The Western fascination with the East – part I
Is Orientalism A Sign of Western Decadence? Relations between “the East” and “the West” have always been complex throughout history. At the beginning of time, at the dawn of history, everything was clear: the Orient was the birthplace of culture and civilisation. “Ex oriente lux”, like the Romans said, light comes from the East, the […]
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The myth about Ukrainian democracy
Intellectuals pride themselves immensely for supposedly being people (generally the only people) who can with unfailing ability distinguish what is true from what is not true; of course only what is true matters. The intellectuals are intellectuals because they can tell myth from reality. Yet, as experience suggests, there is hardly anyone in the world […]
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Закат западной философии?
Чтобы понять конечное предназначение (Bestimmtheit) философии— не как университетской дисциплины, а как антропологической установки, как способа бытия в мире —, прежде чем спрашивать себя о ее судьбе (Geschick), нам, безусловно, следует обратиться к происхождению самой философии. Философия, как написал знаменитый итальянский философ Эмануэле Северино, «рождается великой», то есть содержит в своем восходе и рассвете весь […]
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Ist die westliche Philosophie zum Untergang bestimmt?
You can read this text in English here. Um die letzte Bestimmung (auch „Bestimmtheit“) der Philosophie zu verstehen, bevor wir uns fragen, ob die Philosophie noch eine Ziel, ein Geschick haben kann – nicht als Universitätsdisziplin, sondern als anthropologische Haltung, als Weise des In-der-Welt-Seins –, müssen wir uns zunächst ihrem Ursprung zuwenden. Die Philosophie, schrieb […]
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Is Western philosophy destined for decline?
To understand the ultimate destination (what some German philosophers have called Bestimmtheit) of philosophy, before asking ourselves about its having or not having – not as a university discipline, but as an anthropological posture, as a way of being in the world – still a Destiny (Geschick), we must certainly first of all turn to […]
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Women’s Day has become a day of rage and frustration
It feels like centuries away, but only a few years ago in some Western countries, Women’s Day was regarded as an occasion to celebrate. Today this celebration has become a day of anger and discontent, with many women loudly voicing their frustration (at men, of course) to protest inequality, sexism and other injustices. One would […]
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Сериал “Псих” – Рецензия
В декабре уже прошлого 2020 г. вышел новый сериал Федора Бондарчука по сценарию Паулины Андреевой. В главной роли – Константин Богомолов, режиссер известных своей скандальностью спектаклей. Богомолов играет психотерапевта, который, как это иногда бывает, сам является психически не очень стабильной личностью. Год назад герой потерял красивую, добрую, молодую жену и уже как год не может […]
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Why should it be ok if the left is so divisive?
We truly live in a strange world. I don’t know whether it’s because of postmodernism or postpostmodernism, because of the triumph political correctness or the oversimplification of any message in the age of social media and short attention spans. It’s clearly though that only a few years ago, even if it looks so far away […]
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The true face of liberalism – Liberalism as anti-democracy
We used to be taught from childhood that public interests are higher than personal ones. All levels of social formation of a full member of society are saturated with this idea, starting from children’s fairy tales and cartoons, ending with history and religion. At each level of education of a spiritually healthy and highly moral […]
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Eduard Limonov, Russian writer and politician with a penchant for provocation, dies at 77
The Russian writer and radical politician Eduard Limonov has died in Moscow yesterday. He was 77. Limonov, whose real name was Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko, gained celebrity as the author of provocative novels in the 1970s, after he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974. Born in Dzerzhinsk, an industrial town in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast […]
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Coronavirus and utopian dreams
Only a few weeks ago the world still believed in liberal dreams. Now thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, this all may look so obsolete very soon. Financial markets are tumbling and may plunge the world in an economic crisis greater than the one provoked by the crash of the US real estate bubble in 2008. […]
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If we want equality, it’s time to ban the sexist Women’s Day
What’s the point of having a Women’s Day in 2020? Ages ago, that is, as late as twenty years ago, men used to buy their beloved women flowers and write cliche verses praising all the unique and feminine qualities of their wives, fiancees, girlfriends, daughters and mothers on March 8 every year, in a sincere […]
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Jordan Peterson in Russia: why a professor was turned into a bogeyman by the liberal establishment
The news was shoking and unexpected: Jordan Peterson, one of the most recognizeble public intellectuals of our era, nearly died because of a developed addiction to a tranquillizer and is now seeking treatment in Russia. He was prescribed the tranquillizer a couple of years ago after his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But some […]
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The unforgiving ideal of progress and the future of humanity
Русская версия статьи здесь When the USSR collapsed, in 1991, some Western historians and political scientists began to speak confidently about the “end of history”. Now, only less than 30 years later, it is regarded as good, academic tone to consider all this nothing but nonsense, fantasies of some not all too serious intellectuals, very […]
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Беспощадный идеал прогресса и будущее человечества
English version Когда СССР рухнул, в 1991 году, некоторые западные историки и политологи стали уверенно говорит «о конце истории». Сейчас уже, всего лишь менее чем 30 лет спустя, является хорошим, академическим, серьезным тоном считать все это – просто вздор, задумствыния интеллектуалов, очень далеко от жизни, найвные, сверхоптимистически выводы. Но тогда, немалое количество умных, начитанных людей […]
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The golden era of humanity
Today we live in times of great uncertainty. And still there is a sense, particularly among those living in the West, that we have never had it so good. Conditioning this optimistic sense is a firm belief that the liberal world, order irrespective of the odd setback, will eventually fulfill an eschatological promise of universal […]
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Book review: “The Age of Anger” by Pankaj Mishra
I will tell you straight away: for those like me who feel that the nineteenth century is unsurpassed
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Modern liberals have nothing to do with leftists
That the old concepts of left and right do not make sense anymore, has been said a thousand times. Still, especially among commentators from the United States, the category “the Left”
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Do we live in a mediacracy?
Power as generally understood is divided in the legislative, executive and judiciary branches. And then there is the press, which has been labeled the Fourth Estate
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Nietzsche and the rise of Germany
Nietzsche was born in 1844, the son of a Lutheran pastor, in a provincial town in Thuringia. In 1866 Prussia united the whole of Northern Germany and in 1871
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