The article is devoted to the analysis of the anthropological views of Cyril of Turov on the rela­tionship of spiritual and bodily principles in human nature. In connection with this goal, a review of general anthropological ideas about human nature, presented in Eastern Christian patristic thought, is undertaken in order to identify possible continuity in the works of the ancient Russian author. The tradition of anthropological dualism characteristic of Byzantine patristic thought is shown. A detailed reflection of the relationship between (...) the spiritual and the carnal in human na­ture is considered on the material of such early works by Cyril of Turov as “A word about the monasticism”, “The Legend of the Chernorizsky rank”, and later – “The Parable of the Soul and Body”, “The Word about the Relaxed”. As a result of the research, the author of the article concludes that, firstly, physicality in the anthropology of the ancient Russian author acts as a ne­cessary outer shell for the soul, a form that is not sinful in isolation from spiritual movements, but acts as a receptacle of vice in connection with the free will of a person who has decided to live his life in satisfying earthly temptations and animals needs. Secondly, sin is an exclusively spiritual burden and spiritual responsibility. And, finally, thirdly, according to Cyril of Turov, soul and body are not opposed within a human being, but act as necessary, equally significant parts of the indivi­sible, undifferentiated integrity of the perfect creation of the Lord – man. (shrink)

The article contains a comparative analysis of philosophical and religious views of the Indian thinker and public figure Swami Vivekananda and the philosophers of the American transcenden­talism movement. The author focuses on understanding by the intellectuals of various aspects of the Divine. As representatives of American transcendentalism, the most prominent figures of this movement are considered, in whose works the main transcendentalism ideas are expressed – philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William Ellery Channing. Hermeneutical and historical-philosophical methods (...) are used in the study. As a result, the obvious similarity of many positions in the teachings of thinkers is recognized, caused by common sources of their views. At the same time, significant differences in the views of Western philosophers and Indian thinker are revealed. They are represented in the ideas about the divinity of man, about na­ture as a metaphysical force, as well as in the question of the search for and knowledge of God. The conclusion about Vivekananda’s adequate comprehension of the works of American trans­cendentalists and his using of transcendentalism ideas for forming a masterful interpretation of the foundations of Indian culture for Western society is done. (shrink)

The article analyzes the philosophy of the history of French neo-Kantianism school founder, the creator of the idea of Uchronia, Charles Renouvier. Attention is focused on the theoretical atti­tudes inherent in various stages of the creative development of Renouvier, and on their connection with «utopia in history». In his philosophy of history, Renouvier opposed the concept of predesti­nation, the need for all events taking place. He insisted on the presence of freedom in history, on the possibility of moving along other (...) paths of social reality, not fixed by tradition. In the alter­native version of history depicted by the French thinker, Christianity triumphed not in the West, but in the East. The Crusades took place but were geographically directed in the opposite course. Progress in understanding of religion later returned Christianity to the West in a form cleared of fa­naticism. Renouvier connected the future of human civilization with the republican social struc­ture. He predicted the end of all kinds of wars. In a cautious, veiled form he criticized the Second Empire regime in France. Renouvier’s concept contained both strengths and weaknesses. It is fruit­ful in its call to focus in political life on the idea of the effectiveness of human free will, the idea of maximizing the moral content of the concept of the state. It is vulnerable in its intention to at­tach decisive importance to the intellectual factor in history. (shrink)

