Philosophy
Philosophical Investigations. - Tbilisi - 2003 - N 7 - 384 p. - in Georgian, Russian and English.
A. Gobar. Philosophy as cultural healer. In this article the idea of philosophy as a cultural healer is investigated. Author presents a reinterpretation of the theme of philosophy as a cultural healer in its platonic version and than in its heideggerian version, followed by a radical exposition of the underlying dialectical structure of the theme (the variations of the two versions notwithstanding) from the perspective of dialectical realism by which author is inclined to approach philosophical issues.
M. Dolidze. The concept of existence and phenomenological reduction. The author considers the method of phenomenological reduction and eliminates the concept of existence from the logical reasoning of phenomenology. He continues the process of reduction of objective existence and beholds the unconsciousness, as a sphere of possibilities of the phenomenon of consciousness.
Author accepts that mutually exclusive process of creation and reduction of the meaning of existence possesses the status of real existence, because here we have the self reduction of the process of phenomenological reduction and consequently, the process of elimination of the concept of existence abolishes itself. Therefore, author considers this transcendental level of creation and reduction of the meaning as an existential basis of the world.
L. Jakhaia. On description methods of the system of philosophical categories. Every philosophical theory has a system of its basic categories considering their quantity, contents and interlinking character. At the same time, this theoretical system can be described by various methods. According to the author of the article, the most fruitful method of verbal modeling of the system of categories of the scientific philosophy is the method of ascendance from abstract to concrete. The mentioned method means moving from abstract category of "universe" (material universe) to other general and essential philosophical categories summoned to fill the category of universe with richer contents.
Z. Khasaia. Conception of metaphysical nihilism. Metaphysical experience is a special ability of some men - to feel the existence of the substance. It is impossible to prove the existence of the substance and its essence scientifically; it's only felt by some human beings. The world consists of separate objects and their properties. We call them moduses or temporal state of substance. Moduses are infinitely varied. Their common features are materiality, spiritualness, changeability. Origin and destruction of any modus point to the fact that the existences of moduses metaphysically are not expedient, justified.
Existence in such term is only substance and in this sense it is only nothingness.
Existence in a concrete form is defeated light against it.
Metaphysical nihilism is philosophical perception of nothingness.
L. Chantladze. Ontology of wickedness. Traditional accusation against god is: why there exists wickedness in a country created by him? If he can demolish it and doesn't do it - he is wicked. If he want it, but can't - he is weak. Is this accusation substantial?
Perhaps existence of wickedness gives sense to existence of kindness and demolition of wickedness will demolish a kindness itself.
Being requires existence of permanent risk of meeting with wickedness.
This is an antinomy of being.
In this context this problem is unsubstantial.
M. Lashkhia. The aspects of "others being". The article deals with the subject of a great interest in contemporary french and german philosophy, the problem of "other". The author tries to show, although that phenomenon of "other" is interpreted differently in philosophy of J.P. Sartre, Merlo-ponty and Lacan and other thinkers. Contemporary German philosopher B. Wandelfels discusses the "other" as one of the aspects of the "strange". This aspect is connected with the not-being of the body. The human being depends from the "other" i.d. From that not-being. In the long run the "other's" being represents analyses of the world's possible situations. It's no more than my "unconsciousness" and the "strange" which i encounter in every day life.
N. Kvaratskhelia. Beyond death and life. The first greek philosophers considered the whole world as alive ("hylozoism") they understood life as a principle of inherent self activity. "physis" means exactly the phenomenon originating from itself and without external intervention. Such understanding of life is cosmic-universal, which is limited only to a live nature by the contemporary science spreading the principle of inertia on the rest reality.
Hence death is the termination of life, its end its last stage. Life and death are aspects of the same reality: death happens only to life. Philosophy is interested not in the biological fact of death, but its existential experience that is called "the death consciousness".
The moral world begins beyond life and death. Morality is overcoming of life, man is only a possibility of moral thriving being and a constant being for realization of this possibility.
T. Mtibelashvili. The language and peculiarities of Merab Mamardashvili's thinking. A language is situated between the world of outside phenomena and a human being's interior world. The true creator of any language is the national spirit of the people whose mother language it represents.
