Critical Philosophy Research Articles

Никакого предела. О том, что мысль действительно может делать Часть I Ж. Бенуа

In the article “No Limit” Jocelyn Benoist criticizes the idea of a constitutive lim­itation of human cognitive and thinking abilities, which has spread in modern and postmodern philosophy. The author explores the notion of finite being, which has its origins in late scholasticism, and its evolution. The discourse of limit is linked to the motif of finitude, which goes back to Kant. For critical philosophy, the notion of ‘finitude’ is not reduced to the simple status of ‘being finite’. Finitude of human beings is conditioned by the fact that only the world of phenomena, not things in themselves, is accessible to them. For postmodern philosophy, which asserts the overcoming of finitude, to be is to be represented. Postmodernism abuses the idea of the performativity of language, which leads to a form of linguistic neo-idealism – the idea of the performativity of thought. De-literalising ontology, it attributes to thought an unconditional ontological fruitfulness. This is an insurrection not only against the fact that things are as they are, but also against the normativity of the notion of reality. In fact, things do not depend on their representation and discourse. And representations them­selves cannot easily be changed. Thought adapts to reality, not produces it. The postmodern limitlessness of knowledge and thought is the inverse of the modern limitation. The post-postmodern speculative realism of Q. Meillas­soux, which announced the end of finitude, in fact shares the premise of critical philosophy. To the end of finitude in the very terms of finitude Benoist opposes its end in the sense of refusing to reason in these terms. There is no limit that Meillassoux and neo-metaphysicians attempt to overcome.

Непреодолимый Кант: Делёз о согласованности способностей разума

The influence of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy on the ideas of Gilles Deleuze was quite substantial. However, analyses of the correlation between the ideas of the two philosophers have not yet received proper research attention, especially in Russian-language literature. To reveal the essence and history of the development of Deleuze’s attitude to Kant, the former’s work, Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (1963), in which the French philosopher aims to find the potential limits of interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. Deleuze appeals to Kant’s study of faculties, in which he finds contradictions and “gaps” that find their solution in the Critique of Judgment. Deleuze refers to the free coherence of the faculties as to “something third”, which gives options for reactualising Kant’s philosophy without striving to overcome it. I also provide a brief history of the issues related to Kant­ian philosophy, appearing in the works of Deleuze — from a course of lectures on the problem of grounds, given by the young Deleuze at the Lyceum Louis the Great in Paris, to his last article published in his lifetime, “Immanence: A Life”, in which Deleuze brings up the question of the transcendental field. Despite the fact that Kant and Deleuze are more often contrasted than considered as possible allies, and despite the cases of criticisms of Kant by Deleuze, I defend the thesis that their philosophical projects are firmly linked. Considering Kant’s presence in Deleuze’s study, I conclude that Kant’s philosophy has shaped some key aspects of the French philosopher’s thinking — in particular, the concept of “transcendental empiricism” — and also has influenced Deleuze’s ideas about difference, becoming, ground and immanence.

Hegel on the need for transformation historical forms of Christianity

The article is devoted to Hegel’s contribution to solving the problem of the further development of Christianity and the religious spirit in general. Although the philosopher himself did not directly state the need for such a development anywhere, the article shows that the entire content of Hegel’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” speaks precisely about it. To demonstrate this, the author of the article analyzes, firstly, the final part of the last lecture of the named course and, secondly, traces the lecturer’s train of thought leading to this conclusion. From certain religions Hegel proceeds to the absolute religion, as he calls Christianity, interpreted by him as the result of the historical development of the religious spirit. The author of the article, following Hegel, identifies and examines the philosophical prerequisites and results of the formation of the Christian doctrine. The philosophical principle of absolute religion laid down by ancient thought, he argues, in the course of the history of Christianity turns into its philosophical outcome — into the philosophical removal of the revealed religion of representation into the concept of the religion of truth and freedom. In patristics, the immediate reasonableness of the philosophical teaching of the Neoplatonists, who summarized ancient philosophy as a whole, made itself felt. Medieval scholasticism undertook a rational exposition of the reasonable content of the most important Christian dogmas. The reason, strengthened in the scholastic school, initiated the Reformation of Catholic Christianity. The Enlightenment declared itself a resolute opponent of any, including religious, superstitions, identifying with them the reasonable content of the historical form of Christianity. Classical German philosophy flourished on the premises created by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In Kant’s critical philosophy and Fichte’s science, she overcame the intellectual abstraction of a transcendent god. The possibility of transforming the historical form of Christianity into an absolute religion of truth and freedom from the formal possibility originally inherent in it became a real possibility due to the fact that in Hegel’s works the philosophical negation of the denial by the enlightened mind of the religious idea of God into the concept of an absolute idea was realized. The processing of the ideological content of the historical form of Christianity into the logical form of philosophy allowed Hegel to devote the third part of his lectures on the philosophy of religion to a detailed explication of the philosophical idea of absolute religion, understood as a concrete identity of the concept of the idea of God and the process of realization of this concept in the world, man and the spirit of a religious community. This allows the philosopher to discover the inner necessity of the transformation of historical Christianity. According to Hegel, only philosophy, which through rational thinking restores the true content of the form of religious representation in the concept, can save the Christian community from its progressive decomposition. The article concludes with the conclusion that Hegel’s interpretation of Christianity as an absolute religion of truth and freedom remains to this day the only detailed philosophical exposition of the true Christian faith, as it was articulated by a Lutheran of the first third of the 19th century, who understood what he believes in.

