Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Overview of the Problem
The very notion
of Russian philosophy poses a cultural-historical
problem. No consensus exists
on which works it encompasses and which authors made
decisive contributions. To
a large degree, a particular ideological conception of
Russian philosophy, of
what constitutes its essential traits, has driven the
choice of inclusions. In
turn, the various conceptions have led scholars to
locate the start of Russian
philosophy at different moments and with different
individuals. Among the first
to deal with this issue was T. Masaryk, a student of
Brentano's and later the
first president of the newly formed Czechoslovakia.
Masaryk, following the lead
of a pioneering Russian scholar E. Radlov (1854-1928),
held that Russian
thinkers have historically given short shrift to
epistemological issues in favor
of ethical and political discussions. For Masaryk,
even those who were indebted
to Kant's ethical teachings, scarcely understood and
appreciated his
epistemological criticism, which they viewed as
essentially subjectivistic.
True, Masaryk does comment that the Russian mind is
"more inclined" to mythology
than the Western European, a position that could lead
us to conclude that he
viewed the Russian mind as in some way innately
different from others. However,
he makes clear that the Russian predilection for
unequivocal acceptance or total
negation of a viewpoint stems, at least to a large
degree, from the native
Orthodox faith. Church teachings had "accustomed" the
Russian mind to accept
doctrinaire revelation without criticism. For this
reason Masaryk certainly
placed the start of Russian philosophy no earlier than
the 19th century with the
historiosophical musings of P. Chaadaev (1794-1856),
who not surprisingly also
pinned blame for the country's position in world
affairs on its Orthodox faith.
Others, particularly ethnic Russians, alarmed by
what they took to be
Masaryk's implicit denigration of their intellectual
character have denied that
Russian philosophy suffered from a veritable absence
of epistemological inquiry.
For N. Lossky (1870-1965) Russian philosophers
admittedly have, as a rule,
sought to relate their investigations, regardless of
the specific concern, to
ethical problems. This together with a prevalent
epistemological view that
externality is knowable--and indeed through an
immediate grasping or
intuition--has given Russian philosophy a form
distinct from much of modern
Western philosophy. Nevertheless, the relatively late
emergence of independent
Russian philosophical thought was a result of the
medieval "Tatar yoke" and of
the subsequent cultural isolation of Russia until
Peter the Great's opening to
the West. Even then Russian thought remained heavily
indebted to developments in
Germany until the emergence of 19th century
Slavophilism with I. Kireyevsky
(1806-56) and A. Khomiakov (1804-60).
Even more emphatically than Lossky, V. Zenkovsky
(1881-1962) denied the
absence of epistemological inquiry in Russian thought.
In his eyes, Russian
philosophy rejected the primacy accorded, at least
since Kant, to the theory of
knowledge over ethical and ontological issues. A
widespread, though not
unanimous, view among Russian philosophers, according
to Zenkovsky, is that
knowledge plays but a secondary role in human
existential affairs. Yet, whereas
many Russians historically have advocated such an
ontologism, it is by no means
unique to that nation. More characteristic of Russian
philosophy, for Zenkovsky,
is its anthropocentrism, i.e., a concern with the
human condition and humanity's
ultimate fate. For this reason, philosophy in Russia
has historically been
expressed in terms noticeably different from those in
the West. Furthermore,
like Lossky, Zenkovsky saw the comparatively late
development of Russian
philosophy as a result of the country's isolation and
subsequent infatuation
with Western modes of thought until the nineteenth
century. Thus, although
Zenkovsky placed Kireyevsky only at the "threshold" of
a mature, independent
"Russian philosophy" (understood as a system), the
former believed it possible
to trace the first independent stirrings back to G.
Skovoroda (1722-94), who,
strictly speaking, was the first Russian philosopher.
Largely as a result of rejecting the primacy of
epistemology and the
Cartesian model of methodological inquiry, Lossky, and
Zenkovsky even more,
included within "Russian philosophy" figures whose
views would hardly qualify
for inclusion within contemporary Western treatises in
the history of
philosophy. During the Soviet period, Russian scholars
appealed to the Marxist
doctrine linking intellectual thought to the
socio-economic base for their own
rather broad notion of philosophy. Any attempt at
confining their history to
what passes for professionalism today in the West was
simply dismissed as
"bourgeois." In this way, such literary figures as
Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were
routinely included in texts, though just as routinely
condemned for their own
supposedly bourgeois mentality. Western studies
devoted to the history of
Russian philosophy have largely since their emergence
acquiesced in this
acceptance of a broad understanding of philosophy. F.
Copleston, for example,
conceded that "for historical reasons" philosophy in
Russia tended to be
informed by a socio-political orientation. Such an
apology for his book-length
study can be seen as somewhat self-serving, since he
recognizes that philosophy
as a theoretical discipline never flourished in
Russia. Likewise, A. Walicki
fears viewing the history of Russian philosophy from
the contemporary Western
technical standpoint would result in an impoverished
picture populated with
wholly unoriginal authors. Obviously, one cannot write
a history of some
discipline if that discipline lacks content!
Of those seemingly unafraid to admit the historical
poverty of philosophical
thought in Russia, G. Shpet stands out not only for
his vast historical
erudition but also because of his own original
philosophical contributions.
Shpet, almost defiantly, characterized the
intellectual life of Russia as rooted
in an "elemental ignorance." Unlike Masaryk, however,
Shpet did not view this
dearth as stemming from Russia's Orthodox faith but
from his country's
linguistic isolation. The adopted language of the
Bulgars lacked a cultural and
intellectual tradition. Without a heritage by which to
appreciate ideas,
intellectual endeavors were valued for their utility
alone. Although the
government saw no practical benefit in it, the Church
initially found philosophy
useful as a weapon to safeguard its position. This
toleration extended no
further, and certainly the clerical authorities
countenanced no divergence or
independent creativity. With Peter the Great's
governmental reforms, the state
saw the utility of education and championed those and
only those disciplines
that served a bureaucratic and apologetic function.
After the successful
military campaign against Napoleon, many young Russian
officers had their first
experience of Western European culture and returned to
Russia with incipient
revolutionary ideas that in a relatively short time
found expression in the
abortive Decembrist Uprising of 1825. Finally, towards
the end of the 1830s a
new group, a "nihilistic intelligentsia," appeared
that preached a toleration of
cultural forms, including philosophy, but only insofar
as they served the
"people." Such was the fate of philosophy in Russia
that it was virtually never
viewed as anything but a tool or weapon and had to
incessantly demonstrate this
utility on fear of losing its legitimacy. Shpet
concludes that philosophy as
knowledge, as being of value for its own sake, was
never given a chance.
Regardless of the date from which we place the
start of Russian philosophy
and its first practitioner--and we will have more to
say on this topic as we
go--few would dispute the religious orientation of
Russian thought prior to
Peter the Great and that professional secular
philosophy arose comparatively
recently in the country's history. If we are to avoid
a double standard, one for
"Western" thought and another for Russian, which is
not merely self-serving but
also condescending, we must examine the historical
record for indisputable
instances of philosophical thought that would be
recognized as such regardless
of where they originated. Although our inclusions,
omissions and evaluations, on
the whole, may more closely resemble those of Shpet
than, say, Lossky, we
thereby need not invoke any metaphysical historical
scheme to justify them.
How precisely to subdivide the history of Russian
philosophy has also been a
subject of some controversy. In his pioneering study
from 1898, A. Vvedensky
(see below), Russia's foremost neo-Kantian, found
three periods up to his time.
