Articles

Ekaterina Grigoryeva Lomonosov Moscow State University

Contemporary understanding of the environment is undergoing dramatic changes. Back in the early twentieth century, both in philosophy and in sociology, it was traditionally believed that the concept of the environment should be associated with the concept of the physical (primarily natural) environment and is quite objective. It is on this understanding that, for example, the introduction of eccentricity as the main characteristic of a human being associated with the ability to be open to the world and at the same time independent of the environment is based in the classical philosophical anthropology of M. Scheler, H. Plesner and A.Gehlen. [1; 2; 3] But by the end of the twentieth century, the concept of the environment is increasingly subjectivized and associated with specifically human life activity. The very content content of this concept is also changing. Today, the position that the environment is a «material environment» (as, for example, A.P. Marder literally formulates in his works the definition of the environment [4, 16—17] and that is assumed by most works related to the identification of the human-animal facet, starting with the classical works of K. Lorentz [5] and ending with the latest foreign [6; 7; 8; 9] and domestic [10, 85—90] researches in this area), it no longer seems as obvious as a century and a half or two ago, and increasingly one can find the opinion that the main content of the environment is not material at all. [11; 12; 13; 14] Because it surrounds and shapes a modern person not so much the area of the actual (to which the traditionally understood environment belongs), as the area of the information-virtual (to which most of the modern interpretations of the environment of human existence relate). Which leads some authors to a rather radical conclusion that the environment is a «specific form of thought». [15]

Our tasks do not include criticism or a detailed analysis of the latter provision, however, it is impossible not to notice that it is symptomatic to a certain extent. In modern culture, where the primacy of digital technologies and virtual representation is increasingly clearly revealed, and reality as such is being questioned and significantly curtailed in its rights; where the construction of a correctional institution in a neighboring yard turns out to be a fact of the virtual world of messengers and social networks distributing a petition against this development, before, it is more obvious and urgent than the actual fact of the construction itself, which we should stumble upon on our daily journey from home to work; where our compatriots learn from the work of the British philosopher [16] that almost all trees have died out in Murmansk as a result of severe industrial pollution, the concept of the environment cannot but be rethought.

The change in the aesthetics of the environment and the transformation of the concept of the environment as a subject - oriented and at the same time a subject-forming factor seems to be a manifestation of the movement of human self-exclusion common to modern culture and the discovery of baselessness as a loss of the basic «faith in the world», [17] on which the human perception of the world has been based for the last two millennia, which leads, on the one hand, to the formation of a new type of identity associated with dispersion and the aesthetics of substitution, and on the other hand — to the assertion of the aesthetics of the «dark ecology» as a natural consequence of the psychological rejection of the «world vacuum», [18] which suddenly appears in place of «that is unconditionally great». [19]

Transformation of the environment as a subject-forming factor

The modern understanding of the environment as applied to a person is being transformed, moving further and further away from the concept of the «environment» itself and getting closer and closer to the concept of content. How is the concept of content fundamentally different from the concept of the environment? In general terms — by the fact that it assumes the relation of «content», and not «environment». Which, in turn, means that if we fix in modern thinking and modern culture the transition from the actual environment to the content, then this is not just a transition in understanding the environment as an environment to its understanding as an information environment (which has been since the 60s. In the twentieth century, it was clearly traced and spoken out, and today it seems to have become a commonplace), but also a radical change of philosophical foundations: the rejection of the principle of reality in favor of the virtual, the rejection of the principle of objectivity in favor of inclusiveness and the rejection of anthropocentricity or «human exclusivity» in favor of equality. Since the content initially exists artificially, that is, it is impossible before, outside and in addition to the activity of the subject; it is connected with the field of virtual information, and not with the real, and even more so not with the natural; and finally, despite being connected to the concept of the subject, it is not subject-centered, since it is disconnected from the concept of the environment.

It would seem that man was initially positioned in philosophical anthropology as a being that differs from all others in that it is not determined by the environment, like an animal, but has its own «world». [1, 53—65] Unlike an animal, which is strictly determined by the structure of the surrounding world and its boundaries, a person is «capable of behavior that is directly opposite in form». [1, 54] That is, he is able to distance himself from his own natural and material environment and react to it freely, up to complete or almost complete disregard. The essence of a person, which is associated not with reference to the world, but with reference to himself, with his own ability to dream [20] and with the act of ideation, which is based on the technique of «trial elimination of reality», [1, 63] thus consists not in what «surrounds» him, but in what content he himself creates, not assumed by this environment and not deduced from it (environment) directly as an environment, always supplementing this environment with his content in the act of negation or affirmation.

