The practical failure to understand in conflicts, where participants routinely challenge each other’s attribution of meaning, undermines the key assumption of the Weberian interpretive project: that the subject acts meaningfully. This article revisits Weber’s concept of meaning as an object of understanding for a social scientist. Ascertaining the empirical fact of subjective attribution, as Weber advised, may not be sufficient when it comes to understanding action whose meaning is disputed. The article uses the example of E.P. Thompson’s interpretation of eighteenth-century (...) English food riots to show that the disputed empirical meaning is a product of rational understanding, which Weber would classify as dogmatic meaning. The social scientist fails to understand what the critic claims to: a failure to act meaningfully in cultural terms. Furthermore, because the subject acts meaningfully without fail, we close off the option of explaining conflict as a rational disagreement. (shrink)

This monograph considers the problem of the Russian intelligentsia’s self-identification in its historic-philosophical aspect and compares the spiritual and biographical opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the 19th and 20th century.

The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of foreign language learning among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from the positive psychology perspective. The methods are based on a literature review of available sources found on the research topic in two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not limited by any time period since there are not many studies on this topic. Altogether seven original studies were (...) detected. The findings of this review study thus reveal that foreign language learning (FLL) has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, the FLL courses seem to offer new opportunities for healthy seniors in the area of socializing and integration into society, which consequently may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, the research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed. Cognitive aspects of older age are to be further investigated, including the importance of learning a foreign language, as basically all research conducted proves at least some maintenance or even improvement of cognitive functions of older people when starting intensive language training. (shrink)

Positive psychology has recently seen unprecedented rise and has reached vast achievements in the area of quality of life improvement. The purpose of this study is to show that there are different aspects of well-being that make healthy older people motivated to learn a foreign language at a later age. The research was conducted in the Czech Republic and Poland in two groups of learners aged 55 years and more. The experimental group consisted of 105 Czech respondents who were targeted (...) with an online questionnaire with the aim to determine the level of FLL outcomes connected to QoL in healthy older adults in their L2 acquisition. The second experimental group was established of Polish seniors who attended similar language courses. The findings of the research clearly show that FLL has an irreplaceable role as one of several non-pharmacological strategies utilized to improve the aging process and reduce drawbacks of aging. The results indicate that seniors' overall satisfaction and subjective feelings of well-being are enormously high when attending foreign language classes at older age. FLL, therefore, creates an environment that can enhance QoL of older adults that can be supplemented by other means such as well-balanced diet, other social activities, sport and physical activity, music, or computer games. All these intervention methods can significantly improve QoL of older adults and the parties engaged and/or responsible for taking care of older generation should take it into serious consideration. (shrink)

Currently, there is an increasing number of older population groups, especially in developed countries. This demographic trend, however, may cause serious problems, such as an increase in aging diseases, one of which is dementia whose main symptom consists in the decline of cognitive functioning. Although there has been ongoing pharmacological research on this neurological disorder, it has not brought satisfying results as far as its treatment is concerned. Therefore, governments all over the world are trying to develop alternative, non-pharmacological strategies/activities, (...) which could help to prevent this cognitive decline while this aging population is still healthy in order to reduce future economic and social burden. One of the non-pharmacological approaches, which may enhance cognitive abilities and protect against the decline in healthy older population, seems to be the learning of a foreign language. The purpose of this mini-review is to discuss recent findings about the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among healthy older individuals. The findings, divided into three research areas, show that the learning of a foreign language may generate a lot of benefits for older individuals, such as enhancement of cognitive functioning, their self-esteem, increased opportunities of socializing, or reduction of costs. However, as Ware et al. (2017) indicate, any intervention program on foreign language learning should be well thought of and tailored to the needs of older people in order to be effective and avoid accompanying factors, such as older people’s anxiety or low self-confidence. Nevertheless, more empirical studies should be done in this area. (shrink)

The purpose of this mini-review is to investigate if there are any cognitive benefits of computer-based foreign language training for healthy older individuals aged 55+ years. The author conducted a literature search of peer-reviewed English written research articles found in Pub Med, Web of Science and Scopus. The findings of this mini-review reveal that the research on the cognitive benefits of computer-based foreign language training for healthy older individuals is small-scale. The limited research findings of only three relevant studies indicate (...) that these computer-based foreign language training programs may bring cognitive benefits for healthy elderly people, especially as far as the enhancement of their cognitive functions such as working memory are concerned. In addition, the authors of these studies suggest that foreign language learning is a useful activity for healthy older adults since it has the benefits of being meaningful and provides the chance for acquiring important skills that can benefit other aspects of life, such as travel or communication. In conclusion, the author of this mini-review also provides several implications for practice and future research. (shrink)

