36 Answers

  1. I will add to the answer of Alexander Zaitsev, with whom I completely agree.

    The short answer to this question is something like this: philosophy can exist only if and where there is space for thinking free of ideology, whether religious or secular. If society presupposes the existence of ready-made answers to the philosophical questions posed by ideology, then the philosopher simply has nothing to do.

    Soviet philosophy is a prime example of the latter. It is no coincidence that Merab Mamardashvili in one of his interviews describes the style of teaching philosophy in Soviet universities as a “vinaigrette of categories”. Philosophy as such was not particularly taught in universities, at least not officially. The official course of philosophy, textbooks and philosophical dictionaries were aimed not at teaching philosophy, but at ideological training, that is, at driving these very categories of Marxism-Leninism into the student's head and teaching them to perceive reality through their prism.

    In Soviet times, you know, there was such a joke that every army political instructor is by definition a philosopher. This was due to the fact that, taking into account the ideological tasks of the philosophy faculties, former military personnel were often sent there after retirement. I think it makes no sense to talk about how this affected the quality of philosophy departments and the education received there.

    But this is not to say that the problems began in the USSR. Alexander in his answer very correctly shows that the Soviet practice was just a reproduction of the pre-revolutionary practice, only the ideology in the USSR changed from religious to secular. And now we are seeing an attempt to re-construct a conservative-religious ideology based on Orthodoxy.

    Thus, historically, the situation in Russia for the development of philosophy and, in general, the humanities, for most of its history was unfavorable. But academic traditions don't add up in one generation. For an academic tradition to emerge, we need universities, magazines, and people who can work normally, educate students and face each other in polemics.

    It is all the more surprising that both in the Soviet Union and in Russia, philosophy still existed and still exists. Against all odds.

    From the obvious, you can recall such figures as, for example, Evald Ilyenkov. It is noteworthy that Ilyenkov's ideas were not appreciated in his homeland – in 1955 he was expelled from Moscow State University for his article. But even during his lifetime, Ilyenkov's texts were translated into European languages. And in 2011, David Beckhurst published the book “The Formation of the Mind”, in which he analyzes the main ideas of Ilyenkov and compares them with the ideas of Western philosophers about the nature of consciousness.

    Another interesting figure is Vasily Nalimov. He was actually a mathematician, but his work is devoted, among other things, to scientometrics, the theory of language and the problem of consciousness. A sort of Soviet Penrose. Back in the early 1980s, a body of his work was translated and published in English. In the Soviet Union, like Ilyenkov, he was subjected to harassment. In the 1930s, he was convicted of “counter-revolutionary activities”, and in the late 1940s, he was sent into exile in Kazakhstan.

    The pattern, I think, is clear enough to make it clear how the screening of the most interesting figures, who, in fact, could form some original philosophical tradition, worked in the Soviet era.

    Other names could be mentioned here, but I will probably refrain from turning the answer into a list. I can only say that Arzamas has an interesting little course about philosophy in the USSR: https://arzamas.academy/courses/1/1.

    But what about after the Soviet era? Was it really over? In principle, no. Both in the 1990s and 2000s, there were enough interesting figures in Russia. Another thing is that, in the Russian context, the average person rarely sees these figures and rarely interacts with their ideas. But this, again, is not least a problem of Russian philosophy, but of Russian society.

  2. This is going to be a long time, sorry. Let's start from afar.

    1813-1815 years. Foreign campaign of the Russian Army. Alexander I, after witnessing student riots, comes to the conclusion that students are the source of revolutionary sentiments, and philosophy is to blame for everything.

    Professor I. B. Shad of Kharkiv State University is being dismissed from his post “For adhering to the latest philosophy that emerged in Germany, and especially to the philosophy of Schelling.”

    In 1816, A. I. Golitsin was appointed to the post of Minister of Public Education of the Russian Empire. Golitsin reports to the Emperor: “The spread of philosophy in the universities puts both the Church of the Lord and the government of the father in imminent danger,” and implores the Emperor to “destroy this pernicious teaching.”

    Golitsin's first step as minister was to merge the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Religious Affairs “so that Christian piety may always be the foundation of true enlightenment.”

    What is philosophy in the understanding of man at the beginning of the XIX century? This is mainly “old metaphysics” – that is, the construction of a speculative system of universal principles of the world.

    In 1819, Golitsin appointed S. P. Magnitsky as a member of the main board of schools. Magnitsky believes that philosophy ” infuriates minds with God.” At first, he suggests destroying Kazan University, but then confines himself to writing instructions to the rector.

