What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, What Art Is challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in The Republic, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent.

What is first philosophy today? In Unity and Aspect, the questioning begins with a new (old) approach to metaphysics: being is implied; it is implied in everything that is; it is an implication. But then, the history of philosophy must be rethought completely – for being implies unity, and time, and the other of time, namely, aspect. The effect on the self and on self-understanding is radical: we can no longer be thought as human beings; rather, reaching back to the ancient Greek name for us (phos), Haas seeks to rearticulate us as illuminating, as illuminating ourselves and others, and as implicated in our illuminations. Unity and Aspect then provokes us to problematize words and deeds, thoughts and things – and this means reconsidering our assumptions about history and survival, meaning and universality, sensibility and intimacy, knowledge and intentionality, action and improvisation, language and truth. And if Haas suspends the privilege enjoyed by our traditional philosophical concepts, this has implications for fields as diverse as ontology and phenomenology, ethics and aesthetics, education and linguistics, law and politics. 

The book considers how to make the methodology of business ethics more scientific, especially its normative branch. Storchevoy explores the attempts of economic theory to contribute to the scientific normative analysis of economic behavior, particularly the welfare economics of 1910-1950 and methodological discussions of economics and ethics from 1980-2015. He then examines the development of the methodological structure of business ethics in general since the 1980s and the scientific validity of normative business ethics, including stakeholder theory, the separation thesis, integral social contract theory, corporate social responsibility, virtue ethics and other frameworks. He concludes by suggesting an additional step to make business ethics a more systematic discipline by developing a typology of moral issues and dilemmas. Business Ethics as a Science will be a thought-provoking resource for students and practitioners of business ethics and economists alike.

This book examines how Russia, the world’s most complicated country, is governed. As it resumes its place at the centre of global affairs, the book explores Russia’s overarching strategies, and how it organizes itself (or not) in policy areas ranging from foreign policy and national security to health care, education, immigration, science, sport, agriculture, the environment and criminal justice. The book also discusses the structures and institutions on which Russia relies in order to deliver its goals in these areas of national life, as well as what’s to be done, in policy terms, to improve the country’s performance in its first post-Soviet century. Edited by Irvin Studin, the book includes contributions from a tremendous list of Russia’s leading thinkers and specialists, including Alexei Kudrin, Vladimir Mau, Alexander Auzan, Simon Kordonsky, Fyodor Lukyanov, Natalia Zubarevich and Andrey Melville.

Big History is a new field that has been gaining ground rapidly around the world. It deals with the universe's grand narrative of 13.8 billion years and attempts to provide a connection between our past, present and future. Appearing in three volumes, this is the first international anthology of Big History. The  first volume, Our Place in the Universe: An Introduction to Big History, provides an overview and notes trends in Big History today. The second volume, Education and Understanding: Big History around the World, considers humanity's search for meaning and expression.

The third volume, The Ways that Big History Works: Cosmos, Life, Society and our Future, reflects on how Big History helps us understand the nature of our existence and consider the pathways to our future. This volume will challenge and excite your vision of your own life as well as focus on the new discoveries happening around us. Together with the authors, who come from all the inhabited continents of our planet, you will embark on a fascinating trip into the depths of time and space, and—we hope—will join us in coming to an understanding of our origins and our future. 

This book suggests that normative ethics should be developed as a social science, and that this will improve its reputation in business and society. Storchevoy defines four criteria of a good scientific method (clear definitions, correct logic, empirical verification, accurate measurement) and demonstrates how normative ethics can make use of them. He provides a historical review of the methodological evolution of normative ethics and outlines how it was moving in a nonlinear way towards this scientific development by the 16th century. A Scientific Approach to Ethics challenges the reputation of ethics among many within business and business schools as unscientific and argues that it can come to be seen as a scientific discipline able to reveal universal moral truth.

The book prepared for the purposes of The 2nd World Congress on Logic and Religion, organised by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. 

The book contains the final version of the abstracts submitted by majority of speakers.

Philosophy has never been an obvious life choice, especially in the absence of apparent practical usefulness. The intellectual effort and moral discipline it exacts appeared uninviting “from the outside.” However, the philosophical ideals of theoretical precision and living virtuously are what has shaped the cultural landscape of the West since Antiquity. This paradox arose because the ancients never confined their philosophy to the systematic exposition of doctrine. Orations, treatises, dialogues and letters aimed at persuading people to become lovers of wisdom, not metaphorically, but truly and passionately. Rhetorical feats, logical intricacies, or mystical experience served to recruit adherents, to promote and defend philosophy, to support adherents and guide them towards their goal. Protreptic (from the Greek, “to exhort,” “to convert”) was the literary form that served all these functions. Content and mode of expression varied considerably when targeting classical Greek aristocracy, Hellenistic schoolrooms or members of the early Church where the tradition of protreptic was soon appropriated. This volume seeks to illuminate both the diversity and the continuity of protreptic in the work of a wide range of authors, from Parmenides to Augustine. The persistence of the literary form bears witness to a continued fascination with the call of wisdom.  

