Ideas and Ideals

The article investigates the problem of philosophical substantiation of morality, the urgency of which is caused by aggravation of contradiction between the current state of ethical knowledge and the need to understand the new moral reality. The main issues, covered in the paper, are the following ones: defining the priorities, analyzing methodological models and defining the contours of the ethics future based on the disclosure of the content of classical and non-classical approaches to ethics. The author highlights the idea that philosophical justification of ethical knowledge reveals the interrelated statements: morality is the realm of real human experience; the starting point of morality is not an autonomous person, but people in their relationship to each other; the moral quality of human relations is determined by the ability to put oneself in the place of the other and to support general social agreement. Morality is a reaction to a specific human situation in the world and it is adequate to the peculiarities of human existence. To solve the formulated tasks, the author considers the problem from the generalized historical perspective and uses comparative approach, she also analyses advantages and shortcomings of methodological models showing characteristics of modern ethics. The first model under analysis is the metaphysical model, which establishes the conformity of moral provisions and methods of their philosophical justification, the second – an intuitive normative-ethical model, the third – a communicative normative-ethical model. Further, the author characterizes the existing approaches and points of view to solving this problem: absolutist and relativistic, special attention is paid to the activity approach. The author substantiates her position by emphasizing, that modern ethics should continue the humanistic tradition, taking into account the issues of moral attitude not only to a man, but also to the humanity as a whole. The author highlights the tendency to strengthen the opposition of morality and ethics nowadays. Some researchers think that these concepts denote coexisting phenomena. Responding to accelerated changes in the objective and ethical reality requires work to create a modern ethical paradigm, the essential characteristic of which should be the orientation of the person and society for the future. In conclusion, the author sums up the results: the formation of a new image of ethics implies moral creativity of the subject as a source of it. The problem of ethical codification is of particular importance, which is expressed in the practice of creating professional, corporate and service codes. Moreover, modern texts of codes combine features of professional, corporate and official documents. The future of ethics depends on the transformation of its basic foundations that will make morality the priority in the society. The prospects of ethics are connected with the improvement of tools and mechanisms of applied ethical research.

The author raises the question of the existence of scientific research in philosophy, as well as what research in philosophy and science is in general. The scientific status of philosophy is denied, while the interaction of philosophy and science in modern culture is emphasized. The author notes that the studies, as we understand them today, took shape quite late, not earlier than in the first half of the 20th century. Although in philosophy, there was something similar to research, perceived as dialectic (Plato) and thinking (Aristotle), which originated in ancient culture; in science, research develops later in the Hellenistic period (Archimedes is already a real scientist, not a philosopher). It is proposed to reconstruct the study, in which the problems and tasks are defined, as well as the construction of schemes and ideal objects, objective and subjective aspects are considered. A subjective aspect means self-actualization of the personality of a philosopher or a scientist in the process of research. The author discusses and characterizes the already mentioned distinctions on the material of two cases (Plato's “Pir” and Galileo’s work “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs Concerning Two New Branches of Science Relating to Mechanics and Local Motion with the Appendix about the Centers of Gravity of Different Bodies”). At the same time, they are compared with each other in order to clarify their features for philosophy and science. The author considers two cases of the formation and use of research methodology: first, when the methods have already been formed and determine the entire study, the second, formation of the methodology during the study itself. At the end of the article, the author discusses some features of the research, which are determined by its belonging to the institute of modern science.

This article is devoted to the study of the problem of adaptation and social positioning of physically disabled people in the archaic society. These inclusive strategies are defined by common notions of space and time, ways of forming identity, character of determining boundaries between the norm and anti-norm. The notion of the need to maintain stability is the key element for the traditional culture, and any way out of the normal and familiar is seen as a risk to the whole community. It is worth drawing attention to the fact that here it is about the received, but not inborn deformities. Having been injured a person can not perform his function, he becomes marginalized, which is extremely undesirable for the traditional society. Consequently, there is a need for such a mechanism that allowed disabled people to find their unconditional place in society, which, as any stable position, must be accurately defined and have a clear and functional algorithm of theoretical and practical reproduction.

The study is based on the structural-semiotic approach, which is based on K. Levi-Strauss and V. Ya. Propp’s theoretical and practical constructions, which has been further developed in the works of number of national and international researchers. Also, comparative methodology, which allows to compare similar variants of traditional world perception with each other and its implementation in relevant texts, and thus to recreate the missing components of the world picture of this culture, plays a big role in this study.

The analysis of archaic plots leads to the conclusion that traditional culture offers a variety of strategies to solve problems of maintaining social stability, providing unique and paradoxical opportunities for the effective functioning. Besides, social positioning of physical impairment within traditional culture should prospectively be considered in terms of notions about the necessity of compensation of lost opportunities by other ones, acquired as a result of injury. Here there is the rhythm of losses and acquisitions, customary to archaic worldview, when the damage in one area is compensated by the advantage in another.

