Search

This paper aims at giving a coherent interpretation of Winnicott's concept of the „mirror-role of the mother's face". As we are going to try to demonstrate, following one of Winnicott's letters to Klein, in order that a gesture, be it spontaneous or creative, could be met, it has to first of all be reflected by someone else, in this case, by the mother. Therefore, we are going to present, in a Heideggerian manner, a phenomenological analysis of gestures, as this is found in Heidegger's Zollikon Seminars, so that we can prove that gestures reflect a unified comportment, which in Winnicott's words would mean the „true self". Before analyzing Winnicott's conception, we are going to turn towards some insights from Lacan's mirror stage. We are also going to search for the relation between the true self and the spontaneous gesture in one of Winnicott's earlier papers. The last chapter will consist of an analysis of Winnicott's view on creativity, and as we want to demonstrate, creativity is possible only if the other person, namely alterity, validates, confirms, or recognizes the spontaneous gesture. Our main thesis is that if the mother meets the child's spontaneous gesture, he or she is going to introject the mother's image, which in effect, will give the child's enough trust in the world, so that he or she will start to take a creative glance towards reality. We will focus especially on the situation in which the mother responds to the infant's gesture by smiling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses how certainty is formed in conformity with the Lacanian theory from the 1950s. It focuses mainly on the phenomenon of being-addressed which, it argues, lies at the heart of psychotic certainty. A number of clinical examples are given from clinical praxis. They bring forth the key theoretical element upon which certainty is based: an indecipherable element which results from an encounter with a void. The paper describes how certainty is a secondary phenomenon built around a moment of disturbance in the life of a subject. As a counterpart to this development, the author compares psychotic certainty with the Heideggerian concept of Ruf and the phenomenon of Vocation and Revocation in the work of Giorgio Agamben. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020's are to be named (if not already) the pandemia times. The present paper does not aim to analyses the changes and consequences that this sanitary crisis has produced, or to determine possible scenarios about how the world (in all its dynamics and layers) will survive in the post-pandemia period. There are other academics and (already) plenty of scientific papers that tackled these issues (the social sciences scientific community has responded almost instantly to the COVID-19 effects). This research paper contains the idea of science that social research encompasses by analysing (from a socio-anthropologist eye and based on professional training) the data circulation vortex during the first semester of 2020. The results and the manner of research (constrained by the urgency and isolation restrictions), respectively the quest for the discrepancies between the information offered by governments and international organisations, and by scientific inquiries and academic sources, represent an original perspective on data legitimacy when used for the public. This paper's main aim is not to achieve the comfortable status of the academic "likes" (converted in citations and indexes). It aspires to become a manifesto about the approximation and the substitution of the daily life with the computed (technologically-mediated) narratives about it!. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of command in our social and ethical lives? This paper tries to show that there can be gleaned from Edmund Husserl's posthumous manuscripts two types of investigations with regard to the acts of command: the master-servant relation which represents a constitutive model for social relationships based on willing (1910) and the practical and ethical re-thinking of command founded on a theory of the person (1920). Moreover, Eric Voegelin provides an alternative ethical approach to command through his theory of governance (Herrschaftslehre) which proposes a different understanding of the social -spiritual world compared to Husserl's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we aim to analyze several aspects linked to the content of the legal provisions, communication of law and theories about the truth. As social beings, our lives take place in groups and we rely on others and on society to achieve our individual purposes. In order to function properly, the society must be guided by a set of rules that are known and understood by all its the members. In the process of enactment and application of the law, a language is used to transmit the information. The language doesn't include all the intellectual input and the entire idea of the legislator, but there is no other way to communicate the rule. And, without communication, the law cannot be known, understood and obeyed. We present in the paper important arguments regarding the communication of the norms, the lack of precision of any language, and the necessity that the law to reflect reality. Law is the necessary frame for a quality life in society. Through a proper legal system, we are able to achieve our personal goals, search for happiness, keep our health, raise our children and so on. We also referred in the paper to the philosophical theories regarding the truth, as we consider that they are important for a good establishment of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on an ethos of the subject as psychoanalysis conceives it. In order to do so, the paper is addressing Marc Richir's phenomenology and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis. The hypothesis that it makes use of is that there are some common grounds between the two theoretical approaches, especially regarding the problem of the self. Both theories support the idea that the self, i.e. self-image, represents a liminal point between the registers of the Imaginary and the Real. Thus, it represents a decisive point in approaching (or not) an ethics of the Real, facilitated by anguish and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper follows the extent to which the requirements on the content of the abstracts in four scientific journals from Cluj-Napoca publishing psychology articles are met: The Annual Review (Yearbook) of the «George Barițiu» History Institute in Cluj-Napoca, Series Humanistica; Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An Interdisciplinary Journal; Journal of Evidence-Based Psychotherapies, and Studia Psychologia-Paedagogia. Requirements on the content of abstracts have been formulated from the consultations dedicated to this topic and are generally based on the indications given by The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, sixth edition. They are dependent on the type of research described in the article accompanied by the abstract. The following types of research have been considered: empirical research, narrative review (nonsystematic review, literature reviews), systematic reviews (research synthesis), meta-analysis, case study, and method or instrument development. All the psychology articles from the four journals published in 2009-2018 (N = 550) were analyzed. None of the journals specify in the author's instructions what information should be included in the abstracts. For this reason, the content of abstracts analyzed differs according to the authors of the articles. For each type of research, there is a very low frequency of abstracts that meet all or almost all of the requirements. The research should be extended to all journals containing psychology articles published in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Phanariote Century", the period between 1711 / 1716-1821, in which the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were ruled by ethnic Greeks, loyal subjects of the sultan, from the rich Phanar district of Istanbul, was considered a period of decline characterized by the degradation of social life, by the accentuated impoverishment of a predominantly rural population, by the prosperity of the nobility, by the exacerbation of taxation and, last but not least, by the increase of corruption at all institutional levels in the two principalities. This paper is an analysis, based on documentary sources and historiographical studies, of the mechanisms of operation of local and central state institutions to determine the extent to which the facts we associate today with acts of corruption have significantly influenced, in a negative way, the Romanian society of that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our opinion, the last two years since the debut of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world have already left an important legacy: the urge of re-thinking the Modern suppositions regarding freedom, welfare, progress, and happiness. However, this imperative involves not only the reality of these principles, but also a side-effect of the newly-shaped pandemic world: i.e. the regression of social life from the