Of course, in light of 20th century events his list
must be revisited,
reexamined and expanded. We can readily discern five
periods in Russian
philosophy, the last of which is still too recent to
characterize. Unlike as in
most major nations, specific extra-philosophical,
viz., political, events
clearly played a major if not the sole cause in
terminating a period.
2. Historical Periods
a. The Period of Philosophical Remarks (ca.1755-1825)
Although one can find scattered remarks of a
philosophical nature in Russian
writings before the mid-eighteenth century, these are,
at best, of marginal
interest to the professionally trained philosopher.
For the most part these
remarks were not intended to stand as rational
arguments in support of a
position. Even in the ecclesiastic academies, the thin
scholastic veneer of the
accepted texts was merely a traditional schematic
device, a relic from the time
when the only appropriate texts available were
Western. For whatever reason only
with the opening of the nation's first university in
Moscow in 1755 do we see
the emergence of something resembling philosophy, as
we use that term today.
Even then, however, the floodgates did not burst wide
open. The first occupant
of the chair of philosophy, N. Popovsky (1730-1760),
was more suited to the
teaching of poetry and rhetoric, to which chair he was
shunted after one brief
year.
Sensing the dearth of adequately trained native
personnel, the government
invited two Germans to the university, thus initiating
a practice that would
continue well into the next century. The story of the
first ethnic Russian to
hold the professorship in philosophy for any
significant length of time is
itself indicative of the precarious existence of
philosophy in Russia for much
of its history. Having already obtained a magister's
degree in 1760 with a
thesis entitled "Rassuzhdenie o bessmertii dushi
chelovechoj" ("A Treatise on
the Immortality of the Human Soul"), Dmitry Anichkov
(1733-1788) submitted in
1769 a dissertation on natural religion that was found
to contain atheistic
opinions and was subjected to an 18 year (!)
investigation. Legend has it that
the dissertation was publicly burned, although there
is no firm evidence for
this. As was common at the time, Anichkov used
Wolffian philosophy manuals and
during his first years taught in Latin.
Another notable figure at this time was S.
Desnitsky (~1740-1789), who taught
jurisprudence at Moscow University. Desnitsky attended
university in Glasgow,
where he studied under Adam Smith and became familiar
with the works of Hume.
The influence of Smith and British thought in general
is evident in memoranda
from February 1768 that Desnitsky wrote on government
and public finance. Some
of these ideas, in turn, appeared virtually verbatim
in a portion of Catherine
the Great's famous Nakaz, or Instruction, published in
April of that year.
Also in 1768 appeared Ya. Kozelsky's
Filosoficheskie predlozhenija
(Philosophical Propositions), an unoriginal but
noteworthy collection of
numbered statements on a host of topics, not all of
which were philosophical in
a technical narrow sense. By his own admission the
material dealing with
"theoretical philosophy" was drawn from the Wolffians,
primarily Baumeister, and
that dealing with "moral philosophy" from the French
Enlightenment thinkers,
primarily Rousseau, Montesquieu and Helvetius. The
most interesting feature of
the treatise is its acceptance of a social contract,
of an eight-hour workday,
the explicit rejection of great disparities of wealth
and its silence on
religion as a source of morality. Nevertheless, in his
"theoretical philosophy"
Kozelsky (1728-1795) rejected atomism and the
Newtonian conception of the
possibility of empty space.
During Catherine's reign, plans were made to
establish several universities
in addition to that in Moscow. Of course, nothing came
of these. Moscow
University itself had a difficult time attracting a
sufficient number of
students, most of whom came from poorer families.
Undoubtedly given the state of
the Russian economy and society the virtually
ubiquitous attitude was that the
study of philosophy was a sheer luxury with no
utilitarian value. In terms of
general education the government evidently concluded
that sending students
abroad offered a better investment than spending large
sums at home where the
infrastructure needed much work and time to develop.
Unfortunately, although
there were some who returned to Russia and played a
role in the intellectual
life of the country, many more failed to complete
their studies for a variety of
reasons including falling into debt. Progress,
however, skipped a beat in 1796
when Catherine's son and successor Paul ordered the
recall of all Russian
students studying abroad.
Despite its relatively small number of educational
institutions, Russia felt
a need to invite foreign scholars to help staff these
establishments. One of the
scholars, J. Schaden (1731-97), ran a private boarding
school in Moscow in
addition to teaching philosophy at the university. The
most notorious incident
from these early years, however, involves the German
Ludwig Mellman, who in the
1790s introduced Kant's thought into Russia. Mellman's
advocacy found little
sympathy even among his colleagues at Moscow
University, and in a report to the
Tsar the public prosecutor charged Mellman with
"mental illness." Not only was
Mellman dismissed from his position, but he was forced
to leave Russia as well.
Under the initiative of the new Tsar, Alexander I,
two new universities were
opened in 1804 and with them the need for adequately
trained professors again
arose. Once more the government turned to Germany, and
with the dislocations
caused by the Napoleonic Wars Russia stood in an
excellent position to reap an
intellectual harvest. Unfortunately, many of these
invited scholars left little
lasting impact on Russia thought. For example, one of
the most outstanding,
Johann Buhle (1763-1821), had already written a number
of works on the history
of philosophy before taking up residence in Moscow.
Yet, once in Russia his
literary output plummeted, and his ignorance of the
local language certainly did
nothing to extend his influence.
Nonetheless, the sudden influx of German scholars,
many of whom were
intimately familiar with the latest philosophical
developments, acted as an
intellectual tonic on others. The arrival of the Swiss
physicist Franz Bronner
(1758-1850) at the new University of Kazan may have
introduced Kant's
epistemology to the young future mathematician
Lobachevsky. The Serb physicist
A. Stoikovich (1773-1832), who taught at Kharkov
University, prepared a text for
class use in which the content was arranged in
conformity with Kant's
categories. One of the earliest Russian treatments of
a philosophical topic,
however, was A. Lubkin's two "Pis'ma o kriticheskoj
filosofii" ("Letters on
Critical Philosophy") from 1805. Lubkin (1770/1-1815),
who at the time taught at
the Petersburg Military Academy, criticized Kant's
theory of space and time for
its agnostic implications saying that we obtain our
concepts of space and time
from experience. Likewise, in 1807 a professor of
mathematics at Kharkov
University, T. Osipovsky (1765-1832), delivered a
subsequently published speech
"O prostranstve i vremeni" ("On Space and Time"), in
which he questioned
whether, given the various considerations, Kant's
position was the only logical
conclusion possible. Assuming the Leibnizian notion of
a preestablished harmony,
we can uphold all of Kant's specific observations
concerning space and time
without concluding that they exist solely within our
cognitive faculty.
Osipovsky went on to make a number of other perceptive
criticisms of Kant's
position, though Kant's German critics already voiced
many of these during his
lifetime.
In the realm of social and political philosophy, as
understood today, the
most interesting and arguably the most sophisticated
document from the period of
the Russian Enlightenment is A. Kunitsyn's Pravo
estestvennoe (Natural
Law). In his summary text consisting of 590
sections, Kunitsyn (1783-1840)
clearly demonstrated the influence of Kant and
Rousseau, holding that rational
dictates concerning human conduct form moral
imperatives, which we feel as
obligations. Since each of us possesses reason, we
must always be treated
morally as ends, never as means toward an end. In
subsequent paragraphs,
Kunitsyn elaborated his conception of natural rights
including his belief that
among these rights is freedom of thought and
expression. His outspoken
condemnation of serfdom, however, is not one that the
Russian authorities could
either have missed or passed over. Shortly after the
text reached their
attention all attainable copies were confiscated, and
Kunitsyn himself was
dismissed from his teaching duties at St. Petersburg
University in March 1821.
