eISSN 2335-8769, ISSN 1392-0588, DOI 10.7220/2335-8769 First Published: 1930–1940, 1995– Frequency: Half Yearly Languages: English, Lithuanian, French, German Subjects: Humanities and Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary Interaction of These and Other Sciences, Lithuanian Studies Fees: No Publication Fees Open Access: CC BY-SA Publisher: Vytautas Magnus University
Northern trajectories of Stutthof memory: letters from Sweden to Iceland by Stasys Vainoras and Vytautas Meilus
The publication presents, for the first time, letters written in 1945–1946 from Sweden by Vytautas Meilus and Stasys Vainoras, former prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp, to their friend from Kaunas, Teodoras Bieliackinas, who was living in Iceland at the time. It also includes a translation from German of Stasys Vainoras’s testimony regarding the evacuation of Stutthof prisoners in the most severe physical condition, which began on April 26, 1945. All texts are supplemented with commentary. The introduction provides the biographical and historical context of these documents, reviews references to Meilus and Vainoras in Stutthof historiography, and discusses the significance of ego-documents in the field of historical and cultural memory.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Clergy and monks of the Lithuanian Catholic Church persecuted during the German occupation
The repression of clergy and monks during the German occupation has not been widely studied. At the beginning of the occupation, the impression was formed that the Church could regain what it had lost during the Soviet occupation, that the new government would not interfere with its activities. However, it later turned out that these were false illusions. Although compared to Poland, the Catholic Church in Lithuania experienced less severe persecution by the German government, the activities of the Church in the Vilnius Archdiocese, nevertheless, became more restricted. It must be stated that the chosen research topic has not yet been examined in sufficient depth. To do this, it is necessary to study the archives of archdiocesan and diocesan curias, monasteries, and the biographies of individual clergy in greater depth. The article emphasizes that the main reasons for the repressions against Lithuanian clergy during the German occupation were not political, but pastoral: sermons, evangelical stance, rescuing Jews, and only then, disobedience to political authority and the system.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nerijus Pipiras https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Gaps and other traces of soviet censorship in Balys Sruoga’s work „Dievų Miškas“ („Forest of the Gods“)
Balys Sruoga’s “Forest of the Gods” is widely regarded as his most mature work and as a canonical piece of Lithuanian literature. It is well known worldwide and has therefore been translated into many languages. Between 2024 and 2025, Mahir Gamzajev, Miglė Dulskytė, and Jinseok Seo translated it into Azerbaijani, French, and Korean, respectively. These latest translations were based on a new edition of the work. This edition was prepared in 2025 at the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute in collaboration with the translators. During the Soviet era and the years of independence, three historically significant editions of “Forest of the Gods” were published (in 1957, 1997, and 2005). These editions gradually revealed more of the authentic text that had previously been censored. More than twenty years have passed since the last edition was published in 2005. This article reviews the changes that have occurred in the study of “Forest of the Gods” over this period, and explains why another edition of the work is needed. The new edition is presented in detail, explaining what will differentiate it from previously published texts and answering which interventions (Stalinist censorship, Soviet editing, or authorial language standardization) remain evident in all published texts.
Copyright (c) 2026 Neringa Markevičienė https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The forms of silence in Stasys Yla’ works
This article analyses the work of Stasys Yla (1908−1983), a priest who was a prisoner at Stutthof. Some of his texts were published immediately after the Second World War; others remained in manuscript until Lithuania’s independence and were published posthumously. The focus is on the Stutthof memoirs Men and Beasts in the Forest of the Gods, the first edition of which appeared in the United States in 1951. Unlike Balys Sruoga’s memoirs Forest of the Gods, which were published in Soviet Lithuania in 1957, a decade after the author’s death, this text was neither censored nor otherwise edited and is therefore distinguished by its authenticity. This research aims to examine how Stasys Yla’s texts convey moments of silence and what determines memory or forgetting. This study employs the typology of silence proposed by two scholars, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Chana Teeger, which deals with overt and covert forms of silence. The research describes these forms based on Stasys Yla’s texts. The paper concludes that silence is not unambiguous but fluid, changing forms, becoming silence for memory or for forgetting. The most important aspect determining these changes is the reading and interpretation of the texts and their involvement in the processes of cultural memory. The new editions of the memoirs testify to a living relationship with the published texts.
