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The central argument of this article is that there is a remarkable conceptual parallel between Hegel's famous notion of the "cunning of Reason" and the philosophically profound concept of Chi in Igbo metaphysics. By way of establishing this parallel, the article advances the following subsidiary but complementary points: Chi is also "cunning" in its dynamics; both principles (i.e. Chi and Reason/Spirit) are non-deterministic because they try to maintain a dialectic balance between destiny and individual responsibility; both possess divine attributes; and community serves as an invaluable medium of operation for both. The scholarly significance of the article lies in its attempt not only to systematise the Igbo thought on Chi by eliminating the vestiges of discredited "ethno-philosophy", but also to open up a constructive dialogue between Hegel and elements of African philosophy, using Igbo metaphysics as a placeholder. This is against the backdrop of certain discontents generated by Hegel's famous uncomplimentary and racist remarks on Africa. Seen in this light, the article may well be an exercise in "rapprochement". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I attempt to derive a theory of history and potentiality in the work of Aristotle, Hegel, and Heidegger, laying out the mutual critiques of each in order to determine what might be required in a possible reformulation. I then attempt to provide one potential "reconstruction" which accounts for central desiderata in each of the three theories and which, I argue, provides a beginning framework for an account compatible with core modernist and postmodernist views in the philosophy of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Jameson's reading of Goethe's Faust II in Allegory and Ideology , putting it into dialogue with enquiries into Goethian allegory by other Marxist critics, namely Georg Lukács, Cesare Cases and Franco Fortini. Allegories of monetisation and dispossession in Faust II are explored, along with the limits of Lukács's partial devaluation of the allegorical. The essay focuses in particular on how Jameson's reading of Faust II can be interpreted as an allegory of theory itself, and in particular of the dialectic, thereby returning us to Lukács's own parallel reading of Faust and Hegel's Phenomenology , albeit in a different key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Thomas Mann and G.W.F. Hegel accord beauty a particular role in their work: that of revealing truth. However, both differ in its particular stature and effectiveness. For Hegel it is an essential part of Bildung , a step to fuller knowledge of the Absolute Idea, whereas for Mann it is revelatory of the failures of Bildung , of knowledge, and self-control, and doing so it unmasks an existential truth. Drawing on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lukács, and Gadamer, this article explores the way in which Mann's account of beauty, as detailed in Little Herr Friedemann and Death in Venice , challenges both Hegel's philosophy and in doing so a particular ideal of Bildung , especially with regards to its relationship to truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the possibility of a notion of left-wing populism that is conceptually opposed to the identitarian logic of embodiment that characterises right-populist interpellations of 'the people'. In the first part, I will demonstrate, that in Laclau's constructivist approach, any populist embodiment of the people actually has a partial, subaltern and performative origin. On this basis, it becomes possible to distinguish between a radical-democratic version of the people that is self-reflexively aware of this origin and a regressive and reified one that ideologically betrays and negates its own subaltern tradition of democratic struggle by proclaiming to embody a positive, pre-established substance of 'rooted', 'well-born' community. In the second part of the article, I will focus on this self-negation as a starting point for an immanent critique of right-wing populism. Such an immanent critique is promising, because it could overcome the shortcomings of decisionism and moralism that limit the contemporary critique of right-wing populism. However, it remains still an open question how to defend and define a negativist truth of political community and subjectivation that is necessary for developing such a left-Hegelian critique of regressive and reified notions of 'the people'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also used her editorial position to philosophize. Her column entitled "Letters from New York" is particularly philosophical, including considerations of infinity, free will, time, nature, art, and history. She especially turned to German philosophers and intellectuals such as Kant, Schiller, Bettina von Arnim, Karoline von Günderrode, Jean Paul, Herder, and Hegel in an attempt to guide her readers to a rejection of slavery for the right philosophical reasons. I consider the influence of German philosophy on three particular themes in her writings: a Romantic-Spinozistic view of humans and nature; a Kantian conception of conscience; and a Hegelian description of the philosophy of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With Hegel's metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel's metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel's central concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel's approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed (and rejected) by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to Czesław Miłosz's essay Tiger, analysing the heterodox discourses that it contains, especially the political gnosis. The author analyses the connections between such discourses and the notions of deep crisis of European culture, showing also how Miłosz solved the dialectic argument with his friend Tadeusz Juliusz Kroński, a Hegelian philosopher. Miłosz's solution enabled him to give up both Gnostic catastrophism and a temptation of hermetic utopia by Kroński. Towards the end of the essay the history of mankind regains its value and it is being reintegrated as a history of Salvation.

