Samkhya Philosophy, Deep Ecology and Sustainable Development

Samkhya philosophy is one of the oldest philosophies in the Indian philosophical system. This philosophy is independent in origin and mainly known for its evolution theory. Samkhya philosophy has accepted the two ultimate and independent realities, Nature and pure Consciousness. This paper is an attempt to comprehend the notion of deep ecology from the Samkhya’s evolution theory perspective. In this paper, firstly, we have elucidated the Samkhya philosophy of suffering and the solution to the problem. In the second part of the article, we have argued that how Samkhya’s philosophical notion of Nature demonstrates our embeddedness in Nature. Therefore, the idea of deep ecology is always there in one or another form in Samkhya philosophy. It has also connections to the idea of sustainable development.

Striving for Freedom. Some Notes about Fichte’s Idealism

Moving from Fichte’s assumption that “the essence of the I is its activity”, this paper tries to analyze the meaning and implications of the idea of “activity” [Tathandlung] in order to explicate the peculiarities of Fichte’s critical, transcendental, and moral idealism. Fichte’s idea of activity will be examined with reference to such basic concepts as collision [Anstoss], interaction [Wechselwirkung], inter-determination [Wechselbestimmung], and striving [Streben]. However, it is freedom which frames and connects the core components of Fichte’s thinking and sets up the goal of his philosophy of action. What freedom accounts for, can be identified both at the transcendental level, in the internal dynamic of infinity and finitude constituting the subjectivity of the I, and at the moral and social levels of Fichte’s thought, as the goal of the human action in history and in the society. In assuming the unitary character of Fichte’s philosophical system, concluding remarks are developed concerning the moral meaning of the act of striving for freedom and, conversely, the immorality of attitudes and feelings such as fear, resignation, and fatigue.

Conception of Harmonious Union: Philosophy History Aspect

The academic and humanitarian conception of harmonious union (hehe) has been proposed by Professor Zhang Liwen in the 1990s. It claims to explain the specifics of Chinese civilization and proposes solution of some global problems by its means. Despite the lack of direct references to the conception, it remains in demand both in the political and ideological discourse of the People's Republic of China. This presentations deals with the historical and philosophical facts available in Chinese written monuments and works of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which are put forward as a justification for the primordial idea of harmonious union in Chinese culture. An attempt is done to show that this concept does not offer any new set of philosophical categories, but appeals to the well-known concepts of two-, three- and five-item classifications. At the same time, the emphasis is laid on the form, the method of combining opposite or dissimilar elements. In general, on the basis of the limited historical and philosophical material, it can be concluded that the concept of harmonious unification is aimed not so much at revising the composition of the philosophical system of Confucianism, but at rethinking its value criteria for interaction and mutual dependence of objects and phenomena.

Research of German Classical Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy

The article analyzes the work of the staff of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which relates to the study of German classical philosophy. Ideologically unbiased studies of German idealism at the Institute became possible only after it was headed by Pavlo Kopnin. The Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv became the center from which all researchers of German idealism emerged in the first half of the 1960’s. At first more attention was paid to Hegel’s philosophical system, which was reflected in the monograph of V. Shinkaruk (1964). In the mid-1970’s, Kant’s critical philosophy came to the fore, various aspects of which were analyzed in the collective monograph “Critical Essays on Kant’s Philosophy” (1975). In the early 1980’s, researchers engaged intensively in Feuerbach’s “anthropological materialism” by publishing the collective monograph “Essays on Feuerbach’s Philosophy” (1982). The works and ideas of Hegel, Kant and Feuerbach were the main subject of attention of researchers at the Institute, which was reflected in numerous publications in the journal “Philosophical Thought”. Instead, Schelling’s philosophical systems, and especially Fichte’s, remained almost neglected until 1991.

