У статті розглядається становище освічених верств міського населення України в період революції та громадянської війни 1917-1920 рр. Показано, що в умовах збройного протистояння інтелігенція лишилася між двома ворожими таборами й багато її представників вагалися з остаточним вибором. Погіршення матеріального становища поступово призвело до різкого зниження рівня соціальних потреб та очікувань людей і, як наслідок, до втрати соціальних ознак інтелігенції, як зовнішніх, так і внутрішніх. Політична позиція часто була не усвідомленим рішенням, а вервечкою випадкових вчинків, зумовлених, у першу чергу, фізичним виживанням. (...) У результаті частина інтелігенції покинула країну, частина погодилася співпрацювати з переможцями, більшість же опинилася в стані "внутрішньої" еміграції. (shrink)

The basic features and problems of male consumption in 1920-1930s are considered. The main aim of research is to analyze the material world and everyday life of the male consumer and his demands mainly in the urban space of Soviet Ukraine. The crucial role of Communist ideology and propaganda in the emergence of male consumer culture is discussed. It has been also paid attention on the great role of Soviet planned economic system that influenced on the material needs of ordinary (...) consumers. Thus, it has been emphasized that the image of male consumer was not homogenous. Such features as social status, professional surroundings, accessibility to the distribution sources constructed its mosaics. Due to these reasons, it is not possible to construct the general image of male consumer, but only to characterize its various types, which belonged to different representatives of male population such as workers, Communist party's members, traders, "red directors", or intellectuals. It has been examined that biography of male's things, their longevity was not the same as in comparison with female's ones, because of the less developed practices of suing and remaking clothes among the men. As consumers, they were not also broadly presented in various fashion magazines. It could be explained by the existing consumer policy towards them that excluded man from the fashion discourse. That's why as a result the male consumption could be presented as "forgotten" area of Soviet official discourse. Communist authorities were building new "byt" and had forgotten to satisfy everyday needs of the builders. Notwithstanding, the problems with shortages of goods and clothes forced men to create the new everyday practices, which included the usage of women's sewing services. Therefore, the practices of individual sewing of clothes were not developed among the men. Nevertheless, they took part in the modernization process of Soviet society and consequently accepted new industrial goods into their everyday consumer practices. The investigation of male consumer goods led to the conclusion that their biography, durability differed from female material world. (shrink)

In this article on archival sources, deals with the activity of individual members of the public industrial areas of Ukraine in 1917-1920. to ensure that vital material goods. The factors impeding such activity, formulated two main types of behavior in extreme circumstances, attempt to analyze the social composition of the population depending on the model behavior.

У статті на основі аналізу фрагментів з листів червоноармійців, зроблених співробітниками Державного політичного управління (ДПУ) в рамках практики перлюстрації, реконструйовані окремі аспекти сприйняття червоноармійцями навколишньої дійсності, політики та ідеології нової влади, свого місця в новому суспільстві і його соціальній структурі. Зокрема простежуються результати активної антирелігійної кампанії, прагнення більшовиків у процесі ідеологічного впливу на червоноармійців зв'язати в їх свідомості релігію з пригніченням, владою буржуазних класів. Зафіксована і зворотна реакція самих червоноармійців: від високого рівня засвоєння ідеологем, до сумнівів і неприйняття їх.

У статті розглянуто процеси розгортання політичної боротьби у вищій школі УСРР на початку 1920-х рр., встановлені форми, методи й засоби підкорення студентського загалу комуністичному впливу, вивчені обставини формування, діяльності та ліквідації Центрального бюро комуністичного студентства та місцевих бюро у великих студентських центрах. Доведено, що Центральне бюро комуністичного студентства та місцеві бюро комуністичного студентства, з одного боку, мали статус самодіяльних формувань, а з іншого, їх члени ставали партійними функціонерами - входили до складу організаційно-інструкторських відділів ЦК КПУ та відповідних губкомів Комуністичної партії (...) й отримували там заробітну плату. Тому, по-перше, ця організаційна побудова дублювала звичайну систему партійного підпорядкування, по-друге, керувати роботою партосередків ВНЗ ЦБКС та місцеві бюро мали право тільки через ЦК КПУ та відповідні райкоми партії, по-третє, у процесі керівництва роботою комуністичних сил ВНЗ ці паралельні гілки партійної влади неминуче мали зікнутися з низкою суттєвих протиріч, що фактично й відбувалось уже на початку їх спільної діяльності. Зазначено, що створення ЦБКС і місцевих бюро комуністичного студентства було викликане бажанням вищого партійного керівництва перекласти відповідальність за ліквідацію автономії ВНЗ, встановлення в інститутах і технікумах тоталітарної системи та розгортання політичних репресій на самих студентів та їх самодіяльні організації. (shrink)

