The articles considers philosophy as an educational project. The institutionalization of philosophy is connected with the process of formation and development of the classical university as well as with the transformation of its socio-cultural status. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the essential ambivalence of philosophy and its influence to the basic priorities of philosophical education. It is emphasized that the tasks of reforming and modernizing academic philosophical programs initiate the development of variable models and technologies for teaching (...) philosophy in modern universities. It this regard, of particular interest is the Belarusian experience in reforming philosophical education in its two aspects: general philosophy course and special academic programs. The article analyzes the model of teaching philosophy at various stages and levels of higher education, which has been used at the Belarusian State University over the past 15 years. The author describes both the innovative nature of this model and its connection with the previous organization schemes and teaching priorities. Within the framework of this model, there are three levels of teaching philosophy and its various modifications. At the first level, which is focused on the preparation of bachelors, the basic course “Philosophy” is taught, which suggests an acquaintance with world classical philosophical tradition. At the second level, the course “Philosophy in the Modern World” is offered, which, taking into account the specfics of the academic preparation of graduate students, reproduces the basic ideas and concepts of modern philosophy. At the third level, in the course “Philosophy and Methodology of Science”, the main attention is paid to the issues of logic, methodology, sociology of science and education. The article considers some stages, problems and contradictions of this reform process as well as its consequences in the context of recent events in the socioeconomic and political life of Belarus. The author argues that modern converging technologies of social and humanitarian education, which are based on formal and instrumental-pragmatic criteria, have significantly influenced the processes of reforming the system of teaching the humanities and social sciences in Belarusian universities. (shrink)

The authors consider the phenomenon of overcoming and examines the culture of overcoming in Marxist dialectics. As the core thread for dealing with this issue in the writings of Karl Marx, the authors follows the research on the socio-biological problem carried out by Vladimir I. Plotnikov, a Russian representative of the Marxist dialectics. Examining Marx’s standpoint on the subject, Plotnikov provides an outline of the issue of overcoming. This issue is described as the issue of mankind overcoming its species’ boundaries (...) and divided into the problems of the first and second overcoming. The first overcoming is defined as breaking out beyond the boundaries of instinctual activity, while the second—as the problem of removing the self-restrictions by an alienated person. (shrink)

It has been shown recently that monodic first-order temporal logic without functional symbols but with equality is incomplete, i.e., the set of the valid formulae of this logic is not recursively enumerable. In this paper we show that an even simpler fragment consisting of monodic monadic two-variable formulae is not recursively enumerable.

This article puts into conversation Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism and a particular expression of “African animism,” drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana. Nietzsche’s perspectivism extends interpretation beyond the human species into natural processes. Like perspectivism, African animism troubles the binaries—body/soul, nature/culture—that permeate anthropocentric thinking. Human-nonhuman relations are refigured as socio-ecological relations: the earth may be regarded as life-generating ancestors; baobab trees may approach humans as kin. These two images of the world intersect, but they do not mesh together. Nietzsche adopts (...) perspectivism as active intersections between dynamic processes, within an open universe that has not been predesigned for humans. Animism tends toward a world of personalized relationships that would reach harmony if we would only lighten our ecological footprint. I draw upon such resonances to advance a new ethic of experiential environmentalism that treats ecological threats as lived risks and shared experiences with a lively and communicating “environment.”. (shrink)

I ventured to think during the war. I wrote several blogs on the topic "War and Intelligence". Everything seems out of place here. War requires action (participation, protection, assistance), and thought wants concentration in peace. I am not engaged in scientific research, I just think about what I can, what I have, and what I carry with me, without referring to sources and reference books. I'm thinking about this very: how does the event of the war relate to the ability (...) — and maybe even the duty — to think. I wrote two posts. They consider intelligence (intellectus) as a kind of responsibility. All knowledge, awareness, concepts, sciences, discursive practices, etc. — are secondary. They make sense in the primary context of responsibility. All intellectual pursuits have meaning and meaning as aspects of the answer to the question that constitutes a human being as human. This is being-in-question. (shrink)

