Modern Utopia: Yuval Noah Harari

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the current state of utopia, in particular, attention is paid to the problem of the crisis of utopian thought that arose at the end of the twentieth century and continues to the present. The author examines the features of philosophical criticism of modernity by the ideologist of the future and futurist Yuval Noah Harari. The purpose of this study is to find out whether Yuval Noah Harari is a utopian of our time, and the model of the near future proposed by Y. Harari, which represents a natural reaction of society to the global value and ideological crisis, is a modern utopia by signs. In the course of researching issues related to the crisis of utopian thought of our time, the author proceeds from the postulate that utopia is a special type of predictive reflection, a worldview built in orientation towards the probable future. The research is based on the concept of K. Manheim, according to which utopia is an attitude of consciousness oriented towards the future, as well as from the definition of utopia as an idealized social construct, fundamentally unrealizable as a whole. The scientific novelty of this study is as follows: the main concepts of understanding modern utopia are identified, the specifics of describing the realities of modernity are substantiated, characteristics relevant to the worldview of the XXI century are identified, proceeding from the categories of philosophizing of a new kind, the features of Yuval Noah Harari's criticism of the utopia of a new formation are revealed. The result of the study shows that Yuval Noah Harari is a modern utopian, and his project is considered an escapist-type utopia of modernity, based on social stratification. This utopia is escapist, because for one part of humanity it is unrealizable and is only a means of escape from reality, while for another part of it it can serve as a full-fledged project of the future, claiming to be realized. It also has such an ontological property as temporality, since it corresponds to the realities of its time in terms of content.