The lexeme personality and its derivatives have played an important role in the development of Slavophile teachings. Slavophilism is a comprehensive Utopian project and includes philosophical, theological, social and political ideas and concepts. It intends to provide a justification for certain religious and social ideals as well as for a vision of the historical direction in which Russia should continue to develop. The article discusses the essence of this justification, its background and development through the analysis of the lexeme as (...) used by the Slavophiles. (shrink)

The Slavophile idea in the broad sense, as the idea of the self-determination of Russian culture, was by no means born together with historical Slavophilism. It has always been an immanent component of the intellectual world and intellectual development of Russia and merely received its name, a rather random and infelicitous one, from Slavophilism. In our century it has a rich history, in which the majority of events have been of a political and polemical character. They have been much discussed, (...) and now we will leave them aside and take up another task: to delimit and examine the great creative contributions to the idea. Under the closest scrutiny, we find three such contributions: the idea of a Slavic Renaissance, the Eurasian idea, and the idea of a Neopatristic Synthesis. All of them in their outward appearance diverge quite far from the customary textbook image of Slavophilism: [they are] "a series of magical metamorphoses" that show both the creative force of the idea and its well-known amorphousness. Let us try to see in these metamorphoses interrelated episodes that together trace out a graphic image of the whole. Earlier, people loved to view an idea in graphic form and in action, and they knew how to do so. Faddei Zelinskii was a great master of this, and at the beginning of the century he published in Petersburg a series of studies entitled From the Life of Ideas [Iz zhizni idei]. Indeed, it is with Zelinskii that our first episode from the life of the Slavophile idea is associated. (shrink)

This volume brings together the religious and philosophical writings of the founders of Russian religious philosophy, Aleksei Khomiakov and Ivan Kireevsky. Both began their intellectual careers in the literary world of the 1820s. The texts collected here make the philosophical concepts of Sobornost (community, universality, wholeness, ecumenicity) and integral knowledge, available to western readers. Based on the primacy of the heart, the spiritual wholeness of the human being and the cognitive will, integral knowing moves beyond rationality to union with the (...) object of knowledge in knowing. This book provides an introduction to Russian religious philosophy, and a profound, meditative text for anyone concerned with human and spiritual unity. Also included are two responses to Slavophile ideas by the prominent Russian philosophers Pavel Florensky and Nikolai Berdiaev. (shrink)

There is a very sharp upsurge of interest in the West in the history of Russian conservative thought, particularly in its most outstanding figure, K. Leont'ev. Judge for yourself. In 1948 a monograph on him appeared in West Germany ; one appeared in the USA in 1952 ; and in Italy in 1957 . In 1966 he was inscribed in the "family of the very greatest Russian intellects," to which his large book, Scrittori Russi is devoted. Added to this is (...) N. Berdiaev's book K. N. Leont'ev, which has been translated into English and French, V. Zenkovsky's entire chapters on Leont'ev in his History of Russian Philosophy [Istoriia russkoi filosofii], 1948, and in his book Russian Thinkers and Europe [Russkie mysliteli i Evropa], 1955; and the chapters by the American historian E. Thaden, in his Conservative Nationalism in 19th Century Russia, Seattle, 1964. It thus becomes clear that Leont'ev has been forgotten in a strangely one-sided fashion. As we see, in the West he is not only not forgotten, but his ideas are, ever more obviously, becoming a powerful weapon in a very current ideological struggle. Superficial books written about him find a market. His thoughts are made the basis of very contemporary and dangerous notions. It turns out then that he has been forgotten only in our country. (shrink)

At present, large teams are at work in virtually all branches of Soviet historical scholarship writing major works of synthesis that present the results of long years of research into the history of literature, economic and political thought, ethics, esthetics, philosophy, and sociology. These works deal with currents that have played any significant role whatever in the history of Russian thought. The greatest attention is given to the Decembrists, the Revolutionary Democrats, the Narodniks, and the Russian Marxists. These trends in (...) the intellectual and socio-political movements have been studied in greater or lesser detail, with the exception perhaps of the Narodnik movement, to which, however, the attention of many historians is now being directed. (shrink)

