Darbai ir Dienos / Deeds and Days

Review of the sixth Leonidas Donskis memorial conference – will Russia survive 2024?

Neringa Gališanskytė — 2024-02-13

About COVID-19 testing entre at a Culture Palace, its visitors and testing from the perspective of the staff conducting the testing

Auridas Gajauskas — 2024-02-13

This article analyses the structure and operations of a COVID-19 testing centre, which operated at Dresden Palace of Culture (Germany) in 2022. It provides an overview of how the centre’s attendance changed its social and physical structure, and the impact on the test conductor-client relations, also the status the staff had in the society before the pandemic. The article explores the importance of the visitors’ physicality on the organising and the procedure of the testing, and also centre’s client attitudes to the testing. It discusses various barriers to conducting and assessment of the test, and attempts to search for historical origins of the resistance to the pandemic in the collection of the German Hygiene Museum, also focusing attention to the contexts of polio pandemic and art. The conclusion of the article draws attention to the connection between a childish helplessness and a meaningless death at war, described by the writer Kurt Vonnegut, imprisoned in Dresden in 1945, which once again became reality as the client ranks were supplemented by refugees since the beginning of war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Overview of the literature about American autochthones (Indians) published in Lithuania: from adventure novels to spiritual development literature

Zigmas Vitkus — 2024-02-13

This article provides an overview of fiction and educational literature on North and South American autochthones published in Lithuania from the 19th century to the present. The author reconstructs the genre‘s emergence in Lithuanian literature, emphasizing its roots in Vilnius during the Romantic era. The study explores the genre‘s connections to the broader sociocultural and political context, asserting its unique impact on Lithuanian literature and children‘s socialization. Notably, this genre, characterized by active practice (it is arguably the only literary genre that was “practiced”) served as a metaphorical window to the West during the Soviet occupation (1944–1990). The article analyzes the typology of such publications in Lithuania, elucidating the selection criteria, evolving publishing trends, and societal reception and significance.

Kinesthetic beauty: analysis of the Friedrich Schiller’s article “On Grace and Dignity”

Gediminas Karoblis — 2024-02-13

The article discusses Friedrich Schiller’s essay “On Grace and Dignity” and the influence of Immanuel Kant’s ideas on Schiller’s reflections. Schiller’s article begins with a recounting of a Greek myth about the girdle of gracefulness and uses it as a basis for philosophical reflections on grace. Schiller argues that human architectonic beauty is determined by nature, but it is also a cultural expression and a consequence of kinaesthetic habits. Kant and Schiller have different views on the principle of perfection in fulfilling one’s purpose as it relates to beauty. Kant seeks to purify the judgement of beauty as a rational judgement, free from sensuality, while Schiller seeks to reconcile the rational and the sensuous nature of a human. Finally, Schiller describes grace as a form of moving beauty or kinaesthetic beauty, as opposed to the static and architectonic one. Schiller distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary movements and asserts that grace is found only in involuntary movements, which arise from feeling and express an individual’s style. Grace is a fundamentally human quality and cannot be found in the movements of animals. Schiller rejects the idea that grace can be artificially constructed, as it belongs to involuntary movements. Gracefulness says more about who a person is than who she wants to be. (This summary is created with the help of AI: translated by DeepL and generated by ChatGPT.)

The forms of liberty on the eve of reform movement: the phenomenon of “Jauna Muzika”

Indrė Žakevičienė — 2024-02-13

The aim of the article is to look closer at the series of four editions under the title “Jauna muzika” (Young Music) (1987–1990), issued as a particular manifesto of young Lithuanian composers (born in late fifties and early sixties) on the eve of Sąjūdis (Reform Movement) (1988–1990). The series accompanied the annual music festival “Jaunimo kamerinės muzikos dienos” (The Days of Chamber Music by Young Composers), which was held in 1985 for the first time and in 2000 was renamed to “Druskomanija”. The content of the editions reflects the need of Lithuanian composers, philosophers, musicologists and poets to encode the resistance against the authorities and to demonstrate their spiritual alliance with Western culture. Almost the same aspirations were characteristic of the contributors of Lithuanian magazine “Keturi vėjai” (Four Winds), issued in 1924–1928. “Jauna muzika” could be considered as particular form of freedom, stipulated by the specific principle of habitus, defined by Pierre Bourdieu. The analysis of poetical texts by the composers reveales the feelings of despair and emptiness and the expectations to regain the ability to be sincere. The power of habitus proved out: the contributors of “Jauna muzika” opened new perspective to the restricted thought.

