No nation can exist without its own religious cults and traditions. The practical absence of records of the presence of pagan priests in our ancestors, the bearers of knowledge, beliefs and rituals, testifies only to the careful deliberate destruction of important aspects of national history. Some pages in the history of the Eastern Slavs are simply crossed out from the chronicles and replaced by pious stories in line with Byzantine hagiography. An example in this regard is the description of the (...) baptism of Kiev under Prince Vladimir, which obviously had nothing to do with the real events. The pagan rites and traditions in the annals were changed beyond recognition and took the form of fairy tales and legends. Very interesting in this regard are the descriptions of the funeral rites related to the death of Prince Igor, which were transformed by the chronicler Nestor into the legend "On the revenge of Princess Olga Derevlyany". Even the term "priest" in ancient Slavic sources was replaced by the word "magician" or "old man". Because of all these facts, a fairly authoritative hypothesis has emerged in national historical science, according to which the Eastern Slavs did not have any "pagan priests" at all. (shrink)

Leibniz’s philosophy enjoyed a Russian fandom that endured from the eighteenth century to the death of the last exiled Russian philosophers in the twentieth century. There was, to begin with, Leibniz’s direct impact on Peter the Great and on the scientific development of Saint Petersburg. Then there was, still in the eighteenth century, Mikhail Lomonosov, who was sent to study with Christian Wolff in Marburg, and who came back to Saint Petersburg with a watered-down Leibnizian worldview, which he applied to (...) the study of chemistry and physics. Another eighteenth century philosopher, Alexander Radishchev, who studied in Leipzig, displayed acquiescence with a number of key elements from Leibniz’s philosophy. Russian Lebnizianism as a continuous philosophical movement was considerably reinvigorated in the 1870s when the Leibnizian German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller took a position at the University of Dorpat (nowadays Tartu, Estonia), which was then located within the Russian Empire. Teichmüller influenced a number of Russian philosophers into adopting a “Teichmüllerian” version of Leibnizianism. Among these philosophers were Evgeny Bobrov and Alexei Kozlov. In Saint Petersburg, Kozlov influenced his own son, Askoldov, and the latter’s friend — Nikolai Lossky. In the meanwhile, in Moscow Lev Lopatin, Nikolai Bugaev, and Petr Astafiev developed their own Leibnizianism in seemingly relative independence from Teichmüller’s influence and presumably, in some cases, under the partial influence of Vladimir Solovyov. Despite this relative independence, however, the fact remains that there was in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia a network of more or less loosely interconnected Leibnizian philosophers who read each other and wrote about each other, who exchanged ideas, and who constituted a movement that we might characterize as “Russian Leibnizianism” or “Russian Neo-Leibnizianism.” In this chapter, I tell the story of the intellectual lineage of Russian Leibnizianism. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction: the humanist tradition in Russian philosophy G. M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole; Part I. The Nineteenth Century: 1. Slavophiles, Westernizers, and the birth of Russian philosophical humanism Sergey Horujy; 2. Alexander Herzen Derek Offord; 3. Materialism and the radical intelligentsia: the 1860s Victoria S. Frede; 4. Russian ethical humanism: from populism to neo-idealism Thomas Nemeth; Part II. Russian Metaphysical Idealism in Defense of Human Dignity: 5. Boris Chicherin and human dignity (...) in history G. M. Hamburg; 6. Vladimir Solov'iev's philosophical anthropology: autonomy, dignity, perfectibility Randall A. Poole; 7. Russian panpsychism: Kozlov, Lopatin, Losskii James P. Scanlan; Part III. Humanity and Divinity in Russian Religious Philosophy after Solov'iev: 8. A Russian cosmodicy: Sergei Bulgakov's religious philosophy Paul Valliere; 9. Pavel Florenskii's trinitarian humanism Steven Cassedy; 10. Semën Frank's expressivist humanism Philip J. Swoboda; Part IV. Freedom and Human Perfectibility in the Silver Age: 11. Religious humanism in the Russian silver age Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal; 12. Russian liberalism and the philosophy of law Frances Nethercott; 13. Imagination and ideology in the new religious consciousness Robert Bird; 14. Eschatology and hope in silver age thought Judith Deutsch Kornblatt; Part V. Russian Philosophy in Revolution and Exile: 15. Russian Marxism Andrzej Walicki; 16. Adventures in dialectic and intuition: Shpet, Il'in, Losev Philip T. Grier; 17. Nikolai Berdiaev and the philosophical tasks of the emigration Stuart Finkel; 18. Eurasianism: affirming the person in an 'Era of Faith' Martin Beisswenger; Afterword: on persons as open-ended ends-in-themselves (the view from two novelists and two critics) Caryl Emerson; Bibliography. (shrink)

