Preface

This special issue is conceived as a Festschrift for Nelly V. Motroshilova, a Russian historian of philosophy who has made important and long-lasting contributions to the field. An academic Festschrift does not emerge by chance; it is a testimony to one’s influence in the profession. Nelly V. Motroshilova certainly deserves such a distinction. She is one of those who have shaped Russia’s intellectual landscape in the second part of the twentieth century. Largely thanks to her, Russian scholarship in the history of philosophy retained its creative character despite the dogmatism and orthodoxy that dominated philosophy in Soviet Russia in the 1950s–1980s. For more than 50 years she has been affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the principal academic institution and the main research center in the field of philosophy in the country. For 27 years (1986–2013) she served as the Head of the Institute’s Division for the History of Philosophy that includes departments of the History of Western, the History of Eastern, and the History of Russian philosophy, and employs over one hundred research associates. During her academic career she mentored more than fifty doctoral students, young scholars, and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom have achieved professional success, becoming notable figures in the field.

Motroshilova’s philosophical enterprise is to understand the history of philosophy not just as a compilation of philosophical concepts developed over the course of time, but also as a constant source of dynamic activity of the human mind. In her view, the history of philosophy is not a collection of antique objects or archival documents that belong in a museum. It is a working laboratory of thoughts and ideas with real significance that influence our intellectual and cultural life today. An expert in a wide range of subjects in the history of Western and Russian philosophy, Motroshilova provides a highly realistic picture of the historical and cultural progression of thought, showing the relevance of the ideas of the past to our current situation.

Motroshilova’s career in philosophy has been prolific, and her many contributions to the field are highly valuable and important. She is the author of fifteen scholarly books discussing figures and topics central to both Western and Russian philosophical traditions, with a particular focus on German idealism (especially Kant and Hegel (Motroshilova 1984)), phenomenology (especially Husserl (Motroshilova 2003) and Heidegger (Motroshilova 2013)), and Russian thought, engaging such thinkers as Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Shestov (Motroshilova 2006), Merab Mamardashvili (Motroshilova 2007, 2012), and others. Her numerous publications and seminal articles have appeared in Russian and international philosophical venues. She has also greatly contributed to the advancement of the discipline thanks to her translational and textological work of which perhaps the best recent example is the unique German–Russian bilingual edition of Kant’s writings that she edited together with the late Burkhard Tuschling (Kant 1994–2014). For her work she has been rightly recognized as a leading historian of philosophy at home and abroad. Her publications are a source of new insights offering a highly sophisticated account of the development of philosophical thought and opening up often complex and challenging ideas for wider debate. Her writings are associated not only with the history of philosophy per se, but also with social epistemology, cognitive sociology, and social philosophy.¹ Notwithstanding the extent of her research topics, all of Motroshilova’s work is profoundly grounded in historical–philosophical material with respect to which she is incontestably expert. She is perhaps best known for deliberately erasing a line that others prefer to maintain, the line separating the Western and Russian philosophical traditions. Her study of European philosophy is devoted to a variety of philosophical schools, trends, and thinkers from the ancient period to the Renaissance, and to the present. Her work on Russian philosophical thought focuses on leading figures and main controversies that have defined the philosophical landscape in Russia from the end of the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Unlike many Russian philosophers who emphasize the purely “national” character of philosophical thought in Russia, Motroshilova insists on the close relation between Russian and Western philosophical ideas that emerged around the same time and are indicative of some crucial parallels in the development of the two philosophical traditions, both in the past and in the present (Motroshilova 2006, cf. also Motroshilova 2010).

Motroshilova’s philosophical interests have been so broad and she has been so productive that it is difficult to do her justice in a short introduction or in a single essay.² This Festschrift is eloquent testimony to her influence in the profession; it is a wide-ranging tribute by her colleagues and former students who have distinguished themselves by their work in different areas of the history of philosophy.

Given Motroshilova’ own interests, it is appropriate that a Festschrift in her honor would be just as wide ranging. This collection of hitherto unpublished essays bears on Western and Russian thinkers—Kant, Hegel, Fedorov, Shestov, and Heidegger—whose philosophical theories and ideas have been central topics of Motroshilova’s own recent writings. The essays are ordered more or less chronologically in accordance with the respective philosophical periods of the featured thinkers. The collection does not intend to be comprehensive, first, because Motroshilova’s own interests spanned so many topics and areas that it would be impossible to cover them all in the present issue, and, second, because the attempt to be exhaustive would go against the letter and the spirit of Motroshilova’s own position in philosophy. She is a philosopher of openness. While she sees her mission in serving the truth and thus constantly striving toward what one of her favorite thinkers, Hegel, calls “absolute knowing,” like Hegel, she too believes that this “end” necessarily assumes openness and is already the beginning of a new development. In her pursuit of truth, she is a vocal supporter of contextual and historical analysis as well as an untiring advocate of the enlightening power of thought that promotes human progress.