However, although in the texts of the founders of classical philosophical anthropology we already find the term «virtual» in relation to a person, despite the «utopian» human location postulated by them, [2] denial of reality [1] and eccentricity as a person’s exposure to his own environment, [2, 122—127] the «world» or «joint world» of a person in these philosophers does not have the character of a virtual world proper.

A person will differ from an animal in this philosophical tradition in that the animal «fully gets used to a specific actual reality» [1, 59] and does not distinguish itself from the environment. Thus, the concept of «environment» is, strictly speaking, impossible for an animal, since there is not yet that distinction (and, as a consequence, distinction) on the basis of which the very concept of environment and center (exclusive place, privileged position) in the human definition of the environment is formed. But just as the world presupposes an exceptional place for man (the very concept of the «surrounding world» is already centered, and philosophical anthropology, insisting on the exceptional position of man in the systematics of anthropology, is fundamentally anthropocentric), so man is inevitably connected with the environment in his movement of constant going outside and «bracketing the world». If «eccentricity is a form of frontal orientation in relation to the environment characteristic of a person», [2, 126] then there can be no question of any primacy of virtuality before the real, and the environment is still the determining element in a person’s self-determination, whether he proceeds from its acceptance, denial or «bracketing».

Why, then, does a person’s eccentricity in relation to the environment and the «tentative elimination of reality» characteristic of him eventually lead not only to the realization of the world as what surrounds me, that is, what is different from me in its proximity, but also to the derealization of this world? Comparing man with an animal, Scheler and Plesner, as well as Gehlen and Lorenz, who are in solidarity with them in this respect, and later representatives of the natural philosophical trend in anthropology, overlook the fact that distancing inaccessible to animals, which is the main feature of human attitude to the environment, is nothing more than a specifically human act of discrimination, which Derrida wrote about, [21; 22] ultimately leading to the self-removal of man and to the erasure of the very concept of the environment, turning the surrounding world into content hyperreal. This movement of double erasure (of man and the world) becomes apparent only when referring to modern transformations of culture and philosophy and is especially persistently manifested in the works of J. Baudrillard.

Unlike Bergson and Scheler, who used the term «virtual» as a synonym for «imaginary», Baudrillard clearly shows that the culture of the virtual kills both the real and the imaginary. [23; 24; 25] The virtual world, as it were, cancels the concept of «environment», expanding its boundaries to infinity, making the world, to each point of which I can address through the screen, multidimensional and at the same time flat. «If there is no outside, then there is no here». [26, 225] The elimination of distance — not as the indistinguishability of an animal, but as the accessibility of any «there» as its image — erases the concept of reality, since becoming apparently accessible, «the real disappeared from reality and left us in a hyperreal void of meanings». [27]

The virtual is the primacy of the image over the image, leading to the elimination of the image as imaginary. The image «can no longer dream of reality, since it is a virtual reality» [27], because imagination, dream presuppose double vision, the nature of the present absence, [28] whereas the virtual image has no referent, there is no absent behind it, it is all there, without any «outside», representing a complete coincidence with itself and therefore a complete denial of its own reality, since «here» is canceled by the very rejection of «outside». By «pushing all reality into the orbit of the visual», [24] the virtual destroys the real «by its own double» [27], placing us in the space of disillusionment.

It’s the kind of space in which real objects, subjectivity of perception, involvement in the imaginary and the irrevocability of the moment are paradoxically canceled. It’s the kind of space in which not only reality disappears as an environment surrounding me and as a space of togetherness, but I myself disappear as a subject, «giving way to scattered, mobile and non-objective subjectivity — ectoplasm, which envelops everything and transforms everything into a huge surface reflecting empty disembodied consciousness». [29] Erasing himself unconsciously and inevitably and erasing himself consciously, using various techniques of self-removal, dissolving into a virtual self-image, hiding behind avatars and a black screen, responding as if from the first person — and remaining securely hidden in his anonymity, dissipating in the multiple identity of the transmedia narrative and virtual masks. Wondering «Where am I? Which of these is mine? Or is there nothing at all?» [30, 45] — and at the same time evading the answer to it, because it is unclear whether I have the right to be or this world, virtual, multiple, indifferent to any kind of authenticity, does not presuppose my presence at all and therefore it is necessary to hide this very presence?