The author of the paper ascertains that in the treatment of material beginning of the world two opposed methods of approach had grown up: qualitative and quantitative ones. The first can be traced back to Miletus school. The other goes to Pythagorean philosophy. The qualitative treatment (Aristotelian one in the main) predominated from the fourth century B.C. to early XVII A.D. But from the second part of the XVII age and right up to our days the quantitative approach plays prevalent (...) role not in philosophy only, but also in exact natural sciences. The author supposes that these two approaches don’t exclude, but compensate each other, and no one of them should dominate. Both methods can resolve own epistemological tasks. Unfortunately, from I.Newton, quantitative approach has prevailed in natural sciences. Ignoring qualitative method, scientists (especially of nowodays) try to resolve the epistemological problems of cognition natural phenomena with its help. As a result arbitrary formal mathematical theories come into existence. Such conceptions create only semblance of resolution theproblem. Among them the author reckons for example the Large Burst theory, based on the model of enlarging universe and also the theory of planetary model of atom.In the paper author refers to his own scholarly works, where he proposes by the way alternative conception evolution of universe. (shrink)

We introduce here a new “neoclassical” electromagnetic (EM) theory in which elementary charges are represented by wave functions and individual EM fields to account for their EM interactions. We call so defined charges balanced or “b-charges”. We construct the EM theory of b-charges (BEM) based on a relativistic field Lagrangian and show that: (i) the elementary EM fields satisfy the Maxwell equations; (ii) the Newton equations with the Lorentz forces hold approximately when b-charges are well separated and move with non-relativistic (...) velocities. When the BEM theory is applied to atomic scales it yields a hydrogen atom model with a frequency spectrum matching the Schrodinger model with desired accuracy. An important feature of the theory is a mechanism of elementary EM energy absorption established for retarded potentials. (shrink)

The first part of the interview with Anatoly Akhutin, dedicated to the informal philosophical movement that began in the USSR during the Khrushchev Thaw, the trends of this movement in the 1970s, the phenomenon of soviet «doublethink» and the origins of Eurasianism’s modern versions.

The article gives an overview of works on philosophy published in the 19 th and 20 th centuries in Belarus, widely influenced by the reception of philosophical views and trends of leading Western European thinkers. The main philosophical ideas of German philosophers (I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, F. Nietzsche and others) found creative reflections among the intellectuals of the Northwestern Krai (Region) of the Russian Empire, which included Belarus in the 19 th century. The authors analyze the role of (...) foreign ideas in the first third of the 20 th century on the example of one of the first textbooks on dialectical materialism published by S.Ya. Wolfson in the 1920s (has undergone seven editions). On the basis of the analysis of dissertations (over 800 dissertation of the 1950s–1980s), the authors demonstrate the significance of Western socio-philosophical ideas for the development of philosophical culture in Belarus. Considering the content and features of the processes of transfer of foreign philosophical ideas for two centuries, it can be concluded that is the dominance of the conceptions of German philosophy, especially in the 19 th century. Interest in German philosophy also prevailed in pre-war Soviet philosophy, while the focus was on Marxism and materialistic philosophy in general. Another trend is the significant role of works on the history of philosophy, including personalities and approaches. All this demonstrates that national Belarusian thought developed in the context of European philosophical culture. (shrink)

