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Essence and Freedom: Andrei Platonov’s Anthropological Intuitions
Contemporary philosophical anthropology fluctuates
between, on the one hand, the positivist rejection of
the metaphysically loaded concepts of “essence” and
“existence” in their theoretical constructions and, on
the other, the essentialist traditions in which these con-
cepts have played and continue to play a decisive role.
Positivism rejects the ethical component of philosophi-
cal anthropology, reducing it to relativism. Essentialism
nourishes the metaphysical overtones of ethics but can-
not withstand comparison to real-life history, which pro-
vides examples of an anti-human (“hellish”) actuality in
which there is seemingly no place for humanity.
This article examines the anthropological intuitions
of Andrei Platonov as the key to a new philosophical
understanding of this issue. Platonov problematizes the
concepts of “essence” and “existence,” placing them in
the context of a “hellish reality” and tracing how this
context “reworks” their meanings. Suffering and long-
ing repeatedly take the place of “essence,” while “exis-
tence” ceases to be only a series of phenomena but
becomes a foundation for meanings of essence.