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21НАУЧНЫЙ
РЕЗУЛЬТАТ
RESEARCH BESU L
Polukhin O. N, Olkhov P. A. Project strategies of political thought (meta-scientific dominants) //
Сетевой журнал «Научный результат». Серия «Социальные и гуманитарные исследования». - Т.1, №4(6), 2015.
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СТАТЬЯ НОМЕРА
РИСКИ В ИЗМЕНЯЮЩЕЙСЯ СОЦИАЛЬНОЙ РЕАЛЬНОСТИ: ПРОБЛЕМА ПРОГНОЗИРОВАНИЯ И УПРАВЛЕНИЯ
RISKS IN CHANGING SOCIAL REALITIES: PROBLEM OF FORECASTING
AND MANAGEMENT
UDC 167.7 DOI: 10.18413/2408-932X-2015-1-4-5-8
Polukhin O. N. PROJECT STRATEGIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Olkhov P. A.____________ (META-SCIENTIFIC DOMINANTS)_____________________________________
1) Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor. Belgorod State National Research University. 85 Pobedy St., Belgorod, 308015,
Russia. E-mail: pon@bsu.edu.ru
2) Doctor of Philosophy, Professor. Belgorod State National Research University. 85 Pobedy St., Belgorod, 308015, Russia
E-mail: olkhov@bsu.edu.ru
Abstract
This paper deals with the problem of philosophical and scientific (epistemological) reflection of the value assumptions in political thinking. The authors of the paper use the concept of civic consciousness to demonstrate the relationship of historical axiological senses of political thinking in the context of holistic comprehension of the state life of people.
Keywords: political epistemology; meta-scientific dominants; dialogue; language of political thought; civic consciousness; teleology of political thought.
Полухин О. Н. ПРОЕКТНЫЕ СТРАТЕГИИ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО МЫШЛЕНИЯ
Ольхов П. А.___________ (МЕТАНАУЧНЫЕ ДОМИНАНТЫ)_________________________________
Towards the prospects of a modern political epistemology. The modern political study reveals two basic methodological traditions. The first is associated with the identification of political interests that rationally motivates political activities. This tradition qui prodest is significantly clarified with another tradition associated with the identification of «foreign» rational, underlying axiological motivations providing political activity in terms of its completeness and incompleteness. Harmonization of these traditions occurs in the research field of political epistemology and is one of the least developed areas of political science [see: 16; 17, pp. 54-71; 18, pp. 11-42; 19].
One of the obstacles to be overcome in the development of modern political epistemology is connected with the axiological engagement of the
It should start from the concepts hidden in human actions
Friedrich von Hayek [8, p. 38-39]
There is no any policy in fact except for political thought
Alexander Pyatigorsky [17, p. 54.]
participants of epistemological research, the need to take into account the existential «whirling of measures», which occurs in the very political epistemology. By reproaching the intellectuals of the last century with a kind of betrayal - failure to comply with their avocation, the faithful to a teaching principle of political cognition - J. Benda reminded of humanistic system of political knowledge [4; comp.: 3]; A.M. Pyatigorsky proclaimed in the same manner the «anti-humanism» - the desire to avoid an instinctive faith in the possibility of political thought as such, taken due to its cognitive autonomy - and called at the same time for trust in the thinking as cognitive authentication of political reflection [17,
p. 54 et al.]. According to Fr. von Hayek [8, p. 38-39 et al.], the political research aimed at some constructive purpose can be identified by its
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Polukhin O. N, Olkhov P. A. Project strategies of political thought (meta-scientific dominants) //
Сетевой журнал «Научный результат». Серия «Социальные и гуманитарные исследования». - Т.1, №4(6), 2015.
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axiological-ideological task and presented as a kind of theoretical misunderstanding; the language of political research and the associated language of the political epistemology can be represented as an axiologically-full form of genre or a «slang of authenticity» [1], etc. Axiological principles of political and epistemological study are found everywhere as certain immeasurable intellectual passions, which include both the desire of pure political knowledge, and a desire to limit the full scope of the political with the frames of political thinking, to determine it with the practices of either political or, more broadly, cultural and historical reflection. Accordingly, both the axiological variety in the field of political knowledge, and the conditions of overcoming of the axiological relativism - metascientific dominants of design-oriented political thought require to be consistently clarified.
