Ideas and Ideals

The purpose of the article is to reflect on the concept of Intelligent Design, the connection between the development of this theory and the development of scientific ideas about the world, as well as about free will and predestination.

As a basis in the methodological aspect, the authors applied the five Proofs of the Being of God, which were developed by Thomas Aquinas, namely, the proofs: 1) from motion, 2) from the producing cause, 3) from necessity, 4) from the degree of perfection, 5) from the purposeful cause.  After characterizing each proof, the authors of the paper refute or prove each of the proofs in terms of the concept of predestination and the Being of God. We believe that Thomas Aquinas’ proofs are based in part on Aristotle’s logic and hence on commonplace conceptions of the world. Aristotle, indeed, is the founder of a number of modern sciences that are key today. In addition, the authors refer to one of the greatest philosophers of the enlightenment era in relation to his views in the doctrines of expediency and aesthetics as a category of the beautiful and reasonable.

The relationship between ontological randomness, quantum physics, and issues of freedom of choice and predestination is analyzed. The authors then draw on the aforementioned philosopher’s writings on free will and Genesis to reflect on the theses of causality, and conclude that freedom is God, and God is where there is choice.

The article distinguishes and analyzes two planes of discourses about death, as well as understanding of the cosmos: natural, independent of man, on the contrary, determining his life, and private, so to speak artificial, oriented towards man. Already in the works of Plato and further throughout history, these planes can be reconstructed. For example, they are demonstrated in the novel by Alexander Bogdanov “Engineer Manny”. The author shows that the private plane was initially independent; it was formed in the Ancient World on the basis of semiotic schemes that were invented as means of resolving problematic situations. The understanding of death and space is no exception. The corresponding schemes were understandable to man, as if they were created for his benefit, which is easy to explain, because it was man who invented the schemes that allowed him to understand what was happening and act effectively. Another matter is modern scientific explanations of the Universe and human death. They often describe (model) natural processes independent of man, which with iron necessity force him to follow these processes, but which man cannot understand. The isolation of the private plan, the author argues, did not benefit man. When the latter ignored the natural plan, realizing only his desires in the cognition of reality, the resulting reality became similar to the content of his consciousness without any correction from experience. The author illustrates this position by analyzing one of Carl Jung’s youthful memories. Based on the difference between these two plans, a brief understanding of the natural, humanitarian and social sciences, as well as death and the Universe, is offered. Although the Universe is a physical object, it is also an object of the humanities and social sciences. The latter can be understood in the sense that the Universe is a highly complex text and message that we have yet to understand, as well as a certain form of life, naturally, not biological, the nature of which, again, needs to be understood and explored. In conclusion, the article discusses the crisis of our civilization and a possible scenario for its resolution.

The subject of the research in this article is epistemic paternalism, considered from the perspective of social epistemology. The research methodology uses methods of socio-philosophical cognition (systemic, functional, informational, etc.). The article substantiates the idea that, despite the variable assessments of epistemic paternalism, it has an objective basis for existence and in one form or another is reproduced in the processes of cognition, meaning the intervention of actors in the processes of cognition of individuals without their consent, but with the aim of bringing them benefi t. However, in many cases epistemic paternalism is diffi cult to distinguish from paternalism in general. A number of conditions must be fulfi lled to distinguish epistemic paternalism from general paternalism. But even in this case it is important: who implements such an intrusion, for what purpose and to what results it leads. The variant of epistemic libertarian paternalism seems preferable, although it could not avoid drawbacks. The question is: can the choice made by an individual in the process of cognition, based on given epistemic conditions, be considered truly free, and can he himself be considered an autonomous subject of cognition? This variant of paternalism largely corresponds to the concept of ‘nudging’, in which the creation of appropriate conditions ‘pushes’ the individual to a certain choice. At the same time, the following problems remain unresolved: who has the right to carry out this ‘nudge’, how to determine the true goals of such an intrusion and prevent malicious actions on the part of interventionists, etc.

