Imyaslavie, Philosophy of the Name and Semantics of the 20th Century — Report by Holger Kusse

On October 27, 2021, Professor Holger Kusse, a leading research fellow of the Laboratory made a presentation within the framework of the seminar 'West and East: Universalism of Culture'

The assertion that God Himself is present in the name of God, which led to a dispute on onomatodoxy in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1913, looks like scientific nonsense, since in both modern philosophy and linguistics the identification of designation and signified is a serious categorical error. This is especially true of a proper name, which directly designates an individual, and does not even have to have a 'content' (meaning). On the other hand, 'speaking names', which denote a concrete person, are not uncommon, especially in fiction. Paradoxical as it may seem, but especially in the case of proper names, the separation of sign, meaning, and designated individual is not as clear-cut as it seems at first glance. Thus, imyaslavie contains an intuition that is interesting for linguistics and philosophy, which at one time became interested in famous Russian philosophers and theologians, such as Pavel Florensky, Alexei Losev, Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev. The philosophy of the name, which they developed from imyaslavie, is compared in the report with the semantics and theory of the name in analytical philosophy (Wittgenstein, Russell, Strawson, Kripke, etc.).

Whatch the video on YouTube.