A History of Philosophy, Vol. X: Russian Philosophy

Summary

Copleston wrote this book after finishing the nine volumes of his History, and it first appeared in 1986 as Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev, published by Search Press in England and the University of Notre Dame Press in America. Continuum numbered it Volume X when it reissued the series in 2003, after Copleston's death. It is the only volume that follows one nation's thought, and it was written while the Soviet state still made dialectical materialism the official philosophy and kept most of the thinkers in its later chapters out of print at home. Copleston begins with the question that runs through the whole story: what is Russia's place between Europe and the East, and must it copy the West or develop from its own Orthodox and peasant inheritance? Pyotr Chaadaev's first Philosophical Letter, published in 1836, answered bleakly that Russia had contributed nothing to humanity, and its author was declared insane by order of the government. The Slavophiles, especially Ivan Kireevsky, replied with an ideal of integral knowledge, in which reason, feeling and faith work together within the life of the Church, against what they saw as the one-sided rationalism of the West. The next chapters follow the Westernizers and radicals. Russian readers of Hegel moved, in Belinsky's phrase, from reconciliation with reality to revolt against it; Herzen and Bakunin carried the dialectic toward socialism and anarchism. The 'new men' of the 1860s put their faith in natural science, utility and the peasant commune, and Peter Lavrov's subjective method in sociology argued that the thinking individual must judge history by moral ideals rather than wait for impersonal laws. Against these currents Copleston sets the novelists and religious thinkers. His chapter on Dostoevsky treats him as a philosopher of freedom who saw that man will not be reduced to a calculable piano key and that freedom without God destroys itself. Tolstoy is studied with others on the meaning of life and history. Vladimir Solovyov, the most systematic of the religious philosophers, receives a chapter on his metaphysics of all-unity and his idea of divine humanity, the union of God and man realized in Christ and to be realized in history. The last third follows Marxism from Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, to Lenin's theory of the revolutionary party and his materialist theory of knowledge, and on into Soviet philosophy as a state doctrine. Two chapters then describe the philosophers expelled or exiled after 1917, above all Nikolai Berdyaev, whose philosophy of freedom and creativity Copleston treats at length, before a short epilogue. Copleston's method is to let each thinker speak in his own terms. He gives the atheist radicals and the Marxists as careful a hearing as the Orthodox philosophers, though he makes plain where he thinks their arguments fail. The book is in copyright, so the library offers this summary, a guide and a buy link, and points students to the Russian novels and the Communist Manifesto already in the collection.

Plot or Argument

• Chaadaev's letter and the Slavophile answer

  After an introduction on the late arrival of independent philosophy in Russia, Copleston treats Chaadaev's verdict on Russia's isolation from European history and Ivan Kireevsky's Slavophile theory of integral knowledge rooted in Orthodox faith and communal life.

• Hegel in Moscow and the turn to revolt

  The Russian Hegelians, from Belinsky's brief acceptance of reality as rational to Herzen's and Bakunin's turn to socialism and anarchism, show a borrowed philosophy of history becoming a programme of action.

• The men of the sixties and the subjective method

  The radical generation that trusted science, utility and the peasant commune, followed by Lavrov's argument that the critically thinking individual must evaluate history by moral ideals, the root of the populist movement.

• Novelists and a religious metaphysician

  A chapter on the philosophical content of Dostoevsky's fiction, a chapter on Tolstoy and others on the meaning of life and history, and a chapter on Solovyov's all-unity and divine humanity.

• From Plekhanov to Soviet dialectical materialism

  Plekhanov's orthodox Marxism and Lenin's revisions of it in party organization and theory of knowledge, then the development and codification of Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union.

• The emigration and Berdyaev

  Two chapters on the religious and idealist philosophers who left or were expelled after the Revolution, centred on Berdyaev's philosophy of freedom, creativity and the spirit, followed by an epilogue.

Characters

• Frederick Copleston, author

  Jesuit historian who, after completing the History, turned in old age to a thought-world outside the Western Latin tradition.

