Philosophy of mastery (as exemplified by P.P. Bazhov’s legacy

Abstract

The work is devoted to the philosophy of mastery presented in the tales of the Ural writer Pavel Petrovich Bazhov. The basis of the phenomenon of mastery is the classical philosophy of Plato in its Socratic version. The authors of the article see it as their goal to prove the close relationship between the practical handicraft Ural art, represented in the mythology and literature of P.P. Bazhov, and the classical metaphysical attitudes of European philosophy. The personality of the master becomes a cementing link between the natural world and the world of culture. Mastery in its philosophical and practical form acts as a support for the natural attitude towards nature, art, and towards man in general. The authors decipher the phenomenon of mastery in the tales of P.P. Bazhov, analyze his modes and the specifics of manifestation. Ural tales of P.P. Bazhov in describing the phenomena of mastery and genuine creative attitude to nature repeat the structure of the classical attitude to the world and logically correspond to the structure of the creative attitude of the master poet to the object he creates. The specificity of the Ural artcraftsmanship lies in the fact that the personality of the master is embodied not in an ideologist, not in a religious preacher, not in an intellectual, but in a master who interacts with the elements of nature as concretely and closely as possible. The work immerses P.P. Bazhov’s legends, written during the Soviet period of Russian history, in the global context of research into the nature of genuine living creativity, and also emphasizes the regional and very special specific aspect in the Ural mastery.