ABSTRACT This article examines a still contentious question: how conservative and liberal elements are combined in Boris N. Chicherin’s worldview and political doctrine. It considers several points of view on this issue (expressed by Nikolai Berdyaev, Petr Struve, Georgii Plekhanov, Vasilii Zen’kovskii) and analyzes Chicherin’s works of the 1850s–1860s that have provoked the most heated debates. The

ABSTRACT This article examines the criticisms that Chicherin directed at the classical Western liberalism that emerged from the works of John Locke, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, Baron d’Holbach, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the criticisms that can also be directed at modern Western liberalism. Following the early nineteenth-century German philosophers (Fichte, Hegel), Chicherin proves the falsity of liberalism’s

ABSTRACT This article examines Boris N. Chicherin’s ideas about property. It shows that the thinker interprets property as a material form of the objectification of human freedom, the most important and necessary condition for a fulfilling life. The author argues that Chicherin’s analysis of property is aimed at identifying and justifying its anthropological, legal, and social significance. In that

ABSTRACT The Russian peasant commune was an obstacle to the development of productive rural forces. According to Boris N. Chicherin, this problem should have resolved naturally and without any specific state measures, including resettlement policy, and at the peasants’ expense. Chicherin proposed resolving the labor question by encouraging workers to create mutual aid funds, charity, and private foundations

ABSTRACT This article examines the classification of political doctrines proposed by Boris N. Chicherin in his major work on the history of political thought. Chicherin uses two forms of systematization for political doctrines: in one, he draws attention to the main element used in explaining society (power, personal freedom, law, or the ideal goal of development); in the other, he refers to the initial

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the philosophical views of the Russian philosopher Andrey V. Smirnov. Smirnov has advanced and substantiated the idea that there exist at least two distinct ways of linking the subject and the predicate in a statement—one of these he calls the substance logic (S-logic) and the other, the process logic (P-logic). S-logic reveals the characteristics (predicates) proper

ABSTRACT The Cartesian cogito ergo sum is a major milestone for modern European philosophy, which shaped its mainstream for centuries. This dictum states that consciousness is the only reliable object of inquiry, with a criterion of radical doubt, the goal of which is to cut off any unreliable statement leaving only that which is trustworthy and which serves as a starting point to construct true knowledge

ABSTRACT The paradigm of enfolded-unfolded (complicatio-explicatio) introduced by Nicolas of Cusa, poses a puzzling question: why and how are the enfolded and unfolded equal to itself and to each other (coincidentia oppositorum), adding nothing to itself while unfolding, and losing nothing while enfolding? That question had not been answered so far, since European philosophy, science, and thought in

ABSTRACT Meaning is not a ready-made entity found in dictionaries as signified by a language sign, but rather something which is manufactured through a sense-positing procedure that starts with an initial intuition and runs until the text is written down. This initial intuition may have two interpretations, namely, a substance-based and a process-based readings. This option sets down a bifurcation

ABSTRACT Classical Eurasianism (yevraziystvo, 1921-late 1930s, not including Nikolai Gumilev) is a multifaceted set of teachings centered around ideas introduced by Nikolai S. Trubetskoy (1890-1938). Out of the multitudes of Russian emigrant thought, only classical Eurasianism offered a wholesome systematic answer to two basic questions: why did the revolutionary catastrophe of 1917 occur, and what

ABSTRACT This article discusses a new conception of logic developed by the well-known Russian philosopher Vladimir Solomonovich Bibler. Analyzing prior methods of thinking and previous types of logics, he came to the conclusion that they were historically determined and that modern European logic was oriented toward science (which was at the center of culture in the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries)

ABSTRACT In this excerpt, Vladimir S. Bibler attempts to demonstrate how the initial concepts of Newtonian mechanics are fraught with contradictions. The first is related to the law of inertia, which states that a body will resist change by an external influence; this means that the body is endowed with its own active force and that, being self-sufficient, it does not enter into external relations

ABSTRACT In this excerpt, Vladimir S. Bibler attempts to show that the initial concepts of mechanics that were formulated in the 1660s are paradoxical; they result in contradictory concepts. However, this paradox was revealed only in the late twentieth century. When concepts turn to themselves in self-justification, paradoxes arise, as in the paradox of set theory. According to Bibler, the reason for

ABSTRACT Here Bibler argues that the “beginning” of logic must be understood as a conjunction of the logical and extra-logical. This is in fact the justification of the logic of being, which means the conjoining of two logics, because being enters into logic as another logic; that is, as a different type of reasoning.

