2012. vol. 11. No. 2

The paper focuses upon two samples of early modern “civil sciences”: rhetorical inquiry dealing with contingency (so called “rhetorica primaria”) and mathesis politica traditionally referring to the intellectual context of early Enlightenment. The study deals with the main tendencies that shaped early Enlightenment political science consisting of criticism of the necessitarian ethical rhetorical paradigm, an appeal to rhetorical competence, search for a way to “tame” contingency and thus to learn how to understand the human will’s universe of effects and how to control it. Special attention is paid to the famous “new sciences”: Giambattista Vico’s scienza nuova and Thomas Hobbes scientia civilis. The fundamental difference in Vico’s and Hobbes’ theoretical styles is emphasized. While Hobbs is “macro-sociological” (“macro-solution of macro-problems”) and handles issues extreme and ultimate, that allow neither interim decisions nor close attention to historical niceties, Vico considers the matter of his science as a universe of contingency, defining scienza nuova as history. Particular attention is paid to the function of the topical-rhetorical discourse in Hobbes’ political science, used for the description of the prepolitical man (6th chapter of Leviathan). Drawing upon almost unknown 17th-century Dutch political writings, the study examines ways of the reception of Hobbes’ civil science conceived as a rhetorical inquiry. The authors also explore Vico’s alternative to Hobbes’ constructionist theoretical style. A vast array of contemporary theoretical approaches to the early modern political thought is analyzed, from the “Cambridge history of concepts” to N.S. Struever’s “modal rhetoric”.

The article investigates the Russian-Serbian relations at the end of 19th century as represented in the periodical press and in the correspondence of Russian and Serbian public figures. There was no Parliament in Russia in 1860s so the periodical press was both the arena for public discussion and was used to consolidate the different political movements. Sometimes the society used it to influence the government’s decisions. Russian publicists knew about the Balkan Slavs periodical press interest in the Russian press and tried to convince the Slavs to follow the Russian strategy. Serbian question was discussed at the pages of different Russian journals, both socialist and conservative. The ambiguity of Russian-Serbian relations was confirmed even by Slavophiles, who noted various miscalculation of the Russian state and public figures on the Balkans. Sometimes this criticism was connected with ideological differences between Russian publicists. However, all of them considered St.Petersburg’s bureaucracy the main source of Russian problems. But sometimes the problem was incompatibility between Russian and Serbian interests. Russian conservativs  found allies in Serbian radicals. The Slavophiles’s democratism was represented in the texts of P.A. Kulakovsky, I.S. Aksakov, and N.P. Gilyarov-Platonov. In general, the Slavic question in Russia was connected with domestic Russian politics. The development of democratization of Russian society was objectively connected with increasing nationalism making the Serbian question a part of the quest of national ideology. Slavophiles were not so much interested in the Slavic population per se, but rather how to use them as an instrument of national consolidation. 

Two previously censored versions of the sixth article from I.S. Aksakov’s series “On the mutual relation of the people, society and the state” are published for the first time. They were devoted to the history of zemstvo, its relationship with the state in the era from Ivan IV to Peter I. The series was published in the 1862 in the journal “The Day” that he edited and published. However, publication was interrupted for censorship reasons, which we explain in an introductory article. The unpublished article which is part of a series, is of considerable interest for understanding the ideas of Aksakov. In 1861–1862 Aksakov, together with Yury Samarin, modified Konstantin Aksakov’s “Territory” and “State” doctrine (created at the end of the 1840–1850s). I. Aksakov and Y. Samarin emphasized subjectivity, formulating the doctrine of “society”, “people” and “state” where the “people” and “state” are considered similarly to the doctrine of Konstantin Aksakov. People “in close and more strict sense” are understood as “the common people, that is a lot of the people that live life right,” and the state acts as “the external definition given to itself by the people; its activity, i.e. the states, and the area of its activity are purely external”. The essential novelty consists in the introduced concepts of society defined in Hegelian ambiance as “the people on the second stage of its development, the people self-conscious”.

