Dokuchaev Ilya: Foundations of the Russian Civilization: Russia, the West, the East, and the Third Globalization

Speaker: Dokuchaev Ilya, Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, Head of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition, Doctor of Philosophy

Topic: Foundations of the Russian Civilization: Russia, the West, the East, and the Third Globalization

Abstract

1. The domination of one society over another, or of one state over another, is the desired goal of many such institutions and groups. Achieving this goal leads to the spread of the winner's influence, or globalization. The first version of such globalization is a political empire (military force and political unity), the second is world religion (faith and regional unity), the third is the international division of labor (science, technology, economic growth, and world unity).

2. Russia has gone through four main stages in its history: The Kyiv stage – the emergence of Christian culture, the Moscow stage – the emergence of a centralized state, the St. Petersburg stage – scientific, technological and economic modernization, and the Soviet one – the emergence of the idea of a fair society. The four key pillars of Russian civilization are the Christian faith, law and freedom, reason and development, social justice and self-restraint.

3. The idea of traditional values and its problems:

– axiological abstractionism – separation of values from culture and formalism of content;

– axiological idolatry – oblivion of other aspects of culture, and above all – of scientific and technological progress;

– axiological anti-historicism – denial of the development and replacement of various thesauri.

4. The West and Russia.

– the West: A heterogeneous culture that has various axiological foundations (the Middle Ages, Renaissance, the Modern Age, Positivism, Modernism);

– the West: A way to shift responsibility for one’s own actions onto someone else;

– the West as a competitor and a source of culture. The failure of isolationism.

5. The East and Russia

– the East as a competitor and satellite of the West;

– the East as a threat to Russia in terms of its possible absorbtion and as a problem of another idolatry;

– the East as a prospect and and an ally in resistance. The problem of the inevitability of the Western path. The problem of adequacy of crisis related to heading the Western way.

6. Russia: Prospects for the development of a state-and-civilization or world leadership. The second is impossible without the first, but without the second, the first is impossible, too. Global problems of humanity (population growth, environmental pollution, depletion of resources, the threat of world wars and man-made disasters). The Soviet project as an uncompleted potential for global development. Rational limitation of economic growth, fair consumption.