Ideas and Ideals

In this article, the analysis of the age identity is used as a method to indicate the change in the relationships between generations in modern Japan. The age identity is understood as an element of the level model of the identity developed by the author. Perceiving the age identity as a level within which a person, belonging to a certain age, shares or does not share the values and attitudes of his/her generation, and based on the understanding that values and attitudes can change following the time trends, which are especially noticeable in a modern, dynamically changing world, the author analyzes this level and comes to the conclusion whether the values and attitudes of young, elderly and middle-aged people in modern Japan are similar. The socio-philosophical aspect is manifested in the fact that in this study the age level of identity is considered not in a psychological manner, which is quite typical for research of this level, but in terms of the impact, these changes in the consciousness and perception of the world among representatives of different generations have on the society. Characteristics of modern Japanese society are depopulation of the aging society, a decrease in the birth rate and changes in the labor market. The economic difficulties: difficulties with getting a secure job and low income levels lead to the fact that the Japanese start their families later or do not marry at all, and thus the family institution is being transformed. The changes in the family institution are also affected by changes on the gender level, as more and more women want or are forced to work after getting married and birth of children, and government supports them. Norms and values of the older people comply with the traditional understanding of marriage, children and work. However, the socio-economic realities of the modern world determine the change in norms and values for the middle-aged and young people. And this change does not create an acute conflict of generations, due to the continuing traditionalism and conservatism of the Japanese society.

One of the reasons contributing to the “instant” (according to historical standards) conquest, subjugation and actual destruction of the multimillion civilizations of the New World was the extermination of the rational basis of civilization, understood as a complex of religious, cosmological, philosophical views and educational structures, which provided their maintenance. The most illustrative example is the civilization, traditionally called the Aztec Empire. It was the first on the path of the conquerors and the most “alive”, developed and numerous at that time. Paradoxically, that nowadays we can judge the existence of the Aztecs’ complex system of the world perception and religious-philosophical thinking that united all spheres of human life and society in integrity by texts in the Nahuatl language (common to the population of Central Mexico), which did not have alphabetic script. We have the opportunity to assess the role of the rational worldview in the lives of the peoples who inhabited Central America on the eve of the conquest by testimonies and stories of the conquistadors about the ancient knowledge transmitted by the oral tradition and the pictorial “books” that survived in the first years of the conquest. All these texts were recorded in the Nahuatl language (in the Latin script), or in the Spanish language. The task of this work is to identify the points of conflict between the two civilizations in the rational-philosophical aspect. One of the parties has already stepped on the path of the anthropogenic development, armed with "advanced" weapons and a militant monotheistic religion, with pronounced missionary aspirations. The other is a traditional society characterized by a pronounced "national idea" based on the religious cosmological worldview, a strict social organization, a universal education system, the existence of clear laws regulating all spheres of everyday life and an astronomically verified system of calculating the years and human destinies. It can be concluded that the strength of civilization i.e. its organization and established order, turned out to be a weak link, the destruction of which led to the disintegration of integrity. The destruction of the basis, the loss of the higher meaning, the core of this well-functioning effective mechanism, caused the collapse of the whole system: religious rituals, economic organization, administrative structures, education, upbringing and everyday life.

The paper discusses the most general social, philosophical and macrosociological ideas of Marxism. Marx and Engels used several arguments for their thesis on the socio-economic character of the "basis" when referring policy, state and entire spiritual and cultural sphere to the "superstructure". Each of these arguments is partly right but mainly misleading. The importance of material production for social processes and historical dynamics is not denied, but along with this factor there are always others, no less, and sometimes more powerful ones. Dühring argued rather naively in favor of his thesis of the primacy of power and violence. The Engels's counter-arguments are smart and sometimes sophisticated but should be revised. The analysis of social relations implicitly hidden in ‘property’ shows the fundamental nature of not only order, power and violence relations that reinforce property, but also the importance of normative cultural patterns and psychological attitudes. Technological progress loses the status of the main driver of historical dynamics and social evolution, it remains a very important factor, but only among other no less significant drivers of change. Social revolutions quite often eliminate the political forms that have become inadequate, but they are by no means the only, or the main, factors of such changes. The state is not at all an "instrument" of the class of exploiters (feudal lords, capitalists). The state and the state class (officials) are almost always an independent subject with their own interests, world vision, and resources. Marxism is firmly associated with the struggle for social justice, against class inequality, against the exploitation of man by man, against enslavement. As far as people continue to strive to improve their social status, class polarization, this or that measure of exploitation, social injustice always take place, and break through all attempts at restrictions and equalization. This means the inescapability of the demand for justice, which nourishes and will always nourish the high posthumous reputation of Marx, the emergence of more and more devotees of Marxism.

