This dissertation demonstrates that Chu Hsi forged a compelling ethical theory out of his insights into the requirements of moral self-cultivation. These insights led him to realize that a person's mind forms his seat of volition and thus provides for his capacities of moral self-determination and responsibility. Understanding that a person's cultivation efforts must be focused largely on his mind, so as to transform his intentions and inform his sense of appropriateness, Chu Hsi developed his ethical theory. In ways similar (...) to Kant's, this ethical theory crystallized around the notion of moral will, constituted on the heavenly-principle invested in one's nature: To achieve moral worth, one must have anchored his volition in the feeling of ching and informed it with a knowledge of principle. ;Chapter I recounts Chu Hsi's early learning, youthful eclecticism and subsequent return to Confucianism. It presents his intellectual development to 1164, tracing his eclectic phase and transition to Confucianism in light of his poetry of the time. It concludes with a discussion of his new Confucian outlook. ;Chapter II elucidates Chu Hsi's theory of moral self-realization by tracing its development. It introduces the two-state model of consciousness central to Neo-Confucian moral psychology, then studies Chu Hsi's attempts to work within this model. Finally, it explains Chu Hsi's breakthrough to his dynamic mind-centered approach to moral self-realization. ;Chapter III examines Chu Hsi's resulting command conception of mind and explores his view of the relationship between mind and the nature. It then presents his cultivation theory against this background as a methodology by which a person can transform his mind into a moral will. ;Chapter IV, drawing upon Chu Hsi's command conception of mind, argues that Chu Hsi's ethical theory, like Kant's, crystallized around the notion of moral will, constituted on heavenly-principle. It indicates that this model revivified Confucian ethics and that it is suggestive for contemporary ethical discussion in virtue of Chu Hsi's organic conception of principle. (shrink)

In his book, Aurelien Djian investigates the history of the concept of horizon in the evolution of Husserl’s thought. Addressing the most fundamental concerns of phenomenology, Djian redefines the horizon considering themes such as coherence of experience, the reality of the world, and motivation. He suggests an approach to exploring the horizon grounded in a detailed analysis of Thing and Space lectures. A significant conclusion of Djians’s book is that the origin of the horizon should not be attributed to Ideas (...) I, but to these lectures. This discovery is not only of historical significance, but also opens up a new perspective on relations between the world, the incompleteness of external experience, and the fluidity of attention. Djian denies Saulius Geniusas’ interpretation of “halo” and “background” as psychological opposites of the horizon, which functions in the domain of ontology. These phenomena are given as elements of experience temporarily left by attention, connected with actual ones. The consciousness of unfulfilled potentialities of experience ensures the coherence of experience, making the transition from actual to potential seamless. This paper covers Djian’s conclusions and part of his work that goes beyond the content of the book. We also try to contextualize Djian’s research and show the history of studies of the horizon in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. (shrink)

The article considers the approaches to theodicy’s problem of Russian and German philosophers with clear religious orientation: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev and Max Scheler. However, for more explicit insight into our topic we found, the article provides the general overview of theodicy tradition. Standpoints of these thinkers living in different epochs are linked by the steady belief in a reasonability of the world created by God. The main obstacle to acceptance of this argumentation is the problem of evil’s existence. The way (...) of thinking that has the goal to demonstrate the world’s perfectness presumes either necessity of evil as a mean or the evil’s insignificance or even its illusiveness, which is the result of “too human” perspective. Such ways of thought have become impossible since the second half of 19th century, when the concrete person’s experience had been recognized as a main source of philosophy. In Russian culture, this attitude became widespread after F.M. Dostoevsky, in German culture – after F. Nietzsche. Berdyaev and Scheler inherit the impulse of their thought. Distinctive feature of religious philosophies of Berdyaev and Scheler is conceptualization of the assertion of God’s need in human being, for God is in the process of becoming, is in the inner move toward full self-realization. And human being, who is capable to adopt or to reject the God’s “call,” is the crucial stage of God’s formation. For this tradition of theodicy, exactly human creative act and the direction of this act have the main role in world history. (shrink)

Refleksii vŭrkhu antropologii︠a︡ta -- Kant i idei︠a︡ta za anthropologii︠a︡ta.

