The intuitions of Raimundus Lullus religious metaphysics are in this article explicated according to the opportunities of the convergence between the medieval and the new time philosophy. Such approach to the creativity of the thinker is possible, because his conception is one sides associated with the mystical symbolic theologism, that is typical for the medieval tradition, over sides develops Lullus the new understanding of the infinity of the world, inherent in the newtime philosophy. This opposition conditions some of the features (...) of Lullus spiritual quest. This quest connected the respect to the past, that causes the homesickness to the lost ideals, together with the progressivity – the presentation of the future. This presentiment is by Lullus expressed as the desire to change the external world. The aim of this change is the approximation of the rational theological base – the model for the real life. Lullus experiences the combination and the unrealized synthesis of this intentions as the tragedy. The acute and intensive conflict of this intentions triggers the practical atheism, when the stimulation of the external distraction of the evil leads causes the appearance and the activation of the new evil. This disaster of life is determined with some aspects of Lullus metaphysics, in that the infinity of God is realized as the infinity of the world. The infinity of the world is by Lullus given as the rational hierarchical order, leading to the creator of the world. The tragedy of life is for Lullus the marker, that emphasizes the crisis of the medieval philosophy, that was based on the revelation. This crisis discovers the land of new philosophy. This philosophy stresses the autonomy of the human personality. (shrink)

The spiritual quest of Raymond Lull is of interest to modern philosophical discourse as occupying an intermediate position between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and thus combining the features of these two eras in the history of the development of human thought. They are connected with the Middle Ages by theocentrism and traditionalism, and with the Renaissance by emphasizing the peculiar polyphony of the world, the predominance of plurality over unity, given in the autonomous dialogic space of the human (...) personality as a gradual immanentization of the presence of a transcendent deity, associated with the acceptance by man of the external world as the only possible one. This immanentization is carried out by Luli in the symbol of Love as the Unity of the Loving and the Beloved, explicating the thinker's introspection. The novelty of the work lies in the application of the teachings of A.F. Losev about the interpretive symbol, which made it possible to consider them as a special form of explication of the personality as its transcendence and simultaneous immanence, being a special form of introspection, which correlates with Lull's teaching about Love as a fluctuation in which the Beloved descends, and the Lover ascends. This contributes to the actualization of Lull's spiritual quest as an integrity, a unique eidos, in which each of the separate features of Raymond Lull's spiritual quest is realized in a special way, reflecting the intermediate position occupied by the thinker between the worlds of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The proposed model of mutual positing of the "components" of Lull's teaching allows us to show one of the possibilities for the interaction of the thinker's logical system (understanding the force, its bearer and passively perceiving its beginning) and his theologically oriented personal spiritual quest as a special kind of dynamics in which the leading role is assigned to introspection as a personal intentions, a kind of mythological sub-foundation of the actual logical dimension of the thinker's teachings. (shrink)

The creativity of Rozanov is realized as the flow of experiences and associations. This experiences are putting together by means of the topic-conception “becoming”, that belongs to ancient categories. This categories are used to collect the dividual intuitions of Rozanov. Doctrine of Rozanov is interpreted as the coordination between the outside and the inside ranges of becoming. The inside rang of becoming includes by Rozanov the movement of people and things from birth to death. The inside ranges are corresponded with (...) concrete things and represents the complex analogues to the outside range. The specific by Rozanov lies in the impossibility of things to stop eternal formation. By Rozanov this formation eventually determines itself. It is by Rozanov the folded type of entropy. Rozanov explicates forms of entropy, when he describes his life und the being of world. His descriptions are the is the evidence. We explain the cosmos by Rozanov with help of ancient ontological categories and determine his creativity as an interaction between cosmos and chaos. To find balance between cosmos and chaos is the main eksistential problem of his doctrine and life. The decision of this problem is by Rozanov imposable, but this impossibility gives the opportunity to understand the world of Rozanov in context of different directions of philosophy. (shrink)

