Alexander Sanzhenakov

The paper is considering Justus Lipsius’ the history of philosophy works. I distinguish the main ideas of Neostoic work “On Constancy” and show what kind of confusions Lipsius confronted when he was trying to transport some Stoic dogmas on the Christian ground. The main part of this paper pays special attention to the late works of Lipsius – the “Guide of Stoic Philosophy” and the “Physics of the Stoics”, in which he reveals a deeper knowledge of Stoic dogmatics. Analyzing these writings, I show the specifics of the historical approach of Lipsius. It is shown that Lipsius did not follow Seneca’s theses all the times, but considered it possible to correct them in order to bring some of them in line with the Christian dogmatism. For this purpose, he was appealing to the Christian and proto-Christian authors. In conclusion I try to argue that we should consider these appeals as an attempt to actualize the Stoic idea in new intellectual context, which is the task of any historian of philosophy.

The article focuses on the Stoic notion of “art of living”. First of all, I discuss the Socratic phrase “art that one used for taking pains over oneself”, which is a prototype of the studied concept. Then I show that Socratic normative requirement to take care of one’s own soul was taken up by the Stoics and equipped with a clear perception of the conditions of its practicability. These perceptions have appeared thanks to the Zeno’s definition of art as a ‘system of concepts’. However, the mechanism of its realization remained obscured due to the rigor of early Stoic doctrine. Only the Roman Stoicism, especially this of Seneca, was able to develop the “art of living” as a theoretical and practical concept.

The monograph under review investigates the correlation of the two Stoic ethical concepts: kathēkon and katorthōma. As the author highlights, specific features of the Stoic ethical theory are focused in these concepts and the character of their relations, and at the same time its key challenges are associated with them: the correlation of the highest good and the relative values, and the correlation of natural and virtuous. The author presents readers a history of the investigated problem in the introduction. The first chapter is devoted to the study of the main provisions of the ethics of early Stoics, aretology and axiology of Stoics, doctrine of oikeiōsis etc. The second chapter deals with the problem of influence of Cynic and Peripatetic philosophy on ethics of Stoa. The third chapter is devoted to the solution of the main objective of this work. In order to achieve this goal the author uses the rich heritage of research, which includes names such as M. Forschner, G. Nebel, J. Rist, D. Tsekourakis, A. Huseynov, A. Stolyarov and others. The following position can be assumed as the basic setting of the author: kathēkon and katorthōma are related as matter and principle of the act. On the one hand, this thesis captures the qualitative difference between the two spheres of Stoic ethics. On the other hand, the author fairly insists that the two areas are closely connected to each other. To sum up, the principle is independent from the matter, but the first cannot be completely isolated from the second.

This paper is divided into three sections: an introduction, a translation of Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise “On Virtues and Vices”, and a commentary to this text. In the introduction, the author briefly describes textual tradition, critical editions and available translations of the treatise in European languages. The major issue, discussed in the introduction, concerns the question of authenticity and authorship of the treatise. Arguments by E. Zeller, C. Schuchhardt, F. Susemihl, E. Schmidt, who seriously questioned the authenticity of the text, are contrasted with the opinion of P. Simpson, who insisted on its authenticity. The author of the present work is inclined to think that the treatise is a later composition. Respective arguments are presented in length in the commentary, where the author attempts to place the treatise in the context of the ethical works of the Corpus Aristotelicum, on the one hand, and this of the later Hellenistic developments, on the other.

The article attempts to criticize the concept of language games, as well as the hypothesis of K.A. Rodin on Wittgenstein’s influence on social science through the introduction of “contextualism”. Wittgenstein proposed to place language games in the first place in relation to the feelings and inner experience of individuals participating in common practices. The author of the article puts forward the following argument against it: indirect awareness of the rules and norms in which the individual does not participate or to which s/he does not obey suggests that the meaningfulness of actions stems not only from the context, but also from internal reflective understanding. In the final part of the article, the author refers to the work of E. Durkheim “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” in order to show that contextualism, as K. Rodin understands it, may have its own roots in sociology.

The article is devoted to the rule-following problem and its impact on the sociology of science as K.A. Rodin presents them in his article. It is known that L. Wittgenstein in “Philosophical Studies”, using the rule of arithmetic addition as an example, formulated the rule-following problem, which has acquired the ultimate form of skepticism thanks to S. Kripke. This problem was transferred to the sociology of science by D. Bloor, where it received the following sociological explanation: rule-amenably activity can be understood only by incorporating rules into social institutions. P. Winch rejected a skeptical interpretation of this problem, and as K.A. Rodin shows in the article, most adequately showed the consequences of Wittgenstein’s ideas for sociology. In his answer, A.A. Sanzhenakov draws attention to two circumstances. Firstly, sociology was influenced not only by late but also early ideas of Wittgenstein. Secondly, the rule-following problem as an important factor in the sociological turn can also be found in the phenomenology of E. Husserl. The author concludes about the need for additional research, which will draw a line between the influence of Wittgenstein and Husserl on sociology.