Modern philosophy, which clearly shows a tendency to «shift a person from the center» and «deprive him of all privileges» [31; 32] makes the world not only unreal and unimaginable (in the sense that Baudrillard puts into this concept in his interpretation of virtuality), but also inhuman. The world, when we look at it, we are seized not with admiration, but with horror, and an involuntary: «And where are the people at all? Where are we? Are we, as people, still assigned a place in this world?» [30, 44] After all, if not assigned, then this world poses an obvious threat to me and it is better to hide behind a mask, to withdraw myself, so as not to deprive me of my already ghostly own being.

Face and mask. The society of the demonstration

In the face of an inhuman world that has abolished both the illusory and the real and replaced them with an endless series of hyperreal images, a person feels out of place. However, a person initially has not only the ability to go beyond his own limits and be eccentric in relation to his environment, but also the need to «overcome the horror of consciousness about the purposelessness of existence», [33, 25] which is expressed in modern culture in the assertion of such a «minimum of self» [34], which at the same time would be a concealment of himself.

In this respect, the transformations of self-representation directly related to our «center of the self» — what is traditionally called the «mirror of the soul» — the face are indicative.

The indeterminacy of the face reflects the non-objectibility of the human, representing a constant self-coincidence as an elusive representation. The famous mnemonist S.V. Shereshevsky, a man with a phenomenal memory, complained that it was extremely difficult for him to remember people’s faces, because «they are so fickle… they depend on a person’s mood, from the moment of meeting, they change all the time, get confused in color…". [35, 44] This is a characteristic feature of the face, because, as accurately notes V. Podoroga, «the face is not singular, it is multiple, and therefore never coincides with itself». [36, 131] An artistic image — a portrait made in traditional artistic technique without the use of auxiliary «prints» and other devices and technologies that fix the momentary state of the face, and at the same time striving to convey exactly the face of this person, and not a certain concept expressed through it — preserves this self-discrepancy in bifurcation, in the distinction between the image and the image, in its constant doubling in our perception. This is the very essence of the image, which, always «in some sense, must be alien to itself». [29] However, already in photography, this obligation of self-escaping, flickering reality is violated.

Photography presupposes the fixation of one moment, the desire for the completeness of the given. Thanks to the automatic capture and visible elimination of the artist, the photograph begins to appear as the face itself, and not as its reflection. The photographer as an «agent of death» [36, 132; 24] asserts us in the idea that the representative of a person — his photo — is no less authorized than the person himself, that he is the real person.

Inside the photographic image, «there lives a formula for the disappearance of reality, a formula for distance, a way of freezing the world» [24], which is based on the desire to «imagine the dead more alive than the really alive» [36, 136], and the result is not self-manifestation as recognition of oneself in the image of another, but self-detachment as non-recognition of oneself in one’s own photo, where «a random image plays the role of our face» [36, 132]. And if the reader gets the impression that the last statement illustrates the modern tendency to exhibit a certain «picture» instead of his photo in social networks, messengers and in the educational and scientific online space (lectures, conferences, etc.) — then no, the original text is still only about a photo in a passport. However, it is this movement of detachment and unrecognition, created as a result of fixation «in the space of an irrevocable moment» [24] that makes possible the subsequent self-removal of the face in the culture of selfies, masks of avatars that cease to be masks themselves, and creates the aesthetics of substitution and initial absence as the basis of virtual culture in its visual aspect.

«The modern face has a noticeable tendency to selfdestruction, to self-erasure since it has ceased to be in the center of the world» [36, 140] — notes V. Podoroga, analyzing a series of photographs by V. Mikhalchuk. This connection of self-erasure with displacement from the center is not accidental: it is the displacement of a person from the center that reveals for him (man) clearly and irrevocably as the emptiness of the world («the vacuum of the world», [33] as the Ego defines Ya. Golosovker), as well as the loosing the base of the being, meaninglessness of one’s own existence. Selferasure is a sign of the end of the era of anthropocentricity and logocentricity, when a person loses his privileges, and consciousness is confused with intelligence and becomes a quality both non-specific and unrelated to the possibility of the illusory.

