Search results

In this work I'm proving thesis: the Berlin's distinction between two freedoms is legitimate, because the attributes of positive or negative freedom are characteristic to the past thinkers' theoretical thought. In the first part I'm setting forth the main characteristics of Berlin's two freedoms. I'm also investingating the works of Berlin, which are investigating the problems of equality, philosophy of history, pluralism and Romanticism and Enlightenment. I maintain that Berlin is proponent of negative freedom, because the freedom of individual choice is protected in his philosophy, person is comprehended as autonomous subject. Berlin is proponent of value pluralism, he maintains that equal opportunities must be ensured for all. In the second part I'm analysing the concepts of freedom of three past thinkers, I'm arguing that these concepts of freedom have the features of negative or positive freedom. I'm settling that there are certain attitudes of negative freedom which are dominating in the theory of Locke: it is because author states that all individuals are free and can freely choose the ends of life. I attribute the works of Spinoza to the tradition of positive freedom, because author states that only mind following people can be free. I state, that the system of Hegel belongs to those theories of positive freedom, according to which person can only be free if he belongs to the political community. In the third part I'm analysing the criticism to the Berlin's freedom division. Criticism is introduced in the context of the political theories of the XXth century. There are pertinacious controversy between the proponents of negative (individualists) and positive (communals) freedom. I maintain that the division of two freedoms is criticised from the tradition of individualists or communals. Individuals maintain that individual is upper value than the community and communals maintain that individual always belong to the community. I'm investigating two well-known paradigms, which denies the Berlin's division between freedoms – the proponents of "One freedom" and the proponents of "late Republicanism". I'm arguing that the theories of late republicans doesn't introduce "the third way", whereas they stay in the tradition of negative freedom. The criticism of the proponents of "One freedom" isn't motivated, because they judge about validity of division by researching everyday relations, not the history of philosophy.

In this work I'm proving thesis: the Berlin's distinction between two freedoms is legitimate, because the attributes of positive or negative freedom are characteristic to the past thinkers' theoretical thought. In the first part I'm setting forth the main characteristics of Berlin's two freedoms. I'm also investingating the works of Berlin, which are investigating the problems of equality, philosophy of history, pluralism and Romanticism and Enlightenment. I maintain that Berlin is proponent of negative freedom, because the freedom of individual choice is protected in his philosophy, person is comprehended as autonomous subject. Berlin is proponent of value pluralism, he maintains that equal opportunities must be ensured for all. In the second part I'm analysing the concepts of freedom of three past thinkers, I'm arguing that these concepts of freedom have the features of negative or positive freedom. I'm settling that there are certain attitudes of negative freedom which are dominating in the theory of Locke: it is because author states that all individuals are free and can freely choose the ends of life. I attribute the works of Spinoza to the tradition of positive freedom, because author states that only mind following people can be free. I state, that the system of Hegel belongs to those theories of positive freedom, according to which person can only be free if he belongs to the political community. In the third part I'm analysing the criticism to the Berlin's freedom division. Criticism is introduced in the context of the political theories of the XXth century. There are pertinacious controversy between the proponents of negative (individualists) and positive (communals) freedom. I maintain that the division of two freedoms is criticised from the tradition of individualists or communals. Individuals maintain that individual is upper value than the community and communals maintain that individual always belong to the community. I'm investigating two well-known paradigms, which denies the Berlin's division between freedoms – the proponents of "One freedom" and the proponents of "late Republicanism". I'm arguing that the theories of late republicans doesn't introduce "the third way", whereas they stay in the tradition of negative freedom. The criticism of the proponents of "One freedom" isn't motivated, because they judge about validity of division by researching everyday relations, not the history of philosophy.

