European Sciences Research Articles

The WeChat public platform: strengthening HSS academics’ global competitiveness in non-English speaking countries (La plataforma pública WeChat: un refuerzo de la competitividad global de los académicos de humanidades y de ciencias sociales en países de habla no inglesa)

ABSTRACT The WeChat public platform has become a low-cost, synchronistic and effective social media channel for daily communications between the Chinese and the West. This project aims to enhance Chinese and European humanities and social sciences (HSS) academics’ global competitiveness in international scholarships via WeChat public platforms. The study was conducted in three parts, the pre-survey, the intervention using the WeChat public programme and the post-survey. There were 224 participants, who used the social media tool WeChat in the quantitative study. After the pre-survey, workshops were designed to introduce the WeChat platform and to explain to the HSS staff at the selected universities how the platform was constructed at the first stage. This was followed by a post-survey questionnaire which was adapted to evaluate the effects of the programme. The results show that Chinese HSS academics are interested in using WeChat public platforms in order to have potential collaborations with the West in research publications, conference presentations, visiting scholar programme applications and students’ mobility programmes.

Vermächtnis und Geschichte

AbstractThis article applies Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology to the field of history. It suggests interpreting historical experience along the lines of the logic of pathos and response. Using Husserl’s introductory chapter ofThe Crisis of the European Sciencesand his autobiographical remarks as a case study, the article outlines a concept of diachronic responsiveness, which provides a phenomenological understanding of historical phenomena such as legacy, inheritance or witnessing. In particular, it analyses the temporal deferment lying at the heart of our notion of legacy, which Waldenfels captures as ‘diastasis’. Assuming that the human being must be understood as the ‘responsive being’ (Waldenfels), the article provides means to grasp the implications of this claim for our understanding of the concept of historical experience in contrast to approaches relying on hermeneutics or narrativity.

Da logicização do mundo ao mundo pré-dado:

Este artigo expõe a fenomenologia como análise do mundo da vida como mundo pré-dado, isto é, mundo pré-significativo, entendo-o assim como condição ontológica existencial. Faz uma análise existencial a partir dá obra A crise das ciências europeias e a fenomenologia transcendental. Apresentar algumas críticas segundo E. Husserl sobre o universo minimizante ao qual se estabelece dentro do contexto de uma caracterização cientifica de mundo, em que Husserl afirma que o mundo da vida não se enquadra dentro de um contexto formal estabelecido, mas o mesmo é entendido como dinâmico, intencional, experiencial e vivencial. Ademais, destaca alguns aspectos do método fenomenológico como meio para a experiência ontológica transcendental. Deste modo, busca evidenciar uma maior compreensão epistemológica da teoria husserliana do mundo da vida tendo contato direto de suas obras. Conclusivamente, expõe como Husserl apresenta sua crítica à visão científica de mundo, propondo de outro modo, a visão experiencial de uma ontologia transcendental.

Inclusive Hermeneutics: Ethical Perspectives

This article is concerned with inclusive hermeneutics. Six attitudes will be developed in order for a hermeneutics to be inclusive. In the first four attitudes, we are inspired by the resolutions of Husserl's paradoxes in his book The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy , discussed in the paragraphs 52-54. After this, the term reversibility , reworked by Merleau-Ponty, will be essential to broaden our conception of inclusiveness. Finally, the new perspectives on the concept of otherness/alienness in Waldenfels will support an inclusive ethical-practical interpretation. This inclusiveness will lead us within an authentic judgment, fostering a realization of the Law in the context of the recognition of the differences, through a constant process of Law itself.

