Discourse on Kindness

Abstract

The article explores the phenomenon of moral kindness, analyses its specificity, reveals its humanistic meaning and its chances for survival and affirmation in the present “unkind” world; outlines the moral necessity of the “courage of kind­ness”. The correlation between the idea of Good and kindness as an unaccount­able, “pre-notional” expression of orientation towards good in the life of human person and in individual and joint practices is traced. As shown in the article, en­gageability, often associated with significant moral hazard, is the characteristic feature of kindness. However, kindness is inherent in a special kind of insight. The principal addressing of kindness to the Other determines its relationship with conscience, spirituality, trust. It is shown that the pragmatic tendencies of nowaday epoch represent a challenge that requires not abandoning the culture of human kindness, but its consistent deepening in a reasonable polemic with the prevailing “spirit of the time”. A vector of kindness is an indispensable pre­condition for curbing the threats hanging over humanity and preserving human identity itself. On the basis of what has been said, the well-known communica­tive paradigm of “solidarity of the shocked” is rejected for the sake of an alterna­tive idea of the practical unity of people based on positive moral aspirations. It seems that our time opens up new paradoxical possibilities for the realization of this idea.