Ideas and Ideals

This article provides a theoretical justification for counterparty risk as an independent threat to an organization’s economic security. The problem is that in literature and applied research, counterparty risk is typically considered fragmentarily: through the lens of the counterparty’s creditworthiness, breach of contract, due diligence, bad faith behavior, or operational failures. Existing theoretical approaches do not provide a complete answer to the question of how uncertainty in counterparty relationships translates into multi–level economic damage and affects the organization’s key interests. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to construct a model describing the logic of the transition from the prerequisites of counterparty risk to its realization in the form of direct, indirect, delayed, and cascading damage. This work draws on the principles of the institutional approach, the theory of transaction costs and agency relations, the concept of opportunism, and methods for analyzing an organization’s economic security. The study clarified the concept of counterparty risk, differentiated related categories, and developed a conceptual model that includes risk determinants, mechanisms for its realization, and impact on an organization’s economic security. The scientific novelty lies in the synthesis of disparate approaches and the substantiation of the independent status of counterparty risk within the system of threats to an organization’s economic security. The theoretical signi ficance of the study lies in the formation of a foundation for developing methods for assessing counterparty reliability.

This article presents the results of a scientific study on the topic of improving financial digitalization in a cross-country perspective. In the context of the tasks being solved to improve the financial market, an important aspect is “feedback”, i.e., identifying and assessing changes in the attitude of retail and corporate consumers of financial services towards professional intermediaries operating in the context of global digitalization. The analysis was conducted based on factual data on the state of the financial markets of two countries – the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tajikistan. The conclusions also draw on the results of a sociological study conducted using a questionnaire survey of respondents of different ages (Russia). The work pays special attention to assessing the level of financial and digital literacy of the population of the two countries. The ultimate goal of this study is to demonstrate the objective determinacy of the financial market transition to a new format for providing banking services and to identify the opportunities that need to be used to increase the satisfaction and security of consumers of banking products in the current environment. To achieve this goal, conceptual principles from several Russian and Tajik public policy strategies for improving the financial market through digitalization were utilized. Undoubtedly, studying the experiences of two countries with similar economic structures, histories, and cultures will benefit both Russia and Tajikistan. Since the contours of future digital fi nance are only just emerging as the results of scientific socioeconomic research, conducting such research seems highly promising, as it could serve as the basis for the progressive convergence of the financial systems of countries with common payment systems, stock exchanges, and other institutions. Financial convergence in the modern world is occurring in many ways, affecting the interests of numerous participants–from ordinary consumers to the heads of large financial companies and banks, ministers, and others. Scientists–economists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and cyberneticists–seek to substantiate the feasibility and methods of transferring experience (global and international) in the functioning of the financial market. In this case, not only the concepts of financial market development are important, but also specific measures to improve interactions between suppliers and consumers of financial services.

The article develops the theme of rationality at the border of expressibility. The Indian doctrine of the four levels of speech (vaikhari, madhyama, pashyanti, para-vak) is considered in the context of mythological, philosophical and religious ideas of the East, West, and Ancient Rus’. The author highlights the common features of historically different teachings. The ontological interpretation reveals cosmic speech as the unfolding of the Universe during the period of activity of life (in Indian philosophy - during the period of Manvantara) from the original Voice Sound. The ontology of cosmic consciousness is identifi ed with the ontology of speech, which realizes itself “from the inside out”, from the stage of internal emergence of an idea (ideation) to completion in external articulation (objectification of meanings in things, physical or mental). Focus on an object (intentionality) and the construction of mental images by cosmic demiurges are essential features of universal speech. The concept of “logos” of ancient Greek philosophy absorbed all the main components of universal speech as the formation of meaning and the construction of forms: the externally expressed word, internal speech without sound and voice, logic, number, proportion, elements, species and seed logos. The teachings of universal speech have had cultural interpretations, particularly in poetry and in the psychosomatic practices of yoga. The author offers interpretations of the principles of universal speech in the creative practices of technogenic civilization. To understand the teachings about universal speech, the author draws attention to the languages of nature, which served as prototypes of symbolic thinking: sound, color, geometric shape, number, sensory images. The evolution of intelligence has led to the development of analytical abstract-conceptual thinking abilities and the quality of awareness. Historically, the concrete figurative and symbolic languages of mythology preceded conceptual natural philosophy and science, but continued to evolve in science, and even more so in art. The author believes that the evolution of sensory perception and imagination (sensing thinking), together with the construction of phenomenal languages, will lead to the integration of intellect and straight-knowledge, to the formation of the ability to control the internal and external levels of universal speech.

