Ideas and Ideals

The article suggests a critical overview of the most prominent discussion among the European and American researchers about the dogma problem in Sextus Empiricus teaching: whether the Pyrrhonian sceptic can have a dogma. Due to his philosophy’s features labelled by Sextus as a non-dogmatic one, scholars have divided into two groups. On the one hand there are supporters of an «urban» interpretation (M. Frede, G. Fine, C. Perin) who argue that the sceptic can have some beliefs – namely impressions passively acquired by the sceptic during his life. On the other hand there are the supporters of a «rustic» interpretation (J. Burnyeat, J. Barnes) who refute the former view and take the opposite one: sceptics can have no belief, for belief is defined as a proposition about the world taken to be true by an agent who expresses it. In that case the sceptic’s ataraxia, based on suspension of judgement, wouldn’t come to life. After the analysis of arguments a critical rethinking of the grounds of the discussion is presented. G. Striker argued that the results of a discussion would depend on belief’s notion. K. Vogt suggested to apply the ancient notion of belief as an assent to an impression and came to the conclusion, that the sceptic cannot have beliefs. His beliefs would be pathos, which just push him to act. In addition an idea of K. Vogt is presented that one should distinguish doxa and dogma, for the latter notion was thought as a body of teaching, not as a singular statement. The conclusion contains the main results of the discussion to this moment.

The article investigates the characteristics of socio-cultural manifestations of theoretical knowledge about socialization. The author identifies these manifestations with the theoretical images, which have three attributes. First, theoretical images are the results of (re-)construction of theoretical discourse which appropriately represents the main traits of reality. Second, the mentioned images correspond with the types of scientific and philosophic rationality, i. e. classical, non-classical, post-nonclassical rationality. Third, theoretical images rely on different versions of normative, interpretative or normative-interpretative methodological perspectives. The author argues that the listed attributes should be given a high priority while studying knowledge about socialization as phenomena of socio-cultural reality.

In the article the author suggests a new approach to the problem of anomie, which manifests itself in the form of deviant behavior. In his opinion inconsistence is a prerequisite for social anomie. The main social viability criterion of an individual is the official recognition of the value and necessity of his/her activities and functions which the person performs within social institutions. The main criterion of the social inability of an individual is non-recognition of activities and functions resulting from the imbalance between the consumed and produced products of his/her activities (labor) with the disbalance in favor of the consumed. It does not matter whether the individual produces more goods required from him/her or less. The very presence of the disbalance in the amount of the products of labor generates anomie. As the result of this imbalance the individual is first gradually alienated from the labor process by the society and then from people as the subjects of social life because of that disproportion in the produced and consumed goods, which doesn’t meet socially accepted norms. The alienation of the individual causes inadequate forms of adaptive reactions in the form of deviant behavior, with the aim of social adaptation, which guarantees safety. The author singles out an individual as the subject of anomie, who is a source of deviant behavior and social institutions in which the individual is not able to socialize. Planning his further work the author outlines the plan of his investigations: to define the socio-historical stages of social institutions development, as well as to determine the involvement of individuals in the activities of those institutions.

The philosophy of N. Berdyaev is a restless movement of thought in the space with three conceptual coordinates. The person, creativity, freedom in their unity constitute the universe of Spirit, define the dynamics, the existential orientation of genuine philosophical thinking. The philosophical thought creatively confirms the being of a free person by means of the ideal man’s image formation: the ideal man is opposed to the evil kingdom of necessity, oversteps the limits and overcomes the empirical world. According to Berdyaev, the ethical quintessence of the European culture is three images of the ideal man – the sage, the saint and the knight. This article traces the sources of the knight ideal’s interpretation in the texts of the Russian thinker. The romantic idea of knighthood as “an eternal task of human spirit” demanded overcoming of early Slavophiles’ conceptualizations of knighthood, but Berdyaev valued these authors very highly for their aspiration to holistic understanding of Spirit’s life, to the harmony between the internal and the external. In his publications of 1904-1907 N. Berdyaev outlines two lines of knighthood’s idealization as an embodiment of medieval mystical Christianity’s depth and the noble human type. The first line is connected with the discussion about “new religious consciousness”, D.S. Merezhkovsky's idea about metaphysical primordiality and a religious equivalence of "spirit" and "flesh". The second line is determined by Berdyaev’s treatment of K.N. Leontyev's heritage where the historical knighthood represents itself as an alternative of the bourgeois commonness and mediocrity, vulgarity and philistinism.

Within the concept of post-industrial society the accumulation of human capital is considered to be a major factor of accelerated economic development. Since the advent of the theory of "human capital" has been more than half a century. On the subject of many papers published. However, researchers still do not have a single point of view on the economic content of the concept of "human capital". Appeal to the essence of the category of "capital" leads to the conclusion about the illegality of the use of the term in the strict scientific terminology "human capital". The article reviews the definitions, that researchers offer to disclose the content of the concept. Analysis of the content presented definitions leads to the conclusion that in this case, refers to the human potential and the degree of its development. Within the framework of the theory of "human capital" great attention is paid to the measurement of its cost. However, the value of human potential is difficult to keep exclusively to the valuation, since the possibilities of direct measuring method does not exist in principle. In connection with this conclusion about the need for further research to develop methods to a greater extent based on qualitative rather than quantitative analysis of human potential.