The author of the article carries out ontological research of the anthropic principle in the limelight of worldview and scientific ideas. The author considers theistic and classical scientific approaches for their justification and shows their methodological incorrectness. In the theistic concept, its representatives stop the course of their reasoning as soon as it comes to the Creator who “intended to create” a certain world. The problem of interpretation is transferred from the material to the ideal level, but it does not find a satisfactory justification. In classical scientific approaches, the coincidence of constants is considered as an incredible accident and is explained by the existence of a plurality of worlds or even their ensemble, which again transfers the problems of interpretation to a higher level of being, but does not justify the essence of the case. In this and that case, the answer to the question, why the Universe we observe is like this, – remains open. In the context of modern post-non-classical scientific explanations, it is possible to substantiate the anthropic principle without additional worldview speculations. The universe functions according to certain laws, in which no objective was originally set. And since the goal has not been set in advance, it is methodologically incorrect to talk about the probability of the appearance of a particular structure, since the concept of a “favorable event” in principle is absent. When a complex structure is formed, the probability of its occurrence becomes equal to one – this is a reliable event. According to the author, the appearance of a man in such an ontological interpretation acts as a natural stage in the evolution of the cosmos. In this case, it is impossible to speak about a specific biological species, but we can speak about the fundamental possibility of complication of matter, as a result of which certain properties appeared in the system that had not taken place at the earlier stages of the structural organization of matter. The appearance of new systemic properties at each level of structural organization of matter leads to an increasingly complex structure that sooner or later will lead to the birth of human mind. In other words, in modern scientific interpretations, an anthropological turn to the understanding of the Universe as a place of “moving a man into the Universe” is carried out, and his role in the further development of civilization is incommensurably increased.

The research is devoted to the identification of patrimonial properties of the highest political power and its interaction with regional elites in the Turkic world in the context of continuity with the political tradition of the Golden Horde and its fragments - the Siberian Khanate and the Russian state. The methodology of the study is based on the civilizational approach, which assumes the multi-variance of socio-economic and political development of peoples with different statehood and territories, as well as the biosphere concept of culture that is close to it. The methodological bases of the research are the following theories: V. Vernadsky’s theory of biosphere and noosphere, N. Ya. Danilevsky’s theory of cultural-historical types, the concept of civilizations (society) as a system of interaction of individuals and institutions, P. Sorokin’s concept of economic and cultural types. To determine the concepts of "state" and "statehood" in the study, the theory of "early state" by Henry J. M. Klassen is used. An important methodological position is the continuity of the state institutions of the post-Golden Horde space of the Mongolian empire, and, accordingly, of the Turkic statehood, originating in the works of J. de Guignes mid-XVIII century and developed in later studies. As a result of the research, several characteristic features of the socio-political organization of the Turkic statehood were revealed. The first is "order for trade", that is, the situation in which statehood is formed around the economic idea, in relation to the Turkic khaganate - around the idea of ensuring the stable functioning of the trade route from East to West. The second is "the political ahead of the ethnic". In the Turkic world, ethnic groups are formed after the formation of political associations. "Turk", "Mongol", "Russian" - for a long time were not ethnic concepts, taking such a meaningful load for a long time. The third is statehood as power not over territory, but over people "It dominates people over people, but lives on earth" - one of the main messages of political self-consciousness of the Turkic world. This statement of the problem of power removes a number of traditional "problematic issues" of describing the Turkic states - from the question of borders to the problem of the applicability of the formation theory and the concept of "feudalism" towards them. From this follows the fourth feature of the Turkic statehood: the maximum remoteness of the central government from the "land", the authority of the supreme ruler as power not over the state "as a whole," but over regional elites. On the one hand, this creates a well-known halo of the sacredness of the supreme authority, on the other - it makes it extremely unstable, obliging for constant search for compromises with local rulers. Against this background, a special role is played by "grassroots" social structures that are distinguished by stability against the backdrop of changing supreme rulers. The latter circumstance, in particular, determined the relative simplicity of integration of the Siberian Khanate to the Russian state: the new government simply "transferred" the self-administered units (volosts) of the aboriginal political association. The Russians did not offer the West Siberian aborigines anything fundamentally new: since the statehood in the Moscow kingdom and the Siberian Khanate was based on the same principles, the new government was not actually engaged in building political institutions here, using the already existing system of relations.

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.

