ИСТИНА

The thought about novelty of our time is already not very new. Everyone knows today about "postmodern condition", associated with the list of many deaths: the death of man, the death of subject, the death of author etc. We can also add to this funeral list the historical consciousness that was the attribute of the western human of XIX and the first half of XX centuries. Contemporary human doesn't feel himself a participant of history (although he may feel himself a participant or a victim of global changes, upheavals, processes etc.), and the dimension of historicity doesn't belong to his perception of the state of affairs. Sometimes this lack of historical consciousness is seen as one of the negative traits of our time. But I think that the actual problem of contemporary human is not a problem of crisis of former concepts and ways of viewing. Any new era begins with such a crisis. The problem is that we characterize our time almost exclusively in negative terms – as a crisis or damage of something, that used to be beautiful, deep, strong. Contemporary human lacks a positive reflection of our time. As a result he or she either attempts to "revive lost traditions" and so creates just simulacra, i.e. the likenesses without internal resemblance to what they want to be like; or otherwise runs without reflection, passively and uncreatively inscribed in the time trends. But is the end of historical consciousness not also the beginning of a new attitude to the past? I argue that it is so, and we can make this new attitude fruitful. For this purpose we must positively reflect the specificity of our time, we must work out a language for such a reflection. In my report I wanted to make a modest contribution to the solution of this problem.