This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such as Russian liberalism, (...) personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage. (shrink)

_Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology_ presents a variety of contemporary philosophic problems found in the works of prominent Russian thinkers, ranging from social and political matters and pressing cultural issues to insights into modern science and mounting global challenges.

Russian neo-Kantianismʼs status in the history of the development of Russian philosophy is an important, but poorly presented in scientific publications, issue is revealed in the article. With some exceptions, which are represented by a number of few, but informative and informative articles and a monograph, the problem remains without proper reception in the scientific discourse of our time. Russian neo-Kantianism, however, leaving aside the question of what is the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism, it is impossible to productively and (...) consistently actualize the content of Russian neo-Kantians and, moreover, to show their significance in the history of Russian philosophical and socio-humanitarian thought in general. Three key difficulties stand out: 1) the question of originality and the related theme of the independence of the philosophical direction (originality, independence and originality – differ from each other, but are united in their immanent orientation); 2) Russian neo-Kantianism, which in many ways seems to be the most difficult task for researchers engaged in historical and philosophical reconstruction; 3) the question remains ambiguous as to whether Russian neo-Kantianism is a continuation of the German tradition or whether it is a direction of Russian philosophy of thought. Russian neo-Kantianism, the three difficulties identified in the reception of the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism taken as a whole, are consistently revealed in the content of the proposed article, supplemented by a brief overview of the most systemic positions of Russian philosophers, ranked among Russian neo-Kantianism. Overcoming the indicated difficulties, which undoubtedly affect the objective disclosure of the creativity of each representative of Russian neo-Kantianism or thinkers related to them, seems appropriate not only from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, but also for actualizing the heritage of philosophers in the conditions of modern socio-humanitarian pragmatics. Russian neo-Kantianism The author of the article suggests that one of the ways to overcome the ambiguity of the definition of Russian neo-Kantianism in the history of Russian thought may be, firstly, a more detailed consecration of the activities of Russian neo-Kantians in the historical and philosophical literature, and secondly, a comprehensive representation of this direction, including studies of individual personalities and their works. Despite the controversial and polemical nature of the task, its formulation is necessary for the objectivity of the meaning of Russian thought in the global context. (shrink)

The End of Russian Philosophy describes and evaluates the troubled state of Russian philosophical thought in the post-Soviet decades. The book suggests that in order to revive philosophy as a universal, professional discipline in Russia, it may be necessary for Russian philosophy to first do away with the messianic traditions of the 19th century.

Contemporary Russian philosophical traditions cannot be reduced to Marxist works and research in religious philosophy. Russian philosophers developed philosophy and methodology of social sciences and humanities as early as at the end of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, S.N. Bulgakov’s social philosophy of science is closely related to European thinkers’ works and ideas. Problems of social determinism in scientific cognition are among them. These problems are topical now as seen (...) in the well-known discussion about the nature and meaning of various forms of determinism in which different stands are taken by R. Thomas, E. Morin and I. Prigogine. A new level of research of social determinism is presented in Russia in the second-half of the twentieth century. The identification of determination with causality is overcome. Necessary and contingent, dynamic and statistical determination, self-determination, and so on, come under examination. In the 1970s mechanistic and objectivistic determination is overcome and human factors, such as the will and systems of values, are taken into account. S.L. Frank turns to the methodology of social sciences in 1922 and continues his studies in 1930 in Europe. Frank creates a holistic, fully secular doctrine of social philosophy, sociology, philosophy of law and history. The changing situation in Russia at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century allows us to re-evaluate ideas and works of Russian thinkers who studied mainly rationalist themes, including philosophy and methodology of science, its hermeneutic and semiotic aspects. Russian and European philosophies are used and essentially enriched. G.G. Shpet’s ideas are examined. Studying the sphere of language and meaning, recognizing the essential importance of hermeneutics for knowledge in the humanities, he brings forward a semiotic conception of ethnic psychology to precede, in particular, American anthropologist and ethnographer C. Geertz’s theory of culture. Russian philosophers are quite aware that any reconstruction of real cognition cannot limit itself to the transcendental epistemological agent or “consciousness in general”. It is necessary to change the level of abstraction of the subject matter of the non-classical—social, cultural and historical—epistemology to draw closer to the real manifestations of cognitive activity. (shrink)

