Studies in East European Thought最新文献

Very often in frameworks for and presentations of The Brothers Karamazov, the modern reading public attempts to divide characters by their ability to reason. Usually Ivan is remembered for his reason, pitted against Dmitri’s passion. Adapting some terminology from mathematical logic, I propose and trace a different approach to reason in Dostoevsky’s text, to recast its canonical characters into alternative, though still fluid, categories. This exercise aims not to reinscribe or to reinterpret Dostoevsky’s novel but rather to reconsider an aspect of reasoning, specifically modes or forms of logic. With an admittedly imperfect mapping of characters onto these logical structures, this article encourages the ways in which we can trouble notions of stable reason and sound logic as they operate in the novel.

The article is a comparative analysis of the philosophy of the Russian Religious Renaissance and the views of Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938), a Polish religious thinker, historian of ideas, and historian of literature. Zdziechowski was also an expert on and promoter of Russian religious thought. As a thinker, he was influenced by it and attempted to cope with the same problems that were plaguing the Russians: the Bolshevik revolution, the decline of Christian religion and culture, and the imminent catastrophe of the whole civilization. The paper describes the affinities between Zdziechowski and the Russian thinkers in detail, yet its main task is to grasp the differences between them, i.e., the distinctive features of Zdziechowski’s thought. The conclusion is that Zdziechowski, who—in contrast to the Russians—was not interested in the recent currents of Western philosophy, as a critic of historical Christianity and an eschatological thinker was less radical than the Russians, but as a philosopher of history he turns out to be a greater pessimist. An important part of the analysis is confrontation of literary styles typical for the Polish thinker and the Russians. A specific feature of Zdziechowski was his tendency to express his own views not in a straightforward manner, but rather by commenting and reconstructing other authors’ ideas.

This article deals with the theme of subjectivity. One of the most pressing questions today is what theoretical and practical efforts should be made to avoid being a powerless tool in the hands of others and under what conditions one’s own “subjective opinion” becomes the real, reliable fulcrum as far as purposeful activity, free and reasonable goal-setting are concerned. The desire to derive subjectivity from individual, singular existence today forces a thinker as prominent as Slavoj Žižek to search for its form as “purified from” ideological layers and the contingencies of life. In his search for such a form, he turns to the psychoanalytic tradition, to the work of Jacques Lacan and his attempts to formalize the structures of subjectivity in isolation from the universality that generates them as necessity. This abstract consideration of subjectivity leads him to recognize subjectivity as a “distorting factor” in view of the insurmountable rupture between being and thinking. Evald Ilyenkov takes a different approach to the question of active self-determination. He conceives of personality as universal—the traits of a person are formed in the course of interaction between individuals in the process of producing the means of life. The individual becomes a personality or an acting subject, appropriating the generic powers of humanity, while being included in a system that implies a human relationship to the thing and, through it, to another individual.

Abstract

This paper focuses on what can be said to be the definitive features of the approach to theology by three Russian theologians: Fathers Sergii Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky as well as the Venerable Father Sophrony Sakharov. The article argues that the following common themes characterize the nature of their theology. First, personalism, in other words, the use of the term “person”, which they extensively applied to both God and human and angelic beings. The concept of person is indispensable in the thought of all three theologians. The second common theme is how the authors understood the relationship between theology and experience and what is the significance of religious experience for philosophical theology. Finally, all three theologians agree that when theological truths are expressed in human language the problem of interpretation consequently arises. However, they answer in different ways the question of the number and status of possible theological languages. I conclude that it is St. Sophrony Sakharov who in his life and theology realized Florovsky’s famous call for a neo-patristic synthesis.

Abstract

This paper focuses on Kojève’s account of history and philosophy of science. Kojève’s understanding of science can be characterized as internalism, which is evident in his holistic view of philosophy, theology, quantum physics, and the history of classical Newtonian mechanics. It precipitates the facilitation of a further inquiry into the Christian genesis, secular evolution, and subsequent de-Christianization of scientific thought. The paper includes a critical scrutiny of Kojève’s philosophical tenets, followed by a comparative analysis of the views of Hegel, Koyré, and Kojève. The primary objective of this research is to juxtapose Kojève’s doctrines with Hegel’s contemplations on the history and philosophy of science. In addition to identifying affinities, notably the emphasis on the Christian concept of God’s Incarnation for the advancement of science, I draw the distinctions between the positions of Hegel, Kojève, and Koyré, specifically concerning the valuation of mathematical knowledge.

