Philosophical Interest Research Articles

Un ideologo sentimentale: Stendhal, Rousseau e la nascita dell’amore

This article aims to analyse Stendhal’s theory of love as formulated in Filosofia nova and De l’amour, with the objective of highlighting Henri Beyle’s complex attempt to reconcile two rival epistemological paradigms: the sensational-ideological tradition (particularly Condillac, Cabanis, and Destutt de Tracy) and the sentimental tradition (Rousseau). The cross-examination of the texts reveals how Stendhal’s philosophical reflection sought to refute a purely physical view of love—informed by the concept of ‘unproductive imagination’—and aimed for a middle ground between the ‘coldness of geometry’ and the ‘sentimental ardour’. Specifically, this article suggests the philosophical centrality of Rousseau’s theorization of a dynamic and subjective imagination, often overlooked in critical literature on Stendhal, which emphasizes the programmatic ‘scientific’ foundation of his theory of affectivity. ousseau, a kind of father-master towards whom Beyle always harbored a mixture of respect and resentment. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the constructive presence of Rousseau's thought—often reduced to a counter-model—in Stendhal's explanation of love. Such an operation allows for the simultaneous highlighting of the philosophical interest in Stendhal's writings, which lies not so much in the invention of new concepts but in the specific conceptual twist he manages to subject the heterogeneous philosophical notions that intertwine in the fabric of his thought.

Между имперским и постимперским дискурсом: идеи империи и революции в оптике исследователей XXI века (Рец. на: Идея империи и идея революции в русской философии и культуре XIX–XX веков: коллективная монография / отв. ред. И.И. Евлампиев. СПб.: Изд-во РХГА, 2023. 420 с.)

The paper analyses the collective monograph: “The Idea of Empire and the Idea of Revolution in Russian Philosophy and Culture of the XIX–XX Centuries”, its content being a reflection on one of the most intellectually acute and complex contradictions of Russian history – the problem of empire and revolution. This problem invariably awakens philosophical thought, forcing it to search for an explanation of the notorious “pendulum of Russian history”, the genesis of power, the vector and track of Russian history, which are intellectual outgrowths of the fundamental problem – the problem of Russian civilizational and state identity. The content of the work is an analysis of empire and revolution – the main concepts that are in the focus of philosophical interest and reflection in Russian culture of the XIX–XX centuries. Its aim is to demonstrate the theoretical demand to continue the analysis and philosophical reflection of the concepts of empire and revolution, with the task of rethinking and reinterpreting them. The thesis is presented about the inexhaustibly traditional historical-philosophical narrative (liberalism-conservatism) and the discursively traditional nature of the range of topics, problems and questions, centred on the concepts of “empire” and “revolution”, with the same inexhaustibly traditional duality of interpretation (“us–them”, “East–West”). The result of the analysis of the sections that make up the content of the monograph is the conclusion about the epistemological and axiological value of the concepts of empire and revolution, and the heuristic productivity of the works related to their analysis in the context of the challenges faced by the Russian society and state. The latter can be used as analytical tools for works that develop and deepen the problems of empire and revolution on a modern historiographical basis. The historiographical basis of the article is the works of well-known Russian and foreign authors specializing in this field of humanities, and the methodological basis is hermeneutic analysis with the involvement of the discourse of cultural studies, political science and history.

The Philosophical Playing Field of the Book, “The Prospect of a Humanitarian AI”, by Carlos Montemayor

The Prospect of Humanitarian Artificial Intelligence (The Prospect of HAI) encapsulates the vast and intricate landscape of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) with both theoretical and practical nuances. Carlos Montemayor (Carlos) artfully paints a complex picture, presenting a realm of profound philosophical interest. While abstract, the book navigates the terrain crucial for AGI development, successfully capturing its multifaceted nature. This review focuses on the alignment problem, probing its epistemic and moral dimensions. Imperfect as we are, aligning AGI presents challenges: discerning viable solutions remains uncertain. The epistemic aspect of alignment of the AGI seems to be impossible for the goals Carlos is proposing for the nascent industry of AI. The moral, political, and legal aspects of alignment offer a challenging panorama, mirroring parallels between the Philosophy of AI and theological discourse. Drawing parallels with our experience in moral alignment, especially in guiding children, underscores the idea that this problem is older and more widespread. The Prospect of HAI serves as an inaugural exploration in this realm. Future endeavors should delve deeper into technical intricacies while maintaining a broad philosophical scope. It stands as a compelling precursor to the burgeoning field of philosophy of AI. Carlos should go for the 2nd edition.

