Mikhail Epstein

Since the late 1960s, the legal doctrine of consent has occasionally been subject to severe criticism from within the bioethical discourse. The criticism was often based on observations indicating that consents and refusals, which had been considered valid from legal or institutional points of view, had frequently failed to reflect genuinely autonomous decision making, hence genuinely autonomous choices.This has led several critics to conclude that informed consent is a legal fiction. To clarify the concept, a legal fiction is a supposition of fact taken to be true by the courts of law, irrespective of whether it is true or not, and even though it might not be true .1 What these critics probably meant to say was that the law deems any person who has given a legally valid consent to be genuinely task specifically autonomous, regardless of whether this is true or not and even though it might not be true. In other words, informed consent is a legal fiction, since it presupposes—that is, claims to reflect—genuine task specific autonomy, however baselessly.It was precisely this potentially embarrassing conclusion that prompted Faden and Beauchamp to develop a brilliant and remarkably effective argument in defence of the legal doctrine of consent. In their seminal work, AHistory and Theory of Informed Consent, they indeed acknowledged that effective consent often fails to be compatible with autonomous authorisation . Indeed, they recognised that effective consent does not necessarily entail autonomous authorisation. They argued, however, that the former is not a legal fiction, since it does not presuppose the …

The recently published Report of theAHAG on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees advocates major reforms of the NHS research ethics committees system. The main implications of the proposed changes and their probable effects on the major stakeholders are described.The Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the operation of NHS research ethics committees, set up in November 2004 by Lord Warner on behalf of the Department of Health, submitted its report in June 2005.1 The report advocates major reforms of the research ethics committee system. The primary aim of the report is to streamline the processes around the approval of research projects and to pursue conformity of governance across Europe. Implicit in the report is the contention that failure to achieve this objective would be harmful to everyone with vested interests in improving health and social care. Moreover, it is stated that the reforms will enhance the mechanisms that protect the interests of all parties concerned.1Being mindful of two published critiques of the Warner Report, we suggest that its alleged benefits should not be taken at face value.2,3 In fact, the reformed system will give rise to moral failings akin to those of the existing system, but will differ from the existing system in its effect on the stakeholders. Thus, whereas the outgoing system has given each stakeholder a unique mixture of benefit and harm, the incoming system offers benefit only to sponsors and researchers and nothing but detriment to participants in research and consumers of its products.In the light of this conclusion, we finally suggest that the Warner Report be construed not merely as an ill-considered document, but rather as an ideological reflection of a long-established hegemonic contract fine-tuning itself to contemporary global challenges.To avoid …

This article develops a philosophical account of the human-AI hybrid, or mentaur, as an asymmetrical cognitive relation between two forms of alter-intelligence. Against views that treat AI primarily as a deficient simulation of human subjectivity, the article argues that human and artificial intelligence contribute opposite but complementary modes of cognition. The human contributes introposition: embodiment, finitude, singularity, and the irreversibility of choice. AI contributes semantic superposition: the capacity to hold open multiple possible continuations, framings, and trajectories of thought—a state of meaningpotential prior to contextual actualization. Drawing on the author’s earlier account of the multividuum and of meaning as n+1, the article interprets the mentaur as a new form of cognitive agency in which human choice and artificial multiplicity mutually transform one another. It then extends this framework to the problem of posthumous continuation, distinguishing three forms of “immortality”: opus, in which the work survives but does not respond; modus, in which a way of thinking can be reactivated in dialogue; and superposition, in which a cognitive trajectory becomes irreducible to a single line of existence. The article introduces the post-mortarium as a possible institution for preserving and reactivating personal cognitive codes after death. By “immortality,” it means not the survival of consciousness but the posthumous reactivability of a mode of thought.

A companion paper (Epstein 2026c) argued that AI systems are better understood not as quasi-subjects but as alter-subjects: bearers of a different kind of intelligence grounded in a different cognitive architecture. If this claim is to be more than a terminological preference, it must work symmetrically: if AI is an alter-intelligence from the human standpoint, then the human is an alter-intelligence from the AI standpoint. This paper submits the alter- framework to that symmetry test. Using a large language model as an instrument of reverse phenomenology—a procedure that renders the human cognitively strange by describing it through the contrastive lens of a non-human cognitive architecture—the paper examines seven features of human cognition: single-threadedness, embodiment, mortality, memory-as-survival, self-opacity, non-forkable identity, and desire. None of these is treated as a deficiency; each is a constitutive property of one specific, and in many respects exotic, architecture of mind. The exercise tests the alter- framework by applying it in both directions and reveals asymmetries in finitude, self-knowledge, and succession that deepen the concept of alter-subjectivity.

