F.M. Dostoevsky on Vsechelovecheskoe and Vsechelovek: Origin and Reception

The article is devoted to the origins and reception of the concepts of the vsechelovecheskoe and vsechlovek in the work of the late F. Dostoevsky. N. Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” attracted attention of the writer, because it contained ideas in tune with his own thoughts about the special role of Russia, destinated to unite the Slavs. However, the program of Dostoevsky was significantly different from the conception of Danilevsky: the scientist radically separated religion and politics, while for Dostoevsky religion was called to sanctify politics and point out the ideal of the development of the Russian state, history and humanity; Danilevsky considered the struggle of Russia and Europe inevitable, and the writer believed in the possibility of building of new relations with the Western Europe countries on the Christian fraternal principles. Moreover, Dostoevsky accepted the distinction between universal and vsechelovecheskoe, introduced by the author of “Russia and Europe”. The ideas of vsechelovecheskoe evolved not without the influence of the young philosopher V.S. Solovyov. The historiosophical views of Dostoevsky, concedered by his contemporaries to be overly naive and devoid of robust realism, were adopted by Silver Age thinkers and Eurasians. Using the category of vsechelovecheskoe V.F. Ern and V.I. Ivanov comprehended contemporary historical events, revolutions and wars. The Eurasians, who at first came closer to Danilevsky’s concept with its isolated cultural-historical types, subsequently came to a religious understanding of history in the spirit of A.S. Khomyakov, V.S. Soloviev, F.M. Dostoevsky and others.

Credence-First Epistemology

Chapter 10 discusses the credence-first approach to coarse-grained attitudes. It is explained how the view underwrites a robust realism about the attitudes and why it bolsters the view that belief, disbelief, and suspended judgement are self-standing states. It is explained how credence-first epistemology dovetails with how we ordinarily describe coarse- and fine-grained attitudes and how it makes good sense of ways in which coarse- and fine-grained attitudes march-in-step in their production and rationalization of action. Further, it is explained how credence-first epistemology fits with our use of reductio-based arguments. So it’s argued that there is something deeply right in the credence-first approach. But the chapter closes with a pair of problems for the approach: credence is very often absent in the presence of coarse-grained attitudes—as a matter of descriptive fact—and credence is very often misplaced in the presence of everyday evidence—as a matter of normative fact.

Bruteness and Supervenience

This chapter first presents a framework, one that the author has defended elsewhere (Levine 2001), for understanding the notion of bruteness, its relation to modality, and the way this framework applies to the mind–body problem. Second, the chapter then turns to a problem in meta-ethics and attempts to address this problem within the framework already established. The problem is how to reconcile two views that many philosophers, including the author, are inclined to hold: on the one hand, “robust realism” or “non-naturalism” about the ethical and, on the other, the supervenience of the ethical on the non-ethical. The chapter speculates about how one might reasonably reconcile these two views.

Jean Porter and the Historical Project of Robust Realism

This chapter provides an extended examination of the ideas of Jean Porter of the University of Notre Dame, who sought a more “realist” retrieval of the thought of thirteenth century theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. Her academic project is usually termed “robust realism,” and offers an excellent example of what Thomas Kuhn termed “paradigm revolution” applied to Catholic theology. Porter adumbrates a “Thomistic recovery”: a “historical”—and “historicist”—recovery of the natural law tradition. The author explains that part of this historicist recognition of the differences between the present world and that of Aquinas is the presumption that all ideas are imbedded in the stream of history, and thus need to be approached as historical artifacts shaped by intellectual and cultural presuppositions about which we are sometimes conscious, but often not.

How Heidegger Defends the Possibility of a Correspondence Theory of Truth with Respect to the Entities of Natural Science (2001)

Dreyfus extends his argument against antirealism or “deflationary realism.” The deflationary realist holds that objects appear to be independent of us only relative to a particular set of practices, but in fact their existence is dependent on the practices that disclose them. Dreyfus argues instead for the coherence of a robust realism, according to which science can in principle give us access to the functional components of the universe as they are in themselves. To support the coherence of such a claim, Dreyfus draws a distinction between access practices and constitutive practice. Human artifacts and equipment are constituted by the practices for using them. But scientific practices, by decontextualizing objects from the way they are encountered in everyday life, are “contingent practices for identifying objects,” and thus give us access to the objects in a way that allows us to recontextualize and reinterpret them in theoretical terms.

OUR RELIABILITY IS IN PRINCIPLE EXPLAINABLE

Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non-causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non-causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics (Field 1989, 2001), normativity (Enoch 2011), and even logic (Schechter 2010). In this article I offer two closely related accounts for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries.