Lawyers of the Philosophy: Strategies for Justifying Mandatory Philosophy Courses in Modern Russian Universities

According to the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education (FSES HE 3++), philosophy is a mandatory discipline in all modern Russian universities and faculties, regardless of their specialization. However, the necessity of teaching this discipline in non-core faculties is both justified in various ways and not inherently obvious. This study analyzes a wide range of publications by Russian authors on the problems of teaching philosophy in modern Russian universities, classifies existing approaches to the apology of philosophy as a mandatory discipline for non-core faculties, and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. It demonstrates that some strategies aimed at raising the status of philosophy among other disciplines actually contribute to its decline. In particular, this occurs when the concept of philosophy and its role in the development of the student’s personality are revised to emphasize the personal and general cultural significance of philosophical knowledge. The study also focuses on a comparative analysis of two of the most common trends in the pragmatization of philosophical education in Russian literature today, related to: 1) the need to adjust philosophy courses to the specifics of the students’ major discipline; 2) the use of philosophy as a “school of critical thinking,” useful to anyone regardless of their professional specialization. The author argues that both trends do not correspond to the classical understanding of philosophy and its main goal, since in both cases philosophy begins to be seen as a fundamentally secondary, auxiliary discipline that has no independent value and does not affect the formation of worldview and value orientations of the individual. It is also postulated that this understanding of philosophy does not correspond to the main goal of education, since an applied direction in education, especially in higher education aimed at training researchers and scientists, cannot and should not become the main vector of development of the entire educational system.