Perception of the Values of the Previous Era in the Paradigms of « Prominent Philosophers and Writers

Disputes about the “uniqueness” of one’s era in comparison with the achievements of previous ones have always been a “cornerstone” in the perception of past concepts regarding the values of the achievements of predecessors. However, at one time, Confucius said his world-famous phrase that if you don’t look back, there is no way forward. But many people are not interested in their past. That is why the “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” in the form of a literary debate, centered on a comparison of the value of the contributions of ancient authors and French authors of the 17th century, and which was widespread at the time, is still relevant today. The purpose and objectives of the article. The purpose of the article is to highlight the perception of the values of previous eras in the paradigms of “non-contemporary” prominent philosophers and writers. The tasks of the article are to reveal the reasons for the primordial disputes about “ancient and new”, a natural return to ancient literature and ancient philosophy. Research methodology. The leading research methods were: content-comparative - to analyze the reliability of judgments of French writers of the 17th century; retrospective, which helps to investigate the phenomenon of the value of “the ancient in the new” in the century-old controversy, the method of personalization, which ensures the study and understanding of the works of S. Perrault and his contemporaries. The results. It’s no secret that the tasks of art in the Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modern times differed greatly. For Antiquity, every craftsman was an artist, while the activity of a painter and sculptor was a more complex craft. It is typical for that time that there was almost no idea about creativity and the creative act, but despite this, the ancient Greeks were able to create immortal examples of art. The art of the Middle Ages was supposed to embody a moralistic character and remind of the eternal, the art of romanticism saw godlike creativity as its goal. The art of the 20th century presented its ideal in the denial of everything that the previous era saw as its goal, periodically declaring the death of art. Based on the fact that today there are many different ideas about the goals and tasks of modern art, we cannot say with full confidence what is the common goal of the art of our days, and it is even more difficult for us to imagine how art will live, for example, through a hundred years. Conclusions. So, we can come to the conclusion that in the era of the early Enlightenment, the attitude to the ancient heritage, in particular in France and England, was not unambiguous even among the educated aristocracy or university professors who knew Greco-Roman works well enough. This is clearly evidenced by the century-old dispute “about ancient and new”, which caused a lot of auxiliary discussions. Undoubtedly, even today arguing and debating about the art of previous eras and our own has a place in philosophy and literature, and they continue to do this with success for more than one hundred years. But to prove the rightness of one of the sides of these disputes is a sufficiently dubious matter for science.