical writings.