scholarly journals Synthesis of Cultures of the East and West in the Philosophy of B.D. Dandaron

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-511
Author(s):  
Mergen Sanjievich Ulanov
Keyword(s):  
Practical Aspect ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
East And West ◽  
East West

The article deals with the phenomenon of synthesis of East and West cultures in the religious philosophy of B.D. Dandaron - one of the most famous representatives of Russian Buddhism in the XX century. The beginning of the spread of Buddhist teachings in Russian society is also connected with his extraordinary personality. Dandaron was engaged in active yoga, tantric practice, and also gave instructions to those who were interested in Buddhism. As a result, a small circle of people began to form around him who tried to study and practice Buddhism. Dandaron was also engaged in Buddhist activities, studied Tibetan history and historiography, and described the Tibetan collection of manuscripts. It is indicated that Dandaron not only made an attempt to consider Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy, but also created his own teaching, which was called neobuddism. As a result, he was able to conduct a creative synthesis of Buddhist philosophy with the Western philosophical tradition. In fact, he developed a philosophical system that claims to be universal and synthesized Buddhist and Western spiritual achievements. Trying to synthesize the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought, Dandaron turned to the well-known comparative works of the Indian thinker S. Radhakrishnan and the Russian buddhologist F.I. Shcherbatsky. The author also notes the influence on the philosophy of neobuddism of the ideas of V.E. Sesemann, a neo-Kantian philosopher with whom Dandaron was personally acquainted. The idea of non-Buddhism had not only a philosophical and theoretical, but also a practical aspect, since the consideration of Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy helped to attract people of Western culture to this religion. In General, Dandarons desire to create a universal synthetic philosophical system was in line with the philosophical and spiritual search of Russian philosophy, and was partly related to the traditional problem of East-West, which has always been relevant for Russia.

scholarly journals Jacques Derrida: The Double Liminality of a Philosophical Marrano

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Kutash
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
French Language ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The One

There is an analogy between two types of liminality: the geographic or cultural ‘outside’ space of the Marrano Jew, alienated from his/her original religion and the one he or she has been forced to adopt, and, a philosophical position that is outside of both Athens and Jerusalem. Derrida finds and re-finds ‘h’ors- texte’, an ‘internal desert’, a ‘secret’ outside place: alien to both the western philosophical tradition and the Hebraic archive. In this liminal space he questions the otherness of the French language to which he was acculturated, and, in a turn to a less discursive modality, autobiography, finds, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Jew-who-doesn’t know-that-he-is”. Derrida’s galut (exile) is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It is a private place outside of all discourse, which he claims, is inevitably ethnocentric. In inhabiting this outside space, he exercises the prerogative of a Marrano, equipped to critique the French language of his acculturation and the western philosophy of the scholars. French and Hebrew are irreconcilable binaries, western philosophy and his Hebrew legacy is as well. These issues will be discussed in this paper with reference to Monolingualism of the Other and Archive Fever as they augment some of his earlier work, Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena.

scholarly journals Covid-19, Philosophy and the Leap Towards the Posthuman

Phronimon ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malesela John Lamola
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Technological Transformation ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Human Ontology

A discursive canon around transhumanism and posthumanism as beliefs in the efficacy and necessity of technology as the beneficial transformer of human life “for the better” is well-established in the Western philosophical tradition. However, none of the theorists and protagonists of this technological reconfiguration of humanity could ever have predicted that what they envisaged would be propelled into manifestation with as dramatic and phenomenal momentum such as has been ushered in by the mainly technology-driven interventions introduced in various measures globally to curb the SARS-CoV2 virus. The effect of these responses to the pandemic, it is here demonstrated, have set humanity into a technogenesis, a transformative ontological process headed towards a machinistic and de-anthropic life idealised by posthumanists. Apropos, a set of three intertwined tasks are here executed. Firstly, I explicate my foregoing claim, namely, how at the helm of the variety of measures to control Covid-19 is a discernible socio-scientific movement that is directed at inaugurating and regularising a posthumanist consciousness and de-anthropic modes of sociality. Secondly, I venture a critical understanding of “the Covid-19 moment” that exposes the quadripartite alliance of a postmodernist Western philosophy, technoscience, commercial interests, and politics as the systemic drivers of this technocratic philosophical anthropology. Thirdly, or rather concurrently, taking the work of Nick Bostrom as the theoretical heuristic advocating human technological transformation, I normatively alert of the ramifications of this emerging human ontology.

scholarly journals PETER J. KING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CANON: AN AFRICANIST APPRECIATION

