“Information Isn’t Knowledge”: Denis Rougemont on the Verge of the Information Society

Today it’s not possible to deny the approach of the new epoch – the epoch of the information society. The high technologies have infiltrated the total scope of the everyday life of modern people. In 2020 our civilization confronted the new, but for a long time anticipated, challenge, - mass introduction of distant education in schools and universities. We still will have to comprehend the results of this social experiment in the nearest future. Still one fact arises no doubts: information nowadays is the product that is widely and easily (perhaps, too easily) accessible, but real knowledge remains the lot of the few, and even tend to marginalize. Forty years ago the stated problems became the issue of the studies of the Swiss philosopher Denis de Rougemont. His conclusions turn out to be more and more relevant with the acceleration of the process of culture, communications and education digitalization. His article “Information Isn’t Knowledge” has been published in Russian for the first time. The article deals with the issues of information technologies integration into the human cognitive activity, its influence on the thinking process and cultural, ethic and spiritual values formation. Denis de Rougemont step by step reveals the definition of information technologies, their application in various areas of human existence, their ability to compete with personality and the consequences of their integration in everyday life. These speculations become especially valuable in the era of the triumph for information society and global computerization.

Geopolitical Project and Transhumanism Elements in the Worldview of the Russian Youth

The article is devoted to the analysis of the worldview of the Russian youth on the basis of the results of the opinion poll carried out by the author’s methods in St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk in 2019 – 2020. The subject of the study was to discover the understanding of such notions as family, people, patriotism by the young Russians, to reveal the values of the young, to examine their attitude towards ethnic issues , among them – interethnic marriages and ethnic self-identification of the children in such families. The author reveals in what degree each of the studied categories transforms in the conscience of the young in view of the ideology of transhumanism, as well as how these transformations occur. The sources of the transformations are viewed as the consequence of the imposition of political and technological project, which is transhumanism per se. The mechanisms of such project influence are analyzed, in particular, the influence on the conscience of the youth, and the author explains which elements of the said mechanisms and why are prone to corrosion first of all. The author comes out with the suggestions how to resist the transhumanistic project and how to induce the young to this resistance.

Postliberal Politics

The present article consists of key extracts from the recently published Adrian Pabst’s book “Postliberal Politics. The Coming Era of Renewal” (2021). According to the author, stability in the West faces the challenges of left and right populism. And if left populism hasn’t survived the trial by real elections, the right populism is quite successful in removing liberal elites from power. At the same time the strong point of the right populism is the provision of a political program, but its weakness is in the absence of any concepts or political instruments for transitions implementation. But forces, - the ultraliberal left and anti-liberal right, - develop various types of identity politics thus undermining the cultural and civilizational fundamental aspects of the West and the feelings of common goal and common destiny. The author opposes those extremes with postliberalism – non-uniform ideological movement directed at overcoming the contradictions of the deadlocked liberal ideology that is characterized by the rise of both left and right populism. According to Adrian Pabst, postliberalism acknowledges the failure of liberal projects and at the same time the necessity to preserve the most valuable liberal aspects in new form. Liberalism with its multiple trends is not beyond hope and some institutions it created are worth preserving. Still liberal ideology lead to the situation when freedom once alienated from self-restraint and mutual obligations turned into unfreedom. Self-destruction of liberal values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and pluralism demonstrates abnormalities that at once distort liberal principles and show liberal ideology logic. Postliberalism is intended to cut short those defects. In particular, postliberal ideology proceeds from acknowledging that the society is based not on some non-personal social contract between individuals as claimed by the liberals from the times of Hobbes and Locke, but appeared as the result of mutual arrangement between generations. Civil liberty does not man freedom from obligations or freedom for the sake of egoistical interests, but liberty to take care of oneself and others. Personality development based on personal independence should be balanced by common well-being. Equality does not mean uniformity but respect for integral virtue. Individual rights should not be downgraded but should be specific and relative due to their connection with obligations towards other people. Postliberalism in this interpretation endeavors to preserve the best gains of liberal ideology while eliminating the threat of blunt authoritarianism that is always concealed in liberal logic.

The Notion of Power and Liberalism Evolution

The author of the article makes the attempt to explain the evolution of liberalism and even broader, of human history not through the evolution of the notion of freedom, that became the philosophic mainstream already at the time of Hegel and was convenient for liberalism itself, but on the basis of the notion of power analysis that is interpreted by the liberals as opposite to freedom. Proceeding from the linguistic and political history data, the author demonstrates the multi-components character of the notion of power that is interpreted as: 1) some intriguing and “charming” authority ensuring harmony and order; 2) the source of legal violence; 3) the promise of advantages that leads to voluntary assuming certain responsibilities; 4) dependence on the source of want satisfaction; 5) passion, irrational dependence. The present notion of power structure is coherent to the Varna system specific for Indo-European nations; each Varna has its own, specific only for it, understanding of power. In various epochs and in various societies we find a specific governing notion of power. So, in Russia since ancient times the worldview of Kshatriyas prevailed and it still determines to a large extent its civilizational specifics. The classic western liberalism was characterized by the Vaishyas ideology dominance, i.e. the bourgeois class; on the contrary modern liberalism, libertarianism share the world view of the “classless society” of the Dalits (“gone astray”), whose dominance deprives the world of controllability and destructs all vertical hierarchy. The way out of the universal crisis is possible only on the basis of new historical grounds that will become, according to Heidegger, “the new beginning of history”.

