JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

2021, VOL. 58, NOS. 3–4, 124–136

https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2021.1933826

Chapter 1: The Paradox of Disappearing Activity

V.A. Petrovsky

Activity in common sense judgments

Few people today would be surprised by yet another example of the conflict
between an object’s appearance according to “common sense” and how the
same object looks according to a scientific theory. Rather, when theoretical
and everyday ideas expressing the characteristics of a given object
Lperceived as a kind of norm, expressing the “scientific nature” of those
theoretical views. Otherwise, it is said that the theory is poor, that its
methodological premises are not constructive, or that it does not have
effective means of analyzing the phenomena under study.
It would seem from this that it would be possible to look at the problem
of activity, which has recently been actively discussed in philosophy and
psychology, in this way. Yet if we address the relationship between theore­
tical and everyday ideas regarding the essence of activity, we find a truly
grotesque situation: The everyday view of activity contrasts, not with some
stable and integrated system for revising its scientific views but with
fundamentally different, sometimes actively antagonistic and quite oppos­
ing views. This applies to the definition of the essence of activity, to the
description of its structure and functions, to the identification of its specific
determinants, and so forth. As a result, a very curious paradox arises that
deserves special discussion.
Let us turn first to a rather familiar everyday understanding of activity,
in order to then establish what metamorphoses it undergoes when it
becomes the object of methodological and theoretical analysis.
In the intuitive understanding of activity that corresponds to ordinary
everyday word usage, a number of attributes are traditionally distinguished.
The subjectness of activity. People usually say: “the activity of the sub­
ject,” “is realized by the subject,” or “is determined by the subject.” Let us
illustrate the “subject” in question as follows (see Figure 1.1):

English translation © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text, V.A. Petrovsky, “Paradoks
ischeznoveniia deiatel’nosti,” in Chelovek nad Situatsiei (Moscow: Smysl, 2010), pp. 6–19.
Translated by Susan Welsh. References and Notes have been renumbered for this edition.—Ed.
Published with the publisher’s permission.
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 125

Figure 1.1. “The Subject.”

“Activity has an individual, personal character”—this is a postulate that

seems beyond reproach. When we say “activity,” we have in mind “a subject of
activity.” Let us abstract for a second from the idea of an active, integral,
corporeal being, a living body, which is confronted, along with the environ­
ment, by other similar creatures, and at that moment the idea of activity
disappears. This is a belief intrinsic to everyday consciousness. It includes the
view that, by imitating the experience of others, the individuum,1 the bearer of
this active attitude toward the world, can structure his own behavior in the
environment; protect his own interests, which are distinguishable from the
interests of others; include others in the circle of his interests, and so forth—all
of which, in fact, characterize him as a “doer,” “an active figure in the
environment” (the last formulation is that of M.Ia. Basov [7]).
Any other understanding of the “subject” acquires in our eyes, to
a certain extent, a conditional, metaphorical meaning. Of course, we can
also speak of a “collective” subject, a “social” subject, and so forth. We
experience no lexical difficulties, speaking, for example, about society as
a “subject” of activity or something of that sort. But in such cases, we always
fall back on the idea of the individual subject as the original and seemingly
only authentic one, the one that provides, as it were, a prototype for all
future possible conceptions of “subject” in general.
The objectness of activity. The image of activity in everyday conscious­
ness presupposes the idea that it is objective, “directed to an object” (so we
draw an object alongside the subject, see Figure 1.2):
What then is the object of activity? First of all, it is that which confronts
the living, animate subject as the thing to which his activeness is directed
and which, in this encounter, acts in no way similar to the subject. From
this also follows the second empirical attribute of an object: the “authoriza­
tion” it contains for two principal methods by which the subject can relate
to it, transformation or adaptation. And here, activity is reduced to man­
ifestations of the subject’s adaptive activeness, distinguished only by

Figure 1.2. An “Object” (Next to the “Subject”).

