Ideas and Ideals

The tradition of studying John Locke's philosophy in Russia is more than 200 years old, but the religious component of his system has often fallen out of the interests of domestic researchers. Locke's main theological works are still not translated into Russian, while in Western tradition J. Locke is considered one of the key thinkers of Protestantism. John Locke's theological treatise “The Reasonableness of Christianity” led to Protestant discussions. Locke reconsiders the bases of theological systems according to his own experience of understanding the Bible. J. Locke supposed that theological systems of different denominations were not satisfactory. J. Locke believed that in order to bring the opinions of the various churches and communities to agreement, it was necessary to highlight the only necessary doctrine stating that Jesus is the Messiah. The book was published anonymously by J. Locke in 1695. J. Locke was accused of sympathy for deism, socinianism and atheism after publication of the book. The treatise defined the direction of discussions in the XVII – XVIII centuries. J. Locke proposed the authentic method for studying the Bible derived from the epistemological bases set forth in “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. Offering a sensualistic way of interpreting the Holy Scripture, Locke goes beyond ecclesiastical orthodoxy.

The article is devoted to the Renaissance medicine, the origins of its formation as scientific experimental discipline. Economic, social and scientific processes that have direct and indirect influence on formation of the Renaissance scientific environment are taken into account. Among them: pilgrimage routes, fairs, including book fairs, wars, geographical discoveries, religious missions establishment, invention of printing, scientists’ correspondence from different countries. The Renaissance era has given many prominent personalities in different fields: Copernicus in physics, Luther in theology, Titian in painting, Michelangelo in architecture and many others. One of the brightest personalities in medicine was Paracelsus, a doctor who combined “high” university therapy with “low” craft surgical practices that were previously considered unworthy occupations for nobles, and also introduced chemistry into medical practice. Paracelsus’ merit also is systematization of previous eras knowledge and inclusion of this knowledge in his own medical system, based on interaction of three types of knowledge emitted by Paracelsus: science (theoria, scientia) – experience (erfahrenheit, experientia) – experiment (experimentum), while Paracelsus emphasizes the importance of experience (experientia), which a doctor gains in wanderings, contrasting it with theoretical, speculative training at medical faculties.

Explanation of the interactions of three types of knowledge is comparable with modern approaches to experiment’s definition, which different scientists explain differently. Definitions of the “experiment” by Galileo, Niels Bohr, and Ian Hacking were chosen as examples for comparison.

The article also focuses on Paracelsus laboratory as a kind of space that combines various factors: natural, social, technical and economic, where the living (doctors, patients, other people, animals, plants and mushrooms) and non-living entities (signs, texts, teachings) interact. When these entities communicate with each other, new knowledge arises.

The article analyzes the complexity of the formation of the psychological concept of “will”. The author concludes that this concept is still more philosophical than scientific. The author considers the need of the concept of “will” for psychology as well as various approaches to its definition. For the first time, the focus is placed on the ability to measure the will that opens up in the study of the history of such attempts. The article analyzes the methods that are used to measure various aspects of the phenomenon of will. So, according to the measurement theory, various experiments are considered, which cause and fix physiological changes during the volitional effort or the time it is held. The author analyzes the application of test methods and order scales. The author also examines the possibility of such a measurement from the perspective of measurement theory and experimental psychology, analyzing possible errors and difficulties. The article states that for practical purposes at least one can apply the method of expert evaluation and the formation of a scale of names, allowing to distinguish groups of people with and without strong will. This implies consideration of the will not so much as a volitional action, but as a characteristic of a person. The author comes to the conclusion that further studies of psychological traits will make it possible to specify the content of the concept of will and to clarify its structure.

