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12УДК 141.319.8
Back to Kant? (on the Topicality of the Ideas of philosophical Anthropology)
Yekaterina a. Batiuta*, Aleksandr V. pertsev and Yekaterina S. Cherepanova
Ural Federal University named after B.N. Yeltsin 51 Lenina, Ekaterinburg, 620083 Russia
Received 11.03.2013, received in revised form 18.03.2013, accepted 25.03.2013
The importance of philosophy in people’s lives is still a very topical issue in terms of philosophical anthropology; moreover, this field of philosophical knowledge has brought a vital perspective to the problem. The authors raise the question of transformations in philosophy and philosophical education in Russia. Contemporary philosophy should return to the anthropological ideas of I. Kant about free mind and criticism. The contemplations presented in the article also include polemic points of complex relationship between philosophical world-outlook, religion and everyday worldviews and their influence on modern education. During the Soviet era, the Russian people have accumulated some painful experience of dealing with philosophical and ethical prescriptions, and it is anthropology that could replace normative approach in education with a new outlook of humanism and tolerance.
Keywords: philosophy, philosophical anthropology, society, world outlook, religion, meaning of life, state and society, philosophical education
About two decades ago, the authors of this article forwarded an initiative to enroll Philosophical Anthropology in the list of majors for the Philosophy departments of the country. It is time to contemplate on where we have come to. Here, however, some clarification is required, especially for our overseas readers.
In the year 1991, CPSU was labeled as an organization involved in attempting a coup d’état (establishment notoriously known as SCEG). Alongside with it, the entire Marxist-Leninist philosophy based on dialectical materialist philosophy and scientific communism was
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* Corresponding author E-mail address: apercev@mail.ru
banned. Thus, philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism elapsed “de jure”, not in the least “de facto”. Since people who taught this philosophy throughout the country, from schools to universities, still kept carrying out their activity, delivering their knowledge.
At present, Russia enjoys about 6 thousand professional philosophers (this figure corresponds to the number of the Russian Philosophic Society members registered in the “Bulletin”, the annual list of the society members; there is every reason to believe that it is the members of the professional community and newcomers who
constitute the RPS with the desire to participate in the association’s congresses and conferences and publish their papers in the ‘Bulletin”).
After the repeal of mandatory all-state philosophy in the year 1991, these professionals officially stopped teaching so-called “diamat” (dialectical materialism) and “histmat” (historical materialism). Since then they have delivered “general philosophy”. But the division of the former Soviet philosophers has preserved their general notions of philosophy, the subjects and challenges, structure, etc., and it is quite natural. People cannot change their views overnight while others see it as dishonourable. Dialectical and materialist philosophy at that time was presented as a science. In addition, any science is knowledge that does not change at any rate under any social cataclysms. That is why, a post-soviet philosopher takes themselves as a researcher who cannot and does not have to give up their science. They should carefully observe all the alterations going on in the country, analyze them and form their own scientific judgment about the topic. If Russian modernity does not match their ideas of truth, goodness and beauty, a scholar must call for its modification in the proper direction.
Perceiving themselves as an arbiter of changes, a modern Russian professional philosopher still believes that philosophy is a scientific world outlook. The essence of it lies in the opinion according to which scholars representing some “specialized” fields see the world in a one-sided, one-angle, incomplete and a single-aspect manner. This is why these sciences are called “specialisms”, and all sciences, except for philosophy, belong to this type. Only a philosopher, apart from a physicist or a biologist, can consider our world as a whole in all its fullness and diversity. The challenges of other scientists (chemists, economists) do not stretch to creation of Weltanschauung. They are engaged in their specific fields of study, whereas a philosopher’s
task is to bring the results of all sciences together. This is how a national philosophic community of many thousands takes its mission. Of course, they do not consider themselves a community of retrograde or conservative persons. They are ready to consider everything that is occurring in the world and the country, in science and in culture, in politics and economy. However, one has to order this new knowledge with respect to existing one and distribute it tropically among pre-arranged files.
