This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such (...) as Russian liberalism, personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage. (shrink)

A collection of readings in Russian philosophical thought.

The author analyses the context and reasons for the change in Pushkin's understanding of history. The idea of Russia's special path, disagreement with the Decembrists, and the appeal to the history and personality of Peter I led to the evolution of the poet's views to anti-violent and, in fact, pessimistic attitudes.

The article analyzes the socio-cultural and theoretical origins of the Russian philosophy of history. These origins determined the development of the philosophy of history as a special feld of philosophical knowledge. This process took place in the second half of the 19th century, a significant factor of which was the split within the cultural and spiritual unity of Russian society on the wave of Alexander II’s reforms associated with the abolition of serfdom. In this period the (...) subject-matter of the philosophy of history was defned. In the author’s opinion, the subject-matter of the philosophy of history includes: 1) the historical process in its universal human dimensions and in “past – present – future” movement, 2) the life of society in historically concrete forms of the organization of human community, 3) historical epistemology. The article shows why the philosophy of history, formed in this research feld, was established in the public consciousness and intellectual context as historiosophy, i.e. knowledge of spiritual senses, the beginning and end of history. This philosophical-historical paradigm excluded the oppositions, on the one hand, between philosophical knowledge and historical science and, on the other hand, between the philosophy of the history and social philosophy. As the main ideas of the Russian philosophy of history during that period, the author considers the idea of the integrity of historical existence as an “organic life” and the idea of the variability of the historical process, interpreted as the constant inclination of history to “permanent improvisation”. The author pays special attention to the development of the concepts of “transitional form” and “chaos,” which provide the acceleration of the progressive movement of history and the possibility of an active and responsible participation of an individual and masses in it. The attention to this problem introduced the spiritual and moral component into the ontological basis of the historical process as well as the concept of necessity and chance, freedom and violence, revolution and evolution into the conceptual apparatus of philosophical and historical knowledge. As a result, simultaneously with the metaphysical principles, the principles of concrete historical and axiological analysis were integrated into the methodology of the philosophy of history. This approach to the analysis of the historical process has preserved its heuristic potential to the present day. (shrink)

The paper enters contemporary discourse concerning the examination of history of Russian philosophy, which initiates a new reading of the Russian thinkers’ works. These contemporary examinations problematize the phenomenon of so called intellectual doubles as well. The contribution proceeds from the definition of these issues which was published in journal Problems of Philosophy by M. A. Maslin in 2013. In this work, Maslin mentions A. I. Herzen among the examples of intellectual doubles phenomenon, who is one of (...) the founders of the Russian Narodism. Following from this basis, the contribution shifts an attention toward issues of intellectual doubles in the context of the Russian Narodism. The work represents an endeavour to deepen the existing problematization of this phenomenon on the basis of examination the N. K. Mikhailovsky’s creative legacy. There can be found two faces in works of this Narodnik thinker. The first one can be figuratively designed as a Petersburgian and the second one as a Yaltian. These designations are borrowed from the notes of Sergey Elpatevsky, who had been Mikhailovsky’s friend. The two faces express the specificity of the problem of doubleness in Mikhailovsky and his qualitative shift in relation to contemporary examinations of the reflected phenomenon. (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)

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)

The Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the Bakhtin Circle. The writings of other members of the Circle are considered much less important than his work, while Bakhtin's achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of (...) the Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev (but frequently credited to Bakhtin) are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of religious foundations of culture and power as a problem of Russian political consciousness. The paper reveals the patterns of interaction between the religious and political traditions of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The author provides Bargradsky project case as a unique example of such influence, identifying its mean in the later Russian Empire’s political history. Philosophical-political case that is analyzed in the article makes it (...) possible to trace the inner links between religious attitudes and political imagination of Russian monarchical circles and to identify the peculiarities of religious and political self-awareness of Russian power, its mechanisms for the selecting the ideas, symbols, images of the national political, religious and artistic culture in the last period of the Russian Empire. From our point of view, it would be most effective to combine the cultural-historical and the philosophical and historical approaches both in the reconstruction of Bargradsky project and in studies of Russian political culture. The article examines both the political conditions of activities and spiritual-cultural goals of Bargradsky Committee on Bargradsky project in Italian Bari as well as in Saint Petersburg in the 1910s. The author discusses the religious concept of Russian political culture, applying philosophical-historical method for the analyses Bargradsky Committee activity and its attempt to slow down the degradation of the Russian autocracy. The major emphasis is placed on the political and philosophical way of analysis as well as on the possibility of introducing the results of philosophical-historical research into current debates on the issue of alternatives to Russian history. (shrink)

The history of Russian philosophy, beginning in the eighteenth century. Also includes brief biographies of famous Russian philosophers.

