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Mikhail Naumovich Epstein
Books by Mikhail Epstein
2). Projective theory of literature and culture. Manifestos and articles on new Russian poetry: metarealism, conceptualism, presentalism (in the 1980s). The origins and meaning of Russian postmodernism (in comparison with Western, in the 1990s). The first book in English published on this topic: After the Future: Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture ("After the Future. Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture", Massachusetts University Press, 1995). Second book: Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture" (New York - Oxford, 1999). Articles: "Game in life and culture", " /space/". Sketches for the ecology of the text" and others.
3). Development of the concept of transculture and corresponding interdisciplinary projects. Experiments in the field of collective improvisation, lyric museum, etc., started in Moscow and continued in the West. Club of Essayists (Moscow, 1982-87), association "Thought and Image" (Moscow, 1986), Laboratory of Contemporary Culture (Moscow, 1988-90), Laboratory of Contemporary Thought (New York, 1999 - 2002). The book "Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication" (New York, 1999).
Articles "Thing and Word. To the project of the Lyrical Museum, or Memorial of Things", "Speaking the language of all cultures...", Culture - cultural studies - transculture (in English), etc. Development of the concept of "hyper-authorship" (virtual authorship) and participation in the project of Araki Yasusada (Japanese poet (1907-1971), witness of Hiroshima, who gained international fame in 1995-97).
4). Soviet ideology and philosophy of the post-Stalin era. Logical-linguistic analysis of the language of Soviet ideology and the tetrads that underlie it (four-element lexical-semantic structures, tetralectics). Analysis of the main directions of Russian philosophy of the 1960-80s. (neo-rationalism, personalism, cultural studies, conceptualism, etc.). A book (in English) about Russian philosophy of 1950-91 is being prepared. Monographic essays on Daniil Andreev, A. Sinyavsky-Tertz, articles “The Phoenix of Philosophy” (English) and “The Third Philosophical Awakening” (Russian) have been published.
5). Essays. Short essays collected in two books: The God of Details (1977-88) and On the Frontiers of Cultures (1990-94). Semiotics and cultural studies of Soviet and American everyday life. Myths and rituals of private and public life. Starting from Montaigne’s “Essays” and R. Barthes’ “Mythologies”... The theory of the essayistic genre and essayism as a new post-mythological integrity of image, fact and concept (artistic, documentary and philosophical thinking) and as a “zero discipline”. The work "Laws of a free genre. Essayism in the culture of New Times" (1986). Two-volume collection " All Essays " (about 150 texts), in 2 volumes. vol. 1. In Russia (1970 - 1980s); v.2. From America (1990 - 2000s). Ekaterinburg: U-Factoria, 2005.
6). Philosophical-essayistic and neo-mythological prose. The book "Fatherhood. Metaphysical Diary" (1979-82, published in German 1990, in Russian 1992), dedicated to the first year of a child's life; theology and ethics of father-daughter relationships. The book "The Great Owl" (1984-88, pub. 1994) - about the totemic foundations and metaphorical meanings of a totalitarian society.
7). Theology of culture. Religious consciousness and unconsciousness of Russian avant-garde and conceptualism. The book "Faith and Image. The Religious Unconscious in Russian Culture of the 20th Century" (1994) (Jewish spiritual traditions in Pasternak and Mandelstam, the mysticism of emptiness in Ilya Kabakov, the transformation of holy foolishness and the mysticism of hangover in Ven. Erofeev, etc.). Study of sectarianism and Old Believers ("Old Believer Diary", 1985), religious and philosophical attitudes of the late Soviet period. The book "New Sectarianism" (1984-88, pub. 1993) is the sum of the theology of post-theistic consciousness. The article “Post-atheism, or Poor Religion” (1982, 1991), defining the contours of a new syncretic religion emerging on the basis of mass atheism of the Soviet era. The work “Russian culture at the crossroads. Secularization and the transition from a binary model to a ternary one” (Zvezda, 1999, ##1-2), where, in contrast to traditional Russian dualism and ideocracy and Western monism and mediocracy, the actual ternary model of cultural dynamics is put forward.
