Volume 57, Issue 3, June 2019, Page 223-227.

The purpose of the article is to study the creative heritage of A. Pushkin and P. Chaadaev as catalysts of historiosophical reflections on the fate of Russia, which later took shape in the circles of Westernizers and Slavophiles. By comparing the positions of Pushkin and Chaadaev, the author finds out the reasons and consequences of the emergence and strengthening of the Uvarov ideological construction "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality", which is still the main identifying principle of Russian thought. Study of (...) theses of Pushkin and Chaadaev in relation to Russia; its attitude to Europe; the opposition of Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism gives reason to consider the general goal of the Russian autocracy through the dialogue of Russian thinkers. (shrink)

The author analyses the context and reasons for the change in Pushkin's understanding of history. The idea of Russia's special path, disagreement with the Decembrists, and the appeal to the history and personality of Peter I led to the evolution of the poet's views to anti-violent and, in fact, pessimistic attitudes.

This article discusses Vladimir Vasil’evich Veidle, a philosopher and scholar of cultural study of the Silver Age and a brilliant expert on Alexander Pushkin’s works. The focus is on th...

Born in 1799 in Moscow, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin - who has been called the “founder of poetic and literary language in Russian” (Belinski, Turgenev), “the first of the Russians” (Dos-toyevski), “the first Russian artist-poet” (Belinski), “the original model for Russian identity” (Grigoriev), “an extremely rare and perhaps unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit” (Gogol), “the sun of the Russian intellectual conception of the world” (Dostoyevsky) - could trace his roots back to African ancestors. His mother, Nadine Hanibal, was (...) the granddaughter of “The Negro of Peter the Great,” Abraham Petrovich Hanibal, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century fell victim to the black slave trade with the Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to study the importance of Pushkin's work in the age of scientific and technological progress, to identify and analyze the moral values that accompany the work and personality of Alexander Pushkin and are particularly relevant to our time. The article discusses the moral values of honor and dignity, the ratio between good and evil, concepts of duty, justice, love and friendship, happiness, freedom, creativity, patriotism, national idea, peoples’ friendship and the problem (...) of preserving Russian language in modern Russia. The article is written through the prism of interpretation of Pushkin’s creativity by Russian philosophers abroad and modern philosophers. The article deals with the problem of using neural networks that make it possible to reproduce the style of A. S. Pushkin. The author concludes about the relevance of the work of A. S. Pushkin in our days. The issues of preserving spirituality, moral values, national identity, and optimistic Renaissance perception of the world, of understanding the beauty of life, remain relevant and in demand in modern age of rapid scientific and technical progress, both in Russia and in the world. (shrink)

This article is devoted to Russian religious thinker Semyon L. Frank’s philosophical interpretation of Alexander S. Pushkin’s work. The article identifies the place and significance of the Pushkin...

The annual Kronos Philosophical Journal was established in Warsaw in 2012. The papers presented in the annual might be of interest to the readers from outside Poland, allowing them to familiarize themselves with the dynamic thought of contemporary Polish authors, as well as entirely new topics, rarely discussed by English speaking authors. Volume V/2016 comprises articles problematizing Russian phlosophy and literature as well as Ancient Greek philosophy and culture.

Part I: Theoretical considerations from the beginnings to the present day -- Chapter 1: Delexicalisation, relexicalisation and classroom application -- Chapter 2: collocation, interpretation, and context of situation -- Chapter 3: Semantic prosodies, irony, insincerity and literary analysis -- Chapter 4: Data-assisted negotiating -- Chapter 5: The analysis and creation of humour -- Chapter 6: Events in the context of culture, language events, subtext -- PART II: New applications -- Chapter 7: Alexander Pushkin and authorial intention -- Chapter (...) 8: Translating Pushkin: a case in point -- Chapter 11 : Contextualprosodic theory in the stylistics classroom --Chapter 12: Student-centred stylistics: does subtext read text?. (shrink)