ABSTRACT Modern logical concepts—essences, phenomena, causality, and so forth—border on medieval concepts, including the concept of man’s and, ultimately, God’s involvement in real objects. According to Bibler, every logic is dia-logic (two or more logics), but this is only realized in the late twentieth century thanks to, among others, the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, which demonstrated the dialogic

ABSTRACT The author once again offers a definition of paradox that fundamentally differs from a Hegelian notion of contradiction. In a paradox, thought should logically identify and comprehend the mental reproduction of the subject of thought and the object of thought as the nonidentical thought of an unthinkable being. This is why Bibler argues for the emergence of a new logic as the logic of the

ABSTRACT In this short excerpt from an Introduction to his celebrated book From the Doctrine of Science to the Logic of Culture (1991), Bibler shows that the phenomenon of culture has shifted into the center of being of twentieth century man, permeating all decisive events of human life, and can thus be understood as its universality.

ABSTRACT In this excerpt from his celebrated book From the Doctrine of Science to the Logic of Culture (1991), Bibler discusses a break in historical continuity due to fundamental changes in the social sphere. Dictatorships and wars are causing the resettlement of peoples and the need to understand foreign cultures in conjunction with one’s own while at the same time dwelling on the initial concepts

ABSTRACT In this excerpt, Bibler dissects the dual connection of past and present through sublation of the past in the present and on the basis of its preservation through their interaction. Culture is built on the second principle; communication of achievements and inventions always takes place despite different time periods. In that context, he considers Bakhtin’s discovery that showed how artistic

ABSTRACT In this section, Bibler once again explicates the meaning of the term “culture.” He first defines it as a form of simultaneous being and communication among people of different cultures and eras. The second definition he gives is that culture is a form of self-determination in the horizon of personhood, the self-determination of life, knowledge, and thought. The third is that culture is the

ABSTRACT In this long excerpt, Bibler argues that, in Hegel’s logic, thinking devours the object—the Absolute is achieved—and therefore thinking itself disappears. Yet thinking necessarily involves being, even though it is expressed in a different logic. At this point, the inquiry shifts to the question about the interaction of various logics. Contrary to this, Bibler claims that no meta-logic is required

(2020). Boris Pasternak and His Intellectual Legacy. Russian Studies in Philosophy: Vol. 58, Boris Pasternak, pp. 247-251.

ABSTRACT Boris Pasternak is a key figure in the history of twentieth-century Russian culture. The artistic originality of his poetry and prose has been the subject of fruitful discussion within literary theory and history, the phrase “the poetry of Pasternak” has been interpreted as a culturological concept, and the novel Doctor Zhivago has been recognized as perhaps the most significant work of Russian

ABSTRACT In this article, the author examines the work of Boris Pasternak, primarily his novel Doctor Zhivago, in the context of his Marburg experience and Kantian ideas as the basis of his moral-aesthetic position. Pasternak tried to live and write over the barriers that a totalitarian era had erected in human life. His late novel managed to tell Russia and the rest of humanity about this tragic century

ABSTRACT A unique feature of Pasternak’s reception and interpretation of Cohen’s philosophical ideas consists in the fact that the poet focused mainly on the conception of ethics posed by the head of the Marburg neo-Kantian school and his conception of a history based on ethical principles. This article offers a comparative analysis of the three-stage development of Cohen’s conception of human being

ABSTRACT When we discuss skepticism, we generally mean a certain philosophical movement with a fundamental basis in doubt. At the same time, the history of philosophy gives us another highly productive, methodologically oriented interpretation of skepticism as a psychological state of mind that forces the author to draw a veil over his thoughts. That said, we consider it important that epistemological

ABSTRACT This article discusses the evolution of the cultural-civilizational self-identification of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poet, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890–1960), the 1958 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Analyzing an extensive range of materials, the author shows that Pasternak positioned himself as a particular type of “Russian European,” a “man of the North,” a “winter man

(2020). In Memoriam Valery A. Podoroga 09.15.1946 – 08.09.2020. Russian Studies in Philosophy: Vol. 58, Boris Pasternak, pp. 308-309.

ABSTRACT This article discusses the theoretical core and evolution of Ruben Apressyan’s moral philosophy. The starting point in the development of his views was his clarification of the “idea of morality,” which includes both formal and substantive characteristics, and the correlation of morality with various ethical-normative programs. Having initially accepted the Golden Rule and the Commandment

ABSTRACT Don Juanism is a type of consciousness, value system, and mode of behavior specific to amorous–erotic relationships. It reflects an overall image of Don Juan as presented in Molière’s famous comedy Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre and in many other works of art. This image is internally bifurcated and interpreted in various ways in cultural history. On the one hand, Don Juan is known as a gallant

