The article explores the concept of humanism both in modern discourse and in historical retrospective. Human has always been at the center of philosophy, regardless of what spheres of being were studied. Anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, and many other sciences explore various manifestations of a person, all of which are ultimately designed to answer perhaps one of the most critical questions – what makes us human? However, this discourse significantly changed over the course of two thousand years. For example, (...) Martin Heidegger points out an important nuance of the emergence of the concept of humanism, namely, as a kind of chauvinism – the division into humans (Romans) and non-humans (barbarians). This point of view is often overlooked, but it is critical to understanding the essence of this phenomenon. In the subsequent era of the Middle Ages, human was understood as the opposite of the divine, but in such realities, there were humanistic ideals and values. Already in the Renaissance, a return to the traditions of antiquity was announced, but the understanding of a person acquired a romantic character. Humanism clearly saw something more in a person than a person himself could demonstrate. It is for this metaphysical image that many critics of humanism have criticized this phenomenon. However, where there is criticism, there is progress, which is why this concept has gained a new round of discourse, which is why new trends have appeared that have brought the concept of humanism to a new theoretical level. As a historical phenomenon, humanism is faced with certain difficulties of new eras; because of these collisions, humanism is modified and adapted. Among humanism’s problems are multiculturalism, technological breakthroughs, and the need to search for new theories. In its development, the course of humanism takes on various forms and iterations. It is worth mentioning transhumanism (the idea of becoming someone more than just a human), posthumanism (philosophical views on human nature as a posthuman), and global humanism. (shrink)

The paper covers the origins, development, perspectives and solutions of the civilizational catastrophe of humanity. Humanity is defined as the restricted number of ideal, material, and temporal qualities of human beings. Its civilizational catastrophe is the contingent evolution of the specific element of human consciousness implementing rationality and technique, knowing no limits and no purposes, progressing outside ideal, material, and temporal boundaries of humanity, overcoming on its way limitations of human savagery and transcendental elements. Due to the particular (...) quality of civilizational development, the law of humanity catastrophe could be stated, as the stage of civilization is inversely proportional to the level of humanity in human beings. Civilization catastrophe couldfinalize into other-being or non-being of humanity. Its evolution canalizes into different fields of activity, which are named categories of humanity civilization catastrophe, because each of them leads towards cardinal qualitative changes of humanity or its annihilation. The basic categories are elimination – civilized ability of humans to kill one another, speedization – permanent acceleration of the overhuman speed of civilizational processes; babylonization – the cobeingof different collective qualitative realizations; supermanization – scientific production of over-human being; transsexualization – the negation of sexual immobility of humanity; ballastization – the overproduction of information; ritualizatin – the murder of simple love activity in Jesus manner into ecclesiastic discourse. The onlysalvation of humanity is the total negation of civilization and selftransformation of humankind on the basis of its transcendental element which is love knowing no exceptions. (shrink)

The article deals with attempts to explain the collapse of the Soviet version of modernity –and the disintegration of the USSR—in (post)-Sovietology and historical sociology. It is argued that (post)-Sovietological studies were often characterized by a certain degree of ideological bias. In these studies, the example of “Soviet collapse” was generally used for a confirmation of earlier approaches to Soviet history. At the same time, they mostly focused on the immediate preconditions of that event rather than on long-term historical processes. (...) The shortcomings of this approach can be overcome if we draw on historical sociology. The article considers the prediction of disintegration of the USSR offered by Randall Collins and Johann Arnason’s analysis of the Soviet version of modernity. Both sociologists characterized the Soviet collapse in the context of long-term historical dynamics. While Collins’s approach demonstrates a peculiar geopolitical determinism, Arnason singles out various factors of the dynamics of the alternative version of modernity. In the first half of the 1990s, Arnason applied his model of imperial modernization to the Soviet system, but later emphasized the civilizational aspects of communist modernity. This can also be seen in his evaluation of the Soviet collapse. In the literature on Soviet collapse, a contrast between the USSR and China is often highlighted, with structural and particularly economic factors being commonly highlighted. In contrast, the article argues that—for a comprehensive understanding of transformation processes in China—we need to consider the cultural sphere by drawing on sociological civilizational analysis. (shrink)

Article is devoted to research of the views of the Algerian philosopher and Muslim intellectual Mālik Bin Nabī (1905-1973) and reviews his sociological, cultural, historical and philosophical ideas. In his works Mālik Bin Nabī was writing about human society, paying special attention to the reasons for the decline of Muslim civilization and raised the issue of the degree of necessity, ways and forms of perception of its achievements. The author points to the complex approach of the thinker to the problems (...) of the civilizational revival of the Muslim world in the context of the phenomenon of nahda ( al-Nahda ), the main problem of which was and remains the problem of relationship with Western civilization. According to M. Bin Nabī, both in political and social aspects, Nahda is conceptually connected with the Muslims’ search for their own identity and a way out of the crisis generated by long centuries of colonization. In its broad socio-cultural context al-Nahda implies an authentic way for Arabs to meet modernity and constitutes one of the main concepts aimed at achieving a way out of the crisis and a genuine revival of the Muslim world. He sees the ways of solving this problem through the expression of the social values of Islam, arising from the moral and ethical foundations of the Islamic religion, which, in his opinion, affect the restoration of Muslim identity in all realms of existence of the global universe. The thinker proposes a way for the productive revival of the Muslim world based on a harmonious synthesis in line with the merging of the achievements of Western philosophical rationalism and the Islamic religious heritage. In addition, in order to unite the efforts of the Afro-Asian peoples in the face of colonialism, the cultural and economic expansion of the West and the true revival, ultimately, of all the peoples of the East, M. Bin Nabī developed the concept of Afro-Asianism, in which he puts forward the tasks of a globalist scale, pursuing again revival goals. According to the ontological differentiation of M. Bin Nabī, present in the ratio of man, time, space, it has an Islamic basis. This aspect can play an important role in both positive and negative reorganization of the world by man. This situation is directly related to the issue of what meaning people give to the world, as well as the level of their responsibility for that. (shrink)

The heritage of civilizations in geopolitics is progressively used to consolidate the vision of a multipolar world and, thereby, to establish its important place in the arena of international affairs. Civilizational heritage and civilizational imagination become increasingly important geopolitical factors which begin to shape the relations between China, Russia, Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In global politics during the last decades, in one way or another, Samuel Huntington’s ideas of the interactions between civilizations and their (...) development externalised with the stress on the increase of civilizational conflicts. These ideas made great impact on political elites of main world powers. The author of this article—drawing attention to the importance of cultural and especially religious factors for civilizational processes and the interactions between civilizations, which were also raised by Huntington—examines the peculiarities of the Russian and Turkish civilizational and geopolitical discourses, and connects to those discourses the current geopolitics pursued by the political elites of these countries. The promotion of the current role of the civilization and its geopolitical legacy highlights the uniqueness of civilizations and creates an effort to strengthen the civilizational imagination and to use the civilizational imperial experience and its cultural heritage in current political events. The Russian discourse is characterised by the historical anti-Western and anti-European attitude of Eurasian Messianic civilizational distinctiveness, while the Turkish rhetoric is characterised by the elevation of the imperial Ottoman Islamic cultural and political heritage. Both the discourses are linked by an imperial mentality, orientation towards a multi-civilizational and multi-polar world as well as the demand to create a new world order in line with such an emerging worldview. The article also discusses some of the ideas prevailing in the European Union that underpin the policy of creating a post-national European cosmopolitan community. However, such discourse lacks a cultural, civilizational as well as religious heritage, which brings people together and can form a long-lasting sense of civilizational community. (shrink)

Modern Ukraine is a post-colonial, post-totalitarian state in which decolonization, decommunization, and de-Russification have not yet been fully implemented. This article sets itself the goal of reviewing the agenda of the processes of civilizational transit of Ukraine and developing theoretically grounded vectors of the said process. The important fact that the current stage of development of the “worldview gravity” of Ukrainian society is characterized by an eclectic system of stereotypes is also of significant importance: here coexist both old (...) stereotypes of consciousness and behavior, which have largely ceased to fulfill their functions, and new ones that are unstable and ambiguous. The series of ideas regarding the Ukrainian civilizational choice was already discovered in a monograph, “Civilizational crossroads of modern society,” and presented for Ukrainian readers a few years ago. The current article offers a revision of the previously presented ideas for the international audience of the journal readers, taking into account the current Ukrainian sociocultural situation, at the center of which are the challenges produced by the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The policy of new realism can become an effective tool for social modernization. The given word combination is not accidental: the realism of this type of politics insists on the need for the adequate perception of reality in all its essential aspects, and the novelty emphasizes the need to operate not with the laws and features of the socio-political status quo “in general,” but taking into account the latest dynamics, trends, threats, and problematic challenges. The people and the country need not only (and sometimes not so much) a thorough understanding of their cultural-civilizational, geopolitical, and economic-economic prospects but an indomitable character that guarantees the realization of their potential in spite of anything and against anything. On the difficult path of establishing a civilizational choice, Ukrainians will need not only the awareness of the incomplete state of political modernization, the limited, post-totalitarian (post-colonial, etc.) status, but also to work at the individual level to accelerate evolutionary processes. These processes can catalyze political decisions, not at the declarative level but at the practical level, to fill the steps for the approval of the civilizational choice with content. Step-by-step changes in favor of a new worldview horizon will require significant changes at the personal level through the rejection of destructive post-colonial (post-totalitarian, etc.) narratives in social practice in favor of the development of Ukrainian national identity, which will be preceded by the rational assimilation of the perspectives of civilizational choice, which is a fruitful combination of the European civilizational project and heritage of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

