Culture infantilism and demonization of being (concerning clarification of M.K. Mamardashvili’s heroic art project)

Philosophy

Abstract

In this article, the author analyzes the contraposition between infantile consciousness and «heroic art» used by Merab Mamardashvili. Examining the phenomenon of infantile consciousness, the author discovers a number of principles underlying it. Studying how these principles give rise to areas of absent life experience (from the side of thinking or from the side of feeling), the author indicates how another principle grows out of it — the «unknowability of being» or «demonization of being». Under such conditions, a person performs an evaluation procedure instead of stating the inconceivability of a situation and the self-determination procedure (the inconceivability of a situation is evaluated negatively and is fixed in thinking in this way). Using these conclusions, the author describes a situation in which «heroism» is understood as something alien to the meanings Mamardashvili endowed the «heroic art» idea with. The alienness shows itself in the way «heroism» is expressed as defense against the «unknowability of being». The author draws attention to the principle of ratio, important to Merab Mamardashvili, which consists in maintaining the final apodictic form between the two poles — the unknowable in sensory experience and the unknowable in thinking. With the help of this principle, the meaning of Mamardashvili’s statements about «heroic art» is clarified.