Considerable attention has been given in recent years to the study of the methodological problems of domestic and foreign policy. Some definite results have been achieved. The essence and structure of politics, the content and specific features of its various branches and tendencies have been explored; the place of the social sciences in the study of politics has been determined; and the question of the necessity of elaborating a special theory of politics has been posed.

Since the appearance of private property and the state, the attention of thinkers of many generations has been focused without interruption on questions of war and peace. Most, however, have been unable to explain these sociohistorical phenomena. A truly scientific theory of war and peace has been established only by the founders of Marxism-Leninism.

The present epoch is one of transition from capitalism to socialism, within which two opposite social systems exist simultaneously. Inasmuch as one of the systems - that of capitalism - is a source of wars, and the system of socialism is the source of peace, questions pertaining to the place of military means in the struggle between the two systems, questions of the struggle between the forces of war and peace and for the cessation of wars between peoples, constitute one (...) of the most important elements in the meaning of the epoch. The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution" [0 60-i godovshchine Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii] states: "The Great October opened a new epoch - that of the transition of humanity from capitalism to socialism, the epoch of struggle for liberation of people from imperialism, for cessation of wars between peoples, for overthrow of the dominance of capitalism, for socialism.". (shrink)

Socialinio darbo teoretikai sutinka, kad Pierre’o Bourdieu sociologijos įtaka sociali­ niam darbui plečiasi ir gilėja. Kita vertus, kai kalbama apie socialinio darbo profesiją, tie patys teoretikai ignoruoja P. Bourdieu nuostatą nuo profesijos tyrimų pereiti prie profesinio lauko analizės. P. Bourdieu profesijos fenomeną laikė biurokratinės pri­ gimties konceptualizacija, kuri įtvirtina mokslinio mąstymo logikai prieštaraujančias heteronomijos apraiškas. Straipsnyje siekiama įgyvendinti P. Bourdieu reikalavimą ir, pritaikius jį socialiniam darbui, nuo socialinio darbo profesijos analizės pereiti prie socialinio darbo profesinio lauko tyrimų. Straipsnyje ieškome atsakymo (...) į klausimą, kaip keičiasi su socialiniu darbu siejamų veiklos formų arba praktikų traktavimas, kai socialinio darbo profesijos analizę keičia socialinio darbo lauko tyrimas. Palyginę trijų skirtingų šalių – JAV, Japonijos ir Lietuvos – socialinio darbo profesinės veiklos lau­ kus, priėjome prie išvados, kad profesinio lauko, kitaip nei profesijos, požiūris sudaro prielaidas įtraukti į socialinio darbo lauką tas socialinio įgalinimo praktikas, kurios, socialinio darbo profesijos požiūriu, lieka anapus biurokratinio socialinio darbo reg­ lamento. (shrink)

Straipsnyje, remiantis tarptautinio jaunimo delinkvencijos ir viktimizacijos kiekybinio tyrimo ISRD, kuris Lietuvoje atliktas 2006 m., 2013 m. ir 2022 m., duomenimis, nagrinėjamas jaunuolių, gimusių po 1990-ųjų metų Lietuvoje, turtinio ir smurtinio pobūdžio delinkventinis elgesys. Keliant klausimą, kaip keitėsi šio pobūdžio delinkventinio elgesio dinamika, kiek ji atliepė registruotų nepilnamečių nusikalstamų veikų tendencijas bei kiek lytis išliko kaip delinkventinį elgesį diferencijuojantis veiksnys, straipsnyje lyginamos trijų amžiaus kohortų, jaunuolių, gimusių 1991–1993 m., 1998–2000 m. ir 2007–2009 m., apklausų duomenys. Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė delinkventinio elgesio (...) tarp kohortų skirtumus, o naujausio tyrimo rezultatai leidžia teigti, kad 2007–2009 m. gimusiųjų amžiaus kohortoje delinkventinis elgesys būdingas tiek vaikinams, tiek merginoms, ir šie jaunuoliai labiau pasižymi turtinio, o ne smurtinio pobūdžio delinkventiniu elgesiu. (shrink)

