The article presents a summary of the philosophical teachings of the French thinker Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). The main research topics are as follows: substantiation of the unique relationship between man and the world, man and man; the nature of language; the linguistic experience of man; history as a product and space of human activity. Reflecting on the relationship of man to the world, M. Merleau-Ponty sought to identify the natural and at the same time the original human contact with the (...) world. When creating his philosophical concept, he relied on the teachings of M. Montaigne, Men de Biran, A. Bergson, G. Marcel. The philosopher highlights the specific role of the human body in his life and in creating a human community, declaring it a “universal scale”. Merleau-Ponty explores the concept of flesh in many ways, which for him is the primary element of being and allows us to talk about the kinship of the human self and the world. Further, he substantiates a person's involvement in being through language, speech, the appearance and design of which he associates with a special function of the human body. The philosopher declares linguistic experience to be the highest achievement of man, an indicator of his historicity and ability to transcend, thanks to which the development of human culture is carried out. In linguistic experience, a person turns to the “other”, and being appears as a meeting place for the “I” and the “other” embedded in him; the “other” is initially included in the primary experience of the world — the “I” and the “other” consist of one flesh. The flesh also acts as a starting point for the study of human social existence. The material that supports and develops the conclusions of philosophy for M. Merleau-Ponty is art: a philosopher and an artist in their work proceed from a primary relationship to the world; philosophy and art are contact with existence, the discovery of the world of things, the exploration of primordial reality. Merleau-Ponty seeks confirmation of his ideas in the works of Balzac, Stendhal, Proust, Gide, Saint-Exupery, who, in his opinion, tell about the fullness of the human spirit, the richness of the inner world of man, and the community of people. (shrink)

Reflecting on modern ideas about the diversity of intelligence, the author of the article refers to the phenomenon of mentality as a relatively holistic set of thoughts, beliefs, and spiritual skills that creates a picture of the world and holds together the unity of a cultural tradition or some community. Mentality is considered as a stable attitude of the inner world of people, which unites them into social and historical communities, and in the socio-psychological and epistemological sense is a set (...) of attitudes and predispositions of an individual to a certain type of thinking and action. The article distinguishes between mentality and public attitudes, mentality and value orientations, mentality and ideology. It is shown that mentality goes back to the unconscious depths of the psyche, and in this sense it is not always articulated by its bearers. Mentality is reconstructed by the author of the article in a research way through comparison with another mentality. (shrink)

The question of what intelligence is has always worried philosophers. In the 20th century, the IQ test was widespread, measuring the speed of intellectual operations, mainly logical and verbal. This indicator was criticized, and the very idea of intelligence was questioned. Standard IQ says nothing about the subject's success in life and his ability to understand world events beyond abstract operations. The concepts of emotional intelligence, social intelligence and others were introduced. American psychologist H. Gardner proposed 8 types of intelligence, (...) such as musical, kinesthetic, personal. This article develops his idea and proposes existential-phenomenological intelligence. It is responsible for the subject's value thinking, for his/her attitude to the world, for building a developed worldview. The criterion of truth of this type of intelligence is authenticity. Phenomenological intelligence is responsible for dispassionate self-knowledge, the existential one for value assessment and goal setting. The theoretical discussions of existential intelligence are illustrated by an example: the attitude to humor. At the end, the question of integral intelligence, meta-intelligence, is formulated. Such intelligence may mean a wise human mind. It relates to particular types of intelligence similarly to how reason relates to reasoning in Kant, but in a modern developed theory these relationships must be formulated in a new way. (shrink)

