Russian Enlightenment as a phenomenon of modernity

Abstract

Since the end of the 18th century the answer to the question: “What is Enlightenment?” has been constituted as one of the eternal problems of philosophy. The paper shows that the answer to this question allows us to actualize one of the crucial characteristics of human knowledge – its irrevocability. As the motto of the Enlightenment, instead of Kant’s “Sapere aude!”, the author of the article suggests the formula “One cannot know back”. It indicates both that cognition irreversibly changes the cognizer and that the change that happened to the cognizer becomes his guilt (in the Hegelian sense) and his self-healing responsibility. This formula can also be extrapolated to national cultures. The Age of Enlightenment in the history of a culture is recognized nowadays by the way the fundamental values were formulated, what steps were taken towards the self-awareness of the nation. In the history of Russia, the Age of the Enlightenment, which started with the transformations of Peter the Great and finished with the uprising of the Decembrists, was signed by encounter with the Other in the face of the Western (as defined by the Russian enlighteners themselves) civilization. In these terms, we regard the history of the Enlightenment as a dramatic process of the phenomenology of national self-consciousness, a constant dialogue with the Other for the purpose of self-knowledge. Theauthor concludes that the experience of the Enlightenment can give Russia an axiological basis for continuing a constructive dialogue with other participants in the irrevocable global dialogue.