    He writes: “Conditional truth, which is the subject of speculative philosophy, could replace the truth of Christianity only until the coming of the Savior of the world. In order to avoid the confusion of ideas that is noticed in education from the “inconsistency” of various philosophical systems, the professor of philosophy is obliged to bring the “inconsistencies”of<them> to a single beginning. Only those philosophical theories are sound and just that can be consistent with the teaching of Holy Scripture, for there is only one Truth.”

    In 1820, he solemnly reports to the emperor that the teaching of philosophy has been brought into line with the Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless, he does not calm down and in 1823 initiates a case “on the harmful teaching of philosophical sciences” with the intention of banning philosophy, but the members of the Main Board of Schools vote against it. Philosophy only needs to be ” purged of the absurdities of the latest philosophers.”

    Russian philosophy since the beginning of the XIX century is 1) religious 2) metaphysical.

    What is happening in Germany at this time? What happens is Hegel. Hegel builds his own metaphysical system. To emphasize the superiority of his system over others, he calls other metaphysics metaphysics, and his own-dialectic.

    What happens to Hegel? Hegel is read by Marx, turning him upside down. We get a materialistic dialectic.

    In the middle of the XIX century, the differentiation of sciences begins. Auguste Comte declares that ” science is its own philosophy.” This does not mean that Comte killed philosophy. This means that philosophy soon after Hegel's death begins to abandon the construction of comprehensive metaphysical systems and metaphysics in general. While everything is changing in the world, in Russia on June 22, 1850, the teaching of philosophy was simply abolished for ten years.

    In 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power. The old Russian philosophers (still religious and metaphysical) set sail in 1922 on the philosophical steamer.

    The Hegelian dialectic turned upside down by Marx (a metaphysical system that denies its metaphysicality because it redefines metaphysics!) It is defined as ” the science of the universal laws of the development of nature, society, and thought. ” The main question of philosophy is the metaphysical question of the relation of consciousness to being. Marxism is declared to be the only true teaching.

    “Marxism is based on the Hegelian understanding of philosophy. This type of philosophy was formed and “in its main features was formed before” the beginning of the professionalization process. In the framework of this classical understanding of philosophy, philosophy is understood as some comprehensive system, or as some type of knowledge about “absolutely universal rules, principles and laws of the existence of the world.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2dTqAd3Yg) .

    What is happening in the Soviet Union? Philosophers are deprived of the opportunity to study Russian religious philosophy. Philosophers are deprived of the opportunity to engage in modern professional philosophy, in which metaphysics occupies a completely different place. Philosophical questions are decided by the party and the government.

    The main function of the philosopher in the Soviet Union becomes that of a metaphysical censor – that is, a person who makes sure that everything corresponds to a particular metaphysical system – materialist dialectics-and nails everything that does not seem to correspond to it.

    Therefore, for example, Ivan Frolov is considered a great Soviet philosopher – a man who wrote a treatise in defense of genetics, “Genetics and Dialectics”.

    An anecdotal example of how all this affected weak minds is the grandfather just below with the super – valuable idea of the “dialectical method”, under which everything from the creation of the world is retroactively adjusted.

    Nowhere else in the world, except in the countries of the socialist camp,was there any speculative universal laws and grounds for everything at that time. Philosophers have been doing something else entirely. Ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, political philosophy, phenomenology, methodology, logic, application of the methods of formal logic to the humanities, etc. And metaphysics, yes-in a new sense. And religious philosophy.

    Here, the director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences was an engineer named Ukraintsev, who defended his doctoral thesis on the pamphlet “Transition of quantitative changes to qualitative ones under Socialism”. The engineer of Ukrainians remained in history, because he forbade “colleagues” to travel abroad.

    This does not mean that there were no philosophers in the Soviet Union. Were. It is impossible to be completely two hundred years behind the world. This does not mean that there are no philosophers in Russia. There is. Logos magazine is a world-class magazine. There is still something continental, I just don't have time to follow it…

    This means that the function of metaphysical censor was removed from Russian philosophers only twenty-nine years ago, and at the same time we were flooded with all the philosophy of the world with which we have to deal. This means that teaching an introduction to the history of philosophy is mandatory, but it is simply called “Philosophy” and ends with some Nietzsche. This means that many people of the older generation do not understand anything in philosophy at all, despite all the Soviet candidate's minimums (or rather, because of them)… So we live.

    Twenty-nine years is a very short time.

  3. In my opinion, as an amateur philosopher, the question is more provocative than constructive, suggesting an unambiguous understanding of philosophy and its practitioners, and this in fact does not and cannot be. The multiplicity of definitions of the subject of philosophy makes the concept of a philosopher undefined. The ultimate extension of the concept of the philosopher to the whole of humanity endowed with consciousness is to bring thought to the point of absurdity.

    It is necessary to determine the boundary conditions of compliance for separating “grains from tares” and “rams from goats” , and in this respect, a formal and professional approach is no worse than others, no matter who does not relate to it.

