Ideas and Ideals

This article presents the fi rst Russian translation and a philosophical analysis of “Notes on the Chambers of Canon Veneration in the School of Confucian Scholars of Dazu County” (Dazu-xian ruxue zunjing ge ji 大足縣儒學尊經閣記) by Zhao Zhenji 趙貞吉 (1508–1576), a prominent Ming dynasty statesman and an understudied philosopher. The text records a dialogue between Zhao and Dong Ji, the magistrate of Dazu County in Sichuan Province, on the occasion of the Chambers’ inauguration at the local Confucian school. In his discourse, Zhao articulates his views on the role of the Confucian canons in the world and Confucius’s intentions in their compilation, while introducing the concept of wei 未 (“not yet”) – the inaccessibility of understanding Confucius’s thought – and “four omissions” (si shi四失) associated with it, namely: excessive breadth (bo 博), leading to confusion (luan 亂); heterodoxy (yi 異), leading to fragmentation (san 散); verbosity, leading to impropriety (jian 僭); and excessive concision, leading to absurdity (dan 誕).

The study concludes that the “Notes” align with orthodox Confucian ideology, displaying intolerance toward non-Confucian teachings while exhibiting minimal infl uence from the Taizhou school’s typical humanism, pragmatism, and populist tendencies. Additionally, the article suggests that the text may have been composed at the request of local authorities and identifi es and explicates numerous allusions to classical Chinese philosophical works.

This article presents the fi rst Russian translation and a philosophical analysis of “Notes on the Chambers of Canon Veneration in the School of Confucian Scholars of Dazu County” (Dazu-xian ruxue zunjing ge ji 大足縣儒學尊經閣記) by Zhao Zhenji 趙貞吉 (1508–1576), a prominent Ming dynasty statesman and an understudied philosopher. The text records a dialogue between Zhao and Dong Ji, the magistrate of Dazu County in Sichuan Province, on the occasion of the Chambers’ inauguration at the local Confucian school. In his discourse, Zhao articulates his views on the role of the Confucian canons in the world and Confucius’s intentions in their compilation, while introducing the concept of wei 未 (“not yet”) – the inaccessibility of understanding Confucius’s thought – and “four omissions” (si shi四失) associated with it, namely: excessive breadth (bo 博), leading to confusion (luan 亂); heterodoxy (yi 異), leading to fragmentation (san 散); verbosity, leading to impropriety (jian 僭); and excessive concision, leading to absurdity (dan 誕).

The study concludes that the “Notes” align with orthodox Confucian ideology, displaying intolerance toward non-Confucian teachings while exhibiting minimal infl uence from the Taizhou school’s typical humanism, pragmatism, and populist tendencies. Additionally, the article suggests that the text may have been composed at the request of local authorities and identifi es and explicates numerous allusions to classical Chinese philosophical works.

The specifi city of Indian epistemic culture is the inclusion of mystical intuition among cognitive abilities, and the absence of the concept of reason as the highest cognitive ability. In Indian traditional religio-philosophical texts
intuition, often referred to as mystical experience, was used by default. In the philosophical works of Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), its epistemological status is revealed and substantiated. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the concept of mystical intuition and its relationship with the mind in his book “The Life Divine”. The reason for referring to intuition’s legacy was the opportunity to explicate, with the help of explanations by A. Ghosh, the implicit grounds for the prevalence of mystical intuition over logical operations of thinking, similar to the rational methods of Western philosophy. The thinker’s epistemological ideas are inscribed in his system of Integral Vedanta, which is an intercultural phenomenon that unites Western and Indian traditions of philosophizing. The author of the article draws attention
to the biographical determinants of Aurobindo’s intercultural philosophical synthesis and to his choice of concepts claiming the status of intercultural values. These determinants are related to Aurobindo’s Western education in England, his turn from Western values to classical Hindu culture after returning to his homeland, his participation in the struggle for independence of Motherland, his departure from politics and immersion in the spiritual practices of yoga, which inspired him to create philosophical works.
The methodological framework of the article includes methods of linguistic and semantic analysis of similar terms of European and Indian philosophy, and a comparative method of reducing them to uniformity in order to establish
meaningful similarities and differences; a method of reconstructing the historicophilosophical context of the problem under study; a biographical method allowing to demonstrate the infl uence of the events of his life on his philosophy. The result of the study was the conclusion that the philosopher’s epistemological ideas are innovative, since he uses Western terminology at his discretion and
introduces new contents into the concepts of Vedanta.

