Ideas and Ideals

The authors analyze the rare experience of philosophical understanding of the accounting phenomenon reflected in the scientific heritage of one of the American accounting tradition founders – Charles Ezra Sprague. The article reveals the ideas of the American scientist on the nature, the form and construction of an account as a key category of accounting theory, his view on logic of communication between accounts and the balance sheet, and specific author's interpretation of balance sheet equation and objects of accounting. Basing on the historical parallels and analogies built between Ch. E. Sprague's ideas and urgent provisions of modern theories of financial accounting the authors come to the conclusion about the need to ensure a balance of foresight research in the field of accounting practice and historical, philosophical and science studies of the accounting theory and methodology.

The article is devoted to the problem of development of a new project of reality that has overcome the post-nonclassical stage and faced difficulties in understanding human-like technoobjects in the present. The authors associate the emergence of "new structures" with transformation of human selfness, its practices of "disintegration", alienation from oneself. The beginning of this process launched by the medieval culture of thought, in which real, conceptual and nominal have appeared. They are recorded in the practices of discovering sinful within yourself; cashing out itself in contact with similar (other); revealing a formal (name). In the period of New European philosophy, a cognizer, tied to contemplation and will, begins to practice. He focuses on experience of reflection – a repeated inspection, control over the self, through which its "property" or aggressive withdrawal of irrational opportunities is established. The authors claim an idea that practice of a cognizer with ever-increasing estrangement from oneself generates a new reality in our time – the objects of kogito (virtual, conceptual, linguistic), objects that "complete" the embodiment (biotechnical structures). They are practitioners standing within the boundaries of will-kreacio, aimed at rational extension, transformation of cognizer. A purposeful will that has a rational intention, collects its own reality from the fragments or "traces" of the expressed, described, everyday, etc., constructs it from fragments of social action, text, experience. A methodology, built on the framework of mathematical and natural sciences, is gradually replaced by an activity-practical, hermeneutic, engineering-sociological approaches. Comprehension of science through spiritual experience of cognizer makes it possible to assess it not as something external, civilizationally fateful but as a conscious action, a choice, relying in a special fixation, self-examination.

This article analyzes a number of social and anthropological implications of the sharp increase in the flow of information, which have acquired since the mid-20th century the character of "information explosion". The authors analyze the postmodern concepts by identifying major characteristics of post-industrial society that brings these concepts together with the theories of the information society. The authors substantiate the hypothesis that, on the basis of the convergence of certain postmodern concepts with the theories of the information society there can be conceptual synthesis. The authors show that the informational approach, which is not used explicitly, is present in the works of post-modern artists as the concept of a special type of society, a society living and reproducing itself mostly in virtual reality based on mass production of sign-symbolic artifacts - signs, symbols, values and meanings, aggregated into streams of information. Information flows are the main "building material" and a resource for the construction of symbolic information and communicative space. The authors identified the following characteristics of the society after the "information explosion": there is a change in the content of communication; the symbolic world becomes increasingly unrecognizable for a human being; there is depersonalization of social codes; virtual strata appear; people experience information trauma of consciousness; human existence becomes fragmented; "information schizophrenia" sets in; "intellectual extinction" of mankind syndrome shows up; and then comes "normal anomie".

The article examines the role of a social ideal in history on the example of evolution of the perfect man image. The ideal is understood as a due thing, which allows to assess the present existing nature and to determine the direction of its development. Aspiration to the ideal, which is an essential intention of a person necessary in acquiring ideal traits of a man, is one of the driving forces of history. Every historical period constructs its own image of an ideal person and strives to get closer to it. Ideas about the perfect man have been regularly formed throughout history, this fact proves that there is a permanent innate human sense of dissatisfaction with him/herself (and with the whole world), the lack of self realization, the intention to discover their own inner identity. The first "perfect man" was a beast. In the primitive societies people conquered the “outer” beast, in Antiquity – the “inner” one. There appeared the first identity crisis as a consequence of inadequate self-esteem ("man as the measure of all things"). God was a "perfect man" of the Middle Ages. If a beast turns out to be in the inaccessible past then God is in the eternal unattainable future. So, the second identity crisis comes into existence. A Man becomes an ideal in Modern Times. There appeared a concept of a perfect man (as a real possibility). However, depriving a person of metaphysics leads to the third identity crisis. Nowadays the "perfect man", increasingly, appears to be a machine resembling a "man", devoid of human weaknesses with improved human qualities. The analogy between a human and a machine leads to the fourth identity crisis. "The new perfect man" is a man as a unique result of the development of all human culture, the synthesis of the unique and the universal.

