Twentieth-century Philosophy Research Articles

Идея христианского единства Вл.С. Соловьева в условиях вызовов XX–XXI веков

This article examines the concept of Christian unity in the context of Russian philosophical thought. The author analyzes the works of Vl.S. Solovyov, as well as the works of Russian religious philosophers of the early 20th century, theologians and church leaders of the 20th-21st centuries, devoted to issues of ecclesiastic unity. The study demonstrates the enduring relevance of Solovyov’s ideas on ecclesiastic unity in the context of modern geopolitical and sociocultural challenges. The work relies on the encyclicals of the Roman pontiffs, the official decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the definitions of the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the views of Russian philosophers of the 20th century, among whom N.O. Lossky, V.V. Zenkovsky, G.V. Florovsky, S.N. Bulgakov, S.L. Frank, and A.F. Losev. The author implements the historical and philosophical research method, as well as methods of historical analysis and comparative religion. The article analyzes the evolution of the idea of Christian unity in the thought of Vl.S. Solovyov from the project of ecclesiastic unity to the eschatological pessimism of “Three Conversations about War, Progress and the End of World History”. The author pays attention to its reception in the intellectual and church space of the 20th and 21st centuries and the relevance for determining the directions of contemporary Russian society’s development. In essence, the author of the article substantiates the thesis that the idea of Christian unity of Vl.S. Solovyov could be a possible intellectual basis in formulating responses to the challenges that the church faces today regarding its participation in creating humane world order.

Józef Tischner’s early thought as phenomenological axiology

AbstractJózef Tischner, a Polish twentieth century priest and philosopher, is mostly known for his ideas relating to the theme of solidarity, as well as for his original ‘philosophy of drama’. This article examines selected aspects of his early philosophy, without which those two major contributions cannot be properly understood. I begin by a brief synopsis of three thinkers which have exerted major influence on Tischner – Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Roman Ingarden. I then proceed to recount Tischner’s own early philosophy as an investigation of human self-awareness, showing how several ideas (such as ‘solidarization’) contribute to Tischner’s later thought. Finally, I offer a brief critical remark to Tischner’s work – namely, whether it is possible to argue for an ultimately axiological constitution of self-awareness, without taking a stance on the question related to the nature and existence of values.

Becoming a person through dialogue: field theory revisited

Field theory was first discussed in the natural sciences during the nineteenth century, but was reinterpreted for the realm of psychology through the writings of Gestalt psychologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. I propose that the dynamic field of human experiencing is of most interest for Gestalt therapy field theory. In this article, by tracing theories developed by Gestalt psychologists and twentieth-century philosophers, I suggest that human beings become persons through social interaction and by being part of a community and culture – an approach which creates a clear connection with Martin Buber’s dialogical theory and method. Keywords Field theory, field perspective, personhood, cultural influence, dialogic theory, dialogic method

The Narrative Subject of Law: An Introduction to and Outline of a Long-Awaited Turn in Law

Abstract In this article, we argue that the current concept of the legal subject should be expanded to include narrative identity, in other words that the narrative subject of law should be recognised. With this aim in mind, we firstly (i) identify the philosophical assumptions and tools necessary to articulate the thesis of homo narrans. We find them in Martin Heidegger’s work Being and time, where he made a groundbreaking contribution to twentieth-century philosophy by deconstructing the concept of the subject. Then (ii) we discuss the key theoretical-legal assumptions and tools related to the legal turn we advocate, and finally (iii) we indicate – provisionally and in broad outline – the key consequences of recognising the narrative legal subject of law in the justice system.

A resolute reading of Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

ABSTRACT It is often remarked that Iris Murdoch’s thought deeply influenced the landscape of twentieth-century moral philosophy. It is certainly true that she inspired a generation of Anglo-American philosophers who sought to critique the moral philosophy of their day. However, these philosophers drew almost exclusively from her early philosophical thought, most notably The Sovereignty of Good. When it came to Murdoch’s second book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (MGM), moral philosophers and scholars alike found it hard to place within contemporary moral philosophy. Our aim in this paper is to offer a reading of MGM that is resolute in its commitment to do justice to the book’s resistance against domestication within standard moral philosophy, while taking Murdoch at her word when she writes that her “whole argument can be read as moral philosophy” (MGM, 740). This commitment allows us to read MGM as an integrated unity. More importantly, it allows us to reassess Murdoch’s place in twentieth-century philosophy and to propose MGM as one of the works seeking to transform it. Our hope is that our reading will interest any philosopher who feels that something essential is missing in current typical practices in the discipline.