Copyright (c) 2026 Aurelija Mykolaitytė https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The fate of Stutthof prisoners – from evacuation to safe haven in Sweden
Based on Scandinavian and Lithuanian historiography, memoirs of former prisoners, published and archival sources, this article analyzes the facts and details of the forced evacuation of prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp (11 Lithuanians and their fellow prisoners from Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Estonia, etc.) by river barge along the Baltic Sea to Neustadt. This evacuation is known in the historiography as the Second Stutthof Evacuation and has hardly been studied in the Lithuanian context. From Neustadt, the former prisoners continued their journey towards Sweden, but the Balts were stuck in Copenhagen, from where the Lithuanians managed to escape to Sweden after three months. The article presents the circumstances of the evacuation, the national composition of the prisoners and their mutual relations, the prisoners’ liberation, and the journey to Denmark.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dixie Henri Le Fevre Simonsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The evacuation of the Stutthof concentration camp in April / May 1945 by sea transport
The article examines the evacuation of prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp by sea transport in April and May 1945, situating it within the rapidly deteriorating German military situation on the Eastern Front and in the Gdańsk–West Prussia region. It reconstructs the decision-making structures involving the Wehrmacht, SS, police, and civilian administration, as well as the implementation of the “Eva” evacuation plan. Particular attention is paid to the transfer of prisoners from Stutthof and its satellite camps to the Hel Peninsula, Mikoszewo, Neustadt, Lübeck Bay, Flensburg, Denmark, and other destinations, with detailed discussion of the transports aboard the vessels “Elbing,” “Zephyr,” “Wolfgang,” “Vaterland,” “Klaus,” “Breslau,” “Ruth,” and Landing Craft F 862. The article demonstrates that the sea evacuation was not a humanitarian rescue operation, but rather a continuation of the violence of the concentration camp system under the chaotic conditions of the final phase of the war. Prisoners were transported in overcrowded vessels, without adequate food, water, sanitation, or medical assistance; some were murdered en route, others died from exhaustion, disease, or violence, while many perished during air raids or as a result of refused rescue. The author argues that the sea evacuation of Stutthof prisoners should be classified as a maritime form of the Death March, since concentration camp guards, the German Navy, police units, and other uniformed German forces contributed in various ways to the prisoners’ deaths, abandonment, and direct victimization.
Copyright (c) 2026 Reimer Möller https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The role and significance of the servant of God, father Alfonsas Lipniūnas, in the clandestine religious life in the German Nazi concentration camp Stutthof in 1943–1945. Martyrdom in the death march and deaths in Puck
The article examines the role and significance of the Servant of God, Father Professor Alfonsas Lipniūnas, in the clandestine religious life of the Stutthof concentration camp between 1943 and 1945. It reconstructs the circumstances of his arrest following the failed German attempt to mobilize Lithuanian youth into the Waffen-SS, his imprisonment in the Gestapo prison in Kaunas, and his deportation to Stutthof together with other representatives of the Lithuanian intelligentsia. Particular attention is given to Lipniūnas’s pastoral activity under the extreme conditions of the concentration camp: the secret celebration of Mass, hearing confessions, administering Holy Communion, providing spiritual support, and organizing religious practices despite strict SS prohibitions and the threat of death. The article demonstrates that clandestine religious life in Stutthof fulfilled not only a sacramental but also an existential and resistant function. It strengthened prisoners’ moral resilience, sustained a sense of community, offered hope, and helped preserve human dignity within the Nazi system of terror. Lipniūnas’s ministry extended beyond Lithuanian prisoners: his pastoral assistance reached Polish, Latvian, Czech, German, and other inmates, while his cooperation with Lithuanian and Polish priests helped develop a broader underground network of religious life in the camp. The article also discusses his experiences during the Death March, his ministry in the temporary camp at Gęś and later in Puck after liberation, where he died on 28 March 1945 from the consequences of typhus and exhaustion. The study argues that Father Professor Alfonsas Lipniūnas remained in the memory of Stutthof prisoners as a witness to faith, charity, and spiritual resistance. His activity in the concentration camp reveals the significance of religious practice under conditions of totalitarian violence. It situates his martyrdom within the broader context of spiritual resistance and Christian solidarity.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elżbieta Grot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Ethics of memory and the ethics of remembering
The article examines the ethics of memory and the ethics of remembering by asking which events communities are obliged to remember, how they ought to remember them, and what moral responsibilities arise from historical memory. Drawing on the reflections of Elie Wiesel, Avishai Margalit, and other thinkers, the author argues that memory is not merely the preservation of information or a form of historical knowledge. It generates obligations, shapes communal identity, and serves as a source of moral orientation. The ethics of remembering therefore includes decisions concerning education, public monuments, commemoration days, forms of historical narration, and what is often called “memory work,” particularly in relation to the Holocaust, the crimes of Nazism, and the atrocities of communist regimes. The central concept of the article is “tragic knowledge”: knowledge of events that should not have happened and that cannot be fully mastered or neutralized by reason. The author emphasizes that the memory of the Holocaust and other forms of radical evil remains disruptive: it exceeds the ordinary limits of argument, language, and rational explanation, and thus calls not only for analysis but also for humility, silence, and hope. By discussing the example of German Erinnerungskultur, the article reveals the tension between the need to integrate a tragic past into public life and the danger of “domesticating” it, thereby diminishing its moral disturbance. Ultimately, the article argues that the ethics of memory has not only epistemological and political dimensions but also spiritual ones.
