Национальной академии наук республики казахстан

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УДК 1(091)+574 
 
A.N. NYSSANBAYEV,  N.L. SEYTAKHMETOVA 
 
KAZAKHSTANI PHILOSOPHY «IN THE STREAM OF HISTORY»: 
INTERPRETIVE CONTEXTS OF MODERNITY 
 
Abstract 
 
Philosophy of returning is in fact recovery of philosophy, it is a concept which is necessary to understand as 
returning to your spiritual origin and as returning to yourself in order to learn philosophizing once again. 
Kazakhstan’s experience of philosophizing is a polyphonic philosophic process that dates back to deep layers of the 
Kazakh culture, it has revealed itself as deeply personal philosophizing that involves a world of other philosophic 
paradigms having synthesized into an eastern western philosophic discourse but simultaneously having preserved its 
unique eastern metaphysics. In this paper we tried to comprehend philosophic experience of Kazakhstan’s 
philosophy in its temporality and processuality. 
Keywords: returning back of philosophy, Turkic philosophy, Turkic origin, spiritual and moral paradigm, 
philosophy of education, Kazakh philosophy, Kazakh Enlightenment, religious existentialism, Turkic Islamic 
content. 
 
Introduction 
Nostalgia for philosophic origins is now a «subject of our times», however forgetting your own 
«origin» is also a subject of our times. If we run an eye over mileage of Kazakhstan’s philosophy it can be 
divided into two periods: philosophy of recovering itself and philosophy of discovering it and them both 
can be treated as a discourse of depersonalized philosophy which still goes on in the modern world. 
 
Philosophy of human being’s education: tradition of spirituality 
Long history of development of a philosophic thought in Kazakhstan seemed in historic and 
philosophic heritage of peoples of the USSR as philosophy of Enlightenment and enlightened mind which 
on the whole posed no philosophic threat to the enlightening Soviet philosophic context. Indeed, many 
philosophic systems of Kazakhstan’s thinkers in a rationalistic paradigm of philosophy were extremely 
limited and fit well into patterns of rational comprehension and interpretation of the world. Kazakh 
philosophic thought represented for instance by an enlightening paradigm of Altynsarin of course run 
beyond compliance with general purposes of the Soviet Enlightenment when efforts were made to 
interpret its concepts of cultural sovereignty, religious education, concept of preserving traditions and such 
spiritual origin in which representatives of different philosophic views today try to find their own cultural 
roots. 
Altynsarin probably was not quite suitable due to his philosophic reflection on educational and 
enlightening problems and a message to traditionalists who would be accused of conservatism. It was 
necessary to keep your origins, keep philosophic past in a historic retrospect of memory so that later it 
would be possible to avoid oblivion of a philosophic origin and not to glean what had been lost due to a 
powerful urge to break up with tradition as a menacing force was seen in it that was capable of entailing 
cultural and philosophic backwardness due to which it was possible to find yourselves allegedly on the 
sidelines of the world philosophic life. However, it is interesting to note how stories about the Japanese 
preserving their ancient legends and traditions, how they used to till and still till their tradition from 
century to century invoked admiration and respect in the soviet period of our life. Japanese Man'yōshū, the 
Pillow Book, all kinds of Monogotari used to hit by their depth and individuality, it was a different world 
where the past and the present day were linked by a single thread. However, for some reason it was good 
only for Japan and not for us since we had to derive inspiration from a universal source where neither 
individuality nor traditional uniqueness had place. We were delighted with stories about sakura, Bushido, 
Zen. That almost fairy and metaphoric philosophizing had what we had been deprived of, i.e. 
philosophizing of our souls. Meanwhile, a story about a fifteenth stone in the rock garden of Ryōan-ji 
Temple entirely seemed a expression of unique culture of Japan and incomprehensibility of a Japanese 
soul. 
And when a revelation from Martin Heidegger about essence of a human being, «standing in openness 
of being», «abandonment», «language as a truth of being» came to our philosophic world it overturned our 
consciousness, our realization that failing to recover ourselves it is impossible to learn philosophizing and 
that we have to recover ourselves and that human essence occurs in that recovery. Philosophy of Martin 
Heidegger as if arose us from spiritual stupor and we once again felt an impelling need for philosophizing 
from our origins referring to Turkic philosophic past. In ancient Turkic sources idea of preservation and 