8). Philosophy. Development of new principles of thinking based on the modality of the possible and introducing the third, post-critical era of philosophy (the first is pre-critical, pre-Kantian; the second, critical, began with the Kantian revolution and ends with the theory of deconstruction). Study of changing modalities in the history of thought and culture. Instead of "Occam's razor" and the imperative "realize your capabilities" - the principles of "multiplying entities (universals) as far as possible" and "potentiation of reality" are put forward. These principles are set out in the article “The Theory of Art and the Art of Theory” (1987), in the work “The Teachings of Yakov Abramov as presented by his students” (published 1990), in the essay “Chronocide: Prologue to the Resurrection of the Future” (prize of the international competition in Weimar, 1999). Development of postmodern genres of philosophical "popular print", "remake" (remake), "catalogue", "small treatise". The foundations of the new methodology are systematically outlined in the book “Philosophy of the Possible. Modalities in Thinking and Culture” (St. Petersburg, Aletheya, 2001).
9. The methodology of the humanities and the formation on their basis of practices (secondary arts) that transform the subject of their study. "Techno-humanities". Culturonics - inventive and design activities in the field of culture; active transformation of culture as a consequence of its theoretical research. From the analytical bent that the humanities acquired in the 20th century, the path is being paved to the synthetic and generative theory of the 21st century. This theory not only explores what has already been formed in the humanitarian field, but itself gives rise to “families” of new concepts, genres and disciplines. Family of trans disciplines : (translinguistics, transpoetics, transaesthetics, etc.) - humanitarian technologies, secondary practices that arise on the basis of theoretical disciplines and lead to the transformation of the subjects of their study - language, literature, art, etc. For example, the task of translinguistics is to expand the existing language, synthesize new words and concepts, language rules, lexical fields, and increase the volume of what is said - and therefore what is thought and potentially done . Humanology is a new science about the transformations of man and the human in the process of creating artificial forms of life and intelligence. Article "Debut de siecle: Manifesto of Proteism" (2001). Book " Space sign. On the future of the humanities " (2004).
10). Work on the projective dictionary of the Russian language " The Gift of Words ", weekly issues of which have been published since April 2000 in the form of an electronic newsletter ( subscription ). Publications in Novaya Gazeta , Russian Journal , Grani.ru. This is a dictionary of the lexical and conceptual capabilities of the Russian language, the prospects for its development in the 21st century. The theme of the project is the art of creating new words and concepts, ways to update the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages, the development of the root system, and the expansion of word formation models. The study of the theoretical and practical aspects of the third, rarest type of handling of signs: not sign combinations (speech) and not sign descriptions (metalanguage), but sign creation , introduction of new signs into the language (semiurgy). It can be foreseen that with the development of electronic means of communication, the activity of generating new signs will occupy an increasingly greater place in culture compared to the activity of combining existing signs. Work on projective dictionaries of humanities, in particular philosophy and cultural studies. "Projective philosophical dictionary: New terms and concepts." St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2003 (author of the preface and 90 articles).
eleven). The creation of a special panoramic meta-ideological genre, the “Comedy of Ideas”, correlated with Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Balzac’s “Human Comedy”, but arising on the basis of not medieval-feudal and not bourgeois, but (post)socialist society, the driving motive of which is power ideas. The Comedy of Ideas is a trilogy (hell, purgatory, heaven) that includes The New Sectarianism, the anthology Thinkers of Our Time, and the final part, The Book of Books: A Dictionary of Alternative Thinking . Written in 1984-88, “The Comedy of Ideas” is published in parts: the first book and fragments of the second were published, the third book began its journey to the reader from the virtual space (its gradual publication is planned over 10-12 years, starting in the spring of 1998).