Copyright (c) 2026 Clemens Sedmak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Stutthof – The gates of hell and glimmers of hope
Copyright (c) 2026 Rūta Petrauskaitė, Daiva Kristina Kuzmickaitė, Linas Venclauskas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Editorial Board, Table of Contents, about Authors
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The golden statue of the soul: Plato, Plotinus, and John Chrysostom
This article examines the images of the rudimentary golden element of the soul and the soul as a golden statue found in the Platonic tradition, particularly in the works of Plato and Plotinus. In Plato’s dialogues, gold is repeatedly mentioned in reflections on the nature of the soul. In his treatise “On Beauty”(ch. 5), Plotinus compares the soul’s authentic beauty and its acquired ugliness to gold that has fallen into mud. In Plato’s “Republic” (611 b–612 a), Socrates likens the condition of the soul in this life to the figure of the sea god Glaucus encrusted with shells. Although the discussion refers to the deity himself, it reads as if a sculptural image is being described (“some of his original body parts have broken off, others have worn away”). A memorable reflection on the inner work of shaping (or restoring) the beautiful statue of the soul is found in Plotinus (On Beauty, ch. 9). These Platonic images and the associated considerations on the true nature and beauty of the soul are compared to the Christian treatment of the theme in the “Catechetical Homilies” of John Chrysostom.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tatjana Aleknienė (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Rūta Petrauskaitė, Jurga Jonutytė, Mantas Antanas Davidavičius (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Back to square one: the rise and fall of the Helsinki agreements reflections from the eighth international Leonidas Donskis memorial conference
Copyright (c) 2026 Neringa Gališanskytė (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Inaugural address by the rector of Vytautas Magnus University
Copyright (c) 2026 Ineta Dabašinskienė (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Narrating norm – between life and philosophy
Copyright (c) 2026 Adas Diržys (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
About nature’s inventions and transformations (should we stop?)
