Ideas and Ideals

The article manifests three projects of society development: Marx’s - materialistic, Gefter’s - anthropological and Latour’s - geo-logical. The choice of manifestos is explained by the coincidence of their characteristics of the Modern era, where history is presented as the era of Copernican humanity, implementing its plans through revolution. The first project is considered not from the usual dialectical-materialist position, but from the point of view of the performativity of the sign, which has the ability to instantly switch what is said into action (into exchange, war, trade, relations with each other). Relying on the performativity of the sign is a scientific experiment with the aim of understanding the power of the thing in its entirety. Gefter’s main concepts in relation to Russia are the “country of countries” entering the “World of Worlds” (a form of dwelling of mankind) as one of the poles. Gefter presents history as a world of multidirectional, i.e. alternative developments. Latour presented the whole world through actor-network theory, including the activities of humans and invisible hybrid beings (viruses) affecting human life. The network is revealed through mapping and reveals the ways in which spatio-temporal coordinates expand, contract or break, revealing shifting trajectories of development.

Theological components of the historical memory of the Holocaust are the most important constitutive elements of the socio-political and value-ideological forms of understanding the causes and nature of the unprecedented evil committed by Nazism and ways of further development of the human community. Frankly false concepts and analogies that directly affect the memory of generations about the Second World War and are authorized to exist in Western society require raising questions about the specifics of the connection between the existing forms of theological intentions of understanding the Holocaust and the philosophical discourse associated with them with the features of social-political construction narrative of historical memory of this event. The attempted interpretation of the texts by M. Heidegger, which contain intuitions about the ontological-theological essence of the coming historical catastrophe, aims to identify the specific features of the existing ‘Post-Auschwitz’ theology, which legitimize the value-worldview negative transformations in the self-consciousness of Western society.

The main method of research is the hermeneutic-phenomenological method, according to which the meaning, directly assimilated from the actual side of the event, cannot be identical to the constitutive meaning, which appeals to the essence of the event that is not revealed through facticity. The constitutive meaning of the event in this study is based on a comparison of the Thinker’s onto-theological intuitions about the essence of an event that has not yet occurred with the circumstances of its actual implementation. The specificity of hermeneutic work in relation to the correlation of the onto-theological contours of the tragic unity of human’s and God’s being revealed in the philosophy of the event ‘The Last God’ by M. Heidegger is determined by the correlation of these contours as constitutive elements of meaning with the event of the Holocaust, linking the fate of the Jewish people with the fate of God. In contrast to similar hermeneutic intentions present in the theology of the ‘Death of God’, M. Heidegger’s philosophy emphasizes the effective nature of human existence, which performs an act of gifting its own essence, leading it to death. The result of this gift is an act of ontological transcendence of human nature and the assimilation of divine nature, carried out by ‘The Last God’. As a development of this concept, an assumption is made about the act of ontological restoration by a person of the existence of God before the event. The interpretation of the difference of divine essences is carried out in a Trinitarian context.

The interpretation and development of the philosophy of the event of ‘The Last God’ by M. Heidegger, proposed in this article, are a priority form of development of theology, which aims at the categorical hermeneutic construction of the theodicy of the Holocaust event, determining the essence of the object of faith, as well as preventing value-worldview and socio-political insinuations associated with the transformation of the discourse of ‘guilt and forgiveness’ in Western society.

Throughout many years Berdyaev discusses the problem of spiritual aristocracy formation in Russia. The Russian philosopher defends an imperishable value of spiritual aristocracy, as he doesn’t see a direct connection between the socio-historical environment and the emergence of “knights of spirit”. In his works he underlines the priority of the universal objective Divine will, calls for renewing Christianity and all aspects of public life, connects religious revival only with the development of a person. Berdyaev believes that the ‘people-nation’ can be aristocratic if it is ready to subordinate their own actions to the absolute Divine will. In 1917-1918 the idea of a hierarchical structure of any reality defines a train of Berdyaev’s thought. The being of the free person is closely connected with cosmic hierarchy. Creativity and social equality are not compatible, creativity demands inequality; the nature of creativity and the essence of the person are aristocratic. The Russian thinker welcomes the overthrow of autocracy. He denies class foundation of the ongoing revolution, exposes bourgeois, non-creative base of the socialist idea. Berdyaev sees the cause of ‘the sacred realm’ downfall in the estrangement of Russian people from the state power, absence of spiritual aristocracy in Russia. He accounts for the victory of democracy as an external condition of spiritual knighthood’s making, whose thoughts are directed outside of the empirical world, a necessity and compulsion realm. The Russian philosopher hopes that the democratic revolution will release spiritual forces of the people, whose ascending creative movement will be accompanied by the formation of national spiritual aristocracy. But in July 1917 Berdyaev ascertains that Russia is sacrificed to revolutionary element. He considers the propensity of the Russian person to social utopias as a consequence of centuries-old slavish existence of the people, the absence of the sense of duty and responsibility in the Russian national character. The victory of Bolsheviks in race for power by autumn of 1917 has confirmed Berdyaev’s worst fears: the triumph in Russia of a bourgeois ideal of prosperous habitation in the material world, ideals of equality and justice over a hierarchical principle of the universe design acted as a characteristic symptom of Russian people’s degradation, transformed the project of national aristocracy of spirit into a utopia. The article also shows how the adherents of Marxist ideology have turned this project into a caricature on the philosophy of history.

