Modern man

Philosopher Arkady Week - about the possibility and necessity of the intellectual revolution

Conversation with the philosopher Arkady for a week about his book "Optimal Socium", as well as about freedom and conformism, imposed by authorities and personal choice.

Is there an "end of history"? When does a modern person begin and by what parameters do we judge our own modernity? What is the difference between a person of antiquity and a person of modern times, and are these differences so important?

Are philosophers responsible for concentration camps? What do the forms of new intellectual fascism look and how dangerous? How are mentality and politics related? How many thinking people are needed to change the world?

Elena Fanailova is running

Video version of the program

Elena Fanailova: When we are talking about a modern person, what interests us in this phrase - the word "modern" or the word "man"?

Arkady weeks: both. A modern person differs something from a person, and to be modern is responsibility. We all look for it today-someone in the family, someone in politics, someone in literature, someone in philosophy, someone in sex, anything.

Elena Fanailova: What if a person wants to get away from this form of responsibility?

Arkady weeks: this is also possible, such cases happen.

Elena Fanailova: But he is our contemporary?

Arkady weeks: by time - yes, by social time - no. Any departure implies diving at another time. In the days of Soviet power, people were transmitted into translations of ancient Japanese poetry, because there was no ideology, Averintsev went into Byzantine poetics, the great Eleazar Meletinsky - in myths and so on. It was a form of escapism.

Elena Fanailova: Do you want to say that escapism and modernity are incompatible things?

Arkady weeks: this is life simultaneously in two modes: physically it is present, but socially it is not with us.

Elena Fanailova: The completely opposite example is the Fluxus movement and all the practices of this kind. I'm talking about those near-cultural movements within art, which were engaged in art practices hidden from society. " Collective actions ", for example, in Moscow. Any apartmentmen, any gestures of this kind, all East European performances are unambiguously falling out of the world of Soviet, socialist. This created, for example, under a huge stress of time, including the great Romanian political performance, a Hungarian political performance, it was all the history of escapism. When you are watching it now, you see that these are supermodly and terribly modern things. How is this combined - falling out of time and suddenly a lead?

Arkady weeks: these are not forms of escapism, this is the creation of a parallel reality that exists along with the Soviet, socialist, any. These people tried to do what, in principle, should do an intellectual or a person who claims an authentic statement. Parallel to socialist reality can be near, it can be built on, woven somewhere into officials. And this is the creation of a new, other language in which the authorities do not speak. This, of course, is a form of social presence, and this, of course, is modern.

This is the creation of parallel reality

Elena Fanailova: That is, Averintsev did not create a parallel reality?

Arkady weeks: No, of course. He spoke of things incomprehensible to power, like Byzantine poetics, Greek literature and so on, in such a language that this power would understand this. In a sense, he expanded the language of power on the literary, poetic material that he knew, but he did not create anything new. Averintsev and people like him did not create something new inside the Soviet linguistic-social environment, unlike, say, from "collective actions", from Vladimir Sorokin , from Mamleev and other people who created such a language.

Elena Fanailova: From the St. Petersburg radical underground. I want to move on to the question about the parallelism of the times that the Soviet XX century is presented to us. Keeper - for example, there is such a form in antiquity.

Arkady weeks: to a certain extent. But it is like an archivist, a librarian. He did not do something new even within this Christian tradition.

Elena Fanailova: I will say that Averintsev made for me as a neophyte and a man who came to culture from scratch. I read his article dedicated to the work of Simona Weil about the Trojan War, and this thing absolutely changes my mind in understanding what historical, political and cultural that one specific person can do, I mean Simon, in the history of the twentieth century. By the strength of the explosion in my brain, this information was comparable to the "verses about the unknown soldier" of Mandelstam .

Arkady weeks: This is information, this is cultural -gas activity. The teacher told you, as a student, something new, and this is his great merit. But we are now talking about whether he did something new. As a man of Averintsy was not modern, there were a lot of people like him, and maybe his role was in this. And Lidia Ginzburg was modern. And the same Simon Vale was modern. Ginzburg answered, and she thought about modern time, she lived in him, reflected him. Her brilliant texts about prose, her poetic work, her knowledge of European literature and so on which she shared, all this was incredibly attached to the present. Just as Bakhtin’s book about Rabelais is not only about the French writer of the Renaissance, but also about today, and we read it.

