bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Shestov, Lev (Yehuda Leib Shvartsman) (1866–1938)
Authors: Rosenthal Bernice Glatzer 
Published: September 2018

A major though atypical figure of the Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance, Shestov taught that reason and science can neither explain tragedy and suffering, nor answer the questions that matter most. A maximalist, a subjectivist and an anti-dogmatist, Shestov regarded philosophical idealism as an attempt to gloss over the ‘horrors of life’ and attacked morality and ethics as inherently coercive. He maintained that science ignores the contingent, the unique and the ineffable, that philosophy cannot be a science, and that necessity depersonalizes and dehumanizes the individual. Philosophy and revelation are incompatible because God is not bound by reason, nature or autonomous ethics. To God ‘all things are possible’, even undoing what has already happened. God even restored Job’s dead children to him – the same children, not new ones, Shestov insisted.
In Dobro v uchenii gr. Tolstogo i Fr. Nitshe (The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche) (1900) and Dostoevskii i Nitshe (Dostoevsky and Nietzsche) (1903) Shestov attacked philosophical idealism and attributed his subjects’ philosophies to a defining personal experience: Tolstoi’s horror at urban poverty, Nietzsche’s illness, and Dostoevskii’s Siberian exile, respectively. These books established Shestov as a major literary critic and interpreter of Nietzsche. Around 1910 he turned to philosophy and religion. In his magnum opus Athènes et Jerusalem (1938) Shestov preached a religious existentialism centred on the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and argued that evil came into the world with knowledge. Adam and Socrates were fallen men because they opted for knowledge over life and faith. Socrates, Aristotle, the Scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Husserl were all faith-destroying. Shestov preferred the anti-rationalism of Dostoevskii, Nietzsche, Tertullian, Luther, Pascal and Kierkegaard. He wanted to restore the primordial freedom of Adam before the Fall. Although Shestov quoted the Gospels and certain Christian theologians approvingly, he was not a Christian. Neither was he an adherent of traditional Judaism.
A brilliant stylist, Shestov used reason and knowledge to combat reason and knowledge. He distinguished between the empirical realm where they applied and the metaphysical realm where they did not. But since he philosophized only about the metaphysical realm he comes across as an irrationalist.
Slavophilism
Authors: Walicki Andrzej 
Published: September 2018

In the Slav countries outside Russia the term ’Slavophilism’ is a generic name for all advocates of the ’Slav idea’, irrespective of their philosophical views and political commitments. In Russia, however, this term is used, as a rule, to denote one specific ideology, elaborated in the 1840s by the former members of the Schellingian circle of ’Lovers of Wisdom’: Ivan Kireevskii (1806–56) and Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–60). Among its other followers, the most creative were the former Hegelians – Konstantin Aksakov (1817–60) and Iurii Samarin (1819–76). Despite some individual differences, all these thinkers shared a coherent view of the world which was expressed in their philosophical, theological and historical ideas. Their importance was not immediately recognized, but after Dostoevskii and Solov’ëv it became clear that they were the most important part of Russia’s ’philosophical awakening’ in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The words ’Slavophiles’ and ’Slavophilism’ were originally intended as gibes. The same was true of the words ’Westernizers’ and ’Westernism’. All these terms, however, could be interpreted positively and were finally accepted by both sides of the ’Slavophile–Westernizer’ controversy. But in the case of the Slavophiles it was a very reluctant acceptance: they felt that the term ’Slavophilism’ failed to express the essential nature of their philosophical and religious position. In addition, this term contained a rather misleading suggestion as to their solidarity with non-Russian Slavs: in fact they focused their attention on the ’truly Christian’ and ’purely Slav’ spiritual heritage of pre-Petrine Russia. An interest in the fates of non-Russian Slavs began to play a role in their ideology only at the time of the Crimean War. This shift of focus transformed the original Slavophilism into a form of imperial Russian Pan-Slavism.
Nihilism, Russian
Authors: Lovell Stephen 
Published: September 2018

The term ’Nihilist’, although it was first used in Russian as early as 1829, only acquired its present significance in Turgenev’s novel Ottsy i deti (Fathers and Sons) (1862), where it is applied to the central character, Bazarov. Thereafter Nihilism quickly became the subject of polemical debate in the journal press and in works of literature. The Nihilists were the generation of young, radical, non-gentry intellectuals who espoused a thoroughgoing materialism, positivism and scientism. The major theorists of Russian Nihilism were Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Dmitrii Pisarev, although their authority and influence extended well beyond the realm of theory. Nihilism was a broad social and cultural movement as well as a doctrine.
Russian Nihilism negated not the normative significance of the world or the general meaning of human existence, but rather a particular social, political and aesthetic order. Despite their name, the Russian Nihilists did hold beliefs – most notably in themselves and in the power of their doctrine to effect social change. It is, however, the vagueness of their positive programmes that distinguishes the Nihilists from the revolutionary socialists who followed them. Russian Nihilism is perhaps best regarded as the intellectual pool of the period 1855–66 out of which later radical movements emerged; it held the potential for both Jacobinism and anarchism.
Russian Darwinism
Authors: Vucinich Alexander 
Published: September 2018