_ Purpose. _ The article highlights, on the one hand, the impact of the potential of a developed reflective identity on the processes of civilizational transformations, and on the other hand, the role of the transformational processes of a civilizational scale in the formation of a new type of reflective identity. Acute crisis processes in social development, which humanity has faced so far, in particular after 24.02.2022, indicate the beginning of a radical civilizational transformation. Therefore, in the (...) article, it is necessary to find out with the help of which mental, organizational and personal resources humanity can move to a more developed level of civilization without much loss. It is also necessary to show the importance of the philosophical understanding of reality in the formation of reflective identity because reflection has been the basic method of philosophy since its appearance. _Theoretical basis._ There is an understanding of the inextricable connection between the level of development of civilization and the level of reflective development of the individual fixed in a certain type of identity: a more historically developed stage of civilization corresponds to a more complex type of identity with multi-level reflection. At the same time, achieving a higher level of civilizational development is possible only under the condition of constructing a more complex and multi-level reflexive identity. _Originality._ It consists in establishing that the mental-cognitive mechanisms of reflection during the development of civilization passed through the stages of 1) reflexive forms of "the Axial Age", fixed in the corresponding forms of moral, logical, theological, political, etc. culture since the era of Ancient society; 2) reflexive forms of the Modern era with an emphasis on the inner world of man, the emergence of the reflective division into subject and object of knowledge as an essential feature of epistemology, as well as the formation of a modern type of identity; 3) the dual reflection of the post-industrial society and the Second Modern era, the mechanisms of which contribute to the formation of an active and self-sufficient network society and network crowdfunding economy. In this regard, at various stages of the development of civilization, in accordance with certain reflexive mechanisms, the corresponding types of identity are formed: 1) the basic identity of a person determined by his primary socialization; 2) reflective identity which is associated with the acquired cultural potential of a person and the opportunity to consciously choose special features of one’s own identity, and 3) identity which is associated with the existence in a given social culture of a mechanism of double reflection, which allows not only to make a valuable choice of the trajectory of development own identity but also to construct it. _Conclusions._ The aggravation of the identity problem in the modern world is the result of a civilizational crisis associated with the transformation of modern civilization, the technological basis of which is the introduction of renewable energy and artificial intelligence, as well as the development of network relationships in society. The hierarchical structure of modern identity is conditioned by the gradual historical and civilizational layering of the process of evolution of the reflexive component of identity. In each specific modern society, progressive civilizational transformations take place when an innovative type of identity coexisting with basic and modern types is activated and takes a leadership position. The growing role of network relations in society overcomes the identity crisis due to the reduction of social opposition and the harmonization of different aspects of the identity itself. Perceptible climatic changes and the destruction of the established security system in the world after 24.02.2022 made it obvious to the global thinking public that the world community is at the bifurcation point of a radical civilizational transformation. (shrink)

The book makes a unique contribution to civilizational theory. It traces contemporary social and political crises in Western and Eurasian societies to a process of civilizational decline initiated by war and revolution last century and now being completed by globalization.

Summary. The article deals with the close link between the diminishing influence of the Moscow Patriarchate on social and political processes in Ukraine and the restoration of the Ukrainian cultural and civilizational space. Namely, the gradual deprivation of Orthodox believers of the post-imperial syndrome, including attitudes, perceptions, behavioral models, etc., associated with the stay of Ukrainians in the foreign-language and other people's mentality and culture of the empire. It is noted that the receipt of the Tomos on recognition of (...) autocephaly and the constitution of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by Orthodox believers of Ukraine has a positive impact not only on the development of the OCU itself, but also the level of patriotism, restoration and development of the Ukrainian-speaking environment, archetypal traditions, rituals, behavior models, etc. The conclusion is about the religious aspect of promoting Ukrainian development from the Asian to the European cultural and civilizational model. (shrink)

T opicality of the study of eurocentrism essence is caused by progressive globalization, the assertion of the systemic integrity of the world that highlites fundamentally new accent on the nature of the interaction of individual civilizations, leads to the unification of the civilizational process, its subordination to common principles and values. In philosophical and sociopolitical thought, the question of further orientations and development priorities of countries and peoples has recently become particularly acute. Analysis of the literature. We used (...) the works of the authors, who began the study of this problem: Z. Bauman, Zb. Brzezinski, U. Beck, I. Wallerstein, V. Inozemtseva, S. Kara-Murza, M. Castells, Claude Levi-Strauss, I. Osinsky, A. Panarina, A. Toynbe, F. Fukuyama, S. Huntingtonа, O. Spenglera and others, as well as the work of native scientists: Y. Afonina, V. Voronkova, A. Galchinsky, O. Gnatyuk, V. Gorbulina, L. Gubersky, O. Pakhlevskoy, Y. Pakhomova, S. Pirozhkova, M. Popovich, G. Shchekina. Purpose of the article – philosophical understanding of Eurocentrism as an ideological phenomenon and socio-political practice. The objective of the study is an analysis of the essence of the phenomenon of Eurocentrism, a description of its basic principles, a place in the life of Europe and in the world as a whole, the study of the peculiarities of the Ukrainian choice in modern conditions. The methodology of the study relies on an interdisciplinary approach, the principles of historicism and global evolutionism, the use of methods of analysis and synthesis, synergy to solve the complex problems of the dichotomy "we / they", "West-East" and their influence on the formation of a new world order. The results of the study: the article deals with the historiosophical basis of Eurocentrism, European universalism and European civilization. It reveals the methodological vulnerability and limited Western-centric interpretation and periodization of the historical process, reducing the diversity of past and future specific historical forms of its implementation to one of the possible. The idea of polycentricity, the existence of other models of social development is well grounded. In the context of new global trends of world development, each civilization is self-sufficient, distinctive in its originality and historical experience, and should develop through the self-knowledge of thenations inhabiting it and thereby fulfill its mission on the Earth. The conclusions of the study – progressive globalization and the formation of the systemic integrity of the world heighlight fundamentally new accents when it comes to the "unity of civilization", the interaction and interaction of different communities and cultures. The unity and integrity of human existence presupposes its diversity, the preservation of cultural identity and features of lifestyles, the mentality of nations and ethnic groups but not the subordination to a single model of civilizational being. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to analyze various approaches to the processes of formation of the Russian civilizational identity in the context of modern Russian nation-building and modernization of education. The article substantiates the relevance of the growing civilizational paradigm of Russian education in accordance with the value orientations of the updated Constitution of the Russian Federation, the foundation of which is the course of positioning Russia as one of the civilizational poles of multipolar world development. (...) An important condition for the construction of the Russian civilizational identity is the dissemination of ideas about Russia as a state-civilization in the socio-pedagogical space. As a result of the analysis, the authors come to the conclusion that the modern model of national and civilizational identity should be built as a multi-level education, in which the Russian civilizational identity is complemented by the image of Russia as a Eurasian civilization. It is this image that can act as a certain supra-civilizational level, acceptable in other civilizational formations, which logically fits into the modern geopolitical vector of Russia, aimed at the formation of socio-economic, political and military institutions in the Eurasian space. (shrink)

In the article the socio-political and socio-economic processes of the modern post-industrial society and the possible prospects of its future are analyzed. Existing at this moment concepts of the historical process, in particular, formational, civilizational, theories of modernization, do not provide an adequate analysis of the processes taking place in society. Thus, according to the theory of local civilizations, the basis of civilization are unique cultures that are resistant and incapable of self-transformation. However, the modern world is an (...) expansion of multiculturalism. After the collapse of the socialist system the formational theory is discredited in public opinion. However, some of the provisions of this theory remain relevant. The theory of modernization is not universal and it is used in some cases of social researches. At the same time, the author does not share the point of view expressed by Samuel Huntington about the nature of the conflicts taking place in the world as a clash of civilizations. The article suggests that the essential processes taking place at the end of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st century in the world, linked to two factors. The first factor is change in the political map of the world, redrawing of borders, change in the political balance of power. The second factor is more significant. It is the aging of formational changes which nature remains open. But their focus will be directly determined by common culture, state of public consciousness and spiritual development of society. (shrink)

