In pre-revolutionary France criminal justice is regulated by the Ordinance Louis XIV of 1670. This Ordinance provides for torture as the major method of investigation and for the death penalty as the most commonly used form of punishment. One of the major concerns of French eighteenthcentury philosophers is therefore a radical reform of criminal justice and its humanisation in the spirit of Enlightenment. Many philosophers take...

In the 18 th century thinkers of the French Enlightenment discover Russia, whose institutional reforms replace their traditional utopian topies. The myths of Peter the Great and of Catherine II as Minerva of the North are created Russia also becomes a peculiar laboratory of Enlightenment incarnate. Francesco Locatelli, the author of the Muscovian Letters, who between 1733 and 1735 spend two years in Russian prisons, attempts...

The concept of "ideology" as, firstly, a term that points at non-epistemological conditioning of cognitive processes, and, secondly, as a term which aimed at disclosing the ancillary role of given ideas in regard to specific political interests of certain groups, has long history. Since Francis Bacon's theory of idols modern philosophy endavoured to create a comprehensive classification of systematic cognitive errors which divert...

The article takes on the problem of ideology, critical consciousness and social criticism and distinguishes two ways of thematizing it. The first approach is developed within the post-Hegelian framework. According to this paradigm, critique of ideology is a means of transgressing the antagonistic forms of socialization and emancipating humanity from the false forms of consciousness and corresponding irrational and oppressive social...