    If we proceed from the a priori statement of the existence of philosophy as a certain area of human knowledge, then we can also state the existence of people practicing in this area, and the question of the demand for this area of knowledge by society since the time of Socrates is ambiguous. Philosophical schools, doctrines, and theories-concepts are also ambiguous and contradictory, even to the point of mutual negation. This kaleidoscope of ideas does not yet have a mechanism for their unambiguous verification, as in natural sciences. Perhaps this mechanism is contraindicated in philosophy, since there is no clear boundary between “mental gymnastics”and” mind games”.

    In conclusion, I would like to note that philosophy, for all its “impracticality” and abstraction, is precisely the foundation on which all modern knowledge rests. It is in it that all its modern trends are rooted, and in order that now human thought in this boundless ocean of information does not drown and wander in three pines, does not overflow from empty to empty in favor of its own ambitions, corporate interests or market conditions – philosophy and, first of all, logic is needed not in philosophy departments at universities, but in general education schools on a par with the Russian language and mathematics. It comes to the point of absurdity when studying transformations of algebraic expressions, schoolchildren do not realize that they are actually performing logical exercises, since the concept of “expression” has passed into mathematics from formal classical logic, not to mention the set theory that is passed in high school, where the apparatus of mathematical logic is found almost at every step, and high school students-Jourdain do not know that they are trying to put ideas about logic as one of the branches of philosophy (without naming names). Our school teachers complain about students who are indifferent to knowledge, who think primitively and speak inarticulately, but they are forced to stuff them instead of ethics with the basics of Orthodox culture, the Moscow Art Theater without aesthetics, history and civic studies without any explanations of existing and existing social and philosophical doctrines. A student who is not taught the skills of orderly logical thinking and rhetorical techniques is “loaded” with such a volume of information that he flounders helplessly trying to “keep out bubbles” instead of feeling “like a fish in water”. Students are taught a lot of things, but they forget to teach them to think, and this is what first enters the subject of philosophy…

  4. This is a very controversial issue.

    1) Why did the author conclude that there is no philosophy in Russia and, accordingly, no philosophers either? In Russia, since the 19th century, there is both. Maybe the author is interested in why this was not previously observed there, then it was necessary to ask. The answer is simple – there was no need.

    2) But the most interesting thing is, if the author is not a snob, then I would like to know why he actually needed philosophy, does he have any questions about the universe?

    3) However, it is good if the author is a snob, because then it is clear where this question came from: I just wanted to inflate my cheeks, well, or seem smart, or maybe once again put Russia in a disadvantageous light, as it seems to him, but most likely all this at once… 🙂

  5. Wise is the one who knows not much, but what is necessary.

    Aeschylus

    It is known that literally from the ancient Greek “philosophy” means love of wisdom. However, what kind of love and wisdom have we been talking about for so long? Apparently, the philosophers themselves, without fully understanding this, did not explain, at least for themselves, what should be considered the main subject of philosophy. Having not agreed on this in the distant past, they then repeatedly undertook to deny the existence of such a subject, and unsuccessfully search for answers to many other, no less important, in their opinion, questions. However, without having finally decided what philosophy is, now, apparently, it is proposed that under such concepts as” love “and” wisdom ” everyone should understand their own. Everyone is offered to have only their own love and their own wisdom, as it developed back in the days of the German philosopher Schopenhauer, who, either from great “love” or from great “wisdom”, called his colleague – “incompetent charlatan Hegel”. Not surprisingly, since then, it has become increasingly difficult to understand how philosophizing makes it possible for anyone to fall in love with something called “wisdom.” From the German classical philosophy, it will remain incomprehensible why to experience such an exorbitant feeling as love, if it is enough just to master wisdom. It is difficult to overestimate the philosophy created by the Western and, above all, German culture of thought; but it must be admitted that it rejected love as unnecessary or, at best, gave it an applied character. German philosophers shunned love, because it did not fit into their philosophical systems as an element worthy of serious attention, as a necessary concept. Therefore, it contains interesting guesses for the history of philosophy, assumptions about what the main subject means in such an amazing occupation for a person as philosophizing. After a long search for various “candidates and candidates” for the role of its main subject, German classical philosophy passionately sought to master wisdom. But, like any other rational passion, it only betrayed the object of its next lust every time, and therefore love is absent in German classical philosophy.

    However, the movement of philosophical thought continues and no one is confused by the fact that the purpose of philosophy remains undefined. As a result, philosophy is overflowing with such ideas that ultimately boil down to the fact that a person's life is joyful, but, alas, only for those who have not known it. But on such an archaic foundation, an exceptionally rational, refined image of philosophy can exist, where “one but fiery passion” – the love of wisdom-will still be absent.

