The Philosophical-Historical Views of Herzen as a Problem in the History of West European Philosophy

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Erik Iu. Solov'ev
Author(s):  
Barry Allen

Empiricisms reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European philosophy and comparatively. It traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. A richly detailed account in Part I of history’s empiricisms establishes a context in Part II for reconsidering the work of the so-called radical empiricists—William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is “radical” about their work is to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. Empiricisms also sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other. Empiricism is more multi-textured than philosophers tend to assume when we explain it to ourselves and to students. One purpose of Empiricisms is to recover the neglected context. A complementary purpose is to elucidate the value of experience and arrive at some idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism.


Author(s):  
Павел Великанов

У Рода Дреера получилась сильная, понятная и мотивирующая книга. Это настоящий эталон миссионерской (в светском значении этого слова) литературы. За ярким предисловием следует достаточно объёмный, но совсем не скучный экскурс в историю западноевропейской философии, в котором эта самая история постепенно складывается в линейную схему. Как считает автор, с позднего Средневековья и по настоящее время западноевропейское (и, как производная от него, американское) общество движется исключительно по пути моральной деградации и отхода от религии. Но это не эсхатологическая картина «охладения любви», о которой говорил Христос Спаситель (Мф. 24, 12). Речь идёт о якобы существующем кризисе одной из человеческих культурных моделей, вполне преодолимом человеческим же усилием. Rod Dreher's book is strong, clear and motivating. This is a true benchmark of missionary (in the secular sense of the word) literature. A vivid preface is followed by a rather voluminous, but not at all boring excursion into the history of Western European philosophy, in which this very history is gradually formed into a linear scheme. According to the author, from the late Middle Ages to the present, Western European (and, as a derivative of it, American) society has been moving exclusively along the path of moral degradation and departure from religion. But this is not the eschatological picture of the "cooling down of love" of which Christ the Saviour spoke (Matthew 24:12). We are talking about the alleged crisis of one of the human cultural models, quite surmountable by human efforts.


Author(s):  
Adrian Johnston

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (b. 13 April 1901–d. 9 September 1981) arguably is the most creative and influential figure in the history of psychoanalysis after Sigmund Freud. Lacan portrays himself as an embattled defender of Freud’s true legacy within and beyond analytic circles, the lone champion of a “return to Freud.” His teachings emphasize the crucial differences between the Freudian unconscious and speciously similar notions such as that of the id as a dark, seething cauldron of irrational, animalistic instincts. He stresses especially the centrality of language in psychoanalysis, with the unconscious subject at stake in analysis being constituted and sustained through socio-symbolic mediations (as per Lacan’s famous thesis according to which “the unconscious is structured like a language”). Dubbed “the French Freud,” Lacan significantly broadened and deepened Freudianism through putting Freud’s discoveries into conversation with a wide range of other disciplines and orientations. In particular, Lacan’s reflections draw frequently and extensively on the resources of 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophical currents such as German idealism, structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology, and existentialism. Indeed, not only did Lacan inspire the formation of distinctly Lacanian clinical approaches—perhaps his greatest worldwide impact has been (and continues to be) in the fields of the theoretical humanities, themselves heavily indebted to the past two centuries of European philosophy. Over the course of recent decades, Lacan’s concepts/theories of, for instance, the mirror stage, subjectivity, language, desire, drive, jouissance, fantasy, and the objet petit a all have come to serve as key components in numerous scholars’ explorations of issues and instances relating to philosophy, art, literature, cinema, culture, politics, and religion, among other areas of concern. Furthermore, like Freud, Lacan remains a source of heated controversy among various commentators and critics right up through the present day.


Author(s):  
Екатерина Махотина

Western historiography about the history of madness has pointed out that the emergence and active use of special medical terms led to the development of certain discourses on disease which had been appropriated and used on a subjective level. The discourse on melancholy is such a case. And it may seem surprising that the history of melancholy has remained a West European phenomenon until this day: For Russia, there are no studies on melancholy as illness, sin of acedia or social deviance in the eighteenth century. This article aims to close this gap and systemize melancholics from the point of view of the state, clerical actors and society. With this in mind this article will observe a special socio-cultural phenomenon—the confinement of the so-called “izumlennye,” or “madmen” in monasteries, which were similar to west European institutions that functioned using internment, punishment and discipline. This article will address the following aspects of the melancholy discourse: 1) Madness as a security issue: Internment of the “mad” in severe monastery prisons; 2) Melancholy as illness and self-diagnosis: Melancholy as a reason for the reduction of punishment; 3) Melancholy as external diagnosis in family conflicts and the argument for sending “mentally sick” relatives to the monastery; and, finally, 4) Religious melancholy: those who doubted their own faith and went to repent in a monastery.


Author(s):  
Никита Храпунов ◽  
Nikita Khrapunov

The article examines various aspects of descriptions of the past and archeological sites of Crimea prepared by travelers that visited the peninsula in the first decades after its incorporation into Russia in 1783. It demonstrates that Crimea, which had previously been quite unknown to the European audience, became a popular place for educational trips – largely because of the unique concentration of the cultural heritage on its area. The analysis of the travelers’ notes showed that the foreigners had been attracted by monuments associated with the Ancient Greece and Rome, Scythians, Sarmatians and Tauridians, Crimean Goths and Byzantines, medieval Genovese colonies, the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate. The vogue of Crimea was boosted by the fashion for antiquity and fascination of the Europeans with the mysterious and romantic Islamic East. The study unveils that the travelers created an extensive, though rather mixed set of sources, whose authors had different intellectual level and varying interests, found themselves in different life circumstances, pursued various objectives and worked in a range of genres. The study of the travel essays helped to reveal the unknown pages in the history of archeological studies of Crimea, specifically, the history of the search for the ancient Chersonese or discovery of the capital of the late Scythians. The paper shows the importance of the travelers’ sketches for the modern architectural and archeological research and restoration projects. It is detected that the travelers turned individual monuments into tourist attractions, created and communicated stereotypes and legends. It is demonstrated that some foreigners applied to the history and archeology of Crimea to back up their economic and political projects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35.5 ◽  
pp. 194-199
Author(s):  
Natalya N. Rostova

In the article the author examines humanism criticism that does not result in post-humanism. The author shows that post-humanism is the reaction to the humanistic idea of man as the center of the world that was typical for west-European philosophy. At the same time post-humanism doe not negate the logic of humanism, but extrapolates it to the whole of non-human world. On the contrary, Russian philosophy is free from the original premises of humanism and it views the crisis of humanism in a different perspective. The author shows that Russian philosophy is not anthropocentric, but on the contrary – anthropologic. Its feature consists in viewing the man in the perspective of his ontological expansion. The idea of such ontological expansion is based on the philosophy of inequality. When west-European philosophy today conceptualizes total world democracy on the other side of man, Russian philosophy turns to the idea of metaphysical gaps that substantiate the idea of man’s freedom and anthropological necessity of self-restrictions.


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