126 V.A. PETROVSKY

whether the subject adapts himself to the thing or the thing adapts the
subject to itself.
In pedagogy and pedagogical psychology, the student is often spoken of as
an object of learning activity; however, usually the proviso immediately follows
that the student is also the subject of learning. This emphasizes the special place
and uniqueness of this type of activity compared to other types that are
considered to be the actualization of the “subject–object” relationship.
Activity is a process. The idea of activity as a process does not seem to require
special discussion: Do not the movement of a living body in space, the
dynamics of its kinematic circuits, some kind of continuous curve in sub­
ject–object “space-time,” determine activity? And is it possible to imagine
activity in any other way? The answer to these questions is that activity is
actually a process occurring between a subject and an object (see Figure 1.3):
The precedence of consciousness over activity. On what basis, we ask, is an
activity performed obeying the traditions of common sense? What regulates its
course in the first place? What generates the direction of a specific activity?
We say that an activity that is not based on some kind of knowledge, some
clear idea of the world, a conscious image of that world or a goal of the subject,
is no longer an activity, but just an “empty phrase.” Therefore, in order to
specifically characterize and understand activity, we must look into a person’s
subjective world, to illuminate, so to speak, the depths of his consciousness, in
order to discover the sources and determinants of the activity there.
As a result, an answer to these questions suggests itself: Consciousness is
that which regulates activity! Let us illustrate this idea:
In addition to the four aforementioned characteristics of activity,
describing it as if these are signs of activity itself but not our conceptions
of it, we can identify one more attribute, which, unlike the previous
“ontological” ones, describes activity in gnoseological terms.
The observability of activity. Activity is commonly considered observable,
“visible,” registered in the perception of the observer, captured directly by

Figure 1.3. A “Process” Linking the “Subject” and an “Object.”

Figure 1.4. “Consciousness” Heads Up the Process.

 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 127

Figure 1.5. Portrait of Activity from the Point of View of the “Unsophisticated.”

the “eye,” just as ordinary things are directly perceived. It makes no

difference which observer we are talking about: an “external” one, observing
a person from the outside, or an “internal” one, the subject of activity
himself in the role of an observer (in Figure 1.5, the angle brackets, < >,
symbolize internal and external observers).
Therefore, from the standpoint of everyday consciousness, activity is
subjective; what is objective is the process that is preceded by consciousness
and is directly observable (Figure 1.5 portrays activity in everyday
consciousness):
This, at first glance, is a completely natural and justified understanding
of activity, which does not seem to require any revision on the part of the
theorist, and could in such a “ready-made” form enter the general picture of
the world, the realm of theoretical conceptions of activity. Who could
infringe on these propositions, which seem indisputable? Yet it is these
that often become the object of theoretical infringements.

Activity . . . has disappeared?!

Let us take a look at what the model of activity we constructed above turns
into under the precision fire of methodological criticism. To do this, we
summarize some “expert assessments” given by theorists.
Activity is subjectless. Let us recall that the “subject” is an individuum as
a bearer and creator of activity: a single, indivisible being, who performs
activity. Any other understanding of the subject, as we have emphasized,
seems to be conditional and metaphorical and, moreover, “the very
assumption that the question can be posed in some other way—for exam­
ple, that activity is impersonal—seems to them [most people—V.P.] wild
and absurd” [60, p. 88]. “But there is,” the quoted author continues, “a
completely different point of view. The works of Hegel and Marx affirmed,
alongside the traditional understanding of activity, another one, which in
our view goes deeper. According to that view, human social activity should
be considered not as an attribute of an individual person, but as basic
universal integrity, much broader than he himself. It is then not discrete
128 V.A. PETROVSKY

individuals who create and perform activity, but rather it ‘captures’ them
and compels them to act in a certain way. In relation to a private form of
activity, speech language, W. Humboldt famously expressed this idea as
follows: ‘It is not people who master language, but language that masters
people.’ Activity is thus treated as something that is essentially supra-
individual, although, of course, it is realized by individuals (in their acts
of activity). It is not that activity belongs to people, but that people
themselves turn out ‘to belong to the activity,’ ‘to be attached to the
activity’” [60].
This quotation most precisely expresses the position of the founder of
one of the quite influential schools that currently brings together represen­
tatives of various specialties: philosophers, logicians, psychologists, systems
technicians, and others, developing a special theory, designated in their
works as “the general theory of activity.”
Additionally, this view fosters doubts regarding the traditional “subject”
of activity, since it is—we must say, following the logic of this approach—
impersonal; that is, the individuum does not act as its subject. The subject
“disappears” (see Figure 1.6):2
Activity is not directed at the object. According to everyday conceptions,
we recall that the subject–object relationship to the world is realized in
activity. The development of activity is not conceived otherwise than as the
result of practical or theoretical acts directed at the object. Does anyone
question the validity of such a point of view, which reduces activity and the
processes of development associated with it to the actualization of subject–
object relations? Yes, they do!
The prominent philosopher3 G.S. Batishchev, in a speech known to us
(unfortunately not available in written form), emphasized that even among
philosophers, it is still too common to discuss problems related to activity
without casting doubt on and overcoming the reduction of “activity” to the
notion of a “technocognitive relationship” of the subject to the object.
Moreover, according to Batishchev, the subject–object relationship is con­
sidered as nothing more than a branch on the tree of subject–object
relationships, a position which is completely unacceptable.
The “doubt” we are talking about is, of course, not just an opinion of this
well-known philosopher. Behind this doubt emerges a position that is

