The Cultural Horizon of the Works of P.P. Gaidenko

Abstract

Piama Pavlovna Gaidenko’s research program is recognized as one of the most important foundations of historical and philosophical thought in Russia. None of the modern Russian philosophers or historians of philosophy can say that Gaidenko’s works did not have any influence on them. For beginners in philoso­phy Gaidenko’s articles and books serve as a key and a reliable source of ap­proaching philosophical problems. For those who, with the help of Gaidenko, have already acquired the first guidelines in philosophy, her style of writing – clear, logical and concise – becomes a model of academic ductus. For the rest of the researchers the texts of P.P. Gaidenko create space for a conversation with a competent interlocutor. In this article I draw attention to the features of the his­torical and philosophical approach of P.P. Gaidenko, among which the most im­portant are: 1) the importance of cultural context, which, according to Gaidenko, is the basis of any spiritual action of a person; 2) Gaidenko’s characteristic inter­est in ontological problems and those philosophers for whom these questions were of prime importance; 3) the serious influence of Heidegger’s “history of Being” on the formation of Gaidenko’s concept of the types of rationality that successively replace each other. The clarification of these features will make it possible to understand why Gaidenko sees a way out of the scientific and ideo­logical crisis of modernity in turning to the ancient type of thinking, focused on the contemplation of physis.