Josef Moural

Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem | UJEP · Department of Philosophy and Humanities

In Chapter 3 of his The Construction of Social Reality (CSR in the following text), John Searle endeavors to explain and justify his claim that language is essentially constitutive of institutional reality. Unlike several other components of his theory of institutions (collective intentionality, deontic power, constitutive rules), this claim of Sea...

The Chinese Room Argument is one of the widest and best-known single-issue debates in recent philosophy. Its name originates from a thought experiment proposed by Searle in 1980 in the paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” The debate has far exceeded the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, and has had an impact especially in the fields of artific...

I propose to apply a Searlean theory of institutions to the problem of political liberty, especially of negative liberty in I. Berlin’s sense. Throughout I make use of the simple notion of agent liberty, which consists of the area of possible action open to him or her. I show that, according to theory of institutions, many of the possibilities to a...

Jan Patočka (1907-1977) was a great Czech philosopher and scholar who became a dissent hero and martyr in 1977 as the representative of the dissent group Charta 77. In this chapter, I provide background information about Patočka, about the situation of philosophy and classics in Czechoslovakia of the 1940's to 1970's, and about the beginning and th...

An Ernst Tugendhat (1930-2023) obituary in Czech. He will be remembered as someone who (1) raised the level of Heidegger discussion significantly, (2) was the initiator and leader of the conversion of the elite German philosophy towards the analytic style, and (3) in an ambitious 1993 book attempted to find - finally - a secure base for ethics.

The relationship between religion, social structures and political institutions has always played a fundamental role in human societies. This collection of essays aims to explore possible ways in which philosophical conceptualizations of god, the gods, and the divine in the ancient world interact with traditional religious practices and institution...

Málokterá naučná kniha funguje coby stroj času tak spolehlivě jako Traktát o kritickém rozumu Hanse Alberta. Sotva se začtete do její první kapitoly, přenáší Vás do západního Německa v létě 1967, kdy vzduch opojně voní nadějemi a neurčitým očekáváním velkých změn. Je to doba, kdy němečtí čtenáři ještě pořádně nevědí, co je analytická filosofie, ale...

Josef Moural suggests that new light may be cast on the Appendix by considering Henry Home’s criticisms of the Treatise. The Appendix deals mainly with two topics—the nature of belief and personal identity—and Home (later to be Lord Kames) published essays on both. Moural investigates Hume’s intriguing comment in a letter to Homes that ‘I lik’t exc...

a review (in Czech) of the 3rd edition of the Goodin-Pettit (edd.) Blackwell Anthology of Contemporary Political Philosophy

Zavádím rozlišení mezi třemi druhy pluralismu (čtenářský, autorský, myšlenkový) a prohlašuji je všechny -- v rozumném chápání -- za neškodné a užitečné nástroje filosofické práce. Diskutuji jejich vztah k postmodernismu a zvláštní ráz recepce postmodernismu v Praze před listopadem 1989.

In his lecture course "Socrates" from 1947, Jan Patočka points out that it is characteristic of the adaptation of old mythic stories by the tragic playwrights that the hero is confronted not only with his own destiny and the Gods but newly also with the political and social structure of the city. In such a context, it is even more difficult to cope...

Jan Patočka (1907–1977) je bil češki filozof in akademik, ki je zaradi svoje vloge predstavnika v skupini Karta 77 postal junak in mučenec disidentskega gibanja. Članek analizira obstoječe podatke o Patočki, o razmerah v filozofiji in klasični filologiji od štiridesetih do sedemdesetih ter o Karti 77. Posebej pozorno se posveča vprašanju, kako in z...

There are four major views of the formation of modem philosophy: the crucial role has been, subsequently, ascribed to Bacon, to Descartes, to Locke, and to the reception of Hellenistic philosophy (culminating in the late 16th and early 17th century). Now historical periodization is normally neither true nor false, it can be just more or less fruitf...

In this paper, I show first that, contrary to the widespread opinion, there is a fundamental difference between the so-called Deceiving God from paragraphs 9-10 and the Malignant Demon from paragraph 12 of the First Meditation. Second, I show that the introduction of the Malignant Demon hypothesis is connected with the introduction of an alternativ...

In the first part of my paper I recapitulate some main points of Searle’s theory of institutional facts, as stated in Chapters 1-6 of his book The Construction of Social Reality.1 First, I describe the puzzle that motivates the inquiry and the three main goals of his theory. Then, I describe the two structures that (in my opinion) constitute the co...

John Searle's forthcoming book ‘Rationality in Action’ presents a sophisticated and innovative account of the rationality of action. In the book Searle argues against what he calls the classical model of rationality. In the debate that follows Barry Smith challenges some implications of Searle's account. In particular, Smith suggests that Searle's...

2., opr. vyd

Vyd. 1.