The book presents the final results of a unique project of transnational cultural cooperation launched by the Institute of Asian Studies and Regional Cooperation at Akita International University. The bilingual anthology provided with a comprehensive introductory article and academic commentary includes haiku by the leading poets from the most representative Akita haiku assocations along with the works by foreign participants from over 20 countries, Compilation, editing, intoductory article, translation from the Japanese into English and academic commentary by Alexander Dolin (with technical assistance of Dr. Hidenori Hiruta).

In 1937, the Soviet Union mounted a national celebration commemorating the centenary of poet Alexander Pushkin’s death. Though already a beloved national literary figure, the scale and feverish pitch of the Pushkin festival was unprecedented. Greetings, Pushkin! presents the first in-depth study of this historic event and follows its manifestations in art, literature, popular culture, education, and politics, while also examining its philosophical underpinnings. Jonathan Brooks Platt looks deeply into the motivations behind the Soviet glorification of a long-dead poet—seemingly at odds with the October revolution’s radical break with the past. He views the Pushkin celebration as a conjunction of two opposing approaches to time and modernity: monumentalism and eschatology. Monumentalism—in pointing to specific moments and individuals as the origin point for cultural narratives, and eschatology—which glorifies ruptures in the chain of art or thought, and the destruction of canons. In the midst of the Great Purge, the Pushkin jubilee was a critical element in the drive toward a nationalist discourse that attempted to unify and subsume the disparate elements of the Soviet Union, supporting the move to “socialism in one country”.

This thought-provoking monograph analyzes long- medium- and short-term global cycles of prosperity, recession, and depression, plotting them against centuries of important world events. Major research on economic and political cycles is integrated to clarify evolving relationships between the global center and its periphery as well as current worldwide economic upheavals and potential future developments. Central to this survey are successive waves of industrial and, later, technological and cybernetic progress, leading to the current era of globalization and the changes of the roles of both Western powers and former minors players, however that will lead to the formation of the world order without a hegemon. Additionally, the authors predict what they term the Great Convergence, the lessening of inequities between the global core and the rest of the world, including the wealth gap between First and Third World nations.

                                                                            

Among the topics in this ambitious volume:

 

·         Why politics is often omitted from economic analysis.

·         Why economic cycles are crucial to understanding the modern geopolitical landscape.   

·         How the aging of the developed world will affect world technological and economic future.<

·         The evolving technological forecast for Global North and South.                

·         Where the U.S. is likely to stand on the future world stage.

 

 

Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery will inspire discussion and debate among sociologists, global economists, demographers,  global historians, and futurologists. This expert knowledge is necessary for further research, proactive response, and preparedness for a new age of sociopolitical change.          

“Let's be Logical” is a double invitation. Although logic often refers to a disposition of mind that we all share, this disposition might be confused once its theoretical sources are questioned. The present volume offers thirteen articles that address various aspects of the discipline of logic and its methods, notably formalism, the theory of opposition, mathematical truth, and history of logic. This volume has been prepared with the pedagogical concern of making it accessible to a wide audience of logic and philosophy readers.

The book, being the second part of the fundamental History of New Japanese Poetry, examines the developments in the realm of kindaishi and gendaishi verse of the Meiji – Taisho– early Showa period. The names of the great bards like Takamura Kotaro and Hagiwara Sakutaro, Nakano Shigeharu and Oguma Hideo, Murano Shiro and Nishiwaki Junzaburo , Miyoshi Tatsuji and Kaneko Mitsuharu are introduced along with the names of minor Japanese classics of the time. The concepts of the leading kindaishi and gendaishi schools analyzed in the monograph show the closest interaction of the Japanese authors with their counterparts in the West, which has resulted in the creative fusion of the indigenous and borrowed poetic traditions.The book is richly illustrated with portraits of the poets and lithographs by early modern artists.

The book constitutes the third part of a unique research project presenting to the Western scholars the history of Japanese poetry in the New and Modern times -  from the second half of the XIX c. through the end of the XX c.. The book analyzes a brode scope of social and cultural problems scrutinizing the activity of the leading poetic associations and groupings. Literary portraits of the leading poets give a panoramic view of the age.

