No 12 (2025)

The Jixin Wooden Buddha Temple Museum, situated in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, constitutes an architectural ensemble that seamlessly integrates the traditional functions of a Buddhist temple with contemporary museum operations. The design and spatial organization of the structure reflect the aesthetic principles of traditional Chinese Buddhist architecture. Although the overall layout adheres to the conventional Chinese Buddhist temple configuration, the most innovative elements are evident in the interiors of the three rear halls, featuring a modern spatial arrangement. Consequently, while the exterior of the temple maintains a traditional appearance, its interior design is remarkably contemporary. The central structure of the temple complex is a seven-story ultramodern pagoda, situated in the rear hall. This pagoda houses and displays a collection of wooden Buddha statues. The subsidiary halls on either side of the main rear hall have undergone comprehensive modern renovations, featuring contemporary modifications to their interior layouts. The building's interior utilizes modern technology to carve traditional Buddhist scriptures onto illuminated panels, creating a tranquil atmosphere. These renovated spaces are designed for the study of Buddhist scriptures and house a library. This integration of traditional Buddhist architectural principles with modern design elements establishes a new standard for contemporary Chinese temple architecture, this kind of modern transformation can give traditional buildings a new lease on life through modern construction techniques and methods, making them more suitable for modern lifestyles. Marking a significant advancement in the evolution of contemporary Chinese Buddhist architectural practice.

The subject of this study is the sound content of the commemorative event "Return of Names," in which vocal sound production revitalizes memory of the difficult past of the Soviet era in the public sphere. The author emphasizes that the performativity of the event itself serves as a fundamental semantic component, qualitatively distinguishing the ritual of commemoration from passive forms of understanding the past. Among the specific properties of the performative practice of commemoration, the following are noted: active engagement with the reconstructed past, plasticity and sensitivity to contextual changes, ritualized structure and regulation, as well as the involvement and personal responsibility of participants. The aim of this work is to explicate the role that sound plays in the reactivation and preservation of collective memory within the framework of public ritual, and to identify the characteristics of the auditory medium that influence our relationships with the past. The methodological framework of the study is presented through a philosophical-cultural analysis of the acoustic material, allowing for an examination of the essence of the sound phenomenon of the commemorative action as a product of the intersection of various philosophical concepts in the context of transformations of social reality. Based on the analysis conducted, the author identifies the characteristics of sound as one of the central elements of commemoration practices. Firstly, sound in commemorative practices is deeply woven into the contextual conditions of its reproduction, where the fullness of meaning claimed by the event is revealed. Secondly, thanks to the voice as a bodily instrument of sound production, which physiologically unites the participants in the action, the commemorative experience takes on a more engaged character. Thirdly, the sound concentrated in the voice that utters a name becomes a tool for de-anonymization, giving memory of the victim a personified auditory embodiment. Fourthly, the ritualized nature of conducting the event, of which regulated sound filling is an integral attribute, serves as a platform for symbolic inclusion in a group that shares a common acoustic experience. Fifthly, by examining the location of sound complexes in public space, one can determine the position of the social group reproducing them on the socio-political arena. Sixthly, the fleeting nature of sound contributes to the subversive potential of the auditory medium, transforming it into a weapon for resisting mechanisms of memory suppression. The author concludes that sound in commemorative practice not only reminds us of the past but also allows us to symbolically experience the recreated experience, feeling a sense of participation in it through collective public actions.

