This work was originally published in 1902 & marked a watershed in the Russian Silver age, a vibrant cultural renaissance.

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)

The Moscow Psychological Society, a learned society founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the philosophic center of the revolt against positivism in the Russian Silver Age. In 1889 it began publication of Russia's first regular, specialized journal in philosophy, Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. By the end of its activity in 1922, the Psychological Society had included most of the country's outstanding philosophers and had played the major role in the growth of professional philosophy in Russia. ;While the Silver (...) Age mounted a broad-based revolt against positivism, neo-idealist philosophy in the Psychological Society was distinctive in the theoretical depth of its critique. For leading philosophers in the Society , neo-idealism was a compelling defense of the self against positivist reductionism and naturalism, a defense that took the form, moreover, of a modernized, theoretically explicit theism, in which the value of the person is rooted in transcendent being . In this, neo-idealism promoted not only the autonomization and professionalization of Russian philosophy but also the theoretical development of Russian liberalism. ;This dissertation argues: that a learned society of philosophers had special significance in Russia, where the frail social foundations of liberalism made its intellectual defense all the more imperative; that the Psychological Society, especially in its programmatic symposium, Problems of Idealism , was integrally involved in the Russian Liberation Movement; that the neo-idealist development of Russian liberalism drew heavily on Kant, in its substantiation of the possibility of personalism and in its critique of utopianism; and that the neo-idealist critique of utopianism, specifically in the responses of Psychological Society philosophers to their colleague, Vladimir Solov'ev, provides an excellent measure of the distinctiveness of neo-idealism relative to other currents in the Silver Age. (shrink)

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 paper examines the doctrine of understanding in Russian idealism from the late 19th to early 20th century. The author discusses the main ontological and epistemological concepts in the philosophy of V.S. Solovyov and his follower S.N. Trubetskoy. The paper offers a historical and philosophical reconstruction of the concept of understanding based on the analysis of V.S. Solovyov's Lectures on Divine Humanity and S.N. Trubetskoy's work On the Nature of Human Consciousness. According to Solovyov, the study of understanding is possible (...) if we presume an unconditional principle that premises being as the One. Based on this premise, it is demonstrated that the unconditional principle allows to know everything without having knowledge of each subject separately, and this, in turn, is understanding process. Trubetskoy's theory of understanding is premised on the concept of soborny mind, which defines mind as joint knowledge about all spheres of existence. The article shows that the main position shared by the Russian thinkers is the unconditional principle serving as the basis for life and mind without which the existence of either the universal or the particular is impossible. The author concludes that such a principle is a cognitive relation to the world, which unconditionality is the condition for understanding the reality as indivisible. Understanding, as presented by V.S. Solovyov and S.N. Trubetskoy, is the true understanding of the unity of existence in all its manifestations, that is, a synthesis of the sensual, rational, moral, and aesthetic. (shrink)

Michail Bakhtin’s philosophy of act is considered as a metaphysical project. Bakhtin’s conception is explored in a wider context of the metaphysical project of Russian existentialism. Interpretations of the term “truth”, which correspond to different versions of existentialism, are compared. Shestov’s existentialist particularism, Berdiaev’s actualistic personalism, Bakhtin’s ethical existentialism are analysed. Existentialist implications of Gregory Palama’s metaphysics of light are considered.

