In Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics, Jeffrey Mankoff examines the course of Russian foreign policy since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. He provides a comprehensive over-view of both the continuity and the changes in Russian foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to the Putin era, and analyses Russia’s interactions with major global powers. Throughout the book, the author makes use of various theoretical approaches, including theories of (...) international relations, classical geopolitical theory and Russian geopolitical tradition. (shrink)

Positive social trends around LGBT in Russia has converted into positive political trends, but support for LGBT policies is necessary for a democratic politician.

The chapter examines Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) challenge to the Western liberal order. Even though Dugin’s project is in many ways a theoretical epitome of Russia’s contemporary attempt to profile itself as a regional great power with a political and cultural identity distinct from the liberal West, Dugin can also be read in a wider context as one of the currently most prominent representatives of the culturally and intellectually oriented international New Right. The chapter introduces Dugin’s (...) role on the Russian right-wing political scene and his international networks, Russian neo-Eurasianism as his ideological footing, and his more recent “fourth political theory” as an attempt to formulate a new ideological alternative to liberalism as well as the two other main twentieth-century ideologies, communism and fascism. Dugin’s fourth ideology, essentially meant as an alternative to a unipolar post–Cold War global hegemony of victorious liberalism, draws inspiration from the German conservative revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. In particular, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of history, with its thesis of the end of modernity and another beginning of Western thought, and Carl Schmitt’s pluralistic model of geopolitics are highlighted as key elements of Dugin’s eclectic political thought, which is most appropriately characterized as a form of radical conservatism. (shrink)

This Insight examines the stance the EU should adopt towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the basis of the political thought of Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, and Niccolò Machiavelli. Taking as its starting point Josep Borrell’s comment that “we are too much Kantians and not enough Hobbesians” at the 2022 EU Ambassadors’ Conference, this Insight offers a revisionist interpretation of both Kant and Hobbes while suggesting Machiavelli as a third possible inspiration for EU external action. Although he is (...) often portrayed as a proto-“realist” intent on increasing state power, Hobbes in reality favours stability above all else and would therefore presumably not support a more “aggressive” foreign policy. Kant, on the other hand, has traditionally been seen as more of a philosophical idealist, but his political philosophy in fact supports a more assertive conduct by states in their external relations. Both of these philosophers are thus quite different from how Borrell portrays them. The Insight also introduces the perspective of a third thinker, Machiavelli, whose philosophy suggests that the EU should adopt a pragmatic diplomatic strategy, forging alliances, supplying Ukraine with weapons, and maintaining strong ties with allies. (shrink)

The paper deals with visions of Kyiv in the writings of Russian and Ukrainian émigré writers during the interwar period. The city became a focal point of intensive intellectual debate whose participants regarded Kyiv not only as a place of a recent battleground but also as a sacral place and a highly symbolic image. Within the methodological framework of ethnic symbolism, this study attempts to explain how this physical/symbolic dichotomy was used to reinforce continuing claims for historical origin and (...) cultural heritage, thus serving the contemporary purpose of national identity and political legitimacy. It also deploys the concept of displacement as a complex process of negotiation between homeland and hostland within an émigré community — whose sense of loss and identity crisis creates additional impetus, though in different forms, for exploiting historical narratives. (shrink)

Fully in accord with the Aristotelian confidence in things that are probable (even if not really likely to happen in the near future), the essay anticipates an interplanetary critique against geocentric ways of thinking peculiar to most humans on Earth: Japanese, Chinese, English, Germans, Russians, etc. who insist on using expressions like sunset and sunrise and thus heavily offend the feelings of anyone coming from planets that do not enjoy Earth’s proximity to the Sun. As this critique would not be (...) significantly different to what currently is going on in intercultural studies (the central issue of the essay), the essay may be regarded as illuminating the ways to secure a peaceful future of interplanetary relations. (shrink)

В монографии посредством этического вопрошания раскрывается особое место открытого научного мышления в становлении отечественной культуры. С одной стороны, культура мыслится в качестве детерминанты личностного самоопределения, формирующей личность как элементарную единицу и мерило ценностной системы, с другой — является объектом теоретической рефлексии, сложным системным феноменом, обуславливающим социальные изменения и ход истории. Книга адресована студентам социальных и гуманитарных дисциплин, ученым, философам и педагогам. In the monograph, through the method of ethical questioning, a special place of open scientific thinking in the development of (...) national culture is revealed. On the one hand, culture is conceived as a determinant of personal self-determination, which forms a person as an elementary unit and measure of a value system, on the other hand, it is an object of theoretical reflection, a complex systematic phenomenon causing social changes and the course of history. The book is written for students of social and humanitarian disciplines, scientists, philosophers and educators. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also (...) generates a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

The article provides a critical assessment of The Central Bank of the Russian Federation policy in response to the sanctions of the US, the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea and a number of other countries. The effect of sanctions on the Russian economy and its financial market is viewed through the prism of credit, interest rate, and currency risk, and the risk of a decline in business activity. Special attention is paid to the inflationary component and (...) inflationary expectations of the Russian Federation, as well as to the forecasts for a decline in business activity in Russia. A critical assessment is given to the actions of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the economic bloc of the government of the Russian Federation as a whole in response to the sanctions of the civilized world, which disable the normal existence of the economy and the main purpose of which is not to destroy the economy of the Russian Federation but to ensure the end of hostilities on the European continent. The results of our study will be useful to everyone who studies the problems of the effect of economic sanctions on the resource-based economy and the processes of stimulating political decisions by economic methods. (shrink)

This paper speculatively reconstructs the unique intervention that Pyotr Chaadaev, the early nineteenth-century Russian thinker, made into the political-theological debate. Instead of positioning sovereignty and exception against each other, Chaadaev seeks to think the (Russian) exception immanently, affirming its nonrelation to, and even nullity or nothingness vis-à-vis, the (European, Christian-modern) world-historical regime—and to theorize the logic of sovereignty that could arise from within this nullity. As a result, we argue, nothingness itself becomes, in Chaadaev, operative through and as (...) the sovereign act and the figure of the sovereign, exemplified for him by the Russian emperor Peter the Great (1672–1725). (shrink)

Various disciplines and area studies might benefit from this investigation, aside from the obvious Central Asian and Soviet studies. The artificial separation of "areas" and disciplines, that have not existed during the evolution of the subject matter, cannot yield complete understanding. Given the restrictions imposed by the Soviet censorship and bureaucracies who control collections of materials and published works, documentation is not exhaustive. It is anticipated that subsequent research shall unearth additional information. Therefore, the temptation to hold back and wait (...) for such new discoveries is immense. (shrink)

I take a dim view of this absurdly overpraised book, marred as it is is by errors of fact, interpretation and method and surprisingly uniformed (as it appears to be) about Russian history. It shows what can go wrong with Skinnerite intellectual history in the hands of somebody less gifted than Skinner himself.