I interpret Dostoevskij’s religious concepts in terms of mythogenesis and mythopoesis. Dostoevskij’s religious concepts arose on the basis both of his personal emotional experience and of the discourse of popular Orthodoxy. They demonstrate the antinomial nature of Russian spirituality, and are typified by his conception of the family, which illustrates the communal basis of the individual personality. The antimomial idea of the family is most fully developed in Dostoevskij’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, in which the four models of fatherhood correspond (...) to Isaac the Syrian’s concepts of physical, spiritual, mental and divine fatherhood. (shrink)

Various approaches to civil society research are considered. Two key problems caused by impact of post-modernism are discussed, that are: crises of identification with the society and problems of personal identity. A particular personality crisis that is specific for contemporary Russia is noticed. The crisis is caused by the combination of two factors. They are: social abandonment, atomization and loneliness and total relativism produced by expansion of post-modernism. The second factor influences the Western citizenship as well. That’s why “re-emergence” of (...) civil society is discussed in the Western world, though civil society institute has never died in the Western countries. Personality-oriented civil society is considered to be a prologue for re-emergence of the wholeness that seems to fall apart because of the loss of all universalistic values. The alliance between the heritage of the Russian thinker V. Rozanov and philosophical discourse by M. Foucault is tracked, the latter being a champion of personality-oriented civil society as opposed to “gregarious” politicallystructured one. Rozanov demonstrates his life to us as a process of a personality’s creative work which makes life experience a basis for the creation of universal values. Post-modernism represented by Fucault makes this experience as a basis in the process of the reflexive discourse-analysis this demonstrating his moving away from it. Both authors removed “interdict” from a number of so called "private themes" that had had ambiguous marginalized/sacral status in public discourse. The two thinkers transformed the problem of the “private discourse” into meta-language fit to conceive and describe the essence of the societal life and epoch as a whole. They drew attention to personality-oriented social communications and emergence of new types of societal communities. Both figures are ofa great importance for now-a-days discussions on civil society development in the epoch of a post-modernism. The fact that comparison of their views will contribute to better understanding of the controversies which are inherent in civil society is demonstrated. (shrink)

The well-known epistolary conflict between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Strakhov over the latter's slander of the great Russian writer's terrible sins is considered in the article from the point of view a philosophical anthropology and relations not two but between three participants of this story: Dostoyevsky, Strakhov and Tolstoy. This conflict is presented through anthropological, existential, and class prisms of description, based on a reconstruction of Strakhov's concept of man as a controversial, dual, and undefined being reflected in Dostoevsky's work. (...) A direct relation between the definition of the dual nature of man in the works of Strakhov and Dostoevsky and interpersonal conflicts within "boundary forms of literature" is substantiated. Special attention is paid to the class of seminarians, the object of Dostoevsky's targeted criticism. He saw their worst characteristics in Strakhov personality. Tolstoy plays the role of an arbiter in this controversy, assessing the situation both in terms of literary, existential and religious thought. In the course of his examination of this conflict, his unexpected closeness to Dostoevsky was discovered in regard to assessment of Strakhov. The point of their coincidence was the "pink Christianity" of the writers, who justify man in a quite similar manner, in terms of their religious consciousness. (shrink)

This article describes the device of enstrangement in relation to L.N. Tolstoy’s religious–political ideas. We focus on discussing the connection between enstrangement as a literary device and Tols...

The article considers L.N. Tolstoy not only as a thinker who represents but also accomplishes Enlightenment. Through a comparison of his ideas with philosophy of Spinoza and Diderot, the author clarifies the aspects of the transition from Enlightenment to the unique Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical doctrine. A special attention is paid to the way of thinking, the relation to science and the specifics of the worldview of Tolstoy and Diderot. The contradiction between the way of thinking and the way of (...) life of the three philosophers is revealed. The author also researches their philosophical interpretations of the nature of creative thought. Diderot describes the nature through the concept of paradoxism, Spinoza describes it with the concept of integrity, and Tolstoy uses the method of cohesion that he founds in literary works. If for the philosophers of European Enlightenment, the way of thinking is directly related to human nature, which is presented as a unity of natura naturans and natura naturata, then Tolstoy considers that the most important is a certain a priori sense of life, which is imbued with faith in God and with an instinct of self-giving that is love for the Supreme and other people. The method of cohesion leads Tolstoy away from the direct continuation of educational ideas, stressing the significance of appealing not only to reason but also to creative intuition. Tolstoy gradually moves away from rational perception of Life to its religious and existential foundations. Tolstoy’s worldview undergoes transition from the idea of a natural man to the idea of a human being who lives by commandments of Christ. Starting from the worldview of Enlightenment, Tolstoy comes to the creation of religious and philosophical doctrine, which is relevant to early 20th century. (shrink)