The paper analyzes the correspondence between Prince Evgenii Troubetzkoy and Marian Zdziechowski, from 1905–1916 (not yet published). The correspondence focuses on the question of Russian-Polish relations and the possibility of Poland’s autonomy within the Russian Empire or the restoration of Poland’s independence. With the clarification of these two thinkers’ positions on the “Polish question,” the paper examines their concepts of nationalism and patriotism, their attitude to the idea of Slavic unity and the role of Russia as well as the correlation between their political views and their religious outlook. It demonstrates how the “fascination” of Polish intellectuals with Russian constitutional democrats in 1905 was replaced by disappointment due to the failure of the First Russian revolution, and then by serious disagreements during the First World War. The conclusion states that despite their disagreements on the “Polish question,” Evgenii Troubetzkoy and Marian Zdziechowski retained respect for each other, and their correspondence reveals new facets of their personalities.

This article analyses Ukraine’s language policies from 2002 to 2022 within a framework of liberalism, while avoiding making normative judgements or recommendations, updating the discussion raised in Kymlicka and Opalski’s Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? The analysis takes into consideration Ukraine’s present and historic position, including the challenge that postcolonial nation building can pose for achieving liberalism and linguistic justice. The paper focuses on three main areas of language policy: education, businesses and media, and assesses if they can be described as liberal orthodox, pluralist or illiberal. The article begins by defining liberalism and illiberalism, discussing the context of Ukraine’s linguistic diversity and postcolonial context, before outlining the language situation until EuroMaidan. Then, the main issue of language policy in the areas of education, business and media is analysed, before considering whether Ukrainian language laws might be considered liberal or illiberal. Finally, potential future trajectories are outlined.

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the philosophical legacy of Evald Ilyenkov in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine. The authors use the example of Ilyenkov and his legacy to show how drastically different the philosophical situation was in Soviet Ukraine in order to present a holistic viewpoint on Soviet philosophy. The authors highlight the differences between the political and philosophical circumstances in Russia and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2010s. The Ukrainian philosophical tradition is characterized by its focus on pedagogics, aesthetics, and nonacademic forms of philosophical communication. The main organizational role in Ukrainian philosophy was played by Pavel Kopnin and Valeriy Bosenko, who introduced dialectics as logic to Kyiv universities and made an effort to create philosophical circles for students. Anatoliy Kanarskiy, the prominent Soviet philosopher who specialized in aesthetics adopted the same idea of organizing students into circles. All these personalities were connected with Ilyenkov and each other, thus proving the existence of a common tendency and tradition of thinking within the discourse of Soviet philosophy. The authors highlight that this specific tradition may be called a “Socratic tradition” with its focus on free thinking, on discussions and dialectics. This tradition goes beyond academic philosophy and roots itself in cybernetical studies by Viktor Hlushkov and exists in modern Ukraine in the form of various philosophical circles and literature clubs.

This is a translation from Bulgarian into English of Nikolai Lossky’s “Razlichniiat smisul na dumata intuitsiia” (“The Different Senses of the Word Intuition”), published in the Sofianite journal Filosofski pregled (Philosophical Review), 1931, year III, book 1, pp. 1–9. In this article, solicited by the journal’s editor-in-chief, the Bulgarian philosopher Dimitar Mihalchev, Lossky surveys the different ways in which the word “intuition” (intuitsiia) has been used throughout the history of philosophy: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Jacobi, Ivan Kireevski, Alexei Khomyakov, Vladimir Solovyov, Bergson, Husserl, and Hans Driesch. Lossky then situates his own use of the word within this philosophical tradition and compares his intuitivism with gnoseologies similar to his own, namely, those of Semyon Frank, Johannes Rehmke, Max Scheler, Paul Linke, Dimitar Mihalchev, the English realists (Samuel Alexander and John Laird), the American realists (Edwin Holt, Walter Marvin, William Montague, Ralph Perry, Walter Pitkin, and Edward Spaulding), and the Neo-Scholastic Josef Gredt. As such, the article makes a valuable addendum to his Obosnovanie intuitivizma (The Foundation of Intuitivism) (1906) and provides a helpful synopsis of his theory of knowledge, which, in accordance with the Russian terminological tradition, he calls “gnoseology”.

Georges Florovsky, in 1936, called for a revival of the teaching of the Church Fathers. At the same time, Fr. Joseph Bocheński formulated the program for the renewal of Thomism by means of formal logic. In this paper, I propose to integrate these two projects. Analytic Patristics aims at expressing and developing patristic thought with the tools of analytic philosophy. The broad program of the logic of religion formulated by Bocheński included semiotics, methodology, and the formal logic of religion. I present here three examples of the integration of analytic philosophy and patristics in these three areas. I discuss first Basil Lourié’s paraconsistent interpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite’s theory of the divine names, then Richard Swinburne’s efforts to revive Orthodox natural theology, and finally Beau Branson’s reconstruction of Gregory of Nyssa’s metaphysics of the Trinity. These examples perfectly illustrate how analytic philosophy can contribute to the development of patristics, and how the tradition of the Church Fathers can inspire contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.