A.F. Losev's Radical Lingua-Philosophical Project

I identify the main underlyingcomponents of Losev's philosophy(phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, symbolism,onomatodoxy/imjaslavie) and undertake acomparative analysis of their similarities (theprinciple of the priority of pure sense) anddistinctive features (i.e., whether logic andnatural language are accompanied by an eideticlevel of pure sense, and whether the principleof correlation or of expression is dominant).On this basis I define the pivotal concept ofLosev's radical project as ``eidetic language.''The general contours of Losev's radical projectand its neglected potential for the philosophyof language are described by means of ananalysis of the relationship between eideticlanguage and logic, dialectics, myth, naturallanguage, and exterior ``reality'' (in the worldof ``referents'').     

Aleksej Losev's Antiutopia

This article is devoted not only to Losev'sphilosophical works, but also to his fiction,which he created during 1930s and 1940s.Losev's eight books of the 1920s (his``octateuch'') combine into a single whole thatamounts to his philosophy of life and historydepicted in expressive images. At the same timeLosev's ``octateuch'' strikes one as having beenwritten at a single sitting and in a singlestyle, in a genre that can be identified as the``philosophical novel'' having as much right asSpengler's opus to be called an ``intellectualnovel.'' In his prose of the 1930s and 1940sLosev tries with artistic methods to resolvethe philosophical problems which he raised inhis works of the 1920s. Losev's ``octateuch'' andhis fiction are directed against thosecontemporary materialists who seek to embodyPlato's Republic, whom he christens``soil-less nihilist idealist utopians.'' All ofthis leads to the conclusion that Losev'sintellectual novel belongs to a definite andmore specific subgenre. It is undoubtedly ananti-utopia, full of the grotesque. In additionto its scientific and social orientation,Losev's anti-utopia is also religious innature. Thus Losev not only depicts the realconsequences of utopian dreams, but also turnsto the ``life of the artist,'' which is far fromany technological or social utopias but isfilled with another, no less terrifying ornihilistic utopia: that of the non-religiousexistence of the human person. Losev preservedhis anti-utopian and anti-nihilist viewsthrough his late period (1950s–1980s), despitethe care he took not to cross Sovietcensorship. Losev's anti-utopia is the kind ofChristian realism to which he appealedthroughout his life.     

Mythos and Logos in Losev's Absolute Mythology

The paper analyses A.F. Losev's argument forthe identity of dialectical and mythicalthinking which forms the key part of his theoryof absolute mythology. Losev claims thatdialectical thinking is limited byphenomenological intuition. He fails torecognise, however, that this intuition itselfis a product of thinking. The same is true ofLosev's concept of `life' that is designed tolimit intellectual reflection. The mystery ofthe Absolute is, contrary to Losev's claim, nota threshold that dialectical thinking cannotcross, but it is, in fact, realised only bysuch thinking. This has a bearing on theChristian Neoplatonist doctrine of energisticsymbolism, which also plays a crucial part inLosev's philosophy of myth. Under the pressureof the Neoplatonist tradition Losev violatesthe demands of dialectical thinking in favourof myth's essential mysticism. And yet, becauseof the dialectical relation between rationalismand mysticism, Losev's attempt was not afailure, but a valuable contribution to thetask of illuminating this relation.     

On the Religious Foundations of A.F. Losev's Philosophy of Music

The article considers A.F. Losev's philosophy of music in the context ofhis entire religious worldview and as the part of hisChristian-Neoplatonic philosophy. Synthesizing Pythagorean-Platonic andRomantic musical doctrines, Losev concludes: music is the expression ofthe life of numbers, a meonic-hyletic element that rages inside numericconstructions. So it is necessary to analyse the concept of number inthe system of Neoplatonic thought. In the Neoplatonic hierarchy of theuniverse both numeric sphere and music are located at the source of allthe eidei, above them and between the One (the first hypostasis) and theWorld Intelligence (the second hypostasis). Then music is considered inthe context of the relation between the uncreated Absolute (Tetrade A)and the created world (Tetrade B). Losev's doctrine on the Tetrades Aand B (connected not by essence but by energies) is the importantmodification of Neoplatonism. Finally the article considers Losev'saccount of music in relation to the absolutized individual person.     

Losev's Development of Themes From Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, andearly 20th century Russians' interpretationsand embellishments of it, informed Losev'stheories of music and myth and his studies ofthe religions of Apollo and Dionysus. Hiscomplex musical aesthetic includes the ideathat music is the expression of a fundamentallyDionysian reality structured by Apollonianelements. In The Dialectic of Myth, heargued that myth is a dialectical necessity(not just a necessity), attacked the secularmythologies of the Enlightenment and Marxism,and upheld ``Christian mythology'' (his term). In The Mythologies of the Greeks andRomans, he traced the religions of Zeus,Apollo, and Dionysus from paleolithic Crete tothe end of the Roman Empire.     