The article deals with the study of specific aspects of daily life of management and ordinary workers of the Ukrainian police at the mid 1920's based on the much-discussed in the press "Kievcase". This case was about systematic bribery in Ukrainian police (in modern language - about corruption). In this way we have detected the conditions, causes and mechanisms of the corruption that matter for the modern study of this phenomenon.

The article describes the features of the relationship between Soviet power and engineering specialists, who was working in senior positions in factories and mines of theDonbasin the early 1920's. Interaction between professionals and the new government in that time was inconsistent and compromised. On the one hand, technical specialist received significant preferences and opportunities, regardless of their relationship to the Soviet authorities. This decision was based on the rational considerations about the impossibility of restoring the destroyed industry ofDonbasonly by party (...) instructions, without relying on a professional understanding of the fundamental aspects of the industry. On the other hand, the local party members, their leaders and the working class began pressure on the specialist, because they not understood the rationalist motivation of power and evaluated this policy as a betrayal of conquests of the revolution. The article presents a previously unknown secret document, which demonstrates that in the early 1920's the Soviet authorities in their policy in theDonbasmade a bid for the segmentation of the group of engineering specialists. "Sovietization" of professionals should be the result of internal contradictions and competition in mid group. In the same document founded the practice of detailed surveillance specialists. Later this information about specialists was used as the base for charges during the "spetseedovskie" processes at the late 1920's -1930's. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено аналізу маловивченого аспекту здійснення підбору та підготовки кадрів для органів прокуратури в 1920-ті рр. На основі широкого кола джерел автором висвітлені кадрові проблеми відомства та показані основні заходи влади з виправлення ситуації й підвищення рівня професіоналізму співробітників. Розкрито причини конфліктів між прокуратурою й місцевою владою та відмічено вплив партії на кадрову політику відомства.

У статті розглянуто становище міжнародного лівого руху в умовах існування Версальської системи міжнародних відносин. На конкретних прикладах показані відмінності в ідеологічних принципах існування Комуністичного Інтернаціоналу та Соціалістичного Робітничого Інтернаціоналу. Особлива увага приділена процесам об'єднання учасників Бернського інтернаціоналу та Віденської спільноти. Зроблено висновки про те, що різні погляди на тактику та методи побудови соціалістичної держави стали на заваді об'єднанню учасників міжнародного соціалістичного руху та спричинили остаточний розкол у першій половині 1920-х рр.

У статті досліджується формування архітектурного ансамблю Почаївської лаври в 1831-1920 рр., якому в середині ХХ ст. надано статус пам'ятки історії та культури. На основі аналізу архітектурних проектів храмів лаври розкрито особливості архітектурних стилів споруд ХІХ - поч. ХХ ст. Відзначено, що розбудова лаври тісно пов'язана з творчістю видатних архітекторів, скульпторів, художників, різьбярів, будівничих. Показано, як на формування історико-культурного обличчя Почаївської лаври впливали різноманітні обставини, зокрема політичного, економічного, культурного характеру.

