Kurginyan discusses the fate of humanism after the French Revolution

18.01.2025, Moscow.

The French Revolution proclaimed the rule of Reason instead of God, but this project was also based on humanism and led to progress, political scientist, philosopher, and leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan said on December 27 on the Conversation with a Sage program on the Zvezda radio channel.

Discussing the collapse of the humanistic project in the 21st century, which prioritized development of Man, Kurginyan recalled that even when the society of total religiosity was replaced by the society of modernity, this society was moving toward the development of humanity on the basis of scientific and technological progress and a unified legal system.

“When the French Revolution overthrew all gods – it then quickly brought them back under Napoleon, who was crowned as emperor – at the moment when all this was overthrown, it was said that there is a goddess of Reason, and this goddess of Reason replaces everything previous, that everything previous is based not on reason, but on faith, on irrationality, and that it is just discarded, that the new scientific discovery refutes all these constructions,” he explained.

Kurginyan emphasized that even though the authors of these discoveries were often religious people themselves, “no one cared about that.” It was assumed that the new world project would be built “on the foundation of this rationality, reason’s dominance.”

“The exceptional significance of the project Modernity, without discussion of which it is impossible to understand at all what, in fact, is going on in this Western society: The ideology of this modernity was mainly connected with the fact that the existence of a Christian God was replaced by some other cult – the cult of reason, rationality, ideally reasonable construction of society, which, like a machine, was created so that all the parts were in place, everything was adjusted to each other, all the nuts were properly tightened – his majesty Reason reigns”, the analyst said.

However, it was assumed that this “machine” will bring everyone to a bright future, the world will follow the path of progress, Man will develop. However, postmodernity has abandoned faith in man, and the whole humanistic project began to collapse. It was decided to give up Man and his development. At the same time, most of humanity still does not understand the scale of the collapse of the humanistic project, emphasized Kurginyan.

Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency