The Christian right movement in the USA in the 1990s
This article analyses the factors that strengthened the influence of the Christian right movement in the USA in the 1990s. The author considers the organizational changes and ideological transformation within the movement and its effect on the political process in this period. The article identifies the problems facing the Christian Right movement in its attempt to devise political tactics in the mid-1990s. The author pays special attention to the question of the interaction between the Christian...
Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant on the Existence of God
The positions of Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant on the possibility of proving the existence of God require some examination. Wolff’s critique of the physical-theological proof and his proposed ways of improving it are here analysed. God is central to Wolff’s philosophical system and the fundamental prerequisite of his theoretical and practical philosophy. Although Wolff insists that the natural law is inherent in human nature and can therefore be comprehended by human reason without turning to...
Dispute about Holbein as a dispute about faith: discussion around Fedor Dostoevsky’s novel ‘The Idiot’
The article is devoted to the controversy around the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger "Christ in the tomb" and the novel "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoevsky, where this picture is the central ekphrasis. The aim of the study was to analyze the current trends in the interpretation of Holbein's painting and Dostoevsky's novel, in ...
Image of Christ in Boris Poplavsky’s book of verses “Snowy hour”
The image of Christ is analyzed in Boris Poplavsky’s book of verses “Snowy hour”. Biblical allusions, lyrical plot of poems, composition and an image of lyrical subject are considered. Researched levels of literary text are studied with connection with the image ...
Kants Begriff der Verbindlichkeit und die neuzeitliche Naturrechtslehre
My article is devoted to one of the main concepts of early modern natural law, i. e. the concept of obligation. Starting with Pufendorf's concept of obligation, it will be demonstrated that the natural law is grounded on the will of God. In contrast, the concept of obligation in Christian Wolff's Philosophia practica universalis has no need to found the validity of obligation of natural law in God's will. Instead he developed a concept which was based on the idea of a free self-binding moral subject...
Current practices in French poetic discourse: Christian Prigent, Michèle Finck and Anne-James Chaton
At the core of the contemporary literary process is the search for an effective extratextual communicative situation, which is especially relevant for books of poetry, whether in paper or electronic form.
This article examines current practices of delivering poetic texts to readers through auditory perception. It focuses on contemporary French poets active between 1990 and 2022, representing three different groups and movements; in Russia, they are known only to a narrow circle of specialists...
The Christian context of H. Ch. Andersen’s fairy tales: The confines of the genre
The Christian context of H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales is considered from the perspective of the genre confines in view of the evolution of the author’s oeuvre. It is argued that the romanticism of Andersen’s fairy tales is rooted in his Christian worldview. The article traces the Christian axiology of Andersen’s fairy tales and emphasises their allegoric and parabolic nature. Andersen’s works introduce a certain type of ‘two-worldliness’, which is distinct from that of German romantics' fairy tales...
Ch. Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: the axiology of holiday time
The focus of this article is on the cognitive structure and means of verbalisation of the temporal and atemporal layers in Charles Dickens's depiction of Christmas in his novella «A Christmas Carol». In the complex structure of the holiday concept, past and present become intrinsically blended, Christmas time being a manifestation of eternity.
1. Бердяев Н. А. Время и вечность // На переломе. Философские дискуссии 20-х годов: Философия и мировоззрение. М., 1990. С. 402—410.
2. Вежбицкая А. Семантические...
The Role of the Sublime in Kant’s Religion: Moral Motivation and Empirical Possibility
... functions in two essential ways: as a representation of a maximum of morality that can ground our moral disposition and in so doing acts as a standard for morality. More precisely, the following argument is made: 1) the sublime nature of the image of Christ — as an image of universal respect for the law — awakens the moral feeling of subjects in the sense of the possibility of overcoming one’s perverted nature; 2) as moral perfection it provides immediate transparency to the end goal of morality; ...
Kant on the rights of citizens in matters of religion: The concept of religious tolerance in the German Enlightenment
The universal public law is a section of Kant’s lectures on natural right, which he delivered in 1784. A traditional part of the then natural right compendia, it might seem strange to us today. Kant distinguished between three branches of government. However, they were not identical in the name or function to the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Of interest is the justification of the exclusion of certain powers from the monarch’s authority — the monarch must not dispense justice or rule...
