Philosophical Letters. Russian and European Dialogue

Vasily Terkin — National Hero of Russia

Vladimir K. Kantor — 2025-06-16

In the article, the author shows Vasily Terkin as a man who overcomes with his inner strength the frustration that arose in people as a result of the incredible cruelty of the conquerors. The Great Patriotic War grew out of the European wars of the fi rst half of the 20th century. The author believes that Germany, defeated in the First World War and burdened with contributions, was deliberately restored as a militarized structure by Anglo-Saxon capital to strike at Soviet Russia, to destroy it completely. As a result, a monster was raised. As the leading German philosopher of history and lawyer Carl Schmitt wrote, Hitler is the most terrible product of German Anglomania. The author cites a memo from a Hitlerite soldier: “Remember the greatness and victory of Germany. For your personal glory, you must kill exactly 100 Russians. You have neither a heart nor nerves — they are not needed in war. Having destroyed pity and compassion in yourself, kill every Russian; Don’t stop — there’s an old man in front of you, a woman, a girl or a boy. Kill!” This attitude of destruction was opposed by the position of Vasily Terkin — “For the sake of life on earth,” a position of survival. It is interesting and important that in this terrible war the concept of honor did not disappear, but became a norm of self-awareness, a concept that Peter the Great introduced into the consciousness of the Russian people. And Terkin is supported by a sense of honor. They said about Tvardovsky that he walks between an arrest warrant and an order, and the book about Terkin, “A Book about a Fighter,” which publishers were skeptical about, suddenly received the Stalin Prize of the first degree. “Vasily Terkin” continued with the poem “Terkin in the Afterlife,” Dante-like in concept and execution. In the late 1960s, friends gathered in the author’s kitchen, and he read “Terkin in the Afterlife” aloud. It was a version of a protest worldview. The vitality of the fi ghter’s image created by Tvardovsky turned out to be astonishing. The attempt at Dante’s level did not ruin the poem, but showed its strength and depth, the depth of the created image.

On Amoralism in Politics

Nikolay A. Berdyaev — 2025-06-16

The republication of the article by N. A. Berdyaev “On Amoralism in Politics” (1936) has been carried out, which is preceded by a preface by M. A. Kolerov.

‘The Country Bordering God’: The Importance of Trips to Russia in Rilke’s Work

Giovanni Pirari — 2025-06-16

When he was very young, Rilke left Prague and moved to Munich, where in 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, a Russian immigrant who helped the young poet discover the Russian cultural and spiritual heritage, igniting his passion for the great country to the east of Europe. In April 1899, Rilke embarked on his fi rst trip to Russia, where he met Tolstoy, Leonid Pasternak, and the sculptor Pavel Trubetskoy. He felt forever changed by the experience of the Russian Easter night on Red Square in Moscow. In his later letters, he writes that he found his homeland in Russia and that, for the fi rst time, he felt truly at home. Upon returning to Germany, he wrote the essay Russian Art, he began writing the “Stunden-Buch”, a poem about the spiritual experience of a monk-iconographer, and immersed himself in studying the Russian language and literature. In 1900, he embarked on his second trip to Russia, now recognized as his true homeland. There would be no third journey, but Russia — real, literary, and imagined — would forever remain in Rilke’s works and in his personal identity. In this article, I aim to analyze the impact of his Russian travels on Rilke’s work, paying special attention to how these travels infl uenced the development of Rilke’s personality and his understanding of himself, his creativity, and his vocation as a poet — an aspect often overlooked in the literature on this subject.

Cognition as an Activity of a Universal Person: Cultural and Historical Context (On the 150th anniversary of Albert Schweitzer)

Marina S. Kiseleva — 2025-06-16

The article problematizes the phenomenon of human universality, capable of synthesizing cognitive functions, imagination and emotional sphere in the cognitive activity of various fi elds of knowledge, as well as their embodiment in signsymbolic forms and in practical activity. The subject of the case-study was the creative and practical activity of the “universal man” — this is how Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) defi ned himself — a philosopher, theologian, preacher, musician-organist, music historian, expert in organ architecture, medical missionary, creator and even builder of a hospital, and later also a leper clinic in Gabon (Equatorial Africa). The central issue in the article is the possibility of “translating universality” in connection with Schweitzer’s famous book “Johann Sebastian Bach,” which gives a professional analysis of the synthetic language of Bach’s work based on the study of different forms and types of Bach’s musical art. Schweitzer paid special attention to the synthesis of the arts of the Baroque era, thanks to which he showed the connection of verbal texts rooted in the medieval tradition with the new musical form of Bach’s chorales. This synthesis in the composer’s work gave Schweitzer grounds to defi ne Bach as a “universal personality,” who combined in his work not only the results of the activities of several generations of his musical family, but also to reveal in it the internal unity of poetry-painting-music as a language that corresponds to the universality of the Baroque era itself. The conclusion that completes the article shows the functionality of the concept of “projectivity in itself” for studying the synthesis of cognitive functions and identifying their pragmatics in the discursive representation of the phenomenon of human universality in the social environment and in the awareness of the motives of action (according to M. Weber), when the opportunity for its implementation is open not only in synchronous, but also in diachronic time of culture.

Liberal Theology of Albert Schweitzer in the Dialogue of Cultures

Irina F. Shcherbatova — 2025-06-16

Theologian, humanist and philosopher Albert Schweitzer is considered a representative of liberal Protestantism, the methodology of which was based on rational exegesis. Despite the dynamic state of the doctrine of liberal theology, in general it challenged the authority of dogmas, placed the historical personality of Jesus and his ethical teaching at the center. In the conditions of the crisis of the Church and culture, liberal Protestantism sought to revive religious feeling by “purifying” Christianity from later dogmatic interpretations and the influence of Greek philosophy. In his historical and theological studies, Schweitzer explained the actions of Jesus by his inclusion in the system of late Jewish eschatological views and beliefs, thus giving decisive importance to the factor of the worldview of the era under study. The problems of the relationship between the scientific-historical and religious approaches to Christianity and the infl uence of Greek philosophy on early Christianity, which are signifi cant for liberal theology, were of considerable interest to the religious-philosophical discourse in Russia, which, in particular, was reflected in the criticism of the views of A. Harnack, Schweitzer’s teacher, by Russian philosophers. In his first period of the evolution of scientifi c views — the period of historical theology — Schweitzer formulated the principle of the unity of religion and ethics. Changes in the worldview of society as a result of the First World War exposed the vulnerable spot of liberal Protestantism — the inability of the scientific-historical approach to reveal the phenomenon of God-manhood. Attempts by liberal theologians, and in particular Schweitzer, to combine Protestantism with modern culture in a rationally interpreted Christianity since the mid-1910s were already considered as distorting the religious foundations of cultural Protestantism, against the background of which interest in dogmatics and the existential perception of religion was revived (K. Barth). The article suggests that Schweitzer’s position was distinguished by a certain dialecticism. Schweitzer’s ethicocentrism helped him to escape from the extremes of historicism, and his historicism was practically dissolved in the ethics of Christian love and compassion, which ultimately determined Schweitzer’s own life choices. The principle of the unity of religion, ethics and culture will form the basis of Schweitzer’s cultural studies already in the second period of his scientifi c activity, when he will formulate the main reason for the decline of spiritual culture — the dominance of aestheticism over ethical values.

Albert Schweitzer: Universalism and Self-Realization

Galina B. Stepanova — 2025-06-16

The approaches to the study of self-actualization of foreign humanistic psychologists (Maslow, Frankl) and domestic (Leontiev, Korostyleva, Kudinov) are analyzed. It is shown that self-realization of a universal person (Schweitzer) is conditioned by the search for the meaning of life and the construction of one’s own life strategy based on the realization of one’s potential, one’s abilities in the most different spheres of life activity. The life path of Albert Schweitzer is analyzed from the point of view of formation of his inner motivation, personal qualities, realization of his abilities and ideas, realization of his goals. It is shown that his philosophical and theological research allowed him to formulate his own worldview, based on the idea of reverence for life, in practice to realize his mission of serving people.

‘Another History’?

Gregory S. Kiselev — 2025-06-16

The author argues that due to human amorality and self-will, antihumanistic tendencies have begun to prevail in anthropogenesis. Looking at the present of humanity, there are more and more doubts about whether it is moving along the path of progress, an inevitable progressive movement towards higher forms of sociality and individuation. Hence, the problematic nature of the idea of the “end of history,” a probabilistic process. The immanent evil of the world not only cannot be overcome, but also seems to threaten its very physical existence. Complex problems facing humanity are being solved unsatisfactorily or not at all. Here we have the destruction of the biosphere, the threat of a global nuclear catastrophe, and the degradation of man himself as a spiritual being — the creator of culture. We can, perhaps, talk about signs of the deconstruction of humanity itself.