On Fragments: A Piece of Art and the “I” – or Not

This essay explores the philosophical implications inherent in Samuel Beckett’s most enigmatic and metonymic late theater work, Not I, even as he frequently abjured any interest in philosophy, which he claimed neither to read nor to understand. The play is profoundly ontological, however, and its metonymic stage image engages the classical philosophical conundrum of the relationship of the part, a piece or fragment, say, to the whole, an issue with which Beckett has at least been intrigued for most of his creative life.

Reassessing the Eclipse of Aesthetic Sense—Natural Theology and the History of Modern British Aesthetics

ABSTRACT In this essay, I reconceptualise some of the most general coordinates of the history of modern British aesthetics. My central claim is that a renewed grasp of the relationship between aesthetic sense theory and natural theology fundamentally alters our narrative of British writing on aesthetics, beauty and art. I trace an intellectual genealogy stretching from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, considering, among others, the work of Walter Charleton, Francis Hutcheson, Kames, William Paley and Thomas Chalmers. I argue that these authors can be understood in terms of a common teleological architecture I designate the ‘double teleological condition.’ In turn, I explore how commonly relayed accounts of the ascendency of associationist thought over aesthetic sense have failed to adequately capture the later philosophical interest of aesthetic sense theory. There was no eclipse of aesthetic sense, which continued to assert a profoundly important and innovative role through the nineteenth century.

Conversations in geography: Journeying through four decades of history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom

This article offers a critical appraisal of institutionalised knowledge production and exchange on the history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom. We examine broad epistemic trends over 41 years (1981–2021) through an analysis of annual conference sessions and special events convened by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). We show how organisational, sociocultural, and epistemic changes were coproduced, as expressed by three significant findings. Organisationally, the group emerged through shared philosophical interests of two early career geographers at Queen's University of Belfast in 1981 and received new impetus through its strategic plan 1995–1997, which inspired long-term research collaborations. Socioculturally, the group's activities contributed to national traditions of geographical thought and praxis in masculinist academic environments, with instances of internationalisation, increasing feminisation, and organisational cooperation. Epistemically, the group's events in the 1980s shaped contextualist, constructivist, and critical approaches, and coproduced new cultural geography, but the emphasis shifted from historically sensitive biographical, institutional, and geopolitical studies of geographical knowledges, via critical, postcolonial, and feminist geographies of knowledge-making practices in the 1990s, to more-than-human and more-than-representational geographies in the early twenty-first century.

«Среди великих философов нет атеистов…»: рассуждения об опыте, знании и вере в письмах Н.О. Лосского Г.В. Флоровскому (1947–1955 гг.). Письма Н.О. Лосского Г.В. Флоровскому (1947–1955). Публикация, археографическая работа и примечания Е.В. Сердюковой

In 1946, Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky moved from France to his younger son Andrey who lived in the United States, where Lossky taught at the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary for several years. His correspondence with G.V. Florovsky continued, and, as before, they are connected by their friendship, teaching activities, and, most importantly, their scientific and philosophical interests. “Is it true that Russian philosophy is not scientific?” This question became crucial for N.O. Lossky during the “overseas” period of his life and work (1947–1955). His letters sent to G.V. Florovsky from New Haven, New York, and Los Angeles testify to his interest in the concrete metaphysical foundations of holistic (intuitive) worldview, within which faith and knowledge find their indispensable places. Lossky discusses in his letters Florovsky’s upcoming move to America and the organization of teaching philosophical disciplines at the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Furthermore, he draws Florovsky’s attention to how scientists of that time (A. Eddington, B. Bavinck, D. Jeans, M. Planck, P. Leconte du Nouy, and others) try to answer the question of the relationship between natural sciences (physics, biology, etc.) and the transcendental foundations of religious experience. In addition to this, Lossky is interested in Étienne Gilson’s “History of Medieval Philosophy” (which describes specific intellectual attempts to “reconcile” faith and knowledge) and the epistemological experience of Russian Freemasonry presented in G.V. Vernadsky’s book. And, of course, a special place in Lossky’s letters is devoted to the preparation of the book “History of Russian Philosophy” for publication in New York as part of the works series of the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary.