ИММАНУИЛ КАНТ У ИСТОКОВ КОНЦЕПТУАЛИЗАЦИИ ФЕНОМЕНА «МИРОВОЗЗРЕНИЕ»

The author refers to the philosophical heritage of I. Kant, analyzes the general methodological principles of the integrity of his criti-cal philosophy, which had an impact on the formation and further conceptualization of the phenomenon of "worldview". In this regard, the significance of Kant's "anthropological turn" of philosophy, the idea of a priori, transcendental dialectics and transcen-dental aesthetics is substantiated. Emphasis is placed on the work "Criticism of the ability of judgment", in the context of which the thinker uses and interprets the concept of "worldview" for the first time.

Иммануил Кант и «новое Просвещение». Обзор международной научной конференции

The review surveys the main ideas discussed at the international scientific conference “Immanuel Kant and the ‘New Enlightenment’” hosted by the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on 20-22 April 2022. It was organised by IKBFU’s research unit Academia Kantiana with the support of the Petersburg Dialogue Forum. Speakers analysed the theses of the Report to the Club of Rome, Come on! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet (2018), whose authors, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Anders Wijkman, initiated a call for a “new Enlightenment”. The participants compared these theses with Kant’s philosophical ideas and looked for an answer to the question whether Kant’s critical philosophy should be consigned to the “old” Enlightenment or whether it has real potential for the desired “new Enlightenment”. The summaries of papers and discussions are arranged in order of their presentation. The Conference has shown that Kant’s Enlightenment has not lost its relevance while the ideas of the “new Enlightenment” need to be further examined philosophically.

Three Routes Beyond the Dead Ends of Man

In this article I reflect on meeting Professor Drucilla Cornell as a bachelor’s student at Rutgers University, working as her assistant, and the irreversible impact she had on my life. I argue that Cornell was a thinker of profound courage and that this virtue was crucial to her developing several ways beyond the philosophical anthropology of Euro-modern man. Cornell envisioned three main ways beyond what she called the “dead ends of man”: feminism, critical philosophy (including dialectics and Marxism), and African humanism. These three traditions combine in an explosive, revolutionary way in Cornell’s writings; each are essential pillars of her thought. I also identify a dialectical or “productive” tension in her thinking between tendencies toward both idealist and materialist metaphysics. I conclude by recounting personal experiences with Cornell, exploring the consequences of her ethical philosophy, and posing questions that I think she could help us answer in the tumultuous times we are currently living through.

Kant’s political enlightenment: Free public use of reason as self-discipline

According to recent scholarship, Kant’sAn Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?and the introductory section toThe Conflict of the Facultiesare masterpieces of philosophical rhetoric. The philosophical significance of these texts lies in establishing the free public use of reason as a tool to discipline political power through pure practical reason, and the rhetorical mastery consists in presenting the free public use of reason as a means to satisfy the ruler’s pragmatic practical reason. Elaborating on this interpretation, I flesh out three further aspects of the writings in question. First, I examine the four types of arguments that Kant crafts in defence of the public use of reason and show how their pragmatic practical character is fully in keeping with the foundation of politics on pure practical ideas. Second, contrasting Kant’s notion of the public use of reason with the classical liberal conception of free speech, I argue that the distinctive character of Kant’s notion of the public use of reason consists in adding to the liberal demand for freedom from state censorship the requirement of the self-discipline of the participants in the public use of reason. Third, I contend that Kant’s notion of the public use of reason goes beyond a mere non-coercive discursive procedure and conclude that, to qualify as public in the distinctive Kantian sense, publicly presented positions must uphold theoretical and moral criteria informed by critical philosophy.

The Trouble of Rocks and Waters

This article considers the possibility of constructing an authentic environmental ethic from Buddhist sources. It first outlines the major critiques of historical Buddhist approaches to the natural world and parses some of the philological and linguistic barriers to such a construction. It then considers some of the recent philosophical critiques of such a project and reviews the major points of tension between the Buddhist philosophical tradition and the kinds of environmental ethics found in the land ethic and deep ecology. Ultimately, this article asserts that such tension is relieved if we begin from Buddhist philosophical principles and construct an environmental ethic from the ground up. It argues a Buddhist environmental ethic emerges from the combination of the goal of liberating all sentient beings from duḥkha, an understanding of duḥkha as dependently arising, and a novel recognition of the environment as a major cause of this duḥkha.

Engaging with the Failures of Racial Empathy

AbstractIn the face of media attention that has recently spotlighted police brutality, racialized COVID-19 deaths, and the renewed visibility of white-supremacy groups, scholars, tech entrepreneurs, and media pundits are calling for an increase in empathy, claiming that it may move white and non-Black people of color beyond feelings of pity to dismantling anti-Black racism. However, in the context of anti-Blackness, is racial empathy possible? And what can we expect from it? Examining philosophical critiques of empathy's capabilities by philosophers and scholars engaged in feminist philosophy and Black studies, alongside Heidi Maibom's four-part definition of empathy, I focus on what empathy's limitations might tell us about the emotional and material structures that prevent empathy from achieving the results its advocates often hope for. I argue that the feelings of racial empathy, which may activate in empathy-inducing activities, may instead paradoxically point to the very anti-Black psychological structures that prevent empathetic action. I also contend that the feelings of racial empathy do not themselves undo the relations of anti-Blackness, but tracing the racism implicit in their activation may serve as a self-reflexive tool, an ongoing process, for understanding how anti-Blackness has shaped one's sense of self, embodied awareness, and lifeworld.

The end of all things. Kant and Cohen on religion and reason

According to Kant’s concept of natural religion, the moral concept of God consists in the coordinated aggregate of the concepts of holiness, goodness and justice. I argue that this concept can be used to define a critical account of religion’s role within the public sphere. In order to do so, I refer to Hermann Cohen’s philosophy of religion. Cohen undertakes to explicate a concept of religion as progress toward the “dominion of the good on earth”, especially in relation to Kant’s ideas of natural religion and ethical community. It is inferred that Cohen’s difference between progress in religion and religious progress opens a path to a definition of religion as pre-institution (religion without religion). The goal is to make the concept of religion distinct in the tradition of critical philosophy and its logic. I argue that the emancipatory project of Kantian public reason presupposes a set of rules defining the translation from postulates (Kant’s rational theism) to problems and assignments. Since natural religion is a pure practical concept of reason, religions are subject to moral evaluation. The latter being guided by the pragmatic maxim of overcoming logical and moral egoism, means that any community, even many communities at once (different cultures) can occasionally represent an ethical community, if not in the sense that an ethical community is constituted.

Disgust, Race, and Carroll’s Theory of Solidarity

This article examines Noël Carroll’s theory of solidarity from a critical race theoretical perspective. Using recent work in philosophy of film, philosophy of emotion, and critical philosophy of race, it argues his theory pays insufficient attention to both the role disgust plays in generating solidarity and the role race plays in generating disgust. Numerous and significant examples are cited to support these claims. The article also suggests implicit bias and embodied affect figure into character allegiance more seriously than Carroll’s theory indicates. These weaknesses arguably affect related theories in both philosophy of film and cognitive film theory, such as those advanced by A. W. Eaton, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Murray Smith, and Carl Plantinga. The result is a call for revision of Carroll’s and these other thinkers’ theories, as well as a call for deeper investigation into disgust, race, and their importance in generating character allegiance.