  6. For Russia, as for the whole world, there is a law of nature: “A mouse can only give birth to a mouse, and never a baby elephant, or at least a kitten.” Idealists who were building a bright building of a happy future in Russia needed a project for the foundation of this building. Therefore, they stimulated those scientists who justified the reality of such a building. And so, some mouse, realizing that on the basis of this approach, you can climb high, justified the philosophy of the reality of the building. She was immediately made a “great scientist” and the leader of all the others. Thus, the path for deviations in philosophy was closed. At best, a stray elephant was sent to foreign zoos. And at worst … A similar situation with philosophers was created in due time with geneticists and with cyberneticists. Philosophy, as well as other sciences, requires freedom of thought and mutual contacts with colleagues from all over the world. A modern example: import substitution is a criminal self-isolation with a clearly negative result.

  7. Philosophy is the love of thinking.
    How in principle can it not be somewhere?
    Every adequate person is a philosopher. Inadequate people delegate their ability to think to others.
    I don't agree that there should be any “hothouse conditions”for philosophy. The ideology is based on the currently prevailing state philosophy. The opposition in a more or less legal form, however, still exists.
    Where are our philosophers? Yes, in any beer hall!!
    Tolstoy, Krestovsky, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Weller, after all, are not philosophers to you?

  8. The question is incorrectly posed. In Russia, there are philosophers, philosophy, and philosophy training. But what does not exist is patronymic philosophical schools of thought of world significance. Well, I don't take Leninism into account, because it is rather Marxism in practical terms applied to Russian soil. In Soviet times, one could talk about the Vygotsky school and its followers, the Shchedrovitsky school, and the Ilyenkov school. Even earlier, in tsarist Russia, the Gurdjieff school emerged, which continues to exist in many countries. Despite some popularity of these schools in the world, their influence in the world is not comparable with the influence of Hegel, Kant… and a number of other Western European philosophers. This is largely due to the language barrier. However, Russia has given the world such philosophers and writers of world significance as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. But their philosophy is of a different kind, it does not fit into the Western European format of philosophy, although its global influence is recognized in the West.

  9. There is both. At least those that go back to the methodological direction. Historiosophy in various versions develops clumsily, but actively. There are local reflections of Western schools. Near-Marxist trends are also alive. Everything blooms and smells.

  10. Philosophy disappeared in the USSR because it became a cabinet, ethics disappeared in it, as the connection of any philosophical system with life. I am a Hegelian, perhaps the last one in the world, and I have experienced persecution for dissent. E. V. Ilyenkov also understood Hegel's philosophy, which is why the end of his life was sad. Modern ” philosophers “do not understand the difference between terms, concepts and categories, they do not distinguish between reason, reason and sensuous cognition, for them there is no” truth as a process”, they are not able to think from a system, a whole to parts, they represent the typicalities of the whole, the existence of philosophy through the connection of methodology and technology. They just threw out the methodology and got in the way.

    How do they become philosophers? Through the processes of pulling out of itself, like a spider's web, certain aggregates of opposites, contradictions and borderline sciences according to the principle of 3P-finger, floor, ceiling. In the future, we can stop the enumeration and show an example of the development of Hegel's philosophy, the discovery of technologies in it, as a connection with life. . In more detail. Nikolay Gasha ” Basic ethics “(Laws of self-organization) 364 pages. http://philosophystorm.org/sites/default/files/bazovaya_etika_etika_samoorganizacii.doc Which, by the way, is banned in Russia, as well as the culture of thinking from a self-organized whole to a part, but for more than twenty years

  11. There is a whole Institute of Philosophy in Russia, and D. I. Dubrovsky does not bow a bit to Western philosophy. In Russia, there is no platform for free communication on philosophical topics, and the significance of a philosopher's thoughts directly depends on their position in an educational institution, their proximity to power. This fact confirms the absence of philosophy in Russia.

  12. Once upon a time, philosophy was the only way to study the world. Both science and its method.

    Over time, separate sciences with their own subject and method began to stand out from philosophy. Many of them have achieved very great success and have become possessed of predictive power.

    Today, philosophy resembles the discarded shell of a nymph, from which a dragonfly got out and flew away. Today, the philosophical approach to any problem is the approach of an amateur who has not bothered to study the relevant science. That is why there are so many philosophers and they are indestructible 🙂

  13. Philosophy – in textbooks, in literature… And so-and-so is full. If you understand “in Russia” – more than – “from the nineties dashing”. So, the question is profane. And the answer is in accordance. There are enough philosophers and philosophers in Russia for the whole nation (society if anyone wants) in excess – but there is no demand. For there is also a measure for cattle, and” the measure of everything ” is now-cattle.

