PHILOSOPHER TARAS LIUTYI: on the «state of culture», the «wise fools», and the «new classics»
Taras Liutyi / Photo: Kyrylo Rusanivskyi
SHORT PROFILE
Name: Taras Liutyi
Date of Birth: November 23, 1972
Profession: Philosopher, Writer
How do new meanings emerge within the space of culture? How does a personality give birth to itself? Why were Hitler and Stalin not personalities? And can we live as if death does not exist? We hope that this interview with the renowned Ukrainian philosopher, writer, and musician Taras Liutyi will become that «point of support» which brings your consciousness back to the search for answers to the most essential, ultimate questions of your life. Helping him in this will be Friedrich Nietzsche, Hryhorii Skovoroda, and other thinkers whose works Taras Liutyi has explored in his remarkable books, articles, and lectures.
WHY PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOVERIES ARE POSSIBLE
W
e live in historically volatile times. That is why, from time to time, surprises happen to us. And this is despite the fact that something similar has already happened more than once. When Karl Marx revealed Hegel’s statement that «history repeats itself twice — first as tragedy, second as farce», it meant that, depending on the historical turn, certain events manifest themselves in completely new ways. In other words, the same things in different contexts can acquire meanings that the authors — who may have voiced these theses for the first time — never expected.
Even when it seems as if something is literally repeating, it still requires interpretation or being brought to the level of meanings by which humanity lives at that moment. Sometimes there is the false impression that «everything has already happened». Someone may say: Isn’t it enough to absorb fragments of texts or ideas left to us by ancient thinkers, and stop bothering anyone further, pretending to «do philosophy»? But for some reason, humanity does not cease its philosophical searches. It turns again to what «has already been». Why?
Isaac Newton once repeated a medieval thesis: «Why did I see further? Because I stood on the shoulders of giants!» That is, in order to form one’s own vision, one must rise upon the foundation laid by predecessors. Perhaps you will look at the very same things they did, but you will see them in your own way. Philosophical, scientific, or any other discoveries are fundamentally possible because humanity does not experience identical things an infinite number of times. This is precisely what Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he spoke of the «eternal return». For it does not mean that humanity suffers from some kind of «déjà vu».
We, the moderns, are not simply duplicates of our former manifestations that once existed. At certain historical turning points, new challenges arise that are addressed directly to us. In fact, the ability to respond to a challenge is itself a «discovery of the new». It is an attempt to give birth to oneself anew, rather than merely reproduce in the temporal dimension. Hryhorii Skovoroda paid close attention to Christ’s words that a human being is born twice: once from their parents, and the second time — from the Holy Spirit. But our philosopher does not repeat this thesis out of idleness.
With him, it acquires an entirely different meaning: «First we are born of our parents, and the second time — from ourselves». That is, we urge our spirit into birth! And what it will be like — depends on us! We come into the world as unique beings, along with freedom and the capacity to accept or not accept the challenges of new historical, economic, and sociocultural realities. If a person does not hide from them but seeks to respond, they acquire a distinct voice, one that future generations can hear. This voice grants entirely new meanings to things that were already known before.
«ULTIMATE QUESTIONS» AND «FORMULAS OF MEANING»
Philosophers accept the challenge of history, striving to answer — through the language of their own epoch — what are usually called «eternal questions». Yet it is better to call these questions «ultimate», because each of them can be answered in different ways. Moreover, these answers may not satisfy many people — even those who propose them. The paradox of ultimate questions arises from the fact that a human being is a fragile, finite creature whose existence is limited both in time and space.
Blaise Pascal believed that a mere drop of water could kill a human. But despite this vulnerability, a person is capable of showing remarkable courage by gazing into the abyss of their own existence. Pascal admitted his awe before two abysses: the abyss of the cosmos and the abyss of the mind, capable of endless discoveries. And yet, despite all vulnerability and the sense that human existence is squeezed between these two immensities, a person is able to endure.
