Czech studies in Poland – the nature and content of the research field

The position of Poland and Czechia in contemporary Europe, their mutual relations and significance of the areal studies in Central Europe. Czech Lands in comparative history of Central European macroregion in European and American historiographies, and a special position of the Polish research attitude. The asymmetry of the Polish studies in Czechia and the Czech studies in Poland. Scholars, essayists, and churchmen in the capacity of interpreters of the Czech issues. The national heterostereotypes in an interdiciplinary research and their role in social relations.

From discord to brotherly affection and back. The Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague and its scholarly cooperation with Poland (1918–1938)

The article is focused on the relationship of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University to the Polish culture and humanities in the interwar period. The attention of the author was concentrated on the official contacts as well as on the lectures of visiting professors and on the situation in the field of Slavic studies, historiography and oriental studies.

This article aims to trace the transformation, which the term “humanities” (“human sciences”) was subject to from the early modern era to modern times. Its scope is limited to an indication of some of the key turning points in the history of understanding of the humanities by the humanists themselves, and to an identification of key categories that define the humanities (they include: paideia, studia humanitatis, république des lettres, and Bildung). The arguments contained herein are to serve rather as a voice, a contribution to the debate over the “crisis of the humanities”, which has been conducted more and more intensively for at least several decades.

The aim of this article to reconstruction the vision of the young scientist in humanities (characteristics, competences, optimal progress requirements) written by Ryszard Borowicz based on available references and historical sources. This is the first research to focus this vision has not been noted anywhere through the R. Borowicz’s books and articles. It presents the results of a research based on historical method allowing to combine all the data from different sources from content analysis to delthi technique.

Liberal Education in the Contemporary Political Thought

The article is devoted to the problem of the place ascribed to liberal education (and most of all to humanities as constituting its essential part) in contemporary political thought. In times when many rightist as well as leftist thinkers diagnose a crisis of liberal democracy and its educational system, displaying much anxiety about the still-lowering level of citizens’ willingness to participate in a public sphere, some of them propose their diagnosis of such situation and postulates of reform aimed at raising the level of citizens’ engagement in democratic life. One of the means to achieving that goal is implementation of the idea of liberal education, which might work in favor of students’ character development, their acquisition of a holistic view of reality, and their consciousness of the fact of overlapping character of relations binding individual and communal wellbeing. The article aims at presenting theoretical ways of defending humanities in face of contemporary restatement of the role of liberal education in Western societies. The course of argument is following: firstly the transition made in XXth century from “liberal education” to “education to liberalism” (resulting in specialization and vocational character of science) will be traced. Then the opinions of critics to such model of education will be shown, focusing on the representatives of three political doctrines: republicanism, communitarianism and liberalism. In case of each of these group of thinkers their characteristic attitude towards humanities, will be displayed.

The text addresses the key competencies of the future relevant to the labour market from the perspective of students of the humanities and social sciences. It is based on the research carried out in three universities: in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (a total of 603 students were surveyed) in 2022 as part of the Erasmus+ project grant KA220-HED. Research results indicate that students perceive critical thinking, problem-solving, and interpersonal communication skills as the most important for future work, given that creativity is ranked in the middle of the three universities by students. Students ranked low emotion management, time management skills and digital competencies in the labor market. In terms of gender in the 4Cs, there are differences – for men, critical thinking is more important than for women, while communication and cooperation are more important for women. There are no differences in assessing the importance of creativity – this reflects the stereotypical image of differences between occupations perceived as more male and female.