standards of "good life" to the level of survival; the increasingly thinner line between the human being and the automaton; the giving up of creativity in favour of complying with the new social standards and formal-mechanic imitation. Our paper emphasizes some attempts made by various authors whose research works tried to sketch solutions to these problems, before and after the pandemic (Drăgănescu, Gonseth, Han, Galparsoro et alia). We believe that, unlike the traditional and Modern society, where the value of sacrifice for a collective purpose was assumed by the community/society itself, the supreme value of this new kind of utopia in the contemporary society consists of the sacrifice imposed top-bottom by the authorities, regardless of other social conditions. It is a sacrifice based on simple collective trust on the official emergency regulations, which promises some individual good-feeling in return for the good-will of the person to accept being protected by the inoculation of the serum. Would this status quo function during the next possible future pandemics? It is an open question, depending on many factors, as, for instance, the willingness of communities and nations to comply with future unpredictable and not always transparent regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moral obligation of honesty in medical practice. In the series of professional obligations which are limited to the field of professional ethics and might throw out of gear the doctor-patient relationship by causing various communication difficulties, the physician's honesty towards his/her own patients represents one of the leading imperatives. Yet, in the contemporary medical practice, the truthful disclosure of relevant medical information can become controversial in cases in which it could negatively impact the patient's psychological state. By discussing the main grounds of this ethical obligation, within this paper we approach a few model cases in which certain limits to this obligation could be set. By approaching the principle of respecting the patient's autonomy as the main basis both for the obligation of honesty and for the patients' right not to learn about the information concerning their medical state, along this paper we argue that each patient's autonomy stands for one of the limits of the truth-telling in medical practice. Eventually, starting from a brief outline of Romanian patterns of doctor-patient communication, we aim at opening up an analysis upon a recurrent issue in the age of autonomy, that of the relationship between non-disclosure of medical information and paternalism in medical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witnessing an ever more increasing occurrence of antinatalist stances together with the common expressions of critical perspectives addressing an obsolete infantocentric social structure which, today, pervade even the social media, I have chosen, as research guidance of this paper, to question the extent to which certain theories belonging to analytic contemporary philosophy are liable for today's individual choices regarding the avoidance of committing to a parental role and, especially, to maternity. Along this paper, I analyse, up to their most refined conceptual distinctions, both the deontological and the consequentialist views upon natality, with the purpose of offering an account of the role played by different theoretical positions in nourishing the growing scepticism regarding procreation as well as the more and more popular discourse promoting alternative options to assuming any parental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effervescence of the interwar period also contains the sad story of a brilliant young generation, but lost - intellectually - in the destructive passion of politics. Their search for philosophical, spiritual and political renewal inclined them to fascist doctrines, while their concentration on ethnic, nationalist, Romanian Orthodoxy led them to the legionary movement and anti-Semitism. The present paper offers an overview on the delicate issue of anti-Semitism in interwar Romania and exemplifies it with several successful stories of individuals who managed to escape, just in time, the terror of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is inspired by the vast work of the Romanian thinker Mircea Florian (1888-1960), rich in interesting and substantial interpretations, which inspire to reconsider some convictions routed in the speciality exegesis. For this present work, we considered the arguments that Florian brings to support certain theses proposed in respect to the life and work of Titu Maiorescu, Mihai Eminescu, and Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. The study of the philosophical beginnings of T. Maiorescu determines M. Florian to notice an ideatic constant in his thinking and work, represented by the influence of Herbart. This influence is visible in all the Maiorescu's works - starting with his PhD thesis -, and in any and all major philosophical fields: ontology, logic, aesthetic, education theory, culture theory etc. Thus, researching the life and work of M. Eminescu, the Romanian interpreter uses the thesis-antithesis-synthesis Hegelian triad from love to stoicism -, with the accent on the particular element of the antithesis, which has, in itself, a moment of transformation in a „more profound self" (poet's pessimism). Finally, expressing himself about the life and work of C. Rădulescu-Motru, the interpreter brings the attention on the confusion between the scientific spirit and the social sciences (particulars), thus highlighting the two plans of science evolution - of the surface, which brings with itself the change via the technique, respectively the plan of the depth, which represents the privilege of the science or the metaphysics. The hermeneutic of the energetic personalism is done throughout a profound historic and philosophic analysis of the classic and modern European culture. In this meaning, the energetic personalism constitutes not only a pure theoretical option of its author, but a spiritual expression of the nation to which he belongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the case of a Hungarian Catholic clerk, an 81 year old lady from the Transylvanian countryside. Her daughter has sent her a bigger amount of money, but she understood soon that the post officer, a women herself, has stolen a significant part of it. A procedure of reclamation followed, but the case remained unsolved. The director of the post-office and the local policemen did not help. Then she turned to the Romanian Orthodox priest for help and offered some money in change. Although it is quite widespread among the local Hungarians of different religious affiliation (but almost never Orthodox) to ask Romanian Orthodox priests for help in times of personal crisis (or the crisis of a family member), this is a highly contradictory solution for a pious Catholic clerk. She's never been before to any Orthodox priest, but she was aware of similar help seeking activities among the local Hungarian, Romanian or Roma. The same is true for the use of magic during her long lifetime. But using magic is regarded less sinful by the old clerk, than going to the Orthodox priest for the solution of a legal case. She senses God's intention behind her failure!. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[At the Sources of Poetry] manuscript, drafted during the 1960-1970 period, represents an aesthetic trial of the lyric poetry, left in a drafting-project stage, never completed, nor finished. The manuscript text enters the aesthetic research area of Professor Dumitru Isac, of which plenty edited and unedited works resulted, some being published during the last years by "Anuar" [Year Book] and "Studii şi cercetări din domeniul ştiinţelor socio-umane" [Studies and researches in the field of social science and humanities]. The initial fragment of the La izvoarele poeziei manuscript, published for the first time hereof, endeavors a journey in the history of the aesthetics, concerning the definition of poetry, of the formal structure and of its artistic mission. The initial motivation of the research, invoking the state of the poetic creation in the Romanian society at the time the manuscript was drafted, is quickly overcome towards a welcomed and vast opening towards the universal contributions of the investigated lyric poetry. The Dumitru Isac's main sources in drafting the paper are represented mainly by French aestheticians, namely H. Brémond, P. Claudel, É. Gilson, P. Valéry, M. Dufrenne etc, but he also valorizes local thinkers: L. Blaga, L. Rusu, T. Vianu. Explicitly, D. Isac settles the ground of his research in the field of the poetry philosophy of a certain "objective research" of the poetry, and not within the literary critics. Thus, the paper does not aim at researching the various known lyrical creations, for the purpose of establishing their value or non-value. The author seeks something else: that the concrete examples, which were chosen and analyzed, to illustrate what the poetry is in itself, which are its sources and component elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important voivodal