scholarly journals The Concept of “Prophetic” Socialism by Max Scheler

Discourse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
A. N. Malinkin
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Max Scheler ◽  
Sociocultural Development ◽  
Christian Socialism ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Marxist Interpretation

The article analyzes the conceptual foundations of “prophetic” socialism by Max Scheler (1874–1928). The main principles of a new political and ideological doctrine at that time, designed to become, according to the plan of its creator, an “antidote” to Marxism, are considered. The author analyzes Scheler's argumentation, directed, on the one hand, against socialism in the Marxist interpretation, and on the other, at proving the legitimacy of using the terms “Christian socialism” and “Christian prophetic socialism”. Scheler opposes socialism, first of all, to individualism, which he interprets in social and moral-philosophical senses, and only secondarily to liberalism and capitalism. Socialism and individualism, which now appear as antagonistic tendencies of sociocultural development, are for him two equally necessary and interrelated essential principles of the social being of a person, understood as a spiritual-bodily social being. Individualistic tendencies, according to Scheler, prevailed over socialist tendencies in the West in modern times, therefore socialism in its Marxist interpretation turned out to be so in demand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the destruction of private property is contrary to Christianity. “Forced communism” does not bring with it heaven on earth, but catastrophe and cultural degradation, he foreshadows. Based on the teachings of the Church Fathers and starting from the Catholic social doctrine, Scheler offers his vision of an ideal society in the form of a “personal community” (Personengemeinschaft), corresponding to the true destiny of a person. In it, the individual and social principles are in harmony and interdependent development. Scheler opposes the “prophetic” method of comprehending socio-historical reality, applied proceeding from the Christian solidarism ideal, to the materialistic understanding of history. He points to three advantages of his methodology: it takes into account human freedom, the uniqueness of a historical event, combines all types and methods of human cognition, without absolutizing the scientific form of knowledge. The author reveals the deep content of Scheler's definition of Marxism as “the protest ideology of oppressed classes”, drawing on the analysis of the “sociological doctrine of idols” of the late Scheler. In it, he reveals the pre-reflexive prerequisites for the formation of class ideologies. The author points to the essential kinship of the class prejudices about which the German philosopher wrote, and the national-mental prejudices of the political elites of the leading Western countries. In conclusion, he raises the question of how relevant the problems raised in Scheler's article are today in the context of modern Russian realities.

scholarly journals Prophetischer oder marxistischer Sozialismus?

Discourse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Max Scheler
Keyword(s):  
Max Scheler ◽  
Partial Correctness ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Christian Socialism ◽  
German Philosopher

German philosopher and sociologist Max Scheler (1874–1928) puts forward the concept of “prophetic Christian socialism” as a means of political and ideological opposition to Marxism. The concept expresses his religious-philosophical views, developed in earlier works, primarily in the main work “Formalism in Ethics and Material Ethics of Values”. Scheler compares his own views on socialism, understanding of history, the possibility of foreseeing historical processes with the views of these realities of K. Marx. Scheler's criticism of Marx's teachings is interspersed with the recognition of its partial correctness.

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

scholarly journals Christianity and the “Social Question” in N.А. Berdyaev’s and S.L. Frank’s Philosophical Works

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
I.V. Demin
Keyword(s):  
Social Issue ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Question ◽  
General Importance ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Socialism ◽  
Christian Love

The article analyzes and compares two interpretations of the “social question” and the ways of solving it as they are offered in the works of N.A. Berdyaev and S.L. Frank. A particular attention is paid to the connection between the “social question” and the problem of “Christian socialism”. While acknowledging the general importance of the social issues for the Christian mindset, both philosophers traced the origin of social injustice to the human nature rather than to the social structure. In both interpretations, in fact, the value of social justice is inferior in its hierarchal status to the value of Christian love. However, while they both rejected the socialist utopia of a “paradise on Earth” and the idea of a “Christian socialism”, Berdyaev and Frank radically diverged in their interpretation and assessment of socialism as a social system. This article highlights the fact that Berdyaev combines a criticism of the ideological claims concerning atheistic and materialist socialism with an uncritical acceptance of a number of socialist ideologies (e.g. “class struggle” and “exploitation”) and assumptions. Unlike Berdyaev, in interpreting the “social issue” Frank tended to distance himself from both classical liberalism (with its notions of private property, freedom, and state) and from socialism, which he considered as another ideological extremity. Frank’s social philosophy treats the thesis that the socialist system is more consistent and successful than others in tackling the “social issue” as an empirically dubious assumption. On the contrary, Berdyaev took this thesis for granted and used it as the starting point of his reasoning. This divergence, along with the fact that the same key terms were often used by the two philosophers in different (ideological) meanings, partly accounts for their differences in the interpretation of the “social question” and in the assessment of socialism.

scholarly journals Value Orientations of Entrepreneurs Management Activity

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-112
Author(s):  
D. Seleznov ◽  
V. Kacharova
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activity ◽  
Management Activity ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Internal And External Factors

The article deals with the theoretical approaches and mechanisms of determination of entrepreneurial activity, the formation of individual value orientations of the individual and factors influencing the formation of value and sense of life orientations of entrepreneurs. The analysis of the activity of foreign entrepreneurs shows that among the various personal qualities can be distinguished five of the most important: independence, ambition, perseverance, hard work, stability. The author notes that the increased interest of scientists in the problem of values and valuable orientations is the need for a deeper understanding of the nature of human cognition, which in the process of transformation acquires new characteristics and helps the individual to adapt to qualitatively new socio-cultural living conditions. The work reveals the essence of value orientations of the personality, as those that perform the functions of regulating behaviour and defining its purpose, linking into a single whole personality and social environment. Therefore, at each stage of personality development, the choice of the dominant mechanism of value system formation is determined by a complex set of internal and external factors. Internal psychological factors and factors of the external social environment determine the peculiarities of the development of the system of value orientations, interacting with each other in the implementation of one or another activity. Thus, the article shows that the subject of entrepreneurial activity is characterized by its specific (material, social, spiritual) value orientations, which underlie its activity and determine its structure. Consequently, values that have been identified as specific to entrepreneurial activity are strictly related to the fundamental values of each individual, but have a specific identity to them and determine the direction of the vector-specific business.

scholarly journals The Normativity of Habermas’s Public Sphere from the Vantage Point of Its Evolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Maciej Hułas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Public ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Classical Setting ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of the public sphere remains untouched at its core, despite having undergone some corrective alterations since the time of its first unveiling in the 1960s. This normative core is derived from two individual claims, historically articulated in the eighteenth-century’s “golden age” of reason and liberty as both sacred and self-evident: (1) the individual right to an unrestrained disposal of one’s private property; and (2) the individual right to formulate one’s opinion in the course of public debate. Habermas perceives the public sphere anchored to these two fundamental freedoms/rights as an arena of interactive opinion exchange with the capacity to solidly and reliably generate sound reason and public rationality. Despite its historical and cultural attachments to the bourgeois culture as its classical setting, Habermas’s model of the public sphere, due to its universal normativity, maintains its unique character, even if it has been thoroughly reformulated by social theories that run contrary to his original vision of the lifeworld, organized and ruled by autonomous rational individuals.     

Neoteny and Social Cognition: A Neuroscientific Perspective on Embodiment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Gallese
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Somatic Development ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evo Devo

The chapter will address the notion of embodiment from a neuroscientific perspective, by emphasizing the crucial role played by bodily relations and sociality on the evolution and development of distinctive features of human cognition. The neurophysiological level of description is here accounted for in terms of bodily-formatted representations and discussed by replying to criticisms recently raised against this notion. The neuroscientific approach here proposed is critically framed and discussed against the background of the Evo-Devo focus on a little explored feature of human beings in relation to social cognition: their neotenic character. Neoteny refers to the slowed or delayed physiological and/or somatic development of an individual. Such development is largely dependent on the quantity and quality of interpersonal relationships the individual is able to establish with her/his adult peers. It is proposed that human neoteny further supports the crucial role played by embodiment, here spelled out by adopting the explanatory framework of embodied simulation, in allowing humans to engage in social relations, and make sense of others’ behaviors.This approach can fruitfully be used to shed new light onto non propositional forms of communication and social understanding and onto distinctive human forms of meaning making, like the experience of man-made fictional worlds.

