Čelovek

The article clarifies Foucault’s thesis on “the death of man”, identifies its weaknesses and relevance today. The background of this thesis and the misconceptions in its interpretation are briefly written out. It is not about human as a subject, a biological species or a biosocial being, but about Man as a historical a priori, or a modern episteme formed at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries. As a transcendental condition, it determines the nature of modern forms of knowledge and thinking, for example, German idealism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and various kinds of naturalistic reductionisms. Human became possible thanks to the idea of transcendental finitude associated with Kant’s Copernican turn. However, his birth is associated with betrayal of the transcendental project — a mixture of the transcendental and empirical levels. The general structure of Man is a transcendence, defined on the basis of human sciences and their empirical objectivity. It is shown that, contrary to popular simplifying interpretations, the sciences of man are understood by Foucault specifically: they combine sciences (linguistics, social sciences, biology) with Man as a doubling. The stability and difficulty of overcoming a Person are set by the paradoxical nature of his structure, which mixes empirical and transcendental finiteness: empirical instances (language, labor, biological life) define a person in objective time, but are possible, like time, only thanks to the structure of cognition. A critique of Foucault’s idea of Man is given. Using the example of a cerebral subject identifying a personality with the brain, the relevance of a Person today is shown at least beyond philosophy in the concepts of subjects that rely on scientific knowledge and circulate in discourses and practices in the social space.

The article examines the phenomenon of surrogacy, conducting an ethical analysis of the global ban on this practice, considering international trends, and presenting an analysis of the Russian specifics of its development. The global trend towards stricter regulation of surrogacy is analyzed, as reflected in the adoption of the Casablanca Declaration (2023), which calls for a global ban on the practice. It is demonstrated that Russia is also experiencing a tightening of control in the field of surrogacy. Meanwhile, financial interests in promoting surrogacy are driving attempts to control its perception through framing, representing it in a simplified and minimalistic way, adapting it to the existing socio-axiological context, and creating a positive image. This aims to interpret surrogacy as a humanistic practice based on the idea of a gift, displacing negative interpretations associated with the commodification and instrumentalization of the female body. The article also explores the prospects for liberalizing surrogacy in connection with the potential legitimization of new medical technologies in biomedicine, such as donating the body of a deceased woman (with diagnosed brain death) and the emergence of an artificial womb. It is shown that surrogacy reflects the reality of the birth of a new form of intimacy, which can be termed laboratory or biotechnological intimacy. In this context, technology is increasingly becoming a crucial actor in the constitution of private life. A conclusion is drawn about the convergence of morally ambiguous practices in the context of modern technoscience, which involves the objectification of the human body and increased control in the field of reproductive relations. The problem of a hybrid family model in the context of surrogacy is also examined. It is demonstrated that the practice of surrogate motherhood has a significant impact on the formation of a biotechnological image of childhood and the medicalization of social institutions.

The variability of images of the future has expanded significantly with the advent of big data and unique generative pre-trained transformers that is a type of natural language processing models. The social imaginary gradually becomes sociotechnical, and agents of artificial sociality are included in the construction of various images of the future, reproducing stereotypes from the data used to train large language models. Big data and related technologies feature in various visions of the future, including utopias, dystopias, and realistic scenarios of an achievable and livable “good society”. The emergence of the sociotechnical imaginary and generated images of the future initiates ethical and philosophical reflection, which is not limited to applied problems. However, there is also a need for exploratory studies, the results of which can be useful for further theoretical research. This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of the Russia future images generated by the GigaChat (Sberbank, Russia) and ChatGPT (OpenAI, USA). The utopia from GigaChat is focused on achieving technological leadership of Russia, and the utopia from ChatGPT is based on traditions. Dystopia according to GigaChat is a society of environmental disasters with a high level of socio-economic stratification and a low level of intellectual potential. ChatGPT constructs a Russian dystopia around an insidious small elite who, in various ways, including rewriting history, are trying to preserve their position of power. The “good society” from GigaChat is a utopia with restrictions, and from ChatGPT is an open multicultural society with a mixed economic system, focused on sustainable development and maintaining the mental health of citizens. The article demonstrates that different value and normative emphases in neural network images of the future are determined by the characteristics of the algorithms and the data used to train large language models.

