In this article, I discuss how ritual is framed in the context of ayahuasca tourism, using ethnographic data collected in and around Iquitos, Peru. Alluding to a lack of socially sanctioned spaces for altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in western cultures, contemporary seekers flock to the Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies for an array of reasons, including healing and personal transformation. Taking Gregory Bateson's concept of “framing” as a point of departure, and applying Erving Goffman's frame analysis, I will (...) show that contemporary ayahuasca ceremonies attended by westerners are designed to be liminal, transformative, and meaningful experiences that aim to heal the body through emotional modulation. I will demonstrate how this is achieved through specific discourse that takes place before or during rituals in the form of long speeches delivered by the shamans. This framing not only separates the ritual space as liminal but also frames the way that the experience is conceptualized by the participants, ultimately increasing its meaningfulness. (shrink)

One of the central difficulties for practitioners of cognate disciplines like comparative political theory and comparative philosophy concerns the hermeneutic problem of understanding that which is different. The philosophical challenge, put briefly, is this: Is it possible to bring something of an entirely different order into our world of understanding without imposing our own epistemological categories and civilizational prejudices on it? This essay focuses on recent exemplary work in comparative political theory that has explicitly grappled with this issue. Examined here (...) are three models of encountering and learning from different traditions of thought—the models of existential immersion, conversion, and pilgrimage—as exemplified in the contributions by Farah Godrej, Leigh Jenco, and J. L. Mehta. The essay shows that while the first two authors have sought to resolve the problem of the encounter with difference methodologically (Godrej) and epistemologically (Jenco), their respective solutions remain implicitly bound to a spectator theory of knowledge. This becomes especially evident when their work is contrasted with Mehta’s own. Unlike Godrej and Jenco, Mehta does not view difference as a problem to be resolved. The advantage of his approach, I argue, is that it provides liberation from the rigid subject-object dichotomy which encourages the view that the ‘objects’ of our knowledge exist prior to and wholly apart from the act of knowing. Mehta’s work, therefore, opens the possibility for redirecting our attention to a question that has thus far been thoroughly avoided in the consolidation of the subfield: the question of the very constitution of difference or heterology. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic plant mixture used in a ceremonial context throughout western Amazonia, and its use has expanded globally in recent decades. As part of this expansion, ayahuasca has become popular among westerners who travel to the Peruvian Amazon in increasing numbers to experience its reportedly healing and transformative effects. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in and around the area of Iquitos, Peru, the epicenter of ayahuasca tourism, this paper focuses on some of the problematic aspects of western engagement with (...) indigenous spiritual traditions. This engagement is usually based on idealized and romanticized notions of indigenous shamanism and an inability to digest its less palatable aspects, such as sorcery. Through ethnographic examples and ethnohistorical evidence, I show that the romanticization indigenous peoples is not benign. In fact, this one-sided romantic image hides the complexity of indigenous peoples’ situations by erasing the injustices that they have experienced and continue to experience. I propose a more holistic approach to ayahuasca shamanism that views indigenous peoples not living in a fictitious harmony with nature but as people embedded in larger struggles and facing important challenges not the least of which is the recent commercialization of indigenous spirituality. (shrink)

The world of work over the past 3 years has been characterized by a great reset due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving an even more central role to scholarly discussions of ethics and the future of work. Such discussions have the potential to inform whether, when, and which work is viewed and experienced as meaningful. Yet, thus far, debates concerning ethics, meaningful work, and the future of work have largely pursued separate trajectories. Not only is bridging these research spheres important (...) for the advancement of meaningful work as a field of study but doing so can potentially inform the organizations and societies of the future. In proposing this Special Issue, we were inspired to address these intersections, and we are grateful to have this platform for advancing an integrative conversation, together with the authors of the seven selected scholarly contributions. Each article in this issue takes a unique approach to addressing these topics, with some emphasizing ethics while others focus on the future aspects of meaningful work. Taken together, the papers indicate future research directions with regard to: (a) the meaning of meaningful work, (b) the future of meaningful work, and (c) how we can study the ethics of meaningful work in the future. We hope these insights will spark further relevant scholarly and practitioner conversations. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy has been a fundamental reference point for a broad network of mid-twentieth century anticolonial thinkers and activists, a major inspiration for figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis, among others. James's Notes on Dialectics (1948) constitutes one of the most significant textual engagements with Hegel from within that internationalist tradition. Even though James considered Notes to be his most important work and one of his (...) lasting contributions to Marxist theory, it remains the least read and studied of his books. In comparison to the abovementioned thinkers, all of whom drew inspiration from Hegel's social and political philosophy, in his monograph, James turns instead to Hegel's most difficult text, the Science of Logic, as the true locus of Hegel's critical theory. Situating James's study within the Marxist philosophical tradition, this essay explores how James interprets, appropriates and makes use of Hegel's dialectic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop a constitutivist account of instrumental normativity (an account of the requirement to take the means to one’s end as the normative standard that constitutes intentional action) that overcomes the restrictions of the neo-Anscombean variant of constitutivism without reverting to the reductivism of Kantian constitutivism. I call this account “Murdochian”, for it relies on Iris Murdoch’s conception of the practicable good.

