Neo-Kantianism, Russian

3. Epistemological Neo-Kantianism (cont.)

While not a disciple of Vvedenskii, Georgii Chelpanov (1863–1936), a professor first at Kiev and then at Moscow University, is almost invariably classed as a Neo-Kantian, although even this is not incontestable. As active in psychology as philosophy he upheld Wundt’s programme in experimental psychology (see Wundt, W.) and defended psychophysical parallelism throughout his career. Vvedenskii himself sharply rebuked Chelpanov for his reliance on J.S. Mill’s ideas in an elementary logic textbook. Yet Chelpanov, unlike many others, sought to retain a role for the thing-in-itself, viewing it as a transcendent something that ’evokes’, along with the forms of consciousness, a particular representation of an object. Likewise, something analogous to our representation of space ’evokes’ in us that representation. Explicitly in opposition to those who evaded the issue of how to account for a particular representation and called such a position ’transcendental idealism’, Chelpanov termed his stance ‘critical realism’ or ‘ideal-realism’.

While uninterested in the problem of other minds Chelpanov sought to defend the Kantian apriority of space in the light of non-Euclidean geometry by arguing that our particular spatial relations and therefore a particular set of geometrical axioms are formed under the influence of experience. Nevertheless as idealizations the axioms of Euclidean geometry are produced in and by consciousness. Another set of spatial relations will produce another set of axioms. The concept of space simpliciter, however, is a priori in the sense that it is a condition of perception in general. Every space is characterized by its exteriority, and the particular dimensionality of a space is derived from the establishing of a relation between points.

We should also mention Chaim Flekser (pseudonym Akim Volynskii) (1863–1926), a prominent literary critic and editor for a time of the important journal Severnyi vestnik. Despite his support for an idiosyncratic, but undeveloped, mysticism Volynskii in an early and lengthy article in that journal held that Kant had conclusively resolved the problems concerning cognition. Kant’s practical philosophy, on the other hand, being based on a ’practical faith’, he held to be imbued with the purest dogmatism.