Lecture 35. SERGEY LEONIDOVICH RUBINSTEIN AND HIS SCHOOL IN RUSSIAN PSYCHOLOGY.
Lecture questions:
Introduction. S.L. Rubinstein and his time.Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein– outstanding Soviet psychologist and philosopher. He created an original philosophical and psychological concept of man, his activity and psyche, and was the founder of the activity approach in psychological science. Among the leading Soviet psychologists, he is the only one who achieved outstanding achievements simultaneously in the fields of psychology and philosophy. He was the first in Soviet psychology to systematically and deeply develop the categories of being, man, subject and object, subjective and objective, ideal and material, etc. he, in particular, convincingly revealed the differences and relationships between being and object and showed the illegality of reducing being to matter. He originally and fruitfully developed the general philosophical principle of determinism and built on its basis psychological theory personality and the theory of thinking as an activity and as a process. He contributed a lot of new and still valuable things to the theory of emotions, memory, perception, speech, etc.
Rubinstein entered psychological science as a methodologist. His main task in the first period of his work was the development of methodological foundations psychological science, clarification of its basic principles (1930–1940s). The second period of his work was an appeal to the problems of ontology and philosophy of man, an attempt to return personality to psychology.
The concept of subject and activity. In all of Rubinstein's work, the idea of the subject (person, creator) is central. It is no coincidence that he devoted his first serious works to the study of the category of the subject. In them, Rubinstein forms the principle of the subject of activity - in activity the subject is both manifested and formed. Subjective (arising in human activity) is a reflection of a really existing, objective being. Therefore, the objective and the subjective are not opposite to each other.
The basis of this system is a common understanding of the activity. Rubinstein correlated it with personality and the surrounding existence. The formation of subjects in the system of being means the emergence of “centers for the restructuring of being,” which is their special ontological role. Qualitatively new here is the introduction of reflection and consciousness as abilities of the subject and the introduction (in addition to consciousness and activity) of the third axis - the relationship of the subject to another subject.
So, the subject, both in his cognition, and in his action, and in his relation to another subject, destroys the “externality”, the externality of the object and the other subject, that is, overcomes its isolation, discovers, transforms, strengthens the essence of the subject or object. The subject is thus inextricably linked with his activity. But the subject is never reducible to its activity; it is always richer than the concrete forms in which it is objectified.
Unity of activity, consciousness and personality. The basis for building a new psychological science was the development of new principles. The first of them was the principle of the unity of consciousness and activity: human consciousness is formed and manifested in human activity(both in ontogeny and historically). In activity there is a connection between epistemological (cognition) and ontological (experience). Consciousness, highest level psyche, is defined by Rubinstein as the unity of two characteristics - objective and subjective (the relationship of the individual to the world).
Individual consciousness is determined by social consciousness and social existence, by the relationships into which the individual enters. That is, the function of activity in relation to consciousness is development and determination. But consciousness, on the other hand, acts as a regulator of activity. It reveals this ability only when understood as a higher personal formation.
But Rubinstein criticizes the reduction of personality to only its consciousness. Personality is the basis on which and in the system of which the functioning and development of all mental processes takes place. Rubinstein points to three main dependencies: 1) all mental processes are not only universal, but also individual; 2) mental processes do not have an independent line of development; 3) mental processes do not remain only processes that occur “by gravity,” but turn into a consciously regulated action that takes possession of the individual.
Describing the structure of personality, Rubinstein comes to a triune formula:
1. what a person wants, what is attractive to him (orientation, needs, attitudes, ideals);
2. what a person can do (abilities, gifts);
3. what he himself is (what of his tendencies and attitudes is fixed in his character).
These three modalities form a whole, but this whole is not given initially, not static. The integrity of the personal structure is determined and consolidated by activity.
Personality and its mental properties are both a prerequisite and a result of its activity. The basic properties of the personality, interacting with each other in specific human activities, merge in the real unity of the personality. The mental appearance of a person is determined by the real existence of a person and is formed in specific activities. And human activity itself is formed as a person, in the process of education and training, masters spiritual and material culture.
The personality itself is included in a system of broader relationships - the life path - in which its functioning and its activities, behavior and development are carried out. The life path is a process in which the formation and change of personality occurs. In this regard, Rubinstein differentiated:
1. mental make-up of the individual (including individual characteristics of all mental processes);
2. personal make-up (including qualities of character, abilities, etc.);
3. vital warehouse(morality, intelligence, worldview, activity, life experience etc.).