The research is devoted to the topic of patriotic education of students. Its purpose is to identify interpretations related to the concepts of “Russia” and “Motherland’’ among representatives of the younger generation. Paper presents the results of a study in which students represented this concepts using metaphorical maps and verbal descriptions. These concepts are considered in the study as individual ideas linked to culture that can be expressed visually and verbally. Methods from the cultural-historical school and a phenomenological approach were used for the study, while connections to the larger social context were established using world-systems analysis.

The study was conducted with a group of fi rst-year students during a class on the subject “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood”. Students created metaphorical maps demonstrating their understanding of “Russia” and “Homeland” and explained their work orally to the audience.

The analysis yielded 11 semantic groups, in which images and words revealed different aspects of these concepts. These groups refl ect different aspects of human life, leading to the conclusion that the concepts of “Russia” and “Homeland” are complex and simultaneously encompass different ideas.

It was found that the content of these concepts can be divided into two parts. On the one hand, there are ideas of state power, culture, and the country’s strength; on the other, there are personal, intimate images associated with home and family. Both are important for understanding these concepts. However, the textbook on the subject primarily focuses only on state and cultural aspects, barely touching on personal experiences.

These findings help us understand how the younger generation perceives Russia’s ideological turn toward conservatism. The values of stability and tradition, which are essential to conservative ideology, are reflected in national symbols and positive stereotypes about the country. Young people see Russia’s identity in both the strength and valor of the state and in simple, everyday things – family, home, and personal experience. According to students, personal experiences and everyday life are most important to them now.

The conclusion is that addressing these concepts through personal experience in the educational process can help young people better feel part of society and develop a sense of shared solidarity.

The article examines Spinoza’s ethical virtues through the lens of ‘virtue epistemology,’ a contemporary branch of analytical ethics. The topic is significant because it involves exploring cognitive virtues, values, and norms in the history of philosophy, highlighting their dialectical unity and contradictions. Spinoza’s moral philosophy demonstrates how moral truths are grounded in the synthesis of ancient worldviews with the philosophical and scientific advancements of the 17th century. This synthesis sheds light on the historical continuity in modern virtue epistemology, offering a new perspective on the ideas of ethical theory founders. Virtue epistemology thus serves as a framework for analyzing intellectual virtues within the meta-ethical and interdisciplinary discourse of 20th-century philosophy. The article aims to determine how applicable the modern division of virtue epistemology into reliabilism and responsibilism is to Spinoza’s ethical and epistemological thought. To achieve this, the study traces the development of virtue epistemology from Aristotle to the present, focusing on reliabilist and responsibilist approaches to acquiring reliable knowledge. It also analyzes key concepts in Spinoza’s philosophy related to virtue epistemology – such as ‘idea,’ ‘soul,’ ‘mind,’ and ‘virtue’ – from a systemic and structuralist perspective to identify connections with contemporary traditions. Additionally, the article examines the structure of virtue within Spinoza’s system and illustrates which epistemological approach aligns with his thought, considering the advancements in ethical science. The author notes that Spinoza’s concept of ‘virtue’ from an analytical standpoint has received little attention in Russian scholarly literature. The article reveals how certain underlying assumptions in Spinoza’s doctrine of virtue resemble these epistemological approaches but are actually more profound and transcend binary distinctions.

