Ideas and Ideals

The main concepts of the article are discourse and instances of delineation. This is a set of social institutions that can form the structure of discourse, identify its main and secondary segments. The aim of the research is identification of the instances of delineation in the discourse of rock-culture. The methods of this research included narrative interviews with agents of rock-culture and discourse-analysis. Agents of rock-culture are musicians, their close friends, collector of discs, fans. The research allows us to draw the following conclusions. In the discourse of rock-culture the role of such institutions is fulfilled by a friend, a senior member of family, media and music shops. The friend that structures the discourse should have authority and prestige. They define aesthetic positions, give assessments and exert informational impact. A friend can influence both temporarily and permanently. A senior member of the family affects the discourse in the same way. Other instances of delineation are media and music shops. Media has the effect in rock-discourse of setting the agenda. Methods of forming the agenda are nomination of facts and rankings. A music shop organizes conversation between different agents of rock-culture. A shop operates like media. It provides positive nomination segments of discourse: the demanded goods create a certain verbal series influencing a visitor of the shop. A visitor enters a certain context that leads them to perceive themselves as a referent product that can further the thesaurus of the subject. The structure of the discourse formation is determined by the institutions that act both in the public and in the private field of cultural being. The public instances of delineation are media and musical shops (or market in the reality of Soviet culture). So the discourse of rock performs a double function. It introduces the subject into the sphere of social and cultural innovations. At the same time rock that has a private character returns one to cultural traditions.

The article presents an analysis of the development of the consumer society and its main features of manifestation at the present time. It is noted that the formation of consumer relations is due to the development of the ideas and practices of capitalism, which led, firstly, to economic and technical development, manifested in the growth of incomes of the population; blurring of boundaries between social classes; individualization and a sharp increase in the diversity of consumption. Secondly, the development of the desire to increase capital, social privileges, improve one’s own social status through the consumed products of production. Thirdly, the formation of a culture of behavior based on individual tastes, desires and values of people.

The consumer society is analyzed from the standpoint of psychological, sociological and philosophical approaches, since the process of consumption of a modern person goes far beyond the purely economic framework and reflects not just the satisfaction of physical and physiological needs, but determines the psychological and socio-moral aspects of human life. It is shown that the traditions of the modern consumer society influence the formation of people’s spiritual indifference to each other. Under the influence of the ideology and practices of the consumer society, there is a shift in the hierarchy of human needs, which leads to a corresponding deformation of value systems. A person, striving to meet new social standards, ideals, patterns of consumer behavior, loses the traditional worldview, focused on society. Through consumed things, a person seeks to find self-expression, self-realization, gain social status and prestige. Such human qualities as compassion, kindness, respect, spirituality are deformed. This loss causes a spiritual and moral crisis, leading to the formation of spiritual indifference of a person to a person. Indifference, in turn, leads to social detachment, which contributes to the formation of a sense of disunity between people, to the alienation of people from each other and from oneself as a social being.

In recent years, researchers around the world are increasingly turning to the problem of social alienation, which is caused not only by the coronavirus infection epidemic, but also by numerous other social and institutional processes. This article presents an overview and sociological analysis of foreign approaches to the study of social reclusion as a form of social alienation in religious, socio-philosophical, psychological, recreational, historical-cultural, spatial-geographical and economic-political discourses. Social reclusion is demonstrated both on well-known historical (reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson and others) and on modern cases. It was revealed that social reclusion can occur in relation to the whole society, certain social groups (for example, family) or institutions, as well as territories. Special attention is paid to home reclusion (solitude within the walls of your home) and green reclusion (solitude in nature). The author draws attention to the opposition of researchers of social reclusion and social exclusion, isolation, cultural participation and freedom. It is emphasized that social isolation is not identical with social reclusion, but can accompany it in conditions of limited social contacts, which confirms the phenomenon of A. Hansen’s reclusive openness. It has been established that the determinants of home reclusion can be the place of residence, moral and psychological state of a person, limited health opportunities in older people, visible physiological deficiencies or dependence on the screen (mainly among young people, which in Japan is called “hikikomori”). Guided by the dialectical idea of ​​the functionality of social reclusion, both its negative and positive aspects are shown, for example, the promotion of reintegration into society.

This article is dedicated to making sense of the cultural term “road” in research literature. Also, the author makes a disclosure of different “road” term interpretations in various scientific articles. The necessity of this analysis is contingent on terminological variety, which leads to problems while using terms even in one and the same article. In this article we are trying to highlight a dominant term for different fields of knowledge for the word “road”.

It turns out that in ethnologist articles specialists describe the road as an archetype, a mythologeme. The archetype of the road as a sort of spatial archetype appeared in the collective mind and outspoken in ethnic texts; traditions and rituals play an important role in the world view of different nations. Describing a road as a mythologeme allows to give it a sacral meaning, a road as a way to the “other world”, the borderland between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a dark place. In literary articles the road is viewed as chronotopos, assembling spatial and time relationship in literary texts.

A number of researchers highlight that the “road” chronotopos as a storyline creator and organizer is reflected in Russian literature of XIX-XXI centuries and act independently in the texts of different periods and different authors.