Elena Fanailova: Of course, this is a book about the twentieth century, about modernism, about the breakthrough, about the vanguard.

Arkady weeks

Arkady weeks: about the same Stalin era, because the book was written 20 years before its publication. The modern should have reflection of the present, my time, here and now. If this is not, like Avalentsev and other people like him, then this is something else. He took big topics, conveyed them, as he could, to the Soviet reader. Ginzburg created by itself its presence from what and how she did, an era, then the Leningrad Soviet time, she is a historical character. She thought about the sensuality of those people, she is one of the authors creating the sensuality of time. We feel the era then and now thanks to, among other things, Lydia Yakovlevna Ginzburg, through her, her eyes. And with other authors this does not happen, at least for me. Lydia Yakovlevna has a string on which, when you read her texts about poetry or prose (not necessarily her diaries), you resonate, time plays time. That era in every word, in syntax.

Elena Fanailova: The era plays in her syntax, if you recall urban prose, Russian or Soviet, there are unambiguous parallels, roll calls. I recall the discussions of the time of one of the most contemporary artists, Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov . He often ironically said that Russia lives not at one time, but about four. Part of Russia is back in the 16th century, in pre-Petrine times, some-at the beginning of the XIX, some-at the beginning of the XX, and only very small lives at the beginning of the 21st century. What should we do with this idea of historical time with which I cannot disagree? Going as a journalist on long business trips, I talk to people, they are really different. How does this correlate with modernity?

Arkady weeks: not only Russia lives like this. In America, everything is the same-there is New York, there is the rest of America, there is America living in the 19th century, they perceive the world and themselves, they live even after the American revolution. And who said that modernity should be monolithic? Even physical time, as Einstein theory teaches us, is not continuous and the only possible. There are times that fit into what we call modernity, and if these people are our contemporaries in the sense that we can touch them, talk to them, there are no contradictions.

There are times that fit into what we call modernity

Elena Fanailova: That is, persons like Agafya Lykova , conscious hermits or sects that live in a closed way, also our contemporaries. But are they modern people?

Arkady weeks: depending on how to see. For a middle -level manager, for a politician engaged in power games, there is no, of course. Agafya Lykova is not inscribed in their time.

Elena Fanailova: She seems to them a miracle.

Arkady weeks: And this is normal, Zhirinovsky is also an eccentric. This is a person who jokes, entertains for 25 years. There is a serious policy, and there is and should be the entertainment industry within the political discourse, and Zhirinovsky brilliantly plays this role. Agafya Lykova with his hermit creates such a space inside the social time in which we are.

Elena Fanailova: I'm just trying to figure out the definition of modernity, as it works. I would not want, to talk about modernity, we meant some ghettoiding, that is, it implied that modern is fashionable, hipster, citizen, income level, computers, gadgets, technology, that’s all.

Arkady weeks: This is for statistics, for sociologists, centers that make surveys, or for people hanging out in some specific places. By the way, this is very important - the places in which you hang out. If you want to be modern, you must come to certain places, topos.

Elena Fanailova: Is it fashionable to hang out at the Institute of Philosophy?

Arkady weeks: now less, but it was fashionable.

Elena Fanailova: And certain cafes in Moscow, which are changing rapidly, once it was fashionable, then not. In any large city, this is so.

Arkady weeks: And one more question: is everything modern?

Elena Fanailova: Kolakovsky, about whom we talked about in one of the programs, believed that God manifests himself completely in the fashion season, in how women dress today.

Arkady weeks: this can be developed further, but I would raise the question differently: is God modern?

Elena Fanailova: I think he is superior. It combines two qualities - it is both eternal and modern, because it exists here and now, every share of milliseconds. If we assume that it exists.

Arkady weeks: firstly, if we assume that it exists. And secondly, when it becomes modern. Many people (say, those who share deism) believe that God created everything and moved away from business, he does not care what is happening here. Which, by the way, is a strong argument in the matter of the presence of great evil. How did God allow the Holocaust? How did God allow Katyn? There is no answer. The argument that this is another test was good until some moment. But I have another question: children who burned in furnaces, executed, why should this test pass if God exists? About adults with large stretches, it can be assumed that these are their sins and so on. But children?

