Autors

The article is devoted to the explication and research of the theological origins of the modern paradigm of power and politics in a methodological perspective, set by a combination of hermeneutical, genealogical and deconstructivist ways of reflection and interpretation. The highlighted concept of theology of power (politics) is thought out, mainly, at the intersection of the ideas of G. Agamben, K. Schmitt, E. Kantorovich, M. Heidegger, M. Foucault. The author substantiates the idea that the theological meanings and references of modern political concepts are not just brought to light in the course of special theoretical research and projections, but directly and implicitly have a practical impact on the political structure and technologies of power. The article considers the possibility of “suspending” the action of the metaphysical “machine” that is responsible for the production and operation of the theological myth of power, which determines the political existence of man and society in their modern expression. In this connection, the role of metaphysics, which determines the Western European world, is exhibited as an onto-theo-logy (M. Heidegger), which sees the supreme and first cause of all things as the divine. The rational theology thus sets the contours of all metaphysics, which determines the essence of European thinking in the Middle ages in the form of Christian theology, and in Modern times in the form of emerging scientific knowledge. Secularized political concepts act as a signature that refers to theology (G. Agamben). First of all, this applies to such a concept as “sovereignty”: the state-legal concept of the sovereign is derived from the Christian image of God, personifying the absolute, that is, unlimited, not deducible from anything, a single and indivisible form of power. The theological model of divine governance of the world, in which the miracle is understood as a manifestationof the providential and “saving” will of God, suspending the action of natural law, is the paradigm of the modern state of emergency as a direct intervention of the sovereign in the current law and order (K. Schmitt).

Keywords: theology; metaphysics; onto-theo-logy; political theology; power; politics; sovereignty; state of emergency

The article is devoted to the historical and philosophical study of the origin and formation of the prerequisites of national patriotism in medieval Europe in the optics of the political theology of martyrdom. It is argued that the figure of a national hero-patriot, sacrificing his own life in the name of the fatherland (pro patria mori), has a certain martyrological content derived from the Christian cult of martyrs. The willingness to die for their beliefs and faith, which gives the phenomenon of martyrdom a politically motivated character, allows us to talk about the possibility of building a political martyrology, within the boundaries of which a Christian martyr as a citizen of the heavenly city (civitas coelestis) appears as a defender of his fatherland (defensor patriae paradisi), sacrificing his own life. Since Christianity acquired the status of the state religion, the heavenly city has been involved in the historical context of the Late Roman Empire, with the prospects of which the fate of Christianity itself is actually identified. The need to protect the empire from barbaric invasions forces theologians to develop the concepts of just war (bellum iustum) and holy war (bellum sacrum), which led to the secularization of the idea of the army of Christ (militia Christi) that initially implied participation in the battle with the forces of evil only on the rights of a spiritual army. The combination of two axiological systems (Christ army and secular army) was carried out through the glorification and militarization of the figure of the martyr, on the one hand, and the functional-figurative comparison of the figure of the warrior with the figure of the martyr, on the other. The protection of the Holy Land (Terra Sancta) in the era of the Crusades served as a model on the basis of which the idea of the heavenly homeland began to function in the secular register. As a result of the further evolution of the monarchical state in the paradigm of the “political body” (corpus politicum), the religious imperative of self-sacrifice of a Christian for the sake of the heavenly fatherland acquired the form of a public-legal requirement of civil self-sacrifice for the benefit of the earthly fatherland, which later took shape as a national state.