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recovery of tradition, origin, is expressed as an idea of recovering your own soul. Experience of such 
philosophizing, close to Japanese one, demonstrated that philosophizing means all the time returning back 
to a perpetual source of your own being kept in privateness of its tradition. Therefore, return to perpetual 
is possible as «eternal returning» philosophy that makes it possible to reflect on that origin. We use 
«eternal returning», a famous Nietzschean concept, not as a schematically imitative sketch of ready but 
alien to that philosophizing, abstract content but just on the contrary as a demonstration of ontologic 
similarity of ‘eternal returning’ and recovering philosophy as recovering of uniqueness and individuality 
of philosophizing which is manifested as ultimate in eternal and visa versa as eternal in ultimate as 
returning back to eternity through eventfullness of the ultimate. Tradition as an eternal source from which 
a soul of being of national culture philosophizes remains unaltered in a flow of changing times and every 
time in this changing world of philosophic ideas and changing due to them one recovers philosophy that 
keeps our past in the future. 
Those philosophers who handled apprehension of traditionalistic philosophic concepts of the past very 
frequently seemed eccentrics and their methods earned no significance of universal recommendations at 
all. However, after revelations of Martin Heidegger there is if not an overturn in substantiation of a need to 
return to apprehending our own philosophic tradition, then at least an ontologic turn to recovering 
experience of Kazakh philosophizing and not merely to restore the past and not to withdraw from a 
modern life to the world of the past but absolutely for a different thing, i.e. to find a new philosophic far-
sightedness for present-day life in that semi-conscious world where supreme transcendent samples of 
spirituality used to rule. 
Kazakhstan’s philosophy is a very multifaceted phenomenon with an extremely complex philosophic 
destiny in some aspects similar to philosophic destinies of its founders, followers, imitators and 
destructors and distinct in its special content being spiritually ethical underlain by Turkic Islamic tradition. 
Stages of Kazakhstan’s philosophy are linked to historic destinies of Kazakhstan: Turkic period, Islamic 
Turkic period, Kazakh, Kazakhstani where a linear Soviet and absolutely nonlinear discursive period 
reveals itself which is an independent period when Kazakhstan’s discourse in philosophic trends of 
modern philosophizing deploys. 
Turkic philosophy is the most complex period in terms of development since it is attributed to a 
problem of philosophic authenticity of a Turkic component in the structure of Islamic philosophic 
discourse. Moreover, when raising a question of what exactly is understood under Turkic philosophy, 
another question pops up about to what extent and how it is possible implement a task of constructing an 
authentic image of the Turkic world. A set of challenges faced until now by specialists in their efforts to 
identify Turkic philosophy is inevitable. First of all, it is a problem of allocating a special niche for Turkic 
philosophy in composition of philosophic doctrines of the East. In which case we wonder if it is a question 
of creating a philosophic monologue of the Turkic world or creating a spiritual fortress against challenges 
of the present-day globalization? Is it a question of creating more comfortable conditions for integrating 
into the global community? What is an ultimate priority for a program of implementing Turkic 
philosophy? Is it a question of shaping our own program of postcolonial studies which are being deployed 
in the former USSR? How description of an image of Turkic reality is carried out? How is it possible to 
totalize components and to centralize them in a Turkic logos? And all these questions are far from 
rhetoric. When today we try to recover our philosophic origin we inevitably must think over and 
comprehend a Turkic origin where philosophizing was carried out in the context of transcendent Turkic 
subjectivity despite Islamic ontologic predetermined course of the world. Today, when reconstructing 
Turkic philosophy we try to avoid tough conceptual framing of Turkic philosophy, however by no means 
forgetting a temporal mood when its development took place. However, failing to return to a Turkic origin 
it is unlikely that we will be able to comprehend phenomenon of Kazakh philosophy since a binding 
thread of time contains an even deeper connection which is called experience of Turkic thinking which 
manifests itself in distinctiveness of Turkic spirit and Turkic soul, Turkic philosophic tradition voices a 
special Turkic view on origin of the world, human being, world of things but that distinctiveness also 
contained a lot of universal which in form of dialogue connected it with traditions of an eastern way of 
philosophizing of other nations and subsequent generations of the Turkic work. Thus, Turkic philosophy 
offers an outstanding definition of a problem of person’s individuality in non-opposition to the society, 
nature also not in treating with contempt your I but in a harmonious unity of I – You, I – Another, where it 
is possible to open up a dialogue space for another personality; it is an unrivaled model of communication 
and predisposition to understand another person and another culture. Turkic philosophizing used to open a 
perspective for dialogue, including philosophic one. Uniqueness of Turkic philosophic word fixed in 
Oguz-name, Codex Kumanikus, Kutadgu Bilig, Divan Lugat at Turk exposes secrecy of Turkic 
philosophy which is modeled as comprehension of path of wisdom. XI century when philosophic theses of 
Yusuf Balasaguni and Makhmud Kashgari appeared is treated as a benchmark in Turkic philosophy. 
However, these works can be hardly understood outside philosophic doctrine of Abu Nasr Al Farabi who 

