Ideas and Ideals

“Scientific communism” was introduced into educational programs of all soviet higher education institutions in 1963/64. It is important to study the history of this discipline for it effectively displays transformation of social sciences into a coherent system of disciplines during “The Thaw”. This discipline emerged in the period of destalinization as a result of mass request for renovation and rationalization of social knowledge. During the period of its institutionalization, “scientific communism” was perceived by many specialists as a new, truthful Soviet sociology. In the 2nd part of the article the author shows how the discipline was influenced by the changes in the World socialist movement, in which the Communist Party of China challenged ideological leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This article shows that the discipline emerged as the result of changes in the official ideology, institutional changes in the Soviet higher education and in the global ideological rivalry.

In this article the problem of reflecting historical dynamics of a society in modern humanitarian knowledge is discussed. The author shows, that in the modern humanitarian knowledge the tendencies to imitation the cognitive activities are widely presented that is reflected in the reduction of real conceptual and logical complexity of theoretical descriptions of social phenomena. This reduction is generated, among other things, by actual ignoring the principle of historicism in characterizing the studied objects. First of all, with such an approach the qualitative variability of social phenomena is ignored. To reveal the qualitative variability of social phenomena is possible on the basis of special reflection of their historical dynamics. The paper proposes a method to overcome such imitative trends in the consistent implementation of sociocultural cognition on the basis of the principle of historicism. According to this principle any phenomenon should be described theoretically in the whole process of its own internal development. Any social object at every moment of its existence is the result of its own genesis. That is why the consistent categorical description of dynamics of its development as a quality formation through internally irreducible to one another stages would really implement the cognitive principles, declared in the sociocultural approach. The proposed solution is constructed on the basis of socio-philosophical reflection of the historical cognition characteristics of a society as a dynamic system.

The main thesis of the article is that the concept of economic reality cannot be interpreted from the point of view of such a category as “matter”, although in the Marxist tradition this is exactly the case. This was associated with characteristic intention of Marx to direct transfer of the scientific picture of the world created by the earlier scientific forms of natural science into the area of economic and general social knowledge. However, as it is shown in the article, the scientific picture of the economic world is represented by the forms of culture that are fundamentally different from natural phenomena. For example, according to F.A. Hayek it is linked to the concept of "subjectivity", according to K. Popper's – with the “Third world”.

At the round table the problem was discussed of using mathematical methods in the analysis of historical process, or methods of historical macrosociology. On the one hand, it is obvious that in the history different societies have certain regularity, which can be examined by statistical methods. This applies to demographic waves as well as to certain economic realities, etc. For instance, we can point to the Kondratieff’s waves. If we take it for granted, it appears that it is possible to speak about the corresponding laws. However two problems appear straight away – the quality of data on which to rely, and the ratio of the peculiarities of the history of some particular societies and the general laws which characterize any society. Economists, the most advanced in application of mathematics, are building system models, while historians are just approaching to this. There is inductive approach to these issues as well, when historians use statistics to analyze certain specific processes. Also such issues were discussed such as the transformation of professional history into applied political science, which is certainly counterproductive from the point of view of science as such, and the problem of the access to the archives. In addition, it was indicated that there is a deep connection between historical research and such complex discipline as adaptology. Participants also discussed the problems of interpretation of historical data and the status of social sciences in general.

Widely discussed global systemic crisis is redoubled by the lack of the ideas that can generate a new paradigm in the science, philosophy and intellectual culture in general. Philosophy is able to become the beginning of the intellectual culture output from the recession. This requires the fulfillment of the conditions: a new way of the problematizations, the inclusion of new philosophical problems into interdisciplinary discussion; identification of a number of the humanity ideas with poorly reflected philosophical intuitions and their coordination with problems. Philosophy mission in the XXI century is to establish some synthesis. In the broad sense this is an association of a human, nature and society in some system while prescribing their consistent attachment to the self-development of the Universe. In the narrow sense this is a synthesis of philosophy, physics and mathematics, where the prerogative of philosophy is the organization of interdisciplinary researches and projects. Another actual for philosopher’s task turns out the work at the basis of scientific social theory which is capable to analyze social processes including simulation tools on the computer; to serve as a basis for selecting some development strategies. For philosophers it is important to perceive intellectual culture in general as the main area of their activity when science is a part of this culture.

The author has devoted his article to the consideration of the moral aspects of such an important phenomenon of human communication as a RESPONSE. In our responses we humans behave honestly / dishonestly, resolutely / hesitantly, directly / evasively, respectfully / impudently, responsibly / irresponsibly, humanely / ruthlessly, adequately / with servility. It happens not only on the atomic level of the relationship between two individuals, but also where there is a line connection between an individual and a group, between two groups, an individual and a community, a group and a community. And there is every reason to attribute the answers, given by the actors to each other, to the semantic field studied by the ethical science. The answer is not simply a reaction to the event that has caused it. It's an emotional experience, a thought, an evaluation, or an action of the subject caused by significant moral circumstances. In response, people actively express their attitude to the events, showing their moral culture. Consideration of the generalized situation structure where there is a morally significant answer (SUBJECT – ADDRESSEE – OBJECT – CONTEXT – MOTIVATION – PURPOSE – TOOLS – RESULT) extends the ethical philosophical possibilities in understanding human culture, identifying the moral resources of an individual, a group, and a human community.

The article describes foundations of Post-Operaism in particular and ontology of abundance in general in their connection with the problem of precarity. The critique of the debatable theoretical aspects of the congruous ontological constructions and especially anti-capitalist socio-political projects based on them is represented. Much attention is paid to the question of nomadism – the idea of nomadism was transferred from the context of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to the soil of contemporary autonomous Marxism and it has become an important aspect of the post-operaist theory (precarious homeless multitude), from the point of which nomadism is perceived as emancipatory. But we can’t help noting its resemblance to the late-capitalist ideology of mobility.

On the basis of analysis of the normogenesis concepts the author proposes the formulation of the foundations for the integrative approach to the issue of the nature of normativity. The possibility of such approach is viewed in the reference to the anthropological sense of normogenesis.A human as a special kind of being, as the basis of his being constituted the dynamic equilibrium of the individual-collective ability to live within a certain socio-cultural model of evolution. A variety of shapes and characteristics of the normativity phenomenon can be explained by means of bringing together to the relatively stable unity of the ontological foundations: substantial, cultural and historical, and discursive. The resulting theoretical model allows to link different concepts of normogenesis and obtain heuristically and prognostically a significant idea of the establishment of norms.

In the article on the material of reconstruction of Z. Bauman’s book "The Relevance of the Holocaust" and the analysis of other studies the understanding of complex sciences, which are based on interdisciplinary research and focused in terms of practical applications in engineering and technology in the broadest sense, is introduced. First, the criteria of distinguishing between legal and illegal modernization of philosophical and scientific works are discussed. Special features of interdisciplinary research are characterized in every detail: partial implementation of methodological strategies and ideals of science, balancing and configuration of monodisciplinary discourses, which are included into interdisciplinary research, epistemic knowledge requirements obtained in these studies.