Foundations of relativism by J. Margolis in the polemic of R. Rorty and H. Putnam

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (RL. 2020. vol.1. no. 2) ◽  
pp. 79-87

The polemic about the realism of H. Putnam and R. Rorty is a remarkable event of the 20th century for a number of reasons. Forming within the analytical philosophy, and using the most relevant concepts and ideas of this direction as arguments, this polemic for almost three decades of its existence balanced on the border with relativism, the least popular and admited direction of philosophy of the 20th century. Putnam's arguments against metaphysical realism reject any "point of view of God", entail "internalism", accept the concept of incommensurability of conceptual schemes and the relativization the reality described by the epistemic agent to his experience. Rorty's arguments reject not only relativism, but also realism, but his concepts of ethnocentrism and solidarity also take the view that the standards of truth correlate with the conceptual schemes, are "sociologized" and meet the interests of the majority. J. Margolis find in this polemic not only a retreat into relativism, but also recognized its pragmatistic potential, which gave him the opportunity to defend relativism, proposing its reliable (robust) version and building a neo-pragmatist philosophy on the development of the arguments of both sides.

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 208-245
Author(s):  
Svetlana V. Lourie

The article is devoted to the analysis of American analytic philosophy – the science mostly focused on the problem of the philosophy of conscience since the end of the 20th century, - in the perspective of the Orthodox anthropology and culturology. The author studies the key concepts of analytic philosophy, first of all qualia and the so-called difficult problem of conscience related to it. The author analyzes how and why the physicalism (materialism) of analytic philosophy took the form of illusionism, - the concept of the illusionary character of conscience, free will, human subjectivity and of mental in general. The article develops a new approach to these problems from the point of view of the Orthodox anthropology. In the perspective of Orthodox anthropology and considering the achievements of analytical philosophy the author analyzes the key concepts of the last, including its main stumbling block – the problem of homunculus as “a character” of the so-called Cartesian theatre, that involves the presence of an “observer” in the human mind, which controls the processes of perception and thinking and constitutes the basis of human subjectivity. And finally, the author analyzes the consequences of the Orthodox approach to the problem of conscience for the theory of culture.


Author(s):  
C. Oliver O'Donnell

The ramified legacy of Bernard Berenson’s writings within 20th century art historiography is both celebrated and maligned. In an effort to help reconcile this situation, this essay argues for the partial validity of Berenson’s peculiar version of art historical formalism by detailing its historical connections to the Pragmatist philosophy and psychology of William James and by analytically correlating Berenson’s arguments with recent work in aesthetics and the philosophy of perception. The essay examines the specific example of Berenson’s analysis of Giotto’s paintings and leverages a Pragmatist interpretation of Berenson’s writings to frame Berenson’s known connections with other writers: including Adolf Hildebrand, Giovanni Morelli, and Walter Pater. In conclusion, the failure, potential, reception, and legacy of Berenson’s art historical scholarship are assessed in relation to Pragmatist ideas. Der vielfältige Einfluss von Bernard Berensons Schriften auf die Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts wird ebenso geschätzt wie verachtet. In dem Bestreben, diese Divergenzen zu berichtigen, versucht dieser Beitrag den Nachweis für die bedingte Gültigkeit von Berensons eigentümlicher Variante eines kunsthistorischen Formalismus zu erbringen, indem er einerseits seine historischen Verbindungen zur pragmatischen Philosophie und Psychologie von William James aufzeigt und indem er andererseits Berensons Argumentation ins Verhältnis zu aktuellen Debatten der wahrnehmungstheoretischen Ästhetik und Philosophie setzt. Am Beispiel von Berensons Interpretation der Gemälde Giottos führt dieser Essay eine pragmatische Analyse von Berensons Schriften durch und stellt diese ins Umfeld seiner Kontakte zu anderen Autoren: darunter Adolf Hildebrand, Giovanni Morelli und Walter Pater. Schließlich soll das Scheitern, das Potenzial, die Rezeption und das Erbe von Berensons kunsthistorischen Studien unter pragmatischen Gesichtspunkten bewertet werden.


