Understanding Auschwitz in “philosophy after…” requires its continuation in the “phi­losophy before…”, in considering philosophical thought from the point of view of the extent to which it is responsible for Auschwitz itself. The article attempts to see “philosophy before…” through the prism of one question: what is its attitude to the de­struction of the “non-definable being”, the central figure of Auschwitz, that person who is deprived of all the qualities and definitions the concept of a person is associated with: dignity, (...) reason, speech, morality and so on. A number of ideas and ways of thought, recognized as fundamental for philosophy and culture, allow and even mediate the de­struction of such a person. We are talking about opposing a good life to life as such, about justifying the murder of the non-virtuous and the bodily deficient, and in general – killing on the basis of moral considerations; about the differentiation of concepts, including killing, on the basis of circumstances, motives and intentions, means, results, with the maximum spread of moral and legal evaluations, up to “humane” killing, which puts killing as given­ness to the blind zone of philosophy. The theoretical basis of this line of thought is the re­jection of the understanding of the act as a single and only way of being, of the identity of the act and the actor. The complicity of philosophy in the destruction of the “not to be defined” lies in the definition and constant transcendence of the concept of a human being: any setting of its border at the same time turns out to be the sanctioning of the murder of someone who is outside it (despite the fact that the prohibition on killing a person im­plies such a definition). Philosophy is also responsible for putting killing on a par with other vices. The thought of “philosophy before” gives rise to many questions, including why philosophy is moving away from the desire to think unity, to set the world through thought as an act, why it has taken the path of social servility. Philosophy cannot renounce rationality, definitions, conceptual speech, but it can make the act of non-murder its own foundation. (shrink)

The article investigates the problem of the existence of the so-called multi-modal argu­ments – persuasive structures, where, along with written or spoken words, there are non-verbal elements that also perform persuasive functions. Such arguments are considered neither to be fully translatable into words, nor not to be total aliens in the argumentation studies. Along with the problem of translating the non-verbal component of a multi-modal argument, the question of their functional status in the structure of the argument is also discussed. (...) It is proposed to consider such elements as premises, the connection of which with the conclusion is explained through the description of the mode (whether it is an action, an image or a recorded audio message) in which their propositional con­tent is actualized. It is argued that the mode of the actualization of propositional content of the argument is no less significant than the content itself. On the basis of this claim it is proposed to consider “classical” textual arguments as a form of multi-modal arguments. (shrink)

Iamblichus of Chalcis, one of the most prominent Neoplatonists of the third – fourth cen­turies AD, introduced a list of twelve principal Plato’s dialogues that should have been com­pulsory studied by his disciples. This list was called the Canon of Iamblichus. However, the survived Iamblichus’ writings contain no information on the Canon; and later Neopla­tonists provide very scant mentions on the subject. It is the sole anonymous manuscript of the sixth century that counts twelve dialogues in the Canon and lists (...) each of them match­ing with the hierarchy of virtues. Nonetheless, Iamblichus seems to be less interested in the doctrine of virtues. Moreover, given the hierarchic order of virtues, one cannot ex­plain why ‘political’ virtues correspond to the Gorgias and not to the Statesman or the Re­public. To discover the reason for selection of particular Plato’s dialogues for the Canon, I analyzed the general assessments of the dialogues by later Neoplatonists. The analysis re­veals that every of the first ten dialogues contains a particular mythological story with a featured character, who plays the role of a Demiurge. The collected evidence argues that the principal selection criterion for Iamblichus was the mythologic kernel of each dialogue. Moreover, Iamblichus’ Canon presupposes that the first ten dialogues form a common mythological narrative, a kind of an integral meta-myth of Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

Spinoza teaches that the nature of things expresses itself in two ways: in motion and in the world of bodies, on the one hand, and in the intellect with its world of ideas, on the other. Physical bodies are in perpetual motion – arising, changing, disappearing; since the human body also participates in these processes, they are perceived by senses. Spinoza calls the knowledge of sensual properties and duration of the existence of bodies “imagination”. The human mind processes images of (...) bodies with the help of a special kind of abstractions, the “beings of reason”, and then it forms, on the basis of “general concepts”, adequate ideas about the “inner essences” of things, their “order and connec­tion”, i.e. about the causes for the existence of things and their causal relations. Scientific definitions, formulae and models represent these causes and relations in a perfectly pure form – “under a species of eternity”. The article shows how Spinoza delineates the limits of human cognition: they are set by the nature of mind as the idea of the body (man con­sists of two modes of substance – the living body and its idea/mind in the infinite intel­lect). The wider the scope of the body’s activity, the more our mind knows about the world and about itself. The last section of the article describes the relationship of rea­son to virtue, logic to ethics, and characterises the way of life “according to the guidance of reason”. Social life appears to Spinoza as a battle of “passions”, the passive affects of solidarity and enmity. Society cannot live according to the guidance of reason, but our minds can find a form of government that minimises the damage caused by the “blind af­fects” of the rulers and the crowd: Spinoza considered democracy to be the “completely absolute state”. (shrink)

This article examines the philosophy of Semyon Frank and the theology of Karl Rahner in the light of transcendental themes. It demonstrates that the appeal to transcendental an­thropology and to anthropology in general is perceived by Franck and Rahner as a way of renewal of religious metaphysics, avoiding accusations of both «dogmatism» and re­moteness from living religious experience. Both thinkers, appealing to the Christian tradi­tion and Western philosophy, interpret the «non-thematic» and «non-conceptual» experience of being as a primordial existential state. (...) In the author’s opinion, Frank and Rahner offer original approaches to the problem of the foundations of religious experience by de­veloping a philosophical theology «from below» with a fundamental focus on phenomeno­logical and transcendental consideration of subjectivity. (shrink)

Nikolay Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” was written in hot pursuit of the Crimean War (1853–1856), when the powers of Holy Union broke political equilibrium after the victory of the Russian army over Napoleon and started a new aggressive war against Russia, the only sovereign Slavic state in Europe. The book could be evaluated as an in­tellectual epilogue of the Crimean War in which there were pointed out two central prob­lems: firstly, to show the sovereignty and future perspectives of Slavic (...) civilization, which has occupied it’s own legitimate historic place in Europe as an independent cultural-his­toric type; secondly, to construct the project of the All-Slavic Union as a protective bar­rier against European invasion. The solution of the first problem was based on the tradi­tions of Russian thought, especially on Slavophilism. So that demonstrated it’s culmina­tion and specific Russian contribution to the world civilizational theory. The solution of the second problem was based on the “circle of conservative utopia” (A. Walicki) de­rived from the European Pan-Slavism (Austroslavism), founded on the territory of Aus­tro-Hungarian Empire as early as at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The contra­dictory combination of Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism is the subject of the historiosophi­cal study in the current article. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to describe the structure of sentimental and romantic affects. These structures set the forms of the life of the soul in sentimentalism and romanticism as spiritual movements that determine the epochs of culture. They remain relevant to the present and compete in it. I am starting from the distinction between emotion and affect, which has become one of the main themes of the “affective turn” in social sciences and humanities. Here I follow Brian Massumi (...) and suggest that emotions and affects are dis­tinct entities. Emotion is formed in ontogenesis and works with direct perception as a pri­mary reaction. The affect connects later and can correct the emotion. In the sphere of the symbolic, on the contrary, affects are the first to work, and then emotions can already be connected. The description of the four-part structure of affect as such is given. On its basis, sentimental and romantic assemblages of specific affects arise. Sentimentalism is pluralistic, sees the world as a rhizome, works with the economy of feelings. Sentimental­ist humanity is held together by an empathic pleasure in a variety of feelings. Romanti­cism refers to the nomad and to organic unity. His affects are based on a combination of cognitively comprehended metaphors “grasps”, “lifts” and “carries away” with the in­teroception of the body’s organs. The Romantic offers the experience of ecstatic reincar­nation, performative mental action, and action on behalf of the absolute. Sentimentalism is moving towards deepening individual sensitivity and improving the skills of managing feelings; romanticism, on the contrary, is simplified to low mass affects. The conclusion of the article is that in the complex interactions of the two types of affects, the sentimen­tal ones gradually replace the romantic ones, when and if the ability to control one’s feel­ings is considered as a valuable quality. (shrink)