Another scholar associated with St. Petersburg
University was Aleksandr I.
Galich (1783-1848). Sent to Germany for further
education, he there became
acquainted with Schelling's thought. With his return
to Russia in 1813 he was
appointed adjunct professor of philosophy at the
Pedagogical Institute in St.
Petersburg, and when in 1819 it was transformed into a
university Galich was
named to the chair of philosophy. His teaching career,
however, was short-lived,
for in 1821 Galich was charged with atheism and
revolutionary sympathies.
Although stripped of teaching duties, he continued to
draw a full salary until
1837. Galich's importance lays not so much in his own
quasi-Schellingian views
as his pioneering treatments of the history of
philosophy, aesthetics and
philosophical anthropology. His two-volume Istorija
filosofskikh sistem
(History of Philosophical Systems) from 1818-19
concluded with an
exposition of Schelling's position and contained quite
probably the first
discussion in Russian of Hegel and, in particular, of
his Science of
Logic. Galich's Opyt nauki izjashchnogo
(An Attempt at a Science
of the Beautiful) from 1825 is certainly among the
first Russian treatises
in aesthetics. For Galich the beautiful is the
sensuous manifestation of truth
and as such is a sub-discipline within philosophy. His
1834 work Kartina
cheloveka (A Picture of Man) marked the
first Russian foray into
philosophical anthropology. For Galich all
"scientific" disciplines, including
theology, are in need of an anthropological
foundation, and, moreover, such a
foundation must recognize the unity of the human
aspects and functions be they
corporeal or spiritual.
The increasing religious and political
conservativism that marked Tsar
Alexander's later years imposed onerous restrictions
on the dissemination of
philosophy both in the classroom and in print. By the
time of the Tsar's death
in 1825, most reputable professors of philosophy had
already been
administratively silenced or cowed into compliance. At
the end of that year the
aborted coup known as the Decembrist Uprising, many of
whose leaders had been
exposed to the infection of Western European thought,
only hardened the
basically anti-intellectual attitude of the new Tsar
Nicholas. Shortly after I.
Davydov (1792/4-1863), hardly either an original or a
gifted thinker, had given
his introductory lecture "O vozmozhnosti filosofii kak
nauki" ("On the
Possibility of Philosophy as Science") in May 1826 as
professor of philosophy at
Moscow University, the chair was temporarily abolished
and Davydov shifted to
teaching mathematics.
b. The Philosophical Dark Age (ca. 1825-1860)
The reign of Nicholas I
(1825-1855) was marked by
intellectual obscurantism and an enforced
philosophical silence, unusual even by
Russian standards. The Minister of Public Education,
A. Shishkov, blamed the
Decembrist Uprising explicitly on the contagion of
foreign ideas. To prevent
their spread he and Nicholas's other advisors
restricted the access of non-noble
youths to higher education and had the tsar enact a
comprehensive censorship law
that held publishers legally responsible even after
the official censor's
approval of a manuscript. Yet the scope of this new
"cast-iron statute" was
conceived so broadly that even at the time it was
remarked that the Lord's
Prayer could be interpreted as revolutionary speech.
Prevented an outlet in a
dedicated professional manner at the universities,
philosophy found energetic
though amateurish expression first in the faculties of
medicine and physics and
then later in fashionable salons and social
gatherings, where discipline, rigor
and precision were held of little value. During these
years, those empowered to
teach philosophy at the universities struggled with
the task of justifying the
very existence of their discipline not in terms of a
search for truth, but as
having some social utility. Given the prevailing
climate of opinion, this proved
to be a hard sell. The news of revolutions in Western
Europe in 1848 was the
last straw. All talk of reform and social change was
simply ruled impermissible,
and travel beyond the Empire's borders was forbidden.
Finally, in 1850, the
minister of education took the step that was thought
too extreme in the 1820s:
To protect Russia from the latest philosophical
systems--and therefore
intellectual infection--the teaching of philosophy in
public universities was
simply to be eliminated. Logic and psychology were
permitted but only in the
safe hands of theology professors. This situation
persisted until 1863, when in
the aftermath of the humiliating Crimean War
philosophy reentered the public
academic arena. Even then, however, severe
restrictions on its teaching
persisted until 1889!
Nevertheless, despite the oppressive atmosphere
some independent
philosophizing emerged during the Nicholas years.
True, at first Schelling's
influence dominated abstract discussions, particularly
those concerning the
natural sciences and their place vis-a-vis the other
academic disciplines.
However, the two chief Schellingians of the era, D.
Vellansky (1774-1847) and M.
Pavlov (1793-1840), both valued German Romanticism
more for its sweeping
conclusions than for either its arguments or as the
logical outcome of a
philosophical development that had begun with Kant.
Though both Vellansky and
Pavlov penned a considerable number of works, none of
them would find a place
within today's philosophy curriculum. Slightly later,
in the 1830s and '40s, the
discussion turned to Hegel's system, again with great
enthusiasm but with little
understanding either with what Hegel actually meant or
the philosophical
backdrop of his writings. Not surprisingly Hegel's own
self-described "voyage of
discovery," the Phenomenology of Spirit,
remained an unknown text.
Suffice it to say that but for the dearth of original
competent investigations
at this time, the mere mention of the Stankevich and
the Petrashevsky circles,
the Slavophiles and the Westernizers, etc. in a
history of philosophy text would
be regarded a travesty.
Nevertheless, amid the darkness of official
obscurantism there were a few
brief glimmers of light. In his 1833 Vvedenie v
nauku filosofii
(Introduction to the Science of Philosophy) F.
Sidonsky (1805-1873)
treated philosophy as a rational discipline
independent of theology. Although
conterminous with theology, Sidonsky regarded
philosophy as both a necessary and
a natural searching of the human mind for answers that
faith alone cannot
adequately supply. By no means did he take this to
mean that reason and faith
conflict. Revelation provides the same truths but the
path taken, though
dogmatic and therefore rationally unsatisfying, is
considerably shorter. Much
more could be said about Sidonsky's introductory text,
but both it and its
author were quickly consigned to the margins of
history. Notwithstanding his
book's desired recognition in some secular circles,
Sidonsky soon after its
publication was shifted first from philosophy to the
teaching of French and then
simply dismissed from the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastic
Academy in 1835. This time
it was the clerical authorities who found his book, it
was said, insufficiently
rigorous from the official religious standpoint.
Sidonsky spent the next 30
years, that is, until the re-introduction of
philosophy in the universities, as
a parish priest in the Russian capital.
Among those who most resolutely defended the
autonomy of philosophy during
this "Dark Age" were O. Novitsky (1806-1884) and I.
Mikhnevich (1809-1885), both
of whom taught for a period at the Kiev Ecclesiastic
Academy. Although neither
was a particularly outstanding thinker and left no
enduring works on the
perennial philosophical problems, both stand out for
refusing simply to subsume
philosophy to religion or politics. Novitsky in 1834
accepted the professorship
in philosophy at the new Kiev University, where he
taught until the government's
abolition of philosophy, after which he worked as a
censor. Mikhnevich, on the
other hand, became an administrator.
One of the most interesting pieces of philosophical
analysis from this time
came from another Kiev scholar, S. Gogotsky
(1813-1889). In his undergraduate
thesis "Kriticheskij vzgljad na filosofiju Kanta" ("A
Critical Look at Kant's
Philosophy") from 1847, Gogotsky approached his topic
from a moderate and
informed Hegelianism, unlike that of his more vocal
but dilettantish
contemporaries. For Gogotsky, Kant's thought
represented a distinct improvement
over the positions of empiricism and rationalism.
However, his advocacy of such
ideas as that of the uncognizability of things in
themselves, the rejection of
the real existence of things in space and time, the
sharp dichotomy between
moral duty and happiness, etc. demonstrated his own
extremism. During this "Dark
Age," Gogotsky continued at Kiev University but taught
pedagogy and remained
silent on philosophical issues.
From our standpoint today one of the most important
characteristics of the
philosophizing of the early "Kiev School" is the
stress placed on the history of
Western philosophy and particularly on epistemology.
Mikhnevich, for example,
wrote, "philosophy is the Science of
consciousness...of the subject and the
nature of our consciousness." Based on statements such
as this, some
(A.Vvedensky, A. Nikolsky) have seen the influence of
Fichte.
The teaching of philosophy at this time was not
eliminated from the
ecclesiastic academies, the separate institutions of
higher education parallel
to the secular universities for those from a clerical
background. Largely with
good reason, the government felt secure about their
political and intellectual
passivity. Among the most noteworthy of the professors
at an ecclesiastic
academy during the Nicholaevan years was F. Golubinsky
(1798-1854), who taught
in Moscow. Generally recognized as the founder of the
"Moscow School of Theistic
Philosophy," his historical importance lies solely in
his unabashed
subordination of philosophy to theology and
epistemology to ontology. For
Golubinsky, humans seek knowledge in an attempt to
recover an original
diremption, a lost intimacy with the Infinite!
Nevertheless, the idea of God is
felt immediately within us. Owing to this immediacy,
there is no need for and
cannot be a proof of God's existence. Such was the
tenor of "philosophical"
thought in the religious institutions of the time.
At the very end of the "Dark Age" one figure--the
Owl of Minerva or was it a
phoenix?--emerged who combined the scholarly erudition
of his Kiev predecessors
with the dominating "ontologism" of the theistic
apologists, such as Golubinsky.
P. Jurkevich (1826-1874) stood with one foot in the
Russian philosophical past
and one in the future. Serving as the bridge between
the eras, he largely
defined the contours along which philosophical
discussions would be shaped for
the next two generations.
c. The Emergence of Russian Professional Philosophy (ca. 1860-1917)
While a professor of philosophy at the Kiev Ecclesiastic Academy, Jurkevich in 1861
caught the attention of a well-connected publisher with a long essay in the obscure house organ
of the Academy attacking Chernyshevsky's materialism and anthropologism, which at the time
were all the rage among Russia's youth. Having decided to re-introduce philosophy to the
universities, the government, nevertheless, worried lest a limited and controlled measure of
independent thought get out of hand. The decision to appoint Jurkevich to the professorship at
Moscow University, it was hoped, would serve the government's ends while yet combating
fashionable radical trends.
In a spate of articles from his last three years in Kiev, Jurkevich forcefully argued in support of a
number of seemingly disconnected theses but all of which demonstrated his own deep
commitment to a Platonic idealism. His most familiar stance, his rejection of the popular
materialism of the day, was directed not actually at metaphysical materialism but at a physicalist
reductionism. Among the points Jurkevich made was that no physiological description could do
justice to the revelations offered by introspective psychology and that the transformation of
quantity into quality occurred not in the subject, as the materialists held, but in the interaction
between the object and the subject. Jurkevich did not rule out the possibility that necessary
forms conditioned this interaction, but, in keeping with the logic of this notion, he ruled out an
uncognizable "thing in itself" conceived as an object without any possible subject.
Although Jurkevich already presented the scheme of his overall philosophical approach in his
first article "Ideja" ("The Idea") from 1859, his last, "Razum po ucheniju Platona i opyt po
ucheniju Kanta" ("Plato's Theory of Reason and Kant's Theory of Experience"), written in
Moscow, is today his most readable work. In it he concluded, as did Spinoza and Hegel before
him, that epistemology cannot serve as first philosophy, i.e., that a body of knowledge need not
and, indeed, cannot begin by asking for the conditions of its own possibility. In Jurkevich's
best-known expression: "In order to know it is unnecessary to have knowledge of knowledge
itself." Kant, he held, conceived knowledge not in the traditional, Platonic sense as knowledge
of what truly is, but in a radically different sense as knowledge of the universally valid. Hence,
for Kant, the goal of science was to secure useful information, whereas for Plato science secured
truth.
Unfortunately, Jurkevich's style prevented a greater dissemination of his views. In his own day,
his unfashionable views, cloaked as they were in scholastic language with frequent allusions to
scripture, hardly endeared him to a young, secular audience. Jurkevich remained largely a figure
of derision at the university. Today, it is these same qualities, together with his failure to
elucidate his argument in distinctly rational terms, that make studying his writings both
laborious and unsatisfying. In terms of immediate impact, he had only one student--Vladimir
Solovyov. Yet, notwithstanding his meager direct impact Jurkevic's Christian Platonism proved
deeply influential until at least the Bolshevik Revolution.
Unlike Jurkevich, P. Lavrov (1823-1900), a teacher of mathematics at the Petersburg Military
Academy, actively aspired to a university chair in philosophy, viz., the one in the capital when
the position was restored in the early 1860s. However, the government apparently already
suspected Lavrov of questionable allegiance and, despite a recommendation from a widely
respected scholar (K. Kavelin), awarded the position instead to Sidonsky.
In a series of lengthy essays written when he had university aspirations, Lavrov developed a
position, which he termed "anthropologism," that opposed metaphysical speculation, including
the then-fashionable materialism of left-wing radicalism. Instead, he defended a simple
epistemological phenomenalism that at many points bore a certain similarity to Kant's position
though without the latter's intricacies, nuances and rigor. Essentially, Lavrov maintained that all
claims regarding objects are translatable into statements about appearances or an aggregate of
them. Additionally, he held that we have a collection of convictions concerning the external
world, convictions whose basis lies in repeated experiential encounters with similar
appearances. The indubitability of consciousness and our irresistible conviction in the reality of
the external world are fundamental and irreducible. The error of both materialism and idealism
fundamentally in the mistaken attempt to collapse one into the other. Since both are
fundamental, the attempt to prove either is ill-conceived from the outset. Consistent with this
skepticism, Lavrov argued that the study of "phenomena of consciousness," a "phenomenology
of spirit," could be raised to a science only through introspection, a method he called
"subjective." Likewise, the natural sciences, built on our firm belief in the external world, need
little support from philosophy. To question the law of causality, for example, is, in effect, to
undermine the scientific standpoint.
Parallel to the two principles of theoretical philosophy, Lavrov spoke of two principles
underlying practical philosophy. The first is that the individual is consciously free in his worldly
activity. Unlike for Kant, however, this principle is not a postulate but a phenomenal fact; it
carries no theoretical implications. For Lavrov, the moral sphere is quite autonomous from the
theoretical. The second principle is that of "ideal creation." Just as in the theoretical sphere we
set ourselves against a real world, so in the practical sphere we set ourselves against ideals. Just
as the real world is the source of knowledge, the world of our ideals serves as the motivation for
action. In turning our own image of ourselves into an ideal, we create an ideal of personal
dignity. Initially, the human individual conceives dignity along egoistic lines. In time, however,
the individual's interaction, including competition, with others gives rise to his conception of
them as having equal claims to dignity and to rights. In linking rights to human dignity, Lavrov
thereby denied that animals have rights.
