Ideas and Ideals

The article presents a detailed response to the new book of the philosopher Oleg Bazaluk “Discursive Thinking through Education”. The problem of understanding Plato’s terms is discussed, in connection with which the author of the article expresses the idea that the correct reconstruction of the statements of ancient philosophers allows not only to choose the necessary values from the existing ones, but also to set new ones; at the same time, he believes, understanding the narratives of a foreign culture (or one’s own, but cultivating a different type of thinking) is quite possible, however, the condition for this is a change in one’s own consciousness, which, figuratively speaking, must be re-educated through the methodology and practice of historical and cultural thinking. The author reconstructs the picture of the world that Plato built and the ontological foundations taken by Bazaluk as the basis of his research and constructions. The author of the article raises the questions why the author of the book took the project of Plato as a basis, who began to doubt it even in antiquity, and also whether knowledge of the cosmos and its evolution can help in building a good society and sociality, as well as make a person happy. Special attention is paid to the issue of Bazaluk’s reconstruction of the evolution of the cosmos and the support of the discursive thinking of education on the knowledge and results obtained in this reconstruction. A number of questions and problems are discussed here: what the author of the book understands by education, what are the features of his reconstruction of the evolution of the cosmos, if it is possible to deepen his understanding of the basic reality (matter) in the direction of taking into account not only the first nature, but also the second. Evaluating the book, the author of the article proceeds from the understanding of Bazaluk’s work as a tradition and discourse that implements at least three principles: Plato himself, Russian cosmism, and the cognitive approach, which is popular nowadays. The author of the article understands his response as a benevolent discussion of the book, calling on other readers to do the same.

The article shows the causes and consequences of the deplorable state of the Russian economic science and higher economic education. They are rooted, first of all, in the persecution to which economics was subjected in Soviet times, especially during the Stalinist period. As a result, it lost the most talented scientists. There was no need for good economists in the command economy, so higher economic education had low prestige. In the post-Soviet period, due to the transition to a market economy, the need for economists to work in government institutions and commercial structures increased. However, it turned out that the current system of higher economic education is unable to satisfy it. The author shows negative consequences of a low level of economic education for solving national economic problems and managing companies. The low level of economic science did not allow economists to justify an effective transition to a market economy, taking into account the peculiarities of the Soviet economy and Russian history. In the post-Soviet period, the political leadership focused only on economists loyal to the government, without taking into account their professionalism.

The author proposes the ways of improving the quality of economic science and higher economic education. The emphasis is on a sharp reduction in the number of researchers and teaching staff (and a reduction in the number of students), with a simultaneous significant increase in the remuneration of researchers and teachers basing on objective criteria for evaluating their activities. This will allow democratizing the management of universities and scientific institutions, abolishing bureaucratic control over their activities.

This paper is a critical response to the article by professors P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Consequences for Education, Science and Politics”. The idea of treating Western post-war culture as narcissistic has been expressed in the United States since the 1970s of the XX century, but it will also be relevant in relation to the post-Soviet culture of Russia. Considering the ambiguity of the cognitive metaphor of Narcissus in relation to the described socio-cultural transformations caused by the possibility of an almost arbitrary interpretation of something as narcissism, the article presents its own interpretation of the foundations of narcissistic culture. Following the idea of opposing a narcissistic culture to a culture of service, modern narcissism is viewed not so much as an individual’s selfishness, but as a loss of an object and opportunity for service. Secularism, understood in the spirit of Charles Taylor as the loss of any higher, transcendent, hierarchical ontological concepts, deprives a person of a higher authority that legitimizes any service to something. This means a horizontal ontology of equivalent objects that do not have the highest value in relation to the individual. Post-traditionalism means impermanence, “fluidity” of any institutionalized forms of sociality and their perception, the dynamics of the emergence and decline of which does not allow the individual to find an object of service. A person remains in conditions of “minimal humanism”, which means that this person, having neither a higher reality that determines it, nor the constancy of social institutions, remains for himself the only possible value, a kind of “narcissist against his will”. We also believe that narcissism is not an external, but an internal factor of social processes that constitutes the motives and interests of the participants in these processes. While agreeing with the thesis about the connection between narcissistic culture and postmodernity, we believe that it is not a “young culture” opposite to mass society. On the contrary, narcissistic culture is the culture of a mass society that has gone further along the path of secularism, post-traditionalism and humanism, just as postmodernity is called late, far-reaching modernity by such sociologists as E. Giddens, U. Beck, Ju. Habermas.