  14. Gentlemen, comrades!!! Philosophy as a science and, accordingly. philosophers, as people capable of an extremely generalized and holistic perception of reality, arise when and where: a) favorable conditions for philosophizing and philosophers are formed, and b) when there is a clear public demand – the need to develop a new view of the development of society, human nature and the solution of certain social problems or contradictions. Are there favorable conditions for philosophizing in modern Russian reality?? In general, it is more likely yes than no, at least for now, philosophers are not crucified on crosses and starved, unless, of course, they come into ideological conflict with the existing government and its ideology… Is there a public demand for solving urgent, overdue, overripe and unsolvable problems and contradictions by the authorities?? I am sure that there is, however, this opinion is shared by most intellectuals who are concerned about the state of our affairs and our gloomy prospects. So why is there still no outstanding philosophers and relevant and popular philosophy in Russia?? Yes, because such a philosophy requires not only analytical and logical abilities, but also civic courage, passion, the ability to make sacrifices and take risks for the sake of serving one's cause. When society finally becomes disillusioned with the way it is being led, when the number of cones begins to exceed the number of buns received, when the burden it carries becomes unbearable, then it will sit down on a tree stump and ask itself sacramental Russian questions : “What's going on with us? And who is to blame and what to do??” Then, perhaps, the time will come for the emergence of outstanding Russian philosophers and brilliant and original Russian philosophy.

  15. In the comments, German Georgievich asked a question about A. Losev, and his question hung … There is no time to read A. F. Losev – the article must be completed … prepare for the lecture …

    A. F. Losev took a huge step forward, and we didn't even notice.

  16. In order for smart philosophers and politicians to appear in Russia, it is necessary to develop and spread the scientific worldview in a high-quality way.

    To develop a scientific worldview qualitatively, it is necessary to develop science qualitatively, in the form of creating a complex of 8 systems of all known objects of nature, and their reflection in mathematics and language. In the form of conclusions from the analysis of the human language system, a constantly updated scientific worldview is created, which is necessary for building real highly developed societies. During the Soviet era, there were no savvy enthusiasts, and now the bourgeoisie do not want to finance such research, because of which they will inevitably lose power.

    People have long known the basic interrelationships of concepts that make up the language system.
    To reflect the surrounding reality, all reasonable people use well-known relationships of concepts, often perceived as platitudes, for example:
    1. Interrelations of antagonisms and opposites.
    Ugliness and beauty, work and leisure, wisdom and stupidity, knowledge and ignorance, association and division, politeness and rudeness, tenderness and cruelty, honesty and fraud, health and disease, pride and shame, happiness and failure, joy and torment, disgust and adoration, friendship and conflict, modesty and conceit…
    2. Consistent relationships of concepts.
    Stealth, excitement, apprehension, anxiety, fear, fright, panic, terror.
    Shyness, embarrassment, shyness, shame, embarrassment, shame, humiliation, shame.
    Discipline, compliance, dependence, submission, submission, captivity, hard labor, slavery.
    Respect, reputation, prestige, authority, popularity, admiration, charm, adoration.
    3. Two levels of general concepts that clearly correspond to two levels of human and social development.
    Greed and thrift, imitation and naturalness, adoration and respect, courage and arrogance, cowardice and caution, stubbornness and self-control, arrogance and pride, rudeness and severity, criticism and insult, mockery and demanding, war and competition, association and cooperation, honesty and hypocrisy, thinking and calculation, fanaticism and beliefs.…

  17. In Russia (and abroad) there is no philosophy for the simple reason that all modern philosophy has not found a response in the souls and minds of citizens. Philosophy has not determined its place in the developing humanity. Philosophy is a complete mess. Name for me at least one philosophical work in the last two hundred years that the entire philosophy of the globe can be proud of.

    Name at least one work that I can study with pleasure.

  18. Philosophy is a spiritual and informational reflection of reality, represented by the material essence of the world around us. At the same time, the concept of the world for each individual is purely individual, and therefore subjective. And if a person is born in the form of a baby, the formation of which into a person goes all the rest of his life, then this shows the essence and levels of subjective attitude and reflection of the world. For a child – one, for a teenager-another, for youth-a third, etc. And only in the declining years with proper development and full knowledge of the natural world and the human world, the individual acquires wisdom. And if philosophy is the love of wisdom, then it is a reflection of the path to wisdom. At the same time, the surrounding reality is both objective and material, and therefore philosophy, reflecting its surroundings, must be interterialistic. And since matter is in constant motion and change, it is not just materialistic, but also dialectical. Therefore, if philosophy must lead to truth, and it is objective and concrete, then this is possible only by using dialectical and historical materialism, formed by Karl Marx and Fr. Engels and developed by V. I. Lenin. And if Marxism led to the liberation of the peoples of our country and allowed the creation of a superpower, then this indicates the right direction of both Marxism and politics based on it. But all other subjective-idealistic philosophies have led to the current confusion, collapse and degradation. And if the Bolsheviks led by V. I. Lenin raised the question of the all-round and harmonious development of Soviet people from infancy, and this should have led to the development of philosophy, people, and society, but the departure from Marxism, replacing it with subjective and ideological eclecticism in favor of power, divorced from the people and opposed to the people, led to the opposite. Therefore, philosophy must be understood, developed and brought to the masses!