Anti-Racism and Releasement

This paper explores the selective uptake of Martin Heidegger’s work in critical philosophy of race and in black studies. While scholars have drawn from Heidegger’s thinking on technology to offer accounts of the technological production of race in general and of blackness in particular, few have engaged with Heidegger’s response to technology: his discussions of Gelassenheit or “releasement.” This paper analyzes this avoidance of Gelassenheit, arguing that its interpretation as passivity points to broader anxieties about the need to act that are symptomatic of Heidegger’s account of technology itself. These anxieties lead to a potentially damaging tacit prioritization of action at the expense of thought, and a reduction of black people to their value as actors or workers, even among thinkers like Saidiya Hartman who valorize a resistant waywardness.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

<i>The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century</i>

Концепции универсального времени и множественности времен в понимании существования прошлой реальности

Abstract. The purpose of the article is to identify and determine the dependence of ontological ideas about the existence of past reality on thinking within the framework of competing concepts of universal time and multiplicity of times. The methods of research were the representation, comparison and ontological analysis of various ideas about the essence and nature of time, synthesis and philosophical criticism of the consequences arising from competing concepts of the multiplicity of times and the concept of a single universal time in relation to the definition of ontological characteristics of past reality. The article gives a representation of several versions of the concepts of multiplicity of times, some of which are based on the theory of relativity, others proceed from ontological differences in the processes of various forms of being — being material, spiritual, personal and social. It has been shown that in some cases, in the concepts of multiplicity of times, time itself and the idea of time as a construct of the mind are mistakenly identified, which serves as the reason for the incorrect attribution of time to atypical paradoxical properties, such as inversion — the possibility of its movement to reverse, the uncertainty of the past, present and future, the variability of the past and others. The author gives critical arguments refuting ideas about the possibility of changing the places of events and states of reality in the time relationship “earlier/later,” that is, in the sequence of their appearance and disappearance, as well as incorrect opinions about the possibility of variability of the past under the influence of processes that take place in the present and have to be in the future. The study justifies the idea that a clear and unambiguous distinction between past and present objective reality is impossible from the point of view of ideas about the multiplicity of times and is possible only in the conceptual field of theories, recognizing the unity of the world and using a single scale of universal time common to processes and events, having different ontological characteristics and flowing in arbitrarily distant places of space in different inertial reference systems.

Representationalism in Knowledge Organization and Information Retrieval: Cheer or Criticism?

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the representational approach to language using the concept of ‘Representationalism’ in philosophy and a new framework referred to in this paper as Information Retrieval Action (IRA). IRA is a theoretical construct based on Information Retrieval (IR) theory. Therefore, the methodology employed in this study is philosophical and speculative. It examines and discusses representationalism in both the mental (cognitive) and linguistic dimensions, incorporating concepts from the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language as methodological approaches. ‘Concept’ and ‘Meaning’ emerge as two critical semantic elements when considering language as a semiotic phenomenon. Representationalism in IRA is rooted in logical positivism, which serves as the foundation for interpreting meaning and concept based on mental representation. In response, the paper proposes an alternative non-representational approach to the semantic elements of language (meaning and concept) based on the philosophy of pragmatism within the IRA framework. While the emergence of new technologies like ontologies implicitly criticizes representationalism in IRA, previous research has not explicitly addressed the theoretical and philosophical criticism of representationalism within the IRA framework.

Deconstructing a Disempowering Normative Identity: Angela Carter’s Adaptations of the Ashputtle Story

Historically speaking, fairy tales have been powerful instruments in the education of children and in the transmission of moral standards from one generation to the next, from the dominant class to less powerful groups. As they make certain ways of life or ideals appear attractive and others repellent, fairy tales also contribute to form normative identities in their young readers. A normative identity combines a descriptive account of who one is with a normative account of what one ought to do. Such identities can be empowering or disempowering. Fairy tales can be seen as using a technique of narrative persuasion to impose normative identities on their audiences, making certain ideals and ways of life appear natural and self-evident. To deconstruct a disempowering normative identity imposed by a fairy tale involves separating its descriptive and normative components and making vivid the problematic aspects of the norms, values, and ideals involved. In this article, we analyse Angela Carter’s deconstruction of a disempowering normative identity imposed on women by the Ashputtle fairy tale, as told by the Grimm brothers. In our analysis, based on close reading and philosophical criticism, we reveal how Carter herself makes use of the fairy-tale technique of narrative persuasion in her deconstructive work, vividly bringing out certain appalling consequences of the ideals of submission and self-sacrifice implied by the Grimm version of the Ashputtle story, thereby also subverting that version.