In this work I'm proving thesis: the Berlin's distinction between two freedoms is legitimate, because the attributes of positive or negative freedom are characteristic to the past thinkers' theoretical thought. In the first part I'm setting forth the main characteristics of Berlin's two freedoms. I'm also investingating the works of Berlin, which are investigating the problems of equality, philosophy of history, pluralism and Romanticism and Enlightenment. I maintain that Berlin is proponent of negative freedom, because the freedom of individual choice is protected in his philosophy, person is comprehended as autonomous subject. Berlin is proponent of value pluralism, he maintains that equal opportunities must be ensured for all. In the second part I'm analysing the concepts of freedom of three past thinkers, I'm arguing that these concepts of freedom have the features of negative or positive freedom. I'm settling that there are certain attitudes of negative freedom which are dominating in the theory of Locke: it is because author states that all individuals are free and can freely choose the ends of life. I attribute the works of Spinoza to the tradition of positive freedom, because author states that only mind following people can be free. I state, that the system of Hegel belongs to those theories of positive freedom, according to which person can only be free if he belongs to the political community. In the third part I'm analysing the criticism to the Berlin's freedom division. Criticism is introduced in the context of the political theories of the XXth century. There are pertinacious controversy between the proponents of negative (individualists) and positive (communals) freedom. I maintain that the division of two freedoms is criticised from the tradition of individualists or communals. Individuals maintain that individual is upper value than the community and communals maintain that individual always belong to the community. I'm investigating two well-known paradigms, which denies the Berlin's division between freedoms – the proponents of "One freedom" and the proponents of "late Republicanism". I'm arguing that the theories of late republicans doesn't introduce "the third way", whereas they stay in the tradition of negative freedom. The criticism of the proponents of "One freedom" isn't motivated, because they judge about validity of division by researching everyday relations, not the history of philosophy.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Nassia Yakovaki, The «Traité des trois imposteurs)) and the European Enlightenment The aim of this article is to present the obscure but fascinating story of the production and diffusion of the Traité des trois imposteurs, the best seller of the clandestine literature in Europe during the first half of the 18th century and to discuss the new and to some extent controversial interpretations that the study of this text has provoked as far as the understanding of the European Enlightenment is concerned. The importance of this text derives, first of all, from its subversive ideas: it offers a bold and straightforward attack on all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) by rejecting the principle of revelation and by pronouncing their founders as «impostors», while attributing the appearance of organized religions to political interests. Yet, the significance of this text goes beyond its content: the conditions of its production as well as of its circulation offer to modern historical research the chance to explore an «underground universe», peopled by relatively unknown figures, working among the middlemen of the publishing world. These circles —as it seems— had the readiness to respond creatively to a turbulent religious and political environment, to adopt rigid philosophical stands and to step into radical politics. Historical research has recently succeeded in investigating the complicated issues of the origin, dating, authorship and circulation of this notorious text and in disentangling the thread connecting this late 17th century production with the medieval legend of the «imposture». Crucial among these findings is on the one hand the bond that links the Traité with the works of Spinoza and on the other the connection between the production of the text and a group of people in late 17th and early 18th century Holland. The interesting questions concerning the general understanding of the era of «the crisis of the European consciousness» that the historical scholarship about the Traité has raised have already led to the formation of a new, stimulating, yet controversial historiographical trend which elaborates a new interpretation of the Enlightenment, around the idea of an early and radical Enlightenment (Margaret Jacob, 1981 and 2003, Jonathan Israel, 2001).

"This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority--sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death--to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world ... Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes their meetings and clashes with each other--as well as their confrontations with religious and royal authority. It recounts key moments in the history of modern philosophy, including the burning of Giordano Bruno for heresy, Galileo's house arrest for defending Copernicanism, Descartes's proclaiming cogito ergo sum, Hobbes's vision of the "nasty and brutish" state of nature, and Spinoza's shocking Theological-Political Treatise."--Publisher's description

 Sometime awhile ago I came up with the idea of doing a trilogy of posts on conspiracy theory, or modern conspiracy thought, read through Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx. I am not exactly sure why the idea appealed to me, in part because I increasingly consider Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx to be the cornerstones of my philosophical thought, even if these cornerstones come through the mediations of Tosel, Jameson, and Althusser (to name a few), but in this case, more specifically it seemed worth asking what would three critics of the mystifications of their day make of our modern mystifications.After writing the pieces on Spinoza and Hegel it took me a long time to even consider writing a piece on Marx. The intersection of Marx and conspiracy theory just seems too big to take on in a blogpost. This is  in part because for many in the US, Marxism is both the name of an actual conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. It has become increasingly so in terms of the former, the right has dealt with decline of the Soviet Union not by giving up on red scares, but by making the object of such ghost stories more and more diffuse and conspiratorial.  Marxism, or communism, are not to just to be found in open appeals to revolution, or organizing workers instead everything from Critical Race Theory to the casting of a Disney film can now be seen to be the work of Marxism in its more diffuse cultural form, a plot that becomes more insidious the more indirect its connection discernible political goals become. At the same time that Marxism is seen as conspiracy it is argued that its understanding of history and politics which sees the interest of the ruling class behind everything is fundamentally a conspiracy theory, if not the fundamental conspiracy theory. As is often the case, I would argue that this idea that Marxism is a conspiracy theory gets things wrong and upside down. To gesture to a much larger argument, I would argue that Marx's fundamental theoretical innovation is to present an understanding of economic, social, and political relations that breaks with every conspiracy theory in that its primary mode of explanation is not individual intentions, or collective strategies, but the economic and social conditions that exceed any intention or conspiracy. The actions of capitalist with respect to wages and working conditions are, to use the parlance of our times, dictated by the demands of the market, by the demand to be competitive, etc., what Marx would perhaps more simply call the extraction of surplus value. Marx stresses that this structure is absolutely indifferent to the conscious intentions of not only the workers, who must conform to it in selling their labor or risk losing their jobs, but to the capitalist as well. As Marx puts it, in the mouth of the worker addressing the capitalist,  "You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the R.S.P.C.A. [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals], and you may be in the odour of sanctity as well; but the thing you represent when you come face to face with me has no heart in its breast." As I argued with respect to Spinoza (see the link above), if the defining characteristic of most conspiracy theories is understanding the world in terms of ends, of deducing the conspiracy from effects, (if talking about race makes white people feel bad that must be the reason behind such teaching, and so on, Marx's fundamental argument is how little ends and intentions mean in understanding social and political life. Marx's criticism is not one of "capitalist greed" as a moral failing, but of the structural conditions that cause capitalists to seek cheaper workers, to demand more of workers, and so on regardless of their moral character. This is the real meaning of Marx's invocation of vampires and werewolves, not to call the capitalist a monster, but to claim that there is something monstrous in capital that exceeds intentions and is found not in the hearts of human beings but in the social relations that produce and reproduce them. As something of an aside, I will suggest that part of Marx's legacy on critical theory, for lack of a better term, is this demand to think in terms of structures that exceed and situate consciousness, this, as I have argued awhile ago, is partly what is at stake in the concept of the mode of production. This legacy goes beyond those who are explicitly Marxist. What Foucault called a dispositif, or apparatus, what Deleuze and Guattari referred to as assemblages or machines, were also an attempt to think the structural over and above the intentional. They are in some sense an attempt to articulate a concept that could displace the mode of production understood as the articulation of material practices and ideas, what Marx called base and superstructure. In Foucault this becomes the relation of power and knowledge, while in Deleuze and Guattari it becomes that of machinic assemblages of bodies and collective assemblages of enunciation. Both of which could be understood as an attempt to expand the explanatory framework beyond the putatively economic to encompass the production of knowledge and desire.  Closer to home, the insistence on the term "structural" in "structural racism," as well as similar attempts to think patriarchy as a social and political structure, are all attempts to theorize racism, sexism, or misogyny without reducing it to individual prejudices, biases, or attitudes. I would then say, summing this up all too quickly, not only is Marx's thought not a conspiracy theory, Marx's fundamental move of thinking relations, structures, and institution in excess of intentions and understandings is the antechamber or all theories that want to be more than conspiracy theories that want to understand the structural conditions and not the individual attitudes as the basis for exploitation and domination. Such a point is beyond the focus of a blogpost, and, moreover, it was not what I intend to get at here. My question is what does Marx offer for thinking the conspiratorial turn in contemporary politics. The first point, which I have already more or less uttered, is that a great deal of what we call conspiracy theories are really just anti-communism, and that these theories have become more baroque and oblique as communism as a political force retreats into historical memory. They are in some sense a kind of anti-communism without communism, as Seymour argues. It is the decline of Marxism as a political force that leads to the demand to find it everywhere; everything that challenges the existing order, not just the economic order but its racial and gender aspects as well, from teaching about the history of slavery to non-binary gender identity can be labelled "Marxist." (The irony of this is that actually existing Marxism, especially in its more official state varieties, has had a spotty at best record when it comes to understanding race and gender as sites of domination and exploitation. Many Marxists of an old school variety are perhaps surprised to learn that