Ce livre propose une traversee de l'oeuvre de Sartre depuis la constitution de son programme philosophique dans les annees 1920-1930 jusqu'aux dernieres consequences intellectuelles qu'il en tire, pour la philosophie, pour la litterature et pour la politique, dans les annees 1970. En se donnant pour tache de reconstituer chez Sartre ce qui se donne comme une anthropologie politique des emotions, il suit au gre de l'histoire du vingtieme siecle, de ses sequences politiques, de ses " violences " et de ses (...) luttes, notamment decoloniales, les differentes manieres dont la phenomenologie existentialiste sartrienne prend en charge la crise de la fonction intellectuelle consecutive, selon la formulation d'Enzo Traverso, a la guerre civile europeenne. Proposant, a partir de plusieurs archives, de nouvelles lectures des rapports de la philosophie de Sartre avec differents massifs de la pensee contemporaine, qu'il s'agisse de Bergson ou d'Alain, de Heidegger ou de Nietzsche, de Freud et de Ferenczi ou encore de Camus et de Fanon, ce livre est une invitation a une autre histoire politique du XXeme siecle et, davantage encore, a une autre poetique de l'histoire intellectuelle qui en fut l'inseparable doublure. Il ne peut des lors manquer de deborder vers la situation qui est la notre. Plutot qu'une periode de resignation, notre epoque est plus probablement une epoque qui est activement privee de cette reserve d'affectivite et de puissance politiques qui merite le nom de savoirs critiques. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the issues of physical, infectious and mental health of Ukrainian students in the 1920-th years, and analyzes the factors that directly make worse this condition. Separately we explore issues of power to prevent sexually transmitted epidemics, epidemics of typhoid, tuberculosis and other diseases. We also study such factors that have caused students' diseases as housing insecurity, lack of funds for the existence and complete lack of moral prohibitions- because of a radical change in the value (...) of personality after the revolution and the civil war. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die bisher unveröffentlichten Manuskripte der Vorlesungen, die der Privatdozent Paul Tillich vom Wintersemester 1920/21 bis zum Wintersemester 1923/24 an der Theologischen Fakultät der Berliner Universität gehalten hat. Ihr Thema ist die Geschichte des philosophischen Denkens von den Vorsokratikern bis zur Aufklärung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der altchristlichen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Tillich behandelt den traditionellen Stoff der Philosophiegeschichte nach der von ihm in seiner Idee der Geisteswissenschaft begründeten metalogischen Methode, einer theonomen Erkenntnistheorie. Die Vorlesungen zeigen Sinn und Reichweite dieser (...) Methode und stellen Konkretionen seines Programms einer Theologie der Kultur dar. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the development of evolutionary theory in the period from 1918 to 1932. It argues that: (i) Fisher's work in 1918 constituted a not fully satisfactory reduction of biometry to Mendelism; (ii) there was a synthesis in the 1920s but that this synthesis was mainly one of classical genetics with population genetics, with Haldane's The Causes of Evolution being its founding document; (iii) the most important achievement of the models of theoretical population genetics was to show that (...) natural selection sufficed as a mechanism for evolution; and (iv) Haldane formulated a prospective evolutionary theory in the 1920s whereas Fisher and Wright formulated retrospective theories of evolutionary history. (shrink)

De 1920 à la première moitié des années 1970, la contraception et l'avortement sont interdits en France. L'État impose une sexualité normative, liée à la reproduction et considérée comme la vraie sexualité. Cependant des sexualités nouvelles apparaissent dans lesquelles la question du plaisir est mise en avant. Comment les individus « ordinaires » contournent la loi pour se procurer des moyens de contraception et pratiquer des avortements? Comment vivent-ils leur sexualité dans un tel contexte? Quelles sont les tensions qui naissent (...) de la confrontation de ces différentes représentations des sexualités? (shrink)

The aim of this book is to present and analyze philosophical conceptions concerning mathematics and logic as formulated by Polish logicians, mathematicians and philosophers in the 1920s and 1930s. It was a remarkable period in the history of Polish science, in particular in the history of Polish logic and mathematics. Therefore, it is justified to ask whether and to what extent the development of logic and mathematics was accompanied by a philosophical reflection. We try to answer those questions by (...) analyzing both works of Polish logicians and mathematicians who have a philosophical temperament as well as their research practice. Works and philosophical views of the following Polish scientists will be analyzed: Wacław Sierpiński, Zygmunt Janiszewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Stefan Banach Hugo Steinhaus, Eustachy Żylińsk and Leon Chwistek, Jan Łukasiewicz, Zygmunt Zawirski, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Alfred Tarski, Andrzej Mostowski and Henryk Mehlberg, Jan Sleszyński, Stanisław Zaremba and Witold Wilkosz. To indicate the background of scientists being active in the 1920s and 1930s we consider in Chapter 1 some predecessors, in particular: Jan Śniadecki, Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Samuel Dickstein and Edward Stamm. (shrink)