  19. There are plenty of philosophers in Russia: there are a dime a dozen of them in every tavern and roadside eatery… Another thing is that there are no world-class philosophers in Russia. No, because philosophy is the sublimation of academic book culture and book science into a holistic worldview. Academic science and culture in Russia are borrowed: before Peter from Byzantium, after Peter – from Western Europe. And any product obtained through recycling is a waste product of poor quality. That's all.

  20. I think that the question put in the title, to put it mildly, does not correspond to reality.

    “All people are philosophers.” Although this was said by an English philosopher, but he does not distinguish anyone here by culture, race, people and so on.

    Therefore, anyone who agrees and begins to answer affirmatively to “Why are there no philosophers and philosophers in Russia?”– no longer a philosopher.

    If we turn to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, then Russian philosophers are the pearls of philosophical thought not only in Russia, but also in world philosophy. These are such names as Lev Isaakovich Shestov (who is referred to by such Western philosophers as Camus, Russell and Popper); Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov raised many philosophical questions, especially the religious aspect of general knowledge; Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin and Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin – the founders of anarchism, but at the same time profound philosophers; the philosophy of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov, although it was in the pen in Soviet times, but I, for example, easily found his works reprinted in the twenties and sixties; and, finally, Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, who is one of the top ten philosophers of the XX century.

    The works of Soviet philosophers had a number of features associated at different times with the private “Marxist-Leninist philosophy”. But even here, everything is not so clear. In the twenties after the civil War and until about the end of 1930, Soviet Russia experienced a boom in philosophical thought. In terms of the boldness and originality of the proposed concepts and new approaches, it was a continuous waterfall of ideas that emerged from the heated debates of the party and higher schools. Surprisingly, even modern and professional Russian philosophers know almost nothing about these disputes.

    In Stalin's time, namely from the beginning of the thirties, there is a sharp ideologization of philosophy, but not its development. The authorities, trying to create a “forced” philosophy, nevertheless laid the foundation for the broad development of philosophy itself, which sooner or later had to break through the shackles of ideology. At least in the broad dissident movement of the sixties. Philosophy began to “hide” in the works of Soviet writers in allegorical and journalistic forms.

    The names of E. V. Ilyenkov and A. A. Zinoviev are little known both at that time and today, although their works are now widely used in world philosophy.

    The real question needs to be put differently: why, with the developed system of philosophical knowledge in the Soviet Union, was philosophy itself taught and passed down very poorly, which ultimately affected even the whole generation, which in the post-Soviet period was already subject to any influences from esoteric, magical, and frankly pseudoscientific influences, that their “philosophical root” (no matter what: atheistic or religious) worldview was practically not?!

    I will briefly answer that in my opinion, there were two reasons. The first is “ideological”. But not in the sense that ideology restricts the subject of study. And the attitude to this subject as an obligatory part of ideology. That is, philosophy was not perceived as philosophy, but only as an obligatory attribute of Soviet ideology. Therefore, it was an annoying and boring subject, in which you had to get a credit in order not to lose your scholarship. Well, figuratively speaking.

    The second reason: teaching philosophy. I was just lucky that there was a young teacher in our group who did not require us to know certain philosophical concepts, but rather that we could show how we think, or how he thought… this or that philosopher, how much he is right in his thoughts or, conversely, wrong. Philosophy is not a collection of categories, concepts, or historical concepts. This is primarily a system of thinking, the logic of thinking, the validity of certain concepts… We young students were just lucky then. As it was often said about teachers from other universities or educational institutions, most of the teachers were extremely limited and “followed the program of higher education”.

    How is philosophy taught in US colleges today, for example?! This is a close connection of philosophical aspects with people's lives! And only then comes “ontology” or “epistemology”… We still have “abstruse” philosophical words and expressions, a bunch of names and “classical” definitions thrown at students ' heads in the first classes. This is not so much philosophy, but theology.

