1 Abstract This doctoral thesis focuses on the analogies between Virginia Woolf's "personal philosophy" and Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, or in his own words "philosophy of organism." The thesis does not claim that Whitehead's thought directly influenced Woolf's fiction, rather, it makes use of a zeitgeist model. The two contemporaries shared the rejection of long-established dualisms, particularly the Cartesian mind-body dualism, the binaries of subject and object, animate and inanimate matter, the human and the nonhuman, and last but not least the individual and the community. Interested in the philosophical enquiry into the problem of reality and the visible world, Woolf redefines the notion of "things" in her fiction and adopts the processist view that objects may be defined as clusters of events, which are not separate from the perceiving subject but interrelated with it. Moreover, Woolf illustrates her interest in the natural world in most of her works and often suggests that what we normally think to be inert and lifeless matter, may, in fact, also have some proto-conscious, or proto- experiential, qualities like Whitehead's "actual occasions." The second part of the thesis focuses on Woolf's attempt to overcome one's individual identity in favour of adopting a more inclusive and...

The aim of the thesis is to think over the possibilities of the history of literature and some other literature theories in the field of interpretation. The history of literature describes literary texts as historical objects. Although it's a human science, it disregards a human beings and their life-world. It rather categorize technically literary texts into different groups. This approach is purely scientific. The history of literature as many other branches of literary science solves their own abstract problems through the abstract theories which has no aim to interpret the literary text as a specific experience for a reader. The article points out how the scientific approach to the literary text disable to interpret a conrete literary text in the sense for human being. I use phenomenological philosophy as a proposal of another type of approach to the interpretation. Interpretation in the phenomenological sence means that through literary text the interpret seeks to understand our living world. In the other parts I follow the trail of phenomenological philosophy in tradition of Prague structuralism. Especially I focus on specifics of Russian phenomenology, particularly in philosophies of these Russian philosophers which dealed with interpretation of art (namely J. Golosovker, B. Engelgardt, G....

The aim of the thesis is to advert to precarious position of the history of literature and some other literature theories. The history of literature describes literary texts as dead historical objects. Although it's a human science, it disregards a human beings and their life-world. It rather categorize technically literary texts into different groups. This approach is purely scientific. The history of literature as many other branches of literary science solves their own abstract problems through the abstract theories which has no aim to interpret the literary text as a specific experience for a reader. The article points out how the scientific approach to the literary text disable to interpret a conrete literary text in the sense for human being. I use phenomenological philosophy as a proposal of another type of approach to the interpretation. Interpretation in the phenomenological sence means that through literary text the interpret seeks to understand our living world. In the other parts I follow the trail of phenomenological philosophy in tradition of Prague structuralism. Especially I focus on specifics of Russian phenomenology, particularly in philosophies of these Russian philosophers which dealed with interpretation of art (namely J. Golosovker, B. Engelgardt, G. G. Shpet, M. Bakhtin etc.). At the...

This dissertation thesis focuses on the philosophical aspects of the relationship of Man toward the city. The main methods of the work are interpretation of texts connected with the city and a philosophically inspired analysis of the bond of Man with the city as a space and time constructed, inhabited and shared by humans, and with its experienced phenomena. First of all it presents the method by which the theme of the city has been dealt with by scholars from the field of philosophy and other social sciences. We find the theme of the city in the works of a whole range of philosophers: For example, it served J. A. Comenius as a symbol of human situation in life, Michel Foucault as a point of departure for his political-philosophical analysis of power, and Emmanuel Lévinas for his discourse on culpability, punishment and responsibility. In order to understand the phenomenon of the city, observations from sociologists, architects, town planners and historians of architecture are also important. Moreover, in their works it is possible to find overlaps into philosophical thought, for example Bernard Lepetit contributes to the theme of the temporality of the city with the concept of the "trace", whilst Jan Gehl, through his discourse on the perception of environment and the challenge of applying a human...

The thesis focuses on the reception history of Bernard Bolzano (1781- 1848) in the Czech intellectual culture of the 1945-1989 period. The aim of the thesis is not only to summarize existing studies of Bolzano's life and work or to study some of the partial themes related to Bolzano - but to discover basic features of Bolzano reception that can be found accross the different fields of Bolzano research and that are also connected to intellectual and political history background. The expected merit of the thesis can be considered from two different perspectives: In the context of intellectual history the reception of Bolzano is just a very partial theme, however it can expose some of more general features concerning Czech intellectual history of investigated period. From this point of view Bolzano is just a criterion of historical sources selection that enables to study very complex issue of the Czech intellectual history. In the context of Bolzano research this thesis is also a contribution to the better understanding of Bolzano's life and work. The thesis is pointing out themes which should be researched more thoroughly and, it is more important, it discovers the basic contexts of the potential further studies. Keywords: Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), Czech history 1945-1989, Czech culture 1945-1989,...

