Does Russian philosophy exist as such?

Abstract

The article draws a certain distinction between the existence and the essence of Russian philosophy on the basis of the concrete identity of the national and the universal in the history of philosophy. Based on this difference, the author identifies and examines the prerequisites necessary for the universal content of classical philosophical thought to acquire its national form in Russia. Special attention is drawn to the crucial prerequisite for starting this process. Its creation directly depends on those who today teach the history of philosophy as the main discipline of special philosophical education at the philosophical faculties of domestic universities. They will have to stop teaching this academic discipline only as the history of many philosophical doctrines and theoretically master it as the history of a single philosophy as such. To do this, of course, is not easy, but if the teachers of the history of philosophy do not learn to reveal the inner unity of all classical philosophical teachings from Thales and Parmenides to Schelling and Hegel inclusive, then philosophy in our higher school will finally degenerate into philodoxia, i. e. into love for the opinions of certain, even excellent, philosophers. These opinions have exclusively subjective, special and accidental, and not universal and necessary (objective, or scientific) significance. Consideration of various aspects of this important theoretical and practical-pedagogical problem leads the author of the article to the conclusion that only its solution will allow Russian philosophy to surpass its regional significance and act as a world-class philosophy, or philosophy as such.