Many philosophers of music, especially within the analytic tradition, are essentialists with respect to musical experience. That is, they view their goal as that of isolating the essential set of features constitutive of the experience of music, qua music. Toward this end, they eliminate every element that would appear to be unnecessary for one to experience music as such. In doing so, they limit their analysis to the experience of a silent, motionless individual who listens with rapt attention to the (...) sounds produced by either musicians a on stage, a stereo, or a portable device. This approach is illustrated in recent work by Nick Zangwill. Drawing on essentialist assumptions, Zangwill concludes that properly musical experience is effectively disembodied and radically private. While this seems plausible when we consider the essentialists’ paradigm case, Zangwill’s conclusion seems odd once we consider the wide variety of ways that people experience music. One’s body and social situation seem ineluctably enmeshed within the experience of, e.g., hot jazz played in a nightclub, where listeners bob their heads and dance to the music, cheer on the musicians, and socialize with their fellow concertgoers. The question this paper aims to answer is: should we consider this and similar experiences of music properly “musical”? I maintain that we should. Far from the world of pure music that Zangwill and others relegate properly musical experience, I conclude that our musical experiences are fully enmeshed within the somatic, affective, and interpersonal dimensions of human life. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Since the disintegration of the USSR Eurasia has gained a new geopolitical and strategic significance. Fifteen Countries emerged as a result of disintegration, among which only the Russian Federation was the successor state. The post-soviet era especially the era of the 1990s was a political and economic trauma for the Russian Federation and the post-soviet space. But Eurasianists were well aware of the American unilateralism and American ‘Grand Chessboard strategy” that was solely aimed at encircling Russian geography. (...) With these concerns, the Eurasianists advised the Russian political and military elites to initiate the Eurasian Union Project. This paper briefly sketches the Russian historical Eurasian dream, which deeply rooted in Russian imperial history, and discusses the importance of Eurasian philosophy for the political and economic stability of Russia-Eurasia. The paper also illustrates the challenges and opportunities for Eurasian integration and for the establishment of multipolar world order. Moreover, the paper also briefly outlines the geopolitical rationale behind the Eurasian project as a key objective of contemporary Russian foreign policy and geopolitics. (shrink)

The study delves into the foreign policy plans of Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who is currently commonly regarded as the most prominent opposition leader and the sole plausible alternative to Vladimir Putin. Drawing on his interviews, public speeches, media publications and electoral manifestos, the author analyses his foreign policy views alongside three topics, that is, Russia’s policies towards disputed lands and states in the post-Soviet area (Crimea, Donbas, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria), the country’s foreign policy orientation and priorities (...) (especially regarding relations with the West) and assessment of the Putin regime’s foreign policy. Following this, the author speculates on the likely foundations of Russia’s foreign policy under Navalny’s possible presidency and their implications for the West. (shrink)

This paper argues for the central role of Martin Heidegger’s thought in Alexander Dugin’s political philosophy or political theory. Part one is a broad overview of the place of Heidegger in Dugin’s political theory. Part two outlines how Dugin uses Heidegger to elaborate a specifically Russian political theory. Part three shows how apparently unphilosophical political concepts from Dugin’s political theory have a Heideggerian meaning for him. Because of what he regards as a homology between the philosophical and the political, (...) his readers must always be aware of the philosophical significance of his political concepts and vice versa. Tracing Heidegger’s central role helps clarify Dugin’s political thought. (shrink)

Vera Zasulich’s shooting of Trepov, a governor of St Petersburg who had ordered the flogging of a political prisoner, in January 1878, catapulted her to international fame as a revolutionary heroine, a reputation that she put to good use by becoming one of the five ‘founding parents’ of Russian Marxism that created the ‘Group for the Emancipation of Labour’ in 1883. But her act of self-sacrifice also triggered, to her dismay, the institutionalisation of individual terrorist tactics in the (...) class='Hi'>Russian Populist movement with the creation of the ‘People’s Will’ (Narodnaya Volya) Party in 1879. The organisation went into decline after the killing of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and Populism itself was increasingly superseded by Marxism as the hegemonic force on the left with the rise of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). But individual terrorist tactics reappeared with the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1902, prompting Zasulich to write an article for Die neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, in which she both condemned the Neo-Populist tendency as deleterious to the rising labour movement and supported the organisational plans for the RSDLP sponsored by the Iskra group, developed at length by Lenin in his book What Is to Be Done?, published in March 1902. This article provides the background to Vera Zasulich’s article ‘The Terrorist Tendency in Russia’ (December 1902), setting it against the history of the Russian revolutionary movement from 1878 to 1902. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of ideological and philosophical components correlation in the worldview formation. According to the author, it is fundamentally important to take for understanding Russian history and culture not speculative, but ideological coordinates as the basis. Ideology as a professed philosophy is incomparably higher than any palliative abstraction. It is necessary not to lower culture to the level of the masses, but to elevate a person to the level of culture, impossible without a cult.