The article explores the theme of environment in Valeriy Podoroga’s analytical anthropo­logy, offering an enactivist reading of his “The Metaphysics of Landscape”. The analyti­cal strategy of “The Metaphysics of Landscape” is contrasted with that of later works such as “Mimesis” and “Anthropograms”. Whereas in the later works the analytical tech­niques are set by a variety of optical concepts, metaphors and images, thus representing a strategy of “exclusionary observation”, in “The Metaphysics of Landscape” the analysis follows rather the movement of observer’s (...) body included in the environment and aims at the reconstruction of an integrated, sensorimotor, yet imaginary experience. Three frag­ments of Podoroga’s text, reconstructing imaginary bodies and landscapes embedded in the works of Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, are interpreted as three different ways of coupling body and environment, generating three different models of bodily-environmental experience. Finding the correspondence of the fragments of the descrip­tion of this experience to some key points of enactivist epistemology and aesthetics, the author shows that the enactivist approach makes it possible to formalize those tech­niques of analysis that allow us to discover the rules of dependence between some im­plicit modus of writing and the bodily experience of reading. (shrink)

The study discusses the relationship between Buddhism and poetry in early medieval Japan drawing on the cycle of poems “One Hundred Verses about the Seasons” (Shikidai hyakushu) dedicated to the shrine in Ise and written by the Tendai monk Jien (1155–1225). The paper deals with discursive strategies and ritual practices based on the exam­ples of the cycle “One Hundred Verses about the Seasons” by Jien, by which Buddhism in early medieval Japan consecrated a new ritual use of one of the (...) genres of court litera­ture, waka poetry. The paper briefly describes the process of incorporating the forms of Japanese waka poetry into Buddhist rites, traces the appearance of “songs of joy from following the teachings of (Buddha)” (ho:raku) in ritual practice, explains the meaning of the word ho:raku, describes a stage in the development of poetic theory formulated within the framework of Japanese esoteric Buddhism, characterizes the essence and meaning of “songs of joy” in the Buddhist tradition. The authors point to the contribution of Jien to the development of poetic theory and the relevance of new forms of waka, “songs of joy” created on the basis of this theory. The textual analysis of the cycle “One Hundred Verses about the Seasons”, its structure and content allows identifying the fea­tures of the genre of spiritual poetry ho:raku. The results also display how secular themes (nature, love lyrics) are reinterpreted to convey the experience of learning the teachings of Buddha, show the functioning of waka poetry as a means of preaching Buddhist teach­ings, as a way to comprehend the truth and achieve enlightenment. (shrink)

The article analyzes the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in feminist theory on the example of the concepts of Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler. The first part of the article examines Hegel’s teaching on the role of women in the family, identifies the place of the feminine in Hegel’s system and analyzes the Hegelian interpretation of Sophocle’s “Antigone”. The second part of the article presents an interpretation of Si­mone de Beauvoir. I affirm that the oppositions “woman – man” (...) and “the Other – I” are heirs to the “slave – master” opposition. The third part of the article discusses Irigaray’s in­terpretation of Hegel’s Antigone. It is argued that Antigone in Irigaray’s view goes be­yond the dialectic of slave and master, and therefore becomes a symbol of anti-woman. The fourth part of the article examines the paradox of bodily submission during the transi­tion to the Unhappy Consciousness by Judith Butler. The historical and philosophical study of influence is accompanied by a conceptual analysis of the problems that arise in the inter­pretation of feminist versions of the slave – master dialectic. At the end of the article, I briefly formulate the problems identified during the study and present possible solutions. (shrink)

Picture geometry is often regarded as an area of technical knowledge that accompanies or provides useful information for basic research on visual culture and almost never as a methodological one. Despite the historical and conceptual connections between mathe­matics and the visual, even a basic geometric competence is by no means a common of image and visual culture researchers. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of this kind of work belong to the field of technical knowledge, the history of mathemat­ics, (...) or positivism based theories; in other words, they do not address the most important issues for humanities research. Rare non-technical works in this area do not find due recognition and dissemination among a wider community of specialists. The article offers the main result of the research, the subject of which was pictorial depth. Pictorial depth is the version of the specific experience of distance with which the image is traditionally associated. The problem of distance is a classical area of philosophical reflection on the image. The article presents an attempt to geometrically express one of its versions, namely pictorial and visual depth. At the same time, the important dimension of inacces­sibility and heterogeneity is preserved, that is, the experience of depth is not reduced to visual data or the literal geometry of a flat picture. By constructing a geometrically object that can be considered depth, it is possible to extract intuitively non-obvious properties that would not be available through direct analysis of experience and other methods of naked reflection. The article presents only some of the findings obtained during the study. (shrink)

Modernity is marked by the advent of technologies capable of storing data almost indefi­nitely. On the other hand, the data collection takes place without the conscious permission of the users. The storage and collection of personal data is a potential problem, since the digital footprint of a person on the Internet has an impact on the social and political rep­resentation of the individual, its perception by other actors. Compromising the content of a digital footprint can expose information that is not (...) intended for others. There is cur­rently an increasing trend of misuse of stored data, both by criminals and by companies that use the data for sale or surveillance. The need to control how data is collected, stored and used leads to the emergence in the academic literature and the legal field of the “right to be forgotten”, which allows a person to actively moderate the process of collecting and storing data, to participate in determining the circle of those to whom they can be accessed, and delete personal data. The adoption of such a right not only allows the state to influence the collection and storage of data, regulating interactions through law-making activities, but also to realize the potential of an autonomous individual. The prospect of legislating the right to be forgotten has sparked debate in the academic and professional community about the destruction of the free marketplace of ideas and the imposition of political censor­ship on the Internet. The article deals with the philosophical, ethical and political founda­tions of the right to be forgotten. The article substantiates the conclusion that the right to be forgotten has a positive heuristic potential, but at the same time it has conceptual flaws, and is also not able to completely correct the current situation of data processing. However, the implementation of the right to be forgotten in the future can have a beneficial effect on the current situation in the field of collection and storage of personal data. (shrink)

Within the academic environment, we find the using of the term of biopolitics difficult because of its rather ambiguous definition. As a result, we can see either its naturalistic interpretations in which biopolitics is the application of life sciences (ethology, physio­logy, genetics, sociobiology, cybernetics, bioelementology, etc.) in modern politics, or definitions derived from Michel Foucault’s “biopower”, where biopolitics is a term that refers to techniques of managing all aspects of human life. In the one case, starting from biological knowledge, we (...) come to a mosaic set of studies and techniques aimed directly or indirectly at the political process, the regulation of a political community. In the other case, we have got a historical and philosophical analysis of the development of tech­niques that allow for the control of entire populations in modern Western societies. This study proposed an approach to biopolitical issues in order to distinguish biopolitics, biopolitical research, and explorations in biopolitics. Such way of considering can improve the understanding of how different views interact with each other in this area, and how they relate to the existing practice of managing population. (shrink)

Thomas M. Scanlon is one of the most prominent modern moral philosophers, and his theory of moral responsibility is one of the most influential theories of this kind in mod­ern ethics. In the present article we set out the main features of this theory and then deal in detail with one of the problems this theory faces, the moral luck cases. Despite several plausible approaches to this problem being available within the framework of theories of broadly Scanlonian type, Scanlon himself (...) seems to choose none of them. So, in spite of his own claims, his theory (at least in its form that he himself defends) seems to fail to solve this problem. However, this could arguably not be counted as a decisive argu­ment against this theory, given that all the other modern non-revisionary theories of moral responsibility fare no better in dealing with this problem. (shrink)

