The Iconicity of Russian Culture

Author(s):  
Vitaliy Yu. Darenskiy

Russian culture should be adequately represented in the modern cultural consciousness as a unique phenomenon. Among new approaches there seem to be three that can be considered the most important and promising. 1) The concept of the iconicity of Orthodox culture, created by V.V. Lepakhin, that is now being developed by a significant number of interesting authors in various aspects. 2) The concept of Russian literature Easterness (Paskhalnost), substantiated by I.A. Yesaulov and potentially applicable to the general specific characteristics of Russian culture as a whole. 3) The concept of Russian culture as the “culture of transformation”, in contrast to the Western culture of individual “self-realization”. The purpose of this article is to review the most important works within the outlined conceptual field and formulate general principles for understanding the iconicity of Russian culture as its ontological basis. From the methodological point of view, we are talking about a kind of “archeology of culture” (by analogy with the “archeology of knowledge” of M. Foucault) – that is, the discovery of the primary historical foundations of Russian culture, which were later obscured by the influence of Western culture, especially in its secular forms. In the West, the original and universal principle of the iconicity of Christian culture was gradually replaced by the principle of “sculpturality”. If iconicity is the focus of man and every creature on the Creator and on his highest heavenly perfection, which presupposes the path of transformation and the clear distinction between the created and non-created; then sculpturality is the self-sufficiency of man and all creations, closing them in their proud self-sufficiency, and thereby closing the way for their transformation. Since the Christian East has preserved Orthodoxy, it is here that the original “matrix” of Christian culture has been preserved, indestructible by any later Western influences, although it has experienced strong deformations and “pseudomorphoses” under their onslaught. Iconicity is the original ontology of culture as such: on the one hand, it preserves the original paradise connection with eternal and perfect existence at the moment of creation; on the other hand, it also carries the act of ontological catastrophe bringing death, evil and imperfection into the world. The concept of Russian culture “iconicity” is considered to be the most important theoretical achievement of modern Russian thought. It combines, on the one hand, cultural and theological accuracy, and, on the other, – the huge practical potential for the revival of the national spirit.

1916 ◽  
Vol 20 (78) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
G. H. Bryan ◽  
S. Brodetsky

Consider any form of aircraft provided with a small rudder plane placed behind its centre of gravity and at a certain distance l from it, which we may speak of as the length of the tail. When this tail is subjected to a given wind pressure, the moment of this pressure about the centre of gravity, tending to turn the machine round, is proportional to l. From this point of view a long tail is preferable to a short one.On the other hand, the pressure of the air on the tail plane depends on the normal velocity of the wind relative to it. Hence the normal velocity of the plane itself is limited in magnitude, and the angular velocity with which the machine turns about its centre of gravity must therefore be less when l is large than when lis small; that is, the long–tailed machine turns more slowly than the one with a short tail, and this is a disadvantage.


Author(s):  
Denis Eckert

This article analyses Ukraine’s current borders, de jure and de facto, from a geopolitical point of view. Significant changes in the border regime occurred after the political events of 2014. The emergence of de facto borders after the annexation of Crimea and the hostilities in eastern Ukraine raises the question not only of the direction of the Ukrainian state’s foreign policy but also has fundamental consequences for domestic policy. The presence of international organisations monitoring parts of the state border shows that Ukraine is involved in the process of combating illegal immigration and smuggling, on the one hand, and that it has not solved all its state-building problems, on the other. The delimitation of state borders (demarcation) with the other former Soviet republics has taken a long time for land borders and has not been completed for maritime borders. Today’s Ukraine, in the context of European integration, opens its borders to the West and minimizes its contacts with the East. The sharp deterioration in relations with Russia following the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s support for separatist entities in eastern Ukraine has led to the abandonment of cross-border cooperation between border regions, including for mechanisms as effective as Euroregions. The need to amend current Ukrainian legislation, to take into account the political and legal status of de facto borders is an important point at the moment. To achieve this objective, it is necessary not only to draw on the experience of the functioning of the State border with Moldova in its section not controlled by the Moldovan government but also to develop new approaches to facilitate the lives of displaced persons, legalize their legal status and facilitate the crossing of the line of demarcation.


Author(s):  
Yves Mausen

Abstract The logic of evidence in Bartolistic literature, A reading of the Summa circa testes et examinationem eorum (Ms. Bruxelles, B.R., II 1442, fol.101 ra – 103 rb). – Bartolus teaches how to read testimonies from a logical point of view. On the one hand, the facts that the witness recounts constitute the minor premise of a syllogism, its conclusion being their legal characterization; therefore he is prohibited from pronouncing directly on any legal matter. On the other hand, given that the witness' knowledge of the facts has to stem from sensory perception, the information he provides has at least to constitute the minor premise of another syllogism, making for establishing the causa of his testimony.


