The First Edition of “The Justification of Good” (1897): Contemporaries’ Response. Part 2

The article continues the systematic review and analysis of newspaper and magazine responses to the first edition of V. Solovyov’s main work on moral philosophy “Justification of good” (1897). In the second part of the article we are talking about the scandal associated with a sharp response to the book of V. Solovyov on the pages of the “Novoye Vremya” regular columnist of the newspaper F.E. Shperk having questioned the necessity of moral philosophy and argued that good does not require any justification, and it is impossible to justify any system of morality with reasonable arguments. The article claims that Shperk's attack caused a big scandal in circles close to V. Solovyov. The reaction to this controversy from publications sympathetic to V. Solovyov is also described. It is noted that the publisher of the newspaper “Novoye Vremya” A.S. Suvorin himself had to politely dissociate himself from the speech of his columnist. The article also reveals the reasons that prompted Shperk to soften his position and his formulations. The article provides a new document - an unpublished letter from V. Solovyov to Suvorin, making why the philosopher’s public reaction to this particular response clear. In conclusion, it is proved that the incident led to a serious mutual alienation Vl. Solovyov from V.V. Rozanov, whom the philosopher reasonably suspected of involvement in this publication.