• Pyotr Chaadaev, subject

  Guards officer and essayist whose first Philosophical Letter (1836) declared Russia cut off from the history of Europe and led to his being officially pronounced mad.

• Ivan Kireevsky, subject

  Slavophile thinker who contrasted the Western separation of reason from faith with an Orthodox ideal of integral knowledge.

• Alexander Herzen, subject

  Westernizer and émigré publisher who moved from Hegel to an ethical socialism grounded in the peasant commune.

• Peter Lavrov, subject

  Populist theorist of the subjective method, who held that history is judged and moved by critically thinking individuals.

• Fyodor Dostoevsky, subject

  Novelist whose arguments about freedom, suffering and faith Copleston treats as philosophy in narrative form.

• Vladimir Solovyov, subject

  Religious philosopher of all-unity and divine humanity, the nearest Russian equivalent to a systematic metaphysician.

• Georgy Plekhanov and Vladimir Lenin, subjects

  The founder of Russian Marxism and the revolutionary who adapted it into the doctrine of a vanguard party and a state.

• Nikolai Berdyaev, subject

  Marxist turned Christian philosopher of freedom, expelled in 1922, whose exile writings close the book.

Lessons

• Chaadaev's question: Russia and Europe

  Copleston shows that Russian philosophy began less with abstract problems than with a question about a people's place in history. Chaadaev's despairing answer and the Slavophiles' confident one framed debates for a century. Students can see that a question about identity carries philosophical assumptions about what history is for and whether faith shapes a civilization.

  • What did Chaadaev think Russia lacked, and why did the government treat his letter as madness rather than argument?
  • What did Kireevsky mean by integral knowledge, and why did he think the West had lost it?
  • Is it possible to borrow another civilization's philosophy without borrowing its history?

• Ideas become deeds: the radicals and Lenin

  Again and again in this volume a philosophy is adopted not to understand the world but to change it: Hegel turned into revolt, science into a creed of utility, Marx into a party discipline. Copleston expounds these ideas fairly while showing how their adoption in practice reshaped them. Students can practise distinguishing an argument's merit from the uses to which it was later put.

  • How did Russian readers turn Hegel's philosophy of history into a call for action?
  • What did Lenin add to Plekhanov's Marxism, according to Copleston?
  • When an idea leads to violence, does that refute the idea, or only its application?

• Freedom that will not be calculated

  Copleston's Dostoevsky chapter presents the novelist's case that human beings cannot be reduced to rational self-interest, and that freedom which refuses God ends in either self-will or tyranny. Solovyov and Berdyaev develop the same concern in metaphysical form. Students can test this against the radicals' confidence that science and utility would make men good.

  • Why does the Underground Man insist on his right to act against his own advantage?
  • How does the Grand Inquisitor's offer of bread and order threaten freedom?
  • Does Berdyaev's high view of freedom fit with a Christian doctrine of sin?

• Hearing an atheist fairly

  A Jesuit writing about Bakunin, Lenin and Soviet philosophers might have written polemic. Copleston instead lays out their positions in their own terms before stating his disagreement. Students can learn from the method that charity in exposition and firmness in judgment belong together, and that refuting a caricature proves nothing.

  • Find a passage in your assigned chapter where Copleston states a view he rejects. Could its holder have accepted his summary?
  • Why might fair exposition strengthen rather than weaken a Christian critique?

Context

The thinkers covered lived under the autocracy of Nicholas I and his successors, the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the revolutionary movements that killed Alexander II in 1881, the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the Soviet state. Censorship, exile and emigration shaped where and how Russian philosophy was written, so that much of it appeared in journals, novels and émigré publications rather than university treatises.

Composition

Copleston prepared the book in the 1980s after retiring from Heythrop College and lecturing widely; it was published in 1986 as Philosophy in Russia by Search Press and the University of Notre Dame Press, and Continuum added it to its edition of A History of Philosophy as Volume X in 2003. He followed it with a shorter companion, Russian Religious Philosophy: Selected Aspects (1988).