Interest in Slavophilism has undergone a notable resuscitation in recent decades in the Soviet literature. In the seventies and eighties, collections of works of some of the Slavophiles were published for the first time since the October Revolution. Books and articles on Slavophilism have appeared. Archival materials have been put into scholarly circulation, scholars find their attention being drawn to works of modern foreign authors on Slavophilism, and certain aspects of Slavophile views are often touched upon in current literary criticism. (...) We can agree with the conclusion drawn by I. A. Dudzinskaia in 1983 and shared by N. I. Tsimbaev, namely, that a review of the literature in the recent period "evidences a new stage in the study of Slavophilism." However, various aspects of Slavophilism have by no means been dealt with equally, and there are quite a number of disagreements among scholars in their assessments. (shrink)

Leading members of the Slavophile circle shared a commonWeltanschauung, fostered by a complex reaction to thesocial and political changes taking place in mid-nineteenth-centuryRussia. There was, however, considerable diversity in their views aboutthe character and value of the Russian state apparatus. While theyall criticised the bureaucratic ethos of the tsarist state,a number of them recognised that it played a critical role in stabilising deep-seated social tensions in Russian society. Inthe late 1850s, some members of the Slavophile circle also cameto recognise that (...) the state apparatus could play a positiverole in eliminating serfdom. Nevertheless, in the wake ofthe Emancipation Edict of 1861, conflict over the roleof the Russian state became the most divisive issuefor surviving members of the Slavophile circle. (shrink)

The Slavophile movement cannot be properly understood and assessed without taking into account the movement to which it opposed itself, the Westernizers. It was in close contact with the Westernize...

Nikolay Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” was written in hot pursuit of the Crimean War (1853–1856), when the powers of Holy Union broke political equilibrium after the victory of the Russian army over Napoleon and started a new aggressive war against Russia, the only sovereign Slavic state in Europe. The book could be evaluated as an in­tellectual epilogue of the Crimean War in which there were pointed out two central prob­lems: firstly, to show the sovereignty and future perspectives of Slavic (...) civilization, which has occupied it’s own legitimate historic place in Europe as an independent cultural-his­toric type; secondly, to construct the project of the All-Slavic Union as a protective bar­rier against European invasion. The solution of the first problem was based on the tradi­tions of Russian thought, especially on Slavophilism. So that demonstrated it’s culmina­tion and specific Russian contribution to the world civilizational theory. The solution of the second problem was based on the “circle of conservative utopia” (A. Walicki) de­rived from the European Pan-Slavism (Austroslavism), founded on the territory of Aus­tro-Hungarian Empire as early as at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The contra­dictory combination of Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism is the subject of the historiosophi­cal study in the current article. (shrink)

The philosophy of culture and the philosophy of history were the popular topics of the developing Russian history of philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the following article, A. I. Herzen’s socio-cultural project is examined and compared with the Slavophiles’Christian communal socialism. Herzen’s type of socialism appears to be a specific variant of the Russian national culture as the Slavophiles depicted.

The author examines the nature of Herzen's relationship with Slavophilism in its conflict with Westernism and discusses his incipient religiosity.

Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Yet, they all appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism. In contrast to the latter, Russian philosophy typically displays a tendency towards ontologism, which is generally defined as the view that there is such a thing as being in itself, (...) i.e., being independent of cognition, and that this being is to some extent knowable. We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed movements, an underlying ontologism that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. (shrink)

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.

Монография представляет собой исследование философских взглядов одного из представителей второй половины XIX века, мыслителя, публициста, литературного критика, переводчика, издателя, Н. Н. Страхова.