Introduction. War as a social phenomenon has always been an object of philosophical reflection, since its results largely determine the further de- velopment of society and have a profound impact on all spheres of social life. In connection with the ongoing so-called special military operation which Russia is conducting in Ukraine and which is at the same time a proxy war of the collective West against our country, the modern philosophical discourse of war is clarified. One of the important aspects (...) of the ontology of war is considering its chronotopos. The space-time factor has a signifi- cant impact on the course and outcome of hostili- ties in modern warfare, which makes its study very relevant. The purpose of the study is to describe the chrono- topos of modern warfare, to show the influence of the space-time factor on the course and result of hostilities. Methods. Being supporters of the relational concept of space and time, the authors consider the chronotopos of war as its internal attributive property. In addition, they rely on the methodology of synergetics, which makes it possible, in addition to the external universal space-time, to single out the internal space-time of open complex non-equi- librium systems. The authors apply structural-func- tional analysis to study material and ideal objects that influence the characteristics of space and time in modern warfare. They also use general scientific methods: abstraction, comparison, description and explanation. Scientific novelty of the research. The authors give characteristics of the war chronotopos at the beginning of the 21st century, and consider the tendencies of its changes. The necessity of taking into account spatio-temporal changes in planning and conducting hostilities in modern warfare is substantiated. Results. New means of warfare, as well as the cor- responding changes in tactics, operational art and strategy, will significantly reformat the chronoto- pos of war. The space of modern warfare is being radically transformed due to the fact that the confrontation simultaneously takes place not only on the plane, but also in the air, in space, under water, and even in social networks. New capabili- ties of strike systems are changing the perception of such characteristics of the war space as the front and rear. What was previously considered a deep safe rear, in the era of using missiles and combat drones, is no longer such. The time of war is also changing. An increase in the flight speed of ammu- nition, aircraft, and missiles increases the dynamics of battles and intensifies all processes on the bat- tlefield. Hypersonic systems are changing the pace of war, space satellites, reconnaissance drones and new technologies make it possible for the com- mander officer of the battle to see everything that happens on the battlefield in real time, regard- less of the distance from objects. Each new war is fought in its own space-time continuum. To win the war, all this must be taken into account. Conclusions. The chronotopos of war within the framework of the relational concept of space and time prevailing in modern philosophy is changing due to the emergence of fundamentally new means of warfare with new capabilities, which requires a significant adjustment in combat management, ensuring the adequacy of human behavior in war, training troops, taking into account the character- istics of the space-time continuum of a particular war, understanding on the part of the command staff of the essence of changes in the space and time of modern war. Old stereotyped ideas about the chronotopos of war can cause disorientation of a person on the battlefield, which requires not only a philosophical reflection of the ongoing spatio- temporal changes, but also the practical consid- eration of new knowledge in training troops, in planning and conducting combat operations. (shrink)

Introduction. The need for a transition to a new system of motivating state and municipal employees’ activities has been widely discussed in recent years. Moreover, some government bodies have taken certain actions in this direction. But in general, there have not been any significant changes. The authors of the article are convinced that the transition to more effective management is impossible without changing the civil servants’ remuneration system, which should motivate them to achieve significant results in the areas for which (...) they are responsible. The paper considers the conceptual approach of transferring the civil servants’ remuneration to a new system, shows the advantages of using performance indicators to stimulate the employees’ activities. The purpose of the article is to justify the reasonability of using performance indicators when remunerating state and municipal employees. Methods. Within the framework of the systems approach, the authors use structural and functional analysis, as well as general scientific methods: abstraction, comparison, description and explanation. Scientific novelty. The authors show possibilities of using the personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service in order to increase their motivation for obtaining significant results in their work. Results. The authors analyze the conditions for successful implementing the key personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service, describe the typical mistakes militating the effectiveness of the personnel performance indicators in public authorities. The authors develop some recommendations to improve the use of the personnel performance indicators in the system of state and municipal administration. Conclusions. The proper use of key performance indicators of state and municipal employees will significantly increase their motivation in order to achieve high efficiency in their work. At the same time, the personnel performance indicators must be balanced and matched taking into account the goals of the organization. (shrink)

Today, scientific discussions on the specifics of the development of civil society in Russia do not stop. The institutional approach allows us to look at this problem through the prism of formal and informal institutions existing in society. Researchers and practitioners should not focus only on the rule of law, official prescriptions and orders, setting the framework for interactions between authorities and citizens, promoting private initiatives, and realizing the rights and freedoms of the population. If they do not correspond to (...) the prevailing norms, stereotypes, ways of thinking and actions for centuries, then the most useful, at first glance, innovations in the political and social sphere may not take root. This does not mean, however, that informal institutions remain unchanged under any circumstances. They also evolve. This process can be targeted. It is important to understand all the actors involved in the development of civil society in our country. (shrink)

The Anatoly Bakushinsky’s Seminarium (1917–1926) at the Tsvetkov gallery in Moscow became one of the first experimental and most influential venues to develop approaches to the perception of art in Soviet Russia. In it, Bakushinsky, an art critic and the head of the Physical-Psychological Department of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN), incorporated the practice of formal art history into a methodology based on materialism, psychology, and experimental aesthetics widely practiced at the GAKhN. Today, this combination of approaches (...) is perceived as an isolated historical example of an outmoded eclecticism. I argue, however, that Bakushinsky’s methodology should be studied in the context of the complex institutional structure of the Academy that was designed to ensure multidisciplinary work in art studies and its almost immediate implementation into art practice. This institutional and material nexus of the GAKhN’s history opens up a new direction in studying the intellectual legacy of Soviet humanities of the 1920s, which is otherwise often reduced to biographical narratives. (shrink)

