Values are expressed in actions and in our language, which marks the teleology of actions and strategies of life. At the same time, the semantics of a word may not coincide with value orientations (that is, with real forms of value embodiment), the latter are always more diverse: life practices show us various forms of adaptation of the value horizon, that is, due, to the specifics of existence. However, the meaning of the word is the regulatory of both interpersonal communication and our activities. For the first time, the regulatory importance of language became clear to the Egyptian Ptolemies, who, by “criticizing Homer”, that is, clarifying the original, actually “Homeric” version of the great epic poems, in fact, corrected the foundations of the Greek literary language (based on Homer), acting as the main carriers and users of this “soft power” throughout the space the Hellenistic world. In the 19th century, when the idea of a nation and the exceptional importance of its own language for it became a “common place” for European states, we see a kind of “dictionary race”, a competition in the speed and quality of creating academic explanatory dictionaries of English, German, and Russian. It was not only a competition in scholarship, but also in clarifying and structuring the semantics of the value horizon of national cultures. That’s why we’re talking about values. In many ways, we’re talking about words that express our intentions, the regulations behind them, and, ultimately, the teleology of our actions.
I must say right away that all the words that denote these values have been the subject of discussion for a long time, at least since the 19th century. It is very interesting to read, for example, what is written about “pravda” in Vladimir Dahl’s dictionary. I recommend contacting Dahl to anyone who is interested in the “archaeology of the word”, who is interested in how the ambiguity of the term indicates the semantic horizons behind it.
What is really important is that both “truth”, “knowledge”, and “goodness” retain a certain multiplicity of meanings even with the change of historical epochs. Their continuing ambiguity is a fact embedded in the genome of Russian culture, or rather, stemming from it. Therefore, we can talk about a certain kind of continuity of semantics, and hence the ontology of values in Russian culture.
By far the most revealing word here is “truth.” Our writers and philosophers, as well as Russian theologians, have talked and written quite a lot about him (“The truth of God”). “Truth”, a concept that, it would seem, should be coordinated with the concept of truth, including in its scientific interpretation, shows a broader semantic context in comparison with the latter.
Please note: we are not saying “scientific truth”, the truth is related to science; the truth is about something else, or rather, more, about something that is not limited to scientific truth.
We all remember the idea of correlation, coordination of thinking and being, expressed in the so-called correspondent concept of truth. Thought is stable in its correspondence to being, and this correspondence expresses its beingness as the possibility of establishing such a correspondence for being, its thinkability. Everything is pretty obvious here, and this evidence is the basis for the majority of modern scientists, who are not engaged in excessive speculation about the nature of truth, to verify their activities as scientific.
Quite popular sociological and pragmatic theories of truth complicate the picture, strictly speaking, expand its understanding within the framework of traditional European scientific rationality. But both still talk about the correspondence of our thoughts (concepts, concepts, judgments) to a certain set of circumstances that is given in human experience.
However, when we say “truth”, we mean something that is connected not just with the state of our thinking and knowledge, but with the state of being in general. The truth is that which is rooted in the “being” itself. Therefore, living the truth is not just living according to the law, it is living in accordance with some fundamental foundations of existence.
The famous Russian Truth is not the fruit of legal empiricism, nor is it a set of laws based on public consensus, tradition, and common sense. It was not and was not perceived as a translation of the “Digest” of Justinian or Byzantine church law, although it was influenced by Byzantine legislation. Russian Russian Truth is a code of laws based on divine law; here the word “truth” indicates the connection between the legal structure of the Russian land and the world order.
When a Russian person is looking for the truth, he is looking for how everything works and how everything really is, some kind of authenticity, something that is in no way irrefutable and irrevocable, even if the truth does not come into our lives immediately and even if this truth is completely unpleasant for our hearts and minds. Hence the inescapable truth-seeking expressed in Russian folklore, literature, art, and social behavior, which sometimes takes extreme forms (the uprisings of Stepan Razin, Yemelyan Pugachev, and the revolutions of 1917). The search for truth is also a journey, from schismatic escapes to places far away but close to God, to the Cossack development of vast Siberia, and even Soviet fiction with its glorification of communist star wanderers “Half a Day of the XXII century” is about the same thing, about the truth.
