11.01.2006
Gallery of Russian Thinkers
http://www.isfp.co.uk/russian_thinkers
The Gallery of Russian Thinkers is a relatively new project supported by the International Society for Philosophers (www.isfp.co.uk). It publishes biographies and short theoretical works on Russians who have made major contributions to world thought. The gallery is currently seeking new submissions from scholars (students, teachers, or other researchers). Below is a brief letter from the site editor, Dmitry Olshansky, about the project and the call for papers.
Authors of longer works are invited to submit them for publication to Vestnik, the Journal of Russian and Asian Studies.
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What are the criteria for selecting persons for the Gallery of Russian Thinkers? I consider that there are two fundamental questions: first of all, what does it means to be a Russian thinker? This is more difficult than selecting German or French thinkers, because there are more than 130 nationalities, which live in the territory of Russian Federation. Many Russian intellectuals were not Russians by birth: Roman Jaconson, Lev Shestov, Yuri Lotman were Jewish, Merab Mamardashvili was Georgian.
To live in Russia does not mean to be Russian. Let me explain in a nutshell that there was a very aggressive foreign policy in the Russian Empire, and a lot of small and poor countries were forced to join. Thus, Immaniul Kant spent the last years of his life as a citizen of Russia, because his native city Königsberg was taken into the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great. Today it is known as a town of Kaliningrad. But no one could consider Kant to be a Russian philosopher. Like Emmanuel Levinas, who was born in Lithuania, a Russian province at the time and now an independent state again. Of course neither Kant not Levinas were fluent in Russian, though Levinas knew enough Russian to read and communicate. Russian philosophy was very useful for his ideas, but he was not a Russian philosopher himself.
On the other hand, since XVII century Russia has been a European country and many Russian people have been educated in German and Swiss universities. Thus, Gustav Schpet became Edmund Husserl’s favorite student, Alexandre Kojève has defended his Ph.D. thesis under Karl Jaspers supervision and lectured to Lacan and Sartre, Lou Andreas-Salomé was Nietzsche’s closest friend and has a correspondence with Freud. The most important of Alexandre Kojève’s books was "Introduction à la lecture de Hegel." It was firstly presented as a course of seminars at the l'École pratique des hautes études (Paris) and was published in French in 1947. Although in exile, and did not write in Russian, he keeps relations with and interest in Russian culture. Such interest we can find in his latest essay on his uncle, the famous Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky. The son of Russian émigrés, Wladimir Granoff was born in Strasbourg and had never been to Russia, but he used Russian language for analysis, lectures and writings. Russian language was an inalienable part of his life and works, although he speaks also French, German, and English. That is why I have selected him to be included in the Gallery of Russian thinkers.
Language seems to be the most reliable criteria for such a selection. I bear in mind the cross-lingual and cross-cultural relations in Russian philosophy and therefore prefer to widen the circle of Russian thinkers than to omit any important person.
The second serious problem of selection of Russian thinkers for the gallery is the question: what does it mean to be a thinker? How could one separate the "clear" philosophers from the not-philosophers? We know that a lot of philosophers in XX-th century have never been educated in departments of philosophy and have not investigated philosophical conceptions. But the contribution of the philologist Nietzsche, the economist Marx, and the medical doctor Freud to philosophy is indisputable; they were more important for the philosophy then many their contemporary academics. They rethought issues into a modern context, creating a new basis for many further movements and disciplines. To be a great philosopher, one needn't have attended any department of philosophy. On the other hand, not everyone who invents a new idea is a philosopher. Therefore scientists, writers, politicians are not the matter of our investigation.
Camus considered that to be a philosopher in XX-th century, one should write novels. On the other hand, I understand that it is impossible to include within the Gallery all Russian writers who have philosophical ideas. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, of course, were very prolific authors and contributed to world philosophy, but they were not philosophers themselves. Therefore I am looking for those who could not only to produce ideas, but also to conceptualize them, i.e. to contribute and enlarge the language of philosophy.
The problem consists in the quantity of Russian thinkers. The Encyclopedia of Russian Philosophers contains several thousand names and includes information on every doctor of philosophy in Russia. I refuse to adopt such a bureaucratic method of selection, because I am sure that a Ph.D. in Philosophy is not sufficient reason to consider oneself to be a philosopher. Bakhtin was held a Ph.D. in philology, therefore he was not recognized as a philosopher in the USSR, but his influence in the contemporary phenomenology is obvious. The linguists Roman Jacobson, Yuri Lotman and Nikolay Trubetskoy, psychoanalysts Wladimir Granoff and Sabina Speilrein, folklorist Vladimir Propp, were more prolific for world philosophy than some professors of philosophy.
I am not so ambitious to find any easy way to separate important thinkers from the common ones and to answer in two words the question "what is philosophy," but I will define my principle of selection thusly: I include not only philosophers but also theorists who have had an influence on further philosophical conception. I am looking for those Russian thinkers, whose ideas were useful and prolific for development of the humanities, whose theories have disciples and representatives in contemporary world philosophy.
Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Geoffrey Klempner, who kindly agreed to publish the Gallery of Russian Thinkers on the web page of the International Society for Philosophers (www.isfp.co.uk). I also thank all the contributors to our project and the colleagues who assist in our project.
We are looking for biographical (about 1 page) and theoretical works (about 3 pages) on Russian thinkers. All the papers should be sent to: Olshansky@hotmail.com (for correspondence in English) and Olchanski@free.fr (for correspondence in French).
Dmitry Olshansky,
M.A. in Philosophy (St. Petersburg, Russia)
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