Category Archives: CORNERSTONES

History of origin and development

Summary

Suren A.Manukyan
Today, thirty years after the origin of the genocide studies we can assess the exceptional role it has performed in transforming from a small group of individuals into a field that involves hundreds of scholars and thousands of students, and also is one of the most dynamic and actively growing areas of social sciences.

After the creation of the term “Genocide” by Polish lawyer Rafael Lemkin, this definition was neglected by the scholars, and only a handful of experts continued to use the term in their research. For some time the field of genocide studies was shadowed by the study of the Holocaust, which began to flourish since the mid1960s. In the late 1970s, a group of scholars (L. Kuper, H. Fein, I. Charny, I. Horowitz) began actively to promote the study of genocides and the conference of 1982 in Tel Aviv became visible evidence of the emergence of the discipline.

The end of the Cold War and new genocides that took place in Rwanda and the Balkans drove growing interest to the subject and the development of the field. The search for mechanisms to prevent genocides has become one of the main issues of research, and prevention of genocide became a form of action and public pursuit.

Now genocide is endowed with all the basic attributes of a distinct academic field. Books about genocide are published in the best publishing houses, journals, textbooks, encyclopedias, readers, textbooks bibliographies are appearing permanently, seminars, round tables, conferences, web sites, research centers and international organizations embrace the field. Numerous universities offer courses on this topic. Several theoretical problems are considered, and new approaches are adopted.

Some problems and their possible solutions

Summary

Gevorg G. Hakobyan

Key words – democracy, authoritarianism, governor, power, dictatorship, freedom, justice, truth, happiness, control, anarchistic attitude, antipod of truth, distribution of goods, democratic society.

The article presents a number of principled deficiencies in democracy related to justice and truth. The author agrees beforehand that, despite the fundamental shortcomings of democracy, it has been and remains the best form of organizing and managing the society. In this article the auther attempts to find the means and ways by which it is possible to neutralize the deficiencies of democracy. Those means are anarchistic mentality and the demanding position of the members of the democratic society.

Summary

Ashot S. Abrahamyan

Key words – sentence, utterance, reality, representation, situation, image, intonationality, referentiality, predicationality, contоur, perspective, index, symbol, icon, diagram.

Speech is the process of utterance production. The sentence, the linguistic basis of speech utterance, includes other linguistic units: sounds, morphemes, words. When they appear in the capacity of sentence components, these units, being the primary carriers of fundamental language processes, that is, phonation, designation and structuration, not only preserve their main properties, but also pass them on to the sentence in which these properties are revealed not through simple repetition, but through absolutely new embodiments, inherent only to sentence. Here the sound combination acquires intonation, referential intention is added to the signification, and the structure becomes predicational (including both grammatical and communicative predications). Intonationality, referentiality and predicationality are most important sentence characteristics and necessary conditions for its formation. Three main aspects of the language are supplemented with them in the sentence: expression – with intonationality, contents – with referentiality, structure – with predicationality. Together they form a joint basis for the transfer from a linguistic unit to its speech usage.

By analogy with the intonational contour of the sentence it is also possible to speak on its referential contour (idea of possible referential scope) and predicational contour (flexible hierarchic combinations of deep and surface predications). Prior to speech realization and still in its “expectation”, intonational, referential and predicational contours exist as generalized features of potential utterances and remain in the sphere of virtuality. For them realization is merely a perspective. Thereby they present themselves as intonational perspective, referential perspective and predicational perspective of the sentence. Actualization of these perspectives takes place through interrelated and simultaneous processes of intonating, referring and predicating.

The word, morpheme and sound pass also their semiotic characteristics on to the sentence. The indexical aspect of the sound, the symbolic aspect of the morpheme, the iconic aspect of the word have twofold manifestations: as features of sentence components and as features of the sentence itself. Indexicality, symbolicity and diagramic iconicity are combined in the sentence, this combination being equal, without the dominance of one over the others. That is the very peculiarity of sentence as a linguistic sign. On these grounds the sentence-utterance can be characterized as an indexical-symbolic-iconic sign.

Summary

Romik Kh. Qocharyan,
Anahit R. Jijyan

Key words – social, social science, socially significant, object, need, truth.

The purpose of this research is to reveal the truth-of-being of social science by hermeneutic methodology,perception, critical analysis, and interpretation of the theoretical and practical aspects and components of the whole unity truth of the essenceof the “social science”. The queries of this studyare, first, “What is social scienceasbeing?” or “How does the social scienceexist?”, second, “What is the social science as entity?”, third, “How is the social scienceworking?”, and, fourth, “For what is social science?”. By the suggested queries of the article in the sphere of scientific and particularly social-scientific thought once morethe interesting problems are introduced: to investigate the inner connection of “wisdom” and “science”, in this particular case, of “wisdom” and “social science”.As a result of such researchapproach in scientific knowledge and, namely, in the “social science” appears the possibility to present explicitly the counsel of wisdom. Social science, as such, is called to have openness of its being and hence to the truth of its existence, namely the need and intention to improve social life. Social science in its truth and perspective being chooses and investigates events and deeds by which it is possible to express the genuinely necessary and preferablethingsin human deeds for constructing good-orderly human life. Understanding and to interpreting counsels of wisdomcontained in socially-significant events and deeds of human life is the true calling of social science that was originally inherent to it. The calling of social science addressed to contemporaries and descendants is identical to the calling of reading social-scientific investigation:toreach andcomprehend the wisdom of spiritual-civilized identity, life and culture of human community: in past, present and possible perspective future. The nature of social science or the truth of being-of-social science as such is revealed in the definition of social science. And in this article by revealing and summing up the essential and preferable features of social science through formulas of thought the definitions of social science by its subject are presented.