The paper introduces a conceptually important, but previously unknown essay by the Russian poet, theologian and philosopher Aleksey Khomyakov. This essay, “The Slavic and Orthodox Christian Population of Austria,” was discovered in two versions: an original, previously unpublished manuscript and a later anonymous 1845 text. The author reveals an aesthetic function that certain structural elements perform in Khomyakov’s essay, encouraging the interaction between historiosophical ideas and literary creativity. The essay is emphatically philosophical in its style, as its very composition embraces (...) the classic Hegelian triad of “Being—Nothing—Becoming.” This notion overlaps with Khomyakov’s historiosophical idea of the European Slavdom that flourished in the first millennium B.C., and that then lost its sovereignty being under German rule, and finally enjoyed a renaissance in the 19th century. The paper also shows that the distinctive feature of Khomyakov’s poetry is its prophetism. The contrastive analysis was carried out to identify the affinity between the thematic-figurative patterns of Khomyakov’s early poetry and his essay on the Austrian Slavs, which revealed how the poetic thought had been accumulating and what aspect it had taken on within a philosophical and historical discourse. The author of the article puts forward the hypothesis that the difference in depicting Peter the Great in the two versions of Khomyakov’s essay can be attributed to his dispute with Konstantin Aksakov’s poem “To Peter.” This polemic between two fellow-Slavophils was driven by their diverging approaches to the problem of the ethical dilemma of ends and means. (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)

In the article, the author analyzes the views of the leading ideologues of the concept of pan-Slavism in the Russian Empire, who, according to Ivan Mirchuk, had a decisive influence on the formation of the modern ideological mythologeme of the hegemony of the Russian state on a planetary scale and contributed to the deepening of ideological differences between Western and Eastern civilizations. Using the example of the arguments of representatives of the Slavophile stream of Russian Pan-Slavism regarding its messianic role (...) in the history of the Slavic peoples, the researcher proves the absurdity of the very idea of the superiority of one nation over another. At the same time, intelligence focuses the reader’s attention on those dangerous tendencies of the spread of this theory, which in the future may lead to global world conflicts with catastrophic consequences.Following the further development of the ideology of pan-Slavism during the second half of the 20th century, the researcher reveals the process of transformation of Moscow messianism into the leading role of the now Soviet (Soviet) people in world history, which received its theoretical embodiment in the concept of pan-Sovietism. It was she who contributed to the final consolidation of the lawless position of the Slavic peoples within the framework of a single state entity on the territory of Eastern Europe, and the emergence of a new socio-cultural generation with an ideologically shaped rejection of values contrary to communist ideals and a negative attitude towards the entire surrounding world.The research methodology is based on the philosophical-anthropological and psychological analysis of the key ideas of the concept of pan-Slavism and pan-Sovietism in the historical-philosophical studies of I. Mirchuk. In particular, we used formal-logical, critical and hermeneutic methods of research to reveal the process of transformation of the pan-Slavism mythology in modern Russia and its influence on the socio-political life of other Slavic peoples. Among the general scientific methods, the methods of deduction and comparison came in handy, which helped to analyze the views of individual representatives of various pan-Slavic currents on the problem of uniting the Slavic peoples into a single ethnic substratum in different historical time periods. And the principles of objectivity and systematicity helped us dispel the myth of Russian messianism among other Slavic peoples.Conclusion. Thus, the main mythologeme of the ideology of Pan-Slavism in the studies of the Slavic scholar I. Mirchuk was reduced to the messianic role of Russia and its people, as the leader among the entire Slavic world, in relation to all other, primarily European nations. Neglecting the historical and spiritual contribution to the development of the world culture of other nations and peoples, the Moscow Empire to this day continues to call itself the only center of true Christian traditions, which strives to lead the planet to a better future. Declaring itself the successor of the Roman Empire as the “Third Rome”, Muscovy, and later the Soviet Union, completely usurped the right of other Slavic peoples of the continent to independently choose their own path of state formation and social development.The transformational processes experienced by pan-Slavism at the beginning of the 20th century brought only the change of the name of the ideology to pan-Sovietism, fully preserving the essence of the imperial unity principle in all spheres of social and political life of the communist era. According to the leading communist ideologues, all the best that the world had could be found only in the Soviet Union, or rather in its capital. Other Slavic peoples got the desired equality only in the negative attitude of the center towards any manifestations of their own spiritual identity and economic initiatives, which were instantly punished by brutal repression and physical destruction under the slogans of finding non-existent enemies of the people and invented counter-revolutionary activities. The theoretically attractive idea of the special purpose of the Slavic peoples in the international arena has in practice turned into an imperial totalitarian dictatorship of one country, which wanted only one thing – world domination. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the long-lasting friendship between Georges Florovsky and St. Justin Popović, as well as their common project to build an Orthodox theological synthesis on the basis of the patristic tradition. The paper focuses on three periods from Florovsky’s and Popović’s lives, from late 1910 to early 1920, from the late 1920s to late 1930s, and finally into the 1940s. I argue that in the first period both authors developed their theological (...) visions relying on Solovyov and Florensky, on the one hand, and in opposition to the ecclesial nationalism of the Slavophiles and conservative Orthodox hierarchs, on the other hand. Further, I investigate how during the late 1920s and 1930s both authors searched for an Orthodox synthesis mostly in dialogue with their Orthodox predecessors, especially Solovyov, Florensky, and Bulgakov, as well as the modern western philosophical tradition. The focus will shift then to the 1940s, which was characterized by frequent meetings between Florovsky and Popović in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. I argue that in this period the Church Fathers became for both authors the golden standard for Orthodox theology, and the idea of the Neopatristic synthesis developed in full scale. (shrink)