Elena Fanailova: The same can be said about the children-victims of wars now, who continue to go both in the east of Ukraine and around the world. Children are blown up on mines, become random victims of shelling.

Arkady weeks: children losing their arms, legs, this should not have fit into the divine picture of the world, and this is our modernity.

Elena Fanailova: Yes, this is our modernity too.

Arkady weeks: And then the question is: if God is modern, if He allows it all, is God evil by itself?

Elena Fanailova: No, he is not evil, and I have a theological answer to this. Because he is present with every suffering, dying person, be it a child or an adult, at the peak of his suffering. And this is his modern answer.

Arkady weeks: But if God is omnipotent, why did he allow this?

Elena Fanailova: The main question of the twentieth century: why war? He marks the correspondence of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud when they discuss before the Second World War, are there any ways to prevent it why humanity still comes to war, and come up with projects that partly worked after the Second World War, like the UN and various civil initiatives for preventive action. Why does modern man go to war again, why does he start the war?

Arkady weeks: war, no matter how sad it is to realize it, is anthropologically inscribed in our code. We always fought, during the Neolithic, Paleolithic, there were clashes between a person and Neanderthals, when we came from Africa to Europe about 180-200 thousand years ago and they squeezed them. When we remained alone on earth, we did not have any more competitors, we began to kill each other. And we still continue to do this. It is amazing that for almost 70 years there is no world war, thanks to nuclear deterrence and other reasons, this is amazing. However, local wars are taking place everywhere.

Elena Fanailova: Moreover, Europe swore after the Second World War that there would be no wars on its territory, but please, the Yugoslav wars, and now the Ukrainian conflict.

Arkady weeks: Yes, this is the place to be. Apparently, at some point it will stop when we change radically. Perhaps we will need several more centuries.

Elena Fanailova: Kunders have a great joke on Hitler, he speaks in one of his essays on the culture of Europe: Hitler closed us with conversations about further tragedies, since the Second World War and the Holocaust are considered the most terrible tragedy of humanity. Everything that began later is in the shadow of this event, and in fact, as Kunder writes, depreciates the suffering of subsequent people, those who fall into local conflicts and so on.

Arkady weeks: I would argue with him here. Indeed, the Second World War and Hitler showed us the scale, in scale and on the industrialization of horror, the art of destruction of each other, she really did not know equal. There has never been such a thing as the Holocaust. There was no destruction in concentration camps of millions of absolutely unarmed people who did not pose any threat. But this is an abstract, conceptual level. Any local war, any suffering, in Yugoslavia, in Sudan or somewhere else-this is exactly the same tragedy, and the mother worries for her child as the Jewish mother, whose child was killed or selected then.

Elena Fanailova: Kunder says that the conversation about the Second World War should not turn a blind eye to the fact that suffering is ongoing.

Arkady weeks: Of course. Now the world has changed in the sense that we began to live more closely and depend on each other, and it has become more difficult to fight. And thank God.

Elena Fanailova: Yes, and we can talk about the global world as a capitalist evil, but we can talk about what restrains and serves as a counterweight to aggressive moods.

Arkady weeks: yes, and the phenomenon of local wars in places that are not part of a communal apartment called "White World", therefore it is possible. Say, wars in Belgium or France are impossible as they are now possible in Sudan, in Burma.

Elena Fanailova: Question about pure anthropology. To what extent can we talk about modern man? You are in your book "Optimal Socium" concentrate mainly on a person of new and modern times. A person is interested in you as a political creature, a person in the world of sacred and political - this is your plot, criticism of political, human independence in the face of a political threat and a physical threat. I recently visited the exhibition at the Hermitage - the Naples collection of Mosaic Pompei. This is an insanely beautiful exhibition, and frescoes look terribly modern for a modern eye, for a person who knows the history of the art of the last two centuries. What can be said about this, about the boundaries of our time? Where are they located with us? Is this our two or three thousand years or the last hundred years?

Modernly what is once again changing, setting our optics

Arkady weeks: how to look. For me, the art of Pompey and even ancient Egypt is modern. Just as for me, the collapse of the Akkadian Empire is modern, for me this is an event of the same scale as the collapse of the Soviet Union. It all depends on the scale. Not to mention beauty.

Elena Fanailova: Yes, ideas about beauty, it seems to me, are quite long. Where is the field of reasoning about what is modern? Is this a device of policies, a church structure, historical development? When can we say that one century was replaced by the other, and something is already out of time?