With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions. In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today. As Peters and colleagues note, conceptualisations of ‘facts’ and ‘evidences’ are politically, socially, and epistemically reconstructed in post-truth contexts. At the same time, with (...) intelligence commodified, reified or marginalised, freedom of speech and of mobility can entail fights for entitlements, or escapes from local responsibilities. The decline and corruptions of democratic free speech and academic freedom, or the absence of forces to defend them, are thus serious challenges. These challenges grow as the competition of ideas, sometimes under the rubric of academic freedom, often implies the power struggle and questioning of statuses in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’. Competition as a value invoked in some conceptualisations of freedom, becomes more important than human dignity, which was originally supposed to expand and strengthen under democratic conceptions of freedom in higher education. What had been happening to freedoms, of speech, teaching, and learning, across different subject positions and cultures of higher education, remains largely underexplored, as alt-right movements, neoliberalism and illiberalism, and post-truthism values and orientations expand. (shrink)

Опонуючи дискусійній рецепції метафізики Декарта, автор зосереджується на її тлумаченні як умов особистісної самореалізації. Інтерпретація мислителя в контексті незавершеної революції Коперника прояснює чинники актуалізації належних засадин людської поведінки. У процесі звернення до приватного листування обґрунтовується правомірність а) оцінки періоду роботи над незавершеними «Правилами для керування розумом» як етапу метафізики та б) з’ясування мотивів роботи над незавершеним ним текстом. Аналіз спадщини Декарта як осмислення умов розбудови особистості увиразнює її змістовну спорідненість із вченням Канта. Йдеться насамперед про межі людського знання як передумову (...) свободи, а також про принципову відмінність знань людини та зовнішніх речей. Глибоке знайомство з метафізикою Декарта свідчить про її дистанціювання від науки та релігії та його розважливе ставлення до ідеї абсолютизації мислення. А оскільки усвідомлення метафізичності людської природи зумовлює звертання Декарта до мистецтва, то подальші перспективи дослідження автор пов’язує з вивченням його ролі. (shrink)

This article focuses on the problems of application of artificial intelligence to represent legal knowledge. The volume of legal knowledge used in practice is unusually large, and therefore the ontological knowledge representation is proposed to be used for semantic analysis, presentation and use of common vocabulary, and knowledge integration of problem domain. At the same time some features of legal knowledge representation in Ukraine have been taken into account. The software package has been developed to work with the ontology. The (...) main features of the program complex, which has a Web-based interface and supports multi-user filling of the knowledge base, have been described. The crowdsourcing method is due to be used for filling the knowledge base of legal information. The success of this method is explained by the self-organization principle of information. However, as a result of such collective work a number of errors are identified, which are distributed throughout the structure of the ontology. The results of application of this program complex are discussed in the end of the article and the ways of improvement of the considered technique are planned. (shrink)

The article considers the formation and development of philosophy in Belarus in the context of historical conditions and modern opportunities. Discussing the national context of the philosophical process, the author reveals the four aspects of the phenomenon of “national philosophy.” Firstly, there are national institutional and disciplinary structures, which are responsible for an organized scientific, methodological, research and educational activity, which at the level of the nation-state is formalized by certain institutions, system of professional education, norms of professional ethos, standards (...) of behavior within the community and in the wider social environment. Secondly, in the light of philosophical culture, national philosophy is interpreted as a set of value and cognitive orientations passed down from generation to generation. Thirdly, national philosophy can be viewed in the aspect of the tradition of studying the philosophical thought of the nation in the context of its historical development. Fourthly, national philosophy appears in the aspect of the philosophical foundations of the national idea and national-cultural identity. The author examines the main stages of the development of the Belarusian philosophical culture, it is shown that the features of this culture were formed under the condition of a complex combination of the worldview and values of Latin civilization, Christianity, modern European science, rationalism of social projects of the Enlightenment, ideological and worldview attitudes of Western Russian culture, formalized Soviet philosophical disciplines. The article reviews the circle of theoretical, ideological, and practical problems that the modern philosophical process in Belarus faces, the author emphasizes the unfading value of philosophical knowledge as a source of heuristic means for finding effective local answers to global problems of cultural and civilizational development. The author argues that there are two conditions that make national philosophy possible: this is, first of all, a connection with the history of thought in the area of national genesis and also the expression of thought in a national language. (shrink)