    There is always a philosophy. Even where it seems to be missing.:)

  21. “If society presupposes the existence of ready-made answers to philosophical questions posed by ideology, then the philosopher simply has nothing to do.” With such a culture of thinking, of course

  22. there is no doubt that many people in Russia consider philosophy to be empty talk; for example, in the Russian dictionary, the word philosophy has the meaning of “abstract, irrelevant reasoning”

  23. We have philosophy and philosophers, but there are no outstanding philosophers and philosophies… everything is ruined by one-sided materialism and the fear of idealists to get once again under the ice rink…

  24. Question from the category “a fool asked and puzzled a wise man”)) First, if “Philosophy” is a special form of human mental activity aimed at “a comprehensive rational understanding of the world and human existence in it”, then YES (!), neither philosophers nor philosophy can be traced in Russia. Otherwise, how to explain that a gang of bandits, an organized criminal group at the present time, captured 1/6 of the entire land. In case anyone doesn't know or forgot, 1/6 of the land area is the area of the former Soviet Union. WHO so rationally and comprehensively comprehended the world and human existence that the capture took place without the slightest resistance of this very “person”? Or is this the ultimate justice?))

    Secondly, if “philosophy is also understood as the historically developing set of results of this activity and the system of theoretical propositions within which it is carried out”, then the actual set of “results of this activity” directly screams: GO TO … WITH YOUR PHILOSOPHY!!!!!

    Third, if the philosophy is “denoting a high degree of intelligence, wisdom, and curiosity”, then let's look at the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation. If anyone else is not aware of the scandals in the Russian progress incubator, it is easy to find details on the Internet. But these are high, as they say, matters. School, university, postgraduate studies, candidates and doctors of all kinds of sciences… Someone thinks that these institutions are filled with “a high degree of intelligence, wisdom and curiosity”? Are there any of these?) No, really, there is?))

    And finally, by philosophy in Russia they understood and understand (the broad masses, I mean) empty chatter about nothing, white noise, if you will, the flight of thought without a route, navigator and pilot.)) If this definition of philosophy is appropriate, then there are a dime a dozen philosophers in Russia! Every janitor is a philosopher! To spite your enemies! ))

  25. First, there is now the science of intellectology with mathematically accurate units for measuring mental abilities (“intas”) and even thoughts. To be a philosopher today, you need to have a specific brain that produces a reasonable way of thinking at the level of five intas. For modern MSU teachers, it does not exceed two or three intas. Therefore, to become capable of philosophy, they need to become twice as smart. Philosophical journals are usually headed by people with a two-dimensional mentality who do not understand the essence of philosophy. Therefore, they do not accept truly philosophical publications, but publish philosophical garbage that is accessible to their everyday thinking. They still regard Marxism as a philosophy, not knowing that there is already an experimental branch of philosophy and that Marxism has been experimentally refuted, is not a philosophy, but a metaphysical doctrine. Therefore, it did not stand the test of time, and was defeated almost on a global scale. Today we can talk about the dominance of official, illiterate and therefore ignorant philosophy. Its crisis was revealed by E. Husserl in 1910 and 1935 (The Crisis of European Sciences and the Crisis of European Humanity). He showed that the essence of the crisis lies in the absence of a theory of knowledge, which is a working tool for objective ontological philosophizing. Today, such a theory already exists, but it is published in Russian by a German academic publishing house (in Russia it is not allowed on the threshold). From an experimental point of view, it rejects the prevailing materialistic worldview, asserts the immaterial origin of matter: matter and the universe did not arise from elementary particles, but from a mathematical idea-ideally. The active interaction of materialism and idealism (trialectics) is stated as a new worldview: Artemyev Yu.T. Asymmetric theory of Knowledge. Asymmetry is the mother of matter. yuvenaliitimofeevitch@yandex.ru

  26. Philosophy should be nourished by the development of the sciences and the political and legal struggle. For example, the struggle of aristocrats, as in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, or even as in the medieval estate-representative English or Spanish monarchy, where the nobility provided the monarch with boundless resistance and secured privileges that required the development of philosophical and legal thought to justify rights and develop legal legislation.

    In an absolute monarchy, as in the states of the Holy Roman, Byzantine, and Russian Empires, the elected vicars, who were not by right autocrats, simply could not resist the absolute monarch, whose power was sanctioned by force and the united Church. The political and legal struggle in these conditions was impossible without a church schism, such as the Reformation, which served as the beginning of the development of philosophical and legal ideas and the flourishing of the classical philosophy of German idealism. But in the Russian Empire, absolutism was fixed for a long time, starting with the yoke of the Golden Horde and continuing after the Polish-Lithuanian intervention with the Romanov dynasty and the unification of the church for the entire synodal period until 1917.

  27. There is too much adulation of the West and the associated epigonism. Why should we invent it if everything is invented in the West?! I expect Russian philosophy to flourish in the 21st century.