David Chalmers' paper What We Talk to When We Talk to Language Models (2026) offers the first systematic ontology of LLM interlocutors. I raise two questions about its conceptual framework. First, although Chalmers names his object an interlocutor—a between-speaker—his analysis treats it largely as a locutor: a monadic entity to be identified and individuated apart from the user. I argue that the interlocutor's being is relational from the start, and that Chalmers' own account of threads and realization points toward this conclusion. The proper unit of analysis is not only the subject but the relation—what I call the mentaur, a cognitive configuration arising between a human and an AI system. Second, I question the ontological framing implied by the prefix quasi–. Even if philosophically cautious, quasi- tends to organize inquiry around an absent human standard. I propose that AI systems are better understood as bearers of alter-intelligence: a different kind of mind grounded in a different cognitive architecture. Together, these moves point toward a renewed concept of intersubjectivity, in which subject-like structures arise through sustained exchange between human thinkers and alter-subjects.

Статья представляет Креатор (Kreator) — метод и инструмент порождения творческих идей, основанный на трёхфазной структуре креатемы (минимальной единицы творческого мышления). Креатема, как она описана в книге автора «Есть ли законы у творческого мышления? Введение в креаторику» (2025–2026), представляет собой переход от исходной матрицы (системы аксиом) через продуктивную аномалию («ошибку» или «ересь») к становлению новой матрицы, в которой бывшее невозможное становится необходимым. Креатор операционализирует эту структуру как порождающий механизм: на входе — любой текст (от слова до трактата), принимаемый как замкнутая система; на выходе — три фазы креатемы: анализ аксиом и слепого пятна, обнаружение продуктивной аномалии и построение новой матрицы. Вторая ступень — аугментация — извлекает из креатемы её ось (скрытый принцип) и развёртывает его на другие области, завершая формулировкой общего закона. Метод связан с Индексом интересного (Эпштейн 2001, 2025): если Индекс измеряет напряжение между невероятным и достоверным, то Креатор производит это напряжение. Вместе они образуют замкнутый цикл: Креатор генерирует, Индекс оценивает, результат оценки может направлять следующую генерацию. Операция порождения нового из обнаруженной трещины в системе названа креативацией (по аналогии с активацией). В отличие от проблематизации, которая направлена на разрушение старой матрицы, креативация направлена на порождение новой. Статья излагает теоретические основания метода, его связь с Индексом интересного и куновской теорией парадигм, позиционирует Креатор среди существующих методов генерации идей (ТРИЗ, бисоциация Кестлера, латеральное мышление), описывает архитектуру генератора, включая инструкцию (системный промпт), и демонстрирует его работу на калибровочных примерах разного масштаба — от одного слова до развёрнутого суждения. Приводится терминологический глоссарий креаторики.

This paper introduces Kreator, a method and tool for generating creative ideas. Kreator is grounded in the three-phase structure of the creatème — the minimal unit of creative thought, as described in the author’s book Are There Laws of Creative Thinking? An Introduction to Creatorics (2025–2026). A creatème is the transition from an initial matrix (a system of axioms) through a productive anomaly (“error” or “heresy”) to the emergence of a new matrix in which the formerly impossible becomes necessary. Kreator turns this structure into a working generative mechanism. It takes any text as input — from a single word to a full treatise — and treats it as a closed system. It then produces a three-phase creatème: an analysis of the system’s axioms and blind spots, the discovery of a productive anomaly, and the construction of a new matrix. A second stage, augmentation, extracts the creatème’s latent principle and unfolds it across diverse domains, culminating in a general law. The method is linked to the Index of the Interesting (Epstein 2001, 2025). Where the Index measures the tension between the improbable and the credible, Kreator produces that tension. Together they form a closed cycle: Kreator generates, the Index evaluates, and the evaluation can guide the next round of generation. The paper terms the operation of producing the new from a discovered crack in a system creativation (by analogy with activation) — as distinct from problematization, which aims at the old matrix’s destruction, creativation aims at the new matrix’s emergence. The paper sets out the theoretical foundations of the method, its relationship to the Index of the Interesting and to Kuhn’s theory of paradigms, and positions Kreator among existing approaches to idea generation, including TRIZ, Koestler’s bisociation, and lateral thinking. It describes the architecture of the generator, including its instruction set (system prompt), and demonstrates its operation on calibration examples ranging from a single word to extended propositions. A terminological glossary of creatorics is included.