The study contains the review, analysis, assessment of the current state and prospects for further scientific study of the materials of the Russian state archives, including the personal funds of philosophers and philosophical institutions of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries, which are of the greatest relevance to historians of Russian philosophy. In this regard, on the one hand, the study considers the largest research and scientific-publishing historical and philosophical projects, testifying to the already achieved results of the scientific development of (...) vast arrays of archival documents; on the other hand, a number of collections of Russian state archives (federal, regional, municipal, departmental) have been monitored in order to identify archival collections that were little or insufficiently studied from this point of view. The results of the collective research presented in the article can be considered as the beginning of a large systematic work on the analytical mapping of the content of Russian archival collections relevant to the problems of the history of Russian philosophy. The study shows the importance and productivity of conducting parallel research work both with the personal funds of Russian philosophers of the 19th-20th centuries, and with funds containing documentation of philosophical institutions (magazine editorial offices, faculties, departments, research institutes, publishing houses of philosophical literature, professional and thematic associations of philosophers). In this regard, the question was raised about the need to develop historical and philosophical archiving and source studies in Russia, to include this set of subjects into the system of training historians of philosophy, and also about the need to coordinate the joint efforts of historians of Russian philosophy towards the formation of an archive of Russian philosophy as a significant and publicly available mapped resource. The results obtained in the course of the study should contribute to the emergence of the history of Russian philosophy as a dynamically developing branch of Russian science to a qualitatively new source study and methodological level, necessary for solving the large-scale research tasks, related, in particular, to the scientific preparation of academic collections of works by Russian philosophers and the development of modern fundamental history of Russian philosophy. (shrink)

The article provides a comprehensive view of the problem of continuity and succession in contemporary Russian philosophy by considering the filiation of ideas as well as external factors of historical, socio-cultural, mental, and psychological nature. Examined as well are factors both conducive and detrimental to the continuity and succession of ideas. The major part of the article concerns the most important philosophical schools in contemporary Russia and offers an analysis of their ideological genealogy within the history of Russian and Soviet (...) philosophical thought. (shrink)

Public interest in the legacy of Russian religious philosophy, and above all in the legacy of V. S. Solovyov, reached its peak at the turn of the 1990s, after which it declined. As indirect evidence of this, we can note the remaining unrealized idea of installing a monument to the philosopher, slowing down the pace of work on the release of a complete collection of his works, and reducing the number of works dedicated to him. The year of the centenary (...) since the death of Solovyov was symptomatic, when the authoritative representatives of the Russian philosophical community, S.S. Khoruzhiy and P.P. Gaidenko made an ambiguous assessment of Solovyov's ideological heritage and its significance for the subsequent development of Russian socio-philosophical and religious-theological thought. In the article the statement that the genealogy of the critical interpretation of Solovyov's legacy goes back to the works of the philosopher and theologian G.V. Florovsky is substantiated. Florovsky influence in Russian studies, as well as in post-Soviet Russia in general is difficult to overestimate. In this regard, the author draws attention to the ideological evolution of Florovsky, which gives the key to his interpretation of Solovyov's philosophy. The analysis showed that Florovsky's critical reinterpretation of Solovyov's legacy had both a theoretical, theological, and doctrinal character, and was caused by certain socio-psychological factors related to the generational conflict between representatives and heirs of the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance of the early XX century. It is demonstrated that the reception of Solovyov by Florovsky was very significant, influential and archetypal for Russian religious and philosophical thought, both in Russia and abroad. (shrink)

We obtain a nonasymptotic lower time bound for deciding sentences of bounded second-order arithmetic with respect to a form of the random access machine with stored programs. More precisely, let P be an arbitrary program for the model under consideration which recognized true formulas with a given range of parameters. Let p be the length of P and let N be an arbitrary natural number. We show how to construct a formula G with one free variable with length not more (...) than 400 symbols and a value f of x such that the time required by P to decide the truth of G is at least N+1 steps. Furthermore, the G constructed does not depend on P and the length of f is less than p+400. (shrink)

A family of formal intuitionistic theories is proposed with realizability of proved formulas in several subrecursive classes, e.g. Grzegorczyk classes, polynomial-time computable functions class, etc. xA) Algorithm extraction forxyA is shown for various classes of bounded complexity. The results on polynomial computability are closely connected to work on the Bounded Arithmetic by S. Buss.