Keywords: political theology, martyrology, martyrdom, martyr, Christianity, Middle Ages, patriotism, patriot, nation

The article shows the biopolitical essence of human rights in the national state, which sovereignty based on a birth as a biological fact (natio) establishes the identity between birth and nationality. The mechanism by which national sovereignty inscribesbiological existence («inalienable» human rights) into the political space (citizen's rights) eliminating the gap between biological existence and political existence is shown. Human being is understood as the core of the citizen, and human rights – as the conditions for inclusion into political community. Within the framework of the notion of national sovereignty, rights are conferred on a person only to the extent that she is seen an immediately disappearing prerequisite of the citizen. If a nation is interpreted as a natural-organic «closed society», to which a person belongs by right of birth, and in which political equality is replaced by natural equality, then the state is understood as an «open society» that governs the territory through the establishment and maintenance of law and order. The merger of the state as a political institution, and the institution of law and order with the nation as a biological substance leads to a confusion of citizen’s rights with rights of «compatriots upon birth»; thus, there are national rights. Such identification of nation and state is the meaning of the national state as a biopolitical entity when the state becomes an instrument of the nation. Through identification with the state, the nation demands expansion as its national right; it demands an increase in the power and prosperity of the state in the name of the well-being of the nation, which often almost automatically leads to imperialism. The article examines the figure of the refugee or the stateless individual, which destroys the biological and political identity making visible the fictitious national sovereignty, and bringing to light the powerless «bare life» (homo sacer) without covering its mask of a citizen. In this regard, the author substantiates the problem of ensuring human rights in the modern world, which has lost their own citizenship de facto or de jure.

Keywords: biopolitics; naked life; human rights; citizen's rights; national state; refugees; people; imperialism; fascism

The article presents a historical and philosophical analysis of the ideological foundations that led to the emergence of the European police state (ger. der Polizeistaat) as a comprehensive and unified project in the 17th and 18th centuries. This project aimed to secure safety, expand state power, and promote the well-being and prosperity of the population through extensive administrative regulation of social life. The contemporary relevance of revisiting the conceptual roots of the police state is linked, among other factors, to the current “conservative turn” occurring both in Russia and in liberal Western societies. This shift involves a renewed emphasis on the necessity and effectiveness of a strong paternalistic state, characterized by large-scale intervention in public affairs. Michel Foucault famously connects the rise of the police state at the dawn of Western biopolitics to the concept of pastoral power. While Foucault’s insights are certainly valuable, his analysis seems to oversimplify the complex transformation of pastoral care into a model of administration. Building on Giorgio Agamben’s paradigmatic ontology, which combines historical, hermeneutic and philosophical archaeology approaches, this article argues that the idea of a police state, whose development parallels the history of the state itself since antiquity, originates at the intersection of two evolving forms of Western governance. One draws from the ancient Greek model of biopolitical pastoral care, while the other is rooted in the pastoral ministry of institutional Christianity. The emergence of refined political rationality centered on the concept of state interest (lat. ratio status) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries marked the beginning of a process in which these two pastoral rationalities (lat. ratio pastoralis) became closely intertwined. This fusion ultimately gave rise, during the 17th and 18th centuries to police and bio-power as secular manifestations of the pastoral power exercised by the modern state.

Keywords: police state; police; public administration; biopolitics; pastoral power; pastorate; population 

Abstract: The article considers the problem of adequate conceptual representation of social evil. Traditionally, social evil is theoretically represented by categories of objectivity and subjectivity. But, the results of both total objection and total subjection are the same because they make the causes of social evil transcendental, which means getting out of thinking subject. From the author’s point of view, such representation is a myth that could assent and legitimate a system of actions leading to multiplying the social evil. An adequate solution of this problem could be found with the help of Schelling’s method of subject-object identity added by Heidegger’s hermeneutical ontology. It allows representing social evil in structures of objectivity and subjectivity, at the same time avoiding its naturalization and mythologization.
Keywords: social evil, myth, subjectivity, objectivity, action, thinking, subject-object identity.

Abstract: The article considers Kant’s conception of radical evil in the aspect of extracting implications concerning contemporary ethical and political meditations. It reveals such a perspective of Kant’s moral philosophy, according to which the moral law presents itself as the entity where true moral position and evil are fully identical. Kant eliminated such a view on the moral law as impossible “diabolical evil”. This kind of evil is not driven by pathological motivation; that is why it fully corresponds to the criterion of a moral deed. This innate problem of Kant’s moral philosophy may be solved by means of subjectivizing the moral law when moral subject assumes full responsibility for the translation of the categorical imperative into a concrete moral obligation, which has the structure of Kant’s aesthetic judgment. Kantian reflective judgment opens a space of subjected political being.
Keywords: radical evil, diabolical evil, moral law, categorical imperative, ideology, subject, aesthetic judgment.