The article (using the example of the European cultural tradition) actualizes the problem of the heuristic potential of the concept of ‘soul’, which is far from being fully used, due to the dominance of positivist ideas. The category ‘soul’ is the most adequate in its content and depth, for the study of the inner immaterial world of a person in its integrity. The concept of ‘psyche’ that displaces and replaces it is narrower, covering mainly the processes of reflecting the world for optimal adaptation to it. The dominant of this concept, on the one hand, expresses the real impoverishment of a person’s inner life, the loss of moral, metaphysical experiences and reflections by it. On the other hand, the view through the ‘prism of the psyche’ has a limited cognitive potential, not allowing to reveal the fullness of the inner world of a person, his essential depths. The category ‘soul’ is the earliest, most developed, universal, allowing to explore the structure and functioning, formation and development of the inner world of a person. It is the concept of ‘soul’ that appears, starting from ancient and early Christian thought, synonymous with the concept of ‘human life’. The evolution of the content of the ‘sole’ concept in European thought is a reflection of the real processes taking place in the inner being of a person. During the period of anthroposociogenesis, the formation of the human soul takes place, consisting in the ‘gathering’ of its main parts. In the development of spiritual life, one can distinguish the line of ascent – to the spiritual, and the line of descent – to the material, carnal. The line of ascent unfolds from the first steps of history to the bright Middle Ages. The line of descent plays an increasingly active role from the ‘dark Middle Ages’ to the present. In the New and Modern times, the process of reducing the soul into the psyche is actualized. Moral and metaphysical experiences and reflections, which constitute the essence of the soul, lose their leading role. The ‘death of God’ (as the highest moral and metaphysical law) is an expression of the ‘death’ of the soul, leading to the ‘death’ of a person. The “justification” of the soul, its “new finding” will allow a person to realize a “new finding” of himself.

This article discusses examples of the practical implementation of the ideas of anarchism or attempts at such an implementation. The author believes that without taking into account and systematizing these phenomena, the economic history of the world is incomplete. The author does not make it his task to promote these examples and attempts, he only believes that they cannot be ignored. First, the author considers the anarchies that existed in Europe in the Middle Ages: Free Frisia and Dithmarschen in the north of Europe and the ‘Forest Cantons’ on the territory of modern Switzerland. The phenomenon of the Wild West in the history of the United States is analyzed as a form of long-term existence of the economy on a vast territory without government control. It is noted that those elements of self-organization of the population that were formed during the development of new territories in the western United States are usually hushed up. The author also considers temporarily existing anarchist communities in Spain in the 1930s and modern anarchist movements in Latin America, as well as the problem of the so-called ‘optimal size of the state’, which was raised by the anarchist Leopold Kohr. The paper describes a zone of Zomia, in which 100 million people currently live, who do not recognize the authority of any state. The author explores ideological roots of the Makhnovshchina, an anarchist movement during the Civil War. It is shown that the Republic of Nestor Makhno was organized not spontaneously, but according to certain initial political principles. The author especially highlights the successful attempt to build an anarchist community in Libya, where the principle of the absence of state taxes was practically implemented, since the state had other sources of income. In conclusion, two events of recent years are analyzed, behind which it is not customary to see the practical implementation of anarchist ideas: the Ukrainian Maidan of 2014 and the ‘Yellow Vests’ movement in France in 2018. Both of these phenomena are currently usually interpreted as spontaneous or inspired from outside. However, the author believes that such an interpretation is one-sided, not taking into account the continuity of pre-existing ideological and political currents.