The reforms carried out over the past fifteen years in the RF education system are not related to the discoveries in pedagogy, but to the changes in social orientations, which are imposed by external "Bologna commitments". The forcefully introduced "competence approach" to the planning of education in higher education gave rise to many difficulties, because it was actually incompatible with the Russian educational tradition. The development of "competence" rhetoric at the reporting level had almost no effect on the methodology of teaching in domestic universities, but the goals and ideals of education have radically changed. Now they are formulated not by the society and the state, but by perspective "employers", transnational corporations are usually meant by them. Instead of "comprehensive harmonious development of the personality," the competence approach actually involves preparing a person for the labor market with the subsequent sale of human qualities. Expanding of the buying and selling sphere is the result of the globalization processes, today only state sovereignties can prevent this expansion, and within traditional societies only "family and school" have to stop this expansion. The author considers this gradual transformation of traditional pedagogy into "market pedagogy" from the point of view of modern inter-civilizational confrontation. The triumphant "economic dominant" is not a universal "innovation", but the result of the expansion of Western civilization. The author substantiates the idea that introducing this competence approach, borrowing the goals and ideals from alien cultures hamper the natural development of our national educational system.

This article is dedicated to Bulgarian Bogomils’ ideology research. Bogomilism is one of the most popular and influential Christian heresies, appeared in mediaeval Bulgaria in 10^th century. Ideology, interpreted in terms of Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes as a structured sign-expressed world image, is divided into different levels. There are the Bogomils’ ideas of politics, economy, corporeality and mysticism. Bulgarian heretics’ world-view was based on religious dualism – a concept of existence of opposite fundamentals (spiritual and material in that case), with a human as their battlefield. Negation of everything material, based on religious dualism, thereby is Bogomilism’s world-view basis. The Bogomils’ revolutionary character, noted by some scholars, appeared not only in politics (denial of authorities) – this religious movement tended to a social ideal, that supposed a much deeper changes of society (created by Sathan) and human nature. The process of making of this “new human” presents as a consecutive negation of everything, connecting him with material world: from social position, property and family till his own body.

The article poses for the first time the problem of the existence of democratic and undemocratic variants of the Populist model of the reorganization of Russia. The latter, born three times in different historical epochs on the left flank of the party, can be determined by the self-designation of these forces, under the common name - as a Left-Narodnik variant of the Narodnik model of the socio-political reorganization of Russia. It is known in three of his sub-variants - the maximalist (1904-1906), the Left Socialist (1917) and the MPSR (1919-1922). The democratic Socialist-Revolutionary version of the populist model is known in three sub-variants. The most famous is the so-called. "Chernovsky", "centrist", which became a kind of "Socialist-Revolutionary orthodoxy" and formed the basis of the official doctrine of the PSR. Another sub-variant was born on the right flank of the party and is associated with the names of N.D.Avksentyev, I.I.Fondaminsky, V.V.Rudnev, M.V.Vishnyak, and others. Apparently, we can talk about the formation of one more, more right subvariant, which was forming on the right flank of the party around the newspaper "The Will of the People" (Volya Naroda) and is associated with the names of A.A.Argunov, A.I.Gukovsky, P.A.Sorokin, E.A.Stalinsky. They were ideologically close to E.K.Breško-Breshkovskaya, A.F.Kerensky, B.V.Savinkov, and others. The author believes that, in fact, the democratically oriented part of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party anticipated the ideas and path of the so-called "Swedish socialism," the path of evolutionary reforming of society along the lines of democracy and the social state, a path which was taken by many socialist and social democratic parties in post-war Europe. In Russia, the PSR took this path already in 1917 and it was this program of its transformation that was supported by the majority of the population of Russia at the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Moreover, the Socialist-Revolutionary democratic alternative started to be implemented in the framework of the laws adopted by the Constituent Assembly