One of the most important tasks in each philosophical tradition is to determine the methodological foundations and the target reason for research practice. Russian Russian neo-Kantianism raises several fundamental questions, including the criteria for distinguishing individual systems and the possibility of their integral reconstruction, the identification of the independence of Russian philosophers in overcoming the key contradictions of transcendental idealism, as well as discussions regarding the contribution of Russian neo-Kantians to the history of the development of Russian and European philosophy. (...) No less significant is the problem of uniting Russian neo-Kantianism in the context of the general tradition of neo-Kantianism in its development to the latest trends. The prospect of turning to the heritage of Russian philosophers is largely determined by the design of post-Kantianism and post-Neo-Kantianism. In the works of A.I. Vvedensky, and then B.A. Focht, V.E. Seseman, S.L. Rubinstein, and many others, the transition from German classical idealism in the prism of the specifics of Russian philosophy to the formation of a new understanding of transcendental philosophy and its tasks was marked. In many ways, the proposed solutions were distinguished by originality and obvious independence, but at the same time they were implicitly within the boundaries of the tradition of German neo-Kantian philosophy set by I. Kant. Comparing the latest prospects for the development of neo-Kantian methodology, it can be assumed, not without reason, that Russian neo-Kantianism has largely anticipated the latest trends. Russian neo-Kantians need to reveal the unity of the entire tradition for an objective assessment and subsequent actualization of the heritage of the Russian Neo-Kantians, accompanying this process with a historical and philosophical reconstruction of individual systems of philosophy, but also identifying those perspectives for philosophy that were designated by Russian thinkers. Russian neo-Kantians' problem field of self-determination within the framework of the history of Russian and European philosophy is proposed in the content of the article. Special attention is focused on the unity of methodological tasks and the target reason for the research practices of thinkers who at different stages of their development contributed to the formation of the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction: the humanist tradition in Russian philosophy G. M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole; Part I. The Nineteenth Century: 1. Slavophiles, Westernizers, and the birth of Russian philosophical humanism Sergey Horujy; 2. Alexander Herzen Derek Offord; 3. Materialism and the radical intelligentsia: the 1860s Victoria S. Frede; 4. Russian ethical humanism: from populism to neo-idealism Thomas Nemeth; Part II. Russian Metaphysical Idealism in Defense of Human Dignity: 5. Boris Chicherin and human dignity (...) in history G. M. Hamburg; 6. Vladimir Solov'iev's philosophical anthropology: autonomy, dignity, perfectibility Randall A. Poole; 7. Russian panpsychism: Kozlov, Lopatin, Losskii James P. Scanlan; Part III. Humanity and Divinity in Russian Religious Philosophy after Solov'iev: 8. A Russian cosmodicy: Sergei Bulgakov's religious philosophy Paul Valliere; 9. Pavel Florenskii's trinitarian humanism Steven Cassedy; 10. Semën Frank's expressivist humanism Philip J. Swoboda; Part IV. Freedom and Human Perfectibility in the Silver Age: 11. Religious humanism in the Russian silver age Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal; 12. Russian liberalism and the philosophy of law Frances Nethercott; 13. Imagination and ideology in the new religious consciousness Robert Bird; 14. Eschatology and hope in silver age thought Judith Deutsch Kornblatt; Part V. Russian Philosophy in Revolution and Exile: 15. Russian Marxism Andrzej Walicki; 16. Adventures in dialectic and intuition: Shpet, Il'in, Losev Philip T. Grier; 17. Nikolai Berdiaev and the philosophical tasks of the emigration Stuart Finkel; 18. Eurasianism: affirming the person in an 'Era of Faith' Martin Beisswenger; Afterword: on persons as open-ended ends-in-themselves (the view from two novelists and two critics) Caryl Emerson; Bibliography. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 105 NEW RUSSIAN WORK ON RUSSELL IRVING H. ANELLIS Modern Logic Publishing I Box 1036, Welch Ave. Station Ames, JA 5°010-1036, USA A. S. Kolesnikov. cI»HJIOCOcPHJl BepTPaHa PacceJIa [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela]. Leningrad: Izdatel'srvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1991. Pp. 232. 3 rub. 30 kop.. Anatolii Sergeevich Kolesnikov is a relatively new name in Russell studies,.r1.a1though his book shows a deep knowledge of the material available on Russell in Russian and (...) a wide acquaintance with Russell's publications in English and in Russian translation.1 In this work, which translates as The Philosophy ofBertrand Russel~ Kolesnikov traces the evolution of Russell's "world-view", while presenting a traditional Soviet interpretation of Russell's place in "bourgeois" philosophy. This monograph presents for the first time in Russian a thorough analysis of the evolution of Russell's philosophy as the outstanding representation of contemporary bourgeois philosophy, and is the first major study on Russell's philosophy in Russian since the appearance in'1962 ofSoviet philosopher 1. S. Narskii's The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell2 Russell himself is viewed by Kolesnikov as the best representative of the bourgeois humanist, philosopher, and mathematician. The author seeks a critical understanding of the historical and philosophical sources of Russell's ideas and conceptions and of the influence which these exercised and continue to exercise on contemporary Western philosophy and science. The author's aim is to "uncover" the neo-realist empiricist direction of Russell's philosophy as it manifested itself as a condition of his scientific and epistemological thinking. As had been usual for Soviet studies of Western "bourgeois" philosophers and their philosophies, Lenin and his empiriocriticism serves as a foil for the elucidation of Russell's thought and its development. Probably the most famous example of the dialectical attack on anaI Kolesnikov is also the author of The Freethought ofBertrand Russell [Svobodomyslie Bertrana Rassela] (Moscow: Mysl', 1978). 2 The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell: Lectures for Students in the University Philosophy Faculty [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela: lekcija dlja studentovfilosofikih fakul'tov universitetov] (Moscow: 1962). In the first footnote (on p. 60) to his translation of the article on "Bertrand Russell in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Translation from Russian", Russel~ nos. 23-4 (1976): 60-2, Charles Haynes wrote that "Narskiy... appears to be a leading Soviet writet on Russell's philosophy." In fact Narskii wrote extensively on philosophy of logic, for which work he is bcst known. 106 Reviews lytic philosophy revolved around the rather rough treatment accorded to A. J. Ayer when he lectured at Moscow State University in 1962. This methodology for criticizing "bourgeois idealism" has declined in recent years as a consequence of perestroika; from as early as 1987 Soviet philosophers have managed to refrain from employing this tactic in their writings (as one may readily see, e.g., from Zinaida Sokuler's recent paper on "Wirrgenstein on the Contradictions in Logic and in the Foundations of Mathematics"3). Kolesnikov's discussion of political-ideological, social and moral issues is limited to the Preface, which also presents a brief sketch of Russell's life, especially his education and the earliest of the philosophical influences at Cambridge, of course Russell's visit in 1920 to Soviet Russia and the writings that derived from that trip, especially his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, and of his travels in China. Here Kolesnikov notes Russell's ties to the Fabian socialists and names in particular the Webbs, H. G. Wells and "other members representative of the bourgeois intelligentsia" (p. 5). Mention is also made here of his activism for nuclear disarmament and against the American war in Indochina, and of the essay "Why I Am Not a Christian". We are told at the very outset (p. 3) that "the name of this philosopher is widely known in our country." The remainder of the book is concerned with Russell's technical philosophy, i.e. with his work in philosophy of mathematics, logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology. Kolesnikov divides Russell's philosophical evolution into three stages (p. 22). The "early" period (1894-1910) is the developmental stage, characterized by the influence ofneo-Hegelianism and neo-Kantianism and by the development of the conception of... (shrink)

