This article examines Konstantin N. Leontiev’s critique of the religious preaching of Lev N. Tolstoy. We analyze the philosopher’s main articles devoted to the great writer, noting that, despite Le...

This review is focused on the book Faith and Science in Russian Religious Thought written by Professor Teresa Obolevich and published by Oxford University Press in 2019. This book has become a landmark event among historians of Russian philosophy. The review examines the main ideas of each of the book’s chapters and shows that they all represent a new look at the problem of the relationship between faith and reason in the history of Russian thought. It is noted that the (...) author of the book follows the idea of Russian philosopher Semyon Frank, raised in his article “Religion and Science.” Obolevich shows that Russian religious thought was not on the side of confrontation between religion and science but on recognizing two parallel paths with two different subjects of knowledge: the world and God. At the same time, Obolevich analyzes the stages of essential knowledge in Russian thought as a form of synthesis of the scientific and religious path. The review also notes that this author’s approach to examining the history of Russian philosophy is a very successful attempt to substantiate the relevance of Russian thought in the 19th–20th century in the context of the sociocultural challenge of the current stage of European society’s development. (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)

The article discusses the original critical dialectical approach of the Soviet philosopher Valentin F. Asmus. His publications on the heritage of Western philosophical thought in the journal Pod znamenem marksizma are examples of this approach. In the 1920s and 1930s, Asmus published a number of articles analyzing a variety of the ideas developed by Western European philosophers: “An Advocate for Philosophical Intuition (Bergson and His Critique of the Intellect)” (1926); “The Alogism of William James” (1927); “The Dialectics of Necessity and (...) Freedom in Spinoza’s Ethics” (1927); “Kant’s General and Transcendental Logic” (1928); “Cosmogony and Cosmology of Descartes” (1937); “Fichte and the Vocation of Scholar” (1937); “Nicholas of Cusa. Selected Philosophical Works” (1938); and “Tommaso Campanella” (1939). These articles differed from the journal’s usual rhetoric, which was shaped in accordance with the official Soviet state ideology. Asmus, through the thinkers he examined, showed the fundamental importance of philosophy for the human personality. This article argues that Asmus, despite his closeness to dialectical materialism, adapted the official terminology and issues in his historical and philosophical articles in a way that he advanced the human right to spirituality, creative activity, and individual freedom. (shrink)