Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010470
Yulia V. Sineokaya
ABSTRACT This article proposes a generational approach to the study of the formation of the philosophical tradition. A philosophical generation is a powerful intellectual pattern with its own optics, sets of problems, and methods of research. The author distinguishes six generations of philosophers living and working in Russia today. The specific nature of each philosophical generation is determined by its existential contribution to the philosophy of those close to each other in terms of their experience of discipleship and integration into formal and informal philosophical institutions, and by the commonality of their intellectual foundations. In the case of philosophical generations, this refers not only to the age of those “doing philosophy” but also to the emergence of a new attitude toward philosophy itself, to the production or mastery of new ideas and meanings, to new trends in the discussion of already familiar issues and phenomena, to a new social and cultural role for philosophy, to new general understanding of the world and of man, to a change in what is called “the philosophical way of life.” Studying philosophical generations is important for restoring the human context of philosophical development. The path of cognition from generational type to texts is no less important than the usual path from texts. Reading the history of philosophy as the history of generations of philosophy focuses scholars’ attention on personal connections within the philosophical community (both horizontal and vertical), which clarifies both the individual contribution of thinkers and the mutual influences that determine the birth and development of philosophical ideas.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010475
B. Mezhuev
ABSTRACT This article provides a brief description of the history of that generation of intellectuals usually called the generation of the nineties. The author reflects on that generation’s path, analyzing the fates of a small group of his fellow students who have since crossed the fifty-year mark and have probably reached their peak social maturity. The article emphasizes the great results in philosophical activity that this generation achieved. The author notes the reason for his own alienation from his generation’s path and realizes that it was an internal protest against a desire characteristic of his classmates to withdraw intellectually from their own time in order to be located within a different context, temporal or spatial. The article notes that the very desire was borrowed by the generation of the nineties from the philosophical leaders of the generation of the sixties. The author considers the question of the philosophical generation in the context of the intellectual class’s centuries-old search for its place in society in clear conflict with the social hierarchies existing in the traditional world of agrarian estates.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010473
Nataliya I. Kuznetsova
ABSTRACT This article, for which the focus is an intellectual autobiography, examines the development of worldview of a young person who graduated from the Moscow University Faculty of Philosophy in 1970. It highlights the main socially significant events of those times, events that determined the formation of the sociopolitical views of youth who did not accept Soviet ideology. It presents the reading circles and interactions of that period and tells of the outstanding Russian philosophers of the 1960s–1970s under whose influence this professional development took place. It considers the main topics of the key scholarship in philosophy, as well as the dynamics of research interests and problems. Particular attention is paid to the story of the originality of work by the Moscow Methodological Circle, led by Georgy P. Shchedrovitsky. The circle’s main task was to put all acts of reasoning and mental operations—naming, defining, describing, building ontological models and theoretical constructions, and so forth—under reflexive control. This was, to some extent, reminiscent of the inquiries of Western analytical philosophy, which made it a “suspicious” activity in the ideological sense in the Soviet Union. Cognition as a whole no longer seemed a “reflection” of reality, as had been proclaimed in the leading epistemological understanding of Marxist–Leninist philosophy. However, this also reflected the desire of intellectuals of the sixties and seventies to rationalize all social life as a whole. These dreams of “rationality” manifested at the time in the development of relevant topics in disciplines such as epistemology, in philosophy and methodology of science, and in sociological and psychological research. The author tells how the discussions of methodological problems of historical reconstruction began from positions like these. The discussion of discourse on knowledge in the humanities required not only intellectual audacity but social audacity as well. These discussions took place in informal, home-based seminars and represented a marginal, “clandestine” phenomenon.
