Alexei N. Krouglov’s research while affiliated with Russian State University for the Humanities and other places

Although Kant was born three hundred years ago, his practical philosophy is still relevant and helpful for understanding difficult and crucial issues of today. One example is the strange transformation the concept of human dignity has undergone in post-Soviet Russia — in everyday language, in ideological doctrines, and in legal documents. While in ordinary life dignity is increasingly reduced to access to material benefits, in its legal sense — above all in the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation — anti-communist ideology has turned it into the “right” to enjoy comfortable living conditions, being almost totally divorced from duties and from morality. Such interpretations of human dignity lead to a dead end, creating problems for its perception and for its relationship to other constitutional provisions — problems that are impossible to resolve in the framework of such an interpretation of right. By turning to Kant, one of the pillars of the modern egalitarian universalist conception of human dignity, we can trace the idea of personal dignity back to its origin as an absolute inner value which, unlike external material benefits, has no equivalent, and involves self-legislation, restriction of freedom, and the fulfilling of moral duty.

First Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Main Pedagogical Institute and then also St. Petersburg University, Carpatho-Rusyn P. D. Lodij spent a quarter of a century teaching philosophy and law in the Russian Empire in the first third of the 19th century. His knowledge of Kant’s philosophy and his attitude to Kant’s criticism are estimated diametrically opposed in the research literature. An analysis of his main philosophical work, “Logical Precepts which Lead to Cognition and the Distinction of the True from the False” (1815), convincingly proves that Lodij was an excellent scholar of Kant’s philosophy. In Russia, he was the first thinker who spoke about the differences between the first and second editions of the “Critique of Pure Reason”. Lodij also was the first who noted both the revolutionary role of Kant’s Copernican turn, and the importance of Humeʼs causality problem for the formation of critical philosophy. In Russia, Lodij was the first who proposed a detailed description of Kant’s transcendental idealism. At the same time, Lodij’s general attitude to Kant was rather skeptical. In his own logic, he does not follow Kant’s division of logic into pure and applied, but he returns to pre-Kant’s split into theoretical and practical logics. Lodij disputes with the basic conclusions about the space derived from the transcendental aesthetic, denies synthetic judgments a priori and the rooting of the cognizing reason in illusions. Despite his unequivocal claims regarding Kant’s philosophy, “Logical Precepts” and its author were persecuted during the so-called “professorsʼ affair” of the 1820s. As a result, Lodij was suspended from teaching philosophy, and his logic textbook was withdrawn from teaching for both “disgrace” and imaginary Kantianism.

После абриса предыстории кантовского понятия критики и выявления наиболее распространенных значений критики на примере сочинений Ж. Леклерка, И.Г. Вальха, И.Кр. Готшеда и Ж.-Ф. Мармонтеля дана краткая характеристика наиболее самобытных черт кантовского понятия критики, максимально приближенная к кантовским оригинальным произведениям, опубликованным после 1781 года. Своеобразие кантовского зрелого понятия критики состоит в ее направленности на саму познавательную способность, в сравнении ее действия с судебным процессом, в акцентировании отсутствия на ее пути каких-либо преград, включая сферу религии, права и морали, в связи с требованием свободы мысли и свободы слова и в описании собственной эпохи как века критики. Наряду с общей характеристикой кантовской критики в целом показан также специфический метафизический смысл критики, согласно которому она представляет собой срединный путь между догматизмом и скептицизмом. Отталкиваясь от метафизического смысла критики, автор определяет кантовское понятие критического метода, направленного на преодоление догматизма и скептицизма путем обнаружения общих свойственных им обоим и объединяющих их друг с другом заблуждений. Непонимание и забвение кантовских новаций в развитии критики демонстрируется на примере популярного ныне так называемого «критического мышления», нашедшего определенное применение в российском образовательном процессе. Указанное «критическое мышление» ведет свою родословную от Дж. Дьюи и почти полностью игнорирует кантовские достижения.

