Vesa Oittinen

Mit Spinoza in Frankreich legt der finnische Marxist und Spinozakenner Vesa Oittinen eine fulminant verfasste Kritik an der Spinoza-Rezeption des französischen Poststrukturalismus und Neomarxismus vor. Während Spinoza bei Louis Althusser und seiner Schule herangezogen wird, um Marx als Anti-Dialektiker zu präsentieren, mündet Gilles Deleuzes Spinoza-Lektüre in einen Linksnietzscheanismus, der von Herrschaft und Knechtschaft – und damit auch von Befreiung – nichts mehr wissen will. Spinoza wird so als Anti-Dialektiker fehlinterpretiert. Dagegen wirft Oittinen ein gänzlich neues Licht auf die Philosophie Spinozas: Denn in ihr ist eine andere, nämlich positive Form der Dialektik am Werk, die uns zwingt, das Verhältnis Spinozas zu Hegel und Hegels zu Spinoza grundlegend zu überdenken.

The paper deals with the character of Lenin’s ‘dialectics,’ of which there has, until recently, been many erroneous interpretations. I attempt to show that Lenin’s idea of a dialectical method in most cases boils down to the demand of a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation.” This demand Lenin turned against the un-dialectical and dogmatic interpretations of Marxism of the Second International. Actually, Lenin’s idea of dialectics as, above all, a method of a concrete analysis is not borrowed from Plekhanov or other Marxist theoreticians, but from the Narodnik writer Alexander Herzen. As to the claim that Lenin changed his mind after 1914 when he began to study Hegel’s ‘Logic’, there is no evidence to support the thesis. Lenin did not abandon the positions he had taken earlier, in 1907, in his ‘Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.’ This is obvious from his writings after the October Revolution of 1917; for example, in the notes he criticizes Bukharin’s inability to use dialectics correctly (i.e. to make a concrete analysis).

The article analyzes Lev Vygotsky’s attempts to utilize Spinoza’s philosophical ideas in solving the methodological crisis of psychology in the 1920s and 1930s. Vygotsky had a manuscript, Uchenie ob emocijakh, where he scrutinized the doctrines of the effects on Descartes and Spinoza. Whilst Descartes’ doctrine built on a dualistic soul versus body premise, Spinoza’s starting point was monistic. Despite his clear sympathies for Spinoza’s solution, which according to him was more compatible with Marxism, too, Vygotsky did not manage to finish his study. One may, indeed, doubt whether Spinoza was able to deliver the decisive key for the solution of the dualism problem, since his philosophy built on metaphysical postulates that were unacceptable to Vygotsky.

This is an extended version of the interview of Prof. Andrey D. Maidansky given to Em. Prof. Vesa Oittinen for Monthly Review journal (New York, USA) in January 2020. The interview was dedicated to the works of the Soviet philosopher Evald Vassilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) which have recently received increasing international attention. The interview sheds light on the reasons for such an interest and outlines the key focus topics of both Ilyenkov’s philosophy and his Cultural-Historical Psychology works.

This paper deals with the ontological foundations of the Soviet interpretation of dialectical materialism as exemplified by one of its “founding fathers,” Abram Deborin, in his works of the late 1920s. It has been claimed that the “ontologizing” tendency in Soviet philosophy is due to the influence of Friedrich Engels and his ideas pertaining to the dialectics of nature. However, a more plausible interpretation is that the ontologism of Soviet philosophy is connected with the rejection of the Kantian Copernican turn in philosophy and the idea of the primacy of gnoseology it implies. In this article, I argue in favor of the latter thesis. Ontologism, i.e., the tendency to give priority in philosophy to questions concerning Being, and anti-Kantianism are but two sides of the same coin.

A Kantian Utopia in Russia: Erikh Solov'ëv. The article deals with Erikh Solov'ëv, a historian of philosophy who is one of the best Soviet and post-Soviet exponents of Kant. In several of his works and articles, published in the 1990s, Solov'ëv has attempted to apply the ideas of Kant's social philosophy to post-Soviet realities. Kant is important above all as a theoretician of a free subjectivity, human rights, and a critic of paternalism in social life. Several Kantian motives came to the fore during the perestrojka when the Marxist "class approach" was abandoned and "all-human" values entered into the discussion. Later, Solov'ëv attempted to develop Kantian guidelines for a post-Soviet society, including moral norms for businessmen in the new Russia, but these attempts bore the distinct hallmark of social utopianism

The Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki organized in 25–26 of September 2009 a special symposium Northern Lights — Facets of Enlightenment Culture with the aim to discuss form of Enlightenment thought in Sweden/Finland and Russia. The symposium, which was opened by Prof. Emeritus Matti Klinge, a renowned historian of 18th- and 19th-century Finland, had four participants from Russia, five from Finland and one from Germany; thus, it was yet a quite small event, but we hope that with it the foundations of a fruitful co-operation, with annual symposia on questions of Enlightenment culture, will be laid. Of the speakers, Prof. Tatiana Artemyeva, Dr. Oili Pulkkinen and Prof. Vesa Oittinen focused on more general problems of study of Enlightenment ideas, while the other contributions dealt with different ―case studies‖ either in Sweden/Finland (Dr. Kimmo Sarje, Dr. Johan Sten), Russia (Prof. Mikhail Mikeshin, Dr. Johannes Remy, Dr. Larisa Agamalian), in France (Dr. Alla Zlatopolskaya) or Germany (Dr. Carola Häntsch).