Vol 34, No 5 (2023)

The article provides a critical analysis of the main theoretical provisions of the system-communicative approach. As a starting point, the premise of communicative interaction is considered as a substrate of any public interactions, the foundation of social as such, which is conceptually justified in the works by N. Luhmann. It demonstrates both the methodological success of the use of system-communicative theory within a wide range of social fields of knowledge (sociology, epistemology, economics, political theory, psychology, art research, etc.), and a number of internal limitations (in legal theory, in the study of religious practices). Structure-forming developments of the conceptual apparatus of system-communicative theory are discussed, for example, the concepts of “media” and “form” proposed in the social psychology by F. Heider. The authors reconstruct the theoretical framework of the system analysis of communication on the basis of fundamental differences in act/experience, Ego/the Other and the comparison of the fields of their combinations and constellations. The empirical outcomes of the systemic view of communication are examined in detail, during which anomalies are identified — some gaps, or problem areas, or systemic inconsistencies in the course of communicative interaction within the framework of the proposed unified scheme of the ratio of combinations/constellations of distinctions. Special attention is paid to comparing and identifying the specifics of scientific and political communicative subsystems. Behind the first is approved a special type of system-communicative rationality, justifies the doubling of the binary true/false code in the application to scientific knowledge, proposes a variant for solving Gettier's paradox by system-communicative theory, and also notes the potential of system-communicative theory in ranking types of scientific knowledge, due to the evolutionary selection mechanism as part of the methodological basis of system-communicative theory. The political communication subsystem is provided by the authors for analysis in a system voltage with a scientific one, during which algorithms of rational re-entry and self-reproduction are revealed according to the means of binary oppositions and connections of actors (power, social movements, mass media, etc.).

In the article, on the example of the development of human organ and tissue donation, the ethical and related epistemological status of a dead body is considered. Important factors in their formation are socio-cultural and religious traditions, worldview prerequisites, as well as family attitudes and ideas about private life. Based on these factors, moral conflicts were considered that arise in the process of developing new liberal forms of organ donation and organ transplantation, based on a resource approach to the dead body and demonstrating the existing tension between understanding the (dead) body as a common good and the idea of the body as a private thing. It is shown that in the process of developing the practice of organ and tissue donation, the ethical and epistemological status of a dead human body is problematized in the existing system of value dichotomies — between commodifiable and non-commodifiable, public and private, autonomous and instrumentalized relationship to the human body.

The subject of the article is a walk as a specific practice of a person's daily life in a city, as well as the phenomenon of walkability: the feature of an environment to be suitable for a person to move on foot. The article notes that the term walkability itself is new and is used mainly in the field of Urban Studies. At the same time, the phenomenon itself — a person's walk in the space of the city — was comprehended much earlier in the context of philosophy, social theory and socio-political thought. Based on the work of Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Guy Debord, it is shown that the origin of the aimless walk is chronologically connected with the Modern era, and in terms of the organization of the habitat, it correlates with a certain stage in the development of cities. The article also analyze a number of political aspects of walkability; in particular, it is noted that the nature of power spatiality in the urban environment largely determines its accessibility / inaccessibility for pedestrians, determines the routes of a person’s movement around the city, marks the boundaries of “places of memory”, and so on. It is concluded that increasing the level and quality of walkability in modern cities is not only expedient from a utilitarian, urban planning point of view, but also politically fair in relation to a person — a resident of these cities.