A cycle of lectures Sadhana by Rabindranath Tagore in Harvard University (1913) was one of the fi rst in experience of description of religious philosophical views by Bengal poet. Being a Modern Indian philosopher and the inheritor
of the thought, Tagore declared himself as the thinker who is immediately connected with the Indian heterodox philosophy’s tradition. The author considers the becoming of philosophizing model in Tagore’s Sadhana as based on poet’s connection with Indian thought tradition and his own interpretation both for his compatriots and for the world audience. Following theoretical understanding of
Tagore’s philosophical legacy as fl exible Indo-Western synthesis, the author highlights the feature of Indian substratum in his religious and social thought. In this
polysemantic text about understanding human’s being in their correlation to God and the world in the context of the Indian spiritual tradition, Tagore had made the image of India and its civilization and presented the key ideas of its tradition
based on interpretation of its scriptures for the Other – Western audience. The explanation of the Self – scriptural heritage of India – Tagore constructs on his own interpretation of the ideal, goal and ways to achieve it, that were set by Indian civilization from its headsprings against the background of the Other – conventional Western civilization. Tagore presents key ideas of India spiritual
heritage on the foundation of scriptures such as the early Upaniṣads, Bhagavadgita and the teachings by Buddha. For Tagore himself, these ones are origins of his own philosophizing, and he describes them in Sadhana as the special cultural form of expression of universal meaning of human’s being in the world. The experience of the explanation of the Self for non-Indian audience is important
owing to that Tagore, on the one hand, built the description on the authority of sacred texts and doctrines, and on the other hand, it was constantly correlated with the Other such as religion and civilization of the West. As a result, Tagore necessarily establishes the resemblance of meanings and even its coincidence at the universal human level.

This article evaluates the limitations of an exclusively rational approach to comprehending reality, emphasizing that true understanding often extends far beyond logic and rests on irrational, absurd, random, and unpredictable elements. From the standpoint of the rational–irrational dichotomy, the paper offers a brief overview of key cultural-historical periods and the contemporary situation. Based on essential cultural-historical modes of human activity and psychological consulting practice, the author proposes a concept of fi ve levels of consciousness (egocentric, gentile, social, cosmic, theurgical) and fi ve levels of the unconscious (animalistic, ancestral, collective, personalistic, higher), along with their corresponding developmental tasks (adaptive, reproductive, functional, existential, awakening). This framework is intended to illustrate the subtle interplay between the rational and the irrational. The concept can be used to diagnose and differentiate dynamic interrelations between these polarities, serving as a guiding vector for formulating strategies and tactics of development or problem-solving at individual, social, and global levels. The dialectic of the rational and the irrational is exemplifi ed through a comparison of Eastern and Western cultures. The author puts forward the hypothesis of an anthropo-socio-historical principle of complementary opposites, through which the Western tendency to incorporate irrational aspects of Eastern cultures and the Eastern tendency to adopt elements of Western culture are analyzed. The article concludes that a shift from one polarity to another – whether within the psyche of an individual, a society, or an entire civilization – leads to a dead end. Instead, the author proposes a strategy of integrating opposites as a way out of the developmental impasse. The paper highlights that historically, only a few individuals have embodied examples of true wholeness, and argues that achieving such wholeness has now become a necessary imperative from an anthropo-socio-historical perspective in order to overcome the global crisis. The solution lies in a synthetic position that unites the experiences of both poles. With regard to the inner world of the individual, this implies the development of all available capacities – rational and irrational – philosophical, scientifi c, artistic, and religious worldviews and perceptions.

