V.N. Tatishchev on the Synchronicity of Education and Upbringing in the Process of Personality Formation

The modern concept of education in Russia is in the process of searching for basic value-worldview foundations. It is difficult to overestimate the appeal to the pedagogical experience of V.N. Tatishchev, who interpreted educational activity as a universal concept, as a unity of obtaining knowledge and forming spiritual and moral values. The ideological principles and pedagogical guidelines of the “knight of science” contained innovative ideas that are associated with the transformative activity of Peter I, and an appeal to the domestic religious experience. The “reasonable mean” was the vector of his activity. In accordance with this position, he often acted as a defender of the necessity of science for the future of Russia and as a defender of faith – the source of spiritual strength of the state and its citizens. He distinguished between the categories of morality and spirituality, without denying their interrelation as stages in the development of man. A moral person is characterized by respect for the external “bridle” in the form of laws, customs and traditions. A spiritual person is characterized by a free, determined only by his own will, aspiration to fulfill divine commandments. The attitude to Western European ideas in the field of politics, sociology and law was selective. Approval was caused by what strengthens and develops the state, so he accepted the ideas of Hugo Grotius due to the moral justification of the need for a state, and considered Hobbes’s contractual concept of the origin of society from the “war of all against all” to be questionable. As a practitioner in the field of education and the creator of the first schools in the Urals, he showed himself as a teacher, a methodologist, and an economic manager. He considered education and science as a moral need of the state and a moral obligation of society.