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Alain Sokal conceived his paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Mechanics” (1996) as a test through which he aimed to reveal the partisan sensitivity and conformist superficiality of the editors towards a text that flattered their ideological prejudices. In fact, the study is a parody of post-modern thought disguised as the promise of revealing the philosophical and political implications of twentieth-century physics. One of his main targets was the social constructivism theory proposed by Bruno Latour. My goal in this paper is to outline Latour’s theory in its main aspects so that we can see to what extent it is vulnerable to such criticism. It follows that Latour’s theory cannot be reduced to a simple lexical and ideological conformism, but there are other much more serious critical arguments that raise issues worthy of being taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to administrative documents, narrative sources provide a wealth of information on the functioning of the town government. For almost 30 years, around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, three Brașov biographers and diarists, Michael Weiss, Marcus Schunckabunck and Andreas Hegyes, recorded the complete annual lists of the town council. Set in the context of events in the town, these sources provide particularly valuable information on the organisation and functioning of the administration, the activities, conflicts, and grievances associated with the office of councillor, and not only list the names of the councilmen but also describe their duties in the various areas of the administration. In the absence of the minutes of the council meetings, these sources also make it possible to draw up an archontology of the town council of Brașov. In the appendix to this paper, a list of the councillors from 1590 to 1617 is presented, which can serve as a model for the development of a subsequent urban archontology covering the entire early modern period, including other administrative sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public spaces in Algeria are characterized by the strong lack of interest among people who rely entirely on public authority. Not any tendency here to make of it a common good. The purpose of the paper is to exhibit the extent of popular indifference from in situ observations in Algiers and to explain this attitude through historical analysis. Indeed, the collective imaginary and practices have not always been insensitive to public spaces. On the contrary, in traditional rural society, public spaces were perceived as a continuity of domestic space. The peasant was obliged to take charge of its maintenance as well as for his home, his intimate space. To understand the later behavioural evolution, we must refer to the Ottoman and colonial domination processes. Each period had its own way of considering public spaces, but the urban management systems have always been based on a discrimination policy against natives and a strict control of the public spaces to the point of making them appear as the State property in the collective mentality. This perception of a grabbing of public spaces by the Turkish governor (Beylik) and later by the French colonial administration (for security reasons) has led amongst city dwellers to a feeling of exclusion and a disaffection that still characterize their attitude today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to answer a series of questions resulting from the presence of incomplete and superficial documentation gathered over time in the context of rehabilitation and restoration of historic houses in Turda, some of which are classified as monuments. Therefore, the following questions are considered: What is the value of a historical study in the context of an intervention? What is the structure of a historical study of a building? Who is in a position to carry out such a study and to impose permissions and restrictions? How can the research results be used? Does the history of one building illustrate wider policies of the Austro-Hungarian authorities to urbanise and modernise smaller towns in the realm? Although, this study is dedicated to a single building, located in the historical centre of the town, its detailed study and the reconstruction of its historical and architectural path can provide clues concerning the implementation of urban policies of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in provincial context. The building was classified as a historical monument, but its aspect today reflects its complicated history and the many unfortunate and misguided interventions it has undergone. It has also been neglected by existing research, and thus, its position within the „Art 1900” [Art Nouveau] has not been explored. Consequently, the present research attempts to make the most of the data recorded sporadically in various sources covering the history of Turda. On the other hand, the lack of conservation strategies for this type of heritage, reflected in a coherent legislative framework, has led until recently to a lax and confusing approach at the local administration level as well, as evidenced by the series of renovations and rehabilitation inappropriate to the original style, carried out by the local authority, owners or tenants over time. Good documentation forwarded to the authorities and current owners can, therefore, help these buildings and act as a method of educating the public, providing guidance concerning the value, functionality, and capacity of heritage to create more value for local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1864, cities have played an increasingly important role in creating the norms and rules that governed human life, from economic activity to leisure. These rules had a very important role in the modernization process, contributing substantially to changing behaviours and practices, creating professional bodies, and adopting Western models. However, in Romanian historiography, this phenomenon is far from receiving the attention it deserves. Our paper aims to analyse the regulations, ordinances, and decisions issued by the Bucharest City Hall, regarding trade carried out in market halls, markets, in various places on the city streets, or by peddlers. Markets and market halls were, in the City Hall's conception, not just places intended for the trade of food and various other goods. They were supposed to be fundamental tools through which the municipality ensured that the citizens of Bucharest had access to safe food – from a hygienic and sanitary point of view – and that the numerous diseases transmitted through food had as few consequences as possible on the health of the capital's inhabitants. To attain this aim, the mayor, the Municipal Council, and the Hygiene Council elaborated and enacted numerous rules, which, under the combined pressure of the city's development, advances in the medical, chemical, and biological sciences, not least the professionalization of the municipal administration, experienced a rapid evolution during the chronologic span discussed. At the same time, the City Hall invested in the creation of an infrastructure that would allow the application of these measures (market halls and market, abattoir, laboratory for chemical and bacteriological analysis, etc.), and a body of officials that would ensure their compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I have reviewed some of the most interesting ideas and arguments concerning what has been called the ‘post-truth condition’. I set out to find answers to two questions. First, I have tried