The article focuses on certain aspects of the multidimensional anthropological and eschatological concept of the prominent German Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann. Moltmann’s approach is based on the belief that humans are not only part of the natural world but also inextricably linked to it. This leads him to distinguish between several forms of anthropology: ecological, biological, cultural, and religious. Each of these forms has its own unique characteristics and focuses on different aspects of human identity and behavior. However, they all contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the human experience. Man is a unique creature. Although he is biologically almost ‘inferior,’ he is nevertheless capable of creating a culture. Man is the one with whom God is present, and humanity is the experience of this. Only man has the potential to attain the Kingdom of God. This potential is due to his ability to live in communion with God and his social activity, which is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the ‘true Spirit of life.’ Modern Christianity should encourage individuals to actively participate in worldly life rather than withdraw from it. Every person has hope for a better future. The issue of the future is a crucial challenge that Christianity presents to individuals. This challenge extends beyond the afterlife and encompasses the earthly realm. It is especially emphasized that the realization of this hope should be associated not only with the church, but also with personal experience, a sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and people’s efforts to transform the world order. Christianity should strive to establish justice even in an unjust society and freedom of faith in an unfree world. The Christian faith is the hope for achieving this and creates individuals who can gain the freedom of a ‘divine future.’

This article explores the transformation of the value orientations of scientific and technical actors – scientists, engineers, and designers – in the context of the transition from an information to a post-information society. It is argued that while the information age was dominated by the values of efficiency, access to data, and technological neutrality, the post-information society is characterized by an ‘axiological shift.’ Information ceases to be a resource and becomes an ontological environment, which highlights the issues of responsibility of scientific and technical actors in the information environment, its semantic richness, and its ethical understanding. Under these conditions, the actor in scientific and technical activity ceases to be a ‘source’ of symbolic and technical systems, an automatic translator of objective data. They become creators whose activities directly shape the anthropological and social environment.

The methodological basis of the study is an activity-based approach and the concept of the ethical dimension of science and technology. The author demonstrates that the information ‘saturation’ of the modern environment exacerbates value contradictions, leading to a revision of existing ethical frameworks and a search for modern ones. The article devotes particular attention to new forms of value positioning, such as ‘ethical engineering,’ which involves integrating moral principles directly into the structure of technical knowledge and activity, as well as the concepts of responsible research and innovation (RRI) and technology assessment.

Key vectors of transformation are identified: a shift from responsibility for results to uncertainty management, from objectivity to contextual justice, and from control to trust. The article substantiates that, in the context of hybrid subjectivity and distributed activity, classical normative ethics with individual responsibility is giving way to a new ethical orientation with distributed responsibility. It concludes that a new ethos is emerging, based on situational value choice, reflexivity, and a projective approach to the future. The article contributes to the clarification of the socio-philosophical determinants of the post-information society and proposes a parametric approach to value changes in modern scientific and technological activities.

N.A. Berdyaev develops and elaborates the principles for comprehending the national idea, previously formulated by V.S. Solovyov. The founder of the philosophy of All-Unity linked the meaning of a nation’s existence with the destiny of the Christian world, the Universal Church. According to Solovyov, the national idea has universal character, it consists in what God thinks of the nation in eternity.  In his works Berdyaev examines the Russian idea in the context of the establishment of God-manhood formation, emphasizes the priority of a universal, objective Divine will, calls for the renewal of Christianity and all aspects of social life. The personalist philosopher connects the impending religious revival with the development of the personal principle. He perceives Christianity as a revelation about the person, and the Western European idea of knighthood as the threshold of Christian anthropology. The most important component of the realization of the Russian people-nation is the knightly ideal – the basis for forming a new religious consciousness, an alternative to ‘worldly philistinism’ and total self-sufficing statehood.

Initially, Berdyaev’s attention to the “Russian Idea” was connected with his reflections on the causes and consequences of the First Russian revolution of 1905-1907. He came to the conclusion that Russia was destined for a great mission – to become a bridge between the Christian East and West, to unite humanity in its progressive historical improvement. To fulfill this mission, the Russian people must overcome their inherent shortcomings and create favorable conditions for perfecting the personal principle within its bounds. In the Russian person, who has absorbed knightly virtues, Berdyaev believes, the individualism of the West is superseded, and a synthesis of the two vectors of historical development, East and West, is realized.