Of a similar intellectual bent, N. Mikhailovsky (1842-1904) was even more of a popular writer
than Lavrov. Nevertheless, Mikhailovsky's importance in the history of Russian philosophy lies
in his defense of the role of subjectivity in human studies. Unlike the natural sciences, the aim of
which is the discovery of objective laws, the human sciences, according to Mikhailovsky, must
take into account the epistemologically irreducible fact of conscious, goal-oriented activity.
While not disclaiming the importance of objective laws, both Lavrov and Mikhailovsky held
that the social scientist must introduce a subjective, moral evaluation into his analyses. Unlike
the natural scientist, the social scientist recognizes the malleability of the laws under his
investigation.
Comtean positivism, which for quite some years enjoyed considerable attention in 19th century
Russia, found its most resolute and philosophically notable defender in V. Lesevich (1837-
1905). Finding that it lacked a scientific grounding, Lesevich believed that positivism needed an
inquiry into the principles that guide the attainment of knowledge. Such an inquiry must take for
granted some body of knowledge without simply identifying itself with it. To the now-classic
Hegelian charge that such a procedure amounted to not venturing into the water before learning
how to swim, Lesevich replied that what was sought was not how to swim but, rather, the
conditions that make swimming possible. In this vein he consciously turned to the Kantian
model while remaining highly critical of any talk of an a priori. In the end, Lesevich drew
heavily upon psychology and empiricism for establishing the conditions of knowledge, thus
leaving himself open to the charge of psychologism and relativism.
As the years passed, Lesevich moved from his early "critical realism," which abhorred
metaphysical speculation, to an appreciation for the positivism of Avenarius and Mach.
However, this very abhorrence, which was decidedly unfashionable, as well as his political
involvement somewhat limited his influence. Undoubtedly, of the philosophical figures to
emerge in the 1870s, indeed arguably in any decade, the greatest was V. Solovyov (1853-1900). In
fact, if we view philosophy not as an abstract, independent inquiry but as a more or less
sustained intellectual conversation, then we can precisely date the start of Russian secular
philosophy--24 November 1874, the day of Solovyov's defense of his magister's dissertation,
Krizis zapadnoj filosofii (The Crisis of Western Philosophy). For only from that
day forward do we find a sustained discussion within Russia of philosophical issues considered
on their own terms, that is, without overt appeal to their extra-philosophical ramifications, such
as their religious or political implications.
Concerning Solovyov, I will limit myself here to a few lines. After completion and defense of
his magister's dissertation, Solovyov penned a highly metaphysical treatise entitled "Filosofskie
nachala tsel'nogo znanija" ("Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge"), which he never
completed. However, at approximately the same time he also worked on what became his
doctoral dissertation, Kritika otvlechennykh nachal (Critique of Abstract
Principles). the very title suggesting a Kantian influence. Although originally intended to
consist of three parts, one each covering ethics, epistemology and aesthetics, the completed
work omitted the latter. For more than a decade Solovyov remained silent on philosophical
questions, preferring instead to concentrate on topical issues. When his interest was rekindled in
the 1890s in preparing a second edition of his Kritika, a recognition of a fundamental
shift in his views led him to recast their systemization in the form of an entirely new work,
Opravdanie dobra (The Justification of the Good). Presumably, he intended
follow up his ethical investigations with respective treatises on epistemology and aesthetics.
Unfortunately, Solovyov died having completed only three brief chapters of the "Theoretical
Philosophy."
Solovyov's most relentless philosophical critic was B. Chicherin (1828-1904), certainly one of
the most remarkable and versatile figures in Russian intellectual history. Despite his sharp
differences with Solovyov, Chicherin himself accepted a modified Hegelian standpoint in
metaphysics. Although viewing all of existence as rational, the rational process embodied in
existence unfolds "dialectically." Chicherin, however, parted with the traditional triadic
schematization of the Hegelian dialectic, arguing that the first moment consists of an initial
unity of the one and the many. The second and third moments, paths or steps are antithetical and
take various forms in different spheres, such as matter and reason or universal and particular.
The final moment is a fusion of the two into a higher unity.
In the social and ethical realm, Chicherin placed great emphasis on individual human freedom.
Social and political laws should strive for morally neutrality, permitting the flowering of
individual self-determination. In this way, he remained a staunch advocate of economic
liberalism, seeing essentially no role for government intervention. The government itself had no
right to use its powers either to aim at a moral ideal or to force its citizens to seek an ideal. On
the other hand, the government should not use its powers to prevent the citizenry from the
exercise of private morality. Despite receiving less treatment than the negative conception of
freedom, Chicherin, nevertheless, upheld the idealist conception of positive freedom as the
striving for moral perfection and in this way reaching the Absolute.
Another figure to emerge in the late 1870s and 1880s was the neo-Leibnizian A. Kozlov (1831-
1901), who taught at Kiev University and who called his highly developed metaphysical stance
"panpsychism." As part of this stance, he, in contrast to Hume, argued for the substantial unity
of the Self or I, which makes experience possible. This unity he held to be an obvious fact.
Additionally, rejecting the independent existence of space and time, Kozlov held that they
possessed being only in relation to thinking and sensing creatures. Like Augustine, however,
Kozlov believed that God viewed time as a whole without our divisions into past, present and
future. To substantiate space and time, to attribute an objective existence to either, begs an
answer to where and when to place them. Indeed, the very formulation of the problem
presupposes a relation between a substantiated space or time and our selves. Lastly, unlike Kant,
Kozlov thought all judgments are analytic.
An unfortunately largely neglected figure to emerge in this period was M. Karinsky (1840-
1917), who taught philosophy at the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastic Academy. Unlike many of his
contemporaries, Karinsky devoted much of his attention to logic and an analysis of arguments in
Western philosophy, rather than metaphysical speculation. Unlike his contemporaries, Karinsky
came to philosophy with an analytical bent rather than with a literary flair--a fact that made his
writing style often decidedly torturous. True to those schooled in the Aristotleian tradition,
Karinsky, like Brentano, to whom he has been compared, held that German Idealism was
essentially irrationalist. Arguing against Kant, Karinsky believed that our inner states are not
merely phenomenal, that the reflective self is not an appearance. Inner experience, unlike outer,
yields no distinction between reality and appearance. In his general epistemology, Karinsky
argued that knowledge was built on judgments, which were legitimate conclusions from
premises. Knowledge, however, could be traced back to a set of ultimate unprovable, yet
reliable, truths, which he called "self-evident." Karinsky argued for a pragmatic interpretation of
realism, saying that something exists in another room unperceived by me means I would
perceive it if I were to go into that room. Additionally, he accepted an analogical argument for
the existence of other minds similar to that of Mill and Russell.
In his two-volume magnum opus Polozhitel'nye zadachi filosofii (The Positive Tasks
of Philosophy), L. Lopatin (1855-1920), who taught at Moscow University, defended the
possibility of metaphysical knowledge, claiming that empirical knowledge is limited to
appearances, whereas metaphysics yields knowledge of the true nature of things. Although
Lopatin saw Hegel and Spinoza as the definitive expositors of rationalistic idealism, he rejected
both for their very transformation of concrete relations into rational or logical ones.
Nevertheless, Lopatin affirmed the role of reason particularly in philosophy in conscious
opposition to, as he saw it, Solovyov's ultimate surrender to religion. In the first volume, he
attacked materialism as itself a metaphysical doctrine that elevates matter to the status of an
absolute that cannot explain the particular properties of individual things or the relation between
things and consciousness. In his second volume, Lopatin distinguishes mechanical causality
from "creative causality," according to which one phenomenon follows another, though with
something new added to it. Despite his wealth of metaphysical speculation, quite foreign to most
contemporary readers, Lopatin's observations on the self or ego derived from speculation that is
not without some interest. Denying that the self has a purely empirical nature, Lopatin
emphasized that the undeniable reality of time demonstrated the non-temporality of the self, for
temporality could only be understood by that which is outside time. Since the self is extra-
temporal, it cannot be destroyed, for that is an event in time. Likewise, in opposition to
Solovyov, Lopatin held that the substantiality of the self is immediately evident in
consciousness.