{"title":"The Embers of Memory","authors":"Nataliya I. Kuznetsova","doi":"10.1080/10611967.2021.2010473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10611967.2021.2010473","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article, for which the focus is an intellectual autobiography, examines the development of worldview of a young person who graduated from the Moscow University Faculty of Philosophy in 1970. It highlights the main socially significant events of those times, events that determined the formation of the sociopolitical views of youth who did not accept Soviet ideology. It presents the reading circles and interactions of that period and tells of the outstanding Russian philosophers of the 1960s–1970s under whose influence this professional development took place. It considers the main topics of the key scholarship in philosophy, as well as the dynamics of research interests and problems. Particular attention is paid to the story of the originality of work by the Moscow Methodological Circle, led by Georgy P. Shchedrovitsky. The circle’s main task was to put all acts of reasoning and mental operations—naming, defining, describing, building ontological models and theoretical constructions, and so forth—under reflexive control. This was, to some extent, reminiscent of the inquiries of Western analytical philosophy, which made it a “suspicious” activity in the ideological sense in the Soviet Union. Cognition as a whole no longer seemed a “reflection” of reality, as had been proclaimed in the leading epistemological understanding of Marxist–Leninist philosophy. However, this also reflected the desire of intellectuals of the sixties and seventies to rationalize all social life as a whole. These dreams of “rationality” manifested at the time in the development of relevant topics in disciplines such as epistemology, in philosophy and methodology of science, and in sociological and psychological research. The author tells how the discussions of methodological problems of historical reconstruction began from positions like these. The discussion of discourse on knowledge in the humanities required not only intellectual audacity but social audacity as well. These discussions took place in informal, home-based seminars and represented a marginal, “clandestine” phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":42094,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY","volume":"59 1","pages":"473 - 488"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45527133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010474
A. Dobrokhotov
ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of the fate of the generation that peaked between the 1970s and 1990s, this article discusses the possibility of linking times of disintegration even when the machine of a powerful and seemingly eternal empire was working at “rupturing” them. The author highlights the features of the “philosophical generation” of the last third of the twentieth century in the context of his own personal experience, the cultural characteristics of the late Soviet era, the functioning of cultural institutions, and dialogue and interaction between generations. He sees a characteristic feature of this generation as the dominance of history of philosophy, under which auspices the process of comprehending the acute problems of our own times often took place. The article argues that intergenerational dialogue can take place even in conditions created by state ideological policy for purposefully isolating individuals and groups both from each other and from the contemporary international community. Special attention is devoted to the phenomenon of “culturology,” a science that was, on the one hand, an artificial product of “perestroika,” but on the other hand, the result of productive attempts to overcome our separation from global culture, to integrate the human knowledge accumulated in previous eras into a kind of holistic understanding. The mirror of culturology reflected entire dynamics of generations at the end of the twentieth century.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010472
E. Soloviev
ABSTRACT This article is an attempt at a socio-genealogical analysis of the “philosophers of the sixties.” This is how recent literature has described the generation of young philosophers in the 1950s–1960s who opposed themselves to their dogmatically ossified professors and actively contributed to the de-Stalinization of public consciousness. The main focus is on yesterday’s front-line officers, those of them who returned from the front and entered philosophy, above all Evald V. Ilyenkov and Alexander A. Zinoviev, who initiated debates over philosophy as a topic at the Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Faculty of Philosophy in 1954. The author sees this as a bold and rather successful attempt at philosophical reformation of Marxism. Two years before the Twentieth Party Congress called for the restoration of Leninist norms of living, the “sixties philosophers” called for a revival of Marxian norms of thinking. Then we consider the original understandings of thinking and consciousness that appeared in Soviet philosophy in the 1960s–early 1970s and that were sometimes neo-Marxist in character.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010415
Mariya L. Gel’fond
ABSTRACT This article is devoted to understanding the typological status of Tolstoy’s ideas in the context of the evolution of European humanism from the Renaissance to existentialism, from the doctrine of “human dignity” to the conceptualization of man as a “self-directed project.” The author does not, however, attempt yet another revision of Tolstoy’s moral–religious doctrine or the creation of a precedent for negative reassessment of his significance and originality. The goal of the present article is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of Tolstoy’s anthropological views, to highlight their sources, argumentative characteristics, and nature of impact on the formation of the key theoretical standpoints and normative principles of the thinker’s ethical–philosophical doctrine. This is presented as an impersonalist understanding of a perfectionist transformation of human personhood through the expansion of its boundaries to the point of the universe’s infinitude. Tolstoy’s rejection of personhood and its goodness does not entail his exclusion from the ranks of humanist thinkers. The article draws conclusions about a new path for further development of humanist ideas. Tolstoyan thought not only anticipates the emergence of a “new” (existentialist) humanism, but it also demonstrates the clear advantages over it in the scale and consistency of its theoretical propositions and normative conclusions.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010419
