This article discusses the connection between the ideas of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky and Vladimir S. Solovyov on the need for cultural and moral transformation of those who would claim to participate in...

It is argued that O.E. Stoliarova’s analysis of the STS programs leads her to a conclusion that in them the principle of reflexivity is not carried out though this contradicts the orientation of these programs on a self-reflection of the scientific bases. Hence, a problem arises: whether we will apply the principle of empiricism to justification of metascientific reasonings. This, in turn, leads to a problem of universality of philosophy as a platform for metascientific criticism. The formulation and the solution (...) of such a problem assume the possibility of creation of metaphilosophical systems radicalizing the principle of reflexivity before its application to philosophy. Thereby the philosophy of science appears in the field of immanent paradoxes. An exit from similar paradoxes demands new prospect of philosophical researches. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical anthropology fluctuates between, on the one hand, the positivist rejection of the metaphysically loaded concepts of “essence” and “existence” in their theoretical constru...

This article analyzes Nikolai Berdyaev’s ideas concerning the spiritual origins of the 1917 Russian revolution. The philosopher believed that its sources were “demons” living in the Russian national spirit, discovered and awakened in the works of the Russian classics, such as Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. The main reason these demons were able to take hold of the Russian national consciousness was the collapse of everyday life, and the false orientation of this consciousness toward a violent establishment of (...) a new social order. This order attempted to create a moral of equality and fair distribution of property, while lacking a religious-metaphysical foundation. Berdyaev’s views are compared with the contemporary realities in Russia at the time and the search for a resolution to the deep sociopolitical and moral contradictions inherent in these realities. (shrink)

This article attempts to “decipher” Maxim Gorky’s hidden intentions in his novel The Life of Klim Samgin, which he considered his message to future generations. Samgin is a “mannequin,” a parody of...

The article considers a fundamental contradiction between a hypertrophied desire to freely pursue one's goals and the insuperability of fate that is inherent in Mikhail Lermontov's novel Hero of Our Time [Geroi nashego vremeni] in which the drive for “freedom” precipitates meaningless rebellion. The collision between thought and the vital impulse causes the identity of the hero to split: thought turns out to be fruitless and life hopeless. This contradiction is symptomatic of cultural degeneration, and of the transformation of cultural (...) values into “simulacra”—the “superfluous man” is a simulacrum of identity. (shrink)

Leo Tolstoy’s Moralism is a call for the purification of moral universals as the foundations of culture, in which there is no contradiction between the values of an individual life and the values of the social “world.” A “moralist preacher” must fulfill two main requirements. First, he must personally fulfill the principles of his teaching. Second, he must be absolutely sure that he speaks on behalf of the truth he knows. Otherwise, his preaching will be deceptive and will serve the (...) destruction rather than creation of a moral culture. Lev Shestov rejects this pathos of preaching as incompatible with existential perception of the world. Shestov replaces “absolute morality” with the absolute of human individuality, but this absolute is incompatible with the universalism of cultural values. (shrink)