Russian and Kazakh philosophy

Russian philosophy

The central idea of Russian philosophy was to find and justify special role of Russia in the common history and destiny of mankind.

This was important for the understanding of Russian philosophy, which indeed has its own special features.

The XIX-XX centuries were the age of enlightenment in independent philosophical thought of Russia, emergence of new trends in philosophy, demonstrating diversity of approaches to the problem of human.

However, consideration of human problems consists of representatives of various philosophical directions. Russian philosophy is presented as history of struggle of two opposing directions:

1. Desire to organize life on European way – Westernizers;
2. Desire to protect Russian traditions from foreign influence – Slavophiles.

Beginning of independent philosophical thought in Russia linked to slavophilism. The founders:
A. Khomyakov
(1804-1861) and
I. Kireevsky
(1806-1856).

Their way of philosophizing, which contained the unity of mind, will and feelings, they openly opposed to Western, one-way (односторонний) and rationalistic.

Spiritual basis for slavophilism was Orthodox Christianity with the positions where they criticized the classical idealism of Kant and Hegel.

Slavophiles have original doctrine of Unity (соборность), bringing people together on the basis of higher spiritual, religious values – love and liberty.

The opposite to Slavophiles direction, was Westernizers, who felt that Russia can reach the same stage of development as the West. Virtue for Russia is to understand Western values and become a normal civilized country.

The founder of Westernizers was Russian thinker Peter Chaadayev (1794-1856), author of “Philosophical letters”, in which he talked about the cultural and socio-historical backwardness (отсталости) of Russia.

Prominent Westernizers were A.Herzen, N.Ogarev, K.Kavelin, V.Belinsky.

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV
(1853-1900)

I. GODMANHOOD
1. God is All in Everything.
2. God posits his Otherness – the World.

II. FREEDOM AND EVIL
- Freedom is the likeness of God in man, while perfection is the image of God in man.

Freedom leads a human being away of God, but only through freedom man can return to God.
Evil manifests itself in egoism and suffering.

- In egoism, person opposes himself to other entities; in suffering person experiences events as the obstacle for the attainment (приобретение) of own goals and desires.

III. LOVE
- To overcome suffering, man must overcome his own egoism - Goal of love is the transformation of divided mortal beings into integral immortal being, the reception of temporal into eternity.

IV. SOPHIA (God’s wisdom)
- Sophia is the Eternal ‘Feminine (Женский) soul of the world.
- Sophia occupies a mediating position between the multiplicity of living entities and the absolute unity of Deity.

V. TOTAL-UNITY (всеединство)
- The gradual realization of ideal total-unity is an ultimate goal of the cosmic and historical processes.

NIKOLAI FEDOROV
(1828-1903)

1. Contemporary humanity is divided into the learned and unlearned, the rich and poor. Common task is to restore the kinship (сходство) and unity of mankind.

2. People are brothers and sisters because they have one heavenly Father. Religion is the way to unification.
3. True religion is not an abstract faith in God, but the worship of all our fathers and forefathers since they gave life to us.

NIKOLAI BERDYAEV
(1874-1948)

Ontologically, freedom precedes God and arises from nothingness, “non-ground”.
God creates world from nothingness, but He cannot limit freedom which is prior to God.
God is not all-powerful.

4. There are two worlds:
- noumenal world-in-itself which is spirit, personality, freedom, and
- creativity, phenomenal world, which is alienated from personality and imposes (налагать) general laws and material objects as limitations of human freedom

Kazakh philosophy

Kazakh society is characterized by philosophizing in other forms at the level of worldview universals that shape human activity.
Main ideological orientation of being among the Kazakhs were based on objective-practical activities.

In the way of nomadic life mythological thinking still plays a huge role.

Nomadic life requires space and needs a portable (переносной) buildings, dynamic economy, food supplies (припасы), special clothing, etc. Any of these elements of culture are moment of seeing the world, a component of space people.

- Tengriism
- Shamanism
- Space and time
- Syncretism
- Tolerance

In the Kazakh language, wisdom (Danalyk and Hakim) is close to the word of philosophy. In Arabian sources, Hakim was a title for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. This tradition was taken over by Abay Kunanbayev.