The paper discusses for the first time the “philosophy of life” of the famous literary critic and philosopher of the first quarter of the twentieth century Yuly Isaevich Aykhenvald (1872–1928) in connection with his interpretation of Russian history and literature. The article examines the publications of Yu.I. Aykhenvald in the newspaper “Rul’” in the first half of the 1920s, stimulated by his participation in various philosophical discussions that took place at that time in Berlin (F.A. Stepun’s lecture “Tragedy and Modernity”, (...) S.S. Olden­burg’s report “Russian Literature and Revolution”). Special attention is paid to the report of Yu.I. Aykhenvald “On the question of the meaning of history”, read in the Russian Scien­tific and Philosophical Society on April 14 (1), 1923. It is shown that for a critic-philosopher, any revolution is always opposed by the “progressive force of history”, the temple of human existence built on the basis of everyday life for centuries. It is demonstrated that for Yu.I. Aykhenvald, daily life is full of great meaning and a special “metaphysical height”. At the same time, Aykhenvald’s attitude to everyday life is the basis of his literary preferences, due to this, the “natural symbolism” of Alexander Pushkin, Apollon Grigoryev, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev unexpectedly, but quite logically, turn out to be consonant with ideas of Vladimir Solovyov in his service to the beauty of world life, “overcoming flesh, spiri­tualizing matter, idealizing objectivity”. It is proved that the interpretation of everyday life is associated in the worldview of Yu.I. Aykhenvald with views both religious (the idea of “natu­ral Christianity” as the “imperishable myth of nature” underlying the entire natural world, the “real miracle” of dying and resurrection, which finds “refraction in the religious feeling of people”) and historiosophical (Russia’s destiny and its attitude towards Europe). (shrink)

This article analyzes the philosophy of Alexander Pushkin through the prism of his formulation “to think and to suffer.” The material for this analysis is Pushkin’s lyric poetry, his novel in verse...

I detect a specific attitude to Byzantium (“the Byzantine Enlightenment”) in Ivan Kireevsky’ Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” (1852). I qualify this attitude as Byzantinocentrism. I take that as a focal point and, against this background, consider the image of Byzantium in Kireevsky and some thinkers of his social circle. It allows me to trace the most important lines of attitudes to Byzantium in the Russian historiosophical literature and opinion journalism of the nineteenth century. I detect (...) two opposite lines in perceiving Byzantium in Kireevsky’s early social circle: the anti- and pro-Byzantine ones. The first line goes back to an anti-Byzantine message, characteristic of the epoch of Enlightenment. It found its manifestation in G. W. F. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I point to the traces of the implicit polemics with Hegel’s anti-byzantinism in Kireevsky and identify the context of these polemics in Arist Kunick. As well, I outline how these lines worked in Pyotr Chaadaev and Alexander Pushkin. Then I distinguish between how the image of Byzantium was presented, first, in Kireevsky’s earlier Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” and, second, in his last article “On the Necessity and Possibility of the new Foundations for Philosophy” (1856). In the latter article, which sees Byzantium as bipolar, I find another view on Byzantium. I suggest that this view on Byzantium as a bipolar entity goes back to Alexey Khomyakov’s Semiramis. My point is that this difference in the views on Byzantium is paradigmatic and it reflects a division that was present in the Russian Slavophile-conservative milieu of that time. I suggest that this division stands behind another division within the same milieu, which was politically oriented, the one in relation to the Greek-Bulgarian ecclesiastical question. I analyze how both monopolar (Byzantinocentric) and bipolar views on Byzantium were reflected in the Greek-Bulgarian question as it was considered by Alexey Khomyakov and Terty Filippov. I find a context for developing Kireevsky’s attitude towards Byzantium in François Guizot’s historiosophic scheme as well. (shrink)

The article examines the views of the prominent Russian politician and publicist Vasily Vitalyevich Shulgin, whom the author considers to be the largest ideologist of the “chieftain” political subculture in Russian political culture. Following Shulgin, the author distinguishes two fundamentally different models of power: “monarchical” type of power and “chieftain” type of power. V.V. Shulgin was one of the first Russian thinkers who, after Alexander Pushkin and Sergei Solovyov, considered the “golden age” of the Russian society to be (...) under the rule of “leaders-heroes”. Shulgin explained many of the problems of Russian statehood revealed in the early 20th century by the degradation of the Russian ruling class and specifically the Romanov dynasty. Under these conditions, the national leader P.A. Stolypin, able to bring the country out of crisis by evolution, had appeared “next to the monarch,” but he has not been appreciated by Russian society and it has caused a national catastrophe. The First World War has accelerated the degradation of the Russian government. The “democratic forces” that came to power in Russia for a short time could not nominate a new “leader” from their ranks. Shulgin foresaw that “intermediate figures” like the White generals or the Red diarchy of Lenin and Trotsky would eventually give way to the autocratic rule of an all-Russian “Chief,” who would combine the ideology of the Whites and the will of the Reds. (shrink)