In the waning years of the 19th century, neo-Kantianism came to dominate German philosophy.
Because of the increasing tendency to send young Russian graduate students to Germany for
additional training, it should come as no surprise that that movement gained a foothold in Russia
too. In one of the very few Russian works devoted to philosophy of science A. Vvedensky
(1856-1925) presented, in his lengthy dissertation, a highly idealistic Kantian interpretation of
the concept of matter as understood in the physics of his day. He tried therein to defend and
update Kant's own work as exemplified in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science. Vvedensky's book, however, attracted little attention and exerted even less
influence. Much more widely recognized were his own attempts in subsequent years, while
teaching at St. Petersburg University, to recast Kant's transcendental idealism in, what he
called, "logicism." Without drawing any conclusions based upon the nature of space and time,
Vvedensky believed it possible to prove the impossibility of metaphysical knowledge and, as a
corollary so to speak, that everything we know, including our own self, is merely an appearance,
not a thing in itself. Vvedensky was also willing to cede that the time and the space in which we
experience everything in the world are also phenomenal. Although metaphysical knowledge is
impossible, metaphysical hypotheses, being likewise irrefutable, can be brought into a world-
view based on faith. Particularly useful are those demanded by our moral tenets such as the
existence of other minds.
The next two decades saw a blossoming of academic philosophy on a scale hardly imaginable
just a short time earlier. Most fashionable Western philosophies of the time found adherents
within the increasingly professional Russian scene. Even Nietzsche's thought began to make
inroads, particularly among certain segments of the artistic community and among the growing
number of political radicals. Nonetheless, few, particularly during these formative years,
adopted any Western system without significant qualifications. Even those who were most
receptive to foreign ideas adapted them in line with traditional Russian concerns, interests and
attitudes. One of these traditional concerns was with Platonism in general. Some of Plato's
dialogues appeared in a Masonic journal as early as 1777, and we can easily discern an interest
in Plato's ideas as far back as the medieval period. Possibly the Catholic assimilation of
Aristotelianism had something to do with the Russian Orthodox Church's emphasis on Plato.
And again possibly this interest in Plato had something to do with the metaphysical and
idealistic character of much classic Russian thought as against the decidedly more empirical
character of many Western philosophies. We have already noted the Christian Platonism of
Jurkevich, and his student Solovyov, who with his central concept of "vseedinstvo" ("total-
unity") can, in turn, also be seen as a modern neo-Platonist.
In the immediate decades preceding the Bolshevik Revolution, a veritable legion of philosophers
worked in Solovyov's wide shadow. Among the most prominent of these was S. Trubetskoi
(1862-1905). The Platonic strain of his thought is evident in the very topics Trubetskoi chose for
his magister's and doctoral theses: Metaphysics in Ancient Greece, 1890 and The
History of the Doctrine of Logos, 1900 respectively. It is, however, in his programmatic
essays "O prirode chelovecheskovo soznanija" ("The Nature of Human Consciousness"), 1889-
1891 and "Osnovanija idealizma" ("The Foundations of Idealism"), 1896 that Trubetskoi
elaborated his position vis-a-vis modern philosophy. Holding that the basic problem of
contemporary philosophy is whether human knowledge is of a personal nature, Trubetskoi
maintained that modern Western philosophers relate personal knowledge to a personal
consciousness. Herein lies their error. Human consciousness is not an individual consciousness,
but, rather, an on-going universal process. Likewise, this process is a manifestation not of a
personal mind but of a cosmic one. Personal consciousness, as he puts it, presupposes a
collective consciousness, and the latter presupposes an absolute consciousness. Kant's great
error was in conceiving the transcendental consciousness as subjective. In the second of the
essays mentioned above, Trubetskoi claims that there are three means of knowing reality:
empirically through the senses, rationally through thought, and directly through faith. For him,
faith is what convinces us that there is an external world, a world independent of my subjective
consciousness. It is faith that underlies our accepting the information provided by our sense
organs as reliable. Moreover, it is faith that leads me to think there are in the world other beings
with a mental organization and capacity similar to mine. However, Trubetskoi rejects equating
his notion of faith with the passive "intellectual intuition" of Schelling and Solovyov. For
Trubetskoi, faith is intimately connected with the will, which is the basis of my individuality.
My discovery of the other is grounded in my desire to reach out beyond myself, i.e., to love.
Although generally characterized as a neo-Leibnizian, N. Lossky (1870-1965) was also greatly
influenced by a host of Russian thinkers including Solovyov and Kozlov. In addition to his own
views, Lossky, having studied at Bern and Goettingen among other places, is remembered for
his pioneering studies of contemporary German philosophy. He referred to Husserl's Logical
Investigations already as early as 1906, and in 1911 he gave a course on Husserl's
"intentionalism." Despite this early interest in strict epistemological problems, Lossky in general
drew ever closer to the ontological concerns and positions of Russian Orthodoxy. He termed his
epistemological views "intuitivism," believing that the cognitive subject apprehends the external
world as it is in itself directly. Nevertheless, the object of cognition remains ontologically
transcendent, while epistemologically immanent. This direct penetration into reality is possible,
Lossky tells us, because all worldly entities are interconnected into an "organic whole."
Additionally, all sensory properties of an object, e.g., its color, texture, temperature, etc., are
actual properties of the object, our sense stimulation serving merely to direct our mental
attention to those properties. That different people see one object in different ways is explained
as a result of different ways individuals have of getting their attention directly towards one of
the object's numerous properties. All entities, events and relations that lack a temporal and
spatial character possess "ideal being" and are the objects of "intellectual intuition." Yet, there
is another, a third, realm of being that transcends the laws of logic (here we see the influence of
Lossky's teacher, Vvedensky), which he calls "metalogical being" and is the object of mystical
intuition.
Another kindred spirit was S. Frank (1877-1950), who in his early adult years was involved with
Marxism and political activities. His magister's thesis Predmet znanija (The Object
of Knowledge), 1915, is notable as much for its masterful handling of current Western
philosophy as for its overall metaphysical position. Demonstrating a grasp not only of German
neo-Kantianism, Frank drew freely from, among many others, Bergson, Husserl, and Scheler
and possibly may have been the first in Russian to refer to Frege, whose Foundations of
Arithmetic Frank calls "one of the rare genuinely philosophical works by a mathematician."
Frank contends that all logically determined objects are possible thanks to a metalogical unity,
which is itself not subject to the laws of logic. Likewise all logical knowledge is possible thanks
solely to an "intuition," an "integral intuition," of this unity. Such intuition is possible because
all of us are part of this unity or Absolute. In a subsequent book Nepostizhimoe (The
Unknowable), 1939, Frank further elaborated his view stating that mystical experience
reveals the supra-logical sphere in which we are immersed but which cannot be conceptually
described. Although there is a great deal more to Frank's thought, we see that we are quickly
leaving behind the secular, philosophical sphere for the religious, if not mystical.
No survey, however brief, of Russian thinkers under Solovyov's influence would be satisfactory
without mention of the best known of these in the West, namely N. Berdjaev (1874-1948).
Widely hailed as a Christian existentialist, he began his intellectual journey as a Marxist.