The article considers the existence of society as the being of social subjectivity, which is self-defined by means of violence through a point of negative identity. Social subjectivity is regarded as power of social existence representing itself in predicative structures of normal identity. Normalization of society is connected with establishing of some kind of order based on «inclusion/exclusion» differentiation. It is proved that exclusion being always included into a system is objected and seen as external to the system. Thus, social subjectivity denies part of itself, which leads to its lack. The lack exists as “blind spot” of social system, as “empty place” of missing subject, as the place of objectivity of social subjectivity or as the space for “social imaginary”. In other words, the lack of subjectivity is completed by imaginary constructions of ideology, which legitimizes violence. Adequate methodological solution of this problem could be found within method of subject-object identity, according to which the border is seen as co-operative being of normal and negative identities. 

Keywords: violence, social subjectivity, limit, border, negative identity, consensus, homo sacer.

This article focuses on the discussion of the Gettier problem, which has remained an unresolved epistemological puzzle for more than half a century. Counterexamples proposed by E. Gettier highlight the need for auditing the classical triple definition of knowledge aimed at eliminating the ambiguity of the interpretation of the truth using this definition. It shows the fallacy of the most ways to solve the problem, which only narrow the “gap” between the “objective” truth and the “truth of the subject” in the definition, without saving it from new, more sophisticated counterexamples. The correct solution path is substantiated, which consists in freeing the classical definition from the requirement of knowledge intersubjectivity, the implementation of which is impossible in real cognitive practices. A new solution is proposed in this direction, the basis of which is the author’s concept of rational skepticism, combining the following aspects of scientific knowledge: 1) universal skepticism of the thesis “I know that I know nothing”; 2) local skepticism, limited by accepted premises and overcome in effective scientific research; 3) universal scientific method that normalizes each scientific research as a sequence of stages of posing a question, putting forward hypotheses, testing hypotheses and synthesizing answer, skeptical reflection on the answer. The proposed solution defines knowledge as a justified belief of the cognizing subject, which is not true in the intersubjective sense, but is accepted as true only by the given subject, who is also convinced of the truth of the justification and its prerequisites. Due to this, rational cognitive practices legalize the revision of knowledge by various subjects, which allows one to explain Gettier's paradoxes, having discovered under the guise of “objective” truth, refuting anyone’s justified beliefs as knowledge, nothing but the truth of the subject who revises them. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is illustrated for amateur scientific knowledge on such well-known examples as “a cow in the meadow”, “Smith getting a job”, “Deceiving a girl upon meeting”. The theoretical and practical significance of the problem is revealed.

Keywords: Gettier's problem; knowledge; truth; revision; rational skepticism; scientific method

 This article is devoted to a critical analysis of the epistemology of virtues as a relatively new philosophical trend, the interest in which is noticeably increasing. This analysis is based on the author's concept of rational skepticism, which offers a justification for scientific knowledge. In the course of solving this problem, it turns out that the concepts of the epistemology of virtues do not support the division of cognition into cognitive practices and do not indicate which of them should include the good cognitive character that this direction seeks to establish. A comparison of the requirements of these concepts with the cognitive norms of science reveals a violation of its principles such as veritism, evidentialism, internalism, skepticism and deontological rationing. At the same time, the standards of the aretic approach developed by the epistemology of virtues are insufficient for the implementation of scientific norms, degenerating into the trivial idea that the cognitive success of cognition is conditioned by the application of the intellectual virtues of the subject and is its merit. As applied to science, the solution to the problem of the value of knowledge proposed by the epistemology of virtues is refuted; it is shown that the famous analogy of cognition with a coffee machine is incorrect here, and scientific truth in no way “absorbs” (swamp) its justification. In addition, it is revealed that the solution to the Gettier problem, based on the intersubjective definition of knowledge, gets to the supporters of the aretic approach at an unacceptably high price of turning their cognitive concepts into an empty formalism. As an alternative, solutions to these problems are discussed, supported by rational skepticism, which are free from the identified shortcomings; thus, the validity of scientific knowledge gives value to its validity, and the Gettier problem does not arise if this knowledge is considered to be the knowledge of a particular subject that allows revision. The main conclusion of the article is the refutation of the “value turn” in cognition, the necessity of which the epistemology of virtues insists on.