Despite advances in treatments over the last decades, a uniformly reliable and free of side effects therapy of human cancers remains to be achieved. During chromosome replication, a premature halt of two converging DNA replication forks would cause incomplete replication and a cytotoxic chromosome nondisjunction during mitosis. In contrast to normal cells, most cancer cells bear numerous DNA deletions. A homozygous deletion permanently marks a cell and its descendants. Here, we propose an approach to cancer therapy in which a pair (...) of sequence‐specific roadblocks is placed solely at two cancer‐confined deletion sites that are located ahead of two converging replication forks. We describe this method, termed “replication blocks specific for deletions” (RBSD), and another deletions‐based approach as well. RBSD can be expanded by placing pairs of replication roadblocks on several different chromosomes. The resulting simultaneous nondisjunctions of these chromosomes in cancer cells would further increase the cancer‐specific toxicity of RBSD. (shrink)

Aims to show that the brain is not responsible for consciousness, and uses this assertion to explore profound love and human connection.

...If, in some places, backward science determines the remaining period by the lack of optimism only by the number 123456789, then our progressive science expands it to 987654321, which is eight times more advanced than theirs. However, due to the inherent caution of scientists, both sides do not specify the measuring unit of reference — year, day, hour or minute are meant. Leonid Leonov. Collected Op. in ten volumes. Volume ten. M.: IHL, 1984, p.583. -/- The modern men being as (...) a rule is proceeding in three relatively autonomous, but immanently coexisting, and each penetrating dialectically through other, and each contesting even cruelly with other, and each more or less dominating on other, differently in various societies, worlds: the first one of the barbarity, the second one the culture, the third one the civilization... Barbarity is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the unlimited will to act so as subject wants to do without any limitations of his activities... Culture is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the most ancient testaments, customs, traditions etc of the highestly sacrified appearence... Civilisation is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the reasoned or legitimated by social contracts, by profits, by expediency and so more constitutions, institutions etc... -/- Andrei Melnikov-Pechersky in his epic "In the Woods" says that there was a movement among the Old Believers in Russia, or a current that proclaimed Kostroma the new and, it seems, the only true Jerusalem, in an apocalyptic sense, of course, which in its spiritual scale was probably not inferior to the Bogomils, shakers, Mormons, or else and the whole Reformation in potential. In Western Europe, every more or less convex nuance of the history of a state or region (even if it is a small San Marino) is overgrown with almost a dozen institutions, not always state ones, by the way, in which almost every sneeze and step of very ambivalent historical subjects in a broad sense is studied. Especially in the young, but very pretentious America of the United States, which embodies all world justice. In our country, for example, even many leading humanitarian specialists do not realize the spiritual value of the Ipatievsky MONASTERY. The Russian writer Boris Shiryaev, who died quite a long time ago and in a very far abroad, devoted a special part of his documentary and artistic epic of wanderings "The Inextinguishable Lampada" to an entertaining and instructive, tragic fate of a kind of village monarchy in some Villages of the Kostroma province (I could not identify the area, and, frankly, I did not really try) in the early years The Soviet government. At the same time, all Russians learn about the French emperor Napoleon almost with their mother's milk how many percent of cyanide potassium was found in his hair, they reflect on Lermontov's "Airship" (probably, just not to "memorize" the imposed "Borodino" by heart). The events, of course, are incomparable, but the fact is significant. The outstanding national artist (if not to say a thinker of the Chesnyakov level) Grigory Pavlovich Kusochkin was glorified wherever, in whatever catalogues he was not included. Paris, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow... To look at some smear of luminaries like Picasso or Modigliani, international tourist routes are organized in the restaurant toilet using the finest marketing technologies, and we did not even know Grigory Pavlovich by sight until, thank God, a series of TV shows on all Russian channels was dedicated to him in one gulp. Why is this happening? Is it a consequence of poverty or the result of the conscious policy of the ruling elite of the country and the world? The regions of the Kostroma Region are Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia... Georgia! I served in the army there. In this small but very great country, judging even by the appearance of its President Shevardnadze, although it is smaller than the Kostroma region, there are so many different, but Georgian-speaking peoples! Kakhetians, Meskhetians, Imereti, Iveretians, Mingrelians, Khevsurs... Adjarians (mostly Georgian-speaking Muslims) even have their own autonomy. And some peoples are not Georgian—speaking at all — South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, even Assyrians. In the Kostroma Region, and in any Russian "province" — not much less: there are plenty of the same Georgians or Armenians everywhere, quite moderate, loyal, and so on. Having, as a rule, their own officially registered associations within the framework of cultural autonomy. Well done! And Israel! He is the only one with all his "illegal" (and I am for the fact that every nation knows better where its ancestral lands are) territories half the size of the Kostroma region. The total number of Jews worldwide, according to the "Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary" in 1987, is about 14 million. Meanwhile, the fate of Israel is being preoccupied (it is very instructive how he achieved this!) all the united nations of the world. In the Kostroma Region and its diaspora, it seems to everyone, and especially to its semi-migrant, Varangian leadership. I don't care if they build a public atomic bomb here in the form of a nuclear power plant or not. Because they do not know the value of this land, the greatness of its spirit. Kostroma is a holy land. I will immediately make a reservation that by Kostroma I mean not only the modern region, but the entire area that has