К вопросу о линиях интерпретации феномена гражданской войны в античной философии: stasis и bellum civile

The concept of civil war remains relatively underdeveloped given a steadily increasing interest of political philosophers in the study of civil conflicts in general. The multi-layered genealogy of this notion includes elements of significantly different approaches to its definition. The two divergent lines of interpretation of the phenomenon of civil wars can be traced back to the ancient philosophy: the Greek stasis and the Roman bellum civile. In recent years, the concept of stasis is making a comeback to the academic circles due to its use in the works of Nicole Loraux, Giorgio Agamben and a number of other authors. At the same time, the dominant approach to analyzing civil wars is based primarily on their perception in line with the Roman concept, which presupposes a monistic social ontology model and has significant limitations when applied to modern conditions. In the article, the author analyzes the main features of the perception of the phenomenon of civil wars in the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Based on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, who elaborated the theory of stasis in the most systematic way, the author demonstrates that admitting the possibility to overcome just the extreme external manifestations of stasis (but not to eradicate it altogether) inevitably impacts the evaluation of the importance of pluralism in the life of a political community, the interpretation of the actions of the defeated party and memory politics. Hence, the author analyzes how the perception of a civil conflict as a phenomenon inherent in the life of the polis and, in one form or another, an “inevitable evil”, can again be relevant in the context of the philosophical and political discussions of the 21st century.

Развитие познавательного интереса к философии у курсантов в образовательном пространстве военного вуза посредством интерактивных методов обучения

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the development of cognitive interest in philosophy as an important condition for improving the quality of training among cadets of a military university through the didactic potential of interactive teaching methods. The authors actualize the significance within the pedagogical process of increasing cognitive interest in philosophical knowledge in the architecture of the modern military educational space as an important block in the educational activities of cadets. Scientific novelty of the research: for the first time, it is shown that interactive teaching methods as problem-reflexive models are the basis for the development of cognitive interest in philosophy as the quintessence of the humanities in an engineering and technical university. As a result of the research, the concept of “cadets’ cognitive interest” is specified; the components, levels, and sources of the development of cognitive interest are highlighted; the didactic potential of using interactive teaching methods in the process of increasing the level of cadets' cognitive interest in philosophy is revealed.

"Political Romanticism" and "Aesthetic Politics": Content, Comparison, Criticism

Relevance. In Western political philosophy and political theory, the judgment that modern democracy does not have a satisfactory general ("synoptic") theory, has the status of (almost) universal significance ‒ the philosophical interpretation of this "situation" is an urgent research task for modern political philosophy.Purpose. The representation of the political in the "concept of the political" and the "economic paradigm of the political" reveals identical characteristic features; the configuration of their unity and the assessment attributed to them differ ‒ the goal is to understand the different meanings attributed to the same "phenomena" and "processes" of modernity in conceptual frameworks defined by opposite paradigms.Objectives. The method of determining the actual policy in the horizon of "metaphysical principles" is demonstrated. The fundamentals of the paradigmatic representation of the political and the principles of constructing the narrative of modern liberal democracy are revealed. The procedure of giving credibility to theoretical judgments about the political is analyzed. Methodology. The paradigmatic representation of the political can be understood, and only as a result explained; understanding refers to the real concept, explanation – to reality; the combination of the "real" and "real" distinguished in the tradition of Western philosophy takes place in a philosophical concept; the formation of the concept presupposes philosophical interest; philosophical hermeneutics and deduction provide tools suitable for understanding the political in unity: from "metaphysical foundations" to practical politics. Results. The statement about the romantic nature of the modern representation of the political in the liberal economic paradigm looks reliable. It is proved that historical and aesthetic representation, more than «mimetic», fulfills the imperatives attributed to the modern form of political – Western representative democracy. The evidence of the necessary replacement of the «center of political ontology» from the sovereign to an «empty place» is demonstrated.Conclusions. Representative democracy, romantic and postmodern, is a necessary and legitimate form of the modern liberal way of representing the political. The main task of aesthetic politics is supposed to ensure security: "keep to the middle and avoid extremes", exclude an event, normalize the political, that is, to banalize politics.