Confucian wisdom is commonly assumed to consist in the Confucian value perspective as humanism in a naturalistic outlook. In fact, Confucius and Mencius sketched out a far more interesting notion of wisdom (zhi) as rooted in cognizance and flexibility and expressed in sensitive discernment and the ability to read and respond to complex, changing circumstances--to read (and respond to) the writing on the wall. Whereas the notions of tradition and the Way are thought to weigh heavily in the Confucian perspective, (...) the deeper insight and innovative action of the "wise" can transform everything and recast tradition and the Way on a more adequate basis. In his commentaries and discourses on the Four Books, Zhu Xi grasped this notion of "wisdom" and explicated its connection to several related notions, including chung (hitting the mark), yi (appropriateness), quan (weighing, discretion), and chongyong (hitting the utmost propriety in the common situation). This inquiry reveals an innovative, critical spirit in classical Confucianism that has largely lain dormant since the rise and persistence of a bureaucratic, authoritarian China after the Qin-Han period. (shrink)

To avoid post-neurosurgical language deficits, intraoperative mapping of the language function in the brain can be complemented with preoperative mapping with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The validity of an fMRI “language localizer” paradigm crucially depends on the choice of an optimal language task and baseline condition. This study presents a new fMRI “language localizer” in Russian using overt sentence completion, a task that comprehensively engages the language function by involving both production and comprehension at the word and sentence level. The (...) paradigm was validated in 18 neurologically healthy volunteers who participated in two scanning sessions, for estimating test–retest reliability. For the first time, two baseline conditions for the sentence completion task were compared. At the group level, the paradigm significantly activated both anterior and posterior language-related regions. Individual-level analysis showed that activation was elicited most consistently in the inferior frontal regions, followed by posterior temporal regions and the angular gyrus. Test–retest reliability of activation location, as measured by Dice coefficients, was moderate and thus comparable to previous studies. Test–retest reliability was higher in the frontal than temporo-parietal region and with the most liberal statistical thresholding compared to two more conservative thresholding methods. Lateralization indices were expectedly left-hemispheric, with greater lateralization in the frontal than temporo-parietal region, and showed moderate test-retest reliability. Finally, the pseudoword baseline elicited more extensive and more reliable activation, although the syllable baseline appears more feasible for future clinical use. Overall, the study demonstrated the validity and reliability of the sentence completion task for mapping the language function in the brain. The paradigm needs further validation in a clinical sample of neurosurgical patients. Additionally, the study contributes to general evidence on test–retest reliability of fMRI. (shrink)

ArgumentI believe that some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order.Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger The possibility of crossing humans with other anthropoid species has been discussed in fiction as well as in scientific literature during the twentieth century. Professor Il’ya Ivanov’s attempt to achieve this was crucial for the beginning of organized primate research in the Soviet Union, and remains one of the most interesting and controversial experiments that was ever done on (...) non-human primates. The possibility of removing the boundary that separates humans from other animal species, apes in particular, is loaded with important political meaning and violates cultural and ethical taboos. The history of Ivanov’s scientific experiment thus helps to reveal some of the twentieth-century’s important cultural conventions and hidden assumptions about human nature, species, and social hierarchy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the "subjective method" and the role of value preferences, as underscored in Russian proto-sociology, developed by the populists in discussions with the "ethical Marxism," on the one hand, and with positivists, on the other. The main issue—how was the apologia of individual in these studies connected to the ideals of social development?— leads to the question, whether such ideals could be based on an inborn moral law or "universal good" in the spirit of empirical-positivist theories. (...) Is the use of ethical categories in scientific knowledge admissible in principle, and if so, to what degree? How should the measure of subjectivity in historical or sociological studies be "regulated," and are there universally binding solutions to these problems? (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to analyze the scale of development of the shadow economy in the construction sector during the pandemic. The article presents the dynamics of shadow financial transactions in the construction industry in the period 2020-2021. The scientific novelty lies in forecasting the development potential of the shadow economy in a pandemic, including the construction sector of the economy. As a result, it was revealed that in the structure of the branches of the Russian economy that (...) formed the demand for shadow financial services during the pandemic, the construction sector is in the first place. An analysis of the growth rates of construction works in 2020-2021 showed that anti-pandemic restrictive measures still slowed down the positive dynamics in the construction sector. Reducing the volume of the shadow economy in the construction sector must be carried out comprehensively, including, on the one hand, identifying the benefits of leaving the "shadow sector", while improving, on the other hand, official institutions. (shrink)

