Kate Khan

The article provides a philosophical reconstruction of the composition of key motives in the phenomenological project of Mark Richir, who is known for his criticism of the symbolic institution. Following Richir’s deep inspiration in Schelling’s philosophy allows to find connections between his theory of the phenomenological unconscious and affectivity, his commentaries concerning Greek mythology and mythological thinking in La Naissance de Dieux—and his political theory. Along with general historical and philosophical comments on a number of translations of Schelling into French, Richir repeatedly refers to Schelling in his own theoretical arguments. The research shows how some of Richir’s concepts — in particular, his interpretation of the phenomenological unconsciousness, myth, the Protean nature of power, the change of grand epochs as a change of types of the symbolic institutions of power—can be understood on the basis of relevant passages from Schelling’s philosophy, and how a semantic genealogical connection between them can be built. By considering the importance of the phenomenological unconsciousness in the course of phenomenalization process as described in Richir’s works, it is proposed to contrast the interpretation of the unconsciousness, which retains its simple mystery and the ways of dealing, with it in Richir’s version: while psychoanalysis is striving for the “disenchantment” of the unconsciousness by means of translating it into the symbolic language and transferring the living potentiation of meaning into the reproduction of a symptom. Richir’s phenomenological appeal to mythology turns out to be a non-trivial shift from theoretical philosophy to practical philosophy. The article also pays attention to the theory of power in Richir and Lefort, which presumably dates back to La Boétie. It is proposed to reveal the antithesis of the imaginary policy of the despot proposed by Richir, reproducing the symbolic institution of power and supporting the transcendental illusion of the need for control and order in the form of a kind of “hypnosis”—and real politics as a praxis of freedom.

The article investigates the issue and the mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship in Soviet philosophy. The major forms of censorship are described and analyzed together with their epistemological implications and the peculiar policy of truth. The philosophical problem of defining and describing “facts” and ideological judgments during the “double” technique of reading and re-reading was exposed in the articles of V.F. Asmus and V.V. Bibikhin, thinkers, who experienced the self-censorship and reflected upon this in their texts. Analyzing the complex relation between the “dogmatic” or “critical” foreword and the original word is important, as is reconstructing and deconstructing the way we can reread the ideologically biased foreword, which might be a certain reliquary or protective camouflage, acting as, potentially, either a deactivator or an inhibitor of the reader’s own interpreting efforts. The given case of an attentive reading of V. Asmus’ foreword to the Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus can itself become an interesting philosophical language game. Interpretation of the foreword may reveal a hidden sense and references and encourage reflection based on the “common sense” assessments and perception of text. These hermeneutical exercises on reading forewords may paradoxically provoke starting the dialogue with the alternative foreword by B. Russell and the text of L. Wittgenstein himself, on one hand, and Marxism-Leninism and its variations in the form of historical materialism and Soviet dialectical materialism, on another. The situation of attentive reading with “a throat, strangled by ideology” is opposed to the power of imaginative “broadening of vocal ranges of the Others” thinking, whereas an inattentive reading of the text leaves a complete disability to object, or reply, to the censorship.

The philosophical concept of anxiety, which is usually associated with Kierkegaard and Heidegger's existential philosophy, seems to be an underestimated notion in Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics, while its role is important - anxiety appears to serve as the grounding for hope in his hermeneutics of self. The article aims to show how the anxiety is explained in Ricoeur's philosophy through attention and recognition, and how the anxiety is reflected in the narrative forms, or descriptions of vivencia. These descriptions may be seen as the verbal explanation of the so-called affective niche or affective scaffolding, which is a form of cultural adaptation, attempting to interpret and comprehend one's state of mind and way of the perception of the world as such in the given moment. The research and further dialogue based on these narrations may become an important source to recover from anxiety disorder, by discovering its existential meaning and, at the same time, accepting personal responsibility for it. Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics made an important theoretical contribution in understanding the essential aspects of anxiety and hope; but it also developed prolific methods of interpretation, that could be practically applied in health care and psychotherapy; these can be shown on the example of the psychotherapeutic method of the usage of so-called 'anxiety protocols', which aim to arrange the hermeneutical co-research to help patient/client to recognize and overcome its anxiety disorders.

This paper is dedicated to the issue of collective guilt and the interconnection between theoretical political thinking and ethically grounded political action, collective guilt, and personal responsibility. It assumes that facing political events in a form of media representation (such as with the war conflict in Ukraine), we mostly deal with simulacra, which affects and creates passive shock content consumption instead of active participation. The interconnection between irrational and rational ways of interpretation of political conflict is shown together with the attempt to rethink the social responsibility of nowadays, switching the prospective from synchronic to diachronic dimensions. Instead of producing descriptions that multiply monstrous zombie/victims-blaming apocalyptic discourse or subconsciously continuing to symbolically support “fratricide”, it is proposed to think about the legacy for future generations and see the moral dimension of politics in terms of “adults’ responsibility for children” as each one’s personal responsibility issue. Acting “as if you would wish all children on Earth to grow in safety and deserve a happy life no matter where (s)he would be born, as if it were a universal law” – this is proposed as an ethical-political common-sense formula, based on potential equality and global interconnection, maturity, and care – which could lead to a common goal of overcoming starvation, wars, sufferings, and catastrophes.