ABSTRACT In the Early Modern time (the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries), moral philosophy underwent substantial changes. The most important among them were growing opposition to the theonomous understanding of morality and emerging of new attitudes toward normative force of moral ideas, conditions of morality, an ability of an individual to think morally, and the criterion for moral differences

ABSTRACT The meaning of morality lies in the coordination of private interests for the good of individuals and of society. Morally positive actions are those that affirm and contribute to the good of another. The generalized experience of these actions is reflected in values: non-harm, recognition, solidarity, care. An individual’s sensitivity to these values and willingness to practice them is expressed

ABSTRACT We know the Golden Rule of morality from various formulations in the most ancient of literary sources. Having a certain philosophical–theoretical and normative-ethical concept of the Golden Rule, we can compare the different versions to reconstruct its value-normative dynamics. This article presents the genesis of the Golden Rule in six stages, from a non-verbalized, situational-communicative

ABSTRACT The conception of Eurasianist legal philosophy (1920–1930) represents an interesting but little studied phenomenon. Most researchers consider either the general features of Eurasianism or the individual legal views of Eurasianists without investigating their political and juridical ideas in the multiplicity of their manifestations. The author of this article attempts to fill in this gap by

ABSTRACT This article examines the philosophy of law of the eminent twentieth-century Russian philosopher of law, Pavel I. Novgorodtsev. I demonstrate that his viewpoints express a dialectic between the national and the universal in his understanding of law, a dialectic that consists in a synthesis of law and morals, justice and lawfulness, and in identifying the spiritual basis of law. The article

ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the work of the eminent Russian legal scholar and thinker Pavel I. Novgorodtsev. This is nearly the first time that Novgorodtsev’s philosophy of law is considered as the central link in the formation of the Russian school of philosophy of law (late nineteenth–early twentieth century). The thinker’s doctrine of natural law, which closely binds law and morality, serves

In the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, philosophy marched forward under the slogans of “turns”: the pragmatic turn, the linguistic turn, the realistic tu...

ABSTRACT This article examines legal nihilism, which represents a kind of calling card of Russian legal culture. Nihilism’s penetration of the culture has found expression and has been substantiated in philosophy and literature. The study demonstrates the theoretical foundations of legal nihilism: logical negation, irrationalism, absurdity, and the paradoxical nature of existing. It reveals the ambivalence

The article discusses Alexander Bogdanov’s path from his early philosophic work, formed under the influence of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, and Wilhelm Ostwald and dubbed by him “empiriomonism,” to the oeuvre of his life—the universal organization science of tectology (or tektology). In his papers and letters, Vladimir Lenin was always blaming Bogdanov for his failure to abandon his empirio-critical

This article argues that Bogdanov’s ideas are relevant for analysis of contemporary theory and practice of social designing. We show that activism and empiriomonism together lead to an instrumental understanding of science that forms the basis for a techno-scientific strategy for developing social disciplines. At the same time, the concept of sociohistorical development and “gathering together” of

The article analyzes the initial stages of the shaping of design. Like the situation when the shaping of science was preceded by the emergence of methodology, a similar process had been taking place in this domain: First, methodological studies aimed at the forming of design thought made their appearance and then—on their basis—design as an independent sphere of activity and practice began to take

The article analyzes Alexander Bogdanov’s systemic approach to historical process. Society is portrayed in development—like a living creature that evolves in response to the challenges of its environment. The adaptation of community—and of man as part of it—is expressed as a sum of relations: social, economic, cultural, and political. The author demonstrates that industrial relations and labor are

The article discusses the conditions under which the views of the philosopher, economist, physician, and science fiction author Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov (1873–1928) was formed and analyzes the evolution of his ideas and his social activity in the sphere of political, practical, and cultural changes of Russian society. The focus of the present study is on the last years of the nineteenth and

This article examines Alexander A. Bogdanov’s ideas about forms of organization that are set forth in his book Universal Organizational Science (Tectology). The author conducts this analysis with an eye towards the main organizational approaches in the works of E. Haeckel, A.G. Gurvich, and V.N. Beklemishev, as well as those of contemporary authors such as M.I. Budyko, N.M. Solodukho, and S.S. Horujy

When describing the essential features of the Russian peasantry, Gorky draws attention to the concepts of cruelty and, as a result, pity, which are necessary for understanding its actions. Cruelty, which goes hand in hand with the use of violence and power, is one of the existentials of the people’s being. This being spreads across the vast expanses of the Russian Empire, which is characterized as

This article demonstrates the unique role of the Russian philosophical tradition (“positive philosophy”) in the formation of an individual’s self-consciousness and attempts to overcome the limitations of simplistic ideological interpretations of Maxim Gorky, a distinguished representative of Russian culture. Relying on memoirs and epistolary evidence from Gorky and Fyodor Stepun, the authors show that