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

From real spaces to virtual spaces: The metaverse and decentralized cinema

Developments in computer and communication technologies, which constitute the starting point of concepts such as decentralization, virtuality, simulation, augmented reality and metaverse, have also brought new forms of expression and designs in art to the agenda. In addition to the decentralized data architecture and metaverse areas that emerged in parallel with the development of network technologies, applications that increase the user's interaction and beleaguered experience such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality have increased their effectiveness in this field. The metaverse spaces that emerge with the cooperation of software, art and architecture offer their users a more similar life simulation of natural life through augmented reality vehicles or screens. Here, users can perform new experiences for artistic production and consumption as well as daily life practices such as socialization and communication. Metaverse spaces, which include the design of a three-dimensional virtual universe that can be supported by augmented reality, are free from all the constraints of the real world as a cinematic plateau. It is seen as a great advantage that the real film set can create a cinematic work without expensive equipment such as cameras, lights, and sound away from all the negativities of the natural shooting conditions. The fact that the production, distribution and screening of cinema works can be realized within this field brings a new understanding of decentralized cinema to the agenda. Decentralized cinema, which has begun to rise in the expanding virtual geography of the metaverse virtual space with its advantages such as virtual characters and scenes and creative space fictions, is an art form worth examining. This study focuses on the possible future transformations of cinema in terms of production and representation in the context of the relationship of virtual and augmented reality technologies with developing metaverse areas. The emergence of a new cinematic ecology; The opportunities and obstacles it provides to producers are examined with the philosophical criticism method through concepts such as virtual and augmented reality, web 3.0, metaverse in terms of audience experiences it offers for screening. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the metaverse area has many advantages in terms of the production of cinema works, democratization of the production and distribution of works, digital privacy and security for metaverse artists, and recognition of ownership for digital works of art.

Человек должен принадлежать самому себе (интервью с П. Д. Тищенко)

The interview discusses a number of critical issues related to those social and technological transformations that are radically changing the way people think about their place within the state and amongst other people, and that have created the need for such a line of thought and action as bioethics. The discussion begins with the problem of just access to medical care, which turns out to be tied to the position that the individual occupied during the Soviet era, when in fact his physical body belonged to the State, when his subjectivity also belonged to the State, and his values and interests were represented by the doctor. The moral formula for the patient's actions was medical paternalism, represented by the doctrine of medical deontology. The task of the present time is the formation of autonomy of personality, the ability to realize oneself, where subjectivity is formed as a response to the demands imposed by various biomedical and bioethical practices. The core of this subjectivity is encapsulated in the concept of autonomy, and the rule of free and informed consent is its practical implementation. These questions are rooted in the problem of dignity, which, in turn, is deeply connected to the familiar model of the “other,” in which the doctor, when prescribing treatment, prescribes it not to this particular person, but to a generalized person. The task of philosophical criticism is discussed, which consists in diagnosing the zones of the most glaring discrepancy between our knowledge, skills, moral and legal norms, and philosophical understandings of the new reality. This diagnosis influences the formation of philosophical anthropology of B.G. Yudin, which interprets the borders of the human in human being’ consciousness as “zones of phase transitions”. The idea of transition from a dialogue to a conversation is discussed. Unlike dialogue, conversation is originally multipolar, intermittent and nonlinear, and problemocentric. Ultimately, this leads to the question of the meaningfulness of life in general, which, according to Aristotle, is the highest form of human existence.

ON THE EFFECTS OF BLACK PEDAGOGY AND THE HOPE OF ITS CORDIAL ANTITHESIS DEVELOPMENT

The subject of the analysis is the need to strengthen studies and research in the field of black pedagogy, negative pedagogy, anti-pedagogy, clinical psychology, and critical philosophy in the humanities and social sciences, which reveal the mechanisms of violence in domestic socialization as resulting in delayed reproduction of violence in interpersonal relations and politics. The author points to the development of trends in humanistic and personalistic pedagogy, such as the pedagogy of the heart, whose authors in Poland and Ukraine confirm with their scientific works the possibility of changing the paradigm of educating young generations for the development of the civilization of love and peace. The war in Ukraine caused by the Russian Federation makes us aware of the crisis of humanism and democracy. So it is necessary to defend both Ukraine and the culture of upbringing, which is represented in this country in the works of such scientists as Vasyl Suchomliński – the author of the pedagogy of the heart, and Vasyl Kremień – the philosopher of peace education.