Among the most recent unforeseen events of this modernity, those of 11 September 2001 exposed the dark side of globalization. If science reduces the whole universe to its one logic, philosophy retains a crucial role as a process of production of meanings for the human being, a being incapable of situating himself or herself in relation to the universe except through dialogue. To the extent that no fragment of truth can be absolutized, only permanent thought can constitute a universal cognition.

The human race is defined in relation to the search for the meaning of life, but it is human beings’ search itself that constructs this meaning. As against the definition of the individual as a product of society (20th-century determinism) an integral being is sought in the intuition of Russian spirituality. Ethics is the foundation stone of everything: thought brings together within itself moral, artistic and ontological principles that help one to understand life at the level of personal participation. Between (...) prosaic illuminism (which is the logical source of modern consumerism) and romantic poetry (which attempts to understand the ineffable nature of life), it can be argued that personal development and historical events are complementary. Life is tragic. Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche, when trying to understand the tragedy of human life (its meaninglessness), applied three form of ‘distancing’, and so bypassed suffering. Thus the meaning of life lies in the battles fought on behalf of great hopes in a world of suffering. (shrink)

Résumé L’espèce humaine se définit par rapport à la recherche du sens de la vie, mais ce sont les recherches mêmes de l’homme qui construisent ce sens. Contre la définition de l’individu comme produit de la société (déterminisme du xx e siècle) on cherche, dans l’intuition de la spiritualité russe, un être intégral. L’éthique est le fondement de toute chose : la pensée réunit en elle les principes moraux, artistiques et ontologiques qui permettent de comprendre la vie au niveau d’une (...) participation personnelle. Entre l’illuminisme prosaïque (qui est la source logique du consumérisme moderne) et la poésie romantique (qui essaie de comprendre le caractère ineffable de la vie), on peut soutenir que développement personnel et faits historiques sont complémentaires. La vie est tragique. Spinoza, Kant et Nietzsche, essayant de comprendre la tragédie de la vie humaine (son non-sens), ont appliqué trois formes de « distanciation », passant a côté de la souffrance. Le sens de la vie réside, donc, dans les combats accomplis au nom des grandes espérances dans un monde de souffrances. (shrink)

Philosophy appears to be the need to spiritually perceive the ontological involvement of man's subjective world in the vastness of universal ties and relations. Philosophical thought is largely determined by one duality: to perceive the universe in its absolute truth, including man as a "moment" in the universe; and to discover that the universe filled with meaning finally reveals itself in man's inner word.