Major Philosophers Research Articles

Философските основи на концепцията за изкуството и изкуствознанието на Николай Райнов

The present study is the first attempt to reconstruct the philosophical foundations of Nikolay Raynov's art history conception, developed in particular in the 12 volumes of his History of the Plastic Arts. Although his philosophical views can hardly be separated from the theosophical ones, the author makes a cautious distinction that allows to clarify Nikolay Raynov's selective reception of some of the most important philosophical views on art and art history. The proposed reconstruction aims to show, firstly, that Raynov draws inspiration from major philosophers such as Plato and the Neoplatonists, Bergson, Croce, and Solovyov, and, secondly, that their views stand in the foreground while theosophical ones form rather the general interpretative framework that is always present but not always explicitly stated. The methods of comparative hermeneutics and immanent-critical philosophical analysis are used to clarify Nikolay Raynov's ambivalent attitude toward philosophy, the nature and role of his metaphysical idealism, his interpretation of the multiple forms of realism, his conception of the seven cultural circles, and the basic philosophical components of his synthetic science of plastic arts.

Truth in philosophy: a conceptual engineering approach

The focus of this paper will be to examine the implications that a “practical” approach to conceptual engineering might have for the “traditional” conception of philosophy as uncovering truths about phenomena of philosophical interest. In doing so, I will be building on the ideas of a figure that many take to be the first major philosopher to write on conceptual engineering: Rudolf Carnap. Though the current wave of interest in conceptual engineering goes back less than a decade, many conceptual engineers have found precedent for their views in Carnap’s characterization of what he called “explication.” Interestingly, however, not nearly as much attention has been paid to another Carnapian thesis which seems to me to have deep relevance to methodological questions about conceptual engineering. I have in mind here the distinction between internal and external questions proposed in “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950b) and the accompanying claim that external questions lack cognitive content and can be cogently approached only as a matter of pragmatic decision-making. This is the aspect of Carnap’s views upon which I propose to build. I'll first make the case that there is a suggestive similarity between Carnap’s claim that external questions are matters of pragmatic choice and the practical conceptual engineer’s claim that engineering success should be characterized in terms of suitability to a function or purpose. After that, I'll look at potential worries about the Carnapian distinction—including, e.g., the concern that it relies on the analytic/synthetic distinction. Finally, I will propose a somewhat modified and expanded version of the distinction and examine its consequences for the thesis that philosophy aims at discovering truths about phenomena of philosophical interest.

Developing a Research Design based on the distinction of History from the Social Sciences

The issues of methodology are mainly associated with the concept of authenticity and verification of knowledge which is a key element of epistemology. Since antiquity, various solutions have been proposed and methods were evolved in order to ensure accuracy and truthfulness of the knowledge gained. As far as history was concerned, its methods were evolved in its own epistemological framework in ancient and medieval times. However after the development of philosophy of science in the west, the discipline of history had to face severe methodological crisis. Some major philosophers of history after an evolutionary process rejected the methods of sciences; however the discipline is still somehow related with the social sciences. The present research argues that history is even different, ancient and unique from the social sciences. Thus the methods of research in history are entirely different and building a research design in history is a completely different task. The present research has evaluated the evolution of development of methods in the social sciences as well as in history in order to draw a distinction of social sciences from history. The study further proposed a historical research design which is based on the traditional methods of research in history; and which also ensures maximum authenticity by using tools of reliability. The study will help the historians to highlight the actual methodological nature of their discipline and to justify the claims of their researches as authentic and different from the rest of the social sciences at the same time. 

Infinity and the Possibility of Metaphysics. The Debate on Kant's Antinomies in France (1850s-­1920s)

The article focuses on a neglected chapter in the French reception of Kant: the debate on antinomies. Initially understood, by Victor Cousin's eclecticism, as symbolizing the abstractness of the Kantian system, antinomies were the focus of cogent interpretations in the second half of the nineteenth century. The debate that arose following Charles Renouvier's solution, based on the rejection of the mathematical notion of actual infinity, was intense, involving major philosophers of the time, such as François Evellin, Louis Couturat, Henri Bergson and Léon Brunschvicg. The stakes were decisive: the nature of reason, the relationship between philosophy and science, and the possibility of a positive metaphysics. The Author reconstructs and analyzes the various interpretations, showing how the debate on antinomies played a decisive role in the formation of French philosophy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Суарес Франсиско

The material on the philosophy and theology of Francisco Suarez is collected and analyzed: Suarez's life path is presented, his works are described in detail, including the chronology of their publication and problems, Suarez's contribution to the dogmatic theology of Catholicism, philosophical psychology, metaphysics and philosophical theology as a separate part of metaphysics is summarized. The influence of Suarez's thought on the major philosophers of Modern times is shown.

