CC BY
56
Section 11. Philosophy
7. Уваров М. С. Бинарный архетип. Эволюции идеи антиномизма в истории европейской философии и культуры. СПб., 1996.
8. Флоренский П. А. Столп и утверждение истины. Т 1., М., 1990.
9. Франк С. Л. Непостижимое.//Франк С. Л. Сочинения. М.: Правда, 1990.
10. Шмаков В. Основы пневматологии. Киев.: «София», Ltd., 1994.
11. Эпштейн М. Знак пробела: О будущем гуманитарных наук. М., 2004.
Patsan Vasyl Olexiyovich, Dnepropetrovsk National University, Senior Lecturer, the Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations
E-mail: [email protected]
To the problem of the genealogy of personalism
Abstract: The article focuses on origins of the personalistic philosophy and explores its ways of formation and national variants. It has been clarified that personalism as a philosophical movement took roots in Christianity having been inspired by the concept of person formed by this teaching.
Keywords: Christian teaching, personalism, subject, subjectivity, person, personality, individual, genealogy.
The recent history of philosophy is characterized by the search for such reasons of personal self-identification that will ensure overcoming its crisis, marking the end of the twentieth century. Provoked by the postmodern differentiation between person and subject based upon the refusal of metaphysical presumptions, the loss of identity felt and realized against the philosophical background of postmodernism predicts its historical and cultural outcome. Revealing in the early twenty-first century as a motive in renovating the criteria of the personality, the revision of the rationalistic subjective principle performed by post-non-classical philosophy predetermines the perspectives of humanitarian reflection, aimed at reviewing the concepts of the subjectivity connecting the authentic kernel of a unique self with the rationality.
It is all-known, that a departure from the classical type of philosophizing, significant for the transformations of worldview occurred in the last century, was initiated by the new perception of the subject which had developed throughout the nineteenth century as a reaction to perceived depersonalizing elements in seventeenth century and Enlightenment rationalism, Kantian epistemology of transcendental idealism and Hegelian absolute idealism. Such a revision of the rationalistic philosophical branches forming the basis of posttraditionalistic consciousness resulted in realizing the irreduc-ibility of the subj ective formation only to the laying and revealing of cognitive foundations equalized in the famous formula by R. Descartes “cogito ergo sum” (in spite of its rationalistic nature discovered, according to the author’s confession, under the mystical circumstances!).
The change of paradigmatic precepts of philosophical thought which led to the formation of non-classical philosophy, occurred in the course of identifying the aspects of the subject, exceeding his cognitive self-identity, substantiated in the dialectic of Hegel. Such an extension of the subjective limits revealed in the different areas of philosophical reflection,
including: the neo-Kantian advancement to the realization of the being as a dialogue initiated by the opposing “explanation” to “understanding” (W. Dilthey) and the nomothetic method to the ideographic approach (W. Windelband); the meta-description of phenomenological reduction actualizing the category of the inter-subjectivity (E. Husserl); the comprehension of irrational vital sources forming the basis of “philosophy of life” (H. Bergson,
F. Nietzsche); the perception of human existence reception as an experience, fundamental for existentialism (S. Kierkegaard, K. — Th. Jaspers, J. — P. Sartre).
In all these fields of vision the subjectivity uncovered his individual, personal character, which could not be exhausted by the rationalistic generalizations of the subject’s essence. Determining the formation of modernist worldview, such a turn of philosophical thought predicted its “epistemological uncertainty” delimiting “modernity” of “history”. In the course of their demarcation the philosophical discourse took aim at the disclosure of the personality in the diversity of his individual existential manifestations. This intention was realized on the ground of the personalistic philosophy, anticipated by the ideas of Russian philosophers of the second half ofXIX — early XX centuries and established in two variants — French and American. However, having formed the vision of the subjectivity, which inspired the renovation of philosophical consciousness in the last century, personalism was denied in its fundamental principles in the process of the formation of post-modernism, approving post-non-classical way of philosophizing. Having been inspired by the personalistic exposure of the limits of rational knowledge, the postmodern deconstruction of classical philosophical concepts destroyed the axiological dimension of the personality repudiating the whole worldview as the basis of subjective unity. But the dynamics of post-non-classical philosophical reflection which reveals in moving from the deconstruction
80
To the problem of the genealogy of personalism
(J. Derrida) and the genealogy of knowledge (M. Foucault) to the philosophy of communication (J. Habermas) and the ethical phenomenology (E. Levinas) predetermines the return to the problem of personalism at the turn of the twentieth — the twenty-first century, emphasizing the necessity of rethinking the origins of the personalistic philosophy.