БОРИС ГРІНЧЕНКО В ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ СОЦІОКУЛЬТУРНОМУ ПРОСТОРІ

In the article is highlighted the views of a famous Ukrainian writer, social and political figure, educator and humanitarian scientist Borys Grinchenko (1863–1910) concerning the problem of the modern Ukrainian nation civilization choice and its place in the European socio-cultural space. It is determined his main contacts with the European sciences and artists (especially in the spheres of publishing, linguistic, Ukrainian history and culture, problems of the national development of Ukrainians, their presentation in the European community, personal contacts etc.). The authors have came to the conclusion, that Borys Grinchenko preferred European values, democracy and parliamentarism as a way of resolving the problems of national and cultural development of Ukrainians in Russian Empire. Borys Grinchenko collaborated with cultural leaders in numerous European countries, published his works abroad and otherwise introduced Ukraine, its culture and history to the European community. The authors summarize the complex of historical and historiographical sources, the creative and scientific heritage of Borys Grinchenko. Some materials were first introduced into scientific circulation. He actively promoted the achievements of European civilization in Ukrainian society.

The Problem of Priority in the Invention of Scientific Journals

The article is devoted to the discussion on priority in the invention of scientific journal. In the first part of the article, the author makes a critical analysis of the arguments in the discussion, explicating some contradictions. In the second part, he develops his own approach claiming that the solution lies in the correct definition of the social demand which has impulsed the search for new tools of scientific communication. The author argues that, because of the universality of the socio-economic processes, this demand was common for the early Modern European sciences in general. The author shows that the first scientific journals (Philosophical Transactions, Journal des scavans) have appeared in the atmosphere of competition for the invention of new forms of scientific communication. He argues that Kantian distinction of the public and private application of reason seems to be helpful for better understanding of this process.

Diversifying diversity: Inclusive engagement, intersectionality, and gender identity in a European Social Sciences and Humanities Energy research project

This paper argues for inclusive engagement within Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) interdisciplinary research, particularly, energy and climate research, by reflecting on the attempts to implement an inclusive engagement approach in SHAPE ENERGY, a Horizon 2020 project aimed at creating a European energy-SSH platform where a broad range of viewpoints from researchers, businesses, policymakers, NGOs, and citizens could be brought to bear on energy policy discussions. The European Horizon 2020 funding program has sought to explicitly integrate gender considerations into their funded projects, including SHAPE ENERGY. Our study shows that, in spite of such ambitions, there was huge variety with regard to how gender was understood as well as how notions of gender were engaged with during the project. Dealing with gender was often reduced to counting men and women, while wider concerns, such as representations of age, geography, field of expertise, etc., were comparatively neglected. In this paper, we argue that gender equality strategies should embrace these wider perspectives to sufficiently address how various forms of intersectionality may inform and strengthen inclusive engagement.

From the South to the North: The circulation of Latin American dependency theories in the Federal Republic of Germany

Sociological research into the transregional North–South circulation of knowledge in the social sciences and humanities has tended to have a unidirectional bias to date. The standard assumption is that as a result of globalization, theories and methods are spread from the global North to the global South. Based on this premise, many of the studies of circulation focus on the transfer of knowledge in terms of ideas, traditions, authors and concepts from the North to the South. Thus far, little attention has been paid to the transregional circulation of theoretical approaches from the South to the North and their impact on the transformation of the European social sciences and humanities. Analysing the circulation of the Latin American dependency theories in the Federal Republic of Germany, this article addresses precisely this gap. The focus is on processes of institutional consolidation of area studies, North–South mobility, the translation-process into German, application in empirical research, modification and rejection. Focusing on this little-explored orientation regarding the circulation of knowledge, this article is in keeping with the current attempt to analyse transregional entanglements within European social sciences.

Fenomenología y violencia. La condición europea de la filosofía frente al problema de la alteridad

This paper pretends to summarize the reflections of Emmanuel Levinas, Jaques Derrida and Hans Rainer Sepp on Husserl´s characterization of the european reason in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology . Firstly, I present the key elements of the Husserlian consideration of philosophy in Crisis and then I try to outline the violence towards alterity that his position would imply. Secondly, I delineate Levinas´s appraisal of contemporary ontology and his idea of giving preference to ethic as a way of dealing with the violence of thinking. Finally, I revisit Derrida´s critique on Levinas and Sepp´s reflection on phenomenology in order to underline the in-between as the proper place of thinking.