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malesela John Lamola
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Critical Observation ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Universal Approach ◽  
Universal Measure

From a perspective of an advocacy for a multi-culturally sensitive epistemology, as well as from the context of the politics of decision-making on which thinkers get inaugurated into a community of what is regarded as standard-bearers of what passes as philosophy, Peter King’s One hundred philosophers: The life and work of the world’s greatest thinkers (2004) is instructive. He creatively breaks the boundaries of the traditional canonical criteria of Western philosophy and installs into a singular chronological compendium thinkers from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas as philosophers whose works set the frontiers of philosophic erudition. Our critical observation is that King profoundly subverts the myth and challenges the doctrine of positing European thinkers as bulwarks of a universally superior epistemic system. Drawing from the amply documented protestation of African philosophy against the supremacist tendencies of the hegemonic Western academy, as well as from Walter Mignolo’s critical framework on the proclivity of a colonial epistemology to masquerade as universal, this essay critically highlights the historico-cultural mechanisms whereby the Western philosophical tradition sets itself as the arbiter and universal measure of what passes as philosophy, or a philosopher. King’s book is presented as a commendable negation of this tendency and as a demonstration of a culturally equitable and pluraversal (as opposed to the Eurocentric universal) approach to the recognition of philosophical genius. The essay is a contribution to the demands for the transformation of the conceptualisation of philosophy in the post-colonial academy.

scholarly journals “WHEN EVERYTHING STARTS TO FLOW”: NKRUMAH AND IRIGARAY IN SEARCH OF EMANCIPATORY ONTOLOGIES

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Du Toit
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Current Analysis ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition

A more explicit, comprehensive and sustained dialogue between the African philosophical and Western feminist traditions would yield insights at once rich and useful to both traditions, and beyond, e.g. to the African feminist tradition. Here, I place the work of Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray in discussion with Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah’s conception of “consciencism”. What they most saliently share is an understanding of how the dichotomies central to traditional Western philosophy (mind-body and idealism-materialism) have been key in the structural exclusion and oppression of the “others” of this dominant tradition. Both are convinced that Western metaphysics serve ideological purposes and help to perpetuate relations of domination. Both struggle with the question of how to effectively resist this specific violence of the Western philosophical tradition without repeating its logic. Most importantly for the current analysis, in their search for sources for resistance and emancipation, Nkrumah and Irigaray do not remain with diagnoses; instead both assume or construct a fluid ontology outside of, or beyond, this dominant symbolic order.

Why Look for a Dark Logos in a Dark Room (Especially When It Isn’t There)?

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Uncritical Acceptance ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
Dark Room

The article provides a critical analysis of the Russian philosopher, sociologist and political scientist Alexander Dugin. According to Dugin, there are no universal (rational) principles on which philosophy may rely; however, every culture has its own rationality and its particular “Logos.” Therefore, the task of Russian philosophers is to create a special “Russian philosophy of chaos,” also termed a “dark Logos,” as an alternative to the Western Logos and its pretentions to universality. The uncritical acceptance of this Western Logos by Russian society has given it a distinctive attribute called “archaeomodern,” which is an incomplete and superficial modernization of Russian society even though it remains deeply archaic in its essence. The article finds several critical flaws in Dugin’s project to (re)create a “Russian philosophy of chaos.” First, Dugin’s ideas about the essence of Western European modernity (and consequently about the constituent elements of the Russian archaeomodern) are drawn mainly from the writings of Western such critics of modernity as René Guénon and Martin Heidegger that are themselves an integral part of the Western Logos and that paint a distorted picture of Western modernity by starting from a polemical opposition to it. The author notes also that Dugin’s ideas about the radically archaic nature of the Russian nation, which he believes has not reached even the stage of Europe’s Middle Ages, are based primarily on the speculations of Western thinkers about “underdeveloped non-Western nations.” Thus, instead of the nuanced study of the extent and depth of modernization in Russian society and analysis of its elements promised by Dugin, he offers a series of caricatured images borrowed from Western philosophy and makes recommendations that are too superficial to be of much interest to Russian society or its government

scholarly journals Current objectives of Russian philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-210
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Smirnov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Value System ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Free Basis ◽  
Catching Up