For the first time since the break up of the USSR, and with the help of 21 leading historians of Russian philosophy from Moscow State University including M. N. Gromov, Z. A. Kamensky, M. A. Maslin, B. G. Safronov, and V. V. Serbinenko, Valery A. Kuvakin presents a comprehensive two-volume work capturing the rich philosophical heritage of this diverse culture. These scholars discuss its interpretation of the universe, the essence of history and human existence, the ideals of knowledge and (...) a decent life, the destiny of Russia, and the life of the world community from the 10th century through the early 20th century. These discussions are augmented with selected excerpts from original works, which served as examples of the main schools of thought. (shrink)

The article explores the parallels between the theory of sympathy developed by Max Scheler and the understanding of the foreign I in Russian philosophy. Russian philosophy has been developing the topic of foreign psychic life since the 1880s, and it regards Scheler’s theory as unable to raise above the level of emotional contagion. True sympathy is possible, when the Other is already present to the I, or, according to Nikolay Lossky, there is an original gnoseological difference between “the (...) lived” and “the observed”. Russian philosophy emphasizes the hermeneutical aspect of the problem – the original division and the search for understanding, as does Vasily Rozanov, who also shifted the accent from the general to the individual, particular and even intimate. Semyon Frank pointed out that the feelings of another person will only form a shell of meaningless observation, if not connected to the living knowledge through the human ability to resonate with something transcendent. And Russian philosophy assumes the fact of the original collectiveness of consciousness. This is the impulse given to it by the philosophy of Sergei Trubetskoy and developed in the philosophy of Russian neo-Kantianism, with Ivan Lapshin depicting a creative person, taking up the collective function of experimenting over the psyche to create and expand the map of human feelings. (shrink)

Opens a window on the ways in which Russian thinkers have historically considered the political.

Russian philosophy of the 19th century was developing in close contact with European philosophy. The strongest influence on Russian thought was exerted by classical German philosophy. One significant example is the teaching of Vladimir Solovyov, an outstanding 19th century thinker. Solovyov owes several principles of his teaching to Friedrich Schelling, from whom he assimilated his cardinal concept of all-embracing being; also to Schelling we can trace Solovyov’s conviction that the will constitutes the determining principle of being as (...) well as his conception of the suffering and developing God. Finally, it was largely through Schelling’s influence that Solovyov shaped his cosmogonic theory associated with his sophiology, based on the thesis of the falling away from God of His ‘Alter Ego’, His ‘Prototype’. According to Solovyov, ‘the Second God’, or Sophia-Wisdom, is God-Made-Man, the Absolute coming into being, whose life underlies the substance of historical process. (shrink)

A collection of readings in Russian philosophical thought.

v. 1. The beginnings of Russian philosophy: the Slavophiles. The Westernizers.--v. 2. The Nihilists. The Populists. Critics of religion and culture.--v. 3. Pre-revolutionary philosophy and theology. Philosophers in exile. Marxists and Communists.

The history of Russian philosophy, beginning in the eighteenth century. Also includes brief biographies of famous Russian philosophers.

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and (...) spiritual context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters discuss Russian philosophy's main figures, schools and controversies, while (...) simultaneously pursuing a common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today. (shrink)

Evert van der Zweerde's Russian Political Philosophy: Anarchy, Authority, Autocracy is a compelling work of scholarship. It is not an exaggeration to place Zwee.

The bibliography of works discussing Russian Marxism is huge, making it very difficult to give an original interpretation of this phenomenon. To distinguish myself from the interpretative mainstream, I do not focus on persons and chronology, but rather investigate the question whether there was a specific logic in the unfolding of Russian Marxism which led to its consolidation into a specific doctrine, focusing on dialectical and historical materialism, during the Soviet period, and transformed it from a pluralistic philosophy into (...) the monolithic official ideology of the Russian Communist Party. I concentrate on some theoretical and epistemological problems discussed by Russian Marxists, such as whether dialectical materialism is a theory or a methodology, whether dialectics is a logical or ontological category, what the term “dialectical materialism” exactly means, and what the materialistic understanding of cognition and the core assumption of historical materialism are. Accordingly, my approach has a reconstructive character: I focus on some fundamental propositions of Soviet Marxism which are recorded in textbooks on philosophy and try to recover their philosophical genesis. Thus my scope is restricted to a selection of relevant discussion points, allowing me to keep the philosophical discussions separate from political controversies. (shrink)