institutions of Transylvania, with an uninterrupted continuity in the period of the Principate, was the army (Exercitus Transylvanie). This evolution meant important changes: the men power development - its expansion in numbers, in their training and their war strategy - determined its involvement in many fighting campaigns throughout Central and South-East Europe for eight centuries. This paper addresses a large military law terminology - through the analysis and interpretation of an edict (regulations) unknown by Romanian historiography, made by Transylvanian prince Mihail Apafi, in 1671 - contributing in completing historical and juridical information regarding the way the army and all military personnel were not only disciplined, but also how was its Christian morale towards internal and international war campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research paper aims to analyze in a qualitative manner the main and specific causes of school dropout in young Roma (including age, culture, economical status - poverty, social discrimination, and infrastructure). Our purpose is to explore the phenomenon of school drop-out or early school-leaving as well as to identify its reasons among disadvantaged youth aged 14-22, who failed to complete lower and/or upper secondary education, including the young people who dropped school to raise a family. In addition, the research includes three interviews with successful young Roma that are at postgraduate level (faculty, master, and PhD) in order to analyze the educational success in a comparative manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to examine the concept of human relatedness in psychoanalytic research in light of the Martin Heidegger's phenomenology of human being and the Daseinsanalytic movement influenced by his thought. It first addresses the significance and the conceptual basis of the so-called interpersonal-relational shift in psychoanalysis. Then, different dimensions of human relatedness will be illustrated based on Heidegger's insights into the nature of man's existence. Marking Heidegger's distinction between our being-in-relationship-to the beings and the fundamental being-inrelationship-to the understanding of being is of great importance in this regard. Finally, it will be shown that, though the interpersonal-relational approach in psychoanalysis can be considered in harmony with Heidegger's emphasis on the relational character of human being in certain aspects, it can itself be under criticism from a Heideggerian perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose some routes to be taken by the human subject in its becoming. In other words, its purpose is to be a short phenomenological anthropology, one in which being human doesn't have nothing to do with the classical humanism, but represents an essential trait, that of having the capacity of instituting language into speech. Being potentiated with such a capacity of institution, the human being can trigger in itself the original implosion of the Bejahung, a real Big Bag of whose remnant radiation accompanies the being for its whole life. Having this background noise at its ... back, the being humanises itself as, discovering its instituting powers, it filters this remnant noise, contains it, and gives it a meaning, all that being done in its proper manner through its own speech. Because of the difference between language (langue) and speech (parole) that has been discovered thanks to structuralism, but much more because of the reinterpretation made by the lacanian psychoanalysis of this discovery, we can now construct our paper on the lynchpin of what Marc Richir called sense-in-the-making (sens se faisant). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the contemporary philosophical debate regarding human biomedical enhancement, one of the main objections against enhancement is based upon the hypothesis that there is a high probability that it could lead to social and political injustice. Within this paper, I address the compatibility of the biomedical enhancement with the axiological system assumed by Western societies. The assessment of the above mentioned compatibility starts from the premise that values such as individual freedom, social justice, equality of chances, and plurality, which represent the milestones of any democratic society, could be endangered by procedures and/or technologies of biomedical (moral) enhancement of the persons. By thoroughly describing the way in which these values are to be affected by the humans' accessibility to biomedical enhancement means, I try to emphasize the social risks of creating what bioethical scholarship today calls "post-persons", i.e., persons with a much higher moral status than that of normal moral personhood. Therefore, a first aim of this paper is to examine the arguments for and against biomedical moral enhancement of persons, from an individual as well as from a social perspective. The second aim of this work is to critically analyze the possible emergence of a higher moral status than that acknowledged, throughout the history of the Western moral philosophy, as moral personhood. The third aim of this paper consists in assessing the arguments which are raised against creating post-persons. These counter-arguments defend the thesis that even though mankind could either employ the existing technologies that enhance human capacities such as cognitive or moral capacities or it would just develop new technologies for the purpose of enhancing certain human traits, the cautious decision would be to call off any use of such technologies that could lead, either directly or indirectly, to the creation of "post-persons". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the ethnographic research of a mountain rural community, which between 1997 and 2012, in the context of timber trade liberalization and the global economic integration of Romania, has known a substantial economic and social transformation. This site's particularities make possible a close observation of the processes that take place under conditions of a free market economy and a minimal state. I will show from a historical perspective how these conditions, along with a global system of work organization that makes work possible only in dependent relation to capital, produce a profound social stratification and inequality. I will also present ways in which individuals internalize and accept the justificatory discourse of this organization system, as well as their indignation, the critique they produce, and the resistance practices they adopt. On the other hand, this paper refutes the apprehension of the Romanian neoliberalism as a Western borrowed system, institutionally implemented, and imitated at organizational level, arguing instead that it emerged by itself in novel ways, at the level of individual actions and shared beliefs, due to Romania's opening to global economic system, and under the structuring power of this system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If an entire tradition of classical philosophy has found many of its resources in the question "Who am I?", contemporary philosophy, especially the one influenced by analytic philosophy, aims, by analogy, at defining individual identity, yet from a different perspective. Thus, answering the question: "What makes someone the same person over time?" guides, today, the inquiry regarding personal identity. At least two seem to be, today, the critical issues that generate searches of the basis of personal identity: a metaphysical one, entailed by the death anxiety, and a practical other one, which arises from questioning the responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions. Therefore, in the attempt of explaining the way(s) in which we, as persons, persist over time, within this paper I will first review some theories or perspectives on personal identity which describe the necessary and/or sufficient conditions to ensure that the numerical identity of a being is maintained at different time points throughout her/his life. I will highlight, in a comparative manner, the theories based on psychological continuity, which set up numerical identity on different types of causal dependence of the individuals' psychic experiences, such as memory and/or psychological connectedness, as well as the animalistic theories, which favour the body as the foundation of the personal identity and of one's persistence along time. Eventually, I will try to prove that, among these theories, two - namely the narrative theory and the anthropological theory - seem to be able of answering both the older question of classical philosophy and of the more recent one concerning the definition and construction of personal identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper wishes to explain how Hegel's speculative logic described in the Science of Logic as the „exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind” does not annihilate another famous thesis of the German philosopher according to which „every one is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts.” (in Philosophy of Right). The reason is the following: the essence of God is not outside of time, but it must be inasmuch in time