The Owl of Minerva in the Darkness

For humanist universalism, against parochial idiocy

Anna Ochkina

On January 15, a press conference was held by some philosophers claiming to hold the key to the “correct” – and truly Russian – line, calling the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences “an abscess, a breeding ground for Western infection,” such as “so-called critical thinking,” “fact-checking,” and other examples of dreaded “Russophobia.” Feminist, environmental, and pacifist movements came in for special opprobrium, as did, of course, postmodernism. Olga Zinoviev, widow of the famous dissident, philosopher, and logician Alexander Zinoviev, spoke out most harshly. She advised law enforcement agencies to question the Institute's employees on their loyalty to the interests of the Russian state using lie detectors, and called for the creation of a special commission to identify “Russophobes,” “traitors,” and “extremists.”within its workforce. Finally, the conference participants proposed the establishment of a sovereign Russian philosophy, free from Western influence, which would be articulated in both a fifty-volume encyclopedia of Russian philosophy and in individual monographs on each traditional value of Russia mentioned in President Putin’s decree.

All of this is, frankly speaking, small stuff in the context of events taking place elsewhere in the world – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Gaza, and against the tectonic shifts in the world order and outbreaks of future catastrophes. Really, this is nothing more than a struggle for academic “goodies” such as positions in departments and institutes, for academic degrees and titles, and most importantly, of course, for grants that the mighty champions of sovereign Russian philosophy hope to receive from the state so they may clear the academic Augean stables of “Russophobia,” “Western philosophy,” and “the mockery of traditional values.”

The proven technique is being practiced again: if you want to overthrow a competitor, accuse him of treason. The most important,the key part of the ideology of modern Russia has become the maxim that any objection to the current policy of the state is betrayal, lies, apostasy and, in general, a crime. This greatly distinguishes modern ideological practices from their Soviet forebears. Soviet propagandists and denouncers branded their targets as “enemies of the people” for betraying the working class and the gains of the revolution, for distorting the party’s policies, and the very ideas of communism. Of course, it was assumed that that government served the working class in the most faithful and devoted way, and strictly followed the ideas of communism, and preserved and developed the gains of the revolution. However, loyalty in itself was never the core of ideology; it was assumed, yes, but not directly. Only loyalty to ideas was openly required. And in order for one to have fealty to ideas, it was assumed that one had the capacity for thinking, which the Soviet government had no intention of either banning or eradicating. But modern “patriotic philosophers” seem to wish to do just that.

And really, who else is more qualified to trash philosophy than PhDs?

Just think, no matter how much the creators of educational standards may have mocked humanitarian knowledge (inadvertently or otherwise), no one has ever so clearly encroached on the very core of philosophy and its basis – critical thinking. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation has earlier even invented a competency,“systemic and critical thinking,” which assumes that the graduate is “able to search, critically analyze and synthesize information, and apply a systematic approach to solving assigned problems.” It’s funny that there is a contradiction between the actions of the patriots and those of the bureaucracy. One wonders how they will come to an agreement. The poor teachers will, as usual, have to put up with multiple new “competencies” and further changes in curricula handed down from these lofty heights.

The humanitarian sphere is always of great interest to authoritarian powers. Generally speaking, any government has an interest in the education of its citizens, but an authoritarian one has not only a greater motive, but also more opportunities to get in there and try to establish its own order. I think the logic is this: philosophy is not like physics and mathematics, there are no right or wrong answers, and it’s not very clear what are the answers and what are the questions, so why is this bullshit needed at all? For the defense industry and other useful areas of the economy, philosophy is of no use. And, by the way, considerable harm can result, as Duke Platon Aleksandrovich Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, who led Russian education in the century before last and greatly disliked philosophy, used to say.

Marx believed that philosophy was a necessary part of the system of knowledge of the world; he objected to the rigid opposition between philosophy and reality, denying the mistaken understanding of philosophy both as a set of abstractions not related to life, and as a manual for transforming reality. If we understand philosophy as a systemic knowledge of the world, objective knowledge about thinking and consciousness, their relationship with human activity, then we cannot help but conclude that by definition there can be no sovereign philosophy, just as there is no sovereign physics or national chemistry. There would be no philosophy, there would be no logic, no abstract thinking, and, therefore, there would be no science at all – neither “sovereign” nor “Western.” Like any objective knowledge, philosophy does not give final answers, but constantly raises new questions in accordance with the new living conditions of people. And attempts to set boundaries for philosophical thought can only lead to one thing – philosophy will disappear, since it is somewhat inconvenient to formulate questions at the gunpoint of ideological snipers. But it is always possible to assemble ready-made, officially-approved, eternally-valid answers.

I leave you with one more seditious thought for today – all the true achievements of philosophy, science, music, painting and literature are part of the universal human impulse to knowledge, to study the surrounding world and its laws, one’s own consciousness, history and emotions. An impulse that has inevitably provoked a feeling of the injustice of the world, its imperfection, and the need for change. Raphael and Rublev, Repin and Goya, Shakespeare and Chekhov, Marx and Ilyenkov, Pushkin and Byron, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Roland and Tolstoy, Dickens and Hara, Akutagawa and Khayyam, Marques and Tagore, Keynes and Kondratiev, Einstein and Landau, Wiener and Vavilov – not one of them fit into the framework of the “permissible,” none of them put up with any restrictions on knowledge and creativity. All of them created the future, creating its very basis and prototype – the common culture of humanity – albeit in their own national languages. And in these languages they were sworn at and cursed by politicians and ideologues, who were always panicked over the “sovereign”or the “alien,” the “loyal” or the “undermining.” Such politicians, like the philosophers who sing along with them, belong to the prehistory of humanity, being only temporary obstacles on the way to its true History.