One of the key ethical debates in Russian religious thought, initiated by Leo Tolstoy, concerned the question of nonresistance to evil by force. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of Kant’s ethics and philosophy of religion on the course of this debate and to determine the place and significance of the arguments and considerations expressed on this issue by Semyon Frank in the early and late periods (1908 and 1940s) of his work. To this end I (...) reconstruct the general course of the debate, notably the positions and arguments of Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. Beginning with Tolstoy, Russ­ian thinkers introduced the original ethical content of the idea of nonresistance derived from the Gospel into the ethics of duty borrowed from Kant. The Tolstoy version of this idea was challenged mainly from two directions: from the Kantian grounding of the legitimacy of coercion and attempts to bring in styles of moral thinking other than the ethic of duty. Ilyin’s apolo­gia for the use of force in the struggle against evil prompted Russian émigré thinkers to take a closer look at Tolstoy’s ethical concept and pay attention to its positive content. On this basis Berdyaev and especially Frank create their version of the Christ-centered ethic of salvation which, in the perspective of “protecting the world against evil” includes the ethic of duty and links it with the possibility of using force, always a wrongful act, but one justified “in a situation of extreme need”. (shrink)

The Nikolais/Louis Dance Technique provides the definite resource for understanding and practicing the influential dance technique developed by two pioneers of modern dance, Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. The Nikolais/Louis technique is presented in a week-to-week classroom manual, providing an indispensable tool for teachers and students of this widely studied movement practice. Theoretical background for further reading is set off from the manual for those interested in deeper study. Their philosophy and methodology span a broad readership and offer an important (...) addition to dance literature and American cultural history. (shrink)

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s “Heдocтaтки гнoceoлoгiи Бepгcoнa и влiянie иxъ нa eгo мeтaфизикy” (The Defects of Bergson’s Epistemology and Their Consequences on His Metaphysics), which was published in the journal Boпpocы филocoфiи и пcиxoлoгiи (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology) in 1913. In this article, Lossky criticizes Bergson’s epistemological dualism, which completely separates intuition from reason, and which rejects reason in favor of intuition. For Bergson, reality is continuous, indivisible, fluid, etc., and reason distorts it (...) through its acts of division, abstraction, extraction, and so on. Lossky argues that this conclusion does not follow. Reason does not distort the living flow of reality; it rather provides a window unto aspects of the otherwise undivided seamless flowing organic whole. In fact, reason is itself a species of intuition in its own right, namely an intellectual intuition, the object of which is the atemporal facet of the world (the Platonic ideal realm), which is necessary for the existence of its temporal facet. Lossky thus challenges Bergson’s one-sided and self-defeating reduction of being to a flux of changes devoid of changing things. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)

Nikolai Zhinkin’s review of Ernst Cassirer is so far the earliest document of the discussion in Russia about Cassirer’s conception of myth and his theory of symbolic forms. The text is published from Zhinkin’s archive. Zhinkin here notes a reorientation of Neo-Kantianism that reveals its hidden relativism and stands as a symptom of its downfall.

In modern philosophy, essentialism is in most cases regarded as an outdated and, in fact, incorrect philosophical trend. And one of the scientists who created such a reputation of essentialism was the famous English philosopher of Austrian origin Karl Popper. The success of his book “The Open Society and its Enemies” led to the fact that in the West essentialism began to be considered not only cognitively untenable, but also suspicious as the theoretical basis of fascism, communism and totalitarianism. In (...) the article, K. Popper’s arguments against essentialism are reviewed all over again, and it is shown that K. Popper’s criticism of essentialism as an anti-scientific and outdated doctrine is not the point of view of the philosophy as a whole, but it is just the position of empirical positivism. Essentialism deals with the reality that lies on the other side of phenomena. And this, according to K. Popper, necessarily leads to “ultimate” definitions. However, in accordance with the doctrine of falsification by K. Popper himself, every scientific conclusion within its expiration date is “ultimate”. The article shows that in reality essentialism did not only play an extraordinary role in the classical metaphysical theory of knowledge, but also continues to do so within the framework of modern ontology. Moreover, in the latter case, he does it with the help of abduction which is a specific form of logical inference generating scientific hypotheses. The existence of abduction in science, which generates new knowledge, suggests that essentialism is not something, at best, tolerable and excusable. This is the main way to development of sciences in general. In all cases, the author of the article considers only logical entities, but not legal, theological or any other. (shrink)

Depuis longtemps, la recherche met en relief les influences françaises et allemandes de la pensée de Georges Gurvitch. De récents travaux ouvrent désormais la voie à l’étude de ses sources russes. Cet article vise à poser les bases de l’étude des sources russes de la pensée de Gurvitch. Pour ce faire, il recourt à onze articles publiés par Gurvitch, entre 1924 et 1931, dans la revue russe de l’émigration Annales contemporaines, dont il dégage une propension marquée à l’endroit des totalités (...) sociales. L’article comprend, en outre, une brève étude du parcours russe de Gurvitch ainsi qu’une traduction intégrale de la dernière partie de l’article « Éthique et religion ». (shrink)