The Russian scientific community welcomed Darwin’s evolutionary theory and made it a basis of research in a wide range of biological sciences. Russian evolutionary studies in embryology, paleontology, microbiology and pathology attracted international attention. The vast scope of Darwin’s popularity in Russia was dramatically manifested in 1909, on the occasion of the national celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great English scientist and the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. All universities, naturalist societies, and many newspapers and popular journals took part in the celebration, which produced a hundred praiseful publications on Darwinian themes.
University philosophers, steeped in metaphysical idealism and spiritualism, linked Darwinism to what they called ‘modern scientific materialism’ and rejected it wholly. They were strongly predisposed to welcome modern revivals of metaphysical vitalism. Freelance philosophers, usually associated with heterodox ideological movements and influenced by Auguste Comte’s positivism or various modern neopositivist and Neo-Kantian currents, credited Darwinism with making science a major topic of modern philosophy. A new discipline, known as ‘scientific philosophy’, rapidly developing in the West, made its first appearance in Russia.
In the Soviet Union, Darwin’s evolutionary theory followed a course of cataclysmic ruptures. During the 1920s, Soviet scientists made significant contributions to the study of the role of the genetic environment in biological evolution and helped set the stage for an evolutionary synthesis of Darwinism and genetics. The Stalinist era (1929–53) marked a drastic departure from the prevalent currents in evolutionary biology. It was dominated by the rise of Lysenkoism, a pseudo-science identified as ‘creative Darwinism’, and was guided by a diluted version of the Lamarckian idea of evolution as a product of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lysenkoism rejected the Darwinian conception of natural selection, downgraded the role of physico-chemical analysis in biology, and paid no attention to molecular biology. In 1948 Lysenkoism was officially recognized as the Marxist theory of evolution. Under Lysenko’s influence, genetics was proclaimed a ‘bourgeois science’ and was made illegal. The downfall of Lysenkoism in 1964 brought the re-establishment of genetics, a full-scale return to true Darwinism, and a re-intensified interest in ‘evolutionary synthesis’.
Russian Idea, the
Authors: Walicki Andrzej 
Published: September 2018

‘The Russian Idea’ is a term used by Russian thinkers to define specific features of Russian culture, the spiritual make-up of the Russian nation, the meaning of Russian history and, as a rule (although not always), Russia’s unique mission in the universal history of humanity.
The term was introduced for the first time in 1861 by Dostoevskii, for whom the essence of the Russian Idea was the ‘universal humanity’ (or ‘all-humanity’) of the Russian spirit. At the same time however, Dostoevskii linked the Russian Idea with Russian imperial messianism. Thus, the notion of the Russian Idea included from its beginning a characteristic tension between striving for universalism and nationalist self-assertion..
The first philosopher to devote a special separate work to the Russian Idea (l’Idée russe, Paris, 1888) was Vladimir Solov’ëv, for whom the national idea was ‘not what a given nation thinks about itself in time, but what God thinks about it in eternity’. He was influenced by Dostoevskii but, challenging Russian nationalists, put much greater emphasis on universalism, stressing that the peculiar greatness of the Russians consisted in their capacity for ‘self-renunciation’. The first case of this self-renunciation was the so-called ‘calling of the Varangians’, that is, the voluntary acceptance of foreign rule; the second was the reforms of Peter the Great: rejection of native traditions for the sake of universal progress.
Now the Russian nation should commit itself to the third, most important act of self-renunciation: to submit itself to the authority of the pope, restoring thereby the unity of the Universal Church and bringing about the reconciliation between East and West. But this act of humility was seen by Solov’ëv as a precondition from the fulfilment of Russia’s great mission of creating the universal, freely theocratic Christian Empire. Solov’ëv invoked in this connection the monk Philotheus’ idea of ‘Moscow as the Third Rome’ but reversed its meaning by putting emphasis on symbolic Rome, that is, not on national isolationism and keeping intact the purity of the Orthodox faith, but on ecumenical universalism and the messianic task of the Christian transformation of the world.
Owing to Solov’ëv, the term ‘Russian Idea’ came to be applied retrospectively, as a designation of a set of problems characteristic for Russian philosophical discussions about the essence of ‘Russianness’. Most historians agree that these problems were formulated under the reign of Nicholas I and that the first thinker who posed them forcefully was Pëtr Chaadaev.
Buddhism, Ābhidharmika schools of
Authors: Cox Collett 
Published: September 2018

