Ideas and Ideals

For the survival of Homo sapiens, joint efforts and a strong desire for expansion were of the utmost importance. Our today's emotions and instincts are a relic of the era of hunters and gatherers. External expansion against rival communities and internal expansion, aimed at a closer social organization, gave birth to a mass man, a man of the crowd, who dominated the world until the 19th century. The modern mass man, Homo billionis, whose global civilization covers the entire planet, appeared only in the twentieth century. His archaic craving for expansion gave birth to industrial civilization as the dominant form of life. Today Homo billionis encounters natural boundaries, which are perceived as a hindrance, but he fails to understand that destruction of self-regulating nature is caused by his activities. Behind both world wars, there was a belief in the need to maximally expand the exploitation of nature and other people for the sake of one’s own freedom. This expansion and the freedom won at someone's expense have come to their logical end. For the last two generations, the planet of unlimited possibilities has turned into a closed market, where everyone seeks to displace the other, and where not only individual freedom but also national identity fades away steadily. The mass man as a modern version of Homo sapiens and monotheistic ideological constructions are closely connected with each other. They have to be overcome in order to avoid the death of civilization as the result of further exponential growth. This requires two conditions: the rejection of the expansionist idea of the state and the recognition of differences between people.

This article deals with analyzing traditions from archaic societies to the modern society going through the hard crisis period being full of different risks. Speedy changes over the world are continuing to increase rapidly herewith to multiply risks for speedy achieving favourable future. The growing needs have been aggravating the destruction of harmony between a human and his mental, social and native world. The unbridgeable gap between a man and a tradition has been becoming obvious. The origin of Latin word "traditio" pays attention to education which implements continuity in society developing, and maintains culture. The analysis of examples of forming the traditions in ancient Israel, India and China, in ancient Greek policies and in Rome has revealed the importance of attitude for preserving the values keeping harmony between man’s inner world and society, and providing the balance between privacy and social life. Preserving tradition is carried out in conditions supported by culture which is certain to be the stronghold of any state. A tradition is focused on values and their transference mechanisms, and language is sure to have the priority among them. Language as a means of communication in time and space plays the paramount role keeping universal and professional knowledge for using by humanity. The etymology of loan words pays attention to the cultural and historical conditions of their emergence in a language and emphasizes the successive nature of knowledge. The tradition has been gaining the status of the basis allowing both person and society to get out of crisis.

The article examines the role of a social ideal in history on the example of evolution of the perfect man image. The ideal is understood as a due thing, which allows to assess the present existing nature and to determine the direction of its development. Aspiration to the ideal, which is an essential intention of a person necessary in acquiring ideal traits of a man, is one of the driving forces of history. Every historical period constructs its own image of an ideal person and strives to get closer to it. Ideas about the perfect man have been regularly formed throughout history, this fact proves that there is a permanent innate human sense of dissatisfaction with him/herself (and with the whole world), the lack of self realization, the intention to discover their own inner identity. The first "perfect man" was a beast. In the primitive societies people conquered the “outer” beast, in Antiquity – the “inner” one. There appeared the first identity crisis as a consequence of inadequate self-esteem ("man as the measure of all things"). God was a "perfect man" of the Middle Ages. If a beast turns out to be in the inaccessible past then God is in the eternal unattainable future. So, the second identity crisis comes into existence. A Man becomes an ideal in Modern Times. There appeared a concept of a perfect man (as a real possibility). However, depriving a person of metaphysics leads to the third identity crisis. Nowadays the "perfect man", increasingly, appears to be a machine resembling a "man", devoid of human weaknesses with improved human qualities. The analogy between a human and a machine leads to the fourth identity crisis. "The new perfect man" is a man as a unique result of the development of all human culture, the synthesis of the unique and the universal.

The article considers the essence and nature of a human. The authors substantiate the necessity of a holistic view of a person in modern conditions, when the human development has become the goal of civilized development. The authors discuss various approaches to understanding of human entity. The article criticizes unreasonable use of the mechanistic model of an “economic man”. Forming the empirical models of a human, it is suggested coming from his essence as a socio-natural-spiritual phenomenon.

The article is devoted to the problem of development of a new project of reality that has overcome the post-nonclassical stage and faced difficulties in understanding human-like technoobjects in the present. The authors associate the emergence of "new structures" with transformation of human selfness, its practices of "disintegration", alienation from oneself. The beginning of this process launched by the medieval culture of thought, in which real, conceptual and nominal have appeared. They are recorded in the practices of discovering sinful within yourself; cashing out itself in contact with similar (other); revealing a formal (name). In the period of New European philosophy, a cognizer, tied to contemplation and will, begins to practice. He focuses on experience of reflection – a repeated inspection, control over the self, through which its "property" or aggressive withdrawal of irrational opportunities is established. The authors claim an idea that practice of a cognizer with ever-increasing estrangement from oneself generates a new reality in our time – the objects of kogito (virtual, conceptual, linguistic), objects that "complete" the embodiment (biotechnical structures). They are practitioners standing within the boundaries of will-kreacio, aimed at rational extension, transformation of cognizer. A purposeful will that has a rational intention, collects its own reality from the fragments or "traces" of the expressed, described, everyday, etc., constructs it from fragments of social action, text, experience. A methodology, built on the framework of mathematical and natural sciences, is gradually replaced by an activity-practical, hermeneutic, engineering-sociological approaches. Comprehension of science through spiritual experience of cognizer makes it possible to assess it not as something external, civilizationally fateful but as a conscious action, a choice, relying in a special fixation, self-examination.