as it is outside of it. Especially in his discussion regarding rational theology, Hegel shows how the justification of the fact that an eternal („logical”) essence might exist is purely a historical process and, therefore, we encounter a twist in our analysis - we do not need to understand temporality from the standing point of eternity, but we must investigate how the idea of eternity occurs in time and how it must be understood from the point of view of time itself. Moreover, I will try to show how the longing for timelessness, an all-too-human endeavor, is a source of the limitation of the categories and structures criticised by Hegel in his Logic and which are taken to be symptoms of natural consciousness. These categories are exactly the „naturality” and „common-sense” which block philosophical inquiry, inquiry which cannot ignore the fact that the results cannot be dissociated from the process that generated them and, consequently, can justify its position without needing an arbitrary presupposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after the passing of the most beloved professor Teodor Dima, member of the Romanian Academy, this paper tries to capture the distinctive features of the Romanian and universal culture personalities becoming, via his vision. Thus, we consider that the texts elaborated by Prof. Dima about the book of C. Noica, Letters on Hermes's Logic, are of a fundamental and perennial importance. Our cherished professor, from Iasi, expresses, in this sense, the conviction that „Hermes's logic” represents a logic ontology, and, even more general, a metaphysics of knowledge and its logic. We wouldn't have, thus, to deal with „another logic” effectively, but with a different modelling or interpretation of the logic, under hermeneutic and dialectic sign. We might say that, in this case, we also have to deal with a new use of logic, throughout the re-thinking of its meaning and finality. Essentially, the idea inserted by Noica is the following: he contours a logic of the individual that makes the junction with the general, an „individual-general”, configuring meanings and purposes in the great culture of humankind. In other words, it is proposed to us the analysis and comprehension of certain examples of the synalethism, specific to the Romanian cultural-spiritual space. Knower and consequent cultivator of the sayings of Noica about the necessity to open logic towards culture, T. Dima operates remarkable openings towards major figures of Romanian philosophers, which briefly comprise as many culture, knowledge and creation horizons. In their light, the logic is achieved via ethical enterprises, signifying as much hypostasis of man's detaching from the dull quotidian existence, and her/his entering the spiritual excellence, throughout beauty and truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed paper initiates, at an exploratory level, the investigation of the relationship between the level of autonomy of the emotion regulation goals (measured with the scales of the Self-Regulation of Withholding Negative Emotions - SRWNE -, an instrument elaborated by Kim, Deci, and Zuckerman, in 2002) and the syllogistic reasoning processes (examined through a syllogistic task with two versions, with a different linguistic format, which presumably favor different reasoning processes: the M format, supposedly favoring the inference based on automatic recognition of learned syllogistic schemata, and the E format, presumably favoring general, harder, deliberate analytic processes). A total number of 91 first year students at the University of Fine Arts and Design from Cluj-Napoca (mean age: 20 years, 68 females, 20 males, 3 without a specified gender) participated at the study. The sample was randomly separated in two relatively equal groups, based on the administration order of the two versions of the syllogistic task. The results of the research indicate that the autonomy, as a social aspect of one's functioning, may play a role in the link between the way people set their emotion regulation goals and the way they think deductively. More specifically, there were obtained, mostly, statistically significant or marginally significant positive correlations between the preference for the integrated (autonomous) emotion regulation goals and the performance for the valid syllogisms (and, correlatively, negative correlations between the performance for them and the preference for the externally controlled emotion regulation goals), particularly for the one-model ones and in the M version of the syllogistic task. The general pattern of the results in what respects the association between the performance for the invalid syllogisms and the preference for the investigated types of emotion regulation goals had similarities with the one obtained for the case of the valid syllogisms, but there were also important differences between them. The variation of the investigated correlations based on the considered type of syllogisms, on their linguistic format, or on the administration order of the two versions of the syllogistic task suggests that the studied relationship might not be explained solely based on some general thinking abilities, i.e. that more specific factors, related with the two versions of the syllogistic task, may be involved in that relationship (e.g., one's argumentative experience, presumably associated with the autonomous choice of her/his goals). At the same time, the above-mentioned variation is important for a better understanding of the syllogistic reasoning, supporting the idea that different deductive processes may be usually implicated in the correct solving of the multiple-model valid syllogisms than the processes implicated in the correct solving of the multiple-model invalid ones, because the pattern of the correlations between the performance for them and the preference for the investigated emotion regulation goals was not the same (a result that contradicts the prediction of the mental model theory for the syllogistic reasoning that there should be no difference between the two types of multiple-model syllogisms regarding their solving and its relation with one's argumentative experience, or personal autonomy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the 19th century, a Transylvanian nobleman organized an expedition in several regions of East Africa. Count Sámuel Teleki's expedition resulted in several geographical discoveries, such as the Rudolph and Stephanie lakes or the Teleki Volcano. In this paper, we focus on the anthropological and historical dimensions of the Transylvanian explorer's journeys. After studying a number of unpublished documents related to the count's African voyages - his diary and some of his private letters - we draw a "portrait" of the three main groups of native populations that he encountered along the way: Arabs, East-Africans, and indigenous. Obviously, his descriptions cannot be considered "ethnographic" accounts, as Count Teleki lacked scientific training in this field; to the contemporary scholar, his diary notes and spontaneous remarks are filled with a sense of racism and superiority of the "civilised white man", and this is somehow understandable given the place and the historical period in which Count Teleki lived and was educated. However, we believe that these descriptions are important today not as an objective depiction of 19th century African populations, but as an account of the encounter between a representative of Central European nobility and the native populations of East Africa in the late period of the great expansions of the colonial powers in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to understand how individuals use their free time and to sum up the main activities of leisure in Romania. First of all, I present a schematic overview of the history of time use surveys. Then I discuss their relevance in both sectional and longitudinal researches. The importance of sectional studies on time use is very useful in describing the main ways in which individuals use their (free) time, and also to register differences in allocation of time between individuals, considering their gender, age, residency or social status. Longitudinal studies provide the opportunity to capture very clearly the social changes and the contexts in which they happen. Starting from the data provided by Time Use Surveys (2001, 2013) and Eurostat, I try to capture the differences (and inequalities) in time allocation, considering the gender, age, residency, social status and country of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After living their lives in the public eye, do famous people regain their "privacy" after death or, on the contrary, could death mean their final transformation into a sort of public "commodity"? In order to get a better understanding of this public-private dichotomy (in relation to death), this paper will investigate the way the Romanian media covered the death of the famous movie director Sergiu Nicolaescu. To this end, I studied (using content analysis) over 80 articles, which were published in three Romanian newspapers („Libertatea”, „Jurnalul Național” and „Evenimentul Zilei"), between the 4th and the 11th of January 2013. The