History begins in a struggle producing two figures, Master and Slave. It ends in a “universal and homogeneous state”, an Empire. Revolution with its inevitable terror is the central point in this history. Kojève himself had experienced the Russian revolution and Civil War; in 1920 he left Russia for Germany, where till the end of 1923 he had witnessed the same strife between the “left” and the “right”. This experience is the basis of his view of history, his interpretation of (...) the path from Mastery and Slavery to the figure of the Citizen, to universal recognition. The French revolution with the Jacobins’ terror and Napoleon’s Empire represent for him the model by which to understand not only the revolutions of the twentieth century, but of the entire course of history. (shrink)

When discussing the French Revolution and Napoleon in his lectures from 1933 to 1939, Alexandre Kojève had in mind events in Russia. The clash between the “old order,” with its Masters, and the worker Slaves corresponded for him more with the images of pre-revolutionary Russian journalism than with the wigged aristocrats and French bourgeoisie of the end of the eighteenth century. In his lectures, behind Napoleon, as a revolutionary emperor, there exists, however secretly or openly, the figure of Stalin, with (...) his plans for the “building of socialism in one country,” his five-year plans, collectivization, and terror. Kojève’s ontology and anthropology diverge both from Hegel’s version of the two as well as with Marxism, incorporating different theses from Nietzsche and Heidegger’s Daseinanalytik. Just as in The Phenomenology of Spirit, terror plays a central role in interpreting revolution, yet it is conceived in the spirit of a Heideggerian “being-toward-death.” The relation between Master and Slave begins with fear of death, and it is destroyed by fear of death in the face of revolutionary terror. In this article, Kojève’s philosophy converges with the various versions of “left Nietzscheanism,” which were particularly widespread in prerevolutionary Russia. (shrink)

It is generally accepted among Marxists that the laws of materialist dialectics represent a great, scientifically significant achievement for human knowledge, and that they develop as cognition advances. It is also generally accepted that, under new conditions - for example, in a fundamentally new phase in the development of human society such as is presented by socialism - the objective laws of dialectics acquire distinctive new characteristics, are altered, modified. But is it proper to speak of change or evolution of (...) the laws of objective dialectics? Two different viewpoints on this matter were clearly present at the USSR Symposium in April 1965. (shrink)

The twentieth century has been called the age of science. Indeed, one of its most salient features is a continuous and accelerating advance in our knowledge of nature, accompanied by progress in technology and engineering. The middle of the century witnessed a new revolution in science and technology which brought about radical changes in economic production and everyday life, which brought nature under further control on our planet and ventured into outer space. These advances in science and technology in an (...) age of automation and electronic "brains," of nuclear energy and artificial satellites, exercise a growing influence on all aspects of social life, including the way in which art develops. (shrink)

In his report to the Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU, M.S. Gorbachev noted that "our philosophical and economic front, indeed the social sciences in general, find themselves in a state … somewhat removed from the demands of life."1 He further pointed out that "the times demand that the social sciences address the concrete needs of practical activity on a broad front, that social scientists respond keenly and deftly to the changes taking place in life, that they not lose sight of (...) new phenomena and draw conclusions capable of truly guiding practical activity". (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to identify early and recent Pentecostal studies in the West and to highlight the main difference between them. Today there are more than 250 million Pentecostals in the world, and together with the charismatic movement there are more than 500 million. Having begun to spread in the 20th century, the movement claims to be the fastest growing religious phenomenon in human history. In attempts to interpret the phenomenon of the movement's growth, there have been (...) several gradually emerging approaches: explaining the origin of the movement as supernaturally "coming from heaven"; searching for the origins of Pentecostalism in other Christian movements; presenting the emergence of the movement as the result of social and psychological factors such as poverty, marginalization, and the desire to escape from modern society; and the multicultural approach. The paper analyzes the works of Western historians and theologians of Pentecostalism since the second half of the 20th century. The result shows a turning point between early and late studies, namely that late studies aim to revise the history and include participants in the movement around the world, not just in North America, explore the contribution to the development of the movement of local ministers who have long remained in the shadow of Western missionaries, emphasize the diversity of ideologies and social influences that have shaped the movement. It also highlights three major contemporary areas of research: historical, characterized by studies of Pentecostalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; theological, focusing on the development and shaping of theoretical theology as a result of the movement's institutionalization; and religious studies, practiced primarily from the perspective of the sociology of religion. (shrink)

The semiosphere is arguably the most influential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. This paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and (...) multimodal communication as specifically human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution. (shrink)

