I. A.Inshakov

Modernity as a Time for Utopia

The article is devoted to the question of the relationship between Modernity and utopia. Modernity is viewed as a special time regime (i.e., a set of socially significant forms of perception of time by people and social groups), which constitutes a number of conditions that open up opportunities and create obstacles for the utopian thinking and the policies it directs, struggle practices, etc. The author identifies three important from the perspective for the existence of utopia conditions. The first condition is the tension between the openness of Modernity to qualitative changes and its desire for self-closure and reduction towards one of its features (rationalization, global capitalism, etc.). The possibilities of utopian thinking in a particular historical situation depend on the predominance of one of these impulses. The second condition is the problematization of any specific utopia against the background of the general process of reflexive self-renewal of modern societies, the appropriation of criticism to oneself and its recoding into the elements of routine management. The third condition is the colonization of time due to the subjectively perceived acceleration of time and loss of control over time, which complicates any thinking outside the everyday facts, including utopian thinking. According to the author’s conclusion, these three conditions are interrelated: it is the openness of Modernity to change that causes both the problematization of a specific utopia and the colonization of accelerating time, every moment of which should be spent on changes for the better. In its turn, the colonization of time undermines the possibility of “stopping” it, transferring it into the so-called “messianic time”, a time of eventfulness and concreteness.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2022-104-1-7-23

Pages: 7-23

Aesthetic Dimension of Social Contract: Criticism and Development of Franklin Ankersmit’s Approach to the Political

The aim of the article is to clarify the ontological foundations of the political representation within Franklin Ankersmit’s theory in the context of the modern discussion about the crisis of the liberal-democratic project and the political per se. Taking an almost unique position in this discussion, Ankersmit insists on the presence of the political in the contemporary institutions of democratic representation, resorting to the tools of the theory of aesthetics to justify his viewpoint.

The authors recognize Ankersmit’s approach as a promising direction of the reflection on possible ways out of the political crisis, but at the same time they draw attention to its inherent flaws arising from the insufficient conceptual elaboration of its political and ontological foundations. Ankersmit does not clarify how representational relationships arise and what mechanisms are responsible for maintaining the connection between the representative and the represented. Based on the aesthetic theory of Martin Heidegger, as well as the interpretations of the social contract by Carl Schmitt, Paul Ricœur and Alexan der Filippov, the authors suggest that the theory of social contract can be used as an ontological basis for Ankersmit’s concept, and show how the aesthetic approach to the political can be harmonized with this theory and why Ankersmit’s criticism of this theory is substantively inaccurate. The authors’ arguments demonstrate that the theory of social contract can be articulated in the categories of an aesthetic approach to the political and become its ontological foundation, thereby resolving certain concerns about the origin and functioning of the relations of representation in the society.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2021-101-2-30-46

Pages: 30-46