The dissertation consists of an introduction and three empirical articles. The introduction gives the theoretical background, integrates the three articles, and elaborates on future research questions. The first article investigates the important decision in the lives of German and Indian university students to identify the important areas of decision making. The second article examines the structure of real life decision making and reveals the underlying factors of five major decision areas. The third article investigates the similarities and differences on decision making between German and Indian students using prior qualitative findings in a large quantitative survey.

The thesis "Determinants of environmental concern" is a quantitative analysis that deals with determinants of environmental concern, the scale of new ecological paradigm, environmental behavior and ecological activism. It uses data from an international survey "International Social Survey Project Environment III" from year 2010. Strong predictors came out from the analysis, mainly cultural differences of the respondents and education. The inhabitants of Western Europe and English speaking countries have the strongest environmental concern, in contrast, in post communist countries of Eastern Europe is this concern the smallest. Post materialists and inhabitants of the richer countries have stronger environmental concern and they believe more in science and progress solving ecological problems. The perception of consequences of ecological problems on everyday life is also a strong determinant from which suffers mostly localities out of Europe. The recycling waste is most often carried away in Western Europe and English speaking countries. A strong correlation is between finished education and environmental concern as well as ecological activism, there is a weaker connection to saving natural resources.

The diploma thesis discusses the relationship between humanism and hedonism. However, its main objective is not to explain the terms in their summarized historical relatedness but to point out their internal coherence. The fundamental issue the thesis deals with is the fact that sentient beings suffer from sorrow. Enumerating the reasons why it is important to search for a solution would be a waste of our reader's time. It is necessary to understand that we don't expect empirical science to solve the problem since - despite the enthusiasm significant for this modern period - has not introduced any relief from sorrow. Here comes the opportunity for philosophy and, eventually, ethics. In its first part the thesis maps out the context of humanism and hedonism, studies their apparent as well as hidden nature, and lays the conceivable foundations of humanistic hedonism. The following section suggests a set of particular steps. Adhering to these instructions makes it possible to experience delight and to eliminate sorrow.

The text of this work is primarily based on the works of Wolfgang Brezinka, focusing on the philosophy of education and on many sociological works by Zygmunt Bauman, which are cited for better orientation in the philosophical-educational context of the chapter focusing on the philosophy of education used in the antiquity The aim was to present the reader with at least a brief awareness of the individual aspects of the philosophy of education as presented by Brezinka and to supplement it with the possible aspects that can be taken from Bauman, who primarily focuses on exploring the socio-cultural phenomena of the modern society. Gradually, the essential characteristics, features, and characteristics that accompanied the upbringing in antiquity are presented, just as the educational aims and beliefs in relation to the upbringing that is presented by Brezinka. Furthermore, there are discussed and examined the pitfalls of modernism and postmodernism in relation to personality, culture, society and philosophical-educational possibilities as pointed out by Bauman. The amount of works on the philosophy of education is insufficient and even here, of course, it has not been possible to cover all the philosophical aspects of education which are available to the authors dealing with the philosophy of education, yet...

The aim of this diploma thesis which is called Corporate culture in chosen enterprises was to specify the deciding dimensions of corporate culture, analyze them and suggest changes in the chosen companies. The surveyed companies were Pleas, a.s. and TKZ Polná, spol. s r.o.

The thesis analyzes and compares the approaches of two authors dealing with phenomena in contemporary society. It focuses mainly on issues of lifestyle and values. The thesis asks questions related to socialization and individualization of society. The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is about definition of the basic terms (postmodernism, lifestyle, values). The second part is devoted to the concept of Gilles Lipovetsky. The third part focuses on the concept of Michel Maffesoli. In the fourth section, there is a comparison of these two concepts, where we are primarily focused on tracing argumentation clashes and controversies. In the final part, there is the presentation of the main questions and ideas, that come out on the basis of this comparison.