The paper focuses on the problem of the “anthropological turn” in Russian Neo- Kantianism. There are three sources of this “anthropological turn”. The first one is the concept of man in German Neo-Kantianism which was developed on the basis of Kant’s ethics. The second one is the influence of Russian culture and history. The third is the state of Russian philosophy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Neo-Kantians (...) reflected closely on the doctrine of Leo Tolstoi and on the existence of man in the contemporary historical changes and cataclysms. They conclude the freedom of man as his essence depends on the political state of society and its moral base. There is no genuine existence of man without social politics based on morality and the human ideal. (shrink)

By utilizing words, photographs, and motion pictures, this multimodal and multisited project traces a rhizomatic genealogy of Russian Cosmism—a nineteenth century political theology promoting a universal human program for overcoming death, resurrecting ancestors, and traveling through the cosmos—throughout post-Soviet techno-utopian projects and imaginaries. I illustrate how Cosmist techno-utopian, futurist, and other-than-human discourse exist as Weberian “elective affinities” within diverse ecologies of the imagination, transmitting a variety of philosophies and political programs throughout trans-temporal, yet philosophically bounded, communities. With a particular (...) focus on the United States and Ukraine, and taking an apophatic analytical position, I dissect how different groups of philosophers, technologists, and publics interact(ed) with Cosmism, as well as how seemingly disparate communities (re)shape and deterritorialize Cosmist political theology in an attempt to legitimize their constructed political imaginaries. (shrink)

The following article begins with my recollection of the only academic conference on Zdziechowski that was organised still under the communist regime in the autumn of 1984 at the Jagiellonian University and ends with a description of the discussion on the genesis and power of evil, with the participation of Czesław Miłosz and Leszek Kołakowski, which was triggered in Poland immediately after the publication of the last edition of On Cruelty in 1993. On Cruelty was first published in 1928 in (...) the journal Przegla̧d Współczesny [Contemporary Review] in Krakow, a second time in 1938 in the volume of articles In the Face of the End, Krakow 1938, and a third – and so far last – time also in Krakow in 1993. On Cruelty, published three times but so far only in Polish, has never been thoroughly analysed or even discussed, which is why this article focuses on discussing it and related questions about the origins and nature of evil, mainly in Europe and Asia, from the earliest times to the present. Zdziechowski was particularly outraged when the cruelty he condemned was justified by religion, especially Christianity (Catholic and Protestant). From these condemnations, he described the activities of the Inquisition, the witch trials, cruelty to animals, and – in the introduction – the “psychology of cruelty.” At the same time, however, he meticulously listed the names of those political and spiritual leaders in Europe and Asia, theologians and thinkers, who, over many centuries, up to the present day, have resolutely spoken out against evil, including cruelty, within and outside the Church. A separate and important issue is Zdziechowski’s attitude to Tsarist Russia and Bolshevism, as outlined in his work On Cruelty. On the one hand, he pointed out that at least two rulers of Russia before 1917 – Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great – had made major contributions to the history of cruelty in Europe and Asia. But Bolshevism, which Zdziechowski condemned in the strongest terms, was in his eyes not a continuation of pre-1917 Russian despotism, but emanated from the depths of Asia. (shrink)

This paper cuts across three nineteenth-century Russian thinkers—Pyotr Chaadaev, Mikhail Bakunin and Nikolai Fedorov—to reconstruct a speculative trajectory that seeks to think an ungrounding and delegitimation of the (Christian-modern) world and its logics of violence, domination, and exclusion. In Chaadaev, Russia becomes a territory of nothingness—an absolute exception from history, tradition, and memory, without attachment or relation to world history. Ultimately, Chaadaev affirms this atopic void in its immanence, as capable of creating immanently from itself a common future. Bakunin (...) is antagonistic to political theology as an apparatus of transcendence spanning across nature and history, cannibalism and patriotism, abstraction and religious transcendence. Against these amalgams, and against Schmitt’s naturalist reading of Bakunin, we detect in him the idea of socialism or anarchism as what has never taken place in nature or history, and the image of an unnatural humanity affirmed as the common task linking an absolute futurity with a revolutionary nowness. Against the violence of nature and history in which the present is sacrificed, and death is justified, for future life, Fedorov (the founder of Russian Cosmism) seeks to think the apocalyptic common task of immanent resurrection—and the void as the cosmic void, the expanse of the universe to be inhabited in-common. For him, thought must proceed from death and the ashes (of history and the earth) as what we have in common. The resulting trajectory is ambivalent, caught between an ungrounding of modernity and world-history, and providential or theodical modes of its justification. (shrink)

This report presents the features of the organisation and the main ideas of the international scientific conference “‘No Right of Sedition’. Kant and the Problem of Revolution in the 18th—21st Century Philosophy.” The conference was held at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on November 9—10, 2017 and was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The event was organised by the Academia Kantiana — a research unit on comparative studies on Russian and (...) Western philosophy at the IKBFU’s Institute for the Humanities. The reports presented at the conference focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of revolution from Kant to the present day as well as the conceptions of revolution that appeared around the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The report summarises all the presentations and discussions that took place at the confe­rence in accordance with the thematic clusters. The conference confirmed that Kant’s ideas on the state and the revolution are still relevant today. (shrink)

Upon Brexit & Trade War, the research took a supply-side analysis in macroeconomic paradigm for the purpose and cause of the actions. In the geopolitical competitions on crude oil resources between the allied powers & the Russian hegemony, the latter of which has effective control over P. R. China’s multilateral behaviors, the external research induced that trade war, either by complete information in intelligence or an unintended result, was a supply chain attack in prohibiting the antisatellite weapon supplies in (...) the Northern regions of mainland China in relation to Russia. Although no substantive change to international relations, the Trade War’s prohibitive effect on the high frequency trading in the monetary domain of CNY was observed, which had been the source of economic bubbles in the import-export control regime with centralized banking. The paper argues that by realism in economy & military strategy, trade war was ineffective in deterring the covert operations of the People’s Liberation Army by their territorial strategies and raises questions in humanitarianism in conflict situations. Moreover, with gross privacy breaches by mass surveillance in domain politics, totalitarianism with coercions, and counterfeit of drone strikes, traditional methods of threat elimination are rendered less pragmatic apart from the adversaries’ cyber security breaches. With the scientific approach, I offer an ecological paradigm with historic analysis of the Chinese military’s conducts in terms economics. The territorial methods of the PLA are contextualized into the ecological paradigm in regionalism & public administration. Electronic combats of the Chinese regime with the Great Firewall and Denial-of-Service attacks not only contribute to the diminishing natural freedoms of the population, but also transgress the fundamental right to health along with non-traditional nuclear threats to P.R.C. itself. (shrink)