Personalism is considered to be an influential philosophical trend of the twentieth century based upon the contributions of a wide range of European and American thinkers including such figures as Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910), Josiah Royce (1855-1916), George H. Howi-son (1834-1916) Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884-1953) Ralph T. Flewelling (1871-1960), William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966), Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), Jean Lacroix (1900-1986), Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov (18711944), Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948), Lev Isaakovich Shestov (1866-1938), Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky (1870-1965) and others. And it should be marked that the classical version of the personalistic philosophy is associated with the French personalism originated by two above-mentioned philosophers: Emmanuel Mounier and Jean Lacroix. In particular Mounier’s views “affected the decisions of the Second Vatican Council” [1] (here and further the translation is mine — V. P.)
But using interrogative pattern actualized by the Venerable Nestor the Chronicler, the founder of the national history and asking: “wKydy есть пошла [2, 24] (“what is the origin of...”) the personalistic philosophy?” -, we reveal the connection between personalism and early Christianity predicated an express religious character of the philosophical movement in question. It is all-known that the Church-Slavonic expression realizing the author’s version of the question of sources and roots has been accepted by the humanitarian study of our country as a prime marker of the starting point in the investigations realizing historical methods (The comprehension of this meta-narrative model implies the perception of the original text of the Primary Chronicle: “Се повести BpeMAHbHiirx1 1 лЬтт. й'куду есть пошла рускаж земА 2. кто въ киев-Ь нача первое 3 кнАжит А и WKy-ду рускаж землА стала есть” [2, 24]). Owing to this reference, personalism possesses a certain power of survival alien to scholasticism.
But it is impossible to identify the philosophy of personalism with Christian teaching and, moreover, with any religious confession. As Mounier says, “it is possible to be both Kantian and personalist, socialist and personalist, Christian and a personalist” [3, 56]. Atheistic thinkers made their contribution to the formation of personalism, but such cases were extremely rare.
Thus a philosophical school or system can be hardly accepted as the appropriate criterion of the definition of personalistic reflection, “this is rather a frame of mind, a life position” [4]. Moreover, many creative works touching personalistic subject demonstrate non-philosophical language. “Personalism is just a reassessment of values, showing the fact that the human person is the basis of all searches, all philosophical and
social aspirations” [4]. The personalistic philosophy is more expressive than conceptual.
The modern personalism can be regarded as one more attempt of pouring the new wine in the old bellows of philosophy, as an attempt of appealing to authentic spiritual values. At least this intention was realized by the founder of the classical personalism Emmanuel Mounier. According to his own words, his philosophy “is not burdened with deep-rooted habits and does not believe in formulations completing the definite status of thinking and life. It exposes the great uncovered images of the world and rips the gilt off the soul, unmasking affected politeness, indulgence and outspoken commonplace. This is its force.” [3, 46].
Mounier’s philosophy is full of ebullient energy and noble impulse of a young man: “we see that the young and lively world gasps in secular garbs. Who will assure a clearance of the dead forms which oppress even eternal values at every moment of development, hinder them to keep their identity, imprison them into the ephemera if not the people trying to carry the youth of the spirit?” [3, 76].
The theistic tendency of personalism is reflected in the very title of the organ of the French philosophers, the magazine is called “Esprit” (“Spirit”). “The Spirit, this old precious obstacle, is so comfortable, so familiar. The primacy of the spiritual! No matter what noise shouts and howls of the crash would make: this is at last one of those serene words which carry the peace.” [3, 77]. A source of inspiration and healing of human nature he sees in Christ: “The lacerated body of the proletariat becomes like the crucified body of Christ, surrounded by hypocrites.” [3, 78]. The philosophy non-con-verted to the Primary Source of wisdom, can’t actually give the peace. One of Mounier’s compatriots Blaise Pascal lived through an unusual night “in the commemoration of which he kept to his death a note on the parchment stitched, sewn into the lining of his coat. That note began with a designation of the date and contained a number of fragmentary and metaphorical expressions: “Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God ofJacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.” [5; 6]. Pascal faithfully kept the remembrance of his mysterious experience until his death.
Personalists draw attention to the integrity of the human personality, regard a man as the image and likeness of God, indicate the ontological essence of the personality. The origins of personality are rooted not in himself, but in the infinite source — God. Appealing to the Christian doctrine, they emphasize that a man as a person is the primary creative reality and higher spiritual value, and the world is the manifestation of the creative activity of God as the Supreme Person. The Christian God is a personal God. «Personal relations with the impersonal theistic Absolute are impossible.» [1]. The dogmata of Christianity are personalistic, the deeds of the Creator concerning a man are personalistic, everything has been done «for our sake and for our salvation.» The personalistic sense of Christianity rooted in the doctrines of the Holy Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the creation of man in
81
Section 11. Philosophy
the image and likeness of God, His incarnation. «God enters into unique personal relations with each person. These relations reach their height in the possibility of living communion with God and even union with Him.» [4].
