Not only Greek philosophers listened to prophets. René Descartes also long pondered over the familiar words of Ausonius: "What path shall I choose for myself in life?" And-what an amusing play on words-the idea of methodos entered philosophy with Descartes. The very path of his metaphysical thought was the last possible one within the confines of Aristotelian metaphysics, when, having posited certain principles of discourse, in the end they themselves are conclusively reached and the entire system becomes a manifest certainty. (...) Descartes provides a glimpse of the possibility of a new type of metaphysical reflection in which the correctness of the chosen principles is grounded in the completeness and noncontradictoriness of the system built on their basis but not confined to them. (shrink)

The very rapid developments in the field of computers in the last few years have made it possible to solve, with their aid, problems utterly new in character. The first "generation" of electronic computers, in the 1950's, was one of capricious and cumbersome vacuum-tube devices, but even it brought a fundamental change in our notions of the kind of tasks machines were capable of solving. The second "generation" - transistorized computers - is a substantial improvement. More compact and dependable, these (...) machines have come into wide use in the control of various processes. Today the third "generation" is in birth, consisting of microminiaturized computers employing solid-state circuits. Such computers are no larger than a small suitcase and it is supposed, not without reason, that in the future they will become pocket-size. It is clear that these possibilities create an utterly new situation. Whereas formerly there was still some validity in posing the question of a clear-cut division of functions between man and a large stationary computer that carried out certain calculations on his instructions, today the question of man-computer interaction takes the center of the stage. (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the problem of the overman becomes one of the most discussed problems in Russia. This was mainly a consequence of the boom in the popularity of Nietzsche's writings; however, to a significant degree it was conditioned also by Solov'ev's works. The religious pathos of Solov'ev's philosophy prepared Russian specialists in the humanities to take an attentive interest in and eventually to accept precisely the "overhuman" aspect of Nietzschean thought. It would not be wrong (...) to assert that the special nature of the Russian Nietzscheanism of the Silver Age consists precisely in the fact that the idea of the overman firmly occupied a central place in it. While the representatives of academic scholarship and religious writers in the final years of the nineteenth century recoiled in horror from the Nietzschean overman, seeing in him the mark of Satanic origin, the embodied idea of evil, indeed the Antichrist himself, the young generation of idealist philosophers, the activists of the Russian religious renaissance of the beginning of the twentieth century, on the contrary, welcomed the Nietzschean image as a symbol of the approaching religious renewal of culture. The general mood of those years was accurately conveyed by D. Merezhkovskii: "The overman is the last point, the sharpest summit of the great mountain ridge of European philosophy, with its age-old roots in the rebellious, solitary, and aloof personality. One can go no further: precipice and abyss, fall or flight: the way of the overman-religion.". (shrink)

The question of a universal human nature and the universally human significance of values, first and foremost moral values—a question that, it would seem, had long ago been thoroughly scrutinized in the works of Marxist scholars, including V. P. Tugarinov—has suddenly acquired a "second wind" in public consciousness and in the journalism of our days. Well-known writers, journalists, and scholars have come together on a theoretical platform, which is summed up in a statement by D. S. Likhachev: "Morality is a (...) part of human nature. Its norms are stable and eternal. Indeed, what can be counterposed to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill'? Some new commandment? ‘Kill’? And what about the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’? or ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’?". (shrink)

Jardine examines the evolution of concepts of dialectics during the Renaissance and problems of methodology that influenced the teachings of the founder of philosophy in the modern era, F. Bacon. The work traces the sources of these problems in the dialectics of antiquity and its medieval interpretation. Sources little known to the Soviet reader are cited. In order to evaluate Bacon's reaction to the dialectics of his day, the author also describes works named in the statutes of Cambridge University in (...) the sixteenth century as textbooks on dialectics. They are writings by humanists — bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment — I. Caesarius, R. Agricola, D. Seton, and others. To a certain extent they were based on the work by Peter the Spaniard Summulae Logicales, which is taken as a point of departure for the further evolution of dialectics. (shrink)

