•  6
    The Politics of Apocalypse
    Common 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
  •  4
    Homo scriptor: sbornik stateĭ i materialov v chestʹ 70-letii︠a︡ Mikhaila Ėpshteĭna (edited book)
    with M. N. Lipovet︠s︡kiĭ
    Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 2020.
  •  9
    Non-local inhomogeneity and Eshelby entities
    with J. Śniatycki
    Philosophical Magazine 85 (33-35): 3939-3955. 2005.
  • Filosofii︠a︡ vozmozhnogo
    Izd-vo "Aleteĭi︠a︡". 2001.
  •  42
    Schizophrenic fascism: on Russia’s war in Ukraine
    Studies 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
  •  10
    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
  •  3
    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
  •  214
    Theses on Poor Faith
    In 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
  •  284
    Postatheism and the phenomenon of minimal religion in Russia
    In 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
  •  898
    From 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
  •  19
    Postmodernist thought of the late Soviet period: three profiles
    Studies 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
  •  1
    The Art of Virtual World-Making and the New Vocation for Metaphysics
    Proceedings 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
  •  6
    Main Trends of Contemporary Russian Thought
    The 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
  •  4
  •  8
    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.
  •  16
    Lyrical Philosophy, or How to Sing with Mind
    Common 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
  •  22
    Written 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.
  •  1
    Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture
    with Mikhail Epstein, Aleksandr Genis, and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover
    Berghahn 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
  •  36
    CHRONOCIDE: Prologue to the Resurrection of Time
    Common Knowledge 9 (2): 186-198. 2003.
  •  19
    Inventive thinking in the humanities
    Common Knowledge 23 (1): 1-18. 2017.
    This essay's central concern is the need for a new, practical dimension in the humanities, emphasizing their constructive rather than purely scholarly aspects. An analysis is offered of various types of inventions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, art, and literature, such as new disciplines, genres, cultural practices, and intellectual movements. An invention is not the production of a given work, however great, but rather a principle or technique that can be applied to the production o…Read more