This article continues the discussion of the phenomenon of modern culture published in the paper by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Implications for Education, Science and Politics”. Arguments are presented for those consequences that lead culture to new states and guide thinking to explain the efforts needed to strengthen it in the role of developing us.

The judgments are based on a sense-genetic conception of culture that eliminates the naïve identity between the concepts of ‘cultural’, ‘civilized’, ‘cultivated’, ‘ethical’, ‘aesthetic’, ‘high’ and other assessments of specific properties of human behavior. The method of deriving consequences from judgments is based on the dialectical regularities of the development of living wholes and the products of their activity.

For the sake of continuing the semantic line of the original article, an attempt is made to rely on the phenomena of narcissism disclosed therein to see in them the signs of the future, the approach of which one could rejoice in without demonstrating its quite understandable experiences as an ugly form of the value landscape of modernity. In this sense, the idea, not developed but sown by the authors, that “narcissistic culture” brings to the world high diversity that can serve as a stimulus for the beginning of a new round of human development is supported here. There is a reason for this thought. They point to the approaching of gracious time when anarchic individualism will develop into another form of long-term sustainable coexistence of people under conditions of heterogeneity of values and interests. These conclusions make it possible to outline the contours of the tasks that need to be solved now in order to multiply this grace.

The article deals with the theme of mysticism in the works of Plato. The study begins with the concept of magic and comes to the conclusion that modern scientists do not know what the word μαγεία/magic really meant for the ancient Greeks.

However, Plato is considered to be the philosopher who laid down all the basic concepts of mysticism. The original ancient Greek definition of the word ‘mysticism’, derived from the Greek μυστικός, differs from the modern understanding of this concept and is directly related to the ancient Greek mysteries and the cult of the goddesses of fertility Demeter and Persephone. Very little is known about the mysteries, but it is obvious that for the ancient Greeks it was a way to gain immortality, a kind of action during which the soul descended to the underground world of the dead and returned from there. Many researchers note that such journeys of the soul among the Greeks are extremely similar to shamanic ones. But we are talking here about archaic views, and not about the shamanism that modern ethnography describes.

The most important part of the mysteries was contemplation. What exactly the participants of the mysteries contemplated, what the high priest showed them, remains a mystery. However, Plato in the dialogue “Republic” gives a lesson on how to reveal the ability to such contemplation with the help of mimesis, or imitation. This is not just an external theatrical imitation, namely, it is getting used to what is being contemplated.

Plato believed that actors and temples are not needed for a real mystery, it should unfold in contemplation, and therefore only you are needed for it. The author of the article finds confirmation of this idea in the dialogue between Socrates and Cephalus, which ends with the myth of Er’s travels to the world of the dead. Plato describes these journeys in such a way that his disciples, if desired, can enter the state of Er and, with the help of contemplative imitation, live everything that happened to him. These journeys are similar to the shamanic journeys of the soul to the underground world.

The author concludes the article with the assumption that Plato tried to create a kind of mysteries within his school for a philosopher who wants to master contemplation.