Reception

Appearing on the eve of glasnost, when Russian religious philosophy was about to be republished in Russia itself, the book was welcomed by English readers as a clear survey by a historian who already knew the Western sources the Russians had absorbed. Reviewers praised its fairness to thinkers of opposed views while noting that it surveys rather than breaks new ground.

Comparisons

• The Brothers Karamazov

  Copleston's Dostoevsky chapter draws much of its material from Ivan's rebellion and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor; read the Legend first and then see how Copleston extracts a philosophy of freedom from it without flattening the dialogue.

• Notes from Underground

  The Underground Man's attack on the rational egoism of Chernyshevsky's generation is the literary reply to the 'new men' of Copleston's sixties chapter, so the two can be read as thesis and counter-thesis.

• Crime and Punishment

  Raskolnikov's theory that an extraordinary man may step over the law to benefit humanity puts the radicals' utilitarian arithmetic, which Copleston expounds, to the test of an axe.

• Fathers and Sons

  Turgenev's Bazarov, a medical student who believes only in what science can prove, gave the radical generation the name 'nihilist'; the novel is the best companion to Copleston's account of the men of the 1860s.

• A Confession

  Tolstoy's account of his crisis over the meaning of life is the primary source behind Copleston's chapter on philosophy of life, and shows a moralist reaching a Christianity without the Church.

• War and Peace

  The essays on historical causation in War and Peace, especially the second epilogue, are Tolstoy's contribution to the Russian debate about whether great men or impersonal forces move history.

• The Communist Manifesto

  The Manifesto states the theory that Plekhanov brought to Russia and Lenin reworked; Copleston's Marxism chapters show how a doctrine written for industrial Western Europe was adapted to a peasant empire.

• The Philosophy of History

  Hegel's claim that history is the rational unfolding of freedom was the text Belinsky, Herzen and Bakunin argued over; Copleston traces how they first accepted and then turned against its reconciliation with the actual.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How often a Russian thinker borrows a Western system (Schelling, Hegel, Comte, Marx) and changes it in the borrowing. Note the change each time.
• The recurring figure of the peasant commune, praised by Slavophiles, populists and early socialists for very different reasons.
• Copleston's handling of the novelists: what he takes from their characters' speeches and whether he credits the author with a character's views.
• The difference between Marxism as Plekhanov argued it before 1917 and Marxism as an official state doctrine after it.
• Where the religious philosophers place freedom: Dostoevsky in the person, Solovyov in the union of God and humanity, Berdyaev in spirit set against objectification.

Key terms and names

Slavophiles and Westernizers

The two camps of the 1840s: the first held that Russia should develop from its Orthodox faith and communal traditions, the second that it should follow Western Europe's path of science, law and reform.

Integral knowledge

Kireevsky's ideal of knowing with the whole person, reason united with feeling, will and faith, in contrast to abstract rationalism.

Narodnichestvo (populism)

The movement of the 1860s and 1870s that looked to the peasant and the commune as the basis of a just Russia and sent young radicals 'to the people'.

Subjective method

Lavrov's and Mikhailovsky's principle that the study of society must include moral evaluation by the critically thinking individual.

Divine humanity (Bogochelovechestvo)

Solovyov's idea that the union of God and man achieved in Christ is to be extended through history to all humanity.

Dialectical materialism

The Marxist philosophy codified in the Soviet Union, holding that matter in motion, developing through contradictions, is the basis of all reality.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did Chaadaev's first Philosophical Letter say about Russia, and what happened to him afterward?
2. Comprehension Why did the Russian Hegelians first accept and then reject the claim that the real is rational?
3. Comprehension What is Solovyov's idea of all-unity?
4. Interpretation Why does Copleston treat Dostoevsky as a philosopher even though he wrote no treatise?
5. Interpretation How did Lenin's view of the party change the Marxism he inherited from Plekhanov?
6. Interpretation What did Berdyaev mean by freedom, and why did the Soviet state expel him?
7. Big Question Can a nation's thinkers answer the question 'Who are we?' without first answering 'Who is God?'

