Spinoza and Judaism, by D.Rakhmian.- Spinoza and materialism, by L.I.Akselrod (Ortodoks) - Spinoza's world-view, by A.M.Déborin.- Spinoza's substance and finite things, by V.K.Brushlinski.- Spinoza's ethical world-view, by S.Y.Volfson.- Spinoza and the state, by I.P.Razumovski.- The historical significance of Spinoza's philosophy, by I.K.Luppol.

This volume's aim is to clarify, criticize and theoretically develop some of Whitehead's major philosophic ideas and insights. Eighteen distinguished contributors follow Whitehead in his unique attempt to integrate the often disparate concerns of science , art, religion, social life and common sense. They manage to avoid the twin pitfalls of uncritical acceptance and impatient rejection of Whitehead's thought. They delineate Whitehead's indebtedness to and divergence from the philosophic traditions of Plato, Leibniz, Hume, Hegel, Bergson and others. Some of the (...) distinguished philosophers contributing to this volume are: Charles Hartshorne, William Ernest Hocking, Richard M. Rorty, Gregory Vlastos, William A. Christian, Sr., Nathaniel Lawrence, Ivor Leclerc, Victor Lowe, Robert M. Palter, and Donald W. Sherburne. Originally published in 1963 by Prentice-Hall, this edition contains a new preface by the editor. (shrink)

Während der letzten zehn Jahre wurde viel über den ‘Humanismus’ des jungen Marx gesprochen. Osteuropäische Marxisten, die bemüht sind, ihren Anti-Stalinismus durch Berufung auf die Autorität von ‘Marx selbst’ zu untermauern, gebrauchen den Ausdruck ‘Humanismus’ in einem ungenauen Sinn, etwa gleichbedeutend mit ‘Anthropozentrismus’. Aber wenn man sagt, daß Marx’ Haltung anthropozentrisch sei, so sind damit die Hauptfragen erst gestellt, nicht schon gelöst.‘Humanismus’ mag etwa soviel wie ‘Säkularismus’ bedeuten — der Mensch, nicht Gott, wird als im Mittelpunkt stehend gedacht. Die anthropozentrische (...) Haltung kann verschiedene Formen annehmen, vor allem die Formen, die man als ‘Humanismus der Ideale’ und als ‘Humanismus der Prinzipien’ bezeichnen könnte. Der Humanismus der Ideale ist ausdrücklich an derZukunft orientiert, der Humanismus der Prinzipien aber an derGegenwart. Nur ein Humanismus der Prinzipien, dem es darum geht, den Eigenwert existierender Individuen zu behaupten und zu verteidigen, verdient es, ‘ethischer Humanismus’ genannt zu werden. Marx, sogar der jüngste Marx, war kein ethischer Humanist in diesem Sinn. Und nur ein Humanismus in diesem strengen Sinn würde einen philosophischen Standort bieten, von dem aus man den Stalinismus oder Neo-Stalinismus angreifen könnte.Marx war ein Säkularist, und er entwarf ein humanistisches Ideal für die Zukunft, aber humanistische Prinzipien für die Gegenwart lehnte er ab. Er betonte, daß nur dem nicht entfremdeten, produktiven Individuum der kommunistischen Zukunft ein eigener Wert zukomme. Bis dahin haben Individuen nur einen geschichtlich instrumentalen Wert: jene, die an der Verwirklichung der kommunistischen Gesellschaft arbeiten, sind zu respektieren; diejenigen, welche dabei Widerstand leisten oder versagen, müssen ausschließlich als Hindernisse auf dem Wege des geschichtlichen Fortschritts behandelt werden.In diesem Sinn ist der Leninismus und sogar der Stalinismus und Neo-Stalinismus in dem zukunftsorientierten Humanismus der Ideale des jungen Marx einbegriffen, oder zumindest davon nicht ausgeschlossen. Selbst der jüngste Marx machte sich den Modeirrtum des 19. Jahrhunderts zu eigen — den Irrtum des ‘aufgeschobenen Wertes’ oder des ‘zeitlich verstellten Wertes’ und nahm damit eine mit dem ethischen Humanismus grundsätzlich unvereinbare Position ein. (shrink)

All the authors of the sixteen essays gathered in this volume are concerned, in their different ways, to clarify, criticize, and develop key ideas and insights of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), one of the towering figures of twentieth-century speculative thought, whose "process philosophy" has, in recent decades, aroused intense intellectual interest both in this country and abroad. The present volume is intended to complement, but not to duplicate, an earlier selection of important Whitehead studies, Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His (...) Philosophy, ed. G. L. Kline (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1963). (shrink)

On February 24-25, 1956, in a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita S. Khrushchev made his now famous speech on the crimes of the Stalin era. That speech marked a break with the past and it marked the end of what J.M. Bochenski dubbed the "dead period" of Soviet philosophy. Soviet philosophy changed abruptly after 1956, especially in the area of dialectical materialism. Yet most philosophers in the West neither noticed nor (...) cared. For them, the resurrection of Soviet philosophy, even if believable, was of little interest. The reasons for the lack of belief and interest were multiple. Soviet philosophy had been dull for so long that subtle differences made little difference. The Cold War was in a frigid period and reinforced the attitude of avoiding anything Soviet. Phenomenology and exis tentialism were booming in Europe and analytic philosophy was king on the Anglo-American philosophical scene. Moreover, not many philosophers in the West knew or could read Russian or were motivated to learn it to be able to read Soviet philosophical works. The launching of Sputnik awakened the West from its self complacent slumbers. Academic interest in the Soviet Union grew. (shrink)

