HUMAN, NATURE, SOCIETY IN VIKTOR ASTAFIEV'S AND VALENTIN RASPUTIN'S ESSAYS

V. Astafiev and V. Rasputin understand modern ecological situation as a crisis of humankind existence at the present stage. This crisis demands self-comprehension from humankind in the ontology, ethical correction of relations with nature. It forms the ontological plan of reflection (about human nature and people's place in the world).In V. Astafiev's concept, the human nature possesses both creative and destructive elements. The writer speaks about "madness" of a human - the defect, genetically incorporated in human nature and developing with the progress of humankind, which excludes the responsibility of existence. Madness is the state opposite to reason. To characterise human nature, the writer uses the category of "predatoriness" and "poaching" - the way of existence based on exploitation, unfair assignment (robbery, plunder). Violence, as an organic continuation of human nature, becomes a part of social behaviour, which is based on the absence of the sense of harmony and misunderstanding of universal laws of interrelation of all the alive. The reasonable element, the source of which is ontology, is formed on the feeling of this interrelation. Nature is a reasonably organized space of life, with all elements arranged in a complex dynamic balance and aimed at the assertion of life.In V. Rasputin's social and political essays the civilization concept of ecological crisis is formed. As well as V. Astafiev, V. Rasputin estimates the modern stage of the society development as the final and irreversible phase of human extraction from the natural environment, which created natural preconditions of existence. Nature's transformation opportunities development gives rise to the belief in unlimited opportunities of human mind and to the utilitarian, consumer approach to nature. This break of harmony in the system of existence threatens humankind with destruction: the crisis of ecology, catastrophic pauperisation in the field of spiritual life, degradation of the society stimulates the process of its self-destruction.In essays of both writers the overcoming of the ecological crisis is provided by two strategies: organizational (protection of the external space of existence - the environment) and ethical (protection of the internal space of existence - morals and culture). V. Astafiev and V. Rasputin put forward an imperative of a complete vision of the world - returning of metaphysical experience of nature by the person, cardinal reorientation of cultural experience. V. Rasputin's and V. Astafiev's views correspond to the theory of the "noosphere" (sphere of mind) by V.I. Vernadsky, affirming the joint activity of nature and the human as a condition for further civilization existence and development.

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