Faith Connections

• John 12:24 (Scripture)

  The verse about the grain of wheat that must die to bear fruit stands as the epigraph of The Brothers Karamazov; it compresses the answer Copleston finds in Dostoevsky to the radicals' promise of happiness without sacrifice.

• Matthew 4:1-11 (Scripture)

  Christ's three temptations in the wilderness are the frame of the Grand Inquisitor's speech, which Copleston uses to explain Dostoevsky's view of freedom and authority.

• John 1:14 (Scripture)

  The Word made flesh is the centre of Solovyov's divine humanity; students can compare the incarnation as Scripture states it with Solovyov's speculative extension of it to all history.

• Berdyaev, The Russian Idea (Great Conversation)

  Berdyaev's own account of Russian thought, written in exile, can be read against Copleston's to see how an Orthodox insider and a Western Catholic tell the same story.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Copleston's account suggests that Russian philosophy grew from the question of Russia's relation to Europe; that Western systems were adopted chiefly as guides to action and remade in the process; that a religious line from the Slavophiles through Dostoevsky and Solovyov to Berdyaev defended the person and freedom against the radicals' materialism; and that Marxism's victory in 1917 drove that line into exile while making its own philosophy an orthodoxy of the state.

Rhetorical device: paired portraits. Copleston sets thinkers in matched contrasts, Chaadaev against the Slavophiles, the radicals against Dostoevsky, Plekhanov against Lenin, so that each position is clarified by the one it answers.

Debate: Resolved: The Slavophiles understood Russia better than the Westernizers did.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Using Copleston's chapters on the radicals and on Dostoevsky, explain the debate over whether human beings act from rational self-interest, and argue which side the twentieth century supported.

Comparison with Fathers and Sons: Compare Bazarov in Fathers and Sons with Copleston's account of the 'new men' of the 1860s. Where does Turgenev's portrait agree with the historian's and where does it go further?

Medical Lens

Two points touch the history of medicine and psychiatry. Chaadaev was officially declared insane after his letter was published and placed under medical supervision, an early instance of psychiatric labels used against dissent in Russia; this is a matter of record about how the state treated him, not a diagnosis. The radicals of the 1860s drew a materialist anthropology from physiology and natural science, treating mind as a function of the organism, which Dostoevsky and the religious philosophers resisted. Pointers below are to Copleston's chapters, not quotations.

• Chapter on Chaadaev

  The publication of the first Philosophical Letter in 1836 and the government's response, which declared its author mad and confined him to medical supervision.

  Psychiatry History Asylum Institution
• Chapter on the 'new men' of the 1860s

  The radical generation's trust in natural science and its materialist account of the human being, including Chernyshevsky's anthropological principle.

  Mind Body
• Chapter on Dostoevsky

  Dostoevsky's argument, drawn from Notes from Underground and later novels, that consciousness and freedom cannot be reduced to natural laws or calculated interests.

  Mind Body

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write a dialogue in a Moscow salon of the 1840s between a Slavophile and a Westernizer about whether Peter the Great saved or betrayed Russia, letting each argue as Copleston presents his school.

• Classroom

  Assign one chapter per student group and have each group present its thinker's answer to a single question: what should Russia become? Chart the answers from Chaadaev to Berdyaev.

• Essay

  Berdyaev was a Marxist before he became a Christian philosopher. Using Copleston's exile chapters, explain what he kept from his early thought and what he rejected.

• Fiction

  Write a short scene in which a young radical of the 1860s, convinced by the 'new men', meets an old village priest. Let both speak in good faith.

Further Reading

• The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

• A Confession, Leo Tolstoy

• Philosophical Letters, Pyotr Chaadaev

  The letters that open Copleston's story.

• The Russian Idea, Nikolai Berdyaev

• Lectures on Divine Humanity (Lectures on Godmanhood), Vladimir Solovyov

• Russian Religious Philosophy: Selected Aspects, Frederick Copleston

  Copleston's 1988 companion study.