This paper analyzes why philosophy of religion can surprisingly be considered a rather new field in Russian philosophy. While religion has played a major role in modern Russian culture, the philosophy of religion is still searching a precise definition of its object and domain. Initially, Russian philosophies of religion were inspired by Western influential works, whereas philosophy of religion is barely considered as distinct from theology. As such, philosophy of religion presents a double origin: in a wide sense, it coincides (...) with philosophy, while in a more specific sense its origins are to be found in the modern era. From this point of view, Spinoza is seen as a seminal author for this field of work. This conception is analyzed and used to draw some perspective for the development of philosophy of religion in Russia. (shrink)

The Russian academic theological tradition, scarcely known to the West, was the only milieu wherein the development of philosophy of religion in the pre-revolutionary Russia was under way. Philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of religion was being elaborated in the apologetic context, i.e. in critical analysis of non-theistic conceptions of the origin and essence of religion, and the figure of Friedrich Schleiermacher, with his reduction of religion firstly to cosmic feelings and later to the feeling of the ontological dependence, occupied (...) an invariable place in this analysis. The paper deals with critical comments on Schleiermacher’s Speeches on Religion and Christian Faith made by Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov and his followers, which are being parsed in turn, as well as with historical links of the later Schleiermacher with phenomenology of religion and typological affinities of the earlier Schleiermacher with the theology of religious pluralism. (shrink)

Comparative philosophical studies can seek to fit some Eastern patterns of thought into the general philosophical framework, or, on the contrary, to improve understanding of Western ones through the view "from abroad". I try to hit both marks by means of establishing, firstly, the parallels between Indian versions of theodicy and the Hellenic and Christian ones, then by defining to which of five types of Western theodicy the Advaita-Vedanta and Nyaya versions belong and, thirdly, by considering the meaning of the (...) fact that some varieties of Western theodicy, like the explanation of evil by free will and divine dispensation aiming at the improvement of man, have Indian counterparts while others lack them. Some considerations concerning the remainders of primordial monotheisms ("an argument from theodicy") under the thick layers of other religious world-outlooks are also offered to the reader at the end of the article. (shrink)

The author enters an already old dispute, that is, whether a countеrpart of the notion of philosophy could be encountered in the traditional India, upholds the view that the term ānvīkṣikī (lit. “investigation”) was nearest to it and traces its meaning along the texts on dharma, politics, poetics and philosophy properly. Two main avenues to the understanding of philosophy’s vocations in India have been paved in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, along with the commentaries thereon and by Kamandaki, the author of the Nītisāra (...) (as the knowledge of Ātman) and in the Arthaśāstra and the Nyāya texts composed by Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara (as a metascience helping the other branches of knowledge bear their fruits). Therefore philosophy in India as well was regarded as the duality of ideological and methodological constituents, while the emphasis on analytic practice in the definitions of ānvīkṣikī (Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as a practice is also referred to in this context) paves a good promise for comparative philosophy. (shrink)

It is an issue of already longstanding significance in philosophy of religion after John Hick, that is of differing models of religious consciousness, in the frame of interreligious relations which is tackled in the paper but it is done on the basis of the texts of a concrete philosopher and the narratives around his figure. One of the most eminent Naiyayikas, Udayana, is singled out, as the author of the very renown composition in verse Nyāyakusumaňjali offering arguments for the existence (...) of God in the framework of polemics with the anti-theistic schools and the anti-Buddhist fundamental compendium Ātmatattvaviveka, along with the stories about his very resolute and victorious struggle against Buddhism in the epoch of the latter’s final extirpation from India. The author comes to conclusion that the features of exclusivism, inclusivism and gradualism are detected in his texts and traditions around him and, therefore, any univocal authentication of his attitude to otherwise-minded and those of other faiths is impossible. While participating in the supplantation of Buddhism from India, Udayana displays very resolute exclusivism. When he addresses the educated audience sermonizing his philosophical theism, he uses purely inclusivistic strategy of uncovering implicit knowledge of Īśvara even with those very far removed from the truth. And when he attempts to locate Nyāya on the map of philosophical world-views he uses gradualism as “philosophy of ascent” of the truth from lower to higher levels. As is impossible as well to mark out of his attitudes the so-called pluralism considered by Hick as fundamental advantage of Eastern religions over the Western ones. Comparativistic parallels along with differences and some specification of the main categories of interreligious relations are also offered in the paper. (shrink)