The article attempts to solve a riddle that has occupied historians for 250 years. We are talking about the authorship of travel notes by a certain “Great Person” who made a great European voyage in 1697–1699: from Moscow to Holland, then south along the Rhine to Southern Germany; through the Austrian Alps to the states of Italy and further, repeating the return journey from Venice to Amsterdam, through Hamburg and Riga to Moscow. For a long time it was believed that the “Great Person” was the young Russian Tsar Peter Romanov, who went to Europe in those years as part of the Great Embassy. However, the routes of Peter I and the unknown Anonymous person obviously do not coincide, and this prompted historians to take a closer look at other candidates for “Great Person”. In recent years, a mysterious Anonymous Person has been sought among the second-rate participants of the Great Embassy, who for some reason broke away from the parent group. Gradually, the opinion was formed that the “Great Person” is just an “idle traveler”, and his travel notes are nothing more than a “tourist diary”. Based on the study of new materials, the author of this article proves that a personal friend of Tsar Peter, the future famous diplomat and statesman, Prince Peter Alekseevich Golitsyn (1660–1722) traveled around Europe under the name of a “Great Person”.      

The article considers the main ideas of Soviet Marxist humanism. It is shown that, despite ideological control over culture and science, an original version of Marxist humanism has been developing in Soviet philosophy since the mid 1930-s. Unlike other countries, where the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts played a key role in the emergence of Marxist humanism, this publication did not have the same impact in the USSR. Soviet Marxist humanism results from the debates about proletarian culture and humanism in 1920–30-s and also evolves as an anti-fascist movement. Studying the subject, we analyze three key narratives: proletarian humanism, socialist humanism and communist humanism. Proletarian humanism (M. Gorky, M. Petrosyan), in our opinion, historically corresponded to the period of irreconcilable ideological struggle with abstract humanism and fascism. Socialist humanism (N. Bukharin, P. Fedoseev, F. Konstantinov) was investigating necessary material and spiritual conditions to bring up a comprehensively developed personality. Communist humanism (I. Frolov) reflected the process of scientific and technological revolution and historically corresponded to de-escalation of international relationships and political course towards democratization and transparency.

Since the middle of the 20th century a specific direction, which has gained the status of a serious philosophical (intellectual) fiction prose, has been developing in science fiction literature. Its most illustrative example is the work of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem (1921–2006). One of the tasks that fantasy writers try to solve by literary means is the representation of non-anthropomorphic consciousness. This task is internally contradictory: it requires one to speak of the nonhuman, which implies going beyond one's own boundaries, alienation from one's own essence. At the same time, since the writer is faced with the need to explore the boundaries of being and thinking, the approaches to its solution amount to the philosophical search. The article discusses the ways of representation of non-anthropomorphic consciousness offered by science fiction, with special attention paid to linguistic fiction (J. Vance, S. Delany, I. Watson, T. Chiang). On the example of the works of S. Lem and Soviet fantasy writers A. and B. Strugatsky, it is concluded that one of the most effective ways is to turn to folklore models, which are embedded in the mainstream of traditions that have developed languages of description of man’s alienation in the context of twentieth-century literature and culture.

The article deals with theoretical approaches to the analysis of anthropological aspects of religious places of memory associated with the veneration of Christian saints. This form of religious practice is often a kind of refraction of a dogmatically formalized official religious system, passed through the prism of traditional beliefs, sometimes of archaic origin, in which the objects of worship are both officially fixed material objects (icons, sometimes sculptural images of saints or Mother-of-God, worship crosses), and unofficial locally revered shrines, including springs, stones, trees, and even landscapes. The author analyzes essentialist and non-essentialist theories used to interpret local cults of saints associated with the veneration of natural objects: the theory of dual faith (dvoeverie) and “Orthodox animism”, folk religion, lived religion, vernacular religion, material religion. The most successful methodological approach to explain the historical and cultural survival of religious places of memory, according to the author, is the actor-network theory of B. Latour. Being a non-essentialist approach, the actor-network theory does not distinguish between different types of actors: people, natural objects, and supernatural actors. Natural objects create a network between pilgrims and supernatural actors, which manifests itself in direct worship practices, an important element of which are appropriate votive offerings. Natural actors carry out the function of mediation between the worlds, connecting a person with a supernatural actor who is constantly invisibly present in a sacred place, and thus a network is built that has an important psychological significance for believers, thereby determining the social significance of religious places of memory.