Against those commentators who consider Kant’s explicit reference to Copernicus’s heliocentric reversal either grossly misleading or simply irrelevant to the revolution in philosophy carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued in this paper that Kant’s transcendental idealist inversion of the familiar standpoint of realism and sound common sense fully justifies the talk of a ‘Copernican revolution,’ even if Kant himself never used the expression. It is not just the dominant ‘moving spectator’ motif (or transcendental turn) of (...) the Preface that has to do with Copernicus; both the immediately following ‘crucial experiment’ motif (on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves) and the ‘critical’ motif (regarding self-knowledge and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments) confirm the aptness of the Copernican analogy. Still, some commentators have stretched the analogy too far; the final section of the paper attempts to determine just how far it may reasonably be said to go. (shrink)

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 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)

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)

This is a translation from Russian to English of Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky’s “Tpaнcцeндeнтaльнo-фeнoмeнoлoгичecкiй идeaлизмъ Гyccepля”, published in the émigré journal Пyть in 1939. In this article, Lossky presents and criticizes Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Like many successors of Husserl’s “Göttingen School,” Lossky interprets Husserl’s transcendental idealism as a Neo-Kantian idealism and he criticizes it on the ground that it leads to a form of solipsism. In light of his own epistemology and his metaphysical system, he also claims that, although Husserl is (...) more radical than Descartes in his methodological doubt, he is not radical enough, because his abstention from existential judgment with regard to the external world is itself an existential judgment. In this regard, Lossky affirms that his own critically-informed defense of naive realism is in fact more radical than Husserl’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Marxist studies in the history of philosophy are based on the assumption that all philosophical schools and currents fall into two main traditions, materialism and idealism, and that the whole of the history of philosophy can be described as an opposition between the two. Lenin observed that this distinction goes back to antiquity, and that even then the "tendencies "l of Democritus and Plato were already in evidence.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Neo-Idealist Reception of Kant in the Moscow Psychological SocietyRandall A. Poole*The Moscow Psychological Society, founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the philosophical center of the revolt against positivism in the Russian Silver Age. By the end of its activity in 1922 it had played the major role in the growth of professional philosophy in Russia. 1 The Society owes its name to its founder, M. M. Troitsky (...) (1835–99), an empiricist psychologist. Although it sponsored significant psychological research, its greater importance in the history of Russian philosophy began to emerge already in 1888, when Nikolai Ia. Grot (1852–99) took over as director. Grot’s principal colleagues in the affairs of the Society included the major Russian idealist philosophers Vladimir S. Solov’ev (1853–1900), Sergei N. Trubetskoi (1862–1905), and Lev M. Lopatin (1855–1920). In 1889 the Psychological Society began publication of Russia’s first regular, specialized journal in philosophy, Questions of Philosophy and Psychology (Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii). Grot characterized the journal’s prevailing direction as idealist or, “in respect to method, metaphysical.” 2While the cultural revival of the Silver Age mounted a broad-based revolt against positivism, neo-idealist philosophy in the Psychological Society was distinctive in the theoretical depth of its critique. Positivism was remarkably pervasive [End Page 319] in Russia from the middle of the nineteenth century. The main characteristics of this positivist Weltanschauung were reductionism, which dismissed as a meaningless proposition (neither analytic nor empirical) the possibility of being beyond the positively-given data of sense experience, i.e., phenomena in space and time; scientism, the claim, consistent with the positivist reduction of being to natural phenomena, that the methodology of the natural sciences covered eve-rything; and utopianism, the hope that the application of natural scientific methods to man and society would make human existence as regular and well-ordered as nature. 3 The defining trait was reductionism or, in other words, naturalism or atheism: the reduction of being to nature. In ethics, epistemology, ontology, and social philosophy neo-idealism emerged as a response to these characteristics. Its development by philosophers in the Psychological Society, apart from comprising a basic chapter in the history of Russian thought, informs the European-wide revolt against positivism characteristic of fin-de-siècle culture.According to scientistic positivism, philosophy had no distinctive methodology and thus no legitimate right to exist as its own type of scientific (nauchnyi or wissenschaftlich) discipline. Empirical sciences were the only sciences; philosophy could at best serve as a field that systematized empirical research. Against these claims Russian neo-idealists sought to advance the autonomy of philosophy by showing that the positivist measure of reality was far from exhaustive and that what it did not exhaust comprised the domain of philosophy. This domain was human consciousness itself, to the extent it could be shown to be irreducible to empirical experience (the positivist sphere). Neo-idealism thus took shape as a type of philosophy of consciousness. In the inaugural issue of Questions of Philosophy and Psychology S. N. Trubetskoi published the first installment of a large essay bearing the title, “On the Nature of Human Consciousness.” “The question of the nature of consciousness is the principal question of philosophy, not only of psychology,” Trubetskoi wrote, “for in consciousness we know everything that we know.” 4 Trubetskoi and his colleagues in the Psychological Society were convinced that philosophy had to develop through specification of its own internal standards and through autonomization from the spurious criteria positivism applied externally to it. Their goal was to match, in theoretical rigor, the professionalism associated with the natural sciences by making philosophy “scientific,” but on idealist, not empirical grounds. [End Page 320]The Kantian Critique of PositivismIn their defense of the self against positivist reductionism and naturalism, neo-idealists of the Psychological Society were deeply indebted to Kant, in both epistemology and moral philosophy. This claim revises the traditional view that Russian philosophy developed without significant assistance from Kant. 5In two ways Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason defends the minimal idealist claim that not everything intellectual can be reduced to the natural (sensible or psychological), that consciousness cannot... (shrink)