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)

This set reprints volumes that were orginally published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. in 1953. Landmark volumes at the time of their original publication, these titles do not merely expound the theoretical constructions of Russian philosophers, but also relate these constructions to the general conditions of Russian life. Volume One examines the historical conditions of the development of philosophy in Russia and explores the general features of Russian philosophy. It also surveys the principal works on the (...) history of Russian philosophy. Volume Two includes biographies and examination of the themes of the following philosophers; Vladimir Solovyov, V.D. Kudryavtsev, N.F. Fyodorov and Later Hegelians such as Chicherin, Debolski and Bakunin. This volume also provides analysis of various schools of thought in Russian philosophy in the twentieth century, for example; Neo-Leibzianism, Modern Positivism and New-Marxism to name but a few. (shrink)

This book review discusses the new research of the Russian philosopher and cultural study scholar Olga A. Zhukova. What is special about the Russian intellectual movement Russian Europeanism? Zhukova reconstructs the ideas of Russian Europeanism, and she evaluates the approaches of Russian thinkers to national cultural history. The author manages to introduce the reader to current discussions about the specifics of the Russian cultural and philosophical “project” and to propose new approaches for the (...) interpretation of the intellectual and literary heritage of Russia. In addition to offering a critical analysis of Zhukova’s volume, the book review presents this thought provoking monograph as a great piece of scholarly work. (shrink)

This set reprints volumes that were orginally published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. in 1953. Landmark volumes at the time of their original publication, these titles do not merely expound the theoretical constructions of Russian philosophers, but also relate these constructions to the general conditions of Russian life. Volume One examines the historical conditions of the development of philosophy in Russia and explores the general features of Russian philosophy. It also surveys the principal works on the (...) history of Russian philosophy. Volume Two includes biographies and examination of the themes of the following philosophers; Vladimir Solovyov, V.D. Kudryavtsev, N.F. Fyodorov and Later Hegelians such as Chicherin, Debolski and Bakunin. This volume also provides analysis of various schools of thought in Russian philosophy in the twentieth century, for example; Neo-Leibzianism, Modern Positivism and New-Marxism to name but a few. (shrink)

Russian Marxism was fairly late to address building its own understandings of the Russian historical process. Moreover, the Bolsheviks did not have their own historiography of “Russian history” despite the fact that, beginning in 1918, they began more and more vehemently claiming not just total ideological control but also intellectual hegemony. A confrontation between “Marxist” and “non-Marxist” understandings arose. At the same time, the real disputes within the camp of Marxist historians came down to a confrontation (...) between the versions of the historical process proposed by Georgi V. Plekhanov and Mikhail N. Pokrovskii back in the 1910s. This article broadly analyzes the disputes in the Marxist camp, from pressing political implications such as attitudes toward the state to the definition of the place of “historical facts” in theory and interpretation. We also demonstrate that it was, in fact, the understandings of Plekhanov, Leon D. Trotsky, and Pokrovskii that continue, both explicitly and implicitly, the legacy of Vasily O. Klyuchevsky’s historical schema and his understanding of the “state school,” a legacy that has remained unstudied until now. (shrink)

This article compares the thinking of Andrzej Walicki and Isaiah Berlin on the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia and on Soviet totalitarianism. It suggests that Berlin saw totalitarianism as an externally imposed political system, whereas Walicki understood totalitarianism to depend both on external pressure and inner coercion. The article draws on a variety of published and unpublished sources, including personal interviews with Walicki and Berlin’s archives at the New Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.

The subject of this research is the philosophy of history of Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev as the founder of “Russian idea”, the problematic of which was principal in reasoning of the representatives of the Russian sociopolitical thought regarding the place of Russia in world civilization, its sociocultural and national identity. Alongside the assessments of the vector of Russian history as a whole and its separate stages, the subject of the analysis is also the character of author’s (...) discourse, which united the perception of history as the synthesis of historical narrative and philosophy of history, fine intuition, and rational analysis. Methodology of research of Chaadayev’s works as the most remarkable representative of Christian historicism suggest the application of interdisciplinary approach, principles of intellectual history, comparative culturology, and retrospective political science. The scientific novelty is defined by specification of the stages of creative evolution of P. Y. Chaadayev, conclusion on similarity of the worldview and theoretical-methodological basis of the delegates of two movements of the “Russian Europeanism” represented by the Westernizers and Slavophiles. Accent is made on the difference of the heuristic value of methodology of P. Y. Chaadayev’s history for the assessment of historical fates of the European and Russian people. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the 100th anniversary of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPhRAS), held in 2021. The purpose of the article is to give an overview of IPhRAS's contribution to the study of Aristotle's ethics within the framework of domestic Aristotelian studies, to note the main works of IPhRAS employees in this field. The material of the article is aimed not only at summing up the results to a significant date, but can (...) be used as an auxiliary reference point in the domestic research literature by all those interested in the ethics of Aristotle. The article examines the articles and monographs of IPhRAS employees, makes brief descriptions of the most significant ideas expressed in them, analyzes the general process of development of Aristotle's ethics research in IPhRAS. The result of the conducted research is the identification of two directions in the study of Aristotle's ethics by IPhRAS employees – philosophical-theoretical and historical-philosophical. Within the framework of the first direction, two types are also distinguished: those aimed at the theoretical reconstruction of Aristotle's teaching on morality itself and those that turn to Aristotle's works in search of modern significant concepts. The second direction is represented by translation work, structural and comparative analysis of Aristotle's texts in order to reproduce them as accurately as possible and clarify individual concepts and statements. The main conclusion of the study is the statement that IPhRAS has not yet developed a holistic school in the approach to the study of Aristotle's ethics, and also that the two discovered areas of research are being implemented separately from each other. However, in both directions, researchers proceed largely from the analysis of the philosophical language of the Stagirite, which makes not only historical and philosophical works significant for philosophical and theoretical ones, but also vice versa. Also, despite a relatively short history, the study of Aristotle's ethics at IPhRAS has a systematic nature, all generations of employees are involved in it, which promises its further successful development. (shrink)