In 1934 Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödei, S. C. Kleene, and J. B. Rosser were all to be found in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1936 Church founded The Journal of Symbolic Logic. Shortly thereafter Alan Turing arrived for a two year visit. The United States had become a world center for cutting-edge research in mathematical logic. In this brief survey1 we shall examine some of the writings of American logicians during the 1920s, a period of important beginnings and remarkable insights (...) as well as of confused gropings.The publication of Whitehead and Russell's monumental Principia Mathematica [18] during the years 1910-1913 provided the basis for much of the research that was to follow. It also provided the basis for confusion that remained a factor during the period we are discussing. In 1908, Henri Poincaré, a famous skeptic where mathematical logic was concerned, wrote pointedly :It is difficult to admit that the word if acquires, when written ⊃, a virtue it did not possess when written if.Principia provided no very convincing answer to Poincaré. Indeed the fact that the authors of Principia saw fit to place their first two “primitive propositions”*1.1: Anything implied by a true proposition is true.*1.2: ⊢ p ⋁ p ⊃ punder one and the same heading suggest that they had thought of what they were doing as just such a translation as Poincare had derided. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the interwar period research on turbulence met with interest from different areas: in aeronautical engineering turbulence became a subject of experimental study in wind tunnels; in naval architecture and hydraulic engineering turbulence research was on the agenda because of its role for skin friction; applied mathematicians and theoretical physicists struggled with the problem to determine the onset of turbulence from the fundamental hydrodynamic equations; experimental physicists developed techniques to measure the velocity fluctuations of turbulent flows. In this paper I (...) describe the rise of turbulence in the 1920s and 1930s as a research field under the label of applied mechanics. Although the focus is on Germany, the international development of this research field is illuminated by the role which Ludwig Prandtl played as its acknowledged “chief” (G. I. Taylor). I argue that the multifaceted character of this research field calls for an epistemology and historiography which intrinsically takes the interaction of science and engineering into account. (shrink)

From Brouwer To Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s offers the first comprehensive introduction to the most exciting period in the foundation of mathematics in the twentieth century. The 1920s witnessed the seminal foundational work of Hilbert and Bernays in proof theory, Brouwer's refinement of intuitionistic mathematics, and Weyl's predicativist approach to the foundations of analysis. This impressive collection makes available the first English translations of twenty-five central articles by these important contributors and (...) many others. The articles have been translated for the first time from Dutch, French, and German, and the volume is divided into four sections devoted to Brouwer, Weyl, Bernays and Hilbert, and the emergence of intuitionistic logic. Each section opens with an introduction which provides the necessary historical and technical context for understanding the articles. Although most contemporary work in this field takes its start from the groundbreaking contributions of these major figures, a good, scholarly introduction to the area was not available until now. Unique and accessible, From Brouwer To Hilbert will serve as an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mathematics, and will also be an invaluable resource for philosophers, mathematicians, and interested non-specialists. (shrink)

Biographie et bibliographie complète du professeur Justin Mossay (1920-2012).

Nicolai Hartmann, einer der bedeutendsten Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts, zeichnet das Bemühen um eine Rekonstruktion der philosophischen Tradition in der Auseinandersetzung mit den Wissenschaften aus. Er hat, um diesen Gedanken zu unterstreichen, das Wort "systematische Philosophie" geprägt. Die Praxis systematischen Philosophierens wird erstmals in der hier in kommtierter Fassung vorgelegten Auswahl der "Cirkel-Protokolle" fassbar. Es handelt sich um das Dokument eines Disputierkreises, den Hartmann von 1920 bis 1950 geleitet hat. Hartmann hat in seiner Marburger, Kölner, Berliner und Göttinger Zeit mit (...) einem wechselnden Kreis von persönlich eingeladenen Studenten, Studentinnen und älteren Schülern zu verschiedenen philosophischen Themen und Problemen Gespräche geführt. Aufgrund ihrer dialogischen Form geben die im Nachlass Hartmanns befindlichen Cirkelprotokolle einen unvergleichlichen Einblick in die geistige Kultur des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