In this sense, our truth is not identical with the scientific concept of truth. This is a much more existentially fundamental concept, which has to do with personality, with an existential view of a person, and with the very way Russian culture exists.
I think no one will be surprised by the association with the ancient Greeks and their concept of truth. It was quite complicated in itself, as Martin Heidegger reminded us at the time. And initially, it seems that its meaning is quite consistent with what we said about the “truth”. Nevertheless, at some point the truth began to be accepted in the correspondence (Plato, especially Aristotle) and even the sociological (Protagoras) I mean. But in Hellas there was another concept of “truth” — “dike” (ΔίΚη), truth-justice, which also pointed to the fundamentally correct construction of affairs, the correct building of human relations with each other, as well as the divine law, ultimately leading all events in the world to the proper outcome (Hesiod).
It seems to me that here we are wittingly or unwittingly adopting the Greek tradition. Although it is difficult to say about the ways of a specific historical succession, if you do not refer to Konstantin Leontiev’s arguments about the “fragments of Byzantism.”..
Now about the difference between these values, for example, in our culture and in the Western one. I should immediately note that some of my judgments are likely to be speculative. Western culture is also complicated. It’s not the same thing. The continental, European consciousness, despite all the influences of the analytical Anglo-Saxon speculation, has not yet dissolved into the norms and rules of the United States— this global gendarme. But America is not the same at all. There are much more regional differences, for example, between the North and the South.
But if we leave this aside, it must be said that the West is increasingly characterized by the idea that truth is related to the scientific type of knowledge, as well as to the current common sense (“general opinions”) of the majority. And in this sense, the truth is correct, it is the truth. After all, the scientific model of the world has successfully gained a place in the public consciousness, significantly displacing the religious one. And science, in its technological and applied meaning, is generally the driver of modern society.
At the same time, truth as a kind of finality, certified, explicated, verified in a series of arguments, empirical and speculative, as where we put an end and go nowhere else, is rather a regulatory principle, a goal that humanity strives for. This applies to everything: physics, mathematics, in which virtual worlds are built, as diverse as those created by science fiction writers, history, sociology, anthropology, etc.
However, the scientific nature and values of scientific truth still dictate to us the norms of language and even the ways of forming concepts. As a result, scientific judgments begin to take on the character of evaluative statements. These norms, for example, prohibit many “cognitive scientists” who deal with problems of consciousness from talking about it in a Cartesian spirit.
Thus, the truth turns out to be the correspondence of our thinking to reality, which is constantly being transformed in our cognitive and practical activities. When we turn to political, social, and moral life, the aspect of legal positivism is important for Western consciousness. The state of our relationship is taken as a kind of empirical given. Of course, this reality is being modified in the process of reassessing the social contract and public opinion. For example, in the United States, until recent decades, there was a kind of public consensus on the topic of the Civil War of 1861-1865. The consensus is that both northerners and southerners were hostages to a tragic turn of fate, their own ideas about rights and honor, and the entire Civil War is a necessary drama—a test of the American people that turned them into a great nation. Now the social contract has changed: The status of Southerners has been drastically reduced, Lincoln is turning into a vampire hunter, the memory of the South is being reviewed, and statues of Southern leaders are being removed from public space.