Schelling – from Logos to Myth

This article aims to analyze the beginning of the transition from logos to myth. To incorporate the religious into his Enlightenment philosophical system, Schelling presents a reconstruction of myth. The conceptions of the religious consciousness of the Self from antiquity as presented. The myth embodies cultural reality and the history of self-consciousness, an idea that was later considered by Mircea Eliade. Myths evolve in parallel with human evolution. The need for the development of abstract thinking and the complex social environment presuppose the new mythology. Christianity in history appears as part of the mechanism of human development, which generally symbolizes the transition from mythology to Christianity. Theology must abstract mythologies from the purely divine, but together they participate in the formation of human consciousness.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914) was a polymath who contributed many insights to diverse sciences, from cartography to photometry, from mathematics to metaphysics, and from linguistics to psychology. His fields of philosophical interest cover logic, ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, history, and the philosophy of religion. Today, he is recognized as the founder of the philosophy of pragmatism. Besides being a scientist, logician, and philosopher, Peirce is the patron of modern semiotics, which is the core of his philosophical system. Logic conceived as semiotics, and semiosis, defined as the agency of the sign, are key concepts of his philosophical architecture. The sign, in turn, is a synonym of thought, mind, and continuity. Semiotics, according to Peirce, is founded on phenomenology, whose three universal categories are at the root of his philosophical system. Logic or semiotics is not isolated but coordinated within two other normative sciences, ethics and aesthetics, which guide human ideals. The interconnections between these three branches of philosophy are essential to Peirce’s evolutionary pragmatism. Peirce’s insistence on the principle of continuity as well as evolutionism tout court lies in the two cornerstones of his metaphysics, synechism, the doctrine of continuity, and its complementary opposite, tychism, the doctrine of absolute chance. In the philosophy of science, his corresponding doctrine is the one of fallibilism, which postulates that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims in a continuum of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Fortunately, the times when Peirce’s originality was considered a symptom of incoherence have passed. Years of competent scholarship testify to the contemporary relevance of his genius.

Cohen über Spinoza: Das Denken der Natur und die Natur des Denkens

This analysis of Cohen’s reception of Spinoza’s thought draws attention to theoretical issues: the nature of thinking and the thinking of nature. In a synoptic way it refers to several of Cohen’s works, trying to determine continuity and discontinuity in his interpretation of Spinoza, with a specific focus on Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata. Thus, Cohen’s reception of Spinoza’s thought seems to be characterized by a continuity similar to what we can find in Cohen’s philosophical system as a whole. Discrepancies in his interpretation of Spinoza correspond to a progressive refinement of his own speculative approach.

From Searching for Cultural Integrity to Symbolism of Temple Building and the Organic Picture of Reality

The article is focused mainly on aesthetic-philosophical constants of the work of art of Julius Zeyer. The author of the article tries to point out that Zeyer´s conception of art is tightly connected with artistic conceptions of the rising literary symbolistic generation: His aesthetic-philosophical system contains strong protest against rationalism, realism and naturalism in contemporary literature and underlines the way to subconscious roots of human existence; it turns away from rational understanding of the world and the mystical intuition of inner and organic life in modern literature. In the article the motifs of temple building and motifs of creating the organic picture of the world in Zeyer´s work of art are analysed. The article also contains main references to Zeyer´s work of art published by reputable names of the Czech and European literary criticism.

The Concept of Grammatical Organon in the Star of Redemption by Rosenzweig

In his book The Star of Redemption, F. Rosenzweig formulated a new philosophical system, which is based not on thinking, or being, but on language. At the same time, Rosenzweig not only postulates language but deduces it as a procedural reality that is currently unfolding in relation to perfect and closed elements—the world, God and man. Language fundamentally changes our attitude not only toward the world, God and man but in general toward all objects of knowledge and action. The world ceases to be perceived as an equal given, a person ceases to be a generic definition for subjectivity and acquires singularity and uniqueness. God is not defined as the Absolute Reality but becomes a live interlocutor. One of the central points of Rosenzweig’s system is its grammatical organon—a method that allows one to consider linguistic processes. Rosenzweig unfolds his organon in three books of the second part of The Star of Redemption. This article discusses the philosophical foundations of Rosenzweig’s grammatical organon and the features of its application to various linguistic and speech phenomena.

Bakhtin and Cohen: The First Stages in Building the Philosophical System

Abstact. Although it is generally known that M.M. Bakhtin viewed himself as primarily a philosopher and not a philologist, the overwhelming majority of studies of his work belong to literary criticism. The purpose of this article, relying on the oral testimony of Bakhtin himself and his philosophical texts written in the Nevel-Vitebsk period (1919-1924), is to restore the origin of his philosophical sources and the content of his philosophical ideas of this period. The main idea is the concept of moral philosophy as a philosophical system, whose main subject is participative thinking and an answerable act as an event of being. One of the most important sources of these ideas was probably the philosophy of Neo-Kantianism represented by the teachings of H. Cohen. The article provides four examples of Bakhtin's continuity in relation to the Marburg philosopher - the idea of an answerable act concerning another person as the source of a human's self-consciousness and personal integrity, the idea of a correlative relationship between a person and his neighbor as an expression of a caring participatory being, the idea of distinguishing a moral attitude from an ethical-legal one and the idea of the philosophical system, whose subject is the process of interpersonal relations. In this case, the system consists not only in the integrity of the object but also in its openness. Revealing the continuity of Bakhtin's philosophical ideas regarding Cohen leads to a better understanding of these ideas and Bakhtin's originality of their development. It is also fruitful to compare the perception of Cohen's ideas by Bakhtin and their reception by another philosopher of dialogue, F. Rosenzweig.