One of the most important categories that Rubinstein associated with life's path and considered orientation as an integral characteristic of personality. Direction connects unconscious attitudes, personality tendencies and its conscious structures, reflective and behavioral aspects. Direction is the activity of the individual. Carrying out the objectification of not only individual motives, but also the entire personality, therefore, orientation is the self-expression of the individual, its tendency to self-realization.
Direction is the integral ability of the acting subject, self-awareness is the integral ability of the conscious subject. The self-awareness of a person is mediated by the entire life activity of the subject, all his life manifestations. Self-awareness arises in the course of the development of personality and its consciousness as a special new formation.
Mental process and mental activity. In the second half of the 40s. A new stage in Rubinstein's scientific work begins. At this stage, Rubinstein again returns to the issues of human interaction with the world in the form of activity. In the course of human interaction with the world, both the surrounding reality and the person as a subject of activity and communication are constantly changing. Reflecting this variability, the psyche itself is dynamic and plastic, that is, it is a process that regulates a person’s relationship with the world. This procedurality is like main feature of the psyche begins to be developed by Rubinstein as a fundamental position in psychological science.
Rubinstein considered the mental as a process and as a product of this process, and it is the process that is the main form of existence of the mental.
Studying mental processes also means studying the formation of corresponding formations, that is, results, products. Regardless of education, it is impossible to outline the mental process itself and separate it from other mental processes. On the other hand, mental formations do not exist on their own outside the corresponding mental processes. Each mental formation is, in essence, a mental process in its effective expression. Thus, psychological science studies the mental as a process in relation to its products, but not these products in themselves.
From Rubinstein's point of view, the main task psychological research is to study the psyche in the unity of its two sides - activity and process. The study of thinking as a process, for example, should include the study of the processes of analysis and synthesis through which mental problems are solved. Thinking as an activity is considered when a person’s motives and his attitude to the tasks being solved are taken into account.
The psychologist must differentiate process and activity. Every activity is at the same time a process or includes a process, but not every process acts as an activity. Activity is a process through which one or another relationship of a person to the world and people around him is realized.
The theory of mental process was developed mainly on the basis of the psychology of thinking. In Rubinstein's later works, thinking is considered as the activity of the subject (from the side of goals, motives, operations, etc.), and as its (activity) regulator - a mental cognitive-affective process (analysis, synthesis and generalization of the cognizable object). The thinking process is understood not just as a sequence in time of certain stages (stages, operations), but also as a different, qualitatively new level, which is a form of human interaction with the world.
In his studies of thinking, primarily in children, Rubinstein implemented new principle, specifying the activity approach. Rubinstein considered it necessary to introduce pedagogical influence in a psychological experiment. This pedagogical principle implemented by Rubinstein together with the principle of individualization psychological study people and together with the genetic principle. Rubinstein emphasized the continuous changeability, plasticity of the thinking process, its formation in activity.
Man and the world. The very emergence of human existence is the emergence of the center of its transformation, and therefore being appears with the appearance of man in a new quality - the world for man, the object for the subject. The world is an existence transformed by man, transformed by his activity.
With the emergence of man, being turns into an object that remains independent of knowledge in the sense of its objectivity (the world can exist without man) and becomes dependent on the subject in the sense of the reality of practical transformations (only in the presence of a subject does the world become an object).
The world is a collection of things and people in which is invested what relates to a person and what he relates to by virtue of his essence. Rubinstein defined the quality of nature not associated with man as matter.
The category of subject was defined by Rubinstein through a set of relationships to the world, which include cognition, action, contemplation and ethical attitude. Rubinstein considers the subject in two interconnected, but qualitatively different relations: relation to being and relation to another person. The relationship of a person to a person constitutes a social characteristic of both cognition and activity, mediates a person’s relationship to being and is distinguished as a social area of life.
Rubinshtein S. L.
Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein( , - , ) - Russian and , USSR Academy of Sciences, one of the founders in psychology. Founder of the department and department of psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy, as well as the psychology sector of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Author of the fundamental book “Fundamentals general psychology».