ESPORTS: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

<p>Esports are increasingly popular and are becoming more similar to conventional sports. This is due to the social interaction and community-building aspects, as well as the sporting elements embedded in the virtual environments of the video games they include. Esports are a topic of interest for the interdisciplinary field of Philosophy of Sport, which examines the various dimensions of sport in relation to human values. The aim of this paper is to illuminate the existing philosophical debate on the relationship between esports and the Philosophy of Sport. The paper is a philosophical work that aims to highlight the arguments of sports philosophers on esports over the last twenty years. The argument of this paper is that the focus of philosophical interest is not located in matters of ethics but also not in the human being itself. The majority of philosophical papers on esports focus on whether they can be considered real sports or Olympic sports. Other topics include their definition or institutionalisation, physicality, skill requirements, cheating, and corruption. Rules and the identity of esports players are also of concern to philosophers in the field of Philosophy of Sport. This research is significant due to its relevance and timeliness in the field of esports, as well as its contribution to philosophical discussions surrounding the topic. By advancing both philosophical and empirical research and providing ample material for reflection and debate, the paper is a valuable resource for researchers interested in studying and reflecting on esports.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0777/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Aspects of the presence of the Aristotelian Logic in Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity:

In this article, we discuss a particular aspect of the presence of the Aristotelian Logic –mainly based on the treatise Topics– in the Christianity of the West as well as in the Christianity of the East, with Boethius and Manuel Holobolus as representatives. As a reference text, we have Boethius’ treatise De topicis differentiis, which was translated into Greek, with certain adaptations and individual comments, by Manuel Holobolus. We approach a concise passage from the Byzantine scholar’s translation, which refers to “middle places”, that is to say, to those which arise neither from the meaning of names per se nor from external factors alone, but from their encounter with each other under particular circumstances. We investigate how “middle places” are distinguished into three categories –a) by πτώσις (case), b) by συστοιχία (co-ordination), and c) by διαίρεσις (division)– and how arguments are structured on the basis of their use. They appear as modalities of nouns, mainly through adjectives and adverbs within prepositional phrases, which do not refer to semantic singulars but to a structure of various kinds of relations between situations and between persons, with evaluative schemes sometimes present. We pay particular attention to how an actual case highlights both morphological and semantic variations so that it is not just a grammatical scheme but also one of philosophical interest. We indicate how through the “middle places” formal Logic is brought into relevance with Ontology, or nominal reflections with pragmatological data, in the perspective of what can be called conceptual realism, which refers to how a meaning adapts to the external conditions it is asked to describe and is transformed accordingly. Finally, we conclude that through Boethius’ original text and Holobolus's translation, the Aristotelian formal Logic is utilized by the theological and philosophical atmosphere of Christianity, both in the West and in the East, even though there is a gap of about eight centuries between the two thinkers.

Natural Concepts and the Economics of Cognition and Communication

AbstractThis article takes a cognitive approach to natural concepts. The aim is to introduce criteria that are evaluated with respect to how they support the cognitive economy of humans when using concepts in reasoning and communicating with them. I first present the theory of conceptual spaces as a tool for expressing the criteria. Then I introduce the central idea that natural concepts correspond to convex regions of a conceptual space. I argue that this criterion has far-reaching consequences as regards natural concepts. Partly following earlier work, I present some other criteria that further delimit the class of natural concepts. One of these is coherence, which does not seem to have been discussed previously. Finally, I show that convexity and other criteria make it possible to ensure that people mean the same thing when they communicate using concepts. Apart from its philosophical interest, the analysis presented in the article will be relevant for tasks of conceptual engineering in artificial systems that work with concepts.