To date, critical engagement with Arnold Hauser’s sociology of art has been confined to the field of art history. This perspective has ignored Hauser’s interest in literary history, which I argue is essential to his project. Hauser’s dialectical model, composed of conflicting realist and formalist tendencies, extends to the literary sphere. In The Social History of Art, these two traditions are epitomised by the Russian social novel and German idealism. Anti-enlightenment tendencies in German intellectual culture provide Hauser with evidence of (...) idealism’s propensity for escapism and reaction. Conversely, he extols the Russian social novel as the naturalistic art form par excellence. Because the intelligentsia is central to Hauser’s understanding of the formation of literary culture, this paper provides an outline of his sociology of intellectuals. Through a comparison of the German and Russian literary intelligentsia, this paper shows that Hauser’s analysis of literature is often more complex than his sociological interpretations of the visual arts. (shrink)

Over the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the transcendental dialectic of Critique of Pure Reason in Germany. Authors, however, often do not pay enough attention to the fact that Kant’s theory of reason (in the narrow sense) and the concept of ideas derived from it is not limited to this text. The purpose of this article is to compare and analyze the functionality of mind as a subjective ability developed by Kant and Fichte with the (...) Hegelian expansion of the mind to the idea of universal rationality. The relevance of such a comparison is connected with the need to demonstrate how the Hegelian paradigm of absolute rationality causes either the subsequent rejection of reason as a philosophical principle in the 19th and´20th centuries counter-discourse, or reduction of reason to the concept of pragmatic rationality. In the first part of this paper, the author intends to differentiate between at least 7 different types of ideas and their functions in Kant’s works. In the second part, he demonstrates how Fichte tries to systematize them beginning with reason, which at first creates an idea of itself. Special attention is paid to the way that Fichte categorizes them with the help of 5 spheres of action or 5 worldviews. The third and final part of the article discusses how Hegel goes beyond the frame of the transcendental philosophy of consciousness using different demands linked to the concepts of “reason” and “ideas”. Although these requirements are not found in Kant and Fichte, they entail a set of difficulties, which the author considers in conclusion. The author’s interpretation of the theory of ideas and their functions in Kant, Fichte and Hegel demonstrates the dynamic character of the theories of reason in classical German philosophy, as well as the relevance of the 7 types of ideas that retain their significance for philosophy of the 21st century. Keywords: Kant and German idealism, types of ideas, functions of reason, worldviews, the problem of different demands. В Германии на протяжении последних двух десятилетий возрос интерес к трансцендентальной диалектике «Критики чистого разума». Однако авторы часто не обращают внимания на то, что кантовская теория разума (в узком смысле), в которой разворачивается работа с идеями, не ограничивается этим текстом. Целью данной статьи является сравнительный анализ разработанной Кантом и Фихте функциональности разума как субъективной способности с гегелевским расширением разума до идеи всеобщей разумности. Актуальность такого сравнения связана с необходимостью продемонстрировать то, каким образом гегелевская парадигма абсолютной разумности вызывает либо последующий отказ от разума как философского принципа в контрдискурсе XIX–XX вв., либо редукцию разума к понятию прагматической рациональности. В первой части данной статьи вводится различение по меньшей мере семи различных видов идей и связанных с ними функций в философии Канта. Во второй части демонстрируется попытка Фихте их систематизировать исходя из утверждения том, что разум должен сначала создать идею о самом себе. Проанализировано также предложенное Фихте распределение идей на пять сфер действенности или типов мировоззрения. В третьей, итоговой части статьи рассмотрен выход гегелевской мысли за рамки трансцендентальной философии сознания. Автор статьи связывает этот процесс с выдвижением не осуществимых в контексте философии Канта и Фихте требований к понятиям «разум» и «идея» и анализирует ряд сложностей, вызванных этими требованиями. Таким образом, интерпретация учения об идеях и их функциях у Канта, Фихте и Гегеля демонстрирует динамический характер теорий разума в классической немецкой философии и актуальность семи видов идей, которые сохраняют свое значение для философии XXI в. Ключевые слова: Кант и немецкий идеализм, виды идей, функции разума, мировоззрение, проблема различных требований. (shrink)

