Academic literature on the topic 'Philosophy of Specific Cultures (incl. Comparative Philosophy)'

The article continues the polemics on the problems of interaction of philosophical cultures in the era of globalization, which was started at the meetings of the Round Table "Geography of Rationality". The author gives answers to critical questions, explains the methodology and principles of her work with Indian philosophical texts. A short research of the meta-term "cognitive subject" is an example of her methods. The analysis of cognitive subject aimed to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in Indian epistemic culture, the cornerstones of Western epistemic culture, since Modern times. The justification was carried out by comparing the generalized model of the cognitive subject, abstracted from the writings of empiricists and rationalists of the XVII–XVIII centuries, with the generalized models of the cognitive subject, reconstructed on the basis of authoritative writings of three variants of Indian epistemological teachings: Advaita Vedānta, Jainism and Buddhism. From the author's point of view, the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India leads to the non-classical problem of pluralism of epistemic cultures, and the exploration of the meta-term "cognitive subject" allows us to find, on the one hand, intersections in the contents of epistemologies in Indian philosophy and Western metaphysics of Modern times, and on the other, their incompatible contents, which are specific manifestations of pluralism of epistemic cultures. For her reconstruction of the cognitive subject models the author takes the principle of "double perspective" in combination with the methods of hermeneutical and logical analysis of philosophical terms. The principle determinates the consideration of the theoretical object from two sides: European and Indian. Having appeared in the Western epistemic culture, these methods effectively work to objectify the results of socio-humanitarian research, thanks to which they are becoming increasingly widespread among non-Western cross-cultural philosophers. When the author applies the method of logical analysis to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India, she is guided by the rules of logical semantics and the principles of semiotics. The compared terms, Western and Indian, are considered as signs with their own meanings and senses. The senses are understood as sets of predicates important for solving the author’s task. The author of the article, taking into account the experience of famous philosophers, negatively assesses the possibility of solving the problem of unambiguously correct translation.

G. E. R. Lloyd's economically persuasive study addresses the question of the universalism or relativism of rationality. Drawing careful comparisons, primarily between ancient Greek and Chinese thought, but also more widely, Lloyd introduces a range of disciplinary perspectives and specific points of focus. In doing so, he challenges his reader to think critically about their own assumptions and concepts. In particular, he asks us to consider the degree to which our own broad concepts, especially oppositions such as between rationality and irrationality, are themselves informed by their derivation from ancient Greek thought. His first chapter (‘Aims and Methods’) introduces his central commitments. Rationality and irrationality are not universal across societies in such a way that they can be judged by a single set of criteria. But nor are they just cultural constructs, so that the possibility of mutual intelligibility collapses. The truth lies somewhere in between, in the recognition of the heterogeneity to be identified in what is shared across cultures. Lloyd argues that ancient China is a particularly useful foil for a consideration of these questions, since it provides a perspective from beyond the reach of the Graeco-Roman legacy. His subtle middle road is further supported by his second chapter (‘Rationality Reviewed’), which summarizes some influential accounts of rationality and considers the ‘state of play’ across a variety of disciplines, including palaeontology, child development, and psychology, all of which present evidence of continuities between societies. The next four chapters approach the question of the diversity and commonality of reason from a range of perspectives, including cosmology, metaphysics, language, epistemology, and religion. In the case of cosmology, for example, Lloyd argues that we can identify a difference between the Greeks’ tendency to focus on the thing that is ‘Nature’, and the Chinese interest in natural phenomena and processes, absent a concept of ‘Nature’ itself. He is careful to note the difficulty of generalizing across all Greek or all Chinese thinkers. We can, however, identify a significantly similar belief in the two societies: that understanding the cosmos matters for the sake of the life you live as a result of that knowledge. In the case of the binary ‘Seeming and Being’ (as discussed in Chapter 4), Lloyd argues that the Chinese shared with the Greeks an awareness that appearances can be deceptive. However, their conception of the fundamental binary yin and yang is one of interdependence rather than sharp differentiation, such as we sometimes see in Greek thought between Being and Becoming. Throughout the volume, Lloyd argues for the need to recognize both the similarities and the differences identified as a result of careful comparative study. He ends with a recommendation for his readers to reconsider the universal applicability of certain key Western concepts, without resorting to a claim that it is impossible to recognize or communicate similarities. We must, he suggests, work from a position that demonstrates ‘due recognition both of the commonalities in human cognitive capacities, and of the differences in their deployment’ (96).

This essay examines methodological nuances connected with historical research of Russian law. These nuances are studied against the backdrop of two books published respectively by Professor Ferdinand Feldbrugge and Professor William Pomeranz on Russian legal history. The methods employed by these authors reveal specific features of Russian legal language and mentality which can be helpful in explaining the dissimilarities between legal and political developments in Russia and the West. They place particular emphasis on the development of legal language and productively analyze many current issues of Russian law through the lens of history of concepts. These books are evaluated as important contributions to comparative analysis of Russian and Western legal cultures. The key events of Russian legal history are considered in a perspective that sheds light on the current challenges faced by Russian law.