During the first centuries after the Buddha, with the development of a settled life of scholarly study and religious practice, distinct schools began to emerge within the Buddhist community. In their efforts to organize and understand the Buddha’s traditional teachings, these schools developed a new genre of text, called ‘Abhidharma’, to express their doctrinal interpretations. More importantly, the term ‘Abhidharma’ was also used to refer to the discriminating insight that was not only requisite for the elucidation of doctrine but also indispensable for religious practice: only insight allows one to isolate and remove the causes of suffering.
Abhidharma analysis is innovative in both form and content. While earlier Buddhist discourses were colloquial, using simile and anecdotes, Abhidharma texts were in a highly regimented style, using technical language, intricate definitions and complex classifications. The Abhidharma genre also promoted a method of textual exegesis combining scriptural citation and reasoned arguments.
In content, the hallmark of Abhidharma is its exhaustive classification of all factors that were thought to constitute experience. Different schools proposed different classifications; for example, one school proposed a system of seventy-five distinct factors classified into five groups, including material form, the mind, mental factors, factors dissociated from material form and mind, and unconditioned factors. These differences led to heated doctrinal debates, the most serious of which concerned the manner of existence of the individual factors and the modes of their conditioning interaction. For example, do the factors actually exist as real entities or do they exist merely as provisional designations? Is conditioning interaction always successive or can cause and effect be simultaneous in the same moment? Other major topics of debate included differing models for mental processes, especially perception.
Vasubandhu (4th or 5th century AD)
Authors: Hayes Richard P. , Mejor Marek 
Published: September 2018

An Indian Buddhist philosopher of the fourth or fifth century, Vasubandhu was a prolific author of treatises and commentaries. Best known for his synthesis of the Sarvāstivāda school of Abhidharma, he was sympathetic with the Sautrāntika school and frequently criticized Sarvāstivāda theory from that perspective. Vasubandhu eventually became an eminent exponent of the Yogācāra school. He also wrote short treatises on logic that influenced Dignāga, traditionally said to have been his disciple.
Probably the most original of Vasubandhu’s philosophical works are his two short works in verse, known as the Viṃśatikākārikāvṛtti (Twenty-Verse Treatise) and the Triṃśikākārikāvṛtti (Thirty-Verse Treatise). In these two works, he argues that one can never have direct awareness of external objects, but can be aware only of images within consciousness. Given that some of these images, such as those in dreams and hallucinations, are known to occur without being representations of external objects, one can never be certain whether a given image in awareness corresponds to an external object. Because one can never be sure of what is externally real but can be sure of internal experiences, he concludes, a person seeking nirvāṇa should focus attention on the workings of the mind rather than on the external world.
Monism, Indian
Authors: Phillips Stephen H. 
Published: September 2018

The prominent classical and modern Indian philosophy known as Advaita Vedānta, which insists on the single reality of Brahman (the Absolute), is often identified as Indian monism. But the monism of Advaita is only a portion, albeit central, of the Advaita view. Furthermore, a monism in theology (Brahman as God) is important to almost all expressions, classical and modern, of Indian theism.
The monism of Advaita is principally psychological. Nondual awareness is considered the true self; that is to say, in the self’s native state, the object of awareness and awareness itself are identical. This kind of awareness is claimed to be presupposed by all dualistic consciousness. Moreover, it is said that only self-aware self-awareness itself cannot be revealed by experience to be illusory. And according to Advaita, a supreme mystical experience, popularly called liberation, does in fact, when it occurs, reveal self-awareness to be the sole reality. A dialectical Advaita adds the further contention that it is impossible to define and explain coherently diverse appearances. This contention is cashed out by long and intricate attacks on the pluralistic ontologies of rival schools, particularly Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika.
The monism of Indian theism centres on the reality of God, who is constrained by metaphysical law to create out of the single spiritual substance that God is. The world is commonly said to be God’s body. Various ramifications of God’s being in some way everything can be discerned in Indian theology.
Ontology in Indian philosophy
Authors: Ambuel David 
Published: September 2018