The study explains the perception of the nation in the political thinking of Svetozár Hurban Vajanský, which is founded on primordialist starting points and has a holistic character. In this context, the relationship between the nationally conscious elite and the people is analysed in more detail. The ambivalence of Vajanský’s political thinking is evident in the fact that, in many ways, he formally promotes Ľudovít Štúr’s original idea of unity, but, within Slovak political discourse, he promotes the idea of programme (...) uniformity. Subsequently, this becomes a source of cultural and political isolationism. This fact is complemented in parallel by reflecting the primary acculturation importance of the national elite in developing the national consciousness of the population. Vajanský also incorporated the idea of Slavic mutuality into the national emancipation concept of developing Slovak national identity. Its content is in line with Štúr’s ethnic romanticism. The historicist concept of the development of Slavs under Russian protection also appears in his thinking. Vajanský’s Russophilism was, thus, loosely tied to the ideas of Russian Slavophiles and the idealising perspective of the Slavs’ civilisational mission, who were to form a new, more spiritual and culturally advanced, civilisation circle compared with the morally declining nations of the West. (shrink)

The article presents the reconstruction of the views of F.M. Dostoevsky and Vl.S. Solovyov on the nature of relations between church and state. A line of mutual influence of thinkers in the context of the perception of Christian truth is drawn. It is shown that Dostoevsky was impressed by a series of lectures by Solovyov's "Readings on God-manhood" and adopted from them the idea of the possibility of religious and moral improvement not only of an individual, but of society as (...) a whole. The article shows that not without the Solovyov's influence Dostoevsky arrives at the Slavophil idea of sobornost and the impossibility of salvation outside of church communion, while speaking of the Church as an ecclesia, that is, an assembly of believers. The author of the article shows that the sophistic and mystical moments in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" appear under direct influence on Dostoevsky's "Readings on God-manhood" and a joint trip of thinkers to the Optina Pustyn monastery. It is also noted that in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" the idea was expressed about the gradual growth of the state into the truth of the Church. Solovyov continued this line within the framework of his project of free theocracy in the 1880s, developing the thought of F.M. Dostoevsky - about the Church as the best social order. At the same time, the article shows the principled position of both thinkers on opposing the ideal of socialism and the idea of the Christian community, within which the term "Russian socialism", formulated in the "Diary of a writer". The author shows that Solovyov in his work "Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky" was the first to explain the term "Russian socialism" precisely through the concept of the Christian community. (shrink)