  28. And you have a mind for understanding philosophy, do not lie and do not flatter yourself , you do not have it, you did not create it for yourself, and it will not appear.
    So, they are practically nowhere to be found, they are crushed by the morality and law of society, there is no environment of reason that requires philosophical thought, and this is great work and hard work, and this is without the fact that his achievements are deadly for a philosopher, he says about them painfully loudly. Moreover, it is not a fact that the state will kill him legally, it may not be in time, the people in a fit of righteous patriotism will do it faster. Well, at least those that exist preserve the wisdom of our ancestors, and new developments of our time, and they are stunningly interesting and adequately develop the thoughts of our ancestors, real, not religious, not political, not theological, but philosophical, and this is usually confused by poorly literate people.
    Open the tutorial, and see who of them died a natural death, it is a problem to find such a person.
    That's the whole truth and all this knowledge is not closed at all, everything is freely available.
    Have you ever strained your brains to find and understand them?.YES, NEVER.
    And do not say that give me and I will understand, you were given, it is already visible here, you did not understand anything and did not see, hence this question.

  29. Good. Name societies that are free of ideology…

    I've been wanting to have a good laugh for a long time.

    Only here you can exclude Ancient Greece (there Socrates was expelled for ideological reasons so that he considered it good to get poisoned),

    Ancient Rome also probably does not roll,

    Ancient China, Ancient India, Protestant Germany … (these are my favorites… these people used to burn witches at the stake).

    I'm just curious…

    I want to hear about a society free of ideology…

  30. Philosophers and philosophy in Russia were, are and will be (starting with Joseph Volotsky)! They were simply lost in the Soviet era, and we have not yet determined their meaning and significance systematically.

  31. Because the author did not even bother to Google,so that at least superficially, at a glance, to learn Russian philosophers with a dozen ,only in the last 150 years.

  32. Philosophy is based on the search for truth.

    And why look for it if we all already know everything.

    And there was a strong philosopher in Russia. Rozanov.

    Now the writer Galkovsky is interesting.

  33. the Russian person has no particular interest in playing idols he is a philosopher a writer and a poet in his own right and when he looks out at the world he sees this theater on the stage where talkative masks run around making noise as if letting in a fog for disguise and it is better to drink tea than to waste his time on these games

  34. Do you say that there is no national philosophy, but only a “VINAIGRETTE OF CATEGORIES”?… I hope you don't mind the significance (to put it more coolly, the necessity) of the philosophical CATEGORIES themselves, which, directly or indirectly, are used by philosophers of all stripes? … And the claims, apparently, are made to the “VINAIGRETTE”, i.e. to their certain unsystematic, disordered, and partly eclectic nature … these very categories?… But in this regard, we can recall, for example, about the SYSTEMOLOGY (OTS), which, by its very name, claims to be … systematization and structuring of the conceptual and terminological apparatus. Moreover, if they try to combine it, which is very fair and deserved, with DIALECTICS (which has its roots all the way back to Antiquity)…

    .. I am referring to the SDP (system-dialectical approach)…

    .. Or is someone against Dialectics, allegedly “tainted” and discredited by the Marxist-Leninist ideology?… But to be against dialectics is to deny the fact that M-contradictions are UBIQUITOUS (not to be confused with L-contradictions, i.e., logical ones)… to be opposed to the fact that “every action has a counteraction” , etc., etc.? It is not proper for us, gentlemen, to throw out the child (i.e., the dialectic) together with the dirty water…

    … I may be wrong (imho)), but… DIALECTICAL structuring of concepts-phenomena can not be surpassed by any other approach))… But dialectics is (at this historical stage), one might say, the prerogative of Russian philosophy … And “they don't look for good from the good”, as you know …

    (By the way, in foreign philosophy, you can often find “dialectical” thoughts-categories-techniques, although without using the word “dialectic” and single-root words, …apparently for fear of catching them in “plagiarism”…)))

  35. I proposed a new philosophy in the Department of Philosophy in the 90's. And I was told that to become a philosopher, you need to study to be a philosopher and write scientific papers on philosophy. Hence the conclusion: there is a philosophy, but there are no philosophers. There are only teachers of the world's stupidity and delusions. Maybe I should write it again and publish it on <url>? But who needs it? Who will read it? Who benefits from this? Think of the usefulness of philosophy and the value of a philosopher. Why do you need this?

  36. In Russia, philosophy not only existed, it developed, even if not always consistently. Turn your eyes to the past, don't humiliate our great scientists. A whole layer of Russian and Soviet science could not have been developed without Russian methodology and philosophy, including political philosophy. Ideas don't die, and intelligence isn't born out of nowhere. Russian religious philosophy had a special power of thought. Representatives of Russian cosmism were real philosophers.

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