Biography
Main publications
- The Principle of Creative Amateur Performance (1922)
- Fundamentals of general psychology ( idem) (1940; 1946; 1989)
- Being and Consciousness (1957)
- About thinking and ways of knowing it (1958)
- (2003)
Links
- Zinchenko V.P. A word about S.L. Rubinstein (To the 110th anniversary of the birth of S.L. Rubinstein), Questions of Psychology, 1999, No. 5
- Section of Loren Graham's book “Natural history, philosophy and science of human behavior in the Soviet Union” dedicated to S.L. Rubinstein
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About the work of S. L. Rubinstein “Man and the World” and its place in the history of Soviet philosophy (M. S. Kagan)
1
Among the works of major Soviet psychologists who, starting with P. P. Blonsky and K. N. Kornilov, showed a keen interest in philosophical issues, the works of S. L. Rubinstein occupy a special place. His first works - his doctoral dissertation "A Study of the Problem of Method" and the article "The Principle of Creative Amateur Performance" published in 1922 - were of a purely philosophical nature, as were his last fundamental works "Being and Consciousness" (1957) and "Man and the World" ( 1973), in which the actual psychological plots were subordinated to the analysis of philosophical problems (the book “Man and the World” was first published in 1973 in S. L. Rubinstein’s one-volume book “The Problem of General Psychology”). This analysis was carried out at the highest theoretical level, by which, to a much greater extent than from the writings of many professional philosophers, one can and should judge the level of Soviet philosophical thought in the first post-war decades.
Of particular importance for Rubinstein’s philosophical development was his acquaintance with the manuscripts of the young K. Marx, the analysis of which is devoted to his article “Problems of Psychology in the Works of K. Marx” (Soviet Psychotechnics, 1934, No. 1) and a later special study “On the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology : Early manuscripts of K. Marx and problems of psychology" (1959). I would like to emphasize that in his works Rubinstein not only refuted the opposition of the early Marx to the late one, widespread in Western Marxology, but also did not share the attitude accepted in Soviet philosophy towards these works as immature works from the point of view of dialectical materialism, marked by the allegedly unovercome influence of Hegel and Feuerbach.
Rubinstein saw in the thoughts of K. Marx in 1844 a sketch of that new system philosophical views, which was then developed by himself, and F. Engels, and V.I. Lenin, but the conceptual essence of which was already outlined here, opposed to both the idealism of Hegel and the abstract anthropologism of Feuerbach. Rubinstein clearly saw that “at the center of Marx’s philosophical concept is not an absolute idea, as in Hegel, and not an abstract man or an abstraction of man, as in Feuerbach,” but “a real, concrete person living in a specific, historically established and developing situation, located in certain social relations to other people. The problem of man, the restoration of him to his rights, to the fullness of his rights - this is the main problem" of Marx's philosophical concept, according to the precise conclusion of the commentator.
Rubinstein was already able then, in the early 30s, to appreciate the truly Marxist character of this early work of K. Marx and throughout his life he retained the conviction that in Marxist philosophy the central problem is precisely the problem of man. Ultimately, this conviction led the scientist to the work “Man and the World” that completed his philosophical concept.
Is it necessary to explain how relevant this position is today, when we have finally managed to understand the real significance of the “human factor” in the development of society, in the revolutionary transformations taking place in our country and which are of decisive importance for the historical destinies of socialism?
Since the author of these lines has already had the opportunity to speak and write about this more than once, now we can only briefly summarize: the long-term sociological and epistemological orientation of our philosophy, which went as far as explaining historical materialism with the “general sociological theory of Marxism” and equating philosophy as a whole with the theory of knowledge, led to the “pushing out” of the doctrine of man from the content of philosophical theory. It was justified, on the one hand, by the identification of man and society (based on a false interpretation of the famous thesis of K. Marx about L. Feuerbach), and on the other hand, by the understanding of man as just a subject of knowledge (based on a simplified, dogmatic interpretation of Lenin’s position on unity logic, dialectics and theory of knowledge). Ultimately, the very possibility of building a Marxist philosophical anthropology(the doctrine of man) was resolutely denied, since it, as was convincingly shown
N.Z. Chavchavadze, was strangely identified with anthropological philosophy. But if such a state of affairs was possible, and in a certain sense natural, at the time when a person was declared a “wheel and a cog” of the state mechanism, and his leader revived the formula “the state is me,” then in the conditions of the consistent democratization of our life it turns out to be decidedly intolerant. The practice of perestroika requires a scientific, interdisciplinary, and fundamentally philosophical concept of man, which would justify all our actions to actualize and activate the great opportunities contained in the human factor.