This is a review of Thomas Nemeth's Kant in Imperial Russia, Cham: Springer, 2017. It gives a rundown of the contents of the book, which may be considered the definitive, comprehensive, and authoritative overview of the Kantrezeption in pre-Soviet Russia in the English language. The book proceeds chronologically, starting from Kant's days up to the Bolshevik Revolution, examining well-known and lesser-known Russian philosophers and thinkers as well as figures of other nationalities who contributed to the dissemination of Kant's ideas in (...) Russia, from intellectuals like Nikolai Karamzin, who paid Kant a visit during his travels, to Mikhail Vladislavlev, Vladimir Solovyov, Aleksej Kozlov, Aleksandr Vvedenskij, Lev Lopatin, Nikolai Berdjaev, the brothers Trubeckoj, Georgij Chelpanov, Gustav Shpet, Pavel Novgorodcev, Ivan Lapshin, Vladimir Ern, Nikolai Losskij, Boris Jakovenko, and many others. The review emphasizes the principal outcome of the book, which is that the Russian reception of Kant's philosophy was largely negative. (shrink)

In this article the cosmological and metaphysical dimensions of the Logos concept in the Hellenic and Patristic traditions are explored. Heraclitus initially depicted the logos as the ontological link between the One and the many, with the logos thus serving as the foundation of both rational discourse and natural law. This concept was elaborated and modified by a number of eminent Hellenic and Christian thinkers. Among them count Plato, Philo of Alexandria, the New Testament authors John and Paul, Plotinus, Athenagoras, (...) Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor and John Scottus Eriugena. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present implications of the seller's ability to bid in the four classical auction forms, with independent private values: English, Dutch, first‐ and second‐price auctions.Design/methodology/approachUnder each auction form, the identity of the winning bidder and the expected winning bid are compared between the case when the seller may bid and when he cannot, using equilibrium bidder strategies. The seller's incentive to bid is evaluated.FindingsThe strategies and the welfare results differ with auction type and underlying (...) information assumptions – bidders are either aware or unaware of the seller's ability to bid. In the Dutch and the first‐price auctions, seller‐bidding does not affect any classical results. In the English and the second‐price auctions, it leads to no lower expected prices than without it and higher prices with positive probability. In the English and the second‐price auctions, the seller bids above his reservation value and may unintentionally win the auction. These auctions result in inefficiency with positive probability.Practical implicationsThe English and the second‐price auctions are the most common real‐world auctions. In these auctions, the seller's ability to bid – secretly or publicly – redistributes welfare among participants and introduces a possibility of inefficiency. Making this ability publicly known does not solve the latter problem. Auctioneers must prevent the seller from bidding, or must select a different auction form when seller‐bidding is anticipated.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies to regulators, auction designers, bidders, and other readers which auction forms are susceptible to subversion by seller‐bidding and what the potential damages are. (shrink)

Od grčkog pojma sophia do Potterovih pojmova mudrosti i biološkog znanja, autor analizira različite filozofske i znanstvene koncepte znanja. Autor se slaže s Jaspersom u stavu da ono što je »iz filozofije prevodivo u zajedničko mišljenje, to na koncu odlučuje o njezinoj vrijednosti «. Autor zaključuje da novoj epohi i bioetičkoj perspektivi odgovara zahtjev za orijentacijskim znanjem, te ga nastoji definirati ne samo iz povijesti filozofije, nego i u suprotnosti s tradicionalnim stajalištima , te iz zahtjeva nove epohe.From the Greek (...) term sophia to the Potter’s terms wisdom and biological knowledge, author analyses different philosophical and scientific concepts of knowledge. The author agrees with Jaspers on the notion that what is “transferable from philosophy into the common reasoning is what at the end decides on its worthiness”. The author concludes that the demand for an orientational knowledge corresponds with the new epoch and bioethical perspective, and is trying to define this demand not only from the history of philosophy, but in its contrast to the traditional views represented by Descartes and Bacon, and also from the demands of the new epoch itself. (shrink)

