The article is devoted to the consideration the problem of the phenomenon of an unreliable narration in the British intellectual prose of the second half of the twentieth century. The meaning of the words “narrator”, “unreliable narration” is investigated. The unreliable narration is reviewed based on the example of the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding. It is noted that the aforementioned work has a vibrant didactic component. It has been found that Golding uses a wide range of (...) narrative techniques. The emphasis is made on the critical analysis by other literary scholars of the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding. The use of narrative strategies in accordance with the scientific classification by Genette is investigated. The markers of unreliability of the narrators are emphasized. Attention is focused on the fact that a high degree of unreliability is based on the limited knowledge of the heroes, direct participation in the events, a problematic system of values. It is noted that the unreliability of narration in the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding forces the reader to doubt not only the narrator but oneself. The use of the narrative method in the intellectual prose of the British writer Iris Murdoch is investi-gated. It has been found that the novel “The Black Prince” by Iris Murdock is one of the best examples of an unreliable narration. The genre specifics of the novel are emphasized, which combines the forms of the diary, of the memoir and of the confession. In addition, Murdoch creates a narrative strategy, which combines signs of various forms of “I am the narrator” within the framework of one narrative. In addition, “The Black Prince” is a unique model of modern artistic and philosophical metatext genre formation. (shrink)

Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable rationalists to begin to meet the challenge of supplying (...) a theoretically satisfying treatment of their favoured epistemic source. It is argued, first, that intuitions and perceptual experiences are at a certain level of abstraction the same type of mental state, presentations, which are distinct from beliefs, hunches, inclinations, attractions, and seemings. The notion of a presentation is given a positive explication, which identifies its characteristic features, accounts for several of its substantive psychological roles, and systematically locates it in a threefold division among types of contentful states. Subsequently, it is argued that presentations, intuitive no less than sensory, are by their nature poised to play a distinctive epistemic role. Specifically, in the case of intuition, we encounter an intellectual state that is so structured as to provide justification without requiring justification in turn—something which may, thus, be thought of as ‘given’. (shrink)

I present an account of an aspect of people’s intellectual characters that has yet to receive such direct treatment in the literature on the intellectual virtues. That aspect is our capacity to influence others in ways that make inquiry go more successfully, which I call “intellectual charisma”. In presenting this account, I first draw on work in empirical psychology to build a partial picture of intellectual charisma as a social-psychological phenomenon. I then draw on this (...) partial picture in defining intellectual charisma, explaining some important features of it, and making the case that it meets some important conditions for qualifying as an intellectual virtue. I conclude by first discussing some of the ways that including intellectual charisma within our overall picture of the intellectual virtues changes that picture, and then outlining some of the benefits that result from those changes. (shrink)

When it was published in France, this book shocked the philosophers of the Left Bank with its plain-speaking attack on some of France's greatest minds.

The Imposter Phenomenon—i.e., the phenomenon of feeling like a fraud and like your successes aren’t really yours—is typically construed not just as a crisis of confidence, but as a failure of rationality. On the standard story, “imposters” have bad beliefs about their talents because they dismiss the evidence provided by their successes. Here I suggest that this standard picture could be mistaken, and that these “imposters” may actually be more rational than non-imposters. Why? Accounting for the non-talent causes (...) of your successes may require you to lower your confidence in your talents, in which case, “imposter” beliefs are rational. I then go on to suggest a second reason to worry about the standard picture: It does not adequately address the possible role that one’s environment has in the production of the phenomenon. To give an example, I hypothesize that environments that host a “culture of genius” can alter our evidential landscape in a way that promotes the Imposter Phenomenon. Finally, I argue that my alternative picture of the Imposter Phenomenon should prompt us to opt for a conception of self-worth that is more deeply tied to virtues like intellectual humility than to relative talent possession. (shrink)

Is economics always self-corrective? Do erroneous theorems permanently disappear from the market of economic ideas? _Intellectual Path Dependence in Economics _argues that errors in economics are not always corrected. Although economists are often critical and open-minded, unfit explanations are nonetheless able to reproduce themselves. The problem is that theorems sometimes survive the intellectual challenges in the market of economic ideas even when they are falsified or invalidated by criticism and an abundance of counter-evidence. A key question which often gets (...) little or no attention is: why do economists not reject theories when they have been refuted by evidence and falsified by philosophical reasoning? This book explores the answer to this question by examining the phenomenon of intellectual path dependence in the history of economic thought. It argues that the key reason why economists do not reject refuted theories is the epistemic costs of starting to use new theories. Epistemic costs are primarily the costs of scarcity of the most valued element in academic production: time. Epistemic scarcity overwhelmingly dominates the evolution of scientific research in such a way that when researchers start off a new research project, they allocate time between replicable and un-replicable research. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the methodology, philosophy and history of economics. (shrink)

While copious quantities of ink have been spilled on the topic of autonomy in the context of health care, little has been written about autonomy in relation to intellectual disability. After presenting the received account of capacity, we argue that it cannot account for the moral permissibility of limiting an individual with intellectual disability’s access to diet soda. In cases of preventative medicine and intellectual disability, the philosophical motivation for the received account of capacity is incompatible with (...) the actions it recommends. We consider and reject several potential solutions; then, drawing on applied behavior analysis and the phenomenon of automatic reinforcement, we propose our own solution. The article concludes by considering the broader implications of our discussion. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the objectivity of persons is best understood in terms of intellectual virtue, the telos of which is an enduring commitment to salient and accurate information about reality. On this view, an objective reasoner is one we can trust to manage her perspectives, beliefs, emotions, biases, and responses to evidence in an intellectually virtuous manner. We can be confident that she will exercise intellectual carefulness, openmindedness, fairmindedness, curiosity, and other intellectual virtues in (...) her reasoning. I argue further that the cultivation and exercise of such virtues is a social phenomenon and thus challenge highly individualistic notions of intellectual character, epistemic autonomy, and personal objectivity. An advantage of this account of objectivity is that it better enables us to address bias in scientific research, science policy, and public debates about science. (shrink)