The analysis of the road as a metaphor can also be found in linguistic research. Authors suggest different ways of metaphorization, such as “way of life/way of death”, “way of perception”, “way of work”, “way of salvation/way of sin”, “way of creation/way of destruction”. The culturological method permits the authors to look at the road as a concept and divine the terms “road” and “way”. Within philosophy of culture a “road” had a meaning of a cultural universal relevant to different cultures, world models: mythological, religious, philosophical, artistical. Art science makes an accent on characteristic art’s image of the road.

The article concludes about the importance of the phenomenon of the road as an integral part of culture at all stages of its development, as well as a fairly thorough study of the road as a cultural phenomenon, the formation of various conceptual schemes for its description in the domestic research literature.

The subject of research in this article is the study of the genre areas of representation of the army as a socio-cultural institution in video games. To solve the research problems, methods such as classification were used to determine the main options for the representation of the army in video games, a structural-functional method to identify the media characteristics of games, forecasting to identify the prospects for a genre and ideological shift in military video games. As a result of the study, it was found that modern personalized war games are shifting from the era of the Second World War deeper into the past - for example, to the First World War or the Middle Ages, and their ideological content and content are also changing - from the linear fulfillment of a tactical task to a detailed narrative that reveals tragedy and heroism of military conflicts. According to the author, an important aspect of the success of military-patriotic education and the pragmatics of video games in the context of modern Russian culture is not just setting the task of creating games that glorify our military past, but also regulating the image of the Russian army today. A tool for this can be simulators of everyday activities, adventure games about the everyday life of border guards, signalmen, submariners on a campaign, managers of a military unit. Their potential is able to demonstrate the army as an institution for maintaining peace and ensuring security. The author assumes that such a genre experiment in military video games will make it possible to popularize Russian military video games on the market. In the conclusions of the study, 4 genres of army representation in video games are presented, in which the ideological paradigm is built around personal heroism or team genius, as well as personal exclusivity in extreme circumstances of military operations. The latter is formed by the very genre nature of video games, genre is message. The author revealed that the dominant genre is the action shooter, due to which the connection between the army and the categories of peace and security is lost and the categorical picture of the world created by the games of the military genre is distorted. The identified genre shift is destructive in nature, as it is aimed at destroying the socio-cultural institutions of the army.

The article considers various aspects of the existence of clip thinking and its individual gestalts. Corresponding study looks quite relevant in the context of an actual philosophical agenda, since the current cultural situation decisively affects not only the practical thought algorithms of a modern person, but also the transformation of the structures of Reason as such. Actually, a modern person, as a subject of specific thinking, first of all, demonstrates the narcissistic nature of his/her identity, which is revealed in certain stable intellectual patterns. These patterns include the idea of ​​a person’s existence as a series of events of appropriation of everything that was captured by this existence, the idea of ​​the automaticity of the onset of the human right to be heard, the idea of ​​the possibility of deriving direct references to an individual’s personal experience as a universal transcendental basis and the idea of ​​the inalienable right of a person not to follow the discovered “truth” at will. The most important gestalt of clip thinking, functioning in the horizon of its essential qualities and narcissistic patterns, is post-truth. The very appeal to the concept of post-truth is a statement of the prevailing clear order in the modern world of a situation where on the one hand truth is always less important than the private comfort of a narcissistic personality, and on the other hand truth is no longer significant for the acting sociocultural practices. Among the most significant circumstances accompanying the action of post-truth as a gestalt, it needs to pay attention to the following. First, post-truth can be considered as one of the markers of the actualization of the desire for social escapism, which is characteristic of a modern man. Secondly, the phenomenon of post-truth is inextricably linked with the widespread dissemination of ideas that for any cognitive difficulty somewhere there is an appropriate operational algorithm that resolves all difficulties. Third, post-truth works as the organizing principle of the global meme space. Fourthly, post-truth is an important aspect of that each time anew initiated culture shock, which acts as a practical mechanism for “switching on” clip thinking and “switching” its acts. It can be concluded that the study of the mechanisms of the post-truth gestalt and the related aspects of the existence of clip thinking makes it possible to deepen the understanding of many relevant processes occurring in the modern sociocultural space.

This article presents the research results of Jaque Lacan’s ethics of psychoanalysis. Lacan suggested both the new theory of desire and the new ethics which is motivated by a desire as a criterion of an action.

In this article the author reconstructs the Lacan’s system of arguments, which proves the fact, that desire can be considered as a criterion of an action, not its motive. This paper shows that the ethics of desire, that was originally developed in relation to the problem of the criterion of an analytical act, is also important for the ethical position of the patient, and therefore can be presented as a universal ethic.

The article also provides evidence that psychoanalytic work can be considered as an ethical practice, since there is a transformation of the ethical position of the patient in it. Initially, the patient takes an ethical position that can be defined as the desire to achieve the good, it would lead the subject to satisfaction, comfort and tranquility. On the other hand, psychoanalysis reveals a different ethical perspective to the patient, where the desire defines how the patient chooses the path.