The article deals with one of the particular applications of the concept of “simulacrum”. The article also shows under which circumstances there was a need to use the concept of “simulacrum”. In this case, the simulacrum is presented as a form of simplified and distorted perception of system objects. The main form of a system organization is a hierarchy. Hierarchical systems have the property of forming inverse relationships. Inversion occurs when a subordinate element of the hierarchy acquires dominant properties in it, but does not move to a higher position. This relationship is possible because there are several organizational principles in the system, and these principles collide with each other. A distorted perception of hierarchical systems occurs when inverse relationships are ignored. As a result, an image of the system is formed that is distant from reality (simulacrum). Over time, this image becomes less realistic, as changes occur in the real system caused by the development of inversions. Inversions are the cause of intra-system dynamics; they can lead a system object to decay and destruction. They also, under certain circumstances, contribute to the self-development of the system. However, if we consider only the simulacrum of this system, this ability to self-destruct remains unnoticed. The system’s ability to develop itself remains unrecognized. This concept has become relevant as a result of inversion in the hierarchical system of human activity. The subordinate level of activity that is responsible for subject actions comes to the fore because of the increasingly technical aspects of human activity. The highest, symbolic level of activity moves to a subordinate position. The activity level responsible for subject actions also operates with signs and is responsible for using language as a sign system. Hence, there comes the need for the concept of “simulacrum”, which is “the signifier without the signified”.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the thought and speech of people holding and defending directly opposite positions affect the change in the thought and speech of people of their own and subsequent generations, with different life orientations, and to find ways of this influence. The author describes the situation that arose at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, known as the ideological dispersal of philosophical, historical and sociological trends that ran counter to the policy of the CPSU, which became especially fierce in the fight against opponents after the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968. One of the results of such an ideological battle was the defeat of the sector of the methodology of history of the Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by M. Ya. Gefter, who published a series of books in which the so-called laws of historical development (formational approach) were questioned and the fundamental provisions of the classics of Marxism-Leninism were criticized.  The subject of analysis is Gefter’s article “A Page from the History of Marxism in the Early 20th Century”, published in the book “Historical Science and Some Problems of the Modernity”, dedicated to the analysis of Lenin’s tactics and strategy development which changed the views of many, especially young, historians on the historical process, and most importantly - on the methods of seeking and expressing the truth. The differences were expressed primarily in the fact that the proponents and defenders of the Soviet regime, which was based on their own established norms of Marxism-Leninism, fearlessly used all means of pressure on unwanted opponents. Professionals, however, who tried to understand the true sense of the historical process, the sense of judgments about it, especially the sense of the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy, unfolding at the beginning of the twentieth century, were forced to use the Aesopian language, which also provoked a distortion of this sense in many ways: due to the nebulous and veiled expressions, which give the impression of theoretical blackmail, causing such consequences as speech irresponsibility.

Scientists and teachers have been discussing the peculiarities of dissemination of postmodernism in different areas of society, usually ignoring universities and scientific organizations. During the dominance period of the rationally-oriented intellectual culture, the communication methods among specialists have been developed, assisting to describe any phenomena. Postmodernism, factually revolutionizing communication and discourses, radically changes the communities producing them. Without understanding the essence of these changes, it becomes almost impossible to comprehend what, how and why they are engaged in universities and scientific organizations, and what is happening in economy and in politics? The mentioned transformations have been identified in the article as a phenomenon of the onset of narcissistic culture. Accepting the concept of high culture and a multitude of local cultures, it is reasonable to note the increasing processes of the cultural patterns, which transfer between different areas of private and public life, which more and more complicate being of an individual in culture, when, in particular, the expansion of human freedom is accompanied by enhancing the control over him. Imagine a carnival unfolding in a space arranged like a rhizome (fractal). In this way, from the deconstruction of concepts we move on to the deconstruction of slogans, which, presumably, served as a source for a new type of public perturbation from the end of the 80s of the 20^th century till the present time. In modern universities, research institutes, entrepreneurship, politics along with liberal values a large-scale dissemination of narcissistic culture took place. The slogan Science Must Serve the People is being deconstructed. Thus, narcissistic culture unfolds beyond the boundaries of this slogan. At the same time, the carriers of narcissistic culture belonging to different generations, educational and academic statuses become not only carriers of new patterns of behavior, but pose themselves in a very special way in society. Individualization beats the standards, including professional ones. Recognizing that culture is an external factor to subjects, mainly predetermining collective memory, as well as collective thinking and imagination (expectations), and the transition from mass to narcissistic culture changes the social roles and transforms the society. Even in elite universities professionalism is squeezed out in order to achieve the needs for convenience and comfort. The loss of the importance of professionalism in the environment causes a response - self-isolation (absenteeism) of specialists. In the field of entrepreneurship, replacing mass culture with a narcissistic one required new artistic models, a change in behavior style, and legitimization of hedonism and egocentrism. Perhaps this is the reason for the decline in the world economic growth rates. Under the prevailing conditions a healthy lifestyle becomes a necessary setting for meeting certain social and political indicators. There has been a dramatic cultural shift in electoral democracy. It is no longer important to ‘enrapture the hearts and souls’, but to be in admiration of yourself and your close environment. Absenteeism is an immanent feature of narcissistic culture, leading the individual to alienation from the political life of the society. Narcissistic culture has always existed, but postmodernism served as a unique medium for its dissemination. Despite numerous criticisms of narcissistic culture, it brings a high diversity to all areas where it penetrates, and this diversity can act as a trigger mechanism to the beginning of a new round for the development of mankind. Narcissistic culture in the 20^th century is an external factor changing the flow of all social processes, including economic, political, and social ones. A project ignoring the peculiarities of cultural narcissism discussed above is doomed to failure.