The general introduction to the book places the traditional genres of Japanese poetry in the national and global context by defining the typical features of tanka and haiku as a specific aesthetic system. The overview of the medieval tanka poetry since the eighth century through the first half of the nineteenth century gives the reader a general idea of the principal poetic and aesthetic concepts, to which later authors would constantly refer.

The new tanka and haiku poetry, which emerged after the Meiji Restoration was the direct successor to the classical medieval schools, transformed and renovated in the age of modernization. Since the end of the nineteenth century, tanka and haiku authors developed a novel worldview by over- coming the restrictions and regulations of the rigid poetic canon.

The pioneers of the new tanka and haiku schools, in their quest for a creative national identity, opposed the overwhel- ming flow of Western culture and instead chose to revitalize the traditional poetics, albeit in a modified form, for which they were nonetheless severely criticized by the shintaishi and kindaishi poets.

The beginning of the romantic revival in tanka was heralded by Yosano Tekkan’s literary criticism and his poetic manifesto. Tekkan was the first tanka poet of the new times who instilled in his verse civil feelings, military vigor, and masculine passion. As a response both to Tekkan’s challenge and to the European decadent trend of the fin de siècle period, there followed the outburst of erotic lyrical confessions by Yosano Akiko. Her work represents a wonderful fusion of the French Symbolist and British Pre-Raphaelite poetics projected onto Japanese tanka. The Myojo journal led by Tekkan and Akiko remained for many years the most significant literary hub in the country.

Another great reformer, Masaoka Shiki, regarded himself and his school mostly within the mainstream of tradition and considered renovation of the classic genres possible only on a conventional basis, not going to any extremes. His major shasei (“reflection of nature”) concept was derived from medieval Chinese aesthetics and had a dramatic impact on both tanka and haiku poetry of the twentieth century. Shiki propagated “objective realism,” focusing first on haiku and then applying the same principles to tanka.

Ito Sachio became the official successor of Shiki and widely promoted rgw shasei theory in his journal Ashibi. The works by Shimagi Akahiko, Nagatsuka Takashi, Koizumi Chikashi, Naka- mura Kenkichi, and other followers of Shiki who rallied around the Araragi poetic journal, eventually gained for the shasei trend poets a dominant position in the world of tanka. Their landscape poetry and “daily routine” sketches were marked by a profound comprehension of the harmony of nature. The poetic genius of Saito Mokichi, with his sharp psychological vision and original interpretation of shasei theory, remained unrivaled in modern Japan.

Some poets of the shasei trend like Tsuchiya Bunmei, Shaku Choku, and Aizu Yaichi studied early medieval art and ancient Japanese poetic monuments in search of new ways.

Meanwhile, Yoshii Isamu, Wakayama Bokusui, Kubota Utsu- bo, and Maeda Yugure chose another path and developed a refined trend of Romanticist and “Naturalist” poetry focused on human sentiment in the current of mundane metamorphoses. They expanded the boundaries of verse and enriched tanka with impressive new imagery. Their poetic collections shaped another colorful facet of the tanka world in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Symbolist spirit represented so brilliantly by Kitahara Hakushu in his kindaishi poetry was also projected onto his early tanka, which were marked by eloquent mannerism with a strong touch of exoticism. However, the evolution of aesthetic concepts later made Hakushu return to traditional values. Thus, his poems composed in the 1930s present a typical Zen vision of the universe.

A fusion of realistic worldview with expressionist techniques makes the poetry by Sasaki Nobutsuna, Kawada Jun,and Kino- shita Rigen the most fascinating product of the new tanka diction.

The poetic concept put forward by Ishikawa Takuboku and Toki Aika is known as the “Life School.” The talent of Takuboku elevated the most prosaic topics taken from daily life to the level of lyrical revelation. His successors were less gifted and eventually the social trend in tanka, which had emerged from the legacy of Takuboku, ended with extremist proletarian propaganda slogans.

In the postwar period the tanka revival contributed greatly to the formation of the new national identity of the Japanese. Kondo Yoshimi, Miya Shuji, Sato Sataro, Saito Fumi, Kimata Osamu, and many other masters of tanka poetry paved the way for the new generations.

The triumph of Tawara Machi, whose tanka collection became the number one bestseller of the twentieth century, proves that the old classic genre is still able to attract the young, overcoming the dogmatic regulations and forging a totally new stylistics.

