When the Gods die. Conquest of America in the Light of the Conflict of Rationalities
Marina Burgete Ayala
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-4.2-116-138
Abstract:

One of the reasons contributing to the “instant” (according to historical standards) conquest, subjugation and actual destruction of the multimillion civilizations of the New World was the extermination of the rational basis of civilization, understood as a complex of religious, cosmological, philosophical views and educational structures, which provided their maintenance. The most illustrative example is the civilization, traditionally called the Aztec Empire. It was the first on the path of the conquerors and the most “alive”, developed and numerous at that time. Paradoxically, that nowadays we can judge the existence of the Aztecs’ complex system of the world perception and religious-philosophical thinking that united all spheres of human life and society in integrity by texts in the Nahuatl language (common to the population of Central Mexico), which did not have alphabetic script. We have the opportunity to assess the role of the rational worldview in the lives of the peoples who inhabited Central America on the eve of the conquest by testimonies and stories of the conquistadors about the ancient knowledge transmitted by the oral tradition and the pictorial “books” that survived in the first years of the conquest. All these texts were recorded in the Nahuatl language (in the Latin script), or in the Spanish language. The task of this work is to identify the points of conflict between the two civilizations in the rational-philosophical aspect. One of the parties has already stepped on the path of the anthropogenic development, armed with "advanced" weapons and a militant monotheistic religion, with pronounced missionary aspirations. The other is a traditional society characterized by a pronounced "national idea" based on the religious cosmological worldview, a strict social organization, a universal education system, the existence of clear laws regulating all spheres of everyday life and an astronomically verified system of calculating the years and human destinies. It can be concluded that the strength of civilization i.e. its organization and established order, turned out to be a weak link, the destruction of which led to the disintegration of integrity. The destruction of the basis, the loss of the higher meaning, the core of this well-functioning effective mechanism, caused the collapse of the whole system: religious rituals, economic organization, administrative structures, education, upbringing and everyday life.

Ideas and Mistakes of Marxism in the Light of Historical Macrosociology
Nikolai Rozov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-4.2-42-60
Abstract:

The paper discusses the most general social, philosophical and macrosociological ideas of Marxism. Marx and Engels used several arguments for their thesis on the socio-economic character of the "basis" when referring policy, state and entire spiritual and cultural sphere to the "superstructure". Each of these arguments is partly right but mainly misleading. The importance of material production for social processes and historical dynamics is not denied, but along with this factor there are always others, no less, and sometimes more powerful ones. Dühring argued rather naively in favor of his thesis of the primacy of power and violence. The Engels's counter-arguments are smart and sometimes sophisticated but should be revised. The analysis of social relations implicitly hidden in ‘property’ shows the fundamental nature of not only order, power and violence relations that reinforce property, but also the importance of normative cultural patterns and psychological attitudes. Technological progress loses the status of the main driver of historical dynamics and social evolution, it remains a very important factor, but only among other no less significant drivers of change. Social revolutions quite often eliminate the political forms that have become inadequate, but they are by no means the only, or the main, factors of such changes. The state is not at all an "instrument" of the class of exploiters (feudal lords, capitalists). The state and the state class (officials) are almost always an independent subject with their own interests, world vision, and resources. Marxism is firmly associated with the struggle for social justice, against class inequality, against the exploitation of man by man, against enslavement. As far as people continue to strive to improve their social status, class polarization, this or that measure of exploitation, social injustice always take place, and break through all attempts at restrictions and equalization. This means the inescapability of the demand for justice, which nourishes and will always nourish the high posthumous reputation of Marx, the emergence of more and more devotees of Marxism.