Poetics of the ‘ideal’: The ancient and Christian tradition in K. N. Leontyev’s novel Odysseus Polychroniades
This article examines the interaction between ancient and Christian world-view traditions in K. N. Leontyev’s novel Odysseus Polychroniades. Leontyev expresses Christian ideas using images of Greek heroes. The ancient tradition is represented in the pan-aesthetic attitude of the literary work. In the text, the two traditions are compared using the ‘icon – picture’ opposition. The article stresses the connection between Christian and ancient tradition, which proves to be more important than differences...
The notion of necessity in the German philosophy of the¬ Enlighten¬ment
Necessity is a key philosophical notion, which is used in different disciplines from logic to ontology. In the German philosophy of the Enlightenment, this concept was centralto the work of many thinkers. For them, necessity is related not only to logic but rather to the disciplines of general and special metaphysics. It is explained by that the principle of sufficient reason introduced by Leibniz is closely linked to the notion underconsideration. The recognition of this principle as one of the...
The “illegal” branch of the Russian national patriotic opposition in the USSR: the case of the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People
This article is devoted to the activities of the Russian patriotic anti-Soviet organization All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People, which operated in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The author examines the ideological basis, program, composition, and structure of the Union and describes the role of the organization in Russian national-patriotic opposition in the USSR.
1. ВСХСОН : программа. Суд. В тюрьмах и лагерях. Париж, 1975.
2. ВСХСОН : материалы суда и программа...
Vivos Voco. Post-war Correspondence between Sergey Hessen and Ivan Lapshin: Year 1946
The letters of S. I. Hessen and I. I. Lapshin, two Russian Neo-Kantian philosophers, were written in the early post-war years. These letters bear witness to the later period in the life and work of their authors, a period of hardship, tragic losses and hopes. Both philosophers were deeply embedded in the intellectual landscape of Russian emigration. They were also known and valued by their peers in the countries that gave them refuge, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they not only published their...
Open Use of Reason: Socrates and Kant
Kant is compared with Socrates because the two philosophers have much in common. Both thinkers were central figures in their time. Kant revolutionised the philosophy of the modern period dealing with questions of ethics and epistemology; Socrates brought about a similar revolution in ancient Greek philosophy. The image of Socrates continues to inspire modern scholars, the main features of this image being rationality and publicity. Socrates is seen as an arch-rationalist and the founder of science...
Analysis and translation of the Old English poem Instructions for Christians in the context of the Christian tradition
An Old English poem, preserved in a copy of the 12th century, Instructions for Christians, consisting of 265 lines, is considered through the prism of the explication of the theme of moral instructions in the Old English tradition. The poem, along with other Old English sermons and Christian poems, represents the suggestion of moral rules regarding early Christian life, being a set of orders for believers. This article provides the author's translation of the contexts of the poem Instructions for...
God’s Law or Categorical Imperative: on Crusian Issues of Kantian Morality
The ethics of Kant and the ethics of Crusius are strikingly similar. This is manifested in a whole range of principles and concepts. Crusius’ moral teaching hinges on the rigorous moral law which has to be obeyed absolutely, and which makes it different from other prescriptions that are binding only to a relative degree. This is very close to the Kantian distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Another salient feature of Crusius’ moral teaching is the stress laid on the sphere...
Kantian Ethical Humanism in Late Imperial Russia
The cultural movement known as “humanism” has unfortunately not received a clear and careful definition. Historians and philosophers have lumped together their various understandings of outlooks that stress the value and importance of human life under the collective term “humanism.” This essay sets out to contrast, in particular, three types of humanism, all of which attracted attention at overlapping times in Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union. The youngest of the three, Marxist humanism...
Logic Manuals for Women in the Late Enlightenment Era
In the focus of my attention there are six German-language textbooks in logic published in the second half of the eighteenth century. What distinguishes these books is that they were all written specially for women. While such works were fairly common in France and Italy during this period, they had something of an exotic character in the German-speaking world. Today these works and their authors are generally seen as secondary and marginal. Nevertheless, they may be of substantial interest in the...
Lexemes with the stem –БОГ- (GOD) in hagiographic texts of the 15th—17th centuries
The article explores lexemes stemming from Rus. бог- (god), which were used in the texts of the XV—XVII centuries. This stem expressed the concept of God and was used as a means of characterization of objects, phenomena, etc. The material of the analysis was taken from the texts of the XV—XVII centuries, which are a valuable source of information for the study of the system of values of Slavs, based on the axiology of Christian dogmas. The aim of this research is to identify the specificity of these...
