Roman Yuriev

The article is devoted to an analysis of the role of philosophical societies in the process of the institutionalization of philosophy, using the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association, and the American Philosophical Association as case studies. The authors show that philosophical societies, which initially emerged as open forums for the discussion of ideas, gradually transformed into stable academic structures that set standards for scholarly communication. Two opposing vectors of their development are identified: on the one hand, philosophical societies contributed to the expansion of the thematic scope of philosophical research, the preservation of intellectual pluralism, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge; on the other hand, the processes of professionalization and specialization gradually restricted creative freedom, turning philosophy into a ritualized academic practice. The article proposes viewing the institutionalization of philosophy as a dialectical process in which the stabilization of the intellectual environment is combined with the risk of losing its original innovative energy. Particular attention is paid to an analysis of the internal mechanisms of philosophical societies’ functioning – principles of openness and equality among participants, and norms of organized skepticism and academic impartiality – which ensure their stability and academic reputation within a changing scholarly landscape.

The article considers the thesis about A. Ayer’s radical empiricism as one of the possible conceptual sources for the development of the theory of J. Austin’s speech acts. In contemporary research literature more attention is devoted to the inquiry of the discussion between A. Ayer and J. Austin on the matter of “sense-data”. At the same time it can be stated that few attention is devoted to the historical and philosophical reconstruction of their mutual influence. The importance of this kind of reconstruction is caused by the fact that contention between A. Ayer and J. Austin in Oxford during 1930s and 1940s can be viewed as preliminary work of reception of the idea of L. Wittgenstein’s “language-games”. By comparing A. Ayer’s “empirical / ethical” and J. Austin’s “conservative / performative” oppositions one could show that A. Ayer’s earlier views on ethics expressed in his work “Language, Truth and Logic “cannot be unconditionally attributed to the logical positivism. Ayer’s following statements were considered: 1) ethical judgements state as judgments of arousal of feelings and stimulation to action; 2) ethical judgements state as expression of ethical feelings; 3) ethical judgements add nothing in terms of factual meaning; 4) feelings are not a necessary condition for their expression. In conclusion one can say that in a certain sense Ayer’s approach to the ethical judgment is open to understanding that the meaning of a word is its use in the language. The results of its ethical analysis can be viewed as an important impulse to the development of ordinary language philosophy. Therefore, it is possible to consider logical positivism as including the inevitable premises for creation the ordinary language philosophy.