Ideas and Ideals

The article discusses the institution of presidency, which has a signifi cant impact on the cultural policy and ‘cultural sovereignty’ of Pridnestrovie. It is noted that the development of the culture of the republic is directly related to the personality of the leaders of the PMR, their involvement in the cultural and historical processes taking place in the state.

It is noted that the institution of the presidency acts as the effective imperative for the development of the country’s cultural policy under the infl uence of the legal status, territorial location of the republic and the established educational and award system. Collectively, these form a creative community and cultural leaders, determining the content core of their functioning, the intentionality of the socio-cultural functioning of the region, preserving its uniqueness and “cultural sovereignty”. Using the prism of educational, enlightening and leisure activities, and the correlation of the functioning of national-cultural associations and creative unions, three stages are considered; a different stage for when the young republic had different leaders. It is demonstrated how a change in the socio-moral differentiation of priorities, due to a change in the course pursued by the institute of presidency, leads to certain “swings” in society, a violation of the parity of multicultural interests, and an imbalance in the spiritual consciousness of cultural elites. And it is proven that it is the personal involvement of the head of state, especially in a presidential republic, under the infl uence of internal political events, that infl uences the content core and accents in cultural policy, the pace of fulfi llment of the designated tasks, and the degree of their implementation.

A historiographical review of the cultural policy of Transnistria is presented, examining the identifi cation of the main directions of development at the end of the 20th and the fi rst quarter of the 21st centuries. The author uses promising methodological approaches to conducting cultural research based on a synthesis of practical, experimental methods and theoretical understanding of scientifi c results.

The subject of the article is neopragmatic aesthetics; its formation, methodological foundations and specifi city of the object of research. To reveal the stated goal, the author turns to the works of the American philosopher Richard Shusterman, who most consistently and clearly substantiates his philosophical position. The American philosopher, despite the strong infl uence of the analytical school, restores the connection with pragmatism, with the aesthetics of John Dewey, points out the dead ends and problematic points of the analytical approach. The article presents the evolution of American philosophical aesthetics with an emphasis on the transitional stage from the analytic tradition to a neopragmatic one. It is shown that Shusterman’s attempt to get rid of the “Platonic stigma” in the philosophy of art is carried out at the expense of criticizing analytic aesthetics. Thus, Shusterman makes critical arguments about the established habit of identifying art in its multivariate manifestation with the notion of “high” fi ne art associated with the sublime and true art. Shusterman shifts the focus of attention from the problem of defi ning art to the analytics of aesthetic experience, which allows him to transform aesthetics into somaesthetics - a body-oriented, practical philosophical discipline. The author concludes that Shusterman’s concept of somaesthetics emerges in a polemic with fundamentalist foundations in aesthetics, namely, the tradition of distinguishing objects, works of art from what is not, i.e. defi ning art. The author notes that a key fi gure for the formation of the theoretical basis of somaesthetics was Shusterman’s acquaintance with the position of Noel Carroll, who moves from the search for the essence of art to the investigation of the internal standards and motives of art. Schusterman, picking up on this strategy, affi rms his anti-essentialist position. In polemics with his colleagues, he shifts and rethinks the problem fi eld of aesthetics, declaring war on “Platonism,” criticizing the Greek philosophical tradition, to which we owe the fact that practical activity has become valued much less than theoretical activity. Along with this, the author concludes about Shusterman’s sophistic strategy and logic of thinking, citing arguments from the work of postmodernist researcher Barbara Cassin.

The subject of research in this article is the artistic practices of modern Russian Germans, implemented within the framework of the cultural festival “German Sloboda”. It is proved that festival artistic practices belong to the “culture of ethnos” (according to V. G. Babakov’s classifi cation), that is, they are a combination of ethnic and externally introduced components. The latter are the artistic practices of postmodernism, such as performance, happenings, environment and their varieties. The scientifi c novelty of this work is the consideration of the traditional culture of Russian Germans in the context of artistic forms, methods and techniques of modern times. The objectives of the work include: an analysis of the artistic practices of the cultural festival of Russian Germans “German Sloboda” from the point of view of correlating ethnic content and modern forms of its presentation, as well as the development of the above-mentioned artistic practices in the history of the festival. To achieve the set goals and objectives, a historical-genetic method is used, which allows us to trace the relationship between ethnic traditional and modern innovation in artistic practices, as well as a structural-functional method that demonstrates the artistic practices of modern Russian Germans as an integral part of their spiritual culture. As a result of the analysis of the artistic practices of the cultural festival of Russian Germans “German Sloboda”, a conclusion is made about the culture of modern Russian Germans as a synthesis of the immanent and transcendent, as a combination of following the sociocultural experience of previous generations – traditions – and the desire of the current generation for changes – innovations. The “culture of ethnos” of modern Russian Germans is in the stage of modifi cation and transformation of its forms, creative experimentation, search for an individual-personal beginning with constant reliance on the collective traditional experience of the past. The seven-year history of the cultural festival of Russian Germans “German Sloboda” clearly demonstrates the active use of postmodern artistic practices, in which art leaves traditional spaces (galleries, museums, concert or theater halls) and conquers new spaces that are not necessarily associated with art.