The introductory chapter to Part II of the book gives a broad overview of the haiku world since the middle of seventeenth century and introduces the reader to the great haijin of the Edo period— Basho, Buson, Issa, et al. Their works laid the foundation of classic haiku and therefore strongly influenced the preferences of the poets after the Meiji Restoration.

New haiku were initiated by the endeavors of Masaoka Shiki, who dared to doubt the authority of Basho, opposing to his poetics the brighter style of Buson. Shiki elaborated and applied to haiku his shasei concept based on the principle of objective realism, which later developed into the most popular poetic theory of the twentieth century and founded a school, which soon would become the mainstream haiku trend in Japan.

After the death of Shiki, his major disciples followed two different paths. Kawahigashi Hekigoto treated shasei theory mostly as a call for further reforms. His concept of the “new trend” in haiku, that is, short verse not bound by any regulations and restrictions, found many adherents. Nagatsuka Ippekiro, Ogiwara Seisensui, Ozaki Hosai, and many other poets were inspired by the idea of non-orthodox haiku. The climax of this movement can be traced in the beautiful and deeply philosophical Zen haiku of Taneda Santoka.

Meanwhile, Takahama Kyoshi remained faithful to the legacy of Shiki and transformed the initial shasei doctrine into a coherent aesthetic teaching. Kyoshi remained for many decades the leader of the “Hototogisu” group and gave his blessing to such renowned poets as Murakami Kijo, Iida Dakotsu, Hara Sekitei, Maeda Fura, and Hino Sojo.

The disciples of Kyoshi who would not support the “flowers and birds” poetics of the old master formed a new society around the old Ashibi journal under the leadership of Mizuhara Shuoshi. The pure and transparent lyricism of Yamaguchi Seishi and Hashimoto Takako can be numbered among the most successful poets of this school.

Another trend in haiku was marked by a powerful humanist drive, which can be regarded as an easily recognizable trait of the poetry of Nakamura Kusatao, Kato Shuson, and Ishida Hakyo. These haiku poets, who became known in the pre-war period as members of “The Search for the Human” school, also shaped the postwar haiku world, instilling in it a vital humanist component. The poets of this trend played a crucial role in the revival of Japanese culture, opening to their readers a window to eternal ethical values and giving them hope in the abyss of pain and humiliation. They brought to life the new generations of authors in Japan and also fostered interest in modern haiku in the West.

13 poetic fragments in the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri (the island of Soqotra, Gulf of Aden, Yemen), recorded phonographically at the beginning of the 20th century by the Austrian orientalist David Heinrich Mueller, are presented in phonological transcription and English translation. Each fragment is extensively annotated with the help of native speakers of modern Soqotri. A detailed glossary (Soqotri-English-Arabic) comprising all words from texts and annotations rounds up the book.

This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries’ declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.

 

This article explores how actor-network theory has redescribed the concept of modernity. B. Latour provides a radical critique of modern rationality by undermining its basic opposition between nature and culture. What he offers instead is relational approach to techno-science. From this point of view, all the actors are initially hybrid entities, and the ontological regime of modernity emerged as an unsuccessful attempt to purify and to divide them into clearly defined 'subjects' and 'objects'. The main paradox of modern rationality is that while it was trying to produce an illusion of two different realms (nature and culture), the number of hybrids was increasing dramatically. To tackle this problem, Latour offered a quite utopian alternative - the Parliament of Things. In the end of the article, it is stated that there is a danger for ANT of being modernist itself. And it is rejection of reductionism that distinguishes actor-network analysis from the other theories of modernity.

This article presents a review of a conference Debt: 5000 Years and Counting that took place at the University of Birmingham (Birmingham Research Institute for History and Cultures) on June 8–9, 2018. The conference was based on the recent influential book Debt: The First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber. The conference gathered representatives from all social sciences to discuss the understudied topic of history and ideology of debt. The review contains references to several papers discussed at the conference to give an idea of the approaches used in one way or another in many of the papers. The papers discussed in the review were devoted to the boost of micro-credit in Latvia after the 2008 global financial crisis, the ideology of trapped equity that led to this crisis, the attempt to resolve confusion between the view that debts are to be repaid and the view that profiting from lending is evil, credit in the Islamic Caliphate in the 7th to 10th centuries, the long durée of public debt since the Middle Ages to Early Modern times, and the royal debts in England in the middle of the 16th century. The conference was interesting not only because of the importance of the subject but also because of the originality of the format which helped make the event less hierarchical and less dominated by the academic elite. In addition, one of the aims of the conference was to combine academic and activist approaches. Among the participants there were a few activists. This experience is also described in the review.

The article shows that Marxist dialectics and the social philosophy of science, whose influence was obvious in Imre Lakatos’s early philosophical experiments, underwent substantial reinterpretation during the mature period of his creative activity. Being implicit heuristic sources of his “sophisticated falsificationism” or methodology of scientific research programs, they take on a conceptual form in which they lose the “excess” of authentic contents. Therefore, the philosophical views of “mature Lakatos” may be called close to the Marxist philosophy of science only with many important reservations and specifications.

SummaryMaximus’ idea of appropriation of the divine will by deified humans, in any consistent interpretation, would mean their deprivation of their own freedom – exactly in the same manner as it could be in the case of servitude to sin. Maximus’ own logic, however, was paraconsistent when applied to the case of deification (whereas not to the opposite case of the servitude to sin). A recourse to a paraconsistent deontic logic was not a uniquely Maximian tool even in the Middle Ages and could serve as an inspiring example for logicians today.

Gregory of Nyssa at the outset of his ‘Against Eunomius’ cites Eunomius, where the latter speaks about “greater and lesser” activities. However, discussing this quotation later in the treatise, Gregory misinterprets the words of Eunomius. He reads Eunomius as if he applied the principle of ‘the more and the less’ not to activities but to substances. Such interpretation cannot be proved on the basis of what Eunomius actually wrote. Actually, the two opponents (Gregory of Nyssa and Eunomius) used the same Aristotelian position, which prohibits the application of the principle of ‘the more and the less’ to the category of substance. This position was used by the two polemists in order to argue against each other. At the same time, Gregory developed his own philosophical system founded on the principle of ‘the more and the less’ in the course of this polemics with Eunomius.

I review the central propositions of Neilos Kabasilas's Rule of Theology and analyze the pre-history of a particular theme of vital importance for the treatise's wider theological tradition: the distinction between the warmth and light of fire (the sun) in Palamite theology. This analogy meant to clarify the distinction between the divine essence and energies, as well as between the energies themselves.

The following article examines the structure of a remarkable Christian Arabic treatise from the eleventh century, the heyday of Arabic culture: the Book of Sessions (Kitāb al-majālis) of Elias of Nisibis (975-1046), metropolitan of the Church of the East. In this treatise, Elias presents his discussions with his Muslim interlocutor, the vizier Abū l-Qāsim al-Maghribī (981-1027). The article compares the Book of Sessions with Elias’ Epistle to the vizier, taking into consideration some further documents that shed new light on the genesis of the Book of Sessions.

Although largely neglected in Schelling scholarship, the concept of bliss (Seligkeit) assumes central importance throughout Schelling's oeuvre. Focusing on his 1810-11 texts, the Stuttgart Seminars and the beginning of the Ages of the World, this paper traces the logic of bliss, in its connection with other key concepts such as indifference, the world or the system, at a crucial point in Schelling’s thinking. Bliss is shown, at once, to mark the zero-point of the developmental narrative that Schelling constructs here (from God before creation, via the natural, historical, and spiritual world, to the fully actualized, "true pantheism") and to interrupt it at every step. As a result, bliss emerges here in its real utopian force but also its all-too-real ambivalence, indifference, and even violence, despite Schelling's best efforts to theorize it as "love"; and Schelling himself emerges, in these texts, as one of modernity's foremost thinkers not just of nature or freedom, but also of bliss in its modern afterlives. At stake in Schelling's conception of bliss, I argue, is the very relationship between history and eternity, the not-yet and the already-here, the present and the eschatological – as well as between Spinozian immanence and the Christian temporality of salvation, so important for modernity (with what is often called its process of "secularization") – not to mention the complex entanglement of indifference, violence, and love or the ideas of totality, nonproductivity, and nonrelation that Schellingian bliss involves.

In this research I would like to show how transcendentalism works within the bounds of the modern analytical philosophy of consciousness and in what sense it opposes the naturalism. A considerable number of analytical philosophers do not consider transcendentalism as a ‘legal’ trend of philosophy and often consider it as a purely historical-archival phenomenon. In this case, the self-definition of a transcendentalist in the analytical medium proves not to be very clear at times.

Below, I will try to clarify the essence of this approach in specific application towards the key issues of the analytical philosophy of consciousness and provide such characteristics of it, which would allow unmistakably recognising the handwriting of a transcendentalist even in case they name themselves differently. In this case, transcendentalism should be understood as a certain type of argumentation, and a little bit more broadly, as a certain methodological principle. I will show what the correlation of critical and positive components is in such approaches as naturalism and transcendentalism. Moreover, I will consider the examples from transcendentalist approaches in the modern analytical philosophy (in particular, the theory of C. McGinn, J. Levine and N. Chomsky), with the view of analysing the role of a sceptical position towards these approaches.

