In April 2023, a mini-essay on collective responsibility, attributed to the philosopher and orientalist Alexander Piatigorsky, began to circulate on social networks. We have verified the correctness of this attribution.
On April 22 and 23, dozens of Russian-speaking Facebook users posted text on their pages that began with the words “You asked me about collective responsibility... And this is in fact no longer a question of politics, and not even a question of the philosophy of politics, and certainly not a legal one... This is a question of ontology.” The author further argued that from the point of view of law, a person living in a state that attacked a neighbor and not directly participating in the invasion is not guilty and has not committed war crimes. But from the point of view of ontology, he commits a crime because he “does not think” and “allows everything to continue.” Internet users sign mini-essays on this topic with the name of the philosopher, one of the founders of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school Alexander Pyatigorsky. Separate publications, including this text, dialed By several dozen, and one even almost two hundred reposts. They allegedly posted a quote from Pyatigorsky and in Telegram.
Pyatigorsky is not only a philosopher, he also studied Eastern philosophy and culture, and also wrote works of art. His creative legacy collected on the website maintained by his heirs. “Verified” was unable to find the required quote about collective responsibility either in Pyatigorsky’s books, or in his articles, lectures, interviews and other open sources (both on a specialized website and beyond).
The earliest publication containing an alleged text by Pyatigorsky on collective responsibility was discovered by “Verified” on Facebook in a post by Victoria Chulkova, dated January 30, 2020 (the philosopher himself died in 2009). In a conversation with us, Chulkova said that on April 22, 2023, she added a fragment that had become viral to her old post, and the quote was sent to her by “a friend who was filming a documentary about Pyatigorsky” and “simply shared a find.” Now discussions about collective responsibility deleted from the publication.
Another user, Evgeniy Tumilo, traced chain of distribution of the text among his friends on Facebook and discovered a post by Irina Malyshko - she is presented on the social network as a Doctor of Philosophy from Kyiv. At the end of his publication, which consisted entirely of thoughts attributed to Pyatigorsky, Malyshko thanks a certain Oles Manyuk (also arrived and other users). In his Facebook profile description indicatedthat Manyuk is a “philosopher, psychoanalyst, instructor of the Tai Chi studio” living in Beijing, and the profile itself is closed.
Tumilo sent message to Manyuk, asking him to share “the exact details of the quote.” He responded by saying that “for such questions, people are usually sent as far away as possible, because adequate people think about the idea, and do not find out the exact data of the quote.” Similar results of communication with Manyuk were reported by user Pavel Otdelnov, whom, like Tumilo, Manyuk blocked shortly after receiving a message with a clarifying question.
In a comment to another user, Tatyana Ponomareva, Manyuk wrote: “This is from my diary entries from 2000. I wrote down what seemed interesting to me. In 1999 and 2000, I attended the lectures of A. M. [Pyatigorsky] live.” In turn, Ponomareva, who quoted the text about collective responsibility on her page on the night of April 22-23, the next day hastened to inform subscribers that I received confirmation of Pyatigorsky’s authorship and that the statement is reliable.
Thus, the mini-essay on collective responsibility began to be attributed to the philosopher Alexander Pyatigorsky, who died in 2009, only in the spring of 2023. The dissemination of the text began with a post by Oles Manyuk on Facebook. Manyuk blocked two users who were not among his friends who asked him about the origin of the phrase, and told his subscriber that he took the quote from his own notes more than 20 years ago. There is no other (or any reliable) evidence that these words really belong to Pyatigorsky. The philosopher himself in a 2006 lecture on revolutions described his views on collective responsibility are somewhat different: “I don’t want to be responsible for anything in the world, I’m an irresponsible person by nature, and it’s too late to change.”
Cover photo: Uldis Tirons
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