Therefore, an appeal to Rubinstein’s book “Man and the World” seems today to be highly productive both in theoretical and practical terms, and one can only be amazed at the foresight of the scientist, who three decades before the 27th Congress of the CPSU wrote that “the problem of restructuring society, remaking public life appears as a central philosophical problem," and that for us the question of "social conditions human life“is inextricably linked with the question of the “inner essence” of man, of “the inner being of man in his relation to the world, to other people.” At the same time, one cannot help but be amazed by the modern sound of Rubinstein’s reasoning about personal freedom: “Spiritual freedom and the greatness of man are possible only in society. Collectivity, ideological community must exist along with the preservation of the individual’s critical thought, his initiative and responsibility. Freedom appeared for us at first in connection with necessity, in connection with determinism in general, but this is only the possibility of freedom. Human freedom is realized only in real life and society. For an individual, freedom exists as personal initiative, the opportunity to act at one’s own peril and risk, freedom of thought, the right of criticism and verification, freedom of conscience.”
The idea for this wonderful book took shape in the mid-50s, in the atmosphere of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, but work on it was interrupted by the death of Rubinstein in 1960.
This explains the birth of the first book in the history of Soviet philosophy devoted to the problem of man; its creation was far ahead of the turn to this range of issues by our professional philosophers - only from the late 60s did a few works devoted to philosophical and anthropological issues begin to appear (works by S. S. Batenin, G. S. Batishchev, L. P. Bueva, Z. Kakabadze, A. G. Myslivchenko, M. S. Kagana). But Rubinstein's book "Man and the World" remains to this day, thirty years later, the most significant phenomenon in Soviet and world Marxist literature on this topic.
At the same time, it is necessary to remove the ambiguity that arises here, at first glance - that a subject can act as an object for a subject is a philosophical statement, but it does not mean the opposite, that it is true to treat another as an object, subject, means, or, in Rubinstein’s words , "functions", i.e. a pragmatic attitude from the point of view of ethical criteria.
P. 352*. Extraordinary deep meaning has the seemingly unusual definition of “thinking”, used by Rubinstein in relation to consciousness. This definition contains a whole promising line of research into Rubinstein’s concept from the point of view of his correlation of the concepts of “consciousness” and “thinking.” Philosophically, they are most often identified with him. But from a methodological point of view, essential for psychology, the distinction between resultant (in the form of knowledge), ascertaining and active, i.e., thinking consciousness turns out to be extremely important. In defining consciousness as ideal, Rubinstein notes its ability to represent everything that exists in the world, while in its definition as subjective (both definitions are given in “Being and Consciousness”), he reveals the subject’s ability to relate to what is actually not essential in itself , but relative to him, for him. Here, apparently, the epithet of consciousness as “thinking” is adequate.
P. 353*. Paul Natorp (Natorp; 1851-1924) - representative of the neo-Kantian Marburg school in philosophy. S. L. Rubinstein argues with his concept of “I”, developed in the work Philosophische Propadevtik (Marburg, 1903).
P. 355*. By ethics in the broad sense of the word, S. L. Rubinstein understands the ontology of human existence, primarily ontologizing the relationships between people
to each other, mutually reinforcing, demonstrating their human essence or minimizing it, reducing it to a “mask”. Since in relation to ontology in general the most essential category is formation, development, then in relation to human existence he considers the development of man in the process of life and in the process of history. He understands human development primarily as his improvement.
** See footnote to p. 351.
P. 359*. It's about everything is about the same method applied by S. L. Rubinstein to the analysis of the psyche, which is used here to analyze the human problem.
S. 360*. The concept of “situation” in existentialism is associated with the concept of “human freedom as indeterminacy in general, as the negation of the existing state. Therefore, “going beyond” the situation is understood only as the negation of the situation itself, and not the dialectic of negative and positive, negation and formation (see comments to p. 361).
P. 361*. One of Rubinstein's most important ideas is the affirmation of the contradictory essence of human existence. However, during editing, almost all mentions of contradictions, except for the fragment about the relationship between logical and real contradictions, were removed. Naturally, in that era we could only talk about harmony, and not the inconsistency of a person, personality and her life. However, it is important to correlate the ideas about the inconsistency of human existence restored in this edition with the interpretation of the problem of denial. Rubinstein opposes Sartre's interpretation of negation, which does not imply its opposite - affirmation, becoming. Rubinstein considers negation as a moment of formation, the affirmation of the new, thereby recognizing the ultimately productive nature of the relationship between negation and formation.
