20th Century Russian Pre-Soviet Philosophy

This is the first dissertation analyzing the life and thought of Victor Chernov , leader of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the largest antigovernment organization in tsarist Russia in the early 20th century, and the leading party in 1917. Using published materials, archival sources, and the works of other historians, the thesis evaluates Chernov's involvement in the revolutionary movement, his philosophical and ethical essays, and the party program he authored. Chernov's thought represents the culmination of the Russian intellectual tradition destroyed by (...) the Bolsheviks. The principal focus of the dissertation is on the decisive period of 1917-1920, when Chernov's theoretical ideas were tested in practice. Chernov's role in 1917 and during the ensuing Civil War shows his views and actions as consistent and viable. His participation in the Provisional Government was an honest and serious effort to prepare for the agrarian reform that was to be implemented based on legislation by the Constituent Assembly. The left center position Chernov occupied in the party placed him between the party's two wings, irreconcilable in the context of the polarization of political forces in 1917. Chernov presided over the Constituent Assembly for a single day before the Bolsheviks dispersed it by force. His democratic and Populist inclinations inevitably led him to take an intermediary stand between the Whites and the Reds during the Civil War of 1918-1920, causing him to spend most of this time underground. For a short time he was one of the leaders of the Komuch government, which attempted to oppose the Bolsheviks in the Volga region. He also opposed Kolchak's dictatorship. Chernov's spectacular appearance at a printers' meeting to address a British delegation visiting Moscow in 1920 demonstrated his uncompromising attitude vis a vis the Bolsheviks. This dissertation attempts to place Chernov's weaknesses, initially inflated out of proportion by his political enemies, and subsequently by Soviet historians, in a more objective context. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the problem of the “anthropological turn” in Russian Neo- Kantianism. There are three sources of this “anthropological turn”. The first one is the concept of man in German Neo-Kantianism which was developed on the basis of Kant’s ethics. The second one is the influence of Russian culture and history. The third is the state of Russian philosophy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Neo-Kantians reflected closely on the (...) doctrine of Leo Tolstoi and on the existence of man in the contemporary historical changes and cataclysms. They conclude the freedom of man as his essence depends on the political state of society and its moral base. There is no genuine existence of man without social politics based on morality and the human ideal. (shrink)

What is the philosophy? Husserl's view that philosophy is a reflection of Russian religious philosopher Shestov thought that philosophy is a struggle. In fact, this is the rational philosophical thinking of the opposition and the Bible. Rational thinking based on human philosophy is "reasonable person" understanding, through the "logic" behind the means to search for things based on that philosophy is "love of wisdom." Never mind the Bible are "divine" and starting the "Thunder and Lightning" as their "logic", the philosophy (...) as "the cause of death", which philosophy is the struggle. Shestov philosophy of rational thinking has been criticized, his philosophical understanding of the definition is based on the position of Russian religious philosophy of existence. What is philosophy? Husserl regards philosophy as reflection, while Shestov, the Russian religious philosopher, argues that philosophy is a kind of struggle. In fact, right in the heart of this difference lies the contradiction between rationalistic philosophy and Biblical philosophy. Based on the understanding that all man is "rational", rationalistic philosophy seeks to uncover things behind phenomena throught the means of "logic". Hence, philosophy understood in this sense is "the love of wisdom". However, based on the conviction that all men are "divine", Biblical philosophy considers "thunder and lightning" as its "logic" and therefore views philosophy as an undertaking of life and death. In this sense, philosophy should be a struggle. Shestov attacks rationalistic philosophy. His understanding of the definition of philosophy is set against the backdrop of Russian religious existentialist philosophy. (shrink)

Nicholas Alexsandrovich Berdyaev, 1874--1948, was part of the historic events that changed the course of Russian history. He lived through them and wrote about them for his entire adult life. Berdyaev not only pondered the agony of Russia's past, but he contemplated the possibilities of Russia's future. ;Berdyaev was a deeply Russian thinker, and like Russia, he presented the world with a paradox. Outside of Russia he was perhaps the best known and the most widely read of Russian philosophers, but (...) inside of Russia seldom read and little known. The paradox of Berdyaev extended to his life, his writings, and even his significance for intellectual study. He was at various times a political activist, literary expositor and religious philosopher. ;Although Berdyaev was born a privileged member of the landed gentry, he began his intellectual life as a Marxist Due to his political activism during his days as a university student, he was imprisoned and exiled to Vologda by the Tsarist regime. In the early 1900's he moved away from revolutionary Marxism and became a leader in the intellectual circle that criticized the radicalism of the Bolsheviks. In 1923 he was exiled from Russia by the Soviet government. He never returned to Russia, but for the rest of his life he thought, wrote and dreamed about Russia. ;There was one great passion in Berdyaev's life. He called it the "the mystery" of individual freedom. Even though Berdyaev said that his thoughts had no consistency, there was a link holding all his ideas together. The link was the theory of "opposition and resistance." This theory holds that freedom creates, allows, even demands, a struggle between opposing forces. Freedom is a state of resistance to any form of determinism or autocracy. Thus throughout his life Berdyaev rebelled against all forms of authoritarianism, universal systems or utopian ideologies either from the "right" or the "left." He opposed any authority, including nationalistic movements, which claimed primacy over the freedom of the spirit. (shrink)