This review is an attempt to read the main ideas of Catherine Malabou’s book Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality, with a particular emphasis upon the problem of the modifiability of the transcendental and the rejection of the a priori dimension of subjectivity within scientific and philosophical thought of a materialist orientation. Malabou’s thesis of the epigenesis of pure reason evinces the dynamical dimension of the transcendental, integrating structural and evolutionary conceptions of reason. Epigenesis secures the stability of the phenomenal world and allows for the possibility of a contingent metamorphosis of reason, thereby establishing an economy of transcendental contingency. In general, Malabou’s work has many affinities with recent phenomenological thought, although it makes few explicit references to phenomenological philosophers as such.

This article in the form of "reflections" is devoted mainly to the reception of Heidegger in Russia as a thinker of being, a conservative critic of late modernity and a "post"-philosopher. On the one hand, due to French postmodernism influence on late Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy Russia has developed a special interest in Heidegger's deconstruction theory. On the other hand, the reception of Heidegger's criticism of European nihilism, totalitarianism and machine technology as the manifestations of modernity has shaped significantly the account of the "political". The current discussion about recently published "Black notebooks" shows the fact of existence of a separate language of description and analysis in Russian philosophical field.

The movement of the so-called philosophiсal physicians was formed at the Prussian University of Halle in the middle of the 18th century as a medico-philosophical approach outside of the structure of university genres both in medicine and in philosophy. Being professional physicians, they read metaphysical texts relating to the status of body, to the living or to the relations between soul and body and introduce the elements of new philosophical discourses such as Wolffianism into the field of medical theory outside of academic discourse. In this context, the objective of the paper is to identify and describe the argumentative features of E. A. Nicolai’s “An essay on the beauty of human body”. Nikolai builds his reasoning more geometrico, referring directly to the works of Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten. However, Nicolai’s use of Wolffian terminology and form of reasoning is systematically ambiguous; for instance, he comes to anthropological conclusions which seem quite consistent with a theory of physical influx totally denied by Wolff discussing the soul-body problem. Moreover, the style of many passages of “An essay on the beauty of human body”, saturated with philosophical terminology, is obviously ironic. Departing from Nikolai’s medico-philosophical approach, I lead to a reflection on the configuration of the disciplinary textual spaces and on the borders of academic medicine in the social dimension of the 18th century.

The paper discusses constructing various versions of Muslim identity by politically opposite actors, the government and Muslim activists, involved in ‘placing’ Muslims in modernizing late-imperial Russia. The problem is approached through the extreme case of M.-B. Hadjetlaché (ca 1870-1929), a baptized Jew reinventing himself as Circassian and Muslim and as such working as a State agent against Muslim opposition and vice versa. His strategies of deceit and reasons to trust him in different cultural and political milieus reveal reciprocal and often shared Orientalisms of the ‘regimes of truth’ defining the processes under study.

This study aims to present that A.V. Mikhailov’s historical method is systematic. Special attention is given to historical-anthropological dimension of the A. V. Mikhailov's theory of baroque. The article shows that Mikhailov's historical anthropology should be viewed as a constitutive part of his “Kulturwissenschaft”, opposed both to the literary science and to the positivist historiography by means of commitment to historize human sciences (the notion of «new historiсism»).

In the course of the Middle Ages, the Copts experienced a variety of drastic changes in the attitude of Muslim rulers towards them, from confidence to disgrace. The latter included not only the increasingly rigorous tax policies, but also social and domestic constraints, which can be surely defined as religious discrimination. Though the Copts managed to regain the trust of the authorities by their profound skills in administrative and courtly functions and, of course, compromise in terms of religion, which allowed them to enjoy high ranks and other benefits of their proximity to the Egyptian court. This, in its turn, made them an outstanding social group and can be considered “positive discrimination” in contrast with the definitely negative discrimination based on confessional conditions. The question of the balance between positive and negative discrimination as an instrument of regulating intrastate social cooperation can be crucial for understanding the specific of these relationships during the described period. So, the main goal of this work is to trace historical precedents which can be considered either negative or positive discrimination, and their suppositional influence on the Copts’ turning into a minority.