The article discusses the main features of the Russian philosophy of war that developed in the first third of the 20th century. The author shows that in Russia, the philosophy of war did not develop as a separate broad line of research but limited itself to only a few meaningful, but rather brief, experiments. Nevertheless, many Russian philosophers left deep, well-founded reasoning about war, which can be reconstructed as a consistent system of views. One of its features is (...) the shift in the focus of considering armed violence from the sociological and political to the anthropological and ethical; the focus is not on war as a social phenomenon, but on the human’s position in war. In this regard, the attitude to war in Russian philosophy is paradoxical. On the one hand, war brings a lot of evil in the form of death of many people and destruction, but, on the other hand, it promotes to the manifestation of the best moral qualities in people, up to selflessness and heroism. Armed violence seems to be a tragedy of the Christian conscience, and each participant must independently find a justification for his participation in the war. Based on the conditions of a difficult moral choice, personal, existential justification may come from the idea that people cannot commit violence with a clear conscience. In this case, the person choosing to participate in a war perceives the battle as his own guilt that should be expiated. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the work of the eminent Russian legal scholar and thinker Pavel I. Novgorodtsev. This is nearly the first time that Novgorodtsev’s philosophy of law is considered as the...

There is its own philosophical tradition in Russia. The traditional Russian philosophy is idealistic and religious. The basic categories of traditional Russian philosophy: "Ideal", "Sofia", "Sobornost", « Beauty, True, Kind (the Blessing)». The basic problem of Russian philosophy is to find the way of rescue mankind. One of the cardinal problems is the problem of civilization choice: East – West - Russia. According to the method of Russian philosophy it is not so analytic, but it is (...) synthetic. Synthetic character of Russian philosophy was most full embodied in V.S.Solovjev's philosophical system (1853-1900). In Russian philosophy the person, its destiny in the world was considered as a rule, globally - in universal, space scale. Russian cosmizm has formulated antropocosmik a paradigmon principles coevolution the nature and a noosphere which demands special culture. (shrink)

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth century on Bergson. Bergson’s most (...) original idea is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute, which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson’s ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. (shrink)

The first two seasons of Russian Doll ambitiously take on a number of topics in the Philosophy of Time. In particular, it addresses the metaphysics of time loops and time travel. The metaphysics of time are notoriously thorny and complicated, and Russian Doll provides a treatment of those issues that both does justice to their complexity as well as attempts to provide solutions to some of those issues (or at minimum, in some cases, hints at possible solutions). As is (...) the case with most enduring philosophical topics, the discussion does not happen in a philosophical vacuum. Just as a discussion of the nature of knowledge naturally leads to a discussion of the nature of truth, and so forth, discussions in the metaphysics of time naturally lead to discussions of the ethics of time travel, the nature of the universe, the nature of the reality, God, relativism, the nature of paradoxes, consciousness, and, perhaps most importantly, existential questions about how one should live. This chapter will provide a general account of the way these philosophical issues are presented in Russian Doll with an eye toward (1) explicating the ways in which the various characters in Russian Doll conceive of the issues, (2) making it clear what their responses to the issues are (in those instances in which responses are provided), and (3) where appropriate, evaluating those responses for philosophical consistency, accuracy, and plausibility. (shrink)

This article addresses the writing of the history of Russian philosophy from the first of such works—Archimandrite Gavriil’s Russian Philosophy [ Russkaja filosofija , 1840]—to philosophical histories/textbooks in the twenty-first century. In the majority of these histories, both past and present, we find a relentless insistence on the delineation of “characterizing traits” of Russian philosophy and appeals to “historiosophy,” where historiosophy is employed as being distinct from the historiographical method. In the 1990s and 2000s, the genre of (...) the history of Russian philosophy has grown increasingly conservative with regards to content, with histories from this period demonstrating an almost exclusive Orthodox focus. This conservatism, in turn, has contributed to widespread contention in recent years over the status of these philosophical textbooks—disagreements that often lead to either (1) further appeals to “historiosophical” methods; or (2) denials of the domestic philosophical tradition altogether, where the response to the query “Is there philosophy in Russia?” is emphatically negative. This article argues that the contemporary disputes over the development and preservation of the Russian philosophical canon are in many ways part of a larger debate over the roles of Orthodoxy and the history of philosophy in post-Soviet philosophical thought. (shrink)

The author traces the early evolution of Rubinstein and Shpet from neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, respectively, and shows how their ideas partly converged.