Jardine examines the evolution of concepts of dialectics during the Renaissance and problems of methodology that influenced the teachings of the founder of philosophy in the modern era, F. Bacon. The work traces the sources of these problems in the dialectics of antiquity and its medieval interpretation. Sources little known to the Soviet reader are cited. In order to evaluate Bacon's reaction to the dialectics of his day, the author also describes works named in the statutes of Cambridge University in (...) the sixteenth century as textbooks on dialectics. They are writings by humanists — bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment — I. Caesarius, R. Agricola, D. Seton, and others. To a certain extent they were based on the work by Peter the Spaniard Summulae Logicales, which is taken as a point of departure for the further evolution of dialectics. (shrink)

To study the L shi chunqiu (or L -shih ch'un-ch'iu. Master L 's Spring and Autumn Annals is to enter into the tumultuous but progressive times of the Warring States period (403-221 BCE). 1 This period is commonly referred to as 'the pre-Qin period' because of the fundamental changes that occurred after the Qin unification. Liishi chunqiu was probably completed, in 241 BCE, by various scholars at the estate of L Buwei (L Pu-wei) the prime minister of Qin and tutor (...) to the Qin child King, Zheng. 2 It is one of the few pre-Qin texts that dates itself; the date, though not precise, is given in the xuyi chapter. 3 A decade after the completion of the L shi chunqiu, King Zheng began the ensuing 9 years of fervent warfare that led to his unification of the empire in 221 BCE. Before the political unification, L shi chunqiu created a philosophical consolidation. 4 The Liishi chunqiu performed an important function in the literary and political education of the young King Zheng. More importantly, it provided a philosophical understanding of and justification for a unified empire which left its mark on the young King, and subsequent Han philosophy. After the unification of the empire, King Zheng took the title Qin shihuangdi (First-generation Emperor of Qin), and he established the insignia of water for the imperial emblems, employing concepts from Liishi chunqiu's yingtong (responding and identifying) chapter which describe the succession of dynasties according to the timely cycle of the five phases (wuxing) to justify his new dynasty. 5. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

The decade that has elapsed since the flight of the world's first cosmonaut, Iu. A. Gagarin, has been marked by considerable successes in mastering the cosmos. Lengthy orbital flights and lunar expeditions are already being conducted. Automatic stations are studying the moon, Mars, Venus, and cosmic space. And although we understand that the major trumphs in space are still ahead of us and that today we are merely at the start of the cosmic era, it is nonetheless already possible, in (...) this year of the tenth anniversary of the first human space flight, to draw certain conclusions and discuss the results of human intrusion into the expanses of the universe. (shrink)

Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu [Spring and Autumn of the House of Lü] appeared on the scene in 239 B.C. This was the latter part of the Warring States period. Our country's transition from slavery to feudalism had already been basically completed, but chaotic wars of secession among the feudal princes still occurred. Remnant forces of the slave system were still quite strong, and the restoration-counterrestoration struggle between the declining slave-owning class and the newly emerging landlord class was proceeding violently. Lü Pu-wei was (...) a careerist and plotter of the declining slave-owning class and a representative of the Confucians. In response to the needs of the slave-owning class's counterrevolutionary restoration, Lü adopted the tactic of "attacking the mind." He sneaked into the government of the newly emerging landlord class in the state of Ch'in and played the role of an ardent vanguard for restoration. This big commercial slave owner, who had originally run around among Ch'in, Chao, and other states, had amassed thousands of gold pieces at home and possessed more than ten thousand slaves. He played around with political conspiracies and became chancellor of the state of Ch'in. Before King Ying Cheng of Ch'in personally took power in 238 B.C., political power fell for a time into Lü's hands. Lü Pu-wei worked in collusion with Lao Ai, a eunuch he sponsored, and joined the industrial and commercial slave owners and the aristocratic slave owners to form a frenzied restorationist force. On the one hand, they formed factions to strengthen private interests, expanded their power, and prepared for an armed coup d'état. On the other hand, they took in riff-raff [literally, people who had surrendered and rebelled], assembled Confucian scholars, set to work on ideology, and grandly created public opinion for the restoration of the slave system. At that time, a reactionary adverse current favoring the restoration of the slave system hung over the state of Ch'in. Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu, which was compiled under Lü's direction by his retainers, was the product of this adverse current. (shrink)

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

The transition in the discussion of activity from production-labor and industrial-technological problems to practical problems of life activity proper means that forms of life activity that were formerly unshakable are now becoming the primary object of transformations and purposeful changes: the family, kinship systems, forms of communal life, the genetic basis of man, and man himself with his various capabilities and functions.