The paper discusses Cambridge pragmatism which is understood as certain views of a few Cam­bridge philosophers (B. Russell, Ch. Ogden, F. Ramsey) in the 1920s. Frank Ramsey is regarded as the crucial and most interesting proponent of those views. The philosophers who have introduced the term Cambridge pragmatism (H. Price, Ch. Misak) propose to reconsider the “standard” his­tory which, in their view, underestimates the influence of American pragmatism on the Cambridge philosophers in question. It, first of all, concerns Ramsey who, (...) in Misak’s words, created “the most compelling version” of pragmatism. The aim of the paper is to try to figure out, taking, as a kind of test, the problem of belief which was intensively discussed by both the American prag­matists and the Cambridge philosophers of the 1920s and the particular solution of which consti­tutes, so to say, the kernel of pragmatism, which of the approaches to understanding Ramsey’s view – the standard history or Misak’s history – is more justified. It is concluded that the differ­ences between the two approaches are determined by the fact that they evaluate Ramsey’s ideas from the position of different conceptions of pragmatism. It is noted that a more interesting task for historians of philosophy is to explain why such organic syntheses of analytic philosophy and pragmatism, as we have in the case of Ramsey, are possible. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to an unexplored subject in the history of spiritualism in the 19th century and considers two of its prominent representatives – the famous French spiritualist Felix Ravais­son (1813–1900) and the Swiss thinker Charles Secrétan (1815–1895). The author uses not only biographical material, but also such unstudied documents as Secretan’s article on the philosophy of Ravaisson and his letter to him, accidentally discovered by Ch. Devivaise in Ch. Renouvier’s archive. The author shows that the dependence of both (...) philosophers on Schelling was not so much the direct influence of the German philosopher on their thought as an internal relationship with his thought. The article shows that Ravaisson’s emphasis on the aesthetic component of understanding the world as the self-development of the spirit contrasts with the moral optics of Secrétan’s meta­physics. In addition, the philosophy of Ravaisson was formed on the basis of the Christianly rethought metaphysics of Aristotle, while the philosophy of Secrétan has as its starting point the moral and religious thought of Kant. However, the pathos of the universal striving for the best, the highest, the excellent on the path of sacrificial service and self-giving indissolubly unites these spiritualist philosophers. In the Appendix to the article, the author gives a translation of the men­tioned letter of Secrétan to Ravaisson. (shrink)

This publication presents a translation into Russian of Benedetto Croce’s essay from one of his later books “Philosophy and Historiography”. Here he raises the question of how the historian of philosophy should interpret those moments when the reasoning of a philosopher who is being studied is accidentally or deliberately not cleared up by him, or its development stops at a certain point. Considering the possible reasons for this, Croce touches on several themes to which his ear­lier writings were devoted and (...) to which he returned throughout his scholarly life. Thus, he draws attention to the contradiction in the theory of knowledge of G. Vico, which consists in the applica­tion of the principle of verum-factum not only to history, but also to the mathematical sciences: on the one hand, only God can achieve truth in knowledge of nature, since he created nature, and on the other hand, truth in mathematics is available to man, since he “creates” mathematical ele­ments and operations, and with them the method of natural science. Croce also points as an exam­ple to one of the contradictions in Hegel’s philosophy of nature, which consists in the confu­sion of empirical and speculative methods. It led to the endowment of the natural sciences with the status of “semi-philosophy”, to the untrue application of dialectics to the facts and concepts of the natural sciences. Convinced that the verum-factum formula can be combined with the teaching of absolute spiritualism, Croce warns against attributing such a connection to Vico himself, as this would mean incorporating later experience and a state of knowledge into his theory. (shrink)

The paper explores the origin and semantic derivation of Latin philosophic term “mōrālitās” (“morality”), keeping in mind its generalizing and object-giving function in modern moral philoso­phy, which is obvious in its derivates in European languages. The semantic derivation of “mōrā­litās” is being examined by means of comparative analysis of lexicographical data in three dictio­nary groups: that of the Late Latin (when the word “mōrālitās” first occurs), of the Medieval Latin (when it enters philosophical lexicon) and that of Early Modern Latin (...) (when the term became widespread and got its modern meaning). To cover the lack of lexicographical information in the latter two groups of dictionaries the study uses Google Books full-text search, which statisti­cally proves, that the term gained popularity only in the first half of 17th century and also gives im­portant clues on the development of its meaning in late scholasticism. In conclusion, it is stated, that semantic derivation of the term in Late, Medieval and Early Modern Latin shares the same common guidelines, namely steady synonymic ties with emerging substantive forms of the ad­jective “mōrālis” (moral) and term phrases, formed with “mōrālis” and “mōs” (habit, custom). As a result of such a derivation “mōrālitās” came to be highly polysemic term, denoting the very quality of the free and conscious action, its moral worth and the rules to estimate the worth, and the philosophical discipline for doing that, and the subject of this discipline in the same time. (shrink)