ever historically been associated with Kostroma. The USSR is also a part of the great historical Russia. In this sense, even the entire era of the Russian Romanov Empire is the Kostroma region. Or: many toponymic objects of our native land are called mysteriously beautiful: Sharya, Shunga, Shekshema, Sholezhka, - we need to find out what kind of peoples — and where are they now? — we left such euphonious archetypal combinations, because these are our Kostromsky peoples, these are our Kostroma people. Or, say, the classic of American and world sociology Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin writes in his autobiographical scientific novel "The Long Way" that he studied at the Khrenovskaya (what a strong word!) teachers' seminary of Kostroma province, but in an administrative row for propaganda activities, gendarmes were taken by sledge to the prison of the city of Kineshma - is this not a fact for Kostroma, and primarily for him, local history, although Kineshma has long been attributed to the Ivanovo region, and Pitirim Alexandrovich is buried on the other side of the planet?! I have not the slightest doubt that Kostroma provided spiritual food, gave birth to and nurtured a huge intellectual diaspora with extremely valuable material on a national, global scale. And this is both in direct and indirect order, in the form of a chain reaction. Apparently, it is easy for an intelligent person to grow up in Kostroma, but it is impossible to live, and somewhere on the contrary. Therefore, it is not surprising that the geneticist academician D. K. Belyaev, who was born in the village of Protasov near Nerekhta, very close to Kostroma, glorified Moscow and Siberia with his discoveries and practical results, which immeasurably enriched the Soviet state treasury with foreign exchange income from the sale of the most valuable fur grown according to the biotechnology developed by him in a much shorter time than it usually turns out in nature. And in Kostroma, most likely, few people know who he is and what he is famous for. I will focus in more detail on one of the aspects of his great life. This happened back in the so-called pre-Perestroika times. In a series of his speeches, Dmitry Konstantinovich, based on the results of his and colleagues' research, emphasized, in his opinion, the determining role of the biological factor in shaping the content of human essence, of course, only in a philosophical, conceptual aspect. For some reason, this was opposed by a geneticist, as they say, persecuted at one time by the "senile" in selectionism (including human nature) by the Michurino-Lysenkoists, academician N. P. Dubinin, which personally remains incomprehensible to me until now. With a grateful curtsey to Academician Dubinin and his point of view, the famous French humanist, member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party Lucien Sav appeared on the pages of the Communist magazine. The material was clearly titled: "Problems are not only scientific, but also political." He very indecently attributed the views of academician Belyaev to "a reactionary ideology that tries to put genetics at its service, and more broadly, biology, in order to present all kinds of social inequalities of all kinds as inherent in nature itself"(1). I would like to see any ideology that does not try to "put this or that at its service," much less something worthwhile... A little later, the editorial of the Communist hit the "biologizers", and soon Dmitry Konstantinovich was gone. In short, it is only on the example of our fellow countrymen that you can write interesting, world-class essays on science and its history, but instead our scientists should fit their global potencies into a page and a half (good yet. if not entirely at their own expense), and then for at least three years to guess whether they will be published or not. Now it no longer surprises me how at one time, when, after reading the listener card I filled out, the sweetest girl from the IPKPON office at USU congratulated me for something. It turned out that the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of USU, doctor, professor, Honored Scientist, and now academician Konstantin Niko-laevich Lyubutin is a countryman, Kostromsky, or rather Manturovsky by origin, as I write below in the notes — we are Kostromendors. To him, my fellow citizen in the most subtle micropatriotic dimensions, I owe a lot in my professional and social development, even in survival. Because that's how it often turns out: you can be born here, sometimes you can live here... It's very hard. Maybe the Kostroma origin of an outstanding Russian historian of philosophy, organizer of science and education, educator and friend of a galaxy of people devoted to the Motherland and the cause is not a great milestone in the history of the region, but name me at least a dozen Russian cities on the scale of Kostroma, from where such intellectual ones would come out into the world and light luminaries like ours. No matter who you take from the world significance of the pillars of national (and world, and foreign, - even the great Rabbi of Lubavitcher spent three years in exile in a Campfire, — I learned from some foreign voices) history, literature, culture in general, technology, science and so on - you will always find someone, which is very directly related to Kostroma. Pushkin, Lermontov, Gorky. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, Pisarev, Uspensky, Katenin, Florensky, Savrasov, Kustodiev, Dyagilev, Mikhalkov, Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev; writers, artists, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, inventors, politicians... In some world-famous for its classic Russian provincialism, Kologriv has been storing, figuratively speaking, unique sketches, if not of Leo-Nardo da Vinci himself, then certainly of his school, almost since the seventeenth century. And not only that. Nevertheless, the well-known Chukhloma to the Fatherland, in addition to thinkers of the rank of Rozanov and Zinoviev (where should domestic philosophers mature and not be born, if not in Chukhloma, Manturov or Khrenknowswhere?), gave an actor of amazing, national, originality — Mikhail Pugovkin, who can not be confused with anyone, a role that no one will repeat. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We prove existence of mixed strategy equilibria for a class of discontinuous two-player games with non-compact strategy sets. As a corollary of our main results, we obtain a continuum of mixed strategy equilibria for the first- and second-price two-bidder auctions with toeholds. We also find Klemperer’s (2000) result about the existence of mixed strategy equilibria in the classical Bertrand duopoly.