“He’s the Test(imony)”: Edward Gibbon and Virginia Woolf’s View of History

ABSTRACT This article examines Virginia Woolf’s view of history by taking Edward Gibbon as a locus of historical reflection and refiguration. Starting with a reinvestigation into the Gibbon episode in The Voyage Out, it argues that Woolf’s primary aim is to equate history as an act of reading and thereupon a sort of reader-oriented text. The reader’s powerful autonomy in historical reading foregrounds the textuality of history. This article turns then to explore the ways in which Woolf maneuvers the writing style of Gibbon and infuses it into her historical writing through the prism of imagination. The literary and reconstructive attributes of historical writing indicate the subjectivity of history. Finally, this article adumbrates the retrospective trajectory of Woolf’s mode of thinking in history. By virtue of Gibbon’s great doctrine of the continuity of history, Woolf forges a continuous connection between the present and the past as well as the future. Valorising Gibbon as both an allusion and an influencer, this article problematises the widely acknowledged nineteenth-century traditions or twentieth-century philosophies thought to be assimilated or anticipated by Woolf; instead, it defends Woolf’s receptive and revisionist stance vis-à-vis the eighteenth-century historian as a legacy and correspondingly outlines her triangulated view of history.

Standing beyond Dasein

Abstract This article argues that twentieth-century philosophy of liberation in Latin America should be considered a rhetorical movement just as much as a philosophical one because it exhibits two basic rhetorical tendencies: the prioritization of the concrete over the abstract and the foregrounding of figurative language. To illustrate these rhetorical tendencies, it documents how the twentieth-century cultural anthropologist and philosopher Rodolfo Kusch uses the Spanish words ser and estar to reengineer Heidegger’s concept of Dasein.

Open Form, Its Psychological, Civilizational, and Aesthetic Foundations in the Works of Modern Ukrainian Artists

The paper presents the concept of an “open work” (according to the idea of Umberto Eco) as a meaningfully undefined, and even non-finito work, which appeared in the artistic practice of the 20th century, at the time of revolutionary and military disasters. The events of the early 20th century in the social, psychological, and artistic consciousness of the leading avant-garde figures caused emotional and psychological shifts and contributed to the emergence of new ways of artistic expression. In art, works with different vector characteristics emerged: palimpsest, simulacrum, deconstruction, etc. Since then, the nature of general development of art became that of a rhizome. Similar principles of artistic thinking were predicted by H. Wölfflin in art (19th century) and in the aesthetics by A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson, and other philosophers of the early 20th century. The aesthetic concept of an “open work” and its special poetics reoriented the European art critics’ opinions regarding the analysis of modern artistic practice. Art studies focused on the artistic form in the very process of its formation (incompleteness). The process of forming an artistic work became the subject of meticulous analysis as something that is interesting to the modern viewer, who is a “synergistic person.” In the context of the poetics of an “open work,” the paper highlights the significance of the avant-garde discoveries of Oleksandr Arkhipenko as a pioneer of world modern sculpture. The connection of his philosophical and plastic thinking with dynamic social and scientific shifts in the life of mankind, with the “physics of space” of Albert Einstein, is visualized. The revolutionary role of caesuras (voids) in the volumes of Archipenko sculpture is defined. Under the angle of the concept of an “open work,” the article visualizes new forms of dialogue between modernists of the 21st century, in particular, Ukrainian artists and their recipients. The analysis of the works of modern Ukrainian artists (O. Zhyvotkov, O. Dzhuraeva, I. Grechanyk) illustrates the practical use of an “open form” as a modern practice in the time of psychological tension and uncertainty, in the state of stressful situations of the 2022–2024 war in Ukraine. “Staying before nothingness” (K. Jaspers’s expression), life on the threshold of existence caused irrationalism and “poetics of incompleteness” in the works of the mentioned artists. It was important to determine such a substantial characteristic of the work as ambiguity in its perception and reading. The paper reveals the psychological and plastic foundations of the authors’ artistic thinking when producing an “open work.” The productivity of a certain artistic paradigm is proven.

