Чтение, письмо, исследование в творчестве Н. Ф. Федорова

Abstract

The paper deals with the concept of reading developed by N. F. Fedorov. Reading is a part of the life-creating process aimed at resurrection — “sacred work of restoring” the lives of ancestors in the new world to come. Many Fedorov’s views on culture anticipate the ideas expressed in the first third of the 20th century, in particular, the arguments of M. O. Gershenzon in a famous dispute with Viach. Ivanov in “Correspondence from Two Angles” (1921), as well as directly anticipate the concepts of reading expressed in the works of M. O. Gershenzon and Lev Shestov. Fedorov speaks of the process of thinking as separating, not uniting. The separating is the price that humanity pays for the usefulness of such mechanisms of thinking as abstraction and analysis (breaking down, separation). At the same time, in Fedorov’s concept of reading (and the activities that continue it — writing and research) a synthesis of research work is shown through the achievement of a perfect state of the universe. The similar way of thinking was expressed later by M. O. Gershenzon in his theory of slow reading. Truth can be expressed only through the personal empathy of the reader, and the main goal of the process is creating the new world.