European Thought Research Articles

СТАНОВЛЕНИЕ ИДЕИ АВТОРСТВА В ЕВРОПЕЙСКОЙ МЫСЛИ НОВОГО ВРЕМЕНИ

Анализируется поворотный этап истории понятий «автор», «текст» — XIV–XV вв.; именно в это время они из периферийных понятий превращаются в центральные для процесса толкования текстов, изменяя как традиционное содержание, так и модель толкования. Сопоставляются традиционные трактовки и интерпретации итальянских гуманистов (прежде всего, Лоренцо Валлы), для которых авторство уже не жестко связанное с auctoritas, тем не менее не предполагает уникальности; понятие «текст» универсализируется; к тексту начинает предъявляться требование «истинности». Рассматриваются различные трактовки произошедшего поворота (Ж. Мишле, Э. Па-нофски, Е.А. Косминский, М. Фуко и др.). При анализе текста «Критики Константинова Дара» показываются и объясняются новые ходы, предпринимаемые Лоренцо Валлой; они сопоставляются как с рассуждениями современников, так и классиков предшествующей традиции. Тем самым объясняется трансформация модели извлечения смысла – текст впервые обретает целостность, внутреннее смысловое и стилевое единство; появляется идея контекста и герменевтического круга, а автор становится «гарантом» этой связанности. Тем не менее, понятие «смысл», несмотря на контекстную связанность, претендует на объективность. В результате появляется новое понятие этого времени – «коммуникация». The article analyzes a turning point in the history of the concepts of “author” and “text” in XIV-XV centuries; it was at this time that they turned from peripheral concepts into central ones for the process of interpreting texts, changing both the traditional content and the model of interpretation. The traditional interpretations and interpretations in the works of Italian humanists (first of all, Lorenzo Valla) are compared, for whom authorship no longer rigidly associated with auctoritas, nevertheless does not imply uniqueness; the concept of “text” is universalized; the text begins to be required to be “true”. Various interpretations of the turn that took place are considered (J. Michelet, E. Panofsky, E.A. Kosminsky, M. Foucault, M. McLuhan, etc.). When analyzing the text of the “Criticism of Constantine's Gift”, new moves undertaken by Lorenzo Valla are shown and explained; they are compared both with the arguments of contemporaries and classics of the previous tradition. This explains the transformation of the meaning extraction model – the text for the first time acquires integrity, internal semantic and stylistic unity; the idea of context and hermeneutical circle appears, and the author becomes the “guarantor” of this connectedness. Nevertheless, the concept of “meaning”, despite its contextual connectedness, claims to be objective. As a result, a new concept of this time appears – “communication”.

How ideas connect to the world

The celebrated Russian philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov, draws on Spinoza to solve a key philosophical problem: how exactly does the mind connect to the real world? However, the proposed solution has come under much criticism, for example in a recent special issue of Studies of East European Thought (74, 3). This paper aims to clearly explain the solution, overcoming misunderstandings that are evident in the special issue. The kernel of the solution is an argument that human cognition rests on practical activity. In practical activity humans do not act on a fixed structure within their own bodies, in the manner, say, that the activity of water is determined by its fixed structure, H2O. Instead, human practical activity directly connects with and continually adapts to the structures and causal powers of external bodies. Awareness of practical activity thereby gives the human mind access to a mode of activity that is in direct contact and ever-greater accordance with the objects of the real world. The paper will elaborate and develop this kernel, with particular attention to the notion of ‘causal powers’ that it contains, by drawing from the revival in philosophy and the social sciences of what has been termed ‘causal powers realism’. The paper thereby opens new insights and connections regarding the Spinoza-Ilyenkov solution, alleviating the potential for misunderstandings evident in the special issue.

The Reception of Bantu Divination in Modern South Africa: African Traditional Worldview in Interaction with European Thought

The Reception of Bantu Divination in Modern South Africa: African Traditional Worldview in Interaction with European Thought

Living in Illusion is Dangerous

Abstract The interview given by Marina F. Bykova, Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University (USA), and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Studies in East European Thought. She earned her PhD and Dr. Habil in Philosophy from the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia), where she worked until relocating to the USA in 2000. Bykova specializes in the history of nineteenth century continental philosophy, with a particular focus on German idealism. She has also written extensively on Russian philosophy and intellectual tradition. She has published 11 books and over 250 scholarly articles. Her forthcoming book, Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Guide, is set to be released by Cambridge University Press in 2024.