1928 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy J. Jackson

It is well known that in many orders of typically winged insects species occur which in the adult stage are apterous or have the wings so reduced in size that flight is impossible. Sometimes the reduction of wings affects one sex only, as in the case of the females of certain moths, but in the majority of cases it is exhibited by both sexes. In many instances wing dimorphism occurs irrespective of sex, one form of the species having fully developed wings and the other greatly reduced wings. In some species the wings are polymorphic. The problem of the origin of reduced wings and of other functionless organs is one of great interest from the evolutionary point of view. Various theories have been advanced in explanation, but in the majority of cases the various aspects of the subject are too little known to warrant discussion. More experimental work is required to show how far environmental conditions on the one hand, and hereditary factors on the other, are responsible for this phenomenon. Those species which exhibit alary dimorphism afford material for the study of the inheritance of the two types of wings, but only in a few cases has this method of research been utilized.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Gekle

The history of mental development on the one and the history of his writings on the other hand form the two separate but essentially intertwined strands of an archeology of Ernst Bloch´s thought undertaken in this book. Bloch as a philosopher is peculiar in that his initial access to thought rose from the depths of early, painful experience. To give expression to this experience, he not only needed to develop new categories, but first and foremost had to find words for it: the experience of the uncanny and the abysmal, of which he tells in Spuren, is on the level of philosophical theory juxtaposed by the “Dunkel des gerade gelebten Augenblicks” (darkness of the moment just lived) and his discovery of a “Noch-nicht-Bewusstes” (not-yet-conscious), thus metaphysically undermining the classical Oedipus complex in the succession of Freud. In this book, psyche, work and the history of the 20th century appear concentrated in Ernst Bloch the philosopher and contemporary witness, who paid tribute to these supra-individual powers in his work as much as he hoped to transgress them.


Diogenes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitko Momov

Rosemberg (1991) has made a critical review of a long-standing discussion between Eastern philologists and Buddhist philosophers. The discussion is centered around the translation of the doctrine on the one hand, and its philosophical systematization on the other hand. When scientific-philological translation prevails, the literal meaning of Buddhist terminology is declared to be its basis. The young scholar, who had specialized in Japan, studied Buddhism from Japanese and Chinese sources and collected lexicographic material from non-Hindu sources. After comparing them, he encountered inaccuracies in the translation. In an attempt to overcome them, he preferred the point of view of the philosophy of Buddhism. The conclusion that he has drawn in the preface of this edition is that the study should begin with a systematization of antiquity.


Author(s):  
Anna D. Bertova ◽  

Prominent Japanese economist, specialist in colonial politics, a professor of Im­perial Tokyo University, Yanaihara Tadao (1893‒1961) was one of a few people who dared to oppose the aggressive policy of Japanese government before and during the Second World War. He developed his own view of patriotism and na­tionalism, regarding as a true patriot a person who wished for the moral develop­ment of his or her country and fought the injustice. In the years leading up to the war he stated the necessity of pacifism, calling every war evil in the ultimate, divine sense, developing at the same time the concept of the «just war» (gisen­ron), which can be considered good seen from the point of view of this, imper­fect life. Yanaihara’s theory of pacifism is, on one hand, the continuation of the one proposed by his spiritual teacher, the founder of the Non-Church movement, Uchimura Kanzo (1861‒1930); one the other hand, being a person of different historical period, directly witnessing the boundless spread of Japanese militarism and enormous hardships brought by the war, Yanaihara introduced a number of corrections to the idealistic theory of his teacher and proposed quite a specific explanation of the international situation and the state of affairs in Japan. Yanai­hara’s philosophical concepts influenced greatly both his contemporaries and successors of the pacifist ideas in postwar Japan, and contributed to the dis­cussion about interrelations of pacifism and patriotism, and also patriotism and religion.


1886 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 359-367
Author(s):  
J. H. Collins

My argument that at Porthalla there is a “passage” from hornblende-schist to serpentine; or rather that some beds of a common series have been changed into serpentine, others into hornblende-schist, and others again into a substance of intermediate character, is, I think, much strengthened by the fact that many such “apparent passages” are admitted to exist by all those who have examined the Lizard Coast with any degree of detail. De la Beche's description of that seen near the Lizard Town is as follows, and it would apply equally well to the others. “The hornblende slate,” he says, “supports the great mass of the Lizard serpentine with an apparent passage of the one into the other in many places—an apparent passage somewhat embarrassing,” that is, from his point of view; from mine it is perfectly natural. He goes on to say: “Whatever the cause of this apparent passage may have been, it is very readily seen at Mullion Cove, at Pradanack Point, at the coast west of Lizard Town, and at several places on the east coast between Landewednack and Kennick Cove, more especially under the Balk … and at the remarkable cavern and open cavity named the Frying-Pan, near Cadgwith.” At Kynance some of the laminse of serpentine are not more than one-tenth of an inch in thickness for considerable distances.


The investigation of development described in a previous communication was extended by the application of microscopic methods. The fact that both the silver haloid and the resulting silver are distributed through the film in the form of particles of minute but measurable size, allows us in this way to detect finer qualitative differences in, and to draw independent deductions on the processes of exposure and development. The size of the grain is important, both from the practical point of view and from the theoretical: in the one case as bearing on spectroscopical and astronomical photography, in the other on account of the great importance of the degree of surface-extension for heterogeneous systems. The method has been used previously by Abney, Abegg, Kaiserling, Ebert, and others, but by far the most systematic and important inquiry is that of K. Schaum and V. Bellach.


Philosophy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Moore

The author begins with an outline of Bernard William's moral philosophy, within which he locates William's notorious doctrine that reflection can destroy ethical knowledge. He then gives a partial defence of this doctrine, exploiting an analogy between ethical judgements and tensed judgements. The basic idea is that what the passage of time does for the latter, reflection can do for the former: namely, prevent the re-adoption of an abandoned point of view (an ethical point of view in the one case, a temporal point of view in the other). In the final section the author says a little about how reflection might do this.


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