This essay is aimed at understanding, briefly, the relationship between Hegelianism and Kierkegaard through the intellectual context of Denmark in the first half of the nineteenth century. For this approach it is necessary, in the first place, to verify under what forms German Hegelianism bursts onto the intellectual circles of Copenhagen; then, to probe the existing relationship between this Hegelianism and the figures that give form and content to Danish Hegelianism; and finally, to understand what kind of relationship Søren Kierkegaard maintained with Hegelianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of Kant's arguments in his I Critique of Pure Reason i follows, with Dorrien contending that Kant was a critical subjective idealist who "struggled against subjectivist captivity" (p. 46). Hegel provides the key point of departure throughout, with Dorrien 'contending that Hegel was both offensively wrong and brilliantly creative' (p. 2). In his latest book, Gary Dorrien attempts to synthesize the work of his theological career into one volume. [Extracted from the article]

Addressing the study of human action from Mises's perspective of the praxeological method is in itself highly controversial. Particularly, if it attempts to identify the ultimate basis of human development, it will face unmanageable problems in analytical and normative terms. The incapability to withdraw from the socalled self-evident judgments comes together with the refusal of the elements that address its operability. Dependent of a soft well-being concept (unauthorized to distinguish action from performance), it is unable to establish interpersonal comparisons, and this in turn frustrates any kind of attempt to design a convincing social justice theory. A Hegelian perspective brings order to and improves both the moral and the operability dimension of the praxeological interpretation of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been generally recognized that an important influence on the development of early phenomenologies of religion was Hegel. It is the purpose of this paper to provide a deep reading of the phenomenologies of C.P. Tiele and P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye in order to demonstrate the extent of Hegel's influence on their thought. This demonstration proceeds deconstructively (in the Heideggerian, not the Derridean,sense) to establish (a) the questionability of each thinker's claim to represent a unitary science of religion and to show (b) the oppositions between the respective notions of taxonomy and the notions of science of religion. The paper concludes by suggesting that although both thinkers may have appropriated some Hegelian evolutionary elements, their respective conceptions of science were also influenced by the "received" view that lay behind the writings of scientific phenomenologists such as Robison, Hamilton and Whewell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Detailed comparisons between Weber and Hegel's political and social thought are rare and are usually written by sociologists and legal theorists. Also, not infrequently, they tend to generate more problems than they solve. This contribution aims to compare Weber's and Hegel's views on authority, bureaucracy and capitalism from a broader political-theoretical perspective, taking into account especially such issues like normativity, freedom, political economy and religion. The overall aim of this article is to argue that Weber and Hegel have both less and more in common than is usually thought. In particular, my purpose is to argue in favour of a claim that normativity, understood here in a prescriptive, i.e. ethical, and not the juridical sense, should be read as a key element in understanding the differences between the two thinkers in the areas of political theory and political philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anales de la Cátedra Francisco Suárez is the property of Anales de la Catedra Francisco Suarez and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research paper considers the avant-garde manifestos and programmatic statements of poets, in the light of the debate on the emancipatory potential of neoavant-garde art. The author shows the need to redefine the notion of artistic autonomy that new art programmes involve. In the first part of the article, the point of origin of the modern understanding of artistic autonomy is reflected on in its two basic formulas: Kantian and Hegelian. The second part evolves an analysis of three examples of contemporary metapoetic statements by Polish poets (Piotr Sommer, Andrzej Sosnowski, Kacper Bartczak). Their neoavant-garde premises of the performative character of the theoretical discussions, and of the artistic elements that connect their theoretical ideas to the actual works of these poets lead us to the conclusion that engaged, activistic poetic practice, concerning the rules directed by the questions of autonomy of art, cannot be judged from the point of view of the Kantian definition of this autonomy, especially if we take the poetical matter of avant-garde provenance into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any interpretation of Kierkegaard's relation to art must account for the contradiction that he both dedicated extraordinary attention to aesthetics and condemned it as the lowest of the stages of existence. This article attempts such a task in three steps. First, it examines Kierkegaard's notion of beauty as the sensuous embodiment of ideas, a conception he shares with his Danish