The image of a human in the poetry of Abai Qunanbaiuly (1845-1904) and Ahmed Shawqi (1868-1932)

Relevance. The relevance of this study is conditioned by the importance of the variety of factors in the field of studying human nature and the concepts surrounding personality. Many researchers, working not only for the benefit of the literary world like Abai Qunanbaiuly and Ahmed Shawqi but also in the interests of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and many other sciences, put the phenomenon of human personality and identity at the centre of their studies. Purpose. The main purpose of the study is to analyse the image of a person in the poetry of two authors who worked on the same fundamental moral axes � Abai Qunanbaiuly and Ahmed Shawqi. Methodology. Research methods within the framework of this study were the ones that are basic for literary review. These include the analysis of poetic works, which reveals all the necessary categories, a historical method that allows getting acquainted with the specific features of the region of residence of poets or their historical homeland. Moreover, the psychological method was necessary for a more personal and deep acquaintance. Results. Abai Qunanbaiuly and Ahmed Shawqi both portrayed complex, flawed human characters in their poetry, emphasizing freedom, courage, and tolerance. They transcended cultural boundaries, blending regional heritage with European influences. Qunanbaiuly promoted progressive ideas like women's rights, while Shawqi combined simple language with emotionally rich depictions. Conclusions. Their nuanced portrayals of human nature continue to resonate globally, offering enduring insights into philosophical and psychological aspects of the human condition. Their work demonstrates lasting literary and cultural significance beyond their immediate contexts. Keywords: poetry; comparative approach; Abai Qunanbaiuly; Ahmed Shawqi; human image; literary creativity

Спиритуализм в истории русской религиозной мысли: ключевые оценки и трактовки

The article presents a critical review of the assessments of Modern Spiritualism in Russian philosophical historiography and positions it as a certain kind of natural theology. The author positions spiritualism as a special religious philosophy and outlines the reasons why it was considered as a practice without any philosophical significance. The article considers philosophical characteristics of Spiritualism given by Russian religious philosophers and offers some critical remarks on historiography's opinion about Spiritualism as a kind of "positivism". The author suggests, that spiritualism should be investigated in the perspective of the history of philosophical and theological thought of the early New Modern period. The article deals with analogies between the themes of early modern natural theology and the problems spiritualists were deeply interested in. It touches upon the discussions about the nature of the soul, especially, the questions of its corporeality and possible annihilation. Early modern discussions about witchcraft should be studied as a key issue, which links natural theology and spiritualism. The article proposes to compare seventeenth-century "witch-hunts", aimed to prove the existence of the spirit world, and nineteenth-century investigations of mediums. The importance of Leibnizianism and pneumatological teachings of the eighteenth century as precursors of spiritualist religious and philosophical thought is also pointed out. The article proposes to investigate Spiritualism not only as a subject for Orthodox apologetics’ criticism, but also as a special kind of Christian apologetics that emerged in the early Modern period and aimed at proving the immortality of the soul while refuting the arguments of materialist critics. Both Russian spiritualists and Russian philosophers (V.S. Soloviev, N.Y. Grot, L.M. Lopatin) were interested in "mediumistic phenomena". It is argued that the spiritualists of the late 19th century sought to overcome «positivist» limitations, and were not satisfied with the Kantian solution, which put a barrier to the cognition of the "real" world. The study of Spiritualism in the perspective of Christian natural theology makes it possible to grasp the main reason for the interest of Russian philosophers in Spiritualism and its’ "psychic phenomena" – the potential opportunity to find new arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul.