First of all, this is about the analyst’s desire. This term means a special formation that was resulted by the analyst’s own analysis. Lacan believed that a psychoanalyst is the result of his/her own analysis, one of the main effects of which is the analyst’s desire. The analyst’s desire serves as a criterion for the analyst to perform analytical acts in his/her psychoanalytic practice.

But the ethics of desire is important not only for the psychoanalyst. The author’s task is to show that a patient who came to the analysis for the sake of therapy also performs the transformation of an ethical position in the process of analysis. This is the basic condition of psychoanalytic therapy. The main purpose of psychoanalysis is the study of unconscious desire, as a result of which the patient becomes an analysand and gets the opportunity to face his/her desire and follow it. To follow the desire means to decide to abandon the perspective of satisfaction and to bet on what is opposed to peace and completeness, and what can be defined as life.

The paper is devoted to Value Sensitive Design (VSD). This approach, widely presented in foreign scientific and specialized literature, has not been reflected in the Russian-language discourse. The authors of the study consider the theoretical foundations and methodological tools of VSD, clarify the conceptual apparatus, and also carry out a critical analysis of some of its main provisions (in particular, the question is raised about the absence of a philosophical theory of values, the eclecticism of the modern approach, insufficiently developed methods of cooperation with engineers, designers and potential stakeholders). VSD is viewed in the context of technology assessment and socially responsible innovation. We are talking about a diverse set of practices for the rational shaping of technologies, taking into account the values of society, suggesting a more active and conscious involvement of ordinary citizens (not experts) in the discussion of issues related to the development and design of technologies. An understanding of values with an emphasis on ethics and morality raises the question of achieving a balance between competing values and choosing the desired values, taking into account the diversity of interests of direct and indirect stakeholders. In this regard, two main goals of the VSD stand out. On the one hand, it involves identifying and critically analyzing desirable or limiting values that have been (intentionally or unintentionally) inscribed into existing technologies. On the other hand, VSD offers practical recommendations on how to deliberately and purposefully inscribe socially approved values into the design of new equipment, software, databases, and algorithms. Finally, the article defines the directions of possible applied research: (a) the development of the theory and methodology of change management through structuring the change management process according to the hierarchical principle of interaction, as well as identifying persons and groups that are affected by organizational changes and how; (b) fundamental aspects of human-machine interaction, in particular, human-robot interaction (HRI), which is of great practical importance for the design and production of socially responsible service robotics.

In the system of classical arts, music has always been perceived as a human actional breakthrough to understanding the Universe. The musical language, considered as a cultural universal, is the basis of intuitive cognition, a felt view of the axiological unity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. The article offers an analysis of the formation of the main philosophical theories of the ontological nature of musical creativity in their historical continuity.

In the history of ideas, the phenomenon of musical creativity has been perceived as a special kind of revelation. This reveals the obvious importance of the aesthetic approach in understanding the transcendental world; the objectified connection of man with ontological processes. Modern theories of universal evolutionism represent the development of the Universe as a single system based on the unity of its laws. It is in our time that comprehension of the essence of musical creativity opens a fundamentally new page in the philosophical understanding of the centuries-old history of music. The key point is the idea of the Μελῳδός aspiration to the Λόγος, the tendency to move from particular theoretical constructions and critical assessments to considering the phenomenological foundations of music, fundamentally presented, in particular, in the works of A. Losev and T. Adorno.

In the XX century, there was an obvious surge in the formulation of generalizing musicological concepts, and it was in the XX century that the philosophy of music received qualitatively new worldview foundations for its comprehensive interpretation. In this respect, the study of the epistemological nature of musical creativity has reached, it would seem, its peak.

However, comprehension of the investigated theories allows us to draw conclusions only about the possible approximation of a true understanding of the essence of musical creativity as a special cognitive practice. This turns out to be possible on the methodological basis of cumulative generalization, taking into account the religious, aesthetic, cultural, psychological, educational and other approaches in comprehending the value of the “world of sound”.

The article analyzes the portrait of Count Kirill Grigoryevich Razumovsky, painted in Rome in 1766 by the famous artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni. The portrait has features characteristic of portraits of travelers making the Grand Tour of Europe. In the second half of the 18th century, these were usually young aristocrats completing their education. Young people studied at the best universities; acquired extensive communication experience during their stay in major European centers; improved their skills in horseback riding, dancing and swordsmanship in famous academies, and also acquired knowledge of the art of antiquity by visiting Italy. In the portraits of travelers, Batoni emphasized the elegant dignity of the persons depicted; motifs of ancient architecture and sculpture of Rome testified to their good taste. Kirill Razumovsky also commissioned a portrait from the artist during his Grand Tour. However, the Russian count was already a mature man of 38 years old, who experienced a rapid rise in his youth, when he turned from a shepherd boy into a nobleman, and the collapse of hopes for receiving the hereditary title of hetman in Little Russia shortly before his Grand Tour. Comparison of Kirill Razumovsky portrait with the portrait of the young British traveler Thomas Dundas, which is close in composition, reveals the peculiarities of Pompeo Batoni’s work: by making only minor changes in the composition of the works, the painter skillfully conveyed the inner world of the depicted persons.