The aim of the study was to reveal the cause of the noteworthy resemblance between Wilhelm von Humboldt’s view of the nature of language, the conception of poetry in American Romanticism, and the philosophy of language in early Vedānta (Bhartṛhari, 5th century AD) that demonstrates a non-accidental affinity of the views on the associations of language and poetry between Indian and Western cultures. Five tasks were set for solving the problem: (1) to reveal the basic principles of Humboldt’s conception of language; (2) to explicate the basic traits of Ralf Emerson’s views on the nature of poetry; (3) to discover their common source; (4) to reveal the fundamental principles of Bhartṛhari’s conception of language; (5) to define the common cultural basis of these conceptions. The study was based on the works by Humboldt, Emerson, Plato, on Bhartṛhari’s treatise Vākyapadīya, and on modern works on shamanism. The principal methods of the study were: (1) a hermeneutic method, presupposing that any term of a philosophical treatise is treated as an integral part of the conception explicated; (2) a comparative historical method based on the analysis of the context where a phenomenon of culture took place; and (3) a comparative philosophical method based on the explication and definition of fundamental concepts of theories in comparison, their origin, place of each concept in its system, and function of each system in the general cultural context. Humboldt treated language as a product of a human need for a semantic organization of the world. Language in his philosophy is a primary manifestation of Volksgeist (people’s spirit) generating firstly the language specific for it, and the language forms the basis for any other aspects of culture. Emerson’s Over-Soul also reveals itself as an inner need that must be verbalized to become conscious. Self-reliance is necessary for human to hear the inner voice of Over-Soul. The poet for Emerson is a person whose inner hearing is more acute than that of other people, and this allows him to hear the voice of Over-Soul more clearly and transform it to words that can be apprehended by common people. The poet in his creative activity can perform only the inspirations of Over-Soul. Both these theories go back to Ancient Greece with its peculiar interpretation of poetic works as induced not by the will of a poet himself, but by a supernatural power. Similar ideas were elaborated in ancient Indian philosophy. According to Bhartṛhari, Brahman is an eternal Sacred Speech that creates the world. Any real language is a partial and scanty form of this Sacred Speech audible only for prophets (ṛṣi) having a “supernatural ear” (divya-śrotra). The conclusion of the study is that Humboldt’s and Emerson’s conceptions go back to Ancient Greek view of poetry as inspired by a supernatural power that cannot be controlled consciously, and this view, together with Bhartṛhari’s theory, has roots in the idea of the magical character of poetry, peculiar to ancient cultures.

Innovation studies continue to struggle with an apparent disconnect between innovation’s supposedly universal dynamics and a sense that policy frameworks and associated instruments of innovation are often ineffectual or even harmful when transported across regions or countries. Using a cross-country comparative analysis of three implementations of the ‘MIT model’ of innovation in the UK, Portugal and Singapore, we show how key features in the design, implementation and performance of the model cannot be explained as mere variations on an identical solution to the same underlying problem. We draw on the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to show how implementations of the ‘same’ innovation model – and with it the notion of ‘innovation’ itself – are co-produced with locally specific diagnoses of a societal deficiency and equally specific understandings of acceptable remedies. Our analysis thus flips the conventional notion of ‘best-practice transfer’ on its head: Instead of asking ‘how well’ an innovation model has been implemented, we analyze the differences among the three importations to reveal the idiosyncratic ways in which each country imagines the purpose of innovation. We replace the notion of innovation as a ‘panacea’ – a universal fix for all social woes – with that of innovation-as-diagnosis in which a particular ‘cure’ is ‘prescribed’ for a ‘diagnosed’ societal ‘pathology,’ which may in turn trigger ‘reactions’ within the receiving body. This approach offers new possibilities for theorizing how and where culture matters in innovation policy. It suggests that the ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ of innovation models are not a matter of how well societies are able to implement a sound, universal model, but more about how effectively they articulate their imaginaries of innovation and tailor their strategies accordingly.

The article provides a comparative analysis of phraselogical units with monetary component in Ukrainian, Polish and English phraseological pictures; it has been clarified that money is the subject of many sciences: economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc., and it is an integral part of society, and therefore they are the part of a core value which indicates the importance of this concept. The article investigates and reveals universal and cultural-specific features of phrases with a component of money on the material of phraseological pictures of Ukrainian, Polish and English cultures. The relevance of phraseological units, sayings, proverbs, winged expressions with the money component in the modern world has been proved, because the phraseological picture better reflects the changes that are taking place in the sphere of economics, politics, culture etc., it has been found that money is associated with national self-knowledge; it has been revealed ambivalence regarding money: on the one hand, they arise as a value, and on the other, as a social evil. The most promising research is a comparative study of Slavic (Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Polish) and German (English, German) phrases to indicate people’s attitude to money.

