Miran Epstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 281729 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Miran Epstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Miran |
| FAMILY NAME | Epstein |
| SIGNATURE | EPSTEIN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1544-837X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1922 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Synthetic Turn
This essay calls for a synthetic turn in philosophy, moving beyond the emphasis in analytic philosophy on decomposition toward practices of problematization and constructive world-making. By examining definitions, judgments, ethical postulates, and disciplines, it demonstrates how synthesis expands conceptual horizons and generates new frameworks. In an era of artificial intelligence and virtual realities, philosophy had best evolve from analysis…
Fraudulent Participation in Online Qualitative Studies
Fraudulent participation is defined in the following as participation in research by individuals who, for one reason or another, intentionally provide false responses. Qualitative studies are at an increased risk of fraudulent participation when online recruitment and participation are used, and monetary incentives offered. Fraudulent participation threatens data quality and subsequent evidence-based practice, yet validated guidance on how to tac…
Why Russian Philosophy Is So Important and So Dangerous
The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest gener…
The Politics of Apocalypse
This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world - a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by…
Schizophrenic fascism
Postmodernist thought of the late Soviet period
To See Paris and Die
The Total Art of Stalinism
Book Review| April 01 2019 The Total Art of Stalinism: Avante-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond by Boris Groys Groys, Boris, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avante-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Rougle, Charles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 176 pp. Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2019) 25 (1-3): 444–445. https://doi.org/10.1215/096…
The corruption of medical morality under advanced capitalism
Our medicine displays what appears to be a strange paradox. On the one hand, it has an ostensibly patient-centred ethic. On the other hand, it abuses the patient even and mostly when it follows this ethic to the letter. This chapter attempts to explain away the perplexity. It raises a strong methodological suspicion that the ethic is, as a matter of fact, a capitalist ethic, namely an ethic of, by, and for a capitalist medicine. A capitalist medi…
Intelligentsia, intellectuals, and the social functions of intelligence
KEYWORDS: Russian cultureintelligentsiaintellectualsintelligentsia and the peoplethe end of intelligentsiahumanification
Inventive Thinking in the Humanities
This essay's central concern is the need for a new, practical dimension in the humanities, emphasizing their constructive rather than purely scholarly aspects. An analysis is offered of various types of inventions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, art, and literature, such as new disciplines, genres, cultural practices, and intellectual movements. An invention is not the production of a given work, however great, but rather a principle or…
The Nonhuman Turn
Book Review| September 01 2017 The Nonhuman Turn Grusin, Richard, ed., The Nonhuman Turn. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 255 pp. Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2017) 23 (3): 550. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3988492 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; The Nonhuman Tur…
Paradoxical Speech Acts
Lyrical Philosophy, or How to Sing with Mind
The article suggests that, contrary to widespread opinions and standard encyclopedic definitions, philosophy is a domain not only of thoughts and ideas but also of feelings. Philosophy as (etymologically) love for wisdom includes emotions in both of its components. Among the many various feelings that we experience, there is a discrete group that, thanks to their involvement with universals, may be regarded as philosophical. Wonder, grief, compas…
Introduction
This essay, coauthored by the editor and a member of the editorial board of Common Knowledge, introduces the fifth installment of the journal's symposium "Fuzzy Studies," which is about the "consequence of blur." Beginning with a review of Enlightenment ideas about ideas - especially Descartes's argument that a mind "unclouded and attentive" can be "wholly freed from doubt" (Rules III, 5) - this essay then turns to assess the validity of counter-…
The Philosophical Implications of Russian Conceptualism
The formation of Russian postmodernist thought can be traced to the theoretical works of Andrei Siniavsky, in particular to his treatise “On Socialist Realism” (1959). Instead of praising socialist realism as the “truthful reflection of life” (as did official Soviet criticism), or condemning it as a “distortion of reality and poor ideologized art” (as did dissident and liberal Western criticism), Siniavsky suggested the artistic utilization of th…
The Truth of Scientific Medicine
Mozes, B. The Truth of Scientific Medicine . Jerusalem : The Hebrew University Magnes Press , 2010 £57.50 (hbk ) xvii + 512 pp . ISBN 9789654934664 . In very few fields of knowledge do as many competing paradigms cohabit where their exchange is as common as in contemporary medicine. Indeed, conflicting explanatory, diagnostic and therapeutic agendas are abundant, and conceptions that had been ‘true’ until yesterday often turn out to be ‘false’ to…
The Interesting
Research Article| June 01 2009 The Interesting Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2009) 18 (1): 75–88. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.18.1.75 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; The Interesting. Qui Parle 1 June 2009; 18 (1): 75–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.18.1.75 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager…
