Tragedy, Modernity and Political Life

What are the links between tragedy, politics and modernity? Diverse currents in social and critical theory have tackled this question; some arguing that modernity has itself a tragic structure insofar as its promises are undermined by their own realisation, others that the diversity of worldviews (the ‘warring Gods’ referred to by Max Weber) has tragic—because un-reconcilable—form. After briefly reviewing some of these issues, the paper looks more specifically at tragic structure in relation to (European) modernity and political reason. The French Terror has unique significance in this context, signalling as it does the failure of any kind of political rationality that seeks to take unmediated, universal form. The consequences of this failure are also, in a way, tragic in so far as they involve contradictions and irresolvable dilemmas of ongoing, everyday political existence. As a result—and perhaps this should itself be seen as much in terms of tragedy as triumphalism—our modernity condemns us to liberalism.

Neural signatures of compression in the retelling of past events

When we retell our past experiences, we aim to reproduce some version of the original events; this reproduced version is often temporally compressed relative to the original. How does such compression of memories manifest in brain activity? One possibility is that a compressed retrieved memory manifests as a neural pattern which is more dissimilar to the original, relative to a more detailed or vivid memory. However, we argue that measuring raw dissimilarity alone is insufficient, as it confuses a variety of interesting and uninteresting changes. To address this problem, we examine brain pattern changes that are consistent across people. We show that temporal compression in individuals' retelling of past events predicts systematic encoding-to-recall transformations in a number of higher associative regions. These findings elucidate how neural representations are not simply reactivated, but can also be transformed due to temporal compression during a universal form of human memory expression: verbal retelling.

Bonaventure, Aristotle, and the Being of Universal Forms

The question of whether Bonaventure’s metaphysical thought is “Aristotelian” has long been answered with a plain “no.” Indeed, many scholars have interpreted Bonaventure as parting ways with Aristotle on a number of foundational metaphysical positions: Bonaventure adopts Augustinian seminal reasons, instead of the accounts of generation and causation found in Aristotle, and Bonaventure’s universal forms have ‘being’ independent of and prior to sensibles. While the characterization of Bonaventure as largely opposed to Aristotelianism has become standard in contemporary scholarship, this paper demonstrates quite the opposite: Bonaventure, in developing his notion of form, relies almost exclusively on his—indeed idiosyncratic—interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the author argues that Aristotle’s philosophy is at the foundation of Bonaventure’s two seemingly Augustinian positions concerning seminal reasons and the ontological status of forms—as well as his distinction between the universal form and the seminal reason, which is neither a real nor a conceptual distinction.

Spiritual Heritage of Europe in the Light of Personalistic Universalism of Karol Wojtyla—John Paul II

The article is devoted to the philosophical and theological thought of Karol Wojtyła, i.e., John Paul II, who in his considerations gave a lot of attention to European issues, including the spiritual heritage of Europe, to European Christianity in its two varieties, i.e., Latin and Byzantine, and to the relationship between European unity and the pluralism of national cultures. We discover the proper sense of Wojtyła’s European thought by referring to his inspiration with the theology of spirituality, which was the future Pope’s first research experience. His vision of Europe is based on personalistic philosophy, thanks to which these considerations take a universal form. The key to understanding universalism is personalistic hermeneutics, owing to which we perceive the source of universality in man understood as a person. However, Wojtyła’s universalism has two faces. It is universalism in the literal sense, thanks to the personalistic perspective. In the axiological layer it also takes the form of Christian or European and in a way also Eurocentric universalism, which is related to the perception of Europe as a depositary and promoter of universal values of Christianity.

ON PROBLEMS ORIGINATING FROM RUSSIA`S MEMBERSHIP IN THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND OBLIGATIONS TO EXECUTE ECHR JUDGMENTS

In the article, the authors consider two main forms of cooperation in the field of human rights. According to the authors, a more universal form of cooperation is currently not related to the subordination of the parties to an agreement on human rights to the jurisdiction of an interstate body. The subordination of Russia to such a body must meet a number of conditions that the Council of Europe does not meet. This leads to problems with Russians implementation of the decisions of the ECHR In conclusion, the authors believes that the ECHR is an effective mechanism for the protection of rights and freedoms only for a group of founding states of the Council of Europe, bound by common interests, values, coordinated foreign and domestic policies. The authors believes that Russia needs to return to the rules of international cooperation in the field of human rights set out in Helsinki Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Excited state Rényi entropy and subsystem distance in two-dimensional non-compact bosonic theory. Part I. Single-particle states

We investigate the Rényi entropy of the excited states produced by the current and its derivatives in the two-dimensional free massless non-compact bosonic theory, which is a two-dimensional conformal field theory. We also study the subsystem Schatten distance between these states. The two-dimensional free massless non-compact bosonic theory is the continuum limit of the finite periodic gapless harmonic chains with the local interactions. We identify the excited states produced by current and its derivatives in the massless bosonic theory as the single-particle excited states in the gapless harmonic chain. We calculate analytically the second Rényi entropy and the second Schatten distance in the massless bosonic theory. We then use the wave functions of the excited states and calculate the second Rényi entropy and the second Schatten distance in the gapless limit of the harmonic chain, which match perfectly with the analytical results in the massless bosonic theory. We verify that in the large momentum limit the single-particle state Rényi entropy takes a universal form. We also show that in the limit of large momenta and large momentum difference the subsystem Schatten distance takes a universal form but it is replaced by a new corrected form when the momentum difference is small. Finally we also comment on the mutual Rényi entropy of two disjoint intervals in the excited states of the two-dimensional free non-compact bosonic theory.

Logic as Methodology

The article expresses the idea that the actual methodology is logic as a universal form, which is freely modified in accordance with the subject content of reality. Based on this principle, the socalled applied Sciences are criticized. This confirms the idea that method as logic and logic as a universal form of thinking adequately perform themselves only as an individual-personal ability within the subject-transforming activity. The principle of mind as the ability to Express the essence of a thing and form a concept is developed. The dialectical nature of this process and its opposite to the formal-empirical method are shown. The nature of consciousness is expressed through the problem of the relation of the universal and the special, and the logical form of judgment is expressed as its basis.