The period between the late 1910s and early 1920s saw the emergence of onto-epistemological philosophical projects in Russia that was determined by criticism and attempts to overcome the domination of epistemology in philosophy which was the result of the intensive development of Neo-Kantianism and the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology. Attempts to turn towards ontology were made both by Russian religious philosophers and by Russian Neo-Kantians. I look at the little-studied philosophical projects of the Russian Neo-Kantians Lev Salagov and Nikolai Boldyrev. (...) Their philosophical concepts share the tendency to transpose epistemological problems to ontology, and to identify and bring closer together epistemology and ontology. Russian philosophers ontologise the theory of cognition through the analysis of subjectivity, the complete elimination of psychological motives and the separation of transcendentalism from transcendentism. These principles enable Salagov to ground a three-part structure of cognition and to assert that the main task of genuine epistemology is exclusively the study of the cognitive relationship, committing to consciousness. They enable Boldyrev, proceeding from the separation of reflection and sensibility, to build a doctrine on the self-unfolding of being. Similar tendencies — a turn towards ontology — were observed in the same period in West European philosophy, including German Neo-Kantianism. However, the concepts of Russian Neo-Kantians, which imply a new orientation towards ontology, are fairly independent, and not only on account of the original interpretation of Kantian critical philosophy and Neo-Kantian epistemology, but also on account of internal discussion with the Russian philosophers belonging to other movements. The analysis of the onto-epistemological projects of Russian Neo-Kantians makes important additions to the picture of the reception of Neo-Kantianism in Russia. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century in the Russian-speaking philosophical space philosophical projects emerged which brought ontology and gnoseology closer together. One can observe this process, for example, in the philosophical doctrines of the Russian intuitivists Nikolay Lossky and Semyon Frank. I demonstrate that the emergence of these doctrines and the development of their onto-gnoseological categorial apparatus were mainly connected with the criticism of the Neo-Kantian theory of cognition and the possibility of transcendent knowledge as such. The main sources (...) of my study are The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge and The World as an Organic Whole by N. O. Lossky and The Object of Knowledge and The Unknowable by S. L. Frank. My investigation makes it possible to treat Lossky’s categorial framework as the representation of a system of levels of the universe each of which is characterised by two aspects: the ontological, i.e. it is part of the unity of the world, and the gnoseological, i.e. it has an independent cognitive significance. Frank considers categories to be an organic part of the ontological proof of intuitivism. A common trend in the construction of categorial schemes by Lossky and Frank is their striving to combine gnoseological and ontological descriptions of categories. The key difference is the way an onto-gnoseological system as a whole is justified. In revealing the contradictions in Lossky’s conception, I proceed from the critical remarks of S. A. Askoldov, pointing out that these contradictions stem from an absolutisation of intuition in cognition, the renunciation of the idea of gnoseological transcendence, incompleteness of the theory of immanence and discordance between onto-gnoseological categories. Askoldov’s critical comments clarify the substantive features of Lossky’s theory and the essence of the transformations carried out in Frank’s absolute ideal-realism. (shrink)