Materialism Research Articles

Schopenhauer in Jack Londons The Sea-Wolf: A Comparative Analysis

As a notable work of American nautical fiction, The Sea-Wolf is a defining work of the novelist Jack London in his early career, paving the way for his future adventurous novels, including The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and White Fang. This comparative study aims to inquire on Schopenhauerian philosophys affinities with Londons The Sea-Wolf by examining the antagonist, Wolf Larsens materialistic philosophy, and investigating Larsen as a Schopenhauerian genius and his controversial characterization as a Nietzschean bermensch.

Conspiracy Theory Belief and Education: A Critical Social Analysis

Research on conspiracy theories has revealed a significant association between conspiratorial thinking and education. The relationship is complex, however, and has so far been limited primarily to investigations of personal psychological attributes. This paper argues, instead, in favour of a broader social research perspective, specifically, one informed by a dialectical materialist philosophy. A secondary analysis of publicly available international data sourced from economic institutions and other organisations on conspiratorial belief, educational performance measures, unemployment, inequality and corruption perception was carried out. Conspiratorial belief was taken as a collective public epistemological phenomenon across countries, to explore the role of contemporary education systems across societies, and the degree to which they are successfully nurturing an effective form of critical thinking. A dialectical materialist philosophical approach was instrumental in formulating the study scope and interpreting the findings, given the use of countries as the fundamental unit of analysis. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and education, taking into account social context using unemployment, inequality, and corruption as control variables. The findings showed that the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and education held at the societal level, and was mediated by additional social factors. The paper goes on to argue, by virtue of the nature of the mediators, that education systems generally tend to fall short of effective and socially-engaged forms of critical pedagogy.

The Phenomenon of Legal Awareness: Historical and Philosophical Reception in the Context of Educational Problems

The study of the legal awareness in the educational space presumes its exposition as a universal phenomenon. This phenomenon combines two mutually agreed aspects. One aspect includes the theory of the legal awareness, that is determined with the philosophical reception of such concepts as the natural right and the positive right. The another aspect concerns the practical forms, that help to realize the legal awareness in the educational space by means of the creation of the special educational environment. The theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of the legal awareness shows the complexity of this problem, that connects legal and social sides of the phenomenon. The mutual integration of this directions is possible only on the theoretical level and basis on the grounds of the idealist philosophy by Kant, Hegel, Ilijin. The another possibility of such exposition gives the materialist philosophy primarily the marxism. This state can be explained with the antinomy of the phenomenon of the legal awareness. This antinomy allows the situations, when the special features of the phenomenon do not correspond with each other, but its unity keeps safer. This unity keeps safer by means of the theory of the reflection, that accentuates the material external world. The another way of the realization of this unity is connected with the idealist philosophy, that considers the legal awareness as the special structure- third option that corresponds with the human personality as the potency and the educational environment only realizes this third option. The modern theories of forming of educational environment in the educational space, created by V. V. Rubzov, V. A. Jasvin, V.I. Svobodchikov, V. I. Panov integrate this two approaches and emphasize the dialogical features of educational environment and do not reduce it to the ideal or material grounds.

Review: Christ Returns from the Jungle: Ayahuasca Religion as Mystical Healing, by Marc G. Blainey

Review: <i>Christ Returns from the Jungle: Ayahuasca Religion as Mystical Healing</i>, by Marc G. Blainey

KHMER ART SAMPLINGS: IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF INDIAN KNOWLEDGE THROUGH HINDU DIVINITIES

The importance of the medieval art history of Southeast Asia is still a virgin site, which needs to be explored with multi-disciplinary approach and methodology. The transcultural aspects between India and Southeast Asia from ancient to late medieval period cannot be contemplated through a single medium, it need to be analyzed from various angles through religious sources, philosophical materials and visual contents. The main focus of the present study is on interlinks of religious arts. Few iconographical sample forms from the various monuments of Angkor are taken for critical analysis, such as Śeṣaśāyī, Vamana, Kāḷiyamardana and Dance of Śiva. The common designs in iconographic cornice will have to be recognized in comparative religious studies, getting beyond the shackles of spirituality if we are to discover the ancient heritages. There is no much deviation in representation of the Buddhist and Hindu imagery in India and Southeast Asia but the localization is visually sensed. The cultural links of ancient Indian Knowledge System between Southeast Asia, China and Japan is entangled in the annals of the history.

