Young Orientalists of the Early 21st Century

The article, in the form of a philosophical essay, attempts to outline the essential features of the philosophical generation of "young Moscow historians and orientalists", to which the authors consider themselves to belong. This philosophical generation is not uniform: people belonging to it "encountered" philosophy and oriental studies at different ages, under different circumstances, with different emotions and responses; they have different understandings of what philosophy is and why it is needed; they have different specializations and pursue different goals in it. At the same time, there are ideological and methodological approaches in which they are unanimous, which is precisely what allows us to speak of a single philosophical generation. This is entry into the history of philosophy due to love for philosophy (and not due to external or extraneous circumstances); the absence of clearly expressed original philosophical views, "one's own philosophy"; interest in studying the history of Eastern traditions due to their otherness; recognition of the use of available digital technologies as necessary in the work of a modern historian of philosophy; the desire to resist misconceptions and prejudices about these traditions: opposition to irrationalism, postmodernism, Marxism, Orientalism (as the exaltation of the East and its wisdom in the style of "secrets of spirituality"), propaganda of the special uniqueness of Eastern thought, modernization, generalization, scholasticism, interpretive translations (created not so much to convey the meaning of the text, but to reinforce the thought of the translator and similar ones), methodological anarchism, etc. in historical and philosophical research, that is, the desire to neither complicate nor simplify Eastern thought, but also to convey it in a neutral and critical scientific language; the desire to work among close-knit colleagues and achieve the best quality of scientific communication (including informal) - not only with Russian scientists, but also with the world circle of researchers. The article may be useful for the sociology of science - as a cross-section of self-reflection of young scientists in the humanities of the first quarter of the 21st century.