Idealist Philosophy Research Articles

Hindu Literacy: The Basic Concept of Education and the Literacy Patter in Upanisads


 
 
 Literacy is the soul of education in Hindu civilization. The Upanisad is an integral part of Vedic literature, and it provides the basic concepts of education and literacy patterns. According to the Upanisad, education is about giving academic degrees to students and building excellent human character; literacy is essential in Hindu Education. Various educational methods are used in the Upanisad, with the aim of awakening all human potential. Through educational efforts to generate superior human character as a whole, intelligence and wisdom are accentuated. Upanisad learning still has relevance in the modern era, such as in the philosophy of idealism. Students must be made aware of the importance of education in life, outside of simply making a living. The spirit of the learning torch must be adopted in modern times to prevent it from losing sight of its main path, that is, to raise human excellence. Hindu literacy becomes the main foundation in the education system, which builds the machine of human intelligence and wisdom. Activating the spirit of learning and methodology in Upanisad will directly help efforts to increase literacy.
 
 
 
 Keywords: upanisad, vedānta, Hindu literacy
 
 
 
 
 

Ethics and Society

This paper proposes an idealistic philosophy of history which states that the motives of the people of a society, or equivalently, the moral philosophies adopted by it, fundamentally determine its organization and development. This theory is obtained by explicitly abandoning methodological atheism. It predicts that the more hedonic or Nietzscheist a society is, the less progressed it will be; the more ascetic a society is, the more progressed it will be. It provides a consistent explanation of many puzzles in macro-historical studies, among them the Great Divergence between the West and China, the sudden emergence of the two World Wars, and the ethnic distribution of Nobel Laureates.

Achille tra le rose (negli anni di Napoleone). Femminilizzazione del guerriero nella Penthesilea di Heinrich von Kleist

The hypothesis I advance in this article is that the character of Achilles in Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea embodies the Object of desire of the female protagonist, the queen of the Amazons. By the word “Object”, I mean the interiorised and imaginary representation Penthesilea phantasises within herself about an otherwise unknown “thing” desired which finally takes the feminine features of a tender and harmless boy wearing crowns and garlands of roses, an “Achilles among the roses”, as it were – the word “rose” being both the anagram of “eros” and the emblem of the female sex. In the course of the analysis, I argue that this “mirage” of Penthesilea, the “thing desired”, is the projection of the “Thing itself”, maternal love, which, being unredeemedly lost to her, turns into a persecutory ghost. My understanding of von Kleist’s Penthesilea is not rooted in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, but both in the historical and political context in which the tragedy of the queen of the Amazon was conceived and in the transcendental and idealistic philosophy of the Subject.

Thus spoke the student from Bologna: On behalf of the blush and confusion

To the extent that philosophy deals with the blush, it is almost always as the pink blush of shame. Such is philosophy’s seeming obsession with the latter, there remains the risk of something important being lost in translation when it comes to those examples in the literature that mention the blush. I intend to focus on one such example, a scene from Robert Antelme’s The Human Race, the story of the student from Bologna, in which Antelme describes the student’s blushing response to being randomly selected by an SS soldier from a bedraggled line of prisoners for a roadside execution. I will turn to Lisa Guenther and Giorgio Agamben for their reading of Antelme’s account, not, I should stress, to evaluate their respective analyses of shame, but that which may have been overlooked as a result, namely confusion. I will turn also to Jean-Paul Sartre, again, not in relation to shame, rather for his brief, but no less important, phenomenological account of blushing. I will refer to recent social psychology research suggesting that confusion is a knowledge emotion – something like embarrassment (as aporia). All this in support of the argument, that when Antelme writes of the student – ‘ Il a l’air confus’ (‘He seems confused’), we are bound to take them both, the student and Antelme, the blusher and the beholder, at their word – to maintain our distance so that the scene might speak for itself and in so doing reveal signs of life.

Covid-19 Affirms the Identity of Philosophy

On the world philosophy day (World Philosophy Day) which is celebrated on 19 and 20 November 2020, UNESCO invites all activists and lovers of philosophy to pay attention to the importance of philosophical thinking in helping humans face the challenges posed by the Covid-19 outbreak. Various activities such as interviews with philosophers, round table discussions, and webinars were held with a focus on the importance of philosophical thinking or reflection, and this affirms the role of philosophy in human life (UNESCO, 2020).

THE PROBLEM OF SOCIALITY IN GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY: BETWEEN FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

The article argues that the contradiction between mathematical necessity and the philosophical concept of freedom becomes a real road stone of idealist philosophy. Based on the inherent German classical philosophy of the absolutization of the subject, extends to the internalization of universal concepts of culture as the social nature of reason and rationality. It is proved the understanding of culture as an explication of activity, which based on ethical and axiological norms, and is consolidated in a single human community. The author argues that in the dialectic of the abstract and the concrete, the essence and the existing beginning of life is completed in the forms of thinking, and this is specifically the human, cultural way of being. That is, the personification of culture in the face of the subject is a process of forming a culture of personal thinking, and universal heritage (historical memory) in the communicative space of society is extrapolated to individual consciousness, which in turn becomes the driving force of the cultural process.Key words: culture, sociality, freedom, necessity, subjectivity, thinking, transcendental apperception.

Cosmopolitanism and the Roman Empire.

My article explores the tension between idealized cosmopolitan ideas, of a single citizenry for all people in the world, and imperial Roman nationalism between the late Roman Republic and the Italian Renaissance. In the form of three case studies (and without any claim that those are representative for the development) it focusses on three important thinkers whose work shows affinity with cosmopolitan discourse, but who at the same time also explicitly reflected on the political realities they were living in: Cicero, Augustine, and Lorenzo Valla. All three favour cosmopolitan ideals over political egoism, and all three reflect on whether and how the historical reign under which they are living can live up to the philosophical or theological ideals they advocate. Finally, all three authors do not only share similar discursive patterns, but also react to each other intertextually (links will be mentioned especially between Cicero and Augustine and between Augustine and Valla). Thus, while all three are distinct in their argument and use cosmopolitan concepts for hugely different aims, the comparison can share light both on the boundaries and the discursive power of the concept in Latin literature.
 

Albert Camus’ Philosophy of Love

AbstractAlbert Camus does not provide a direct or sustained exploration of romantic love. Instead, love is addressed only indirectly in The Myth of Sisyphus, and sporadically in other writings. This article analyses the experience of absurdity in love. Absurdity clears away the social, cultural, and philosophical ideals of love to focus on the actual experience of love. With this in mind, a positive account of Camus’ philosophy of love is developed from several different works. This shows that Camus’ philosophy of love centres on the biological feelings of love, which are temporary, non‐exclusive, and do not imply commitment.

Del realismo filosófico a la pedagogía realista

Dado que detrás de toda pedagogía hay una epistemología y una metafísica, esta nota crítica presenta el argumento de que los rasgos característicos de las pedagogías activas se identifican con una filosofía idealista, que privilegia el pensamiento, la actividad inmanente, así como el desarrollo de habilidades (genéricas, cognitivas y socioemocionales), mientras que una pedagogía realista se basa en el realismo filosófico, que parte del conocimiento de la realidad, así como de la capacidad de la persona para conocerla. Esta nota crítica argumenta a favor de la pedagogía realista como aquella en la que la persona puede conocer la realidad, acceder a la verdad y trascender.

Philosophical Review of Materialism and Idealism Limits of Wedding Age in Indonesia; Study of Article 7 Paragraph (1) of Law 16 of 2019 jo. Law 1 of 1974 concerning Marriage

This research departs from a juridical confusion regarding the ideal of a person going to get married, where the age of marriage with other provisions regarding age, namely, in terms of philosophical Materialism and Idealism of Marriage Age in Indonesia. Whereas in Indonesian Law on Marriage Marriage is only permitted if men and women have reached the age of 19 (nineteen) years. The purpose of this study is to find out the philosophical review of materialism and idealism of marriage age in Indonesia, with the article 7 paragraph (1) for 16 of 2019 jo. u 1 year 1974 regarding marriage). The conclusion of this research is the philosophical value of materialism and idealism of marriage age is the concept of historical materialism of humans who will choose their readiness in facing marriage, this is because one's age is not a reference, which is the basis for people to get married including their readiness to face material livelihood, readiness self and material. Likewise in Indonesia, the ideal age in society in Indonesia if it is associated with Karl Mark's theory, then the readiness of oneself in the material (economic elements) is as a reference for people to get married.

