Issue introduction

The article discusses topical problems of social development, in which context modernity evolves as a challenge, and the emergence of new forms is accompanied by a reset of values. The post-Soviet society turns to national foundations, traditions, historical experience, ideals, and values tested in national culture. The Western-type consumer society, which is now dominant in the world, was previously perceived as promising, and its ideals and values were presented as a role model, but nowadays, in public opinion, that society is not considered as a non-alternative model. The problems that arise during the implementation of the value orientations of the consumer society are becoming increasingly obvious. The universality of such a model of development for modernity is called into question, and evidence of its historical limitations appears. In addition, that type of organization of socio-economic and cultural life is not organic and does not imply continuity in the reset of values. Under the current conditions of global instability, connections and interactions emerge that form some new integrity. From a methodological point of view, it is important to analyze the mechanism and motives for choosing the future and the role of culture in that process. Obviously, in every time there is a need to define what modernity is and what is the role of values reset for that. Modernity does not arise as a completed project, but as a process of updating social reality, as a system of individual views on society and relations to the world; in emerging modernity, there is a growing diversity of values. The catalysts for transformations on the way to a new modernity are values that bring changes in life meanings under the influence of social life. Constantly emerging new risks and challenges demand the reset of values, which are tested on various levels of national culture and only after that become ideals for imitation and mass reproduction.

The article examines features of the post-Soviet period of social transformation and state building of Belarus in the context of the comparative analysis of the Soviet (communist) and Western (capitalist) development systems conducted by the famous Russian philosopher and sociologist Alexander Zinoviev. The author pays attention to the reasons of the collapse of the USSR, according to A.A. Zinoviev, as well as to the search by the post-Soviet countries, including the Republic of Belarus, for their own ways out of the current crisis. The author states that the most important task of gaining state sovereignty is associated not only with social and economic processes but also with the field of national self-consciousness and the specifics of the formation of national and cultural identity. This cause is related, among other things, with the national philosophy as a stable basis of intellectual cultural creation, the evolutionary formation of worldview and cultural values of people. The author demonstrates a tolerant nature of this process in Belarus which made it possible to avoid acute social conflicts in the country and to avoid the opposition of the Belarusian model of development and culture to the traditions and achievements of neighboring countries and the world civilizational process as a whole. Also the author demonstrates contemporary achievements of the Republic of Belarus in the sphere of socio-economic and scientific-technological development as the basis for further modernization of the country in new geopolitical conditions. The conceptual views of A.A. Zinoviev are multifaceted, they have contributed and continue to play an important role in science, culture, social development, socio-political practice. Zinoviev’s works are very valuable since they are still actual and serve as a good theoretical, ideological, and methodological basis in assessing modernity, including understanding socio-political processes that have developed today in the post-Soviet space, around Russia and Belarus, in relations between the West and the East.

The author analyzes three waves of the crisis of democracy during the 20^th and early 21^st centuries. The first crisis of democracy in the early 20^th century is caused by the emergence and development of public politics, which challenged the possibility to govern the masses having conflict potential, it balanced the power of the people and universal suffrage with the control of the media in order to maintain the stability of political system. The second wave of the crisis of democracy (the last third of the 20^th century) is associated with the destruction of the conventional world and the weakening of the nation-state; and its markers were: the imbalance between the branches of government, the domination of economics over politics, the predominance of equality over freedom, the problematic implementation of human rights, and, as a consequence, the inability to put into practice the national form of democracy. The third wave of crisis (early the 21^st century) is accompanied by the transformation of democracy into post-democracy, in which the power of the people is replaced by the power of global capital, and the illusion of consent is reinforced by the prohibition of alternative points of view and the narrowing of the space of issues allowed for discussion in the name of public security. The crisis of the policy to achieve peace through the transformation of the balance of powers into a balance of interests called into question the principles of democracy. On the contrary, post-democracies justify the use of force to spread democracy around the world, and they take an active part in contemporary military conflicts, which can rightly be defined as hybrid proxy wars. Drawing on J. Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality, the author concludes that to overcome the crisis of democracy it is necessary to accept the very possibility of an alternative to this form of government and allow to discuss these previously marginalized issues as well as to maintain the return of the majority to genuine communication and politics, contribute to its enlightenment.

The article exposes the analysis of different socio-philosophical approaches to the fixation of a rule in contemporary praxis. It clarifies the status and role of the rule as a notion in practical philosophy. The author compares the advantages of neo-Aristotelian, neo-Kantian and socio-critical approaches to the revelation of valid forms of praxis rules. In the framework of social philosophy, the article demonstrates the interdependency and succession of these approaches to the interpretation of the essence of the practical rule. The renaissance of the Aristotelean definition of praxis is considered in the works by E. Stein and A. MacIntyre. The relevance of the neo-Kantian approach to the revelation of the nature of practical rule in contemporary social theory is justified on the basis of works by R. Jaeggi, E. von Redecker and J. Butler. The author traces the productive interaction between the neo-Aristotelean and the neo-Kantian approaches to defining praxis rules. Special attention is paid to the philosophy of H. Lotze and E. Lask, where is accomplished the practical turn from the Aristotelean accomplished deed itself to the Kantian judgement about a value of this or that form fulfillment. The dominance of the axiological approach to praxis in contemporary social theory is problematised by means of the neo-Aristotelean interpretation, which prevents its alienation from the essence of the virtue action. The late modern characteristic forms of the practical rule fulfillment in creative activity are considered. There is justified the necessity of turning the theory of practices to the neo-Kantian and the neo-Aristotelean traditions in order to reveal valid forms of expressing and preserving the value-normative nature of rules in contemporary society. That can partially overcome the pragmatic relativism of the theory of practices, which neglects the traditional sense of the praxis rule in its situational intersubjective interpretation. Taking into account complexity and non-linear development of social reality, as well as of the variety of approaches to its reflection, there is explicated the relevance of the determination of contextually possible and universally necessary forms of praxis rules, which are justifiable as value meaningful.

Based on the hypothesis that the selfhood is the last outpost of sociality within a person, consciousness and the self are considered as complex spiritual and material phenomena, they include at least three main components: neurobiological activity, intimate personal environment and social context. The author analyzes an internal materialistic perspective, which infers the reduction of self and consciousness to ordinary neural processes of the brain. With this perspective, the main thing for neural activity is to maintain homeostasis, first, within the brain itself, and then within the organism as a whole. Based on the latest achievements of neuroscience and the constructions of neurophilosophy, the impossibility of a significant accentuation of the production of the self against the background of the default activity of brain activity is demonstrated. The concept of protoconsciousness is introduced. In its context, it is shown that even the simplest ones can use complex algorithms for processing information, correcting behavioral errors to ensure effective existence in the life world intended for them. As a result – there is an integrative behavior, when one or another of its elements is not just a single reaction to a stimulus but formed as a result of the execution of a certain algorithm (of yet not clear structure and origin), data and commands for which come from several sources. Attention is drawn to the fact that even for a quite simple behavior there is need for some built-in spatio-temporal matrix which will be typologically similar to Kant’s forms of perception. From the standpoint of a materialistic perspective, it is proposed to consider rationality and the self, which is associated with it, as a kind of superstructure over the outconscious interaction with reality that our biological predecessors developed. However, both rationality and the self inevitably presuppose a return to sociality, without which neither the first nor the second can be conceived.

The article explicates new conceptual approaches to the study of culture, language, semantic, and communicative processes, focusing on the importance of the role of the natural environment and various living systems in cultural semiosis. The author substantiates the relevance of the main biosemiotic approaches in the study of sign systems of culture and the problems of semiosis, and also determines their specificity, main problems and prospects for use. The author explicates the biological roots of sign formation and meaning, establishes the main mechanisms for their formation, draws attention to similarities, rather than differences, in the manifestations of culture and the natural world, reveals the local contexts of the functioning of the process of semiosis, which are related to the interests of living organisms, their interactions with the environment. The article considers the possibility of using biosemiotics as an interdisciplinary basis that unites the natural and human sciences in the field of studying semiotic processes, identifies the main obstacles to the development of this direction. The perspective of the research proposed in the article allows us to talk about new prospects for the use of biosemiotic approaches in the study of culture and society, taking into account the influence of the natural environment and living systems on the process of sign formation. It also makes it possible to establish the integrative and explanatory functions of biosemiotic positions associated with the unification of the biological and sociocultural aspects of semiosis. The results of the study may be important for the development of modern cognitive sciences and non-classical epistemology, focused on the study of various forms of cognition, for the search for ecological methods and approaches to the study of sign systems of culture, for the creation of new hybrid methods and models for the study of semiotic systems, for the solution of a number of epistemological and metaphysical issues that require philosophical reflection.

