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Human choice is possible because of the freedom intrinsic to human beings, and it is also meaningful on the base of the notion of it. Two different antinomies of freedom are considered in this short essay, stemming from the philosophical contexts of theistic and atheistic existentialism.
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This article follows till the end the direction, drawn by the provocative Schopenhauer’s posing of the “law of motivation”, which according to Schopenhauer determines the motives of human in its constant “willing”. Such a law statement must find its own necessity and its own range. With this scale, Kant deduces the practical law, valid for “every rational being”, and formulates it as “supreme effective cause”, which range extends to the “realm of ends”. How such practical statement will have its own formulation and sub-positions in the area of motivation. And whether the higher motivations, discovered and investigated by A. Maslow, will have its own ultimate level – exactly by which we could find the constitutive personal power of the higher motivations. These must be statements, which possess universal validity for each and every human and for the humanity as total.
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The article covers the extent to which dreams can be a subject of scientific studies. What part of the human conception of the world they take in the various cultures. Is the conscious dreaming an opportunity for an unlimited choice and are the boundaries of this field also the boundaries of imagination?
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The advances in neurosciences provoked the classical concept of both psychology and philosophy. The mind-body problem was redefined again after a number of mental processes have been proven to be functions of the brain. The choice as an action selection operation among many competitive representations of actions, for instance, is executed by the brain as a solution of optimization problem and decision making process. Furthermore, even moral rules and values such as monogamy and altruism have correlates in brain activity and learned local group behavioral practices. The brain-body has become a causal essence, which presupposes moral dilemmas solving. In this theoretical paper is suggested another problem “language-body problem” instead “mind-body problem” as the language is presented as a genius for creation of virtual realities of increasingly higher order to enable the growing human to separate from the others, to individualize himself and to lose his innate ability of empathy. Language is not a communication tool, on the contrary – individualization environment. Only in language virtualities and therefore born pure thinking the human is free and has free choices. Language virtual development is in its infancy and is called to repeat and walk through the whole evolution of the human body and its Rubicons – from the first cell division through the fish stage to the well-known human biology. Reviving the language, literally, we will put in their places all paradoxes and problems in human cultural development – from “lethal competition” and violence to full dedication and altruism – these are all in perfect balance in the human body. To develop this idea, the author offers a completely new scientific research area – biosophy – “biology of language” to study the future life in language genius.
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Within the framework of this article is made an attempt to mark some important Christian ideas about human freedom and their importance for the formation of some basic positions of Christian ethics on moral self-determination and moral choice. Secondly, the article brings some important philosophical ideas and interpretations of freedom and moral choice of three of the prominent representatives of Russian religious philosophy (F. Dostoevsky, N. Berdyaev and B. Visheslavtsev) who are crucial for the Russian intellectual tradition and philosophical approach to the subject of freedom.
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The present text discusses the balance between the spirit of Modernity and that of Tradition, analyzing the rejecting of Tradition in the Century of criticism. The author makes an attempt to explain the reasons of the thinkers with a traditionalistic orientation towards all aspects of life, including the religious sphere.
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The article attempts to explore the religious motives in the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard and his influence on the two of the world’s leading representatives of Russian religious philosophy in the twentieth century – Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev.
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In 1917 in Germany is published the work „Das Heilige“ by the German theologian and philosopher of religion Rudolf Otto. In this work Otto subjected to phenomenological analysis experiences of the sacred – an essentially necessary element in all religions. After this thorough phenomenological analysis, Otto defines the Holy as a pure category a priori, referring to the Kantian epistemology and aesthetics. Defining the Holy as a priori category subsequently provoked theological and philosophical discussion, both in Germany and in other parts of the world, referring the problem about how far the used by Otto term „a priori“ is consistent with the Kantian „a priori“. The main thesis of this article is that transcendental critical method set by Kant through the model a priori – a posteriori, is the basis of the method of philosophy of religion in „Das Heilige“.
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The article is about the Christian and ethical views of the problem related to the suffering reflected in the light of the Biblical points of view and ideas in terms of God’s Rightness and Punishment.
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The article briefly investigates new approaches in epistemology, focusing on their benefits and deficiencies. These approaches include naturalized epistemology, virtue epistemology, evolutionary epistemology, and memetics. Their reconstructions include a brief introduction to an approach and an assessment part in which the benefits and the deficiencies of the approach are discussed. The conclusion is that, notwithstanding the introduction of innovative components, the new approaches in epistemology cannot resolve radically the problem posed by skepticism.
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The text reviews the connection between Eros, beautiful and sublime. It creates a parallel between the ancient ideas of Plato for the Common and Heavenly Eros and the ideas for Beautiful and Sublime, developed in the German classic aesthetics.
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This article aims to show the dressing in philosophical and anthropological perspective. The author defends the idea that dressing is above all an opportunity to adapt the body to a desired image. The dressing and the fashion are interpreted as part of the human experience.
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This article considers a problem of the body and its ambivalence as a subject and as a fiction. Different views on culture are observed and attempt to propose a new reading of the relationships between the body and the culture is made. The point of the article is that the body is ambivalent and has symbolic along with its physical characteristics. The body is usually concerned as an opposition to a soul. An exception to this view is Kantorowicz’s perspective on the political body of the ruler, which is linked to the Lesly White’s idea of the prohibition of incest.