Water has always been an important resource for Central Asian states and peoples. Different rulers at different times used water, and access to it, as an instrument of political and even military influence. When the Russian Empire expanded into Central Asia, seizing substantial parts of three central Asian khanates (Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand) and established its own protectorate over these states, its also found that water was one of the most effective means to control the rulers and peoples of Central Asia. The use of water and irrigation policy as an instrument of rule was effectively used by the Russian Empire in its relations with the Central Asian khanates and this has already been the subject of investigation. This paper analyses the legal regulation of water use and the irrigation policy of the Russian Empire in Turkestan in order to influence the Bukharan Emirate and the Khivan Khanate during the epoch of the Russian protectorate (1870s–1910s). The paper demonstrates how the internal “water law” was a starting point in Russian policy towards Bukhara and Khiva, and shows that each subsequent stage was closely connected to the evolution of the “water law” in the Russian Turkestan. The sources are official documents (including legal acts) of the Russian Empire, correspondence of Russian and Central Asian statesmen, memoirs of contemporaries and the notes of Russian visitors to khanates (diplomats, engineers, etc.) who participated in the realization of Russian water policy in Bukhara and Khiva and could estimate its effectiveness.

The paper introduces a metaphor "digital porosity" aiming to grasp the nonuniformity, limitations and gaps of digital connectivity (technological, material, spatial, social, etc.) in urban spaces. Being used as a research guidance, the metaphor raises the questions what digital porosity is? how is it produced? how is it changing? Based on the research of internet connectedness and practices of Internet use in the subways of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, the paper states that the extension of the Internet zone and the inclusion of new urban spaces do not automatically increase the connectivity of the city, since the latter depends not only on the availability or the quality of internet communication, but also on the intentions and skills of the internet users and their ideas about the comfort and the possibility of internet connection, the role of the subway ride in the broader planning horizons.

The article deals with the problem of time in the context of several theories of modern physics. This fundamental concept inevitably arises in physical theories, but so far there is no adequate description of it in the philosophy of science. In the theory of relativity, quantum field theory, Standard Model of particle physics, theory of loop quantum gravity, superstring theory and other most recent theories the idea of time is shown explicitly or not.  Sometimes, such as in the special theory of relativity, it plays a significant role and sometimes it does not. But anyway it exists and is implied by the content of the theory, which in some cases directly includes its mathematical tools. Fundamental difference of space-time processes in microcosm and macrocosm is of particular importance for solving the problem. In this regard, a need to understand the time in the way it appears in modern physics, to describe it in the language of philosophy arises (satisfactory for time description mathematical tools also do not exist).  This will give an opportunity to get closer to the answer on question of time characteristics. And even if we do not obtain the exact answer, we will still be able to formulate the right question about its nature. For this purpose, the present research carries out analysis of the key theories of modern physics with regard to historical and scientific, historical and philosophical perspectives. In some cases, this gives an opportunity to detect the succession of the associated with time perception ideas, their development, as well as the origination of fundamentally new ones. During the analysis, the correct characteristics of time are formulated from the point of view of physical theory and the attempt to state the nature of time is made. On the ground of conducted research, the conclusions about current state of the problem and its future solution perspectives are drawn.

We study abstract versions of G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem and formulate generalizations of L\"ob's derivability conditions that work for logics weaker than the classical one. We isolate the role of contraction rule in G\"odel's theorem and give a (toy) example of a system based on modal logic without contraction invalidating G\"odel's argument.

Brian Orend, one of the leading just war theorists, is best known today for elaborating jus post bellum principles while his works contain another distinctive component, concept of “minimally just” political community. This article explores Briand Orend’s conception of “minimally just” political community, especially the meaning of this concept for Orend’s version of just war theory. Orend uses Kantian political and moral philosophy in order to prove there are two key functions of state: protection of human rights and establishing order. Since human rights are universal, a state should assist in protection of human rights of every person, not only its citizen’s rights. This leads to situation when states avoid of harming foreigners and aggressive wars become banned. Orend call a state “minimally just” if it follows these rules. However, these states could violate non-intervention principle and start wars. A crucial point here is an idea that a “minimally just” state has a right to fight for the overthrow of the aggressive regimes and establishment of “minimal justice”. The author concludes that this notion helps Orend extend the list of just causes of war, though his original intention was limitation of cases when arms could be used.

This article is devoted to the study of Viet and Muong song lore. The traditional view on folk songs of the Viets assumes autochthonous music and poetry as opposed to high Vietnamese Sinicized culture. In reality, high and popular culture in Vietnam were in a state of mutual influence, that’s why we can suggest that there are Sinitic traits in folk poetry and music of Viets. It can be assumed that there are Sinitic traits even in Muong song lore, but in fact Muong song lore in Muong language is not Sinicized, though Muong folk music is Sinicized.