This article examines how Gregory of Nazianzus (Gregory the Theologian, ca. 330-390) constructs an image of the priest using political metaphor and vocabulary from previous traditions. The author chooses a specific text from ancient political thought that was close to his own understanding of Christian tradition (Plato’s Republic). In turn, the biblical material he uses comprises fragments that are highly political in nature (for example, criticism of the rulers of Israel by the prophets). Combining these texts first of all leads (...) to their transformation, and secondly allows him to piece together an image of the priest as ruler of the Church. The combination of these two traditions makes it possible to describe both the historical and contemporary legitimization of this image – one novel for Late Antiquity – and to define the main characteristics of its ethos. (shrink)

This volume examines the elements of formalism and decisionism in Russian legal thinking and, also, the impact of conservatism on the interplay of these elements. This combination leads to internal contradictions in theorizing about law and rights in Russian legal culture.

The paper proves that a historical method in Marxism is not identified to a dialectical method. The logic of history and the logic of its analysis in Marxism do not always coincide. The Logical coincides with the Historical only in eternity as it actually occurs in the works by G.V.F. Hegel. Eternity which has already witnessed everything does not know history any more. In the same way, history also begins there where the eternity comes to an end. Therefore, artificial identification (...) of the Logical with the Historical in Marxism led sometimes to actual mistakes. It is no wonder that it has always caused discussions in Marxism. They are mainly explained by the fact that the deductive, abstract-to-concrete method in which the “General” appears before the “Concrete” is an anti-historical method in its Nature. In real human history the “General” which is generalization of many “Concrete” could not appear before the latter in any way. For this reason, the real historical materialism needs an inductive method of knowledge. Only in that case historical materialism will cease to remain the soviet “histmat” and becomes the real form of a new world outlook. The author is of the opinion that the Party spirit of the Soviet philosophy promoted preservation of the anomalies mentioned in Marxism. The open discussion could help to find valid but not inherited from Hegel relation of historical and logical methods in Marxism. (shrink)

Andrei Platonov is known mainly for his larger works, often perceived as a surrealistic critic of revolutionary utopia and the building of communism. This makes it all the more interesting to consi...

The subject of this study is the problem of the failure of attempts by the scientific community to come to a common understanding of what exactly information can be as something encoded into material structures and moved along with them. At the same time, the following aspects of this problem are considered in detail: what is the immediate cause of the information problem; what are the objective and subjective prerequisites for its appearance; why the unresolved nature of this problem does (...) not interfere with the creation and development of communication systems, control and other "smart" devices; is there any general guideline for finding solutions to such problems, and what is it; what role did the philosophy of information play in turning the problem of information from a private scientific problem into a problem of the ideological level. The main results of the conducted research are as follows: the immediate cause of the information problem has been identified and a comprehensively substantiated solution to this problem has been given; it has been revealed that the incompleteness of the materialistic theory of cognition has become a fertile ground for the appearance of this problem; the circumstances that prevented its completion have been identified; the natural mechanism of control and cognition has been revealed, as a result of which the materialistic theory of cognition has been further developed the source of the ideal in the material world is revealed; it is shown that the mechanistic idea of information coding made the concept of information incompatible with the presence of any objective content; it is revealed what is actually hidden behind the words about information coding and its measurement; the nature of signals and signs is revealed; a kind of bias of the philosophy of information and a general error is revealed all known concepts of information. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

This is a translation from Russian to English of Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky’s “Tpaнcцeндeнтaльнo-фeнoмeнoлoгичecкiй идeaлизмъ Гyccepля”, published in the émigré journal Пyть in 1939. In this article, Lossky presents and criticizes Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Like many successors of Husserl’s “Göttingen School,” Lossky interprets Husserl’s transcendental idealism as a Neo-Kantian idealism and he criticizes it on the ground that it leads to a form of solipsism. In light of his own epistemology and his metaphysical system, he also claims that, although Husserl is (...) more radical than Descartes in his methodological doubt, he is not radical enough, because his abstention from existential judgment with regard to the external world is itself an existential judgment. In this regard, Lossky affirms that his own critically-informed defense of naive realism is in fact more radical than Husserl’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

