Enemy named Kant

Why did the Kaliningrad governor go to war against the author of the concept of universal morality, the philosopher explains

On February 9, the Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Anton Alikhanov said that Immanuel Kant is one of the main symbols of the region - "is directly related to the military conflict in Ukraine." Moreover, the philosopher consistently opposed the wars.

In Kaliningrad, they have already tried many times to desecrate Kant's memory, for example, they doused his monument with paint, called on the BFU (the main local university) to abandon the name in the name. After the death of Alexei Navalny, the police were on duty at the grave of Kant and asked the documents from the layers of flowers. At the request of Novaya Gazeta Europe, the professor of intellectual history of the University of Rur, Nikolai Plotnikov tells why Alikhanov went to war against the author of the concept of universal morality.

Until recently, Immanuel Kant was the city talisman of Kaliningrad, its main attraction and a treasure brand. Kanta University, Kanta Street, Kant Museum, Kant's Grave, Kant Island, Kant's philosophical path, cafe “Visiting Kant” and the bakery “Kant Bunks” - from Kant Ryabilo in the eyes. But he was a symbol of openness and pronounced cosmopolitanism, on which the post -Soviet cultural identity of the city was built.

Everything changed after the beginning of full -scale military aggression unleashed by Russia against Ukraine. Now the young governor of the Kaliningrad region himself, a few years ago, proudly opened the Kant House-Museum and even called vandals a group of nationalists who doused the monument to the philosopher, leads the struggle with the dominance of Kant and sacrifices the main symbol of the region to the new Kremlin isolationism.

On February 9, 2024, Alikhanov spoke in Svetlogorsk before the meeting of Russian political scientists. Most of which themselves adhere to the ideologies of civilizational exclusivity, as well as the preachers of Mantra about unlimited sovereignty and redistribution of the world in Russian interests. At this congress of political scientists, the governor resolutely took a high philosophical tone in order to publicly cut the Kaliningrad “genius of place” in his speech. Right in the year of the 300th anniversary of the philosopher, he accused Kant of “was directly related to global chaos” and “military conflict in Ukraine”, which, according to the Kremlin legend, is unleashed by the West itself. And since “Kant is one of the spiritual creators of the modern West”, it lies with the responsibility “for all this”.

The tone, however, turned out to be false. To justify his statement, the governor had to climb into a chest with the old intellectual trash and extract from there the thesis of one of the founders of Russian philosophical chauvinism, Vladimir Ern, who was eager for Molya, who, before the start of the First World War, became famous for announcing the philosophy of Kant to the cause of German militarism. Neoslavophile Ern compared criticism by Kant Dogm of the old philosophy with Krupp guns destroying European cities, and urged to save Russian thought from the painful dominance of Kantus rationalism as soon as possible. Ern used his demagogic formula “from Kant to Krupp” in order to philosophically substantiate the superiority of Russian weapons over the German and at the same time affirm the ideology of the superiority of the “Russian soul”.

The claims of the current adherents of Russian national exclusivity look much more modest. Although they quote Ern sympathetically against Kant, they stylize themselves under the victims of the global expansion of the West, which seeks to impose on Russia the values ​​of it in the form of “666 genders”.

They are led by the consciousness of a resentment dominant in the Russian official rhetoric, which depicts all the criminal actions of the authorities as a forced response to resentment and humiliation from the West.

It is characteristic that in the governor’s speech the basic beliefs of the ideology of Russian civilizational exclusivity were deliberately or unconscious, as if the text of his speech was written by some preacher of neo-vorezia, such as Alexander Dugin, who was sitting at the congress of sovereign political scientists in the forefront as a delegate from the “Higher Political School of the name of Ivan Ilyin” (abbreviation). It was recently created at the Russian Humanitarian University in order to propagate in university education of ultra -conservative views of Dugin himself. The center of this ideology is the thesis of Russia as a special civilization, which is alien to universal norms and values, and therefore the main task of the authorities in Russia is to prevent their penetration into the country at any cost. In this picture of the world, in which the years ago, the theses of Oswald Spengler and the Russian Eurasians about the closed and impermeable cultures are mixed with the visions of the American political scientist Samuel Huntington about the “clash of civilizations” after the collapse of communism and with the theses of the Nazi lawyer Schmitt about politics as a struggle as a struggle and The enemy, in general there is no place for the idea of ​​universal norms, but there are only local civilizations that lead an endless struggle for a place under the sun. For adherents of this picture of the world, Kant is actually the number one enemy, since he is the creator of the philosophy of moral universalism and its principles of unconditional dignity of the personality and universal human rights, actual in all civilizations, regardless of cultural differences. For Kant under any circumstances and in any contexts, the lie remains a lie, humiliation of dignity - humiliation of dignity, violence against a person - violence.

It is clear that the main target for supporters of civilizational exclusivity is at the same time the idea of ​​Kant about the universal moral principle, which he formulates in his famous formulations of the categorical imperative: “Do so that the principle of your actions can become a universal law.” So the Kaliningrad governor did not leave this idea in his speech without attention, accusing Kant that he was preaching that only strongly imposing the law to everyone else, even if they do not want to. But the most superficial acquaintance with the principles of Kant's ethics will allow you to understand that the idea of ​​a universal law means the exact opposite, namely, that any other person in my place would agree with this ethical requirement and would have acted in the same way as I do, without any coercion. The idea that the “universal law” is only a form of coercion from the strong, and not the protection of the weak from the attacks of the strong, demonstrates the basic attitudes of the consciousness of the Russian power elite and its speaker, who just consider the laws of suppression of inconsistent and subordination of their own authorities accepted by them. And since they themselves do not obey these laws, then the demand for the universality of moral law looks especially dangerous and harmful in their eyes.

In his escapades against Kant, the governor does not hesitate to use the most sophisticated figures of anticantianism, exposing the Satanic character of Kantian philosophy, which, together with the modern Western world, turned out to be, according to him, captured by “evil spirits”. The fact that Kant in the history of Russian culture appeared as a synonym to the devil has long been known (see the subtle essay of the philosopher Anatoly Akhutin “Sofia and the devil” on this occasion). The quoted by the governor Vladimir Ern was also proud that he discovered Luciferian energy in Kant's philosophy. But if for Ern his rationalism was a source of Satanism in Kant, then for the current official interpreters of the philosopher, he is a categorical imperative and universal human rights.

Both are considered by them as an absolute evil that threatens the “traditional values”, which are declared by the current power by the highest and indisputable authority.

All these hundreds of times hardened and empty formulas about Kant’s connection with “unclean power”, about the fact that he “cut off the German people from God and the highest values”, that his formula of the categorical imperative is “absolutely destructive idea”, are now designed to express the general line of official Russian isolationism - the desire to break out of modern civilization and return to the patriarchal utopia of the traditional Society where everyone goes to church is subordinate to the boss, and wives obey husbands.

For adherents of such patriarchal utopia, the main evil itself is the modern society itself, which proclaimed in the Enlightenment the universal rights and dignity of a person an integral condition for any political structure that deserves the name “modern”. And Kant, therefore, appears for them in the image of the “all -destroyer” that in his philosophy he put radical criticizing the dogmatic faith in authorities and any forms of “morality for his own”, which cannot withstand the verification of universality.