The fundamental changes that took place at the beginning of the 21st century in all spheres of public life actualized the personalized trend of the modern personality, namely its social and professional development, which is associated with the concept of “career”. The purpose of the article is to characterize the pool of factors that determine a career as a socio-cultural phenomenon of modern society. Based on macro- and microsociological approaches, the parameters of career transformation are determined. Economic ones consist (...) in the transition from working professions to expert-type professions that require a high level of education and specialization. Technological - in the development of information technologies, which led to changes in the technical and technological component of social production and the growth of a separate social group of intellectual workers. The transformation of interests and value orientations of a person has led to a shift in the emphasis of personal performance from external signs to individualistic factors. The patterns of new realities in the world of work, which led to the transformation of the concept of career and new trends, are characterized. The first model includes the presence of higher education, intellectual work in the specialty and a fairly low level of income. The second model is based on ideas about the American dream and the unlimited possibilities of the individual, where the main component is a high material status and own business as a symbol of success. The third model is a highly paid professional with a high level of prestigious education and a good profession. A new type of career is defined - “polyvariant”. These days, success in career strategies requires constant professional development and gaining experience. Through the individualization and pluralization of lifestyles and consumption, people are more able to choose their own path to success, including various forms of life and career development. The tendencies of the spread of self-employment and the development of professional qualities in the career strategies of a modern person are determined. Through the individualization and pluralization of lifestyles and consumption, people are more able to choose their own path to success, including various forms of life and career development. (shrink)

In the thirteenth century, the University of Paris emerged as a complex community with a distinctive role in society. This book explores the relationship between contexts of learning and the ways of knowing developed within them, focusing on twelfth-century schools and monasteries, as well as the university. By investigating their views on money, marriage and sex, Ian Wei reveals the complexity of what theologians had to say about the world around them. He analyses the theologians' sense of responsibility to the (...) rest of society and the means by which they tried to communicate and assert their authority. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, however, their claims to authority were challenged by learned and intellectually sophisticated women and men who were active outside as well as inside the university and who used the vernacular - an important phenomenon in the development of the intellectual culture of medieval Europe. (shrink)

I shall discuss what I have chosen to call the phenomenon of ‘intellectual robotry’. Intellectual robotry is a disease which is manifested in various different ways by some intellectuals, though not by all. What do I mean by ‘intellectual robotry’? I mean, among other things, a habitual indulgence in clever words for their own sake, a fixation about the potency of arguments and a sort of involved commitment to certain fashionable ideologies. One of the main characteristics (...) of intellectual robotry is that the practitioner of it invariably loses sight of the person he is talking to, or allegedly talking to. He, the intellectual, is intent on pursuing his own momentum of metaphysical or ideological or political or whatever talk because he believes he has something rather important to say, but as he talks—you can almost see it in his or her eyes—he is no longer talking to a person. (shrink)

Dehumanization Studies is a burgeoning field that has much to teach Critical Disability Studies and philosophers of disability. Conversely, a critical disability perspective can inform and challenge theoretical approaches to dehumanization. This paper attempts to forge a conversation between these interdisciplinary areas by exploring the phenomenon of dehumanization in relation to people with intellectual disabilities. It begins with a definition of disability dehumanization, and then explores the ways in which this form of dehumanization functions dynamically at multiple levels, (...) drawing from the history of ID and contemporary examples in moral philosophy. Ultimately it argues that it is essential to recognize the moral relevance of being human in order to challenge and prevent forms of disability dehumanization and de­fends this idea in the face of two objections (speciesism and posthumanism). (shrink)

Quite honestly, it is not easy to see what all the fuss is about. Sir Julian Huxley was clearly impressed. “A landmark in modern thought which we cannot afford to pass by” wrote John Stewart Collis in the Sunday Times, and the following week Arnold Toynbee in the Observer wrote: “This is a great book. If it is eclipsed by anything, it is by the spirit of the author, which shines through it”. The French reaction to the original text was (...) at least equally enthusiastic. André Rousseaux in Figaro Littéraire says: “Not since the 12th. Century has there been such a satisfying exposition of the perfect understanding between the material world and that of Christ Incarnate”. One wonders how much of the enthusiasm is due to the fact that Father Teilhard was not allowed to publish his philosophical thought in his own lifetime. The facts of his life are well known. Born in 1881, he joined the Jesuits in 1899 and was ordained. in 1912. Prehistory, geology, palaeontology, anthropology, were his chief intellectual interests, and he took his doctorate in the Sorbonne in 1922. He became professor of geology in the Institut Catholique in Paris and in 1923 went with Pére Licent S.J. to China on a palaeontological mission. The detail is given by Sir Julian in the introduction, in the course of which he pays Père Teilhard many felicitous tributes, notably that he was “a dedicated Christian priest.” On his return to France, Sir Julian tells us, “some of the ideas which he had expressed in his lectures about original sin and its relation to evolution, were regarded as unorthodox by his religious superiors, and he was forbidden to continue teaching.” He spent the next twenty years mostly in China with occasional scientific visits to India, Burma, Java, Abyssinia and the United States. The work under review was all but finished in Peking in 1938-1940. (shrink)

The article’s intellectual core resides in the examination of social phenomena through the lenses of ambivalence and ambitemptiness. Democracy is conceived through the cultivation of the ideal of national solidarity within the framework of the “indivisible and unified nation” and revolution — values which, according to B. Anderson, individuals do not choose of their own volition. Nevertheless, it functions by virtue of structures that are freely chosen by individuals, specifically political parties and civil society organisations, among which trade unions (...) assume a paramount role in ensuring social solidarity. The author posits that a functioning political democracy, viewed as a historically ambi temptuous phenomenon, necessitates the reanimation of sustained equilibrium between the for ces of social hegemony and counter-hegemony. This revival hinges on transformative shifts in the structure of civil society, particularly reinstatement of pivotal social functions to trade unions. The article underscores the phenomenon of unprecedented demonstrative solidarity exhibited by the Democratic Party of the USA towards the strike movement. The author emphasises that a fully-fledged European liberal democracy was established during its golden age, preceding financial globalisation, as a social democracy. Within its framework, competitive and pluralist elections were complemented by the possibility of nationwide strikes facilitated by trade unions capable of social mobilisation. Proposing the term “political society” to denote the phenomenon encompassing political parties and movements, the article argues that their viability depends on their connection with civil society structures. It is asserted that neither right-wing nor left-wing populism possesses the capacity to fully neutralise “democratic fatigue”. (shrink)