The author’s goal is to weigh capabilities of theistic reason in regard to the problem of evil, and two formats of reasoning in this regard are strictly differed, i.e. attempts at building theodicies and defenses. The upshot is that while there is no doubt that the great multitude of evils and sufferings in the world are surely beyond reach of any theodicies, it is similarly doubtless that many sound reasons are suitable for countering atheist “evidential refutations”. Some new arguments are (...) offered to counterbalance Rowe’s “friendly atheism”, Draper’s “hypothesis of indifference”, and Schellenberg’s “argument from hiddenness”, along with analysis of wishful thinking underlying all of them. (shrink)

One of the most fascinating phenomena in the cultural and spiritual life of Russia in the last decade and a half has been the fact that, after seventy years of the official state-implanted materialistic atheism, the witness of the Bible about our world is openly and widely discussed by scholars and theologians. This paper will survey certain features of those debates in which Orthodox authors participate, and also aspects of the understanding of the Hexaemeron (The Six Days of Creation) that (...) are not reflected in those debates but which are brought to light by several eminent Russian theologians of the XIX century and which to my mind have a great significance. (shrink)

There is a post-modernist myth that metaphysics has always been an exclusively Western heritage. This article refutes such a view by reviewing the many centuries of debate between Indian mind-body dualists and champions of reductionist physicalism. It also suggests the relevance of the Indian dualistic arguments for contemporary discussions of the mind-body issue.

Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that “ought” implies “can,” which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that an agent ought to keep a promise (...) that he is unable to keep, but only when he is to blame for the inability. Experiment 2 shows that such “ought” judgments correlate with judgments of blame, rather than with judgments of the agent’s ability. Experiment 3 replicates these findings for moral “ought” judgments and finds that they do not hold for nonmoral “ought” judgments, such as what someone ought to do to fulfill their desires. These results together show that folk moral judgments do not conform to a widely assumed philosophical principle that “ought” implies “can.” Instead, judgments of blame play a modulatory role in some judgments of obligation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe psychological and philosophical literature exploring the role of social influence in moral judgments suggests that conformity in moral judgments is common and, in many cases, seems to b...

Philosophy of Science; Ukraine; Polysytemic nature of theories; Practical theories; Subsystems of a theory.

t. 1. Filosofskai︠a︡ publit︠s︡istika -- t. 2. Chtenii︠a︡ o bogochelovechestve ; Filosofskai︠a︡ publit︠s︡istika.

This article deals with the relations in the triangle state–society–business in modern Russia. It is shown against Russian historical background, that the absolutist state in this country could never be identified with the society and these relations were shaped under its strong domination. The ethics of rule-following characteristic for market economy in general did not develop in Russia. The breakdown of communist Russia and market reforms proceeding since 1992 did not change this situation significantly. The period of political alliance between (...) big business and government was followed by restoration of state dominance in somewhat modified forms. Both periods were characterized by corruption, which contrary to Putin’s slogans, increases in Russia. In the article I show the evolution of Putin administration’s policy which changed from emphasizing and improving legal institutions to selective use of legal norms depending on personal loyalty. Main forms of state exploitation of Russian business are described. The conclusion is that Russian experience of balancing state and market should be called negative. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the long-lasting friendship between Georges Florovsky and St. Justin Popović, as well as their common project to build an Orthodox theological synthesis on the basis of the patristic tradition. The paper focuses on three periods from Florovsky’s and Popović’s lives, from late 1910 to early 1920, from the late 1920s to late 1930s, and finally into the 1940s. I argue that in the first period both authors developed their theological (...) visions relying on Solovyov and Florensky, on the one hand, and in opposition to the ecclesial nationalism of the Slavophiles and conservative Orthodox hierarchs, on the other hand. Further, I investigate how during the late 1920s and 1930s both authors searched for an Orthodox synthesis mostly in dialogue with their Orthodox predecessors, especially Solovyov, Florensky, and Bulgakov, as well as the modern western philosophical tradition. The focus will shift then to the 1940s, which was characterized by frequent meetings between Florovsky and Popović in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. I argue that in this period the Church Fathers became for both authors the golden standard for Orthodox theology, and the idea of the Neopatristic synthesis developed in full scale. (shrink)