This volume compiles international contributions that explore the potential risks and chances coming along with the wide-scale migration of society into digital space. Suggesting a shift of paradigm from Spiral of Silence to Nexus of Noise, the opening chapter provides an overview on systematic approaches and mechanisms of manipulation – ranging from populist political players to Cambridge Analytica. After a discussion of the the juxtaposition effects of social media use on social environments, the efficient instrumentalization of Twitter by Turkish politicans (...) in the course of the US-decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is being analyzed. Following a case study of Instagram, Black Lives Matter and racism is a research about the impact of online pornography on the academic performance of university students. Another chapter is pointing out the potential of online tools for the successful relaunch of shadow brands. The closing section of the book deals with the role of social media on the opinion formation about the Euromaidan movement during the Ukrainian revolution and offers a comparative study touching on Russian and Western depictions of political documentaries in the 2000s. (shrink)

The paper problematizes the national soft power strategies of authoritarian states arguing that many of their features stem from those countries’ political regime. In particular, the author focuses on such features as actors involved in soft power policies, the public media’s international and domestic rhetoric, the presence or absence of ideological commitments, strategies’ proactiveness/reactiveness as well as their long- and short-termness. The author presents his argumentation in a fashion similar to what is called theory-building process tracing: first, he shows causal (...) links between an autocratic political regime and each of those features, and then illustrates them with relevant examples taken from case studies and media publications on the soft power strategies of contemporary Russia and China. (shrink)

The main objective of this collection of papers is to explore ideas of generation and transformation in the context of postdependency discourse as it may be traced in women’s writing published in Bengali, Polish, Czech, Russian and English. As we believe, literature does not have merely a descriptive function or a purely visionary quality but serves also as a discursive medium, which is rhetorically sophisticated, imaginatively influential and stimulates cultural dynamics. It is an essential carrier of collective memory and (...) a significant indicator of group identity. Along with philosophy, literature explores the intellectual and emotional, aesthetic and ethical components of our lives, and, while focusing on a single feeling or unique event or phenomenon, aspires to capture the universal attributes of human experience. Hence, we intend to juxtapose interpretations of literature originating in very different cultural milieus, such as the Central East European and South Asian,with the literary treatment of the philosophical dilemmas that challenge authors of various nationalities in times of great political, economic and social upheaval and transformation following long periods of dependency and suppression, caused either by colonial and imperialist domination or by communist ideology. (shrink)

The 1917 February Revolution led to the reshaping of the war-era image of the German enemy. Focusing on the former imperial borderland province of the Southwestern Krai, this article unveils the national, political, and cultural considerations of the local Ukrainian and Russian-language media that affected their attitude towards the Germans. It argues that the developments of the 1917–1918 Ukrainian Revolution presented a unique case of constructing the image of the Germans due to the ongoing rivalry between the respective Ukrainian (...) and Russian national projects. The study is based on the materials of prominent Kyivan daily newspapers, thus rendering the spectrum of the region’s political thought. Built upon the concept of imagology, the article apprehends the images of “otherness” in conjunction with the actor’s own identity. (shrink)

The paper studies the significance of Martin Heidegger's philosophy of history for two key thinkers of contemporary radical conservatism and the Identitarian movement, Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin. Heidegger's often-overlooked affinities with the German “conservative revolution” of the Weimar period have in recent years been emphasized by an emerging radical-conservative “right-Heideggerian” orientation. I first discuss the later Heidegger's “being-historical” narrative of the culmination and end of the metaphysical foundations of Western modernity in the contemporary Nietzschean era of nihilism and (...) of an emerging postmodern “other beginning” of Western thinking, focused on historical and cultural relativism and particularism. In Heidegger's work of the 1930s and 1940s, we find attempts to apply this historical narrative to interpreting contemporary geopolitical and ideological phenomena in ways that connect Heidegger to certain central ideas and concerns of the conservative revolutionaries, especially Carl Schmitt's geopolitical particularism. De Benoist, the key name of the French Nouvelle Droite and a founding figure of contemporary Identitarianism, is particularly inspired by Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche as the culmination of the “metaphysics of subjectivity” dominating Western modernity. For de Benoist, this modern metaphysics is the root of the “ideology of the Same” underlying the liberal universalism and individualism that he opposes in the name of a cultural ethnopluralism. De Benoist's Russian disciple Dugin bases the pluralistic geopolitics of his radical-conservative “fourth political theory” on the legacy of the conservative revolution, the key intellectual model of which Dugin discovers in Heidegger's notion of the “other beginning”. (shrink)

Appearing for the first time in English, Art and the Working Class is the work of Alexander Bogdanov, a revolutionary polymath and co-founder, with Vladimir Lenin, of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Bogdanov was a strong proponent of the arts, co-founding the Proletarian Culture (Proletkult) organization to provide political and artistic education to workers. In this book, Bogdanov discusses the origins of art, its class characteristics, and how it might be created within a revolutionary (...) socialist context. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explain the intellectual formation, cultural and political implementation of the Azerbaijan National Movement in Azerbaijan under the rule of Tsarist Russia from the mid-19th century to 1918 and resulted in the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan in the context of Miroslav Hroch's approach to the three-phase development of national movements. It is very important to understand Miroslav Hroch's approach in order to understand the originality, fundamental dynamics and the way of development (...) of the Azerbaijani National Movement, which was revealed by the Turkish nationalists in Azerbaijan with many discourses and practices. In this study, the history of Azerbaijan National Movement is divided into three phases through Hroch's approach. Phase A, which began in the mid-19th century, had a purely cultural, literary and folkloric content, while a modern nation from the ethnic group was formed by the nationalist agitation through the transition to Phase B in the early 20th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Azerbaijani National Movement gained mass support and moved on to Phase C. -/- . (shrink)