The subject of the research is the aesthetic discourse in K. Geertz's work "Deep Play," which is examined within the framework and based on the principles of a specific epistemology of anthropological research developed by the author. By characterizing the cockfights that were common on the island of Bali in the 1950s as a work of art, K. Geertz creates a multi-layered aesthetic description of them. He distinguishes the level of expressive means, which includes blood, bets, the crowd, the roosters themselves, projections of status, and fractional struggles; the level of the main experience, "anxiety," to which this diversity is subordinated; and the level at which cockfighting becomes a representation of a universal human event. However, these three levels do not create a unified aesthetics and do not allow for a formulation of the question of what constitutes art in this context. To address the question of the nature of the aesthetic that K. Geertz proposes, we rely primarily on the division of aesthetics into classical and non-classical developed in domestic philosophy. For the analysis of discursive insertions in Geertz's interpretation of the fights, we turn to neo-Kantian philosophy, the interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of mimesis, and phenomenological aesthetics. The scientific novelty of this research lies in the suggestion of a new pathway for the reception and conceptualization of Geertz's interpretative approach, which has not yet been realized. Although the problem of poetics and aesthetics of anthropological writing itself is regarded as significant, and the blending of humanitarian and artistic-literary genres is recognized, with new writing practices being developed, the tools of poetics and aesthetics are not utilized. They are overshadowed by numerous critical approaches. However, as demonstrated by Geertz's work and the reception of his writings by his initial critics, incorporating philosophical aesthetics into the anthropological discourse is necessary. Since reception occurs through the "translation" of the perceived into the register of familiar discourses, this article proposes to turn to non-classical aesthetics as a domestic philosophical development. The concept of non-classics appears useful not only as a "name" but also due to its content, capturing the nature of non-classics not as a system but as a tense meaningful field.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the epistolary heritage of M.V. Lomonosov. A sufficiently extensive corpus of letters, thoroughly studied by philologists and historians, has hardly been examined as a form of self-description. The study clarifies what roles M.V. Lomonosov sought to establish for himself in his correspondence, what topics he included and excluded from his epistolary communication, and how he distributed tones and rhetorical gestures among different groups of his addressees – patrons, colleagues at the Academy of Sciences, and subordinates. Special attention is given to the formulaic expressions in the texts (addresses, self-naming) and their dependence on the status of the addressee. It is emphasized that Lomonosov not only impeccably mastered the norms of epistolary etiquette but also used them as a tool for social positioning, strengthening personal authority, and achieving desired goals. An interdisciplinary approach, combining methods of historical-biographical analysis and sociocultural interpretation of the text, allows for the reconstruction of the system of epistolary behavior of the sender. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that Lomonosov's epistolary legacy is interpreted for the first time as a coherent strategy of self-presentation of a professional scholar. The fact that in his correspondence, Lomonosov positioned himself primarily as a scientist, relegating other roles and statuses (poet, administrator) to the periphery, allows for an examination of his texts in the context of the emergence of this profession in 18th-century Russia. The correspondence presents a space where the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomy of the individual, based on reason and individual achievements, is vividly revealed, while simultaneously exposing the deep contradictions faced by a scholar existing under conditions of patronage dependence and institutional uncertainty. Thus, Lomonosov's "epistolary portrait" illustrates how models and the rhetoric of self-presentation were shaped in Russian culture during the Modern era.

In the era of total digitalization, when artificial neural networks curate our attention and social networks function as machines for producing affects, the question of how we perceive the world takes on not just an academic but a sharply social character. This article proposes a radical ontological shift in understanding the digital age, asserting that the key political field of the 21st century is the very structure of human perception. Through the synthesis of the concepts of technical individuation by Simondon, Stiegler's "pharmacology" of attention, and Latour's actor-network theory, we demonstrate that digital technologies are not merely tools but active co-architects of a new "perceptual grammar." This grammar is a hidden set of rules and filters that determine what can be seen, heard, and felt. It is produced in hybrid networks where algorithms, interfaces, and user practices interweave into a new mode of sensibility that requires its own deconstruction. The novelty of the approach lies in the rejection of viewing technology as a neutral mediator. Hence, the methodological approach of the research is based on the sequential application of three theoretical optics: the concept of individuation (Simondon), actor-network theory (Latour), and the pharmacological approach (Stiegler). This three-tiered method, ascending from ontological justification through empirical tracing to critical evaluation, allows us not only to describe but also to problematize the politics of digital sensitivity in all its complexity. The relevance of this research is determined by the unprecedented challenge that technological platforms pose to human agency and autonomy. If Simondon provides an ontological basis by understanding technology as a condition for the possibility of individuation itself, and Latour serves as a method for empirically tracing the assemblages that produce reality, then Stiegler introduces a critical and political vector. His analysis of the "proletarianization of sensitivity" under the pressure of the attention industry allows us to pose the following central question: "Whose interests and what logics (economic, political, ideological) crystallize in this new perceptual grammar?" Thus, the article insists that the struggle for the future is a struggle for the very "material" of experience and calls for the development of a new "therapeutics" of digital sensitivity capable of resisting its total capitalization.