Can a Materialistic Philosophy Produce a Moral System? "Epicurean Model"

The main problem in this research was the answer to the question posed about the possibility of the existence of an ethical system based on a materialistic philosophy and not on an idealistic and metaphysical philosophy as was customary in establishing ethical systems. It has nothing to do with idealism or metaphysics. Rather, Democritus adopts the atomic materialist philosophy as its theoretical basis and does not depend on reason or divine laws as a criterion and judgment in moral issues, but rather nature, the sense of pleasure and the avoidance of pain as a spontaneous judgment of human and animal life alike. Herefore, this philosophy resorts to liberating man from the fear of death and the fear of the gods, so that this fear and anxiety do not spoil human life and deprive him of enjoying life itself. We have revealed in this research that the pleasure that the Epicureans are talking about is mainly the pleasure of the stomach, but it is not a reckless and exaggerated pleasure, but rather a pleasure that seeks simplicity and seeks to establish a calm life that is not disturbed by the pain resulting from the pursuit of more pleasures, the results of which are greater pain. The Greek philosopher Epicurus, who lived in the fourth century BC and a contemporary of both the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the philosopher Zeno, the founder of Stoicism that opposed his philosophical school, had established Epicureanism in Athens, Greece, to respond to the questions of the Greek public about the necessities of the historical stage and the decline of civilization after the death of AlexanderMacedonian in 324 BC.

Ecologies of care: drawing//cleaning interiors

Whilst gender has been critical to the analysis and understanding of the consumption of lived, often domestic, interiors, the analysis of a gendered practice of production has been much less considered. Through the work of feminist philosophers Elizabeth Grosz and Karen Barad, corporeal feminism and new materialist philosophy, and relatively new technologies such as the LiDAR scanner and embodied drawing methods, or through the daily acts of cleaning, I aim to reconfigure the structures and material practices through which interiors are produced, experienced and reproduced. Wymering Manor, a sixteenth century house in Cosham, UK, is used as a case study to reconfigure the drawing practices through which interiors are made. The house provides a space of cultural and historical “affect” in the middle of a suburban setting where local people are invited to engage through volunteering or as an audience member to one of its varied events. The volunteers are drawn into the house looking to connect with others, with history and the pleasure of being in a historic building. Through the collective daily acts as hoovering, taking tours, dusting, making tea and decorating, they embody the manor. As a result of the repetition of these gestures, the house becomes part of those that visit it.

Derrida’s Speculative Materialism/Marxism’s Promethean Scientism

This paper examines the relationship between deconstruction and Marxism by turning to recent attempts to read Derrida as a materialist philosopher. Following Martin Hägglund, I propose that Derrida’s critique of logocentrism implies a commitment to certain seemingly materialistic philosophical positions, most importantly, the radical foreclosure of an entity exempt from a transcendental field of differences. However, Derrida’s materialism remains speculative to the extent that it results in a philosophy of infinite finitude itself premised upon a transcendental style of argumentation excluded from scientific verification or falsification. By contrast, I suggest that Marxism with its commitment to Promethean scientism—the claim that all limits on human theory and practice are relative and subject to possible transformation—offers a more radical form of philosophical materialism.

Orthodox Schools of Indian Philosophy

The Indian Philosophy is regarded as the most mature philosophy in the world. Its approach towards the quest regarding creation, the Almighty and Salvation, makes it unique among others. All the six darśanas namely, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, provide a different and exclusive angle to the answers of the philosophical quest. The deep insights into these concepts by various sages and scholars, gave birth to various sub-schools, showcasing the divine intellectual prowess of Sanātana Dharma. The present paper communicates in a bird eye of all the 6 darśanas for an aspirant to choose the most suitable one for his salvation. Through this paper, we can come to a conclusion that the last darśana, that is Vedānta provides an amicable solution to current day aspirants. It gives a practical and more easy path of salvation through devotion.