Author(s):  
Anatoly S. Kuprin ◽  
Galina I. Danilina

The purpose of this study is the analysis of limit situation in the narrative of war. The material of the study is the novel of Daniil Granin “My Lieutenant” and related texts. In the first part of the paper, the authors explore existing approaches to the term “limit situation” and similar concepts into scientific and philosophical traditions; limits of its applicability in literary studies and its relation to the categories of “narrative instances” and “event”. Proposed a literary-theoretical definition of the limit situation, which can be used in the analysis of fiction texts. Existing approaches to the examination of the situation of war are analyzed: philosophical-existential, psychoanalytic, sociological, literary. In the second part of the paper, the authors propose their method for analyzing limit situations in texts about war, which basis on existing approaches and preserves the text-centric principle of studying the structure of the story. Two interrelated areas of research have been identified: the study of war as a continuous limit situation in the intertextual aspect (the discourse of war); the study of limit situations (death, suffering, guilt, accident) in the narrative of war as part of a specific text. In the third part of the scientific work,the analysis of war as a continuous limit situation results in the study of the concept of “limit” (border) in a fiction text. The role of “limit” (border) concept in the texts about the war is studied, the possible types of limits in the discourse of war are examined. Limit situations in the narrative of war are analyzed on the basis of the novel “My Lieutenant” by Daniil Granin. A review of journalistic and scientific works about the novel revealed both the continuity and the differences between the novel and the “lieutenant” prose of the 20th century. An analysis of the limit situations in the novel revealed their key position in the narrative. These situations are independent of the fiction time, of the fluctuation of the point of view’; the function of the abstract author is to build the narrative as a “directive” immersion of the hero and narrator in these situations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-128
Author(s):  
Sh. Kuttybaev ◽  
◽  
Е. Abdimomynov ◽  

The article analyzes views on innovation in the literary science of the early twentieth century and the work of Alash representatives in an era that is a period filled with profound changes and large-scale innovations in Kazakh society. In addition, works related to freedom, enlightenment, politics, spiritual values, the position of the people as a whole and social changes are considered the idea of independence and continuity. On the way of evolutionary development of the Kazakh literature, artistic power, thematic and ideological character, substantial and stylistic features of poetry of poets in the beginning of the XX century and during the Great Patriotic War, in subsequent years and years of independence are discussed in detail. In addition, on the basis of literary traditions and novelty, the works of prominent poets of Kazakh poetry of the 20th century and Independence are considered and comprehensively characterized, i.e. internal motives, the content of life phenomena in national poetry are analyzed in close connection with the works of poets. The original vision of the traditional and differentiated in the literature of the Soviet period in the works of poets from a new perspective, from the point of view of today. In addition, the works of outstanding poets of Kazakh poetry in the period of the 20th century and independence are considered on the basis of classical tradition and novelty in literature.


