Issue editors: Martin Tabakov and Kristiyan Enchev
Michel Fichant – Leibniz and the Natural Machine
Abstract: The concept of the natural machine was introduced by Leibniz in 1695 in his Systeme nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances. It provides the real definition of the organic body, and gives a criterion for distinguishing between bodies that are organic and those that are not: the decomposition, to infinity, of the machine into other machines, without end, is not in itself a machine. This nested structure corresponds to what gives form to the materia secunda, as Leibniz calls it. It can also be regarded as an aggregate resulting from an infinity of monads, as well as an aggregate that contains corporeal substances situated each within the other, to infinity. Thus, the natural machine allows supporting the positivity that the concept of corporeal substance alw ays retains in Leibniz's view, even in the latest developments of the monadological ontology, which cannot be reduced to an idealistic thesis.
Keywords: Leibniz, natural machine, artificial machine, body, aggregate, matter, identity, substance.
Nicolas Gomez Davila – From New Scholia to an Implicit Text
Abstract: The characters in the work of Nicolas Gomez Davila are modern man and the progressivist, who are possessed by the superficial spirit of inauthenticity among the topoi of mediocrity, technology as strongly related to the spiritual downfall resulting from a moral-intellectual dementia, literature seen through the eye of the superb connoisseur, language, art, the reactionary, who is a loner in the field of ideas, images and events, proletarians, bourgeois, revolutionaries, socialists and democrats, presented in the masquerade of liberal devastation of personal freedom, the believer and Catholic standing amidst the waves of modernity that advance upon Christianity.
Keywords: science, technology, education, spirituality, religion, humanism, authenticity.
Alexandre Lozev – De Caelo and Timaeus
Abstract: Plato's Timaeus is taken as a background for certain views presented by Aristotle in his On the Heavens. The author discusses possible arguments for introducing a new (“fifth”) element.
Кeywords: Aristotle, history of ideas, Plato.
Ivan Kozhuharov – Carl Schmidt and Jan Patocka: An Extramural Debate on the Concepts of “Enemy”, “Solidarity”, and “Politics”
Abstract: Carl Schmitt and Jan Patocka could be said to belong to different generations of European thinkers. To my knowledge, they never met or had personal contact with each other; nor did they express a stance on each other's activity, life or thinking. However, the conceptions they built seem to be in mutual controversy; their debate on many standpoints is, as it were, entwined in a crucial clash – crucial as regards the interpretation of the sinuous history and ambiguous heritage of the 20th century.
Keywords: enemy, politics, solidarity, war, philosophy, hermeneutics
Krasimir Delchev – The Appearance of a Philosophical Society from the Covers of a Book (Wolf and the Alethophiles)
Abstract: The article investigates the relationship between Wolf and Societas Alethophilorum.
Keywords: Wolf, the Enlightenment, philosophical society, emblems.
Abstract: The concept of the natural machine was introduced by Leibniz in 1695 in his Systeme nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances. It provides the real definition of the organic body, and gives a criterion for distinguishing between bodies that are organic and those that are not: the decomposition, to infinity, of the machine into other machines, without end, is not in itself a machine. This nested structure corresponds to what gives form to the materia secunda, as Leibniz calls it. It can also be regarded as an aggregate resulting from an infinity of monads, as well as an aggregate that contains corporeal substances situated each within the other, to infinity. Thus, the natural machine allows supporting the positivity that the concept of corporeal substance alw ays retains in Leibniz's view, even in the latest developments of the monadological ontology, which cannot be reduced to an idealistic thesis.
Keywords: Leibniz, natural machine, artificial machine, body, aggregate, matter, identity, substance.
Nicolas Gomez Davila – From New Scholia to an Implicit Text
Abstract: The characters in the work of Nicolas Gomez Davila are modern man and the progressivist, who are possessed by the superficial spirit of inauthenticity among the topoi of mediocrity, technology as strongly related to the spiritual downfall resulting from a moral-intellectual dementia, literature seen through the eye of the superb connoisseur, language, art, the reactionary, who is a loner in the field of ideas, images and events, proletarians, bourgeois, revolutionaries, socialists and democrats, presented in the masquerade of liberal devastation of personal freedom, the believer and Catholic standing amidst the waves of modernity that advance upon Christianity.
Keywords: science, technology, education, spirituality, religion, humanism, authenticity.
Alexandre Lozev – De Caelo and Timaeus
Abstract: Plato's Timaeus is taken as a background for certain views presented by Aristotle in his On the Heavens. The author discusses possible arguments for introducing a new (“fifth”) element.
Кeywords: Aristotle, history of ideas, Plato.