The world that has become virtual, the world of disillusion, no longer needs a person as a special being and leads to his selferasure. And in the light of these transformations, the phrase of James Elkins becomes natural, noting that in modern culture, where the concept of a center is basically eliminated, as well as the concept of a sample, the human face disappears, since «without any center… There is nothing that I can call myself». [29] Seriality, the endless sending of signifiers in an arbitrary chain as a symptom of modern virtual culture is the same manifestation of derealization and the world and its placement in the space of disillusion, as well as the appearance of the concept of a mask without a face, since «in… the digital liberation of the photographic act, in this impersonal process, where the intermediary itself generates images in the chain, relying only on technical capabilities, one can see the final form of seriality». [29] But disillusion and seriality mean not only the absence of a center, the absence of a sample, in other words, the aesthetics of emptiness — but also the fact that now the center can be multiple, and any image can act as a sample, which leads to the formation in modern culture of the aesthetics of substitution and the formation of not only the tendency of self-removal of a person (including the self-erasure of his face), but also the aesthetics of substitution, in which the expression is canceled, the technique and aesthetics of performance become irrelevant and are obscured by the technique and aesthetics of the demonstration.

For the aesthetics of expression, it was important what is behind the image, what manifests itself in the image and what can only be touched. In the aesthetics of demonstration and self-removal characteristic of the era of analog photography, the emphasis is already shifting so that «it is only important what a face can become, not what it is», [36, 138] however, the connection between the image and the image is still preserved, since what a face can or cannot become is determined, among other things, by the features of the face itself. In the prevailing aesthetics of the demonstration today, the very instance to which we could turn as the primary source disappears — the face itself is erased along with the world, and in the desire set at the stage of demonstration to «become a white spot, a mask face» [36, 136] — and finally reaches its goal and is thinned to complete absence.

The state of irresponsibility

It is not surprising that «at the moment we are in a state of non-response, irresponsibility». [25] And it is not by chance that a modern person is a person who does not speak, but writes.And even, paradoxical as it sounds, in a letter trying to avoid the word as much as possible, using pictures, abbreviations, references instead. Something that fundamentally does not imply an answer.

Can the one who has withdrawn himself, who is not, speak? Speech presupposes an answer. Suggests the one who stands behind his words. Therefore, modern culture cannot be speech. [37] But at the same time, it is the maximum information culture associated with a huge number of signifiers, including words. This is a culture of constantly speaking, built in such a way that nothing, in fact, is said and if, nevertheless, «something turns out to be spoken, then everything is done in such a way that no answer is received to these words». [25] The virtuality of hyperreality, which eliminates reality, the self - erasure of the personality in the space of disillusionment is complemented by social practices and techniques of blocking the self, making it impossible to respond both to maintain the virtual status of reality and to keep the subject absent. At the same time, «the mass media have also learned very well how to put into effect the formal „reversibility“ of their networks (correspondence with readers, telephone conversations with listeners, surveys, etc.), while leaving no room for any kind of answer, without changing anything in the division of roles» [25], leaving speech — mute with the appearance of utterance, and the answer — unaccountable and seemingly non-existent with the appearance of its presence and even expectation.

H.M. Enzensberger in his article Constituens of a Theory of the Media also suggests that the problem of irresponsibility is connected with the centralization of the mass media and invites each of us to become a source — that «speaker», an author who does not so much answer the mass media, contrary to their function of «de-articulation», as he offers an answer to an unanswered question. [38] In 1970, when this article was written, it could still seem like a way out, since the intentions of depersonalization and disillusionment were not fully embodied at that time and the reality of both the speaker and the questioner was assumed to be possible and even necessary — as well as the reality of the world, shaded by its illusory nature in the subjective sphere of the imaginary. However, today, when his proposed strategy is «to turn everyone into a manipulator, in the sense of an active operator, a doer, etc. in short, so that everyone would move from the category of receiving information to the category of its producer/ distributor» [25] has already been actually implemented thanks to the development of the social network system and the culture of blogs and Internet comments, we see a society even more unresponsive than during the writing of Enzensberger’s work.

