Vijñānabhikṣu (16th century) is known in the history of Indian philosophy pri­marily for his commentaries, although in fact he created an original philosophi­cal system that deserves separate consideration and further in-depth research. Three important aspects of his activities firstly should be pointed out: (1) the syn­thesis of yoga, Vedānta and Saṃkhyā in a system called Avibhāga-Advaita-Vedānta (unity of indivisibility, that is, Brahman of Avibhāga-Advaita is Iśvara in Yoga); Vijñānabhikṣu wrote a commentary on each basic text of the mentioned systems (commentary on Brahma Sūtra – Vijñānāmṛtabhāṣyam; commentary on Yoga Sūtra – Yogavārttikam; commentary on Sāṁkhyakārikā – Sāṇkhyasū­trabhāṣya); (2) compilation of the longest commentary on Yoga Sūtra – Yo­gavārttikam; (3) the forerunner of Neo-vedantantism and his main “inspiration”. The article aims to highlight the structure and content of Vijñānabhikṣu’s san­skrit commentary on Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra (with Vyāsa’s commentary), clarify­ing his main ideas, style, and techniques for integrating the Saṃkhyā-Yoga tradi­tion into the Vedānta tradition. This coverage is preceded by a historiographical overview of the Vijñānabhikṣu.

In June 2025, the Voprosy filosofii journal hosted a jubilee “round table” “Philo­sophical Problems of Quantum Mechanics: Historical Reality and Development Prospects,” dedicated to the centenary of the emergence of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. The round table was organized by the De­partment of Philosophy of the Natural Sciences at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The discussion brought together specialists in the philosophy and methodology of science, in the philosophical problems of quantum mechanics, as well as natural scientists and historians of science. Participants focused primarily on the conceptual aspects of the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics and on the question of which event should be considered the true “birthdate” of this field of knowledge. In addition, the inter­disciplinary dialogue clarified the trajectories of interaction between quantum mechanics and the social and human sciences in today’s changing world. A spe­cial topic of discussion concerned the philosophical research programs that influ­enced the development of quantum mechanics, and the extent to which quantum mechanics itself has significantly shaped these programs (including eco-philo­sophical ones). Most participants agreed that dialectics and phenomenology (par­ticularly those of G.W.F. Hegel, M. Heidegger, G.G. Shpet, and others) are acquiring special importance today for comprehending the fundamental founda­tions of quantum mechanics. Another original perspective in the debate was linked to examining the philosophical meanings of logic and hermeneutics and assessing their methodological potential in research on quantum mechanics.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the concepts of posthuman and philosophical posthumanism in the context of the anthropological crisis of moder­nity in the 21st century and the challenges to man caused by the development of science and technology. The author of the article analyzes, first of all, the con­cept of F. Ferrando, which shows the expansion of the problematic field of re­search arising from the rethinking and redefinition of man. In this regard, the concepts of posthuman and posthumanism are introduced and substantiated as а new knowledge, as a reaction to the anthropological crisis and the anthro­pocene. Taking into account the abstract and declarative approach in this concep­tualization, the article considers other conceptual approaches based on the spiri­tual and moral basis of human development (N.A. Berdyaev), as well as critical approaches aimed at analyzing the situation of man in the context of late capita­lism. These include theoretical approaches by J. Baudrillard, Byung-Chul Han, A. Rekwitz, correlated with real socio-economic and psychological factors of so­ciety development. Considering the problematic field of a number of the noted concepts responding to the anthropological crisis, the author comes to the con­clusion that Frolov’s position and his concept of a new (real) humanism as a methodology for further research on this issue are the most promising. The article shows that the question of anthropological identity in the context of the influence of information technology, biotechnology and social engineering can blur the boundaries between man and the other (machine, animal, etc.) to the point of losing its own specificity. Therefore, the alternative to the posthu­man is the preservation of his anthropological identity, associated with the ethi­cal understanding of the human race and man as a subject of free moral choice. Ultimately, the author comes to the conclusion that the study of issues of anthropological identity in the context of anthropological crisis in various conceptualizations has a deep theoretical and practical meaning associated with the choice of the path to the future, including the future of civilizational development.

