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"SUCCESSFUL VICE" CONCEPT IN THE ENGLISH COMEDIOGRAPHY OF THE STUARTS RESTORATION PERIOD:PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND OF GENESIS

A. P. Vlaskin, O. Y. Kolesnikova, M. L. Skvortsova, S. V. Kharitonova, S. V. Ovcharova

Abstract

Modern humanitarian knowledge has increasingly paid attention to axiological aspects of human life. In search of moral values of the present, it makes sense to address to the cultural heritage of the previous eras. Restoration Comedy, emerged as a reaction to six-year puritanical dictatorship, followed by the restoration of the monarchy, is of special interest, in this sense. The peculiar attitude towards the moral standards found the reflection in comedies of manners of the Restoration era is, certainly, related to the main philosophical doctrines of that period. The authors focus on the interpretation of the concept of "vice" in the ethical concepts of F. La Rochefoucauld, and Shaftesbury, F. Hutcheson, T. Hobbes, B. Mandeville, emphasizing the different approaches of philosophers to moral norms and their violation. The main goal of the article is to reveal the philosophical and ethical background of the formation of one of the most striking concepts of Restoration Comedy – "a successful vice" on the basis of the most influential philosophical concepts at the turn of XVII-XVIII centuries. This purpose has defined a number of tasks: first, it is necessary to designate cultural and historical conditions of the origin and identity of the comedy of Restoration; secondly, having analyzed the main philosophical and ethical concepts at the turn of XVII-XVIII centuries, to define the way "vice" is gradually getting in public consciousness of that time as the line of success; thirdly, to establish how the possibilities of a concept "successful vice" in the comedy of Restoration are implemented. As a result of the conducted research the authors have come to the following conclusions: due to the socio-political changes happened in England at the turn of XVII-XVIII centuries in the English dramatic art there was a special type of the comedy of manners later called the comedy of Restoration. One of the key concepts of Restoration Comedy was the concept "successful vice", the formation of which is closely related to moral shifts, characteristic for the European culture of the specified period, and reflected in the writings of the philosophers of the second half of the XVII - first decades of the XVIII centuries. In this context the enrichment of philosophical and ethical category of "vice" with signs of success and its realization in the comediography of Restoration era is of special interest.

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