I detect a specific attitude to Byzantium (“the Byzantine Enlightenment”) in Ivan Kireevsky’ Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” (1852). I qualify this attitude as Byzantinocentrism. I take that as a focal point and, against this background, consider the image of Byzantium in Kireevsky and some thinkers of his social circle. It allows me to trace the most important lines of attitudes to Byzantium in the Russian historiosophical literature and opinion journalism of the nineteenth century. I detect (...) two opposite lines in perceiving Byzantium in Kireevsky’s early social circle: the anti- and pro-Byzantine ones. The first line goes back to an anti-Byzantine message, characteristic of the epoch of Enlightenment. It found its manifestation in G. W. F. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I point to the traces of the implicit polemics with Hegel’s anti-byzantinism in Kireevsky and identify the context of these polemics in Arist Kunick. As well, I outline how these lines worked in Pyotr Chaadaev and Alexander Pushkin. Then I distinguish between how the image of Byzantium was presented, first, in Kireevsky’s earlier Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” and, second, in his last article “On the Necessity and Possibility of the new Foundations for Philosophy” (1856). In the latter article, which sees Byzantium as bipolar, I find another view on Byzantium. I suggest that this view on Byzantium as a bipolar entity goes back to Alexey Khomyakov’s Semiramis. My point is that this difference in the views on Byzantium is paradigmatic and it reflects a division that was present in the Russian Slavophile-conservative milieu of that time. I suggest that this division stands behind another division within the same milieu, which was politically oriented, the one in relation to the Greek-Bulgarian ecclesiastical question. I analyze how both monopolar (Byzantinocentric) and bipolar views on Byzantium were reflected in the Greek-Bulgarian question as it was considered by Alexey Khomyakov and Terty Filippov. I find a context for developing Kireevsky’s attitude towards Byzantium in François Guizot’s historiosophic scheme as well. (shrink)

Chaadayev's Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman unite the religious approach to history, which was later adopted by the Slavophiles, with the search for Western enlightenment, symbolized in the figure of Peter the Great. - Front flap.

Chaadayev's Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman unite the religious approach to history, which was later adopted by the Slavophiles, with the search for Western enlightenment, symbolized in the figure of Peter the Great. - Front flap.

This article is devoted to the Russian Neokantian philosopher, teacher and member of the Kant Society, Moses M. Rubinstein, who attined his doctoral degree under Rickert in 1905 and who was very involved in promoting Kantianism in Russian. He is known for his public defence of Kant in 1914 at the time of the slavophile attacks on Kantian philosophy occasioned by World War I. Rubinstein's essay on “The Logical Foundations of the Hegelian System and the End of History” was published (...) in Kant-Studien in 1906. In his chief work “On the Meaning of Life”, Rubinstein attempted a synthesis of Neokantianism and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

At the beginning of 20th century, there was a problem of establishing which version of the association of Kant’s and Marx’s ideas is correct. If some Legal Marxists more or less combined Kant and Marx, most Russian Social Democrats, especially Bolsheviks, were against such an association. Under the influence of G. V. Plekhanov, Russian Marxists announced a sharply critical attitude toward Kant’s philosophy. This position was reinforced by Russian philosophers, poets, and slavophiles who accused Kant of being militarist. During the (...) World War I, both tendencies faced each other. Plekhanov’s desperate appeal to „the simple laws or morals and justice” and Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason”, which was supported by L. I. Axelrod, failed. It was rejected by the majority of Marxists both during the World War I and after the triumph of the 1917 October Revolution. (shrink)

The author reveals Fyodor Dostoevsky's works main features, his importance for Russian and world philosophy. The researcher analyzes the concept of "Russian Idea" introduced by Dostoyevsky, which became a study subject in Russian philosophy's subsequent history. The polemics that arose regarding the characteristics of Dostoevsky's soilness ideology and his interpretation of the Russian Idea in his Pushkin Speech and subsequent comments in A Writer's Diary are unveiled. The author concludes that Dostoevsky overcomes the limitations of soilness and comes to universalism. (...) The universal for him does not have a rootless cosmopolitan character but is born from the national's heyday. Diversity adorns the truth, and national diversity enamels humankind. People's real unity is in that all-human value that is found in the highest examples of each national culture. The truth is not in rootless cosmopolitanism or nationalism - it is in the "golden mean," which, in our opinion, the writer-philosopher sought to express. Dostoevsky wanted to rise above the dispute, to recognize the points of view of the Slavophiles and Westernizers as one-sided, to get out of any particularity to universality. (shrink)

