This article seeks to return to the corpus of knowledge of the sixteenth century, a time understood as the Era of similarities, second reading of Michel Foucault. We are interested in the approximation of the practical order of the period - rich in signs and spellings - in order to pause in its proper conception of the world - rich in symbology. In this analysis, the Renaissance world will be involved in an intensification of the ordination exercise, governed by forms according to which similarities become known: the so-called figures of similarities - signatura, convenientia, aemulatio, analogia and simpatia. In addition, adhering to a background of general configuration, the notion of circle as a figurative referential will be emphasized, which can be understood in the understanding of the general space of Renaissance knowledge. From the notion of circle we shall refer to the practice of circulation of similarities, and through this we shall indicate a Renaissance world deciphered or interpreted according to an exhaustible network, within the limits of the circular orbits emanating from the adjustment of similarities. In practice, the use of a symbolic marking - inclusive, extended to the cosmic dimension - enables us to visualize an arrangement of how, through the ordering of knowledge, certain dispositions are promoted "between" and "for" things and people in the world.
The present article aims to sketch a parallel between two works of political philosophy: the unfinished pamphlet "From the Kingdom or Government of the Princes to the King of Cyprus" by St. Thomas Aquinas, and the well-known "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli. The collation of texts allows direct approximations between two distant philosophical moments through the similar theme, through the philosophical treatment of the classical tradition, and through the subtlety of the argument that relates the common good to the private, in the political relations. The analysis is divided into two thematic parts: the definition of ruler, and the characteristics of his craft. In Thomas, the influence of Aristotelian politics is articulated with the way in which the private purpose of the ruler is established in a hierarchy of ends that justifies the government and is directed to the common good. In Machiavelli there is a different reception of ancient thought, connected with Roman rhetoric, and a hierarchy of ends, which is directed, similarly to the Tomasian, for the common good, but with a different treatment as to how public good relates to the private good of both the ruler and the people subjected to him. From this comparison we conclude that there is a need to establish the complexity of political philosophy in the passage from the middle ages to the renaissance that removes the idea of a total rupture and allows us to understand how the modern age keep medieval elements and develops them much more than abandon them.
Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), chancellor and historian, is the author of one of the main praises of the city of Florence of this period. In writing to Laudatio florentinae urbis (1403-1404), the humanist describes Florence and its government as a well-ordered, beautiful, wholesome, free and participatory city. The paper analyzes this text not only as a rhetorical piece, but highlights the republican ideals of freedom, self-government and citizenship. From an institutional point of view, Laudatio offers the foundations of mixed government, which would become a central aspect of Renaissance republicanism. From the ancients, Bruni removes the idea of the division of powers from the classic triad monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, with the separation of functions in each of these pure forms. Bruni points out that both aspects of antiquity can be found in the Florentine institutions of his time, in such a way that he observes in the historical fact the realization of an ancient political theory, complementing, therefore, the idealization of the city.
By dynamically adapting good examples, accommodating these to the needs imposed by circumstances, Machiavelli reverberates multiple uses of imitatio from ancient and Renaissance authors. Imitation renovates ancient Virtù in civil practices and attitudes, providing encouragement for fulfilling political actions and pedagogical practices, as Machiavelli's role as secretary of Florence and his political, historical and literary writings attest. Thus, after reviewing the notion of imitatio, specifically in antiquity and renaissance, Machiavelli's arguments about the possibility of humans reaching Virtù are contextualized in the 'Discorsi, Prince, in Florentine Histories and the Art of War', specifically in the proposals to imitate the appropriate actions. Hence, investigations and analyzes of the past produces utility and delight, enhancing the 'flavor of human actions'. Consequently, Machiavelli's writings assure the impossibility of a predetermined definition among possible multiple options (ambiguity) as well as support the possibility to simultaneously choose two, apparently antagonistic, perspectives (ambivalence).
