Познание, мораль и политика = Cognition, morality and policy. Учебное пособие

ity – religion or philosophy, artistic creativity or performing music. A concrete personal approach is necessary here, the criterion for which is the depth of disclosing his essence.

Spiritual knowledge as a revelation that splits into three basic spheres is, nevertheless, a unity. Philosophy, religion, and art as specific ways of manifesting the spiritual, not only enter into contradictions with each other, but also communicate and interact with each other throughout the whole culture of humanity.

So, some intrinsic characteristics of the spiritual phenomenon are already determined, and the spheres of its actions and objectivization are allocated. Given the definition of the concept of the spiritual, it is impossible to stop at any of the pre-established points of view, for example, the extremely religious or atheistic. This would deform the concept of the spiritual, as this would be only a one-sided consideration of it. In the modern world, we notice an innumerable number of sometimes opposite types of world-views. The task is to see whether we can find a common language, and, moreover, a general spiritual basis for dialogue. But, all the same, it is necessary to find some starting point for research, and we already see that the spiritual is the process of the uncovering of a person’s essence. The basis of this analysis is the position of a person in the world, the position in which he discovers himself in the act of consciousness. He discovers himself as an essence, which contains contradictions and moves forwards and backwards between them. The essence of this motion is one as if the person is crucified between two worlds: the empirical and the theoretical, the sensual and the speculative. He is simultaneously a spiritual and a material essence. This position of the person in the world is reflected by religion in the basic doctrines, and by philosophy in categories: through the symbol of the fall from grace, on the one hand, and a category of being or essence on the other. Disclosing the religious symbolism and the philosophical categorical apparatus is the answer; it is the attempt of judgment and feeling to overcome the contradictions of one’s position in the world. Here we see concepts of ideal and material,

32

goodness and maliciousness, and so on. The concept of the spiritual in this case is considered not as a category that is opposed to the material, and not as some absolute that would have removed itself from matter, but as the highest level of intelligence and sensibleness of a person in the world. Spiritual truth is nothing else than what is true and correct about the attitude of a person to himself and the world. «Truth», wrote Kafka, «is necessary for each person for life and yet he cannot receive or get it from anybody else. Each person continuously should give rise to it from within himself, otherwise he will be lost. Life without truth is impossible. Truth is life itself»1.

Originally, the spiritual existed for a person as a mystery, in such a way that he lost himself in it, experienced some kind of ecstasy, and changed the state of his consciousness, accomplishing thus some transcendence of his routine existence. But all this occurred mainly due to putting aside rational conscious life, rather than due to increasing sensuousness. However, each person needs a way of transcendence, and Spiritual Cognition in Different Cultures 205 even now, having come to a deadlock, he can choose alcohol or drugs as a remedy. Today, a qualitatively new understanding of the spiritual and of the method of its achievement has appeared with the occurrence of philosophy and monotheistic religions. Here, the spiritual attitude to life began to appear when a person started to comprehend life metaphysically from his position in the world. On this basis, the representation of idea was born; the idea about the ideal relation to life, i.e. the spiritual, appeared. Idea as spiritual vision is well expressed, though not without some problems, in Plato’s philosophy. In religion, the metaphysical comprehension of life is fixed to its central symbol. Through such a symbol or idea of human consciousness arises the possibility of an entry into the spiritual, the realization by a person of a spiritual life. Christ, Buddha, and Plato

1 Kafka F. The Castle. Stories and Legends. Letter to his Father. Moscow, 1991, p. 568.

33

have found the spiritual essence of the position of a person in the world, and to express it in symbols and concepts. These positions contain speculative truth, which is demonstrated in various cultures and by various methods. And as spiritual knowledge concerns not just the abilities of a person, not just what he has, but what he is in his essence, the spiritual truth is he himself at the highest level of his being when his essence is completely developed, resulting in the appearance of the spiritual archetype of humankind. Thus, Christ said «I am the way», and the Sufi mystic Mansur al-Hallaj said «I am the Truth».