Ethnic Studies as Decolonial Transdisciplinarity*

The decolonization of knowledge entails various forms of transdisciplinarity, but not all forms of transdisciplinarity are decolonial. This article offers an analysis of decolonial transdisciplinarity in relation to the European sciences, its disciplines, and its methods. It identifies a “secular line,” which combines with a “color line” to define the context and horizon of the European sciences. I propose that Ethnic Studies establishes a different attitude from that underlying the European sciences and represents an example of decolonial transdisciplinary thinking.

Why Relativity needs Phenomenology ? Eidetic-Relativistic Kinesthetics and Temporality in Hus-serl, Weyl and Einstein.

This paper aims to explain how the insights Weyl gleaned from Husserl played an important role in his scientific work, and then how Einstein’s major work exhibit important parallels to Weyl’s work, thereby establishing phenomenology both as an indirect historical influence and a systematic underpinning for Einstein’s work in theoretical physics. In so doing, this paper seeks to show how some of the most basic problems that Einstein addresses have a kinship not just to problems addressed in a completely different context by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and his circle, but also to perennial problems in ontology and epistemology that go back to Kant, Hume and Leibniz. The conclusion seems to suggest that it not only shows how phenomenology both historically and systematically provides a backdrop for Einstein’s work; my thesis actually situates issues in twentieth-century scientific thought against the backdrop of a philosophical development, and perhaps the most original idea of this study consists not just in showing how phenomenology influenced Einstein, but also how Einstein’s work on relativity had an important influence on the work of Edmund Husserl in Crisis of European Sciences and in his later works.

Випускники Ніжинської класичної гімназії – видатні вчені-емігранти

This article examines the activities of scientists whose affiliation with Ukraine has long been obscured and scientific heritage has been severely banned. These are talented scientists,graduates of Nizhyn Classical Gymnasium Hvedir Vovk and Vadim Shcherbakоvsky. Hvedir Vovk (1847–1918) is an anthropologist, ethnographer and archeologist. In his writings,the scientist argued that the Ukrainians are a separate, distinct from the neighboring Slavic peoples, an anthropological type that has completely original ethnographic features. Thanks to Hvedir Vovk, Ukrainian archeology and ethnography of the early 20th century rose to one stage with the most developed European sciences of that time. Vadim Shcherbakovsky (1876–1957) is a scientist with a world name, archeologist, art critic, ethnologist, museum worker, collector. The greatest achievement of the scientist is his own conception of the origin of the Ukrainian people, developed on the basis of archaeological and ethnographic materials. Vadim Shcherbakоvsky has left behind a rich scientific heritage, more than 100 articles, monographs, textbooks that have been published in many countries of the world.

The Jesuits and Chinese Science

From 1580, the Jesuits introduced European sciences to China―an autarkic civilization whose intelligentsia was dominated by Confucian literati. Drawing upon prefectural distributions of the Jesuits and of Chinese scientific works between 1501 and 1780, this paper demonstrates that the Jesuits stimulated Confucian literati to study science. On average, the literati’s scientific works increased four times in prefectures with Jesuit scientists after 1580. But this effect shrank after the Jesuits were expelled by the emperor of China in 1723. These findings indicate the importance of an environment open to knowledge flow for intellectual development in pre-industrial times.

The Crisis of Western Sciences and Husserl’s Critique in the Vienna Lecture

The paper deals primarily with the standard question in what exactly, according to Husserl, consists the crisis of the European sciences. In the literature so far, there have been two tendencies on this question, one focusing on the loss of the sciences’ meaningfulness for life, the other emphasizing the inadequacy of their scientificity. Instead of arguing for one of these two options or for some sort of combination of both, another interpretation of this topic will be suggested. The focus will be on Husserl’s notion of historicity and its connection with the concept of life-world. It will be argued that it is the historical detachment of sciences from ideas and consequently the sphere of meaning altogether which lies at the core of their ill state. On this basis, it will show that Husserl’s approach to science in Crisis is actually double. For one, it is an attempt to supplement science with a philosophical justification. The other is a historical de-construction of scientific objectivism as a misleading metaphysical claim concerning the lived world. This second, historical approach is developed exclusively in the Crisis. However, it does bring out questions leading to rethinking the meaning and goals of transcendental phenomenology itself.