anti-racist education is secretly Marxist and that Marxists are behind the demand to respect individual's choice of pronouns). Second, Marxism is integral to understanding the real conditions of social and political life which are in some sense experienced as a vast conspiracy. As I have alluded to above, Marx explains, better than any conspiracy theory the way in which prevailing economic and political relations produce the feeling of helplessness and lack of control that is, as Marcus Gilroy-Ware argues, the raw material for most conspiracy theories. Of course the fundamental question is if it is in some sense the relations of capitalism that create the conditions of alienation and powerlessness which in turn create the condition for conspiracy theorizing, why do such theories name everything but capital, or the ruling class, as the agent of this conspiracy. This is part because the demands of capital are too open, too disclosed to be the object of a conspiracy theory. There is no riddle to solve in saying that capital is driven by the extraction of surplus value, or, as they say, the pursuit of profit. It is openly declared in every newspaper, website, and news broadcast. Without a secret, without the ability to be in the know, there is no affective appeal to a conspiracy theory. We are stuck in a kind of perpetual purloined letter situation in which it is because the existing goals of the ruling class are so out in the open that there is a need to create a kind of bizarro world inversion of this world in order to believe in the conspiracy that must exist. While it is fairly clear to anyone paying attention that the established position on COVID for example is to declare it over again and again in order to be able to get people back to work and to end any state spending on aid, testing, or vaccines, such a goal is too open to muster any theorizing, too public to generate any critique, so we get a bizarro inversion where the powers want to keep the pandemic going, want lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccines for some vague reason of control. At the same time, it could be argued that the fact that conspiracy theories generally leave capitalism untouched, approaching it only obliquely through the antisemitic fear of global elites, demonstrates to what extent the demands of capitalism have become, as Marx writes, self-evident natural laws, wage labor as a mode of existence and commodification as the realization of pleasures remain unexamined by conspiracy theories. Thus to butcher a phrase, is easier to imagine the world controlled by lizard people than it is to question the existence of wage labor and the commodity form. 

Every adaptation mining the vast troves of memory that we recall as our lives as readers of books and comics and watchers of film and television, but is known by its owners simply as intellectual property, always runs up against the singularity of the memory in adapting the generic nature of the property. Much of the politics of culture hinge on the conflict over the singular and generic nature of the memory. At times this politics takes the form as an attempt to retain some singular experience, a memory or attachment, against the commodification of culture  and at other times it takes the form of an attempt to insist on this singular memory or experience as the only correct one.  We are constantly trying to retain what is singular against what is interchangeable, which is, to some extent, a doomed project under capitalism. All of this is a set up of sorts to a very particular memory. I was not a huge fan of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, and to be honest I am not sure if I ever read the whole run, but I do have a very particular memory from a collected volume. In the story Dream, or Morpheus, tracks the Corinthian, the fugitive nightmare to Serial Killers convention, or as they call it, in a thinly veiled disguise a "Cereal Convention." After dispensing with the Corinthian Morpheus turns his attention to the audience of serial killers, or collectors, and offers the speech detailed in the following panels. I am not sure why this particular bit of pop culture stuck with for so many years. Maybe there is no real reason, it is baggage without inventory as Gramsci would say. However, I can offer two reasons, one old and one new. For the old I have never really found serial killers interesting. The serial killer who taunts the police through a series of clues has to be one of the most tired cliches of popular culture. Beyond the cliches I was always disgusted by the way in which actual serial killers, from Jack the Ripper to Jeffrey Dalmer, became pop culture figures in the there own right, even to the point of having their own trading cards. I just find that stuff to be distasteful to the point of offensive. In the Sandman the killers are frightening, but as the dialogue makes clear, they are nothing to look up to or emulate, just damaged people with delusions of grandeur. That is why I first liked the panel.As I have occasionally thought about this scene from time to time the way one does with the odd and accumulated bits of popular culture that make up our "tertiary retentions" (to use Stiegler's phrase) it has taken on a different meaning, one that hinges on the line "fantasies in which you are the maltreated heroes of your own stories." This formulation of a kind of day dream or, dreaming with one's eyes open, appears in Spinoza. For Spinoza the formulation is reserved specifically for those who believe that the mind controls the body. As he writes "Those...who believe that they either speak or are silent, or do anything from a free decision of the mind, dream with open eyes." One could argue that in general this formulation in which one is caught in a kind of dream in which one is at the center describes what Spinoza calls superstition, and what Althusser calls after him ideology. On this reading, and if one wanted to simplify things considerably, one could say that ideology is a matter of what the "kids today" on Tik Tok call main character syndrome, the belief that one is at the center of their own little universe, a cause and never an effect.  