After the transition of the «right to vote» to any representative of the mass, we received not only «personalized amateurism, the equivalent of Sunday needlework on the periphery of the system», [25] as a result of which the hyperreality of the world only intensifies in its profanity, and the facelessness of the speaker is supported by the «minimum of self» that has become arbitrary in relation to him, but also the culture of «falsification of the request for an answer», which has found the most distinct expression in the technologies of transmedia narration built in this way, that apparently interactive projects with the inclusion of so-called «interpretive communities» do not in fact presuppose an answer as some kind of manifestation of subjectivity and even subjectivity, and «interaction with the audience and its influence on the project (the choice of plot, character, his reaction to the situation, etc.) is actually set by the authors of the project». [39, 155].

Thus, modern culture, based on disillusionment and displacement of a person from the center, does everything to make the answer impossible even when it seems to be formally given. «The entire modern architecture of mass media is based on this last definition of ours: they are something that forever prohibits the response, which makes the exchange process impossible (except in the forms of response simulation, which themselves turn out to be integrated into the process of information transmission, which, however, does not change anything in the unidirectionality of communication). This is their true abstraction». [25] Thus, a contemporary person in his culture of unrequited writing radically implements what Derrida will call «the archive of his own self-exclusion». [40, 356] Or rather, trying to implement. As if resigned to the fact that being a man today is «at least not having any essence» [41, 151] and therefore, if such an essence is still present outside for some reason, it must be hidden. Securely cover with a mask. And it is better to have a lot of masks that are not connected with each other in any way, so that it would be absolutely impossible to establish a certain «essence» behind them. And if there really is no such entity– then the mask will replace it with itself.

In both cases, the mask turns out to be absolutely arbitrary in relation to what was previously a face — either for the purpose of better concealment, or due to the fact that it is impossible to be involuntary in relation to what has no essence, what is absent or what is present only as an absolute selferasure, a «white spot» [36, 135]. A mask that has ceased to be a mask, since it no longer hides anything, but replaces a face, and the emptiness behind it is the flip side of irresponsibility. But at the same time — and the movement of the abolition of the internal as the destruction of the meaning of the external.

What does it mean to erase one’s own face so much as to merge with one’s own mask in affirming the minimum of selfhood and at the same time not become the one who «deceived the deceiver in himself» [42, 175—176], but remain an «honest hypocrite»? [26, 183] To turn into an endless series of images, none of which is really mine, since «actually» itself is no longer possible? When the «tremor of the world» disappears, [24] I can be anyone, because I no longer have any essence, since the essence as such has already been canceled along with the loss of this tremor. «To be isolated, without any essence», [41, 155] means to have no basis for one’s own existence, no assumption — and «to be what could not have been». [41, 156] Discover yourself as a void located in a vacuum.

And — at the same time — «it means to be shown (to be exposed)». [41, 155. Symbolization is impossible for something that has no essence, since there is nothing that can be expressed in a symbol. But concealment is also impossible, since concealment, mystery presupposes the inner (hidden), as a condition of manifestation or non-manifestation. The only strategy for an empty entity is a display, that is, a demonstration of a face that demonstrates not the face itself, but also not emptiness — but something external. For an empty entity is one for which any mask is an equally arbitrary signified, since «to be shown is to be put „outside“. Not „from outside“ (from something similar to „internal“), but as external», [41, 155] for which «inside» and «outside» are equally «more inappropriate» [41, 155] and are equally erased in the procedure of demonstrative display.

The ultimate ambition of the virtual, which Baudrillard speaks about in his works, means thereby not only staying in the space of disillusionment as in the space of the hyperreal, not only self-removal as a displacement of a person from the center and erasing his face by him, but also demonstrative presence, being together without togetherness as a confidential intimacy — as being «many, exposed to each other». [41, 162] An ostentatious existence, which is neither a phenomenon nor a representation, but a rejection of both — just as the hyperreal is neither real nor illusory, but something that cancels them both.

We now find both the world and man in the aesthetics of substitution, as a void filled with simulacra. From now on, «you will never be able to point to the Real» [43] neither in the sphere of the world nor in the sphere of the human. The rejection of the «environment» as a rejection of the very concept of «environment» leads to the desubjectification of the subject and the derealization of the world. And it causes horror. Not the horror that is mentioned in various versions of «philosophical horror». [32, 117—130] And not the one that is associated with the problems of being-to-death and defines human existence as human in Heidegger. [44, 184—190] This is not a horror of my own insignificance and what exceeds me. And before that, with my emptiness and meaninglessness, there is no one and nothing to exceed me.

