Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2019)
Conservative criticism of culture as a method of history and philosophy: advantages and drawbacks
Abstract
This article critically analyses the book by Yury Pushchaev Philosophy of Soviet Times. М. Mamardashvili and E. Il’yenkov (Energies of Repulsion and Attraction) (Moscow, 2018). The analysis discovers in it a paradoxical mixture of a classic historical and philosophical study with an essayism of the conservative Orthodox fashion. Essayistic elements are incorporated in the book already on the methodological level, though they do not decrease the high quality of the work. The article discusses the main content of the book paying attention to its rhetorical strategy. On the whole, the author of this article thinks that Yu. Pushchaev has managed to demonstrate both the genuine philosophical signifi cance and the suffi ciently problematic character of the socalled Soviet philosophy, as well as the impossibility to describe it in terms of the binary opposition “true philosophers vs. ideologists-bureaucrats” and such like. Entering a polemic with the author of the book, this article points to the unfairness of its critique of phenomenology and the ideal of the “pure science” (as particular cases of insuffi ciently justified critique of rationality on the whole), the insuffi cient theological justifi cation of this critique caused by the fact that it originates from the Orthodox views of the author, elements of rhetorical cliches in his political and cultural criticism of modern time. However, the book on the whole is assessed as an achievement in the Russian history of philosophy in general and as a good handbook in the history of Soviet philosophy in particular.
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