However, by the time of his first publications he was attempting to unite a revolutionary
political outlook with transcendental idealism, particularly a Kantian ethic. Within the next few
years Berdjaev's thought evolved quickly decisively away from Marxism and away from
critical idealism to an outright Orthodox Christian idealism. On the issue of free will versus
determinism, Berdjaev moved from an initial acceptance of soft determinism to a resolute
incompatibilist. Morality, he claimed, demanded his stand. Certainly, Berdjaev was among the
first, if not the first, philosopher of his era to diminish the importance of epistemology in place
of ontology. In time, however, he himself made clear that the pivot of his thought was not the
concept of Being, as it would be for some others, and even less that of knowledge, but, rather,
the concept of freedom. Acknowledging his debt to Kant, Berdjaev too saw science as providing
knowledge of phenomenal reality but not of actuality, of things as they are in themselves.
However applicable the categories of logic and physics may be to appearances, they are
assuredly inapplicable to the noumenal world and, in particular, to God. In this way Berdjaev
does not object to the neo-Kantianism of Vvedensky, for whom the objectification of the world
is a result of functioning of the human cognitive apparatus, but only that it does not go far
enough. There is another world or realm, namely one characterized by freedom.
Just as all of the above figures drew inspiration from Christian neo-Platonism, so too did they all
feel the need to address the Kantian heritage. Lossky's dissertation Obosnovanie
intuitivizma (The Foundations of Intuitivism), for example, is an extended
engagement with Kant's epistemology, Lossky himself having prepared a Russian translation of
the "First Critique" comparable in style and adequacy to Kemp Smith's rendering into English.
Trubetskoi called Kant the "Copernicus of modern philosophy", who "discovered that there is an
a priori precondition of all possible experience." Nevertheless, among the philosophers of this
era not all saw transcendental idealism as a springboard to religious and mystical thought. A
student of Vvedensky's, I. Lapshin (1870-1952) in his dissertation, Zakony myshlenija i
formy poznanija (The Laws of Thought and the Forms of Cognition), 1906,
attempted to show that, contrary to Kant's stand, space and time were categories of cognition
and that all thought, even logical, relies on a categorical synthesis. Consequently, the laws of
logic are themselves synthetic, not analytic, as Kant had thought and are applicable only within
the bounds of possible experience.
G. Chelpanov (1863-1936), who taught at Moscow University, was another with a broadly
conceived Kantian stripe. Remembered as much, if not more so, for his work in experimental
psychology as in philosophy, Chelpanov, unlike many others, wished to retain the concept of the
thing-in-itself, seeing it as that which ultimately "evokes" a particular representation of an
object. Without it, contended Chelpanov, we are left (as in Kant) without an explanation of why
we perceive this, and not that, particular object. In much the same manner, we must appeal to
some transcendent space in order to account for why we see an object in this spot and not
another. For these reasons Chelpanov called his position "critical realism" as opposed to the
more usual construal of Kantianism as "transcendental idealism." In psychology, Chelpanov
upheld Wundt's psychophysical parallelism.
As the years of the First World War approached, a new generation of scholars came to the fore
who returned to Russia from graduate work in Germany broadly sympathetic to one or even an
amalgam of the schools of neo-Kantianism. Among these young scholars the works of B.
Kistjakovsky (1868-1920) and P. Novgorodtsev (1866-1924) stand out as, arguably, the most
accessible today for their analytic approach to questions of social-science methodology.
During this period, Husserlian phenomenology was introduced into Russia from a number
of sources, but its first and, in a sense, only major propagandist was G. Shpet (1879-1937), whom we
have referred to earlier. In any case, besides his historical studies Shpet did pioneering work in
hermeneutics as early as 1918. Additionally, in two memorable essays he respectively argued,
along the lines of the early Husserl and the late Solovyov, against the Husserlian view of the
transcendental ego and in the other traced the Husserlian notion of philosophy as a rigorous
science back to Parmenides.
Regrettably, Shpet was permanently silenced during the Stalinist era, but A. Losev (1893-1988),
whose early works fruitfully employed some early phenomenological techniques, survived and
blossomed in its aftermath. Concentrating on ancient Greek thought, particularly aesthetics, his
numerous publications have yet to be assimilated into world literature, although during later
years his enormous contributions were recognized within his homeland and by others to whom
they were linguistically accessible. It must be said, nonetheless, that Losev's personal
pronouncements hark back to a neo-Platonism completely at odds with the modern
temperament.
d. Russian Philosophy during the Soviet Era (1917-1991)
The Bolshevik Revolution
of 1917 ushered in a
political regime with a set ideology that countenanced
no intellectual
competition. During the first few years of its
existence, Bolshevik attention
was directed towards consolidating political power,
and the selection of
university personnel in many cases was left an
internal matter. In 1922,
however, most explicitly non-Marxist philosophers who
had not already fled were
banished from the country. Many of them found
employment, at least for a time,
in the major cities of Europe and continued their
personal intellectual agendas.
None of them, however, during their lifetimes
significantly influenced
philosophical developments either in their homeland or
in the West and few, with
the notable exception of Berdyaev, received wide
recognition.
During the first decade of Bolshevik rule the
consuming philosophical
question concerned the role of Marxism vis-a-vis
traditional academic
disciplines, particularly those that had either
emerged since Marx's death or
had seen recent breathtaking developments that had
reshaped the field. The best
known dispute occurred between the "mechanists" and
the "dialecticians" or
"Deborinists," after its principal advocate A. Deborin
(1881-1963). Since a
number of individuals composed both groups and the
issues in dispute evolved
over time, no simple statement of the respective
stances can do complete justice
to either. Nevertheless, the mechanists essentially
held that philosophy as a
separate discipline had no raison d'etre within the
Soviet state. All
philosophical problems could and would be resolved by
the natural sciences. The
hallowed dialectical method of Marxism was, in fact,
just the scientific method.
The Deborinists, on the other hand, defended the
existence of philosophy as a
separate discipline. Indeed, they viewed the natural
sciences as built on a set
of philosophical principles. Unlike the mechanists,
they saw nature as
fundamentally dialectical, which could not be reduced
to simpler mechanical
terms. Even human history and society proceeded
dialectically in taking leaps
that resulted in qualitatively different states. The
specifics of the
controversy, which raged until 1929, are of marginal
philosophical importance
now, but to some degree the basic issue of the
relation of philosophy to the
sciences, of the role of the former vis-a-vis the
latter, endures to this day.
Regrettably, politics played as much of a role in the
course of the dispute as
abstract reasoning, and the outcome was a simple
matter of a political fiat with
the Deborinists gaining a temporary victory.
Subsequent events over the next two
decades, such as the defeat of the Deborinists, have
nothing to do with
philosophy. What philosophy did continue to be pursued
during these years within
Russia was kept a personal secret, any disclosure of
which was at the expense of
one's life. To a certain degree, the issue of the role
of philosophy arose again
in the 1950s when the philosophical implications of
relativity theory became a
disputed subject. Again, the issue arose of whether
philosophy or science had
priority. This time, however, with atomic weapons
securely in hand there could
be no doubt as to the ultimate victor with little need
for political
intervention.
Another controversy, though less vociferous,
concerned psychological
methodology and the very retention of such common
terms as consciousness, psyche
and attention. The introspective method, as we saw
advocated by many of the
idealistic philosophers, was seen by the new
ideologues as subjective and
unscientific in that it manifestly referred to private
phenomena. I. Pavlov
(1849-1936), already a star of Russian science at the
time of the Revolution,
was quickly seen as utilizing a method that subjected
psychic activity to the
objective methods of the natural sciences. The issue
became, however, whether
the use of objective methods would eliminate the need
to invoke such traditional
terms as consciousness. The central figure here was V.
