Love has always liked, as we can observe since the same lyrical beginnings, to show itself, proclaim itself, as if something vital was played in that revelation that, in a certain sense, does not stop being strange because we are talking about deep experiences of each one’s soul. Now, that showing, which has found a place of privilege, must be thought under the digital cloak that dresses Eros, and think about it, then, as digital Eros. From Plato, Eros is a desire for the beautiful, Eros loves the beautiful. Therefore, the showing itself beautiful of love, requires a reflection in relation with how we show ourselves beautiful, that is, how the possibilities of networks allow us to make, sculpt, elaborate for that purpose. Finally, this implies a revision of the fictitious and the authentic of us, what the networks allow of us.

Some philosophers and theologians have argued that God-centeredness cannot be a condition of inter-religious dialogue for at least four reasons. First, it is an existential fact that all religions tend to view the truth of their beliefs and values as absolute. Second, all religions are embedded in radically different cultural contexts; this kind of difference undercuts the possibility of inter-religious dialogue. Third, grounding all the religions in a transcendent reality relativizes their beliefs and values. Moreover, people worship “their” God, not a neutral reality. Fourth, it is difficult to ground all the religions in a transcendent, neutral realty. This paper critically evaluates these arguments and defends the proposition that the mystical experience provides a justifiable basis for the claim that the transcendent is not only a wealth of being but also an infinite wealth of being and that the same transcendent is “revealed” in the mystical experience which underlies all the major religions. The transcendent is the common ground on which all the religions stand in inter-religious dialogue qua religions.

The article attempts to analyze unconscious cognitive empathy in Sam Harris’ discourse. Harris equates the theology of Abrahamic religions with ancient mythology. However, the expulsion of the Numinous into the sphere of the transcendent, made possible by monotheism, gave impetus to the study of nature and led to what Max Weber called the Disenchantment. This Disenchantment, firstly, led to the discrediting of ancient myths, and secondly, to the scientism of Harris and his like-minded people.

The monopolization of our techno-scientific culture by digital information technology, the Technopoly has unintentionally resulted in the extinction of knowledge or postknowledge, by reducing knowledge to systems of symbols—formalized algorithmic hierarchies of symbol-systems without external reference; a totalistic virtuality, or real virtuality. The extinction of knowledge or post-knowledge has resulted in two mutually reinforcing situations. One situation is the rise of a new elite of technology experts. The other situation is the dummification of people. These two mutually reinforcing situations further result in an illegitimate role reversal between people and their machines. The machines become treated as smart; people become treated as dummies. The role reversal of machines and people reinforces the monopoly of digital technology over everything. The monopoly of digital techno-scientific culture, the Technopoly, becomes accepted without question and without criticism. However, there is a way to retrieve knowledge, and that way is through restoring the (Ionian) tradition of critical discussion within all our institutions. Critical discussion can be restored by increasing democratic participation in our techno-scientific culture, which amounts to implementing a Socratic social architecture.

In this essay I expose two historical examples of the ambivalence of the place of philosophical knowledge in society. The symptomatic starting point is Aristotle’s characterization of the philosopher. Then, through the specification of Descartes’s views on philosophy, culture, the human and the artificial, I will show that there exists certain tension between the development of philosophy as a free knowledge available to everyone and philosophy as a specialized knowledge only suitable for initiates. Nowadays, when philosophy is in a critical situation maybe because of that ambivalence, the need arises to overcome this problem and democratize it.

The proposition I elucidate and defend in this paper is that the explanatory power of Malgorzata Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth extends beyond our knowledge of empirical reality and includes our knowledge of human nature and human values. The paper is composed of two parts. In the first part I present a detailed analysis of the conception of symbolic truth. The focus in this analysis is on the nature of the correspondence relation which connects a true statement and the cognitive object. Czarnocka persuasively argues that this relation is neither isomorphic nor homomorphic in character. She advances a detailed analysis of sensual perception as the locus of the cognitive act. The outcome of this analysis is that the structure of the statement which is articulated in this act does not copy or mirror the structure of the object but is a linguistic representation. In the second part of the paper I argue that empirical reality is not the paradigm of reality and that scientific knowledge is not the paradigm of knowledge. The domain of humanity is as real as the domain of empirical reality, and our knowledge of this domain is as central to our life as scientific knowledge is. Moreover, I argue that Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth functions adequately in explaining the possibility of knowledge of human nature and human values with special focus on the literary work of art.