Copyright (c) 2026 Jurga Jonutytė (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The poetic search for being of Arvydas Šliogeris as an illustration of Richard Rorty’s philosophically poeticized culture
The author analyzes whether Arvydas Šliogeris’ philosophy can illustrate Richard Rorty’s philosophically poeticized culture. He also raises the question of whether Šliogeris’ philosophical contradictions may be viewed as an intellectual irresponsibility, and what Rorty’s perspective on this would be. Much attention is given to Šliogeris’ poetic search for Being, considering how it fits in with Rorty’s philosophy. Many similarities are found between these two seemingly different thinkers, one of which is their anti-epistemological approach. Their views on poetic philosophical imagination also have common points. Both authors raise the question of objective truth, which is particularly important to justify why a philosophically poetic culture is needed and how this relates to the different roles of philosophy and the philosopher. However, it should be noted that Šliogeris’
Copyright (c) 2026 Tomas Kavaliauskas (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Kinaesthetic sedimentation: in the hands of ancestors
The article explores how bodily movement and sensory experience sediment into one’s being as a form of memory and tradition. It draws on Edmund Husserl’s idea that each subject’s primordiality contains not only their own past but also the primordiality of Others. This means that our movements, posture, and bodily habits arise not only from individual experience but also from intercorporeal relations – experiences passed down through generations. Building on Husserl’s notion of empathy, I examine how I empathize with the Other through spatial and intercorporeal relations. Identification occurs through different forms of intercorporeal congruence: transposition, rotation, reflection, and complementation. These phenomena can be illustrated by the example of dance, especially ballroom dancing, where movement, rhythm, and partnership become a practice of intercorporeal memory. I draw on my conversations with my dance teachers Jūratė and Česlovas Norvaišos, who discussed their training with Alex Moore (1901–1991) in the UK. Alex Moore emphasized that, in dance, the body never ceases to move as movement is a continuous flow, and learning occurs not through words or diagrams but through shared bodily action. This experience led me to realize that such knowledge is sedimented in bodily tradition passed from teacher to student, from one generation to the next. Ballroom dance makes this particularly visible through the principle of complementarity. The intercorporeal memory is both synchronic – when two bodies move together, “unlocking” each other – and diachronic, when movement experience is transmitted from teacher to student and from parents to children. I was held in my parents’ hands, and now I hold my child in my own hands, continuing that same embodied experience. My parents were once in my grandparents’ hands. Looking “back,” my grandparents were likewise held in the hands of their parents – and so on. That is why I say: we are all in the hands of our ancestors.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gediminas Karoblis (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Metamodernism and the future of theory: an interview with Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm
This interview with Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm was conducted in Vilnius in June 2025 during the 10th Biennial Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE10). He is a Professor of Religion and the Chair of Science & Technology Studies at Williams College, and the author of “The Invention of Religion in Japan” (2012), “The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences” (2017), “Metamodernism: The Future of Theory” (2021), and “The Genealogy of Genealogy: Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History” (forthcoming 2026), all published by the University of Chicago Press. This conversation centers on the articulation of metamodernism as a response to the limits of postmodernism and the wider sense of theoretical fatigue in the human and social sciences. Topics addressed include conceptual and contextual grounding of metamodernism, its critical engagement with key postmodern problems, and reflections on its future development. What follows is an edited transcript, revised for clarity and readability while preserving the voice and structure of the original exchange.
Copyright (c) 2026 Augustas Pinkevičius (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Rethinking the human subject through Judith Butler’s concept of vulnerability
Drawing on feminist critiques of the modern subject, this article questions the concept of the autonomous subject. It examines the alternative proposed by Judith Butler: a model of the subject grounded in vulnerability. It is argued that Butler’s conception relies on a relational process ontology, elucidated through Simondon’s theory of individuation, where the subject is conceived as an ongoing relational formation within the complex web of ties known as the milieu. In this context, vulnerability emerges not as an individual attribute or subjective state, but as a condition grounded in the fundamental interconnectedness of individuals and their inevitable dependence on the milieu that constitutes and sustains them. Butler’s concept of vulnerability is analysed through two dimensions – bodily and linguistic – which highlight the subject‘s fundamental exposure to others and dependence on material structures and social norms. The article demonstrates that vulnerability is an ambivalent relational condition that simultaneously enables the existence of living beings and exposes their self-insufficiency and fragility.
Copyright (c) 2026 Monika Višnevska (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Weird horror: aspects of genre-philosophy
The article examines the growing prominence of horror culture (including in Lithuania) and its philosophical foundations, focusing on two key concepts – determination and the Other. Drawing on early sources (e.g., Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and the notion of wyrd) and modern examples (such as Ari Aster’s “Hereditary”), it explores how the subject operates between the constraints of fate and the illusion of freedom. The social and political atmosphere of anxiety – wars, post-pandemic uncertainty, artificial intelligence, ecological threats – helps explain horror’s appeal and its capacity to express helplessness and the intrusion of the Other. Different understandings of horror are discussed: Anne Radcliffe’s distinction between terror and horror, the phenomenon of the uncanny (Jentsch, Freud), and H. P. Lovecraft’s weird tale, characterized by cosmic dread and inevitability. Later variations of weirdness – Robert Aickman’s minimalist strange stories, queer horror, body/extreme horror, and bizarro – reveal how weirdness individualizes experience and expands the scope of horror. Ultimately, the text argues that weirdness dissolves genre boundaries and functions as a modus of writing and a cultural force that deconstructs accepted structures. Horror, rather than being understood morally, is seen as an epistemological rupture – a confrontation with the unknown and with the Other.