During the two last decades, speeded up by the development of the Internet, several types of commons have been opened up for intellectual resources. In this article their variety is being explored as to the kind of resources and the type of regulation involved. The open source software movement initiated the phenomenon, by creating a copyright-based commons of source code that can be labelled `dynamic': allowing both use and modification of resources. Additionally, such a commons may be either (...) protected from appropriation (by `copyleft' licensing), or unprotected. Around the year 2000, this approach was generalized by the Creative Commons initiative. In the process they added a `static' commons, in which only use of resources is allowed. This mould was applied to the sciences and the humanities in particular, and various Open Access initiatives unfolded. A final aspect of copyright-based commons is the distinction between active and passive commons: while the latter is only a site for obtaining resources, the former is also a site for production of new resources by communities of volunteers (`peer production'). Finally, several patent commons are discussed, which mainly aim at preventing patents blocking the further development of science. Throughout, attention is drawn to interrelationships between the various commons. (shrink)

Purpose of this article is to tell foreign readers about novels made in Russian intellectual property law in 2014. As is known modern Russian revolution in the field of intellectual property legislation occurred January 1, 2008 when Russian intellectual property legislation was codified, included in the text of part fourth of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Part fourth of the Russian CC entered into force on January 1, 2008. At the same day seven sectoral (...) class='Hi'>intellectual property laws were repealed. Second Revolution in this field took place during 2014: Federal law №35-FZ, 2014, substantially amending the Fourth part on the CC, entered into force on October the 1st of 2014. Scientific aim: The essence and evaluation of these amendments is the subject matter of this paper. Methods: The research is based on the analysis of the new amendments and articles added to the part fourth of the CC. Findings: Codification of the sectoral legislation en bloc in CC is a unique phenomenon. The author believes that such a construction of intellectual property law was made correctly and at the proper time. Factually the Federal Law №35-FZ is the eleventh law amending the text of the part fourth of the CC. But all previous amendments were small and not substantial. As far as amendments introduced by the law №35-FZ are concerned, they are numerous and very, very substantial. Before entering into force of the law №35-FZ, the Part fourth of the CC contained 328 articles. The law 35-FZ amends 169 articles of it and adds seven new articles. I am convinced that the law is a rather big step towards building a modern system of intellectual property legislation in Russia. Conclusions: More than 150 amendments were introduced by the law №35-FZ. Author estimates about 80% of them as positive and about 20% as negative and erroneous. These amendments do not contradict the international intellectual property agreements signed by the Russian Federation. Generally their purpose is to enhance and clarify the Russian intellectual property legislation and to narrow the gap between Russian and European intellectual property laws. The author of this article deals with intellectual property laws more than 50 years on. This paper is a short English version of various articles on this topic published in Russian, in journals: «The business and the law» and «The patents and licenses». (shrink)

The authors of the article with reference to the discussions about the status of knowledge in the postmodernism discourse and the "crisis of the intellectual" presented in the works by J.F. Lyotard and Z. Bauman, consider these issues in the context of other social challenges. Interpreting the conducted empirical research results, the research also focuses on the multidisciplinary theoretical analysis of philosophical, psychological and pedagogical literature. The authors note that in the absence of metanarratives, the phenomenon of intellectuals (...) and intellectual work is transformed: postmodern epistemology has changed the opportunities of mass education about how things should stand / what to have / how to act into the multiple / polyphonic / variable / fragmentary / collage dissemination of knowledge. As an argument in the "crisis of intellectuals" discussion, the authors analyze the educators` need and motivation sphere emphasizing constant knowledge enhancement to be a priority for them, which logically affects professional identity reconstruction carried out through self-reference. The paper presents an opinion that intellectuals lack self-perception as a reference social group. We conclude that in the information society, public interaction with the media affecting the reconsideration of the intellectual`s role and status serves as a basis for their legitimation. The results of the conducted survey enable us to conclude that raising educators` intellectual level affects their competences in professional practices. The status of the intellectual-educator is legitimized by their activity in training sessions, discussions, meet-ups and other events. The study presents an algorithm for constructing the intellectual-educator in the conditions of social reality challenges. The research substantiates demand for the intellectual-educator who is IT literate, capable of professional reflection, open to change, motivated for continuous self-development, ready for the reconstruction of professional identity from a knowledge transmitter to an erudite, a creative coach, a supervisor and a moderator. (shrink)

The paper enters contemporary discourse concerning the examination of history of Russian philosophy, which initiates a new reading of the Russian thinkers’ works. These contemporary examinations problematize the phenomenon of so called intellectual doubles as well. The contribution proceeds from the definition of these issues which was published in journal Problems of Philosophy by M. A. Maslin in 2013. In this work, Maslin mentions A. I. Herzen among the examples of intellectual doubles phenomenon, who is one (...) of the founders of the Russian Narodism. Following from this basis, the contribution shifts an attention toward issues of intellectual doubles in the context of the Russian Narodism. The work represents an endeavour to deepen the existing problematization of this phenomenon on the basis of examination the N. K. Mikhailovsky’s creative legacy. There can be found two faces in works of this Narodnik thinker. The first one can be figuratively designed as a Petersburgian and the second one as a Yaltian. These designations are borrowed from the notes of Sergey Elpatevsky, who had been Mikhailovsky’s friend. The two faces express the specificity of the problem of doubleness in Mikhailovsky and his qualitative shift in relation to contemporary examinations of the reflected phenomenon. (shrink)

