The path of thought

"Russian Journal": Vladimir Natanovich, what is the philosophical significance for us today by the personality of A.M. Pyatigorsky?

Vladimir Porus: Lectures by A.M. Pyatigorsky in today's Moscow - an occasion for awe about the "shadow of Merab", which causes a skeptical grin with their claims to involve those who have already learned in the reflection of: while you will reflect, the agiles will already divide everything according to concepts. Who is the hunt to be a sucker? Moreover, reflection is all of the "strikingly blind to all Russian" Western European thought. About forty years ago, it was still possible to powder the brains of a “girl from the third row” , but today this girl adds a mustachioed grandson to the Academy of Public Administration, what a reflection there!

Crack, but Alexander Moiseevich is really a person from the "wounded" time. From what it felt too burdened by history and therefore painfully wanted to gain independence from it. He said and a half years ago: “The fixation on history, on the restoration of what happened the day before yesterday, or on the rejection of what was yesterday, completely exhausts thinking: for philosophical thinking it is very important, I think, the oblivion of some things, and not the denial of them. Not a denial, but as if internal cleansing of your thinking. Just as, in the end, not a single philosophy grows up in conditions Curses or praise .

So, a philosopher is one who managed to break out of the captivity of “public reactions”, who takes the courage to think, without referring to the circumstances of the time and place, as well as the opinions of “others”, not wanting to recognize the right to determine the course and content of his thought. And in this self -sufficiency, the philosopher must pass between Scylla and Haribda - history and culture. And it is difficult to pass, if at all. History involves the thought into its stream, suppresses its resistance and carries with him, and those who are trying to rake up against the current.

The culture acts differently, but is equally destructive: it dissolves the thought in itself, erasing the differences between the past and the future, which are one present: "Listen to my current history of a person without history" 2 . Odyssey’s dream is to outwit culture by history, and history is culture. But the philosopher is not Odysseus, he is more likely Socrates, for whom "philosophy <:> is not only what you think, but also that you are" 3 , which means that you have to pay your life for the participation of your thoughts in history.

That is why philosophy is not indifferent reflection, not detached contemplation (after all, for such a philosopher does not have a cultural position or a historical duration), but the involvement of reflecting consciousness into a real stream of events. Philosophical thought is not the garbage carried away by this stream, and not the ethereal spirit that hits it. This is a truly paradoxical essence: it is non -non -nonsense with reality and inseparable with it. And this paradox is not permitted theoretically whether it permits or does not resolve the life of the philosopher. And therefore, when asked whether you are a philosopher or not, you can never answer yourself, how can you honestly answer the question "Are you sleeping?" Others will answer - there and then.

And here and now you have to get out. And here is the answer (I can’t, of course, I can’t attract any objectivity) to the first question asked to me: a philosophical lesson, incorporated by the visit of A.M. Pyatigorsky to today's Moscow, not so much in the concept of political philosophy (all theories are standing each other), and the possibilities that he seemed to realize his biography, - the opportunity to look for a gap between history and culture, so that he has grown up into a crop. her, to continue the path of thought, sovereignly reflecting, but sensitively responding to the pain of topicality.

RSA: What is the reason for today's interest in the intellectual environment, which belonged to Pyatigorsky before emigration, in the atmosphere of those years?

VP: Briefly answer the second question. The time in which people of the scale of Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky did their job have gone: partly in legends, partly in gossip, sometimes into spite (read Galkovsky!), But rarely - in the field of analysis and criticism. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about some general interest in how the “intellectual environment” of that time was the “intellectual environment” of that time. My own interest is clear, I lived in this environment, I came out of that time, it is part of my life, part is dear.

But this is not nostalgia, I would not want to return to "then", no matter how expensive it is to me. The "atmosphere" of those years gave rise to ways to survive the spirit in conditions incompatible with life. This is an exceptional experience, but what is its value? Thank God, age gives hope that I will not have to enter that river again. The young people themselves decide whether this experience is valuable for them, or if it is necessary to part with it, how humanity is parting with its past - laughing.

However, maybe I am mistaken and something happens these days that the memories of the past are replaced by sad thoughts about the present. In any case, I would advise you to remember that the country in which A.M. Pyatigorsky lived before emigration, and the country that he has now arrived as a guest, not two different, as some enthusiasts of "historical changes" sometimes hastily believe, but the same. And God forbid to be the right Boris Strugatsky, who recently said that the democratic revolution has exhausted itself and Russia returned to a natural state. But if he is still right, then the experience of the Pyatigorsky generation can still be not only historical, but also practical value.

RG: What can you say about the return of Pyatigorsky to Russia in a hypostasis of a political philosopher?

VP: I think that the political philosophy of Pyatigorsky in today's Russia can have any special significance. If only because there is no place for her. All places are occupied by political technologies and political fuss. To philosophy, the attitude of it is floating, even more so to political. Once, it was politics that caused a social need for philosophy. So it would be today, be today politics. But there is no policy, that is, there is no what would be called politics. Therefore, only science abandons the challenges of philosophical thinking, and even then it is extremely rare, when it is the very foundations of the latter. When the science is “normal”, that is, deals with its direct responsibilities, it solves research problems, without doubt on its own grounds, it does not receive philosophy either with challenges or any other signs of attention.

The philosophy of art, the philosophy of love, the philosophy of the economy of direct attitude to art, love and economics. The same thing is to say the same about the philosophy of politics (or, if you like, political philosophy). To be interested in the problem of a political entity at a time when the very concept of the subject, in fact, lost its residence permit on a philosophical living space, means to cause a shadow of the deceased against his will. And it is even more strange to talk about any challenging from philosophy. The point is not that the politicians of philosophers do not see at point blank, but that such a philosophy is simply not capable of any serious challenge. It remains to sit quietly, repeating somehow understood or memorized ideas and ideas of politicians (in the "dialogues" with science the situation is the same!).

Now go and say that political thinking is not at all the same as the thoughts of politicians and politicians, that politics requires its subject, and not a “decentered” fiction in the episodic role of one. You can say something, and Pyatigorsk does it, but who needs it? Who is ready to exchange a comfortable niche of postmodern chatter about politics, behind which the efforts of the quick propagandists are built by the mythology of high meanings and goals, "hidden" from profiles, but well -known and understandable to the esoteric circle of the elect?

I think that with the lectures of Alexander Moiseevich the worst will happen: they will be listened carefully and politely, perhaps squeezing a small circulation - and will be forgotten.

Sorry, of course. But what to do, this is reality.
Notes:

1 Pyatigorsk A. M. Selected works. M., 1996. S. 281-82.

2 Ibid. S. 363.

3 Ibid. S. 304.