The article examines the “philosophy of anxiety” of early Heidegger. The influence of Niet­zsche on the young philosopher is noted, as well as the traumatic experience of World War I, which very strongly influenced the worldview of the author of Being and Time, making him reconsider, among other things, his attitude to the “system of Catholicism”. The article examines Heidegger’s description of the situation where one is seized by anxiety, where one would not expect it at all, where one normally (...) feels at home. Normally, being fallen, that is, being in the world and bustling with daily chores, one feels secure in the midst of beings, at home. However, something happens to him that robs him of his tranquility. This occurs because the existent (Dasein) is disturbed im Grunde seines Seins, at the core of his being; one is aware of his own mortality and the finitude of being, which constitutes a threat, opening the possibility of anxiety (immortal beings, such as angels, treat being dif­ferently, for them the analysis of Dasein is irrelevant). Fear belongs to the ontic, it relates to the fallen state. When one ascends to the Nothingness, which is revealed as Being, that is, when one rises above being in some respect, one surpasses fear as well. In the course of the article, the question of translating some of Heidegger’s concepts into Russian is dis­cussed, which is an urgent task for the Heideggerian studies. (shrink)

The main idea of the article is that the concepts of “Russian philosophy” and “philosophy in Russia” are one and the same. The very differentiation of the latter is associated with the peculiarities of the historical development of Russian philosophy, the formation of which coincided with the European turn in the development of the Russian state, car­ried out in the process of reforms of Peter the Great. This differentiation was justified at the initial stage and lost its meaning with the (...) acquisition of Russian philosophy of its independence by the end of the 19th century, the emergence of the original nationally ori­ented philosophical teachings in it. It is shown that the specificity of philosophy as a kind of knowledge and at the same time as a form of social consciousness gives rise to the di­versity of its specific manifestations, the unique identity of history and theory. It is con­cluded that the concept of Russian philosophy cannot be reduced to the history of Russian philosophy as a special research direction and academic subject within the subject field of professional philosophy. The question is raised about the specifics of national philosophy as a special kind of the latter. (shrink)

The article provides a critical assessment of the project to overcome correlationism pre­sented in Ray Brassier’s book “Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction”. Brassier is usually considered to be among the “speculative realists”, since the starting point of his philosophy in the 2000s was the struggle against correlationism. We argue that in terms of understanding correlationism, the philosopher was influenced by his colleague in speculative realism, Quentin Meillassoux. Meillassoux proposes to understand corre­lationism as philosophical approaches that focus on the relationship (correlation) (...) be­tween the poles: subject – object, signifier – signified, noema – noesis, etc. Meillassoux reproaches correlationists for not thematizing a reality independent of thinking, without which correlation itself would not exist. Meillassoux’s pathos is justified, since correla­tionism narrows the field of philosophical research, but Meillassoux himself cannot get rid of correlationism. Ray Brassier undertakes this task, drawing on the ideas of Wilfrid Sellars, Alain Badiou, and especially François Laruelle. Some natural-science theories also receive an anti-correlationist interpretation in Brassier’s book. Thus, the philoso­pher appeals to modern neurophysiology and eliminativism, as well as to cosmological physics. Based on the results of the study, it is concluded that Ray Brassier fails to over­come correlationism. The philosopher does not offer a convincing anti-correlationist in­terpretation of the ideas of Sellars, Badiou and Laruelle, and also does not justify the ap­peal to modern natural science. In addition, we come to the conclusion that the desire to oppose correlationism is productive, and for this, philosophy should shift its attention from correlation to the everyday pressure of reality itself, which the human subject can­not get rid of. (shrink)

The article examines the question of the correlation of the phenomena “Russian philoso­phy” and “philosophy in Russia”. The author believes that these phenomena are not iden­tical to each other, and Russian philosophy, being an important fragment of intellectual subculture, was often created outside of Russia. This phenomenon became especially prominent in the twentieth century, when Russian dissidents who were exiled abroad, working in the West, continued to be the largest Russian philosophers. On the other hand, within Russia itself (the Moscow (...) Kingdom, the Russian Empire, the short “democratic republic”, the USSR, post-Soviet Russia), not only Russians in language and culture phi­losophized and continue to philosophize. The author notes that Russian literature and philosophical journalism played an exceptional role in domestic philosophizing. It was they who most often made philosophy, as knowledge objectively tending to universality, a nationally colored Russian philosophy. (shrink)

The article is written on the basis of author’s paper at the panel discussion “How we un­derstand Russian philosophy” hold in the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. The article presents contemporary look on the problem based on the thesis of diversity as the central fundamental characteristic of the Russian philosophy. The di­versity must be acknowledged as the expression of it’s sovereignty opposed to the sole normative approach. Such kind of approach based on dogmatic Marxism had been spread during (...) Soviet period by authoritarian measures. The conception of diversity instead of Marxist oriented unification proposes variety of cognitive and hermeneutic means for knowing the treasury of Russian intellectual history. Another aspect of diversity includes multiplicity of languages used in philosophical texts besides proper Russian during the various periods. There are: Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin (XI–XVII centuries), French, English, German (XVIII–XX centuries) and various Slavic languages (XIX–XX centuries). Multiplicity of languages in Russian philosophical space could be explained mostly by political and censorial reasons. That multiplicity incorporates also high assortment of eth­nic groups that took part in the elaboration of various philosophical texts. It included Greeks, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Serbs etc. Many Russian thinkers had been exiled abroad or ought to leave home country to avoid political repressions: A.I. Herzen, M.A. Bakunin, P.A. Kropotkin, N.A. Berdyaev, S.L. Frank, S.L. Karsavin, S.N. Bulgakov and others. Therefore they created their writings in abroad. Needless to mark also that some Russian thinkers born in Russia, such as A. Koyre, A. Kozhev, I. Berlin, P. Sorokin, became famous Western philosophers in emigration. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree that in our relations with philosophical tradition we face a hermeneutic problem. This problem is how to achieve an adequate understanding of the representatives of this tradition. It is believed that we need to establish a dialogue with figures from the past, rather than attribute our own thoughts and ideas to them. However, few dare to offer a reliable way to achieve this. At the same time, there are those who believe that the hermeneutic problem points to (...) a fundamentally problematic relationship with our history. In this case, we are talking not only about a separate prob­lem requiring its solution, but about a certain attitude as well. Within this attitude, we are focused not so much on an adequate interpretation of the philosophical tradition as on its overcoming. However, the nature of these problematic relations with tradition can be de­scribed differently. For example, one can consider their dependence on tradition as an ob­stacle to understanding oneself and one’s relations with the world. Conversely, one can consider it a condition for such understanding. It is the latter view that John McDowell adheres to. Without denying the obvious fact that there must be a certain distance be­tween different historical contexts, he nevertheless shows that there is no unbridgeable gap in philosophy between its present and past. The article provides an overview of how McDowell, relying on Wilfrid Sellars’s idea of the logical space of reasons and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea of fusion of horizons, solves this problem. In addition, the article shows why McDowell himself can be considered a representative of modernism in phi­losophy. (shrink)

