Philosophical Problems in the Theoretical Heritage of K.D. Ushinsky (to the 200th Anniversary of the Birth)

Abstract

The article provides a historical and philosophical analysis of the theoretical her­itage of one of the most significant figures of the “golden age” of Russian cul­ture, K.D. Ushinsky. Ushinsky entered intellectual history primarily as a “teacher of teachers”, the founder of scientific pedagogy and philosophy of education in Russia. At the same time, he paid great attention to the philosophical substan­tiation of his views on education, and a number of his works contain a fairly de­tailed exposition of general issues of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history and philosophy of science. In philosophical terms, Ushinsky was sig­nificantly influenced by Hegel, the Russian Hegelians (P.G. Redkin), Feuerbach and the first positivism; however, as it is shown in the article, at the same time he freely combined and interpreted ideas coming from different sources, taking a generally independent theoretical position. The originality of Ushinsky’s philo­sophical thinking was especially clearly manifested in his development of the ca­tegory of “narodnost” (a concept that in the Russian intellectual tradition meant national identity, preserved in its pure form mainly in the lower social strata). Ushinsky significantly modified the meaning of this category which had a key importance for the Russian culture of the “golden age”, giving it not only an evaluative, but also an instrumental character. In addition, in Ushinsky’s works, this concept received a certain sociological meaning and interpretation within the framework of Ushinsky’s ideas about the stages of the socio-historical development of mankind and the modernization of post-reform Russian society, which was experiencing difficult collisions characteristic of the process of the for­mation of capitalism.