Publications

This editorial introduction at once surveys and makes an intervention into the main problematics of the volume, charting an unorthodox trajectory of German Idealism as a political-theological thinking of nothingness, immanence, and world-(de)legitimation -- and a key genealogical resource for the present and future of political theology.

This paper explores the relation between world-annihilation and world-construction in Schelling, Fichte, and Friedrich Schlegel, in light of a central question: how to think the world without absolutizing or justifying it – to (re-)construct a world, or the way the world is or could be, without falling into the logic of justification – while accounting for the world’s being-there, as fact or problem?

This groundbreaking volume reassess the philosophical trajectory of German Idealism and its aftermath from a political-theological perspective. Over the course of the volume, German Idealism emerges as a crucial phase in the genealogy of political theology and an important point of reference for the ongoing reassessment of modernity and secularity.

In this article it is shown that in some theories defending the non-reductive nature of the first-person perspective a not very consistent attitude to this perspective may be found. Such theories are related by the author to a so-called moderate naturalism. The article shows the difference between moderate and radical naturalism. Radical naturalism completely abandons the idea of subjectivity as unobservable from a third-person perspective. On the contrary, moderate naturalism defends the irreducibility of subjectivity, but believes subjectivity to be a part of the nature. As a case of moderate naturalism, the article considers the approaches of L. Baker and T. Metzinger. Using their approaches to the first-person perspective as an example, it is shown that in case of certain work strategies focused on the first-person perspective, it is possible that a so-called description error may appear, by which a description error of subjectivity – when it is placed in the world on the rights of a part of nature, according to the laws of which it exists – is understood. The logic of this error points to one of L. Wittgenstein's statements about the incorrect placement of the eye in the perspective of the eye view itself. If the first-person perspective is introduced as a point of view (or a point of observation), then its subsequent shift to the observation result area leads to description error. If there is no observation, as well as no viewpoint, we lose the very idea of first-person perspective and actually take the position of radical naturalism.

What our paper as a whole traces is the way that the declarations of nothingness, anarchy, and cosmism all offer a “Russian” mode of thought that is radically decoupled from national identity, particularity, or ethnos – a mode of thought that is preoccupied with and immanently affirms nothingness or the void. To think by beginning with the void is to delegitimate the world – to unground its mechanisms of power, succession, and reproduction. But it is also to think immanently out of this void – to think a future decoupled from tradition and history, and their (sovereign, no less than sacrificial) logics of violence and oppression. In this, the (im)properly Russian thinking of nothingness remains genealogically and conceptually relevant to the debate within contemporary continental philosophy, political theology, and humanities theory broadly construed.

What is to Be Done? Art Practice, Theory and Criticism in Russia during the Long Nineteenth Century

The Jünger brothers count among those authors of the 20th century who are particularly sensitive to developments in technology and the media. With his two seminal essays "Die totale Mobilmachung" (1930) and "Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt" (1932), Ernst Jünger set standards in the interpretation of these developments. With "Die Perfektion der Technik" (1946), Friedrich Georg Jünger opened up an independent approach to technology that was quite different from that of his brother. This issue of the Jünger yearbook contains essays by renowned Jünger researchers on this topic as well as the first publication of the verbatim transcription of a part of the "Arbeiter" manuscript including a facsimile.

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich den bedeutsamsten theoretischen Stufen in der Vorgeschichte der Religionspsychologie in Deutschland, die sich im Laufe des langen 19. Jahrhunderts entwickelte. Die unterschiedlichen Skizzen und Projekte der psychologischen Forschung auf religiösem Gebiet wurden damals vor allem im theologischen Milieu entworfen. Die Haupttendenzen ihrer konzeptuellen Entwicklung können anhand der Bedeutungsveränderung der ‚Stichwörter‘ wie [religiöse] Erfahrung, Selbstbeobachtung und Wert nachverfolgt werden. Von Anfang an zielten Philosophen wie J. Fries und Theologen wie Chr. Weisse auf größtmögliche Exaktheit und Strenge der zu erarbeitenden Methode. Sie setzten dabei ihre Hoffnungen in die Selbstbeobachtung, aber der Einfluss W. Wundts ließ Zweifel daran aufkommen. Deshalb glaubten manche Theologen ab den 1890er Jahren, die unvermeidlichen Nachteile der Introspektion durch die Anwendung der interaktiven bzw. instrumentalen Methoden der psychologischen Untersuchung aufheben zu können. Außerdem waren die deutschen religionspsychologischen Entwürfe des 19. Jahrhunderts stark axiologisch orientiert: Es handelte sich um die Wertgefühle bzw. Werturteile (d. h. weltanschaulich bzw. doktrinell gefärbtes affektives Fürwahrhalten) als den wesentlichsten Bestandteil der Religiosität überhaupt. Diese Tendenz schwächte sich zum Ende des langen 19. Jahrhunderts ab.