The frequent opposition of “philosophy in Russia” and “Russian philosophy” is consid­ered by the author as a counterproductive dilemma that prevents the natural interaction of the cultural and historical originality of national philosophizing and world philosophi­cal culture. The most important point in this regard is the need of depoliticization and dei­deologization of discussions about the Russian philosophical heritage. One of the key problems in this regard is the circumstance that the contemporary history of Russian phi­losophy continues to use the self-description (...) language of Russian philosophy of the first half of the 20th century. It causes, on the one hand, the uncritical use of philosophical ideas, categories, concepts of the past in the modern cultural and historical context, on the other hand, the fundamental rejection of work with this conceptual apparatus. The most characteristic examples in this regard are the concepts of “sobornost’” and so called “Russian idea”. The inclusion of the Russian philosophical heritage in the subject field of modern philosophy is hampered, in turn, by a number of circumstances caused both by the fragmentation of modern philosophical knowledge and the blurring of its dis­ciplinary boundaries, and by the specifics of the formation of the Russian professional philosophical community. Historical reasons have necessarily led to a significant gap be­tween the Russian philosophical heritage of the 19th–20th centuries and the conceptual and methodological space of modern philosophical thought. Awareness of this gap, in turn, caused a kind of corporate rift within the Russian philosophical community – its di­vision into groups dealing with issues that claim to be relevant, and a community focused on the study of the Russian philosophical heritage. Overcoming this conceptual gap and corporate rift turns out to be necessary prerequisites for the genuine actualization of the Russian philosophical heritage in modern conditions. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to consider the phenomenon of philosophical “turn” in the framework of descriptive metaphilosophy. Using the example of analytical, linguis­tic, pragmatic and ontological turns, an attempt is made to highlight the characteristic fea­tures of “turns”. The author shows that the analytical turn is associated with the develop­ment of methods of philosophy, primarily with the diversification of the concept of analy­sis itself. Consideration of the linguistic turn leads to the position that its characterization as a change (...) in the subject of philosophy is not quite adequate – in fact, it is a change in the methods of philosophical analysis, which leads to the emergence of new problem areas not only in philosophy, but also in linguistics. The pragmatic turn is characterized by emphasizing the role of pragmatism in overcoming the existing opposition of analytic and continental philosophy through the use of both logical and, for example, axiological methods or the “pragmatic principle”. The ontological turn, characteristic of anthropol­ogy, the philosophy of technology, as well as for “general” philosophy, is associated with a change in the methods of analysis in the direction of solving the problem of seeing “things in a new way” and how “they really are”. The analysis in the case of an ontologi­cal turn is aimed not so much at “multiculturalism” as at “multi-naturalism”, at taking into account the active role of the subject and building the research models capable of taking this into account. The final position of the author is that according to which a “turn” is a change in research methods that leads to the formation of a new subject area and the formulation of new problems. They, in turn, stimulate the next “turn” and the de­velopment of new methods and methodologies. (shrink)

Healing the inner rupture of Russian culture caused by the reforms of Peter the Great is an urgent need which is still on agenda. This task can be accomplished by relying upon the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ that manifested itself as the basic value in the course of millennium of Russian history. Implanting the European section into the overall layout of the vsechelovecheskoye design of Russian culture will help bridge the gap between the culture of the upper strata totally (...) bound by the spirit of European domination (evropeynichanye, “Europe-apping”, according to N.Ya. Danilevsky) and the culture of the lower strata governed by the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’. To overcome Europe-apping, which is still a pressing task, means to overcome the dogma of European culture as obshechelovecheskoye (common to humankind) by basing the dis­course on the vsechelovecheskoye category. Vsechelovecheskoye, as opposed to obshe­chelovecheskoye, was elaborated in Russian thought starting from the 19th century. For­mation and manifestation of the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ represents the sense of the Russian history tying it together over all breaks and revolutionary catas­trophes. “Humankind” can be conceived of only as a notion based on sobornost’, not as a unity of any kind, for it developed, in the course of its history, a number of the big cul­tures each of which based itself on its indigenous logic irreducible to the logic of any other big culture. The basic task the Russian philosophy faces, in order to develop itself as the philosophy of sense, is to study and elaborate on the actual manifestations of the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ in the course of Russian history as the logic of vsechelovecheskoye global design for humankind. (shrink)

The article focuses on the symptomatic interpretation of some modern concepts that ap­peal to a cosmic order. Against the background of well-known “dark”, homeless systems proposed by such Western thinkers as Q. Meillassoux, K. Barad, D. Haraway, E. Thacker et al., trying to present pictures of a world “without us”, the author examines here anti-colonialist approaches that complement the conclusions of European and North American researchers in their own way. The author shows that the ideas of a direct connection be­tween (...) a moral act and a cosmic order or humanity spilled throughout the cosmos, al­though it turns out that they cannot be considered as the basis for universal coexistence, can nevertheless act as an engine of practical communication. With all fluctuations in the terminology that they use, in which the interchangeability of cosmopolitanism, cos­mology and space is not uncommon, combined with attempts to maintain the specificity of the “local”, it seems that these different works obviously tend to construct a new spe­cial type of statement. (shrink)

The article discusses the position of the Australian philosopher David Armstrong on the problem of the ontological status of the laws of nature. Through a clarification of Armstrong’s understanding of naturalism, physicalism, and factualism, the general essence of his metaphysical project is summarized. Then article presents his theory of the laws of nature, which is a kind of nomological realism: his version of the nomolog­ical argument is examined; his general grounds for rejecting the regularity theories, which is classical for the (...) naturalistic approach, are clarified; and the role of abduction in Arm­strong’s theory is demonstrated. The relation of nomic necessity, which is the key concept of his theory, is discussed in detail: its status as a second-order universal is explained; the terms of this relation, namely the types of states of affairs that constitute some special kind of universals, are distinguished; the essence of the nomic connection assumed by this relation is clarified through Armstrong’s theory of causality. Armstrong’s critique of regularity theories of laws of nature and the advantages of his nomological realism over them are discussed: cases where regularity is not law are considered; cases where there are laws that are not related to regularities, and cases where law and regularity seem to coincide, but there is reason to believe that they are different, these are the cases that appear to be most important. Finally, drawing on his own argumentation, the advan­tages of Armstrong’s theory over the best systems approach are justified: the problem of subjectivism and the threat of anti-realism inherent in coherentist approaches are ex­amined; the highly counterintuitive dependence of the existence of some laws on the ex­istence of others is pointed out; and the danger of actual contradictions within our ontol­ogy is demonstrated. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the cognitive status of moral judgements in moral philosophy and cognitive science. Having a cognitive status means that a judgement ade­quately expresses moral content in a form specific to morality. In moral philosophy, be­ginning with the Modern Times, the problem of cognitive status has been presented as a question about the nature of moral judgements and formulated as a dilemma of rea­son and sense. In the process of discussing this problem, two schools of (...) thought emerged: intellectualism and sentimentalism, which set a paradigm for thinking about moral judge­ments that is also incorporated in contemporary ethics. In both, the assertion of the ‘ratio­nal’ or ‘emotional’ nature of moral judgements was used to justify such features as un­conditionality, directness, universality, imperativeness, and non-utilitarianism. In contem­porary cognitive science, the issue of the ‘rational’ or ‘emotional’ nature of moral judge­ments is related to the issue of the emotional-intuitive and rational-discursive factors in the formation of moral judgements. By analysing the theories of Jonathan Haidt, ac­cording to which sense-intuitive moral judgements have cognitive status, and Joshua Green, according to which only rational-discursive judgements have such status, it was shown that the dilemma of reason and feeling is not clarified in cognitive science, but only reproduced. The lesson that moral philosophy must learn from the discussion of moral judgements in cognitive science is to recognise that neither the validity of moral judgements nor their specific features depend on whether reason or feeling, reasoning or intuition is involved in their formation. These features are entirely determined by the specificity of morality as a cultural phenomenon and are not produced by natural mecha­nisms. (shrink)

The focus of the study is the problem of “entry” or “penetration” of pre-revolutionary philosophy into Soviet philosophy. On the example of the oeuvre of E.K. Gertsyk, the au­thor of “Memoirs” on the philosophers and writers of the religious and philosophical re­vival at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, the translator of the works of F. Nietzsche, J. Huysmans, F. von Baader and others, the thinker who created her own version of the philosophy of life, it is shown how a (...) representative of the culture of the Silver Age managed to reconcile with the Soviet reality. The article traces Gertsyk’s creative evolu­tion from the philosophy of the phenomenon, presented in her dissertation essay on the problem of the real world in the Kant’s philosophy (1904), to the philosophy of life; her interpretation of Kant’s epistemology is considered; the concept of a path (a key one in Gertsyk’s work) was analyzed on the basis of works written in the early Soviet years (the hagiographic treatise “On the Ways” (1917–1918), the essay “Edgar Poe” (1918–1927)); the influences of decisive importance for Gertsyk’s philosophical searches are considered (I. Kant, F. Nietzsche, L. Shestov, N. Berdyaev, V. Ivanov, A. Bergson and etc). The article focuses on the transitional stage of Gertsyk’s oeuvre, when there was an increase in religiosity and apocalyptic moods in her mindset, which in the 1930s was replaced by a departure from Christianity as a stronghold of the old culture and old values, justification and apologia for the new social reality, demonstrated by Gertsyk in the well-known letters “from there”, i.e. from the Soviet Russia, published on the pages of the Parisian journal “Sovremennye zapiski” and caused a mixed reaction in the emigrant community. The article shows what ideological attitudes allowed the par­ticipant of the decadent meetings and the interlocutor of Russian religious philosophers to accept the Soviet reality. (shrink)