Is the white horse paradox just a sleight of hand, or is it indicative of some truths about words, language, and logic? The paradox underscores some differences in the significance and implications of terms when considered in the context of mention rather than use. Moreover, the paradox shows that insights into how words and phrases operate in language can be gained by considering them in the context of mention. The paradox also causes us to think of the instrumental value of (...) words, as opposed to thinking of their roles just in referring and in judgments and inferences. (shrink)

The “Fish Happiness” anecdote in the Zhuangzi is a literary gem, a well-wrought urn, which simultaneously reflects and informs the “Autumn Floods” chapter,1 as well as the text as a whole.2 Despite its polish and surface clarity, the anecdote has afforded a variety of readings. Its points and assumptions tend to be muted or understated in pun, so the reader is pressed to bring his or her own intellectual wits to bear. Indeed, one wonders if the fish happiness anecdote wasn’t (...) intended as a sort of Rorschach test for the reader.3In what follows I offer a reading, nudge some insights from the happy-fish anecdote, and share some philosophical reflections. Given Zhuangzi’s avowed skepticism regarding positions and... (shrink)

Confucian wisdom is commonly assumed to consist in the Confucian value perspective as humanism in a naturalistic outlook. In fact, Confucius and Mencius sketched out a far more interesting notion of wisdom as rooted in cognizance and flexibility and expressed in sensitive discernment and the ability to read and respond to complex, changing circumstances--to read the writing on the wall. Whereas the notions of tradition and the Way are thought to weigh heavily in the Confucian perspective, the deeper insight and (...) innovative action of the "wise" can transform everything and recast tradition and the Way on a more adequate basis. In his commentaries and discourses on the Four Books, Zhu Xi grasped this notion of "wisdom" and explicated its connection to several related notions, including chung, yi, quan, and chongyong. This inquiry reveals an innovative, critical spirit in classical Confucianism that has largely lain dormant since the rise and persistence of a bureaucratic, authoritarian China after the Qin-Han period. (shrink)

This paper revisits the rhetorics of system and irony in Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel in order to theorize the utopic operation and standpoint that, I argue, system and irony share. Both system and irony transport the speculative speaker to the impossible zero point preceding and suspending the construction of any binary terms or the world itself—an immanent nonplace (of the in-itself, nothingness, or chaos) that cannot be inscribed into the world's regime of comprehensibility and possibility. It is because the philosopher (...) and the ironist articulate their speech immanently from this standpoint that system and irony are positioned as incomprehensible to those framed rhetorically as incapable of occupying it. This standpoint is philosophically important, I maintain, because it allows one to think how the (comprehensibility of the) world is constructed without being bound to the necessity of this construction or having to absolutize the way things are or can be. (shrink)

In a study of three indigenous and non-indigenous cultural groups in northwestern and northeastern Siberia, framed line tests and a landscape drawing task were used to examine the hypotheses that test-based assessments of context sensitivity and independence are correlated with the amount of contextual information contained in drawings, and with the order in which the focal and background objects are drawn. The results supported these hypotheses, and inspection of the regression relationships suggested that the intergroup variations in test performance were (...) likely to result from differences in the attention accorded to contextual information, as revealed by the drawings. Social and environmental explanations for the group differences in context sensitivity are also discussed. The conclusions support the argument that cultural differences in artistic styles and perceptual tests reflect the same underlying perceptual tendencies, and they are consistent with the argument that these tendencies reflect corresponding differences in patterns of social and environmental interaction. (shrink)