Science and mathematics continually change in their tools, methods, and concepts. Many of these changes are not just modifications but progress---steps to be admired. But what constitutes progress? This dissertation addresses one central source of intellectual advancement in both disciplines: reformulating a problem-solving plan into a new, logically compatible one. For short, I call these cases of compatible problem-solving plans "reformulations." Two aspects of reformulations are puzzling. First, reformulating is often unnecessary. Given that we could already solve a problem (...) using an older formulation, what do we gain by reformulating? Second, some reformulations are genuinely trivial or insignificant. Merely replacing one symbol with another does not lead to intellectual progress. What distinguishes significant reformulations from trivial ones? According to what I call "conceptualism" (or "conceptual empiricism"), reformulations are intellectually significant when they provide a different plan for solving problems. Significant reformulations provide inferentially different routes to the same solution. In contrast, trivial reformulations provide exactly the same problem-solving plans, and hence they do not change our understanding. This answers the second question about what distinguishes trivial from significant reformulations. However, the first question remains: what makes a new way of solving an old problem valuable? Here, a bevy of practical considerations come to mind: one formulation might be faster, less complicated, or use more familiar concepts. According to "instrumentalism," these practical benefits are all there is to reformulating. Some reformulations are simply more instrumentally valuable for meeting the aims of science than others. At another extreme, "fundamentalism" contends that a reformulation is valuable when it provides a more fundamental description of reality. According to this view, some reformulations directly contribute to the metaphysical aim of carving reality at its joints. Conceptualism develops a middle ground between instrumentalism and fundamentalism, preserving their benefits without their costs. I argue that the epistemic value of significant reformulations does not reduce to either practical or metaphysical value. Reformulations are valuable because they are a constitutive part of problem-solving. Both science and mathematics aim at solving all possible problems within their respective domains. Meeting this aim requires being able to plan for any possible problem-solving context, and this requires reformulating. By reformulating, we clarify what we need to know to solve problems. Still, one might wonder whether the value of reformulations requires underlying differences in explanatory power. According to "explanationism," a reformulation is valuable only when it provides a better explanation. Explanationism stands as a rival middle ground position to my own. However, it faces numerous counterexamples. In many cases, two reformulations provide the same explanation while nonetheless providing different ways of understanding a phenomenon. Hence, reformulating can be valuable even when neither formulation is more explanatory. Methodologically, I draw on a variety of case studies to support my account of reformulation. These range from classical mechanics to quantum chemistry, along with examples from mathematics. Symmetry arguments provide a paradigmatic example: the mathematics of symmetry groups radically recasts quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry. Nevertheless, elementary approaches exist that eschew this additional mathematical apparatus, solving problems in a more tedious but less mathematically-demanding manner. Further examples include reformulations of quantum field theory, Arabic vs. Roman numerals, and Fermat's little theorem in number theory. In each case, my account identifies how reformulations change and improve our understanding of science and mathematics. (shrink)

This article examines the puzzling phenomenon that many Chinese liberal intellectuals fervently idolize Donald Trump and embrace the alt-right ideologies he epitomizes. Rejecting ‘pure tactic’ and ‘neoliberal affinity’ explanations, it argues that the Trumpian metamorphosis of Chinese liberal intellectuals is precipitated by their ‘beacon complex’, which has ‘political’ and ‘civilizational’ components. Political beaconism grows from the traumatizing lived experience of Maoist totalitarianism, sanitizes the West and particularly the United States as politically near-perfect, and gives rise to both a neoliberal (...) affinity and a latent hostility toward baizuo. Civilizational beaconism, sharing with its nationalistic counterpart -- civilizational vindicativism -- the heritages of scientific racism and social Darwinism imported in late-Qing, renders the Chinese liberal intelligentsia receptive to anti-immigrant and Islamophobic paranoia, exacerbates its anti-baizuo sentiments, and catalyzes its Trumpian convergence with Chinese non-liberals. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to substantiate the socio-cultural contexts of the leading role of knowledge in the transformation of power and managerial relations in the knowledge society. The article analyzes the nature of the intellectual overstraat – a new power and management structure that is being formed in the conditions of the Knowledge Society, and identifies the socio-cultural prerequisites for the formation of this phenomenon. New spheres of cultural life, new social strata and strata, as shown (...) in the study, were the result of a" shift", a" shift " of power from the economy to knowledge. The "shift" in the structures of power and management undermines the traditional bureaucratic foundations. The overstraat of intellectuals is presented as embodying the power of knowledge. As a result, the functions of the intellectual overstrate in a knowledge - based society-social, economic, political and state-are identified and analyzed; the socio-cultural context of the leading role of knowledge in the transformation of power and managerial relations of the "Knowledge Society"is substantiated. (shrink)

From Kosovo to Québec, Ireland to East Timor, nationalism has been a recurrent topic of intense debate. It has been condemned as a source of hatred and war, yet embraced for stimulating community feeling and collective freedom. Joan Cocks explores the power, danger, and allure of nationalism by examining its place in the thought of eight politically engaged intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the antagonist of capital, Karl Marx; the critics of imperialism Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz (...) Fanon; the liberal pluralist Isaiah Berlin; the neonationalist Tom Nairn, and the post-colonial writers, V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said. Cocks not only sheds new light on the complexities of nationalism but also reveals the tensions that have inspired and troubled intellectuals who have sought to lead lives between detached criticism and political passion.In lively, conversational prose, Cocks assesses their treatment of questions such as the mythology of national identity, the right to national self-determination, and the morality of nationalist violence. While ultimately critical of nationalism, she engages sympathetically even with its defenders. By illuminating the links that distinguished minds have drawn between thought and action on nationalism in politics, this stimulating work provides a rich foundation from which we ourselves might think or act more wisely when confronting a phenomenon that, in fundamental and perplexing ways, has shaped our world. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to consider individual symptoms and areas of alienation in the history of mankind and in the modern information society, and the disclosure of its logic and patterns. Methodologically, the study is based on the historical, information and cybernetic approaches. The paper points to a positive feedback between the amount of knowledge in alienated form and figures of society, the development of its comprehensive intelligence. New forms of exclusion, which exist in the form of artificial (...) intelligence, robotics, and global computer networks, are analysed. The findings suggest a communicative model of the interaction of mankind with man-made external memory, which describes a non-linear process of communicating to it all human knowledge and intellectual abilities. It is emphasized that the contradiction between man and the material world created by him is the main contradiction of modernity. (shrink)