SYMPHONIC COMPOSITIONS IN THE LITERARY AND EPISTOLARY HERITAGE OF HRYHORII SKOVORODA

The article explores the phenomenon of symphonism in the written and other intellectual heritage of Hryhorii Skovoroda. The study reveals that the conclusion about systemic symphonismbeing a property of the thinker’s reflections can only be hypothetical at this stage. This is due tothe fact that the source base of the present study includes a significant number of diverse works by the philosopher that have not yet received a proper archaeographic description. The matter of archaeographic description of sources in the history of philosophy research in Ukraine has not yet been positively resolved and is still in its formation. This article briefly presents the problematic range of source studies of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s works. It is, however, not limited to the suggested list and tends to expand. With this circumstance in mind, the boundaries of the research were limited to a selection of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s letters to various persons, which is contained in the most representative academic printed edition of his writings available today. The distinctive features of understanding the source heritage of the philosopher include its genre character and the way it was disseminated. All the major philosopher’s works were personally handwritten or replicated by other copyists in lists. This circumstance causes considerable difficulties in verifying the accuracy of the content of the original manuscript source in print. The presentation of the material is intentionally not systematic, but illustrative. The selection of extractsfrom the philosopher’s works contains the most distinctive examples of symphonicity, which illustrate the panorama of the growth of symphonic complexes from simpler to quantitatively more complex. The inherent polemical core of the study is to establish the correspondence between systemic symphonicity and dialogicity of the philosopher’s style of thinking. The conclusions about this could be drawn on the basis of historical and philosophical explication from certain sources. The author suggests that the development of dialogicity is preceded by a thorough justification of the principle of proper thinking by Hryhorii Skovoroda, which has a complex symphonic structure. From this perspective, dialogism does not contradict the fundamental symphonicity, but is rather one of its manifestations.

Sembilan Nilai Utama Gus Dur Perspektif Etika Ibnu Miskawaih

K.H. Abdurrohman Wahid or who is familiar with the name Gus Dur is an important figure in Indonesia. Gus Dur is a figure who represents the santri group with its salaf traditions and also the intellectuals in the world of academia. People who loved Gus Dur voluntarily set up organizations or forums to channel aspirations and explore Gus Dur's values. So that in the teachings of the Gus Durian community there is the term Gus Dur's nine main values. These nine main values ​​are the hallmark and identity of the Gus Durian community. These nine main values ​​are the efforts of the Gus Durian community to find and formulate the values ​​of Gus Dur's struggle. Gus Dur's nine main values ​​are monotheism, humanity, justice, equality, liberation, simplicity, brotherhood, chivalry, and local wisdom. Gus Dur's nine main values ​​are ethical teachings practiced by Gus Dur to defend minorities. Gus Dur's teachings are very relevant to the ethical teachings of Ibn Miskawaih. Ibn Miskawaih himself is a major philosopher in Islam whose style of thought is influenced by Islamic religious concepts and Greek philosophical concepts. With these two features, Ibn Miskawaih's philosophy is comprehensive, especially in terms of ethics. The ethical teachings focus on understanding and cultivating character when carrying out an action. His views on ethics are related to human virtues, namely morals. This morality is divided into three parts, namely: wisdom, courage and chastity. These three virtues are born from a just attitude. Thus, there is compatibility between Gus Dur's teachings through Gus Dur's nine main values ​​and the ethical teachings of Ibn Miskawaih. Thus it can be concluded that there is a relationship between Gus Dur's nine main values ​​and the ethical teachings of Ibn Miskawaih.