First of all, I would like to thank to the Philosophy of Law Department for this encounter with Professor Solum. It is really a pleasure meeting you Professor, and having the possibility to discuss this profoundly interesting and courageaus text with my colegues and specially with its author. The adjetive I have just used is not simply politeness, I really think we are in front of a very interesting work not only because of its persuasive humorous rhetoric but mainly because (...) it is a text that interrogates its own tradition even if it is with the intention to oxygenate, give air to it. And from a critical position that is something always to be welcomed. Nevertheless what I want to argue in this brief words is that what it is surprising (for my humble point of view) is that originalism, even in this new textual linguistic outfit or clothing, doesnt still address the question of the concept of origin itself. A question and a signifier that has a long inscription not only in western philosophical and interpretative traditions (meaning Nietzsche, Freud, Philosophical Hermeneutics as Gadamer, Ricoeur or in Derrida s deconstruction and so on) but also in non western interpretative tradition such as the Talmudic, for example. In these lines of thought the origin is unreachable, either lost or doesnt exist at all as far as there is no absolute ground that soustain an unique pure original meaning. In short, it is an empty signifier, obviously in dispute. So at last what it is called “original public meaning” it is no more than the result of the force relations between discourses. In other terms, there is an internal intimate relationship between power, language and interpretation. As Bajtin puts it (a russian linguist from the early XX century): the sign is the arena of social struggle. Or as Roland Barthes use to write: power parasitizes the language itself. (shrink)

In the 1960s Mancur Olson and Samuel Huntington suggested that the positive correlation between per capita income and the level of sociopolitical destabilization that they detected for low and middle income countries might be partly accounted for by the growth of the inequality associated with the economic and technological development in these countries. The empirical tests we perform generally support this hypothesis, but they also identify certain limits for such an explanation. Our tests reveal for low and middle income countries (...) a statistically significant correlation between GDP per capita and the economic inequality levels, but this correlation is not particularly strong. Earlier we found for the same countries significantly stronger positive correlations between GDP per capita and some important components of sociopolitical destabilization, such as the intensity of political assassinations, general strikes and anti-government demonstrations. It is quite clear that the strong association between the increase in the intensity of these components of sociopolitical destabilization and GDP per capita growth, can be explained by a much weaker tendency toward the growth of economic inequality only partly. In addition, our empirical tests suggest the presence of a certain threshold level of about 40 points on the Gini scale, after crossing which one can expect a radical increase in levels of sociopolitical destabilization in general, and the intensity of terrorist acts / guerrilla warfare and anti-government demonstrations in particular. According to the World Bank, the value of the Gini coefficient for Russia is now just in this zone, which suggests that the further growth of inequality in Russia could lead to an abrupt increase in political destabilization. (shrink)

The essay proceeds from the assumptions that for a economic/political integration group to succeed, first, its participants’ motives should ideally be as alike as possible and not oppose one another and, second, their expectations from integration should correspond to the organisation’s capabilities. In light of these assumptions, the study endeavours to assess the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) potential for stability and development. First, the author analyses the key motives that were driving its member states’ decisions to enter the organisation, compares (...) them with one another and discusses how the countries’ motives influence their conduct in the union. Second, the author confronts those motives against the EAEU’s activities and the general logic of interstate politics on the post-Soviet space to reckon up whether the bloc’s capabilities fit with the expectations of its member countries. Finally, based on that discussion, the author speculates on how the divergence/convergence of EAEU member states’ goals, as well as the (in-)feasibility of their expectations, affect the organisation’s development. (shrink)

We analyzed remarkable stories linked to the famous Anatoly Vlasov equations in plasma physics. Their creation, modification, and application are interesting from a scientific viewpoint. We also show the relations between those equations dealing with electromagnetism and analogous Jeans equations describing, in particular, gravitational instability in astrophysics. The second half of the essay is devoted to the controversies and political struggle in Soviet (before 1991) and Russian (after 1991) physical communities related to Vlasov’s personality, career, and posthumous recognition. The (...) never-ending destructive influence of Russian totalitarianism on science is demonstrated. (shrink)

The paper argues that while the Serbian society and political elite are known for treating their country’s accession to the EU in terms of pragmatic utility maximisation, they generally conceive of Serbian relations with Russia, contrariwise, as an identity-laden issue. To prove it, the author analyses Serbia’s behaviour toward Russia along the features of emotion-driven cooperation, found in the literature on identity and emotions in foreign policy. In particular, the paper focuses on Serbians’ especially strong friendliness vis-à-vis Russia, the parallel (...) existence of the Other (the West) in their identity and the particularly strong intensity of their attraction to Russia during Serbia-West conflicts, the reinforcement of their affection to Russia by national traumas, the endurance of the affection’s strength despite conflicting rational interests and negative experiences in bilateral interaction, the frequent occurrence of references to Russia in Serbia’s domestic discourse and decisional justifications and a large use of historical analogies concerning Russia. Finally, the author ponders over the implications of the existent configuration of emotional and pragmatic forces in Serbian politics for the country’s current and future conduct toward Russia and the EU. (shrink)

In Russia, on the eve of the Revolution, the religious phenomenon was analyzed by scholars in specific works and in public discussions in its various aspects: historical, political, social, institutional. Of particular interest is the attempt to bring it back to an original expression of emotional consciousness, which marks a continuity with the Sentimentalism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This cultural current attempted to grasp a more certain truth in the immediacy of sentiment than in demonstrative reason, (...) and, levering on the ‘redi in te ipsum’, claimed a full moral responsibility for the individual, and at the same time attributed to the truth an immediate evidence, enlightening the the interiority of the individual. Individual consciousness, namely the seat of the truth that reveals itself in the immediacy of moral and religious sentiment, was moreover opposed to any external authority, and considered as giving rise to the ecclesial community itself. Accordingly, such an idea of an inner Church, fueling sectarianism, determined the hostility of the confessional Churches. However, Sentimentalism, while primarily concerning the psychology of interiority, did not go so far as to deal with the relationship of rational mediation with the immediacy of sentiment: namely to consider the emergence of distinctions (art and religion, moral truth and divine truth) that no longer belonged to the sentimental area but to conceptualization. This was in fact an issue discussed in the early twentieth century by a part of Russian intelligentsia, seeing in the individual emotional interiority not the light of a transcendent truth, but the creative freedom of establishing values. Since values are nothing but culture, namely products of reason, Russian intelligentsia got entangled in an ambiguity similar to the one characterizing Sentimentalism, in the attempt to identify in emotional consciousness the processes of formulation of logical-representative structures. (shrink)

Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIALE / EDITORIALS -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Considerații privind necesitatea educării și formării resursei umane pentru intelligence–ul național Considerations regarding the need to educate and train human resources for national intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Epistemologia activității de intelligence Epistemology of intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Rolul serviciilor de informații în război The role of the intelligence agencies in a war Nicolae SFETCU (...) Evoluția inteligenței artificiale în domeniul securității naționale The evolution of artificial intelligence in the field of national security -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Ovidiu BOUREANU O scurtă istorie a spionajului: spionajul modern de la Războiul Rece la Războiul împotriva terorii A Brief History of the Spy: Modern Spying from the Cold War to the War on Terror Ioana PĂIUȘ, Tiberiu TĂNASE Securitate și informații într-o lume în schimbare Security and intelligence in a changing world Nicolae SFETCU Activitatea de intelligence - Ciclul intelligence Intelligence Activity – Intelligence Cycle Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul asupra Intelligence –ului Control over Intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Informația și nevoia de gestionare a resurselor informaționale Information and the need to manage information resources Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul parlamentar al serviciilor de informații Parliamentary control of intelligence services Tiberiu TĂNASE Mecanisme de control democratic al activității serviciilor de informații Mechanisms of democratic control of the activity of intelligence agencies Nicolae SFETCU Analiza informațiilor Intelligence Analysis Bogdan-George RĂDULESCU Cum ar trebui să fie utilizată analiza intelligence pentru a contracara războiul cognitiv? How should intelligence analysis be utilized to counter cognitive warfare? -/- ISTORIE / HISTORY -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Biroul de Informații al Secției Militare din Transilvania și rolul său în campania pentru apărarea României Mari The Intelligence Office of the Transylvanian Military Section and its role in the campaign for the defense of Greater Romania Stan PETRESCU Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard și românii Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard and the Romanians Tiberiu TĂNASE Contracararea de către SSI a activităților informative și acțiunilor Serviciilor Germane și Sovietice de Informații implicate în evenimentele din 21 - 23 ianuarie 1941 Countering by the SSI of the informational activities and actions of the German and Soviet Intelligence Services involved in the events of January 21-23, 1941 Tiberiu TĂNASE Alexandru Ioan Cuza, fondatorul Intelligence-lui statului modern românesc Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Founder of the Intelligence of the Modern Romanian State Tiberiu TĂNASE, Bogdan MUSCALU Puncte de vedere privind tradițiile romane în istoria intelligence-lui Viewpoints on Roman traditions in history intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Istoria Serviciului Român de Informații – serviciu de intelligence competitiv, și strategiile de intelligence History of the Romanian Intelligence Service – competitive intelligence service, and intelligence strategies Rodica LISEANU Reformele serviciilor secrete de la Mihail Moruzov la Eugen Cristescu, între inovație și decadență Secret service reforms from Mihail Moruzov to Eugen Cristescu Rodica LISEANU Take Ionescu – O biografie vectorială în istoria partidelor politice și în semantica diplomației Take Ionescu - A Vectorial Biography in the History of Political Parties and the Semantics of Diplomacy Remus MACOVEI Trădători și trădători Traitors and traitors -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Antoaneta AVRAM Pandemia de COVID-19 și consecințele ei în peisajul anului 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences in the landscape of 2022 Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Ioan MANCI Analiza conflictului ruso-cecen din perspectivă militară Analysis of the Russian-Chechen conflict from a military perspective Lisa-Maria ACHIMESCU Apusul universalismului european The decline of European universalism Emilian M. DOBRESCU Hegemonia chineză în producția de pământuri rare Chinese Hegemony in the Production of Rare Earths Ionuț-Daniel GORGOVAN ”Descurajarea integrată”. Analiză asupra strategiei SUA în Pacific "Integrated deterrence". Analysis of US Pacific Strategy Tiberiu TĂNASE, Violeta Ioana NAGÂȚ Conflictul arabo-israelian. Percepții privind cauzele și natura conflictului. Repere istorice și actualitate The Arab-Israeli conflict. Perceptions of the causes and nature of conflict. Historical landmarks and current affairs -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Tănase TIBERIU Minighid de pregătire și protecție contrainformativă Counterintelligence preparation and protection mini-guide Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ ISIS - Jocul morții - Martiri, asasinate și fascinație The Killing Game - Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS Traian OSTAHIE Abordări generale ale conceptului de cultură de securitate For a 21st century realism Dalia Elena SILAGHI Terorismul cibernetic: o formă contemporană de terorism Cyber Terrorism: A Contemporary Form of Terrorism Paul Alexandru HELER Conflictul asimetric și consecințele sale în securitatea Asiei Asymmetric Conflict and Its Consequences in Asian Security Daria-Maria TÂRNĂVEAN Confruntarea informațională și repercusiunile sale asupra mediului actual de securitate The Information Confrontation and its Repercussions on the Current Security Environment Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ Analiza atacurilor cibernetice, precum APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) și ransomware Analysis of cyber attacks such as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and ransomware Daniela Georgiana GOLEA, Oana Ștefania COȘA Nevoia de adaptare managerială a noilor probleme de securitate modernă The need for managerial adaptation to new modern security issues Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Corneliu PREJA Implicarea NATO în domeniul apărării cibernetice NATO's involvement in cyber defence Alexandru CRISTIAN Paradigme în mediul internațional de securitate Paradigms in the international security environment Alexandru CRISTIAN Schimbarea paradigmelor în mediul internațional de securitate Changing paradigms in the international security environment Dan D. FARCAȘ Adevăr și dezinformare în fenomenul OZN Truth and disinformation in the UFO phenomenon Alexandru CRISTIAN Un nou mediu de securitate A new security environment -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Oana Ștefania COȘA Rolul structurilor de intelligence medical în atingerea obiectivul de consolidare a sistemului de sănătate The role of medical intelligence structures in achieving the objective of strengthening the health system Nicolae SFETCU Preocupări legislative în mineritul datelor Legislative concerns in data mining Nicolae SFETCU Utilizarea analiticii rețelelor sociale în intelligence Using social network analytics in intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Ingineria cunoașterii în colectarea informațiilor Knowledge Engineering in Intelligence Gathering -/- ISSN 2971 – 9089 ISSN-L 2821 – 8159, DOI: 10.58679/II26972. (shrink)