Thus, the connection between denial and affirmation appears as a contradiction of human existence. However, the subtlety of their difference (the problem of negation and the problem of contradictions) is due to the fact that, recognizing the natural nature of contradictions, their inevitability, Rubinstein mainly correlates them with a subject capable of resolving these contradictions, and not only with the objective result of their resolution, but with what gives the subject himself is overcoming contradictions, struggle. The interpretation of the problem of negation is mainly connected with the context of Sartre’s concepts of being and non-being.
** Criticism of the existentialist concept of “going beyond” the situation is carried out by S. L. Rubinstein along several lines (see comments on p. 373). S. L. Rubinstein contrasts the existentialist going beyond the limits of a situation only in consciousness with going beyond its limits in the real action of a person, transforming the very situation and the person himself. But even in the case when going beyond the limits of the situation is carried out through consciousness, S. L. Rubinstein, in contrast to existentialism, emphasizes that transformation, change in the situation forms a natural transition of the present into another, and not a simple negation of the present.
P. 362. On the relationship between a person’s upbringing and the social conditions of his upbringing, see “Principles and ways of developing psychology” by S. L. Rubinstein. Fundamental in the interpretation of education is the disclosure of its ethical aspect,
but not as moralizing (characteristic of Soviet ideology), but as maintaining and strengthening a person’s humanity through an appropriate attitude towards him.
P. 363*. S. L. Rubinstein’s demand for the inclusion of morality in life is an objection to an abstract consideration of moral norms. However, the category “life” is considered not as empirical, but as concrete, including all the richness of relationships (life both as a natural process and as the social existence of man in his individual form). This interpretation of the category “life” makes it possible to understand the role of ethics in solving practical problems.
P. 365*. Overcoming the shortcomings of contemplative materialism does not cancel, according to S. L. Rubinstein, the very problem of a contemplative attitude to reality. Unlike Husserl and Heidegger, who contrast cognition and contemplation with activity on the basis that cognition does not change its object, but directly grasps the essence, S. L. Rubinstein, distinguishing contemplation and activity, interprets contemplation not phenomenologically as immediacy, passivity, but as a value attitude towards existence that expresses the essence of the subject itself.
By introducing the category of “contemplation”, equated in rank to cognition and activity, Rubinstein actually resolves the contradiction, leads out of the dead end into which the desire of existentialism led to contrast the knowledge of the world with its “acceptance”, to emphasize not so much the logical structures of cognition as the individual’s ability to think . But a dead end arose due to the relegation of the category of “acceptance” and “reflection” to the individual level, the level of the individual. There is no doubt that there is a significant difference between these categories, which Rubinstein also takes into account, for which he introduces the category of “contemplation,” which differs from cognition. Characterization of this feature of consciousness - its “interest” in revealing the truth, in revealing the real state of affairs - becomes possible only on the basis of establishing a connection between cognition and practice. The entire pathos of “Being and Consciousness” is aimed at proving the active transformative nature cognitive activity, understanding it as a recreation, restoration of an object according to the laws of cognitive activity, and not direct comprehension of the essence. But Rubinstein raises the rank of “contemplation” to the level of the subject’s ability to be philosophically, and not empirically determined. Here contemplation approaches in its meaning Dilthey's “understanding” or hermeneutic interpretation. If cognition reveals “logic,” the essence of an object, then contemplation expresses the subject’s ability to “correctly relate to the world,” that is, to determine the nature and “logic” of his relationship to it. In this sense, understanding the world does not mean intelligently determining one’s place in it. Cognition of the world is the ability of consciousness along with its contemplation. The nature of the latter ability was revealed by us (during the development of Rubinstein’s ideas) as the ability to interpret reality by the subject (A. N. Slavskaya, 1993). S. L. Rubinstein makes a distinction between practical and theoretical, ideal activity. By changing nature according to the laws of his socio-historical activity, man changes it not contrary to the objective laws of nature themselves. To take into account
these laws in their activities, a person must know them. Cognition does not create or change the essence of an object. But it reveals this essence in " pure form", therefore it is not passive attitude, and the active disclosure of the essence, it is “interested” in the disclosure of this essence. “Interest” in revealing the true essence arises from the need to transform nature to satisfy one’s needs and at the same time in accordance with its objective laws (see more about this: Abulkhanova-Slavskaya K. A. Philosophical heritage of S. L. Rubinstein // Questions of Philosophy. - 1969 . - No. 8. - P. 146, etc.).