Ovanes Akopyan (ed.). Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400-1650 (Leiden and Boston, 2021)

Ovanes Akopyan (ed.). Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400-1650 (Leiden and Boston, 2021)

The Role of European Think Tanks as a Channel of the EU Public Diplomacy Towards Domestic and Foreign Publics

<p>This article examines the role of European think tanks in public diplomacy efforts of the EU. It builds on Bourdieu’s field theory and concept of capital using data from EU official documents, website materials, and semi-structured interviews with representatives of think tanks from Brussels, France, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom, as well as their networks and the EU institutions. The article argues that EU institutions provide financial support for think tanks to obtain political capital in the form of internal and external legitimacy. The European Commission mobilises think tank academic capital by funding their educational activities, which helps to deal with the “democratic deficit” and plays the role of intellectual “soft power” by training current and future policymakers in Europe and beyond as potential allies in competition with other regions. Due to the particularity of the EU public sphere, characterised by the lack of outreach mass media, the European Commission tries to improve its capacity to shape public opinion at the European and global levels by using think tank publicity capital in its communication activities via new media platforms, distinguished by direct access to wider audiences. The European Commission benefits from think tank social capital, encouraging them to create transnational networks regarded as contributing to the promotion of integration within the EU, building relations with candidate countries, and strengthening its position in multilateral negotiations. Although the citizen’s dimension is not always at the core of practices of European think tanks, this article demonstrates their effectiveness as a channel of public diplomacy towards transnational publics.</p>

The University as a Being-historical Object: the Experience of M. Heidegger

The article is based on the historical and philosophical analysis of fragments of Martin Heidegger’s concept called “Seinsgeschichte”, in which the philosopher considered the phenomenon of the university and the current situation of sciences. Their condition, accord- ing to the philosopher, is a direct consequence of the comprehensive extinction of the tradi- tion of European thinking, originating in the era of Platonism. The main signs of the era of the “decline of metaphysics” are the primacy of form over content, the “factory” production of university personnel and products of scientific activity, the rejection of comprehension as an urgent necessity and the total domination of the utilitarian approach to knowledge. Heidegger has no formed positive project to overcome the current state of affairs. Firstly, because he had an unsuccessful experience of rectorship, including a fruitless attempt to put into practice his philosophical ideas, to which part of this article is devoted. Secondly, since the rejection of uni- versal methods, ready-made answers and unshakable truths becomes an integral part of his late philosophy, since they lull thinking and lead a person away from fruitful doubt. A deep analysis of the origins of the crisis of the European University allows us to take a different look at the side effects of industrialization and digitalization of modern society and outline possible ways to resolve it in the future.

“The Bold Arcs of Salvation History”: Faith and Reason in Jürgen Habermas's Reconstruction of the Roots of European Thinking. By Maureen Junker-Kenny. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. xviii + 288 pages. $99.99.

“The Bold Arcs of Salvation History”: Faith and Reason in Jürgen Habermas's Reconstruction of the Roots of European Thinking. By Maureen Junker-Kenny. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. xviii + 288 pages. $99.99. - Volume 50 Issue 1

On the relentless labour of deconstructing domination logics: The case of decolonial critical accounting research in South America

Eight years after the publication of our article on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, this reflexive commentary responds to a recent critique by M. Gómez-Villegas and C. Larrinaga, which claims our study is characterized by a colonial and Anglo-Euro-centric bias, as is found in other critical accounting research. While the two authors criticize our use of a Bourdieusian framework to investigate a technology, participatory budgeting, born and implemented in a region of the Global South, we point to the relevance of using Bourdieu’s critical sociology to think of emancipation, even more so as European thinking is constitutive of Latin American thinking. We extend some of Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga’s comments to question more broadly the conditions under which critical accounting research and research at large are being produced. Welcoming the diffusion of decolonial perspectives in critical accounting research, we lastly invite all critical researchers to remain alert to the pervasiveness and relentless renewal of capitalist, colonial, and masculine domination logics – including in decolonial research itself.

“They are Faithful, Precise, Relentless”. Clock Metaphor in Modern European Thought

The clock metaphor, which began to spread in European literature in the fourteenth century, at first became an expression of certain Christian virtues, most notably temperantia. By the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the function of this metaphor had expanded considerably, and the mechanical clock also became a symbol of the orderliness and harmony of the Universe, the wisdom of the Creator, and the image of an ideal monarchical state. In early modern times, the metaphor of the clock was associated with mechanical philosophy, most prominently in the writings of R. Boyle and R. Descartes. A distinctive feature of the new natural philosophy was its approach to understanding natural phenomena as if they were the result of the action of machines, and the mechanical clock was most often chosen as the machine-analog of the world. The structure and functioning of the clock mechanism served as an analogue of the structure and functioning not only of the Universe, but also of an ideal state in which everything emanated from a single center. The political connotations of chorological metaphors clearly correlated with the idea of a strong central authority with its desire for all-encompassing control and a unidirectional (top-down, no feedback) system of communication with non-central elements. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the metaphor of the clock gradually lost its popularity, especially in England. By the end of the Age of Enlightenment, the relationship between the laws of nature, rather than the coherence of the wheels of a clockwork mechanism, was seen as the best evidence in favor of a Higher Intelligence behind the “system of the world”. Clocks, on the other hand, have come to symbolize regimentation and oppression, an unfree, dull, repetitive mode of operation, rigid determinism, and the denial of free will (including the will of God). The mechanical clock, itself a worthy and useful device, symbolized all that was rejected by English intellectuals of the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily in the subjects of theology and politics.

Where is the l(ove)? Excavating law and labour in The Redress of Law

AbstractIn his monograph The Redress of Law, Emilios Christodoulidis provides a sophisticated genealogical study of the emergence of total market thinking in Europe. With market constitutionalism having sidelined political constitutionalism, the potential of law to organise the political community is significantly restricted. By examining the commodification of labour, processes of bargaining, unemployment, and strikes, Christodoulidis demonstrates the destructive consequences of law in the service of market rationalities as well as its potential for strategic action to build collective identity in the EU (European Union).Yet, I argue that this book comes with two significant blind spots, namely a dated understanding of both law and labour. First of all, Christodoulidis’s systems theoretical understanding of law is neglecting the material conditions that law continuously re-produces in the course of globalization. Secondly, his vision of labour remains rather traditional, focused on unionised, white, and male workers. Both elements are central pillars of his analysis but do not reflect the current reality of the 21st century. In this Article, I challenge his conceptualization by situating his work in recent research on the role of law and labour regulation in global capitalism.

Panentheism as cosmopolitanism: Karl Christian Friedrich Krause's conception of a global human league

AbstractKarl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) left for posterity an impressive and astonishingly contemporary corpus of philosophical creativity. Not only does it cover numerous topics of theoretical and practical philosophy, from a panentheistic-cosmopolitan point of view, but, in terms of the history of philosophy, it may be seen as one of the first works from a European pen which also appreciates the Indian roots of European thinking in their systematic importance. It combines them with Platonic metaphysics and Kant's transcendental philosophy to form a system of philosophy that is truly intercultural. In what follows, Krause's fundamental argument for panentheism is presented before it is argued that Krause's panentheism entails a cosmopolitan theory of human society according to which it is a postulate of practical reason to realize a cosmopolitan global league of humanity.

In the Name of Conservation

This thesis investigates the introduction, adaption, and implementation of the modern concept of heritage conservation in modern China after the opening of its treaty ports. Through an analysis of the different layers of disseminating and receiving knowledge in transnational exchanges, it explicitly points out the divergence between the Eurocentric concept of conservation and the Chinese tradition of treating historic buildings and sites. As a result of the complexity of understanding and adapting an imported idea, the heritage discourse in China is characterised by its own ambiguity. Conservation of modern heritage, in particular those built under colonial power, has seen conflicts of perceptions between conservation planning and interest-led practice. A progressive legislative framework for heritage conservation has had a limited binding effect on stakeholders’ actions to protect listed immovable built cultural heritage sites from artificial damage in China’s contemporary urban practices. By analysing various actors’ interpretations and expressions of the concept of “conservation” (known as “保护” in Chinese) derived from different temporalities, it explores the causes and effects of heritage strategies and approaches created by individuals, groups, and the state apparatus. Theoretically, it challenges the local acceptability of classic conservation principles that are primarily based on European thoughts and cultural background. Practically, it provides adequate clues for a multi-faceted consideration of listed heritage sites in future development. It highlights the significance of creating a powerful local narrative under the authoritative heritage discourse at a crossroads of ongoing globalisation and growing nationalism.

Uranus to Derrida: Reading Inception and Inheritance of Alienation in European Thinking

Uranus to Derrida: Reading Inception and Inheritance of Alienation in European Thinking

The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East

The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East

A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World by John Jeffries Martin

One may not expect to see the apocalyptic imagination foregrounded as a key constituent element in the traditional telling of modernity’s origins. According to Martin, however, apocalyptic ideas are deeply embedded in modern thinking about the nature of history, its direction, and human aspirations to shape its outcome.Martin began his research for this book intending to write a straightforward history of Early Modern Europe from the age of Columbus until the French Revolution, and that original plan can still be seen in the volume’s chronological progression and organization. All of the major historical touchstones and markers for the making of the Early Modern Era remain present, including among other developments the invention of print, the European encounter with the Americas, the rise of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, and the ensuing Wars of Religion. The project took a different turn, however, when Martin discerned a particular thread running through those critical centuries of transition between the medieval and modern worlds, namely, that of apocalyptic ideas and millennialist hopes for “a beautiful ending” to history—a Golden Age of justice, prosperity, and peace before the end of time.In his compelling tour of apocalypticism from c. 1400 to 1700, Martin finds numerous examples to substantiate this finding—such as the fact that the oldest surviving printed text from Europe relates to the Final Judgment; that Columbus perceived his voyages as fulfilling biblical prophecies; the strands of messianic thinking that informed Hapsburg imperial ideology; the utopian visions of authors such as Thomas More; and the battles between Protestant and Catholic reformers, which seemed to suggest the final tribulations under the Antichrist were at hand, thereby setting the stage for the ultimate triumph of the Elect.Beneath Martin’s engaging prose, there lies a long-standing and far-reaching academic debate over the relationship between (premodern) theology of history and (modern) philosophy of history, associated with the likes of Löwith and Blumenberg. Löwith argued that modern theories of historical progress (evident in the works of figures such as Georg Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx) represented “secularized” versions of theological interpretations of history (displayed by thinkers such as Augustine of Hippo and Joachim of Fiore).1 Blumenberg posited instead a definitive rupture between medieval and modern temporal conceptualizations of history, as the latter jettisoned the former’s stultifying reliance on God as the architect of a foreordained historical plan that would end in the apocalypse.2 Indeed, Blumenberg explicitly flagged apocalyptic modes of thought as antithetical to modern notions of open-ended historical progress and human agency within the arena of time. Apocalypticism and modernity thus stand at odds with one another.Martin seems to adopt a far more “Löwithesque” perspective, offering his assessment that “Modernity was, in the end, a providential product” (10) and that “the apocalyptic imagination and the hope and energies it inspired played a fundamental role in the shaping of the modern world” (12). As evident in his copious notes, Martin is well aware of the greater stakes in this topic, which are part of a wider debate over secularization and modernity writ large.A Beautiful Ending strikes me as making two especially important contributions. First, Martin calls attention to the fact that Christian apocalyptic ideas, the ones that predominantly shaped European thinking, were just one strand in what he calls an “apocalyptic braid,” bound up with contemporary Jewish and Islamic ideas about the divinely ordained course of history. Admittedly, trained as an expert in Early Modern Europe, his focus remains mostly on the European tradition. But his discussion of how print enabled the dissemination of rabbinical texts on the Final Things, for example, or about the political implications of Ottoman prophecies about the end-times, provides a far richer picture of how apocalyptic ideas shaped intellectual life and culture beyond the confines of Christian Europe.Second, Martin reminds us that, while millenarian visions of the future could inspire violence, rebellion, and fear of “outsiders” as agents of apocalyptic evil, in some instances the longing for the end also generated optimism, egalitarianism, and an ecumenical spirit. That sense of optimism about the end-times seems to be the true casualty of the secular and scientific impulses that eventually came to dominate modern theorizing about time and history. While it is hard to find a “beautiful ending” in the promise of nuclear destruction or the unfolding disasters caused by climate change, perhaps, as Martin speculates in his epilogue, we can and should devise new ways of thinking about the “catastrophes that have littered and continue to litter human history without having recourse to the apocalyptic” (250). Given how deeply the apocalyptic braid is woven into the broader fabric of modernity, he seems to feel that the providential appeal of a beautiful ending is far from exhausted.

