Eternal person

Poet Olga Sedakova and philosopher Olga Kusenko: Who did the humanism believe in?

• The ideas of humanism originated in the middle of the XIV century. Its origins in antiquity, which returned the Europeans to faith in man and freed him from religious slavery.
• Today, researchers distinguish many varieties of humanism: atheistic and religious, communist and scientific, post- and transgumanism.
• Humanism came to Russia mainly in the 19th century, already in secular and anti -religious form.
• Modern humanism is not associated with any one direction, it feeds on various humanistic oriented traditions of culture.

Alexey Yudin: Today we have humanism on the agenda. Recently, the ideas about what humanism is somehow more and more blurry, and in many discussions there are direct accusations that humanism has become a fatal mistake, that it perverted the fate of modern civilization, and everything that happened to us unpleasant once gave rise to humanism. Let's figure it out.

Correspondent: “Not for that we reason to know what virtue is,” but in order to become good people ”(Aristotle).“ I am a person, and nothing human is alien to me ”
(Publi Terentius Afr).

Humanism originated at the end of the Middle Ages as an attempt to read a person according to the rules created by ancient writers, primarily by Virgil and Cicero. The first project of humanism was Renaissance humanism, which was based on the so -called "study of humanity." But then this humanity still filed into the framework of the Christian worldview. The humanists of this period, having re -seduced Cicero, emphasized that the concept of "humanity" is the most important result of culture. They proclaimed a person with the crown of the universe and affirmed his right to earthly happiness, to a "natural" desire to enjoy and the ability to moral self -improvement as a spiritually free person. Renaissance humanists strive for the knowledge of man as he is, with all his earthly needs and imperfections.
Further, the ideas of humanism played a noticeable role both in the movement of the Reformation and in the resistance of the Catholic Church with Protestant reforms. In the era of education, the ideas of humanism form the fundamental features of a new European culture with its optimistic cult of reason, science, free personality, individualism and entrepreneurial initiative.

Humanism came to Russia mainly in the 19th century already in the "secular" and anti -religious form, which naturally caused resistance from Orthodoxy. Nikolai Berdyaev claimed that atheistic humanism is dialectically reborn into anti -humanism. And from the point of view of ideas, such humanism ultimately leads to Nietzscanism and Marxism, and from the point of view of the socio-political structure-to the regime of Nazi Germany and communist Russia.

However, humanism is criticized from not only a religious community, but also modern post -regulators. They do not accept the exceptional concentration of humanists on a person, emphasizing that a person is an evolving part of nature and is subject to constant changes.
Today, researchers distinguish various varieties of humanism: atheistic and religious, communist and scientific, post- and transgumanism, as well as many others.

Humanism is criticized by not only a religious community, but also modern post -regulators

Modern humanism is not connected with any one intellectual tradition, it feeds on various humanistic oriented philosophical, artistic, scientific, legal and other traditions of culture.

Alexey Yudin: Our guests today are Olga Sedakova , poet, philologist, translator Dante, and Olga Kusenko , researcher at the Sector of the History of Western Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences .

Actually, how did it all begin? Somewhere from the middle of the 15th century, what we now describe as a humanistic movement arise, and the humanism ripens as a certain project. But this is, in fact, a high Middle Ages. And where was the man there? Indeed, the Middle Ages forgot a person, and then the humanists had to remember him.

Olga Kusenko: This is a very big question for historians, causing many discussions, especially from the beginning of the Enlightenment, when the rather significant concepts of the Renaissance and historiographic work on humanism began to appear. In one of the well -known works of the 19th century, the Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt, we clearly see the separation of the Middle Ages, then this ended at once, and the period of humanism began. The division was introduced by the humanists themselves: back in the 15th century, the concept of "Middle Ages" is introduced. Antiquity, as many humanists believed, lasted until 529, until the Platonov Academy was closed. As Hegel said, we will put on the boots-skills and run through this millennium, because there everything is quite faded and the same.