The main direction of M. Epstein's work is the creation of multiple alternatives to dominant sign systems and theoretical models - what he calls "multiplicity of thought." On this path, “possible worlds of the conceivable” arise - philosophical systems, religious and artistic movements, life orientations, virtual peoples and states, new words, terms and concepts, new disciplines and forms of humanitarian research. This method of thinking is analytical in relation to modern culture - and at the same time alternative to it, revealing its voids, lacunae, unrealized possibilities. This method can be called projective - but, unlike projective-utopian thinking traditional for Russian thought (unity and God-manhood in Solovyov, Fedorov’s common cause, creative apocalypse in Berdyaev), the uniqueness and global omni-significance of one project is not assumed here. On the contrary, a whole series of equally conceivable alternatives is put forward at once - their diverging fan. Hence the name of the online magazine co-edited by M. Epstein (in collaboration with Alexander Romadanov) since December 2000: " Fan of futures. Techno-humanitarian bulletin ."
Mikhail Epstein's inteLnet has been online in English since July 1995, in Russian since December 1997.
Humanitarian sciences. Literature. Culture. Religion. Philosophy. Essays.
Photo by M. Lemkhin
Mikhail Naumovich Epstein is a philosopher, philologist, cultural critic, literary critic, essayist, emeritus professor of cultural theory and Russian literature at Emory University (Atlanta). Member of the Russian Pen Club and the Academy of Russian Modern Literature.
M. Epstein was born in Moscow in 1950. In 1972 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, and since 1978 he has been a member of the Writers' Union. His articles on questions of literature and theory were published in "New World", "Znamya", "Zvezda", "October", "Questions of Literature", "Questions of Philosophy", "Questions of Linguistics", "New Literary Review" and other literary and theoretical journals. Author of over 20 books and more than 500 articles and essays, translated into 15 foreign languages (see bibliography below).
In the 1970s, he participated in the work of the theoretical problems sector of the Institute of World Literature (Moscow) and taught literature at Moscow universities.
In the 1980s, he was the founder and director of interdisciplinary associations of the Moscow humanitarian intelligentsia: “Essayists Club”, “Image and Thought” and “Laboratory of Contemporary Culture”.
Since 1990 he has lived and worked in the USA. Professor at Emory University since 1990. Main courses: "Western and Russian Postmodernism", "Semiotics and Poetics", "Introduction to Literary Theory", "Religion and Philosophy in Russia", "Love Discourses", "Dostoevsky", "Bakhtin and his circles", "Global culture and the future of the humanities".
In 1990-91 Fellow at the Kennan Institute in Washington, conducting research on the topic “Soviet Ideological Language.”
In 1992-94, under a contract with the National Council for Soviet and East European Research (USA, Washington), he worked on the study “Philosophical and Humanitarian Thought in Russia, 1950-91”.
In 2002-03 - Fellow at the Center for Humanities Research (Emory University), working on the project “Futurology of the Humanities: Paradigmatic Shifts and New Concepts.”
Co-editor of the magazines " Symposion. A Journal of Russian Thought " (USA, 1996-2001) and " Fan of Futures. Techno-Humanitarian Bulletin " (2000 -2003), the book series "Bodies of Thought" (ed. Aletheia, St. Petersburg); Member of the editorial board of the journals " Common Knowledge " (USA) and " Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge" (USA).
Award winner:
Andrei Bely, in the section of humanitarian studies (St. Petersburg, 1991);
Institute of Social Invention (London) for the electronic Bank of New Ideas (1995);
Zvezda magazine (for the best publications 1999);
"Liberty", for contribution to Russian-American culture and the development of cultural relations between Russia and the USA" (New York, 2000; awarded since 1999);
prize-winner of the international essay competition (Berlin-Weimar, 1999) and scholarship holder of the Weimar Classics Foundation (2000).
Author of network projects and websites:
Internet (since 1995)
Virtual Library of Mikhail Epstein (projects, books, articles, interviews)
The gift of words. Weekly Lexicon (since 2000)
Fan of futures. Techno-humanitarian bulletin (since 2000)
Book of books: Dictionary-anthology of alternative thinking (since 1998)
Intelnet Humanities Journals (1997), etc.