Spiritual Origins of Aria, its Formation in Europe and China

The purpose of the work is to trace the genesis of the aria typology and its inherent expressiveness of aria singing in its pre- and non-opera existence, comparing relevant materials from the history of the genre in Europe and China. As a methodological basis, we put forward the intonation approach of B. Asafyev's school in Ukraine, as it developed in the works of O. Markova, O. Muravska, Liu Bing Jiang, with emphasis on hermeneutic and stylistic-comparative analysis. The scientific novelty of the study is caused by the historical novelty of emphasising symbolic and religious beginnings in culture and art, which was traditionally ignored in the classical for Europe period of New time, as well as by the fact that, for the first time in Ukrainian and Chinese musicology, about hymnographic and song-chant forming of syncretism are put in logical chain of receivership information, from which an aria was born in the 12th-13th centuries in China and the 15th-16th centuries in Europe, which was later absorbed into the opera at the level of an essential component of the composition. Conclusion. The culture of the aria as a finished expressive quality and arias as a type of singing developed into the spiritual activity in the diametrically opposed cultural formations of China and Europe. They are historically connected by their appearance only in them in the planetary scope of the operatic action by its singing saturation from the beginning to the end of the performance. For China, the concept of forming an aria from the ritual syncretism of a hymn-song-aria is proven. For the European thinking, the awareness of the aria as a derivative of the Byzantine hymnography and liturgical-canto song with vocality inseparable from it was the achievement of musicological developments of the last decades. The adoption of such a concept, developed in the presented work, significantly corrects the “generic emphasis” of the expressiveness of the aria, traditionally considered in the context of the specifics of the operatic action.
 Key words: aria, genre in music, opera, song, chant, hymn.

Sultan V. Murad Dönemi’nin Viyana Basınına Yansımaları

The reign of Sultan Murad V, more precisely, the period of his accession to the throne was coincides in a periode, where the dignitaries struggled to prevent the collapse of the state. The superiority of the European great powers and Russia was obvious and the peoples within the empire fought for their independence. The application of European thoughts, order and management models were discussed and applied. This transformation, which is required by the obligations, is a process that Austria, which is closely interested in the Balkans, also followed with interest. The communiqué known as the Andrassy Note, which was written by the Austrian Prime Minister Andrassy after the joint meetings of Germany, Russia and Austria, and asking for improvements in religion, worship and taxes of non-Muslim peoples, was given just before the reign of Sultan Murad V. The reflections of this short period on the vienna press, in which extremely active and uninterrupted events took place, will be tried to be conveyed in this article. Because almost every day and quite comprehensive news about the period of Sultan Murad V has been made, it was not possible to include all of them. However, the Depositions and the Enthronements of the Sultans and the murders of the Ministers, the Ottoman-Serbian war and the constitutional debates from the basis of my work. Since it is not possible to peruse all the newspapers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only Vienna-based newspapers are included. It is possible to reach the newspapers mentioned in the study in the Austrian National Library Digital Archive.

Modern Ukrainian Grand Narrative: Prospects for Evolution

The article analyzes the features of the modern Ukrainian narrative. Particular attention is paid to interpreting the term “grand narrative”. By “grand narrative”, we mean the global intellectual narrative of concepts of experience and knowledge, which emerged in the Enlightenment. The paper notes that the grand narrative not only managed to systematize European thinking but has made an intellectual expansion into the whole scientific world. Today, the grand narrative is a rather broad concept, and it means a new method of historiography. The article pays attention to historical research methods: chronological, historical-comparative and retrospective. The work is formed based on the conclusions of the classics of Ukrainian history (M. Hrushevsky) and the grand narratives of modern Ukrainian historians. The results of the study show that in Ukraine, several versions of the grand narrative are formed on different scientific principles: multiethnic, Eurocentrism, Westernization (modernization), and nationalism. We believe that bringing the Ukrainian grand narrative into westernization is undesirable because it significantly limits the heuristic potential. But the national-state concept of narrativism has potential in history, as many Ukrainian “stories” are written under the influence of Soviet stereotypes. Therefore, we believe that today we need to rethink narrativism to find a new Ukrainian grand narrative.

A Framework for European Thought on Psychology, Education, and Health Based on Foucault’s The Order of Things

In European thought, the relationship among the fields of psychology, education, and health is both complex and obscured. Foucault’s acclaimed work, The Order of Things, offers a framework to evaluate their interconnection by identifying three distinct periods of European thought since the 16th century, with respect to the ordering of phenomena—Renaissance, Classical, and Modern. Theoretically dense and often difficult to decipher, the book’s categorization of language, value, and being has been understandably underused, yet it provides deep insights into what have come to be known as psychology, education, and health, and remains invaluable in understanding the origin, limits, and consequences of these fields. Investigated is how Foucault’s analysis can be interpreted, concerning the development of these areas in each of the three periods of European thought. An approach based on narrative research appraises the analysis offered in the book. The results, presented for the first time in table form, compare these three periods, demonstrating a continuing practical value to Foucault’s insights. With the aid of the framework presented by these tables, the boundaries and relationship of psychology, education, and health become clear, and their limitations—plus potential solutions to them—can be identified to mitigate anticipated negative consequences.