Two lives of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

The article presents the author’s generalizations from a number of his works which are related to the analysis of the work of A.S. Pushkin, who is presented as a reconstruction made in the logic of humanities and cultural studies. The main subject of the reconstruction is the personality of the poet, taken in the process of radical change; the additional subject is the artistic reality of the works that he created. The material in the article is of interest for philosophers, scientists, teachers, students, and educated people in general. In addition, it can serve as an illustration of the method of hermeneutic reconstruction, which is important within the framework of areas of training related to Philosophy, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies.

The rational roles of experiences of utterance meanings

ABSTRACT The perennial question of the nature of natural-language understanding has received renewed attention in recent years. Two kinds of natural-language understanding, in particular, have captivated the interest of philosophers: linguistic understanding and utterance understanding. While the literature is rife with discussions of linguistic understanding and utterance understanding, the question of how the two types of understanding explanatorily depend on each other has received relatively scant attention. Exceptions include the linguistic ability/know-how views of linguistic understanding proposed by Dean Pettit and Brendan Balcerak Jackson. On these views, to tacitly linguistically understand a sentence just is to possess the linguistic ability/knowledge-how needed to derive/infer what is said by different utterances of the sentence. Despite their focus on linguistic understanding, both views can straightforwardly explain utterance understanding as the output of a derivation/inference from a representation of the sentence uttered. Here, I take issue with these approaches to utterance understanding and then develop an alternative. More specifically, I distinguish two kinds of utterance understanding, experiential and doxastic, and then argue that experiences of what is said by utterances play distinct rational roles in the two kinds of utterance understanding. I conclude by addressing a recent challenge to my proposal.

Understanding democracy in Africa: Concept and praxis

AbstractDemocracy is a political system that has some universal appeal, and, this seems to invest it with some kind of legitimacy over other systems of government. But this in no way suggests that it is homogenously conceived or practiced across the world—particularly in Western and African countries. Yet there is some supposition that some cultures have (almost) perfected their practice of democracy while others are learning its rudiments. This tends to arouse the philosopher's interest in the conceptual and practical bases for the supposition. In African philosophy, the notion of consensus has often been touted as a kernel and mēnsūra for evidence of democracy in traditional African thought. This paper examines the propriety of this move, taking into account the specific positions of the Ghanaian philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. It explores the political dynamics of contemporary Africa and brings out the challenges and prospects for the sort of democracy that is being practiced—or, at least, is said to be practiced—in Africa. It is often debated in African political thought whether consensus or majoritarian rule (characterized by such activities as voting and multipartism) defines democracy, but the paper argues that neither of them really brings about democracy. It then highlights the humanistic end of democracy. Using the Ghanaian experience especially, the paper proposes ways of improving the understanding and practice of democracy in Africa.

Why the turn to matter matters: A response to post-Marxist critiques of new materialism

Theories of new materialism have gained increasing traction in the social and human sciences in recent decades, as thinkers like Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett have reinvigorated the philosophical interest in topics such as the agency of nonhuman matter, the relational nature of existence and the limitations of anthropocentric forms of inquiry. However, these theories have faced criticism from post-Marxist critical theorists, who argue that theories of new materialism blunt social and capitalist critique and promote obscurity by flattening the world to a single ontological plane. In this article, I argue that these critiques rely on mischaracterizations of new materialist scholarship and that theories of new materialism can in fact help us re-examine – not reject, as their critics suggest – the role of critique, responsibility and human politics in the context of the Anthropocene and its unfolding ecological crises.

Joanna Baillie on Sympathetic Curiosity and Elizabeth Hamilton's Critique

Abstract Scholars working on recovering forgotten historical women philosophers have noted the importance of looking beyond traditional philosophical genres. This strategy is particularly important for finding Scottish women philosophers. By considering non-canonical genres, we can see the philosophical interest of the works of Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), who presents an account of “sympathetic curiosity” as one of the basic principles of the human mind. Baillie's work is also interesting for being a rare case of a woman's philosophical work that was discussed in print by another woman philosopher – in this case, by Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816), who argues for the importance of a feature of human nature that she calls the “selfish principle.” The article suggests that focusing on critical engagements between historical women philosophers can help integrate their texts into the history of philosophy without presenting them as “handmaidens” to male philosophers.