The paper gives an analytical description of the ideology of Slavonic spirit as an essence of culture. The principles of this ideology, from which a pretension on historical mission has been derived, was articulated by Russian Slavophils. In his writing Slavism and the world of future ?udovít Štúr outlines this ideology to Central-European Slavs as well as to justify the need of adopting pan-Russian Slavism. His vocabulary and style are marked by political romanticism, while his conceptual map embodies dichotomies (...) such as West/East, we/the others, religion/secularism. He finds the West to be in the state of political and moral decline, while the East is seen by him as the ground of a new civilization. The background of this way of thinking is his conservative utopism. (shrink)

The paper analyzed opinions, provoked or initiated by Mickiewicz’s thoughts, claimed by Russian thinkers: Vladimir Soloviev, Vladimir Herzen and others. Thethoughts concern mainly Slavophile messianism.

The purpose of the article is to study the creative heritage of A. Pushkin and P. Chaadaev as catalysts of historiosophical reflections on the fate of Russia, which later took shape in the circles of Westernizers and Slavophiles. By comparing the positions of Pushkin and Chaadaev, the author finds out the reasons and consequences of the emergence and strengthening of the Uvarov ideological construction "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality", which is still the main identifying principle of Russian thought. Study of theses of (...) Pushkin and Chaadaev in relation to Russia; its attitude to Europe; the opposition of Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism gives reason to consider the general goal of the Russian autocracy through the dialogue of Russian thinkers. (shrink)

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

The contemporary epoch has confronted our country with the problem of choosing its path of development and at the same time has placed the problem of liberalism at the center of political discussions. But at first glance there would not seem to be a problem here: since liberal principles played a decisive role in the genesis of Western society and form the basis of the modern world order, it would seem that we should accept these principles, which have passed the (...) fundamental test of history, without any reflection. However, such a straightforward answer leaves out of account two essential factors. The first of these is the specific nature of the Russian "mentality," the Russian public mind or, put more broadly, the specific nature of the whole of Russian social life. The fact that the idea of a "special way" for Russia is being actively exploited by various political movements with an overtly expressed nationalist shading should not blind us to the need for a profound and sober interpretation of what this idea really means. It is no accident that the assertion that Russia's historical development has a special character has been a commonplace in all currents of Russian social life. Even the ideologues of an extremely "Westernizing" bent accompanied their acceptance of the necessity of Russia's adopting a system of values traditional for Europe with a sharp criticism of Western European civilization itself . It turned out that, after adopting these values, Russia was to demonstrate to the West itself the true path of development, the true purport of the latter's intellectual achievements, which had been discredited by the realities of Western civilization. The difference between the "Westernizers" and the Slavophiles in this regard lay merely in their disparate understanding of the essence of Russia's "uniqueness" and in the disparate criteria they had chosen for assessing it; but neither current called into question this "uniqueness" itself. (shrink)

The article examines the historiosophical reflections of F. I. Tyutchev, presented in his treatises, letters, poems, and substantiates the idea that Tyutchev does not proclaim slogans of either Slavophil or Westernist doctrines, but creates an original imperial ideology. Tyutchev views Russia as an equal and integral part of Europe, linking the existence of the empire with the development of the European spirit in Russia. The main criterion for the existence of the empire is unity. If it does not exist, then (...) the state as an empire cannot exist. Tyutchev treated Orthodoxy as a historiosophical category. He bases his concept of the historical process on the traditions of Eastern Christianity and the legacy of the Byzantine Empire. In the idea of an empire based on Christian principles, Tyutchev sees the best system of statehood. For Tyutchev, the Russian people and Orthodoxy play a major role in the transformation of the world. In the concept of state and power, the categories of Christian ethics are especially important for Tyutchev, which, in his opinion, were not really relevant for the upper strata of society and representatives of the Russian government. The poet calls power "godless", claiming that it does not come from God, but is based on its material power, without recognizing a higher Divine authority over itself. The reason for the "godlessness" of the authorities was the separation from the Russian people and their national traditions and the departure from the historical past of "Holy Russia". This, from Tyutchev's point of view, is the main existential problem of Russia. Tyutchev's concept of empire was not a reproduction of the realities of the political life of Russia in the XIX century, but was an attempt to answer how the state should be built. Tyutchev's ideal of the Russian state is based on a society united by a single Christian faith. (shrink)