PHILIPPA RUTH FOOT was born on 3 October 1920, the second daughter of William Bosanquet, who had done mathematics at Cambridge and became the manager of a steelworks in Yorkshire, and Esther Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland. She was educated mainly at home in the country by governesses, and not well. She said, many years later, that, ‘unsurprisingly’, she had been left ‘extremely ignorant’, and when the last one, ‘who actually had a degree’, suggested to her that she should (...) go to Oxford, she had to work for it. She spent a year with an established Oxford entrance coach and took a correspondence course to acquire the necessary entrance Latin; the result was a place at Somerville College, where she went to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) in 1939. (shrink)

This article examines some techno-political aspects of the early years of electrification in British-ruled 1920s Palestine. It emphasizes the importance of local technical, topographical and hydrological forms of knowledge for understanding the dynamics of electrification. Situating the analysis in a general colonial context of electrification, the study shows that British colonial rulers lagged behind both German firms and local entrepreneurs in understanding the specific conditions pertaining to electrification in Palestine. Subsequently, the study shows that the British had limited control (...) of the actual electrification process and its declared/professed developmental purposes, thereby complicating assumptions about electrification as a tool of the Empire/tool of empire. Finding some similarities between the cases of electrifying Palestine and India, the article’s findings may shed further light on the importance of micro-politics of knowledge for understanding the trajectory of electrification in the colonies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), An Unended QuestElías José PaltiAt 76, after a long intellectual career spanning more than thirty years, first as Professor of Philosophy at Giessel, then at Bochum, and finally at Münster until his retirement in 1985, Hans Blumenberg has died.1 He leaves behind an incredibly vast oeuvre2 covering the most diverse subjects, from an interpretation of Bach’s The Passion of St Matthew to the history (...) of different terms, concepts, and metaphors (such as shipwreck, the book, and the cave).3 His three major books—The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966), The Genesis of the Copernican World (1975), and Work on Myth (1979)—are already classics and constitute true landmarks in the contemporary historiography of ideas. Yet so varied and extended an intellectual production revolves around a single concern: the origins and legitimacy of the so-called Modern Age. Moving back and forth from different angles and perspectives toward the same core—as in a prolonged assault—in order to test the different edges and explore all the potential implications of his own inquiring, men and gods, science and myth, from antiquity to the present day, all are invoked in his work for a concerted [End Page 503] attack aimed to shed new light into that enigma called the “Modern Age.” His multifaceted approach is thus only an expression of the multifold nature of his own subject matter.However, the unity of this quest is more apparent than real. His line of questioning moved progressively from the problem regarding the legitimacy of the modern age to that of its origins and specific nature, and in this very process not only did his approach vary but his very concept of that age changed. Here I will trace the main investigative lines that Blumenberg followed through his three major works4 to uncover how his view of the modern age was modified and became more and more complex over time. I will also show how, in fulfilling his project and in the consequent growing sophistication of his perspective, Blumenberg actually discovered a number of unsuspected problems that derailed him from his original endeavor, forcing him to reformulate some of his conceptual tools, and indeed to redefine the ultimate object of his undertaking.Modernity and the Problem of Its LegitimacyThe Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966)5 was first in a trilogy of major works reviewed here. Its title formulates concisely Blumenberg’s original concern. In it he focussed his discussion on the “theory of secularization,” originally formulated by Carl Schmitt in Political Theology (1922) and later developed by Karl Löwith in Meaning and History (1949).For Löwith there were only two authentically original traditions in Western historical thought: the Ancient (based on the notion of cyclical time) and the Medieval/Modern (founded on the idea of a linear, future-directed pattern of human development).6 The philosophy of history that originated in the eighteenth century is nothing else but a result of the secularization of the eschatological Christian motif of the fall and subsequent redemption. Such a revelation would unmask, according to the author of this theory, the myth of modernity’s origins as representing a radical rupture from its immediate past and the final consecration of the absolute reign of reason. This would deprive modernity of the grounds upon which it legitimizes itself. “Illegitimacy,” then, is here identified with “heterogony” (the lack of authentic, proper sources). “Seen from the point of view of secularization,” remarks Blumenberg, “the false conflict of the medieval and the modern age can be reduced to a single episode in the interruption of the human connection to the cosmos” (28). [End Page 504]For Blumenberg, on the contrary, “secularization” did not necessarily constitute an anathema. The fact that the notion of “secularization”—originally conceived as merely a descriptive term—came to involve pejorative connotations resulted from the Platonic assumption that a derivative truth is only a degraded form of the primitive, authentic Truth, so that any kind of intellectual acquisition becomes suspect (73). This is not actually the case. In a purely descriptive sense, Blumenberg argued, one can cite almost any philosophy... (shrink)