Alone in a Crowd: Charles Baudelaire and 20th-Century and Contemporary Art The dissertation called Alone in a Crowd explores the influence of the poet Charles Baudelaire's personality and work on 20th-century and contemporary art. Due to the field of study, the main focus is on the visual arts, but literature, music, philosophy, and film are also included to a large extent. This dissertation is divided into four substantive chapters. The first chapter, The Inner Message, introduces the poet's life, his family and acquaintances, as well as Baudelaire's poetry collection The Flowers of Evil. Themes of evil, ugliness, fear, death, and even a relationship to their mother, father and women are common for 20th-century and contemporary artists. This chapter presents Félicien Rops, James Ensor, Edvard Munch, Hans Bellmer, Francis Bacon, Joel-Peter Witkin, Kurt Cobain, members of the Young British Artists group, Lars von Trier, and others. The second chapter pursues the correspondence theory. The character of the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg and his successor, William Blake, is followed by Baudelaire's understanding of sensual and spiritual correspondences, as his principles are adopted by modern artists in a distinct manner. The third chapter called "On the Edge of Society" covers the curse...

As a result of changes in the society, such as the increasing mobility, increasing spatial demandindgness of inhabitants and the onset of digital technologies, the architects and urbanists have been searching for new ways of urban housing developments. One of these ways is densification, i.e. an intensive use of the urban space. An intensive urban structure uses up the potential of a place to its maximum, solves several issues simultaneously and is a functional hybrid, the home of potential suburbanizers and a place of social contacts. It comes from the efforts to solve the particular issue of an over-populated, collapsing city. The aim of the thesis is to show contemporary approaches to the issue of intensive urban structures and to map out both the built and unbuilt projects. The thesis creates a system of their categorization and taxonomy. There is always a mixture of functions in play from the functional perspective. One can distinguish five categories according to the spacial conception. These categories are as follows: multiplicity, porousness, hybridity, connectivity and verticality. The public and semi-public spaces thus move to the higher levels of the city, into the city level, urban balcony or the hybrid landscape. The built projects usually tend to be impulses, in relation to the original city, to develop and revitalize the devastated city areas, brownfields, even urban sprawls. Based on the findings of this thesis, diploma and pre-diploma project assignments have been created at the architecture department at FAST VUT in Brno and the approaches to the issue have been tested in the pedagogical process. The survey in the second part of the thesis looks for the answer to the question of whether the potential inhabitants of an intensive urban structure exist, and who these people might be.

The main aspiration of this thesis is to illustrate on several selected examples (or almost "cases" of clinical kind) from French, Russian, Polish, Italian (and in the second plan also German or English) writtings of the 19th and early 20th century the methods of application and presentation of the Withdrawnnes-motif in literature. And on the basis of them (after attempting to mapping out the network of their possible mutual influences, consequences, concurrency or filiations, in the interpretative part of the thesis, so on the II. to VI. chapter) try to define its final characteristics, periodisation, classification and his general definition. … and, moreover, or on the way to this purpose, perhaps to provide the reader a few other - perhaps more useful, or more interesting - information. Keywords: Autostylisation, Confusion of the dream and the reality, Decadence, Dreaming, Extreme mental states of mind, fin de siècle, Individualism, Literary motives, Modernism, Psychologism, Psychic naturalism, Solipsism, Transposition of identity, Withdrawnnes

West European Impulses of Bulgarian Diabolism (A Look at the Bulgarian Literature of the 1920s) Abstract Keywords: Bulgarian literature, expressionism, avant-garde, diabolism, horror fiction, marvelous, uncanny, Menippean carnival discourse, romanticism, naturalism, individualism Svetoslav Minkov (1902-1966), Vladimir Poljanov (1899-1988), Georgi Rajčev (1882 - 1947), Čavdar Mutafov (1889-1954) Contrary to its generally innovative potential for Bulgarian literature, the phenomenon called Bulgarian diabolism has been a marginal one from the point of view of literary discourse. The interest of postmodern writers and reviewers has given rise to accentuating some of the partial aspects of the works of Svetoslav Minkov, Vladimir Polyanov, Georgi Raychev and Chavdar Mutafov. However, with the exception of Thomas Martin's monograph Der bulgarische Diabolismus. Eine Studie zur bulgarischen Phantastik zwischen 1920 und 1934, published in 1993, works explicating the nature of the phenomenon in Bulgarian literature have been missing. Due to their novelty and impurity, the syncretic writings of Bulgarian diabolists, blending fading individualistic modernist tendencies together with elements of romantic fiction of horror in the generally expressionist roots of their works, were a phenomenon difficult to rank for their...