Summing up the decade's state independence of Ukraine, it is necessary to note certain positive changes in the life of the people, in particular in the spiritual sphere, which is most often associated with national and religious rebirth. One can argue about the pace and scale of these processes, but they undoubtedly changed the direction of the historical development of our state, which seeks to rethink its past, to decide on its present presence in the cultural world, to make the (...) right civilizational choice. (shrink)

The problem of identity and identity of the individual, which exists throughout human history, is particularly acute at the intersection of epochs, when existing knowledge and skills are not enough to understand the processes taking place in society, history, and nature, and new theories and tools have not yet been developed. When a civilization was faced with a paradox, when it was decided whether to live as before or accept a new one, it was individuals who were able to go (...) beyond identity that showed a new path. It went against the existing dogmas, against identity. Moreover, over time, man had to accept many more rules and restrictions than at the beginning of his existence. At the intersection of epochs, there was an infusion of new ideas into society. This was done by people who did not just see the future in dreams or nightmares, but were able to imagine what the implementation of a particular postulate in the life of society entails. There was a crisis that literally buried all the old ideas about the world around us and other communities. It was then that the metaphysical perception of the world took on a real form, which, nevertheless, had to be worked out for the sake of the existence of society as a whole. (shrink)

Socio-cultural and political transformations that are taking place in the modern world under the influence of globalization, predetermine the growth of scientific interest in the history and the theory of shaping the group unity.The coverage of various aspects of this problem is found in the works of foreign philosophers (M. Gibernau, S. Huntington, E. Hiddens, B. Yak, et al.), which focus their primary attention on studying the factors, contributing to the emergence of communities in the modern world, while distancing from (...) the development of universal explanatory schemes for the process of forming the collective unity at various stages of the historical development of society.Some Ukrainian researchers (Y. Hrytsak, V. Kravchenko, H. Kasyanov, et al.), who, in contrast to foreign scholars, pay more attention to studying the various aspects of Ukrainian nation-building, are approaching the above problems from a bit different angle of view to solve them. Undoubtedly, the work of these researchers thoroughly and fully covers the history of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, explains the reasons or factors that contributed to its appearance. Meanwhile, they do not have sufficient potential to explain the causes of the cultural fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society, which, in our opinion, has become a logical consequence of the undivided domination in the Ukrainian intellectual discourse of the paradigm of perennialism, within which the cultural identity of the community appears to be a kind of “entity or reality.” Proponents of this position believe that the cultural diversity of nations emerged in the early stages of social development. Within this outlook, Ukrainians, as a mentally and culturally distinct community, have always existed. Of course, their culture has been developing and enriching in the process of historical development and intercultural communication, while its original spiritual and symbolic core remaining unchanged.Despite the fact, that renaissance has a rational grain and can become themethodological basis for very effective national consolidation strategies, one should not ignore its failure to explain the causes of the cultural and civilizational fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society. In our opinion, the solution of this issue requires a comprehensive understanding of the origins, mechanisms and factors, and the formation of a culturally homogeneous Ukrainian cultural space. In view of this, the purpose of our work is to uncover the theoretical preconditions and mechanisms for shaping the cultural identity of Ukrainians in the XIX and early XX centuries. Instead, the task of the work is to highlight the ideological foundations of the growth of scientific interest in folk culture in foreign and Ukrainian intellectual discourse and to reveal their significance in the process of thematizing the modern Ukrainian identity.Methods.The interdisciplinary approach and the principle of unity of the historical and logical have become a methodological basis of scientific research. Methods of historical and philosophical reconstruction, cultural analysis, and extrapolation have been also widely used in the process of research, as well as the fundamental principles of hermeneutics, which have been taken into account.Results. The dominance of the educational enlightenment-cognitive paradigm has contributed to the growth of scientific interest in the cultural identity of peoples, which, according to the prevailing beliefs, has been most clearly preserved in folk poetry and ancient literature. The study of the latter has resulted in the outbreak of ethnographic and linguistic exploration, which facilitated the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian language to literary use, thereby contributing to the thematization of modern Ukrainian identity. (shrink)

Objective – is to formulate a methodological discourse regarding the place and role of the language interconnected with the process of socialization of a person and develop a systemic idea of the corresponding functional features. -/- Materials & Methods – this discourse is formulated on the basis of a systemic idea of the personality socialization, which, in turn, is realized using the structural-ontological method of studying the subject matter field in interdisciplinary researches. This method involves the construction of special (...) visual-graphic matrices that reflect the interaction of the primary process and the material of the studied system. -/- Results. The work with the structural-ontological matrix made it possible to analyze the functions of the language in the context of such significant factors of socialization as complex psychodynamics, civilization space and the function of reflection. At the same time, reflection is considered at the level of two plans – primary (reflection-bond) and secondary (reflection-splitting). This made it possible to deduce the idea of the role of language beyond the traditional framework of working with text and analyze the place of the language in the context of activities to establish a connection between individuals, which is realized in a specific cooperative situation (Shchedrovitsky). In particular, the look at language as a specific tool of civilizational rationing, the mechanism of which is provided through reflection-communication. Thus, the language is examined through the prism of its systemic influence on the morphology of the psyche. -/- Conclusions – a structural-ontological analysis of the place and role of language in the process of personality socialization has led us to construction of a hypothesis about the phenomenon of language discontentment, as a tendency to distance away ego-consciousness in the process of individuation from linguistic ontology. The arguments were also advanced in favor of the assumption regarding the peculiarities of the influence of language discontentment on cultural activities and the psychodynamic contribution of this phenomenon in the midlife crisis (Jung). (shrink)

This article engages with Johann Arnason’s approach to the entanglements of culture and power in comparative civilizational analysis by simultaneously reframing the themes of the civilizing process and the public sphere. It comments and expands upon some key insights of Arnason concerning the work of Norbert Elias and Jürgen Habermas by adopting an ‘Islamic perspective’ on the processes of singularization of power from its cultural bases and of reconstruction of a modern collective identity merging the steering capacities and (...) the participative ambitions of an emerging urban intelligentsia. The Islamic perspective provides insights into the interplay between civilizing processes and the modes through which cultural traditions innervate a modern public sphere. By revisiting key remarks of Arnason on Elias and Habermas, the Islamic perspective gains original contours, reflecting the search for a type of modernity that is eccentric to the mono-civilizational axis of the Western-led, global civilizing process. While this eccentric positioning entails a severe imbalance of power, it also relativizes the centrality of the modern state in the civilizing process and evidences some original traits of the public sphere in a non-Western context. (shrink)

The relevance is due to the socio-cultural and civilizational importance of training specialists in the field of cultural process management. The purpose of the work is the articulation of the philosophical-anthropological, teleological-causal, organizational-praxeological foundations of the educational-professional program “Cultural Studies: Cultural Process Management”. It is proved that the philosophical and anthropological basis contains a syncretic image of a person, which arises at the intersection of three images – a person who is capable for symbolic activity, producing different (...) forms – science, art, literature, philosophy, religion etc. (homo symbolicum), a person who is able to perform mediating functions (homo mediator), as well as a person who knows how to manage complex cultural processes through the search for a common measure of interaction (homo moderator) like Pericles, Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet etc. It is realized that the teleological-causal foundation contains, on the one hand, the complementarity of the transcendent (wisdom, goodwill, beauty, justice etc.) and immanent (specific socio-cultural projects) goals of culture, and on the other hand, a set of causal mechanisms for their achievement and compliance. It is realized that the relationship between the goal and the means is such that the more complex the goal, the stronger the role of the means, and because of this, it has a singular character, that is, it is determined in each individual case. It is established that the organizational and praxeological foundation underpins it in the context of interdisciplinarity, which corresponds to the current – synergetic – state of existence and development of scientific knowledge with the inherent processes of nonlinearity, stochasticity, probability, randomness. (shrink)