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)

This paper restates and subjects to analysis the polemics in Russian pre-revolutionary Populist and Marxist thought that concerned Kant’s practical philosophy. In these polemics Kantian ideas influence and reinforce the Populist personalism and idealism, as well as Marxist revisionist reformism and moral universalism. Plekhanov, Lenin, and other Russian “orthodox Marxists” heavily criticize both trends. In addition, they generally view Kantianism as a “spiritual weapon” of the reactionary bourgeois thought. This results in a starkly anti-Kantian position of Soviet Marxism. In view (...) of this the 1947 Communist Party decision to preserve Kant’s tomb in Soviet Kaliningrad becomes something of an experimentum crucis that challenges the soundness of the theory. (shrink)

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)

The preface to the translation of Tobias Rosefeldt’s article into Russian provides a discussion context, in which the author settles an issue of interpreting the a posteriori aspects of the content of experience in Kant’s transcendental idealism. Key points of the article are briefly formulated and the translator’s choices of certain terms are justified.

This book argues that the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin should primarily be understood through British idealism. Though he adopted Kantian methodology and a view of people as purposive beings, he rejected the Idealists' monism and theories of positive liberty. Robert A. Kocis demonstrates how, like Michael Oakeshott and R. G. Collingwood, Berlin can be seen as a 'post-Idealist' thinker, invested in the implications of that rich tradition.

The aim of this essay is to synthesize as well as to analyze the conceptual evolution of 1860s Russian nihilism in general and its notion of negation in particular. The fictitious characters that traditionally have been informing the popular notion of “Russian nihilism” mainly refer to an antinihilistic genre. By analyzing nihilism also on the basis of primary sources, the antinihilistic notion of nihilism is nuanced, enabling a more comprehensive analysis of the movement’s different aspects. In some instances, Russian nihilism (...) has been taken out of context and portrayed as a monolith; its pursuit of “negation” interpreted literally. In this essay, a dialectical relation emerges, between affirmation and negation on the one hand as well as between the nihilist “children” and their idealist “fathers” on the other. Despite its radical stance, nihilism consists of a reconciliation of opposites. Although nihilists fought for autonomy, revolution and a new society, the movement was ironically stuck in a continuous negation of its inspirers and forerunners. (shrink)

Mikhail Lifsic is one of the most contradictory and to this date poorly understood authors of the Soviet era. He represented an independent Marxist position, but one internally characterized by the tense relationship between Marxism and the philosophy of Hegel. This relationship, concerning historical philosophical questions, is the subject of this essay. In the 1930s, as "historical materialism" was canonized in the USSR, a development that Soviet civilization understood as the "beginning of the end of history ", Lifsic drafted a (...) different, skeptical summary of the revolutionary era. However, he remained loyal to both the concept of universal history and the examination of Russian -Soviet cultural history within the framework of this concept. With the help of a text from Lifsic from the 1930s as well as his later reflection and remembrance of the ideological debates of the 1930s, this essay will show that Lifsic' reconstruction of idealism in Marxism was no accident, but rather a necessary movement in thought. This, in turn, enabled him to give a new account of the historical experience of the October Revolution. (shrink)

