Die Vorahnung der Revolution in den Werken russischer Schriftsteller

This article discusses the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in Russia on the eve of the 1917 revolution. In particular, through the examples of Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky, the author shows how the changes in the Russian economic and sociopolitical situation effected the intellectuals of the era. Despite the differences in social backgrounds, lifestyles, worldviews and artistic styles, Tolstoy’s and Gorky’s assessments of Russia’s developmental prospects were in many ways consistent. As this article demonstrates, the values held by both writers were grounded in their unorthodox religious views. In conclusion, the author reexamines Lenin’s assessment of both writers.

     

The individual and nothingness (Stavrogin: a Russian interpretation)

This study is an attempt to reconstruct and sum up philosophical interpretations of Stavrogin, the main hero of the classic Dostoevsky’s novel “The Devils”, given by the outstanding Russian religious thinkers in the twentieth century. The author emphasizes that, however different can be their philosophical premises, the discussed interpretations of Dostoevsky’s hero are compatible and complementary. Confronting and, above all, synthesizing different points of view, he tries to grasp the basic historiosophical, anthropological and religious ideas of Russian renaissance.     

An Examination of Modern Psychology Through Two Philosophies of Knowledge

Plato was one of the world’s greatest thinkers. The philosophy of knowledge that he formulated has dominated Western thought for about 2,400 years. This article will suggest that Einstein’s philosophy of knowledge, which includes Plato’s philosophy as a limited case, may help us better understand the fundamental problems in modern psychology.

     

The lesson of the revolution in Russian émigré theology and contemporary Orthodox thought

Abstract

This paper cuts across the whole spectrum of Orthodox thought in Russia today, both clerical and lay, both theological and philosophical, in order to show the different ways in which Orthodox thinkers have reflected (or not reflected) upon the experience of totalitarianism. The point which I want to make here is that many representatives of Russian Orthodoxy – and most casual western observers – overlook ‘the lesson taught by the revolution’. This lesson is expressed in the need to formulate clear standpoints on the totalitarian challenge from within the Orthodox theological tradition. Russian émigré theology and its contemporary heirs have embarked upon this path; the Russian Orthodox Church has not, or has done so to a much lesser extent.     

Editorial

Abstract

Russian society has been undergoing tremendous changes in the last two decades. The renewed interest in Orthodox tradition is therefore much more than a quantitative growth in the number of believers. The quality of the discursive space in which Orthodoxy has become a subject of social debate is very different from that of a premodern society and from that of Soviet atheist society. In this context the popular image of religion – the popular idea of religious behaviour – has changed profoundly. In this essay I use the ideas of two Russian thinkers with a theological background to conceptualise these changes. Aleksandr Kyrlezhev applies the western notion of the postmodern to the Russian context to describe the transformation from the monolithic Soviet world-view to a state of ideological diversity. Aleksandr Morozov uses the metaphor ‘the end of transcendence’ to illustrate changes in religious behaviour. Both authors conclude that the renewed interest in the Orthodox tradition is primarily a desire for morality, for a set of norms and values to supplement both Soviet and imported western counterparts. I also look at Orthodox classes in the public education system in order to see how these ideas apply to the social context. Kyrlezhev's notion of a postmodern ideological diversity helps to explain how such classes are welcomed as a complementary ‘spiritual’ element alongside existing ‘materialist’ world-views. Morozov's ‘end of transcendence’ assists in understanding how such classes, although teaching about the Orthodox faith, may operate in a secular environment.     

Il’enkov’s Hegel

This paper examines Hegel’s place in the philosophy of Eval’d Il’enkov (1924–1979). Hegel’s ideas had a huge impact on Il’enkov’s conception of the nature of philosophy and of the philosopher’s mission, and they formed the core of his distinctive account of thought and its place in nature. At the same time, Il’enkov was victimized for his “Hegelianism” throughout his career, from the time he was sacked from Moscow State University in 1955 to the ideological criticisms that preceded his death in 1979. After considering Hegel’s influence on the history of Russian thought, the paper focuses on Hegelian themes in Il’enkov’s 1974 book, Dialekti?eskaja logika and evaluates their philosophical significance. Finally, parallels are explored between Il’enkov’s situation at the end of his life and the plight of Nikolaj Bukharin, incarcerated in the Lubjanka prison in 1936 and at work on Philosophical arabesques. Both thinkers confronted the contradiction between their confidence in the rationality of history and the tragic absurdity of Soviet reality, and both responded by affirming their fidelity to Lenin and his vision of Marxism. In this way, they sought to make sense of their respective situations in the face of extreme adversity. That they so much as thought it worth trying owed much to Hegel’s influence.     