Explanation of inversions in Russian history causes major conceptual problems. The traditionally used conceptual apparatus and its theoretical schemes does not seem to really “grasp” this reality, at best, it only describes the Russian reality to some extent. It simply fails to capture the nature and mechanisms that lie in the specifics of Russian society and its dynamics. Hence, there are widespread conclusions about “pathology,” historical “rut,” constant matrix, and endless reproduction of the “predetermined” characteristics of social life in Russia. (...) However, expanding the conceptual apparatus with a constructive approach, combined with a specific historical approach, makes it possible to single out more than one agent of modernization processes (political elite, merged with state authorities), but at least two - authority and society taken discreetly. From this point of view, the inverse nature of Russian modernization has two causes. One of these is social, associated with the peculiarities of Russian society, where underdeveloped social forces are dominated by the imperious will. The second cause is related to modernization attempts based on external historical experience. However, due to the former cause, these attempts turn out to be premature and ill-conceived, giving rise to new conflicts and deformations in society. Both causes are complementary and intertwined. At the same time, there are general civilizational processes, such as urbanization and formation of a mass society, modernization processes in Russian society, including the formation of national identity. This creates prerequisites for a qualitative change in the development of society. If the main factors of inversion “from top down” are hasty and imitative, then doing things “from bottom up” presupposes slow development of the middle class, which, nevertheless, creates conditions for real mediation. (shrink)

The paper describes the origins of sports sociology in Great Britain within the “Leicester School” of Historical Sociology of Norbert Elias, explaining the causes for the strong influence of the ideas of Elysianism on the present-day international sociology of sports. The overall development of the historical and sociological “Leicester School” of the 1960s and 1970s, its influence on the sociology of Great Britain, as well as the role of Elias and Ilya Neustadt in its formation are shown. The contemporary historical (...) and sociological tradition of social analysis, inspired by the ideas of Elias and called the ‘sociology of process’ or ‘figurative research’, is described. Its key features are indicated: focus on relations–in–progress, relativism, studies of phenomena in their dynamics, the collection of historical materials, comparative analysis, and interdisciplinarity. The seminal works of Eric Dunning and Elias on sports sociology are considered, in addition to the early development of this field of studies. It is noted that both authors viewed sport and leisure activities as a means to understand society and proposed a sociological interpretation of sport as a tool for the civilizational process. Their work was based not only on a theoretical framework, but also on extensive historical research. This contributed to the early acceptance of the ideas of Leicester School during the establishment of international sports sociology in the 1960s. The paper is based on an informal interview in 2010 with Eric Dunning, the founding father of the British Sociology of Sport, co-author and student of Norbert Elias. (shrink)

The French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote provocatively about world civilization from his dual expertise as paleontologist and Catholic priest. This paper will extract from his many writings references to civilizational process in terms of his concept of the noosphere, that is, the transhuman accumulation of knowledge. Basing himself on the notion of a geogenetic process that he described in his important publication, Le Phenomenene Humain (1955), de Chardin considered the evolution of humankind to involve not (...) merely the change of individual members of the species, but in the development of the capacity to shape the earth and its forces by the invention of technology. He foresaw the human creation of a new level of understanding (some would say this is the cyberspace of the Internet) that would be the achievement of a unifying human civilization. The impulse to contribute to and benefit from this wealth of shared knowledge constituted for the Jesuit a quasi-magnetic force that brought together disparate human experiences. Borne in part by his religious faith, de Chardin described in a second masterpiece, Le Milieu Divin (1957) this unifying force as “love”. When a new world civilization learned to harness this kind of love in common purpose, said de Chardin, “for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire”. Possibly because of his religiously tinted language and mystical orientation, Teilhard has not always been viewed a contributor to the field. This paper will offer suggestions for ways to incorporate the French Jesuit among the sources for civilizational analysis. (shrink)

The paper states that the world as a self-ruling system needs creation of its new concept based on philosophy of harmony. Harmonic foundation-building of the world system, safeguarding the turning strategy of the world from non-balanced into balanced development, formation of world order on the basis of convergent idea on world unity of nationstates, the leading way of integral globalization contrary to unipolar globalization are the principal conditions of the world’s progress. The necessity on creation of harmony in the world (...) occupies an important place in the practice of international social, political, economic and civilizationalrelations. Global civilization, which appears as a result of historical development of humanity, the evolution of philosophical idea of world unity, interaction of globalizational and civilizational processes and other specific development conditions, defines itself as a new stage of our planet. Through forming the organics of national cultures and local civilizations global civilization begins to create its own complex of common-universal behaviors and values. The historical and international importance of the globalization era is that it opens its very successful perspectives having rational basis of world development towards global civilization not in a spontaneous, but in a naturally determined movement. Global civilization comprising humanity’s potential harmonically is and will continue to be the principal project of world-building. (shrink)

This article examines the ways in which Islamic civilization has faced the challenges of the modern age and of globalization. The expansion of Islam in world history is itself a global or proto-global process with its own distinctive internal dynamics. The main challenge to modern Islam, coming from the global political culture in the form of constitutionalism and democratization and human rights, has set in motion a civilizational encounter that has significantly altered the politico-religious dynamics of the proto-global, (...) pre-modern Islamic pattern. The intermingling of these inter- and intra-civilizational processes is traced with respect to the subversion of constitutionalism by ideology during the 1945–1989 period, and the slow recovery of the rule of law since 1989. The same framework of civilizational analysis is used for understanding Islamic fundamentalism, and counter-global defensive developments in contemporary Islam. (shrink)

Ibn KhaldØun’s theory of history has been extensively discussed and interpreted in widely divergent ways by Western scholars. In the context of present debates, it seems most appropriate to read his work as an original and comprehensive version of civilizational analysis (the key concept of ‘umran is crucial to this line of interpretation), and to reconstruct his model in terms of relations between religious, political and economic dimensions of the human condition. A specific relationship between state formation and the (...) broader context of civilizational processes appears as the most central theme. This civilizational approach is then contrasted with the most influential recent Western interpretation, put forward by Ernest Gellner. Gellner translates Ibn KhaldØun’s analysis into functionalist terms and thus tones down its historical and civilizational specificity. The consequences are most obvious when it comes to discussing the unity and diversity of the Islamic world, especially with regard to the Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

The article examines features of the post-Soviet period of social transformation and state building of Belarus in the context of the comparative analysis of the Soviet (communist) and Western (capitalist) development systems conducted by the famous Russian philosopher and sociologist Alexander Zinoviev. The author pays attention to the reasons of the collapse of the USSR, according to A.A. Zinoviev, as well as to the search by the post-Soviet countries, including the Republic of Belarus, for their own ways out of the (...) current crisis. The author states that the most important task of gaining state sovereignty is associated not only with social and economic processes but also with the field of national self-consciousness and the specifics of the formation of national and cultural identity. This cause is related, among other things, with the national philosophy as a stable basis of intellectual cultural creation, the evolutionary formation of worldview and cultural values of people. The author demonstrates a tolerant nature of this process in Belarus which made it possible to avoid acute social conflicts in the country and to avoid the opposition of the Belarusian model of development and culture to the traditions and achievements of neighboring countries and the world civilizational process as a whole. Also the author demonstrates contemporary achievements of the Republic of Belarus in the sphere of socio-economic and scientific-technological development as the basis for further modernization of the country in new geopolitical conditions. The conceptual views of A.A. Zinoviev are multifaceted, they have contributed and continue to play an important role in science, culture, social development, socio-political practice. Zinoviev’s works are very valuable since they are still actual and serve as a good theoretical, ideological, and methodological basis in assessing modernity, including understanding socio-political processes that have developed today in the post-Soviet space, around Russia and Belarus, in relations between the West and the East. (shrink)

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better understood as (...) a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alternative to the dominant forms of political modernity. (shrink)

