Leonid Kornilaev

The specific feature of P.I. Novgorodtsev’s philosophy of law is that it advocates the fundamental role of society along with the absolute value of the individual. However, the value side of social life is not always specifically thematized by him, although it logically follows from his general axiological attitudes. The social in the doctrine of russian philosopher receives a specific value meaning: firstly, society is a field of interaction between autonomous individuals, secondly, the prerequisites for the formation of society are laid in the absolute value of the individual, thirdly, the social is a collective carrier of social values. The axiology of the social forms important consequences in the understanding of social unities, such as the nation and the state. The combination of the supranational ideal and national values proves to be the basis for Novgorodtsev’s balanced conception of the relation between the individual and the social.

Fichte’s doctrine played a significant role in the emergence of Neo-Kantian philosophical projects both in Germany and in Russia. This paper proceeds from the works of Boris Vysheslavtsev, Boris Yakovenko and Henry Lanz and tries to reconstruct the influences exerted by Fichte’s ideas on the philosophical ideas of Russian Neo-Kantians. The historical-philosophical works of Russian Neo-Kantians constitute an integral body which provides an interpretative context of Fichte’s philosophy and forms an inalienable and significant part of Fichte studies in Russia. The main tendency of these works is an attempt to bring Fichte’s doctrine closer to Russian philosophy, to represent his philosophical system in its entirety without dividing it into autonomous periods, drawing attention to the ethical character of his philosophy and stressing the German philosopher’s contribution to the study of the problem of the irrational. The works of Russian Neo-Kantians are characterised by particular attention to Fichte’s ideal-realist ideas, his logicistic approach to absolute being, the attempt to overcome the contradiction between absolute unity and the concrete manifold. Fichte’s idea of the primacy of practical reason, which shaped the image of Fichtean philosophy in Gertman Neo-Kantianism, was taken up and developed in an original way by Russian Neo-Kantians. Vysheslavtsev made a consistent attempt to derive law, the state and economics from the ethical content of epistemology, “the science of knowledge”; Yakovenko suggested interpreting “the science of knowledge” as a teaching on life and freedom, as the philosophical grounding of the Christian idea; Lanz wrote about Fichte’s philosophy in the same vein as “the revolt of morality against theory”, as a philosophy of freedom.

In recent decades, perspectivism has developed into an independent epistemological research program. Perspectivism is based on the idea that a perspective, as an attempt to get insight into an object, depends on a multitude of factors. Perspectivists are concerned with reconstructing and explaining these factors as well as identifying the conditions of epistemic acts using such concepts as “position” / “point of view,” “view,” “angle,” “horizon,” “focus,” “picture,” “relativity,” and “context”. Although these concepts are part of the perspectivist’s toolkit, their content and interrelationship have not yet been critically and comprehensively analyzed. The article aims to clarify the conceptual basis of perspectivism as an epistemological program, building on previous efforts of F. Kaulbach (1990) and W. Stegmaier (2008). It will conduct a systematic conceptual analysis and present the logical content of perspectivist notions, integrating them into a single coherent model to serve as perspectivism’s conceptual foundation. Perspectivist concepts form a “population” or matrix of the concept “epistemic situation”. When coherently articulated and organized within a conceptual model, they can serve as a tool for nuanced analysis of epistemic situations and their outcomes (theories, positions, views, etc.). The article’s final section will highlight significant implications of this new, programmatic understanding of perspectivism: the status of perspectivist concepts, how perspectivism distinguishes itself from related epistemological programs, and challenges for its continued development.

In recent decades, perspectivism has developed into an epistemological research program claiming its independence. This autonomy stems from Perspectivism’s potential ability to resolve the contradictions between realist and constructivist programs. Perspectivism is based on the idea that the object depends on perspective, which constitutes any subjective attempt to cognize it. Perspectivists reconstruct and explain the factors involved in the formation of perspective, identifying the conditionality of epistemic acts, using concepts such as “position”, “point of view”, “view”, “angle”, “horizon”, “focus”, “picture”, “context”, “aspect”, etc. Although these concepts are part of the perspectivist’s toolkit, their meanings and interrelation have so far been taken for granted and have not yet been critically and comprehensively analyzed. The purpose of this article is to take steps toward clarifying the conceptual basis for defending perspectivism as an epistemological program. Once consistently uncovered and correlated in a conceptual model, Perspectivist concepts can be used as a tool for a detailed analysis of theories, positions, and beliefs. The article begins with a preliminary description of the concept of perspectivism and its brief history as an epistemological program. In particular, the first modern attempts to outline perspectivist epistemology are described in the works of F. Kaulbach (1990), W. Stegmaier (2008), and M. Massimi (2017, 2020). The problem of identifying the special a priori status of perspectivist notions as a strategy for justifying the autonomy of Perspectivism is then posed. A method for demonstrating such a status, based on Kant’s transcendentalism and P. Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics, is then suggested.

