Dialectical Contradictions Research Articles

The logical principles of hermeneutics

This article constitutes the first part of a more extensive work on hermeneutics and existential philosophy. It’s articulated as an analysis of some central statements of Truth and Method of Gadamer and both Being and Time and Contributions to Philosophy of Heidegger, conducted alternating five different points of view: metaphilosophy, epistemology, philosophy of logic, bio- and cognitive linguistics, and philosophy of language. In the present article I focus on philosophy of logic, with some excursions into philosophy of language. The main objective of the work consists in demonstrating what follows. A general impredicative structure is variously described and commented on in Truth and Method; I argue that it 1) corresponds logically to the intesional Liar-paradox; 2) derives exegetically from Heidegger’s differentiation between ἀλήθεια and truth in λόγος; 3) should be interpreted philosophically as the Hegelian Identity in Difference, despite Gadamer’s intention to avoid dialectic conclusions. Priest showed that the concept of Identity in Difference and the Law of Dialectical Contradiction describe the same structures, imposing a dialetheic lecture. Along this line, I argue, Gadamer’s followers should better present their argument as paraconsistent.

Variations on Time: Reading Paolo Virno Reading Ernst Bloch

Abstract: This essay discusses the concept of nonchronological time through the philosophies of Paolo Virno and Ernst Bloch, mostly focusing on Virno’s Déjà vu and the End of History , originally published as Il Ricordo del Presente in 1999. In this work, Virno formulates the thesis that capitalism is the first social form that historicizes the metahistorical and nonchronological invariant that defines human life. An important element in Virno’s argument is what he presents as a more radical reinterpretation of Ernst Bloch’s idea of the “contemporaneity of the non-contemporary.” Virno translates Bloch’s notion of ungleichzeitigkeit as coexistence of potentiality and act, or labor-power and commodity. In many respects, Bloch and Virno could be aligned as thinkers of a nonchronological time of possibility in the tradition of historical materialism. However, Virno’s engagement with Bloch seems to be missing central aspects of Bloch’s original formula. Unlike Virno, Bloch’s philosophy does not limit the nonchronological to temporal anteriority or heterogeneity; on the contrary, Bloch’s theory of time uncovers the nonlinear dialectical contradictions between unfinished pasts and open-ended futures.

Organizational complexity and road safety: dialectical contradiction and its behavioural interpretation

The main organizational and technical idea implemented in recent years in Russia in the field of road safety is to reduce the conflict of traffic and pedestrian flows. This is realised through the use of multiphase traffic light cycle modes. The consequence of this is a sharp increase in the duration of the traffic light cycle (up to 180-200 sec) and a decrease in the capacity of the street and road network. However, more surprisingly, it does not lead to an increase in road safety. The article presents the author’s view on the non-obvious effectiveness of such attempts to reduce the conflict of traffic and pedestrian flows and the author’s reflections on the dialectical contradiction between the organizational complexity of traffic light cycles and the behaviour of road users.

ІСТОРИКО-МЕТОДОЛОГІЧНІ ОСНОВИ ТРАКТУВАННЯ ІСТИНИ ПРЕДСТАВНИКАМИ АКАДЕМІЧНОЇ ФІЛОСОФСЬКОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ УКРАЇНИ ДРУГОЇ ПОЛОВИНИ ХХ СТОЛІТТЯ РАДЯНСЬКОЇ ДОБИ