The placement of Marx, together with Marxism, in a religious context may seem strange, at least to those people who still remember “opium for the people” and “a sigh of the oppressed creature”. There is a habit of associating the author and his teachings exclusively with the forms of scientific knowledge. However, it turns out that a more careful and consistent examination shows that despite the prevailing stereotype of the exclusively scientific identification of the Marxist doctrine, referring Marxism precisely to the religious context allows to understand its true place in history and culture. As the Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, S. N. Bulgakov, said, religion carries “the highest and last values that a person recognizes above himself and higher than himself, and that practical attitude, a human being is put in, in relation to these values”. But what are values? Values are the ultimate basis of choice and goal setting. Religion is the social form of the hierarchy of values existence. The article substantiates the thesis that the genesis of Marxism was the product of a complex collision in a general cultural process that embraced philosophy, science, and religion in their interrelation. The features of the interaction of these cultural phenomena in a certain social context explain the culturological features of religion, which are inherent in Marxism.

The paper analyzes K. Marx’s theoretical heritage from the modern standpoints, especially regarding his political and economic works. The author tries to answer the question – why his ideas were popular in the past and remain popular at present. The author discusses K. Marx’s scientific program and paradigm and shows that his scientific program fundamentally differs from those of other leading economists of the first half of the 19th century and his paradigm – from that of classical economics. Marxism created his own original paradigm which combined elements of classical economies and historical school. The paper also shows how K. Marx’s scientific program and some basic elements of his economic theory influence the works of scientists working within alternative schools. The author presents his critical notes to several elements of K. Marx’s theory, namely his historical concept, sociology, and especially, political economy. The author pays special attention to the terms used by K. Marx which allow making ambiguous conclusions and avoiding the critics. The author highlights the influence of Marx’s works on the choice of the subject and statement of problems made by researchers of neoclassical, Austrian, and institutional schools of economics. A major achievement of Marxism is that K. Marx states the problem of how modern bourgeois societies emerge, develop, and die as well as their institutional systems which define the economic dynamics and distribution of public wealth. The way how the Marxists explain economic processes (such as dynamics of prices, profits, and incomes, cyclical patterns of production development, and many others) as well as theories of historical dynamics, why states rise and fall, class structure of societies, and inefficiency of decentralized market economies have not been verified. However, at present K. Marx’s works are very attractive due to the ambiguity of his criticism of bourgeois society and, above all, an aphoristic nature and emotionality of his works. The reason for this is an integrated character of K. Marx’s political, economic, sociohistorical, and even ideological and psychological doctrine. As compared to Marx’s doctrine, modern science is comprised of specialized sectors and, therefore, it is less attractive and understandable.

There is a fundamental difference between the human migration movements of the past and those of the beginning of the 21st century. The latter impose the need for a cultural assimilation of the migrants which they cannot master within one generation. This cultural transformation includes a human densification into a new living space, i.e. the essentially technology-based megapolises, which altogether represent the equivalent of an artificial planet. This new planet does not provide new resources or additional free spaces for an overall growth of material wealth. On the contrary, it asks for a drastic reduction of individual freedoms. The stability, even the survival of these mega centers is at stake without consistent subdivisions of the overall shrinking of spaces needed for all kinds of movements and of a consistent restriction of the exploding communicative interference within and between these mega centers. This essay is aimed at a first-hand analysis of a possible introduction of digital borders without which adequate legal spaces appear infeasible as an indispensable framework of this artificial new planet.

The author substantiates his opinion that I. A. Goncharov's novel "Oblomov" is a philosophical and symbolic literary text. The method of symbolization the characters allows the author to include into the novel a system of philosophical ideas revealing the cultural and historical specificity of Russia. So, for example, the character of Oblomov, according to the author, was formed as a generalizing type of some psychological traits of real Russian people. But gradually it was transformed into a symbol of the Russian "in general". Another character, Andrey Stoltz, symbolically embodies the synthesis of the Russian world and the West. Not only people perform a symbolic function in the novel. Oblomov's gown is a symbol of the Islamic East, which is sharply different from the Indo-Buddhist Far East. Thus, the philosophical depth of the novel is achieved through symbolization of characters, not by a collision of abstract ideas. The philosophical content of the novel is to identify the specificity of Russia (the "Russian soul") in its opposition to "the West" and "the East”. The "West" is treated as the mechanical, moving force, opposed to the fixed, inert "East". At the same time, the Western principles are immanent to the Russian ones, while the Eastern principles are transcendent, and they are connected with the Russian principles only mechanically. The specificity of Russia is in its "spiritualized" impulse towards the transcendental meaning of the existence. The philosophical content of the novel, thus, reproduces the Slavophile complex of ideas. However, unlike the Slavophiles, Goncharov created the novel not about greatness, but about self-destruction of the "Russian soul." The main characters of the novel experience an existential crisis due to the loss of meaning in life. But the feminine part of the "Russian soul", which embodies its dynamic and strong-willed principle, is not capable of transcendence. And the male part of the "Russian soul", which has this transcendence ability, is weak-willed, passive and cannot resist the fatal influence of the "East". Thus, the novel "Oblomov" is considered to be anti-Eurasian and it warns against "the Eurasian temptation".