She generously shares her discoveries with her readers, students, and colleagues. And her desire to further philosophical understanding of the history of philosophy shows no signs of abating. No doubt she will produce many more important insights in the years to come.

This Festschrift opens with the essay “Philosophy: History and Theory” by Abdusalam A. Guseynov who assesses the significance of the history of philosophy for philosophical inquiry. He shows that the history of philosophy is the main source of theoretical quests in all areas of philosophical knowledge and as such provides not only a valuable foundation but also a real medium for contemporary philosophical investigations.

Dieter Hüning’s essay “Liberty and Determinism: The approach of Christian Wolff” examines Wolff’s failed attempt to provide a solution to the famous free will controversy and to secure freedom against determinism. The author reveals the pitfalls of Wolff’s own approach and indicates philosophical problems to which his “half-deterministic” position necessarily leads.

Two essays are devoted to Kant: one by Kenneth R. Westphal and another by Alexei N. Krouglov. In “Enlightenment, reason and universalism: Kant’s critical insights,” Westphal revisits the topic of Kant’s “universalist” moral principles with emphasis on their application to ethics and especially justice. Using Kant’s critical principles and methods in connection with “practical anthropology”, he shows how Kant justified fundamentally universal principles of justice, which form the basis for our social rights and obligations acquired throughout life. Krouglov’s essay “Kant und der Siebenjährige Krieg” focuses on the less well-known period in Kant’s life that coincides with the Russian occupation of his hometown, Königsberg, during the Seven Years’ War (1758–1762). Krouglov discusses how Kant’s contacts with Prussian, Austrian, and Russian officers and merchants influenced the philosopher’s position regarding war, history, as well as his assessment of the role and historical significance of Frederick the Great.

Both Franz Hespe’s and Marina F. Bykova’s essays focus on Hegel: the former discusses some central notions (especially those of State and Law) of his political philosophy and the philosophy of right, while the latter clarifies Hegel’s concept of Geist and its role in the thinker’s philosophical system. In his essay, “Hegel’s Kritik des Subjektivismus der neuzeitlichen Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie im Naturrechtsaufsatz,” Hespe questions a common reading of Hegel’s political philosophy as a logical successor of Aristotelian concept of politics. He shows that contrary to this reading, Hegel does not view the state and the law as a kind of predetermined order, but rather interprets them as a result of human activity in the political sphere. Bykova’s essay takes a closer look at the recently renewed tendency to overemphasize the onto-theological connotations of Hegel’s notion of Geist and eventually to equate it with the Divine, conceived along lines similar to the Christian notion of God. Critically opposing this reading and showing its conceptual shortcomings, the author offers a more accurate description of Hegel’s concept of Spirit, interpreting it along the lines of social ontology.

The Festschrift also includes two essays on Russian thinkers. Julia B. Mehlich’s essay “Der radikale Pragmatismus N. F. Fedorovs als Überwindung der Philosophie Kants” draws attention to Nikolai F. Fedorov‘s philosophical position. She argues that Fedorov’s radical pragmatism can be seen as a reaction to Kant and as an attempt to surpass his philosophy. The essay “Lev Shestov’s Philosophy of Freedom” by Julia V. Sineokaya and Anton M. Khokhlov examines Lev Shestov’s philosophical project. The focal center of his philosophy is the problem of freedom, which the thinker understands as the spiritual liberation of man on the way to comprehending God. The authors reconstruct Shestov’s religious–philosophical concept of freedom, providing a detailed analysis of its role in his philosophical system.

The collection concludes with the essay “A Progress Report on the Ongoing Heidegger Reception” by Tom Rockmore who discusses the reception of Heidegger following the recent publication of his Schwarze Hefte [The Black Notebooks]. Published in 2014, the notebooks from 1931 to 1938 (Heidegger 2014) contain explicit anti-Semitic content that reignited the debate about Heidegger’s highly controversial relationship to Nazism and the extent to which it is reflected in the thinker’s own philosophical project. Supporting a contextual reading of Heidegger and explicitly rebuffing his tendency toward National Socialism, Rockmore wishes to separate those aspects of Heidegger’s position from the remainder of his philosophy. Rockmore argues that in order for philosophy to survive in a meaningful sense, there is no alternative but to reject Heidegger’s blatantly National Socialist ideas as dead and destructive in favor of other vital aspects of his thinking that are worth retaining.

Some of the essays included in this special issue seek to engage with Motorshilova’s philosophical interests and scholarly contributions, the others are just written in her honor. But focusing on important topics in the history of philosophy, all essays develop new ideas and clarify important philosophical conceptions. While the wide range of topics and philosophical figures examined in the issue might make it difficult to appraise the collection as a whole, it does provide a useful vantage point from which to assess the history of philosophy as a fundamental field of philosophical inquiry. Hopefully, the collection will be acknowledged as a valuable contribution to the discipline, providing rich material for present and future scholarly discussions in the field.