and German contemporaries. Second, it shows how Kierkegaard follows Hegel in taking this definition to also impose precise internal and historical limits on art. Finally, the paper suggests that Kierkegaard conceives of the religious as a way to overcome these limitations and provide an alternative way to justify the absolute value of immediate experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we will analyze the place that the concept and critical philosophy occupy in Deleuze's thought. Why does the author give so much importance to the concept by treating it as an integral part of the philosopher. Philosophy without concepts cannot be understood and the purpose of philosophy in one way or another is the fabrication of concepts. In this context concepts are creatures which means they are never out of nothing. The concept also has properties that make the component inseparable, which means that it is within itself. The concept can be defined by endoconsistency, exoconsistency, consistency, the concept refers to itself, is placed there, but not only that, it places its object at the same time that it is created. The concept is therefore the act of thinking as thought acts on it rapidly. It also deals with Deleuze's critical philosophy where the author is based on Nietzsche who had an affirmative, affirmative philosophy of life and where he criticizes everything that perverts life and this affirmative philosophy Deleuze needs to oppose the Hegelian dialectic and denial as denial par excellence life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Filosofija, Sociologija is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In order to achieve a new understanding of modern society in the 21st century, Axel Honneth's practical philosophy draws on Hegel's famous Elements of the Philosophy of Right. The core and systematic structure of the Hegelian concept of freedom is analysed, focussing on the notion of abstract right. By identifying legal, social and political rights as yet incomplete but necessary elements of freedom, Honneth gains the theoretical means to establish a current philosophy of freedom and justice. Thus, he is also correcting the conservative picture of his famous predecessor in rethinking modern society on the basis of the idea of freedom once again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends Kant against a neo‐Hegelian line of criticism, recently advanced by John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and Sebastian Rödl, targeting Kant's alleged claim that forms of sensibility other than space and time are possible. If correct, the criticism identifies a deep problem in Kant's position and points toward Hegel's position and method as its natural solution. I show that Kant has the philosophical resources to respond effectively to the criticism, notably including the set of claims about the limits of meaningful thought that P. F. Strawson calls Kant's "principle of significance." By Kant's lights, first, the concept "non‐spatio‐temporal form of sensibility" is meaningless, so he cannot meaningfully grant that such a form is possible; and second, there is no need to prove (e.g., from reflection on pure intellect) that non‐spatio‐temporal forms of sensibility are impossible, because insofar as the concept "knowing" means anything, that meaning is provided by our own always‐already‐spatio‐temporal case. An upshot of the argument is that Kant's two "stems" of knowledge or cognition, sensibility and understanding, are merely aspects of a single epistemic capacity rather than each a separate capacity in its own right. Many today are unwilling to take Kant's claims about the limits of meaningful thought at face value, notwithstanding their ubiquity and explicitness. This paper is therefore an indirect argument on behalf of that dimension of Kant's position: We have something significant to lose in not taking it seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Preface of the Phenomenology o Spirit, Hegel famously claims that "everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject". This article aims to put Hegel's claim into the context of the preceding discussion about the relation between the concepts of subject and substance in Kant and Fichte. Whereas Kant adopted a concept of subject which goes together with agnosticism regarding the question if subjects are substances, Fichte transformed the concept of subject into a concept which signifies a peculiar ontological status, that is, a mode of being which is characterized by the self-positing nature which distinguishes subjects from things. At the same time, Fichte understands the concept of substance as being subordinated to that of subject. It is the central thesis of the article that the Hegelian claim presupposes the Fichtean ontologicalization of the concept of subject. However, it is also argued that Hegel, in contrast to Fichte, construes the concepts of subject and of substance as being equally original. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns in contemporary conflict highlight the failures of traditional views of the relationship between humanity and technology. This paper proposes that modern conflict is characterized by something called "dissimulation," referring to numerous phenomena together emphasizing the inadequacies of conceiving man as the overseeing creator of technological advancement. It shows rather that man, particularly man in conflict, is always already implicated and concealed within complex technological networks and mediums, wherein humanity is just another player amongst others. This paper diagnoses and defines the condition of "dissimulation" in drone warfare, modern partisanship and terrorism, raising further the question of the conceptualization of a technological object in doing so. It highlights the danger of an observed technological tendency too, particularly in terms of its shaping of contemporary conflict as well as our relationship to space and time. Having considered dissimulation's characteristic phenomena and effects, a strategy for dealing with it is then suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines three interlocking and mutually reinforcing registers in Giorgio Agamben's work: the law, the apparatus, and the anthropological machine. While Agamben is clear that rules render inoperative laws and counter-apparatuses suspend the functioning of apparatuses, that which neutralizes the anthropological machine remains undisclosed. To explore this messianic opening, the author moves beyond Agamben and posits the possibility of a shift from an anthropological machine to a phytological machine. Whereas the former functions through the production of binary oppositions that divide life from its form, the latter yields to the internally generative potentiality of lifeforms. In conclusion, the article proposes an alternative reading of several of Agamben's key examples, including his references to Tiananmen Square, as manifestations of a phytological machine emerging from within the composting of anthropological divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hélène Cixous's engagement with faith is a significant but overlooked facet of her work. Focusing on Beethoven à jamais ou l'existence de Dieu [Beethoven Forever or the Existence of God] (1993), this article contends that Cixous envisions faith as the ground and horizon of both artistic creation and love. To illustrate this point, the author focuses on Cixous's idiosyncratic portrayal of Ludwig von Beethoven. Her representation of Beethoven as an impassioned lover and artist runs against the grain of the canonical depiction of the composer as a "great man" or a "heroic individual," as found in the writings of Romain Rolland and Sigmund Freud. For Cixous, love and writing both stem from an unpredictable, joyful event that infinitely exceeds our understanding. Both are predicated on a state of "active passivity" that clears the ground for the event of passion and creation to occur without predetermining what it will be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker is often understood as both a cinematic masterpiece and an impenetrable mystery. The source text, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel, Roadside Picnic, provides clues to interpretation as well as insights into the evolution of motifs from book to screenplay. By subjecting the texts to a critical reading inspired by Alain Badiou's philosophy of the event – itself considered enigmatic – this article elucidates novel, film, and philosophy, connecting such shared themes as desire, fidelity, militancy, and truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much critical attention has been given to Isabella's non-answer to Duke Vincentio's marriage proposal at the conclusion of Measure for Measure. What critics have failed to notice is that Isabella's non-answer is not a unique or singular moment in the play. In fact, this paper will apply the theories of Slavoj Žižek to argue that the logic of subtraction, the negative gesture of non-compliance to which Isabella gives especially pronounced form, is fundamental to the structure of the play in its entirety. Two characters in particular, Isabella and Barnardine, demonstrate the possibility of occupying a subjective orientation that is at once under the sway of the law and aware of the law's incomplete hold on the subject. Ultimately, I will show that the logic of subtraction and refusal has important implications for how the play understands the potential political power of various forms of labor, especially sexual labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the nuances and insinuations of a conceptualisation of "lament" as an inability to appropriate any object, or to turn the lost object into a fetish. While mourning, melancholia, and fetishism ultimately remain entangled with the ego (i.e., within a narcissistic configuration), lament goes beyond that, hinting at a loss of ego, a disintegration of the autonomous self. As a sonic expression of the failure of language, lament is a manifestation of the negativity or void at the core of language. However, in lament this negativity is radicalised. This extreme obstruction, which impedes all connection, imparts to lament abstractive powers, ultimately qualifying lament as a political force. The last part of the article argues that the social imaginary of Iran, steeped in numerous failed attempts to rise above domination and subjection (as evident in myriad revolts and two revolutions in the twentieth century), could serve as promising material for the concretisation of such a theory of lament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the friendship of Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille through a close reading of their thought on death and dying. An intellectual and personal friendship, both conceived of death as an "impossible" space and "limit-experience" that not only constituted human subjectivity, but could also puncture it, leading to joy through deindividuation. This could only occur indirectly – for Bataille, via the