‘Take Down Mezuzahs, Remove Name-Plates’: The Emigration of Objects from Germany to Palestine

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Joachim Schlör
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Private Property ◽  
German Society ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter evaluates the meaning of objects inventoried and packed as emigrants prepared to leave Germany for Palestine after Adolf Hitler came to power. Private property has, for both the individual memory and the collective memory, a deep emotional significance. The exclusion of the Jews from German society started with the National Socialist policy of ‘Aryanization’, the expropriation of property. Many y émigrés had to abandon, to leave behind, their private dwellings. In the process, they lost more than the object itself. Around 1800, the British philosopher and legal theoretician Jeremy Bentham drew attention to the importance of the relationship between an object and its owner: ownership forms the basis of a hope. Thus, the threat of losing property is symbolic of the loss of all hope of a continued life in Germany and as a German. Ultimately, Aryanization and confiscation were a symbolic theft of identity. And in these cases, even the legal system was no longer capable of protecting property rights. Those who emigrated in good time were able to take at least some of their property with them.

Fichte and National Socialism

1942 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Humanitarian Values ◽  
German People ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
External Form

Next to Hegel and Nietzsche, Fichte is the German philosopher most frequently blamed as one of the principal inspirers of the National Socialist ideologies of state despotism and the superiority of the German people. Indeed, it is not difficult to find in Fichte's work any number of passages which might be interpreted in such a way as to corroborate these views. In the writings of his middle period, around 1800, Fichte arrives at a despotism of reason which in its practical application might be even more consistently restraining than the rule of our modern dictators. In his programmatic speeches for the restoration of the German nation, he ascribes to his people a divine mission which has shocked many of his interpreters. Therefore we cannot be surprised that historians who, in accordance with the demands of their profession, lay more stress on the effects of thoughts and actions than on the intentions which motivate them, attribute to Fichte a good share of responsibility for the ideology of the National Socialist party and its hold on the German people. Yet these historians are right only with regard to the external form, while the intended aims of the two systems of thought are diametrically opposed to one another.On the whole, Fichte is a moral idealist whose principal concerns are the political and inner freedom of the individual, the right and duty of the individual to contribute his best to the welfare and the cultural progress of his nation, the independence of all nationalities, social security, and an acceptable standard of living for every human being. These demands are based on a genuine respect for the dignity of man and the desire to contribute to the rule of humanitarian values in all human relations. The National Socialist, on the contrary, is fundamentally an egotistic materialist, a ruthless Herrenmensch, with a deep-rooted contempt for freedom, equality, and all humanitarian values.

scholarly journals Fulfilment of righteousness: Historical and ontological perspective of Matthew 3:15

