Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 52, no. 3 (Winter 2013–14), pp. 9–17.

© 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com

ISSN 1061–1967 (print)/1558–0431 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/RSP1061–1967520301

Ruben G. Apresian

The Ethical Evolution of

Abdusalam A. Guseinov

The article discusses the contributions made by the distinguished Russian

ethicist A.A. Guseinov to philosophy, and especially to philosophical eth-
ics. It reviews the evolution of his views on ethics and morality as they are
presented in the main body of his work.
The history of contemporary philosophical ethics in Russia is inseparable from
the name of Abdusalam Abdulkerimovich Guseinov. He entered the scholarly
world in 1964 with the publication of his paper “Problema proiskhozhdeniia
nravstvennosti (na materiale razvitiia instituta krovnoi mesti),” [The Problem
of the Emerging of Morality (Study of the Development of the Practice of
Blood Vengeance Practice)].1 By that time, Soviet ethics had already largely
formed in the preceding decade as a scholarly field and an academic discipline
in some of its initial, thematically and topically specific forms. But this first
article by Guseinov, at such a young age, was clearly out of the ordinary.
He proposed a groundbreaking—it can even be said defiantly so—approach
to a problem that was quite well established in the existing methodological
canon.

English translation © 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2009,
izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta (MGU). A version revised
by the author of an article originally published as “Eticheskaia evoliutsiia A.A. Gusein-
ova,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriia 7. Filosofiia, 2009, no. 6, pp. 21–29.
Ruben Grantovich Apresian, doctor of philosophical sciences and professor, is
head of the department of ethics at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy
of Sciences in Moscow.
Translated by Stephan Lang.

9
10  RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

As a young author, Guseinov was probably not particularly thinking about

possible outcomes of his work; however, the logic of his analysis of the origins
of morality led to some unique conclusions. Through research of proto-moral
normative forms, Guseinov proposed a different reference point for under-
standing the emergence of morality.
At that time, the predominant view on this question was rooted in Fried-
rich Engels’s famous work “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from
Ape to Man.” According to this view, morality has been formed during the
development of initial forms of labor activity in response to the needs gener-
ated by this activity; morality was associated with consciousness in general,
and its manifestations were discerned in the primordial conscious actions
of early man, in contrast with the instinctive actions of prehistoric man.
Guseinov rightly considered such an approach to the origin of morals un-
satisfactory in that it ignored the qualitative distinctiveness of morality—and,
correspondingly, of the processes of its emergence. He proposed combining
the clarification of the conditions of the origin of morality with the study of
the social practice specific to the early era. As a subject of his investigation,
he chose the practice of blood vengeance in its evolution in the process of
the development and social differentiation of early society. Generalizing the
observations of historians and anthropologists, he showed that changes in
the practice of blood vengeance had immediate significance for the forma-
tion of that regulative mechanism that would serve as the basis of morality.
The custom of blood vengeance changes during the lengthy development of
archaic society: the possibility of complete arbitrariness in its implementa-
tion gives way to gradually intensifying restrictions on the scale of reciprocal
retaliatory action. Historically, the basis, or the prerequisite, of morality is a
regulative mechanism by means of which emerging conflicts are resolved on
a basis of equality, and specifically of equal retaliation. Thus does the ancient
custom of blood vengeance take on the form of talion,* in accordance with
which the principle of equality, equal retaliation, takes the role of an inflexible
restrictor of the reciprocal actions of feuding collectives and the individuals
representing them. Blood vengeance, of course, was not the only manifesta-
tion of conflict in archaic society and not the only form of regulating human
relations both between individuals and between collectives (in all their forms).
However, this custom appeared to Guseinov to be so characteristic and vivid,
so typical of the way human relations were regulated in archaic society, that

*From the Latin talio, an eye for an eye.—Trans.

