This article is based on a discussion held in Athens in April 2002, in the framework of a research visit, supported by the National Technical University of Athens, among the following participants: Alexander Pavlovits Ogurtsov (APO), Svetlena Sergeevna Neretina (SSN), and Michalis Assimakopoulos (MA) who translated and annotated the Russian text. The later wishes to thank his Russian teachers in philosophy, E.A. Mamchur and language, A.A. Nekrasova The translation was reviewed and emended by E.M. Swiderski, editor of SEET.Svetlana Neretina is (...) senior researcher in the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), doctor of philosophy, titled professor for medieval philosophy, author of: The Conceptualism of Peter Abelard (1994), Believing Reason (1995), Tropes and Concepts (1999), Time of Culture (2000, with A. Ogurtsov), articles and translations on Philosophy of culture, email, [email protected]. (shrink)

As we know, the category of practice is a focal point in Marxist philosophy. The revolutionary upheaval in philosophy carried out by Marxism involves the interpretation of the essence of practice and its role in the process of cognition. In the fifty years of the development of Soviet philosophy, much has been done to clarify the nature of this problem, to render it concrete and work it out. The development of Marxist philosophical thought in other countries has also yielded much.

I have several comments and I will try to present the essence of the problem. The papers that we read on the computer give an idea of a certain structure of the future dictionary of culturology, or of culture- I don't know which is intended. It seems to me, that, according their approach, the papers are strictly scientific and attempt to apply the methods and concepts of scientific knowledge to culturology. Indeed, there is a scientific approach to cultural phenomena, for (...) example, the morphology of culture. It proceeds from the ideas of general validity, objectivity, and conceptuality. All this is legitimate and was sufficiently justified. I have some comments on Orlova's text regarding the identification of formal and eidetic logic. It is not exactly so. Eidetic logic has no bearing on contemporary logic, which does not coincide with formal logic. (shrink)

Stalinism is above all a regime, a personal power, an autocracy that repudiates democratic principles of social and political life, unifies culture, and embraces a repressive ideology formed around a mythological cult of a single person—the Master, and one value—Order. Here politics is replaced by intrigue, science—by servicing utilitarian and pragmatic ends, and philosophy—by the ideology of the ruling clique at the helm of a command-bureaucratic system, which also oppressed by the despotic will of the autocrat.