Tyrimų duomenys rodo, kad šiuolaikinė tranzicijos į suaugystę patirtis neatitinka so­cialinių normatyvinių tvarkaraščių, o suaugystės samprata prarado didelę savo vaid­menų struktūros ir tradicinės prasmės dalį, tapo daug labiau psichologiniu reiškiniu, siejamu su vėlyvosios modernios visuomenės individualizacija. Šiame straipsnyje analizuojamos suaugystės sampratų sąsajos su tranzicijos į suaugystę patirtimi Lietuvoje XXI a. Siekiama atsieti šias sąsajas formuojančius ar jų nebuvimą lemiančius veiksnius. Tam pasitelkta 1990­ųjų pradžioje gimusių dviejų skirtingų lyčių jaunuo­lių suaugystės atvejų analizė, paremta kokybine gyvenimo istorijų interviu medžiaga. Straipsnyje taip pat (...) pateikiamas platesnis ir bendresnis suaugystės modelių kaitos, pra­sidėjusios visuomenėms pereinant iš modernybės į vėlyvąją modernybę, vaizdas. Jis papildomas suaugystės kaitos XX–XXI a. Lietuvoje apžvalga. (shrink)

Socialinė politika vaidina svarbų vaidmenį formuojant žmonių gyvenimus. Siekiame išsiaiškinti, kaip posovietinė pertvarka socialinės politikos srityje keičia šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje gyvenančių žmonių gyvenimo eigą. Siekiant šio tikslo, straipsnyje naudojama L. Leiseringo ir R. Walkerio (1998) pasiūlyta „gyvenimo eigos politikos“ analizės schema. Analizė rodo, kad Lietuva iš savo autoritarinės praeities paveldėjo stiprius gyvenimo eigos struktūravimo, integracijos ir normų formavimo mechanizmus. Vis dėlto šie mechanizmai silpsta arba yra adaptuojami prie šiuolaikinio socialinio, ekonominio ir politinio konteksto. Dėl to šiuolaikinę Lietuvą galima priskirti pofordistiniam gyvenimo (...) eigos režimui, kuris pasižymi gyvenimo eigos destandartizacija, depolitizacija ir didesniu socialinės politikos institucijų lankstumu. Perėjimas prie šio gyvenimo eigos režimo mūsų šalyje įvyko vėliau, palyginti su kitomis Vakarų Europos šalimis. Dabartinį gyvenimo eigos politikos režimą Lietuvoje taip pat galima apibūdinti kaip silpnai integruotą „segmentuoto saugumo“ modelį, kuriam būdingas atotrūkis tarp tų, kurie dalyvauja socialinio draudimo sistemoje, ir tų, kurie yra už jos ribų. (shrink)

The article reviews current historical research on the life and work of Max Weber. The completion of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) by the Mohr Siebeck publishing house not only made it possible to put a new textual basis behind the systematization of Weber’s legacy — which is key for a general theoretical grounding and self-explanation of sociology — but also elevated historical and biographical studies devoted to Weber. This has been achieved by introducing many new sources and clarifying (...) old ones. The article is based on an analysis of Weber’s most recent intellectual biography published in 2019. It was written by Gangolf Hübinger, a German academic and a member of the MWG editorial staff since 2004. Hübinger’s book presents Weber’s life as a convergence of some concentric circles that revolve around several major themes. Among them are social and cultural features of “organized modernity” as the turning point era in the history of the West; the formative years of Weber as an individual and a scholar; the intellectualization of modernity and its consequences; Weber’s invention of a new academic discipline, political sociology; the intellectual networks with which Weber was involved as a scholar and politician. An important advantage of this new biography is that it provides a detailed description of the current study of Weber’s theoretical legacy and the prospects for the development of a “Weberian paradigm” in today’s social science and humanities. (shrink)

T. Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions has repeatedly been the subject of criticism. It is important to note that Kuhn pays very limited attention to the phenomenon of the scientific revolution itself, comparing the revolution either with a religious conversion or with a gestalt switch. Such comparisons, however, are very superficial. This paper outlines a new understanding of the scientific revolution as a result of the resonance of the intellectual trends of the early modern period. It was the quasi-simultaneous action (...) of various factors that led to revolutionary changes in natural philosophy, which, in turn, gave rise to the actual scientific revolution. In addition, the article shows that the Copernican Revolution cannot be described within the model of scientific revolution developed by T. Kuhn. Ptolemy’s theory was mathematically constructed so that it could not make inaccurate predictions of planetary motion, because – as we are now clear – the function characterizing the trajectory of planetary motion was actually represented as a Fourier series. The Copernican revolution was not a Kuhn-type scientific revolution, nor was it caused by the empirical failures of Ptolemaic astronomy. Events unfolded according to a different scheme. Copernicus set out to carry out the principle of the uniform circular motion of the planets more consistently than had been done in Ptolemy’s theory, at the same time presenting to this theory those requirements of an aesthetic and methodological order, which the cognitively fragmented system of Ptolemy, for all its flexibility, could not satisfy and, by the conditions of its creation, could not satisfy. In addition, the article shows that Copernicus, in constructing his heliocentric theory, was essentially seeking answers to the challenges that Alberti’s artificial perspective and Nicholas of Cusa’s theological speculation posed to the visual experience in the sixteenth century. (shrink)

Not only Greek philosophers listened to prophets. René Descartes also long pondered over the familiar words of Ausonius: "What path shall I choose for myself in life?" And-what an amusing play on words-the idea of methodos entered philosophy with Descartes. The very path of his metaphysical thought was the last possible one within the confines of Aristotelian metaphysics, when, having posited certain principles of discourse, in the end they themselves are conclusively reached and the entire system becomes a manifest certainty. (...) Descartes provides a glimpse of the possibility of a new type of metaphysical reflection in which the correctness of the chosen principles is grounded in the completeness and noncontradictoriness of the system built on their basis but not confined to them. (shrink)

The fundamentals of the Frankfurt school's conception of art were expounded in Horkheimer and Adorno's book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the "critical theory of society" appeared in the form of a specific philosophy of history—the history of bourgeois enlightenment, whose sources the authors trace to ancient Greek mythology.

Seven decades separate us from the time when the workers raised the scarlet banner of revolution on the barricades of the Krasnaia Presnia district. The December armed insurrection in Moscow was the high point of development of the first Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, which occurred in 1905-1907. Seventy years are enough to permit a comprehensive evaluation of the historic significance of the events of 1905, which exercised a lasting influence on the whole subsequent development of the world movement for liberation.

The aesthetic comprehension of works of art has two aspects: it sheds light on something of essential importance in the work itself and in its creator, and at the same time enriches and enhances its own problematic. For, "A work of art in which thought is alienated from itself is also part of the domain of comprehending thought; and the spirit, submitting itself to the requirements of scientific investigation, thereby clearly satisfies a need of its own most innermost nature.".

I think we will agree that there are questions that it is not always preferable to put point-blank. Among them we may class that of whether ethics belongs to the category of philosophical knowledge. We know that the custom of regarding ethics as knowledge exclusively philosophical in nature persists to this day. Such a notion, with origins in the past, expresses, in our view, the dominance of spontaneous, uncontrollable factors in the real morality of society. In Hegel's expression, ethical theory (...) usually came too late: all that was left for it to do was to interpret various changes that had taken place in moral attitudes, shifts in the world of moral reflection and moral feeling. But sometimes it entered the picture entirely too early. On the one hand, this means that ethical theory has been insufficiently oriented toward practice, limiting itself to the rationalization of spontaneously established views and preferences of moral consciousness that we were incapable of abandoning. On the other hand, it testifies that the moral regulation of people's behavior was to only a very small degree subject to the need to be equipped with theory, inasmuch as practice itself was strongly constrained within the narrow limits of the processes of life . Ethical theory, for the most part, provided the morality actually being practiced with various philosophical illusions, in the form of compensatory and adaptive viewpoints, and, along with this, offered certain regulatory notions in the area of socialization to morality. (shrink)

There are words and concepts that almost automatically trigger bitter discussions in our country. And among them are the terms in the title of this article. True, there are occasional attempts to tone down the bitterness of the disputes surrounding them by using the more ideologically "neutral" terms "personal" or "individual." But the dispute is of course not about the words but about their meaning. Let us begin by looking in the dictionary.