The Kantian legacy has had a key impact on the landscape of theoretical philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. Philosophers both in Germany and in Russia saw Immanuel Kant’s ideas as seminal for their philosophical research. The main schools of that era were formed in discussions of the problems and the solutions which were proposed by Kant. The methodological legacy of the critical philosophy effectively became the main benchmark of the thinking of a whole generation of intellectuals. (...) Research into the unity of “form” in the structure of human cognition was also in many ways mediated by the Kantian tradition. To prove this thesis I first look at the philosophy of Gustav Shpet who creatively interpreted the German tradition and proposed an original project of his own, and then I examine the theory of Ernst Cassirer, an outstanding representative of Neo-Kantianism who in the later period of his work proposed considering the phenomena of the humanities to be symbolic forms closest to the spontaneity of the biological. The common feature of the approaches of the two philosophers is their attempt to preserve the integrity of cognition which is destroyed by mathematisation of the common denominator (ultimate categorisation) and hierarchisation of the phenomena of human life. The alternative is the metaphor of mutational change, through which the concept of “form” acquires a new meaning. In conclusion I show that the analysis of the projects of Shpet and Cassirer has heuristic value for the historical-philosophical understanding of the fate of the Kantian philosophy and for modern philosophical culture. (shrink)

I should like to treat one important question on the solution of which depends not only the improvement of production but successful solution of tasks in shaping a communist attitude toward work. Irefer to certain aspects of our planning techniques.

Thomas Mann’s famous novella “Death in Venice” is more than social critics or metaphor of artistic search for means. Its ambiguous poetry of forbidden longing offers a game we play ever since, a drama of strange, dreamlike romance unfolding itself in a highly troublesome atmosphere of ordinary life succumbing to the oncoming devastation and catastrophe of the outer world that inexplicably links with the wishes of a soul. This plot became a focus of ideas, a web of meanings covering more (...) and more areas of mentality and imagination while living on. One of the latter writers rarely compared to Mann, a popular American author Stephen King, master of macabre fantasy, suddenly shows some extraordinary level of coincidence of his works’ throughout motives/invariants with those of the European classic. The answers both of them are chasing after lie in the mysterious character of the Whole of the world denying any isolate and solid sense, medium lands of affection and connection, Gordian knots of disastrous dialectics interweaving will and passivity, creation and destruction. Why dark fantasy (that King embodies) constantly insists on destroying, erasing the entire world for the sake of some bittersweet heroic pathos upon its ruin, as before Mann unleashes the epidemics to his story’s bourgeois backgrounds to celebrate the phantom love of his characters? Why does Beauty transgress the borders of subjectivity very much like Death does the borders of physicality, and they both lead us to the same revelation of some great apophatic quasi-Platonian chora at the core of our being where everything is born and we are all one? (shrink)

Genomes of higher eukaryotes contain abundant non‐coding repeated sequences whose overall biological impact is unclear. They comprise two categories. The first consists of retrotransposon‐derived elements. These are three major families of retroelements (LINEs, SINEs and LTRs). SINEs are clustered in gene‐rich regions and are found in promoters of genes while LINEs are concentrated in gene‐poor regions and are depleted from promoters. The second class consists of non‐coding tandem repeats (satellite DNAs and TTAGGG arrays), which are associated with mammalian centromeres, heterochromatin (...) and telomeres. Terminal TTAGGG arrays are involved in telomere capping and satellite DNAs are located in heterochromatin, which is implicated in transcription silencing by gene repositioning (relocalization). It is unknown whether interstitial TTAGGG sequences, which are present in many vertebrates, have a function. Here, evidence will be presented that retroelements and TTAGGG arrays are involved in regulation of gene expression. Retroelements can provide binding sites for transcription factors and protect promoter CpG islands from repressive chromatin modifications, and may be also involved in nuclear compartmentalization of transcriptionally active and inactive domains. Interstitial telomere‐like sequences can form dynamically maintained three‐dimensional nuclear networks of transcriptionally inactive domains, which may be involved in transcription silencing like classic heterochromatin. BioEssays 30:338–348, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

On note, dans certains courants de la philosophie contemporaine, un intérêt croissant pour les aspects passifs et réceptifs de la condition humaine. Cet intérêt s’accompagne souvent d’une critique selon laquelle la philosophie «occidentale» négligerait à tort ces aspects en raison d’un «biais d’agentivité». Cette critique a également été émise à l’endroit de la philosophie de Charles Taylor. J’entends montrer ici que cette critique, bien qu’elle ait en principe une certaine force, ne peut raisonnablement s’appliquer dans le cas de Taylor. J’analyserai (...) dans un premier temps le concept fort influent de «projet de vie» et montrerai comment le biais d’agentivité s’y applique. Dans un second temps, en présentant comment les moments actifs et passifs sont liés dans ses concepts d’articulation et de narration, je montrerai que ce biais ne saurait valoir pour The Language Animal de Taylor. (shrink)