The publication is a commented translation and study of the work “Pakṣilasvāmin’s Introduc­tion to his Nyāyabhāṣyam” by a prominent Austrian indologist and intercultural philosopher G.R.F. Oberhammer. The author examines the background of Oberhammer’s research, gives a brief information about the school of Nyāya and focuses on how Oberhammer demonstrates the history of Nyāya and its becoming aware of itself as a philosophical system based on the short text of Pakṣilasvāmin (Vātsyāyana) introduction to his Nyāyabhāṣyam. In his article, Oberhammer answers the (...) question why such heterogeneous parts as elements of the theory of argumentation borrowed from the ancient tradition of Vāda (the theory of debate), logic and epistemology, cos­mology and the doctrine of the soul and its liberation from the bonds of saṁsāra (soteriology) were combined into the harmonious philosophical system of Nyāya and how this happened during the development of the school due to its becoming aware of itself as a method of searching for truth (and what this truth is from the point of view of Nyāya), how this was helped by creative bor­rowing from another philosophical school – Yoga. The publication is prefaced by a brief history of the Viennese oriental and indological school, to which Oberhammer belongs. (shrink)

In recent decades, historians of moral philosophy started to pay more attention to Baruch Spinoza, studying the often-neglected ethical dimension of his philosophy. Nevertheless, despite this growing interest, Spinoza is rarely placed in the canon of moral philosophy, and therefore his relation to various traditions of normative ethics remains unclear. In this article, I attempt to show that Spinoza’s moral theory relies heavily on a certain tradition in normative ethics, usually called eudaimonism or eudaimonist virtue ethics. This assertion is justified (...) through close examination of two conceptual features that unite Spinoza’s moral theory with virtue-ethical eudaimonism. The first feature is its moral naturalism: this theory is explicitly derived from Spinoza’s metaphysical views on nature sive substance and human nature in particular. The second feature is Spinoza’s active reliance on a developed normative concept of the highest good (summum bonum), also called “happiness” (felicitas) or “blessedness” (beatitudo) – the concept that is directly manifested in the moral ideal of a “free man” (homo liber), put forward in Part IV of the “Ethics”. (shrink)

The paper studies the practice of intercultural philosophy in the writings of J. Mohanty, the philosopher deeply engaged in both Indian and Western traditions of thought. Mohanty makes a number of important observations about the nature of Indian thought; he focuses on the particular relation between theory and practice in the philosophical schools of India (darshanas): practice is an essential part of Indian discourse; and theory, a genuine philosophical knowledge, is a significant part of it as well. Mohanty argues, on (...) the basis of classical philosophical texts of the Indian tradition, that Indian systems of thought are quite suitable to the classical European notion of philosophy. The publication includes a translated article by Mohanty, “Theory and Practice in Indian Philosophy” (with the commentary of the translator), which represents an important example of intercultural philosophical reflection. (shrink)

The review highlights two main parts of the book: information about scientists who created psychoanalysis, developed and applied it, and Appendices. The first of them is devoted to classical psychoanalysis, starting with S. Freud. Here the author introduces the reader to British and Hungarian psychoanalysis, including in their modern version. It is noted that the changes that have occurred in the theoretical field of psychoanalysis have led to radical changes in therapeutic practice. The boundaries of psychoanalysis are fluid. They are (...) constantly expanding, and in our time psychoanalysis can be interpreted as a system of theories of human behavior, as a way to treat mental illness, etc. Appendices consisting mainly of scientific articles of philosophers and psychoanalysts translated by V.V. Starovoitov from English. They can be considered an interesting book in their own right. Particularly attractive to the reader are the articles of R. Fairburne and D. Winnicott, as well as an extensive article by Dr. Elizabeth Spillius. Overall, the whole book is informative and useful, it can not only benefit the novice psychoanalyst of a philosophical orientation, but also arouse interest in psychoanalysis in a person who previously considered the theory and practice of psychoanalysis to be theoretical fun. (shrink)