A philosopher possesses three of such files. He or she is accustomed to defining their science as a science of nature, society and cognition. So, due to the definition, philosophy can have just this very structure. And, vice versa, everything that has another structure is not considered as philosophy. This is the reason why only two specialties for future philosophy pros were customary for university and academic philosophers. One of them was former “dialectic materialism” which now sounds as “ontology and epistemology”, i.e. study of the world on the whole and its cognition. The second one is former “historic materialism” -today’s “social philosophy”. These old wineskins, i.e. catalog’s sections, need to be filled with the new wine of modern philosophy. But what if the ferments of young wine could burst the old wineskin? Would a certain contemporary address use containers in search for the things necessary for a new life, even if these old wineskins were full of new contents?
After the year 1991, sciences in Russia felt somewhat liberated from philosophy (their representatives were secretly offended for some time that philosophers tagged their sciences as “specialisms”, denying their abilities to generalize and to see the world as a whole). At the beginning, the academic community tried to abolish philosophy in general: at least as a compulsory exam for the future candidates of science. The decision was made by the Russian Academy
of Sciences. Nowadays they a bit soothed their stand and admitted that the Vienna Circle had been right: each science has its own philosophy which must be taken as a exam by all the future candidates of science. In parallel, the community of “specialism” sciences established good relationships with the Russian Orthodox Church which used to come under fire by philosophers. Quite recently, on September 28, 2012 Moscow State University awarded His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus’ Kirill with the title of an Honoured Doctor. It is worth noticing, that the church as well as philosophy cannot be considered a competitor of “specialism” sciences, but still it offers the general worldview, “converges” the results obtained by specific studies into one picture. Therefore, the public of positive sciences preferred to disown of philosophers’ “scientific world outlook” and allied with the Church.
Thus, common notions of the role philosophy plays in society are wrecking spectacularly. Scientists are against any alliances with philosophy. And the society, the unenlightened majority in particular, is not willing to ally with the scientists. The sentiments and the frame of mind of the silent majority are perfectly indicated by the TV ratings. These ratings go up dramatically when the public is shown the things classified as fraudulent by the science, such as wizards, folk healers, shamans, mediums of all kinds. A scholar today is brought down to the position of an enlightened servant for an uneducated ruler (in modern terminology they are called experts). At a breathtaking speed prehistoric and pagan forms of the world outlook which seem to have been totally ruined by Christianity and enlightenment are rising from the dead. Shamans tour across Russia gathering full stadiums of audience.
In this situation the government goes on cutting budget students vacancies at the universities’ Philosophy departments. This
number has been gradually decreasing by about 10 % for 5 years, which means that it has decreased by more than a half. The official pretext is abundance of human science graduates. It is true regarding the great number of lawyers and economists who are trained by both state and non-state educational institutions. Nevertheless, non-state universities do not provide education for philosophers! It seems like it is time when it is sufficient to clarify what role in society philosophy is to accomplish. Does it need to play its previous role of the “general theory of everything” (S. Lem), i.e. critically general study of the world, cognition and society? “Specialism” sciences apprehend the world, and philosophy even if it wished to, cannot compete with them in this respect. Then, perhaps, philosophy should deal with cognition of cognition or with the analysis of scholars’ cognitive activity? There is no order for this activity among scientists. Even government appeared not to be interested in this sort of research, though there might be lots of promising findings. Sociologists and political studies researchers are far more successful in the society cognition, primarily due to the fact that theoretical level of these fields can ensure good understanding between these sciences and the modern society.
What is left for philosophy?
First and foremost, it is philosophical anthropology. This is notjust a philosophical study of a human being. This is something different. It is a look at all the knowledge acquired by human beings as human knowledge. It is a specific way to perceive processes going on in the world, the way when any piece of information about a tiny happening in the Great World structure or in the Little World structure immediately awakes the question, what it may mean for people. Is it possible that we came very close to an anthropological turn in philosophy made in Europe by I. Kant and are now standing face to face with it?
The gist of this turn should be seen in the fact that philosophy is recognized as a field of knowledge and activity that is non-natural for a science, but vital for a man.