Enlightment philosophers treated XI-XVII centuries of Russian philosophy with a bit of scepticism. According to the canons of the European history of thought, Russian philosophy’s early period does not deserve to enjoy scientific status. Although this point of view has its followers, careful examination of textual sources and artefacts has proven it wrong. The following article analyzes ancient Russia's intellectual history within the framework of evolutionary rationality theory. The systemic design of the article integrates the achievements of archeology, history, philology, philosophy and history of science. It is everyday life that pushed forward scientific progress in Russia. The calculation of paschal cycles stimulated astronomy and mathematics. The XII-th century witnessed creative efforts of Kirik the Novgorodian, a distinguished mathematician. Computational texts' complexity provides bright evidence of high level research conducted in the competitive atmosphere. Translated texts of Saint John of Damascus, Andrey Kurbsky, Al-Ghazali and Maimonides made a contribution to logical studies. Ancient Russian thinkers used these works as a starting point to shed light on both religious and secular issues. The understanding of medicine as a kind of sacred knowledge made it a birthplace of innovation. There were several medical schools categorized by the way they addressed the body-soul dichotomy: teotherapy (spiritual guidance), non-traditional medicine (naturopathy and psychotherapy), nature-aligned medicine (Hippocratic tradition). “Galenovo on Hippocrates” is a colourful example of an ancient Russian text based on antropo-cosmic correspondence and qualitative nature of time. Christianization raises the question of ancient Russian political rationalism. The encorporation of translated Christian literature into the history of Russian thought prepared fertile soil for the development of abstract logic. The study of self-developing spatial thought in “Paleya Tolkovaya” shares its conceptual hallmarks with today’s information and communication theories. Spiritual significance of the early textual heritage increases along with the rising popularity of cognitive practices.

The article explores the connection between modern narrativist philosophy of history and epistemology of Immanuel Kant. Both narrativism and Kantianism are interested not in reality itself, but in the ways of cognition of reality. Both assert that reality in one way or another is created by consciousness. According to Kant, human consciousness “creates” the object with the help of a priori concepts. Such theorists of narrative as Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, Paul Ricoeur argue that narrative is a product of consciousness activity. Narrativity brings narrative structure and completeness to the material. Thus, narrativity is something similar to the a priori concepts of Kantian philosophy. Integrity is one of the main attributes of the narrative. Its analogue is the unity as a category in the “Critique of Pure Reason”. The integrity of the narrative is derived from intrigue as a unifying factor. One of the aspects of the integrity of the narrative is the self-identity of the character. For the historical narrative, the integrity of the character is often a problem, since the state does not have such a degree of inner unity as a person. Both Kant and narrativists raise the question of the correlation between reality existing in consciousness and reality outside consciousness. Unlike Kant's conception, in the philosophy of historical narrative the source material is not so unknowable as the Kantian “noumenon”: it is the level of historical sources and chronicles. As a result, in narrativism a view of narrativity as a distorting factor is possible, which is impossible for a priori concepts in Kantianism. Thus, from the point of view of Hayden White, one model of the interpretation of reality becomes dominant in the historical narrative, suppressing other semantic lines. The article is based on the concepts of analytical philosophy (Arthur Danto), philosophical hermeneutics (Paul Ricoeur) and poststructuralism (Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, Keith Jenkins, Alan Munslow), and classical and postclassical narratology (Tsvetan Todorov, Seymour Chatman, Wolf Schmid).

The article considers the problem of values as the most relevant in the system of cultural and social studies of our age, a problem integrating in itself various aspects of the interaction between the human and the outside world. The value appears as a dynamic phenomenon, having an object-subject nature, formed in society and existing in it as the central link of spiritual culture, the core principle of the human activity. It is noted that the value as a social phenomenon cannot have an absolute final expression, which leads to the plurality of its definitions. The main elements of the value structure are distinguished: purpose, evaluation, significance, ideals and norms, the emergence of which is connected with the vital activity of human and society, as well as with the identification of the semantic side of the concept. Attention is drawn to the dichotomy of value, which carries within itself the comprehension of the world as the source of values and the discovery of a relation to it as an identification of the values of the source itself. It also reveals the duality of value orientations that carry within themselves, with one the one hand, internal, terminologically repeating meanings, on the other hand, the difference in understanding and practical realization of these meanings. The above contradiction in the comprehension and validation of values in the real life allows to appeal to the value principle in any kind of social confrontation, that is used in modern information, hybrid and other "bloodless" wars of our age. A special place in society is occupied by its armed forces, which carry out a specific type of activity, directly dependent on the state, regulating the entire system of relations of each of their representatives in situations of any degree of complexity and under any type of conflict. Such activity implies not only high professionalism, training, but also a stable system of values, which alone can lie at the base of every act that is at the same time the implementation of norms, ideals and values of subjective nature and the expression of state goals. Consequently, in the modern world, the category of value finds itself on the front line of the worldview, it is the central factor in almost all forms of activity, forming the spiritual culture of society, of each social group and of a person.