O artigo discute como Nietzsche compreende a instituição da lei e da moral em distinção a Kant e à tradição cristã. Ele argumenta que Nietzsche é, em grande medida, inspirado pela mudança de paradigma em direção a um pensamento biológico evolutivo, introduzido por diversos de seus colegas ao final do século XIX, entre os quais F. A. Lange, que vê esta mudança como uma sóbria alternativa científico-materialista a Kant. Em Nietzsche, a imperativa moral kantiana é substituída pela noção de uma (...) moralidade emergente graças a processos civilizatórios históricos ou pré-históricos, impostos a um ser humano de mente débil sem quaisquer disposições racionais inerentes a obedecer à Lei. Ela também é um processo que, em vez de universalizar o ser humano, o cinde em uma dualidade, em que uma parte obedece a antigos e imediatos interesses próprios, e a outra parte obedece a novos 'comandos', que lhe foram gritados 'aos ouvidos' por um chamado 'comandante'. A obediência à lei conduz a duas formas radicalmente diferentes em Nietzsche: indivíduos servis e medíocres precisam ser expostos à disciplina e à punição, para adotar a Lei; enquanto os chamados indivíduos 'soberanos' são capazes de impor a lei a si mesmos. A figura do 'soberano' vem consequentemente sendo o motivo de vigoroso debate, especialmente quanto à tradição anglo-saxônica em pesquisa por Nietzsche, uma vez que seu aparente 'respeito pela lei' e 'senso de dever' reiteram típicas qualidades kantianas. Em relação a essas discussões, sugiro que o 'soberano' de Nietzsche (em um contexto) seja idêntico ao 'comandante' (em outros contextos). Quando o 'soberano', como tal, impõe a lei a si mesmo e aos demais, sua ação é convencional e arbitrária (como a linguagem em Saussure), e é mais irracional que racional, como em Kant. Sua vontade não é uma vontade boa, nem uma vontade racional, com visão para a autonomia humana. Seu comando de si mesmo e dos outros é performativo, portanto, sem valor de verdade (como atos ilocucionários de fala em Austin e Searle). The article discusses how Nietzsche understands the institution of law and morals in distinction to Kant and the Christian tradition. It argues that Nietzsche to a large extent is inspired by the paradigm-shift toward a evolutionary biological thinking introduced by several of his peers in the late 19th century, among else F. A. Lange, who sees this shift as a sobering scientific-materialistic alternative to Kant. In Nietzsche, the Kantian moral imperative is replaced with a notion of a morality emerging thanks to historical, or pre-historical, civilizational processes, imposed on a feebleminded human without any inherent rational dispositions to obey Law. It is also a process, which rather than universalizing the human, splits it in a duality where one part obeys old immediate self-interests and another part obeys new 'commands,' having been shouted 'into the ear' by a so-called 'commander.' The compliance with law takes two radically different forms in Nietzsche: servile and mediocre individuals need to be exposed to discipline and punishment in order to adopt Law; while so-called 'sovereign' individuals are able to impose law upon themselves. The figure of the 'sovereign' has consequently been an issue for vigorous debate in especially the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Nietzsche research, since his apparent 'respect for law' and 'sense of duty' reiterate typical Kantian qualities. Relating to these discussions, I suggest that Nietzsche's 'sovereign' (in one context) is identical his 'commander' (in other contexts). When the 'sovereign' as such imposes law upon himself and others, his act is conventional and arbitrary (like language in Saussure), and is rather irrational than rational as in Kant. His will is not a good will, nor a rational will with a vision of human autonomy. His command of himself and others is a performative, thus without truth-value (like illocutionary speech-acts in Austin and Searle). (shrink)

This essay engages Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus as a salient intervention into modern political theory. I analyze the work as a cipher for the tensions inhabiting Euro-modernity’s stitched together fictions of racial determinism and racial dynamism legible in slavery, assimilationist projects and White fears reverberating throughout. Adapting the mythical ancient Prometheus as one who steals fire from the gods to create humans and civilization, Frankenstein dramatizes the risks and monstrous results of White imperial masculinity as a Euro-colonial (...) Promethean project of subject formation and race-making. Viewed through the prism of the Modern Prometheus, modernity in general and liberal humanism in particular are recast as monster-making projects. The European “discovery” of Indigenous peoples amplified Promethean aspirations to create subjects through civilizational processes of religious conversion, the infusion of Enlightenment rationality, and assimilation into whiteness. Politically, the Promethean capacity to engineer humans and proto-humans using Native peoples as raw material allowed progressives to argue against outright extermination in favor of cultural genocide. Seeking to create a subserviant species, Victor Frankenstein confronts a revolting insurrection of his own making—a Creature who refuses slavery, claims mastery over his creator and demands a female companion. Yet Frankenstein’s fear of creating “a race of devils” betrays a terror of what Whites know, but refuse to acknowledge, about themselves and racial others. (shrink)

This article questions the popular assumption that the concept of civilization that entered public discourse in a grand way with Samuel P. Huntington’s sensational article on a ‘clash of civilizations’ refers to any meaningful historical formations that can be identified across time and space in plural manifestations, apparently withstanding collapse, disintegration and a final withering away. Contrasting Huntington’s rather stable universe with A. J. Toynbee’s and Eric Voegelin’s radically different perspectives on an open-ended dynamics of civilizational processes makes it (...) possible to recognize that the sequence of institutional cycles and the succession of universes of symbolic meaning that accompany them may be limited. Civilizations are not natural phenomena but human constructs and have therefore limited timelines. Toynbee and Voegelin were facing an end of the history of traditional civilizations and all their pseudo-morphed variations. They envisioned something new would emerge out of the wasteland of meaning without clearly knowing what it would be. The political economy of globalization has certainly accelerated the terminal conditions of traditional civilizations that Toynbee and Voegelin had anticipated long before this modern endgame began. The signs of decay and death are overwhelming while the quests for a new universe of meaning are still in their infancy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the philosophical consideration of anthropological crisis in the risk society in his historical transformation. The research is aimed to anthropological analysis of the risk society in order to identify its new features in the modern era. As a methodological principle of research, the author defines the distinction between anthropological and cosmological approaches in philosophy. It is about their complex relationships and contradictions in the development of the civilizational process. The anthropological crisis becomes apparent (...) when society becomes a “society of risk” in the modern era. The article reveals the cause of the anthropological crisis in the risk society: the social production of wealth becomes the production of risks. In the XXI century there is a “world society of risk”, which is associated with the process of globalization. The risk research methodology suggests the need to anticipate unpredictable. The main difficulty in risk analysis is that the risk is between certainty and uncertainty, between rational and irrational. Two main trends - the reflexivity of the unknown and the cosmopolitan moment - point to a global change in the society in the 21st century, whose priority is security. In the historical and social philosophical perspective, security is understood as a concept that encompasses integrity, inviolability, inviolability with respect to corporeality, life and property. In the context of the modern anthropological crisis, security has become the main value concept of the social political language. The logic of uniqueness gives way to the logic of ambiguity, which finds its expression in the connection of the risk society with the cosmopolitism. The “cosmopolitan moment” of the world risk society presupposes recognition of the uniqueness of the Other as an opportunity to overcome the anthropological crisis. (shrink)

The article explores the manifesto of the Moscow Anthropological School, emphasizing the primacy of hallucinations in anthropogenesis. The current predicament of modern humanity urges the anticipation of something genuine and substantial. However, the essence of philosophy does not always align with the prevailing “spirit of the times.” Its mission is to pursue autopoiesis, scrutinizing society for its inherent flaws that impede progress. From this viewpoint, F.I. Girenok’s hallucinatory theory is entirely pertinent and justified. The narrative of civilization is typically portrayed (...) as a chronicle of discoveries and triumphs of rationality over irrationality. The history of fears and misconceptions, which not only persist from the past but also resurface, is less well-documented. Therefore, the program of the Moscow Anthropological School is far from being peripheral; on the contrary, it holds significant relevance. It furthers the tradition of inversion anthropology, initially established by N.Ya. Danilevsky, the first Russian critic of Darwinism. This anthropological tradition was particularly advanced by the concept of B.F. Porshnev and the research of contemporary authors like Yu.M. Boroday and V.A. Podoroga. Each, in their unique way, contributed to the critique of evolutionism and reductionism. F.I. Girenok’s concept evokes schizoanalysis, albeit devoid of Marxist influence, unlike G. Deleuze. All these aspects warrant a comprehensive philosophical discourse on the manifesto. Meanwhile, reports and discussions concerning F.I. Girenok’s theory revealed that not all participants are readily prepared to tread the path suggested by the founder of this theory, confining themselves to theological explorations instead. This, as per the author of the article, inherently signifies that hallucinatory and messianic anthropologies are complementary to each other. (shrink)

Civilizational analysis of the kind propounded by Eisenstadt and globalization theory are apparently wholly incommensurate paradigms, with radically differing visions of the contemporary world order, the former championing the notion of ‘multiple modernities’ and the latter envisioning a world of trans-national processes and institutions. This articles challenges such a dichotomizing view, and seeks to illustrate how in various ways they overlap and can come to inform each other. Particular attention is given to how a focus on inter-civilizational interactions (...) can lead to productive rapprochements between civilizational analysis and globalization theory, as it allows some of the themes of the latter to be analysed through civilization-analytic lenses. The pioneering work in this regard of Benjamin Nelson is shown to provide a basis for future civilizational analyses of globalization, especially in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

The process of reviving an independent democratic Ukraine with its desire to become a full member in the world civilization implies a comprehensive incorporation into the social and individual life of the civilizational foundations of life based on humanistic principles, values ​​and norms. The importance of the philosophy and methodology of education in shaping the consciousness of the young generation, not only on the basis of scientific understanding of reality and material realization of the relevant worldview, but also (...) at a higher spiritual and moral level with priority of universal values ​​is emphasized in the state program "Towards People". Its task is to overcome not only the socio-economic but also the spiritual and moral crisis, the transformation of Ukrainian society into a developed civilized nation. (shrink)