sacrifice, eroticism, drunkenness or laughter – and for Blanchot, via literature. This line of thinking leads to varying formulations of sovereignty at odds with the prosaic world of use-value. Proceeding first through their friendship, this paper then explores this thinking death through the contexts of French Hegelianism, Kojève and Heidegger. While holding much similar, the paper argues that Bataille's transgressive, embodied and deindividuating visions of death present a form of community that was overlooked by Blanchot subsequently, with consequences for theories of community and collective power today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a great variety of comments on Hegel and as to where one should place him on an IR theory spectrum. Many see in Hegel a precursor of the Realist School of International Relations. Fewer scholars, though, attribute Hegel a liberalistic worldview, turning him into a liberal IR forerunner. Amid all these different takes on him, this paper aims to elaborate Hegel's philosophy on the state, civil society, international law and the importance of recognition therein. Hegelian concept of state is one of an absolute. The state is in need of bureaucratic cadres, entrusted with significant duties. However, civil society and relations developed within it are of utmost significance, as well. The latter is not destined, under all circumstances, to be dispensed with in the favour of the former one. On the contrary, just as it is the case in civil society, the institution of recognition plays an important role on international political fora. As a result of recognition, states see each other as equal others, i.e. states; which will contribute to the observation of a core of principles and rules. Toward the end of the paper, I shall endeavor to compare Hegelian thought with the basic premises of Realism. The crucial criterion here proves to be the level and the scope of significance attached to the Hegelian notions of the state and the civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper I emphasize the link between Honneth's critical theory and radical democracy as defined by C. Douglas Lummis. I, firstly, present Lummis's portrayal of radical democracy, emphasizing the original meaning of the notion of democracy as essentially radical in contrast to muddled conceptions of democracy. I, then, briefly present a characterization of radical democracy as a philosophical and normative principle. I emphasize, following Lummis, that what is radical in democracy is common sense language that collectively binds people. I relate this to Hegel's idea of Sittlichkeit. Gesturing towards the idea that democracy is a kind of participative discourse, I propose that Honneth's theory of social freedom is a third possibility between Habermas's deliberative discourse and Mouffe's agonistic discourse. I, then, rehearse the three normative claims of Horkheimer to contextualize Honneth's commitment to critical theory, allowing me to present a schematic account of his theory of social freedom which is ironically Hegelian inspired, but decidedly critical of Hegel's characterization of democracy. I conclude by relating Benjamin's image of "the tradition of the oppressed" with the notion of social freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the core of the principle of democracy is the claim that all individuals, or as many as possible, should decide for themselves and that they must be included in collective governance of the community in which the majority rules. However, drawing upon Hegel's theory of the state, I will show in this paper that in a democracy, the emphasis on individual rights, at the expense of developing the notion of universal good, is not only problematic, but dangerous because in the absence of rational authority of the state, people rely mainly on public opinion for guidance, which results in what Hegel may call the tyranny of the majority. As a consequence, democracy, which purports itself to be the champion of freedom, tends to be exclusivist and totalitarian as dissenting ideas are silenced by the "ruling majority" in actual democratic processes. In fact, the notion of "legitimacy" (i.e., legitimated by the majority) conduces to the assault on the inner will to resist rendering individuals in a democracy as "conformists." The paper concludes that, for Hegel, freedom can be realized not through democracy as espoused by the liberal theorists, but through his theory of the state the state being not only a guarantor of basic rights and liberties, but as a dimension of freedom which commits itself to a substantive vision of the universal good as the paramount object of human aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Max Weber delivered his “Science as a Vocation” lecture in 1917 it was to an audience of students facing war and political conflict, and shaped by its membership of activist youth groups whose ideologies were informed by left-Hegelianism. Resisting the clamour for a political message that would light the path to a progressive future, Weber told the students that such philosophical prophecy betrayed the office of the scholar. This consisted in transmitting the “value free” methods that characterised empirical fields, and the ethical disciplines that students had to undergo in order to master these methods. The paper argues that when the Frankfurt School rejected Weber’s approach it did so on the basis of a critique that amounted to a cultural-political attack grounded in the left-Hegelianism that he had repudiated.

