Two years ago, a professor at the University of California, Herbert Marcuse, an American social philosopher with traditional German training, came to be regarded as the recognized theoretician of the "New Left" movement. Marcuse's popularity compelled many writers, including ourselves , to make a careful examination specifically of the theoretical content of that teaching, which laid claim to performing the role of a critical and revolutionary theory of society. The development of a critique of the philosophical and theoretical foundations and (...) the internal contradictions of Marcuse's teachings was thus dictated by a real situation, by the actual struggle of ideas, and has perhaps still not lost its significance. Another problem, which aroused the interest of researchers even then but which had not found an answer in our article because of its specific purpose, had to do with the relationship between Marcuse's philosophical concept and the spontaneous consciousness of the "mass" participants in the real protest movement that came to be known as the "New Left" movement. (shrink)

In the years since World War II, the social critic has become a rather popular figure in the West. The demand for critical theories of society is readily explainable where the contradictions of social development take the form of sharp paradoxes recognized by the broad public. It may be assumed that interest in critical concepts of society will increase. People who recognize themselves as cogs without rights in the system of bureaucratic organization of state-supported monopoly capitalism, who react acutely to (...) the threat of social catastrophes , endow such concepts with the halo of humanism if only because they often find in them their own moods, given shape and seemingly elevated to the level of general social protest. These feelings represent a concrete dissatisfaction with the present situation, and the sense that the society in which they live is in crisis. (shrink)

During the half-century of its existence, the Soviet study of esthetics has achieved considerable success in developing the views of the founders of Marxism-Leninism with respect to the nature and social function of art. There is no need to list the authors and titles of the works in which the history of world thought about esthetics and the cardinal problems of esthetics have been treated from the Marxist standpoint. Suffice it to say that Soviet esthetic thought has been the first (...) to deal with such very important categories as the principle of partisanship in art, the creative method , the principles of socialist realism, the international and the national in art, and so forth. (shrink)

The deep commonality of science and art lies in the fact that both phenomena arose as a means of breaking out of the self-contained shell of the self-sufficient world of everyday consciousness. Science and art arose as a means of escaping from the narrow bounds of natural existence, so as to recognize one's specifically human attitude toward the world, recognize the value of truth, beauty, and the right. In the course of history, science and art have created highly specialized superstructures. (...) Science became a means for technological mastery of the world, and even its deep-lying substrate is perceived by us today primarily from the standpoint of the technological power it attains. In art the primary task of discovering harmony is by no means always identifiable, because it is aimed at creating consumer-oriented esthetic values. Science and art have sharply parted company in pursuit of their utilitarian functions, and this interferes with seeing their basic unity. There float to the surface such secondary phenomena as the fruitfulness of a scientist's efforts in one or another sphere of art, whether it be amateur creativity, deep involvement in esthetic values, or the study of art by the methods of science. When they interact thus, science and art appear in such polar roles that no commonality between them is observed at all. (shrink)

A new term, "the new conservatism," has recently appeared in the American sociopolitical lexicon. The meaning given it does not resolve merely to a description of the current conservative trends in the United States , which until recently were termed neoconservative in the critical literature. A number of American writers have begun to employ the term "new conservatism" in a narrower sense: to denote the evolution of the sociopolitical views of those ideologists of capitalist reformism who were, until recently, known (...) as neoliberals. The term "new conservatism" was first employed in that sense by the American radical sociologist Michael Harrington in analyzing the evolution, in the realm of political ideas and social policy, of the views of such prominent bourgeois ideologists as Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and others. To those listed, this identification appeared so well chosen and reflective of the essence of the matter that subsequently they themselves began to speak of themselves as new conservatives. This term has become firmly established in the American sociological literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the "legitimacy" of the use of this term and the points of contact between this group and the conservatives or neoconservatives and the lines of demarcation between them. (shrink)

There are words and concepts that almost automatically trigger bitter discussions in our country. And among them are the terms in the title of this article. True, there are occasional attempts to tone down the bitterness of the disputes surrounding them by using the more ideologically "neutral" terms "personal" or "individual." But the dispute is of course not about the words but about their meaning. Let us begin by looking in the dictionary.

Marx said that a science attains perfection when it is successful in employing mathematics.

The question of the nature and regularities of development of the socialist state is quite urgent at present, because identification and application of the objective laws of development of the socialist state will facilitate successful solution of practical problems of governmental, economic, and sociocultural construction and make possible a deep and comprehensive analysis of the course of evolution of statehood in the modern world. In the USSR these processes are proceeding under conditions in which a new Constitution, adopted two years (...) ago, is in force. (shrink)

I would like to tell you about my own road to the serious pursuit of philosophy, relying only on my own memory, although occasionally I shall check this against other testimony. These are merely the notes of a witness and participant in the events described.