P. 371*. S. L. Rubinstein’s merit to psychology did not lie in the very fact of applying the principle of determinism, which was developed in the teachings of I. M. Sechenov and I. P. Pavlov. It consisted in the fact that, in contrast to the cause-and-effect dependence usually emphasized in determinism, he brought to the fore and developed in relation to the problem of the psyche the dialectic of external and internal. Identification of the dialectic of external and internal conditions, the formula for the refraction of the external through the internal, developed by S. L. Rubinstein, made it possible to reveal the specificity of internal conditions, the own properties of a given body or phenomenon, a special way of refracting external influences. This formula, as understood, made it possible to put mental phenomena on a par with all other phenomena. material world and thereby extend an objective materialistic explanation to them, to overcome the subjectivistic understanding of the mental. The subjectivistic understanding of the psyche as internal closes it in the world of immediate givenness to the subject himself, in the world of direct experience and introspection. The dialectical formula of refraction of the external through the internal makes it possible to understand that the mental in this sense is no exception to the dialectical relationship and interaction of all phenomena of the material world.
Instead, it would be erroneous to believe that by including the mental through this formula in a row with all phenomena of the material world, the path “to understanding the specifics of mental phenomena was closed. On the contrary, this formula was a universal formula for revealing the specifics of determination for phenomena of any level , and this was its dialectical feature. Therefore, its application to mental phenomena made it possible to extend the materialistic approach and dialectical explanation to specific features of the mental, such as reflective transformative external influences a feature of the psyche, the psyche as an attitude, the psyche as a regulator of activity. The active transformative feature of the psyche was included in the determination by external conditions, understood both as conditioned and as determining human activity and behavior. The disclosure of the psyche through the dialectics of external and internal conditions also provided the key to the problem of personality as its self-determination in relation to external conditions (in in accordance with specific established and ongoing internal conditions), the ability to understand its selectivity, activity in relation to the external, its transformation by the inner world, the needs of the influences of the external world.
This publication, at first glance simply including one of the last two philosophical and psychological works of S. L. Rubinstein, in fact has a much deeper meaning, revealing the internal logic of his scientific and life path. These two works seem to be a paradoxical, unexpected end to the life of an outstanding psychologist precisely because of their predominantly philosophical and methodological content. Having started his journey as a philosopher, due to social life circumstances, he officially becomes a Soviet psychological theorist, researcher, methodologist, and organizer of psychological science. What prompts him at the end of his life to again declare himself as a philosopher - to return to ideas that have a paradigmatic philosophical meaning for psychology (“Being and Consciousness,” 1957) and representing a new paradigm for philosophy itself (“Man and the World,” 1973)?
His last work, not complete in form but complete in content, “Man and the World,” was his philosophical testament - a rich legacy for those who are able to read and understand it. He said the last word in his life and work as a philosopher, restoring himself to the rights of a philosopher who posed the philosophical problem of man in the world.
The book “Being and Consciousness,” published in 1957, was actually the third fundamental work of S. L. Rubinstein, which was preceded by “Fundamentals of General Psychology” (1940; 1946) and “Philosophical Roots of Psychology” (1947) - a book a set that was scattered at the layout stage.
In the decade preceding the publication of the book (from 1946 to 1956), S. L. Rubinstein experienced two blows dealt to his works: the first was criticism of the “Fundamentals of General Psychology”, which unexpectedly followed after the extraordinary scientific and social success (1st edition “Fundamentals of General Psychology” was awarded the State Prize), the second was the destruction of the layout of the next book, “Philosophical Roots of Psychology” (1947), written in the context of criticism of “Fundamentals” and the author’s elaborations. S. L. Rubinstein himself was subjected to scientific and ideological criticism (accused of cosmopolitanism) and removed from all posts. The publication of “Being and Consciousness” and the two more books that followed this monograph (“On thinking and ways of its research,” 1958, and “Principles and ways of development of psychology,” 1959) testified to the extraordinary human courage that made it possible to overcome these upheavals, and the creative spiritual uplift of the author, although his scientific status was not officially restored even after the death of Stalin (1953).