paper focuses on the role that the deceased's family had in managing his posthumous "relationship" with the public. I will also argue that Nicolaescu's widow came to represent a "scapegoat". A widow dressed in an unlikely white, a public vocally questioning the way the Nicoleascu family had handled the director's death, and a vivid debate over the rightness of cremation set the scene for one of the most intriguing news events of 2013 in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the European Union 2007 enlargement, the time has come to reconsider the place of some valuable local adult education traditions in Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, I have chosen the examples of two outstanding personalities of interwar Romania: Nicolae Iorga and Dimitrie Gusti, whose activity in the field of adult education still requires a thorough analysis for a full understanding of its historical meaning and importance. Therefore, the present paper attempts to explore the path they chose to become adult educators, and thus, accounts for key elements of their professional background, for the theoretical and practical knowledge of adult education they both had at that time, as well as for their ways to transform ideas into institutions in the above-mentioned field. As a result of the analysis of what Iorga and Gusti explicitly or implicitly asserted concerning adult education, one could find at least five distinct features, which I intend to present as clues for a future more detailed perspective of their understanding on adult education. In their views, adult education was intimately linked to the politics of culture - being in fact, an important part of the second one; adult education was conceived differently from school pedagogy; furthermore, it was thought that there are important differences between them; in interwar theorists' and practitioners' minds, there was a peculiar difference between andragogy as theory (i.e. encompassing and emphasizing the principles of adult education) and as practice of adult education; accordingly, adult education did not identify itself - as both process and result - with the bare assimilation of some disciplines, theories or formal principles, no matter how important they were seen per se; adult education did not mean the mere mechanical adoption of what had been done in other countries; on the contrary, the stake of its successful implementation was the making of the inland experience compatible with that of the outland one, by stimulating the innovation, initiative and self-responsibility. As I did on different occasions (see Isac, 2003, chapter 3.3., p. 67-86; Isac, 2004), to the end of the paper I propose a brief discussion about the meanings of this impressive cultural and educational inheritance for nowadays Romanian adult education in European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal norm is the only social norm enforced by the state. The law has to be clear, for people to know what the desirable conduct is. Case-law plays an important role in the clarity of the law. In the Romanian legal system, case law is not traditionally considered a source of law. Nevertheless, the demand for equality before law led to the creation of different procedural mechanisms for the convergence of case-law, through decisions of the High Court of Cassation and Justice. According to the Romanian Constitution, international conventions regarding human rights and the legislation of the European Union prevails in the face of national law. With the international legal acts, the case-law of international courts that interpret them becomes a source of law. The paper is analysing the way case-law of the international courts and even national case-law is more and more a source of law in Romania, against the traditional view that considered it was not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research paper is grounded on the possibility of two questions that can be raised regarding madness. One is the question if madness has a meaning and the other one is the question if there is a meaning in madness. Apparently two questions that are the same, these are the ones that will give us the possibility to approach madness from two complementary perspectives. The phenomenological perspective, since it takes madness as a phenomenon, will raise a question regarding the meaning of madness, of course. Instead, the psychoanalytical one, being less preoccupied with the phenomenon as such and more with what happens inside the phenomenon, will search for a meaning in madness. However, both of them will take into account our own personal approach, which is that of the non symbolic phenomenology, an approach which imposes a particular understanding of meaning. The particularity that is given to the meaning in the context of Marc Richir's non symbolic phenomenology, the one of being sens se faisant, meaning in the making, will allow us... a meaningful discourse... about meaning in madness, given the fact that in such an exceptional condition of the human being we will not find a lack of meaning, but too much presence of it. Thus, the meaning of madness becomes to realize the meaning as such whatever is the place of meaning. It can be outside madness (in a phenomenological approach), or it can be inside madness (in an psychoanalytical approach). Whatever it's place, meaning becomes the same, and problematic in the same way for every human being, exceptional or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents an agonistic endeavour focused on reclaiming the concept of reflection as it is formulated in Hegel's Science of Logic. Contrary to many suggestions of various philosophical schools, reflection itself implies with necessity "immediacy" (detailed and condensed in the Doctrine of Being), but also denounces the impossibility of a direct deductive relation of „nature” from „thinking”. In other words, the rigid etiquette of Hegelianism as solipsism vanishes through a careful analysis of the very activity of reflection. The accurate understanding of mediation, which is the Hegelian essence (being the second book of the Objective Logic - The Doctrine of Essence), constitutes a duality in immediacy: essence does not only negate and, therefore, transforms its content, but also, structurally, presupposes and generates it. The post-Hegelian line of reasoning, which retracts the one-sidedness of a simple destruction/negation of Being (as immediacy), can be reduced to the general scheme of determining the relation-to-other (specific to finitude) as a moment wholly internal to the infinite relation-to-self of the Hegelian Concept, a dynamic closely followed and described by the German philosopher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

„In a job of writing, to do it well you have to live it”, said, half century ago, the great American sociologist Charles Wright Mills. That's not an easy task, one may argue, if you want to fully embrace it with its meanings and prescriptions altogether. I took his request onboard very seriously, especially knowing that in the nowadays liquid society that kind of writing could be the (only) type of text production meant to resist a bit longer than a split-second the all-encompassing melting processes. The challenge of this paper was not to simply present various life experiences of my own, something that I have done already in my previous works, where I employed (auto)ethnography and participant objectivation as a methodological toolbox (here too), but to incorporate epistemologically, through the act of writing, distinct Lebenswelten into mine, and even to live them. Being caught up in the last years in the process of reviewing doctoral theses (which is both a pleasant and a painful task to handle), with every single PhD manuscript that I have received, I got to know (practically and epistemologically) that I had a text and (references to) a lifeworld in my hands. How can one deal with such an issue? There are two possible answers: one can follow the institutional-administrative way or take the unpaved road of pondering on the intellectual craftsmanship of the (thesis) work. This time, I choose to follow a dusty and shaky path instead of an immaculate and stiff one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is a brief presentation of the Romanian research in rural sociology carried on by the School of sociological monographs led by D. Gusti. In its introduction, the author ranges Gusti's studies with the international framework of research in rural sociology. He emphasizes the growing interest in rural life displayed by Western sociology after World War I, and at the same time focuses on the East European, chiefly Russian, sociological practice of research in the field. According to the author, the literary and socio-political agrarian movements that have dominated, side by side with the national question, the Romanian public and intellectual life before 1918 should be ranged with the abovementioned tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents an attempt to frame a theoretical model for a gradual and reasonable social intervention. We will bring arguments favoring the thesis that, in spite of the entire technological progress