The theoretical gap with the action actually performed is one of the fundamental problems of anthropology and the theory of action. To understand it, it is worth turning to the antitheoretical and anti-formalist pathos of the "late" Wittgenstein, which opposes all attempts to describe action and language in terms of rules and abstract structures. A critical analysis of the assumptions of intellectualism borrowed from simple common sense allows us to show that the logical analysis of action and language deals not (...) with a real language, but with an artificially created abstraction. The article attempts to show the positive significance of this criticism. The main conclusion of the study is that a thinker is able to adequately understand action and language if he also makes his own scientific attitude to them the subject of his analysis. Only in this way can we hope to transform Wittgenstein's antitheoretical pathos into the basis of a constructive study of action and language. The tools of scientific analysis are often much more rigorous and logical than its subject. Wittgenstein's analysis of language games and the life form behind them is an attempt to avoid such too strict and too logical methods and constructions in anthropology, philosophy of action and philosophy of language. The novelty of the research lies in the application of Wittgenstein's ideas to clarify the weaknesses and difficulties faced by the humanities in the XX century and today, as well as to find a way out of these difficulties. The relevance of the work is connected with the great interest of modern logicians and philosophers in Wittgenstein's work, with the urgent need to identify new ways of developing philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe concept of Methodenstreits is used to analyse the relationship between behavioral and mainstream economics. A Methodenstreit is understood by the authors as a dispute between the more a...

This article seeks to show how several rhetorical tools were used and, in fact, played a central role in the argumentation advanced by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in their 1972 seminal article on the theory of Punctuated Equilibria. It is analyzed how Eldredge and Gould proceeded through three steps that, sequentially integrated, made their argument compelling. It is shown how they made use of analogies, metaphors and other rhetorical tools. It is sustained that they began by priming the (...) reader to distrust the current interpretation of the fossil record offered by most paleontologists and then, in a second step, they used specific visual representations in order to suggest that the competitor theory was committed to the idea of an even and slow evolution at a constant rate, an image utilized by them as straw man. Finally, it is analyzed how, in their third step, Eldredge and Gould made use of several rhetorical arguments to present their theory as new for paleontology while, at the same time, placing it well inside the frame of the modern synthesis, and how they also managed to present their theory as more promising and capable of making predictions for future researches than the competitor theory. (shrink)

resumo Trata-se de abordar o problema da teoria hegeliana da linguagem a partir do ponto onde pragmática e ontologia se articulam. Isto exige uma reflexão sobre a maneira com que Hegel organiza as dinâmicas da pragmática da linguagem levando em conta os modos de manifestação de uma negação ontológica no interior do campo de experiências lingüísticas da consciência. palavras-chave dialética, negação, linguagem, pragmática, atos de fala, contradição.

Trata-se de abordar o problema da teoria hegeliana da linguagem a partir do ponto onde pragmática e ontologia se articulam. Isto exige uma reflexão sobre a maneira com que Hegel organiza as dinâmicas da pragmática da linguagem levando em conta os modos de manifestação de uma negação ontológica no interior do campo de experiências lingüísticas da consciência.

Trata-se de abordar o problema da teoria hegeliana da linguagem a partir do ponto onde pragmática e ontologia se articulam. Isto exige uma reflexão sobre a maneira com que Hegel organiza as dinâmicas da pragmática da linguagem levando em conta os modos de manifestação de uma negação ontológica no interior do campo de experiências lingüísticas da consciência.