There is in fact nothing a priori "privileged" in the reality. Therefore, it can be said that the closest to the reality is a language which is the most democratic by its nature, if we understand democracy as a system which recognizes only one kind of privilege - the privilege of the law. Within a language the role of such a law is performed by a true word as a supreme law of the spirit's life. Georgian is one of such languages. Therefore, it has preserved a mosaic vision of the reality. It is reflected in georgian mentality as well, where all things have equal chances to appear as the above-mentioned "privileged point" and everybody's ambition is to dominate.
Merab Mamardashvili's philosophy is the most important and at the same time typical instance of such thinking.
G. Baruchello. On Globalisation. The article presents John McMurtry's analysis of contemporary globalization, as this is developed in his latest work The Cancer Stage of Capitalism. In such text, this original Canadian philosopher aims at revealing and analyzing both the inner logic and the structural consequences of contemporary market theory. This discipline and its actualization are seen as the responsible for a parasitic growth of "paper economy", the development of which is the economic correlative of a carcinogenic pathology. Globalization entails a fundamental conflict between the requirements of the domination economic forces and those of planetary life. In response to this conflict, McMurthy furnishes criteria to establish a life-value metric, based upon the notions of need and of the civil commons. Thus, McMurthy can provide a comprehensive, novel alternative to economists, administrators, philosophers, and sociologists, namely a life-based model of economic analysis, which is meant to help decision-making and to unveil the quasi-theological axioms of contemporary market theory.
G. Asatiani, G. Baranidze. On the object of the political philosophy. This essay provides an analysis of the problem of founding of the Political Philosophy as independent discipline. Particular attention is given to the relations of the political philosophy to the adjacent disciplines. The following aspects of the political philosophy are emphasized: the problem of the politization of the real social life and consciousness; the problem of the alternativity of democracy and dictatorship. The aspects of the international relations are taken into account.
B. Lutidze. Comments on Fr. Engels' comments (in connection with the letters of 90-ies). This article deals with Fr.Engels comments on the superstructure phenomenon in the life of society, which he expressed at the beginning of 90-ies (letters to K.Schmidt, Fr.Mering, V.Borgiusis).
In this letters Fr. Engels tries to negate economical determinate accusations in conjunction with the question of subjective factors which were promoted against Marxism.
On the basis of analysis of Fr. Engels argument the author of this article concludes that commentary of Fr. Engels about the determinate of the life of society with economical factors on the final account doesn't negate, but confirms economical - determinate character of Marxist sociology.
T. Pachulia. Attributes of totalitarism. The author tries to arrange attributes of totalitarism in the following order: 1. Concentration of all branches of authority in hands of one instance (department, the person). 2. The second attribute is the manager of all material and spiritual tools of the given social reality. 3. Monoparty system. 4. Denying an elective principle. 5. Absolutization of a role of the State. 6. Full state monopolization of the economy. 7. Absolute ideologization of social validity. 8. The terror based on omnipotence of power authorities. 9. The author names the following attribute as imperialism in sense of mentality, based on militaristic violence, on a cult of the weapon. 10. The tenth attribute the author represents a personification that is, denying totalitarism of personal life and mentality.
I. Bulalauri. Individual and social destruction. The author of clause gives the critical analysis of sights of Fromm on a nature of individual and social destruction. According to Fromm the sources of human destruction we should search in connection of the nature and mankind. The author considers that the analysis of necrophilia and biophilia, given by Fromm, gives the most significant theoretical bases for research of the problem of human destructivity.
B. Porchkhidze. The problem of the technical alienation of social consciousness. At the contemporary stage, a creative man was lost in technically modeled systems; gradually he not only lost the function of vital thinking and productive creation, but also faced the danger of loosing the biologically, hereditarily and genetically established vital impulses and vital attributes. Time by time, the crisis of human being, life, at large, becomes sharper and sharper, this being revealed inside a human and outside him by means of the total rebel of non-organic elements against the organic world: non-animate systems grow and develop at the expanse of the extreme deprivation of the animate nature; this may erase the boundary between a living being and a dead, though this situation does not exclude various alternatives, which can be seen in super-human individuals referred to as the "third phase humans". They are, though the great historical ordeal, the missionaries of the mankind's conscience and morals, still holding the bright ray of optimism, since the key to the survival of the mythologically inherited disappointed world lies in their aspiration.