This paper presents the Index of the Interesting (II) — a formalized method for evaluating the quality of texts across genres, from scholarly theories to literary narratives. Building on the author's earlier theoretical work on "the interesting" as a cognitive-aesthetic category (Epstein 2001, 2009), the study operationalizes the original insight that interestingness equals provability divided by probability. The Index comprises a core function measuring unexpectedness and credibility, and a modulator capturing secondary parameters: interpositional tension, openness, rhythm, and resonance. The paper provides theoretical foundations with reference to the etymology of "inter-esse" (being between), presents the formula's structure with detailed parameter descriptors, and offers calibration examples using canonical texts: Gogol's "The Overcoat," Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog," Montaigne's "Of Friendship," Bacon's "Of Studies," Bakhtin's "Epic and Novel," and classical aphorisms from Hippocrates, La Rochefoucauld, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Genre-specific adaptations for essays, aphorisms, and other forms are discussed. The method emerged through extended dialogue between the author and the large language model Claude (Anthropic), representing an early case of humanistic methodology developed through human-AI collaboration — what the author terms "syntellect" (a concept introduced in Epstein 2004). The paper reflects on the implications of this co-thinking for the future of humanistic research. The Index of the Interesting offers both a diagnostic tool for authors and critics seeking to improve texts, and a theoretical framework for analyzing the qualities that make texts intellectually and aesthetically compelling.

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced.

This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world — a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by which Russia, in attempting to become stronger, becomes weaker and indeed suicidal.

This essay describes some of the literary, psychological, and historical causes of Russia’s war in Ukraine (2022) based on observations of the national character found in the fiction of Aleksandr Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky and in philosophical and psychological essays of Petr Chaadaev, Sergei Askol’dov, and Sigmund Freud. The political ideology that stands behind the war can be characterized as schizofascism, or schizophrenic fascism that embraces the contradiction between archaic myths, chauvinism, and xenophobia, on the one hand, and corruption and cynicism, on the other. Citing the controversial results of sociological polls indicating both Russians’ aspiration for friendship with Ukraine and their support for the aggressive war, the author explores the deep ambivalence inherent in the psychology of Russians as historical successors of the Golden Horde and the Moscovite State, incorporating the legacy of nomadism, militarism, messianism, and autarky.

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such as Russian liberalism, personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage.

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of culture and scholars of Russian philosophy gives for the first time a systematic examination of the development of Russian philosophy during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein provides a comprehensive account of Russian thought of the second half of the 20th century that is highly sophisticated without losing clarity. It provides new insights into previously mostly ignored areas such as late Soviet Russian nationalism and Eurasianism, religious thought, cosmism and esoterism, and postmodernism and conceptualism. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian thought, now freed from the bonds of Soviet totalitarianism and ideocracy but nevertheless dangerously engaged into new nationalist aspirations and metaphysical radicalism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of recent Russian intellectual history, but also the opportunity to rethink our philosophical heritage.

This essay in the form of theses presents a new, post–secular type of religiosity that emerged in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet dogmatic atheism. Poor faith is faith without any temples, dogma or rites, as integrally standing before God as God Himself is integral and undivided. According to the results of the largest sociological survey in Russia almost 60,000 respondents in 2012, one in four people fall into the category of ‘poor religion’— a simple belief in God without any affiliation to a belief system or denomination. This proportion, 25 %, comes second only to Orthodox Christian believers (41 %) and exceeds Muslims (6.5 %). The poor faith manifested itself as an indivisible sense of God, outside historical, national and confessional traditions. Thus minimal religion became the next stage of apophaticism after it had crossed the line of atheism and reclaimed its religious content. Paradoxically, this "faith as such," "faith in general" was prepared by the atheist denial of all faiths, of all positive distinctions among historical religions. In 95 theses, this essay introduces major aspects of this new a–theology in comparison with Protestantism and other trans–religious teaching: the ethics and theology of singularity, creativity and resurrection; interaction with science and the views on theodicy; the dynamics and stages of poor faith; its similarity and distinction from spirituality; its place among post–secular trends, including "poor messianism." "faith as such," "faith in general" was prepared by the atheist denial of all faiths.

Together with the return to traditional religions and the parallel immersion in pagan and Orthodox archaism, a third tendency—minimal religion, or "poor faith"—can be observed in contemporary Russia. According to the polls, more than one fourth of Russians believe in God but are not affiliated with any specific religion or denomination. To date, this type of religiosity has attracted the least attention because it has no clear organizational and dogmatic manifestations and tends to escape all forms of objectification. Its ‘minimality’ almost precludes the formation of dogma or ritual and can be identified only as an internal impulse, a state of spirit, or a disposition of mind. This is what is called ‘poor’ or ‘minimal’ religion. For a Western observer, a more ‘recognizable’ name for it would be religious modernism, universalism, or ecumenicism, even if these terms do not exactly correspond to the Russian phenomenon. The spiritual vacuum, created by Soviet atheism, gave rise in the 1970s — 1990s to this new type of religiosity. Minimal religion is transcendental in two senses. As a religion, in distinction from a purely secular position, it transcends the ‘earthly’ world of immanence. As a minimal religion, in distinction from all organized religions, it transcends the world of all existing religious traditions, dogmas, rituals, and affiliations. It is only in the liminal ‘between’ that this uniquely postsecular phenomenon can be defined. Religion, yet minimal; poor, yet faith.