Carl Schmitt kept diaries throughout his life, several of which he specifically selected for academic publication. These are the recordings made in the early years after World War II, when Schmitt lost all his positions. After his release from the prison he returned to his home in small town of Plettenberg, where he remained until his death. Schmitt ordered these diaries to be published only after his death, because, even several decades after the war, they remained ideologically dangerous. In this issue we continue to publish fragments of translation of the “Glossarium”. In the fragments prepared for present publication, Schmitt argues on several important topics. First, he discusses the position of intellectual in modern society. Schmitt argues with Julien Benda, the author of a book about the betrayal of intellectuals (Trahision des clercs). Schmitt also reflects on his own political fortunes. After the war, many colleagues accused him of collaboration with the Nazis which seemed unfair to him. The figure of the conservative Catholic poet of the middle 19th century Annette von Droste-Hulshoff appears in his writings. Schmitt also writes about Leon Bloy, a Catholic thinker whose writings preoccupied his attention, especially Bloy’s famous diaries. Schmitt criticized the newer editions of his works. Schmitt agrees with conception of institute of Maurice Hauriou. Finally, he addresses a number of fundamental facts of political theology in connection to the basic distinctions drawn in his Concept of the Political, especially the distinction between friend and foe.

Despite many points of divergence, social scientists and social theorists seem united by one primary concern: to identify what it is people are doing (or sometimes merely the negative of this, to expose that people are not doing what they took themselves to be doing, or that their peers or ancestors are not doing what folk had took them to have been doing). The thought that this might count as not only a viable but centrally important concern is grounded in a scepticism about the ability of societies’ ordinary members to reliably correctly identify their own and others’ actions. In this scepticism, such social scientists and social theorists usually situate themselves in opposition to ethnomethodologists and Peter Winch. This scepticism is grounded in a belief that ordinary or competent members of societies are unreliable authorities on the identity of their own and others’ actions because they are subject to systems of sociological refraction. The idea being that ordinary members of society are systematically misled as to the identity of their actions and those of their peers because they — or their perceptions of actions — are subject to the refractive properties of (for example) ideology, or folk theories of action, and so on. In this paper, I subject to analysis this core commitment of much social science and social theory.

The concept of personal identity is one of the most sensitive questions in Paul Ricoeur’s oeuvre. In this article we show what makes originality of Ricoeur’s conception of narrative identity by analyzing the way it is presented in Oneself as Another and by pointing out the difference between the ricoeurian concept and the concept of narrative identity, introduced by Alasdair MacIntyre. For this reason we would like to focus on the analysis of configuration and refiguration, studied by Ricoeur in his oeuvre Time and Narrative. We would also include the notion of narrative identity into the conception of hermeneutics and demonstrate that the originality of the ricoerian concept is based on the possibilities offered by the theory of narration explicated in the debates with structuralism and literary theory. This sets the issue of subjectivity (self), in which the problematic of narrative identity is inscribed. This “philosophy of the first person” makes the key object of the second part of the research. The article shows how the self applies the narrative intrigue to his/her own life by identifying him(her)self with a storyteller or with a character. A reader or a storyteller constructs his/her narrative identity so that the process of self-understanding becomes possible.

Review of Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power by Jeffrey Alexander (London: Blumsbury Academic, 2012).

The paper analyzes the theory of social identity. The role the individuals’ intentions play in the processes of social identities construction is considered. The article shows the potential of rational choice theory as an alternative approach to the social identity conceptualization. The lack of existing theories, in the author’s opinion, is in the absence of description and analysis of identity-choosing processes. The prevailing view is that social identity is formed unconsciously and by pressure of structural factors. The paper suggests that sociological rational choice theory can replace psychological theories which pay more attention to the individual level processes. In rational choice theory identity is understood as a matter of choice and a source of pleasure. Thus in rational choice theory, identity is still considered as a social phenomenon. It influences the individual’s behavior, but the reason for this is contained not in coercion of social structures, but in the risk of losing something valuable (in a subjective sense). Individuals do not want to risk their “source of satisfaction”, and consciously identify themselves with a group trying to maximize the measure of “group conformity”. However, this cannot be considered as an exhaustive explanation which excludes all others. The author believes that it is impossible to synthesize a single consistent theory of identity, because in this case we would have to combine incompatible things.

Review of Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life by Christian Heath, Jon Hindmarsh and Paul Luff (London: SAGE, 2010).