Science,politics, and moral activism: Sorokin's integralism reconsidered

This paper uses previously untranslated excerpts from P. A. Sorokin's revolutionary journalism to reexamine the relationship between his scientific and nonscientific activities. Columns written in 1917 for the political daily Volya Naroda (The People's Will) provide insight into Sorokin's early Russian period and also prefigure the later synthesis that he called Integralism. This article explains Sorokin's competing commitments to science and reformism in terms of the Russian intelligentsia's social role and concludes that Sorokin in America remained a more Russian figure than has been generally recognized. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Just Plain "Ought'

Is there any sense to the idea of an ``ought''that is not relative to any particularnormative framework? This ``ought'' would not bea moral, prudential, legal, aesthetic, orreligious ``ought,'' but rather an unqualified or just plain ``ought.'' Thispaper (i) argues for the existence andusefulness of just plain ``ought''; (ii) locatesthe concept of just plain ``ought'' within amajor strand in the history of ethics (namely,the perennial attempt to demonstrate thatmorality and prudence are in harmony); and(iii) challenges David Copp's recent attempt toshow that in fact there is no such thing asjust plain ``ought.'' A theory of just plain``ought'' emerges along the way.     

The Attractiveness of Panentheism—a Reply to Benedikt Paul Göcke

In his recent article in Sophia, Benedikt Paul Göcke concluded that ‘as long as we do not have a sound argument entailing the necessity of the world, panentheism is not an attractive alternative to classical theism’ (Benedikt Paul Göcke, ‘Panentheism and Classical Theism’, Sophia 52, no. 1 (2013): 75). As the article progresses, Göcke clarifies his view of what panentheism is, essentially identical to Göcke’s view of classical theism in every way, except in the world’s modal relation to God. This concept is vastly different to many of the panentheistic notions that are more commonly held. While it is not initially made transparent—especially with the label Göcke chooses to use—it becomes increasingly clear that Göcke critiques a God concept of his own making. More common variations of panentheism are contrasted with Göcke’s version, in order to provide a broader and more accurate view of the ancient concept, and to demonstrate that Göcke’s view of panentheism is idiosyncratic. It is finally explained that even if Göcke’s view of panentheism were definitive, he has not successfully argued for the relative unattractiveness of the concept, relative to his view of classical theism.     

Harré on Piaget's Sociological Studies

Piaget's Sociological Studies is largely taken up with questions of sociology, epistemology, moral, political and legal theory. Roughly, these are by-passed in Harré's (2000, this journal) interpretation of Piaget's social account. Our critique is in two parts. In the first part, we explain the basis of our disagreement with Harré's interpretation of six specific issues. These are Piaget's model of social exchange, sociology, concept of egocentrism, response to Wallon, psycho-social parallelism, distinction between the concrete and the abstract. In the second part, we challenge two central theses invoked in Harré's review, namely (A) all psychological activity is a joint activity, and (B) any society is based on irreducible differences in psychological activity. We have tried to set the record straight as far as Piaget's social account is concerned. Harré's review shows a general lack of acquaintance with Piaget's account and our aim has been to compensate for this.     

Wie Natürlich ist das System der Natürlichen Deduktion?

How natural is natural deduction?– Gentzen's system of natural deduction intends to fit logical rules to the effective mathematical reasoning in order to overcome the artificiality of deductions in axiomatic systems (¶ 2). In spite of this reform some of Gentzen's rules for natural deduction are criticised by psychologists and natural language philosophers for remaining unnatural. The criticism focuses on the principle of extensionality and on formalism of logic (¶ 3). After sketching the criticism relatively to the main rules, I argue that the criteria of economy, simplicity, pertinence etc., on which the objections are based, transcend the strict domain of logic and apply to arguments in general (¶ 4). (¶ 5) deals with Frege's critique of the concept of naturalness as regards logic. It is shown that this concept means a regression into psychologism and is exposed to the same difficulties as are: relativity, lack of precision, the error of arguing from `is' to `ought' (the naturalistic fallacy). Despite of these, the concept of naturalness plays the role of a diffuse ideal which favours the construction of alternative deductive systems in contrast to the platonic conception of logic (¶ 6).     