The article examines bilinguism from the social and political perspective, discussing such phenomena as the language situation, language policy, language rights. The author defines the concept of a language situation and reveals the features of various types of a bilingual situation: horizontal and vertical bilingualism, balanced and unbalanced bilingualism. The article analyzes the language policy under the conditions of bilingualism and specifies the main points of its possible problematization. Diglossia is analyzed as a factor of language development; special attention is paid to the evolvement of bilingualism in a diglossic situation. The article considers the possible statuses of national languages in a diglossic context and their statuses from the perspective of the balance of political forces. The author models the prospects for the development of national languages in diglossic contexts and analyzes destructive relation of diglossia to language evolution. The article reveals the phenomenon of exoglossia, its demonstrates its negative impact on the language process, the mechanisms of its influence through the education system. The phenomenon of bilingualism is related to the process of the formation of national identity, of the development of various models of diglossia and especially exoglossia. The article discusses language issues arising in the social and political life, determines the conditions of its actualization and aggravation on various historical stages. The author assesses prospects for the development of national languages in the context of globalization, in particular the possibility of the formation of the diglossic situation of the dominance of “global English” over national languages. The article concludes with the ways to overcome language conflicts and imbalances.

The theoretical explication and conceptualization of the concept of episteme in religious philosophy (Anselm of Canterbury) is carried out; epistemological configurations and specifications of philosophical and theological discourse are revealed (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Anselm of Canterbury’s epistemological discourse is based on his postulated ontology: the ontological configurability of his ideas ranges from the a priori ability to think of God to reflection on his predicates. The consequence of Anselm of Canterbury’s ideas is the idea that in the act of religious faith, God becomes an ontological reality. Within the framework of the article, it is noted that the ideas of D. Bonhoeffer, like many areas of modern religious philosophy, constitute the context of the study and substantiation of the religious episteme. The simultaneity and discreteness of the act of life correlates in this concept with eternal nature of God. The concept of “irreligious Christianity” by the German theologian is a part of the processes of reforming Christian theology that took place in the 20th century. The article contains a conceptual analysis of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and religious consciousness. The role of religious knowledge in the formation of new approaches to personality and religious life is considered. The concept of religious episteme as an object of philosophical and religious analysis is explicated. The interpretive perspective of the concept of religious episteme is presented, the field of variable possibilities in the study of this phenomenon is revealed, its theoretical configurations and key, dominant features are shown. The work includes the analysis of the concept of religious episteme from the scientific and philosophical points of view, from the point of view of theoretical reflection. The problems of religious epistemology are considered on the base of historical and cultural material of approaches and concepts of both medieval and modern religious philosophy. It is concluded that religious epistemology is also a philosophical and methodological reflection on the possibility of comprehending the ultimate foundations of religious being.

The summary reveals various areas of Belarusian-Russian collaboration in philosophy: problems of the methodology of scientific knowledge, transdisciplinary synthesis of philosophy and science, philosophical foundations of physics, scientific realism, theory of harmony and self-organization of complex systems, modern epistemological theories, the sociocultural foundations, risks, and prospects of the digital society, human problems in the context of convergent technologies, anthropological foundations of intercultural communication, the world heritage of philosophical thought, the reception of Russian philosophy in the Belarusian intellectual tradition. Special attential is paid to the content, possibilities, and prospects of the agreement on cooperation in the field of scientific and educational activity between the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The areas of mutual interest are scientific research activity, academic work, publishing, humanitarian expertise, training of scientific personnel, interaction of young scientists, career guidance work with schoolchildren, popularization of philosophical knowledge. Under current conditions, the Belarusian and Russian philosophers consider important the studies of civilizational dynamics in the light of the formation of a multipolar world, the philosophical and ethical aspects of the transformation of social practices in the post-COVID era, the philosophical problems of developing artificial intelligence, and the praxeological dimension of philosophical knowledge. Emphasis is placed on the importance of scientific and humanitarian partnership in the development of research and educational potential in the post-Soviet space.