This paper focuses on the influence of cultural familiarity on getting the most out of an e-negotiation for merger or acquisition based on subjective and objective negotiation behaviors. We examined if cultural awareness could increase the rate of negotiation self-efficacy, shorten the length of negotiation and optimize deal closure results. To do so, firstly we investigate the concept of e-negotiation and its development in the last two decades. Then a series of systematic reviews is performed on the parameters influencing the success in offline and online merger or acquisition negotiations. We also considered the main traits of Western and Middle Eastern Arab cultures on negotiations. The results show that many of the requirements of successful collaboration, or negotiations, with Arab managers can currently happen only through face-to-face meetings.

In this paper, we address the relevance of virtual worlds for negotiation using the example of Second Life and AltspaceVR; we take into account mindset issues and an avatar’s influence on this process. The concept of negotiation is related here to the concept of a networked society to describe actions undertaken between two or more individuals, groups, and/or organizations. The network is a milieu for negotiating with oneself and with others. Negotiating in a networked space can be an opportunity for self-exploration, subversion, and compensation for the limitations of physical reality, and it also involves background problems and the displacement of power. The term “negotiation” is used in online communities to describe interactions between people who are not physically present but interact with each other through some technical devices, such as the telephone or the Internet. In the waves of technological development, how people organize their lives and behave is a question of convenience. Virtual worlds, in which the human is extended by an avatar (and the avatar by the electronic space), are now being transformed into worlds where the human is just the avatar. The avatar is in the same space the human is in, i.e., in the physical world. This transformation (in fact, a paradigm shift) involves changing the habits of users, who are now adopting new habits in the form of negotiating the physical world with the values and habits of the virtual world.

Recently the virtual organization of work has become of crucial significance. The changes in the work environment induced by the Industry 4.0 revolution are also reflected in the emergence of virtual negotiations. New settings impose new challenges not only for negotiators, but also for higher education struggling to provide students with the best opportunities for comprehensive development. Given the applicability of virtual exchange (VE) in business higher education, the main objective of this paper is to present the usefulness of virtual exchange as a tool to boost students’ skills that are necessary for virtual negotiations. Firstly, the concept of the 4th space was applied to compare the context of virtual negotiations and VE projects. Secondly, the learning outcomes of the VE projects were studied from the perspective of the requirements of virtual negotiations.

The digital “4th Space” is a development of Oldenburg’s delineation of the 1st (home), 2nd place (work) and 3rd (social) places. Coworking spaces are presented as an example of space blurring within the knowledge economy, where digitalization, knowledge flows, flexibility and innovation play out at the micro level. Post-pandemic, they are likely to play a greater role as remote working remains a permanent feature. But how should we reassess their role in the advent of the 4th space, and what might the 4th space mean for how the role of proximity itself is (re)conceptualized in relation to collaboration and innovation? To do so, providing examples, we suggest the journey from the telephone to extended reality (XR) video conferencing technologies as a means to understand the evolution of the 4th space. We discuss (XR) spaces and the opportunities to afford proximity and collaboration, thus providing an agenda for further research.

The paper describes the circumstances in which digital technology arises; the change is recognized in the literature as the basis of digital transformation. This transformation is understood as a deterministic economic process. However, the analysis of the deeper circumstances of this process shows that we are dealing with a vast change in the ways of understanding and describing the world, i.e. with an epistemological change. This change concerns, on the one hand, the method of creating general mathematical (including geometric) structures that are the basis of models used to describe the world, and on the other hand—tools for its description, e.g. network theory, systems theory, complexity theory. Such a broadly understood change makes the deterministic description proposed by the digital transformation too simple and shallow. Instead, the concept of predigital transformation is proposed. It includes not only the omitted historical part but also creates better and richer conditions for understanding the digital transformation process, as well as for developing appropriate conceptual tools for its use.

This paper examines Aristotle’s discussion of slavery, showing his description of actual slavery to be an indictment and those regarding natural slavery to be a hypothetical investigation of a separate kind. Aristotle not only precludes the inclusion of natural slaves and freepersons in a single natural kind, but also articulates such bizarre requirements for natural slaves that they ultimately cannot exist. While this reading avoids notorious difficulties associated with Aristotle’s discussion of slaves, it replaces them with impossible preconditions for just slavery—so much that one must consider the possibility that Aristotle did not believe there was such a thing as “just” slavery. Was Aristotle’s otherwise acute mind blinded by the prejudices of his time? Or is this the inevitable result of “defending” the indefensible: an ad absurdum that has been ironically misunderstood and anachronistically misapplied to modern race and racism?