The prospect of the emergence of something new in culture can also be interpreted in this way. The new is often associated with what has been pushed from the center to the periphery of history or of culture. But then a curious soul discovers this seemingly lost element on the cultural-historical margins and once again reveals it to the world. The Ukrainian philosopher Ihor Bychko once told such a story: archaeologists unearthed an unknown artifact and could not attribute it. Yet their attempts to describe it became a new birth of that thing. They began to inscribe new semantic codes for it in order to place it once more into the core of culture.
Philosophy, in my view, always deals with meanings that touch upon the discovery of the new. Archimedes said something similar: «Give me a point of support, and I will move the world». In other words, human existence and cognition require certain points of support — points of «entry» into the world. And these are tied to meaning. A person will not exist fully until they form such points — origins of meaning. Yet the formation of meanings in philosophy is usually different from how it happens, for example, in science. For philosophy is engaged with ultimate questions.
For example, science does not ask: «What is Nothing?» For how and where could it be found or experimentally measured? Yet a human cannot exist without answering the question «What is the world?» or until the phenomenon of life is made sense of. Science is not concerned with this, for it can study only the biological or chemical aspects of life. By contrast, philosophy seeks new — not mathematical, but existential — «formulas of meaning», without which meaningful existence is impossible. It is the articulation of these formulas that makes philosophical ideas new. And since philosophy seeks answers to ultimate questions, it always tunes itself to the crossing of the boundaries of meaning.
A HUMAN BEING IS A CREATURE «ON THE EDGE»
In philosophy, there is a concept called «transcendence» (from the Latin transcendo — crossing, going beyond). Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, uses it to explore what lies beyond sensory perception. Thus, critique means identifying boundaries and clarifying what lies beyond them. According to Kant, there are two dimensions of the world: the phenomenal and the noumenal. In other words, the world of phenomena, which humanity has tried to describe throughout history on the basis of sensations, and the world of «things in themselves», about which our experience remains silent. For when reason steps beyond the sensory world, something strange happens to it.
It encounters «paralogisms» and «antinomies», that is, contradictions of reason. For example, antinomies are theses that can simultaneously find both confirmation and refutation. Reason enters this state when it seeks answers to questions like: «What truly exists — freedom or necessity?» Incidentally, the emergence of the new is also a problem of freedom. Only a free human being can call into being that which has never existed before.
Biologically, we are determined, since we are finite beings. For instance, we can not breathe, not eat, and so on. In short, we are not eternal. Yet at the same time, we affirm: «Heroes never die!» This means that, despite biological determinism, some people are capable of acting as if death does not exist. In doing so, they act as free beings — capable of transcending, crossing the boundaries of natural existence, using reason, intuition, will, spirit…
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in their book What is Philosophy?, defined philosophy as the creation of concepts. A philosopher is not only someone who knows how to operate with concepts but also someone who creates and rethinks them. Culture is a kind of archive of meanings. If one merely borrows them without replenishing them with new ones, life begins to shrink. Indeed, some meanings we use unconsciously.
For example, socio-cultural realities dictate certain patterns of behavior, which we simply reproduce and copy without thinking. But thought is a very complex, nonlinear, non-determined gift. Thus, existence will only be authentic if a human being forms meanings in response to challenges. According to Karl Jaspers, existence is always localized at the edge — in situations of illness, fear, death, and so on.
There are many points in our existence that place us between Being and Nothing. For instance, between the rational and the irrational. Again, Jaspers uses the phrase philosophische Glaube — philosophical faith. It is what a person relies upon in an ultimate situation, in a «border point» — between life and death, between reason and sensuality, between aggression and love — when existence seems torn apart. Nietzsche gives a metaphor: a human is a tightrope walker walking on a rope stretched between the beast and the overhuman. Balancing above the abyss, one makes the crossing and thus transcends oneself. Constantly changing and growing, one discovers the Other within.