On the Edge of Conventional Maps: the Southern Mythologies of Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges and Australia’s Gerald Murnane

ABSTRACT Many critics have observed affinities between the experimental fictions of Australia’s Gerald Murnane (1939–) and the writing of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). This extended comparative study considers two main points of intersection. Firstly, both these writers explore the literary potential of ideas drawn from radical idealist philosophy. Secondly, both writers repeatedly converse with European modernist texts and authors from the perspective of peripheral modernity. Here, I reread a selection of iconic Borges stories and essays, including “Funes el memorioso” and “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,” alongside texts from across Murnane’s career. The Argentine and Australian writers’ radical idealist poetics work to provincialize the metropolitan discourse of modernism, and to destabilize Northern critical canons and literary genres.

СТАНОВЛЕННЯ ПИСЬМОВОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРНОЇ ТРАДИЦІЇ КОРІННИХ НАЦІЙ ПІВНІЧНОЇ АМЕРИКИ

Article deals with the attempt to describe the creating of Native American and First Nations of Canada written literature. The aim of our study is to characterize the phenomenon of the literary struggle for Indian independence as a historically determined phenomenon of cultural, literary and historical process in North America, in the context of cultural and literary search and transformations of Native American identities that take place in the context of indigenous peoples' adaptation to white expansion on the continent during the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. In the article we used such methods as: historical-literary and historical-cultural methods as well as elements of structural analysis. The research deals with the ways of actualizing one of the most powerful concepts of the modern world – that of ethnicity, which stands out as a constituent of the basic Native American identity concept originated in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The relevance of the research is determined by the importance of conducting more profound study of the concept that went through the objective stages of conceptualization and got fixed in the Indigenous Studies. Identity is manifested as a subjective feeling of belonging to a particular social group and at the same time it is a source of inspiration and continuity of each individual. The existence of the identity phenomenon is caused by the social context and the inviolability of social ties in society. The study of the North American identity has been and remains a problem with inexhaustible potential for researchers up to now. Identity becomes a form of literary discourse, causing self-discovery, self-interpretation, and the opportunity to transform into the “other” in one`s own country. Native American identity can be presented as a theory of social proximity and distance or as an interpretive scheme of gradual and direct discovery of oneself and the surrounding social reality through literature and social network communication. Anyhow interpretation of indigenous identity must be largely determined by a set of political, philosophical, historical, cultural, religious, ethnic concepts that dominate in given circumstances, determining the originality of indigenous identity in these circumstances. Today makes us witness a progressive development of American Indian identity in both cultural and civilizational and psychological dimensions through literary texts. The focus of the research is on the manifestations of the Indigenous national identity as a modern interdisciplinary phenomenon and the analysis of its projections in fiction. Theoretical and methodological foundations for understanding national identity in philosophy, culture, history, literary studies are determined, the ways of modeling national identity in contemporary Native American literature are traced. There are three dominant criteria of identity in such literary works: indigenous identity as a collective or personal feeling, manifestation or form of social consciousness, a social or individual-psychological phenomenon; fundamental identity as a doctrine, ideology or worldview, a systematized view of the world within a certain set of cultural and religious concepts; fundamental identity as a political movement, a political program based on ideology, doctrine or convictions.

The ontology of history in the retrospective of Russian philosophy (P. Chaadaev — N. Danilevsky — N. Fedorov)

The article is devoted to one of the features of Russian philosophy — the key role in its development, which was played by the problems of history. The authors begin to study this issue with a general analysis of the status of historical issues in the system of philosophical knowledge, proceeding to substantiate the thesis of the predominantly ontological characteristics of history. The essence of the substantiation of this statement boils down to the fact that philosophy deals with an entity that opens to consciousness as a world, i. e. as a being ordered by man. The world as reality is reality as a form and result of human activity. Consequently, the source of existence as the original is in the foundations of human activity. Next, the authors proceed to consider the reasons why the topic of historical development has become a priority in Russia, and history as a form of human existence has been considered in an ontological way. Using the example of the philosophical creativity of three Russian thinkers (P. Ya. Chaadaev, N. Ya. Danilevsky and N. F. Fedorov), the authors demonstrate the general logic of the development of historical self-consciousness as the basis of civilizational self-determination of Russia. The article draws special attention to the peculiar national pragmatics of Russian historiosophical thought, which implies the need for broad national participation in transformations that have in mind a planetary, cosmic scale. In addition, the authors put forward a polemic thesis about the practical congeniality of the Soviet era to the theoretical intutions of the founder of Russian cosmism. Socialist construction in the USSR, in the understanding of the authors, largely actualized the project of N. F. Fedorov, declaring and actually expressing the “philosophy of the common cause”. And such a “thing” was conceived, despairing and carried out not only in class unity, but also in national unity, the unity of man and woman, and most importantly in the context of Fedorov’s views — in the unity of generations.