Neo-Kantianism is traditionally seen as a philosophy that was formed to develop and actualise Kant’s philosophy and Kantian transcendental methodology. However, Kant was the determining, but by no means the only, influence on the emergence of the neo-Kantian tradition. Neo-Kantianism was strongly influenced by the entire German post-Kantian philosophy, especially by Fichte and Hegel, although neo-Kantians have repeatedly tried to dissociate themselves from the great idealists. In many ways neo-Kantianism was cultivated by the Fichtean reading of Kant, which enabled succeeding philosophers, notably H.-G. Gadamer, to consider neo-Kantianism to be “hidden neo-Fichteanism”. The main goal of this study is a historical-philosophical reconstruction of the image of Fichtean philosophy formed within German neo-Kantianism. To achieve this aim I have analysed the key projects of the German neo-Kantians in which the influence of Fichte’s philosophy, in particular his interpretation of the Kantian doctrine of the primacy of practical reason, is most clearly manifested. I show that the theory of values of the Southwest neo-Kantians and the ethics of pure will of the Marburg neo-Kantians are associated with the Fichtean revision of Kant’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. The following, in my opinion, are the main features of the image of Fichte’s philosophy: it is close to neo-Kantians precisely because it strives to combine theoretical and practical reason; it is in ethics that Fiche’s ideas are most manifest in neo-Kantianism; neo-Kantian original theories contain the ideas of self-consciousness “in the spirit” of Fichte. The conclusion is drawn that the growth of the metaphysical component in neo-Kantian doctrines may be connected with the influence of Fichte’s philosophy.

Along with competing legal concepts of positivism and gnoseologism in the second half of the 19th century, a direction of legal psychology was formed, within which the psychological theory of law by the Russian and Polish lawyer L.I. Petrazhitsky takes a prominent place. L.I. Petrazhitsky's legal theory interprets the law as a mental phenomenon in a person's mind. The mental life forms the internal and external legal behavior. Studying the law becomes possible only by analyzing the subject's particular kind of emotional life - legal experience. Our focus on the individual's emotional world gives us reason to think of the theory as individualistic, i.e., close to the subject's mental life. At the same time, the Russian lawyer's psychological doctrine also gains explanatory potential for scrutinizing social life. It contains ideas that reveal such mechanisms of social functioning as the affirmation of the ideal of love as the ultimate goal of law-making, the priority of unofficial law in the life of society, and a specific interpretation of public and private law. The system of legal emotions is carried out on the social niveau and establishes such values as love and social order. The article reconstructs the main provisions of Petrazhitsky's psychological theory of law from the point of view of the interaction of its individual and social sides. The social potential of the Russian lawyer's theory appears capable of supplementing and explaining the ideas of socialism and sobornost discussed widely at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Petrazhitsky's individualistic doctrine appears as a flexible concept, capable of fitting organically into various philosophical and sociological contexts.

The acquaintance with significant philosophical doctrines emerging in the West has been a systematic process in the leading Russian-language philosophical journals, collections of articles, monographs and translations. Practically all the most important Western philosophical doctrines have been subjected to scrutiny by Russian philosophers. One of the most vivid Neo-Kantian projects of the early twentieth century, Emil Lask’s Logic of Philosophy, has not gone unnoticed either. Reaction to Lask’s works were far from being homogeneous. His project received several different evaluations, including the critical ones. The project was criticized for the unsolved ontological potential of philosophy, the dogmatic immobility of logic of philosophy, inconsistency of material–form relation, etc. The article considers the first reviews and critical assessments of Lask’s works in Russia as well as the texts of Russian religious philosophers and Russian Neo-Kantians which contain constructive criticism. The range of reviews allows us to reconstruct the reception of Lask’s ideas in Russia and provides a significant supplement to the overall picture of the reception of Neo-Kantianism in Russia.

The period between the late 1910s and early 1920s saw the emergence of onto-epistemological philosophical projects in Russia that was determined by criticism and attempts to overcome the domination of epistemology in philosophy which was the result of the intensive development of Neo-Kantianism and the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology. Attempts to turn towards ontology were made both by Russian religious philosophers and by Russian Neo-Kantians. I look at the little-studied philosophical projects of the Russian Neo-Kantians Lev Salagov and Nikolai Boldyrev. Their philosophical concepts share the tendency to transpose epistemological problems to ontology, and to identify and bring closer together epistemology and ontology. Russian philosophers ontologise the theory of cognition through the analysis of subjectivity, the complete elimination of psychological motives and the separation of transcendentalism from transcendentism. These principles enable Salagov to ground a three-part structure of cognition and to assert that the main task of genuine epistemology is exclusively the study of the cognitive relationship, committing to consciousness. They enable Boldyrev, proceeding from the separation of reflection and sensibility, to build a doctrine on the self-unfolding of being. Similar tendencies — a turn towards ontology — were observed in the same period in West European philosophy, including German Neo-Kantianism. However, the concepts of Russian Neo-Kantians, which imply a new orientation towards ontology, are fairly independent, and not only on account of the original interpretation of Kantian critical philosophy and Neo-Kantian epistemology, but also on account of internal discussion with the Russian philosophers belonging to other movements. The analysis of the onto-epistemological projects of Russian Neo-Kantians makes important additions to the picture of the reception of Neo-Kantianism in Russia.

This report presents the features of the organisation and the main ideas of the international scientific conference “‘No Right of Sedition’. Kant and the Problem of Revolution in the 18th—21st Century Philosophy.” The conference was held at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on November 9—10, 2017 and was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The event was organised by the Academia Kantiana — a research unit on comparative studies on Russian and Western philosophy at the IKBFU’s Institute for the Humanities. The reports presented at the conference focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of revolution from Kant to the present day as well as the conceptions of revolution that appeared around the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The report summarises all the presentations and discussions that took place at the confe­rence in accordance with the thematic clusters. The conference confirmed that Kant’s ideas on the state and the revolution are still relevant today.