Our approach bases on the explication of Rosanov’s creativity as the special intention, that implements the unspeakable Self-Selfness of Vasiliy Rosanov. The ineffability of Self-Selfness can be dialectical expressed by Rosanov through phenomena, of that consists the Rosanov’s world. This ineffability actualizes by Rosanov by means of understanding as a filled emptiness, that determinates the specialties and the structure of the understood objects. The exposition of this emptiness conditions the antinomies of Rosanov’s creativity: one sides is understanding by Rosanov the (...) closed world, other sides it corresponds with the world of things. Rosanov mythically fills the void, using the intimate personal contact with the things. We consider the creativity of Rosanov as the synthesis of both this global directions of Rosanov’s theory: the vision of understanding through things, this vision causes the special perception of things by Rosanov. The things are by Rosanov neither material objects, nor the ideal essences. This are by Rosanov the givens, inherent to the understanding. At the same time Rosanov examines the things through understanding, including it with help of the carnivalisation in his own special world. This method defines in our opinion style and content of Rosanov’s works. The thinker realizes by means of the carnivalisation the understanding, according to the concrete things, creating the special world of life (reality). For Rosanov this world is the second world. (shrink)

The study of the cultural activity of the Spiritual missions of the Russian Orthodox Church in various regions of Russia is one of the urgent tasks in the context of the problematic field of the theory of regionalism, cultural studies and socio-philosophical knowledge. Russian settlements on the territory of the Yenisei River basin and the entry of ethnic groups and territories of Yakutia and Buryatia into the Russian Empire has become one of the most important stages of the integration of (...) the ethnic groups of Siberia into a single statehood. The Irkutsk Spiritual Mission received a more perfect organization, institutionalized by increasing the number of missionary camps, which for successful Christian activities carried out among pagans allowed the formation of school educational institutions for the education and upbringing of a new Buryat generation of children in the doctrinal Orthodox canons, and Russian cultural traditions. In this regard, one of the key tasks of the missionaries was to establish a rational view of further life in new Christian-type formations, which was realized in socio-cultural activities: providing medical care to sick representatives of other ethnic groups, a friendly attitude to people of a different faith and a sincere desire to guide them on the path of righteousness, etc. It should be noted that the largest share of foreigners in this territory belonged to Buddhists, which was reflected in the influence of lamas on doctrinal issues, including economic ones. Since Buddhism in the Russian Empire belonged to the section of tolerant religions, direct (administrative) pressure on it was impossible. There remained funds of an exclusively spiritual nature, to which Orthodox missionary work was directed. Today in the Russian Federation, Buddhism, as well as Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as some other faiths belong to the category of traditional religions, which organizationally operate within the framework of the modern Russian Constitution. (shrink)

_Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology_ presents a variety of contemporary philosophic problems found in the works of prominent Russian thinkers, ranging from social and political matters and pressing cultural issues to insights into modern science and mounting global challenges.

In _Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity and the Bahá’í Faith_ Mikhail Sergeev offers a new interpretation of the Soviet period of Russian history by developing a theory of religious cycles, which he applies to modernity and all major world religions.