In “The Phenomenology of Spirit” and “Philosophy of Right”, Hegel gives a detailed specification of the theses about the war that were claimed in earlier papers and manuscripts, but his position is not fundamentally changed. In the “The Phenomenology of Spirit” Hegel advocates governments’ need and right to initiate a war from time to time in order to prevent both the isolation and atomization, and let individuals feel the death. As in the past, the war, as Hegel says, has a moment of ethical life. In the “Philosophy of Right” Hegel introduces final deliberations about war that rely on ideas of his earlier paper about natural law even more than in the “The Phenomenology of Spirit”. Hegel emphasizes the ethical role of sacrifice in the war and expresses opinions critical of not an abstract perpetual peace but a concrete philosophical project of Kant. Due to Hegel, Kant’s perpetual peace does not resemble a perpetual deception, since the required union of states is elusive and none except the world spirit in the world history can be a praetor. In line with Heraclitus, Hegel maintains that wars underlie the nature of things. I contribute to the discussions of Hegel scholars if Hegel’s philosophy glorifies a war or not as follows: I substitute the term “glorification” with the term “bellicisme” that suits better to measured, not snobbish and deprived of certain historical implications Hegel’s theses about reasonableness, necessity, the ethicality of war and ethicality of perpetual peace illness.

The modern popularity of the Kantian definition of enlightenment often leads to a distorted notion that his understanding of enlightenment was dominant already during his lifetime, expressing the quintessence of all-European Enlightenment. This turns our attention away from entire layers of philosophical thought, since the Kantian definition of enlightenment in the late eighteenth century was neither the only one nor the preeminent one. The study of alternatives represented in the German philosophy of that period gives a deeper insight into the originality of the Kantian approach with regard to both its merits and demerits. The presentation of the Kantian definition of enlightenment as the standard turns out to be a rather late historical phenomenon. Even Kant’s closest followers did not turn to his interpretation of enlightenment and, indeed, were sharply critical of the phenomenon as a banal and superficial one, opposed to faith. Further transformation of the views on the Enlightenment led to the emergence of the inauthentic terms of “Enlightenment” and Lumières applied post factum to the eighteenth-century philosophy in Europe. As a result, the essence of the enlightenment was defined not so much by the eighteenth-century Enlighteners as by historians and philosophers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who constructed a model notion of enlightenment against which philosophical figures were then compared. This approach ignored, first, the authentic definition of enlightenment (in Germany and Russia in the eighteenth century there were authentic terms “Aufklärung” and “prosveshcheniye”, and in France the proto-term “eclairé”) and, second, important national differences in the interpretation of the phenomenon. The emasculate Kantian definition of enlightenment used to legitimise the proposed approach. A closer look at the authentic view of eighteenth-century philosophers and a comparison of the Kantian approach to enlightenment with its alternatives that existed at the time might perhaps demonstrate that the philosophical and heuristic potential of the allegedly overcome and discredited Enlightenment is far from exhausted and is still relevant today.

By providing symbolic (operates by means of signs) and intuitive (operates without signs) types of cognition, G.W. Leibniz in the “Reasoning about cognition, truth and ideas” laid the foundation for the problem of visibility discussions in 18th century. Proceeding from Leibniz’s ideas, Chr. Wolff in the “German metaphysics” built a detailed doctrine about figurative and contemplating cognition, giving priority in the field of application and the degree of clarity to the first type. Wolff’s doctrine almost immediately became classic and found a lot of supporters. J.G. Darjes and G.F. Meier moved the metaphysical distinction of cognition distinctions to logic. A.G. Baumgarten in the “Metaphysics” offered a new criterion of symbolic and intuitive cognition distinction. J.N. Tetens scrutinized the opposition of symbolic and contemplating cognition from the point of a priori and a posteriori opposition. J.H. Lambert in the “New Organon” brings the interest back to the figurative cognition.