1. 1901-1910 -- 2. 1911-1920 -- 3. 1921-1930 -- 4. 1931-1943 (2 v.).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), An Unended QuestElías José PaltiAt 76, after a long intellectual career spanning more than thirty years, first as Professor of Philosophy at Giessel, then at Bochum, and finally at Münster until his retirement in 1985, Hans Blumenberg has died.1 He leaves behind an incredibly vast oeuvre2 covering the most diverse subjects, from an interpretation of Bach’s The Passion of St Matthew to the history (...) of different terms, concepts, and metaphors (such as shipwreck, the book, and the cave).3 His three major books—The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966), The Genesis of the Copernican World (1975), and Work on Myth (1979)—are already classics and constitute true landmarks in the contemporary historiography of ideas. Yet so varied and extended an intellectual production revolves around a single concern: the origins and legitimacy of the so-called Modern Age. Moving back and forth from different angles and perspectives toward the same core—as in a prolonged assault—in order to test the different edges and explore all the potential implications of his own inquiring, men and gods, science and myth, from antiquity to the present day, all are invoked in his work for a concerted [End Page 503] attack aimed to shed new light into that enigma called the “Modern Age.” His multifaceted approach is thus only an expression of the multifold nature of his own subject matter.However, the unity of this quest is more apparent than real. His line of questioning moved progressively from the problem regarding the legitimacy of the modern age to that of its origins and specific nature, and in this very process not only did his approach vary but his very concept of that age changed. Here I will trace the main investigative lines that Blumenberg followed through his three major works4 to uncover how his view of the modern age was modified and became more and more complex over time. I will also show how, in fulfilling his project and in the consequent growing sophistication of his perspective, Blumenberg actually discovered a number of unsuspected problems that derailed him from his original endeavor, forcing him to reformulate some of his conceptual tools, and indeed to redefine the ultimate object of his undertaking.Modernity and the Problem of Its LegitimacyThe Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966)5 was first in a trilogy of major works reviewed here. Its title formulates concisely Blumenberg’s original concern. In it he focussed his discussion on the “theory of secularization,” originally formulated by Carl Schmitt in Political Theology (1922) and later developed by Karl Löwith in Meaning and History (1949).For Löwith there were only two authentically original traditions in Western historical thought: the Ancient (based on the notion of cyclical time) and the Medieval/Modern (founded on the idea of a linear, future-directed pattern of human development).6 The philosophy of history that originated in the eighteenth century is nothing else but a result of the secularization of the eschatological Christian motif of the fall and subsequent redemption. Such a revelation would unmask, according to the author of this theory, the myth of modernity’s origins as representing a radical rupture from its immediate past and the final consecration of the absolute reign of reason. This would deprive modernity of the grounds upon which it legitimizes itself. “Illegitimacy,” then, is here identified with “heterogony” (the lack of authentic, proper sources). “Seen from the point of view of secularization,” remarks Blumenberg, “the false conflict of the medieval and the modern age can be reduced to a single episode in the interruption of the human connection to the cosmos” (28). [End Page 504]For Blumenberg, on the contrary, “secularization” did not necessarily constitute an anathema. The fact that the notion of “secularization”—originally conceived as merely a descriptive term—came to involve pejorative connotations resulted from the Platonic assumption that a derivative truth is only a degraded form of the primitive, authentic Truth, so that any kind of intellectual acquisition becomes suspect (73). This is not actually the case. In a purely descriptive sense, Blumenberg argued, one can cite almost any philosophy... (shrink)

