The historical subject in Moses Rubinstein’s philosophy

Moses Rubinstein (Moisey Rubinshteyn) (1878-1953) developed his own philosophical and pedagogical teachings based on Heinrich Rickert’ s axiology. According to Rubinstein’s teachings, the history of humanity is a process of embodying eternal values (transcendent objects), which are fundamentally inaccessible to cognition, in the form of material culture. Individuals and collective entities (historical subjects) participate in the creation of culture. The historical subject in Rubinstein’s philosophy remains understudied in the research literature. This article establishes how Rubinstein interpreted the historical subject. The content of culture is shaped by personalities - people who have overcome selfishness and become free. Rubinstein contrasts selfishness and morality as manifestations of nature and freedom, using Kant’s anti-naturalistic justification of freedom to substantiate them. By overcoming selfishness, an individual becomes a personality. Similarly, the collective subject, the community, develops from a nation to a people. The nation precedes the people and, based on the natural similarities of the origins of the people who make up the community, forms a unity - a collective subject that creates culture. Encouraging national egoism, which manifests itself in the recognition of one’s own nation as an eternal value superior to other nations, leads to national hostility and the cultivation of xenophobia. If a nation overcomes selfishness, it is transformed into a people - a historical entity that recognizes moral ideals as eternal values, through which it views timeless values and proposes variations of their embodiment in reality. Peoples reject the idea of the superiority of one national culture over others: they are all equal and open to interaction and cooperation. According to Rubinstein, the history of humanity is a multitude of national cultures. Rubinstein believes that historical subjects evolve from nations to peoples, and in the long run, this will lead to the rejection of war. The concept of the historical subject in Rubinstein’s philosophy is relevant in the modern world, allowing us to justify the freedom and equality of all national cultures. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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