B a c k g r o u n d . The current research focuses on Ukraine's academic philosophical culture in the second half of the 20th century during the Soviet era, emphasising the historical and methodological bases of truth interpretation by its representatives. Using descriptive methodology and comparative analysis, it was found that the Ukrainian academic philosophy of this period, represented here by the legacy of recognised figures often referred to in the philosophical literature as the Kyiv School of Philosophy, is a revival of philosophy in Ukraine based on so-called "authentic" Marxism-Leninism. M e t h o d s . In particular, to analyse the concept of truth, representatives of the Ukrainian academic philosophical culture of the studied period employed the dialectical method, which is interpreted in dialectical materialism through the concept of the "development" of the material universe. Specifically, within this dialectics of nature, dialectical negation is considered a stage of object development in which the achievements of the earlier stages are not eliminated but rather "removed" – contained within it. R e s u l t s . The interpretation of logic as a theoretical reflection of historical patterns in theoretical form enabled them to define truth as correspondence to reality and analyse it through the lens of the dialectical inter-transformation of the categories of subjective and objective, relative and absolute. The application of the dialectical method to the concepts of "relative" and "absolute" resulted in the identification of "relatively absolute," "absolutely relative" truth, and the opposition of the "relatively absolute truth" to the "absolutely absolute truth." They regard the latter – absolutely absolute truth – as an unreachable ideal that serves as a regulative principle, the pursuit of which promotes cognitive progress through the accumulation of partial, relative truths. C o n c l u s i o n s . Thus, in the second half of the 20th century, during the Soviet era, representatives of Ukraine's academic philosophical culture employed dialectical materialism methodology to define the concept of truth, allowing them to justify the process of cognition as complex and endless. At the same time, as representatives of that era's academic philosophy have emphasised, on the path to achieving relative truths, in addition to objective dialectical contradictions, there are also subjective formal-logical errors and mistakes that can only be distinguished from objective contradictions through practical verification.

Психология смеха в структурно-диалектическом подходе

<p>The article is devoted to the discussion of the psychology of laughter from the perspective of its functional purpose in culture. Addressing the topic of laughter is needed to describe its counterintuitive nature, consisting of dialectical contradictions. The study of the formation of laughter in children's subculture and its inclusion in the subject area of developmental psychology is of immediate interest. The purpose of the study is to determine the psychological significance of laughter in culture as a system of normative situations. We assumed that in a normative situation such as a biosocial unit of culture, laughter will manifest itself as a phenomenon of a binary nature, containing contrasting relations. The structural-dialectical method of analysis, which consists of the search for contrasts, made it possible to build an explanatory model of the phenomenon under study. In the capacity of binary pairs in the study of laughter as a psychological phenomenon, such antinomies as "freedom-fear", "good-evil", "world-antiworld" were singled out. Laughter as a psychological phenomenon has a dialectical structure in which fear gives rise to the desire for freedom; the cultural mission of laughter is associated with the discovery of evil as a violation of the norm and good as the inviolability of culture. The condition for overcoming fear and achieving illusory freedom through laughter is the displacement of evil into the unreal world, which leads to the supra-situation of the subject.</p>

Japan 2040: Dialectics of Transhumanism and Society of the Future

Analysis of the essence, content and forms of the scenario state of Japan in 2040, reflected in the 11th Scientific and Technical Forecast of NISTEP in 2019, revealed a number of conceptual dialectical contradictions. They narrow down to the question of admissibility and expediency of changing a man’s nature in order to ensure his prosperous, safe, meaningful and happy existence. The author proposes for discussion a conclusion on inevitability of the transhumanization of a mankind on the scale of a single country (Japan) and the whole world, given the nature of the great challenges facing it. The possibility of keeping the historical development in a conditionally humanistic direction is noted, given the emphasis of social reforms in Japan, reflected in the 6th Basic Plan for scientific, technical and innovative development of the country, on building a society for the fullest realization and use of human intellectual potential.

Japan 2040: Dialectics of Transhumanism and Society of the Future

Analysis of the essence, content and forms of the scenario state of Japan in 2040, reflected in the 11th Scientific and Technical Forecast of NISTEP in 2019, revealed a number of conceptual dialectical contradictions. They narrow down to the question of admissibility and expediency of changing a man’s nature in order to ensure his prosperous, safe, meaningful and happy existence. The author proposes for discussion a conclusion on inevitability of the transhumanization of a mankind on the scale of a single country (Japan) and the whole world, given the nature of the great challenges facing it. The possibility of keeping the historical development in a conditionally humanistic direction is noted, given the emphasis of social reforms in Japan, reflected in the 6th Basic Plan for scientific, technical and innovative development of the country, on building a society for the fullest realization and use of human intellectual potential.