Figure 1.6. Disappearance of the Subject.

 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 129

beginning to be shared by an increasing number of modern philosophers and

psychologists: A special “subject–subject” paradigm is being formed in the
interpretation of activity. The essence of this emerging approach is that the
aspect of activity that is intentionally oriented toward another subject is singled
out as a new object of analysis. The final orientation here is not the transfor­
mation of a thing or the correspondence with a thing in order to saturate the
interests of the agent of activeness (the doer), but another person, a “significant
other,” to whom the former addresses his problems and values.
Thus, activity is by no means always “related to things,” “objective”
(although it seems that one cannot do without a “thing” in interpreting it,
although that is not always specifically stated). On the contrary, the intrin­
sically human activity that actualizes a person’s “essential powers” is an
activity oriented toward another person, the realization of subject–subject,
and not subject–object, relations. Therefore, following G.S. Batishchev, we
doubt the necessity of object-oriented activity (see Figure 1.7):
Activity is not a process. One can doubt the subjectness or objectness of
activity. But can there be any doubt that activity is a process? A rigorous
analysis of the concept of “process” showed convincingly that an activity
cannot be directly represented as a process [60]. We would explain this
view as follows.
First. It is reasonable to talk about a “process” only when there is
something that is undergoing change. Advanced scientific thinking cannot
do without ideas that establish the change over time of certain states of
a thing against the relative immutability of the thing itself. This establishes
some object as the “bearer of a process.”
Activity is revealed to us in the form of transitions that occur between
different bearer-objects. For example, individual activity functions as a motion
of the subject being transferred into the motion of its object, which in turn is
translated into new forms of motion of the subject, and so on.
With a more differentiated view of the subject and object of activity—for
example, when separating its material basis from its instruments—the activity
appears to us as even less homogeneous in structure, as “differently formed.”
Even more to the point, the heterogeneity of activity (the lack of something
uniform that is subject to change) appears in collective activity, activity that
requires technology, computers, and so forth. All these examples, when the
activity is the same but is realized by different agents, seem like a relay race of
processes.

Figure 1.7. Disappearance of the object.

130 V.A. PETROVSKY

Second. The fact that the “process” pertains to the same object, viewed
as the bearer of that process, does not at all mean that the latter is not
internally differentiated, that it does not act as an aspect or a part of it,
that it is amorphous in our eyes. On the contrary, the idea of a process
that allows us to say, “Here we have the same object, but something is
changing in it,” directly signifies the existence of at least one selected part
of the object, namely that part of it that is considered variable. Examples
of such “parts” (qualities, aspects, properties) include: temperature, elec­
trical conductivity, weight, color, and position in space, among others.
A process affecting any one part of the object is expressed in a sequence
of changes in the state of that part over time. From this point of view,
activity, unlike process, cannot be directly represented as a sequence of
states of any single fixed part of an object (or strictly parallel changes of
many of its parts). Thus, the stages of programming and implementation
of a particular individuality of activity are realized by different “parts” of
the individuum and mutually condition one another, partly intersecting,
partly diverging. Moreover, this also applies to the characteristics of mass
activity, which generally actualizes the motion of social production. That
can be described in two ways: in the form of transitions from one
changing object into another, and in the form of transitions from one
changing “part” into another “part” within the same object—in this case,
what can be called “society.” In both cases, the term “process” is
obviously unsuitable to describe everything that happens.
Third. In addition to the previous two points, there is one more that
characterizes a process from the aspect of its continuity. The concept of
a process assumes that it is possible to select any fractional (small) transi­
tions between certain states of the delineated “parts” of this object, such that
any fragment of the process can be reconstructed from these transitions as
well as from units. It follows from this that for each such division of the
process into a sequence of transitions between its states, each previous state
is transferred into one and only one subsequent state, and vice versa, each
subsequent state corresponds to one and only one previous state. Thus, the
chain of transitions does not split into two and does not reduce two
transitions between states to one. We can portray the process in this way
as an arbitrarily small linear chain of transitions at the limit of the con­
tinuous, between instantaneous states of an object in the preceding
moments of time and, accordingly, the subsequent ones. Does “activity”
correspond to this idea of “process”?
Taking just the example of speech activity, let us illustrate a rather
general feature: the branching out of processes that realize the activity.
Special knowledge of psycholinguistics is not required to understand that
here we are dealing with a complex dynamic formation, one procedural
“part” of which is formed by the phonetic series itself, the other “part” by
 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 131