Non-replaceable concepts. Meta-scientific dominants of political thought should be understood to mean its cultural and historical attitudes that suggest trust in the common grounds and basic procedures of scientific research, and take the form of non-replaceable concepts within the political thought. Political thought cannot succeed without the desire for authenticity, accuracy and completeness of political knowledge and its ensuring cognitive procedures of representation, interpretation, convention, etc. However, this desire is incomplete without the phase of categorization, the state of axiological-conceptual constellation of those senses, which are connected with the very nature of the political being. Political thought can succeed only when it is structured with its drive-fixing concepts undetectable due to their meta-scientific authenticity. This authenticity itself cannot be the subject of epistemological analysis and is referred to the field of political theology. But the cognitive reality of these concepts is quite representable and expressible, as well as in already existing language of political philosophy1. The problem of the return reflection of
1 Studying the political thought as verbal one, it would be prudent to quarrel its historical forms, including ideological ones; these forms require not an external assessment, but rather «a response to the need to understand the world» [2, p. 67]. C. Geertz, speaking ironically about the contemptuous attitude to the ideology that prevailed in 1930-1950ss., noted that «we may wait for the end of ideology as long as the positivists used to wait for the end of religion. Just as militant atheism was a response to militant religious fervor of intolerance (and to the expansion of knowledge about nature), so the hostility against ideology is also a response to political hecatombs
these historic language, their reciprocity, translatability and mutual non-replaceability of their axiological-conceptual principles must be recognized as a key issue of political epistemology. The principal incompleteness of political thought never excludes a «loophole supra-addressee» (M.M. Bakhtin), an authoritative principle of such practices of political thought. Otherwise, the thought, which metascientific horizon is noticed and recognized, is in epistemological relation to this authoritative principle, which can no longer be presented as an impersonal absolute. Discovering the incompatible concepts of political thought in their particular historicity, the political epistemology does not exclude a political absolute from the responsibility of political thought, but clarifies its dialogical horizon. A specifically historical absolute is present in the political thought as a sort of horizon of its metascientific risks; it does not blur, but rather concentrates political thought, which assumes responsibility in relation to a permanent absolute, becomes dialogically responsible. The reality of political thinking, «hidden in the human act», is the reality of design and cognitive action, the authenticity of which is ensured within its personal status.
Towards the teleology of political project. One of the non-replaceable concepts of political thought, which has an obvious effect of its meta-scientific dominants and its historical and axiological-projective attitude, can be considered the concept of civic consciousness. This concept is obviously artificial; it is impossible to believe in it as in some kind of absolute giveness of political thought; however, its value cannot be excluded, even if doubting its cultural and historical authenticity. The civic consciousness means to follow a certain ideal of participation in political action - the ideal, which is interpreted at the cultural and historical boundaries of political knowledge, within a certain evaluative range between ethical and political knowledge. Romantically-personal pathos of this concept goes back to the age of Enlightenment; however, the axiological principle of this ideal took its metascientific conceptual form when it became possible to think of it beyond the specific revolutionary practices of citizenship in the late XVIII century, after the Enlightenment, during the skeptical, science-and-historism-cultivating XIX century. This concept has emerged as an artifact of the secular theoretical and political thought, ready to ideological creativity and aware of its autonomy and ready to prescribe the
of the last half-century (and to the expansion of knowledge about the society) » [7, p. 192].__________________________
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Polukhin O. N, Olkhov P. A. Project strategies of political thought (meta-scientific dominants) //
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conditions of political action in the imperative-cognitive manner. Understanding of the civil status of the participants of the political process, their special social and political dignity happened, of course, much earlier; Roman corona civica, composed of oak leaves, was for those who risked themselves in military mess, saved their co-citizens; we can find bright replica about civic consciousness as a moral problem in «Spirit of the Laws» by C. Montesquieu, which served as the basis, at the request of revolutionary France in the end of the XVIII century, for the law of citizenship - civisme - loyalty to the revolutionary government. However, the concept of civic consciousness indicated already a special consciousness of civil actions, their clarification in political science of the XIX century - the science of the spirit, distinguished as a significant cognitive and volitional principle of civic consciousness, civic consciousness or public spirit, as a special scientific and stylistic point of political thought [see: 15; 6]. In the history of Russian thought a special
understanding of civic consciousness as an integral, purposeful state of political thought of an educated person is associated with the name of
A.N. Radishchev, and the politically engaged intellectuals-Decembrists, «worthy sons of the Motherland» N.A. Nekrasov and
N.G. Chernyshevsky, etc. Encyclopaedist V.I. Dal pointed to civic consciousness as «a state of civil community; the concept and the degree of education required for the formation of civil society» [5, p. 390], marking thereby not only a meaningful traditional, but also relevant by the middle of the XIX century design and teleological citizenship status, its axiological-normative moment [see: 11; 13,
p. 155-159 et al.].