Another group of historians, to whom I am adjacent, believes that this millennium was filled with extraordinary flowering and depth. Yes, a man in the Middle Ages, of course, was, he was also a crown of creation, antiquity in the Middle Ages did not disappear anywhere, and the man did not disappear anywhere.

Alexey Yudin: He was the crown of creation, but so far not the center of the universe, as is often attributed to humanism. What could have attracted humanists in antiquity, what did they lack in the present?

Olga Sedakova: Antiquity was, first of all, a school. She developed a school of education of an ancient person. According to this model, they wanted to build a new type of school: a person who reaches perfection, first of all, humanitarian, but not only: the development of technical genius and everything else.

I want to say about the Middle Ages: of course, nothing put a person as much as a Christian doctrine. Since Christ becomes a man, man is designed to follow Christ and himself become a kind of deity. This was not in antiquity.

Alexey Yudin: With the advent of humanism, the Christian doctrine somehow fades?

Olga Sedakova

Olga Sedakova: No, but something happens to the Christian doctrine. In antiquity, they saw what, probably, they lacked in the previous thought and art. Of course, she disappeared anywhere, Dante, for example, no one will relate to Renaissance and Humanism in the strict sense, but his knowledge of antiquity and need for antiquity is huge. Sometimes he turned to God, calling him Apollo, and none of his readers considered it heresy - this was a very familiar form of using ancient names.

Olga Kusenko: Nikolai Bakhtin wrote that the appeal to antiquity in the 19th - early twentieth century in Russia was a conspiracy against the present. In the first and only classic Italian Renaissance, one can see the same thing. Many historians and philosophers see this in him. The humanists themselves talk a lot about it. This does not mean that they deny modernity - this means that they ask her questions and want to collect all the best that was in the past (and not only in antiquity, they translate the fathers of the church), until the 15th century, and move on.

Alexey Yudin: What was the project of humanism, what and how were they going to teach?

Olga Sedakova: The first thing is the Latin language. The study of classical Latin begins.

Olga Kusenko: We need to return to the concept of "humanism." Now in textbooks or Wikipedia they often write that this is humanity. But first of all, this is not humanity, but education. For the Greeks, as I understand it, this was the idea of a beautiful, comprehensively developed person, a certain ideal of a person developed due to free arts, rhetoric, poetry, and bodily exercises. For this ideal, every person should have strived primarily due to humanitarian knowledge. If we are talking about antiquity and about the revival humanists, then I would still focus on humanitarian studies, and not on the fact that they fought for human rights.

Alexey Yudin: I am interested in how the foundation was laid, on the basis of which many modern designs were then built. Is it still some kind of science of man?

Olga Sedakova: It was the teaching of man. For a humanist, a person is not born, they become as a result of a long work, the acquisition of knowledge. This school until recently remained in Europe, in the classical gymnasium. The last current classical school of the Renaissance type has been preserved in Italy. The later connotations of humanism with some kind of softness, pity, love for the person were not present there, there was a rather strict desire to make something designed from an unformed person. Maybe they wanted to contrast a person with a rich palette of feelings and thoughts of the Middle Ages, who, as it seemed to them, was narrow to the repertoire of feelings: these feelings were condemned in advance as sinners, they should not be talked about. This is the expansion of the range.

Alexey Yudin: Why is Francesco Petrarch considered the first humanist?

Olga Kusenko: In Soviet textbooks, they wrote that this is the first new person. Unfortunately, we still live in this canon.

Olga Sedakova: I just can’t explain why he is considered the father of humanism. Maybe because he was the first to write in such a beautiful Latin language.

Olga Kusenko: The closest to him the humanists believed that their century is more beautiful than antiquity, because, including, in their century there was already Petrarch.

Olga Sedakova: Petrarch, one might say, brought Cicero to culture. Dante, with all the wealth of ancient allusions, Cicero means almost nothing.

Olga Kusenko: And he lost another text - "On Glory". If the humanists were a little late, maybe half a century, then we would probably have no chance to join many texts of ancient authors. Petrarka found the text of Cicero and, not having time to rewrite it, gave it to his teacher for a while, he defined it somewhere, and nothing more about this text is unknown.

