RUSSIAN WORLD The metaphysical meaning of Russia

At the forum organized by the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University on current events in Russia, positions that were neither obvious nor univocal were expressed. Even without openly criticizing the positions of the dominant power, philosophers show that they do not want to renounce the true dimension of the Russian soul, that of openness to all variations of the spirit.

A few days ago, an international Philosophy forum with the title “Getting to know the meaning of Russia” was held at the Grand Hotel Metropol, between the Bolshoi Theater and Red Square, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow’s main university. , the “Lomonosov MGU”, with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. The organizers explained that they wanted to move away from the style of scientific dissertations to try, based on the tradition of Russian philosophy, to understand “in first person” the events of this moment. Philosophers, historians and philologists focused on confronting metaphysical questions with the practical problems of current Russian politics.

It was not simply a “high propaganda” initiative, although the forum was inaugurated with a series of statements by politicians who used philosophical categories to justify the most audacious and aggressive decisions of the militarist and imperial ideology of current Putinism. Among them all stood out the vice-president of the Moscow Duma, Petr Tolstoy, a distant descendant of the great writer of “War and Peace” and one of the main defenders of the “philosophy of the Russian world”, which must lead the world to the true traditional values. In his opinion, “only by making things clear among ourselves and within ourselves will we be able to explain to the whole world what Russian civilization consists of.” The State must propose to the entire society a finished image of the future that awaits us, and philosophers must provide the most appropriate categories for this task.

The MGU University, despite being the most important state institution, has tried in these turbulent years to maintain balance and move away from propaganda excesses, unlike other institutions such as the Russian State University of the Humanities (RGGU) or the Higher School of Economy of Vyshka, which until two years ago were the most open to cultural dialogue with the West and later transformed into schools-cadres for ideologues of the universal conflict. Above all, the Faculty of Philosophy of the MGU has kept quite intact the group that tries to preserve the link with the various philosophical currents of Russia of the present and the past, avoiding getting involved in projects and initiatives directly related to politics. Now they have wanted to stimulate them “from above” to adopt a more explicit position, but the forum expressed positions that are neither obvious nor univocal, reflecting the multiplicity characteristic of true Russian culture.

Indeed, “Russian philosophy” as such, especially in the most intense stage of the debates of the 19th century, has never concentrated on unilateral positions. On the contrary, it is characterized by the confrontation and reworking of the different positions of the common European and world heritage. In the classic division between “Slavophiles” and “Westernists”, the Russians started from the rereading of the main German philosophers: Slavophilism maintained the need to fully develop the idea of ​​a “religious philosophy” proposed by Friedrich Schelling, while its adversaries They were based on the rationalist theories of Georg Wilhelm Hegel, with the inevitable historical development towards the “absolute spirit” that had to be realized with the social revolution. This means that all Russian culture can be read from different perspectives and in opposite directions, unlike what the ideologues of today’s Russia would like to impose with the abstract proclamation of “traditional values.”

The prominent philologist Tatiana Kasatkina, for example, referring to the multiform spirit of the great Slavophile writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, stated in her speech that “the current elites of Russia have not really understood the meaning of the Russian idea.” As the history of the Petersburg Empire teaches, already in the time of Peter the Great the aristocratic classes were separated from the people, thus creating a “colonial type ideology”, since the people themselves were despised and considered barbarians, without true spiritual contents, and “instead of serving society, they began to manage it from above,” concludes Kasatkina, with obvious similarities with the current situation in Russia.

The philosopher Mikhail Bogatov commented in turn that “when planning their future, Russians often do not take into account the true role of their own country, their own topos in universal reality.” What has often tormented Russia is precisely the attempt to impose a vision of the world that ends up excluding Russia itself, and this remains an “unfinished world” and in suspense between other powers and other cultures. This is often justified as a “sacrifice” of the Russians in favor of other peoples, in effect canceling themselves, and this statement seems to be confirmed today on spectacular dimensions. Bogatov observes that this contradiction is very evident in the new mandatory school courses on “Foundations of Russian Statehood”, which in his opinion “seem to be written to convince foreigners of the greatness of Russia” rather than to adequately inform students. .

Another eminent professor of History, Sergej Perevezentsev, also concludes that Russian political science today seems to depend more and more on the Anglo-Saxon one, but in a “defensive and conservative” way, letting his arguments be dictated by the ongoing debate in the “enemy world.” The traditional values ​​that Russia intends to defend are not “Russian values”, but the “countervalues” with respect to the West, to distinguish itself by winking at the political factions of the different countries of the world, especially Europe and the United States, which are They are attracted to Russia’s sovereignist and traditionalist ideology and experience deep dissatisfaction with the changes that are taking place in contemporary society.

Next, sociologist Sergej Baranov spoke about “Russian civilization as an original and sovereign variant of Eastern European civilization, and current civilization of axial time”, trying to put metaphysics back into the field of the Russian mission. In his opinion, “today philosophy has the possibility of building something different from its Western roots”; He also starts from the contrast of values, goes “from the scope of Western rationalism to the philosophy of supra-rational practice”, an obscure definition to incite a “spiritual revolution of the person”, and through it reach a ” social, economic and technological ordering of an axial type”, a way of reaffirming the Russian superiority of values.

In hallway conversations with the many journalists present, some participants began to discuss why Slavophiles focused on the religious dimension as a sign of Russia’s distinction from the West. Recovering the great visions of the 19th century, philosophers return to the theme of the “hierarchy of empires” that distinguished Russia, which at that time proposed to Austria and Prussia the “Holy Alliance” of Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, and today recovers the religious roots of Europe with the “special military operation.”

The forum was dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest Russian philosophers, Nikolai Berdjaev, who, after the Bolshevik revolution and the world wars, described the situation in the world as a “New Middle Ages.” Many presentations have sought inspiration from the philosopher of “Russian personalism” to understand Russia and the world today, placing him alongside another intellectual whose anniversary coincided with the days of the meeting, the philosopher and historian of religion Aleksej Losev, the only thinker “idealism” allowed by Stalin in the times of official atheism. Berdjaev maintained the importance of freedom and creativity as essential elements of the Russian idea, in times when it was necessary to think about a new world, in which man should try to recover the relationship with the Creator.

Many other interventions sought to confirm the innovative and original potential of Russian culture, and the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at MGU, Aleksej Kozyrev, concluded by stating that “the relationship between Russian philosophy and politics depends on the choice of each one”, thought should not depend on obligations and impositions, but in any case “philosophical evaluations of events cannot be reduced to primitive statements.” Even without openly criticizing the positions of the dominant power, Russian philosophers demonstrate that they do not want to renounce the true dimension of the Russian soul, that of openness to all variants of the spirit, each one speaking “in the first person” before the entire world.

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