Ecology without nature

«We have lost reality» — Timothy Morton will repeat almost verbatim the main thesis of J. Baudrillard. [26, 225] However, the creator of the «dark ecology» does not mean immersion in the virtual world, physical isolation as isolation from the actual, which Baudrillard spoke about, leading to the movement of selfexamination, which is so clearly traced in modern culture.

The meaninglessness of a person’s own existence is now analogous to the meaninglessness of the existence of things from the surrounding world of Romanticism and enlightenment, the ancient house-cosmos or Heidegger’s «house of being» turning into a «contradictory pile of junk», [43] meaninglessly existing for us in the «bulk data mode». [26, 226—227]

The point is not that we have played too much in the imaginary and have lost the ability to distinguish illusion from reality, thereby destroying both the first and the second, Morton will say. It’s not that we preferred the virtuality of reality and now we can’t distinguish the real from the hyperreal. That would be half the trouble. In the end, Moore’s argument, paraphrased colloquially as the «brick argument», has not yet been canceled. [45] And even Baudrillard himself, despite his obvious concern about the derealizing trend of modern culture and his confidence in the inevitability of both the disappearance of man and the visualization of the hyperreal, still leaves us a loophole, speaking about the existence of a street, which, in his opinion, is «there is an alternative and destructive form of all mass media» [25] and quoting Jerry Ruban, in his argumentation he turns out to be, in fact, very close to Moore’s analysis. [46] So the loss of the real in the virtual is still incomplete — if it were, even the implementation of the simplest practical actions would be quite problematic.

The trouble is that «we have lost reality», [26, 225] although «we have the real». [26, 226] The real is like those falling bricks, like a cluster («pile» or «bulk», in the words of the same Morton) of heterogeneous objects that we stumble upon, but in which «there is no special meaning anymore», [26, 226] since «only with being in consciousness, that is, in imagination, one can put meaning into existence», [47, 116] and without distinguishing between the real and the imaginary, as well as without the fact that surrounding me, it is still not constructed by me, but always surprises in its greatness, we find «a black bathhouse with spiders in place of „being“, only a burdock growing on the grave… the vacuum of the world» [33, 25] or something «like a huge white piece of soap, bloated and solid». [26, 199] Both the first and the second cause neither admiration nor a sense of closeness precisely because of their inhumanity, the obvious lack of a place for a person, the non-circumference of this nature, which ceases to be the environment of my existence and apparently does well without me.

Timothy Morton’s project is notable for the fact that he draws us an ecology without an environment. That is, it shows not only the environment as something that has ceased to surround us, but also ecology without nature. He clearly prescribes the first position, pointing out the impossibility of finding a place for a person as an exceptional being, since both thanks to modern science and thanks to the peculiarities of modern culture, not only the world is no longer realized as the cosmos that surrounds us and in which we find ourselves as in a house (at best, this is the house of being, and being, which itself has already been crossed out [26]), but also «our consciousness is no longer realized on a human scale, it is no longer tuned to anthropocentrism». [26, 226] As for the second position — ecology without nature, it is also aimed at eliminating the foundation, at destroying a certain solidity of being, understood positively in the sense of nature, as the absolute and the basis of my presence in it and my communion with it.

The gesture of «crossing out» of being, observed by Morton in Derrida and Heidegger, suggests the destruction of the connectedness of the world, which is no longer understood as nature, but «will allow objects to be contradictory piles of junk». [43] Even the «bath with spiders» and «burdock on the grave» look more anthropocentric and integral than the random dump in front of which we find ourselves according to the «dark ecology» project.

«The starry sky above my head» [48] as a source of a sense of beauty can be seen only if I believe in the world as something obligatory for my existence and in this sense more than real — and not only real, but also in some way related to me standing under this sky. Giving meaning to my existence by its wholeness and its closeness. Only when these two conditions are met — the basic trust in the world as a conviction of its meaningfulness and appeal to me — do we see the starry sky as something precious, only in this case does its contemplation lead us to the idea of pre-established harmony and elevates, that is, elevates us in our going beyond our own limits. To be stolen as stolen and exalted at the same time, and to find oneself in this abduction [49] — this is the possibility of a positive aesthetic experience that occurs when referring to the «unconditionally great». [19] The rejection of the idea of «unconditionally great» as something that has the idea of the good in its foundation, something that surpasses me, is still related to me and that is why it surrounds me, leads first to the image of a place that was once, perhaps, residential, but now abandoned and uninhabited (as in Ya. Golosovker), and then transforms into the idea of a «black box», which is nature, which has ceased to be nature and has become a «pile of junk» and a «bulk of data» (as in T. Morton).