This article deals with the main ideas and basic concepts of Hindu aesthetics. The problem area reveals itself in the question of European culture’s perception of Hindu aesthetics. In this connection, the following questions are actualized: what can be considered as original aesthetic conceptions of Hinduism? is it possible to find direct analogies in other cultures? how relevant and correct is the conceptual apparatus describing various aesthetic phenomena? what is the role of the religious thought in the proposed aesthetic context? Proceeding from the historical and cultural position of aesthetic knowledge as it is presented in the European tradition, key approaches to the phenomenon of the aesthetic are shown, with the ideas of classical German philosophy – the cradle of aesthetic science (A. Baumgarten, I. Kant) – at the centre. The marked heterogeneity of aesthetic knowledge indicates its problematic status in the European historical-philosophical discourse and at the same time allows one to see, against its background, the harmonious place of aesthetics in Hindu culture. It mainly concerns the peculiarities of religious and worldview systems. Further, the paper studies the similarities and differences between the theoretical and ritual ideas and practices in Christianity and Hinduism. In particular, what they have in common is the importance of “threshold people” – liminal personae – in the spiritual life of society. Among the radical differences is the natural embedding of aesthetics in the religious system of India, while for European aesthetics, the religious world is just one of the spheres of the aesthetic. Using the method of comparative text analysis with reference to leading Russian orientalists and foreign researchers (V. Shokhin, D. Zilberman, E. Torchinov, R. Guénon, N. Gupta), the author takes a number of concepts as an example to demonstrate identity of religious and aesthetic ideas in Hindu and European cultures, as well as a possibility of mutual “cultural translation” of such basic concepts as aesthetics, the aesthetic, rasa and bhava.

The article examines the structure of national historical mythology of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) with an emphasis on the foreign policy dimension based on the analysis of their issues of the postage stamps. Since issuing of the postage stamps is a product of consensus between the state and civil society, their topics and images presented on them, on the one hand, may be considered as a part of the semiotic model of the state image, thus reflecting its stance on processes, events, phenomena or personalities of the past and the present and, accordingly, shaping, transforming or supporting a certain nation-forming mythology or state ideology; on the other hand, they reflect mass perceptions of the dominant national historical narrative, and often the priorities of contemporary politics. Due to the specifics of the Baltic states’ history and the dominant values and ideology of their political class, the mainstream historical narrative is inevitably turned outward, that makes the analysis of its main elements extremely operational in the study of their strategic cultures. The article proposes the author's attitude to categorizing and highlighting the main chronological and thematic elements of the arrays of postage stamps of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from 1990 to 2020. On the basis of discourse and selective iconographic analysis, the key elements of national historical narratives and their coherence with the foreign political positioning and strategies of the Baltic states are identified and analyzed. A comparative analysis of the three country cases allows us to pinpoint their relative proximity as well as some specific features.

Abstract In a fragmented digital media environment where news is increasingly encountered passively in social media feeds and via automated mobile alerts, active avoidance of news, rather than deliberate consumption, takes on outsized importance in shaping what it means to be an informed citizen. This article systematically evaluates the factors that predict news avoidance behaviors, considering both individual- and country-level explanations. Using a large-scale quantitative, comparative approach, we examine more than 67,000 survey respondents across 35 countries worldwide and find consistent evidence for how factors including demographics, political attitudes, and news genre preferences shape avoidance consistently across information environments. But we also show how country-level contextual factors, what we call “cultures of news consumption,” influence behaviors beyond that which is explained by respondent-level differences. Specifically, levels of press freedom and political freedom and stability are shown to negatively predict rates of news avoidance. These findings suggest that many people’s news use practices depend not only on personal characteristics and preferences but quite sensibly on the news available to them, which they may have good reason to view as deficient or untrustworthy, as well as culturally specific norms around its value and utility.

The idea of the 'saviour' has been an interesting subject matter for many specialists for a very long time. Its interset can be attributed to many reasons, probably the most important one is religion. Allusions to the saviour seem to be present in almost all religions, heavenly or earthly. It has been noted that even the pagan tribes believe in the existence of a saviour as a part of their cultures and traditions. Another reason stems back to man's weakness as a living creature and his constant need for a natural, or supernatural, power to save him from misery, oppression, injustice, ...etc. The saviour could be a superbeing or human being. For instance, Beowulf is looked at as a saviour, and King Arthur was, for a long time, thought to be a saviour that one day he will come and save his people, and many legends have been written in this respect. The aim of this study is to highlight the 'saviour' as a concept in Samuel Becket's play Waiting for Godot and explore its interpretations as tackled by two 'schools': The Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism, then compare it to the concept of the saviour from Islam's point of view. The study falls into four chapters. Chapter one is devoted to outline the 'saviour' as a term, the belief in the presence of the saviour in general, and how the idea of the saviour is looked at by different writers and philosophers. Chapter two highlights the principles of the Theatre of the Absurd that are concerned with the 'saviour' and how those principles are reflected in the play. It also shows how 'waiting' becomes adherent to the word 'saviour'. Thereafter, the existentialism philosophy is examined since the principles of the Theatre of the Absurd are closely related to the it. Chapter three is spared for showing the concept of the saviour in Islam in general, and in the Shia sect in specific. In order to accomplish this aim, some Quranic verses and Hadiths (reports of Prophet Mohamed's teachings collected after His death) are presented as examples to show the belief in the existence of the Saviour (Mahdi) in Islam. Finally, the study ends with chapter four which, in the light of the research findings, compares the image of the saviour in Waiting for Godot and Islam.