The proposition I elucidates and defend in this paper is that the Transcendent can be an object of genuine knowledge and that the knowledge the philosophical mystic claims of it is symbolic in nature. In my endeavor to achieve this aim I rely on Małgorzata Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth as a model of explanation. I am inclined to think that, as a model of explanation, this conception sheds ample light on the possibility of having a cognitive experience of the Transcendent. The paper is composed of four parts. The first part raises the question of the Transcendent as an object of knowledge. The second part advances a brief analysis of the main elements of Czarnozka’s conception of symbolic truth with special emphasis on her view of human nature. The third part explicates the sense in which the conception of symbolic truth functions as a model of explanation. The fourth part analyzes the conditions under which the Transcendent can be an object of knowledge.

I investigate the universality of science as perceived in epistemological conceptions and in sociology of science, as well as claims about the anti-universal character of science. In this, I distinguish two kinds of universality of science: epistemic and global cultural/social, and in the latter also the global universality of the basic level of science. I attempt to show that epistemology views science as universal in its basic aspects relating to knowledge, its object, subject and cognitive values as well as methods, which, according to the epistemological meta-theses, are necessary for scientific validity and autonomy. I also draw attention to the fact that sociologised, multiculturally-oriented approaches to science are wrong to hold it for irrevocably anti-universal and exclusively a part of Western culture. I suggest instead the perspective of basic-level global universalism, where science is seen to grow out of a cultural base common to all cultures, which provides the criteria for weak rationality, weak empiricism and methodology and determines the nomological character of cognition. Finally, I trace the evolution of universality from a property of science to a value, and ask about the meaning of this property-cum-value for the human world.

Deep disagreement is a disagreement about epistemic principles, pertaining to the methods of justification and argumentation. Relying on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conceptual metaphor of “hinges,” researchers arrive at the conclusion that deep disagreement cannot be resolved. This conclusion leads to relativism in the theory of argumentation. The aim of the article is to show that in the situation of deep disagreement it is theoretically possible to ascertain which of the positions of the participants of the argument has a better epistemic status, and hence, is argumentatively virtuous.

Neither for today’s Russia, nor for the whole of the contemporary world is there, perhaps, a more important issue than the possibility of a civilized, peaceful dialogue between cultures, peoples, governments and individuals. The International Society for Universal Dialogue is one among other philosophical schools, societies and organizations which promote the idea of universal dialogue. It tries to solve problems associated with language and ideological barriers, strengthening professional and friendly ties and implementation, through joint efforts, of a peaceful and fair world order.

This paper argues that the contemporary challenge for ISUD and philosophy itself is to repair and replenish our shared and overlapping lifeworlds through the recovery, critique, clarification, and renewal of authentic values, insights, and achievements from the widest possible plurality of traditions, cultures, and philosophical visions. We must liberate the life world from the snares of creeping nihilism. We must repair and replenish the life world through open and honest communication, through philosophical dialogue among an ever-greater plurality of perspectives and points of view.

In this essay, I argue that the contemporary world scene is characterized by a growing sense of conflict, disorganization, and fragmentation of previous unities and alliances. I also argue that any serious attempt to address these issues would have to focus on the following broad areas of concern: (1) the challenge of global political instability; (2) the challenge of promoting a more positive approach to regionalism; (3) the challenge of global poverty and inequality; (4) the challenge of human displacement; and (5) the challenge of climate change and environmental degradation.

This paper considers the extent to which we already live in a cosmopolitan era. Resurgent nationalism is explained as a reactionary response to the success of cosmopolitanization. Cosmopolitanization is further explained as a dialectical process. Contemporary cosmopolitanism emerges against the backdrop of Eurocentric globalization associated with the colonial era. While the Eurocentric legacy must be rejected, it has left us with a cosmopolitan world. Other dialectical processes emerge in consideration of the importance of local and multicultural issues. Cosmopolitanization is a process that must work to connect global processes with local concerns. The paper situates this argument in consideration of events in Peru, in connection with the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, and in relation to several examples of the cosmopolitan dialectic. Despite some dialectical setbacks, the paper concludes that we are already operating in a world in which globally diverse ideas and practices are already in dialogue. The challenge is to continue the cosmpolitanizing conversation, while remaining responsive to the needs of local communities.

