Perfect Society Research Articles

Utopian Horizons: Ideology, Politics, Literature

Utopian Horizons: Ideology, Politics, Literature

Introduction: Solidarity and Utopia

Introduction: Solidarity and Utopia

Five Pillars of Islam and their Social Impacts

n Islam the rules of conduct are compatible with the very nature of man himself and nothing contrary to that finds any room in the life of an individual. We do not have to grape around in the dark to find a solution to any issue as Islam offers a complete code of life that covers all aspects of human life. When we closely examine the social teachings of Islam we find thtat these are attractive as well as effective if the intention is to creat a peacful, hormoneous, and perfect society. In this article we discuss the five pillars of Islamand their impact on society as a whole if honestly implemented a guarnteed success, prosperity and blessings of Allah are promised both in this world and the hereafter. Good actions and deeds make our relation with the creator stronger and stronger. As a result we enjoy unlimited spiritual, social and economic benefits. Implementation of the fundamental pillars of Islam in letter an spirit has a positive impact on society which is a true mainifestation and expression of Islamic teachings. Islam does not stand for any superstitioues beliefs or out of order system, but it is a complete, practicable, implementable and competitive manifesto. Keywords: Religion, Society, Unity, Tolerance, Health, Had’ith

The State of the Future in Corpus Delicti by Juli Zeh

율리 체의 「코르푸스 텔릭티. 어떤 소송」은 21세기 중반의 어느 시점을 다룬다는 점에서는 미래 소설의 형태를, 한 여성의 강간 살인 사건에서 조사를 받던 남성 용의자가 자살한다는 점에서는 추리 소설의 형식을 띠고, 자살한 용의자의 누나이자 이 소설의 프로타고니스트가 국가의 규범을 어긴 명목으로 소송을 받는다는 점에서는 법정 소설의 형태를 취한다. 또한 DNA 검사나 국민 건강관리 체계를 쟁점화한다는 점에서는 의과학적인 요소도 지니고 있다. 사적 영역과 공적 영역의 경계, 개인 정보의 문제 또한 이 소설의 주요 모티프에 해당하는데, 이를 통해 작가는 정보화 사회의 문제점도 빼놓지 않고 드러낸다. 체의 「코르푸스 텔릭티」에 설정된 21세기 중반의 미래 국가는 완벽한 건강사회를 유지하는 것을 국가 이념으로 삼는다. 이 미래 국가가 내세우는 보편적 복리의 원칙은 과거의 종교나 정치 이데올로기를 대신하여 각 개인을 배려하는 지극히 인간적인 모습을 지닌다. 그러나 시간이 흐를수록 이 국가의 숨겨진 면모가 드러나는데, 그것은 인간의 슬픔이나 고통을 허용하지 않는 무한 긍정사회, 한 구석의 어둠도 허용하지 않는 백색사회, 개인의 모든 자질이 데이터화되는 정보사회, 이로 인해 개인의 일거수일투족이 통제되는 감시사회로 작동하고 있음이 밝혀진다. 이 소설은 지구상에 완벽한 유토피아란 존재할 수 없다는 사실을 재차 확인시켜 준다. 이와 더불어 그것의 실현을 위한 공적 열망은 시스템에 최적화시키기 위한 개인들의 자발적인 자기 착취로 이어지고, 그 결과 개인은 자신에게서 소외될 수밖에 없다는 사실을 시사한다.Corpus Delicti by Juli Zeh presents a future society which exists in the middle of the 21 century. This society, released from the anxiety of possible diseases, approaches the most perfect society which people have long dreamed of. In the process of time, this society even indicates unlimited positivity which doesn t allow negative feelings like sorrow and frustration. At the same time it reveals itself as an information society, in which elements of personalities are entirely changed into data. This transparent society finally turns into a surveillance society to control every step of individuals. In this novel, Zeh tries to show characteristics of totalitarianism hidden in the system of a free and liberal state.