The advanced philosophy theses that lie beyond empirical sciences and cannot be refuted or confirmed by experience. But these theses set a meaning to human life and without this knowledge a person falls into neurosis and cannot survive under modern conditions (though the meaning of life issue looks absurd from the point of view of empirical sciences).
All mentioned above is typical philosophical anthropology reasoning. Its urge is witnessed by the following famous joke:
A patient asks: “Doc, will I live?”
The doctor answers: “What’s the sense of it?”
A person who is terminally ill does not expect a representative of the “positive” science of medicine to philosophize over the meaning of life. But a doctor seems to have lost it while experiencing an emotional upheaval. Thus, scholars need to have critically general (not specifically scientific) world outlook. It is necessary not only for the prospects it opens for a man. The absence of such anthropology-oriented outlook is the absolute evil for human beings. The greater evil is when this outlook exists but it is not in line with positive sciences. The lesser evil is when the existing outlook agrees with their results, with everyday life and political, economic and cultural life collisions.
A philosopher, unlike a geologist, can presumablytieupeverythingthatispsychologically vital to a man but remains unclaimed as long as they are involved in “particularly scientific” cognition, into one integrated world view. Let us define the position of I. Kant who had been precisely calling for the anthropologic turn. The Konigsberg thinker wrote: «The fact that the human mind may ever give up metaphysical
researches is as little to be expected as that we may prefer to give up breathing, to avoid inhaling impure air. Metaphysics will always exist in the world; nay, everyone, especially every man of reflection, will have it, and in case of need of a recognized standard, they will shape it for themselves according to their own pattern. What has hitherto been called metaphysics, cannot satisfy any critical mind, but it is impossible to forego it entirely; therefore the Critique of Pure Reason itself must now be attempted or, if one exists, investigated, and brought to the full test, because there is no other means of supplying this pressing need, which is something more than mere thirst for knowledge»1.
Note several key points of this quotation. First, each person, not only an intellectual, has their own philosophy. Speaking about such individual philosophy Kant does not mean one or two profound wisdoms any person can sometimes come up with. He speaks about metaphysics, i.e. proceeding from the meaning of this notion in his philosophy, he infers thoughts of the world as a whole, of a soul, of the transcendent that is beyond experience (experiment) and, eventually, of a man’s freedom. All these ideas are typical of every person irrespective to the fact whether they have read at least one philosophy book or not, whether they can express these notions using the cultural language accepted in the given society or not. (Mayakovsky used to describe this inability by apt formula “aglossus avenue is twisting”).
In other words, if a person is regularly asked some questions, they will give quite adequate answers. They will be able to explain what their world is like, their capabilities in this world, their ideas of the soul or (in modern terms of philosophy, of consciousness) and finally, their idea of the invisible forces able to assist or hinder their efforts to freely realize their life aspirations.
Second, I. Kant says, that each person’s metaphysics is tailored “in the absence of general standard ... in his own way”. In other words, I. Kant supposes that any individual should possess their own personal life philosophy, which allows them to make the most important decisions. It is of interest to note the thesis of individual philosophic thinking, which is characteristic of everyone.
Third, I. Kant proposes that the need for life philosophy is for no evident reasons ineradicable. It will persist forever. A professional philosopher can strain every nerve trying to prove such philosophy to be imperfect, controversial and inconsistent but it will be beyond their capabilities to make this person give up philosophizing. “It is as unbelievable as if we stopped breathing completely in the fear of inhaling unclean air”. Consequently, the person’s need for life philosophy is vital: they cannot live without it in the same way as they cannot live without air.
Fourth, I. Kant confines his task only to criticism against hitherto existed and still existing life philosophies. “What has been considered metaphysics so far cannot satisfy any inquisitive mind”. By the latter one must imply the mind of Kant. This is he who is not satisfied with either extensive doctrines of the greatest metaphysicians, or, to even greater extent, simple-minded life philosophies of the rest of people.