THE PATH FROM INNOCENCE TO EXPERIENCE
The Other, by the way, is also a boundary category. Human identity is not a monolithic, single core that permeates our entire existence. It is a construct. Indeed, it is one thing to choose one’s gender. But even when a person is born in the likeness of a certain sex, they then begin to identify themselves as male or female. And even then, we see examples of how one sometimes reconstructs this supposedly «unchangeable» identity, intervening in the morphology of their own body. Like an actor in a theater, a person plays certain social or psychological roles according to their self-perception: they identify themselves as a son, a father, a woman, a sister, a professional, and so on.
In this sense, for example, being Ukrainian is not necessarily an ethnic marker. It is, above all, identifying oneself with Ukrainian culture, language, and history. One may freely choose any identity, and only afterwards do culture or society impose certain boundaries. Yet a human being, as the biblical legend of the forbidden fruit shows, is a creature that always strives to go beyond them. Søren Kierkegaard emphasized: a person who has not known good and evil exists in a state of innocence. By losing it, they pass into the state of experience.
By the way, William Blake illustrated this well in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In undergoing experience, you identify yourself with your actions, with the mode of being you have chosen, and, of course, you transgress a certain system of taboos. In this regard, it is worth recalling another term — «transgression». This is an attempt to break a taboo. Georges Bataille regarded transgression as the experience of «absolute negativity», which includes ecstasy, madness, orgasm, and even death. The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the founders of structuralism, described the prohibition of incest as fundamental to archaic cultures. Yet from the biblical story of Lot, we know that the transgressive human always attempts to break the taboo.
Even in spite of the great risk and the high price paid for such an experience. A person dares to explore their own boundary, and this enables them to better identify themselves and set new «points on the horizon», which allow them to move further and cross the next boundaries. In other words, identity is a transgressive phenomenon. It is enough to look at your childhood photographs to realize: we are constantly changing — both at the level of the body and at the level of consciousness. The phenomenon of life lies in the fact that we do not preserve certain states; on the contrary, we expand, develop, and surpass ourselves in the Nietzschean sense.
IS A «NEW CLASSIC» POSSIBLE?
Ukraine now finds itself in a kind of «border point», in the conditions of an existential challenge. To use Hegel’s language, there are historical and non-historical nations. Ukrainians are once again proving that they are a historical nation, one that has long gone beyond the limits of ethnicity. They are ready not only to formulate their values but also to defend them. For example, after the 2013–2014 revolution in Ukraine, the value of dignity was once again brought into focus. The phenomenon of Ukrainian dignity differs from what Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote about in his famous Renaissance work Oration on the Dignity of Man.
For Mirandola, a human is higher than the angels, since they occupy a unique boundary position — between the heavenly and earthly worlds — and possess reason and choice. But when we speak of dignity in the conditions of Ukrainian existence, we mean the dignity of a historical nation — the agents of the culture to which we belong, of our socio-political life — agents who defend the right to be subjects. The problem of subjectivity, like the problem of identity, always requires definition. It cannot simply be hung on one’s chest once and for all like the Order of Lenin. Subjectivity, like politics, is the art of the possible — it must be constantly fought for.
To be within the system of Western civilization does not imply a blind, uncritical attitude toward it. On the contrary, it means constantly fulfilling certain civilizational «normatives», including respect for subjectivity and the ability to construct it. Sometimes one hears that the postmodernist idea comes down to instability, to what is constantly revised and reinterpreted. But on this path, there lies one great trap… Postmodernity is an era whose reckoning begins after World War II. Just like the great modern «systems of meaning», postmodernity can also be turned into a kind of utopia.
Remember Francis Fukuyama’s idea of the «end of history», which promised the triumph of liberalism? It is now clear that Fukuyama was mistaken. Liberalism has not ultimately triumphed — but what awaits us next? In my view, either humanity will invent some kind of «new classic», perhaps something resembling a «new antiquity», or it faces a slide into the dystopia of global tyranny. If we want to move along the first path, we must not fear being subjects — that is, responsible for our decisions.