An eminent scholar of modern culture argues that the Enlightenment—the importance of which has been vigorously debated in recent years—was a more complex phenomenon than either its detractors or advocates assume. “Ranging as it does over art, morality, religion, science, philosophy, social theory, and a good deal besides, [Dupré’s book] is a marvel of scholarly erudition.... Formidably well-researched,... [this] would make an excellent introduction to Enlightenment ideas for the general reader.”—Terry Eagleton, _Harper’s Magazine _“This immensely readable book will cause (...) readers to rethink the Enlightenment and to see its positive aspects. It will also add crucial historical perspective to current discussions of modernity.”—Donald Verene, Emory University. (shrink)

An eminent scholar of modern culture argues that the Enlightenment—the importance of which has been vigorously debated in recent years—was a more complex phenomenon than either its detractors or advocates assume. “Ranging as it does over art, morality, religion, science, philosophy, social theory, and a good deal besides, [Dupré’s book] is a marvel of scholarly erudition.... Formidably well-researched,... [this] would make an excellent introduction to Enlightenment ideas for the general reader.”—Terry Eagleton, _Harper’s Magazine _“This immensely readable book will cause (...) readers to rethink the Enlightenment and to see its positive aspects. It will also add crucial historical perspective to current discussions of modernity.”—Donald Verene, Emory University. (shrink)

Is there not any place in the history of ideas for the imperfect character of human doings (i.e. capability of error) that is repeated for so long until we lately start to think that it had long been wrong? The answer is: In the conventional histories of ideas there is almost none. The importance of the phenomenon,however, is immense. Intellectual history is full of errors. Scholarly errors are among the factors that generate intellectual pathways in which consequences (...) of historical small events feed back up on each other positively and give rise to historical pathologies in the end. Pathways hold the intellectuals dependent on the consequences of errors which interact upon each other and prevent resulting pathologies to disappear fully. As a result, ideas do not converge to a level of perfection. Evolutionary account of errors suggests that errors in the history of ideas matter even though they are often corrected. (shrink)

This work is the intellectual biography of the greatest of American philosophers. Peirce was not only a pioneer in logic and the creator of a philosophical movement pragmatism he also proposed a phenomenological theory, quite different from that of Husserl, but equal in profundity; and long before Saussure, and in a totally different spirit, a semiotic theory whose present interest owes nothing to passing fashion and everything to its fecundity. Throughout his life Peirce wrote continually about sign and (...) class='Hi'>phenomenon (or phaneron). Consequently his writings must be studied chronologically if they are not to appear incomprehensible or contradictory. One of the merits of this book is to clarify Peirce's thought by analysing its development chronologically. We follow the evolution of Peirce's thought from his critique of Kantian logic and Cartesianism (Chap. I, “Leaving the Cave”: 1851-1870) to his discovery of modern logic and pragmatism (Chap. II, “The Eclipse of the Sun”: 1870-1887) and finally to a semiotic founded on a phenomenology the base of which is the logic of relations and the crowning-point scientific metaphysics (Chap. III, “The Sun Set Free”: 1887-1914). The book includes a detailed chronology, a general bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

The author analyzes the phenomenon of denialism (denial of scientific consensus out of the normative boundaries of scientific discussion). The intellectual origins (including connection with P. Feyerabend’s post-positivism), sociocultural characteristics and political aspects of this phenomenon are discussed. The author defends the thesis that denialism is associated with scientism – non-reflexive trust in science, which is used for unscrupulous manipulations for the purpose of political influence. As an example, she considers the South African expert case related to (...) HIV denial in the early 2000s. The author believes that denialism needs a comprehensive analysis that takes into account the interdependence of its intellectual and socio-political foundations. (shrink)

Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj Žižek is one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. He publishes at a breakneck speed and lectures around the world. He has an unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture. YouTube clips of his talks, interviews, and media appearances often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of views. How did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country (...) come to such notoriety? In this book, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the "phenomenon called 'Žižek;'" its origin, emergence, and development over the years. He begins with Žižek's early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society. There, Žižek became a philosopher, immersed himself in Marxist debates both within academia as well as in activist circles, and even ran for office. Bar-El then turns to Žižek's emergence in the English-speaking world as an intellectual celebrity in the 1990s and the development and perfection of his unique performative style and rhetorical arsenal (Žižek's language of "Hegelacanese"). Post 9/11, Žižek goes global, becoming a well-known op-ed writer and TV commentator on pop culture and large-scale global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Things took a turn when Žižek was almost entirely estranged from the normal workings of academia and increasingly became the target of other of other thinkers-Noam Chomsky, notably-who singled him out as an example of intellectual imposture, as well as others outraged by the non-politically correct views he professes. Ultimately, Bar-El shows how Žižek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as an intellectual, remaking and capitalizing on the shifting intellectual landscape and what Bar-El calls our "knowledge societies." Throughout the book, Bar-El shows how Žižek has navigated different audiences and publics, developing a hybrid language capable of speaking to specialists and laypeople alike, using globally traumatic events as the subject of his often irreverent analyses, combining high and low registers, and flaunting his own lack of expertise and specialization and his "outsider" status as a way to form a substantial extra-academic public and to engage with current events. (shrink)