Kutyrev Vladimir Aleksandrovich is known as a social philosopher, a leftist conservative, a supporter of controlled progress. His papers and books are an event for the Russian intellectual life. The subject of the study is the monograph by Kutyrev, “The Owl of Minerva Starts Flying at Dusk” published in 2018. I offer an extenstive phenomenological analysis of what was said and unsaid by Kutyrev in the same manner as the author himself analyzes the soap bubble of modern anthropoactivity (homo bullo) by removing the casing behind the shell of the civilization bulb of innovationism. Removing and discarding layer by layer, we advance towards the system of human stability. Kutyrev's philosophy is presented as the reactivization of a narrow path between agnosticism and technocracy, reism and structuralism. The target of his book is, as always, the salvation of Man. The difference in this monograph is in the details. In his previous works he saved us from technology, emptiness, progress. Yet here he saves us from self-apocalypse, an eschatological man-made tragedy. The article provides an overview of the main subjects of the author's work: the struggle between the natural and the artificial, the open vs. the sustainable society, self-development of technology, the threat of hypermodernism and transhumanism, the problems of biotechnical design of a Post-Man, the prospects for conservative philosophizing, and justification of life. The basis of the monograph consists of the following deep ideas: being is a blessing; self-assertion is the essence of every living being; eternal regression is a solid platform instead of progressivism. The author of the book uses a hermeneutic analysis as a research method and he analyses the apologetics of slow life, thoughtful reading and aesthetics of Ecce homo. The book reflects Heidegger’s primordial understanding as a primer in relation to which Husserl is contrasted as speculative and scholastic. Grassroots of traditional poetry resist abstract logo-centrism, where factuality competes with contingency. Kutyrev takes revenge for  Jean Jaurès Jean and Karl Marx, Dostoevsky and Christ, trying to resist the Holocaust of traditional objective reality and the corresponding metaphysical philosophy. Humanity sculpts the image of chaos, not paying attention to the fact that the way of thinking magnetizes the course of action and the fatalism of the body-subject matter becomes closer as more and more papers on speculative-body nigitology come out. Conclusions: 1) if you want to understand Heidegger, read Kutyrev; 2) being is good, 3) eternal regression is a more solid platform instead of reckless progressivism.

The article is devoted to the study of the position of R. Rorty in relation to two different methods of philosophical discourse - argumentation and “conversation”. The first of these correlates with the epistemological tradition, the heir of which is declared analytical philosophy, while the second - with continental philosophy. The research method consists in the analysis of Rorty’s neo-pragmatist rhetoric, which claims to find a balance between the argumentative style in philosophy and the understanding of philosophy as a “conversation of humanity”. Rorty’s motivation for this understanding is that philosophers-as-poets do not follow the standards of philosophical argumentation and offer new types of conversations. The author traces the origins of the concept of Rorty’s philosophy as a “conversation”, going back to the appeal of M. Heidegger and G. Gadamer to the poetry of F. Hölderlin. The article shows, that despite the slogan “philosophy as a conversation of humanity” in the spirit of hermeneutics, Rorty does not in any way reject argumentative practice. Moreover, he is trying with analytical precision to make the “conversations” believable, presenting them in the framework of an argumentative reasoning. On the other hand, Rorty cannot afford the full approval of the argumentative practice of analytic philosophers to the detriment of the evasive linguistic practice of continental philosophers. In this regard, Rorty was forced to keep a certain kind of neutrality. Such a neutrality of Rorty is analyzed in his evaluation of the work of J. Derrida, in which he calls many of Derrida’s arguments (in controversy with his opponent J. Searle) awful, and yet Derrida remains one of his heroes. Rorty shows a scornful attitude towards Serl to prevent analytical philosophy from winning too much. The article concludes that Rorty’s interpretation of opposing argumentation and “conversation” in philosophical discourse is a reflection of his philosophical “ecumenism”. Rorty was between two opposing trends in characterizing the essence of philosophy, not daring to choose between argumentation and conversation. The famous slogan of Rorty - philosophy is the conversation of mankind - is supported by his considerable argument. Such a mixture of genres speaks of the instability of the concept of neopragmatist rhetoric, which among its followers takes the form of a new style of philosophizing.