Conference proceedings of the V. annual German conference at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, April 17, 2019.

Kant famously claims that we have all freely chosen evil. This paper offers a novel account of the much-debated justification for this claim. I reconstruct Kant’s argument from his affirmation that we all have a price – we can all succumb to temptation. I argue that this follows a priori from a theoretical principle of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all empirical powers have a finite, changeable degree, an intensive magnitude. Because of this, our reason can always be overpowered by sensible inclinations. Kant moreover holds that this necessary feature of our moral psychology should not have been the case: We ought to instead be like the divine human being, for whom the moral law yields a greater incentive than any possible temptation. On Kant’s view, we are thus responsible for having a price, and the synthetic a priori fact that we do proves that we each made an initial choice of evil. 

NaCl is one of the simplest compounds and was thought to be well-understood, and yet, unexpected complexities related to it were uncovered at high pressure and in low-dimensional states. Here, exotic hexagonal NaCl thin films on the (110) diamond surface were crystallized in the experiment following a theoretical prediction based on ab initio evolutionary algorithm USPEX. State-of-the-art calculations and experiments showed the existence of a hexagonal NaCl thin film, which is due to the strong chemical interaction of the NaCl film with the diamond substrate.

The book focuses most of all on women's and partly on men's agency, to discuss variant ways in which women and men actively use their scopes of action - through political activism, protest, movements, in the military. The book is aiming to dicuss variant perspectives on these issues in different contexts witin Eastern Europe.  How do these in change affect conservative societies and the concepts of masculinity?

The volume is structured in four parts:

I) Floating concepts of Femininities and Masculinities

    (essentially this is a discussion on the role of feminism in the transformation period in Eastern Europe)

II) Political Activism

    (this part deals with political participation of women - also within conservative parties - and of variant forms of protest)

III) Nationalism and Militarization of societies

 (also papers on violence)

IV) Social Roles and Concepts of Women and Men

This text begins by applying the critique of phrenology to contemporary neuro-science in order to raise, once again, the question of consciousness. I then argue that consciousness is a process and product of the body, driven by history; like the work (and a work ) of art. This becomes clearer with Hegel's differentiation between human and animal consciousness, that is, in how our language and thought can tolerate contradiction, even grasp it as true. Thus, as Aristotle knew: consciousness is to the body as the sign is to the referent — and this has implications for our very survival.

Does Kant hold that we can have intuitions independently of concepts? A striking passage from §13 of the Critique of Pure Reason appears to say so explicitly. However, it also conjures up a scenario where the categories are inapplicable to objects of intuition, a scenario presumably shown impossible by the following Transcendental Deduction. The seemingly non-conceptualist claim concerning intuition have therefore been read, by conceptualist interpreters of Kant, as similarly counterpossible. I argue that the passage in question best supports an underappreciated middle position where intuition requires a pre-conceptual use of the understanding. Such preconceptual use of the understanding faces both textual and systematic objections. I show that these objections can be rebutted.

In this article I analyse retrospectively main directions in the interpretation of the notion sobornost’ in modern Russian philosophical thought. Key for religious Russian Philosophy on the border of the XIX - XX centuries, this term hasn't lost its importance today, but it has acquired some new senses and significations. Religious-philosophical and epistemological notion first and foremost, it was transformed into ontological and anthropological category, what allowed to describe the Russian national current community as "conciliarity" corresponding to “Russian idea”.

