About Epistemological Problems in Chekhov’s Work

The article examines the epistemological issues in Chekhov’s work. In the late 1880s, the writer came to the conclusion: “No one knows the real truth”. He considers our knowledge of the world to be relative and hypothetical. Chekhov understands that rational cognition turns out to be dependent on the point of view from which it is produced, and therefore is insufficient, incomplete, and not entirely reliable. Reducing a person to a “label” (a general concept) impoverishes ideas about him and leads to distorted opinions about a person. The “label” also eliminates people, erases, at least partially, their individual differences. The disadvantages of rational cognition look insurmountable. For Chekhov, as well as for N.O. Lossky and A. Bergson, life is an organic whole. According to Chekhov, knowledge in its own, “pure” sense involves an uninterested immersion in the subject of knowledge. We believe that all of this led the writer to become distrustful of rationalistic knowledge, which divides organic wholes into their component parts, and to come to the conclusion that intuition is necessary. Chekhov does not reject the great role of rationalistic cognition in understanding life, but it turns out to be not the main thing, the main cognition is intuitive cognition, “the gift of insight into life,” as Chekhov defines it, which is not given to everyone. At the same time, a deep intuitive understanding of life must be combined with an ethical principle, this brings to mind the philosophy of N.O. Lossky, A. Bergson, and M. Scheler.