to understand whether we are dealing with a new phenomenon, specific for the contemporary world, or, on the contrary, we are facing an older human tendency, which manifests itself today in a new and more aggressive form. Secondly, I have tried to provide an answer to the question of whether or not post-truth is a phenomenon necessary connected to human nature itself, that is, whether man is, as some scholars have claimed, a ‘post-truth species’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The name “Tiergarten Programme” was given to Russell’s early philosophical project by Nicholas Griffin (1988) because it was conceived during a walk through the Tiergarten in Berlin. Russell’s plan was to develop a comprehensively Hegelian dialectic of the sciences, from mathemathics to physiology, using the tools of dialectical logic and the metaphysical categories of the Absolute Spirit. Russell wrote a lot of notes about the new developments in Mathemathics and Physics and he tried to put them in a neo-hegelian framework. The only completed work the Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), which could be understood as an attempt to offer a new version of Kantian transcendentalism. My goal in this paper is to propose a reconstruction of these contributions and to point out their philosophical significance both in the context in which they were elaborated and in relation to Russell’s philosophical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper goes on with the presentation of Alexandru Surdu’s reconstruction of the theory of notion from classical logic by means of analyzing the relation between notion and word and showing the double subsistence of notion, its double partn the conventional character terms, and the relation among words and notion as definition and, on the other hand, by exposing notion as mediation between word and object through the three hypostases of the word – uttering, denomination, and name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The categoricity problem for a system of logic reveals an asymmetry between the model-theoretic and the proof-theoretic resources of that logic. In particular, it reveals prima facie that the proof-theoretic instruments are insufficient for matching the envisaged model-theory, when the latter is already available. Among the proposed solutions for solving this problem, some make use of new proof-theoretic instruments, some others introduce new model-theoretic constrains on the proof-systems, while others try to use instruments from both sides. On the proof-theoretical side, two main approaches for solving the categoricity problem for propositional classical logic consist in the enforcement of the formal systems of this logic by introducing rules of inference of a new kind. A multiple-conclusions logic allows rules of inference with more than one conclusion, while a bilateralist system contains rules of inference formulated in terms of assertion and rejection. Both these approaches reveal interesting formal features of logical reasoning. This paper analyses some of the advantages and limitations of these two approaches as solutions for a full formalization of logic, i.e., for a categorical formalization [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my paper, I attempt to investigate Dimitrie Cantemir’s view on science as we may find it in his Sacrosanctae.... I argue that he believes that only knowledge revealed in the form of charity provides access to the transcendent; to understand the actuality of Cantemir’s views, I place them in the context of the beginning of the modern science and the continuation of the Aristotelian tradition in southeastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Rawls focuses in his writings on one of the most important concepts of political thinking, more specifically on the concept of justice. He tries to conceive a new kind of theory, an ideal one, and to do that he uses two important concepts: The Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance. In this paper we will try to find out to what extent the society proposed by Rawls is moving towards an utopian one. What are the utopic elements of his theory and what can be applied in a society that is already created? How can people put themselves in the Original Position, or under the Veil of Ignorance if they are already part of this society. These are only some questions of which this paper is trying to answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is, for the most part, an answer to Raymond Geuss's opinion about the value of John Rawls's philosophical contributions. Rawls, Geuss argued, “is not a major moral and political theorist, whose work self-evidently deserves and repays the most careful scrutiny. Rather he was a parochial figure who not only failed to advance the subject but also pointed political philosophy firmly in the wrong direction.” A similar, although more nuanced, conclusion about Rawls was also recently suggested by Katrina Forrester. My main objective in the paper is to show that such opinions are poorly argued and false (and that Rawls is, as most political philosophers think, a major, if not the greatest contemporary political philosopher – and one of the few recent thinkers comparable in scope and depth to giants in the history of political philosophy such as Plato, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau or John Stuart Mill). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the situation of the food supply in Sibiu given the war conditions of the years 1939-1945. The author shows that the population of Sibiu increased suddenly after the Vienna Diktat from 30 August 1940, due to which Romania was obligated to give up the northern part of Transylvania to Hungary, because the University of Cluj, with over 3 000 people, moved here. Simultaneously, many refugees came from the ceded area. On 22 June 1941 Romania went to war along with Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union. The state of war caused difficulties in supplying food to the city's population. The paper presents the changes that took place in supply and consumption, price evolution, consumption limits, food quality, the population's reaction to the shortcomings in supply. Another aspect presented is the situation of public consumption supply: entertainment venues (restaurants, terraces, pubs etc.), as well as the canteens for pupils and students, for military units, for civil and military hospitals, which were numerous in the city on the Cibin river during the war. The author tries to outline the specifics of the supply and consumption situation in Sibiu and to compare it to the state of affairs of those years in other urban centers throughout the country and even from cities in Germany, the great power that dominated Europe in those years. The author concludes that the supply of Sibiu in the years 1939-1945 was seriously disturbed during the war years, although there were no battles in the city. Authorities did not find solutions for the satisfactory supply and equitable distribution of food, the lives of the people of Sibiu being thus much harder than those of the inhabitants of other less industrialized urban centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For some ones, the topic of the paper may sound somehow outdated (“content” and “form”), since at least the tradition of the last century avoided the first and reduced the second to formal or rhetorical figures. The paper highlights, however, that the mentioned couple is not only present in a ubiquitous manner in the entire process of thinking/speaking/understanding, but also in the sophisticated