СОВМЕСТНЫЙ ПРОЕКТ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФИЛОСОФСКОЙ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОСТИ И ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВА «СИДИПРЕСС»

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THE RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHICAL GAZETTE

April 2010 – No 4

FEATURES

Herbert Spencer: “Science is an organised knowledge.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an English philosopher, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist.

He developed a comprehensive conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spencer achieved quite an outstanding authority in his lifetime, mainly in English-speaking countries. In 1902 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is best known for coining the concept "survival of the fittest," which he did in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. So in general terms Spencer extended evolution into realms of sociology and ethics and thus he is considered to be the founder of the so-called organic school in sociology.

BY NATALIYA LOGINOVA

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The Unknown Ways of Civilizations

 

Archaeology studies an enormous time interval – from the relatively recent past to many thousands of years ago – to paleolith and even farther on to the depth of human history. Scientists still argue over some questions to which only archaeology can give an answer. Where did the first human beings come from? What is their place of origin? Along what paths did civilization spread? Much argument is nowadays over the chronology and the methods of research. This interview with Evgeni Chernykh, director of methodology laboratory of the RAS Institute of Archaeology sheds light on many exciting problems and controversial questions including but not limited to the evolution of the human race.

 

 

INTERVIEW BY SERGEI SHARAKSHANE

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Taxes: fairness or effectiveness?

 

Just like the ancient people of Babylon and Egypt, we, too, have been searching for a universal, most optimal variant of taxation. The fact that the search is still going on is itself an indication that mankind has so far been unable to find it. The author holds that this inability accounts for the objectively complex inconsistency between the social form of human life and the economic function of taxes. See for yourself: the effectiveness of work of each and everyone is unquestionably different, i.e. individual contribution to the common benefit varies from one person to another. Yet people are always demanding the fair distribution of the results of their work. But their attempts to prove that fairness comes before effectiveness or vice versa boil down to nothing but a simultaneous economic and social collapse. Anyway, the article is worth reading if only it is a fresh view on this age-long problem.

BY EVGENI POLUEKTOV

 

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The Nature of Corruption in Russia and How to Conquer it in Three Stages

 

The Russian Philosophical Gazette has begun to lay open to the public some extracts from the works of the winners of the philosophical project contest on the general subject “The Philosophy of Civil Service and Countering Corruption”. This extract by Nicholai Rozov defines priorities, presents the social ontology of corruption and describes the distinguishing features of corruption in Russia today. The author proceeds then to explain his vision of countering corruption. He believes the task can be carried out in three stages: through the building of an anti-corruption coalition (the onset of a fair-play stage), the gradual and orderly squeeze-out of corruption (the action stage) and the eradication of remission causes (the prevention stage). This and the other works in full can be found at www.philgazeta.ru.

 

BY NICHOLAI ROZOV

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Society v Corruption: Putting up a Resistance

This is a review of this issue’s second philosophical project which too may be of interest to our readers. Its purpose is to study methods for mobilizing the public to resist all forms of today’s corruption in Russia ranging from the tyranny of bureaucrats to the so-called ‘regular daily-needs’ corruption. To achieve this purpose, as the author thinks, the following three problems should be resolved: first, to provide public officers with a system of incentives to perform their duties honestly; second, to raise the level of anti-corruption education and propaganda through mass media channels; third, to raise substantially the level of social responsibility among broad masses. The review is to be continued in one of our next issues.

BY OLGA CHERNYSHENKO

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From Philosophy of Language to Pedagogy

“The philosophy of language is the basis of pedagogy. The structure of an academic subject in the system of general and vocational education depends on the nature of the philosophy of language”, says Yuri Rozhdestvensky, a RAS Member, distinguished professor in Moscow State University, philologist, orientalist and theorist in the field of language and culture. The article is both about this extraordinary man and his views on the role of the philosophy of language for education with regard not only to humanities but also natural subjects such as mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and so on. Professor Rozhdestvensky’s views are where humanities and natural science meet and this fact alone makes them invaluable. But the most exciting part is that the article throws light on the applied relevance of the philosophy of language to pedagogy.

 

BY ELENA KARTASHOVA AND ALEKSANDR OLESKIN

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His Hope-giving Melancholy

There are some people in the history of world arts, literature, scientific thought and philosophy whose names are immediately associated with a certain country. Hans Christian Andersen is one of them. Thus in our mind his name has always been linked with the Kingdom of Denmark. Born on 2 April 1805, Andersen owed much his love for fairy tales to his father. As a boy, Andersen had to listen often to the stories of mental patients at a local hospital at which his grandmother was working at the time. Impressed, he absorbed their revelations with awe and later said that “it was his father’s songs and the talk of mental patients that made him a writer”. The world’s most famous storyteller wrote over 400 fairy tales, but his creative heritage also includes novels, stories, stage plays, comedies, novelettes and, of course, traveler’s notes as he traveled extensively. Andersen is also known for his philosophical essays that hold a special place in his many works. Moreover, of particular importance is the fact that Andersen knew well Russian contemporary literature and held it in great esteem. It surely deserves to be mentioned that Andersen’s works have been published in Russia since 1844.

 

BY VLADIMIR ROTSCHUPKIN

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