Ideology Restart: Liberal Project and Pandemic. Lessons of 2020

The present article is an abridged version of the paper of the “Russian Idea” site editors staff devoted to the ideological transformation in the Western countries and Russia in 2020, – the year of COVID pandemic and dramatic elections in the USA. The paper was drawn before the results of the elections were made public, but still it contains the correct forecast of the electoral victory of the liberal establishment representative. The authors also made the hypothesis confirmed by further course of events, that the winner of the ideological contest of 2020 would be the ideology described by the authors as the “new Atlantism”, – the doctrine about the Atlantic coalition interests priority over the national interests of the countries composing the coalition. The paper also forecasts the defeat of populism and Trumpism: in fact, having initiated the new cold war against China the supporters of those trends in the USA will surrender the initiative to their ideological opponents who are much more experienced in leading cold wars. On the basis of these conclusions the authors make the assumption of which new ideologies opposing the liberal establishment would be adopted by the conservative-minded intellectuals, and which conservative strategies could be of current importance for Russia as well.

“The Fatherland is not in Geography...”: on the Issue of the Evolution of Traditional Spiritual and Political Values of Russian Civilization*

The article is devoted to the study of Russian traditional basic values. On the basis of the traditionalist-conservative approach, the authors investigate the origin and substantial evolution of the concept of “fatherland” in the public consciousness of the Russian people. The study of a large number of various sources on Russian intellectual history allows to conclude that the concept of “fatherland” began to appear in chronicles, literary and spiritual-political monuments relatively early – already from the 10th century, but then it had the meaning of “hereditary property”, “ancestral possession”. Meanwhile, already in the 12th–17th centuries, the use of the concept «fatherland» in the meaning of “homeland”, “native land” were found sometimes, and since the 18th century the notion “Fatherland” was finally entrenched with the value content of patriotic love and service for the benefit of one's native country. In the 19th century in Russia, the notion of “love for the Fatherland” received a variety of interpretations, enriched with new meanings and contexts, but retained its significance as one of the most important social values and civic virtues. The authors of the article conclude that despite the cardinal transformations of the social, economic and political structure of Russia in the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of “Fatherland” as a value has retained its basic significance for Russian civilization, since it is a fundamental spiritual and political ideal and is directly related to the formation of political identity.

Boundaries of Ideology

Liberalism is the ideology that has travelled a long way of formation and development. But for all the variety of economic, legal and philosophic theories within this doctrine, the key characteristic for it still remains the specific understanding of freedom (“negative freedom”) and equality. Modern neo-liberalism has become the total ideology claiming to be identical to the all-out world order, and thus becoming the secularized religion.

Philosophy of Inequality in the Context of Post-Humanism

In the article the author examines humanism criticism that does not result in post-humanism. The author shows that post-humanism is the reaction to the humanistic idea of man as the center of the world that was typical for west-European philosophy. At the same time post-humanism doe not negate the logic of humanism, but extrapolates it to the whole of non-human world. On the contrary, Russian philosophy is free from the original premises of humanism and it views the crisis of humanism in a different perspective. The author shows that Russian philosophy is not anthropocentric, but on the contrary – anthropologic. Its feature consists in viewing the man in the perspective of his ontological expansion. The idea of such ontological expansion is based on the philosophy of inequality. When west-European philosophy today conceptualizes total world democracy on the other side of man, Russian philosophy turns to the idea of metaphysical gaps that substantiate the idea of man’s freedom and anthropological necessity of self-restrictions.

Information is not Knowledge

The article of the Swiss philosopher, cultural theorist and public figure Denis the Rougemont (1906-1985) who wrote in French, is devoted to the relevant problems of the society computerization and the transformation of the essence of knowledge under the influence of advanced information technologies. First published in 1981 the article remains topical still now. The ideas of Denis de Rougemont are especially important nowadays when the distant mode of education and work are gradually introduced in our everyday life. The author does not limit himself to just naming the risks related to the results of uncontrolled latest information technologies introduction into the usual human activity processes, but denotes each of them specifically while suggesting the way to minimize likely damage. Besides the author studies the nature of genuine knowledge and difference from the informational ersatz offered by our digital epoch. Analyzing the basic concepts the author logically proves that such human faculties as memory and intellect can’t be attributed to computer, though they’ve already entered our speech as customary in relation to it. This is the first publication of Denis Rougemont’s article in Russian.

Replace the Elite

The article presents the authors reflections on Michael Lind’s book “The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite” that tries to explain the on-going process of the rise of populism and the decline of liberalism in the West. Reflecting upon the theme and theses of the book, the author of the article analyzes the phenomenon of the managerial elite formation as a new type of the ruling class that is estranges from the social environment and value settings of the majority of population in the Western countries, and this new class sets the current economic and political agenda. Going further than the author of the book, Patrick Deneen calls for the radical replacement of the current elite libertarian ethos for popular conservatism targeted at general material and social capital, family and local communities support