Russian Ontologism: An Overview
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Russian Ontologism: An Overview Frédéric Tremblay1 Accepted: 5 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Yet, they all appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism. In contrast to the latter, Russian philosophy typically displays a tendency towards ontologism, which is generally defined as the view that there is such a thing as being in itself, i.e., being independent of cognition, and that this being is to some extent knowable. We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed movements, an underlying ontologism that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. Keywords Russian philosophy · Russian ontologism · Slavophilism · Russian nihilism · Russian religious philosophy · Dialectical materialism · Ontologism · Meonism · Vladimir Solovyov · Nikolai Lossky · Vladimir Lenin
Introduction Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Slavophilism was opposed to Westernism with regards to the issue of Russia’s openness to the West, the Russian nihilists were opposed to the Slavophiles for their belief in the existence of God and their political views, Russian religious philosophy was opposed to nihilism for its atheism, barrenness, and political aims, and, in turn, dialectical materialism was opposed to religious philosophy again for its belief in the existence of God, its speculative character, and its hierarchical worldview. Yet all of these movements appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the * Frédéric Tremblay [email protected]‑sofia.bg 1
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria
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subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism that some Russian thinkers like Nikolai Chernyshevsky have called “illusionism”1 and others like Nikolai Berdyaev and Vladimir Ern called “meonism.”2 We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed Russian movements, an underlying ontologism—i.e., the view that there is such a thing as a mind-independent being and according to which such being is to some extent knowable—that defies the main meonist trend of nineteenth-century German philosophy and that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. I begin with examining claims from works on the history of philosophy to the effect that Russian philosophy inclines towards ontologism, and I then turn to a pres
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