Alexey Yudin: We summarize the intermediate result: the humanists came very on time, they created a kind of school, which then had to go through European humanity. This project was exactly about man, about language, about the fate of culture and civilization.

Who were the first people of humanism, its founders? Spool Salutati , Brakelini pogo , Rotterdam erazm ...

Humanism is primarily not humanity, but education

Olga Kusenko: It is important to note that there was still no renaissance humanism as a single course. There was a humanism of salutati, was the humanism of Nikolo Machiavelli, was the humanism of Marsilio Ficino . They are all very different people. For example, Ficino is a student of a scholastic school. There is such a work written in Italian by our compatriot, emigrant Vladimir Zabugin: "The History of the Christian Renaissance." He generally believes that there was no return to pagan fundamental principles - this is just one of the stages of the development of Christianity. For example, you can recall Jacopo Sannadzaro - this is a Renaissance poet, writer, author of the famous poem about the Christmas of the Virgin Mary, written in imitation of Virgil. We can also recall artists. In music, and in architecture, and in literature, and in painting you can find a lot of examples of attempts to return to unclosed foundations of Christianity.

Alexey Yudin: Then we must remember Luther, because he had the same program. And the reformation itself is just an update, a return to the origins. Humanists and Reformation are still about one big something.

Olga Sedakova: Yes, only the question is how these origins appear here. Some Catholic theologians say that the general movement of the Renaissance Christianity, with all the discrepancies and differences, is somewhat close to Pelagianism , which was convicted as heresy at the beginning of the 5th century, but it has not died and still vividly, from time to time arises again. This teaching of the monk Pelagia from Britain, it concerns issues that, it seems to me, cannot be solved completely unambiguously. The first considerations of the Pelagian movement were positive, they were recognized as orthodox. What Augustine argued with Pelagia, his main opponent, it seems to me, was transferred to the legacy of the humanists. The main thing that was the difference was the topic of fallen and sinfulness. The humanists did not deny Christianity and did not come out of it, but focus on original sin, on the fact that a person is doomed, therefore his very development, education and the ability to do great good deeds, which the humanists wanted ... That is, they wanted freedom in order to do good deeds, and not to do anything.

Alexey Yudin: What was freedom for them?

Olga Sedakova: First of all, this is freedom to show the greatness of human capabilities: intellectual, creative and different others. If a person is not doomed, if he is not in a hopelessly fallen world, if the original sin is not inherited, then a person has the opportunity not to fall into sin. If he sins, he does it by his own free will. A lot of things are connected with this complex, but the main thing is that the theme of the gloomy Middle Ages disappears, a lot of funny and joyful paintings, however, the monastic path of repentance in sins and pious helplessness, without which I cannot imagine the Christian faith, prevails. A person knows that without God's help he will not achieve anything. What the trouble that Adam brought: he showed a bad example, and everyone can follow him. But this does not mean that the child is born with Adam's sin. It was a retreat from the orthodox doctrine, which has not yet developed.

When we look at the painting of the Renaissance, especially early, we see that darkness, repentance, repentance are scattered somewhere, the world becomes lighter, the curse of the fallen world is like it. The beauty of the world, the beauty of the flesh is a renaissance theme, it is possible only despite the fact that the concept of sin does not gravitate over everything.

Alexey Yudin: Is it similar to what Max Weber wrote about when speaking about the befitting of the world? The world is spaced and becomes human. What did they mean, how did this happen, and what remains of the legacy to us? They were attracted by the religiosity of antiquity, or Apollo - was it just a name for the solar God and nothing more? Being Christians, they nevertheless opened another world, quite alarming, from the point of view of religious intuitions.

Olga Sedakova: I think, directly, like contemporaries of Socrates, they, of course, did not believe in ancient gods, there was some other handling with them. They believed in some divine principle, which was behind all this, and it attracted them very much.