the planning of a speech utterance (by thinking); between the processes of

thinking and pronouncing words, processes are distinguished that realize
the interdependence of words and thoughts (the generation of a word by
thought and the formation of thought in a word). Thus, speech does not
“arrange itself” in a linear chain; the processes that produce it intertwine
and branch out. But the picture of these intertwinings and branchings is
even richer. Suffice it to consider the existing models of generating utter­
ances: “Arterial” transitions from thought to word and “venous” transitions
from word to thought are even more complex, and if we bear in mind that
they only connect the processes of thinking and pronunciation of words
that have their own specific patterns, the discrepancy between this picture
of speech activity and the schema of process becomes more striking.
Here is one of the models for generating an utterance: “Its first stage is
the construction of a linear extragrammatical structure of an utterance, its
internal programming. The second stage is the transformation of this
structure into the grammatical structure of a sentence. The third stage is
its actualization as the latter. If we are dealing with a rather complex
statement, there is reason to assume that at the first stage we have some­
thing like a set of Osgood’s ‘kernel assertions,’ although of course, like
Lieutenant Kijé,4 ‘having no shape,’ they have not yet been formed either
lexically or grammatically, and especially not phonetically. In the percep­
tion of speech, it all happens in the opposite order . . . ” [35, pp. 124 – 125].
Here, however, the phenomenology of “self-hearing,” “self-interpretation”
is not yet being considered: Is the inverse scanning of one’s own utterance
always identical to its original premises? After all, if this were always the
case, we would never notice the accidental ambiguity of words we have
uttered.
Rising from this particular example to a general assessment of the
dynamic characteristics of activity, we must conclude that activity cannot
be directly represented as a process (see Figure 1.8):
Activity is not preceded by consciousness. In the course of working on the
problem of activity, the concept of the primacy of consciousness in relation
to activity was radically revised in the works of A.N. Leontiev and his
school. The first steps of the “activity approach” in psychology were
J. Piaget’s and L.S. Vygotsky’s ideas of the “interiorization” (transition
from outside to inside) of objective relations existing in nature and society.

Figure 1.8. “Activity Is Not a Process.”

132 V.A. PETROVSKY

Leontiev focused on the formation of a mental image of the world, having

theoretically and experimentally substantiated the thesis that the foundation
of any forms of mental reflection, from the elementary to the most com­
plex, is the activeness of the subject, and that the latter in its genetically
early manifestations should be understood as external and object-related,
regulated not from the inside (by some ready-made mental content), but
from the outside, by objects and relationships in the surrounding world.
“According to the internal logic of this theory,” notes V.V. Davydov, “the
constitutive activity should be its objectivity. It is revealed in the process of
transformation of activity through its subordination (elsewhere it is called
‘assimilation’) to the properties, phenomena, and relations of an object-
related world independent of it. Therefore, the inference may be justified
that this quality of activity is its universal plasticity, its ability to be
transformed in the process of taking over, absorbing into itself those
objective qualities of objects among which and in which the subject has
to exist and act. The transformations of such activity are governed by the
objects themselves in the process of the subject’s practical contacts with
them. In other words, the transformations and changes in the activity of
a person as an integral organic system, taken in its entirety, occur under its
plastic and flexible subordination to objective social relations among peo­
ple, the forms of their material and spiritual communication. This is one of
the ‘obviously unusual elements’ that characterize activity, and this is one of
the contentions that express ‘the deep originality and genuine unconven­
tionality of his [A.N. Leontiev’s] approach to the problem of constructing
a psychological theory’” [18, p. 32].
Those who were lucky enough to listen to the brilliant lectures of Alexei
Nikolaevich Leontiev remember an example that would not have been so
intelligible if not for the marvelous plasticity of the lecturer’s gestures. “You
see,” he said, with, as always, a captivating trust in the intelligence of his
listeners, “the hand moves, drawing the contours of an object, and the
shape of the hand’s motion turns into the shape of a mental image of the
object, and is transferred into consciousness.” And his long, narrow palm
slid lightly along the edge of the table.
“At the initial stages of its development,” Leontiev continues his story,
“activity necessarily takes the form of external processes . . . . Accordingly,
the mental image is a product of these processes, practically linking the
subject with object-related reality.” If we refuse to study these external
processes as genetically early forms of the production of images, then
“there is nothing left for us to do but acknowledge the existence of
a mysterious ‘mental ability,’ which consists in being influenced by external
impulses falling on the subject’s sense receptors; in his brain—a phenom­
enon parallel to physiological processes—an inner light flashes, illuminating
the world for the person, as if from the radiation of images that are then
 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 133

