Ideas and Ideals

The article presents an analysis of the original concept of heliocentrism by A.L. Chizhevsky, set out in his scientifi c works. The scientist correlates the infl uence of solar energy with the factors of historical and social processes. According to his concept, the state of predisposition to the behavior of human masses is a function of the energetic activity of the Sun, the regular sharp rises of which transform potential psychic energy into the energy of action. Under the condition of mutual complementarity of natural and social factors, when a situation of “imaginary chaos” arises and certain laws begin to play a dominant role, heliotaraxis creates history. The article expresses the idea that Chizhevsky’s heliocentrism allowed not only to look at the Sun as the “pulse of the Earth”, but also to combine love for the subject of scientifi c research with poetry. His worldview is a cosmoplanetary all-unity, embodied in the integration of scientifi c ideas about the energy of the world with its artistic refl ection. The methodological basis of the study was the analysis of Chizhevsky’s theory of heliotaraxy, his idea of t he infl uence of solar activity on the course of the historical process. The fi rst and main conclusion is that despite the ambiguous attitude to Chizhevsky’s scientifi c works, he is the author of original philosophical works. Analysis of the scientist’s heliocentric ideas contributes to the understanding of his worldview, and, consequently, his entire creative heritage. This idea has every right to be recognized as one of the methods of understanding the world around us. It is worth noting that the interpreted philosophical views of Chizhevsky are not only of interest in themselves, as scientifi c theoretical research, but also have heuristic value for modern science. One of the main conclusions is the conclusion about Chizhevsky’s scientifi c courage, his devotion to his scientifi c ideas, his ability to search and assume, without fear of being caught in gross ignorance and ridiculed. 

The purpose of this article is to clarify the political views of the Eleatics. The relevance of this work stems from the paucity of research on this topic. Signifi cant gaps in the sources hinder the study of the political views of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus. This article provides a historical reconstruction of the Eleatics’ political views based on biographical analysis and a contextual approach. It has been established that Xenophanes’ poetry contains criticism of tyranny and oligarchy. The arguments in favor of two versions of Parmenides’ party preferences are considered. The version of Parmenides’ democratic orientation is based on the reports of Strabo and Aristotle. A parallel is drawn between Elea and Taranto. Similarities in the social structure of both policies are noted. Based on information about the democratic structure of Taranto, an assumption is made about the democratic orientation of Parmenides’ state activities. The version of Parmenides’ aristocratic orientation is supported by Strabo’s report on the aristocratic state structure of Massalia. It is noted that this polis, like Elea, was founded in the Western Mediterranean by people from Phocaea. It is suggested that there were similarities in the state system between Elea and Massalia. It is shown that Parmenides’ legislative activity could have been aimed at creating strict laws in the sphere of morality and legal proceedings. It is established that reports of Zeno’s struggle against tyranny do not allow us to draw an unambiguous conclusion about his party affi liation. The version of Zeno’s commitment to the aristocracy does not have an advantage over the version of his democratic orientation. Based on the analysis of the political situation on the eve of and during the war between Samos and Athens, it is concluded that Melissus was a supporter of oligarchy or aristocracy. It is established that the idea of continuity in the party preferences of the Eleatics looks weak and unconvincing. At the same time, it is shown that all representatives of the Eleatic school were characterized by commitment to polis values. The views and activities of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus manifested polis patriotism, a high level of political activity, and the priority of the interests of the state over the interests of the citizen.

This paper is a preface to the translation of Johann Eberlin’s “Wolfaria” (1521) – the fi rst utopian text in Early Modern Era of continental Europe. J. Eberlin von Günzburg (c. 1460–1533) – religious reformer and thinker, humanist, translator. The article brings the brief analysis of his biography, social and political activities, as well as his writings. His ideas are subjected to the research in the context of reformation and humanist movement, they are linked to the views of the Wittenbergian reformist circle, the views and practices of radical reformers and the theories of the emerging utopian tradition of early Modernity. We point out the main stages of the development of eberlinian thought from radicalism to moderate views. Eberlinian utopianism is compared to the ideas of T. More, Ulrich von Hutten, J. Reichlin, Erasmus of Rotterdamm. Attention is paid to his attitudes towards social justice, property, education, humanistic studies and connection to early Lutheran views on the Christian state.

The paper also outlines the principal stages of the research of Eberlin’s writings and thinking from late 19-th to early 21-st centuries. We give also a brief survey of the translations of “Wolfaria” into European languages. The translation is provided with commentaries. This is the fi rst critical translation of “Wolfaria” into Russian.

