Plato as a postmodernist
There are certain features of the world-view that are mentioned in characterizing our epoch. These features are connected with adaptation of modern knowledge to guidelines that are set by a universal regime of free market or, in other words, of the capitalist regime. We will talk about features, which we will designate as the will to good (welfare) and the will to generality (the will to find one's place in the universal system of recognition). The given adjustments activate one more feature of the world-view - uncertainty, which has long been discussed by analysts of the European and American schools: from G. Deleuze and J. Baudrillard to F. Fukuyama and R. Sennett. However, all the mentioned above is not only the feature of modern times; the will to good, to generality and uncertainty that accompanies them are quite archaic and were explained a long time ago. One of the first ideologists of the world-view that is nowadays called postmodern is Plato. The title of our article reflects this succession. Orienting his philosophical system towards the idea of the good Plato organically forms the attitude of consciousness to the nothing, because characteristics of the good are superlatively a-formal and uncertain. Accepting this attitude consciousness opens its subjectivity as something immanent to this nothing. Thereafter the status of authenticity is denied to any detached identity. Consciousness is given function only in those identity codes, which are recognized by the ideology of the good as conductors of an ideal project. Instead of the questionable value of individualism, consciousness guided this way receives the verification of its belonging to the Universe, that is the universal recognition. And this frees consciousness from the burden of deep anxiety, which is an immanent part of any detached human existence. An analogy by which we can correlate Platonic paradigms and modern humanistic guidelines deserves attention. We understand humanism as a generic concept having a propensity for transcendental removal of any detached form of consciousness and human existence for adaptive implementation of this form into the communicative generic context not as a detached one, but as one mediating values of this context. Plato's Republic will be the first consistent model of humanistic ideology. Denying the self-sufficient subjective core of the person characterizes both Platonism and humanism. Different conclusions can be drawn from this denying: from idealistic pragmatism of Plato to socioeconomic pragmatism in the contemporary humanistic space. Both types of pragmatism are conjoint by their mediacracy: existence is constituted by communication and is designated as non-genuine out of it. Communication is an intentional stream, and its basic characteristic is to transcend communicating consciousness. Total connection with the world of ideas stated by Plato is a project of absolute communication. An idea is insuperable and infinite; we can say the same about communication. Practising it, the person must agree to his/her own indefinability; to the impossibility to realize and execute the project of his/her existence. The person at last opens up to infinity in this agreement; the problem of personal destiny should not worry him any more
Keywords
uncertainty, humanism, reproduction, good, неопределенность, гуманизм, воспроизводство, благоAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Shamolin Roman V. | Novosibirsk State University | shaman-rom@yandex.ru |
References