In the late 1960s, British popular music, evolution of its aesthetic and thematic traits had some peculiarities. Light guitar-based music was flavored by English folklore and exceptional British subjects, live performances demonstrated certain theatricality, imagery of rock bands was linked to British cases becoming a peculiar way of exhibiting their ‘Englishness’. As a result of new British musicians’ desire to determine their own sound, they tend to rework the past and actively include national history subjects in their music. The paper analyzes the mechanisms of treatment with the past in British popular music of the late 1960s on the example of the rock band, the Kinks. Focused largely on the musical style of American blues on their first albums, since 1967 year the Kinks turned to British musical tradition rediscovering mainly music hall. Despite the fact that other British Invasion leaders, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, also borrowed the music hall imagery, the Kinks embraced not only the external music hall style, but deeply adopted music form and subjects. An appeal to the widely recognizable tradition of the British music hall was occurring on the wave of general re-actualization of national past in England. The paper describes, firstly, particular historical subjects that became popular among the British audience in the 1960s; secondly, the format of treatment with the past, which is conditionally characterized as a ‘relevant history’.

This publication presents an overview of the situation in studies of Buddhist epistemology and logic in Western Europe and in Russia. Those studies are the young direction of Buddhology, and they started only at the beginning of the XX century. There are considered the main schools, their representatives, the directions of their researches and achievements in the review. The activity of Russian scientists in this field was not looked through ever before.   

In order to determine the concept of space interpretation in several multiverse hypotheses, this article analyzes a number of them, which arises from some theories of modern physics. The interpretation of space in the history of philosophy and science and their interrelation with modern physical notions are presented. The research is based on the cognitive interpretation method of the contents of formalistic mathematics and physics theories, the method of comparative analysis (analysis of philosophical texts), the hermeneutical method, and the phenomenological method (analysis of representations). The author shows how the context of modern physics multiverse hypotheses contributes to new connotations in the perception of space. The research draws some conclusions about the present status of the philosophical perception of space.

This paper focuses on fan fiction as a literary experience and especially on fan fiction readers’ receptive strategies. Methodologically, its approach is at the intersection of literary theory, theory of popular culture, and qualitative research into practices of communication within online communities. It presents a general characterization of fan fiction as a type of contemporary reading and writing, drawing upon the influential works by H. Jenkins, A. Dericho, K. Tosenberger, and others. Taking as an example the Russian Harry Potter fan fiction community, the paper poses a set of questions about meanings and contexts of immersive reading and affective reading, highly present among the reading strategies of this fan fiction community. The emotional reading of fan fiction communities is put into historical and theoretical context, with references to the works by researchers who analyzed and criticized the dichotomy of rational and affective reading, or «enchantment», in literary culture as one of the symptoms of modernity (M. Millner, M. Saler, R. Felski). The metaphor of «emotional landscapes of reading» is used in the paper for theorization of the reading strategies of fan fiction readers, and discussed through parallels with phenomenological theories of landscape. Among the «assemblage points of reading» of fan fiction, such specific elements are described as «selective reading», «kink reading», «first encounter with fan fiction texts» and «unpredictability»

Proposed study aims to clarify the nature of the rationality crisis in the European culture of Modernity. This crisis manifested itself in many ways already in the 17th-19th centuries, i.e. at the peak of rationalism. The study considers certain aspects of Cartesianism, which prevented it from dissolving entirely in the epistemology and methodology of Modernity and which, moreover, presuppose certain steps to be taken toward reconsidering the new European rationalism within the framework of overlapping philosophical ideas and literary images. The study focuses on three subjects implied by ‘cogito’: self-consciousness, will, and law.

Using a dialogue between the Moscow Pastor Karl Albrecht Sederholm with Schelling as an example, and referring to many unpublished archive documents and manuscripts, this article analyses the role of Sederholm in the cultural transfer between Russia and Germany and the complex interaction between theological, philosophical, religious, political and personal factors in the reception of Schelling's and Hegel's ideas in Russia in the firsthalf of 19th century.

This article deals with the ways of approaching plagiarism in the early modern Europe, mostly in the writings of two German intellectuals, J. Thomasius and J. C. Schwartz. The phenomenon of plagiarism is treated not only as an instrument of “symbolic violence” and “policing force of knowledge” in the Republic of letters, but primarily as a point of intersection of different discourses of the erudite culture: jurisprudence, moral medicine, Ciceronian rhetoric, hermeneutics and simultaneously – as a touchstone revealing the various dimensions of rival models of scientific knowledge (Protestant Aristotelianism, Barock eruditism, enlightened rationalism)