Neoplatonic tendencies in Russian philosophy

The Absolute is a basic and fundamental issue for philosophy as such. I present different concepts of the Absolute (substantialism, energetism, escapism, methodologism). We can say that contemporary European philosophy “orphaned” the neo-Platonic tradition. Thereafter Russian philosophy developed in an intensive and turbulent as well as relatively uniform fashion, in view of the well-established Neo-Platonist context. This makes Russian philosophy not only part of a lasting universally acknowledged tradition; not only has Russian philosophy continued to develop currents of thought abandoned by modern European philosophiers, but it is also heir to a philosophical tradition of particular quality and value in the universal history of thought.     

Berdjaev: authentic existence or a negative sociology

This paper is a contribution to the constantly increasing Polish interest in Russian thought, especially in Nicolas Berdjaev’s philosophy. The differences between Western philosophy and Russian religious thinking are mentioned in passing. Berdjaev’s existential personalism, which from the sociological point of view can be described as a freedom from the world, is dealt with. The thinker contrasts persons and their activities with the objectified world and emphasizes the existential strangeness of the person in the world of culture bound by different determining factors.     

Introduction

This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence (or not) of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century.     

Writing the history of Russian philosophy

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.     

舍斯托夫对哲学定义的理解

哲学是什么？胡塞尔认为哲学是反思,俄罗斯宗教哲学家舍斯托夫却认为哲学是一种斗争。实际上,这是理性哲学思维和圣经思维的对立。理性哲学思维基于人是“理性的人”的认识,通过“逻辑”的手段来寻找事物背后的根据,哲学是“爱智慧”。圣经思维却从人是“神性的人”出发,把“雷霆和闪电”作为自己的“逻辑”,把哲学当作“生死事业”,因而哲学是斗争。舍斯托夫对理性哲学思维进行了抨击,他对哲学定义的理解是基于俄罗斯宗教存在哲学的立场。     

Cultural roots of Russian sophiology

Conclusion The development of Russian culture predetermined three propensities which form the intellectual framework of Russian national philosophy—historicism, mysticism and aestheticism. The most significant conceptions of Russian philosophy, united by the idea and image of Sophia, are defined by this framework. There is no contradiction in Russian philosophy between rational and mystical modes of thought because they are complementary in this tradition. It is, however, necessary to redefine the conception of rationality. I would like to finish with Solovyov's words: “The idea of a nation is not what it thinks of itself in time, but what God thinks of it in eternity”. I am very grateful to Dr. Graeme Marshall for his support and help.     

Posthumanism and Russian Religious Thought

I argue that one of the centralaspects characterizing the philosophicalhorizon at the threshhold of the twentieth andtwenty-first centuries is the erosion of thehumanist idea, i.e. `posthumanism'. Russianreligious philosophy is pervaded byconsiderations of humanism and posthumanism(antihumanism). The latter ascribes centralsignificance to the category of `Godmanhood'with which the leading Russian philosophersopposed the Nietzschean category of theOverman. But all of Germany philosophy can bereproached for having forsaken man. The`posthumanist' narrative about man and God isan extreme, indeed pathological symptom ofphilosophy waiting for Embodiment.     

An American Philosopher at Moscow State University, 1964–1965

For an American philosopher participating in a cultural exchangeprogram with the Soviet Union in 1964–65, a year spent in thePhilosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, studying and doingresearch in the history of Russian philosophy, provided manyinteresting insights – some of them surprising – into the theoryand practice of Marxism-Leninism and the nature of philosophicaleducation in Russia in the 1960s.     

Russian Phenomenology,or The Interrupted Flight

In this article the author notes that Russian phenomenology has a long history that has contributed to European progress in philosophy. He presents the main ideas of Gustav Shpet, a well‐known Russian thinker and original follower of Husserl. The heart of Shpet's positive philosophy is a special, skeptical state of mind—hermeneutic phenomenology. This positive philosophy, with its synthesis of hermeneutics and phenomenology, opposes Kant's negative, relativistic thought. In his work, Shpet focuses on the concept of a text. A text's meaning is objective and grasped via the nonpsychological methods of hermeneutics. Language largely determines the development of the human spiritual world, and so the problematics of language merge with the problematics of consciousness. Because texts are human products that express the influence of linguistic consciousness, our understanding of texts should be based on the analysis of language consciousness. Shpet characterizes the whole culture as a sign‐symbolical, objectified expression of the human spirit.     

Hegel’s political philosophy and the social imaginary of early Russian realism

This article considers aspects of the social imaginary underlying early Russian realist thought and narrative by exploring two canonical novels from the 1840s, Ivan Gon?arov’s Obyknovennaja istorija and Aleksandr Gercen’s Kto vinovat?, in light of Vissarion Belinskij’s activist reception of Hegel’s political philosophy. The Russian texts are read symptomatically against their western counterparts as illustrating the intriguing transformations that dominant European models of narrative and sociality undergo as they migrate to Russia.     

GALILEO IN THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CONTEXT: HISTORY,PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY,AND SCIENCE

The trial of Galileo remains a representative example of the alleged incompatibility between science and religion as well as a suggestive case study of the relationship between them from the Western historical and methodological perspective. However, the Eastern Christian view has not been explored to a significant extent. In this article, the author considers relevant aspects of the reception of the teaching of Copernicus and Galileo in Russian culture, especially in the works of scientists. Whereas in prerevolutionary Russia Galileo was considered a symbol of the unity of science and religion, in the Soviet period his name and especially his trial was largely used for atheistic propaganda purposes. The author discusses the most recent debate in the Russian Orthodox milieu. The second part is dedicated to the presence of Galileo in Russian religious philosophy, especially in the thought of Gregory Skovoroda, Ivan Kireyevsky, and Sergey Glagolev. Finally, the relation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the teaching of Galileo is considered.     