The persistent struggle waged by the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries for peaceful coexistence among states with differing social systems has greatly increased the authority of this humanitarian policy in the eyes of the peoples of the world. Belligerent appeals for an outright rejection of peaceful coexistence are heard less and less frequently, even among the ideologists of imperialism. They are compelled to adapt themselves to the situation and to camouflage themselves with the masks of the peacemaker. Bourgeois (...) professors of social science say they are for peace and peaceful coexistence. However, these concepts are sometimes given such a distorted interpretation that all real content evaporates. "Peaceful coexistence and the cold war," we read, for example, in the words of the British professor, Hugh Seton-Watson, "are literally the same thing." [All quotations from non-Russian sources are retranslated from the Russian.] Thus, a single sentence suffices, by an act of sophistry, to transform peaceful coexistence into a state of international tension and intensive war preparations. The ideologists of imperialism deny, in essence, the possibility of cooperation between the socialist and capitalist countries in the process of peaceful coexistence. (shrink)

Seven decades separate us from the time when the workers raised the scarlet banner of revolution on the barricades of the Krasnaia Presnia district. The December armed insurrection in Moscow was the high point of development of the first Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, which occurred in 1905-1907. Seventy years are enough to permit a comprehensive evaluation of the historic significance of the events of 1905, which exercised a lasting influence on the whole subsequent development of the world movement for liberation.

The documents of the Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU, the new Party Program, the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Congress, and the welcoming addresses of the foreign delegations revealed a broad and multi-colored panorama of contemporary world development in all its variety and contradictions.

The general notion of the development of productive forces is, according to the materialist understanding of history, the point of departure for the solution of numerous concrete problems in Marxist-Leninist social theory and current revolutionary practice. It offers decisive arguments for the critique of Right and "Left" revisionism and reformism. In the course of the disputes that have recently begun in the Marxist economic and philosophical literature with regard to the basic questions involved in this problem, substantial gaps are found (...) specifically in the development of general theory. What is the internal contradiction moving within the forces of production; in what lies the distinction between their existence and essence, essence and appearance? A correct understanding of the processes involved in the resolution of this contradiction in real life, in revolutionary practice, depends upon attaining the utmost clarity with regard to these questions. (shrink)

In the academic year just past, the Expert Commission on Philosophical Disciplines of the Higher Certification Committee [VAK] processed 441 cases pertaining to the award of degrees and ranks. Of these, positive decisions were handed down in 333 cases, and negative decisions in 9 cases, while final decisions have not yet been taken on 99. Of the total number, 418 cases were examined, 114 of these for the degree of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences and 304 for Candidate in Philosophical Sciences, (...) and final decisions were taken on 323, while 95 were referred to further expert examination. (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since publication of the first edition of Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin regarded as "one of the basic works of modern socialism." Engels's interest in the remote past of mankind and Lenin's evaluation of his work were, of course, not coincidental. They may be explained by the tremendous role played by the concept of primitive history in a general materialist understanding of the universal historical process. What (...) was the nature of this very first term in the sequence of socioeconomic formations, this cornerstone of the Marxist concept of universal history? When did private property, antagonistic social classes, and state power, separate from the people, emerge, and what were they, original and permanent institutions, or historically determined institutions of human communal life? These problems are clearly of great philosophical importance. They were, and continue to be, the arena of a bitter ideological struggle, and inevitably attracted the most conscientious attention of the founders of scientific communism. (shrink)

The triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia, the fiftieth anniversary of which the Soviet people are marking this year, the building of socialism in the USSR, and the coming into being of a world socialist system eliminated the ideological monopoly theretofore enjoyed by exploitative society in the contemporary world. For the first time in human history, an ideology of the toiling masses has extensively taken root in a number of countries. This has meant a narrowing of the sphere in (...) which bourgeois ideology is dominant, and could not fail to have a bearing upon all the forms of social consciousness in the capitalist world, including philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to find out to what demand of philosophical and scientific thinking is culturology a response, treating culturology from two aspects: as a set of approaches to culture and as a school subject in the system of education. The task is not to define the subject boundaries of some science . I am interested in the "metaphysical location" of the interest in culture, in the lacuna of man's understanding of the world and of himself it (...) seeks to fill. (shrink)

Much attention was devoted, at the Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU, to the ideological struggle now in progress and to the need for prompt and decisive refutation of bourgeois ideology. The problem of the genesis of science is now central to fierce ideological debates.