(in English): This thesis focuses on the theories of Human-computer interaction, called by the selected authors "postcognitivistic", that react critically to the cognitivistic approach of the first- wave HCI. The working hypothesis of this work is to view the broader context of interface of technological objects as a medium of a sociotechnical relation between technological artefacts, human actors and the society. The goal of the thesis is to develop a theoretic-philosophical analysis and the comparison of how the primary sources focused on the HCI theory and sociotechnical systems, together with the chosen literature on the new media theory and philosophy of technology, contribute to the contemporary discussion about the contextual aspects of HCI, including the question of how seeing the interface as a sociotechnical relation influences the work of the designers who have to deal with the complexity of contemporary design problems.

The starting point of this work is the concept of indigenous animism in Félix Guattari's late work at the end of his life, understood as a form of subjectivity operating through different regimes of signs than the "modern" one. These animist semiotics are "polysemic" and "trans-individual," while instead of building a sharp division between the spheres of "nature" and "culture", they inhabit reality by "collective entities half-thing half-soul, half- man half-animal, machine and flow, matter and sign." The aim of most of the following text is then primarily to trace these semiotics across the joint work of Deleuze and Guattari. After introducing the context of Deleuze's philosophy and its specific "image of thought," and explaining its basic concepts, we will focus on the description and comparison of the semiotic "ethnographies" of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. The first volume traces the "universal history" of the ways of hominization (becoming human) of man from the state of nature, through various forms of inscription, which constitute society and culture. These modes are several and do not work only through language. In the limit experience of schizophrenia, the authors of Anti-Oedipa find a moment preceding all these historically contingent forms of hominization. In contrast, the...

This thesis deals with the philosophical works of Austrian thinker, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Focusing mainly on his epistemological thinking, its main objective is to interpret Steiner's Theory of Knowledge. This work is structured in four chapters. After giving the reader insight into Steiner's life, it goes on to deal with the development of his thinking and work, with particular attention paid to the substance of his first and truly philosophical (not yet theosofical- anthroposofical) phase of working life. Following from this is a passage on his relationship with J. W. Goethe, whose intellectual (and especially scientific) legacy served as Steiner's main source of inspiration, while also laying out the basic form of Goethe's scientific methodology and its epistemological background, namely its empirical and simultaneously objective idealism, which deeply spoke to Steiner and motivated him to write his first philosophical work: Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung (1886). The third chapter approaches this particular work, in which Steiner presents and describes the theory of knowledge, as aligned with that of Goethe. Analysed and interpreted are the three main successive sections of his work, in which he expresses his notion of experience, thinking and knowledge....

Human rights are the pervasive practical and political concept, discussed in various branches: political and legal philosophy, political science or jurisprudence. In the diploma thesis, this concept is discussed in the framework of political philosophy. An author's basic question: Is the concept of human rights plausible (rationally valid) in the postmetaphysical situation as well, and if so, which rights are possible to specify as "human"? This question is asked in view of contemporary (content, spatial and symbolical) expansion of human rights and solved in light of Jürgen Habermas' conception of human rights. Habermas' conception of human rights represents probably the most significant rational attempt to reformulate this concept in the postmetaphysical situation. His foundation is apparently free from the burden of all anthropological presuppositions, connected with a pristine articulation of the rights of man. As we know, these presuppositions also resound in the legal concept of human dignity. After the problem definition, a historical excursus on the field of rational natural law and basic characterization of the postmetaphysical situation, an analysis and evaluation of presuppositions intrinsic to Habermas' "linguistificated" conception of human rights follow - i.e. universal pragmatics,...

This thesis deals with the concept of modernity called "nadcivilizace" ("supercivilization") that was developed in the nineteen-fifties by Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907-1977) in his originally unpublished study Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt. The main goal of the thesis is to introduce this concept in the framework of the author's life and work, as well as in the context of current research in the field of historical sociology. This goal is fulfilled through three main steps, which are preceded by preliminary remarks about the issues of nowadays civilizational analysis. The first part is focused on the introduction of the author's concept of modernity as it was presented in the aforementioned study. Patočka's original term "nadcivilizace" is introduced and put into the context of civilizational analysis. At the same time, the circumstances of the genesis of the text, and the spiritual framework of the epoch in which Czech philosopher lived, are presented. Second part attempts to put the original concept into the author's lecture of philosophy of history, and to demonstrate the changes that occurred in Patočka's understanding of modernity in his work Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin (Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 1975). Finally, the last part is dedicated to the problem...