LIVING ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY: Reflection on Mulyadhi Kartanegara's Thought

This study elaborates Mulyadhi Kartanegara's thoughts regarding the continuity of Islamic philosophy after the Ibn Rushd era. This research is a case study-based qualitative research using a review on Kartanegara's travel notes and research reports as the object. This research also uses other relevant studies to understand Kartanegara’s big idea. This study concludes that, although the idea on Islamic Philosophy does not perish in the Iranian region has been a thesis recognized by many researchers, Kartanegara explore further the dynamics of Islamic philosophical traditions in Iran since the post-Ibn Rushd era. He was dissatisfied with the explanations of many experts who emphasized the elaboration of a prominent philosopher, Mullâ Sadrâ, while ignoring the role of minor philosophers in supporting the continuity of the Islamic philosophical tradition in Iran. This research found, Kartanegara could construct the argument that Islamic philosophy is a living tradition marked by the continuity of ideas developed by minor and major philosophers. Mulyadhi also showed that Islamic philosophy has relevance for overcoming contemporary challenges, primarily related to the problem of knowledge production.

Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime by Lesley Chamberlain

Reviewed by: Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime by Lesley Chamberlain Jeremy Best Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime. By Lesley Chamberlain. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. Pp. 237. Cloth $40.00. ISBN 978-1789144949. Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime details a survey history of philosophical thought in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At various times in Lesley Chamberlain’s book, she stresses that philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Hannah Arendt struggled to answer a trio of questions raised by the forces of modernity: how to manage liberal, capitalist social relations; technological change and innovation; and the fate of reason itself. [End Page 322] The sections of the book lay out in detail the various interventions and suppositions made by major philosophers of Germany’s early twentieth century to answer these questions. Organized in a basically chronological order, the book conforms to the titular lifetime of Adolf Hitler and begins roughly in 1889 and continues to 1945. An introductory chapter opens the book and then the narrative proceeds to a second chapter detailing the social, economic, and urban transformations of Germany as perceived by philosophers like Georg Simmel and Siegfried Kracauer. The next chapter discusses “Kantianism” in Germany and twentieth-century attempts to adapt what Chamberlain emphasizes was an eighteenth-century philosophy to urban industrial life. Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl figure prominently in this chapter. The most substantial chapter, the fourth, discusses the thought of key figures including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Arendt of the Frankfurt School along with Martin Heidegger. Chamberlain details their engagement with the crisis of modernity and philosophy posed by the Weimar and Nazi period. The concluding chapter attempts to show that the philosophy that came out of this period, particularly from the Frankfurt School and its affiliates, was a “positive outcome,” a remnant of a lost German tradition. The book ends with two appendices, one on Kant’s relevance to National Socialism and one on the experiences of philosophers during the Third Reich. The strengths of Chamberlain’s book lie in its intense and erudite interest in the thought and lives of the philosophers detailed in the book. For a reader unfamiliar with the corpus, this book provides a useful overview of the era’s major ideas and their interconnections. Chamberlain’s overview of Simmel and Arendt, in chapters two and four, respectively, are of noteworthy quality. These virtues mean that Street Life and Morals would be especially suitable for an educated, non-academic reader who desires to understand the history of philosophical ideas in Germany during the Interwar period. Similarly, a scholar seeking a general overview for reference would benefit from the text. Disappointingly, the book examines the crisis of philosophical confidence and sensibility during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries without satisfactorily showing the connections to the wider social and political crisis that lay at the root of the Nazis’ ascendance. Reading the book’s chapters is to immerse oneself in a traditional history of ideas; a discussion of philosophers, their lives and ideas, and their relationships. Only infrequently does Chamberlain connect the wider historical context of Weimar Germany and the Third Reich to these histories. It reduces the lifetime and impact of Adolf Hitler on Germany to little more than a framing device. It would have been highly productive to have the shifts and changes in the ideas of Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, or others connected to the rapidly and radically shifting social, political, and cultural history playing out in Germany at the time. Nor does Chamberlain bring in the extensive scholarship on the intellectual lives of German [End Page 323] academics and cultural figures during the Weimar era. These weaknesses limit the book’s utility for historians and cultural scholars of the period who are not expressly interested in one, some, or all of the philosophers that Chamberlain examines. The approach and tone of the book are uneven when read from an academic perspective. Frequently, Chamberlain inserts herself into the narrative with critiques of the quality of a philosopher’s prose or similar asides. In fact, this approach reinforces the general...