Migration Decision-Making Process: Dialectic Contradictions Experienced by Asylum-Seeking Women

ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of migrants have fled human rights abuses, seeking refugee status. This study, involving semi-structured interviews with 12 African asylum-seeking women in Israel, explores their decision to leave home, journey to, and enter Israel without legal authorization. It further examines their retrospective view of leaving home amidst their experiences in Israel. Guided by a qualitative descriptive approach, the analysis reveals contradictory themes: autonomy/absence of autonomy in migration decision-making and positive/negative sentiments about life in Israel. We discuss these findings in relation to international migration determinant theories, relational dialectic theory, and research on communicative tensions experienced by refugees.

On the Antiutopian Effect in Game of Thrones

ABSTRACT The antiutopian effect of Game of Thrones (GoT) is examined as a form of mass entertainment. The first part of this article approaches GoT from the standpoint of dialectical contradiction between Fantasy and Realism peculiar to GoT’s eclectic nature. The second part puts forward a hypothesis about the social basis of GoT horizons, taking into account the fragmented and niched state of contemporary TV audiences.

THE CONCEPT OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY IN THE SYSTEM OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF ELECTRICITY ENTERPRISES

The electric power sector is one of the most important components of the development of the national economy, which confirms the importance of Ukraine’s implementation of the successful experience of other countries in the field of applying innovations in the energy sector and the need to introduce innovations in the energy sector. This involves the effective use of the existing innovation potential of electric power enterprises and a fundamental analysis of innovation processes in the energy sector. The purpose of the article is the development of conceptual principles for increasing the innovative activity of electric power enterprises in the system of strategic management of their activities. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the work of domestic and foreign scientists. The basis of the research methodology is a systematic approach, within which the following logical, general scientific, theoretical and empirical methods are applied: content analysis – for the systematization of approaches to the interpretation of the definition, innovative activity and development of the author’s definition; abstract-logical method – for building the logic of research, for theoretical generalizations and formulation of research conclusions; deductions – to identify individual factors affecting the innovative activity of electric power enterprises; analysis and synthesis – to determine trends in the innovative activity of electric power enterprises. The graphic method made it possible to visualize the obtained research results. The results of the study are the determination of the main problems that prevent the implementation of innovative activity of electric power enterprises, and the justification of the main goals of increasing the innovative activity of electric power enterprises. The article identifies the current domestic trends in the innovative activity of energy enterprises, which made it possible to justify the need to strengthen the role of innovative activity of electric power enterprises as a fundamental factor in their competitiveness. The authors formed the conceptual foundations of the innovative activity of electric power enterprises in the strategic management system, in particular, the interpretation of innovative activity was systematized with the definition of certain properties to provide the author’s interpretation of this definition. The dialectical contradiction between the concepts of the development of economic systems through the prism of innovations has been resolved. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the development of the concept of innovative activity of electric power enterprises in the system of strategic management, taking into account the challenges of the internal and external environment.

Holiday Culture in Modern Conditions: Main Vectors of Development

In the context of the emerging new geopolitical and socio-economic reality, a serious transformation of culture and its values is taking place. One of these values is the phenomenon of the holiday. Firstly, the holiday is an important recreational factor in people's lives and, secondly, it acts as a translator of tradition from one generation to another. The article is devoted to investigating the issues of the essence and role of the holiday in the life of an individual and society. The holiday phenomenon as an object of philosophical and cultural analysis is characterized by a rich morphology. The article proposes the authors’ original classification of holidays based on the comparison of private and public festive spaces and the ratio of sacred and secular content in the structure of the holiday. On the basis of available publications and practical research conducted by the authors, the system, hierarchy, and features of the motivation of festive culture subjects are revealed. With the help of program-targeted, structural-functional, hermeneutic, and sociological methods, the main features of the holiday, its features and functions have been studied. This framework made it possible to carry out a theoretical and methodological reconstruction of the phenomenon of the holiday, analyze its scenario and identify its structure, algorithm, order, and influence on people. The holiday phenomenon is considered in the context of the dialectical contradiction between the labor and leisure contexts of human existence. By utilizing the method of nomothetic diagnostics, the system of motivation of different age groups of the population participating in the holidays is generalized and specified. The authors suggest a hypothesis about the essential transformation and formal metamorphosis of the holiday phenomenon, taking place in the context of growing socio-economic, geopolitical, and cultural instability and uncertainty in the modern world.