Editorial

In this issue of Religion State &;Society Alexander Agadjanian writes about the first attempt by an Orthodox Church to outline a ‘social doctrine’, in the form of the Foundations for a Social Concept for the Russian Orthodox Church (FSC), produced by a Bishops' Council of the church in 2000. Agadjanian describes the Russian Orthodox Church as ‘facing a classical problem of religious ecology: how to respond to constant changes in the Lebenswelt, the surrounding social world, while still retaining a cognitive identity and institutional vitality’, and he finds the FSC to be a ‘torn and polyphonic document’, in which a ‘pro-world stance, affirmed in the beginning, is constantly questioned through the rest of the text’, and in which affirmation of the dignity of the individual turns out to be in the context of the church protecting the individual in his or her need to resist ‘an expanding godless civilisation’. One Russian commentator on the document soon after it appeared went so far as to say that it showed that ‘all possible forms of social existence of the church in a modern secularised society are in fact in contradiction with the sacral concept of social life which is deeply rooted in Orthodoxy’. This is the first time the Russian Orthodox Church has attempted the official formulation of a social doctrine; however, from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1920s, and thereafter in exile, successive Russian Orthodox thinkers and social activists grappled with the very question of how Orthodoxy was to respond to the changing social, economic and political environment. One fertile concept, first formulated by Aleksei Khomyakov in the 1840s, was that of ‘sobornost’', often translated as ‘individual diversity in free unity’, and based on the insight that human social relationships are a manifestation of love and analogous to the relationship amongst the three Persons of the Trinity. Agadjanian draws attention to one fact that appears particularly puzzling. In the FSC no reference is made to sobornost'; much less is there any attempt to deploy it as a conceptual tool in the shaping of a social doctrine for the Orthodox Church. Why should this be?     

Collingwood on religious atonement

R. G. Collingwood’s philosophical analysis of religious atonement as a dialectical process of mortal repentance and divine forgiveness is explained and criticized. Collingwood’s Christian concept of atonement, in which Christ  \(=\)  the Atonement (and also  \(=\)  the Incarnation), is subject in turn to another kind of dialectic, in which some of Collingwood’s leading ideas are first surveyed, and then tested against objections in a philosophical evaluation of their virtues and defects, strengths and weaknesses. Collingwood’s efforts to synthesize objective and subjective aspects of atonement, and his proposal to solve the soteriological problem as to why God becomes flesh, as a dogma of some Christian belief systems, is finally exposed in adversarial exposition as inadequately supported by one of his main arguments, designated here as Collingwood’s Dilemma. The dilemma is that sin is either forgiven or unforgiven by God. If God forgives sin, then God’s justice is lax, whereas if God does not forgive sin, then, also contrary to divine nature, God lacks perfect loving compassion. The dilemma is supposed to drive philosophy toward a concept of atonement in which the sacrifice of Christ is required in order to absolve God of the lax judgment objection. God forgives sin only when the price of sin is paid, in this case, by the suffering and crucifixion of God’s avatar. The dilemma can be resolved in another way than Collingwood considers, undermining his motivation for synthesizing objective and subjective facets of the concept of atonement for the sake of avoiding inconsistency. Collingwood is philosophically important because he asks all the right questions about religious atonement, and points toward reasonable answers, even if he does not always deliver original philosophically satisfactory solutions.     

Positive Experiences at Work and Daily Recovery: Effects on Couple’s Well-Being

The present diary study investigates, at the within-person level, how job satisfaction mediates the relationship between self-rated job performance and recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment from work and relaxation) during off-job time. Furthermore, we explore the effects of these two recovery experiences on couple´s well-being. Data were collected from 145 dual-earner couples (N = 290 participants; N = 1450 occasions) with a daily diary design (five consecutive working days). Multilevel analyses showed that daily job performance positively predicted psychological detachment and relaxation, and that daily job satisfaction partially mediated this relationship. In addition, we found that psychological detachment and relaxation have positive effects on own and partner´s indicators of well-being (i.e., relationship satisfaction and positive emotions). The benefits of recovery go beyond the individual and affect their partner´s level of well-being.     

Mandel'štam and Dante: TheDivine Comedy in Mandel'štam's poetry of the 1930s

Osip Mandel'?tam (1891–1938?) belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel'?tam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante's genius — theDivine Comedy. Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of each poet was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. Mandel'?tam's inner world was Judaeo-Christian, European, and rooted in classical and neo-Platonic philosophy, but his outer world, consisting of a new Marxist or pseudo-Marxist system, was totally at odds with it. Thus Mandel'?tam could not embody the epic impulse of the society he opposed. He was left with the tormented lyric impulse. The fundamental conflict between Mandel'?tam as a lyric poet and the society in which he had to live and work accounts for the fact that his vision of Stalinist society in a number of respects remarkably corresponds to Dante's vision of a perverted divine order in theInferno.     