The article researches the historical transformation of the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism, which originally in ancient Greece did not have a pejorative connotation. This dichotomy has become relevant today to justify the classification of states according to their degree of acceptance of “civilization standards,” which are understood as the standards of the European model of development. The main features of the stereotype of the divide between civilization and barbarism, which took shape in the Roman era, have survived to the (...) present. The premise of “civilizational superiority” of European culture is accompanied by a moral depreciation of other civilizations, turning a barbarian into an enemy of civilization with an explicit racist connotation. Civilization itself is seen as a “vaccination” in the process of missionary work. There emerges the concept of “Eastern barbarism,” coupled with the concepts of terra nullis and the innate irrational behavior of the population of these countries, which justify the seizing of territories for a “more rational” resource management. This activity is historically accompanied by colonization and, in the modern world, by forceful forms of “promoting democracy.” According to the logic of the divide between civilization and barbarism, non-Western countries are doomed to imitate and perpetually fall behind, which causes the disunity of society and internal hostility of “second-rate Europeanized” nations. The Western mentoring has transformed from protectorate to the creation of governance structures that are headed by Western-educated local elites and are designed to change the cultural patterns of society. There was a conception that the world is divided into spheres, in the first circle of which there is a progressive civilized European world, followed by a number of countries similar in structure and values to the European model, and then there is a sphere of barbarism and backwardness. In the contemporary version, this theory presumes the division of states into “pre-modern,” modern, and post-modern states. It the conclusion, it is noted that this divide contradicts to the humane essence of culture and civilization process. (shrink)

The aggravation of the global environmental and military-political crisis has become evidence that the postmodern era has ended and the time has come for post-postmodern and profound civilizational transformation, the technological base of which is renewable energy and artificial intelligence; the main social environment is distributed capitalism (J. Rifkin) and social networks; and the main driving forces and mechanisms of social self-organization are humanity, competitiveness and double reflection (E. Giddens). Since humanity has not yet fully actualized the basic values (...) of survival and development and has not paid enough attention to the problem of climate catastrophe, more drastic measures to mitigate it will be implemented in the process of its deployment (A. Honnacker) and in the difficult conditions of military-political opposition to democracy and authoritarianism. One of the main rational worldview and practical guidelines of post-postmodernism is classical Pragmatism, which is based on human experience, an important element of which should be scientific knowledge, which is confirmed experimentally. Societies that are dominated by pragmatic and democratic egalitarian relations that promote human self-realization and creative freedom can channel natural aggressiveness into competition to improve the well-being of all its members. The ruling elite in totalitarian societies, in which man is humiliated and exploited, and in which aggressiveness accumulates due to polarization into upper and lower classes of the population, may start wars in order to prevent self-destruction from within, directing aggression outwards against other countries. Therefore, the global community in today's conditions needs to expand the worldview and orientation horizon of every citizen of the world from the everyday concerns of life support to the understanding and actualization of the absolute values of survival and development of humanity. Pragmatism, from a purely methodological point of view, is aimed at ensuring that a person is guided by life experience in his activity and cognition, putting forward certain hypotheses regarding his own activity and cognition, simultaneously and/or later experimentally testing these hypotheses on the basis of practical results. Thanks to the pragmatist approach, a person increasingly experiments with the choice of innovative behavior models and avoids predetermined outdated life guidelines and ideological grand narratives. Based on her own experience and online social communication with other people, he or she is convinced of the effectiveness of certain value models of behavior that have not only a socio-economic, but also a moral dimension. A pragmatist approach focused on global human values of survival and development is an important tool that should ensure urgent civilizational transformation and the avoidance of destructive environmental and military-political disasters. In the conditions of modern civilizational transformation, survival is possible only with a radical intensification of the development of human-centered social self-organization. (shrink)

ANNOTATION Sardak S.E. Global Regulatory System of Human Resources Development. – Manuscript. Thesis for the Doctor of Economic Science academic degree with major in 08.00.02 – World Economy and international economic relations. – SHEE «Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman», Kyiv, 2014. The preconditions and factors of the global economic system with the identified relevant subjects areas and mechanisms of regulation instruments have been investigated. The crucial role of humans in the global economic system as a key factor (...) of production, the main resource, the producer and the consumer of economic and social benefits that are exposed to global threats, problems, challenges, trends and subjects has been confirmed. There have been revealed the causes and consequences of the public institutions transformation under the influence of globalization, which formed a qualitatively new conditions for social and economic development that determine the need for further changes in the areas of conceptual guideline for the management of human resources development, optimization of tasks, state and international institutions activity forms, integration of efforts as for monitoring, planning and forecasting. The modern major instruments and spheres of international cooperation to ensure human development have been determined. The integrated characteristic of human resources and their role in social development both from the standpoint of their use in labour processes and as a medium of civilization and social utility with the help of the categorical classification system organizing and expanding which enables to design and apply the appropriate approaches at all managerial levels have been defined. The necessity and the concept of human resources development in the context of the content of managerial influence identifying (self-development, self-management and external control of development) at different administrative levels that ensures the growth of human capital to the limits of its potential have been analysed. The survey of human activity system aspects in the global world, taking into account the parametrization of the global environment, its structure, management and development have been realized. The formed methodology principles of managerial influence on the development of human resources with scientific schools, hardness degrees, available models, research and providing theoretical and practical implementation peculiarities for groups of countries and territories of the world taken into consideration have been examined. There have been noted civilization and national differences in the forms of managerial influence on the development of human resources, which lead to the formation of human resources development national control systems conditioned by different value public strategic guidelines, especially in relation to social security, education, national management and state migration policy. The current and future requirements for global human resources development which are proposed to be achieved by the development and formalization of global civilizational paradigm of social development due to social coordination interaction have been given. The influence of the institute of state on the human resources development has been evaluated and it has been proved that in the beginning of the XXI century in the global environment the institute of state is the ultimate guarantor of its citizens’ labour ability and vital activity renewal, that makes it the main instrument of managerial influence on human development. The methodology of countries and territories matrix positioning by human development qualitative criteria and population size quantitative parameters which allows to design unified managerial measures as for human resources for similar national economies in the context of global regulatory trends has been proposed. The strategic trends of improvement of human resources development in the national economy, taking into account the differences in the development of human resources in different countries and areas which vary and differ in their focus, content and ways of implementation for such groups. The varying criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the global impact on human resources development, taking into account the natural, biological, technological, economic, social and management dimensions and the results of human resources development management in social and economic systems at various levels have been revealed. The periodization and the forecast of the global dynamics of human resources development by analyzing and modeling the values of the absolute and relative terms correlation character have been carried out, which enables to make their retrospective and prospective comparison and to find chronological boundaries of qualitatively different periods. The configuration of the human resource development global coordinate system as a set of interrelated principles, components, fields, tools, frameworks, management levels and forms of managerial influence that allows with the help of institutional means to adapt the state of human resources development to a globally varying environment. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is the analysis of the causes of the systemic crisis that hit modern civilization through the description of its main structures, identifying the relationship between its elements, assessments of their heuristic potential. This will open up opportunities for finding ways to resolve this crisis, new directions of civilizational development. Theoretical basis of the research are the systems analysis, socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological approaches as well as the analysis of scientific developments in the field of global (...) studies. Originality lies in the fact that this article is the first to show the connection between the main structural elements of human civilization as a system. Change in one of the parameters leads to a change in all the others, together with a change in civilization as a whole. Conclusions. The reason for the deep crisis that hit modern civilization is its imbalance as a system. The most important elements of this system are population size, resources and technology, and the core is consciousness in its individual and collective forms. The perception, processing, and use of information, which is a defining civilizational resource, as well as the stability of the entire system depend on the state of consciousness. Consciousness, based on old, obsolete principles and stereotypes, is unable to cope with the most acute challenges of time. New consciousness, since it is formed, will mark the transition to a new theoretical picture of the world and a model of human behavior, in which people will act, driven by proven knowledge, and not willfulness and prejudice. The idea of forming a productive information environment where the ideas of constructiveness and creative work will dominate rather than consumerism and destruction, as is the case at present, must become the categorical imperative of the new consciousness. (shrink)