The theme of Russia’s world-historic world mission becomes urgent in Berdyaev’s work in connection with the country’s entry into the First World War, and especially after the overthrow of the autocracy in February 1917. He views the victory of democracy in Russia as an external condition for the emergence of spiritual knighthood, whose thoughts are directed beyond the empirical world. The Russian philosopher hopes that the revolution will liberate spiritual forces of the people and will be accompanied by the formation of national aristocracy of the spirit. But in the summer of July 1917, Berdyaev observes that Russia is being sacrificed to the revolutionary element. He considers the Russian person’s inclination towards social utopias a consequence of centuries of slave-like existence of the people, the absence in the Russian national character of a sense of duty and responsibility. The Bolsheviks’ victory in the struggle for power in the autumn of 1917 confirmed Berdyaev’s worst fears. He states that in Russia, the forces of negation and degeneration, the force of chaos and disintegration have prevailed. There is no genuine revolutionary movement, no creative development. Class consciousness destroys respect for the human person. The triumph in Russia of the bourgeois ideal of prosperous existence in the material world, of equality and justice, over the hierarchical principle of the universe’s order, was symptom of the degradation of the Russian people and meant the collapse of N.A. Berdyaev’s “Russian Idea”.

The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics and patterns of development of Soviet private collecting. The article describes the sociocultural mechanisms of the historical dynamics of domestic private collecting within the context of the political, social, and economic processes of Soviet society and state policy. The phenomenon of Soviet private collecting is examined both in its holistic, institutional characteristics and in its individual manifestations. The following periods of Soviet history are analyzed: the early years of Soviet power, the NEP period, the Stalin period, the Thaw, and Gorbachev’s perestroika. The analysis included: a study of government documents, an analysis of the activities of state and public organizations charged with working in the fi eld of private collecting, a description of the activities of domestic private collectors, and the fate of their collections.

The methodology is based on a micro historical method, which allows us to highlight the role of individuals in history through the analysis of personal documents. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the use of the pendulum metaphor. As a result, it was established that the history of Soviet private collecting follows a pendulum-like pattern: increased state surveillance of citizens’ lives, making legal collecting impossible, was followed by a period of relaxed private initiatives in this area, and then a reversal. This shift in the country’s political course led to the active movement of cultural treasures, the emergence of new ways to locate collectibles, the formation of new types of collectors, and forms of communication between private collectors and with state institutions.

As a result of the study, the author concludes that private collecting not only reflects the logic of the country’s historical and cultural processes but also has its own developmental logic.

Studying collecting practices, the forms and methods of assembling collections, and the nature of the relationships between the state, state museums, and private collectors can be useful not only for understanding the historical process but also for understanding the ways in which national identity is formed and maintained and cultural heritage is preserved.

This article continues the testing of the analytical model of the Siberian super text as a cultural hyper palimpsest [17], applying it to Novosibirsk. While Kemerovo exemplifies an industrial center with the semiotics of “victim” and “resource,” Novosibirsk reveals itself as a different model – a deliberately designed administrative and scientific metropolis, a “capital” project in the Siberian context. The aim is to demonstrate the universality of the cultural hyper palimpsest model, capable of describing a fundamentally different type of Siberian city, and to identify the specific mechanisms of meaning-making in its subtext. Using Novosibirsk as a case study, the article examines the key characteristics of the hyper palimpsest: high density and conflict of overlays (transport, administrative, constructivist, industrial, and scientific strata); the presence of significant lacunae (prehistory, constructivist utopia, traumatic memory of repression); nonlinearity and the “overseeing” of hidden layers (for example, the tragic conditions of gaining capital status within the logic of subsequent growth); and multichannel narratives (architecture, toponymy). The city exists in a constant opposition. On the one hand, the official success story: a favorable transport hub, the establishment of a science city, and so on. But on the other hand, a different reality lies hidden beneath this: a forcibly imposed capital status, shaped amidst famine and a typhus epidemic; traces of “distribution zones” being erased under elite housing; utopian projects that remained only on paper. The article proves the heuristic power of the cultural hyper palimpsest model for the comparative analysis of diverse urban subtexts within the unified Siberian super text.