The article examines the meaning and essence of “law philosophy” as an original project within the framework of the development of non-classical philosophy. A critical assessment of the key concepts of the classical philosophy comes from the postmodern “philosophy of difference”, the concepts of activism, semiotics and normativity. The opposition of classical and non-classical philosophy is car­ried out along the line of differentiation between being and law, truth and norm. Being is the justification of truth, while the basis of norm is law. Knowledge in its genesis is considered as an act in which the mind creates a norm necessary for effective interaction with the outside world and communication with other people. The non-classical philosophy of difference does not claim to be a new ontology, but can be understood in the spirit of semiotic transcendentalism: “pri­mordial difference” is that which is generated each time by the subject in the act of semiosis, which creates the boundary between the signified and the signifier as a transcendental condition of cognition. The semiotic concept of norms pro­posed by the author of the article makes it possible to describe the semiosphere as a normative system: a norm has a meaning that must be recognized by Others. This means that human thinking has a legal right nature. Legal philosophy is the direction of the development of philosophical thought, which is based on the idea of law. Philosophy should focus not on finding truths about the uni­verse, which is what science is doing, not on substantiating any other worldview than ideology is doing, but on creating norms of thinking, experiencing, and acting that ensure effective human interaction with the outside world.

In December 2024, the journal Voprosy Filosofii hosted an interdisciplinary “round table”, The Intellectual Legacy of Daniil Mikhailovich Vellansky in the Con­text of Contemporary Problems of the Philosophy of Knowledge, dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the birth of this outstanding Russian philosopher, scholar, medical practitioner, and translator of scientific literature. Russian philosophers and humanities scholars – epistemologists, historians of philosophy, historians of medicine, philologists – discussed source-critical and historiographical prob­lems in studying Russian Schellingianism as a phenomenon of intellectual cul­ture; highlighted the significance of D.M. Vellansky’s conceptual constructions for the development of the philosophy of medicine; identified the fundamental foundations of his organic theory; focused on the reception of his ideas in Rus­sian philosophy and culture; and demonstrated his role as a scholar, teacher, and translator in disseminating philosophical and scientific knowledge in Russia. The participants also addressed the interdisciplinary character of his philosophi­cal and scientific interests, as well as the problem of ‘human-sizedness’ dimen­sions in the philosophy of science, the origins of which can be traced to Vellan­sky’s fundamental reflections. Despite disciplinary and conceptual differences, scholars involved in the discussion agreed that Vellansky’s intellectual legacy, like Russian philosophy of the 19th century as a whole, requires today a prob­lem-oriented reinterpretation and a revitalization of fundamental historical-philo­sophical research aimed at expanding our understanding of the epistemological style of Russian intellectual culture.

The adherence of a number of 20th-century intellectuals to the concept and term “estrangement” (Verfremdung) unites writers, playwrights, sociologists, and philosophers in their striving for the renewal of humanitarian thought, for politi­cal nonconformism, and for the substantiation of the autonomy of the individual. Viktor Shklovsky, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Camus are vivid examples of such authors. Most of them had to go through difficult times, in particular, in emigra­tion, which formed cognitive and existential attitudes close to those described by A. Schütz in the sociological essays “The Stranger” and “Homecomer”. The arti­cle shows that the idea of estrangement is a core of the certain epistemology of art shaped by the socio-political and cultural atmosphere of geopolitical crises and human tragedies, so characteristic of Europe in the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Contrary to the widespread tradition of considering the phi­losophy of art and existential philosophy as a slightly smoothed-over emotional-affective discourse that says little about cognition and is practically inapplicable to the analysis of science, the article offers a purely epistemological and positive view of such concepts as estrangement, absurdity and rebellion. Man must prove his right to be called a knowing subject, not just a semi-conscious recorder and consumer of information. The genuine goal of knowledge does not always con­sist precisely in the dispassionate revelation of the essence of reality as it is in it­self. Knowledge is hardly possible unless man is induced to take responsibility for knowledge in order to overcome the automatism of everyday existence, to achieve clarity of his own consciousness, to join in the dignity of knowledge and free action, i.e. such creative cognition that goes against circumstances, is not humbled and is not justified by them. This creative and research attitude can enrich modern epistemology with the heuristic and existential content.

In his compendium Ten Stages of Mind Kūkai presents his most complete doxographic system, ranking teachings known to him with their corresponding “minds” as ten hierarchically organized categories, ascending from the lowest to the highest, adducing a description to each of these, mainly in the form of quotations. In the beginning of the first fascicle Kūkai characterizes the be­ings of the lowest mind, whose views and actions are completely “unwhole­some”. Following this Kūkai turns his attention towards issues of cosmology, covering the main Buddhist theses on the origin and structure of the world-sys­tem with references to those canonical works which thoroughly cover such issues.