One of the main themes that Maxim Gorky developed throughout his life was that of the honest (good) Russian man and the Russian intelligentsia’s endless role of enlightening him and protecting him from the authorities. This theme runs through all the writer’s major works, from the early Chelkash and the autobiographical trilogy to the final unfinished novel The Life of Klim Samgin. In continuing the

This article attempts to “decipher” Maxim Gorky’s hidden intentions in his novel The Life of Klim Samgin, which he considered his message to future generations. Samgin is a “mannequin,” a parody of a particular kind of Russian intellectual of the early twentieth-century revolutionary era. This social group was characterized by their desire to “transplant” European cultural ideas and values to Russian

The authors of this article propose and defend the hypothesis that the provincial-born Maxim Gorky, when illustrating his worldview in his polemical and artistic works, served as the bearer of mental characteristics and complexes inherent only and exclusively to the Russian people. The hypothesis in question serves as the basis for a rebuttal to the traditional understanding of Gorky’s social engagement

The author turns to Maxim Gorky’s literary–philosophical understanding of the meshchanstvo as a sociopsychological state and attitude to the world for which the main feature is the desire “to comfortably furnish the soul.” In this manifestation, the meshchanstvo instills “the poison of nihilistic individualism” in man, placing his Ego in the center of the world, an Ego devoid of social and cultural

Gorky’s story “Man,” as the title already makes evident, is a hymn of praise to man as the driving force of history, its main character, the source (or bearer) of all its meanings. However, man is also to some extent the victim of history, its slave, and the meanings he invests in being often turn against him or cease to be recognized by him as his particular property or product. Written in an elevated

This article examines the phenomenon of collective creative activities by one of the most famous Petersburg “triple unions” at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Merezhkovsky couple (Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky) and Dmitry Filosofov. This “triple union” is represented by three works: the essayistic collections The Tsar and Revolution (Paris, 1907) and Kingdom of the

This article discusses the causes of Lev Shestov’s psychological and worldview crises that he experienced in 1895, forcing the thinker to abandon his idealist philosophy and to embark on a path of groundlessness and adogmatism. Furthermore, the author traces the stages of Shestov becoming a philosopher, beginning with his early works on Shakespeare and Vladimir Solovyov. According to Silver-Age polemicist

This article examines the metaphysics of Lev Platonovich Karsavin (1882–1952), which absorbed the specific features of the life of this Russian theologian, philosopher, scholar, and poet and his love for Elena Cheslavovna Skrzhinskaya. The most complete expressions of this metaphysics are contained in Karsavin’s works Noctes Petropolitanae (Petrograd, 1922) and A Poem on Death (Kaunas, 1931). The thinker

This article examines the personal and creative relationship between the theologian, philosopher, and priest Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov and the artist and icon painter Yulia Reitlinger (Sister Ioanna, after taking the veil). Beginning with their first acquaintance in Crimea in 1918 and until the death of Father Sergius in Paris in 1944, Reitlinger was spiritually close to Bulgakov; she was his spiritual

This article presents the central paradigms of the understanding of love by early twentieth-century Russian philosophers. It shows that interpreting the meaning of erotic love as a way of overcoming death, as proposed by Vladimir Solovyov, largely determined not only the metaphysical inquiries, but also the personal life strategies of those who contributed to Russian Silver-Age culture. The author

This article traces the evolution of feelings of love that connected Vyacheslav Ivanov and Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal from the moment the two first met to the dramatic events that occurred after Lydia’s death. The author examines the relationship of these two individuals in line with a phenomenon that Sergei Averintsev has dubbed “symbolist marriage.” In addition, the article explores the post-matrimony

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799–1837) has rightly been regarded as Russia’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. In addition to lyrics composed in widely differing styles, he also wrote historical poems, novels, short stories, and dramas. His works were heavily influenced by Russian history and folklore and have been roundly praised for their emotional and intellectual depth

This article analyzes the philosophy of Alexander Pushkin through the prism of his formulation “to think and to suffer.” The material for this analysis is Pushkin’s lyric poetry, his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, and his cycle of plays The Little Tragedies. Pushkin’s works contain a tragic world view embodied in the deep structures of his texts, which therefore remain hidden to the general reader in

This article discusses the foundation of ideas for Vyacheslav Ivanov’s interpretation of Pushkin’s poem. In The Gypsies, Ivanov sees a conflict between personal freedom and sobornost’ as revealed by Pushkin, a conflict whose resolution marks the poet’s turn toward religious metaphysics. Ivanov’s conception of sobornost’ as the result of seeking the supra-personal in the personal echoes Pushkin’s overcoming