All Indian philosophical traditions are deeply engaged with ontology, the study of being, since clarity about the nature of reality is at the heart of three intimately connected goals: knowledge, proper conduct and liberation from the continued suffering that is part of all human existence. The formulation of a list of ontological categories, a classification of reality by division into several fundamental objective kinds, however, is less widespread. There is little room for a doctrine of distinct, if related, ontological categories in a philosophical school that takes reality as one, even less if that one lies beyond description. If the phenomenal world is but illusory appearance, as, for example, in the Vedānta of Śaṅkara, then a determination of kinds of entities does not recommend itself as a means to adequate analysis of the world. Even the Sāṅkhya tradition’s realism reduces the world to an evolution from two fundamental entities, spirit and matter. Categories make sense within the context of a pluralistic realism, an analysis of the world that finds it to be composed of a multiplicity of real entities. Such a view is found to some extent in Jaina philosophy, but is primarily defended and developed in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika school.
The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika categories are seven: substance, quality, motion, universal, particular, inherence and not-being. While all are understood as real entities and objects of knowledge, substance is most fundamental as each of the others in some way depends on substance. Substances are nine: earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self and mind. The first four are atomic: they may combine to form macroscopic substance, such as a clay pot, but in incomposite form they are indestructible atoms, as are the last two. Ether, time and space, likewise indestructible, are unitary and pervade all. In its irreducible parts, all substance is eternal; every composite whole is a destructible substance.
A relation of containment, called inherence, structures the categories. The qualities, actions and universals by which we might characterize a pot inhere in it. They are distinct entities from the pot, yet cannot exist apart from their underlying substrate. Composite substances like a pot are also contained in their parts by inherence, but the smallest parts, eternal substances, exist independently as receptacles that contain nothing. A whole, greater than the sum of its parts, is said to inhere in the parts while the parts are the inherence cause of the whole.
Eternal substance, the ultimate substrate of all, is a bare particular. An entity that is nothing but a receptacle for other entities, it furnishes criteria for separability and individuality, but cannot be defined in itself apart from others. This aspect of the concept of substance leads later Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika into extensive analysis of relations and negation.
Fatalism, Indian
Authors: Woods Julian F. 
Published: September 2018

Indian speculation about the vicissitudes of human life has a long and complex history. Life in the early Vedic period was considered to be largely hostage to the ‘fate’ of natural and psychic forces controlled by various gods (devas). Fate was what proceeded ‘from the gods’ (daiva), who were considered to be the guardians of the cosmic order and the ultimate source of prosperity. Sacrifice and prayer were the principal means to win their favour.
Later the idea arose that one’s present lot is due, not to the whim of some god, but to karma, the effect of one’s own actions performed in this or previous lives. On this view, humans do have some scope or ‘freedom’ to change themselves and the environment in which they live. This more individual potential is called puruṣakāra, which, to varying degrees, may modify daiva. The literal meaning of this term is ‘human action’ (from the Sanskrit for ‘man’ and a verbal root meaning ‘to act’). With the increasing popularity of the karma theory, daiva tended to become equated with the effects of past behaviour.
Finally, in the context of the spiritual ascent towards a unifying vision of existence, the status of human agency itself became an issue. As long as the seeker remains blinded by false notions of ‘I’, the ego must experience a sense of agency and a modicum of freedom to chart its course of life. However, from the perspective of enlightenment, or mokṣa, all is ‘fate’ in the hands of a personal God or a Supreme Self.
Political philosophy, Indian
Authors: Inayatullah Sohail 
Published: September 2018

While Western political theory has been framed as the struggle between the state and the individual, Indian political philosophy has been more concerned with issues of self-liberation, morality and leadership. Until recently, with the advent of institutionalized or syndicated Hinduism, Indian society made a softer distinction between state and religion. Classical Indian political theory, as with Kauṭilya, centred on axioms on how to maintain and expand power. Kauṭilya argued that reason, the edicts of the king, and his own rules of governance, the Arthaśāstra, were as important for decision-making as the ancient religious treatises, which defined social structure and one’s duty to family, caste and God. With the exception of the Arthaśāstra, politics was expressed through the ability not so much to govern as to define social and moral responsibility, what one could or could not do and who could oversee these rules.
Like all civilizations, India had periods of rule by accumulators of capital and traders, warriors and kings, and Brahmans and monks; there were also revolts by peasants. Still, philosophy was in the hands of the Brahmans, the priestly class. This philosophy was primarily not about artha (economic gain) or kāma (pleasure), but about dharma (virtue) and mokṣa (liberation from the material world). The attainment of salvation, of release from the bonds of karma, was far more important than the relationship between the individual and the sovereign, as was the case in Western political philosophy.