 WINTER 2013–14  11

he devoted his greatest attention to blood vengeance, seeing in the changes

in the way this specific practice of primordial society was regulated—and not
in giving, in gratitude, or in caring—the real prototype of morality, with its
demands of individual autonomy and responsibility. The object of Guseinov’s
research here—the regulative mechanisms of the customs of early and archaic
societies, their changes in the process of the establishment and development
of civilization—predetermined the view of morality as a social institution.
Therefore social organization, the securing of social discipline, and regulation
came to the forefront in his examination of morality.
A few years later, Guseinov published an article focusing on the golden
rule, literally opening up for the Soviet reader this moral phenomenon, which
had hitherto not attracted the attention of scholars. It should be noted that if
Guseinov’s understanding of the true significance of the golden rule for the
moral culture of humanity could have been influenced by the works of Ger-
man authors, first and foremost Hans Reiner,2 then the credit for examining
it in the context of the historical development of morality, and even more in
correlation with the principle of retaliation,* belongs exclusively to Guseinov;
I do not know of no other such examples in the professional literature.
It is obvious that the theme of the golden rule could not have been com-
fortable and appealing for Soviet ethicists. For it inevitably led one to the
topic of the universality of moral forms, the universality of imperative and
values-based definitions of morality as such. As in the case of Guseinov’s
early theoretical investigations, the consistent development of the theme of
the golden rule led to conclusions that could easily seem unacceptable from
the positions of historical materialism.
[Indeed,] recognition of the golden rule as a point of departure in the de-
velopment of morality would necessitate general-theoretical changes in the
conception of morality. This, however, did not occur right away. Until the
early 1980s, Guseinov held to the historical-materialistic understanding of
morality on the whole. This was a refined version of ethics developed on a
base of distinctively (almost in a Hegelian spirit) interpreted historical mater-
ialism: morality was not regarded as a function of an existing social order or
as part of a “superstructure” above relations of production. In some manner
it was linked to history, to the historical perspective, and was thought of as [a
phenomenon that] represents to a concrete society and empirical individuals
the universal interest of progressive historical development. Such is the con-
ceptual nucleus of what can tentatively be called Guseinov’s “first ethics.” I
would call the understanding of morality it presented social-historicistic. The
sociality of the morality signifies that its source is discerned in the historical

*The law of talion.—Ed.

12  RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

development of society and social relations, as well as that its functioning

answers the needs of a concrete society, and not the needs of an “abstract
individual.” The historical character of morality was introduced in terms
of the historical—that is, universal—necessity that is reflected in morality.
By historicism [istoritsizmom] in relation to ethics (not to be confused with
historicity [istorizmom]) is understood a methodology according to which
morality, having a social origin, develops in conformity with some general
vector of development of history, which, in fact, defines both its substance
and its social mission—the sense of functioning in society.3

At the beginning of the 1980s, Guseinov introduced a series of revisions into

his conception of morality. At first they could have been taken as separate,
individual refinements: he continued to maintain the positions of a social and
realist understanding of morality, considering it as a regulative tool, operating
in a context of real social and human relations. But this was in essence a new
ethics. There is no place left for historicism, appeals to the abstract universal
interest of history, assumptions about some responsibility by an individual to
history, and the like. Extreme sociologism [sotsiologizm] with its recognition
of a direct dependence of moral principles on the concrete conditions of the
life of society, the relations of the classes, and so forth becomes superficial.
At the same time the principle of historicism in ethics is carried out more
clearly and convincingly: the emergence of morality is associated with a
certain historical era, with the need to resolve specific social and individual
needs, with the development of social relations. A humanistic component is
emphasized in morality—humanness is discerned both at the level of morality
as a whole and in some of its concrete manifestations. Morality appears as
a way for the individual to achieve internal harmony; it characterizes social
relations and the state of a specific society from the viewpoint of how appro-
priate it is to individual existence. In principle, morality proves to be possible
on the strength of the fact that the sociality inherent to human society is a
sociality of a particular kind, which is based on an “absolute interdepend-
ence” of individuals who acquire “qualitative certainty, human appearance
and status, only to the extent that—and in the process of how—[they] enter
into relations with other individuals.”4 Thus the characteristic of morality as
a measure of the humanness of social relations becomes predominant over
such of its characteristics as the way of reconciling what is and what ought to
be, of overcoming the contradiction between the personal and the societal—
the principal characteristics that have been emphasized in the (early) book
Sotsial’naia priroda nravstvennosti [The Social Nature of Morality].
 WINTER 2013–14  13