Biological and Mediated Pandemics, Panic, and Pandemonium

Plagues have a physical existence. They also have mediated existence. The two are only circumstantially related, for, as is the case of all media and mediation, biological and digital existence do not necessarily correlate accurately, and media are as often used as a lamp to project political and philosophical idealism, that is, propaganda, as they are to serve as a mirror that reflects the external world realistically. Objective journalism, news spin, and fake news, conflated in the collective mind of the populace, are tools in the class struggle to control the social, cultural and political narrative. Plagues have been and continue to be mediated in drama, oral storytelling, in books, printed and manuscript, on the radio, on TV and in films, and in social media while the populace rails against and shouts its rage at TV screens.

What We All Know: Community in Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense"

I defend an account of Moore's conception of Common Sense—as it figures in "A Defence of Common Sense"—according to which it is based in a vision of the community of human beings as bound and unified by a settled common understanding of the meaning of our words and statements. This, for Moore, is our inalienable starting point in philosophy. When Moore invokes Common Sense against idealist (and skeptical) philosophers, he is reminding them that they too are bound by this common understanding, which cannot just be left behind as they confusedly believe. On Moore's conception, Common Sense becomes nothing other than the affirmation that there is such a common understanding—that there is Common Sense—which yields a specific body of Common Sense knowledge. This yields a more principled account of Common Sense than a mere tallying of what contingently happens to be believed (or known) by all.

Роль Цзэн Го-фаня в деятельности литературно-философской тунчэнской школы

Zeng Gofan had made a great contribution to the Tongcheng School, had found the points of convergence with western concepts and formed his own philosophi­cal system applying ideas of Confucianism, Taosism and Buddism. Along with the ethic, textual criticism and studying literature, as an innovator, Zeng Gofan had also identified the forth area in the philosophy of science – the theory of government management. He suggested that the dispute between Han and Song Confucianism will be depleted, if it is recognized that they are complementary. Neo-Confucianism and the thought of Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song and Ming dynasties, that Zeng Gofan viewed through the lens of his own experience, had made a great contribution in forming his philosophical sys­tem. The participation of Zeng Gofan in the policy of “self-stengthening” influ­enced the definition of the Tongcheng school’s place in the historic process. His firm position on his country’s development path, on multiplying its capital, on the strengthening of logistics base and improvement of education, had be­come a strong base for forming Tongcheng School’s thoughts. Departing from classical assumptions Zen Gofan’s adherents continued the transition of Tong­cheng’s School adding new ideas and anchored the Literary and Philosophical school in the history of the country.

The Decameron: On the Possibility of Love During Self-Isolation

This article in the genre of the consolation of philosophy deals with the COVID-19 pandemic as a new superphenomenal experience marked by an extremely intense experience of one’s vulnerability and finiteness as well as by problematization of our previous ideas of a human being. The author offers a way to understand our situation and find solace by starting with the performative paradox of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, which contains one of the most famous descriptions of the plague and remains one of the most cheerful and life-enhancing texts in European literature. The article shows that, contrary to the common belief, the consolation offered in the The Decameron is not reduced merely to telling stories that entertain and distract us from tales of grief. Nor is it reduced to the invention of social practices for building a new and more perfect society, although all this, as the author shows, is undoubtedly there in the text and has a beneficial effect. The Decameron’s consolation ultimately consists of the assumption that man himself has metaphysical depths in his incomprehensible (although it is fully embodied in the Decameron) and impossible potential for lovingly accepting the reality of the world as a blessed Gift, to think of eventfulness itself as a gift. The article argues that the anthropology on which Boccaccio’s utopia is based is that of the feast or symposium understood in the spirit of the Platonic-Christian tradition. The author hopes that Boccaccio’s anthropological optics, designed to overcome the pessimism of reason and affirm the optimism of will and faith, can help the reader find meaning and joy in the midst of the suffering and death which are the irrevocable framework of life. This consolation can be heard in the cheerful voice of Boccaccio, which comes to us from faraway plague-ridden Florence and offers us his prescription for healing the “wounds of being.”

