The social ideal as an a priori concept of the Russian philosophy of history (Second half of the XIX – early ХХ century)

Abstract

The article fixes two dimensions of the problem of the social ideal: axiological and philosophical-historical. The social ideal is considered by the author as an a priori concept of philosophical and historical knowledge, which asserts the scientific legitimacy of assessing historical events and social reality from the standpoint of moral consciousness and universal human ideas about what should be done. The author shows that its inclusion in the scientific apparatus of the philosophy of history allows us to understand the historical movement of mankind and individual peoples as an integral being, the semantic core of which is the movement from the past to the present and from it to the future in the direction of perfect forms of social community. Such a direction was presented in Russian philosophical thought by studies that correlated the movement of history and the accompanying social transformations with the interests of development and the creative self-realization of a person. This initiated attention to a new vector of consideration of the social ideal and, in this context, to historical epistemology as part of the scientific philosophy of history. In this regard, the author refers to the research of N.I. Kareev and his analysis of the role of "accidental" and "legitimate" subjectivism in the interpretation of the historical process.