localized, ‘objectified’ by the subject in the surrounding space” [36, pp. 92–
93]. In the works of A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Zaporozhets, L.A. Wenger, Iu.B.
Gippenreiter, V.P. Zinchenko, and their collaborators and students, the idea
of generating a mental image through activity, the derivation of conscious­
ness from the subject’s sensory, practical contacts with the outside world,
was traced experimentally and was largely generalized in the formula
“perception as action.” This approach to the psychology of perception is
a necessary condition for understanding the genesis of consciousness in
activity, and is a concrete psychological form of the proposition that “the
ideal is material, transplanted into the head of a person and transformed in
it” (K. Marx). Human sensory, object-related activity is considered as the
producing foundation, the “substance” (A.N. Leontiev) of consciousness.
Thus, the universality of the thesis is rejected, according to which con­
sciousness anticipates activity, and vice versa, that activity precedes con­
sciousness. Another “indisputable” characteristic of activity thus loses its
power (Figure 1.9):
Activity is invisible. Suffice it to carefully familiarize oneself with the
principal works of A.N. Leontiev in order to understand that activity for
him can in no way be identified with behavior—with activeness in its
external manifestations. The principle of objectivity and, accordingly, the
range of phenomena of objectivity (“the character of requirements,”
“functional fixation” of objects, etc.) “allow us to draw a dividing line
between the activity approach and various naturalistic behavioral con­
cepts based on schemas of ‘stimulus–response,’ ‘organism-environment,’
and their modifications in neobehaviorism” [2]. A.U. Kharash, recalling
a remarkable episode related by K. Lorenz, gives a vivid example of the
fact that the object of activity is by no means identical to the thing with
which a person is directly interacting at the moment and which is directly

Figure 1.9. “Activity Is Not Preceded by Consciousness.”

Figure 1.10. “Activity Is Invisible.”

134 V.A. PETROVSKY

accessible to an outside observer. The well-known ethologist once took

a brood of ducklings “for a walk,” standing in for their mother. To do
this, he had to squat and scoot along, quacking continuously. “When
I suddenly looked up,” writes K. Lorenz, “I saw the garden fence framed
by a row of deathly white faces: a group of tourists was standing at the
fence and staring horrified in my direction. Not surprising! For all they
could see was a big man with a beard dragging himself around, crouching,
in the meadow, in figure eights, constantly glancing over his shoulder and
quacking—but the ducklings, the all-revealing and all-explaining duck­
lings, were hidden in the tall spring grass from the view of the astonished
crowd.” “The fear on the faces of the viewers was nothing more than their
nonverbal self-report of the perceptual impression that K. Lorenz himself
reproduced so well. His activity was observed in a truncated form—an
object-related, semantic piece was completely ‘cut out’ of it” [30, p. 3].
The nonidentity of activity and behavior is not the only feature differ­
entiating those concepts, according to the criterion of perceptibility (“given­
ness,” “visibility,” “observability”). We note this in connection with our
main task: to show that this attribute, the “observability” of activity, is being
critically reinterpreted by methodologists.
But are we perhaps only talking about the fact that activity is always
observable from the outside, and if we take the position of an “internal”
observer, does the image of activity instantly open up to the observer and
the activity become “visible”? Alas, this is not always the case! If everything
were like that, then, perhaps, criticism of the introspective method of
studying mental phenomena would be completely unjustified (this method
claimed to be a direct study of consciousness “from the inside,” through the
eyes of an internal observer); there would be no need for any special
techniques to allow people to understand themselves; and the whole of
modern psychology, which has not put much faith in the direct evidence of
a person’s inner experience, would have to be substantially abolished.
Activity “from within” is by no means perceived and experienced in its
full coherence, but is often distorted; the vision of activity often serves as
a special activity of the subject (reflection), sometimes without introducing
anything but negative results. Such, for example, is the phenomenon of
“ugly thinking” discovered by the Würzburg School: the absence of struc­
tured and meaningfully interpreted data of consciousness, which serve as
intermediate products in solving a number of intellectual problems.
Likewise, a person’s motives (the objects of his needs), as most researchers
emphasize, can be “behind the curtain of consciousness.”
Activity, therefore, can be “invisible” from either the outside or the inside.
The “brackets” symbolizing the “observability” of the activity disappear:
Let us summarize what has been said thus far. If we try to take into account
and equally take as a foundation the views of the main “developers” of the
 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 135