Arkady weeks: art, literature form our vision. Literature and art are made in such a way that we see one way or another. We do not see an object of art in one way or another, but an object, form and method of art forces us to see one way or another. This can be called education, education in the field of art. When the prospect was opened in Western European art, the vision of a European person has changed radically. And Japanese art learned about the prospect almost at the end of the 18th century, and the Japanese eye was completely different. And in China, the prospect was its own. The same with literature, prose teaches us, among other things, to see and feel. If this is a talented, well-made prosaic text, he sets up our optics, he changes it, forces us to see the world differently. In general, we look at the world for a reason, the natural look of the child. Therefore, this is modern what once again changes, sets up our optics. And this change in the eye, vision remains for a while, and then something new comes to replace. But at the time, until this new came, it is modern.

Elena Fanailova: Is modernity related to the idea of progress?

Аркадий Недель: Я не очень верю в прогресс.

Елена Фанайлова: Является ли современный человек свободнее, счастливее, умнее, добрее, чем человек, который был сто лет назад?

Аркадий Недель: Не думаю. Все зависит от локальных контекстов. 60-е годы были, наверное, уникальным десятилетием в истории человечества, когда по всему миру была невероятная свобода. Она была в США, в Советском Союзе, в Европе… Это была абсолютно беспрецедентная эпоха освобождения. Это эффект после Второй мировой войны. 50-е ушли на то, чтобы прийти в себя, а 60-е дали невероятную возможность быть собой. А в конце 60-х – начале 70-х как в Советском Союзе, так и в Америке начинается закручивание гаек. В СССР начинается отлов диссидентов, в Америке в это же время запрещают медицинские, научные эксперименты над синтетическими наркотиками, алкалоидами, потому что это тоже был прорыв в свободу, расценивавшийся как ненужный. Только в начале 90-х в Америке разрешили исследование этих вещей. В Советском Союзе диссиденты играли ту же роль, как и наркотики в Америке.

Елена Фанайлова: Я сказала бы, ограничения, наложенные по поводу наркотиков, и репрессии в отношении людей.

Аркадий Недель: Современный человек счастливее, свободнее, умнее, чем человек XVIII, XIX века или XVIII века до нашей эры? Of course not. Изменились технологии, изменились формы социального менеджмента, но слишком мало времени прошло, чтобы поменялись глубинные антропологические структуры в самом человеке, чтобы назвать его умнее. Историческим людям очень мало лет, мы еще фактически находимся в пеленках.

Елена Фанайлова: Это правда, ни биохимия, ни физиология, ни анатомия не поменялась.

Аркадий Недель: Примерно 300 миллионов лет назад произошло очень важное событие в истории жизни, когда небольшая рыбка – тиктаалик – вышла из воды на сушу, и это было спасение. Потому что мировой океан в то время был практически отравлен газами, идущими из недр земли, и масса живого мира погибла. Они не знали, что происходит, не понимали, что нужно делать, и погибали. Тиктаалик единственный догадался, что оставаться нельзя, это смерть, и он выскочил из воды на землю. И научился ходить, сначала это было неумело и неприятно, но в ходе эволюции его плавники превратилась в лапы, он научился дышать, его пузо приподнялось над землей. И тиктаалик, этот гений, дал жизнь млекопитающим на земле. Мы с вами здесь сидим благодаря догадливости тиктаалика. Не происходит ли сегодня очередная миграция человечества в виртуальный, информационный мир, как тогда тиктаалик выскочил из воды? Может быть, через миллион лет физических существ, как мы сегодня, просто не останется.

Елена Фанайлова: Вы говорите о каком-то типе бессмертия? Что, возможно, человек интуитивно продляет себя цифровым образом, поскольку хочет достичь бессмертия или понимает: жизнь в нынешних "отравленных водах" становится слишком опасной?

Аркадий Недель: Мне грустно об этом думать, потому что я очень люблю нашу жизнь на суше во всех ее проявлениях, кроме войны. Мне кажется, все это очень интересно, но, может быть, сейчас начинается такое же глобальное направление в сторону цифрового, виртуального мира.

Елена Фанайлова: Современный человек и политика, современный человек и власть – как меняется эта конструкция, может быть, со времен Великой Французской революции, которую принято считать началом новой политической эпохи на планете?