The article discusses the problem of parallelism of epistemic and moral virtues. The author presents the problem along with other methodological obstacles in virtue epistemology. The importance of the problem of parallelism becomes evident when we turn to the criteria of intellectual (epistemic) evaluation and to the framework of possible intellectual ethos. This problem is discussed in the paper by the example of definitions of master virtue and wisdom proposed by A.R. Karimov.

This study investigates the Mongolian manuscript Kanjur preserved at the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The manuscript previously belonged to the Chesan Buddhist monastery of Central Transbaikalia and was brought to the Buruchkom, a first academic institute of the Republic of Buryat-Mongolia by the eminent Buryat writer Khotsa Namsaraev. The manuscript is an almost complete copy of the Ligdan Khan’s Kanjur (...) presumably made in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century in Beijing. The article presents a description, analysis and brief catalogue of Ulan-Ude manuscript Kanjur. (shrink)

_Hegel and Schelling in Early Nineteenth-Century France_ is a two-volume work that documents the French reception of G. W. F. Hegel and F. W. J. Schelling from 1801 to 1848. It shows that the story of the "French Hegel" didn't begin with Wahl and Kojève by giving readers a solid understanding of the various ways in which German Idealism impacted nineteenth-century French philosophy, as well as providing the first ever English-language translations of excerpts from the most important philosophical texts of (...) the era. Inside volume two, readers will find a series of scholarly studies to help them get to grips with this neglected field in the history of ideas. The contributors are world-leading and emerging experts from Europe, UK, and North America. They highlight the stakes and trace the pathways of this reception for French and German thought during the period, including the ways in which French philosophers of the period took up the debates and concepts of German Idealism, transformed them or rejected them. In this way, the volume aims to redress the serious neglect of early nineteenth-century French thought in English-language scholarship and, in so doing, goes beyond a nation-based narrative of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to consider a certain set of notions in Kant as subsumable under a single notion – that of the soul’s intensity – as well as the possibility of a transcendental grounding of this notion within Kant ’s critical framework. First, I discuss what it means for Kant to attribute intensive magnitude to the soul, starting with his response to Mendelssohn where Kant introduces the soul’s intensity as a metaphysical notion immanent to the principles of rational (...) psychology. I show, however, that in Kant ’s counter-argument there occurs a subtle though crucial shift in perspective – from the soul’s substance to its powers. Then I move on to consider three fundamental variants upon the soul’s intensity – intensities of representation, of life, and of cognition – each governed, I argue, by the implied notions of measure of intensity and its balance. Also, I examine Kant ’s accounts of the life of a species and the necessity of sickness; of intensity of “enlightenment” in a society and the benefit of ignorance; and of sermon as a practical exertion of cognition’s intensity. Next, the aforementioned shift of emphasis allows me to demonstrate that the notion of the soul’s intensity can indeed be transcendentally justified by appealing to Kant ’s principle of the Anticipations of Perception. Finally, I conclude with an appendix on the possible connection of the soul’s intensity to Kant ’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Thinking about abnormalization, the author views abnormalizing as one of the means of entering the space where everything is born, and evaluates the place of this means in modern society. Over the course of human history, society established norms and taboos of all kinds, and the system of norms and taboosdetermined the society itself. This is especially important in modern society, the society where, besides self-reproduction, development is also one of the main objectives, which presupposes constant creation of new norms. (...) How are norms created? What are the requirements for this? What kind of people can create new norms? What are the threats of this process? The author answers these questions and many others in the outlines of thought. While dwelling upon abnormalization, the author involuntarily touched the borders, the limits of the human world, took a look beyond the horizon of something totally different. (shrink)