This article is devoted to the problem statement for the interdisciplinary research of “the will" concept. As the main methodological principle of research, the author uses the archaeological method of Michel Foucault, whose method was used by Giorgio Agamben in the study of “the will" concept. The main part of the article gives an integrated cultural-historical psychological analysis of “the will" concept in Russian philosophy and psychology. The author comes to the conclusion that “the will" concept exists only in the Russian-language philosophy or in translations of European philosophical studies into the Russian language. Thereby this fact indicates that the translations created the concept confusion: “the wish” was interpreted as “the will”. Basing on the works of modern psychologists (E.P. Ilyin, V.A. Ivannikov), the author comes to the conclusion that the philosophical understanding of the will in the XX century was forgotten, and the psychological understanding is deficient. The author pays special attention to the theory of the will suggested by the Russian psychologist K.D. Kavelin, whose work was not noticed during his lifetime and it is forgotten by modern psychology. In conclusion, the author proposes to direct the philosophical efforts to create the foundations for defining “the will" concept, giving the opportunity for applied psychological work with this concept.

The problem of moral principles in the life of an individual and society has become rather acute in the context of the global spread of consumerism as the installation of modern civilized behavior of the individual. Traditionally, moral foundations are investigated as moral principles of individual behavior. The article draws attention to the problem of moral foundations of social life, which was first identified by the Russian philosopher V. Solovyov. The author considers two issues. The first one is the problem of moral foundations: whether morality has a religious origin or its roots are hidden in sociogenesis, in establishing principles of behavior in cultural communities. The second problem concerns the existence of issues of morality in public life and its impact on social relations. The article shows that the moral principles express solidarity relations among people. They arise in the course of new programs formation of symbolic behavior in communities following the way of active sociogenesis. New behavior, which is programmed by culture, requires establishing solidarity relations among members of the society, because deprived of such relationships, socio genetic development becomes impossible. Cooperation, based on the feeling of inner unity, is essential to the society. For this reason, moral foundations turn out to be the system principles of social organization, including economic life and economic relations in the society. Moral progress in the history of society is manifested in the development of solidarity principles up to the level of universal human morality, which defines the principles of behavior for societies and individuals.

What is Marxist philosophy? About thirty or forty years ago the answer could be found in any textbook of philosophy. Philosophy is "the science of universal laws of motion and evolution in nature, human society and thought." The inseparable connection between philosophy and "various branches of positive science" was postulated as well as its status as a universal method of all sciences, and so on. But here is the casus – there are no works of Marx himself, where his philosophy of Marxism as such would be stated. Kant has three of his "Critiques", Hegel has "The Science of Logic." So N. Mikhailovsky once asked: "In what work did Marx expound his materialistic understanding of history? ... Where is such work of Marx? – There isn’t any." Lenin, at the beginning of his revolutionary career, sarcastically giggling, replied to Mikhailovsky that the philosophy of Marx is "dissolved" in his numerous works on economics, politics, history, etc., and it is, so to say, their "dry residue". Indeed there is little reason to fully trust the quality of the analysis of the leader of the world proletariat and his conclusions.

The article is devoted to the anniversary of the birth (370 years ago) and the date of death (300 years ago) of the outstanding German philosopher, mathematician, physicist, jurist, historian, linguist, and diplomat Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz undertake a creative synthesis of science, philosophy and theology, producing a unique philosophical system. The foundation of this system is constituted by the doctrine of preestablished harmony. In all areas in which he worked, Leibniz made great discoveries. It inherited the gift of synthesizing the disparate views of different thinkers on the basis of the original methodological principle based on the universality and rigor of philosophical arguments in their logical sequence. Leibnitz is also a great theologian and originator of the profound ethical system. Ethical optimism of Leibniz's teleology has Christian religious worldview as its basis.

In this paper the author tries to look at Leibniz from the topos of Indian philosophy. François Jullien called such a strategy “dépayser la pensée” – to withdraw a thought from its habitat and to see it through the lens of different culture. She refers to Indian philosophy, especially to some Buddhists systems, and highlights – in a more general intercultural perspective – continualistic and atomistic approaches in Leibniz’s thought. The author argues that despite Leibniz’ consistent criticism, predominantly from the continualistic position, of the ancient and the contemporary atomism, Leibniz in his own metaphysics remained a convinced atomist - his monads are the only final causes of things, substances, or "true atoms of nature". In this paper, Leibniz’ mereological arguments are examined with the help of some principles and conceptualizations developed in Indian philosophy. In particular, the author compares the whole-parts models in monadology and in Nyāya, as well as the Buddhist schools of Abhidharma and Yogācāra. The article also shows that because of their atomistic approach both Leibniz and Buddhists confronted a problem of how to give an account for a complex substance, and proposed different strategies of dealing with its continuity. If we evaluate the position of Leibniz, for example, from a Buddhist point of view, its main drawback consists in theism, in an attempt to shift responsibility for the universe from human beings to God, and instead of investigating causal relations between things to recourse to the theistic principle of pre-established harmony.