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links Turkic and Islamic worlds. Turkic component in his theses, especially during last years of his life, is 
an ethical imperative that was desobjectivated in the Islamic ontologic context. In sociocultural 
development of Islamic world uniqueness of Turkic philosophizing manifested itself through ethnical and 
aesthetic, existential phenomena of Turkic culture both supreme and routine. Transformation of Turkic 
tradition in Islamic mysticism, Islamic literature revealed itself in idea of equality of cultures, idea of 
tolerance, openness, freedom of creativity. In Turkic Islamic world preserved ethical Turkic code was 
cracked by a next philosophic generation and harmoniously flowed into philosophic trends absorbing new 
time but simultaneously preserving its Turkic origin. In the same manner works of Abu Nasr Al Farabi, 
the utmost theorist of medieval Islamic philosophy, for a long time were interpreted as exceptionally 
Islamic, outside their Turkic component (what is meant here is a philosophic component), but today they 
are viewed as a doctrine that contains a Turkic way of philosophizing which is determined by a dialogue 
nature of its philosophy, exceptional openness and philosophic tolerance towards other philosophic 
systems, rational substantiation and desire to come to the point in everything. Having flowed into Islamic 
rational paradigm Turkic rationality revealed axiological aspects of a category of mind through sensitivity 
and morality through mind. In Al Farabi’s philosophy moral philosophy simultaneously turns into 
philosophy of morality. Al Farabi believed that fundamental framework of a society is morality and in 
hisfamous Opinions of the residents of a splendid city he made no attempt to enforce moral categories on 
residents as a back-breaking load, instead he tried to construct ontology of morality and make it available 
for understanding that no decent society is possible without such virtue as morality. Collapse of great 
empires almost always is attributed to slumping morality index. Al Farabi, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Haldun 
spoke about that. Al Farabi maintained that a person needs ethical standards not because they are imposed 
from outside but because without morals no person can be a person and deep truths are revealed only to a 
pure moral soul. Yet, Al Farabi understood a cognitive process itself as purification from meanness, 
vulgarity, that is achievement of virtue. When a person attains a virtue he is revealed the deepest patterns 
of the world and person begins to live not in pettiness but in fundamental principles and these principles 
are moral principles. 
One of Al Farabi’s works where he interpreted Plato’s doctrine covers problems of human being’s 
improvement and problem of happiness. How to become happy, this subject of philosophy in medieval 
world is still nostalgic about transcendence of idea of happiness, but in Al Farabi’s interpretation it gains 
its ontologic completeness in moral development of a human being. Al Farabi writes the following: «First, 
Plato studies perfection of a human being, in particular what is a human being and what from inherent 
things in Al Farabi helps him become happy… Then, he studies if a person becomes perfect only because 
he possesses perfect organs, beautiful face, soft skin or at the same time he enjoys noble ranks of his 
parents, his ancestry…» [Al Farabi, 1984, p. 107]. Further, he wonders if Plato treated external reasons of 
perfection as a real force of gaining happiness and Plato’s answer was consonant with his idea that only 
virtuous way of life is a fundamental precondition to achieve happiness [Al Farabi, 1984, 109]. Plato’s 
philosophy of course held a special place in Al Farabi’s works. This interest is dictated by shared stances 
of thinkers in explaining moral philosophy and its need for implementation in a world of essence of a 
human being. He draws our attention to Plato’s idea that happy people (and these are moral people) do not 
need either laws or established rules of life since their way of life is virtuous. Society of free people as a 
society of moral people lays virtue into foundation and therefore virtuous life is an art of moral life, it is 
perfect. Al Farabi also believed that Plato’s idea about achievement of person’s perfection through 
knowledge is a splendid method to gain happiness. Set course toward education in Turkic world is a 
striking phenomenon. For Turkic thinkers getting education not only for practical purposes but also to 
apprehend a path of wisdom as a process of approaching perfection was a goal for communicating with 
the world. Al Farabi believed that education for a person must become a creative event carried out deep 
inside his soul. And in this respect we would like to draw attention to a difference between Plato and Al 
Farabi in understanding essence of education. While Plato’s theory of education in itself is his 
implemented project of supremacy of idea over empiric world, which generally is an idea of supremacy 
over world and human being very philosophically veiled in terms of metaphysics. This meaning latently or 
implicitly laid by Plato became more defined due to such thinkers as Bacon, Nietzsche and Fuko. Bacon 
explains that knowledge is power, Nietzsche indicates that education under a motto of person’s integration 
into absolute meaning can load a person with stranger’s values and meanings, while Michele Fuco opines 
that education is shaping consciousness by a scientific discourse that engrains recognition of authority in 
any kind. Superhuman normative rationality in Plato’s philosophy is presented in a versatile historic form. 
In Middle Ages education was closely connected with understanding a person as a word of God. Hegel 
saw in education a way to gain important logical forms that ensure concreteness of life, i.e. implication to 
Absolute Meaning. Under all historic changes one thing that stays put is recognition of some 
transcendental reality by logics of which consciousness development of an individual is stated 
[Seitakhmetova, 2009, 18]. Meanwhile, Abu Nasr absolutely differently comprehends an education 

