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THE RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHICAL GAZETTE

December 2011 – No 12

FEATURES

Anaxagoras: “Our sense is limited; the intellect is weak, and life is short.”

Anaxagoras (c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Presocratic Greek philosopher and scientist. Born in a small Ionian polis of Clazomenae, he moved to Athens and taught there for approximately thirty years. This was the time of Athenian prosperity, the so-called Golden Age of Pericles, who was one of the closest friends of Anaxagoras. Also, Anaxagoras knew intimately such titans of Greek culture as Sophocles, Euripides, Phidias and the ‘father of history’ Herodotus whom he often saw at the house of Pericles as guests. They all held him in great respect for his profound knowledge and wisdom.

But the life of Anaxagoras was not all sweetness and light. The matter is that he was a man of materialistic views. In particular, he contended that the sun was a fiery rock. This led to charges of impiety, and he was sentenced to death by the Athenian court. He avoided this penalty by leaving Athens, and he spent his remaining years in exile. While Anaxagoras’ theories were on the whole a variety of subjects, he is most noted for the following two. First, he speculated that in the physical world everything contains a portion of everything else. The second theory of significance is Anaxagoras’ postulation of Mind (Nous) as the initiating and governing principle of the cosmos. And this idea of his is especially welcome on RPhG’s pages as it has a lot in common and correlates with what we are trying to develop.

 

 

BY NATALIYA LOGINOVA

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Humanist Appraisal is What this Country Needs!

Today one may raise one’s brow at the fact that the Department of Philosophy of Moscow University (MGU) was shut for a whole century following the notorious resolution of the then public education minister Prince Platon Shirinsky-Shikhmatov’s, which actually said, “While the benefits of philosophy appear to be doubtful, the damage it causes is obvious”. But what really seems to be prodigious is that it came back to life on 25 December 1941(!) when the Red Army was selflessly fighting a hard and strenuous battle to defend Moscow against Nazi troops. What on earth was there on the mind of the one responsible for writing the draft paper to re-establish the MGU philosophy department? What was he who was about to sign it thinking of? Well, this is rhetorical, but so overwhelming! Anyway, all philosophers in Russia are observing the 70th anniversary of its new beginning, of its “resurrection”.

This time RPhG’s questions as to this occasion and many others on different subjects are answered by the Dean of the MGU Department of Philosophy Vladimir Mironov, a Corresponding Fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

 

 

INTERVIEW BY SERGEI SHARAKSHANE

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English

 

“Going Beyond Disciplinary, Age and Geographical Limits

Some people see it as a tradition that this year’s annual conference of young researchers in the field of humanities and social sciences was also held in Novosibirsk under the auspices of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Novosibirsk State University. It is not surprising because it is already the ninth time that Novosibirsk welcomed its participants to its science campus. As always, social problems were central to the conference with a special focus on education and scientific research. It is worth noting that the agenda of the philosophical research workshop was quite interesting and extensive. Instead of a concluding plenary, there was a round table on bioethics. This year’s conference’s edited volume includes the summaries and talking points of over 90 reports, which is quite impressive.

BY ANATOLY ABLAZHEI

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Days of Philosophy, 2011 in St.-Petersburg

This year St.-Petersburg University dedicated three days in November – 17, 18 and 19 – to philosophy in the form of a forum entitled “The axiological worlds of today’s civilization. The plenary consisted of a number of extremely interesting presentations like “Cultural synthesis in history: Eurasian values in Russian culture”, “Homo scienticus: between knowledge and faith”, “Human brain and consciousness: free will and problems of neuroethics”, “The world of worlds: strategies of cultural pluralism in a global world”, “The economic crisis as a call for the revolution of values”, “Ethics and development: is there a conflict?”, “Resistance in the modern world”, etc.