It is interesting to compare two of Guseinov’s books The Social Nature of

Morality, the defining example of his creativity of the 1970s, and Vvedenie v
etiku [Introduction to Ethics], which sets the tone for the 1980s. As mentioned
above, the first book offered an ethical analysis of talion and the golden rule.
But the conception of the social nature of morality was not generally based
on the results of this analysis. The topics of talion and the golden rule are
touched on in Introduction only in passing. But the practical-social character
of morality—and Guseinov views this quality as key—is revealed as being
linked to and in the spirit of the golden rule. In this, Introduction is akin to
Aristotle’s works on ethics: it seems as if Aristotle does not know about the
golden rule; however, a significant part of his ethical thought constitutes an
expanded explication of the logic of the golden rule, of the positions, sets,
motives, dependencies, and relations assumed by it. So too do Guseinov’s
discussions of sociality, the individual side of social relations, appear as if
they are derived from the formula of the golden rule. It is characteristic that in
the works of this period he almost—even if tacitly—brings his understanding
of social relations to the point of interpersonal interactions, communicative
relations; moral relations are presented as associated with friendship and love
(philosophically generalized love—relations toward another as an end in itself).
This could be considered the reverse side of Guseinov’s recognition of the in-
dividual as one of the real prerequisites and factors of morality. Nevertheless,
the golden rule was not actualized in this investigation of morality. For in his
analysis of morality Guseinov focused on social relations [as a whole], while
trying to present interpersonal relations as a particularity of social relations.
Even though the focus of investigation was not a “concrete” or “empir-
ical” individual, but rather man as a “species being,” this was a conception
of morality turned toward the human. Morality represented to society and to
a concrete individual not historical perspective, but man himself, and was
conceived by Guseinov as an expression and an affirmation of humanness in
social relations.
This understanding of morality could be called personalist-social. It was
central to Guseinov at the end of the 1980s, when he turned to the particu-
lar specific—and at first glance even applied—problem, to the ethics of
nonviolence. He deserves the credit for the introduction into the late-Soviet
philosophical–journalistic [filosofsko-publitsisticheskii] discourse the idea of
nonviolence and the institutionalization of research in this field.
At the same time he continued his research in the history of ethics. In the
early 1970s, the need to devise a course of lectures on the history of ethics
at the philosophy faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University had led
Guseinov to an in-depth study of ancient ethics, and in particular the ethical
teaching of Aristotle. It is he who should have the credit for mastering the
14  RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

ethics of Aristotle in our philosophical-historical literature. Thanks to him,

the tradition of ethical Aristotelianism was introduced into Soviet and post-
Soviet ethics. Guseinov took research in the field of the history of ethics to a
new level—both through his own works focusing on a variety of ethicists and
philosophical thinkers and by initiating a series of collective philosophical-
historical projects. In this regard, it is worth mentioning Guseinov’s book
Velikie moralisty [The Great Moralists]5—groundbreaking for its time—
which introduced ethical theories of the great teachers of humanity. In the
late 1980s–early 1990s, Guseinov conducted fundamental research into the
ethics of A. Schweitzer, L. Tolstoy, and I. Kant.

This important work led to Guseinov’s forming a new vision of morality,

changing the understanding of the nature and expression of moral imperative-
ness, of the status of the moral subject, and of the function of morality in the
sphere of values and in culture as a whole. Starting in the second half of the
1990s, new thoughts and intuitions were emerging in Guseinov’s views on
morality which eventually developed into a complex of ideas that the author
identified as “negative ethics.” The results of his creative search boiled down
to the following: (a) moral norms or imperatives have an absolute character;
(b) a priority and essential expression of moral imperativeness is prohibition;
(c) moral imperativeness is passed on in a specific manner by means of the
subjunctive mood; (d) compliance with a prohibition takes place in a conscious
and principle-based refusal to do what is prohibited, manifested in a particular
kind of conduct, specifically in “negative [morally not permissible—Ed.]
acts”; (e) they represent the essence of morality as a sphere of individually
responsible behavior.
While the conception of negative ethics is outside the scope of this article,
I would like to comment briefly on the aspect that is related to the absolute-
ness of morality and the absolute character of moral requirements. Interest-
ingly, the conception of absolute morality allows us to view the numerous
“inclusions” and “retreats” of an ideological-ethical nature that are present in
Guseinov’s works of the 1970s in a different way. While such insertions did
serve some ideological purposes, what is apparent is also another tendency,
namely striving toward the ideal, an attempt to juxtapose the ideal to reality,
to move morality away from being determined by the specific social circum-
stances, concrete social necessity, and authoritarian directive. In this context,
Guseinov’s sharp attacks, deployed in the 1980s, against the conception of
“managing the moral upbringing process”—and more broadly the conception
of morality as a technique for social management, which had arisen within
 WINTER 2013–14  15