This paper discusses the methodological challenges of Soviet sociology of religion in the period between 1960 and 1989, when it was charged with the contradictory task of investigating the actual standing of religion in Soviet society and, at the same time, with proposing methods through which the official “scientific atheism,” deeply rooted in Marxism, could be imposed upon the very populations that were the subject of its inquiries. The authors propose an insight into the actual practices of the researchers, based (...) on little-known archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. The materials adduced by the authors show the various ways in which Soviet believers were surveyed and in which questionnaires were constructed, illustrating the modes of argumentation used in atheist propaganda conducted alongside such surveys, and giving a rare glimpse into the methodological discussions that were taking place at conferences organized by the Institute of Scientific Atheism. The authors track also the sociological conceptions and typologies adopted by Soviet sociology. (shrink)

This paper discusses the methodological challenges of Soviet sociology of religion in the period between 1960 and 1989, when it was charged with the contradictory task of investigating the actual standing of religion in Soviet society and, at the same time, with proposing methods through which the official “scientific atheism,” deeply rooted in Marxism, could be imposed upon the very populations that were the subject of its inquiries. The authors propose an insight into the actual practices of the researchers, based (...) on little-known archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. The materials adduced by the authors show the various ways in which Soviet believers were surveyed and in which questionnaires were constructed, illustrating the modes of argumentation used in atheist propaganda conducted alongside such surveys, and giving a rare glimpse into the methodological discussions that were taking place at conferences organized by the Institute of Scientific Atheism. The authors track also the sociological conceptions and typologies adopted by Soviet sociology. (shrink)

The paper investigates the dependence of Leo Tolstoy’s ethical, religious and political ideas on Benedict Spinoza’s philosophy. The Soviet philosopher Valentin Asmus offered a solution to this problem by attempting to emphasize rationalist elements in Tolstoy’s teachings while glossing over his religious inclinations. Asmus treated Tolstoy’s “life’s religion” as a peculiar form of humanist ethics, just like Spinoza’s idea that “God” is merely infinite Nature. Asmus compared the Spinozist and Tolstoyan understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and ethics. He also (...) showed that the fundamental difference between Tolstoy’s and Spinoza’s doctrines, was in their different understanding of human freedom. According to Tolstoy, a “free action” goes beyond the limitations of the laws of history. Regarding their relation to “real life,” Tolstoy’s, in many ways, was polar opposite to that of Spinoza’s. (shrink)

The philosophy of Mamardashvili can be presented through the prism of his experience of living through Soviet history, which became a “beneficial vantage point”, and through his understanding, not just of deeply theoretical, but also existential Russian themes. His particular style—“the living through thought” in the presence of the other reflected a covert protest and spiritual opposition to the zombified masses and to history. In the analysis of his ideas, a special attention has been payed to the mediative—« intermittential space (...) of the self » or the theory of symbols. In this article, an analysis of the symbolic theory of Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky as well as a comparison of this theory and those developed by Ernst Cassirer, Aleksei Losev and Mikhail Lifshits is provided. (shrink)

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s departure from this earth took place in 1910, a year that has since become a common touchstone for Russians. The twentieth century came to a symbolic close, beginning a te...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of the educational system, including students’ learning styles, which are heavily dependent on self-regulated studying strategies and motivation. The purpose of this study was to discover whether Central European students, in this case the Slovak and Czech students, were able to perform self-regulated learning during online learning under the COVID-19 pandemic to achieve their learning goals and improve academic performance, as well as to propose a few practical recommendations how to develop and maintain (...) students’ self-regulation learning in this new online environment. The methodology was based on a questionnaire survey conducted among 268 students at two Central European universities in February and March 2021. The findings indicate that Central European students seemed to be able to perform their online self-study, especially in regard to personal competencies, meaningfulness and motivation. They reported higher awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in learning, time management, and/or the usefulness of making an effort to study. However, the findings reveal an urgent need for more work to be done in the area of metacognitive strategies, such as reflective and critical thinking, analyzing and evaluating. In this respect, the teacher’s role is replaceable since s/he serves as a facilitator and promotes these metacognitive strategies by providing students with constructive feedback, monitoring their learning, reviewing their progress, and/or providing opportunities to reflect on their learning. There were not any striking differences between the Czech and Slovak students. Nevertheless, Slovak students seemed to be more self-disciplined and goal-oriented in their learning. (shrink)