What results from this dissatisfaction? I. Kant finds himself at the cross-roads: his thesis leads to three roads, and it is necessary to select one of them. The first way is the following. Admittedly, a person’s aspiration to have their own life philosophy is irresistible. Let it be far from satisfactory for my searching mind; it is enough that its author feels pleased with it. My task can just entail why this very philosophy meets the needs of this particular person, becoming vital for him or her. Why cannot this person do without it? What biographic clashes were interpreted in this
unique way? What sources did he or she derive the phrasing to express the stance from? What words did he or she add, editing the sources according to their fundamental needs? As a result, a more general question arises. How and in what way can such life philosophy help this person live? Why is craving for philosophizing so insuperable and vital?
Later on, this way selected by representatives of existentialism and philosophy of life had an influence on the corresponding fields in psychology.
The second way can be put as follows. Admittedly, in this life every person is governed by a certain life philosophy. However, the principal thing is not the comprehension of a separate individual but facilitation of mutual understanding between people, provision of free thought and intellectual tolerance in the society. In case everyone goes into the shell of their own philosophy, one will not be able to hear others. If one sees it as the only truth, it results in denying the other people’s right to create their own life philosophies. If such a person possesses enough charisma to paralyze a great number of people’s abilities to independent thinking and make them “co-thinkers” (more precisely “co-not-thinkers’), they can found a party of authoritarian type. If this party manages to come to power, democracy will be over. Repressive state apparatus chastises those who deviate from the solely true and immortal doctrine forced in the society as a “common” world outlook.
So, for the sake of democracy, equality, tolerance, for the sake of human rights observance one has to ruin, constantly and sustainably, each person’s individual faith in exceptional rightness of their own life philosophy. It is necessary to devote oneself to devastating criticism against each separate life philosophy and, as a tendency, to criticizing the metaphysical thinking itself. Metaphysics is dangerous owing to its potential to
generate dictators and totalitarian regimes. This threat is in its very essence. Experience brings knowledge about particulars. A person is right when they speak about things they witnessed in person. However, “generalization” in “notions”, which is characteristic of metaphysics, allows a person to acquire the firm belief that they are always right. Hence, people should break the thinking in “absolute” philosophic concepts. Criticism leveled at metaphysics in general, and at each individual life philosophy, in particular, will permit, once and forever, to deprive all and everyone of arrogance and confidence in absolute correctness. In this case, we will be engaged in therapy of both scientific and everyday languages to ensure that everything that does not match experience is discarded and nip metaphysics in the bud. Then, people will realize that the truth is a result of a fair agreement between persons equal in rights, when each of them obeys the conventionally accepted rules of logics with all the responsibility and honesty, shares their own experience and vision of their part without pretending of seeing the whole. If rationalism and scholasticism procreate dictators, then empiricism produces constitutions and parliaments. Long live criticism at metaphysics!
This way was later chosen by positivism, logic and linguistic analysis exponents.
There is, at last, the third way. In this case it is necessary to start with criticism in metaphysics. We can ruin an individual’s faith in their own life philosophy. We can destroy a dominated society-wide “ideology”, a system of metaphysical or theological notions which “cannot satisfy any inquisitive mind”. But criticism in its pure form is like acid. It can only erode. It can give rise to universal impiety and nihilism. AngloSaxon empiricists may feel at ease; their world enjoys a developed specialization of labour with a perceived need of people in each other, and a market, which in contrast to bazaar, teaches to
reach agreement, establish strong relationships, both act as independent from philosophy constructive force in its own right. With this state of things one can be an empiricist for the given in practice and observation is progress. There it is enough to be an empiricist (while putting metaphysics to an end) in order to readjust those who move in the right direction and stop them from sinking into intolerance and arrogance, irreconcilable idea-driven discord. In Kant and Hegel’s times in Germany, as well as later in Russia where observation could not give anything but experience of standstill, philosophy was not allowed to just criticize. It had to act as a cementing basis in absence of other creative nation-wide principles.