In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing by Thomas Michael

Reviewed by: In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing by Thomas Michael Robin R. Wang (bio) In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing. By Thomas Michael. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Pp. xx + 311. Hardcover $90.00, isbn 978-1-4384-5897-7. The Daodejing is a fascinating text that has captivated scholarly minds and the popular imagination for centuries. Is it a manual for self-cultivation and government, a work of philosophy providing a metaphysical account of reality, or a treatise for deep mystical insight? Is it perhaps an ethical masterpiece intended for the ruling class, with concrete strategic suggestions aimed at remedying the moral and political turmoil surrounding Warring States China? Or is it a way of life characterized by simplicity, calmness, and freedom from the tyranny of desire? In a comprehensive and refined study, Thomas Michael sheds new light on the Daodejing in his effort to read it apart from Western Sinology's inheritance of Wang Bi's Confucian commentarial tradition. Michael's synthetic reading discovers weaving through the text a hidden core treasure of yangsheng 養生 ("the nurture of life"), a specific regimen coupling breath circulation with techniques of bodily movement. In other words, the Daodejing is all about yangsheng. It exhibits the distilled knowledge of ancient yangsheng masters that was transmitted through the generations of their yangsheng disciples. Its central content concerns the possibility of transforming the physical body in the production of a Sage, a person who is one with the Dao. Michael attributes these teachings to a movement that he calls "early Daoism" (p. 12). This defined term sets up a frame of reference separate from the more standard distinction between "philosophical" (daojia) and "religious" (daojiao) Daoism. He rightly points out that there was no single monolithic tradition that can be designated as Daoism in early China; rather, [End Page 654] there were multiple groups and lineages that demand to be attended to much more closely. Following the introduction in chapter 1, chapter 2 conducts a penetrating discussion of modern scholarship on Daoism. It displays the stark differences between modern English-and French-language scholarship on the subject. Michael then compares these traditions to their modern Chinese counterpart, and this is one of many striking features of the book. He engages some of the most influential modern Chinese scholars of Daoism, including Xu Dishan 许地山, Fu Qinjia 傅勤家, Qing Xitai 卿希泰, Ren Jiyu 任繼愈, and Hu Fushen 胡孚琛. This is an impressive and valuable analysis of how modern Chinese scholars have differently constructed their own understandings of early Daoism, and Michael's integrative method sets a powerful model for future cross-cultural studies. Chapter 3 examines various readings of the Daodejing. Michael supports the daojia/daojiao split that has served as the primary interpretive approach to it, but he decisively revises our understanding of its historical construction. Modern scholars misconceive it to refer simply to a philosophical versus a religious reading, thereby reducing the rich history of its many diverse readings into a neat either/or container. Against this, Michael demonstrates that daojia refers to a Confucian reading of the Wang Bi commentary, while daojiao refers to a Daoist reading of the Heshang Gong commentary, and he documents the origins of this split in the court debates of the late Tang and early Song. Chapter 4 attends to the Dao itself as separately conceived by Laozi and Confucius. Michael begins by exploring the range of its ancient meanings primarily from the Shijing 詩經, and shows how these two foundational thinkers advanced their conceptions of it in fundamentally opposite directions. For Confucius, the Dao concerns the perfect society, whereas for Laozi it concerns the cosmos as a whole. Michael goes on to show how each thinker then developed different paths of cultivation, the former centered on moral and the latter on physical cultivation, and this sets the stage for his ensuing explorations of the Daodejing. Chapter 5 is the critical pivot of Michael's entire study. Here he explores the hiddenness of early Daoism as a mountainous tradition of yangsheng masters and disciples from whence the Daodejing was born. He argues that these teachings remained hidden until they...

Concept of Power Decentralization in Political Science and Approaches to its Methodological Study

The problem of power decentralization is up to date in a modern political science. We can trace its historical genesis first in European and further in the USA political ideas. Decentralization of power was considered along with the study of a perfect state system, civil society and local self-government. It is argued that the major part of successful process of power decentralization in the Western Europe was due to the idea nature for their political culture.
 The article attempts to retrace the history of the idea of power decentralization. As a background of the investigations of such thinkers as J. Bodin, J. Althusius, J. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau, C.-L. Montesquieu, R. Owen, C. Fourier, J. S.Mill, T. Jefferson, A. de Tocqueville and M. Dragomanov were thoroughly investigated. The paper also considers the modern definitions of power decentralization. Likewise the value of structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism and constructivism are argued in terms of further surveys of power decentralization.
 To conclude, the author opines that civil servants training, their theoretical teaching and moral education have to become the main objectives in perspective investigations. Furthermore, the success of power decentralization depends not only on devoting authority by central government, but also on capacity of its implementation by deputies on the local level.
 Keywords: Decentralization of power, deconcentration of power, administrative and political decentralization, classical and non-classical philosophy, structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, construc-tivism

Hope Abjuring Hope: On the Place of Utopia in Realist Political Theory

This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about “how to do political theory.” I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: “real utopia” (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and “dystopic liberalism” (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss’s recent reflections, the essay then claims that an engagement with literature can shift the focus of these accounts. Utopian fiction, I maintain, is useful for comprehending what is (thus enhancing our understanding of the world) and for contemplating what might be (thus nurturing the hope for a better future). Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed deploys this double function in an exemplary fashion: through her dynamic and open-ended portrayal of an Anarchist community, Le Guin succeeds in imagining a utopia that negates the status quo, without striving to construct a perfect society. The book’s radical, yet ambiguous, narrative hence reveals a strategy for locating utopia within realist political theory that moves beyond the positions dominating the current debate. Reading The Dispossessed ultimately demonstrates that realism without utopia is status quo–affirming, while utopia without realism is wishful thinking.

Friends Farm: Australia’s First Quaker Commune

Australia has a long and rich history of religious groups trying to establish some sort of utopia by removing themselves from urban centres to rural idylls. The first of these was H errnhut, in western Victoria (1853–1889), and today there are many such as D anthonia B ruderhof and N ew G ovardhana, in NSW, C henrezig, in Queensland and R ocky C ape H utterites in Tasmania. While Quakers in the UK and USA have a tradition of forming rural communes starting from the seventeenth century, the first, and most important of such in Australia was F riends F arm, established in 1869 on what is now Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. This group was led by the charismatic Alfred Allen, a radical Quaker from Sydney. He believed that he had been reborn, held Christ within him, and had achieved sin‐free perfection. He was disowned, twice, by Sydney Quakers after when he led his small band of would‐be communards to the “wilderness” of Queensland where they sought to create a perfect society. Not surprisingly, it did not quite work out that way.

The Governor’s Two Bodies: Polity and Monstrosity in Winthrop’s Boston

The Governor’s Two BodiesPolity and Monstrosity in Winthrop’s Boston Jonathan Beecher Field (bio) Scholars of early New England are surprisingly indifferent to monsters. To a contemporary reader, John Winthrop’s allegations that Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson gave birth to monsters are one of the more puzzling aspects of the Antinomian Controversy. Even though this theological and political struggle remains a perennial subject of inquiry for early Americanists, little of this attention has focused on the stories of Dyer’s and Hutchinson’s monstrous births.1 In spite of many disparate scholarly approaches to the Antinomian Controversy, almost without exception this body of scholarship downplays the accounts of monstrous births Massachusetts governor John Winthrop includes in his narratives of the Bay Colony’s struggle with Antinomians. Indeed, some earlier editions of John Winthrop’s Journal either omit the description of Hutchinson’s monstrous birth entirely or translate the more scandalous parts into Latin.2 Scholarship that does consider these monstrous births often focuses on scientific explanations for these phenomena in place of the God’s judgement explanation that Winthrop employs. Instead of beginning with a narrative of monstrosity, and working to explain the inexplicable in scientific terms, this essay proposes to read Winthrop’s account of monstrous births in terms of the tension between the disabled bodies that Winthrop attributes to Hutchinson and Dyer and the idealized able body Winthrop imagines as the form of his Bible commonwealth in “A Modell of Christian Charitie.” Intellectual history has dominated scholarship on early New England, and scholars in this field do not generally think much about Puritan bodies. Adding a bodily component to this history of ideas can offer new perspectives on familiar texts. In particular, the burgeoning field of disability studies suggests new connections between Winthrop’s “Modell” and his narratives of monstrous births. Winthrop’s discourse, composed around the 1630 voyage of the Arbella from England to New England, articulates [End Page 29] Winthrop’s vision for his Bible commonwealth through the image of the settlers as a single perfect body, united in perfect form through the ligaments of God’s love. Considering Winthrop’s “Modell” from the perspective of disability studies clarifies the Bay Colony governor’s investment in the able body as the figure of his Christian commonwealth. This canonical text of early American literature anticipates what Tobin Siebers has called the “ideology of ability,” where “we imagine our bodies are of no consequence while dreaming at the same time that we might perfect them” (9). For Siebers, this contradiction is central to contemporary imaginations of disability, which exist under “the shadow of the ideology of ability” (9). Siebers speaks to a contemporary moment in his scholarship, and importing this concept wholesale to seventeenth-century discourse runs the risk of anachronism, but the structures of thought he details resonate with the able and disabled bodies Winthrop conjures. In particular, “the ideology of ability simultaneously banishes disability and turns it into a principle of exclusion” (10). Winthrop’s image of a perfect society as a perfect body raises the question of how this perfect society would understand its members with imperfect bodies. As we will see, Hutchinson and Dyer’s monstrous births are of a piece with their putative inability to reproduce, their inability to read Scripture, and their banishment. For Winthrop, the imperfect bodies Hutchinson and Dyer produce are evidence of their heresy, and a mark of their separation from the godly community of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In turn, this contrast between Winthrop’s perfectly embodied Christian commonwealth and the monstrous spawn of his enemies offers a new, and more persuasive, explanation for the monstrous births. Miscarriages are real, but monsters are not. Turning one into the other is a product of Winthrop’s imagination. The Massachusetts Bay Colony as one ideal Christian body is an image that Winthrop produces in his writing; the monstrous births are another. If there is a material basis for the monstrous birth narratives in miscarriages Hutchinson and Dyer suffered, neither Winthrop’s monsters nor his perfect body have or ever had a physical, embodied reality. If we read the monstrous births as a move Winthrop makes in a...