The subject of this article is the phenomenon of the boundary between the private and public spheres. The research is based on a systematic approach that allows analyzing and combining individual aspects of the phenomenon under study, as well as methods of logical and historical analysis, hermeneutical and logical methods. The ratio of public and private spheres has now become the subject of consideration of a number of social sciences and humanities. If the public sphere is fundamentally transparent and open to everyone, then privacy, on the contrary, is connoted with darkness, opacity, mystery. A person as a social being is characterized by the need for both public and private space. The boundaries between public and private space can be both material (doors, walls) and immaterial (laws, traditions, social norms). It is noted that these boundaries are not static, they change in space and time, depend on culture, generation and social stratum. Socially constructed boundaries of privacy are formed on the basis of existing ideas in this society about the degree of personal inviolability. What a person is allowed to demonstrate and see is subject to public expectations. Different ideas about personal boundaries can lead to cross-cultural confl ict. It is argued that borders protect the right to privacy associated with tact, voluntary refusal to interfere in the personal affairs of another person. The observance of social distance constitutes personal freedom in both public and private space. Deprivation of privacy humiliates human dignity. Therefore, the right to private space, the ability to defend and protect personal boundaries is a necessary prerequisite for personal freedom and autonomy.

Philosophical anthropology, which arose each time in a specifi c historical reality, sought to create a universal image of man, calling this process the revelation of his essence. This problem was solved by Russian philosophy, which developed the Orthodox Christian tradition within certain historical boundaries. Modern philosophy, solving this problem, cannot ignore the basic philosophical and anthropological ideas of different civilizations, primarily Eastern, Western and Russian philosophy. The space for their comparison and synthesis can be the semantic conceptual fi eld of sociogenesis, which opens up a universal approach to the formation of a human being as a global cultural and biological species. The sociogenetic approach reveals the opportunity to compare two main essential models of man, which are represented by the version of the self-suffi cient individual, which developed in the European Enlightenment, and the version of the conciliar (communal) man, the discussion of which began in Russian philosophy of the 19th century. In the context of sociogenesis, the basis for distinguishing anthropological versions is the opposition of individualistic and communal (conciliar) principles of behavior. A specifi c synthesis of these principles in one or another cultural-historical model appears as a solution to the contradiction between the individual and species model of behavior within the cultural-biological species “human being”. In the natural world, the coordination of individual and species behavior is resolved through the genetic inheritance of species behavior, eliminating the confl ict between species and individual. The sociogenetic evolution of a human being has posed the task of searching for species-specifi c universal principles of behavior, which has complicated the solution of the problem of harmonizing species and individual behavior. The complexity of the situation is that human behavior is directed by cultural programs in the context of a sociogenetic search for a species program capable of ensuring the global consolidation of the human species. In this context, philosophical anthropology requires a sociogenetic support, and the appeal to it can be called the “sociogenetic turn” in philosophical anthropology.

The relevance of the topic is due to the formulation of issues related to the state of modern social reality, the presence of risk in it as one of the essential characteristics. Abandoning the past mechanism of development – tradition as a stable foundation, modern society has acquired the specifi city of the absence of a non-stop movement – a transition that does not correlate with the movement from one stage to another, more stable, but represents the continuity of the process. This is a fundamentally new ontology of reality, in which the constancy of its movement, instability create a situation where, as U. Beck says, in the rapidity of change, there is a “collapse of scientifi c, technical and legal rationality” [3, p. 167], traditionally used as a method of organizing public order.

The article updates the Platonic category of metaxy (“Timaeus”) as a characteristic of the dynamics of being, its constant ‘intermediacy’ between the ‘past’ and the ‘future’ while eliminating the stable ‘present’. Modern social reality is a meta–reality, a transition in its infi nity of realization, the consequence of which is the risk and fear of falling into the abyss of baselessness. Risk is a specifi c characteristic of a social movement in the continuity of transition, when the stability of the present is lost, and the horizon of the future is not visible in traditional logic, which causes existential fear that constantly accompanies a person.