The constantly accelerating progress of contemporary natural science is indissolubly associated with the development and use of mathematics and with the processes of mathematical modeling of the phenomena of nature. The essence of this diverse and highly fertile interaction of mathematics and natural science and the dialectics of this interaction can only be disclosed through analysis of the nature of theoretical notions in general. Today, above all in the ranks of materialistically minded researchers, it is generally accepted that theory possesses (...) a value of its own. Contrary to positivist concepts of the nature of our knowledge, the meaning and significance of theory do not consist merely of the recording of experimental data, their classification and notation in abbreviated form. The meaning of theory is considerably more significant and is revealed, above all, in its explanatory and predictive functions. Contemporary theoretical knowledge is quite advanced and comprises a highly complex system, relatively self-contained and capable of internal development. Mathematics is the most interesting and distinctive phenomenon in the system of theoretical knowledge, in the system of science in general. It is in its dialectical development that the internal force and dynamics of the development of theory, in the very broadest sense of that word, find expression. Paul Lafargue tells us that Karl Marx held that "science only attains perfection when it succeeds in making use of mathematics" . In many fields of research the formulation of new ideas and concepts rests upon mathematics, its concepts and notions, and "is suggested" by the latter. "Mathematics," writes F. Dyson, "is the main source of the notions and principles out of which new theories are created" . The basic significance of mathematics to theory has been noted by outstanding thinkers over the course of the entire history of development of science. Today the expressive phrase, "the mathematization of knowledge," has come into general currency as a description of the principal direction of growth of theoretical notions in natural science. However, with respect to the growth of modern theoretical physics in general, the statement that it develops primarily by the method of the mathematical hypothesis has general validity. For example, the principal findings and discoveries of quantum theory and particle physics, starting from the corpuscularwave dualism and terminating with the omega minus hyperon and hypothetical quarks, were obtained or made "at the tip of a mathematician's pen.". (shrink)

I was born on 7 November 1952 in Moscow. I studied at the Historical-Archival Institute, from which I graduated after writing a dissertation titled The Commission for the Preservation of the Monuments of Art and Antiquity of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 191 8-1 925. Survey of Materials [Komissiia PO okhrane pamiatnikov iskusstva i stariny Troitse-Sergievoi lavry. 1918-1925. Obzor materialov].

In this paper I attempt to refute the instrumental conception of practical reason, and thus defend a rationalist conception of practical reason. I argue that, far from merely playing an instrumental role, reason can be used by an agent to evaluate, that is, to approve or reject, final ends, which might be suggested by desires, and further to determine final ends independently of any desires, whether actual or potential, that the agent might have. My argument relies on an analysis of (...) the concept of intention, and, more specifically, on the distinction between want and intention. I argue that the notion of an intentional action entails that reason can be used to evaluate and determine final ends. (shrink)

Changes in the productive forces and, consequently, in the economic structure of socialist society as a whole are being prepared by the current relationships of production. We refer particularly to the influence of socioeconomic processes under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology on the development of the individual as a factor in the productive forces and as subject in production relationships.

Difficulties understanding speech form one of the most prevalent complaints among older adults. Successful speech perception depends on top-down linguistic and cognitive processes that interact with the bottom-up sensory processing of the incoming acoustic information. The relative roles of these processes in age-related difficulties in speech perception, especially when listening conditions are not ideal, are still unclear. In the current study, we asked whether older adults with a larger working memory capacity process speech more efficiently than peers with lower capacity (...) when speech is presented in noise, with another task performed in tandem. Using the Eye-tracking of Word Identification in Noise Under Memory Increased Load an adapted version of the “visual world” paradigm, 36 older listeners were asked to follow spoken instructions presented in background noise, while retaining digits for later recall under low or high memory load. In critical trials, instructions directed listeners’ gaze to pictures of objects whose names shared onset or offset sounds with the name of a competitor that was displayed on the screen at the same time. We compared listeners with different memory capacities on the time course for spoken word recognition under the two memory loads by testing eye-fixations on a named object, relative to fixations on an object whose name shared phonology with the named object. Results indicated two trends. For older adults with lower working memory capacity, increased memory load did not affect online speech processing, however, it impaired offline word recognition accuracy. The reverse pattern was observed for older adults with higher working memory capacity: increased task difficulty significantly decreases online speech processing efficiency but had no effect on offline word recognition accuracy. Results suggest that in older adults, adaptation to adverse listening conditions is at least partially supported by cognitive reserve. Therefore, additional cognitive capacity may lead to greater resilience of older listeners to adverse listening conditions. The differential effects documented by eye movements and accuracy highlight the importance of using both online and offline measures of speech processing to explore age-related changes in speech perception. (shrink)

This book offers a new definition of metaphor-as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names “visualist,” challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual become a site of philosophical (...) analysis. This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence. Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors. (shrink)