Kant’s cryptic notes (Afterword to publication)
1. Васильев В. В. «Маргинальная» метафизика Канта // Логос. 1997. № 10. С. 100—107.
2. Гегель Г. В. Ф. Письма 1793—1831 // Гегель Г. В. Ф. Работы разных лет : в 2 т. М.,1971. Т. 2.
3. Гюйгенс Х. О движении тел под влиянием удара // Голин Г. М., Филонович С. Р. Классики физической науки (с древнейших времен до начала XX века). М.,1989. С. 124—128.
4. Жучков В. А. Черновые заметки // Собр. соч. : в 8 т. М., 1994. Т. 8. С. 698.
5. Кант И. Из рукописного наследия (материалы к «Критике чистого разума»...
Energy and the Ways of its Conceptualisation in Cognition: an Attempt at an Epistemological Analysis
Thе article examines the connection between conceptualisation and transfer of knowledge in the humanities and analyses the role of these processes in the formation of conceptual and terminological framework for different types of discourse. The study draws on an analytical description of the development of the concept of energy in the Christian Orthodox discourse. The description was provided from the perspective of transferology — a new metadiscipline aimed to study the meaning-focused transformations...
On the role of religion in N. N. Alekseev’s axiological model of law
This paper is devoted to investigation of destination of religion in the process of forming of the concept of law in determined cultural circumstances. This study is actualizes the essential link between comprehension of content of domain of law and concept of subjectivity. Nikolay Alexeev overcomes concept of subjectivity represented in philosophy of early modern period of European history, (primarily in the rationalistic tradition of Rene Descartes). The crucial significant in his concept of law...
An icon of time: the verbal image of a holiday in Russian culture
This article considers the temporal constants of the holiday of Christmas in I. S. Shmelev’s novel The Summer of the Lord. The key to understanding the verbal image of a holiday is the lines based on Christmas chants. An analysis of lexical and grammatical means of expressing temporal semantics shows that the past and the eternally present amalgamate in the description of a holiday: in the supra-temporal reality of a holiday, everything abides in the atemporal “now”.
1. Вейсман А. Д. Греческо-русский...
Kant’s Legacy and Philosophy of the Future. Report of the Fifth Immanuel Kant International Summer School for Young Scholars and Students
The following is a review of the Fifth International Summer School for Young Scholars and Students, held on the eve of the tercentenary of Kant’s birth, and devoted to the question of the relevance of his philosophical ideas for understanding and solving the problems that confront humankind in the twenty-first century. The event was organized by the Academia Kantiana of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, with the support of the RF Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Petersburg...
Wanderings in Syllogistic Figures: On Kant’s Possible Cognitive Syllogistics
Kant’s treatise “The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures” has logical, epistemological, and cognitive-psychological implications. These three perspectives on his conclusions are practically undifferentiated. The first part of this article discusses the logical and ontological-gnoseological content of the treatise in order to reveal the prerequisites for the cognitive interpretation of syllogisms. The second part is an attempt to explicate the treatise’s cognitive content, i.e. a systemic...
Principles of Adjudication (diiudicatio) and Execution (executio) in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Based on Feyerabend’s Natural Right and Lectures on Ethics)
This paper is concerned with the principles of adjudication (diiudicatio, Beurteilung) and execution (executio, Ausübung) in the notes of Kant’s lectures on natural right (“Feyerbend’s Natural Right”). In this manuscript these principles are used as a binary scheme twice, each time in the introduction to the first chapter. To explain the meaning of these concepts I use other cases of their use in Kant’s philosophy. I have established that they are used as a pair only in the notes of various lecture...
Kants Sendschreiben zum Tod des Studenten Johann Friedrich von Funk (1760). Zur literaturhistorischen Einordnung – Teil 2: Antike Vorbilder der Seelenleitung
In this second installment (for the first, see Kantian Journal, 2024, vol. 43, no. 2), Kant’s references to ancient consolation writings are elaborated. The general aim is to make Kant’s proximity to the Roman Stoa, and his borrowings from it, more apparent. A comparison with his necrology for Funk then shows more explicitly how Kant takes up this ancient philosophy anew for his time, and for his fellow human beings. In so doing, he continued a trend that had begun in the Enlightenment. In Universal...
Review of Recent Russian Studies of Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy
The review covers scholarly publications devoted to the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, the head of the Marburg School of NeoKantianism, written by Russ ian researchers in the period between 2000 and 2023. Although Cohen commanded unquestioned authorityamong Russian philosophers of his time — among them some followers and pupils — there was no systematic and substantive study of his work in prerevolutionary Russia. The review below attempts to show the evidentgrowth of interest in Cohen’s philosophy...