This paper has two main aims. First, it examines the relation of Russian and Chinese Marxism against its Hegelian background. Secondly, it comments on recent Western research on Marxism in tracing the origins of Engels’s anti-Hegelianism to materialist reactions to modern idealist philosophy. I maintain that Engels is a Schellingian, that Marx is a Hegelian, and that Marx’s form of Hegelianism cannot be realized in practice. I consider different kinds of Marxism as efforts to realize Marx’s theories and argue that, (...) since Marx’s theory cannot be realized, in the final analysis his view is no more than a dream. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the theological-academic ontological doctrine of the three types of being formulated within the framework of the Russian theological-academic philosophy of the 19th century. The study of this problem in the context of the general analysis of the phenomenon of theological-academic philosophy allows expanding our understanding of the genesis of Russian philosophy and its religious-philosophical component. The main aim of the article is the historical-philosophical analysis (on the material of philosophical courses of Russian (...) theological academies and original works of professors of academies) of the doctrine about three types of being, which was developed within the framework of the theological-academic philosophy in Russia in the 19th century. The set goal is achieved by means of textual and religious analysis methods, as well as historical-functional, historical-genetic, and comparative research methods. The authors conclude that the specificity of theological-academic philosophizing was determined by confessional affiliation and consisted in its theistic form: the transversal theme of all theological-academic interpretations was the problem of being. Thus, theological-academic ontology took the form of the doctrine of God as an absolute being and the world as its derivative. The theological-academic doctrine of the three types of being and the synthesizing function of the absolute in relation to theological and material being cannot be characterized as quite logical and consistent. The notion of God as an absolute being is conditioned by the aspiration of theological-academic philosophers not to go beyond traditional orthodoxy and is one of the main specific features of theological-academic philosophical interpretations of religious consciousness. At the same time, the historical and philosophical analysis of the works of professors from Russian theological academies allows tracing how the powerful ideological and theoretical potential accumulated in Russian theological academies after their reforms in the 19th century contributed to the development of professional philosophy in Russia, the development of a philosophical categorical apparatus and the systematic formation of Russian philosophical thought. The development of this theme responds to the urgent research tasks of the history of philosophy. Further, this topic is very interesting not only for historians of philosophy but also for historians of religion, historians of orthodoxy, and culturologists. (shrink)

Edited from the author's posthumous works by Agnes von Cranach. Topics incl. natural science & idealistic philosophy, general attempts to define life, vitalism, mechanism, etc.\Here Am I Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose was thought to be Konrad Lorenz's last book. However, in 1991 the "Russian Manuscript" was discovered in an attic, and its subsequent publication in German has become a scientific sensation. Written under the most extreme conditions in Soviet prison camps, the "Russian Manuscript" was the (...) first outline of a large-scale work on behavioral science. This translation contains a synopsis of all the ideas that made Lorenz famous as the founder of ethology, the study of comparative animal behavior. Written just after World War II, while the author was incarcerated in a Soviet prison camp, this so-called "Russian manuscript" was believed lost forever. Its rediscovery in 1991 and, now, its publication represent a major contribution to the history of science and the advancement of the behavioral sciences. This book contains some of the earliest formulations of the discipline that Lorenz called comparative behavioral research (i.e., ethology); its theories also portend the development of sociobiology and the new fields of behavioral and genetic psychology. He writes, "The route to an understanding of humans leads just as surely through an understanding of animals as the evolutionary pathway of humans had led through animal precursors." Lorenz also devotes almost equal attention to the "Philosophical Prolegomena" as to the "Biological Prologomena," arguing, in the process, for a synthesis between the sciences and the humanities as complementary expressions of human cognition. The text, edited by Lorenz's daughter, is full of literary excesses; although comprehensible to the lay reader, it is not particularly enjoyable to read. Still, such a book's value cannot be measured by its popularity alone. Important for any general science collection and indispensable for all academic or history of science collections.-Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib. (shrink)

Between 1899 and 1906, Alexander Bogdanov developed a scientific philosophy intended to substantiate the basic principle of historical materialism—the idea that existence determines consciousness—in terms of the most advanced science and empiricist epistemology/ontology of his day. At the same time, however, he strove ‘to answer the broad needs of our workers for an overall worldview’, and in the process of doing so he elaborated a complete philosophical system and a holistic worldview. Although his intention was to serve the proletariat and (...) advance socialist revolution, Bogdanov also provided the sort of integral vision of the interconnectedness of the individual, society, and the cosmos that the Russian intelligentsia had traditionally pursued. Bogdanov adopted a number of the principles of nineteenth-century German and Russian idealism, including the concept of the unity of the subject and the object and the ideas that the laws of thought are the same as the laws of being, that there is no qualitative difference between humans and nature, and that humanity is central in the progressive development of the cosmos. Bogdanov, however, provided a materialist mirror image of the idealist worldview. While Russian idealists celebrated spirituality, individual personhood, freedom, and religion, Bogdanov advocated materialism, collectivism, determinism, and naturalism. (shrink)

The construction of spacetime in a physical system without time and dynamics is considered. It is shown that in models without time and dynamics anthropic principle and causality principle inevitably arise. It is shown that for any physical model based on a system without time and dynamics, the anthropic principle is a scientific principle and, in principle, can be falsified. It is shown that, in principle, there is the possibility of experimental verification of what is true - realism or idealism.