There is no time to wait until in Germany, separated into tiny principalities, or in the feudal “Pre-Perestroyka” Russian empire there emerges a developed economy which, in its turn, generates a market under which people can learn how to negotiate, tolerate and understand each other. Critically shattering the wrongness and confusion of the individual life metaphysics comprised in traditional society, one should propose a new national philosophy of freedom which is worth becoming universal. It is sure to be created by me as an individual but it is not individual for I sacrifice my own for the mankind. One should always confine themselves to peremptory imperative and think of themselves as of all-human embodiment of reason. They kill everything private in themselves and become the Voice of humankind heralding universal values and ideals. And at that they will appear (being classic German philosophy or the exponent of Russian Orthodox Church) completely intolerant to everything not deserving to be all-human.
From now on philosophy has to be as it were an all-state matter with the help of which an enlightened monarch and his academic armed force sets up a power exemplary for a mankind;
philosophic culture imposed from the top through education has to haul the left-behind economy. This can occur only when all purposeful citizens do away with their own private philosophies in the same free manner as with luxury that can be afforded sometime in the future. One must think of motherland first and then of himself!
In Kantian-Hegelian times in Germany and in Russia, since Peter the Great till perestroika, philosophy was considered to be a State affair. A philosopher saw themselves as a citizen and a servant for a will-be ideal state. Later, after enveloping all the people this state will disappear to everyone’s satisfaction and delegate all its functions to morale. That is why a thinker should engross their whole attention in universal human ideas which temporarily present the ideas of the most enlightened, bringing- knowledge- to-the-world state.
They, indeed, can come across a private thought. Nobody is protected from it. This specific idea should be thought of at home, in free time. A philosopher can share it with a friend, tet-a-tet. Though it is not worth publishing since publication of any philosophic thought is an act that cannot help being pro- or contra-state.
We are perishing in the world under the moon
Our life is a blink of an eye, while oblivion is eternal
The globe rolls in the Universe And people live and disappear2.
As I. Raskin states, these lines belongs to the ex-leader of KGB, later Secretary General of the CPSU, Y.V Andropov. The reading public could read them only after perestroika in a book that combines cynicism with the manifestation of loyalty. The appearance of the poem in this very book is quite explicable. A “decadent” thought about the caducity of human existence could surely come across the governing Marxist’s mind. It had remained private until it was not published.
If it had come out, it would have been taken as a state philosophic affair, or rather an assault on the ideology of optimistic power, an attempt to substitute dialectical and historic materialism for desperate existentialist ideas.
In Russia both state and private ideas have always been strictly differentiated. The very supposition that philosophy might express the own thoughts of a person, that it can be of private use, that philosophy could voice a thinker’s individuality, their unique and unmatchable sensations and product of their life reflections, seemed absolutely impossible.
However, honestly speaking, it should be noted that the notion of philosophy as a state affair appeared, indeed, not in Soviet Russia, but was originated by “classic German” philosophers highly respected by the Marxists. It was not the Marxists who elaborated two different philosophies: one for oneself and the other for the prosperity of the state. If we go back to Kant, we will find: «The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring enlightenment among human beings; the private use of one’s reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted without this particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. But by the public use of one’s own reason I understand that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers. What I call the private use of reason is that which one may make of it in a certain civil post or office with which they are entrusted. Now, for many affairs conducted in the interest of the commonwealth a certain mechanism is necessary, so that some members of the commonwealth must behave merely passively, so as to be directed by the government, through an artful unanimity, to public ends (or at least prevented from destroying such ends). Here it is, certainly, impermissible to argue; instead, one must obey. But insofar as this part of the machine also regards themselves
as a member of the whole commonwealth, even of the society of citizens of the world, and so in their capacity of a scholar who by their writings addresses the public in the proper sense of the word, they can certainly argue without thereby harming the affairs assigned to them in part as a passive member. Thus it would be ruinous if an officer, receiving an order from the superiors, wanted while on duty to engage openly in subtle reasoning about its appropriateness or utility; one must obey»3. This thesis illustrates the very core of enlightenment which never outgrew the project stage in Germany and was spectacularly and miserably implemented in the practice of Russia. To put it simple, it implies that only such a philosopher who edifies a government and a nation has the right to use reason publicly. Having been enlightened itself, the government has grasped the philosopher’ stand, it starts to put its wise plans for achieving all-humanness into effect in one particular country. The government functions as a mechanism ( ^ organon ^ body ^ bodies) which prevents even the state officials from taking their own way: no free philosophizing or improvising are not allowed, otherwise no plan for mankind’s precepting will be realized!