The problem of person’s social formation becomes especialy actual in all its aspects during the periods of social historical transformations. The guiding lines of individual’s development accepted by society (socialization norms) are either lacking or being overthrown. Such situation demands from the researchers to switch their attention from the mechanisms of sociality reproduction to the mechanisms responsible for the sociality formation. The last ones become the main subject of the self-organization theory (synergetics). According to it, socialization can be represented as (...) the self-organizing system-process. The attempt to use the principle of unlinearity in the research of social formation of personality, is undertaken in the present article. (shrink)

"In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study (...) is written with scholarly care, penetrating analysis, elegance of style, and moral urgency: Cherkasova writes with both mind and heart." Emily Grosholz, Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University Social Philosophy (SP), in conjunction with the Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, SUNY Cortland, explores theoretical and applied issues in contemporary social philosophy, drawing on a variety of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

When in 1792 Kant published his essay “On the Radical Evil in Human Nature” in the Berlinische Monatsschrift it had the effect of an exploding bomb. Many of those who previously embraced his ethics were shocked and bewildered. Goethe’s well-known metaphorical statement sums up the reaction: “Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosophical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil, in order that Christians too might (...) be attracted to kiss its hem.” The deep emotional disappointment of Kant’s followers aside, there is very little reason to believe that Kant’s alleged sharp turn in regard to the problem of evil was dictated by any political considerations. Rather, it was Kant’s decision to face philosophically his inner conviction of “the insuperable evil of our hearts,” which before the essay on radical evil only appears—rather implicitly—in his personal correspondence. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw a contrast between two ways of posing the question of moral experience: the episodic and the contemplative. On the first, the episodic outlook, the question of moral experience is the question of specifying the workings of a capacity (or set of capacities) whose exercise may ground claims of moral knowledge. On the contemplative outlook, on the other hand, the question of understanding moral experience is the question of articulating a standpoint: the moral standpoint. On this (...) view, philosophical reflection on moral experience aims to shed light on the human experiences that paradigmatically exemplify and, thus, best reveal the moral standpoint. In the tradition of contemplative accounts, I propose that some of the human experiences that paradigmatically exemplify and reveal the moral standpoint are experiences of “moral growth and change”. Finally, I argue that in “moral growth and change”, one is in view of the world as what is at stake. This leads to a different sense in which moral experience grounds knowledge claims. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between Edward Said’s well-known contrapuntal reading of history and Erich Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt, or point of departure, as a means of entering a given hermene...

In this paper I examine the relation between intentional action and morality from the perspective of practical epistemology. In other words I study the relation between Elizabeth Anscombe's knowledge of one’s own intentional actions (knowledge in action) and Iris Murdoch's knowledge of what is good to do or what one ought to do in particular circumstances (knowledge in the circumstances). If practical knowledge in the former sense (knowledge in action) and practical knowledge in the latter sense (knowledge in the circumstances) (...) turn out to constitute exercises of one and the same capacity for knowledge, as I will argue they do, this will give us strong reason to believe that what is known in the two cases (i.e. intentional action and the moral fabric of the world) is in some sense the same. In examining the relation between practical knowledge of one’s own intentional actions and practical knowledge of what is good to do I draw from two traditions of thought on practical epistemology. The first is the tradition of Anscombe’s conception of knowledge in action and the second is the tradition of Murdoch’s conception of knowledge in the circumstances. What is striking about these traditions is that they tend to understand practical knowledge by reference to the possible involvement therein of perception. Thus Anscombe claims in her Intention[1] that knowledge in action is specified as knowledge without observation; a claim to the effect that the epistemological status of knowledge in action is determined by reference to the lack of a certain sort of involvement therein of perception. And Iris Murdoch in her Sovereignty of the Good[2] proposes that what makes knowledge in the circumstances knowledge is a form of sensitivity to particular features or aspects of the circumstances in which the agent finds herself. Thus, for Murdoch, knowledge in the circumstances owes its status as knowledge to the capacity of the agent to perceive what she ought to do in particular circumstances. In this paper I will argue that both of these forms of knowledge are instances of the exercise of one and the same capacity for knowledge. But the question now arises. How can we both claim that the two forms of practical knowledge are instances of the exercise of one and the same capacity for knowledge and that perception plays such a diverse role in their epistemological grounding? In the main body of this paper I will show how to interpret the Murdochian and the Anscombean claims so as to provide the materials with which we can answer this question. If the argument of this paper works, it will transpire that both of these forms of knowledge are instances of the exercise of our capacity for self-knowledge. This account of practical knowledge opens the way for understanding intentional action and the moral fabric of the world as knowable as the self. And it is thus that what is known in the two forms of knowing (i.e. intentional action and the moral fabric of the world) is in some sense the same. [1] Anscombe, 1957. [2] Murdoch, 1970. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the question of whether and in what sense action might be the conclusion of practical reasoning and argue against the answer provided by Sebastian Rödl's account of practical reasoning. Rödl's account aspires to steer a middle ground between the attitudinal and the neo-Aristotelian accounts of practical reasoning, by proposing that its conclusion is at once a thought and a movement. This account is worth considering for it promises to explain both practical reasoning's practicality and (...) its rationality in one move. But, I argue in this paper, a Rödlian account—an account which grants Rödl's central theses—fails to deliver on its promise. The reason is that, like others, a Rödlian also assumes that the only sense in which practical reasoning is practical is the sense in which it has a conclusion. Challenging this assumption in the right way, I finally suggest, helps us reassess the task of explaining practical reasoning in a way that goes beyond Rödlian, attitudinal and neo-Aristotelian accounts alike. (shrink)