The article is devoted to the processes of displacement of religion into the sphere of marginalized religiosity in the era of Modernity. The research based on various sources related to the given historical period. They include alchemical manuscripts, legal papers, scholarly writings as well as Russian and international studies of alchemy. The following scientifi c research methods were applied: textual, descriptive, comparative, biographical, systematic, etc. The article introduces the main fi ndings of the study. It shows that in Western Europe for a long time alchemical beliefs and practices were woven into everyday life. The marginalization of alchemy took a long period and ended only in the 18th century. This process of delimitation occurred despite the self-positioning of alchemists as pious believers, on the one hand, and despite their intellectual and social demand and actual support from the secular authorities, on the other. In the era of modern times pressure on alchemy came to be exerted both by offi cial Christianity, which did not accept alchemical teachings and practices that raised suspicions of witchcraft, and by scientifi c natural science, which rejected it because of its mythologized narrative and its attitude of secrecy about research. As a result, alchemy was marginalized not only in the religious sphere but also in secular cognition. The alchemical tradition is an eclectic combination of knowledge and skills, so it has a great capacity for adaptation. Because of these abilities, it was able to persist into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when alchemical elements began to be incorporated into various esoteric movements, mystical cults, art historical concepts, and so on. Nowadays, alchemy is still a marginalized phenomenon, closely associated with religion but not reducible to it. The results of the study are important for understanding the history of religion and the evolution of the relationship between religion and science.

One of the relevant and demanded areas of modern philosophical knowledge is the philosophy of education. When education is considered within the framework of socio-philosophical analysis as a social institution and a cultural phenomenon, attention is paid to its role in the creation and development of culture. The philosophy of education focuses on identifying the goals and principles of the educational systems, on determining pedagogical methods and their impact on the individual and society as a whole. The problem fi eld of the philosophy of education defines the object of study of pedagogical anthropology, which consists in identifying the meaning of the relationship between teacher and student, in understanding the role of the dialogue component in pedagogical work, and finally, the conceptualization of the anthropological program for the formation of the spiritual and physical health of the student. All of the above is the subject of this article. The source study base used the classical works of the pedagogical and philosophical-anthropological nature of the ancestor of Russian pedagogical anthropology K.D. Ushinsky, works on the problems of the pedagogical philosophy of Free education and education of the great Russian writer and teacher L.N. Tolstoy, as well as modern research literature of a socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological nature. The theoretical and methodological toolkit of the article is based on the application of the general scientific principle of historicism, which makes it possible to identify the dynamics in the analysis of the problems posed of a philosophical and educational nature, as well as on the use of the method of cultures-comparative analysis, since the chronological period of Russian history covered in this work dates back to the time of the Alexander reforms before the formation of the era of the Silver Age of Russian culture and concerns a number of iconic figures of this time.

The subject of the research is a philosophical analysis of mythological narratives about artifi cial intelligent beings, considered as cultural prototypes of modern concepts of artifi cial intelligence (AI). It is proved that myths are archetypal matrices encoding fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of the mind, the limits of creation and the responsibility of the creator. The study thus hypothesizes that archaic myths do not contain intuitive predictions and guesses, but archetypal models that continue to implicitly structure the discourse around AI technologies. The focus is on the reconstruction and systematization of key mythologies that reveal fundamental anxieties and ethical dilemmas associated with the act of artifi cial creation, which remain relevant in the era of machine learning and autonomous cognitive agents. The methodology is based on a philosophical and comparative analysis of relevant mythological texts using a hermeneutic approach to identify stable archetypal structures and their subsequent projection on modern AI problems. The scientifi c novelty of the work lies in the systematization of four archetypal models for creating artifi cial intelligence – hybrid (Pandora), mechanical artifact (Talos), emergent entity (Sparta) and combined model (Golem) – and in demonstrating their direct connection with the current problems of AI. The correlation is traced between the unpredictable destructive actions of mythological characters with artifi cial intelligence and the shortcomings in modern AI systems being developed: the ‘black box’ (opacity of solutions), the ‘sinister valley’ (psychological discomfort from too realistic, but not living creatures), emergent behavior (unpredictability), loss of control and ethical risks. The main conclusion is that understanding the mythological heritage provides an indispensable cultural and philosophical toolkit for the responsible development of AI technologies, which sets a coordinate system for solving problems of interpretability, security and reconciliation of values, necessitating an interdisciplinary dialogue between engineers, philosophers and ethicists.