Home page on the Emory University website
Books by M. Epstein
New publications
In English:
Internet
Mikhail Epstein's Virtual Library
Home Page
Books by Mikhail Epstein
1. Paradoxes of novelty. About the literary development of the 19th-20th centuries. M., Soviet writer, 1988, 416 pp.
2. “Nature, the world, the hiding place of the universe...” The system of landscape images in Russian poetry. M., Higher School, 1990, 304 pp.
2nd ed. Poems and elements. Nature in Russian poetry of the 18th - 20th centuries (series "Rainbow of Thought"). Samara, Bakhrakh-M, 2007, 352 pp.
3. Paternity. Essay novel. Tenafly (New Jersey, USA), Hermitage, 1992, 160 pp.;
Fatherhood Metaphysical diary.. St. Petersburg. Aletheia, 2003, 248 pp. (the first book in the Men Studies series).
4. New sectarianism: types of religious and philosophical attitudes in Russia. 1970-1980s. Holyoke (Massachusetts). New England Publishing Co., 1993, 179 pp.;
2nd ed., Moscow, Labyrinth, 1994, 181 pp.
3rd ed. New sectarianism. Types of religious and philosophical mindsets in Russia in the 1970s - 1980s . (series "Rainbow of Thought"). Samara: Bakhrakh-M, 2005, 256 pp.
5. Great Owl. Philosophical and mythological essay. New York, Slovo, 1994, 177 pp.
2nd ed. Great Owl. Soviet mythology. (series "Rainbow of Thought"). Samara: Bakhrakh-M, 2006, 268 pp.
6. Faith and image. The religious unconscious in Russian culture of the twentieth century. Tenafly (New Jersey, USA), Hermitage, 1992, 1994, 269 pp.
7. On the borders of cultures: Russian - American - Soviet. NY. Slovo, 1995, 344 pp.
8. God of details. The people's soul and private life in Russia at the end of the empire. NY. Slovo, 1997, 248 pp.
2nd ed., Moscow, LIA R. Elinina, series "Classics of the 21st century", 1998, 240 pp.
9. Postmodernism in Russia: literature and theory. M., LIA R. Elinina, 2000, 367 pp.
2nd, revised and additional ed.: Postmodernism in Russian literature . M., Higher School, 2005, 495 pp.
10. Philosophy of the possible . St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2001, 334 pp.
11. Projective philosophical dictionary: New terms and concepts . St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 2003, 512 pp. (co-editor with G. L. Tulchinsky, author of the preface and 90 articles out of 165).
12. Space sign. On the Future of the Humanities . M., New Literary Review, 2004, 864 pp.
13. All essays , in 2 vols. vol. 1. In Russia (1970 - 1980s), 544 pp.; v.2. From America (1990 - 2000s), 704 pp. Ekaterinburg: U-Factoria, 2005. 16 17 18 19
14. Word and silence. Metaphysics of Russian literature "M., "Higher School", 2006, 559 pp. (mag. "Higher School", Pedagogical book, Young Guard)
15. Philosophy of the body . St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 2006, 194 pp.
16. Amerossia. Selected essays (series "Parallel Texts", in Russian and English) M., Silver Threads, 2007, 504 pp.
* * *
17. Cries in the New Wilderness: from the Files of the Moscow Institute of Atheism. Trans. and intr. by Eve Adler, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002, 236 pp.
18. Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication (with Ellen Berry). New York: St. Martin's Press (Scholarly and Reference Division), 1999, 340 pp. (of 23 chapters, 16 are written by this author).
19. Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture (with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, in the series Studies in Slavic Literature, Culture, and Society, vol. 3). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999, 528 pp. (of 24 chapters, 16 are written by this author). Hardcover and paperback editions.
20. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (a volume in the series Critical Perspectives on Modern Culture, introd. and transl. by Anesa Miller-Pogacar), Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1995, 392 pp. Hardcover and paperback editions. Electronic edition, Boulder, Colo.: NetLibrary, Inc., 2000.
21. Relativistic Patterns in Totalitarian Thinking: An Inquiry into the Language of Soviet Ideology. Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Occasional Paper, No.243. Washington: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1991, 94 pp.