The Ideological Legacy of Nikolai Bukharin in Russian and Foreign Historiography: a Brief Overview

The article is a brief overview of domestic and foreign works of various subjects and formats, the subject of attention in which were the ideas and works of N. I. Bukharin, a major philosopher, publicist, Soviet statesman, in various fields - in economics, party and state building, in Marxist theory, culture and art. The article examines works ranging from the earliest, created during Bukharin's lifetime, by his associates and opponents from among domestic and foreign political figures, philosophers, ideologists, and ending with scientific and journalistic works of our time. The article also highlights the main features of Soviet historiography of different periods in relation to the consideration of Bukharin's ideas in different fields.

„Rasse“ und Naturteleologie bei Kant

AbstractImmanuel Kant is, famously, not only the major philosopher of European enlightenment, but also one of the first philosophers to develop a philosophical theory of “human races”. How do these two sides of Kant relate to each other? What is the significance of race in Kant’s philosophy? In this article, we aim to discuss these questions by taking (1st) a close look into the conceptual and philosophical presuppositions underlying Kant’s understanding of race; relating them (2nd) to the concept of teleology as developed by Kant in theCritique of Judgementand to the idea of natural history that can be derived from there. In the last two chapters (3rdand 4th), we intertwine both perspectives in such a way that, on the one hand, we can determine the philosophical significance of race for Kant, and, on the other hand, show how a race-sensible perspective gives new and critical insight into Kant’s concept of reason.

The limits of viability of extremely preterm infants

Shaeffer and Avery’s textbook, Diseases of the Newborn (1971), estimated the limit of viability to be around 28 weeks’ gestation and/or 1000 g. Contemporarily, however, attempts are being made to resuscitate infants as early as 22 weeks’ gestation. Clearly the “limit of viability” is a moving target, and the acceptable risk of intervening to attempt to “save” these small infants/fetuses is a value judgment and not one that can be answered by science. Even though the dilemma is not one that can be resolved empirically, the emphasis on resolution continues to be one of demands for “further research” by critics as well as advocates for the care of these small infants. Patrick Romanell (1912–2002) was a major philosopher in the critical naturalist movement in the United States and internationally. His observations on the tragic quality of human life and the dilemmas associated between the conflicts of good vs good rather than the epic quality of good vs evil lend themselves well to understanding the conflicts involved in determining the limits of viability of extremely preterm infants.

Towards the History of Perception of György Lukács’ Work in the USSR on the Base of Correspondence from the Late 1940s to the 1960s

György Lukács (1885—1971), who after a long spiritual quest came to Marxism in the late 1910s, left his mark on the history of European thought in the 20th century as a major philosopher and literary critic, whose most important works of different decades (“History and class consciousness”, “Young Hegel”, “The originality of the aesthetic”, etc.) caused a wide international response. This publication focuses on the lifetime perception of Lukacs’ work in the USSR in the mirror of his correspondence from the second half of the 1940s to the end of the 1960s. Although Lukacs returned to his native Budapest in 1945, he was well remembered in the USSR as a person who spent a long time in Soviet emigration (1930—1931, 1933—1945) and actively participated in literary and philosophical life. The discussion of the late 1930s, initiated by his work “On the History of Realism”, was especially memorable for the Soviet humanitarian intelligentsia.

Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction by David Riddle Watson