The St. Petersburg Theological Academy was the first of the four academies in the early years of the nineteenth century to undergo a remodeling along the lines of a new charter for the empire’s church-affiliated educational institutions. Instruction in philosophy was mandated, but the academy faced staffing issues at the outset. Courses were taught following Wolffian guidebooks that many found to be antiquated, raising pedagogical dilemmas for the teachers. Nevertheless, a divorce between faith and reason was proscribed, and adherence (...) to a Christianized Plato remained prescribed and seen as central to the Orthodox religion. (shrink)

The article examines the question of the correlation of the phenomena “Russian philoso­phy” and “philosophy in Russia”. The author believes that these phenomena are not iden­tical to each other, and Russian philosophy, being an important fragment of intellectual subculture, was often created outside of Russia. This phenomenon became especially prominent in the twentieth century, when Russian dissidents who were exiled abroad, working in the West, continued to be the largest Russian philosophers. On the other hand, within Russia itself (...) (the Moscow Kingdom, the Russian Empire, the short “democratic republic”, the USSR, post-Soviet Russia), not only Russians in language and culture phi­losophized and continue to philosophize. The author notes that Russian literature and philosophical journalism played an exceptional role in domestic philosophizing. It was they who most often made philosophy, as knowledge objectively tending to universality, a nationally colored Russian philosophy. (shrink)

December 6, 1963, marked 150 years since the birth of Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev . Ogarev was one of the first in the group of Russia's best sons who, in the dark years of reaction under the serf system, became forerunners of the revolution. Ogarev was distinguished for his diverse gifts and many-sided activity. He was a revolutionist — the organizer of the secret Land and Freedom [Zemlia i Volia] society — and also became known as a lyric poet. He was (...) one of the founders of the free Russian press, an original philosopher with a materialist outlook, a penetrating student of Russia's economic life, a passionate propagandist of polytechnical education, a proponent of freedom for oppressed peoples, and a spokesman for new esthetic ideals. Prerevolutionary historiographers neglected to take account of Ogarev's work, and, at best, recognized him as a "fellow-traveler" of Herzen. Only in the Soviet period did Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev obtain the recognition he deserved. (shrink)

Crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, written before and during the Bolshevik Revolution by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in (...) its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism was developed by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov in the late nineteenth century; he believed that humans had an ethical obligation not only to care for the sick but to cure death using science and technology; outer space was the territory of both immortal life and infinite resources. After the revolution, a new generation pursued Fedorov's vision. Cosmist ideas inspired visual artists, poets, filmmakers, theater directors, novelists (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky read Fedorov's writings), architects, and composers, and influenced Soviet politics and technology. In the 1930s, Stalin quashed Cosmism, jailing or executing many members of the movement. Today, when the philosophical imagination has again become entangled with scientific and technological imagination, the works of the Russian Cosmists seem newly relevant. Contributors Alexander Bogdanov, Alexander Chizhevsky, Nikolai Fedorov, Boris Groys, Valerian Muravyev, Alexander Svyatogor, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood A copublication with e-flux, New York. (shrink)

In 2022, Russian Studies in Philosophy (RSP) celebrates its sixtieth anniversary and the current issue completes the anniversary volume of the journal. Launched in 1962 by founding publisher Mike S...

Semen Frank is one of the most interesting and exciting pre-revolutionary Russian religious philosophers to be “rediscovered” after the fall of the Soviet Union. His involvement in Russian pre-revolutionary political and academic life brought Frank into contact with an imaginative, progressive and idealistic group of thinkers whose ranks he then joined. Like Nicholas Berdyaev and Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, Frank put forward his own philosophical views about their world, which was in upheaval, and about human nature. After emigration from the then (...) young Soviet Union, Frank continued to produce his impressive body of work. His ideas are remarkable for their considered, moderate and tolerant nature.This book is a contribution to the ever-growing body of scholarship, which strives to connect Russian thought to its contemporary Western context and continues to facilitate the revival of these fascinating thinkers. In addition to situating Frank’s thought in a Western context, this work seeks to provide an overview of his thought, and introduce his key arguments to those unfamiliar with Russian religious philosophy. (shrink)

