Ideas and Ideals

  The article is devoted to the problematic character of the relations of Christianity with other cultures as one of the brightest features of European civilization. Attempts to understand it were made throughout the History of Christianity. It is necessary to consider continuous penetration into Europe of the most diverse cultures from the other continents which entered into the existential conflict with this religion. At the same time it is necessary to consider the problem relations of Christianity with the European mental and cultural arrangements. They naturally came into conflict with Christianity which had been created outside the continent. It is especially vividly seen in the period of early Christianity when Christianity was more presented by a set of ideas, than the sum of artifacts. Besides, Christianity was formed not due to the evolution of a certain initial paradigm, but as a result of synthesis of elements of almost all known at that time cultures. The author gives a general characteristic of the history of interaction between Christianity and the European cultural streams, and also he considers some forms and methods of fight, which Christianity used against those cultural streams. The Church played a special role in this fight, and сhristianization might be presented as the movement of the Church, not a religion. At the same time сhristianization is an information gain of new space. Simultaneously, it is necessary to highlight the role of this religion in preservation of the European information unity and also in the fight against cultural interventions from the outside.

The article is devoted to the search of the hidden meaning of the Bible, and to the birth of the tradition of patristic hermeneutics and exegesis in the history of the early Christian Church. Actually, in the works of early Christian apologists, the five main methods of exegesis of the Holy Scripture were already used, including: literally-historical, moral, theoretical, typological, and allegorical. The author examines the influence of Philo of Alexandria, who identified two stages in the study of God – knowledge of God from the “created things”, and the ascent of mind to the understanding of the transcendence of deity. Clement of Alexandria, unlike his predecessor, didn’t try to turn the biblical text into a philosophical treatise, but sought to transform the philosophical ideas into the Christian ones, and with the help of the typological method he succeeded in it. The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of interaction between two theoretical and methodological traditions: the tradition of the apology of the truths of Divine Revelation and the tradition of interpreting the text of the Scripture, which was systematized in the Alexandrian philosophical-theological school.

The round table participants discussed a number of interrelated questions: how can we evaluate the relationship between the Church and society in Russia at the present stage? What is causing the obstacles for the dialogue between the Church and other social groups in modern Russia? Is there a possibility for such a dialogue in modern Russian society? What is the actual and possible role of intelligentsia in the formation of a neutral space for such a dialogue? The participants discussed different aspects of the problem: the history of the church and society relations, the problems of these relations at the present stage, the role of the church in the life of modern Russian society, the problem of the dialogue between the Church and atheists. The participants also discussed the burning problems of the Church's participation in the formation and education of youth, issues of influence of the church on the processes of cultural development, the acute problems of the fight between the Orthodox church and religious extremism, the danger of which influence, especially on young people, is often underestimated. In the final analysis, there is a multi-dimensional picture of the relationship between the institution of the Church and civil society represented by different social groups.

The reciprocity between religion and culture is the key theme of the book by I. N. Morozova "Religion and Culture: the Cognitions of Acceptance and Reciprocity". In modern socio-humanitarian discourse there is an urgent need in elucidation of the logical-conceptual, thematic and content subject areas, where theology and a secular worldview can be the participants of the dialogue (keeping the distinction in their original spiritually-aimed orientations). The ideals and values of classical culture form one of the foundations for Christianity and secular culture. The origins of tensions are in the relations between religious and secular components in modern Russian education, the eclecticism of their combination. The author also introduces into the scientific circulation the original texts of foreign scientists-naturalists, who are speculating on cultural dimensions of the sacred; famous sociologists; religious scholars (S. Kaufman, H. Casanova, L. Woodhead, etc.), and theologians. The author considers post-secular culture at the stage of its denial of the rhetoric of confrontation with religion. The author collected and summarized the significant scientific and publicistic material, revealing the uncertain picture of the Russian society ̓ s searching for the necessary consensus in the relationship of religion and culture after Perestroika.

The specific images of man stand for any canon of values and for any behavioral code. They determine not only the desire to achieve certain public goals. In the end, any change in these images leads to revolutions, radically influencing the development of entire countries. The article highlights some of the linkages and concealed contradictions hidden behind the Ten commandments of the Old Testament, the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ, the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and related French Constitution of 1791, and finally, of the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The image of free and rightful man with innate dignity stands in glaring contradiction with the reality of modern humankind, which will reach the ten billion mark quite soon. The limited capacity of finite resources of planet Earth decidedly demands the change of our traditional ideas about man. The lives of our grandchildren will be determined by the new image of man and the way of when and how it will be developed.

The article considers the problem of de-socialization and alienation of an individual in the social space. The aim of the article is to conduct a socio - philosophical analysis of the conditions of the emergence and development stages of these forms and identification of types and forms of personal alienation in society. The article analyzes the complex of objective and subjective social conditions which lead to de-socialization of an individual. The buffer zone of alienation is examined in the article as a reflection of social exclusion processes. De-socialization of the individual is the result of social exclusion process which leads to alienation and its acculturation.

The article presents a reconstruction of the phenomenological concept of immanent time as the base of the experience of consciousness, which is expressed in the imagination. Husserl's position is mapped to a Kantian interpretation of time as a priori forms of productive synthesis. Identifies the main characteristics of immanent time and imagination, integrated into the notion of the horizon of consciousness. Highlights the potential of this approach for the development of modern ontology and scientific picture of the world.

In the article the author considers the tendencies of transformation of human life in the conditions of permanent sociocultural complexity. The social structure becomes more and more complicated, saturated with knowledge and information and a human being at the same time falls apart into functional subsystems – modules. Getting adjusted to the new conditions of sociocultural complexity a person risks to lose his/her ontological status. In the article, using the idea of modularity, the author describes the image of sociocultural complexity and the place of a person in the emerging conditions. The author comes to the conclusion, that a modern person, adapting to sociocultural complexity, turns into a «framework» construction comprised of «modules», deprived of any independent ontological status.

The author considers modern problems of virtualization of interpersonal communication. The purpose of the article is to show that new forms of communication significantly extend the range and area of communication among people, which is an absolute value either for an individual or a society. The article highlights the idea, that there has been noticed a change of values in the perception of an interlocutor in the process of virtual communication. Also there is a relatively short period of the transition time from the tangible interpersonal interaction system to the virtual one. To the formal (business and professional) forms of communication, the author adds many forms of virtual communication, which also have their own gradation: the discussions in social nets, e-mail communication, chats and comments to on-line publications.

The paper concerns the “observer” concept and the necessity of the observer presence in the technical reality consideration. The idea of observer brings the systematic foundation to both scientific view of the world and philosophical thinking. The observer of techno sphere becomes an active cognitive agent binding the diversity of natural and artificial machines and devices into a special kind of polycentric and evolving autopoietic unity.