(Dis)empowering the feminine? Spatializing the interlace of gender‐class‐neoliberal managerialism in a women‐only café in India

AbstractUsing the Lefebvrian triad, we explore spatial organizing of classed‐gendered work and working bodies in a cafe space that emerges from urbanized claims of empowering “rural poor women” to become entrepreneurs by employing them in a cafe. Our critical‐interpretive ethnography analyses the process of installing a neoliberal‐managerial path along which foodwork and working bodies are hierarchized and disciplined, creating spatialized hegemonic gendered positionalities interlaced with elite urban‐working class rural binaries. The womanized workers came to embody the binaries and the dialectical contradictions they created, yet performing alternative femininities in the free spaces and times in the cafe.

Physical violence against a person: criminal-legal aspect

The article emphasizes that in the historical development of society, violence is an objective factor accompanying the entire process of its existence. In each historical epoch, the forms and methods of this social phenomenon acquire certain specific changes, but its essence remains unchanged - it is an anti-legal, anti-social, anti-humane phenomenon.
 Among the objective factors and factors that generate violence are the deformation of moral guidelines and Christian virtues, the promotion of cruelty, unspirituality and violence is gaining widespread development.
 Among violent acts against a person, physical violence is the most serious concern. It remains extremely relevant in any form.
 The article states that in Art. 3 of the Constitution of Ukraine clearly prescribes norms aimed at the protection of a person and a citizen: "A person, his life and health, honor and dignity, inviolability and security are the highest social value" [1].
 Based on the requirements of the Basic Law, normative legal acts, law enforcement agencies of Ukraine direct all their activities to fight against criminal offenses, ensure legality, and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens. This important function is clearly formulated in Art. 1 of the General part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (hereinafter the Criminal Code of Ukraine), where it is indicated that it "has as its task the legal protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen ... as well as the prevention of criminal offenses" [2].
 Thus, the state and its law enforcement agencies face the problem of protecting life, health and security of inviolability, primarily from physical violence.
 The article emphasizes that physical violence, aimed primarily at humiliating a person's honor and dignity, causes him not only physical, but also moral and psychological suffering. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the humiliation of a person's dignity negatively affects not only his psychological and moral, but also his spiritual, mental and intellectual state, can push him to revenge, which can lead to tragic consequences.
 The article emphasizes that in modern society there are processes that are characterized by rapid changes in all spheres of social life and are based on contradictions and conflicts.
 Attention is focused on the fact that physical violence objectively includes conflict in its orbit as a dialectical contradiction between opposite, polar parties.
 The article found that physical violence directed against a person is not only illegal from the point of view of criminal law, but also an anti-humane, anti-moral and anti-social action that leads to physical and moral suffering and humiliation of human honor and dignity. It necessarily negatively affects the mental state of the victim.
 A significant role in physical violence is played by the mental activity of a person, which is closely related to his moral-willed, emotional-intellectual characteristics and other factors that play an important role in criminal liability and punishment.
 The article establishes that the concept of violence as a legal category has received a new understanding in our time. As a result of scientific and technical progress, the emergence of new technical means contributes to the spread of new forms of violence.
 The fight against any manifestations of physical violence, a criminal offense, is the constitutional duty of the state and its law enforcement agencies.

Deinstitutionalization of the Congress ‘party system’ in Indian competitive politics

The conference in Poona that led to the foundation of Indian National Congress in 1885 aimed to serve as the germ of a native parliament to provide a reply to the assertion that India was still unfit for any form of representative institution. It spearheaded the Indian independence movement and post 1947 ushered in a ‘Congress system’ of one-party dominance that represented a historical consensus with few parallels in any political party system in the world. Dialectical contradiction has been a historic recurrence in the Congress as ‘personality cults’ of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi in the early years and a ‘high command culture’ later on decimated its hegemonic power in competitive party politics. The Congress declined due to a deficit of political vision, lack of forward-thinking ideas, engagement in competitive pseudo-secularism and diminishing electoral returns of dynastic (Nehru-Gandhi) politics. The institutionalization of BJP as a dominant party in 2014 coincided with the deinstitutionalization of the Congress party system. The grand old party needs to relegitimize itself by revamping its ideology, formulating a populist model of governance, creating son-of-the-soil leadership, revitalizing the party system, re-engaging with citizens, altering its politics to meritocracy and embracing new age electoral grammar.