‘Risk Society’ (U. Beck) demanded a new rational ‘arrangement’ (A. Giddens) and a relevant methodology for its construction. The article is devoted to the problem of searching for this methodology. As such, the rationality of the emerging new trend in philosophy – ecosophy - is proposed, which actualizes a holistic view of the world, building on the category of ‘life’ in the unity of its manifestations in nature and culture. The problem is solved by contradiction: on the one hand, the risk is associated with the growth of science, which has historically had a humanistic connotation, on the other hand, its embodiments, being realized today in high technologies, turned out to be turning against man. Contradiction initiates risk. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the rationality of the ecosophical content as a methodology for the study of modern risky social ontology caused by scientifi c technologies, to argue their impact on human health and to show the possibilities of medicine in solving this problem.

The analytical review examines the most signifi cant publications of Russian researchers devoted to Śaṁkara (VII–VIII centuries), issued since 2000. The review is divided into parts devoted to individual authors, and their works are evaluated according to their contribution to Russian Śaṁkara studies, the criterion of which is the author’s translations of Śaṁkara’s texts from Sanskrit into Russian, and their conceptual interpretations.

The “calling card” of V.K. Shokhin’s works is the inclusion of Śaṁkara’s discourse within the discussion of topical issues of philosophical Indology, theoretical philosophy and religious studies. The review examines the monograph “Stratifi cation of Reality in the Ontology of Advaita-Vedānta” and a number of articles; it explicates the methods by which Śaṁkara “fi ts” into the history of world philosophy.

In S.L. Burmistrov’s publications, Śaṁkaraa’s texts are also used not only to solve special historical and philosophical problems, but also to solve topical problems of philosophy. The article “The Concept of Consciousness in the Philosophy of Śaṁkara” makes a completely reasonable conclusion on the decisive role of Śaṁkara in the formation of the Vedāntist concept of consciousness. In the article “Religious Consciousness in Classical Advaita-Vedānta”, Śaṁkara’s interpretations of Ātman are placed in the context of modern discussions on the forms of religious consciousness.

N.V. Isaeva’s publication “The Teachings of Śaṁkara – Brahman as a Look and a Tail ...” contains interesting material that contributes to Śaṁkara’s understanding of Brahman as “full of bliss” (ānandamaya), and an assessment of the importance of the philosopher’s ideas in the development of Vedānta concepts.

In V.G. Lysenko’s article “Sleep and Dreaming as States of Consciousness...”, structured as a “slow reading of the text”, two versions of Śaṁkara’s topology of consciousness are considered. The researcher reveals ambiguity of Vedāntist terminology, leading to different models of consciousness.

Y.V. Predtechenskaya in her article “Defi nitions of Brahman in the Upaniṣads: Apophatic and Cataphatic Approaches ...” quite productively draws Śaṁkara’s comment to the solution of the religious problem of contrasting apophatic and cataphatic approaches to the defi nition of the Absolute.

The book by R.V. Pshu “Vedārthasaṁgraha by Rāmānuja and the Formation of Viśiṣṭā-dvaita-vedānta” brings some new information of the infl uence of Śaṁkara’s ideas on t he Vedānta movement. The author notes that the Vedāntists lived after Śaṁkara did not consider his ideas as fundamental to them, and they did not develop them, but Śaṁkara’s teachings provoked their criticism, and they formulated their conceptions as antitheses to Śaṁkara’s ideas. There in the book, the reader can also fi nd  useful information on the history of world Śaṁkara Studies.