The idea of all of us walking around in our own little daydreams is not only an interesting way to think of a kind of spontaneous ideology, but Dream's removal of that Dream suggests ideology critique as a kind of superpower. Although to be honest, after watching the series I am a little unclear on what Dream's powers are and how they work, but as the panels above indicate I have pulled my collection out of the closet to reread it. I am not going to offer a full consideration of The Sandman series here, or talk about how it differs from the comic. I am confident it has been analyzed to death elsewhere. I will say briefly that I think that one of its strengths is that it borrows the pacing of the comic, following the arc of the first dozen or so issues. It always seems strange to me that comic books have had better success with movies when their serial form lends itself to television or streaming. Stranger still that the turn to streaming of recent MCU shows has tended to write them more like long movies than episodes of in an ongoing story. The Sandman has more of the structure of the comic in which there is an ongoing story, but there are also stories that are contained more or less within an episode. When it comes to adapting the panels in question. The dialogue is retained, albeit extended, and to some extent, as the clip below demonstrates, the scene is as well. We get to see the effects of Morpheus intervention as the collectors wrestle with their newfound conscience and consciousness of their situation. In that sense the scene is well adapted from the page to the screen. However, one cannot be struck with a certain flatness to the initial shot. In the place of the graphic play of color and line we just get a man standing in front of a curtain. I do not love the art, and there are many panels in comics that would stand out more, but the panels work better than the moving image. One of the things that I find striking in the sheer number of comic book films and television shows is not just how they fail to function as movies, that point has been made again and again, but they often fail to live up to the comics, there are striking visuals in so many different comics, and over the years there have been talented artists working on all of the different superheroes that have made it to the screen, and while these visuals are sometimes gestured to in individual scenes in the various films there is still a kind of translation problem in which the color and composition of the panel is lost when it is put into motion. In fact these visuals become one more easter egg, one more thing for fans to pick up on such as Martha Wayne's pearl necklace from The Dark Knight Returns returning again and again in nearly every filmed version of Batman's parent's death. This is an aside, but I would argue that one of the reasons that Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse stands out as a film is that its animation captures the visual sense and sensibility of comics better than CGI. I have more thoughts on The Sandman, about the representation of dreams in popular culture, but my focus here has been just on how an image from popular culture can linger like the remnant of a dream, and how that image might make it possible to think about how one's memory is shaped and formative, and what an adaptation misses. 

Chapter Joseph B. Maier{u2019}s Life and Work: An Introduction -- chapter Vico and Critical Theory -- part Part 1: Biographical: Interviews and Personal Notes -- chapter 1 From Leipzig to America: The Story of a Friendship -- chapter 2 Joseph Maier: A Personal Reminiscence -- chapter 3 Meeting Moses Finley and His Old Friend, Joseph Maier -- chapter 4 The Fury of Historical Redemptionism: An Interview with Joseph B. Maier, September 30, 1982 -- chapter 5 Joseph B. Maier: Reflections on His Career and Contribution to the University Seminars at Columbia -- part Part 2: Social Science Inquiries into the Human Condition -- chapter 6 Nationality, Citizenship, and Sociocultural Community -- chapter 7 Politics and Problems of Collective Identity in France and Germany: A Comparative Analysis -- chapter 8 Social Integration, National Identity, and German Unification -- chapter 9 Ethnicity, Nationality, and Nationalism in Early Austrian-Hungarian Social Science -- chapter 10 On Peter Blau{u2019}s Interpretation of Simmel -- chapter 11 Education and Society in Germany -- chapter 12 The Scientific Status of Social Research: The Political Context of Contemporary Sociology -- chapter 13 The ?Ideal-Typical? Presentation of the Jewish Intellectual in Thomas Mann{u2019}s Work -- chapter 14 What Tocqueville Might Say About Our NEA -- chapter 15 Twenty-Five Year History of the Club of Rome -- chapter 16 Victimhood and Empowerment: Madonna{u2019}s ?Like a Prayer? -- chapter 17 The Notion of the Personal and the Cult of Personality: Reflections on Television in Nigeria and North America -- chapter 18 Frederick J. Teggart on ?Entering California?: Self-Reflections on Migrations, Religion, and the Humanistic Sciences -- chapter 19 Existenzialistische Aufklärung. Anklänge der Leipziger Schule an die Kritische Theorie -- part Part 3: On Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Intellectual Linkages -- chapter 20 Philosophy, Literature, and Intellectual Responsibility -- chapter 21 Semantics and Street-Bred Irreverence -- chapter 22 My German Visitors -- chapter 23 Religionsphilosophie und Religionskritik bei Ernst Bloch -- chapter 24 Benedictus de Spinoza -- chapter 25 Sich Nicht zur Unzeit Begegnen{u2014}Ein Feature -- chapter 26 L{u2019}autodestruction de la Raison: La place de la {u2018}Dialektik der Aufklärung{u2019} dans l{u2019}évolution de la Théorie critique -- chapter 27 Ansätze zu einer Erinnerungskultur als Praxis des Wahrnehmens und Wahrgebens -- part Part 4: Jewish History, Art, and Community -- chapter 28 Individual and Institutional Survival Strategies: Berlin 1936-1942 -- chapter 29 Torah as Movable Territory -- chapter 30 The Jews of Barcelona in the Time of R. Nissim b. Reuben Gerondi: 1340-1380 -- chapter 31 Das Buch: Zeichen für Frömmigkeit und Gelehrsamkeit in der Jüdischen Kunst -- chapter 32 Zwischen den Mächten. Gottesherrschaft und Weltpolitik in der Gedankenwelt des mittelalterlichen Judentums -- part Part 5: Lauditatio -- chapter 33 A Message -- chapter 34 Joseph Maier: The Seminar Chairman -- chapter 35 Greetings!.