The article discusses the problems of the professional ethos of science genesis and its transformation in the context of modern realities. There is a brief description of the classical norms of the scientific ethos (universalism, communalism, disinterestedness and organized skepticism), formulated by R. Merton in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in response to the sharp exacerbation of the problem of science’s autonomy in the conditions of totalitarian regimes. The key idea of ​​Merton is especially emphasized: compliance with the norms is aimed primarily at optimizing the process of scientific production and, thereby, the most effective solution to the main goal of science – the increasing of certified knowledge volume. The concept of the ethical imperatives of a scientific profession was almost immediately criticized for being ‘idealistic’ and ‘disconnected from real life’, and by the end of the 1960s it intensified many times over. You can find the examples of critical attitude to the concept of Merton, also we described the alternative versions of the norms of scientific ethos (in the interpretation of Mitroff and Fuller). It has been established that under the conditions of academic capitalism, which implies the incorporation of market culture into the system of scientific research, a negative deformation of classical norms occurs, in practice creating barriers to the production of knowledge and disrupting the practice of communication within the scientific community. The result of this deformation is the system of relationships between scientists, described by Ziman in the framework of the concept of ‘post-academic science’. Evidence is presented that the process of degradation of norms is further intensified in the conditions of cognitive capitalism and neoliberal science. Using the example of modern Russian science, the author shows that the result of such degradation is, for example, the exacerbation of the problem of plagiarism. Methods of counteracting such practice are briefly described using the example of modern Russian science, such as the creation of a Dissernet community or a special commission to counteract falsification of scientific research within the framework of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In a theoretical sense, in the context of the philosophy and sociology of science, the concept of ‘two ethics’ proposed by B. Pruzhinin, looks productive. B. Pruzhinin singles out the specific ethos of fundamental and applied science.

The article examines the paradoxical nature of G. W. F. Hegel’s biography and philosophical ideology. The essence of paradoxicality is substantiated by several factors – biographical, historical-philosophical, hermeneutical, and concrete-historical. The purpose of the work is to identify insufficiently known aspects of the personality and philosophical ideology of the thinker. Methodologically, the study is constructed using dialectical and historical-logical methods. The results of the study are to reveal the voluminous inconsistency of Hegel’s biography and thought; to clarify both the positive and negative aspects of his philosophical ideology.

The author shows a number of paradoxes of Hegel’s philosophy: first, the understanding of development as a ‘hard’ war against itself and inattention to the multifactorial and non-linear nature of many processes; secondly, focusing on a logical idea belittles or denies the value of everything else, including living and human beings; thirdly, the desire to raise a person to ‘the highest’ position and at the same time enslave him as a universal creature and a state citizen; fourth, Hegel’s essentialism is frankly anti-existential and merciless to everything private and subjective; fifth, Hegel’s seemingly flawless scientific system suffers from inattention to the complexity and unpredictability of reality; sixth, the Lutheran religiosity of the philosopher turns out to be almost anti-Christian – with the non-recognition of the Most Holy Trinity, without the desire to become a ‘servant’ of another, etc.; seventh, Hegel’s decency and philistine ‘kindness’ are radically different from his pejorative attitude towards the female sex, other peoples, races, and civilizations. Colonialism is justified. Hence, it was quite natural for the German Nazis to turn to Hegel’s ideas. Eighth, the great dialectic has too much belittled the reality of static things, unambiguity and invariance.

The novelty of the research lies in the recognition of the true causes and tasks of the thinker’s life and work; in the explanation of his main values, including his understanding of Christianity; in the clarification of the Hegel-German and Hegel-citizen positions.

The conclusions of the study are related to the antithetical comparison of the ideology and philosophy of Hegel and Hesse, Hegel and Shestov. The author highlights anti-existential and racial-nationalist motives of the philosopher’s work.