Although Henri Bergson's short work, Laughter, was his first to be translated into Russian in 1900, it was not until the Moscow publication of Creative Evolution in 1909 that the French philosopher gained widespread popularity among Russian writers and thinkers. As put forth in Creative Revolution, Bergson's juxtaposition of mathematical, spatialized time with the duration of "real time" a dynamic flow that cannot be measured chronologically, appealed greatly to Russian modernists interested in breaking free of traditional concepts of time and (...) space. ;In Chapter One I discuss the attraction to Bergson's philosophy on the part of several Russian religious thinkers, most importantly Nikolai Losskii and Semyon Frank. Despite some reservation concerning Bergson's reluctance to embrace a neo-Platonic outlook on the world, these thinkers still found Bergsonian intuition appealing as a non-cognitive means for the immediate contemplation of divine reality. ;The relationship between Russian Symbolism and Bergsonian philosophy is examined in Chapter Two, which focuses on the Russian Symbolist poets, Zinaida Hippius and Andrei Belyi. Although Bergson stated triumphantly in 1903 that " etaphysics is the science that claims to dispense with symbols," some Russian Symbolists nonetheless were attracted to Bergson's metaphysical intuition. ;Chapter Three deals with Bergson's possible influence on Osip Mandel'shtam, Velimir Khlebnikov and Kazimir Malevich, representatives of the three major post-Symbolist artistic movements in Russia--Acmeism, Futurism and Suprematism. In each case, be it Mandel'shtam's interest in the Hellenistic nature of the Russian language, Khlebnikov's passion for etymology, or Malevich's geometric brush strokes, some type of intellectual, material framework anchored their post-Symbolist attraction to Bergson's concept of artistic intuition. ;In Chapter Four I discuss the major Russian writer of the Absurd, Daniil Kharms, along with his early mentor, the "transrational" poet, Aleksandr Tufanov, in terms of how their appropriation of Bergsonian ideas contributed to the aesthetics of the Russian Absurd. ;Chapter Five focuses on the final discrediting of Bergson in Russia as dialectical materialism and socialist realism take center stage, sounding the death knell of Russian modernism.* ftn*Originally published in DAI Vol. 57, No. 5. Reprinted here with corrected text. (shrink)

The Moscow Psychological Society, a learned society founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the philosophic center of the revolt against positivism in the Russian Silver Age. In 1889 it began publication of Russia's first regular, specialized journal in philosophy, Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. By the end of its activity in 1922, the Psychological Society had included most of the country's outstanding philosophers and had played the major role in the growth of professional philosophy in Russia. ;While the Silver (...) Age mounted a broad-based revolt against positivism, neo-idealist philosophy in the Psychological Society was distinctive in the theoretical depth of its critique. For leading philosophers in the Society , neo-idealism was a compelling defense of the self against positivist reductionism and naturalism, a defense that took the form, moreover, of a modernized, theoretically explicit theism, in which the value of the person is rooted in transcendent being . In this, neo-idealism promoted not only the autonomization and professionalization of Russian philosophy but also the theoretical development of Russian liberalism. ;This dissertation argues: that a learned society of philosophers had special significance in Russia, where the frail social foundations of liberalism made its intellectual defense all the more imperative; that the Psychological Society, especially in its programmatic symposium, Problems of Idealism , was integrally involved in the Russian Liberation Movement; that the neo-idealist development of Russian liberalism drew heavily on Kant, in its substantiation of the possibility of personalism and in its critique of utopianism; and that the neo-idealist critique of utopianism, specifically in the responses of Psychological Society philosophers to their colleague, Vladimir Solov'ev, provides an excellent measure of the distinctiveness of neo-idealism relative to other currents in the Silver Age. (shrink)

Semyon L. Frank was a leading representative of the metaphysical current in early 20th-century Russian philosophy. This study traces the evolution of his world-view from the 1890s, when he was a student Marxist, to 1915, when he published The Object of Knowledge, his first book-length exposition of his mature philosophical system. Challenging the established interpretation of Frank's philosophical development, which makes much of his supposed indebtedness to Vladimir Solovyov, the study emphasizes the important role played in his intellectual formation by (...) currents in the philosophical thought of contemporary Europe, including Nietzscheanism, neo-Kantianism, and Lebensphilosophie. At the same time, it explores the linkage between changes in Frank's philosophical positions and changes in his views on the vocation of the intellectual in Russia. ;Frank's struggle to define himself in relation to the Kantian tradition is the central drama of his philosophical development. In the years leading up to the 1905 Revolution, the opposition between the normative and the real was to him--as to the Kantians--a primary philosophical axiom. It mirrored his own vision of the Russian intelligentsia as a group charged with molding reality to conform to its moral ideals. The intelligentsia's actual conduct in 1905-1906, however, drove him to repudiate this vision, and with it, Kantian dualism. He was henceforth to uphold the view that reality was itself the source of all norms, which are grasped by the human mind in acts of intellectual intuition. ;Frank characterized his new conception of reality as "religious." But the last major modifications in his world-view were precipitated by his arguments with other "religious" thinkers of the post-1905 period. Reacting to their attacks on Western "rationalism," Frank was driven to reaffirm his commitment to science an indispensable component of culture, and to the validity of scientific knowing in its proper sphere. The Object of Knowledge was written to defend a conception of scientific and intuitive knowledge as parallel paths to the understanding of reality. (shrink)