Bulletin Philosophy and Society 2023-34/3
The third issue in 2023 of the journal Philosophy and Society (Philosophy and Society 34/3) brings forth seven original scientific studies and articles covering a wide range of topics: from the role of combat drones in 21st-century battlefields, Lenin’s philosophy as a theoretical formation, modal logic in integrative philosophical practice, to novel approaches to Zeno’s paradoxes from the perspective of quantum physics. The issue also includes a paper which analyzes three classics of horror literature, one paper on the post-patriarchal society, and a paper on the concept of cessation in Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy. Finally, this issue contains a review article on the crisis of liberalism as well as a book review of Siniša Malešević’s Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-range Violence.
In his paper, “Is Drone Becoming the New ‘Apparatus of Domination’?: Battlefield Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century Warfare”, Srđan T. Korać examines how drones shape the combat efficiency in 21st-century warfare. Using critical theory and military studies, the author focuses on the operational use of drone visual regimes, drawing insights from YouTube videos related to the ongoing Ukraine war. The analysis reveals a shift towards drone surveillance for scrutinizing the performance of one’s own soldiers, suggesting that drones could evolve into tools of domination.
Nikola Dedić in his paper entitled “Towards a Theory of Theoretical Formations: From Althusser to Lenin”, claims that Lenin’s idea of socio-economic formation is also applicable to philosophy. The author shows that, like diverse ways of production in societies, philosophical discourse is a contradictory and overdetermined theoretical formation. Applying the notion of overdetermined formation to philosophy, the author paints its history as a continuous struggle between materialism and idealism, and as an extension of the class struggle to philosophy itself.
In “Modal Logic in Integrative Philosophical Practice”, Aleksandar Fatić explores the distinctions between practical applications of binary and modal logic in philosophical practice and psychotherapy, highlighting the recent focus on modal logic in helping professions, particularly in its contentious use by C.G. Jung and Lacan’s psychoanalysis. The paper addresses conceptual dilemmas related to the interplay of logical modality, intuition, and scientificity within the philosophical foundation of psychotherapy.
In his paper “Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Quantum Microworld: What the Aporias Convey”, Ivan A. Karpenko explores novel perspectives on four of Zeno’s paradoxes — Arrow, Achilles and the Tortoise, Dichotomy, and Stadium — by analyzing them in the context of current research in elementary particle physics and emerging directions in quantum gravity. Karpenko suggests that the paradoxes become irrelevant when examined at small scales in the microworld, leading to the proposition that classical interpretations of these paradoxes may be impossible due to a historical mixing of macroworld and microworld properties, emphasizing the need for a reevaluation of fundamental physical reality at extremely small scales.
In “Nature as the Source of Mysterium Tremendum: An Essay on the Poetic Works of Blackwood, Smith and Campbell”, Nikola Pišev delves into three horror classics — Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows”, Clark Ashton Smith’s “Genius Loci”, and Ramsey Campbell’s “The Voice of the Beach” — and examines how the landscape serves as a supernatural realm that merges the real and unreal and how it is used to explore metaphysical ideas about existence and reality. Pišev aims to contextualize these ideas historically and epistemologically, linking them to recent developments in philosophy and social theory, while also analyzing the semantics of space unique to each narrative.
Želimir Vukašinović, in his paper entitled “Post-patriarchal Society and the Authority of Dialogue – on Free Faith, Atheism and the Meaning of Language”, seeks to comprehend the historical shift to postmodernity through Nietzsche’s words “God is dead” and how it is manifested in a post-patriarchal society. Vukašinović connects Nietzsche’s experience of epoch with Žižek’s “genealogical desert between man and God,” framing a reinterpretation of religion, atheism, and modernity.
In “Whitehead on Perishing”, Mark Losoncz delves into the issue of cessation in Whitehead’s philosophy, examining different temporal and mereological aspects of perishing, particularly focusing on the annihilation of subjective directness and the complementary nature of creation and cessation across subjective, objective, and divine layers. Losoncz uses the critical reception of Whitehead to highlight dilemmas regarding the status, possibility, and discreet character of perishing.