The article analyzes the main ideas of Alan Gilbert Nixon, a contemporary sociologist of religion and researcher of the new atheism movement. The subject of the study is the ideology of the new atheism movement as a special anti-religious worldview associated with the work of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, which arose in 2006. Nixon himself, studying this movement, uses an original methodology, which he calls ‘grounded theory’ and explores the development of a new atheism in the actual contextual space of interaction between participants and the prospects of this interaction. The methodology of the authors of this article is based on the principle of the unity of the historical and logical interpretation of the key concepts and positions of A. Nixon in the process of a systematic analysis of historical background, ideological foundation, self-presentation of representatives of the new atheism movement. In addition, in the context of this study, a number of social changes (the globalization of capitalism, the development of the Internet and the related “leaps of communication”, the religious renaissance) are considered as a necessary context for the formation of a special “narrative mythology” of the new atheism, expressed in the idea of the greatness of Nature and Science. and suggesting a kind of piety within the worldview of the new atheism. As the main result of the presented analysis, one can single out the conceptual design of key aspects of the existence of a modern anti-religious worldview: hyperskepticism in the knowledge of the world, nihilism and the denial of classical metaphysics of rationality, criticism of the values of religious morality; a postmodern paradox that erases the boundaries between religious/non-religious and cancels the very possibility of discrimination on religious grounds, which nullifies the confrontational logic of the new atheism; the emergence of secular non-religious missionary work as a result of the process of competition of ideas in the space of “multiple modernities”; and, finally, the fact that the new atheistic message is gaining adherents because the anti-religious worldview is subject to the cultural logic of late capitalism with its postmodern spread of pluralism of cultures, discourses, organizations.

The article focuses on the problem of correlation between ethical norms and stratagem thinking. The analysis of the methods of description and representation of stratagem thinking in the works of Feng Menglong is aiming to achieve a complex research goal. Firstly, to supplement the information about the biography and work of Feng Menglong; secondly, to introduce new sources for the study of stratagem thinking; thirdly, to describe the complex of socio-philosophical views of Feng Menglong as he mastered stratagem thinking. The collection of stratagems A Complete Book of Wisdom is introduced as an academic source for the first time. The article is organized into three parts. The first part introduces the problem: China civil officials, as well as the military class, actively used stratagems in management practice. The second part analyzes the facts of Feng Menglong's biography that initiated his interest in stratagems. Everyday stratagem thinking in Feng Menglong's personal experience provides a basis for evaluating wisdom and foolishness as significant social factors. The analysis of Feng Menglong's biography may confirm the hypothesis that in Chinese culture stratagem thinking was limited by the Confucian ethical system, which, on the one hand, does not encourage the use of stratagems, but on the other hand, does not prohibit it either.  The third part focuses directly on the analysis of the literature source. The analysis of the structure and content of A Complete Book of Wisdom proves that stratagem thinking is a kind of practical and figurative-associative thinking, which does not destroy ethical frameworks, but shows an acceptable way out into the “gray zone” of ethics. The description of stratagems in A Complete Book of Wisdom is based on traditional Confucian values, but at the same time sets multi-option way to planned action.

The article presents an analysis of the transformation of methodological discourse on the concept of diaspora in the framework of migration issues studies. The development of research in a certain area is always associated with methodological issues that give rise to different approaches, despite this, they require their own solutions. The study of the experience of conceptualizing the concept of diaspora seems necessary from the point of view of clarifying the instrumental capabilities and, consequently, the methodological productivity of this concept, which is necessary for the selection and consistent justification of research optics in the process of developing a strategy for studying various aspects of international migration and separately the diaspora as its significant component. The transformation of the theoretical debate is considered within the framework of its periodization proposed by R. Cohen. Based on the analysis of a number of Western concepts of diaspora, the main approaches to the interpretation of this concept are revealed: essentialist and relativistic.

Representatives of the first approach (W. Safran, R. Cohen) position diaspora as a kind of the model, which has fixed features that determine its unchangeable essence. The most significant of them are forced nature of migration, the connection with the homeland and the desire to return there. Despite the fact that R. Cohen proposed an expanded somewhat liberalized set of features of diaspora, it continued to be considered from the point of view of the necessary presence of certain features of this community, which makes it possible to define it as a diaspora. This approach has been criticized. Its opponents were representatives of relativism and constructionism (Clifford, Gillroy and Hall). They identified the flexibility of diaspora, the diversity of its causes, a number of acquired features and aspects of existence, in addition to the connection with the motherland. The second approach considers a new type of diaspora – trans-diaspora – in the context of transnational migration. The diaspora began to be positioned procedurally in the new conditions of a globalizing world and transnational living space. Thus, two types of definitions of the concept of diaspora have been formed: reterritorialized and deterritorialized. The author of the article reveals the features of these approaches and their methodological productivity from the point of view of a research strategy.