Since the early nineties, the term ‘civilization’ has undergone remarkable transformations and has assumed political and ideological functions it has not been fit for as a linchpin of the more than two-centuries-old academic discourse on ‘civilizations’. These transformations materialized in the political-ideological formations known as the ‘clash of civilizations’ and the ‘dialogue among civilizations’ which comprise a ‘civilizational discourse’ in many respects alternative to the academic one. This essay intends, firstly, to uncover the structural and thematic differences between the (...) academic ‘civilizational discourse’ and its trendy alternative. Secondly, the essay aspires to demonstrate how complementary, at their methodological and ideological bases, the ‘clash of civilizations’ and the ‘dialogue among civilizations’ are, despite their highly-publicized antagonism. Thirdly, the article aims to highlight the actual political processes underway in our world which manifest themselves through and make use of the alternative ‘civilizational discourse’ as part of their modus operandi. The essay ties these processes with the global triumph of capitalism at the closure of the 20th century, and with the rise of the projects of authoritarian hegemony. (shrink)

In exact epistemology Immanuel Kant’s statement on the priority of application of cognitive faculties is detailed as an intellectual process. Empirical regularities of the JSM–method of automated support for research are synthetic a posteriori judgements. Theoretical intelligence is primary, and its aspects are understanding (Verstand) and mind (Gemüt). The conditions of possible experience in Kant’s sense are implemented in the JSM–method of ASR in intelligent systems. And the JSM–method itself is the transcendental logic of artificial intelligence using two theories (...) of truth, the coherence theory and the correspondence theory. Exact epistemology, which is exact neo-Kantianism, can be naturally considered as a reflection of information society culture on its civilizational (technological) aspects. (shrink)

Science, and with it our understanding of evolutionary processes, is itself undergoing evolution. The evolutionary framework still most frequently used by the general public to describe and guide processes of societal development is erroneously grounded in Darwinian perspectives or, at the very least, draws facile analogies from biological evolution. The present inquiry incorporates fresh insights on the general systemic nature of developmental dynamics from the most recent advances in the transdisciplinary realm of the sciences of complexity (e.g., general evolution theory, (...) cybernetics, information and communication theory, chaos theory, dynamical systems theory, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics). The description of the evolutionary trajectory of complex dynamical systems as irreversible, periodically chaotic, and strongly nonlinear agrees with certain features of the historical processes of societal development. But there are additional features of the evolutionary dynamic of natural systems that are seldom portrayed as part of human developmental deportment. These features include elements such as the convergence of existing systems at progressively higher levels of organization, the increasingly efficient utilization of environmental energy, and the complexification of system structures in states that are progressively further removed from chemical and thermodynamic equilibria. The sciences of complexity offer insight into the laws and dynamics that govern the evolution of complex systems across a variety of disciplinary areas of investigation. Through a study of the isomorphisms across disciplinary constructs in the theoretical analyses of the principles governing the evolution of human societies, it is possible to enrich the account of developmental dynamics at the socio-civilizational level. Such an account would further our understanding of the phenomenon of societal development and provide the means for the purposeful guidance of this phenomenon in accordance with general evolutionary principles. This article sets forth the type of considerations, and outlines a general research agenda, for inquiry toward an operational model of the evolutionary development of social systems. (shrink)

Problem Statement. In modern conditions the reconstruction of self-developing socio-technological-ecological systems, which include man as its element, is actualized. The result of such a construction will be the management of the value of technogenic risk in its biological, social and civilizational forms. And the obvious consequence will be the transition of the development of biopolitical problems to a new, no longer international, but global-evolutionary level. The theory and practice of such a reconstruction can be designated by the category of (...) “Transbiolitics,” which implies the political institutionalization of “ecological reflection. The article is a logical continuation of our previous publication devoted to the analysis of the transformation of the political process into the main factor of global evolution and the biopolitical transformation of the geopolitical landscape. The purpose of this paper is to create a general sketch of the configuration of the main trends of the coevolutionary interaction of biological, sociocultural and techno-rationalist modules of the stable evolutionary strategy of the technogenic civilization in the space of bio- and geopolitical connotations of international relations. Based on a combination of methods of conceptual, discursive and political-anthropological analysis (in the context of transbiolitical paradigm) the content of the category “Transbiolitical Chronotope” is revealed: a geopolitically differentiated set of socio-cultural vectors of modern civilization evolution. In other words, the trans-biopolitical chronotope determines the direction of inclusive technological transformation of both cultural and ecological niche and the biosocial nature of man. The general conclusion/prognosis can be reduced to two theses. Firstly, transbiolitics, formed in a differentiated cultural-civilizational context, is currently being integrated into the general political process, partially replacing and partially intertwining with geopolitical doctrines in the sphere of international relations. Secondly, the growing conflict of technological civilization with the cultural and ecological niche constructed by it through the turbulence of the geopolitical sphere of social life can bring the level of technological and civilizational risk to the existential boundary. (shrink)

As the potential for enhancement technologies migrates from the theoretical to the practical, a difficult and important decision will be imposed upon human civilization, namely the issue as to whether or not we are morally obligated to biologically enhance nonhuman animals and integrate them into human and posthuman society. Precedents for intra-species cultural uplift abound in human history, providing both sobering and edifying episodes showcasing the possibilities for the instigated and accelerated advancement of technologically delayed societies. As a number of (...) scientists, philosophers and futurists have recently argued, there is mounting evidence in support of the suggestion that these historical episodes are symptomatic of a larger developmental trend, namely the inexorable and steady advancement of intelligence. Civilizational progress necessarily implies increasing levels of organization and refinement across all realms of activity. Consequently, the status of nonhuman species and the biosphere will eventually come under the purview of guided intelligence rather than autonomous processes. That said, a developmental tendency towards uplift does not imply that it is good or right; more properly, it can be argued that uplift scenarios do in fact carry moral currency. Through the application of Rawlsian moral frameworks, and in consideration of the acknowledgement of legally recognized nonhuman persons, it can be shown that the presence of uplift biotechnologies will represent a new primary good and will thus necessitate the inclusion of highly sapient nonhumans into what has traditionally been regarded as human society. In addition to issues of distributive justice, the Rawlsian notion of the original position can be used to answer the question of whether or not there is consent to uplift. Finally, it will be shown that the presence of uplift biotechnologies in the absence of the legal recognition of nonhuman persons and a mandate for responsible uplifting will ultimately lead to abuse, adding another important consideration to the uplift imperative. (shrink)

Biosemiotics is a theoretical approach that makes a research on signs, sign systems and semantic processes of the biosphere. It provides a conceptual framework for describing biological phenomena at all levels of the organization of life, and its relevance may be due to the unstable relationship between culture and nature. We are able to use this approach to initiate safe cultural forms and practices. Biosemiotic approach makes it possible to combine cultural and semiotic concepts with biological and biosemiotic frames in (...) the relevance to ecosemiotics, as we are able to update cultural civilizational meanings and identify new vectors of human’s civilization development in the epoch of the post-anthropocentrism. (shrink)