The article gives quite an unusual view on quite usual things. The author speculates upon different, but utmost important aspects of love. He reflects on love of self, love for another human being, love for the mankind, love for the Motherland, physical love and terrestrial love. But the author doesn’t share his thoughts with the readers on parental love and love of God. The article is full of philosophical comments to literature passages, irony and curious, nontrivial, conclusions. In our opinion, the article will be of great interest to people, who are not indifferent and inclined to reflection and it can be perceived as the additional opportunity to touch eternity.

This article analyzes a number of social and anthropological implications of the sharp increase in the flow of information, which have acquired since the mid-20th century the character of "information explosion". The authors analyze the postmodern concepts by identifying major characteristics of post-industrial society that brings these concepts together with the theories of the information society. The authors substantiate the hypothesis that, on the basis of the convergence of certain postmodern concepts with the theories of the information society there can be conceptual synthesis. The authors show that the informational approach, which is not used explicitly, is present in the works of post-modern artists as the concept of a special type of society, a society living and reproducing itself mostly in virtual reality based on mass production of sign-symbolic artifacts - signs, symbols, values and meanings, aggregated into streams of information. Information flows are the main "building material" and a resource for the construction of symbolic information and communicative space. The authors identified the following characteristics of the society after the "information explosion": there is a change in the content of communication; the symbolic world becomes increasingly unrecognizable for a human being; there is depersonalization of social codes; virtual strata appear; people experience information trauma of consciousness; human existence becomes fragmented; "information schizophrenia" sets in; "intellectual extinction" of mankind syndrome shows up; and then comes "normal anomie".

The reforms carried out over the past fifteen years in the RF education system are not related to the discoveries in pedagogy, but to the changes in social orientations, which are imposed by external "Bologna commitments". The forcefully introduced "competence approach" to the planning of education in higher education gave rise to many difficulties, because it was actually incompatible with the Russian educational tradition. The development of "competence" rhetoric at the reporting level had almost no effect on the methodology of teaching in domestic universities, but the goals and ideals of education have radically changed. Now they are formulated not by the society and the state, but by perspective "employers", transnational corporations are usually meant by them. Instead of "comprehensive harmonious development of the personality," the competence approach actually involves preparing a person for the labor market with the subsequent sale of human qualities. Expanding of the buying and selling sphere is the result of the globalization processes, today only state sovereignties can prevent this expansion, and within traditional societies only "family and school" have to stop this expansion. The author considers this gradual transformation of traditional pedagogy into "market pedagogy" from the point of view of modern inter-civilizational confrontation. The triumphant "economic dominant" is not a universal "innovation", but the result of the expansion of Western civilization. The author substantiates the idea that introducing this competence approach, borrowing the goals and ideals from alien cultures hamper the natural development of our national educational system.

The article examines theoretical development of the idea of a Russian University in the XVIII-XIX centuries. The author considers the ideas of outstanding scientists and thinkers of the time. She also analyzes the charters of Russian universities and their role in the development of University education and considers the attitudes and influence of society on the development of universities. It is highlighted in the article that relations between the state, society and universities are well-defined in the University statutes. Four University Charters were adopted in Russia in the XIX century: 1804, 1835, 1863, and 1884. If the first Charter granted relative autonomy to the universities, the Charter of 1835 strengthened the power of Trustees, thereby limiting the previously given autonomy. The third Charter of 1863 restored the universities in their rights granting them broad autonomy, while the Charter of 1884 abolished them altogether. The author studies both points of view: the Russian and the foreign ones on the topic of University autonomy from the government. The article shows that Russian universities couldn’t even think about any autonomy, because they were created by the state with the aim to strengthen and preserve the monarchy. The author presents a comparison of missions of the first University and the already reformed University. While the mission of the first university was training of officials for the state service, the reformed universities focused on the development of science within its walls. The article considers development of the Russian University within one hundred years frame from the utilitarian to the classical one.

The authors analyze the rare experience of philosophical understanding of the accounting phenomenon reflected in the scientific heritage of one of the American accounting tradition founders – Charles Ezra Sprague. The article reveals the ideas of the American scientist on the nature, the form and construction of an account as a key category of accounting theory, his view on logic of communication between accounts and the balance sheet, and specific author's interpretation of balance sheet equation and objects of accounting. Basing on the historical parallels and analogies built between Ch. E. Sprague's ideas and urgent provisions of modern theories of financial accounting the authors come to the conclusion about the need to ensure a balance of foresight research in the field of accounting practice and historical, philosophical and science studies of the accounting theory and methodology.