The article discusses some aspects of the narrative explanation, and its nature and role in explaining the historical entities. The author defends possibility of formulating status of narrative explanation as scientific and adequate for all historical sciences, here defined as sciences concerned with the spatio-temporally restricted entities. lie suggests that uniqueness and particularity of historical objects are not in contradiction with the claims based on the classical model of explanation in the way of logical inferring. Results of discussion are that (...) undeveloped explanations, like explanation sketches, could be adopt, not just in accordance with pragmatic reasons, but also as the step toward full-fledged or complete explanation trough mediation of developing the scientific research programs on which they are based. (shrink)

The notion of conditional entropy is extended to noncomposite systems. The \-deformed entropic inequalities, which usually are associated with correlations of the subsystem degrees of freedom in bipartite systems, are found for the noncomposite systems. New entropic inequalities for quantum tomograms of qudit states including the single qudit states are obtained. The Araki–Lieb inequality is found for systems without subsystems.

The problem of commensurability/incommensurability of different cultural codes is a key problem of modern civilizational development. This is the problem of the search for communicative unity in the world of cultural and biological diversity, which has to be protected, and the search for the cohesion of different Umwelten, of semiotically-defined artificial and natural environments, of ecological and cognitive niches, taking into account that each of them has their own identity and uniqueness. The purpose of the article is to draw attention (...) to the fact that the question of the so-called incommensurability of different conceptual schemes, paradigms, language consciousnesses is widely discussed not only in cross-cultural studies and philosophical problems of translation but also in connection with the problems of incommensurability between the language of classical physics and the language of relativistic quantum physics. Attention is drawn to the problem of the incommensurability and correlation of different languages that are used in debates about the foundations of quantum mechanics, its interpretation, comprehension and ontology. Two approaches stand out in this debate. The first approach is based on the language of the formed being, on the language of things localized in time and on the logic of Aristotle. The second approach is based on the language of the becoming, process and nonlocality, on the search for various processual-oriented temporal logics. In this regard, we discuss the processual approach to understanding quantum mechanics, proposed in the philosophical and physical works of D. Bohm. The authors argue that the experience of constructive understanding of the metaproblems of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the critical reception of the legacy of such philosophers of the process as Peirce, Bergson and Whitehead, the deep reflection on the problems of commensurability/ incommensurability of linguistic consciousnesses of different cultures – will eventually create a common synergetic-interdisciplinary space of cooperation for the solutions of the above-mentioned issues. (shrink)

The article deals with the issues of comparing the teachings of Tolstoy and Lao-zi according to the criterion of palingenesis, which is the basis for the construction of the entire ideological corpus of the most important treatise of Taoism “Tao de jing”. Lao-zi formulated the lapidary formula of palingenesis in the fortieth zhang of this treatise, recreating a picture of the harmonization of the Middle Kingdom, arguing that return is the movement of the Tao, and weakening is the action of (...) the Tao. The principle of palingenesis is one of the fundamental principles for which Tolstoy uses Christological vocabulary, and Lao-zi uses embryological vocabulary. The choice of the palingenesis criterion for comparative analysis of the teachings is due to the fact that the latter works as an immutable law when setting the task of recreating harmony in social chaos. Based on the assessments of the content of the zhangs of the “Tao de jing” canon, a representative line of palingenesis elements is built: the category of knowledge/truth; the category of ignorance; the category of simplicity; the category of naturalness; the category of “baby”; the category of non-action; the category of nonviolence. The principles of Taoism are not expressed by Tolstoy with a research sequence in logical definitions, but appear as categories and trends, working in the worldview of the Yasnaya Polyana sage. In the works “What is my faith?”, “Sayings of the Chinese sage Lao-Tse”, “Non-doing”, Tolstoy's teaching is presented in its entirety and is therefore convenient for comparison with the Taoist classics. It is noted that Tolstoy's conceptual idea is based on the desire to convert people to the good - unity with all people. This orientation towards the good is nothing else than the return to man of his original nature, on the way to which the principle of palingenesis associated with the boycott of the civilization of violence is realized. The conducted research has shown that in the teachings of Lao-zi and Tolstoy, which record the experience of theoretical exploration of the world, the categories of palingenesis are common to the Russian and Chinese spirit. (shrink)