The Dichotomy of the Contemplative and Active Attitude to the World in I. S. Turgenev’s Ontology of Human Life

The subject of scientific reflection is the contemplation and action as ways of the human attitude to the world, existence, substantiated and accomplished in the ontology of human life by I. S. Turgenev, thinker and artist. The presence of a “thought” and “will”, consciousness and action, knowledge and transformation is considered by the writer as a fundamental characteristic of the human way of existence, which becomes the semantic core of the philosophical and anthropological concept of the article-speech “Hamlet and Don Quixote” (1860), fundamental for the research on Turgenev’s creative work at the level of historical poetics. The activity approach to the person, strengthened at the turn of the classical and non-classical stages of development of philosophical thought, — the time of formation of Turgenev’s world outlook, explains converging of the points of opposite “native types”, their transition from the ideal existence into the real one, their equally weighted opposition to the “evil and lies”. As a result, according to Turgenev’s view the images of Hamlet and Don Quixote come together on the ground of “worship to the Truth” and the “idea of high merits” of the individual, in which the human “nature” and “quintessence” are objectified. Therefore, the analysis of the hamletian and don-quijotian types could be carried out by Turgenev just within the universal socio-cosmic lay of the interrelation of the opposites inherent in centripetal and centrifugal natural forces and their tendency to synthesis. The “tragic aspect of human life” engendered by the inaccessibility of such synthesis may be overcome by means of comprehension of the Truth, the “true meaning of nature”. Moreover, Turgenev’s ontological idea of the “Conciliation and absorbtion of everything existing in the other”, argued at the attitudinal and aesthetic levels, is the basis for the definition of the meaning of human life. This meaning is found in the balance between the content of all human life and the world, society, other people in the name of the “ideal”, establishment of the truth and justice. Hence, contemplation and action as forms of a morally responsible attitude to life in Turgenev’s artistic ontology are directly related to the problem of “high levels” and quality of human existence.