ОСВІТНІЙ ПРОСТІР ЄВРОПИ ДОБИ ПРОСВІТНИЦТВА: ДИСКУСІЇ ЩОДО ГЕНДЕРНИХ ПАРАМЕТРІВ НАВЧАННЯ

The problem of upbringing and education of the younger generation has been drawing attention of teachers, thinkers, politicians, statesmen, and public figures from the dawn of time. The interest of national and foreign scholars to gender parameters of education is driven by formation of scientific direction “history of women” / gender studios in the last third of the 20th century. However, many social and cultural issues remain out of sight of national scholars, particularly issues of the European educational environment of the modern age, and this makes study of them actual. The goal of the article is to detect gender parameters of the educational environment of Europe in the Age of Enlightenment in the context of formation of foundations of the education system of the modern civilization of the West. Gradual destruction of previous religious practices and growing authority of thinkers in society in the Age of Enlightenment in Europe made the topic of education a popular subject of discussion. The problem of moral upbringing and education of the younger generation took an important place in works of enlighteners. Ideologues of the Enlightenment thought that the perfect society could be reached through propaganda and dissemination of knowledge, education, and imposition of high moral principles to individuals. Enlighteners considered the educational model of those times imperfect, and they proposed different reformation projects, in which a significant place was devoted to education and training of males and females. Enlighteners assumed female education exclusively as a mean required for preparation of new male generations, as a way to upgrade morality of a male society. Women were mostly limited to elementary education. It took them a whole century to reach the next level. Images and models of female education are usually correlated with prevailing attitudes of public opinion about it. In fact, alignment of gender parameters of education in the Age of Enlightenment included not only the need for women to study, but also transformation of social ideal of female education; media, didactic literature, and housekeeping practices became markers of that.

Algunas reflexiones sobre lo utópico

I. The Missing Story Utopias have something to do with failure and tell us more about our own limits and weaknesses than they do about perfect societies. Even if one insists (as I do) that you can't fail unless you try to succeed, the idea is an uncomfortable one and seems to redirect objective inquiries (about social and political difficulties, for example) back into psychological vicious circles which turn on the desire to lose, or an innate pessimism, or inferiority feelings and paralyzin...

Taking to the Sea: The Modern Seasteading Movement in the Context of Other Historical Intentional Communities

Though its mission may seem to belong to the realm of science fiction—establishing self-sufficient, floating cities on the high seas—the modern seasteading movement is simply the next iteration of mankind’s long quest to establish more perfect societies. If they wish to accomplish their goals, seasteaders must be prepared to confront and overcome serious obstacles on technological, social, and legal fronts. Reviewing other historical examples of intentional communities offers a glimpse of the potential challenges that are common across all such movements and suggests that, to ensure long-term success, seasteaders may benefit long-term from pursuing international recognition of sovereignty for their eventual communities.

Crystallisation of Social Dimension of Recognition (in Axel Honneth’s Intentions)

Lately the issue of social recognition has been discussed frequently – by philosophers, social scientists, politicians and scholars focusing on various fields, e.g. media theorists, sociologists, ethicists. The idea of recognition is in the centre of our attention mainly in the context of serious problems, which are related to migration of culturally diverse people; these aspects are, in fact, at the heart of the problem of recognition as such. The last decades have brought advanced communication technologies and new trends associated with communication between people from different cultures and minorities; however, the present situation forces us to face increasingly escalated conflicts, terrorist attacks and military operations. The questions of recognition, in their full complexity, have been a part of western thinking – even though not in its very centre – for several decades. The first part of the article mainly deals with the issue of social dimension of different forms of recognition proposed by Axel Honneth; emphasis is put on the third form of Honneth’s recognition tripartite – solidarity. The second part of the text addresses the problem of social injustice. Social movements presume that they are able to establish new normative goals. The struggle for moral recognition is, however, motivated by experience of expected abuse, and functions as the very source of moral development. Various types of injustice share their essential basis – misrecognition. Perfect society is therefore a society built upon subjects that offer mutual recognition; members of such a perfect society expect that the social establishment should offer them certain possibilities of self-realisation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1p538

