In the process of interacting with students within the framework of humanities disciplines and extracurricular scientific and educational activities, it is not about forming value-based thinking, as it already exists, but about correcting and reformatting the established value paradigm through hermeneutic practice of interpretation.
The task of Russian universities today is not only to designate and describe traditional values but also to clarify their meaning and praxeological significance for each individual. We observe that, by responding to the axiological demand in universities, the standards of Greek paideia are partially being revived, aimed not at informing about positive, traditional values but at forming a worthy citizen of their country. Of course, the university is the final instance in the development and enrichment of the value system, as most of this work takes place in the family and school.
In the university context, the humanities disciplines possess a formative potential for personality development. These disciplines, such as philosophy, Russian history, Russian literature, and the new synthetic subject “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,” contain a worldview layer of meanings. The analytical potential of these disciplines helps to shed light on complex questions about the uniqueness of Russian identity and Russia’s role in the spiritual development of humanity.
The complexity of finding answers to these questions lies in the fact that we are within the Russian semantic field and specific cultural sphere, which prevents us from objectively assessing the axiological axioms of our own thoughts and actions. Therefore, the reflections of Russian philosophers and writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, most of whom were emigrants, are particularly valuable. Through comparative analysis with Western ways of thinking and the identification of its value foundations, it became possible to determine the distinctive features of Russian worldview, authentic spirituality, and the unique type of Russian thinking. The cultural, philosophical, and historical studies of V.V. Zenkovsky, G.V. Florovsky, V.S. Solovyov, A.S. Khomyakov, A.A. and I.V. Kireyevsky, N.Ya. Danilevsky, and other outstanding Russian thinkers represent the result of explicating the inherent, unique, and distinctive features of Russian thought and behavior. Here, we rely on the period before the creation of the universal image of homo soveticus, as the entire Russian spiritual culture is based on the Orthodox Christian heritage, uniquely understood in the context of global intellectual spirit. Concepts such as sobornost, all-humanity, all-unity, sophiology, and living knowledge permeate the works of Russian philosophers and thus form the spiritual foundation of Russian society. These untranslatable concepts require immersion in the context and understanding of the specifics of the Russian historical consciousness, that is, a certain way of understanding one’s role in world history.
Indeed, unlike Western European philosophy, which is primarily focused on the study of the process of cognition and the construction of grandiose epistemological systems, the goal of Russian philosophy is to seek a unifying factor in both cognition and being as a whole. The orientation towards a holistic, ontological understanding of the world is characteristic of the Russian way of thinking, which underlies the Russian worldview and value system. Assimilating this fundamental difference is an important task of educational practice in universities. Unity in diversity should become not an empty beautiful phrase but a conscious principle of life, through which the civilizational mission of Russia and the internal foundation of the interaction of the Russian person with the surrounding social world become understandable.
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