The article by the Swiss author, published in translation, vividly and expressively reveals the nature of the personality and work of Charles Secretan (1815–1895), an outstanding philosopher of Switzerland of the 19th century, in the historical context in which they developed. The author of the article convincingly shows the difficulty of unambiguous historical and philosophical characteristics of Secretan’s philosophy, which is based on the religious-metaphysical doctrine of freedom and moral obligation. Maurer approaches the coverage of Secretan’s philosophy, trying to understand (...) it not only as a result of certain philosophical and religious influences, but also as a reflection of “his time and his country”. The author of the article presents the evolution of Secretan's work as a departure from the speculative-deductive method of German idealists-systematists, characteristic of its first period, which is manifested in the Swiss philosopher’s appeal to the actual moral and socio-political problems of his time. Maurer’s article can be useful not only to specialists in the history of philosophy, but also to a wider circle of readers interested in the thought of the 19th century, without knowledge of which it is impossible to understand modern Western philosophy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to an investigation of the preconditions of Heidegger’s methodological atheism, according to which “philosophy is fundamentally atheistic”. Based on biographical evidence which sheds light on the mental experience of the young philosopher (“darkness of depressive sensitivity”, according to H. Ott) the author maintains that Heidegger was very prejudiced against the Catholic tradition. The author suggests that the origins of Heidegger’s methodology should be sought in the first and most important of the “turns” which took place around (...) 1916, when Heidegger was in deep crisis. Two main components can be distinguished in this religious-philosophical turn: (1) the rejection of Catholicism, linked to a youthful experience of dependence on the church that stretched over decade; (2) the Protestant influence of his wife and teacher (but no less so of Luther and Kierkegaard) along with the existential experience of the First World War, in which Heidegger became involved. As a result, the author concludes that Heidegger chooses philosophy as opposed to theology, which sets up a specific understanding of philosophy and a negative attitude towards theology. According to Heidegger, only by renouncing ungenuine religiosity one can stand honestly before God, but this “purifying atheism” ultimately leads not to God, but to Nothing. (shrink)

The publication consists of two parts: an introduction to the problems of researching W.L. Gordin’s creative legacy and a translation of his article, published in 1926 in Columbia University magazine “The Journal of Philosophy”, from English into Russian. The author emphasizes that it is impossible to write the biography of the Russian thinker until the emigrant period of his life is studied. Besides, the introduction says that historians mostly focus their attention on the sociopolitical side of W.L. Gordin’s life, rather (...) than on his ideas, which, in fact, determined his actions throughout his life. The author believes that the publication of this source will make it possible in the future to begin large-scale work on the study of the philosophical heritage of the thinker during his forced emigration from Russia. (shrink)

The article highlights the possibility of considering the works by P.A. Florensky through the prism of an intertextual approach. In order to fully determine the relevance of the intertextual approach to the study of this issue, the article articulates such concepts as intertext and intertextuality, and Florensky’s legacy itself is considered from the point of view of Barth’s idea of the Text. А program for studying Florensky’s works is proposed based on the conclusions. This program consists in considering the author’s (...) legacy with an emphasis on reading the text and the meanings embedded in it without searching for borrowed the other philosophers’ ideas. At the same time, the article summarizes the importance of preserving the figure of the author as the creator of the text, although in a situation of reducing his role, as opposed to the intertextual approach where the role of the author is eliminated, replaced with a scriptor. Intertextual optics allows us to characterize Florensky’s texts in terms of their high ability to generate new texts and inherent meanings. (shrink)

