Elusive Generations

Appeal to the idea of ​​generation is a fairly effective tool for interpreting changes occurring in various spheres of human activity, in particular in the field of philosophical knowledge. It links the historical picture of such changes to an important anthropological constant - human age - and allows us to reconstruct both the general natural dynamics of what is happening and the unique features of each stage of the dynamic process. However, the “generational” (discrete) dimension of history in some specific cases may lose its significance and go into the shadows, giving way to those dimensions that ensure continuity and continuity. In relation to philosophical knowledge, these are factors of the universal unity of the problematic and the philosophical school. The biography of the author of this essay shows that a certain part of Russian philosophers is characterized by precisely this correlation of features and driving forces of their academic career. Philosophers belonging to this group are characterized by two common features: 1) coming to philosophy from other humanities disciplines; 2) coming to philosophy against the backdrop of a more or less acute “personnel crisis” in this discipline at the turn of the 1990–2000s. They can also be called a kind of generation, at least a generation within a generation. However, their “generational” unity is purely structural, and the content of their activities is determined by their belonging to the schools through which they were introduced to philosophy. Thus, the author of the essay, who initially specialized in the history of social thought, became a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Tula State University named after L. N. Tolstoy, working closely with the ethics sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This determined not only his long-term connection with the institute, but also his belonging to the Moscow ethical school with its methodological approaches and theoretical guidelines regarding the phenomenon of morality. Such a biographical scenario excluded priority communication with philosophical peers and contributed to the perception of one’s discipline (ethics) not as a space of generational change, which dramatically fight each other to define a “universally recognized reality” (J. Ortega y Gasset), but as a space for collective solutions to cross-cutting theoretical problems.