Current models of cortical speech and language processing include multiple regions within the temporal lobe of both hemispheres. Human communication, by necessity, involves complex interactions between regions subserving speech and language processing with those involved in more general cognitive functions. To assess these interactions, we utilized an ecologically salient conversation-based approach. This approach mandates that we first clarify activity patterns at the earliest stages of cortical speech processing. Therefore, we examined high gamma (70-150 Hz) responses within the electrocorticogram (ECoG) recorded (...) simultaneously from Heschl’s gyrus (HG) and lateral surface of the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Subjects were neurosurgical patients undergoing evaluation for treatment of medically intractable epilepsy. They performed an expanded version of the Mini-mental state examination (MMSE), which included additional spelling, naming, and memory-based tasks. ECoG was recorded from HG and the STG using multicontact depth and subdural electrode arrays, respectively. Differences in high gamma activity during listening to the interviewer and the subject's self-generated verbal responses were quantified for each recording site and across sites within HG and STG. The expanded MMSE produced widespread activation in auditory cortex of both hemispheres. No significant difference was found between activity during listening to the interviewer's questions and the subject's answers in posteromedial HG (auditory core cortex). A different pattern was observed throughout anterolateral HG and posterior and middle portions of lateral STG (non-core auditory cortical areas), where activity was significantly greater during listening compared to speaking. No systematic task-specific differences in the degree of suppression during speaking relative to listening were found in posterior and middle STG. Individual sites could, however, exhibit task-related variability in the degree of suppression during speaking compared to listening. The current study demonstrates that ECoG recordings can be acquired in time-efficient dialog-based paradigms, permitting examination of language and cognition in an ecologically salient manner. The results obtained from auditory cortex serve as a foundation for future studies addressing patterns of activity beyond auditory cortex that subserve human communication. (shrink)

The hundred-year history of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we examine in the article through a gradual approach (through the refusal of researchers from obviously erroneous interpretations) to an ethical (or metaphilosophical) reading of the work. The latter explains Wittgenstein’s unambiguous indication of ethical meaning as the main meaning of the Tractatus and consistently reconciles various parts of the work (ontology, figurative theory of meaning, rejection of the theory of types and logical constants, etc.) with the latest so-called ethical and (...) mystical statements of the Tractatus and with demanding silence. An ethical (metaphilosophical) reading explains the continuing influence and relevance of the Tractatus and is presented in the article as a necessary condition for understanding the continuity between the works of early and late Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The article presents the main trends in the analytical epistemology of religious belief. Their interrelations and mutual influences are shown. The author argues that epistemology of religious belief has risen as one of the possible answers to the Gettier- problems. Therefore different trends in religious epistemology are bounded not only with each other, but also with trends in general epistemology. As a result of the analysis of all major trends in epistemology of religious belief (reformed epistemology, social epistemology, virtue epistemology, (...) problem of the epistemic authority) the author concludes that the core of each trend is an attempt of defining the phenomenon of religion itself. Hence it is possible to consider epistemology of religious belief as the next step in the history of such attempts. Since finding appropriate definition of the phenomenon of religion is a special task of philosophy of religion (both in analytic and continental traditions), the author argues that epistemology of religious belief is the essential part of philosophy of religion as a scholar discipline. (shrink)

For over a century, Haeckel's Gastraea theory remained a dominant theory to explain the origin of multicellular animals. According to this theory, the animal ancestor was a blastula‐like colony of uniform cells that gradually evolved cell differentiation. Today, however, genes that typically control metazoan development, cell differentiation, cell‐to‐cell adhesion, and cell‐to‐matrix adhesion are found in various unicellular relatives of the Metazoa, which suggests the origin of the genetic programs of cell differentiation and adhesion in the root of the Opisthokonta. Multicellular (...) stages occurring in the complex life cycles of opisthokont protists (mesomycetozoeans and choanoflagellates) never resemble a blastula. Here, we discuss a more realistic scenario of transition to multicellularity through integration of pre‐existing transient cell types into the body of an early metazoon, which possessed a complex life cycle with a differentiated sedentary filter‐feeding trophic stage and a non‐feeding blastula‐like larva, the synzoospore. Choanoflagellates are considered as forms with secondarily simplified life cycles. (shrink)

