Splendor and Misery of the Anthropological Crisis: A Myth of Contemporary Russian Philosophy

Abstract

The concept of anthropological crisis is very popular in contemporary Russian humanities: the Russian Scientific Electronic Library, or Elibrary.ru, includes more than ten thousand publications with the keyword anthropological crisis. On the contrary, Google gives links to Russian publications only when one searches for anthropological crisis. This keyword has no reference in the famous online book catalogue Worldcat.org. Nowadays English-speaking scientific communities still explore the crisis in anthropology as a discipline. The difference between the anthropological crisis and the crisis in anthropology seems essential. The crisis of a scientific discipline is not a crisis of the human nature. The modern Russian academicians, including the late Vyacheslav Stepin, find many features of the anthropological crisis in the successes of genetic engineering and modern medicine as well as in the growing psychological pressures. Russian-language scholars find the traits of anthropological crisis in many fields, including studies of memory, bioethics, pedagogics, literature, and economics. The loss of the sense of life is often treated by Russian scholars, like Stepin and Boris Pruzhinin, as a trait of the anthropological crisis. The problems of self-identity are also marked by Russian authors as a mark of that crisis. Sergey Averintsev felt that human beings lack their human nature. Pruzhinin supposes humans cannot predict consequences of genetic engineering for their nature as a species. But all these trends have nothing in common with the anthropological crisis. Genetic engineering helps improving of sick human nature and self-realization. Certainly, all consequences are not open but there is no scientific discovery whose effects would be absolutely evident at once. Cyborgs are an inevitable step towards healthier and smarter humans. Existential problems are universal since the emergence of self-consciousness among the humans. Self-identities are in constant flux since the birth of complex societies, especially since the industrial revolution strengthened alienation. The growth and volume of information flows are not threats to humans as there is no necessity to memorize all the data in the world, and there are multiple network and personal filters which block garbage. The anthropological crisis seems a myth in contemporary Russian-language humanities in general and philosophy in particular.