Alexey Yudin: The new discovery of the world suggested some projections for real life: social, civilian? Any direct conclusions followed from this discovery?

Olga Kusenko

Olga Kusenko: There was such a humanist Leon Battista Alberti, he has human freedom, the creative beginning of a Renaissance person (Augustinovskoye "surpassing himself") is always associated with responsibility. It is amazing how much the Renaissance person, the humanist felt this responsibility to the small or big world, to the city or, in general, to the whole planet. In the diaries of Leonardo, this is also very noticeable. He, for example, writes: I can create a device with which you can swim under water and pierce the ships, and no one will notice, but I will not do it, because unscrupulous people who use it not for the benefit of humanity can use it. It is amazing how much this ligament is lost now.

The same Alberti in the treatise on architecture writes that there are a lot of examples of buildings that are built to the detriment of the landscape should not build, that is, nothing should invanim the world initially given to us, everything should fit into it organically.

Olga Sedakova: This impulse to conquer nature, space, time is not at all a renaissance impulse, it arises later.

Alexey Yudin: The idea of progress, the desire to forward was already born, can we find it at that time?

Olga Sedakova: There was no such idea of progress that developed later, I think, rather, there was an idea that it was possible to do something better, more perfect in a special way, not what we would take and build a hundred factories.

Alexey Yudin: But this perfection is burdened with responsibility?

Olga Sedakova: Of course, otherwise it is not perfection.

Alexei Yudin: We understand how huge, complex, extremely ambiguous the humanistic Renaissance project has come to date. Let's remember the main scenarios of this path. More recently, there was Soviet humanism.

Olga Sedakova: There was no Soviet humanism.

Alexey Yudin: Nevertheless, there was a claim in the name itself. There was communist humanism, there seems to be some religious humanism.

Olga Sedakova: Nikita Alekseevich Struve after the death of Sergey Sergeyevich Averintsev said that he was the last Christian humanist. I objected to him that one of the first, because this is a rather rare combination of humanism to the extent that he is comparable to humanists in his treatment of antiquity and at the same time quite a dogmatic Christian.

Alexey Yudin: In my opinion, humanism implies a comparison with something more perfect, powerful, bright. There is an atheistic humanism: if you have a "humanistic society" on the Internet, it will certainly be atheists. Значит, это еще какое-то направление, связанное с отрицанием не только церкви, но и бога. Когда это появляется?

Советского гуманизма не было и не могло быть, как и нацистского гуманизма

Ольга Седакова: Еще одно важнейшее понятие для гуманизма – это достоинство человека. То, что мы теперь называем правами человека, возникло отсюда и первоначально называлось именно достоинством. Речь шла о том, что человек должен в любом положении сохранять достоинство, его нельзя лишать достоинства, нарушать его. Поэтому я говорю, что советского гуманизма не было и не могло быть, как и нацистского гуманизма.

Ольга Кусенко: Или гуманизма эпохи Французской революции. Это гуманизм, который берет только бренд, но внутри содержание, пожалуй, антигуманистическое.

Достаточно непростой вопрос, где начинается атеистический гуманизм. Может быть, с Фридриха Ницше. Некоторые историки философии считают, что он был величайшим гуманистом. Ницше достаточно много пишет про Ренессанс, в какой-то мере он чувствует себя, видимо, фигурой, равной ренессансным деятелям. Жан-Поль Сартр, экзистенциализм – это гуманизм, то есть человек заброшен в этот мир, нет бога, нет абсолютна, на который человек должен равняться, человек – сам себе абсолют, сам себе мера. Христианский гуманизм – пожалуй, единственно возможный гуманизм, потому что если нет опоры на абсолют, на абсолютную личность… Человек полторы тысячи лет жил на опыте абсолютной личности, видел ее перед собой, стремился к этому идеалу. Как только у него забрали этот идеал… Сейчас постгуманисты, трансгуманисты вообще говорят о том, что нужно записать наше сознание на небиологический носитель – это избавит нас от болезней и смерти, мы действительно станем вечными людьми. Но людьми ли? Большой вопрос, что получится из этого киборга. Как потом нам существовать с этими постсуществами?