Main areas of work
(many of the publications listed below can be found in the Virtual Library1). Poetics and metaphysics of Russian classical literature, topoi and archetypes of Russian poetry. Articles about Faust by Goethe and Pushkin; about “The Bronze Horseman” and “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” as a single work, a fairy tale poem; about the irony of the demonic in Gogol; about Akaki Bashmachkin and Prince Myshkin; about the motif of the theater curtain in Pushkin and Mandelstam, etc. Particular interest in titanic and demonic motifs in Russian culture. A book about Russian landscape poetry, about its plant, animal, and landscape archetypes.
2). Projective theory of literature and culture. Manifestos and articles on new Russian poetry: metarealism, conceptualism, presentalism (in the 1980s). The origins and meaning of Russian postmodernism (in comparison with Western, in the 1990s). The first book in English published on this topic: After the Future: Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture ("After the Future. Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture", Massachusetts University Press, 1995). Second book: Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture" (New York - Oxford, 1999). Articles: "Game in life and culture", " /space/". Sketches for the ecology of the text" and others.
3). Development of the concept of transculture and corresponding interdisciplinary projects. Experiments in the field of collective improvisation, lyric museum, etc., started in Moscow and continued in the West. Club of Essayists (Moscow, 1982-87), association "Thought and Image" (Moscow, 1986), Laboratory of Contemporary Culture (Moscow, 1988-90), Laboratory of Contemporary Thought (New York, 1999 - 2002). The book "Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication" (New York, 1999).
Articles "Thing and Word. To the project of the Lyrical Museum, or Memorial of Things", "Speaking the language of all cultures...", Culture - cultural studies - transculture (in English), etc. Development of the concept of "hyper-authorship" (virtual authorship) and participation in the project of Araki Yasusada (Japanese poet (1907-1971), witness of Hiroshima, who gained international fame in 1995-97).
4). Soviet ideology and philosophy of the post-Stalin era. Logical-linguistic analysis of the language of Soviet ideology and the tetrads that underlie it (four-element lexical-semantic structures, tetralectics). Analysis of the main directions of Russian philosophy of the 1960-80s. (neo-rationalism, personalism, cultural studies, conceptualism, etc.). A book (in English) about Russian philosophy of 1950-91 is being prepared. Monographic essays on Daniil Andreev, A. Sinyavsky-Tertz, articles “The Phoenix of Philosophy” (English) and “The Third Philosophical Awakening” (Russian) have been published.
5). Essays. Short essays collected in two books: The God of Details (1977-88) and On the Frontiers of Cultures (1990-94). Semiotics and cultural studies of Soviet and American everyday life. Myths and rituals of private and public life. Starting from Montaigne’s “Essays” and R. Barthes’ “Mythologies”... The theory of the essayistic genre and essayism as a new post-mythological integrity of image, fact and concept (artistic, documentary and philosophical thinking) and as a “zero discipline”. The work "Laws of a free genre. Essayism in the culture of New Times" (1986). Two-volume collection " All Essays " (about 150 texts), in 2 volumes. vol. 1. In Russia (1970 - 1980s); v.2. From America (1990 - 2000s). Ekaterinburg: U-Factoria, 2005.
6). Philosophical-essayistic and neo-mythological prose. The book "Fatherhood. Metaphysical Diary" (1979-82, published in German 1990, in Russian 1992), dedicated to the first year of a child's life; theology and ethics of father-daughter relationships. The book "The Great Owl" (1984-88, pub. 1994) - about the totemic foundations and metaphorical meanings of a totalitarian society.
7). Theology of culture. Religious consciousness and unconsciousness of Russian avant-garde and conceptualism. The book "Faith and Image. The Religious Unconscious in Russian Culture of the 20th Century" (1994) (Jewish spiritual traditions in Pasternak and Mandelstam, the mysticism of emptiness in Ilya Kabakov, the transformation of holy foolishness and the mysticism of hangover in Ven. Erofeev, etc.). Study of sectarianism and Old Believers ("Old Believer Diary", 1985), religious and philosophical attitudes of the late Soviet period. The book "New Sectarianism" (1984-88, pub. 1993) is the sum of the theology of post-theistic consciousness. The article “Post-atheism, or Poor Religion” (1982, 1991), defining the contours of a new syncretic religion emerging on the basis of mass atheism of the Soviet era. The work “Russian culture at the crossroads. Secularization and the transition from a binary model to a ternary one” (Zvezda, 1999, ##1-2), where, in contrast to traditional Russian dualism and ideocracy and Western monism and mediocracy, the actual ternary model of cultural dynamics is put forward.
