Today, the world is struggling with a coronavirus epidemic. People explain differently the causes and sense of this disease. Old Polish literature about diseases is representative for European thought in the modern era. The problem of the disease appears in old Polish literature in various discourses. The three most important are religious, medical-astrological and social discourse. In this article, I discuss basic paradigms of thinking connected with these discourses and the relationship between them. In the religious discourse, it is God who decides about health and illness. The pathological state of the organism can be both a trial and a punishment for the sinner. The medical and astrological discourse is based on ancient medicine, medieval medicine and astrology. It assumes a close dependence of human health on the balance of the fluids in the body and on the planetary system. The social discourse is dominated by epidemics of infectious diseases. It is a collection of advices for organizing a society during a pandemic.
The article presents a workshop on art evaluation addressed at university students of the humanities. The aims of the workshop involve defining the terms ‘art’ and ‘kitsch’, analysing the functions of art throughout the ages, understanding the difference between an educated and uneducated art viewer, the importance of a canon of masterpieces of art for preserving the cultural heritage of Europe, and the problem of personal expectations concerning art. Scholarly content is presented to the students via a workshop based on coaching methods developed by cognitive psychology. The choice of this mode of work allows students to express themselves freely, teaches them how to defend their own opinions, improves their ability to see different points of view, and develops creativity. The workshop begins with a preliminary survey to identify the issues the students need help. It consists of 4 sessions (1.5 hours each) and ends with an evaluation. The proposed workshop can be extended with additional modules, tailored to the participants’ specific needs.
Summary
This article is concerned with the notion of the ages of man’s life seen from the anthropo-logical perspective as a cultural paradigm. It is obvious in all cultures that anybody who has lived a long life has to pass through the stages of childhood, youth, adulthood down to old age. Although these four ages are universally acknowledged, the length of each phase, its relative quality and value are subject to cultural variation. To reconstruct the topoi used to highlight both the more attractive and the negative aspects of old age the article examines the contents of two books from the late 16th century, Stanisław Kołakowski’s Man’s Life (1584) and Jan Protasowicz’s A Mirror of the Old Man (1597). Chief among the benefits peculiar to senectitude is the respect given to the old man’s wisdom, his counsel and advice, the quality of his political leadership; accordingly the senex can function as a paragon of virtues, a holy man who blesses the young generation, a hale old man enjoying his well-earned retirement, and a pious old man preparing for death. This complimentary picture of the rewards of old age is however offset by its accumulating ills and miseries, clumsiness and decrepitude, habitual whinging and complaining, childishness, ill-health, loneliness, naivete, proneness to romantic infatuation and ridicule. All those features that are conditioned by the nature of biological rythms and processes have a permanence about them that makes them constants of the literary descriptions of old age. The culture of the Renaissance was on the whole unfavourably disposed towards senectitude, which is borne out by the two texts analyzed in this article.
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