Structures without time and dynamics are considered. The principle is proposed how to build space-time in a structure without time and dynamics. It is found what can be objects in such a space-time, and what can be an interaction between such objects.Within the framework of the considered class of structures, answers were found to the following problems of philosophy and physics: the nature of consciousness and the connection between the body and consciousness (mind-body problem), nature of time, anthropic principle and (...) the problem of fine-tuning the universe, the effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical phenomena, limits of knowledge.The considered class of structures makes it possible to find answers to questions that cannot be answered for our Universe. This shows the fundamental possibility of finding answers to these questions for our Universe as well. (shrink)

The antithesis of nature and freedom is the central idea of Kant's philosophy. It is the direct expression of its postulated division of all existing things into the world of phenomena, which in their sum-total constitute nature, and its original foundation—the world of things in themselves, which lie beyond the categorial determinations of nature. Necessity and causal relations, like space and time, apply only to the world of phenomena; the world of things in themselves is free of these determinations and, (...) therefore, constitutes the realm of freedom—freedom from the intractable laws of nature. Thus, Kant, on the one hand, proves the unconditional subsumption of phenomena under the laws of nature, under the strictest determinism, and, on the other, insists just as decisively that freedom is the first, pretemporal link in the cause-and-effect chain of events. True, the existence of this original freedom is unprovable; it is unknowable, supersensible, and transcendent. But if we agree that there are not only phenomena but also things in themselves, then the conclusion about freedom is fully justified. If, on the other hand, we reject the existence of things in themselves, then we deny at the same time any possibility of freedom, for there are no exceptions in natural determinism. (shrink)

I think it is impossible to adhere to the plan of this book and to follow a chronological sequence.

One of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and unconventional thinkers, Alexandre Kojève was a Russian émigré to France whose lectures on Hegel in the 1930s galvanized a generation of French intellectuals. Although Kojève wrote a great deal, he published very little in his lifetime, and so the ongoing rediscovery of his work continues to present new challenges to philosophy and political theory. Written in 1931 but left unfinished, Atheism is an erudite and open-ended exploration of profound questions of estrangement, death, (...) suicide, and the infinite that demonstrates the range and the provocative power of Kojève’s thought. Ranging across Heidegger, Buddhism, Christianity, German idealism, Russian literature, and mathematics, Kojève advances a novel argument about freedom and authority. He investigates the possibility that there is not any vantage point or source of authority—including philosophy, science, or God—that is outside or beyond politics and the world as we experience it. The question becomes whether atheism—or theism—is even a meaningful position since both affirmation and denial of God’s existence imply a knowledge that seems clearly outside our capacities. Masterfully translated by Jeff Love, this book offers a striking new perspective on Kojève’s work and its implications for theism, atheism, politics, and freedom. (shrink)

My book is about the human creativity being a source of progress, and cycling of evolution caused by platitude and triviality of once high-reaching idealism. In essence the book presents an original perception of human history, based on Christian values as vital coordinates system. I hope this book will revive the interest to the Russian school of thoughts and to humanism in general.

This volume brings the remarkable writings of Russian liberal thinker Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin to English-language readers for the first time. The collection includes key essays in which Chicherin addresses the central political and social problems that confronted Russia from 1855 to the opening years of the twentieth century. Chicherin’s ideological alternatives to the Bolshevik plan for revolutionary transformation of Russia not only provide valuable historical insights, but also are highly relevant to current political discussion of liberalism in Russia and in (...) the West. In a comprehensive introduction to the book, G. M. Hamburg discusses the development of Chicherin’s thought and places it in historical context. Chicherin, Hamburg says, was a powerful and sophisticated but often misunderstood defender of civil and political rights. Like his fellow liberals in Russia, Chicherin was heavily influenced by German idealism and particularly by Hegel. He departed from many, however, in favoring a market economy and advocating that reform efforts be tailored to local conditions and traditions. In this collection Chicherin explores such contemporary issues as the abolition of serfdom, Russian education, and the need for a constitution. He also tackles broad philosophical problems—the nature of liberty and equality, styles of political discourse—and comments on such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, More, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Hegel, and Marx. (shrink)

The article focuses on the philosophical and scientific dialogue between Vladimir Vernadsky and Pavel Florensky in the context of Russian philosophy. Florensky formulated his philosophy in the book The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, making a great impact on Vernadsky. The two philosophers exchanged their thoughts through letters. During the time of his imprisonment, Florensky wrote letters on scientific topics to his son Kirill, who worked with Vernadsky. Thus, Kirill Florensky became the point of contact between the two thinkers. (...) The present article aims to show the complementarity between Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s work with a particular emphasis on their conception of noosphere-pneumatosphere connected with Plato’s methaphysics, which Florensky interpreted as the world of the Truth or absolute reality. Through investigating Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s letters and diaries and comparing their conceptions of noosphere and pneumatosphere, as well as their interpretation of reality in their writings, it is possible to determine influences of the concepts important for Russian religious philosophers, such as a tendency towards wholeness and intuition. The first part of the article examines Vernadsky in relation to Russian idealists, the second part of the article is focused on the relationship between Vernadsky and Florensky, and the third on the concepts of noosphere, pneumatosphere, and the concept of reality (living being) — absolute reality (Truth). Through these three steps, the complementarity of Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s interpretations are illustrated. Their interpretations are not contradictory because while Vernadsky dealt with Earth’s reality and its evolution, and Florensky focused on the metaphysical world, both were interested in the evolution of the biosphere-noosphere/pneumatosphere through the activity of man. The article is the first study in English focused on the scientific and religious-philosophical interaction between Vernadsky and Florensky. (shrink)