Crises, defined as a period of acute stress on social systems of all kinds, are a recurrent feature of history. As such, they are best approached and understood from a comparative historical perspective. We can distinguish between those caused or precipitated by an exogenous shock and those that derive from an endogenous process that culminates in the crisis. Crises can be of short or long duration and range from local to global. The most severe are ones that lead to (...) a civilizational collapse or radical simplification process. Historically, severe crises have been localized to specific parts of the planet, even when several occur simultaneously because of global natural phenomena, but in the modern world we have truly global crises. Evidence suggests that such a global crisis is imminent or has already commenced. This raises practical and normative pressing issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public PolicyWillis JenkinsClimate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy James Martin-Schramm Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. 232 pp. $20.00Religious ethicists are sometimes tempted to interpret climate change as symptomatic of a civilizational corruption so deep that practical responsibility seems nearly impossible. In its considered treatment of energy options and policy responses, [End Page 198] Climate Justice works to make applied Christian ethics competent (...) to address climate change. By interpreting political possibilities with Christian commitments to justice, the book makes a distinctively practical contribution to the literature on Christianity and climate; it lifts an important theological voice in the growing subfield of climate ethics.The book begins by elaborating the general notion of ecological justice into workable criteria. Martin-Schramm describes four basic norms of ecojustice (sustainability, sufficiency, participation, and solidarity), from which he develops twelve energy policy guidelines (e.g., equity, adequacy). He then specifies those guidelines into fourteen criteria by which to assess the justice of climate action (e.g., historical responsibility, emissions verifiability).Subsequent chapters use those criteria to evaluate policy options. A chief difficulty in applying them lies in the tension between intergenerational and intragenerational claims. Global climate negotiations founder on disagreements about these undeveloped, plural dimensions of justice. Martin-Schramm therefore deploys criteria with a balancing objective: to develop obligations to the future while recognizing claims of the present poor and vulnerable, and while keeping the result within the bounds of North American political viability.For example, Martin-Schramm recognizes that the criterion of historical responsibility indicates that the United States should bear about one-third of the costs of climate transition. But he finds that the resulting figure ($331 billion) so outstrips realistic acceptance that he rejects financial transfer in favor of a “national obligation wedge” in which the nation compensates by pledging to reduce future emissions. Since those emission reductions are unlikely apart from a price on carbon, Martin-Schramm argues that justice mandates a fossil fuel tax. With an eye to political viability, he proposes beginning with a modest $5/ton (for comparison, the Stern Report estimates the social costs of carbon at $85/ton).Controversy in the details matters to the whole project because the point of Martin-Schramm’s approach is that a meaningful climate ethic should guide contextual action. Yet other accounts of climate justice will find a scandal of modesty on those contextual points. Martin-Schramm’s climate justice entails less economic transformation than the “Northern structural adjustment” demanded by the Latin American Council of Churches. It is also less ecocentric than accounts from indigenous theologians arguing that justice warrants rights for species at risk of extinction, and perhaps for Earth itself.While Climate Justice is a self-consciously North American account, the criteria it develops would be different and work more critically were the underlying account of justice dialogically constructed across economic, political, and theological borders. Were it pragmatic, in the sense of arising from projects from across those borders, rather than applied deductively, a Christian climate ethic would likely produce an account of justice with more critical demands on industrial infrastructure and on ecological consciousness. [End Page 199]In its self-limitation, however, lies the book’s practical promise. Martin-Schramm wants justice to illuminate effective ways toward real responsibility. His criteria for justice imply that advocating for impossible goals, or for objectives that would imperil other conditions of social justice, would amount to injustice. Making ethics matter for climate change, he shows, requires understanding what justice can do in context.The open question for this book’s project is how a self-limited ethic of applied justice relates to the deeper processes of social transformation obviously needed for adequate response. Martin-Schramm closes with an account of his work reforming the energy economy of Luther College, which should inspire every reader with a sense of what persistent, informed, and contextual action can accomplish.Willis JenkinsYale Divinity SchoolCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

ExcerptThe high-water mark of globalization has passed. New competitions continue to emerge in a decidedly multipolar international system. As the United States views China and Russia as strategic competitors or worse, an array of mid-level powers—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, the BRICS, and so forth—try to navigate this complex system and pursue their national interests. Meanwhile, no matter how much the United States and the European Union both believe themselves part of a single “West,” divergent interests tend to (...) drive them apart, even as tensions within the EU itself have grown sharper. In order to describe part of this increasingly competitive environment, an analytic distinction between so-called “civilizational states” and “liberal empires” seems to provide a framework to analyze international political processes in starkly contrasting terms.1 To some extent, the two terms repackage the terminology of the Cold War era that contrasted closed and open societies, and if we are indeed entering a new Cold War, the return of these categories is arguably appropriate. Yet more is surely at stake than a repetition of the historical competition between Communism and democracy, and the focus on the contrast between allegedly civilizational states and liberal empires may be missing a key part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at the two concepts and then ask whether this binary provides an adequate toolkit to understand, for example, the conflict in Ukraine. To anticipate the conclusion: those who celebrate Russia as a “civilizational state” doing battle with the evil “liberal empire” of the West miss the key point in the conflict, the will of the Ukrainian people to assert their autonomy as a nation and to resist foreign occupation. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is aimed at substantiation of the process of formation of various human images in the postmodernism era in the context of biophilosophy, taking into account the need to find an adequate response to historical challenges and the production of new value orientations reflecting succession of civilization development. Theoretical basis. The author in his theoretical constructs proceeds from the need of taking into account the biophilosophical aspect of postmodern man, as the one who, remaining a representative of (...) the species Homo sapiens, began to dynamically change, losing its own natural and functional qualities, acquiring to a large extent the socio-technology-related qualities. The thesis that in the postmodern society the moral and legal foundations of existence of human being, as the subject of actions and responsibility for these actions, practically coincide with the biological foundations is taken as initial argument. New biological knowledge, as well as the related technologies, orient the public consciousness towards production of fundamentally new or modernization of the existing bio-philosophical ideas. The author's vision of the anthropological collision of the Post-Modernism era is caused by the fact that the issues of a postmodern man acquire a special urgency at the end of the ХХ – early XXI century. A progressive disproportion between a human being, whose abilities as a representative of the species Homo sapiens are biologically limited, and the human community, which sees no limits in its information and technological expansion, is of current interest. Originality. The author reveals the key features of the Post-Modernism era, in which a fundamentally different civilizational space originates, and where a new type of person emerges in its internal culture, which is called the postmodern man. The postmodern man was considered through the prism of bio-philosophy. Its interest in man is caused by his or her place in nature, the prospects of development at the individual, population and species levels. Conclusions. In the process of development of bio-philosophy, its research field will be naturally expanded with the use of philosophical means of perception of life as such and filling the bio-philosophy with philosophical and biological issues. In contemporary conditions, the study of the boundaries of biological reality and its previously unknown properties, definition of new horizons of theoretical knowledge in the science of life, the critical rethinking of the concepts of biocentrism and anthropocentrism in the space of modern scientific knowledge, the definition of perspective trends in the study of man, his or her place and role in the planetary being is of great importance. (shrink)

The problem of commensurability/incommensurability of different cultural codes is a key problem of modern civilizational development. This is the problem of the search for communicative unity in the world of cultural and biological diversity, which has to be protected, and the search for the cohesion of different Umwelten, of semiotically-defined artificial and natural environments, of ecological and cognitive niches, taking into account that each of them has their own identity and uniqueness. The purpose of the article is to draw (...) attention to the fact that the question of the so-called incommensurability of different conceptual schemes, paradigms, language consciousnesses is widely discussed not only in cross-cultural studies and philosophical problems of translation but also in connection with the problems of incommensurability between the language of classical physics and the language of relativistic quantum physics. Attention is drawn to the problem of the incommensurability and correlation of different languages that are used in debates about the foundations of quantum mechanics, its interpretation, comprehension and ontology. Two approaches stand out in this debate. The first approach is based on the language of the formed being, on the language of things localized in time and on the logic of Aristotle. The second approach is based on the language of the becoming, process and nonlocality, on the search for various processual-oriented temporal logics. In this regard, we discuss the processual approach to understanding quantum mechanics, proposed in the philosophical and physical works of D. Bohm. The authors argue that the experience of constructive understanding of the metaproblems of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the critical reception of the legacy of such philosophers of the process as Peirce, Bergson and Whitehead, the deep reflection on the problems of commensurability/ incommensurability of linguistic consciousnesses of different cultures – will eventually create a common synergetic-interdisciplinary space of cooperation for the solutions of the above-mentioned issues. (shrink)

The contemporary historical situation suggests fascinating parallels with that period of the 13th/7th century when the massive destruction of the Mongol invasions opened the way for popular new forms of Islamic life and practice that eventually spread Islam throughout Asia. Today, as in earlier periods of dramatic upheaval, we can witness those processes of inspiration and awakening that give rise to the spiritual pathways of future centuries, through each soul’s gradual discovery of its unique challenges and demands of ihsan. One (...) way of describing this transformation, to use the Qur’anic language adapted by Ibn ‘Arabi, is in the terms of the process of spiritual realization by which people discover their guiding inner relationship to those divine qualities or “Names” that eventually come to define the meaning and purpose of their lives. Through our life long movement of service to the “Lord” constituted by each divine Name, the transformation of the soul follows a familiar, naturally ascending trajectory. It begins with a curiosity drawing us toward some particular dimension of the Real ; then a compelling striving leading to heightened discipline and awareness; and ultimately to the creative manifestation of that devotion through the appropriate means of teaching, communication, and new communities of fellow- seekers—the Qur’anic “servants of the All-Merciful”—that slowly emerge from this shared spiritual work of devotion, discovery and creative response. Here we point to some ways this process of civilizational renewal is unfolding around the world, focusing on three of the most far-reaching of those divine Names: the “servants of the All-Wise”, in their exploring and deciphering the infinite Signs of God’s Wisdom “on the horizons”, in all of the sciences of nature and society; to those muhsinūn and “servants of the Beautiful” whose creative acts of beauty help awaken that love and awe which mark the beginnings of each spiritual journey; or to those “servants of the Subtly-Gracious” whose lives are dedicated to deepening our understanding of the presence and meaning of each of the divine Signs “in our souls,” in the emerging science of spirituality. These “servants of the all- Merciful” and their communities are themselves the first seeds of an emerging global civilization. (shrink)