Book chapter
Дюси (Дюсис) Жан-Франсуа
The paper treats the issue of identity of the ego, which constitutes the central problem of personology. The skeptical approach to this problem, which sees it as not being subject to be resolved by means of science, began with D. Hume's work. Contemporary personologists (P. Ricoeur and others) approach this problem through study of culture, which imparts the ego with «narrative identity». Cultural historic psychology is a «Bridge of interpretations», upon which philosophy of culture meets psychology, and psychological data associated with «personality» are interpreted on the basis of some specific cultural philosophic theory. The «conflict of interpretations» plays and essential role in personology, which participates in the processes of emergence and overcoming of the cultural crisis. Philosophical and methodological problems that define the near term perspective development of personology are formulated: whether there are any «ego invariants» that remain regardless of any possible cultural determination; whether the ego possesses any rigidity in relation to cultural determination and, if it does, what is the nature of this rigidity; whether ego identity is destroyed when cultural determination diminishes or ceases, etc.
Education by observation: Students in research process The article argues for a new technology in teaching students of state and municipal management. The method is based on direct observation and description of management practices by students who lack any systematic research skills (the «naive observer» method). The authors ague that the use of this method allows to solve two types of problem at once: a pedagogical one and a scientific one. Students observe, and provide a description of, facts of the Russian provincial life without any interpretation whatsoever, which allows to obtain a picture of the social life that is closer to the reality than the one obtained by use of interpretational schemes of sociologists and journalists. It is only the latter picture that is currently used by the authorities as a basis for management decisions and for developing projects of social changes.