"Practical Dialectics", or the Laws of History and the Sovereign Power of the Paradox

Статья посвящена анализу предложенного А.Л. Юргановым генезиса сталинской «практической диалектики». Отталкиваясь от полемики «механистов» и «диалектиков», Юрганов прослеживает становление такой диалектической структуры, где решающее значение имеет суверенная воля модератора. «Борьба на два фронта» – это логическая машина, которая всегда обеспечивает выигрыш тому, кто ее запускает. В статье эта «машина модерации» сопоставляется, с одной стороны, с размышлениями Карла Шмитта и Джорджо Агамбена о суверенитете и чрезвычайном положении, а с другой – с идеей Бориса Гройса о советской власти как о торжестве «медиума языка» над «медиумом денег». В финале намечается дальнейшая перспектива исследования роли этой машины в позднесоветских условиях. The article is devoted to the analysis of the conception of the genesis of Stalin's "practical dialectics" proposed by A.L. Yurganov. Starting from the polemics of "mechanists" and "dialecticians", Yurganov traces the formation of such a dialectical structure, where the sovereign will of the moderator is of decisive importance. A “fight on two fronts” is a logical machine that always wins for the one who launches it. The article compares this "moderation machine", on the one hand, with the thoughts of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben about sovereignty and a state of emergency, and on the other, with Boris Groys's idea of Soviet power as the triumph of the "medium of language" over the "medium of money." In the finale, a further perspective is outlined for researching the role of this machine in late Soviet conditions.

Dialectics, Irony, and The Well of the Saints

Beginning with a reading of a short manuscript fragment, A Rabelaisian Rhapsody (1898–1900), this chapter shows that this short dramatic dialogue affords us a unique and overlooked insight into the structures and key concerns of Synge’s entire dramatic oeuvre. In doing so, the chapter excavates many new influences on Synge’s work through a close reading of new source materials by Jacob Boehme, Spinoza, Blavatsky, Nietzsche, Hegel, Rabelais, Paracelsus, and a number of esoteric figures, reinforcing the continued importance of mysticism to his dramatic development. In The Well of the Saints (1905), we find the final synthesis of the dialectical structure of ‘A Rabelaisian Rhapsody’, and the preparation for Synge’s overt sociological statements regarding modernization in Ireland in his articles ‘From the Congested Districts’, published later the same year. Synge established a spiritual basis for his aesthetic, countering asceticism with pantheism, restriction with Rabelaisian excess. The various iterations of this conflict can be traced over numerous dialogues, scenarios, and plays in his oeuvre, and this dialectical structure became subsumed into a larger literary vision of nonconformity and multidirectional irony. In turn, Synge’s spiritual and aesthetic opposition to ascetic or conforming figures began to influence his understanding of political and social change in contemporary Ireland. Finally, this chapter demonstrates that by reading The Well of the Saints as a play based in Ossianic dialogues, nineteenth-century Celticist readings of racial difference, and conflicting modes of production, we can begin to understand Synge’s drama as one urging consciously towards protest and designed political impact.

Contours of a Constructive Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic

Development of Pentecostal hermeneutics continues to benefit from further consideration of the roles general philosophical and theological hermeneutics play in the formation of Pentecostal hermeneutics of Scripture and life. This article pictures a Pentecostal philosophical-theological hermeneutical paradigm by sketching the contours of a broad hermeneutical realist program for Pentecostal interpretive structures. It commends a dialectical structure which recognizes the thoroughgoing contextuality of human understanding with attendant linguistic-symbolic encultured categories of knowing in interpretive relation with the ontic, which, for Pentecostal Christian hermeneutics especially, includes divine revelation. The article further commends a theological narrative of epochal moments in salvation history – Creation-Incarnation-Pentecost-Eschaton – to provide an overarching theological structure which is complementary with already prominent Pentecostal governing theological narrations.

Witness Impeachment in Cross-Examination Using Ad Hominem Argumentation

This paper combines methods of argumentation theory and artificial intelligence to extend existing work on the dialectical structure of crossexamination. The existing method used conflict diagrams to search for inconsistent statements in the testimony of a witness. This paper extends the method by using the inconsistency of commitments to draw an inference by the ad hominem argumentation scheme to the conclusion that the testimony is unreliable because of the bad ethical character for veracity of the witness.

Hegel's Complete Views on Crime and Punishment

In this article, I argue that Hegel's complete and mature view of crime and punishment is more robust than many interpretations of theUnrechtpassage in the ‘Abstract Right’ section of Hegel'sElements of the Philosophy of Rightsuggest. First, I explain the value of revisiting the interpretation of Hegel as a simple retributionist in the contemporary debate. Then, I look at Hegel's treatment of crime and punishment in the section on abstract right to show the role of punishment in Hegel's account. Next, I argue that this needs to be situated in Hegel's broader social philosophy and that we can accomplish this by looking at how theUnrechtpassage fits in theElements of the Philosophy of Right’s dialectical structure. I do so by building on the sections on civil society and state in the part ofElements of the Philosophy of Rightdealing with ethical life(Sittlichkeit), which include considerations of prevention and rehabilitation. I contend that this analysis reveals an account of punishment as more complicated than simple retribution.

Animal Death: Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi’s Nebula award-winning novel The Windup Girl (2009) sets up a dialectical situation which it then disrupts. This is important for two reasons. First, dialectic formations are often also assemblages or networks, meaning that their constituent parts are defined by how they interact with each other rather than by the essence which is withdrawn from such interactions. In the previous chapter, symbiosis was seen as a powerful tool for change. However, the way it was described often bordered on a dialectical structure, as did the doubling of double-vision and the contradiction of crisis energy. The Windup Girl offers a different strategy, the short circuit. In brief, this means that one of the terms of a symbiosis disrupts the symbiosis. This disruption takes the form of spatial and temporal tensions, as described above and developed below.

Part Twelve

Part 12 is bracketed by two problematic passages: Philo expresses extravagant religious commitments, and he declares that “to be a philosophical Sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step toward being a sound believing Christian.” The dialectical structure of the Dialogues reflects that in the Treatise and the Enquiry. Hume recognizes the strong attraction of abstruse philosophy and thus the importance of taking precautions against it. When Philo recommends a brand of philosophical skepticism, it is the mitigated skepticism in the closing of the Enquiry. His closing adoration of a divine being is not the product of reasoning at all. It is, when it occurs, irresistible—Cleanthes’ irregular argument. Cleanthes’ “cause of order in the universe” is reduced to an anemic “having some remote analogy to human intelligence.” “Who Speaks for Hume?” is answered with assurance: Cleanthes and Philo do, and sometimes even Demea.

Faces of Intersubjectivity

Here we consider interpersonal experience in schizophrenia, melancholia, and mania. Our goal is to improve understanding of similarities and differences in how other people can be experienced in these disorders, through a review of first-person accounts and case examples and of contemporary and classic literature on the phenomenology of these disorders. We adopt a tripartite/dialectical structure: first we explore main differences as traditionally described; next we consider how the disorders may resemble each other; finally we discuss more subtle but perhaps foundational ways in which the phenomenology of these disorders may nonetheless be differentiated. These involve disruptions of common sense and conventionality, abnormalities of empathy, distinct forms of paranoia and the sense of personal centrality, and altered perceptions of intentionality, deadness, and artificiality. We end by considering some neurocognitive research relevant to these abnormal forms of subjectivity, including work on theory of mind, experience of human movement, and perception of faces.