Russian Orthodoxy during the twentieth century presented a rich and varied body of thought about the nature of humanity and the human condition. This article surveys the major thinkers within this tradition, beginning with its background in the Slavophile movement and culminating in the work of more recent Orthodox thinkers such as Sergei Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Alexander Schmemann.

This article examines the development of the concept of a “special path” in societies that have experienced problems with their self-identity. Western European intellectuals who needed an “other” in the construction and definition of their own cultural and geographical space in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played an important role in shaping the understanding of a Russian “special path.” The “Russian chaos” they postulated was contrasted to “Western” rationalism and order and Eastern “slavery” was seen as a (...) counter position to the “Western” demands regarding human dignity. With the coming of an era of nationalism in Russia, many of these ideas were adopted by Russian intellectuals and laid a foundation for their own work toward the formation of a national identity. Orthodoxy, autocracy, Narodnost’ and communal traditionalism were seen as the only alternatives to the modern West. The Russian “Westernizers” were captivated by the idea of a “special path” as much as the “Slavophiles” and saw this path through the prism of uniquely refracted concepts of “Orthodoxy, autocracy and Narodnost’”. The author considers the concept of the ‘special path’ not only as a means of forming group identity, but also as a type of social search within the boundaries of the dominant paradigm. Russian intellectuals claiming Russian ‘uniqueness’ today, as two centuries ago, are doing so, to a very considerable degree, as a result of western intellectualism. (shrink)

У статті автор досліджує місце й роль релігійно мотивованих смислів і цінностей у російській думці на межі XIX-XX ст. як передумову формування атеїстичної ідеології Радянського Союзу. Обґрунтовано, що створення СРСР супроводжувалось конструюванням культурної традиції, яка відповідала запитам різних народів; були сформульовані вимоги до "радянської культури і радянської людини". Цю культурну традицію, реалізовану в радянській практиці, пропонується розуміти як нову артикуляцію "російської ідеї". Характерним інструментом її впровадження була атеїстична ідеологія, передумови формування якої автор статті вбачає в релігійних пошуках російської інтелігенції на (...) межі XIX-XX століть, зокрема в її "секуляризованих" уявленнях про обраний народ та його особливу місію, які згодом склали серцевину радянського ідеологічного наративу. (shrink)

An examination of Russia's philosophical heritage. It extends from the Slavophiles to the philosophers of the Silver Age, from emigre religious thinkers to Losev and Bakhtin and assesses the meaning for Russian culture as a whole.