Karl Marx and Marxism in the Religious “Dimension”
Georgy Antipov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-4.2-23-41
Abstract:

The placement of Marx, together with Marxism, in a religious context may seem strange, at least to those people who still remember “opium for the people” and “a sigh of the oppressed creature”. There is a habit of associating the author and his teachings exclusively with the forms of scientific knowledge. However, it turns out that a more careful and consistent examination shows that despite the prevailing stereotype of the exclusively scientific identification of the Marxist doctrine, referring Marxism precisely to the religious context allows to understand its true place in history and culture. As the Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, S. N. Bulgakov, said, religion carries “the highest and last values that a person recognizes above himself and higher than himself, and that practical attitude, a human being is put in, in relation to these values”. But what are values? Values are the ultimate basis of choice and goal setting. Religion is the social form of the hierarchy of values existence. The article substantiates the thesis that the genesis of Marxism was the product of a complex collision in a general cultural process that embraced philosophy, science, and religion in their interrelation. The features of the interaction of these cultural phenomena in a certain social context explain the culturological features of religion, which are inherent in Marxism.

Who Are You, Doctor Marx?
Vladimir Klistorin
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-4.2-3-22
Abstract:

The paper analyzes K. Marx’s theoretical heritage from the modern standpoints, especially regarding his political and economic works. The author tries to answer the question – why his ideas were popular in the past and remain popular at present. The author discusses K. Marx’s scientific program and paradigm and shows that his scientific program fundamentally differs from those of other leading economists of the first half of the 19th century and his paradigm – from that of classical economics. Marxism created his own original paradigm which combined elements of classical economies and historical school. The paper also shows how K. Marx’s scientific program and some basic elements of his economic theory influence the works of scientists working within alternative schools. The author presents his critical notes to several elements of K. Marx’s theory, namely his historical concept, sociology, and especially, political economy. The author pays special attention to the terms used by K. Marx which allow making ambiguous conclusions and avoiding the critics. The author highlights the influence of Marx’s works on the choice of the subject and statement of problems made by researchers of neoclassical, Austrian, and institutional schools of economics. A major achievement of Marxism is that K. Marx states the problem of how modern bourgeois societies emerge, develop, and die as well as their institutional systems which define the economic dynamics and distribution of public wealth. The way how the Marxists explain economic processes (such as dynamics of prices, profits, and incomes, cyclical patterns of production development, and many others) as well as theories of historical dynamics, why states rise and fall, class structure of societies, and inefficiency of decentralized market economies have not been verified. However, at present K. Marx’s works are very attractive due to the ambiguity of his criticism of bourgeois society and, above all, an aphoristic nature and emotionality of his works. The reason for this is an integrated character of K. Marx’s political, economic, sociohistorical, and even ideological and psychological doctrine. As compared to Marx’s doctrine, modern science is comprised of specialized sectors and, therefore, it is less attractive and understandable.

Legal Spaces and their Missing Digital Boundaries
Wolfgang Sassin
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-4.1-11-25
Abstract:

There is a fundamental difference between the human migration movements of the past and those of the beginning of the 21st century. The latter impose the need for a cultural assimilation of the migrants which they cannot master within one generation. This cultural transformation includes a human densification into a new living space, i.e. the essentially technology-based megapolises, which altogether represent the equivalent of an artificial planet. This new planet does not provide new resources or additional free spaces for an overall growth of material wealth. On the contrary, it asks for a drastic reduction of individual freedoms. The stability, even the survival of these mega centers is at stake without consistent subdivisions of the overall shrinking of spaces needed for all kinds of movements and of a consistent restriction of the exploding communicative interference within and between these mega centers. This essay is aimed at a first-hand analysis of a possible introduction of digital borders without which adequate legal spaces appear infeasible as an indispensable framework of this artificial new planet.

Oriental Gown of I.I. Oblomov and Metaphysics of "Oblomovism"
Igor Likhomanov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-3.2-152-168
Abstract:

