Suchergebnisse

Six decades of N.V. Motroshilova's active creative work were commonly asso­ciated with her work as a historian of philosophy. Although this view is largely fair and is confirmed by the way Motroshilova herself assessed her research, the philosopher's range of interests was much wider: it covered problems of West­ern European history, the theory of culture and civilization. The article shows the formation of Motroshilova's philosophical specialization which began as an interest in German philosophy, initially limited to Husserl's phenomenology. However, already in the early 1960s the discussion of phenomenological prob­lems was clearly placed in the context of social analysis and was commonly identified with sociology. At the same time, another perspective was outlined: consideration of the problems of Western philosophy from the point of view of the most universal problems of the theory of knowledge. Social analysis as the dominant direction of Motroshilova's research remained until the end of the 1970s, while the thematic area of this analysis gradually expanded – first to the philosophy of the New Age, subsequently to German idealism (the philos­ophy of Hegel and then Kant), as well as to the origins of Western European phi­losophy in Greek antiquity. Simultaneously with this expansion, and largely due to it, the general philosophical methodology also changed: starting from the 1990s, the study of the history of ideas in the aspect of culture and civiliza­tion is used as a general approach to the history of ideas. The parallel thematic and methodological "universalization" helps N.V. Motroshilova to implement a number of extremely important scientific and organizational projects for Rus­sian philosophy, three of them occupy a special place: History of Philosophy Yearbook, the first Russian periodic edition, entirely focused on the history of philosophy; preparation and publication of a new textbook History of Philoso­phy. West – Russia – East, as well as a new edition of the main works of Im­manuel Kant.

The article reflects upon the developmet of professional history of philosophy, philosophy of science and theoretical sociology in Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The decisive contribution to the formation of modern historical and philo­sophical problems, as well as to modern disputes about the nature of philoso­phy and science, belongs to Piama Gaidenko. The author focuses on the role of studies in existentialism and the way its problematic shaped human and sci­ence studies in soviet philosophy. A small review article published in Voprosy Filosofii in 1959, the very first scientific paper by Gaidenko despite its formal status, appears to be an extremely important scientific document, revealing not only the characteristic personal style of the author soon to become famous, but also the full thematic structure of Gaidenko's future works. Contrary to the com­mon in the 50-60-s classification of existentialism as "irrationalism" and hence as hostile to science, this movement was the first to be studied as a region of contemporary philosophy thus fostering soviet philosophy to move away from harsh criticism of bourgeois philosophy and develop the branch of history of phi­losophy as "normal science".

For the last two centuries the relationship between philosophy and science have constantly been an issue that provoked vehement quarrels. Positions in theses quarrels are mostly based on a relatively narrow cultural and theoretical horizon. It is rather likely that an uncompromising stance would be represented by an ad­vocate of positivism. Meanwhile an alternative standpoint is not only possible but also quite desirable. The question of self-determination of philosophy cannot be solved by any of the answers about its attitude to science, since the grounds on which such an answer is based (various historical, national and general cul­tural attitudes) are significantly different. The severity and regular recurrence of such disputes are to be taken as symptoms of the fact that some fundamental questions are raised here concerning the nature of both science and philosophy. This means, in particular, that such disputes could never stop, but will constantly serve as an instrument of self-consciousness and self-determination of both phi­losophy and sciences. It is shown that the these disputes are caused by hetero­geneous reaons: a) radicalization of the question of the scientific nature of phi­losophy and the foundations of knowledge in German idealism; b) processes of separation of areas of knowledge, i.e. the separation of science and art; c) in­volvement in science of wider social strata, as well as changes in the organiza­tional forms of science itself. However, the results of these transformations were quite apparent not until the second half of the 19. Century and have been pre­ceded by a long tradition of synonymy between "sciences" and "arts" that is partly reflected in the concept of "artes liberales". Strong identification of phi­losophy with the study of nature in the British tradition gives us another example of a disputed and controversial relation.