Nondeterministic exponential time complexity bounds are established for recognizing true propositional formulas with partially ordered quantifiers on propositional variables.

The legacy of totalitarianism thwarts discourse and practice of academic freedom in post-Soviet universities. For legacy-holders, “academic freedom” causes disorientation, irresponsibility, demoralization and inequity. They see more threats than benefits from empowering decision-makers who are non-compliant with local bureaucracy. For innovators, freedoms enhance flexibility and creativity. However, granting such freedom also reinforces value clashes on campuses and tends to intensify feelings of guilt and shame in regard to actions which show a disrespect of authority and tradition. While both legacy-holders and (...) innovators endeavour to redefine their practices and norms in their teaching, they appear to still struggle to shed their predispositions to a paternalistic and colonial philosophy of education. Presumably curative, their engagement with international networks of scholarship exposes their particular positions of vulnerabilities to that end. Both groups continue to push patriotism and cultural idiosyncrasy in order to hedge their power and status in the global marketplace of ideas. As in the past, a discourse of anti-westernization prevails, shoring up legacies of regulative thinking, indoctrination, and insularity. Progressive academics succeed primarily by taking bold steps to go above and beyond the dominant discourses and norms within their universities and policy-building communities. This article explicates why, in turn, a “surrogate academic freedom” tends to emerge as a conundrum across the post-Soviet higher education space. (shrink)

Biology has been one of the more sensitive areas for Soviet efforts to establish the scientific character of dialectical materialism. Since Lysenko there has been indubitable progress. Dialectification of science has come to the fore as a major question, and much of the activity has been in the line of discussing genetics and dialectics. On the other hand, the Soviets have had little success in developing a non-Lysenkoist explanation of the relationship between the organism and the environment. There have been (...) some efforts to use structures and systems as explanatory models. The major problems that remain in Soviet biology include the meaning of materialism for living entities and the precise nature of evolution. (shrink)

Biology has been one of the more sensitive areas for Soviet efforts to establish the 'scientific' character of dialectical materialism. Since Lysenko there has been indubitable progress. Dialectification of science has come to the fore as a major question, and much of the activity has been in the line of discussing genetics and dialectics. On the other hand, the Soviets have had little success in developing a non-Lysenkoist explanation of the relationship between the organism and the environment. There have been (...) some efforts to use structures and systems as explanatory models. The major problems that remain in Soviet biology include the meaning of materialism for living entities and the precise nature of evolution. (shrink)

Розглядається формування базових положень античного дискурсу стосовно феномену реальності, його спрямованість і подальша рецепція середньовічною теологією. Філософське осмислення феномену реальності почалося у ранніх представників античної філософії і поступово сформувало систему онтологічних і гносеологічних понять, що поступово сформували два основних напрямки дискурсу – ідеалістичний і реалістичний. Представники класичного періоду – Платон і Арістотель – реалізували його інтенції у своїх філософських системах, але підвалини вже були закладені їх попередниками, зокрема Гераклітом, Демокрітом, Парменідом і Зеноном. Напрацювання античних мислителів були сприйняті середньовічними теологами і (...) трансформовані у контексті християнської системи уявлень про світ. З одного боку античний дискурс звузився до єдиної моделі теологічного, християнського ідеалізму. Але з іншого, середньовічна модель реальності доповнилася самостійною категорією часової протяжності, що мала лінійну спрямованість. В перспективі це робило можливим реалізацію ідеї діалектичного розвитку, як властивості реальності. (shrink)

This article discusses the challenges of educational transformation in post-totalitarian societies. Special attention is given to the situation in social sciences and humanities which have suffered a long period of the Soviet ideology domination. The dramatic story of the European Humanities University, which was established in Minsk in 1992 and closed down by the Belarusian regime in 2004, serves as a perfect example of the difficulties in overcoming the crisis of humanities education. The importance of the crucial differentiation between knowledge (...) and thinking is emphasized. (shrink)

Interview of Illia Davidenko, Kseniia Myroshnyk, Daria Popil with Anatoly Loy.