The article is dedicated to the problem of stringing together Russian social reality and genuine theoretical concerns of philosophy. Due to lifting ideological restriction in 1991 the major part of philosophical work was aimed on catching up with Western philosophy widening the gap between society and philosophy in Russia and stating Western value system as universal. The pressing issue for modern Russian philosophy is to formulate and to accept the epis­temological basis for Russian civilization project equal in scale to the Western one. It re­quires the search of a new solution that could be able to gather heterogeneous value sys­tems of Russian society. It should be more universal than “traditional Russian values”, which requires the great efforts on developing individual philosophical consciousness and reaching the deep self-awareness both philosophical and social. The Western-free basis of cogitation in Russian culture could be found in the idea of Vsesubektnostʼ as an utopian idea of the whole world unity, non-losable entirety and non-losable subjectivity. This idea could be used as unobtainable ideal to contemplate how the big culture could manifest itself into civilization system. It specifies the huge field for all-level research from the philosophy of consciousness to the practical cultural and civilization construction.

scholarly journals Reason without feelings? Emotions in the history of western philosophy

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Aleksej Kisjuhas
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophy Of Emotions

The paper critically analyzes the interplay between reason and emotions in the history of Western philosophy, as an inadequately ambivalent interrelationship of contrast, control and conflict. After the analysis of the philosophies of emotions and passion amongst the most important philosophers and philosophical works of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, the paper presents ideas on this interrelationship within the framework of modern philosophy, or during the so-called Age of Reason. Finally, the paper analyzes the character of emotions in the contemporary philosophy, while examining possibilities for the history of (philosophy of) emotions and feelings, but also the possibilities for overcoming the undue opposition of reason and emotions, which was present in the dominant Western philosophical tradition.

The Russian World and the System of National Values in the Social Philosophy of Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
Nikita V. Teplykh
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
A Value ◽  
National Values ◽  
The Social

Introduction. This study examines the peculiarity of the phenomenon of the “Russian world” as a complex socio-value phenomenon of the existence of the Russian society. From the time of ancient Russian society to the present, many important value dominants of “Russianness” retain their identity and relevance. Russian social thought has clearly identified the main axiological themes of modernity: collectivism, spirituality, religiosity, and the traditional nature of human social existence. The purpose of the article is to comprehensively analyze the issues of the correlation of the national values of Russians and the ideas of the “Russian world” in the socio-philosophical context of the Russian philosophical tradition. Materials and Methods. The issues of a systematic and integrated approach to the problems of identifying the specifics of Russian philosophy and its representation of the phenomenon of the value dominants of the Russian world are methodologically quite debatable. However, most of the concepts of social philosophy in Russia in this regard analyze this issue from a value-normative position. The comparative-historical and complex approaches in the methodology of solving the problems of research of the “Russian world” are considered important. The results of the study. The specifics of the topic under consideration affect both socio-axiological and socio-cultural trends in the development of Russian society from its origins to the present day. The systematic resolution of the polemics around the phenomena and elements of the “Russian world” in philosophy and historical science is concentrated in the perspective of the continuous development of Russian social thought. This feature allows us to reveal the value of traditionalism and continuity of the Russian society. Discussion and Conclusion. In the context of dynamically changing trends of our time, it is important to identify the current issues of preserving the traditions and value “codes” of Russian society. The problems of continuity and influence of the ideas of the “Russian world” had a significant impact on the social thought of Russia. Many of the value bases of the existence of Russians have proved vital to this day: collectivism, spirituality, and tradition are an important asset of public Russian thought.

Cultivating Reason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Epistemic Dependence ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Educational Ideal

The Western philosophical tradition has historically valorized the cultivation of reason as a fundamental intellectual ideal. This ideal continues to be defended by many as educationally basic. However, recent philosophical work has challenged it on several fronts, including worries stemming from relativistic tendencies in the philosophy of science, the apparent ubiquity of epistemic dependence in social epistemology, and broad critiques of objectionable hegemony launched from feminist and postmodernist perspectives. This chapter briefly reviews the historical record, connects the cultivation of reason to the educational ideal of critical thinking, spells out the latter ideal, and evaluates these challenges. It ends by sketching a general, “transcendental” reply to all such critiques of reason.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come

The Introduction outlines the various chapters. It then situates the question of ‘body’ in the modern Western philosophical tradition following Descartes, and argues that this leaves subsequent responses to come under one of three options: metaphysical dualism of body and subject; any anti-dualist reductionism; or the overcoming of the divide. Describing the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty as a potent example of the third strategy, the Introduction then suggests his philosophy will function as foil to the ecological phenomenology developed and presented in the book. Moreover, one approach within the Western Phenomenological tradition, of treating phenomenology as a methodology for the clarification of experience (rather than the means to the determination of an ontology of the subject) is compared to the approach in this book. Since classical India, while understanding dualism, did not confront the challenge of Descartes (for better or for worse), its treatment of body follows a different trajectory.

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