Nature and essential characteristics of classical rationality

Authors

  • Viktor S. Levytskyy Ukrainian Institute of Strategies of Global Development and Adaptation, 6, Rond-point Schuman, 1040, Brussel, Belgium

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2019.304

Abstract

The 20 th century began under the sign of deconstruction of the classical comprehension of substantiality of history, culture and mind. It turned out that each culture has its unique worldview universals and a conclusion has been made that there is a principal difference between classical and modern cultural worlds, and in the rationalities characteristic to them. In the article, based on V. Stepin’s conception of scientific rationality, the essential characteristics of the classical mind, which possess heuristic potentials when comparing pre-modern and modern rationality, are explicated. In particular, the ontologism of the pre-modern mind has been distinguished and substantiated based on historical and philosophical material — rootedness in being, only partially related to man; its hierarchy is the dependence of cognitive possibilities on the ontological level of the entities opening to the mind; and the transcendence is the fundamental incomprehensibility of the bases and “guarantors” of the mind and the world for the mind itself. Within the framework of the classical mind, archetypical principles of Western rationality were formulated as such, some of which, after the secularization of medieval culture, became the principle of organizing secular social reality, which ultimately led to the emergence of a new social reality, later called Modernism.

Keywords:

mind, rationality, modernity, ontology, hierarchy, transcendence

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References

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Published

2019-09-30

How to Cite

Levytskyy, V. S. . (2019). Nature and essential characteristics of classical rationality. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 35(3), 430–446. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2019.304

Issue

Vol. 35 No. 3 (2019): Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies

Section

Philosophy

License

Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.