No 4 (2015)

The article is aimed to confute the belief held about the nature of the world view of Marcus Aurelius as pessimistic. The analysis of “Meditations” demonstrates that the text represents a dialogue between a stoic sage and an ordinary man, Marcus Aurelius being in the guise of both. The article proves that the guidance of the philosopher king is positive in its nature, calling one to fulfill manfully their duties aimed at the welfare of the World and Rome while manifesting love to people and showing no fear of failure, suffering or death.

We propose the interpretation of Parmenides’ poem in which “indivisibility” of things is justified. It is shown that there are good reasons for the interpretation of what-is in Parmenides as an internal object of thinking, which is defined only all at once, completely, by all the characteristics that are attributed to that object in subject’s act of thinking. So, we develop J. Barrington’s treatment of what-is in Parmenides. We also show that Parmenides could mean in Doxa that any apprehended objects are different if and only if they can be apprehended separately. We propose a formalization of these Parmenides’ assumptions on objects of thinking. We construct this formalization by the instrumentality of B. Linsky & E. Zalta’s Theory of abstract objects . We demonstrate how this formalism imply Parmenides’ thesis on “indivisibility” of what-is, which we interpret as assertion of our inability to distinguish between propositions, which are defining an internal object of thought, or to distinguish between properties attributed to the internal object of thinking. We also point out the respects in which our interpretation is similar to “predicational monism”, attributed to Parmenides by P. Curd, and in which respects it is different from it.

The article analyzes philosophical prototypes of modern concept “The Chinese dream” - great revival of the Chinese nation. The main subject is Confucian model - xiao kang (small prosperity), which is represented in “Shi jing” (Book of Poetry), “Li ji” (Book of Rites) and Taoist model of the Dream, which is represented in “Le zi”. Results show that the ancient concept “xiao kang” is based on spiritual archetype of five-and-five constancy, Taoist model of the Dream is based on mechanism of a palingenezis - spiritual immersion in a first-born nature, moral clarification and appeal to reality. The author puts forward two new provisions in sinology: а) the ancient concept of “xiao kang” isn’t an utopia, “xiao kang” was realized during the transition of archaic society “da tong” to the civilization; b) at a present historical stage at end by 2021 of creation of “xiao kang” society (average prosperity) and during the way to “da tong” society will be changed ideal subjects of Confucianism and Taoism, the noble husband “jun zi” will delegate the creative powers to the Taoist great person (at least they will add each other). The author assumes great revival of Taoism basing on a mirror historical paradigm of interface “da tong” - “xiao kang” × “xiao kang” - “da tong”.

The paper deals with the paradoxes in the texts of the medieval Sufi Muhammad ‘Abd al-Jabbar an-Niffary (X).

This article seeks to systematize the earliest copies of the “Book of Changes” discovered in archaeological excavations in China during the 20th century. The main focus is laid on the description of the silk manuscript discovered in 1973 in Mawangdui (Changsha), which also indicates some scholarly debates on the structure of the canonical text “64 hexagrams” and its commentaries. It is shown that the Mawangdui manuscript might also be in correlation with the text “Guizang” which has long been considered lost. This article also gives a brief description of 2-other copies of the “Book of Changes”: texts on bamboo strips found during excavations in Shuanggudui in 1977, and texts on bamboo strips, published by Shanghai Museum in 2003.

In the article considers the concept of “axial time”, developed by K. Jaspers. Through a prism of A.V. Semushkin and M.K. Mamardashvili’s creativity opens its essence determined as “spiritual revolution”. Defined its specific features, as consequence of this “break to transcendent”: universalism, an opportunity of the communication, birth of philosophy, world religions and sciences; history, person and morals. Degradation the modern culture, expressing in growth of conflicts and wars, communicate the author with deviation from revelations of “axial time” that threatens mankind with self-destruction.

The present article is devoted to the special role of nonverbal means in communication. It reveals the function of the latter in the language system. The author offers a system linguistic approach to the differentiation between linguistics and paralinguistics, proves the idea, that a considerable amount of paralinguistic phenomena, e.g. descriptive and symbolic gestures, which modern linguistics doesn’t regard as a part of language system, nevertheless should be included in it as its integral and organic but peripheral section.

The article is about the research experience of the anthropological basis of the Latin American “Philosophy of Liberation”. Within the antithesis of “the Totality - the Other” is a classic critique of (Hegelian) version of the ontology. The philosophical discussion of the article involves ideas of the representatives of the Latin American “philosophy of liberation”, on the basis of which the conditions and parameters of the polylogical modern historical and philosophical process are determined. The author also specifies the substance of the key for the modern philosophy concept of the Other through its correlation with the notion of Otherness.

There can be little doubt that as we enter into newly global times we find the world sinking rapidly into mutual fear and conflict. Some would propose to solve this by a kind of spiritual lobotomy or negative mode of tolerance that leads via relativism to a flaccid indifference. If however, religion is the key to having life and that more fully - as is the very essence of religion - then abandoning faith commitments or employing them against one another is not a reasonable proposal. Rather it becomes the most urgent task of our day to search deeply into how our universal faiths relate to the diversity of the cultures they inspire and hence to their mutual encounters in global times. But were religion and culture to be two alien or even antithetic realities then we might be doomed to failure and hence to conflict. Our task would be simply one of conflict resolution or attenuation by external manipulation. The argument of this paper is the contrary, namely (a) that the history of thought indicates that originally religion and culture were one and not distinguished, but (b) that in the West the emphasis on objectivity from the time of Socrates and Plato directed the mind away from culture and in modern times has made it difficult to appreciate religion as well. In response (c) the important new appreciation of human intentionality and subjectivity opens new paths to understanding both culture and religion as it were from within and as mutually important.

This article is about the beginning of the tight interaction between cultures of East and West in China in the beginning of XXth century and about the role of Hu Shih in this interaction. The article describes main ideological debates in China of that time and disputes about material and spiritual essence of cultures of East and West. The article pays special attention to vision of Hu Shih to the future of world philosophy.