Contents
Scientist and monk, physiologist and theologian, he studied the mechanisms of human mental life. Science, culture, life, conscience are inseparable in his works. With a complete lack of moralization.
Aleksey Ukhtomsky is a bright, almost improbable person in the history of Russian science. Russian prince, candidate of theology, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, a monk in the world. One of the galaxy of great Russian physiologists of the late XNUMXth – mid-XNUMXth centuries – Ivan Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, Vladimir Bekhterev – Aleksey Ukhtomsky came closer than others to studying the mechanisms of human mental life. A true man of science, he devoted his life to the knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the human spirit. (Nikolai Gogol would call him a “spiritual anatomist”.) He created the doctrine of the dominant *, which is equally strong from the standpoint of physiology and psychology. He believed that it was the dominants, being both a bodily and a spiritual mechanism, that subjugate our spiritual life, direct our behavior and determine the logic of thinking. This is a form of causality that brings us closer to understanding free will, free and responsible action – an act.
The main dominant of Ukhtomsky himself was “constant listening to what is happening in our spirit, how it gets sick, rises and grows.” He, of course, understood that the biblical sequence of creation “spirit – life – mind” is not a guarantee of such a hierarchy in every person, but he himself never lost sight of it.
It is difficult to convey the extraordinary flavor emanating from his writings, diaries, letters. In them, science, culture, life, conscience are inseparable in the complete absence of moralization. That is why you constantly return to them, “you peer into the lines as if into wrinkles of thoughtfulness” (R. Rilke) and learn to penetrate deep into.
* From lat. dominans – dominant.
His dates
- June 13 (25), 1875: born in the family of Prince Alexei Ukhtomsky in his estate (Vesloma village, Rybinsk district, Yaroslavl province).
- 1882-1894: studied at the Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps.
- 1898: graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in Sergiev Posad and defended his Ph.D. thesis in theology.
- 1906: graduated from the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University.
- 1923: approved as a professor at Petrograd University.
- 1932: Elected Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
- 1935: elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
- August 31, 1942: died, buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Keys to Understanding
become human
The human face is a new facet of the eternal problems of philosophy and psychology, seen by Ukhtomsky. “The real happiness of mankind will be possible only after a person can find in himself the ability to understand the closest person he meets as a concrete, original being that is not replaceable in nature. In a word, when each of us brings up a dominant on the face of another. And from that moment, when the face of another is revealed, the person himself deserves to be talked about as a person.
Deserve an interlocutor
He called everyday communication “empirical” and distinguished it from genuine communication – “interviews”. Attention and sympathy, which we feel during genuine (live, open) communication, Ukhtomsky contrasted with absent-mindedness and fuss. “Be able to build and earn yourself an interlocutor, what you would like! This is unattainable by intricacies and philosophies.
mind requirements
Ukhtomsky made high demands not only on the mind, but also on reflection on the results of intellectual work. “Mind is the highest and only vision of truth, things and being. But it happens that he is the last to notice what is obvious to the most primitive observation. Art served as a model of thinking for him, in which he saw “the continuation of scientific work, that is, the study of the laws of being in the field of the human spirit.”
intuition of conscience
Alexei Ukhtomsky was always worried about the mystery of conscience. “The heart, intuition and conscience are the most far-sighted that we have. This is no longer a personal experience, but the experience of generations, handed down to us. Conscience – warns with special unrest and emotions of a higher order about the proper consequences of what is being done before us. However, Ukhtomsky did not delude himself about conscience – “after all, it can be completely calm, satisfied and not warning of any troubles, while a person or a whole society is engulfed in crime! This is when crime became habitual!”
The intuition of conscience determines the stages of personal development, when we successively move from stage to stage from the ethics of hedonism to caring for the other, about the neighbor, and then to the ethics of duty and finally to the ethics of mercy. In the last, highest step, Pushkin’s “mercy for the fallen” is heard.
About it
Books by Alexei Ukhtomsky
- “Intuition of conscience”, Petersburg writer, 1996.
- “Honored Interlocutor”, Rybinsk Compound, 1997.
- “Dominant of the Soul”, Rybinsk Compound, 2000.