Chronicling the emergence of an international society in the 1920s, Daniel Gorman describes how the shock of the First World War gave rise to a broad array of overlapping initiatives in international cooperation. Though national rivalries continued to plague world politics, ordinary citizens and state officials found common causes in politics, religion, culture and sport with peers beyond their borders. The League of Nations, the turn to a less centralized British Empire, the beginning of an international ecumenical movement, international (...) sporting events and audacious plans for the abolition of war all signaled internationalism's growth. State actors played an important role in these developments and were aided by international voluntary organizations, church groups and international networks of academics, athletes, women, pacifists and humanitarian activists. These international networks became the forerunners of international NGOs and global governance. (shrink)

Originally published in Russian in 1981, this unique history of early Soviet philosophy is now available for the first time in English, translated by Frederick Choate.Yehoshua Yakhot (1919-2003) was a professor of philosophy in the Soviet Union until forced to emigrate to Israel in 1975. While in emigration, he finished writing the book begun in Moscow years before. Yakhot's book is essential reading for an understanding of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism and its devastating impact on every aspect of Soviet (...) thought. Rare among works dealing with this period, Yakhot presents an objective account of the theoretical role of the major figures in the early Soviet Union—including, most significantly, that of Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution of October 1917.The book describes the flourishing of philosophical discussion after the revolution and ensuing Civil War. By 1922, the major theoretical journal Under the Banner of Marxism had been founded at Trotsky's urging. The first two issues contained letters from Trotsky and Lenin that constituted the program of the journal. By the mid-1920s, two contending camps had formed in philosophy: the mechanists and dialecticians. The relatively free debate between them on many complex issues was followed by Stalin's intervention in December 1930. In a ferocious reaction against the theoretical foundations of the October Revolution, Stalin sent countless genuine Marxists to their deaths during the Great Terror of 1936-38. Prior to the opening of the archives in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yakhot presents the largely unknown history of many of the Marxist philosophers victimized by Stalinism.The subjects covered in the book include: the subject matter of Marxist philosophy; the problem of contingency; the principle of partisanship in philosophy; Hegel and Marxist dialectics; Spinoza's place in the discussions of the 1920s and 1930s; the rejection of ideology by Marx and Engels; the influence of Bogdanov's ideas; the inevitable crisis of Soviet ideology; and continued attempts to conceal the crimes of Stalinism in the USSR.This new English edition contains photographs, biographical information, an index and two letters by Trotsky and Lenin. (shrink)

This article examines different intellectual-historical approaches to the work of Georg Lukács, arguing that a methodology similar to that of the Cambridge School is, curiously, that most in line with Lukács’s own approach. I begin with some general methodological comments on intellectual history, before showing that a proper appreciation of the discourses within which Lukács was situated is essential to understanding both the specifics and the overall project of History and Class Consciousness. Finally, I argue that situating thinkers like Lukács (...) properly within their time does not reduce them to museum pieces; rather, by seeking to capture the alterity of the past without reducing it to familiarity, we may de-reify our own world-views. (shrink)

This article discusses the meaning of the notion of virtuality in modern physics. To this end, it develops considerations on the introduction and establishment in nuclear physics of two independent concepts at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s: that of the virtual state, used in the context of neutron scattering studies, and that of the virtual transition, useful for the theoretical understanding of strong nuclear forces, which forms the basis of what are now called virtual particles. Their comparative (...) analysis highlights the theoretical nature of virtual entities and processes in modern physics. It also shows how the virtual has been associated with various purely physical attributes, leading to a form of polysemy of the term, from the beginning of the application of these concepts. (shrink)

In diesem Band der Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe werden Webers Texte zum asketischen Protestantismus aus den Jahren 1904 bis 1906 in ihrer überarbeiteten Fassung, wie er sie 1919/20 zum Druck gab, zusammen mit der »Vorbemerkung« in historisch-kritischer Bearbeitung präsentiert. Diese »Vorbemerkung« stellte er an den Beginn seiner Sammlung religionssoziologischer Aufsätze, die vier Bände umfassen sollte, und legte darin den Zweck dieser Sammlung dar.