This article covers Valentin Asmus’s first book Dialectical Materialism and Logic and response thereto among émigré and Soviet intellectuals. The interest in Asmus’s first book is not only related to the demonstration of his ideas. It records and discusses the main problems that emerged in early Soviet theory of cognition, and reveals the existence of a latent Hegelian trend within it. Asmus presents the dialectical method by situating it within the development of philosophical ideas from Hegel to Marx. The article (...) particularly focuses on the perception of Asmus’s book “on the two shores,” on the discussion of philosophy’s subject and method. Lenin’s name, featured in the book’s title, turns out to be essentially absent from the study itself. Asmus argues that only thinking taken in its dialectical development can be the true subject of philosophy (30 years later, Evald Ilyenkov would assume this stance as well). The second part of the article considers critical responses to Asmus’s first books in both émigré and Soviet press. (shrink)

Obsah této studie se zaměřuje na mýtus o prvotním hříchu a jeho dopadu na encyklopedické práce v raném novověku. Jejím hlavním cílem je zde zodpovězení otázky do jaké míry byly encyklopedie tímto příběhem ovlivněny a následně popsat konkrétní změny, které byly tímto mýtem zapříčeněny. Hlavní pozornost je věnována zejména nejvýznamnějším anglickým encyklopedickým pracím v raném novověku a to Cyclopaedii (1728) od Ephraim Chamberse a Lexiconu Technicumu (1704) od Johna Harrise.

Obsah této studie se zaměřuje na mýtus o prvotním hříchu a jeho dopadu na encyklopedické práce v raném novověku. Jejím hlavním cílem je zde zodpovězení otázky do jaké míry byly encyklopedie tímto příběhem ovlivněny a následně popsat konkrétní změny, které byly tímto mýtem zapříčeněny. Hlavní pozornost je věnována zejména nejvýznamnějším anglickým encyklopedickým pracím v raném novověku a to Cyclopaedii (1728) od Ephraim Chamberse a Lexiconu Technicumu (1704) od Johna Harrise.

Big data technologies are entering the world of ageing computer systems running critical infrastructures. These innovations promise to afford rapid Internet connectivity, remote operations or predictive maintenance. As legacy critical infrastructures were traditionally disconnected from the Internet, the prospect of their modernisation necessitates an inquiry into cyber security and how it intersects with traditional engineering requirements like safety, reliability or resilience. Looking at how the adoption of big data technologies in critical infrastructures shapes understandings of risk management, we focus on (...) a specific case study from the cyber security governance: the EU Network and Information Systems Security Directive. We argue that the implementation of Network and Information Systems Security Directive is the first step in the integration of safety and security through novel risk management practices. Therefore, it is the move towards legitimising the modernisation of critical infrastructures. But we also show that security risk management practices cannot be directly transplanted from the safety realm, as cyber security is grounded in anticipation of the future adversarial behaviours rather than the history of equipment failure rates. Our analysis offers several postulates for the emerging research agenda on big data in complex engineering systems. Building on the conceptualisations of safety and security grounded in the materialist literature across Science and Technology Studies and Organisational Sociology, we call for a better understanding of the ‘making of’ technologies, standardisation processes and engineering knowledge in a quest to build safe and secure critical infrastructures. (shrink)

The paper deals with the topical issue of studying cyclic patterns in the economy and their practical application for the forecasts on the development of financial markets. The work aims to establish the features of the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" in the international financial markets in current conditions and to develop recommendations for the practical application of these patterns in the investment activities. The US stock market as an integral part of the (...) World financial market was chosen as a basis for research. The research was conducted by statistical processing of data on the values of the broad market index Standard & Poor's-500 for the period from 1950 to 2019. The study showed that the formation of forecasts about the annual growth or decline of the stock market index using the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" can show a high result in cases where the growth of the Standard & Poor's-500 index by the results of both the first five days of January and the results of the entire month of January of this year is a positive value. Otherwise, forecasting based on these instruments is not advisable. The best results (the forecast efficiency was 93.3%) were achieved with the joint application of both cyclic patterns. The practical application of the research results makes it possible to improve the efficiency of investment activities in international financial markets. (shrink)