2019 ◽  
pp. 279-287
Author(s):  
Алексей Михайлович Гагинский

Курс лекций П. Рикёра, прочитанный более полувека назад, интересен по ряду причин. Во-первых, потому что он посвящён крайне важной теме — античной онтологии; во-вторых, потому что он был прочитан одним из ведущих философов XX в.; в-третьих, потому что этот философ был крупнейшим представителем герменевтического направления, вследствие чего особенно любопытно проследить, как он читает тексты, без преувеличения, самых важных философов в истории человечества. Впрочем, с формальной точки зрения есть некоторые сомнения в возожности исполнения замысла работы: П. Рикёр всё-таки не антиковед, его знание греческого языка, что видно из текста, весьма скромного уровня; кроме того, изданный текст представляет собой курс лекций, автор которых, как кажется, не столько хочет донести до слушателей результаты кропотливых исследований и продуманных идей, сколько разобраться вместе со студентами в античной онтологии. P. Ricoeur's course of lectures, delivered more than half a century ago, is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it is devoted to an extremely important topic - ancient ontology; secondly, because it was read by one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century; thirdly, because this philosopher was the biggest representative of the hermeneutic direction, so it is especially interesting to trace how he reads texts of, without exaggeration, the most important philosophers in the history of mankind. However, from the formal point of view, there are some doubts about the feasibility of the idea of the work: Ricoeur is not an antiquarian and his knowledge of Greek, as the text shows, is rather modest; besides, the published text is a course of lectures, the author of which seems to want not so much to convey the results of laborious research and elaborated ideas to his students, as to understand ancient ontology together with the students.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 476-482
Author(s):  
Boris V. Mezhuev

The article is devoted to the detailed review of the publications almanac of prominent Russian historian M.A. Kolerov who mainly specialized in the works of Russian political idealists of the beginning of the 20th century, and especially those of P.B. Struve. The author draws attention to the fact that in 2018 almanac and in his latest works M.A. Kolerov directly contrasts Struve’s consistent anti-Bolshevism and “White activism” with the powerful national Bolshevist views of his student and disciple N.V. Ustryalov, who accepted Soviet power in 1920, returned to the USSR in 1935 and perished in the period of Stalin repressions. In the present article the author makes the attempt to critically assess national Bolshevism mainly not from the political, but from the moral and philosophic point of view. He notes that the major mistake of Ustryalov and his associates was in their refusal to politically criticize Bolshevism, thus underestimating the destructive potential of the terrorist practices of the Communist dictatorship for the destiny of the country and its people.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Robinson Guitarrari

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n2p285 The understanding of conceptual relativity in Putnam’s and Kuhn’s writings should not be restricted to the claim that the existence is relative to, but not in virtue of, a conceptual scheme. This approach does not capture some significant differences between their positions about the notion of conceptual scheme. We understand that the thesis of conceptual relativity contains a statement about the close relationship between conceptual scheme and content, and another claim about the differences between conceptual schemes. Based on these two formal requirements, we propose a reconstruction of the Putnam’s treatment of it and show how it can be understood from Kuhn’s perspective of scientific development. We defend that, although both fulfill a critical role against metaphysical realism, they are applied to distinct domains: while Putnam’s conceptual relativity is in the record of the conceptual structure of scientific theories and presupposes a choice between cognitively equivalent conceptual schemes, Kuhn considers the field of the dynamics of development of science. Thus, we note relevant scientific cases of conceptual relativity that do not involve semantic incommensurability.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (-) ◽  
pp. 88-103
Author(s):  
Gabriel C. Gherasim

Abstract The study of The Cantos, one of the most complex and difficult works belonging to literary modernism makes possible, precisely due to this observation, the exploration of a series of characteristics and dimensions of Pound’s work that have either remained in a programmatic stage or should be revisited more closely in order for their meanings to be discerned. ‘Analyticity’ and ‘scientism’ can be considered relevant characteristics of Pound’s work, with both aesthetic and methodologic meanings. The present study aims at investigating these two dimensions of Pound’s poetry as they appear in the second and the fourth decades of the 20th century. In conclusion the question is whether Pound’s analyticity and scientism could still be considered valuable from an aesthetic or methodologic point of view.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (51) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Javier Echeverría

