Suchergebnisse

In an effort to substantiate the fundamental areligiosity of morality and the amo­rality of religion, Richard Dawkins develops the argument from a universal moral ability that has evolutionary genesis and is therefore inherent in people, re­gardless of their religious beliefs. In his book The God Delusion (2006), he uses the results of a thought experiment conducted by M. Hauser and P. Singer, who were the first to put forward this argument, claiming that their test did not reveal noticeable differences in the moral modus cogitandi of believers and atheists. The aim of the article is to give a critical analysis of that argument as based on a false presumption. It is reduced to opposition: either morality has arisen in the course of natural evolution, and then religion has nothing to do with it – or morality has been the supernatural gift of God, and then evolution has nothing to do with it. The author proves that the results of the experiment do not give grounds for the ideological conclusions that those advocates of atheism build on them.

In an effort to separate morality and religion as mutually independent and hostile phenomena, Richard Dawkins put forward an argument from moral progress. Extremely influential in the atheistic propaganda of our days, it says that a grad­ual improvement in ethical norms and standards, human morals and behavior is noticeable in modern history. According to it, the Enlightenment with its secular­ization and promotion of secular humanism was the most important catalyst of this process. The aim of the article is to give a detailed critique of this argu­ment showing the inconsistency of its underlying views on the causes, "mechan­ics" and manifestations of the moral progress. The internal inconsistency of guide­lines and criteria of the progress is revealed, as well as the factual inaccuracy of the central thesis of a significant decline of violence in the world over the past three centuries.

Richard Dawkins is more than a biologist and science communicator. He is a guiding light, whose books are designed to spread the scientific naturalistic world­view as the only and absolutely true one. It is especially evident in his later militant-atheistic works, little related to science as such which have a philosophical and ideo­logical pathos. The purpose of the article is to give a critical analysis of the moral ar­gument that Dawkins develops in those works, substantiating the fundamental areli­giosity of morality and the amorality of religion. One of the lines of argument concerning the evolution of morality and, in particular, the origin of altruism is consid­ered in detail. In order to understand better the contradictions found in it, the dynamics of the British intellectual's views on these problems is traced in the context of sociobi­ological ideas and theories of the past half century. It is proved that in the sphere of evolutionary studies there is a more consistent and promising approach to the explo­ration of relationship between morality and religion than that proposed by Dawkins.

The Russian studies of John Amos Comenius' works rarely go beyond the limits of history of pedagogy. Meanwhile, the Czech thinker's legacy is wide and mul­tifaceted. The aim of the article is to explore a linguo-philosophic aspect of his teaching subjected to goals of global reform of the world in a context of Come­nius' eschatological views. It is shown that the aspect was developed in a form of the "universal culture of language". Main directions of that culture and their or­ganization according to which relatively simple and feasible projects devoted to cultivation of national as well as classic languages were subordinated to the most difficult and problematic one, namely creation of a universal, purely rational and artificial language, are considered. The system of beliefs and presumptions un­derlying that ultimate scheme is analyzed: firstly, its core including epistemic and theological convictions shared by Comenius with other designers and sup­porters of universal language schemes, and, secondly, its periphery which com­prised religious and metaphysic views distinguishing the Czech reformer's modus cogitandi. The research is supplemented with a translation of the chapter XIX 'The foundation of the Universal language' of Comenius' important treatise 'The Way of Light' (Via Lucis) (publ. 1668).

The life and work of John Dee (1527–1608/9), an English mathematician, eru­dite and occultist, remains an enigma that gives rise to intensive controversies, puzzles scholars, and nourishes imagination of mass culture makers. The aim of the article is to consider a magical practice of the late Dee and a unique narrative recorded in his diaries, in a context of the intellectual situation of that epoch. The analysis is concentrated on a role of those practice and narrative in dialectics of the search for the perfect language which took place in the West in 15th–17th cc. A technical facet of crystallomancy and its standing in the Renaissance culture as well as conditions and motives urging Dee to invest his years in practicing the magic of that kind. A special attention is paid to the course and results of re­vealing of the primordial tongue by the 'angels' and to the Adamic myth that accompanied the linguistic material and informed of substance, functions, and historical fate of Ursprache. It is argued that despite its reprehensibility crystal­lomancy took a relatively high cultural status and a wide spreading. Dee became its convinced adept due to a deep inner crisis caused by eschatological anxiety, collapse of traditional epistemology, and discontent with his previous intellectual initiatives. As spirits claimed, the language that they were imparting to him con­nected the protoplasts with God and angels in Eden and served Adam as a per­fect instrument of knowledge and magic. Explaining his lasting failure of com­prehending of the revealed language the spirits persuaded Dee that it was not time yet for activation of its potencies but that it was very near though known only to God. That time had never come in the magician's life. Nonetheless, glad­ness of (seeming) communication with the 'angels' compensated for bitterness of futile expectations.