Ideas and Ideals

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.

In the article the words “mir”, “volya”, “svet”, “pravda”. On the material of the Ancient Russian literature it is shown that each of these words has at least two substantially distinct meanings, and two (or three) meanings influence each other, creating game of senses inexpressible in other languages. At the same time, these words define the semantic core of national self-identification in modern times, forming the certain attitude to the key principles of life. In XIX-th century in Russian poetry “volya” is opposed to the Western “svoboda” (liberty) as the Christian goal to specific political position. The ambivalence of the national consciousness is presented by the fact that the ideal peaceful beauty of the mundane cooperative communal life coexisted with a free desire to get beyond the world-community and earthly world. Yet both ideals were receiving internal justification, intersecting with Pravda-truth as well as with pravda-justice.

The round table discussed how philosophy interprets the concept of will and whether it is possible, basing on this understanding, to create a methodology for a psychological understanding of the will. It is stated that so far in the domestic tradition there is no methodology that would overcome the crisis associated with the inability to develop this concept. The category of will is considered in the key of the historical and philosophical traditions; it plays an important role both in ancient and medieval philosophy, and in the philosophy of modern times. Special attention was paid to the Schopenhauer approach, who believed that everything is an objectification of the will. The will was also discussed in its relation to such a category as the soul, and in this case the will becomes a part of the soul; and the concept of the will was also considered in its relation to the notion of power: in this case the will is the awareness of desire and aspiration for its realization.

The paper presents the evolution of pragmatism, with an emphasis on its third stage which is called neo-pragmatism. The paper considers the specific features of this stage in the light of the philosophy of Joseph Margolis. The paper demonstrates that Margolis takes part in all relevant discussions of this philosophical movement, first of all, about the relationship of realism and relativism and about the nature of the truth. The question about the nature of the truth related to the problem of incommensurability and alethic relativism, and Margolis offers his own version of this kind of relativism – the robust relativism. The article discusses these issues in general. A more detailed analysis the authors provide for the Margolis’s solution of the problem of the realism and relativism compatibility. On the one hand, Margolis firmly stays on relativistic positions. On the other hand, he argues that it is possible to defend realism against relativistic attacks but only if to reconcile these two trends. Margolis offers two strategies for doing this. He implements the first strategy through the clarification of the nature of skepticism. He formulates the form of realism which could resist to skepticism, it ought to satisfy the main statements of neopragmatism. Such a kind of realism Margolis calls minimal realism. The second strategy appeals to practices and activities and it is implemented through the actual survival and viability of the human species that is closely related to the historicity of human existence. For the last strategy Margolis offers two ways as well, the pragmatic and epistemic ones. The epistemic way allows to legitimize realism through an appeal to the technology, the existence and the use of which indicates human cognitive competence about external world. The pragmatic way legitimizes realism through the successful interventions of collective human knowledge in different structures of the world. Summarizing the authors draw a conclusion, that Margolis tries to occupy a middle position between two poles – absolutism (foundationalism) and relativism, which are presented most clearly in the pragmatists dispute between Putnam and Rorty, and thereby he tries to eliminate the differences between these two tendencies in contemporary philosophy.

The article provides the analysis of modern approaches to the theory of value in economic anthropology with an insight to David Graber’s works. The article highlights the impact of Sociology and Economics on the genesis of anthropological theory of value. The main task of the article is to identify the key points of the modern anthropological value studies and to analyze them in terms of Economics. The provided analysis shows that anthropological theory of value has a lot in common with marginalism, however, it also highlights the significant differences between these approaches. The last part of the article focuses on the opportunities to apply the economic anthropology conclusions to Economics and special attention is paid to the critical analysis of the socio-anthropological definition of value in case of the luxury consumption and the problem of falsification of the hypothesis of the symbolic capital.

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 author analyzes five aspects of ontological teachings of Leibniz and Spinoza and identifies commonalities and differences in the positions of these two philosophers. The first aspect is adherence to rationalism. The god is an essentially rational being, and so is the world. However for Leibniz the god is outside of the rational world he created, but for Spinoza the rational god is the world itself. The second aspect is acceptance by both philosophers of predeterminism of everything in the world. For Leibniz this is the result of the god’s choice to create the best out of the many possible worlds, but for Spinoza the world is not the result of the god’s choice. The third aspect is the answer to the question about the freedom of the god. They both accept this freedom, but for Leibniz this is freedom of the god as a subject making a conscious choice out of many possible choices, while for Spinoza freedom is self-determination of activity of impersonal substance. The fourth aspect is acceptance by both philosophers of objective necessity. For Spinoza the god and necessity is the same thing. For Leibniz absolute necessity is mightier than the god. The fifth aspect is acceptance by both philosophers of multiple components of the universe and their mutual isolation and consistency of elements at the same time. The god is the source and reason of this consistency for both philosophers, but for Leibniz the god is outside of the world of multiple monads, while for Spinoza it is the unity of multiple attributes of the god itself.

The author analyzes the Leibniz’s idea of “uniqueness of objects”, i.e. his conclusion that every possible object is present in one and only one possible world. The article reveals the role of the principle of indistinguishability of identity in this conclusion, referring to the discussions in modern philosophy, which are generated by similar conclusions. Leibniz treats any possible world as a holistic system. This places his reasoning in the context of disputes about the validity of various holistic approaches. Leibniz accepts the “Holistic Assumption”, according to which all objects of one possible world are determined through each other. The article also shows how Leibniz’s “uniqueness of objects” logically connects his teaching with certain statement of the problem of intentional identity, as well as with ongoing discussions about mental holism. The author demonstrates that Leibniz did something more than the developing of the theory of metaphysical possible worlds – which, thanks to the works of S. Kripke, became the “canonical” semantics for modal logic. In addition, Leibniz stood at the beginning of understanding the possible worlds as corresponding to the subject of cognition’s perceptions. Thus, Leibniz also made a step towards the development of the semantics of epistemic logic that was proposed by J. Hintikka. The interpretation of the problem of intentional identity in E. Saarinen’s works is based on the accepting of the “uniqueness of objects” for many worlds, which are open to certain subject, and not for one and only one possible world, as in Leibniz’s works. The author concludes that the ways of generating the problem of intentional identity for Leibniz’s semantics and the ones for Saarinen’s semantics are similar. All this shows that the problems stated by Leibniz’s possible worlds semantics have been still discussed.