THE LIMITS OF TRANSHUMANIST UTOPIAS: ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF TIME IN M.A.SHOLOKHOV’S NOVEL “QUIET FLOWS THE DON”

Gaifutdinov Lenar R.

The article offers a phenomenological analysis of limit-experience in Mikhail Sholokhov’s epic novel And Quiet Flows the Don in the context of contemporary debates on transhumanism, digital immortality, and the posthuman subject. The theoretical framework is provided by Henri Bergson’s concept of duration and Eugène Minkowski’s notion of lived time, which together allow subjectivity to be understood as a temporal structure grounded in continuous becoming and vital rhythm. It is shown that the experiences of war, revolution, and civil conflict in the novel lead to a disintegration of duration and to the breakdown of the hero’s lived temporal unity, so that finitude manifests itself not only as the risk of physical death, but also as the destruction of inner temporal wholeness. Against this background, transhumanist projects of overcoming death and achieving digital immortality—built on the reduction of subjectivity to data and algorithms—are critically examined. The article argues that Sholokhov’s phenomenology of war reveals forms of limit-experience that cannot be removed by technical means without annihilating the very structure of human experience. The conclusion is that And Quiet Flows the Don provides an important critical horizon for transhumanist and posthuman utopias, reminding us of the irreducible character of finitude and limit as ontological conditions of human existence.

Keywords:phenomenology; limit-experience; war; And Quiet Flows the Don; duration; lived time; transhumanism; digital immortality; posthuman; ontology.