The article poses for the first time the problem of the existence of democratic and undemocratic variants of the Populist model of the reorganization of Russia. The latter, born three times in different historical epochs on the left flank of the party, can be determined by the self-designation of these forces, under the common name - as a Left-Narodnik variant of the Narodnik model of the socio-political reorganization of Russia. It is known in three of his sub-variants - the maximalist (1904-1906), the Left Socialist (1917) and the MPSR (1919-1922). The democratic Socialist-Revolutionary version of the populist model is known in three sub-variants. The most famous is the so-called. "Chernovsky", "centrist", which became a kind of "Socialist-Revolutionary orthodoxy" and formed the basis of the official doctrine of the PSR. Another sub-variant was born on the right flank of the party and is associated with the names of N.D.Avksentyev, I.I.Fondaminsky, V.V.Rudnev, M.V.Vishnyak, and others. Apparently, we can talk about the formation of one more, more right subvariant, which was forming on the right flank of the party around the newspaper "The Will of the People" (Volya Naroda) and is associated with the names of A.A.Argunov, A.I.Gukovsky, P.A.Sorokin, E.A.Stalinsky. They were ideologically close to E.K.Breško-Breshkovskaya, A.F.Kerensky, B.V.Savinkov, and others. The author believes that, in fact, the democratically oriented part of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party anticipated the ideas and path of the so-called "Swedish socialism," the path of evolutionary reforming of society along the lines of democracy and the social state, a path which was taken by many socialist and social democratic parties in post-war Europe. In Russia, the PSR took this path already in 1917 and it was this program of its transformation that was supported by the majority of the population of Russia at the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Moreover, the Socialist-Revolutionary democratic alternative started to be implemented in the framework of the laws adopted by the Constituent Assembly

This article is dedicated to Bulgarian Bogomils’ ideology research. Bogomilism is one of the most popular and influential Christian heresies, appeared in mediaeval Bulgaria in 10^th century. Ideology, interpreted in terms of Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes as a structured sign-expressed world image, is divided into different levels. There are the Bogomils’ ideas of politics, economy, corporeality and mysticism. Bulgarian heretics’ world-view was based on religious dualism – a concept of existence of opposite fundamentals (spiritual and material in that case), with a human as their battlefield. Negation of everything material, based on religious dualism, thereby is Bogomilism’s world-view basis. The Bogomils’ revolutionary character, noted by some scholars, appeared not only in politics (denial of authorities) – this religious movement tended to a social ideal, that supposed a much deeper changes of society (created by Sathan) and human nature. The process of making of this “new human” presents as a consecutive negation of everything, connecting him with material world: from social position, property and family till his own body.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of political power as it is depicted in the artistic world of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”. The concept of Tzar Boris is analyzed in the context of contemporary view on the nature of power elaborated by Eugen Fink. The author of the article focuses on the dialogue of historical truth and artistic credibility. The article shows that the complexity of Godunov’s character gives way to a wide range of interpretations in nowadays theatre and movies. Boris Godunov is comprehended by stage directors as the “actor” (acting subject) of modernity capable to struggle through the problematic current reality. In addition to the problems of the relationship between power and an individual, the authorities and the people in Boris Godunov, the author raises the most important topic of relations between Russia and the West. The author draws attention to the most famous performance of "Boris Godunov" in new Russia, the play, staged in 2000 by the British producer of Irish descent, Declan Donnellan, and expresses the opinion that this very performance solves the problem in the context of the "unhealed present" at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The study is addressed to theatre professionals, philologists, specialists in cultural studies and aesthetics, cultural scientists and educators.

The profile federal regional department (Russian Federation Ministry for Nationalities Issues and Regional Policy) since its establishment has been in a difficult situation in the matter of its activity object. This is proved indirectly by its numerous (five times!) renaming. Difficulties finally reached such a level that it was decided in October 2001 to abolish it. In 2004, the ministry was re-created, but in September 2014 it was abolished again. Between the articles 41 and 47 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation of January 1, 2000, there was a contradiction in the matter of the content of "own revenues" category. The developers had to eliminate the contradiction, but in such a way that, as far as possible, the volume of the region's own revenues should be increased in accordance with the political line. And indeed, in the amended article 47 of the Budget Code of January1, 2005, "incomes received by budgets in the form of gratuitous income, with the exception of subventions" were also attributed to the budget's own revenues. The greatness of the idea is that a significant increase in the region's own revenues is achieved by simply changing the definition. But this decision was not radical enough, and the concept of "own revenues" is completely excluded from the draft of the new edition of the Code. It is a tendency, though!