In this article we intend undertake a reading of ancient judaism, or veterotestamentary, in some of its main aspects, in contrast to the Machiavellian view of the role of religion in the organization and expansion of the State. The first step of this enterprise will be given by exposing the founding and delineanting features of the ancient Jewish tradition, especially in the books that make up the so-called Old Testament, demonstranting the using of religion in the ordination and expansion of the State, as well as in the formation of the individual. In a second moment we will demonstrate how to create a new Jewish tradition, influenced and influential on the ancient Greek world, early in the Christian era which will be assimilated and explored in its mystical bias in Renaissance humanism. This Hellenistic Judaism tradition will be best known and assimilated in the European erudite circles of the Renaissance. Finally, we will try to demonstrate how the constitutive features of ancient Judaism, to the detriment of Hellenistic Judaism, can be read in the light of Machiavellian description of the role of religion in the organization and expansion of the State and the formation of the individual.
The work 'De revolutionibus orbium coelestium' (1543) installed the foundation stone of a mentality that conceived a new rationality model. The heliocentric hypothesis devised by Nicolas Copernicus has entered the contemporary narrative as one of the battles fought against medieval cosmology, which translates into a confrontation with the socio-political hegemony that the Catholic Church projected on the most decisive questions of humanity. Nevertheless, cosmology, seen through a hermeneutic gaze proposed by Ernst Cassirer, allows us to suspend the ascending condition of history in order to direct our attention to the neoplatonic, Pythagorean and Gnostic filiation of certain qualities that finally played in favour of the acceptance of the new image of the world. These doctrines were key in the articulation of that new cosmology, and nevertheless, our modernity has not known how to recognize its contributions to what could be a history of ideas. For these reasons we will relate the work with some cosmological precepts in the epistemological context of the Renaissance, which will shed light on certain unknown areas of the work, and also, why not, on certain unknown areas of the spirit of our modernity.
In the paper, we will study Olavo de Carvalho's thought, focusing on his position regarding Brazilian and American Black movement in its struggle for reparation in terms of colonialism-slavery-racism. We will argue that his refusal of any reparatory praxis to political-cultural minorities and his position of a non-place for Black-African traditions in the context of Western culture/civilization, as with respect to his defense of the inferiority of Black-African culture-civilization when compared to Jewish-Christian, Greek-Latin and Medieval-Renaissance tradition, is pervaded by a dualist metaphysics with a highly anti-modern and anti-modernizing character, in which the dynamic of streamlining of "human drama about universe and eternity" is constituted (a) by the struggle between natural necessity (Behemont) and individual consciousness (Leviathan), that can only be won by the correlation of divine grace given by Jesus Christ and personal direct and immediate interiorization and intuition by each individual with God; (b) by the refusal of politics, history and intersubjective action as basically materialism and, in this sense, as the sphere of totalitarian political ideologies (to which Enlightnment modernity is the biggest example); and, finally, (d) by the centrality of spiritualism, of intimate and direct relation between God and man, mediated by Revelation, which points to the non-existence, in the Olavo de Carvalho' thought, of objective parameters to rational discussion, interaction and justification - that is the reason of his delegitimation of science, politics, history and macro-structural institutional action, and his appeal to methodological, intuitionist and spiritualist individualism.
The article raises the issue of the importance of preserving and increasing the national cultural traditions of Ukrainians, without which one cannot hope for development in the civilization process, because based on cultural and spiritual priorities, a full-fledged sociocultural environment with values is forming. The article considers the essence of national culture as a sphere of spiritual and material possessions that influence the communicative organization of people with specific values and norms of behavior. The role of national culture as a potent factor in the deconfliction of Ukrainians in Ukraine and abroad is underlining. It is known that Ukrainian culture has been leveled for a long time, subjected to censorship bans and ideological pressure, especially during the Soviet period. Our culture has gone through a period of destruction, but now it is a time for national and cultural revival, opportunities for free choice and self-realization of the artist, time for renaissance and development of the ethnocultural heritage of Ukrainians, which is one of the priorities of national revival and preservation. The Ukrainian nation is modernizing, actively creating its cultural space despite the slowdown of the outdated administrative system, economic instability, hybrid warfare, and manifestations of military aggression by Russia. The article examines the peculiarities of the creation of the cultural space of Ukrainians in modern conditions, taking into account the challenges of the globalized world and the threats of the "Russian world". Thanks to the state support and implementation of humanitarian policy programs, the consolidation of Ukrainian societies, and the unification of citizens of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the world around national values and priorities. The core of the unity of Ukrainians is the national idea, the preservation of self-identity, patriotism, and the establishment of the ukrainian nation in the modern world. The emphasis is determined on the fact that national culture has a great potential in establishing Ukraine in the world cultural space and is a consolidating factor in the political unity of society, especially in the current conditions of hybrid warfare and the struggle of Ukrainians against Russian aggression.