The relevance of this research has been caused by the return of “war” as a central subject of thought to the attention of European thinkers. The complexity of this subject requires special attention to the methodological aspects of its cognition. The purpose of our research is to find effective epistemological means for transferring the immediate experience of war into the sphere of rational thinking and knowledge because this article focuses on the analysis of the specifics of thinking about war in (...) one’s own country. The results of the study show that thinking about the war “from the inside of war” differs from the “external view” as it is built on personally experienced feelings. This article argues that the immediate experience of war is not an obstacle for the process of cognition but, on the contrary, is a prerequisite for having a close view of the factual reality of war. Also, this research argues that for the thinker of a country waging a just defensive war, a true interpretation of the reality of war is an effective means of countering the enemy. This article proposes the use of Heinrich Rickert’s theory of the ordering of the chaos of sensations through concept formation and the further systematization of the formed concepts. This is because this theory is one of the means of transferring the experience of war into the sphere of rational thinking. Furthermore, this article demonstrates the application of this theory when dealing with the feeling of encountering evil. The concept of three modes of evil (factual, active, and passive) is proposed, and its applicability for characterizing Russia’s military actions against Ukraine is demonstrated. In addition, the idea of collective and personal responsibility of the citizens of the Russian Federation for the war their state unleashed against Ukraine was elaborated through the means of philosophy. In particular, the applicability of Karl Jaspers’ theory regarding the political, moral, and metaphysical guilt of the aggressor nation is shown in relation to the people of contemporary Russia. Throughout this review, two types of toleration of war by Russian citizens are distinguished. Also, three conclusions were drawn from the obtained results. First, thinking about war in one’s country make one capable of taking into consideration data that researchers “outside the war” do not have. Secondly, the main methodological difficulty of thinking about the war in one’s own country is the search for a reliable means of transferring the sensations from experience into a rational and clearly articulated system of concepts. Thirdly, using the methodological tools of H. Rickert and K. Jaspers, one can effectively start to research complex aspects of this war such as the essence of the actions committed by the invaders and the question of their guilt. (shrink)

According to the results of 162 respondents survey, the affective and cognitive components of feelings of guilt in the space of Ukrainians’ collective consciousness were described. This space is complex, but poorly structured, capable of appearing and spreading little understood defensive assessments and attitudes. -/- The content of relevant processes recorded the following trends: undifferentiated feelings of guilt, general self-accusations, accusations of Ukrainians themselves for historical failures, shame for Ukrainians’ violence, readiness to recognize or not to recognize Ukrainians’ guilties, accusations (...) of Ukrainian powers of different periods, denunciation of Soviet power, Ukrainians’ feelings to be innocent victims of Russia, the avoidance of political guilt. -/- In defining of the perpetrators of Ukrainian historical miseries the agents of Russian-Soviet influences and the Ukrainian authorities of various times unconditionally dominate. Psychologically more problematic is the sphere of recognition / non-recognition by Ukrainians of their own faults. One can speak of the presence of a basic affective background – the experience of undifferentiated feelings of guilt. -/- The Ukrainians’ consciousness is characterized by two main emotional-value positions: denialdefensive (we are not guilty of anyone) and avoiding-defensive (we are only guilty of ourselves). The opposite self-accusatory position (we are guilty of others and should ask them for forgiveness) has a relatively small share. -/- The denial-defensive position essentially correlates with the narcissistic Ukrainian identity. The avoiding-defensive position reflects the conciliatory Ukrainian identity. Recognizing the historical blames of Ukrainians and a need to apologize concerns the representatives of humanistic Ukrainian identity. It means understanding the real state of affairs without illusory idealization, the ability to profoundly experience one’s involvement in the Ukrainian world, and the willingness to assume moral responsibility for the sins of the past. (shrink)

In 2014,war in the Ukraine began. In the same year, the largest number of terrorist attacks had been committed in Ukraine since 1991. A similar increase in terrorist activity was recorded twenty years earlier, in 1994, during the conflict between the Ukraine and Russia, caused by the partition of the Black Sea Fleet, which these two countries had inherited after the Soviet Union collapse. As in 1994, the wave of terrorist attacks in 2014-2015 swept on the backdrop of a new (...) conflict with Russia, now involving regular army units and irregular armed groups on the both sides. This article explores the hypothesis that Russia is using terrorism as an instrument when confronting other statesin pursuit of its geo-political goals. In the case of Ukraine, terrorism was used as an instrument to weaken the military and political potential of the Ukraine during the preparation of a large-scale military operation by regular Russian forces. To test this hypothesis, the author uses open data sources, especially the Global Terrorism Database od the University of Maryland, as well as reports of the Ukrainian General Staff, and international organizations. (shrink)

This paper analyses Ernst Nolte’s interpretation of Bolshevik revolution, and underlines the characteristics of his methodological approach to historical research. According to the German historian, the Russian revolution (1917) determined an ideological dialectics that characterized the first half of the 20th century: following the mechanism of “challenge and response” Nolte has interpreted the birth and the developments of Nazism as a response to Bolshevism, a violent and excessive response (Schreckbild). Thus, Nolte explains the historical development of the Nazi totalitarianism (...) in relationship to the Soviet totalitarianism, and speaks about a "European civil war" (europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945). In this paper the criticisms that several historians have made to Nolte’s point of view are also discussed: this debate is known as “Historikerstreit.” I underline, therefore, the features and the limits of Nolte’s “deconstruction of revolutionary mythology.”. (shrink)

