The article analyzes the general principles for the evaluation of the process of history of philosophy, outlined in the writings of Auguste Comte and one of his successors, Hippolyte Taine. It discusses the importance of Condorcet’s and Saint-Simon’s ideas in the forming of understanding of the history of philosophy inherent in classic positivism.

The article considers the influence of modern metaethical researches in Anglo-American thought on forming of new ideas and transformation of old interests and subject domains in the French normative ethical philosophy. Whether the national tradition suffers from need for such «adaptation» or it is the natural and inevitable phenomenon of distribution of logical and analytical thinking on all levels of philosophical knowledge?

The article is an essay on the role of Victor Cousin in the development of Hegel studies in France in the early 19'* century. Author compares Cousin’s works, correspondence and contemporary documents to show how they established a particular framework of perceiving Hegelian thought before 20^th century. Author claims that Cousin played a key role in how France explored Hegel’s philosophy: Cousin was an important medium, who used to bring up Hegelian philosophy, though, his endeavors were often misleading. Proper acquaintance with Hegel’s thought in France was propagating slowly as it was obstructed by the medium itself - Victor Cousin.

The article deals with dogmatic and critical views of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard on the philosophy of science, in particular, his central idea about a discontinuous progress of sciences, epistemological breaks between scientific and ordinary knowledge, the necessity to overcome obstacles in the course of the development of the scientific spirit. The author argues against an interpretation of Bachelard’s thought as a dogmatic epistemologist and presents his critical comprehension of scientific progress. His views are compared with the idea of a Russian thinker of the 20th century Yevgeny Zamyatin about the eternal revolution.

The article discusses some essential ideas of the outstanding Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, of the French philosopher Felix Guattari and of the French mathematician R. Thom. It draws several conceptual parallels which can serve as a methodological instrument for the development of biosemiotics as a modern field of interdisciplinary research. While biosemiotics tries to reveal the biological roots of the origin of meaning in the world of nature and of human world, de Saussure saw a purpose of semiotics developed by him in the study of signs of the life in society and the evolution of languages as sign systems, Guattari coined a concept of ecosophy and wrote about transversivity as a characteristic of the modern method of knowledge, and the creator of the mathematical theory of catastrophes Thom developed semiophysics (the physics of meaning), when studying morphogenesis and the transformation of complex structures. A connecting link of these conceptions is the understanding of the mutual activities and the ability to produce and to select the meanings which are peculiar both for structures, organisms or organizations in the world and for media of their existence, life and development. Such mutual activities of construction of a living organism as a result of influences of the surrounding world on it and of the surrounding world (environment) as a result of activity of the organism is expressed in the important concept of Umwelt introduced by one of the founders of biosemiotics J. von Uexküll, and it is in the focus of attention in the modern conception of enactivism in cognitive science.

The article reveals that despite the polarity of Levinas’ and J. Derrida’s views on the problem of metaphysics, both authors saw one of the main tasks of philosophy in the resistance to power discourse and support of human freedom. Developing his anti-metaphysical deconstruction program, Derrida was highly attentive to Levinas’ critique of ontology, his preoccupation with ethical problems and linguistic methodology. In the last stage of his career, on the basis of his philosophical interpretation of religious experience, Derrida followed Levinas emphasizing the importance of the ethical and political responsibility, as well as the value of the messianic element for the criticism of power discourse and political violence in the globalization age.

The article seeks to show that in a declarative anti-dialectical philosophy of Gilles Deleuze there are visible traces of negative dialectics, more often associated with the methodological strategy of the Frankfurt School. According to the author’s position, only the dialectic, some version of it, can really resist the reductionism and the nihilism line in the theory.

This paper demonstrates that Jean-Luc Marion’s theological and phenomenological projects are motivated by the attempts to go beyond the reality immanent to the subject of knowledge. I show that Marion’s main concern is how one may avoid the replacement of God with the idol when doing theology and that of phenomena with subjective representations when doing philosophy. Analyzing Marion’s writings the author comes to the conclusion that in Marion’s theology and philosophy, the condition of possibility of thinking the transcendent is non-autonomous and finite subjectivity.

The essay is a preface to the translation into Russian of the work “Leonardo da Vinci and learning to draw” written by Felix Ravaisson, the French philosopher-spiritualist of 19th century. The work presents some ideas that are important to the aesthetic concept of Ravaisson and for his doctrine in general. Art appears here as one of the main ways of manifestation of the spiritual principle underlying the universe. Art gives the ideal to nature, revealing its spiritual basis.

The article is a translation into Russian of the work “Leonardo da Vinci and learning to draw” written by Felix Ravaisson, the French philosopher-spiritualist of 19th century. Art appears here as one of the main ways of manifestation of the spiritual principle underlying the universe. Art gives the ideal to nature, revealing its spiritual basis.

The article considers the conception of art by J. Poulain, prominent expert in the analytical philosophy and the pragmatism. The human in a pragmatic era seeks to operate himself, to operate his relation to the world and to another proceeding from the blind power of consensus, proceeding from a simple consent with himself, with another, and with the world. In this context the art is the sphere of human experimenting where the esthetic pleasure without means of concept is followed by a judgment about the forms of life validity. The art of modernism becomes a sensual embodiment of idea when it replaces the image of a real subject with the consumer action closed on itself, imitating the autoaffective automatism of the human speech. The poetry of the 20th century (Ch. Milosz, I. Bachman, M. Tsvetaeva, P. Celan) imitates the same verbal prosopopeia, defining a source of poetic judgment in a self-hearing as a authenticity criteria of any proposition.