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. McCuistion ◽  
Colin Warner ◽  
Francois P. Viljoen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Event ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The Third ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This article maintained that the historicity of Jesus’ baptism was intended to flesh out the righteousness of God that was well-documented in the Hebrew Scriptures. Furthermore, the historical event initiated the ontological emphasis on the relationship of baptism to righteousness. To support this proposal, this article focused on Matthew’s fulfilment statement in Matthew 3:15. Looking specifically at this verse within its context, the article examines what Matthew may have intended for his community to grasp regarding the Christian tradition of righteousness. The article is divided into four sections that are intended to examine Matthew’s intentions. Firstly, the immediate context is examined, showing the influences and setting for the fulfilment statement. The following section explores the fulfilment statement within this context. The third section uncovers some of the theological traditions in Paul and the church fathers. Finally, the baptismal statement of Matthew 3:15 will be tied directly to the relationship of the law and righteousness in Matthew’s ἦλθον statement of Matthew 5:17. Hierdie artikel betoog dat die historiese waarheid van Jesus se doop bedoel was om die geregtigheid van God, wat volledig uiteengesit is in die Hebreeuse Bybel, te versterk. Verder het die historiese gebeurtenis die ontologiese klem op die verhouding van die doop tot geregtigheid geïnisieer. Om hierdie voorstel te ondersteun, fokus hierdie artikel op Matteus se verklaring van verwesenliking (Mat 3:15). Deur spesifiek na hierdie vers binne sy konteks te kyk, ondersoek die artikel wat Matteus moontlik beplan het sodat sy gemeenskap die Christelike tradisie van geregtigheid kon begryp. Die artikel is in vier afdelings verdeel om sodoende Matteus se bedoelings te ondersoek. Eerstens word die onmiddellike konteks ondersoek wat die invloede en agtergrond van die verklaring van die verwesenliking uitwys. In die volgende afdeling word die verklaring van die verwesenliking in hierdie konteks verken. In die derde afdeling word ’n paar van die teologiese tradisies van Paulus en die kerkvaders aan die lig gebring. Ten slotte is die doopverklaring van Matteus 3:15 regstreeks aan die verhouding van reg en geregtigheid in Mattheus se ἦλθον verklaring van Matteus 5:17 gekoppel.

Formação de Professores: Possibilidades que se Configuram no Trabalho com Memórias e Narrativas

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 310
Author(s):  
Cyntia Simioni França ◽  
Guilherme Do Val Toledo Prado
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Teacher Training ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Technical Rationality ◽  
Edward Palmer ◽  
The Individual

Neste artigo apresentamos um recorte da pesquisa de doutorado, tendo como mote a relação entre formação de professores e experiências vividas, fomentada por uma pesquisa-ação desenvolvida junto com professores de Educação Básica, de escolas públicas na cidade de Londrina. O referencial teórico e metodológico desta pesquisa dialoga com as contribuições do filósofo alemão Walter Benjamin e do historiador inglês Edward Palmer Thompson sobre a acepção de experiência, memórias e narrativas, uma vez que consideramos a formação docente indissociável de experiências sociopolíticas e econômico-culturais, bem como individuais e coletivas, engendradas em processos ampliados de educação que acontecem além dos espaços da universidade e da escola. Trazemos a contribuição do trabalho com as práticas de memória e narrativas, pois consideramos que são férteis no movimento de (re)significação da docência desencadeado por professores que resistem ao apagamento de suas experiências (marcas), no bojo de uma educação a cada dia dominada pela perspectiva da racionalidade técnica (instrumental). Trabalhamos com Benjamin, que nos orientou na produção de mônadas como aporte metodológico. Portanto, as narrativas orais e escritas pelos professores foram transformadas em mônadas. As mônadas são centelhas de sentidos que tornaram as narrativas dos professores mais que comunicáveis, sobretudo, experienciáveis. Palavras-chave: Formação de Professores. Memória. Narrativas. AbstractIn this paper we present an excerpt of a doctoral research with the theme relationship between teacher education and experiences, fostered by an action research developed with teachers of Basic Education of public schools in the city of Londrina. The theoretical and methodological framework of this research speaks to the contributions of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin and the English historian Edward Palmer Thompson about the meaning of experience, memories and narratives, as we consider teacher training inseparable from socio-political and economic and cultural experiences, as well as the individual and collective ones, engendered in expanded education processes that take place beyond the university and school spaces. We bring the contribution of working with memory and narrative practices, because we believe they are fertile in motion of teaching (re)signification triggered by teachers who resist to the erasure of their experiences (marks), in the midst of an education every day dominated by the prospect of technical rationality (instrumental). We work with Benjamin who directed us to the production of monads as a methodological contribution. Therefore, oral and written narratives done by teachers were transformed into monads. Monads are sparks of meaning that become the teachers’ narrative more than communicable, especially, experiential. Keywords: Teacher training. Memory. Narrative. 

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