Thus, personalism is a fundamental principle of Christian monotheism and a direction of the same name in Christian philosophy. But «it is exactly the Christian doctrine that is consistently personalistic to the end. Mounier constantly emphasizes that he does not found a new philosophical school, but simply repeats the old, hackneyed truth that a person needs to return to his roots — to God, that man must return through God to himself, and thus to know himself and find the peace in his soul and in the society.» [4] He admits that the purely speculative development of the philosophy is not able to compensate for the reducing of the spiritual life. It requires other means. «The attempts to find God in the way of abstract conceptual cognition, that had been made by the theologians and philosophers, limited personal and existential human contact with God.» [6]. The main task of the philosophy of Mounier, Lacroix and other personalists is expressed in the reorientation of the man, his returning to the primary Christian origins.
The personality in personalism is characterized, first of all, by the freedom of moral choice. The freedom is a seal of the Creator on His creation, a God-given gift for the spiritual moral perfection. God honored the man by granting him the freedom through which the person realizes himself. But the man is truly free when he is in the truth — «Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.» (John 8:32).
The man is a free being, and the use of freedom, depending on the choice can become the cause of his happiness as well as the cause of his suffering. Without the truth the great gift of freedom brings great torments — «nothing has ever been for man and human society more unbearable than the freedom!» [7, 277]. «There is nothing more seductive for the man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more painful.» [7, 277]. Without the truth, people «can never be free, because they are weak, vicious, worthless and rioters.» [7, 277]. Having wasted the freedom and satiated their passions and vices enough, they will find themselves bound hand and foot, and their «freedom, free spirit and science will lead them in such a jungle and put before such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, who are unruly and ferocious, destroy themselves, some other who are rebels, but weak, destroy each other, and the rest of them, feeble and miserable, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: «Yes, you were right, you alone possessed the secret of it, and we get back to you, save us from ourselves.» [7, 278].
Hawing drawn attention to the philosophical reflection of many predecessors personalists gave their own thought a philosophical appearance, enlisting a reliable aid of the supernatural Revelation contained in Christianity. As a philosophical school, personalism laid its foundations under the significant influence of Socrates, Pascal and Leibniz. In the
field of philosophy personalists made more subtle and clear the concepts of individual and person. The man as a part of the genus, as a part of the society is an individual.
According to the personalistic definitions, “the individual is a biological characteristic of the man with all his individual biological differences: the colour of eyes, hair, the number of moles and so on” [4], and the person “is a unique unit, not as a material, biological, but as a free unit, first of all, creating and acting freely” [4]. In contrast to the individual the person is not static, he is alive and dynamic, being in formation, transcendence, constant self-creation. Responding to the call of God, the person goes beyond his own self. Becoming the person is the transformation, the implementation of the image and likeness of God. To be the person means to go to God. This very intention paves the way for the existence of true relations between persons.
Personalists also express their disagreement with idealism. Despite the fact that the idealists formally close to the ideas of Christianity and even sympathize with this teaching, they not only lead to personal God, but do not point to Him. The search for the truth in philosophy without the experience of communion with God condemns the philosopher to roving, incompleteness, doubts. The American personalist William Ernest Hocking in his work “The Meaning of God in Human Experience” (1912) notes that “the philosophy cannot lead to religion, because it can not lead us to the knowledge of God, and above all ... the philosophy will never be able to create a God who is worshiped.” [8, 97]. The essence of pagan and godless philosophy was discovered in the Apostle’s Prevention “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ”. (Col., 2:8-20)
Becoming a person is only possible in the ethical dimension, the only communion with God makes a man the true personality. The creative power of the person is Love. “God is love” (lJohn 4:16) “God is spirit” (John 4:24) “Love is the ontological essence of personality. Love that person answers the call is not a passive feeling it is the source of all human activities.” [1].