The article examines the changing role of the author-narrator as a defining feature of contemporary collective artistic practices and as a form of subjective narrative rupture. In this article, the term “narrative” refers to an artistic utterance organised through the sequential disclosure of meaning and presupposing an agency that holds this sequence together. The article argues that for understanding contemporary forms of distributed authorship, the relevant genealogical reference is not modernism in general but the specific institutional model of the Bauhaus: the workshop as a form of joint design production in which the artwork ceases to be an exclusively individual utterance. It traces a structural connection between this model and the curatorial concept of Documenta fifteen, where for the fi rst time a non-Western collective, RUANGRUPA, acted as artistic directors. It shows that the Indonesian idea of lumbung – a collective resource barn – does not bring about the destruction of narrative, but rather offers a different model of artistic coherence based on the distribution of authorship, resources, and responsibility. The methodological framework consists of structural analysis of narrative conventions, comparative art studies, and historical reconstruction.

Contemporary philosophical thought, characterized as post-metaphysical, is associated with an ontological transformation: the idea of a single substance that underpins various social practices is being replaced by communications that become social ontology. The change in social ontology, in turn, actualizes the need to study the philosophical foundations of education in the context of transition from a classical to a non-classical style of thinking. In this regard, there is a need to turn to the ontology of education, which takes on a communicative form (which is expressed in the motives of openness, incompleteness, variability of the educational space and educational knowledge). In the research literature, despite the presence of a large number of works covering educational communications from a pedagogical perspective, an insufficient conceptualization of the communicative ontology of education has nevertheless been identifi ed. The author sees the methodological basis of the communicative ontology of education in the works of a number of non-classical thinkers of the 20th century: K. Jaspers, J. Ortega y Gasset, M. Mamardashvili, J.-F. Lyotard, A. Toffler. Based on the analysis of the works of these authors, connections are identifi ed between the philosophical ideas they express and current educational practices and trends (humanization, humanitarization, digitalization, fundamentalization, etc.). An attempt is made to outline the contours of the communicative content of education based on the methodological concept of the School of Communicative Didactics (V.I. Tyupa, I.A. Zimnyaya, G.I. Petrova, Yu.L. Troitsky and others). A conclusion is made about the formation of a communicative ontology of education as a result of changes in philosophical discourse.

The article discusses approaches to understanding the nature of probability in mathematics and physics with the consequences of these approaches, as well as the difficulties that arise. The ontological status of probability is discussed. It is shown that probability theory, contrary to R. Mises, should be classified as a mathematical science, using the definition formulated by A.N. Kolmogorov. The application of this definition in practice is provided within the framework of the classical approach, provided that the connection with physical reality is defined through the concept of equal opportunity. To do this, the concepts of simple and complex events are introduced, and the method of decomposing complex events into simple ones is explained. The point of view is substantiated, according to which a mathematical probability determined and related to physical reality in this way can be considered an objective probability, that is, existing independently of any tests.

Various interpretations of quantum mechanics and approaches to understanding probability are also revealed. It is shown that in physics today the existing approaches to understanding the nature of probability contradict each other. In the Bohm interpretation, probability is an analogue of the classical approach – statistical objective probability, which has a mathematical formalization, and in quantum Bayesianism, probability quantifies the degree of reliability and depends on the subject conducting the experiment. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics tries to eliminate the difficulties associated with combining the wave and corpuscular properties of light and electron beams into a single picture by giving the ontological status of probability, which leads to the problem of understanding physical reality. The article argues for the need for a new connection between the mathematical description of probability and physical reality.

The empirical (frequency) approach of R. Mises is analyzed, which causes a lot of criticism, as it does not have a clear consistent formalization. The article argues that this approach is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. The probability given by M. Born in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is also considered, which formulates a new definition of probability, which does not exclude the difficulties associated with the physical interpretation of probability. Born’s approach is based on the classical approach and is reduced to a formal axiomatic definition, which assumes the interpretation of probability as a mathematical construct. The connection of probability with physical reality and the consistency of the statistical method of finding probability values remain unresolved problems, which creates a dualism of understanding probability: in mathematics – one thing, in physics – another. If in the mathematical approach, the solution of these problems is carried out through the connection of probability with physical properties, then in quantum mechanics, in the Copenhagen interpretation, problems persist, which is caused by giving the wave function an ontological status.