ATOMISM, «SUMMA THEOLOGICA» AND B. LIBET’S EXPERIMENTS:CONTRADICTIONS IN SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF THE SUBJECT’S FREE WILL

The article deals with the contradictions that arise when solving the problem of the subject’s freewill. A thesis is put forward that these contradictions are caused by the discrepancy between the views on free will and the ontological foundations from which they are derived. This thesis is consistently proved on the basis of both the historical and philosophical material and the modern discussion that unfolded after the discoveries of B. Libet and his followers. An analysis of the ideas of Thomas Aquinas reveals a num-ber of insurmountable contradictions indicating the impossibility of combining the free will of a subject and the theological principle of providentialism. The approaches of the philosophers of the Renaissance and the New Age to the indicated problem are considered, these being associated with an attempt to over-come this contradiction and again turn philosophical thought to natural philosophy. The dialectical ap-proach of Immanuel Kant is presented as taking a certain step toward resolving the contradictions through linking free will with the concept of morality and duty. The philosophical interpretation of B.Libet’s ex-periments is analyzed and the idea of conscious decisions of a person as determined by the activity of his neurons is refuted. Such an erroneous thesis is derived from the «flat ontology»paradigm. The popularity of this approach is due to the difficulty in resolving the psychophysiological problem and the lack of un-derstanding of the mechanisms for the transition of biologically determined processes of the material sub-strate to the field of the ideal. The groundlessness of sucha conclusion is explained by biological reduc-tion and the vulgar materialistic approach of modern authors, similar to the ideas of Democritus or Epicu-rus, who derived free will from the movement of atoms. All the examples considered in the article clearly demonstrate the fallacy of attempts to derive free will or its absence from something external to a person. The thesis that free will must be immanently inherent in man is substantiated. To solve the problem of free will, it is necessary not only to rely on the data of scientific discoveries but also to approach their interpretation dialectically.

The power of time in lyrical poetry by Per Atterbom and Viktor Rydberg

The article focuses on the concept of time in human and global perspective in the poetry of two Swedish authors of the 19th century: Per Atterbom and Viktor Rydberg. These two poets belong to different branches of the Romantic movement. Atterbom represents the early mystic Romanticism and he is one of the first Romantic authors in Sweden. Rydberg is a post-Romantic poet: his poetic works contain features that are characteristic of the literature of Romanticism, but they were written in the last decades of the century. The theme of the power of time is one of the most important for both authors, it determines characters of lyrical heroes and poetics in many of their poems but in different ways. Atterbom represents the destructive power of time. Thus, the main characters of his fairy tale play “The Isle of Bliss”, Hyperborean king Astolf and nymph Felicia, live on a magical island and aspire to escape from Time, but Time overcomes them. Atterbom shows in his poetry that time hasn’t its limits in the world beyond. Rydberg represents the characters who try to apprehend the rules of time. The immortal mythological creatures in his poems (the Tomten, the elf of a river) cannot explain why time has such an influence on man and mankind. This theme corresponds with a philosophical matter of the meaning of human life. The humans in Rydberg’s lyrics do not try to overcome time as they perceive the nature and its rules throw their senses.

From Platonic Gesture to the Theory of Discourses. On Some Unplublished Notes by Badiou on Philosophical Discourse

This article will examine some theses that Badiou developed in the first period of his philosophy, when he was close to the theoretical horizon of Althusserianism. The article traces a route back from the Manifesto for Philosophy to some yet unpublished notes, dating from the late Sixties, on an aborted collective project on materialist philosophy. While, according to the later Badiou – who is also the most well-known – contemporary philosophical discourse should recover the Platonic gesture after Heidegger, it will be shown that the early Badiou, by debating the nature of the Platonic gesture with Macherey, seems to conceptualise philosophical discourse and its function under the inseparable link of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. The article ends with some open questions for a possible theory of discourse that would build on Badiou’s theoretical insights.

