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Rudenko and Liashenko’s (2020) “Chinese studies in Ukrainian philosophy of the Soviet period” explores the philosophy and political thought of that time through the study of a Soviet-era book on Chinese philosophy. Their article argues that the content and structure of Dmytrychenko and Shynkaruk’s (1958) book “The development of philosophical thought in ancient China” reflects its authors’ political education intentions. This analytical argument is comprehensively presented in the paper and effectively articulates the particularity of this Ukrainian book on Chinese philosophy. In this article, I examine Rudenko and Liashenko’s paper from the perspective of positivism and of an individual who received a traditional Chinese education. Through a comparison with other books on Chinese philosophy, I discuss Rudenko and Liashenko’s argument regarding the materialist historical view of Dmytrychenko and Shynkaruk’s book. The lack of excerpts from the original Chinese texts affects the correctness of some interpretations in the reviewed article. Nonetheless, through a dialogue between the two authors and contemporary philosophers, the reviewed article touches upon many philosophical ideas and research topics that are worth reading and studying, especially in terms of socialist philosophy, the historical development of Marxism, and the study of Ukrainian philosophy.

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Relevance. The socio-philosophical analysis of the current phase of social development is carried out in view of occurrence of “digital society”, which is being formed under the influence of development and integration of cutting-edge technologies of different scientific branches and production industries. This leads to transformation of social environment and rise of the new mode of development. Aim. Interpretation and anticipation of current and coming state of digital society, thought of as a new stage of post-industrial development; reveal of reasons of transfer from industrial mode of development to informational one and pursuit of relation between modes of development and modes of production; determination of the role of digital and information technology in the process of the transfer; identification of the mode of production relevant to the informational mode of development. Results. The paper demonstrates the formation of the theory of post-industrial society. Its relationship with the Marxian theory of social development is detected. The authors have carried out phenomenological analysis of “digital society” concept and revealed its correlation to “post-industrial society” and “information society” concepts. The socio-philosophical analysis of social development phases as evolutionary stages of digital society is carried out from the view point of the theory of post-industrial society. Conclusions. The theory of postindustrial society can be used for explaining and anticipating social and economic tendencies, emerging under the influence of transformative technologies of the “fourth industrial revolution”. No direct dependency between mode of production and mode of development has been detected, though processes of capitalism restructuring and informationalism development correlate with each other: the transfer from the industrial mode of development to the informational one is caused by logic and interests of advanced capitalism, but not confined to them. It is notable that digital and information technologies were not the root cause of the transfer, though contributed to it in the long term. The development mode concomitant to the informational mode of development is defined as “informational capitalism”.

Actuality of the article consists in the fact that culture plays crucial role in contemporary Russian society. The authors address the origins of this tendency. The aim of the article is an analysis of the beginning of the proletarian culture. As the resources for the paper archive documents of revolutionaries, political articles of that period, scientific papers and books of foreign and domestic authors are used. Problematic-analytic reconstruction with the elements of enactive approach is applied as a main method. The method allows to present the subject in its development and to make an original socio-philosophical interpretation of culture. The paper accentuate a prehistory of proletarian culture movement. Analyzing early works of A. Bogdanov, one of the father of the movement, the authors came to conclusion that the conception of proletarian culture was emerged from agitational politics of Bogdanov, who called to revolutionary armed uprising. Therefore, first stage of proletarian culture was agitation and propaganda for preparation of revolutionary active elements of combative movement. The paper shows the evolution of Boganov’s thought about foundation of proletarian culture: starting from discussing on necessity of revolutionary armed actions, Bogdanov slowly came up with Marxist argumentation of his conception.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: – how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s–50s? – what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of sign? We will propose here an apparently narrow angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a ”theory of hieroglyphics” (or symbols), therefore a type of bourgeois idealist theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about E. Mach, and which was upheld for a time by Plekhanov. But thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century about the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–50s seems entirely to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

The article presents a comparative analysis of I.V. Goethe’s “The Word to Young Poets” („Ein Wort für junge Dichter,“ 1833) and the article written in connection with A.M. Gorky death by the theorist of Marxist aesthetics D. (G.) Lukács “The Liberator” („Der Befreier,“ 1936). The subject of the analysis is Lukách’s interpretation of the ‛liberator’ concept used by Goethe in relation to his own work. Lukács, who chose this keyword from Goethe’s paper as the title of his own article, tries within the framework of the theme set by Goethe about the liberating mission of the writer to prove the validity of applying the theses of the German classic in the era of proletarian art. In the course of the undertaken analysis, the author of the article comes to the conclusion about the selectivity of Lukács’s approaches to research material. That was dictated by the specificities of the functional-target settings the author of “The Liberator,” dedicated not just to a great writer per se, but to the classic of socialist realism, was guided by. Therefore, Lukács’s interpretation of Goethe’s text isn’t based on a comprehensive analysis of the German classic and the Soviet writer views on a given topic, but is limited to the juxtaposition of iconic semantic constants that are embedded in the word “liberator,” important for Lukács in terms of their relevance to Gorky’s personality and work.