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Heidegger’s name is often brought up in connection to Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958), since his thought had a pervasive influence on Arendt’s work. Although Heidegger is not mentioned in The Human Condition, Arendt herself claims in her letter that her work “grew right out of the first days in Marburg and so is in all respects indebted to” him. Accordingly, this article is an attempt to search for the roots of Arendt’s philosophical views in her magnum opus. Based upon close reading of Heidegger’s texts, this article argues that Heidegger’s later philosophy has impacted on Arendt’s ontology and her understanding of modern society in The Human Condition. My plan is as follows: first, to note Arendt’s relationship to Western tradition of political philosophy; second, to discuss Arendtian notions of political action and public realm; and third to study her conception of modernity.
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This paper studies the viability of philosophy as a system of knowledge and its efficacy as a tool for decision making. Decisions are the key to life, given the existential predicaments human beings constantly confront and the fact that man is a purposive being. A being with a defined purpose is inevitably a being possessing rationality. Rationality is about the meaning and communication of our thoughts and actions. It is about the way that we manage our behavior and experience as humans. Our experiences commit us to courses of action- decisions, as seen in both the public and private domains. We are often confronted with choices or options about pathways or world views to follow or adopt. Such choices compel us to make decisions or take actions that have profound consequences on our lives and eventually on the lives of others. In some cases, decision making can be a mind boggling or tricky thing. Therefore, we may ask: Is there a way that philosophical thinking or knowledge can add value to the decisions made by people or even the capacity of people to make some decisions (moral, logical, epistemological, esthetic or political)? If the answer is yes, then what logical and empirical features of philosophy can facilitate constructive and valuable decision making in daily life or at higher levels of abstract thought. Through the use of examples and analysis, the paper shows that philosophy as knowledge system is particularly illuminating with regard to the ways our human minds form ideas or principles, and the role of ideas and concepts in building tools for coordinating the physical and mental aspects of reality. Reality is partly based on facts and phenomena, as well as value judgments, opinions, beliefs, tastes and preferences. How does philosophical knowledge help us to manage these dynamic and different elements in reality? This work emphasizes the qualitative or social elements that philosophy brings to bear on the material and mental aspects of human existence.
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One of the main objectives of this article is to clarify why ‘mapping’ otherness in the era of the Anthropocene is not an axiologically neutral process. This hypothesis is elaborated by demonstrating how the proponents of both radical anthropocentrism and radical eco-centrism rely upon the center-periphery dichotomy when ‘mapping’ what they understand by other in both spatial and moral terms. In this context, I argue that overcoming the negative effects of so-called myopic moral horizons is possible by adopting the principle of ethical gradualism in an interspecies context.
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Freedom in the context of the ethical views of the Russian classics – Berdyaev, Solovyov, Dostoevsky and others, is examined. Emphasis is placed on freedom and the enormous challenges to achieve it. The faith in Man and the possibility for divine incarnation is a distinctive characteristic of Russian religious philosophy. The second part examines Solovyov’s formulations of the Good and its realization. His polemics with Kant for the Moral Good and the Highest Good is presented here. Berdyaev’s thesis for the relationship between Man and God is also investigated. Just as Man needs God, God also needs Man.
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The central aim of this paper is to provide certain clarity regarding the question ‘What role does ‘the intellect’ play from the perspective of a Higher-order Theory (HOT) of consciousness. My hope is to show that there are grounds for the conclusion that there is a close relation between what we call ‘intellect’ and the evolutionary and adaptive processes that a biological system undergoes. As for the final result, my goal is admittedly modest – to merely outline a working definition of the term ‘intellect’, which is, however, compatible with evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, I hope that, if successful, such definition can facilitate future research in the field.
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The article aims to overcome the traditional standards in connection with the interpretation of Russell’s philosophical logic. The requirement which is needed for that aim to be done is the re-evaluation of a series of features in the British philosopher’s mode of thinking. The text is organized as it follows. 1) A mixture of some autobiographical storylines, which suggest the negative attitude of Russell to the tradition of transcendentalism. 2) Analysis of some selected sections from Russell’s unpublished manuscript from 1903/1904, which is rarely mentioned, too. In the context of the same manuscript, some indicators are visible, and they show that in his mental experiments transcendental counterparts of important logical puzzles exist. 3) It is maintained that the problems of philosophical logic and non-classical transcendentalism could be studied together relying on Critique of Pure Reason.
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The study focuses on some aspects of the church’s spiritual life, based on the work of St. John Cassian. “Conferences of the Desert Fathers”. The author seeks answers in the writings of the Reverend and the practice of the church about the emergence and overcoming of the confrontation of the Eucharist with asceticism and the Eucharistic spirituality with therapeutic spirituality. Тhe dependence of the ascetic views of Rev. St. John Cassian on Origen and Evagrius of Pontius, who prioritize the fight with passions, purifying the heart and contemplation of the life of the church was studied and analyzed in a discussion manner. For the purpose, were made parallels of the ideas of St. John Cassian’s work with the hymnographic texts of the liturgical tradition and other ascetic writings of the early Byzantine Fathers of the church. The text of the study raises the question of the existence of the therapeutic and eucharistic spirituality of the church separately from each other, as being extrinsic to the Orthodox church spirituality.
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