From Platonic Gesture to the theory of Discourses. On Some Unpublished Notes by Badiou on Philosophical Discourse.

This article will examine some theses that Badiou developed in the first period of his philosophy, when he was close to the theoretical horizon of Althusserianism. The article traces a route back from the Manifesto for Philosophy to some yet unpublished notes, dating from the late Sixties, on an aborted collective project on materialist philosophy. While, according to the later Badiou – who is also the most well-known – contemporary philosophical discourse should recover the Platonic gesture after Heidegger, it will be shown that the early Badiou, by debating the nature of the Platonic gesture with Macherey, seems to conceptualise philosophical discourse and its function under the inseparable link of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. The article ends with some open questions for a possible theory of discourse that would build on Badiou’s theoretical insights.

Dialectical Materialism and its Theory of Knowledge

This article explores the basic tenets of dialectical materialism and its theory of knowledge. Itis relevant to identifying the basics of dialectical materialistic philosophy and its cognitive theory. The article addresses the research problems concerning the primacy of thought or matter, the acceptance of the concept of the immutability of the cosmos or motion of matter,the source of knowledge, the validity of truth and morals, stages of cognition, and the utility of knowledge in changing the world.The article deals with the research problems through the review-based analysis of Marxist criticismsof the dialectical materialist philosophy and its cognitive theory. The article reveals that dialectical materialist philosophy believes in the primacy of matter and the motion of matter. The dialectical materialist theory of knowledge regards the objective world as the primary source of knowledge, rejects the idea of absolute and immutable truths and morals, believes in the dialectical relationship between perceptual and logical knowledge, and gives high priority to the application of the gained knowledge in changing the existing world.

Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction; The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism

Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction; The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism

Философский идеал образованности: поколение предан(н)ых

The generation that studied philosophy in the 1980s learned to build communism and shape the man of the future, protecting him from the influence of bourgeois values and the ideals of the soulless “golden calf”. These were self-confident students convinced of the working principle of democratic centralism and the universality of philosophical knowledge. This was a young generation of idealists who received a scientific justification for their confidence in the Soviet materialist philosophy of Marxism developed by the previous generation, which was alive, it could be asked questions and discussed at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow University. What and how they taught in the 80s helped someone not only survive, but also technologically use management science to build a business or form a monetized personal brand, and someone to stay in philosophy, primarily in teaching philosophy, and build new educational systems of modern Russia and to form new relations for the provision of educational services. Fortunately, the subject of teaching in this generation was not affected.

Beginning at the Beginning: Towards a Trans-actional Music Sociology

Music sociology has proven a fertile arena for the study and theorization of object–subject interaction, with the work of scholars such as Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion marking its key contribution to the ‘new sociology of art’. Recent years have, however, witnessed no little debate amongst music sociologists about the broader purchase and value of such scholarship, especially considering its apparent challenge to Bourdieu’s critical cultural sociology. This article seeks to contribute to debates in this area by advocating a novel approach to questions about music’s relation to the social, one that seeks less to map the social distribution of taste profiles or explore how listeners make use of music’s affordances than understand the variable ways in which music emerges as something to be attended to (or not) in the first place. Drawing on recent work in relational sociology, the mature philosophy of pragmatist John Dewey as well as new materialist thought, this article explores the potential of a trans-actional prospectus for music sociology. This is an approach that advocates a ‘flat’ social ontology in order to focus on questions about the constitution and configuration of musical events. In so doing, the article argues that if we are to gain a better understanding of music’s varied relation to the social, it is necessary to transcend the residual substantialism implicit in ‘new sociology’ and mediation-focused accounts and adopt an approach capable of integrating concerns of object-ness, emergence and attention with questions of power and inequality.

