Our philosophical credo

We would like to immediately establish the basic mechanisms of our worldview and founding philosophical principles, so that any reader who stumbles upon our site will know at once the key factors and stylistics of the philosophical discussion conducted here. By no means do we hope to impose these principles upon anyone (indeed, that is impossible); we would just like to clearly convey our ideas in potential conversations with visitors.   A clear initial position will enable the like-minded to make an immediate transition to discussing the concrete issues, and opponents (if they are open to constructive polemics) to immediately embark on their criticism.

First of all, to us, philosophy is love of wisdom, in the traditional sense of the world. If it does not help a person to live and act sensibly, or enable the formation of an overall worldview—that is, a systematic and analytical one, simultaneously rooted in tradition and striving towards the future—then it ceases to be philo-sophy. It either degenerates into the realm of varied scientific—or quasi-scientific!—knowledge, of little interest to the majority (as occurred with analytical philosophy and phenomenology), or turns into one of the various unsubstantiated fictions, like the so-called philosophy of Postmodernism. 

At the same time, there is a unified and holistic understanding of philosophy exactly as love of wisdom – the Sophiological philosophy, to use the phrase of the prominent historian of philosophy, G.G. Mayorov.  It comes through in the teachings of Plato and Neo-Platonists, Nikolai Kuzansky and G. Leibniz, F. Schelling and V.S. Solovyov, Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghosh, Teilhard de Chardin, P.A. Florensky and S.L. Frank, and many other authors, continuing to the present. This line of thinking underpins the idea of an unseen, spiritual cosmic reality, to which we are all inherently connected and to which we will all eventually return. 

Secondly, we believe in the vitality of the philosophical tradition of our homeland (especially Russian metaphysical unity and Russian cosmism), which are not only undervalued in the West, but unfortunately, are also weakly adapted and developed by Russian philosophers. The intellectual complex that our national philosophy pales in the face of its European counterpart is alien to us. Of course, this does not indicate some sort of prejudice against the European intellectual tradition, which should be known and actively utilized. Simply that it is time to stop constantly asking ourselves, “but what will the enlightened, philosophical Europe think of us?” Europe does not think anything of us, besides rightfully preferring not to read second-hand Russian commentary on its own original texts. N.S. Trubetzkoy was right when he said that if we want to be respected, we must find the courage to stand on our own – a distinctive and strong Russian philosophy in a united Eurasian cultural space. This is possible and necessary, considering the first-class collection of philosophical ideas and methodologies that Russian philosophical thought has created. Without aspiring to lay out a full inventory of heuristic ideas and principles of Russian philosophy, we will single out only a few of the most important:

- the principle of sobornost’ in the organization of societal and political life opposes both totalitarian collectivism and Western individualism;

- the idea of a Living, evolving Cosmos and the closely related Sophiological treatment of human nature and its potential anthropological transformation (obozhenie, or God’s enlightenment);

- the intention for an organic synthesis of different types of knowledge (the ideal of a whole knowledge in Russian philosophy) with special emphasis on the heart as the ontological and cognitive center of the individual;

- V.I. Vernadsky’s idea of the autotrophic human and the noosphere;

- the Eurasian understanding of the essence of Russia;

- P.I. Novgorodtsev’s idea of the “power of the sacred” (hagiarchy or hagiocracy).

Thirdly, it is necessary to transition to an essentially new civilization, which we call spirituo-ecological (or noospherical). Without this transition, the earthly community awaits global anthropogenic, exploitative collapse. The philosophical development of this new civilization is one of the key tasks of world—and especially national—philosophy. 

We are also deeply convinced that people must fight for this new civilization ideologically as well as practically, for belief without action is dead—including philosophical belief.

A.V. Ivanov