The life of any person is largely due to the peculiarities of the infant and the child development. Memories of childhood are an essential factor determining the development and the existence of a person, the possibility of his creative life. The deeper a person descends into childhood memories, the more truly human features appear in him: the simplicity, credulity, sincerity, a sense of truth and goodness. Memories – the main occupation, allowing us to stay in the spirit. Memories of the childhood allow us to feel alive, capable of love and the creative work.

The author of this paper analyses a fragment from the fourth “book” (“Kiṣkindhā-kāṇḍa”) of the “Rāmāyaṇa” of Vālmīki, in which fragment Rāma explains to the dying monkey king Vālin why he, Rāma, had the right and even was obliged to kill him, Vālin. This fragment of the “Rāmāyaṇa”, in the author’s opinion, resembles the famous poem “Bhagavadgītā” (“The Lord’s Song”), part of the “Mahābhārata”. In the “Bhagavadgītā”, Kr̥ṣṇa (like Rāma, also an avatāra of Viṣṇu) explains to the warrior Arjuna why he, Arjuna, had the right and even was obliged to kill his relatives and teachers in the course of a battle. Apart from the similarity in the content, there are specific lexical similarities in the two texts. In both cases, the discussion of a specific event brings about a discussion of some fundamental problems of life. By the end of the paper, three “key words” from Rāma’s speech/sermon are discussed: kāla (‘Time’), svabhāva (‘that which possesses its own being’) and niyati (‘predeterminacy’, ‘fate’).

The article attempts to analyze ideas about the church hierarchy in three works created in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle of the 17th century: “Perspective” by Kassian Sakowicz, “Lithos or Stone” by Peter Mohyla and “Mirror or Veil” by Pachomiusz Wojna-Oranski. These treatises are genetically related, since the second and third are certain kind of the “Orthodox” and “Uniate” responses to the first. “Perspective”, created to condemn the churches of the Greek rite, thus initiated a significant multi-dimensional discussion, one of the cornerstones of which were the issues concerning the church organization.

The question of the church hierarchy in those texts includes a wide range of subjects. The aim of this study is to group and analyze them. The interest is focused on understanding the role and place of the priest, establishing the necessary components and order of the sacrament of holy orders, condemnation of abandoning the Christian ideal by particular clergymen of one or another of the Christian faiths, and also, of course, one of the most pressing issues of interfaith polemics – the dispute about the status of the Pope. The hierarchical principle acquires special significance in the writings of polemicists in the light of the doctrine of salvation.

Speaking about the creative heritage of Grigorii Skovoroda (1722–1794), the author considers the principles and results of his translation activities. A thinker of the 18th century, he translated classical authors (Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Plutarch), and neo-Latin poets (Marc Antoine de Muret, Sidronius Hozjusz). Skovoroda not only translated, but also reflected on the principles and methods of translation. He recommended to take into account the peculiarities of the language and not to limit oneself with rendering the bare meaning of words. He also clearly distinguished between the literal translation (translatio) and free interpretation (interpretatio). In most cases, Skovoroda himself certainly preferred interpretation, because for him the translation was another way to express his own ideas. It is within the framework of such translation strategy that the philosophical principles of the thinker were realized. “Truth without beginning” was a fundamental idea for Skovoroda. That led not only to the Christianization of the works of Greek and Roman authors, but also to the Hellenization of Christianity. The author of the article on a number of specific examples shows how such translation strategy works in Skovoroda’s translations of Plutarch’s “De senectute” and “De tranquillitate animi” of Cicero.

This article is a continuation of the publication placed in the RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Philosophy. Sociology. Art history” Series (2017, no. 4). The first part presented an analysis of the texts and events of the Russian 18th century in its relation to state guardianship, which extended to the Orthodoxy, education and science. In the second part, an attempt is made to show the metaphysical foundations on which the Russian Enlightenment, which carried out the reception of European rationality, was based. The metaphysics of Christian Wolf, adopted in Russia as a “university science”, according to the author, was the ideology of a compromise of the established science, the emerging educational system and the religious policy of the state.