Ivan Kozhuharov – Carl Schmidt and Jan Patocka: An Extramural Debate on the Concepts of “Enemy”, “Solidarity”, and “Politics”
Abstract: Carl Schmitt and Jan Patocka could be said to belong to different generations of European thinkers. To my knowledge, they never met or had personal contact with each other; nor did they express a stance on each other's activity, life or thinking. However, the conceptions they built seem to be in mutual controversy; their debate on many standpoints is, as it were, entwined in a crucial clash – crucial as regards the interpretation of the sinuous history and ambiguous heritage of the 20th century.
Keywords: enemy, politics, solidarity, war, philosophy, hermeneutics
Krasimir Delchev – The Appearance of a Philosophical Society from the Covers of a Book (Wolf and the Alethophiles)
Abstract: The article investigates the relationship between Wolf and Societas Alethophilorum.
Keywords: Wolf, the Enlightenment, philosophical society, emblems.
Abstract: The article describes, analyses and comments on the influence upon the sociology of religion of some post-modern philosophical paradigms outlined by the Canadian sociologist Roberto Miguelez. The Rationality Paradigm and its projections on modern sociological approaches to religion are emphasized. The contemporary research trends and debates that problematize and support the domination of the Rationality Paradigm over sociological interpretations and definitions of religion are outlined. The author analyses three post-modern philosophical paradigms which oppose this domination, and their influence on contemporary sociology of religion. The article offers a critique of the instrumental model of rationality.
Keywords: philosophical paradigms, sociology of religion, Rationality Paradigm, definitions of religion, sociological interpretations of religion, Roberto Miguelez.
Andrey Leshkov – Aesthetics in the Perspective of Reading? (Notes on the Appearances of Writing)
Abstract: This paper sets itself the task to delineate an “aesthetic” approach to reading. It takes as a point of departure two intertwined themes in Kant's third Critique:
1) the “disinterested” aesthetic attitude, and
2) the as-if character of aesthetic entities. These define two extremes of reading: per diletto on the one hand and logos-minded reading on the other. This makes it possible to offer a phenomenologo-hermeneutical “history of reading”, which is staged here by the author in the form of a three-act comedy. From this perspective, the present article portrays reading itself, starting from pre-modernity, when it was marked by reading in, then passing through modernity (for which reading of is relevant), only to reach, at present, an actualist contemporaneity, whose all-embracing oblivion assumes the form of deliberate copy-paste reading.
Keywords: aesthetics, as-if, Borges, disinterest, Hegel, Kant, memory/oblivion, Nietzsche, reading/writing.
Lyudmila Ivancheva – Functional Model of the Social Impacts of Science
Abstract : The paper presents the author's functional model of the exo-systemic social context of science in the form of a typology, and builds a classification scheme of the model's social functions, decomposed into target (external and internal) and instrumental functions; the latter group is divided into relational and performative functions. Through application of the principles of functional and structural analysis, indicators are proposed for determining the level of development of a social function. A summary of the types and directions of functional transformations of modern science in the context of their social impact is presented. The article concludes that both the target and instrumental social functions of science undergo significant development in the modern knowledge society.
Keywords: science and society, social context of science, social relevance and responsibility, re-conceptualization, socially-robust science.
Abstract : The paper presents the author's functional model of the exo-systemic social context of science in the form of a typology, and builds a classification scheme of the model's social functions, decomposed into target (external and internal) and instrumental functions; the latter group is divided into relational and performative functions. Through application of the principles of functional and structural analysis, indicators are proposed for determining the level of development of a social function. A summary of the types and directions of functional transformations of modern science in the context of their social impact is presented. The article concludes that both the target and instrumental social functions of science undergo significant development in the modern knowledge society.
Keywords: science and society, social context of science, social relevance and responsibility, re-conceptualization, socially-robust science.
Martin Tabakov – A Hitherto Unnoticed Paradox in the Hare-Niemeyer System
Abstract: When, unexpectedly, an otherwise logically correct proposition is seen to contradict common sense and intuition, we have what is called a “psychological paradox” or a “paradox of intuition”. Here, the author presents one such hitherto unnoticed paradox: “At elections for the European Parliament conducted using the Hare-Niemeyer method of distribution of mandates, a situation may arise where, if a party P were to increase its number of votes while the number of votes for the other parties remained unchanged, P would get a smaller number of MPs.
Keywords: paradox, elections, Hare-Niemeyer, psychological paradox, intuition.
Abstract: When, unexpectedly, an otherwise logically correct proposition is seen to contradict common sense and intuition, we have what is called a “psychological paradox” or a “paradox of intuition”. Here, the author presents one such hitherto unnoticed paradox: “At elections for the European Parliament conducted using the Hare-Niemeyer method of distribution of mandates, a situation may arise where, if a party P were to increase its number of votes while the number of votes for the other parties remained unchanged, P would get a smaller number of MPs.
Keywords: paradox, elections, Hare-Niemeyer, psychological paradox, intuition.
Nonka Bogomilova – Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling: Once Again in a Bulgarian Translation by Gencho Donchev