The paper studies the transformation of the conceptual apparatus of modern social sciences, characterized by a shift from a socially-problematic to a risk-prognostic analysis. The author shows that these conceptual and theoretical changes are conditioned by the internal logic of sociology development, which has gradually transferred in the analysis of social phenomena from the study of unfavorable effects of social changes and symptoms of social deviations to the reasons that cause socially problematic situations. An approach based on the personal responsibility of “problem” individuals and social groups for their exclusion from normal social life was formed within the framework of social psychology and it is defined by a medical-criminological model that affirms the existence of “universal criteria for normality” and, accordingly, standards of behavior. In the framework of this approach, which was clearly manifested in social Darwinism, the main focus of problem-oriented studies is focused on the external symptoms of social ailments and the “deviant behavior” of individuals and social groups, or factors of their unsuccessful socialization, interpreted as a source of social problems. Theoretical and practical analysis shows consistency of the modern turn in understanding social problems, which is characterized by shifting the focus of research to an institutional-systemic level that generates conditions for the reproduction of social deviations and deprivations. According to the author, the analysis of risks in a sociological perspective takes over the baton of the development of problem-oriented research in social sciences. Modern sociology of risks was formed within the framework of critical reflection on the ideas of U. Beck (who understands risk as a rational strategy for transformation of uncertainty into certainty) and it is represented by sociocultural, constructivist, neo-institutional, administrative approaches. What unites these approaches is that risks are treated as products of social interactions that are deeply embedded in social structures, dependent on the external context and the conditions for the formation of subjective perceptions of risks, and the degree of vulnerability of different social groups, determined by their place in the social hierarchy of society. The critical direction in risk theory focused on the problem of risks interconnection and a system-institutional arrangement of society, emphasizes disproportionate vulnerability to the risks of various social groups, based on socio-structural inequalities, as well as imperfection of organizational structures created to minimize risks due to their greater fitness to the established institutional design, than to the challenges that they face due to their specific activities.

The article deals with the phenomenon of multilingualism and its most common case – bilingualism – from both the linguistics and philosophical points of view. More than a half of the global population at present are multilingual, i.e. they use two or more languages in their daily lives. The related changes in culture and ways of thinking require scientific research and philosophic reflection. The article briefly covers approaches applied by researchers of language and language ability to defining the nature of bilingualism.  Linguists and psychologists choose different criteria in order to determine the level of language fluency that allows to characterize someone as bilingual. Some scientists believe that even a minimum competence in listening, speaking, reading, or writing means that an individual is bilingual, while others consider a native-like fluency in two languages to be a necessary condition.  Using as a basis mainly the ideas of the 20th century’s analytic philosophers, the author attempts to offer a philosophical explanation to the mechanism that enables bilinguals to switch between their languages. The key philosophic idea that helps to explain the phenomenon is the concept of a language as a means of expressing thoughts and the only possible form for the existence of thoughts. The main language structure in which a thought can be expressed is a sentence, because it allows to establish relations between any objects of the world. The main criterion of bilingualism is not the ability to speak another language, but the ability to think in that language, whereas the criterion of the ability to think in a language is a skill to build sentences in that language.

This article analyzes the possible chance of overcoming the limited capacity of the existing theories of modernity to the explanation of the newest tendencies of transformation of society. Asked about the need to update existing concepts, because all of them, according to the author, reflect already leaving the next stage of the post-industrial development. The author believes that the prospect of explaining the rapidly changing social world and his prediction tool could become a concept of informational resonance in social structures. The author draws attention to the crucial role of information increase the transformation of all parties social life. But its role remains underestimated in constructing adequate models of the contemporarily, and especially in predicting consequences for social life rapidly developing information technology. Analysis and forecasting of social and anthropological implications of the next phase of the information-computer and the sixth industrial revolutions did not follow the intensity of technological innovations and for studies of the dynamics and forms technical-technological change. The author introduces the notion of "information resonance in social structures" and analyzes the possibility of building a concept of this process. In doing so, it relies on the expertise of multidisciplinary research using the concept of resonance, wave and synergetic processes. Describes typical manifestations of resonant wave processes in social structures and their effects. The author suggests and formulates arguments proving that the "information explosion" and information overload are transforming social structures, affecting primarily the basic system of society is social interaction. The article argues that with "the cage" social system processes similar to the studied mutations in cytogenetic. According to the author, the similarity of these processes allows for the social structure and the structure of social interaction to build explanatory model by analogy, turning on an interdisciplinary level, then the transdisciplinary approach and synthesis of notional apparatus. At this level, build a new theoretical objects - "mutation the cells of the social system", and citosociology which are offered as a concept in the context of the prospects for the development of transdisciplinary methodologies.