The Rabbit and The Duck: Antinomic unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian religious tradition, and Mikhail Bakhtin

At the core of Dostoevskij’s philosophy and theology lies a concept according to which the Truth (Istina) is antinomical: it contains both a thesis and its antithesis without expectation of synthesis. This concept can be traced to Eastern Patristics. After Dostoevskij, the theory of antinomies was elaborated by 20th century Russian religious thinkers such as Pavel Florenskij, Sergej Bulgakov, Nikolaj Berdjaev, Semën Frank, and Vladimir Losskij. Their ideas help us to understand that Dostoevskij’s dialogism, made famous in its secular guise by Bakhtin, has a theological underpinning. Dostoevskij’s exposition of conflicting truths should therefore be seen not as a case of irresolvable contradiction or paradox but as an organic wholeness.     

Intellectuals as missionaries: the liberal opposition in Russia and their notion of culture

The present article is primarily concerned with the imagined community of liberal intellectuals (starting with the Westernizers, in the 1840s, and ending with the Kadets and the participants of the October Revolution in the early twentieth century), rather than the community that “objectively” existed. This imaginary community constructed notions of the collective identity of their own group as well as that of Russian society. For this purpose, they instrumentalized the notions of “progress,” “backwardness,” “culturedness” (kul’turnost’) and “benightedness” (temnota), thereby creating hierarchies in which the “constructors” of collective identities granted themselves the important role of intermediaries between state and society. Special attention is paid to the prominent role Russia’s liberal historians played in this process insofar as historians possessed great power in nineteenth-century Europe—the power to tell their states and societies about their past, present, and future—and this transformed them into professional producers of (national) identities. Their work combined expert knowledge and ideological clichés in a highly complex manner. The central question posed is to what extent and in what respect the reality constructed by Russian intellectuals coincided with the actions of intellectuals in other European regions or, on the contrary, to what extent their discursive activities had a specifically local character.     

Gods and giants: Cudworth’s platonic metaphysics and his ancient theology

ABSTRACT

The Cambridge Platonists are modern thinkers and the context of seventeenth-century Cambridge science is an inalienable and decisive part of their thought. Cudworth’s interest in ancient theology, however, seems to conflict with the progressive aspect of his philosophy. The problem of the nature, however, of this ‘Platonism’ is unavoidable. Even in his complex and recondite ancient theology Cudworth is motivated by philosophical considerations, and his legacy among philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should not be overlooked. In particular we will draw on the scholarship of the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann in order to reassess the significance of Cudworth’s theory of religion for later philosophical developments.     

A revolutionary as a “beautiful soul”: Lev Tolstoy’s path to ethical anarchism

This article discusses Leo Tolstoy’s view of the Russian revolutionary movement. Taking as a focal point the writer’s lifelong interest in the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and particularly in the personalities of the gentry revolutionaries, the article argues that Tolstoy’s fascination for these figures was due to their superior moral qualities, rather than to their political and socioeconomic doctrines. Following Alexander Herzen, Tolstoy came to regard the Decembrists as full-fledged individualities and “beautiful souls” (in Friedrich von Schiller’s sense of the term). Thus, Tolstoy’s much debated “conversion” and subsequent attempts to transform literary art into a medium of religious and moral reform (and thus a peaceful cultural revolution) can also be viewed as extensions of his project of self-understanding and self-formation according to the model of kalokagathia provided by Russia’s aristocratic revolutionaries.

     

Levinas and Shinran: the power of the other

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I compare the idea of ‘substitution’, central to the later work of Emmanuel Levinas, to the idea of jinen hōni, or ‘natural acts’, proposed by Shinran Shōnin. For Levinas, ‘substitution’ meant the acceptance of responsibility for the suffering of the Other that one hasn’t caused, giving oneself up to ‘persecution’ and ‘accusation’ of the Other in absolute passivity. For Shinran, a similar passivity is implied by the unability of the ‘I’ to act in order to liberate itself from its conditioned existence, a result which can be achieved by giving up one’s own agency in favour of the Other. For both thinkers, ethical selfhood is thus attainable only by forsaking of one’s worldly ego, described in remarkably similar terms, even though their understanding of alterity itself is radically different.     

Where is the common ground? Interaction and transfer between European and Russian philosophical culture

In this paper, I discuss and analyze three instances of exchange and interaction between Russian (incl. Soviet) and (West) European philosophical culture: the correspondence between Merab Mamarda?vili and Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida’s visit to Moscow in 1990, and a joint Russian–German publication by Nikolaj Plotnikov and Alexander Haardt. The focus is on the implicit mutual perception of philosophical cultures and on the ‘micro-politics’ of discourse that is at stake in their interaction. Also, it is shown how different contexts—labelled ‘philosophical culture’, though not in any deterministic sense—are at work in the mutual perception between individual thinkers. Even if philosophical thinking tends to transcend the parameters of ‘glocal’ situations, this involves a job that needs to be done, individually and collectively, by the philosophers involved. Consequently, this dimension has to be taken into account when analysing such instances of encounter.     