Two years ago, a professor at the University of California, Herbert Marcuse, an American social philosopher with traditional German training, came to be regarded as the recognized theoretician of the "New Left" movement. Marcuse's popularity compelled many writers, including ourselves , to make a careful examination specifically of the theoretical content of that teaching, which laid claim to performing the role of a critical and revolutionary theory of society. The development of a critique of the philosophical and theoretical foundations and (...) the internal contradictions of Marcuse's teachings was thus dictated by a real situation, by the actual struggle of ideas, and has perhaps still not lost its significance. Another problem, which aroused the interest of researchers even then but which had not found an answer in our article because of its specific purpose, had to do with the relationship between Marcuse's philosophical concept and the spontaneous consciousness of the "mass" participants in the real protest movement that came to be known as the "New Left" movement. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine how anxiety related to different styles of coping during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these relationships were moderated by the cultural orientations of individualism/collectivism and a person’s sense of meaning in life. A sample of 849 participants from Georgia completed an online survey during the final stage of lockdown. To measure the main variables, we used the State Anxiety Inventory, the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism Scale, the Meaning of Life Questionnaire, the COVID-19 Worry (...) Scale, and the Ways of Coping Scale tailored to COVID-19 pandemic. The latter measured rational coping via the subscales of information accessing/processing and action-planning coping, and affective coping – via the subscales of passive-submissive and avoidant coping. Results suggested that anxiety positively predicted both affective coping styles and negatively predicted the action-planning coping style, while COVID-19 worry predicted all coping styles; presence of meaning in life positively predicted both rational coping styles and negatively predicted the avoidant coping style, while search for meaning positively predicted all coping styles; individualism negatively predicted the passive-submissive style and positively predicted the action-planning style, whereas collectivism predicted all coping styles; furthermore, individualism and collectivism moderated the link between anxiety and the passive-submissive coping style, presence of meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and avoidant coping style, while search for meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and the action-planning coping style. Overall, the findings enrich the cultural transactional theory of stress and coping, and generate insights for the culture-sensitive approach to the meaning in life. The results were conceptualized vis-a-vis Georgia’s intermediate position between clear-cut individualism and clear-cut collectivism. (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since the death of a man named Karl Marx. A whole century. A century of dramatic upheavals, revolutionary turmoil, and radical changes in the destiny of humankind. A century that has overturned and swept away a multitude of philosophical conceptions, social theories, and political doctrines. A century that has seen a continuous succession of victories of Marxism and its growing influence on social development.

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

Postmodernism as a mythologem reflecting the remarkable shift that has taken place in contemporary Western culture as a whole entered the consciousness of our intelligentsia with the usual delay. This is not surprising if one bears in mind the constantly "lagging" character of our consciousness, which also colors in corresponding tones the whole of "Russian civilization," and if one believes that it is condemned to be always "catching up" and making up for lost time. Having arisen in the West as (...) a concept describing certain special characteristics of the latest architectural style that no longer fitted into the rather passé category of modernism, the concept of the postmodern was initially current, both in the West and in Russia, among people close to architecture. At that time it had not yet been able to acquire the "philosophical" subtext that is already felt in the book of Charles Jencks that came out in 1977 in Germany under the gaudy title The Language of Postmodern Architecture. (shrink)

This article contextualizes an old debate about the extent of knowledge of Latin by John Lydus, a state official and an erudite from sixth-century Constantinople, within a broader issue of the role of Latin in early Byzantium. It is argued here that Lydus’ startling etymological explanations had no relation to his level of knowledge of Latin, but reflected the declining official use of Latin in Byzantium by resurrecting the theory about Latin as a dialect of Greek.

The article formulates some aspects concerning the nature and structure of scientific revolutions. As a reference example, the scientific (more precisely, natural-philosophical) revolution of the 16th-17th centuries (SR1) was taken, which in turn became part of the intellectual revolution of the Early Modern period. It is shown that SR1 is not at all monodirectional and not predetermined in its milestones process, when the break with the Aristotelian tradition automatically cleared the way to the new science and philosophy. In reality, there (...) was an intellectual war, the outcome of which was by no means known to any of the opposing sides in advance. In the article eight factors are noted that contributed to the SR1: 1) weakening ideological control on the part of the Church; 2) chaotization and fragmentation of intellectual space; 3) the redundancy of the intellectual resource for the emergence of innovative theories and practices; 4) the presence of intellectual reserve (the legacy of classical Antiquity and the Hellenistic era, as well as the scholastic method); 5) the flow of new information not embedded in traditional world picture and practices; 6) weakening the requirements for the validity of the hypotheses put forward and the rigor of reasoning, declining (delution) the rationality of cognitive activity and behavior; 7) local breakthrough (as seed impulse) in one of the areas of knowledge (heliocentric theory); 8) the possibility of developments a nd tendencies of the proper natural-philosophical revolution to develop in the tideway (in a shell) of innovative concepts, methodologies and practices that have arisen in unscientific spheres (culture, politics, economics, theology, etc.). (shrink)

In recent years there has been rather extensive discussion in the physics literature of the possibility of transmission of material effects at speeds exceeding that of light.