 

BY A.KOROLEV, RPhG academic secretary

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On the establishment of the Sociological (Academic) Association of Russia

This is an extensive announcement of the fact that, pursuant to the RAS’s resolution of 22 November 2011, a Sociological Association of Russia is to be established soon. The Association is to become a successor to the Soviet Sociological Association which used to play a key role in the process of revitalization, make-up and institutionalization of sociological sciences in the USSR. The Association is organized to act as a representative body of scientists involved in sociological research on behalf of which they could represent it and participate in the International Sociological Association, to strengthen ties with foreign sociologists, to promote national achievements worldwide and so on.

RPhG also informs its readers here that while this Association is being formed, another similar association has already been operating in Russia for nearly eight years. Called the “Russian Sociological Association”, the latter was set up in 2003 at the Second All-Russia Sociological Congress and has a developed infrastructure with 58 regional branches and 5 local subdivisions, which is quite impressive. It can boast of an official scientific journal “Sociology” and a solid scientific research capability. RPhG has been told that the new association and the already existing one are going to work on what might be called as parallel “tracks” as no question of merger or amalgamation has so far been raised.

BY EDITORIAL STAFF

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Philosophic Reflections over the Loss of Respect for Teachers

Here we are again in the company of our good old friend “philosopher” who, as a generalized character, is free from pretenses and conventionalities and thus can say things as he thinks fit without bothering a bit that someone may not like them. This time his thoughts are about the results of a sociological survey carried out by an independent agent in 2010 at the request of the Government of Moscow. The survey report is based on an extensive questionnaire filled out by those whose children go to school. The sad thing is that 43.3% of respondents said that their most important concern about the secondary school today was that schoolchildren had no respect for teachers. This is no news because, as is generally known, such respect usually comes with age. However, the report also shows something else, more alarming. What really made the philosopher uncomfortable was that the overwhelming majority of all those questioned, too, showed a lack of respect for teachers and their profession as it thinks that a secondary school teacher is none other but a loser! Most of the responders said they wished their child or a close relative would become anything but a school teacher. The saddest thing of all is that our rulers do nothing to raise the profile of a teacher and give it back the lost prestige and respect because teaching, as a profession, is definitely not for losers!

BY ALEKSANDR ZENKIN

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The “Kremlin” Operation: Counts and Miscounts

5 December 1941… This date is usually associated with the beginning of a major counteroffensive launched by the Red Army that pushed the Nazi troops off Moscow. It can be found in all history text books and encyclopedias and is usually associated with the victory in the Battle of Moscow. However, if we want to be historically exact, it is not quite so. This was only the beginning of success because, strategically, the Battle of Moscow began on 31 September 1941 and ended on 20 April 1942. It is generally believed that its chronology is well detailed, but still its history has certain pages that for this reason or another have not been made known to the broad public. This article is exactly about such a page.

BY VLADIMIR ROSCHUPKIN

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He Worshipped the Illusion of Light…

Even those who are very far from the art of painting know the name of Kuindzhi and at least one or two of his paintings “Moolight Night on the Dnieper” and “A Birch Grove”. It is not surprising because he was more than just a landscape artist. His works are so original, so unlike those of all other landscape artists, great or not so great, that he definitely stands apart from and above them all. Being a poet and a powerful master of light, he managed to paint so convincingly, forcefully and brightly that his works have left no soul unmoved since they were painted.

Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in January 1841 in Mariupol in a poor family; his father was a Greek shoemaker. At six he lost his parents and had to fend for himself.

He studied painting mainly on his own and then in St.-Petersburg Academy of Arts (of which he became a full member in 1893). He was also a co-partner of mobile art exhibitions called Peredvizhniki (a group of Russian realist artists who in protest to academic restrictions formed an artists’ cooperative, which evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions).

Kuindzhi lectured at the St.Petersburg Academy of arts. Among his students were such artists as Arkady Rylov, Nicholai Roerich, Konstantin Bogaevsky, and others.

BY NATALIYA LOGINOVA

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