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

Not only Greek philosophers listened to prophets. René Descartes also long pondered over the familiar words of Ausonius: "What path shall I choose for myself in life?" And-what an amusing play on words-the idea of methodos entered philosophy with Descartes. The very path of his metaphysical thought was the last possible one within the confines of Aristotelian metaphysics, when, having posited certain principles of discourse, in the end they themselves are conclusively reached and the entire system becomes a manifest certainty. (...) Descartes provides a glimpse of the possibility of a new type of metaphysical reflection in which the correctness of the chosen principles is grounded in the completeness and noncontradictoriness of the system built on their basis but not confined to them. (shrink)

The following describes the concept of apoliticism, distinguishing it from indifference, which is also considered a negative attitude toward politics. Whereas apoliticism is the rejection of the official political institutions, possibly with the plan of an alternative system, the indifferent rejects politics altogether and is politically disinterested. If reflective negativism rejects politics as mechanism, the indifferent rejects it as a pursuit. I also distinguish between the extra-political, as the condition of being outside of any environment in which free deliberation and (...) public engagement is possible, and the supra-political condition, as blurring the line between public political activities and rites prescribed by the state on the one hand and the private sphere of the individual on the other hand. If different, both are forms of political poverty. These concepts may serve as means for a more nuanced understanding of the structure of apolitical attitudes. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Hegel’s account of shame as a fundamental affect. Qua spiritual, the human individual strives for self-determination; hence she is ashamed of the fact that, q...

A partir de l'idée de “ folie ” chez S. Paul , Fr. Le Gal explore le thème de “ la folie sainte de Dieu ” qui n'est autre que la révélation de son amour fou pour l'homme. Examinant tout d'abord la polysémie du terme, sa réflexion porte en première partie sur Jésus-Christ comme “ homme de la dérision et Dieu à la folie ”, examinant au passage la parabole comme lieu de l' “ ironie christique ”. Dans la seconde (...) partie, c'est Paul qui révèle le contenu à la fois christologique, théologique et spirituel de la folie dans la tension entre la scandale de la croix et le risque pour l'apôtre et le croyant de n'être pas reçus. C'est pourtant là que se manifestera la “ folie sainte ”.Beginning with the idea of 'folly " in St. Paul , Fr Le Gal explores the theme of "the holy folly of God " that is nothing other than the revelation of his mad love for man. Examining first of all the polysemy of the term, his reflection in the first part is on Jesus Christ as "man of derision and God of folly ", examining in passing the parable as the area of "christic irony ". In the second part, it is Paul who reveals, at the same time, the christological, theological, and spiritual content of folly in the tension between the scandal of the cross and the risk for the apostle and the believer not to be accepted. It is there, nevertheless, that the "holy folly " manifests itself. (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the problem of the overman becomes one of the most discussed problems in Russia. This was mainly a consequence of the boom in the popularity of Nietzsche's writings; however, to a significant degree it was conditioned also by Solov'ev's works. The religious pathos of Solov'ev's philosophy prepared Russian specialists in the humanities to take an attentive interest in and eventually to accept precisely the "overhuman" aspect of Nietzschean thought. It would not be wrong (...) to assert that the special nature of the Russian Nietzscheanism of the Silver Age consists precisely in the fact that the idea of the overman firmly occupied a central place in it. While the representatives of academic scholarship and religious writers in the final years of the nineteenth century recoiled in horror from the Nietzschean overman, seeing in him the mark of Satanic origin, the embodied idea of evil, indeed the Antichrist himself, the young generation of idealist philosophers, the activists of the Russian religious renaissance of the beginning of the twentieth century, on the contrary, welcomed the Nietzschean image as a symbol of the approaching religious renewal of culture. The general mood of those years was accurately conveyed by D. Merezhkovskii: "The overman is the last point, the sharpest summit of the great mountain ridge of European philosophy, with its age-old roots in the rebellious, solitary, and aloof personality. One can go no further: precipice and abyss, fall or flight: the way of the overman-religion.". (shrink)

The authors argue that Morenian-inspired existential psychodrama turns out to be a formidable lever for opening up existence as it allows schizophrenic patients to incorporate the experience of an “absolutely other” on which the foundation of any autonomous self is built. More precisely, by relying on their clinical experiences, the authors show how psycho-dramatic play goes along with an intense movement of original projection which carries psychotic patients externally in relation to themselves. Offset from their pathological world, these patients feel (...) more inclined to “wear someone else’s shoes,” for the duration of the game, and they do so in a manner that is both sensorial and pathic. This surprising and creative “journey,” which allows them to return to the world better attuned to others and to themselves, is merely an enactment of a “true” intersubjective encounter: the very essence of existential psychodrama. By applying phenomenology to this psychodramatic method, notably by relying on the hypothesis of psychosis being a disorder of what Bin Kimura calls the “ aida,” the authors hope to contribute to the advancement of psychosis’ psychotherapy. (shrink)