«Атмосфера истины»: модели истории философии в неосхоластике и неотомизме

The article shows the development of historical and philosophical problems in Neo-Scholasticism and Neo-Thomism. There are two key goals that authors of historical and philosophical models of the development of intellectual culture sought to solve: primarily, this is the legitimation of Scholasticism as a philosophical tradition, and secondly, its actualization in the context of the philosophical and theological discussions of their time. After the 1840s catholic intellectuals realized a gap to the medieval and post-medieval scholastic tradition, and their historical and philosophical research ceased to be a tool for legitimizing of interpretation of Thomism, which claims to be authoritative. Intervention of scholasticism into the problems of philosophy in the 19th century led to a determination of their relationship to Kant and post-Kantian projects of transcendental philosophy. As a result, Joseph Maréchal SJ formed a project of Transcendental Thomism: he moved from the strategy of legitimizing scholasticism through historical and philosophical material to the strategy of transformation of Thomism to form the program of Scholasticism that would correspond to the “Epoch of Criticism”.

Exploring Factors Affecting Sustainable Consumption Behaviour

Business development policies cover both marketing and sales functions, as they are so intertwined in most firms. Thus, managers should comply with the factors that influence sustainable consumption behaviour. The study aims to investigate the effect of environmental knowledge (EK), materialism (MAT), environmental influences (EI), the promotion of sustainable consumption (PSC), and sustainable consumption behaviour intention (SCBI) on sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB). Although many studies have examined sustainability issues for various groups of countries, activities in this critical field in Bulgaria are severely limited, and integrated research on the subject is non-existent. This paper focuses on the importance of investigating various factors that influence sustainable consumer behaviour. A total of 489 complete and usable responses were collected from participants from all regions of Bulgaria between May 2022 and July 2022. The partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and SmartPLS 4 software were employed to test the hypothesised relationships. The results indicated that EK and MAT significantly affected SCBI. Additionally, the analysis revealed the statistically significant impact of EK, MAT, EI, PSC, and SCBI on SCB. Moreover, this study demonstrated that SCBI significantly mediated the relationships between EK and SCB and between MAT and SCB. Finally, the outcomes of the moderation analysis showed that age moderated the relationship between SCBI and SCB.

«Мнимые противоречия»: предисловие С. А. Рачинского к книге Чарльза Дарвина «Происхождение видов»

This publication introduces the preface by Sergey Rachinsky, a profeccor of the Moscow University, to the book of Charles Darwin «On the Origin of Species». Rachinsky is best known in Russia as an educator and the founder of the school in Tatevo, Tver Oblast, and also as a founder of the temperance society in Tatevo. But in his correspondence Rachinsky repeatedly touches on religious and philosophical matters. For example, he gets into an argument with people like Vasily Rozanov and Leo Tolstoy. In addition, Rachinsky left some religious and philosophical works that are still in manuscript. This unpublished work was written in the 1882. Rachinsky touched upon the issues related to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Some of them had been raised before by his famous Russuan contemporaries, such as Nikolay Strakhov, Dmitry Pisarev, Kliment Timiryazev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. By the time that the preface was written, disputes over Darwin had been going on more than two decades. Disputes were related not only to «On the Origin of Species», but also to Darwin's later works. At the beginning of the preface Rachinsky commends the theory of natural selection which had proposed a general law of classification of living beings. The main body of the preface is devoted to Darwin's attempt to incorporate human into a genealogical tree of animal species. Rachinsky points out that Charles Darwin tried to gather some animal's characteristics and to work out the image not merely of a human being but of a Christian. Rachinsky calls it “a futile exercise”. He indicates that the inner human world has no precedent in the animal kingdom and believes that it is a miracle. Citing the principle of energy conservation as an example, and aims to show that “a miracle” exists in this theory. At the end of the preface author points out that Darwin's theory is applicable in some areas of science and it has no any contradictions with Christianity. He also points out to critics of this thesis that Church poses no restrictions to the exploration of nature.