The contributors to this anthology represent Russian-speaking communities from eight countries of the world, located on three continents: The United States, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, China and Israel. Most of the authors also represent different waves of Russian emigration that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century. The book opens with an interview with one of the legendary figures of the Russian diaspora, Russian-American historian Alexander Yanov, and is followed by articles from such prominent thinkers as (...) Igor Smirnov, Anatoly Akhutin and Fr. Vladimir Zelinsky, Boris Groys and Karen Swassjan, Mikhail Epstein and Alexander Genis. Issues raised in these essays cover the whole range of modern philosophical discourse-from epistemology, ontology and philosophical anthropology, to the philosophy of culture, religion, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Depending upon their epistemological foundations philosophical systems can be divided into five types: empiricist (Locke), rationalist (Descartes), intuitivist (Bergson), traditionalist (Confucius), and scriptural (Aquinas). In the history of philosophy there were five major waves of scriptural reasoning-Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. In this context Bah ' philosophy represents the sixth wave, and it finds itself in a fruitful dialogue not only with the traditional forms of religious philosophy but also with modern Western thought which is based solely on reason (...) and empirical observation. In this collection the reader will find articles on various aspects of Bah ' philosophy-philosophical anthropology, philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, comparative and political philosophy, and, finally, history of philosophy. The authors of those articles-Bah ' and non-Bah ' scholars-reflect global aspirations of this religion by representing diverse countries of the world-USA, Canada, France, Italy, and Sweden. This collection of articles also introduces a Global Faith Book Series which publishes works on various aspects of the Bah ' Faith and globalization. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of Law and Legal Thinking in Critical Theory with specific reference to the arguments that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri offer in their book Commonwealth. The core idea is that Critical Theory is no less radical, but much more concrete, when it is performing not only an external, but also an internal critique of the Law. It shows that the role of the law in critical theory emerges as a problem when the latter claims that (...) ‘there is no outside’ and that ‘the legal base of the system structures our lives.’ It then discusses optimistic and pessimistic strategies to overcome the problem, and argue for a demanding strategy which consist in articulating the external and the internal critique of the law. To make this point, the paper goes back to the epistemic context in which critical attitudes are deployed (the ‘Conflict of the Faculties’), describes the four theoretical moves constitutive of the historical moment in which, at the end of the 18th Century, modern law as we know it was conceived of and founded; and sketches the key moments of the history of the internal critique of the law. It then illustrates the demanding strategy with examples taken from the field of Intellectual Property, and concludes that the Law is malleable and open enough to allow the thinking and practicing of radical alternatives from within the legal system and also that alternatives spoken in the language of the law are no less radical, but certainly, more concrete than others. (shrink)

Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for (...) jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement. (shrink)

This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

The aim of the dissertation is to formulate a research program in moral cognition modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar and organized around three classic problems in moral epistemology: What constitutes moral knowledge? How is moral knowledge acquired? How is moral knowledge put to use? Drawing on the work of Rawls and Chomsky, a framework for investigating -- is proposed. The framework is defended against a range of philosophical objections and contrasted with the approach of developmentalists like Piaget and Kohlberg. (...) ;One chapter consists of an interpretation of the analogy Rawls draws in A Theory of Justice between moral theory and generative linguistics. A second chapter clarifies the empirical significance of Rawls' linguistic analogy by formulating a solution to the problem of descriptive adequacy with respect to a class of commonsense moral intuitions, including those discussed in the trolley problem literature originating in the work of Foot and Thomson. Three remaining chapters defend Rawls' linguistic analogy against some of its critics. In response to Hare's objection that Rawls' conception of moral theory is too empirical and insufficiently normative, it is argued that Hare fails to acknowledge both the centrality of the problem of empirical adequacy in the history of moral philosophy and the complexity of Rawls' approach to the problem of normative adequacy. In response to Nagel's claim that the analogy between moral theory and linguistics is false because whatever native speakers agree on is English, but whatever ordinary men agree in condemning is not necessarily wrong, it is argued that the criticism ignores both Rawls' use of the competence-performance distinction and the theory-dependence of the corresponding distinction in linguistics. In response to Dworkin's claim that Rawls' conception of moral theory is incompatible with naturalism and presupposes constructivism, it is argued that Dworkin's distinction between naturalism and constructivism represents a false antithesis; neither is an accurate interpretation of the model of moral theory Rawls describes in A Theory of Justice. The thesis concludes by situating Rawls' linguistic analogy within the context of broader debates in metaethics, democratic theory, natural law theory, and the theory of moral development. (shrink)

Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus attention on the psychology and biology of human morality. One research program that has recently gained attention is universal moral grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky's program in linguistics. This approach is thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate moral competence from computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological and phylogenetic perspectives. In this article, (...) I outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence that supports it. I also propose a novel computational analysis of moral intuitions and argue that future research on this topic should draw more directly on legal theory. (shrink)

My primary aims in this paper are to explain what exploitation is, when it’s wrong, and what makes it wrong. I argue that exploitation is not always wrong, but that it can be, and that its wrongness cannot be fully explained with familiar moral constraints such as those against harming people, coercing them, or using them as a means, or with familiar moral obligations such as an obligation to rescue those in distress or not to take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. (...) Its deepest wrongness, I argue, lies in our moral obligation not to extract excessive benefits from people who cannot, or cannot reasonably, refuse our offers. (shrink)