Editorial Board: Karl P. Ameriks, Margaret Atherton, Frederick Beiser, Fabien Capeillères, Faustino Fabbianelli, Daniel Garber, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Steven Nadler, Alan Nelson, Christof Rapp, Ursula Renz, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Denis Thouard, Paul Ziche, Günter Zöller The series publishes monographs and essay collections devoted to the history of philosophy as well as studies in the theory of writing the history of philosophy. A special emphasis is placed on the contextualization of philosophical historiography into the areas of the history of science, (...) culture, and the wider scope of intellectual history. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it (...) consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

This essay addresses one of the most concerning features of Russian thought: its claim to exceptionality. The author contends that the notion of Russian distinctiveness and exceptionality has reverberated consistently throughout Russian intellectual discussions. In contemporary Russia, these debates have heightened, often taking on a distinctly political character. The essay highlights the perilous consequences of believing in the exclusivity and superiority of one national tradition over others. Not only does this belief lead to national isolationism, negatively impacting the country’s intellectual (...) culture and diminishing its vibrancy and creativity, but it also erodes the foundation for a critical attitude and self-reflection, essential aspects of philosophical inquiry. Russia needs an open philosophy that is seamlessly integrated into the global philosophical process and actively engages in constructive dialogue with other philosophical cultures. Achieving this goal requires breaking free from the longstanding belief in exceptionality that has cast a shadow over Russia’s state, culture, and thought for centuries. (shrink)

Leibniz’s philosophy enjoyed a Russian fandom that endured from the eighteenth century to the death of the last exiled Russian philosophers in the twentieth century. There was, to begin with, Leibniz’s direct impact on Peter the Great and on the scientific development of Saint Petersburg. Then there was, still in the eighteenth century, Mikhail Lomonosov, who was sent to study with Christian Wolff in Marburg, and who came back to Saint Petersburg with a watered-down Leibnizian worldview, which he applied (...) to the study of chemistry and physics. Another eighteenth century philosopher, Alexander Radishchev, who studied in Leipzig, displayed acquiescence with a number of key elements from Leibniz’s philosophy. Russian Lebnizianism as a continuous philosophical movement was considerably reinvigorated in the 1870s when the Leibnizian German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller took a position at the University of Dorpat (nowadays Tartu, Estonia), which was then located within the Russian Empire. Teichmüller influenced a number of Russian philosophers into adopting a “Teichmüllerian” version of Leibnizianism. Among these philosophers were Evgeny Bobrov and Alexei Kozlov. In Saint Petersburg, Kozlov influenced his own son, Askoldov, and the latter’s friend — Nikolai Lossky. In the meanwhile, in Moscow Lev Lopatin, Nikolai Bugaev, and Petr Astafiev developed their own Leibnizianism in seemingly relative independence from Teichmüller’s influence and presumably, in some cases, under the partial influence of Vladimir Solovyov. Despite this relative independence, however, the fact remains that there was in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia a network of more or less loosely interconnected Leibnizian philosophers who read each other and wrote about each other, who exchanged ideas, and who constituted a movement that we might characterize as “Russian Leibnizianism” or “Russian Neo-Leibnizianism.” In this chapter, I tell the story of the intellectual lineage of Russian Leibnizianism. (shrink)

In pre-revolutionary Russia, law was criticized from many points of view: in the name of Christ or the name of Marx, in defense of anarchism or of an idealized autocracy, on behalf of the "Russian soul" or of universal progress towards socialism. Examining the rich tradition of hostility to law, Walicki presents those Russian thinkers who boldly challenged this legacy of anti-legal prejudice by developing liberal philosophies of law, vindicating the value of human rights and rule of law. He discusses (...) six leading theorists--Boris Chicherin, Vladimir Soloviev, Leon Petrazycki, Pavel Novgorodtsev, Bogdan Kistiakovsky, and Sergius Hessen--all of whom viewed law in the context of wider philosophical and social problems. (shrink)

The specificity of different perceptions must correspond to the metaphysical lines of the world. The metaphysical fault lines of being find expression in the peculiarities of the psychological structure of our experience. Ontologically, one would say: metaphysics produces psychology; psychologically, one would say the opposite: psychology determines our metaphysical structures. But symbolically, we will say, as we have said already: the metaphysical is expressed in the psychological, the psychological expresses metaphysics.