Parenting Style and Children’s Life Satisfaction and Depressive Symptoms: Preliminary Findings from Romania,France, and Russia

This study evaluated how culture relates to parenting and children’s life satisfaction and depressive symptoms, and whether there are cultural differences in how maternal parenting style relates to children’s adjustment among three cultural contexts: Romanian, Russian, and French. The sample included 325 children, aged 9–11 years, from Romania (n = 123), Russia (n = 112), and France (n = 90). Children completed questionnaires regarding their perceptions of maternal parenting style, and their life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. French children reported lower levels of authoritative parenting style and higher levels of authoritarian parenting style compared to their Romanian and Russian peers. Further, French children reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than both their Romanian and Russian peers, while Russian children had higher life satisfaction than their Romanian and French peers. The strengths of the associations between parenting style and both children’s life satisfaction and depressive symptoms, however, did not differ based on children’s cultural context. Our findings suggest the importance of cultural context in relation to parenting styles and children’s life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. Further, our study shows that the relations between parenting and children’s adjustment are similar across the cultural contexts included in this study.     

Religion and the crisis in Ukraine

This article investigates religious nationalism in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, which has appeared in political and popular rhetoric and has been expressed through violence. From the Tsarist era, Kyiv and Crimea have featured centrally in Russian national mythology as the cradle(s) of Russian Christianity. This nationalist conception of space persisted after political borders changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as has the Russian Orthodox Church's historic jurisdiction in Ukraine. As a result, Russian Orthodox believers retain a special affinity for Kyiv and Crimea, and many Ukrainian citizens have looked to Moscow for matters of faith. Subjects of inquiry include religious nationalism, the baptism of Slavic Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr), Orthodox holy places in Crimea and Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill's Russian World concept, and religious violence in Ukraine and Crimea.     

Le genou de Clémence ou l'espace nostrique comme perspective psychothérapeutique

The writer uses the case study of Clemence' knee to present the phenomenological concept of Wirheit in german (Nostrité in french) which can be translate into "being with" or "being together" in english. This concept is worth knowing in psychology because it can run the psychotherapeutic treatment more effective: care proceedings which will be able to create their own "being with" area vill start again the existential dimension of the patient; this sentient and unrepresentable (so unanalysable) base of the psychical human identity. In practice, we'll see that this therapeutic « being with » consists in working a spontaneous problematic "being with" called out by the patient. This defensive position can be identified in the light of a cover for the human being core. With the therapeutic help, such a "being with" will become the place of the embodied and incorporated self as a competent base for existence. It is noteworthy that the method used to make the reader's understanding easier is to start from a psychanalytic understanding of Clemence's problematic to move on a phenomenological one, so as to draw the efficient sight, for psychology, of this "being with" concept came from philosophy.     

Russian Phenomenology,or The Interrupted Flight

In this article the author notes that Russian phenomenology has a long history that has contributed to European progress in philosophy. He presents the main ideas of Gustav Shpet, a well‐known Russian thinker and original follower of Husserl. The heart of Shpet's positive philosophy is a special, skeptical state of mind—hermeneutic phenomenology. This positive philosophy, with its synthesis of hermeneutics and phenomenology, opposes Kant's negative, relativistic thought. In his work, Shpet focuses on the concept of a text. A text's meaning is objective and grasped via the nonpsychological methods of hermeneutics. Language largely determines the development of the human spiritual world, and so the problematics of language merge with the problematics of consciousness. Because texts are human products that express the influence of linguistic consciousness, our understanding of texts should be based on the analysis of language consciousness. Shpet characterizes the whole culture as a sign‐symbolical, objectified expression of the human spirit.     

Commentary on Wolford,Taylor, and Beck: The conjunction fallacy?

AlthoughP(A&B|X) can never exceedP(A|X) (the conjunction rule), it is possible forP(X|A&B) to exceedP(X|A). Hence, people who rankA&B as more probable thanA are not necessarily violating any normative rule if the ranking is done in terms of the probability of these events to yield an eventX. Wolford, Taylor, and Beck (1990) have argued that this indeed is what happens in some problems (e.g. Tversky& Kahneman’s [1983] Linda problem). The claim made here is that the Linda problem is hard to reconcile with this interpretation; that there is little if any evidence that subjects utilize this interpretation; and that in any case, representativeness can account for all Linda problem results.