The third chapter is dedicated to Plotinus. In six books of the Enneads, Plotinus managed to combine the teaching of the pre-Socratic Parmenides with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. The best idea of Plotinus' philosophy can be formed by analyzing his allegory of the world as a giant tree, a single plant, whose appendages, branches and leaves are everything that exists. At that stage of the development of philosophical thought, the idea of an integral soul was certainly not something (...) new. For example, in Plato's Timaeus, the universe is represented as a huge living being. An innovative aspect of the Plotinus image is the plant form given to the universal soul. What is behind this change of perspective? The deep implication of the vegetable image of the world, permeated by the Universal Soul has the following meaning: there is nothing in the universe outside the soul, which, taking care of the animate body, contributes to the well-being of the world, saving it from immersion in materiality. For the philosophy of the twenty-first century, the relativization of reason is especially relevant in Plotinus' writings. There are as many varieties of mind in the world as there are forms of life, and each form of life is the material embodiment of the corresponding form of thinking. Plants, according to Plotinus, also have intelligence and have their share in the happiness and well-being that all living things desire. With this bold statement, the author of the Enneads resolutely breaks with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus's mind permeates the entire universe and is no longer limited to the rational part of the human soul or the eternal existence of the gods. Plotinus' system of views seems to the author of the book to be closer to modern scientific views than the obvious immutability characteristic of Aristotle's biology. Proceeding from them, but trying to be more Plotinian than the ancient Greek philosopher himself, he paraphrases Plotinus' dying words into the slogan: Try to bring back the plant in you to the Plant in the All! Chapter ten is about Martin Heidegger. If Plato's philosophizing took place in the shade of the plane tree, whose height is surpassed by the incommensurably distant world of Ideas, Heidegger opens to us another primary stage of philosophy: the thinker standing face to face with the tree. A full relationship to the apple tree is possible because we share being with it, even though man and tree have quite different kinds of existence. In the light of Heidegger's ontological concept of phusis as one of the ancient words for “being”, the plant should denote the being closest to the activity of being as such. In this understanding, nature is the common “ground of being”, and the same is true of the plant, whose principle of vitality makes possible the existence of all other living things. According to Heidegger's classification, the stone is worldless, the animal is poor in world, and man is world-forming, and the absence of plants in this hierarchy indicates their rejection, their extreme poverty in the world, bordering on the worldlessness of the stone. Heidegger later gives a harsher verdict: they have nothing. The world is created from the environment with a language that plants and animals do not have. The worldlessness of the stone is a consequence of its silence; the belittling of plants is the result of their apparent silence. Heidegger prefers to contrast man with the plant, which has in common with man the fact that it is alive. But the plant, in its living being, is closed in on itself, dim, irrelevant to anything else we call “revealed”. As Heidegger says, we... use “life” only to designate beings of plant or animal origin; by doing so we distinguish the human being from these other kinds, the human being means something more and something other than mere “life”. The subtlest distinction between mere life and true existence is death. In Heidegger's thought, logos takes the structural place of death. If the plant, bearing fruit, fulfills its promises, the human being's arrival at the end is always a disappointment and unfulfillment, because at the hour of death countless existential possibilities remain unrealized. All along, Heidegger thought, the world of the Ideas was not above us, but right before our eyes; it becomes apparent every time we come face to face with beings, because eidos is their appearance or face. A flowering tree, devoid of any resemblance to a human face, has an eidetic one outlines of which come through when we stand next to it. The philosophical encounter with the tree, on the ground where it is rooted, demands phenomenological attention to how it looks. But above all, this rendezvous symbolizes the end of the era known as “metaphysical”. (shrink)

The article analyzes P. Riker's philosophy of dialogue — the philosophical and anthropological concept of man as a speaking being (l'etre-parlant) in the context of the problem of metaphor. The dyad of language/speech, subject/human is considered. In this regard, the role of metaphor as a symbolic function of language in poetic and philosophical discourses is analyzed. The article considers Riker's thesis on metaphorical truth and the connection of a living metaphor with human existence.

The article examines the practical philosophy of Aristotle: his ethics and politics. It is established when the term “practical thinking” first appears, what is the difference between practical and theoretical knowledge, on what basis ethics and politics are combined and how they differ as two practical sciences. The ethical works that came down under the name of Aristotle as part of the Aristotelian corpus of writings are characterized in terms of their authenticity, chronology, and book composition. The article describes the (...) history of the issue of three common books in the manuscripts of Nicomachean and Evdemean ethics and provides arguments in favor of solving the question of which ethics they originally belonged to. Definitions of the key provisions of the doctrine and concepts are given: goodness, virtue, conscious choice, middle ground, foundations, reason, intelligence, friendship, happy life. The second part of the article examines the basic concepts of Aristotle's political teaching: the state and the state system, parts of the state, types of government, political conflicts and coups d'etat, the doctrine of the best state system and the principles of education. (shrink)

The question of whether beauty exists in nature is a philosophical problem. In particular, there is the question of whether works of art, people, or nature have aesthetic qualities. Most people say they care about their own beauty. Moreover, they judge the appearance of another person from an aesthetic perspective, using aesthetic concepts. However, aesthetic judgments are not objective in the sense that experience justifies their objectivity. In this publication, which is a translation of a scholarly article, the author analyzes (...) the theory of the American philosopher of art and one of the key figures in postwar American aesthetics, Monroe C. Beardsley on the objectivity of aesthetic qualities and explores the question of whether there are truly beautiful and ugly people in the world. The attitude of analytic philosophers to evaluate people and art from an aesthetic point of view is subjected to critical reflection. According to the author, if there are no aesthetic qualities in the world, then no one can judge that someone is beautiful or ugly without oppressing them. Aesthetic judgments are manifestations of power. (shrink)

Smirnov Vladimir Alexandrovich is an outstanding Soviet and Russian philosopher and logician. His main areas of interest were syllogistics, Vasiliev's logic, proof theory, modal-temporal logics, logic and methodology of science. The result of his scientific and pedagogical activity was the emergence of an independent school of logic, which is strongly associated with his name. His numerous students currently continue to work in various fields of logic, continuing the traditions of their teacher. V.A. Smirnov's editorial and scientific publishing activities contributed to (...) the dissemination of logical knowledge both among philosophers and among representatives of other sciences. His active efforts in the field of scientific and organizational activities have been reflected in numerous conferences on the logic and methodology of science with the participation of both domestic and foreign scientists. (shrink)