Summary

Mariam M. Margaryan

Key words – state, sovereignty, statehood, historism, constitution, constitutionalism, ruling elite, person, society.

The article researches the issue of multidimensionality of sovereignty in the process of formation of the new world order. The imperative of heredity of the state sovereignty is proved as a factor of nation-state power. In this context historism is researched as a component of evolutionary modernization of sovereignty. The author is convinced that historism, including historical memory, is also an active constructive process of analysis and choise of the past. Simultaneously historism is viewed as a process of recovery of information flows, in the framework of which political time provides maximal viability and competitiveness. The notion of “choise of the past” is suggested, which on rational level allows recalling from the historical memory the part, the further generation of which will provide both viability and competitiveness with simultaneous filtering of information noise. The author is convinced that in the conditions of the new world order the process of providing of complex security should be based on three-dimensional connection past-present-future of the three Armenian republics.

Summary

E. Harutyunyan

Key words – contestation, architectonics, expression of will, engineering, life, past, present, future, art of living, identity.

Life is much more significant than moving from one insufficiency to another. Life is an unfinished event and the human is an eternal Faust. The world must be constantly contested so that the life is not deprived of prospect. Contesting is a bid for architectonics of the world. The human has metaphysical surplus of energy and aesthetical creation of the world is his incurable “disease”. The human being cannot live chained to herself. The past pulls, and the future calls. The present does not have history while the life is a story. Each person tries to govern their limited life and to convert it into a story. The past and future story of human life is a text of “how to live” on which we endlessly work and readjust according to our conceptions The article discusses the issues of social-cultural modernization of the Armenian nation living in existential environment and development of “life project” equivalent to contemporary geopolitical conditions. Because of almost perpetual unbeneficial external and internal circumstances the Armenian nation has been forced to choose the “Esthetical” solutions of its existence and has followed to principles of nationalistic ethics when organizing and regulating its life. These principles form a “World of friends” in space and “world of generations” in time. These worlds which organized the national life is a “world of community”, which is outstanding by its cultural power but not by its civilizational will, however to address the challenges of contemporary world a nation needs civilizational organization and a will to choose.

Summary

Elena O. Etaryan

Key words – self-referential literature, self-reflection, metafiction, meta-language, meta-narration, meta-description, creating illusions and disillusioning methods of metaization.

The subject of the study of this article is the phenomenon of metaization in literature, which became widespread in the 1960s of the 20th century and most often is used to describe techniques in postmodern literature and experimental literature. It should be noted that the study of this phenomenon also involved Russian formalists and structuralists, up to deconstructivists. Our research highlights the problems associated with the term “metaization”, namely, the diversity in its use, including the problems associated with defining and delineating its techniques (such as narrator’s comments, intertextual links, mise en abyme (story in story), refraction in the narrative, irony plays, textual contradictions, metalepses, paratexts, etc.). The studying of the functions of metaization takes the central place in our article. The conclusion of the article indicates the prospects of researching the subject of our article.

Summary

Davit R. Mosinyan

Key words – history, past, present, philosophy of history, discipline, possibility, historical process, development.

The problem of possibility of philosophy of history is ultimately related to those conditions in which the philosophy of history is thought to be a scientific discipline. This issue logically precedes the philosophy of history as a historical fact. So the main question here is what is the subject of philosophy of history: on the one hand, it studies history, but on the other hand, history seems to be possible through the philosophy of history. The main thesis of this article is that history did not always exist, at least, history in the modern sense. So, the philosophy of history is not a reference to what has already happened or history itself, but rather is a reflection to itself, which in turn means that the philosophy of history exists independently of history and is most connected with the worldview..

Summary

Siranush G. Hovhannisyan

Keywords – art, literature, religion, society, Human quality, Lord, Slave, spiritually-intellectual world, antimorality, amorality.

The article focuses on the type of human society and the quality of relations between members of that society, as well as morals and morality, as concepts that organize inter-human relations and culture. There are three types of morality – morality, antimorality and amorality. These three concepts are presented as prerequisites for the development of culture and the main indices of the way of becoming out of man by Man. As well as the article considers literature as a form of culture and language, as a means of forming a culture. The fact is underlined that the human creature is always in the positives of morality consciously or in the subconscious level of thinking.

Summary

Davit R. Mosinyan

Key words – history, past, presence, memory, narrative, experience, language, text, historical knowledge, philosophy of history, phenomenology

What makes it possible to talk about history and understanding relating to the history of consciousness? The fact is that history is not a simple given, that is, it seems that it makes no sense or it is impossible to fix the history here and now, due to which it is difficult to separate history from non-history. If we approach the problem from a different point of view, it becomes clear that we are not talking about what is history in itself, or as a form of historical knowledge about historical reality, but rather about how the history is presented for consciousness, i.e. whether there is an experience of history or history is represented exclusively through linguistic texts. Therefore, the question is not ontological or epistemological, but rather phenomenologic.