Ideologies, worldviews, or simply personal theories, often acquire a distorted and pathological character, and become a factor of alienation rather than an epistemic resource and an aid for personal existence. This paper attempts to better define the limits and characteristics of this experience, which we call distorted intellectual beliefs, or general conceptual beliefs (GB), while trying to highlight both its sometimes dramatic background and its personal and social consequences, which are no less potentially deleterious. We believe that such experiences (...) should not be confused tout court with a broader and more complex phenomenon, such as extremism and politico-religious radicalism, but are a specific typology of that broader and multifaceted fact that is self-deception. We hypothesize that the self-deception implicit in experiences of intellectual distortion produces a cognitive dissonance of which the subject is normally, though with varying intensity, aware (or may become aware through honest introspection). The phenomenon occurs in two extreme forms: one is normal (sporadic), the other is exceptional (systematic). The passage from one to the other is a complex process of escalation and de-escalation, on which multiple external and internal variables act. In its ascending path, it essentially coincides with a process of psychological polarization and cognitive "de-pluralization", while its descending phase marks a return to reality and a "re-pluralization", where the subject returns to being what he basically is, namely, an active and tireless meaning seeker. In the central part of the chapter, similarities and differences between processes of deradicalization and phenomena of religious deconversion are analyzed, with reference, among others, to the case of the Austro-Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler. -/- An abridged version of this text has been delivered for the Workshop "Explaining Extreme Belief and Extreme Behavior", September 15-16, 2022, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am grateful to David Konstan (NYU) for reading and commenting on a first version of this chapter and to Rik Peels (VUA) for his comments and questions during the Workshop. I would also like to thank my bachelor's and master's students at UDG, who discussed these topics at length with during semester 2022-B. (shrink)

Drawing on research from digital media studies, political theory and rhetoric, this article explores online radical conservative and reactionary ‘ideological entrepreneurs’. It argues that online media are uniting an ‘ideological family’ around concepts of natural inequality and hostility to those who deny them. Placing this phenomenon in context, the article shows how online culture reinvigorates well-established discourses of opposition to bureaucrats, intellectuals and experts of all kinds, rejecting one version of the neoliberal state and of its personnel, a ‘new (...) class’ understood to dominate through discursive, cultural power and imagined through the figures of the ‘Social Justice Warrior’ and the ‘Cultural Marxist’. In competing for a share of the marketplace of ideas, these ideological entrepreneurs promise insights – the revelations of the ‘red pill’ – critiquing ‘actually-existing’ neoliberalism yet insisting on the ‘rationality’ of governance through markets and promising adherents techniques for achieving success as liberated entrepreneurial selves. (shrink)

Ideologies, worldviews, or simply personal theories, often acquire a distorted and pathological character, and become a factor of alienation rather than an epistemic resource and an aid for personal existence. This paper attempts to better define the limits and characteristics of this experience, which we call distorted intellectual beliefs, or general conceptual beliefs (GB), while trying to highlight both its sometimes dramatic background and its personal and social consequences, which are no less potentially deleterious. We believe that such experiences (...) should not be confused tout court with a broader and more complex phenomenon, such as extremism and politico-religious radicalism, but are a specific typology of that broader and multifaceted fact that is self-deception. We hypothesize that the self-deception implicit in experiences of intellectual distortion produces a cognitive dissonance of which the subject is normally, though with varying intensity, aware (or may become aware through honest introspection). The phenomenon occurs in two forms: one is normal (sporadic), the other is exceptional (systematic). The passage from one to the other is a complex process of escalation and de-escalation, on which multiple external and internal variables act. In its ascending path, it essentially coincides with a process of psychological polarization and cognitive "de-pluralization", while its descending phase marks a return to reality and a "re-pluralization", where the subject returns to being what he basically is, namely, an active and tireless meaning seeker. In the central part of the chapter, similarities and differences between processes of deradicalization and phenomena of religious deconversion are analyzed, with reference, among others, to the case of the Austro-Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler. -/- An abridged version of this text has been delivered for the Workshop "Explaining Extreme Belief and Extreme Behavior", September 15-16, 2022, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am grateful to David Konstan (NYU) for reading and commenting on a first version of this chapter and to Rik Peels (VUA) for his comments and questions during the Workshop. I would also like to thank my bachelor's and master's students at UDG, who discussed these topics at length with during semester 2022-B. (shrink)

The article analyses the relation between globalization and the responsibility of the intellectual. Inthe context of globalization the question of the responsibility of the intellectual is problematic. Thatis why we have to ponder on intellectual modesty and human measure of Socrates trying to analysethe phenomenon of globalization. The author discusses the dualism of the act and potency by Aristotle, that of mind and body by Descartes, the concept of the thing-in-itself by Kant and the radicalprinciple by (...) Hegel, and the utopias of Marxism and Capitalism at the end. The discussion is focused onthe following question: does the logic of globalization has metaphysical roots, or it is just untenableclaim to reduce all the cultures to the worldwide one without the possibility of the responsibility ofthe intellectual?Key words: homogeneity, metaphysical foundations of globalization, ontological debate, reflection, identity, universality. (shrink)

_Who Was Jacques Derrida?_ is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "theory," the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a (...) discipline that resists psychology. While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derrida’s betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that “Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed.". (shrink)