"Alexander's commentary on Book 1 concerns the definition of Aristotelian syllogistic argument; its resistance to the rival Stoic theory of inference; and the character of inductive inference and of rhetorical argument. Alexander distinguishes inseparable accidents, such as the whiteness of snow, from defining differentiae, such as its being frozen, and considers how these differences fit into the schemes of categories. He speaks of dialectic as a stochastic discipline in which success is to be judged not by victory but (...) by skill in argument. Alexander also investigates the subject of ambiguity, which had been richly developed since Aristotle by the rival Stoic school."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

After having held through much of his career the view that our senses and our intellect falsify the world, Nietzsche published in Twilight of the Idols the claim that the senses do not lie at all. A preparation for this apparent change of mind has often been seen in BGE 15, where Nietzsche seems to recommend “sensualism,” at least for scientists working on the physiology of the senses. I try to characterize in some detail what “sensualism” means by drawing on (...) contemporary discussions and suggest a clarifying reading of the argument in BGE 15. Nietzsche’s attitude towards sensualism, however, is ambivalent. It is a suitable view to hold for scientists engaged in accomplishing “coarse tasks.” But there is a nobler way of doing science, exemplified by Copernicus and Boscovich who “triumphed over the senses.” I explicate this more nuanced attitude towards sensualism and suggest that the senses do not lie insofar as they show us change, that is, temporal relations between events, while they do lie about the events themselves. This happens to be a view that the eminent physiologist of the senses, Helmholtz, had arrived at in 1867. (shrink)