The spiritual results from the position of a person in the world, which is characterized by such concepts as freedom, will, consciousness, speculation, and so on. The necessity of the spiritual comes from the position of a person in the world who is characterized by a duality and contradiction: a human person by nature is a biological creature, and by essence spiritual. But a person is a unity and integrates everything that he has. He enters the sphere of the spiritual, which is also an essentially human area, when he starts posing existential questions about the significance of his life. The spiritual is represented as the truth of human life which is born from a comprehension of life itself. The spiritual is the supreme product of life which comes to self-consciousness in the person. Searching for the meaning of life necessarily results in self-knowledge, knowledge of the essence of being. Spiritual cognition is vertical, whereas all other kinds of knowledge are horizontal. This vertical, or the intrinsic cognition of the meaning of life, is nothing else but self-cognition, a result of which is that the essence of a person is developed and created, showing the spiritual archetype of humankind.

Self-cognition as knowledge of the cognizing subject is speculation about his essence that, in its turn, is characterized by the humanizing of a person and results in his humanization. Such knowledge is the supreme kind of creativity – selfmastery. In such an ideal of spiritual perfection, it is possible to see the one who has developed his essence, has humanized him-

34

self, and has revealed in himself the spiritual archetype of humankind.

The process of spiritual creativity in the history of culture splits into three basic streams in which the spiritual is the most direct manifestation: 206 Sergey Nizhnikov religion, philosophy, and art. The spiritual, as it is, is unified in its concept, but during historical periods it has been carried out in various ways. It is the transformation of a person into a spiritual creature – which is impossible without «points of a support», symbols of religion, and metaphysical categories of philosophy, based on which one’s consciousness is capable of purifying itself. The spiritual penetrates all human life and without it, strictly speaking, there is no person. However, the spiritual can come to self-consciousness, if it is sought, not through something else, but through it itself; not in its own sphere, but through an initial revelation, through contemplation in which all the intrinsic forces of a person result in supreme harmony and perfection, and when his essence is completely realized in existence, history, and culture.

First of all, the genesis of the concept of the spiritual is simultaneously the formation of a person as a spiritual essence and the reflection of this process in philosophical concepts, religious symbols, and works of art. They are important because play a creative, resourceful and original role in spiritual knowledge. Based on these spiritual instruments, a person with greater depth is capable of comprehending his position in the world and of thinking about the meaning of his own life. The genesis of the concept of the spiritual accomplishes both in history and in each separate person. In the former as in the latter case, it develops a spiritual archetype of humankind through the disclosing of the essence of a person. In the history of spiritual culture, there are two regular methods of knowledge which are realized in logos or theos. The analysis of the genesis of the concept of the spiritual is needed for carrying out research in a speculative way – which goes from mythos to logos, from apeiron to nous, from immanent to transcendent, and vice versa. The essence of a person, then, is

35

no longer just soul, but spirit. The concept of being as transcendental is unprecedented, and introduces new horizons of spiritual knowledge. It has, however, brought with itself a number of problems, such as the necessity of how to correlate the transcendent and the immanent, reality and being, being and thought, mutual relation and connections of a body, soul and spirit, a person and God, the world and God, and so on. All spiritual culture tries to engage these tasks, and to remove these oppositions which are the driving force for both spiritual culture and philosophy.

The ordering of various approaches to the spiritual and to its manifestations in various cultures already comprises some kind of understanding of a subject. As a result of research, however, a certain spiritual phenomenon which all cultures contain comes to be known. At the same time, the realization of the spiritual in the different fields of a person’s activity does not destroy its specificity. So, whether it is the East or the West, religion, philosophy or art – despite the variety of forms, appearance and understanding – the spiritual comprises something essentially uniform that comes out of the position of a person in the world, regardless of what culture or spiritual tradition he belongs to. This intrinsic unity can be defined as the spiritual archetype of humankind.

Research on this problematic and on the concept of spiritual, focused on the logic of its development, results in an integrated and holistic approach to spiritual phenomena. The spiritual archetype of humankind represents by itself the essence of a person in a developed, but formal way, demanding an existential ‘filling up’ of the life of each human being. Spiritual knowledge as selfcognition, remembering or deployment of what has already been initially incorporated, requires a definition of the essence of the final goal. The spiritual archetype represents such a cell that grows up into the plant of spiritual culture.