For traditional Indian philosophy, which tends to establish its identity on the basis of the rationally incognizable Absolute (Ātman, Brahman), the verbal expressibility of the latter is one of the central issues. In fact, what is at stake here, is an attitude to language, trust or distrust in its capacity to be a tool for transmitting the experience of reality, which for the Indian tradition is of the highest soteriological and metaphysical value. Namely, it is the experience characteristic of the culminating transpersonal states of meditation and yogic practices, as well as at the moment of unio mystica (between a believer and the personal God). The best way to point to such states is to demonstrate their radical otherness in comparison with everyday speech behaviour (vyavahāra) and discursive ways of reporting it. That is why, the apophatic approach is used, meanwhile, that does not exclude the applicability of its cataphatic opposite.

In the first part of the paper, the author emphasizes a tendency to privilege the apophatic approach (‘not that, not that’) to the definition of Brahman on the example of some mahāvākya (‘great sayings’) from the Upaniṣhads. In the second part, the author elucidates a phenomenon of phonocentrism, characteristic of traditional Indian culture, taking as example an incarnation of the goddess Vāk (Speech) in Vedic literature and in Tantrism. The third part is devoted to Bhartṛihari’s (ca.V century A.D.) concepts of ‘linguistic monism’ (śabda-advaita), and of the three-part speech, and their culmination in Kashmiri Shaivism. The author shows that in Bharitṛhari and Kashmiri’ s expressibility and inexpressibility of vocalized speech does not presuppose the recognition of a separate reality of object referred to by it (correspondence principle), but varied within the boundaries of the word (śabda) itself as identical to the dynamic nature of Brahman constituted by potencies (śakti).

The article presents a translation of fragments of the text of a Spanish thinker of the XVI century, Michael Servetus (Spanish: Miguel Servet), “Reasoning in Defense of Astrology against a Certain Medic.” Despite the fact that this text touches on a small area of knowledge, which includes medicine and astrology, taken in their close interaction, it clearly demonstrates the characteristic feature of Servetus’ philosophical worldview. In the era in question, objective internal processes going on in the depths of the paradigm of thinking, like volcanoes erupt in various fields of knowledge. Servetus is one of those outstanding personalities whose activity activates this process by starting to cross the boundaries outlined by tradition and authorities, anticipating what will become the greatest value in the new paradigm – obtaining new knowledge. This small work is methodological in nature and clearly demonstrates an example of following the chosen personal method, without turning off the path, neglecting the possible consequences.

Servetus hopes to convince the reader that medicine needs additional facts that can be provided by knowledge of the laws of the movement of the heavenly bodies and their influence on human earthly affairs and the state of his health. Observation of astronomical phenomena contributes, in his opinion, to obtaining additional knowledge and experience useful in medical practice.

The system of the world order built by him unites the unconnected, violates the boundaries of subject areas, not only within science, but also between science and theology, which gives him the opportunity to talk about various facets of reality. He demonstrates the talent of a thinker, rare and relevant in all epochs – to see the whole and not to neglect knowledge that goes beyond the generally accepted framework, collecting a general picture of being at all possible and cognizable levels: visible and invisible; expressible and inexpressible; earthly and heavenly; spiritual and material; human and divine.

Rational thinking and language are faced with difficulties, when it is necessary to express the setting of two opposite aspects of reality - change and constancy. The author is developing a plot-game methodology based on the ontological generalization of art history concepts of the plot, script and game to the level of philosophical categories. Categories correspond to natural science terms.

 On the basis of the selected universals - "through" units of Being, with the involvement of geometric images-symbols of a circle, sphere and torus - a solution to the problem of organic synthesis of change with constancy is proposed using the ontological construction of a quasi-cyclic plot. The essence of this concept is that the condition for the existence of any forms and processes of reality are quasi-cyclic plots that set the sequence of almost cyclic changes. The quasi-cycle can be thought of as a reproduction of the plot spiral (that is, in the next generation) “from egg to egg, absorbing another egg” (“ab ovo ad ovo, absorber ovo”). In a quasi-cycle, everything starts from some initial, “folded” state of some form, then it develops (in accordance with the “unfolding” of events around it) to a certain limit, “culmination”. The result is the generation of a new, similar to the original form. The constantly transforming initial formation itself at a certain time "dissolves" in the plot stream of reality, being absorbed by other forms that are at one stage or another of their existence cycles - from appearance to disappearance. The “minimal” basic proto-plot ab ovo ad ovo, ab sorber ovo in the plot-game picture of the world is “blinking”, the pulsation of the Universe, and the “maximum” is the cycle of manifestation and “convolution” of the Universe. All other plots arise on the basis of the first, being forming fragments of the second.

The results of work, like the plot-game concept as a whole, can be applied both in natural-scientific and in humanitarian research, in their practical applications, in teaching any knowledge and skills; They are of particular importance for personal spiritual development.