Piotr W. Juchacz – författare

The main subject of the book is the relationship between discursively shaped social relations, entrenched in the principle of mutual recognition, and the need to punish the perpetrators of communication disruption, involving the commission of an offence in multicultural societies. This work analyses the problem of the intercultural nature of legal discourse and the dispute about the universality of human rights. The author raises the question – crucial yet complicated from a legal and, above all, philosophical and ethical perspective – whether Western societies are entitled to judge the representatives of other, distant, and distinct cultures and to subject this judgment to the relevant sanctions. The answer to that question is sought in universal human rights, which – whilst being grounded in human dignity and meeting the standards of civil society – restore confidence of the victims of rights violation in the correctness and effectiveness of the rules governing the modern world. The answer to this question also has an important practical value, since the negative outcome calls into question the jurisdiction of international criminal tribunals.

The book tackles significant problems that each historian of law faces in the light of present decline of philosophical, ethical and ideological canons in the overall context of western civilization. The issues discussed in the book manifest themselves in the question whether the «democratic turn» is a real or just a virtue one. Democracy generally means governance by the people – but who are the people? What kind of governance by the people can be claimed as democratic – all of the various types that exist or only a single, chosen one? What – if any – is the normative issue of such a governance? Democracy, after all, is not a simple descriptive model of governance; it is deeply rooted in our preferences and hence normative patterns of conduct, which are not yet to be understood as the norm but rather as founding principles. Democracy is a thoroughly normative model. It is always as constructed and uttered in the picture of life at the same time.

This book analyzes the main problems of Friedrich Nietzsche’s critical philosophy, such as the theory of being, the theory of knowledge and the theory of values. It also addresses his positive program which is based on a number of fundamental conceptions, namely the will to power, the Übermensch, bestowing virtue and the notion of the eternal recurrence. The «death of God» must, in Nietzsche’s opinion, lead to a revolution in human consciousness which requires the creation of a new frame of reference for values. To realize this aim, Nietzsche invokes the will which has the normative power to create values and even to overcome time. The author sets his focus on the «tragic gay science» that has never been fully elucidated and still affords new perspectives for interpretation.

In the current global context, there is a shift in power paradigm from the rigid realpolitik perspective towards the inclusion of multiple faces of power. This publication focuses on the power forms identified by Joseph Nye: hard, soft, and smart, and evaluates education as a resource of power. Resource ambiguity is one of the key shortcomings of soft power theory. Education is a smart power resource since it has both hard and soft power characteristics. The case study of Kazakhstan reveals that international educational programs allow education to become a power resource.

Do technologies advance our self-identities, as they do our bodies, cognitive skills, and the next developmental stage called postpersonal? Did we already manage to be fully human, before becoming posthuman? Are we doomed to disintegration and episodic selfhood? This book examines the impact of radical technopoiesis on our selves from a multidisciplinary perspective, including the health humanities, phenomenology, the life sciences and humanoid AI (artificial intelligence) ethics. Surprisingly, our body representations show more plasticity than scholarly concepts and sociocultural narratives. Our embodied selves can withstand transplants, bionic prostheses and radical somatechnics, but to remain autonomous and authentic, our agential potentials must be strengthened – and this is not through ‘psychosurgery’ and the brain–computer interface.

This book argues that the current renegotiation of the postwar social contract concerning the welfare state in Europe is being accompanied by the renegotiation of a smaller-scale modern social pact between the university and the nation-state. Current transformations to the state under the pressures of globalization will not leave the university unaffected, and consequently it is useful to discuss the university and its future in the context of the state. In the new global order, against the odds, universities are striving to maintain their pivotal role in society. Their role as engines of economic growth and contributors to economic competitiveness between increasingly knowledge-driven economies is being widely acknowledged. But it is a radical reformulation of their traditional social roles. The main reasons for current transformations of the university include globalization pressures on nation-states and their public services, the end of the «Golden age» of the Keynesian welfare state, and the emergence of knowledge-based societies and knowledge-driven economies. Therefore the university can no longer be discussed solely in traditional, relatively self-contained disciplinary contexts. Here the university is seen from a variety of perspectives and through the lens of a wide range of disciplines (mainly educational sciences, political economy, sociology, political sciences, and philosophy).