Познание чужого как способ самопознания: Запад, Индия, Россия (попытка ксенологии)

Abstract

The article proposes a philosophical concept of “xenology” (the science of alien) as a way of knowing oneself through the knowledge of the culturally and civilizationally alien as a way of forming identity “self-construction”. The author formulates four principles of xenology. First: we can realize our Self only through the “not-Me”, the other, the alien. Second: civilizational, cultural and national identity is actualized when confronted or in conflict with someone else's identity. For example, the Greeks realized themselves as “political animals” only against the background of “barbarians”. Third: our “self-construction” is already embedded in the very model of someone else. Fourth: the image of a stranger in a particular culture can serve as an important indicator of its level of development (tell me what your alien is, and I'll tell you what you are), as well as an instrument of both self-affirmation and self-understanding, self-esteem, self-criticism, and a stimulus for self-improvement. As an illustration of these principles, the article offers nine models of the alien, highlighted on the material of the cultural history of two civilizations – European and Indian as well as in connection with the analysis of modern Russian reality. The models develop into a sequence that is determined by the movement from the biological to the social and cultural: xenophobic (ethological), mythological, model of antipodes, model of races, model of the initial state, passeist model, model of the natural state, heterotopic and universalist models. We humans, as a biological species, have a fear of the alien, but we rise above this fear with the help of social and cultural mechanisms that allow us to expand and deepen our identity from family, collective, ethnos, nation to the entire human race (presumption of humanity). In the conclusion of the article, the author examines the manipulation of “friend-foe” identities based on the xenophobic model in modern Russian political discourse.