The Turn to Future: History and Present in Philosophical Thought of Swami Vivekananda, Swami Vivekananda, Problem of Modern India and its Solution, Trans. by Skorokhodova, Tatiana G.

Abstract

An idea of renaissance in Bengal social thought is interpreted in the article in the context of permanent presence of “Tchaadaev’s paradigm” in Modern Indian philosophy. Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy of crisis is comparable to Pyotr Tchaadaev’s ideas and approaches in his Lettres Philosophiques. Based on hermeneu­tic analysis of texts by Vivekananda, the turn to the Future in his thinking about history of India and its condition in Present is described in the research. The idea of renaissance was offered in Problem of Modern India and its Solution as well as the other lectures and articles by Vivekananda as the sign of reorienta­tion of thought and practice to the Future and rejection of restoration of the Past in Modern India. Thinking on Indian and the World history, the philosopher re­peated the Tchaadaev’s ideas as applied to India, such as description of history as development of thought and human spirit, searching for the achievements of In­dian civilization, analyzing its role and place in the World human history, its in­teraction with other peoples in the context of the ‘East – West’ problem and the critics of the present India’s decline. Vivekananda unites organically a liberal vector of free action for positive transformations with a conservative one to be based on highest spiritual and cultural achievements of India. The turn from the origin of India’s history to its meaning and purpose had become the founda­tion to a philosophical understanding of Indian history