This paper briefly outlines the historical and cultural context of the linguistic discussion about Marxism in linguistics that took place in the Soviet Union in 1950; the materials of the discussion were published in the main Soviet newspaper “Pravda”. I describe the reaction of the academic community to this (undoubtedly incorrect) statement that the Kursk-Orel dialect formed the basis of the Russian national language. The reaction mostly amounted to ritual quotations of this Stalin’s claim (without detailed argumentation) in studies on Russian language and dialectology published by Soviet Slavicists in the 1950s. I discuss proposed explanations for the emergence of the “Kursk-Oryol dialect” theory, in particular, Yu. M. Lotman's hypothesis about the influence of Maxim Gorky's statements on the origin of classical Russian literature in Kursk-Orel steppes as well as several more speculative assumptions. I demonstrate the unsatisfactory character of the proposed explanations and put forward a new hypothesis, which draws attention to the possible influence of F. Engels’ work "The Franconian Dialect".

The paper discusses a scientific program and paradigm of the historical school as well as the role it plays in economics and shows that there are diametrically opposite viewpoints on how studies of this research area has impacted on the development of economic thoughts in the past and what impacts can be observed today. It also describes the principle differences between historical school’s representatives and those of classical economics; analyzes how different authors understand the notions of the scientific program and paradigm of the historical school; the specifics of the studies of this research area and concludes that it is not worth confusing such studies with historical or economical ones as they could be done within the framework of the alternative approaches. The paper presents the achievements of historical school, which are universally recognized or/and widely applied by the different branches of science and new arguments in favor of the continuity and mutual influence of historical school, Marxism, and old American institutionalism .

This paper is an extended review of selected conferences and other academic events devoted to Marx’s 200th anniversary held in 2018. The authors review a collection of the papers presented during these events and reflect on the current position of Marxist and Marxiological scholarship on contemporary campuses in the time of «academic capitalism».

This study examines the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Vojvodinian historiography’ which flourished in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina from the late 1960s until the early 1990s as a special kind of party historiography. The paper focuses on the ‘Vojvodinian historiography’s’ institutional framework, theoretical and methodological features and general ideological profile as well as its outcomes. As a result of its close ties with the ruling Communist League of Vojvodina, the political collapse of the Vojvodinian communists marked the disappearance of this extremely ideological kind of historiography.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s; and, what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of signs? We propose the following angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a “theory of hieroglyphics”, therefore a type of “bourgeois idealist” theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about Ernst Mach. Yet thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century and concerning the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–1950s seems to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/ thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

The article comprehensively examines the social sources of armed violence, as one of the important phenomena in the development of humanity. Based on the analysis of works by leading Ukrainian and foreign scientists, the author considers the essence of the phenomenon of armed violence in the context of the development of social violence. In particular, a significant number of scientific papers have been analyzed, in which certain aspects of the topic chosen for research are disclosed, the main approaches and concepts that have developed in the process of studying this issue are identified and characterized. The complex characteristic of the basic concepts that studied in the article is presented. The term "social violence" the author understands as the application by one class or another of a social group of various forms of coercion, up to armed influence, against other classes and social groups in order to obtain or maintain economic and political dominance, to gain these or those rights or privileges. Accordingly, armed violence is interpreted as a way to achieve the goals using weapons. The author agrees with the opinion of a significant number of scientists regarding the definition of armed violence as a radical form of the use of social violence. As a result of the research, the author has come to the conclusion that violence has been characteristic of the human environment since its occurrence. As most scholars have noted, since the emergence of social relations, violence, including armed violence, has been one of the most important ways to achieve the goals of controlling and asserting dominance in other members of social communities. Armed violence is the most radical form of achievement of the aforementioned goal. As a form of social interaction, as noted by psychologists, armed violence is the result of the transformation of animal instincts that, in the course of social evolution, have evolved into one of the specific forms of struggle for domination within complex human communities. This is the main scientific value of the articles analyzed in the article. At the same time, as the analysis of the researched works has shown, the further classification of the types of armed violence according to the spheres of its application in social life and its varieties, according to the tasks, which are realized in the process of its use, needs further consideration. The article assumes that the most important criterion for the classification of violence is the use of weapons in this process. It is noted that no one can doubt that armed violence is violence. It is suggested to consider the main goal of most unarmed forms of social violence − the prevention of armed forms of confrontation. These aspects will be addressed in future scientific publications

The article is devoted to the presentation of metaphysical ideas about the free will of the individual, hidden in political ideologies, through conceptual analysis and the thesaurus of analytical philosophy. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which the metaphysical postulates of the most famous ideological projects of modernism (communism, Nazism and liberalism) are compatible with modern theories of freedom in analytical metaphysics, and show their poor compatibility. At the same time, we have proposed an alternative to modern ideologies in the form of republicanism, which does not seem to have unsolvable metaphysical problems in its own definition of freedom. In this article we have demonstrated that the fundamental metaphysics of individual freedom is a legitimate criterion for assessing the relevance, validity and relevance of political ideologies, as it is not an abstract detached theorizing, but the founder of our ideas about the constitution of normative in terms of personal responsibility.