Der Streit der russischen Marxisten um Kants Ethik

At the beginning of 20th century, there was a problem of establishing which version of the association of Kant’s and Marx’s ideas is correct. If some Legal Marxists more or less combined Kant and Marx, most Russian Social Democrats, especially Bolsheviks, were against such an association. Under the influence of G. V. Plekhanov, Russian Marxists announced a sharply critical attitude toward Kant’s philosophy. This position was reinforced by Russian philosophers, poets, and slavophiles who accused Kant of being militarist. During the World War I, both tendencies faced each other. Plekhanov’s desperate appeal to ?the simple laws or morals and justice” and Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason”, which was supported by L. I. Axelrod, failed. It was rejected by the majority of Marxists both during the World War I and after the triumph of the 1917 October Revolution.     

Burden of the Third Rome: The threat of Russian orthodox fundamentalism and Muslim eurasia

For contemporary Muslim public opinion, anxious to comprehend the revival of Orthodoxy and nostalgia for starina (old times), the growing radical Orthodox fundamentalism seems to indicate the return of anti‐Islamic Pan‐Slavism. The Neo‐Soviet National Liberals and National Communists are both opposed to the self‐determination of Muslims in Tatarstan, Boshkirstan, Chechnya, Crimea and Daghestan. They are also hostile to the Islamic revival ( al‐sahwa al‐islamiyya) in Central Asian Turkestan and Tajikistan. Their misconception of Islam is shaped by the long tradition of Russian messianism which is rejuvenated after every cyclical decline of Russian political authority. The success of Russian messianic nationalism lies neither in its selective historiosophy nor in its dialectic politics, but in the charismatic reasoning of the old geopolitical threats to the existence of Russians, demonized as the Islamic reconquest of Idel‐Ural (Musulmanskiye dvizheny na Volgu) initiated by the restoration of Pan‐Turkic Islamistan and the Muslim Commonwealth in Central Asia. Like other Russian philosophies of the past, modern Russian nationalism draws on a host of European thinkers and their ideas, but its context is governed by the fundamental notion of ‘Holy Mother Russia’ (Sviataya Matushka Rassieya) and its Byzantine paradigm of ‘the True Holy Church of Constantinople’. Influenced by the militant anti‐Islamic and anti‐Western traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, modem All‐Russian nationalism has become a new and dangerous chimera of economically and politically frustrated Russians. Revitalized Russian Orthodox fundamentalism is a real threat to the newly emancipated Islamic East, because the fall of Communist atheist tyranny did not eliminate the old threat of Russian Orthodox hegemony in the Russian Federation, Central Asia and the Caucasian independent republics. Invasion, occupation and military interventions in the Chechen Republic of Itchek‐eria, Azerbaijan and Tadjikistan, as well as the prospect of armed rebellions by the Russian separatist minorities in Kazakhstan, Daghestan, Ingushetia, Crimea and Tatarstan, explicitly demonstrate the nature of All‐Russian hegemonism at the end of the post‐postmodernist age. The geopolitical and cultural continuity of the Tsarist‐Soviet empire, regardless of the political and economic regime in Moscow, still determines Russian Islamophobia and animates an obsession with ‘national security’ among the rulers of the Kremlin, who attempt to improve Russia's strategic status by a re‐annexation of the so‐called ‘near abroad’ ( blizhnee zarubezhye) countries into the Russian‐dominated confederation of Independent States.     

Difference threshold for stimulus length under simultaneous and nonsimultaneous viewing conditions

The present study was concerned with Weber’s Law as it is related to the discriminability of the lengths of lines. Experiments were conducted to investigate three questions: (I) Is Weber’s Law equally applicable to simultaneous and nonsimultaneous viewing conditions? (2) Is the relationship between the stimulus sizes and the values ofDLs described more adequately by the function proposed by Weber or a generalized Weber’s Law stated by Miller? and (3) Is Weber’s Law better approximated by proximal or distal size? It was demonstrated that the discriminability of the lengths of lines follows Weber’s Law under the nonsimultaneous viewing condition, but not under the simultaneous viewing condition. Under the nonsimultaneous viewing condition, it was noted that the generalized Weber’s Law as stated by Miller described the relationship between the DL and stimulus size significantly better than the function proposed by Weber. From the results pertaining to the third question, it was not possible to determine whether the proximal or the distal size follows Weber’s Law more closely.     