This study seeks to critically explore the link between sovereignty, violence and war in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. From a brief rereading of Leviathan’s main arguments that explicitly revolves around the Aristotelian distinction between actuality/ potentiality, it will conclude that Hobbesian pre-contractual violence is primarily based on what Hobbes terms “anticipatory reason” and the problem of future contingency. Relying on Foucauldian insights, it will be emphasized that the assumption of certain potentialities suffices in leading to (...) Hobbes’s well-known conclusion that the state of nature is a “condition of Warre.” In a second step, this study considers some of Agamben’s arguments to account for how pre-contractual violence as envisioned by Hobbes cannot be rendered impotent through the integration of a sovereign. In specific, Agamben’s claims shed light on an irreducible, inextricable entwining between the state of nature and the state of law as “Siamese twins” (Virno). On a meta-level, Agamben thus implicitly shows how the “Hobbesian problem” cannot be merely reduced to a “problem of order” (Parsons). With regard to the current functioning of the stratagems of financial markets and the mechanisms of future-colonization underpinning global politics, this study finally argues that Hobbes ought to be reevaluated in particular regarding the problem of the future in his account. Partly responding to Agamben’s critical investigations, I suggest that a careful exploration of what will be coined “the prospects of an actualization of the potentiality not-to-be” might serve as a first theoretical step towards a productive form of criticism. (shrink)

In the discipline of international relations there are contending general theories or theoretical perspectives. Realism, also known as political realism, is a view of international politics that stresses its competitive and conflictual side. It is usually contrasted with idealism or liberalism, which tends to emphasize cooperation. Realists consider the principal actors in the international arena to be states, which are concerned with their own security, act in pursuit of their own national interests, and struggle for power. The negative side (...) of the realists’ emphasis on power and selfinterest is often their skepticism regarding the relevance of ethical norms to relations among states. National politics is the realm of authority and law, whereas international politics, they sometimes claim, is a sphere without justice, characterized by active or potential conflict among states. Not all realists, however, deny the presence of ethics in international relations. The article presents a comprehensive picture of political realism. -/- Korab-Karpowicz, W. Julian, "Political Realism in International Relations", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (shrink)

In Book 10 of the Republic, Plato launches an extensive critique of art, claiming that it can have no legitimate role within the well-ordered state. While his reasons are multifac- eted, Plato’s primary objection to art rests on its status as a mere shadow of a shadow. Such shadows inevitably lead the human mind away from the Good, rather than toward it. How- ever, after voicing his many objections, Plato concedes that if art “has any arguments to show it should (...) have a place in a well-governed city, [he] would gladly welcome it back.” Over two millennia later, the nineteenth-century Russian philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev implicitly responded to this challenge in his Lectures on Godmanhood (1881). Solov’ev cited the phenomenon of art as additional proof in favor of his model of the metaphysical foundations of reality. According to Solov’ev, art is not three steps removed from ultimate reality; rather, an artist creates true art only when he has experienced a vision of the univer- sal and substantial ideas that stand over and above particular things, and then conveys them to the viewer directly, via the artistic medium. Hence, the artist is able to sidestep the in- termediate shadow and produce something that is more than a shadow—a clear reflection of that higher reality. If Solov’ev is correct, the artist should enjoy the elevated status of sage, per- haps even philosopher-king, rather than face exile from Plato’s republic, because the artist both knows the Good and guides the less enlightened toward it. After a brief sketch of the metaphysical grounds for Plato’s critique of art, I provide an analysis of Solov’ev’s ontology, as represented in his Lectures on Godmanhood. Next, I describe Solov’ev’s concept of the three-fold mission of art and its relationship to human nature, drawing both from the Lectures and from The Universal Meaning of Art (1890). Finally, in the last section, I demonstrate how the afore-mentioned account comprises Solov’ev’s robust and successful response to Plato’s challenge, from within a platonic framework. (shrink)

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

Important achievements were obtained in the fields of mathematics, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, physics, optics, mechanics, zoology, botanic, mineralogy, geography and etc. in the Turkish-Islamic world between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. According to the leading historians of science, scholars living in different parts of the TurkishIslamic world not only surpassed their Greek and Byzantine predecessors. They also paved the way for development of these fields of science for following centuries. It is possible to mention many physicians that left non-erasable marks (...) in the medicine history among these distinguished scholars. One of these names is an Andalusian surgeon-physician called Abul-Qāsim alZahrāwī. He is known for his solid and unique contributions to the surgical world and regarded as the founder of surgery in the TurkishIslamic world. al-Zahrāwī wrote many books. One of these books, called al-Taṣrīf (The Method of Medicine) regarded as a medical encyclopedia has reached until today. The book attracted more attention in the European countries than in the Turkish-Islamic world and had an impact on Europe. Different chapters from the book were translated into languages such as Hebrew, French, English and especially Latin. al-Zahrāwī’s scientific heritage has also been discussed with all its aspects in Russia where scientists in the Turkish-Islamic world have especially been studied. Even though it was translated at a later period than Avicenna’s al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (The Canon of Medicine), al-Taṣrīf was translated into Russian. The aim of this study is to identify Russian studies on Zahrawi and his main work, al-Taṣrīf -within the framework of available opportunitiesand to present prominent ones among these. In conclusion, this article also aims to contribute to the Turkish literature on al-Zahrāwī and al-Taṣrīf. Therefore, the author wishes to assist the relevant ongoing studies and the ones to be conducted in the future in terms of bibliography and material index. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development of a (...) political hinge epistemology. The first is about nature and demarcation of political hinges, while the second is about rational deliberation over political hinges. I then use political hinge epistemology to analyze ideology, dealing with the challenge of how an agent's ideology 'masks' or distorts their understanding of social reality, along with the challenge of how ideology critique can change the beliefs of agents who adhere to dominant ideologies, if agents only have their own or the competing ideology to rely on (see Haslanger 2017). I then explore how political hinge epistemology might be extended to further our understanding of political belief polarization. (shrink)

Throughout history, Eurasia has been central to relations between Europe and Asia. It has been the crossroads of civilizations, contributing to the cultural and ethnic hybridity of the region. However, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and later the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, Eurasia lost its geostrategic importance in the US-led liberal world order. In the 1920s, a group of Russian emigres described the cultural and ethnic ties among the communities living across the vast Eurasian steppes (...) as Eurasianism. Eurasianists divide the world into two opposing forces with Eurasianism including Russia and the European states favoring integration with it and Atlanticism including the US and European countries supporting an American-led Atlantic order. Today, Russia is an important revisionist power in Eurasia, with huge stakes in the global order and the capability to help forge new relationships in the region. (shrink)