The Gates of Charity: Images of City and Community in the Early Modern Dutch Orphanage

In the seventeenth century, Dutch charitable institutions were the subject of international praise and the object of civic pride, and their public façades communicated a message of central importance to its citizens. In this essay, I examine the iconography of seventeenth-century “gates of charity,” focusing on the almoner’s orphanage in Gouda and the Holy Ghost orphanage in Leiden. I relate them to other orphanages in the Dutch Republic to show developments in their iconography. The façade decorations demonstrate the responsibilities of the city as benefactor, the expectations of its citizens and the supposed effects of charity upon the community. At the gates, the worlds of the rich and the poor collided. Here, charity could flourish making the community a mirror image of the heavenly realm. The gate portrays the perfect society as one that assists its poor and strengthens its communal ties.

The Place of Identity and Hybridity on Literary Commitment in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather

The current study examines the influence of identity on literary commitment in Bessie Head’s When rain clouds gather. In particular, the study is interested in the hybrid syncretic crossings reflected in the text and which define her commitment as a writer in the Third Space – a dimension that has so far been overlooked by critics of her literary works. The study adopts the analytical research design. The postcolonial theory is instrumental in the reading, analysis and interpretation of the selected text. The data collected through content analysis of the text is coded according to thematic concerns, the mode of characterization and the vision of the author. The findings reveal that Head’s identity influences her commitment in her choice of characters that like herself, are cast in the in-between space. These characters shuttle between points of inclusion and exclusion. Within this in-between or Third Space, identities defy fixity thereby remaining fickle, fluid and unstable. People are thus cast in a perpetual process of becoming, always mutating or changing into something ‘other’. Essentialist formulations of identity are undermined by defiance of territorial confinement which allows for cultural fusion, but in the process also results in fission or more precisely, a shift from essentialist perceptions of self image. Hybridity, on the other hand, emerges as the coexistence of differences. In such cases, differences meet, mix and tolerate one another. However, it does not imply total erasure of cultural differences; its only impact is to blur the boundaries. Despite this, hybridity is propped by the author as the recipe for a perfect society. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n3p61

Conceptos clave del conservadurismo en Ecuador, 1875-1900

Se busca comprender el lenguaje político conservador en Ecuador, en el último tercio del siglo XIX, como expresión de la modernidad política y como un discurso que estaba en diálogo con los conceptos liberales. Se exploran las ideas conservadoras de “libertad católica”, “civilización católica” y “sociedad perfecta”, y se estudia cómo estas se definieron de manera recíproca con nociones liberales. A partir de la historia conceptual, se analizan categorías políticas polisemánticas en un contexto de lucha y con relación al surgimiento de la modernidad.

Khōra: An Inquiry Into Polytopian Philosophy and Cosmopolitan Governance

This article conducts an inquiry into polytopian philosophy, which is contrasted with classical utopia. It contends that classical utopia, in its exclusionary reliance on a single vision of a perfect society, faces the risk of becoming dystopian. The article conceives of polytopian philosophy as a discursive medium that remains open to the reception of diverse utopian impulses without restricting itself to a single vision. The article connects polytopia to Kristeva’s discussion of Plato’s khōra, which is interpreted as a rhythmic receptacle that receives subliminal desires and transforms them in a signifying process that both subverts and produces a symbolic order that gives meaning. The article concludes that polytopian khōra is a cosmopolitan social medium for inclusion of the uncanny “strange.” Polytopian khōra points the way to a more inclusive public administration that can serve as a catalyst in the transformative process of reception and co-creation.