Kants Sendschreibens zum Tod des Studenten Johann Friedrich von Funk (1760). Zur literaturhistorischen Einordnung — Teil 1: Gottsched und die Königliche Deutsche Gesellschaft zu Königsberg
Kant’s mourning letter or necrology for his student Johann Friedrich von Funk (1760) has hardly been received. This study attempts to change this by explaining the contexts of the short missive. In the first part this concerns in particular the influence that Gottsched exerted on the style of such printed speeches or necrologies. Kant’s references therefore to the ‘Royal German Society’ in Königsberg and its founder Flottwell, a friend of Gottsched’s, are described. The influence of the Roman Stoa...
Adventures of the soul: transmission of the system of mystical poetry in the language of Veniamin Blazhenny
The poetry of Veniamin Blazhenny (the Blessed) can be seen as a vivid example of the translation of the typological properties of the language of mysticism in late 20th century poetry. The artistic nature of the work of the Blessed during this time did not receive a fundamental analysis. The soul, a key concept of Blazhenny’s poetry, reveals undoubted similarities with the conceptualization of the soul and the idea of metempsychosis in Jewish and Judeo-Christian mysticism. This study focuses on...
“The Forgotten stories” by Hans Christian Andersen in the context of his creative evolution
The article analyzes H. Ch. Andersen’s works, published in Russian in 2016 under the title “The Forgotten Stories of Hans Christian Andersen”. Their content and poetics are considered at the background of the writer’s creative evolution. The authors studies the reasons that determined the incompleteness of a number of works, and the circumstances that prompted the author to refuse to publish completed texts. “The Forgotten Stories” become the source for analyzing the writer’s creative manner and...
The ‘Faust zone’ in the works of Goethe and Pushkin
This article considers the ‘Faustian motif’ in Pushkin’s life and work. The problem of the ‘Faust zone’ in history is emphasised in the context of compari-son of different ideological and poetic interpretations of the Faustian archetype in the works of Goethe and Pushkin. It is concluded that Pushkin’s poetic ge-nius is Christian in its essence and related to the key characteristics of the Rus¬sian national identity.
1. Гёте И. В. Фауст // Гёте В. Собрание соч. : в 10 т. М., 1976. Т. 2.
2. Достоевский...
Social Christianity in F. A. Stepun’s philosophy of history
This article analyses Fedor Stepun’s idea of social Christianity. The au¬thor identifies the axiological context of the Baden School of Neo-Kantian thought in Stepun’s interpretation of Christian God. The significance of Christian politics in the philosopher’s assessment of socio-political processes is stressed.
1. Степун Ф. А. Борьба либеральной и тоталитарной демократии вокруг понятия истины // Степун Ф. А. Соч. М., 2000. С. 557—564.
2. Степун Ф. А. Бывшее и несбывшееся. СПб., 1994.
3. Степун...
The rhetorical turn in argumentation theory
This article focuses on the key aspects of the rhetorical approach developed by Christopher Tindale and emphasizes its significance for modern theory of argumentation. The article examines the historical background of the rhetorical turn and its relation to informal logic and pragma-dialectics. The author argues that it is justified to consider different approaches to argumentation as complementary.
1. Blair J. A. Tindale’s Acts of arguing: A rhetorical model of argument // Informal Logic. 2000...
Kant and “Seasickness” of Modernity
On the eve of the tercentenary of Kant’s birth, just as it was a hundred years ago, Kantianism is simultaneously on the receiving end of the blows of history and attacks by rival philosophical parties, both progressivist and reactionary. The radical wings of both parties perceive modernity as a depressing, nauseating period which must be broken with by moving toward the past or toward the future. One of the most original and profound diagnoses of this attitude was offered by Hans Jonas, who discerned...
Fyodor Dostoevsky vs Karl Marx: Personal Freedom in Existential and Social Dimensions
The paper explores the perspectives of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Karl Marx regarding human freedom, highlighting their relevance amidst the contradictory landscape of social development in late capitalism. It is well-established that Dostoevsky's ‘orthodox’ socialist stance resonated with Marx's critique of bourgeois society, focusing on themes of materialism, the dominance of wealth, and alienation. Both thinkers grappled with the concept of human freedom, recognizing it as an intrinsic characteristic...