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process, in fact his understanding is in the tideway of Turkic educational strategy underlain by Eastern 
metaphysics. What kind is it? Purpose of education is not supremacy of a human being over the world, but 
unity with the world, God, nature, yourself and Others. It is achieving a happy condition and happiness as 
implementation of moral life and a happy person is a person living in harmony of moral intent and its 
moral implementation. Self-improvement in education was a prerequisite to reveal God inside yourself. 
Institute of mentorship in eastern paradigm of education opened up such prospect of spiritual self-
improvement since Mentor’s role was to help his Follower to implement a moral path but not to subdue 
Follower’s will and mind to his personal supremacy. Therefore, education was not intended for everyone, 
but only to those who enjoyed spiritual and moral qualities relevant to that activity. Each Mentor in the 
East is respected because his personality is a path towards morality. Moreover, great Mentor was the one 
who could educate a Follower that excelled the Mentor himself by his spiritual qualities. If a Mentor locks 
meaning of education on worshiping the Mentor himself, he ceases to execute his mentoring obligations 
and settles down to a course of amoralism, sin. Al Farabi himself is both great Follower and great Mentor, 
that is why his ideas about moral education become a condition of implementing a virtuous life. Revised 
in subsequent philosophic systems, namely in studies of Yussuf Balasaguni, Akhmed Yassawi, Akhmed 
Yugneki, they laid as a benign foundation for a subject of moral education as «a science to become 
happy». Turkic philosophy turns into philosophy of morality and its authenticity can be determined in this 
particular moral content. Way of philosophizing in Turkic world was similar to Socrates’ philosophizing 
which was seamlessly merged with a dialogue of three time projections: past, present and future. For 
Turkic thinkers it was also necessary because exposure of a traditional origin of philosophizing was a 
foundation to preserve an idea of moral understanding of things, world of items and eternal world for the 
future. 
Outside understanding of philosophic problems posed by Abu Nasr Al Farabi it is very difficult to 
understand the entire discourse of Turkic and Kazakh philosophy because an ontologic interest in ethnical 
that evolved in a subject area of professional philosophy someway or other was underlain by a question 
about moral origin. No doubts that here the issue is about Islamic interrogation about morality and about 
its Turkic component that seamlessly entered the Islamic system of values and of course about fact that 
search in the Kazakh philosophy first shapes the whole foundation of philosophic knowledge. Al Farabi 
and his ethical philosophy modern humanitarian discourse is sought-after but still it requires new reading 
for philosophic conformity with other ages, for restoration of tradition in Turkic Islamic experience. 
Tradition is ethical. Probably its reconstruction as well is a task in the tideway of ethical problems. 
Studying philosophic heritage of Abu Nasr in contemporary world is impossible without considering a fact 
that any philosophy (national, religious, etc.) as an independent thought cannot freely flow having utterly 
renouncing their previous achievements. Philosophic discourses of the East and the West assume that an 
objectified thought is not the highest summit, indeed the highest summit of a thought is to find an ability 
to overcome its own narrow-mindedness. That is why we need great spiritual experience of the East which 
involved an eternal strive for polishing up moral abilities of a human being: through education, through 
aspiration for art of moral life. Problem of morality, social justice, personal responsibility in discourse of 
already Kazakh philosophy contained samples of an ethical paradigm of Turkic and Islamic philosophy 
that were revealed as transcendental samples of morality of Al Farabi’s teaching. That particular moral 
uplifting meaning of human life became a condition of its completeness. Further, development of Kazakh 
philosophy took place in the context of recovering moral philosophy of the past since method of 
philosophizing that was being gained amid new historic conditions continuously needed clearness of 
moral thought that was ontologically speeded up in teaching of Al Farabi, Balasaguni, Kashgari, Yassawi. 
 

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