Reviewed by: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction by David Riddle Watson Clare Rolens David Riddle Watson, Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 235 pp. Detective fiction criticism often views a detective's ability to absolutely solve the mystery as problematic or banal. The Hercule Poirots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is argued, provide closure that reinforces a dominant order, and serve as a foil in studies of more dynamic, subversive detectives. The scholar of detective fiction tends to be wary of a mystery tied up in a neat little package. David Riddle Watson, in Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction, begs to differ. Outlining the merits of closure and restoration of order, Watson's argument betrays a nostalgia not for the particular order that Victorian and Golden Age detectives restored, but for any order at all. Whereas Poe's Dupin and Conan Doyle's Holmes lived in a world where detective, sidekick, police, and suspects could agree on a stable sense of truth, contemporary America is fractured into competing versions of reality without a shared consensus on what is true, or even what is truth. We need to be better detectives, the aptly named Watson suggests. Watson is worried not just about consensus concerning the philosophical nature of truth as a theoretical exercise, but about the survival of our democracy. The book investigates the concept of truth from the first modern detective stories in the 1840s to the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building in 2021. The remarkable preface begins with the author enduring a long stay in the hospital. With little to do but watch the news, worry about the state of the nation, and contemplate the dissertation that he wasn't sure he'd ever get to finish, it came to him: "I would use detective novels as a way to discuss … the assumptions that were being made about truth throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. In this way, the texts were picked as a means to explore a philosophical argument about the truth that I want to make" (ix). This last point is important; the book's focus is narrative representations of the search for truth that can help us understand how we have moved into a post-truth mind-set. Indeed, American detective "fiction" named in the title also misses one of the strengths of the book, that is, compelling interpretation of fictional and non-fictional detection as connected. The impressively ambitious project provides a short history of truth according to major philosophers. Watson connects this history to elements of arguably the first modern detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and especially those starring C. Auguste Dupin. "Detectives model the search for truth" (2), and we can see how ideas have changed throughout literary periods "moving from one end of the spectrum where truth is conceived of as a certainty, to the other end, where truth is considered [End Page 501] relative to the interpreter's desires" (23) in the contemporary era. There is overlap; postmodern ideas show up in the margins of modernism, and vice versa. But a common understanding of truth allows the non-postmodern Dupin to access "the interior lives of others" to reach a solution, continuing to a lesser degree even up to the hard-boiled school in the 1930s. Moving to the 1950s, Watson argues that two particular elements of the early Cold War, namely, "the compartmentalization of knowledge along with the classification of state secrets," fueled a growing distrust in government, whose "every statement must be interpreted ironically, as every potential signal, could in fact be noise" (47). This culture of doubt and suspicion is evident in the anti-Communist Mickey Spillane, as well as in the more recent work of journalistic detection, Nicholson Baker's Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. In the 1960s we find emphasis on the role of language in postmodern narratives of detection, or more often, anti-detection. In the hands of Thomas Pynchon, "truth itself is no longer a thing that is found or discovered...

Alienación y nihilismo en la “sociedad opulenta”. La actualidad de Augusto Del Noce

Del Noce’s thought unravels over several decades on the stimulation of the great historical events in the 20th century (Totalitarianism, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Second Vatican Council, the Historic Compromise in Italy, etc.). Del Noce tackles the major philosophers of his time in this long journey of meditation: from Maritain to Gilson, from Gentile to Gramsci, from Löwith to Lukács and from Voegelin to Croce, not forgetting the dialogue with the classics from Descartes to Rosmini, and Marx to Gioberti. In this paper, I will concentrate mainly on his reflections around the so-called “affluent society” where he has gathered together, prophetically, those nihilist and anti-Christian traits which we are now experimenting in all their dramatic power.

Isaiah Berlin and the Animal Instinct

Between Aristotle and Hegel, none of the major Western philosophers were married. Is abstract thinking, at its highest, incompatible with the messiness of everyday life? At the age of nineteen, Isaiah Berlin said he was ‘vowed to eternal celibacy’. Was there a connection between his sexual abstinence and his choice of analytical philosophy as a career? During World War II he fell in love with the gentile Patricia de Bendern; this frustrating affair coincided with Berlin’s shift from abstract logic to the history of ideas. In 1956 he took a Jewish bride, Aline Halban. His personal history reflects difficulties in choosing between endogamy and exogamy, Zionism and the diaspora, negative and positive liberty.

Guay , Robert Dostoevsky's ‘Crime and Punishment’: Philosophical Perspectives (review)