The article discusses the problem of rejecting the image of beauty in modern dance. It is indicated that the theme of despair, fear, violence and depression begins to dominate in modern dance since its inception in the 20s of the last century. The characteristic features of movements and plasticity in expressionist dance, in the school of M. Graham, are described: broken vertical, inwardly turned chest and feet, sharpness and convulsiveness of movements, blows aimed at oneself, etc. The article consistently examines the possible causes of this trend, such as technical ease and accessibility, lower energy cost of ‘sad dances’, as well as the opportunity to demonstrate originality, nonconformism, express social protest, etc. There is an opinion that the expression of pathological motives, negative feelings, fears in art contributes to the liberation from their destructive effect in real life. This approach is questioned, because there is also a reverse mechanism: as a result of viewing relevant plots (for example, scenes of violence), infection with emotions occurs, role models arise, and the thresholds of what is permissible decrease. Along with criticism of a number of trends in contemporary art, the importance of the concept of ugliness for culture is emphasized. Meeting one’s own infi rmity and imperfection, be that physical, psychological or moral, plays an essential role in the spiritual development of a person. However, modern art, including the dance performances considered, follow the path of establishing ugliness as a new norm and cultivate the perverted reality of the ‘sick’ creativity of a disintegrating personality. The expression of beauty, on the contrary, is characteristic of an integral personality striving for perfection and praising life.

Religion is the dominant aspect of Rozanov’s creativity. The main topics of Rozanov’s spiritual search include: God, the world and man are focused around this dominant. The peculiarity of this topics is the explication of intuition of a single whole. This intuition was realized by means of symbols that belong to the world of traditional religions. Rozanov’s creativity actualizes the opportunity of vision of religion as a phenomenon despite the prevalence of images of material things in his texts. This vision is based on a metaphysical foundation of suggestions, examined in the work “On Understanding”, where he understands religion as a temporal undetermined phenomenon. Contact with the world of religion allows us to explicate the human spirit as unity. Rozanov’s vision moves from a description of religion as unity to the description of single images of paganism, Judaism and the Christianity. Rozanov emphasizes this particular content, but his search is inspired by the doctrine of religion as having a certain potency. The realization of this certain potency is the historical development of religions, that conditions the occurrence of new religion in a cultural vacuum, and appears after the distraction of Christianity. The presentiment of metaphysical emptiness is the culmination of Rozanov’s search for God and at the same time the tragedy. Rozanov conceptualizes this intention as the absolutisation of particular things. The transparency of the religious search and the concentration on religion itself makes Rozanov’s position in some aspects close to the narrative of the classic phenomenology of religion. We study the creativity of Rozanov by means of historical-philosophical reconstruction, using elements of hermeneutic analysis.

In less than a century, the stable concept of «French garden» is formed and consolidated, having become the result of the activity of very specifi c historical fi gures (André Lenôtre and Louis XIV) in the national consciousness of the French and in the language. The concept can be classifi ed as a linguocultureme with a clearly expressed nationally colored semantic meaning. The article proposes to explore the ethnocultural features of the linguocultureme «French garden», as well as to determine its role and place in the national consciousness of the French, and to outline its infl uence on the formation of the French national picture of the world. The concept of «French garden» in the linguocultural aspect is not well-studied, which emphasizes the novelty of this work.

The author conducts the research using a complex of scientifi c methods, including contextual-interpretive analysis, diachronic research, and analysis of linguistic and cultural objects. It is also worth noting that the author for the fi rst time cites, in the author’s translation from French, primary sources of French scientifi c research and publications on the topic of landscape gardening, unknown to Russian readers. As a result of a comparison of theoretical generalization and analysis of linguistic material, the author comes to the conclusion that at certain stages of history, some concepts and traditions are formed in the collective consciousness of a nation, which can become elements of the cultural code and form the basis of the national linguistic picture of the world. Such a concept and a tradition stretching back centuries for the French is the desire to cultivate a garden, in which its aesthetic component acquires particular importance.