Алексей Юдин: Что творится с современными гуманитариями?

Ольга Седакова: Они в своих сочинениях, картинах ставят вопрос: что такое человек? Начинают сосредоточиться на самых драматических, ужасных вещах: рассматривать, человек ли это, изучать какие-то страшные сцены, допустим, поведение лагерников. Главное о человеке мы узнаем в экстремальной ситуации, на грани смерти. Конечно, это не по-гуманистически, потому что для гуманистов для начала хорошо, чтобы человек себя проявил, он вовсе не должен превращаться в лагерную пыль. Новый гуманизм очень драматичен: как богословие после Освенцима, так и гуманизм после Освенцима. Но, по-моему, в этом ракурсе очень много не узнаешь. Человек проявляет себя, когда он счастлив, а не когда находится в этом состоянии. Это прекрасно понимали гуманисты. Мое любимое пушкинское изречение: "Все говорят, что несчастье – это хорошая школа. Может быть. Но счастье – это лучший университет".

Алексей Юдин: Что осталось от ренессансной школы гуманизма в современном университете и осталось ли? Чему учиться, у кого, с кем сравнивать себя?

Ольга Кусенко: Лоренцо Валла говорил: чтобы стать настоящим гуманистом, нужны три вещи. Первое – это время в плане эпохи: чтобы не было войн, чтобы все было относительно спокойно, можно было предаваться изучению. Второе – это время в плане того, чтобы было время, чтобы ты не должен был каждое утро бежать на работу и возвращаться домой уставший. И третье – это круг единомышленников, без которого не станешь настоящим гуманистом. Похоже, что современный университет очень редко порождает такие круги, где действительно возникает какая-то интеллектуальная, эмоциональная вовлеченность студентов. Видимо, все поставлено на осуществление услуг. Ответственности в высоком гуманистическом смысле в университете становится меньше, и это печально.

Алексей Юдин: А вообще, это гуманистическое, гуманитарное начало где-то присутствует в нашей жизни? Есть ли такое место, куда можно прийти и остаться в спокойствии, где можно понять что-то про изначальный замысел гуманизма?

Ольга Кусенко: Видимо, нужно отправляться во Флоренцию, в какие-то малые музеи, или ехать на Вилла И Татти, в флорентийский пригород, где сейчас находится центр ренессансных исследований Гарвардского университета. Там ты попадаешь в атмосферу дома, в котором гипотетически мог бы обитать какой-нибудь среднестатистический гуманист.

Ольга Седакова: Это музей, а я хотела бы сказать о живом. Мандельштам в прозе очень хорошо описывает наследство гуманизма, как семинар или кружок, которым руководит любимый профессор, где люди действительно вовлечены. Я была достаточно счастлива, потому что я видела такие кружки еще в университете, и они были скорее вопреки общему течению. Никита Ильич Толстой создавал вокруг себя такой круг. Конечно, такой круг был вокруг Сергея Сергеевича Аверинцева. Это действительно напоминало гуманистическую среду. Наверное, и сейчас такое бывает.

Алексей Юдин: Мы нашли возможное конкретное воплощение гуманистического проекта. Я тоже это видел. И будем надеяться, что этот изначальный дух гуманизма с его идеей достоинства и ответственности все-таки не выполнил своей миссии, а продолжает работать дальше.

Ольга Седакова: Интересно, а с чем мы останемся без этого, без достоинства и ответственности?

Алексей Юдин: Я приведу свою любимую цитату из Честертона, которая для меня много что проясняет в этом плане (это "Вечный человек"): "Кто-то сказал, что человек на коне – самое прекрасное зрелище в мире. Пока мы это чувствуем, все в порядке. Легче и лучше всего чувствовать это, если тебя научили любить животных". Здесь речь не только о животных. Человек на коне, величественный, гордый – это прекрасно, но все-таки кто-то должен быть рядом (или что-то): вот эта соотнесенность, достоинство в ответственности за других.