Having deprived a person of his exclusivity as someone who is capable of being stolen, and at the same time ceasing to be the very «surrounding» (centered in relation to me) environment and great in its sublimity, and therefore goodness (according to Plato) and indifference towards me as someone who is involved in it (according to Kant), «the starry sky, somehow strangely withered, drooped with glassy, like the eyes of the dead, stars …, dropping star after star flying around with emeralds of rays, it became starless — and gaped like a black pit above», [50] which was seen in all the inescapable hopelessness by both Ya. Golosovker and T. Morton.

The «contradictory pile of junk», unlike nature and the world, does not make sense and is not close — its understanding is inaccessible to me, and the attitude of involvement in relation to it does not arise in principle. It causes distrust, fear and other forms of «restless relationships». [26, 197] It is terrifying, as is the idea that «the difference between humans and snails is not so great» [43] and other variations on the theme of «mucus ontology». [51] For the world represented in these ontologies is meaningless and inhuman. And not the world at all.

The trend fashionable in modern Western philosophy of «shifting a person from the center» [31] and presenting the natural environment as all connections with a person, that is, not as his anthropocentric «environment», leads to the perception of the world as a semantic vacuum and horror of it. The horror, intensified by the hopelessness of this situation («there is nowhere to run anyway» [43]) and the initial need for an answer, trust — and the hopeless expectation of irresponsibility and even the threat emanating from this vacuum. After all, despite all the installations of T. Morton «to learn a more playful attitude to the absence of an obvious solid foundation of meaning», [26, 226] despite his call to «find joy inside horror» [52] in his works, as in the works of other representatives of modern non-human ontologies, unfolding before us the proof of the inevitability of the aesthetics of horror, the leitmotif is not only the recognition of the unreality and meaninglessness of what we received instead of the surrounding world, depriving a person of his privileges and placing him in the space of disillusionment, but also the need to establish some semblance of contact, striving for this «pile of junk» and strange guests of the ghostly host: «We love the dead. We love fantasies. But do they love us in return?». [26, 182].

Conclusions

Self-exclusion and the horror of the world are two sides of the same coin, two consequences of the loss of togetherness and trusting closeness in relation to the other, whether the other is actually present in his uniqueness and therefore incomprehensible to me, the other as a representative of another species or the Other as an absolute, the communion to which I discover simultaneously with his difference from me (and in this case it is not so important whether God, being or nature will act as such an absolute).

When Plesner writes that «a shared world does not surround a person, as nature does», [2, 132], he does not take into account the fact that the concept of togetherness already presupposes the reality of both me and the one with whom I share this world — and at the same time our difference and communion with each other. That intimacy, as Heidegger famously showed, [44] is also impossible without distancing, as is Plesner’s eccentricity. Without taking into account this provision, the idea that the joint world «carries a personality that is simultaneously formed by it», [2, 132] which opposes the joint to the surrounding, does not lead to a plurality of equivalent centers, equally needing and interested in each other due to their proximity and creating a single semantic field, but to the absence of the center as such as the discovery of emptiness and to the appearance of the aesthetics of horror and the culture of the mask as an attempt to protect themselves from this emptiness.

«The real experience of what we sometimes call beauty,» writes Timothy Morton, «is the identification in me of what is not me». [26, 191] This is an introduction to something that infinitely exceeds me, but at the same time turns out to be close to me.

This is an experience of both togetherness and distancing, an experience of admiration as elevation and «forgetting oneself» in some kind of abduction by this great one [49] — not causing horror and a sense of threat precisely because togetherness appears here simultaneously with distinction, and the other is a «doublet of the self». [44, 124] The aesthetics of the beautiful as a feeling of discovering the unexpected, manifesting itself every time as a discovery, as «otherness» turns out to be associated with admiring surprise, in which one (theft) is inseparable from the other (surprise) and which becomes impossible in principle from a situation of consistent self - removal, as a result of which «Self» erase myself so much that I am completely lost in an endless series of my own hypocritical effects. If the mask ceases to be a mask and there is emptiness behind it, if the ontology is based on the positions of deanthropologization, disillusionment and meaninglessness of the real, then aesthetic experience becomes impossible.

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