The article examines the contribution to the formation of modern philosophy in India of the Bengali thinker Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), whom representatives of the current generation of Indian philosophers evaluate in different ways: not only as the country’s fi rst modern philosopher, but also as an “apostle of nationalism” and an extremist, and Western ones say about him as a mystic. All these assessments have their reasons. The author of the article traced these foundations in the facts of Aurobindo’s biography, and in the statements of Aurobindo himself in his two books “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “The Human Cycle”, as well as in his unpublished article “The New Nationalism” and notes to his biographies. All of it are included in his Collected works in 36-volumes, the last volumes of which are being prepared for publication now. The materials studied make it possible to reconstruct the portrait of the thinker who, having started with a passion for Western ideas and values, returned to the spiritual values of Indian culture on a new theoretical level. Based on his own synthesis of the achievements of Western and Indian thought, he redefi ned the meaning of human life in a global perspective. The arguments for this meaning became the consideration of world history, in which different forms of communities were formed: family, tribe, class, city-state, nation, empire, etc. The meaning seen by Aurobindo excludes extremism as a form of violence; it presupposes trust in the Divine Absolute, which, according to Ghosh, is worshipped in all regions of the world. The Absolute, called Nature in the books reviewed, has its own plan for humanity as a whole. This plan is beyond rational understanding, but it must be boon to humanity. Aurobindo’s contribution to the transition of Indian philosophy to the modern philosophical discourse (the introduction of new concepts: evolution, reason, nation, nationalism, etc., and new methodological tools – in particular, historico-comparative and hypothetico-inductive methods, open truth) confi rm his high status as the fi rst modern philosopher of India.The article examines the contribution to the formation of modern philosophy in India of the Bengali thinker Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), whom representatives of the current generation of Indian philosophers evaluate in different ways: not only as the country’s fi rst modern philosopher, but also as an “apostle of nationalism” and an extremist, and Western ones say about him as a mystic. All these assessments have their reasons. The author of the article traced these foundations in the facts of Aurobindo’s biography, and in the statements of Aurobindo himself in his two books “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “The Human Cycle”, as well as in his unpublished article “The New Nationalism” and notes to his biographies. All of it are included in his Collected works in 36-volumes, the last volumes of which are being prepared for publication now. The materials studied make it possible to reconstruct the portrait of the thinker who, having started with a passion for Western ideas and values, returned to the spiritual values of Indian culture on a new theoretical level. Based on his own synthesis of the achievements of Western and Indian thought, he redefi ned the meaning of human life in a global perspective. The arguments for this meaning became the consideration of world history, in which different forms of communities were formed: family, tribe, class, city-state, nation, empire, etc. The meaning seen by Aurobindo excludes extremism as a form of violence; it presupposes trust in the Divine Absolute, which, according to Ghosh, is worshipped in all regions of the world. The Absolute, called Nature in the books reviewed, has its own plan for humanity as a whole. This plan is beyond rational understanding, but it must be boon to humanity. Aurobindo’s contribution to the transition of Indian philosophy to the modern philosophical discourse (the introduction of new concepts: evolution, reason, nation, nationalism, etc., and new methodological tools – in particular, historico-comparative and hypothetico-inductive methods, open truth) confi rm his high status as the fi rst modern philosopher of India.

The phenomenon of resemblance between the meaning and content of the intellectual search by Modern Eastern thinkers and Pyotr Tchaadaev’s social-philosophical thought is considered in the article. Based on a juxtaposition of his works and Modern Indian thinkers, the author substantiates the methodological value of Tchaadaev’s heritage for Oriental studies. The thinking paradigm had been created in Lettres Philosophique and other texts by Tchaadaev; it was founded in different cultural areas of the East in the beginning of Modernization and the meeting of traditional societies with the West and, therefore, it could serve as the model of juxtaposition. Tchaadaev’s Paradigm originates from the thinking features in the space of society that involves interaction with the West: religiosity, correlation and understanding of the Other in dialogue, a critical attitude towards society’s condition. The fi rst principle to indicate the paradigm is the strict adherence to principles of truth in verifying all ideas and judgments. The base of Tchaadaev’s philosophical approach is the principle of universality (catholicity) of the spiritual and social world; and because of this, the national (the Own – country, tradition, people, culture) is considered as one special part of a universal whole – humanity, and the question of foundational differences between distinct societies is raised. The foundational questions include the spiritual and cultural traditions of peoples in their development in history that help explain the present condition and features of the Own and to predict its future. The method of posing the problem is a correlation of the Own with the Other, ‘our’ with the ‘universal’, in an East – West context. ‘Tchaadaev’s questions’ are asked and certain themes are raised to discover the critical cognition of the Own in the process of correlation. There are two levels of philosophizing in the paradigm. The fi rst is religious, to ground the religious-philosophical foundation of thinking based on native tradition. The second level is social philosophizing based on understanding and interpretation of the Own, such as tradition, history, people, and their development in time and modern condition. The image of the Own is created in self-cognition with clearly outlined advantages and disadvantages, values and ideas, a role and a place in world history, and the perspectives of the future are defi ned.

The study examines the cultural and socio-political features of the ancient Indian civilization that led to the emergence of chaturanga (the original version of chess) in India during the Gupta Empire. The methodological basis of the research is the explication of the studied issues through comparative historical analysis. Since chess, being a cultural phenomenon, refl ects socio-cultural and socio-political realities at all stages of its development, therefore, their appearance should be due to similar reasons. What distinguishes chaturanga from other ancient games (latrunkuli, petteyi, senet) is that it was attended by not two, but four competitors, which refl ects the political fragmentation of India, which, throughout almost the entire history, has been a number of independent states. In addition, in ancient board games, the chips were the same, and only in chaturanga was there a variety of shapes. The presence in the original version of chess of various pieces with different possibilities, as well as the absence of a rule for turning a pawn into any piece, is a demonstration of the Indian caste system, which is characterized by the absence of social elevators. Chaturanga also refl ected the religious realities of that era. In particular, a number of Buddhist concepts have been embodied on the chessboard. The principle of the infi nity of worlds is refl ected in the infi nite number of possible chess games, the concept of samsara is conveyed by the return of captured (killed) pieces to the board. The chessboard itself was called ashtapada in India and meant a numerical magical symbol used in Buddhism, and the clockwise turn is a reference to the wheel of dharma. The most striking projection of Buddhism on the chess space is the use of dice in chaturanga to determine the turn of the move, embodying the principle of karma on the chessboard. The obvious shortcomings of chaturanga, in particular, the element of randomness in casting lots, could not be corrected by Indian thinkers and chess players, since after the collapse of the Gupta Empire, scientifi c and philosophical thought in India was stagnating.