The theme of abilities was constantly in Nietzsche’s focus of attention, the meaning transformations of which in many respects define the depth of his mythopoetic discourse. The opposition of aesthetic ability, which is realized in a Dionysian Dithyramb and an Appollonian dream - and abilities to argue logically - is the basis of Nietzsche’s analysis of the basic tendencies of cultural development in Ancient Greece. The German thinker understood harmonization of life as the process of tightening all abilities into one center, the main ability. However, harmonization of human life demands not only its deepening, but also the life’s expansion beyond the sphere of individual existence. This deepening and life expansion should be connected with a current state of affairs which is achievable here and now. Hence, Nietzsche’s interest in the problem of historical experience comes from, as well as the problem of differentiation between the historical and unhistorical. Free Spirit is, first of all, the ability for versatility and integrity, width and completeness. The thinker constantly points to the superindividual character of abilities, in its historical digressions the subject of abilities is mankind. Nietzsche’s thematization of abilities shows incompatibility of its creativity with the individualistic outlook. In a certain sense the "philosophy" of Nietzsche is a conceptually verified strategy of application the metaphor of ability to designate the limiting bases of creative life.

Plato considers the nature of a man in three different aspects: as a retrospective description of the achieved in the past and the lost state of a man; as the goal of his improvement, the acquisition by the empirical person of the completeness of his eidos, i.e. the merging of a real and eidetic person; as mass, stereotypical, wrong variants of soul and body connection. For the Plato’s philosophical anthropology, the thesis of a person’s existential insufficiency is essential. Plato considers this problem alongside with the problem of human integrity and includes constitutive as well as regulative judgments. Relationships of the sacred and profane, mental and somatic were the main themes in the anthropology of Plato. It has characteristics of radical pneumatology. Man is his soul. The soul determines the hierarchy of anthropological composition; the soul changes the state of the body, and the state of the body is an indicator of the state of the soul. Within this tradition, the somatic is devoid of subjectivity.

The philosopher develops pneumatology within the framework of essentialist and voluntaristic traditions. The first assumes that the correct hierarchy of the soul and body is predetermined by the very order of the universe. The "beginnings" of the soul, i.e. psychophysiological potentials, are created to realize a chain, which is responsible for control and submission of intellect-will-feelings. This chain will be completed if the potentials reach the limit of their perfection - the state of virtue. The hierarchy of the "beginnings" of the soul is established together with the attainment of virtue, and virtue is certified by recognition of the priority of thinking.

In the voluntaristic tradition, the essence of man is also represented by the soul, but the soul is not determined by the intellect, but by the will. In this line of Platonic reasoning, intellect is an optional factor of action. Knowing good does not mean choosing it as a guide to behavior. This means that there is not only an erring, but also a vicious (evil) will. The thinker substantiated evil: it is not a lack of good, but something that exists independently. Evil is connected with the soul. Evil in the human soul is like a cosmic situation. For the philosopher it is obvious that egoism can be combined with the rational organization of consciousness.

The recognition of good and evil creates the effect of pseudorational behavior. The instruments of consciousness are used to imitate virtue while preserving the intemperance of desires, and good is not associated with a highly developed intellect. To identify the good, neither intellect nor virtue are needed, there is enough to have intuition and life experience

The article investigates the ontological foundations of negativity. It shows dialectical relationship of nothingness and negativity. Negativity is understood as the being of nothingness, as a special process, unfolding in the deepest substrate of destruction and changing. The article considers a problematic and ambiguous interpretation of the category of nothingness in the history of philosophy. The article substantiates the thesis that various philosophical directions giving different definitions of nothingness, nevertheless, allow us to describe the negativity through the set of manifested characteristics of nothingness. The author reveals the natural-philosophical and anthropological approaches to the interpretation of negativity. As a result, the author criticizes the natural-philosophical concept of negativity and justifies the anthropological concept of negativity. Negativity is not able to come into existence without reflection. And reflection is carried out only by a man. The main bearer of negativity as such is a person who is aware of his mortality and finiteness