The Victory as a Value

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Victory as a value. It is argued that, since value is nothing more than a preference given to some things over others, the acquisition of the character of value by any phenomenon presupposes that it has withstood a certain cultural competition. The value of victory is paradoxical: by demanding the end of the confrontation, it thus negates the structure of value with its internal tension. A complete victory would mean the cessation of the confrontation with the further impossibility of forming new values, since the counterbalance of the value, the suppressed (anti-value) essence must either completely disappear, as a result of which the value would lose its significance, or enter into some kind of partnership with the value, and then the value would lose its content. Therefore, it is likely that any victory is only temporary and relative, which is reflected by all values in their current, purely intermediate and imperfect state. The need for coexistence against the background of the phenomenon of values automatically leads to permanent confrontation, which only changes its forms and intensity. Since any consensus is achieved only on the basis of common values that have already been found, the search for a topos takes place only through disagreements that are resolved by  the victory of some ideas over others. The Great Victory of 1945 is the historical imprint of the next round of the axiological confrontation of the mid-twentieth century. The positions of the individualist worldview were somewhat shaken by the impressive demonstration of the power of collectivism. In turn, the apparent softening of strictly atheistic attitudes, replaced by moderate mutual loyalty between the state and the church, could be seen as a relative victory for Christian ideals. The short-lived and fragile synthesis of these principles, soon subjected to new attacks, nevertheless became the basis of the value self-determination of Russian culture, which has not yet found a worthy replacement.