In my opinion, the birth of a «new classic» is possible only if we can realize Nietzsche’s idea of a «state of culture», where the key role is played by personality. At one time, the Ukrainian philosopher Serhii Krymskyi proposed a triad that generates the subjective self-organization of a human being: individual, person, personality. The individual perceives the world mainly through the senses. The person assumes responsibility and, therefore, can be a political and legal subject. And the personality is an agent who poses ultimate questions.
DISCOVERING THE OTHER WITHIN
I sometimes provoke my audience with the question: «Were Stalin and Hitler personalities?» The paradox is that an essential criterion of personality is the capacity to accept the Other. Stalin and Hitler were categorically incapable of this. To be a personality means a constant effort of «surpassing oneself», a change that comes through accepting the Other as part of oneself. The birth of personality is what will save Ukraine and the world from the horror of dystopia. But how is personality born?
The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep proposed a theory of «rites of passage», which serve as a mechanism of growth, change, and transformation. Such rites have a three-phase structure: the individual’s renunciation of a previous status, the liminal phase — between the old and the new status — and the phase of integration into the new status. The liminal (threshold) phase is marked by ultimate uncertainty: the individual is stripped of all former characteristics but has not yet acquired the new ones.
In philosophy, this can be compared to the situation of reflection as a kind of «detachment», described by Martin Heidegger and, earlier in the Middle Ages, by the German mystic Meister Eckhart. It allows one not to limit one’s vision to any single position. The founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, spoke of «phenomenological reduction» as an attempt to rid oneself of the interpretations and meanings imposed by the world. Personal consciousness is able to form only those meanings and markers of identity that help you change and move forward. That is, existence manifests itself precisely at the edge or on the threshold.
WISE FOOLS
When I studied the phenomena of the rational and the irrational, I tried to outline the transitions that prevented a fall into the extremes of instrumental rationality or the dogmatism of religiosity. A human being has the fundamental possibility of finding balance between the rational and the irrational, though such a threshold state is deeply uncomfortable. Foolishness for Christ in the Orthodox tradition, Hasidism in Jewish mysticism, and Malamati in Islam — all these are phenomena of the «wise fools», connected with great trials. Such figures are abundant not only in the religions of the world but also in culture.
Take, for instance, the feigned madness of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Yet being on the edge is always a temporary and highly unstable state. But it is necessary in order to become oneself, a subject. Let us recall how Odysseus introduced himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom he had blinded: «My name is Nobody!» But did he manage to hide his essence from the all-seeing gods? Throughout life — even in the course of a single day — a human being demonstrates how their status changes: social, psychological, personal, and so on. Their entire existence consists of such rites of passage. The same applies to Ukraine, which now stands on the threshold of creating a new ethos and melos.
For example, we are witnessing a flourishing of our poetry. Just listen to Kateryna Kalytko recite her verses. There are even warrior-poets emerging, such as Yaryna Chornohuz, Ihor Mitrov, Artur Dron, and others. We see that in transitional, threshold states, culture acquires extraordinary significance. The notion that culture «cannot be spread on bread» is a strange one. The French philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that cultural capital can be converted into another kind — economic or social. That is, on the level of meaning, there are things that not only keep us afloat on the waves of history but also allow us to lift off the ground, overcoming gravity.
Since 2014, we have witnessed the rise of the volunteer movement, which at first greatly surprised me. But when I began writing a book about Skovoroda, I saw the same phenomenon in the Orthodox Ukrainian brotherhoods. That is, the community in Ukraine can play the role of state institutions, even when the people are part of another state — founding schools, hospitals, dining halls, churches…
Another discovery for me was that women were very prominent actors in these processes. At the beginning of the 17th century, they could freely manage their own property. Halshka Hulevychivna, for example, donated her wealth to what would later become the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. This is a vivid example of how, first, individual personalities are born, and only then do they gather together to become creators of culture. At the same time, without culture, personality is impossible. These are reciprocal processes. This is precisely how the «state of culture» arises — one that can lay claim to historical subjectivity.
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