For over a century, Hegel’s view of war is seen as controversial that results in mutually exclusive interpretations. To reach a proper evaluation of Hegel’s views, it is necessary to consider both Hegel’s initial states of philosophical doctrine about war and peace, and the development of his understanding of war from early works to mature ones. In the first part of the paper, I characterize Kant’s position on war, since it was the starting point for Hegel. Contrary to popular representations about Kant as an exclusive pacifist, the philosopher of Koenigsberg had a philosophical-historical treatment of war, in which the war appeared as something sublime. However, both legal-ethical peace understanding and veto of war from the point of practical reason were not dominant in Kant’s philosophy, subordinating the sublime treatment of war. Kant’s next contemporaries could not already keep this position, emphasizing either one or the other side of war interpretation. Starting from the early writings (the paper “On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law” or manuscripts “System of Ethical Life” and “The German Constitution”), Hegel stresses an ethical aspect of war and its necessity, so that the shield is arranged on the way of systems isolation and individuals atomization, and the unity in its ethical health is saved. Perpetual peace, on the contrary, leads to diseases. The statement about equality of claims and the same truthfulness of warring parties’ rights is the originality of Hegel’s view. It makes absolutely impossible the war evaluation from the point of its justice and injustice.

The origins in Marxist-Leninist philosophy of the dogma about Kant as the German theorist of the French Revolution requires some analysis and I explain how a phrase of Marx later gave rise to the dogma. I first look at the sources that influenced K. Marx’s view of Kant and the French Revolution, above all С. F. Bachmann and H. Heine. I then examine the form in which Kant’s philosophy was compared with the French Revolution in the non-Bolshevik milieu before the 1917 Russian Revolution (P. Ya. Chaadayev, V. S. Mezhevich, the Dostoyevsky brothers, V. F. Ern, Archbishop Nikanor, P. A. Florensky). Then I look at how Marx’s phrase influenced Russian social democrats and specifically the Bolsheviks (G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Lenin, V. M. Shulyatikov). I cite the example of the discussion triggered by a letter of Z. Ya. Beletsky concerning the third volume of The History of Philosophy (1943) to demonstrate the non-canonical status of Marx’s thesis on Kant and the French Revolution in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, the first Soviet edition of Kant’s works in the 1960s canonised Marx’s phrase and gave the exact source. The reason why it took so long to give chapter and verse for the Marx quotation is that it occurs as early as 1842 in “The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law” which belongs to the idealistic period of the early Marx.

Kant’s concept of Gesinnung reveals the whole range of its problematic potential when it has to be translated into other languages: there are no ready-made equivalents. The problem stems from the evolution of this concept in Kant himself from the pre-Critical (“mode of thinking”, “convictions”, “virtuousness”, “virtues”, “sentiments”, “inclinations”, “aspirations”) to the critical works and then in the Critical period in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Further problems arise from the complex pre-Kant­ian history of the concept of Gesinnung which influenced Kant’s philosophy. Among the sources that had a particularly strong impact both on the meaning of Kant’s concept of Gesinnung and on its perception the most important are various translations of the Bible — both into German and into Russian — as well as Latin works by A. G. Baumgarten and German works by C. A. Crusius and M. Mendelssohn. I have also included an overview of English versions of translations of Kant’s term Gesinnung (disposition, attitude, conviction, sentiment, comportment of mind, intention, Gesinnung) and their more important differences and have shown the unhistorical character of the translation arguments in modern English-speaking Kant scholarship which totally ignores pre-Kantian history and the context of Kant’s contemporaries. Proceeding from this study the next part of the article will offer my own interpretation of Kant’s concept of Gesinnung in the Critical period and suggest a uniform translation of the term into Russian with a corresponding grounding of my choice.

At the beginning of 20th century, there was a problem of establishing which version of the association of Kant’s and Marx’s ideas is correct. If some Legal Marxists more or less combined Kant and Marx, most Russian Social Democrats, especially Bolsheviks, were against such an association. Under the influence of G. V. Plekhanov, Russian Marxists announced a sharply critical attitude toward Kant’s philosophy. This position was reinforced by Russian philosophers, poets, and slavophiles who accused Kant of being militarist. During the World War I, both tendencies faced each other. Plekhanov’s desperate appeal to „the simple laws or morals and justice” and Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason”, which was supported by L. I. Axelrod, failed. It was rejected by the majority of Marxists both during the World War I and after the triumph of the 1917 October Revolution.