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Reception of Emil Lask’s philosophy in Russia

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Abstract

The acquaintance with significant philosophical doctrines emerging in the West has been a systematic process in the leading Russian-language philosophical journals, collections of articles, monographs and translations. Practically all the most important Western philosophical doctrines have been subjected to scrutiny by Russian philosophers. One of the most vivid Neo-Kantian projects of the early twentieth century, Emil Lask’s Logic of Philosophy, has not gone unnoticed either. Reaction to Lask’s works were far from being homogeneous. His project received several different evaluations, including the critical ones. The project was criticized for the unsolved ontological potential of philosophy, the dogmatic immobility of logic of philosophy, inconsistency of material–form relation, etc. The article considers the first reviews and critical assessments of Lask’s works in Russia as well as the texts of Russian religious philosophers and Russian Neo-Kantians which contain constructive criticism. The range of reviews allows us to reconstruct the reception of Lask’s ideas in Russia and provides a significant supplement to the overall picture of the reception of Neo-Kantianism in Russia.

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Notes

  1. The main figures include Fyodor Stepun, Boris Yakovenko, Sergei Gessen, Nicolai von Bubnov, and Genrikh Lanz. Aron Sternberg wrote his dissertation under the guidance of Lask. Georgii Gurvich was acquainted with Lask. Ivan Ilyin also attended the seminars of the German philosopher during his European fellowship in 1910–1912.

  2. It is noteworthy that in the works of the German philosopher, there are references to some Russian philosophers (Lossky, Nikolai von Bubnov, Stepun), which indicates the presence of scholarly contacts with Russian colleagues.

  3. For example, in his book Social Science and Law (1916), Kistyakovsky notes the success of the methodological attitude of the Baden Neo-Kantians in developing the methodological foundations of the various humanities, e.g. in the philosophy of law, where Lask achieved methodological success in his Rechtsphilosophie (Kistyakovskii 1998, p. 229).

  4. On Gordin’s reception of Lask’s philosophy see Dmitrieva (2016a, b).

  5. The visit of young Russian philosophers to Heidelberg is masterfully described in Stepun’s Bygone and Unfulfilled (Stepun 1956, pp. 93–144). Of interest is also a list of courses and lectures attended by Russian philosophers in Heidelberg (Treiber 1995, pp. 95–96).

  6. Lask's main works will be translated into Russian only at the beginning of the twenty-first century: Doctrine of Judgment (2005–2009), Philosophy of Law (2012), and The Logic of Philosophy (2017). Why were the main works of Lask, unlike those of Wilhelm Windelband, H. Rickert, Paul Natorp, etc. not translated into Russian in the early twentieth century, when Neo-Kantianism was on the rise? Although Lask's works were well known in Russia, it seems that they were not considered to be primary Neo-Kantian works, which required immediate translation into Russian. Despite his independence, Lask remained “in the shadow” of his teachers, Windelband and Rickert. Lask's own philosophy will come to the forefront later in the second half of the twentieth century in connection with research of the background of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, on whom Lask had a considerable influence.

  7. The phrase “illogical form” seems somewhat paradoxical, for form is logical. Non-logical forms refer to what Lask refers to as “material of a formal nature” (Lask 1923, p. 177), i.e. the material side of the domain of the non-sensible. Lask’s revision of the structure of the non-sensible sphere implied the separation of two sides within it: formal and material.

  8. The limitation of Kantian philosophy, according to Lask, consists in the application of categories exclusively to the sphere of sensual being, whereas it is necessary to apply categories to themselves, i.e. to the sphere of the non-sensible or given only in mind. This was the main idea behind Lask’s conclusion of Kant’s Copernican turn.

  9. According to Gessen, with Lask's assumption of the possibility of special categories for the sphere of the supersensible, there is no strict necessity to derive ethics, aesthetics, and religion from reason, as Kant did.

  10. Rainov seems to be referring to the Husserlian doctrine of categorical contemplation, which assumes the direct contemplation of an ideal essence. For example, Martin Heidegger in Being and Time pointed out the proximity to Husserl’s VI Logical Investigation of Lask’s philosophy: “The only one who from outside phenomenological research took up the named investigations positively was E. Lask, whose Logik der Philosophie (1911) is as strongly influenced by the VI investigation (On sensual and categorical intuition) as his Lehre vom Urteil (1912) is by the named sections on evidence and truth” (Heidegger 1967, p. 218).

  11. In Russian, the word “razuma” (“of reason”, genitive) backwards.

  12. Critical reflection on Lask’s philosophy is part of the polemics between Russian Neo-Kantians and Russian religious philosophers. According to Nina A. Dmitrieva, it was in the disputes with religious philosophers that Russian Neo-Kantians “crystallised” the question of the irrational (cf. Dmitrieva 2016a, p. 387). Lask was one of the first Neo-Kantians to raise this question.

  13. According to Alexei N. Krouglov, Trubetskoy chose to criticise Cohen, Rickert and Lask to demonstrate the inconsistency of the various Neo-Kantian systems, regardless of their relation to metaphysics—from Cohen’s anti-metaphysics to Lask’s possible metaphysics (see Krouglov 2016, pp. 409–410).

  14. Mainly because of Lask's discussion of Fichte in the context of the problem of the irrational, Vysheslavtsev writes about Lask’s own irrationalism. While addressing this topic, he also mentions Gessen in passing (Vysheslavtsev 1914, pp. 54–60).

  15. For more on Gessen’s social conception see Zagirnyak (2019, 2020).

  16. Vyscheslavtsev studied not only in Marburg, but also in Heidelberg and Freiburg.

  17. It is Plotinus with whom Lask himself associates his ideas in many ways. In the historical overview at the end of the book Lask explicitly states this (Lask 2017, pp. 305–314).

  18. For example, ‘hingelten’, ‘gelten betreffs’, ‘umgelten’, ‘umgreifen’, ‘Legitimirung’, ‘Besiegelung’, ‘Stempelung’, ‘Epitheton’, etc. (Yakovenko 1912–1913, p. 128).

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This research was supported by the Russian Academic Excellence Project at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.

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    Leonid Kornilaev

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Kornilaev, L. Reception of Emil Lask’s philosophy in Russia. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 505–524 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09461-y

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