J.G. Hamann and I. Kant were thinkers - contemporaries connected by personal acquaintance and communication, which began in the years of their youth (in 1756) and continued until the death of Hamann in 1788. When in 1781 Kant publishes his “Critique of Pure Reason”, Hamann responds to it with his “metacriticism” of Kant’s transcendentalism. The various lines of Hamann’s critique of Kant’s philosophy converge to the decisive for Hamann problematization of language as a condition for the possibility of any thinking. Kant, according to Hamann, does not take into account the fact that his philosophy itself is a realization of the ability to think as given by language. From the standpoint of his philosophy of language Hamann criticizes Kant’s understanding of reason as a self-sufficient instance capable to be a guide for itself. According to Hamann, such a presentation of reason by Kant is a success thanks to his “violent, unlawful separation” of the sensibility and understanding as two “trunks” of knowledge, – separation, that is possible only because of the idea of sensory perception as beginning with an extralinguistic sensation. In contrast to that, Hamann defends the idea of sensory perception as being wholly accomplished in language. According to Hamann, the sensibility and understanding are not two trunks, but two roots of a single process of cognition; and those roots are presented by Hamann as “receptivity of language and spontaneity of concepts”, or “receptive and spontaneous language”. Further developing the idea of the unity of reason and language, Hamann, in contrast with Kant, defends the idea of the historicity and dialogic realization of all rational knowledge.

The article compares two significant theoretical approaches to the study of the phenomenon of technology. Research by A. Gehlen and H. Schelsky became an important milestone in the development of German philosophy of technology of the 20th century. A number of provisions of the considered philosophers retain their relevance in our time, in particular, those about the radical transformation of human identity in technical civilization. The Leipzig school in sociology is currently a little-studied intellectual project in Russia, within which the original concept of the society of modern era has been proposed. The article reveals both the similarities and differences in the theories under consideration.

The focus of this article is the resort to the socio-anthropological foundations of technological development. Over the 20th century, that issue was being solved by the philosophy of technology, and above all by its anthropological direction (the moral, ethical and cultural studies of technology, the humanistic and value aspects of technology).

Currently, technology is developing so rapidly, and this development is even more initiated by representatives of the engineering and computer sciences, which makes philosophical thought more and more urgent addressing the most important anthropological and social issues that arise during the growing technological convergence, and this cannot be limited by expressing anxiety and warnings of risks and implications.

Today, mass culture products that offer a field for reflection (cinema, game studies) are associated with technology; they also require consideration and evaluation of philosophers.

Current issue of philosophical research is an adequate interpretation of processes, events, consequences and prospects of technical development in the context of the globalization processes, finalization and radical transformation of the main spheres of society and human activities.

This article deal with the idea of contingency in technological development as it presented in works of Donald Angus MacKenzie. From his point of view, the main focus in sociological studies of technological development should be shifted from understanding it through the lenses of “natural trajectories” to grasp it as a result of social construction. In this sense, construction is understood not as the purposeful influence of society on technological progress, but as a complex interweaving of various interests and expectations, which, rather, forms the horizon of the desired development, than merely planning it. Also, MacKenzie supposes that economic approaches to the study of technology should become more open to the influence of sociological ideas. Such concepts as technological determinism or the natural trajectory of development limit the potential of both firms and scientific research. Given the complexity and uncertainty of technology, it is necessary to use new methods to study it. Thus, according to MacKenzie, the “ethnoaccountancy” can shed light on how firms correlate profits and R & D costs in different regions of the world, which means it can enrich both sociological and economic understanding of technology. Describing the approach of MacKenzie as a whole, one can conclude that it is based on extensive empirical material, while the author himself relies on openness to new approaches and issues, combining them into a specific bricolage, which is a model of interdisciplinary research.

The author gives a comparative analysis of an interpretation for the concept of the Other in radical (J.D. Caputo) and diacritical hermeneutics (R. Kearney). The article considers the understanding of otherness in the context of the concept of the impossible and the criticism of traditional ethics in the works of Caputo. The main features of the post-metaphysical ethics are highlighted: the absence of any deep foundations and hypersensitivity to the Other. In the analysis of the concept of “religion without religion” the author accents the indeterminacy between God and the Other , God and love. In discussions around the interpretations of the Other in the theory of deconstruction with its claim “every other is wholly other” she emphasizes the impossibility to distinguish between the divine and the monstrous. Richard Kearney’s diacritical hermeneutics is considered as an attempt to overcome the extremes of a strict version of indeterminacy. The author shows that the way of thinking of God from the perspective of persona and prosopon pays tribute to the irreducible singularity of the Other, but at the same time does not place the Other on the other side of the abyss, which would exclude the possibility of any kind of relationship. Another significant way of thinking is the understanding of God as posse rather as esse. The main task is to consider the transcendence without precluding a possibility to experience or encounter the transcendence. It is stated that Kearney thinks of God in such a way as to take into account the transcendence of absolute otherness, and at the same time pay attention to how that otherness can appear as phenomenon.

The work is devoted to the analysis of mechanisms and historical trajectories of the formation of national identity in different countries at different stages of history; levels and forms of collective identities (civil, ethnic, religious, regional-local); factors of ethnocultural development and principles of self-determination in modern conditions. Much attention is paid to the study in the historical experience of the coexistence for carriers of different cultures.