Karl Popper believed that science, like the social contract, is a method of trial and error, a method of hypotheses that replace each other. From his point of view, we can in no way, especially in the sphere of public life, talk about a universal general historical law (we should not capitulate to the charm of “historicism”), because then it would be, in Popper’s opinion, violence against man, due to existence.…
When we discuss the history of our Fatherland, which is rich in Westernization projects, it seems that the most striking example of this process (Westernization) is not even the reforms of Peter I or Alexander II, but the victory of the communist (Bolshevik) revolution. At the time, Toynbee called Bolshevism a “Western heresy.” And this “heresy” came to Russia in full accordance with the values of historicism criticized by Popper.: as a promise of the truth, common to all, the truth provided by the scientific nature of Marxist truth, including the truth of the natural historical law: the law that guarantees mankind prosperity, happiness and truth in the near future.
Now they are looking for (or remembering) in Russia own civilizational path of development. At the same time, we are actually looking for something universal, because despite all the specific differences between civilizations, they (differences) are expressed in universal and necessary structures, which, in fact, transform a specific set of citizens and public institutions into something peculiar. In order to understand our own identity (whether formational or civilizational), we need to find criteria by which we compare Ourselves with Others. Only by identifying them will we be able to understand who we are, what our truth is, no matter how unpleasant it may be. And this process is radically different from the combination of legal positivism, historiophobia accepted in the West (after all, history, with Popper’s rejection of “historicism,” becomes a zone of scientific, ideological, and moral errors — and therefore a zone of social sin before future generations of people) and appeals to constantly evolving public opinion.
Maybe this doesn’t sound very optimistic for someone who is oriented towards the norms of modern legal consciousness, but a Russian person will always look for an opportunity to escape from the too heavy embrace of law. But not because he wants to commit a crime or break the law, but because he is looking for something else that stands behind the outer shell of legalism.
The evolution of each of the values is an endless topic, and therefore I will be able to give only some individual judgments. To begin with, the Russian consciousness, since it is connected with Christianity, cannot but remember that the Lord is the Way, Truth and Life. Truth is something quite alive, just like the truth, and in this case it turns out not to be a set of circumstances, scientific consensus, or even metaphysical laws. In this respect, the Russian “truth” is quite correlated with such a religious Truth.
Why is truth related to ontology? Because the truth is about how everything we care about really is. That’s why they’re looking for it or trying to achieve it, because it’s not formal, but real. Probably, in this sense, being for the national consciousness is not a “what”, but a living and universal law that can be unexpectedly seen in scientific judgments, and in the beauty of the sunset, and in someone’s deed, and in a work of art, and even in the inner mood.
It is clear that a Russian and a Christian in our time are far from the same thing. Not all Russians were, are, and will be Christians, but in any case, existence remains “alive” in some important sense of the word. Therefore, the truth can be embodied in someone’s personality. For example, some of our ancestors saw the truth in Stenka Razin or Yemelyan Pugachev, who was supposedly Peter III. The Bolsheviks proved to be the same kind of truth during the Civil War. Now we understand that those events — the Revolutions and then the Civil Wars — were caused by a complex of diverse causes. And what happened in the history of Russia, and then Soviet Russia in 1917-1920, was the result of passing through several bifurcation points. But there is no doubt that some part of the urban and not only urban population went after the Bolsheviks, because they saw their truth in them, clothed in a Messianic guise. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky — this is the “living truth” of those years, and not only of Bolshevik propaganda, but also of the inner worldview of many Russians. And without this inner worldview, the USSR would not exist.
Probably, the truth was seen in the same way on the banks of the Volga River in the autumn and winter of 1943 (the Battle of Stalingrad). Similarly, this truth (albeit perhaps deceptive) was seen in the era of perestroika, including in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev, who at some point began to talk about the impossibility of living in the unrighteous version of statehood that we had.
Truth is not just a set of norms and laws governing our world, but also something that deeply relates us to the very essence of things and to fate.
Truth, in the non-religious sense of this concept, is directly involved in the semantic, linguistic turnover associated with scientific activity. And the truth requires some kind of social and at the same time personal consent, flair, if I may say so, insight — an understanding of how everything works. And therefore, it is best to show and demonstrate the truth, rather than describe it in the form of some kind of scientific narrative. It seems to me that this understanding of the value of truth persists at the present moment.
