During the second half of the 19 century, in line with Europe, some Western Armenian intellectuals started to become acquainted with positivist and materialistic ideas. One of these intellectuals was Anton Madatya Karakashian, who, under the influence of the German materialist philosopher Büchner, quit his clerical status and adopted a scientific worldview.
Karakashian propagated scientific views in some of his articles, but his main contribution was his Armenian textbooks on philosophy and logic. These books reflect his scientific worldview which stands closer to the empiricists. Furthermore, these books played an important role in introducing Western philosophy to Armenian students.
Karakashian was also a well-known Armenologist, educator, linguist and a popular textbook author. He promoted critical thinking, yet he was conservative in terms of language and campaigned for the revival of Krapar (classical Armenian), and even launched a journal in classical Armenian.
Positivist thought found some echoes within the Armenian circles of Constantinople and Smyrna as of the second half of 19th century.
Positivism promoted positivism against metaphysics and religion. Old norms were to be replaced by new perceptions. Gosdantian Armenian book, About Method, is nothing but a promotion of po...
The paper focuses on the political serialized writings of one of the greatest Armenian humorists, Ler Gamsar. These series reflect the dire life of the Armenian nation in the first two decades of the 20th century.
They can be considered as chapters of Armenian history written by Ler Gamsar. The author notes that these...
During the post-Tanzimat period Western philosophical trends were introduced to the Ottoman Empire. This was for political reasons. In their search for ways to salvage the failing Ottoman Empire, Turkish Ottoman intellectuals thought that the spread of political philosophy and a scientific mindset would be helpful to t...
The Armenians of the Caucasus were introduced to Evangelism during the first half of the 19th century, first by Swiss and later by Swedish missionaries. The missionaries were confronted by the local Armenian Orthodox church authorities but were, nonetheless, able to establish a foothold through educational projects and...
The term "Haykabanutyun" often comes across in scientific literature and fiction. The concept of "Haykabanutyun," however, hasn't been defined so far and we cannot explain what did Haykabanutyun/Haykaban specifically mean.
The author tackles this concern in this article, based on diverse dictionaries and other sources....
Hovhannes Toumanian's letters cover diverse aspects of literary arts and criticism, form vs. content, characters, linguistic tricks, his views on different authors, his approaches and understanding of different genres of literature, the messages he conveys, etc. This paper, however, highlights the literary and theoreti...