G. Shushanashvili. Fundamentals of professional ethics. Professional ethics is a peculiar use of norms and principles of general ethics. Its aim is to recognize norms and values which are related to professional activities.
The specificity of concrete professional ethics is generally defined by some fundamental ethical problem that is connected with the principles of professional activities (politics and ethics, truth and scientist's responsibility, nature protection and the use of nature, etc.). When settling such problems, sometimes conflicts happen in collectives as the peculiarities of the concrete situation and activities are not considered and more often because the functioning frames of ethical norms in the new situation are not distinct.
B. Mamulashvili. Issue of life and death in bioethics. The target of our research is to study the attitude of different layers and age groups of Georgian population to euthanasia legislation.
We think the legalization of euthanasia is inadmissible for the following reasons:
G. Vekua. Causality problem in philosophy and medicine (continuation). Causality in only one of the sides, particle universal interaction of objects and events. In developed scientific disciplines the causative analysis of studying objects shifts or is completely removed by new cognition sides. At the same time the cognition of events and causative relation (causation) doesn't lose its significant in such branches of science where it is the cause of cognition.
Cause always contains at least two components. The components of cause are nothing but certain unity of conditions upon the other complex of conditions, furthermore, conditions as well as cause components can be divided into two parts - outer and inner conditions. Cause is the influence of one complex of conditions (outer cause component) upon the other complex (the inner cause component).
R. Gakhokidze. Relation of elements and structure in a system. The elements and structures are manifestations of objective states, characteristics and relations of moving matter. The general characteristics of elements and structures are determined by general characteristics of the motion itself - its absolute, relativity and contradiction.
The characteristics of a system as a whole one are determined not only by characteristics of its separate elements but by system structure ones as well. There are arranged certain connections and relations between elements of a system. Due to them, the set of elements is transformed into a bound whole, where each element appears to be bound with all the other ones. Presence of connections among the elements and resulted in integrative characteristics of a system provide it with relatively high independence in its activity.
A. Bregadze. Paradoxes of cognition. For the philosophical anthropology a human being is a regional and specific wholeness, the subject of being and ought. But as on the one hand he has cognitive faculty and on the other hand the process of cognition and its results are under brand of a human being.
Among the difficulties which we meet during the process of cognition is that human being addresses to a scientific cognition when he is formulated and has his own belief and views. A philosopher - subject of an educated mind-can (must be able) to avoid his own belief even for a "second" (for a higher value) and think under the circumstances.
In the sciences of mind, among them in philosophical anthropology, a method of interpretation is considered as a promise of conception. Interpretation is the act of freedom (creation) and with some point of view we approach the truth.
S. Avaliani. Anthropocenrism. In this article the idea of ontological anthropocentrism is investigated. According to anthropocentrism the world was created for the mankind, that is the man is in the center of the world. It goes without saying that on the one hand anthropocentrism is closely connected with religions and cosmological creationism, while on the other hand - with teleology, because it asserts creation of the world, the main goal of which is the existence of mankind.
In the latter part of this article the conception of anthological teleology is analyzed. It is asserted that since aspiration is the main sign of purpose (Hegel), we can speak about ontological (objective) teleology especially in organic world (biological teleology). The idea of anthropocentrism which is based on the modern scientific (cosmological) researches also allows us to speak about cosmological creationism and teleology, which are in conformity with religious creationism and teleology.
Z. Khasaia. Man and compulsion. Regarding man as a free being comes from Christian traditions. Freedom is action according to one's will and is apposed to compulsion, which is action against will.
Man's freedom is connected with reason and it is an action according to sensible will or purpose. That's why it includes actions against one's will and in this sense - compulsion.
Impartial observation convinces us that in man's life compulsion prevails over freedom or acting against will over action according to one's will. As a matter of fact we yield up our wishes to our purposes. But purpose will appear less desirable than we expected.
Secondly: man more or less chooses according to his wish, but being in the situation of choice is against his wish, he is simply compelled to be free. Thus freedom is more negative that positive and that points out that in man's life compulsion prevails over freedom.
N. Mshvenieradze. Problem of man in cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology as an independent branch of science was formed in the 20-th century and due to the authority of the Anglo-American schools of anthropology established as an independent interdisciplinary branch of knowledge.
The main thesis serving as a basis of the cultural anthropology is that man's world is the world of culture. Culture enables man to overcome his "biological imperfection".
In difference with the philosophical anthropology that creates a definite conception of man's essence, cultural anthropology aims at stating what a really acting man is, what kind of historical development man as a cultural being has undergone, what kind of influence cultural events is, how traditions are transcended from generation to generation, what kind of dynamics is characteristic for cultural processes.
Cultural anthropology considers man not only as a complex of particular paternal activities, but as a whole of certain plans, normative ideas and will.
R. Goletiani. Konstantine kapaneli's sociological organotropism. The organotropism by Konstantine Kapaneli is one of the most important among those philosophical and sociological concepts, which have been created in Georgia in the twenties of the 20-th century.
The sociological organotropism by Konstantine Kapaneli is the result of the author's principles of philosophical concept - the principles of organothropism, which are carried out and spread in social life.
Kapaneli is extremely devoted to organothropism: he doesn't recognize the general logical rules and regards the logic to the class nature. He also designates, that the bourgeois logic differs greatly from the proletarian one. Kapaneli doesn't take into consideration that by making the relativity principle absolute, he betrays the relativity principle itself.
L. Zakharadze. Parallelism in georgian romanism. Grigol Orbeliani and Nokoloz Baratashvili - representatives of Georgian romanticism were familiar with German classic philosophy and theorists of romanticism. It is obvious that Grigol Orbeliani was familiar with one of the theorists of romanticism Fr.Schlegel's work - "History of old and new literature".
According to the fundamental ideas of the mentioned work we can say that the national conception, admiration of past, patriotic soul, coverage of beauty and cult of nature, requirements of contemporary spiritual activity and philosophical reflection of language are based on common romantic outlook of Schlegel's and Schelling's philosophy.
I. Kalandia. Culture as creative activity and tolerance of person. Culture is a process of satisfaction on man's spiritual demands, a process of active realization of spiritual values that results in formation, "humanization" of the creator of culture - man. Culture as a field of reviling man's essential powers, as a sphere of his activity and demonstration of his abilities is an expression of the process of formation and self-establishment of person - the subject of culture.
Thus, implies person's free, creative activity. Creativity is an essential aspect of culture.
Culture can be interpreted as understanding in its broadest sense - as understanding of things, nature and life. This means that culture by its nature is a dialogical phenomenon and it forms man as a tolerant being, person who can conduct his own activities in accordance with the values common to all mankind.
D. Gegeshidze. Leo Tolstoy about the death and existentialism. In the life and creation of the classic of world literature - Leo Tolstoy, the theme of death occupies the central place, and far more, to our opinion, it is aim and task of Tolstoy's world outlook.
Existentialism, namely its main representative Martin Heidegger, completely shared the motives of "The death of Ivan Ilich", eternity of death, fear of death - trepidation and etc.
Generally the influence of Tolstoy's opinions on existential philosophy is not only noticeable, but essential one.
V. Corozia. Phenomenon of alienation in philosophy of friedrich nietzsche. The analysis of the alienation is based on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is supposed that the problem of the alienation is the central point for Nietzsche's theory. The focus is made on the third period of Nietzsche's life where he uses the concept of "Increasing Nihilism' for the alienation.
In the essay the main forms and indicators of nihilism are discussed based on Nietzsche. They are compared to the content of the concept of alienation. Nietzsche absolutely denies the transcendent and immanent sense of human existence. The main value according to Nietzsche is "Superman" as the major standard of real social life. The Nietzsche's theory is criticized here because of non-social and non-historical approach to the problem. Nietzsche couldn't overcome the nihilism but introduced the new form of it.
V. Makhniashvili. Ambiguity of the structural trauma. In this article the work of Dominik LaCapra "Trauma, Absence, Loss" is investigated.
Two main assumptions of LaCapra's text, that are explicated here, are universalistic and transcendetalistic conception of structural trauma, and monistic ontology of absence. The attempt is made to show that the negation of universalism of "absence" and, based on it, the conception of structural trauma ensue if some aspects of the pluralistic onto-epistemology are articulated and applied to "absence" more clearly than that is done by LaCapra.
In the end of this book are published chronicle of the life of Georgian philosophical academy in 2002 and the article of Irma Chitishvili "Problems of renaissance in Georgian philosophy".