Identification of the problem of employment in the context of modern research approaches

Problem setting. The effectiveness of the functioning of the economic and political system of vital functions of the society the state foresees the formation and implementation of a policy of employment, which would serve to create a balanced number of places of work in accordance with the spiritual and material needs of the population. The achievement of high indicators of socio-economic development of a modern postmodern state depends on ensuring a high level of employment of the labor potential of the nation. Thus, within the framework of various modern research approaches, a significant number of concepts and theories were formed concerning the methodology of identifying the employment of the population, its structural elements and functions.Recent research and publications analysis. In the framework of modern Western European science, the concept of T. Weblen and V. Hympelson is of considerable interest in the research of employment issues.Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. It is worth noting that the normative and conceptual understanding of issues of employment of the population is still deprived of legal definition, which in this way led to the lack of a unified methodological view concerning their identification. This in such a way determines the expediency of a detailed analysis of the essence, the basic concepts and approaches, the structural aspects of identifying the content of employment and elaborating a state policy for its ensuring.The purpose of this article is to identify the problem of employment in the context of modern research approaches.Paper main body. Within the limits of various research approaches in the context of identifying the nature of employment of the population, a multi-methodological number of its definitions is used, among them are productive, rational, optimal, balanced, effective, which in most cases relate to the refinement of its content structure. However, these concepts do not allow for a clear ranking between the concepts: employed workforce, its reserve and labor resources.In the context of identifying the nature of the category of employment of population, the concept deserves special attention when within its framework it is considered through the prism of the analysis of the content of quality of labor force. Based on this, the main elements of the workforce were classified, which determine the dynamics of employment of the population in the processes of social practice. It includes such elements as professional knowledge, abilities (skills) of a person, competence, responsibility. In this regard, the sphere of employment of the population in the structural and functional part depends on the personal characteristics of the person, which determine its statics or dynamics.Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies. Thus, our identification of the problem of employment in the context of modern research approaches allowed systematizing the main research approaches to its definition, to classify the main categorical apparatus for its understanding developed within the framework of Western European and post-Soviet humanitarian sciences. On the basis of this, the authors proposed the construction of definition of employment as an object of social policy, which characterizes the totality of relations that are formed in society in the context of the implementation of labor activities of citizens, which thus reflects their level of inclusion in relevant labor processes in the implementation of their personal and social needs and the interests which the welfare of society depends on, its important macroeconomic indicators, the narrowing and expansion of relevant demographic processes in society. Employment is characterized as a socially useful activity of the able-bodied population, which performs relevant socially significant functions under the conditions of a social-legal agreement.

Postmodernism and Crises in Psychology

The twentieth century went through a turmoil that produced crises in almost all the academic disciplines, but also in our civilization as such. In the 1980s, postmodernity appeared as one of the buzzwords that tried to rationalize some aspects of the turmoil. Many had problems with the term (like Lapoujade, this volume). This paper, however, pursues the crisis in psychology that Karl Buhler and Lev Vygotsky invited to discuss in the late 1920s. The aim is to examine what this crisis actually was about. A closer look at the appearance of psychology in philosophy in the eighteenth century demonstrates that rather philosophy instead of psychology went into a crisis. The objective aspects of medieval philosophy represented a kind of stability in the discipline. Yet, when psychology appeared as a part of metaphysics in the German Enlightenment, this stability was severely disturbed. The aspect of subjectivity that psychology introduced to philosophy created a crisis that provoked Immanuel Kant and forced him to develop his critical philosophy. Since then, subjectivity has been an accepted aspect of philosophy, but not with full agreement about how it should be understood. On this basis, Edmund Husserl talked about a crisis in European sciences in general. This paper, on the other hand, highlights the postmodern assumption, which says that the crisis is to be located in narratives produced by the sciences themselves. The broader the narratives are, the more they appear as self-contradictory. The more they pretend to explain, the more they fail to grasp the indeterminacy that is embedded in reality and actual life. As long as psychology is about the actual life, psychology is a science that can tell us about the crisis in narratives.