The article presents the author’s reflection on the topic of scientific communication and forms of presentation of scientific results in the form of journal publications. As a starting point for reflection served the meeting that took place on March 28, 2019 held by the editor-in-chief of the Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences Khachatur Marinosyan with new researchers. The event was mainly devoted to the structure of the representation of modern knowledge, a crucial role in which is continued to be played (...) by a scientific journal that should be considered as a special phenomenon of intellectual culture. The operation of a journal is considered from the communicative perspective. In addition to the main topics of scientific communication, during the meeting some relevant to the institutional functioning of knowledge topics were also discussed: ageism, interdisciplinarity, transmedia, formalization of knowledge, international unification and formal indexation of journals. The meeting, which format was unusual for contemporary Russian science, aroused the interest of the professional community. The relevance and just-in-time character of the “dialogical” approach to the functioning of science was evidenced by the participants. The Social Philosophy Department of the Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the meeting, which was attended by the beginning scientists from Lomonosov Moscow State University, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences and independent researchers who do not have an institutional position in academic institutions but are engaged in research activities. The most important conclusion of the meeting is that there are the possibility and necessity of thematic updating of humanitarian and, in particular, philosophical knowledge by the work of beginning but promising authors, and editorial boards should be ready to that if they want to maintain journal’s leading status and keep up with the times. (shrink)

This study presents the first translation from Latin to English of the Linnaean dissertationMundus invisibilisorThe Invisible World, submitted by Johannes Roos in 1769. The dissertation highlights Linnaeus's conviction that infectious diseases could be transmitted by living organisms, too small to be seen. Biographies of Linnaeus often fail to mention that Linnaeus was correct in ascribing the cause of diseases such as measles, smallpox and syphilis to living organisms. The dissertation itself reviews the work of many microscopists, especially on zoophytes and (...) insects, marvelling at the many unexpected discoveries. It then discusses and quotes at length the observations of Münchhausen suggesting that spores from fungi causing plant diseases germinate to produce animalcules, an observation that Linnaeus claimed to have confirmed. The dissertation then draws parallels between these findings and the contagiousness of many human diseases, and urges further studies of this ‘invisible world’ since, as Roos avers, microscopic organisms may cause more destruction than occurs in all wars. (shrink)

The Lagrangian and Hamiltonian properties of classical electrodynamics models and their associated Dirac quantizations are studied. Using the vacuum field theory approach developed in (Prykarpatsky et al. Theor. Math. Phys. 160(2): 1079–1095, 2009 and The field structure of a vacuum, Maxwell equations and relativity theory aspects. Preprint ICTP) consistent canonical Hamiltonian reformulations of some alternative classical electrodynamics models are devised, and these formulations include the Lorentz condition in a natural way. The Dirac quantization procedure corresponding to the Hamiltonian formulations is (...) developed. The crucial importance of the rest reference systems, with respect to which the dynamics of charged point particles is framed, is explained and emphasized. A concise expression for the Lorentz force is derived by suitably taking into account the duality of electromagnetic field and charged particle interactions. Finally, a physical explanation of the vacuum field medium and its relativistic properties fitting the mathematical framework developed is formulated and discussed. (shrink)

The following result is an approximation to the answer of the question of Kokorin about decidability of a quantifier-free theory of field of rational numbers. Let Q0 be a subset of the set of all rational numbers which contains integers 1 and −1. Let be a set containing Q0 and closed by the functions of addition, subtraction and multiplication. For example coincides with Q0 if Q0 is the set of all binary rational numbers or the set of all decimal rational (...) numbers. It is clear that , where Z is the set of all integers and Q is the set of all rational numbers. A negationless theory uses only conjunction and disjunction as logical connectives. Let T be a quantifier-free negationless elementary theory of signature , where Pol is the list of all polynomials with rational coefficients from Q0 in which exponent of the polynomials and rational coefficients are written in binary number system. Theorem 1. Theory T is NP-hard and if is everywhere dense then the theory T is decidable by an algorithm which belongs to EXPTIME. The set of all rational numbers or the set of all binary rational numbers may be taken instead of . The quantifier-free negationless theory of the field of rational numbers may be regarded as a base of constructive mathematics. (shrink)

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s review of Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932). The review was published in the Parisian émigré journal Новый Град (Cité nouvelle) in 1932. In this review, Lossky criticizes Bergson for leaving some key problems of the philosophy of religion unresolved, namely that of God’s relation to the world (theism vs. pantheism), that of immortality, as well as that of evil. He also criticizes Bergson’s (...) “extreme biologism” in his explanation of morality, which, in his view, subjectivizes the objects of religion. For Lossky, the symbolic images of the Christian religion are not subjective “fabulations,” but real symbols through which God reveals himself to us. Likewise, according to Lossky, true morality cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, but must rely on the foundation of an objective, i.e., Platonic, axiological sphere. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)

Gorky’s story “Man,” as the title already makes evident, is a hymn of praise to man as the driving force of history, its main character, the source of all its meanings. However, man is...

Kniga 1. Prolegomeny -- kniga 2. Prichiny, dinamika i smysl revoli︠u︡t︠s︡iĭ.