of our times, which facilitates long distance charitable interventions, at least in precarious socio-economic circumstances, it is preferable to allow the moral intuition that encourages philanthropy in the realm of proximity. We will try to demonstrate that through approaching contextually our moral duties to help others in critical need and by establishing, at the level of each society, a minimum threshold of well-being from which each person could, eventually, engage in charitable interventions, a more feasible charitable framework could be forged. Moreover, exploiting the moral bias to help the proximate needful people could lead to a progressive increase of the capacity of social intervention and, thereafter, to assuming beneficence as moral duty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps every artistic, philosophical, scientific or religious action of any human being is based on the quest for understanding the meaning of his/her own existence. In order to achieve immortality or as a consequence of the need to exist eternally in one way or another, we are headed in different directions. The religious man seeks a theological explanation (and there is a big amount of such explanations) and the least religious man (or just more skeptical) is headed towards the scientific discoveries. The Art, the Science, and the Religion are our reference points when trying to load a deeper sense to our existence. Creationism has always had a number of supporters, many of them intelligent and passionate. Their main occupation was, over time, to integrate the scientific discoveries into religion and to assign everything that happens in the hands of a conscious Creator who made us and wants us to exist. The present paper consists of a review of several discoveries and theories elaborated by modern evolutionists. All these new discoveries cover several scientific domains such as biology, physics, genetics and paleontology, and they have transformed our knowledge about the Universe and the nature of human being and life in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1997) is a child self-report measure designed to evaluate symptoms relating to separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic-agoraphobia, generalized anxiety and fears of physical injury. This scale consists of 44 items, of which 38 reflect specific symptoms of anxiety. SCAS has been adapted and standardized for Romanian children and adolescents between 8 and 15 years old by a team of researchers from Cognitrom LTD, Cluj-Napoca. The aim of this paper was to analyze the validity of two subscales from SCAS: Generalized anxiety (6 items) and Separation anxiety (6 items). I used a non-clinical sample and three clinical samples. All participants were aged between 8 and 15 years. The non-clinical sample consisted of 567 children and adolescents without any anxiety problems. The persons from the clinical samples were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder: generalized anxiety (N=34), separation anxiety (N=25) or posttraumatic stress disorder (N=31). The relationships between the SCAS, Youth Self-Report (YSR) and Parent report on the CBCL were assessed using a subsample of 109 children and adolescents and, respectively, a subsample of 64 children and adolescents and their parents. The validity of the subscales Generalized anxiety and Separation anxiety was investigated by six methods (analysis of Pearson correlation coefficients between each item and all subscales from SCAS; examination of age and gender effects for the subscales by means of ANOVA; comparisons between clinical samples and between non-clinical sample and clinical samples; grouping the subscales Generalized anxiety and Separation anxiety with the scales of YSR and Parent report on the CBCL, by means of cluster analysis; analysis of positive predictive value and negative predictive value). The results indicated that the two subscales have a good criterion-related validity. Evidence was found for both convergent and discriminant validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article may not be the canonic academic paper with which some readers are accustomed to. At worst, the reader will be able to examine an extensive methodological toolkit (i.e., participant observation, focus group, and document analysis) involved in the research of a case-study, that of Rupea Citadel, to grasp various theoretical backgrounds in the field of cultural tourism that will enhance her/his understandings about patrimonialization and the mercantilization of the authentic, especially when the reference framework relies on reflexive sociology, social epistemology and socio-hermeneutic production of knowledge. At best, the ones with the "eyes wide shut" will have the chance to plunge into the life-world of a research (meta)object, and gain - via participant objectivation - some autoethnographical insights, useful in the depiction of the endless layers and multiple facets of a particular instance of a socioepistemic experience. As a helping hand in the endeavor, we can offer here the description of our own journey together with the epistemological access at its back stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the specificity of the totalitarian societies, in which, throughout manipulation processes, the helping out relationship is perverted and transformed into a constraint. The "helping out" concept is understood as a "prosocial behaviour", which sustains and promotes social values. Thus, from the benevolent support, free of interest, in principle, we arrive to the situation where somebody (individuals, communities, groups) is compelled to accept and reproduce officially accepted social relations. The author considers the ambiguity feature of the helping out relationship, by monitoring the perverting process of this humanitarian social action, starting with the Leninist and Stalinist ideology, in respect to education, learning, mass culture, as well as the creation of new elites. A special attention is bestowed to the analysis of the sinister „Piteşti experiment", as an extremely paroxysmal result of the implementation and adaptation of the communitarian re-education pedagogy, initially created by Makarenko. From the point of view of this paper, in the totalitarian societies we achieve specific connections between the social representations and the context control practices, via the compelling social standards, towards which individuals are not allowed any oppositions whatsoever. The cognitive schemes approved by the regime shall be the only authorised and favoured, in order for the individuals to learn them and to absolutely valorise them. The supreme goal of the system is to create the "new man" (in other words, "the totalitarian personality"), who corresponds to the socialist and communist society. It adopts and reproduces without thinking certain reasoning ways, behaviour patterns, communication forms and social interaction types, etc. A totalitarian ideology corrupts the generous intention of the mutual support of the individuals for the benefit of a democratic society and transforms it in its contrary: domination, constraint, alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, more than ever, due to the changes that constantly occur, generally, within the societies, a natural question arises: "To which extent is the Romanian rural space still traditional?" In an attempt to offer an answer to this question, within this article, we aim at assessing, from a gender perspective, how traditional the Romanian rural space is. Namely, by applying a qualitative method, our inquiry focuses upon the occupations and roles assumed by women in Romanian rural areas. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that what we today call "traditionalism" within the rural framework strongly depends upon the mentalities of the social actors regarding either the need to preserve/transmit, to the future generation, the inveterate values regarding household activities and gender roles, or the need to overpass them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a secularized society, Scientific Medicine and Religion belong to two completely different discursive orders, yielding dual competing worldviews. In such a societal arrangement, the medical enterprise would never appeal to religion in order to institutionalize its arguments and practices. Biomedicine belongs to an ordained, cognoscible, predictable and manipulable physical world, while the religious sphere is utterly denounced as a transcendent domain, in which naivety and superstition reign. Starting off by describing a curious case during the Romanian interbellum period, in which a renowned medical doctor, a scientific authority par excellance, tries to establish a systematic collaboration with the clergy in order to implement modern medical regulations, this paper aims to confront two distinct socioanthropological perspectives on the secularization process. I strongly believe that this specific occurrence gives us the opportunity to relaunch the debate upon the opposing modes of approaching secularization. Does the functional differentiation between the religious and the secular constitute a necessary by-product of the modernization process or a strategic category used in larger biopolitical schemata? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we would like to analyze the breaches regarding the contract by one of the parties. In the aftermath, effective damages have been suffered through an unrealized legal gain or benefit by the other party, with the intent of bringing gains towards a third party. This represents an illegal deed, being frowned upon by the Civil Law. Thus, according to the New Civil Code, the aggrieved party can request damages, resulted both through actual and future damages. The said future damages consist in unfulfilled benefits, as a consequence of the breaching of the contractual provisions by the guilty party. Their quantum is calculated on the basis of proof which has to demonstrate that the said benefit should have been obtained. In general, the Judge or the Arbitral Council are invested with the power to solve such cases, and if it is necessary, to establish the quantum of the damages that can not be agreed upon with certainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A very important personality of interwar Romania, the architect Emanuel Arnet is almost forgotten today. Documents and inedited correspondence found in the archives of Center for Research on Romanian Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, bring us the figure of a wonderful man, dedicated to his work, but also a great lover of arts and a close friend of many Romanian artists and writers. Through this paper, we try to sketch the professional portrait of Emanuel Arnet, the architect who designed some of the most beautiful buildings of interwar Bucharest, and also to complete his image with fragments of correspondence, bringing in this way some unknown details about the cultural universe of the '30. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a group of teachers' synthesis efforts to implement and test exercise firm level I as a method of simulating real business firms for high school students. We designed and described this method as a result of our experience in teaching economic disciplines and practical internships. In essence, the method is based on implementing the principle of "learning by doing" and simulated business environment in the classroom, enrolling in the new methodology of teaching and learning entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an approach of occupational and educational intergenerational mobility in Romania, for individuals belonging to the 1955-1966 and 1977-1985 cohorts. This approach primarily involves a comparison between the values and directions of the social mobility of individuals from the aforementioned generations, followed by an attempt to identify the most important determinants of the relative chances of upward social mobility (occupational and educational). Among the most important results of the present research, I have to mention that for both cohorts, the upward occupational and educational mobility is more common than the downward mobility. Also, the occupational mobility (both upward and downward) is more frequent among people from 1977 to 1985 cohort. The ascending educational mobility, however, is more prevalent in 1955-1966 generation. The characteristics that predict greater chances of upward occupational mobility for both cohorts are: the female gender, the belonging to a family with fewer children, a higher level of education and having parents with prestigious occupations. The increase of the chances of upward educational mobility for individuals from the 1955-1966 cohort is influenced by characteristics such as the rural region of residence, the membership in a family with fewer children, the possession of higher education than secondary education and an occupation in non-agricultural domain. For the second cohort, the relative chances of educational mobility increase when the individual lives in an urban area, he has a family with fewer children and his father's employment is in a non-agricultural domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to capture the relationship between the social class and social inequalities, using a subjective positioning, namely a respondent's perspective upon its own position in society, using data collected on a national dataset. A subjective approach offers a glance into the manner in which social inequalities are constructed and applied by and on different categories, also creating the context for a discussion related to the reasons and implications of these perceived societal positions. I guide my analysis on two assumptions: 1. that different individuals, belonging to different social classes - measured in an objective way - discern and comprehend in multiple forms the structure of the Romanian society; 2. these individuals self-position themselves according to their perception and to their objective position in the stratification order. The results did not support the first assumption because a large proportion of the individuals from our sample describe and understand the Romanian society as one characterized by important inequalities between people. However, I found evidence for the second, related assumption, as all classes seem to aspire to be part of the middle class and to report that they are closer to that middle class than the objective measures would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as a starting point the subject's development phase that Jacques Lacan calls the mirror stage, our paper attempts to highlight some delicate points that such a phase presupposes. First of all, there is a subtle distinction between I and ego. The distinction is supposed to overcome mistaking the subject with subjectivity, a confusion often made as a consequence of the idea that consciousness is unitary and homogenous. Making such a distinction means understanding that the subject goes beyond the sphere of the imaginary (and, thus, beyond the sphere of humanity), in such a way that its origins are to be found at the frontier between reality and the real. It is in this junction point that Marc Richir's phenomenological project can bring new knowledge with regard to the issue. However, since Richir's phenomenological project relies on developing a non-symbolic phenomenology, knowledge susceptible of being brought about is in fact know-how, i.e. savoir-faire. This type of knowledge renders speaking beings able to face the truth about their consciousness, which consists in the latter's defectiveness, non-circularity, and its being pierced by foreign intermittences described by Marc Richir as feral essences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the begging phenomenon from the perspective of the sociology of delinquency. We expound evolution and development of the concept of begging, through the time and social circumstances in Romania, from the perspective of the criminal law incrimination, and also through its perception at the population level in our country. A quantitative and qualitative valuation of the begging phenomenon proves that it has become a great challenge to the Romanian society: the beggars are of all types and the forms of manifestation are complex and extensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is based on a conference delivered by N. Ghiulea at the Sociology Seminar at the Jassy University on the occasion of the publication of Spiru Haret's work, Mecanique sociale (Social Mechanics, 1910). The study makes a synthetic presentation of the most relevant theories on how to apply quantitative methods to the investigation of social phenomena that have been up to then debated upon in the national and world literature in the field. In opposition to those who believe that mechanics is part of mathematics due to the fact that both sciences operate with numerical values, the author deems that the two disciplines have distinct subjects of research, as mathematics is the science of pure quantity, while mechanics is the science of motion in general. In addition, the methods used by the two sciences are essentially different: whereas the mathematical method involves complex logical reasoning, the mechanistic method is a system of reasoning that enables to determine the movement accompanying a phenomenon by knowing the forces that generate the movement and the circumstances in which the respective phenomenon is manifested. The mathematical method can be used whenever the constitutive elements of the phenomenon enable the employment of its reasoning, while the mechanistic method can be used when certain forces determine a movement or equilibrium between the respective elements. Focusing on the field of social sciences, the author asserts that the mathematical method can be applied to the disciplines that relate only to quantities, characterized by a static view on the phenomena - finances, statistics, insurances; the mechanistic method is useful to the disciplines governed by forces and motion, characterized by a dynamic view on the social phenomena - economics and sociology. The former group of sciences, namely those characterized by a static view on the social phenomena, is more briefly approached because mathematics has anyway played a leading part in their creation as