_Who Was Jacques Derrida?_ is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "theory," the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a (...) discipline that resists psychology. While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derrida’s betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that “Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed.". (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to determine plagiarism as anthropological and social phenomenon. Theoretical basis. The author has analysed authentic historical-philosophical and literary texts to explicate the original meaning of the terms, by which the phenomenon of plagiarism was denoted. There were used methods and principles of socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological research, in particular: social determinism and anthropological interpretation of human life phenomena. Originality consists of: clarifying the terminological evolution in relation to designating the phenomenon of plagiarism; 2) (...) the philosophical-anthropological description of the motives and personal traits of the subject of plagiarism proposed by author. Conclusions. 1. Plagiarism as practice and plagiarism as a term existed separately for a long time. With the nominates, which denoted the practice, "Plagium" had as its predecessors the Greek "Λογοκλόπία" and the Latin "Furta". The modern semantics genesis of the term "plagiarism" took place as a process of changing the nominal values due to the complication of the semantic structure of the word before reintegration. 2. Analysis of historical-philosophical and literary sources from the "Empedocles Case" and "Fedentinus Case" allowed reconstructing the anthropological characteristics of the named persons as plagiarists: both of them were induced to plagiarize by vanity, either due to temporary limitation of abilities to intellectual creation or due to constant limited ability to the literary creativity. Plagiarism was also caused by the low moral qualities of both, that allows to consider plagiarism as one of the manifestations of the individual’s integral characteristics. 3. Vanity, that motivates the commission of plagiarism, is one of the manifestations of the esteem needs, sociogenic by its nature, but unlike the next, higher stage in the hierarchy of basic needs does not foresee the self-improvement of man. Therefore, the plagiarist does not pass to the level of the need for self-actualization, the means to satisfy which is creativity in its various forms, "trampling" on the previous level. 4. Plagiarism is an ambivalent phenomenon, because in spite of plagiarists’ anthropological peculiarities, the ontological foundations of plagiarism are rooted in the social nature of man. (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s intellectual conversion and shows how it facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism. Buber, who is today known mainly as a key representative of dialogical philosophy, was in the 1910s part of the double wave of German and Jewish nationalism which strongly affected the German-speaking Jewish public. Buber provided intellectual support for this wave of nationalism and interpreted World War I as a unique chance for the spiritual (...) unification of European Jewry. Consequent to his conflict with Gustav Landauer Buber underwent a complex intellectual and existential transformation. He abandoned key concepts of his pre-dialogical thought and laid the foundations of his dialogical thought. He rejected his endorsement of Geman nationalism and substantially reevaluated his political positions. The analysis of Buber’s intellectual development sheds light on some important aspects of the dynamics of nationalism. (shrink)

People who dislike the garishness of Wang Shuo all have their own explanations—Wang Shuo, as he says in his books, is a hoodlum who has switched to "stringing words together." He is a ruffian writing about ruffians, and the large numbers of ruffians in Chinese society who grew up on the rubble of the Cultural Revolution have provided him with a best-seller market and a basis for gaining popularity and wealth. Actually, this explanation avoids one phenomenon: Why do Wang (...) Shuo's books exert such a large influence on intellectuals, and why is his ruffian-like language and literary style imitated by so many intellectuals? (shrink)

Aware that it is very difficult in one text to review and critically to analyse the entire thought of such a philosopher, Catholic theologian, paleontologist, cultural anthropologist and humanist as Chardin, the author tries to, at least to mention and critically commented on only a few important aspects, parts and dimensions of his polydimensional and transdiscursive thought. Chardin’s discourse is complex and multi-layered. It exceeds the boundaries of special philosophical sciences and disciplines and in its comprehensive holistic systematicity maximally relativizes (...) and makes transparent the border between spiritual/humanistic and natural/biological sciences. At the end of the short review of Chardin, the author presents several critical reviews of his works, which, until today, despite the increased interest in them, unfortunately still remain relatively unknown to the wider philosophical and intellectual public. The text is supported by quoted and referenced philosophical and other professional literature in foreign languages and Macedonian. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Peter Auriol’s contribution regarding (i) what it is for a thing to be an intention or a concept and (ii) what kind of relation connects the object cognized to the cognizing mind as soon as intellectual cognition is occurring. First, I consider Auriol’s criticism of Brito’s thesis, according to which intentions are the same as cognitive acts, and “being cognized,” or for a thing to be objectively in the mind, is just for there to (...) be a cognitive act directed at that thing. Then, I discuss Auriol’s thesis, according to which each and every act of thinking must be thought of as a connotative notion, that is, as something implying or connoting an intentional object appearing to the cognizer. In this regard, Auriol’s view, as opposed to Brito’s, allows him to think of “being cognized” as more than an extrinsic denomination of the object cognized, as well as to incorporate into intellectual cognition a phenomenon that proves to be unique to our cognitive life, viz. the fact that we consciously experience what we cognize while we cognize it. Finally, I offer some concluding remarks on Auriol’s doctrine, as well as a brief evaluation of his theory. (shrink)

