The Beautiful As a “Rescue Hopeless”. Hegel and Adorno

Does modern philosophy of art reject the principles and methods of mastering the reality of classical aesthetics, in particular, the category of the beautiful, em­phasizing, on the contrary, the ugly, ugly, terrible, disgusting? The authors strive to find answers in the dialogue of great philosophical masters – “Zeus the Olympian of the German classics” by Hegel and the preacher of “progressive negation” on the border of modernity and postmodernism Theodor Adorno. Hegel insists on the transcendental origin of the beautiful as the coincidence of idea and reality, the sensory phenomenon of the absolute, the resolution of con­tradictions between the subjective and the objective, the universal and the indi­vidual, the finite and the infinite. Adorno opposes, claiming the rights of “beauti­ful negativity”. He abandons the transcendental character of beauty and shifts the emphasis to the social sphere. The ugly, the ugly, the ugly should not be hidden. But to portray him in such a way as to arouse disgust towards him, the desire to create a project of “righteous life” But the development of the dialogue reveals that both thinkers ultimately agree on the main thing: the beautiful is inescapable and remains the defining category of both aesthetics and life.

Culture as a Market: “Inspiration Is Not for Sale”?

Considering artistic creativity through the prism of socio-philosophical prob­lems, the author reveals the reasons and the course of the increasing subordina­tion of culture to the market and capital in the process of evolution of modern society. The article shows that this subordination becomes most intense due to the expansion of the total market of simulacra – a system that is becoming dominant in the 21st century. The dominance of simulacra on the market de­velops to the extent that the main object of not only economic, but all social transactions are signs that have no basis (denotatum) – simulacra. This process of increasing subordination to the total market of simulacra extends not only to the external (sale of the results of artistic creation, which was typical for the previous market), but also to the internal life of culture, including the goals, values, motives of the artist’s activity and transforming co-creativity into alien­ated market relations. This transformation is transforming the market for manuscripts into a market for “inspiration”. The author identifies contradic­tions specific to this process, including the dual nature of the brand, artifact, glamour and the measure of the transformation of cultural phenomena into an “empty sign”.

Spiritual Crisis of the Beginning of the 20th Century: From Philosophical to Religious Interpretations

The paper is an attempt to narrow down the notion of spiritual crisis which is now widely applied in research on history of culture of the 19th–20th centuries, with respect to history of German philosophy and observation of modern reli­giosity. The shift from the history of philosophy to the religious context is ful­filled through analysis of texts of two religious thinkers, A. Reinach and S. Frank, whose thought clearly demonstrates strong interconnection between the both fields. Analysis of contemporary studies on history of phenomenological philos­ophy (C. Möckel and W. Gleixner) lets firstly observe ways of application of Koselleck’s notion of crisis to investigations in the history of philosophy. Sec­ondly it discovers two possibilities of philosophical contextualization of the con­cept of spiritual crisis – on the one hand, as a constituent rhetorical element of the philosophical statement (Möckel), on the other hand, as a term which de­scribes the uniqueness of an intellectual situation of the beginning of the 20thcentury (Gleixner). Then these aspects of the rhetoric of crisis are applied to reli­gious philosophy of Reinach and Frank, what leads to interpretation of their works as a particular statement discovering the divine (or the holy) as a new cat­egory of religious consciousness.

Discreteness of Space and Its Consequences

Based on the general principle of the unity of the nature of interacting entities and the principle of the relativity of motion, as well as following the requirement of an indissoluble and conditioning connection of space and time, the model of a discrete space-time consisting of identical interacting particles is proposed as the most acceptable one. We consider the consequences of the discreteness of space, such as: the occurrence of time quanta, the limiting speed of signal propa­gation, and the constancy of this speed, regardless of the motion of the reference frame. Regularly performed acts of particles of space-time (PST) interaction en­sure the connectivity of space, set the quantum of time and the maximum speed – the speed of light. In the process of PST communication, their mixing occurs, which ensures the relativity of inertial motion, and can also underlie quantum uncertainty. In this case, elementary particles are spatial configurations of an excited “lattice” of PST, and particles with mass must contain loop struc­tures in their configuration. A new interpretation of quantum mechanics is pro­posed, according to which the wave function determines the probability of de­struction of a spatial configuration (representing a quantum object) in its corresponding region, which leads to the contraction of the entire structure to a given, detectable component. Particle entanglement is explained by the appear­ance of additional links between the PST – the appearance of a local coordinate along which the distance between entangled objects does not increase. It is shown that the movement of a body should lead to an asymmetry of the tension of the bonds between the PST – to the asymmetry of its effective gravity, the es­tablishment of which is one of the possibilities for experimental verification of the proposed model. It is shown that the constancy of the speed of light in a vac­uum and the appearance of relativistic effects are based on ensuring the connec­tivity of space-time, i.e. striving to prevent its rupture.

Balancing of Values and the Value of Balancing (Part One)

The article discusses the specific mode of existence of values – balancing or op­timization when it comes to deontological values. The authors using examples of values such as the principles of law and human rights, the rules of balancing are analyzed, which, according to G. Hart's classification, are secondary norms. The critical issue for the legal balancing procedure is the relationship between legal reality and values as such. Are the constitutional and legal values set by the Basic Law (Constitution), or do they objectively exist in society as a general (pre-constitutional) order of values? Should the Basic Law be confined to its own text and remain value-neutral in this sense? Are legal values purely deonto­logical, or can they be related to utilitarian goals and interests? The second part of the article explores the value of balancing as one of the methods for resolving the most complex legal conflicts. The well-known dispute between J. Habermas and R. Alexy about the admissibility of balancing of human rights demonstrates how complex and philosophically rich the legal balancing procedure is. Based on Luhmann’s concept of the cognitive openness of law, at the end of the article, the authors substantiate their own position on the role of values in modern justice.

The Heart Admonition of the Ancient Chinese Classic Shujing: An Episode from History of Its Interpretation in the West and Russia

Autochthonous traditional Chinese thought in its most developed form could be found in the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism, which continues to be a sig­nificant factor in the modern national consciousness of the Chinese people. At the same time, the pre-emptive attention of Western Sinology and Russian Chinese studies to early Confucianism does not fully take into account the Neo-Confucian interpretation of the ancient Chinese classics. Russian and Western translations of the so-called Sixteen-Word Heart Admonition (Shi liu zi xin chuan), a passage from Chapter III “Da Yu mo” (Councel of Yu the Great) of the ancient Chinese classic The Book of Historical Documents (Shujing) by A. Gaubil, N.Ya. Bichurin, D.P. Sivillov, W.H. Medhurst, J. Legge, S. Couvreur, and W.G. Old demonstrate the gradual assimilation of its Neo-Confucian inter­pretation by Western and Russian translators. Archimandrite Daniil (Dmitry P. Sivillov), in his unpublished Russian translation of Shujing of the early 1840s, adopted this interpretation earlier and understood it better than the others. It is assumed that rejection of the Manchu language mediation and peruse of the con­temporary Neo-Confucian commentaries played the key role in his success. The importance of Neo-Confucian hermeneutics research for the studies of tradi­tional Chinese philosophy, including ancient Chinese classics, is emphasized. The text of the previously unpublished Shujing Chapter III Da Yu mo Russian transla­tion by archimandrite Daniil is attached.

The Philosophy of Sobornost as a Prototype of Ferdinand Tönnies’ “Sociological Conservatism”

The article presents a comparative analysis of the theory of Ferdinand Tönnies “Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft” and the philosophy of catholicity in the works of A.S. Khomyakov and I.V. Kireevsky. The theory of Tönnies is considered in the light of the concept of “sociological conservatism” manifested by A.F. Filippov. It is shown that the conceptual opposition “Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft” can be seen continuation of the discussion about the “nature of the social”. In this light, the main reference points of Tönnies sociology are the political theories of Aris­totle and Hobbes, with an emphasis on the definition of the “natural state” of man. Based on the analysis of Tönnies theory, it is shown that its comparison with Slavophilism is possible in three parameters: appeal to the factor of sub­stantiality, the dichotomy of “historical” and “non – historical” and the use of the concept of “organic”. It is proved that in the context of a “conservative” reading of the philosophy of sobornost, its argumentation turns out to be mainly political and sociological

Xavier Zubiri’s Metaphysics: Eternal Search Between God and Human

The article is a foreword to the translation of the chapter of the book The Struc­ture of Metaphysics of the Spanish thinker Xavier Zubiri, which was published in 2016. The foreword gives a brief excursion into the publication of this book, which includes both lectures on the structure of metaphysics in 1969 and the philosopher’s manuscript with the same name written a decade later. The struc­ture of metaphysics is fundamentally important for understanding the evolution of Zubiri’s ideas, and it will also be useful to everyone is interested in the history of Western metaphysics, which Zubiri skillfully expounds here from Aristotle to Hegel with an emphasis on the concept of the transcendental. The foreword also gives a short explication of the key concepts of Xavier Zubiri’s philosophy such as: reality, intelligence, essence, time and other concepts, which are necessary to understand the personal position of the philosopher.

Indian and Russian Tolstoy: one among strangers and a stranger among one’s

The article examines the phenomenon of the late Lev Tolstoy in the context of his religious position. The author analyzes the reactions to his teaching in Russian state and official Orthodox circles, on the one hand, and Indian thought, on the other. Two sociocultural images of L.N. Tolstoy: us and them that arose in the context of understanding the position of the Russian Church and the authorities and Indian public and religious figures (including Mahatma Gandhi, who was under his influence). A peculiar phenomenon of intellectually usL.N. Tolstoy among culturally them (Indian) correspondents and intellectually them Tolstoy among culturally us (representatives of the official government and the Church of Russia) transpires. The originality of this situation is that these im­ages of Lev Tolstoy arise practically at the same period. The author compares these images, based on the method of defamiliarisation (V. Shklovsky), which allows to visually demonstrate the religious component of Tolstoy’s criticism of the political sphere of life and, at the same time, to understand the psychological reasons for its rejection in Russian official circles. With the methodological help of defamiliarisation the author tries to show that the opinion of Tolstoy (as the writer) becomes at the same time the voice of conscience for many of his con­temporaries. The method of defamiliarisation allowed the author to show how Leo Tolstoy’s inner law of nonviolence influenced the concept of non­violent resistance in the teachings of Gandhi.

The Theory of Social Relay by M.A. Rozov: Pathway for Understanding

The article analyzes the problems of modern epistemology in the context of pre­senting the views and philosophical heritage of the famous Russian philosopher Mikhail Alexandrovich Rozov. The relevance of the theory of social relay devel­oped by him and the corresponding “wave” ontology, especially in the period of thematic, terminological and substantial transformations of modern epistemo­logy, is shown. The author carry out the idea that without solving the ontological and methodological problems of the empirical analysis of scientific knowledge, it is impossible to correctly investigate knowledge. The article describes in detail the logic of Rozov’s reasoning, and also demonstrates the scale of M.A. Rozov on the reforming of epistemology and philosophy of science, on the formulation of an urgent agenda, problems, goals and objectives of the study of knowledge. The bottom line is that understanding semiotic objects (scientific knowledge) as phenomena of social memory, which are reproduced according to direct or indi­rect (verbalized) patterns, opens a new world of social relay races. The broad ap­plicability of Rozov’s theory in various empirical contexts is demonstrated, which allows discussing both traditional and modern philosophical and method­ological problems of the natural and socio-humanitarian sciences, as well as in epistemology and philosophy of science.