Following the idea first expressed by Heinrich Swoboda, there is a general perception that the meaning of ἀτιμία in Athens eventually evolved from the original ‘outlawry’, when an ἄτιμος was liable to being deprived of his property and slayed with impunity if he returned to the land from which he had been banished, into a certain limitation on civic status, which has often been rendered as a ‘disfranchisement’. Specific outcomes of this later form of ἀτιμία varied depending on the dating (...) and circumstances of individual cases, thereby giving rise to theories of a so-called full – or ‘total’ – and partial ἀτιμία. Still, whether it was viewed as ‘full’ or ‘partial’, this ἀτιμία did not inflict the death penalty. The precise dating of the transformation of ἀτιμία has also been debated, with opinions ranging from pre-Solonian times (L'Homme-Wéry) to the late sixth (Swoboda, Hansen, Manville) or the late fifth century (Scafuro). While the exact dating is unknown, this transformation was definitely over in the fifth century, when inscriptions and literary texts mentioned punishment by ἀτιμία alongside the death penalty and the confiscation of property. Thus, according to Raphael Sealey, ἀτιμία evolved ‘from a more severe to a milder sense’, and Alick R.W. Harrison pointed to the evidence that, by the fourth century, any willing Athenian could seize an ἄτιμος who happened to be in Athenian territory and surrender him to the θεσμοθέται, instead of killing him. (shrink)

The author conducts a comparative analysis of the Russian Revolution developed by two prominent social-political thinkers of Germany and Russia in the early twentieth century—Max Weber and Peter Struve. The article focuses on their respective interpretations of the causes, course, and consequences of the Revolution as determined by their political ideals, i.e. a specific combination of nationalism and liberalism. The author pays special attention to Weber’s and Struve’s perception of the Russian Revolution, which, albeit for different reasons, was rejected by (...) both thinkers. (shrink)

Changes in the productive forces and, consequently, in the economic structure of socialist society as a whole are being prepared by the current relationships of production. We refer particularly to the influence of socioeconomic processes under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology on the development of the individual as a factor in the productive forces and as subject in production relationships.

Marx said that a science attains perfection when it is successful in employing mathematics.

A new term, "the new conservatism," has recently appeared in the American sociopolitical lexicon. The meaning given it does not resolve merely to a description of the current conservative trends in the United States , which until recently were termed neoconservative in the critical literature. A number of American writers have begun to employ the term "new conservatism" in a narrower sense: to denote the evolution of the sociopolitical views of those ideologists of capitalist reformism who were, until recently, known (...) as neoliberals. The term "new conservatism" was first employed in that sense by the American radical sociologist Michael Harrington in analyzing the evolution, in the realm of political ideas and social policy, of the views of such prominent bourgeois ideologists as Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and others. To those listed, this identification appeared so well chosen and reflective of the essence of the matter that subsequently they themselves began to speak of themselves as new conservatives. This term has become firmly established in the American sociological literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the "legitimacy" of the use of this term and the points of contact between this group and the conservatives or neoconservatives and the lines of demarcation between them. (shrink)

In the years since World War II, the social critic has become a rather popular figure in the West. The demand for critical theories of society is readily explainable where the contradictions of social development take the form of sharp paradoxes recognized by the broad public. It may be assumed that interest in critical concepts of society will increase. People who recognize themselves as cogs without rights in the system of bureaucratic organization of state-supported monopoly capitalism, who react acutely to (...) the threat of social catastrophes , endow such concepts with the halo of humanism if only because they often find in them their own moods, given shape and seemingly elevated to the level of general social protest. These feelings represent a concrete dissatisfaction with the present situation, and the sense that the society in which they live is in crisis. (shrink)