This publication is a translation of a Latin text by the Franciscan philosopher and theolo­gian of the first third of the 14th century, Petrus Thomae (c. 1280–1340). Petrus Thomae is one of the early followers of the philosophy and theology of John Duns Scotus and probably the most interesting and important metaphysician belonging to the emerging among the Franciscan scholars in the 1310s–1330s “schola Scotica”. We have translated the text of the 7th question from the metaphysical treatise of Petrus Thomae (...) “Questions on the modes of distinctions” (written around 1325). This question is an explication of the concept of “formality” fundamental to the early Scotist tradition and its relation­ship with the metaphysical concept of a thing, as well as an analysis of the problem most discussed among the first followers of Scotus: to what extent the formal distinction (or the distinction between formalities) coincides with or differs from the real distinction as a distinction between different things. Thus, this rather brief question by Petrus is an exploration of a problematic at the heart of the metaphysics and epistemology of the early Scotists, and of paramount importance both for the consideration of questions of scholastic theology and for the philosophical analysis of finite being and its constitu­tion. The translation from Latin was made from the “working edition” of the Latin text of this question prepared by the translator, which was constituted on the basis of a colla­tio of 6 manuscripts of the 14th–15th centuries. The translation is accompanied by a histo­rical and philosophical commentary and preliminary remarks by the translator. (shrink)

The article examines the socio-political aspect of the new atheism. Within the framework of this phenomenon, initially associated with the four bestselling authors R. Dawkins, S. Harris, K. Hitchens, D. Dennett, who launched the “fight against religion” in the mid-2000s, a community and a weakly organized movement eventually formed. A number of connected questions are considered: characteristics of the phenomenon of new atheism (origins, sources, specifics); perception of atheism and new atheism by society in the USA and Great Britain; political (...) views of key figures of the new atheism, external assess­ment of their political influence; views and activity of supporters, external assessment of the socio-political influence of the movement. The article focuses on the aspects of the new atheism as a movement in the USA and the UK. The author comes to the fol­lowing conclusions: the “creators” of the new atheism scarcely touch upon the socio-po­litical agenda in their activities (the main foreign policy interest is the fight against Is­lamic terrorism); currently, the new atheism as a movement and a community reacts to politics rather than forms it; not all actions of new atheists aimed at reducing the social and political presence of religion or at reducing discrimination against atheists achieve their goals; the main achievement of the new atheism movement is that atheism as a worldview ceases to be a marginal agenda, and non-believers receive a formalized, pos­itively colored identity for themselves. The latter is important in the context of discrimi­nation of non-believers against believers, which in the United States takes place both in the public consciousness and even at the highest political level. (shrink)

The article describes the linguistic conditionalities and correlations of four civilization-specific types of rationality: (1) The Great West (BZ), the heir of the ancient civilization. (2) The Afro-Asian (AA) civilization, in its current state represented by the populous Arab-Islamic world and a more ancient version of the Jewish culture. (3) The South Asian (SA) civilization, which is originated in the central part of the northern India, which defined the cultures of Indochina (except Vietnam) and earlier Indonesia. (4) The Far Eastern (...) (DV) civilization formed in China, which spread to its neighboring countries. The author explores the correlations with the types of a developed writing based on the tiers of the linguistic structure of each of the civilizations, as well as the re­sults of the ultimate semantic-ontological transition. The only related theory belongs to Andrei Smirnov and is called the Logic-of-sense theory. Some of its results have found their application in the thoughts expressed in this paper. (shrink)

The article considers the influence of I. Kant’s ideas on the development of philosophical and bioethical discourse on animal rights. The doctrine of I. Kant, with its inherent anthropocentric attitude, is usually regarded as opposed to the spirit of the biocentric po­sition that has been characteristic of Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism since the time of I. Ben­tham. The Kantian approach is supposed to ignore the issue of animal rights. In the arti­cle, the author argues that the teachings of I. Kant had a (...) significant impact on the for­mation of the discourse on animal rights not only in the sense that animal rights activists perceived the ideas of I. Kant as arguments of their ideological opponent, which should be questioned, but also in the sense that they were accepted and developed in the 20th cen­tury as part of the biocentric discourse and were used to protect animal rights. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show that a particular interpretation of the end in itself, which is widely accepted in research on Kant’s critical philosophy, is at least worth dis­cussing. I refer to the interpretation of the end in itself as a so-called existing end, i.e., something for the sake of which we perform an action but which we do not realize – sim­ply because it already exists. As I will argue, this interpretation does not take into (...) account a crucial aspect of the end in itself, i.e., its property of being an end. Being an end, the end in itself must fit into the Kantian general definition of a practical end and must therefore be something to be realized. (shrink)

The article analyzes the aspect of the subject-predicative relationship, the actualization of which is superficially associated with the development of analytical philosophy in the West. This question has an important philosophical deepening (from grammar through logic to ontology) also in the history of Indian thought. In particular, the Sanskrit term sāmānādhikaraṇya, which is commonly translated as ‘correlative predication’, has be­come an important ontological principle in one of the vedānta schools (viśiṣṭādvaita of Rāmānuja). Previously, this term is found in the grammar (...) of Panini and in the related philosophy of the Bhartirhari language In viśiṣṭādvaita, this term denotes (a) a logical and grammatical method of interpreting the sacred texts, according to which all texts of śruti, despite their inconsistency, should be considered by the interpreter as equally authori­tative; (b) the principle justifying and explaining the viśiṣṭādvaitic model of ontology; (c) and the resulting only possible paradigm of liberation of the soul (bhakti, or devo­tional love of God, which is based on karma and jñāna, as a way of salvation). The analy­sis of the material of Indian philosophy is carried out in the context of the developments of Western European philosophy, in particular, Porphyry and a number of analytical philosophers (Frege, Russell, Wittshenstein). Using the example of sāmānādhikaraṇya, a different logical model of the structure of the world is presented, which makes the on­tology proposed in viśiṣṭādvaita understandable and convincing. (shrink)

An unbiased metaphysics of consciousness allows us to put forward a thesis that con­sciousness is not an object, but a fundamental problem of modern philosophy and differ­ent solutions of this problem define the history of European philosophy. For Descartes, consciousness is Cogito, the personalization of substance by the mind acting in a variety of cogital, conscious acts. Kant, for whom substance is a mode of thinking the unity of experience, Cogito is not a thing (Res), but a transcendental condition for (...) the forma­tion of notions in the process of categorical synthesis. The resurgent phenomenology and analytical philosophy of consciousness in the 21st century aim at studying consciousness, respectively, in the transcendental-theoretical and pragmatic-naturalistic settings. Contin­uing the Kantian line of thinking, one can see the processuality of consciousness as data acquisition process, but the verb formed from a noun “consciousness” (for this processu­ality) is difficult to adequately translate into English. To achieve completeness in identi­fying the problem area of the philosophy of consciousness, it is necessary to take into ac­count one more type of conscious activity referred to as “osoznanie” in Russian (“aware­ness”, “coming into consciousness about something”). The Russian verb formed from the noun Smysl cannot be adequately translated into English as the main language of the ana­lytical philosophy of consciousness and this term can mean the opposite of data acquisi­tion process and can refer us to the idea of Integrity (A.V. Smirnov). Once the most im­portant, meaningful and existential activity of the mind is identified as the denotation of this term, the problem of Smysl acquires the potential of changing the perspective on the possibility of creating a “strong” AI. (shrink)