This article concerns genealogy of ideas from the Marburg school of neo-Kantian philosophy in’s early works in the context of intellectual and educational tendencies in Europe and the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century. Yevhen Spektorskyi is known as a prominent philosopher and lawyer, professor, and the last president at the Saint Volodymyr University. Analyzing his early works, which were strongly connected to his teaching and scientific activities at the law faculty of Warsaw University, the author recognizes (...) several key factors as the reasons for considerable development of the main neo-Kantian ideas of the philosopher. Firstly, Spektorskyi’s research interests were strongly influenced by the intellectual communication with his teacher, professor, and lawyer Oleksandr Blok, whose research was concentrated on the idea of classification of the sciences and its further substantiating. Secondly, we know that at the beginning of 20th century Spektorskyi was on several long-term educational secondments in European educational institutions, which allowed him to immerse into intellectual life of that time. In the article, the author focuses on analysis of Spektorskyi’s published works and unpublished manuscripts of the years 1903–1910. It is clarified that their main issues concern essential notions and arguments of critical idealism and its implications for the procedures of rational argumentation of sciences by setting ideal goals and clarification of regulative ideas for the social scientists in their research. The article also examines Spektorskyi’s logical structure of critique of the founder of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism Hermann Cohen. The critique concerns the development of ethics as “mathematics of natural science” and argues for the creative and productive rethinking of neo-Kantian ideas by Spektorskyi. (shrink)

In the history of Russian philosophy, V. S. Solovyov is known as one of the prominent spokesmen of theological idealism. Lenin more than once pointed to the need to combat the ideas of this philosopher . He quite properly regarded them as the theoretical foundation of the ideology of "liberal renegacy.".

In his last, uncompleted essay Teoreticheskaja filosofija (1897–1899) Vladimir Solov'ëv seems to acknowledge thecentral statements of Kant's epistemology andphilosophy of subjectivity in a manner whichhas lead many interpretators to think that hewanted to revise substantially his earlierphilosophy. A closer look at Solov'ëv'sarguments show, however, that this is not thecase: his critique of the Cartesian concept ofsubjectivity does not allow him to embraceKantianism, either. So it must be stated thateven Solov'ëv does not, in the last instance,abandon the primarily Anti-Kantian positions ofRussian (...) idealism. (shrink)

Introduction. In the Russian philosophical tradition, domestic philosophical concepts are rather poorly considered at the moment. In fact, there is no coverage of regional specific features: the problems that worried and united Russian philosophers within the boundaries of one or another temporalterritorial locality. The purpose of the article is to consider the views of the Tyumen philosopher-ethicist Yuri Mikhailovich Fedorov in the context of their relevance at present and in the context of a continuous research tradition. Methods. The author proceeds (...) from the methods of hermeneutics, which are obligatory in this case, and also uses L. Laudan’s theory of research traditions, M. Foucault’s optics and the concept of permanent modernity. Scientific novelty of the research. The author clarifies Yu.M. Fedorov’s views through the specified methodology, considering his works in the context of a continuing philosophical tradition, with a special emphasis on the methods of subjectification. Results and conclusions. Taking into consideration the results of analytical reading of Yu.M. Fedorov’s key work “Universe of Morality”, it is concluded that the author’s concept, which combines the features of idealism, cosmism, structuralism, semiotics and existentialism, with some reservations (indicated in the article), suggests an adequate model of subjectification for a person of the XXI century. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive study of the influence of Immanuel Kant’s Critical Philosophy in the Russian Empire, spanning the period from the late 19th century to the Bolshevik Revolution. It systematically details the reception bestowed on Kant’s ideas during his lifetime and up to and through the era of the First World War. The book traces the tensions arising in the early 19th century between the imported German scholars, who were often bristling with the latest philosophical developments in their (...) homeland, and the more conservative Russian professors and administrators. The book goes on to examine the frequently neglected criticism of Kant in the theological institutions throughout the Russian Empire as well as the last remaining, though virtually unknown, embers of Kantianism during the reign of Nicholas I. With the political activities of many young radicals during the subsequent decades having been amply studied, this book focuses on their largely ignored attempts to grapple with Kant’s transcendental idealism. It also presents a complete account of the resurgence of interest in Kant in the last two decades of that century, and the growing attempts to graft a transcendental idealism onto popular social and political movements. The book draws attention to the young and budding Russian neo-Kantian movement that mirrored developments in Germany before being overtaken by political events. (shrink)