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"Values and Traditions in Philosophy" by Sokolov, Alexey V. Philosophy as a part of culture, that have its history, have traditions. Significance of them for philosophy have been assessed by Hegel, who has written in his “Lectures on the History of Philosophy”: "everything what we are in science and philosophy also has to be ascribed in its existence to tradition, which through all that is passing and therefore has begone, stretches, using Herder’s comparison, like a sacred chain, and it has preserved for us and has transmitted to us everything that has been created by the anteceding generations.” Any philosopher relies on the works of predecessors, experiences influences, accepts and develops some legacy, criticizes and rejects legacy of another kind. Thereby a philosopher refers to tradition, or more exactly – to traditions, a part of which he becomes. Philosopher turns, for example, into sensualist, into Hegelian, into materialist, into positivist. So the succession of philosophical ideas happens, that is “the soul of every following generation, the spiritual substance, that has become something habitual to him, his principles, preconceptions and wealth." Polish scientist J. Shatski (J. Szacki) has marked out three most important approaches to understanding of a tradition in humanities: 1) functional – a tradition is transfer of legacy, succession; 2) object-related approach – a tradition is that is transferred, i.e. legacy itself; 3) subject-related approach – a tradition is our attitude towards legacy. From my standpoint in all three approaches three main aspects of a tradition find expression. Taken individually, separately from the others they can not determine this social and cultural phenomenon. Besides, they are unequal. Functional notion of a tradition conveys its essential aspect, its substance, heart of being. Because a tradition is always a succession between present and past (actual or imaginary). But functional side of a tradition necessarily turns with its object side, as there cannot be a succession without something that is transferred, a function cannot exist without an object of its reference; if there is nothing to transfer, there is no process of transference. The case is somewhat different with the subject-related aspect of a tradition. Our attitude to legacy, to that which is transferred, the attitude that a succession cannot do without, will not come into existence, acts as the necessary condition, or the cause, by whose availability only a tradition can be made up and exist. Now let us give the definition of a tradition, that we shall adhere to in this article: a tradition is transferring legacy, stable succession, carried out because of a certain attitude to this legacy. If there is an attitude, there is the subject of it, who will work as tradition-carrier. It can be a social group to quality, attributes and condition of which tradition is always linked. So we can say that a tradition is activity of social group by which transference of legacy comes to be. Let us mark out elements of a tradition: 1) object of tradition (legacy); 2) subject – tradition-carrier; 3) attitude to the object of a tradition, inherent in its subject, and values that determine subject’s attitude to legacy; 4) carried by subject activity of legacy transfer. Philosophical ideas (or knowledge) as a rough approximation are that very object, transfer of which is the core of a tradition in philosophy. But these expressions need to be more specific. Most likely the agenda should be named in the first place as an object of succession in philosophy, that is a certain set of topics, problems, questions, that make a sort of directions for movement of philosophical thought. They are changing from an epoch to epoch, from a culture to culture, from a country to country, now slowly and evolutionary and then sometimes swiftly and revolutionary. Further, as an object of a philosophical tradition one should regard conceptual and categorial expression of the agenda, because one and the same agenda can be conceptualized in many different ways. Conceptual apparatus, categories are inherited, as well as their meaning charge, interpretation. One more important object of philosophical heritage are activities, that philosophers put into practice. Here a list of activities appropriate to philosophers should be considered (for example, Socrates conversations, writing of books, delivering of lectures, etc.), together with norms, models and standards that governs their execution. It is necessary to emphasize that an object even of a single tradition is a compound formation consisting of many specifically linked elements. These are certain values that surely stay behind reception or unacceptance of some philosophical agenda. Values are the key element of a tradition. Philosophers’ interests guidance depends on them. Values are among the most important junctions that connect philosophy with the surrounding culture. Apprehending values of culture philosophy seeks to substantiate (or to depreciate, to demolish) them, building conceptual schemas. By cultural values, that philosophy apprehends, society influences it, accepts or rejects some philosophical heritage, thereby supporting or destroying some philosophical traditions. Values are connected with an object of philosophical tradition by its subject. Tradition’s subject-carrier is a group, various groups. Speaking most generally, the carrier of traditions in philosophy is the community of philosophers. But it is not possible to outline this community distinctly, because