J. L. BORGES AND HIS «MORAL LESSONS FOR THE IMMORTAL»

The Argentine writer J. L. Borges described his short story “The Immortal” as “a moralizing tale for the immortals”. The writer obviously gave the short story a special moral meaning, which has not lost its relevance in modern culture, which is a new stage of development of the “culture of nominalism”, the fact of existence of which Borges stated in the middle of the twentieth century. The aim of the article is to investigate the ethical foundations of the short story, which originate in ancient philosophy. On the one hand, the article analyzes philosophical references to the relation between death and immortality and the images of river and time in Homer and Heraclitus; on the other hand, to the categories of ancient ethics (universal good, cardinal virtues, ataraxia, vices). The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the ethical-philosophical approach to the analysis of the writer's work, which consists in using the concepts of ancient philosophy. As a result, the article concludes that the short story symbolizes the modern culture's departure from the basic concepts of ethics; it brings closer the era of chaos and madness, where classical virtues either become meaningless or turn into vices.