E. Mareeva
ABSTRACT This article compares the works of Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky as interpreted by the philosopher Lev Shestov. The author shows how Shestov analyzes Anna Karenina and War and Peace in light of Nietzschean nihilism and individualism. Criticizing the ideals of goodness and the ethics of compassion, Shestov finds himself on the side of Dostoevsky’s “underground man” as an exponent of an extreme form of egoistic thirst for life. The article outlines Shestov’s transition from Nietzschean atheism and vitalism to early Christian religiosity and mysticism, already evident in his work on Dostoevsky. However, it is still possible to discern the voice of the “underground man” in the cries of the Shestovian Job. Thus, the Nietzschean system of coordinates is preserved in the philosophy of “late” Shestov, one that proved a poor fit for Lev Tolstoy, his understanding of folk life, and his rejection of the idea of individual immortality based on individual egoism.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010413
S. Klimova
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s departure from this earth took place in 1910, a year that has since become a common touchstone for Russians. The twentieth century came to a symbolic close, beginning a terrible era of changes that saw the Russian author’s humanist ideas and religious inquiries burned and melted down. The terrible age seemed to consume everything that humanity had valued over the centuries: poetry, faith, morality, freedom love; everything man lived by, to use Tolstoy’s own expression. After Auschwitz, the very thought of man as a superior and rational being created in the image and likeness of God was drained of all its blood. But perhaps, thanks to his genius, the world has gradually thawed and returned to man, gazing upon him anew, but with the loving eyes of Tolstoy. The twenty-first century is linked to certain dates in Tolstoy’s life that are important not only for us, but also for world culture. It has been exactly 120 years since the infamous Synodal Act of February 20–22, 1901, which discussed Count Tolstoy’s excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church. This event was not so much religious as sociopolitical, an event with global consequences for the changing consciousness of many thousands of people in Russia and around the world. The intentions of the church hierarchs met with opposite results, as the name Tolstoy became much more attractive to inquiring minds than it had been before. This led to an axiological inversion typical of Russian ideological politics: Tolstoy gained the status of “sacrificial lamb” of the system, which served as additional confirmation that his criticism of the church was just. On June 10, 2021, we celebrated another important event linked by blood and spirit to the life world of Tolstoy, the centenary of the founding of the Yasnaya Polyana State Museum-Estate, which was then and remains now a “Russian Mecca,” a point of spiritual attraction for people all over the world.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010418
A. Krouglov
ABSTRACT Tolstoy’s literary works, as well as a number of events in his life, leave no doubt about the writer’s deep familiarity with law in both the theoretical and practical spheres. In his later years, this served as a basis for his sharply critical position in relation to law as such. Tolstoy interprets law as a pseudoscience written in an unnatural language, aimed at allowing the ruling classes to oppress the people and justify violence. Law (pravo) replaces evident moral law with pseudo-law in the form of an arbitrary legal establishment. Pseudo-law distorts the true relationship among morality, religion, and legal institutions. Part of Tolstoy’s critique stems from his clash with positivist interpretations of law that reject natural law. Tolstoy asks a number of important questions regarding the foundations and premises of law: What is a human court, according to positive laws adopted at the whims of legislatures, without the absence of the prospect of the Last Judgment? What can be considered genuine law? Are there laws more important and more binding than juridical ones? Instead of having his questions answered, Tolstoy is still reproached as an anarchist and legal nihilist.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2021.2010421
E. Besschetnova
ABSTRACT This article examines Konstantin N. Leontiev’s critique of the religious preaching of Lev N. Tolstoy. We analyze the philosopher’s main articles devoted to the great writer, noting that, despite Leontiev’s admiration for Tolstoy as the author of brilliant novels, he emphasized that Tolstoy had a much greater gift for writing than for personal religiosity. Tolstoy could not perceive Christianity at a deeper level, limiting himself to a superficial view. We show that Leontiev believed Tolstoy’s ideas fully corresponded to the “Zeitgeist,” in which the philosopher had seen the first signs of cultural decay and destruction. Leontiev considered a universal, reductionist confusion to be the cause of the beginning of the end and the destruction of the world, and he thought that the ultimate fruits of humanism—democracy and universal equality—bring with them a destructive, ruinously anti-Christian force.
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