8). Philosophy. Development of new principles of thinking based on the modality of the possible and introducing the third, post-critical era of philosophy (the first is pre-critical, pre-Kantian; the second, critical, began with the Kantian revolution and ends with the theory of deconstruction). Study of changing modalities in the history of thought and culture. Instead of "Occam's razor" and the imperative "realize your capabilities" - the principles of "multiplying entities (universals) as far as possible" and "potentiation of reality" are put forward. These principles are set out in the article “The Theory of Art and the Art of Theory” (1987), in the work “The Teachings of Yakov Abramov as presented by his students” (published 1990), in the essay “Chronocide: Prologue to the Resurrection of the Future” (prize of the international competition in Weimar, 1999). Development of postmodern genres of philosophical "popular print", "remake" (remake), "catalogue", "small treatise". The foundations of the new methodology are systematically outlined in the book “Philosophy of the Possible. Modalities in Thinking and Culture” (St. Petersburg, Aletheya, 2001).
9. The methodology of the humanities and the formation on their basis of practices (secondary arts) that transform the subject of their study. "Techno-humanities". Culturonics - inventive and design activities in the field of culture; active transformation of culture as a consequence of its theoretical research. From the analytical bent that the humanities acquired in the 20th century, the path is being paved to the synthetic and generative theory of the 21st century. This theory not only explores what has already been formed in the humanitarian field, but itself gives rise to “families” of new concepts, genres and disciplines. Family of trans disciplines : (translinguistics, transpoetics, transaesthetics, etc.) - humanitarian technologies, secondary practices that arise on the basis of theoretical disciplines and lead to the transformation of the subjects of their study - language, literature, art, etc. For example, the task of translinguistics is to expand the existing language, synthesize new words and concepts, language rules, lexical fields, and increase the volume of what is said - and therefore what is thought and potentially done . Humanology is a new science about the transformations of man and the human in the process of creating artificial forms of life and intelligence. Article "Debut de siecle: Manifesto of Proteism" (2001). Book " Space sign. On the future of the humanities " (2004).
10). Work on the projective dictionary of the Russian language " The Gift of Words ", weekly issues of which have been published since April 2000 in the form of an electronic newsletter ( subscription ). Publications in Novaya Gazeta , Russian Journal , Grani.ru. This is a dictionary of the lexical and conceptual capabilities of the Russian language, the prospects for its development in the 21st century. The theme of the project is the art of creating new words and concepts, ways to update the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages, the development of the root system, and the expansion of word formation models. The study of the theoretical and practical aspects of the third, rarest type of handling of signs: not sign combinations (speech) and not sign descriptions (metalanguage), but sign creation , introduction of new signs into the language (semiurgy). It can be foreseen that with the development of electronic means of communication, the activity of generating new signs will occupy an increasingly greater place in culture compared to the activity of combining existing signs. Work on projective dictionaries of humanities, in particular philosophy and cultural studies. "Projective philosophical dictionary: New terms and concepts." St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2003 (author of the preface and 90 articles).
eleven). The creation of a special panoramic meta-ideological genre, the “Comedy of Ideas”, correlated with Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Balzac’s “Human Comedy”, but arising on the basis of not medieval-feudal and not bourgeois, but (post)socialist society, the driving motive of which is power ideas. The Comedy of Ideas is a trilogy (hell, purgatory, heaven) that includes The New Sectarianism, the anthology Thinkers of Our Time, and the final part, The Book of Books: A Dictionary of Alternative Thinking . Written in 1984-88, “The Comedy of Ideas” is published in parts: the first book and fragments of the second were published, the third book began its journey to the reader from the virtual space (its gradual publication is planned over 10-12 years, starting in the spring of 1998).