Russian ‘Logos’ and European ‘Razio’: the meaning of Russian philosophy in the assessment of A. F. Losev

Irina V. Gravina — 2025-06-16

The article deals with A. F. Losev’s understanding of the role of Russian philosophy in the context of its dialogue with European philosophy on the basis of his searly text of the same name “Russian Philosophy” (1919). From Losev’s point of view, Russian philosophy is only a nascent and emerging phenomenon that requires comprehension and detailed realisation of its differences from Western thought. In the early period of his work, Losev literally dreamed of creating distinctive Russian philosophy he did not abandon this idea in the late period of his work. The criterion of the main distinction Losev considers the concept of the opposition between “logos” and “razio” to be the criterion of the main distinction, which is not new for Russian philosophy as a whole. The logocentricity of Russian culture lies in its mystical-religious foundations, “mystical realism”, as Losev claims. These foundations will not disappear even in the “atheistic” Soviet period of its history. The rationalism of Western culture is alien to Russian self-consciousness, so European philosophy is unable to fully refl ect the essence of either Russian history or Russian anthropology. Although refl ections on Russian philosophy as such were not the subject of Losev’s research interest, they implicitly had a great influence on his work. The importance of his early, still not quite independent ideas for later aims and objectives is outlined.

Controversy about Memory: E. Evtushenko’s Poem ‘Baby Yar’ in the Soviet Literary and Political Context of the 1960s

Yury G. Bit-Yunan — 2025-06-16

The article researches the history of the creation and publication of E. Yevtushenko’s poem “Baby Yar” in the “Literary Gazette” as well as the newspaper controversy soon to start off. The authors deconstruct a number of myths about the creation and publication of “Baby Yar” as well as about the sanctions followed allegedly for the author and for V. A. Kosolapov, the “Literary Gazette” editor-in-chief. It is also proven that the publication of the poem was in accordance with the political pragmatics of the supreme Soviet administration prior to the XXII CPSU Congress.

Ivan Kireevsky and the Paths of Post-Secular Philosophy

Ilia I. Pavlov — 2025-06-16

The article delves into an analysis of the philosophical perspectives of Ivan Kireevsky within the framework of a pivotal domain in the study of the history of Russian philosophy. Specifically, it explores the juxtaposition of Russian philosophy with the historical trajectory of secularization and contemporary debates on post-secular philosophy. This approach is made feasible by the author’s departure from a historiosophical comprehension of post-secularity towards a structural one. Here, post-secularity is not viewed as a contemporary epoch but rather as a distinct mode of religiosity vis-à-vis secularization observable throughout history. The study reveals that Kireevsky’s philosophical tenets are signifi cantly shaped as a response to secularization and its critique. Notably, Kireevsky both draws upon the advancements of secularization and advocates for their integration into an epistemology of integral knowledge where reason is subordinate to faith in existential and anthropological dimension. Kireevsky’s critique is not aimed at the secular modes of thought intrinsic to philosophy and science per se, but rather at their assertions of providing final and total solutions. Furthermore, the analysis contrasts Kireevsky’s philosophy with its evolution in Alexey Khomyakov’s work. While Khomyakov endeavors to construct a universal philosophy of integrated knowledge akin to Kantian principles, Kireevsky refrains from such ambitions. Consequently, Kireevsky emerges as more aligned with contemporary epistemological approaches than Khomyakov. Moreover, Kireevsky avoids delving into an epistemology of integrality in the direction to allunity metaphysics, criticized by Grigory Gutner as irrelevant to the objectives of postsecular philosophy. In conclusion, the article underscores the potential promise for postsecular philosophy, aiming to continue the tradition of Russian religious thought, by revisiting the divergence between Kireevsky and Khomyakov and furthering the trajectory outlined by Kireevsky.

Chaadaev is Irrelevant?

Alina A. Zhukova — 2025-06-16

Book review

In a Gutenberg’s Mirror

- - — 2025-06-16

In a Gutenberg’s Mirror