theories about knowledge and language. The problems of the content of concepts and judgements are examined through the development of the logic of form and content in the popular intuition, the analytic philosophy of language, the relationship between the empirical and the abstract concepts, the abstract and concrete concepts. The truth is when we come to understand as comprehensively as possible the concrete object (in its particular characteristics). And this means that, first, we must name the way (i.e., formal) we understand the concrete object. The form is the set of patterns or formal frames, criteria, milestones without which there is no knowledge and which, therefore, have autonomy from the contents of knowledge. While in the modes of knowledge, the object to be known is the content to which the concept refers; thus, the content is the set of meanings of a concept. Therefore, it demands the transcendence of the unilateral view of things, that is, of concepts and judgments. The paper gives many current examples/concepts/problems that transform the apparently dry theories about cognition and comprehension into clear, familiar understanding. The content of knowledge is the synthesis of information and interpretation, involving overcoming and evaluating them from the point of view of certain criteria. From a concrete point of view, the criteria are historical, so the understanding is historical. But the criteria also have a methodological aspect, so universal, because only in this way it is possible to establish the meanings. The content is the one who refers to the telos, that is, to the complex purpose of the idea and its communication: therefore also to the purpose of the form. The telos of a concept is its content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world of towns was a complex one in the late Middle Ages, as it housed people of very different backgrounds and interests. The bulk of the urban society consisted of townspeople, free people with predominantly commercial occupations, but also craftsmen, in addition to which we find representatives of other categories of late medieval - early modern society, from boyars to members of the clergy (including monastic) or slaves (robi). The larger the town, the more diverse its population. In this paper we turn our attention to a special category of townspeople from the towns of the Romanian Principalities, the craftsmen. There was no special official category of craftsmen in urban society. Often, they cannot even be differentiated from merchants, given that many of those who produced something and sold the results of their work in shops. However, we notice a concentration of craftsmen depending on the profession, with traces in the local toponymy. This is a feature of the big towns, Iai and Bucharest, together with the former princely residence towns of Suceava and Târgovite. In other important urban centers (Craiova, Ploieti, Galai, Focani, Bârlad, Roman, Botoani) such specializations are observed later, especially after 1700. The reunion of several craftsmen with the same trade is noticeable in Târgul Vechi (the oldest part of the town), while in the valleys of the nearby rivers we find the craftsmen with "impure" trades, butchers, soap makers or tanners. The rest of the towns show much less evidence of this aspect, and where it appears they are a specific found rather after 1800. This is explained by the gradual penetration of the elements of modernization of towns in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In addition to the new rules of urbanism that were introduced at this time, we are witnessing the first forms of industrial organization which, although still modest, have allowed the transition from collective organization and guild to individual business based on capital and factory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For one of the specific and significant features of the style of current scientific knowledge is the integration of the historical perspective in the actual scientific construction, due to the fact that the deep methodological and conceptual changes that affect the general frameworks, assumptions and structures require to put to work the entire history of science in order to determine its possible directions of future development, my paper is an attempt to set forth a brief account on French historical epistemology, mainly on Bachelard’s work and his influence on Foucault. Therefore, I will focus on his reflections on the relationship between consciousness and reality, rational knowledge and affective knowledge, on the significance of the “epistemological obstacles”, on the sources of errors in the process of knowledge, on how to purify the process of knowledge in order to ensure scientific certainty, with a particular emphasis on his “psychoanalysis of scientific knowledge”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although separated by centuries, Hegel and Kuhn support the same ideas concerning worldview change. Both consider such changes real „revolutions”. Through them, the human spirit (in Hegel) and science (in Kuhn) replace their old fundamental concepts with new ones. The paper also highlights the necessary relationship of the Kuhnian paradigm shift with the cultural background of the epoch in which such a shift occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I have argued that although a multitude of answers have been formulated that are intended to end once and for all the nature versus nurture controversy, many scholars observed the ‘open’ nature of the issue, that is, the fact that the debate does not, in fact, close and is periodically reignited, at different degrees of intensity. Following the historical development of the ‘nativist-nurturist’ controversy, I have identified a possible cause of this situation: although there is no major theorist who does not admit that neither the idea of nature nor that of nurture can function in isolation as an explanatory principle, but only an understanding of the two principles in their interdependence can help us build on their basis a consistent philosophical anthropology, yet a large part of the participants in the debate adopt a reductionist position and believe one of the two factors to be dominant, attempting to build an explanatory model that reduces to the minimum the influence of the other, seen as considered secondary, recessive, or even eliminate it completely. Then I reviewed the contemporary dispute between ‘nativists’ and ‘nurturists’ using James Tabery’s methodological distinction between the ‘variation-partitioning approach’ and the ‘mechanism-elucidation approach’. The conclusion is that the nature-nurture controversy has no chance of ending in the near future because the two methodological approaches are mutually exclusive: their practitioners aim to investigate distinct entities and phenomena, look for different correlations and causality relations, propose different explanatory mechanisms, and use distinct methods to highlight these mechanisms and provide an explanation for the investigated phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on a different perspective on Blaga’s epistemology and its particular relationship with his metaphysics of knowledge (part 1); in order to achieve that I will put together the elements of a reconstruction of Blaga’s conception on the possibility, the structure and the dynamics of science understood as an extraordinary anticipation of the historical trend in contemporary philosophy of science inaugurated by Th. Kuhn (part 2), on the one hand; from the methodological perspective on science, especially that in the Experiment and the mathematical spirit, I propose a new reading and analysis of the concept of „stylistic matrix”, where the „supermethod” will play a central role, on the other hand (part 3). This interpretation aims at highlighting new dimensions of Blaga’s reflections on science than those foreshadowing the historical trend in the philosophy of science inaugurated by Th. Kuhn that may advocate for an interpretation of his epistemology beyond the mere label of historical „relativism”, (that Kuhn himself was accused of after the first edition of his Structure of scientific revolutions). In this respect, I try to show how Blaga’s programme in the philosophy of science includes and exceeds the ideational core of some of his works, considered as foreshadowing the Structure...