Are freedom, rationality, and morality intrinsically connected? Or perhaps freedom's very nature is transgression, going beyond rationality and ethics? These questions are the center of my discussion of free will and arbitrariness in Kant's late writings. Kant's interlocutor here is Dostoevsky's underground man, a passionate proponent of the Russian _volia--("freedom," "unfettered, arbitrary will"). The underground man questions freedom's relationship to rationality and moral law and insists that free will, arbitrariness and even tyranny are inseparable. Finally, in its attack on rational (...) conceptions of freedom the _Notes offer a surprisingly consistent, that is, self-destructive, philosophical pursuit of arbitrariness. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 167-179.

Values formed in culture, reflecting social relations, fulfilling a regulatory role, are defined as norms fixed in the culture of society. Moral norms that combine such properties of morality as normativity, imperativeness and evaluativeness act as significant foundations of culture. Values and norms enshrined in culture contribute to the integration and spiritual development of society The transformational processes taking place in modern society have influence on the value system. The relevance of this study is determined by the dialectic of emerging (...) contradictions in modern Russian culture caused by the formation of ambivalent values, norms, and attitudes in mass culture that have a negative impact on collective consciousness, on changing the value foundations of culture in modern society, which jeopardizes the safety of culture. In the focus of the analyzed problem, kitsch culture as a phenomenon of mass culture acts as the subject of research. The purpose of the study is to identify threats to cultural security coming from kitsch culture, which transforms the value foundations of culture, and to identify strategies to protect Russian culture. The study of the voiced issues is carried out through the prism of socio-cultural, structural-functional, interdisciplinary approaches. The novelty of the studied problem lies in the fact that kitsch culture acts as a pseudo-culture, which is devoid of aesthetic and artistic value and moral content, as one of the sources that creates certain risks and poses threats to cultural security. In particular, we are talking about the organization of joint activities of government agencies, public organizations, scientific, cultural and educational spheres, based on the principles of optimizing the constructive impact on the consciousness of the younger generation through the mediation process and inculturation. (shrink)

The subject of the research is utopian discourse, which unites all the variety of concepts related in one way or another to utopia, utopian dimension of reality and understanding of the Future (utopian element, utopian impulse, utopian optics, utopianism, utopian consciousness, utopian thinking, dystopia, etc.). Special attention is paid to the study of the explanatory and predictive potential of utopian discourse, identifying its boundaries and analysis of the relationship with ideological discourse. The conceptualization of utopian discourse is based on an (...) instrumental approach to utopia, which is complemented by the communicative approach and the interpretive concept of culture by K. Geertz, which justifies the possibility of considering utopian discourse as a semantic and symbolic matrix. The novelty of the research is to identify and substantiate the exaggerated dichotomy of thinking and otherness as the structure-forming elements of utopian discourse. This contributed to the assessment of utopian discourse as a peculiar but viable form of reflection of political reality and the construction, consolidation and comprehension of values. The proposed algorithm of thinking with dichotomies made it possible to trace the process of constructing utopian discourse on the basis of a pyramid of dichotomies, consisting of system-forming, key and peripheral dichotomies. The article clarifies that the otherness of utopian discourse is manifested in the historicity, radicality and inextricable connection of utopian discourse with the Present. The indicated specificity of utopian discourse has led to the clarification of the reasons for the negative and/or skeptical attitude towards utopia and utopian discourse, as well as to the definition of its strengths and weaknesses. The authors conclude that despite the identified shortcomings, which often lead utopias to periodic displacement from the framework of actual political life, utopian discourse can have a significant impact on the change and development of society. (shrink)

