Following World War I, a new artistic-social avant-garde emerged with the ambition to engage the artist in the building of social life. Through close readings of the works of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and László Moholy-Nagy whose careers covered a broad range of artistic practices and political situations, Victor Margolin examines the way these three artists negotiated the changing relations between their social ideals and the political realities they confronted. Focusing on the difficult relationship between art and social change, Margolin (...) brings important new insights to the understanding of the avant-garde's role in a period of great political complexity. "An ambitious effort. This book puts the masters of European Modernism into perfect focus as inventors, propagators, and practitioners of a visual language that continues to hold sway over contemporary graphic style."—Steven Heller "Worth the wait.... Margolin usefully presents what he calls the 'failed hope' of this movement in this valuable effort."—Publishers Weekly. (shrink)

This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

First comprehensive introduction to information theory explores the work of Shannon, McMillan, Feinstein, and Khinchin. Topics include the entropy concept in probability theory, fundamental theorems, and other subjects. 1957 edition.

We argue that the most‐promising area of clinical application of microarrays in the foreseeable future is the diagnostics and monitoring of infectious diseases. Microarrays for the detection and characterization of human pathogens have already found their way into clinical practice in some countries. After discussing the persistent, yet often underestimated, importance of infectious diseases for public health, we consider the technologies that are best suited for the detection and clinical investigation of pathogens. Clinical application of microarray technologies for the detection (...) of mycobacteria, Bacillus anthracis, HIV, hepatitis and influenza viruses, and other major pathogens, as well as the analysis of their drug‐resistance patterns, illustrate our main thesis. BioEssays 30:673–682, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Frankfurt-type cases with covered manipulation received a great attention in the debates about freedom of will and moral responsibility. They pretend to give the refutation of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities and to show that we can intuitively blame or praise an agent who was not able to do otherwise. In this paper, I will try to make explicit some basic intuitions underlying the agent’s responsibility in Frankfurt-type cases, which were surprisingly ignored in the contemporary debates. The key intuition is (...) that the responsibility of the agent in Frankfurt-type cases is always grounded at the point of overcoming the uncertainty preceding action. This overcoming is crucially important for agent’s responsibility and immune to any manipulation of counterfactual intervener. (shrink)

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

I. "Filosofskiĭ paroxod": k istorii voprosa -- II. Respressii i permanentnai︠a︡ ėmigrat︠s︡ii︠a︡ -- III. Overkili russkoĭ filosofii -- IV. Postsovetskiĭ period: v poiskakh identichnosti -- V. Vozvrashchenie "filosofskogo paroxoda" (2003) -- VI. "Filosofskie avtobusy" -- VII. Samolet-paroxod-"filosofskiĭ poezd" -- VIII. Afinskiĭ kongress: prikosnovenie k istorii (2013) -- IX. "Uchitʹsi︠a︡ bytʹ chelovekom": XXIV vsemirnyĭ filosofskiĭ kongress -- X. Mezhdu proshlym i budushchim.

A collection of historical essays on human sexuality.

We are old birds, we know which obligations can be accepted and which cannot. Hence the strategy of sustainable development has been assiduously purged of all commitments that might make us look bad not only in two or three years but even in thirty years.

This article discusses the foundation of ideas for Vyacheslav Ivanov’s interpretation of Pushkin’s poem. In The Gypsies, Ivanov sees a conflict between personal freedom and sobornost’ as revealed b...

У статті проаналізовано вчення П'єра Абеляра в частині його впливу на виокремлення світської сфери знання з тотально релігійного середньовічного дискурсу. Схоластична теологія, творцем якої є Абеляр, розглядається автором статті як специфічний результат філософського мислення в граничних екзистенційних обставинах та маркер секулярних зрушень у середньовічній християнській культурі.

This article presents a report of the Fourth Immanuel Kant International Summer School devoted to Kant’s doctrine of war and peace (24-31 July 2022), organised by the Academia Kantiana of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University with the support of the “Petersburg Dialog” Forum. The lectures of the School’s scientific supervisor, Alexei N. Krouglov, address a wide range of topics: the sources of Kant’s doctrine on war and peace, Kant’s political views and their inherent contradictions, analysis of Kant’s treatise on (...) perpetual peace, as well as its early reception and current discussions. The conference of young scholars heard 22 papers whose content is reviewed here. Among the topics were the cultural, social and intellectual conditions in which the treatise on perpetual peace appeared, its influence on the creation of the League of Nations, the UN and the EU; intersections with twentieth-century philosophical projects were also covered. Some original interpretations were offered. (shrink)

This publication aims to analyze the economic, social, and cultural phenomena that first appeared in the "era of revolutions" that occurred in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The modern European trend toward tolerance, which is the basis of current social and cultural changes, including in our country, has specific intellectual grounds. The subject of the study was the ideosphere of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including philosophical, economic, and psychological concepts that gave rise to modern trends in these (...) areas. The result of this study was the determination of the reasons that caused the change of the ideological paradigm in Europe. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the intellectual foundations of the formation of tolerance as an actual socio-cultural phenomenon are analyzed. This article consistently proves that among the first such grounds, it is possible to determine the emergence of machine production and, as a result, the appearance of a mass person with a culture corresponding to them, performing a compensatory and entertaining function. The most important cultural foundation is mainly the intellectual "background" created by the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. The ideas of Anglo-American pragmatism played a significant role in forming a new morality, which included the denial of religion and its values, giving it a utilitarian character. During the subsequent historical period and at present, these views have become the basis for the creation of the so-called "individual faith," in which religion ceases to be the guide of human life but only serves the needs of the individual. The desacralization of religion leads to the study of different aspects of sexuality, which opens up the possibility for modern thinking about gender. The concept of "natural law" should also be attributed to the intellectual factors of the formation of modern European tolerance. (shrink)

People often use indirect speech, for example, when trying to bribe a police officer by asking whether there might be “a way to take care of things without all the paperwork.” Recent game theoretic accounts suggest that a speaker uses indirect speech to reduce public accountability for socially risky behaviors. The present studies examine a secondary function of indirect speech use: increasing the perceived moral permissibility of an action. Participants report that indirect speech is associated with reduced accountability for unethical (...) behavior, as well as increased moral permissibility and increased likelihood of unethical behavior. Importantly, moral permissibility was a stronger mediator of the effect of indirect speech on likelihood of action, for judgments of one's own versus others' unethical action. In sum, the motorist who bribes the police officer with winks and nudges may not only avoid public punishment but also maintain the sense that his actions are morally permissible. (shrink)