Theorists of the Russian conservatism have made a considerable contribution to the development of axiology, the philosophy of history and comparativistics. In their studies of the local civilisations existing at different times and at different places they have focused on the dynamics of their origin, development, collapse or transformation into new civilisational forms. The best known slavophiles such as A. Khomyakov, K. Axakov, I. Kireyevskiy saw the mission of the Russian civilisation in synthesising Europe and Russia which has preserved the (...) true Christianity – the Orthodoxy. According to N. Danilevskiy, the founder of the culturohistorical school of thought, Europe has an irreconcilable hostility towards Russia. He proves that Europe and Russia are two different culturohistoricaltypes (local civilisations). He understood Russia’s mission as that of unification of Slavic peoples. K. Leontiev develops the so-called theory of Byzantism, according to which the West is doomed and Russia will be saved thanks to its Orthodoxy and the oriental despotism underlying its statehood. He advocates a merger between Russian and oriental traditions. From the point of view of the proponents of the Eurasian theory such as P. Savitskiy, N. Trubetskoy, etc., the merger has already occurred, so Russians should be viewed as Eurasians and Russia as a Eurasian civilisation. Russian thinkers were criticising the so-called Eurocentrism in their efforts to prove that progress should be measured not only by the accumulation of material wealth, but also by the development of various spiritual aspects of human beings. The anthroposociogenesis does not have any predetermined patterns, its development is of co-evolutionary, often broken, discrete nature. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:494 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in the Haller Zeitung; it will probably not appear at all--it has, among other short, comings, the fault to be too long." In a letter to Schtitz, Niethammer writes from Bamberg on 23 March 1807: "I repeat my urgent demand... to send the review of Salat's book submitted by Prof. Hegel as soon as possible to Jena to hand it in to Hofrat Voigt.... " (...) The volume contains almost 1,000 valuable notes which explain the philosophical and historical background of the newly edited material. HENRY WALTERBRANN Takoma Park, Maryland Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev: Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman. Trans. with Intro. by Mary-Barbara Zeldin. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969. Pp. 203. $7.50) Mary-Barbara Zeldin's translation into English of the Philosophical Letters and the Apology of a Madman, by the enigmatic Russian intellectual leader of the early nineteenth century, Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev makes available in English for the first time the thought of this figure whose small corpus of writings circulated mostly in manuscript during his own lifetime and waited over a hundred years after his death for their complete translation in their original French. Historically Chaadayev is important as a mediator between Westernizers and Slavophiles in this initial period of the nineteenth-century Russian intellectual awakening. Chaadayev himself remained aloof from either of these parties, was appealed to by both of them and became himself a kind of martyr to intellectual freedom. His own view of Russian-Western relationships incorporates this problem most remarkably into a theological vision of the "education of the human race." Philosophically Chaadayev stands as a unique and somewhat eccentric synthesizer of German idealism with the Christian concept of salvation history. Perhaps the most remarkable insight to be gained by reading these long-buried essays is the ease with which an Eastern Orthodox Christian versed in Patristic hellenism could fuse the ideas of a paedagogy of the human race in Lessing, Herder and Schiller and read this as an expression of an Irenaean doctrine of the progressive development of a mankind through the mediation of the primordial Logos; an Alexandrian idea of the paedagogy of Christ in history and a Eusebian doctrine of Christian universal empire. In so doing this Russian thinker also reveals to what an extent the German idealist movement itself was grounded on much older syntheses of Christian thought. In the process, however, Chaadayev also shows that nineteenth-century men could only appropriate this heritage anew by taking the great credal themes of revelation, Christi, the church and the Kingdom of God and reissuing them in a secularized, humanistic dress, as a philosophy of history. Chaadayev's basic thesis is that knowledge is a divinely-given deposit of certain fundamental primordial ideas, which man would not have arrived at through his own unaided powers, but rather possesses as an imprint upon the mind of the first man implanted by the Creator. Chaadayev weds the western philosophical concept of a fundamental a priori with a doctrine of primordial revelation, revealing the foundation of man himself in the divine Logos. This primordial deposit of ideas existed in BOOK REVIEWS 495 the first man only as a rudimentary 'image' of God. It is only through historical development that man grows to full stature in these truths whereby he attains to the completed 'likeness' of God. These truths, together with their historical development, are passed down by a historical succession, which is not an ecclesiastical succession, but a succession of the human family. These truths are periodically renewed by the advent of certain extraordinary individuals who exemplify them to a high degree, and by certain elect nations who are divinely designated as their culture-bearers. The Jews of the Old Testament were that culture-bearer in antiquity, and, since the time of Jesus Christ, it is Christendom which stands for and bears the development of this primordial truth as it has been renewed and set forth in archetypal perfection by Christ. Chaadayev sharply down grades the role of the Greeks in this development, but does so in a manner remarkably similar to the ancient Christian apologists who stole Greek fire in order to bathe the... (shrink)

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