Аркадий Недель: Французская революция свернула великие начинания, попытки построения демократической, просвещенной Европы, инициированные Фридрихом Великим . Он был очень образованным человеком, политическим мыслителем, спорил с Макиавелли и так далее. Этот человек, не успев прийти к власти, отменяет цензуру в прессе, на собственные средства обустраивает центр Берлина, выстраивает оперу, причем таким образом, что она больше не принадлежит королевской власти, это отдано гражданскому обществу. Фридрих Великий начинает построение гражданской свободной Европы. Не говоря уже о том, что ему удалось примирить религиозные конфессии на какой-то период, что совершенно невероятное его достижение. Чуть позже Кант тоже очень много сделал для построения гражданской Европы. Все эти начинания могли бы быть продолжены, если бы не Французская революция. И в Германии это было свернуто, когда пришла новая эпоха, пришел Гегель , ситуация совершенно поменялась.

Елена Фанайлова: Великая Французская революция легитимировала насилие как образ политического действия.

Arkady weeks: Without a doubt.

Елена Фанайлова: Как говорят современные исследователи о периоде перед Второй мировой войной, например, Тимоти Снайдер в книге "Кровавые земли. Европа между Гитлером и Сталиным", насилие того уровня, которое творилось в это время на европейских землях, современный человек не может помыслить. Он представляет себе, что террор – это плохо, концлагеря – это плохо, массовые убийства в политических целях – это плохо. Мы можем сойтись хотя бы на том, что это качество современного человека? Или налет цивилизации так тонок, что сковырнуть его легко?

Аркадий Недель: Вопрос надо поставить немножко не так. Политический террор а-ля 30-х годов, концлагеря и прочие страшные вещи сегодня невозможны не потому, что люди или власть стали лучше, добрее, гуманнее, а потому, что это просто не нужно сегодня, это неэффективно. Точно так же как мы не пользуемся сегодня библиотечными карточками, каретами, они вышли из употребления, то же самое и здесь. Но сегодня есть другой террор, устроенный более тонко, изящно, таким образом, что люди не считают, что это террор.

Елена Фанайлова: Мы говорим о механизмах государственного контроля, полицейского контроля, контроля на границах, всей той степени инструментального насилия, которому подвергается любой современный человек внутри так называемой цивилизации.

Аркадий Недель: Только один пример – досмотр в аэропорту. Вас раздевают почти догола, к вам залезают под юбку, в трусы, если нужно. Если вы идете с маленьким ребенком, и с ним сделают все то же самое. Вы потенциальный террорист, пока вы не докажете, раздевшись, обратное. И это кажется всем нормальным.

Елена Фанайлова: Потому что обещание безопасности оказалось той монетой, которую люди платят.

Аркадий Недель: Но мы же прекрасно понимаем, что это обман, потому что последнее, что может помешать профессиональным террористам пробраться в самолет или подложить туда бомбу, это люди в аэропорту, которые вас раздевают. Это необходимое усилие, которое мы делаем и будем делать в направлении сохранения наших гражданских и социальных свобод. Безусловно, у нас есть огромный потенциал, чтобы всему этому противостоять, и в первую очередь самим думанием об этом, самой рефлексией, самим нашим присутствием, что мы можем говорить по этому поводу. Все равно будет предел, и сегодня есть некий предел, за который социальный террор не может перейти. Может быть, благодаря опыту предшествующей эпохи, опыту Второй мировой войны. Может быть, потому что два раза это уже не повторить. Но нам обязательно нужно использовать сегодня поле свободы, которое у нас есть, максимально чувствовать себя свободным человеком, несмотря ни на что.

Елена Фанайлова: Быть современным человеком сегодня и трудно, и опасно, и неприятно. Но и почетно, и заслуженно. Потому что современный человек – это тот, кто помнит все, что происходило со всем человечеством, а в этой памяти не только героические и доблестные страницы, но и страницы ужаса, террора и отчаяния. И возможно, основная задача или трудность современного человека в том, чтобы наконец прекратить зло, прекратить войну, прекратить агрессию и освободиться от природы насилия, подшитой в его и биологическую, и социальную часть. И это, конечно, огромный вызов и огромная ответственность, но и дикое приключение.