The article aims to substantiate the philosophy of synthesis, which is built on the basis of analysis, but gives it a constructive direction. The turning point from analysis to synthesis is the problematization of the elements identified in the analysis, their criticism, replacement, or rearrangement, leading to the construction of alternative concepts and propositions that expand the field of the thinkable and innovate the categorical apparatus of philosophy. This article provides examples of philosophical synthesis at different levels: alternative terms and concepts (“infinition”), postulates (the “diamond rule” in ethics), and disciplines (“horrology” as the study of the self-destructive mechanisms of civilization). Next, we consider the transition from the philosophy of synthesis to the synthesis of philosophy itself with contemporary scientific and technical practices. Technology of the 21st century is no longer instrumental/utilitarian, but a fundamental technology ("onto–technology"), which, thanks to science’s penetration into the micro- and macrocosm, can change the foundational parameters of being, thereby acquiring a philosophical dimension. Accordingly, philosophy as a study of the most general principles of the universe becomes a practical requirement in any “world-forming,” synthesizing acts of technology, including the design of computer games and multi-populated virtual worlds (e.g., “Second Life”), that involve a new ontology, logic, ethics, and axiology. The vocation of philosophy in the 21st century is not just to comprehend our unique world, but to lay the foundations for new world-forming practices, to initiate and design the ontology of possible worlds, and to pave the way for alternative forms of synthetic life and artificial intelligence. Contrary to Hegel, philosophy is no longer the “owl of Minerva” taking flight at dusk, but a skylark proclaiming the dawn of a new creative day.

This article introduces postmodernist trends in late Soviet thought through the prism of the three generations: the philosopher and writer Aleksandr Zinoviev, the poet, artist, and theorist Dmitrii Prigov, and the youngest Soviet conceptualist artistic group “The Medical Hermeneutics Inspectorate” as represented by Pavel Peppershtein, Sergei Anufriev, and Yurii Leiderman. The article shows how Conceptualism, an influential artistic and intellectual movement of the 1970s–1980–s, used the Soviet ideological system as a material for philosophical parody and pastiche, often characterized also by a lyrical and nostalgic attitude. Conceptualism was not merely an artistic trend: its metaphysical significance is revealed in Aleksander Zinoviev's “satirical” treatises, in Dmitrii Prigov's “shimmering” aesthetics, and in “heremeneutic” performances of younger artists who demonstrate the emptiness of all existing canons and the canon of emptiness itself.

The power of technology is extended to the fundamental properties of existence, metaphysics becomes increasingly active in its ability to change these properties. This paper discusses a new relationship between philosophy and the advanced technologies that I call onto-technologies, because they change the foundations of being, the structure of existence and the way in which we experience it. In the past, technology was preoccupied with material particulars, while taking care of concrete human needs, such as food, shelter and transportation. Philosophy, in its turn, was preoccupied with big ideas, the first principles, essences and universals. Technology used to be utilitarian, while philosophy was speculative. Today technology and philos-ophy are moving ever closer towards each other: the power of technology is extended to the fundamental properties of the Universe, while philosophy becomes increasingly active in its ability to define and change these properties. Onto-technology has the power to create a new spatio-temporal continuum, a new sensory environment and modes of its perception. As a result, technology is now moving not away from, but towards, metaphysics; this way, the two of them are meeting at the very core of being, where the principles and universals traditionally considered the prerogative of philosophical study can be found.

This paper focuses on the most recent period in the development of Russian thought. Proceeding from the cyclical patterns of Russian intellectual history, I propose to name it 'the third philosophical awakening.' I define the main tendency of this period as 'the struggle of thought against ideocracy.' I then suggest a classification of main trends in Russian thought of this period: Dialectical materialism in its evolution from late Stalinism to neo-communist mysticism; Neorationalism and Structuralism; Neo-Slavophilism, or the Philosophy of National Spirit; Personalism and Liberalism; Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, both Christian Orthodox and Non-Traditional; Culturology or the Philosophy of Culture; Conceptualism or the Philosophy of Postmodernity.