(1962), through a parallel with Kuhn’s standpoint from the answers to his critics, that also proposes overcoming the socalled relativism of the first edition of his work by reconfiguring its position, especially with respect to the concept of paradigm. At the end of my analysis I attempt to show a deep similarity in the epistemological standpoints of the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Kuhn explicitly states that the paradigm-shift implies a change of the world. This is because the paradigm is seen as constitutive for nature itself. In this paper I will try to interpret this thesis by inscribing Kuhn's theory in the larger kantian theoretical framework. As the last chapter of the „Critique of pure reason” shows, Kant thought that reson is inherently historical and evolves through revolutions. This dynamical perspective on reason comes clearly to light especially in the „Appendix” to the „transcendental Dialectic”, where the Idea of reason is seen as an abstract theoretical framework that makes possible and guides the understanding. It will be shown that the kuhnian paradigm and the kantian transcendental Ideea function in similar ways. Both serve as an orientation for scientific research, they make rules possible, and constitute nature in a weak, indirect, way. The relation between Ideea and understanding in the first „Critique” parallels in many ways the kuhnian relation between paradigm and normal science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early reception of the Kierkegaardian oeuvre in Norway has a two-fold complication in our inquiry - one is cultural and the other theological. This paper tries to reconstruct these two by following the way in which Kierkegaard's "attack upon Christendom" in Denmark is essentially a reformation movement and is transmitted into the Norwegian intellectual circles as a mark of cultural aestheticization. The point of convergence upon which this paper focuses is the artistical representation of the Kierkegaardian concept of anxiety into the works of Edvard Munch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a discussion of Kant's idea of a dialectic of pure reason and going through some key interpretations in recent Kant-scholarship, the paper investigates the way in which reason relates to experience in Kant's first Critique. It is shown how the three principles of reason make the use of the understanding possible by systematizing empirical knowledge as such, in a regulative, non-constitutive, manner. The paper reaches the conclusion that Kantian reason can relate to experience only by projecting infinite objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound originality of John Rawls’s theory of justice lies in the way it goes beyond both jusnaturalist theories, which have been accused of being illusory because they propose a “rational” justice, and juspositivist theories, which would also be debatable because they propose the preservation of legal reasoning in terms of the positive order, but eliminating from the law the plan of human action and, implicitly, the effective way of obtaining decisions in law. The paper aims to shed light on the concrete way in which John Rawls found a theoretical solution to overcome the inconveniences of the two great currents of legal philosophy. The author's solution is neither social agreement, nor compromise, nor even the “democratic” treatment of conceptions of good, but a theory of justice that takes into account the fact that global approaches to existence became irremediably plural in the twentieth century, being impossible for society to base its political organization on a single conception of existence. Observing, however, that the Justice for a society should be the same, while conceptions of Good may be different, Rawls identifies theoretical bases for a revolutionary theory, in which concepts such as “fair cooperation”, “overlapping consensus”, or “enlightened self-interest” have a remarkable comprehensive value. The idea that we can defend the same principles from different global doctrines is now all the more appealing as the diversity of motivational resources that enable social action is growing, and a social agreement or compromise is hard to imagine. This idea has a provocative continuation in Habermas’s perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to circumscribe, through a specific history of ideas approach, the role played in the destiny of Rawlsʼ theory of justice by Michael Sandel’s critical philosophy. Its hypothesis is that the revised theory of justice as fairness, the result of a process of clarification, nuance and reconsideration carried out by Rawls over two decades, reflects an important connection with the communitarian critique of A Theory of Justice, mainly with the one sustained by Michael Sandel, despite the lack of Rawlsʼ explicit referring to Sandel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to argue that the theoretical discourse on reflective equilibrium is marked by the presence of an equivocation between the method of reflective equilibrium and the state of reflective equilibrium. This equivocation allows for the formulation of seemingly legitimate questions, but which on analysis turn out to be based on a category mistake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the 20th century Galați was just a city-port, where you met all kinds of people. In the city were many luxury restaurants on the main streets, but also many places for the ordinary people. However, by the 1930s, a first-class restaurant that offered special services for banquets, at private or official events, would distinguish between the city's luxury restaurants: the "Suré" restaurant, located opposite the municipal park, on the town's promenade. The elite of Galați used to meet there and the wine cellar was also richly stocked. The "Suré" restaurant was famous in Galați because of its rarities and the ascending tariff, and its reputation had passed beyond the borders of Covurlui county (part of the current Galați county), being considered one of the best restaurants in the country, next to „Enescu and Iordache” in Bucharest, "Renier" in Constanta, "Bufnița" or "Zur Eule" in Sibiu, and "The Carpathian Bear" in Busteni, as Nicolae Steinhardt mentioned in the Journal of Happiness. In this paper we will present some aspects of the past of this famous restaurant, its moments of glory, of greatness, the periods of agony and its return, until the moment of the definitive disappearance of it from the Galați, because of the World War II and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the transition from the use of natural ice to that of artificial one, in Bucharest at the beginning of twentieth century, and the central role played by the city municipality. The ice played an important role in the food chain, before the advent of refrigerating