Meta-scientific, axiological-normative intensity of the concept of civic consciousness asserts itself throughout the entire XX century. At the very beginning of the last century, P.A. Stolypin recorded an observation where he captured epistemologically free nature of this concept, its secular and projective didacticism: «First of all, we should create a citizen ... and when this task will be performed, the civic consciousness will be established in Russia. Citizen first, and the civic consciousness thereafter. And we usually do it quite opposite» [20, p. 69]. The similar thought by I.A. Ilyin is extremely filled with antididactic pathos: «Both science, and life still have a dominant formal understanding of the state, which perverts its nature and corrupts deeply in souls all the basic principles of civic consciousness. Following this understanding, people build public life as if it came down to the known, mechanically performed,
external actions, detached from the inner world and spiritual roots of the human ...» [9, p. 259]. A century has passed; changes in Russian politics are ahead of the development of political reflection; the current political thought uses the concept of civic consciousness as a non-replaceable, indefinable or poorly definable through another undefined notion of a set, such as «a set of attitudes and beliefs, which, on the one hand, involves a high degree of independence of individual judgments in a society, and on the other hand, a strong social solidarity, which is reflected in the participation of the person in society» [12]; there is also a regret about no «precise scientific justification of ‘civic consciousness’ being given yet» [12].
Civic consciousness is the basic design value of modern Russian political thought; it is its inherency as its meta-scientific dominant, its hidden cognitive sense. It is worth to think about it epistemologically, not objectifying the civic consciousness as a kind of a long intellectual passion, an external historic moral requirement, but keeping it in a certain historical unity of political thought, which has no external guarantees of its autonomy and understands the civic consciousness as a sine qua non of its scientific and cognitive efficiency.
Thinking historically. A little more than two centuries ago, in March 1811, N.M. Karamzin presented to Emperor Alexander I a secret report -«Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia in its political and civil terms». In this report, Karamzin discussed axiological principles of Russian political thought, objecting to the practice of political reforms by M.M. Speransky and formulating a protest aphorism: «We have become the citizens of the world, but we’re no longer, in some cases, the citizens of Russia» [10, p. 35]. This aphorism has been furiously discussed for decades, often simplified and ideologized as some practical advice on the manipulation of public opinion given by the ruler of the minds to a reigning monarch. However, Karamzin, being the ideologists of contemporary European theorists, never was an ideologue. His protest was a protest of an experienced historian, who noted in the history of Russia not only the action of political interests, but also the fact that these interests could not include, namely the rallying axiological principles of political reality, rooted in the experience of political self-experience. The Russian political thinking always had a place for sober and historical awareness of the harmonic nature of political acts done by people in close contact with their entire life system. To think politically in Russia has always meant to think with some teleological precision,
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Polukhin O. N, Olkhov P. A. Project strategies of political thought (meta-scientific dominants) //
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knowing the autonomy of political thought both in its abstract realness and its truth - think axiologically, thoroughly, and act, coordinately considering the thinking itself, its individuality and uniqueness as thought in terms of its highly political, life alter. «Blessed is he who laid down life for his friends» (John 15: 13). This attitude to political thought, evangelic and ultimately epistemological, was sometimes limited to enthusiasm of unthinking scientific and political action and led then to monstrous aberrations of political thought. However, being understood with life prudence by the «citizens of Russia» straying away from thinking abstractly and impersonally, as the «citizens of the world», it was quite triumphant in terms of political care and protection of all life-close and valuable-immutable value things. Successes of Russian policy were always the stronger, the more they were associated with the conservative distrust of political thinking to itself, with trust in the immutable axiological principle, with respect to which the open completeness of the Russian political thought manifested itself. Experience of such trust has been half-remembered; a century later, Russian political thought rediscovered itself. It will be a shame if this rediscovery is a repetition of intellectual and ideological predilections; happily, if it takes place within the horizon of the new challenges of political epistemology - in the long term of design strategies of political thought, verifiable to the extent of their axiological credibility already visible in the analytical tradition of Western political thought [comp.: 14, pp. 65-90].
This paper was prepared with the support of a RFH grant, project No. 13-03-00336 «The conceptual framework of cultural-historical epistemology and modern trends in the methodology of humanitarian research».
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