REASONS FOR CONFLICTS IN THE ENTERPRISE AND WAYS DECISION THEM

The need to study the theoretical foundations of conflicts in an enterprise and to develop practical recommendations for the effective regulation of contradictions in the process of labor activity substantiated. The essence of the concept of “conflict” and the nature of its occurrence in the work collective clarified. It proposed that the concept of “conflict” understood as a process of tension that arises between participants in a conflict in the process of their professional interaction regarding a dialectical contradiction. The types of conflicts are formed according to classification criteria: according to the results, according to the composition of the participants, according to the sources of occurrence, according to the time of the conflict, according to the degree of severity of the contradictions, according to the type of functional system, according to the degree of intensity of the conflict, according to the tendency to change, according to the stage of the flow, in terms of motive, according to the service-communicative orientation of interaction in a dynamic aspect. It has established that the most common conflicts in a work team based on the composition of the participants - interpersonal and intrapersonal. In order to resolve everyday issues, it is advisable to consider the causes of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts from the perspective of a systemic and process approach as external (arising in the process of interaction between people and joint activities) and internal (arising within the psychological world of the individual, which is a collision of oppositely directed motives (interests, values, goals, ideals) External and internal causes of conflicts studied. Methods and principles for managing conflicts in the workforce of an enterprise are proposed. Methods of conflict management include the following: 1) intrapersonal (methods of acting on an individual); 2) structural: reward system, coordination mechanisms, clarification of work requirements, and formation of common values); 3) interpersonal: compromise, conflict avoidance, cooperation, compliance, confrontation. We believe that conflicts that subsequently arise in the labor process can become an incentive for the movement and development of the enterprise, strengthening its potential and competitive position in the market, and not cause damage.

Comprehension of Russian Culture (“Theater Review”)

The article analyzes the recently-published third part of Olga Zhukova’s trilogy devoted to Russian culture, Russian philosophy, and the philosophy of Russian culture. The article’s author suggests that this book, as well as previous parts of the trilogy, contains extensive, largely unknown material about the studied area. Besides the richness of the factual material, the advantage of the book is that it encourages a reader’s interest in the considered stories; at the same time, it provokes an internal polemic with Zhukova, produces the desire to reflect on the various statements made, and, probably, even enters the discussion with the author. The cornerstone of Zhukova’s concept is the thesis about the fundamental conditionality of Russian culture and Russian philosophy on Eastern Christianity. According to this concept, there is a direct conditionality in some cases, while an indirect conditionality appears through the dialectical contradiction in some others. The article’s author does not find this thesis to be ultimately correct. Another separate object of the article’s discussion is the reviewed book’s polygraphic features.

Immersion in the Concrete (On Dialectics and Its Interpretation by A. A. Zinoviev)

In correlation with the position of A. A. Zinoviev, the peculiarities of dialectics are discussed. The focus is on the philosophical nature of dialectics, its inherent interrelation of the abstract and the concrete, as well as the specificity of dialectical contradiction. The author’s reasoning is built around several pivotal statements. Science can do without dialectics; but philosophy cannot do without dialectics. Dialectical thought does not ascend from the abstract to the concrete, but immerses in the concrete. Dialectical contradiction arises between meanings that are close to the opposite ones, but are not strictly opposite. It is reasonable to distinguish between dialectics of process and dialectics of state and to insist on the irreducibility to the first dialectical paradigm as such. Dialectics is not only a theory and methodology, but, above all, a style.

