Ideas and Ideals

In the publications of 1904-1907 N. Berdyaev traced two lines of knighthood’s idealization: the embodiment of medieval mystical Christianity’s depth and the noble human type. In his book “New Religious Consciousness and Society” (1907) he added the third line, which is formed on the basis of the first two and it portrays the knight as an attractive example of overcoming a self-sufficing, depersonalized, godless state. The main theme of the book is the necessity to update Christianity and all parts of public life. Religious revival, according to Berdyaev, can be connected only with the development of a person. In the modern world the false hierarchy of values is dominating: subjective interests, relative willpower of a person forces out the higher unconditional values connected with the universal objective God’s will. The state serves as an expression of subjective human will, a product of the boundless enslaving power of one person over another. N.A. Berdyaev recognizes free theocracy as an ideal, the only morally justified form of the state. He sees an alternative to the modern false theocracy in the system of values of medieval culture - anarchical principles of feudalism and the personal knightly honor. The Russian philosopher correlates the knightly ideal of the Middle Ages with the modern epoch and convinces a reader of the necessity of its actualization. New forms of organization of public life assume a knightly war for the liberation of a person, including the liberation from violence of the state. Speaking about the mutual relationship between the individual and the state, Berdyaev joins the internal polemic with Slavophiles. He formulated his position on this question earlier, in the articles of 1903-1904. Berdyaev rejects the Slavophile idyll of the former Russia. Greatness and individuality of the nation presupposes freedom of a human being, the national spirit manifests itself not in the solution of the state problems, but in creative realization of universal tasks, common to the whole mankind.

  Philosophy in the traditional society was based on other principles than in the modern one. As a part of the traditional culture, it created unity, because it originated from the single principle. It was linked with traditional Sciences, among which there was alchemy. Alchemy became prosperous in the Alexandrian epoch, in Greco-Roman Egypt. It was synthetic metaphysical cognition and at the same time practice of a man and cosmos transformation. Its aim was "healing" the world; it had to deal with qualities, not quantities. With the advent of Christianity, alchemy became persecuted. As a result, it degenerated into the practice of “metals transformation”. Alchemists were rightfully called philosophers. The subject of our study, therefore, is to extend the understanding of philosophy. The applied method consists in the disclosure of the metaphysical status of alchemy as a different type of thinking, not reducible to the categories of modern science. The same analysis has been made in relation to contemporary philosophy. The modern state of humanity is anti-traditional. This is the realm of quantity. There is neither a tradition of initiation, nor the intellectual elite, which put it into practice. Therefore, philosophy ceases to follow its calling, becoming a shell of individual opinions and judgments of non-universal nature. The result of this research is different understanding of philosophy and its role in the unity of culture, it differs from the understanding widely spread today. Nowadays it is understood as generalization of scientific knowledge. But philosophy cannot be subordinated to science as it was once subordinated to religion. Its mission is to find the truth. Modern philosophy bears the imprint of all negative aspects of culture: individualism, “the realm of quantity", the lack of unity, crisis in every direction, anti-traditionalism. Alchemy was the historical experience of transforming knowledge. It sought to overcome the limitations of individual existence.

On August 6, 2017 Boris G. Yudin (Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chief Research Fellow of the Humanitarian Expertise and Bioethics Sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, editor-in-chief of the journal "Man", member of the “Ideas and Ideals” editorial board) died after a prolonged critical illness.

This article discusses several key concepts of the research strategy of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, who put forward the concept of technical, biological, psychological and collective individuation, directly related to the problem of self-developing systems. This review is focused on finding the ways to understand the philosophy of Simondon and justification of its relevance today. The author proposes the interpretation of the origin of individualized sensible beings in the light of such important concepts for Simondon as the transduction and allagmatic, involving also other related presentation. The organization according to Simondon is neither a thing nor an object, nor a ready idea; its purpose is reconciliation of the different facilities in order to obtain sustainable effects. There are no constant organizations, but there are only processes of organization. Organization is the link between people and non-people, ideas and beliefs. It is of "pre-individuated" facilities that compiled assembly and action network. Organization is individuated and becomes metastable. But there are no established regimes of organization. Mechanisms of transduction permanently affect the organization and cause significant changes in it. The thinking about individuation by Simondon relating to organized structures (non-living, living and social) is very important and contemporary. The process of transduktivity suggests epistemology that Heidegger and Derrida, in different terms, called the metaphysics of presence. The author shows that the allagmatic project goes further than the cybernetic project in various philosophical strategies, as well as in the natural sciences and the humanities research, that again points to its interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character.

The article considers the problem of moral ideal formation in the philosophy of personalism. It shows the relationship of religious and social views on moral development. In modern society, due to the simplification of the social communication process, it is necessary to universalize the moral category in order to adopt the norms of behavior and ethical views of society, which, in fact, differ greatly from each other. The article considers the issue of moral self-development in the limelight of aspiration for inner freedom of an individual taking into consideration the growth of communication and travel freedom. The key thesis is the need for the moral ideal formation with setting of goals, values, paradigms, which will serve the aspirations of a modern, harmoniously developed person to the moral growth and the ideal, which embodies the best moral qualities and can become a model. The author compares religious and philosophical points of view on the formation of the moral ideal, which appear to be united in the philosophy of personalism. According to the author the existence of a moral ideal is a prerequisite of moral self-development of a person. The result of the analysis is the conclusion that the unity of goals, values and paradigms of moral self-development, in the context of religious and philosophical direction of personalism contributes to the moral ideal. Reaching the moral ideal requires setting goals in the moral education of the society.

During all their history people have always been striving for acquiring the integrated worldview. In the Christian part of the world theology and science have traditionally been of great importance in the formation of the worldview. First, theology dominated in gnoseological respect, but then, in the last half-thousand years the leading role was given to science. What is the relationship between Christianity and science nowadays? This article is devoted to consideration of positions of some well-known Christian thinkers specializing in this field. Rejecting the division of spheres of competence between Christianity and science, and their autonomous development, they consider an integrative approach as the most perspective, constructive and productive. The author analyses some flaws in attempts to integrate theology and science, which have been done within the frames of natural theology. Unlike natural theology, which stresses natural sciences component, the suggested approach highlights the idea, that in Christianity theories of creation and salvation are inseparable as well as spiritual life development. Modern integration stipulated by specific and similar features of Christianity and science suggests the formation of integrated worldview on the basis of common philosophical schemes and categories. As one of the most accurate philosophical basis for such integrated worldview the author puts forward «philosophy of process» which considers the world as the dynamic, complex but at the same time the interconnected single whole.

The paper investigates contradictory character of the concept ‘freedom’ in the modern society. The author aims to create new principles of structure in this field. The essence of ‘freedom’ is defined by the notion ‘subject-ness’. The heuristic potential of this concept is determined by its capability of synthesizing ideas of self-causality and self-determination, which constitute essential semantic kernel of freedom. The author considers the main tendencies of personalization / depersonalization and subjectivation / objectivation in social-individual human life as the main aspects and contradictions of ‘freedom’. With respect to the understanding of freedom the objectified impersonal principles of social life are accentuated, which are usually referred to as social system. The problem concerning the relationship of an individual and a system is presented as one of the key socio-philosophical and humanitarian themes in discourses forming the basis of all modern philosophy of freedom. The main idea of the paper is to substantiate new structuring of freedom concept. In contemporary culture it includes three main elements: self-determination, self-identity and self-realization.

The article in question deals with the problem of coexistential intercourse in close connection with the opportunity of death. The author defines coexistential intercourse as the universal mode of subjects’ coexistence in their fundamental existential opportunity. The subject of the author’s research is coexistential intercourse in relation with the opportunity of death. Death tends to be a negative opportunity of unique coexistential meaning and its positive opportunity either. The author of the article sets a goal to investigate the existential meaning of death as a fundamental opportunity of coexistence. According to the goal the author  puts the following problem: is it possible to express the irrational contents of coexistential experience by means of rational thinking? Thus, the unique coexistential experience may be expressed by logical means, but we cannot totally avoid contradiction and opposition between coexistential experience and theoretic discourse. Besides, the author of the article uses existential thinking in close connection with hermeneutical approach which makes possible more profound comprehension of the essence of death. Due to the author’s approach death utters itself through a solitary act of negation. The latter bears ultimate overmeaning of non-existence. Moreover, an act of negation represents a specific “challenge” proposed by death. The subject of coexistence is free to accept a challenge of death and to suggest his own response to the opportunity of negation. The subject of coexistential intercourse brings forward and “utters” his conscious and responsible position, opposed to total negation. This makes possible specific “communication” with death which becomes a “subject” of intercourse. Besides, death appears to be a positive opportunity of coexistential intercourse.

The article presents a systematic analysis of Aristotle’s views on the nature and qualities of time and human opportunities of its researching. This analysis is based on three treatises of the philosopher – "Physics", "Metaphysics" and "Categories". Aristotle’s concept of time is a synthesis of metaphysical (speculative) and scientific (instrumental) approaches to the study of time. The specific character of Aristotle's epistemological strategy includes also acceptance of the pre-theoretical, everyday knowledge that Aristotle recognizes as reliable because of the accordance of man to the world. The article is focused on the following aspects of time according to Aristotle: time and eternity; origin of time; reality of time, time and movement; continuity/discontinuity of time; interrelation of time’s parts; ontological essence of the moment of time (or point “now”); time as border. Some questions are considered in the context of Aristotle’s polemics with the Eleatics and Plato; some of them including the problem of “inner time” of things are raised for the first time. There is given a solution of the well-known Aristotle’s paradox on absence of time, because past no longer exists, future doesn’t exist yet and present is only a moment without duration. According to Aristotle, the point "now" doesn’t deprive the present reality, but, on the contrary, confirms this reality. In addition, if the point "now" is a reference point (boundary) for other modes of time that's why it is the ontological condition for the being of time as a whole.

The article is devoted to religion as one of the forms of comprehension of being. To denote the processes of getting various kinds of knowledge in different types of activities in the society the term «comprehension» is used (which is wider than the concept «cognition»). Methodologically «comprehension» is closer to Hegelian interpretation of knowledge acquisition as a cultural and historical process. As a result of comprehension different types of knowledge are formed: the reflective knowledge presenting the world in its own logic and the evaluative knowledge connected with trying to understand this world. The comprehension of being proceeds in stable forms which occupy their own places in general comprehension system (mythology, philosophy, science, religion, art, occultism, trivial and practical knowledge). Depending on the created images of objective reality, methods of its acquisition, methods of obtaining knowledge and their specificity, realistic, imaginative and ambivalent forms of comprehension of objective reality are distinguished. Along with mythology and art, religion can be attributed to imaginative forms of comprehension in which images of the world are created: on the one hand, realistic, and on the other hand, imaginative (in religion, moreover, sacred), built according to the laws of imagination. As any form of comprehension of being, religion has a structure which is represented in the social, epistemological and psychological blocks. The social bloc reveals the process of forming beliefs in the course of religious activity. The epistemological block reflects the specificity of religious knowledge and the methods of obtaining it. The psychological block is dedicated to the peculiarities of religious faith as a gnoseo-psychological mechanism of consciousness, and it also includes other psychological aspects related to the process of obtaining religious knowledge.