Among the impasses of radical constructivism, one of the most problematic is the modern understanding of democracy. The newest theory of democracy, developed in the newly published book of A. Magun, is an obvious example. The choice of the method logically brings the author to the left radicalism, whose apology turns out to be a model of genuine democracy that corresponds to its historical meaning. Attempts to write this model into the historical and cultural context provide the possibility of several critical remarks. The main problem of the concept of "actual" democracy is the easiness with which historicism is sacrificed as a fundamental epistemological principle. This is expected, since historicism in constructivism loses its significance. To reach the historical reality, we need the will to reality as such, but in radical constructivism it is impossible. And then the arbitrarily designed optics with the blinded diaphragm, taken from the slogans of today's political establishment, transferred with uncontrolled energy to the view of the subjects of history, since we have rejected the very possibility of control along with the concept of reality, and then the historical reality begins to be judged according to the standards of fashionable templates. This is the prerequisite for the possibility of declaring any significance as "emptiness". This is how the warlike skepticism towards historical versions of democracy appears. The courage to go to the edge provides the dignity of A. Magun's concept, she is interested in the consistency, the readiness to firmly declare totalitarian violence by the meaning of democracy.

The article presents a sociophilosophical analysis of the problem of identity formation in contemporary society with its systemic transitional character. The idea of complex identity formation in sociospatial form is put forward and substantiated. Identity types, presented as a hierarchical structure in some conceptions, are positioned as components of sociospatial identity.  Due to highly dynamic social changes and processes the structure of sociospatial identity undergoes transformations, resulting in strengthening some components and loss of importance of the other ones. Factors, determining new identity types and transformations of the process of identification of the social actor are discussed. Major tendencies of its self-identification and their results are revealed. The most relevant of them are the following: identity fragmentation and, consequently, the breakdown of its hierarchy, transgressing the limits of national identity and formation of alternative identities (transnational, binational), strengthening of ethnic and cultural identities. Overall, the shift of identity formation from macro-social level and its dispersion to meso- and micro-social levels is established. The significance of the structure center loss is emphasized, indicating the state of chaos, which is analyzed from post-modernist viewpoint as a chance for plural identity formation in the contemporary society and, consequently, antinomic tendencies of the process.  The most relevant aspects of the presented issues, requiring further empirical investigation, are identified in the conclusion.

In the publications of 1904-1907 N. Berdyaev traced two lines of knighthood’s idealization: the embodiment of medieval mystical Christianity’s depth and the noble human type. In his book “New Religious Consciousness and Society” (1907) he added the third line, which is formed on the basis of the first two and it portrays the knight as an attractive example of overcoming a self-sufficing, depersonalized, godless state. The main theme of the book is the necessity to update Christianity and all parts of public life. Religious revival, according to Berdyaev, can be connected only with the development of a person. In the modern world the false hierarchy of values is dominating: subjective interests, relative willpower of a person forces out the higher unconditional values connected with the universal objective God’s will. The state serves as an expression of subjective human will, a product of the boundless enslaving power of one person over another. N.A. Berdyaev recognizes free theocracy as an ideal, the only morally justified form of the state. He sees an alternative to the modern false theocracy in the system of values of medieval culture - anarchical principles of feudalism and the personal knightly honor. The Russian philosopher correlates the knightly ideal of the Middle Ages with the modern epoch and convinces a reader of the necessity of its actualization. New forms of organization of public life assume a knightly war for the liberation of a person, including the liberation from violence of the state. Speaking about the mutual relationship between the individual and the state, Berdyaev joins the internal polemic with Slavophiles. He formulated his position on this question earlier, in the articles of 1903-1904. Berdyaev rejects the Slavophile idyll of the former Russia. Greatness and individuality of the nation presupposes freedom of a human being, the national spirit manifests itself not in the solution of the state problems, but in creative realization of universal tasks, common to the whole mankind.