The Subject and the State's Media Control

The fact that media discourse is an outlet of quasi-interaction between producers and audiences refers, in all probability, to the engagement of people in a virtual environment that operates through managing the necessary information needed to communicate the minds of people. This mental control, so to speak, is exercised by its manipulator, especially labeled as the state, through entertaining discourses and other forms of communication. The state, which represents the official power, depends mainly on such outlet to control, what Lippmann termed, “the bewildered herd”. This act of control, however, has taken different forms and has produced different ways for monitoring the individual. In fact, the major objective of media in any society is to “restrict the public arena and transfer decisions to the hands of uncountable private tyrannies,” [1] this, in turn, plays an important role in, “removing the public from potential influence on policy” [1]. That is, people should remain out of the realm of politics and simply keeps themselves away from integrating within the elites’ matters. People, in the ‘sham democracy’, are gentle citizen when they are pampering themselves with what the state provides them, yelling patriotic mottos, and believing what is circulated in their media institution. This media propaganda relies on certain models to convincingly market its products to a wider range of people, be they Europeans or non-Europeans. That is, the individuals and the masses remain the main targets of this propaganda that aims at unifying their belief of what is normal and what should be acceptable. This fact is achieved through creating the image of perfect society that could not exist without adopting the way of everyday life casted on the system’s screens. To make this point clear, Douglas Kellner provides an example of the role of American television that he perceives, like many other critics, as “instrumental in selling American values, commodities, and ways of life to other countries, and is thus a major force of culture hegemony” [2]. In the same manner, media propaganda in every society tries to redefine the meaning of life, be happiness, love, hate, modernity, terrorism and anything that the system want to implant in people’s mindsets. As a result, under the influence of this propaganda, vague notions about anything and everything lead to what Ellul terms “psychological crystallization”, thereby becoming powerful, direct and precise. “Propaganda furnishes objectives, organizes the traits of an individual’s personality into a system, and freezes them into a mold” [3]. Indeed, media has the greatest potential to influence the masses since they uncompromisingly offer: A deeper level of identification with the characters and action on the screen more than found elsewhere in popular culture... movies do, in fact, succeed at propaganda by presenting one set of values as the only viable set. Over a period of years, these values can both reflect and shape society’s norms [4]. Additionally, media narratives are unavoidably tied into ideology and politics. The latter is what monitors these narratives, and ideology, as Pentti Haddington avers, “enters the people’s lives as part of their everyday conduct” [5]. In this regard, media narratives remain an essential institution through which these ideology and politics may operate more effectively. Often, those who control the production and dissemination of these narratives struggle over how a certain scripts will fit into the prevailing political atmosphere. This is quite clear in *Corresponding author: Mounir Sanhaji, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Morocco, Tel: 212 5 35 60 96 60/61; E-mail: mounirsan@hotmail.com

Русская литератураsub specie mortis:набоковская интерпретация творчества Гоголя. Часть 2-я

“Every Russian writer owes something to Gogol.” This Nabokovian statement questions beliefs traditionally formulated in respect to Gogol’s oeuvre. His book paradoxically introduced by the depiction of the writer’s death implies that the motif of death has a specific impact on the genesis of the artefact. The similar postmodernist theory by Terc echoes in part ideas found in the symbolist perception of Gogol (Annensky, Blok, Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, and Andrei Bely). Gogol’s poetics centred upon this principle, reminiscent of Dante’s Divine Comedy, can be traced throughout the works of Russian authors – a thesis to be scrutinised in a series of forthcoming articles. The irrational in Gogol’s views concerning true art thus shall discard the labels of critical realism and art envisaged as the device meant to perfect human society, consequently via the transmutation of the self shall true art fulfil its ultimate mission. Introducing the dichotomy of ‘poet’ – ‘non-poet’ indicates a precursor of the Solovyovian d...

Radical Conservative Socialism: Buddhadasa Bhikkhu's Vision of a Perfect World Society and its Implication for Thailand's Political Culture

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906–1993) has been regarded as a ‘modernist’ and ‘reformist’ both in terms of his rational reinterpretation of the teachings of the Buddha for individual life and the consequences of his approach towards Buddhism for a renewal of Thai society. This article analyses Buddhadasa's political philosophy – highlighted by his concept of ‘Dhammic Socialism’ – vis-à-vis the socialist ideas of Pridi Banomyong (1900–1983), the ideological father of the Thai revolution of 1932, and in relation to the confrontational character of Thai politics from the downfall of the absolute monarchy until today. It argues that both Buddhadasa's concept as well as its secular political counterparts in the Thai public sphere could and still can be characterised as variations of conservative Theravāda Buddhist thought. The ‘Teaching of the Elders’ leaves little room for deviation from the absolute and comprehensive truth laid down in the sacred Buddhist scriptures. Moreover, while competing political groups in Thailand make full use of the reservoir of such Buddhist ‘radical conservatism’ by dressing it in a secular garb, they too permit little if any compromise.