The article discusses the role of the history of psychology in the search for adequate solutions to the methodological problems of psychological science. The most recent studies of consciousness, which combine a meticulous study of anatomy and physiology of the brain with the help of modern technology and introspective reports of the bearer of consciousness, differ little in their methodological foundations from those of more than a century ago, which were subjected to sound criticism for Cartesian dualism by L.S. Vygotsky and other representatives of cultural-historical activity theory in psychology. L.S. Vygotsky's distinction between perezhivanie (experience) and scientific knowledge gives grounds to be critical of the assertion of some representatives and supporters of analytic philosophy that it is impossible to have a scientific comprehension of consciousness, which they identify with subjective reality. A comparative historical analysis of psychological ideas of B. Spinoza, A.N. Leontiev, and E.V. Ilyenkov leads to a conclusion that, in constructing his theory of activity, A.N. Leontiev was guided not by the official Soviet version of Marxism («dialectical materialism») but by the provisions of authentic Marxism. The philosophers of E.V. Ilyenkov's circle fairly viewed Marxism as a continuation and development of Spinozism. On this philosophical basis, A.N. Leontiev's scientific school created the concept of activity as a peculiar substance, with consciousness (and the psyche in general) being its function. This doctrine, confirmed by numerous empirical studies and the practice of forming consciousness in ontogenesis, is a good alternative to the Cartesian-oriented research on consciousness in modern cognitive sciences, which has reached a methodological dead end. The paper also shows the role of archival research in clarifying the origin and original meaning of terminology used in psychology. For example, the study of transcripts of the 1948 discussions presented in A.N. Leontiev's book An Essay on the Development of the Psyche reveals that the phrase «the threefold scheme of analysis» originally appeared in the speeches of Leontiev's opponents, while these terms (later used by Leontiev himself in his book Activity. Consciousness. Personality) only confuse the matter and do not allow one to adequately understand the non-trivial view on activity as a substance of consciousness developed by A.N. Leontiev's school. In conclusion, the author argues that the special attention of the international scientific community to the historical heritage of the founders of cultural-activity psychology is due to its specific methodology, which makes it a «science of the future» and, in turn, requires a new historical-psychological and theoretical reflection.

للتفاؤل (Optimism) كما للتشاؤم (Pessimism) معان متعددة([i])، غير أننا سنكتفي بالإشارة فقط إلى معنى هذين المفهومين كما تجلى في ذهن فلاسفة عصر التنوير الأوربي. معنى التفاؤل هو أن هذا العالم يغلب فيه الخير على الشر والسعادة على الشقاء. أما معنى التشاؤم فهو على العكس من ذلك تماماً، أي أن هذا العالم يغلب فيه الشر على الخير والشقاء على السعادة. وقبل أن نعرض مذاهب أبرز فلاسفة عصر التنوير الأوربي في موضوع التفاؤل والتشاؤم، وهو أول عصر شهد اهتماماً جدياً بهذه المشكلة، نعتقد أن من المفيد أن نذكر باختصار شديد اتجاهات فلاسفة القرن السابع عشر في هذه المشكلة، لأنهم مهدوا لمناقشتها في القرن الثامن عشر، أي في عصر التنوير.
