From Voluntary Action’s Ontology to Historical Responsibility: Methodology of Philosophical Research

In the article, the author analyzes methodological approaches to the study of the concept of “historical responsibility,” comparing the German tradition of study (H. Arendt, T. Adorno) with the voluntary action’s ontology of M.M. Bakhtin 's. The German tradition, influenced by the thinking of World War II, emphasizes the perception of responsibility in the context of the relationship with guilt, which raises a substantial question about the nature of responsibility and its boundaries. In particular, H. Arendt formulates the concept of “banality of evil,” focusing on the disappearance of internal perception of responsibility, but does not solve the question of the origins of such feeling. The Russian religious tradition, presented by M.M. Bakhtin, allows to propose a way to solve the issues raised due to the identification of ontological grounds of individual responsibility. Nevertheless, M.M. Bakhtin conclusions are also important for solving the problem of collective responsibility. Bakhtin addresses responsibility as an ontological characteristic of human existence, opposing its freedom. Responsibility manifests itself in acts, but ontologically precedes a separate action performed by a person. The role of the act is that it allows the person himself to understand the burden of responsibility and act on these prerequisites. The transfer of the Bakhtin’s methodology from individual to collective responsibility makes it possible to link the moment of its occurrence not to public recognition, but to the very fact of the individual 's entry into a certain community. The ontological integrity of the individual also acquires a social dimension, not only synchronic but also diachronic. According to the author, the application of the Bakhtin’s methodology in the field of social research makes it possible to consider problems of historical responsibility in the context of more fundamental philosophical questions about the relationship between individual and collective identity, the dynamics of identity, the combination of regularity and variability in human behavior.