A PERSISTÊNCIA DA EUROPA COMO MEDIDA DA MODERNIDADE

O objetivo do presente trabalho é apresentar as relações entre eurocentrismo como padrão cognitivo imperial e o pensamento social de Jürgen Habermas. Tal análise será levada a cabo pela discussão do método comparativo bastante comum à tradição das ciências sociais europeias e cujo uso em Habermas torna possível entrever o monismo universalista característica de sua teoria em que a Europa é tomada como norma, significante mestre, medida de todas as outras sociedades e civilizações do mundo. Para desenvolver o objetivo delineado, foram escolhidas, basicamente, duas obras, uma dos anos de 1980 e outra do início do século XXI com o intuito de mostrar como a narrativa habermasiana se mantém basicamente presa ao que designamos por padrão cognitivo imperial europeu pela qual se entreve uma geopolítica de classificação da população mundial cuja dinâmica se iniciou em 1492 com a conquista da América.

The Long Crisis of Irish Realism: A Phenomenological Reading

In an essay titled “On the Theory of Image Consciousness and Figment Consciousness,” Edmund Husserl notes, “The space of the stage with its sets, and so on, analogizes actual space.” The desire to stage a world analogous to “actual space” dominated Irish theatrical practice from the founding of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1904 up to the moment in the late twentieth century when it entered a period of crisis, as the social world it purported to stage became fractured and unstable. This article looks to develop the analysis of Irish theatrical space further by using Husserl’s concept of Lebenswelt, or “lifeworld,” which he defines in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy as “the spatiotemporal world of things as we experience them in our pre- and extrascientific life.” The article argues that the physical space of the stage gives concrete, experiential form to Husserl’s concept of the epochē, the “bracketing” by which theatrical space is transformed into place and the temporary lifeworld on the stage is generated. Drawing examples from Irish theatre that range from J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1904) to Enda Walsh’s Arlington (2016), the article explores the progression from stage worlds that correspond spatially to the extra-theatrical world to stage worlds that challenge the theatre’s ability to hold together a single image capable of functioning as a Lebenswelt.

Crisis, Biology, Ecology: A New Starting-Point for Phenomenology?

ABSTRACTThe crisis of European sciences in Husserl’s late work diagnoses Galilean science as specifically and necessarily losing touch with the intuitive evidence that would legitimate it due to its reliance on a formal-mathematical conceptual apparatus. While the vast majority of Husserl’s late work was focussed on a critique of the formal-mathematical paradigm of the physical science of nature, at several points the possibility of biology as the exemplary science is raised to suggest that the lack of a reliance on formal-mathematical conceptual language would mean that a systemic crisis would not occur in such a case. This investigation considers the grounds for the expectation that biology would not engender a crisis, suggests that a paradigmatic role for ecology would more adequately address this expectation, and finally claims that the question of the relation between a specific exemplary science and transcendental phenomenology is not fully resolved even in this case.

Sądownictwo administracyjne w europejskiej doktrynie prawa administracyjnego na przełomie XIX i XX w.

One of the fundamental assumptions of a constitutional and lawful state was recognizing the existence of an inviolable sphere of rights and freedom of individuals that restricted the freedom of administrative action. The guarantee for the protection of the sphere was seen in the statutory defining of the boundaries of the workings of the state apparatus and in the possibility of the external audit of the legality of the public administration. The duty was supposed to be fulfilled mainly by administrative judiciary which was considered to be one of the most significant institutions of administrative law in the 19th-century theory and practice. The term “administrative judiciary” was understood as the settlement of complaints against unlawful administrative decisions implemented by way of contentious proceeding before the authorities of the Member State. Such understanding of administrative judiciary did not decide upon the necessity for separating individual authorities, independent of Common Courts, that were established for administrative disputes resolution. It also did not define the material scope of its characteristics. Those issues were of special interest to the European Administrative Sciences, especially in the second half of the 19th century.