ربما تعد النزعة العقلية في القرن السابع عشر من وجهة نظر ميتافيزيقية، تفاؤلية. لقد دعم هذه التفاؤلية، كل من ديكارت Descartes (1596ـ 1650) وسبينوزا Spinoza (1632ـ 1677) وليبنتز Leibniz (1646ـ 1716) بإيمانهم الراسخ أن الشر محدود، وأن أفكارنا تنتقل من التشوش والغموض وعدم الملاءمة باتجاه الوضوح والتميز والملاءمة، وأن خيرية هذا العالم وخيرية حياتنا تتكشفان بطريقة مقنعة على نحو جازم([ii]).
طبعا ليس كل فلاسفة هذا القرن قبلوا النزعة الميتافيزيقية المتفائلة، كباسكال Pascal (1623ـ 1662) ولوك Locke (1632ـ 1704) وبيير بايل Pierr Bayle (1647ـ 1706). ويعد الأخير أهم هؤلاء الثلاثة وأوضحهم في تبني موقف تشاؤمي من الطبيعة الإنسانية، إذ كثيرا ما كان يصرح أن الجنس البشري شرير وبائس وأن كل إنسان يعرف هذه الحقيقة([iii]). وجادل بقوة بعدم وجود حل عقلي، ومن ثم فلسفي، يمكن الدفاع عنه لمشكلة الشر([iv])، أي ليس من سبيل إلى التوفيق بين وجود الشر ووجود إله يتصف بالقدرة الكلية والخيرية المطلقة. لذلك رأى ضرورة الأخذ بالمانوية، وهي ديانة فارسية تؤمن بوجود إلهين أحدهما يأتي منه الخير والآخر الشر، لتبرئة الله من جميع أشكال اللوم([v]).

هوامش البحث ومصادره:
([i]) لمعرفة المعاني المختلفة للتفاؤل والتشاؤم يراجع: موسوعة لالاند الفلسفية، ترجمة : خليل أحمد خليل، منشورات عويدات، بيروت، 2008، المجلد الثاني، ص915ـ 917؛ د. جميل صليبا، المعجم الفلسفي، منشورات ذوي القربي، قم، 1385، (تقويم الفارسي)، الجزء الأول، ص 274ـ 275؛ ص 312ـ 313.
([ii]) Loemker , L.E., Pessimim and Optimsism , Article in " The Encyclopedia of Philosophy", Macmillan, New York, 1967, P.117.
([iii]) Fonnesu, L., The Problem of Theodicy Article in " The Cambridge History of Eigteenth – Century Philosophy " , Cambridge , 2007, Vol. 2, P. 752.
([iv]) Cammins, P.L., Bayle, Article, in " The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy", Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy', Cambridge, 2006, P.75.
([v]) آرثر، لفجوي، سلسلة الوجود الكبري، ترجمة: د. ماجد فخري، دار الكاتب العربي، بيروت، 1964، ص 316ـ 321.

This paper begins with excerpts from Ervin Lazlo's book, The Systems View of the World, one version of the emerging paradigm for understanding the universe, the natural world, the human psyche and human culture. The second section presents excerpts from Antonio Damasio's book, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. Damasio is a highly respected neuroscientist whose discoveries about the inner mapping of the human brain have led him to reject Enlightenment views of human psychology and replace them with another version of Lazlo's "systems" approach. The third section presents Indonesia's Pancasila, a five-point political ideology that serves as the foundation for their democratic republic. This ideology begins with the belief in God, but the notion of "God" is one more example of a type of "systems" thought. The fourth section includes an interview from Dr. Amad Kardimin, professor of education at Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Dr. Kardimin describes the beliefs and way of living in the small village where he grew up. I will interpret what he says in light of my own scholarship about Aristotle's model of the flourishing human life, a life of both practical and theoretical wisdom. Even though the people in this village are not formally educated, they are living much more wisely than many highly respected intellectuals today. Finally, I will quote from a number of public intellectuals in the United States who are very worried about the decline in quality of life in the United States today. This decline will lead to an increase in authoritarianism in the U.S. I conclude that too many developing nations have looked to the West, especially the United States, for guidelines about how to "move forward." Their best and brightest young people are sent to Western universities and go back home to educate their own best and brightest to think and act like Westerners. This is a mistake. Indonesia is continually working on a model of education that unites the moral with the intellectual virtues. The West, especially the United States, has focused on higher and higher levels of education in science, math, and computer science without adequate concern for avoiding greed, pride, power hunger and other vices. Indonesia and other developing nations should recognize the importance of an education for wisdom. Leaders in all sectors should exhibit both moral and intellectual excellence. The future of international culture, politics and even of life on earth is at stake.