The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of postcolonial mentality in contemporary Ukraine, in particular the question of its linguistic component. The era of neocolonialism continues to exist even after the actual collapse of the colonial system in the twentieth century. The consequences of the long colonial past of peoples and nations are the deformed sense of national identity and, accordingly, the phenomenon of postcolonial mentality. More than three hundred years of the colonial regime in Ukraine and the purposeful policy of cultural expansion and language oppression promoted the formation of such a distorted type of national consciousness. The main manifestation of post-colonial mentality is a contemptuous attitude to the Ukrainian language, a diminution of its meaning as the foundation for nation-building, since artificially spreaded bilingualism actually appears as a means of Russification. It is proved that, despite the purposeful but inconsistent policy of renaissance during the Independence, the dominant influence of the Russian language in public and everyday use can not be ignored, since these phenomena are mostly chauvinistic in nature, which manifests itself in an apparent offensive on the legitimization of the Ukrainian language as the language of the State Ukraine, as the foundations of the right of the nation as a whole, as well as acting as a field for speculation as a conscious means of successfully manipulated technique in the slogan of the necessity of bilingualism, which is positioned as an essential attribute of the modern globalized world. Ukrainian/Russian dichotomy appears axiologically as shameful / prestigious, which, according to the author, is one of the manifestations of the post-colonial mentality of Ukrainians, namely the linguistic aspect of the functioning and even the collision between two cultures, nations, ideological systems and mentality. The language of the postcolonial mentality of Ukrainians is the subject of an analysis of the problem of finding means and efforts for the consolidation of the Ukrainian nation in connection with the urgent need for confrontation and prevention of linguocide by the aggressor state, since such colonial practices are total anachronism in a democratic society.
The article studies the right to human dignity through the prism of German legal doctrine. During the research, a wide range of general scientific and special legal methods of scientific cognition has been used, in particular: methods of dialectical logic, comparative legal and system-structural methods. The paper analyses domestic and German legal resources on the right to human dignity, in particular the works of S. von Puffendorf, I. Kant and G. Durig. As a result of the study, the author states that the German legal opinion formed the fundamental doctrine of the right to human dignity. This doctrine began in Germany, back in the Renaissance. For the first time, it was systematized in the works of a German researcher S. von Puffendorf. The article illustrates that human dignity is revealed in the German doctrine of fundamental human rights through a number of characteristics. The right to human dignity is the foundation of social value and respect for human beings. It prohibits the conversion of a person to an object in state procedures. Human dignity is not only the individual dignity, but also the dignity of a person as a species. Everyone possesses it regardless of its characteristics, achievements and social status. It also belongs to someone who cannot act reasonably because of his or her physical or mental state. They do not lose their human dignity even through "unworthy" behaviour, for example, by committing any crime. No one can be deprived of human dignity. Attention is drawn to the fact that German law does not intentionally give a definitive definition of the right to human dignity. It merely defines a comprehensive list of requirements for the protection of this fundamental human right. The reason for this is that any definition cannot guarantee the absolute protection of this human right. In other words, such a normative definition of this human right will inevitably lead to such a situation where it cannot protect the human dignity of an individual or even be the legal basis for its restriction. In this part, the German approach to the definition of the right to human dignity differs significantly from the domestic approach, since for the national science and practice of lawmaking it is quite logical to take a different approach, in particular to formulate clear and comprehensive definitions of legally significant phenomena and categories. It has been established that, according to the German doctrine of fundamental human rights, human dignity must be protected in any way within any relationship. It was found that the German Nazis had a negative influence on the German doctrine of the human dignity. This is due to the fact that the protection of human dignity was not built around what was allowed to be done, but about what was forbidden under any circumstances. Keywords: human dignity, a fundamental human right, a human rights doctrine, a state, legislation.