Was Sergei Leonidovich inspired by the fall of the Stalinist regime, or by the very opportunity, finally, after several years of prohibition, to publish his works, or by the desire to openly respond to the cruel criticism of his opponents? Probably the whole combination of these circumstances played a role. But the main reason, undoubtedly, is the very peculiarity of his personality and the rise of his inner life, which occurred during this period, in creativity, which was the meaning, the goal of his life, practical and aimed at solving the most complex problems of philosophy and psychology (its subject). This allowed him to withstand the most difficult trials of life.
There are people whose personal development reaches peaks, fueled by good luck and success. Rubinstein belonged, as we see, to a different type of people: obstacles generate in them the energy and strength to overcome them.
“Being and Consciousness” and “Man and the World” make it possible to reveal the entire integrity of his plan, which arose at the beginning of life, and represent its implementation, which took place only at the end of it. The essence of his calling was to find and realize his true purpose as a philosopher, in order to solve the most difficult problems of both psychology and philosophy. This task was understood and formulated by him at the very beginning of his scientific path on the basis of processing and rethinking of all the wealth, problems and contradictions of philosophical, concrete scientific and psychological thought. But her decision turned out to be postponed for a lifetime, for decades due to the prevailing circumstances of real life. The fact that such a plan was formulated and quite deeply specified is evidenced by the not yet published manuscripts of the 1910–1920s. and the article “The Principle of Creative Amateur Performance” (1922), as well as excerpts from manuscripts of the 1920s published for the first time in this publication. They already pose the problem of man in the world, the problem of the subject, that is, they give an outline of ontology and philosophical anthropology. This plan and the approach he implemented allowed S. L. Rubinstein, without embodying it in its own philosophical form, which was impossible, to “see” the essential characteristics of psychology as a science, to implement in it the methodological principles that he legalized, relying on Marxism, giving his model and interpretation of Marx’s category of activity and revealing its role for psychology. Man, the subject of activity, the personality remained “behind the scenes,” but understanding their essence allowed Rubinstein, already in “Fundamentals of General Psychology,” to give a unique interpretation of the subject of psychology, psyche, consciousness, which has not yet been surpassed by anyone in the world in its integrativeness, depth and promise.
In “Being and Consciousness” S. L. Rubinstein legalizes his position as a philosopher, as evidenced by the very title of the book, the introduction of the concept of “being”, unrecognized in the everyday life of official philosophy. The work is called not “Matter and Consciousness,” as it might sound if the author followed the Marxist tradition, but “Being and Consciousness.” In this volume, as it can be called in relation to the second work (volume) “Man and the World” (in fact, together forming a two-volume work), he solves the first task, focused on problems of psychology - implements ontological approach to her subject. In the volume “Man and the World” he proposes a philosophical concept of ontology-being and the subject-man in the world. Thus, he solves the second task - the creation of philosophical anthropology.
This task, which Rubinstein solved throughout his life, required a certain method (even strategy), the development of which he began in his very first philosophical work - a doctoral dissertation devoted to the method and brilliantly defended in Marburg.
It was necessary to see and extract everything positive that had matured throughout history in philosophical thought - especially the “grains” of the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical paradigms. But he revealed this positive content, simultaneously with overcoming its one-sided, limited mechanistic or idealistic interpretation, not from the standpoint of Marxist philosophy, but on the basis of the philosophical paradigm that he built throughout his life, but the foundations of which, judging by the works of 1920 -ies, developed even before turning to the works of K. Marx. The method, accessible only to an intellect of the level that Rubinstein possessed, consisted in the disclosure and integration of all the wealth contained in both philosophical and scientific knowledge, in the philosophy and science of the past and present. Almost any concept is built (even if it develops the previous one or represents its alternative) by the method of further specification of its main provisions. This is where both her originality and her... isolation lie. The author is completely absorbed in the task of building all the links his theories. Therefore, he refers to past or existing concepts on specific issues, referring to them, mentioning them or criticizing them.
Rubinstein was able to build a concept that consistently and organically united everything positive in the history of philosophical and scientific thought. He managed to do this by summarizing the main movements of human thought, revealing its logic, alternatives and contradictions. At the same time, he considered the history of philosophy and science not only as knowledge, not as a set of theories, but with point of view of that way of thinking, the train of thought that led to them.