As to the question of social problems, it is solved in different ways in the American and French personalism. The first area remains in the frames of the detection of the crisis of modern society and human being setting the hopes on the viability of Western culture and substituting the social issues by the task of the individual self-improvement. The French personalism, focusing attention on he social doctrine (Mounier), preaches the ideal of medieval commune as the antipode of urban civilization. The French personalism, painted pessimistic, is characterized by an anti-capitalist orientation. Mounier wrote about the general crisis of capitalism, leading to his death; called for social renewal, to the “personalistic and communal revolution” [3, 113], differed by him from the socialist revolution, leading to collectivism. This revolution, in his opinion, should be both spiritual and economic, to cre-
82
Why did Kolmogorov use a dependent requirement to probabilities?
ate conditions for personal development and overcoming the In whole as a philosophical movement formed in the
conflict in society. It is conceived as a result of the spread of connection with Christianity personalism has become close
personalistic doctrine among the people. enough to a large number of Christians, especially in the West.
References:
1. Дворецкая Е. В. Персонализм и христианство. (Религия и нравственность в секулярном мире. Материалы научной конференции. 28-30 ноября 2001 года. Санкт-Петербург. СПб. Санкт-Петербургское философское общество. 2001. С. 163 http://anthropology.ru/ru/texts/dvoretsk/secular_38.html
2. ПСРЛ. - Т. 1. Лаврентьевская летопись. - Л., 1926. 426c.
3. Mounier E. Revolution personnaliste et communautaire: http://www.uqac.uquebec.ca/zone30/Classiques_des_sciences_ sociales/index.html
4. Лега В. П. Современная западная философия. Персонализм [Электронный ресурс] http://www.sedmitza.
ru/lib/text/431862/
5. Паскаль Блез. Мысли. С-Пб. 1888. 358 с.
6. http://azbyka.ru/dictionary/15/personalizm-all.shtml
7. Достоевский Ф. М. Братья Карамазовы. - М.: Художественная литература, 1973. 816 с.
8. Hocking W. E. The Meaning of God in Human Experience https://archive.org/stream/meaningofgodinhu027626mbp /meaningofgodinhu027626mbp_djvu.txt
Reznikov Vladimir Moiseevich, Institute of Philosophy and Law of the SBRAS, Senior Researcher, Novosibirsk State University, Department of Philosophy, Associate Professor,
E-mail: [email protected]
Why did Kolmogorov use a dependent requirement to probabilities?
Abstract: An explanation due to Shafer and Vovk is studied for Kolmogorov’s using the requirement ofproximity of theoretical probability to frequencies, which can be derived on the basis of Bernoulli’s theorem and Cournot’s principle. To some extent, this explanation is subjective. Some new philosophical and formal arguments are proposed in favor of rationality of this explanation.
Keywords: probability, independence, Cournot’s principle, Bernoulli’s theorem, frequency interpretation.
In 1933 A. Kolmogorov published a book, where an axiomatic theory of probability was proposed, which was eventually accepted by the mathematical community [1]. In 1936 the book was published in Russian [2]. This small-volume monograph was not purely mathematical; it also examined some issues related to the methodology of application of probability theory. In particular, Kolmogorov formulated two statements, describing the properties of probabilities, for the events being studied in the applications of probability theory. These requirements by Kolmogorov are the following:
«A. One can be pretty much sure that if a set of conditions S is repeated a large number of times n, and m denotes the number of cases in which the event A occurred, then the ratio m/n will differ little from P(A).
B. If P(A) is very small, then one can be pretty much sure that for a single realization of the conditions S the event A will not take place» [2, 13].
In the literature, the condition B is known as the principle of A. Cournot [3]. In the case of several requirements there naturally arises the question of their compatibility. According to G. Shafer and V. Vovk, it was noted already by Kolmogorov’s contemporaries, in particular, by E. Borel, P. Levy and others
that condition A is derivable from condition B and Bernoulli’s theorem. Even though Kolmogorov formulated the requirements to probabilities informally, it is naturally assumed in the statement about derivability of one condition from the other that these conditions are given in a formal way. It should be noted that condition A is the conclusion of Bernoulli’s theorem. The reason for using condition B is that the conclusion of Bernoulli’s theorem is true on any typical sample. The fact that the conditions A and B turn out to be dependent gives raise to several questions. Why did Kolmogorov finally decide to use dependent requirements for probabilities? Why didn’t this fact appear in the center of attention of mathematicians long ago and was not thoroughly studied?
In two interesting papers Shafer and Vovk proposed several explanations of the linkedness of Kolmogorov’s requirements [4-5]. The strongest explanation is based on a special significance for Kolmogorov of requirement A, since it has a frequency nature, and Kolmogorov noted that in the application of probability theory he followed, in general, R. von Mises, the founder of the frequency interpretation. This explanation is plausible, but it is based on Kolmogorov’s preferences and, therefore, has a somewhat subjective character.
83