The purpose of the article is to analyse Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about the radical social division of society and the domination of the elite over the masses in the context of the latest socio-economic, technological and political realities of the post-industrial society. The authors emphasize the existing social demand for the study of threats that arise from social divisions due to the influence of the information society. In these processes, the authors trace a peculiar kind of recent interpretation of Nietzsche’s ideas about the “Übermensch,” owing to a radical change in the information space under the influence of the technological revolution. It is stated that the modern information society forms a new radical social division into the upper class of intellectuals and the general mass of consumers, provokes the emergence of a “divided civilization,” where under the slogans of supporting the idea of meritocracy, a society with new social divisions is formed. Ignoring the humanistic meaning of rights and freedoms, perceiving them exclusively as a technological tool for the introduction of irresponsibility make it possible to justify the rule of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch.” The “Übermensch” is now the bearer of knowledge, which is necessary for modern civilization. Nietzsche’s calls for the destruction of cultural tradition are used as a justification for the rejection of personal freedom, human rights, as well as the rejection of state institutions capable of protecting them. The authors conclude that the information society, which is based on technological innovations, faces a range of socially dangerous consequences, as well as the deformation of the system of established values. Thanks to the manipulative tools generated by technological progress, new formats of inequality are emerging and taking root. The appearance of powerful information resources strengthens the ability to control the behaviour of the individual, expands the power of a small group of people who control the information space. This is what actualizes Nietzsche’s statements about the radical division of society and the domination of the elite over the masses in the new socio-economic and technological realities.

The aim of this work is to consider individual symptoms and areas of alienation in the history of mankind and in the modern information society, and the disclosure of its logic and patterns. Methodologically, the study is based on the historical, information and cybernetic approaches. The paper points to a positive feedback between the amount of knowledge in alienated form and figures of society, the development of its comprehensive intelligence. New forms of exclusion, which exist in the form of artificial intelligence, robotics, and global computer networks, are analysed. The findings suggest a communicative model of the interaction of mankind with man-made external memory, which describes a non-linear process of communicating to it all human knowledge and intellectual abilities. It is emphasized that the contradiction between man and the material world created by him is the main contradiction of modernity.

In the paper we analyze the educational rationality closely associated with a neoliberal cultural logic that causes various lifestyles which seek only the satisfaction of unreal or symbolic needs where the ideal of education appears as one more among others. Furthermore, we consider educational policies subordinated to an expansive cultural logic of post-industrial capitalism, having as a historical reference the neoliberal turn of the Peruvian educational policy and a symbolic structure deeply established in the psyche of the society transformed by the social pathologies of mercantilism and consumerism. This insight will allow us to propose a socio-philosophical critique of postmodernity.

The paper analyses today partly forgotten Max Horkheimer’s conception of instrumental reason which presents this reason differently from the definition widespread today (claiming that it consists in adopting suitable means to set ends). Horkheimer relates instrumental reason to subjective one, seeing the former as a degenerate form of the latter. His theory is far more philosophical than the dominating today conceptions which do not consider the problem of instrumental reason philosophical any longer and instead move it step by step to the domain of a nonphilosophical decision theory. The paper analyses in particular Horkheimer’s beliefs claiming that 1) it is science which founds instrumental reason, and therefore 2) it is science which is the main source of oppressiveness and degradation of the contemporary civilization. It is shown among other things that Horkheimer misunderstands some properties of science and its operations and this leads to his incorrect presentation of the role of instrumental reason.

In the paper I propose a definition of higher religions as having their own Holy Scripture. The rating of the higher religions was built on the number of followers, the time of existence and predominance in certain territories. In total, 25 higher religions are identified. Four world religions were chosen as the coordinate basis for building a graphic connection between all 25 higher religions: by rating and by mutual proximity. It turned out that they can be placed in only one specific way. Moreover, all these religions are lined up in the correct absolutely symmetrical matrix—the harmony of the higher religions. This is clear evidence that all higher religions constitute a holistic, mutually reinforcing unity.

The paper proposes a comparative intercultural approach to the climate change. The author bases on the cases of Chinese Daoism and Norbert Bolz’s philosophy to present his personal general viewpoint. The today greatest challenge is the recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic by getting rid of the financial burden and by introducing individual economical solutions to each country as well as accepting international conventions on the reduction of climate change results. According to the author of the article, the increasing consequences of the climate change liven up international business and indifferent politicians to make positive decisions concerning it.

In this article we reconsider strands of Adam Smith’s contribution to the project of the Enlightenment. Many of these, as we shall identify, remain poignant, and valuable observations for the twenty-first century. This sampled reconsideration touches both on (i) how Smith is identified, as well as occasionally misread, as an Enlightenment philosopher/economist; and (ii) the extent to which t/his enlightenment survives.