The author substantiates his opinion that I. A. Goncharov's novel "Oblomov" is a philosophical and symbolic literary text. The method of symbolization the characters allows the author to include into the novel a system of philosophical ideas revealing the cultural and historical specificity of Russia. So, for example, the character of Oblomov, according to the author, was formed as a generalizing type of some psychological traits of real Russian people. But gradually it was transformed into a symbol of the Russian "in general". Another character, Andrey Stoltz, symbolically embodies the synthesis of the Russian world and the West. Not only people perform a symbolic function in the novel. Oblomov's gown is a symbol of the Islamic East, which is sharply different from the Indo-Buddhist Far East. Thus, the philosophical depth of the novel is achieved through symbolization of characters, not by a collision of abstract ideas. The philosophical content of the novel is to identify the specificity of Russia (the "Russian soul") in its opposition to "the West" and "the East”. The "West" is treated as the mechanical, moving force, opposed to the fixed, inert "East". At the same time, the Western principles are immanent to the Russian ones, while the Eastern principles are transcendent, and they are connected with the Russian principles only mechanically. The specificity of Russia is in its "spiritualized" impulse towards the transcendental meaning of the existence. The philosophical content of the novel, thus, reproduces the Slavophile complex of ideas. However, unlike the Slavophiles, Goncharov created the novel not about greatness, but about self-destruction of the "Russian soul." The main characters of the novel experience an existential crisis due to the loss of meaning in life. But the feminine part of the "Russian soul", which embodies its dynamic and strong-willed principle, is not capable of transcendence. And the male part of the "Russian soul", which has this transcendence ability, is weak-willed, passive and cannot resist the fatal influence of the "East". Thus, the novel "Oblomov" is considered to be anti-Eurasian and it warns against "the Eurasian temptation".

Hierarchical Optics of Language: the Greek Breakthrough
Oleg Donskikh
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-3.1-144-170
Abstract:

The article analyzes a number of stages of the formation of a generic and non-specific vocabulary in the period from 9-8 to 5-4 centuries BC in Ancient Greece. Cosmogonies of the period of ordering mythological representations in Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek cultures are taken as a source material. The article considers the interaction of basic metaphors that allow this ordering to be carried out-metaphors of genealogical (birth and change of generations) and metaphors of artisan-demiurge. The formation of the legislative space is investigated, yet namely this space allows to outline the first reflective steps in relation to mythological thinking. These steps are initially carried out within the limits of traditional mythological images. The most important stage of the movement towards general words in the process of the emergence of artificial concepts in the early philosophical systems – "apeiron", "ontos", "logos", "physis", which begin to be ordered through interaction with each other. In parallel with the personified mythological concepts the abstract concepts are gradually lining up and organizing systematically. From a beginning  they allow to integrate mythological ideas and present them in the abstract form. In the next phase, a fundamental role is played by the activity of sophists, whose attention is focused on the game with the general concepts, yet the content of these concepts starts to lose the reference to the outside world. At the same time, the language is discovered as an independent system. This is the content of the third stage of reflective activity. The attempt of Socrates to escape from sophistic relativism and return the contents to the general concepts leads to the overturning of the relations of names and reality, when it turns out that the general concepts are enclosed in the soul, and they are preset the understanding of the world. Plato and Aristotle are implementing this setting and transform this work with concepts into a separate sphere of activity, creating dialectics and logic that underlie the methodology of reasoning and research in different spheres of intellectual activity.

Social Interactions in the context of Social History and Social Geography
Elena Abramova,  Maria Udalcova
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-3.1-26-37
Abstract:

The article substantiates the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social reality. Various branches of social knowledge have been focusing on identifying the laws of social self-development and rational action. Both the external world and the sociological system of knowledge about it are of a pluralistic nature. There are different answers to the question: "What is modern society?" Today virtual social interaction is coming on the stage. Social nets have become a sphere of intense activity for the attention of target audiences, and network structures - structures of inequality. All phenomena of reality have certain social projections. The authors pay special attention to recording social projections of such areas of reality as history, geography, space, time and the appearance of such qualitative approaches in sociological research as temporality, spatiality and contextuality. Social history is the history of human relations. Social geography is the geography of the very space of people's interaction, which determines the choice of certain occupations and the way of life. Both social history and social geography become immediate phenomena of sociological theory and social practice. The authors demonstrate the growth in the importance of the organization of people’s life, its regionalization in connection with the increased need to manage these processes. The dominating characteristics of a particular regional space are living conditions and environmental conditions. These characteristics are differentiated both in different countries and within a particular country. These differences explain the continuing migration of the population from the less prosperous regions to the more prosperous ones. For Russia, the intra-country differences, which are valid for a long time, are of the utmost importance. Social management is presented as a special type of social interaction aimed at improving the quality of life of the population in various regional environments. The article shows “the scope” of dominating characteristics of the quality of life in the international research and in the regional studies within a country. Estimation of the country's human development potential will always be incomplete without assessing some vulnerability of some regions due to their geographical and historical conditions.

Cryptotypes in the English Language (based on the analysis of publications of the English and American press about robotics and artificial intelligence)
E.A. Kolomeytsev
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-3.1-182-197
Abstract:

The article explores the interrelation between the cryptotypic meaning and frequency in the English language using an example of broad contexts from the English-language press dedicated to artificial intelligence. The author studies interrelation of classical rules, the foundations of speech and new trends in speech which arise under the influence of changes in our society. The author examines the problem on the basis of the analysis of the British and American press, taking into account both current publications and those published ten years ago. In the course of the research, the author draws attention to the connection between cryptotypes and frequency using the example of publications on artificial intelligence, which has become quite characteristic of the modern society. As a result of the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the existing rules of speech do not contradict new phenomena, but, on the contrary, they form the basis for creating new words and sentences which can satisfy the needs of the modern language. It means that violation of the classical canons, when constructing sentences using new words or when narrating about something new, is not a linguistic mistake, but it shows the evolution of a language which is forced to adapt to modern requirements. The analysis of the frequency occurring in the course of use of the spatial relations cryptotype, expressed with the help of demonstrative pronouns this / these-that / those, indicates the predominant expression of the idea of proximity in English in similar constructions. The author of the article notes that a speaker or a writer subconsciously constructs sentences using the pronouns which seem appropriate to him in this particular situation. The idea of cryptotypes can be traced here, since the speaker demonstrates his attitude to artificial intelligence, as to something remote, despite the fact that in the spatial sense, the object is in close proximity to him. The relevance of this study is supported by the fact that, today, the English language is constantly being supplemented by new words, terms, concepts and language constructs. Because of this, the classical foundations and rules are gradually changing, that indicates a close connection of the language with its speakers.

From Socially-Problematic to Risk-Prognostic Analysis: Modern Changes in the Conceptual Apparatus of Social Sciences
Vsevolod Samsonov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2018-3.1-38-51
Abstract:

The paper studies the transformation of the conceptual apparatus of modern social sciences, characterized by a shift from a socially-problematic to a risk-prognostic analysis. The author shows that these conceptual and theoretical changes are conditioned by the internal logic of sociology development, which has gradually transferred in the analysis of social phenomena from the study of unfavorable effects of social changes and symptoms of social deviations to the reasons that cause socially problematic situations. An approach based on the personal responsibility of “problem” individuals and social groups for their exclusion from normal social life was formed within the framework of social psychology and it is defined by a medical-criminological model that affirms the existence of “universal criteria for normality” and, accordingly, standards of behavior. In the framework of this approach, which was clearly manifested in social Darwinism, the main focus of problem-oriented studies is focused on the external symptoms of social ailments and the “deviant behavior” of individuals and social groups, or factors of their unsuccessful socialization, interpreted as a source of social problems. Theoretical and practical analysis shows consistency of the modern turn in understanding social problems, which is characterized by shifting the focus of research to an institutional-systemic level that generates conditions for the reproduction of social deviations and deprivations. According to the author, the analysis of risks in a sociological perspective takes over the baton of the development of problem-oriented research in social sciences. Modern sociology of risks was formed within the framework of critical reflection on the ideas of U. Beck (who understands risk as a rational strategy for transformation of uncertainty into certainty) and it is represented by sociocultural, constructivist, neo-institutional, administrative approaches. What unites these approaches is that risks are treated as products of social interactions that are deeply embedded in social structures, dependent on the external context and the conditions for the formation of subjective perceptions of risks, and the degree of vulnerability of different social groups, determined by their place in the social hierarchy of society. The critical direction in risk theory focused on the problem of risks interconnection and a system-institutional arrangement of society, emphasizes disproportionate vulnerability to the risks of various social groups, based on socio-structural inequalities, as well as imperfection of organizational structures created to minimize risks due to their greater fitness to the established institutional design, than to the challenges that they face due to their specific activities.