Russian philosophy

By Kelly, Aileen

Russian thought is best approached without fixed preconceptions about the nature and proper boundaries of philosophy. Conditions of extreme political oppression and economic backwardness are not conducive to ...

Russian philosophy of law

By Walicki, Andrzej

Russian thought is rarely associated with philosophy of law. The intellectuals of pre-revolutionary Russia are known rather for their uncompromising critique of legalism, passing sometimes into a genuine ...

Russian philosophy of history

By Walicki, Andrzej

In his classic book The Russian Idea Nikolai Berdiaev pointed out that ‘independent Russian thought was awakened by the problem of the philosophy of history’. It was because ...

Kozlov, Aleksei Aleksandrovich (1831–1901)

By Poole, Randall A.

One of the forerunners of the idealist revival in Russian philosophy at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Aleksei Kozlov was the founder ...

Medieval philosophy, Russian

By Farrimond, Claire

The term ‘philosophy’ is itself highly problematic in the context of medieval Russia. Even in its most literal sense of love of learning, it was regarded with ambivalence, ...

Russian Idea, the

By Walicki, Andrzej

‘The Russian Idea’ is a term used by Russian thinkers to define specific features of Russian culture, the spiritual make-up of the Russian nation, the meaning of Russian ...

Vysheslavtsev, Boris Petrovich (1877–1954)

By Scanlan, James P.

Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev, Russian idealist philosopher and religious thinker, was exiled from his homeland in 1922 because of his anti-Marxism (which he later elaborated in a full-fledged philosophical ...

Lopatin, Lev Mikailovich (1855–1920)

By Poole, Randall A.

In 1911 the Moscow Psychological Society celebrated the accomplishments of Lev Lopatin, a major Russian idealist and personalist philosopher. Lopatin was lauded for his chairmanship of the Psychological ...

Positivism, Russian

By Walicki, Andrzej

Positivism in Russia was not a separate, well-defined philosophical school but, rather, a broad, multidisciplinary current of thought, characterized by a cult of ‘positive science’, commitment to scientific, ...

Moscow Psychological Society

By Poole, Randall A.

The Moscow Psychological Society, a learned society founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the first and main centre of the remarkable philosophical achievements of the Russian Silver ...

Asmus, Valentin Ferdinandovich (1894–1975)

By Bakhurst, David

One of the most accomplished thinkers in the Soviet Marxist tradition, Asmus wrote extensively in many areas of philosophy, and was widely regarded as the Soviet Union’s principal ...

Lossky, Nicholas Onufrievich (1870–1965)

By Scanlan, James P.

In 1922, the Russian neo-Leibnizian idealist Nicholas Onufrievich Lossky, one of his country’s most distinguished professional philosophers, was banished from Russia along with more than a hundred other ...

Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance

By Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer

The Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance was created by lay intellectuals who found rationalism, positivism and Marxism inadequate as explanations of the world or guides to life. They were deeply ...

Skovoroda, Hryhorii Savych (1722–94)

By Zakydalsky, Taras D.

Skovoroda was the first truly independent philosopher produced by Ukraine and the last brilliant exponent of its Baroque culture. Departing from the Aristotelian tradition of the Kiev Academy, ...

Hegelianism, Russian

By Walicki, Andrzej

In Russian intellectual history the so-called ‘remarkable decade’ of 1838–48 (P.V. Annenkov’s expression) could be characterized as a truly ‘philosophical epoch’. Speculative philosophy was seen by then as ...

Solov’ëv, Vladimir Sergeevich (1853–1900)

By Walicki, Andrzej

It has been widely acknowledged that Vladimir Solov’ëv is the greatest Russian philosopher of the nineteenth century; his significance for Russian philosophy is often compared to the significance ...

Nihilism, Russian

By Lovell, Stephen

The term ’Nihilist’, although it was first used in Russian as early as 1829, only acquired its present significance in Turgenev’s novel Ottsy i deti (Fathers and Sons) ...

Berdiaev, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1874–1948)

By Scanlan, James P.

Nikolai Berdiaev, Russian religious idealist, was one of many non-Marxist thinkers expelled from Russia by communist authorities in 1922. Although attracted to Marxism in his youth, even then ...

Frank, Semën Liudvigovich (1877–1950)

By Swoboda, Philip J.

The philosophy of S.L. Frank was one product of the renewed interest in epistemology, speculative metaphysics and religion among educated Russians in the quarter-century preceding the Revolution of ...

Herzen, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1812–70)

By Kelly, Aileen

Lauded by Nietzsche as ‘a man of every distinctive talent’ and admired by Lenin as the founder of the Russian revolutionary movement, Herzen eludes all neat categorizations. As ...

Shpet, Gustav Gustavovich (1879–1937)

By Haardt, Alexander

Gustav Shpet was the first Russian philosopher to take up Edmund Husserl’s idea of pure phenomenology as prima philosophia and develop it in several directions. Thus, in ...

Dostoevskii, Fëdor Mikhailovich (1821–81)

By Morson, Gary Saul

Dostoevskii, regarded as one of the world’s greatest novelists, is especially well known for his mastery of philosophical or ideological fiction. In his works, characters espouse intriguing ideas ...

Fëdorov, Nikolai Fëdorovich (1829–1903)

By Young, George M.

Like many other major figures in the nineteenth-century Russian tradition of speculation, Fëdorov was not an academic philosopher, but an unsystematic religious thinker who sought working answers to ...

Fëdorov, Nikolai Fëdorovich (1829–1903)

Like many other major figures in the nineteenth-century Russian tradition of speculation, Fëdorov was not an academic philosopher, but an unsystematic religious thinker who sought working answers to ...

Russian Materialism: ‘the 1860s’

By Scanlan, James P.

No tradition of philosophical materialism existed in Russia until the years conventionally called ‘the 1860s’ – roughly, the period from the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855 ...