This article presents an original interpretation of David Hume’s eighteenth-century writings in moral philosophy as universalistic and normative, and not as merely psychological, metaethical, empirical, and the like, which has been common in many interpretations of Hume. Whether his views should or should not be regarded as a type of general moral theory such as utilitarianism is not considered, although I argue that Hume is deeply committed to a form of virtue ethics. I also argue that Hume sees the fundamentals of morality as a human phenomenon that is universally applicable to, and universally shared across, cultures and geographical regions. In this way Hume relies heavily on his conception of a universally shared common morality, which he refers to as the morality present “in common life.” This morality is a major foundation of his moral philosophy.

This paper examines Hume’s theory of republicanism from the perspective of the history of ancient and modern thought. Hume criticized ancient republicanism for its implicit assumption of institutional slavery, and sought the possibility of a republican constitution based on the freedom and equality of citizens. Despite the title “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” its content was a concrete theory and discussed the British society as it existed in the 18th century. His conclusion was the realistic proposal of a highly democratic federal republic, which not only became the origin of the U.S. Constitution through James Madison, but also serves as a valuable source of enlightenment and inspiration for our time, when the challenges and problems of party politics and mass democracy have become extremely serious.

Among the many criticisms advanced against the enlightenment is that its emphasis on rational reflection and commitment to universal moral truths serve as solvents of tradition and community. Here, I wish to show how the German Jewish enlightenment figure, Moses Mendelssohn in his classic work, Jerusalem succeeded in bringing together universal rational religious reflection and Halakhah, Jewish ceremonial law. Essentially, the ceremonial law for Mendelssohn, forms a traditional mimetic society, whose members absorb the Halakhah naturally and intuitively both from the community at large and from its teachers through a process of total immersion. If we see religious practice as a language, then members of this halakhic mimetic community, for whom the Halakhah is a first language practiced fluently and intuitively, are able to use this language to intelligently discuss the great truths of religion. In this way, tradition and community and rational reflection turn out to be mutually supportive.

My general objective in this paper is to provide (1) the outlines of the reception of Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn in the Russian Enlightenment of the late 18th century as well as (2) in the Russian-Jewish Haskalah. In part (1) of the paper I consider Gavrila (Gavriil) Derzhavin’s mention of Mendelssohn in his “Opinion,” the translation of Mendelssohn’s Phaedon in Nikolay Novikov’s Masonic-inspired journal Utrennyi Svet, and the readings of Spinoza’s view on God and then-shared interpretation of his views as an “atheism” in Feofan Propovich, Vasily Trediakovskiy, and Alexander Sumarokov. In the part on the late Russian-Jewish Haskalah of 1860s I examine two intellectual biographies appeared in the period—Saveliy (Saul) Kovner on Spinoza and Yakov Gurliand on Mendelssohn, which aim to interpret positions of Spinoza and Mendelssohn as exemplary strategies of the Jewish emancipation within the framework of claims and prospects of the modern European culture. I also rediscover and reinterpret Spinoza’s approach to religion as the late Russian Haskalah’s authors strongly object to label Spinoza’s philosophy of religion as “atheistic” and consider it as close to the “pure, or true Judaism.”

It was plain long before the 20th century that both the act of translation and the translator’s task were quite complex: it became clear and evident during the Enlightenment, within the République des Lettres, with the emergence and gradual affirmation of national languages. In this general framework, the French translation of John Locke’s Essay concerning Humane Understanding is one of the main protagonists of the circulation of texts and ideas: Pierre Coste’s solutions follow the strategy adopted by Jean Le Clerc in his Extrait of the Essay published in the “Bibliotheque universelle et historique” in 1688 and, in primis, by Locke himself, as a theorist of communication/translation (in the Third Book of the Essay): the French translation is thus the exemplar par excellence and the embodiment of Locke’s theories of language, communication, and communicative ethics, all axed on the concepts of “agreement” and “consensual rationality.”

This paper discusses Adam Smith’s intellectual relationship with the French Enlightenment, with a particular focus on his view of French culture as conveyed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Compared to England at that time, eighteenth-century Scotland is considered as having a closer affiliation with France in terms of their intellectual and cultural life during what has been dubbed the Enlightenment. While David Hume was representative of the affinity between the French and Scottish literati, Smith also held an enduring interest in the French philosophy, literature, and other aspects of its civilisation, long before the historic visit to Toulouse and Paris (1764–1766) that would shape his political economy greatly. While this paper shall examine Smith’s Francophile and Europeanist tendency within his moral argument, it also emphasises that he was abundantly aware of the moral cultural tensions between these two branches of the European Enlightenment.