the framework of applied-ethical quests—become understandable. He saw

in those research initiatives a danger of the subordination of morality to the
pragmatics of urgent political or economic interest, and consequently the
loss of morality as such. The conception of absolute morality also allows an
assessment of Guseinov’s early ethical historicism in a different way: histori-
cism allowed him to safeguard himself from the requirements of ideological
servility, disengage from callous realism, and experience the possible ground
of individual autonomy and moral freedom.
The proposed linkage between the conception of absolute morality and
Guseinov’s own ideological and theoretical views in the 1970s–80s raises
the question of the possible nature of the absoluteness of morals. Once, in
response to a question about the nature of the universality of moral require-
ments in a conversation in the late 1980s, Guseinov conjectured (indirectly,
yet polemically addressing universalist ethics) that universality is a concrete-
historical characteristic of a specific type of moral consciousness, namely the
moral consciousness of the early modern period.. The property of absoluteness
introduced indirectly to negative action and the subjunctive mood of moral
thought can be treated analogously: Is that not just a phenomenon of becoming
aware of and experiencing morality; is that not a reflexive metaphor for moral
consciousness itself? The most vivid image of the absoluteness of morals is
provided by Guseinov in his analysis of Old Testament ethics: “The roots of
morality go deep into the impenetrable depths of infinity. Morality is absolute.
[It is] absolute to such a degree that this very absoluteness becomes its specific
feature. This distinctive feature of morality in the language of an Old Testa-
ment person found expression in the point that its demands are presented as
God’s commandments.”6 These words were formulated in one of Guseinov’s
most popular books—Velikie moralisty, written before the conception of nega-
tive ethics had been developed. However, the understanding of absoluteness
assumed in therein—“absoluteness becomes their specific feature,” “[moral]
demands are presented as God’s commandments”—more likely confirms an
assumption of their epiphenomenal character. A moral subject cannot speak
either of absolute morality or in the name of absolute morality, but he can
think, be motivated, and act in a regime of absolute morality.
According to Guseinov, the most important practical correlate of the no-
tion of absolute morality is the principle of nonviolence; and the conception
of absolute morality finds continuation and supplementation in the ethics of
nonviolence. As can be seen in his works, recognition that the principle of
nonviolence has unconditional and priority significance proves possible within
the framework of a notion of morality in which the latter is thought of as
absolute in all its manifestations. Thus it would be more accurate to call this
understanding of morality absolutist-negative.
16  RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

* * *

The three understandings of morality—historical-social, personal-social, and

absolutist-negative—these syntheses of ideas or conceptual clusters, do not
so much divide Guseinov’s creativity into separate stages as they bring and
(potentially) hold it together.7 Guseinov’s ethics is a work in progress in a dual
sense. First, in the obvious existential sense, as an expression of a naturally
and actively continuing creative life; second, in the sense of expressed ideas
and dynamically evolving conceptions.
The last point I wish to raise in my presentation of these ideas and their
evolution is to imply [the existence of] some kind of phasing in the intellectual
development of Guseinov and a mutual isolation between the conceptions of
morality generated at different stages. And in my opinion, a distant echo of
ideological moralizing (no doubt mixed with sincere moral idealism) and eth-
ical historicism of the early Guseinov can be discerned in the ethical absolutism
of the later Guseinov. The three understandings of morality I have examined
above are in some way mutually complementary, actually and potentially:
—the conception of absolute morality can be completed by the theory of
the origin of morality that contains the transition from talion to the golden
rule, which is basic for morality,
— the conception of “negative action” and prohibitory imperativeness can
be combined with the understanding of morality as a measure of the human-
ness of social and communicative connections, expressed in the summation
of those same primary moral relations,
—individual responsibility for moral actions can be rethought in terms of
effective action, implemented fairness, and true concern.
Guseinov himself perceived these theoretical possibilities as tasks when he
raised the complex methodological question of whether it is possible to combine
the traditions of Kantianism and Aristotelianism in a single ethical theory.
This persistent modality of possibility in Guseinov’s works attests to the
fact that his philosophical project is still unfinished and its continuation awaits
his solutions and fulfillments.

Notes

1. “Problema proiskhozhdeniia nravstvennosti (na materiale razvitiia instituta

krovnoi mesti),” Filosofskie nauki, 1964, no. 3, pp. 57–67.
2. Hans Reiner, “Die Goldene Regel. Die Bedeutung einer sittlichen Grundformel
der Menschheit” [1948], in Hans Reiner, Die Grundlagen der Sittlichkeit (erw. Auflage
von Pflicht und Neigung) (Hain: Meisenheim, 1974).
3. See A.A. Guseinov, Sotsial’naia priroda nravstvennosti (Moscow: Izd-vo
Moskovskogo universiteta, 1974).
 WINTER 2013–14  17

4. A.A. Guseinov, Vvedenie v etiku (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo univer-

siteta, 1985), pp. 153–54.
5. A.A. Guseinov, Velikie moralisty (Moscow: Respublika, 1995). The second,
supplemented and expanded publication of this work—Velikie proroki i mysliteli:
Nravstvennye ucheniia ot Moiseia do nashikh dnei (Moscow: Veche, 2009).
6. Guseinov, Velikie moralisty, p. 80.
7. See the collection of [recent] A.A. Guseinov’s texts : Filosofiia—mysl’ i postupok:
Stat’i, doklady, lektsii, interv’iu (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo
gosudarstvennogo universiteta profsoiuzov, 2012).

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