The process of the unfolding of a person’s essence and the displaying of the spiritual archetype of humankind are already determined from the conceptual, abstract side, but when confronted with concrete material, there appear to be several problems. The

36

archetype is uniform, but it develops in the material of various cultures and is shaped in various languages by different concepts and symbols. This subsequently results in religious wars, philosophical contradictions and, eventually, an imaginary opposition of cultures and civilizations. In order to remove the abovementioned contradictions, it is necessary to scrutinize the sources of various cultures. Only then will their intrinsic unity be clear. The person who has already looked deeply into himself carries within himself the universal knowledge and reflection of his essence that is manifested in the codes of various cultures.

§ 3. The concept of spiritual creativity

In the broadest sense, creativity encompasses all the spheres of human life, not only spiritual but also material. However, any truly spiritual human activity is a creative process, as creativity is one of the main characteristics of spirituality. We may safely say that there is no spirituality outside of creativity, only because of it, philosophy, religion, love, and conscience find valid meaning and development.

Creativity is always an answer to the unknown, for it is transcending. It is qualitatively different from the mechanical process in which everything is being repeated, and from the biological process, in which there is only a reproduction. Creativity is a qualitative leap, where the new has the old as the premise, but cannot be directly derived. The creative act is possible because of freedom, being its implementation. The very movement of thought is creativity (philosophizing), that is happening not so often. Spirit is useless and worthless without matter, being just an empty form. In spirit's connection with matter creativity emerges (F.W.J. Schelling). Creativity is free, not predetermined, and therefore incalculable. «Try to predict a scientific discovery, not to mention the work of art. The higher it is, the more unexpected, surprising, wonderful it goes. There are notions to explain it retrospectively. But they fail, not reaching beyond the background,

37

foundation, on which it saw the light of the day. Its birth is a God-Man mystery»1.

True creativity is rationally impossible and unapprehensive, it is always spontaneous, also realized as a part of the canon. I. Kant defined spontaneity as the human ability to productive imagination based on which mental acts occur. In Schelling's philosophy, true creativity finds its source in the sphere of the unconscious, we may add, superrational. In the spiritual sense, the creative spontaneity in the work of the consciousness is expressed in the self-revelation of the meanings, that seem to be born suddenly and out of nothing. This creative spontaneity is based on intuition, which precedes the research.

Art in general (visual art in particular) originates in the Paleolithic age. Only at the end of it, the ancient people began to depict, draw and cut, with animals being the subject matter. In the Mesolithic age the art themes became more diverse: we are aware of the works of art, depicting groups of people, yet the individuals lack faces and are not distinguished but special attention was paid to ritual clothing. The transition to the settled lifestyle brought to life such art as architecture. In the prehistoric times the role of art was even more important than now: in the absence of science and philosophy, art encompassed almost all the experience and knowledge of the world. With the retreat of the glacier (9-10 thousand years ago) began the modern era. The world of the settled farmers changed. The leading role in the visual art was passed to the ornament – art, associated with dimension and figure. Distant signs of written characters started to appear in the ornament. Writing first evolved approximately in 3 300 BC in Sumer (ideographic writing), in 3 000 BC in Egypt (hieroglyphic writing), and in 2 000 BC in China, although alphabet was developed by the Phoenicians and was perfected by the Greeks only in the first millennium BC.

1 Fedotov G.P. Letters on Russian Culture // Russia's Destine and Sins: in 2 Vols. Vol. 2. SPb.: Sophia, 1991. P. 163

38

Apparently, creativity emerges alongside an individual. The making of the first artificial tool, and even use of natural tools in the work are the creative acts. The transition from instinctive activity to work is related not only to material necessity but also with creativity, resourcefulness. However, art arises much later than this moment. Art is acquired fully only when it is aware of its own distinguishing features and proceeds from own goals and objectives when it is «art for art's sake». This occurred after the emergence of civilizations, somewhere during in the «Axial age». That is why art in the proper sense of the word is historically equal to philosophy and the higher forms of religion.

However, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a creative process in the pre-Axial age. After all, the temples are being built since the dawn of the cities, cultures, and civilizations. The point is, that art didn't play an independent role back then and wasn't allocated into the special sphere of spiritual activity. Art was official, implementing religious inquiries and completely subordinated to religious interest. There was no place for independent artists, scholars, and philosophers, while true creativity occurs only when an artist realizes his own spiritual demands, driven by the personal interest of self-cognition and fulfillment, not dictated from without. The truly independent forms of art appear only in Ancient Greece. The Egyptian pyramids are in the first place the houses of worship and only in this framework, they may be viewed as works of art. Unlike the pyramids, the tragedies of Aeschylus, or even the works of Homer and Hesiod, though speaking of myths, are something independent. In this sense, art expresses its essence only when it's done for the sake of art. This is also true for all the forms of human spiritual activity. It gets realized only when answering the internal needs and objectives; philosophy for philosophy, religion for religion.

Historical development of the concept of beauty lies in its deepening, transition from external forms to internal, from the body to soul, from sculpture and painting to poetry and music. The principle of kalos kagathos (Ancient Greek: καλός for «beau-

39

tiful» and ἀγαθός for «good» or «virtuous») was dominant in the ancient world, uniting aesthetic and ethical merits. Yet, the latter was reduced to socio-political understanding. Antiquity was based on the principle «a sound mind in a sound body». However, the Ancient Greek sages, moving from epic to polis ethical values, strived to focus on virtue, and not on valor and wealth. Virtue comes to the fore in the field of ethics, instead of military prowess and beauty of the outside.

Socrates sought to develop further the notion of kalos kagathos and beauty, transferring it from the sphere of society, external to an individual, to the inner, mental, spiritual plane. The principle of inner-spiritual comprehension of beauty prevailed in the world religions. Christianity is based on the principle of Philokalia («in weakness, God's will is happening»). A person may be ugly and bodily sickly, but may have a beautiful soul and therefore be pleasing to God. Beauty is inseparable from good and truth in the spiritual traditions of humanity. This unity is starting to disintegrate only in the New time because of the complexity and contradictory nature of the social and spiritual development of mankind.

If in a broad sense creativity can cover all human activity, in the narrow sense it is a special kind of labor, cultural and creative activity engaged with the formation of values and symbols. This creative work ends with the creation of works of art, it is aimed at it. Creativity in the true sense of the word is realized in the aesthetic attitude to reality, which is reflected in the ability to perceive and appreciate beauty. Aesthetic appreciation is nurtured, shaped and formed along with the spiritual development of an individual. It doesn't much reflect reality and human life, but rather expresses the aspirations and ideals. It is not passive, for its essence is in the creation of something new. This is how creation differs from science, that discovers the laws of nature, while art creates beauty and sublime, although creativity is inherent to science.

Thus, creativity in the strict sense of the word is realized exactly in art, for only in it creativity is free from external and pre-

40

set goals, seeking to express beauty, idea, and meaning as such. Art is supposed to realize hugely spiritual needs of an individual, and not material or any other. By building a house, individual aims at strength, warmth, convenience, etc., but by building a temple he primarily cares about splendor and beauty. Ideally, all forms of human labor shall approach creativity in art, for by creating beauty and living in the world of beauty, individual cleanses and perfects the soul.

We shouldn't consider a person's spiritual sphere in analogy with the material one, which is not self-sufficient and realizes the bodily needs. Construction, e.g., couldn't be for a construction's sake, it is necessary for people and their needs. Quite different is the spiritual realm, as it is initially in and for an individual, therefore, the more autonomous it is, the better it serves an individual and society. In this regard, the slogan «art for people» is equivalent to art's destruction – no wonder this slogan was dominant under totalitarian regimes and in ideological societies. In fact, art, in this case turns into a service mechanism of power, which seeks to use art for self-justification and self-sustainment of the ruling regime. In this case, true art is being suppressed, and legal art degenerates. The result is quite opposite: when we say «art for art's sake», we call art for the expansion of its potential, and artists for self-realization, as only then we experience «art for the people». If we start with the slogan «art for the people», we will destroy the inner creative motive, and the result is not art, which is then destroyed, made to serve a totalitarian power, turning into «art for power».

Art feels bad not only in totalitarian regimes, where it is forced to fight its way like grass through asphalt despite the authorities and the dominant ideology, exposed to violence and censorship. Art also feels bad in the conditions of market economy, that is not interested in art's development and prosperity. If priceless art works turn into the subjects of sale, business takes notice, hunting after profit and prestige. Art is able to survive and adjust adequately only in a welfare state.

41