The article attempts to analyze philosophically the vulnerability of conversation in online communication. The purpose of the article is to analyze the factors that weaken conversation as one of the key genres of communication. The author notes that the effects of online communication mediated in the format of social networks and instant messengers on direct interpersonal connections have not yet been fully studied, as the emphasis is already shifting to a high-tech novelty – neural networks. The role of the smartphone as a key cultural artifact is noted, turning the ‘good old’ social networks into immersive media platforms with functionality that intensifi es the process of destruction of the genre of conversation in real time and co-presence. The article posits the thesis that technologically mediated electronic interaction – whether in messengers and social networks or with a neural network – constitutes one of the fundamental communicative mythologemes of the age of universal connectivity. It is substantiated that the activity occurring in all the listed formats is not a conversation, despite the prevailing perception as such. The mythologem is born from a stable feeling of communicative well-being against the background of an increasing number of virtually continuous connections (superfi cial online communication with its own specifi cs), while in fact, due to the almost constant technological mediation of interaction, the fullness of the conversation as a communicative act and the fullness of communication in general are truncated. The author reveals the substitution of the corresponding concepts: in the case of a messenger, this is just correspondence, in the case of a social network, correspondence in the context of constructing an identity. As for the interaction with the neural network, carried out through prompts - whether it is communication –  is a debatable issue, the author comes to the conclusion that, rather, it is a complex imitation of communication through elements of dialogicity. The study used methods of statistical and structural analysis.

The crisis of the neoliberal model of capitalism that we observe today, and the transition to a platform-based economy is accompanied by a profound ideological transformation. The article provides a critical analysis of posthumanistic and transhumanistic concepts, which are considered as the ideological foundations of the emerging order of digital capitalism. It argues that, despite their declared rhetoric of liberation, these philosophical movements become tools for legitimizing new forms of exploitation, alienation, and control. Methodologically grounded in critical theory and the Marxist tradition, the work demonstrates how the interests of digital capital are objectively served by ideas of human deconstruction (R. Braidotti) and techno-utopianism/transhumanism (N. Bostrom). The philosophical concepts examined in this work effectively camoufl age the real social and economic problems arising from the rapid development of digital technologies, namely: the hyper-concentration of capital and power, the precarization of labor, and the destruction of human subjectivity. By manifesting a radical rethinking and alteration of human nature, these ideologies create a philosophical basis for the formation of a plastic and manageable ‘new human’, stripped of identity and critical consciousness. This ‘new human’ as a construct is a necessary and systemic condition for the existence and development of digital capitalism.

The article examines the impact of digitalization on the social structure of modern society. As a result of digital technologies taking center stage in the functioning of public institutions, the position of the individual in society is changing. Modern people exist both in the world of digital networks and in the real world, “online” and “offl ine.” At the same time, they can play different roles and have different statuses in the real world and the digital environment. Thus, a kind of dualism of human existence is formed. Under the infl uence of digital technologies, the social structure is undergoing a transformation. This is refl ected in the emergence of new social groups whose activities are either related to the functioning of digital structures or are modifi ed under the infl uence of changes taking place in society. Entire social groups are formed and function in the digital environment, creating the phenomenon of “network societies” with their own norms. A relationship is emerging between the transformation of the social structure and the modifi cation of the political system of society. Political actors are evolving. For example, political parties are being modifi ed into electoral clubs. Changes in the social organism caused by digitalization have led to a loss of support from the traditional social groups and strata that parties previously targeted. Under the new conditions, the moods and needs of new social strata and groups must be taken into account. As a result, political forces are forced to adapt to the new conditions, which leads to the erosion of the political spectrum. Thanks to the widespread introduction of digital technologies, the voices of individuals and entire groups have become noticeable. Social networks are largely replacing traditional media, actively competing with them and becoming a signifi cant force in public life. All of this is becoming an important factor in politics that must be taken into account by participants in political action. In a digital society, politics is becoming more complex. As a result, the political system is gradually transforming and acquiring new features. 

This article presents the fi rst Russian translation and a philosophical analysis of “Notes on the Chambers of Canon Veneration in the School of Confucian Scholars of Dazu County” (Dazu-xian ruxue zunjing ge ji 大足縣儒學尊經閣記) by Zhao Zhenji 趙貞吉 (1508–1576), a prominent Ming dynasty statesman and an understudied philosopher. The text records a dialogue between Zhao and Dong Ji, the magistrate of Dazu County in Sichuan Province, on the occasion of the Chambers’ inauguration at the local Confucian school. In his discourse, Zhao articulates his views on the role of the Confucian canons in the world and Confucius’s intentions in their compilation, while introducing the concept of wei 未 (“not yet”) – the inaccessibility of understanding Confucius’s thought – and “four omissions” (si shi四失) associated with it, namely: excessive breadth (bo 博), leading to confusion (luan 亂); heterodoxy (yi 異), leading to fragmentation (san 散); verbosity, leading to impropriety (jian 僭); and excessive concision, leading to absurdity (dan 誕).