FOR MANY YEARS the received wisdom--proclaimed by certain physicists and philosophers of physics and received by certain metaphysicians--was that, in Bertrand Russell's inimitable phrase, "time is an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past and future must be acknowledged to be as real as the present." Moreover, according to Russell, "it is a mere accident that we have no memory of the future"--presumably because the future, regarded as no less determinate than the past, is held to be equally "there" to (...) be known and hence "remembered.". (shrink)

"Professor B. Petrov" is actually the nom de plume of Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev, a professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Law at Moscow University from 1917 to 1922, well known in Russian émigré circles as the author of a number of technically competent and stylistically brilliant studies in philosophy and psychology. His last published work, The Crisis of Industrial Civilization: Marxism, Neo-Socialism, Neo-Liberalism, is a significant contribution to social philosophy. Vysheslavtsev is distinguished by a scholar's intimacy with the philosophic (...) doctrines of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Lenin, together with an imaginative and disciplined command of at least the major contemporary developments in sociology, psychology, economics, and jurisprudence. (shrink)

I know about you only from your valuable books and from the little that was communicated to me by telephone in Moscow in September. Nevertheless, we share a warm interest in Greek culture generally and philosophy in particular.

Bocheński's lucid, unpartisan, and judiciously critical discussion of Soviet Marxism-Leninism in his book Der sowjetrussische dialektische Materialismus (1950) filled a major gap in our understanding of that influential movement. Prior to its publication there had been only two works on the subject in English, John Somerville's Soviet Philosophy (1946) and the Handbook of Philosophy (1949), edited and adapted by Howard Selsam from the Kratkij filosofskij slovar' (2nd ed. 1940). Both are marked by strong partisanship and ideological bias. Somerville is uncritically (...) pro-Soviet and abjectly Stalinist. Selsam, although he tones down the adulation of Marx, Stalin et al. of the KFS, retains that work's abuse of such "reactionary" and "idealist" thinkers as Plato and such "reactionary" and "bourgeois" thinkers as Hegel. The benign influence of Bocheński's work increased with the publication of the English translation, Soviet Russian Dialectical Materialism, in 1963. (shrink)

L.P.: Earlier, Georgii Liudvigovich, we spoke at some length about your personal acquaintance with such distinguished Russian émigré scholars and thinkers as Fr. Vasilii Zen'kovskii, N.O. Losskii, and Fr. Georgii Florovskii. Today I'd like to ask you about your meetings in Moscow with the late A.F. Losev.

Shestov’s work can be summed up under six headings. Three are sharp contrasts, three are paradoxes. First there is the contrast between Shestov the person, who was moderate, competent, and calm, and Shestov the thinker, who was extreme, incandescent, and impassioned. Then there is the contrast between his critique of reason, his acceptance of irrationalism, and the means by which he attacks the former and defends the latter: namely, careful rational argument. Sometimes he argues like a lawyer. Shestov speaks repeatedly (...) of the “horrors and atrocities of human existence.” But his examples are always drawn from history or literature, never from his own life, although we know that he experienced much horror. Nietzsche is the thinker whom he invokes most frequently, and most warmly. Yet, paradoxically, Shestov completely ignores most of Nietzsche’s central themes. Shestov’s skeptical doubts are mostly directed at rationalism; he is not skeptical about the existence or benevolence of God. Yet he is explicitly skeptical about divine omniscience and implicitly skeptical about divine omnipotence in a metaphysical sense, though not in its ethical application. Shestov has a deep faith that God can undo all the horrors of life, putting an end to all suffering. At the same time he knows that this will not, and cannot, happen, since the very idea of undoing the past, erasing its horrors, is conceptually incoherent. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER I shall try to exhibit certain interconnections within and between the "dialectical stages" of self-consciousness and active reason which appear not to have been noticed by Hegel scholars. I take as my text Hegel's remark, in a letter to Schelling dated May 1, 1807, that "the whole" of the Phenomenology is "by its nature" an "interlocking hither and thither." The more closely one studies the Phenomenology, the more clearly one can see that its parts--even those which are (...) widely separated--do indeed "interlock.". (shrink)

Semën [Simon] Liudvigovich Frank was born in Moscow, the son of a doctor. He studied law at Moscow University, joined a student Marxist group headed by P.B. Struve, and as a result was barred by the Russian authorities from living in any of the Russian “university cities.” He continued his university education at the Universities of Berlin and Munich. His first published work was a critique of Marx’s theory of value. Between 1902 and 1905 he divided his time among Berlin, (...) Munich, and Moscow. In 1902 he published his first philosophical essay, on Nietzsche’s doctrine of Fernstenliebe. He was a contributor—along with Nicolas Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, and Struve—to three influential symposium volumes: Problemy idealizma [Problems of idealism], Vekhi [Signposts], and Iz glubiny [De profundis]. This last work was printed but its release was blocked by Soviet censorship. All of these works were originally published in Moscow; all of them have, in the past three or four years, been republished in Moscow, but for more than seventy years they were banned in the Soviet Union and could be reprinted only abroad. (shrink)

The three HSA panels which President Donald P. Verene asked me to convene in the framework of the XIX World Congress of Philosophy in Moscow were a distinct success. Ten substantial papers were presented; each of them stirred up lively and constructive discussion. The audiences, which were truly international, ranged from about a dozen to nearly twenty people. The panels were made up as follows.