A hundred years have passed since the death of a man named Karl Marx. A whole century. A century of dramatic upheavals, revolutionary turmoil, and radical changes in the destiny of humankind. A century that has overturned and swept away a multitude of philosophical conceptions, social theories, and political doctrines. A century that has seen a continuous succession of victories of Marxism and its growing influence on social development.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990.

It is customary to associate the birth of European science with the name of Thales. For example: "In the history of mankind there come moments when new forms of action or thought arise so suddenly that they produce the impression of an explosion. Such is precisely the case with the rise of science—rationalistic scientific knowledge—in Asiatic Greece, in Ionia, at the end of the seventh century B.C.E., with Thales of Miletus and his school".

Postmodernism as a mythologem reflecting the remarkable shift that has taken place in contemporary Western culture as a whole entered the consciousness of our intelligentsia with the usual delay. This is not surprising if one bears in mind the constantly "lagging" character of our consciousness, which also colors in corresponding tones the whole of "Russian civilization," and if one believes that it is condemned to be always "catching up" and making up for lost time. Having arisen in the West as (...) a concept describing certain special characteristics of the latest architectural style that no longer fitted into the rather passé category of modernism, the concept of the postmodern was initially current, both in the West and in Russia, among people close to architecture. At that time it had not yet been able to acquire the "philosophical" subtext that is already felt in the book of Charles Jencks that came out in 1977 in Germany under the gaudy title The Language of Postmodern Architecture. (shrink)

The fundamentals of the Frankfurt school's conception of art were expounded in Horkheimer and Adorno's book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the "critical theory of society" appeared in the form of a specific philosophy of history—the history of bourgeois enlightenment, whose sources the authors trace to ancient Greek mythology.

A hundred years have passed since publication of the first edition of Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin regarded as "one of the basic works of modern socialism." Engels's interest in the remote past of mankind and Lenin's evaluation of his work were, of course, not coincidental. They may be explained by the tremendous role played by the concept of primitive history in a general materialist understanding of the universal historical process. What (...) was the nature of this very first term in the sequence of socioeconomic formations, this cornerstone of the Marxist concept of universal history? When did private property, antagonistic social classes, and state power, separate from the people, emerge, and what were they, original and permanent institutions, or historically determined institutions of human communal life? These problems are clearly of great philosophical importance. They were, and continue to be, the arena of a bitter ideological struggle, and inevitably attracted the most conscientious attention of the founders of scientific communism. (shrink)

The comparative analysis of the approaches to philosophy and philosophizing by the two prominent Russian thinkers of the Soviet era: Evald V. Ilyenkov and Merab K. Mamardashvili. The author discusses specific methodological and conceptual features of Ilyenkov's dialectic and Mamardashvili's phenomenology, showing their theoretical and topical affinity.

The concept of truth of the mathematical theory plays an important methodological role in philosophy of mathematics in the context of a link between ontological and gnoseological aspects of a problem of mathematics substantiation. In the article, the author analyzes how the features of mathematical knowledge are reflected in the understanding of concept of truth in the contemporary mathematics. The author claims that the concept of truth of mathematical offers and theorems is metamathematical concept; therefore, underestimation of distinction between mathematics (...) and metamathematics can lead to philosophical misunderstanding. They consist primarily in the fact that theoretically possible level of rigor of contemporary mathematical theories has been virtually represented in the science. In order to resolve the fundamental philosophical and methodological difficulties of the problem of mathematics substantiation, the formal provability in logically consistent theory is necessary. However, contrary to the widespread belief, a rigid formalization of the proof is still not the synonymous with reliability and rigor of mathematical reasoning from the standpoint of the philosophy of contemporary mathematics substantiation. (shrink)

In recent years there has been rather extensive discussion in the physics literature of the possibility of transmission of material effects at speeds exceeding that of light.

One of the primary propositions in Marxist philosophy is that thought is historical in nature. "The theoretical thought of each epoch," observed Engels, "is a historical product which takes on very different forms at different times, and also very different content" . Accordingly, any analysis of the nature of thought in general that does not consider its historical character is either incomplete or may result in false conclusions. Naturally, what we are talking about is substantive thought, i.e., thought that proceeds (...) on a basis of elaboration and development of definite principles relating to the structure and evolution of material existence, and that is expressed in terms of knowledge concerning nature, society, and man. (shrink)

Based on its prevalence, there is an urgent need to better understand the mechanisms, opportunities and risks of sexual interaction in digital contexts that are related with sexual arousal. While there is a growing body of literature on SIDC, there is also a lack of conceptual clarity and classification. Therefore, based on a conceptual analysis, we propose to distinguish between sexual interaction through, via, and with digital technologies. Sexual interactions through digital technologies are face-to-face sexual interactions that have been started (...) digitally or are accompanied by digital technology. Sexual interactions via digital technology are technology-mediated interpersonal sexual interactions. Sexual interactions with digital technology occur when the technology itself has the role of an interaction partner. The three types of SIDC and their respective subtypes are explained and backed up with empirical studies that are grouped according to two major mediators: consent and commerce. Regarding the causes and consequences of the three types of SIDC we suggest a classification that entails biological, psychological, social, economic, and technological factors. Regarding implications of SIDC we suggest to focus on both opportunities and risks for sexual health. The proposed conceptual framework of SIDC is meant to inform future research. (shrink)

In this interview, Robert Sapolsky outlines his view on Free Will and related topics. The discussion anticipates his upcoming book Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will. Various topics are covered at the intersection of neuroscience with philosophy, education, and the criminal justice system.

The aesthetic comprehension of works of art has two aspects: it sheds light on something of essential importance in the work itself and in its creator, and at the same time enriches and enhances its own problematic. For, "A work of art in which thought is alienated from itself is also part of the domain of comprehending thought; and the spirit, submitting itself to the requirements of scientific investigation, thereby clearly satisfies a need of its own most innermost nature.".

In recent years the science of what is to be, futurology, has become one of the most popular branches of knowledge in the West. A fever to prognosticate, the desire to penetrate the barriers of time, to predict or at least sense the central direction of history, possesses philosophers and historians, economists and sociologists, politicians and preachers, public figures, and the heads of scientific institutions and of the largest industrial firms. In the United States, England, France, and Italy, committees to (...) study the shape of the future organization of society appear one after the other. Journals of futurology are founded. Special conferences, seminars, colloquiums and even religious meetings are convened, which produce a veritable squall of prognoses, projects both abstract and narrowly practical, spiritualist prophecies, and predictions positive and irrational. (shrink)

Changes in the productive forces and, consequently, in the economic structure of socialist society as a whole are being prepared by the current relationships of production. We refer particularly to the influence of socioeconomic processes under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology on the development of the individual as a factor in the productive forces and as subject in production relationships.

In the earthly city, then, we find two things-its own obvious presence, and its symbolic presentation of the heavenly city. Now citizens are begotten to the earthly city by nature vitiated by sin, but to the Heavenly City by grace freeing nature from sin.

The transition of various countries to socialism is giving birth to a constantly increasing diversity of concrete forms of implementation of the functions of the socialist revolution. At the same time, historical experience shows that the socialist revolution is characterized by certain universal regularities, so that it is a matter of principle, of vital importance, that a revolutionary Marxist party allow for them. Among these, above all, is the need for power to be in the hands of the working class (...) in alliance with all others who labor, the need for abolishing the socio-economic dominance of the capitalist class, and for the new authority to have the capacity to overcome any form of resistance by the class opponents of socialism while uniting the masses of the workers at large in the struggle for the building of the new society. Without the organization and cohesion of the laboring masses headed by the working class, and without converting them into the determining political force, a transition to socialism is impossible: this is the most important conclusion of Marxism-Leninism. This conclusion has found precise expression, with room for all possibilities, in the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the political essence of the transition from capitalism to socialism. (shrink)