Only now can we consider that the question of genuine mythical detachment has been fully clarified. We remember how difficult it was to find the true root of this detachment. We compared mythical detachment with general material detachment and poetic detachment but could not find a satisfactory answer anywhere. All the time we have faced a difficult task: to synthesize the sensuousness, extreme con-creteness, and purely material corporeality of myth with its otherworldly, fabulous, and generally acknowledged "unreal" character. After many (...) attempts we have only now finally found this genuine synthesis in the concept of miracle. Miracle is thus an absolutely necessary dialectical synthesis by which mythical consciousness lives and without which myth itself would not exist. From this point of view, myth's relation to other areas of human creativity also appears in a new light. (shrink)

The article examines some aspects of Brentano's ontology, starting with his 1862 dissertation "On the ambiguity of Being according to Aristotle", as well as its influence on the philosophy of M. Heidegger. The author shows that the ontology of the early Brentano is not limited to ousiology, since it includes a discussion of the field of mental being (ens rationis, ὂν ὡς ἀληθές) and it is in this aspect that he influences the young Heidegger. Following Aristotle, Brentano assigns a central (...) role to the ontology of essence, which in the late period leads him to the position of reism, but in the lectures of the middle period Brentano discusses the problems of intentional inexistence, thanks to which projects of "new types of ontology" by Husserl and Mainong appear. The author believes that Heidegger was also influenced by these ideas. Of course, there are fundamental differences between the positions of Brentano and Heidegger, but the similarities are quite large. In particular, if Brentano, highlighting the real and true areas, gives preference in favor of the former, then Heidegger's ontology is built on the second member of this opposition. In particular, everything that can be given is called being by Heidegger, because we are talking about intentional being, about ens rationis, or ὂν ὡς ἀληθές. (shrink)

This article examines the innovations introduced to phenomenological philosophy by the Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet. We identify the motifs and results of Shpet's problematization of the Husserlian concept of constitution, and we develop Shpet's treatment of the source of semantic genesis as a generative experience.

Четвертая работа из знаменитого восьмикнижия Лосева "Диалектика художественной формы", представляет собой изложение эстетической теории, созданной автором с "привлечением диалектического метода".

The works, views and ideas of Heini Hediger (1908-1992), one of the most distinguished and influential zoologist of the 20th century, had and still have an enormous impact on contemporary understanding of animal behaviour. His views on territorial, social, etc. aspects of animal behaviour are based on semiotic concepts derived from Umwelt-theory (J. v. Uexküll) and combined with ideas from modern ethology. Hediger's special attention was devoted to the area of animal-man communications; he treated these problematic phenomena as a system (...) of semiosis-processes, in a mainly holistic way. Hediger's approach inspires the author to propose a notion "the need for impression" to be used in zoosemiotic analyses. (shrink)

The article deals with Heidegger’s interpretation of antique ontology, in which Being was conceptualized in terms of production. What is this interpretation and why is it so important? Until recently, it has been difficult to answer these questions, since the texts in question have only in recent years become publicly available, and therefore have not yet been fully absorbed in Heideggerian-studies. Consequently, even the very useful works that cover the subject of production-theme in Heidegger focus more on the question of (...) technique and do not consider the formation of this problematic, and therefore do not deal with it substantively. In the years 1921-1924, Heidegger was closely involved with Aristotle and lectured on his favorite philosopher for four years. It was during this period that he began to interpret Being in Aristotle as being-made, being-produced (das Hergestelltsein), and then extended this interpretation to the whole of ancient and medieval philosophy. This is a very remarkable moment in terms of methodology that characterizes Heidegger as a historian of philosophy. In this article, the author examines Heidegger’s interpretation of ancient ontology, revealing its weaknesses. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the process of many aspects of audiovisual creativity that must be taken into account when creating a video. The object of the work is to create a movie trailer through the use of design elements and graphics in the video sequence. The study examines the trailer of a post-apocalyptic fantasy genre called "Genesis", in which the two main characters are depicted as opposites. The work examines and describes in detail all the stages of creating (...) a video trailer for the film, including visual representation, audio accompaniment of the video sequence. The paper notes that the main goal of all the stages of trailer development considered in the article is to create an audiovisual project of professional quality. The main methods used in the study are visual effects modeling and 3D modeling in Houdini, creating realistic matte paintings in Photoshop and video compositing in Nuke. The main conclusions of the study are those specialized programs that allow you to create a high-quality author's product. This software will become the core of the project, since it is in it that all the elements will be combined into one final clip due to the high-quality integration of various objects of the scene. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that within the framework of the work, the characteristics of the possibilities of working with various video editors and graphic programs were carried out, which together help the creators of movie trailers and other similar products to realize the tasks of entertainment and quality of the projects produced. (shrink)

Audacity of the Spirit by A.F. Losev demonstrates the merits of the dialectical method to understand antiquity, history, culture and philosophy. The book is a guide to dialectics for beginners and a major philosopher's summing-up of his reflections to a general audience. It is an English translation from the Russian original Дерзание духа (Politizdat Moskva, 1988), translated by Peter R. Weisensel and Vitali I. Betaneli.