“Anthropological or Humanistic View of the World”: a Model of Scientific Cognition in Mikhailovsky's Heritage

Abstract

The article focuses on the approach to the study of human psyche and behavior, suggested by literary critic and ideologist of Narodnikism N. K. Mikhailovsky in the second half of the 19th century. Mikhaylovsky is proved to have developed an original model of scientific cognition, which was based on the synthesis of knowledge from different fields of science and built around an “anthropological or humane point of view”. Scientific search within the framework of this model is carried out with the help of the subjective method, based on the effort to understand another person, and the subject of cognition is a “profane” — a person complete with all of his social experience. The problems put forward by Mikhailovsky seem relevant in the light of the modern “cognitive turn” in the humanities, the desire for interdisciplinary approach and the creation of an integrative scientific picture of the world, fundamental rethinking of the classical objectivistic model of scientific knowledge.