The object of the study is the food culture of France and Japan. The subject of the study is gastronomic literature. The empirical materials of the article are culinary books, religious and philosophical works, writings of chefs and literary critics. In the focus of the study philosophical treatises of the Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Dōgen, Neo-Confucian philosopher Hayashi Razan, the literary works of Pierre David, François Pierre de la Varenne, Grimod de La Reynière, J.A. Brillat-Savarin, dedicated to cooking, food rituals and cultural features of the national kitchens of France and Japan. Particular attention is paid to the description and analysis of the fi rst culinary books and treatises. The basis of the research methodology is interdisciplinary sociocultural analysis, an axiological approach related to the study of culture as a set of values, methods of cultural interpretation and linguistic commentary. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing interest of researchers of various spheres of humanitarian knowledge regarding the problems of food, the cultural characteristics of national kitchens. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that the gastronomic literature of France and Japan in the cultural aspect is not examined enough. The authors conclude that gastronomic literature is a refl ection of the formation and development of food culture, explicates certain value-norming attitudes, stereotypes and images, which refl ect the features of the national mentality and worldview.

The presented article was conceived as a comparative overview of the cultural practices of two signifi cant civilizations for the ancient world: ancient Chinese and ancient Greek. Many researchers contrasted them in various studies as Western and Eastern, alphabetic and hieroglyphic, analytical and holistic. For the comparison I chose the ideas of the two traditions about the cosmos and man from the point of view of several aspects: the refl ection of the archetype of opposites in mythology and natural philosophy, the doctrine of the primary elements, the relationship of the elements with the planets, as well as the manifestation of all these ideas in the healing and musical practices of both cultures. The purpose of the work was to search for similarities and differences in the ideas of the two traditions according to the specifi ed parameters. The article uses sources in Russian and Chinese, as well as works of famous researchers. The paper shows that in both cultures, ancient scientists, when studying the world, relied on the archetype of opposites, but did it in different ways: the Greeks described the world as a struggle of opposites, while the Chinese sought for balance. Identifying the primary elements of the universe has also become a common desire, however the application of this knowledge in two cultures was not manifested in the same way. In China, the wu xing system became a universal principle for classifying all things, while in the Greek tradition the connection between the elements and the phenomena of the surrounding world is not so clear, and in some types of practices (music) it can only be traced indirectly. The paper also shows the similarity of the two traditions in the matter of the desire to identify the correspondence between the elements and planets, elements/planets and phenomena of the human body, as well as musical notes. However, there are not only similarities, but also differences in the musical and medical practices of the two cultures, stemming from the difference in the original ideas about the planets and primary elements.The presented article was conceived as a comparative overview of the cultural practices of two signifi cant civilizations for the ancient world: ancient Chinese and ancient Greek. Many researchers contrasted them in various studies as Western and Eastern, alphabetic and hieroglyphic, analytical and holistic. For the comparison I chose the ideas of the two traditions about the cosmos and man from the point of view of several aspects: the refl ection of the archetype of opposites in mythology and natural philosophy, the doctrine of the primary elements, the relationship of the elements with the planets, as well as the manifestation of all these ideas in the healing and musical practices of both cultures. The purpose of the work was to search for similarities and differences in the ideas of the two traditions according to the specifi ed parameters. The article uses sources in Russian and Chinese, as well as works of famous researchers. The paper shows that in both cultures, ancient scientists, when studying the world, relied on the archetype of opposites, but did it in different ways: the Greeks described the world as a struggle of opposites, while the Chinese sought for balance. Identifying the primary elements of the universe has also become a common desire, however the application of this knowledge in two cultures was not manifested in the same way. In China, the wu xing system became a universal principle for classifying all things, while in the Greek tradition the connection between the elements and the phenomena of the surrounding world is not so clear, and in some types of practices (music) it can only be traced indirectly. The paper also shows the similarity of the two traditions in the matter of the desire to identify the correspondence between the elements and planets, elements/planets and phenomena of the human body, as well as musical notes. However, there are not only similarities, but also differences in the musical and medical practices of the two cultures, stemming from the difference in the original ideas about the planets and primary elements.