>From: "ChrisD(RJ)" <chrisd at russiajournal.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: "'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com'" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: RE: Russian philosophy
>Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 16:59:03 +0400
>
>Justin: I don't know Russian and no one would mistake me
>for an expert in "Rusian philosophy" outsider of a knowledge of the Russian
>---------
>Not many people in the West know this, but classical Russian philosophy,
>Berdyayev, Rozanov, Solovyov, those guys, is pretty interesting..
Ya, I read those guys after I got the job, had read Berdayev before actually; and Tolstoi (as a philosopher) too, some others. Russian philosophy doesn't look like philosophy to someome trained in Anglo-AMerican analytical philosophy. It's more like highly charged, rather poetic (at its best) expression of feeling than careful construction of arguments. That's not a criticism, just a statement. I recognize that the Russian philosophers were not trying to be Hume or Mill and failing. They were doing something else. When I went to philosophy conferences in Russia, this lead to culture conflicts.
My predecessor at Ohio State, James Scanlan, was a real expert in Russian philosophy, spoke gorgeous, accent free Russian, edited a fine anthology of the subject, wrote a first rate book on Marxism in the USSR, best thing on the subject, actually. Does it the favor, if that's the word, of treating it seriously, as if it were real philosophy. I was fired before I got to teach the subject, though.
jks
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