I would like to stress Vadim Mikhailovich's [Mezhuev's] position and clarify our conversation about culturology. It is constantly repeated that culturology is a science. It is my profound conviction that culturology is not a science. Culturology is a distinctive phenomenon of Russian culture and represents a certain intellectual movement. If one briefly surveys the history of its emergence, its philosophical origin becomes obvious. This intellectual movement consists of three levels, if one takes into account the "-logy" ending. (...) First, the philosophical level, from which in the 1970s culture began to be conceived as a special field of knowledge in our country. Then, humanistic knowledge: a great many representatives of the humanities in Russia-historians, art specialists, art critics, essayists-studied culture. Finally, there is the socioscientific tendency, which is just beginning to form in Russia and carries the internationally accepted name of social and cultural anthropology. All of us are synergistically attracted to these three tendencies, which comprise what is called culturology. The question of how these three tendencies of knowledge are correlated in the framework of the given intellectual movement is, in my view, extremely important. For quite some time now, there has been no reflection in Russia on the foundations of scientific and philosophical knowledge, but such reflection is necessary. To advance along the road of rational knowledge it is important to reflect in what cognitive space we find ourselves, what we are doing within its boundaries, and for what reason. From this point of view, neither philosophers nor representatives of the humanities or the social sciences will renounce their positions of observer. Moreover, I agree with Mezhuev that there is no single philosophy, humanistic conception, or theory of culture. Anyone who is engaged professionally in the study of cultural phenomena can choose his initial foundations. As Vadim Mezhuev correctly notes, the significance of philosophy for other types of knowledge lies in the fact that there are borderline areas of man's existence in the world. However, they are identified in different ways by different philosophies: positivism, phenomenology, classical Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, and so forth. Representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge are free to choose any metaphysics. Philosophers will continue to attend to their business in their subject area, and scientists in theirs. But it is important periodically to determine rationally when there must be close and complementary relations between the three components of this intellectual movement and when they must exist in parallel. Then questions such as who has priority and who is the guardian of truth will not arise. If the tendencies have diverged in parallel, then the representatives of each of them are occupied within their domains with questions which are irrelevant in other fields of knowledge or for other theoretical models. At the end of the twentieth century, to pose the question of scientism or antiscientism is senseless because today we know that there are different forms of rationality and that science is not the only, and is quite a narrow, form of rationality. Myth too is rational. It is expressed in categories and has a particular inner logic. We recognize myth as a rational cultural entity, because it is represented in symbolic form as an ordered sequence of judgments, as an artifact. But it differs from scientific theory. That is why it is fruitful to reflect on what forms of rationality are relevant to what levels of knowledge. I agree with Ogurtsov, who says that these forms penetrate in one way or another into every culturally institutionalized form of knowledge. Indeed, in philosophical knowledge there are elements of everyday, mythological, and scientific knowledge, but this does not negate the distinctive nature of the philosophical form of knowledge. In science there are elements of metaphysics, mythology, and everyday knowledge, but this does not cancel the particularities of the scientific form of knowledge. The same is true of the humanistic form, which is in principle irremovable from the framework of institutionalized knowledge, at least for now. I do not agree with Ogurtsov that I give the humanistic form of knowledge a negative evaluation. Humanistic knowledge begins to be significant in a period of a cognitive paradigm shift. This, we can say, is apparent today, at a time of transition from the grand style of modernism in its postmodern mode to the building of the foundations for a new whole. The point is that the humanistic form of knowledge enables us to isolate at the outset those areas of the unknown at which we arrive because of the limitations inherent in other forms of rationality. It is closest to everyday and empirical categories of knowledge and forms of ideas; hence, particularism, image syncretism, and mobility are its distinctive features. But without this humanistic level no further step is possible in either scientific or philosophical knowledge. The breakdown into these forms of knowledge- philosophical, humanistic, and scientific-may be primitive, but we have to start our reflection on the foundations of our cognitive relationship to our surroundings somewhere. The identification of the forms of knowledge makes it possible to draw the conclusion that, unlike philosophical and humanistic knowledge, socioscientific knowledge is modeled on the natural sciences. From this it becomes obvious that the distinctive features of the object of social sciences determine also the special nature of the categorial apparatus, operationalization, selection method, and information analysis. I do not insist that the model I suggest must be accepted. Other models can be constructed. But let us start with a simpler comparison of types of knowledge and later we shall differentiate them. I started from this level because in our culture such a division is apparent and generally accepted. There are the philosophical, humanistic, and scientific forms of knowledge. They are irreducible to one another, they perform entirely different functions in the knowledge of man's relationship to the environment, and express different views about how man lives in culture. I agree that philosophy is exactly existence in culture with a singling out of the limits of this existence. But representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge also deal with existence in culture. What is important for the philosopher is the direction of knowledge from within to the outside; for the representative of humanistic knowledge it is the description of how he exists among a multitude of seemingly diverse and divergent artifacts and processes; and for the scientist it is the order of the philosophically and humanistically defined reality in order to control it the better. (shrink)

Feminist activist, novelist, literary critic, bio-ethnographer, legal autodidact, and political writer: Rebecca West was a 20th-century phenomenon. She was also a lifelong critic of communism’s appeal to the intelligentsia. Communism, West claimed, was attractive to three groups of intellectuals outside the Soviet bloc: a minority of scientists who viewed politics as merely a sum of technical problems to solve; the emotionally devastated for whom communism was a means of mental reorientation; and a déclassé segment of the middle class who (...) envisaged communism as a means of material and status advancement. I examine West’s three explanations for communism’s allure, and then proceed to evaluate her account. My assessment is both empirical, using sociological data on American and European communist parties, and methodological, examining the techniques of West’s style, a mix of novelistic empathy and unmasking political partisanship. This mixture I consider fatal because while the novel, like historical interpretation, allows a generous understanding of human agents, unmasking tends towards caricature and denunciation. (shrink)

As we know, the activity approach to understanding man and his world became widespread in Russian philosophy in the 1960s-70s. At the time, it was, I should emphasize, one of the most significant manifestations of progressive trends in Soviet philosophical thought, which strived to overcome the stagnation and dogmatism of official Marxism. However, as it happens whenever the authority of an intellectual current is established, the activity approach and the category of activity were used frequently in a superficial way, (...) simply because they were fashionable at the time. This gave me occasion to announce, in a collection of articles on the problems of the a tivity approach published in 1976, that a sort of magical word "activity," unsupported by responsible conceptual analysis, was widely used.1 There is no doubt, however, that the development of the activity approach by serious theoreticians was backed up by sufficiently deep conceptual analysis, which advanced our philosophical culture of the time. (shrink)

In a first and most general approach to our topic, three questions are of especial importance: Does a country that has not yet really bid farewell to the style of life and thought under conditions of a fundamentalist, essentially clerical regime and state really need an ideology? What is ideology as a phenomenon, what functions does it fulfill objectively, and are these functions fading in modern society and in the foreseeable future? Finally, if after answering the first two questions (...) we nonetheless still opt for an integrative ideology for Russia-and that is this author's choice-then what qualities of this ideology would be most conducive to the country's renewal and resurgence, to the social effectiveness of its political and economic order, and to its competitiveness on the world markets of commodities, services, ideas, culture, and lifestyle? (shrink)

Illustrating the knowledge and ideas of thinkers such as Mandeville, Hume, Montesquieu and Smith, this book fully investigates the entire panorama of social sciences as well as providing a clear and concise analysis of the history of the social sciences from the point at which evolutionary theory entered the field. Examining the history of culture and humanity, Lorenzo Infantino discusses the 'discovery of society, ' when people stopped seeing behind every social phenomenon the direct action of human and/or divine (...) will, and how the subsequent void was filled by the unintended creation of language, habits, customs, laws and public power. Focussing on the idea that the object of social sciences should be the study of unintended consequences, Infantino also expertly reviews the approach of 'methodological individualism'. Forward-thinking, the book highlights the need for a rule of law in cultural evolution to prevent harm to others and allow a greater freedom of choice when deciding future actions. Providing an in-depth explanation of why the social sciences are needed and highlighting the task of a social scientist, this book will be invaluable for researchers in the fields of politics, economics and sociology. (shrink)