Educational Literature in Russia of the 17th–18th Centuries as a Source for the History of Moral Concepts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21146/2074-4870-2021-21-1-122-134Keywords:
moral concepts, Russian ethic thought, educational literature in Russia of the seventeenth – eighteenth centuriesAbstract
The article analyses moral concepts in the educational literature and didactic manuals, which were popular in Russia in the seventeenth – eighteenth centuries. The main sources for the research are the following texts: ‘The Citizenship of Children’s Habits’ (translation of ‘De civilitate morum puerilium’ by Erasmus of Rotterdam), ‘The Honest Mirror of Youth’, ‘Iphika and Hieropolitic’, ‘Arithmetic’ by Leontiy Magnitsky, a translation of ‘Orbis sensualium pictus’ by John Amos Comenius, and ‘Didactic Philosophy’ by F.X. Baumeister. The chronological frames of the research are defined as a period of and active ‘appropriation’ of moral codes of the European good manners, and the shaping of the ethical language allowing to build both the outer forms of the moral life of the society, and its ethical reflection. Taking into account the educational literature of that period, we may not only reveal its moral concepts, but also outline the general volume of new terms and their definitions. Moral concepts captured the rules of behaviour, moral characteristics of persons, the ethical significance of their labour, education, and upbringing. Studying the educational literature allows us to understand the role of the introduction of basic grammar, arithmetic, and other disciplines in the shaping of the new moral world in its integrity and diversity, to trace the history of formation of moral terms and concepts from didactic ethical compositions to the first manuals of the late eighteenth century, where ethic was presented as a specific field of philosophy. Thus, studying such various sources in the context of the ethic analyzes allows us to do a complex research of the basics of theoretical philosophical ethic in Russia, as well as the commonplace moral language of the Russian society of the epoch of Enlightenment. Largely thanks to these manuals, the categorical and conceptual language of morality was formed in Russian culture.