The article is a sketch of a theoretical approach (or, more precisely, a research program) to human culture, which is based on the human-dimensionality, given as a set of irremovable natural limitations that man, as a natural being, imposes on everything thought, felt, made, changed, stored and used by him. Culture is presented as a multidimensional net/meshwork of cultural objects understood as an assemblages/re-assemblages that involve human-dimensional and non-human-dimensional artifacts, non-human actants, and humans as a condition and carriers of practices Humans act as mobile nodes of net/meshworks, moving along certain trajectories of their everyday habitat, the “enculturation” of that habitat is determined by the configurations of “awaiting” artifacts and “waylaying” non-human actants on their paths. A human, moving along his trajectories, assembles practices with artifacts of the environment, forming cultural objects; by the latter, as well as by the cultural objects one carries, a human can link with the cultural objects of other humans on the same or intersecting routes. Thus, couplings and multi-couplings of cultural objects are formed, which recreate a complex and constantly reassembling multidimensional net/meshwork. Configurations of relatively reproducible couplings in the net/meshwork we call retentions, the presence of which determines the state of culture; in the case of the coercion of retentions to be reproduced, we speak of a state of civilization. The first part of the article sets out the conceptual logic of the approach; the second part (which is an essay) provides a sketch of the analytical optics possible with this approach.

Today, we return to the history of Russian philosophy not so much to once again emphasize its dependence on European methodological frameworks, but rather to comprehend its cognitive value and positively evaluate its contribution to the development of Russia’s intellectual culture, the Russian philosophical language, and Russian speech. In December 2024, the philosophical and scientific communities will celebrate the anniversary of the natural philosopher, scholar, and Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, Daniil Mikhailovich Vellansky, whose original works and translations influenced the development of 19^th-century Russian philosophy and science. Vellansky’s passionate methodological call for the theorization and philosophical systematization of medical knowledge was notably different from the practice-focused Russian medicine of his time, which sought to understand the human organism through “experimental” approaches. Although Vellansky’s natural philosophical reflections — drawing from but not merely replicating Schelling — were criticized among medical scientists, his philosopher colleagues, such as Moscow University professors I.I. Davydov and M.G. Pavlov, showed genuine interest in his attempts to apply Schelling’s teachings to “physical subjects.” By placing the intellectual legacy of D.M. Vellansky in the broader context of contemporary issues in philosophy and the methodology of science, particularly in the epistemology of medicine, we gain a fresh perspective on his idea of the “wholeness of Man”, which he established as the foundation of medicine as an science. This thought of Vellansky’s is particularly relevant today in the context of modern interdisciplinary research programs (for example, the ecologization of medical practice), which take into account the human-sized character of scientific knowledge.

The article offers an interpretation of hypothetical necessity, which is important for understanding Aristotle’s future contingent events, based on praxis. For this purpose, the concept of becoming, the ways of expanding knowledge and the consequences for them of incomplete information about the conditions for the occurrence of future contingent events are used. Hypothetical necessity is the basis of praxis, where it is created by choice and decision, which allows us to see our actions not as absolutely contingent. It is difficult to indicate the absolute meaning of hypothetical necessity outside the theory of essence and becoming. But its difference from simple (metaphysical) necessity allows us to form a basis for criticizing actions that generate future contingent events. They are determined by the conditions that act in us and can change along with our ideas about the current situation, about the good and about the ways to achieve it. An act is not necessary, and not completely contingent, although it becomes necessary after its commission. The fact that a person himself does not control the formation of moral conditional necessity, and for him changes in opinions and preferences are usually spontaneous, contains the basis for criticism of the act. The latter is justified by speaking about the realization of the essence, and condemned by pointing to moral conditional necessity associated with dubious circumstances, for example, with delusions, prejudices, laziness, lack of will, etc.

The response article to the book by S.A. Nikolsky “Soviet Philosophical and Literary Analysis” is a dialogue between Oleg Leibovich and Alexander Kazankov. The conversation covers a wide range of topics related to reading the specified treatise. Firstly, the possibility of classifying S.A. Nikolsky’s philosophical analysis as a real anthropological type is discussed. According to modern Russian sociologists, the Soviet man emerged in the 1960s and his presence in society can be confirmed by mass surveys. However, this scientific approach is not interesting for S.A. Nikolsky, as both interlocutors point out. For a philosopher, it is not a question of whether or not the Soviet person existed, but rather who he was and what his role in literature was. Even if you assign it the status of a noumenal thing-in-itself or a hypothetical Bigfoot, it is a legitimate subject for literary and philosophical analysis. S.A. Nikolsky’s methodology allowed him to identify two fundamental features in the image of the Soviet man: clandestine and submissive. According to the author, these human qualities were discovered by Russian literary classics (I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.S. Leskov, etc.). During the discussion, it turns out that the existence of substantial human qualities is problematic, and clandestinity and submission are socially conditioned features of the ethos of the Russian writing intelligentsia itself. The interlocutors conclude their discussion of S.A. Nikolsky’s treatise on Soviet man with a discussion on the actual “Sovietness” of Soviet man.