ПОИСК «ИНОГО ЦАРСТВА»: ОБРАЗ ПОЭТА В ЛИРИКЕ В. ДУДАРЕВА И Е. ГУСЕВА

The aim of the study is to identify the philosophical, ontological aspect of the poet's image in the poems of modern Russian poets Valery Fedorovich Dudarev and Evgeny Pavlovich Gusev. The object of the article is two poems: "Poets" (V. Dudarev) and "Return" (E. Gusev). The subject of the study is the eidology of "another kingdom", which is the foundation for the image of the poet in the lyrics of his contemporaries. Parallels are drawn with the Russian fairy tale, its otherworldly aesthetics, built on the ontological search for "another kingdom", an ideal world. The poems of modern poets reveal the axiological and ontological essence of this search for "another kingdom", which can only be realized by an artist of the word, who feels the signs of fate, prophetically treating life. We turn to Russian philosophy of the early 20th century, the legacy of S. Frank, who showed the apophatic horizon of poetry, and Russian literary criticism, the works of V. Kozhinov, in which poetry is understood noumenal. The methodology of the work is based on the use of hermeneutic-interpretative analysis of the text, and the comparative method is also used. The results of the work may be of interest to literary scholars who include literature in the space of a large dialogue of cultures, and can also be used in teaching courses on cultural studies and philosophy.

Thomas S. Kuhn: key to a better understanding of the extended evolutionary synthesis.

In recent years, some scholars have explicitly questioned the desirability or utility of applying the classical and "old-fashioned" theories of scientific change by the likes of Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn to the question of the precise nature and significance of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). Supposedly, these twentieth-century philosophers are completely irrelevant for a better understanding of this new theoretical framework for the study of evolution. Here, it will be argued that the EES can be fruitfully interpreted in terms of, as yet, insufficiently considered or even overlooked elements from Kuhn's theory. First, in his original, historical philosophy of science, Kuhn not only distinguished between small and big scientific revolutions, he also pointed out that paradigms can be extended and reformulated. In contrast with what its name suggests, the mainstream EES can be interpreted as a Kuhnian reformulation of modern evolutionary theory. Second, it has, as yet, also been overlooked that the EES can be interpreted in terms of Kuhn's later, tentative evolutionary philosophy of science. With the EES, an old dichotomy in evolutionary biology is maybe being formalized and institutionalized.

‘Freeze Peach’: A Fruitful Formulation or a Recipe for Heated Discord? Followed by A Response to Keith Reader's ‘Freeze Peach’

Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article ‘Freeze Peach’ situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with thinkers associated with the postmodern would have allowed Keith to develop a uniquely perceptive and productive insight into the present moment of political disorientation, one which demands a renegotiation of the legacies of both modernity and postmodernity.

Open Sesame! The Magical Words of the World of Meaning of Human Beings: Dialectical Harmony of the Symbolical Forms

Ernst Cassirer made an original contribution to twentieth century philosophy with his genuine series of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer evaluates the various moments of culture from an integral perspective in this multi-faceted study that covers the symbolic dimension of human communication and interaction with the world. Cassirer's contribution to the philosophical agenda was reinforced by the works An Essay on Man and The Myth of the State, published posthumously. These latter works, however, go beyond mere repetition and summary of Cassirer's thought. Particularly, The Myth of the State is important to confront a problem left open by Cassirer's integral philosophy of culture; the return of myth that consolidates contemporary political thought and action. Cassirer defines culture as the progressive process of human emancipation; analyzes the elements of culture in dialectical harmony, without reducing one to the other. It is doubtful that a metaphysics of culture will eliminate existing problems, but a philosophical framework that will offer an integral view of culture is still a current need. Although Cassirer presents such a framework, it triggers a series of questions waiting to be resolved within itself. In this study, first, the aspects of Cassirer's philosophy of culture that give the opportunity to comprehend the various dimensions of the human beings’ world of meaning will be discussed in detail. Then, it will be tried to describe the depth and limit of the original cultural analysis revealed by this systematic approach to update itself in the face of a historical problem. Within the first half of the twentieth century, totalitarianism, as an experience that completely shook the world of meaning of the West, documented the violence and destruction of the culture's transformation into cult. Thus, the challenge concerning Cassirer's assumption of dialectical harmony of symbolic forms that move culture raises the need for a political horizon. Although The Myth of State has tried to present this necessary complementary horizon of interpretation, it is far from the comprehensive dimension offered by the critical philosophical interventions bolstered mainly by Cassirer’s thought.

"The New Economy and the Old Morality": Reimagining a Liberal Culture in Howards End

Abstract: Attentive to the transmutation of British liberalism as a political philosophy in the early twentieth century, this essay examines how E. M. Forster's Howards End brings together multiple intellectual sources that trouble standard divisions between liberal and conservative affiliations in reimagining a liberal culture. From the root and branch image of the wych-elm to the "sweetness and light" (79) of the grass, and to the "little platoon" (136) of Howards End, the essay offers fresh interpretations of Forster's novel and reconnects his work with a group of thinkers as diverse as Edmund Burke, William Gladstone, Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Hobhouse, and John Maynard Keynes.