But if even the statesmen’s intellectual pursuits “should be occasionally limited”, what is left to common subjects? Moreover, the state does not require “private application of reasoning” by “pure mortals”, and this “mechanism through which these or those members of society could behave in a passive way” must phase down every attempt to think on one’s own in an enlightened and enlightening country.
Though the trouble is that every person in the pride interprets the principles of Enlightenment too freely: they believe that under enlightenment an individual is free to muse whereas, as a matter of fact, this privilege is given solely to the lecturer. Kant did have such an appeal: “One should have the courage to make their mind
work!” And this courage is unlikely to be needed for pondering over in one’s mind on one’s own! A person should use their mental ability to wave aside old religion and metaphysics in order to be capable of perceiving Kant’s arguments, form up in a column and march after him.
However, there are people impertinent enough not to see it. Thanks to the critics who have dethroned the former idols, these brave hearts demonstrate an impulse to reflect on what God is, what freedom is, what immortality of a soul is, i.e. to solve “those tasks towards whose resolution as the ultimate and only goal all metaphysics means are directed” in their own individual manner4. Certainly, nothing good or wise can come out of it, no matter how emphatically they could be persuaded not to inhale impure air of personal philosophy.
In Russia, the very way of raising the issue of tolerance towards private thinking is an indirect evidence of the fact that the most grandeur endeavor to teach peoples of the world through developing a single all-human philosophy in an isolated country collapses in the same way as any other less ambitious attempts.
Thus, our results can be summarized as follows.
Irrespective of evident developments in the modern Russian philosophical thought (that has undergone significant evolution since the year1991), the general idea of the nature of philosophy, its objectives, structure and basic topics remains an unchanged vestige of the Soviet era. In fact, this vision dates back to F. Engels “Anti-Duhring” structures, where the author, in his turn, discussed the book by Eugen Duhring book, part by part. And all this gave rise to the scientific image of philosophy as of “a science studying the universal laws of Nature, Cognition and Society”. This definition was canonical and mandatory in the USSR. We cannot see even a mention of a man among the “subject matters”
of this philosophy. Soviet philosophy was anti-anthropological from its very nature, and all that corresponded to the general communist idea: “an individual is nothing; Society (Nation or Party) is everything”.
There is no “state” world outlook in contemporary Russia. The state attempts to substitute dialectical and materialistic worldview for mandatory religion, but this process feels very uncertain. The results of the survey conducted among the parents of 4-grade schoolchildren (they had to choose between the fundamentals of religious culture or secular ethics for their children to study) served as a sort of a test in this respect. It was secular ethics that three thirds of the parents preferred. It could be interpreted as follows: modern Russian nation still likes to build its way of life guided by secular values. Another fact was added by Ms. O. Gredina, the Rector for Educational Development of Sverdlovsk Regional Institute, and it is instructive, too. 11 % of those who chose secular ethics later refused their choice because of ‘insufficient educational quality’ and transferred their children to the groups dealing with religious culture. The reasons are quite easy to understand; secular ethics was taught by available schoolmasters, many of them had never taught humanities. If you are a teacher of geography, drawing or the like and you have to read ethics to 4-grade schoolchildren, that is to explain the meaning of Duty, Honour, Conscious to ten-year-old children, you should be either as talented as Lev Tolstoy or have a proper professional training and proper training manuals. There are neither such manuals considering age-dependent characteristics and the role of plays in a 4-grade schoolchild’s life, nor appropriate professional training system nowadays. But the main point is that ethics presents normative knowledge. It prescribes required human relationships. No discussions are allowed. The previously existing
ethics did not include the plurality of opinions either. That is why ethics is highly unpopular in the democratic era with its established freedom of thought, freedom of actions, freedom of speech, etc. The teaching of humanities has turned into “provision of paid educational service” mainly for the customer’s payment. Now there are not many people who are ready to pay for sermons or instructions. The customers themselves would rather instruct the others to get the right and successful living. Russians have accumulated some painful experience of dealing with various ethical prescriptions through the Soviet years, recall that the Moral Code of the Communism Builder that had been inscribed on the walls of every respectable organization; so the older generations connect ethics with the CPSU dictates.