Концепт понимания и его идеалистическая трактовка в теоретической философии В.В. Розанова

The article is devoted to the analysis of the key provisions of Rozanov’s early theoretical treatise “On Understanding”, which is a model of Russian philosophical idealism. It shows that Rozanov’s work, which anticipated some ideas of hermeneutics and phenomenology in the 20th century, remained unnoticed within the Russian philosophical tradition. The purpose of this article is to reveal the basis of Rozanov’s thesis that the first idea of reason potentially contains all knowledge in unity. The author analyzes the following aspects of Rozanov’s work related to the problem of understanding: the motive and purpose of writing a treatise, the theme of innate ideas, the concept of vivacity of ideas, the theory of potential knowledge and its subject, the cyclical process of understanding, the difference between mind and reason, understanding from knowledge. Rozanov’s interpretation of the idea of reason, the scheme of reason, and the doctrine of number are also reconstructed. The paper concludes: the fundamental thesis of Rozanov about the embeddedness of all knowledge in the unity of the first idea of reason is justified by the primacy of the position of the idea in the taxonomy of cognitive acts. And also, by the fact that the purpose of the cognitive process pushes reason to itself.

The Usefulness of Uselessness for Conservation in the Ways of Zhuangzi

Global efforts for biodiversity conservation have gained considerable momentum in recent years. Yet much remains to be learned from the minds of the ancient past regarding perspectives on relations between society and the environment. Zhuangzi is one such figure whose works may be of high relevance to contemporary conservation. While many philosophical ideals underpinning conservation stem from a mostly westernized ethos, strategies can be expanded by non-western principles such as Zhuangzi’s. In light of IPBES’ “nature’s contributions to people” concept, a globally reaching framework for conservation, I explore the applicability of one of Zhuangzi’s central teachings; the usefulness of uselessness.

일차 세계대전 직후 중국 관념 철학자들의 사회주의 재해석과 그 한계 - 빈곤의 현실과 역사유물론의 역설 -

This article explores the idealist philosophy of socialism that Liang Qichao, Zhang Dongsun, and Zhang Junmai formulated in the aftermath of the First World War. These Chinese philosophers believed that the global catastrophe of the First World War resulted significantly from the moral bankruptcy of the modern Western civilization of capitalism. They thought that this capitalist civilization was founded on the basis of the positivist philosophy that explains the world, including human beings, in accordance with the inevitable laws of natural movements, resulting in the loss of morality as any important issue of consideration in philosophy. As they shared this critique of positivism with western thinkers, they joined the global revolt against positivism and tried to construct an alternative vision of the world, particularly a vision of socialism that they saw as a sign of the retrieval of morality after the war. In opposition to the Marxist materialist conception of history that was then interpreted mainly as the theory of economic determinism in China, Liang and the two Zhangs tried to reinterpret the meaning of socialism with a special stress on free human will as a motivating force for social change. While suggesting morality, ethics, and culture as important issues in a socialist movement, they constructed an alternative vision of socialism as a global-historical project to build a morally desirable future, rather than as an inevitable consequence of natural movement of history.<BR> While concentrating on critiques of the moral bankruptcy of capitalism, however, their idealist theory of socialism neglected to acknowledge the contradictions imbedded in the social relations of production under capitalism. As they believed that China should solve the problem of poverty that resulted from the lack of productive force to save the Chinese people, they tended to stress the necessity of improving China’s productive force without any consideration of the relations of production or class relations. During the so-called socialist debate, they themselves interpreted historical materialism as an evolutionary theory of economic development and appropriated this revolutionary theory to support their advocacy for capitalist development in China as a precondition for genuine socialism. In doing so, these philosophers themselves fell in a trap of “inevitability” (the positivist logic that they aimed to overcome until one year ago) - not the inevitability of socialism but the inevitability of capitalism -. By endorsing the necessity of capitalist development and relegating socialism to the future, they neglected to address any problems in the relations of production and, because of their failure to address social injustice and unfairness, their idealist theory lost any transformative significance.