This paper considers different views on existent golden mountain problem, the subject of dispute within the framework of the discussion between Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell, which took place in the period from 1904 to 1920. Namely, we are talking about Russell’s argument that Meinong’s theory contains a contradiction re­garding different types of existence. According to Russell, it turns out that Meinong thought that the existent golden mountain exists, but it does not exist. The entire dis­cussion was divided into several (...) stages. During the discussion, the conceptions of both authors changed, as well as their attitude to each other’s theories and the formu­lation of the problem. Russell at fiesta thought that it’s wrong to assert that there can be any correct propositions about non-existent objects like the current king of France, the golden mountain, or a round square. At that stage of the discussion the theory of Meinong did not have sufficient tools to clarify its position on this issue. This problem was solved only ten years later, but the problem of the “existing golden mountain” re­mained and was never sufficiently clarified by Meinong. Meinong agreed with Russell that, according to his theory, it follows “The existing golden mountain exists, but does not exist” is correct proposition, but at the same time pointed out that the concept of ‘existence’ is used in a different sense. Commentators and followers of Meinong (Ernst Mally, John Findlay, Dale Jacquette) believed that this refinement did not solve the problem, and therefore offered their own solutions in the framework of the theory of objects.The purpose of this study is to find out whether the methods proposed by them really solve the problem of the existent golden mountain, whether they violate any principles of the Meinong theory, and finally, whether it is possible to solve this problem. (shrink)

The article addresses the following question: what is sense (smysl) as such, not to be confused with the sense of something. The sense as such sets the absolute limit for human conscious­ness, since we can be conscious only of that which makes sense, and, vice versa, what makes sense is part of our consciousness. Sense is devoid of semiotic nature, for sense as such cannot be conceptualized as something opposed to meaning or related otherwise to it or to anything denoted. (...) Sense is a tselostnost’ (integrity). Three basic axes for sense development are dis­cussed, that is, opposition-and-integration, unity-and-multiplicity, continuity-and-discreteness. The development of tselostnost’ (integrity) as the “what-and-such” svyaznost’ (linkage and coherence) may vary depending on the initial intuition of tselostnost’, laying down the basis for variations in pure reason. The author delineates a contour of the four types of pure reason developed by the four big cultures (European, Arab-Muslim, Indian and Chinese). This typol­ogy finds a sound parallel in the civilizational typology of reason proposed by A.V. Paribok. (shrink)

A.V. Smirnov’s theory of the Logic-of-sense is based on the difference between two lo­gics: the logic of substance and the logic of process. Their difference can be examined us­ing the theory of preconceptual experience based on the notion of scheme. A.V. Smirnov has formulated the natural setting of consciousness: existence of the outside world and the Self, their uniqueness and their permanency. As the result of analysis of the natural setting of consciousness the authors singled out two main schemes: the (...) experience scheme and the universality scheme. The schemes are discussed using a thought experi­ment: the treatment of pneumonia by doctors who understand their own actions using different logics. It is demonstrated that each scheme is valid in both logics. Still, the psychological and objective-practical content of the schemes changes. Experience in process logic is the process which is naturally given to consciousness. Perception of the course of an ailment by a doctor is an example. This perception can be empiri­cally wrong but it cannot be confused with another process, such as remembrance of the manifestations of the disease known to the doctor from literature. Experience in the substance logic, by contrast, is just one of the properties of the disease known from the literature: “it is possible to perceive it by senses in a given situation”. Experi­ence that is conceived substantially is often denoted as qualia. The universality scheme in process logic is often realized as a universality of the process: the course of the dis­ease is not changing if the observer is changed, though the experience of the course can be different. Universality scheme in the substance logic is realized as universality of the result of the observation: “I see the same thing that any other doctor would see”. It follows that the universality scheme understood substantially is a generalization of the results of observations of different observers. Realizations of both schemes can be empirically correct but both have their limitations. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to comprehend the radical changes in the historical self-con­sciousness of the modern era and their impact on modern political practices. The position of the author is that our attitude to the time of history crystallizes deep transformations of the political sphere. It is shown that the historicity regime at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries is characterized by an orientation towards today’s needs and interests (so-called presentism) and at the same time increased attention to the (...) past (“memorial revolution”), which, in the absence of major socio-political projects of the future, plays the role of a consolidating social factor. These changes required, on the one hand, significant efforts by historians to revise the methodological foundations of their science and, on the other hand, philosophical reflection on key historiosophical concepts and mean­ings. The most significant discussions concern, first of all, the concept of the past in its relation to the present, “modernity”. Understanding the ontological and epistemological foundations of these concepts has become today a “bone of contention” in building mod­ern political strategies and practices. The article demonstrates how the past from the con­cept of clear and self-evident, as it appeared within the framework of the historicist con­cepts of the Modern era, has become a philosophical and political problem in our days. There are two approaches to solving this problem. These are, firstly, those philosophers and historians who defend the modernist idea of the past as different in relation to the present, although they significantly modify it with the help of the idea of a “living past”. And secondly, those philosophers who defend the thesis about the “non-past” of the past and the continuation of its existence in the present. It is concluded that, with all the differ­ences, both types of concepts proceed from the concept of “living past”, which implies a non-linear and “multi-layered” understanding of historical time. (shrink)

The article focuses on the concept of sense in Husserl’s phenomenology. The author points to the presence of different interpretations of “sense” in phenomenology, and dwells in detail on the one that is consonant with the theme of this panel discussion. In this regard, the author refers to the introduction of the concept of sense as the core of the noema in the first book of “Ideas for Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy”. In accordance with the chosen interpretation strategy sense (...) denotes an ob­ject considered in a phenomenological attitude, that is, an object from the point of view of its givenenness of consciousness. This means that the meaning and the subject mean­ingfully sense the same thing. From a phenomenological point of view, to perceive objec­tively means to perceive meaningfully. The article highlights the features of this concept of sense, which primarily include integrity and correlation with the content that already exists in consciousness. The author pays special attention to the fact that sense, as an ob­jective integrity, can be understood not only material things, but also relationships, pro­cesses, states of affairs, etc. The task of phenomenology is to fix the sense, their justifica­tion and research. This research can be carried out within the framework of a theoretical cognitive approach, where the identification of the conditions for the possibility of sense as knowledge and the determination of their truth come to the fore. (shrink)

The text considers the impossibility of abstracting away from the sense of formal con­structions in logical and mathematical researches. The validity of the application of the “formal methodology” is allowed only after some system of conventional notations and agreements has been accepted. The context determined by such agreements is called formal. A correlation of constructions and results obtained by formal methods within sev­eral formal contexts is impossible without a consideration of the various semantic aspects of the correlated formal constructions. The (...) author calls such correlations intercontextual. The paper examines two examples of such intercontextual comparisons to demonstrate the necessity of taking into account different semantic components of the compared for­mal constructions. In the context of these conclusions, the author raises the question of the structure and origin of some senses of the “symbols” used in formal constructions and of the “sequences of symbols” constructed from them. The author identifies three main sources of the semantic load carried by formal constructions. Firstly, these are the various aspects of semiotic usage: first of all, the general cultural and general profes­sional semiotic skills of the “interpreter”. Secondly, it is the sense given to formal con­structions by verbal comments, descriptions of the construction process and the associ­ated knowledge of the “interpreter”. Thirdly, these are the senses set by the formal con­structions themselves: at the stage of defining a formal language and at the stage of con­structing a formal deductive or semantic system. The author also considers the fallacy of the assumption of the existence of some universal “global intuition” associated with the very possibility of formal methodology. (shrink)

Hegel’s so-called system of philosophy is a speculative, i.e. meta-level or topical reflec­tion on the logical roles of concepts in world-related empirical knowledge. Its main in­sight is that the so-called explanations in the science are a result of a world-wide work on ‘the concept’, the translatable semantics of our languages, which form a relatively a priori and generic precondition for concrete assertions and their understanding.