The paper presents the analysis of the historical development of ideas of tolerance, freedom of conscience and speech in Early Modern times. These concepts were introduced to the ideological & philosophical discourse by Reformation and Counterreformation movements. An initial point of their development was linked to the strife of competing parties and thus got a strong instrumentalist bias. Mainstream theorists of the Reformation (e.g. T. Beza, Peter Martyr Vermigli, T. Goodwin) regarded tolerance & freedom of conscience as a means for propagation of a true faith (i.e. Protestantism) and a guarantee against its suppression by the powerful governments of the unfaithful. Mainstream theorists of the Counterreformation (e.g. F. Suarez, M. Becanus) followed this pattern as well. While mainstream theorists stressed a collectivist and clerically-conservative perspective of the freedom of conscience, their adversaries proposed an individualist and politically radical vision. S. Castellion, R. Brown and R. Williams argued that freedom of conscience was a universal right of a person of any confessional identity; a true Reformation, ought to be a “Reformation Without Tarying for Anie”, not just a reformed papal tyranny. Disputations between the proponents of the conservative and the radical perspective culminated in the writings of J. Milton and T. Hobbes. Despite the sharp confl ict of parties they belonged to Milton and Hobbes stood on a common ground of a secular & individualist vision of the freedom of conscience. Their analysis of the practices of freedom of thought & speech and of the tensions between the citizen and the state set an initial point of the religious thought in the Enlightenment epoch.

The Christian worldview of the late Middle Ages was quite diverse, but at the same time extremely contradictory. Northern France, Flanders, and the German towns in the Rhine Valley were fi lled with various spiritual movements and beliefs that largely determined the spiritual climate of medieval Europe. One such spiritual current was the Beguine movement, which was condemned by the Catholic Church, as were many other religious sects during this period of European history. Nevertheless, the reasons for the persecution of the representatives of female semi-monastic communities are still not clear enough for us. On the one hand, we know that the condemnation of the Beguine’s is directly related to their social activities, because they created serious competition to the Catholic Church. But on the other hand, limiting ourselves exclusively to social reasons, we miss the fact that the Beguine movement was largely mystical and many representatives of women’s communities experienced extremely intense extraordinary experiences. Therefore, turning to the problem of the condemnation of the female mystics, we fi nd that the root of these persecutions lay in their reinterpretation of religious ecstasy, rather than their social activities. To substantiate this position, we examine in detail the representation of love-mystical cognition in two of the most infl uential beguines, Hadewijch of Brabant and Mechthild of Magdeburg. We observe that they not only express their extraordinary experience, but they also theorize it. The mystics abandon the notion of love-mystical cognition as a passive process of perceiving God. Instead, they turn to an active kind of love and justify a form of vita activa. This allows them to bridge the gulf between God and man, and to move independently beyond their own female bodies, burdened by medieval patriarchal norms. The female mystics, as we show, change the very relationship between woman and the world, thereby endowing her with greater autonomy in relation to medieval society and divine reality.

Modern philosophy of mind focuses on such aspects of consciousness as perception, information processing, and qualia (also occurring in perception). At the same time, insuffi cient attention is paid to such conscious actions of the subject as decision-making and action. However, action requires no less consciousness than perception. It is not so much the philosophy of mind that deals with action as the philosophy of subject. This article makes a connection between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of subject through the concepts of freedom and selfrelationship. The subject is essentially free because he makes decisions. Even if his decisions are determined by his biological arrangement or his history, he transforms past determinations into future ones, and still the decision-making occurs, so that some freedom is required. As for mind, it is also related to freedom because its light is lit in the same decision-making situations. There is a special group of decisions concerning subject’s relations. The subject’s relations to the world, to the Self, to the Others, to transcendence are considered. In relation to the world, the subject can manifest his freedom through self-restraint, renunciation of power, based on Heidegger’s maxim of “letting being be.” He can build his attitude towards Others in an ethical paradigm, for example, according to the teachings of Levinas. Transcendence can be given in the form of looking at oneself from the outside. A special group of actions of the subject is distinguished: self-attitude and self-action. In the fi eld of mind it is self-consciousness. The subject can modify his own attitudes based on the transcendent point that he himself posits. This also has implications for the choice of values. The religious relation to one’s own soul and Heidegger’s doctrine of transcendence are considered. Self-existence is a supremely free action of the subject through which he constructs himself.