The development of the political philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

This article follows the development of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy from his 1947 text, Humanism and Terror, through a number of essays in the Adventures of the Dialectic, to the Preface to Signs published in 1959. It shows the process by which Merleau-Ponty escaped the “grip of marxism” as a philosophy of history. It notes the link between his philosophy of history and the concrete historical events of his times, particularly the Russian Revolution and its degeneration into Stalinism. It suggests a certain analogy between Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the October Revolution and Kant’s reflection on the French Revolution. The notion of the universal class of the proletariat is the guiding thread in the analyses of both Merleau-Ponty’s proximity to marxism and the process by which he frees himself from its grip. We observe the role that this concept plays in Humanism and Terror and in the essays on Weber and Lukacs in the Adventure of the Dialectic where we eventually see its dissolution. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty arrives at a new conception of historical meaning which is neither totalizing or empiricist. The paper concludes by presenting an outline of the direction that his philosophy of history took after he extricated himself from marxism. This new philosophy took the form of a critical reflection on the role of the “notion of the hero” in 20th century political philosophy in general, particularly in Heidegger and Sartre.

A Controversy Over the Existence of Fictional Objects: Husserl and Ingarden on Imagination and Fiction

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the structure and elements of the intentional experiences of imagining fictional objects. The author critically examines the argument that whereas Husserl’s theory of imagination cannot do justice to fictional objects, Ingarden’s theory of purely intentional objects provides a basis for the theory of intentionality that explains the status of fictional objects. The paper discusses this argument to show that it is justified only in regard to Husserl’s early account of imagination, and on the condition of understanding contents as the phantasmas. Moreover, the author sketches Ingarden’s theory of imagination, and compares it to Husserl’s later account of imagination in terms of noetic-noematic structures. Finally, the author questions the sharp distinction between Husserl and Ingarden with respect to their theories of imagination and fictional objects by showing that it is hard to classify clearly their theories as content or object theories respectively.     

Bhartṛhari’s Verbal Holism: Some Hermeneutical Queries

One of the main problems regarding language which has bothered philosophers since antiquity is that it often misleads us. Linguistic understanding inevitably involves a subject who understands and the subject-matter or content of what she understands. Since the subject-matter of linguistic understanding is externally given to the subject as text or spoken word, linguistic understanding, therefore, is both subjective and objective at the same time and ineluctably involves interpretation on the part of the subject. But the moment we grant the subjective participation in understanding, the problem of universality of meaning would inevitably raise its head. This problem has been addressed in different ways by different thinkers across history and cultures. Even though some of the ancient Indian thinkers like Bhartṛhari mainly focus on understanding of the Vedic texts, they could probably have important clues for the problem of universality in understanding through language as it is posed by hermeneutic thinkers starting from St. Augustine in medieval period up to Gadamer and Habermas in more recent times. This paper attempts to explore and examine Bhartṛhari’s philosophy of verbal holism from the point of view of the problem of universality in hermeneutics.

     

‘The Russian Silver Age’: invention or intention? Review of Vyacheslav P. Shestakov: Russkii Serebrjanyi vek: zapozdavshii renessans [The Russian Silver Age: The belated Renaissance] St. Petersburg,Aleteia, 2017, 218 pp,ISBN: 978-5-906980-06-9

In his book, Vyacheslav P. Shestakov conducts a theoretical reconstruction of the concept of the ‘Silver Age’ of Russian culture. He highlights three typical features that this phenomenon has in common with the European Renaissance: Hellenism, aestheticism and eroticism. In an effort to disprove Omry Ronen’s claim that the Silver Age was an unsuccessful invention of literary scholars, Shestakov calls the Silver Age “a certain intention, viz. a project of the future.” The monograph includes sections on Russian philosophy, painting and ballet.

     

The worthless remains of a physician’s calling: Max Weber,William Osler,and the last virtue of physicians

On the centenary of Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” his essay still performs interpretative work. In it, Weber argues that the vocation of a scientist is to produce specialized, rationalized knowledge that will be superseded. Weber says this vocation is a rationalized version of the Protestant conception of calling or vocation (Beruf), tragically disenchanting the world and leaving the idea of calling as a worthless remains (caput mortuum). A similar trajectory can be seen in the physician William Osler’s writings, especially his essay “Internal Medicine as a Vocation,” in which the calling of a physician is described as both rational and noble. While Osler’s conception of the physician’s vocation has been formative for contemporary medicine, physicians are reporting burnout and leaving medical practice at escalating rates. As physicians abandon their noble vocations, an alternative conception of a physician’s vocation is needed. From the worthless remains of the physician’s rational and noble vocation, the labor of a physician can find grounding in humility.