The article analyzes an epistemic condition for moral responsibility. The condition is taken in a dispositional form: the attribution of responsibility is appropriate only if the agent was in an epistemic position suitable for obtaining knowledge relevant to moral re­sponsibility. The choice of a dispositional interpretation of the epistemic condition is jus­tified with the help of four thought experiments showing that the actualist understanding of this condition is unacceptable. The main question of the article concerns this epistemic position. The article (...) presents N. Levy’s criticism of the concept of responsibility that rests on the thesis that we never find ourselves in the epistemic position required for moral responsibility. Two lines of response to Levy’s criticism are briefly considered: the Reasonable Expectation Approach and the Attributionist Approach. With the help of the analysis of a thought experiment, the condition of basic knowledge of a morally significant situation is revealed. Further analysis of this condition exposes the condition of attention for moral responsibility. Attention refers to the ability to redirect one’s cogni­tive resources to different tasks. The moral significance of attention is demonstrated: inat­tention as an excusing factor is investigated, the connection between attention and such phenomena of moral life as care and respect is shown. The article shows that the require­ment of attention implies certain control over attention. The condition of attention pro­vides an answer to Levy’s criticism, according to which we have no control over the psy­chological states leading to actions. This is not the case since control of attention plays this role. In conclusion, the prospects for further research are discussed: the study of the concept of control over attention, the connection of moral responsibility and conscious­ness, and examination of the condition of attention in the context of virtue epistemology. (shrink)

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the political views of the philosophers of Montaigne circle. The ideas put forward by Charron and La Boétie were important not only for the period of religious wars of the 16th century, but also for various aspects of the genesis of modern philosophy. If autocracy is unacceptable in principle for La Boétie, then Charron is a supporter of a monarchical state structure, although he condemns tyrannical rule. La Boétie justifies his position (...) with references to the need to protect political free­dom. Autocracy, he believes, is inseparable from arbitrariness, illegal and gross violation of the interests of the country’s residents. People can refuse freedom only voluntarily, from force of habit of obeying tyrannical power, once established by deception or violence. He considers it possible to end religious strife by a revival of the Church and a moral re­newal. La Boétie’s political ideal is a republic. Charron, by contrast, considers the king a true sovereign. But rulers often have both shortcomings and vices, sometimes giving rise to tyranny, expressed in disregard for the laws and traditions of the country. Charron, like La Boétie, sees the reason for the religious wars in the damage of morals. He also sees a compromise as the best solution; to withdraw compatriots from the state of civil con­frontation is possible peacefully. For Charron, as for La Boétie, social inequality, class hi­erarchy seems to be an invariable condition of social existence. For both, violence is an unacceptable form of implementing social improvements. Both see religion as an im­portant pillar of social life. In the coordinate system of the two thinkers of the Montaigne circle, religious considerations are not taken beyond the general contours of their political reflections. It is noteworthy that for the philosophical landscape of the late Renaissance, the problem of religious confrontation turns out to be closely associated with the question of the best form of social structure. Discussions about it continue in our time. (shrink)

Skepticism about moral responsibility is one of the most elaborated approaches to this important moral phenomenon in contemporary philosophical literature. In this paper, I use the skeptical approach in general, and specific skeptical arguments in particular, to clarify the connections between the conditions of an appropriate attribution of moral re­sponsibility and the structural elements of this attitude. A distinction is made between moral dogmatism and a critical approach to morality, and a classification is given of the possible outcomes of the (...) latter: skepticism proper, illusionism, and revolutionary ap­proach. The difference between general moral skepticism and skepticism about moral re­sponsibility is defined, and a classification of the types of skepticism about moral respon­sibility is proposed on the basis of which the elements of the structure of attribution of re­sponsibility are questioned. Galen Strawson’s Basic argument, Gideon Rosen’s argument from epistemological regress, and his alethic conception of moral responsibility are ana­lyzed. It is shown that Strawson’s argument unreasonably reduces moral responsibility to a so-called true moral responsibility. It is argued that the epistemic condition of responsi­bility to which the argument from regress is directed can be reduced to a normative con­dition, and thus regress can be avoided. The connection between responsibility and retri­bution, which Rosen postulates, is problematized. It is argued that the control condition binds the moral agent and the agent’s moral factor; the normative condition binds the agent’s moral factor and its moral value. It is argued that the connection between a moral factor and moral value cannot be the object of skepticism about moral responsibility. (shrink)

The article defends the thesis that in the context of moral responsibility (MR) as it is un­derstood in modern Strawsonian theories of MR, psychological approach has significant advantages in comparison with competing approaches to personal identity problem: bio­logical approach, substantialism and narrative view. In the Strawsonian theories, two gen­erally accepted necessary conditions of the appropriateness of holding someone responsi­ble are the conditions of moral agency and agency of action. The article shows that for these conditions to be satisfied a person (...) who is to be hold morally responsible now for some past action should stay not only numerically, but also qualitatively identical in re­spect to his quality of will and moral capacities. That raises the problem of personal iden­tity over time in the context of MR. It is shown that psychological approach helps to clar­ify the kind of personal identity that is required for the conditions of moral agency and agency of action to be satisfied, it is compatible with all the Strawsonian theories of MR and copes with much of moral collisions that are usually presented as its problematic con­sequences. It is also shown that the competing approaches to personal identity are either cannot clarify the relevant for MR kind of personal identity, or incompatible with most of the Strawsonian theories of MR and leads to moral collisions. That gives strong reasons to prefer the psychological approach to personal identity in the context of MR. (shrink)

The article defines the significance of Bolzano for the Brentano school and explores the sense in which Bolzano could have been an intermediary between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school. The first part of the article discusses the assessment of the Bolzano’s philosophical doctrine, which is offered by Brentano himself and his closest student Marty. Brentano found Bolzano’s pursuit of scientific philosophy commendable, but at the same time criticized him for platonism in the theory of meanings and for distin­guishing the (...) ways of being. Marty, continuing partly to criticize Bolzano, rather posi­tively assessed his doctrine of propositions in themselves. Using the example of the doc­trine of modifying adjectives, it is shown what influence Bolzano had on Marty’s philoso­phy of language. In the second part of the article, the question of Bolzano’s influence on K. Twardowski, A. Meinong and E. Husserl is considered. It is shown that each of these thinkers interpreted Bolzano's doctrine of propositions in themselves in different ways and at the same time not quite correctly. Bolzano’s doctrine of proposition structure is discussed separately and the evaluation of this doctrine proposed by Husserl is analyzed. Bolzano’s insufficient attention to the syntactic complexity of sentences, according to Husserl, was the reason that the Bohemian thinker did not propose a full-fledged theory of meaning and did not investigate the relationship between semantics and ontology. For other students of Brentano, Husserl’s assessment only confirmed that Bolzano did not pay due attention to linguistic synsemantics. The third part answers the question of Bolzano’s mediation between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school: the desire to defend the objectivity of truth and refute subjectivism unites such thinkers as S. Izquierdo and B. Bolzano, and it is on this basis that the continuity between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school can be traced. (shrink)

The author draws a distinction between the reflective (epistemic) tradition of philosophiz­ing and the value philosophy, which perceives the world correlating it with the needs and interests of people as well as viewing it through the prism of the man’s value preferences. The author derives this distinction from the difference between denotative judgments about being and prescriptive judgments about the proper. These two types of judgments are claimed to be related but not reducible to each other and not derived from (...) one an­other. The author defends the right of a refleсtive philosophy to speak in the language of verifiable judgments of truth, while opposing the position of cognitive imperialism, which absolutizes the truth and turns it into the substance of the human spirit. The author treats the anthropological and gnoseological interpretations of the reflective philosophy, which limit its subject to the analysis of the man in his praxiological, axiological and gnoseological relation to the world, as insufficient. The article defends the now unfash­ionable substantive understanding of philosophy, according to which its object is not the man, but the world surrounding and embracing us, and its subject is the possible unity of the world considered in the aspects of its integrative wholeness and taxonomic univer­sality. An integrative approach that looks for substantive distinctions and connections be­tween the subsystems of the world, is carried out by natural philosophy, social philoso­phy, and philosophy of consciousness. Philosophical ontology has a different objective. It begins with the axiomatic problem of the existence of the world, the relation between the real and the ideal, and proceeds to verifiable judgments about the referential relations between the various "realms of being”. The world is considered by the discipline of on­tology in a conceptual projection “the separate – the singular – the particular – the univer­sal”, which is different from a conceptual projection “the whole – the part”. The author argues for the importance of the ontological problematics, which is of great methodologi­cal importance for non-philosophical (first of all, social and humanitarian) sciences. (shrink)