Galaxies with stellar masses near M* contain the majority of stellar mass in the universe, and are therefore of special interest in the study of galaxy evolution. The Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) have present-day stellar masses near M*, at 5 x 10(10) M-circle dot (defined here to be MW-mass) and 10(11) M-circle dot (defined to be M31-mass). We study the typical progenitors of these galaxies using the FOURSTAR Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE). ZFOURGE is a deep medium-band near-IR imaging survey, which is sensitive to the progenitors of these galaxies out to z similar to 3. We use abundance-matching techniques to identify the main progenitors of these galaxies at higher redshifts. We measure the evolution in the stellar mass, rest-frame colors, morphologies, far-IR luminosities, and star formation rates, combining our deep multiwavelength imaging with near-IR Hubble Space Telescope imaging from Cosmic Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), and Spitzer and Herschel far-IR imaging from Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-Herschel and CANDELS-Herschel. The typical MW-mass and M31-mass progenitors passed through the same evolution stages, evolving from blue, star-forming disk galaxies at the earliest stages to redder dust-obscured IR-luminous galaxies in intermediate stages and to red, more quiescent galaxies at their latest stages. The progenitors of the MW-mass galaxies reached each evolutionary stage at later times (lower redshifts) and with stellar masses that are a factor of two to three lower than the progenitors of the M31-mass galaxies. The process driving this evolution, including the suppression of star formation in present-day M* galaxies, requires an evolving stellar-mass/halo-mass ratio and/or evolving halo-mass threshold for quiescent galaxies. The effective size and SFRs imply that the baryonic cold-gas fractions drop as galaxies evolve from high redshift to z similar to 0 and are strongly anticorrelated with an increase in the Sersic index. Therefore, the growth of galaxy bulges in M* galaxies corresponds to a rapid decline in the galaxy gas fractions and/or a decrease in the star formation efficiency. ; National Science Foundation AST-1009707, AST-0808133 ; ERC HIGHZ 227749 ; NL-NWO Spinoza ; NASA NAS5-26555 ; HST program GO-12060 ; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy of the Australian Federal Government ; Texas A&M University ; George P. and Cynthia Woods Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy ; Astronomy

Habermas's approach to the age-old conflict between reason and faith, or Athens and Jerusalem, is far from being of minor importance in his overall philosophical project, and it decisively orients his understanding of the idea of public reason. In this paper I argue that Habermas's attempts to find a solution to this conflict lie at the heart of the existential dilemma posed by ones being a German philosopher called to carry on, after the Shoah, the spirit of German philosophy from Kant to Marx, that is, the project of modernity. My discussion of the topic of Athens and Jerusalem in Habermas is divided into three parts. The first deals with his well-known thesis that, in the age of postmetaphysical thought, philosophy is called to act as an interpreter and translator of semantic content which it receives from extraphilosophical sources, be these common sense, religious traditions, or empirical sciences. I call this the post-Hegelian moment of Habermas's discourse on religion. I argue that the topos of philosophical translation poses a dilemma for Habermas: if the translation of religious intuitions into philosophical reason is too successful, then there is no point to preserving these intuitions qua "religious" (and thus, to some extent, impermeable to reason because linked to revelation); if the translation is not successful, these intuitions may get lost in any case, given the prevalence of other translations of moral and political concepts (for example, those engaged in from the standpoint of evolutionary biology). In the second part, I explain why Habermas needs to hold on to a notion of philosophical translation that does not eliminate the religious intuitions, despite their "irrationality." This has to do with the question of the memory of the Shoah as constitutive for the ideas of public reason in postwar German philosophy and theology. Here I discuss Habermas's sympathetic approach to the so-called critical political theology, developed by German theologians in the Federal Republic of Germany. The third part of this presentation takes up Habermas's "methodological atheism", which he offers as the solution to the problem of Athens and Jerusalem. I try to show why this atheistic standpoint with respect to religion enters into an irresolvable aporia. In this context, I compare Habermas's atheistic standpoint with that of Spinoza in light of their use of a conception of public reason to resolve the conflict between reason and faith. Adapted from the source document.