The publication presents 13 letters of the outstanding Russian philosopher and pedagogue S.I. Hessen to his friend, the famous English educator N.A. Hans. Hessen’s letters are the most important source for his scientific biography of the first half of the 1930s. They reflect his intensive work on new books and articles for émigré periodicals, including the new journal “Russkaja Shkola”, and German, Polish, Czechoslovak, Serbian, Bulgarian, Italian philosophical and pedagogical editions. It allows us to assess the scope of his research activity and further plans, and the prospects for their realization in future publications. They contain detailed accounts of his personal problems, difficulties in obtaining a professorship at the Slavic Institute of Charles University in Prague, and a con­stant lack of money. The letters of this period are characterized with special depth of philosophical reflections on life, sharp criticism of present day policy, inner fortitude and optimism. Hessen discusses with Hans the details of revision of their manuscript on the Soviet educational policy (1933) for the German Beltz publishing house, the additions to chapters already written and the inclusion of new material. The special story is the fate of Hessen’s monograph “Moderne Pädagogik im Ausland”, which never reached the reader due to political circum­stances. The letters of 1933–1934 make it possible to trace how the scholar’s decision to move from Prague to Warsaw gradually took shape. The letter of 24 April 1933, one of the most striking anti-Nazi documents of the Russian emigration, is fundamentally important for Hessen’s understanding of the es­sence of Hitlerism and the catastrophic nature of the Nazi regime for Germany.

The name of Joseph de Maistre appears in Berdyaev’s writings throughout his entire oeuvre. The peak of his interest in this thinker falls on the revolution and the first years of emigration. At the center of the article is Berdyaev’s review of the works of French scholars Georges Goyau and Émile Dermengem, contem­porary to him, in which de Mestre appeared as a mystic and an idealist, a pacifist and a liberal conservative, and the author of an original historiosophic concept. These works were important for Berdyaev in two ways. Firstly, a number of points of intersection of the historical metaphysical and epistemological views of these two philosophers were discovered. Both were characterized by the idea­lization of the Middle Ages and calls for a spiritual reaction against the revolu­tion. Both were fascinated by mysticism and the occult sciences and opposed monism. Secondly, the ideas of French researchers became a theoretical basis for Berdyaev in the controversy that unfolded in emigrant circles around the role of Freemasons and Jews in the Russian revolution. The Russian Сhernosotency spread myths about Masonic conspiracies, in which Berdyaev played a leading role. De Maistre’s polemic with Abbé Barruel, as presented by Dermengem, be­came a good experience for Berdyaev to reflect on such accusations. Der­mengem’s works, if not influenced Berdyaev, then at any rate were a confirma­tion of his ideas about de Mestre not as a conservative, looking into the past, but as an original thinker who prepared the further movement of philosophical thought of the 19th century and remained relevant in the 20th century.

The legacy of the Russian philosopher and educator S. Hessen has been of active interest to historians of philosophy, education and culture in Russia and abroad for the last decades. One of the urgent tasks of modern Hessen studies should be considered the creation of a full-scale the thinker’s scientific biography on the basis of newly discovered archival materials, unknown and hard-to-access sources, memoirs of contemporaries, official documents of numerous émigré or­ganizations. A special role of epistolary is evident in these circumstances. S. Hessen’s letters preserved in various archives are an important source that makes it possible to reconstruct the details of the scholar’s biography and everyday life, to feel the atmosphere that surrounded him, to reveal the contexts and subtexts of his works. For the Prague period, such a source are the letters to N. Hans, a renown English expert in comparative education and a life-long friend of Hessen. Due to the fact Hessen’s archive was burnt down in 1944 during the Warsaw up­rising, the letters to Hans are of particular value. The correspondence began in 1923 after they met in Prague. The letters from 1926 to 1930 show the pecu­liarities of Hessen’s work as the editor of “Russian School Abroad” journal, his co-operation with European philosophical and pedagogical editions, his partici­pation in international scientific forums, his co-authorship of the English version of the book on the Soviet educational policy, and reveal the circumstances of his life in Prague, his family and financial problems, and etc.