The concern of this paper is to critique the political conception of nationalism as a theory of the nation-state. The basic point of the critique is that when the interests of the nation and the principles of the state coincide there emerges a fierce sense of national identity which endangers moral indifference to outsiders, the people within and outside the national boundary, without remorse. Here the attempt to uphold national identity is something more than nationhood. Besides involving territorial identity, common language, custom and culture essential to the idea of a “nation,” it also upholds the consciousness of these as determining separate rights and allegiances, the idea of attachment to a nation and its interests. Such a consciousness can emerge only on the adoption of certain populist ideas such as racism, ethnicity and even such popular elusive myths as the “greatness” of a nation, the urge for the maintenance of “national character,” etc. Such “nationalist xenophobia” leads to the intensification of the distinction between the “own” and the “other,” “national” and the “alien,” the “citizen” and the “migrant” leading to “ethnic disharmony,” “colour bias,” hatred and suspicion of persons with whom one has lived closely as neighbours for decades. The most popular is the economic discourse of the “migrants” putting the “nationals” out of work. All this has its toll on multi-culturalism and humanitarian concerns. Many affluent nations have become cold to human misery, suffering and deaths from wars, terrorism, acute poverty, political persecution, environmental degradation, etc. This has created an “existential” crisis for millions of people on earth.

Over the past couple of decades, both the news media and mainstream literature have been awash with stories of some sort of renascent nationalism and populism. Some citizens have begun to express lack of confidence in core representative institutions, accusing politicians and entrepreneurs of having lost touch with the concerns of ordinary people. They demand protection from transnational economic forces undercutting their access to jobs, wages, and benefits, and in addition, from the threats of terrorism associated with Islamic extremism. In this piece, their questioning of liberal civil rights was reviewed. Efforts at liberal homogenization were examined, and the charge that conservative views trivialize the ethics of universal human care, love and collaboration, which are at the heart of creating enduring peace in the world, was considered.

In the history of political thought a major problem has been to determine if philosophers should get involved in political affairs. From Aristotle to Antonio Gramsci, a wide variety of positions have been presented on this topic. Today academics often choose to isolate themselves in the ivory tower of the university. Although there are many exceptions to this general rule there is no consensus about how philosophers should relate to politics. We hope that this article which explores the relation of Aristotle to Machiavelli can shed some light on this very relevant issue.

The essay characterizes an anthropological impasse of political philosophy dividing those in a more liberal tradition from those in a more Hegelian tradition, and then it proceeds to sketch a political philosophy without any human or anthropological content. I rely on Foucault’s notion of parrhesia to activate such a political philosophy, and I rely on the philosophical life of the Cynic to make parrhesia possible. Finally by invoking exercises of ascent and of descent, I suggest that this kind of political philosophy can not only solve the anthropological impasse of political philosophy, but also in practice, it can cool hateful passions and warm cold hearts.

I have chosen to approach the Marxian alienation theory from a historical angle and recount its evolution in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Grundrisse (Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy), wherein it develops into a theory regulating the co-creation of conditions for “freedom” in the choice of processes that lead to de-alienation. I will attempt to present the alienation theory as an aspect of a broader anti-metaphysical critique of all substantialism, According to Marx, the substantialist approach to history could at most only pretend to be dynamic and ignored the structural complexity of being, whereas the true idea was to notice and keep track of the structural and qualitative changes brought to being by the genetic, structural, social, economic, class and institutional conditionings of human history.

The aim of this essay is to examine the long-term evolution of the material reproductive vehicles of society. The fairly continuous trend of economic integration and progressive enfranchisement of the world’s people is indicated, ascertainable even with the emergence from general slavery of ancient times, through feudalism to the modern stage of industrialism and widespread national sovereignties. With greater political expression has come higher degrees and penetration of economic prosperity. Both vicious and virtuous tendencies of automation are considered. The necessary foundation of living labor is recognized.