The principle of Last Resort belongs to the core principles of Just War Theory. It is regarded as one of the contstraints on war. In its application the combatants are concerned with taking all possible efforts not to be provoced to start a war before it is truly necessary or unavoidable. In this chapter we not only look throuhg the theoretical aspects, but also consider a number of practical cases. 

The article gives an outline of masculine strategies in the context of sociocultural preferences of post-Soviet Orthodoxy. The article reveals the specific features of deformation and distortion of normative masculine strategies in the conditions of religious conservatism and the post-secular resort to patriarchal norms, which causes a lack of men in the Orthodox Church, i.e., a certain masculinity crisis. The author subjects to verification the traditional view of gender imbalance, showing that this imbalance is diminishing, although there are still fewer men in the church (participating in worship and church life) than women. The evidenced decline of the percentage disparity between men and women in the church environment over the past 30 years allows us to acknowledge a partial overcoming of masculinity crisis in the Orthodox environment. Analyzing the limitations of ways to realize normative masculinity in the Orthodox environment, the author shows that the way out of this crisis are three ways of hypercompensation: consumerization of the church space, involvement in the global imperial project of Orthodox civilization and cultivating of a special religious attitude toward the war, accompanied by the militarization of the church culture. At least the second option and the third one involves a certain resort to neopatriarchy as they are shifting priorities to the side of primordial masculinity with a greater value of physical strength, authoritarianism and military exploit.

The article focuses on the reclaiming of militaristic ideas and the emergence of specific “militant piety” and “theology of war” in the Orthodox discourse of post-Soviet Russia. It scrutinizes the increasing prestige of soldiering in the Church and its convergence with the army. This convergence generates particular hybrid forms, in which Church rituals and symbols interact with military ones, leading to a “symbolic reception of war” in Orthodoxy. The authors show that militaristic ideas are getting influence not only in the post-Soviet but also in American Orthodoxy; they consider this parallel as evidence that the process is caused not only by the political context—the revival of neo-imperial ideas in Russia and the increasing role of power structures in public administration—but is conditioned by socio-cultural attitudes inherent in Orthodox tradition, forming a type of militant religiosity called “militant piety”. This piety is not a matter of fundamentalism only; it represents the essential layer of religious consciousness in Orthodoxy reflected in modern Church theology, rhetoric, and aesthetics. The authors analyze war rhetoric while applying approaches of Karen Armstrong, Mark Juergensmeyer, R. Scott Appleby, and other theoreticians of the relationship between religion and violence.

This third edition of Moral Constraints on War offers a principle by principle presentation of the ethics of war as is found in the age-old tradition of the Just War. Parts one and two trace the evolution of Just War Theory, analyzing the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello: the principles that determine the conditions under which it is just to start a war and then conduct military operations. Each chapter provides a historical background of the principle under discussion and an in-depth analysis of its meaning. More so than in the previous editions, there is a special focus on the transcultural nature of the principles. Besides theoretical clarifications, each of the principles is also put to the test with numerous historical and contemporary examples. In Part three, Just War Theory is applied in three specific case studies: the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in World War II, the Korean War (1950-53), and the use of armed drones in the "war on terror." Bringing together an international coterie of philosophers and political scientists, this accessible and practical guide offers both students of military ethics and of international relations rich, up-to-date insights into the pluralistic character of Just War Theory.

Some biologists and philosophers of biology claim selection can "create" novel traits. Others claim creativity is to be found only in development. I here endorse the former claim, but take seriously and address the concerns that underlie the latter. My discussion of these issues is informed by recent work that champions the "return of the organism" to mainstream evolutionary biology, and I suggest how population and organismal perspectives on trait origins can be reconciled.  

The principle of Right Intentions is closely related to the Just Cause Principle. It may be referred to as the subjective part of the Right Intentions. Nevertheless it is regarded as a moral principle in its own right. Further mor the intention to go to war may have nothing to do with the Just Cause, even if it does exist. In this chapter we also consider a number of practical cases.