Figure 1.11. “The Disappearance of Activity.”

problem of activity—authoritative philosophers, methodologists, psychologists

—and, drawing upon the range of their ideas, try again to answer the question,
“What is activity?” then we will be obliged to state the following. It turns out that
everything that to everyday consciousness seemed to be definitive in the descrip­
tion of activity is not something immutable and obligatory for theorists. On the
contrary, the basic characteristics of activity, according to common sense, cannot
be at all reliably connected with what should be understood as activity, and can
be separated from it without doing any harm to “activity.” Activity is not
necessarily “subjective” and not necessarily “objective”; it cannot be directly
represented as a “process”; it is not always anticipated by consciousness and,
moreover, is sometimes “invisible.” Subjectness, objectness, representability in
the form of a process, anticipation by consciousness, observability—all these
seemingly internal, intrinsic characteristics of activity are refuted (or to put it
more gently, they are not observed) as its attributes (see Figure 1.11).
Has activity then disappeared?!
Has activity disappeared? In answering this question, we first have to find
out the ideological foundation on which that image of activity arises, which
at first seems quite acceptable, but then literally comes to naught as soon as
it becomes an object of methodological reflection. Here we will encounter
the attitudes of researchers, not always sharply delineated and not always
conscious, researchers quite varied in their beliefs, but adhering, never­
theless, to the same principle in understanding human behavior and con­
sciousness: “the postulate of congruity.”
Next, we turn to analysis of those methodological premises that underlie
the criticism of everyday ideas about activity, and try to establish the real
commonality (and whether there is one) of the positions of those whose
critical judgments about activity have led to its “destruction.” Turning in
this context to the phenomenon of the self-motion of activity, we will come
close to the problem of the activeness of the personality and outline possible
ways to “restore” activity.

Notes

1. Here and below, when we say “individuum,” we mean what people usually
understand by “person,” a single member of the human community. The
136 V.A. PETROVSKY

“individuum” is Pyotr, Pavel, Natalya, or Tatiana—that is, he or she whom

speakers think of as a being similar to themselves, joining different hypos­
tases of being (vital— organism”; existential—“individual”; social—“person­
ality”; spiritual—“person”). Of course, at this point it would be logical to start
with the question: What, in this case, is the “human community,” and is there
a risk of making the logical mistake “circulus in definiendo”—“a circle by
definition”? No, we will not make such a mistake if we employ the only
ostensive definition possible in this context—by explicitly indicating that
“here, here, and here, are those who form a ‘human community,’ as distinct
from all others” (so that those who are not included in the class we have
defined are explicitly indicated).
2. The phenomenon of doubt in the attributes is symbolized by the inversion of
the color and a cross in the upper right corner of each of the previous figures.
3. In our 1993 book, written in 1984 on the basis of lectures in 1978, we said
that Genrikh Stepanovich Batishchev was “a prominent Soviet philoso­
pher”—the epithet “Soviet” is least of all suitable for a sharp-tongued,
I would say inflexible person, who could always stand up for his extraordin­
ary views to anyone, without exception.
4. The protagonist of a story about the reign of Emperor Paul I of Russia.—
Trans.
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