“Like a Spectator in a Theatre”: on Preliminary Formulation of the Basic Concepts of Critique of Anthropology of Modernity in the Russian Philosophical Tradition

The purpose of this article is to preliminarily outline and then discuss some basic provisions of Western anthropology of modernity in the context of their critical examination by the Russian philosophical tradition. Three of these are identified: particularism, virtuality, and extreme individualism. The metaphysical premises of each provision are discussed: the priority of the multiplicity over the unity; the possible over the actual; the particular over the whole. Using some of the theses by I. V. Kireevsky and L. I. Shestov as an example, it is shown that these premises were noted and analyzed in the Russian cultural criticism of the achievements of modernity culture, and in the legacy of Russian philosophy in the first place. Using modern Western philosophical theology (J. Milbank, J. Caputo), theological implications of these premises are described, and the distortions that occurred within Western Christian philosophy itself are analyzed: the ones that led the West to the post- Christian era and also laid the foundations for the transhumanist perspective.