Discourse on Kindness

The article explores the phenomenon of moral kindness, analyses its specificity, reveals its humanistic meaning and its chances for survival and affirmation in the present “unkind” world; outlines the moral necessity of the “courage of kind­ness”. The correlation between the idea of Good and kindness as an unaccount­able, “pre-notional” expression of orientation towards good in the life of human person and in individual and joint practices is traced. As shown in the article, en­gageability, often associated with significant moral hazard, is the characteristic feature of kindness. However, kindness is inherent in a special kind of insight. The principal addressing of kindness to the Other determines its relationship with conscience, spirituality, trust. It is shown that the pragmatic tendencies of nowaday epoch represent a challenge that requires not abandoning the culture of human kindness, but its consistent deepening in a reasonable polemic with the prevailing “spirit of the time”. A vector of kindness is an indispensable pre­condition for curbing the threats hanging over humanity and preserving human identity itself. On the basis of what has been said, the well-known communica­tive paradigm of “solidarity of the shocked” is rejected for the sake of an alterna­tive idea of the practical unity of people based on positive moral aspirations. It seems that our time opens up new paradoxical possibilities for the realization of this idea.