The purpose of the research is to analyze the mechanism of formation of technological competence of students of pedagogical education. The article pays special attention to the levels of technological competence, the achievement of which contributes to the acquisition of certain knowledge, skills and abilities. The article focuses on the interaction between the digitalization of society and the formation of technological competence. As a result, the main features for assessing the level of formation of technological competence were identified. It is (...) emphasized that the formation of the technological competence of students of pedagogical education presupposes the division of the process of students' research activities into a number of stages, which are considered in more detail. (shrink)

The article deals with the problematization of the study of the kon (unwritten rules) phenomenon. The functions of the unwritten rules (kon) are compared with the functions of the law. The constitution of social reality as a socio-historical process that establishes the basic categories of society's perception of its social existence is the object of research. The subject of the study is the poorly studied functions of the “kon” in the constitution of social reality. The methodology is held together by (...) general theoretical methods of typology and comparison. The study is built from the observation of the historical phenomenon of the horse to the disclosure of the heuristic potential of the concept of “kon” for describing the phenomena of modern life. The basis of the methodology is the theory of binary oppositions of culture by A.S. Akhiezer, reinforced the dialectical-dialogical pragmatic model of metacommunication R.T. Craig. The social functions of the horse remain poorly studied due to a certain way of configured research optics, concentrated on the laws governing the control of a single center of power by a poorly organized periphery. (shrink)

Purpose: The main purpose of this article is to show that the paradigm of viewing the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness in analytic philosophy makes it a pseudo-problem rather than a ‘hard problem’. The objectives of this research included showing the reasons for the authors’ thesis, demonstrating the irreducibility of consciousness as a special layer of reality, and proposing a way to overcome these difficulties. Design/methodology/approach: In this article, the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is viewed from the standpoints of the transcendental-phenomenological (...) and dialectical approaches and is analyzed through the prism of the principle of onto-gnoseological uncertainty. Findings: It is shown that the way of formulating the ‘hard problem’ in the analytical philosophical tradition inevitably makes it a pseudo-problem. At the same time, with the consistent realization of the principle of onto-gnoseological uncertainty, the antinomy of solutions to the problems of consciousness is eliminated, which opens up a way to a productive solution of problems related to the interpretation of consciousness both in natural sciences and in philosophy. Originality/value : This research reveals the methodological potential of applying the principle of onto-gnoseological uncertainty to the problems that arise in modern philosophy in connection with the achievements of natural sciences. (shrink)

The author demonstrates the new thesis about the space of the moral that is parallel to law. The moral does not act automatically by itself. In legally meaningful situations, the moral often remains neutral, becomes kind of paralyzed, and demonstrates its weakness, leaving the person face to face with the strikes of immorality. Powerful impulse of the moral of the XXI century relates to the resolution of its unconventional problems.

The purpose of the study is to identify promising opportunities for outsourcing business processes of an enterprise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the article substantiates the possibilities of outsourcing business processes. As a result, it was found that today the global COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to look for new ways to manage their enterprises, and outsourcing, having great advantages, provides many opportunities for this. It is concluded that enterprises will (...) face huge changes in the short term and must adapt today in order to continue to achieve their initial strategic goals based on the use of business process outsourcing. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to assess changes in Russian legislation and legislative initiatives related to cryptocurrencies and digital financial assets. The article focuses on the possible economic consequences of using cryptocurrency for Russian business; determining the degree of impact of transactions with digital assets on the country's economy in connection with the introduction of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation regarding cryptocurrency. The scientific novelty lies in the development and theoretical justification of the legal principles of regulation (...) of cryptocurrency and its place in the domestic legal system, the need to improve the legislation of the Russian Federation in relation to cryptocurrency is substantiated. As a result, the existing legal framework governing the circulation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in Russia was analyzed, measures of responsibility for failure to report on transactions with cryptocurrencies were identified, and the need to eliminate disagreements on the legalization of cryptocurrencies in the country was substantiated. (shrink)

In this paper I show how John Hyman takes the traditional question whether we should give a physical, ethical, psychological or intellectual account of human action and stands it on its head. For Hyman argues that the real question is how to distinguish the physical, the ethical, the psychological and the intellectual dimensions of human action, and he thereby changes the landscape in the philosophy of action. Finally, I argue that Hyman's positive proposal fails by the lights of his own (...) argument. (shrink)