Transposition — retelling — translation: the destiny of Areopagitica in Slavia Orthodoxa
The article undertakes a conceptual analysis of the challenges associated with translating works from the Corpus Areopagiticum, a collection of theological treatises attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite from the 1st century. However, these works are unequivocally associated with early medieval Eastern Christian mystical-theological thought, presumably from the turn of the 5th—6th centuries. These texts first appeared in the Slavic Orthodox area in 1370, and subsequent translations emerged at...
Dialektik als Logik des Scheins. Zu Kants Lektüre von Michael Piccarts Isagoge
An unrecognised copy (1665) in Kant’s private library of Michael Piccart’s Isagoge (1605), an introduction to the system of Aristotelian philosophy together with Kant’s own remarks on this author (Refl 4160, AA 17, p. 439) can be established as an original source for the Kantian ‘ideosphere’. First, I point out contexts and consequences of Piccart’s Altdorfian Aristotelianism, in contrast to the Königsbergian Aristotelianism (emphasised by Tonelli’s research). To further check the quality of Piccart...
Who is the one who uses the human language? On Alexsander Kravchenko's article "Language and the Nature of Humanity")
The article is devoted to the polemic with Alexander Kravchenko regarding his thesis that the way out of the protracted crisis in linguistics is to use a systemic approach to linguistic semiosis as biological adaptation. The author argues that linguistics is not in a state of crisis but rather in a state of stagnation. Overcoming it presupposes an intensive methodological search that infinitely expands the horizons of permissible views rather than the use of a system approach that is inadequate...
Watershed or Cul-de-Sac? Disputes in the Theological Reception of Kant’s Philosophy
... counterparts created by God, according to Duns Scotus’s late medieval theology which anticipates Kant’s concept of autonomy. The standard by which theologies are judged is how they do justice to the New Testament’s message of salvation by Jesus Christ. The Conclusion argues that Kant’s turn to freedom in its unconditionality and finitude has opened up a thought form in which the truth of the Gospel finds more adequate categories of understanding than in those of earlier eras.
Anzenbacher,...
Czesław Miłosz’s “Theological treatise” in the context of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s religious worldview
The article investigates a religious and philosophical dialogue of Miłosz and Dostoevsky. The antinomic content of Miłosz's poem “Theological Treatise” is analyzed in the context of Dostoevsky's Christocentric worldview, as well as religious and heretical teachings of early Christianity, which aroused Milosz's interest throughout his career. In their works, Dostoevsky and Miłosz explored the theological problem of apoсatastasis and offered their interpretation of it. The paper also examines Miłosz’s...
The Embodied Practical Ideal: Kant’s Ethicotheology and Godmanhood
The metaphysical layer of what can be called philosophical Christology in Kant’s treatise on religion reflects his idea of the embodiment of the archetype of moral perfection. Kant raises the problem of the ontology of the ideal in the shape of the question about the conditions that make actual experience possible: the ideal of holiness resides in reason, i. e. in the human being, but the dominance of radical evil over the human will puts it out of human reach either in thought or in practice. For...
Inadvisable Concession: Kant’s Critique of the Political Philosophy of Christian Garve
The starting point of my study is Kant’s remark to the effect that Garve in his treatise on the connection between morality and politics presents arguments in defence of unjust principles. Recognition of these principles is, according to Kant, an inadvisable concession to those who are inclined to abuse it. I interpret this judgement by making a detailed comparison of the texts of the two treatises. I demonstrate that Garve’s work is an eclectic attempt to combine in one concept the lessons of historical...
Was heißt Fortschritt im Wissen? Gnoseotopische Überlegungen zur Aufklärung und ihren Folgen
This article focuses on the question of what “progress in knowledge” (Fortschritt im Wissen) since the Enlightenment could mean. The answer is rooted in a shift in perspective in our understanding of the Enlightenment, and in an awareness of the gnoseotope at the center of this perspectival shift. Given the fact that human knowledge has always been considered limited, the axiom called gnoseotope (from Greek gnōsis: cognition, knowledge and topos: place, area, field) can be defined as the area of...
Kant and the Problem of Optimism: The Origin of the Debate
Kant scholars have rarely addressed the notion of optimism as it was interpreted by the Königsbergian philosopher in the mid-18th century. The notion originates from Leibniz’s Theodicy and from debates over whether the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. The first of a two-part series, this article studies the historical context in which appeared Kant’s 1759 lecture advertisement leaflet entitled An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism. The study describes the requirements of the...