Il’enkov on Education

The philosophy of education is among the least celebrated sub-disciplines of Anglo-American philosophy. Its neglect is hard to reconcile, however, with the fact that human beings owe their distinctive psychological powers to cumulative cultural evolution, the process in which each generation inherits the collective cognitive achievements of previous generations through cultural, rather than biological, transmission. This paper examines the work of Eval’d Il’enkov, who, unlike his Anglo-American counterparts, maintains that education, broadly understood, is central to issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind. I expound Il’enkov’s position and defend it from five objections: (1) that Il’enkov treats education as a vehicle of social engineering; (2) that he is unduly preoccupied with controlling human development; (3) that he implausibly portrays the mind as a tabula rasa; (4) that his position is utopian; and (5) that it is technocratic. Defending Il’enkov illuminates a variety of issues about the objectives and ideals of education, formal and informal. I conclude that Il’enkov’s ideas, if complemented by those of other thinkers, Russian and Western, can help rejuvenate philosophy of education and reinstate the field at the centre of philosophical inquiry.     

Breaks and Links. Prospects for Russian Religious Philosophy Today

An analytical review of the current situation of Christian philosophyin Russia is presented, aiming to explain, why so much expectedrenaissance of this philosophy in the post-soviet period did nottake place. Russian philosophy is shown to be structurally a synthesis of the Western conceptual framework and Eastern Christian discourse,the latter being, in turn, the synthesis of patristic and asceticdiscourse, including two basic paradigms, deification (theosis)and sacralisation, and having energy as its dominant category.The key role of ascetic experience in Eastern Christian discourseis stressed. Topical problems related to the study of thisexperience, as well as concepts of energy and theosis, are discussed.     

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.     

Vladimir Solov'ëv as `A Mirror of the Russian Counter-Revolution'

In this narrative analysis oftwo Soviet dissertations in philosophy Idiscuss the role of Solov'ëv as one of themajor characters in the Soviet academicnarration of Russian philosophy: I show how theauthors (Turenko and Spirov) cope with thenecessity of criticizing Solov'ëv from theMarxist position and protect him from Westernscholars as the latter attempted to reviseRussian philosophy. I also discuss the way inwhich this requirement both to criticize andprotect is represented in the dissertations inwhich the strong Marxist posture and loyalty tocommunist doctrine corresponded to the authors'belief that Solov'ëv was a greatphilosopher who made mistakes, although hisphilosophy remains a part of Russia's culturalheritage. The main conclusion is that in spiteof their vision of the world as split into thecommunist and bourgeois camps, both authors tryto avoid straightforward Manichean assessmentsand, in 60s and 70s, were keen to find as manypositive elements in Solov'ëv's philosophyas possible.     

Culture,Contexts, and Directions in Russian Post-Soviet Philosophy

Studies in East European Thought - The author examines, historically and theoretically, issues related to the state and current tendencies of post-Soviet Russian philosophy. The accent falls on the...     

20th Century Russian Philosophy Of Science: A Philosophical Discussion

This article is based on a discussion held in Athens in April 2002, in the framework of a research visit, supported by the National Technical University of Athens, among the following participants: Alexander Pavlovits Ogurtsov (APO), Svetlena Sergeevna Neretina (SSN), and Michalis Assimakopoulos (MA) who translated and annotated the Russian text. The later wishes to thank his Russian teachers in philosophy, E.A. Mamchur and language, A.A. Nekrasova The translation was reviewed and emended by E.M. Swiderski, editor of SEET.Svetlana Neretina is senior researcher in the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), doctor of philosophy, titled professor for medieval philosophy, author of: The Conceptualism of Peter Abelard (1994), Believing Reason (1995), Tropes and Concepts (1999), Time of Culture (2000, with A. Ogurtsov), articles and translations on Philosophy of culture, email, neretina@iph.ras.ruAlexander Ogurtsov is head of the Department of Philosophy of Science and Technology in the Institute of Philosophy RAS, doctor of philosophy, author of: Disciplinary structure of Science (1988), From Philosophy of Nature to Logic of Science (1995), Philosophy of Science in the Age of the Enlightenment (1995), Time of Culture (2000, with S. Neretina), articles on different issues, email, neretina@iph.ras.ruM. Assimakopoulos is assistant professor at the National Techical University, Athens, has held visiting research posts at the Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, MIT, and Harvard University, has published articles on various topics in Science and Technology Studies, and has edited Greek translations of related books, email, massim@central.,ntua.gr     

The philosophy of time of Henri Bergson and Russian culture of the nineteenth–early twentieth centuries

Studies in East European Thought - The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the...     

Personality, person, subject in Russian legal philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century

The problem of the legal person is a central issue in legal philosophy and the theory of law. In this article I examine the semantic meaning of the concept of the person in Russian philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, considered to be the “Golden Age” of Russian legal thought. This provides an overview of the conception of the personality in the context of different legal approaches (theory of natural law, legal positivism, the psychological legal doctrine, and the sociological school of law). I indicate a polemic among the theories of the person and attempts to create an integral concept of the legal subject. In addition I present an analysis of the relation between the concepts of the legal subject and the moral person, which personify fundamental features of law and morality. In order to demarcate the notions of individual and the legal subject, I focus on doctrines of the artificial person or the juridical person.     

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.