Ambivalence in the concept of libidinal economy: Jean-François Lyotard against Samo Tomšič

Linartas Tuomas — 2024-02-13

This article examines the ambivalence in the concept of libidinal economy, which we identify in the philosophies of Jean-François Lyotard and Samo Tomšič; they both offer radically different conceptions of libidinal economy. Although emerging from very contrasting perspectives, both theories consider the relationship between desire, the unconscious, and the capitalist economy. After defining these two approaches, we compare them, while marking differences, similarities, influences, and sociopolitical presumptions. Also, we propose a few indicative concepts, which should help to contextualize the identity of the concept of libidinal economy. After critically discussing both theories, we suggest three paradoxes in Lyotard’s approach as well as some weaknesses in Tomšič’s project. It turns out that the concept of libidinal economy is a productive theoretical tool to explore the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis, as well as the split in the materialist tradition. Based on that, we claim that the ambivalence of the concept of libidinal economy is a part of much more complex philosophical-historical conflict.

Challenging the linear narrative of European integration: a call for reflection

Juozas Kasputis — 2024-02-13

This paper philosophically explores the possible introduction of an alternative analytical approach to European integration. It is an invitation to reflect critically outside the mainstream paradigm. An extensive amount of scientific literature and research papers focuses on the EU, but it is quite easy to get lost amidst this stream of abundant writing. Meanwhile, the EU has been experiencing serious challenges since the previous enlargement, which has led to a broader definition of the “European project.” Numerous discussions have failed to deliver the expected results. It is an interesting paradox that the EU has been proposed globally as a model of peacebuilding in the context of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012. However, since then, no clearly defined model of internal EU integration has been implemented apart from some basic premises. The Monnet method has become formalized within the official framework of the EU, thus justifying top-down institutional engineering, which is contrary to the concept proposed by Jean Monnet. The paper offers a metaphorical reasoning as an intellectual counterbalance to the unreflective application of integrational models, thus enriching analytical and critical discourse.

Realism of internalistic and externalistic ontologies: Gilles Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and Iain Hamilton Grant’s transcendental materialism

Adas Diržys — 2024-02-13

This paper deals with two different interpretations of realism: Gilles Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and Iain Hamilton Grant’s transcendental materialism. While both of them have an integral orientation towards reevaluation of transcendental and not elimination of it from the inquiries of realism, they differ between themselves by having different qualifications of reality and different meanings of transcendental in effect. I argue that they could be reconciled by treating transcendental empiricism as an internalistic and transcendental materialism as an externalistic versions of ontologies.

Leonas Gudaitis – creative editor, who compiled a unique collection of Lithuanian scientific works

Danguolė Valančė — 2024-02-13

The editor Leonas Gudaitis had an excellent knowledge of the language, but in the preparation of the articles he had also set his own principles of management, including technical ones, which he followed in order to create a unique encyclopedic publication, which was very much needed in the restored Lithuania as a new, fresh breath of fresh air after the long years of occupation. An examination of his revised manuscripts reveals that Gudaitis had some words that he did not like, which he always corrected or erased. He was particularly creative in his approach to the thematic headings of volumes and the titles of articles, which show that, as a creative personality, he simply avoided dry scholarship and excessive academia, preferring to use his literary imagination, thus underlining the importance of creativity in the editing of what were sometimes rather dull scholarly texts. (This summary translated by DeepL.)

80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEEDS AND DAYS

Rūta Petrauskaitė — 2024-02-13

80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEEDS AND DAYS

Rūta Petrauskaitė — 2024-02-13

Bronislovas Genzelis (1934–2023). A man who lived with the concern that Lithuanians would remain true to themselves

Antanas Kulakauskas — 2024-02-13

Mykolas Jurgis Drunga (1948–2023). It doesn’t matter how much, it matters how

Egidijus Aleksandravičius — 2024-02-13