The paper deals with the correlation between the justification of morality and the justifi­cation of utilitarian normative ethics in the two treatises of Jeremy Bentham: An Intro­duction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation and Deontology. In the Introduction, the general requirement of morality (‘promote the good of others’) is considered justified because a) it is integrated into the structure of the principle of utility and only contingent to the concurring principles (the principle of asceticism and the principle of sympathy (...) and antipathy), b) the two concurring principles cannot withstand rational criticism, c) the list of principles is closed. There are two additional strategies to justify morality in the treatise. Bentham claims that the advantages of having a reputation of a trustworthy person are a sufficient reason to hold burdensome obligations. At the same time, he in­sists that an agent cannot persuade other people that her moral judgments are right unless these jugments are grounded in her recognition of the equal non-instrumental value of ev­ery person. In the Deontology, Bentham expands on the second strategy – the identifica­tion of moral virtue (duty) with the correctly understood personal interest of an agent. First, he proposes such a conception of moral virtue (duty) where sacrifices and efforts made by a person of prudence, probity, and beneficence are interpreted as the result of a clash among her own interests. Then, he demonstrates that the system of sanctions (sympathetic, religious, physical, moral, political) peculiar to human societies makes ad­vantages brought by breaches of prudence, probity, and beneficence illusory. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the work of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” which is the most complete statement on the topic of his use of pseudonyms. The purpose of the article is to reveal the meaning of “The Point of View” for the study of the thinker’s creativity, to identify and discuss work-related problems. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of the cre­ation and publication (...) of “The Point of View”. The interpretations of pseudonymity in “The Point of View” and “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” are compared, the dif­ference between the goals and circumstances of the creation of works is considered. The reasons why Kierkegaard postponed the publication of “The Point of View” and never published it are analyzed. In the second part of the article the content of “The Point of View” is considered. Kierkegaard's interpretation of authorship and re­lated problems are analyzed. Kierkegaard connects his interpretation with the modern crisis of Christianity and shows that in these conditions a direct message about Chris­tianity is impossible. A religious author who carries out indirect communication ap­pears as a new religious type. The formation of these views of the thinker and their sig­nificance in the context of his epoch are discussed. The author of the article shows that the last part of “The Point of View” is in contradiction with its first part. Next, the criti­cism of “The Point of View” is considered. The author concludes that the skeptical atti­tude towards the content of the work is fair, but it is more aimed at destroying ideas about the possible integrity of Kierkegaard’s work and is influenced by Derrida’s doc­trine of deconstruction. The contradiction between the parts of “The Point of View” may be a consequence of Kierkegaard’s religious views and his communicative strat­egy. Arguments are made in favor of a positive attitude to the work and problems are formulated, work on which will help clarify the topic of pseudonymity. The author con­cludes that “The Point of View” is an important source through which we can trace the change in Kierkegaard’s attitude to his work. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomenalism of John Stuart Mill. The analysis of the theory includes consideration of the historical context of the creation of this doctrine. This doc­trine was created in a debate with philosophers whom Mill associated with the intuitive school and in particular with W. Hamilton. It is argued that for Mill the establishment of phenomenalism was in many ways a political project. Then, the author traces the influ­ence that Berkeley and Hartley had on Mill. The relativity of (...) human knowledge and asso­ciationism are two main elements of Mill’s theory. Specific elements of Berkeley’s imma­terialism are given, with which Mill agrees and elements that Mill considers unsuccess­ful. The following are the laws of association of ideas recognized by Mill. After that, the author analyzes Mill’s understanding of matter. Matter is understood as a permanent possibility of sensations. The main arguments in favor of this theory are analyzed. Some of these arguments are criticized. The similarities in Mill’s approach with Hume’s understanding of reality are pointed out. Changes are traced between the presentation of the theory in the 1865 edition and in the 1867 edition. The author also demonstrates the simi­larity between Mill’s theory and the XX century phenomenalism. The phenomenalists of the XX century, like Mill, sought to translate statements about material objects into dispositional statements. The difficulties of interpreting the essence of possible sensations are considered. Further, the main problems arising by the adoption of this theory are ana­lyzed. These difficulties are associated with the acceptance of only dispositions as the fun­damental basis of reality, and from Berkeley Mill also gets the problem of proving the ex­istence of other consciousnesses. The author gives attempts to solve these difficulties from the perspective of Mill’s theory. (shrink)

The article provides an analysis of one problem related to the discussion of the ontologi­cal status of virtual reality. The author proposes to discuss the problem of the reality of virtual worlds in terms of transformed forms. In this regard, an analysis is given of how this concept was introduced by K. Marx and how it was discussed further in the scientific literature. It is proposed to perceive the transformed form not as a perverted or false real­ity, but as a (...) separate form of life presented in its transformation. An example is the meta­morphosis of the cost of labor into the monetary form of a commodity, as was shown in Capital. On this example, a proposal is made, according to which virtual reality is the same transformed form of reality, and not an illusion of consciousness, and not an imaginary world. The qualities of the transformed form of reality are introduced: 1) a separate, but not independent form of life; 2) playing a role in the process of trans­formation as an indirect form; 3) representation in the form of a copy of the original; 4) sign-symbolic mode of existence; 5) dependence on the original, generic form of real­ity, not independence. It is shown that virtual reality is, as it were, an unembodied form of reality, existence in its potency. Such a representation was presented in the history of philosophy in the form of the idea of potential being. But this idea did not subse­quently become the basis for the development of an independent ontology of virtual real­ity. A distinction is made between the concept of virtual reality as a reality, not an illusion (the reality of digital objects) in the concept of D. Chalmers, and reality in the form of its transformed form. It is shown that virtual reality is not reduced only to the reality of imaginary worlds, to the reality of consciousness, the reality of special psychological states. The rationale is given that virtual reality is the continuation of a natural-artificial process of metamorphosis of human activity, only embodied in its transformed form. In this regard, the author proposes to interpret virtual reality as a form of life in its trans­formation and non-incarnation, which a person must use as a new resource for their de­velopment in order to overcome alienation from themselves. (shrink)

Post-humanism, a comprehensive critique of the demands of humanism, especially the centrality of cognitive and biological structures, offers a new understanding of the realm of language, the role of subject, and the environment. The post-cataclysmic subject in Beckett’s writing uses words that arrive from nowhere, to no purpose, without direc­tion, and without telos. It is therefore in the failure of language that we realize our predicament as prisoners of this symbolic void. Approaching, or interpreting, the work of Beckett may remain (...) at the level of an “attempt”; fulfillment or capturing an absolute meaning will be a mirage, an illusion. Drawing on Jonathan Boulter’s ideas, this article aims at showing what the meaning and relationship of the posthuman and existence in the world is, because the posthuman subject seems to be always within a space; it is situated. This space could be post-apocalyptic; however, the trace of being and existence is there. In other words, it is space and spatiality that define and determine the borderlines of the idea of the posthuman in Beckett’s works. Boulter further argues that the posthu­man a la Beckett challenges the borderlines and the binaries. (shrink)

It was at the turn of the the twentieth century when Francis Bradley’s metaphysics perme­ated with the spirit of German Idealism was one of the strongest trends of English aca­demic philosophy. But after the “neopositivist Brexit” launched by Russell, Moore and some other analytical thinkers it became mainly a subject for historians of idealism. An attempt is undertaken in the paper to reveal both the historical and actual significance of Bradley’s doctrine of degrees of reality along with an estimation of (...) his critics’ argu­ments and the author’s own criticisms of his “ontology of the Absolute”. Bradley’s ideal­ism is fit unto the framework of comparative ontology, in the first place by its juxtaposi­tion with mostly congenial “absolutism” of Advaita-Vedānta. The author suggests also his own version of differing and quantifying reality, in the shape of individual landscapes of reality in the context of their comparison with personal valuables. (shrink)