Bekhterev (1857-1927),
who believed that since all mental processes
eventually manifested themselves in
objectively observable behavior, subjective
terminology was superfluous. Again,
the discussion was silenced through political means
once a victory was secured
over the introspectionists. Bekhterev's behaviorism
was itself found to be
dangerously leftist.
As noted above, during the 1930s and '40s
independent philosophizing
virtually ceased to exist, and what little was
published is of no more than
historical interest. Indicative of the condition of
Russian thought at this time
is the fact that when in 1946 the government decided
to introduce logic into the
curriculum of secondary schools the only suitable text
available was a slim book
by Chelpanov dating from before the Revolution. After
Stalin's death a relative
relaxation or "thaw" in the harsh intellectual climate
was permitted, of course
within the strict bounds of the official state
ideology. In addition to the
re-surfacing of the old issue of the role of Marxism
with respect to the natural
sciences, Russian scholars sought a return to the
traditional texts in hopes of
understanding the original inspiration of the official
philosophy. Some, such as
the young A. Zinoviev (1922- ) sought an understanding
of "dialectical logic" in
terms of the operations, procedures and techniques
employed in political
economics. Others, for example, V. Tugarinov, drew
heavily on Hegel's example in
attempting to delineate a system of fundamental
categories.
After the formal recognition in the validity of
formal logic, it received
significant attention in the ensuing years by
Zinoviev, D. Gorsky, E. Voishvillo
among many others. Their works have deservedly
received international attention
and made no use of the official ideology. What sense,
if any, to make of
"dialectical logic" was another matter that could not
remain politically
neutral. Until the last days of the Soviet period,
there was no consensus as to
what it is or its relation to formal logic. One of the
most resolute defenders
of dialectical logic was E. Ilyenkov, who has received
attention even in the
West. In epistemology too, surface agreement,
demonstrated through use of an
official vocabulary obscured but did not quite hide
differences of opinion
concerning precisely how to construe the official
stand. It certainly now
appears that little of enduring worth in this field
was published during the
Soviet years. However, some philosophers who were
active at that time produced
works that only recently have been published. Perhaps
the most striking example
is M. Mamardashvili (1930-1990), who during his
lifetime was noted for his deep
interest in the history of philosophy and his
anti-Hegelian stands.
Most work in ethics in the Soviet period took a
crude apologetic form of
service to the state. In essence, the good is that
which promotes the stated
goals of Soviet society. Against such a backdrop, Ja.
Mil'ner-Irinin's study
Etika ili printsy istinnoj chelovechnosti
(Ethics or The Principles of
a True Humanity) is all the more remarkable.
Although only an excerpt
appeared in print in the 1960s, the book-length
manuscript, which as a whole was
rejected for publication, was circulated and
discussed. The author presented a
normative system that he held to be universally valid
and timeless. Harking back
to the early days of German Idealism, Mil'ner-Irinin
urged being true to one's
conscience as a moral principle. However, he claimed
he deduced his deontology
from human social nature rather than from the idea of
rationality, as in Kant.
After the accession of L. Brezhnev to the position
of General Secretary and
particularly after the events that curtailed the
Prague Spring in 1968 all signs
of independent philosophizing beat a speedy retreat.
The government anxiously
launched a campaign for ideological vigilance, which a
German scholar, H. Dahm,
termed an "ideological counter-reformation," that
persisted until the
"perestroika" of the Gorbachev years.
[##SHEADER]Post-Soviet Era (1991-)[/SHEADER##]
Clearly,
the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the relegation
of the Communist Party to
the political opposition has also ushered in a new era
in the history of Russian
philosophy. What trends will emerge is still too early
to tell. How Russian
philosophers will eventually evaluate their own recent
as well as tsarist past
may turn, to a large degree, on the country's
political and economic fortunes.
Not surprisingly, the 1990s saw, in particular, a
"re-discovery" of the
previously forbidden works of the religious
philosophers active just prior to or
at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Whether
Russian philosophers will
continue along these lines or approach a style
resembling Western "analytical"
trends remains an open question.
3. Concluding Remarks
In the above historical
survey we have emphasized Russian epistemological over
ontological and ethical
concerns hopefully without neglecting or disparaging
them. Admittedly, doing so may reflect a certain
"Western bias." Nevertheless, such a survey, whatever
its deficiencies, shows that questions regarding the
possibility of knowledge have never been completely
foreign to the Russian mind. This we can unequivocally
state without dismissing Masaryk's position, for
indeed during the immediate decades preceding the 1917
Revolution epistemology was not accorded special
attention, let alone priority. Certainly at the time
when Masaryk formulated his position Russian
philosophy was relatively young. Nonetheless, were the
non-critical features of
Russian philosophy, which Masaryk so correctly
observed, a reflection of the Russian mind as such or
were they a reflection of the era observed? If one
were to view 19th century German philosophy from the
rise of Hegelianism to the emergence of
neo-Kantianism, would one not
see it as shortchanging epistemology? Could it not be
that our error lay in focussing on a single period in
Russian history, albeit the philosophically most
fruitful one? In any case,
the mere existence of divergent opinions during the
Soviet era--however cautiously these
had to be expressed--on recurring fundamental
questions testifies to the tenacity of philosophy on
the human mind.
Rather than ask for the general characteristics of
Russian philosophy, should we not ask why
philosophy arose so late in Russia compared to other
nations? Was Vvedensky correct that the country lacked
suitable educational institutions until relatively
recently, or was he writing
as a university professor who saw no viable
alternative to make a living? Could it be that Shpet
was right in thinking that no one found any
utilitarian value in philosophy except in modest
service to theology, or was he merely expressing his
own fears for the future of philosophy in an overtly
ideological state? Did Masaryk have grounds for
linking the late emergence of philosophy in Russia to
the perceived anti-intellectualism of Orthodox
theology, or was he simply speaking as a Unitarian.
Finally, intriguing as this question may be, are we
not in searching for an answer guilty of what some
would label the mistake of reductionism, i.e., of
trying to resolve a philosophical problem by appeal to
non-philosophical means?
4. Secondary Works in Western Languages
Copleston,
Frederick C. Philosophy in Russia, From Herzen to
Lenin and Berdyaev,
Notre Dame, 1986.
Dahm, Helmut. Der
gescheiterte Ausbruch:
Entideologisierung und ideologische Gegenreformation
in Osteuropa
(1960-1980), Baden-Baden, 1982.
DeGeorge,
Richard T. Patterns of
Soviet Thought, Ann Arbor, 1966.
Goerdt, W.
Russische Philosophie: Zugaenge und
Durchblicke, Freiburg/Muenchen, 1984.
Joravsky, David.
Soviet Marxism and Natural Science 1917-1932,
NY, 1960.
Koyre,
Alexandre. La philosophie et le probleme national
en Russie au debut du XIXe
siecle, Paris, 1929.
Lossky, Nicholas O.
History of Russian
Philosophy, New York, 1972.
Masaryk, Thomas
Garrigue. The Spirit of
Russia, trans. Eden & Cedar Paul, NY, 1955.
Scanlan, James P.
Marxism in the USSR, A Critical Survey of Current
Soviet Thought, Ithaca,
1985
Walicki, Andrzej. A History of Russian
Thought from the
Enlightenment to Marxism, Stanford, 1979.
Zenkovsky, V. V. A History
of Russian Philosophy, trans. George L. Kline,
London, 1967.
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