The problem of post-truth deserves separate reflections. We live in an era of destruction of some concepts and concepts that were existentially important for previous generations. The story of post—truth is an attempt to get rid of the pressure of big narratives, from the big framework in which people live. It would seem that this liberation can lead a person to something more peculiar to him – if human nature exists at all (and from the point of view of the postmodern worldview it hardly exists) — and therefore it should allow him to realize himself. However, if for a modern person personal beliefs and emotions are (supposedly) more important than the objective state of affairs, then this does not indicate any stage in human evolution, but rather an imposed and nurtured vulnerability to fairly simple forms of propaganda, especially peculiar to the Western world.
Note that even the very expression that we are considering — “the era of post—truth” (not “post-truth” or “post-knowledge”, but “post-truth”) – suggests that the word “truth” itself is more important to the Russian ear than some other terms.
Here it would be logical to move on to the value of knowledge. Although the 809th decree on Russian traditional values does not explicitly mention it as a separate value, it is contextually “packaged” into their general system.
If we talk about knowledge in the ancient history of Russia, it is clear that the Christian context of this word, the church concept of this value, is developing first of all. Because first of all, knowledge is knowledge about Christian doctrines, the Christian doctrine of salvation, knowledge about Christ, the christocentricity of the inner world and external activities. We will not recall the pagan period, the era of double faith, etc., especially since we do not have much information on this topic. I’d rather start with Muscovy. There, knowledge was primarily knowledge about holiness, about the norms that correspond to it. It may not have had a deep, mystical, scholastic or any other character, but you and I remember what the specifics of the phenomenon of Muscovy at the end of the XV, XVI and XVII centuries are, in fact, the specifics of the self—perception of the future deep Russia. The history of Deep Russia is the history of self—awareness as Holy Russia. Why is Russia Holy? Because it was the only Orthodox power in that era that preserved Orthodoxy and avoided the art of union and Islam.
In the 16th century, Moscow began to acquire the features of the Eternal City — the reborn Constantinople, as well as Jerusalem. Yes, there was a Renaissance in Russia in the 16th century, but it was the Renaissance of Byzantium, the Second Rome. Under these conditions, the perception of Russia as Holy Russia is primarily the knowledge of holiness, which at some point began to require accuracy. Which is more correct, a pure or a shallow “hallelujah”? How is it right (and righteousness is the source of wisdom) to write the name Jesus? How to be baptized? Should the priest wear his hair long or not? How to print liturgical texts correctly? All this leads back to the 17th century. to the schism, because both sides — Nikon and his opponents — sought accurate knowledge in Russian holiness.
Such knowledge, knowledge in a religious context, has much in common with the concept of truth. But in the same 17th century, the processes of Westernization of Russia took place. Knowledge is beginning to connect with academic and theological truths, as higher education is coming to Russia, initially based on the Catholic model of universities (the Kyiv Mohyla College and its influence). This is followed by a period of Enlightenment in the Protestant spirit of the word (Peter the Great and the post-Roman era). Then comes the period of knowledge in the scientific and educational spirit. In the 19th century, the dilemma of “faith — knowledge” is clearly understood. This realization comes along with scientific practices, new forms of education, new focuses of public interest, and the flourishing of specific sciences that have demonstrated their strength and effectiveness.
Faith and religion begin to correlate with emotional and existential experiences, with personal and unique ones, and knowledge with clearly formulated and universal ones. This is very clearly seen in the example of great Russian literature. Knowledge in Russia is beginning to be understood in the same way as in the West, linking it with science and scholarship as it is understood in Europe. But what kind of scientific approach was characteristic of Russia in the 20th century after the October Revolution? Marxism, which presented itself as the highest form of scientific knowledge, was actually metaphysics — together with the concept of the natural historical process, with teleologism (teleology of historical development) and with some basic principles, ontological obligations that followed from this doctrine.