Slavonic and East European Review, 99, 1, 2021 Reviews Guay, Robert (ed.). Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford Studies in Philosophy and Literature. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2019. xv + 220 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £64.00; £16.99. The chief ‘effort’ of the series in which this volume appears is, in the words of general editor Richard Eldridge, ‘to track the work of open thinking in literary forms, as they lie both neighbor to and aslant from philosophy’ (p. xi). With this in mind, the choice of Crime and Punishment as the first text from the Russian canon to be featured in the series seems both obvious and ambitious. As Robert Guay comments in his Introduction, and as Raskol´nikov, Porfirii and Sonia (the three protagonists of these essays) are only too aware, the theoretical aspects of the novel are built around ‘poor arguments that are ineffectual in shaping beliefs and actions’ (p. 3). Crime and Punishment does not even make it clear ‘what the thought experiments are or when they begin or end, if they ever do’ (p. 3) — in contrast, say, to Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov. Yet it is precisely this lack of beginnings and ends — the mysteries of motivation and agency at the heart of the novel, its overriding concern with mind and language — that compels the interest of the philosophers who have contributed five of the volume’s seven chapters. The arguments of these chapters defy brief summary, but the contours of their concerns may at least be sketched. In his account of Dostoevskii’s representation of mind, Garry L. Hagberg is especially interested in (and perceptive about) the ‘torrent of submerged meaning’ (p. 33) in Porfirii’s language, an aspect which Hagberg studies more broadly in terms of the novel’s repertoire of gestures, facial expressions, tone and implication, permitting himself the parenthetical provocation that ‘the philosophy of language forgets what Dostoevskii is showing about linguistic expressivity in this novel to its peril’ (p. 26). In his chapter, Guay explores related concerns, arguing that the novel ‘treat[s] agency as expressive’ and that Raskol´nikov’s agency, whether he wishes this or not, requires ‘the ability to make the deed his own’ (p. 72). However, several of Guay’s own categorical claims — for example, that ‘All the characters in the novel fail as agents’ (p. 88) or that agency is only available through transgression (Razumikhin, Dunia, Sonia, Porfirii?) — are hard to accept, and indeed are contradicted by other chapters in the volume that marshal textual evidence more persuasively. One such chapter is Rick Anthony Furtak’s decidedly sunny-side-up take on Dostoevskii’s treatment of ‘Love, Suffering, and Gratitude for Existence’, which convincingly (if not innovatively) traces Raskol´nikov’s evolution and self-recognition to his acceptance of Sonia’s love and his love for her. Furtak is especially strong on the distinctive psychological and spiritual REVIEWS 159 feature of Sonia, one that makes of her a rather more credible character than the conventional criticisms allow. After comparing her aptly to Alesha Karamazov, Furtak comments that ‘Her faith […] is a kind of existential trust that sustains her wholehearted participation in the finite realm of her cares and concerns’ (p. 63). Trust and care are also at the centre of the chapter on ‘The Family in Crime and Punishment’, supplied by the Slavist Susanne Fusso. Healthy family life, as the novel makes abundantly clear, is precisely what Dostoevskii’s St Petersburg cannot offer its denizens, but Fusso subtly illuminates the ways that ‘noncoercive ’, ‘voluntary familial care’ (p. 139) is extended by some of its characters, notably Raskol´nikov and Razumikhin, to those outside their biological families. With his imaginative ability ‘to explore family relations in all their multifariousness, transcending the “woman question”’ (p. 144), Dostoevskii thus manages to suggest, beneath the surface of the novel, his response to the critiques of traditional family relations prevalent in his time, whether in the writings of his chief intellectual antagonist Chernyshevskii or of his main amatory antagonist Apollinaria Suslova, whose stories, first published by Dostoevskii, are skilfully treated here. Thevolume’sthreemostarrestingcontributionsbringCrimeandPunishment into sustained dialogue with a major philosopher — in two...

Theoretical and philosophical approaches of Russian management thought to the correlation of occupational reasonability and human factor

One of the fundamental problems in management is the issue of correlation of occupational rationality and human factor. The highest recognition of this issue was achieved in the Russian management thought in the early 1900s. The authors have concentrated their attention on the Russian management thought, since it is studied less in comparison with classical Western management schools. This article analyzes the works by the major philosophers and theoreticians of management, their approaches and attitudes to the mentioned issue are considered, the main results of conferences on scientific organization of labor held in the USSR are studied. The main aim of the article is retrospective analysis and systematization of approaches of the Russian scientists to the correlation between occupational rationality and human capital. The results of the study are arranged in the form of correlation matrix of various sides and attitudes on this issue in the works by various Russian philosophers of management. It should be mentioned that solution to this problem is relevant at present, since digitization minimizes the significance and opportunities of human factor.

Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History by Thomas P. Kasulis

Reviewed by: Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History by Thomas P. Kasulis Mara Miller Thomas P. Kasulis, Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018; Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. 773 pages, including 696 pages of expository text; map, notes, bibliography, index, photographs; ISBN: 9780824874070; paperback, alk. paper If you have not already done so, read this book. Especially if you are interested in philosophy, or Japan. And whether you are a specialist in Japanese philosophy or not. Though not necessarily in one sitting; most of you will want to take your time with it. (At 750 pages, the subtitle can only be ironic, even given that it covers fourteen centuries.) I can't argue that it's a quick read, but it is engaging—to employ the vernacular meaning side of the philosophical term of the title—and at times it's downright entertaining, particularly some of the biographies and certainly the author's personal experiences (regrettably, fewer than this reader would have liked). It seamlessly integrates political history, cultural history, biography, and philosophy with the views of major (and dozens of minor) philosophers and the most important currents of Japanese philosophy (including Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, and over the past century or more, various schools of Western philosophy) and the work by individual philosophers. The text is supplemented by black and white photographs (of gardens, architecture, paintings, and sculpture); diagrams (Four Views of Relations, 26; Philosophical Themes Built on Internal Relations, 28; Reality as External Relations, 32; Internally Related Whole and Holographic Whole, 33; Identity without Substance, 184; Self ("I") and Amida according to Shinran, 195); one chart of the Buddhist schools, their texts, and general orientation, 94; and sketches of Kūkai, Shinran, Dōgen, Ogyū Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitarō, and Watsuji Tetsurō. Kasulis is not only a deeply knowledgeable and insightful philosopher, but a wonderful writer, easy on the ear, with a conversational style and a gift for clarity regardless of the abstruseness of the ideas presented. And to engage with the thinkers Kasulis has chosen for in-depth analysis, Kūkai, [End Page 105] Shinran, Dōgen, Ogyū Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitarō, and Watsuji Tetsurō—to engage with Kasulis himself, as he allows us to do—is to remember why one cares about philosophy in the first place. What Does This Book Do? This book does seven things. First, though it is not exhaustive, it provides a survey of Japanese philosophy, introducing readers to fourteen hundred years of major schools and over a hundred thinkers, covering seven or eight of them in depth and with reference to a large number of themes, especially those related to his main argument (see number six below), themes including engagement, knowledge, action, language and translation, being, nothingness/emptiness, transience/death/suffering, and others. As the current worldwide popularity of some forms of Buddhism suggests, many of these issues are as alive today as they ever were—perhaps more as we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic. Reading the book and writing this review during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself—I can only say—grateful for the opportunity to reconnect through Kasulis's findings with Buddhist texts, philosophers, and ideas I have long been familiar with but now find more pertinent, useful, comprehensible, and insightful. Revealing implicit unities within Japanese philosophy (361), Engaging Japanese Philosophy (hereafter EJP) explores the work not just as individual bodies of thought but as an organic set of often-integrated movements (though not all the thinkers were aware of each other). At the same time, it does justice to the disagreements, divergences, and disjunctures within Japanese philosophy. Those who seek either such an overall view or an in-depth study of certain components will find it welcome and, for a history of philosophy, unusually easy to use. Second, it provides an introduction to Japanese culture, expanding on much of the work Kasulis did in his 1981 Zen Person, Zen Action; his 2002 Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference; and his 2004 Shinto: The Way Home (all University of Hawai'i Press). As a professor not only of philosophy but of...

Понятие искусственного интеллекта и его перспективы с точки зрения философии Живой Этики

The article considers the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) using categories and basic principles of the consciousness theory developed in the Living Ethics (LE). The latter is a modern form of the ancient tradition of exploring conscious­ness in Indian philosophy and spiritual practice. Categorial apparatus of Indian philosophy contains rich variety of distinction which may be successfully imple­mented also in the modern cognitive researches. The article shows that more pre­cise definitions of the basic concepts allow to fulfill strict delimitation between “strong” and “weak” AI as well as between what is possible and what completely impossible regarding AI. Strong AI in a sense of possessing “subjective presenta­tions” appears to be impossible. But, a deeper understanding of nature of con­sciousness in LE allows to move the limits of what is considered as possible for the weak AI. First, LE asserts mechanical mode of operation underlying the most of intellectual operations. Hence, even “weak AI” may fulfill many functions which were before attributed only to “strong AI”. Second, LE defines conscious­ness and intelligence as inherent inner potential powers of material systems, manifesting also in their ability and tendency to self-organization. Therefore, some features of “artificial” intelligence may be reconsidered as manifestations of intrinsic “intelligence” of matter, which also implies wider possibilities for AI systems. Some parallels appear with major Western philosophers such as G. Bruno, Leibnitz, H. Bergson, E. Husserl, including recent approaches of N. Luhmann’s systems theory and B. Latour’s actor-network theory