Transculture
A bstract This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerge…
The Whisperers
Book Review| August 01 2009 The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 740 pp. Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2009) 15 (3): 506–507. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754x-2009-032 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Ci…
Hyperauthorship in Mikhail Bakhtin
This article explores the phemenon of hyperauthorship in intellectual writing: a primary author (hyperauthor) creates a number of secondary authors (hypoauthors), and develops possible conceptual systems on their behalf. The case under consideration is Mikhail Bakhtin and his complex relationship with his friends Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Voloshinov, members of the so called “Bakhtin’s circle” (in the 1920s) who are credited with authorship of …
Semiurgy
The article focuses on the transition from language analysis to language synthesis as a new strategy in the performative humanities of the early 21st century. In addition to semiotics, the practical discipline of semiurgy (signformation) is described in the context of growing creative potential of electronic communications. For philosophy, it means the turn to linguistic vitalism as an attempt to synthesize the legacies of Nietzsche and Wittgenst…
Between Humanity and Human Beings
Research Article| January 01 2007 Between Humanity and Human Beings: Information Trauma and the Evolution of the Species Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2007) 13 (1): 18-32. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2006-026 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; Between Humanity and Human Beings: Information Trauma and the Evolu…
The Demise of the First Secularization
Cries in the New Wilderness
Transculture
A bstract This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerge…
After the Future
Reduction of high-risk sexual behavior among heterosexuals undergoing HIV antibody testing
BACKGROUND. We evaluated the effect of HIV antibody testing on sexual behavior and communication with sexual partners about AIDS risk among heterosexual adults at a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. METHODS. We randomized 186 subjects to receive either AIDS education alone (the control group) or AIDS education, an HIV antibody test, and the test results (the intervention group). These subjects were then followed up 8 weeks later. RESULTS.…
The Unasked Question
Research Article| January 01 2004 The Unasked Question: What Would Bakhtin Say Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2004) 10 (1): 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-1-42 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; The Unasked Question: What Would Bakhtin Say. Common Knowledge 1 January 2004; 10 (1): 42-60. doi: https://doi…
Fraudulent Participation in Online Qualitative Studies
Fraudulent participation is defined in the following as participation in research by individuals who, for one reason or another, intentionally provide false responses. Qualitative studies are at an increased risk of fraudulent participation when online recruitment and participation are used, and monetary incentives offered. Fraudulent participation threatens data quality and subsequent evidence-based practice, yet validated guidance on how to tac…
Schizophrenic fascism
The Philosophical Implications of Russian Conceptualism
The formation of Russian postmodernist thought can be traced to the theoretical works of Andrei Siniavsky, in particular to his treatise “On Socialist Realism” (1959). Instead of praising socialist realism as the “truthful reflection of life” (as did official Soviet criticism), or condemning it as a “distortion of reality and poor ideologized art” (as did dissident and liberal Western criticism), Siniavsky suggested the artistic utilization of th…
Intelligentsia, intellectuals, and the social functions of intelligence
KEYWORDS: Russian cultureintelligentsiaintellectualsintelligentsia and the peoplethe end of intelligentsiahumanification
Paradoxical Speech Acts
Third Wave
Die Reform der Staatswissenschaftlichen Studien
Reduction of high-risk sexual behavior among heterosexuals undergoing HIV antibody testing
BACKGROUND. We evaluated the effect of HIV antibody testing on sexual behavior and communication with sexual partners about AIDS risk among heterosexual adults at a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. METHODS. We randomized 186 subjects to receive either AIDS education alone (the control group) or AIDS education, an HIV antibody test, and the test results (the intervention group). These subjects were then followed up 8 weeks later. RESULTS.…
After the Future
Research Article| April 01 1991 After the Future: On the New Consciousness in Literature Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1991) 90 (2): 409–444. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-90-2-409 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; After the Future: On the New Consciousness in Literature. South …
A Draft Essay on Russian and Western Postmodernism
Postmodern Culture - Volume 3, Number 2, January 1993
Third Wave
After the Future
Russian Postmodernism
Russian Postmodernism
The last couple of decades have been decisive for Russia not only in the political sphere; the period has also seen the rise and crystallization of Russian postmodernism. The essays, manifestos, and articles gathered here investigate various manifestations of this crucial cultural trend in: Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, offering both a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies ins…
Transcultural Experiments