Taking all this into account, philosophy should return to schools, however, not as a ‘theory of everything” duplicating positive sciences in a rather perfunctory way, but as philosophical anthropology. It is manifested in the fact that it avoids dictates and allows discussions, contemplations and interpretations; it is different from the previous ethics. Philosophical anthropology does not resemble descriptive fact-collecting psychology either. Modern psychology seems more like physics striving to study individual to find the general. It does not admit the concept of “values”. It treats feelings of people as a sort of psychological crises or neurosis which people should overcome. Finally it could lead to the “medical” approach considering philosophy as “superficial ideas” which people must get rid of, even using medicines.
In this respect the advantages of German philosophy are very valuable. Germans are famous for their high-level philosophy to have rejected teaching “pure metaphysics” at schools and universities. They introduced ethics instead. But this ethics is not normative. It comprises
skills of discussing and reasoning of a person’s moral state. The Head of Ethics Programme D. Benner from Humboldt University once told to this article’s authors that his philosophical and pedagogical objective was to stimulate schoolchildren’s thought. A present-day child comes to school with one and the only conception of his Duty, and these ideas are inspired by their religious parents of relatives. Modern Berlin is characterized by the fact that a great amount of Turkish people has been living and working there since 1945. Numerous builders, cleaners, traders from Somali to Vietnam have overcrowded Berlin. Finally, children of different or even opposite cultures and values find themselves together in the same classroom. Prof. Benner said that he felt as if he were a successor of I. Kant, following the idea “Have the manliness to use your reason!” It is not necessary to have courage being simply guided by ‘the elders’ repeating
their words without a trace of a doubt. But the challenge of contemporary teacher is to establish and to maintain the dialogue of cultures where people can reason and defend their values in peaceful discussions, but not in military battles. D. Benner’s research group elaborated teaching materials for discussions at ethics class. They present mainly slices of life (extracted from fiction and arts) and the questions to stimulate children to define their life values and to reason them. Here it is important to mention the difference between “value” and “assessment” distinguished by a neo-Kantian Geo Rikkert. Individuals can assess everything subjectively, and philosophers, analyzing and reasoning these assessments, are able to estimate human values. It is the space for dialogue that philosophical anthropology can provide for modern society, but the honour of being the founder of anthropology belongs to I. Kant.
1 Kant I. Prolegomeny ko vsiakoy budushchey metafizike, mogushchey poiavit’sia kak nauka [Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science], Kant I. Collected Works, Moscow, 1963-1966, Vol. 4,
p.192
2 Raskin I.Z. Entsiklopediya huliganstvuyushchego ortodoksa [The Rampageous Orthodox Encyclopedia], Moscow, Gamma, 1996, p.38
3 Kant I. Collected works, Moscow, 1963-1966, Vol.6, p.25, 29
4 Kant I. Collected works, Moscow, 1963-1966, Vol.5, p.512
Назад к Канту? (Об актуальности идеи философской антропологии)
Е.А. Батюта, А.В. Перцев, Е.С. Черепанова
Уральский федеральный университет им. Б.Н. Ельцина, Россия 620083, Екатеринбург, пр. Ленина, 51
В статье поднимается вопрос о развитии философии и философского образования в России. Авторы в полемическом контексте представляют современную судьбу философского знания и предлагают обратиться к философии Канта в попытке ответить на этот вопрос. Также обсуждается проблема отношения философского и религиозного знания в современном образовании. В статье подчеркивается актуализация философско-антропологического подхода в понимании роли философии в жизни человека.
Ключевые слова: философская антропология, философия, общество, религиозное
мировоззрение, смысл жизни, государство и общество, философское образование.