they are essentially quantitative, and nobody has ever doubted the role and significance of the mathematical method in these sciences. Having a dual way of envisaging and approaching phenomena - its quantitative elements "favor" a static, mathematical approach, while the components "in motion" point to a dynamic, mechanistic approach - the science of economics enjoys a special attention from the part of the author. He states that the quantitative nature of the economic elements has compelled the economists who wished to give an accurate scientific form to political economy to employ the mathematical method. Nevertheless, reservations have been and are still expressed at the attempts at applying mathematics to the study of economic phenomena in spite of the fact that the mathematical method has already proved its efficiency. More fruitful have been the attempts of the economists who, understanding the deep nature of economic realities, have systematically employed mechanistic methods in their research. In the economic thought, the "mechanistic" approach has a long standing tradition. From its earliest stages, the vocabulary of mechanics has been most successfully used in this field. The notions peculiar to mechanics, such as: equilibrium, stability, elasticity, expansion, pressure, dilatation, contraction, flux, reflux, force, movement, resistance, action and reaction, distribution, friction, etc. have already been adopted by the classics of economics, Adam Smith, for instance, who "used terms and expressions from the field of mechanics in his works". As far as economics is concerned, the presence of real forces and movements in society has been put into evidence by many sociologists-economists. According to the author, Irving Fisher and Vilfredo Pareto are the most illustrative names associated with laying the scientific foundation of the importance and value of applying the mechanistic method in economics, who elaborated the mechanistic view on economic reality. In spite of the fact that he did not elaborate a comprehensive economic theory, I. Fisher was the first representative of mechanistic interpretation in economics who rigorously applied mechanistic methods to solve seminal economic problems. Although he did not deal thoroughly with dynamic questions of pure economics, he did nevertheless pay enough attention to economic dynamics. In his turn, V. Pareto's mathematical approach to production and exchange endowed economics with a strong mechanistic character. His system, whose basic features were described by N. Ghiulea, was the most comprehensive system of mathematical economics, but in his case as well "static" prevailed over "dynamic" economics, which made it incomplete. The example of "economic mechanics" was followed by sociology, certain representatives of the science tried to determine the criteria for applying the mechanistic methods to the research in the field, namely to lay de foundation of a social mechanics. The core principles of mechanics, being so general, were thus extended to the study of social phenomena and movements. Asserted as early as Antiquity, when the principle of attraction and rejection was considered the foundation of social life, mechanistic sociology found its earliest "modern" expressions in the theories of J. Fr. Herbart, A. Quetelet, H. C. Carey, H. Spencer, and Ch. Mismer. But the true measure of mechanistic sociology was revealed in the works of Lester Ward - who defined for the first time sociology as "social mechanics" with its two subfields: social statics (studying social equilibrium) and social dynamics (studying social transformation, social progress) - and Léon Winiarski - the author of the first scientific system of social mechanics presented in his work Essai sur la mécanique sociale. The system was built according to the model of rational mechanics. It was based on the principle of universal attraction as the social system is but a "material system in which molecules are held together by the forces of attraction and repulsion", an "aggregate of individuals-molecules" forever in motion, in which the constitutive elements move closer or farther away from one another. The aggregate is constantly subject to the action of several forces none other than man's needs and wishes that aim at procuring maximum pleasure for the individual and the society. All social forces are born form various combinations between twofundamental forces that move the individual: egoism and altruism, which "can be seen as playing the same part as attraction and repulsion in a certain material or cosmic system". In this system, social functions and structures were the subject of statics, while the study of movements was the object of dynamics. In this context, the author also mentions a Romanian contribution to the field, namely the attempt of the mathematician Spiru Haret to elaborate a social mechanics as revealed in the work Mécanique sociale, whose publication has been the starting point of N. Ghiulea's paper. He is extremely critical towards the social mechanics conceived by S. Haret, which he regards as a "rigid application of rational mechanics to sociology". N. Ghiulea has a clear-cut perspective on the role and use or the quantitative method in social sciences in general, and in sociology in particular. In his opinion, the natural path of any positive science is the evolution from a qualitative and descriptive to a quantitative and causal stage. Like any other social science, sociology is a positive science because its object is the study of a reality, as social phenomena are real phenomena, social movements and regularities are natural movements and regularities, and its limitations are the natural limitations of our own knowledge like in the case of any other positive science. Consequently, sociology must have all the features of a positive science: it must be experimental, deductive, it must always expect confirmation or information of its deductions from experience, and lastly to evolve towards the quantitative and causal stage. Of course, it doesn't mean that if mechanics is the science of quantity, sociology, which must aspire to the status of quantitative science, is meant to make up a chapter of mathematics like algebra or geometry. This would be nonsense, chiefly because all positive sciences, even those that have reached the quantitative stage, preserve their distinct character of natural sciences. On the other hand, nobody should imagine that a formal, purely mathematical science could be able to encompass the entire highly complex field of sociology. There are many phenomena, many connections between phenomena in the field of sociology that could never be described in terms of mathematical formulae. In conclusion, sociology has to preserve its character of special science and only borrow the mathematical method whenever is possible and profitable. A science cannot progress but by itself. Not much is gained by comparing phenomena of different sciences, by making more or less valid analogies, or by borrowing alien methods. For that reason, the mathematical method should not be overrated. Mathematics cannot play other part in sociology than being a high judgment tool, a complex logical instrument untainted by human errors, a technique of research complementary to other methods. As concerns the mechanistic method, N. Ghiulea believes that it is called to play a significant part in social sciences, but he also emphasizes that, because of the complex social realities, social movements cannot be investigated by means of rational mechanics, which is not appropriate for such an approach, because it is restricted to the analysis of local movements and therefore is not enough even for the "world of physical phenomena". "Social mechanics will be a complex mechanics, with all-encompasing principles, with wide applications, whose pale image one may distinguish in thermodynamics". Giving up any forced comparison or analogy, the science of social movements should be conceived as a distinct science, a social mechanics that should study the nature and importance of social movements with its own methods. This is the only path to be followed by sociology in its evolution in order to become a deductive, quantitative and causal, distinct and clear-cut science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to obtain and analyse information that concern the users' behaviour and attitude towards the online advertising. In order to reach this goal we have made a questionnaire-based home inquiry. The main information collected relates to: the places where users access the internet, the average weekly time spent on the internet, the purposes for accessing the internet, knowledge of the methods of making the online advertising, assessment by the users of the efficiency degree of the online advertising, the degree of accessing the advertising banners, the degree of accepting the advertising e-mails, the users' trust in the online advertising and others. The study's results showed the high interest level of those interviewed for the possibilities that the internet provides and the high percentage of users who have a favourable attitude towards the online advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]