Many legal jurisdictions permit victims of targeted hate speech to sue for damages in civil courts. In the US plaintiffs may sue for damages using the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Indeed, back in 1982 Richard Delgado proposed the introduction of a new tort of racial insult to handle such cases. In South Africa plaintiffs can use the delict of injuria. Although there have been some successful lawsuits, the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress has been an (...) unreliable means of recovering damages for psychological harms caused by targeted hate speech. One major obstacle to recovery in the US has been the tendency of courts to view the use of racial insults, for instance, as too ordinary or commonplace to count as ‘extreme and outrageous conduct’. Even Delgado’s tort of racial insult would not recognise as a cause of action the mere use of a racial insult; the insult must demean. But once again this opens up significant leeway for courts to treat many commonplace racial insults as non-demeaning. In South Africa the courts have interpreted the delict of injuria using the abstract test of whether the speech ‘impaired the plaintiff’s dignity’. The open-textured nature of this test has led courts to diverge in their understanding of the dignitary threat posed by almost identical forms of hate speech. In this article I argue that these two torts and one delict should be comprehensively rethought. At the level of theory, we should think of them as protecting people’s fundamental rights to human dignity and the expression of human dignity as well as people’s fundamental rights to civic dignity and confidence in their civic dignity. And, at the level of practice, courts should adopt what I am proposing as two new legal tests for degradation and humiliation as a way of interpreting and operationalising these two torts and one delict in cases of targeted hate speech. (shrink)

There is much in Weinstein’s article to contemplate, but I shall limit myself to making the following four main points. First, I believe that debates concerning the normative standing of hate speech law are always improved by heeding the internal variety of such law, and although I can see something of that same care in Weinstein’s article, such as when he distinguishes between different forms of hate speech law based on relative detriment to the legitimacy of so-called downstream laws, in (...) some instances this care is lacking. Second, Weinstein plays up the importance of collective authorization or democratic legitimacy of downstream laws vis-à-vis “(a) the obligation of those restrained by the speech restriction to obey a downstream antidiscrimination law; and (b) the morality of enforcing the downstream measure against those whose participatory rights have been impaired by the upstream speech restriction.” These may be important aspects of what it means to detract from the legitimacy of downstream laws, but they do not exhaust the relevant aspects. Third, I think that Weinstein’s article ignores some important nuances in what I have argued about hate speech laws and political legitimacy, and ignores something that might be true of the relationship between political and democratic legitimacy, namely, it might be that political legitimacy takes lexical priority over and, therefore, cannot be traded off against, the collective authorization or democratic legitimacy of downstream laws. Finally, I believe that in describing my use of the precautionary principle as “plainly indefensible” Weinstein has done justice neither to the raw plausibility of that principle nor to how I applied it to the special silencing effects of hate speech. (shrink)

The article discusses the development of modern society. In the author’s opinion, the prediction of society development is not possible due to the spontaneity of social processes. The contemporary social development is characterized by transition values: strategic instability, permanent crisis, decay of morality, degradation of the ecological environment, increase of international terrorism, danger of nuclear war, etc. Each epoch, including an epoch of uncertainty, gives rise to its own mechanisms for regulating world development, which are based on the historical memory (...) of mankind, on the acknowledgment of the value of peaceful coexistence and the acceptance of human life as the highest value. Preventing war is the main value of world development. The crucial decisions of country’s further development are dictated by the security of the state. The author demonstrates that in our time the ideal of progress evolves from the concept of accelerated innovation changes into the ideal of sustainable development, which presumes the formation of new values as a condition for the transition to new strategies of civilizational development. The current system of economic growth has its own value foundation – a consumer society. The preservation of a consumer society or the transition to alternative development scenarios largely depend on the achievements of the social sciences and humanities. The future will come without our will, but are we ready to accept this alien and unpredictable future? That is why we cannot passively await the future. The future will not arise by itself, the future will be what we make it. (shrink)

This article describes a qualitative inquiry into the historical reception of Flemish television fiction broadcast by the monopolistic Flemish broadcaster BRT between 1953 and 1989. This is a relatively homogeneous period, both in terms of broadcasting policies and fiction output. What do viewers remember of this period? Can patterns be discerned in these memories, and if so, why? To answer these questions, this research uses semi-structured interviews with older viewers. First, the article discusses the particular problems of this method, mostly (...) ‘faulty’ memory and nostalgic reinterpretation. Then, the findings are presented, reflecting on processes of memory formation. One clear finding concerns the selective and homogeneous nature of memories; the same few serials are remembered in similar ways by most, leading to clichéd memories of the past. (shrink)