rights, rights, and still more rights, duties, obligations, powers, freedoms Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com>
- --- Charles Brown <CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> w
>
> My impression ( from Chris Doss in part) is that
> the Russian and former Soviet masses are much more
> philosophical than the American.
Wasn't this true even before the 1917 revolution though? One certainly gets that impression from reading, say, Dostoevesky and the characters he portrays. The russian people (I hate the word "masses", reminds me of that glutinous macaroni and cheese they served in elementary school) throughout history appear to be rather philosophical.
^^^^^
CB: You might be right. There is this idea that they have to be philosophical to get through all the shit they have faced.
You might hate this, but, I think Stalin had something about Russain philosophicalness and American ingenuity :>)
The trouble with hating the term "masses" is that it raises a suspcion of eltiism. The mob, the gooy gooy mass, as you say.
> I don't know about
> France. Seems the approach in the SU was more
> popularization of philosophy than in the U.S.
Really? The funny thing I notice about most of the people I have met from the former SU, East Bloc, and China is that they know damn little about Marx. In the case of my wife (Chinese), she was force-fed Mao (guess that's what you call popularization) and my russian colleagues seem to know damn little about Marx but they do know a little about Lenin.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: Of course, philo per se, passes away in the Marxist schema. Note Marx didn't write much philo. So, maybe I should say "formal logic and dialectics " :>) Did you notice that most of them speak English better than most Americans speak Russian ?