The study presents the Russian historical-philosophical process in the context of the discovery of a new object, themes, personae, set of reactions and formation of a product for the intellectual community. The author's reliance on philosophical empirical material and appropriate hermeneutics in its processing allows the author to highlight those factors that influenced individual and collective reception. The author sees as a convenient case study the “discovery” by the Russian philosophical community of the early 20th century of both (...) American philosophy in general and C.S. Peirce in particular. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Russian thinkers have turned their attention to American philosophy in all the diversity of its manifestations. Russian intellectuals paid special attention to American pragmatism and everything associated with it. In Russia, in addition to translations, numerous reviews of foreign publications on this topic are appearing. Of particular interest to us in the Russian “collective reflection” of American ideas is the system of preferences for ideas, texts, events, and names. The point is that what might have been a priority for a European thinker, for a Russian one turned out to be on the “periphery” of his consciousness, as well as vice versa. While James appeared among the priority figures for Russian thinkers, Peirce was in his “shadow”. Using rich empirical material, the author shows all the stages of Peirce’s image formation in the Russian intellectual community. The research shows that “image” of Peirce, which represents not so much the thinker himself, but characterizes the intellectual community that turned to him. The results of the study may be useful both for contemporary foreign and Russian interpreters of Peirce and for historians of philosophy who are rethinking the past and forming in the present new objects of reception and reflection. (shrink)

This article addresses the writing of the history of Russian philosophy from the first of such works—Archimandrite Gavriil’s Russian Philosophy [ Russkaja filosofija , 1840]—to philosophical histories/textbooks in the twenty-first century. In the majority of these histories, both past and present, we find a relentless insistence on the delineation of “characterizing traits” of Russian philosophy and appeals to “historiosophy,” where historiosophy is employed as being distinct from the historiographical method. In the 1990s and 2000s, the genre (...) of the history of Russian philosophy has grown increasingly conservative with regards to content, with histories from this period demonstrating an almost exclusive Orthodox focus. This conservatism, in turn, has contributed to widespread contention in recent years over the status of these philosophical textbooks—disagreements that often lead to either (1) further appeals to “historiosophical” methods; or (2) denials of the domestic philosophical tradition altogether, where the response to the query “Is there philosophy in Russia?” is emphatically negative. This article argues that the contemporary disputes over the development and preservation of the Russian philosophical canon are in many ways part of a larger debate over the roles of Orthodoxy and the history of philosophy in post-Soviet philosophical thought. (shrink)

December 6, 1963, marked 150 years since the birth of Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev . Ogarev was one of the first in the group of Russia's best sons who, in the dark years of reaction under the serf system, became forerunners of the revolution. Ogarev was distinguished for his diverse gifts and many-sided activity. He was a revolutionist — the organizer of the secret Land and Freedom [Zemlia i Volia] society — and also became known as a lyric poet. He was (...) one of the founders of the free Russian press, an original philosopher with a materialist outlook, a penetrating student of Russia's economic life, a passionate propagandist of polytechnical education, a proponent of freedom for oppressed peoples, and a spokesman for new esthetic ideals. Prerevolutionary historiographers neglected to take account of Ogarev's work, and, at best, recognized him as a "fellow-traveler" of Herzen. Only in the Soviet period did Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev obtain the recognition he deserved. (shrink)

BERDYAEV AS A PHILOSOPHER How shall a non-Russian, above all a North American, assimilate the extraordinary assemblage of ideas which is Berdyaev's philosophy? Dr. Richardson does not exaggerate the difficulties. And he introduces us with great care (and what a formidable task it must have been) precisely to what is most strange in this writer, his fusion of historical.. eschatological-metaphysical-mystical-Christian conceptions. By some standards Berdyaev is a theologian rather than a philosopher; for he takes the truth of the Christian (...) revelation for granted and his work can readily be viewed as an elaborate apologetic for one religion against all others and against irreligion. Yet I incline to sympathize with him in his claim to be a philosopher. What an eccentric one, however! There are indeed some partial analogies in the general European tradition. Certainly this Russian is a disciple of Kant, and strong traces of Kantianism survive in him. He also moved away from Kant somewhat as did Fichte, Hegel, and, above all, Schelling in his last period. His sympathetic response to Heracleitos and Boehme recalls Hegel. The interest in Boehme and Schelling is found also in Tillich. Like the late German-American, Berdyaev rejects conceptual in favor of symbolic speech about God. Like Bergson, he stresses intuition and makes a radical distinction between scientific logical analytic thought and the mode of apprehension by which, he believes, metaphysical truth is to be appropriated. Here one thinks also of Heidegger. (shrink)