Dialectics of Scientific Revolutions from the Point of View of Innovations Theory

It is shown that the difficulties that appear during attempts to uncover the mechanisms of changing of scientific paradigms can be overcome by consistent application of the apparatus of dialectics and by the interpretation of science as a social institution that produces intangible assets. This interpretation demonstrates analogy between T. Kuhn’s theory of changing scientific paradigms and the theory of innovation cycles, which goes back to the works of J. Schumpeter. The fact allows one to consider the production of intangible assets by the methods of institutional economics. The basic dialectical contradiction in this interpretation is the contradiction between the innovativeness of a set of ideas that form a new paradigm and ensure the systematic generation of intangible assets, and its liquidity. The liquidity of intangible assets is primarily determined by the extent to which society is ready to accept new ideas and views. The resolution of the identified contradiction is carried out through a cyclical change in resistance to innovation. The period of dominance of a certain paradigm ends when it exhausts the potential of its development, which determines the finiteness of the life cycle of any scientific paradigm, just as the life cycle of any innovation is finite.

Триада «природа – человек – культура» в конструировании геокультурного пространства Русского Севера

This article presents the results of many years of research into the geocultural space of the Russian North, its figurative and symbolic framework. The conceptual and methodological foundations for studying the principles of constructing geocultural space as well as Russian and foreign theories of cultural landscape are considered. The paper presents the author’s theoretical nature–human–culture model, which elucidates the problem of overcoming the dialectical contradiction in understanding the Northern Russian space in terms of adaptation and spiritual transformation. The article reveals the ethnocultural meanings of the space (landscape) of the Russian North in the context of the nature–human–culture triad. The symbolic space is formed in the process of exploration and “appropriation” of the Northern territories, which is expressed in the acts of comprehension (of both the northern world and the place of the human in it) and expansion. The author concludes that the exploration of the Northern space is a critically intense process, where both poles of human life, spiritual and physical, are manifested to the fullest. Considering the dual nature of humans, the exploration of the Northern space takes place on two levels: material (physical) and spiritual. The result of such exploration is the cultural landscape, i.e. an element of the geocultural space in which a person acts both as a subject and as a measure of its potential development. In terms of practical significance, this paper solves the problem of actualization of the cultural landscapes of Northern Russia as a basic component of the country’s regional and national culture, as well as the problem of formation of sociocultural constants that determine the spatial coordinates of the socioeconomic development of the North. The scientific importance and relevance of this research lie in the need to reconstruct the geocultural and geohistorical images of the Russian North and Russian Arctic as a symbolic resource for the development of the Northern macroregion.

Redesigning online mentoring schemes for faculty managers in vocational education and training: The developmental role of primary contradictions

This paper summarises a research-intervention in a setting of vocational education and training (VET), where mentoring schemes for faculty managers are changed by participants themselves. Participants comprise mentees, who are faculty managers in VET, and their mentors, who are more experienced colleagues in the same institution. Informed by Marx’s conception of dialectical contradictions, with a theoretical framework of Cultural and Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and using a Change Laboratory methodology, participants envision, negotiate, and enact change to mentoring activity. In this study, technology enhanced learning (TEL) is of interest to participants in two interrelated domains of work and learning: TEL describes their own development, including the mentoring schemes examined in this paper; and TEL describes the pedagogical development of faculty and students in VET, the development of which is their managerial responsibility. By collaboratively exposing and aggravating contradictions in their past, present and future activity, participants recognise local dilemmas as manifestations of contradictions in mentoring. The paper examines how they trace primary contradictions of use versus exchange value: a tension in capitalist economies, between inherent worth and exchange as a commodity. Double stimulation tasks enable these participants to collaboratively expose, model and call upon contradictions to enact change. The changes to mentoring activity are modest yet expansive for mentors and mentees, indicating the developmental potential of primary contradictions: countering the pretence of managerial consensus in mentoring relationships; challenging business-focused outcomes of mentoring schemes; and confronting top-down coercion during mentor-mentee interactions.Keywords: Activity theory; Change Laboratory; mentoring; primary contradiction; TEL; TVETPart of the special issue Activity theory in technology enhanced learning research <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.cbaae672>