The main direction of M. Epstein's work is the creation of multiple alternatives to dominant sign systems and theoretical models - what he calls "multiplicity of thought." On this path, “possible worlds of the conceivable” arise - philosophical systems, religious and artistic movements, life orientations, virtual peoples and states, new words, terms and concepts, new disciplines and forms of humanitarian research. This method of thinking is analytical in relation to modern culture - and at the same time alternative to it, revealing its voids, lacunae, unrealized possibilities. This method can be called projective - but, unlike projective-utopian thinking traditional for Russian thought (unity and God-manhood in Solovyov, Fedorov’s common cause, creative apocalypse in Berdyaev), the uniqueness and global omni-significance of one project is not assumed here. On the contrary, a whole series of equally conceivable alternatives is put forward at once - their diverging fan. Hence the name of the online magazine co-edited by M. Epstein (in collaboration with Alexander Romadanov) since December 2000: " Fan of futures. Techno-humanitarian bulletin ."
This method of thinking can be called “possibilistic”, “possibilistic”, “conceptual”, “fan-shaped”, “variable”, “virtual”, since each of the projected theories and practices simultaneously posits its own area of potential existence. not reducible to the plane of what is, what is necessary or what is “only possible”. Virtual objects act as their own predicates, i.e. possess the properties of entire worlds, which contain within themselves the conditions and modes of their existence, and do not receive them from the outside, from our only “actual” world. The principle of “realization of possibilities,” which has traditionally dominated history and culture, M. Epstein proposes to supplement with the principle of “potentiation of reality.”
“Potentation, or possibility, is an increase in the degrees of the possible in reality itself, the process of transforming facts into probabilities, theories into hypotheses, statements into assumptions, necessities into alternative possibilities... The best of possible worlds is the one that is still possible... "At the entrance to a new era of history, the extinction of being begins, its transition to the subjunctive mood, to the form of would." (from the book Philosophy of the Possible .)
“Conceptivism is the philosophy of “incipient concepts”, the constructive activity of thinking in the field of concepts and universals. Like deconstruction, conceptivism recognizes the “constructiveness”, the conceptual predetermination of “reality”, but sets as its task not criticism and demystification of these constructs, but their creative generation ", the creation of multiple models of possible worlds, cognitive and social practices. The term "conceptivism" indicates the inception-generative nature of new methodologies, which do not so much deconstruct linguistic and mental objects as conceptualize them, generate them in hypothetical and possibilistic modalities."
Previously, when we had only one world at our disposal, philosophy was inevitably a speculative, abstract science. When, with the development of computer technology and the physical discovery of parallel universes, the possibility of other worlds opens up, philosophy moves on to business and becomes the super-technology of the new day of creation . Previously, the philosopher said the last word about the world, summed it up: Hegel liked to repeat that the owl of Minerva (the goddess of wisdom) flies out at dusk. But now the philosopher becomes a “lark” or even a “rooster”, heralds the dawn, pronounces the first word about something that has never happened before. In the 21st century, alternative types of mind and life appear, at least in a scientifically defined perspective: genoplasty, cloning, artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, cyborgs, brain expansion, exploration of holes (tunnels) in space and time. At the same time, philosophy, as the science of first principles, first principles, no longer speculates about what was in the beginning, but It itself lays these foundations , determines the metaphysical properties of virtual, alien-physical, alien-spatial, alien-psychic worlds (from computer games to the creation of artificial intelligence). Philosophy does not complete history, does not remove in itself and by itself all the contradictions of reason deployed in it, but deploys those possibilities of reason that have not yet been embodied in history or cannot be historically embodied at all, require the construction of alternative worlds, feasible in other, virtual forms of existence ".
Bibliography of books published in English and other languages, including brief summaries and information on purchasing them.
Subject bibliography
Bibliography 1966-1994
Bibliography 1995-
Mikhail Epstein's inteLnet has been online in English since July 1995, in Russian since December 1997.
Copyright Mikhail Epstein (Epshtein)