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

Synthesis and analysis: Jean Nicod as a mediator between Bergson and Russell

ABSTRACT This paper presents Jean Nicod (1893–1924) as a mediator in the dispute between Bergson and Russell. In La géométrie dans le monde sensible (1924), Nicod extensively discusses Bergson’s epistemology focusing on those aspects that Russell critically discusses in The Philosophy of Henri Bergson (1912) and Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). His aim is to establish a middle ground between synthesis and analysis: to show how most of the disagreements between Bergson and Russell can be resolved without compromising the central principles of their thought. Throughout this paper, I explicate Nicod’s exposition of two points of contention between Bergson and Russell: (1) the nature of sense-data and analysis, and (2) the relation between geometry and the sensible world. I will also show that his attempt to reconcile synthesis and analysis results in an innovative account of representation inspired by an early reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In the conclusion, I reflect on how Nicod’s proficiency to engage with two increasingly diverging philosophical programmes, namely early analytic philosophy and the French epistemological tradition, could have affected the development of early twentieth-century philosophy.

Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze

Abstract In the 1983 article “My Chances/Mes chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies,” Jacques Derrida gives philological questions massive philosophical significance by reading the long âgon between idealist and materialist philosophy through a philological crux in the text of Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Tracing philological debates that have surrounded Lucretius from the Renaissance onward, this article argues that Lucretius’s poetic theory of interlinked atomic and textual swerves and the philological history that has mediated them were important touchstones for both Derrida and the other major twentieth-century philosopher of difference, Gilles Deleuze. Additionally, the article argues that for both Derrida and Deleuze, the clinamen offers a theory not only of how atoms or alphabetical letters swerve or even split, but also of how a philosophical tradition such as materialism refuses to run in a straight, unitary line. This is a question of how to understand reception history: either as an unbroken tradition of faithful imitation and replication (a family genealogy, grouped under the name of the father, “Lucretius” for example), or else as something less patriarchal, less heteronormative, less faithful. Read this way, the swerve offers a rethinking of the methods of reception history itself.

Другой, ребенок, тринитарность: к новому теологическому обоснованию гетеросексуальности

This paper, written in the context of a public debate on LGBT issues, seeks a novel theological explanation for the uniqueness of the relationship between a man and a woman in the flesh, and an answer to the question of why heterosexual relations are considered in the Gospel and Christian tradition to be the way to God. The author argues that the value of heterosexual relations, which nowadays is no longer considered self-evident, requires a new justification – which the paper attempts to give, drawing on the intellectual resources of modern theology (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) and twentieth-century philosophy. The article begins with an analysis of I Rom. 1:19-27, describing Paul’s position on the subject. Then the author interprets love between a man and a woman as a fundamental experience of communion with the Other, an experience necessary, among other things, for a relationship with God and life in heaven. Next we will consider the profound connection of heterosexual relationships with the conception, as an act of God phenomenon (unpredictable and miraculous) and personal trust in God, and the experience of trinitarian relationships, in the father-mother-child triangle, with the knowledge of the Trinitarian God. The ideas and arguments developed in this article are not based on notions of "normalcy-abnormality," "naturalness-non-naturalness" of one behavior or another, but on principles of path and choice. We argue that our approach may be useful for the church, from a catechetical and missionary perspective, helping to develop a language in which to talk about sexuality and live in the contemporary world.

Modal Ontological Arguments

AbstractInspired by the third chapter of Anselm's Proslogion, twentieth century philosophers including Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga developed “modal” ontological arguments for the existence of God. Such arguments use modal logic to infer God's existence from the premises that (i) God's existence is possible and (ii) if God exists, He exists necessarily. Like other ontological arguments, modal arguments have won few converts to theism; many commentators consider them question‐begging or liable to parody. This article details how recent attempts to defend these arguments have tried to overcome these difficulties by drawing on modern accounts of the epistemology and metaphysics of modality.

“How didst thou come beneath the murky darkness?”: sense-making in light of the ancient Greeks and in the spirit of Hegel

PurposeThis piece explores the philosophical origins of sense-making as defined in Brenda Dervin’s methodology.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper locates the origins of sense-making's rich ontological, epistemological and etymological heritage to the Classical Greece and the Pre-Socratic period. The Greek origins of sense-making‘s philosophical undercurrents surface again in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit before the idea is picked up again in twentieth century philosophy and library science.FindingsThis is a conceptual paper and no empirical findings are presented.Originality/valueThis paper makes an original contribution to the study of information seeking and to sense making theory and methodology.

Bibliotheken von Frauen: Ein Lexikon

Bibliotheken von Frauen: Ein Lexikon