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This study examines Louis Cazamian’s considerations on the nature of humour, which were influenced by Bergson’s theory of the comic as a contrast between life and automatism and Bergson’s idea of humour as a specific type of comic linguistic transposition. In this context, the paper draws attention to the critical function of humour in Cazamian’s understanding based on his embracing of Bergson’s conception of laughter as a critique of the automation of life. However, Cazamian’s speculating diverges from Bergson’s thoughts on humour and leads to the creation of an elaborated theory. Cazamian states that humour has an artistic status and attributes characteristics to it that Bergson attributes to works of art. In contrast to Bergson, who emphasises the distinction between art and the comic, Cazamian deems humour’s critical aspect to accord with its artistic status. While humour is attributed artistic status because it suggests the multifaceted or elusive character of reality, humour’s comic character entails ridiculing the inability or unwillingness to respect that reality has a comic character.

Článek pojednává o problému laskavosti humoru v kontextu teorie humoru Louise Cazamiana. Zdůrazňuje Cazamianův návrh, že myšlenka laskavosti humoru je výsledkem konkrétního mýtu. Tento mýtus ukazuje, že anglický národ je obzvláště obdarován vtipným witticismem, protože duch tohoto národa je realistický, pikantní a plný srdečnosti. Cazamian tvrdí, že tento mýtus musí být kritizován a odmítnut, ale také navrhuje, že do jisté míry odráží povahu zkušenosti s humorem. Článek dále sleduje Cazamianovo podrobné zkoumání různých aspektů vztahu laskavosti a humoru. Zdůrazňuje, že humor jako specifický druh směsi přirozeného a nepřirozeného přístupu k realitě vede k relativismu myšlení, který není daleko od tolerance a laskavosti. Také ukazuje, že laskavost je důležitou součástí ovlivnitelnosti a ovlivnitelnost je základem důležitého druhu humoru. A také naznačuje, že zjevná laskavost humoristy představuje určitý druh jeho triku, který používá k uklidnění osoby kritizované vtipným výsměchem. Nakonec článek zdůrazňuje ve všech těchto ohledech podrobnější pohled, který ukazuje, že existuje jen určitá spřízněnost mezi laskavostí a humorem, nikoli jakýkoli podstatný vztah. Tento podrobnější pohled však ukazuje i humor jako velmi komplikovaný mechanismus, ve kterém se prolínají odlišné a dokonce protichůdné tendence. The article deals with the problem of kindness of humor in the context of Louis Cazamian’s theory of humor. It highlights Cazamian’s suggestion that the idea of kindness of humor is an outcome of a specific myth. This myth shows the English nation as particularly endowed for humorous witticism, because the spirit of this nation is realistic, piquant and full of cordiality. Cazamian maintains that this myth must be criticized and dismissed, but he also suggests that it, to a certain degree, reflects the nature of experience with humor. Further, the article follows Cazamian’s detailed investigation into various aspects of the relation of kindness and humor. He emphasizes that humor, as a specific kind of mixture of natural and unnatural approach to reality, results in relativism of thought that is not far from tolerance and kindness. He shows as well that kindness is an important part of affectability and affectability is the basis of an important kind of humor. And he also suggests that the apparent kindness of humorist presents a kind of his or her trick, which he or she uses to calm a person criticized by humorous mockery. Finally, the article stresses, in all these respect, the more detailed view shows that there is only a certain affinity between kindness and humor, not any kind of an essential relation. However, such a more detailed view also shows humor as a very complicated mechanism, in which different and even contradictory tendencies mingle.

In this essay, the author seeks to demonstrate the remarkable resemblance between the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and those of Henri Bergson concerning the role of art and aesthetic experience generally in revealing the appearance of immediate experience. The two philosophers agree that this reality is usually concealed from human considerations about practical possibilities of using reality, including considerations about the communicability of the nature of reality. Both men also agree that this revealing has the form of the harmonization of the usual unfocused experience of things and feelings. Nevertheless, in this article the author seeks to demonstrate that harmonization assumes the form of rhythmic arrangement, and art and aesthetic experience therefore generally show immediate reality as rhythm. The fact that immediate experience is rhythm appears, when seen from the standpoint of the conception of Whitehead and Bergson, to be natural, because all reality has the nature of a spectrum of rhythmic movements. By comparing the ideas of the two philosophers, the author aims not only to provide a more precise outline of their thinking on this subject, but also to point out that the similarities of their views enable us to explain them, make them more precise, and to develop them.

The article is a discussion of Alfred North Whitehead’s and Henri Bergson’s considerations of the difference between creativity and stagnation in art. A comparison of the ideas of these two thinkers is then made with the intention of demonstrating the similarity of their approaches to the nature and meaning of fundamental innovations in art. The article also emphasizes that, according to the two thinkers, such innovations are derived from the artist’s relationship with multifaceted reality and are inspired by a true revelation of it. Finally, the article considers Whitehead’s and Bergson’s ideas about the relationship between artistic creativity and the future: the future of universal harmony in Whitehead and the future of artistic production in Bergson.

In his article ‘Art and Time’ (1966) Patočka argues that Hegel rightly recognized a fundamental difference between classical and contemporary art. In developing Hegel’s insight he offers a conception of two eras of art, the ‘artistic’ era and the era of ‘aesthetic culture’. Patočka supposes that artworks of both the artistic era and the aesthetic era always open up a certain ‘meaning’ that gives human existence its fundamental points of reference. The status of this world, however, radically changed from one era to the next. The art of the artistic era offered objective and binding meaning, whereas aesthetic art offers personal or individual meaning. The current article points to an important discrepancy in Patočka’s treatment of the relation between the two eras, and presents Patočka’s later reading of Hegel’s notion of the past character of art. From the perspective of this interpretation, art reveals temporality as such, that is, as the ontological basis of the revelation of meaning. The article emphasizes that such an interpretation demonstrates the ontological relevance of the artwork in greater detail. Yet Patočka continued to use the concepts of the artistic era and the aesthetic era, without sufficiently clarifying the relationship between the two eras. Finally, the author argues that the discrepancy in the concept can be resolved with the help of Patočka’s later reflections on the ‘problematic nature’ of meaning. The article argues that in classical art such a nature is concealed, whereas in modern art it is revealed again. The article includes an English translation of Patočka’s ‘Art and Time’.

The second virial coefficient in systems with permanent and induced multipole interactions was studied by using a statistical-thermodynamics correlation based on the perturbation theory of fluids. Several pair potential combinations of the Lennard-Jones function with different, subsequently more complex anisotropic contributions, were considered; the improvement in the description of intermolecular interactions due to these non-central contributions brought about an improvement in the interpretation of experimental data. The characteristic dependence of the parameters ε/k on σ at different temperatures was obtained for all of the three systems studied (Ar, CH4 and CH3F). It was found that if experimental values of the second virial coefficient of methyl fluoride are correlated by a relation derived from the Stockmayer potential, two sets of the ε/k and σ can be employed.

Perturbation theory proposed to describe fluids with the multipole interactions was extended to the systems with significant induced interactions. The relations obtained were used to study the effect of the permanent and induced multipole interactions on excess thermodynamic functions of binary solutions formed by a simple fluid (interacting according to the Lennard-Jones pair potential) and a fluid with anisotropic intermolecular forces. Model solutions were studied first; the same procedure was then used to predict behaviour of the real systems cyclopentane-chloroform at 298.15 K and xenon-hydrogen chloride at 195.4 K. A considerable effect of anisotropic interaction on excess quantities of the model- as well as actual solutions was proved.