Basic tendencies of enterprises' innovative development management have been considered from the perspective of postfordist tranformations. It has been determined that mobility is a specificity of postfordist industrial management. Mobility provides dispersion of structural subdivisions all over the world, it doesn't need any governmental support and strict control. Total diversification of the kind allows to implement «high» technologies through global data revolution practically into all spheres of social life. The evolution of social relations types from feudalism up to Post-Fordism has (...) been provided and their specifics defined. Analytical studies carried out have enabled to discover formed world innovative centres and – from global economic perspective – those of half-peripheral countries with low level of innovative development. The directions of China management of innovative development, whose combined innovation level steadily increases, have been described. It has been determined that a great many of world countries is not currently being on the postfordist stage, since an industrial labour is characteristic for them which defines their type as traditional or early industrial pre-modern. We've also found that innovation development governance at the global level through the prism of postfordist transformations manifests itself in looking for niche, strict subordination to global market mechanisms, decentralization under control of transnational corporations; at the national level: in decentration of social space and thinking, marginalization of urban population, migration; at the meso level: in orientation on consumer needs, considerable mobility of production, individualization under global standardization; at the micro level: in project approach, faster time to market, cost minimization. It has been determined that technological breakthrough evokes such social concerns as total control, alienation, job and security loss. (shrink)

Considering entrepreneurial activity from the psychological perspective, primarily it is worth to give an answer to the question of what fundamental, ultimate purpose of entrepreneurship is. In the conceptual and theoretical aspect, two opposite points of view are distinguished: the first recognizes focusing of the entrepreneurship mainly on profit subject to obeying existing laws, the second considers business entities as members of society, who bear personal responsibility to society for their behaviour. However, since laws cannot cover all life events, entrepreneurs (...) are obliged to comply with the requirements of the rules of socially responsible behaviour in order to maintain a society based on order and legality. Scientists identify a number of stages that the company goes through before realizing: corporate social responsibility is a tool for creating new value. The first step to the introduction of strategic innovations in companies is to harmonize compliance with the law. Actually, a social company should do this by definition. The second step is when companies begin to realize the need to engage in strategic philanthropy. Thus, corporate funds are established. The third stage is to create mechanisms of self-regulation based on values. The next stage is the direct material benefits from strategic innovations. This is most often the result of increased efficiency. At the last stage, conceptually new products are created, new markets are opened. It is important that strategic innovations through social responsibility are mostly aimed at creating new products and services and are a source of income. (shrink)

Moderní evropská kultura o sobě ráda prohlašuje, že se na svou nynější intelektuální, kulturní a vědeckotechnickou úroveň dostala díky tomu, že se osvobodila od předsudků a iluzí. Jednou z nejčastěji zmiňovaných iluzí se stal geocentrismus vykládaný obvykle jako projev naivní touhy člověka postavit se do středu vesmíru. V této studii ukazuji, že geocentrismus se v antice, středověku ani renesanci nepojil s představou lidské výlučnosti v kosmu. Z kosmologického hlediska byla Země kloaka světa a z teologického hlediska byla Země působištěm ďáblovým. (...) Teprve Koperníkova reforma astronomie rozbila dosavadní distribuci dignity v kosmu a přinesla odlišné zhodnocení Země a středu světa. A geocentrismus začal být napadán právě jako projev naivního a infantilního antropocentrismu, který v nekonečném vesmíru obydleném miliony inteligentních bytostí, nemá smysl. (shrink)

Moderní evropská kultura o sobě ráda prohlašuje, že se na svou nynější intelektuální, kulturní a vědeckotechnickou úroveň dostala díky tomu, že se osvobodila od předsudků a iluzí. Jednou z nejčastěji zmiňovaných iluzí se stal geocentrismus vykládaný obvykle jako projev naivní touhy člověka postavit se do středu vesmíru. V této studii ukazuji, že geocentrismus se v antice, středověku ani renesanci nepojil s představou lidské výlučnosti v kosmu. Z kosmologického hlediska byla Země kloaka světa a z teologického hlediska byla Země působištěm ďáblovým. (...) Teprve Koperníkova reforma astronomie rozbila dosavadní distribuci dignity v kosmu a přinesla odlišné zhodnocení Země a středu světa. A geocentrismus začal být napadán právě jako projev naivního a infantilního antropocentrismu, který v nekonečném vesmíru obydleném miliony inteligentních bytostí, nemá smysl. (shrink)