The article aims at contributing to philosophical understanding of issues in international political economy (IPE). The philosophical formations of different approaches to conducting research in IPE demonstrate that all its divisions are conditional, with permeable rather than impenetrable boundaries. To simplify introduction, some IPE textbooks follow Robert Gilpin’s “trichotomous categorisation”, or theoretical division of the field into realism, liberalism and Marxism/structuralism, which fails to clearly define cultural and historical roots, ignores alternative philosophical approaches to IPE, and denies the possibility of theoretical mergers. With the main focus on the notion of power, this article aims at exploring the possible ways to overcome this trichotomous theoretical division, making the attempt to find ground for theoretical merger. The paper concludes that the theoretical boundaries can be transcended by merging different concepts (a “horizontal” merger), or by approaching the same phenomena in different epistemological ways (a “vertical” merger).

This text focuses on Bojan Djordjev’s theatre piece Diskretni šarm marksizma / The Discreet Charm of Marxism (2013), by analysing the politicality of the practices employed in it – the one of reading aloud and the one of listening to what is being read, and by enquiring what kind of transformation such acts could bring to the contemporary stage and the public sphere. It examines the politicality of such a community, formed by coming and being together in theatre to read aloud and listen to others reading Marx’s and Marx-related texts. Moreover, the paper advocates for collective reading and listening as autonomous performative and theatrical practices, which have community-formative qualities. Since Djordjev defined Diskretni šarm marksizma as a “six course dinner piece”, this article aims to look further into what happens when acts of reading and eating in a group become interchangeable. Is it possible to imagine a communist revolution, which began on a theatrical stage, when audience members surrendered to each other’s reading voices in the tactile act of listening (as a special form of attention in theatre) to political texts, first and foremost The Communist Manifesto?

In this paper, the author analyses Professor N. M. Nikolsky’s 1933 school textbook on ancient history. Nikolsky introduced a number of interesting innovations in his work uncharacteristic of scholarship of the time. He was able to combine the pre-revolutionary school tradition and elements of Marxism. Equally, the textbook matched the level of historical scholarship of the first third of the twentieth century. Nikolsky’s innovations were almost completely rejected in the 1930s because of the replacement of the pre-revolutionary Marxist tradition with Soviet Marxism. As a result, his contribution to the renewal of the national system of teaching ancient history has been underestimated. Many of his ideas were not unpromising, but simply unfinished. This essay discusses the rivalry between N. M. Nikolsky and V. V. Struve, which the former lost.

The paper explains the relationship between sinification of Marxism and modernization of China. The authors have analyzed the basic principles of modernization proposed by the leadership of the People's Republic of China and have studied the process of development of "Chinese Marxism" basic theory; the leading role of "signification of Marxism" in the ideology of modernization of China is shown. The authors identified the main contradictions in the development of modern Chinese society and analyzed the change in the value priorities of China's modernization strategy. Initially at the time of "reform and opening" the task of economic development was in the first place but now the problem of spiritual and moral development of society came to the fore. The authors make a conclusion that the problem of modernization in China is interpreted comprehensively considering national specificity

The fate of the tragic figure of the British king James II Stuart is considered in the article. In this paper the author pays speсial attention to the history of investigation of the character and politics of this person by the British historians, as well as by the leading European and American specialists on the Early Modern Time. The estimates of James II are of vast variety in the British historiography but at the same time diff erent authors have some similar features in their attitude. Except the apologists the British historians on the whole criticized this king and explain that the majority of the problems connected with him are based on the religious factor that is not really right. On the other hand there are some differences in this negative approaches among various scientifi c schools of British historiography. The Whigs stated that James II tried to limit the personal rights of the Englishmen which was the main result of the English revolution of the middle of the 17th century. The Tories proved that the king neglected the gentry’s property rights and tried to transform the dualistic monarchy into absolutism. The Positivists thought that James II supported the Catholic Counterreformation and fought against the Enlightenment. The revisionists and postrevisionists tried to revalue the person of James II based on the true scientific foundations. A special view on James II’ policy is produced by Non-British authors: German, French and American historians.

Copyright of NaUKMA Research Papers in Philosophy & Religious Studies is the property of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Faculty of Humanities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)