Mokslo ir tikėjimo dialogai

The article analyses the educational-didactic level of the sermons by the late 19th century priest and Lithuanian writer Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas. The target of the sermons is the community, whose value orientation and morality must be developed. A sermon as a religious discourse enables the orator not only to comment on the Word of God revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and to explain the truths of the faith, but also, with the help of these truths, to achieve pragmatic goals: to educate, teach and provide practical knowledge. The study focuses on the category of conscience, as determining the moral decisions of an individual and having the power to influence his thoughts and feelings. The problem and the main goal of the article is to find out how this special human ability to distinguish good from evil is measured and understood by Vaižgantas himself, what role he gives it in the process of the individual’s moral education, and how his perceived conscience and its meaning correlate with the texts of the Holy Scriptures. The sermons preached by J. Tumas-Vaižgantas in Mintauja in 1894 were selected for the study. During the analysis, it became clear that for the preacher, the conscience is not only the final authority of morality, which must be obeyed unconditionally, but also that the close relationship between the conscience and faith is important. Discussing the educational role of the conscience, Vaižgantas emphasises the need to form a clear conscience.

In order to find out whether there is a possibility for developing environmental protection policy in Thomas Hobbes’ political theory, the publication examines Hobbes’ approach to man, biotic and abiotic nature, and their interrelationships in natural and civil states. The author of the article argues that although Hobbes does not imagine a social contract that includes irrational plants and animals, there is a possibility in his political system to represent the interests of nature, and to create environmental policy taking into account the role of the Hobbesian sovereignty in civil society.

The article investigates the source of the historiographical topic of heroic paganism in the laments/elegies of Dionizas Poška (1764–1830). It is known that Poška read the manuscript of the first history of Lithuania (1822) by Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864). The article hypothesises that the choice of Poška’s written language ‘to lean towards the Samogitian dialect’, and the increase in a lexicon characteristic of the historiographical genre in the laments, are connected with his reading Daukantas’ manuscript. Since until now researchers into Daukantas’ legacy do not agree on the date of the completion of his first manuscript history, it is believed that research of this kind will make it possible to clarify it. The research leads to the conclusion that Poška read the ‘History of Lithuania’ by Daukantas in 1824, because in verse dating from that year we find a lexicon which is characteristic of Daukantas’ work. In elegies written after 1824, Poška found Lithuanian equivalents of the traditional topics of the heroic and lost nation, which are often taken from the text of Daukantas, and are not literal translations of Polish literature. Daukantas’ text inspired Poška to talk about a lost Golden Age, and so he can be considered a pioneer of Lithuanian historical elegy. Following Daukantas, the poet learned to replace rhetorical writing with an authentic expression of thought characteristic of Romantic authors.

The emotions impact every single process in an individual’s life. An analysis of the scientific works selected by a Google search based on the terms ‘emotions, Vygostky, Leontiev’ shows that the complexity of the topic is multiplied by the complexity, mixture and fragmentary nature of the approaches applied to the investigation of the emotions. The aim of this work is to revisit the works of Vygotsky and Leontiev relating to the emotions underpinning the identification of notions, features and functions of the emotions. A novel research methodology, the development of the system of external and internal perspectives, was implemented. The investigation into the emotions was based on the theories of Vygotsky and Leontiev: activity theory, law of development, psychological system, word meaning, concept formation, and the unity of language. The theoretical analysis resulted in the definition of notions, features and functions of the emotions. The limitations of the research were identified. Further research directions are proposed.

The presented here article analyses the features of a language occurring in the border. The results were achieved by using the ethno-linguistic method, which is based on the systematic analysis of the ritual structure and vocabulary. The object of the analysis was a little fragment of the spiritual culture – the winter period of the ritual year. The structure of the ritual was established according to the methodology as well as the terminology of rituals, which includes several lexical-semantic microfields, was analyzed. The research was carried out nearby Vilnius (region of Vilnius, partly Širvintai and Molėtai) and also in the regions close to Byelorussia (Šalčininkai and Švenčionys).