technologies, as it was essential for preservation of foods, especially perishable ones like meat or fish. From the last decade of the 19th century, the medical profession was more and more concerned with the bacteriological hazards associated with natural ice, and had pressed for the introduction of artificial ice. In 1902, a warm winter had generated an ice crisis, which in turn prompted the City Hall to construct an artificial ice factory. It was a complicated process, made more challenging by the very short terms and by the necessity to import the installation from Western Europe. The inevitable delays resulted in a long and protracted conflict between the Borsig Company and the City Hall. In the following years, cold winters assured a sufficient supply of natural ice, and the municipal factory was neglected. In 1910, when a new crisis occurred, the old factory proved unusable and had to be replaced with a new one, soon completed with cold storage rooms. The municipality did not envisage the ice factory as an economic venture, but treated it more like a public service. The price of ice was set low, and the ice was distributed preferentially to those branches of the food chain where its absence would have caused the greatest dangers for consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the end of the 19th century, in a socio-political context in which biopolitical concerns of the state are combined with an interest for children, school meals become a topic of debate between various professional groups (doctors, teachers). Assimilated by the state in the process of governance, these professionals define a food model (the amount of food and the types of products recommended for children), invested with various social and cultural meanings. This paper discusses food practices in urban schools, based on a socio-cultural model disseminated through school. The topic of food will also be analysed taking into account the intersection with the school space model developed at the end of 19th century, following to what extent this model includes spaces especially designed for food preparation and serving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 1494, King Vladislaus II of Hungary established his court in Sibiu (Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben) for about one month. The sovereign's stay was recorded not only briefly, throughout the royal charters issued here in that particular time frame, but also in a more peculiar manner. Two accounting records, drawn up by the town's authorities, illustrate the joint effort for a good hosting of its king. A constant concern, reflected in these two historical sources, was precisely the supply of food and the providing of related services, such as water transportation, food preparation, or animal slaughtering. Although published more than a century ago, these accounts have not been exploited so far to the full extent of their data and of their analytical perspectives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to put into context the royal presence in Sibiu, but, more importantly, to highlight what this moment meant in terms of food, with its various features. These two accounting sources can be interrogated from the perspective of the consumed goods, the costs involved, the communal (from Sibiu's hinterland and not only) or individual contribution, sometimes determined by gender. Given that the event articulated itself as a time of celebration, food itself had an exceptional character, an aspect suggested by these financial records, especially regarding the quantities they noted down. Thus, they outline the profile of a city capable of assuming and sustaining the presence of the Hungarian royal court, while also letting the specifics of the local economy to be seen -- from acquiring oriental spices, to preparing vegetables and meats from local or regional households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt to reconstruct the importance of alimentation for the economic and cultural development of an episcopal town in Medieval Transylvania, by the example of Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Weissenburg) in the first decades of the 16th century. The inquiry is based mainly on sources from the family archive of bishop Ferenc Várdai (1513-1524): accountable registers, missives, testament, etc. The text is divided into three parts, the first traces the provenience of consumed food, while the second and third one show the personnel and inventory related to the nourishment of the bishop and his household. The bishop played an ambivalent part in the economic development of his residence town. On one hand, he stimulated its development by granting privileges, creating workplaces and attracting a large number of potential buyers, on the other hand, he inhibited economic growth by spending relatively small sums on food purchases in the town, retaining the monopoly of wine trade and imposing taxes. Sumptuous meals aimed to express the power and wealth of the bishop and thus to attract more and more people, familiars, into his household. The episcopal household from Alba Iulia had certainly a significant part in disseminating the Renaissance lifestyle throughout Transylvania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper aims to be a description of the stages that the human being goes through on the path to realizing the moral nature of the human being and ultimately the enlightenment. We will start from the Madman’s journey as it’s portraied in the Tarot cards, then we will see the implications of the homo demens and what it has in common with the Übermensch, but also with the shadow archetype. Afterwards we will apply our finding to aesthetics, more precisely to three well-known literary characthers: Faust, Raskolnikov and Siddhartha. We trace the actualization of the moral nature of the human being through the discarding of the layers of shadow and we will see that our last characther takes things to a higher level, the realization of enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main point of the paper is to support the hypothesis that there is a methodological and epistemological unity of knowledge as it is assigned to a specific time period, philosophical trend or geographical region. Together with general remarks, there are also three case studies: empiricism, rationalism and Kantian philosophy – whose main characteristics are displayed in order to show the above-mentioned unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the main achievements in contemporary social epistemology and a particular approach to knowledge. In this approach, scientific knowledge is interpretable as an epistemological “event”, as a social phenomenon, as a reality, as an activity and as a result, carried out in society, in specific circumstances, but not in a sociopolitical vacuum. The contributions of K. Mannheim, D. Bloor, L. Wittgenstein, D. Haraway, M. Hesse, R. Rorty, S. Fuller, Fr. Remedios and other thinkers are brought together to bring a contour to contemporary social epistemology. As Fr. Remedios notices “some of the natural philosophers of science argue that scientific methods are means to achieve social goals.” The study rejects the idea of social epistemology as an extreme and scientifically disqualifying relativization of the contemporary epistemological approach. An original part of the study describes “communicable knowledge” in opposition to “tacit knowledge” and in continuity with the aspect of sociality in epistemology, considering the position of the subject as a situated knower and social agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, Constanţa is the largest city in Dobruja (Romania), but also the heir of an important urban centre in the Antiquity, named Tomis. During the Roman occupation of these lands, Tomis was a major western Black Sea port and also the capital of Scythia province in the Late Antiquity. The peninsula where the antique city progressively developed was also inhabited in the Middle Ages, used mostly for commercial and less frequently for military purposes by the Byzantines, Italians and later by the Ottomans. From the former Ottoman settlement, the modern city developed starting with the last decades of the 19th century. In this general context, characterized also by uneven research depending on the historical period (i. e. proportional to the available sources), an uncomfortable question arises: was there or was it not some sort of continuity between the impressive antique structures (some of which were well documented) and the following ones of the Middle and Modern Ages? As a consequence, are there any elements of the modern city's configuration heirs of the antique ones? The topic is indirectly addressed here, by investigating old descriptions of the city in our search of archaeological clues. In this paper I have examined the archaeological relevance of an older but extensive monograph of the city, written in 1931 by Marin Ionescu-Dobrogianu. Although having a military career, the author was a passionate not only about the city of Constanţa but also about Dobruja and their geography and history. When he wrote this book, he had been an inhabitant of the city for about 40 years of his adult life,thus being himself a valuable witness of the modern city's development, which basically started from scratch - a ruined and almost depopulated settlement devastated by19th century Ottoman-Russian wars. It is presumable that the building sites of that period revealed to the contemporaries many more antique structures than the modern archaeologists of the 19th got the chance to record. In a nutshell, his book is no more than a compilation of data and quotes from different sources (carefully noted, though), set in a chronological order and where suitable, marked by the author's own addenda. However, one must note the boldness of writing a history of Constanţa throughout all times-an unique approach, as far as I know, as historians usually and currently deal only with their own period of expertise, and no efforts had been made in order to unite knowledge into a coherent story of this important historical city. For these reasons, I've considered Dobrogianu’s book the appropriate resource for starting my investigations on the city’s continuity thesis. Although extensive, it was not possible to include in this paper all the data from Dobrogianu's book which is relevant for archaeological purposes. I have selected three large recurrent topics: A. The general topography of the Peninsula; B. Visible "old" constructions on diffuse areas and C. Visible "old" constructions in precise, identifiable locations documented by various witnesses, including the author, leaving aside for future occasions subjects such as the mobile assets (especially architectural fragments and inscriptions), building material reuse (spolia) and the post-antique and premodern landscape - each of them with a certain interest for our main topic. After introductions (delimitating the subject, sources and approach), the first part of the paper includes the accounts on the general topography of the Peninsula (section A), which are partially complemented by info on historical buildings (sections B1, B4), suggesting that most of the topographical "accidents" (such as large ravine) have or might have an anthropic cause. Another accounts series (section B2) offers some arguments - although in an indirect manner -0 for the yet controversial issue of the perimetral fortifications in the Antiquity. Perhaps the most interesting part of the paper is where I correlate accounts on the so-called "Genovese storerooms" (section B3), from which it results, with high probability, that the storerooms were in fact not Genovese, but Roman, that what we see today under the so-called "Mosaic Edifice" is just a small fragment from the tens (or maybe hundreds) of storerooms which equipped the harbour in the Roman period and that some of them were still in use in the 17th century (and maybe later on). The idea of the Roman harbour fitted along the entire south-western shore of the Peninsula was clearly presented by Natalia Toma (2010), except for the mention that by fitting we understand not only terraces, but also storerooms. By correlating on a topographic support the literary sources with the archaeological evidence, supplementary arguments for the abovementioned virtual restoration were added. Section B4 treats an issue rarely addressed in the archaeological and historical literature, the Ottoman fortification, as Dobrogianu's book is quite generous with indications in this matter, still waiting to be verified by researchers. In the last part of the paper I centralized information of archaeological interest which can or could be, theoretically, precisely located in space, regarding segments of the Late Roman fortification (section C1), "old" and massive constructions seen in the basements of various public and private buildings (C2, C3), structures of the antique and medieval port (C4) and some of the dozens of tumuli along the roads which were still standing in or around the city during the early modern period (C5). Overall, this paper is an example of isolated urban history information reevaluated by correlating them with other sources (especially archaeological and cartographic), to the purpose of better understanding the urban structure's evolution in time. At last, in addition to the results of associating different information types and sources earned through this study, perhaps the most important aspect to be underlined is the importance of the approach itself, which is the critical evaluation of a source apparently dated and generally ignored for various prejudices. As it hopefully comes out of this paper, the literature outside the scientific spheres can be itself a valuable source of information, yet insufficiently explored and exploited. Undoubtedly, in some of these cases we may speak about proper sources of the Modern Era, of a real archaeological interest, which need to be understood and treated as such. Extending this research direction in the study of historical Constanţa, as well as the systematic reevaluation of the premodern literary sources, paralleled by the centralization of the relevant archaeological and cartographic sources, may yield, in time, significant evidence for the general fate of the city after the Antiquity, but also, in particular, the fate of its antique and medieval structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Realm of St. Stephan, like any other realm of Europe, was a world of political, administrative, social, juridical and cultural diversity and individualism. The best example is Transylvania, province of the realm since the 11th century, where individuals, families and communities were bound direct to the kingship, by given word and by written privilege. While archaic societies like the Szeklers kept their bounds with the kingship through the given word by the late Middle Ages, the rights and obligations of the Transylvanian Saxons towards the kingship were established, since their early settlement in the mid 12th century, through the written privilege. In this paper we aim to analyse the military obligations of the Transylvanian Saxon towns, seats and districts, established by the