a scientist, a writer, a priest, a politician, etc., can be a philosopher as well. And this community is not homogenous, it is divided into subgroups on theoretical, ethno-cultural, political and many other grounds. Not only physically real group can be the subject-carrier of a tradition in philosophy, but also ideal groups, consisting from people that have no immediate connection with each other. Moreover, the latter groups can include not live persons along with alive. In view of this circumstance even a single philosopher is able to act as a physically real carrier of legacy, and then he deserves to be labeled a tradition custodian, or a tradition reviver. In relation to values all traditions can be ascribed to one of two kinds: reflective, whose subject realizes values, and unreflective, irrational. Many researchers of traditions associate this notion only with active, rational and reflective attitude to legacy. But there are quite a few reasons not to neglect successions of another kind – passive, irrational and unreflective, that could not be called otherwise than traditions. When philosophical heritage is transferred this way, reproduction of well-established, settled philosophical schools and trends occurs, as it took place, for instance, in the history of Medieval scholasticism or of Soviet philosophy. In such cases we do not find any selective attitude to preserving of intellectual objects, the subject of tradition doesn’t make any choice, but the fact itself of preserving and reproduction of a legacy indicates an implicit acknowledgement of it as valuable (veritable, “the only true”, etc.). Traditions of this sort play a great role in philosophy: they provide its sustainability. By this reason let’s call them stabilizing traditions. Exactly them has meant Hegel in the above-cited quotation, who has called philosophical traditions “the spiritual substance” of a generation. Characteristic of traditions rationally-reflective is their active and selective attitude to some philosophical heritage (object of a tradition), and this choice is rationally grounded and defended. If the core of the attitude consists in keeping, conserving of heritage, then we deal with rationally-reflective variety of stabilizing traditions. Rationally-reflective traditions of other kind are built on the base of marked down values and some new (or revalued old) ones, that relate to the former as a kind of anti-values. Forming on this base attitude leads as a result to renunciation of some legacy (disintegration, repudiation of “outmoded” tradition), acception of another legacy (consolidation of a new tradition, or revival of “forgotten” one), in particular, alien to the given country (bringing in of an alien tradition, influence from abroad). Traditions of this kind should be called transforming, because changeability in philosophy is attributed to them. The time for transforming tradition comes when society goes through value change, that accompanies any more or less sizeable social cataclysm. Reforms and revolutions affect directly the subject of a tradition, which can be suppressed, disintegrated and even exterminated. But value shift plays much more significant role in traditions fate. It results in discrediting and disactualization of some traditions, actualization of other. Discrediting has to do with the object of a tradition – ideas, conceptions, agenda, affects standing for them or somehow associated with them (at times quite accidentally and superficially) philosophical schools and trends, single philosophers (i.e. the subject of a tradition). Bright example of tradition’s discrediting one can see in the fortune of Enlightenment in France at the beginning of XIX century. By words of English historian of philosophy J.G. Lewis, “the reaction against philosophy of XVIII century was not a sort of reaction against an untenable doctrine, but against the doctrine, that has shown itself to be a source of awful immorality…Associated in human minds with the Saturnalias of terror, philosophical views of Condillaque, Diderot and Cabanis turned in the eyes of this people to be responsible for the crimes of Convent…” The history of Russia is even more abundant with revolutions, than French history is. That’s why in the fortune of philosophy in Russia the transforming traditions have played more significant role. Russia lived through radical value-turn twice only in the 20th century. First time it took place in 20th ages of the century, when considerable amount of the home philosophical heritage (first of all religious and idealistic philosophy) suffered discrediting as “borgeous”, “reactionary”, etc. Many of before existent relays were interrupted, and the succession, that makes tradition, was broken. However, some kind of old traditions – naturalistic and Hegelian ones – were found fitting new “proletarian” values, and the new national philosophy begin to develop basing on them – dialectical materialism. But this new philosophy started to assert itself rather soon as continuation of “materialistic” and “scientific” traditions of the home thought. Then a half century long period of Soviet philosophy has set in, and within it stabilizing traditions had played the decisive role. Again at the end of 80th a new value-turn came, resulting in discrediting of Marxist philosophy, and its entire agenda together with notions and conceptions lost at once any interest for society, who turned away from it, as French society did at the beginning of the XIX century in respect to the agenda and conceptions, that have been shadowed by revolutionary terror of the Jacobinic dictatorship.