In relativistic mechanics the energy-momentum of a free point mass moving without acceleration forms a four-vector. Einstein’s celebrated energy-mass relation E=mc 2 is commonly derived from that fact. By contrast, in Newtonian mechanics the mass is introduced for an accelerated motion as a measure of inertia. In this paper we rigorously derive the relativistic point mechanics and Einstein’s energy-mass relation using our recently introduced neoclassical field theory where a charge is not a point but a distribution. We show that both (...) the approaches to the definition of mass are complementary within the framework of our field theory. This theory also predicts a small difference between the electron rest mass relevant to the Penning trap experiments and its mass relevant to spectroscopic measurements. (shrink)

The article “Prevention of corruption in public procurement: importance of general legal principles” examines the importance of general legal principles in the sphere of public purchases. The purpose of the work is to analyse the information on possible methods of prevention of and fight against corruption. The main result of the work is the conclusion that strict adherence to the general legal principles is one of the corruption-reducing factors. While combating corruption in the field of public procurement, general legal principles (...) should not be divided into primary and secondary principles, because they are all equally important and complement each other. Audit of the normative acts regulating public procurement shall be performed in the Member States of the European Union; positivisation of the following principles will effectively prevent manifestations of corruption in the area of public procurement: the principle of responsibility; principle of permanent composition of the procurement commission; the principle of in dubio pro reo; the principle of compensation; the principle of control; the principle of objectivity; the principle of completing the procurement procedure within a reasonable time period. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is the hermeneutic reconstruction of the political in the original concepts of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt. The scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the approaches of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt to the identification of the essence of the political. As a result, the differences between the theoretical approaches of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt were revealed, which correlate with each other according to the principle of complementarity. According to K. Schmitt, in the (...) era of modernity there is a monopolization of politics by the state, which acquires an external character and is implemented in the space of international relations. H. Arendt considers the political as the quintessence of active life, which is carried out by free people, first in the space of the ancient polis, and in later times – in other formats of publicity. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the specifics of the functioning of ideologies and political religions in modern society. The article examines primary sources and modern publications on ideologies and political religions. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the classical tradition of studying ideology as a kind of false consciousness and, at the same time, as a strategy of social hegemony in modern society is reconstructed; a rational explanation of the circumstances under which Conservatism, Liberalism, Marxism (...) arose as three fundamental answers to questions about changes, values and power; the essence of civil and totalitarian religions as forms of secondary sacralization of institutions, values and collective political subjects is determined. As a result, the similarities and differences of ideologies and political religions in modern society were revealed. (shrink)

In relativistic theories, the assumption of proper mass constancy generally holds. We study gravitational relativistic mechanics of point particle in the novel approach of proper mass varying under Minkowski force action. The motivation and objective of this work are twofold: first, to show how the gravitational force can be included in the Special Relativity Mechanics framework, and, second, to investigate possible consequences of the revision of conventional proper mass concept (in particular, to clarify a proper mass role in the divergence (...) problem). It is shown that photon motion in the gravitational field can be treated in terms of massless refracting medium, what makes the gravity phenomenon compatible with SR Mechanics framework in the variable proper mass approach.Specifically, the problem of point particle in the spherical symmetric stationary gravitational field is studied in SR-based Mechanics, and equations of motion in the Lorentz covariant form are obtained in the relativistic Lagrangean problem formulation. The dependence of proper mass on potential field strength is derived from the Euler-Lagrange equations as well. One of new results is the elimination of conventional 1/r divergence, which is known to be not removable in Schwarzschild gravitomechanics. Predictions of particle and photon gravitational properties are in agreement with GR classical tests under weak-field conditions; however, deviations rise with potential field strength. The conclusion is made that the approach of field-dependent proper mass is perspective for development of SR gravitational mechanics and further studies of gravitational problems. (shrink)

The article proposes to view Maidan as a historic event that generated widely influential new meanings. The authors interpret Maidan not only as a political phenomenon, but as an event that rehabilitated the idea of human dignity and solidarity, and demonstrated the possibility of creating a new community where people come together not because they share a common past, but because they choose a common future—it provided people the occasion to make free choices concerning their futures. At the same time, (...) Maidan raised the question of European identity once again. The European idea is that of an incomplete, free individual in search of himself; European culture is Maidan—the space in which people of different cultures communicate. European culture does not create a specific identity and puts any identity into question. The European idea and patriotic idea are the internal contradictions of Maidan. (shrink)