A la différence du concept chrétien de la justice en tant que vertu morale, tel que l’avait énoncé Thomas d’Aquin en la définissant comme une attitude par la force de laquelle quelqu’un dont la volonté est forte reconnaît à autrui son droit, Nietzsche trouve l’origine de la justice dans la négociation de forces dont la puissance est approximativement égale ou bien dans la contrainte des moins forts à un accord. Pour présenter un tel point de vue fondé sur l’assertion que (...) pour la vie-même l’appropriation est essentielle, en d’autres mots que la volonté de puissance est en fait le vouloir vivre, Nietzsche s’est servi de la description des Athéniens et des Méliens par Thucydide. Cependant, l’auteur aboutit à la conclusion que Nietzsche n’est pas seulement un penseur de la puissance mais qu’il cherche aussi un nouvel entendement de la justice qu’il veut expliquer par la totalité de sa pensée. (shrink)

Im Unterschied zum christlichen Begriff der Gerechtigkeit als einer sittlichen Tugend, wie es Thomas von Aquin zusammenfasste, als einer Einstellung, kraft deren ein Mensch festen und steten Willens jedem sein Recht zukommen lässt, erkennt Nietzsche die Herkunft der Gerechtigkeit im Ausgleich oder Kompromiss zwischen ungefähr gleich Mächtigen sowie im Zwang der weniger Mächtigen zu einem Ausgleich. Zur Untermauerung dieser Einstellung, die sich auf der Behauptung gründet, dass das Leben seinem innersten Wesen nach eine Aneignung sei bzw. dass der Wille zur (...) Macht den Lebenswillen schlechthin ausmache, griff Nietzsche auf den von Thukydides geschilderten Dialog der Athener und Melier zurück. Der Autor kommt jedoch zu dem Schluss, dass Nietzsche nicht nur ein Denker der Macht war, sondern nach einem neuen Verständnis der Gerechtigkeit trachtete, das aus der Gesamtheit seines Denkens zu deuten sei. (shrink)

In contrast to the Christian concept of justice as moral virtue, defined by St. Thomas Aquinas as “an attitude with the power of which one is fortified and acknowledges the rights of others of one’s own accord”, Nietzsche identifies the origin of justice in equalisation or an agreement between forces of approximately equal powers, as well as in the compulsion of the less powerful to agree. In support of this standpoint, founded on the claim that life itself is essentially appropriation, (...) i.e. that the will to power is the will of life itself, Nietzsche made use of Thucydides’s imagery of the Athenians and Melians. The author, however, concludes that what Nietzsche does is not only think about power, but that he also seeks a novel understanding of justice, which he strives to expound from the totality of his thought. (shrink)

In “Elementa Juris Naturalis” (1671) G.W. Leibniz formulated the genius intuition about the fundamental unity of juridical and Aristotelian modalities. Interpreting and explicating this intuition by virtue of the deontic logic G.W. Wright arrived to the conclusion that the unity of modalities in question is not an equivalence relation but an analogy one. However a complement for G.W. Wright’s explication of the intuition of G.W. Leibniz was submitted. This complement was a two-valued algebra of formal-natural-law philosophy of juridical and Aristotelian (...) modalities as moral-legal evaluation-functions determined by one variable. In thepresent paper I submit a binary generalization of the mentioned unary complement. By virtue of this generalization some significant shortcomings of the complement in question are eliminated. The generalization deals with the modalities as moral-legal evaluation-functions determined by two variables. (shrink)

There is a hitherto not recognized possibility effectively to use computer-based scientific investigating, teaching and learning strategies and resources in history of philosophy. This is especially interesting for comparative scientific investigations in history of philosophy, for distance learning and teaching it. Effectively to apply modern computer technologies one has to have an adequate mathematical simulation of the sphere of application. Therefore the paper starts with submitting a mathematical simulation of metaphysics (in general). Then this mathematical machinery is applied to a (...) representative concrete example, namely, to the metaphysical system of Parmenides of Elea. By means of the method submitted in this paper (and by virtue of computer) a user himself can create (construct) an adequate digital simulation of some computable aspect of any specific philosophical system. Here the digital method of investigating the history of philosophy is exemplified by applying it to the metaphysical system of Parmenides. According to the hypothesis underlying the mentioned method, metaphysics is formal axiology. Hence algebra of metaphysics is algebra of formal axiology. Therefore metaphysics of Parmenides is represented below as a system of equations of the formal-axiology algebra. This system of equations could be computer-generated and investigated by any user autonomously. (shrink)