Interpreting Duns Scotus

John Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as one of the most original thinkers of medieval philosophy. His influence on subsequent philosophers and theologians is enormous and extends well beyond the limits of the Middle Ages. His thought, however, might be intimidating for the non-initiated, because of the sheer number of topics he touched on and the difficulty of his style. The eleven essays collected here, especially written for this volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, take the reader through various topics, including Duns Scotus's intellectual environment, his argument for the existence of God, and his conceptions of modality, order, causality, freedom, and human nature. This volume provides a reliable point of entrance to the thought of Duns Scotus while giving a snapshot of some of the best research that is now being done on this difficult but intellectually rewarding thinker.

Paraguay Natural Ilustrado by José Sánchez Labrador SJ: Between the American Experience and Exile

This paper analyzes the work Paraguay Natural Ilustrado and discusses the impact that the American experience and the later exile in Italy had in the trajectory and intellectual production of its author, Jesuit priest José Sánchez Labrador. The four volumes have evidence of the scientific advancements in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, due to his contact with other exiled Jesuits and the collection of the Library of Ravenna, along with his observations of American nature and the indigenous populations of the Jesuit Province of Paraguay. His experience for thirty-four years in the Americas, and later in exile, unmistakably are present in Paraguay Natural. It contributes significantly to the reconstitution of the circulation process and appropriation of botanical knowledge and of the intellectual environment in which the Jesuit brothers and priests were in, both in the missions among the natives in America, as well as in Europe in their exile.

Psychology and methodology: prospects of co-organization

The proposed text recording of lectures given by a famous thinker-methodologist in March 1987 at one of the universities belongs to the last period of his amazingly productive work, namely to the creation of a working scheme of thought-activity, forms, means and conditions of its various reflexive elaboration and to the full formation of system-though-activity methodology as an innovative socio-cultural phenomenon in its intellectual environment – in the systematic hard work of the Moscow Methodological Circle. In addition, it is at this historical time that the idea of methodological games is mastered programmatically, organizationally and imitation-technically, and numerous organizational games are held in various problem-thematic areas of solving the most difficult scientific, industrial and covital situations. The s u b j e c t of the collective thought communication of the lecturer with the audience of professional psychologists, which unites the problem areas of the actualized polydialogical semantic landscape of thoughts, questions, answers, arguments, are the historical perspectives of the psychology development. The lecturer offers to abandon the Galilean model of science and Wundt’s model of psychological science, in particular because of their detachment from life and their functioning in their own artificial areas of laws and regularities as ideal abstractions. Therefore, he, unequivocally denying psychologism of any kind, supports not a natural-scientific strategy of empowerment of psychology, but an intelligible, reflexive-interpretive one, which is interested in explaining, constructing and describing true mental reality according to adequately defined goals and values, forms and methods, ways and means of carried out thought-activity. The basic thesis here is formulated very categorically; “outside the framework of methodological thought, no psychology can be.” This is argued by the fact that only methodological thinking allows thought-activity of any psychological content by appropriate means, methods, forms, adequate to a particular life situation. Besides, the projected enrichment of the psychology’s subject field in the coming decades will be determined not by the available material and not by ontological content, but by a methodological approach or a full-fledged philosophical methodologem, though “thinking itself cannot be studied psychologically.” The optimal form of organization and an integral condition for the development of collective thought-activity, in particular in the field of psychology, is organizational game, which at the same time, on the principle of three “s”, provides self-activity, self-organization and self-development of its participants, that operate in a simulated, but real, problem-conflict situation.

Gabriel Naudé’s library thought and early modern views into history and veins within political theory

The essay discusses Gabriel Naudé’s ideal of a censorship-free and publicly open library within Naudé’s intellectual environment consisting of some early modern veins of political theory and views to history. An assumption is that the Naudéan ideal of library and some veins in early modern historiography and views to history could manifest somehow similar rationalities. The early modern vein of Tacitist historiography pursuing a realist and source-based description of the past could relate to Naudé’s ideal of the censorship-free library and his technocratic and moral premises excluding political thought. Naudé’s ideal of the publicly open library, on the other hand, could relate to a different view to history that could be constitutive of morality too. The early phase of early modern Tacitism especially would be consistent with Naudé’s thought of both the library and politics, while the other view to history could be, at best, only fragmentarily significant.

Освоение и развитие философской культуры в условиях её модификации

The article reveals the intellectual and educational potential of philosophy, the ways of translation of philosophical culture, the examples of teaching philosophy in its classical and post-classical version. The characteristics of the philosopher’s personality is given, its role in the spiritual and intellectual environment is revealed and the ways of its formation are specified.

MARK FISHER: FREE CRITICISM AS GESTURE

The review analyzes the Russian edition of Mark Fisher’s essay collection (1968–2017) “The Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures”, translated by Maria Ermakova, 2021. The theoretical and biographical premises that make up the critical toolkit of Mark Fisher are introduced. It helps to distinguish his essays from a number of similar ones. The author analyzes the formation of the phenomenon of Fisher’s popularity as a culture critic in an intellectual environment as well as structural and symbolic features that form an integral unity of heterogeneous texts in the essay collection.

Institutions, ideas and economic change: some reflections on Geoffrey Hodgson's ‘Culture and Institutions’

Professor Hodgson in his review of my A Culture of Growth (Princeton University Press, 2016) raises a number of important issues. One of them is the usefulness of the concept of a ‘market for ideas’ as an analytical tool in discussing the way cultural change affects economic change. Even though there is no price mechanism that clears the market, many basic components of the economic analysis of markets carry through and enriched by evolutionary concepts. A second question is the importance of cultural entrepreneurs, who play an important role in my book. It should be stressed that such ‘Vital Few’ were rarely indispensable, yet their influence on subsequent events may have imparted a direction on events and accelerated them. In any event, the success of such entrepreneurs was an indication of an intellectual environment sufficiently open to new ideas to be consistent with major new ideas such as the possibility and desirability of sustained economic progress.