Keywords: epistemology of virtues; rational skepticism; knowledge; truth; value; turn; Gettier problem

Abstract: The article is devoted to the history of formation of the mainstream economics. The author shows that business community played a decisive role in its formation, because was interested not in a scientific discipline, which would explore the economic reality, but in an economic discipline, which reflects an ideology favorable to this community. If by science one means the real (not imaginary) research practices adopted in the natural sciences, then in the history of economic thought one will find just few islands of science in the sea of philosophy, ideologies and utopias. Throughout the 20^th century, the economics taught in universities performed exclusively ideological function of justifying and maintaining the existing social order: the Soviet order in the USSR and the market order in the West. After the fall of the Soviet order, Western aid projects in Russia were targeted to replace this order by the market one and to transform the economic education according to the Western model. This model involves not learning of the realities of market economy, but a market vision of social realities, which pictures all human relations as relations of exchange and buying-selling, and humans as seeking their self-interest with guile. The article shows how economics taught now in Russian universities was initially shaped in France, UK and the USA.

Keywords: Boisguilbert, Quesnay, Rousseau, Smith, Schmoller, Marshall Commons, Debré.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of the process of media convergence and crucial characteristics and typology of this process. The author studies both foreign and domestic approaches in order to conduct an extensive analysis of this topic. The article is concerned with specific and significant differences in approaches in connection with the understanding of media convergence. There are few explanations of differences between these representations. First, foreign scholars explains media convergence as a consequence of the development of the computer industry in the 20th century. M. McLuhan, Canadian professor of English literature, was a pioneer on this topic; he wrote several monographs on it. Through the vision of a generalized approach to the electric structuring of the world and his theory of technological determinism, M. McLuhan provided a foundation for understanding the process of media convergence. To explore this phenomenon, he used the concept of “implosion”, which means erasing the line between different systems (not only in the area of mass media). Other approaches differ significantly in depth because media convergence is studied not only in a technological context, but also in a social one, allowing evaluation of cultural and social issues and the communication process from different points of view. Domestic scholars analyzes the process of media convergence primarily in the area of mass media. Researchers note that this process is related to the integration of formerly isolated mass media (print, electronic), as well as to the development of the organizational structure of media companies, etc. Notable foreign scholars study media convergence as a multidimensional process. Consequently, research potential is greatly enhanced.

Keywords: media convergence, age of globalization, convergence of mass media, Internet.

Abstract: The article deals with general problems of the development as philosophical category linked to some applied issues of public administration. The development is analyzed as a specific mode of change with its own particular properties, including particular conditions needed for managing this kind of change, as well as its limits. The authors show where and why public administration faces problems concerning development of the administrated areas, arguing that such problems can be resolved only through elaborating special methods of administration appropriated for managing the development. The article criticizes largely accepted definition of the development as a goal-oriented positive change, arguing that particularities of the process such as irreversibility of the change, the new quality as a result of the development process, the systemic organization of the change, and the major role of the self-organization are more important than the change itself. Analyzing current research on the development as social and economical process, the authors give some theoretical and empirical evidence of the absent distinction between the development and the change in modern literature. Therefore, many isolated examples of more sophisticated attitudes are found in the theoretical research, as well as in the practice of public administration. In addition, research agenda is proposed in order to build interdisciplinary research program concerning development mechanisms, to integrate this special dimension in the planning and strategy building at the national, regional and local level.
Keywords: development; development management; public administration; regional development; change management.