Hungarian kings in the 13th and 14th centuries. The main idea is that the four „local authonomies" of the Transylvanian Saxons (Sibiu, Brașov, Bistrița and The Two Seats - Mediaș and Șeica Mare), along with the city of Cluj, had distinct military obligations towards the kingship, (at least) until 1486, when the Transylvanian Saxon University was established. According to this obligations, the towns, seats and districts of the Transylvanian Saxons raised militias and hired mercenaries, in order to take part at the royal campaigns. Since the 15th century there are preserved several orders of mobilization, issued by the Hungarian kings or by the Transylvanian voivodes and vicevoivodes for the towns, seats and districts of the Transylvanian Saxons. One can observe that the latter fulfilled this orders only if they received them direct from the king or from his appointed deputy. The mobilization orders issued by the voivodes, vicevoivodes and other military captains of Transylvania were simply ignored by the leaders of the Transylvanian Saxon towns, seats and districts. They relied on their written privileges and on their actual military might (militias and mercenaries), without fearing consequences from their Transylvanian neighbours. Yet, historical sources are mentioning the participation of the Transylvanian Saxon militias in campaigns led by the king or by the voievodes in Wallachia, Moldavia and in Transylvania itself (1426, 1427, 1442, 1467, 1476, 1479, 1526), which demonstrate that the Transylvanian Saxons fulfilled their military obligations towards the Hungarian Crown, even if this particular cases the orders of mobilization are not preserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aims to identify the metaphysical elements in the work of Dimitrie Cantemir, and to demonstrate the fact they pertain to the cited philosophical domain. In the first part of this paper, the presence of the four Aristotelian causes is identified in their specific form the Romanian philosopher's works, with similarities and differences to Aristotle. The role of the ethics category and its relation with the four Cantemirian causes is also taken into account. A consequence of the way of taking over the four causes is the theory of double truth. The two Gnostic perspectives are highlighted: the profane knowledge and the sacred knowledge. Subsequently, it is concluded, in the light of the arguments presented, that Cantemir's work is a true philosophical one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What we call nowadays post-truth derives from the development of pragmatic roots in the soil of modernism, thus becoming post-modernism. The preeminent subjectivity of the former, as an era of the individual by definition, models the Truth and shapes it, dissipating it in a series of "truths" built mainly on an emotional foundation as opposed to a factual one. Given the fact that the role of the image as a symbol is, beyond transmission of information, its capacity to be emotionally received and to enhance the leap of knowledge for its viewer, this paper will attempt to show the importance of the image in the post-truth era. More precisely, one of the aims of this article is to demonstrate the predictable rise of the post-truth concept in the post-modern era of digitalization of the information and the image. The other one is to correlate the evolution of the technology that repositions the thinking subject and its knowledge in the world with the reconstruction of reality as a simple social construct in a world of image pre-eminence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B. Spinoza (1632-1677) is one of the central figures in the history of philosophy that has significantly influenced the Western culture. Generally known as a rationalist, Spinoza was less widely accepted as a philosopher of education, although such an outline is outlined in his writings. An explanation for this may be that in none of his works did Spinoza explicitly address education. However, concepts, values and implications of ethical theory that are particularly relevant in educational endeavors can be easily identified in Spinozian texts. In this paper we intend to explore the conceptual resources provided by Spinoza that underlie the moral education and place them in the contemporary educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I aim in this paper to obtain a simple, perhaps even a simplified, point of view on the normative dimension of good governance from the angle of its relation to moral agency. This view is designed from the perspective of a political realist theory on political legitimacy, inspired by both Bernard Williams's realist conception on political legitimacy, which maintains that a legitimate state must be limited to ensuring social peace and the conditions for social cooperation, and Thomas Pogge's institutionalist conception on human rights, which maintains that every person has a right to a just institutional order. According to the latter view, a legitimate institutional order must meet at least the condition of ensuring the social cooperation and peace with the premise of preserving individuals' moral agency. Preserving individuals' moral agency is also a condition for good governance. My paper also has an applicative dimension. I start my argument with an analysis of the quality of governance in Romania and end it with making some reflections about the ways to improve the Romanian public policy making framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the importance of the archaeological site represented by the Princely Court from Suceava (Suceava County, Romania) which was mentioned for the first time in written sources at the end of the 14th century. During the Middle Ages, when Suceava was the residence seat of the Moldavian rulers (until the 16th century), a Princely Court, two fortresses and many churches were built here. A part of these medieval constructions have survived until now. This remarkable heritage is the main pride of the locals (the authorities and common people) in Suceava today and represents one of the symbols of the city. At the same time, we observe that the medieval city with its important constructions is situated in the contemporary downtown area and the medieval constructions are suffocated by the modern buildings and the roads between them. In time, the pressure has grown constantly because the urban development is concentrated in this central area and the local authorities continue to accept new constructions in already crowded area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the information provided by written sources on the presence of the friars minor at Braşov (Kronstadt / Brassó) in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, attempting to identify the location of their medieval buildings. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century the town had a single mendicant convent founded by the friars preachers on the north-east corner of the walled area. In 1507, King Vladislav II assigned the former Corpus Christi chapel of the hospital to the Observant Franciscans for the establishment of a house. The place was formally accepted the same year by the Order's provincial chapter. From the very beginning the friars were faced with the hostility of the parish priest, the main reason consisting, apparently, in the selling of indulgences practiced by the brethren. Not only the large amount of money raised by the friars, who by the spring of 1511 were supposed to gather as many as a thousand florins, but also the chest for money which, according to written sources, was set up in their church for that purpose, as well as the royal protection enjoyed by the brethren suggest that the indulgence concerned the raise of funds for the new St. Peter's basilica in Rome, initiated by Pope Julius II in 1507. According to a papal bull issued in 1508, the king of Hungary was allowed to keep two thirds from that money for the military expenditures of defense against the Turks. As indicated by the city accounts, the Franciscan friars were eventually expelled in 1529, and their buildings demolished in the summer of the same year. Two entries in the city accounts of 1520 concerning a payment made for the water draining from a house across the Observant friars in the upper suburb, reveal the location of the Franciscan friary outside the western city gate, so-called Porta Corporis Christi or Katharinenthor. Further hints provided by written sources, like the proximity to the city moats and to a fish pond, allow the assumption that the friary was located on the Corpus Christi street, perhaps on a plot of land that after the Reformation served as cemetery, and on which, between 1790-94, a Lutheran church was built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an evaluation of the current state of what can be called "historic centre" in the Romanian cities that suffered different types of interventions in the communist period. Regarding the recent history of these urban components, the paper evaluates the particular situation of the Romanian area, mainly Wallachia and Moldavia, and compares it to the rest of Europe. We can detect a few significant phases in the past century, in which Romanian cities suffered due to harsh interventions. The most pregnant ones are: the one following the 50s, after the 1977 earthquake, and the one happening today, the study highlighting the process and the results of these phases. From this point of view, there are cities that remained without the historic morphostructures, cities that conserve them partially and very few that have historic centres kept almost intact. The main target of this study is conducting case studies for Romanian cities from Moldavia and Wallachia and, as comparison, for cities of Arad-Oradea area. Thus, taken in account were medium sized cities- Piatra Neamţ and Curtea de Argeş (from Moldavia and Walachia) and as reference the small western cities of Ineu and Pecica. For each of them, reconstructions of the longer developments, especially of the last two centuries are proposed (using historical cartography and other data) and the types of interventions undergone in the communist era and their current state are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the sort of understanding that is provided through a certain type of model - the ABM model. I argue that it is more plausible to approach this sort of understanding as a non-explanatory form, i.e. not delivered through a scientific explanation. I will recall in this sense some suggestions made by Peter Lipton on non-explanatory understanding. In the second part, I will discuss and reject some critiques that were raised against such non-explanatory forms by K. Khalifa and M. Stevens. I will end by sketching some further possible directions for investigation that could make for a further working agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science is both the road to knowledge and the totality of knowledge accepted as such by the specialists of the scientific communities. Starting from a first distinction, betwen science and pseudo-science applicable in practical domains and concrete situations that indicate science rather as a practical result, the paper identifies a battery of criteria brought to the fore to describe and nuance the proposed distiction (activity vs. result): the criterion of education, the criterion of exemplars, the criterion of incommensurability, the criterion of systematicity, discovery and justification, the criterion of scientific progress, and the ontological criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, from a critical point of view, I underlined the fact that, in spite of the success of their intuitive reconstruction of mathematics, both Kantianism and Neo-intuitionism (not only the Brouwerian one!) do not represent a solid philosophical ground of them (mathematics). Besides, even Heyting says that for the better, to achieve the understanding in mathematical intuitionism it is not necessary to address its philosophical thesis or some psychological ones. Nevertheless, this does not mean that, in general, for a proper grounding of mathematical intuitionism, a suitable philosophical view is useless, such as a correlative theory of intuition, which (intuition), by the way, in every intuitionist perspective is assumed as a fundamental item of mathematical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows that the Kantian moral is necesarily a formal moral because the pure reason must use in the moral field some of the conceptual instruments that it uses in the theoretical realm. Thus the moral law can take in the moral field the universal form that natural law takes in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terms of utopia and utopian refer to a concept that pervades the modern thought. This concept has acquired many meanings, but some of them seem more central than others. Utopia, utopian mean something that is not real, something that cannot become real, even though it would be desirable; but they can also acquire a more normative meaning referring to something that should happen, something that is inherently good, and even if it is not to be made real, one should strive as a private person or as a society toward the goal that lies in the meaning of the term itself. The Work of Thomas Morus seems to incarnate humanistic values that address man as a rational being with intrinsic value, that can be educated, that can fashion himself/herself, so that he/she can live a dignified life. But it is really so? Our paper attempts to illuminate some aspects of the concept of utopia, and examines the text that gave the name to an entire genre of philosophical-political writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to prove that the transcendence issue embraces some subtle solutions in Romanian philosophy. As for example, Mircea Florian's metaphysics starts with the fundamental object of the traditional metaphysics, namely God, acquiring Immanuel Kant's doctrine about God as regulative ideal of pure reason, in order to reveal its two metaphysical hypostases, i.e. ontological transcendence and epistemological transcendence. As collatio, it is brought out to complement Lucian Blaga's metaphysics insofar it addresses the transcendence issue (the Great Anonymous) and also Constantin Noica's reassessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts from the relation between two of the main methods of science in Aristotle's view, i.e., definition and proof, in order to individualize and to distinguish the former, and to determine its species and its relations with the other ways of determining notions and concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of our paper is to reconstruct three fundamental Western ways of thinking around the valuation of two entities, the community and the individual. The three paradigms considered are: the Greek one, the Christian medieval one and the modern one. The hypothesis is specified in three ways: the Greek philosophy has focused on the community; the Christian and modern thinking have focused on the individual (the person); the former on the divine individual and the latter on the human one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]