PRECIOUS SECRETS AND SACRED MYSTERIES OF HUMAN SOUL (I. A. Goncharov in ethics disputes of his time)

The paper gives the definition of moral and ethical ideas of I. A. Goncharov in the context of his disputes with modern positivism and vulgar materialism. Art, censors, critical and epistolary texts of Goncharov, as well as his library, which has been partially preserved up to our days, it all shows the deep interest of the writer to the works of contemporary philosophers positivists, with whom he argued, starting from the first novel A Common story and to the novel The Precipice and An Uncommon Story. I. Goncharov was acquainted with the works of G. Buckle, J. Mill and other philosophers of positivist trend. The point of the dispute is that Goncharov was indignant at the attempts to build morality not on the traditionally religious grounds, but on scientific principles. The debates of I. Goncharov with positive ethics were especially active in 1860-1870-s, in the novel Thc Precipice one of the main characters is the image of the nihilist Volohov. However, the writer drew the figure of the first in Russian literature positivist Aduev in his first novel, and it anticipated in part the character of Bazarov (the novel Fathers and Sons of Turgenev). Goncharov's own ethics was built on the basis of religion.