DOI: 10.25136/2409-8728.2023.5.39624

Abstract: Specific character of subject-object relations in humanities is analysed. The article gives the critique of naturalist approaches, which demand to determine social events on the basis of external observational features. It is proved that it is impossible to fix social events without taking into account agents’ motives and without references to the meaning which events has to them. Meaning is the most important concept in humanities, so it is impossible to describe social reality ignoring the world of meanings. Social reality is not independent from our ways of understanding and interpreting meanings. Moreover, our representations of social reality are the most important part of this reality. From the other side, man as a subject of humanities is formed by society and culture which he tries to study. He cannot regard them from outside as an usual external object. We cannot exactly calculate in what degree our thought is determined by socio-cultural factors in order to deactivate those determinations on the way to objective knowledge. Socio-humanitarian knowledge has transcendental status. Discussing how socio-class interests or language effect our knowledge we concern fundamental conditions of cognitive experience as such. Because of that natural sciences’ (technological) model of knowledge cannot be applied in humanities. Here we do not investigate some outer object for the sake of manipulation. We make our self-understanding deeper. Double mutual penetration of subject and object in humanities constitutes its fundamental difference from natural sciences.

DOI: 10.25136/2409-8728.2019.9.30884

Abstract: Scientific knowledge traditionally qualifies for objectivity, regardless of what manifested as the object of cognition – nature or society. Are there crucial differences in this regard between the natural and humanitarian sciences? Is anything changing, when a human and the society he lives in become the object of cognition? The subject of this research is the peculiarities of articulation of the problem of objectivity applicable for the sciences on human and society, as well as differences in interpretation of this problem in classical and nonclassical philosophy. The research is conducted on the basis of analysis and interpretation of texts and ideas of the representatives of classical philosophy along with the philosophers and sociologists of the past two centuries. The author claims that the law of the sociology of knowledge, which proves the fundamental dependence of social knowledge from social interests, should be applied not only for debunking the ideological illusions of the others, but also for analyzing the own ideas. The principles of objective scientific analysis in sociology require that the researcher’s personal ideological position would not affect his works; in order to achieve this, he must be aware of the level of its influence upon cognitive activity. However, it is merely impossible to fully apprehend the historical, social and cultural determination of our understanding. Therefore, the objectivity of natural scientific type in socio-humanitarian sciences may not be feasible. Most often, objectivity is being reached through constant attention to the potential ideological substantiation of personal ideas.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0757.2018.6.26078

Abstract: This article determines the philosophical aspects of translation, which as demonstrated, relate to the problem of the identity of meaning. This problem has not been successfully resolved in the logical semantics. The author criticizes the “theory of expression”, according to which a thought (meaning) is formed at the pre- and extra-linguistic level, while merely being expressed in the language; as well as the “paradigm of name”: perception that the main function of language expressions is the denotement of a subject, that the world as such divides into the subjects, properties, actions independently of the language. The article analyzes and compares the existed in classical philosophy and present in modern philosophy approaches towards the problems of understanding, meaning of the text, correlation of mind and language. The author advocates the theory that translation always means interpretation. It can be realize at various levels: denotation, connotation, intertextual connections, etc. As the meaning of text generally is a “thing-in-itself”, because the meaning does not exists before and besides its expressions, we cannot compare different translations with a certain absolute standard. Thus, there do not exist the absolute criteria of an unequivocally accurate translation. The interaction of semantic worlds can bring out the new shades of meaning.