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4Why Russian Philosophy Is So Important and So DangerousCommon Knowledge 29 (3): 405-409. 2023.The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical …Read more
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Rebuilding the Profession: Comparative Literature, Intercultural Studies and the Humanities in the Age of Globalization. (edited book)Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2020.
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15The Politics of ApocalypseCommon Knowledge 29 (2): 141-172. 2023.This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world — a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by which Russia, in attempting to become stronger, b…Read more
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7Homo scriptor: sbornik stateĭ i materialov v chestʹ 70-letii︠a︡ Mikhaila Ėpshteĭna (edited book)Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 2020.
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2Proektivnyĭ filosofskiĭ slovarʹ: Novye terminy i poni︠a︡tii︠a︡ (edited book)Izdatelʹstvo "Aleteĭi︠a︡
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55Schizophrenic fascism: on Russia’s war in UkraineStudies in East European Thought 74 (4): 475-481. 2022.This essay describes some of the literary, psychological, and historical causes of Russia’s war in Ukraine (2022) based on observations of the national character found in the fiction of Aleksandr Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky and in philosophical and psychological essays of Petr Chaadaev, Sergei Askol’dov, and Sigmund Freud. The political ideology that stands behind the war can be characterized as schizofascism, or schizophrenic fascism that embraces the contradiction between archaic myths, chau…Read more
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14The phoenix of philosophy: Russian thought of the late Soviet period (1953-1991)Bloomsbury Academic. 2019.This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored ar…Read more
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6Ideas against ideocracy: non-Marxist thought of the late Soviet period (1953-1991)Bloomsbury Academic. 2021.This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of culture and scholars of Russian philosophy gives for the first time a systematic examination of the development of Russian philosophy during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein provides a comprehensive account of Russian thought of the second half of the 20th century that is highly sophisticated without losing clarity. It provides new…Read more
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301Theses on Poor FaithIn Rebuilding the Profession: Comparative Literature, Intercultural Studies and the Humanities in the Age of Globalization., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2020.This essay in the form of theses presents a new, post–secular type of religiosity that emerged in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet dogmatic atheism. Poor faith is faith without any temples, dogma or rites, as integrally standing before God as God Himself is integral and undivided. According to the results of the largest sociological survey in Russia almost 60,000 respondents in 2012, one in four people fall into the category of ‘poor religion’— a simple belief in God without a…Read more
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392Postatheism and the phenomenon of minimal religion in RussiaIn The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity., Routledge. pp. 73-85. 2018.Together with the return to traditional religions and the parallel immersion in pagan and Orthodox archaism, a third tendency—minimal religion, or "poor faith"—can be observed in contemporary Russia. According to the polls, more than one fourth of Russians believe in God but are not affiliated with any specific religion or denomination. To date, this type of religiosity has attracted the least attention because it has no clear organizational and dogmatic manifestations and tends to escape al…Read more
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1057From Analysis to Synthesis: Conceiving a Transformative Metaphysics for the Twenty-First Century.In Mikhail Sergeev, Alexander Nikolaevich Chumakov & Mary Elizabeth Theis (eds.), Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology, Brill | Rodopi. 2020.The article aims to substantiate the philosophy of synthesis, which is built on the basis of analysis, but gives it a constructive direction. The turning point from analysis to synthesis is the problematization of the elements identified in the analysis, their criticism, replacement, or rearrangement, leading to the construction of alternative concepts and propositions that expand the field of the thinkable and innovate the categorical apparatus of philosophy. This article provides examples of p…Read more
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27Postmodernist thought of the late Soviet period: three profilesStudies in East European Thought 73 (4): 477-493. 2021.This article introduces postmodernist trends in late Soviet thought through the prism of the three generations: the philosopher and writer Aleksandr Zinoviev, the poet, artist, and theorist Dmitrii Prigov, and the youngest Soviet conceptualist artistic group “The Medical Hermeneutics Inspectorate” as represented by Pavel Peppershtein, Sergei Anufriev, and Yurii Leiderman. The article shows how Conceptualism, an influential artistic and intellectual movement of the 1970s–1980–s, used the Soviet i…Read more
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16To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture by Eleonory GilburdCommon Knowledge 26 (3): 433-433. 2020.
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2The Art of Virtual World-Making and the New Vocation for MetaphysicsProceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 64 11-15. 2018.The power of technology is extended to the fundamental properties of existence, metaphysics becomes increasingly active in its ability to change these properties. This paper discusses a new relationship between philosophy and the advanced technologies that I call onto-technologies, because they change the foundations of being, the structure of existence and the way in which we experience it. In the past, technology was preoccupied with material particulars, while taking care of concrete human ne…Read more
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7Main Trends of Contemporary Russian ThoughtThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 6 99-109. 1998.This paper focuses on the most recent period in the development of Russian thought. Proceeding from the cyclical patterns of Russian intellectual history, I propose to name it 'the third philosophical awakening.' I define the main tendency of this period as 'the struggle of thought against ideocracy.' I then suggest a classification of main trends in Russian thought of this period: Dialectical materialism in its evolution from late Stalinism to neo-communist mysticism; Neorationalism and Structu…Read more
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11The Total Art of Stalinism: Avante-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond by Boris GroysCommon Knowledge 25 (1-3): 444-445. 2019.
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13A Philosophy of the Possible: Modalities in Thought and CultureBrill | Rodopi. 2019.In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities and their impact on the philosophy and culture of modernity and postmodernity, focusing on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking for the humanities.
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25Lyrical Philosophy, or How to Sing with MindCommon Knowledge 20 (2): 204-213. 2014.The article suggests that, contrary to widespread opinions and standard encyclopedic definitions, philosophy is a domain not only of thoughts and ideas but also of feelings. Philosophy as love for wisdom includes emotions in both of its components. Among the many various feelings that we experience, there is a discrete group that, thanks to their involvement with universals, may be regarded as philosophical. Wonder, grief, compassion, tenderness, hope, despair, and delight are philosophical if t…Read more
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25Written from a non-Western point of view, this work offers a fresh perspective on the postcommunist literary scene. The four sections of the book - literature, ideology, culture and methodology - reflect the range of postmodernism in contemporary Russia.
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1Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet CultureBerghahn Books. 1999.The last ten years were decisive for Russia, not only in the political sphere, but also culturally as this period saw the rise and crystallization of Russian postmodernism. The essays, manifestos, and articles gathered here investigate various manifestations of this crucial cultural trend. Exploring Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, they provide a point of departure and a valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies which is currently insufficiently represent…Read more
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Druid Hills, Georgia, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Arts and Humanities |
Metaphysics |
Professional Areas |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |