Issue #47

Abstract: The reader’s attention is invited to a fragment of correspondence between a former (in the mid-60s of the last century) the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute student (P. Tishchenko) and his philosophy teacher (L. Chernyak), in which the meaning of philosophical endeavor is touched upon. For P. Tishchenko, in classical philosophy, thought as an effort toward being (conatus) is attributed to the result of this effort — for example, to the pure Ego, and the personal meaning of the existence of this thinking being is removed in its essence — the life of pure consciousness. The question is this — to whom does the effort to being belong — to the private human being who begins to reflect, looking at the fireplace fire and doubting everything, or to that undoubtedly existent “I” which, as a result of reflection, just provides itself with this undoubtedness as a reliable foundation? The answer to this question for Tishchenko P. is connected in one way or another with the effort to being of a private human being who presents itself to itself and others as an author. On the example of the creative biography of V.S. Bibler, it is argued that a real person, responding to the challenges of the changing historical situation, can present himself as different authors, the commonality of which can be justified only biographically. Responding to P. Tishchenko, L. Chernyak emphasizes that the abstraction of the absolute “I” is not the same as the transcendental self. The transcendental Self is not a separate entity that could be somehow contrasted with “a private human being who begins to think, looking at the fireplace fire, and doubts everything”. The transcendental Self is the proper human modus of being of the human individual qua individual. This Self is that individual synthesis (individual authorship concerning formation) of its own ability to author, which synthesis alone makes the human individual human, i. e. the producer and master (“genome”) of its genus, and not the individual embodiment of this genus (not the individual embodiment of the eidos as the genus beginning). These aspects central to the correspondents were discussed in the context of the critique of the contemporary philosophical situation.