Intellectual experiences of Russian philosophers of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries devoted to Russia demonstrate the intensive work of national self – knowledge. The concentration of thinkers on a certain range of topics, such as freedom and revolution, the state and society, culture and politics, religion and ideology, indicates a high density and polemical intensity of discussion. The thematic focus of Russian thought on national and cultural issues creates an end-to-end narrative with an open structure, where (...) texts are dialogically intertwined with each other. These statements often indicate a value and ideological conflict between various actors in the social history of Russia. This historiosophical narrative can be interpreted as a meta-text of Russian social and religious-philosophical thought, which in many senses is the practice of self-description of the national intelligentsia. It testifies to her spiritual and ideological quest, the struggle for a social ideal – about the moral choice of thinking Russian people, which encourages criticism of the historical experience of Russia. The main problem of this pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary discourse is the question of the moral and political responsibility of the educated class for the historical choice of Russia and its fate. The most important from a historical and philosophical point of view texts are the works of Russian Silver Age thinkers. Their arguments about Russia include both a reaction to the events of the three Russian revolutions and the Great War, which traumatized the consciousness of the intelligentsia, and a painful post-traumatic reception of their own intellectual tradition and the moral deformation of ideals that took place in it. Those ideals based on the idea of freedom and philosophical honesty in achieving the truth. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the consideration of some Wittgenstein’s ideas in relation to similar ideas of Dostoevsky. The comparison is given on a number of key topics for both: the world as the whole as it is and what it is; the image of the world and the meaning of life; the world of the happy and the unhappy. Despite the fundamental difference between the thinkers, the comparison makes it possible to discover an affinity with Dostoyevsky’s worldview of values (...) in Wittgenstein. The analysis of his “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, the philosopher’s “Diaries” and “Lecture on Ethics” in comparison with the analysis of the Russian writer’s fiction texts, helps us to discover those religious and spiritual foundations that both hide and expose to the thoughtful reader beyond the “border and logic of the world”, about which one suggests silence, while the other hides and demonstrates only through the opposite form of false Christianity. The comparison allows us to see that, for Wittgenstein, making sense of the world as the meaning of life is not as silent as he himself claims. At the same time, it was the philosopher’s language of description that allowed us to discover Dostoevsky’s theodicy within the rational world, visibly crucifying Christ but tacitly living it. (shrink)

This paper is the second part of the investigation. Chr. A. Crusius in the “Way to the Certainty and Adequacy of Human Knowledge” introduced the most developed alternative view to Wolffian position regarding symbolic and contemplating correlation. He preferred the contemplating cognition and tied its functioning with imagination. Kant in the “Critique of Pure Reason” brings about a terminology revolution and changes the style of the problem consideration. He turns the proceeding from F. Viet and G.W. Leibniz’s art “speciosa generalis”, (...) which was earlier thought as symbolic, into a priori figurative synthesis. Following the changes in the nature of sensibility and understanding treatment, Kant rejects the opposition of intuitive or contemplative and symbolic in favour of the following oppositions: intuitive is opposed to discursive, while the contemplation is opposed to the understanding concept. The figurative synthesis as a result of transcendental faculty of imagination instead of the former empirical imagery creates the schematic possibility of the empirical image per se. This well-developed Kant’s position unwittingly put aside Wolff’s program of reduction of the symbolic cognition to quasi-intuitive one. However, today this program can have a practical importance and enrich the problem of the cognition visibility. (shrink)

The art historian Alessandro Giovanardi has recently published a monograph on one of the important representatives of the Russian religious-philosophical renaissance of the beginning of 20th century – Vladimir Nikolayevich Zabugin. This volume, written in Italian, aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Zabugin's intellectual biography, philosophical and aesthetic ideas and opens up a completely unknown corpus of the author’s works as well as the history of the reception of his heritage. The monograph underlines the contribution of Vladimir Zabugin in (...) Italian and European humanitarian culture and defines his heritage as a rare synthesis of the finest erudition and Christian spirituality. (shrink)

Translation of a fragment of one of Locke’s last major works named “A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul” with a translators’ Preface, which traces Locke’s arguments tending to justify the resistance to the supreme powers and offer the corresponding interpretation of Paul’s famous ban on any opposition to political power. The main method applied by Locke is placing of Paul’s thesis into historical and personal context, and drawing the distinction between the power in abstract, and on (...) the other hand the power of persons exercising it de facto. These last persons, in case they are not called by God or have no legal right to power or do iniquities and stay far from the law of nature, or act counter to the common good of the people, all these are due to be resisted and that with no fear of committing sin and incurring wrath from above. These conclusions though presupposed by the drift of Locke’s argument, remail prudently unvoiced by Locke, who keeps silence on the matter and expects from the readers the right understanding of his silences. (shrink)