The present research paper is devoted to philosophic motifs in the creative work of one of the leading cultural fi gures of the Silver Age, the poet, writer and philosopher N.S. Gumilyov. His personal fate (executed in 1921 by order of the Petrograd Cheka) is one of the examples of the sad poetic “tradition” of Russian culture: Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Yesenin and others. This paper analyzes philosophical and linguistic peculiarities of the “Akmeism” poetic and theoretical style, which was originated by Nikola Gumilev. In socio-philosophical aspect, Gumilyov’s intentions were associated with the formation of the concept of “Adamism”, which implied the analysis of man as a personality (most fully refl ected in the compositions “The Captains”, “The Conquistadors’ Way”, etc.) in comparison with the Nietzschean “superman”. For Nietzsche, his slogan ‘God is dead’ did not mean the exaltation of man, but merely stated the overabundance of the individual in every personality. In this case, Gumilyov adhered to the idea of “transcendental man”, which implied the unity of Man’s natural essence in synthesis with supernatural (higher, i.e. spiritual) origins. This was the purpose of this article. Analysis of Gumilyov’s poetic and publicistic works argues in favour of the proof of the philosophical idea of “transcendental man”, which was later developed in N.A. Berdyaev’s philosophy of personalism. Both Russian philosophers and writers defended the idea of a creative and free Man, capable of self-assertion. Self-affi rmation of Man for them is inextricably linked with the ability to Self-knowledge. But it should be noted that the views of Berdyaev and Gumilev on the role of society and the state in human life had certain differences.

One of the tools that participate in the transformation of the identity system at the stage of transition from modern culture to postmodern culture is rock culture. It offers a person a number of identifi cation opportunities that have different properties compared to the possibilities of defi ning oneself in a manner characteristic of modern culture. There is a partial rejection of identity markers characteristic to the modern era. The identity formed by rock culture, in accordance with current theoretical concepts, can be attributed to multiple, small narrative identities. As its fundamental characteristic feature, the presence of an indefi nite core of identity is considered, which is understood as a set of phenomena perceived and interpreted by the subject as a basis for establishing one’s own identity with other subjects. This uncertainty lies in the weak defi nitions of rock, in the desire of subjects to refuse to positively identify themselves with rock, in denying the existence of this phenomenon as such. At the same time, rock does not turn into its own opposite, does not assume the functions of the excluded Other, remaining an object of centrifugal or centripetal motion. In addition, the weakening of the core of identity is due to the fact that the concept of rock turns into the focus of axiological aspirations of the subject. Rock culture is appropriated by the subject, turning into an absolute epicenter of identifi cation. Subjectivity, thus, is taken out of the framework of one’s own personality and is endowed with the characteristics of an object, while receiving the name of rock.

The real object for building identity disappears, being replaced by a subject, or at least a separate segment of it.

This article comprehensively examines and analyzes the historical and cultural context of the transformation of a formerly consumer society into a society of impressions (“a society of experiences”), analyzed from J. Baudrillard and G. Debord to G. Schulze, whose work of the same name made a signifi cant contribution to the process of understanding the causes of change in the attitudes of consumer behavior recorded over the past decades. Developed by G. Schulze, the social concept of “consumption of experiences” of members of modern society is studied from the point of view of the growing crisis of the previous models of mass consumption, which are increasingly ceasing to meet the requirements of modernity. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the features of further development of all these ideas in the form of the emerging counter-culture of anti-consumerism, criticism of overconsumption and a number of psychologizing approaches to the study and search for solutions to the problems of the emerging “emotional economy” in its application to the broader concept of “emotional capitalism” in that form as it is presented in a number of works of domestic and foreign authors.

In the history of human thought, the question of the human wisdom nature, or the possibility to gain it, has never assumed a simple solution. Chinese thinkers and philosophers answered this question in different ways. The secular and practical character of understanding the concept of wisdom in the Chinese intellectual tradition was largely due to the infl uence of the ethical and political doctrine of Confucianism. From the point of view of Confucian ethics, the idea of using tricks and gimmicks was considered rather dubious. In the history of Chinese thought, there were periods when the intellectual elite had time to realize the beginning of a crisis in society and tried not only to theorize stratagem thinking, but also to fi nd suffi cient ethical grounds for applying stratagems in routine practices. The last third of the Ming dynasty reigning, when A Complete Book of Wisdom was written, was just such a period. At the same time, there was a serious value guidelines transformation of the educated class in China, which could also act as one of the factors in developing interest in stratagems and stratagem thinking. The aim of the article is to analyze the transformation of the value system of Chinese intellectuals, who lived in the last third of the Ming dynasty, and identify the value grounds of stratagem thinking described in A Complete Book of Wisdom.

The article presents a classifi cation of relevant factors that infl uenced the transformation of the value system of educated people under the late Ming. It describes and systematizes the data on the attitude of Ming emperors to educated people and Confucian ethical-political doctrine.  The struggle not only for real power but also for symbolic power in the area of values and ideals was one of the drivers for the transformation of the value system. In addition, the commercialization of life and mass culture was the main factor in the signifi cant change of Confucian philosophy. The article presents the analysis of educated people feelings and attitudes, which entailed changes in approaches to the process of knowledge and social practices. Thus, under the late Ming dynasty, there was the development of new models of social confl ict resolution and value grounds of stratagem thinking.