Part 1 History: introducing culturology - major ideas and thinkers the laboratory of contemporary culture - improvisational practice and transcultural consciousness postmodern avant gardes and cultural re-invention. Part 2 Theory: Definitions transculture in the context of contemporary critical theories difference and interference transculture and society nomadic desires and transcultural becomings Infinitions how does newness enter the postmoder…
Chronocide
Research Article| April 01 2003 Chronocide: Prologue to the Resurrection of Time Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2003) 9 (2): 186-198. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9-2-186 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; Chronocide: Prologue to the Resurrection of Time. Common Knowledge 1 April 2003; 9 (2): 186-198. doi: https…
The Unasked Question
Research Article| January 01 2004 The Unasked Question: What Would Bakhtin Say Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2004) 10 (1): 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-1-42 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; The Unasked Question: What Would Bakhtin Say. Common Knowledge 1 January 2004; 10 (1): 42-60. doi: https://doi…
Cries in the New Wilderness
The Demise of the First Secularization
Between Humanity and Human Beings
Research Article| January 01 2007 Between Humanity and Human Beings: Information Trauma and the Evolution of the Species Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2007) 13 (1): 18-32. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2006-026 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; Between Humanity and Human Beings: Information Trauma and the Evolu…
Hyperauthorship in Mikhail Bakhtin
This article explores the phemenon of hyperauthorship in intellectual writing: a primary author (hyperauthor) creates a number of secondary authors (hypoauthors), and develops possible conceptual systems on their behalf. The case under consideration is Mikhail Bakhtin and his complex relationship with his friends Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Voloshinov, members of the so called “Bakhtin’s circle” (in the 1920s) who are credited with authorship of …
Semiurgy
The article focuses on the transition from language analysis to language synthesis as a new strategy in the performative humanities of the early 21st century. In addition to semiotics, the practical discipline of semiurgy (signformation) is described in the context of growing creative potential of electronic communications. For philosophy, it means the turn to linguistic vitalism as an attempt to synthesize the legacies of Nietzsche and Wittgenst…
The Interesting
Research Article| June 01 2009 The Interesting Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2009) 18 (1): 75–88. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.18.1.75 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mikhail Epstein; The Interesting. Qui Parle 1 June 2009; 18 (1): 75–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.18.1.75 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager…
Transculture
A bstract This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerge…
The Whisperers
Book Review| August 01 2009 The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 740 pp. Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Epstein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2009) 15 (3): 506–507. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754x-2009-032 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Ci…
The Philosophical Implications of Russian Conceptualism
The formation of Russian postmodernist thought can be traced to the theoretical works of Andrei Siniavsky, in particular to his treatise “On Socialist Realism” (1959). Instead of praising socialist realism as the “truthful reflection of life” (as did official Soviet criticism), or condemning it as a “distortion of reality and poor ideologized art” (as did dissident and liberal Western criticism), Siniavsky suggested the artistic utilization of th…
The Truth of Scientific Medicine
Mozes, B. The Truth of Scientific Medicine . Jerusalem : The Hebrew University Magnes Press , 2010 £57.50 (hbk ) xvii + 512 pp . ISBN 9789654934664 . In very few fields of knowledge do as many competing paradigms cohabit where their exchange is as common as in contemporary medicine. Indeed, conflicting explanatory, diagnostic and therapeutic agendas are abundant, and conceptions that had been ‘true’ until yesterday often turn out to be ‘false’ to…
Introduction
This essay, coauthored by the editor and a member of the editorial board of Common Knowledge, introduces the fifth installment of the journal's symposium "Fuzzy Studies," which is about the "consequence of blur." Beginning with a review of Enlightenment ideas about ideas - especially Descartes's argument that a mind "unclouded and attentive" can be "wholly freed from doubt" (Rules III, 5) - this essay then turns to assess the validity of counter-…
Lyrical Philosophy, or How to Sing with Mind
The article suggests that, contrary to widespread opinions and standard encyclopedic definitions, philosophy is a domain not only of thoughts and ideas but also of feelings. Philosophy as (etymologically) love for wisdom includes emotions in both of its components. Among the many various feelings that we experience, there is a discrete group that, thanks to their involvement with universals, may be regarded as philosophical. Wonder, grief, compas…
Paradoxical Speech Acts
Inventive Thinking in the Humanities
This essay's central concern is the need for a new, practical dimension in the humanities, emphasizing their constructive rather than purely scholarly aspects. An analysis is offered of various types of inventions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, art, and literature, such as new disciplines, genres, cultural practices, and intellectual movements. An invention is not the production of a given work, however great, but rather a principle or…
Philosophy (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Art (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Literature (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works)