“Critical positivism” versus “new idealism” in Russia at the beginning of 20th century

Abstract

The paper focuses on the situation in Russian philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. Of special interest is the discussion between the so called “critical positivism” and the “new idealism”. The former is represented by A. A. Bogdanov, P. S. Juškevič, V. A. Bazarov and Ja.A. Berman; the latter is represented by N. A. Berdjaev, S. N. Bulgakov, P. A. Florenskij and others. In a first step, I reconstruct this discussion on the basis of the collected works “Problems of idealism” (1902) and “Landmarks” (1909) from the side of the idealists, and “Essays of realist world view” (1904), “Essays on Marxist Philosophy” (1908), and “Essays on philosophy of collectivism” (1909) published by the positivists. I argue that this discussion took on the character of the struggle of worldviews: it was a struggle of the traditional Russian paradigm of philosophical thinking against the new type of philosophizing which was oriented towards the natural sciences. After that, I briefly characterize the theoretical and practical programs of “critical positivism”. Its main theoretical principle is “realism”, and its core practical principle is “idealism”. However, both the concept of “realism” and the concept of “idealism” received a completely new interpretation. Bogdanov’s “empiriomonism”, Juškevič’s “empiriosymbolism” and Bazarov’s philosophy, which developed the ideas of empiriocritiscism, can be seen as different modifications of the realizing these key principles. I promote the view that we can consider the so called “third” wave of Russian positivism (Bogdanov, Juškevič, Bazarov) as “neopositivism”, because, within this currency, the transformation from scientific philosophy to theory of science took place. The vivid illustration of this transformation can be seen in Bogdanov’s general theory of organization or “Tectology”.