The history of the Kazakh philosophy can be divided into two periods. The first period is genesis, i.e., the rich traditions of Turkic-Islamic philosophers’ thought, founded by prominent thinkers as Korkut-Ata, Yusuf Balasaghuni, Khoja Akhmet Yassaui, Al-Farabi, Mahmut Kashgari, etc.

The second stage is the Kazakh worldview formation, based on the creativity of the medieval thinkers. At this time, there appeared the first Kazakh thinkers – Asan Kaigy and Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat Beg.

Asan Sabit uly (Kaigy)
(the late 14th – the 50-s of the 15th cent.)
was the first Kazakh zhyrau, social thinker, founder of the idea of “Zher-Uyik” (The Land Promised), which became the basic idea of the independent Kazakh Khanate.

In fact, he was not only a thinker, but the originator of a rationalistic use of the land. The issues of the territory, the rules and principles of public administration, especially the formation of a unified nation – all these issues were raised by Asan Kaigy.

The tradition of Asan Kaigy existed until the collapse of the Kazakh Khanate. The successors of his traditions were such zhyraus like Kaztugan, Dospambet, Shalkiiz, Aktamberdy, Umbetej, Bukhar zhyrau, etc. If the last Khan of the Kazakh Khanate was Abylai, the last zhyrau was Bukhar zhyrau.

Main feature of zhyrau is two main themes in their creativity: Power and Heroism. Zhyrau had no legal authority, but he was the mediator between the ruler and the ordinary people.

Another Kazakh philosopher is Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat Beg (Duglati) (1499-1551), who in his book “Tarikh-I-Rashidi” shows the spiritual unity of Turkic people and traces their relationships to the world civilization.

Muhammad Haidar Duglati’s book contains not only the complete history of Mogholstan and the Kazakh Khanate. In the book he considers philosophical problems of history; such as the time, destiny, history of religion, evaluation of historical events, the sense of life, the principles of public administration, etc.

Khan’s period lasted from 1456 till 1822 (“Charter of Siberian Kirghiz”). More than three centuries the Kazakh society existed as a socio-cultural commonality with the system of values, reflected in numerous poems: “Alpamys batyr”, “Er Targyn,” “Er Edige”, “Kambar Batyr”, “Forty Crimean batyrs”, etc.

With the accession of Kazakhstan to the Russian Empire the idea of secular education was gradually developed. A special role in the distribution of secular knowledge played Ybyrai Altynsarin, Shokan Walikhanov and Abai Kunanbaev.

In the works of Ybyrai Altynsarin (1841-1889), there is no complex philosophical metaphors. He needed to be understood by the ordinary people. He believed that at the beginning of study, the pupil has to be sure in the benefits of knowledge.

The heritage of Shokan Walikhanov (1835-1865) was that in his writings it was created cultural-political, public portrait of the late 19th century.

“Chinese Turkestan and Dzungaria”
“Traces of Shamanism among the Kazakhs”
“Regarding the camps of Kazakh nomads”
“The Kazakhs”
“General view of Dzungaria”, etc.

Main issues studied by Sh.Walikhanov were:
Shamanism as a historical phenomenon in the Kazakh culture
Democracy
Geographical determinism

Abai Kunanbayev
(1845-1904)

Against the isolation of the Kazakhs
Criticized them, who had power and could not use it
Critique clergy (духовенство)

Abay defines the relationship between Allah and man through love.
1. Duty of man is to love the Creator, who created it with love.
2. In addition, a man must love all people as brothers,
3. Man also must love justice, as the good, true path.
These three characteristics of love are at the core of Holiness of man (Imani Gul).

According to Abai, human contemplates the world through the eyes of body. The real spiritual understanding is not given to everyone, because the body destroys many abilities of the soul. Emancipation from carnal (плотские) desires means spirituality (sufism and asceticism).

Abai also explained models of spiritually mature person (Tolyk Adam). By Abai, mature person realizes three things:
Mind,
Heart,
Will.

Values in Abai’s philosophy:
Knowledge
Investigation of international culture
Morality (Адам бол!)

Shakarim Kudaiberdiyev
(1858-1931)

Three truths:
- God
- Soul-knowledge
- Conscience