Two interpretations of the concept of the “Übermensch” in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy
This paper analyzes the controversy surrounding the concept of the Overman (Übermensch) in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, distinguishing between two main interpretations: one in which the Overman is understood as an ideal separate from man, and another in which he is presented as a higher type of human. The aim of this paper is not to provide a detailed analysis of this concept, but to show its relationship to the idea of man in Nietzsche’s later philosophy. I argue that although “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” gives a central place to the figure of the Overman, rejecting the philosophical category of man, in his later texts Nietzsche introduces the Übermensch as a type of man who remains within the bounds of humanity. I present the contradictory conceptions of the Overman in this work as two strategies: the Overman as a symbolic figure is used to criticize Christian ideals and the type of human being they shape, whereas the concept of a superior type of human being serves as a model for a practical vision of human cultivation.
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Life extension and the badness of death: deprivationist assessment and its limits
Recent advances in biotechnologies – from regenerative medicine to targeted gene interventions – have made it plausible, at least in principle, that the human lifespan could be significantly extended. This development raises urgent philosophical questions about whether prolonged life would be prudentially desirable and morally permissible. This article provides a critical overview of philosophical themes concerning the badness of death in the context of life extension. Its goal is threefold: (1) to articulate a basic prudential argument for the desirability of life extension grounded in the deprivation account of the badness of death; (2) to respond to several objections to this view, which revolve around the claim that the finitude of life is itself valuable; and (3) to identify the external limitations of the account defended by considering it against the backdrop of more substantive social, technological, and distributive considerations. While deprivationist reasoning generally supports the desirability of extending life for individuals whose lives are, on balance, worth living, broader practical and ethical concerns (e.g., fairness of access, demographic pressures, and technological risks) qualify this conclusion. A complete ethical assessment, therefore, must involve both the intrinsic desirability of life extension and the feasibility of realizing it in a way that is just and sustainable.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kęstutis Mosakas (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Multiple symbolic worlds and philosophical diplomacy
The article discusses issues surrounding the negotiation of diversity, arguing that critical philosophical hermeneutics is a prerequisite for philosophical diplomacy. In today’s post-humanist, post-truth society, which is moving at an accelerated pace, the growing importance of recognising social and cultural diversity is more closely linked to the need for dialogue and public diplomacy than to traditional ethics. The article critically examines the political projects of the ‘Neoreactionary Enlightenment’, which seek to reinstate grand narratives and deny the necessity of diplomacy grounded in diversity, even as its proponents themselves belong to this group. Without philosophical-anthropological or philosophical-sociological interpretation, diplomacy concerning public diversity cannot be fully understood. Previous critical theory theses on the primacy of recognition, which diminish the importance of dialogue and diplomatic action, represent an uncritical ethical ideal. Some diversity groups may be wrongly accused of being toxic or pathological. While the article is based on Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics and Habermas’s theory of communicative action as prerequisites for recognition, it emphasises that communication occurs within communities in which differences in symbols, symbolic organisations, and competing (even hostile) symbolic worlds emerge. The article analyses the correlations between diversity in symbolic worlds and philosophical diplomacy. Habermas explained the collapse of grand narratives as a crisis of legitimacy within the epistemology of the social and human sciences. This has led either to the recognition of new diversity or to the restoration of the old order. Grand narratives are key texts that are later interpreted by other texts, forming the basis of truth, identity, faith, and predictions about the future. Small political, scientific, and cultural groups may regard their own texts as grand narratives. However, growing diversity and the emergence of smaller, more dynamic narratives create a need for philosophical, anthropological, and sociological negotiations, which I refer to as ‘philosophical diplomacy’. Negotiations on recognition, reducing exploitation, and preventing segregation depend on interpretation – a form of critical hermeneutics in practice. As cultural diversity expands, symbolic organisations emerge, creating their own worldview and outlook. They strive to exist in a world that transcends the mere confines of a simple symbolic organisation, be it a political party or even a state. As the diversity, form, and content of these organisations grow and the function of social and humanitarian truth narrows, the need for new legitimacy–recognition increases. The development of these symbolic worlds is linked to philosophical diplomacy and philosophical approaches to diplomacy, including critical-practical hermeneutics.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gintautas Mažeikis (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0