The paper shows relationships between the characteristics of residents and the places, where they live. A combination of three criteria of place attractiveness was chosen to classify places, and profiles of their beneficiaries on the theoretical level. The results of the empirical study partially con­firm the developed theoretical typologies. Two methods to segment place market are equal only if expectations of population are constant. Study results allow place marketers to identify emerging shifts in the structure of beneficiaries of specific places (...) and predict their further evolution. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a transpacific dialog on the role of agriculture and food, especially within traditions of Chinese and Japanese philosophy and social thought.

: Confucian wisdom is commonly assumed to consist in the Confucian value perspective as humanism in a naturalistic outlook. In fact, Confucius and Mencius sketched out a far more interesting notion of wisdom (zhi) as rooted in cognizance and flexibility and expressed in sensitive discernment and the ability to read and respond to complex, changing circumstances-to read (and respond to) the writing on the wall. Whereas the notions of tradition and the Way are thought to weigh heavily in the Confucian (...) perspective, the deeper insight and innovative action of the "wise" can transform everything and recast tradition and the Way on a more adequate basis. In his commentaries and discourses on the Four Books, Zhu Xi grasped this notion of "wisdom" and explicated its connection to several related notions, including chung (hitting the mark), yi (appropriateness), quan (weighing, discretion), and chongyong (hitting the utmost propriety in the common situation). This inquiry reveals an innovative, critical spirit in classical Confucianism that has largely lain dormant since the rise and persistence of a bureaucratic, authoritarian China after the Qin-Han period. (shrink)

One’s translating, reading, and understanding of texts from other eras and traditions are conditioned by tacit assumptions built into one’s own vocabulary and psycho-cultural understanding of self—of which one tends to be only intuitively aware. Thus, for example, when encountering the vocabulary in Classical Chinese for “I,” “me,” “mine,” “self,” et cetera, modern readers are inclined to import their own linguistic, cognitive, and cultural intuitions about these terms, unconsciously and without second thought. This has been particularly problematic for modern Western (...) readers of the Confucian classics, who tend to take self as ontologically and ethically individual. However, recent psychological accounts of self... (shrink)

The article presents an attempt to evaluate the influence of the late Wittgenstein philosophy (by the example of the rule-following problem) on sociology and some empirical programs of sociological research. At first we give a brief overview of the rule-following problem and consider, on the one hand, a skeptical reading and a skeptical solution to the problem by S. Kripke and, on the other hand, criticism towards Kripke by some Wittgensteinians). Then we reveal the role of skeptic reading in the (...) sociological works of D. Bloor and the role of anti-sceptic reading in ethnomethodological projects. At the end we show the paramount importance of Peter Winch – we prove the following thesis: the ideas of Peter Winch anticipated many of the points and arguments in the dispute between D. Bloor and ethnomethodology. (shrink)

Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856) declared Russia to be a non-place in both space and time, a singular nothingness without history, topos, or footing, without relation or attachment to the world-historical tradition culminating in Christian-European modernity. This paper recovers Chaadaev’s conception of nothingness as that which, unbound by tradition, constitutes a total, even revolutionary ungrounding of the world-whole. Working with and through Chaadaev’s key writings, we trace his articulation of immanent nothingness or the void of the Real as completely emptying (...) out the mechanisms of history and tradition, thereby putting also into question the basic conceptual machinery of modernity. Chaadaev’s position appears, as a result, not only as a neglected genealogical element to contemporary critiques of modernity and its logic of reproduction through tradition and futurity but also as a contribution to the ongoing critical rethinking of this logic in contemporary theory. (shrink)