СОВМЕСТНЫЙ ПРОЕКТ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФИЛОСОФСКОЙ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОСТИ И ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВА «СИДИПРЕСС»

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THE RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHICAL GAZETTE

July 2009 – No 7

 

FEATURES

Ludwig Feuerbach, “True Philosophy is Focused on Making People.”

 

Ludwig Feuerbach’s philosophy is often associated with the ‘end’ of the German classical philosophy of the 19th century – that of Kant, Hegel, Schelling and Fichte.  This can be put down to his rebellion against academic philosophy and that he thought of himself as an advocate of materialistic approach and a prophet of a new culture.  Feuerbach (1804–1872) began his career as an enthusiastic follower of Hegel, but in the 1840s he became a leader of a group of radicals called the Young Hegelians who used the critical side of Hegel's philosophy to attack idealism and religion, especially Christianity. Some of his writings were concerned with developing a materialistic humanism and an ethics of human solidarity and most scholars have regarded him as the bridge between Hegel and Marx.

He believed his philosophy to be that of the future because it viewed man’s mind as a product of nature.

 

BY NATALYA LOGINOVA

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Housing and Public Utilities: A Seismic Forecast

 

 

Housing and public utilities rank last as the most inefficient sector of Russian economy and thus need urgent modernization. The sector’s technical state and economic performance are two-three times as worse as those in Western Europe.

As a first turnaround step, a decision was made to take control over the sector from the state, which is the current owner of the housing stock, and give it to a new owner – a partnerships of flat owners in a given house. Letting people take care of their own house, its maintenance, major and minor repairs is obviously a good thing. However the initiative has found little response and only three percent of the city housing stock in Russia has been embraced by those partnerships. The problem is obviously not in the people but authorities – both municipal and local at the subject-of-federation level.

In this interview Galina Khovanskaya, a State Duma deputy and the head of the Subcommittee on Housing and Utilities Reform gives answers to many questions in an attempt to explain the current run of things in the housing reform and shares her views on the future of the sector.

 

 

INTERVIEW BY SERGEI SHARAKSHANE

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Get up and Walk…

 

Russia has officially declared that it is going to seek membership in the International Convention of Disabled People’s Rights which provides for their employment, medical care, education and full-fledged participation in social life. 

Moscow’s signature of this Convention is an extremely responsible step forward to reaffirm its assurances made in pursuit of a civilized rule-of-law state. It is all the more so important that membership in the Convention will bind Russia, as a member of the international community, to meet most serious obligations both legal and financial.

The article is focused on what has to be done urgently to radically improve the current situation in this field.

 

 

BY VLADIMIR ROSCHUPKIN

  Read the article in Russian

 

Is There an Alternative to Nuclear Energy?

 

Sergei Ryzhkov, chief designer and head of Podolsk Gidropress, answers to our questions and says that no equivalent substitute for atomic energy has so far been found. Recent talk of solar batteries, wind turbines and so on just does not hold water. It was as far back as 1970s when scientists understood clearly that nuclear engineering is the most effective means of producing electric power. The principal advantages are its high economic efficiency and ability to effectively compete with oil, gas and coal, particularly from the environmental point of view. Besides, the reserves of fossil fuels on earth are limited. And one more thing. It is about a closed fuel cycle technology that has already been developed for atomic power plants. If not tomorrow, the human race will eventually have a practically inexhaustible source of power.

The interview gives fascinating insights into the prospects of atomic energy development and also explains what Russia did and is doing at Busher.

INTERVIEW BY TATIYANA UNLITINA

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“Be Blessed, All My Creations…”

 

The poet, thinker and scholar Francesco Petrarch is one of the most important public figures in the history of Christian thought – everything that he had or did is great in itself. It is more than 600 years since mankind first began paying him tribute and respect. This great Italian contributed, perhaps more than anyone else, to what we know as the Renaissance – an epoch of discovery of the world and man himself.

 

BY NATALYA LOGINOVA

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Dostoevsky’s Conception of Man and the Society of the Future

 

The interest for Dostoevsky’s heritage, as we can judge by the latest screen version of “The Karamasov Brothers” is obviously growing rather than fading. This can be put down to many factors of which his depth of thought is definitely overriding. It is not surprising that Dostoevsky’s creations became a basis for a number of philosophical vectors in the 20th century.

One out of Aleksandr Zenkin’s four volumes jointly named “The Curse of Geniuses” is entirely centered on Dostoevsky’s work. In it the author says that the thoughts of the Russian genius are of particular value for those living in the 21st century. The author suggests that it is so because today is the right time to fundamentally sum up the first results of the socialist uprising in Russia.

The article is not a dull narration but a vivid appeal to our readers, a kind of strong reminder of what it is and what it takes to be homo sapience.

 

BY ALEKSANDR ZENKIN

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Round and Round the Black Square

The Black Square of Kazimir Malevich is one of the most famous creations of Russian art in the last century. It is well known that his first Black Square was painted in 1915 to become the turning point in the development of Russian avant-garde.

Although there is a multitude of studies, articles, essays, theses and multi-volume investigations on Malevich’s Black Square, this article is quite different and thus special because it explains in plain language what Malevich himself thought of that canvas and more importantly what he himself saw when he was looking at it.

It has been generally believed that for him the square represented only Suprematism: "the supremacy of pure feeling" in and of itself. He removed specific subject matter by shifting away from representation towards the purity of mathematical geometry. The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling. But still, is there anything else behind the Black Square?

 

 

BY OLGA ZHUKOVA

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