The study concludes that the “Notes” align with orthodox Confucian ideology, displaying intolerance toward non-Confucian teachings while exhibiting minimal infl uence from the Taizhou school’s typical humanism, pragmatism, and populist tendencies. Additionally, the article suggests that the text may have been composed at the request of local authorities and identifi es and explicates numerous allusions to classical Chinese philosophical works.

This article presents the fi rst Russian translation and a philosophical analysis of “Notes on the Chambers of Canon Veneration in the School of Confucian Scholars of Dazu County” (Dazu-xian ruxue zunjing ge ji 大足縣儒學尊經閣記) by Zhao Zhenji 趙貞吉 (1508–1576), a prominent Ming dynasty statesman and an understudied philosopher. The text records a dialogue between Zhao and Dong Ji, the magistrate of Dazu County in Sichuan Province, on the occasion of the Chambers’ inauguration at the local Confucian school. In his discourse, Zhao articulates his views on the role of the Confucian canons in the world and Confucius’s intentions in their compilation, while introducing the concept of wei 未 (“not yet”) – the inaccessibility of understanding Confucius’s thought – and “four omissions” (si shi四失) associated with it, namely: excessive breadth (bo 博), leading to confusion (luan 亂); heterodoxy (yi 異), leading to fragmentation (san 散); verbosity, leading to impropriety (jian 僭); and excessive concision, leading to absurdity (dan 誕).

The study concludes that the “Notes” align with orthodox Confucian ideology, displaying intolerance toward non-Confucian teachings while exhibiting minimal infl uence from the Taizhou school’s typical humanism, pragmatism, and populist tendencies. Additionally, the article suggests that the text may have been composed at the request of local authorities and identifi es and explicates numerous allusions to classical Chinese philosophical works.

This article advances the discussion by S.Yu. Kolomiytsev and N.I. Martishina concerning the limitations of falsifi ability criteria within the scientifi c demarcation problem. The subject of the study is the dynamics of a theory’s scientifi c status during its development and the relationship between this dynamic and classical demarcation criteria. The methodology employs an evolutionary model that frames scientifi c status as a variable attribute of a theory’s life cycle. This model defi nes fi ve sequential stages in a theoretical construct’s evolution: metaphysical (speculative idea), protoscientifi c (testable hypothesis), scientifi c (verifi ed theory), aposcientifi c (outdated but utilized model), and exscientifi c (rejected concept). The terms protoscience, aposcience, and exscience serve as author defi nitions for stages 2, 4, and 5, respectively. The main result establishes the specifi c, context-dependent function of classical demarcation criteria as triggers for transitions between these stages: potential falsifi ability enables the shift from metaphysics to protoscience; empirical verifi cation drives the progression from protoscience to science; the accumulation of anomalies or emergence of a competing theory signals a move from science to aposcience; irrefutable falsifi cation underpins the transition from aposcience to exscience. The analysis demonstrates that these criteria operate not as universal indicators of scientifi city, but as mechanisms governing the evolution of demarcation status. Furthermore, the model reveals the potential for a theory to return from aposcience to science through modifi cation, highlighting the prevalence of evolutionary correction over radical paradigm shifts. The conclusions emphasize the practical value of this approach. It provides a systematic tool for assessing a theory’s epistemological status using stage-relevant criteria, classifying transitional knowledge states, optimizing scientifi c resource allocation, and integrating the frameworks of K. Popper, T. Kuhn, and I. Lakatos into a unifi ed dynamic scheme. Critically, the model offers a solution to the core theoretical diffi culties regarding the applicability and limitations of demarcation criteria raised in the Kolomiytsev-Martishina discussion.

The article presents the results of a search for an answer to the question of how educational events in higher education affect a student’s worldview attitudes, value-normative foundations, and belief system. It notes the vagueness of the theoretical and methodological framework of the educational technology under discussion, the signifi cant lead of practice over theory, and a reliance on pedagogical intuition. Nevertheless, pedagogical thought clearly identifi es the essential characteristics of an educational event. The content of any educational event can be described in the language of meanings and values. This means that the technology works effectively in matters of transforming worldviews at both individualistic and collectivistic levels. It is noted that educational events fi t organically into the model of transformative learning. Personal participation, the ‘inclusion’ of the student in the subject of knowledge expands boundaries of the worldview, develops a general culture of self-improvement. It is proposed to initiate not only educational events that implicitly contain an exit to the worldview level, but also those specifi cally aimed at solving pressing worldview issues. In conclusion, the general rules of the algorithm for preparing and holding an educational event are defi ned. The question is raised about the formation of a common educational-event fi eld of the university, designed in relay logic and assuming end-to-end support for the student throughout his entire learning path.