One of the main deficiencies of the twentieth century philosophy of science, in spite of evident achievements in the logical analysis and reconstruction of scientific theories, is the separation between formal sciences and those sciences with empirical contents. This distinction derives from Carnap and it was generally admitted by the Vienna Circle since the publication of “Formalwissenschaft und Realwissenschaft” in Erkenntnis in 1935. Later philosophy of science, in spite of other criticism of the neopositivist programme, has maintained this separation. It can be claimed that Realwissenschaften, physics in particular, have determined the development of later philosophy of science. Analyses of scientific theories most of the time refer to physical theories, and occasionally to biological ones. There is still a lot to be done in the field of mathematics and logic, in order to analyse and reconstruct their theories. But even if this task is undertaken, and some progress has been done lately, there is still a lot of work to do before a general theory of science can be proposed which transcends such a division between formal and empirical sciences, let alone the human or social sciences. This paper is intended as a contribution to supersede the first dichotomy between formal and physical sciences. One of the main problems in order to make some progress along these lines is that since its origins logical positivism had a deficient theory of knowledge, and the same happened with analytical philosophy developed immediately afterwards. This paper thus criticises examples of such a type of theory of knowledge, as expressed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and Russell’s Philosophy of Logical Atomism. The core argument is as follows: these theorizations are inadequate for scientific knowledge; this type of knowledge, particularly the notion of ‘sign’ cannot be adapted to the simple scheme proposed in those works. The criticism here undertaken is developed from a rationalist point of view, in a sense which is closer to Leibniz and Saussure, than to recent philosophers fascinated with the word ‘reason’. Some new proposals are put forward, necessarily provisional, which justify the term, which in turn could be perfectly substituted by another, of Semiology of Science.


2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 327-335
Author(s):  
Agata Firlej

The stolen death: About the play Hledáme strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg from 1943The puppet theatre play Hledame strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg was written in the Terezín/Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 and over 50 years was hidden in the archive until it was presented to readers and viewers in the 1990s — but it turned out to be still surprisingly valid and cogent. The author, a 14-year-old prisoner of the ghetto, used the conventions of the puppet theatre, the carnival and the fairy tales. The mythical or fairy-tale-like “timelessness” allowed him to show the absurdity of Nazism and — yet unnamed — the Holocaust. The main character of the play, the King, captures Death itself, which soon becomes so ordinary and kitschy that no one is afraid of her. The confinement of Death — a motif known, among others, from the myth of Sisyphus — is an important theme of the theatre in Terezín; it appears also in the German-speaking opera by Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, Der Keiser von Atlantis Emperor of Atlantis. In this article, I show how the old themes of enslaved Death and the dance macabre between extasy and destruction become the symbols of the war, and indeed of the 20th century, which culminates in the devastating forces of the great ideologies and in which there can be found the origins of retrotopia, which is now, according to Zygmunt Bauman, the dominating point of view in East- and West-European and in American discourse.  Únos smrti. O terezίnske divadelnί hře Hledáme strašidlo Hanuše Hachenburga z roku 1943Divadelní hra Hledáme strašidlo od Hanuše Hachenburga byla napsána v ghettu Terezín / Theresienstadt v roce 1943 a více než padesát let byla ukryta v archivu, aby v 90. letech si našla cestu pro své čtenáře a diváky — a ukázalo se, že je překvapivě platná a přitažlivá. Autor, čtrnáctiletý vězeň ghetta, využil konvencí loutkového divadla, karnevalu a pohádek. Mýtická nebo pohádková „nadčasovost“ mu umožnila ukázat absurditu nacismu a — tehdy ještĕ nemenovaného — holocaustu. Hlavní postava hry, Král, zachytí samotnou Smrt, která se brzy stane tak obyčejnou a kyčovitou, že se ji nikdo nebude bát. Únos smrti — motiv známý mimo jiné i z mýtu Sisyfa — je důležitým tématem divadla v Terezíně; objevuje se také v německojazyčné operě Petera Kiena a Viktora Ullmanna Der Keizer von Atlantis Císař Atlantidy. V tomto textu ukazuji, jak se staré motivy zotročené Smrti a danse macabre mezi extázi a zničení stávají symbolem války a celého dvacátého století, v který vyvrcholily ničivými sily velké ideologie a kde lze nalézt počátky retrotopie, která je podle Zygmunta Baumana dominantním hlediskem ve východním, západoevropským a americkým diskurzu.


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