Westphal outlines Subjective Spirit as a whole to argue that Hegel develops Kant's functionalist cognitive psychology in a broader context of embodied psychophysiology; Gabriel advances the idea that Hegel is pursuing a "meta-metaphysical" project (106), premised in second-order conceptions of "modes of thinking of human mind that fall short of a coherent account" (116). In part 4, Angelica Nuzzo brilliantly surveys the notion of "absoluteness" starting from Kant's Transcendental Dialectic in the I Critique of Pure Reason i , arguing that Hegel's use of "absolute" in the I Encyclopedia i "starts where Kant has left off" (214). Indeed, for Hegel morality, the state, art, religion, and philosophy all belong to the I spiritual i domain, and this makes the I Philosophy of Spirit i , as Hegel himself acknowledges, "the sublimest and most difficult" part of his system ( I Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences i , §377). [Extracted from the article]

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The 19th century was one of the richest periods in the history of human thought. If we look at it not only in terms of bare dates, but also in terms of ideologically meaningful events, we realize that this time span symbolically begins with the great French revolution (1789) and ends with the outbreak of world war I (1914). Scientific theories and philosophical ideas that emerged during the nineteenth century - Kantianism, Hegelianism, materialism, Marxism, social and biological evolutionism, positivism, radical atheism - inundated university lecture halls, political cabinets, and parliamentary chambers. Not all intellectuals of that time were aware of the overwhelming power of these philosophical novelties or the groundbreaking significance of major ideological currents. Only serious reflection on what was happening in European thought, in the fields of culture, science, history, philosophy, and religion, allowed people to notice that very serious changes were on their way. One of the key figures who recognized the power of philosophical ideas reverberating in 19-century disputes was an Italian clergyman: Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, later pope Leo XIII. It was this Pope who, aware of the weight, power and consequences of the new trends emerging in the late 19th century, in very unfavorable conditions for the catholic Church (idealistic philosophies and incipient Marxism) issued in 1879 the encyclical Aeterni Patris. This sophisticated document was not exclusively religious in character (as encyclicals and exhortations usually are), but it was also concerned with the spiritual and ideological condition of nineteenth-century Europe. The pope delineated the ways for providing intellectual assistance and rebuilding the significance of theology and religion in public life, imbalanced by post-Enlightenment and modernistic trends. Leo XIII argued persuasively that the Church's mission is not limited to teaching, and that it also concerns the dissemination of relevant content in public and political life. It is not merely economic or concerning everyday life issues that matter for Nations, states and communities are not exclusively preoccupied with economic matters and everyday problems. Rather, they are concerned in the first place with what happens in culture, art, philosophy. The pope in an almost prophetic way realized the overarching importance of philosophy. In the light of the constantly recurring question about the legitimacy and need of Christian philosophy, it is worth looking retrospectively at the meaning of Leo XIII's encyclical and the vision of the role of philosophy it proposes with respect to the human search for answers to questions arising from current civilization as well as scientific and cultural progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]